Summary
Joe Hudson and Tara discuss their personal journey of learning to fight healthily in their relationship. The core technique: when triggered during conflict, physically move the emotional charge (anger, fear, grief) without directing it at your partner — leave the room, press against a wall, dance, make sounds — then return with clarity and compassion. This allows the reactive brain to calm down so executive functioning and curiosity can re-engage.
Tara describes the progression from leaking anger on the way out of the room, to cleanly announcing “I have some anger to move, I’ll be back in 3 minutes,” to eventually being able to discharge emotions together in the same room. They discuss how moving anger without believing the story behind it is essential — otherwise the anger doesn’t fully resolve. They also describe how this practice revealed deeper emotions underneath anger (grief, fear), how it eliminated resentment, and how their fights went from hour-long events to brief non-events. A key insight from their daughter Esme — “That was some good anger, Dad” — showed them that emotions aren’t inherently bad; they’re only harmful when used to control or manipulate.
Key Concepts
- Move the emotional charge without believing the story
- Clean exits during conflict prevent abandonment wounds
- There is often a backlog of anger that must clear before settling
- Emotions aren’t bad — their weaponization is
- Speaking truth uncharged follows moved emotion
- The progression from anger reveals grief and fear underneath
Key Quotes
“If I take the hit and let it fully sequence, I get to discharge it, I get to release it, I get to not take it out on anybody.”
“Hold on, I have some anger to move. I’ll be back in 3 minutes.”
“That was some good anger, Dad.”
“If I’m moving the anger without believing the story, it definitely moved smoother. Whereas if I kept thinking the story was true, then I actually hadn’t moved the anger all the way.”
“The charge that leads to the resentment… if I move the charge, resentment isn’t even a — I’m trying to search — it’s not even [a thing].”
Transcript
What are the hacks that you’ve learned like through our relationship that help you get out of the corner or you’ve seen help me get out of the corner when we’re in our fights?
So if I get triggered by something in a conversation and I don’t move the trigger, often what we do is compartmentalize and then we’re speaking from the trigger and then our bodies tense up to hold on to the thing — the hit that happened in our body. And I personally will try to compensate through saying something or acting like it didn’t happen or didn’t affect me when it really did. And my tone gets different and then I’m digging in and then I’m like subtly kind of saying like “screw you, no it’s totally okay” and “screw you, no I’m fine, I’m not angry about anything but screw you.” And I’m saying it not with those words but like “no yeah I don’t want to do that, no okay, now that’s all you” — and I’m not owning that I’m really upset.
You’re laughing because you recognize it. I’ve been there once or twice. Because the hit is in my body and hasn’t gotten to move. It hasn’t gotten to finish sequencing. So it’s as if you got hit by something and it’s kind of simmering and like you got hit by a hot potato and it’s still burning your skin.
Whereas if I take the hit and let it fully sequence, I get to discharge it, I get to release it, I get to not take it out on anybody. And then I think what technically happens is that emotional part of the brain calms down, the reactive part of the brain calms down, and my executive functioning part of the brain can come back on and can actually be curious and have a conversation. And I can come back to compassion, curiosity, and come out of my corner and actually kind of wonder like “oh, that was crazy for me — what was that like for you?” or “what were you actually trying to say when I got triggered?” The reactive part of myself isn’t there anymore. I’ve moved — I consider it like a charge or a hit — and I’ve moved the charge and in doing so recalibrated my whole system so I can think clearly.
So tell me a good story about that. I don’t have a story with you — I have a story with kids. I remember Esme, we were cooking and she threw something at me but I wasn’t — I didn’t know it was coming so it hit me in the face and I got really triggered and I got really angry. And I knew it was an accident logically but I had heat in my body and I was like “hold on one second, I just have to do a little dance.” And I am confident that sounded more fun than it actually sounded — like “that hurt!” I would try not to curse in front of kids but I was like “ah, that really hurt!” And I could come back and say “okay let’s try that again — that really hurt, I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, let’s make eye contact before we throw things to each other in the kitchen.” So I could not respond from anger.
How did you learn this trick? My very first introduction to Hand in Hand Parenting. And I remember Patty saying you can go tell your kids in advance — if I get triggered this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to go into the room and I’m going to press on the wall. I don’t remember exactly how she said it but I remember saying it to Esme like “oh, if I ever get angry it’s nothing to do with you, it’s my job, and this is how I’m going to take care of it — I’m going to go into our bedroom and I’m going to press on this wall and you might hear me make funny sounds.” And I remember doing that one or two or three times and parenting got a lot easier after that.
Before that I found myself losing my temper, having a short fuse with the kids. And when I learned that hack that I could go and move anger then it was like I’d actually do that once and I’d be settled for a week — untriggered, unfazed. Things could get thrown at me and I’d be like “okay, that didn’t work, let’s try a do-over.”
And did you learn to translate that to a husband? It was harder to figure out that emotional dance with you. I think I actually remember one of the first times I really learned it — we were in a car fighting about something and you said something hot and I went — and I just got angry back and it was at you but it wasn’t really at you. And you were just like “yeah, cool.” And I was like “oh, okay.” I felt like you could hold it. You didn’t take it personally. And I got to just move it as opposed to sit on it and hold it, which is what I did traditionally beforehand.
And then it was like “oh, I could be untriggered, I could think clearly, and I could have compassion for me and for you” and be like “what are we doing here, what’s this really about?”
And how has life been like — moving — now that in our relationship you take the emotions you’re feeling, you move them without taking them out on anybody? What — like how do you see the relationship having changed?
I’d say fights are much shorter. They’re not really even fights because it’s like — trigger — “what did you just say?” — “oh okay, I thought you said something else, that’s so funny” — “yeah, no, I don’t want to go see a movie” — or like it’s just a non-event. What would have been an event that then I layered and piled on more crap onto and could have gone on for an hour, two hours, maybe not the night — sometimes though, like more like occasionally residual overnight — is now like a non — it’s not a total non-event, like there’s still something, but it moves quickly.
How about resentment? No. My experience is that if I’m sitting on especially a charge like anger that — then it’s not moving the charge that leads to the resentment and kind of like complaining. And if I move the charge, I don’t even want to call it anger as much as like a charge or a trigger or a hit — and express it — it doesn’t even have to be to you, I can express it on my own — then it’s like I’ve moved it. Resentment isn’t even a — I’m trying to search — it’s not even — because when the charge moves there’s no need for resentment usually because there’s another hack that comes in which is then I speak my truth uncharged.
The thing that I remember about when I first started moving emotions so I wasn’t triggered by you — at you — I was triggered by you, I would move the emotion but then I could come back. Was that when I first started moving the emotions I actually started feeling it more and more. I remember like “oh, should I be doing this?” because it started to amplify a little bit. Like I was a little quicker to anger at the beginning. I would get angry out of the room and come back and be there. But then I just noticed like “oh, I just had a ton of backlog of anger that needed to move.”
And that if I was moving the anger without believing the story, it definitely moved smoother. Whereas if I got angry in such a way that I tracked — kept on thinking the story was true — then I actually hadn’t moved the anger all the way. So part of it was learning to move the anger all the way so that I actually had real peace on the other side, a real epiphany on the other side. And then part of it was just getting a backlog of anger out of the system.
Because for me it was anger that was the piece — you know, still is. I’m still prone to anger quicker than any of the other emotions. And then I also remember at the beginning that when you were leaving to go into the other room you weren’t clear about what you were doing — or that was open — and I’d be like “God, feel so abandoned, like I was going to die or something.” And that was really hard for me — “wait, you’re leaving the room? What’s going on? You’re abandoning me? We’re supposed to fight this out and figure it out.”
And that was something — then it was really helpful when we learned those tricks of like “here’s the — I’m going to be gone for five minutes, this is what I’m doing, I’m going to come back openhearted.” Leaving instead of closed-hearted leaving. That was really useful. And not letting the leaving be part of the anger. Yeah. That’s a great way to put it — not letting the leaving be part of the anger.
Like a big moment for me that was really interesting in our fights — and just like the anger — because we learned this as the kids were young. And I remember that time when I was making pancakes and same thing — Esme didn’t throw something at me but the girls would always fight or do something right when the pancakes were burning and the bacon was going and the grease was splattering and the alarm was going off. And they’d be like — at the time I didn’t quite know but they’re just feeling my attention and mimicking it. And I went — and Esme just looked at me. She’s like “that was some good anger, Dad.”
And I remember that and I was like “oh, there’s a whole another level here” — which is if I’m not getting angry at you, anger isn’t something that’s scary, it isn’t something that’s bad. The emotions are considered bad at least in part because of what people do with them. People think something’s bad often not because it is — like it’s a neutral thing like money — but it’s bad because they’ve had a bad experience with it. And I realized emotions were the same way in my life. All the emotions that I thought were bad were actually just — people had used them as a tool to manipulate me or to try to control me. And that the emotions themselves weren’t bad. So that was a big realization.
The other piece that was interesting for me was at the beginning when we first discharged emotions, it was mostly anger. But there’s been times now where it’s like in the middle of the fight the thing that needs to be felt is the grief. And we can do that — usually not in the other room, like with each other. But I think it was interesting — anger was the first that we learned because we wanted to stop hurting each other. But then we started seeing how the fights themselves were these ways to feel things we had pushed down and then we could feel them and be with each other.
And I think it’s just important to realize that it’s not just anger that is the emotions that sometimes get released in a fight and that allow us to heal. I’d say the progression actually was: in the beginning, go move anger in another room while leaking it ever so slightly on the way out. And then learning to clean it up and say “hold on, I have some anger to move, I’ll be back in 3 minutes” — going to the other room and moving it so that it wasn’t leaking out. And then eventually there came a time when I can remember being like “hold on, do you have a minute of space for me just to yell?” — you’d be like “yeah” — and we could do it with each other in the room. And sometimes there would be leaking over on each other and eventually again even there we’d learn how to do it really cleanly.
So there was a whole progression with anger. And then came room for the grief and the fear and other things to move. And sometimes in the — like starting with anger — “hold on, I’m just so frustrated, do you have a minute while I move frustration?” — you’d be like “yeah, go for it” — and I’d start shaking like “oh, I’m really scared because I have no idea where we’re going after this.” So those deeper emotions could come out too. And the more we did it the easier it got to hold space for each other. Yeah, that’s for sure.