The Wisdom of Anger: Part II - Emotion Series #4

If you're following the mind, it's very hard to allow anger to move cleanly. Whether your story is, "They're absolutely wrong and they deserve this," or your story is, "No, they deserve compassion," any kind of thick story around it is going to really make the anger have a hard time coming out in a clean way.

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. All right. How are you doing today, Joe?

I'm good. I'm good. I'm really looking forward to the weekend. AOA has been a lot. It's been a lot.

Yes, it's been a lot this week. So a while back we did an episode on anger, and that was actually several months ago that we recorded it. And now we're doing a second one on anger. And it's a really interesting time to do it for me because in AOA, we're kind of in the middle, middle to late AOA. And after that Feel Over Figure week, a lot of stuff started coming up in some of the groups and some of the partners and even among us and some of our like circles. And there's just so much coming up around anger, repressed anger, sideways anger, projections of anger, projections of repressed sideways anger, anger at the anger, shame spirals, all of these things are happening and it's all beautiful and juicy and, Many of us are just still in it to some extent. I definitely am. And so this is something that I really want to come back to and do another episode on Anger to follow up the previous one that we recorded, which will have been released just before this one by the time this comes out.

Yeah. What I noticed in the conversations that are happening on Circle is that a large portion of it is around the technical part of Anger. I think the last podcast we did, I just listened to it knowing that we wanted to do anger again. And the last podcast that we did was just more on the theoretical. And this feels like it's more like, like what I'm seeing everybody talk about on Circle is just about the technicalities of anger. And so to me, that feels like a really cool place to talk about it. What's going on actually inside of a single person around anger. So that's exciting to me.

What are some of the symptoms that you see of these forms of anger?

So there's kind of 3 ways that it goes, right? There's the anger inwards. So that's like the self-abusive talk. There's the anger sideways, right? Which is kind of passive aggression. It's like, I'm angry, but I'm not allowed to be angry. So I do a whole bunch of things. And that particular thing is really difficult for people to see that they're doing when they're doing it. So passive-aggressive, a lot of people don't think they're being passive-aggressive when they are until they see it, you know, subtleties, see it as they say. And then the other kind of, in the way that I look at it, the other kind of repressed anger is getting angry at somebody.

It's rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.

Like that is repressed anger. That's anger not coming out clearly either. So if I think about anger as like a tube or like a wire and it's like, Is that wire open or is that wire constricted? Is it? And if it's twisted one way, it's like, I'm not angry, I'm not angry. And if it's twisted another way, it's like, nice dress. And if it's twisted another way, it's like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you. So I think all of those are forms of repressed anger. And so like on a symptomatic level, this looks like depression. Like oftentimes one of the quickest ways to help people with low-level dysthymia depression is just allow them to move their anger Symptoms are abusive self-talk. It's people having a hard time feeling determination, codependence, passive aggression, like blaming other people for your emotional experience. That's a form of passive aggression. Being late or not taking out the trash or doing something that you know is gonna get the other person angry, like that level of passive aggression, subtle undermining that happens. The propensity to freeze in your own head, like that is all, and then yelling at people, taking your anger out on people, that's all forms of what I would call repression of the energy. It's kinking the hose in one way or another.

Yeah, interesting you mentioned the ones that you mentioned about being codependent with or guilting people. Those are interesting to me. Those are ones that I've experienced a lot in my life and sometimes I've like relived that pattern a little bit and it doesn't feel like anger. It's just like, oh, look what you've done there with your anger. Now we're all sad because the anger happened.

Right. Yeah, yeah. And kind of psychology in general and our society in general, especially kind of more in the left side of the political spectrum, anger itself is the bad guy. And it's not okay to be angry at somebody, but it's okay to be sad at them. Or, you know, it's not even recognized that someone's being sad at somebody. And when you're being sad at somebody, in a weird way, that is passive aggression, right? So yeah, it's a fascinating thing. And once you see it, it's like, holy crap, it's happening all over, these forms of passive aggressive. But the person who's doing it feels stuck. They feel oppressed. So they don't always see that they're doing it. Guilting somebody is another great example of passive aggression.

So continuing on to some of these reasons for repressed anger. How, how did these patterns end up getting installed in us?

Yeah, got 3 basic general ways that it happens, right? So one of them is that you had an experience of somebody who was always angry as a, as a child, so like a mom or dad or a teacher, and that anger became— was at you, it was manipulative, it was trying to change you, and then that became completely unsafe. And so you vowed to yourself some way that like, I will never do that to other people again. So, and it could be a sibling, it could be a caretaker, but where that anger was so destructive that you were like, yeah, I'm not doing that. So that's one way that we've like repressed it. There's another way that's like anger was just never allowed in the house, or whenever anger happened in the house, it was all at people, was like, bah bah bah bah bah. So like that comes out. That's the form of repression that comes out. You either got love removed from you if you were angry because it was just not allowed, or you got attention by having the anger that was like, that got you the engagement and love as a kid that you wanted. And then—

So it worked in a way.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the other one is that, I mean, that was my childhood, right? Like I got the most engagement from my family when I was angry. And for somebody who's in that side of things like I was, If you're angry at someone, you're like, ah, ah, and they're like freeze or check out, you're like, you're abandoning me. Why are you abandoning me? And the person on the other side of it who's like, why are you abandoning me by attacking me, right? Like why, like I have to go make myself safe. So it's, it, both of them feel trapped, both of them feel abandoned. So it's just like which one you learned. And then the last thing is that you were rejected, punished if you got angry. If you got angry in your house, it was like, you know, and this happens at such a young age, like temper tantrums, like just like not allowing your kid to have like that full out. And so that's how it happens. So basically you get taught to repress it in one of the ways.

Something that's interesting about this is there seem to be so many ways especially for this particular emotion to be repressed. And so when people of all different stripes of anger suppression start to try to release anger, what are some of the things that happen in the mind that just subtly block it before they even can become aware of it?

So let's say I'm angry at you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? I'm not getting angry at you 'cause we do not suggest getting angry at anybody. 'cause that's control, that's manipulation. So I go off, I get angry, and my mind is gonna start saying things like, well, you know, Brett's point of view, you know, it's totally reasonable to see it his way. Like he had, like it, that's one of the ways it does it.

Mind does that.

Yeah, and then the other one, which is true, I'm not saying that that's not true, by the way. It's just, it's an order of operations thing. If you do that first, then you're not gonna get through the anger.

Right.

Which is the same thing as the second, which is like compassion. Oh, I should be compassionate. No, you're angry, be angry. And then the compassion will naturally come out of that if the anger moves in a healthy attuned way. You'll start judging your anger release. You'll say that's like, that's bad. Like especially people have like moral or religious things where they're like, these are the good emotions, these are the bad emotions. I'm supposed to be happy and I'm not allowed to be angry. So they'll, they'll, your brain will do that. And then you'll also, the other thing that happens is you'll be, you'll hear your brain telling yourself you're ignorant. If you've lost control and you're angry, you're ignorant, right? That's the way it works if it's like repressed, as in like not coming out. But if it's coming out and it's coming out kink, like, or passive-aggressive, oftentimes the way that the brain is Talking to you in that is like, you believe that you're stuck, you believe that you're alone in it. And that's how the brain convinces you to repress it in that way because stuck just means that you don't want imagined consequences. So like, I'm stuck because I can't tell my wife that she's a crappy cook 'cause then she'll get mad at me. So what's really true is that like, I don't want my wife to get mad at me, not that, stuck. So that's the way that the mind works to repress it that way. It's like it believes the story.

Yeah, that seems to also happen interpersonally too. You can have in a partnership that one person's voice in the head is suppressing the other person's anger, and they're like, it just kind of like crosses the boundary there. And then that's— I'm speaking from experience there in my life.

Totally, totally. Yeah, we got to see that with the guy talking about the anger to his parents today, right? Like, it's like one person feels oppressed by the anger that's coming out, right? So one person in the relationship, someone's like, "Rah!" That form of repressed anger makes somebody else feel oppressed. The other person's form of repressed anger, which is like, "I'm fricking outta here," freeze, like, "Eh," then that makes this person feel abandoned, and they both feel stuck. And they're both angry, but nobody's actually just allowing that free flow of anger to happen.

We were just talking about ways that the free flow of anger can be resisted in our consciousness before we're even aware of it. And then there's other ways it can be resisted, like in the body. So we could be maybe recognizing that there's anger or not, but it's coming through somehow into our actions, into our muscle tension. What are some of those resistances that might come up in that next layer?

Yeah, so let's say you got abused as a kid for any time you were angry. Let's say you had like a brother who was a bully and every time you got angry, you just got smashed, right? So then you're gonna have fear. And I've seen this, I've seen people release their anger for the first time and then as soon as they've done it, they're like, ah, and then we've watched this in slow motion, it's so cool, they go, ah, and then as they pull away and realize they got angry, their eyes widen, they're like, They're just totally frightened. So the body will like have fear that happens that says it's completely unsafe. It's very scared of being rejected. That's another thing is that it will feel rejected. Oftentimes the body will be actually scared of the freedom that gets felt after anger, the empowerment and the freedom and the less rigidity and holding. So the body is like, and I wouldn't even say scared, the body isn't, it's used to something, it's used to holding in a certain way. And to ask it to unhold, it just like, it's gonna go through the process of unholding that stuff. And that's gonna come up in the form of like, fear that you'll be lost, fear of like losing some of the rigidity. That's how it's gonna work.

Yeah, it's interesting. So there's like scared that they'll be attacked. So that would be actually just like the anger be expressed through a physical protection kind of holding.

Yeah, in a weird way, there's almost always, and every time there's anger that overwhelms, almost every time there's anger, the overwhelm is an overwhelming of some other, like we talked about in that other podcast, there's like, there's this deep care, but there's also some fear. There's also hurt. Like there's a lot of stuff happening underneath it.

Yeah, I'm interested in the one you talked about, about being scared of the freedom that it will bring. It seems that, you know, if you are afraid of your anger, and you're living in the story that other people's anger is causing you a problem, or that your anger is causing a problem and you're in a shame spiral. There's a way that it's easier to feel that than to feel the power of, well, if my anger actually moved through me cleanly, things would change around me. And maybe I don't feel like I trust myself or the world to integrate those changes in a way that like is good, like the effects that come out from my determination are going to hurt people and I'm not going to want that to have happened.

Right. It's the same thing, right? That's what your mind is going to be saying. It's very similar to your mind saying, oh, you should be compassionate. It's like jumping into the future, not paying attention to the present. It's jumping to the future and saying, this is how, like, I think it should be. This is how I think it's going to go. Instead of trusting the emotion, right? And that's the whole thing. The, the essential piece is that if you're following the mind, it's very hard to allow anger to move. It's really hard to allow anger to move cleanly. Whether your story is they're absolutely wrong and they deserve this, or your story is no, they deserve compassion— either one of those stories, any kind of thick story around it, is going to really make the anger have a hard time coming out in a clean way.

Yeah, it'll have to be funneled through one of those stories, and then it becomes compressed into a sharp water cannon.

Right, including the story that I have to figure out how to get angry, that I should get angry. There's this, yeah, instead of just like, it's like overthinking going to the bathroom. It's literally like that. If you start really thinking about it, it's gonna get in the way of the, of it moving in a clean, efficient way.

So how can releasing anger go wrong? Once we've gotten through each of these steps, you're recognizing it consciously, you are now recognizing it in your body, your body's tension is allowing it through, and then you release it. How does, what goes wrong there?

Yeah, so again, depending on kind of the way that it's kinked, if it's kinked in one way, if it's kinked where it's like usually, goes into kind of either the internal or the passive aggression, you're gonna go into collapse. Particularly the passive aggression, you're gonna go into collapse. So you'll start the anger, will start going, and then you'll go, ah. You're like, literally when I see people do this, when we're doing this with people in person, you'll see them like they collapse into it. And so that's one thing that happens. The other thing that happens if they fully believe the story if they fully buy into that they have a reason to be angry, blah, blah, blah, blah, then they become unregulated. Then they actually lose control. So when people think about, when people in our society say that person was angry, they're usually talking about a person who's become dysregulated. They're like out of their body, they're out of their experience, they're saying things that they don't wanna say, which is just another form of repressed anger. And then the other thing that happens is people recreate the shame. So they'll get angry in such a way that destroys something. They'll get angry in such a way, they'll get angry at somebody. They'll get angry in a way that hurts themselves. And so they'll do that so that they can then prove to themselves anger isn't good. Anger isn't a good thing. It's hurting people, blah, blah, blah, blah. So when people, move that anger, those are the things that'll happen often is they'll go into collapse, they'll go into dysregulation, or they'll recreate their shame. And that's where anger can go wrong.

It sounds like those are actually kind of stages, like collapse first. You have anger, you're just gonna cut the anger off. Let's not cause problems.

So I'm talking about something different. So we're saying someone's moving their anger. We're not saying that they're cutting it off. Cutting it off is like, I'm not angry, or, you know, that, of course. I'm talking about like, like literally, like they go, their back bends, they're, you know, it's like shame hits them.

Yeah, okay, so maybe stages wasn't the term for it, but I still see sort of a progression here. It's like the first times that you might release some anger, might move some anger that's been held for a long time, it'll come out a little bit and then you'll collapse. You'll feel it somewhat and then the anger will come out and then there'll be some kind of a collapse, like, "Oh, let's just back the train up, let's undo that." And then this next, another way that it comes out is maybe more of the anger comes out and it's unregulated and it's just sort of a mess. And if you do that enough, you'll end up in a situation where maybe you've recreated the shame.

I would say it's not quite that way. So I would say it's more of if you're the person who is doing more self-abusive stuff, then you're likely to go into collapse. If you're the person who took it out on people a lot, then you're gonna more likely get into the unregulated side of it. If you're somebody who has a lot of shame around their anger, then you're gonna recreate the shame around the anger. And you could be one or all of those things. So it might be a progression for some, like you're pointing out, and for other people, it might be the exact reverse progression. And some people, it might just be only one thing that they do.

Yeah, interesting. So then what does somebody do about this, about each of these, if you're lucky enough to catch this happen in yourself?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the dysregulation one is the most interesting to me, right? Because it's the one that our society is most scared of, is someone getting angry and actually like losing control. And it's, I think, deep down the fear that we almost all have around getting angry. It's like, I'm gonna destroy. And we talked about this in the other podcast. So that one is, it's not believing the story. It's seeing yourself as an actor. It's like, it's like being in the observer position is a far better way to do it. It's like allowing. So for somebody who goes into freeze or flight, being in the observer position is gonna completely shut off anger. They're just not gonna be able to access it. So for those people, they're gonna need to go into the story a bit. They're gonna need to believe the story a bit until the anger can move and then they can listen to their body. Whereas a person who's like believes that everybody is screwed up and they need to get angry to fix the situation or that it's highly okay that they're angry, then the best thing for them is to actually move into the awareness position to see themselves being angry. It's the best, when I see this, the exercise I give people is, be an actor playing the role of you getting angry so that they can see that it's like, oh, I'm just here to give a good performance, but on some level I don't believe it.

What's the way if somebody's doing that and they're doing this on their own, they're doing it without coaching or facilitation, and they're having some anger move and they're like, okay, so I'm gonna get into the story a little bit. Yeah. And then once the anger starts moving, they go further and further into the story and then really buying into it. What's a way to internally catch that if this is a practice that people are exploring on their own just from this podcast alone?

So you'll know, you'll know the feeling of being, of buying into the story and the fact that you get, you're unregulated. There are times where if you lose yourself in the release of anger, there's like, there's a huge amount of freedom there. But dysregulated is a little bit different. And so what I mean by that is like, where you've left your body, where you don't feel like you're in your body anymore. Maybe for some people, they are like looking at themselves from above, and then some people, they're not aware of the time and space. It's like they've completely lost themselves. And so if that's happened, it means you bought into the story way, way, way, way too much. And the other thing that'll happen is the anger won't provide clarity at the end. So at the end of an anger movement, you're gonna get kind of clarity and determination. That's what's gonna happen. If you don't get there, it means that anger isn't the proper emotion or you got completely lost in the story. And so you're just basically retraumatizing yourself at that point.

And can you be more specific on clarity and determination? Because I think one of the things that can happen is somebody finds clarity and they're like, okay, I'm clear, this person needs to change. Or yeah, I'm pretty clear, fuck them.

Right. Yeah.

So what do you really mean by when it's actually moved through to clarity and determination?

It's a visceral sense, right? So I'm clear, fuck them is, there's no clarity in that somatic experience. So it's literally like relief. It's like, aha, I know what to do. It's clear. There's no more fight in me. There's no more, or it's not that there's no more, but the tension that I'm feeling around it is so dissolved, right? And so it actually could be, I wouldn't say fuck them, but it could be like, Yeah, the clarity is that I don't want to be around them, definitely. So it could be that. But if it's like, yeah, I'm clear, fuck them, you're not clear. But if it's like, oh, oh yeah, I don't want, I realize I don't wanna be around them. And so that's the second kind of clue is that clarity is all about you. It's not about anybody else. So it's, I don't wanna be around them. It's an I, it's like, it's about yourself.

Right, it's about yourself, it's about what you're going to do from your empowered place and not what needs to happen around you.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

I think we only got to one. So you asked me this question, what do you do about the collapse? What do you do about the unregulated? What do you do about the shame? The shame one, I think all you need is awareness. It's just like, don't hurt yourself, don't hurt others, don't do it to anybody, don't break shit. Like, it's just that simple.

How do you do that without that becoming a should?

Like I said, I think all that's necessary is awareness. If you're just aware that, oh, like one of the things I might do is recreate the cycle of shame around this anger. And then if you see it and you do it and you go, oh, that's just me recreating the shame around it, that's all that's necessary. If you make it a should, then it's gonna take a lot longer. It's gonna take a lot longer. And then with the collapse, if you notice you go into collapse, you know, you have the use of will and just be like, yeah, I'm not doing that, just like you would in a workout. But the other thing that you can do is just repeat one sentence like, no, no, I won't collapse, I won't collapse, or you can't stop me. Just whatever that sentence is that triggers the anger response. It's like to feel the oppression of the collapse instead of the oppression of the anger, to feel the oppression of the collapse and respond to it and be like, "No, I'm not going there. No, I will be empowered. You will not stop me. You will not stop me. You will not stop me from being angry." That is a really good thing. It often has huge releases for people if they can just find that phrase in response to that very early childhood, "No, you can't be angry." Yeah, it seems like you could do that internally with your voice.

You can do that with a partner. You can do that have that come out at society or around society in your safe place to express anger.

Yeah. You said something with a partner, which is a kind of something that we do in our work, which is like, oh, we'll move anger with other people, which makes moving anger a lot easier, but there's a lot of pitfalls there. A lot of people wanna be good with anger when they're not, or somebody who has had a lot of anger trauma in their life will freak out if people are getting angry around them. So if you're moving anger with other people, I suggest that, A, everybody moves it in themselves first by themselves. That's a for sure thing. Do it with like one person and make sure there's like, you can stop it at any time. You do not wanna recreate trauma for anybody.

This is all great. And the thing that I was actually referring to about like with a partner might be that Like if you feel that that partner is not allowing you to be angry, there's that whole like fractal layers of my internal voice in the head doesn't let me be angry. I find myself in a partnership with someone who doesn't let me be angry. I have a society that I believe won't let me be angry and that I can't. There's these layers of— Layers. Like I am allowed to be angry or no. Or one that I've heard recently, my partner was like, I exist.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a great one. It's just an affirmation, which is letting it move and getting out of the collapse.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

I exist.

Is a great one. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Cool, yeah, so that's kind of the things to do around those things that can go wrong while releasing.

So let's get into some more of the just tricks for getting this to move.

Before we do, I'm just thinking about something. I'm thinking about this thing of like, so you move the anger, I'm just seeing if we're missing something here. So you realize you have this, the kind of the, these are the symptoms of it. I see that I need to move the anger in a clean way. These are the things that can get in the way of me doing it. Then I do it. These are the things that can go wrong while I'm doing it. I think there's another, the other piece that I wanna speak to is sometimes somebody who's so used to anger is like kind of the default thing once you start releasing it, that you can use it as a way to cover the underlying hurt or fear that can happen. And so if you notice you're releasing anger And maybe even you get like small bits of clarity, but it's not like this, oh yeah, I see it moment. And it just keeps on recycling really quickly every couple days or every day or something like that. Then you have some other stuff to feel underneath. Then you have some fear or some hurt or some helplessness that's still, or grief that's left to feel. And so I would play with that. I would allow myself to feel those things.

So yeah, let's move on to some tricks for people to be releasing their anger in a way that is safe and then reaching that determination and clarity or uncovering some of those other feelings that they might be avoiding, 'cause it's not always entirely about anger.

Listen to Tool. That's the way.

Yeah.

I love Tool. That's one of my favorite. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ticks and Leeches.

I've been really into their album, I don't know, the one that like came after a long period of time. But yeah, I like Tool in particular because it's so angry and aggressive, but it's also speaking to this kind of deep spiritual truth, which is like a cool— but whatever, any kind of anger, any kind of angry music can be really helpful. That's a really good one. And if you're doing anything like my learning how to be sad, you can just fake it too. You can just say— I was working with somebody the other day and and they were having this hard time, you know, we were going back into when they were 5 years old and it's like, well, what would it have been like to go through this scenario but getting angry at your father? And it literally, they couldn't say it. And I was like, well, just fake it. Just fake it. You know, it doesn't have to be towards your dad. We're just gonna, if you were like playing a 5-year-old, what would you? And then that could release it. So that's a cool way to do it.

Yeah, and that's similar to the performance, like being an actor.

Right.

Just giving yourself the space to, all right, if I were to let myself be angry and not do the other thing, what would that actually look like? Well, let's pretend.

So you can either be the actor and focus on the fact that it's not you who's angry, and that's for somebody who gets dysregulated, and then you can focus on giving a good performance if you're the kind of person who's like just not gonna get angry. Like how do you give a good performance? The other thing is like to respond to some of the thoughts at the beginning. So the thought says, there's no real good reason to be angry. They have their reasons. You should be compassionate. Like my favorite thing to say is like, hey, I've listened to you for like a decade. Now I'm just gonna listen to anger for like 20 minutes. I'm just gonna listen for 20 minutes. That's another way if you get dysregulated is like to listen to the anger. Either way, either you're playing the actor or you're listening to the anger, there's a part of you that is outside of the process. And the anger moves a lot quicker if there's some part of you outside of the process and the anger is moving. Both two things have to be happening. But yeah, just responding to the voice in your head telling you not to, you know, hey, I'm gonna listen for 15 minutes, see what it has to say.

Yeah, having a view conversation with it. Essentially.

For a little bit.

Until it comes out. Yeah. It seems like you could also, I mean, you can go places. There's times that you might be feeling this and it might be in the middle of a board meeting and you've got this stuff going on and maybe you're just like, okay, okay, voice, I'm going to listen to you that this anger isn't safe here right now for, I'll listen to you for the next 10 minutes.

Yes.

And then when I'm driving home, I'm gonna listen to the anger.

That's right.

But finding a safe place for it.

Finding a safe place is important. Yelling in a pillow, putting music on so nobody can hear you, going to the beach, doing it in the car, doing it in nature. You can just sit there and rant. You don't have— I mean, it's best if you're releasing anger with your physical body and your voice and your sounds. That's where you're gonna get like the most, but you can just be like, goddamn motherfucker, I fucking hate when that happens. Why the fuck is that always happening? Da da da da da, like, It can literally just be like a rant that anybody could not hear from a different room. It's not gonna release the musculature, the trauma musculature the same way, but it still is a great process of moving the anger.

What about breathwork?

Yeah, breath is huge. So it's way too complicated to describe here, but I will say, hey, if you can breathe in a way that builds up your anger, great. That's a great way for those people who've repressed anger in a way that it's self-abusive or the passive aggression. To be able to breathe in such a way that allows you to get angry. Breathe like the Hulk. Anyway, it'll be different for different people, but that, yeah, that would be a great one. Have the determination of working out is the same thing. And literally telling your body, hey, it's safe. It's okay to literally say, hey, I'm not gonna be abused here. I'm not gonna get attacked by my abusive brother. I'm not going to, I'm not gonna destroy anybody, I'm not hurting anybody, nobody's here to hear me. Literally to just tell your body that, give your body that message. It seems simple, but it can totally work.

What if you're someone like me who goes straight to compassion first?

Yeah.

And the anger comes up and then the body's just like, no, I love whoever I'm angry at.

Ask your compassion to be compassionate to anger.

Hmm.

If compassion's really being compassionate, it's accepting of everything including the anger. The last thing I would say is just to allow yourself. So I'll do this. You've probably seen me do this sometimes. You'll see a couple people when we're like talking about it on Circle, they'll say something and I'll respond. And then they're like, that made me really angry. And so typically what's happening there is that they are saying something about like, I'm a victim and I'm stuck. And I call that victim into question. And they get pissed. It's like the response when the victim is called into question, right? When it's like, really? Like, you know, because your wife went to work and now you're a stay-at-home dad, you're the one that's not in control and you have to do everything your wife says? Really? 'Cause it seems like you have, like, you're the slave master and she's doing all the work for you and making all the money. So what are we talking about here, right? And they'll go be like, what the fuck? You know, like, and then that anger comes up. I'm like, yeah, that, that, that, that. So if you can deconstruct the victim, the thing that thinks you're stuck, and say, "Actually, you're just pretending," the victim will get pretty damn angry. And so that's another little trick you can use.

So to wrap this one up, I'm curious to ask you about a time, like the most recent time that you found yourself having some repressed anger and how you caught it, how you knew it got to clarity, whether or not it was true clarity or later on you're like, wait a minute, there's still some more. Yeah.

Okay. Couple things in that. There's always still some more. I mean, like, I don't know if it's like accumulated, meaning like, yeah, in 2 weeks I'll have some anger that hasn't. So there's always something there to move. It doesn't mean that I, um, it's, it's a very hard thing to describe, but it's just like, there's just a natural cycle in the body that accumulates and moves emotions. It's just what happens. And just like all your other systems, they accumulate stuff and then they move it. I keep on using the bathroom, but it's a very similar thing. And then, so there's really no time where there isn't some sort of thing in there that can be moved. The way that I notice that my emotional movement needs to happen. And it's not usually so much like anger or sadness. Once you start moving this stuff, it, it feels very much— over time, it just feels like it's either stuck or not stuck. And when you release it, it can move from anger to sadness to fear, all inside of like a couple minutes. But what happens is I wake up a little bit not wanting to face the day. That's a pretty damn good thing that tells me if I am reacting to my stress in any way. That's another thing that tells me. And both of those two things happened. You know, the course is a lot of work that we have a lot more happening this year than we did last year. And so I'm really wanting to care for everybody and at the same time wanting to care for myself. And that balance has not been entirely balanced the whole time. So there's been moments where I'm just like, Oh, I don't want to get on the circle and do this work. And that tells me, oh, I have some emotion that I need to move. So it's really any feeling of stuckness in my life, any feeling of like not excited and joy is where I know that I have something stuck and it needs to move. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, great. This has been awesome. Thank you, Joe.

Yeah, pleasure. Pleasure. Good to see you, Brett.

You too. Looking forward to the next one. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.