“The mind is everything; what you think, you become.” (Buddha)

When we feel angry, we know something is not right. We become acutely aware that some of our needs are not being met. Anger is most often associated with safety violations. If we feel angry because our validation needs are not being met, it's usually an indication that we have an attachment to meeting our validation needs-a sign that one of main ways that we feel safe is to feel validated. When we feel angry in our relationships, we usually respond in one of two ways. The first response is to express our anger, most often by lashing out in some way. We've already seen how this is always a lose-lose proposition.

The second response is to repress our anger in order to avoid a full-out confrontation. (Notice how this response also assumes that only other way to deal with anger is to express it by attacking!) When we repress our anger, we attempt to restore balance in our safety accounts by isolating ourselves and disengaging from relationship. Eventually, we will no longer be able to repress our anger, and it will manifest in a confrontation of unexpected and inappropriate intensity.

Neither response meets our relationship needs, of course.

When we cultivate a more skillful relationship with anger, however, we have a third option. When we feel angry in a relationship, we can become aware that we're feeling unsafe, that some expectation has not been met, and that our needs are not being met. We can own this experience, recognizing that it's about us, not about our partner. And we can choose to take appropriate action. Instead of attacking or withdrawing, we can choose to engage in relationship more fully.

Before we engage in relationship, however, we must first recognize that we're feeling unsafe, and remedy this. We may be able to shift our awareness and restore balance in our safety account in an instant. We may need to disengage (briefly) so that we can cool down before we reengage in relationship. Whatever method, it is essential that we feel completely safe before we proceed. If we don't feel safe, we won't behave in a reasonable or rational manner.

Once we feel safe, we can explore why we felt angry. Remember, anger arises because an expectation was not met, or a communication was not delivered. What was expectation? What boundary was crossed? What was not communicated? What was not understood?

Now that we've identified reason for anger response, we can consider it objectively. The most important question is whether our expectations were reasonable. Remember that we are responsible for meeting our minimum daily requirements of safety and validation on our own. When our unreasonable expectations aren't met, we do experience anger, but that anger is a call to make us aware that it's time to adjust our expectations, and this does not involve our partner in any way.

If we discover that our expectations are, in fact, reasonable, and that our partner is responsible, then it's time to defend our boundaries and hold our partner accountable.

Holding our partner accountable, however, is not same thing as blaming our partner, yelling at our partner, insulting our partner, "tearing our partner a new one," or in any way making our partner wrong.

It's important to recognize that much of time, all that we need is an acknowledgement that our partner has not met an expectation, and an apology. All we need in order to feel safe again is to be able to believe that our expectations will actually be met in future.

This may seem hard to accept-how could a simple apology ever be sufficient? It's something each of us has to experience for ourselves. The desire for punishment or revenge exists because we have disengaged from our relationships, and we believe that our partners are responsible for meeting our safety needs. When we take responsibility for restoring our sense of safety and choose to engage in our relationships, all we need is an apology-an acknowledgement of boundary violation-and then forgiveness comes naturally.