I love being able to talk about brands that I use on my podcasts and I've personally
been using this one for over five years.
Our sponsor, Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies, are specifically formulated
for women.
They contain 16 vitamins and minerals, including the full B vitamin complex to help convert
food into fuel and have the added benefit of supporting healthy hair, skin and nails.
With just two delicious gummies, Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are
an easy way to feel like you're best self every day.
To learn more, visit nature's way.com slash Gemma 10 and use code Gemma 10 at Checkout
for 10% off any Alive Women's Multivitamins, terms and conditions apply valid through June
30th.
Sound is personal, intimate and emotive.
Just like this podcast.
We are AudioStack.ai.
We combine AI writing.
The best synthetic voices like ours.
With production, like music and mastering.
And deliver them to be heard, be it ads, podcasts or VOs for video.
Just like this ad you're listening to right now.
However, we have millions of spots just like this on podcasts.
And rather than hearing from us, we want to hear from you.
How would you utilize AI audio?
For free.
Do you work with businesses, products, events or causes that could benefit from free promotion
on podcasts in the coming month?
Simply go to audiostack.ai-forward-slash-contest.
Give us some details of what you would say.
And you could replace this spot and be heard by millions.
You will also find terms and conditions at audiostack.ai-forward-slash-contest.
Shaving is honestly such a hassle, but sometimes it just has to be done.
Actually, what if I told you about an alternative, one that was quick, easy and left you smelling
surprisingly good?
Niers, new line of sensational hair removal, shower and body creams, gets the job done and
smells delicious.
My friends were all over for dinner the other day and I had this bottle of their oat milk
and vanilla body cream.
Of course we had to try it out and we all agreed.
The results were pretty spectacular after only three minutes of application and actually
smelled delicious like vanilla goodness.
Smell for yourself, try the reformulated in-air body and shower creams, available at retailers
nationwide and online.
Amazon One Medical Presents, Painful Thoughts.
With a little help from the internet, I've diagnosed myself with them, fangio-myomatosis,
a very rare case, since it only affects women of child-bearing age and well, I'm a man.
Book a same day appointment with Amazon One Medical and get checked out for the thing
you probably definitely don't have.
Amazon One Medical, healthcare just got less painful.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast, new listeners,
old listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It is so great to have you back for another episode.
Today we're going to be talking about anger, one of our most primal human emotions that
I think gets neglected a lot in our conversations around mental health and kind of the spectrum
of feelings that we have every day.
There is such a hidden private experience for a lot of us, something to be kind of concealed
behind politeness and niceties, something to be suppressed.
You know we're told that it's a very ugly emotion, something that needs to be controlled
and then it holds us back.
And I think yes, maybe that is true, but anger is also a really important emotional cue.
And it also shows up in a lot of our daily interactions.
We are angry at a friend for letting us down at a co-worker for messing something up or
a partner for a past mistake that we just can't let go of.
There is a lot of invisible anger inside, I think a lot of us, anger that lives below
the surface and probably has done for a long time.
And like I said, we're really good at accepting our kind of pretty and romanticised emotions
like happiness or even grief, even melancholy, but rage and fury, they seem to be left out.
And I think I spent quite a lot of time, quite a few years in my early 20s kind of ruled
by anger in ways that I didn't realise.
I was angry at the world, I was angry at people who had overlooked me or hurt me or who
had been cruel to me because really it was easier to feel anger than admit how insecure
those experiences had made me.
And I think I thought that being angry almost made me tough.
And I let that feeling really make a lot of decisions for me, I let it be projected
onto people who didn't deserve that, I let it turn to misery.
And I wish that I'd known what I know now.
So let's share everything to do with the psychology behind anger and what psychology has to say
about this misguided and misjudged feeling.
I feel like we don't need a definition of anger every human, even every animal knows the
feeling, the hot feeling, the pressure in the chest, the twitching hands that kind of
building urge to react and to scream.
Anger is one of our most primal rudimentary emotions.
It is an emotion that mobilises the body for action, it mobilises our fight or flight
response.
And that is what means that it allows us to survive in response to a perceived threat
or a perceived injustice.
These kinds of primal emotions always really fascinate me because we have evolved so much
from being these creatures who are only ruled and driven by survival and instinct when
they're longer outhunting in the wilderness or fighting neighboring tribes.
Maybe we are in some senses, but our society has really evolved to make sure we are all
kind of prim and proper and we are suppressing these really raw emotions and yet they're still
there.
They haven't dissolved or disappeared with increased sophistication.
Society is just asking us to hide it.
So the main theory is that anger comes from primarily feeling threatened, feeling powerless
or that there is some part of who you are, what you stand for that has been trespassed.
So this article published in 2017 called Anger as a basic emotion and its role in personality,
it describes it really well.
Our anger serves as an internal sign that there is an obstacle or aversive situation that
is crossed an emotional or physical boundary that we need to respond to.
And our anger is one of the only emotions that is strong enough to get us to that point
of acting.
And this kind of relates to another dimension of anger, which is that it can and is often
a secondary emotion.
Let me explain that a little bit further.
Our anger often masks a much more vulnerable feeling that we are not quite ready to confront
yet.
It masks our fear, it masks our hurt, it masks our disappointment, how powerless we feel.
If you've ever been so angry that you've cried, you'll know that really well.
That is the true emotion, the sadness, the disappointment really bubbling up.
And sometimes anger is less complicated than the emotion that we really want to express.
It's less complicated in the situation we're in and so we hide behind our rage.
Our anger is what makes us act when fear or sadness or disappointment can't.
And as it wears off, it reveals what is truly at the root of that wrath that we are actually
just really fragile, gentle creatures who have been hurt.
Maybe you are not angry as a person.
Maybe you just have a really delicate soul that's been crossed a few too many times and you've
reverted to what feels easier.
And when we see anger in any form regardless of its origin, psychologists can kind of broadly
categorize it into three different types.
Firstly, we have hasty and sudden anger and this is really connected to the impulse for
self-preservation.
So it occurs when we feel really trapped in a situation or something has just pushed
us to the point of explosion.
It's a very episodic in nature.
It comes from these brief uncontrollable bursts.
But it doesn't mean that it hasn't been building up for a while.
Maybe this anger has been simmering, just waiting for the final catalyst.
The straw that breaks the camel's back.
Then we have settled and deliberate anger.
And this is a reaction to a deliberate harm from someone else, something that is perhaps
long term.
It's anger that simmers, that settles, anger that creates actions that are less impulsive,
like hasty anger and more calculated.
And then finally, we have dispositional anger.
I think we all know people that are just angry other than others.
They have that fiery gene.
And this dispositional anger is related more to an innate character trait than to instincts
or kignitians.
This also brings me to a really important point.
Like I said, there are some people who are just angry are than others.
And there is actually a disorder for this called intermittent explosive disorder.
And this is really related to our ability to control our impulses.
When we are unable to do that.
The behavior that we might exhibit is these repeated angry outbursts.
Our failure to control our aggressive impulses.
And normally it's not something that we want to do.
It just feels like this explosion that has come out of nowhere.
And normally the reaction is also very much out of proportion to the event that sparked
that rage.
This is obviously an extreme.
You know, it is like a diagnosable disorder, but I think it does go to show how anger is
in one way an emotion.
For others it can become a personality trait.
And then for others it can be a disordered part of who they are and how the world sees
and how they see the world.
When we feel any of these types of anger though, something really unique happens in our brain.
There are entire regions devoted to processing this feeling.
And the reason that anger feels so fiery is because firstly it's almost entirely automatic
and out of our control.
And secondly it activates this part of our brain known as the amygdala.
One of the oldest parts of our brain perhaps the most primal, it's nestled deep in there
right in the middle of our limbic system.
And it is what is responsible for some of our most instinctual feelings.
The ones that are going to ensure that you survive and those big ones are fear and anger.
Fear and anger.
Our ability to detect danger and respond are intrinsically linked.
Sometimes hard to distinguish.
It almost feels like anger is fear in a more of a hidden form instead of wanting to show
that we're scared, we show that we are like dangerous or we show that we are angry.
I think what's definitely true is that when this part of the brain takes over the unconscious
rational part of us tends to switch off.
Anger, as has been shown in a lot of research, causes a reduction in our cognitive abilities
and basically our ability to accurately process external stimuli.
We don't tend to think straight anymore, we face a bunch of distortions to our reasoning
abilities.
For example, like we might see something and overreact or we might see something in a
tribute blame to someone else when in fact it is not their fault.
And I think this can create a feedback loop where as our cognition has become more distorted
we're less able to see clearly.
The more blame we place on others, the more angry that we feel.
And I think it's at that point when we sometimes see people do things that they normally really
wouldn't do.
That is not within their normal personality traits.
It doesn't mean that they didn't do it, they are still accountable.
But a lot of the time they are acting from a point of blind rage.
And I think that brings me to my main point, we don't know what to do with our anger.
We don't know how to process it, whether we should forgive, how to forgive, whether we
should lash out, who we should tell, how to get rid of this feeling.
And so we suppress the immersion, we let it show up in less than ideal ways.
It may also be because of how you have come to see anger in the past.
You've come to see it as an immersion that we should avoid.
This often can be attributed to maybe being raised by really angry parents or seeing
anger from a previous partner.
We can see in those moments how ugly it can be, especially when it has total control
over someone.
It may also be that as a child, you are not given permission to express emotions like
anger or rage in a safe space.
You were punished for being frustrated or rightfully angry, angry in response to your boundaries
being crossed.
You were not given access to your full emotional bandwidth.
So anytime you feel anger now as an adult, you associate it with the shame and the punishment
you received as a child.
Or we vow not to be like the person who has let anger control them in our past.
We know how much it hurts, we know how much it harms us around us.
We are told and we know that anger is bad and therefore to feel it would make us bad.
And so we push it down.
We begin to believe that to feel anger makes us purely an angry person and nothing more.
When we fear any kind of emotional reaction, it naturally leads to avoidance and that is
what causes us to suppress a feeling, treat it like it's somewhat diseased.
However, our body can really only hold on to an emotion for so long.
You know, eventually we run out of like cognitive resources and cognitive strength to hold
it down to be end up exploding.
And the reason we end up exploding is often totally unrelated to the origin of our anger.
This is what Freud called displacement.
And displacement is part of our unconscious defense mechanisms in which we project and
find a new object for our anger rather than the original cause.
It is why you may be really angry at your roommates or really angry at your younger sibling,
but then you end up snapping at someone on the internet or you end up like picking a
fight with your partner.
This is just your body trying to find a way to let out your anger in an environment that
it sees is more appropriate.
And really what it comes from is originally like shame.
It comes from shame at your anger.
It comes from conflict aversion.
It comes from not being able to put it in a place where it's going to do good.
And I think at that point it's really useful to remember that like any emotion, anger is
really just here to tell you something.
It is just the messenger.
It is trying to communicate with you that there is something in your life, an important emotional
issue, a sense of dissatisfaction, something that is bothering you, a sense of injustice,
that is going against your values, that is going against your desires, your ambitions.
It has been compromised.
And if we were to ignore anger or kind of like try and opt out of it, what we would actually
be ignoring is a lot of important information.
And it would mean that we would never be able to stand up for ourselves if our boundary
would be crossed because we could never allow ourselves to feel wronged.
Otherwise that would be allowing ourselves to feel angry.
Hopefully that kind of makes sense, right?
I think about this a lot in terms of people who are in situationships or if you're in a
really fraught relationship and you just don't let yourself bring up the things that have
bothered you.
And you suppress it because to feel angry might compromise that relationship.
You don't want to be angry in front of this person.
Here's the thing though, eventually that is going to boil over.
It is going to give to get to the point where you cannot tolerate that for much longer.
And that is why anger is so crucial because it is a really valuable motivator for change.
If we channel that initial impulse for violence and rage correctly, we can actually really
unlock a lot of movement in our life.
We can unlock a lot of creativity.
I know this really, really well.
You can displace it.
That's your first option.
You can let it take over your entire life and you can let it make you violent and rageful.
Or you can treat it like energy.
Why do you want to divert that energy?
In what parts of your life might it be useful to have access to that level of passion?
Don't you want to kind of almost really tap into its power rather than wasting it on
like a momentary explosion?
Anyway, I think the best analogy I have heard about this topic is from this TED talk called
Anger is Your ally.
And the speaker explains that anger is very much like a child.
You shouldn't let it drive the car that is going to be a terrible problem.
But you also shouldn't stuff it in the trunk either.
You need to treat anger like it's a passenger in the vehicle.
You know what's there?
It's just cruising along with you.
You're not trying to hide from it.
But it's also not in the front seat.
I think this acceptance of our anger is not to justify holding onto it by no means.
I think we often make the mistake in believing that raging and seizing and silence is somehow
going to hurt the person we're actually furious at or that it's productive.
When actually when we really like hold on to this rage and we hold on to this like aggressive
instinct in this hurt, we are the person that it does the most damage to.
What is the answer to that that we should forgive?
Do we always have to be the bigger person to let go of our anger?
I personally, I don't think so.
I think forgiveness is a privilege and you can still understand the ways in which someone
has hurt you, the ways certain actions have gone against your values and not need to
subsequently hurt that person as well to find release.
You can find peace with your anger.
Sometimes I think we really celebrate forgiveness.
There's this really pure and good thing.
There's a lot of religious undertones to that and that it's going to make us so much
lighter and such better people.
But I also don't think that it's going to help us release our rage.
I don't think that forgiveness is something that we should rush.
I think that anger actually needs an outlet and it needs to be processed and it needs to
be worked through.
It needs to be treated with respect before we get to the point that we can be stoics about
it.
In that moment, you kind of have three options.
You can channel your anger through sublimation.
You can create something with it.
You can use it as motivation.
Find a positive way to process that feeling.
You can adopt the stoic approach which is, I'm just going to let this emotion wash over
me without needing to reach out and touch it.
Or you can listen to the impulse and you can explode.
You can inevitably say things you don't mean.
You can lash out.
You can burn the fucking world down and that might feel great in the moment.
But then you kind of just left with the remains there.
You're left with a lot of burnt bridges and there's not much more to make of it.
I think option one and two are our best bet.
But sometimes it's hard to get there, especially when anger has really ruled you unconsciously
for so long.
So what I want to talk about next is how we can honour the emotion whilst also letting
it serve us.
So all of that and more after this short break.
I love being able to talk about brands that I use on the podcast and this is a brand
that I've been personally using for over five years.
Our sponsor Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are specifically formulated for
women.
They contain 16 vitamins and minerals including the full B vitamin complex to help you
convert food into fuel.
They also have calcium and vitamin D to support bone health and healthy hair skin and nails.
And for those of you who may be watching your sugar intake, they now have a zero sugar
version made with plant-based sweetness including stevia extract and monk fruit extract.
With just two delicious gummies, Nature's Way Alive Women's Multivitamin Gummies are an
easy way to feel like your best self every day.
To learn more, visit naturesway.com slash jema and use code jema10 at checkout for 10% of
any alive women's multivitamins, terms and conditions apply valid through June 30.
Our first time using something normally forms a lifelong impression even if psychology says
that impression is not always correct.
For example, you may try a new food for the first time, realize you don't like it and
you're convinced for the rest of your life to never try again.
Or the first time shaving or using hair removal cream, I think we can all remember that strong
chemical smell of those old formulas.
Well that is about to change.
There is the number one hair removal brand and now it has a new and improved formula that
actually smells amazing and does away with the need to shave or have a rusty razor on
hand.
I was honestly so surprised when I used these for the first time because I think the last
time I used hair removal creams was when I was probably 18.
There was nothing pleasant about that smell but now with scents like orange blossom and
Moroccan organ oil for the new shower creams and cocoa butter, oat milk, vanilla or
water lily and aloe vera for their body creams, they actually make me enjoy the experience.
So a story about this the other day I had three of my closest girlfriends and my boyfriend
over for dinner and we had this bottle we decided we wanted to try it out.
We wanted to get rid of some hair on our legs.
We all used the oat milk and vanilla body cream, literally at my dining table we applied
it and we waited for three minutes.
They turned out so smooth.
Even my boyfriend put some on his calf and let me tell you that little spot is still
silky smooth a week later.
He can testify this stuff works and we also agreed these new formulas are a game changer
because not only can you actually get rid of hair it actually smells nice and it removes
the hassle of having to shave every few days every few weeks.
It also is free of dyes, it's free of parabens, it's free of sulfates which is a big plus
for me and I have to say again the new spents actually smell really really good.
You can smell them for yourself, try the reformulated net body and shower creams available
at retailers nationwide and online.
It is personal, intimate and emotive.
Just like this podcast.
We are audio stack.ai.
We combine AI writing.
The best synthetic voices like ours.
With production like music and mastering.
And deliver them to be heard, be it ads, podcasts or VOs for video.
Just like this ad you're listening to right now.
However, we have millions of spots just like this on podcasts.
And rather than hearing from us we want to hear from you.
How would you utilize AI audio?
For free.
Do you work with businesses, products, events or causes that could benefit from free promotion
on podcasts in the coming month?
Simply go to audiostack.ai-forward-slash-contest.
Give us some details of what you would say.
And you could replace this spot and be heard by millions.
You will also find terms and conditions at audiostack.ai-forward-slash-contest.
Summer is finally here and that means more days spent outside at the park on the beach
or in the pool.
Make sure that you're taking care of your hair this summer since the sun, so an SPF can
all affect your hair health.
Now is the perfect time to start taking neutropho to keep your locks feeling thick and healthy.
All is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement with over a million
people saying thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding.
Neutropho has multiple formulas that are tailored to give your hair what it needs to grow based
on your life stage, your biology and lifestyle factors.
With Neutropho, building a hair growth routine is super simple, super easy, purchase online.
You don't need a prescription and you don't need to go to the doctor.
It results that you can run your fingers through.
For a limited time, Neutropho is offering L listeners $10 off your first fund's subscription
and free shipping when you go to neutropho.com and enter the promo code Psychology.
Find out why over 4,500 healthcare professionals and stylists recommend Neutropho for healthier
hair.
Neutropho.com.
Spelt and UTRAFOL.com.
So the two ways we've mentioned for dealing with anger so far is by processing and channeling
rather than letting it rule you.
And I want to talk through some specific tips for doing so.
Firstly, once again, I want to clarify, anger is not an emotion to be avoided by any means.
It is good that you feel angry sometimes.
It shows that you have boundaries.
It shows that you have a sense of injustice.
It shows that you are protective of yourself.
And I actually think that's really, really important.
I also think when we ignore anger, when we suppress it, obviously we can explode.
Yada, yada, yada.
But it also maybe indicates that somewhere along the way you were taught that to experience
and show all your emotions was shameful.
And I think that the shame around emotions is one of those kind of generational patterns
and things that we are taught by our parents that we need to unlearn.
So here's how we're going to go about it instead.
Firstly, when you were feeling this rage for any reason, avoid what we like to call the
catharsis myth.
So a catharsis is this thing that provides release. It is this huge explosion of energy that
makes us feel a lot better.
When we talk about anger, a lot of people talk about venting, talk about ranting as a way
to kind of release their anger effectively.
They think about it as turning the tap on and letting out some of the pressure.
But a psychologist that I was reading into about this put it very well, when you vent
your anger or blow off steam, when you are screaming, when you're like really mad, when
you're just having this huge vent to your friend, it actually keeps our arousal levels
really high.
Have you ever like had a moment where someone has done something that has made you so angry?
And you've walked away from it, you've kind of thought about it.
And then a few days later, your friends like, hey, remember when that person did that thing?
And it just makes you feel angry afterwards when you talk about it with them.
You think that it's going to make you feel better.
I actually don't think it really does.
It's like using gasoline to put out a fire.
It does it doesn't work.
And I know that that advice feels counterintuitive because we feel like when we're venting, when
we're ranting, that we're doing something about this feeling and therefore that we're
processing it.
However, I think there are more sustainable ways of going about it that don't keep us
in such a state of like active anger.
Like there's ways that we can exhaust the feeling.
It's probably a better way of putting it rather than continuing to exacerbate it or accelerating
it.
So exercise is great, particularly something cardio focused, but I've also found boxing
incredibly useful.
I think that although it can still increase arousal in the moment, it also exhausts me
afterwards.
And therapy is great and all, but something really does have to be said about just hitting
a bag for an hour and leaving being like super sweaty and just feeling like this, all
of this like emotion and feeling that was buzzing in your body has a place to land.
There's also this technique I have for processing rage and actually a bunch of emotions.
And I call it crazy dance and I've talked about this before on the show and it's what
it sounds like.
I want you to just put on your headphones and just go absolutely wild.
Let loose.
I don't want it to look good.
I don't want it to be a cool dance.
I want it to be the most energetic, crazy dance.
You can think of legs moving, arms moving, body twisting.
This acts as a form of somatic therapy where we are able to release damaging pent-up emotions
using our bodies and that is the place where they're often stored.
So I want you before and after to notice how your body feels and then where you've been
holding stress, maybe you have like muscle tension or pain.
And afterwards, I want you to notice whether those parts have experienced a sense of relief,
whether there has been some kind of release in those muscles in those parts of your body.
I think it works in so many situations.
Another way to go about it is make sure that before you address your anger, you calm
your body by giving it enough oxygen.
If you think about it when we're really, really frustrated and upset, our breathing
gets a lot deeper, a lot faster, sorry, a lot faster.
And when it's really fast like this, you're not taking in that much oxygen.
When our brain is low on oxygen, our thinking becomes a little bit more disturbed, it becomes
a lot slower and breathing exercises are a way to firstly help us calm down but also get
that oxygen back into our brain to make a smart informed decision.
I know we hear a lot about breathing exercises in therapy and in psychology and if you
go to therapy, it's like one of those staples in a therapist toolkit, that and like meditation
and mindfulness.
And sometimes when we hear about those things too much, we just credit it, we think it
doesn't work, but it does.
The science says that it does and it really helps in these situations.
So deliberately practicing like a relaxed breathing pattern, so breathing in for eight, holding
for four, breathing out for eight, it brings a lot of our involuntary functions like our
breathing under control and it shows us that other things we think are out of our control
like anger are actually something that we have a say over, that we can almost operate
and move and have some decision making over.
So control breathing really can cause quite profound physiological changes, it lowers our blood
pressure, lowers our heart rate, it reduces stress levels and levels of stress hormones
in the blood.
So all of which I think is a really good start to processing anger in whatever form you
choose to.
My favorite form though is through creative channeling.
So creative channeling is where you take your anger and you make something with it.
It helps us place our anger, express our anger and make it tangible.
It takes us, you know, takes that emotion out of our mind and onto the page.
Like if we're making a piece of art or a sculpture or anything of a sort, it really allows
us to see this emotion is something that isn't just held up in our brain but has a place
in the world, a recognizable place outside of our body.
Additionally I think when we're like partaking in something creative it helps us enter into
a flow state.
A flow state is this kind of state of mind where we aren't so much focused on what's bothering
us, just the task at hand.
We feel really fulfilled by it.
We feel really excited by it, challenged by it but also just extremely focused and it
actually is amazing because whilst you're in a flow state it's really hard to think about
more than one thing.
And so you come back from practicing this creative exercise from making something with not
only a fresh set of eyes but with kind of like a renewed sense of peace and a renewed sense
of calm.
This mainly focuses on how you can manage your anger on an individual level but obviously
someone has given us a reason to feel angry.
And I'm not just not saying that in a way that we should be endorsing blame but anger
is often environmental something has triggered it and so our reaction is also probably going
to be environmental or external or interpersonal as well.
Here are some tips for managing that because we know anger does a lot of damage when we
don't have control over it.
It causes us to just do so many things that we wouldn't normally do.
Often at the expense of the people that are closest to us, they are the closest to the
epicenter, they get the most kind of heat from this feeling.
So when you are processing your anger when you feel rage, avoid projecting, avoid displacing
as Freud would say.
I think you need to acknowledge when you have allowed someone else to be the target of
your anger when they are not the source.
For example you've come home from like a really rough day at work where people have just
been super rude and you just snap at your partner and it's not fair because and it's
probably not fair to snap at anyone really but it's definitely not fair to snap at this
person who probably doesn't know what's going on and is just wanting to make you happy
and just wanting to see you happy as well.
I think it's easy to project onto those people because we know that we kind of know that
they're going to take it in a way that we can't snap at a stranger but once again they're
not just having and it will do harm to your relationship.
So in those moments recognize it, apologize to that person and explain why.
Talk about why it is that you came into a situation or a room or an interaction feeling
that rage and make sure they know what part of it may have been because of them or what
part of it really wasn't to do with them so that they're not sitting there waiting
for you to just blow up that they're not having an anxious reaction to your feelings
of rage.
There's a strategy used in anger management called the 30-30 intervention that I think is
a really good and useful strategy for those moments when you do displace your anger onto
someone who doesn't deserve it or when you've just had a really rough day and you know
that this passion and this feeling is really building up so take 30 seconds to remove
yourself from a situation that may be frustrating you.
30 seconds to do something else particularly something with your hands because it shows
our brain that we're doing something about this problem, this problem, emotion that we're
having or something physical to release that bodily tension and then 30 seconds to create
a coping strategy.
Maybe that coping strategy will be all right I need a few moments to on a walk or I'm going
to write down exactly why I'm upset I'm going to journal about this and then I'm going
to come back to this person and we can talk about it.
I also say all the time let people make mistakes don't let other people always be the source
of your anger because they don't meet your expectations and because you are lowering
your threshold for their behavior.
I'm going to explain that a little bit more but sometimes I think we become angry because
we have false expectations about other people and when they don't meet them we blame them
rather than blaming ourselves for not being honest about what we can expect from someone.
The same way that you're allowed to make mistakes and be your own person these people
are allowed that as well and I think that our anger comes from a sense of like reality
the reality we want not matching up with kind of what is actually going to happen and
sometimes that's fair to be angry about right like the reality is you expect everyone
around you to be really really nice and kind and someone isn't that makes you angry but
if the reality is I expect my partner to have done like every single chore in the household
even though he also works full time and you come back and he's just gotten home before
you and he hasn't done that and reality doesn't make blah blah blah they don't think it's
fair in those times to be angry let other people make mistakes and also when they
you're really frustrated about something when you really feel like something is so hard
to like go of you are so filled with rage that it's not going anywhere don't say you're
over it when you're not don't pretend that you are fine that is just another form of
suppression and it is going to come up later I think a lot of the time we really want
to be forgiving and we want to pretend that the emotion just isn't there because it is
so uncomfortable to feel and we hear it all the time is someone is really upset by something
and they go it's fine I'm fine like let's move on I don't want to talk about it and
no no I'm over I'm over I forgive you it's very easy to say those words as well if you're
a people pleaser and if you feel like your anger is not justified but this is your reminder
that really take that closing of the feeling that closing of the trigger that closing
or whatever is caused your anger make sure you take the closing of that chapter seriously
don't close it too soon don't close it prematurely because it will bubble and it will fester
and it will come up at the worst time finally if there is a particular person you are upset
are practice both assertive communication but also practice calm communication have you
ever had those moments where you like you know that a friend is mad at you or you know
that you've done something to upset someone and you go into the conversation and you're
just immediately defensive and you are immediately really upset and you are immediately angry
or they are immediately angry it is so hard to ever resolve something when we come to
the table with this primal emotion at the forefront rather than like we said in the
passenger seat so think through your initial reaction the first thing you want to do and
then sleep on it it will always feel better in the morning and maybe you will have thought
again about burning the whole world down take a step back from what you from the first
thing that you want to do in response to your anger and make sure you are expressing what
you need in an assertive yet calm way I often find this difficult when people are like
oh my gosh you're so angry like you're overreacting like women especially you're so emotional
you're allowed to have this feeling right I'm not saying that you need to be like calm
about it for them I'm saying you need to become about it for you calm about it for you
because you're able to go in with a really clear way of addressing what you need a really
clear way of trying at least to show them why you feel this way why you feel like a boundary
has been crossed why you feel angry I hate when people have their reality kind of discredited
because they are emotional when that is like literally the thing that we've been talking
about that's entire episode this emotion is not shameful it is not bad but it is bad
when you let it do things that hurt others deliberately that hurt others without a second
thought to it or that make it so you can't actually get what you need out of a situation
so I think it's really important here to have a healthy relationship with anger and how
it is expressed to other people so that it can I think be a tool rather than an obstacle
and that in other situations it can really help motivate change it can help motivate
progress towards a better understanding between you and someone else or a better outcome
so some final reminders it is totally okay to feel angry it's telling you something it
is just a sign of something you don't always need to forgive you don't always need to have
an answer to your anger but you can't suppress it you have to find a way to either process
it through communication through talking it out through the 30 30 intervention or channeling
it finding how you can find a medium or an outlet for this anger instead of letting
it sit in the body I think you are not an angry person just because someone has crossed
your boundaries or repeatedly crossed your boundaries you are not an angry person because
society and your parents and your family and everyone around you has told you to hold
on to that anger and not let it go has told you to be polite and suppress it there are
a lot of positive ways that this emotion can help us it can help us in our relationships
in our careers in our lives in general so I hope this episode has helped you especially
if you have a long term relationship with anger I hope that it's at least taught you
something new that you've learned something about yourself or about the psychology I found
it really fascinating because I think about anger a lot and I think about anger in my
life and anger in my family's life and you know sometimes it's like very easy to just
hide from it and it's very easy to go off and rant but I've found that that doesn't always
leave me actually feeling better so hopefully you've taken that with you as well as always
if you've enjoyed this episode please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple
podcasts Spotify wherever you are listening right now make sure you give us a follow on
Instagram at that psychology podcast especially if you have an episode suggestion or something
that you want to say about this episode I would love to hear from you we're always taking
ideas and feedback and make sure you're just having a good time I don't know where I was
going with that but make sure you're happy here's like a little reminder to just take
a second right now ask yourself am I happy what could I do about it if I'm not that's
a beautiful way to end the episode hopefully we will see you back here next week with another
one.
What is personal, intimate and emotive just like this podcast we are audio stack dot AI
we combine AI writing the best synthetic voices like ours with production like music and
mastering and deliver them to be heard be it ads podcasts or vos for video just like this
had you're listening to right now however we have millions of spots just like this on
podcasts and rather than hearing from us we want to hear from you how would you utilize
AI audio for free do you work with businesses products events or causes that could benefit
from free promotion on podcasts in the coming month simply go to audio stack dot AI forward
slash contest give us some details of what you would say and you could replace this spot
and be heard by millions you will also find terms and conditions at audio stack dot AI
forward slash contest.
The guy in front of me in the pharmacy line is halfway through an incredibly detailed 17-minute
time.
the
the
the
