The Liz Moody Podcast - What We Get Wrong About Anger + How To Harness Its Full Potential With Dr. Ryan Martin

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

Anger expert Dr. Ryan Martin shares what NOT to do when you’re angry, how to identify where your anger is really coming from, & actionable steps for feeling better in the moment.  the valuable purpose of anger the trick to making your anger work FOR you why some people tend more toward anger than others how parents can help kids have a healthy relationship with anger how to deal with anger about things that are out of your control (climate change, systemic injustice and inequities, etc) the time of year that stokes the most anger the surprising way to fight WAY less with your partner the best to deal with a partner when THEY’RE angry how to deal with people you have to interact with regularly that make you angry  signs you might be repressing your anger what causes road rage + exactly how to deal with it in yourself or someone else and so much more!  For more from Dr. Martin, visit his website alltheragescience.com, follow him on social media at @angerprofessor, and grab his latest book How to Deal with Angry People: 10 Strategies for Facing Anger at Home, at Work and in the Street.  To join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthiertogetherpodcast. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Pre-order my new book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  This episode is sponsored by: Osea: get 10% off your first order at oseamalibu.com with code LIZMOODY10. Cozy Earth: visit cozyearth.com and use code HEALTHIER35 for up to 35% sitewide.  AG1: visit AG1.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 10 free travel packs today.  Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're getting actionable tips for improving our focus, hearing about all the most effective ways to make strong friendships as an adult, or optimizing our gut microbiomes through diet and lifestyle hacks. And yes, those are all real episodes, so if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives. Today, I am so excited to welcome Dr. Ryan Martin to the podcast. Dr. Martin is a researcher, professor of psychology, and the author of two books, How to Deal with Angry People

and Why We Get Mad, How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change. He's also the host of the podcast Psychology and Stuff and has been featured in publications like The New York Times, NPR, BBC, Ted, and more. My sister who is finishing up her PhD in psychology, right now actually suggested an episode on anger because the more she's learned about psychology, the more she realized what an incredibly misunderstood emotion it is. This episode is both going to give you practical tips to deal with anger, but it will also completely revolutionize your view of anger and its role in our lives. Anger matters and we need to stop trying to ignore it or push it down.

Dr. Martin and I get into the valuable purpose of anger, the trick to making your anger work for you. Why some people tend more toward anger than others. How parents can help kids have a healthy relationship with anger. How to deal with anger about things that are out of your control like climate change or systemic injustice and inequities. The time of year that stokes the most anger, any guesses, this one was interesting to me for sure. The best way to deal with a partner when they are angry. The surprising way to fight way less with your partner in general. How to deal with people you have to interact with on a regular basis that make you angry. Signs you might be repressing your anger.

What causes road rage and exactly how to deal with it in yourself or someone else and so much more. We would both love to hear your thoughts and your biggest takeaways as you're listening to the episode. So definitely screenshot and tag Ryan. He is at Anger Professor. And me, I'm at Liz Moody on Instagram. Also, have you snagged your copy of 100 Ways to Change Your Life? yet? A bookstore owner who got to read an advance copy, this was so exciting. I'm starting to get these reviews, which is crazy. Anyway, she said, this is my favorite fall book by far. It'll appeal to

readers of books like Atomic Habits, although the scope is so large that it will likely be able to reach people beyond that as well. I loved the tangible insights, the accessibility of the tips, and how shame-free the book is, especially the anti-diet nature of the how-to-eat sections. It is so crazy to me that people are reading the book right now after so long of it, just living in my head and living on the page, and it's even crazier that they're loving it, and I cannot wait to get it into your hands. Pre-ordering is hands-down the best way to support the book, and you'll also get entered to win a thousand-dollar travel credit to an airline of your choice.

Just go to 100 Ways to Change Your Life.com. that is 100Ways to Change Your Life.com. And this is one of the last weeks this podcast will be called healthier together. We are changing the name to the Liz Moody podcast, but the content will be exactly the same. The new name just reflects the much wider range of content we cover on here from the pros and cons of having kids to how to balance your hormones, to how to make friends as an adult. So look for the Liz Moody podcast in your feed. and know it's the exact same healthier together podcast you know and love just with a much-needed

little makeover. Okay, let's get right into it with Dr. Ryan Martin. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to get into this topic, which I feel like is really under-discussed societally. Thank you for having me. In so many ways, I feel like we talk about anger a lot. We're seeing it places all the time, but what we don't do is necessarily have lots of conversations about anything nuanced in the area of anger.

We're going to dive into a lot of nuance today, but I love to kick it off with one of your core theses, which is that anger isn't all bad. I think a lot of people spend a lot of time telling themselves that they shouldn't feel angry, that they should feel embarrassed or ashamed or just push that emotion away entirely. I would love for you to make a pitch for anger's purpose in our lives.

A lot of this is rooted in what I would say is true of all emotions and that we should try not to evaluate our emotions as sort of good or bad, but actually think of them as sources of information. It's one of the ways our brain communicates with us about sort of our place in the world and what's going on in our situation and who are around and all those things, right? So when I get scared, it's because there's danger. When I get sad, it's because I've lost something. And when I get angry, it's because I've been mistreated.

or experienced or witnessed some sort of injustice or had my goals blocked in some way. And so that feeling itself is valuable. It does two things, really. It alerts us to the possibility of that injustice, and then it energizes us to confront that injustice. When we feel that increase in adrenaline, when our heart rate starts increasing and so on,

that's because our body is preparing to deal with whatever that injustice is. And so in many ways, those things are good and valuable. Really, when anger goes wrong, it's because we aren't necessarily expressing it in the best possible ways or because we're letting it get the best of us in some other way. But that doesn't make the feeling itself necessarily good or bad. What would you say to somebody who said, my anger is actually getting in the way of me fighting injustice? It doesn't make me. think in a clear-headed way, it gets in the way of me expressing myself the way that I want. There has to be a way to fight injustice without being hindered by anger. What would you say to them?

I would start from saying that that is a remarkable level of insight. And they should start out proud of the fact that they see themselves that way and that they're recognizing that about themselves. I don't actually think a lot of people have that level of insight. So that's a good thing right there. I would expand on that to say, in that, case, it isn't necessarily so much that the anger is preventing you from doing those things. It's all the thoughts and feelings you're having and even ways of acting that you're having in response to that anger. If we can try and work through some of those challenges that you're struggling with, I think you'll find that your anger can be a really powerful tool. It's just

we've got to start working through that next step, which is in what way can I kind of handle this more productively. Do you have any tips that are sort of universally applicable for handling anger more productively? The strategy I like to refer to is diagramming an angry incident. And one of the things I suggest is when you are angry, when you are mad, you need to think through all of the different parts of that anger experience. You need to think through the provocation, the thing that happened that led to that anger. You need to to think through your mood at the time of that provocation. So was I tired? Was I hungry? And then you need to think through the thoughts you had that may have exacerbated that angry response. So how did I interpret

that provocation that led to this anger? I equate this sometimes to athletes watching game footage the day after a match. It's like my son's a soccer player after the game. Sometimes we'll talk through and I might even show them pictures of things and we'll talk through what happened. And that's a really productive way for people to think through what they might do differently in the future. The same thing can happen with us in these moments. Like what led to this angry response? What types of thoughts did I have when it was happening? How did I behave?

What are some things I could have done differently in that moment that would have led to a different outcome? And the more we do that, the more we reflect on those angry experiences, the more likely we are to act on that in a productive way in the future. Now, a lot of people might say, well, I think about those angry incidents all the time. And I bet that's true. But I also bet that a lot of times when people are doing that, they're thinking about what the other person did, right? They're kind of fixated. Anger is a social emotion. A lot of times when we feel it, it's because we're interacting with someone else. And what happens is when people get really fixated on what the other person said or what the other person did, instead of spending that time reflecting

on their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in that moment. It's almost like watching game tape, but only watching the other team, right? That wouldn't be productive, but I think that's a way in which people tend to handle those things. What causes some people to get really mad in a situation, whereas other people might react really calmly? Like, are some people more genetically predisposed to anger? Is that a function of our childhood? What is going on there? There's a bunch of different pieces there. There are genetic predispositions being more quick to experience anger or to lose control in that way.

And so that is definitely the case. Another piece, though, is oftentimes what was like different aspects of our upbringing, as you mentioned. And our upbringing can look a lot of different ways. There are the messages that we got regarding our anger, meaning what were we told is an okay way to express it versus punished for. And anger in particular is one where we see people have pretty strong feelings about how kids should or should not express their anger, right? And so they send those messages either overtly or sort of unintentionally to kids. Child hits another child and they get punished for it. Child yells and screams and they get punished for it. So there's a lot of

that. The other piece, though, oftentimes has to do with the modeling that our caregivers bring. And And what I mean is how our parents or caregivers tend to express their anger, that we oftentimes will see the kids sort of modeling that and doing what their parents did. If parents yell and swear, kids are likely going to do that too. If a parent goes and cries in their room, kids are likely to do that too. So we see that modeling playing a role. Okay. So if any parents are listening and they want to do everything in their power to have their

have a good relationship with anger, what are some steps they could take there? If you want your kids to have a healthy relationship with anger, then you've got to live that yourself and they've got to see that. One, it means doing those things when you're frustrated. Instead of yelling and screaming, it might be taking a moment to say, I'm feeling really angry and frustrated, and I think it's because, right, and then fill in that blank for them. Showing that emotional maturity, it's about having conversations with them. when you experience anger, when you witness someone else experiencing anger, but also when they experience anger and how they show it. One of the things that happens is that kid gets mad,

yells and screams, parent yells at scream to them to tell them to stop yelling and screaming, right? And we see that sort of cycle. Instead, making sure everyone's safe, but letting some of that anger play itself out, and then having a chance to come back and revisit it later and say, hey, let's talk about what just happened. It seemed like you were just so upset that you did X, Y, and Z, does that sound fair? And have that conversation where you can process all of that in a way that is healthy, that is reasonable, that isn't scary to them, have them come out of feeling a little bit of sort of insight into themselves. Do you think you should overtly tell kids, it's okay to feel anger? This isn't an emotion you should be repressing. Yeah, absolutely. I

routinely, I will tell you as a parent, have those conversations with my kids about things that, frankly, if I'm being honest, even when I hear about things that happened at their school, when I hear about a decision that was made, if I don't think it was fair, I'll say, you know, I understand why you're angry about that. That doesn't sound fair. And we'll talk through those things. I do think one of the challenges, though, especially with kids, is that they do tend to have not a great understanding of fairness. It takes time for the them to develop that. And I think that is also something that you can work through because having a healthy understanding of fairness is a really important part of having a healthy relationship with

anger. I was just going to say, as you were saying that, this connection hasn't occurred to me before, but the idea that part of having a right-sized relationship with anger would be learning to accept the certain level of unfairness that just exists in the world, do you have any tips for that for either kids or adults, too. Yeah. If I didn't study anger, I think I'd want to study fairness in a lot of ways because the two are so clearly linked. Fairness is really a complicated thing for kids and anyone to understand because it is worth acknowledging that there's no such thing as like cosmic fairness, right? The world doesn't treat everyone the same. Some people get sick when they probably

shouldn't have. And there's all sorts of ways in which we are born into success or born into struggles and things like that. Now, the other piece, though, is that sometimes those things just happen through chance, but sometimes those things really do reflect a lack of fairness, right? Poverty is not distributed equally, right? Struggles and exposure to things are not distributed fairly. And so helping kids understand that there's no such thing as cosmic fairness, but at the same time, we should work to treat people fairly, right? And as human beings, we should be trying to do that. part of the problem, and you see this with kids a lot, but you also see it with adults, is sometimes people interpret, I didn't get what I wanted, therefore it's unfair. And you hear that a lot from

children when it's, why does my brother have a later bed time than me? Well, that's not fair, right? And it's, well, is it unfair or is it just that he's a little older? And that when you're his age, you will also have that bedtime. Those are complicated things for a kid to get. I just had such a flashback to what a big deal bedtime was as a kid? It's true. What about as an adult? I feel like lack of fairness is something that it's probably one of my number one stokers. I don't know if stoker's word.

It's one of the number one things that stokes jealousy in my own life. Like I have a real jealousy of generational wealth and people who grew up with a lot of money. And obviously there's no fairness or rhyme or reason to that. And then I obviously have tons of privileges that aren't fair that I have. how can we not let that make us angry on a day-to-day moment-to-moment basis? It's a hard question for me to answer because there's a piece of me that says, but we should be angry about that, right? We should be angry about the lack of equity there and the lack of justice

when it comes to economic structures and things like that. But I think the second part of what you said is really, really important, which is on a moment-to-moment day-to-day basis, right? because it's one thing to be mad about something, and then it's another thing to be mad about that thing all the time, right? And let it affect all of your interactions. There is a degree to which I think being able to compartmentalize is a really healthy psychological skill.

And to be able to say, you know what, every now and then I'm going to take out this injustice, I'm going to be mad about it and I'm going to do something about it. And then I'm going to put it away so I can get through my day and interact with people and go to work and do all those things. So as far as what is the psychological skill associated with that, I think it's ability to distract yourself, its ability to stay focused. And I think there's a lot of actually little psychological skills

that end up being relevant and making it able for you to kind of push that aside for a little bit. Which begs the question, how do we know when our anger is guiding us to external action versus being something that we should process internally? It's a great question because once you grant the premise, as I would, that anger isn't inherently good or bad, and that what matters is sort of how you express it, it begs the next question that follows from that is, well, how do you know?

Like, how do you know if you're doing a good job with your anger or doing a bad job with it? And some of that, I think, is rooted in the consequences and being able to investigate those consequences and being emotionally mature enough to think about those consequences and understand them. And so when we think about the potential consequences of anger, there's actually a much longer list than people really realize, meaning there's verbal and physical fights and there's relationship damage. And of course, there's road rage, right, which we talk about a lot. But there's also other forms of risky driving that people do, meaning even when they're not aggressive, when people are angry, they just drive worse, right? So it's not so much that they are trying to hurt other people

on the road. They're just driving poorly because they're mad. Substance abuse is a common consequence. Mental and physical health problems are common consequences, cardiovascular disorder, muscle tension, chronic headaches, some other negative emotions. People sometimes get really sad after an angry incident. They get really anxious or feel guilty or something like that. So once we can start to kind of think broadly about those consequences, and then even more so, think broadly about your role in those things. What is it that I did that led to those things? We can start to have a better sense of whether or not we have that kind of healthy relationship

with our anger. Another piece of it, too, is just there are some people who say, I'm not necessarily having consequences, but I'm a little tired of feeling this way. I'm just sort of exhausted with it, and I don't want to feel this way. I would chalk that up to it as a consequence too. I would say, if you just want to feel a little differently, then there's a problem there, and we should work on it. Are there signs that might indicate that we're repressing our anger? It's worth noting that when we talk about repression or suppression, sometimes that leans pretty heavily into how Freud talked about emotions. I do want to be clear. I try and steer away from that

sometimes. But I do think it's worth noting that there are people who don't admit that they're angry. If we're talking about repression and there's suppression in that way, then yeah, absolutely. I think you might notice it in yourself. You're probably more likely to notice it in someone else. When people are chronically using the term, I'm fine to describe things is something I hear all the time. You sure you're okay with this? Yes, I'm fine. It plays itself out that way. there's lots of ways for anger to damage relationships. And one of the ways is actually when you start pulling back from people because you're mad at them, but you're not necessarily admitting that's why.

That might be another sign people can point to. And then you just listed all of these side effects that people might not be aware of for experiencing anger. Are there physical or psychological dangers of repressing or tamping down our anger? The research is a little unclear as to whether or not the consequences are that different, but especially the health consequences. What we know is chronic anger, meaning you're experiencing it a lot and you're experiencing it intensely tends to have physical health consequences. It's basically rooted in the fact that your cardiovascular system is activated for long

periods of time, and that has consequences the same way stress does or anxiety. So now the question is, well, does that happen with people who tend to suppress? their anger too. On some level, yes, it tends to be a little different because you're not necessarily seeing that same cardiovascular activation, but it's still associated potentially with things like ulcers and things like muscle tension and those sorts of problems. I personally feel like I know a lot of people, and particularly women, but I don't want to stereotype too much, where I feel like they would be so served by letting themselves get a little bit more angry. If somebody needed to get more in touch with their anger, but in a right

sized way, in a productive way, could you give us some tips for doing that? Yeah. I want to comment on something you just said about particularly women, because I think it's worth noting. And frankly, every time I get a chance to talk to a larger audience, this is something I want to highlight is that the consequences of outward expression of anger are very different for different groups. I think it's really important that people be aware of that. So when you talk about women have a tendency to suppress their anger, those aren't your exact words, but that idea, that's rooted in the fact that there's very different consequences for women who express their anger outwardly. And there's plenty of research that says that men, particularly white men, who express their anger outwardly,

the attitudes towards them increase, their opinions are valued. Women who do that exact same thing, and truly in the research of the exact same thing, tend to have their opinions minimized or invalidated. So the consequences are different. This is also found with other marginalized groups. Black men and women are more likely to see those consequences than white men. And so there's a reason why some groups oftentimes find themselves needing to suppress or better control, quote unquote, their anger.

So as far as getting in touch with it, a lot of that comes down to self-concept, self-esteem, self-value. Sometimes when people minimize their own anger, it's really rooted in them not feeling like they have the right to be angry, not feeling like their opinions maybe matter enough or their needs matter enough. And so for some people, it's really rooted in that and saying, what am I worth? What is my value? Should I be treated better than this? If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to. to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung

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especially when paired with what you just said about, like, society has been telling you historically and in your own lifetime, like, you are not worth this. You should be treated poorly. You shouldn't be able to express your anger, et cetera. Right. Those feelings are so often internalized by people. We talked about how having a healthy relationship with anger means having a healthy relationship with fairness, the same thing is true with what you deserve. As a human being, what your rights are, what you deserve, how you should be treated is really rooted in whether or not you should be angry in a particular circumstance. And you see both versions of that, meaning there are people who have entitlement issues who get angrier more quickly. And then you see

people who have self-esteem issues who maybe aren't getting angry when they probably should. Do you have any tips for like increasing self-worth and having that sense of righteousness about yourself if you need a little bit more? I would say for people who aren't going to go to therapy for one reason or another. And if this is an issue for you, you should. I would encourage you to really spend time unpacking their beliefs about themselves and where those beliefs came from. And knowing full well that that's not necessarily going to undo it, you can't all of a sudden just say, hey, I no longer have self-worth issues because I know where those messages came from. I oftentimes tell my students, I'm 47 years old, right?

That means I've spent 47 years internalizing the messages that I got. I'm not going to be able to undo those in a day. Trying to think about some of those messages, maybe even being brainwashing and how do you undo that sort of brainwashing. But awareness is a really positive first step. Yes, absolutely. And then on the flip side, what would you say to somebody who just, just feels like they are kind of constantly low-grade angry. They're triggered really easily, and they'd love to just decrease their base level of anger. The thing I love most about talking to

people about anger is the fact that we're sort of trained to believe there's only like one intervention. It's just when you get angry, you got to find ways to relax, right? You got to find ways to control it. And the truth about all emotions is that you can intervene in all sorts of places on that sort of angry diagram I described before. We can think about our provocations, the things we invite into our lives, and actually ask, I mean, yes, some provocations come out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting them and I have no control. There are others that I walk into, right? Maybe even willingly. Do I choose to watch the news every night knowing that those things might make me mad? For people who are that sort of low-grade angry all the time, the first thing I'd say is what provocations are you

inviting into your life that maybe you don't need to invite. That's not my way of saying, stay ignorant or avoid anything and everything far from it. It's just we have choices. Maybe it's not the news. Maybe it's watching basketball. Maybe it's scrolling through Facebook in a way that it is unhealthy. All of those are things we can think about. Another thing I would say is start taking care of yourself if you're not already. So exercise, healthy sleep, getting the healthy foods, all of those things can make a real difference in your mood overall. And then embrace relaxation approaches, not just when you're angry, but off and on throughout the day. Try and find ways to just take breaks, to breathe deeply and to meditate if that's your thing.

There's lots of different approaches to relaxation that can be effective. Can you speak a little bit more to some of the physiological underpinnings of anger? I know that we talk about being hangary all the time. Is there scientific validity to that? There is. I love that research, too. If we're just going to go through like a quick crash course in the brain and what's going on is you have these little structures deep in your brain called the amygdala. And they take in information from your senses and they fire off emotional responses. Something went wrong, get mad. And then those messages go to other parts of the brain. But one of the places that go is to your prefrontal cortex, which is this structure up near the front that basically that's where you decide what to do about it. And when we are hungry, or when we have low blood sugar, basically, that structure of the brain is just a little less active. People have a harder time controlling that angry impulse. So it might not necessarily be that the person is getting angrier because they're hungry,

but it's just they have a harder time controlling it. Same thing happens when you're sleep deprived, that you just have a little bit harder time controlling those angry impulses. Dr. Brad Bushman, the study he did was participants who were married couples. And before bed, they were monitoring blood sugar throughout the day, but before bed, they both got voodoo dolls of the other person. And they got to stab the voodoo doll at the end of the night to reflect how they were feeling about the other person. And they found that there was a relationship between their blood sugar level and how frequently

they stabbed the voodoo doll of their partner. So a real clear link between the blood sugar and aggression. I love that. I feel like it's actionable not only in the like, make sure you're sleeping, make sure you're keeping your blood sugar level stable as much as possible. But also maybe in the moment, if you're fighting with your partner, have a snack and then carry on with the fight. Would that be recommended advice? Yeah, this is the thing that back to parenting for a second that cracked me up when my kids were little is that, you know, kids would act out when they were tired or when they were

hungry or whatever. And then people immediately sort of gravitated to, oh, he's just really tired. He needs a nap. Or, oh, he's just really hungry. He needs a snack. I don't know what age we start pretending that no longer matters. But part of me just at work, I just sort of feel like, gosh, maybe this person just needs a snack. It's so true. It sounds so diminutizing, but it's often so true. Absolutely. There's a real clear relationship taking care of our physical cells and our emotional health. And we oftentimes let that stuff go in ways that have a negative impact on our emotions. What are some other common causes of anger that people might not be aware of? Like I loved in your TED Talk, that you said if you were going to design like a situation that would make people angry,

it would be driving. I know people get road rage and whatever, but I didn't think of it as that anger-inducing. In all seriousness, driving is the perfectly designed provocation or anger-inducing experience because it kind of hits all of the buttons that you've got, by definition, you're on your way somewhere. You have a goal in mind, which means that goal can be blocked, right? And oftentimes there's, it's not just that you're on your way someplace, but there's a time that you're supposed to be at that place. And so things that happen can interfere with that. People don't often think about this way or maybe not often enough, but it's dangerous. And so it leads to that anxiety and tension as you're doing it, even if you're used to it, that elevates your emotional arousal just to begin with. The people around us are typically people we don't know. So they're anonymous to us, which honestly, part of what that means. is that we can make whatever assumptions about them we want. I can call someone a total idiot and if there's no evidence to the contrary, that's just who they are, in my mind at least. And this is the thing about driving that is so fascinating to me is that, yes, there are written

rules of the road, but there are also lots of unwritten rules, things that we don't have universal agreement on. And we have different interpretations of those. So when I ask people, how fast should we be going on this road right now, the answer will be anywhere from whatever the speed limit is to 100 miles per hour, right, or more. What that means, if we don't agree on that, then if I'm doing, say, 65, and I think I'm going plenty fast, and you think I should be going 70, then you're going to get mad at me. If you think I should be going the speed limit and I come driving by at 65, then you're going to get mad at me. There are just all sorts of vague rules about. about how we should behave on the road, including how much space to leave between you and the car in

front of you and when it's okay to get over, all of those things. Earlier today, I was driving, and traffic went down to one lane because one of the lanes was closed. And when you should merge is a question where what is recommended is different from what people do. All of those things tend to play themselves out. But what's most fascinating to me is that those sorts of unwritten rules exist in all sorts of social interactions and day-to-day experiences where we exist with one another. I was at a movie recently and the person next to me was talking to his partner during the previews. And in my mind, like, that's not a thing that I would do. That's my favorite part of the movie. Yes, exactly. And then this person got real quiet once the movie started. So that was

clearly just like, well, this is the previews. This is basically like talking through commercials. doesn't matter. So we just had different rules for what was okay in that circumstance. No, you might argue, well, there's a right answer there, but this person obviously didn't feel the same way. It's such an interesting point that like, if I think back on the times I've gotten angry, it's because I've had an idea, a lot of the times, I've had an idea of the way that things should be done in that situation. And the other person who I have not communicated that idea to at all, isn't following it? Even like in my friendships, like, oh, you should arrive at this time. You should have invited me to this. You should have given me this much

warning or with my partner or with total strangers. It's so interesting how much it stimulates anger that other people aren't just like abiding by the unspoken rules that we're living by. I think sadness is similar in that when you have an idea of how a thing should be and then the thing isn't that way is when people oftentimes experience. sadness and anger. There's a real prominent myth. I've heard this in every city I've ever lived in, that domestic violence increases on football Sunday. It's not accurate. However, there is one that we know of, and I've actually talked to the heads of domestic violence shelters here in Green Bay to ask them, is this something you've ever seen? And they've all said, nope, that's a myth. Here's what is true,

is that there is some research that says that instances of domestic violence do, increase on holidays, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, things like that. And one of the reasons for that has to do with expectations and that there's probably a lot of factors because alcohols involved increased time spent amongst people kind of interacting as part of it. But also there's a role of expectations in there. Like, I wanted the day to go this way. And it didn't go that way. And that is one of those things that leads to feelings of anger and frustration, especially when we're not communicating those things. Oh, that's so interesting. I'd love tips both for like road rage specifically or letting go of that anger when we're driving. And then also in a greater sense, like letting go of the anger

of the fact that other people aren't abiding by the rules in our head. The first thing to do, and this is actually harder than I would have expected, is to help people understand that sometimes those rules really are just in their head. And there are some people are really reluctant. They just kind of live by what we oftentimes refer to as other directed should. It's like, nope, this is a way other people should act and it's the right way and they can't grant the premise that the other person might have a different norm or a different idea there. So I think that's the first thing for people to realize is what are the rules that are just mine that other people don't share? Even if you have an absolutely perfect reason for why that should be the rule until you acknowledge that not everyone

has that you're going to struggle. On the road in particular, I think it's really important that people realize that that is actually a space where I don't think much good can come from anger for all of the ways in which I will say, hey, it's good that we feel anger. I think that on the road is one place where that's probably not true, that it's best to stay calm and it's best to not try to assert yourself or aggress towards a person who is a threat, I just don't think any good can come from it. And so at a certain point, I really made the intentional effort that if I think that there's someone who is behaving badly on the road, I'm just going to back far away and just get away from them. Being relatively intentional about that thought process and about that approach is important.

And something similar is true in our day-to-day interactions, being a little bit more intentional about the feelings we're having in a given moment, why we're having those feelings, what might be driving them, and thinking about the same way we were thinking about, you know, what speed should we be going. We can think about those rules in all of our interactions. How long should it take for someone to respond to my email, right, or my text? What are the reasonable expectations there? And how might they be approaching those things?

I also think acknowledging that in the same way you're living by all these rules in your head, they're living by all these rules in their head that you're not privy to either. So somebody might think it's utterly in offensive to not reply to a text message for a week because that's the rule in their head. And you demanding a response of them instantly as you encouraging their anger and not living by their rule. So it is an interesting thing just to be like, as much as I have everything going on here, you have all that going on there equally. Can you explain the difference between a primary and a secondary emotion and then how we can tell if our anger is a primary or secondary emotion? I would chalk this up to sort of a myth about anger, and that is a lot of people would argue that

anger is inherently a secondary emotion. You're always feeling something else. It's just a symptom of some other problem. And I would argue that that is not the case, that sometimes anger absolutely is the primary emotion. And I should say this is something that's talked a lot more in pop psychology than in scientific journals. But typically what people mean is that the emotion that you are expressing isn't what you're really feeling. It's just a mask for what's really going on. And so when I'm mad, it's really because I'm sad or I'm scared or something like that. That is definitely true sometimes. It's definitely not true all the time. And in fact, I would actually argue it's a minimizing of people's anger. When a person has like a real justified reason to be angry,

to say, well, that's secondary to some other thing going on is fairly minimizing. Maybe I'm just mad. Maybe I was just treated poorly. And it's not because I'm feeling sad or hurt or scared or jealous or anything like that. For other people, should we always be assuming it's primary essentially when dealing with them? I might not say always, but I think a lot of the time, it's sort of a believing people, right? And so if someone tells me that they're feeling a certain way, I think I should trust that and not assume that I somehow know better. But of course, there are times we're going to be wrong. There are times where, no, I think this person's actually feeling sad or really is feeling scared or overwhelmed or something like that. I will say maybe a caveat to this is children in

particular, I think it's fair to acknowledge that sometimes those other things come out as anger because they're just so sort of worked up. For ourselves, are there any questions that we could ask ourselves or ways that we could do like a little digging to see if there's an underlying emotion that we might not be aware of? Yeah. One of the things I love about talking about emotions in general or thinking about emotions is that really what they are more than anything are windows into things we really truly care about. If I'm feeling really angry about something or really sad about something, it's really a window into my values on some level and what is most important to me. That's a way to start asking ourselves really the question. As a therapist, I was always taught not to use

a why question because it sounds judgmental. If I say, why are you feeling that way? You shouldn't be feeling that way or something. Yeah, but I use why questions with myself all the time. I'm allowed to judge myself. Why are you feeling this way? Like, what is the value at your core? And maybe it's fairness, maybe it's esteem. Maybe it's like, I feel like I'm not getting the respect I deserve. Those can be things that at your core are really being shook by whatever this situation is,

that can be a little bit of a window into, like, what's really going on. I don't necessarily think that means the emotion is secondary. I think it means that there's a core value that's been shaken a little bit. There's some information there that you could dig around a little bit in access. I would love to talk a little bit about anger and relationships. If you are angry, what is the best way to communicate that to somebody else to best preserve or protect the relationship? What people struggle with when it comes to anger and relationships is a lot of times they have those conversations when they're both already feeling something. when one person is angry or maybe both of them are angry.

And I do think one of the best pieces of advice is actually to take some time to step away and be able to have that conversation in a way where that is a little less heated. Because inevitably what happens is people get defensive, people get hurt, and then it ends up being a less productive conversation. They may say things in a way that they wouldn't have said if they weren't already angry. So sometimes sort of stepping away. way and having that conversation when things aren't so heated is really valuable. When you are, the other thing I would say, too, is really try and focus on the specific incident, try and stay

specific to the particular situation instead of generalizing to a broader situation. If I'm mad at my spouse because she didn't do the dishes, some cliched reason, instead of saying, you never do the dishes. Now I've taken this thing and I've made it much bigger than it actually is, or you always do this or something like that. Instead of saying that, just say, I wish you would have done the dishes or I was expecting you to or something like that. And then you can kind of unpack that. And if there is a pattern and you need to talk about that pattern, that's okay, but try and do it in a less judgmental way. My wife actually did say this to me recently. It's felt lately like I've been doing the dishes an awful lot. And it's like, yeah, we can.

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My husband and I made a rule where we're only allowed to talk about the present moment and fights because we always kept trying to talk about historical things and then we would disagree about what had happened historically and then we would get caught in this whole loop of like trying to prove to the other person that our version of past reality was right. And I do think in the moment it can be frustrating because you walk to explain why not doing the dishes that one time is so annoying and it's because of all of these other times. But by and large, you can just say like, we've found at least that we can say, this is how I feel when you do this thing. And if we can really accurately reflect how we feel in

that moment, we actually don't need all of the proof points of the historical situation. That's a really good rule. One of the things that oftentimes goes wrong for people is when they generalize to a long, broad pattern. It becomes really easy, actually. You almost end up letting people off the hook a little bit. Like if my wife said to me, hey, you never do the dishes. Well, of course I've done the dishes before. I can find a point in time when I did and say, yeah, I didn't just the other day.

But instead, if she said, hey, I was counting on you to do the dishes tonight and you didn't, well, then we can have a conversation about why she was counting on me to do them, why I didn't do them. Or I can just say, oh, I'm sorry, I will do them. It becomes a much easier conversation than blowing it up and making it bigger than it has to be. What do we do if we have to regularly engage with somebody who makes us angry, like a parent who refuses to acknowledge our sexuality or makes snarky comments about our looks or our choice of partner? Like, what should we do in that type of situation?

That's such a difficult question about, you know, do you disengage? Do you cut off contact? how do you disconnect from people who, for lack of a better term, are toxic to you? And the answer to that is so context-specific, the Internet is full of people who will tell you, you don't need that kind of toxicity in your life, disengage, whatever. And to me, I understand where that comes from, but it also feels a little bit naive and a little bit simple. Sometimes we're talking about relationships with parents, sometimes we're talking about

relationship with siblings, sometimes you can't necessarily disconnect from one parent. if you want to have a relationship with the other one. It might be that your children want to have relationships with those parents. All of those things play into it. So that is really, really difficult. The first thing I usually say is make sure at some way you're having the conversation with them. This is a time when it's probably good to talk about that pattern and say, I feel like you don't recognize my sexuality, whatever the thing is that we're talking about. have that conversation with them. Tell them how it's affecting you. Yes, this requires some

emotional maturity, not just from you, but obviously from them. And see if you can get to a place where even if they don't agree, they understand that you're not going to keep spending time with them if they keep doing that. It's a boundary thing. Yes, exactly, essentially setting those boundaries for them. And to set those expectations and then if they're still not coming around, that's when you start to think about, okay, it doesn't have to be cut off contact, but change what contact looks like. You know, maybe you are spending a little bit less time with them, or maybe you're spending time with them, but only in particular ways. It's about tweaking those things to better suit you and better meet your needs. What about dealing with a partner,

somebody in your life who is angry? Like, they're the one with the road rage. They're coming at you, mad at you and you're like, well, let's take a break and discuss this when we're not angry. And they're like, no, I'm mad now. What do we do then? Depends on context a little bit. In some ways, it's about just having that respect for one another. And if you want to take a break and they don't want to, you still get to take that break, unless they're actually in a way that is threatening or dangerous, in which case, that's not just anger anymore, right? A person who's refusing to allow you to get away from them. That's a whole other problem there. Ultimately, though, you do have that right to get that break. What if you're in the car with them? Is there any validity to trying to like talk somebody down and be

like, this isn't that important? You're not going to get where you want to go faster by yelling through the windshield. I live by the value that no one's ever relaxed because someone told them, hey, relax. That doesn't really happen. I think more often than not, if you want to calm someone down around you, you do so by staying calm yourself, modeling that for them, not necessarily challenging what they're saying or things like that. Maybe it's distraction, but just staying calm yourself. Sometimes it actually helps even to validate sort of and say, yeah, that person's not driving very well. We should stay away from them. Or, yeah, this traffic is really terrible. Sometimes in those situations, I might just say, hey, you know what, it's making me anxious, how angry you are right

now, it's a little different than saying, hey, you need to calm down. Yeah, it's saying how it affects you. Yeah, exactly. That makes sense. Do you have any favorite, like in the moment coping techniques for anger, like yelling into a pillow or whatever? It's always nice for people to have a go-to mantra, something that they can just say to themselves that helps them work through that.

I ask people all the time on social media, what's your go-to mantra? People come up with some great stuff. Actually, one of my friends recently showed me she has on her on her smartphone, her wallpaper, instead of my picture of my family, it's the pause symbol. And she said, so sometimes when I'm feeling like frustrated, she'll change her wallpaper to that pause symbol. And she said, it's a reminder when I look at my phone to just sort of calm down. I think that's a really interesting approach, this idea that you look at your phone how many times a day, right, that there's a signal there to, hey, I need to stay calm. Just to account. to one, two, or three, something like that, like a quick count. I've talked to people for whom grounding really works, taking a moment to count, you know, five things I can see, four things I can hear, and work their way down. By the time they get to the end, they oftentimes feel more calm. All of those things are things that are valuable. I knew someone who carried a little stone around with them. When they were feeling overwhelmed, they would just sort of rub that stone

as a way to sort of ground themselves. I think that's another way. I love the use of a lock screen as a way to enable whatever goals you have at the moment. My lock screen right now is my social media goals. So it's like, do you need to be scrolling right now? Is there something else you could do instead? Is there a better use of this time? It's really helpful because you do see it all the time.

I agree for a long time when I was trying to be a little more mindful. I just had a picture of my wife meditating, which was totally opposed. was not meditating at the time, but I asked her if I could. But it was a nice little reminder. Just take a deep breath now before you go on and do anything. Are there any mantras that you or your clients have found particularly helpful? An absolute go-to for lots and lots of people is I can do hard things. That's one that a lot of people like and find helpful. There's also the, this two shall pass, which is another one that I know a lot of people like. When I have found myself feeling frustrated by little things, Albert Ellis used to say,

it's a hassle, not a horror, which I often think is important. Just a reminder, like, this is actually a small thing in the grand scheme of things. If there were a real crisis right now, I wouldn't care about this thing that's happening. I'd care about the crisis. I love that. It gives you a little bit of, like, a zoom out perspective. You also made a video on social media about things that you don't recommend people do when they're angry. Can you share some of those? There's a couple things that I would suggest. And some of these are really surprising to people. But one of the first thing it says, You mentioned screaming into a pillow earlier. Again, this is rooted in Freud, who I mentioned earlier,

is this idea that catharsis is a good way to release our anger, right? Yelling, screaming, punching things like that, that we need to, quote-unquote, release our anger. Every piece of data we have says that that is not good for us. If anything, it makes the problem worse. And it makes the problem worse in the short term and in the long term, meaning a lot of times after a person, you know, punches a punching bag or hammers nails or whatever the researcher had them doing, that immediately after that, they're actually angrier.

Oh, that's so interesting. I feel like so many movie scripts need to be rewritten with that in mind. Yep. And there's a lot of therapists, actually, who are out there advocating that too. Releasing anger that way is oftentimes ineffective. And it also is more likely to lead to long-term anger problems too. If people embrace that as a go-to strategy, they're just more likely to act aggressively. Brad Bushman, who I mentioned earlier, one of the things he says is it's practice, right? When in those moments, you're essentially practicing for how you're going to do it later. That makes so much sense. A variation on this, and this is something that is, I think, a lot of times surprising to people.

This one comes with a caveat. So exercise is extraordinarily good for emotional well-being, right? We've tons of research. Just a study came out a couple weeks ago pointing to exercises as being as valuable as medication for things like depression and anxiety and that sort of thing. Exercise tremendously important. However, exercising when you are angry is not necessarily good for you. Now, taking a gentle walk through the woods might be, being surrounded in nature, yoga, exercise. Those kinds of exercises might be, but vigorous exercise that gets your heart rate

increasing, that has actually been shown to have a similar effect as catharsis, the punching a punching bag and things like that. Basically, what it does is it keeps those angry feelings at the surface. There's a phenomenon that psychologists talk about called excitation transfer, and it's the elevation of my heart rate from exercise. I attribute that to the anger. And so it transfers over. I misinterpret that. I oftentimes discourage any kind of vigorous exercise when someone's angry. Much like when a person's having a panic attack, you wouldn't tell him to go exercise, right? I struggle with anxiety.

A lot of my listeners struggle with anxiety. And I talk about that a lot that if you can prevent kind of the physical symptoms of anxiety, that start that feedback loop of your brain being like, well, I feel this physical symptom. What am I anxious about? Oh, I'll find something to be anxious about. And then I'll feel even more physical symptoms. And it's this vicious cycle.

And if you can stop that cycle with the physical initially, it can be. incredibly helpful. Yeah, I agree. And actually, you know, before you ask for things that work in the moment, this is something I adapted from feeling anxious at times, that a thing I would oftentimes do is I would ask myself on a scale of 1 to 10, how anxious are you right now? And what I oftentimes would discover is that it didn't last as long as I sort of thought it did. You can do the same thing with anger of actually asking yourself, I'm a scale of 1 to 10. Am I actually at a 10 right now? Where am I on that. And what it really does more than anything, it brings your attention to that and gives you a moment to sort of reflect. And just the process of thinking about it for a second, it helps alleviate

things a little bit. And probably also to add to that list of things you shouldn't do when you're angry is to your earlier point, like talk to the person in that moment. Like you'll want to talk to them eventually, but don't do it in the moment of anger. A lot of times it's best to try and wait and sort out how you are feeling in a particular moment. And for all the ways that anger is good for us and can be good for us, one of the things it does is we don't think as clearly in those moments, right? We're not thinking as logically and we're not thinking by definition. We're emoting. And so our thoughts are more emotional than they would otherwise be. So until we've had a chance to sort of step back and think through it, it's good to hold back and make sure you don't do anything that's hard to undo.

Do you think that on a societal level, we are more angry these days than we've been in the past? There's the shootings and there's the social media and all of that. Like, is there more anger in the world right now? I can't tell you how much I wish I could go back 30 years and just start doing a yearly survey somehow of anger levels. That'd be very nice. So that we would have some sort of thermometer of societal temperature. because I don't think we have any good formal means of answering that question. But using some of the informal means that we have, I think, yes, we are angrier now than we used to be.

And I would point to a couple of indicators. I would point to something you mentioned. We have indicators of things like road rage related shootings, which are on the increase. I think we can just look at surveys of service workers right now who are saying they're dealing with far more negative instances of customer anger. including flight attendants have expressed great concern over their treatment over the last few years. And then the third thing I think we could probably point to is it seems that school violence or physical fights at school are on the increase. All of those things that I just mentioned, there's lots of causes of those. It's hard to just pin it on anger.

In my mind, I think, yeah, I suspect that all of those are symptoms of a broader anger problem that we're having right now. My read of things is some of this has to do with economic uncertainty for a lot of people does bring out stress and anxiety and anger. I do think the pandemic led to, in some ways, maybe not more anger, but a swinging of norms. People during that time started to feel more comfortable kind of doing and saying things to each other that maybe we wouldn't have done or said prior to that. I think it's fair to point out that we did have a president for four years there who expressed their anger in a very particular way and that there might have been some modeling of that that was different than we had seen before and that that's probably shifted things and a very divisive election that didn't really go away, right? The divisiveness didn't go

away afterwards. It feels to me like a country where people just don't like each other very much right now and don't trust each other very much right now and that that's exacerbating a lot of those angry feelings. What do you do with that on like a personal and a professional level, like outside of getting anxious or angry or sad? How do you channel that? I can tell you on a personal level, it's really discouraging to me. I mean, people joke all the time and say, well, this is like the best time for an anger researcher to be alive. We've gotten all this opportunity, but I don't like it. I want people to get along. I don't want people to live that way. That's why I decided to study this. So it's really discouraging for me. On a personal level,

I try really hard to give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm trying to sort of have that be part of how I play my role. But also, I do feel a need to be a little more defensive in my day-to-day life because I do have a hard time trusting that the person next to me isn't going to come out swinging when I make a mistake. That I think we're seeing lots of those instances. And so that does put me on edge a little bit. So it seems like that ends up escalating the problem, too, that we becoming increasingly disconnected from what I'm. another because we're having a hard time trusting each other. And you mentioned social media. I also should have mentioned social media. I do think that that is also playing a role in this. Our political views for sure, but not just political views are becoming more and more divisive because we're living in the algorithm-induced bubble. We're not seeing or learning as much about how the quote-unquote other side sees the world. And so I think we're becoming kind of disconnected from one another that way that leads to anger. If we are angry about things like school shootings and the political situation and the injustices of the world, could you just share one piece of advice for finding that right-sized balance between doing something about it, not bearing your head in the sand, but not letting the emotions of that overtake your life?

That's a really good question because sometimes some of these problems that we quote unquote should, and I'm quoting myself. but should get angry about are so massive that we on our own can't necessarily do anything to fix them. And so it becomes really difficult to feel like we're doing anything significant, to not feel helpless and powerless. One of the things I oftentimes encourage people to do is try and do the things that help you feel like you're making progress, that you're doing something, that you're having some sort of impact, and try and recognize that impact. and pay attention to it, use your anger to get that done, but then also learn to accept kind of the limited role that you can play in this. It will be different for different people.

Some people just have different levels of power in that situation to be able to do more. As a concept, acceptance is another piece of this that's really fascinating because acceptance can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. It kind of goes back to what we were talking about before with suppression, there are times when acceptance is a very healthy, this is not something I can change. I just have to acknowledge this is the way the world is right now, right? And there's nothing I can do to undo that. And maybe it's not a big societal political thing. Maybe it's a recent cancer diagnosis or something like that. Like, this is a thing I cannot change. And I have to accept that this is what's happened. That can be actually a healthy process for people. Sometimes,

though, it's not a healthy process. Sometimes people accept things. They really could change or acceptance looks more like denial than actual acceptance. And so where is that line? How do you know where it is? That's the million dollar question and a really hard one to answer because context matters so much. So first step is sort of to ask yourself what parts of this are in my control and what parts are out. And then do you have anything pragmatic that we can do to increase our ability to accept the things that are out of our control? One thing that I always think is interesting is when people acknowledge, and I've seen this from people who maybe were victims of assault or things like that, like they simultaneously are able to say, and I'm always really impressed by this, able to say,

like, I accept that this thing happened to be and I can't go back in time and change it and I wish I could. At the same time, I'm unwilling to accept that it will happen to other people. And I'm going to dedicate in some cases my life's work to making sure that other people are safe and that we can help keep them safe from similar experiences. And so there's sort of a simultaneously like, yes, this happened to me and I understand that and I can't change that, but I'm not going to let it happen to anyone else. So even within that, there's like a nuanced relationship with acceptance. And there's taking your power back. It's like looking for the places that. that you can take your power back can be perhaps a key part of your journey with acceptance.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it. Absolutely. It really is oftentimes about that sort of empowerment. Can you leave us with just one homework assignment, something that people can do as soon as they're done listening to this podcast? It could be a mindset shift or something they're actually doing in the moment to make anger work for us instead of against us. think back to the last time that you were good and angry. It could be a very specific, like, situation that happened. It could be a person, whatever, just the last time you were good and angry. And I would go through the act of diagramming that. I'll remind you what the pieces are. There's the provocation, the thing that quote unquote made you angry. There's what we call the pre-anger

state, meaning your mood at the time of that. There is your interpretation of that provocation. So what did it mean? How did you interpret it, that thing? Including how did you interpret your ability to cope with it? So did you say, oh, this is the worst thing ever, and now my entire day is ruined or something like that. And then to follow that, what did that angry experience feel like? What did it feel like in your body?

Did your heart rate increase? Did your muscles tense up, all that? And then finally, what did you do about it? What actions did you engage in? Did you go in your room and cry? Did you yell and scream? did you try and solve the problem? How did you handle that? And so that would be the first step. The second piece of this assignment is to think in each of those different points that I just mentioned,

how could you have intervened to do something differently? So did I need to invite that provocation into my life? Is there something I could have done to prevent my pre-anger state? Are there different interpretations and so on? Love that. Can you tell us a little bit about where people can find you on the internet and your two amazing books. Anger Professor is my social media handle and it's in all of the different places. I'm on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. So you can find me there. I have two books. I have one called Why We Get Mad, which the TED Talk you mentioned is of the same name, Why We Get Mad. And the book is really rooted in that idea and a lot of what we talked about today. My second book is called How to Deal with Angry People. It came out just a few months ago.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. This was absolutely wonderful. I love talking to you. Thanks for having me. I know you're going to want to share this episode with everyone in your life so they can reevaluate their own relationship with anger. So just a friendly reminder that sharing the podcast is truly the best way to support it and it is so, so appreciated. And if you did love this episode, I'd be so grateful if you'd write a quick rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It's hugely helpful for other people deciding whether to listen to the podcast and I appreciate it so, so much.

If you were new here, make sure that you're following the podcast on whatever platform you like to listen on. Just go to the main podcast page, the one that lists all of the healthier together episodes. And you'll see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there's a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. That way, all of the new episodes will show up right in your feed so you will never miss out on one.

And we have some incredible episodes coming up, including one all about climate change and a game-changing episode about making the most of your moment-to-moment hours. So make sure that you are following so you do not miss out. Okay, I love you and I'll see you next Wednesday on the next episode of The Healthier Together, soon to be the Liz Moody podcast. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years. And I am so obsessed with it.

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