Mindset Monday - Useful Anger

This is episode 233 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome. Welcome to Mindset Monday, where we pop in on Mondays in order to bring.

You some quick tidbits, quick topics, in order to have you performing your best, to empower you in your life, at home, at work, so that you can keep living your best life. So today on our Mindset Monday, we're talking about an unusual topic. I think for a Mindset Monday, it's useful anger. Useful anger. So you might have experienced anger at a time or two. I don't know about you, but I've experienced anger.

And if you've experienced anger, you may.

Find that it's not as useful as you'd like it to be. So let's take a look at this. Anger is a natural, instinctive response to threats. This is the kind of thing some anger can be actually necessary for our survival. So some of us have learned to use anger, though, in a way to cover up another emotion that we're not so comfortable with. And I'd like to share a little story here. There was a time, gosh, this was years ago, but it was one of my daughters, and they're both fairly athletic, and one of them was coming down the stairs and did a little kind of skip or hop as coming as they were coming down the stairs right at the point where there was where the floor above crosses the stairwell. So in that little skip or hop, they went up just, you know, maybe an inch or 2 inches or whatever it was, maybe it was 6 inches, I don't know, but enough for them to hit their head and it knocked them back down and they fell onto the stairs. Now, I heard this loud boom and I came running and I was what happened? What happened? And once I realized what had happened and realized they were okay, I was angry in that moment. I had this emotion of anger because in the moment I was being angry toward my daughter. Why were you messing around on the stairs? Why did you do that? And meanwhile, this poor kid is shocked from being knocked back and falling on the stairs. And. And then they've got their mom coming at them in anger once I realized that they were okay. So in this instance, what was really happening is that the anger was there covering up the feeling of fear. What was really there was fear. I was afraid that she was hurt. I was afraid that if she was hurt, how were we even going to handle it? Because there were so many other demands at the time. And what if I had to take her to the hospital and was she going to be okay? And what was this going to mean? And it just sparked this anger in the moment instead of expressing fear because I was so spread thin at the time. I'm going to give another example because I see this come up in men a lot, and especially men who have a lot on their plate and they're highly productive and a lot of people depend on them. And in this particular circumstance, I had a client who was feeling. I could tell that there were some things coming up and I was coaching this person. This is a very powerful and intimidating person in some instances, and a very loving and cuddly and amazing person in other instances. But in this particular scenario, there was something coming up for them. And I coached at the time, it's okay to allow the emotion that you're experiencing. And when I said that, he said back to me, if I allowed this anger, this whole room would be torn apart. It's happened before. And I steadfastly responded with, and it's not really anger, what's actually underneath that anger? And he realized in that moment that it wasn't actually anger. It was a fear of not belonging. So with anger, especially for men, especially for men with high levels of position or responsibility, anger is a socially and culturally appropriate response versus showing sadness or fear or hurt or anxiety, which might be some of the other things that are showing up. But primarily for most people, it's going to be something like a fear that's a fear of unworthiness, a fear of not belonging, a fear of lack of respect or unimportance or not being loved. But ultimately, it's usually that fear that's underneath because we're not often actually being threatened with danger, which is what anger is actually for. That's what that emotion is for. So in my life personally, I had so much anger, so much anger from being treated badly, from being taken advantage of, from being judged, from lots of unfairness, a lot of unfair situations. But that anger was really just a habitual emotion that was modeled after people that I learned it from my parents. And that's probably the situation for many of you that you learned anger you saw when it was used as an example and modeled after it, or you're in a social or cultural situation, that it's a more appropriate response than crying or showing some sort of vulnerability. So for me personally, I loved the go to of anger. I loved it Because I felt so powerful, it was consuming. I felt like I could be invincible, do anything from that emotion. And I certainly didn't want to show any sadness since that was weak and I'd be in positions where I had to either be leading a team or running a business or managing a family. And so I didn't want to show any sadness or vulnerability or weakness. Yet I didn't realize that by not expressing that emotion like sadness that was really there, I was perpetuating, still having sadness under the surface with an additional hairpin trigger for anger. Not only that, anger is also a sign of depression since it's so often used to cover up deep sadness. So the purpose of this particular mindset Monday is to show you how sadness can actually be useful. It can actually serve you in a positive way because we're not usually having to turn and face a bear coming at us and have a physical danger threat. But that is the number one way it can be useful. Number one is to protect us from a harmful threat of danger, a threat to family, a threat to my household. If that's the case, then I am happy to tap into anger to show some sort of threat that I'm something to be reckoned with, that I can protect my household, that it's not going to be breached by something that's threatening my household or whatever it is. But that's the number one useful way of utilizing anger. Number two, this is where anger can be really, really useful is to point to what the problem really is. Is it a loss? Is it a sadness? Is it a lack of belonging? Is it not feeling loved? So it can point to what that problem really is under the emotion for you, Is it an emotion that you're just not accustomed to expressing or you're uncomfortable with feeling that particular emotion and you're more comfortable feeling and expressing anger, or it's more appropriate in the environments that you're in so that number two can be so powerful to really allow anger to be a pause and go, okay, what am I really feeling here? What's really the problem? Why am I so angry? Is it more than I'm disappointed? Am I actually sad? Am I actually feeling disrespected? So looking below the anger, because anger is usually a cover up emotion, it's usually an indulgent emotion that we go to because it feels better than the emotion that we're looking to avoid. So that's number two, how it can be really useful to find what's actually there. Not useful to keep covering up something, but useful to find and see what's actually there. It's like the red flag, the alarm, the red light to say, hey, there's something underneath this. Take a look. And number three, the anger makes it easy to find the trigger pattern. Most of us don't want to be triggered. We don't want to be reacting in a way that's against our own will, that we're not controlling. Most of us do not want to be triggered easily. And so the beautiful thing about anger is that it shows where the pattern is. If there was a pattern of seeing unfairness and that triggers anger or seeing disrespect, it points to what occurred in our own lives, that we learned to be triggered by that, that we learned something along the way in the past, that this was the appropriate thing to trigger this response. And if we can learn our trigger patterns, then we're far less likely to be triggered, which is typically where we're reacting in a way that's beyond our control. We're actually doing something or feeling something and reacting against our will to something. So if we can identify those trigger patterns, then we're more likely to have greater awareness, more control of our own self, instead of having outside circumstances trigger something within us that really we don't want. So the anger has us go, okay, why am I feeling this way? And as soon as we answer, why am I feeling this way? There's usually going to be a few points to what the trigger is. I'm feeling this way because that's so unfair. And then if you look back, maybe it was your childhood, maybe it was your parents, there's probably somewhere in your life that that same thing happened, and it anchored that trigger for the rest of your life. So that third point of how anger can be useful, it gives us the opportunity so that we can learn what the past caused, for us to learn that trigger, learn that response, and we can switch into a more appropriate response or a better emotional tool. So those are the three ways that anger can be really useful. Protect us from harmful threats, Point to what the emotional problem really is beneath the anger, and also highlight where we've been habitually triggered and where we learned that from the past. So anger, just so you know, it. Typically, if we're actually in a really angry state, it usually takes 15 to 20 minutes for the physiological hormones to actually calm down. So sometimes when you experience anger, you might have to actually set a timer, go for a walk, take some deep breaths, and then look for those three other options. Was I actually threatened physically? Was there another emotion that I'm covering up and what is the trigger pattern that this anger is pointing to? So if anger is showing up more than you want in your life, turn it around. Make it useful instead of something that's contaminating your life. That's what we're offering this mindset Monday. Turn anger into something that has you grow and learn and actually contribute and help other people instead of something that's dominating your day or dominating a situation when you don't want it to. So I hope this sets you up powerfully for your week. And if that anger shows up in some way or another, take a look. See. Use these three useful tools so that you can see where anger is actually serving you. To show you where you can actually feel and experience what's really going on in your life and grow and learn in that direction. So have a wonderful rest of your.

Day and kick this week into high.

Gear and have a wonderful week.

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