To answer you previous post I think a lot of my ugly habits have come from fear. Fear of being alone/ abandoned, fear of being hurt, fear of D, fear of being found out to not be everything people think I am, etc... As you said the worst of most of those fears has come true so there's no reason to be afraid of them anymore.
So where do those fears REALLY come from ???
Why do they still affect you so much ?
Is the reality of what has happened, better or worse than you imagined it being ?
When you start to understand those fears, then you will start to see how fear overtakes your interactions. you start acting out of fear, and it drives the poor habits that you have acquired over the years.
When you first started dating your spouse, did you act out of fear ?
I would guess that you didn't.
Fear is an emotion. When you can overcome it, then you can start acting from a place of rational thought. Think about how irrational your spouse seems to you right now. I'm sure that you think that she is 180 different than she was when you met, or even last year.
She is running and reacting on pure emotion. Emotions are driving her thoughts, actions, everything about her. You think it is strange, yet to her, those emotions are very real to her, the same as your fear is very real to you.
Once you can let that go, then you will be free of emotional reactions, and start rational actions.
Your goal should be to act rationally...not to REact emotionally..
And when you can act, then your reactions will start coming from a place of rationality...
One of the things I would do, is to be conscious of the difference when I would interact with strangers, or family members. When I would talk with a stranger, there was a complete absence of emotion, and the interactions looked very different than when I would talk with Family, or friends. I would intentionally provoke a topic where that family member, or friend would start interjecting emotion into the conversation, to gauge how I would react.
Maybe start recognizing the triggers, or behaviors that trigger you interjecting emotion into your conversations. Start digging into the "whys" of you becoming emotional.
