While watching an episode of Dr. Phil about a teenage sexual predator the other day, I was disgusted by the misconduct and lack of remorse for all of the criminal activity the predator had committed.
The show kept the audience gripping their seats waiting for the polygraph test results to determine whether the 19-year-old had inappropriately touched his four-year-old sister.
My biggest concern was when he admitted to having been molested as a child and hadn't told anyone. All of that rage had built up to the point where the only behavior he knew was ill-mannered.
I stayed tuned in and soon realized that pent-up emotion and hostility only leads to tragedy. No wonder it was no surprise to anyone when he failed his polygraph test.
The episode closely resembled recent stories I'd heard about men killing their wives and children. Last week Oprah went behind the scenes and talked to a man serving a life sentence in prison for brutally killing his wife. Years before the vicious attack, he had been diagnosed with manic depression, but had not made any effort to seek help.
Looking back, he feels that if he had gotten help and talked to someone about the problems in his life, his anger would not have exploded out of him the way it did the day he killed his wife. Now he has the rest of his days to think about the mistakes he made.
One woman on that same episode shared her tragic story with the world. She had separated from her husband shortly after learning that he had problems of his own to figure out. Long story short, he kept his feelings of hatred for his estranged wife locked up so deep inside of him, that by the time he snapped, there was no hope left. His anger poured out of him and he took it out on his two little children.
A psychologist later said that angry husbands often view their children as an extension of their mother, and in this case, that was true. He strangled one and smothered the other before driving to his wife's house. He stabbed her over 50 times, but she managed to survive the attack. However, her life is not the same because her children are gone and her husband is serving two consecutive life sentences.
The similar TV shows may have just been coincidentally aired around the same time, but an article then ran in the Indianapolis Star about a man in Loogootee who killed his estranged wife, her boyfriend and his own two children. The reasons for the killings are unknown because he killed himself shortly after. However, it is likely that his outburst was triggered by a pileup of angry feelings.
Dr. Phil and Oprah may not have all the answers, but the lesson to be learned is that emotional instability is not justification for hurting or killing other people.
These scenarios don't happen every day, but they're perfect examples of how much lives change when emotion is kept locked up. There are so many pressures put on people that, sooner or later, it all comes out. Simply talking to vent about bad days gets those bad feelings out so that the pressure doesn't build over time. History shows it's dangerous to keep anger bottled up inside because it only leads to the end of innocent lives.
Write to Whitney at wlhoyt@bsu.edu
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