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Developing a Healthy Relationship with Anger · Gay Men Going Deeper

• 0:03
  Speaker A: Welcome to gay Men going deeper, a podcast series by the Gaiman's Brotherhood where we talk about personal development, mental health and sexuality. I am your host, Matt Lancadell. I am a counselor and facilitator specializing in healing and empowerment. My areas of expertise are teaching people how to heal toxic shame and attachment trauma so they can embody their authentic self and enjoy more meaningful connections in their lives. I specialize in working with highly sensitive people, empaths, and gay men to develop a stronger sense of self worth. Today's topic, we're going to be talking about developing a healthy relationship with anger and exploring how to connect with and release our anger in a healthy way. And we are joined again for the second time by Niall Biondi. Welcome, Niall. It's good to have you back.
• 0:49
  Speaker B: Thank you. Good to be here.
• 0:52
  Speaker A: Yes, our first episode, we talked about protecting your peace, and now we're talking about anger, and they kind of enter. There's an intersection between these two concepts, so we obviously have a flavor that we like to explore in our dynamic together. So I'm excited. And for those of you who are meeting Niall for the first time, he's a psychotherapist. He's been doing therapy for over 15 years. He used to primarily work with trans youth and young adults, but shifted his focus to helping people heal from chronic pain in 2019. Through his own journey in healing from chronic pain, he has come to understand the importance of anger work and is eager to talk about that today. I'm very eager to talk about it, too, because I did your coursework, actually, and I'll talk more about that as the episode goes on. But I have talked about this on the podcast before, having my own chronic pain, a lot of neck pain, different things like that. And I learned a lot from. From you and your course about anger and how anger manifests in the body, which was kind of an inspiration to wanting to do this episode. So, yeah, I'm curious, like, what got you into exploring, like, anger? Why anger for you? What's inspiring for you about this?
• 2:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah, as I mentioned, it was through my own chronic pain healing journey that I started to realize the importance of it. I would have told you probably until I was about 35 years old that I was someone who didn't experience anger, which is just nonsense. We all experience anger, but I very much repressed it. That was just sort of how I got by in my family system and just in life, just, you know, I thought I was a very chill, laid back guy, but realized later on that I was just repressing everything. Yeah. And so part of what I've learned is that when we repress things like anger and rage and stress and, you know, just emotions that we label as negative, it just builds up a lot of stress in our systems. Our system starts to produce a lot of adrenaline and cortisol, and that wreaks havoc on our bodies. And so it's. It's really important for all of us to learn how to feel and release those types of emotions so that we're not producing so many stress hormones.
• 3:15
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker B: And, like, I just. I just feel better. Like, that's the main thing.
• 3:20
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Speaker B: You know, I can give you the science behind it and all of that, but I just feel better now that I know how to feel those feelings and get them out of my body.
• 3:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Well, well said. And, you know, my allergies have decreased since taking your course because I did a lot of anger work. And, like, anger, I think allergies are, like, a manifestation of stress and a lot of cortisol in the body and these sorts of things. So as we release this, our body changes. Like, even my physiology changed. How I look changed. Like, my. The fur between my eyebrows, I always had that when I was younger has softened. So I do believe we manifest and hold anger in our bodies. So that's half of my inspiration for wanting to do this episode. The other half for me is, I see this a lot in our community, and we were gonna title the episode the angry gay man, but we chose not to title it that because, you know, it's kind of pigeonholing the episode. I think this episode can be for anybody. But, you know, you look at the book the velvet rage, that book, the velvet rage, it truly is, like, this dichotomy of how anger is repressed in our culture, and we present velvet, but really, there is rage underlying. And I see a lot of gay men and queer men have a lot of repressed anger and rage deep down, and it shows in different ways. And I think, for me, it's presented itself in dating, in rejecting or being rejected, because I get angry when I get rejected. And when I see this on the apps and things like that, if I've ever rejected people, it can become very rageful, and they can become. They say horrible things or block you, these sorts of things. I'm sure we've all experienced this one time or another, um, on the apps. So it's there. It's there, and it's not spoken about. And I think we wanted to bring voice to it. Today, so we can, um, normalize it. Anger is, I think, a very well, really, my new experience of anger is it's a beautiful emotion and it's actually, it's filled with power, like empowerment. We can become really empowered and we can, um, when. When we're connecting with anger in a healthy way. And, you know, I want to start off maybe because I did a bit of research before coming onto this about rage and anger, because I never actually truly knew the definition of each. I knew a rage is a little bit more intense, but anger is actually, you know, if you look at the definition of it, it's like this expression or more of, like, it's more in the healthy realm. Anger is like, actually something that we all experience as human beings. And it's normal, it's natural, but our society and our culture has shamed it. Rage is the more violent expression of anger. So it's probably when anger has been manifesting and repressed in our system for so long, it turns into rage and it's no longer controllable. So I just see it as probably the continuum of unconscious anger. As it goes more and more into the unconscious shadow side, it becomes rage. That would be how I would interpret it. Do you have a different interpretation of rage versus anger?
• 6:28
  Speaker B: No, I think you're right on. And I think that's one of the important reasons to learn how to work with your anger so that it doesn't become rage. And I think it is when people are lashing out and finding themselves really irritable and things like that, those are signs that you're repressing a lot of anger and you're not able to control it anymore. So. Yeah, I agree with what you said.
• 6:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so just giving people a heads up, this is what we're going to be unpacking today. Um, we're going to be talking about anger 101. So giving you guys the rundown on, you know, other words to identify anger. Some of you might be listening to this and thinking like, I'm not an angry person. Like, Niall and I both had that experience. Like, people, please. Ye, you know, not connecting to these parts of ourselves, when we go and do the work, it's there. The anger is there. So some of us, some of you listening might not connect with that word anger, but it could show up in other ways. We'll explore that, uh, the difference between anger and rage, which we kind of already explored, um, ways unprocessed anger shows up. Um, your relationship with anger and the social conditioning we might have around relating with our own anger, um, how to identify it, implosive versus explosive anger, why we repress anger and why anger is helpful and why we need it. These are just going to be some of the things we're going to explore and, uh, we're going to look at, uh, a kind of a process. That's what we have, um, is a process that can help you, um, connect and release your anger. That's what the episode is promising. So we're going to look at ways to connect and activate anger so we can get familiar with it, relate with it, and then look at ways to release the anger and then ways to soothe. Because we don't want to leave our nervous system in an activated state. We want to upregulate to work with our anger and then down regulate once we've completed our anger cycle. So that's going to be what we're going to explore. So maybe I'll start with you, Niall. You know, when you were in this energy of whatever we call it, people pleasing or not connecting with your anger, how were you connecting with aspects of anger? Like, was it irritation or like, maybe other words that you were. That you were connecting with where you could kind of recognize anger a bit?
• 8:38
  Speaker B: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think I would have said things like, I feel frustrated or irritated or, you know, like lower grade anger. Things that I didn't identify as anger but definitely were. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, for me, what part of what led me to this work was just. I just was starting to feel agitated, like, all the time. And, you know, in my younger days, before I had lots of built up anger and rage, I was pretty easygoing and laid back. But after decades of repressing it, I just started feeling agitated and irritated all the time. And I was, you know, just kind of like, what is going on? And then when I sort of encountered this work, I was like, oh, that. That's what was going on. I just had too much built up in my system and it was coming out kind of sideways at the wrong people.
• 9:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I never actually realized that, like, you know, growing up being highly sensitive and my nervous system being overstimulated a lot because of growing up in, like, environments where there was a lot of stimulus, my. And then there was a lot of unrepressed or a lot of repressed anger that was happening. So I have had a lot of body pain, body ache, allergies, feeling overstimulated a lot. So for me, it's like, anger can manifest as, like, it's an energy that wants to move out, and I don't let it move out. So I keep it in, and then it starts to do this inside my system. It starts to, like particles bouncing off of each other, and I get overstimulated. So I find, like, you know, just finding ways to release it, whether that's talking or screaming or connecting or punching a pillow or whatever, has really helped me move from some of these lower grade states of, like, yeah, overstimulated, agitated, whatever, into actually connecting with the full experience of anger. And, uh, it's been so healing for me. It's been tremendous.
• 10:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's. Yeah, same. It's really great.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker B: And honestly, like, my main pain symptom that led me to this work was, um, something called burning mouth syndrome, which was just intense pain in my mouth, on my tongue, specifically. Um, and I think it's. It's not a coincidence. You know, I think for me, it was a symptom of repressing anger and rage, but also just not having much of a voice, not using my voice. Um, and so that's been a big, big part of all of the work for me, is, again, just learning how to bring that up and out, get it out of my body.
• 11:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. In TCM, traditional chinese medicine, anger is held in the liver. That's what they believe. And it's hot. It's a hot emotion. And for myself, when I was. I remember when I was in my teens and into my twenties, I had horrible night sweats. I would get up in the middle of the night, and I would be soaked. My bed would be soaked. I'd have to lay towels down so I could go back to bed. And, uh, I'm now making that connection, like, right in this moment, that this was unprocessed stuff. It was just stirring in my system. I wasn't connecting with it, I was repressing it. And it starts to. Your. Your. The liver starts to carry too much heat, and then it's fine. It's. It, you know, you can't release it. So I remember taking things like peppermint oil in gel capsules and things like that to help cool my system. So there's definitely things that we can do that can help on that level. But I think, you know, obviously, your course in the system that you teach is really, like, a beautiful way to actually get to the epicenter of your anger so you don't have to keep repressing it. Was there any other ways that unprocessed anger was showing up for you, like.
• 12:12
  Speaker B: Besides through my body and agitation, I mean, I kind of think nothing is coming to mind. I mean, it definitely was impacting my relationships, and I feel like the agitation was, you know, like I said, coming out at people who didn't necessarily deserve it and that it wasn't necessarily about. And it wasn't like, it wasn't rage. It was just, you know, I just would get, like, pissy, you know, with people. And, you know, the partner that I was with for a long time would just be like, did I do something to upset you? And I'd have to kind of, like, check in and just be like, oh, is this about my partner? Or is this. Do I have something else going on here? Learning how to do that?
• 12:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm quite similar, and I want to maybe bring it on, like, a macro level instead of, like, the individual level. Like, how do we see it showing up? Unprocessed anger showing up in our community, the gay or queer community. Like, how do you see it showing up?
• 13:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, you see it on dating apps, for sure. I think you can see it out at bars a lot, too. Just out in queer spaces. I think similar. The rejection type stuff. People get upset about that. But I think also just so much of the judgment that I think everybody has, but I think the queer community has a slightly different flavor of just especially gay men in terms of how we're supposed to look and how we're supposed to act, and just a lot of judgment when people aren't doing the things that we, as queer men are, quote unquote, supposed to do. I do think a lot of that judgment comes from a fear place, but it's coming out as anger. And you should be doing this differently. You're not like us. You know, those sorts of things that a lot of us experience.
• 14:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:07
  Speaker B: How about you?
• 14:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would say, like, one that I see. And again, it's a little different for me. Um, and maybe people who are empaths, because I feel it in people's system. I'm an emotional empath, so I feel. I feel. I can feel anger in people's bodies, in their systems. I can feel it right here. Like, I think a lot of people. This is where you can tell if people have a lot of unprocessed anger for me, like, it manifests in this area. Yeah. So things like cattiness in our. In our community. Sarcasm is a big one. I think people that don't feel comfortable expressing anger and they've been shamed and they've been told that anger is not okay to express, I find that they tend to let it out in little, tiny things. So it could be sarcasm or passive aggressiveness, or for some people that don't even feel comfortable expressing it at all, it's implosive anger. So they turn it towards themselves. So that could look like self harm. Yeah. Self harming, suicidal thinking. Like self abuse. Maybe that's substance abuse, like, using drugs and alcohol. Maybe that's promiscuity. Like, really, at the end of the day, it can manifest very similar to shame. Right? Unprocessed shame or repressed shame. We act out, or we could. We could turn it towards ourselves. Um, and then explosive anger is, obviously, you're going to see this in the form of, like, directing. Right? Like, projecting. Directing our. Our anger towards other people and, uh, being, like, violent or aggressive, these sorts of things. So we have two different types of anger. And maybe that actually takes us to the next part of the conversation around, like, conditioning. Like, how were you conditioned when you were younger around anger? I'm curious about that for you.
• 15:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, yeah, and I think that that might be a little different for me than a lot of the listeners, just given that I'm trans and was socialized as a girl and so internalized a lot of those messages of, like, girls don't get angry. And I'm also the second born. And so I think a lot of us in that position just sort of. If you study birth order, the second born is usually the emotional balance in the family. And that was definitely true for me. My brother had more of the explosive anger, and I really internalized, like, okay, mom and dad have enough going on. They've got busy, chaotic lives. My brother's doing what he's doing. And so my job is just to not make any waves and just suck it up, figure out how to get along, and just do that. So that's kind of my main thing. And I think the internalization of so much chaos and anger and all of that really did wreak havoc on my body. I've had a number of sort of chronic health issues throughout my life, and I don't think that's a coincidence.
• 17:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. And it's. I value your perspective and the fact that you kind of have both perspectives now. Right. You're conditioning in childhood was one. One set of conditioning. And I'm wondering now, do you see that as different?
• 17:25
  Speaker B: You mean. You mean, like, in terms of what people expect of me?
• 17:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, in terms of, like, gender conditioning, really, when it comes to anger?
• 17:32
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think it's definitely more expected and acceptable and it's still not a super comfortable thing for me to like, outwardly express publicly. So a lot of the anger work I do is private, but I've gotten a lot better at being assertive about my needs and asking for my needs to be met and stating my needs and things like that. But, yeah, I mean, I think it is a lot more acceptable to just sort of riff about what you're upset about and, you know, to, to be bigger and more vocal about it when you're perceived as a man in the world versus, you know, because, because women are perceived as being bitchy and catty and whatever, if they're expressing anger, whereas men, it's just like, yeah, they're powerful or dominant or, you know, like, it's, it's just, it's more acceptable.
• 18:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting, I didn't actually reflect on this question myself, but your share helped me because we're quite similar actually. My conditioning when I was younger, I again, being highly sensitive, a sensitive little boy and empathic and I could feel what was going on in my family system. I turned off my stuff so I could tend to my environment and what was going on. And so I became more implosive. I had a lot of fucking anger. I was. And I still have anger in my system. Like I've been working with it for. Consciously now for probably like three years. And yeah, I was conditioned to turn it down and not, not express it because it would have created more chaos in my environment. And I chose to, yeah, just please. And, and, you know, I became addicted to drugs and alcohol. I started using drugs and alcohol at the age of eleven. So I became very implosive and I had a lot of unprocessed shame and I had a lot of anger around having, feeling like I had to hide who I was, you know, these sorts of things. So there was a ton of anger there. And, you know, it's interesting because anger expression in other people really activates me and I think if, if that's the case normally and I won't speak for everybody, but when I feel anger in somebody else, it's playing on the unprocessed anger in myself if I'm highly triggered by it, right? Like, if it's just like annoying, like this person's angry and I don't want to be around angry people, it's a little different. But if you're highly activated by someone else's expression of anger, it's likely that there's. There's unprocessed anger in yourself or in myself that I'm feeling that's being activated because I'm seeing it in somebody else.
• 20:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So, um. Okay, so maybe let's. Let's speak to the listener. Like, if the listener's wanting to get a sense of, like, how they could identify anger in themself, like, where would you say to start?
• 20:23
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think for folks who are really disconnected from their anger, just sort of looking at, do you feel tense, agitated, irritated? A lot? Are you kind of lashing out at people? Those sorts of things, you know, and also just, like, how do you feel physically? Do you feel like you're. I don't know, because I just. I feel like since I've been doing this work, my whole body is just more relaxed. I used to carry myself very tightly, but I didn't know it, and it was very, like, self protective. This sense of, like, I can just contain everything, then I'm safe. Then people aren't going to judge me. They're not going to criticize me. You know, I just have to, like, stay in this box. But that, I think, you know, again, just contributes to that, that agitation. It's like you're just pent up, literally. And so I think starting to look at those sorts of things and then maybe zooming out and looking at, what are my reasons for feeling anger? Because I think a lot of us, we try to bypass it, those of us who are people pleasers, because I was definitely someone who would just try to jump over it and just be like, that serves no purpose. I understand why this person did this hurtful thing to me, and I can just forgive them. I don't need to be angry with them. And so, you know, if you're someone who does a lot of that, you know, just looking at, what are you afraid of in terms of allowing yourself to feel the anger? Yeah, those are the things that are kind of coming to me. What. What about you? What would you say?
• 21:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, um, like, my hips is a big one. Like, if I'm speaking psychosomatically, like, my hips, I had the same experience as you. I didn't want my hips to sway, you know, like, I didn't want people to think I was gay, these sorts of things. So I became very rigid and stoic in the. In that. In that sense. And, um, ever since I've been doing the anger work, my hips have been moving more, and I've been doing, um, a process called structural integration. Rolfing which is a pract, a practice of the body where you are stripping fascia. And you're working with the fascia in a psychosomatic way. And, uh, like, it is a very much a body practice. Like, you're working with the body, but there's a very strong psychological component to it as well. You're releasing, um, emotional debris from the fascia in the body, which is where it's often contained. And I had a lot of this work done, and in the last, well, three months, and my hips are now, like, I was. I was walking yesterday, and I haven't been able to run for, oh, my God, like, years because I would get, like, bad hip and. And, uh, back pain. And, um, it's. I can now run and jog, like, lightly. And my hips are, like, moving. I'm like, oh, my God.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: Like, it's so exciting. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:06
  Speaker A: But I'm also connecting with shame around that. Like, I'm like, okay, this is interesting. My butt. My hips are moving, and there's shame around this. And that's part of the conditioning that I had around. Around this. So, anyway, that's one of the things. And then I would say, like, you know, I see this a lot. Like, speaking to the macro, the systemic level, I see this a lot in, like, online. It's such a, like, social media can be so toxic. Everybody's wanting to, like, argue. And, like, there's this keyboard warrior mentality thing where people are trying to cut people down. That would be, again, if you're somebody that needs to do that or create conflict with people or stir the pot online or in groups of people, these sorts of things, that would probably be a sign to me that there's some unprocessed emotion, likely anger or shame, that's stirring in your system and you're needing to connect with it outside yourself. Right. And maybe that's why we. We project onto people is because it gives us an opportunity to work with a part of ourselves on the screen in front of us, which is the other person, as opposed to having to go towards it within ourselves directly. And I've done that before, too. Like, I can stir a pot like the best of them, you know what I mean? And. But for me, when I know when I'm doing that, it's like I now have the conscious awareness to turn toward myself. Yeah, why am I doing this? Why am I wanting to poke the bear? You know, like, what's stirring inside of me? Because poking the bear, it will never allow you to connect with yourself. And it'll never allow you to release and heal. It just activates. That's it. And then you don't actually release and you don't soothe and go through the steps of, like, what you taught in your course. So, yeah, so, yeah, there's so many ways, honestly, we could go. We could do a whole episode just on how to identify and how anger expresses itself. But those are just a few that. That show up.
• 24:51
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And as you were talking, I was just thinking, like, my face will get really red and hot if I'm repressing something. Like, it's. Yeah, people can just read it on me. They're like, you're getting really red. I mean, and I just blush a lot anyway. I'm probably blushing now just talking about it, because that's what happens. But it's like, I can feel it when it's anger that I'm repressing, you know, that increased heart rate and the heat in my face. But, yeah, I mean, I know you're going down through the notes, but I think we're talking a lot about shame with the anger. And I do think anger is often the antidote to that shame. You know, really identifying who's made you feel shameful or what has made you feel shameful and releasing anger about that, because I think shame is sort of internalizing those negative messages, and when we can just get angry and get it out of our body, we carry a lot less shame.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: Yes. Amen. Yeah. They're basically like brothers, anger and shame, they're always hanging out together. You know what I mean? You're not often going to have one without the other, in my opinion.
• 25:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:58
  Speaker A: But oftentimes, I find anger is more elusive when. When you're in shame states. Like, and I do agree, it is. Getting angry is part of liberating from shame. And it's like, I'm angry at the conditioning that I got around. I'm not acceptable. I'm not lovable. Whatever it might have been. The anger is actually going to be the part of us that. That liberates us from that dark hole of shame. So I agree. Like, that's powerful. Anger work is probably one of the more powerful parts of my healing journey. Like, it's helped me tremendous.
• 26:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, same, same. Absolutely.
• 26:34
  Speaker A: Okay. Why do we repress anger from your opinion?
• 26:37
  Speaker B: Um, because it's bad, right? Like, we're taught, it's. It's bad, you're bad. If you express it, it's destructive, it's mean, it's hurtful. It's, um. It means that you're out of control. You know, I just think we are given a lot of messages about who expresses anger and what it means to express anger. Yeah. What would you add to that?
• 27:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, same thing. But I think I go back to being young, and if I did have an emotional outburst, I was shamed and scolded. And you're creating more problems for me. Right. Your mother, father might say, and it's like you're so it's easy in a state of anger to be emotionally invalidated. Right. Because anger is an emotion that people don't want to work with. They don't want to be around it. It feels like a lot for them.
• 27:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: Right. So I think that, you know, and one thing is, it's like, yes, anger is important, but it is a secondary emotion. So there's always something that's going to be underlying anger. Right. Sadness, hurt, fear, these sorts of things. So if we can get better at being more, like, emotionally literate and talking about our emotions, maybe we have to have less expressions of anger, which pushes people away, and we can have more expressions of vulnerability and, you know, sharing that we're hurt or we're sad about something that's come up for us. But I do think that we, as a culture, can get better at both, like, tolerating people's expressions of anger and helping them work with it. But I also think we need to be mindful of not turning it, letting it build up and turning it into rage, because rage is something that becomes harmful. We say things we don't mean, like, these sorts of things, whereas anger can actually be expressed in a healthy way, and we can talk about, uh, our anger. Um, so I do think that, you know, there's the conditioning that most of us carry is probably going to be around. Like, anger is not good. Keep anger at bay. You know, don't show people that you're angry, these sorts of things.
• 28:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 28:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. Um. All right, let's shift the conversation into why it's helpful. Let's, uh. Let's let the listener and viewer into our worlds and, like, how angerwork has really helped us and why it can be really beneficial. I think we've already touched a little bit on it, but what's. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say, you know, anger work can be helpful? Why do we need it?
• 28:56
  Speaker B: Again, just because you. You feel better if you do it? But I think. I mean, I think we should get into a little bit. I think this relates to why we have anger. Like, what is the purpose of anger. And I think anger helps us set boundaries. It helps us know when a boundary has been crossed. Sometimes it can keep us safe, sometimes, you know, because it can be protective if we do need to actually defend ourselves in a situation. But, yeah, I mean, the main benefits to me have been the physical health benefits, but also the mental health benefits. Just feeling more, you know, like I said, I used to, I thought I was a very laid back, chill guy. And now I think I actually am. Like, I don't, like, I'm able to get that stuff out and that helps me be someone who's able to go with the flow but also able to express my opinion. Whereas before I felt like I just had to go with the flow and not express an opinion which goes in with, goes on, goes along with the people pleasing stuff. Yeah, yeah. What about you? What's your main reason for finding benefit to this work?
• 30:07
  Speaker A: Why anger work is helpful? There was something that you said at the beginning, and now I lost it. I can't remember what the heck it was, though.
• 30:19
  Speaker B: Purpose of anger? I don't know.
• 30:22
  Speaker A: Oh, that's what it was. So unmet needs. So I teach in my work three pillars. And it really is the three pillars of everything in personal development, truly, you can relate it to any of them. The first pillar, and it kind of works linear too. So you move from one step to the other, but you can always be moving around them. So you're going to have emotions being the first pillar. You're going to have needs being the second pillar. And you're going to have boundaries being the third pillar. And one informs the next. So when we feel our emotions, they are data rich. They're going to be giving us constantly data about our environment, about what we're feeling about, like you said, a boundary that might be being violated. Maybe there's an unmet need. So the need is going to always be attached to the emotion. So we have to first be feeling, right. So if we feel anger, we get data and it's like, okay, I'm disappointed right now. I'm not feeling comfortable being vulnerable about my disappointment, so I'm going to move into anger. That's where I feel comfortable. Okay, so what we, what we realize that there's disappointment and the disappointment is maybe there's an unmet need. So we move to the next pillar. We have data that there's an unmet need. We start to get curious about what this need might be. And then we can start to either make a request or set a boundary, which moves us to the next pillar, which is setting boundaries and, like, making requests, getting our needs met, finding right. So boundaries are going to be the things that we use to make sure we set up our environment and our relationships in a way that we get our needs met. And I think that's really, at the end of the day, like, you know, why anger is helpful and why we need it? We could replace the word anger with emotions, why emotions are important, why we need to be feeling. Because if we're not feeling, we're not getting the data. We need that data. We need it. It's important for. For us to. In order for us to get our needs met and set boundaries. So I just think that's. That's, for me, that's the biggest thing, and part of being a people pleaser for myself is I was dissociated. I was. I wasn't connected to my emotions. So I have a long period of time in my life where I didn't. I didn't have a sense of self. I wasn't connected to myself. And you have to be feeling your emotions and connecting to your needs in order to have a sense of self. So my sense of self was stunted and delayed up to a certain point when I started to feel again, bringing my emotions back online. I do think anger will. Feeling our anger will contribute to our sense of self, and it. And our sense of self can feel more empowered when we're feeling our emotions.
• 32:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think you and I are very similar in that way in terms of, you know, I think I approach the world, you know, in the sense of, like, as long as I can make sure you're happy and you're comfortable, then I will feel safe. So I had to be very disconnected and very checked out from my own wants and needs. Um, and really, I really believe, like, as long as everybody else is happy, then I'm good. I don't. I don't care where we go for dinner, where we, you know, what we choose about this situation. As long as you're happy, I'm happy. Um, but again, it's just. That's just another sign of repression, you know? Yeah. And that goes back to one of your earlier questions. But just not having a sense of your own likes and desires and wants and needs, it's a. A very clear sign of repressed. Repressed a lot of things, but definitely repressed anger.
• 33:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. I still have moments where I'm like, what do I need right now? Like, I'm. I spend so much of my life disconnected from my needs that I. I'm still. I'm in this, like, a rebirth right now of, like, really, actually truly learning what it is I need and want in life, my desires. Like, there's. There's still a big learning that I'm going through right now, and I'm still meeting anger and rage, even, like, it's still there, and I'm still. But I have healthy, you know, like, tools and skills that I can use to connect with it. So, yeah, it's definitely been helpful. I think the, you know, the hyper fixation on external world is such. It's such a trauma response because when we're younger and we grow up in chaotic homes and especially being an empath and feeling everything, it was like, how can I get my needs met? Well, the first need we have as children is safety. To feel safe. If our. If our environments are chaotic and we turn our feelings off so we're not needing anything. Right. We turn our needs off. So then that way, we're just tending to the people around us, making sure they feel safe so we can feel safe. And then all of our needs beyond safety go unmet. Right. It's. It's. I see this a lot. I see this a lot. And it's a big contributor to codependency for a lot of people. It's a hyper fixation on the other as a way to feel soothing, like yourself. So, yeah, lots of. Lots of stuff that in this area that we could. We could take it in so many directions, I find.
• 35:05
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 35:06
  Speaker A: Topic. Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 35:10
  Speaker A: All right, let's talk a bit about exploring anger. So let's maybe start with some of the challenges that you've had around exploring anger.
• 35:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. Me personally or in my work, I.
• 35:21
  Speaker A: Guess I'd love to hear both personal and professional.
• 35:24
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, like, the hardest part for me was just actually acknowledging that I was experiencing anger and then learning how to, like, stay with it, you know, because I had sort of programmed myself, like I said, to just sort of jump over it, try to bypass it. Just that sense of, I don't need anger. It doesn't solve any problems. And I get that feedback a lot with clients who, like, just are very resistant to starting this type of work. I also hear a lot of people say, well, but if I. If I tap into that. That anger, it won't stop. It'll just, like, keep coming. Like, well, if that's your sense, then you really need to do this work. But. But people get afraid of their own anger. Just the sense of, I'm going to get out of control. I'm going to hurt somebody. I'm going to say something that I regret. And so that's where I think, you know, getting into what exactly do we mean by anger work is important because we're, I'm not talking, and I don't think you're talking about, like, you should just yell at people if you're upset with, you know, it's, it's not that we're not saying, like, every time somebody makes you angry, you need to tell them and in a forceful way. But, yeah, we'll get into that in a second. I want to hear your response first.
• 36:42
  Speaker A: Did you answer both personal and professional?
• 36:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think professionally, it's just I hear a lot of, like, I won't be able to turn it off if I start to let it out. And I'm worried that I'm going to say something I regret or hurt somebody in some kind of way. That, that wasn't really my fear, just. Yeah, because I trust myself not to direct it at other people and I have the skills and resources, but that's what I hear a lot from people and it's just incorrect. I've never had that happen when somebody is working with me and processing their anger and releasing it in the ways that we talk about and that we will talk about in session because again, we're not telling people go and start screaming at people if they don't do what you want. You know, it's, yeah, it's more of a private process.
• 37:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. Anger, anger displaced or exploded onto people will just perpetuate the place that the anger is coming from within. So if it's coming from hurt, disappointment, fear, making somebody else angry and projecting your anger onto them will likely throw more salt on the wound of where the anger is coming from, my opinion. So we want to connect with anger either with a safe person or within our, within ourselves, which, again, we'll talk about after. But, yeah, so much resistance, so much resistance to doing this work for, for people, like with clients and stuff. It's like, oh, I hear all the time, I'm not an angry person.
• 38:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:07
  Speaker A: You know, and I just think anger for a lot of people feels like out of control, and a lot of people don't want to feel out of control. And so people that are highly avoidant, they have an avoidant attachment style. Like, anger is not something that they're going to go towards because it's too. So it's like, almost like engage.
• 38:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 38:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Right. Whereas I find somebody that more on the anxious side of the spectrum will tend to find it easier for them to connect more with anger. But it tends to show up more as in like disappointment or irritated with people because their needs are going unmet, these sorts of things, but yeah. And then personally, what was the question again? The challenges of exploring anger for myself, being still enough, probably. Honestly, one of my coping mechanisms with not feeling is like doing so. I'll scroll, I'll eat, I'll walk around my house, I'll go for walks or runs or these sorts of things. And I just. So getting still enough to be with my anger is probably been the greatest challenge for me. And then I find that there's this notion of forcing. So if it's like, yeah, let's do anger work, let's sit down and do anger work, you can't force it. You can't force yourself to get angry. You can't force yourself to feel anything really, at the end of the day. So it's like creating space in your life for there to be opportunity to be still, to be more in that beingness, energy. So when I did this work, I think it was like a two month window where I took your course and I was like really working on this stuff. I made space in my life. I was taking a bit of time on the weekends to do the course. And then I'd make sure I had like four or 5 hours after that to just chill and be with myself. Like, that's the biggest thing I think, is creating the space for there to be time to do the work. And it will emerge. It will emerge, but oftentimes it won't emerge because we're too busy. So.
• 40:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I know. I think you're right. And like, I hear a lot of people talk about how it feels kind of silly to do or self indulgent in a way, or like, if you're not comfortable with the emotion, you don't want to try to feel it. So, yeah, I hear a lot of like, oh, that. Is that really gonna make me feel better? That seems stupid, you know? Yes, it. I really will just try it, I swear. Yeah, you have to lose.
• 40:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's really only things to gain from it, like more peace in the body. And I also find, like, if for people that are ruminators, they ruminate a lot or they have insomnia, they can't sleep at night because their mind is just spinning. I find like unprocessed emotion is like gas, gasoline to like the wheel of the mind that's just spinning. Right. So the more unprocessed emotions we have, the more fuel we have to feed the mind to chew on stuff. Right. So as we release unprocessed emotions, the brain. Well, I find for me, it's been like the brain will still be on that automatic, but it won't be. It won't be chewing on the emotions. So once the emotions have been purged, the mind just spins a bit, but then all of a sudden, the mind will have this moment where it's like, wait, there's nothing left to spin on. And it starts to soften, it starts to settle, and the mind doesn't become as ruminative. At least that's been my process. It's been been helpful. So anger work has really helped with overthinking and ruminating?
• 41:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
• 41:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. What are some other benefits of doing anger work?
• 41:37
  Speaker B: Along the lines of what you were just saying? I think it does help you solve the problem if there's a problem that needs to be solved, like, once you get the anger out, you can think more clearly about, okay, what do I want to do about the situation? This person really upset me. This is someone I have to see every day. I release the anger and rage about them, about the situation. Now, how do I want to address it? And I think we're a lot more skillful in doing those things when we're working with our emotions and releasing them along the way. Um, I find that it really does, you know, like, if I'm struggling about a particular situation, if I do some anger work or journaling to kind of release some of what's going on for me, that is when my brain starts to go, oh, yeah, and there's something you can do about this, and this is what it is. Whereas when you're just stuck in the emotion, you're like, you're usually. Because, as you said before, anger is often a secondary emotion, and what the primary emotion is often fear or pain. And so when we're just in the anger, it's always accompanied by that fear place. And when we're in that fear place, we have that sense of like, oh, but if I do this, you know, this person might reject me or they might not like me, or, you know, there might be some negative consequence. But when we're dealing with the anger and releasing that, the fear tends to get released as well. And so, again, we can become regulated, and from that place, we know we can just. We become more empowered and more grounded and more centered and can figure out how we want to show up in life and how we want to deal with any given situation.
• 43:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well said. Yeah, I can say yes to pretty much everything you just said. If I were to add to it, I would probably say, for me, well, I'm just even content, like, thinking back to the work that I did with your course. Like, I did so much anger work. My inner child was pissed because of the things that I had to experience. So anger work for me was inner child work. And I met. I met compassion. Once the anger was discharged, I met compassion for my parents, and I met understanding and forgiveness. And that was huge for me because I was holding on to so much stuff around that, and because of the way I was holding on to it, it was implosive. There was an aspect of me that I was angry at myself. I didn't like myself. So for me, anger work has helped me find compassion for myself. It's helped me find, like, love for myself and. Yeah, so it's really changed my relationship with me and then my relationships. Like, I find, too, that whenever I do anger work, like animals and people are really drawn to me because I'm freeing my heart of the heaviness, and it's open and there's an expansive, resonant energy. And so, like, I remember when I had big releases from the work I did, I would go out and people would be drawn to me. They would want to, like, be around me or, like, animals. Like, I had a bumblebee on my finger one time. Like, I just find, like, you know, so when our heart's healing, we're actually more. More unified with whatever. Whatever you believe in consciousness or nature or whatever that might be. It's powerful. Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:02
  Speaker B: Yeah. No, I think you're right. You, like, we feel. We look and feel more vibrant, more alive, more approachable, energetic, compassionate, all of those things.
• 45:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, totally. Okay, let's teach the process because we're going to wind down here. But so we have a three step process, and it comes from. From your course. Actually, why don't we. Why don't you just talk about your course now, share a little bit about what the course is so people have an idea, and then we'll teach the steps after that. So.
• 45:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, sorry. So the course is about healing from chronic pain and symptoms, but it's really applicable to a lot of conditions, really anything stress based. So I've worked with people who are working through, like, IB's type symptoms, erectile dysfunction type issues, just even anxiety and depression. This work helps all of it. But the main focus is healing from chronic pain and symptoms. And so, yeah, my colleague and I who developed the course have pulled from a number of different processes, a number of different sort of philosophies and strategies, and sort of combine them all. We haven't necessarily invented anything or created anything ourselves directly, but we both have healed from our own chronic pain and just read tons of books, listened to tons of podcasts, went to a bunch of trainings, and just tried to combine some of the best resources to just make it easier than what we had to go through. So, anyway, the anger work, the emotions based work, comes from a woman named Nicole Sachs, who studied under a doctor named John Sarno, who discovered in the fifties and sixties that a lot of chronic pain and health conditions seem to be related to trauma and repressed emotions. And at that time, of course, people thought he was a quack, but the people going to him were like, yeah, but this works. And I thought it sounded like nonsense when I started it, too, but, like, right away I started to feel some physical relief. And so I was like, all right, there's clearly something to this. So anyway, that's where the course comes from. But the anger work. Yeah, there's three main steps. So the main process is a journaling process, but it's not like your average. Dear Diary, I'm really upset at this thing my dad did when I was five. It's like really getting straight into the emotion. And so if you're someone who. Someone who might be angry at something their dad did at age five. So, again, moving away from I'm angry about this to like, fuck you, dad, for punishing me in this way, or for scaring me when I was only five years old, or for neglecting me, abandoning me, you know, just like, getting straight into it and releasing the direct emotion. And so the process involves, like, the starting point for a lot of people, is just coming up with three lists of things that you could journal about. And the lists are all of your past traumas, childhood, adulthood, just any past trauma, your daily stressors. And that could be just anything from your job to bills you have to pay to getting cut off in traffic today, just day to day kind of stressors. And the personality traits that lead to people having chronic pain and symptoms. And so those tend to be things like people pleasing perfectionism, having a harsh inner critic, stoicism, stuff like that. And the reason behind it is that when we're engaging in those personality traits, we're repressing a lot, and we're also putting a lot of pressure on our systems, and we're basically putting a lot of fear into our system. So people who are perfectionists often have this sense of, yeah, but perfectionism helps me be successful. It helps me get ahead in life. It helps me get things done. But what we know about putting pressure and stress on our systems, we have data to show us this, is that we're actually significantly less effective when we're feeling stressed. And perfectionism also has that sense of, like, just sort of looking for the ways that you fucked up. You know, you're just like, sort of scanning to look for the ways that you sucked at something.
• 49:32
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:33
  Speaker B: And so again, it just puts a lot of pressure and stress on our systems. And so starting to journal about, like, where and why you developed those traits, that tends to be the deepest work, in my opinion. Usually people start with the past traumas, kind of the most obvious ones first, but then getting into, like, maybe some of the attachment traumas or some of the messaging you got as a kid that was harmful. You know, not necessarily. I was in a bike accident or, you know, I was attacked or assaulted or, you know, not necessarily like, the big things that we think of as trauma. It could just be, yeah, I had a. A parent that was pretty checked out and not really tuned into me as a kid and starting to look at the impact and getting angry about that, just like, fuck you, mom and dad. Where were you? Why didn't you notice that this was going on for me? Why didn't you protect me from an older sibling that may have been abusive in some way? Really letting yourself tap into that rather than this is just the way life is. So anyway, the first step is, you know, coming up with those lists and then beginning to journal about it. Not everybody likes journaling, and so it doesn't have to be the journaling, but that just tends to be the easiest and most accessible way for people. But other ways you could do it would be exercise. But the thing about exercise, because you were talking before about running, and I think a lot of people do things like running and weightlifting to try to release some of that energy. And it's successful to a point. It may, like, keep you from boiling over, but unless you're actually pairing it with what you're angry about, you're just kind of releasing the, like, the surface level energy.
• 51:21
  Speaker A: Can I say something about that? Because I had an experience with this that is actually really important. Doing the personality traits from your course, I realized that I was in, like, you know, perfectionism and highly critical of myself. And people pleasing and these things. And it was a manifestation of my nervous system. System. So those things showed me that I was in fight or flight or fawn. Right. And I was driving myself forward, which is why I've been going through burnout and I've been going through depression, is because I've been healing being in fight or flight for so long. But I think people that tend to be more in a freeze response, which is very different than fight or flight. Right. Those people have to be activated out of freeze. So running might be good for somebody who's highly depressive or in freeze mode just to get things going. Maybe you're not going to go for a run, just getting up and moving your body or doing ten jumping jacks to get the system going. So it depends on, like, probably where you're at and your course does a good job with that, of, like, really helping people understand where they're at and their. Their baselines and things. So I think that would depend for me for sure on what activated. Yeah.
• 52:30
  Speaker B: Right. No, and you're absolutely right. To get out of freeze, you literally have to activate your system's fight or flight response. And so exercise can be a good way to do that. But again, you really have to be pairing it with what you're angry about.
• 52:43
  Speaker A: Totally.
• 52:44
  Speaker B: Just get that out. Yeah. So anyway, that's the first stage, you know, just releasing it, like identifying what's going on, then going through some sort of process. Whether it's journaling exercise, it could be like punching a pillow or it could be yelling. I've done a fair amount of just yelling in my car, which the first couple times I did it, I was so self conscious. But then I was just. It was like, beginning of COVID I was like, there's not even anybody on the road to see me looking like a weirdo yelling in my car. But it feels good, especially for people who have really silenced themselves over the years to, like, let yourself just yell. It's like, oh, did that just come out of me, that type of work? I've got a young kid and so sometimes I'll take her pink wiffle bat. I feel like a real badass when I do this. Go to town on my bed or a pillow or something. You could punch a pillow. Just use a pillow to hit something. Chopping wood is really good. Or going to the batting cages, stuff like that. So something to get it out. And then the end point would be to do something to soothe your nervous system because obviously that's going to be really dysregulating. To get all of that emotion up and out. And so you want to really take the time afterwards, because, as you said, when we're repressing rage, we're in a dysregulated state. Whether it's fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, it's dysregulated. And so the end game of all of this is to get to a regulated state. And so we have to teach our nervous systems how to be more regulated. And so it would be following it up either with some sort of meditation or just listening to soothing music or maybe going for a walk or taking a bath, just whatever is soothing to you. Um, just to really help your, your system come down.
• 54:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Beautiful description. I want to recap the three things. So three steps. These will be in the show notes, and I'm also going to put a link to Nile's course. So the step one is connect and activate. So you're turning towards your, your anger. You're turning towards your emotion, whatever it might be. Number two is you're going to release. Number three is you're going to soothe. Okay, so those, like I said, those will be in the show notes. Um, yeah, this is exciting. I just know for me how liberating this work can be, and I want to strongly encourage people to move towards it. And maybe some, maybe we can just end off with some lessons that we may have learned in doing this work, like, maybe something that we could pass on to the listener viewer that might, like, help them learn. Because I know, like, some, some of the work I've done in the, in, on the healing journey, I've developed a lot of scar tissue because I took the long, hard way, and I'm like, oh. And then I learned maybe a shortcut that somebody could have taken or whatever. So is there anything that you would want to maybe leave the listener viewer with?
• 55:40
  Speaker B: I mean, I want to say, just try it, you know? Because, again, back to the resistance that we've both experienced from people that we work with. For me, it's always been, you know, resistance, resistance, resistance. Then they finally do it, and they are like, why didn't I do this six months ago when you first started talking to me about this? So I would say that, like, if you're someone who thinks that you might benefit from this, just try it. There's really nothing to lose. But also, I think just having a lot of compassion for yourself through this, you know, because sometimes people start to turn the anger inwards. And so when that happens, it's really important to one look at, you know, why you feel that way about yourself and then get angry about that. Who taught you that you should be feeling angry towards yourself? And then, yeah, bringing in that self compassion, honestly, that's kind of the end game of the whole process. But I don't like to lead with that, because then people, they're like, you've lived in Boulder county for too long, and you're just telling me I just have to love myself. I'm like, yes. And because it just takes the pressure off of our system, and it gets the fear out of our system. You know, when you're able to just. Just, like, put your hand on your heart and just say, okay, buddy, you're feeling upset today, and it makes sense. You just went through a really hard situation, and this person that you were engaging with said something really terrible to you, and of course you're upset, and it makes sense. And it's okay for you to kind of let this out and get this out of your system rather than turning it inward.
• 57:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. For me, it would be this whole notion of victimhood. I think there's so much resistance to going to this place because I don't want to feel like a victim. I don't want to re victimize myself. Why would I want to say, fuck you, dad, and write this stuff out? But victimhood is actually done when done consciously. It's a very important part of the healing journey, especially with trauma, if we've been victimized, because sometimes a trauma response can be close off, dissociate. No one can ever get to me, no one can hurt me. And we go into this really kind of self protective mode, which is what I did. And so, like, having to go back to that place of feeling young and feeling victimized and being angry about that. So victimhood actually was important, right? Very important. Victimhood is when unconsciously projected onto people or imploded, and we're not actually willing to work with it. It can be really toxic, and it can keep us stuck. But conscious victimhood, where we move towards it deliberately and intentionally. Intentionally can be very healing and very important. A part of the healing journey through anger. So that's. That would be my thing, is, like, don't be, you know, don't be afraid to go into that victim energy and be in it, and. Because that's the place where we can discharge and release from.
• 58:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice.
• 58:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. Lots of good stuff. I'm sure we could probably do a part two of this and still have enough to talk about because there's a lot of stuff here. Yeah, but, yeah. Anything. Any final parting comments?
• 58:49
  Speaker B: One thing I just thought of, like if somebody is engaging in the journaling process and feeling afraid to do it, the idea is that you would delete or destroy the journaling when you're done because a lot of people have this sense of what if somebody comes along and read this? And also that sense of but I have to write out the backstory first. But you don't. You know the backstory. There's no future audience. This is just to get it out. It's not reflective journaling. You actually don't want to go back and reread it later because you don't want to put that anger and emotion back in your system. If you have insights from the process, make note of those if you want to hang on to that. But otherwise it's just destroy it when you're done and then go on to the nervous system soothing part.
• 59:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just want to thank you again for coming on again. I'm sure you'll be on again. Creating with you is so natural and organic and easy. I just love it. It feels like we just. Yeah, it's amazing. So thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom with us. And the link to your. What's your course name? What's the name of the course again?
• 59:55
  Speaker B: So our business name is heal your chronic pain, but the course itself is the pain free pathway. And we also have a community that's, that's sort of under the heal your chronic pain umbrella that people can join to ask us questions and things like that.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, perfect. So that'll be in the show notes as well as the three steps we talked about in some of our ideas that we put below in there. And yeah, for those of you who are just listening to us for the first time on the podcast, come and join us in the private Facebook group gay men's Brotherhood on Facebook, where we have about 8500 guys that are wanting to do this work, wanting to be on the personal development path and heal and do anger work and these sorts of things. So it can be an inspiring community. And if you're watching on YouTube, please leave a comment. Leave us a comment. Ask us a question. Tell us about your experience with anger or rage, maybe how you see it showing up in yourself or in the community. We'd love to hear from you. And if you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, please give us a review, preferably five stars. If you enjoyed what you heard today and actually write a review for us because we, it really helps us. It bumps us up in the rankings, and it gets our information, our guest information, into the ears and eyes of the people who need it. So it's really important if you can do that for us. That would be greatly appreciated. And until next time, much love, everybody. Bye.