When your wife has her “I hate humans” moments, do you know what she’s been doing/watching/listening to in the hours prior to trying to relax and making that statement?
Maybe the next time this happens (or perhaps before, during a calm moment), instead of telling her that the statement scares you, you can ask her if there was something she saw or heard that made her feel that way about people in general.
Just a thought…because I periodically had the same thought in the past. So I stopped watching the news. But frankly, I still have that feeling pop into my head when I see an ASPCA commercial showing horrid animal cruelty.
I think that is part of it. She cares really deeply about a lot of issues on the news, like environmental issues, animal cruelty, racism etc. Unfortunately, she spends a lot of time on Facebook where for some reason she gets recommended a lot of right-wing posts, that deeply hurt her a lot.
I reacted in all kinds of ways before, so it wasn't all the time that I told her I was scared of this. I also asked both during a quiet moment and after such an episode. She never tells me immediately afterwards, but in the quiet moments she seem surprised I don't feel the same way, like "Seeing how the environment get's destroyed, why don't you hate humans as well".
The kids copied her a couple of times since she also had these moments in front of them a couple of times, but she also seems to be able to control them to a degree.
Also, just recently I noticed a behavior again, that seems related to this, where she also tenses up for a short moment and seems distant, but then just utters my name a couple of times. I guess both of these moments are just her somehow getting overwhelmed by emotion and trying to handle it somehow. It's been a long time since she did the name thing, and we went to a rough phase for a while.
So maybe I really shouldn't put too much thought into this, except seeing it as a way for her to handle strong emotions. And just figure out how we can avoid the "I hate humans" moments in front of the kids.