In my years as the Houston marriage counselor, I’ve learned that unchecked anger and the fights caused by it can be one of the most detrimental forces a relationship can face. While some anger is natural and healthy, using it to get your point across or – worse – simply to hurt your partner can leave lasting scars. But how do you get your partner to realize what their anger is doing to you? Or – if you’re the one with trouble controlling anger – how do you stop yourself? You need relationship help from the Houston marriage counselor.
What do we think anger accomplishes? Some people feel driven to anger by their partner, that they are causing the behavior. And they think that if their partner knows how upset they are, the partner might act differently in the future. They may also believe that the anger will make their partner feel the same hurt they do and this will cause them to change.
However, as the Houston marriage counselor, I can tell you that this feeling is more about subconsciously wanting to control and manipulate your partner than anything else. Worse: it doesn’t work. Instead of anger making the other person feel remorse, it often brings out feelings of returned anger or frustration, or can make your partner grow distant. If this is happening with your partner, you may need relationship help.
The Houston Marriage Counselor Talks about How to Control Your Anger
The person who has trouble controlling his or her anger has to accept that they have control over their actions. That’s the first thing. That regardless of what their partner is doing, they are allowing themselves to become angry and have the power to stop it, because anger will only escalate the argument. The next thing to do is something that can be practiced by both people in a relationship; when a fight starts to drive either of you to anger, stop the argument and try to talk calmly, without attacking each other.
Also: listen. Sometimes we start to get angry before the words are even our of our partner’s mouth because we think we already know what they’re going to say and we want to cut it off ahead of time. However, if we take a deep breath, stop, and listen to each other, often the arguments and the anger will just fade away as we realize that we jumped to conclusions or didn’t understand where our partner was coming from.
I tell my clients that wanting to change is the most important step. Until the person with the problem actually wants to get help, there’s not a whole lot that can be done. If you or a loved one needs help controlling anger and are ready to deal with it, call the Houston marriage counselor today.
