Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Demons, Anger, and Heartbreak

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Today we are diving into the complexities of human emotions and relationships. One listener shared his ongoing battle with anger and its potential consequences for his relationship, while another reaches out for guidance in the aftermath of an unexpected breakup. Join us as we explore the tools and mindsets needed to confront personal challenges head-on and emerge stronger on the other side.    The Speed of War Comic Series: https://www.thespeedofwar.com/ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/  

Relationships can be rough and we're going to get into it. But before that, let's talk a little bit about why I'm sitting here in a department in Dublin. Sometimes basic math escapes me, and I thought I had recorded enough episodes to go on this trip, and then I realized I had not. So here we are. I don't think you can see Dublin behind me, but it's been an amazing trip. We'll get into this in the episode. Before I get into that, though, let's talk about change agents.

If you're not aware of it, I host another podcast called Change Agents. It's produced by a company called Ironclad. My guest, Monday, two days from now, is Donnie Vincent, who I would describe as a conservationist. Through an interesting lens, though, of being a hunter, a storyteller, a filmmaker, fascinating interview, and that'll be out on Monday. And in addition to that,

the Ironclad crew put together a trailer slash teaser for season number two, which is just getting ready to, or it just has kicked off. So, want to you check that out? right now and then we'll get into it. Thank you so much for keeping change agents at the top of the charts week after week. As we dive into season two, we are taking things to the next level. This season, we are tackling issues that are some of the most interesting,

most surprising, and most urgent we've covered so far, including conspiracies by the Chinese and Saudis to control Americans' food and water, the possibility of an AI military takeover, criminal schemes by big pharmaceutical companies and a lot more. See you then. So the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. All right, so like I said in the beginning, or you can probably tell from the title of the thumbnail.

We're diving in a little bit to some relationship stuff here. Actually, the first one's about relationships. Second one's kind of about handling your emotions. I'm in Ireland. We flew over here. It's been an amazing trip. Flew into Dublin, then headed out to Balenaa, then Donagall, then up to the...

the northern coast. We went up to Bally Money, Bally Castle. We checked out whiskey distillery, the Bushmill's Distillery, Giants Causeway. We've gone to the beach. We trained Jiu-Jitsu up at North Coast Grapling. We trained out at the SBG Gym in Balinah, and it has been awesome. This is one of the few

places that I have left to go on my bucket list. I may or may not have picked up a pretty dope hat, like the one I'm wearing right now. I don't think I'm ever taking it off again. I feel like I'm pretty much Irish. But if you're thinking about coming to Ireland, you should absolutely come to Ireland. This has been an amazing location that people could not have been more friendly. And I want to get it back out and hang out with them.

So let's knock out the two questions that we have for today. So here we go. I also, of course, have a cold. So I apologize for the nasal sound today. It's been a rough few days. I'm currently trying to find my way through a breakup. It's a long story, but essentially we broke a. at the beginning of somewhere. We're both in college since we're going to be in different places.

When we got back, we started talking and hanging out again, but hadn't gotten back together officially. But over the last two or three weeks, she was hanging out with her friends from church and went on a getaway. She had been hanging out with those new friends and less with me. Church isn't really my thing, but she likes it, which is fine. Long story short, she ghosted me on Sunday after knowing each other for a year and dating for seven months and pretty much being together that entire year. We literally had been hanging out and talking the whole time. She didn't even say anything to me. Just silence. After all that, I didn't get a conversation, a text nothing. I had to text her to find out what was going on. She started dating someone from

church a few days ago. Shortly after I texted her, she said, out of respect for my relationship, I am going to unad you. What about the respect for our relationship? It crushed me. It in a way I can't describe. I'm still crushed while I'm writing this letter. I can barely sleep. I don't feel like eating and I feel anxious and uneasy 24-7. I just want to talk to her. I just want her. I don't know what to do. Nothing makes it better and feels it feels like my whole world is coming crumbling down. Any sense you can make of it would be like a breath of fresh air. Okay, I'm going to make some assumptions on this email. One I think is a little bit easy to say. you're both in college, so you're probably a little bit younger, maybe late teens, early 20s.

I say that my mom went back to college, she was in her 40s. But that's an assumption that I'm going to make. I'm going to also assume this is one of your first relationships because of the way and impact that this is having on you and how you are feeling. And if I'm wrong about both those assumptions, I don't know what to tell you. It's hard to say when you get an email and you have, it's a one-way dialogue. with those two assumptions in mind, here's what I'm going to say. The fact that this is happening to you now, a little bit younger in your life,

I don't think it's a bad thing at all. And I think that this is going to be a very good lesson for you moving forward. Relationships can suck, especially if you dedicate and devote yourself to a relationship, perhaps more than the person that you were in the relationship with was doing themselves, and it ends up not going your way. And from a mathematical perspective, not most, but I'd say more than half of the relationships to include marriages, don't actually go your way.

And it can be painful, and it can make you feel exactly like this. What it sounds like, though, is that this is not the person for you. She's also, I'm going to assume you guys are the same age, so she's also young as well. She found somebody else that she wants to be with, and all you want to do is talk to her and you just want her. And all I can say to you is this. Regardless of how much you want her or want to be with her,

there's no way that you can force it. And if you do try to force it, I think it's only going to get worse. Also, why would you want to force it with somebody who ghosted you and then started dating somebody else? I don't think that that is the right call. If they have a history of doing it once, I feel like there's a chance that they're going to have a history of doing it a second time.

And I also would recommend, you know, reading your email, it seems like you didn't have a open conversation about what you thought your relationship was versus what this person thought your relationship was. Did she feel like that you were together? Did you have the conversation about being exclusive? Or did she feel like she had the ability to kind of navigate through social circles and met somebody else and was like, you know, I'm not really dating somebody. We're not really serious, so I'm going to start a relationship with somebody else. I don't know the answer to any of those questions, but having a hard conversation and being secure and who you are and what the relationship is without having any questions may in the future

prevent you from finding yourself in this situation. And it sucks. I know exactly how you feel, but talking to her, it's probably not going to make you feel any better, especially if the relationship or the conversation doesn't go the way that you want it to. Being with her, forcing that, isn't going to make you feel any better either, because what if this situation presents itself again? You're going to be equally crushed, you're going to have forced it, and I just don't think you can force somebody to do something over a long period of time

that they just don't want to do, which it sounds like in this email, your previous girlfriend just didn't want to be involved. I personally think that you dodged a bullet here. I'm glad that you learned this lesson or are learning this lesson up front. It's okay that nothing makes you feel better

and that it feels like your whole world is crumbling down. I know exactly how you're feeling. I think most people know exactly how you're feeling. And the only remedy for that that I have found in my life is time. Some people would say, hey, go back out and jump into the dating pool, whatever it may be, go find her sister and, you know, knock the headboard off of her dad's bed with her. Whatever that may be, that is not the path that I have ever gone down or I would suggest. Maybe it works for you.

Maybe that's a short-term fix, though, that in the end makes you feel even worse about it. Time. Take the time to sit with it and work yourself through this so that you can be an even better version of yourself. when you go forward into your next relationship situation. I hate using an analogy that half the fish in the sea are men and half of them are women, but I actually think that math is a little bit off. I think it's 51% of people on earth are women.

I don't think relationships would be treated like fishing, but to use that analogy, not every catch is one that you want to take home and put up on your wall, if you know what I mean. And I think this particular person may fall into that category. So take this as a short-term loss, long-term victory. The victory will be the person that you are going to become at the end of this and how better prepared you are going to be for the next relationship that you go into.

I'm sorry you're going through this. Just give it some time. All right, question number two. As a man who's been through a hell of a lot more than I could imagine, someone who's invested in time into a marriage, I suppose one could say you have wisdom in certain aspects of life. Not every man could say that they have. I'm going to stop there. I don't think I have any wisdom. I have some experiences that I have gone through.

I'm about to turn 46 years old. But trust me, I have more questions than I have answers. My hopefully soon to me, wife, feels as if things have gone downhill with a few things, but mainly an issue I've struggled with, but I thought I had gotten control over, which is anger. No, I am not beating up my woman. However, from her past experiences growing up, she is worried that I would become so angry at a point that I would hit her. and I know I would never, but she still is concerned and wants it addressed. I love her enough to recognize the problem and would definitely like to solve it, but it's been a lifelong struggle for me, although short at 22 years of age, it's all I've known it seems. Watching parents get upset at things and growing up to mimic this behavior is embarrassing

and is one hell of a habit to kick. I've tried taking a step back and breathing, which helps. I have counted to 10 and I've thought of what I want to say or do, etc. where I fail is how to catch it. How to get things I need to do to calm myself down before I lose my temper. How to get the things I need to do to calm myself down before I lose my temper. What things would be practical to use to address this issue? As therapy and focusing on myself had been suggested,

I figure the least I could do is explore every option available in order to get control of this. So I don't lose the one person in my life. I'd be happy with. With your blunt and honest insight, hopefully something will click or give me an idea to sprout off of. Anything would be appreciated

as I have more a podcast more than you know than most other people consider celebrities. I greatly appreciate advice on how to move forward this. First off, I'm not a celebrity. I don't consider myself to be at all.

I think it's a very interesting spot that I've found myself in where I have a podcast and people reach out to ask me questions. All right, you're 22 years of age. You've watched your parents get upset at things and you've grown up to mimic this behavior and it's embarrassing you and you recognize that you have an issue. So that right in and of itself, I think, is at least a positive metric. You realize that something is going on. You realize you've seen behavior that you don't

want to mimic, but you're struggling with doing so. What I'll say is this. It sounds like your future wife grew up in an environment where this is an extreme trigger for her. I would recommend, I would recommend three things, actually. One, that she sit down and talk with somebody about it so she can address any potential triggers she may have because just because she's worried about this doesn't mean that it's going to happen but her worry could create a very negative situation for her if left unchecked two you already mentioned it in here therapy or talking with somebody who can actually develop for you a systematic approach in game plan based off your email i would say off of recognizing where things are escalating to a point where you may lose control and then three i would say

sit down with somebody together. So you can have a neutral third party in the room and discuss where she is and her feelings are about this, where you are and where your feelings are about this, and how you can work together as a couple to make sure you have a healthy and flourishing relationship. I've said this many times, and I'm never going to stop saying it. You're not responsible for the trauma that you have received in your life, especially when you're talking about behavior that has been modeled for you by adults when you are young. but you are 100% responsible for what you do with that trauma

and whether or not you pass it on. So having the behavior modeled for you, let's say you grow up in an environment where your parents are alcoholics. That does not provide for you an excuse to become an alcoholic later in life. Could it be a potential, you know, could you have a genetic tendency toward leaning towards that? Could it trend you in that direction because of the behavior that was modeled? Yes, it could, but you have a choice in that and your hand,

is on the wheel unless your parents were forced feeding you alcohol, strapping you in a chair, and forcing you to drink it until you developed a chemical level of dependency. If they're not doing that, the behavior that they model could put you on that path, you're driving the car. The anger is exactly the same thing. Identifying warnings for you or triggers for you or physiological changes for you as you start to escalate in that anger is going to be really important and I don't have the knowledge experience or professional background to give any advice on what to recommend for that other than to say that I know there are people out there who specialize in exactly that and my recommendation would be pursue those individuals until you have a handle on it

you know one of the things I really liked about the military is that's checklist based and people can say well it's just you know it's dumb or they do that because the people People aren't very smart. And people who say that don't understand the intelligence level of most people in the military. I did not find it to be a choice of last resort for most. It was actually a first option of people who wanted to pursue a career or change their socioeconomic status. Checklists are not for people who are dumb. Checklists are for people who always want to know where they are in a system. and in the times that they may get lost because they are emotionally invested, tired, exhausted, hungry, confused, if they forget a step, they can just look at their checklist and they can know where to start over again.

And that's where I think having a structured approach to your anger and having an understanding of where it comes from and identifying it along the way with a not like a 3xx card, unless that's what somebody recommends, just an understanding internally, a checklist for yourself so that if you do get lost, you can say, you know what? I forgot where I'm at, so I'm going to go back to step one. And step one, maybe take three or five deep breaths. Hopefully the things that you're doing right now are working for you. You know, if counting to 10 and taking some deep breaths,

or I would maybe even suggest with that removing yourself from the environment or situation if you can briefly to get your head back on your shoulders, if all those things are working for you, that's great. But identify and address the root cause of the issue. If you've identified this woman as the person that you want to marry and spend the rest of your life with, and you've identified this as an issue that may threaten that, man, there's only one answer to give you. And that's invest as much into solving this particular issue that you have identified as you would want to invest into your potential partner. And if you do that, I think you guys can flourish.

But the relationship, there's an equal sign in the middle, and there's numbers on both sides of that. She needs to put in some work as well because I feel like, she maybe have been exposed, maybe have been, may have been exposed to some trauma in her upbringing as well. It is not fair to put it all on one person. If one person has an issue that is out of control, of course address that. But again, you know, the metaphor or analogy when you're pointing at somebody, there's three fingers coming back at you or, you know, before you point the finger at somebody else, look at the mirror and try to determine if there's any part of the issue staring back at you,

very tough to do but actually very impactful and if both of you can commit to working through this I think you got nothing but green pastors ahead of you if you choose not to hard to say anger's a tough one the modeling of the behavior

the examples you'd seen growing up those can all be hard but they're not insurmountable and if this person means this much to you and you want to spend the rest of your life with them stop fucking around do everything that you can and hopefully she's willing to to as well. Hopefully that helps. That's it, everybody. I'm going to go back out and look for another killer hat like this in Dublin. May never take it off again. May wear it on every other podcast. See you guys back on Monday. Not only with Donnie Vincent on Change Agents, but another

cleared hot podcast coming out as well. See you.