#278: How to Navigate Being Triggered by a Partner's Moodiness

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0:52Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light. and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's Ask Steph episode, I'm answering the listener question of how do I deal with being triggered by my partner's bad moods and irritability? So this is one that I know from experience is a huge sticking point for a lot of people, particularly with anxious attachment patterns.

1:42It's one that still to this day, I struggle with myself and certainly have struggled with historically. So rest assured you are not alone. if you find your partner's moodiness triggering. And I do want to acknowledge at the outset that there is a spectrum that we could be talking about here, as is always the case that what I'm talking about as moodiness or irritability might mean something very different to you if you're listening in the context of your own relationship. And the advice that I'm going to share is very much speaking to a scenario where someone's just being a bit grumpy or cranky or short or tired or irritable and not where someone is being overtly nasty or full-on blocking you out or stonewalling or anything that feels a bit more severe and intentional.

2:31So the scenario that I'm going to speak to in today's episode and the advice I'm going to give is really around that like day-to-day thing which even still can be really triggering for those of us particularly with anxious attachment patterns and I'm going to share some thoughts as to why that can be and how you might go about grounding yourself through that. Because as we'll talk about, what we do by default tends to make things worse rather than better. Even though it's coming from a place of earnestly wanting to fix things, it can often backfire. So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

3:02Before we get into that, if you're someone who struggles with anxious attachment, and certainly if you relate to what I'm going to talk about in today's episode, I would love for you to register for my free training on how to heal anxious attachment and finally feel secure in life and love. I share in a lot more detail about the framework that I teach for healing anxious attachment, as well as some of the reasons why you might be stuck despite all the work that you're doing and how you can discern whether the problems that you're experiencing, the challenges are stemming from your anxious attachment or stemming from something that's off in your relationship.

3:35So I cover all of that in the free training and you can register for that at the link in the show notes or by heading directly to my website. Okay, so let's get into this conversation around struggling with a partner's moodiness and feeling really triggered by it, feeling like it really activates something in you and feels quite unsafe. So let's just first acknowledge that nothing comes from nowhere and that most of us who have this sensitivity likely had something in our family of origin that mirrored that dynamic, a feeling like there was some unpredictability, a feeling like we had to manage or move around other people's moods, feeling like it was our responsibility to make sure everyone was happy and calm and feeling like we'd then done something wrong if they weren't.

4:19So if someone's in a bad mood, if they're angry, if they're frustrated, if they're short, that spells trouble for us either because it's going to mean conflict, it's going to mean stress, it means I've done something wrong. That can be really deeply coded into our system and that can obviously travel with us throughout life and into our adult relationships. I think when we layer onto that some other pieces around the fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, this unworthiness piece of feeling like it's our job to be the perfect partner and to never do anything wrong and to make our partner happy, those sort of codependent subconscious thoughts that we might have, that your feelings are my responsibility and I have to smooth all of that over for you.

5:01That if you're annoyed, it's because I've failed or done something wrong and that that means you're going to leave me or you don't love me anymore because you couldn't possibly be annoyed at me and also still love me. All of that can create a lot of anxiety because it feels really high stakes. And so many of us with anxious attachment patterns do just have this blueprint around if I can just be the perfect partner and make our relationship perfectly happy and make you happy, then I'll be safe and nothing bad will happen and you'll love me and we'll live happily ever after and then I won't have to feel all the bad feelings that come with that fear of rejection and abandonment and the intense vulnerability of feeling unworthy of love.

5:38So when we look at that backdrop, suddenly it starts to make more sense why we might feel very activated by a partner being moody, being cranky, being irritable, being a bit short or snappy. Even if it has nothing to do with us, it still registers as this can't be good and this might spell trouble. This might mean that I've done something wrong, which really feels threatening to my whole identity as a partner in this relationship because I pride myself on being perfect and not doing anything wrong and making you happy. So we can take it all very personally and of course when we're receiving it in that way and we're sort of instantly activated by it then we react from this fearful place, from this anxious place and when someone has just had a rough day at work or they're a bit tired or they're a bit hungry or something and our response is to rush in and go, what's wrong?

6:33And ask them that five times and then say, are you angry at me? Why are you speaking to me like that? And put a lot of anxiety around it. A lot of people, and particularly people with avoidant patterns who we are often in relationship with, will just push that away so hard. Like they don't want to absorb that anxiety because from their perspective, remember when they're experiencing stress, they tend to disconnect. They tend to retreat into themselves. They tend to not want to talk about it. And so feeling like them being a bit quiet or withdrawn is suddenly a magnet for your anxiety to come and circle around them and rush in and want to fix it and want to inquire about it and want to talk about it, that will often be received pretty poorly and they might really push back against that or shut down even further, which of course triggers the anxiety further.

7:21So if that is sounding familiar to you, it is certainly familiar to me. My big piece of advice, what do you do with that situation when your partner's in a bad mood and you're feeling triggered by it, my advice, and this is advice that I certainly try to live by as much as I can, is to do nothing. In the moment, just do nothing. You don't have to respond. You don't even have to acknowledge it. If you want to ask them, oh, you seem a bit tired or is something up? And they say, no, I'm fine, which of course registers in your system as like, well, they're clearly not fine. So what's wrong? What's been kept from me?

7:54just go, okay, not my problem. I've asked. They said they're fine. They clearly don't want to talk about it. And now I'm going to go and live my life as if that was not happening because it's actually not my responsibility. It's not my responsibility to fix their cranky mood. It's not my responsibility to make them suddenly be happy again. And so it is this really conscious letting go, almost like a cutting of the cord that I feel connects my mood to their mood. and just actually going on with your day, going on with your evening, whatever you would have been doing if they weren't being like that.

8:28And I've often given the advice to students of actually having a few things up your sleeve. If you get triggered by something like this, it's like, okay, I will go and run myself a bath. I will read a book. I will go on a walk and listen to a podcast, any number of things that I can do, enjoying my own company, protecting my own peace that don't require me to be in and around them if I know that that's probably going to be triggering for me. But it's like, I'm going to create this bubble of blissful ignorance around myself where I don't need to be pulled into that storm. And I certainly don't need to jump into that storm willingly because nothing good comes of it.

9:04And I think that's the key piece to realize because I'm sure some of you will be hearing this and having resistance to it. But we all know from experience that nothing good comes from it. They don't appreciate the hovering and the interrogating you don't get what you want from it because it tends to just make it worse. And so then you feel more anxious and shut out and worried and all of that. So I think the majority of the time, certainly again, in my personal experience, when I just choose not to engage and certainly decline to participate or be pulled into it, it's a storm cloud that passes and then they come out of it.

9:37They're fine. If we felt that they were being particularly rude or impolite, or if there was something that needed to be addressed, you can address it afterwards and say like, hey, I get that you were tired before, but in future, I'd really appreciate if you could, whatever. But just going in and sort of pecking at them in the moment is not going to work. It's not going to make anything better. It's going to make you feel worse. It's going to make them feel controlled, which they're going to push back hard against. And so I really, really encourage you to just give it a try. The next time you get triggered by it, by your partner being a bit moody or irritable, cranky or tired or withdrawn, just do nothing.

10:14Do your own thing. Don't engage. You don't even have to acknowledge it. You don't even have to call it out. You don't have to name it. You can actually just carry on with your life and allow them to experience a mood and trust that they can be in a mood and then come out of a mood and they're an adult and that's fine. That doesn't have to pose a threat to you. It doesn't have to be about you. It doesn't have to be some personal attack on you, it's actually okay. And as I said, if there is something to talk about, talk about it afterwards, because it's not going to be very productive in the moment.

10:44So I hope that that helps. It really is such a tricky thing. And as I said, it makes so much sense that it's activating for you if any of those pieces that I spoke to have been part of your story. But I think it is so, so powerful in actually rewriting that story for ourselves going forward, to realize that we can exist in proximity to someone we love who is having an emotion without taking responsibility for that emotion and taking that on as our own thing to fix or as being about us. And the more experiences that we have of that actually not spiraling into some full-blown crisis and not treating it as such, that's how we start to shift away from that experience.

11:23And we can actually just build up our tolerance for more friction in relationship, for more of the ebbs and flows that are part of being two people with all of their own stuff, building a relationship together. So I hope that that's been helpful, sending you lots of love, and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Coca-Cola. For the big, for the small, the short, and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers. For the optimists, pessimists, for long-distance love, for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers, for old friends and new. Coca-Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca-Cola at a store near you.

12:12Fall never arrives all at once. First the air, then the light, and slowly the things you love begin to find each other. A jacket meets a dress. A hoodie slips beneath a blazer. An old cap finds a new scarf. Because you don't simply step into the season. You create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall. Find fall your way at Ross.

12:42Brussels clean up nicely at Sweetgreen. Maple glazed, roasted, and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweetgreen's fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweetgreen app. Thanks, guys.