Breaking the Anger/Abuse Cycle

Breaking the Anger/Abuse Cycle
by Ron Huxley

The anger/abuse cycle is a common pattern of
interaction between family members. Although it is
traditionally used to describe domestic violence it can
take place in everyday parenting routines, through
verbal and emotional abuse. For example, a parent
may explode in frustration at his child for his
irresponsible behavior. Words and actions are said by
the parent that are hurtful. And even when the parent
knows he is verbally abusing his son, he may be
unable to stop himself or find himself caught back up
in anger after he promised himself, and his son, that
he would not vent at him in frustration. Understanding
the anger/abuse cycle is the first step toward breaking
the cycle.

The anger/abuse cycle has three main phases: The
problem, tension building, and honeymoon phase.
The following ten steps break these phases into more
detail:

1. Problems occur in life and tension begins to
develop. What stressors are at work in your life, job,
or family? How do you perceive the actions of others
towards you? Are those perceptions accurate or
unrealistic? 2. Opportunity to ESCAPE or ESCALATE!
3. If escalating, tension builds/ineffective coping
strategies start. 4. Ineffective coping strategies
fail/Tension continues to build. 5. Trigger thoughts set
off anger and violence. 6. Explosion: Destructive
release of tension. 7. Feelings of guilt and remorse
over angry words/actions. Promises are made to
"never do it again." 8. Honeymoon Period. Low
tension, happy moods, and false hope. 9. Denial of
anger problem. 10. Problems and stressors reoccur
or new ones develop. The cycle continues.

The first phase brings problems in the life of the
parent or in the relationship between parent and child.
Problems are a normal part of life but if they add up
too high or occur too frequently, they can lead to
expressions of anger. The expression can be
constructive if the parent has coping mechanisms that
allow him to cope with the problem by finding a
solution to it. This is the escape choice listed in item 2
above. If the parent is unable to cope then he is left
with the choice of escalating or moving into the
tension building phase. Ineffective coping
mechanisms may increase feelings of frustration and
helplessness if parents feel they are "failures"
because their coping mechanisms did not work. This
and other trigger thoughts become the spark that sets
off an explosion or release of tension. This would
include items 3 through 6 listed above. Items 7 and 8
occur after the tension has been released. This is
characterized by guilt, remorse, and false promises.
This is the third or honeymoon phase. It is called the
honeymoon phase because parent and child
experience low tension, happy moods, and false hope
that the anger/abuse is gone. All that has really
happened is that the tension has been released and
the feelings of frustration over the parents problems
and their inability to cope with it are no longer
present. Unfortunately, this denial of an anger
management problem and the inevitable recurrence
of more problems causes the anger/abuse cycle to
start all over again.

The obvious means of breaking this cycle is to find
more effective coping mechanisms. This does two
things for the parent. The first is that it relieves the
parent from personalizing their failure. This means
that the parent reframes themselves as needing new
tools to find a solution to their parenting problem
rather than as being failures for not finding the
solution. In other words, it is the tool that is ineffective
not the parent. At this point, the parent needs to find
the right tool for the job. The second benefit is that it
empowers the parent to take responsibility for
changing the parent/child relationship. The parent
enjoys the feeling of being in control of their thoughts
and actions which affects the child's thoughts and
actions. This is the opposite direction taken in item 5
and 6 above where blame and shame typically occur.
Instead of blaming the other person, as wrong as he
might be, the parent can take responsibility for their
part in the problem, or at least their reaction to it,
which breaks the cycle of anger and abuse.

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