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What's the Emotional Age of Your Anger? (with Alistair Moes) · Evolutionary Men

0:00
Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everybody.
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I am super pumped today to be joined by a very special guest.
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Alistair Moose has run Moose anger Management for 31
0:13
years
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and leads a team of multiple therapists who have worked with over 15,000
0:20
men and women.
0:22
Alistair focuses on helping people reconnect with what truly matters
0:27
to his clients and draws on neuroscience and the way emotions resonate throughout
0:33
the body across generations.
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Through his work, people return to their core values and become more
0:42
fully themselves.
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He works online with people worldwide and works with individuals, couples.
0:50
And his anger management groups start every four weeks.
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He started facilitating those groups in 1995.
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And our paths have kind of crossed in a somewhat circuitous way where we've both met
1:04
each other's wives and we know of each other, but this is kind of our first time
1:08
really coming together.
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And I've just been watching him and what he's up to online for many years now and
1:14
have always been very impressed and thought, I got to get this guy on the show.
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He's been in the trenches doing some really powerful work for a long time.
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So welcome, Alistair.
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So good to have you here.
1:27
Alistair Moes: Well, thank you for inviting me on the show.
1:30
Really appreciate it.
1:33
Jason Lange: Yeah.
1:33
And, you know, there's so much we could talk about here today.
1:38
And we were even just talking a little bit
1:41
before I hit record and
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tell.
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Tell people a little bit about how you kind of got into the work and.
1:48
Yeah.
1:48
What you've been up to these.
1:50
These last 31 years.
1:51
Alistair Moes: Yeah.
1:51
So back at the end of 1994,
1:56
just to date myself,
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I.
2:00
I just had a random networking conversation with somebody who asked me to run an
2:05
anger management,
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you know, group for them,
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and.
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Which forced me to start my own company.
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And
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when they asked me, I.
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I said over the phone with absolute confidence.
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Yeah, totally.
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I could do that.
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Like, absolute confidence.
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And after I put the phone down, I'm like, how do I do that?
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But I'd been working in the field for six years by that time, and I'm, you know,
2:35
knew actually how to do that apparently.
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And that kept on growing over the years.
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I did tons of other jobs and addictions and supervising counselors that
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worked with street kids and tons of programs.
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Worked as a social worker for about four months once
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and.
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And ended up just slowly growing in the business until I left everything else
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behind.
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And now I've been doing this for a lot of years.
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There's 10 therapists with us.
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And,
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you know, when I first started doing this work,
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it fairly quickly came to my attention that the role models I had growing up didn't
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have anger management very dialed in.
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So I did not have anger management really dialed in.
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I was too nice.
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It would all build up and then I'd freak out
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and lose it.
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And,
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you know, I spent the 80s bartending and managing bars, which had its own impact.
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Wow.
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Jason Lange: And
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Alistair Moes: yeah, so it
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became obvious to me that I needed a lot of work on myself, but I
3:53
welcomed that.
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And
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all these years later, I continued to attend training and do group and individual
4:01
breath work and attend therapeutic groups and all, all sorts of stuff.
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So
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I like this work because there's always more to learn.
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And
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I'm curious
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by nature,
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which is not true for the majority of my family.
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There are things that got passed down to me through the generations that were
4:30
suboptimal, let's just say some of it around alcohol and drugs and things like that,
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and some of it just around.
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I come from a family with generations of just not talking about things.
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Like things would be blowing up and getting smashed.
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And the next morning, when I was a little kid, everybody just act like nothing
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happened.
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Which as a kid I'm like, awesome.
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This is the way the world works.
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But then when I became an adult and people held me accountable, I was
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horrified.
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Like, what are you doing?
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We're supposed to just pretend like nothing happened.
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And so it took me time to figure that out and, and
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really just to grow up because I didn't have a lot of emotional maturity
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when I was younger
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and.
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Yeah, and, you know, some bad things happen along the way that kind of, you know,
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threw me off course.
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And so I've been doing a lot ever since to
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help myself and also
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working with other men.
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And
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a lot of the guys can relate to what I talk about, about my experience
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and,
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and that brings people to acknowledge their own stuff.
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And I think
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so many of us, like my dad grew up, just keep it all in, never
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let anything out.
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And in the groups,
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guys just open up more and more and more.
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Not all of them, but
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most people just do it because it feels comfortable
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and it's an invitation.
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It's not
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anybody telling them to open up.
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I had a 79 year old in one of my groups earlier this year
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and he says to the guys,
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and there's guys from every age and every background, rich, poor,
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you name it.
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Sometimes it looks like the United nations in there and the 79 year old says,
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if you told me two years ago
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that I'd be going to an anger management
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class
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and that I would be going to counseling,
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loving it, I would have called you an idiot.
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Probably Worse than that.
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But the truth is, I love it.
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My wife isn't leaving me now, so that's good.
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And we get a long way better and life is more enjoyable.
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And so he was inspiring everybody in the group.
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So I love stuff like that.
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Like, I live for things like that,
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and I get to witness that in every group in
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multiple ways.
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So I feel
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gratitude, shall we say?
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Jason Lange: Yeah,
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that's so great.
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And that has me curious.
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There's a little thread there.
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Question for you.
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What's something about anger
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that you believed back 31 years ago when you first got that
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invitation that maybe you don't believe anymore?
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Like, how's your understanding or concept or.
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Alistair Moes: Well, when I was growing up, anger was really scary.
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Even my mom.
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My mom was only about 5 foot 1 and my dad was like 6 3.
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She was the one that was angry.
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She was the one in control.
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And
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as a little kid, anger scared me.
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And so I didn't really learn what to do with anger.
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And it just seemed like
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it wasn't a good thing.
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But anger has this beautiful life energy in it.
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And when we're stuck, when we're in a position that
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things aren't getting resolved and it's building up in us,
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anger, if we relate to it in a healthy manner, can help us
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get focused and put energy in
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a direction that is healing and helpful and expansive.
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Or, of course, when people call me, they've had the blinders on and
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have been really escalated and things are all or nothing super dramatic.
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Feels like the end of the world
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and they've blown up.
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And then they give me a call.
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Sometimes people ask, well, what's it like dealing with all these angry guys and
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women?
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And I go, well, by the time they call me, usually they're feeling shame.
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They're not feeling anger.
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They might still have anger in them for sure.
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We all do.
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But it's like, this isn't me,
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right?
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Healthy shame.
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And
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so every big shift in the history of the world started with anger.
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Whether we're talking about civil rights or all sorts of things with politics,
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human rights, racism.
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Gandhi probably kind of pissed off of the British occupying India way back when, but
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he did something that was nonviolent, it was very intelligent, very well thought
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out, and changed the world.
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And most of us aren't after changing the world, but
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making it so that after we've addressed a difficult conflict,
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we feel like, I did the best I could.
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Maybe it went my way, maybe it didn't go my way.
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You can tell that some maturity was involved when it doesn't go your way and you
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remind yourself it's not the end of the world,
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it's not always going to go your way, and that's okay.
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So there you go.
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Anger can serve us well.
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And
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we need to access anger in our relationships so that we speak
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up.
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Like, anger
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expressed wisely and with a connection to your heart creates more space
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for love because things get resolved or
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potentially resolved, whereas when people avoid those things.
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And I've met with couples where they've never argued and it's like, oh, that's not a
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good sign
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because, you know, I've met with couples where they're going through divorce, they
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never argued, but things built up and then one cheated on the other and
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things need to be resolved.
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Jason Lange: Yeah.
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And I mean, I think you named certainly a pattern I've experienced and seen in many
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men I work with and that I think, you know, is really all that a lot of men in
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default culture know, which is either my over, my anger over, well, overwhelms me,
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right.
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And it comes out literally the blow up or I stuff it, stuff it, stuff
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it disconnects.
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And then resentments or frustrations or all kinds even, you know, autoimmune stuff
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can start to come up, you know, with guys I've worked with when they haven't
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expressed that 100%.
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And I work with a lot of, you know, I consider myself so called nice guys.
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Right.
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And anger goes,
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it's right hand in hand with
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the challenge of a nice guy to like you said, express directly something that may
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create confrontation or tension,
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but when we don't do
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leads to so much frustration.
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Right.
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And
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my family was a little bit like yours.
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Nothing was really talked about.
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As I became a teenager, my parents started kind of getting on the rocks and
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eventually divorced.
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And my dad's anger would come out, but all I ever saw was huge movements of
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anger and no change in behavior.
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Yeah, just right.
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Just kind of more like complaining anger, maybe you'd put it.
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And so I internalized something on top of my own nervous system.
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It was just like, what the fuck's the point?
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Right?
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It's not going to change anything.
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And I've had to like work really hard to unwind that over a few
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decades of the type of work we got connected through and men's work in general of.
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Yeah.
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When I'm not angry,
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when I'm not allowing myself to bring my anger forward in relationships that matter
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the most to me,
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I'm actually neglecting the relationship in our connection in myself.
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Alistair Moes: Yeah, you're neglecting yourself first, and that impacts the relationship with
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everybody in your life,
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kids
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especially.
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Jason Lange: Yeah.
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And so I do a lot of shadow work with guys, and so I have my own stories about this.
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But I'm curious you named right.
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You know, by the time guys sometimes get to me, it's not that they're necessarily in
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an angry state, but they're in a state of maybe shame.
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And you know, you talk about in your work and your social media and your site that
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you work with all this stuff underneath,
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what's often going on?
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You know, obviously you work with a huge range of people, but what are some of the
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common things you end up working with in clients that might surprise people that
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you're dealing with in an anger management
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context?
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Alistair Moes: You know, one of the things that
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we do in the first session of the group is go through a lot of physiology and
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talk about the neuroscience, about what happens in your brain and your body
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when things escalate and why
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if we escalate enough, we lose connection with our heart, we lose connection
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with our gut, the, our emotional intelligence, and certainly our higher reasoning
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part of the brain goes offline if we escalate enough, even the part of our brain
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that develops memory can get choppy or blackout.
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Even without alcohol.
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Of course with alcohol, even more so.
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But
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when people come back for session number two,
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all I said at the end of session number one, because we went through all this stuff,
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is over the next week, just notice
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what happens in your body.
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The constriction in the chest, the feeling in the solar plexus, your gut, your
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shoulders,
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the grinding the teeth or clenching the jaw, which is usually about anger,
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the overwhelm in the forehead.
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And notice these things and the moment your thoughts become blaming
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and, or defensive,
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just notice all that with curiosity.
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You're just to witness that over the next week in yourself.
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And when you notice it in yourself, then you'll notice it more in the other.
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And so if we're disconnected from our own body, we can't connect to anybody
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else.
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So part of what we do is help guys
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come up with practices where they notice what's happening in their body
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and understanding that this is a feedback loop.
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And
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we can do things to have a positive impact or
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negative.
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Just like one of the most important things, if you notice you're getting angry, is
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to shut your mouth.
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And
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a lot of the guys, the first thing they do is open their mouth and words spill out.
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But one of the more powerful things, and it takes more maturity to
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listen than to speak.
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And so having the ability when, especially when you're getting angry.
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This is not easy stuff.
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Shutting your mouth, closing your lips,
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and
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breathing through your nose.
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And when we breathe through the nose,
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the sinuses condition the air so you get to 20% more oxygen
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and you know, from the air that you're breathing.
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Because often people are really tense
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and there are shallow breathing, and the heart compensates for that by beating
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faster and harder to pump the limited amount of oxygen around.
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And then that just spikes us up even farther because the heart's
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going faster and harder.
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Completely counterproductive.
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So shut them out.
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Breathe through the nose, deep into your abdomen, and you do a few of those, and
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that signals to the body that you're safe.
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And so we do breathing exercises.
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We talk about meditation and different
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practices,
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different somatic practices that
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help
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bring the body back down so that, you know, you pull yourself out of fight or
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flight, and then you can see the bigger picture.
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And you reconnect with your heart, your gut, what really matters to you.
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Then you're smarter
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and think things through.
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At least that's the plan.
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But really, the homework after that first session is just be curious and
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notice.
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And.
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And one of the interesting thing that things that happens is usually one guy's.
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One guy sees somebody else is losing it over the week and go, oh, my God, that's me.
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That's what I look like.
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It's like a mirror, right?
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And
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yeah, and it's just.
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I do this in groups because there's very few places where
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men hear each other taking responsibility.
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There's an old book by Ellen Jenkins, an Australian,
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called Invitations to Responsibility.
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And I just really like that term because
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when men hear other men, not me, they hear other men in the group
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saying, yeah, I did this and this.
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And then,
19:00
wow, it really changed how things go, because so many men, all they do
19:06
all day long at work is fix problems,
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deal with things that are going wrong or whatever.
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They're just, like, doing stuff, and then they get home and they try to do the same
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thing, and there's a disaster.
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Jason Lange: Yeah.
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Alistair Moes: So one of the goals guys come up with,
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you know, and we have a whole list of different goals they can come up with.
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One of them is
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give your partner the experience
19:31
of being fully seen and heard and valued,
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which really is
19:39
helping them feel loved.
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And then they feel emotional safety, and then they can be themselves.
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Then you can have more depth of connection with each other.
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And when people really feel heard and seen and valued, at least
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half of the
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conflicts just, poof, they're gone.
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They just needed to be listened to.
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That was It.
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And sometimes there's more to it than that.
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But if they feel listened to, then that dialogue is gonna shift
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because you're responding with more maturity,
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more wisdom.
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Jason Lange: Yeah.
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Beautiful.
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And very aligned with my experience,
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both personally and the work I do as well.
20:28
And, you know, I'm curious to get your take
20:31
on, you know, do you work in your groups or with individuals on, like, how do you
20:36
distinguish the difference between, like, a healthy anger and, you know, aggression
20:41
or the more damaging versions of anger?
20:45
Alistair Moes: Right.
20:46
So we go into some depth about
20:50
what happens in a relationship.
20:52
If your primary
20:54
method of conflict resolution is being passive or manipulative or
21:00
aggressive or assertive.
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And
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I let them know, we all do all of these things.
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Don't pretend that you don't.
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That's just like, we're human beings.
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We do shitty things.
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We sometimes.
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And it doesn't matter how many years I've done this kind of work and how many books
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and how much training I take, I still mess up.
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I still make mistakes.
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And we're supposed to.
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We're not supposed to have everything figured out.
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I mean,
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you're never going to have everything figured out.
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That's not the point.
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The point is to learn from the mistakes we make so that we can make new and
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different mistakes, which makes life way more interesting.
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Yeah.
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Jason Lange: Like, how do you tease apart, you know, or what in your mind is the difference
21:51
between healthy relationship to anger and, you know, more distracting.
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Alistair Moes: So healthy
21:56
when, when you're doing something healthy, you're
21:59
addressing the conflict from the adult in you.
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You're addressing the conflict from the.
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A part of you that knows it's not the end of the world if you don't get your way.
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You are listening, you're compassionate to yourself, to the other,
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and you're intelligent.
22:22
You're
22:25
recognizing when, okay, this, this conversation is going nowhere.
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And I'm not going to let somebody
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mistreat me or insult me.
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Like, you know,
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I can say, okay, like, we're done here.
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And that can be a very healthy thing.
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And the difference is I can say, we're done here, you fucking idiot.
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Or I can say, you know, we're not getting anywhere.
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Like, let's.
22:53
Let's address this another day.
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And I'm, you know, exiting stage left here.
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Let's talk tomorrow or what have you.
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I'm not avoiding it,
23:05
but I'm recognizing where, okay, this, this brick wall that I'm talking to right now
23:09
is not getting anywhere.
23:12
Let's just be honest with it.
23:15
And if it's a family member, for instance, and There's a long history of them
23:20
acting the way they do.
23:22
Then your job is to expect them to continue acting exactly as they do and accept
23:27
them like that.
23:29
It's just
23:31
stop fighting it and then choose how much time you want to spend around that person
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if it's really unpleasant.
23:38
And sometimes that means, yeah, I think I'll take a break for a few years from you
23:42
or a week or whatever makes sense.
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But I'm going to look after myself.
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I'm going to have
23:50
a fiercely loving relationship with myself
23:56
where I'm not letting people mistreat me and I'm not mistreating somebody else
24:01
because that's not who I am.
24:04
And
24:06
I'm going to have my own back
24:09
and
24:11
going to act like an adult.
24:13
Right.
24:13
So Anna, I'm going to have a sense of humor about the whole thing because
24:19
it's better if we can step back and see the humor in how we act like big babies
24:24
sometimes and
24:27
to be able to acknowledge that
24:31
and connect with the physical sensations in our body and become more
24:36
aware and talk out loud about it vulnerably.
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You know, I attend a men's group because I want to be around other men that open up
24:46
and take responsibility for stuff and
24:49
this is healthy to be around.
24:52
I need these kind of things and I'm super grateful for my male
24:58
friends that I can open up to and really talk with about these things
25:03
and be honest with them because
25:07
life is not easy sometimes
25:10
for the majority of us.
25:13
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely.
25:15
I love that frame of just
25:17
healthy anger is when it's coming from that adult part of ourselves.
25:22
Right.
25:22
You and I were talking, I got a two year old, near two year old and it's been
25:27
incredibly illuminating, you know, having had kids and seeing.
25:30
Yeah.
25:30
What really happens, you know, when a tantrum comes,
25:34
there's no,
25:35
there's no there there anymore.
25:37
Right.
25:38
It's just energy.
25:40
And as I, you know, have continued into fatherhood, you know, I, I have this thing
25:46
where it's just this realization, I've Talked to my 6 year old about it too, of
25:50
like, well, sometimes daddy has tantrums too or like I can feel it now where like,
25:54
you know, I say something a little cutting or a little biting or my anger comes up
25:59
and it's not coming from the adult place.
26:02
It's my little child having a tantrum because I'm not getting what I want just
26:08
in the same way my 2 year old does.
26:09
Right.
26:10
And I can feel it, you know, now in my body.
26:13
So it's such a simple but beautiful distinction.
26:16
Alistair Moes: Of.
26:16
Jason Lange: Yeah, you know, it's coming from that adult part, part of us.
26:19
And not that just purely relate.
26:22
Reactive kind of, you know, whether we call it inner child or just
26:27
prefrontal cortex, totally offline, you know, part of the brain.
26:31
Alistair Moes: And
26:34
pretty much all of us have experienced some kind of trauma or traumas growing up,
26:40
and those
26:43
exist in our bodies.
26:46
And
26:47
so I always talk with guys about, you want to really get to know the part of you
26:52
that wants to lose it,
26:54
and you want to be really in tune with the adult part of you
26:59
that's breathing and thinking things through and
27:04
connected to love and,
27:07
you know, dignity and things like that.
27:11
Because
27:12
that
27:13
part in you that wants to freak out,
27:19
it's not a bad part of you.
27:21
It's just that's there.
27:23
And we're not going back in history.
27:26
We're not regressing to two years old or four, six or whatever.
27:33
We're connecting to those physical sensations in the body right now that lead us to
27:37
feel like it's the end of the world.
27:41
And
27:43
it takes some courage to really allow yourself to feel that uncomfortableness,
27:49
to
27:51
apologize.
27:52
Well, to feel the shame and the regret and the remorse,
27:58
the vulnerable
28:00
apology where you make no excuses whatsoever other than
28:06
a commitment to change.
28:08
Like, that's powerful stuff.
28:12
But we have to be connected to how we carry this stuff and
28:18
how this stuff has
28:20
been there for generations.
28:23
Definitely in
28:25
both of my parents for different reasons.
28:27
And going back generations, there's all sorts of stuff there.
28:31
My
28:33
Dutch grandfather was in prison for five years during World War II in Holland,
28:39
and my dad was like 7 to 12 years old.
28:44
And then after the war thing, you just don't talk about anything.
28:48
You just smoke cigarettes and have a drink and look really good doing it, which my
28:54
dad was quite gifted at that,
28:57
but didn't know where to.
29:00
Yeah, that had some negative consequences later in life especially.
29:05
But.
29:07
Yeah.
29:08
And so I got
29:11
really up close and personal with what happens when you don't talk
29:17
about anything.
29:18
You know, like, my mom died from an aneurysm very suddenly when I was 18.
29:24
Like, just like she was alive and then she was dead.
29:27
I never saw her again.
29:28
My dad was so committed to
29:32
don't talk about anything that there was.
29:34
He didn't have a funeral, nothing,
29:37
and just kind of
29:39
avoided the topic.
29:41
Took us kids to Hawaii, which he had never done before for Christmas.
29:46
And,
29:49
you know, it was like, let's just,
29:52
you know, turn that frown upside down.
29:54
I don't know.
29:55
It's just.
29:56
But I mean, he didn't have the emotional Maturity, and he didn't reach out,
30:03
so he didn't know what to do
30:05
and just
30:07
plow on through.
30:08
And
30:10
then he made other bad decisions, but I won't get to.
30:13
And I love my dad.
30:14
I'm not here to blame him.
30:15
I know he came through it honestly.
30:17
And.
30:19
And it's about owning what's in us today.
30:22
It's understanding our history to help explain our present.
30:28
Some people will
30:30
argue that, you know, well, I'm this way because my parents or whatever, I'm like,
30:35
come on, that's not real.
30:37
That's a little kid talking.
30:39
Right?
30:39
That's not the adult in you who pulls back and sees the bigger picture.
30:44
And,
30:45
yeah, and there's lots to learn.
30:47
So, yeah, I do shadow work and things like that, and sometimes I'll do group shadow
30:53
work,
30:54
you know, days with guys,
30:58
because
30:59
it's inspiring.
31:02
I love that stuff.
31:03
And
31:05
just seeing
31:07
men figuring things out and other men seeing them figure those things out,
31:13
and really,
31:15
it's so supportive.
31:17
You know, you wouldn't think a bunch of total strangers going to an anger management
31:22
group.
31:23
And some of them, their lawyer said, you know, you should really go and do this.
31:28
Lots of them don't have lawyers, but almost all of them
31:33
want to be more in charge of themselves, want to be less reactive, more intentional,
31:39
and that's all this is about.
31:42
And then they get to hear each other working on things so that
31:47
they're less reactive and more intentional.
31:50
And that seems to inspire people, and it certainly continues to inspire me all these
31:56
years later.
31:59
Yeah, yeah, it's.
32:01
It's.
32:02
It's really cool.
32:03
I had a
32:04
guy, legally blind guy, who is the breadwinner for the family, recently
32:10
attending, and it's like,
32:13
yeah, he was, like, suicidal before he started, and
32:18
he was completely inspired by the end of it and inspiring the other man because
32:24
he is really listening and connecting with his partner, and he wants to do more work
32:29
on himself.
32:30
And.
32:32
And, you know, we do this over zoom, and he's on his phone like this,
32:36
so you see his, like, eyeball.
32:40
But everybody's totally supportive.
32:42
And
32:43
guys are often anxious when they first step into the group,
32:49
but they pretty quickly discover, oh, this is actually a safe place.
32:53
And
32:55
they're covering stuff that's really helpful,
32:59
like, much to their surprise.
33:00
And more often than not, people end up saying, oh, I wish I did this, you know,
33:06
years ago, years ago.
33:08
I say, you probably weren't open to it years ago, but, you know,
33:13
the time is now.
33:14
Now we can do something about it.
33:16
Jason Lange: So, yeah,
33:19
yeah.
33:20
So much resonance there and
33:23
can just feel your career and your delight in the work you get to do, supporting
33:29
people for transforming.
33:30
And there was.
33:31
There was something
33:33
I wanted to chat with you about.
33:34
We talked about briefly before our call, but you're really unique, I think, in that,
33:39
you know, a lot of the world I swim in is kind of,
33:43
you know, coaching and transformational work, which is often opt in, meaning someone
33:48
is choosing to be there.
33:51
And your program is unique, I think, special compared to that in the sense it's
33:56
court recognized.
33:57
Sometimes judges send men or women to you,
34:02
usually lawyers.
34:04
Lawyers.
34:05
There we go.
34:05
Okay.
34:06
Alistair Moes: Usually it's lawyers or sometimes probation officers,
34:11
and sometimes HR
34:14
sends their longshore workers their way or their
34:19
truck drivers or,
34:21
you know,
34:23
or the nurse or the.
34:31
Surgeon.
34:32
The surgeon and medical professor being sent to us.
34:37
I've had Multiple guys with PhDs in psychology attend my groups
34:43
voluntarily, and I think they were all voluntary.
34:46
But,
34:49
yeah, it knows no bounds, that's for sure.
34:52
But, yes,
34:55
a number of them are
34:57
sent there, and some of them are reluctant.
35:00
And even the reluctant ones generally end up
35:06
appreciating it a lot.
35:09
And I've had guy, like, super, like, judgmental and critical and like.
35:13
Like, come back to session two, hey, this stuff actually works.
35:20
And then there's some guys who are just
35:23
so stuck that they're not.
35:26
They don't show up because it's voluntary.
35:30
Right.
35:30
I mean, whether the lawyer sends them to us.
35:34
Right?
35:34
I mean,
35:36
that doesn't mean that they show up.
35:38
They.
35:39
And.
35:40
And it's uncomfortable for them because all these other guys are opening up.
35:47
And.
35:48
And.
35:48
And this includes
35:51
transgender,
35:52
like, it.
35:54
Like, it doesn't matter.
35:56
Like, like, what.
35:57
What your history is.
36:00
And when men are in the group,
36:04
they.
36:05
They get accepted as they are.
36:09
And it's really
36:11
impressive how,
36:13
you know,
36:15
gay men will out themselves in the group,
36:19
and
36:21
nobody really blinks an eye.
36:23
And I think most people would think a bunch of, you know, anger management tough
36:28
guys or they're all tattooed bikers or something.
36:32
It's like, no, they're just accountants.
36:34
And,
36:36
yeah, sometimes there's a tattooed biker in there, but, I mean,
36:41
that doesn't matter, right?
36:42
It's like, everybody's accepted, and
36:46
people feed off each other's energy
36:49
and end up looking at this stuff.
36:53
And I put my energy into the guys
36:57
that are working on themselves,
37:00
which is most of them.
37:02
I'm not spending my time trying to pull the reluctant guy in there.
37:06
I'm like, if they want to join us, great.
37:08
If they don't want to, fine.
37:09
Like, yeah, that's okay.
37:11
I'm not here to convince anybody anything.
37:14
It's.
37:16
And I.
37:17
And I'd rather feed all the positive stuff going on because
37:23
that's where the inspiration is.
37:25
Right.
37:25
And
37:27
that works better for me too.
37:29
When couples call us, I say it's probably better if you each attend your group
37:34
because we do women's groups as well.
37:37
And
37:38
because when
37:40
I said each do your group and then go to couples counseling.
37:46
Because
37:47
when I've had couples come into my office and one starts like screaming and yelling
37:53
at the other,
37:55
I don't like it.
37:56
It's very unpleasant.
37:58
And I tell them, and you're wasting your money.
38:00
I am not cheap.
38:02
And if you want to spend, you know, $400 an hour and yell at each other, like,
38:08
just give me the 400, go do that at home.
38:11
Jason Lange: That's great.
38:11
Alistair Moes: I don't want to be a part of it because it's.
38:15
It's just spinning our wheels and it's.
38:19
Yeah.
38:20
So really, when I do see couples, all I tell them all we're going to focus on is
38:26
that each of you feels heard and seen and valued,
38:31
and that's it.
38:34
Then there's more space for love in the room.
38:36
And each of you really feels like the other gets you.
38:40
Things are going to turn out pretty well.
38:42
It doesn't have to be that complicated.
38:45
And sometimes I'll do shadow work with one of them and the other one just witnesses
38:49
that I'll go back and forth to do that.
38:52
So
38:53
lovely.
38:55
Jason Lange: Yeah, I love what you just said there.
38:56
I mean, it's so great to kind of get the
39:01
street level in the sense of the preconceived notion, I think a lot of people have,
39:05
of who ends up in an anger management group versus the reality of a.
39:11
Like everyone, you know, all kinds of different people show up.
39:15
And I think that, particularly for us men, really points to, you know, you were
39:19
speaking to this.
39:19
Just the
39:22
lack of training we get as men about how to be in our bodies, talk about what's
39:27
happening in our bodies, communicate.
39:30
And that often then leads to these blow ups or blowovers where, you know, no one
39:35
ever showed us.
39:35
You know, it was one of the things that really
39:38
transformed me so much in my early men's work was getting to be around
39:44
men who had a healthy relationship to their emotional body and in particular
39:50
their anger, who could express anger.
39:52
But here's the key.
39:54
Never once did I feel unsafe around it.
39:57
Right.
39:57
Alistair Moes: Yeah.
39:58
Jason Lange: And I had never, like, that had never been something in my reality.
40:02
Alistair Moes: As soon as I saw.
40:03
Jason Lange: Yeah.
40:03
You know, and then you
40:05
As I got to experience it, that was the, oh, there's a model for something else
40:09
here.
40:10
Nobody told me or showed me.
40:12
You know, our culture just does not equip us, particularly as men.
40:17
But really, as anyone, I think to, to know how to deal with this
40:21
internal self.
40:24
Alistair Moes: Yeah, yeah.
40:25
And
40:27
the men come and do a six week group and I tell them, I said, the best predictor of
40:31
the future is your past.
40:34
So unless you keep working on this stuff, you are going to slowly slide back into
40:39
whatever you were doing before you came here.
40:42
And I tell people we give them a reduced fee to attend a second time.
40:48
And everybody who does that finds it super helpful.
40:51
I say come back before you need to
40:56
think that through.
40:57
Before you need to is the key.
40:59
Because almost everybody comes back after there's another blow up and it's like,
41:04
you know, it's.
41:06
But, but that's it.
41:08
We need to.
41:09
And I live this to keep on working on ourselves
41:14
because my background was, you know,
41:17
taught me some bad things and I know those things are still in me at some level.
41:23
And I'm
41:26
really grateful because my kids show
41:30
way more emotional maturity than I did at their age.
41:35
But
41:36
yeah, they have it.
41:37
And, and I have regular deep conversations with them
41:43
even though they're, you know, well into their 20s.
41:46
And
41:48
yeah, I did not have that with my parents.
41:51
Like, I wasn't opening up to my parents.
41:54
I would lie to my parents because that just seemed like
41:59
that's what you do.
42:01
And you certainly don't open up to them.
42:04
You don't even really open up to your friends either.
42:09
Wow.
42:10
It's like.
42:11
So you end up very alone
42:14
and.
42:16
Yeah, that's part of the
42:19
really big modern problem when men come our way and they have no friends
42:25
and they spend a lot of time on their own, just them and the Internet, whether
42:29
they're married with children or not.
42:32
And the more alone they are, the more challenging it is for them
42:38
to learn and grow.
42:40
Because we need, we can't grow without
42:44
feedback from other people.
42:47
We need to connect with other people so that we get things reflected.
42:52
If it's just us on the Internet, it's like a lot of negativity and everything is the
42:57
end of the world and super dramatic and we lose ourselves.
43:01
Whereas when men actually connect with other men, they're reconnecting
43:07
with what actually matters to them and they get to see that in other men.
43:11
And good things tend to
43:14
come from that.
43:17
Jason Lange: Yeah, well, you just, you just named something that I'd never quite connected the
43:21
dots before on, but it's like
43:24
I could see clearly now how, you know, the type of work you're spearheading and
43:28
education about
43:31
anger and how it works in our body.
43:33
I mean, that's kind of becoming table stakes for just being able
43:38
to navigate a sane online world.
43:42
Because, because the whole thing is powered by outrage, right?
43:45
That's how they make money.
43:46
Like, they get your body into that state and then, you know, they've captured you,
43:51
you know, in some sense.
43:52
So, yeah, what you're teaching, you know, goes way beyond even just local
43:56
relationships.
43:57
But like, yeah, how do you sanely engage with a machine that is meant to trigger
44:02
that anger in you?
44:03
Alistair Moes: Well, and so my son, I shouldn't brag too much, but my, my son tells
44:09
me he reads every night
44:12
I go to bed, him and his girlfriend, and they read books.
44:19
And I've thought recently that, well,
44:23
we all end up scrolling and spending time doing, watching all sorts of
44:29
ridiculous things online.
44:31
I'm no saint, right?
44:34
And,
44:36
and that seems to be exactly what the
44:41
billionaire tech bros want us.
44:43
They want us sedated,
44:47
sometimes drinking or drugs or whatever, but also they want us distracted so we
44:53
don't notice how much worse it is, how much harder it is to get by in today's world
44:59
than it used to be.
45:00
Like, people are struggling way more than they used to be.
45:04
And if we're all
45:05
watching
45:07
stupid shit on TikTok,
45:09
it's, you know,
45:11
we don't notice, then we're not going to actually be intelligent with their anger.
45:16
We're going to be outraged with it and everything's going to be black and white.
45:20
And you can see that because a lot of politics is just name calling and
45:26
insults, which is, you know,
45:29
childish, is definitely single digits for emotional age.
45:33
And, and I ask men regularly, you know, first I'll ask them, well, where did you
45:39
feel that in your body?
45:40
You know, usually there's some heat rising or, you know, what have you.
45:45
And I'll say, what's the emotional age
45:49
of that?
45:49
And I'll say, oh, you know, maybe 18 or 21.
45:53
So if you saw an 18 or 21 year old act like that, would that be
45:58
accurate for maturity level?
46:01
No.
46:03
Okay, single digits for sure.
46:05
Yeah, maybe like three or four.
46:08
Because that's true for me, like four for sure.
46:11
You know?
46:14
You know, and
46:16
you know, there's good reason for that, right?
46:19
At four years old, we were living in South America and also my dad took me and my
46:24
older brother in 1965 and flew with us to,
46:29
and dropped us off in Holland with an aunt and uncle that we never met and left us
46:34
there for six months and then
46:38
came and picked us up and came to Vancouver, where I am now and
46:43
just never really talked about.
46:46
Wasn't until I was in my 20s that I went to my dad and went, hey, what happened
46:51
there?
46:51
Oh, your mom tried to kill herself.
46:56
Okay.
46:57
Just after my younger brother was born.
46:59
And it's like, not a great start to life for him,
47:04
but it's like, okay, that helps me understand so much.
47:08
And
47:10
these family secrets
47:12
are in
47:14
every family.
47:16
And
47:17
until we can pull back and actually be aware of them without
47:23
judgment, like, just with curiosity, then we can recognize what's in us.
47:31
And my mom had a really lovely heart.
47:36
She could be very loving and kind, and I learned a lot from her, from that.
47:41
But, you know, clearly she had a pretty severely depressed side and was medicated
47:46
and stuff like that for many years.
47:48
She was a nurse.
47:50
But these things have a big impact.
47:52
And then, like, you just can't talk about them with some family members.
47:58
But it needs to move through us.
48:01
Otherwise, we just hold that as this toxic shame that I'm a failure.
48:07
And
48:09
I tell all the guys, I said, we all have this inner critic.
48:13
The thing is, the inner critic tells us that everybody else has their shit together
48:17
except for us.
48:19
And so you can't let anybody know.
48:22
If anybody finds out the truth about you, it'll be the end of the world.
48:25
Nobody will ever want to have anything to do with you ever again.
48:30
You can hear the emotional immaturity in that.
48:33
It's like fear.
48:35
But you don't let anybody know you're afraid.
48:38
You act like you have no fear.
48:40
If anybody suggests that you're afraid, then you attack and blame and judge and
48:44
criticize them and be defensive.
48:48
But that's also letting your history run you.
48:51
So we go into all this material
48:54
in our groups and
48:56
go into lots of detail about it because
48:59
all, you know, pretty much everybody in the group, really, if they look, they can
49:04
find things that help them understand how they became the way they are without
49:09
blaming anybody else.
49:11
Right.
49:12
It's owning what's in you today.
49:14
That's where your power lies.
49:17
And
49:18
getting to know all the physical sensations, the emptiness, the weight, the
49:22
heaviness, the change in your breathing, the change in your heart.
49:27
You breathe differently with every emotion, and your heart beats differently with
49:33
every emotion.
49:35
So when we get really angry and outraged, the heart gets really jagged and more
49:40
erratic.
49:41
When we breathe deep and slow and we're feeling at peace, then it reflects in the
49:47
whole rest of our body and our brain.
49:50
Because it's in a much more peaceful,
49:53
rhythmic,
49:55
predictable,
49:56
stable, you know, beat.
49:59
And
50:01
yeah, and I grew up just ignore.
50:05
If it feels too much in there, then drink.
50:09
And I practiced that for years.
50:11
But, you know, I gave it, you know, a good shot, but it didn't seem to get me where
50:16
I wanted to go.
50:17
So eventually I had to shift gears on that one.
50:22
Jason Lange: Amazing.
50:23
Well, as we come to a close here, I'm curious.
50:26
So, yeah, you know, 31 years you've been in the trenches here.
50:31
Things are pretty intense in a lot of ways in our culture, but you've been really
50:34
kind of on the ground helping people transform.
50:38
You know, what, what gives you hope at this point, if anything, that you're seeing
50:42
in men and women and people stepping into this work?
50:46
Alistair Moes: Well,
50:47
you know, when I was first doing these groups in the 90s,
50:53
if I asked the group of men, how many of you have practiced any sort of breathing
50:59
exercise or
51:01
meditation, maybe one guy would put his hand up.
51:05
The group that I was just running
51:08
last week,
51:11
3, 2, 3 to 3 quarters of them put their hand up.
51:16
So this is just guys going to anger management, right?
51:19
This is not
51:22
hand picking people who are doing shadow work or something like that.
51:29
And so men are more open
51:33
to doing this work now.
51:36
Men are more
51:38
self aware in many respects and have practiced more things.
51:42
People are more open minded.
51:45
And, you know, I've worked with a lot of longshore workers, guys that load and
51:51
unload ships and stuff like that, kind of historically
51:54
a lot of Hell's Angels and, you know, rough kind of guys in that field.
52:03
And
52:04
now they request to come and work with us.
52:07
Like usually it would be they're sent because they lost it at work.
52:11
And so they get sent to do an individual program with us.
52:15
And now they request on a regular basis to come and
52:20
work because they've seen a positive impact on some of their, you know, members
52:26
of the union.
52:27
So
52:29
I see that
52:31
there's hope in the world.
52:33
And I'm
52:35
continually inspired by the work that the men do when they come and do the work.
52:41
And more and more come and work with us every year.
52:46
We've got a team of 10 therapists and I run half of the groups.
52:50
And I have another guy, Trevor Bird, who runs half of the groups.
52:54
And
52:56
yeah, and women's groups, women are more likely to acknowledge their anger,
53:02
so more women's groups as well.
53:04
So, yeah, there's a lot of doom and gloom out there.
53:08
And I think this work is more important than ever
53:14
because people need to be dialed into what matters
53:18
for them, what's their core values and,
53:21
and being in alignment with that and just being aware and making conscious choices
53:26
rather than just losing themselves in
53:29
whatever addiction or scrolling or what have you.
53:34
It's like your life and your family are depending on it.
53:39
Time to do something about it is right fucking now.
53:44
It's always right now.
53:46
And there's always more to learn and, and be interested.
53:50
Right.
53:50
It's.
53:51
It's worth it.
53:52
It's my humble opinion.
53:54
I know it's a little bit self serving, but I think the, the world is better off
54:00
if there's more men doing this work.
54:03
Jason Lange: Yeah.
54:03
Well, thank you for trailblazing and leading the way and impacting so many lives and
54:08
what's the best place for folks to learn a little bit more about you or your groups
54:13
and everything you're up to?
54:15
Alistair Moes: Yeah, Angerman
54:17
Online
54:19
is the website.
54:20
There's tons of information.
54:22
There's tons of podcasts and resources and videos there as well that are free.
54:27
You can download the first part of our men's or women's book,
54:32
like the first 40 pages.
54:34
And
54:37
of course you're welcome to join any of our groups or individual stuff.
54:40
And, and
54:42
I'm on YouTube, ooseanger management, among other platforms.
54:47
Same thing.
54:48
Oosenger management
54:50
and I post like a demon.
54:53
So I'm always on there
54:55
relentlessly.
54:58
Short videos though.
55:00
And some of them I use humor because I think it's.
55:04
I think humor and laughter are
55:08
our intelligence.
55:09
That we absolutely need
55:14
to have fun and be silly and use humor in life.
55:21
It's wise and it takes
55:24
more maturity to be able to be silly.
55:30
So act like an animal,
55:33
which means you can act like a child while you're acting like an adult.
55:37
Yeah.
55:39
Jason Lange: Well, beautiful.
55:40
Thanks so much for your time and being here.
55:43
I'll drop all your links and everything in the show notes and yeah, man, just deep
55:47
appreciation for everything you're into.
55:49
Alistair Moes: Well, thank you.
55:50
I think you're also doing some really
55:53
powerful, meaningful work and the world needs more men like you doing this kind of
55:59
work.
55:59
So thank you.
56:00
Thank you for that as well.
56:02
Jason Lange: Thank you much.
56:03
And yeah, good to have you on the team.
56:05
Say hi to your wife for me and I'll do the same.
56:09
Alistair Moes: Yeah.
56:09
Jason Lange: Until next time.