Carlos Zambrano said today that he has completed his anger management course last fall.
He said he is cured.
Ok...before I go any further, I will admit, I've been overly harsh toward Z over the last few years...so much so that last season I said that he should retire for reasons that many read into incorrectly, but were probably inappropriate.
That being said, I really hope that Z didn't mean what he said today. I hope that maybe his sometimes loose handling of the English language made him unintentionally misspeak when he said that he was cured. Or maybe it was another of Z's jokes.
Hopefully it was a joke because the reality is anger issues are not something the someone can just snap their fingers to make better.
You can learn techniques to cope with your anger. You can learn to control it. You can work on ways to avoid situations that stimulate these feelings in you. You can take drugs to "mellow you out".
To say that after a couple months of anger management courses you are cured could very well be proof that you actually are not cured.
I don't say this because I'm a psychiatrist or a therapist. I say this as a person that has, and continues to deal with my own anger problems. I've gone through a couple of stints of sessions to help me with some of my personal demons in this regard.
And even with the money and time I've spent on this, I still have lapses. I'd like to think I've gotten better over the last couple years, but this isn't something that I can just assume will be solved with a couple of months of therapy.
After my first stint through these sessions, I thought like Zambrano did...I thought I was cured. I wasn't and when I relapsed not only did I have anger issues, but I had to fight with depression as well. It was worse than ever. Only after my second time trying to deal with this did I realize that I would have to continuously work on this for a long time...years...perhaps the rest of my life.
I could be completely wrong here. I am not Carlos Zambrano and he is not me (lucky for him). Every person is different. But I don't personally do see how he can be 'cured' at this point.
Of course he could just be pulling our legs again.
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Update:
Carrie Muskat is the only one that has stated this, but supposedly Zambrano stated his "cured" sentence in a rather light-hearted manner. Good job by the Chicago media as they conveniently forgot to add this.
