When your partner’s behaviour taps on certain fears or concerns you harbour within, you often react with strong emotions. Frequently, strong emotions point to fear. For sure, your unhealthy words and actions feed a vicious cycle of fear that recruits your partner. Again, it portrays you as one being controlled by another person. If another person is using his behaviour to control how you think and feel, then it means that your happiness and fulfillment is dependent on another person. Hence, how to control your emotions in a relationship is an effective means of reclaiming your personal power and creating a more satisfying relationship.
Your Reaction And Emotions Are Based On Your Thoughts
A sobering truth is that you are the one who choses your reactions, and your reactions are sponsored by your thoughts. As well, the rallying emotions rise from your thoughts. In a situation where your partner’s behaviour provokes your fears, you have a choice about how to react. If a stranger on the street calls you a disgusting name, you will probably ignore the person and walk on. However, if your partner or colleague calls you the very same name, you may likely react with an angry outburst. In the second situation, the name-calling touched on your fear of rejection or failure. In other words, an angry outburst is just an extension of fear buried within the mind. It has nothing to do with the external. For a fact, unhealthy words and actions are calculated attempts to bully your partner to give you what you want. In the aforementioned case, it may be respect or acceptance that you desire. To the worst, your outbursts trigger your partner’s fears. As a result, a vicious cycle of fear bedevils the relationship. If you believe that you cannot live without a tangible or an intangible thing, you will invite in a fear of losing that thing. Hence, if you believe that you cannot live without your partner’s acceptance, you will fear rejection. Inevitably, all actions to the contrary will trigger the fears.
Focusing On Yourself Is The True Path To Power
In point of fact, You cannot control your partner’s behaviour. You can only control how you think and react to it. Problems in relationship are not about the external issues, but about the fears behind the reactions to the issues. Accordingly, it is constructive to quit trying to control your partner’s behaviour. Focusing on yourself is the true path to controlling your emotions and reclaiming your personal power. In addition, it helps you to create a more satisfying emotional climate in your relationship. How to control your emotions in a relationship portions out below.
1. Focus On Things You Can Control
You take away from your own power by focusing your attention on what the other person is doing. It is an exercise in futility since you are trying to control things you cannot control. To increase your chances of influencing the relationship for the better, you need to focus on yourself. Truly, you can only control yourself. By controlling yourself, you take personal responsibility for your actions. In the process, you create room for a deeper, more satisfying relationship. In short, to take personal responsibility for your actions means to deliberately chose constructive thoughts and actions, independent of the other person’s behaviour. For sure, constructive emotions follow constructive thoughts.
2. Try To Understand The Fears Behind Your Strong Reactions
When you understand the concerns and fears sponsoring your strong reactions, it becomes easier for you to cultivate more productive thoughts. As you do that, you control your emotions and reactions. Learning your concerns and feelings, and those of your partner, primes you to extend compassion and reassurance. Both facilitate healing and conflict resolution. Without doubt, self-awareness helps in learning how to control your emotions in a relationship.
3. Realise That Your Partner Cannot Meet All Your Needs Or Make up For Your Personal Deficiencies
To acknowledge that your fulfillment is your job, not the job of someone else, motivates you to cultivate constructive thoughts that influence your emotions positively. In good earnest, no one but yourself can make you happy.
4. Let Go Of The Expectations And Move On
Stress features as the gap between what you expect to happen and what is actually happening. The more value you place on an expectation, the greater the attendant stress level. In good truth, you have the power to let go of any expectation and influence your emotions positively. Without question, opportunities never cease.
5. Reframe Negative Events Into Something Positive
Life’s trials take on a new meaning when we begin to view them in a positive light. At any rate, you can reframe an angry outburst as a call for calming compassion and empathy. The process helps to defuse negativity. Thus, reframing is a veritable tool at the core of how to control your emotions in a relationship.
6. Recruit Your Partner As A Willing Assistant To Help You Take Care Of Yourself And Stay Responsible For Yourself
When you reveal your concerns and fears to your partner, he or she stands in a better position to limit behaviour capable of tapping on your fears. With the information, she can also assist you to nurture more positive thoughts.
7. Become Good At Asking for And Giving Forgiveness
If you want your relationship to flourish, you need to remove all barriers that make it difficult for you to ask for and give forgiveness. The gesture helps to break the cycle of fear and negativity.
On the whole, the kernel of how to control your emotions in a relationship reflects the importance of taking responsibility for your thoughts and actions.
I love this…my husband and I struggled for quite some time trying to learn communication and there are still times we need a reminder. This was absolutely what I needed!