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How To Handle Adult Temper Tantrums

One psychoanalyst has a strategy to stop adult temper tantrums in their tracks

Lin
8 min readFeb 6, 2019
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I’ve seen a lot of temper tantrums in my life.

Only a small portion of them have actually come from toddlers— the majority of these outbursts have actually been by adult friends or relatives.

When we’re faced with an adult tantrum, we don’t always know what to do. Like an overwhelmed parent, our first instinct is to calm the person down and give them whatever it is they need to stop screaming. However, this may not be the smart move — doing so only encourages the tantrum-thrower to repeat this behavior whenever they aren’t happy with us.

The good news is that one psychoanalyst has isolated a much better strategy that will stop an adult temper tantrum in its tracks — so the next time your spouse, friend, or relative has an outburst, you’ll be ready.

What does an adult temper tantrum look like?

Before we discuss how to stop them, we should first address what an adult temper tantrum looks like in comparison to a moment of frustration or anger. There is a very distinct difference: while we all go through temporary periods of anger — and may even say things we regret — an adult temper tantrum shows an…

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Lin
Lin

Written by Lin

When I’m not writing, you can usually find me hanging out with my cats

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