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Anger is a sign that you're resisting what's happening because you perceive an overwhelming threat, not trusting yourself to handle what's happening directly. Vulnerable feelings under anger are usually fear, hurt, or grief. Experiencing and expressing these feelings and connecting them to your needs, gives you access to more skill, insight, compassion, and wisdom. Read on for 3 questions to ask yourself when angry.

Making decisions from overwhelm can be costly for you and others. Instead, to get distance name overwhelm as it comes. Apply self-compassion. Be suspicious of your impulse to withdraw. Find ways to meet your needs. Tell others about your overwhelm. This may allow more support, connection and trust-building. Plan what to do to meet your needs next time you're overwhelmed. Tweak your plan.

Research shows that couples with a secure bond experience arguments that are shorter, lower in intensity, and easier to recover from. Building and keeping a secure bond with your partner requires mindfulness and consistency: respond to what’s needed or supportive in a given moment; give them your full attention and affection in a spacious greeting; conveying care, consideration, and that they matter and are seen.

There are ways to reduce obstacles to setting boundaries. Notice unconscious ways you sacrifice yourself in order to avoid boundary setting. List of signs that a life-serving boundary is needed, but you're denying this. Realizing you consistently abandoned your needs may require time to process and mourn before you can set boundaries consistently. With practice, you can recognize boundaries care for yourself and others.

One way of simplifying decision-making in relationships is clarity about the level of contact and connection you want with the people you interact with. This means knowing what you want and don’t want to share, the kinds of activities you do and don’t do together, how often, etc. This can help you chose how to best support your needs in that context, and help you to remember to set life-serving boundaries when you need them.

Setting boundaries takes being firmly grounded in self-respect and clear about what works for you. This means making conscious choices about how you relate to another or behave in a situation. Such clarity allows you to put your attention and energy where you want it to go. Thus we can have care and compassion without taking responsibility for others, nor feeling guilty when we say “no”. This takes awareness, skills, practice, healing and compassion.

Because we affect one another it can be hard to know where to take responsibility and where to leave it with the other person. This means we need self empathy, and presence for another's struggles without compulsion to "make them happy" or bring them healthy change. You can then attend to the needs and to your choice about if and how you want to contribute with compassion. Respect them as autonomously in charge of their unique process of change. With this, you honor your life and theirs. And where, what, and how you will invest your precious life energy.

Marriage can be seen as a limit on freedom. Ideas of compromise collude with this view. Instead, notice when your "yes" to your partner is laden with obligation, duty, guilt, fear, or an attempt to win love or approval, and how it's not a truly free "yes". True freedom is different from compulsion, and doesn't conflict with other needs. When have you experienced true freedom? What conditions support your access to freedom?

Struggling to say "no"? Here are ways you change your adjacent mind patterns. First, note the differences between those who respect boundaries and those who often don't. Second, review situations in which you lost track of your choice. And rehearse what it would sound, look, and feel like if you kept connection to your choice. Third, seek validation of your experience - from a grounded and mindful (non-reactive) state.

Notice situations where you're attending to another and giving up on your needs with resentment or a sense of submitting. You can also watch for “shoulds,” obligation, and black-and-white thinking around the support you offer. Is there a sense that if you don't carry out a particular action something bad will happen? If so, identify the needs at hand and brainstorm a variety of strategies to meet them.