It’s been a good day. It’s evening and you just sat down to have some dinner. Your partner says something, and right away you snap! You can’t believe you’re being asked the same thing you just discussed 5 minutes ago. All of a sudden you go from happy to being angry and miserable.
You get up and walk away from the table and go to another room making sure you slam the door.
You’re thinking to yourself… “why am I never heard!?” And you end up going to bed alone in a bad mood.
Has this ever happened to you?
Did a simple conversation turn into something bigger?
What went wrong…
You’re getting worried your relationship is not going to survive. Although you want it more than anything in the world.
But you have no clue why it keeps going in a direction where you are hurt and angry.
I get it. It can be so hard to know why you end up in similar fights, while actually everything in your life is okay. You love your partner. And you want to be with your partner.
Here’s the thing.
It’s not about the fight or your partner.
What really happened, a trauma or a wound, an unprocessed emotion from your past got triggered.
Even if you are not aware what the trauma is, there is something in your past, still living in your subconscious body, that hasn’t been fully resolved.
In other words, you are responding to the memory stored in your subconscious (your body), not your partner.
And the moment they say that “thing” or they don’t say the “right thing”, it is like they put a key into a lock, the emotion is now activated and the behaviors that are in place to protect you get put into action.
Your body is responding to a trauma or incident from your past, and the body starts creating stress hormones – neurotransmitters like adrenaline and noradrenaline, in order to protect you.
All these active stress hormones that your body is creating are made to fight, flight or freeze, but you aren’t in the kind of danger that requires these actions. What happens is these stress hormones, that aren’t used up, can back up and turn into anger for frustration.
Here are a few things you can do to navigate through this without hurting your relationship:
- The moment you feel the anger coming up, imagine it being like a flame. And let that fire burn up all that anger until it completes.
- Turn up some music and vigorously dance and move your body, shake everything off until your body comes to a state of rest naturally.
- Explain to your partner that it has nothing to do with them and that you just need just a little time and space you need to move through it.
So back to you, have you ever had an experience where you felt like your reaction was more than the situation called for?
Let me know in the comments, I am happy to help.