There's the birthday boy surrounded by his mates on one side and his grandparents on the other. There something larger than life about that kid. Even in the picture he seems more vivid and more active than everyone else. His moods are bigger, his joys louder, his anger more imposing. And he does love anger. He loves the burn and the heat of it. I think you can literally see steam coming out of his ears when he is angry. I'm not frightened by his rages persay. He shies away from physicalizing anything (though I did hear glass breaking in the basement one evening). He is definitely more about the bark than the bite. But wow can he bark and snarl sometimes! Now, I'm all for expressing feelings . I don't even mind a bit of shouting, which is probably why he and I get into it at dinner sometimes while everyone else shrinks back. You can see them thinking "here we go again," and I can see joe looking for a spot to interject his signature peace making phrase, which is "so what about those monkeys?" But I do worry that he's a bit of a bully and I do worry that he is so very ready to lay the causes for his outsized emotions outside himself, to treat them as pleasures given to him by the outside world, rather than as information provided by his system.
If I think back to his adolescence, I can objectively see that he has figured out many coping strategies (most of which I approve of but not all) and learned a great deal about socially acceptable modes of expression. But sometimes all I seeis that living with someone who wears their heart on their sleeve and doesn't take explicit personal responsibility for channeling emotion can be very exhausting!
