Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Anger What Do You Need From Me with Bronwyn Schweigerdt
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gimick
- 0:03Speaker 1: person I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to
- 0:07Speaker 1: helping those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank
- 0:10Speaker 1: you to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting
- 0:14Speaker 1: this show five four, three, two and one. Our folks,
- 0:18Speaker 1: welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have as
- 0:21Speaker 1: my guests today. Bron Wren Schweigert Bronwin Welcome, Thank you awesome.
- 0:26Speaker 1: Bronwyn is a licensed psychotherapist, podcaster, and anger expert dedicated
- 0:31Speaker 1: to addressing the root causes of mental and physical illness.
- 0:34Speaker 1: Drawing from her own personal experiences with depression, she explores
- 0:38Speaker 1: the vital importance of acknowledging and managing internal feelings. Specifically,
- 0:42Speaker 1: anger is a primary catalyst for personal growth and informed
- 0:46Speaker 1: decision making beyond individual healing. Bronwin provides practical strategies for
- 0:52Speaker 1: navigating anger within relationships and examining the unique responsibility therapists
- 0:57Speaker 1: have in managing their own emotional help whilsting others. All right, Bronman,
- 1:03Speaker 1: Obviously just a little bit about you before we get going.
- 1:05Speaker 1: Share with our listeners where you're from originally and where
- 1:08Speaker 1: you are currently.
- 1:10Speaker 2: Well, my first ten years were in Ohio and ever
- 1:15Speaker 2: since i've or mostly since, I've lived in California. So
- 1:18Speaker 2: I live in northern California.
- 1:20Speaker 1: Now okay, awesome, all right, Well let's start. How the
- 1:25Speaker 1: heck did all this start for you?
- 1:29Speaker 2: Yeah, so becoming a psycho therapist wasn't a career I
- 1:33Speaker 2: went looking for. I already had my career. I was
- 1:37Speaker 2: about thirty nine forty, and you know, life just kind
- 1:41Speaker 2: of took a turn for the worst at that time
- 1:44Speaker 2: and I fell into a very very very severe depressive episode.
- 1:49Speaker 2: Went looking for a good enough therapist to help me
- 1:53Speaker 2: like figure out what's going on inside me, Like why
- 1:56Speaker 2: am I becoming crazy? And I could find that. So
- 2:02Speaker 2: I remember sitting with multiple different therapists at multiple times,
- 2:06Speaker 2: and every time I thought to myself, you know, Bronwin,
- 2:09Speaker 2: you are barely functioning right now, but I still think
- 2:12Speaker 2: you would make a better therapist than this person in
- 2:15Speaker 2: front of you. So I ended up going back to
- 2:18Speaker 2: school and becoming getting another master's degree in you know,
- 2:21Speaker 2: counseling and becoming a licensed therapist because I wanted to
- 2:25Speaker 2: be the therapist that I needed for me and what
- 2:29Speaker 2: I see now in retrospect, with that depressive episode I
- 2:31Speaker 2: went through in a subsequent one that was even longer
- 2:35Speaker 2: and more pernicious. Were the common denominator was my own
- 2:40Speaker 2: disassociated or suppressed anger.
- 2:44Speaker 1: If I may, if I may, just hold on right there,
- 2:46Speaker 1: because you're saying a lot of juicy stuff here. What
- 2:51Speaker 1: were you doing? You said you had you had a job.
- 2:55Speaker 1: What were you doing?
- 2:56Speaker 2: My career at that time was in nutrition. I was
- 2:58Speaker 2: a nutritionist.
- 2:59Speaker 1: Okay, okay. And what happened such that what caused this
- 3:07Speaker 1: depressive episode? This initial one.
- 3:09Speaker 2: Yeah, So this first one, my family and I just
- 3:13Speaker 2: relocated about an hour and a half away, and it
- 3:16Speaker 2: might have well been the other side of the moon
- 3:19Speaker 2: because I knew no one and I was very, very lonely.
- 3:22Speaker 2: And my husband, he had just gotten a different job.
- 3:25Speaker 2: This was during the two thousand and eight two thousand
- 3:27Speaker 2: and nine recessions, so we had to move. Our daughter
- 3:30Speaker 2: was very young at the time, so my husband went
- 3:33Speaker 2: off to school. I didn't have a job at that time.
- 3:36Speaker 2: My daughter, I put her in school, she was in kindergarten.
- 3:39Speaker 2: I was alone every day all day I had I
- 3:43Speaker 2: knew no one, I mean no one, and I was
- 3:46Speaker 2: so incredibly lonely, and one of the first nights after
- 3:50Speaker 2: we moved, I looked at my husband and I think
- 3:53Speaker 2: I had tears in my eyes. This is like seventeen
- 3:55Speaker 2: years ago now, but I really needed him to just
- 4:00Speaker 2: say something like, bron Wan, I see how much this
- 4:03Speaker 2: is hurting you, and it breaks my heart to see
- 4:06Speaker 2: you suffering like this. That's what I need it. That's empathy, right,
- 4:10Speaker 2: That's what I needed. And what I got was actually
- 4:14Speaker 2: a very hardened look in his eyes, a very i'm
- 4:19Speaker 2: not going to empathize for you look, and there was
- 4:22Speaker 2: no empathy. And you know we have since, you know,
- 4:25Speaker 2: discussed this, but you know, at that time he felt
- 4:29Speaker 2: like if he had empathized for me, that would make
- 4:32Speaker 2: him feel very guilty for having made us relocate in
- 4:36Speaker 2: the first place, and so he chose to withhold empathy
- 4:39Speaker 2: for me. But you know that I think triggered in
- 4:44Speaker 2: me what I experienced as a very young child from
- 4:47Speaker 2: my mother who withheld empathy from me. And so I
- 4:50Speaker 2: not only fell immediately into a severe depressive episode, but
- 4:54Speaker 2: I was vomiting involuntarily. It was horrible. While I was
- 4:59Speaker 2: driving a I would just have to vomit in my lap.
- 5:01Speaker 2: I couldn't stop walking down a street. I would vomit.
- 5:06Speaker 2: It was so humiliating. And I also couldn't stop eating.
- 5:10Speaker 2: I felt like there was a whole inside of me
- 5:14Speaker 2: day and night. I mean, I would get up at
- 5:15Speaker 2: three in the morning and just chow, and I gained
- 5:17Speaker 2: like probably thirty pounds in a couple months. It was
- 5:21Speaker 2: so horrible. So my body, I now see in retrospect,
- 5:26Speaker 2: was re experiencing an attachment wound when there was a
- 5:30Speaker 2: withholding of empathy from my current attachment partner, something I'd
- 5:35Speaker 2: never processed from my early childhood. But the anger comes
- 5:39Speaker 2: in here because if I had had at that time
- 5:42Speaker 2: the wherewithal just to look at Steve, my husband, and say,
- 5:45Speaker 2: you know what, Steve, you're withholding empathy from me, and
- 5:48Speaker 2: that's hurtful. Right now, I need you to put me first,
- 5:53Speaker 2: to prioritize my feelings over yours. I know it's going
- 5:55Speaker 2: to make you feel guilty, but to choose my comfort
- 5:58Speaker 2: over your discomfort. If I had that anger, because anger
- 6:01Speaker 2: is really what we need to have assertive speech, to
- 6:04Speaker 2: have boundaries, to confront people, even gently and kindly, but
- 6:08Speaker 2: to confront them. If I'd had that, I would have
- 6:11Speaker 2: saved myself all of that suffering. And the second depressive
- 6:17Speaker 2: episode was very similar in that if I had had
- 6:21Speaker 2: the wherewithal.
- 6:22Speaker 1: To say and when did that happen relative to the
- 6:24Speaker 1: first one, yeah, a couple.
- 6:25Speaker 2: Of years later. It was when I started out as
- 6:28Speaker 2: an intern getting my hours to become licensed, and the
- 6:32Speaker 2: supervisor where I was working, I told him, I'm not
- 6:36Speaker 2: ready to see couples, you know, because really you should
- 6:40Speaker 2: be very equipped and trained to see That's a very
- 6:43Speaker 2: complicated thing to address. And he had a new intake
- 6:47Speaker 2: and they wanted to only pay the lowest fee, which
- 6:49Speaker 2: was me because I was just straying out. He didn't
- 6:51Speaker 2: want to lose them. He was also the clinical director,
- 6:54Speaker 2: so that was problematic because he's also my supervisor, so
- 6:56Speaker 2: very blurry boundaries. But he's like, you're going to see him.
- 7:00Speaker 2: And if I had had the wherewithal then to say,
- 7:04Speaker 2: uh no, you know, but I needed that anger to
- 7:07Speaker 2: say no, and I didn't have it. I didn't have that.
- 7:10Speaker 1: Okay, I'm getting Okay, So what I hear you saying
- 7:15Speaker 1: is you're getting you're experiencing anger at a particular situation,
- 7:21Speaker 1: But there's also is there not kind of an assertiveness
- 7:26Speaker 1: of speaking up right or lack of assertiveness in those
- 7:31Speaker 1: particular situations too.
- 7:34Speaker 2: Yeah, and I see those as synonymous. So when we
- 7:37Speaker 2: feel the anger, you know, usually we feel it here
- 7:39Speaker 2: in our chest. What our relationship to that anger, to
- 7:43Speaker 2: have a healthy relationship with it is to say I
- 7:46Speaker 2: feel you, I feel you, write in my chest, anger,
- 7:49Speaker 2: What do you need from me right now?
- 7:51Speaker 1: Oh?
- 7:51Speaker 2: You need me to be assertive and say no. And
- 7:54Speaker 2: if that no is met with you know, well that's
- 7:57Speaker 2: a problem. Then you need me to be assertive and say, well,
- 8:00Speaker 2: then I'm going to look for a different place to
- 8:02Speaker 2: work because this isn't a good fit. So that's a boundary.
- 8:05Speaker 2: But I didn't have that. I know I felt that anger,
- 8:08Speaker 2: but I just associated from it because of my own immaturity.
- 8:13Speaker 2: And then I went on to see these couples and
- 8:15Speaker 2: I did so horribly and that just sent brought me
- 8:20Speaker 2: into a decent where I was betraying myself. And that's
- 8:24Speaker 2: really what gets us depressed, is when we betray ourselves.
- 8:28Speaker 1: All Right, So you decide like I can't find a therapist,
- 8:36Speaker 1: that's I'm trying to find the right word here, that's
- 8:43Speaker 1: a good fit to be to be kind. You couldn't
- 8:47Speaker 1: find one that was a good fit. You're like, to
- 8:49Speaker 1: hell with it, I'm going to become that therapist that
- 8:52Speaker 1: I need. So you go to school, you go back
- 8:54Speaker 1: to school. I'm guessing you're like, I'm going to do this,
- 8:58Speaker 1: And the thinking is, Bronwin, what what do you what's
- 9:04Speaker 1: the drive there?
- 9:05Speaker 2: I think, looking back, intuitively, what I needed in that
- 9:10Speaker 2: therapist I was searching for is someone who would be
- 9:13Speaker 2: a mirror to me to help me make sense of myself,
- 9:16Speaker 2: who really listened and had enough wisdom and understanding to
- 9:20Speaker 2: help me understand myself. And that would definitely entail someone
- 9:24Speaker 2: who could validate my anger that I'm dissociating from, you know,
- 9:29Speaker 2: at my husband, like someone who had said, you know, Brahman,
- 9:32Speaker 2: it seems like when he didn't empathize with you that
- 9:35Speaker 2: that was pretty infuriating. Actually, like that's not okay. If
- 9:39Speaker 2: I had had someone to be that mirror for me
- 9:41Speaker 2: and say I could go, oh that's not okay, Oh
- 9:45Speaker 2: my god, you're right, like, yeah, I need to be angry,
- 9:47Speaker 2: that would have spared me from depression. Because depression is
- 9:50Speaker 2: anger turn inward. So is anxiety. By the way, so
- 9:54Speaker 2: are all mental illnesses in my book is when we
- 9:56Speaker 2: dissociate from our anger, we get sick meant and physically
- 10:01Speaker 2: somatically as well.
- 10:03Speaker 1: So what you're describing pretty much sounds like therapy one
- 10:07Speaker 1: on one right for the therapists to become the membor.
- 10:09Speaker 1: But you didn't get that. What were you getting? And
- 10:12Speaker 1: this is important for all the therapists listening? What were
- 10:14Speaker 1: you getting instead of that?
- 10:16Speaker 2: So I went to multiple Oh goodness, So the first
- 10:19Speaker 2: one she just kind of listened and not much more,
- 10:23Speaker 2: maybe a little bit like, you know, maybe a little oh,
- 10:27Speaker 2: have you thought about going outside? Have you thought about
- 10:30Speaker 2: hard exercise? You know, that kind of stuff, but not
- 10:34Speaker 2: really helping me understand myself, not validating my anger, not
- 10:38Speaker 2: helping me connect to my anger in a healthy way.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all right. So you go through school and
- 10:48Speaker 1: when and how did you learn or discover that anger
- 10:56Speaker 1: was at the crux of what was going on?
- 10:58Speaker 2: Yeah, that wasn't really in school. That was probably after
- 11:02Speaker 2: my second depressed episode, and and it was when I
- 11:05Speaker 2: finally started coming back to life and I started making
- 11:10Speaker 2: the association, the connection connecting these dots that my clients'
- 11:15Speaker 2: anxiety attacks, their panic attacks, their manic episodes, their depression,
- 11:21Speaker 2: their OCD all the common denominator was their own dissociated anger,
- 11:27Speaker 2: just like my depressive episode. That is what I started
- 11:30Speaker 2: seeing very clearly. And the minute they started, I you know,
- 11:36Speaker 2: my goal was to help them connect with their anger,
- 11:39Speaker 2: to know it's valid, to channel it out of their
- 11:42Speaker 2: bodies into assertiveness, boundaries, accountability and protecting themselves and that
- 11:51Speaker 2: made them healthy. That's when their symptoms you know, remediated
- 11:55Speaker 2: and that so that was really my own experience and
- 11:58Speaker 2: seeing it live out in my clients was what helped
- 12:01Speaker 2: me see all this.
- 12:03Speaker 1: Can you give us a specific example of what that
- 12:09Speaker 1: might have looked like with a particular client you worked with?
- 12:11Speaker 2: Yes, So I have one client in particular. She's given
- 12:14Speaker 2: me permission because I do I speak a lot to
- 12:17Speaker 2: be my example. So I'll call her Katie. So Katie
- 12:23Speaker 2: had been going to therapy, you know, more group therapy
- 12:27Speaker 2: kind of stuff, but for maybe a decade before she
- 12:30Speaker 2: came to me, and when she started telling me and
- 12:34Speaker 2: nothing had helped her. But when she started telling me
- 12:37Speaker 2: how sick she was, and you know, she had had psychosis,
- 12:41Speaker 2: she had had for those ten years. She'd had a
- 12:43Speaker 2: lot of hallucinations, never delusions, but hallucinations. And I'm listening
- 12:48Speaker 2: to her, I'm listening to her describe her hallucinations, and
- 12:51Speaker 2: I'm saying, those sound like, really, you know, great depictions
- 12:58Speaker 2: of your mom. What you saw, like the witch that
- 13:00Speaker 2: you saw floating out your outside your window. That seems
- 13:04Speaker 2: like it's describing your mother, and your brain's telling you, like,
- 13:08Speaker 2: get away from your mother. And she's like, oh my god,
- 13:13Speaker 2: I think you might be right. So we've been together
- 13:16Speaker 2: now three years. She's still with me, and the minute
- 13:20Speaker 2: she was able to have those boundaries with her mother,
- 13:24Speaker 2: she completely cut off her relationship with her mother. All
- 13:27Speaker 2: her hallucinations stopped immediately, her mania stopped, her depressive episodes
- 13:33Speaker 2: started again, remediating. I mean, she is so so healthy now,
- 13:38Speaker 2: she's off all her meds, and she was oh so
- 13:41Speaker 2: many meds. So I am just yeah, So she's a
- 13:44Speaker 2: great example.
- 13:46Speaker 1: All right, So this I'm just going back to that
- 13:51Speaker 1: situation with you and your husband because I think it's
- 13:54Speaker 1: such a I mean, it's just such almost a classic
- 13:59Speaker 1: example of how oftentimes we interact with people. Right. I
- 14:06Speaker 1: thought it was very interesting that you said, you know,
- 14:08Speaker 1: he didn't want to kind of acknowledge your anger because
- 14:11Speaker 1: then it would reflect on him and he didn't want
- 14:13Speaker 1: to have to deal with that as well. But you're there,
- 14:18Speaker 1: you're his partner. Yeah, there's something just very I don't know,
- 14:24Speaker 1: raw and emotional and human about that that's not always
- 14:29Speaker 1: easy to do.
- 14:32Speaker 2: I think this is kind of the fundamental imprint or
- 14:38Speaker 2: pattern that we would see in all human relationships. And
- 14:42Speaker 2: I also think the mental illness is a result of
- 14:45Speaker 2: our relationships, things like this, things that seem so small
- 14:49Speaker 2: in the moment. So he was choosing his comfort over mind.
- 14:53Speaker 2: I desperately needed him to just go browm and it
- 14:56Speaker 2: breaks my heart to see how lonely you are right now.
- 15:00Speaker 2: But he chose his comfort. He wanted to stay in
- 15:02Speaker 2: denial because in his mind, he was causing me this
- 15:06Speaker 2: loneliness because he had the job that caused us to relocate.
- 15:10Speaker 2: And you know, so denial really it's denial of reality.
- 15:14Speaker 2: And when we choose that, it will be at someone
- 15:17Speaker 2: else's expense and it will hurt them.
- 15:21Speaker 1: The other thing I think that comes up for me is,
- 15:25Speaker 1: you know, everyone is there, as you well know, they're
- 15:29Speaker 1: their own organism and forever. For whatever reason, he was
- 15:34Speaker 1: not able to do that, because that, in turn would
- 15:38Speaker 1: take a certain ownership right for him to then deal
- 15:43Speaker 1: be able to deal with everything that was going to
- 15:44Speaker 1: come back from acknowledging what was going on for you.
- 15:50Speaker 1: So all right, let's just kind of switch gears a
- 15:52Speaker 1: little here. How did you begin to work through these
- 15:57Speaker 1: depressive episodes? What's started helping you?
- 16:00Speaker 2: If things did, yeah, I will say that what really
- 16:07Speaker 2: helped me. The second depressive episode was much more pernicious,
- 16:11Speaker 2: much more complex. There were a lot of people who
- 16:15Speaker 2: contributed to it. And I'm not gonna say I was
- 16:19Speaker 2: immune from that because I could have said no, I
- 16:21Speaker 2: could have said, hey, I'm going to find another supervisor,
- 16:24Speaker 2: another place to work, and I didn't, so you know,
- 16:27Speaker 2: I definitely contributed to that as well. But really it
- 16:30Speaker 2: was about perspective shift. It really it was about me
- 16:33Speaker 2: taking time to reflect and kind of think it through.
- 16:38Speaker 2: Because when my supervisor said you're going to see the
- 16:42Speaker 2: client or you're going to see this couple, you know,
- 16:46Speaker 2: I betrayed myself. But to look back and go, oh,
- 16:49Speaker 2: he was doing that because he didn't want to say
- 16:51Speaker 2: no to these incoming clients. He was the clinic director.
- 16:55Speaker 2: He wanted numbers I'm going to feel some angry about
- 16:58Speaker 2: that because that's not okay. He was my super and
- 17:00Speaker 2: that was a betrayal of his job. So really kind
- 17:03Speaker 2: of reflecting back and really putting all the blame where
- 17:07Speaker 2: it belonged. I'm owning some of that too. It was
- 17:10Speaker 2: not that I'm just an innocent victim. I was just naive, really.
- 17:15Speaker 2: But yeah, so seeing all that, feeling that anger one
- 17:19Speaker 2: person that was very much a contributor to my depression
- 17:22Speaker 2: at that time. She was a different supervisor at a
- 17:25Speaker 2: different place that I worked, a different internship site, but
- 17:29Speaker 2: she had been my friend prior to that, and she
- 17:33Speaker 2: as a supervisor was so belittling. I mean, I look
- 17:36Speaker 2: back and I actually wrote her an accountability letter. So
- 17:41Speaker 2: I encourage my clients write a fantasy letter, say everything
- 17:46Speaker 2: you want to say, raw and unfiltered, and then if
- 17:50Speaker 2: you need to edit it, edit it, and then you
- 17:52Speaker 2: might want to consider pressing send and sending an email.
- 17:56Speaker 2: And I did that with her, and I said, hey, Kristen,
- 17:58Speaker 2: I just need you to know you're a bully. And
- 18:01Speaker 2: I'm documented specific things she did that made her a bully,
- 18:05Speaker 2: and I said, at the end, I'm not interested in
- 18:07Speaker 2: a dialogue on this. If you respond, it will go unread.
- 18:12Speaker 2: This is a one way piece of communication. I just
- 18:15Speaker 2: needed to set the record straight, and doing that release
- 18:19Speaker 2: so much suppressed anger from my body. It allowed me
- 18:24Speaker 2: to get back my dignity. I didn't disparage her. I
- 18:28Speaker 2: just said the truth. I just set the record straight.
- 18:31Speaker 1: So, yeah, was among my guess is you held all
- 18:36Speaker 1: this inside forever?
- 18:39Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 18:39Speaker 1: I did, so growing up bottled up anger was bottled
- 18:44Speaker 1: up for you? Or you weren't. You weren't able to
- 18:48Speaker 1: assert yourself to a certain degree? Is that is that
- 18:52Speaker 1: true or what?
- 18:53Speaker 2: Not? So much? You know, I that's such a great question, guy,
- 18:57Speaker 2: I would say for me, the religious background I came
- 19:02Speaker 2: from kind of taught me to not be angry and
- 19:07Speaker 2: you know, not be an agitator or what have you.
- 19:11Speaker 2: And you know, again, I own I take ownership of
- 19:14Speaker 2: that too because I adhered to that, I believed it,
- 19:17Speaker 2: and now I see it was just so much bs.
- 19:20Speaker 2: So yeah, that was very much. I think for me
- 19:23Speaker 2: that taught me to be a nice person. And now
- 19:25Speaker 2: I talk about do you want to be a nice
- 19:27Speaker 2: person or a good person? Because those are two distinct things.
- 19:34Speaker 1: All right, So let me just remind me. When I'm
- 19:36Speaker 1: speaking with bron Win Schweigert, we're talking about anger, and
- 19:42Speaker 1: how would you phrase it. We're talking about the importance
- 19:46Speaker 1: of what owning our anger, releasing our anger, what I.
- 19:51Speaker 2: Would say, connecting to our anger, and more importantly, developing
- 19:55Speaker 2: a healthy relationship to anger, because we all have anger.
- 20:00Speaker 2: You know, I hate the phrase when people say, oh,
- 20:03Speaker 2: she's not an angry person. I'm like, well, is she
- 20:05Speaker 2: a breathing person? We all have anger, right, is.
- 20:10Speaker 1: Part of living.
- 20:12Speaker 2: We get angry human right, we shouldn't see that as
- 20:15Speaker 2: a negative. Really, what we need to do is cultivate
- 20:18Speaker 2: a healthy relationship with our anger. And what makes it unhealthy,
- 20:24Speaker 2: like you kind of insinuated, guy, is our childhood and
- 20:28Speaker 2: the imprince the templates that were formed during our early
- 20:32Speaker 2: childhood about anger. And I would say a lot of
- 20:36Speaker 2: that is formed probably in what we would call the
- 20:39Speaker 2: terrible twos, when we first start as a little child,
- 20:42Speaker 2: to show anger, to have boundaries, to be assertive, to
- 20:46Speaker 2: differentiate from our parents. And if we have parents who
- 20:49Speaker 2: aren't informed about how important that phase is, which most
- 20:53Speaker 2: parents are not informed, they see that as something to
- 20:57Speaker 2: be corrected, so they'll shame the child. Maybe they'll do
- 21:02Speaker 2: silent treatment or time out, and the child's like, oh,
- 21:05Speaker 2: I can't afford to be angry because that's going to
- 21:08Speaker 2: get me abandoned. And so that template is formed in
- 21:12Speaker 2: our brain and that will stay there and very much
- 21:16Speaker 2: influence our behavior, our relationship with our anger, for a
- 21:20Speaker 2: lifetime unless we kind of wake up and start to
- 21:25Speaker 2: unlearn that that harmful template.
- 21:28Speaker 1: How do you well, oftentimes we hear of when people
- 21:35Speaker 1: talk about kids having behavioral issues, it's oftentimes people say, well,
- 21:44Speaker 1: there's anger beneath that, right, how do you said? Anger
- 21:50Speaker 1: maybe at the root of a lot of mental illness.
- 21:54Speaker 1: How are you seeing Where are you seeing anger showing
- 21:57Speaker 1: up in people's lives? How is it showing up kind
- 22:00Speaker 1: of indirectly in a sense.
- 22:02Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, one answer might be that a need
- 22:05Speaker 2: is going unmet. So when you say with children, yeah,
- 22:09Speaker 2: a needs not being met for attachment stuff, it's really
- 22:13Speaker 2: I don't feel seen. I don't feel like I matter,
- 22:17Speaker 2: you know that kind of thing. Children need to feel
- 22:20Speaker 2: like they matter, They need to feel seen. They need
- 22:22Speaker 2: to be heard. You know, they being heard is how
- 22:26Speaker 2: we feel seen, So they need to be listened to.
- 22:28Speaker 2: They need to be attuned to and if they're not
- 22:31Speaker 2: getting that, or if they're seeing the parent giving more
- 22:35Speaker 2: attunement to a sibling than they are, that kind of thing. Yeah,
- 22:39Speaker 2: there's going to be a lot of anger. Of course.
- 22:41Speaker 1: You mentioned also that anger had a relationship with anxiety too.
- 22:47Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about that.
- 22:49Speaker 2: Yeah, so most of my clients have quite a bit
- 22:53Speaker 2: of anxiety. And those are you know, some of the
- 22:57Speaker 2: most lovely people in the world, but they have been
- 22:59Speaker 2: very conditioned to believe their anger is shameful, that it
- 23:04Speaker 2: will get them abandoned, and so they very much learn to,
- 23:08Speaker 2: you know, quash their anger. And you know that comes
- 23:13Speaker 2: just from believing or being kind of taught I'm responsible
- 23:18Speaker 2: for other people's feelings. And when we believe that, when
- 23:22Speaker 2: we are conditioned to believe that implicitly, we cannot simultaneously
- 23:27Speaker 2: be responsible for our feelings. It is really an either or.
- 23:32Speaker 2: And so you know, one of the things I help
- 23:34Speaker 2: them do is I work with their inner child and
- 23:37Speaker 2: help them let their inner child know, you know what,
- 23:41Speaker 2: we are only responsible for our feelings. We are responsible
- 23:46Speaker 2: to other people, but never for other people. Once we
- 23:50Speaker 2: live within those healthy universal parameters, there's going to be
- 23:56Speaker 2: order brought back to our lives.
- 24:00Speaker 1: One of the things that I mentioned in your bio
- 24:04Speaker 1: that I think is pretty interesting is you said that
- 24:08Speaker 1: therapists have responsibility in managing their own emotional health while
- 24:12Speaker 1: supporting others. That seems it seems like that's so important,
- 24:21Speaker 1: very important for you. For you, why, oh yeah.
- 24:26Speaker 2: Well that's really what I couldn't find. I couldn't find
- 24:29Speaker 2: a therapist who had a healthy relationship with her own anger.
- 24:34Speaker 2: And therefore, as therapists, we are not able to validate
- 24:38Speaker 2: our client's anger. We're not able to help them heal
- 24:42Speaker 2: their relationship with their anger because we haven't done that
- 24:45Speaker 2: for ourselves.
- 24:48Speaker 1: All right, So let's talk about your own punk podcast,
- 24:52Speaker 1: Angry at the Right Things. How did this come about
- 24:55Speaker 1: for you?
- 24:56Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it was kind of like a weird coincidence
- 25:00Speaker 2: where someone just told me literally like three minutes before
- 25:05Speaker 2: that I should have a podcast, and I was like,
- 25:07Speaker 2: that would be kind of fun. And then I checked
- 25:10Speaker 2: my email, and my email I got we were donors
- 25:15Speaker 2: to this charity, and the charity's like, oh, we're training
- 25:18Speaker 2: up donors to have podcasts, you know, as a fundraising
- 25:22Speaker 2: and I'm like, okay, yeah, that just seemed like too
- 25:25Speaker 2: much to be a coincidence. So I just started doing
- 25:28Speaker 2: it about three years ago. But my favorite guests where
- 25:33Speaker 2: I've guested on other podcasts have been like yours, where
- 25:36Speaker 2: we're talking just where the person that the host it's
- 25:39Speaker 2: all about psychology or therapy because we can have the
- 25:42Speaker 2: best conversations. There's so much more in depth. And over time,
- 25:45Speaker 2: I just started doing trainings like continuing education for therapists,
- 25:51Speaker 2: and then now I have I founded the Center for
- 25:54Speaker 2: Anger and Integration, so I do ce continuing education trainings
- 25:59Speaker 2: on anger on integration for other therapists.
- 26:02Speaker 1: Now wow, how cool is that? So give us a
- 26:08Speaker 1: little more about that. What is that training?
- 26:11Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have two one hour trainings now of
- 26:15Speaker 2: my own. I have a couple others through other training
- 26:18Speaker 2: platforms on there as well. So anger it's really psychoed
- 26:23Speaker 2: about how dissociate anger causes somatic illness like headaches, gut disorders,
- 26:30Speaker 2: autoimmune disorders, like that's what a lot of research is
- 26:34Speaker 2: showing from what we call alexothymia. So a lot of
- 26:37Speaker 2: psychoad But then I actually lead the therapist in how
- 26:42Speaker 2: to do this modality I developed called an integration exercise
- 26:47Speaker 2: where we lead the client to do an imaginary exercise
- 26:53Speaker 2: where they are connecting with their inner child and integrating
- 26:57Speaker 2: with them.
- 26:59Speaker 1: Now, is it always.
- 27:03Speaker 2: What was that?
- 27:04Speaker 1: Is it always inner child? Do we always have to
- 27:07Speaker 1: go back to that?
- 27:08Speaker 2: We all do?
- 27:09Speaker 1: We do well?
- 27:10Speaker 2: I mean there's plenty. Sometimes we're integrating with ourselves from
- 27:14Speaker 2: six months ago, but there's always things in the past
- 27:17Speaker 2: that we kind of need to heal and dislodge shame
- 27:22Speaker 2: from things that we have experienced.
- 27:24Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, all right, Bronwin. How do people learn
- 27:29Speaker 1: more about you what you're doing these trainings and your podcast?
- 27:35Speaker 2: Sure so, yeah, So my website is integrateannger dot com
- 27:40Speaker 2: all one word, and the trainings are on there. My
- 27:43Speaker 2: podcast is on there too, so lots of stuff about
- 27:46Speaker 2: me and yeah, I guess that's kind of it. I'm
- 27:48Speaker 2: on social media as well. I have a YouTube channel
- 27:51Speaker 2: as well.
- 27:52Speaker 1: Awesome, Okay, we'll have all that link up here at
- 27:54Speaker 1: the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Bronwin,
- 27:58Speaker 1: thank you so much. Appreciate your just showing up and
- 28:01Speaker 1: being open and honest about what's going on with you.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Appreciate it.
- 28:04Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for having me.
- 28:05Speaker 1: Guys, all right, take care, okay, you too.