About 17 years ago, my mother-in-law lived with us. There were times when she went out of control with her rage and vitriol.
She was experienced at triggering angry reactions. She intentionally poked the most sensitive topics in her efforts at getting me or others to react.
With her first husband, she’d often go into an out of control rage and say inflammatory things he reacted to. After doing so, she ran out onto the porch and sat down, assuming an innocent posture.
This put her enraged husband into a bind which he didn’t always handle in a good manner. Knowing her history, I did things differently.
During those times, I found myself using skills I learned in working with psychiatric populations. It’s likely she would have freaked out if she knew that I was using hospital proven techniques in dealing with her.
Although it seemed forever at the time, within about 15 minutes she would be noticeably calmer.
There are times you may find yourself facing an out of control spouse, especially when dealing with the affair. When those situations happen, do you know what to do?
In dealing with the affair, there’s a high likelihood that if either of you had traumas earlier in life that one is triggered by the other. Those early life traumas have ways of returning into your heart and mind.
There are ways of calming yourself and them down, even if either one of you has a history of being traumatized. The effects of earlier life traumas can be overcome when you know how.
Besides what you do, the environment where you address the affair matters. Doing it in the wrong place can make matters worse.
As odd as it sounds, besides the environment, your actions and your brain are key components in calming them and you down. The research of Dr. Stephen Porges is finding that one person’s mind has the capacity for calming down another person’s mind.
Think about what that means. Your thinking either aggravates or calms the situation in ways you are not aware of.
This is my reason for embedding brain hack techniques into the interventions I cover in the ‘Affair Recovery Workshop‘. When you’re hurting, you want techniques that get results. You’re not interested in long discussions of why they work or how, you just want something that works.
The workshop takes a practical hands-on approach rather than overloading you with theory and all the whys behind the techniques and sequencing.
The unique sequence used builds on you developing the needed skills that help you through affair recovery. That sequence also has built in hacks designed for helping both of you through this, even when it feels out of control.
Best Regards,
Jeff
