Sooner or later you will encounter a situation where one partner is aggressively triggered in your office.

They explode after hearing an unexpected comment. At that point they are flooded with emotion and become explosively furious. They often just want to “express their rage” and they definitely don’t want to be interrupted.

The spouse can’t retract, apologize or explain what they said. The limbic system is in charge! At this moment, nothing has any positive effect.

Your attempts to soothe, listen empathically, or offer insight seem to do no good at all. You understand that trauma is being triggered. But maybe another part of you believes being triggered does not justify such an aggressive response.

The bad news: it’s not easy for therapists to live through sessions like these.

The good news: events like these can become defining moments in your work with them.

Positive outcomes don’t often occur in the session when a partner is this enraged. However, how you use these explosive moments  in the next few sessions will help you lay a foundation for effective confrontation and differentiation.

In a recent session George asked Cindy, “Are you likely to have another affair?” She exploded saying, “You are sadistic. You’ll never let this die. You’ll rub my face in it forever and never let me forget what I did!” She brutally continued saying he was no saint either. It was near the end of the session and nothing constructive was going to happen in that hour.

When they returned, they were getting along fine and neither of them mentioned the previous session. My dilemma: Do I risk bringing it up again and going into another swamp or stay with the positive feelings they were now having? I chose to bring it up again knowing that I had witnessed a defining moment. They had demonstrated for me the limits of their own differentiation.

I began by alerting Cindy: “I’d like to go back to what happened last week because I think there is a lot of learning there. Are you in a good enough spot to be open to learning more?”

After Cindy consented I said, “It seems that George’s pain about the affair is still something you have difficulty processing together. Would you each like to be strong enough to further resolve George’s feelings about the affair?”

There was a long tense silence and finally Cindy and George agreed. I proceeded, “Cindy, I believe George’s question to you last week was his way of saying, “I’m scared to believe you and I am testing out whether I can ask you sensitive questions. Your response seems defensive and does not make it easy for George to turn to you when he’s having a tough time. Is that the message you want to communicate to him? Your guilt seems to get in the way of you accepting that George has his own process to go through.”

In this situation I am using Cindy’s outburst as a vehicle to open her to stretch and get outside of herself and see George’s vulnerability. Until now she has not understood that her inability to accept his vulnerability has made her an unsafe partner.

When he talks about who he is as a separate person from her, and how his own development has been affected by the lies and betrayal, she doesn’t hear him and his struggles in a separate way yet. She has been unable to support George processing his experience in a way that would enable them to understand one another and together create an understanding of what went wrong and why.

Cindy’s response will show me how much I can use the previous week’s session to push her awareness of her husband as another “real self.” Cindy’s answers will reveal whether she will still revert to the angry, defensive self or whether she will be open to seeing how her barriers interfere with them connecting.

George’s differentiation will be strengthened when he can go to Cindy and say, “ I felt so hurt when you turned away from me for another man. I want to be able to tell you when I am scared and have you respond openly to me when I’m vulnerable with you.”

The previous session becomes a defining moment for him when he recognizes that he must not let her anger derail him. He will have to repetitively step up to difficult conversations no matter how much he would like to retreat.

For both Cindy and George stepping up to the intensity of tough conversations is what will “affair-proof” their marriage in the future.  Stepping up, embracing the process of knowing each other more deeply and surviving intensity is what will prevent them from having a dead and disconnected marriage.

Can you share any defining moments you’ve experienced recently? How did you make use of them? If you didn’t recognize them at the time, how can you use them in future sessions?

We help couples struggling with marital affairs in Menlo Park, San Francisco, San Mateo, Redwood City, San Jose, Campbell and the surrounding areas.