Nick Sotelo - founder, Anger Resolution

Zipping across the ether, and just like that, as we often do, we landed just where we're supposed to be. Welcome everyone to another episode of Creative on Purpose Live, conversations about making a better living and a bigger impact by defining, developing, and delivering the difference only you can make. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Chief Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose. If you're ready to get clearer about who you really are so you can get closer to what you really want in life, Visit CreativeOnPurpose.com today to start playing your game on your terms without compromise. Let's meet today's guest, Dr. Nick Sotelo. Welcome to the broadcast. Please tell our viewers who you are, what you're up to these days, and where can people go to learn more about you and the difference you're making?

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Scott. I'm Dr. Nick Sotelo. And who am I? That's a good question. I guess I am who I am. We'll learn more about that as the discussion unfolds. It's always a complicated question that I have a response to, I guess, in terms of what do I do. I do lots of things, but the golden thread is I help people get what they want in life. And whether that's through my place of employment, which currently is— I'm a university professor teaching graduate students in mental health counseling. I have a 13-year career as a youth coach. I'm a father, I'm a husband, and when I was doing this sifting, sorting process, that was the golden thread that came out is, uh, always find myself in a position to help people to realize and reach their God-given potential. People can find me at angerresolution.xyz, and really that's going to funnel you into a Facebook group that I run for men that are looking to get control over anger in their life.

Well, fantastic. So it's interesting that, that you kind of self-identify as a coach. It's interesting to me because I am, I often am of the persuasion that we are all in one way, shape, or form coaches. I think coaches in general are people that help people get from where they are to where they want to be. And we do that as parents. And if we're good spouses, hopefully we do that as spouses and have it done for us in return. So I would be curious just about, like, what are some of the, you know, what, what are some of the ways, you know, whether it's mental models or approaches, that you help the people that you serve get close to what they want to achieve in life?

Yeah, so for me, it's, I do have a belief that I guess it's called acorn theory. I get it from James Hillman. James Hillman was analyzed by Carl Jung, so he was one of the few kind of American psychologists to have done the full meal deal with Carl Jung and wrote prolifically about the experience and kind of his impact. So he talks about acorn theory. Robert Johnson talks about inner gold. But this idea that Everything that, everything that we're meant to be is, is imbued in us at birth, right? And so it's a, it's a coach's job then to help people understand that and get to that, get back to that. Most of us will be trained away from that in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. And getting back to that, I think, you know, Gabor Maté talks about that in terms of what is trauma. Trauma is when you denied an aspect of yourself when you were a child in order to receive love from those around you, right? And so the solution to that is to get back to that thing that you denied about yourself. So, so that's, that's the model, you know, high-level overview, is it's already there. You've just have either been trained away from it or you've never been in a process to help you discover it with somebody who really has no attachment to the outcome per se, and really has your best interest in mind.

I love that. It reminds me a little bit of, uh, the quote from the Gospel of Thomas: If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. And, um, it's interesting that I'm having this conversation with you on the heels of a conversation I had with Seth Godin on Monday, because Seth is someone that does not believe in calling, that, you know, there is this— not this thing that you're meant to do with your life or this gift that you're meant to bring forth, but that, you know, that becomes a seductive way of hiding in it. And of course, oftentimes it all comes down to just, you know, defining the terms and unpacking exactly what we mean by all these things. But when I hear you talk about, you know, this, like, what you're meant to do, That's language that resonates with me for sure, and it resonates around that idea of, of calling. You know, life, life wants to speak through you so that you can stop allowing life to simply happen to you. But we, we go through these systems in our lives, you know, systems of being brought up by our parents, being encultured by peers and teachers, and then later bosses that can knock us off of, you know, or out of alignment with our natural interests, proclivities, gifts, etc. How do you, how do you then, you know, how do you then help people get reconnected to something? Because it sounds like you're helping people connect with something that's been there all along and helping them either reconnect or get out of their way and just lean into the thing that they're they're meant to do? What are some of the tools or approaches that you use to do that?

I think that, that the answer to that is depends. It depends on who the person is and where they're at. It's very different working with, you know, like today's young adults, you know, kids that we're trying to launch. I have one, you know, I'll soon, I'll have two. They, they go into this panic-freeze mode versus somebody who's, you know, like you're familiar working with, you know, somebody who's, who's dedicated a huge portion of their life to a career, and then they're wondering, what is it all for, right? So it's a little bit different depending on who you're working with and kind of what the circumstance is. But it's, I think the commonality there is, is that there's this stirring in them that there's, there's more. I know that you and I have a different kind of slant on that, on that idea of more, but there's, there's something off, there's something, there's something more, there's something missing, that the path that they're, that they find themselves on right now, they aren't sure that it's the path that's going to get them to where they want to be. And so, so the approach is is different depending on how convinced that person is that they're potentially on the wrong path, I guess, right. And so if you look at that as kind of a spectrum, somebody who's like absolutely convinced that this is not the path for me, or somebody who, I don't know, maybe I'm on the right path, it seems like I'm on the right path. So the approach is going to be different depending on kind of where they're at around their current perspective on what's going on in their life. I don't think I answered your question, but that's what came to my mind when, when you were talking about about that.

No, I think that's really important because, you know, it's a difference between someone who is actually a, you know, considerate, caring, empathetic coach, truly interested in meeting someone where they are, exploring, you know, what their potentialities are and where they want to get in life, and then helping them, helping them navigate their way through whatever challenges, probably mostly self-imposed, that, that will get them there. And, you know, what I call the, you know, the guru approach to coaching was, here's my 3-step system that worked for me. Because it worked for me, it will work for everyone else. And I'm going to, you know, it's one size fits all. I'm going to jam you into this system. And then of course, when the system doesn't work for you, we'll just blame you and your mindset for not engaging properly. But You know, what I'm hearing and what you're saying is it's very much a process of meeting people where they are. Some people are more open and receptive and aware that perhaps the path that was provided to them by institutionalized education and occupation is not the only choice, and they need some help seeing and embracing that more might be actually just very different than what they've been doing up until this point. And, you know, for some people, it might be much more— might be several layers deeper. And, you know, they need to even become aware that there are alternative ways of seeing and being and doing in this world. So I love that, you know, that approach of kind of meeting people where they are. And of course, one of the places that you're doing, you know, some of the, some of your greatest work is attached to anger resolution, which you alluded to in your introduction. And I'd love to, you know, as someone that has been through my own anger resolution experience, I would love to hear a little bit more about like, how did you come to be doing that work in particular?

Yeah, for sure. So a little bit more about my background that I didn't touch on in my intro is, you know, the, my bulk of my career I spent 23 years working at state-level youth corrections. So that's, that's kind of the end of the road, so to speak, for a young person in the juvenile justice system is that you go to your state-level corrections. So I did that from 1999 to just about a year and a half ago. And so that's where, I mean, that's the only career that I really have only known. Collected some formal degrees along the way in order to help me progress and advance in that system, in that agency, and kind of got to the point to where I realized that this path was not going to get me— it took me a long ways, and I'm very grateful for it, but it wasn't going to get me where I ultimately wanted to go. And so that's the impetus for the shift that I made for myself personally about a couple years ago. So the reason why I'm talking about that is that in, in the realm of corrections and youth corrections, when a judge sends a young person our way, we don't get to tell the judge, "Oh, sorry, Judge, we don't work with that type of person. They don't fit our inclusion criteria," right? We don't get to do that. And so by nature, then it forces us, and especially me being a clinician, you know, trained as a clinician, to embrace every type of person that comes through that gate with every type of problem that they come with, with every, every set of strengths that they come with. And so you didn't get to exclude things based on a criteria or a model. And so I found myself dealing with a fair share of people that struggled with anger. Struggled with feelings in general. I'm one of those weirdos that separates emotions from feelings. So I think about primary feeling states, just like we think about primary colors, right? You have to be able to master the primary feeling state before you can get on to master emotions. That's the background. I'm an expert and authority in addictions, self-harm, suicide, depression, anxiety, any of those things, because I was forced to. I couldn't, I couldn't use the excuse of, "That's not my strength. That's not my training." because these young people keep coming through the door, right? And so fast forward, it's, uh, right on the first third of COVID and I am part of an online mastermind called The Dad's Edge, uh, The Dad's Edge podcast, and we run weekly calls with men. We cover a monthly, we call it a tactical agenda, that covers some piece of some area content that's relevant to the lives of fathers. And I had been contributing, just like you see me contribute in all the groups that I'm around that were, that were linked up, Scott, and being helpful as much as I can. And they approached me, hey, would you be willing to submit some content for this upcoming month? I said, sure. I said, here's 4 things that I can probably quickly and easily "Write up some content around— you pick." And it was like addiction. It was— I'm licensed as a marriage and family therapist as well, so I can cover relationship things. But one of them was anger, anger resolution. And that's what was picked. So it's kind of me being receptive to, you know, the need that was out there. And so I wrote the content. We delivered it to about 200 men, or over the course of a month. And the feedback was, is that it was the best content in about 2 years— in a 2-year existence of this mastermind that they had ever received. And so then I then was offered to be the curator of content for the, for the group from there on out. So, so that's where it started. I mean, I took that as, as the indicator, kind of like Steve Jobs, you know, he wanted to put a ding in the universe. And so this was kind of my ding that I took up and ran with, and I'm still running with at this point.

Really fascinated by— I've actually also written a little bit about distinguishing between feelings and emotions. I'd love to hear your take and have you unpack that a little bit more. What's the working definition you have of each? And how are they different from, and what's the utility of each each of those terms.

Yeah. And so this is the way I was mentored by my clinical mentor, was don't make a ton of absolute claims about what's going on with people, but this is one of the ones that I'll come close to, is that when it comes to the 4 primary feeling states—mad, sad, glad, and afraid—that when people have a problem in their life, it's usually a hang-up around one of those primary feeling states. So it's either an overconnection or underconnection to one or more of the primary feeling states. So that's where the concept was really ingrained in me, and I've tested it out from there, from then on, and I can't think of a single case where it's not applicable to what's going on with the person. So I'm always assessing for mad, sad, glad, and afraid, and somebody being underconnected or overconnected to one or more of the primary Primary feeling states. So that's what I would say a feeling state is, that they are hardwired. They're part of our survival mechanisms in the, in the back of our brain. Mad, sad, glad, and afraid. They are all there for keeping us alive and, and keeping our specific set of DNA moving on through, through the ages. Mad, sad, glad, and afraid. They're only there for survival. They're not there for potential, right? That's their only role, is to keep you alive. Now, an emotion, in my understanding, is when you combine a primary feeling state with a thought. Okay, so, um, uh, you see the Amazon Prime truck coming up to your house. Right? And you then, then you think you see it, so you, you, um, you're glad. And then you have this thought of, oh, it's going to bring me this thing that I bought. So then you get excited, right? So I would say excited is an emotion, right? Seeing the Amazon truck triggers that I'm glad. I have expectations of being happy about this moment. The thought is it's bringing me this thing that I bought. The package gets dropped off and it's something that you're that your wife ordered. And then now you're deflated. You're like, oh my gosh, this is stupid. Right? Okay, so now that, that's an emotional state based on a different perspective that's now been brought to you. So hopefully that makes a little bit of difference or kind of distinguishes it. So an emotion is the combination of a primary feeling state and a thought based on perspective, history, you know, those types of things.

No, that— I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So the, the feeling state is it, when it's attached to a narrative about that, is, is what you're saying is now becomes the emotional state. And yep, curious about, um, you know what, that, that makes perfect sense to me. And then of course the, the question is, well, when we are experiencing some sort of negative emotional state, and by negative I mean something that is impeding our sense of, you know, tranquility, equanimity, well-being, peace of mind. And we want to, we want to do something about that. How does one go about, how does one go about changing the way that they— is it changing the way they feel, or is it, is it dealing with the emotion, or is it some sort of combination of the two?

Yeah, so to me, that's a skill set. It's definitely a skill set that I teach men in my Anger Resolution program, but it's, you know, it's a, it's a ubiquitous skill set. So part of it is, is that you have to learn to accept your feeling states. They're not right or wrong. They are what they are. And so it's helping somebody take a step back and get curious about what it is that they're experiencing. You know, I— and so it's accepting that emotional state, right? I am sad right now, right? And then learning to avoid the doom spiral that can come with that, right? You know, all of the thought traps that come along with that. But really, it's about accepting feeling states for what they are. They're there to keep us alive. Okay, you know, for men, I try to get more, you know, mechanical about this. It's, you know, they're, they're lights on the dashboard. You know, they're telling you, they're giving you a feedback loop that you need to pay attention to and learn to recognize, right? So if you can get somebody to— of course, if somebody's in, you know, absolute crisis, well, then you have to get them out of crisis mode so they can start doing this, you know, self-reflection around it. But That's really the first thing. And this is where, where I, where I know most anger management or anger control interventions, they don't get it right. Because, you know, I'm a big believer of— I can't— you'll probably know who said this, right? But a problem well-defined is a problem half-solved. Right? And I, and I agree with that, that if you are struggling with any kind of a negative emotion state, you have to understand why. You have to under— you know, it's, uh, it's, it's your favorite, right? It's the, it's the maxim, you know, at the Oracle of Delphi: know thyself. It's, it's understanding what this emotional, negative emotional state is, where it's coming from, and why it has a grip on your life. So if you don't do enough of that front-end work then most of what gets contained in classical anger management or anger control is— it's, it's a guess, it's a shot in the dark, because you can't line up tools, strategies, and interventions if you don't even understand what's really going on with you. You can, but it's going to be a guess, right? It's going to be a shot in the dark. And this is why, especially men, so many men go through these programs, say it didn't work. Yeah, because we didn't do enough front-end work to really understand you. And what's going on with this negative emotion state.

Yeah, that makes— I, I— that makes a lot of sense to me. It's, it's the, the, the, um, the third of, um, the, the three Stoic principles or disciplines, which is willing acceptance of, of what's happening. You have to be, you have to be willing to accept and acknowledge what's happening. The way I like to think about it is, you know, if until you articulate, to your point, a problem well-defined, until you articulate the problem in a way that turns it into something that you can work on, it is something that is going to just continue to work on you. And so it's that idea of how do you hold it out at arm's length and then start working on it as a problem that you need to navigate through. Or, you know, sometimes I'd be interested in your take on this. I mean, for me, oftentimes a lot of, a lot of our feeling, I think fear in some way, shape, or form ties into a lot of this. And that, um, you know, what we fail to understand sometimes is that when we are talking about these things that we usually think of as negative emotional states or negative feeling states, they actually can become compasses because they, they're helping point to something that we need to perhaps pay more attention to. So when anger flares up, when fear arises, when you're feeling anxious about something that you know, you anticipate might happen in the future, or you're feeling regret about something that happened in your past, that's, that's a signal that there's something, there's something going on that you haven't really paid adequate attention to that maybe needs to be excavated, defined, and kind of work through.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's where it's about primary feeling state integration. And with men— and I get asked this all the time, "Well, women get angry too." Yes, I trust me, I know women get angry too. But the reason why I focus on helping men with anger is because masculine and feminine energy and feeling states is very different. And in Western society, men get shaped into not suppressing sadness, right? Not admitting that you're afraid. And sometimes when we get in touch with, with being happy, it's to excess, right? Nothing in excess, but, uh, that gets missed there. So we get conditioned to funnel our feeling states through anger, right? And this is where I'm saying underconnected or overconnected.. So in this case, most men are overconnected with anger, and they're underconnected to the other primary feeling states, because that's how we raise and condition men in Western society. Right? And so, so a lot of it is making them aware that there are other primary feeling states. And I've seen, been exposed to extreme cases, right? Men that will cry when we try to validate or acknowledge that they that they're crying, they will say, no, I'm not. And so then we kind of back off a little bit, like, well, what's going on with your eyes? Oh, you mean this? Sometimes my eyes leak water. So the person didn't even have the language for sadness or crying, because that's an extreme example of somebody having that shaped out of them at some point in time, right? So primary feeling state integration is on the front end of doing this work.

Well, and I wonder if, you know, I think for men, anger is something that we are taught almost to use as leverage. Like it's a way to get us, it almost becomes like a motivating force, something that puts the fire in our belly into, you know, to compete and to win and to, you know, to defeat. That's, you know, all of those kind of things. It's almost as if we're taught that, you know, if we don't, if we're not experiencing that, then we're not invested enough in whatever it is we've been told we're supposed to invest Yeah, absolutely.

That's a great example of, of the shaping that goes there, right? In reality, there's a time and place for everything under the sun. And if your only, if your only internal resource is anger, in a state of anger, then you're missing out on, on a whole other set of resources that could be available to you. And, you know, we see other people that learn to leverage other feeling states, right? The people that, people that are really good at guilt-tripping you, you know, are leveraging the feeling state of sadness, right?

So, yeah, yeah. Well, well, shame, and, you know, is, is another powerful motivator that, that I'm sure we could explore in some depth. So As we're coming to the end of our time together, Dr. Nick, you know, if, number one, I'd like to have you share a little bit about, you know, when you, if you have a program upcoming that people can reach out to learn more about. But if there were just, you know, one final tip, exercise, practice that would help someone that's tuning in today that get a little bit more of a handle on their feelings around, you know, around anger and help them navigate their way into a better way forward? What would you share with them?

Yeah, it's, it's the thing that I can offer folks too. It's what I call the Individual Anger Profile. But in a sense, I mean, this is no different than, than helping people in a variety of ways. But it's, it's listing out the top 10 ways that anger is getting in the way of your life. You know, it's basically admitting, you know, here's how anger is wreaking havoc in my life. And then you just have to ask yourself, am I okay with this? Right? If, if this, if nothing changes here, say, for, for 3 months, am I going to be okay with that? For a year, am I going to be okay with that? In 5 years, am I going to be okay with that? Right? And you got to be brutally honest with yourself about what's going on. So that's really the first step, is to really kind of outline, you know, the basically the pros and cons of, of maintaining, you know, this, this negative aspect of anger, because I'll also teach people that you can have destructive anger or you can have constructive anger, right? There is such a thing as just anger. And so the goal here isn't to get rid of anger, right? It's not to manage it. It's not to control it. It's to integrate it, right? And to have it play the role that it needs to play in your life, but not to an excess. So, uh, so yeah, I would say, you know, do that exercise. Write down all the anger that is wreaking havoc in your life and asking yourself, are you okay with that? And if you're not, then, um, you know, the easy thing is, is honestly, uh, join my Facebook group. And it's, it's in that group that you can get access to, um, some of the best lessons that I have to offer that help people get control over anger.

Well, I love that final takeaway that anger is not necessarily just a negative emotional state, but it's also something that you can leverage and it can be useful as well. I couldn't agree with that more. Well, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Dr. Nick and I really appreciate the gift of your time and attention. Today's broadcast motivates you to take a bolder step into possibility. Keep go-go going and visit creativeonpurpose.com. To get started with playing your game today. If you're watching on social media or YouTube, please leave us a question or a comment. What's your biggest takeaway from this episode? Leave it in the comments. And if you're listening as a podcast, please leave us a 5-star rating and a written review. It really helps more of the right people connect with the wisdom that's being shared by my guests. Now, take the insight and inspiration from this conversation and play your game All In and Full Out. Dr. Nick Sotelo, thank you so much for the gift of sharing your wisdom and experience with us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.