When Anger Hurts Your Relationship

Two psychologists offer couples a variety of tools and strategies to reduce conflict, diffuse rage, and move beyond repeated confrontations to regain a loving relationship.

When you are feeling depressed, having a loving, supportive relationship with your partner can help you in your path towards healing and creating a happier life. But often depression interferes with your relationship, distancing you from your partner during your time of need. If you are in the midst of depression, you may worry that you aren’t good enough for your partner, or become irritable around them. You may even push them away when you feel like your emotions are beyond your control. In addition, your sense of intimacy may diminish, and your sex life may fizzle as a result of fatigue, medications and feeling disconnected from your partner. The hard truth is that feelings of isolation, worthlessness, and tiredness can all take a hefty toll on your love life. But you don’t have to let depression be the demise of your relationship. Using an integrative approach based in mindfulness, interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), When Depression Hurts Your Relationship offers practical skills to help readers with depression reignite intimacy with their partners. If you suffer from depression, this book is a must-read to help keep your romantic relationship healthy, exciting, and rewarding for you both.

“Every woman who is struggling to understand the mistreatment she is experiencing in her relationship should begin by reading [this] wonderful book.”—Lundy Bancroft, author of Why Does He Do That? What do you do when the one you love hurts you? Have you been searching for answers to difficult questions about your relationship? Do you feel confused about why your partner seems loving one moment and angry the next? Summoning the courage to ask these challenging questions can seem daunting. You know something is wrong in your relationship, but you are not sure what. If you are beginning to wonder if you are experiencing abuse, this book can offer you support, information, and, most of all, hope as you look for answers. Written by two women with a wealth of experience supporting victims of abuse, When Love Hurts introduces exercises and resources to help you make sense of your relationship, addressing all forms of abuse, including verbal, emotional, financial, sexual, and physical. This practical guidebook is a supportive and nonjudgmental friend to those who don’t know where to turn and is filled with stories from women who have been in the same position. By drawing on your own wisdom and that of the many others who have shared your experience, When Love Hurts can help you find the answers you have been looking for.

The highly anticipated sequel to the global bestseller 12 Rules for Life. In 12 Rules for Life, acclaimed public thinker and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson offered an antidote to the chaos in our lives: eternal truths applied to modern anxieties. His insights have helped millions of readers and resonated powerfully around the world. Now in his long-awaited sequel, Peterson goes further, showing that part of life's meaning comes from reaching out into the domain beyond what we know, and adapting to an ever-transforming world. While an excess of chaos threatens us with uncertainty, an excess of order leads to a lack of curiosity and creative vitality. Beyond Order therefore calls on us to balance the two fundamental principles of reality--order and chaos--and reveals the profound meaning that can be found on the path that divides them. In times of instability and suffering, Peterson reminds us that there are sources of strength on which we can all draw: insights borrowed from psychology, philosophy, and humanity's greatest myths and stories. Drawing on the hard-won truths of ancient wisdom, as well as deeply personal lessons from his own life and clinical practice, Peterson offers twelve new principles to guide readers towards a more courageous, truthful, and meaningful life.

A major revision of the best-selling classic-a quarter of a million copies sold. This new edition of When Anger Hurts is a complete, step-by-step guide to changing habitual anger-generating thoughts while developing healthier, more effective ways of meeting your needs. It includes new chapters on emergency anger control, the interpersonal and physiological costs of anger, road rage, and parental anger. Discover how to create your own personal intervention strategy for controlling angry impulses Recognize anger-triggering thoughts and learn ways to challenge them Learn how to control anger-generating stress Recognize the early warning signals of anger and find out how to cool down before things get really hot When you work through the exercises and lessons in this book, you will immediately see positive change in every aspect of your life.

When it comes to finding love, are you standing in your own way? Daring to Love will help you identify the internal barriers that cause you to sabotage your love life, open yourself up to vulnerability, and build the intimate, lasting relationship you truly desire. After a breakup, most of us spend a lot of time thinking long and hard about what the other person did to cause it, rather than reflecting on ourselves. It seems self-evident that we want our romantic relationships to work, and that love and long-term commitment are our ultimate goals. But what if our desire for love is actually not as straightforward as our emotions make us believe? What if, instead of pursuing love, we are unconsciously pushing it away? In Daring to Love, Tamsen and Robert W. Firestone offer techniques based in Robert Firestone’s groundbreaking voice therapy—the process of giving spoken word to unhealthy patterns—to help you understand how you are getting in your own way on the quest for true love. Love, the Firestones argue, makes us vulnerable and triggers old defenses we formed in childhood, causing us to sabotage our relationships in myriad subtle—and not-so-subtle—ways. Using the voice therapy strategies in this book, you will be able to identify your own defensive patterns and uncover the destructive messages your critical inner voice is telling you about yourself, your partners, and your relationships. If you’re struggling to cultivate lasting relationships, this book can help you embark on your next romantic journey with more openness and self-knowledge.

When St. Jane Francis de Chantal encouraged St. Francis de Sales to be a bit angrier over the opposition they were facing in starting their religious order, he replied, “Would you have me lose in a quarter hour what has taken me twenty years’ hard work to acquire? St. Francis de Sales had quite a temper when he was young. But over time he learned to convert his angry feelings into virtuous action. He knew that anger never leads to happiness. Worse, it causes tremendous harm to our relationship with God. In these pages, the wise Fr. Morrow shows you how to pull the rug out from beneath your anger and reclaim a life of peace and grace. You’ll come to understand the root causes of angry behavior, ways to heal painful memories, and how to deal well with your hurts and humiliations. You’re not likely to overcome blowups and anxiety through willpower alone. You need tools that help you cultivate the habits that lead to virtuous action. You’ll discover here simple ways to influence your behavior, control your impulses, and rebuild tattered relationships. When you follow the simple advice offered in these pages, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you’re giving up all desire for revenge, forgiving those who hurt you, and finding peace in your life. You’ll also learn: The difference between righteous and sinful anger.Why saying "Well, that’s just the way I am” could cost you your soul.The three root causes of every angry outburstThe five stages of healing hurtful memories.How to discipline an angry childThe three actions every Christian MUST take to overcome sinful anger. “Father Morrow presents a practical solution to a common problem. This book can make the world a much better place." Mike Aquilina

Road rage. Domestic violence. Professionally angry TV and radio commentators. We’re a society that is swimming in anger, always about to snap. Leonard Scheff, a trial attorney, once used anger to fuel his court persona, until he came to realize just how poisonous anger is. That and his intense study of Buddhism and meditation changed him. His transformation can be summarized in a simple parable: Imagine you are circling a crowded parking lot when, just as you spot a space, another driver races ahead and takes it. Easy to imagine the rage. But now imagine that instead of another driver, a cow has lumbered into that parking space and settled down. The anger dissolves into bemusement. What really changed? You—your perspective. Using simple Buddhist principles and applying them in a way that is easy for non-Buddhists to understand and put into practice, Scheff and Edmiston have created an interactive book that helps readers change perspective, step by step, so that they can replace the anger in their lives with a newfound happiness. Based on the successful anger management program Scheff created, The Cow in the Parking Lot shows how anger is based on unmet demands, and introduces the four most common types—Important and Reasonable (you want love from your partner); Reasonable but Unimportant (you didn’t get that seat in the restaurant window); Irrational (you want respect from a stranger); and the Impossible (you want someone to fix everything wrong in your life). Scheff and Edmiston show how, once we identify our real unmet demands we can dissolve the anger; how, once we understand our "buttons," we can change what happens when they’re pushed. He shows how to laugh at ourselves—a powerful early step in changing angry behavior. By the end, as the reader continues to observe and fill in the exercises honestly, it won’t matter who takes that parking space—only you can make yourself angry.