10 Tips for Preventing an Anger Outburst

An anger outburst is an intense and sudden expression of anger. A variety of factors can cause anger outbursts, including frustration, perceived wrongs, and stress. Anger itself is a natural and normal emotion. However, excessive anger can damage you and others. It’s essential to learn how to manage anger in effective and healthy ways.

How Anger Damages Relationships

Anger affects relationships in negative ways. When anger is not managed carefully and wisely. It can wreak havoc in relationships. Problems can include communication breakdown, resentment, and ongoing conflicts.

Communication takes a hit when there are frequent angry outbursts. Angry people often speak in aggressive or hostile ways. This can make other people feel threatened or verbally attacked. Results may include defensiveness, shutting down, or stonewalling. This cycle can cause communication breakdowns, which make conflict resolution nearly impossible.

Anger outbursts cause conflicts in relationships. Arguments and fights that include anger outbursts damage relationships. Over time, repeated conflicts cause hurt feelings, broken trust, and resentment, which can take a lot of effort and time to repair.

Bitterness and resentment are other ways that anger outbursts affect relationships. Anger that is not managed well can lead to buried feelings, including resentment and bitterness. These negative attributes work like poison to ruin a relationship over time. Once bitterness and resentment set in in our relationship, it can make it difficult to return to a positive and healthy point.

Learning to manage anger effectively will prevent anger outbursts and improve relationships. A qualified Christian counselor can help you rebuild and maintain positive and healthy connections with family members, friends, and other important people in your life.

How to Prevent an Anger Outburst

The good news is that you can learn to prevent an anger outburst. By working with a counselor, you can practice techniques so that you’ll be prepared the next time anger starts rising.

A good way to prevent an anger outburst is to practice relaxation techniques every day. Deep breathing is an excellent practice in the heat of the moment. You can also try progressive muscle relaxation and meditating on God’s word. If you get in a rhythm of practicing these techniques every day, you can calm your body and mind and be more prepared when you are triggered.

Managing triggers is an important part of preventing an anger outburst. An anger trigger is a thought, situation, or event that leads to an outburst. When you are more aware of the things that trigger you, you can practice self-control in a heated moment rather than reacting with an anger outburst. A counselor can help you identify your triggers so you are better prepared and more self-aware.

Learning to communicate effectively when you’re angry is an important way to prevent an anger outburst from occurring. You may have suffered negative consequences for lashing out, hurling insults, or demonstrating aggressive behavior in past instances.

With a counselor’s help, you can learn to express your anger in assertive yet calm and self-controlled ways. Your counselor can role-play with you to help you use certain statements like “I feel angry when you do that” instead of blaming, criticizing, or attacking someone else.

By putting these strategies into regular practice, you can learn to manage your anger and reduce the chance that an anger outburst will occur.

Ways to Avoid an Anger Outburst

There are many things you can do on your own to learn how to manage anger and reduce the chance of an anger outburst. Here are ten tips for managing anger.

Meditate daily

By choosing a verse of God’s word upon which you can meditate every day, you will be better prepared in the moment when an anger trigger strikes. Choose verses that talk about anger or self-control and think about them carefully, repeating them over and over.

Displaying them in conspicuous places can help you memorize these verses so you have them ready when you feel triggered. In the heat of a moment, you can repeat the verse back to yourself and invite God into your situation. He will help you practice self-control rather than reacting with an anger outburst.

Identify the causes of your anger

Often, people who struggle with anger outbursts have deep, underlying issues fueling their anger. You can meet with a counselor to identify the causes of your anger. Your counselor can help you develop strategies to overcome underlying issues so they aren’t weighing you down anymore.

Recognize and manage triggers

There could be many reasons your anger is triggered. It’s helpful to think about the thoughts, situations, or events that have triggered your anger in the past. If you talk about this with your counselor, you will be better equipped to handle your anger the next time you are triggered.

Communicate effectively

When you are caught up in an angry outburst, it’s likely that you aren’t communicating your feelings in an effective way. You may say things that you don’t mean yet still cause hurt feelings for the other people in your life. By working with the counselor, you can learn new ways of communicating effectively when you are angry without lashing out at other people.

Take a break

Taking a break when you’re angry is a great way to recenter yourself and calm down. Simply let the other person know you’re stepping away for a moment. Take a short walk and count to ten, and practice some deep breathing so you can come back into the moment with a greater sense of self-control.

Use humor

When the time is right, humor can be effective in reducing anger. Learn to laugh at yourself and not take everything so seriously. Look for humor even in difficult situations, and you might not be triggered as often as you have been in the past.

Get physical

Because anger releases stress hormones in our bodies, we need physical activity to metabolize those hormones. So, physical activity when you are angry can help you blow off steam and feel much better. A brisk walk or jog can help, as well as shooting baskets or hitting baseballs, or golf balls. Just fifteen minutes of physical activity when you are angry can help you metabolize those stress hormones.

Practice mindfulness

When you practice mindfulness, you pay attention to your thoughts and feelings without judging yourself. You also use your senses to be present in the moment. Practicing mindfulness increases self-awareness, so you are more in tune with your feelings. This can give you clarity and perspective that can reduce the chances of an anger outburst.

Be patient with yourself

Learning to manage your anger is a process. It can take weeks or months to see significant improvements. Rather than becoming discouraged, learn to be patient with yourself and show yourself compassion as you learn to manage your anger. Meeting regularly with a qualified counselor during this process can help it go more smoothly.

Seek professional help

If your anger has taken a serious toll on your personal or professional relationships, you need to seek professional help. A mental health professional, such as a Christian counselor, can provide the guidance and support you need in developing a strategy for managing anger and preventing anger outbursts.

Ongoing Anger Management Therapy in California

As stated before, learning to manage your anger is a process. The process will be easier for you if you have support all along the way. A caring Christian counselor in California can meet with you regularly, not just to identify underlying issues and triggers, but also to role-play situations in which you would normally get angry. By practicing with your counselor, you will be better prepared to handle your triggers, and this can greatly improve your relationships over time.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to a qualified counselor to get practical and spiritual help in preventing an anger outburst. Contact us today to schedule an appointment.

Photos:
“Not. Happy. Bob.”, Courtesy of Getty Images, Unsplash.com, Unsplash+ License; “Stressed”, Courtesy of Simran Sood, Unsplash.com, CC0 License; “Sitting on the Beach”, Courtesy of Pan Xiaozhen, Unsplash.com, CC0 License; “Prayer”, Courtesy of Getty Images, Unsplash.com, Unsplash+ License

Emotional Infidelity Uncovered: What Exactly is It, Why It Happens, and Steps to Repair Your Relationship

Emotional infidelity is a relationship issue that is unfortunately becoming more and more common. The constant and convenient accessibility to others (whether people, chat rooms, social media accounts, or AI) makes it easy for partners to satisfy their unmet relationship needs online, sometimes even while lying in bed next to their partner.

Given the reality of our current society, monogamy can feel under attack now more than ever. It can feel like it’s harder to stay completely faithful in a marriage. But if your relationship has been betrayed by emotional infidelity, it is certainly possible for it to recover and prosper after emotional infidelity.

In this article, I will provide more clarity on defining emotional infidelity, why it occurs, and steps on how to recover your relationship. For the sake of reading ease, this article will use the terms relationship, couple, and marriage interchangeably.

Who I Am

Before proceeding, I would like to give you, the reader, a little context about me. My name is Kristy De Leon, and I am a doctorate-level licensed marriage and family therapist with a certification in sex and couples therapy. I have over twenty years of experience in the mental health field and have been with my husband for twenty-two years in total, of which we have been married for seventeen.

We have two neurodivergent sons in addition to my husband being a career fireman. All that to say, he and I have been through some real challenges. There have been dark moments in which I (and I’m sure he too) was unsure of whether our marriage would survive- yet through the grace of God and the commitment to our marital covenant, here we are still married and in love.

The commitment to the marital covenant is an important topic that will be revisited as part of the solution. I felt my background was important to share with you because if you are reading this article, you are most likely in a challenging season of your relationship.

Knowing that the writer has been through difficult seasons in her own relationship can hopefully help you feel seen along with learning realistic steps toward marital recovery. There is nothing worse than reading an article in hopes of finding comfort and solutions to only be left feeling the same or worse because the author only gave textbook unrealistic suggestions.

What is emotional infidelity?

So let’s dive in and define emotional infidelity. It is the act of a person going outside of their committed relationship to meet their emotional needs. Examples can range from engaging in flirtatious activities (whether texts, social messaging, or in-person gestures) to having deep conversations with someone other than their partner. Think of it as sharing emotional sides of oneself that truly should only be shared with one’s partner.

This means that emotional infidelity can be defined differently per person and relationship: what one couple would define as emotional infidelity, another couple would not. What is important to note here is that emotional infidelity does not have a one-size-fits-all definition, unlike sexual infidelity.

For some couples, liking or following social media accounts that have provocative images would be defined as emotional infidelity. For another couple, becoming close to a co-worker by sharing worries, dreams, or inside jokes would be seen as emotional infidelity. Regardless of the behavior being seen as “innocent,” if it pulls a person away from their partner and more importantly if the partner feels betrayed then it is emotional infidelity.

Reasons for Emotional Infidelity

Why does emotional infidelity occur? Similar to the definition, the reasons why it occurs vary from person to person and from couple to couple. Despite the reason, the common denominator is that there are emotional needs that are going unmet. Even though there have been multiple conversations and fights about the needs, they continue to go unmet.

Or worse, there is a complete lack of communication, and these needs continue to go unseen. Communication challenges are an issue that many couples face. Communicating one’s needs can be difficult. It’s risky, vulnerable, and opens the door to possible rejection and ridicule.

The reality is that most people have a hard time communicating vulnerable requests or statements. Therefore, most relationships do not have the communication foundations to have such vulnerable conversations. It becomes easier to avoid these conversations altogether and easier to get one’s emotional needs met elsewhere where there isn’t so much history, hurt, or negative emotions.

In addition to communication challenges, other factors can open the door to emotional infidelity, such as past hurts or betrayals, becoming emotionally or sexually bored in the relationship, feeling rejected by your partner, feeling your partner is emotionally unavailable, associating with others where emotional infidelity is common and accepted, feeling like you parenting your spouse or feeling like you are being parented by your spouse.

There can be multiple unhealthy relationship dynamics that can be co-occurring which can lead to infidelity. There can also be individual factors (such as traumas, unhealthy beliefs around relationships, etc.) that can contribute to existing unhealthy relationships increasing the likelihood of emotional infidelity.

Both partners contribute to emotional infidelity

Infidelity, whether emotional and/or sexual or any other type of relationship betrayal, does not exist in a vacuum. Meaning it is not a stand-alone thing that sprouted out of nowhere. With all the individuals and couples that I have counseled who are in search of infidelity recovery, it is typically a result of unhealthy relationship dynamics. Similar to addiction, infidelity is a systemic problem/relationship issue in which each partner has contributed in their own way to the issue.

I understand that statement can be really hard to read and process, especially if you are the one who was betrayed. Society would say “You don’t need this.”, “Walk away.”, or “Once a cheater always a cheater.” And without knowing your relationship nor the context in which the betrayal occurred, all those statements may hold some truth.

But what I can say is that for each couple who has courageously sat in front of me with the willingness to repair their relationship, each person eventually was able to not only recognize their contribution but more importantly was able to own their part.

At its core, a marriage relationship requires four components: sex, time, attention, and affection. Think of these as slices in a pie where each partner’s slices may look different. For example, for the husband the slice of time may be bigger than for the wife or the slice of affection may be bigger for the wife than it is for the husband. The size of these slices can change over time, during milestones, in times of stress, or just as a result of aging.

Although each spouse’s pie can look different, there is an overlap in that each person has the same four slices. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, it is pivotal for each partner to share when their slices change size; meaning the need has either increased or decreased for any of the four components.

I hope that this imagery can help you begin to understand the importance of having explicit conversations about the needs of each partner. These are continuous conversations that should be occurring throughout the life of the marriage. As we age our needs change and so do the needs of the relationship.

Repairing the Ruins

So how does a marriage repair itself after emotional infidelity? First, I want to affirm that overcoming this betrayal is possible. Second, I have a three-step process through which I lead couples who are recovering from any type of infidelity or betrayal. The three steps are as follows: crisis, insight, and vision.

Crisis Chances are, you may currently be in the crisis stage: you just found out, many different conflicting emotions overcome you, you may be in shock, or you may be exploring your options on whether to stay or leave (especially if this is not the first time). In the crisis phase, both partners are grappling to manage many different emotions.

Insight It’s not until the emotional dust settles that we can move toward the second phase of insight. Insight is a stage where each partner is able and willing to explore their own contribution to what happened in addition to gaining an understanding of their spouse’s choices and behaviors.

Vision In the last phase of vision, the couple co-creates a new definition of the monogamy agreement, and a new commitment to the covenant of marriage is made.

Keeping Covenant

The commitment to the covenant is at the core of sustaining a marriage regardless of the challenges. Keeping the commitment means showing up even when it’s hard, scary, or when you are hurt, tired, or not in the mood. It also means that there is an understanding and acceptance of the fallible human nature.

Thus, even though you and your partner have recommitted to the marital covenant, human nature will cause you and your partner to fail each other again at some point in some way. This is when and where we must grow our faith, strengthen our relationship with God, and practice our Christian morals and values with ourselves and our spouses.

Hope to Overcome Emotional Infidelity

I want to reiterate that a marriage can recover and prosper despite emotional infidelity. It will require creating a new healthy covenant that includes effective communication skills, healthy coping skills, and a different way of problem-solving – all things that are part of my therapeutic work with couples. In closing, Scripture reminds us that, “…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

If you are looking for support in navigating emotional infidelity, please contact our reception team to schedule a free consultation today. Kristy De Leon offers traditional talk therapy sessions or couple intensives (that range between 3-4 hours) for busy couples who want to expedite the healing process.

Photo:
“Shattered Heart”, Courtesy of Isidore Decamon, Unsplash.com, Unsplash+ License