Adapted from: The Little Book of Relationship Problems
Now you have your goals within reach and have both learned how to listen and hear each other. You have learned some new strategies that have given you confidence in your ability to start communicating and you are more equipped to deal with problems as they arise. You now need to learn how to manage difficult and emotionally charged situations in a skilful and therapeutic way.
Learning to control difficult emotions and highly charged situations more effectively is an important part of addressing your relationship problems and an important part of the work you do. Now you can talk to your partner and know he or she is listening to you, you will hopefully begin to feel he or she is not quite the enemy they were until this point. Hopefully, your partner won’t feel such a threat to you, or you to him or her now you have begun communicating again. The next thing is to learn how to control your negative emotions and behavior as they happen so as not to put your hard work at risk by igniting things further.
Negative emotions are bound to come up if you have experienced relationship problems. It’s easy for me to suggest controlling emotionally charged words and behavior because it’s not me going through it. However, if you don’t learn, it will be difficult for any kind of change to take place. Being emotionally charged is very potent and so powerful that the emotions involved can simply overwhelm everything and stop you from trying.
One important technique to learn is to tolerate highly charged feelings if you want to succeed in resolving your relationship problems. You have learned how to talk and listen together, you don’t want to ruin it with behavior that is toxic or that gets out of control because that would be such a pity.
Firstly there is one rule you can both put in place. It is a rule of tolerance with the other. When one of you is ignited with anger at the other, one technique to learn is this: Although it would be very easy to react, reacting won’t help either of you. Reacting is also out of control behavior and can be very toxic. What is important is firstly, whoever is on the receiving end to learn to ignore the outburst and ride it out until the situation calms down and rationality has returned to the situation.
Whichever one of you it is, it is important to tolerate what is going on without reacting. This includes controlling your own feelings until the outburst passes. The outburst was likely to have been due to a weak spot that has been ignited. It could be a trigger spot where reactions aren’t necessarily rational but very instantaneous as is always the case with triggers. When you start to see a reaction or trigger as a reaction or as a trigger, and treat it as such without taking it personally you will start to regain some control and start to feel better about the situation.
This doesn’t mean tolerating abuse, certainly not, and if your partner is being verbally abusive they need to know it will not be tolerated. You can let them know this in a rational way without you also losing control. Losing control means not being in control of your behavior or mind and that is not what you want.
Your perception of the situation is everything and much depends on it. (The way you think) If you can start to think of an outburst of anger or rage not as consciously being targeted at you personally, rather that it is a bad and uncontrolled reaction your partner experienced and is unable to control. It is their problem and they will need to deal with. It is not their conscious self, but their unconscious self reacting uncontrollably.
Perhaps they have reacted to a trigger, who knows? Not taking it personally and learning to tolerate your own reactions to it as well as your partner’s is a very skillful way to manage it worthy of a prize. Managing the situation skillfully is better than reacting to it, and quietly tolerating your own feelings means you are in control of your emotions, rather than them controlling you. It also means you are not out of control. Being out of control never resolves anything, so better to stay in control.
Learning to tolerate feelings and reactions of your own and others needs a lot of practice, but you can practice together as much as you need to. It’s about learning to control thoughts, feelings and behavior in a conscious way and learning not to allow thoughts of feelings to control you. Think about this consciously, it makes such sense.
Reactions can be so toxic as to ruin what you are trying to do if you let them. The important point is to be conscious enough to understand what is going on and to bring down the emotional heat to a manageable level. If you are the one who gets ignited you will need to learn why your buttons were pushed and why you reacted? You both need to know so you can stop it. You also want to know how to tolerate those out of control feelings in a more effective way which is what you have been learning now. You both have your own role here and as long as you each take responsibility for managing your part you will be able to succeed. Once you learn to tolerate your feelings (anger and pain,) you will be in a good place to talk about what happened and why it happened, why things got out of control and what you both need to do to stop such situations from repeating themselves.
In the next article I will talk about triggers, highly charged moments, but for now the art is to demonstrate restraint, tolerance and the ability to control and tolerate urges and feelings. In order to achieve any of this you will need to be conscious enough to know exactly when to put tolerance management techniques in place. Basically these techniques are simply learning to take control of free flying emotions and negative thoughts and not allowing them to control you.
Being consciously aware and having a breathing space to think clearly will help you NOT to react in situations that become ignited with highly negative emotions. Whether you are the one who exploded or not, whether you were instrumental in creating the situation, or if the situation got out of hand for other reasons, you will both want to learn how to tolerate feelings without reacting. You will want to know how to gain control over them. This is what you have been learning until now, you just need practice now.
It takes consciousness to do this. Conscious awareness is the key. Think of reaction as the untrained, unconscious and undisciplined mind having its own way. Reaction doesn’t help, but the way you go about dealing with it does and will.
In the self help program on the website, there is a complete module dealing with conscious awareness and you might want to take a look. The module teaches you how to become more consciously aware in any given situation and is well worth following.
When dealing with highly charged situations, you will be dealing with the emotions, the thoughts and your reactions with restraint and control. Using conscious awareness techniques you will soon learn how to tolerate emotions you would previously been unable to tolerate or be in control of. One tip for you, always think of the result you want, think of the end product and think of your goal. You will achieve all this if you can learn to control and tolerate your feelings and reactions. You need the will and the right tools to succeed…..
For more information on gaining the tools mentioned in this article please go to my website: www.selfhelp4u.com