Overcoming Angry Outbursts

So in my last post about anger, I thought about how anger could be bad or good, and how the point is learning how to be angry the right way. This book we’re studying for our marriage class (Love Busters by Harley) says something more extreme: “there is no place for anger in marriage.” Angry outbursts should and can be completely eliminated in marriage.

He gives several reasons for why angry outbursts should never be tolerated: it never evens the score or solves problems. It withdraws units from the love bank and erodes your spouse’s feelings of love for you.  It is a form of abuse and control. It is a like a psychotic episode: you are irrational, you think your spouse is your worst enemy and deliberately trying to hurt you, your sense of the truth is distorted, and you often forget afterwards exactly what you did and said.

He describes the following steps for overcoming angry outbursts:

1. Acknowledge the fact that you, and you only, determine if you will have an angry outburst. No one “makes” you angry. Until you take full responsibility for your angry outbursts, you cannot learn to control them. You can avoid them if you choose. As soon as you give yourself any excuses for your outbursts (other people, how you were raised, etc), you will not overcome them.

2. Identify instances of your angry outbursts and their effects. Ask your spouse: how much unhappiness do my outbursts cause you? How often do they occur? What do I do/say during them? Which ways you are attacked causes you the most unhappiness? How have they changed in frequency or other ways over time?

3. Understand why your angry outbursts take place. Ask yourself: why do I lose my temper? What are the most important reasons why I have outbursts against my spouse? What do I typically do? What do I think hurts them the most? Do I feel better afterwards and why? Do I feel a score is evened? Do I ever try to control/avoid them; why and how? If I decided never to have another angry outburst, could I stop? Am I willing to; why and why not?

4. Try to avoid the conditions that make angry outbursts difficult to control. These could include physical conditions (time of day, hunger, fatigue), making too many sacrifices (generosity leads to resentment and anger; he says marriage should involve not sacrifices, but solutions about which both people are enthusiastically happy), having assumptions about unspoken understandings, patterns of communication such as demands or disparaging remarks, circumstances like bad traffic or stress at work. Ask: can we control any of these conditions?

5. Train yourself to control your temper when you cannot avoid frustrating situations. This means walking away, or, as the author urges, learning to relax. Practicing relaxing, by imagining something your spouse does that frustrates you, then relaxing after thinking about it—instead of feeling increasingly resentful, feeling more objective. Picturing yourself thinking of solutions without becoming angry. Training your physiologic response.

6. Measure your progress. Ask your spouse to keep track of the day, date, time, circumstances, description of your angry outbursts. Address each one immediately to avoid more in the future.

Thinking over all this helped me realize that deep down, I think I have a right to angry outbursts. I think I need them so Dave understands the depth of hurt that underlies a surface frustration, or so that he gets the intensity of my emotions. Often I see my outbursts as even being productive, because it helps me get it off my chest so I feel better afterwards, and it leads us to discuss some deep issue that we may not otherwise have.

But I’m realizing that my angry outbursts hurt him more than I realize. It erodes at our relationship and is actually counter-productive to problem-solving and negotiating, because I become temporarily irrational, and because it erodes at our basic sense of love and trust. I’m wrapping my mind around the fact that it is necessary, and possible, to make a commitment to never again having another angry outburst.

I think the key to handling anger well is to allow my initial feelings of anger to help get us to that place where we have deep discussions, listening to expressions of hurt, and problem-solving without having an angry outburst. My initial prompting of anger, my feelings of frustration, hurt, jealousy or whatever it is are legitimate. I have to trust that Dave will listen deeply and seriously when I tell him it is serious. I don’t have to have an angry outburst, and when I feel myself becoming angry, I can commit to mentally and physically choosing to relax instead, to walk away temporarily to calm down if I can.

So we’ve worked through those questions with each other, and I think we’re both going to commit to not having angry outbursts. When I’m in a situation where I feel increasing frustration and early anger (which pretty much seems like every night sometimes with the kids acting up), I think, okay, you are starting to get angry. You can choose not to let it burst out. You can choose not to step through that door. It’s not as bad as it feels right now. The world is not as bad as it looks right now. It is not all Dave’s fault, and he is not purposely trying to hurt me. It’s better for you not to say anything right now. You can calm down; you can walk away.

In some ways it’s rewiring how I react, relearning how I communicate. Sometimes I look at the kids, who burst into anger at the slightest provocation, who make selfish demands and lose sight of rationality, and I think, well, it’s born in us. It all has to be redeemed. God has redeemed me. He loves me and I live in grace as his child. I can learn to do this; I can walk in and work out my salvation in this way. He won’t give me more than I can handle in that moment. He will provide a way out for that temptation to have an outburst. I can do it, and he can do it in me.