Dear Halle:

From reading your posts in your previous thread as well as your recent post here, I understand that anger is the issue:

You lived with a very angry mother and you don’t want to be like her. You don’t want to be angry. So you have done your best to not feel angry. You view feeling angry as something bad.

Problem is you feel angry and you can’t help it. You can’t help it because none of us humans (as well as other animals) can not feel angry at times. It is impossible to free ourselves from this natural feeling/ emotion.

When someone hurts us, we naturally feel scared, and often we follow with anger. The fear motivates us to run away (the Flight reaction to perceived danger) and the anger motivates us to fight (the Fight reaction to perceived danger).

Accept the anger that you feel. It is an automatic reaction, none of your choosing.

Distinguish between the feeling of anger and the behavior following the feeling. No way to choose the feeling, there is a way to choose the behavior.

When your boyfriend calls you names and degrades you, that is a behavior. He can choose to not call you names and to not degrade you. He can choose to treat you respectfully.

How do you respond to a person who mistreats you (as in calling you names and degrading you) when they are angry? Your inclination is to “hug him and kiss him and tell him I didn’t do anything wrong”-

this is your inclination, I believe, because you are fearful of him ending the relationship with you. Problem with hugging him and kissing him as a reaction to his mistreating you is that … well, you are inviting more mistreatment by the same person.

I mentioned a few factors here, and hope to read your thoughts about what I wrote here.

anita