#489： How to Get a Handle on Your Anger
Episode Stats
Summary
If you ve been trying to get a handle on your anger, you ve likely read tips for calming down, like taking a deep breath and counting to 10. While those tactics might serve as a Band-Aid in the short term, truly getting control of your anger has to begin long before you have a blow up. His name is David L. Lieberman and he holds a PhD in Psychology. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Never Get Angry Again. In this episode, we begin our conversation discussing what happens in our minds and body when we get angry, the ill effects anger can have on our health and relationships, and why common anger management advice isn t very effective.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you've been
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trying to get a handle on your anger you've likely read tips for calming down like take
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a deep breath and counting to 10 my guest stay argues while those tactics might serve as a band
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in the short term truly getting control of your anger has to begin long before you have a blow
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up his name is david lieberman he holds a phd in psychology is the author of several books
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including his latest never get angry again we begin our conversation discussing talking about
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what happens in our minds and body when we get angry the ill effects anger can have on our health
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and relationships and why common anger management advice isn't very effective david then digs deeper
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into the root cause of most anger issues and walks through what you can do to address and solve them
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after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash anger
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all right david lieberman welcome to the show thanks brett pleasure so you got a new book out
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never get angry again the foolproof way to stay calm and in control in any conversation or situation
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now over the years since i've been doing the art of manliness on the website and the podcast and i've
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gotten a lot of emails from guys saying they've had a problem with anger and something they want
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to get a handle on i think a lot of people want to get a handle on their anger but before we get into
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that like why in your practice in your experience working with people why do why do we get angry
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a million dollar question so there are many layers to that but at the root of it is that our desires
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our goals our expectations are not met we feel threatened sometimes it's a mask for other emotions
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but even beyond that we find that anger comes because of a fear and that fear is always rooted
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in the fear that i'm not good enough that i'm not lovable enough i'm not worthy enough which is why
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whenever we get angry it is always preceded by a fear that we are going to be taken advantage of
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we're going to be ridiculed we're not in charge it comes from sort of feeling vulnerable and anger is
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a response to that fear so yoda was right right and the star wars movie things i've got fear leads
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to anger and anger leads to the dark side yes i suppose yoda said it before i did well so i mean in
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your experience have you noticed that men have problems with anger more than women and if so or
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if not why do you think that's the case yeah so what's interesting is there's conflicting research
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on that and in doing research for the book i found that at first we thought yes men have more anger
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issues than women and then other research indicated maybe not so because women tend to internalize their
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anger so while men may express it overtly women may express it maybe more passively anyone that's
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been married can testify to that and then beyond that that anger may also manifest in terms of feelings
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of guilt insecurity and shame so it's turned inward but the emotion itself i think is fairly evenly
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distributed amongst the sexes even though some preliminary research had showed that men are more prone to
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anger than women so that that raises an interesting question anger can manifest itself differently
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and i think a lot of people don't realize that and as a consequence they miss out on you know
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whether they're experiencing anger or whether someone else is experiencing anger so i think when
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most people think of anger they think of like you know stereotypical guy turning red yelling screaming
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swearing but beyond that how else can it manifest itself that's that's true right and that only is
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important for us to understand how anger can manifest for ourselves but also in our relationships because
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you know we can't operate on the assumption that just because somebody didn't scream at us
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that our behavior was acceptable so there's generally four sort of responses to anger and they mirror
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what's called the fight flight or freeze response used to be called the fight or flight but now it's
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flight fight freeze and it's either a sort of aggressive where we come out sort of fighting attempting to
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control the situation as you mentioned then you've got the passive aggressive which parallels the flight
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where anger leaks out in more subtle ways because a person is unable to confront directly they sort of
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seek to control stealthily and they're not able to sort of stand up for themselves or don't feel like
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they're able to but they're going to even the score they're going to exact justice one way or the other
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another way anger can manifest is in sort of a surrender or suppression and that is when a person's
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unable to consciously acknowledge their anger so they either tell themselves that they're not worthy
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of asserting themselves meaning you know what you know i'm not you know who am i to go ahead and say this
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person is wrong or they suppress their emotions and tell themselves they're not really angry to begin with
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and the issue there obviously that's the suppression is it ends up resulting in a host of
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physiological causes such as anything from anxiety to depression to feeling a lot of like back pain and
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it manifests in a host of sort of physical symptoms and then finally is the immobilization and that's when a
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person is very angry they feel powerless but they're not able to even acknowledge the the pain or the fear so
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they really just shut down it's sort of like if you've got you know your toaster plugged in and
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there's a firestorm or a thunderstorm you don't plug it to avoid it getting overloaded so this person
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can't deal with the the pain of anger at all and they just shut down shut out the world just to avoid
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feeling that pain so let's talk about that passive aggressive because i think a lot of people have
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probably experienced that or maybe people do it and they're not realizing it so you're not expressing
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you're not asserting your anger right like you're not saying hey this is upsetting me instead you're
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doing things you're still angry but you might do something like if you have a job and your boss asks
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you to do something you turn it in late or you do sort of a sloppy job maybe on purpose or unconsciously
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yeah that's right and i i would say that passive aggressive is probably the most devastating to
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relationship because even though all anger should be dealt with responsibly in a healthy way
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if you are sort of aggressive and you've got that sort of screaming yelling at least you know
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where you stand and the other person does as well passive aggressive it damages the relationship because
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we're looking to exact justice we're looking to even the score and as you say it could be conscious
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could be subconscious and we'll go ahead and you know forget to do something we'll turn something in
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late we'll inconvenience our spouse or our co-worker and it causes friction in the relationship
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because they're going to then get upset with us but once again we're not able to confront that we're
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not able to stand up so it sort of ingrains further into more passive aggressive behavior
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and it's it can be very very damaging in our relationships and what often happens is once the
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passive aggressive person gets called out on it they they continue the manipulation as you said
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they say well no it's not me this is you it's your problem and it's like well no that's right you're not
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going to find a person engaging in passive aggressive behavior to suddenly acknowledge
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their responsibility and say yeah you know what because the decision to not confront generally
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doesn't happen at the conscious level so they feel wrong but if they were able to confront that wrong
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at the moment they would have so there's no reason to think that they're now able to go ahead and
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confront their passive aggressive behavior once they're called out on it and that other that sort of
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you know you've experienced where you experience anger but like you deny it uh that sort of freeze
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thing we've had a lot of people on talking about like the nice guy syndrome right where a lot of guys
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they'll experience anger but they're like no i'm a nice guy i'm not angry and they just keep pushing it
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down pushing it down and as you said lead to anxiety depression but also it can eventually lead to like a big
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giant blow up that would that that could do a lot more damage that's that's quite true that's quite true
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because anger does need a a release valve of sorts and when we suppress it and look you know
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if you want the world to see you as a nice guy or most likely you know the person grew up in a house
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where they weren't allowed to express themselves or when they did it was shut down so this is how they
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learned to deal with their anger and they would tell themselves that oh it just rolls right off me
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it doesn't ruffle my feathers it doesn't matter now if that were true then this guy would be
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fantastic his ego wouldn't be involved and he'd be on a very high level but if in fact he's selling
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himself himself a pack of lies because he doesn't want to acknowledge the anger because he doesn't
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know what he's going to do with it he will suppress it and as you say it will either just tear him apart
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from the inside or it will lead to an overt explosion which can be quite devastating and damaging not only
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to himself but to his relationship now it sounds like uh what we've been talking is that anger
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can be useful because it's sort of a signal to you that something's going wrong and that you need
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to do something to fix it now there's now the question is like how do you go about fixing that
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so i mean would you say like anger is not a completely terrible emotion it's useful if it's
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used in the right way you know i'd say yes and no and i know it's you know it sounds like i'm covering
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my bases here but you know there's an expression that you know anger lies in the in the bosom of fools
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meaning that if you have anger on the table to pull out of your tool belt at any point when you
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feel you're justified the problem is when you're in the situation you're going to assume that it's
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justified and you know no one ever walked away from a conversation and said you know what i wish i would
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have gotten angrier i would have been able to handle myself so much better you know when you're angry
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you're not seeing through a clear objective lens you're seeing through distorted emotions and while it
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does increase your acuity and it brings a lot of you know your attention and emotional and mental
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resources and focuses it at the same time you're not able to process your world with a proper
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perspective so you are going to be inclined to act irresponsibly recklessly and go overboard so quite
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frankly i tell people take it off the table completely could you have used that anger and
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capitalized on it in one out of a hundred cases sure but i'd rather be wrong one out of a hundred
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than to use it 99 out of a hundred knowing that i too quickly went for that angry response because
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if you think about it if you said to yourself i'm not going to get angry no matter what happens
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the entire day you're going to have an entirely different day than if you said okay fine if i get
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angry to be justified but in there lies a problem when you are in that moment your perspective is
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narrowed your ego's engaged and you're going to assume it's justified when through the objective
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lens of clarity and a little more perspective you would have realized that it was not called for
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yeah you you devote a section of the book about what happens to our brain whenever we get angry
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as you said it has so you can like focus us and narrow our attention but that has some downsides
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because as you said you're not really seeing the bigger picture where you're you can see other
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options other solutions you're just narrowed in on that one one thing yeah no sorry ask yourself
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the question is you know who would you rather rather go to battle with somebody who was just you
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know flying in a blind rage or somebody who was cool calculated you know very cognitively aware
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and clearly you'd rather go into battle against the guy who's just not thinking clearly and you could
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say oh he's got you know a lot of it and when a person does become angry the nervous system
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releases whether it's adrenaline nor adrenaline cortisol but what's interesting actually about
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cortisol which is also responsible for weight gain called the stress hormone a cortisol actually
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interferes with the prefrontal cortex the part of the brain responsible for executive functioning
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it literally makes us dumb it interferes with our ability to process information clearly
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so with a physiological basis for the fact that anger clouds our judgments and while certainly yes
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there are some limited advantages i would much rather go into a situation with the objective
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lens of clarity than have my perspective clouded by emotions right a great example you can see that
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in real time of cortisol and anger making you dumb like social media is people get angry so they they do
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something right away and they'd usually type something that they regret day later oh gosh yes sometimes
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two seconds later i think whatsapp now has something where you could pull back you know how many times do
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people send off a text and then they send a correction two seconds later when all it would have taken
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them with those same two seconds to do a you know a spell check and to realize that you know it auto
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corrected something ridiculous but we all have that just visceral response where we want to answer back
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and yeah it it invariably will produce conversations and interactions that are just not productive
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so besides the psychological downsides of anger it makes you dumber you make poorer decisions there's
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physiological so you mentioned cortisol if you're constantly exposed to cortisol it causes weight gain
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which is not good for health but any other like physiological downsides of being angry all the time
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sure in the short term you've got anxiety high blood pressure headache these are symptoms that manifest
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instantaneously and certainly the long-term damage on your emotional health and your relationships
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is incalculable so let's talk about what we can do about this and you argue that the typical
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anger management advice doesn't work in the long run so before we get to why you think that doesn't
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work like what is the typical anger management advice that you see out there right so you know you have
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your basic take deep breaths visualize your happy place and there's some you know cognitive behavioral
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sort of reframing and it's one of the reasons why i wrote the book was you know yes there are some gaps
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in terms of i think traditional advice but even from our own perspective i mean when was the last time
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you were really upset you took a deep breath you visualize you know your happy place or something else
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and then you instantaneously calm down you know it may work for the smaller stuff but when you're entering a
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situation and you're you know you are already enraged it's very very hard to sort of talk yourself
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down from that okay so what what is the solution then like how do we if those things if they can work
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sometimes but not all the time i guess the goal is to like not even have to go to that like you don't
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you get to the point where you don't even need to use those things like what what are we looking at
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here that's right one of the reasons why the book has gotten so much attention is because
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it shows you how to avoid getting to that fork in the road where you find yourself fighting against
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your own nature meaning that if you enter the situation with a wide enough perspective
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and you realized ahead of time that this is something that's inconsequential you're going
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to forget about it 10 minutes 10 days 10 years you're not even going to remember it happened
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so in much the same way that you're in a situation at the moment when you've got that clarity of
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perspective after the fact you're not going to be bothered so what if you were able to bring that
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same perspective that you would have after the fact into the moment right you would never find
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yourself bothered certainly by little stuff and even the bigger stuff you're able to instantly frame
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in the proper perspective and that's really what time gives us time it gives us perspective so
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by entering these situations without your ego involved you're not you don't have to fight
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against your own nature you don't have to remain calm you don't have to force yourself to do anything
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you're naturally unbothered because of the gift of perspective gives you the ability to recognize
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that it simply doesn't matter and most things we get upset about simply don't matter so basically
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as we talked earlier the the root of anger is fear and that's fear comes from a very when we have an
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ego-based view of life right where we're just thinking about us and what's in it for us so what
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are some of the stories that our ego tells us right that we sort of you know it goes on internally
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that contributes to us getting angry about big things but like even like little things like the
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guy cutting you off in traffic yeah or your kid you know ignoring you we get angry because there's a
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story that we're we're we're telling ourselves that that that event means something that's right
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that's right and that story regardless of the narrative always comes down to the same message
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and that is that they don't care enough about me they don't love me enough they don't respect me
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enough but let me give you an example let's say you're driving along and someone cuts you off on
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the road right now many of us have a tendency to see what this person looks like right because who
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is going to typically bother us more a nice little lady driving you know when you just see her hat and
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her hands on the on the uh steering wheel or a young guy driving with the beer bottle in one hand
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cigarette in the other music blasting from the the car who's going to generally bother us more
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the little lady or the young guy the young guy of course right of course because we assume the nice
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little lady probably didn't see our car but the young guy did it to me on purpose because he
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doesn't care enough he doesn't respect me blah blah blah blah blah blah and if you appreciate the
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insanity of this you're driving along then you almost get into an accident then you speed up
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risking life to see what the person looks like to see how angry you should be i mean it's sheer
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insanity and but that's what the ego does it connects the dots it makes everything about me
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when the truth is it has nothing to do with me we treat other people based on how we feel about
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ourselves you give love you give respect but when we have a inflated ego we assume it's about us
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and we're not able to see the other person's pain we're focused on our own pain so when you take
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your ego out of the equation you can look at the other person with empathy with compassion
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with sympathy and you're not absorbed in your own pain and if you're not absorbed in your own pain
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you're not going to get upset because you don't take it personally and that's really what real anger
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management comes down to something happens you take it personally you get upset something happens
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you don't get it personally take it personally you don't get upset that's 25 years of therapy in a
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sentence you know so you know the degree which we're able to take ourselves out of the equation
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is a degree to which we're going to manage or anger much more effectively because if our ego is not
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involved there is nothing to get angry about yeah i feel like the ego thing it's we tend yeah as you
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said we personalize things and we even like do the personalization for like just like you know acts of
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god that like you know you have no like a hurricane it's like why why me it's like well the hurricane
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doesn't you know it doesn't doesn't have any emotions it doesn't care it's just it just happened
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right right but and it's it's indiscriminate it doesn't discriminate and that's just it and you can
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tell as you know i've done a lot of work with reading people and and body language and emotional
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health in that the more personal i personally people take things that have nothing to do with
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them the less emotionally healthy they are so when they begin to say that you know it was a
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thunderstorm and it rained you know god doesn't love me because he doesn't want me to have a
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picnic today you know those are things that are indicative of somebody who's really personalizing
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a bit too much and even again at the highest level if somebody legitimately does something to you
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but you realize it really doesn't have anything to do with you yes it is to you but once again
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we treat other people based on how we feel about ourselves so their capacity is limited the fact that
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somebody can't love me the fact that somebody can't give me respect the fact that somebody can't
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show me the attention or the or give me the accolades and praise that i feel i deserve
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if my ego is not involved i recognize it's their limitation it's not mine but if my ego is engaged
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i'm going to assume they're doing this because there's something wrong there's something lacking
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there's something broken bad or defective about me and that's what makes me so angry well so how do
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how do you get to that point where you personalize everything where you think it's all about you and
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people do things to you or things happen to you because you're defective you deserve it you're
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inadequate like how do you get to that point because there's some people who you know don't really have
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that problem but other people who really have that problem so what was the difference between those two
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people right so first you will not find a person that has anger issues that did not have some sort of
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childhood trauma tragedy abuse it is as and it is so sad but the scars and the imprint on our emotional
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health that childhood leaves is very very difficult to undo unless the person is able to revisit it and
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i'd like to share with you a fantastic technique to accomplish that but before that is that to answer
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your question is that we've got this thing called shame now there's legitimate shame and some people tell
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you all shame is toxic and it's not true there's legitimate shame that when you act beneath your
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level when you do something that is just not you and afterwards you feel a little bit maybe disturbed
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or disgusted and you know you think back and you think that was unconscionable i i can't believe i did
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that that's legitimate shame and shame is the voice of our conscience that says hey you know what you did
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something that was beneath you and it's a self-correcting mechanism to wake us up to take responsibility
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and to move forward but if we're not willing to do that we sort of double down and the ego then
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justifies minimizes blames rationalizes whatever it can to avoid feeling that pain at the core we're
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still left with that stain of shame that says i'm not lovable now that's legitimate shame and there's
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ways to deal with that unfortunately we acquire as i said before toxic shame and that comes courtesy of
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childhood where we because children by definition are completely egocentric right and that's okay
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that's their job we know adults like this as well but at least children have an excuse for it so for
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example let's say you've got a seven-year-old boy whose father comes back and screams and yells at him
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that child is never going to say well you know what dad just had a hard day at work let him go ahead
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and have a cocktail let him calm down and he'll be okay no the child's going to assume that there's
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something wrong with him because he's egocentric he takes everything personally how people treat him
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is a direct reflection of his self-worth that's his equation so as he transitions to adulthood he walks
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around with that same stain of shame that says how i'm treated by other people is a reflection of my
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self-worth and when you're able to undo that you realize that your self-worth does not hinge on
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somebody's acceptance of you not only is it very freeing emotionally but you will find that you're
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going to be living anger free and how do you how do you do that i mean you mentioned there's like
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something we can do to sort of help unpack that right so there's a whole protocol and i've worked
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with really hard their whole reason why i got into this was because as you may know i do a lot of work
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with law enforcement techniques of interview and interrogation and i found that you know you had
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otherwise decent people who just in a moment of anger or rage completely upended their life and i said
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that there there has to be a way to help people before they get you know into this situation and
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that's the genesis of how i began with the book and first is the appreciation the acknowledgement
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that just because somebody can't love me doesn't make me unlovable and that goes even to the core
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of childhood and the way i explain it to people is like this you know you ever watch a movie or read
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a book and you know the ending is just amazing and it was like a big twist like the sixth sense comes to
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mind right you sort of replay back the entire movie in your life and you recast everything through this
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new awareness or you read a book and the ending is maybe uh you know a twist of an ending you sort of
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replay everything back so while we can't go back in time we can give new meaning to the experiences
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from our childhood and when we look at it in a different light and we're able to recognize
00:24:32.220
that just because my mother wasn't able to give me the love and respect that i needed and deserved
00:24:39.680
or just because my father yelled at me or abused me doesn't mean there's something wrong with me
00:24:44.920
when a person really owns that then they're free we're gonna take a quick break for your word from
00:24:50.000
our sponsors and now back to the show i like that and i and the one thing i've that's helped me too
00:24:56.280
with anger is like so typically our brains are like hypersensitive to negative right like we're
00:25:01.780
looking constantly vigilant for any negative things that happen to us yeah so when the guy cuts you off
00:25:05.720
you think well that guy that jerk disrespects me and everyone disrespects me then you have to like stop
00:25:10.440
like no not everyone disrespects me like my kids like me my wife likes me my friends like me like
00:25:15.460
like focusing on all the things that got going good in your life like really puts things in perspective
00:25:20.780
for you it sure does and we've got this term in you know in psychology we label everything it's called
00:25:26.440
negativity bias which speaks to that exact point or confirmation bias also and that is that you know
00:25:31.960
if you believe something to be true you're going to not only look for that but you're going to
00:25:38.520
manifest you're going to create you're going to live a life that tells that narrative and that
00:25:45.540
fulfills that story of yours so your entire sort of existence and as awful and as sad as this is
00:25:54.120
so many people do this we live a life of masks and games and we really go into hiding to avoid facing
00:26:02.660
the pain of our reality and we want we have a story to be told and if our story is i'm no good i'm not
00:26:11.280
lovable then we're going to bring that to fruition no matter what it takes and so not only we will look
00:26:16.800
for it but we're going to go ahead and manifest it and these are the people that will read into things
00:26:20.960
they'll connect dots that don't exist and it's almost like a form of of of paranoia where they'll
00:26:26.720
begin to make connections only to tell the story that they've been telling themselves for so long
00:26:32.800
and a person like this would rather be right than be happy yeah no i've seen that happen in my own
00:26:38.840
life and in other people's lives as well like you're so used to the story like you know it's the devil
00:26:43.560
you know you just keep going with that because it's so familiar and comfortable yeah yeah that's it
00:26:49.120
and and once again it's so sad is because people live lives that are they're barely scratching the
00:26:56.480
surface of their potential but it is comfortable and they ensconce themselves in their pain and they
00:27:01.600
tell themselves a story because this is all they know and the ego sort of is it tells them and feeds
00:27:08.220
them the message that this is the truth and when you're able to sort of cast it aside and connect with
00:27:15.620
other people and appreciate your worth you know you'll find that this veil of anger just lifts off
00:27:20.460
you because you're no longer looking to confirm you know some distorted truth that you're not worthy
00:27:25.940
and in fact that if somebody can't treat you properly you could see you could focus in that
00:27:30.920
they're the ones that are in pain and you don't have to be in pain and yeah so this is accepting the
00:27:35.800
reality that you have and accepting the pain but doesn't mean you have to approve of it right i think a lot
00:27:40.180
of people confuse accepting as approval that's not necessarily the case you just have to accept okay this
00:27:44.140
happened to me this was bad but it is part of the reality but it's not the whole reality that's right
00:27:49.920
that's a great point and and the acceptance versus approval hangs up in our relationships as well
00:27:55.440
and also with our own self-esteem meaning that i can accept me and love me 100 and i accept and love
00:28:01.680
my kids 100 and i always tell them there's nothing they can do that would make me not accept them it
00:28:06.820
doesn't mean i approve everything they do and it doesn't mean that i approve everything that i do and
00:28:11.520
there are behaviors that i engage in that i i work on and i have regrets and i try and make it right
00:28:17.600
move forward but when we conflate the two when we say that i can't accept a person or accept me unless
00:28:23.740
i approve and have this sort of perfectionist mentality then we are throwing the baby out with
00:28:28.340
the bathwater and we're living up to some sort of unrealistic expectation that everything has to be
00:28:33.660
just so in order to have acceptance and it's not the case i can accept me 100 unconditionally i can accept
00:28:39.820
my wife and i can accept my kids and now we roll up our sleeves because the thing is this bread if you
00:28:46.100
let's say you plug into your gps that you wanted to go from where you are to i don't know toronto canada
00:28:51.920
the first thing the gps has to locate is where you are so the beginning of growth the beginning of moving
00:28:58.060
forward begins with acknowledging and accepting who you are where you are how you are right now but you're
00:29:05.000
never going to go from point a to point b unless you accept you're at point a so i'm never going to
00:29:09.800
work on myself i'm never going to be able to get rid of my anger i'm never going to improve my
00:29:13.680
relationships if i refuse to accept the reality that exists and i'm sure that in finding you know
00:29:19.220
figuring out what that reality that exists that might involve other people too maybe talking to a
00:29:23.740
therapist talking to your friends and families so they you can get a better idea because if you know
00:29:27.840
if it's just you your ego might tell you a story that's probably not true yeah and you know what
00:29:32.680
that's so true is our ego will tell us a lot of stories and none of them true because the last
00:29:38.660
thing the ego wants to do is accept responsibility and you know the one thing even the wisest of men
00:29:44.500
can't achieve on their own is objectivity which is why it does make sense to talk it over with a friend
00:29:49.620
you know a trusted confidence someone that knows you trust you respects you likes you that can give you
00:29:55.260
a objective sort of reality check because when our ego is involved you're right we're a piece of our
00:30:02.060
own puzzle we lack that perspective to see objectively and we're gonna come up with a
00:30:08.280
distorted conclusion so yes acceptance can very easily be gained more readily by speaking it over
00:30:15.700
with somebody who can look at the situation and give us that objectivity that we don't always gain
00:30:20.640
on our own so one thing i noticed in my own life is a lot of my you know when i get angry it comes from
00:30:26.160
when i feel someone's violating some personal boundary like you know the perfect example getting cut off like
00:30:31.840
the personal boundary is man like i had the right of way right i was like sort of acknowledged but
00:30:36.580
this guy disregarded it and went in but it also happened other places the boss calls you on the
00:30:42.020
weekend right and violates that and you get angry but you know you don't do anything about it so how do
00:30:47.880
you get better at enforcing boundaries but without going overboard like being coming off as a jerk about
00:30:54.240
it sure sure that's that's a great question because it goes to the core of a lot of people's anger
00:31:00.040
issues and that's sort of like this you know take take a person that gets put in that proverbial no when
00:31:05.060
where someone asks you something that that you you don't want to do so if you don't do it they're mad at
00:31:11.780
you and if you you do do it you're mad at you and we sort of get boxed in particularly if you've got the
00:31:17.120
sort of people pleasing you know perpetual doormat mentality which is a strong manifestation of anger
00:31:22.700
particularly passive aggressive because a person doesn't feel like they can assert their boundaries
00:31:26.560
invariably we find that boundary issues become distorted from childhood and that's because if
00:31:35.160
my boundaries were traipsed over if someone didn't respect my boundaries in one way or the other i don't
00:31:41.980
have a clear sense of me and if i don't have a clear sense of me i don't have a clear sense of we
00:31:45.980
now that may manifest into the person who becomes very arrogant very pushy and drip and and encroach
00:31:52.680
into other people's boundaries or it may manifest into the person who's sort of that people-pleasing
00:31:57.240
mentality that allows other people to come into their boundaries so first when i give workshops
00:32:03.000
i let people know that and and and often the people that come for anger management unless it's
00:32:09.280
court ordered are the ones who feel like other people are taking advantage of them and i i say like
00:32:15.100
this you can't say yes if you can't say no meaning that if you don't feel like you can stand up to the
00:32:21.940
person and say no then you're not really saying yes because if you do choose to do an act of kindness
00:32:28.540
for somebody that means you are making a choice but if you feel like you're getting guilted into
00:32:35.000
something you are not secure enough to stand up you don't think you can enforce your boundary
00:32:39.400
and you tell yourself oh i'm just being a nice guy i'm gonna go ahead and do it why make a big deal
00:32:43.700
about it you're really not giving and it's a difference between giving a donation and being
00:32:47.240
robbed in one case a hundred dollars going out of your pocket you feel very good it's very empowering
00:32:51.800
the other case you're being robbed it's unempowering now in both cases a hundred dollars went out of
00:32:56.280
your pocket but one was a choice to give and the other wasn't so the beginning of setting boundaries
00:33:02.020
first is to take a step back and ask yourself where is my boundary in other words what is accepted
00:33:08.400
what will i find proper and am i legitimately choosing to give or am i simply just rolling
00:33:16.700
over and allow the person take advantage of me and people that have an issue asserting boundaries
00:33:20.920
would do well to practice in a small way and it can be very very uncomfortable because i don't want
00:33:27.980
to assert my boundaries because this person may reject me they may tell me you know what i don't like
00:33:34.940
you and that's just going to reinforce my fear that i'm not lovable and it's going to bring out all my
00:33:39.580
feelings of shame that i'm not worthy so i'm going to go ahead and give in because i don't want to feel
00:33:44.320
the pain of somebody thinking that i'm not worthy and that's why we allow people into our space and
00:33:49.980
when you appreciate that at least intellectually then you can begin to own it emotionally and it once
00:33:55.560
again it is fewer things are more empowering and infuse us with a greater sense of self-esteem
00:34:00.720
than drawing a responsible boundary line and asserting ourselves in a situation where we feel
00:34:08.760
somebody is taking advantage of us so you mentioned start off in a small way what would be a small way
00:34:13.700
to start off with that if you're if you're someone who has problems enforcing boundaries right so whether
00:34:19.500
generally try with somebody who's more safe that you feel is not going to run away they're not going
00:34:24.740
to give you a hard time not going to reject you and it could be with a good friend of yours a
00:34:30.220
co-worker your spouse whomever it is and just say you know what i and you even let the person know
00:34:36.300
i'm working on trying to assert myself and you can tell the person you know what there's nothing wrong
00:34:42.580
with what you're asking i appreciate it but i am going to go ahead and i'm going to deny decline your
00:34:49.680
request and you've got to get more comfortable and it is a matter of comfort being okay with the fact
00:34:56.820
that somebody may not like you because if you set out to have everyone like you everyone like you
00:35:02.960
everyone appreciate you everyone think you're great it's the surest path to be a miserable human being
00:35:08.620
because unfortunately you have people out there who are not well forget about those that are actually
00:35:13.400
suffer with a pathology such as you know psychopathy psychoses or sociopathy sociopaths or
00:35:20.120
narcissists forget about those people that are going to run roughshod over you
00:35:23.220
other well-meaning well-intentioned people are going to be doing what makes sense and just because
00:35:29.680
it makes sense to them or for them doesn't mean it makes sense to you and you can't act irresponsibly
00:35:36.020
and give in to somebody because they're going to become upset with you because again if you continue
00:35:41.120
to do that you're going to be upset with you and they don't need a reason to become mad at you
00:35:46.440
and if you're upset with you then you are going to
00:35:50.960
magnify and increase your own feelings of guilt and shame and inferiority because all it does is
00:35:57.240
reinforce the fact that you don't deserve to stand up for yourself and so when you practice in these small
00:36:01.980
ways and you realize the world will still spin and you're okay just because you asserted yourself
00:36:08.580
you feel fantastic and how you assert yourself by the way should always be with proper empathy and
00:36:14.140
compassion and as you say not be a jerk about it but i don't have to defend my right to assert my
00:36:23.000
legitimate boundaries and i don't have to give a person a thousand reasons a thousand excuses
00:36:27.880
sometimes no is a complete sentence yeah and another thing to think about too is that as you
00:36:33.320
mentioned earlier it can define the relationship sort of fine-tune the definition of the relationship
00:36:38.260
right so the the person who's asking you for something that you don't want to do you say no well now
00:36:43.120
they know something new they have new information now there might be some conflict but now you guys
00:36:48.160
can if you accept the conflict you can move forward and actually be proactive about it now it might mean
00:36:53.160
you just go your separate ways or you look for another solution that's right and and a person that tries
00:36:59.260
to avoid asserting themselves to maintain the illusion of peace will find that they're not going to either
00:37:05.240
have boundaries or peace every healthy relationship requires boundaries and if you think that you're
00:37:13.460
going to just make things okay by allowing someone to traipse into your space when they're not welcomed
00:37:19.740
you're going to find that it keeps on coming up and up and up and again and by drawing that line
00:37:25.240
you're right you redefine the relationship and you've got proper and responsible boundary lines and this
00:37:31.100
person knows what's no longer accepted and when they know what's long accepted then they can make
00:37:36.000
a choice they'll either say you know what this relationship isn't worth it in which case then
00:37:40.760
you know that they're only interested in the relationship because of what they can gain from
00:37:45.140
it or they're going to respect your boundaries in which case it benefits both of you but make no
00:37:50.520
mistake i tell people who are very very sensitive those perpetual people pleasers the ones that have a hard
00:37:56.620
time saying no i said if you can't say no for yourself say no for the other person because you
00:38:02.480
do no favors by making easy for the bully or manipulator the bulldozer to run into you you don't
00:38:09.140
do the many favors by making easy for them to take advantage of you so it is selfless meaning you're doing
00:38:16.240
them the favor by asserting yourself so i mean it sounds like the goal again i'm reiterating this point
00:38:22.520
is the goal is you know we're not trying to manage anger at the point it happens we might have to
00:38:26.460
use some tactics for that every now and then you talk about some of those in the book but the goal
00:38:29.760
is to basically inoculate ourselves so we no longer have those angry emotions and that involves you
00:38:35.320
know reframing changing the stories that we tell our ego tells ourselves about ourselves but besides
00:38:40.780
that sort of and then that's going to take a lot of work might take months years for that to happen
00:38:45.500
but what are some other things you can do to inoculate yourself from anger so you see reality
00:38:51.200
for what it really is and not just sort of this narrow focused negativity bias that
00:38:56.340
you typically have when you come from a place of anger sure sure i love that word inoculate and
00:39:01.640
that's uh that's a beautiful word and that's exactly what we do here is once you have the shot
00:39:07.120
then you don't have to worry about putting yourself in situation where people have got those you know
00:39:11.160
negative germs they're not going to infect you and there's two main things you can do to answer
00:39:15.580
your question in brief one is when you find yourself in that moment where you're feeling angry
00:39:22.460
the biggest mistakes i'm always surprised when people say this is the therapeutic advice they got
00:39:26.880
was to go ahead and just sort of shut it down and say no i'm not angry it's not a big deal and all they
00:39:31.840
do is move into the world of illusion and they lie to themselves and that's where the ego lives in the
00:39:37.900
world of lies rather acknowledge i am in pain right now somebody either cut me off on the road or my wife
00:39:44.760
didn't do something i thought it was important or my co-worker didn't do this or my kids didn't do this
00:39:49.580
acknowledge the fact that this is a moment to be in pain but then here's the key brett you have to
00:39:55.400
ask yourself which part of me is really in pain is it my soul or is it my ego is it the real me that's
00:40:02.880
in pain or is it the part of me that craves respect that craves honor that craves appreciation
00:40:08.140
accolades and so on and so by having an honest conversation with yourself you'll find that the anger
00:40:15.540
simply dissipates again assuming that you've you're at this fork the ideal is you say is to
00:40:20.580
not get that yourself beforehand but it's sort of like if you're familiar with john sarno's method about
00:40:25.460
the back pain is by not avoiding it not ignoring it by fully owning the emotion it's processed completely
00:40:33.520
out of you and and you what's another method so there's that aspect um what's another thing so
00:40:38.560
the other is there's fascinating there's a part of the brain it's called the reticular activating
00:40:44.820
system and it acts as an antenna of sorts you ever have the experience of having a conversation with
00:40:50.640
somebody at a party and you realize there's a much more interesting conversation happening about 10
00:40:55.140
feet away and you sort of like mute the person in front of you and you like tune in and pick up the
00:41:00.440
other conversation and that's what the reticular activating system does it allows for us to hone in
00:41:07.240
on what we deem as important or what we deem is interesting in much the same way that if you're
00:41:13.200
thinking of getting a new suit or a watch or a car you suddenly see all of those suits and watches and
00:41:19.520
cars on the road not that they didn't exist before but the reticular activating system is honed in on it
00:41:25.540
so when you move through your day looking for the good looking for positive looking having the perspective
00:41:33.660
that things are good and picking up on what you're grateful for your antenna will sort of hone in on
00:41:41.800
that and you're the entire rhythm the cadence the mood will be completely different than if you're
00:41:49.640
always looking for the negative always looking for areas where you're feeling disrespected or taking
00:41:54.340
the vantage of or being you know manipulated if you hone in look for the good look for the positive
00:42:01.280
than others you begin to see it in other people you'll see it yourself and you'll see it in your
00:42:05.820
world and then when those you know conflicts happen they don't bother you as much that's right because
00:42:12.200
also you know as we talked about before negativity bias and confirmation bias i am going to find the
00:42:19.640
reality that i expect to find time and time and time again so if i expect that my spouse is a good
00:42:29.860
person who loves me she's got her own faults as i do but i already go into the situation knowing that
00:42:36.720
she is good she is um a lovable person who loves me we have a positive relationship whatever she does
00:42:44.260
will be filtered through that if i move through the day knowing the same thing about everyone else
00:42:48.640
it'll be filtered through that and once again whether we know the person don't know the person they
00:42:52.960
cut us off whether it is something that happens in a moment or something that we've been leading
00:43:00.040
up to if we don't take it personally we can't become upset but the minute we assume that somebody
00:43:06.460
else's behavior is a reflection of my self-worth i'm now fighting against my own nature i'm fighting
00:43:12.760
an uphill battle and i'm gonna have a hard time managing my anger but if i'm able to instantly come
00:43:18.920
into it with the proper perspective my ego is not engaged and i'm simply not angry well david this
00:43:25.500
has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work they can go to i
00:43:29.880
suppose uh my website which is dr david lieberman dr david lieberman.com and also on amazon i've got a
00:43:36.880
number of books and um i've got some workshops and some different programs but i just encourage me
00:43:43.820
and doesn't have to be really quite frankly my book on anger but if if you've got an anger issue
00:43:49.780
it is something that you will be surprised at even no matter what the root is even if it's childhood
00:43:56.260
even if it's rooted in something very very significant you don't have to walk around with
00:44:01.500
the anger anymore if you can free yourself from it you'll just live a different quality of life and
00:44:07.480
encourage anyone with any anger issue to do what they can to try to eradicate it because the entire
00:44:13.160
their entire emotional framework will be different and the relationships will be forever transformed
00:44:18.720
david lieberman thanks for your time it's been a pleasure brett you are amazing you've got a
00:44:23.900
fantastic show i wish you lots of good luck with everything thank you thank you my guest here is dr
00:44:29.380
david lieberman he's the author of the book never get angry again it's available amazon.com and bookstores
00:44:34.140
everywhere you can also find out more information about his work at his website dr david lieberman.com
00:44:38.580
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash anger where you can find links to resources where you can
00:44:43.040
delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast check out our
00:44:59.480
website art of manliness.com where you can see our podcast archives we had over 480 episodes there
00:45:04.020
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00:45:07.800
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00:45:22.960
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