STOP RIPPing® Anger in Relationships
Every relationship experiences conflict. Disagreements are a normal part of sharing a life with another person. The greatest damage rarely comes from the disagreement itself, but from what happens when two people get caught in emotional reactions they no longer seem able to control. Perhaps you find yourselves having the same argument over and over again. One of you may become angry while the other withdraws or shuts down, or one of you gets angry, and the other gets angry back- you both keep adding fuel to the fire, which can quickly become a blaze. Small issues get out of proportion and disagreements become much bigger than either of you intended; resentment builds up. You both may have become emotionally distant and no longer know how to find your way back to one another. Sometimes something much more serious has happened. An affair, betrayal, separation or threat of abandonment can produce extraordinarily powerful reactions in both partners and leave a relationship that once felt safe seeming completely unrecognisable. Whatever has happened, I don't look for which one of you is the problem. I want to understand what is happening between you and within each of you.
Why Do We Keep Having the Same Arguments?
Many couples believe they have a communication problem. Communication certainly matters, but in my experience it is often not where the difficulty begins. Long before the words become hurtful, both people may already have entered an automatic emotional response. One person feels criticised while the other feels unheard. One becomes angry while the other withdraws. The withdrawal can then feel like rejection or indifference, which creates more anger, while the anger makes the other person want to withdraw even further. Before long, neither person is really responding to what the other is trying to say. Both are reacting to what is happening inside themselves. This is why simply learning better words to use doesn't always change the relationship. Changing the words alone rarely changes the pattern, whereas understanding what is happening beneath the words gives us an opportunity to change the way we respond.
Anger and Withdrawal
Anger is not the only way emotional pain appears in relationships. One person may express their distress outwardly through anger, criticism of the other, demands, or confrontation, while the other expresses it inwardly by becoming quiet, emotionally distant, or unavailable. However, both are struggling with powerful emotional responses, and each person's way of coping is triggering the other. The angry partner pursues because the withdrawal feels unbearable, while the withdrawing partner retreats further because the anger feels unbearable. Both then unintentionally create more of the very thing they are trying to escape. Understanding this dynamic can completely change how we view relationship conflict. Instead of asking which person is causing the problem, we can begin looking at the pattern that has developed between them and what each person is experiencing within it.
The RIPP Loop in Relationships
Over more than twenty-five years of working with people and their relationships, I began noticing a recurring emotional process beneath many apparently different conflicts. Something happens that we are in resistance to; we experience what is happening as an injustice, wrong, unfair; we feel powerless to change it, make it different from what it is, and emotional pain follows. I call this RIPP—Resistance, Injustice, Powerlessness, and Pain. In a relationship, both people can become caught in their own RIPP process at the same time. Your partner's reaction becomes your trigger, and your reaction then becomes theirs. Each person's attempt to protect themselves, be heard or understood produces another reaction, and the conflict gathers momentum. This is what I describe as the RIPP Vortex. Neither person necessarily sets out to hurt the other. Often, both are desperately trying to be heard, reassured, valued, or loved, but the way they express their distress makes it increasingly difficult for either person to give the other what they need. Recognising this process gives us a very different place to begin our work together.
When Love and Anger Exist Together
One reason relationship conflict can feel so confusing is that anger and love are not necessarily opposites. We can become most emotionally reactive with the people who matter most to us precisely because they matter so much. Rejection hurts more when we desperately want to feel wanted by the person we love. Being criticised, judged or ignored by the person we love and want to feel valued by also hurts more. Betrayal is devastating because there was trust, and the possibility of losing someone we love can create enormous anger precisely because we don't want to lose them. This doesn't justify intimidation, manipulation, cruelty or abusive behaviour, and understanding an emotional response does not remove responsibility for it. But it does help us understand why apparently simple relationship problems can generate such powerful reactions. My approach is therefore not about identifying the 'bad' partner and the 'good' partner. It is about understanding what is happening and helping each person take responsibility for their own responses without becoming trapped in blame.
Betrayal and Infidelity
Few experiences can trigger RIPP as powerfully as discovering an affair or another serious betrayal. The betrayed person may feel overwhelming resistance to what happened, an enormous sense of injustice, and a terrible feeling of powerlessness because the past cannot be changed. Anger, questioning, checking, accusations and repeated attempts to understand why can follow. The other partner can become caught in their own emotional responses too, including shame, defensiveness, guilt, frustration, fear of losing the relationship or a desire to escape repeated confrontation. This can create an extraordinarily painful cycle in which each person's reaction intensifies the other's distress. Whether a relationship ultimately survives a betrayal is not for me to decide. Relationship work is not about encouraging two people to remain together or judging the work as a failure if they decide to separate. Sometimes the outcome is rebuilding the relationship; sometimes it is understanding what has happened well enough to make a different decision with greater clarity and less emotional destruction. The important thing is that, as much as possible, decisions come from a place of awareness and choice, rather than the middle of an emotional vortex.
Working Together
I work confidentially online primarily with couples who attend sessions together. This allows me to understand each person's experience and to see what happens between you when the relationship becomes emotionally charged, rather than simply deciding who is right or wrong. There may also be times when it is helpful for me to speak with each partner separately, and I can also work with just one person if their partner does not wish to take part. You don't need your partner's agreement to begin understanding your own emotional responses, and sometimes a significant change in one person's responses can begin to change the dynamics of the relationship. Our sessions are practical, personal and nonjudgmental. We look at what is actually happening in your relationship, what each of you experiences, and how the patterns between you have developed. The purpose isn't merely to teach you how to argue more politely! It is to help you understand what takes over when your relationship is under pressure and discover different ways of responding to one another. I work confidentially online with just one half of a couple, both people but each partner separately or as a couple together in the same session. You don't need your partner's agreement to begin understanding your own emotional patterns, and sometimes a significant change in one person's responses can shift the relationship's dynamics. I want to understand both of you and help each of you recognise what happens when the relationship becomes emotionally charged. Our sessions are practical, personal and nonjudgmental. We look at what is actually happening in your relationship, what each of you experiences and how the patterns between you have developed. The purpose isn't merely to teach you how to argue more politely! It is to help you understand what takes over when your relationship is under pressure and to discover different ways of responding to one another.
A Different Way Forward
The aim of STOP RIPPing in Relationships isn't simply to stop arguments, nor is it necessarily to keep every relationship together at all costs. It is to help you understand what is happening beneath anger, withdrawal, resentment and recurring conflict so that you have greater freedom in how you respond to one another. When those automatic reactions begin to lose their grip, there can be room again for listening, understanding, warmth and genuine choice. STOP Ripping can help two people rediscover one another and go forward stronger and better than ever. Sometimes it helps them make difficult decisions with greater clarity. Either can represent meaningful change.
What Clients Say About Working With Me on Their Relationships
"Gary saved our marriage, our relationship, our personal demons and our family."
"We got in touch with Gary when our relationship was hanging by a thread. I did some research into local counsellors and therapists and Gary stood out by a mile. Just from his website, I knew he was exactly what we needed. We didn't want our relationship to end but things had happened that we didn't think a relationship could survive, despite loving each other and having children together. We went to Gary with a common goal and that was to understand why our relationship had taken a turn for the worse and what could we do to come out of the other side as a stronger and happier couple. Gary was unbiased and non-judgemental; he was easy to talk to, even when things were hard to say. To say that seeing Gary has been life-changing for both of us, personally and as a couple, would be an understatement. Gary helped us to understand our individual attachment personalities and what that means for us in a relationship - taking us back to our starts in life and our relationships with our primary carers. This was so insightful and a breakthrough for us in understanding why we respond to certain situations the way that we do. We had a couple of sessions together, a few sessions apart and then a couple more sessions together. That's it. We covered relationship counselling, depression, anger management and more importantly for us, how to change the way we think and act to ensure that we don’t spiral downwards again. We went through the RIPP programme (Resistance, Injustice, Powerless, Pain). It was so meaningful and so effective. I've seen therapists before, but all they really did was put a short-term plaster over the pain or anxiety. Through Gary's methods, we worked on finding the root cause to change the behaviour and conditioning for good. I can honestly say my husband and I have never been happier, and we have found a way to survive what some would consider the ultimate test in a relationship. We truly have a stronger, more empathetic and loving relationship now. My only regret is that we didn’t see Gary sooner, but sometimes it takes until breaking point before you realise you need to do something about it. Gary - you saved our marriage, our relationship, our personal demons and our family and we can't thank you enough."
Anonymous Couple Cheltenham July 2019
