Episode 16 How to Handle Your Partner's Anger: Key Do's and Don'ts

In this podcast episode, Kari Hoskins discusses practical strategies for dealing with a partner or spouse’s anger in a relationship. She provides five essential dos and don’ts, offering advice on how to maintain calm, avoid escalating situations, and communicate effectively during moments of anger. Kari shares insights on identifying underlying emotions like frustration or stress that can trigger anger and how to respond in a healthy way. She also emphasizes the importance of not being defensive or judgmental and offers helpful tips for handling emotional reactions, including when dealing with yelling and minimizing triggers. This episode is a valuable resource for couples looking to improve their relationship communication and constructively manage anger.

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:01.026)

Hey there, friends. Thank you so much for joining me today. I think that you are going to find today's topic quite helpful. We are going to be talking about how to handle or deal with your partner or spouse's anger. And I'm going to be giving you five key do's and don'ts to help you. When my husband and I were first dating, one of the earliest turning points that we had in our relationship

was when we decided to take off kind of on this random weekend getaway. And something happened on the very first day that turned out to be unexpected and very frustrating. And he lost his temper in a very big, dramatic way. But instead of getting upset right along with him, and trust me, you guys, I was not happy either,

And instead of making a snide comment, because trust me, in my head, I was thinking them a little bit because I had made a couple of suggestions that if we had done what I had suggested, we potentially could have avoided the situation that we were in. But I did not say anything. Instead, I threw down some salami and cheese and cracked a Coke Zero and we sat on the back of the tailgate and just ate our snacks.

It only took a couple of minutes before our blood sugar was normalized and we were in much better mood and frame of mind. But he like scooped me up, gave me this really big hug and said that I was the only woman that he'd ever been with that has not thrown fuel on the fire. And this my friends, I think is definitely one of the reasons why we work so well together is because

neither of us want to inflame the other one. So if one of us loses our temper, the other one puts their own emotions in check so that they don't make it worse. So whether your significant other loses their temper on a regular basis or it only happens once or twice a year, I am sure that you're going to find some of the suggestions I have helpful for you. But I do want to point out that I am not talking about situations

Kari Hoskins (02:23.938)

that involve gaslighting, emotional, physical, or verbal abuse or violence. If you're in that situation and you are afraid for your safety, you guys please get out, remove yourself from that situation and get some help figuring out what good next steps might be. So the way that your partner or spouse responds to their anger is their responsibility, but the way that you respond to their response is yours. And to be perfectly honest with you,

This is something that most people refuse either to acknowledge or they just don't agree with me. They think that if their husband or their wife loses their temper, it's 100 % a them problem. This is not a them problem. It is a we problem. And your response can make things better or worse, not just in the moment, but just for your relationship as a whole. So your reaction is just,

as important as theirs. Okay? And I also want to point out, because people get this confused as well in their minds, that the state of being angry, which is a feeling, and losing your temper, which is a response to that feeling, does not mean that there's automatically a conflict or an argument. Okay? An argument or conflict happens when two people have a difference of opinion and they go back and forth expressing those differences of opinion. And something

that most people don't consider is that you can have an argument or a conflict without feeling angry. Yes, that is possible. Okay. And I just don't want you to mix up the two because losing one's temper and having a conflict or argument, these are two different things and they do not automatically happen and they don't always have to happen together. Now, this is actually quite a big

issue for a lot of people. And the reason why I'm talking about it is because I do have many clients who seek out help to deal with anger. And I do see the harm that it causes when neither of the people in the relationship really knows how to effectively respond or deal with it. Okay. And what happens is if you don't know how to, how to deal with it in a healthy way, it can really start to damage your relationship. can create a lot of drama.

Kari Hoskins (04:47.246)

where you don't need to have that much drama. It can also create emotional distance between you, which then leads to, you know, affecting the way that you communicate and what you talk about and how you talk to each other. And it affects your intimacy, your emotional intimacy and your physical intimacy. So this is a much, has a lot more ramifications than what people realize. Okay, so here are my dos and don'ts. The first one is don't mirror and escalate.

the anger. So your partner gets upset, they lose it and they lash out. And then you respond with your own anger and temper. And so this is what we call mirroring. All right. And what this does is it escalates the situation, it makes it worse. It is literally like throwing fuel on the fire. And other things that can escalate a situation would be saying, like saying something or making a comment.

that will provoke defensiveness in them. So something like, I told you so, or if you just would have listened to me, this whole thing could have been avoided, which is what I was thinking on that date. But passive aggressive comments can also inflame the situation and rolling your eyes or making certain facial expressions can also be construed as inflammatory in the moment. So please do not do that, okay? Mirroring and escalating.

always leads to an argument. It always leads to conflict. And it didn't necessarily start out like that. So if you happen to be somebody, if this is you, if you mirror and escalate, then, you know, my guess is that you probably have a bit of conflict going on, which isn't super healthy or super fun. Okay, so what do you do instead? Well, you need to stay calm, grounded, and non-reactive. And I think one of the best ways to do that

is to figure out what's really going on beneath the surface of the anger. Okay, what is causing the anger? Try to identify the primary emotion. Anger is what we call a secondary emotion. It doesn't come first, it comes after another emotion. So there are technically 14 different emotions that can trigger somebody to become angry or lose their temper. And I'm not gonna go through all of them, don't worry.

Kari Hoskins (07:11.042)

but I thought that I would just highlight some of the more common ones. So, feeling very afraid or scared, having a lot of anxiety. People that have high anxiety can often become easily angered and lose their temper pretty easy. Feeling like you're out of control of a situation or feeling powerless, feeling stressed out, overwhelmed, or under a lot of pressure can definitely...

trigger an anger response. Being emotionally hurt can also do this as well. And so I think it's really important that you do your best to try to figure out what is going on underneath the surface, because this does a couple of things, you guys. Number one, it helps keep your thoughts focused in a more healthy, positive way, like let's figure out what's going on, which helps you not be like, you know, super judgmental and ruminating in your mind. But then it can also

help you talk about it and like maybe potentially even, I don't know, problem solve or troubleshoot whatever is going on that is like adding to the anger, right? So I would really suggest that you just take an educated guess or you can even ask your partner or spouse in the moment. But really the key here is to do your best to stay emotionally present, calm, grounded and non-reactive, okay? Now if you happen to have

partner who loses their temper like kind of on a regular basis, then it's very likely that there's one or two primary emotions that they experience that consistently will set them off. And it should not be that hard to figure out. If you can stay calm in the moment and observant, then I'm sure you can figure out what, you know, likely triggers your spouse or your significant other. So

If stress, because stress is such a common one, if that is something that you think probably triggers an anger response quite easily, then I would suggest starting to have a stress reducing conversations. Make that a normal part of your relationship because that can help decrease the amount of stress that your partner is experiencing. If you don't know how to have one of these conversations, there's like a very specific way to do it, then go back and listen to episode 11.

Kari Hoskins (09:31.896)

which is called How to Stress Prove Your Relationship, because I teach you how to have one of these conversations. I know for my husband, when he loses his temper, it's almost always because he's frustrated. In fact, his anger is almost never directed at me, and it actually almost never has anything to do with me. It always has to do with something that is causing him frustration. It could be something as simple as,

He bought the wrong part at the hardware store and now he's got to go back, right? And go get the right part. So acknowledging the frustration is helpful like in my situation. So I'll say something like, you know, it seems like you're really frustrated right now. Is there anything that I can do to help? Okay. So instead of saying, wow, you seem really pissed off. What can I do? That's just kind of inflammatory. You seem kind of frustrated. there anything I can do to help you? Okay. So referring to the primary,

emotion instead of the anger can help like de-escalate and bring down the temperature of the situation in the moment. And then of course you might be able to even talk through and problem solve. So my second suggestion, if the anger is directed at you, I want you to avoid becoming defensive. Now this is hard for a lot of people because I think it's becoming defensive is a very normal human response.

when somebody is angry or mad at us, right? But what can you do instead? Listen with curiosity. Where are they coming from? Are there any parts of what they're saying where you're like, okay, yeah, that's right, that's true, okay? And I'm not saying that you shouldn't share your perspective, but I suggest that you wait until things have calmed down, wait for the upsetness or the anger to pass, and then you sit down and you have a calm conversation about it.

Now, if you struggle with this like a lot of people do, I do suggest that you go back and listen to episode four, where I talk about how to respond when you're feeling defensive. My third suggestion for you is don't sit in your glass house. Avoid being judgmental and thinking judgy thoughts about your partner or your spouse. You gotta remember that you have stuff too.

Kari Hoskins (11:54.264)

that is probably challenging for them to deal with some aspect of your personality, okay? But sitting in judgment is not good for your relationship because it leads to other more insidious feelings. Judgment over time, and I'm telling you this from experience from like helping so many people with this, judgment over time leads to looking at your partner with disgust. It changes how you feel about them. It changes how much you wanna talk to them. It changes...

your desire to be around them. And when you have feelings like disgust, resentment, and even contempt, it really has this whole domino effect and negatively impacts your relationship. And I do not want that for you. It definitely creates distance. So I had a client who was raised in a household where they were not allowed to express any type of displeasure or anger or sadness or anything like that. And in their family,

They were taught that it's a sign of weakness and it's a sign that you lack of self-control, right? And so my client, he had a lot of judgment around his wife's temper, which caused a big problem in their relationship. And frankly, they were on the brink of divorce when they came and saw me. But his wife, on the other hand, she was raised in a very loud Italian household where someone was always losing their temper.

It was a very normal response. And she thought of herself and she thought of her anger, and these are her words. It's a sign of her passion, right? She said, because when he brought her into the session, she's just like, but I'm a passionate person. I'm passionate about the things that I care about. So in the way that she was raised, anger was not a problem. In the way he was raised, it was. And that's where you have these judgy thoughts coming in, right?

And when like worlds collide and it causes a problem So if you recognize that you're a little bit judgy about this I would suggest spending some time writing down your thoughts writing down all the things that you think about this aspect of your significant other And then ask yourself. Where did these thoughts come from? Why do I think these things and are these thoughts?

Kari Hoskins (14:15.032)

helping my relationship or are they hurting my relationship? That's really important for you to kind of work through and figure out. Number four is to avoid minimizing the triggering event. Now I know for me personally, this is a really challenging one, but whatever happened that triggered that primary emotion, let's pretend it's frustration or stress or anxiety, okay, whatever happened, try not to minimize it in your head.

Like I said, this one's a struggle for me. Like my husband seems to lose his temper over things that I think are kind of small or silly and I just don't get it. But if I sit there or stand there observing and I minimize the triggering event in my mind, what it does is it causes me to feel annoyed or irritated. And frankly, it's not my issue. I don't have to feel annoyed or irritated, right? So avoiding minimizing that triggering event can really help you.

with your own emotions and it can also help you not have judgy thoughts. So what I do is I remind myself that this is obviously a big deal to him. It may not be a big deal to me. It may seem silly to me, but it's not silly to him. And my last suggestion has to do with yelling. Yelling seems like something literally like every single couple deals with. The non-upset partner almost always feels like the upset partner is

yelling at them. And the upset partner is like, I'm not yelling at you. And then they go back and forth and they get in an argument about whether or not there's yelling. Okay. Let's cease and like, I don't even know what that phrase is. Cease and assist. Let's stop doing that. Okay. So don't say things like stop yelling at me or you're yelling at me. Instead, try using neutral, non-accusatory phrases.

that cue your partner into the fact that things have gotten a little bit heated, okay? So instead of saying, stop yelling at me or please stop yelling at me, you can say something like, you know, this feels like a lot right now. Is there a way we can dial it back? Can we just bring it down a notch, right? Or can we turn down the volume? Saying something like that is a non-judgmental way of bringing it to their attention that things have gotten a little bit out of hand, okay?

Kari Hoskins (16:37.814)

And this works for many of my clients and myself. So I do want to throw out there that getting help with this earlier rather than later is definitely the key. Unfortunately, many of the people that I work with wait so long and then by the time that they find me, their relationship is in a lot of trouble. So I don't want that to happen to you. If you are avoiding bringing up certain topics because

you are afraid of how your partner or your spouse is going to respond, then definitely I would suggest that consider getting help. If you struggle to understand where they're coming from and this is really bothering you and it's actually gotten to a point where you're like, I'm done, definitely I would think about getting help. And last, if your desire for emotional or physical intimacy is gone because of their anger or their temper,

then definitely getting help would probably benefit both you and your relationship. So I do want to tell you that in addition to my Before You Break Up program, I do offer general relationship coaching. And I do this for individuals and for couples. It's just four sessions and it can really go a long way in helping you deal with this if this is a problem in your relationship.

So if you wanna find out more information about that, you can just go check out my website, kahoskins.com, and you can get more information that way. Okay, my friends, I hope that you found this helpful, and I will talk to you next week.