Edit, last paragraph: How does this relate to you?- — you will have to teach the child-within you emotion regulation. Part of you should be the Parent to the Child part, teach and guide the child-part with empathy and assertiveness, like in the example I gave. The child part (who gets her way sometimes) will learn to tolerate it when she doesn’t get her way (assuming that the other person’s way is not unethical or abusive).

anita

Dear Zenith:

You are welcome (I am still excited about you being back!)

“Do I still do the same thing when I am angry with someone. Like talk to them later instead of that moment ?“- yes, like the saying goes, when your anger is up, your I.Q. is down. So, better to postpone talking until calm, or calmer. Never talk when intensely angry (unless in real-emergency situations, of course).

“Lets say I was angry with my friend. When I calmed down a bit, I thought about it. I told myself that I cannot control who my friend interacts with“- what you did here is a CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) technique: you came up with an accurate, realistic thought (you really can’t control who she interacts with). When we replace inaccurate/ unrealistic thoughts with accurate, realistic thoughts, we feel better about the situation. This CBT technique of replacing thoughts can be part of the Address (the situation) step of the NPARR.

“then I told myself I have to trust her and let it be. But the thought of losing my friend or losing control over her made me cry“- if the thought crosses your mind, at times, that you can control her (not necessarily in these words), then this is an inaccurate/ unrealistic thought that you can replace with I cannot control her. Repeat the accurate thought while taking slower breaths, relaxing a bit.

“Another case was disagreements between my husband and I. I wanted to do something in a different way than he thought, but still he did it in his own way, that just made me angry. I get angry when things don’t go my way.”– this makes me think of a kid in a supermarket, wanting this or that to be purchased for him, or her, and when the parent refuses, the child gets angry, falls to the ground and throws a temper tantrum. In this case, what would a good parent do? Respond to then child with a mix of empathy and assertiveness: lower to the child’s level and say with a strong voice (not yelling), something like: I understand that you are upset and we will talk about it when we get home, but right now, I need you to get up, to quiet down and quietly leave the supermarket with me. It is not okay to make all this noise in a public place, to disturb the peace of all these good people around.

How does this relate to you?- — you will have to teach the child-within you emotion regulation. Part of you should be the Parent to the Child part, teach and guide the child-part with empathy and assertiveness, like in the example I gave. The child part (who gets her say sometimes) will learn to tolerate it when she doesn’t get her way (assuming that the other person’s way is not unethical or abusive).

anita

Dear Zenith:

Emotion regulation can not be achieved by making a decision, or by reading anything, including my posts. This is so because our emotional reactions to situations (such as your strong, angry emotional reaction to being ignored/ not being prioritized) is a biochemical habit, meaning, when you are ignored, or you perceive that you are ignored, certain chemicals (neurotransmitters) are released in the brain, and other chemical (hormones) are released into your blood, and these chemicals create your emotional experience.

* I am not a scientist, so I am sure that my explanation above is simplistic, but in principle it’s correct.

You cannot stop these chemicals from being released in your body by making a decision or reading this post. The way to change these biochemical reactions is to commit to the slow, intentional process required day after day, persistently, and over time. There will be regressions, but you’ll need to not give up.

I too used to lash out at people, but guess what? I didn’t lash out at anyone for the last 7 years or so, not even once!

The process starts with the Notice I mentioned above, then the Pause, and next, once you are alone for a moment, take a few slow breaths (and, if possible,  take a hot shower, or listen to music, something that will calm you down)- calm down before you think. There is a saying: when your anger goes up, your I.Q goes down. You can’t think intelligently when angry, or as I like to say, when you are under the influence of anger.

So, you calm down,  and when you are calm, Address (the situation) think: what happened? Define the problem in the situation and think of a rational solution or solutions to the problem. Put a timeline to the solutions, ask yourself: is there something I need to do now? Today? Make a solution plan, write it down perhaps.

If you are not sure about what happened, make a plan to ask or otherwise find out what happened, if it’s possible.

Next, Respond (or not): according to the solutions you came up with, do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done. Sometimes nothing needs to be said or done, so you don’t.

And lastly, Redirect: direct your attention elsewhere.

I call the above strategy NPARR (Notice, Pause, Address, respond-or-not, Redirect).

Mindfulness is a huge part of modern psychotherapy: it’s about paying attention/ focusing on the present moment and living intentionally (instead of living in the past and on automatic). Mindfulness practice, over time, changes the biochemical habits I mentioned above.

anita

Dear Zenith:

You are an equally good friend of mine, thank you for being my friend!

“I feel like I am behaving just like my father. He is a very short tempered person“- it’s not that short-temperedness passes on genetically. A whole lot of people who are genetically unrelated, are short-tempered, and that’s because they were never taught (primarily by their parents), and they never otherwise learned emotion regulation.

“Yeah I do experience intense amount of anger and frustration like no one understands or prioritizes me“- the first thing to learn/ the first step of the emotion regulation process, is to Notice when you feel an intense amount of anger, and second step to do is to Pause (that is, to say nothing to anyone, and do nothing/ no response). At the Pause phase, you are not trying to analyze what was said and what happened to cause your intense anger. At this point your focus is on saying/ doing nothing.

While you Pause, take time out of the situation as soon as it is possible for you, and go to another room/ someplace where you are alone, so to do the third step of the emotion regulation practice.

I need to stop here and soon go on my daily walk (a part of my personal emotion regulation practice). I will be back to the computer in about two hours.

anita

I just finished a post for you before I read your 2nd post above, so here it is:

Dear Zenith:

Also, I think I know of what you shared yesterday made you anxious, so I will not bring it up in this thread. I will not bring up anything from what you shared in the past, so to keep this thread a safe place for you. Share only what you feel comfortable sharing.

One of the things we can talk more about is the topic of emotion regulation, it is a crucial part of mental health.”

As to your 2nd post, right above, thank you very much for your empathy and prayers, greatly appreciated!

anita

Dear ManagoFandango:

I haven’t read any books in over 10 years. I learn a lot about human behavior by reading posts in these forums (have done so every day since May 2015). I learn here.. so, no, I don’t know of any books on human behavior. I guess you can google it and easily you will get titles of books on the topic.

anita

Dear antarkala:

“From the moment my mom said he might not be good enough for me, I have been overanalyzing and overthinking about my relationship and my boyfriend which did not help the relationship in any positive way. You are right, I have to explore the relationship with my mother with the help of a psychotherapist to get better clarity and I am on it now“-

– the relationship between mother and daughter (childhood and on) can be very powerful, in negative ways, when it comes to the quality and dynamics of the adult daughter’s romantic relationships. This has been true in my case.

As I share about it here (just a bit in this post, and maybe in future posts), please know.. that I know that although there are similarities between our mothers, our mothers are not identical. There are many differences between them. Yet, there are a few significant similarities between our mothers (and therefore between you and I) that make it so that we can learn from each other’s experience.

I am saying this so to avoid/ prevent inaccurate projections on my end and on yours. If you read something that I share that is strange/ unfamiliar to you, please do not dismiss the totality of what I share as irrelevant to you:

My mother not only negatively affected my romantic relationships, she has emptied them from any measure of romance, killed the romance before I ever had a relationship. I do not have a single memory of feeling romantic outside my past day-dreaming (I used to daydream A LOT about being in a love story, way back when  I was a teenager).

Growing up and onward, she gave me two messages: (1) that I am not good enough, that I was an inferior specimen, and (2) no man is good enough for me. See the bind my poor brain was in? I felt too inferior to be with a quality man, and too superior to be with any man who was not close enough to being perfect (my mother had very high and superficial expectations of what constitutes perfect: the man had to be movie star handsome and rich). So, no man could be right for me. Result: no man was right for me all the years of my 20s and 30s. The great majority of the time, I was alone and lonely.

Also, my relationship with my mother was so troubled, so difficult, so full of distress, on my part, for years and years, that it turned me off to the idea of being in any long-term relationship of any kind. I was stuck with my mother, I didn’t want to get stuck with anyone else. When living with her, I wanted to leave; that desire to leave did not leave me for decades of adulthood.

Back to your post: “I have been trying to find a good therapist and it’s taking a while. If you have any recommendations, I would be happy to hear from you“- I would choose a therapist who exercises great empathy for his clients and one who does CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), nothing like cognitive clarity to help with confusion (Confused about relationship- Need help” is the title of your thread).

“Apart from that, I want to update that I had a great time with my boyfriend, he is a wonderful and genuine person who cares for me and loves me. Our relationship has grown so much over the past one year…”- reads like a high quality man and a high quality relationship.

“But the feeling of missing the attraction and spark is still there“-  I wonder about your relationship spark history (RSH, if you will.. lol). Did you feel the spark with other men, for how long and what happened to that spark (answer this or any other question only if you are comfortable answering).

“My mind says everything is going well but my heart keeps saying something is missing – my heart doesn’t say yes!“- I wonder to whom your heart say yes! in the past, and for how long.

“At the same time, when I am with my boyfriend, I feel my social life and spiritual life are not thriving and it bothers me“- a person cannot thrive in a situation (a relationship) when the person wants out of. It’s like this: if you live in an apartment but want to vacate it and live elsewhere, you are not going to thrive in that apartment (painting it, re-arranging the furniture in it, relaxing and enjoying it),  you’d be getting ready to leave it.

“Like I mentioned before, I keep getting thoughts like ‘Am I settling for something less?’…“- something less than your mother thinks you should settle for?

“It is Monday night here as well…. I am unable to stop overthinking. I feel this is unfair to my boyfriend, why should he go through this?“- no, it is not fair to him. I understand that he loves you, but why is he going through this otherwise…   does he love himself?

“He has told me today morning… that I am overthinking which hurts me. This has never happened to me“- again, I wonder about your relationship history, never doubted a man/ relationship before?

anita

Dear antarkala:

You are very welcome, and thank you for expressing your appreciation of my input! I will re-read and reply to you Tues morning (it is Mon evening here).

anita