Speaker 1: Pushkin. Imagine that right now, you're driving a car, which,
Speaker 1: if you actually are driving a car, is probably an
Speaker 1: easy thing to conceptualize. But imagine you're in your car
Speaker 1: and you're stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Your lane
Speaker 1: is ending soon, so you turn on your turn signal
Speaker 1: and try to merge, but car after car pretends just
Speaker 1: not to see you, and that's when the drivers behind
Speaker 1: you start honking their horns at you, like it's somehow
Speaker 1: your fault that no one will let you in. Now,
Speaker 1: I'd like to think that during a moment like this,
Speaker 1: I'd think back to my years of training as a
Speaker 1: happiness expert, that I'd embrace a bit of compassion for
Speaker 1: the other drivers, or just remember to take a deep breath.
Speaker 1: But no, Instead, I usually undergo an immediate hulk like
Speaker 1: transformation from a friendly, everyday commuter into a full on,
Speaker 1: profanity shouting road rage masshole. My car may be at
Speaker 1: a standstill, but my emotions and specifically my rage, has
Speaker 1: gone from zero to sixty in what feels like less
Speaker 1: than a millisecond. The science shows that burst of anger
Speaker 1: like these don't really help us out in the long run,
Speaker 1: Unlike a green superhero. Our human fury can be much
Speaker 1: more under control than we think if we have the
Speaker 1: right strategies. It's such an uncomfortable feeling, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody has had this experience of anger or you've gotten
Speaker 1: really really good and not paying attention to your own
Speaker 1: feelings and your dissociated all the time. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: feel good, and there's a physiological reason for it. Our
Speaker 1: body is pushing us to do something. It's a very
Speaker 1: protective mechanism, and the body is determined to force us
Speaker 1: into action in order to protect us, which is why
Speaker 1: is so incredibly uncomfortable to feel angry and to want
Speaker 1: to do something about it as soon as possible. This
Speaker 1: is Faith Harper. She's a therapist based in San Antonio,
Speaker 1: Texas who's written several books designed to make neuroscience more
Speaker 1: understandable to the general public, including one that's taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about strategies I can use when my mass
Speaker 1: whole self wants to bust out. But I'll warn you.
Speaker 1: Faith's book has a distinctly not safe for work title.
Speaker 1: It's called Unfuck Your Anger. Using Science to Understand Frustration,
Speaker 1: rage and Forgiveness, and the colorful title really fits because,
Speaker 1: as Faith puts it at the start of her book,
Speaker 1: nothing pisses her off more than being angry, but sometimes
Speaker 1: she just can't help it. I got angry last night
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to pull into a parking spot and
Speaker 1: somebody opens their car door and then leaves it open
Speaker 1: while they're digging around in their truck. I don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Move, I'm trying to park, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to go grocery shopping. It just feels like there's this
Speaker 1: idea of how things should be, and when people break
Speaker 1: the contract, we get mad. Anything that doesn't align with
Speaker 1: how we expect the world to work can create these
Speaker 1: feelings of distress. But this need for movement to create change,
Speaker 1: and the change that I created was rather than yell
Speaker 1: at the lady digging in or trunk because I went
Speaker 1: to other partet spot. And so why don't give be
Speaker 1: like a quick definition of anger, because you know, it
Speaker 1: differs from some of these other negative emotions that we've
Speaker 1: talked about in this season of the podcast. You know,
Speaker 1: how would you define it? It comes from the Latin
Speaker 1: route meaning to outmove. It's creating energy to propel action.
Speaker 1: It's the nervous system getting wound up enough to do something.
Speaker 1: So anger is your body directing you to create change.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a good neutral definition because we
Speaker 1: have these ideas about anger being very negative and something
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't have versus paying attention to my body
Speaker 1: is wanting me to make some kind of correaction and
Speaker 1: protect itself. We've talked in this season a lot about
Speaker 1: different negative emotions, things like sadness and anxiety, And with
Speaker 1: all these emotions, there's this kind of urge to ignore
Speaker 1: them or runaway, right because they don't feel good. But
Speaker 1: with anger, you know we have that urge, but I
Speaker 1: think the reason is different. I think with anger there's
Speaker 1: a real worry that if we acknowledge it and act
Speaker 1: on it, we could hurt someone, hurt ourselves. Right. It
Speaker 1: sure happens too, right, I mean, so, so talk about why,
Speaker 1: even though you know there's a potential for harm with
Speaker 1: this emotion, we shouldn't ignore it. That's not really the
Speaker 1: right response. Yeah, any emotion that we ignore I call
Speaker 1: it holding the beach ball underwater. You can spend all
Speaker 1: of your time and attention doing that. And for those
Speaker 1: of us who grew up splashing around in the pool
Speaker 1: and have done that. You know, you can push it
Speaker 1: under it and you can do nothing but that, But
Speaker 1: eventually you're going to need to do something else. Your
Speaker 1: attention span is going to wander somewhere else, and that
Speaker 1: beach ball is going to pop up, is going to
Speaker 1: hit you in the face. Things are going to go
Speaker 1: flying everywhere. You're going to have to deal with it
Speaker 1: at some point. So ignoring any complicated emotion doesn't make
Speaker 1: it go away. It actually festers and makes it worse.
Speaker 1: And that's true of all the uncomfortable emotions that you're
Speaker 1: talking about in the series. Anger is no different. So
Speaker 1: when people are worried, like well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: react from anger, ignoring it is just going to have
Speaker 1: it pop up in some weird way. Instead of having
Speaker 1: a conversation with a co worker that needs to be had,
Speaker 1: you're going to go home and yell at your partner.
Speaker 1: And maybe not even that day, maybe a month later,
Speaker 1: as things build up. And so I think this is
Speaker 1: a really important way to think about anger, right, because again,
Speaker 1: you know, we can sometimes think these emotions they're just uncomfortable, right,
Speaker 1: But you've argued this, sometimes anger is normative. It's helpful
Speaker 1: you know, talk about what you mean there. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should say first of all that I was that
Speaker 1: kid even at a very young age. My data especially
Speaker 1: like that's too many battles. You can't put every battle
Speaker 1: in your pocket. You have to pick two or three
Speaker 1: at a time, put some down. I was always that
Speaker 1: person that was mad about injustice and mad about how
Speaker 1: other people treated and wanted to punch the sun at
Speaker 1: a very young age, and my parents were probably like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do with this person. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I became a therapist interested in social justice issues. The
Speaker 1: story that I tell in the book is about Rosa Parks.
Speaker 1: Most people know who Rosa Parks, but they don't know
Speaker 1: the story of how she became Rosa Parks. Right. She
Speaker 1: was not politically active and engaged. Her brother had served
Speaker 1: in World War Two, was an incredibly decorated hero and
Speaker 1: came back and was treated like shit because he was
Speaker 1: a black man in a structurally racist society. And that
Speaker 1: pissed her off, and so she could have yelled and
Speaker 1: screamed about it, but she decided to get involved. She
Speaker 1: became involved with her local chapter of NWACP. She became
Speaker 1: the secretary of that local chapter, and when the bus
Speaker 1: boycott was determined to be a good, non violent course
Speaker 1: of action, the idea was that she was going to
Speaker 1: replicate something else that had already happened in Birmingham. There
Speaker 1: had been a young, unwed, pregnant woman who had been
Speaker 1: told not to sit down and move, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: let's replicate this action with somebody who will not be
Speaker 1: torn up needlessly, or can at least take it if
Speaker 1: it happens. So the action happened, and it wasn't that
Speaker 1: Rosa Parks got on the bus and she was tired
Speaker 1: and she said, screw y'all, I'm not getting up. And
Speaker 1: then they papered all of the historically black neighborhoods with
Speaker 1: flyers about the protest. And so rather than just reacting,
Speaker 1: she became very, very involved in strategic about creating change.
Speaker 1: And so that's anger being you. Your body's telling you
Speaker 1: something's wrong, and there was like no lies, detective, there
Speaker 1: was something incredibly wrong there. But by handling in this
Speaker 1: more measured and thoughtful way, so much more tends to
Speaker 1: get done than just beating the crap out of somebody.
Speaker 1: So I loved these stories about these cases where anger's normative.
Speaker 1: But of course the problem is that anger can also
Speaker 1: stick with us. We can kind of get caught in
Speaker 1: these cycles of anger where our emotions kind of blow
Speaker 1: up on a hair trigger. So talk about why that's
Speaker 1: not great either, well, and I think that's when we
Speaker 1: feed it. There used to be this primal screen kind
Speaker 1: of therapy, which was a big thing in the seventies
Speaker 1: that you can just go in and kind of vomit
Speaker 1: and you do like you feel better for a minute
Speaker 1: because you're like, yeah, I'm mad and everything sucks, and
Speaker 1: my therapist now agrees, and this group we're sitting naked
Speaker 1: in the woods and everybody agrees or whatever. And then
Speaker 1: we found kandas Pert's research found that that's not true.
Speaker 1: That that process of just having this vomit where we're
Speaker 1: not doing anything with it became something I hate to
Speaker 1: use the word addiction because it's not an addiction, but
Speaker 1: it becomes a very out of control behavior. It's this
Speaker 1: thing that we want to engage in and that we
Speaker 1: need it to feel better, but it just becomes this
Speaker 1: loop that we go in and we scream about stuff,
Speaker 1: but we're not doing anything with it. Just like any
Speaker 1: uncomfortable emotion, it's like, Okay, so our body's telling us
Speaker 1: to pay attention to something. What do we need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to? Are we listening to an old tape?
Speaker 1: And we need to remind ourselves that, you know, that's
Speaker 1: an uncomfortable association because of past traumas, and it's not
Speaker 1: reality based or is it reality based? And so if so,
Speaker 1: how do we work with it? And so we're not
Speaker 1: moving through it, we're just stuck in it. And so
Speaker 1: what you've fargued is in these cases where people are
Speaker 1: like legitimately being a jerk or there's like a legitimate
Speaker 1: structural inequity, you've heard you that even in those cases,
Speaker 1: we should try to be good about regulating our anger,
Speaker 1: being kinder and more patient. Why right, Well, we get
Speaker 1: more done. You know, anger can be scary for the
Speaker 1: people around us. It can be scary and uncomfortable for ourselves.
Speaker 1: It feels very much like a lack of control for
Speaker 1: physiological reasons. So recognizing it, let's try to manage the
Speaker 1: beach ball without shoving it underwater, is far more helpful
Speaker 1: and efficacious for getting anything done. And I have clients
Speaker 1: that will come in and they're mad, and they're screaming,
Speaker 1: and I'll go ahead and give them some rope to
Speaker 1: do that because I'm curious what their pattern is around that,
Speaker 1: and this is a safe place to do it. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, so I don't feel unsafe with you.
Speaker 1: I understand where this is coming from. You've got a
Speaker 1: lot of pain here that's being expressed in this way.
Speaker 1: But you know, you're kind of a big dude, and
Speaker 1: you're pretty loud, and I'm wondering how other people are
Speaker 1: responding to this in your life? Are people hearing what
Speaker 1: you're saying when it's expressed in this way? And that's
Speaker 1: the point, Like we're trying to create change, is what
Speaker 1: are the mechanisms of change? And screaming and raging doesn't
Speaker 1: get people real far, even though social media is full
Speaker 1: of it. That's not how action is created. If we
Speaker 1: want to channel our anger productively rather than chaotically, we
Speaker 1: need to figure out where our anger goes wrong and
Speaker 1: how to respond with a bit more chill. But doing
Speaker 1: that requires figuring out how anger works in the first place.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into the biology of anger. We'll see the
Speaker 1: understanding the purpose of this ancient emotion can give us
Speaker 1: some hints about how to use our anger in more
Speaker 1: effective ways. The happiness lab will be right back. To
Speaker 1: really understand an emotion, it's often helpful to learn more
Speaker 1: about how that emotion first originates and how it interacts
Speaker 1: with the rest of our neural circuitry. Therapist Faith Harper
Speaker 1: has argued that we can understand anger better once we
Speaker 1: realize that this emotion starts with perception. Well, the body
Speaker 1: is perceiving something, and a lot of times we don't
Speaker 1: even really know what it is. We are getting so
Speaker 1: much information that it's sort of downloading and we can
Speaker 1: pay attention to a few pieces of it at the
Speaker 1: prefreederal cortex level, and the rest of it is kind
Speaker 1: of souping around on there. And so sometimes I have
Speaker 1: people like that was angry, and I didn't know why
Speaker 1: your body was paying attention it read something as a threat.
Speaker 1: You were in the store and you smelled somebody's cologne
Speaker 1: and it was the same cologne that was warned by
Speaker 1: somebody who really don't like That kind of stuff happens
Speaker 1: all the time. So getting really curious is important because
Speaker 1: people listening to this yaye, yeah, but I have no
Speaker 1: idea like why him pissed all the time, And that's okay.
Speaker 1: A lot of it's precognitive or it's body based. Most
Speaker 1: of our messaging is afferent, is coming from the body.
Speaker 1: We're having like this vaguel tone experience that our brain
Speaker 1: then interprets his abpiss. So when we decide an emotion
Speaker 1: as negative or positive, as when we get into trouble
Speaker 1: versus an emotion just exists. And when we get curious about, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm really grumpy and upset right now, I wonder what
Speaker 1: that's about, or I'm irritated, and I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: why people that are just huge impass are having a
Speaker 1: lot of that right now because everybody is so tight
Speaker 1: and exhausted and frustrated. Where a year and a half
Speaker 1: into pandemic and we're having these big societal upheavals, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we're just picking up on other people's shit, right
Speaker 1: So getting curious of like, hmm, I wonder what that's about.
Speaker 1: I wonder what's going on takes the internalized stigma and
Speaker 1: the externalized stigma out of it. And so rather than
Speaker 1: like oh, I'm mad and I shouldn't be, or that's
Speaker 1: a bad emotion to have something's wrong. It's just like,
Speaker 1: I wonder what that's about. I wonder what's going on.
Speaker 1: My body picked up on something, but it's obviously not
Speaker 1: something I need to pay attention to you right now.
Speaker 1: But you're telling body like I got you. I paid attention,
Speaker 1: but I don't see anything. So I think we're good.
Speaker 1: And then you're no longer trying to shove something away,
Speaker 1: and the body's like, are you sure? Like, yo, you
Speaker 1: can continue to watch, but I think we're fine. Let's
Speaker 1: just go ahead and go to the grocery store. And
Speaker 1: then we're having a negotiation rather than trying to wrestle
Speaker 1: control away from the amygdal up which never works. And
Speaker 1: so let's talk about how anger manifests in the body.
Speaker 1: You know, give me a kind of sympathetic nervous system
Speaker 1: one oh one. You know, how does anger really start?
Speaker 1: Physiologically speaking? Yeah, we think that the brain is controlling
Speaker 1: the body, like there's somebody up there with a joystick,
Speaker 1: and the body's really controlling the brain. The vegas nerve
Speaker 1: is sending up this information. There are four pathways up
Speaker 1: and only one down. Eighty percent of the messaging is
Speaker 1: body to brain, not brain to body. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of us have heard of fight flight, and we
Speaker 1: actually have fight flight freeze. And what that is is
Speaker 1: the nervous system, specifically the vagus nerve, the tenth cranial nerve,
Speaker 1: which connects to pretty much everywhere in our body. All
Speaker 1: of our organs is reacting. We're built for connection. We're
Speaker 1: wired for connection, and if something challenges that, then the
Speaker 1: body's job is survival. And so we're having this very physiological,
Speaker 1: animalistic response and the people get really embarrassed that their
Speaker 1: bodies are doing what their bodies are supposed to do,
Speaker 1: which goes back to paying attention to those early warning
Speaker 1: signs is the best way through a legal event. And
Speaker 1: then if you get overactivative, but even just going like
Speaker 1: this is what's going on. I just need to let
Speaker 1: this rush of hormones get through me and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to feel a little nauseous and then I'll have
Speaker 1: something little sugar. I've recognizing like this is just something
Speaker 1: that I have to now work through because my body
Speaker 1: is doing its job. Is really helpful. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: a yoga teacher, so just ignore me. So that's why
Speaker 1: things like yoga and she goong and taichi and very
Speaker 1: mindful movement can be incredibly beneficial because we're bringing the
Speaker 1: brain and body back together, and the mechanism of that
Speaker 1: is the vegas earp And this isn't really new information.
Speaker 1: That's our new word for it, but acupuncturists three thousand
Speaker 1: years ago called it the do channel. Same thing, so
Speaker 1: we've always known about the mind body connection. We get
Speaker 1: really good at forgetting and we also get really good
Speaker 1: at thinking that other people's science may not be correct
Speaker 1: because of the words that they used, or they didn't
Speaker 1: have an fMRI to understand what was going on. But
Speaker 1: we've had thousands of years of understanding that this is
Speaker 1: what bodies do. This isn't brand brand new. One thing
Speaker 1: you noted in the book, which I thought was really important,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we sometimes think of anger as
Speaker 1: like an on off switch, and I'm angry or I'm not.
Speaker 1: You'll talk about why that's not necessarily always the case.
Speaker 1: So we think we have three emotions, mad, sad, glad.
Speaker 1: There's actually a huge spectrum of emotions, and even within
Speaker 1: the anger, it can be frustrated, it can be irritated,
Speaker 1: it can be going back to parking lot, lady was
Speaker 1: I angry, it was I pissed off. No, I was irritated,
Speaker 1: but it would be very easy for me to continue
Speaker 1: to feed that and it turned into a rage of thought. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm always trying to get my clients and
Speaker 1: people who read my book to recognize what are those
Speaker 1: early signs of, like oh, my jaw gets tight, my
Speaker 1: shoulders go up, really trying to pay attention to it
Speaker 1: sematically so we can attend to what needs to be
Speaker 1: attended to before it gets into a full blown rage fit.
Speaker 1: Because anybody who has tried to calm themselves down in
Speaker 1: a full blown reach fit or a two year old
Speaker 1: in a full blown rache fit knows that it's nigh
Speaker 1: impossible and you just kind of have to let it
Speaker 1: wear itself out. You know, there's multiple layers to any
Speaker 1: strong emotion. We can be content or we can be
Speaker 1: completely blissed out right in the same mistrue with anchor.
Speaker 1: I think it's so cool to recognize the biology of
Speaker 1: this stuff, because you know, this isn't the body each
Speaker 1: to get us into trouble, or get us fired from work,
Speaker 1: or get us in a fight in a parking lot.
Speaker 1: This is the body's way to survive. This is a
Speaker 1: system that's built to keep us safe. Right. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the second thing I think that's kind of cool, is
Speaker 1: it when you think about the evolutionary reason for this,
Speaker 1: you really learned that this is why anger works so fast. Right,
Speaker 1: If the job is to get us away from some tiger,
Speaker 1: it couldn't think and diither of like is this the
Speaker 1: right appropriate context or kind of scream at someone. The
Speaker 1: brain's just kind of doing its job really fast. Yeah, Right,
Speaker 1: Like if you touch a hot stove, you don't want
Speaker 1: to sit there and go, oh my goodness, this is hot,
Speaker 1: this may burn, I may have consequences from that. Is
Speaker 1: my insurance activated? No, you want to move your hand.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing in society has evolved so much
Speaker 1: faster than human bodies have. Our bodies are really not
Speaker 1: meant to be in this room doing a zoom session
Speaker 1: right now. Right. All of these things are meant for,
Speaker 1: like you say, being chased by a tiger, not dealing
Speaker 1: with somebody not being aware of their surroundings in the
Speaker 1: parking lot and leaving their door open. And so this
Speaker 1: is why researchers who study aggression really try to look
Speaker 1: into the evolutionary aspects of these triggers which can sometimes
Speaker 1: give us some insight. And so in your book you
Speaker 1: review some work by our Douglas Field, who talks about
Speaker 1: these these nine rage triggers. Fields has this acronym he
Speaker 1: calls life morts. So the l is life or death,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that kind of makes evolutionary sense, right,
Speaker 1: like if you're going to die, you know, you need
Speaker 1: a fast response. But another one, which is cool is
Speaker 1: this idea of insult you know, so talking about you
Speaker 1: know how a lot of our anger triggers are about
Speaker 1: this notion of what's insulting us? Well, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that goes back in the fact that we
Speaker 1: are hardwired for connection and we are hardwired to be
Speaker 1: protective of our people, and so insult to that or
Speaker 1: disrespect of that is a threat, right, We're having to
Speaker 1: resettle of like no, I am to be respected and
Speaker 1: you're not, and we're going to have a problem is
Speaker 1: what the body is doing, and that's where the anger
Speaker 1: is coming from. Another set of triggers that are part
Speaker 1: of the life Morts model are cases where who is
Speaker 1: under threat? Right, And so he has a couple of
Speaker 1: cases that make tons of evolutionary sense. So f is
Speaker 1: for fai, M is for me, he is for tribes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you talk about this idea that some of our fast
Speaker 1: anger response might be a protection device for the people
Speaker 1: we should care about. Evolutionarily speaking, right, very few people
Speaker 1: are completely an island. You know. There was that god
Speaker 1: that they found who was living alone in the woods
Speaker 1: for many, many years and like just kind of stealing
Speaker 1: what he needs. But that's weird. Human beings do need
Speaker 1: other human beings and our survival depends on it, which
Speaker 1: is why our relaxed state is tend and befriend and connection.
Speaker 1: I'm a relationally trained therapist. Relational cultural theory is what
Speaker 1: I work from. And you know, in the seventies it
Speaker 1: was this idea that we're hardwired for connection, and now
Speaker 1: we have the science that they're set out that we
Speaker 1: really do need that for survival. And so those early
Speaker 1: ideas about psychology is we need to move to self
Speaker 1: actualization and you don't need anybody are patently false. And
Speaker 1: then we can also see now the evolution psychology is
Speaker 1: like why would we defend somebody that we don't need.
Speaker 1: It's not just like well I love my husband and
Speaker 1: I want you to leave him alone. No, I need
Speaker 1: my husband. He's part of my people, and we need
Speaker 1: each other. I mean, nobody else is going to do
Speaker 1: the dishes in my house or something happens to my
Speaker 1: husband and I don't want to do them, so we're
Speaker 1: going to have to fight. Yeah, So part of it
Speaker 1: is about the people that are being affected, but part
Speaker 1: of it is about the stuff in our life that's
Speaker 1: being affected. You know. He talks about the ease for
Speaker 1: environment and the rs for this idea of resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, so talk about how the space can kind
Speaker 1: of be part of the context for these triggers. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're really seeing that, and we have been for a
Speaker 1: couple of years now, this idea of resources being limited,
Speaker 1: and we really saw it in full technique color last
Speaker 1: year with all the shortages. And it's about caring for
Speaker 1: ourselves and caring for the people around. So it's not
Speaker 1: like I just want all the stuff. But where is
Speaker 1: this idea that I need all the stuff coming from?
Speaker 1: Is this mechanism of caring for my family, my mate,
Speaker 1: my kids, my tribe. Is I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that everybody has food and toilet paper, you know, and
Speaker 1: all these other things. If you look on it, You're like,
Speaker 1: we're being protective of our fast fashion clothing. Now we're
Speaker 1: being protective of resources again to keep us alive and
Speaker 1: the people that we love alive, because we all need
Speaker 1: each other. And so when we walk through these lifeboards,
Speaker 1: we sometimes can get some insight into paradoxes of spots
Speaker 1: where we get angry, where you're like, why do we
Speaker 1: get angry at this and not that? And you know
Speaker 1: one that I can relate to because I am definitely
Speaker 1: guilty of this is road rage. If I'm walking in
Speaker 1: a big city and it's really crowded and someone walks
Speaker 1: in front of me, I don't freak out. But if
Speaker 1: somebody cuts me off on I ninety five, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: filled with this incredibly fast, deeply evolved rage. We're gonna scrap. Yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm not the only one yere. But so
Speaker 1: talk about why understanding these triggers can help explain that
Speaker 1: sort of strange context of road rage and why we
Speaker 1: just don't get nearly as pissed off in other contexts.
Speaker 1: The expectation is, if we're walking down the street, we're
Speaker 1: all sharing this space, and even though we're really doing
Speaker 1: the same thing on the road. The car's property, and
Speaker 1: that feels like somebody invading our home if they cut
Speaker 1: us out. And also, I mean, I think it feels
Speaker 1: more threatenings are more dangerous. If somebody bumps into your car.
Speaker 1: There's far more consequences for that than if somebody bumps
Speaker 1: into your body with their backpack in the store. That's irritating,
Speaker 1: but there's not going to be thousands of dollars of
Speaker 1: damage and great physical injury impossible death from that. So
Speaker 1: I think that's also part of what's playing recycle all
Speaker 1: the information that's downloading for us, and that takes a
Speaker 1: lot of the self stigma out of it, of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just working with the process of a human body
Speaker 1: and recognizing I'm more upset about this in my car
Speaker 1: because I think of my car as my property by space,
Speaker 1: and if you've got my kid in the car, Okay,
Speaker 1: Now it's on. Now that we have a better sense
Speaker 1: of how anger works biologically, why it feels so fast,
Speaker 1: and why it's not a bad response per se, we
Speaker 1: can start to understand that even though rage doesn't feel great,
Speaker 1: it's really a feeling that's there to try to help us,
Speaker 1: but biological good intentions are not. We often react pretty
Speaker 1: badly to our anger. Think see thing yelling, middle fingers
Speaker 1: raised with strangers on the highway. These responses not so good.
Speaker 1: So how can we react to these frustrations better? We'll
Speaker 1: here's some of Faith's strategies for working positively with our
Speaker 1: anger when the happiness Lab returns in a moment so far.
Speaker 1: Therapist and anger expert Faith Harper has explained that rage
Speaker 1: is our bodies way of saying, hey, something is wrong
Speaker 1: in our environment and we need to change it asap.
Speaker 1: It's an important alert system that we need to listen
Speaker 1: to in order to be happier. But listening to that
Speaker 1: alert doesn't necessarily require flipping off complete strangers. Some ways
Speaker 1: of reacting to our anger are more helpful than others.
Speaker 1: This is something Faith is seen firsthand in her therapy practice.
Speaker 1: When anger becomes a mechanism of controlling others, that's obviously problematic,
Speaker 1: and in fact, one of the first things that I
Speaker 1: look at was do they calm down when they get
Speaker 1: what they want? If a kid is having a complete
Speaker 1: melt down and you're like buying, here's the cookie, and
Speaker 1: they're still melting down, then the anger is very physiological,
Speaker 1: not something they're doing to manipulate. So I always look
Speaker 1: with people like the weaponizing anger and they're completely in control,
Speaker 1: but they're punching walls to show you what they're physically
Speaker 1: capable of, or you know whatever, And then they get
Speaker 1: what they want and they're buying and they're sweetest pie.
Speaker 1: That's a different thing, right. That's not a physiological evolutionary
Speaker 1: anger response that somebody weaponizing their body against somebody else.
Speaker 1: But if they get what they want and they're still activated,
Speaker 1: if their nervous system is still jangled and like the
Speaker 1: problems resolved and the other person who bumped into them
Speaker 1: backs off or whatever, but they're still like this, that's
Speaker 1: an evolutionary physiological response. That's what we look at to
Speaker 1: parse out where is it coming from. Is this purely
Speaker 1: behavioral or is this physiological? So one of the techniques
Speaker 1: you've used is this acronym ahen, can you walk me
Speaker 1: through what the acronym? Sure? So the asanswer anger and
Speaker 1: the idea is it comes from one, two, or three
Speaker 1: of the following variables, which is H hurt E expectations
Speaker 1: not met, or N needs not met, or any combination thereof,
Speaker 1: and so unpacking it very simply where your feelings hurt?
Speaker 1: Are you angry at your partner because they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be home for dinner and you had planned a
Speaker 1: nice dinner and then they had gone out drinking after
Speaker 1: work and whipsie daisy, But you're hurt. Your anger is
Speaker 1: coming from being very hurt by somebody and your body
Speaker 1: reacting in a way to express that. Did you have
Speaker 1: an expectation for them to show up? Hey? You know
Speaker 1: it's a really good and simple tool for parsing out
Speaker 1: what's the underlying emotion? That helps us figure out our
Speaker 1: patterns of responses, and then you get those aha moments
Speaker 1: of oh this really kind of connects to my trauma
Speaker 1: history that I have a lot of emotional neglect in
Speaker 1: my household, and I'm feeling that same being mishart or misunderstood.
Speaker 1: We start recognizing these patterns and so we go, oh
Speaker 1: there it is, okay, got it. That helps us work
Speaker 1: with it in a different way, and that helps us
Speaker 1: then figure out those early signals of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a big trigger for me, so I need
Speaker 1: to pay attention to this. My jaws getting tight, I
Speaker 1: know what that means. About myself. I need to do
Speaker 1: something with that. And I've had a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have had, you know, decades of being in one
Speaker 1: pattern and they're looking at me like I'm nuts and
Speaker 1: like I'm never going to be able to do that,
Speaker 1: and you know, within a year they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: my jaws tied. And I was really frustrated by this,
Speaker 1: and I handled it just fine, because the whole point
Speaker 1: of therapy is not to just like have to sit
Speaker 1: in my office and cry. The point is to be
Speaker 1: able to learn new skills. So you're managing your own
Speaker 1: life without me, and so with things like angers like here,
Speaker 1: let me help you from this place of perspective of
Speaker 1: noticing patterns and going, oh, but that's also kind of
Speaker 1: like what you said about your mom, you know, and
Speaker 1: then it gives you other ways to work with it.
Speaker 1: And so that's why AHEN is so good, because it
Speaker 1: really simplifies what's going on underneath this big response that
Speaker 1: I'm having. And we also we have some cultural narrative
Speaker 1: issues around anger. Anger is considered appropriate, it's considered powerful,
Speaker 1: it's considered effective. It's very masculine emotion and energy. We
Speaker 1: really struggle socially to let men have a wide range
Speaker 1: of emotional experiences. Men aren't supposed to cry, men aren't
Speaker 1: supposed to be sad or hurt or disappointed or depressed.
Speaker 1: They're allowed to be angry. That's macho. So a lot
Speaker 1: of time the anger is masking that all that other stuff.
Speaker 1: We're not allowing this free range of expression of emotions
Speaker 1: and being able to work with them and have them
Speaker 1: be validated and understood. You're allowed to be angry or
Speaker 1: you can be a pussy basically. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we can talk about testosterone and differences and gender birth
Speaker 1: assignment and the like, but a lot of it is
Speaker 1: also cultural and what's acceptable and what's not. And so
Speaker 1: one of those strategies you've talked about in the book
Speaker 1: is this idea that if we can kind of use
Speaker 1: this ninety second rule, we can ride the waves. Would
Speaker 1: walk through the strategy of what it would look like
Speaker 1: to ride the wave of anger. It comes from neuroscience,
Speaker 1: but this is one of those things like we've known
Speaker 1: this for thousands of years Buddhist practice. This is this
Speaker 1: idea that an emotion is meant to give us information
Speaker 1: and when we either hold on to it or we
Speaker 1: try and shove it away, which is just another version
Speaker 1: of holding onto it. That's when it gets stuck and
Speaker 1: becomes this longer turn mood because people like I'm not
Speaker 1: angry for ninety seconds. I've been angry for ten years. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the mood, and there's something going on to this's
Speaker 1: making that very sticky for you. The ninety second rule
Speaker 1: is this idea that we're having this rush, we're getting
Speaker 1: all this messaging. It's being interpreted with this emotionality in
Speaker 1: the amygdala. Our thoughts are based on that, and if
Speaker 1: we go, oh, okay, curious, I wonder what that's about.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I can figure that out. Something's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm having a big reaction to that, okay, And that
Speaker 1: it dissipates because we're paying attention to it, which is
Speaker 1: all the body wants. Somebody just wants us pay attention,
Speaker 1: like I am trying to help you out. Sis is
Speaker 1: what the body is saying. And if we're ignored it,
Speaker 1: it's going to throw down and the body's going to wit.
Speaker 1: So once we start paying attention and negotiating, then the
Speaker 1: anger doesn't last nearly is long because it flushes out
Speaker 1: because we're attending to what's going on. We're making the
Speaker 1: movement that the body wants to make. And so that's
Speaker 1: where the ninety second comes from, just going oh okay,
Speaker 1: breathing through it, sitting with it, not reacting from it.
Speaker 1: Because we're not talking about somebody coming with us a knife,
Speaker 1: you know, behind a dumpster on a Saturday night. We're
Speaker 1: talking about I'm mad at my partner because they didn't
Speaker 1: they didn't do the dishes. What's up with that? Why
Speaker 1: am I having a strong response to a small problem
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So that's a case where we can
Speaker 1: kind of sit with the emotion and let it dissipate
Speaker 1: on its own. Sometimes it feels so striking that it's
Speaker 1: really hard to do that. And in that case, you
Speaker 1: will have other techniques that we can use to hack
Speaker 1: our physiology. You know, this idea that because the vagus
Speaker 1: nerve is what's going on, we can actually maybe even
Speaker 1: use our breath to deal with that. Talk about some
Speaker 1: of these. The idea is there are multiple ways that
Speaker 1: we can access our vaguest nerve externally, we can do
Speaker 1: things to calm our bodies. I've had people tell me
Speaker 1: that they're really embarrassed that when they're upset, they kind
Speaker 1: of pull into the fetal position or rock and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what you're doing is actually you're soothing your vegas nerve.
Speaker 1: And that makes entire sense, and that's not just a
Speaker 1: weird thing that you only see in movies where people
Speaker 1: are in a psychiatric hospital. That's actually an accurate portrayal,
Speaker 1: but accurate for a reason, and so that when the
Speaker 1: bending over the soothing the vegas nerve. Anytime we extend
Speaker 1: our outbreath, that's parasympathetic. If your outbreath is longer than
Speaker 1: you're in breath, because the inbreath is sympathetic, that's getting
Speaker 1: your body ready, and the outbreath is parasympathetic, that's the
Speaker 1: calming breath. So if that one's longer, you're also going
Speaker 1: to change your vagal tone and breathing is free. It's
Speaker 1: worth trying. I took clients all the time, like, this
Speaker 1: is an experiment. If it doesn't work, that's fine, and
Speaker 1: they're like, Okay, it felt really dumb, but it kind
Speaker 1: of helped, you know. I talked with clients about that
Speaker 1: we're not responsible for that first emotion. That first emotion
Speaker 1: is physiological. It's tied to our histories. It's tied to
Speaker 1: things that are amygdala has held on too to keep
Speaker 1: us safe. And there's nothing raw with any emotion that
Speaker 1: you're having. It's a really important information. It's what we
Speaker 1: do with that that's the important part. Right. So I said,
Speaker 1: you're not responsible for your first thought. You're responsible for
Speaker 1: your second thought and your first behavior. So as long
Speaker 1: as we're looking at the first thought and not reacting
Speaker 1: from that and going, oh, I'm angry, I should scream
Speaker 1: at this woman who won't close her card door is
Speaker 1: not an appropriate response, even though it would have been
Speaker 1: a satisfying one, because what was she doing? So the
Speaker 1: second thought is or I could just go back somewhere
Speaker 1: else and let's just go, And then my behavior was
Speaker 1: to do something different. This is not an acceptable way
Speaker 1: to be in society. Is a screament strangers, so let's
Speaker 1: do something else. Like neural pathways don't go away. But
Speaker 1: if we keep working on not going down them and
Speaker 1: building new ones, it becomes easier to go down the
Speaker 1: new one and have a new a different response, and
Speaker 1: the old one gets weeded over. You know, what fires
Speaker 1: to gather wires together, So what has wired to create
Speaker 1: these consistent anger patterns and let's create these new ways
Speaker 1: of managing it. I'm going to use the uncomfortable breathing
Speaker 1: techniques that dumb doctor Faith wants me to use that
Speaker 1: I don't like them and it's uncomfortable, but okay, they
Speaker 1: kind of help. And just like one salad doesn't make
Speaker 1: you healthy, this is all practice. We're having to unfuck
Speaker 1: years or decades of managing things one way that served
Speaker 1: at one point that no longer serve, and now we're
Speaker 1: having to learn to manage them another way. And so
Speaker 1: do you think that really understanding our emotion and really
Speaker 1: committing to acknowledging anger can help us live a life
Speaker 1: that's flourishing, where we can use our anger productively but
Speaker 1: not kind of have it control us. Oh? Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm a therapist. That's my jam. Right. That's what
Speaker 1: we're here trying to do is have people recognize you're
Speaker 1: having this embodied experience of life and we're not perfect.
Speaker 1: Expecting ourselves to be perfect is setting ourselves up for failure.
Speaker 1: I mean, so much of it is like, oh that's
Speaker 1: why I do that, that makes sense, that's a little crazy,
Speaker 1: or oh yeah, that's about all that stuff that happened
Speaker 1: when I was that makes sense, okay, cool, and then
Speaker 1: we're working with it in a completely different way. Clients
Speaker 1: here from me all the time. I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: know that we get better so much as we get
Speaker 1: better at it. And that's also recovery. Right. One of
Speaker 1: my former interns that same people just know that they're crazy,
Speaker 1: like everybody crazy. And if you're saying you know, and
Speaker 1: you're working on it and you know where it is
Speaker 1: and you know what you have to do with it,
Speaker 1: versus just out there being a chaos monster. And I
Speaker 1: love that analogy of recognizing like nobody has this down
Speaker 1: where all works in process. I love Faith's description of
Speaker 1: anger that it's our body's way of giving us the
Speaker 1: energy to get out of a difficult situation. I'm going
Speaker 1: to remember this when I start to feel frustrated and
Speaker 1: try to appreciate my anger signals a bit more than
Speaker 1: I usually would. But I'm also going to recognize that
Speaker 1: the energy boost I get from feeling annoyed doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I need to let my experience of rage run wild.
Speaker 1: I can listen to what my ire is saying without
Speaker 1: blowing my top. I'm also going to commit to paying
Speaker 1: attention to the circumstances that get my blood boiling. If
Speaker 1: I can recognize the patterns that cause my frustration ahead
Speaker 1: of time, I'll have a better chance of changing my
Speaker 1: circumstances in ways that will boost my well being even
Speaker 1: more broadly. And if all that fails, I now have
Speaker 1: some new breathing techniques I can use to chill out
Speaker 1: my fight or flight system the next time I'm stuck
Speaker 1: in traffic. I hope my conversation with Faith has given
Speaker 1: you some helpful tips that you can use to deal
Speaker 1: with your own anger a bit more productively. And I
Speaker 1: also hope that you'll return soon. When we tackle how
Speaker 1: to deal with other negative emotions, there seemed to be
Speaker 1: no bandwidth there to say, actually, maybe we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be happy right now. Maybe sadness is what we're
Speaker 1: supposed to feel when we experience loss or disappointment. There
Speaker 1: is this real reluctance to be sad, and I wondered
Speaker 1: how we could be living in a happier way ultimately
Speaker 1: by embracing us sadness too. On the next episode of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab with me, Doctor Laurie Santos, If you
Speaker 1: love this show and others from Pushkin Industries consider subscribing
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that
Speaker 1: offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for only four ninety
Speaker 1: nine a month. As a special gift to Pushkin Plus subscribers,
Speaker 1: I'll be sharing a series of six guided meditations to
Speaker 1: help you practice the lessons we've learned from our experts.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is available on the show page and Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan,
Speaker 1: and Courtney Guerino. Our original music was composed by Zachary Silver,
Speaker 1: with additional scoring, mixing and mastering by Evan Viola. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Milabelle, Heather Faine, John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Grant Haynes, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserved,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts,