Has your relationship partner rattled your cage (and serenity) lately with a high-anxiety panic attack disguised as an anger attack? You may cringe at the memory, but chances are your reactive partner has high-anxiety states that spill over over into your personal world…looking much like crazy, angry outbursts or unfair fights.
Psychologically, emotions can layer on top of each other in this situation: Anxiety is often dressed up or disguised on the talk stage as rough and tough…gruff anger. Moreover, anxiety-derived negative words of anger are like sticks and stones that can break relational bones…so you had better duck when anxiety flies.
Hope is here: I often recommend a single talk transaction that can calm down an angry co-communicator pretty effectively. The CommTool or transaction to say calmly in the face of an anger-panic attack person is: “I need you to know I’m feeling anxious…scared…not safe…RIGHT NOW.”
How to know when a RELATIONSHIP PANIC ATTACK is under way:
1. Yelling. Yelling is a form of verbal bashing. Your partner may talk exceptionally loudly, give you “the guilt look,” bring up the past, screech about the unfairness of it all, say inappropriate things (like obscenities) or suffer from “giveupitis” or quitting.
2. Loss of control. Your partner will be red-faced, speech will be pressured, interrupting is common. “S/he acts like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
3. Erratic, agitated behaviors. Your partner may pace back-and-forth and make you wonder: “Who am I living with? Is he/she a split personality, or what?”
4. Broken trust. You don’t feel safe around your partner, you don’t feel important as a top priority and you’re not able to be who you are without a “dirty fight.”
5. “Fix-it” pressure. You feel pressured to fix the other person, and have difficulty accepting what the parnter expects from the relationship. This takes the form of, “I’ve got to fix this for him/her…before it gets any worse!” or “I’ve got to go into a fix-it mode to make my partner feel better or happier.
6. Blowing up the relationship bridge. Contact is broken and there is a “disconnect.” Attachment or loving feelings are broken off, the relationship bridge is blown up by anxiety/anger dynamite.
7. Refusing to talk. S/he may stomp off disrupting talk for days, cooly acting like everything is perfectly O.K., grump around like a child, refuse to talk for days or engage in other “juvenile behaviors.”
8. Change is perceived as a threat. Rather than a life motto of “Change CAN happen!”…the partner reacts as if change is bad or the loss of change too much to grapple with or handle.
In a two-way relationship, you don’t have to automatically react in fright to your partner’s high-anxiety states that can spill over into your personal world to ruin your day.
When a relationship-centered panic attack threatens to spill over into your personal world and peace of mind, say calmly: “I need you to know I’m feeling anxious…scared…not safe…RIGHT NOW!” That caring transaction will invite the person to calm down…and prime their mind for a positive change.
Dr. Dennis O’Grady is a reducing anxiety expert and professional relationship counselor whose book “Taking the Fear Out of Changing” primes the mind for making leaps of change. He writes about myths of divorce, good communication and saving a marriage. Dennis is also a business consultant who runs “Leadership Talks” (and baloney walks!) programs.