Reduce the soil moisture, if you can. Of course, in your area you may not have been but if you have done any watering of these during the growing season, maybe discontinue that. Even in the wild abelias are characteristic of warm, open sunny places, perhaps drier than in nearby sites.

That is the most extreme example I've seen of these bursting out of the previous outline. Yes, the new growth can be expected to bend over and branch sideways at some point.

Haven't needed to water so far this year. I also posted on Cottage gardening and a couple people there said they'd seen similar growth on theirs. One cut it back. I was tempted to do that at first, now I'm just watching to see what happens.

What you see here is people shearing them into balls and then cutting the new growth back every time it pops out of the ball shape. This means repeated trimming every time new growth is made, especially if the plants are on an irrigation system which prompts them to send out long shoots.

Not into yard meatballs. I have a neighbor who does that to her azaleas. Such a shame.

In Japanese gardening evergreen azaleas are sheared to represent rocks.