I was recently very mean to my husband after he failed to show up at a specific meeting place, wasn’t answering his phone, and caused me to go into a thought spiral thinking something terrible had happened to him. I initially had feelings of fear triggered by these thoughts. But when I found out he had just lost track of time, my feelings were replaced with anger from thoughts like he doesn’t respect my time, his stuff is more important than me, I’m not worth watching the clock, etc.

When I find myself in these anger models, I lash out at him and act very mean by trying to find hurtful things to say to him. I don’t want to let him put me in that place of fear again, so it seems I try to hurt him to keep him at a distance to protect myself from fear.

In the above circumstance, I seem to bounce between multiple models, and I’m having difficulty separating them all out. So it is hard to pull me out and change my thoughts to create feelings and behaviors that I would prefer to have in those moments (such as forgiveness). So how do I handle these moments when I feel so deep in the emotions? One thought I had was to ask for space and distance from my husband to feel the anger in a safe space where I won’t lash out. Are there other tools I could practice?