I think I had an angry outburst this morning. I'm frustrated with myself. I don't want to repeat it ever again. I'm wondering if anyone has any helpful advice for how to achieve that.

My memory of what happened:
Mrs. FanPalm said: "Why don't you just do [this thing]?"
I said: "No, I don't want to do that"
She said something, I can't remember what, I think further on the idea of doing it.
I said "No, no, no, I said no" <- here my voice raised, got louder, whinier, I suspect I sounded like a six-year old having a temper tantrum, everything but stamping my foot.

My reaction was ridiculous, in many ways, and not just that I was childish. She asked a "why?" question and I could have just responded to that and explained patiently the source of my discomfort with it. I could have excused myself. What she was asking doesn't cost me much, so I could've just said yes. Ultimately, I don't ever want to treat her that way. I'm sure it was hurtful to her and I don't want to do that.

I know anger is solely my responsibility and I've read Dr Harley's writings on it. I never want to expose her to it. I'm trying to figure out what I can learn from this and do to avoid it in the future.

Context that might or might not be relevant:
I am highly stressed right now.
Our marriage is in bad shape.
I am moving out at her request.
We spent hours yesterday having conversations that I found intensely stressful; she feels urgency to have them before I move out.
When she woke up this morning I noticed my stress level immediately went up, and then this interaction followed soon after she woke up.
I have a long-standing problem where I too often respond to her requests by saying "no", and saying "no" in a cold or unpleasant way.
I was carrying some bad feelings from remembering a recent situation when she had asked me to do [similar thing] and I did it and I understood she would be taking a next step and that didn't happen.

Tentative lessons I'm taking away:
1. I have to get better at relaxing myself when I am stressed.
Concretely: I will practice spending 30 minutes on mindfulness-based stress reduction each time I am stressed or beginning to get angry, for relaxing myself when stressed.
2. I need to recognize when I am stressed and remember to be more careful in those times.
Concretely: I'm not sure. I can take a break and relax myself and come back. But so many of our interactions are stressful for me, and I remove myself from them frequently, and she is complaining (if I understand correctly) that we don't resolve anything because I can't handle the discussions, so I'm worried that I'm just going to make that worse.
3. Time to try a bio-feedback device, as Dr Harley recommended.
4. What else?

I suspect I'm not thinking clearly.

Does anyone have any reactions or suggestions for me? I'm not sure this question will be answerable in a useful way, but I have such respect for this site and people on this forum and I thought I'd try.

Happy to provide more details if needed, but I worry this may already be too long.

Hi FanPalm, like you have noted, the key is to learn to relax when you encounter frustration. After you do this for awhile it will just come naturally. However, just saying YES when to things you don't want to do is not the solution. That is sacrifice and people who sacrifice KEEP SCORE, as you well know:


You sacrificed in that situation and she did not follow through, so resentment was the outcome. So just saying yes to things you don't want to do is never a good idea.

Thanks. I will keep working on relaxation. I appreciate your encouragement, and for a reminder about protecting myself from resentment.