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Douglas the Dragon
Book One
“Douglas the Unloved Dragon"
By
William Forde
Illustrations by Dave Bradbury
Copyright January 2012 by William Forde
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Author’s Foreword
As so often in life, learning best comes from our most traumatic experiences. Over fifty years ago as a young boy of twelve, I was run over by a large wagon and received multiple injuries. My parents were told that I’d never walk again. For three years following my accident, a spinal injury prevented me from feeling any signs of life below my waist. The predominant emotions I experienced during this period were ‘Anger’ and ‘Fear’: intense ‘Anger’ at what had happened to me and ‘Fear’ of the inevitable consequences of never walking again. In time, ‘Anger and Fear’ consumed me. I stopped loving myself and felt unable to ‘Love’ others.
During the remainder of my teenage years, and aided by prayer and the practising of numerous eastern disciplines, my ability to walk returned. While being unable to pin point the precise cause of this seemingly miraculous recovery, I had, nevertheless, stumbled across the bodily correlation between ‘Fear, Anger and Love’ without realising it at the time, and how the malfunctioning of these three emotions govern our behaviour patterns.
In later life, as a Probation Officer serving in West Yorkshire, I found that my professional training left me ill-equipped to help many recidivists change their offending behaviour. After analysing the behavioural response patterns of 600 offenders, I found that the three human emotions of ‘Fear, Anger and Love’, and in particular, the inability to appropriately express these emotions, constituted the core of their general unhappiness, dissatisfaction and offending behaviour.
Remembering my own childhood experiences and my re-discovery of the behavioural correlation between ‘Fear, Anger and Love’, I abandoned the traditional Probation Officer method of working with offenders and, instead, constructed a group programme of work that I used thereafter. For the following 24 years, I operated hundreds of these group programmes with all ages of mixed sex in Probation Offices, Hostels, Prisons, Hospitals, Educational Establishments and Community Halls. These were my very first ‘Anger Management’ programmes operated in Great Britain. I’m proud to say that many similar group programmes have mushroomed in Europe, America and across the English speaking world ever since.
The principle of all successful Anger Management work has three essential stages at the heart of its process; a process of which I am the original founder, and which I freely gave to the world in 1971:
(1) Learn how to face and confront our ‘Fears.’
(2) Learn how to ‘Love’ ourselves so that we can be enabled to ‘Love’ others.
(3) Learn how to manage and appropriately express our ‘Anger.’
Fighting for the heart of every man, woman and child are two dragons; a ‘Dragon of Anger’ and a ‘Dragon of Love.’ These two dragons fight for the supremacy of control over one’s behaviour; what one thinks, feels and does. However, they cannot co-exist within one heart and body. In order to expel the ‘Dragon of Anger’ from our heart we must first invite in the ‘Dragon of Love.’
Douglas the Dragon symbolizes ‘The Power of Love.’ He teaches one that only by climbing one’s ‘Hill of Fear’ and expressing one’s love through what one thinks, feels and does, can one rid oneself of one’s ‘Hill of Anger.’
The Douglas Dragon stories were read to her young children when they were aged between 7 and 9 years old by the late Princess Diana. It pleases me to know that the next King of England had my stories read to him and his brother during their early years of life. It also pleases me to know that until her death, Princess Diana, believed in ‘The Power of Love’ and used it whenever she had the opportunity.