DW,

I really wonder who HASN'T experienced this, male or female. I'd very much doubt that anyone (or, to be realistic, more than about 10% of the population) is raised to know their feelings, acknowledge their feelings, be honest about their feelings and express their feelings to their parents or family whenever those feelings are painful or important enough to express. In other words, how many of us are REALLY raised to be mentally healthy? Frankly, in my opinion, very, very few.

So, what to do? Well, you're already in therapy and that's surely a good start. I'm in therapy too and doing fine there, thank you. I've been learning how to transform unconscious feelings into conscious feelings and then do something about them on my own without necessarily involving my wife, who has her own problems. In other words, take care of myself. Which, I guess, is what real adults are supposed to do.

Before you get to the explosion point, you feel out all those previous, prior "getting ready to explode" feelings and make them conscious so that you're aware of what's happening from the word go. And then you figure out, by yourself or with your T, how to "head 'em off at the pass." In other words, when you're first moving toward a build-up with an explosion at the end of it, you're conscious of this from the beginning and figure out how to deal with the problem without exploding.

"Dealing with the problem" could be all kinds of things: rewarding yourself with a snack, deep breathing, patting yourself on the back, all kinds of things. Me, I have to make sure I don't use alcohol to get away from that awful "build-up" feeling. It takes a lot of concentration and energy NOT to get to the explosion point. To refrain. And then you have to deal with that kind of stress. That's what T and I are talking about now. I'm to the point where I can stop things in their tracks, and won't explode, and know what I need to do, but I don't yet know what to do at that point to help myself feel better and unstressed. I'm sure if you and your T talk about it she'll help you with ways you can gear down from that stress. Take care!