An angry young man
Mark has been under homeopathic treatment for most of his life, due to behaviour problems. He is now 18 years old, and his mother contacts me again from New Zealand, since he is becoming dangerously aggressive. He has just been expelled from school after getting into numerous fights; during the last one he broke a boy’s nose, which had to be operated on. He refused to apologise, saying “he was bothering me. I would do it again if the situation came up again. Some people just need to be hit.” The school said that he was too dangerous to have there, since he showed no signs of remorse. During the lessons he would just retreat into himself and not listen, saying that they were ‘boring’. He did not study, saying that the subjects were of no interest to him. His mother said that he expected to get good results with no effort. At home, he refused to do anything around the house. Like a ‘typical teenage boy’ he refused to clean up his room or to help with household chores like taking out the garbage or setting the table. What was not typical for a teenager, though, was his extreme aggression. He would swear at his mother and take on a threatening stance as though he would hit her. Sometimes he did lash out at her; he only stopped when she picked up the phone to call the police. He was afraid of being sent to prison for hurting, or even killing someone.
Ever since early childhood his mother says “He drives me crazy. I am afraid that he will come into harsh contact with the law at some point. He threatens me, says he will shoot me or cut off my legs.” His parents tried to find the best schooling for him, enrolling him in a Montessori school with small classes in the hope that the teachers would understand him and help him get through his problems. But there, too, his teachers did not know what to do with him. He was the class bully, even though he was the smallest of the class; he would tease children, pushing, making them fall down and then hitting them. He had no friends. Sometimes, if he felt like it, he would be helpful, taking care of younger children or taking on responsibility in the class. He tried to do his work meticulously, wanting it to be perfect, he would erase it and start again if he had not got it right. But he could not take any criticism or help.
He likes animals, but ends up hitting them instead of patting them. He kills insects, either by smashing them or by pulling them to pieces. He always wants to fight; he tempts his father into a fight by scattering his newspaper all over the floor and tearing it up while his father tries to read. He liked to wear cowboy clothes, taking on a fighting pose and pointing a toy gun at his mother. He likes to show his muscles. His mother says “He has no fear at all, he will swim under water, jump from heights, I am always afraid that he will hurt himself but he is very well-coordinated.” He likes to dance to music, but this does not make him quiet. He loves sports and is very good at them, soccer, running, golf. He wants to be the best, showing off and getting medals. He cannot manage team sports, though, as he always fights with the other children. He likes to watch fighting films on TV, and becomes extremely angry if his parents try to limit him in this. “He does not listen to a thing we say, we have no control over him. Everything is we suggest is “no”, he is in constant opposition. He rebels until he is punished, as though he is forcing us to be angry with him.” His parents try to reason with him, to no avail. He says “Everyone is telling me what to do, trying to keep me small, telling me to follow the rules; to do it this way and no other way. I can’t stand it. It drives me crazy, as though I am drunk. Then I do crazy things.”
He had trouble concentrating, his mother says “he is all over the place.” His intelligence is very good, though, as seen through tests. He does not want to be told how to do anything, he plunges straight into a task before learning how to do it and becomes angry if someone tries to explain it to him. It seems that he is in a continual battle with authorities, with his parents in the first place, but also the teachers or anyone who would tell him what to do.
Even as a small child of just a few months old he was “hard to please”. He did not play with things that one would expect at child to play with, such as rattles or balls; he would take anything he found and smash it, such as plants or vases. He was late learning to talk.
Food has always been a problem as well. He refused to eat most things, even if he was hungry. His mother, who teaches cooking classes, found this very frustrating, since she liked to prepare healthy, appetizing meals. He would wriggle on his chair and get up from the table several times during the meal. He would take his plate and turn it upside down on the table, or take one bite then smile at his mother in a “malicious way” as though to say “you can’t force me to eat.” He would bring his lunchbox home from school with the carefully prepared meal still in it. It turned out that he would buy sugary things for himself instead of eating his mother’s meal. He ate things that one would not expect a small child too eat, such as mustard directly from the pot, raw carrots, mushrooms, but would not eat if his mother was looking. It was impossible to get him to brush his teeth, a constant battle.
Sometimes he likes to be cuddled, seeking contact. He says “I am just a little boy, I need lots of love.”He builds a “nest” for himself in his bed, a safe place to hide in. “I hear footsteps at night, they are coming to get me, sharpening their knives to kill me. I am always prepared in case they come. I practice certain karate moves.”
Physical: Small for his age. Often herpes labials and ulcers in his mouth. Severe acne on his face during his teens.
One would think that he came from a violent family background where he was beaten or neglected, but the opposite is true. He is the only child of parents who had looked forward to having a child and were prepared to do everything for him. His father is a successful engineer who earns a lot of money in huge projects all over the world. He has anger problems, too, and can shout, though never hit. He tends to drink and smoke too much. These days he does not live with the family most of the time, staying overseas doing high-powered projects.
His mother has studied homeopathy, yoga, and nutrition. She says the violence runs in the genes in her family, her father used to hit people before talking with them. He was raised during the war and there was not much money, “they talked with their fists.” She said that she had been problematic as a teenager, going out with much older men and then feeling abused by them, then extremely angry. “Once I invited an ex-boyfriend, a man who had left me, to go to the sauna. He undressed, then I took all his clothes and drove away, leaving him naked. He should know exactly how I feel.”
I did not hear from the family for several years after moving to France, then the mother phoned me in great distress. “Our family is falling apart; my husband does not want to come home anymore if Mark is still there. We have tried so much for him, but nothing works. I am completely beside myself, afraid that my son will kill me or someone else or himself. He refuses to go to anger management treatment. He does not go to school anymore after being expelled, so we do homeschooling, but he refuses to work, saying it is useless. Everyone tries their best for him but he just pushes them away. We have sent him on expensive courses like Outward Bound, sent him to expensive schools, sent him to counseling, gone to counseling ourselves, nothing helps. When we lived overseas he went to the school for foreigners there, then to Australia to have a better schooling. He lived with family members there for a while, but several families turned him away after a while, he was just too hard to live with. He would not help at all and was only getting into fights with everyone.”
He only eats sugary things and his guts are completely out of order, with really stinking stools and flatulence. His skin is a mess.
Skype session with Mark: “People push my limits until I crack. At school I wonder how the kids are so immature, so stupid. I didn’t get any positive feedback, nothing to boost my moral. Now I don’t want to get out of bed, I stay in my room all day, watching TV all night and sleeping all day. Everyone bothers me, I feel every fly that lands on my face and I want to smash it. I don’t have the will-power to drive to golf lessons even though it is just 20 minutes away. Everything is useless. I would like to become a bouncer at a pub to earn money and to hit people. Or I would go into the marines, but for that I have to get more schooling and I don’t have the drive to do it. Nothing works for me. I am so full of anger and aggression. It is my parent’s fault, they have never done anything good for me. They should not have brought me back from Australia. I would love to drink whisky, vodka or beer, but I don’t want to be like my father. I am stronger than him. I want to do my own thing, no one should tell me what to do. I don’t want all those women, my mother, those therapists, telling me what to do, I will do it all myself. I don’t want to take remedies, I should be able to do it alone.
“I am afraid of becoming a criminal because of this aggression in me. I could end up in prison for the rest of my life. I run marathons just to get rid of this anger energy. If someone at school told me what to do, even how to make my bed, I would get so angry that I hit the wall. If people say that I am small I want to hit them. People just try to make me angry. I feel like I have been picked on, attacked, all my life. Life has been so unfair to me. I wrestle with people who are bigger than me, I will show them how strong I am. I am furious with my parents, I never wanted to eat at the same table as them. If I have anything in my hands when I am angry, I smash it, but fortunately not my computer.
“I feel like I need to make myself hard and indifferent. No one should know that I am insecure. Basically I am quite shy, but I put on an act the whole time, like a mask of indifference. I have to show that I am stronger even if I don’t feel that way inside.”
The remedy was given without him knowing it, since he absolutely refused to take any remedies but the situation was becoming dangerous. The day after the first dose, his mother emailed: “It is a miracle. He has got out of bed in the morning and asked how he can help me. He says I am the best cook in the world.”
Little by little he ‘softens’. He gets up on time, helps around the house, learns to cook with his mother, asks for her help in filling out forms to go to a special training school in the US. He asks if it is OK if he goes for a run before dinner. He tidies up his room, helps clean the house, and looks for a part time job as a personal sports trainer.
“I used to be so mean, I don’t know what came over me. It was as though everyone was against me. Now I see it was not that way, but I don’t know why I felt that way. I was lazy, wanted to hurt people, make them feel just as bad as me. I used to feel like I had no future, now I do.”
From time to time he has a mild relapse into blaming and shouting, but no more threatening behaviour. His mother is enormously relieved. “I was completely at the end of my tether, could not sleep, could not eat, a nervous wreck. Now I see hope for him, for the first time.” A repeat of the remedy inevitably helps him again, though he still does not know that he has been given anything.