The One You Feed - Special Episode: How to Work with Anger

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

So many of us are feeling angry for a myriad of reasons amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. To help us better understand and work with our anger, Eric reached out to several previous guests of the show to ask them if they would be willing to talk with him for a special edition of The One You Feed Podcast about anger. They all generously agreed at a moment’s notice and this episode featuring 4 “mini-interviews” is the result. These are all new conversations with previous guests, Rick Hanson, Hilary Jacobs Hendel, Ruth King, and David Richo.You can find all of the most up to date crisis help & support resources that Eric is making available through The One You Feed by going to www.oneyoufeed.net/helpIn This Episode, We discuss How to Work with Anger and…That anger is a natural and normal responseUtilizing anger rather than letting anger utilize usHow anger can feel good in the moment but it corrodes over timeFinding peace when confronted with the truth of uncertaintyMindfully noticing and naming our angerAnger being triggered by perceived danger and it readies us for a fightThe danger of blocking our angerThat we feel anger as energy that wants to get outUsing fantasy to release the energy of anger When calm, making a list of “state-changers” for yourselfNoticing our coping strategies in the face of things we can’t controlThe critical choice of what to do with the energy of angerBeing informed by our anger instead of reacting out of itChanneling the energy in constructive ways rather than damaging waysGetting curious about what the anger is trying to tell us – rather than focusing on what it’s saying about other peopleGetting fiercely clear about rather than ablaze in the fire of our angerWhen we’re in the anger, we lose touch with how it’s impacting our bodiesSetting the intention of doing no harm That fear is often underneath angerNot acting out of anger because it can be abusiveLinks to Other Episodes:Rick HansonHilary Jacobs HendelRuth KingDavid RichoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, everyone. I hope that you are staying safe and sane in these very challenging times. This episode is a special episode, and I put it together because I was hearing from a lot of people and feeling it in myself, anger about the way things are going with this whole situation. So hearing from a lot of healthcare workers, I've started doing one-on-one free work with healthcare workers, more to come about that in a minute. Hearing from them, hearing from other people, feeling to myself, and this anger that either the government's not handling this well, or institutions aren't handling it well, or individuals aren't handling it well. They aren't taking it seriously, and it's bringing up a lot of anger collectively. lot of anger collectively. And so I thought it would be a good idea to have an episode where I got some previous guests back together to talk about how do we deal with anger skillfully? How

do we deal with it in a way that doesn't promote more harm, but allows us to use that anger in positive ways. So I reached out to several guests at the beginning of the week, and they were very wonderful in responding very quickly, and we were able to turn this around in just a few days and get it to you. So I'm very grateful to them, grateful to Chris for the quick editing, and I hope that this episode is helpful to you.

And I also want to give a brief reminder of some of the things that we at The One You Feed are doing to try and be of support during this time. And you can get details on all these things at oneyoufeed.net slash help. First, we are doing free weekly group coaching calls on Wednesdays at noon. We had our first one this last Wednesday, and it was wonderful. And I will do it again for the next several weeks. Details, as I said, several weeks. Details, as I said, on how to join that are at oneufeed.net slash help. Secondly, I am doing free coaching sessions for healthcare workers. There's only a few spots remaining. I've gotten a pretty overwhelming response to that and I'm working with a lot

of people, but there are still some opportunities. So free coaching sessions for healthcare workers. And then also I am giving discounts and offering payment plans on all of the one-on-one coaching and spiritual habits program so that if you need some additional support during this time, I'm trying to make it a little bit more affordable and a little bit easier to access. And as I mentioned earlier, details on all these things are at oneufeed.net slash help. And if you're not connected to us via email list or social media, this is a great time to do it

because we are using those channels to announce other things that we are doing to provide support in these times. So you can join our email list and get links to all our social media off of that same page. So I wish you the best in staying safe and sane. Be good to yourself. Be good to others. All the things that we've talked about and learned

about feeding our good wolf is especially important in these times. And I'd encourage you to lean on those learnings, lean on those practices because we need them more than ever. Thanks so much. And let me know how we can help. If you have other ideas that we've not thought of, please feel free to let us know. Take care. Bye. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF, and me, Mandy B, as we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday and Wednesday, we both invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. Tune in and join the conversation.

Listen to Decisions Decisions on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. First up is Rick Hansen. Rick is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and an affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. He's been an invited speaker at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. Hi, Rick. It is a pleasure to have you back on. I'm always happy when you and I get a chance to talk. Today, what I'd like to talk with you about is, you know, one of the things I'm getting listeners telling me about and healthcare workers

that I'm doing some work with, is this some anger that they're feeling about the way people in the world are handling this. Either they're not taking it seriously, they're not doing social distancing, they're doing things that people feel like are putting other people at risk. And the response that comes up out of that is anger. And so I'm just looking for some ideas for people how to work with that anger more skillfully. Well, it's a really natural response. And it's important for everyone to realize what you and these healthcare workers already know, which is that our actions have life and death consequences these days for others, not just for ourselves. Maybe we're in a low-risk group. Maybe we can afford to get ill, but think about the person you pass it on to inadvertently before you're even symptomatic and who then passes it on someone else inadvertently, who then passes

it on to an older person who dies as a result. It's that chain of dominoes. So it's really important for us all to hold other people in our heart and remember that. And so obviously it's natural to get angry when we see people who aren't doing that, or we get angry about the two months or so we've wasted as a country, mainly, even when the alarm bells were flashing bright red from national security experts and public health experts in early January. So that's very natural. Anger is normal. I say this as a neuropsychologist, an evolutionary neuropsychologist. Anger is very normal. It's a coping response, okay, but we pay a price for it. So what to do about it? One is to be mindful of your anger. Notice what it feels like. And in particular, try to tune into the primary body sensations and the emotions of

anger rather than the righteous case that's looping and looping inside your own mind. That is calming right there. Second, what's underneath the anger? Maybe it's fear for yourself. Maybe it's worry for others. Maybe there's a sense that's been built up over years of feeling like the public health systems in this country have been gradually hollowed out for all kinds of reasons with the money essentially going to the richest one-tenth of one percent of the population. And now the rest of us are left holding the bag while they can hop in their private jets and fly off to their own little islands, right? So there's an underlying buildup that's worth paying attention to that's involved here. So tune into what's beneath the anger, you know, sense down to what's beneath it. And then for me, what's really important is to use anger, but don't let it use us. There's a traditional saying that getting angry at others is like throwing hot coals with bare hands. Both people get burned. And as someone who, even though I'm fairly calm and cheerful, I have a temper. I can definitely go there. And it's helpful for me to appreciate that anger, unlike the other major so-called negative emotions, feels good in the moment, unlike fear

or sadness or shame, which we don't like to feel. But anger in the moment can feel good. So it's really important to appreciate that anger is an affliction on oneself. It's a burden on oneself. There's a proverb that says that anger is like a honeyed barb. In other words, with its honeyed tip and poisoned barb. And so I try to keep that in mind. And then the last thing is to move into action. What are the actions I can focus on? Anger is often a reaction to helplessness. I know a lot of people these days, I've collected some time there myself, to enlapse around the track of helpless outrage. And that's not good.

Once around the track, okay. Ten times around the track, you're done. Because it's not good to marinate in helpless anger. It's bad for the body. It's bad for relationships. It's bad for the mind. And to move into the action we can take, I can't make them get off the beach. bad for the mind. And to move into the action we can take, I can't make them get off the beach,

but I can be very careful about the risks I add myself for the sake of others, not just for myself. Yeah, that's wonderful feedback and advice. I think, you know, allowing the emotion, recognizing it's normal, going a little bit deeper and taking whatever action we can. I think those are really, really sound ideas, you know, because I think I love that idea of the loop of, you know, righteous anger, of just getting, you know, on that track again. I think that's where we get stuck. It feels so good. Right.

In a weird way, you know. For a little bit. Yeah, it's not good for us. Right, right. It feels good for a little bit. And then most of us, if we have a certain degree of wisdom, which I think a lot of the people I'm hearing from do, they realize like, I'm stuck in this and it's corroding me. The other phrase, the old classic, you know, resentments like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, right? You know, it's...

I think part of this too, Eric, if I can just kind of say this, is that it's confronting us with feelings of helplessness that maybe in some ways were always true. The fact of helplessness about so many things was always true, but it wasn't in our face. And now it's really true that literally the fate, life and death of ourselves, and by extension, people we love. I have elderly relatives. I have friends who are in high-risk categories in their 70s or 80s, young children. There are 12-year-olds on ventilators right now as we talk about this. No one is immune, right? And so we care about these people. And the truth is, right now, there are limitations to what we can do about it. And it's hard for people to face their helplessness.

And yet we have to be courageous enough and big enough to recognize that. And thinking about the theme that you work with so much, the one we feed, part of what I think many people are realizing is that they have not taken enough of your advice over the years, in effect, and they haven't been feeding important wolves inside. Wolves of serenity, wolves of perspective, wolves of perhaps spiritual practice, wolves of resilience. And it was okay. On any given day, they kind of got through all these different things we used to do to get through. Hang out with our friends, go to a bar, go to a restaurant. Well, guess what? We can't do it. The ground has fallen out beneath our feet, which revealed, frankly, a fundamental vulnerability that was true all along.

And now we're left only with what we've already grown inside ourselves. And for many people, that's like running on empty. And one of the great lessons here now is for this storm that is upon us, and will be with us for many, many months to come by all expert predictions, if not a year or so, really, including its economic consequences. For this storm, as well as for the future storms, now's the time every day to focus on the one you feed inside yourself and to keep feeding those good wolves again and again every day. Yeah. I love that. You know, what happened in the past, what we did feed. Okay, great. Now today, you know, and I've really been thinking about, you know, that I say this often that success in life is really about deciding what's

important and what really matters and then finding a way to put that into the world. And I think this is a really great opportunity to really go back to that first step and say, all right, what really matters? What's really important? And I also think you're right about the fact of helplessness. We're always in that state, Mark Nepo calls it, the terrible knowledge, right? The terrible knowledge that anything could happen, any terrible thing could happen at any time. That's always there. But now we're actually faced with it more concretely. But working with that

knowledge and all that, we can find some degree of peace and serenity in that. There is a way to exist with that terrible knowledge that doesn't mean panic and freak out. Yeah, and people find different things. I mean, for me, I've been focusing on thankfulness for all that I've had in this life so far, including on the worst day of my life, which was pretty bad, still the gift of life that day. If I had a choice between experiencing the worst day of my life or oblivion, I would still choose the worst day of my life. And I respect the fact that there may be a worst day of my life to come and I'll pick oblivion over it.

And I respect people having that right to themselves. But I can say that at least for me, even amidst the madness of this time, is to appreciate all that I am thankful for. That helps me bear this time. Different people, different things. Focusing on where you do have agency, where you're not helpless, is a real compensation, including neurologically,

for the ways that we are helpless. So can you choose to put ketchup on your French fries? Can you choose to have ketchup at all, right? Or whatever silly dumb thing you're making a choice for. And the last thing for me that's so important is to just be in touch with all the love that we've given. Think about all the people you've smiled at, you've encouraged, you weren't a jerk with. You actually were good with. You were good too. And taking refuge. Refuge is a traditional term. It's a beautiful, important term. Sanctuary. What are the wellsprings of our life that we can take refuge in? What refuels us? What feeds us, right? And also what shelters us and what gives us comfort and reassurance. I mean, being able to turn to those refuges in your life today and again and again, you know, feed refuges, feed the felt sense of refuge so that

you have it with you more and more wherever you go. Wonderful. Well, that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Thank you so much, Rick, for taking the time to come on and share some thoughts. It was an honor, Eric. You have a wonderful, wonderful show. And really, it's great. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Hilary Jacobs Hendel. She's a psychotherapist who switched from practicing traditional talk psychotherapy to accelerated experientia dynamic psychotherapy. Hilary is also the author of the book, It's Not Always Depression, Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body,

Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self. Hi, Hilary. It's a pleasure to have you back discover core emotions, and connect to your authentic self. Hi, Hilary. It's a pleasure to have you back on. Thanks, Eric. I'm so glad you called me to chime in with my thoughts. Yeah. So what we're doing in this episode is really talking about the anger that a lot of people are feeling.

There's healthcare workers that are feeling it like they're not being protected. There's people who are seeing people not social distancing. So it's really this anger at how this whole situation is being handled. And so I'm just looking to get some thoughts from different people on working with that anger in a skillful way. Right, right. It's anger is such a difficult emotion for most people. And as a trauma psychotherapist, and as an emotion educator, I always go back to this tool that I cannot imagine living my life without that I ended up writing about called the change triangle. And anger is a core emotion on this triangle, which means that it's something that we're born with that serves a very important survival

purpose. So we don't want to judge our anger, number one. We don't want to shame ourselves for our anger. We want to really notice the anger when it comes up. And we're going to first notice it most likely if we really are in tune with ourselves as the way we notice all core emotions as these physical sensations, right? Because something in the environment that is trying to hurt us, right? In these examples of people not having access to masks because other people made mistakes, people not social distancing, right? This hurts us all. It's dangerous, right? So, anger will be triggered in the middle of the brain in the limbic system. And as all core emotions function, the limbic system, the middle of the brain, is going

to trigger the body to have a host of reactions that ready us for a fight. And that's the impulse that people feel to lash out, to be mean, to be physically hurtful to other people, right? That's natural. The thing, what we want to do as civilized human beings is to take that angry energy and to really do two things. One is to help it flow within us so that we don't block it. And when we block our core emotions, it makes us anxious, right? We hold it down with muscular tension, all sorts of ways that we control our emotions, particularly in our society where no one teaches us about emotions and how to accept them. What we want to do, one, is work with the anger so that we can release it in a constructive way or use it in a constructive way.

What I would recommend in a nutshell, really, is a few things. One, when somebody notices that they're angry, to first and foremost validate it, meaning literally, you know, we all sort of feel that jolt. Our bodies kind of go into some other state that we recognize as anger if we're lucky. Some people unconsciously block it from the get-go, so all you noticed is anxiety. And I would recommend to people that feel highly anxious to check around and ask yourself, under that anxiety, am I angry? And so once you validate and you know yourself well enough and you practice working with emotions or you've done enough work on yourself where you can recognize, okay, this fire in my belly

and this energy that wants to come up is anger, I say to myself, I am angry. And I tune into the anger, right, which is counterintuitive for most people. We lean away. We go up in our heads. We start ruminating, obsessing. lean away, we go up in our heads, we start ruminating, obsessing. We want to, instead of that, really slow ourselves down, kind of take a few deep breaths, scan the body slowly from head to toe to really try to notice the ways that anger is showing up in the body. We want to validate it and we want to listen to the impulse.

Again, no action is being taken by now at this point and say, you know, to figure out who am I angry at? What am I angry about? What is my impulse? If I have anything like I want to kick something, I want to kick this person, I want to, you know, punch this politician in the face or really kind of get to know the anger in a very open, accepting, nonjudgmental way. Once we sort of, and again, I'll use me, and most people sort of feel anger this way, is there's a ton of energy that wants to come out. And so in this two-step process where, one, we kind of want to release some of the energy, we can use fantasy in a very safe way. When I'm working with patients who have been traumatized and we're going back to people who have been abused by their parents or relatives, right? And we always want to access the anger because anger is actually empowering and it's enlarging. And I use fantasy to help people discharge anger in this way that I work, which is called AEDP for anybody interested in experiential and trauma methodologies of therapy.

And so I'll ask someone to imagine what this anger wants to do to their abuser or to the person that hurt them. wants to do to their abuser or to the person that hurt them. And through a very vivid fantasy, like I'll say, make it like a movie, like it's happening right now. They'll say, okay, I want to punch, let's say it's a father who was abusive. I feel the anger towards my father and I want to punch him in the face. And I'll say, stay with that feeling in your body, stay with the anger in your body, and just imagine punching your father in the face exactly as you want to do it. So lifelike that you even feel the impact of your fist on his face and then see what happens next. Does he fall to the floor. So you invite people to have very vivid fantasies because it's a way to discharge this intense biological energy that's supposed to happen, right? Because in reality,

it's getting ready for a real fight. If a tiger attacked you, you'd got to punch the hell out of that tiger. This is a safe way to discharge that energy and to help the the nervous system which is in a high state of arousal arousal to calm down a bit and i have many i have examples of this i have a blog i have tons of resources on my website maybe you'll let people know my website that they can get that and and in the book it's not always depression lots of vivid examples and it really helps to see what it looks like so that you can be able to mimic this stuff on your own and work with your own feelings in this way. Once you can get a little bit of relief and calm down, and I should say you can do this by screaming into a pillow. You can do this by running very fast.

The idea is we want to get energy mobilized. you can do this by running very fast. The idea is we want to get energy mobilized, but it's particularly effective if there's a particular person who has wronged us, that we can make it a very vivid fantasy until, you know, sometimes people just have to murder people in fantasy, and that's when they get the relief. So you really take your cue from the feeling in your body until it's all discharged. So I'll say, just keep doing what this anger needs to do. Keep imagining it until it feels like it's done. And whatever that is, don't judge it because whoever you're angry at is totally safe wherever they are. You're safe. I'm safe. They're safe. This is just working with emotions in this very skillful way. Once there's a little bit of

discharging and you can think a little bit, then step two is really, how can I take this anger and kind of the way I describe it or imagine it in myself is put it in my backbone and then do something. Take an action that is assertive or helpful. So I'm thinking, for example, when you talk about racial injustice, it's sort of a diffuse rage. thinking, for example, when you talk about racial injustice, and right, it's sort of a diffuse rage, who are you angry about if you're a black man who has been wronged your whole life by people, you know, by people who are prejudiced? Sometimes you can channel that into political action, into activism. So what are, again, constructive ways to take this anger to make things better, Instructive ways to take this anger to make things better, to right the wrongs that have been done to you or to other individuals. Volunteering, voting out the person in office if you don't like him, calling your congress

people, writing letters, just taking an action feels very good for people. So that's one way to do that. feels very good for people. So that's one way to do that. And I would say to really open your mind real wide, just something that feels like you have taken that anger and channeled it into some sort of action that you can feel good about. And that is, it's relieving in some way just to do something, even if it's volunteering and being kind to someone, smiling at someone, just being part of a constructive action in some way. Right. Anger often shows us what we care about. And if we can flip that, right? Okay, this shows me I care about this thing. So what can I do now to show that care in some other way? It helps us see our values and then we can think about ways to act on those. in some other way. It helps us see our values and then we can think about ways to act on those. Exactly. And so I really would think of it in that two-pronged approach of one,

working with the emotion in the body where no action has taken place and how can I help myself so I don't get anxious if I hold in my anger so I don't get depressed. Depression is a lot of people kind of their anger imploding because they don't have any tools or skills to work with that. And so there's plenty of that, again, on my website and in the book, It's Not Always Depression, which is a self-help, easy to read, accessible book on how to work with emotions that I wrote that came out of my own moral outrage that we don't get any emotion education. So it's not that I want to hock my wares. I do. I want to help people. And I think this book does it. And that's why I also offer resources that are free, but you can also get these things at the library and it doesn't have to cost you anything. There's like a third problem,

which is when one really feels powerless and there is nothing to be done, right? You're stuck. You sort of validated your anger. You've given yourself compassion because this sucks to feel angry, right? We just want to be kind to ourselves when we're having any type of feeling because feelings are painful. And when there's nothing that can be done, this kind of acceptance that there's so much in life we can't control and that that doesn't mean we're bad and that doesn't mean that people are bad and that life is bad. And then I guess, you know, going to those sort of old cliches of that, which doesn't kill us, makes us stronger, kind of the platitudes that are sometimes true that you have to relinquish control and that maybe something good comes out of something bad and just positive self-talk the

best that you can. Lastly, because I've been talking about this ad nauseum, trying to help my own patients and anyone else who wants help and support is when you're feeling terrible, maybe from anger, maybe from anxiety, maybe from sadness and grief over all the suffering going on. Again, to try to help yourself because in a bad state, we're not thinking clearly. The first goal is really to calm down. And so I also recommend that people kind of have a list that they create in a calmer moment of what

I call state changers, like a list of five things that you know radically changes your state from one of being very hyper aroused, meaning your nervous system is very upset to come. And these are like little things like grounding and breathing. I can't imagine life without it. And I can't imagine living through this pandemic without I'm grounding and breathing anytime my anxiety spikes and anytime my outrage spikes. And again, I have instructions for that on my website for anyone that wants it. Taking a hot bath, taking a hot shower, making yourself tea, exercising, calling a friend. I would write down a pre-list that you put on your refrigerator. Because when you're upset, it's very hard to think.

And so at least you can march yourself over to the refrigerator and say, okay, step one, I'm going to ground and breathe, that type of thing. That's great advice to always sort of think ahead because the moments that we need to be able to think of, the example I always use is I know music helps me, but when I'm really upset, I can't think about what I want to hear. So I've got like a playlist that I just go, all right, just go press play on that playlist because I know it has what I upset, I can't think about what I want to hear. So I've got like a playlist that I just go, all right, just go press play on that playlist because I know it has what I need because I can't decide because I'm when I'm overwhelmed. So great advice. Yeah, that's exactly so right.

That would be maybe what would that be? Number one on your state changing list or exercise is definitely number one on my moving my body somehow. That's the biggest one for me. All right. Well, thank you so much, Hilary. I really appreciate you taking the time to to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called really no really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Next up, we have Ruth King, an emotional wisdom author, coach, and consultant. Ruth is a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and she's on the teacher's council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. She's the author of the book, Mindful of Race, Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. Hi, Ruth. Welcome back. Thank you. It is a pleasure to have you on again. I'm always happy to talk with you. I'm glad you're doing this. It's important. Yeah. So what I want to

talk about, I explained to you before we started, is the anger that people are feeling at perhaps the government or the institutions they work at. A lot of healthcare workers feeling frustrated. A lot of people seeing people going out and being in public and not doing the distancing and feeling like that's putting other people at danger. And that's causing an anger in people. And I just wanted to hear from you some thoughts on working with that anger skillfully. Yeah, well, it's such an important question. And people, first of all, just to validate that people have a lot of good reasons to be pissed off right now. I mean, it makes sense that, you know, when we see the pervasiveness of ignorance that's in our political system, for example, you know, just a kind of a blatant incompetence.

laden incompetence. And then, like you said, we see people that are kind of clueless about the impact of our interdependence and that we're really seeing a heightened way that we rely on each other and how people are treating that, you know, rather casually or kind of from a place of self-interest. So just to first validate that there's good reason to be upset. But I think what it puts us in the face of clearly, squarely, intimately, we're put into the face of what we can't control. You know, we really can't control other people, yet we're dependent on them responding in ways because, why? Because we're impacted. Right. on them responding in ways because, why? Because we're impacted. Right. So I think what we're left with in the face of that is our own raw material. And so it's showing up in anger. For some people, it might be showing up in depression. One of the things I talk about are the six ways that we see the faces of anger and rage. So we see the defiance that comes out for those of us who can be quickly on fire with it, or we see a certain sense of

dominance, which can be in our strong judgment about it. We might distract ourselves with our devices or a lot of other consumption and activity, binging out here and there, you know, we might overly impose ourselves on our views and everything on others' points of view. So we have these kind of strategies that we've been developing for some time that fly out of the box in the face of these situations that we don't have control over. So what we're left with in this raw material is how do I make a U-turn around this energy? Because what we're talking about is energy. We're talking about fire. We're talking about being on fire. And it's a sacred energy in my mind because what we do with it next is so crucial. You know, so if we vomit it out on everybody, you know, that might feel good for some people for a hot minute. You know,

we have to be concerned about our impact, what we do with this energy. So bottom line, I think we have to be interested in working with the energetics, the raw material of this. We have to first set the intention to be interested in looking at it in a different way, perhaps changing how we hold it to be informed by it instead of in reaction to it. So this requires us to settle down a bit, to call ourselves inward, to be interested in learning about what it's like to be on fire and the impact that you can have because our actions create impact. We have to be so interested about that that we are using the energy in ways that really make a difference. I don't want people wasting the energy on just fuming out. I want it to channel a certain response that's mobilizing in a way that's non-harming to people.

So this requires us to pause and be able to tolerate what's uncomfortable, what's heightened, and what's ours. It's our disturbance. So what we do with that energy, I think, is so crucial. We need to have the intention to pause, the intention to do no harm, the intention to use the energy efficiently. And so the way to work with this anger is not when you're in the middle of a crisis, but in between the spaces of the crisis. So you can learn to settle the nervous system enough so that when you are on fire,

you can put a little space, enough space in there to soften before you just go off into habitual reactivity. I love that idea of using the energy. That's so important because you're right, if we just spin out the moment it happens and go crazy and feel everywhere, it doesn't do any good. And that energy is spent. Right, right. Yeah. Often it even makes the situation worse. We distance people we might've been able to work with. So I love that idea of that energy being really useful, but that we have to sort of be centered within ourselves in order to know how to use it. That's right. And I also think that there are some ways we can, if we can just turn our attention inward and settle a little bit, we can also have an image

I find helpful of the rage and the anger that I'm feeling is trying to tell me something more than it's trying to tell somebody else something. So I think there is some wholesomeness and being curious about what does this intensity trying to teach me in this moment? Other than, you know, you're probably right about what you're enraged about. But, you know, what is this energy trying to teach me, you know, and can I be fiercely clear instead of on fire in a blaze? Can I be fiercely clear and stable in the fire that I'm sitting in, stay centered in it so that I can be informed enough to respond wisely. And this requires us to really develop a relationship with the intensity of our experience, because it belongs to us. And the other thing I think is important, Eric, is that, gee, right there, I forgot the point I was going to make because it was just so on fire in me. But yeah, so I just think there's

something for us to learn from it. So I think our anger on one hand tells us what we value. That's a good way to put that. Yeah. Right. And so if we can pivot to what's important, okay, this tells me what's important. But then also, I think, this is the point I think you were driving at. Also, I think our anger probably tells us something about value, but I think it also tells us something about our internal state, how we react, and can't quite find the right word for it, but our internal reactivity. I think it tells us two things. Yeah. Well, I think it's true that we do have habits of working with this energy that gets amplified in situations like we're in now. But it's not like a new habit. That's right. it makes sense. It makes sense for us. We should be enraged about the times we're in,

especially in terms of how things are being managed. I know that's true from my experience. I think we forget that when we're in those moments of rage or anger and upset, and we see the good reasons for it. I think what we lose touch with is how we're impacted by the anger ourselves. We lose touch with how the heart is collapsing. We lose touch with the tightness in the belly. We lose touch with how shut down we are in those moments. shut down we are in those moments. And I think it's important for us to comfort that distress that's literally happening inside the body. And one way we do that is to remind ourselves that we're sitting in a chair or sitting on a cushion or standing up and to connect with the breath,

up and to connect with the breath, especially the exhale of the breath and just allow ourselves to settle because we are in a ball of tension and we exit the body when we are enraged or when we're angry about something. We leave the premises. And so this idea of returning is to really claim a sense of power and self-control and inner stability that I think we need to, that actually informs a wiser action that's needed. And it's so important to just not, to do no harm. I mean, if we set the intention of not doing harm, then that really challenges us to how we're going to respond in the face of the craziness that we're in, right? Yeah, I love the idea about these are habits of how we respond. And that can be hard to see sometimes, but it can also be a starting point to say, okay, here's these habitual habits. And I think this time for a lot of people, if we use it right,

can be a chance to really reflect on ourselves and what we value and how we respond. And it's a time to start strengthening the practices that can help us respond better. That's right. I mean, again, we have good reason to be upset. No one's taken that away. that a way we must continue to do what must be done in terms of our activism and writing the letters and contacting and reaching out and things like that. And we have to stay in our seat with it. We have to stay connected with the body and breath, which is always in the present time. It's always a source of stability and comfort. If we tap in there. It's our inner resource.

We can cultivate a sense of friendship with our body and breath that supports us in times like this as we do what must be done. And it's a practice. We can't work with anger and rage right in the heat of the moment. We have to be cultivating that like background elevator music. You know, it has to be a steady intravenous intention running around a staying stable, staying on the ground, seeing what's real, responding in ways that are non-harming. Wonderful. Yes. Thank you so much, Ruth. That was really lovely. And I'm always happy to hear your thoughts. They're so lucid. Thank you so much. I'm so happy with what you're doing. And I also think we're all doing our best. And it's a good time to both do the best we can,

it's a good time to both do the best we can, but also keep our hand on our heart and know that every action, every thought they're planting seeds. And we want to be sensitive to what blooms next from our actions. Beautifully said. Thank you. Yeah. Good to talk to you. Good to talk to you. And last up we have David Rico, a psychotherapist, teacher, workshop leader, and writer. He's the author of the classic book, How to Be an Adult, a handbook on psychological and spiritual integration. Hi, David.

Welcome back. Thank you. Nice to be here, Eric. Pleasure to have you on. What I'm doing with this episode is I am just working to give people some tips on dealing with anger. There's a lot of anger coming up from healthcare workers, from individuals about the way our government is handling this, or perhaps the way certain institutions are handling it, or the way some people are handling it, the way some people might not be practicing social distancing and people feeling angry, like they're putting everyone at

risk. So I just want to give listeners some tips for dealing with that anger skillfully. I would begin by saying that anger is defined in the dictionary as displeasure and injustice. There's displeasure and injustice. So when we feel that things are being done in an unfair way, we are unhappy about it, displeased, and that displeasure is anger. So that's healthy anger. But when it turns into aggression, when it goes out of control, and when harms others then it has become abuse and that's the distinction that i think is important to make now when people come at us in an abusive way we want to leave the get away, because it can turn into violence, aggression. And when someone is expressing actual anger, we are paying close attention and we're responding

in a healthy way by acknowledging what the other person feels angry about and opening up a pathway of communication. If we ourselves feel that we have crossed the line and become abusive, that's when we need to pull ourselves back and acknowledge that we've gone too far and come back to our actual anger. Now, some of this anger that we're seeing nowadays is actually fear that makes us feel so vulnerable makes us feel so vulnerable that we don't want to express it. And we turn it into anger. Something like what happens in road rage, you are actually scared that somebody cut you off. But instead of feeling the fear, you immediately transpose it into anger, and you're actually avoiding the actual feeling. So the basic style is you feel somehow unsafe. That's fear. That leads you to want to protect yourself. And the poor man's version of protecting yourself is to become hostile, to act out against others. And then you believe that that will make them pull back and withdraw,

and you'll be safe again. From my point of view, that's not a healthy way to operate. So what's an alternative for us when we're feeling these things? The alternative is to admit that you feel the fear itself, to allow yourself to feel it, and then not act on it. In other words, not be pushed into anger and rage, and also not to pull back into denial of it. And it especially helps to be able to share the feeling of fear and powerlessness with others whom you trust. That helps relieve it. Right. I think it's interesting because a lot of times, like if we're feeling afraid, it's a personal experience and we can go talk to somebody else. And this is challenging,

I think, because so many people feel afraid. Oh, yeah. I think it's quite normal. Like with this crisis of the virus, normal with this crisis of the virus. We all feel afraid for ourselves and our loved ones. And we want to be able to hold the fear in a way that does not turn it into something that lashes out against others.

We could protest if we don't like the way things are being handled, but we want to do that in the context of joining with others in a protest or speaking up ourselves, speak truth to power. It's not a good idea to have it turn into aggression or hate. And so we can avoid that by allowing ourselves to feel the emotion and share it with other people. Yeah. And not be pushed by it into actions that we ultimately would be ashamed of. Right. Any other words you'd like to add on the topic? No, I think that kind of fits with your question. We're just all doing our best to

feel our legitimate feelings, but not let them turn into something that might hurt others. Right. I think we're all wrestling with how do we feel these feelings? What's the right level? How do we keep them from becoming overwhelming? I think that's just a common challenge right now. Yeah. And to use your model, the dog is anger and the wolf is abuse. So we want to feed, it's okay to feed the dog of anger. And that activates us into appropriate protest or action. But we don't want to feed the wolf of abuse and violence.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, David. I genuinely appreciate you taking a few minutes to talk with our listeners and violence. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, David. I genuinely appreciate you taking a few minutes to talk with our listeners and me. Well, thank you, Eric, and good luck with your work. Thank you. Take care. You too.