Listen To Your Anger

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Hey, welcome. Today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite topic, which is anger. And this is especially important for you. Yes, you. And you might think that you experience anger a lot and maybe you think, I need to feel less angry and I have too much anger. Or you might be on the other side of the spectrum, which is, I don't feel angry that often. I don't think that's much of an issue for me. And that's especially why you should listen to this episode. Because what I found is a lot of people are experiencing a lot of anger without even knowing it. And that's a major part of the problem and leads to a lot of health consequences as well as relationship consequences. And it comes from nice programming where you learn that you're not supposed to be angry and being angry is bad and wrong, and so you just learned how to repress it without even really knowing you're doing it. And in this episode, you're going to learn more about that, how that process works, and why anger is really valuable, how to feel it more, let it move through you quickly and easily and get the message. Because anger is not a bad thing that shouldn't exist. It is like all your emotions, it is carrying a message for you and you can receive the message and then act accordingly and you benefit and all your relationships benefit. So let's dive right into it. How are you with anger? Do you let yourself feel angry? Do you have a pretty strong, nice person programming set of rules around anger where you shouldn't feel it? How aware are you of that? Is it something you've looked at? I find people fall into a few different camps. One is maybe you've read Not Nice, my book or other materials about emotional health and say, oh, no, I think anger is useful to feel and I think there's benefit in it. And so I'm working on letting myself feel it. More. And that means you sort of do. And some of it you just push away without really letting yourself feel it. But you intellectually think that it's good to feel it more, so you definitely open up more space for it. And the other camp is people that are pretty steeped in the programming of, like, it's bad and wrong and it's dangerous for relationships. And I'm a bad person if I experience it and I need to hide it if I'm feeling it. And that has more consequences. So what are the consequences of not letting yourself feel anger or even. Not even thinking, not even knowing you experience it, Just kind of repressing it. And just a quick definition here. Repression refers to it's unconscious. You're not even aware that you might feel anger in a situation. And then suppression is, is you are aware that you're feeling angry, but you contain it within. And sometimes that is necessary or essential. You know, you're in a work meeting and someone says something that you feel is condescending and you might want to, you know, in the moment you're like, f you, Terry. You know, and so you suppress it because you don't want to leap over the table and attack Terry. Or in my case, I got, you know, two little kids and a puppy right now. And, you know, especially the younger one is like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put the puppy up on this high thing and watch him jump off. Okay, all right, we know that the puppy's not supposed to jump off high things. Why do you want to put him up there? I want to see what's gonna happen. You know what's gonna happen. He's gonna jump off and it's not good for him. Yeah, okay, what if I blow in his face? It freaks him out. Don't blow in his face. You know, so lots of things like that. Right. And so in the moment I'm angry and so there's gonna be some suppression of the impulse to yell or say something harsh or cruel. Right. And to choose a more patient or loving long game approach to protect the puppy and also guide a 5 year old on how to have more empathy when his brain structures haven't developed empathy in any thorough way yet for most kids. So, you know, you gotta play a long game there. So suppressing is not inherently bad. It's just what do you do after that moment? You know, just because you clenched your mouth and your jaw and your stomach, doesn't mean the emotion went away. He just held it inside. Now you still have that frustration. You still have that anger, you still have that irritability. What do you do, how do you discharge it, how do you process it, how do you feel it, how do you move through it? A lot of people just like move on to the next thing and there's no space in their life. And if there is a moment of space, you jam it full with your phone, with input, with audio, with listening, with this, with that. And there's no space to let yourself breathe and feel and allow because it's uncomfortable. Especially emotions like anger and frustration. And they're especially uncomfortable because they're often like, who do you get angry the most with? That's right, people you're close to, people you love, people in your family, your spouse, your partner, your kids, your parents, your friends, your loved ones, those that you spend the most time with, your housemate, your roommate, your colleagues that you see every day, your boss, your employees. Like the people that you're around. The most is going to trigger the most anger because it comes out of relationships. And it's uncomfortable because you also love these people or care about them or need to work together. And we perceive it as in conflict because the anger might feel like it's a push away or an attacking kind of feeling. And we are afraid that if we experience that, then we're going to act it out. So we want to make a distinction right now between feeling a feeling and acting out the feeling. And oftentimes people are afraid to feel an emotion like sadness or anger, grief or anger, because there's a sense that the emotion will overtake them and they'll just have to, you know, they'll cry forever or they will just have to go verbally attack somebody. And actually the opposite is true. If you suppress an emotion or repress an emotion, it gets a lot more control over you. You're just in denial and you're projecting and you're saying, well, I only acted. I only said that thing to that person because they did this and so they deserved it. And meanwhile you're saying something really harsh and crue and you're like, oh, but they deserved it because of this, this and that. And it comes out in ways that you're not even aware. So it's much more effective to actually let yourself feel it. And not only effective, it is sanity. Because if you don't feel the suppressed or repressed anger, one, you won't get the message. And the message is saying like, hey, maybe something needs to change. Maybe the way that someone's talking to you doesn't work. For you. And you need to be assertive. You need to ask for something, you need to say no, you need to claim something for yourself. And the anger is actually give you the fuel and the power to be able to do that. Now. You don't have to claim it in this really extreme way. Like the anger might inside of you be saying like, I hate this and I'm going to say that to that person and I'm going to break up with them and that. And you don't necessarily act that all out, but you take the message, oh, something needs to change here. What is it that I want? What do I need to do here? And you discover what the message is and then how to more effectively communicate. But you do something. There's information there for you. And if you close it down, not only do you not get the information, but you also start to get all these weird symptoms. You can get physical symptoms from suppressing anger and other emotions. You know, foot pain, back pain, upper back pain, neck pain, jaw pain, headaches, migraines, wrist problems, repetitive strain problems, mysterious things that you wrinked in or tinnitus, ringing in your ears, weird gastrointestinal pains and IBS and other symptoms, foot pain, knee pain, shoulder pain. I could go on. And there's emotional consequences and more anxiety, more depression, as well as longer term health implications of autoimmune conditions, cancers. Because your body, when you're suppressing an emotion, what's happening is there's all this emotional energy that's inside that your body's tightening in response to. It's a stress response and there's fear around letting yourself feel the emotion. And so you're in a constant chronic state of fight or flight. Your autonomic nervous system is on overload and that starts to take a significant toll on all systems in your body. So it's real and it's extremely necessary from a health perspective, from a relationship perspective and a confidence perspective to let yourself feel your feelings, including anger. So you on board? You ready? Let's talk more about how to do it. First things first, you got to give yourself some space to feel your feelings. Not necessarily filling every moment with some sort of stimulus and input. And it could be as little as 15 minutes. One of the best ways to do this is 15 minutes of journaling. Just write whatever comes to your mind. What did I like today? What did I not like today? What's bothering me today? This isn't like a, you know, memoirs at the lake kind of what happened on your vacation kind of journal this Is not something you need to keep. This is about moving energy. You could rip up the page when you're done. You could hide the journal so no one reads it. You could do it on the digital format and just erase it or lock the file and just let it move through you. And it's frustrations, resentments, challenges. What might be bothering me right now, as well as you could do this in motion. I'm a big fan of doing this while walking, running. You could do it while biking or swimming. Some sort of steady state motion where you get into a hypnotic rhythm. Not necessarily like strength training or something, because you need a lot more focus on your form than. But this would be something you could do any sort of cardio work or just walking and let yourself feel. And unlike the journaling, you don't necessarily have to put it all into words. You could verbalize it all. But sometimes for me, I don't even verbalize it. I just tune into the feeling and just feel it. And it's hot. There's like a teeth gritting, like, ugh. And I'll think of different people in my life and, you know, blame them. And this is not the time to be mature, to let yourself really feel it. You're listening to a part of you, and yes, this part is immature. It does blame people. It blames circumstances. And this person did that. And I don't want this. And it could be totally irrational. Totally irrational. You know, blaming something for something. You could be blaming someone else for something that you brought it about. And now is not the time to say, well, actually, you brought it about. That's you trying to talk yourself out of the anger. You know, it's only reasonable if I have it. Or you're feeding the flames like, yeah, yeah, that person did me wrong and I'm gonna get them back. And that's not what that. That's like revenge fantasies. This is just letting yourself really feel the raw heat and the hurt and the anger. And there's maybe there's some revenge ideas in there or blame in there, but you don't. None of this is something that you are agreeing with or disagreeing with or challenging. You're just saying, yeah, show me more. Yeah, you're hur. Yeah, you're angry. Yeah, you're frustrated. Yeah, you're resentful. Yeah, you're whatever. Show me. Yes, that's what you're saying to that part of you. And then you receive the feelings. You feel the feelings, which is going to be uncomfortable. That's why you can practice Discomfort tolerance by taking cold showers, by doing things that make you get rejected or feel embarrassed. These are all forms of discomfort tolerance which boost your confidence. And the most uncomfortable thing is to feel our own feelings fully. Just allow it. Give it total space. That's why I love to do it outside. Just let it, boom, go outside of the bounds of your skin, out up into the air and all directions around you. You're not trying to get rid of it, you're just giving as much space as it needs. Because if you get rid of it, you don't get the message inside. What is the message? What is the anger telling you? It might be telling you something really valuable like, no, I need to change something here. That situation doesn't work when that person talks to me that way. That doesn't work for me now. It doesn't come out in that way. It comes out as like, so and so is a piece of. But then you listen, say, wow, okay, yeah, I'm really angry at so and so. Why? Well, they said this to me. Okay, what do I not like about that? Well, it feels very disrespectful. It feels condescending. Okay, great. So I need a different dynamic with this person. I need to be able to speak back. I need to be able to speak up for myself. I need to be able to challenge them or question them or something, or withdraw from the environment or whatever is needed. But you can start to get the message. And the message might come extreme like, I gotta leave everybody or quit or divorce. And that's not maybe the exact action that you need to take. But you can hear the message underneath. You know, I was just doing this. Let me give you an example so you get a sense of how this works. I was just doing this yesterday. I was going for a run and I was tuning into this frustration feeling, this anger feeling. I had been doing a ton of output recently. I did this virtual three day virtual event and then talked to potential clients for my group programs for days afterwards. And then we have this puppy, right? So there's a lot more output. So then we had a weekend that was just a lot of family time and puppy time and all my own systems for when I would exercise and when I would have alone time or meditate or all that stuff is just out the window during this phase of, of puppyhood. And so I was giving more and less recharge time and I was feeling more this frustration, this anger. So I was going for this run, which felt fantastic. It was in the hot sun, one of the first Alone times I had. And I just started tuning into that feeling and it was blaming my wife for this and my kid for that and this. You know, I don't like this about the team members and this thing about that. And everybody, everybody get off of me. It's like all my responsibilities, all my things that I normally am excited about doing. Felt like I just need space from everything, right? And it's. And it's. Then if I don't let myself really feel it, it can start to get into this negative spiral. Like I don't like my life right now and this sucks and that. And instead I just let myself feel like I'm angry inside at all these things. And this is. Man, I would never let myself feel this when I was younger at all. Even in my 20s, I was just completely locked up and suppressed when it came to emotions and anger. Until about my late 20s, I'd say, so let myself feel it. And then there's a message. There's always a message inside. You always got to get curious. What is the message? And the message was we gotta. This is too much like immersion intertwining and nesting, you know, with the puppy and the kids and family and Candace. And then we're gonna go on this, we have this week long vacation coming up. We're all gonna be in a little camper van together and it's gonna be tight and compact and there's gonna be a lot of sweetness in it. But there's this part of me that's just like too much nesting, too much togetherness. Like I need some autonomy, I need some independence. And then this phrase came to my mind, just made me laugh. And it said, enough nesting, it's time for some questing. And I was like, yeah, yeah, that's right. But what am I gonna do? We're gonna go on this vacation in like a couple of days and I got all this work to do before I go and ah, you know, and then. But I just listened and it was like, I just need, I need some time to myself. That's what I need to recharge before. And so I started to think about it and I kind of moved my schedule around and I was like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a day before vacation. Which is outrageous. Cause normally people before vacation I would be like working my face off. Like, I gotta get everything done. I'm stressed out. And now I was like, all right, you know what I'm do? I'm take the day before the family vacation begins. For an Aziz vacation, a one day Aziz vacation, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to Mount Hood, I'm going to bring this little puppy and he can't hike that far. You're not supposed to hike a puppy that far. So I have this little backpack I can put him in that I've been training him to get used to. And I'm going to go as far and as hard as I can on Mount Hood for a day. My goal is 20 miles, 10 miles out and back to get to this certain spot. And I'm pretty sure I could do that without a puppy on my back. So we're gonna see how it goes. He needs to basically sit in the backpack for a good, you know, eight hours. So I don't see what could possibly go wrong. But whatever it is, I told Candace and she's like, you sure you can do that with a puppy? And I'm like, what kind of quest would it be if you knew you were gonna make it? You gotta have that element of uncertainty. So we're gonna see. But I just put a huge smile on my face. I felt totally energized knowing that I have this day to fully recharge, to give myself what I need. And that came out of letting myself feel the frustration, the anger and the resentment. Which raises an interesting question that you might want to consider is what messages are there and the anger for you? You might even know it, like right now, even without necessarily doing a full on exercise of journaling, or I call it the rage walk where you do it while you're walking or in motion. Just like right now, is there some irritation or some resentment that you're experiencing or in a relationship, something that's bothering you, what you want to let yourself do is actually feel it. And this sounds so simple, but what some snags are is oftentimes we'll get into the story about it and, and will really just spin around the edge of the pool and not really go straight into the physical feeling. When I say feel it, I mean not in your head. Like so and so said this to me and that was totally inappropriate. And now I'm gonna say this to them and I can't believe they did this. And she's so stupid and he's just. That might seem like you're feeling it, but actually you're spinning around the edge in your mental stories about it and building a case about why you're right and they're wrong. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you can start there, but then you gotta go straight down into the center of your heart and feel. And it feels hot and burning and tight and pressure. And you wanna get into that. And then it's just. It's less about the story and more about this. Raw. Like, f you hate you this, that. And it might feel really scary and intense. Which is why we stay around the edge and rationally make up a story. Why they suck and we're good and we're righteous and they're all wrong because we're uncomfortable just being with this, like, primal emotion. But just go straight into it and breathe and know that it might feel really intense, but it moves. And it's going to move so much faster because you're discharging it and you're allowing the energy to move a thousand times faster than if you clenched everything up and just, you know, tried to keep it inside. So let it move. A couple times when I'm running, I grunt. I'm like. I remember one time I was grunting and then there's like a person sitting in their car with their window open as I ran by. Like, maybe they think I'm just running really hard. Maybe not. I don't care. Whatever, you know, they heard a dude grunting. Gotta let go of that hyper concern. What other people think. Although that's a different episode, different topic. So what are you seeing about yourself right now? In fact, let's turn this into your action step. Time for action, action, action. Your action step is to go grunt as you walk down the street. No, your action step is going to be to practice this, right? So whether it's journaling or a walk or something, just do it at least once. Just do it now. It might take a few times to really start to be able to get the message because it might be a little bit of practice on not only feeling the anger, but also connecting to the part of you that's angry and really listening to it. Sometimes those parts take a little bit of trust. Take some time to build the trust. Because if you've been suppressing it for so many years and all of a sudden you're like, yeah, tell me more. I really want to hear it. Notice if you start to argue with it or say, no, we shouldn't feel that, or you should be more patient or this or that, it's not the time for that. The time to really let yourself feel it and see if you can upgrade your reality, your rules, so that you see this is actually good. And healing and helpful for you and for your relationships. Because in the old programming, it's like a dichotomy, right? It's like anger is bad for relationships. Anger is bad. It's destructive. It takes away from relationships. And there's a new way of seeing it where it is constructive. It is actually adding something to you and your relationships and can really help you steer in a very effective way, in a way that actually builds more love and connection. It can clear the air, it can remove old blocks and resentments, and it can forge something new. So go ahead and practice love to hear more about it. If you're not already a part of our Confidence Warriors Facebook group, go to Facebook and type in Confidence warriors and you can join. It's a free group. You'll just get approved and you can share about your experience with this process or anything else you're learning from this show or my books or anything else. So until we speak again, may have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com. Sam.