When You Hurt the People You Love, Without Meaning To
How to catch yourself before you destroy your relationships
I couldn’t believe it happened.
Again.
One moment, I was crossing the finish line and beaming at my girls while they held handmade signs that read, “Congratulations, daddy! We’re so proud of you!”
The next, I was storming toward the car, scowling as I dragged my bike alongside me, and my family trailed far behind.
What set me off?
Who knows.
What matters is that I—once again—allowed what could have been a beautiful memory to devolve into a white-hot display of anger.
And it would be days before our household’s energetic balance returned to “normal,” causing me to miss even more miraculous moments with my girls. Opportunities I’d never get back.
Despite the deep personal costs, though, another outburst would inevitably occur weeks later, a pattern that repeated itself throughout most of my girls’ formative years: When faced with the tiniest irritation, I would blindly react with anger, despite my deepest desire to do otherwise.
The good news is that I eventually gained the courage to face myself, ask my anger what it wanted to teach me, lean into its difficult lessons, and then release my clinging to it.
However, not before my life shattered into a million pieces, and I nearly lost everything.
If this painful cycle of anger and regret sounds familiar, here’s how you can also interrupt your knee-jerk reactions—before it’s too late.
Why You Hurt the People You Love Most
Emotions are complex, so there are myriad reasons why you attack those you love when enraged. But understanding these mechanisms is the first step toward breaking the destructive cycle.
Here are three of the most common.
1. The "Safe Target" Phenomenon
Your loved ones are always there for you and have earned your trust, which is why you feel safe in their presence. Paradoxically, this could also be a main reason why they’re often the target of your anger.
Basically, they become your emotional waste bins: When you need to offload strong feelings that you can’t express in most settings (e.g., at work, around strangers, etc.), you save your outbursts for those you believe will remain by your side afterward.
After all, they'll understand that "you didn't mean it" or that "you’re just having a bad day," right?
2. Emotional Regulation Deficits & a Need for Control
Trauma, for example, can impede emotional regulation, leading to excessive anger, fear, and rage, which is then expressed toward “safe” loved ones.
In addition, if you’re uncomfortable with vulnerability and unwilling to talk about the sources of your anger, you may interpret it as a signal to exert dominance; to control something about your circumstances, including over the emotions of those closest to you.
And one of the fastest, easiest ways to accomplish this is through physical outbursts. You unconsciously shift from the internal, the source of your discomfort, to the external, where your source of safety (i.e., loved ones) exists.
3. Neurobiological Hijacking
Once triggered by anger, a cascade of stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, floods your body, effectively causing your brain to bypass its prefrontal cortex, where rational thinking typically occurs.
Consequently, you can lose access to higher-order thinking skills involving empathy, perspective-taking, and impulse control. Your most primitive brain functions take over, and you become neurologically incapable of considering consequences or recognizing that you’re about to hurt someone you cherish.
With these processes in mind, how can you consciously respond to your anger when in its presence, and prevent it from hijacking your nervous system in the first place?
Here’s what works for me.
Two Practices for Mindfully Responding to Anger
If you want to create a pause between a trigger and your response, I recommend committing to these quick-and-simple daily practices:
Morning 1-Minute Intention-Setting
When you wake up in the morning, take one minute and do the following:
Thank the day for the opportunities that lie before you. Gratitude is fertile soil for growth in all aspects of life.
Imagine yourself pausing, breathing, and reacting calmly to a situation you usually find triggering (e.g., someone cutting you off on the freeway, your boss breathing down your neck, your child repeatedly whining/crying, etc.). This helps you become accustomed to low-level sensations associated with anger in a safe and healthy environment free from distractions.
Set an intention that every time you experience these triggers throughout your day, you will respond with this same calmness.
Mindfully Processing Anger in the Moment
At the first signs of anger when you’re out in the real world, take a few seconds and try the following:
Breathe – Take a slow, deep breath while mentally saying "pause." This activates your parasympathetic nervous system and gives your prefrontal cortex time to come online before your amygdala hijacks your response.
Identify – Name what you're feeling ("I'm getting frustrated" or "I notice anger rising"). The act of putting feelings into words reduces activity in your brain's emotional centers, creating distance between you and the emotion.
Locate – Quickly scan your body and notice where anger or frustration shows up; tightness in your chest, rapid heartbeat, facial heat, clenched jaw or fists, shallow breathing, etc.
Reframe – Ask yourself: "What is this anger trying to tell me?" or "What boundary or value of mine feels threatened right now?" This cognitive reframing transforms anger from a destructive force into useful information about what matters to you, helping you respond from a place of clarity rather than reactivity.
I use this simple four-step process every day to effectively pause and respond to my anger-related triggers, instead of indulging and reacting.
Keep in mind, however, that while it might be simple, it’s not always easy, especially when you’re just getting started. Like any skill, though, the more you practice—both during formal meditation and out “in the field”—the better you’ll get.
Before you know it, this four-step process will engage automatically and allow you to consciously acknowledge your emotional states instead of unconsciously letting them affect those you love most.
What Stories Will Your Loved Ones Tell About You?
Look, you will get triggered again. That’s just part of being human, and no amount of mindfulness will change this reality.
However, mindfulness can help you pause, examine the root of your anger, and respond from a place of compassionate understanding instead of reactionary outrage.
Because your loved ones write stories about you every day. Stories they carry in their heart when you’re not in their presence, and that they’ll continue carrying long after you're gone.
The question is, which narrative will you choose?
I totally resonate with this, Derek. Your honesty lays bare what so many of us carry in silence. That gut-wrenching feeling of missing sacred moments, replaced by anger we didn’t want but didn’t know how to stop. I’ve been there too.
Your insight reminds me of a Stoic truth from Epictetus: “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” But what if the one disturbing us is ourselves? That’s the deeper mastery, learning to rule our own reactions before they rule our lives.
Thank you for the tools and your vulnerability. You’ve turned pain into a path, and I’m walking it too, with more breath, more awareness, and slowly, more peace
I teach a powerful mental fitness practice called Positive Intelligence. Its process has some similarities and like you've mentioned here, the most important first step is awareness. How am I feeling right now? Recognize that I've been triggered - our bodies are wonderful partners in helping us realize something is wrong. Once we are aware, we can do whatever somatic exercise shifts us from our survival brain - from which we're very reactive - to the part of our brain that serves us with insight, empathy, clarity, etc. Great post!