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Does your partner have fits of anger? Pay attention to these red flags
Anger is part of the adaptive emotions that appear in situations in which we feel threatened or frustrated. On many occasions anger appears as a defense mechanism in these situations.
However, attacks of anger are a disproportionate and unregulated expression of this emotion.
It can happen that extreme circumstances lead your partner to a fit of anger, but if these episodes are common they stop being adaptive and become a problem that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.
If this problem is not treated, it is likely that the relationship will wear down, the couple will wear out and moments of intimacy are lost. If you or your partner have problems controlling anger, you should attend therapy, to improve as a person and as part of the couple.
Nobody deserves to be mistreated or abused or verbally non-physically, if your partner attacks you, seek help, do not remain silent.
This type of situation can progressively increase in level, if this is the case, it is best to seek therapeutic help and consider whether to continue with the relationship. The solution begins as much with learning to control anger as with learning how to express it.
How should I react to a fit of anger from my partner?
If this happens you should try not to get upset yourself, this can have a counterproductive effect. If you feel in danger, don't hesitate to call for help.
Stay calm: try not to respond with the same level of anger, avoid attacking or insulting your partner, as this can make the situation worse than worse.
Be empathetic: make an effort to put yourself in your partner's shoes and try to understand how they feel and why.
Try to talk: Once your partner's level of disturbance has decreased, use a soft tone of voice and communicate to your partner how you have felt.
Tips for managing and reducing anger attacks
If you are the one who has attacks of anger, here are some tips to regulate yourself at this time.
Try to calm yourself: Repeat phrases that help you stay calm and take you to positive places in your mind, you can stay calm, try not to get too upset. This way you will avoid reaching a very high level of activation, and you will be able to talk about the situation calmly.
Get physical exercise: This helps to get rid of pent-up emotions such as anger or frustration.
Communicate: It is very important that they can express how they feel in these situations, that they are bothered or worried without attacking each other, trying to be assertive.
Work on empathy: Empathy is the ability to perceive and understand the feelings of the other. Practice putting yourself in the other person's shoes in order to understand how they might be feeling.
Practice relaxation techniques: Meditation or breathing techniques will help lower anger levels. If you feel that you are getting upset, you can communicate to your partner that you need to withdraw a moment from the space to calm down and be able to continue the conversation in a better way.
Take a deep breath and try to regulate your discomfort levels, think about how you can control it, and then try to identify why you got upset that way.
Couples and individual therapy is an ally to learn to manage these moments of anger and understand why they originate.
Misconceptions about how to handle anger attacks
It's okay to express anger freely
Your emotions are valid, but there are effective ways to express them and when anger is released without a filter it can lead to violent and harmful situations.
Run away
Ideally, in these situations is that you can control the expression of your annoyance appropriately, taking a moment to calm down can be effective but avoid facing the situation in the long term.
Since it does not favor the real management of your emotions, you only try to avoid your feelings or the situations that produced them.
Trying to modify what made us angry
Instead of betting on changing our partner, we must make an effort to communicate how we feel about situations and try to find an agreement for both parties that makes the relationship grow.
Couple relationships sometimes become intense, closeness makes us prone to experiencing strong feelings in discussions.
However, we must not forget that we have the ability to effectively develop the management of our emotions.