Kidd Files for Divorce Claiming Cruelty - Anger Management is NOT ENOUGH

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE LACKING IN A SPOUSE - everyone's worse nightmare. Jason Kidd and Joumana.

When you read about the problems of Joumana and Jason Kidd, doesn't it give you the same feeling as "Fatal Attraction". It's the thing we fear the most, a spouse who is out-of-control.

In the papers filed in state Superior Court in Bergen County, Jason Kidd accuses Joumana Kidd of "physically and mentally abusing him, threatening to make false domestic violence complaints against him to police, and of interfering with his relationship with his children."

"The defendant's extreme and unwarranted jealousy and rage has left the plaintiff concerned about her emotional stability," the papers say. Read the rest of the article HERE.

It's sickening. Imagine what it's like for their children. Jason was ordered to take anger management after Joumana reported him once for abuse (and if you read what's written, it's possible she was setting hi up).

Anger management is not enough. It isn't just about anger, it's about emotional intelligence.

My "Anger Management through Emotional Intelligence" is a real landmark in a sea of "product" with debatable value that's also hard to assess. Are the same people offering "anger management" that offer "notary training" in California, and "defensive driving" all over the US - because it's court-ordered and easy money? And because judges are judges and are quick to say, as one did recently, "I'm a judge. I don't know physics." SOmehow this "anger management" got started. Does the teacher have credentials in psychology and coaching, and years of experience with actual people?

Anger is not, frankly, what it's about, as you can see. My program was constructed from years of work with people in the trenches. It is clinically based, and I have a degree in clinical psychology.

It's common for a person who feels (without being mindful of it) out-of-control, to marry someone who appears to be quite IN control. (Opposites attract). Someone like Jason Kidd, for instance, who says it's not going to affect his game, that's his job. Because there's no response from the "in control" one, the "out of control" one amps it up. The other one shuts down further. The game is on, and it's a very ugly one. And there is no winner, as we see here. It is a tragedy.

Violence and abuse occur because of a lack of emotional intelligence. The anger can be "hot" or it can be "cold"; it can be from depression, fear, and for heaven's sake, people also go bonkers when excited. If 90% of the people who win the lottery are bankrupt 5 years later, even beyond the winnings' interest, what does that tell you?

Our hearts are saddened when we read something like the Kidds' problems. And for all the superstars whose troubled relationships make the headlines, there are hundreds of thousands of "just folks" in the same sitaution, and emotionally unintelligent nightmare. The divorce rate is over 50%. It is higher for 2nd marriages and higher STILL for third marriages. "Hope springs eternal," but without emotional intelligence intervention, it is sterile hope, as the statistics confirm.

EQ makes or breaks your life. I'm thinking of a former client of mine, who was 49 at the time his second wife, 24 years old, pulled up to the parking lot at his work, screamed, threw things at him, and kicked him in front of his colleagues and employees. He owns the company and employs over 200 people, makes well into 7 figures, has a Ph.D. in engineering, has top security clearance from the US of A, and has made some of the - frankly - stupidest decisions in his private life that you can imagine. His first wife used to physically abuse him. He was 6'4" tall and weighed 250 lbs. and she was 5'1" tall and weighed 105 lbs.

EQ. It makes or breaks your life and, sadly, the lives of many children are involved, as with the Kidds' children. My heart goes out to all concerned. If the judge is going to grant joint custody, which was requested, I would like to see him order both of them to take not "anger management," but an emotional intelligence course.

Vendetta! Sangue! say Verdi's arias. And "vengeance is a dish best served cold" says Shakespeare. It goes on and on, and is really terrifying, and "anger" is the least of it.

Gerald Ford: The Emotionally Intelligent President

THE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE OF GERALD FORD
Ford had "guts" in the way that counts ... an emotionally stable and mature man, he was willing to put the common good before his personal good, and acted with courage and authenticity.

If you want to improve your OWN emotional intelligence, call me at 817-734-1471 or email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc . Give yourself a real gift for the New year: Emotional Intelligence.

The reports continue ... from cbs, "The Underappreciated President": "Ford was a genial, likeable man, not entirely guileless but still an antidote to Richard Nixon, whom he replaced as president. Ford saw the best in people and assumed that even his political adversaries — he insisted he had no enemies — usually had good intentions. Nixon saw his opponents as sinister. Nixon was paranoid. Ford wasn't. His appealing personality —his openness, his unperturbed reaction to critics, his cheerfulness and warmth — was a necessary factor in suturing the wounds left by the bitter political battles over Watergate and Vietnam. But imposing his personality on the nation wasn't sufficient for the task.

"That's where Ford's guts came in. The fallout from the pardon, which Ford issued a month into his presidency, was predictable. His approval rating was instantly cut in half — from the 70s to the 30s. His election to a full term in 1976 became problematic at best, impossible at worst. And, as expected, he lost to Jimmy Carter narrowly in the 1976 race. Ford knew the political downside of the pardon. But he went ahead anyway, and it had an extraordinarily benign effect in two ways. The pardon spared the nation the trauma of bringing a former president to trial, a polarizing drama that would have lasted for years. And it allowed Ford to govern without the distraction of a Nixon prosecution. Absent the pardon, Ford would have been a crippled caretaker in the White House...

"[Ford] was a moderate who got along famously with Democrats, especially the crusty conservatives from the South and West. He felt strongly, as others did in that era, that politics should stop at the water's edge. In other words, he believed the foreign policy pursued by presidents, whether Republican or Democrat, should have bipartisan support. But bipartisanship in foreign affairs had died in Vietnam. ..."

"Ford was more or less a small government conservative. His favorite saying in speeches was: 'A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.'

"It was two decades before Ford's success as president began to be appreciated. When presidential scholar Fred Greenstein of Princeton developed a half-dozen non-partisan, non-ideological measures for judging modern presidents, he found that Ford scored surprisingly well. Greenstein labeled Ford "underappreciated." Ford's greatest strength, Greenstein wrote in his book "The Presidential Difference," was his "emotional intelligence." This is the quality of emotional soundness that allows a president to avoid distractions, not be intimidated by his high office and its obligations, and to take criticism and even policy defeats with equanimity. Greenstein wrote: "Ford's own remark about himself upon assuming the vice presidency in December 1973 was that he was 'a Ford, not a Lincoln.' In the second half of the 1970s, it was more to the point for the nation that he was not an emotionally roiled Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon." Read the full article HERE.

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REMEMBER .... emotional intelligence is not a mystery. It can be learned.

If your Christmas get-togethers were difficult this year, take the How to Handle Difficult People course. DR who successfully completed it just before the annual Christmas get-together, wrote:

"What a pleasure to have someone push your buttons and not experience the emotional tug that used to make me react.... I felt the urge to be kind instead of annoyed by their odd behaviors. Thanks for leading me through this path. Our holiday dinner was, well, enjoyable. Thanks."

This could be YOU, next year, if you start now. Do it NOW while it's fresh in your memory and mind. Click HERE to register for the How to Handle Difficult People course. It could be the best $79.99 you ever spent.