Usually when I lose my temper, I am not proud of it afterwards. But a particular pair of temper tantrums I threw in graduate school revealed to me something important about my own self-understanding and my sense of dignity.

But I also am very leery of falling prey to what I here dub “The Abuser’s Dialectic”. I would rather achieve a sort of Stoic overcoming of emotions that are reactive to others and, in that way, extensions of others’ abilities to control us, manipulate us, and make us into them.