"Our darkness is what defines us all too often. Being broken is not easy on the mind" quote Underground

See how you define yourself? That is an awful lot to protect from others, it's actually very brave of you to say it like this though too. However, keep in mind Underground, it's hard to just be human to begin with so you are not as alone with the overall challenge as you think.

You have to find and define the triggers that make you angry too. Typically it is a threat of some kind of abandonment. Someone looks at your wife and you don't like it, it's a threat that goes very deep for you. Well, that has something to do with how others disrespected "your things" growing up, so that is a trigger that goes way back.

You know, what is interesting "now" when it comes to psychotherapy is that more study is being done on men and the major challenges they "do" have and many do have problems with "anger management", the percentage of individuals that have NPD "are" men too. Young boys are often told to "just man up" when they begin to feel emotions and get confused by them. Well, that is wrong because instead a child needs to have a presence there that can help them understand these emotions and help them learn to manage them and that feeling emotions is "normal and human". Often where anger comes in when emotions surface is coming from how a parent expressed "anger" when the child struggled emotionally. SO, that is what you learned, why your own children are afraid of coming to you when they are challenged emotionally, you are looking in a mirror when you see them "afraid" to approach you with these challenges. You are handing down your "own" fears, that is all you really "know", what you were taught to do, what you imprinted. That doesn't mean you are "broken" though Underground, truth is you literally just don't "know", no one helped you with that so you can only give what you 'know" how to give.

You are however not "stupid", you did what you had to do in order to survive. You actually "can" learn how to react differently, however, it takes time to do that, but is not impossible.