Get a Handle on Your Anger (Podcast Summary) – David J. Lieberman

(Full audio after the summary)

Podcast Summary:
The root is that our desires, our goals, or expectations are not met and we feel threatened. Sometimes it’s a mask for other emotions, but even beyond that we find that anger comes because of a fear that I’m not good enough, lovable enough, worthy enough, which is why whenever we get angry it is always preceded by a fear that we are going to be taken advantage of, be ridiculed, not in charge. It comes from sort of feeling vulnerable and anger is a response to that fear.

While men may express it overtly women may express it maybe more passively. Anyone that’s been married can testify to that. Anger may also manifest in terms of feelings of guilt, insecurity and shame, so it’s turned inward, but the emotion itself I think is evenly distributed amongst the sexes even though some preliminary research had shown that men are more prone to anger than women.

The Fight, Flight or Freeze response:
Fight – is either assertive aggressive where we come out sort of fighting, attempting to control the situation.
Flight – is the passive aggressive, which parallels the fight where anger leaks out in more subtle ways because a person is unable to confront directly they sort of seek to control stealthily.
Freeze – when they’re not able to stand up for themselves or don’t feel like they’re able to, but they’re going to even the score, they’re going to exact justice one way or the other.

Surrender of suppression:
When a person’s unable to consciously acknowledge their anger, so they either tell themselves that they’re not worthy of asserting themselves. Or, they suppress their emotions and tell themselves they’re not really angry to begin with, which in turn results in a host of physiological causes from anxiety, to depression, to feeling a lot of back pain, and it manifests in a host of sort of physical symptoms.

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Immobilisation:
When a person is very angry, they feel powerless, but they’re not able to even acknowledge the pain or the fear so they really just shut down. The person can’t deal with the pain of anger at all and they avoid feeling that pain.

Passive Aggressiveness:
The most devastating to relationships because even though all anger should be dealt with responsibly in a healthy way if you’re assertive aggressive, and you’ve got that sort of seaming, yelling, at least you know where you stand, and the other person does as well. Passive aggressive damages the relationship because we’re looking to exact justice, we’re looking to even the score. It could be conscious, it could be subconscious, and you’ll forget to do something, turn something in late, inconvenience our spouse or our co-worker. It causes friction in the relationship because they’re going to then get upset with us. But once again we’re not able to confront that, we’re not able to stand up. It can very, very damaging in our relationships. You’re not going to find a person engaging in passive aggressive behaviour to suddenly acknowledge their responsibility when they’re called on it.

Anger does need a release valve of sorts, if not, it will either just tear you apart from the inside or it will lead to an overt explosion, which can be quite devastating and damaging not only to yourself but to the relationship.

There’s an expression that anger lies in the bosom of fools meaning when you’re in the situation you’re going to assume that it’s justified. No one ever walked away from a conversation and said, “You know what, I wish I would have gotten angrier, I would have been able to handle myself so much better.” When you’re angry you’re not seeing through a clear objective lens, you’re seeing through a distorted emotions and while it does increase your acuity, and it brings a lot of your attention, and emotional, and mental resources and focuses it, at the same time you’re not able to process your world with a proper perspective, so you are going to be inclined to act irresponsibly, recklessly, and go overboard.

Take it off the table completely.

We’d rather go to battle with someone flying in blind rage rather than a cool, calm and aware person. Cortisol is responsible for weight gain called the stress hormone, it actually interferes with the prefrontal cortex responsible for executive functioning. It literally makes us dumb. Don’t go into situations with cloudy judgement. Think how inconsequential it will be in 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 years, you’re not even going to remember it happened.

Time gives us perspective.

By entering these situations without your ego involved you don’t have to fight against your own nature, you don’t have to remain calm, you’re naturally unbothered because of the gift of perspective gives you the ability to recognize that it simply doesn’t matter. And most things we get upset about simply don’t matter.

The story you tell yourself always comes down to the same message and that is that they don’t care enough about me, they don’t love me enough, they don’t respect me enough. Old lady vs. teen driving recklessly. The young guy did it to me on purpose ’cause he doesn’t care enough, he doesn’t respect me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The insanity is you speed up risking your life to see what the person looks like to see how angry you should be.

We treat other people based on how we feel about ourselves. When you take your ego out of the equation you can look at the other person with empathy, with compassion, with sympathy and you’re not absorbed in your own pain. Something happens, you don’t take it personally, you don’t get upset.

The degree to which we’re able to take ourselves out of the equation is a degree to which we’re going to manage our anger much more effectively because if our ego’s not involved there’s nothing to get angry about.

When they begin to say that God doesn’t love me because he doesn’t want me to have a picnic today, those are things that are indicative of somebody who’s really personalising a bit too much. We treat other people based on how we feel about ourselves so their capacity’s limited. The fact that somebody can’t love me, give me respect, show me the attention or give me the accolades and praise that I feel I deserve, if my ego’s not involved I recognize it’s their limitation it’s not mine. But, if my ego is engaged I’m going to assume they’re doing this because there’s something wrong, lacking, broken, battered, defective about me and that’s what makes me so angry.

You will not find a person that has anger issues that did not have some sort of childhood trauma, tragedy, abuse, and it’s so sad, but the scars and the imprint on our emotional health that childhood leaves is very difficult to undo, unless the person is able to revisit it and heal.

Click here for links on healing childhood trauma.

There’s legitimate shame that when you act beneath your level and do something that is just not you and afterwards you feel a little bit maybe disturbed or disgusted. You can’t believe you did that, that’s legitimate shame, and shame is the voice of conscience that says, “Hey, you know what you did something that was beneath you,” and it’s a self correcting mechanism to wake us up, to take responsibility, and to move forward. But, if we’re not willing to do that the ego then justifies, minimises, blames, whatever it can to avoid feeling that pain, at the core we’re still left with that stain of shame that says, I’m not lovable. Now that’s legitimate shame and there’s ways to deal with that.

A child is never going to say, “Dad just had a hard day at work, let him go ahead and have a cocktail, let him calm down and he’ll be okay.” No, the child’s going to assume that there’s something wrong with him because he’s egocentric he takes everything personally. How people treat him is a direct reflection of his self worth, that’s his equation. So as he transitions to adulthood he walks around with that same stain of shame that says, how I’m treated by other people is a reflection of my self worth. And when you’re able to undo that you realise that your self-worth does not hinge on somebody’s acceptance of you. Not only is it very freeing emotionally but you will find that you’re going to be living anger free.

The Big Idea:
First is the appreciation, the acknowledgement that just because somebody can’t love me doesn’t make me unlovable, and that goes even to the core of childhood. Replay an amazing story with a twist like the Sixth Sense comes to mind. You sort of replay back the entire movie in your life and you recast everything through this new awareness. That ending bit of information makes you replay the whole story under a new light. Say when we’re able to recognize that just because my mother wasn’t able to give me the love and respect that I needed and deserved, or just because my father yelled at me or abused me doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me. When a person really owns that then they’re free. So it wasn’t something wrong with me but with them.

Negativity Bias:
When you believe something to be true you’re going to not only look for that but you’re going to manifest, create, live a life that tells that narrative and that fulfills that story of yours. If our story is, I’m no good, I’m not lovable then we’re going to bring that to fruition no matter what it takes. These are the people that will read into things, they’ll connect dots that don’t exist and it’s almost like a form of paranoia where they’ll begin to make connections only to tell the story that they’ve been telling themselves for so long, and a person like this would rather be right than be happy.

You’ll find that this vale of anger just lifts off you because you’re no longer looking to confirm some distorted truth that you’re not worthy. That if somebody can’t treat you properly you can see that they’re the ones that are in pain and you don’t have to be in pain.

I can accept me and love me 100%, and I accept the love my kids 100%, and I always tell them there’s nothing they can do that would make me not accept them. It doesn’t mean I approve everything they do, and it doesn’t mean they approve everything I do.

I have regrets, and I try and make it right and move forward.

The first thing the GPS has to locate is where you are. So, the beginning of growth, the beginning of moving forward begins with acknowledging and accepting who, where and how you are right now, but you’re never going to go from point A to point B unless you accept you’re at point A. I’m never going to improve my relationships if I refuse to accept the reality that exists. The last thing the ego wants to do is accept responsibility.

You can’t say yes if you can’t say no:
Meaning that if you don’t feel like you can stand up to the person and say no then you’re not really saying yes, because if you choose to do an act that means you are making a choice e.g. to agree to give or to voluntarily give $100. But if you feel like you’re getting guilted into something, you’re not secure enough to stand up, you don’t think you can enforce your boundary. In both cases $100 went out of your pocket but one was a choice to give and the other wasn’t.

The beginning of setting boundaries first is to take a step back and ask yourself where is my boundary? What is accepted, what will I find proper, and am I legitimately choosing to give or am I simply just rolling over and allowing the person to take advantage of me? Fewer things are more empowering and infused with the greater sense of self-esteem than drawing a responsible boundary line and asserting ourselves in a situation where we feel somebody is taking advantage of us.

Great breakdown of boundaries and individuation here – Deep Inner Game – Understanding Boundaries, Politics, Ethics, Forgiveness & Individuation

“You know what, there’s nothing wrong with what you’re asking, but I am going to decline your request.”

You can’t act irresponsibly and give into somebody because they’re going to become upset with you, if you continue to do that you’re going to be upset with you, they don’t need a reason to become mad at you, if you’re upset with you then you are going to magnify and increase your own feelings of guilt, shame and inferiority. It reinforces the fact that you don’t deserve to stand up for yourself.

How you assert yourself should always be with proper empathy and compassion, I don’t have to defend my right to assert my legitimate boundaries, and I don’t have to give a person 1,000 reasons and 1,000 excuses, sometimes no is a complete sentence.

Otherwise they’re not going to either have boundaries or peace. Every healthy relationship requires boundaries. They’re allowed to say, “You know what, this relationship isn’t worth it.” Then you know that they’re only interested in the relationship because of what they can gain from it. I tell people who are very, very sensitive, those perpetual people pleasers that, “If you can’t say no for yourself say no for the other person, because you do no favors by making easy for the bully to run into you. So it is selfless, meaning you’re doing them the favor by asserting yourself.” Once you have the antidote then you don’t have to worry about putting yourself in a situation where people have got those negative germs, they’re not going to infect you.

Acknowledge “am in pain”.
This is a moment to be in pain. Ask yourself, which part of me is really in pain? Is it my soul or is it my ego? Is it the real me that’s in pain or is the part of me that craves respect, that craves honor, that craves appreciation, accolades and so on. By having an honest conversation with yourself you’ll find that the anger simply dissipates. By fully owning the emotion it’s processed completely out of you.

The Reticula Activating System:
Acts as an antenna of sorts. You want to buy a red car and now all you see is red cars. Not that they didn’t exist before. So when you move through your day looking for the good, looking for positive, having the perspective that things are good, and picking up on what you’re grateful for your antenna will sort of hone in on that. You’ll begin to see it in other people, yourself and in your world. I am going to find the reality that I expect to find time and time and time again.

Whatever it is, if we don’t take it personally we can’t become upset. Once we assume that somebody else’s behavior is a reflection of my self worth, I’m now fighting against my own nature and I’m going to have a hard time managing my anger.

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