Here are the top 3 mistakes women make when trying to stop resenting their husbands or feeling angry toward them, and what to do instead!
If you go to a marriage counselor, psychologist, or therapist, there’s a good chance that they’ll tell you to “manage” your anger. If they join you in blaming your husband for how you’re feeling, they might even encourage you to leave him, breaking up your family and creating an ACE in your children’s lives (ACE = Adverse Childhood Experience… the more ACE’s, the more therapy your own children will need, basically).
Look, it’s ok and healthy to feel anger. You are not alone at all for resenting your husband, feeling sick of seeing his face, or wanting to flip him off behind his back. Women are raised to be good girls who just take on everything for everyone, always striving to make others feel better. We’re raised around so much chaos usually that we’re empathic and can feel what everyone else is feeling, so we tiptoe around people and make them happy, no matter how it makes us feel. And all that bottled-up anger eventually leads to resentment.
Your emotions are just energy in your body trying to alert you to take different action than you are currently taking, think differently than you’re currently thinking, or verbally advocate for yourself in some way. They’re a message from your soul that things aren’t quite right. Think about it: what happens when you’re suddenly in a life or death situation? You don’t start thinking, “Hmm, what ever shall I do?” No! Your body kicks you into fight or flight mode and gives you superhuman strength to try to survive whatever mess you’ve just gotten yourself in. That’s the emotion of fear and it’s energy in your body trying to alert you to take action.
It’s important to understand the messages of your emotion so you USE THEM instead of ignoring them, repressing them, or expressing them onto others. If you don’t learn how to do this, it’s like going through life blind.
Mistake #1: They Ignore Their Emotions
One of the most dangerous things you can do with your emotions is to ignore them. When you try to pretend you don’t feel afraid, angry, or sad, you start living in dissonance with what’s really happening in your world. I had a friend once who was married to a man with advanced diabetes. He ignored a small cut on his foot, thinking it was no big deal. Diabetics just can’t do that, and eventually, he had to have part of his foot and I think even a toe amputated! It led to not being able to work, having to sign up for disability, and eventually the end of his marriage.
If you ignore the little problems, they turn into REALLY BIG PROBLEMS. Ignoring your free-flowing, present-moment emotions can have them turn into a mood state which can lead to all kinds of poor decisions and behavior, and even physical illness down the road.
Never ignore your emotions!
Mistake #2: They Repress Their Emotions
Repressing your emotions means that you shove them down and don’t allow the energy (emotion = energy in motion) to flow out of your body. This is pretty much the same as ignoring your emotions, but it’s an active shoving down of what is coming up. Imagine a bottle of Coke that you shake as hard as you possibly can — all of that energy is ready to explode out of the bottle. Holding your emotions down like this is a death sentence for your body and leaves you essentially blind to what you want and how to navigate life. You lose touch with your intuition and with all of the positive, or replenishing emotions like joy, peace, love, and happiness.
If you refuse to feel anger, you’ll never feel love.
Don’t repress your emotions. You have got to let the energy flow.
Mistake #3: They Express Their Emotions Onto Others
You want the energy of the emotion to flow out of your body, but you don’t want to violate another person’s boundaries with it, either. Sometimes it’s necessary to express your emotions when it’s necessary to defend yourself. For example, if you’re genuinely afraid, you’ll scream, fight, or run away. If someone is attacking you and you can’t get away, you may have to yell or hit them. I can also imagine situations where a cry might help you get the help of others through empathy.
But day-to-day, you want to be able to channel the energy of emotion out of your body, but not AT others in an unhealthy way.
Unhealthy Expression of Anger Looks Like:
- Yelling or Screaming
- Slamming Doors
- Punching, Hitting, Kicking, Spanking
- Calling People Names
- Flipping Others Off
- Road Rage
- Destroying Things or Property
- Containing Others Against Their Will
Unhealthy Expression of PERCEIVED Fear (Perceived Fear Means Your Life Isn’t In Danger) Looks Like:
- Excess Prepping
- Hypochondria
- Refusing Sound Medical Care
- Biting Nails, Picking, Fidgeting, Pacing
- Yelling At Others
- Controlling Others
Unhealthy Expression of Sadness Looks Like:
- Wailing/Excessive Crying When Not Grieving
- Cutting
- Hoarding
- Neglecting Self, Property, Others
- Disconnecting From Others
And consistently ignoring or repressing any or all of our emotions leads to unhealthy coping strategies that can become or look like addictions.
Remember that a lot of unhealthy coping strategies have been mislabeled as healthy or at least “normal”:
- Overworking
- Excessive Working Out
- Obsession With Nutrition
- Perfectionism
- Excessive Planning
- Excessive Learning/Reading
- “Fighting” Against Anything – Can Be: Social Justice, Abortion, Political Parties, Etc.
- Excessive Sports/Being Overscheduled With Physical or Social Activities
- Excessive Cleaning
- Sleeping Less Than 8 Hours
- Years-Long Therapy With The Same Therapist
- Telling Jokes/Being A 24/7 Comedian
- Overgiving
I’ve created an assessment to help you understand what your emotions have been trying to tell you:
To stop feeling angry or resentful with your husband, you’ve got to start listening to what these emotions have been trying to tell you. The Princess & The Peeve™ Emotion Assessment Worksheet is designed to help you quickly see what you’re feeling and what it means about you. Are you Self-Abandoning, Self-Arrested, or Self-Sabotaging? Once you have that information, I invite you to take my online masterclass, Royally Guarded™ so you can learn more about all 14 emotions and their Quests so you know exactly what action to take every time you’re upset.
If you’d like to learn more about having a Conscious Marriage, click here.
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