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Understand your own emotions before you lash out at others.
By Dawn Michael — Written on Dec 07, 2018
For most people, anger stems from hurt feelings, and that hurt usually comes from not being understood. Emotions are very complicated, especially in dealing with love and rejection from our loved ones.
The sting of rejection or not being understood by a person you love is much more hurtful than by someone else. Our emotions and feelings of self-worth are invested in our partners, and often times we see ourselves through their eyes.
Understanding our own emotions is the first step to learning how to stop being angry and to sort out anger from hurt feelings. We sometimes forget that the other person we are feeling hurt or angry towards does not think or feel the same way as us.
This is a common problem between men and women. They just think and react very differently from one another, and miscommunication often leads to hurt feelings on both parts.
When a person gets hurt, many times, instead of the real hurt feeling being said, a person will use a defense word or shut down, not expressing their true feelings. This may go on in a relationship for years with each person harboring hurt feelings, eventually turning into anger and frustration.
After so many years of hurt feelings, it is difficult to get past them. And that is why communication with our partner clearly is so important.
Not saying what a person feels and keeping it inside is a way of communicating to the other person that you don’t care, and it can be just as hurtful as saying something bad. The ideal situation and the one true way to communicate is to speak from your perspective, meaning "this is how I feel" and keep it to that. "No blaming or pointing fingers," but simply, "This is how it makes me feel."
You can never argue how the other person feels. Then give the other person a solution to how you feel and ask for what you want — this way you will know exactly where the other person is coming from when they give their response.
For example, "I love you and I want to spend more quality time together with you. I would like to have a date night with you twice a week, can we work on that?"
This statement is true to what a person feels and is a solution to the problem. This gives the other person clear information that is not threatening or defensive, and is a solution to the problem while asking for what you want.
Don't allow your hurt feelings to turn into anger. Speak to your loved one and let them know how you feel before it is too late.
Dr. Dawn Michael is a relationship expert, certified sexuality counselor, certified clinical sexologist, author and public speaker. She has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, AskMen, Huffington Post, Shape, eHarmony, PopSugar, PsychCentral, and more.