Handling Anger Triggers <<– Listen to the audio here
Hi, this is Jeff Murrah with Affair Recovery Radio and I’m glad you’re here with me today. Today’s topic is “Handling anger triggers”.
As each of you find yourselves dealing with affair recovery and finding your way through it, one of the issues that you’re going to find yourself dealing with is that of ‘anger triggers‘.
The issue with anger triggers is that anger, which you’ll find yourself dealing with either from other people or from yourself, is a reaction to triggers. I use the term trigger because these are the items that set off, you could use the term start, activate, ignite, any of those terms.
Since anger starts a series of dominoes falling that serves as the spark to get things going. These are those triggers that bring about angry reactions.
90% of the time anger is a secondary response. In other words, it is a reaction to something that happened beforehand. It’s a reaction to the trigger. We’re going to be talking about what to do about those triggers.
When people feel threatened the most common reaction is anger. There are many emotional states that make a person feel threatened.
In some cases when they feel lonely, in some places when they feel scared, when they feel like they have been rejected, there’s many things that can bring about this reaction. And that’s part of what we’re going to be getting into.
In terms of how to deal with these anger triggers we’ve got three steps we’re going to be covering today. We need to head on into that.
1. Identify the triggers. In terms of identifying the triggers it’s going to be important that you identify not only what your triggers are, but also what your spouse’s triggers are. You need to know what sets them off, as well as what sets you off.
When you are going into a relationship and there are triggers that have not been identified, that’s like walking straight into a minefield. If you or your spouse have ever used the term or the phrase “I feel like I’m walking on eggshells”, chances are there are many unidentified triggers in your relationship that are leaving both of you in this state of anxiety. They leave you unsure of where you stand.
That goes back to these triggers and not knowing what they are. Maybe not talking about them or dealing with them.
2. Avoid cornering the tiger. What I mean by this, when you are talking with your spouse, don’t intentionally activate triggers for either the show or for revenge. I know that may sound harsh, but I know some of you may be so desperate to feel like your spouse is connected with you, or you may be a person that wants to see your spouse squirm or wiggle or see them uncomfortable, and so for that reason you intentionally put them in a corner.
When you provoke them, you corner the tiger just to watch the show.
You don’t want to do that. That typically has bad repercussions.
If you want to use the term bad karma. It’s not going to bring healing to your marriage. This is something that just stirs up a lot of stuff that doesn’t need to be stirred up.
Some of you may be considering having one of those episodes where you corner the tiger for revenge. I’ll talk about revenge in some future sessions, but even for the purpose of revenge this is not worth it.
Part of the reason, when you make personal attacks, that does nothing more than generate more personal attacks. When people feel attacked they’re going to attack back.
And so those personal attacks, yes you know how to get through to your spouse, you know the exact words to say to get in there and get their goat, when you do that yeah you’re going to get the goat. But they’re going to react. And that’s the kind of situation you want to avoid. You want to stop that cycle.
I know that there’s a tendency to get into power and control games, but that’s not going to help you at this point.
3. Communicate for understanding rather than reaction. This means you need to choose words that get your point across as opposed to choosing words that pick fights.
You’ve lived with your spouse long enough to know that there are certain words, certain phrases, that get them fired up. You know what they are. You know the things that you say that will start a fight. That’s what you want to avoid.
There are ways that you can get your point across without picking a fight, and that’s what you want to focus on. That’s what I mean by communicate for understanding rather than reaction.
There are ways to let them know that you’re hurt, that you’re angry, that you’re sad, without attacking them or without phrasing it in such a way that you’re going to get a reaction.
These are some ways that you can get your point across and you can start handling some situations without setting off those anger triggers.
Once again let me go over this real quick before we run out of time today.
- You want to identify the triggers. If you want, get a sheet of paper, put your triggers on one side, put their triggers on the other, so that you can be aware of those things. Because, like I said, heading into a confrontation without knowing what the triggers are is like walking into a minefield.
2) Avoid cornering the tiger. Don’t intentionally activate them or aggravate them for either your own entertainment or revenge. Whatever your reason.
3) Communicate for understanding rather than reaction. I know I’ve repeated those a couple of times and that’s mainly because when you get into breaking old habits, many times it’s hard to break those habits.
And if you’re like me you need to hear it two or three times before it sinks in. Because I know a lot of times I’ll jump or wade right into a situation and have to remind myself, “Jeff, communicate for understanding not reaction”.
These are some things that you can put into place right now that will start you on your road to recover and can make things go a lot smoother for you.
You can learn more about ways of handling affair recovery by membership in the support community at Restored Lifestyle. There you can share with others, listen to different perspectives of those going through what you’re going through, and watch the videos taking you through recovery.
Best Regards,
Jeff
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