HealthyGamerGG - Why Men Keep Losing Control

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K takes a hard look at anger, violence, and why some men seem to lose control. Using the Raja Jackson situation as a case study, he unpacks how hurt, ego, and value systems can pile up until anger explodes. Dr. K breaks down: How “perceived value systems” shape what we see as respect or disrespect The hidden role of hurt and egocentric thinking before anger even shows up Why some violence is “reactive” rather than psychopathic Red flags that make someone prone to abuse Why men, in particular, are socialized to convert fear or sadness into anger It’s a deep dive into the psychology of rage, how it develops, and what it takes to break the cycle whether in yourself or in people you know. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Dr. Alok Kanoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist gamer and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Welcome to other Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Aalo Kanoja. Just a reminder that although I am a medical doctor,

nothing we discuss on stream today is intended to be taken as medical advice. Everything is for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. I'll be honest with you all. I kind of hate days like this. So sometimes when I come on to stream, I get to talk about something that excites me. Like I'll read some paper. I saw this super cool paper about a year ago on something called Social Anahdonia.

And Social Anahdonia basically explains why people don't enjoy Small Talk. And so I'd seen all these posts on the Internet about, oh, I hate Small Talk, Small Talk is so boring. How do I form deep meaningful connections? All these plebs are just talking to each other. Like, and that's just completely a waste of time for me. So what do I do about that? How do I form deep connections with people? Then I read this really cool paper about social anhedonia.

So anhedonia is the inability to derive pleasure. So it's basically like your dopaminergic circuitry is not functioning. And people who have social anhedonia, literally the plebs, the normies, when they do small talk with the other humans, they get a dopaminergic release. But if you're someone who has social anodonia, you don't get dopaminergic release from interacting with the normies. That's not like dopaminergically activating. And so I sometimes I'll find these papers and I'll be like, oh, holy crap.

Like this explains so much about why people don't like small talk. And then I get excited about it and I put together a stream about it and then like, you know, then we talk about it and it's fun and exciting and we learn something and blah, blah, blah. There are a handful of times, though, where I stream about things that are not pleasant, where we have this skill set, right? So I understand something about neuroscience, something about spirituality, something about clinical medicine. And things in the world happen that are bad. And it's really important for us to use this breadth of knowledge that we have to try to understand how to improve ourselves, how to get better, things like that. But I think there are sometimes where we can use this breadth of knowledge to try to understand like really bad things happening in the world.

And today is one of those days. So today I'm going to talk a little bit about what's going on with, not what's going on, what happened with Roger Jackson. I have a certain impression of it. And I think it's a really, really, really great example to illustrate certain principles. of how people become angry, how people become violent, how people lose control. And I think this is really important for y'all to understand because this could be someone in your life, this could be you. So a couple of other things that I want to be super clear about.

This is a discussion. This is basically a lecture I've put together about understanding anger and understanding how people become violent. it is in no way an effort to claim what is going on with Roger Jackson, to understand what's going on with him, to try to diagnose him or anything like that. We're not going to use any diagnostic language. I'm not going to like, you know, evaluate him formally. I think what I'm going to do today is explain the system of how people become angry and lose control. And I think what's really what what I saw when I started seeing some of these clips was like, holy crap, this is such a great. example of these overarching principles of how anger works. Now, is this what's going on with him?

Is this what happened with him? We have no idea. And I think this is really important for y'all to really understand, right? So when we see people on the internet, we don't see the whole picture. We see the clips that are the most damning. So today's lecture is about anger. It's not about what's going on with him. We don't know what's going on with him.

We don't know. So part of the challenging and awesome thing about being a psychiatrist or a mental health professional is you sit down with people. And the whole point of like taking a clinical history is that you get a complete sense of who they are, not just a string of their lowest points. At the same time, I think some of the clips that we're going to show you all today, I think are really illustrative of particular principles. Now, is this one-to-one what is going on?

Not necessarily, right? We don't know that. We would only know that if we sit down and talk to them. And I don't think that that's a good idea either. You know, sometimes people will say like, oh, you should talk to this person. You should talk to this person. So one of the principles that we have when we talk to people is we don't want this to be harmful to them. And I have to imagine that any kind of conversation about this sort of thing, I'm not saying that the person is good or bad or whatever.

it doesn't matter whether they're a criminal or we don't care when someone comes on the stream, we don't want to put them in a position where they could potentially hurt themselves. And I can't imagine there is a scenario in which any kind of conversation can be had where this person does not potentially jeopardize themselves from a legal perspective. So after all the legal stuff is solved or whatever, everything is resolved. Like then absolutely we can have conversations. It's a great idea. But be careful about the way that you all judge and be careful about the way that you judge,

especially the lowest points in someone's life, right? Because that's what we're seeing. So I want to start by explaining what goes on with anger. So how does anger work? And when people, actually, that's not right. When we look at violence and the perpetration of violence, as it relates to anger, what is going on? That's what we're going to start with, okay?

So we're going to go over some basic principles. And hopefully after we go over these principles, watch some clips, and then we'll see whether like this maps on or not. Okay. So violence as it relates to anger always starts with something called a perceived value system. How unexciting. Oh my God. A perceived value system. So what does this mean? So this is a system of shoulds. Okay. So this is like when someone is moving, through the world, they have a set of values. Like, this is respect, this is disrespect. If you are weak, it means this. It means that you're pathetic.

If you don't stand up for yourself, it means you're weak. There's this whole system of what is important and what is not important. Okay? There's a lot of associations, and this will become important a little bit later. But this is where things start. There's a way that the world works. There's rules to this game of life. life. And it's really important to understand those rules. It's really important to play by the rules,

because if you don't play by the rules, then things become problematic. The second thing that happens so commonly when people get really angry and violent. This is what people see. So people see the anger down here, right? They see like, oh, this person is getting pissed. And then there's some kind of violent act. This is what people focus on. And they're like, oh, my God, this person is a sociopath, this person is this, this person is that, you have no idea, I have no idea. We're going to show you all how many steps there are in between it. And if you all understand the steps in between, you will be able to better control your anger, which is really what my goal is here today.

It's to help you understand anger and other people, but what is the impact that, why do I stream? I stream to help you. So if you're an angry dude, or if you know someone who's an angry dude or woman, this is something that they need to understand. You're welcome to share it with them. And I don't say this because I mean, I don't normally say like, hey, like, like, like, like, like, like, when I look at situations like this, what can I do?

How can I make the world a better place? I can teach people how anger works. That's what I'm trying to do today. Now, this is what a lot of people don't see. The next step is hurt. Now, this happens so fast. And when someone behaves in an angry way, they don't even realize they've been hurt. But hurt is incredibly common, right?

So if we look at, you know, statistics on people who are abusers, on people who are violent, violent criminals. Many of them have a history of trauma. Many of them have been victims of abuse. And oftentimes, if you talk to someone who's abusive, you know, they blame you. Or they get angry with you, they're the victim. And they are responding to this threat or hurt to them by defending themselves. This is something that a lot of people don't realize. Okay.

Now, when they feel hurt, this is usually some kind of emotion. There are a couple of other things that enter into the picture. One is ego-centricity. So, actually, this is not in the right place. another really important thing is egosentricity. And this combines with heart. So if I move through the world

and I get hurt by someone, there's a certain amount of pain involved. Fair enough. But if I add egosentricity of the picture, if I take it personally, if I take this individual action and I don't know how to explain this, man.

And I make it defined me. So if someone does something that is hurtful to me, that defines me as a person. It's not just an isolated incident. It's not like, you did this thing, now I'm hurt, and then tomorrow I'll feel better. No, when you did this thing, this means something about me. This means I am weak. You hurt me and now I am weak. I am weak. And this gets to another important point, which is associations. of which ego eccentricity is one of them. So the hurt isn't just an individual act. It means something else.

When I get hurt, it means I'm weak. When I get hurt, it means that I'm a wuss. When I get hurt based on this perceived value system in the egocentricity, this means particular things about me. So y'all may have been in relationships where someone is like, you don't even call me every day. And it's like, what's the big deal? I'm at work.

Like, I'm busy. That's why I'm not calling you. But this person feels hurt when you don't call. And then they form some association with it. They make some kind of interpretation. Since you don't call, that means you do not care. And this is what makes anger so hard to control is we're trying to control this. But if you really want to stop anger, you need to look at this, you need to look at this.

And you need to look at this. And this stuff happens so fast. right? And when someone gets angry with you, you're like, it's not that I don't care about you. That's not that I don't, those two things I don't tie in my mind. And then what ends up happening is they don't explain that to us, right? They just feel that. And then they come at you. And when they come at you, you're like, I don't know what to do. So now you're stuck with like, okay, you can call if you want. And then you respond like, you're always trying to control me. Ah, and then you get angry with them. Because when they make you feel hurt by criticizing you, then this whole process goes on with you.

Oh, people who criticize me don't, are trying to control me. People who try to, people who are hurt, like they're trying to control me. You're always trying to call, you're trying to turn me into a beta. You're trying to, you're trying to turn me into this. I ain't that. I ain't an alpha. I'm an alpha. I call you when I want to call you.

And then this whole thing gets triggered. And then, oftentimes what happens is with these associations come other feelings. So if I'm weak, what does that mean? This is going to engender two additional feelings. One is anxiety. because if I'm weak and I work through the world, if I go through the world as a weak person, what does that mean for me?

That means I need to be worried. That means people are going to continue disrespect me. That means that I can't take care of my business because I am weak. And this also engenders hopelessness. Because if I'm weak and I try to move in the world, what's going to happen? I won't be able to accomplish what I want to accomplish.

They're the weak and they're the strong. This goes back to the perceived value system. And so the person who is angry doesn't want to be weak. And they need to act. So then their brain says, no problem, bro. Let's get anger. Let's get violent. And then we will be strong.

Okay? Now what we're going to do is watch. You all understand? Then we'll kind of go through this again. Let's meet you, bro. No, now you're with my favorite wrestler here. Fuck him. Oh, bro.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's a good. Yeah. You don't sell it? He's not a fucking work. Bro. What the fuck? Know me?

Hell no. That's about him. What's the real McKele at? Where's he at? You don't need to worry about him. He needs to be worried about psychostoo. Cycle stew. What, you don't know me?

Hell not. Yeah. Hey, that's that. Hey, I think that's a little. Oh. Okay. Oh, you don't. Is it.

Is it. He's not a fucking worker, bro. Yeah, what the fuck was that? You're good, you're good, you're good. What the fuck was that? You don't sell it? Yeah, he's not a fucking worker, bro. What the fuck was, hold on, hold on, no, I don't play that shit, bro.

No, I will fuck him up, bro. I know, I know you will. We're good. I will fuck him up, bro. You're good. No, fuck that, dude. It's part of the fucking. Yeah, Kali are rampage.

And what we are. No, no, no, bro. So now, now, no, bro. So now, now, no, so now. now Psycho Sue apologizes, right? All right. So, what do we see here? Okay.

So this guy smashes a beer can over his face. He's backstage. He thinks that he's just starting some drama, right? This is like creating drama before you go into the ring. It's a prop beer can. Right? So this is like something that they do, apparently.

So he's in a professional area where wrestlers use props and stuff like this to create drama, create hype, it's all an act. And then when Stu finds out that, when Stu finds out that, okay, like this, this, when Stu finds out that this guy is not a worker, he's like, they tell him he's not a worker. What does that mean? That means like he's not a working professional. You just slammed a beer canons on someone's head. And it's just like a guy hanging out backstage, then Stu apologizes.

Okay? So let's try to understand a little bit more. context. All I'm going to say is that my son hasn't been the same since his mom got murdered. He hasn't. And I know that. And I've been trying to be there for him and, you know, make him laugh and cheer him up and everything. But I'm not a psychiatrist.

I don't know what the fuck they do. And, you know, I know my kids. He hasn't been the same with me. Like, he's just been distant from me. Like, want to be like, he want to be more of a man and more of this. Okay. So, what are we seeing here, right? We're seeing hurt, presumably.

Right? So this person has disrespected him. And then we're seeing there are some other factors involving potentially not doing well. And then now we're going to look at perceived value system. No, I don't, don't. Real, do you tell people on the back like that? Bro, that's rude as fuck. Nobody like that.

Turn around. Turn around. Come here. Turn around. How you like that? I'm so sorry. Think about it. How you like that?

No, I just grew up watching your fights. So you come to tap people on the back like that? Nah, no, no. Are you serious, though, bro? I'm so sorry. I just want, no, no, it's a, so come on, come closer. That's a social experiment. Did you like that?

No, not really. So why you do it to me? I just wanted to grab your attention, that's all. You can say my name, bro. I got ears, bro. Don't never tap a grown man on his back like that, bro. What's your name? Nathan.

How old are you? I'm 21. I just turned 21. God damn, you old enough, you old enough, you're old enough to get your ass kicked. Yeah, sorry. I just, I just grew up watching your fights. Look at my son. Look at my son looking at you.

You did, yeah, sorry. Sorry, good. All right, thank you guys. All right. Okay, so what do y'all, like, notice in that clip? So, in my experience, and y'all may disagree with me, I could be wrong. Tapping someone on the back is a completely reasonable way to get someone's attention. Like, I don't know about y'all, but like tapping someone on the back is, some people don't like it.

Fair enough. Right. But like, I don't know how to say this. Like, generally speaking, there are overtly threatening things that we can do. But tapping someone on the back, you know, is something that generally speaking is an acceptable version of getting someone's attention. but what we see here is like this is completely unacceptable. This means something else, right? And if we wanted to know what it meant,

we would really have to just talk to Rampay Jackson about it. You know, what's the deal with tapping people on the back? Like, how did you learn this stuff? But the whole point is that there's some kind of internal system of okay and not okay. There's an internal system. And the whole point is that there's also an expectation that other people understand that system. That when someone does, taps you on the back, it is a sign of disrespect. Right? We don't know if that's literally what he means, but he really is clearly upset about it.

Right? So people are saying, okay, I was never raised to touch anyone. Fair enough. So people are raised in different ways. And then when someone taps you on the back, what is the way that you respond? What is an appropriate response? Hey, yo. Did you get jumped by a bunch of dudes in tight? You said what? You were hugging on a dude and some damn tight. Man, you shut the fuck up. I look at your stream,

you were hugging on some dudes and some booty shorts. I wasn't a fucking hugging on nobody. I saw you, I saw you hugging on your coach. I don't got no sexual fans. You got no sex. Not around a bunch of dudes because of damn, the thought that on time. I had a fucking pro wrestling show.

Exactly. Watch. Watch. Watch. My dad can't never call me a bitch. Straight up. How many subs to knock them out? That's a good question. I don't know if they crash out, all right, bet. You about to see, you about to see how fake of a crash out I am.

Now I get a chance to get in the ring and do this, and do some shit to him. Exactly, people think this shit's sweet. People think this shit's a fucking game. Straight up, bro. How do everybody fucking playing with me and shit? I think I'm always planning and shit. Call me bitch and shit. Not no fucking bitch, bro.

At the end of the day, I'm a stand up for my fucking self because I'm proud of everybody fucking playing with me, bro. Real shit. Exactly. What? My dad can't never call me. What do you all see here?

Right? So what we see, like this is really important to understand. Ego-centricity. Hurt. Before the anger. So if you're, someone who's struggling with anger, these things happen so fast. We also see a perceived value system.

So now let's go back to our model. I'm even debating whether we want to watch the rest of it or not. Oh, fuck, it's playing with me, bro. Real shit. One of them little bitch and fucking bit me. I'm tired of everybody fucking playing with me and shit. I think I'm always playing and shit. Call me bitch and shit.

Not no fucking bitch, bro. At the end of the day, I'm a standoff with my fucking self. Because I'm proud of everybody fucking playing with me, bro. Real shit! Come on, man. We're leaving, man. We're walking away, bro. Let's not take a shit.

Let's go. Come on, Roger. Let's go. Let's go. Roger, let's go. Roger, I'm telling you, let's go. You listen to me. Listen to me, Roger.

You need to listen to me right now, Roger. Let's go. I don't give them fuck. You guys trying to jump me and shit. Let's go. You ain't going to do shit to me, bro. You can't do shit to me. You can't fuck with me, bro.

You can't fuck with me. I want them to. I want them to leave. I'm telling you, I'm going to hit them as many times as you can't watch. No, they didn't tell me the fake him. They said, I can hit them for real. All right, so this is also where, like, I got to just take a quick aside here. This happens all the time. I know this sounds kind of weird, but like something very similar happens to me all the time.

where people like don't understand that if you have an amateur in a professional situation, you can't just put random people in professional situations and expect them to understand what the rules of the game are. Right?

And now this guy says like he's upset. Right? His dad is calling him a bitch for hugging people in tight shorts. Right? And then like we can start to see the associations. Like what does that mean? Like what does it mean when your dad calls you?

bitch, what does that say about you? And then, of course, there's people in his chat egging him on. How many subs to knock him out or whatever, right? So then there, like, people in his chat are calling him all kinds of negative things. So now he's, like, weak, he's a bitch.

This person disrespected him. What do you do when someone disrespects you? When you're at Costco buying things and someone taps you on the shoulder, and that's a sign of disrespect, what is the appropriate response for a tap on the shoulder? Step closer to me. Why are you stepping away? You're 21. You're old enough to get beat or something like that, he says, right?

So what is like the value system that this kid is growing up with? And this is where I know that it's going to be really easy to like point the finger and we can say, oh, like this guy is a terrible dad and things like that, like, I don't think we have enough understanding. We don't have enough information to judge this guy's parenting style. We really don't. Who knows what kind of day this guy was having today? Who knows what kind of value system he grew up with? Right.

We know that apparently his mom was murdered, so there's, like, trauma going on here, like, how is dad coping with it? Is this the day that he found out? Is he, is today the day that he's, like, really grieving really hard? Like, who knows? Let's keep going. Hello? You should piss me off, though, Andre.

Not bad. I'll call you back later. Okay. And then, so Rampage posted. You know, I've been confirmed that this clear up some misinformation. Stuart Smith, aka Psycho Stu, is awake and stable. Raja was unexpectedly hit in the side of the head moments before his match. Roger was told he could get payback.

It was bad judgment. and work that went wrong. Raj's an MMI fighter, not a pro wrestler, had no business involved in an event like this. I don't condone my son's actions at all. He suffered a concussion from sparring only days ago. As a father, I'm deeply concerned with his health and the well-being of Mr. Smith. That being said, I'm very upset that any of this happened. My main concern right now is that Mr. Smith will make a speedy recovery. I apologize on his behalf and to kick for the situation. Now, what's going on here? So I think what we see, we don't really know what's going on. But when I see stuff like this, I think it's good illustrative examples.

Now, is this really what's going on in the situation? We don't have more complex information. But if we want to understand, like, the basics of how this happens, if we want to understand what's going on in our life, we see this. First, there's a perceived value system. Respect. When someone smashes a beer can on your face, you don't take it laying down. That makes you weak.

And there's two kinds of people in the world. there's the weak and there's the strong. And if you get hurt, right? And we can kind of hear it in Roger's words. Like, people are calling me a bitch. Like, I ain't going to be a bitch. I'm going to show them. There's the egocentricity.

There's the hurt. Like, imagine how it feels to just be hanging out with people backstage and some guy slams a beer can over your head. Like the disrespect. And what is the perceived value system? When someone disrespects you, what do you do? Do you take that laying down like a bitch? What happens when your chat is egging you?

you on calling you a bitch you're going to take that bro you're going to take it and then your dad calls you like an hour later and is like hey i saw that you were doing things that are i guess homosexual i'm not quite sure so the hurt piles up and piles up the egosentricity piles up piles up piles up on a day that he's already been disrespected on a day that his chat is egging him on his dad calls him up and dad doesn't know this right Right? Dad doesn't know that the beer can is there. Dad doesn't know what his chat is doing, what his chat is saying, presumably. So these things start to pile up.

And it's formed with all these associations. What does a beer can mean? What does it mean when my dad calls me? Means that I'm weak. And then this creates anxiety. This creates hopelessness. You all can feel it empathically, right? Like how upset this person is.

How they're like hanging by a thread. and then comes the anger, then comes the violence, and we're not going to show the actual match. So this is what happens with anger. You know, I mean like, and I mean that in a general sense, once again. We don't know really what's going on here. We'd have to talk to them and really try to understand. But I think in the sequence of events that we can see here,

we can use it as potential examples of what this process looks like. And there is anger, but I think everyone focuses on the anger. It's the wrong thing to focus on. If you're someone who's struggling with anger, if you want to stop anger, like, at no point, did anyone ask this kid, hey, how are you doing? Like, that's what blows my mind. Oh, hey, like, it was an accident. Like, he didn't know. At no point, was there anyone who was like, hey, man, like, everyone's telling him to stop.

Right? Stop, stop, stop, stop while they're still filming, which we'll get to in a minute. But generally speaking, what I've seen time and time and time again, and there's some really interesting research on this. There's two kinds of people who commit violence. There are people who commit reactive violence and people who are sociopaths or psychopaths. There's actually, I've got a good... So, the psychopath has a self-concept of being invulnerable, superior, and has preemptive rights. The psychopath believes that they're...

are worth more than other people and that other people are worth less than they are. Things are not, there's not a zero-sum game, right? It's like you, it's okay for me to disrespect you, but it's not okay for you to disrespect me. There's an inherent superiority and an alteration of the assignment of rights. They think about other people as dupes, inferior, and weak, and their strategies are manipulative and violent. Then there are people who are reactively violent. These are not people who are psychopaths. Their self-concept is vulnerable. It fluctuates. And they feel fragile. Their rights are fragile. Their egosentricity is fragile. This is not I'm better than you. This is I feel weaker than you. Therefore, I have to prove something. Their concept of others is hostile, opposition, or the enemy.

Do you all understand the difference? The psychopath doesn't think of other people as the enemies. They think of them as dupes. They think of them as nubes. They think of them as weak. prey. The person who is reactively violent thinks of the reason they're violent is because they see threats, not weakness. And they engage in a defensive sort of violence. This, by the way, is from a book called Prisoners of Hate, the Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence by Aaron Beck. Now, which one is Raja? Who knows? We don't have enough information. That's we got to sit down and talk to him if we ever want to find that out. But if you're struggling with being violent or there's someone in your life who's violent towards you, hostile

towards you, think about the way that they think about you. This is what separates a psychopath from someone who is reactively violent. Both of them can be violent, but we should not judge them both the same. The reason we shouldn't judge them both the same is because the way that we deal with them is different. And my role here is to help y'all understand the violence in yourself and the violence in other people. If you demonstrate compassion to a psychopath, they will view it as weakness. It will only increase the the amount of predatory behavior on their end. If someone is reactively violent and you demonstrate compassion to them, that will diffuse the situation.

This is why it's so hard to deal with. And this is where we get so focused on like the action. This guy is angry. All men are bad. All men are evil. Men are violent. Why? There's different etiologies.

So if you're someone who's struggling with anger, if you see other people who are angry, you all should think about this kind of stuff. First of all, what is their value system? What do actions mean? When I don't call this person back, what is the association that they make? Secondly, focus on the hurt. If they feel hurt and you can assuage the hurt, the violent behavior and the hostility will reduce. Thirdly, focus on the egocentricity.

So when I did this thing to you, what did it mean to you? What does this say about you as a person? So I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but the reason that these people are violent is like, if I'm weak, if you did this to me, that means I'm weak. If I'm weak, that means that there's, if you did this to me, this means I'm weak. If I'm weak, that means that the world is a scary place. I'm going to be taken advantage of and I won't be able to exercise my will in the world. Therefore, I can't be weak. Therefore, anger gets called up. Therefore, I'm anger. therefore violent, therefore I'm strong. And once I become strong, these two things disappear. Oh, God. Right? And if I can get rid of those two things by becoming strong, then I become strong.

And that's what I'm really looking for. Make sense? So when people are angry, the really scary thing is that this is what we see. This is what we respond to as a society. We are not aware of all of this. when we look at it, right, when we see some of these clips of his dad or whatever, like we can sort of see that there's something going on with the perceived value system. When you watch these clips, like for me, it like raised my hair on end.

You know, like there's something about this is like very scary to watch. There's something going on here. And when you get angry, the problem is this stuff all happens automatically. As long as you are blind to this, it's going to be really hard to change. and people try to control their anger, control their anger, control their anger, doesn't work. It's in figuring out this stuff that you really get control. So one of the things that I was also kind of thinking about is like, you know, when my daughters are growing up, how am I going to teach them to spot a potentially abusive person?

And I see all these like, you know, TikToks and short form content by sometimes mental health professionals, say, here are the signs of a narcissist, here's a sign. you have ADHD. And, you know, a recent study found that 95% of the information on TikTok about whether you have ADHD or not is incorrect. So there are five in, if you look at the research and clinical work, I think there are five real red flags that will make someone prone to violence. So the first is that they take things personally.

This is the egocentricity. So when you're talking to someone and you're like, you know, when you do something that is hurtful to them, they attribute an intention to your actions, right? You lost weight to make me look bad. So be careful about this. There's an egosentricity and there's taking things personally. Second thing is they're selective with the kind of information that they receive. And there are studies that show that this happens at the neuroscience level, not even

necessarily at the psychological level or psychological level as well. But they may not be capable of seeing it in a different way. So when you do something that really upsets them, they tend to ignore a lot of information. And oftentimes, a lot of what they ignore is their contribution to the situation. So they take things personally. There's ego-centricity. There is selectivity of information. There is over-divertive. generalization. So they tend to think in like broad, broad terms, right? So there's not a whole lot of context.

There aren't individual reasons why something happened. It's like a big generalization. Next thing is that they engage in a lot of denial. So if you try to point out things to them, like, yeah, like the reason that I did this is because you did this, they'll deny. They'll deny, they'll deny. And the really scary thing about this is like, this is not someone that is easy to have a relationship with. It may not be possible to have a relationship with.

So if you want to have a relationship with someone, they need to be able to hear your perspective of things. They need to be able to look at information that may be critical of themselves. Because this, I don't know if this makes sense. If they're denying everything that they did wrong and they're selective about the information, there's no way that they can improve. and if there's no way that they can improve, that means the only way for this relationship to succeed is if they're perfect and you improve all the way to perfection.

They can't self-correct. I'm going to take a moment to try to look at questions, and then we've got a couple of other things. That book is Prisoners of Hate, but I've got a couple of other papers that we're going to talk about today. and, oh, these are so good. Okay. Let's start with intermittent explosive disorder.

So first thing about intermittent explosive disorder is that it has a lot more of a neurological spin to it. So sometimes when people have violent outbursts, it's because of things like conditioning and stuff like that. But IED is a little bit different. Well, we know an IED is that their propensity to anger is like very, very high. So the intensity of anger is greater. The duration of anger is greater. And it requires a lower threshold for them to become angry. This is probably absolutely originates as a hard word, but has a huge element at the neurologic level.

So if you sort of think about your brain, how much does it take for you to get angry? And someone with IED, it takes very little for them to get angry. and then their brain creates this outsized disproportionate response. So IED, we frequently will diagnose in children, and then it may be a pediatric diagnosis. I don't know if you can diagnose this. You should be able to diagnose an adult, I imagine. But generally speaking, it's a pediatric diagnosis,

and some people will grow out of it. So there's certain things that you can do to help train. This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin. saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home.

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Give me a second chat. There's, okay, let's talk. a little bit more. So a lot of people are asking questions about, you know, what they should do about anger. So one of the questions is, how do you help someone understand that they're the victim of abuse? So generally speaking, the reason it's hard for people to realize that they're victims of abuse has a number of different... So people don't realize they're victims of abuse for a number of different reasons. The first is the gradual nature of abuse. So generally speaking, people like don't start out being overtly abusive.

What it is, what abusers sort of learn is like this series of testing limits. Right. So first I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this. It's kind of this principle of like, you know, if you like boil a frog, right? So you put it in cold water, you slowly turn up the temperature. And if the rate of change is gradual enough, then people won't rebel. Other great examples of this are the way that subscription-based services increase their price by small hikes until they hit the threshold of. cancellation. Same principle. Human beings respond to large changes, not small changes. Second thing that a lot of people really, really, really don't realize is that victims of

abuse don't see the person that you see. When you look from the outside, you see someone who's just abusive. The problem with victims of abuse is that they see the perfect partner half the time. So there's the terrible partner, and then there's the perfect partner. And then it becomes a game of, okay, what can I do to help the perfect partner be there instead of the abusive partner? So leaving an abusive partner is easy. Leaving the perfect partner is hard. And then this is what abusers do. They tie their behavior to the other person's behavior.

Why am I being abusive to you today? To you today? Because you did this. there's a brutal episode of South Park, which blows my mind that it's able to air. But, you know, why do you make me hit you? And so this is, there's more to this that we can get into. I'll make a video about it. But, you know, there's this whole idea that is in the victim's mind that if I behave a certain way, I get the perfect person.

If I don't behave in a way, I get the imperfect person. Now, the last thing is that often. Sometimes the reason they don't see the abuse is because they believe they deserve it. So people who were abused as children are more likely to get abused as adults. So there's a certain normalization to the behavior. This is something that I know how to deal with. It's familiar. I can survive.

It's maybe not that bad. And since I have low self-esteem, it makes it easier for me to tolerate, right? So if I have low self-esteem and I get beat up, I deserved it. They don't think that there's something wrong with the abuse. sometimes. Now, oftentimes, what happens is if you try to explain to them, hey, this is abuse, you'll run up into a pile of defense mechanisms. They'll defend their partner. They'll say, oh, yeah, you know, like, it's not that bad. Like, you don't see the good parts of him. They'll say all of these things. So I think oftentimes what we have to do is first listen, right?

Really listen. So the way to disarm those defense mechanisms is not to attack. It's to create a vacuum. where they can just share whatever is going on, try to be supportive of them. And I've seen this like so many times with patients of mine, patients of mine who have people in their lives who have a partner who's alcoholic. You try to tell them, hey, like this person is an alcoholic and like, you know, the person that you're talking to doesn't want to hear it. So you just, you have to really just listen and be compassionate and create a lot of what I would say negative space. So be there and receive what comes out. So at the beginning, you'll get the rationalizations. At the beginning, you'll get the defense mechanisms.

But they won't be there forever. So you all got to understand this. Someone who is staying with an abusive partner is internally conflicted. So then once the defense mechanisms come out, then the stuff that you agree with will come out. Then they'll start to say maybe this isn't okay. This person, I don't like it when they do this. Yeah, it's really like unfortunate when they do that. That's really not fair to you.

That's when you support. Right? So when they start to move in a particular direction, you can encourage them. But if you try to push them, they're going to dig their heels in. Hey, y'all, just a reminder that in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, and things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description below and back to the video. Okay, there's a comment about demonizing men.

So the majority of research shows that physical violence is more often perpetrated by men. Now, this is where we have to be a little bit careful because there are all kinds of associations that come with that. So you can say men are to blame, which is like sort of true. But I think this is where the real problem is that we treat men differently in one important. important way. So if you look at a systemic problem, most of the cases of systemic problems involve systemic solutions. So if we see there are not a whole lot of women in STEM, then we say this is a system's problem. We don't blame the women. We don't say you're not doing a good enough job. You're not studying hard enough. We say, hey, this is a problem of the system. People don't treat

women well in STEM. Fair enough. They're discouraged from participating in STEM-based activities, they get harassed if they're majoring in computer engineering. Like, we say that there's the system problem, right? So when there's a class of people who has some kind of struggle, we say that the system is to blame. What really separates men is that when men, when men is a class are not doing well, we tend to blame the men. So men have skyrocketing unemployment rates.

They have lower rates of graduation. They are more physically violent. that is true. But then what is our intervention? Are we making a systems-based intervention to fix this problem? And fix this problem usually means adjusting things on the system side and helping the people. Right? So one of my patients, awesome, decided to have a couple of kids and left investment banking.

And super cool, they joined a bank that had a specific program to help mothers reintegrate. So the cost of having a child for your professional career is profound. People don't really realize how many hundreds of thousands of dollars having a child costs in terms of your professional earnings. Right. So if you look at the curve of how you earn money, the longer into your career you are, the more you earn. And generally it starts to plateau out at some point. But there's like this ramp up phase. So if you delay your ramp up phase, it really is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So this bank did an awesome job. They're like, okay, if you decided to have a couple kids and you want to come back into banking, we have an accelerated track where we'll give you more support and will, like, promote you so that you can catch up to where you used to be. I think that's great. Like, it's wonderful that we have these kinds of support systems. Right now, we have a low matriculation rate for men into college where the mayor. only scholarships, right? So we as a society when men have a problem, we tell them it's your

problem to fix. Because this is something that's very important. We have to understand this. That when we talk to men, when we deal with men, there's a presumption of independence. There's a presumption of access to power, right, which comes to a certain degree to the patriarchy. And everyone says the patriarchy harms both men and women. That's true. But no one actually like treats men in that way. I don't know if that makes sense. So you'll sort of say this kind of thing, but the money isn't where the mouth is. And this is where when we say, when we talk about men being more violent, yes, they are more violent. Now the question is, what are we going to do with that information? How are we going to address that? Are we going to say, hey, you just need to learn

how to fix this on your own. You need to stop being violent. Stop being a predator. We can say that, but it's not going to be effective. Or what we can try to do and what I'm trying to do here today is show people insight into the process through which anger and violence arise. And does this happen more in men than women?

Absolutely. There are many reasons for that. One is that men are socialized. We did a whole lecture on this. But if you're experiencing a lot of anger, there's a good chance, if you're experiencing mostly anger, there's a good chance

that there's a transmutation of emotions, of things like sadness, frustration, fear, into anger. So if we go back to our, you know, okay, maybe we'll take a look at a post, right? And men are socialized to be angry. Okay, let's take a look at a post, actually. I'm the asshole in my story, and I don't know how to change. I'm like a weird middle class version of Joffrey from Game of Thrones or Homelander from the Boys.

If you're not familiar with them, their character is known for their cruelty and lack of empathy. The difference is I wasn't raised to be this way. My parents did everything right, but somehow I turned out like this. My parents gave me everything they had. They always encouraged me to be kind and considerate, enrolling me in various activities and trying to teach me empathy. But even as a kid, I'd have these intense tantrums that went beyond normal childhood behavior. My mom is like a maid for the whole family, but I treat her like shit whenever I'm angry, not in the mood, or if something doesn't go my way. I go full Joffrey homelander mode, taking out my temper on them. I don't know how I got this way.

My dad's a bit of a dictator, and that's tolerable. My mom does all the heavy lifting at home, which might be why I'm such a spoiled brat. Everything's been handed to me on a silver platter. I've tried digging into my family history. I have aunts and uncles who never forgive people for minor misunderstandings. I have this tendency too, but mine is probably way worse. My mom and dad never exhibited these traits, so I'm not sure if I just made myself grow into a piece of shit, or if I've inherited some of those bad traits from elsewhere of the family. Part of my weirdness comes from choosing to stay home instead of socializing. This has warped my sense of morality and justice. Once I come down from my outbursts, the damage

is already done. I feel bad, but my family just brushes it off like it never happened. Maybe if I'd faced more challenges in life, dealt with difficult people, or juggle multiple responsibilities, I'd be different and probably know how to control my anger. I first realized how problematic my behavior was in high school, a friend called me out on my attitude and it hit me hard, but even though I recognized the issue, I struggled to change. It's affected every aspect of my life. I've lost my friends who couldn't handle my mood swings. At work, I'm known as the office hothead, which has definitely limited my career prospects. I've tried therapy and anger management, but I always quit after a few sessions. It's like I can't stand the idea of someone else telling

me how to behave, and even when I know I need the help. I used to rage hard at multiplayer f-PS games. I'd scream, I'd whine and complain when I couldn't win. Once I got so angry that I punched a hole in my wall, after years of this toxic behavior, I realized I wasn't happy anymore. I switched to single-player RPGs to avoid the rage. As human beings, we should have more than one activity that brings us joy, continually subjecting yourself myself to anger and rage was destroying my well-being. I've had several girlfriends who all left me after seeing who I really am. My first girlfriend would always forgive me because I can't live without her, but once we got back together, I'd return to my old habits, never putting

an effort in blaming her for our fights. I treated my ex-girlfriends the same way I treat my parents. When something doesn't go my way, I go ape shit and treat them like shit. Then the cycle repeats. What's even more disturbing is my use of the silent treatment. Even when I've calmed down and I know I should apologize, I can't bring myself to do it for days. There's a voice in my head telling me to make things right, but I just won't.

During these periods, I feel constant tension in my chest like a real. rubber band stretched to its limit. One time I gave my ex the silent treatment for a week because she forgot to buy my favorite snack at the grocery store. I knew it was ridiculous, but I couldn't stop myself. Eventually, I'd apologize, but it would be too late. We'd break up and they'd find someone who treats them better. Any guy who doesn't treat them like shit is ten times better than me. Okay?

Because of who I am, I don't have deep connections with people, but that's probably because when they know the real me, I start acting differently. My negative vibes, weirdness, and tendency to put people in an uncomfortable situation have pushed everyone away. I know if they knew how I really am when I'm angry, they'd run away, unfriend me, and block me. That's why I bought my own house. Sometimes I have tantrums and message my family, but I try to remind myself that everything here is my own fault. There's no one else to blame but me.

No one but my family in past relationships knows the full extent of who I am. Some people might have caught glimpses, but they haven't seen how I how truly angry I can be or get to where my tipping point really is. I'm terrified of what my future looks like if I can't get this under control. Will I end up completely alone? Will I ever be able to maintain a healthy relationship or advance my career? I know I'm not all bad. I can be funny and creative.

I'm great with computers. I've been told I'm a good cook, but I don't know how to change. Such a great post. I know it's long. So anger really makes us feel out of, of control. Not just makes us feel out of control, it makes us out of control. And sometimes we don't really know what the problem is, but sometimes we do. Sometimes we can look at our anger. We have insight into it. And then we sort of realize like, oh my God, like I can't control this. Right? Like,

what do I do? And this person has some insight, right? They'll sort of like look at themselves and they'll say, okay, like, I've tried to go to therapy and anger management. But what is it? What do they say? Where's this part about? I've tried therapy and anger management, but I always quit after a few sessions. It's like I can't stand the idea of someone else telling me how to behave, even when I know I need help. So how do you manage this? How do you understand if you're someone who gets so angry, sabotages your relationships, you've even tried to get help, but you can't stand help what's going on? So there are a few important principles that we have to understand about how anger works. We're going to start with socialization.

So when we move through the world and we relate to other people, the way that we relate to ourselves and the way that we relate to other people, which I know sounds like a weird phrase, how do you relate to yourself, has to do with what we're shown. So we have a mom who's subservient and a dad who's a dictator. So what is the social script? this person obeys, this person dictates, right? So this is the script.

So then what happens is like this person gets angry and yells at mom. And then mom falls into the script of saying, okay. Now, dictator, it seems like, is not regulating this behavior. So one of the reasons why we learn how to become incredibly angry is because our parents don't teach us the proper emotional regulation skills. Right now, why don't they teach us the proper emotional regulation skills? This is the script, but we'll get to this later, if the dictator does not get super angry all the time, we'll get to that in a second, they won't have learned these skills.

So one of the most challenging things about being a parent is when you have a child whose brain is different from yours. So when I'm like, this is why it's like so hard to be a parent of a neuro-a-typical child. So I have a daughter who's probably neuro-a-typical, and I have a daughter who probably is neurotypical. And I'm a little bit neuro-a-typical. My wife is neurotypical. And so the really hard thing is if you have a child who has ADHD or is on the autism

spectrum, or in the case of this person, this person probably has some flavor of intermittent an explosive disorder or oppositional defiant disorder or both. We'll get to those in a second. But the way that their brain responds to situations is just a ton of anger. But if your parents haven't had a brain that just gets really angry, really quickly, they literally don't know how to teach you how to manage that anger because they have no idea. And this is the problem, right? is what they'll do is the solutions they offer assumes the brain that they have.

This is why it's so hard to parent neuroatypical kids unless you're neuroatypical. Because the solutions that you come up with for the problems in your life, presume the brain that you have. But if the brain that you have is different, then we don't know how to translate our solutions for that brain. Now, really simple example of this is if I'm a parent who can see, and I have a child who is blind, then obviously I can't teach them my solutions.

I have to come up with a new set of solutions for my child. The problem with things like anger or people who are neurotypical, especially girls, because we don't realize that they have ADHD, is that the parent doesn't realize that you're blind. So they don't even realize that they need to do something else. They need to figure out a new solution for you. So then what happens is they go on trying to impose what works for them, which may have worked for their parents, right?

And this person kind of says, my aunts and uncles are like this too, but my parents aren't. That's a really important piece of information. And then the solutions that your parents give you assume a brain that responds to moderate emotional regulation. Doesn't need emotional like care and maintenance on a day-to-day basis.

So it doesn't work. Okay? Now the good news is once you understand what, and this is the job of every parent, right, to understand the idiosyncrasy, of your child. How is my child different? What really works for them? So I think the start of this, if you're someone who's struggling with anger and you don't know like how to get a control of yourself, the first thing you should look at is what is the social script. And then when you got

angry with mom, was that behavior tolerated or not tolerated? And I'm not getting a whole lot of sense of intolerance of this behavior or the appropriate emotional regulation tools, which doesn't mean that the parents are at fault per se, because they did the best that they could. But I think we still like, just because we can diagnose a problem somewhere doesn't mean that it is anybody's fault. It's just the way things are. Okay. So what is the social script that you were taught? You were taught that you can be a dictator and that the person that you're dating, right?

Mom is obeys and is subservient. And dad dictates. So you're a dictator too. You fall into the dictator role. And so you, like, mimic this socialization. Second thing, the brain. Sometimes the people that we, sometimes the reason that we get really angry is because our brain is itchy.

What do I mean by an itchy brain? That means it takes very little stimulus to get a reaction. So we experience more intensity of anger. We have a lower threshold to trigger anger. And the duration of anger is longer. So there are certain things that we can do here in terms of emotional regulation techniques, doing things like meditation, frontal lobe training that will all help with these sorts of things. But your brain is different.

That's okay. You can train it up. But it gets more complicated. I want to highlight this relationship. Now, where is this relationship? So my first girlfriend would always forgive me because I can't live without her. But once we got back together, I'd return to my old habits, never put. putting an effort and blaming her for our fights.

So sometimes when we have this social script of one person is subservient and one person does a dictator, one of the worst things that we can ever do is find someone who has the same script. So here's the angry person. Here's the person who receives the blame, the blame taker and the blame giver. right so the girlfriend that you picked feels some degree of guilt oh I I can't live without you

and then they they derive some kind of ego benefit from martyrdom because I have low self-esteem since I don't feel good about myself the more that I martyr myself the more that I put up with my with your abuse you're abusing me so hard you're getting angry at me

you never change I'm not going to give up on you because that's not what I do It's love forever Till death do us part So heap it on me Like heap it on me Go ahead be as mean as you want to I will never ever abandon you

And the more that you heap it on me And the less that I abandon you The more of a saint I become So now y'all are both acting out parts of a play Never gonna get better That's not how we heal It's how we find harmony Absolutely.

And this is why sometimes I think the worst thing that you can do is look for a relationship where you're very harmonious. Y'all just fit together like gloves. Oh my God. Terrible relationship to find is one where y'all fit together like gloves because that means the particular socialization, the particular ways that you're screwed up and the particular ways that they're screwed up fit together. That's not a good thing because now y'all will just reenact the problems of the generations above. We want conflict in a relationship.

We want there to be a growing of the two people. There should be tension. There should be conflict. And that's the cool thing. When there is tension and conflict, that's when we have to change. And as you change, you become a new person. And they become a new person. And now the growing on both of your ends, if it happens in the

positive direction, results in a relationship that is like new and is really designed for the two of you. Really confusing. The other thing is that one of the, one thing that I think is really dumb, people will say like when you're trying to find a partner, okay, this really, sometimes people will come to me and they'll be like, Dr. Kay, I'm trying to figure out how to find love in this world. And I'm trying to just be my authentic self. And a lot of people will say like, oh yeah, like just be your, if you want to find a good partner, just be yourself. Just be yourself.

I've never heard worse advice. Being yourself is such a terrible way to find a healthy relationship. So I want you to think about for a moment how we come to be. So the person that you are, the person that I am, is not crafted intentionally. It is some kind of am. of dashed dreams, traumatic experiences, maladaptive coping mechanisms that have mashed together

into this current version of you. It's not something that someone sat down and designed in a lab. Right? Someone didn't sit down. Like, that's the work of being a person. It's like, you don't want to just be yourself. You want to become something better. That's like what being human,

that's what progress is a human being is. In your current form, unless you've done a lot of, of intentional crafting or you got really lucky, chances are what you are is not great. Now, why do people say be yourself? This is a response to the overwhelming social conditioning where the rest of the world, this is important, the reason we say be yourself is because the rest of the world tells you to be something else.

And so what you say is you say, no, I'm not going to be what the rest of the world tells me. I've given up my life for living up to the expectations of the people around me. So I'm going to stop doing that. I'm going to start being myself. Both of those are mistakes. Either end of the spectrum, if you're at a negative 100 or a positive 100, both of them are bad. What you need to move is perpendicular to the whole axis.

Become someone that you can be proud of. It's not automatic. Become someone that someone else would enjoy being with. I'm serious. Right? And I don't say this as someone who's like, oh my God, I've done, no, like, I'm still doing this work. Like, I went through a midlife crisis that started about two, two and a half years ago. It was great.

And I was like, the person that I am is kind of shitty. Like, I'm great in a lot of ways, but, like, I'm also kind of shitty. And I can be better. I can be a better parent. I can be a better professional. I can be a better doctor. I can be a better husband. I can be a better son.

So be someone who is worth being and strive for that. Anyway, going back to anger. So there's blame takers and blame givers. And sometimes you'll wind up with people who will play through this socialization, this script, the same way that you will. And that feels really harmonious, but is oftentimes toxic. Okay? Now we get to a couple of other really important things about if you're struggling with anger, there are a couple of other dimensions that you need to understand.

If the anger is overwhelming, why is that? That is because unless you are taught healthy emotional, unless your EQ is pretty high and you're a dude, there's a good chance that the reason you feel so much anger is because you're doing an internal alchemy where you take sadness, you take hopelessness, you take fear, and you turn them all into anger. We did a whole lecture on, like a two-hour lecture on the nature of anger over on the membership side. We talk about this principle. We're going to share it here. Okay? So, like, I'm going to give you all a simple example. Oh, my God, this person, I asked this person out on a date.

They said no. Man, fuck that bitch, bro. She don't deserve me. I was doing her a favor. You all get that? That's actually a feeling of humiliation. of rejection. And what do we do? We turn it into anger. I'm sad. But sadness doesn't bode well for my future. So I'm going to turn it into anger. I'm going to do something about it. So here's the key thing.

A lot of these emotions are emotions of inaction. If you're sad, what do you feel like doing? Nothing. If you're afraid, don't leave the house. If you're hopeless, there's no point. There are emotions that are designed. to keep you still, literally. Sadness is an emotion that human beings evolved as a beacon of distress to invoke action from other people. When I start crying on a park bench, what am I really doing? I'm signaling to all the strangers around me that I'm having a tough time. Come sit down and give me a hug.

Hopelessness, don't bother. Conserve your resources. Fear. The consequences are too dangerous. don't act. And oftentimes when we are faced with bad situations and we feel negative emotions, we recognize that inaction is not going to solve our problems, that we don't live in a world that is getting better by the day, that we don't live in a world where sadness will evoke the appropriate response from my dormant mother or my dictator father. When I'm sad, how did they respond to me?

Not in the right way. I've got to do it myself. So we turn. turn action, sorry, we turn inaction into action by transmuting anger. So this is what you need to do if you experience overwhelming anger. You need to look for these emotions, process these emotions. This person is sitting here. This is so, it's so great. Great example. Where's the therapy part?

Okay, I've tried therapy and anger management, but I always quit after a few sessions. It's like I can't stand the idea of someone telling me, someone else telling me how to behave, even when I know I need the help. This person doesn't need anger management. They need someone who is going to be a compassionate listener. Tell me how hard it is for you, and they're going to hate it. They're going to hate that, too. But that's what they need.

You all understand? They need stuff like this. Are you scared? Tell me about your fear. Are you hopeless? Tell me about your hopelessness. And we can see this, by the way. We can see all these emotions trickle out.

You guys see that? Look, will I end up completely alone? What emotion is that? Will I ever be able to maintain a healthy relationship? I try to remind myself that everything here is my own fault. There's no one else to blame but me. So this brings us to the other point. Why do we get angry at other people?

Because of displacement. When the anger towards ourself, this is what happens, here's my anger towards myself. When this fills up, it starts to flow over into other people. And then I get angry at other people when really who I'm angry at is myself. There's no more space for the self-hatred. There's no much space for like, look at the self-loathing in this post. Everything is my own fault. I don't have deep connections.

when people really see who I am, I can put on an act for a little while, but when they really see who I am, when they see that rotten-ass core of messed-up stuff, of the pathetic, angry little bitch who knows what he's supposed to do, but can't bring himself to do it. When you know you need therapy

and you end up quitting therapy anyway, when you know you should apologize and you can't bring yourself to apologize, how do you feel towards yourself? You're so angry. So angry. towards yourself. And then you can only handle so much anger towards yourself. And then you have this little voice, oh, look at this little baby. Like, oh, like, oh, little baby over here. Hold on.

Look, this little baby. Oh, I'm not all bad. I can be funny and creative when I'm in a good mood. I'm great with computers. Look, don't, don't beat yourself up. You can be a good, you're a good boy, too. You're a good boy. You're not all bad. But everything is my own fault. No, one else to blame but me. You guys see that? So much conflict. So much self-loathing. And then the part of you that's like, no, you're a good person. But this other part of you is like, no, you're not. Yeah, oh, you're like, you could be a good person. But deep down, when they see the real you, when they get to the core, oh my God, it's so bad. So much hatred, so much self-loathing. So much anger towards yourself. When you're angry with yourself, you'll be angry with the rest of the world.

And this person doesn't know what to do. They're stuck. They're terrified. I've tried anger management. So then we get to part six, the ego. So these kinds of people can really benefit from ego-based work. You don't like to be told what to do. So tell me about that.

Who are you? And for those of y'all that are familiar with the ego, remember that ego arises to protect you from negative emotion. right? This girl rejected me or this guy rejected me. He doesn't deserve me. I'm so much better. He would be lucky to date me. I'm so much better than anything he will ever have ever in the history of existence. This is an ego response.

So as long as the ego is running the show, as long as you have to pump yourself up because your core is rotten, and that doesn't feel good. so I'm going to pump myself up. And then when I interact with other people, imagine how hard it is for them. Because if they insult you even a little bit, you go off the handle. Oh my God. Like you're disrespect me.

How do you disrespect me? And then if they're like nice to you, then you're like, don't be nice to me because I'm rotten on the inside. Save yourself. Break up with me. Never talk to me again. Go and live a happy life without me because I'm rotten. at the core. So if they're like nice to you, you push them away.

And if they're critical of you, you're like, and it's like how are other people supposed to relate to this? And it's really confusing for you too. Because half the time you're angry with them, half of the time you think they deserve someone better than you. It's like, so ego. Let go of the ego. But notice, right?

So what does this say about me? Who do I think I am? And if you're trying to move forward from this kind of stuff, I think there's a couple of really important things to do. The first is to recognize this cycle of how anger evolves. And the cycle involves several steps, right? The first thing is to look at your associations, your shoulds, but especially the shoulds that other people relate to you with. So how should other people treat you? that's the question to ask yourself how should other people treat me what should they do what's the

right way to behave second thing you need to do is before you get angry look for the hurt so anytime you get angry there's a good chance that you feel hurt you feel some other kind of emotion then what we talked about is the egocentricity so not only do you feel hurt there's some kind of association When you put these two things together, this means something about you. So when someone doesn't call me back, I feel hurt, and that means that they don't care about me. This means that I'm weak. This means that they think I'm pathetic. I'm not going to let them treat me this way.

Like, oh, my God, like these therapists. Oh, my God, telling me what to do, right? I can't stand the idea of someone else telling me how to behave. They have the gall to tell me how to behave. I know how to behave. I'm behaving perfectly. That's why I'm in this situation, because everything I'm doing is right.

How dare they? You see the ego response? So look for this. Look for the rules of the game. How should people treat you? How should you treat other people? Look for the hurt that you feel before you get angry. Look for what this means about you.

When these two events happen, what does it mean? What is the part that really hurts? It's something about you. It says something about you. You believe it says something about you. And that's what's really confusing for them because that's not what they intend.

And then when you put these two things together, this creates some degree of malice, malevolence. Right? Since I am hurt, they tried to hurt me. They're trying to make me weak. So this will turn into, by the way, all kinds of other emotions, right? So it'll be sadness. It'll be rejection.

And by the way, I have a list of words here. So if you guys are looking for more resolution into this, I wrote these down, just how complex this can be. Dominated, controlled, disrespected, humiliated, rejected, devalued, criticized, criticized, criticized, abandoned, cheated, wounded, thwarted, misled, undermined, let down. This is the series of emotions that take this, and when you add egocentricity, this is what you end up with. So this is how these people usually feel. Oh, I was misled. This person took advantage of me.

I've been thwarted. This person doesn't recognize my true potential. I've been denied. I feel controlled. Controlled is powerlessness plus ego. Rejected is humiliation plus ego. You'll see that? So you'll track these emotions back to some other emotion.

Then you work on this, and you work on this. And then this is what ends up into anger and then action. So this too, once we get down here, we can do meditation, We can do behavioral training. This is like anger management. Right? So this is how you fix this. Got to understand these steps.

All right, let's take questions. How do you calm people that are angry with you? The reason it's hard to calm people who are angry at you is because there's not a way to teach, there's not a way that works. As a psychiatrist, where I'll usually do is in a span of about 60 to 90 seconds, I'll go through a list of different things that I'll try. So the first thing that I'll try is to just listen. So anger usually involves like energy sent your way.

And if you push back against it, oftentimes it intensifies. So the first thing that I'll do is just listen and see if like if I don't, if I'm not very reactive and I listen and I start to ask open ended questions that get them talking, what are you upset about? Can you help me understand what the situation is? you know, I'm trying to figure out what's going on. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. That's kind of the angle.

Okay. Now, there are some people for whom that'll start to calm them down because if you sort of hold their emotion, when they're angry with you, you can kind of just hold that emotion, the motion will start to deflate. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget.

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they'll just get more pissed off. And that's when we use a really interesting technique, which is mirroring. So we don't usually think about using mirroring. We'll say like, oh, like, if you are a job interview and your interviewer crosses the arms and does this, you should do this too,

because that means that they will hire you. You have all this stupid people saying the stupid kind of stuff. There's a certain degree there's that sort of stuff is true, but I think it tends to be overblown. So here's what really works well. If someone starts yelling at you, you should yell back. And then intentionally calm yourself down visibly in front of them. And then they will calm down too.

This is the most effective technique. Works for people who are fucking high on cocaine, high on meth, high on K2, drunk, really angry, had a suicide attempt, got brought to the hospital, our manic. Works incredibly well. Someone comes, I walk into the emergency room and someone says, well, Dr. K. And I'm like, hey, what are you yelling at me for, man? I didn't bring you here. And then oftentimes they're surprised.

They're like, like, they're expecting you to be like soft. And then you, and then what you do is you don't keep, you don't get angry. This is important. You display anger. You show anger. You raise the tone of your voice. Why are you yelling at me? And then you calm yourself down.

I'm sorry, dude. It's been a long day. I know you're here, you got upset, you don't want to be here. I don't want to be here either, but I don't understand why you're yelling at me. I'm here to help you. My bad, I shouldn't have lost my temper with you. Can you tell me what's going on and maybe we can figure this fucking thing out? That's what you do.

They're angry. You respond with anger. Before they escalate, and this is why it's really important, don't lose control. Don't start blaming them. You express anger without blame. Why are you yelling at me? What did I do? I just got here.

And then you calm yourself down. Right? So, and if they are blaming you, let's say you're like at home. And someone's like, oh my God, you didn't like, I asked you to take out the laundry. Like, you didn't take out the laundry. And then you get angry with them. Yeah, I didn't take out the laundry. I said I was going to do it.

This stuff happened. Look, I realize I said I was going to do something and I didn't do it. Can you tell me what's upsetting you? Like, I'm going to try to calm down. me yelling doesn't help you yelling doesn't help can we try to figure out what's going on i can maybe do the laundry now the reason i didn't take out the i have a perspective on this right i was about to start yelling at you the reason i didn't take out the laundry is because i was taking i was emptying the dishwasher you said you were going to do the dishwasher you didn't do the dishwasher

people are going to be here in 45 minutes the dishwasher needs to be empty what are like okay i said i was going to do something you said you were going to do something to do what are we going to do can we just like calm the fuck down and figure this out so you respond initially with anger and then calm yourself down. And when people, when you do that, a lot of people, like, you'd be amazed. When you do it properly, and this is the really important thing,

you can express anger without attacking. The moment that you attack, the anger is going to explode. You want to express anger, but don't blame. Blame will make things worse. Except some responsibility. Visible show of calming yourself down. I need to take a deep breath. Can we please try to figure this out

in a civilized manner. But if you want to yell, like I can fucking yell. I don't think that helps any of us. Okay? So anger, meet them where they're at and then start ratching it down. Ratch it down.

They'll ratchet down with you. Works incredibly well. Great question. Okay. How do we release that energy that being angry gives you? What's the natural release for it? I think physical activity is the best.

Sexual activity can work too. but physical activity I think is really, really, really good. Okay, so let's understand this. If you're really angry, intense physical activity is one of the best things you can do to manage your anger. Let's understand why.

When you get angry, you activate your sympathetic nervous system. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up. If you try to calm yourself down, oftentimes it won't work. You'll just get angrier. If people try to calm you, hey man, calm down. The worst thing that you can ever tell someone who's angry to do is to calm down.

What they need to do is calm down, but you can't tell them to calm down. You can just force yourself to calm down. Your sympathetic nervous system is active. What we need to do is deactivate the sympathetic nervous system. How do half of us do it? We use things like drugs, alcohol, video games, whatever. We use something that alters our neurology, alters our physiology, so the parasympathetic nervous system calms down.

That is what we want to do. We just want to use healthy versions of it. So when you do intense physical exercise, this leans into the direction of your sympathetic nervous system. So your heart rate is up and then you lean into that direction. It's kind of like, I don't know if you guys have heard this, right? But if you're losing control of your car and you're kind of skidding, you want to move in the direction of the skid.

If you try to, if you're like, you know, caught in water and things like that, and you're kind of, I don't know what the term is in driving, but you kind of like, you know, move into that direction. If you jerk the wheel the other way, you're just going to like tailspin and it'll be So you actually want to move in the direction of your physiology. So when you feel amped up, when you feel angry, you want to lean into your sympathetic nervous system. When you do that, something really cool happens.

Anytime you activate your sympathetic nervous system in the way of exercise, a compensatory delayed mechanism also activates, which is your parasympathetic nervous system. So to put it very simply, if I start running from a tiger, and I'm running really fast, my body's like heart rate tops, maximum amount of blood flow to my skeletal muscles, and as I am huffing and puffing, my body is activating a backup mechanism. My body is saying the moment that we stop huffing and puffing, we are going to go into rest mode and recovery mode. So you're running, you're running, you're running, and then you're like, and then you feel exhausted. We want to trigger exhaustion. That's a simple way to put it. So, anytime you feel angry,

best thing to do is hit the gym, boys and girls. Lift, exert those muscles. Then, once the anger is gone, this is really important. Then we want to solve the problem. What were you angry about? What should we do about it? Now that your mind is calm, now that your mind is not thinking in black and white,

Now that your mind is not thinking in a catastrophic way, what are we going to do about this? The biggest mistake that people make with anger is they combine the anger with the problem solving. Because when we feel angry, we want to do something about it. The reason is because when our problems were surviving tiger attacks, being angry and doing something about it happened at the same time. But when our problem is this person at work keeps on claiming credit for the work that I do, we want to separate anger from our problem solving. So exercise intensely. Going to the gym is a great idea.

But if you want to, you can do like 30 pushups at home. Like just start banging out push-ups, do some body weight exercises, then sit down with a piece of paper and a pen. Ideally, not a cell phone. Piece of paper and pen is better. and then start thinking about your problems. Gender to gender hate posting is driving me nuts. To cope, I shut off all communication with women. Life is more peaceful now, but is there a better way to deal?

I think absolutely, right? And I think this answer is going to sound kind of obvious. So one of the biggest problems with gender to gender communication in today's world is that we project the Internet onto a person. So we have all of these faceless, nameless interactions, especially through dating apps, because there's not a person there. And this is so funny.

So, you know, one of my friends was one of the earliest streamers. And by earliest streamers, I mean, was streaming back in 2004, okay? Was streaming on Justin TV. And they quit streaming. And the reason they quit streaming, they love playing games. is because they used to play games at the arcade. And then the internet showed up and they started playing games on the internet.

And what they hated about playing games on the internet is when you're an asshole in the arcade, if you're playing Street Fighter 2, in the arcade against other people, and you behave like an asshole, no one will play with you. There's a real face, there's a real relationship that forms.

People remember who you are. There's no anonymity. There's not an endless supply of anonymous people for you to abuse. IRL. And then the internet showed up. And now there's an endless supply of anonymous people

who are not real people. And so when they don't have their own characteristics, it's so fascinating how the brain does this. Literally these people are faceless. Right? They may have a face on their profile, but when you're texting with someone, you don't see facial expressions.

You don't see the hurt that your words cause. They don't see the hurt that their words cause. So when the brain does not have real information about a human being, it fills that void up with generalizations from things like hate posts on the internet. All women are like this. All men are like this. You watch all these shorts where people talking about men and people talking about women. Oh my God. They're talking about men and women. They're not talking about this individual human being. And then what happens is if this person demonstrates even one iota of the

pattern that you see in hate posting, it triggers. Trigger.exe. Then you're like, oh, my God, it's happening. All these women, all these men. Oh, my God. And you'll see this all the time. If you look at these, like, you know, nice girls, nice guys posts, all these, like, really just terrible instances of, like, people just texting really crazy stuff.

And you say one thing. And then they text this, like wall of text about, oh, how this should happen and this should happen and whatever. And if you're not going to be this way and then this is what I deserve. and then you get this like, you know, it's kind of like you're opening a can and it just explodes in your face. And you're like, what did I say? What did I do? You're dealing with a lot of projective energy.

So this is where I think if you're trying to date nowadays, I'm going to give you all some really bad advice. The first is don't watch gender-based content on the internet. It will literally, not literally, metaphorically, it will poison your mind. It will have you filling in all the gaps. in real people with these kinds of projections. And I hear this, like, on a scary frequency of people going down the rabbit hole, going down the female dating strategy rabbit hole, going down the tradwife rabbit hole, going down the red pill rabbit hole.

Partners will come to me and they will see it happening in real time. Over the past six months, my husband has changed. As long as you are programming your brain with this information, it is going to be hard to fix it. Second thing, try to make it as human of an interaction as possible. And this is where there's really, really hard advice, which is that I think the faster you can make it human, the faster you can have a face-to-face interaction, the better off you'll be, because it's really hard otherwise. And texting is this whole skill. But nowadays, everyone wants to text for like three months before they ever meet up. But there are a lot of people who are like not huge fans of texting for very long periods of time.

And this is why they're hard to find because these people who like to meet up, once they start meeting up with each other, and you find two people who don't like to text a lot, they leave the dating pool because once you start meeting up with people, that is what creates the circumstances for actually finding a lasting relationship. I've never seen a study that talks about the advantages of doing long distance. I've never seen a study that talks about the success of relationships coming from a lack of face-to-face contact. The ways in which we fall in love happen in person. Physical touch, oxytocin, vasopressin, facial empathy, being able to connect, laughing together.

So there's absolutely a better way to do it, but you're fighting an uphill battle. And here's the really tricky thing is you're going to have to move through a lot of people who want to text and they want to meet you and things like that. They want to text for a long time. They want there to be a spark. They want there to be a connection. Like, texting is not a great way to form an attractive spark. It's a great way to trauma bond.

So Discord, when you share all your traumas and they share all their traumas and there's walls of text and oh my God, we feel so connected. It's great. You can form some really authentic connections on the internet. They're not necessarily romantic. They're not necessarily healthy romantic. Right? But there are people who do meet on Discord and get married and have happy, healthy lives.

So it happens. But it's challenging. Great question. All right, one more chat. Okay. Is there a level of healthy anger or aggression for people to have? And if so, how do you encourage this in people who are lacking without access? Excellent question.

Oh, so good questions. There is absolutely a healthy amount of anger to have. The healthiest way to have anger is to manage all of your other emotions. So remember that emotions like sadness, hopelessness, fear can turn into anger. I don't want to be afraid, but I'm okay being pissed, especially for men. So men are socialized to transmute emotions that are like sadness, like don't cry, get pissed. Right? If you look at any kind of like action movie, someone like there's some tragedy, like Braveheart or something.

And then like someone dies. And then like the protagonist isn't like, ah! And then like the next, you know, hour of the movie is eight months of them grieving and going to therapy and That's not what happens in action movies. When someone is aggrieved in a movie, they get angry. And I'm going to make it right. I'm going to make it just unreal. So we transmute a lot of emotions into anger.

So what is the right level of anger? It is the anger that only comes from anger. No transmutation, no alchemy. Manage your other emotions. Let yourself feel sadness. Let yourself feel grief. Move through it. and then what anger remains is the appropriate amount.

Second thing that you have to be a little bit careful about is ego. So what is the right amount of anger? It is the anger that you experience when your ego is calm. So when I get egotistical, I take things personally and I get really pissed. Even though there may not be anything directed towards me. There's no real malevolence. Someone's not trying to take advantage of me. I just did something stupid.

And now I'm blaming them. So when you're of calm mind and all of the other emotions have been dealt with and you're not in the egotistical frame where you're thinking super black and white, you're blaming other people, I'm the best and this person is the worst. When you have all those thoughts and you sit down and you say to yourself, you know what? This is my friend. I've loaned them $100 three times in a row. They have not paid me back. This is not fair. This is my friend.

I've asked them for three. They've asked me for three favors. I've said yes to all of them. I've asked them for three favors. They said, oh, no to all of them. This is not fair. I'm angry. And I'm going to let them know.

And when you let them know, you can say, hey, I know we're friends. Frankly, I feel like at this point, you're taking advantage of our friendship. You asked me for these three things. I said yes. I asked you for these three things. You said no every single time. I feel like in this relationship, this is not equal. This is not reciprocal.

So you can set your territory. You can draw your lines, you can respect your boundaries, and it's okay to be angry with someone when they violate those. That's the right way to do it. It's okay to be. It's good to be angry in the appropriate situations. The whole problem with anger is when it's inappropriate. And what makes it inappropriate?

What makes it inappropriate is ego in the transmutation of other emotions. Can you react to the chakra episode and Avatar The Last Bender? I will do this. So this is kind of a funny story. When my daughter was two and a half and was starting to learn how to watch things, I tried to get her to watch Avatar the last Airbender because I had heard that Avatar is great.

So I took my two and a half-year-old daughter, sat her down on the couch and I was like, we're going to watch Avatar. And she didn't like it. She didn't understand that she's like two. Maybe she was three. And so then I was like, maybe she doesn't like it because there's a male protagonist.

So then we started watching Legend of Cora. She didn't seem to really care for that too. And I was trying to hype it up. I was like, oh, look, they're flying, and now they're using ice and like, look at that. Isn't that cool? And she was like, whatever. So many years later, they started watching Avatar maybe about a year ago, and they're like chain watching it.

We ordered the books. They're reading the books. And I told them, hey, we should watch this together as a family. And now they're watching it because I'm working. And so I will go back. I promised them that I'll watch the show. So I will watch the show. I will watch the chakra episode.

And now I will get back to you all. I've heard there's a lot of, like, great stuff to learn and good life lessons. And it's like fun and engaging. and things like that. So they're in Avatar nowadays. All right, y'all. Thank you so much for coming today. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.