Betrayal Rage: How to Regulate Overwhelming Emotions Without Abandoning Yourself (Episode #130)

Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, we have been talking about a range of topics, everything from the Intimacy Repair Method We've talked about grief and we've talked about guilt. We've talked about anxiety and how it influences our relationships and we can't stand the pain. So emotions, empathy overload, compassion. Today though, I've been asked by many betrayed partners, like, talk about emotional regulation for my husband. How can I do it? Because I'm acting in ways that I've never acted before, angrier than I've ever been. And I, I don't like who I'm being. Help. Your thoughts, Marya.

I know that this is a potentially sensitive topic for a lot of betrayed partners. I know oftentimes when you've been betrayed, sometimes it can feel like this gives me a free license because I have a lot of triggers. I have a lot of unexpected emotions.

Sure is.

And I do feel out of control a lot, and something happened to me that I didn't ask for. And so yes, I am reacting in ways that don't make sense to me, and it makes sense that I'm reacting that way. But so many times my clients struggle with, I'm not proud of how I'm reacting. It goes against my value system. And yet I still want to lash out. I still want to— how many times they'll say, I want my partner to feel pain. I want to hurt them. I want them to feel as much pain as I feel. And so whether they'll say, maybe I should go act out as well so they can feel this, but that doesn't match who I am.

Right.

And so they feel stuck. I want to hurt my partner. I want them to feel my pain. And how do I do that? And so there's this really sticky, really difficult space of dealing with these emotions on top of the betrayal of this internal conflict of what do I do with these really crappy emotions that don't feel right for me, but how do I manage this person that I'm not, but who wants to act out in this way that doesn't feel normal for me.

I want to address the ways that I'm going to call it the anger that manifests itself, because in the research that I was gathering and have been gathering for 20 years now, 98%, 98%, I don't, it's probably the highest number of any of the questions I asked. They report being angrier than they've ever been. 98%. It's statistically almost impossible, but it's what it is. We know that betrayed partners get angrier than they've been in probably maybe ever. So we know that, Marianne, but the ways that it manifests it, that I've seen it, slapping, throwing things, grabbing, punching, kicking. A story that I read, because as I train other therapists to just to speak to the responses, when people get flooded and hijacked, they do things sometimes without really understanding the depth of it. But one case in particular that I read about back East was a dean of a college discovered that her husband was cheating with somebody in another city. She got a gun. She went to that person's apartment, broke the window, and shot the person. That is an extreme case, but you find stories like that of high intensity where there's deep hurt. And this is a dean of a college. This is, this is not a, this is an educated human being. Who has so much information, so much knowledge in that brain, but because of the betrayal, brain gets hijacked and does something not only to kill somebody, but to spend the rest of her life in prison. That, when I teach therapists, that is what happens to a completely hijacked, flooded brain that cannot regulate.

Yeah. Can, if I can go back, I would want to maybe alter the word that you used when you were saying 98%. Betrayed partners have this anger. The word I use is rage. Because most of the time, I mean, what you're talking about, this intense, I've never felt anything to this degree before. I don't know what the clinical definition between anger and rage is, but when this is something so intense that it takes me out of my normal state of being, above and beyond anything that I've ever felt before. And it puts me in a place where I do things that don't make sense, that I would never do in a normal space. Most people have anger. Most people experience anger. Somebody cuts them off, somebody does something that's frustrating, and we have anger. But oftentimes with betrayal, we see anger that is just elevated to these levels where there is screaming like a banshee, where there is just out of, almost out-of-body experiences. And this is the PTSD where we often dissociate. And so when you're talking about this Dean, you know, what came to my mind is this person wasn't in their right mind, right? This person was not in— they're a Dean, they're educated, they deal with conflict, they've got a lot of training. Yet they were not in a proper state of mind. And PTSD dissociates us. It moves us into a place where one of our parts takes over. And so we are really dealing with, as you said, hijacked emotions. And I think this is also a part, or important to recognize, oftentimes this is where we have protector parts that show up. And oftentimes our protector parts show up to protect us because this feels like, this is the end of my life. I might die. And so they show up to help us survive and they go to extremes to do so.

And what's interesting to me there is the questions that I get in my office, like, What do I do about it? How do I respond to it? And I would even add, that's not just from the betrayed spouse, that's from the betraying spouse. In that moment, what can I say? What can I do? How can I help? I don't know what to do. My natural response is to get away from or to fight back.

Yeah.

And from the betraying partner.

And I don't know about you, Dr. Skinner, before my clients even get to what do I do? Most of the time, what I see is before that, I see so much shame and guilt.

And you're talking to the betrayed? Yeah.

I'm telling my betrayed partners who are experiencing this, they feel so guilty and have so much shame. Who am I? How could I do this? I feel so bad because that's not who I am. I'm a compassionate, kind person. How could I act this way?

Hit, slap, grab, punch.

Right. And then maybe they'll, you know, we'll get to the point where they're saying, how do I fix this? But boy, we sure have to do a lot of work around how do I even make sense of who I am? Because I don't even know myself. What's going on?

And from a biological perspective, when I train other therapists, one of the core things I say is, okay, so What triggers that kind of a response? What's the threat that leads to those kind of behaviors? And the threat is countless. I mean, you can't just name one of them. The threat is so broad. The threat is, you betrayed me, you deceived me, you lied to me. You made me think something that wasn't true. You made me look stupid. You made me look like a fool. And I could go on and on with the language that I've heard The challenge then is, well, all those things are true, the deception, that I still— what do I do with my behavior? Because I don't like being out of control. OOC. I don't like it. I don't like being OOC. Help. What do I do? My first response, Marianne, and then I'd love your thoughts on this. My first response is you have to understand that it's a natural biological response, and that's what I teach my clients. That's what I teach the therapists. It's a natural biological response because it's not voluntary. You— it's involuntary. It's happening to you. It's how you respond to it is where you have choice. You don't have choice initially because your initial response is to protect yourself, and that may be lashing out. And it's hard to come back to a place of calmness when that initial rage is there. John Gottman, in his work— we've talked about this at different times— he's citing other researchers, but they say when your heart rate goes over 100 heartbeats per minute, you're— this term they use is flooded, hijacked, where you don't think the way you would normally think because you're going into the autonomic state of fight or flight. So am I going to fight or flee? And the examples we're giving— hitting, punching, grabbing— is actually the fighting part. But how many times do you see people just run away, get away? So those are natural biological responses. If I could say anything to our listeners or viewers, those are natural biological. Step number 1, you have to understand that's a natural response. Then what, Maryanne?

I 100% agree with you. And so this is where I think this is where the compassion comes in. And this is a space for grief. And what I tell my clients, and I know this might be a little bit difficult for our listeners and viewers to hear. And so I, I wanna be really gentle and recognize this is sensitive, and this is not said in any shaming or judgmental way, but this is the work of a betrayed partner. When we talk about a betrayed partner, when we talk about the recovery work, When we talk about the work of their healing work, this is such an important component, component of that work. This is the betrayed partner's work. It is recognizing these things happen to me that I did not choose, and I have to grieve that. And part of grief is that anger. It is that rage. It is learning how to manage my emotions around that. It is learning how to manage the rage so that I don't hurt people and that I don't hurt property and that I don't abandon or betray myself. I've got to learn ways to do it so that I can look in the mirror and that I don't feel slimy and that I don't feel yuck.

So what you described there, Marianne, just let me talk about that for a minute, because I— if you're listening to this and you've done those things, we— please don't beat yourself up. Like I said, this is a natural biological response. But everybody that I've talked to— I, I'll never forget the person that came to me and felt so bad that she had slapped her husband, and she— her quote, I'll never forget: I'm as bad as he is. I'm an abuser. Fortunately, she didn't stay in that understanding because that wasn't her, but she felt that way. I'm a bad person because I was out of control and slapped my husband. I honestly believe, Marianne, that when the brain is hijacked, you don't think rationally. That's why I shared that extreme story. We're trying to get to slow down because I don't believe most betrayed partners, I don't believe they're angry people. I don't believe that's their disposition. Would they really slow it down? It's like, this isn't me. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? So it's how then do we deal with the time from being overwhelmed and flooded? And truly, Marianne, I think I want to punish. I want you to feel my pain. I want you to understand. Can't you get it through your thick skull how much you hurt me? Doesn't usually have a positive outcome when that happens.

But let me validate that. How many times do you and I hear that in our office? That is such a normal, valid response that I think we hear over and over and over. And so when I say that is part of the work, it is figuring out how to work through that, to work through what do I do with that energy? Yeah. What do I do with those emotions? How do I process that out of my body? Is that through journaling? Is that through yelling? Is that through sitting in my car with the windows rolled up, letting all of that out, saying everything that I need to say so nobody else hears it, but letting it out of my body, figuring out ways to still express it without being verbally or emotionally abusive to someone. It is figuring that out and also giving myself compassion. And permission to feel all of these feelings that I'm having because they're so valid. And I can say, no, I shouldn't have those and shame myself and judge myself and keep them inside. But that makes me sick and they need to come out.

And that doesn't work. No.

And then it, and then it comes out sideways. It comes out to my family or friends or in other ways. And so I've got to figure out, and that is, once again, that's the work. Of finding ways to do it in healthy ways that I can feel— I don't know if I want to say good about, but ways that I don't feel bad about.

Yeah. So two concepts I want to talk about here. One comes from what I learned from Dr. Al Siebert on resiliency, because what he talks about is in life, we typically think of resilient people as this person is a strong person. This person's resilient. They do hard things. But one of the things that in my interview with him many years ago, he said something that I'll never ever forget. He says resilient people are both/and people. What do you mean by both/and? They still have adversity, challenges, experiences. If they're depressed, they still have depressive episodes. If they're anxious, they still have anxious episodes. If they've been through trauma, they still have traumatic memories and experiences. And they've learned how to deal with them and they know how to respond and they know how to communicate their real needs in those moments of time. And so he said realistically, resiliency is both and, not either or. Very important because when you are experiencing these things, you're gonna have moments where you get flooded. If you've been betrayed, You're going to have moments. You're not choosing those. They're happening. You drive by a hotel, you drive by a place where an affair occurred or something occurred. Trigger, trigger, boom, bam. And off my brain goes. How to respond to that, creating the— I'm going to call it a gap or a space, a pause, slowing down to respond rather than react. That's ultimately a key approach. That helps people regulate the emotions that are overwhelming them.

I have a couple thoughts on that, Dr. Skinner. I think oftentimes we learn from experience with this. Oftentimes we do it poorly and go, ooh, I didn't do that very well. Now, now I know that hotel or that street corner or that whatever it was, that's a trigger for me. And I didn't do that well. So Now I know next time I need to have a plan for that. I need to figure out, I need to think ahead. And this is also, I think, where group can be so helpful because we can hear other people saying, oh, here's a tool that I used. Here's something that I learned. This didn't work well for me. So now I tried this. This was helpful. Or I can go to group and say, I'm trying to figure this out. I don't know how to do this, or I know that I have to drive by this hotel today. Can I call somebody while I'm driving by? Or whatever it is. This is where we learn as we go. And this is a journey because I don't want anybody who's listening to think, oh, I'm not doing this right. It's often trial and error. And we learn from the mistakes. We learn from where it didn't go well. And then we have to say, okay, what do I need to do and change so that I can get through that in a better way next time?

And the second part that I wanted to bring up is just, I wanna validate that part and the second part, right? So I talked about the Either Or by Dr. Siebert. The second part of this is when you understand what's going on inside of you, and I don't know how else to say that. When you understand what's going on inside of you, that when you have the opportunity for choice, not before. And so choice comes with awareness. Choice comes with understanding. And so as you're just talking about that, Marianne, it's like, oh wait, that street corner or this hotel or this region of town or whatever it is, or when I walk in the room and the internet's, you know, the computer's on or whatever it is, when those triggers occur, developing a plan gives me choice of opportunity. Rather than my brain instantly going flooded. So the second part of this is really understanding, yes, I'm going to be flooded at times. When the trigger occurs, do I have a strategy in how to respond? Without a strategy, you're most likely to go back to the autonomic natural response of fight or flight, the automatic response. We're trying to, we're trying to interrupt that pattern. And if you can interrupt it, you feel more in control.

I think just one other, other part of this that I think is important is in these spaces, if we can slow down and say, what is this part of me trying to help me with? Because we have a part that shows up, usually our parts are trying to protect us. And so if I have this rage part, it's a defensive part. It's trying to push back. And it is usually trying to protect me. So if I can slow down and say, ooh, I have a protector part of me, it's putting up a wall. It's trying to keep people away. What is it trying to help with? Do I have a wounded part? Do I have a younger part inside of me? What do I need right now? And that is usually where actually I usually need some compassion. Where I usually need some understanding. And if I can reach in and have some self-compassion, use some grounding, really notice what do I need right now? What's going on? That might be a space to slow down, take a breath and look and say, is my intent really to hurt somebody else? And it will that help me? Or do I actually have some wounding in myself that I need to Slow down and take care of it.

Yeah. So in the intensives that I do, this is like the crux point because I often get to the point of core beliefs. And when I'm rageful, when I want to punish you, when I'm angry, there's usually a core belief about self associated with that, the rage or the anger. Or the desire to punish. And when I say core belief, people say, what do you mean, Dr. Skinner? I say, if you've read my book, Treating Trauma from Sexual Betrayal, I have an exercise in there. I call it the 5 Whys exercise. And it's just a simple concept. If you take memory and experience a nightmare and you start asking the whys, what you really— it's what's this about? Why is this happening? What's inside of me? Almost always, Marianne, I get individuals to a core belief. Is it possible that my rage comes from, I feel stupid because you deceived me? Is it possible that my anger and desire to punish you is because it makes me feel like I'm not enough? It's those core beliefs that we have to deal with. And so when I do Betrayals Trauma Intensives, that's the place I go, because if we can't get to the roots, then we're still circling up above, Marianne. We're not resolving the issue. So we have to get to the roots of the anger, get to the roots of the rage. So to our listeners, if you want to feel in control, you, that's where you need to go. You need to get to the core of the pain. And that's what we're trying to help you talk about. If you can talk about the roots of the pain, you can make tremendous progress.

So I'm going back to 5th and 6th grade, Dr. Skinner. I don't know what it is about our podcast that just takes me back there, but—

You're welcome. We just do, we do our own therapy on this podcast.

I just pulled back to a memory that I haven't thought about for years, but I have a brother that's 3 years younger than me. And so I was, I must've been in either 5th or 6th grade and somebody came and told me, hey, there's a boy that's going to beat up your brother during recess. And you know, I was his older sister and I stomped in there and I found that kid with my friends and I gave that kid— I was like, you touch my brother and you're dead. You know, I already told you I was a little bit feisty. And I let that kid know in no uncertain terms that I was going to beat the tar out of him if he even laid a finger on my brother.

Wow.

And so as we're talking about these protectors, I just bring this up. My brother was, you know, a little second or third grader. He was pretty small, but his big sister, who was mean and tough and brought her friends in to protect him. That's what we're talking about. We have these younger scared parts that often feel weak, abandoned, powerless, rejected. And then we have parts that feel strong and they show up to make sure that we're not hurt, to make sure that we don't get hurt again. And so being able to recognize that and coming back to that younger, smaller, weaker part, even though it was my brother, but I think that this, hopefully this applies here.

In fact, Marianne, as you described that, that's really what's happening when I want you to be punished or I want you to feel my pain. Is I truly want you to know the depth of the pain you've created. So the only other part I have today that I think is relevant from, at least from my perspective, when I'm the betraying partner there and I see you're angry, raged, punishing, it's usually a space where most betrayed spouses are hijacked. You can go hijacked too. That's World War III. You can turn away and say, if you're going to be this way, I'm going to leave. That's creating a boundary that usually makes your spouse or partner angrier. And so many say, well, what should I do? What could I do? What can I do? How can I help in those moments? I wanna close with this concept. Sometimes there aren't answers. When a person's flooded, you can be present. You can own your mistake. You can acknowledge the pain. You can do all of those things that we've talked about and how to stay present with a person in pain with compassion. It doesn't mean it's gonna get better in that moment. It means that you're staying present because you created pain in your partner, that while they're flooded, you're still trying to stay present. That's the gift you give your spouse. And I've had people say, well, how many times do I need to do that? And I say, as many times as you need to do that because of the pain that's there. There may be times where you can't handle it. And I say this to both partners. There's times where you have to take a break because it's too much. And it's too much for both of you. It's not healthy for me to punish, punish, punish, punish you because it doesn't solve anything. So there are times, Marian, where we have to take a timeout because it's not being productive. John Gottman, the best marital therapist in the world based upon research and his outcomes and the things he's doing, him and Sue Johnson, he says when you are flooded, you cannot do— as a therapist, he tells us when you have one partner who's flooded, the best treatment you have is to take a timeout and take a break so you can be more productive in helping regulate the nervous system so you can have meaningful conversations. If you don't know how to do that, that's where therapy comes in. Come join us for an intensive and we'll show you the process of how to do that. Final thoughts, Marianne?

I know that this is a delicate process. I know that this be a difficult conversation that we've had today, Dr. Skinner. And I believe if you're a betrayed partner, that you may have experienced some of what we've been talking about today. And I want you to know that we have a lot of compassion and want to just validate the experience that you've had. And if you've been a betraying partner, we also understand the complexity of this and how difficult and powerless it can feel not knowing, yes, I've caused this and I don't know what to do with this. And I feel frustrated and also feel like maybe I deserve this as well. And I don't want to see my partner acting like this. And I also want to have compassion towards them. And I feel like Yeah, I was the cause of this. There's a lot of emotions that we're talking about, and this is really complex. And so if this has been triggering or difficult, we just invite you to definitely take some time, take a walk and give yourself compassion. This is a journey, a journey of recovery, of learning about yourself, and also just noticing the parts that you have that have shown up maybe today. And as you were talking, Dr. Kevin Skinner, especially about the betraying partner, if it's possible, if you can see that betrayed partner and see their parts and see that, as I was describing my big sister part that showed up to defend my brother, if you can see that in your partner, if you can see, oh, that part that's actually showing up, this isn't necessarily— it is your partner, but, but that's a part that's showing up. My partner's not in maybe I don't know if I wanna say the right state of mind, but I can see that my partner's really flooded right now. Can you have compassion seeing that that's where my partner is and understand, oh, I can really see and have compassion for where they're at right now. I can understand that's where they're at right now, rather than taking it at face value and really internalizing what's going on. I think that's a, a really good place to be able to come from if you can.

And that's work. I mean, both partners, this is why it's so much work because these moments are real. We've heard about it in our career, heard it from clients. We know it's real. That's why we're talking about it. If I could give you a challenge, it would be to step back and reflect on what am I really trying to communicate? How do I best show up when my spouse is hurting in that way, if I've been the betraying spouse? And then ultimately as a couple, How to regain a sense of personal identity, differentiation, which we've talked about. How do we learn to do that and practice it to the point where we're good at it? Hmm. And that's really what I do, Marian, is I have couples practice this over and over and over in my intensives so they understand this is the process. It's learning how to do it in those crucial moments in a productive way.

Right. I was just going to add, this would be a place where, if it's possible afterwards, to be able to come back and say, What did you need here? What can I do next time? How can I help you through this in a better way? If we can have those conversations as a couple, then we can figure out a, you know, like a roadmap for the next time this occurs. And we can, we're working together as a couple to get through this so that we're going to be more successful next time.

Yeah. If you are struggling to do this, you'd like to learn how Marianne and I are doing couples retreat, you can go to intimacyrepairmethod.com. And you'll see IRM for Couples Intensive. If you're interested, we would love to have you join us and there's an application, but we would love to have you join us if you really want to take your relationship through this process in a more productive way. So Marianne, thank you for your time. To our listeners and viewers, thank you so much for being with us. Final thoughts, Marianne?

It's been a lovely conversation, Dr. Kevin Skinner, and to our listeners and viewers, hopefully you can join us. We're going to have a really exciting time, really deeply diving into these concepts that we've been talking about in September at the intensive retreat.

All right. Thank you and have a great week. We'll see you next week.

Thanks, Dr. Skinner.