Dear Missxm:

You mentioned  meditation earlier- meditation is one way of learning  and practicing  emotional regulation and it will help you.

It will also help to understand your motivation better, regarding abusing partners. You feel anger at them, wanting to hurt them. Why, is  what  I ask myself. If  you would like to look more into it, we can look some more into it here. Tell me about  your thoughts during the times you told your partners mean things. What were  you thinking before you said those things?

anita

Dear  Missxm:

As I wrote to you before, you shouldn’t be in a relationship with a man until and if you can control your behavior and not mistreat the man.

There is a way or ways to feel angry at a person, to want to say mean things, to be  all triggered and  upset and yet, to say nothing. Take a time out, go elsewhere, take a fast, long walk so to release that energy. Basically, remove yourself from the man’s presence immediately.

It takes enduring distress without reacting to it by saying  anything at all, suffering without passing he suffering on to another.

You suggested that you feel that a man should accept all parts of you, including  the angry-abusive part. You did it for your father, accept all parts of him?

Will you share more about your relationship with your mother?

anita

Dear Missxm:

You are welcome. You wrote that you accepted all parts of your father, growing up. A child has no choice but to accept all parts of a parent, because a child is so needy and inexperienced, not having a choice to leave existing parents and home and move to another home, different parents.

As an adult, you have a choice, however difficult, to not accept a parent’s abusive behavior. Because, hopefully, as an adult, you can leave and live elsewhere.

You wrote about your mother: “she is flawed naturally and says things often she does not mean (nothing too extreme)”-

First: when people say hurtful things to another, they do mean to hurt the other person. In anger itself there is the motivation to hurt or harm another. It is so with other animals, in nature, motivating an animal to fight another, that is, to harm another.

Better look into this and acknowledge your intent when angry.

Second: notice you accept this behavior in your mother, and so you accept it in you as well. At least as long as it is not “too extreme”. Maybe what she says is less extreme than what your father said, but more extreme than what other people out there say. So if you say hurtful things to a boyfriend that you believe is not extreme, it may very well be extreme in his experience.

Make it a rule for yourself, if you will, to not say abusive things to another, extreme or mild. Non. Communicate honestly, assertively and non-abusively.

anita

Dear Missxm:

There is one very important thing you must do, I believe, so to not repeat the behavior you want to stop, and that is, to not accept it from others yourself. If in your relationship with your mother, or your father, either one of them still says mean-things-they-don’t-mean (they do!), you must not be available to hear or read what they say. You must not be there to hear it.

It is not about hearing the mean things they say and trying to not be affected by it. It is about not hearing those things at all, and doing whatever it takes to not be exposed yourself to such.

anita