Anger has the power to kill, he says, and too often the victim is a marriage. But if we started doing just a few things differently, he says, we could reverse the trend. Smalley speaks not only from what he has observed in his years as a counselor, but also from his own experience of reaching the meltdown point. Here is his strategy for disarming your anger before it explodes and hurts someone you love. People seem to be reacting to situations with an intensity that is way out of proportion to the circumstances.
People have a tendency to avoid dealing with hurtful situations when they occur.
Instead, they try to bury the pain. But it just builds up inside them and eventually turns into anger. We can try to bury our anger, but it's always buried alive. And it's just a matter of time before it comes out. When I explain this to people, they start looking back over their lives and a lot of issues come into sharper focus.