Lill, I think what you describe as "compulsions" are actually healthy and normal reactions to living with any "difficult" person. In our cases, though, the "difficult" person just happens to be a raging alcoholic, and therefore cannot process in any sort of rational/sane way anything we might say.
I know there are people out there who have honestly found peace through detachment. I do not understand how it is done!
I am a very opinionated and outspoken person...I just can't see myself getting to the point of being able to see such dispicable behavior and not having an emotional reaction.
I know for a fact that I never got how to do detachment...for me, it seemed like a total scheme to rationalize living in a total crazy-making situation:
you either hold it in and feel like you're drinking poison and feel like a crazy woman and make yourself an emotional wreck in the process...
or you let it out and feel like a crazy woman because you're totally wasting your breath and making yourself an emotional wreck in the process.
So to answer your question about what I do to handle the compulsion to open my mouth, my answer was to get out of the situation that was giving me so much to say.