This Past Weekend - E543 Dr. Ryan Martin

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

Dr. Ryan Martin (aka the Anger Professor) is a psychology professor, author, and the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. He’s an expert on anger, and the author of How to Deal with Angry People, and Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change. “The Anger Professor” Dr. Ryan Martin joins Theo to talk about why we get mad, how anger from childhood reappears later in life, what’s really going on when people get road rage, and how to deal with these feelings in a better way.  Dr. Ryan Martin: https://www.instagram.com/angerprofessor His book, “Why We Get Mad”: https://bit.ly/3NX53j0  ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit  https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ  Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/  or email them at [e-mail] ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [e-mail] Hit the Hotline: [phone] Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Cam https://www.instagram.com/cam__george/  Producer: Colin https://instagram.com/colin_reiner Producer: Ben https://www.instagram.com/benbeckermusic/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've got some spring tour dates that I got warm for you here right off the griddle All these tickets you can get through theovon.com slash T-o-u-r this is still the return of the rat tour and we will be coming to Toledo, Ohio Pittsburgh Eugene, Oregon Kennewick, Washington Seattle Victoria BC in the Canada Belton, Texas San Antonio Ola

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remaining for Champaign Illinois on November 15th and happy early holidays to everyone. Remember don't buy through a secondary website. Go through our website so you're not getting those heightened ticket prices and thank you so much for your support. And we do have new merch items back by popular demand, the Hitter Hunting Club collection. We've also got the Hitter Bait and Tackle tees. Those are new, baby. If you like to rod and reel them, baby,

get all these and more at thetheovonstore.com, the only place to get our merch. Today's guest is an expert in the world of anger. He's an author, he's a researcher. He's a Dean at the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. We covered a lot of ground

and he has some insightful thoughts, just talking about anger in general and then just things that spaces I've had trouble with anger in. I'm very grateful today to have spent time with Dr. Ryan Martin. And I will find a song I've been singing for so long. And I will find a song I've been singing for so long. And I will find a song I've been singing for so long. I think the thing I was really, I thought was cool, is just the variety of guests you've had on over the years. I mean, it was impressive.

It's a cool. Thanks, man. Yeah, it was a cool group. Yeah, I mean, there's been some real smart people, some real perverts that have come on here, some real creeps who've had all kinds. Yeah, well good. Well, I hope I fall in that first category. I hope I'm not one of the perverts of the creeps. TBD, brother.

We'll see where we end. Dr. Ryan Martin is here from, you're a professor at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Yep, right. That is right. And yeah, and we wanted to talk with you today about anger because that's the world you work in, right? Anger? Yep. Yep.

Okay. Exactly. Yeah, so I've been working at the university for the last 19 years. I've been teaching psychology for 18 of those years. I actually just started a year ago as the Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. But most of that time I've been researching, and actually even before that, I was researching anger

and teaching and writing about anger. And what made you get into it? Did you have like some things when you was a child that got you really angry? Yeah, some of it was that. Some of it, you know, there's this long story about my family and what was called the Martin temper, right? And referred to mostly the men in my family who

had, who were like quick to, quick to get mad. Oh yeah. Um, starting with my dad, um, but, but not ending with him, right? And so both my brothers, me, um, and you know, so something I was just, it's interesting because I think people assume, um, you know, anger is, um, uh, you, you know, that it was like

hostile or uncomfortable or that we didn't love each other. Like professional wrestling or something. Yes, exactly. But it wasn't that. It was like, it was a really loving home. Like I get along great with my siblings. We've got really great relationships. All of us have, have chilled out quite a bit since then.

But so it's just something I grew up with. And when I- When's that theme? Yeah, and when I went to college, decided I was interested in studying it more. And then I went to grad school and started working with a professor who studied it. His name's Dr. Eric Dallen, and he was researching anger.

And it just became something I was really passionate about and really interested in. So yeah, it seems like it was kind of a family affair then kind of and so obviously that's maybe that's just a sign out of the gate that it's something for you to to like reflect on and learn about you know. So when people like because I get angry all the time I'm pretty angry a lot even though maybe sometimes I don't seem like it but when when people say anger, like what do they mean? Like what, like I know it's so basic, but like what is anger?

Yep, yeah, and so I think what you just said is really, really important. Like, you know, you said I'm angry a lot of the time, but people don't realize it. And I think that's because something I think you realize that a lot of people don't is that anger is just the feeling, it's just the emotion. We can express that emotion in a gajillion different ways.

And some people express that anger by yelling and screaming. Some people express that anger by suppressing it. Some people, like me, they just do a relatively good job of controlling it, of using it to problem solve and so on. To answer your question, what is it? It's the emotional desire to lash out. And it's associated with having been wronged, having been treated unfairly, or having had your goals blocked.

Like, I want to do something, and something's interfering with me trying to get that thing done. So it's why road rage is so common. It's because by definition, you're on your way somewhere, stuff's getting in your way, and you start to get mad about it. Yeah. What are your triggers?

When you say you get angry all the time, what are some of the things that, if I can ask? Yeah, no, thanks for asking, Ryan. For me, I've been noticing recently, a lot of it is unrealistic expectations. So I have a lot of just generally unrealistic expectations that people should know how to do things the way I would like them to be done.

Got it. So that out of the gate has been a big one for me. Would you describe yourself as like kind of type A? Do you know what that means, like type A personality? Like blood or whatever? No, no, no. Like it's a personality type of being competitive, really aggressive.

A lot of successful people are type A. I'm type A, right? And even, it's like, I'm really competitive, I'm really aggressive, I'm really. Type A, let me see it right here, we have it. Our personality is defined by traits like ambition, drive, and competitiveness, which can lead to a high level of success.

But type A personalities can also be impatient, hostile, and even have trouble relaxing. Yeah, I wouldn't go to hostile. I don't get there, but I can get like, yeah, very impatient, have trouble relaxing. Dude, I'll notice I will be urinating, right? And in the middle of urinating, I will flush the toilet just because I don't want to, I want to get it off my checklist. Yeah. It's like, it's already done. You got a to-do list, right? Yeah.

Right. So it's still weird, because I'll then still urinate into the toilet. But it's like, I've already, it's like, but so impatience, yeah, is definitely a big one for me. You got to learn to time that just right, so that it's like, just as you're finishing, it's going down.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure that's how I started. But then after a while, it's like, just as you're finishing, it's going down. Yeah, I'm sure that's how I started, but then after a while it was like, well, why do I, you know, but I noticed that about myself. Like, that's a real thing that I noticed that's like, that for me was like, wow, I have a lot of impatience. Yeah, the reason I ask is because what you said

about like setting unrealistic expectations is that's really common for people who are kinda type A, right, who have these high, this competitive trait, is that they think, hey, the people should, I want to accomplish a lot, and me accomplishing a lot relies on other people to get their stuff done and taken care of. And if they don't, if they let me down,

that slows me down and I don't like it, right? And so it's, it's, um, this is something I actually deal with relatively often too. I get an idea in my head that idea is reliant on other people doing their job in a particular way. And I think to myself, they should be able to get that done by whatever day, and then they don't, you know, and it, and in fairness to them, it's because they've got other stuff they're doing.

Right. I mean, yeah, totally. Yeah. It makes sense that they don't, or that? And in fairness to them, it's because they've got other stuff they're doing, right? I mean. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it makes sense that they don't or that things don't go a certain way. It's just like in certain moments, it's tough for me, you know, it's tough for me to notice that.

It's like, that's not what I'm thinking. But that for sure is a big trigger for me, I notice, is unrealistic expectations. Yeah. So, and I'm sure I'm not the only person that deals with this type of thing. Yeah, so why do people get mad like or get angry in any given moment? Kind of like is it is there a real science behind it? Yep and this is the stuff I study. So okay so why people get angry in a particular moment is

usually a confluence of like three things right there. So there's a trigger, there's the thing that happened, right? And I encourage people to be really specific about what that thing is, right? So driving down the street, yellow light in front of you, you think you can make it, car in front of you stops though, right?

So now you've got to stop. So that's the trigger, right? Then there is your mood at the time of that trigger. So are you stressed? Are you fatigued? Are you already angry about something? Are you anxious? Whatever. Are you too warm or too cold, physically uncomfortable, hungry? All those things make it more likely that you're going to respond with anger in that moment. And then there's how you interpret that behavior. And this is where those expectations come in.

So do I interpret this person as, do I look at this and say, oh, this is going to ruin my day. Now I'm going to be late to work. I'm not going to get done what I need to get done. Do you interpret it as, oh, that idiot, why did they slow down? And so do you label them in that sort of negative way? You totally could have made that, man.

Yeah. Um, you know, or do you interpret it as, um, hey, it's going to slow me down two minutes, I'll still get to work. Everything's going to be okay. Right? That third one sounds like the healthiest one. Yup. But I'll even go, sometimes like this bastard left his house just

to fucking strain me here. Yup. He's just here to ruin my life. Like yeah, so now a part of my brain will even go there. Yeah. You know? We have these thoughts, there's like, there are a couple specific types of thoughts

that we have when we're faced with that kind of provocation. Okay. And one of them is what you just described, it's this inflammatory labeling, right? So I label this guy as a bastard, as an asshole, as a loser, whatever, right? Another one is that demandingness that we talked about. It's like, you know, God, why can't they just do the job

the way they're supposed to, whatever. You know, what we call like making these dictatorial demands. Like things need to be done the way I want them when I want them. There's what we call overgeneralizing. So it's, uh, I don't know if you ever say like, God, this always happens to me. You know, where you label things in that sort of super exaggerated way. Um, there's catastrophizing, which is when you blow things out of proportion, you say, this is going to ruin my day, my week, my month, my year, right?

This is the, my career is over now, right? This ruins everything. Christmas is done. Yep, exactly. Right. Yep. And then there's, the last one is what we call misattributing causation, but it's where you just

blame the wrong people for things. You know, you say, or you decide they did it on purpose, right? What you were saying before about like, this guy's just doing this to fuck with me. Right? That's you're, you're making assumptions about, now, and I know you're not really making those assumptions, but you're making assumptions about why they did a thing. Right.

Yeah. Um, and, and blown it out. So all those things come together into like this recipe for why you get mad in a particular moment. And then, um, even separate from that is what we do when we're mad, right? And so for me, every now and then, I'll just have a moment where I'll yell, not at someone,

but just at the heavens. I might sometimes pound my fist on the table or something like that when I'm really mad. A lot of times, though, I'll simmer inside a little bit. I'll probably pound my fist on the table or something like that when I'm really mad. A lot of times though, I'll sort of simmer inside a little bit. I'll get frustrated. I'll sort of take a... We do this thing in my office. We've done it for a long time where when we're feeling frustrated, we'll say, okay, let's

start with an unproductive response, meaning let's just take a minute to vent for a second about how we hate this, right? We'll take like two minutes and then we'll stop and we'll say, okay, now let's problem solve. What do we need to do, right? How do we work through this? Right, let some of the pressure off. Yep, yeah, exactly. When it comes to anger, are there different types,

so like we kind of have looked at like a situation and triggers and then you end up angry. Right? Right? Are there different types of anger? Like are there? Yeah, I mean, I think anger can come from a lot of different places

and people can tend to express it in lots of different ways. I tend to think of anger as existing on like a continuum. Meaning, you know, on one end you've got mild frustration. Like, Hey, I'm leaving the house. Can't find my keys. Right. Right.

It's irritating. I misplaced something. It's a bummer. Yeah. My shoes don't fit that good. Right. Stuff like that. And then there's more intense frustration that comes from like, Hey, I'm now

I'm really starting to run late. That this dude that got in my way on the road or whatever right more intense all the way up to like extreme anger of I You know when you see a Politician do something that you just hate or when when you know your your spouse treats you badly or when your parents treat you badly Whatever a friend takes advantage of you. Like the real extreme, cruel, terrible things, right? And it exists, and so it's everything from like mild frustration to just being livid with rage.

That whole spectrum of anger. So there's just kind of a spectrum of anger. It's like in small amounts, there's larger, there's things that are really intense. I guess in my next thought, like, because anger gives me a sense sometimes, it's like an illusionary sense that I have some control over what's going on.

Yeah. But at the same time, I feel out of control. Right. Because anger sometimes makes me wanna take an action. So that makes me feel like I'm in control. But then I'll get so sometimes just blinded by being angry that it's like I know I'm out of control. Yeah, this is one of the things that,

so I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but have you ever been so angry that you started to cry? Is that something you can think of? Yeah, not as an adult, but as a child. Yeah, okay, interesting. I've been sad, but not anger that I, but not anger. That I've cried. So there are some people, and I discovered this on social media, like there are a lot of people

who sometimes when they get really angry, they'll start to cry. Like that's their sort of go-to expression. And the interesting thing is the people I've talked to hate this about themselves. They will tell me, I can't stand it. It drives me crazy because I'm really mad. And instead of like, I just start, I start to cry.

And I think a big part of what's going on there is a pretty intense feeling of helplessness. It's like, not only am I being treated badly, not only am I being treated unfairly and having my goals blocked, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm being treated unfairly and having my goals blocked, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm just stuck. Um, and that hurts, you know? And it doesn't feel good.

It feels scary. And so I think for a lot of people, that hopelessness and helplessness lands them in a place where they just start to tear up. Like it sort of dovetails with sadness in this very real way. Whereas for people like me, when I'm feeling particularly sort of helpless or hopeless and angry, I tend to focus on,

okay, so where are the places where I can make a difference? Where are the places where I can take a little bit of power back, right? And try and solve this problem. Can I solve the whole big problem? Maybe not, but maybe I can make a little bit of power back, right? And try and solve this problem. Can I solve the whole big problem? Maybe not, but maybe I can make a dent, you know, and do what I can do, and then, and that at least gives me some power to let things go.

Yeah, because that's the biggest thing, is that anger feels like it has to be let go. Mm-hmm. That's the thing about anger, like other feelings, like, you know, anger, it feels like you have to, you know, like happy. I've never been so happy. I then like went and dressed up like a clown and ran out into the street, you know?

But I've been so angry that I'll kick a clown if it comes near me, you know? So, you know, but you know, there's, anger's the one that feels like it has to get out of your body, you know? It's got anger's the one that feels like it has to get out of your body. Yeah. You know, it's got that gremlin in it, it just literally feels like it needs to leave you somehow.

Well, it's because it, that's a really interesting thought. And I think it's because, I think you're right, anger tends to linger in ways that other emotions don't necessarily linger. Yeah, dude, in loiterers. Yeah, and it's interesting because joy or happiness or excitement, that tends to dissipate relatively quickly, more quickly than I think people realize, right?

Those feelings don't last. Yeah, well the half-life on joy, it's not very long probably. Right. But anger, you can still, like you'll go get in your car, you'll drive somewhere, you'll start chewing the bottom. I didn't even know somehow. I started chewing on my own teeth one time I was like, what is even you know, sometimes you can get so angry that you turn you turn into a chew toy for yourself Almost yeah, you know, like I've just gotten so agitated

Yeah, what happens to anger if you if we don't process it and then how can process it? Like, what's a legitimate way to process it that's realistic? Can we start with some of the illegitimate ways? OK, yeah. Yeah. And I say that because it connects to something you just said, which is wanting, because people want it out of their body, right? And it feels like, and so we've been literally

for thousands of years, people have been talking about catharsis as a way of ridding our body of anger and thinking of ourselves almost like pressure cookers. Like if we don't open up the valve and release this anger, we'll blow up, right? And so that's where a lot of these approaches, like if you've ever heard of a rage room or like people punching a punching bag,

or hitting the gym, or things like that, that's where those approaches come from. Is this idea that we gotta let that out. And now here's the thing, and people are gonna throw rocks when I say this, but all of the research that we have on catharsis tells us it doesn't work. It doesn't.

Like rage, actions of getting it out physically? Yep, that it doesn't work. It doesn't- Like rage actions of getting it out physically? Yep, that it doesn't work. It feels good at the time. And so people think, well, because it feels good, it must be good for me, it must help. But what we find is two things. First, over time, the people who use that as their mechanism stay angry and get angrier over time.

We also find that right after, like moments after, they did this study, this is like 50 years old, right? So we've known for a long time. They did this study where they provoked people in the lab, then they took half of them and they put them on a bicycle and said, just ride the bike as fast as you can, right? Exercise. The other half had to do this really ridiculous task where they were like threading coins with a needle or something like that, something boring and tedious.

And then afterwards they assessed to see how angry and aggressive they were. And the people who worked it out on the bike were way more aggressive than the people who, you know, did the other task. Because that exercise, it doesn't do it. It keeps the angry thoughts at the surface. It keeps the intensity going, keeps your blood pressure going.

What you need to do when you're angry is to actually find ways to calm down and relax. You need to take deep breaths, stuff like that. Rage rooms don't do that. Hitting a punching bag doesn't do that. Wow, and I guess you feel like it does because again, anger is that, it's that, I mean, it almost makes you act.

It's like, you know, people do things in a fit of anger, in a fit of rage. It's like, it's like this energy that's, it's almost like it's always leaving a diving board, you know? So to get that to that even, it almost feels like inertia or whatever. So to get it to stop, I think is, you know,

some of this kind of harrowing, I feel like. Right. Raidrooms invite people to engage with their anger, but do they actually work? Yeah. This is a study that came out. I can't see who wrote it. Marcus Biddle. I don't know Marcus.

Rage rooms. They just had one for women that they opened up. I saw this. Did you? Yeah. You bring that up? Rage rooms for women? Yeah.

I think it's, is it a rage room or do they take them out into the woods? If they're taking them into the woods, I'm not getting involved with it. You know what I'm saying? Like, look. That's it. I'll let'll let look I'll let as many ladies they want just go ham inside of a bed bath and bodywork or whatever with a

shovel yeah I'll join them but but if we I don't think we need to like bring anybody into the woods. Yeah that's probably not a great. Can you see what's going on here though? I think there's like a New York Times article or something. This was an article about rage, women rage, getting it out. Yep. Well, cause sometimes my rage, it will almost feels like it blinds me. Right.

You know, it's like, it is so overcoming. Cause if you don't, so if somebody doesn't process... I mean, I think like probably truly the worst thing people can do is that cathartic expression is like breaking stuff, exercising. Those are probably the bad ways. Right, and I guess there's a, it just feels like that because physically

you're doing something. Like yeah, obviously I'm taking an action. This is an actual physical action, then it feels like, oh, that should be helpful. And it is what your body wants to do, right? Because, I mean, if we define anger as the emotional desire to lash out, well, then your body wants to lash out. And so if you give it that, you know, it's going to feel good. That doesn't, again, that doesn't make it good for you. We could talk about this with other, I mean, you know, I guess some other

like bad ways to deal with your anger, but these are obvious to people, is like, doing drugs, right? Overeating, just calling a friend and screaming at them. Those things are bad for you, they're mean. Do they make you feel better? Sometimes in the moment they do for people, right? But that doesn't make it good for them. But sometimes I think it feels like

doing one of those things is healthier than doing something physically dangerous. Yes, yep, I think so. I think you're right. Although, I mean, long term, those things can be physically dangerous too, for sure. 100%. But yeah.

Right, yeah, in the moment. Yep. Yeah. And that's the worry actually is that, so what we find is that people who use, like if their approach to dealing with anger is, I'm gonna go punch this pillow, or I'm gonna go punch this punching bag,

or I'm gonna tear phone books in half or whatever, what we find is that becomes, it's like, I used to have a soccer coach who would say, practice makes permanent, right? And it's like the way you practice something is how you'll do things in life. And if you practice your anger that way, well then someday when you're mad,

you're not gonna control yourself and you're gonna hit someone, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna punch someone, you're gonna go after them. And so it ends up having those kinds of long-term, harmful consequences. you're going to punch someone, you're going to go after them. And so it ends up having those kinds of long-term harmful consequences. Damn, dude.

God, I just. People don't like to hear this, by the way. When I talk about this, and just a couple weeks ago, I talk about this on Instagram. And wow, I mean, new research comes out, 150-plus studies. It's an article by a guy named Dr. Brad Bushman, who's a huge monster anger researcher and aggression researcher in the field.

And he does this study and he looks at 154 studies over time approximately, and finds that across all these studies, what does work is when you find ways to relax, to decrease arousal in the moment, right? Grounding, deep breaths, all that stuff. What doesn't work is when you, um, uh, when you, you raise arousal, right? You break stuff. Of course I share this on Instagram.

Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear that. Yeah. Well, I think arousal is a great term too to use because that's what's going on. Right. You're at a heightened state of arousal. Right. And it feels like dangerous arousal.

Right. But even then I could see maybe if you're going to work out or get it out, that way you're keeping the arousal at a high level. Right. Because you're keeping like at least something inside of you aroused. Every now and then someone reaches out to me

and asks if I'll... Open a rage room? No, if I'll support theirs. Like if I'll go and like do promote their rage room and I have to tell them no. Like you obviously haven't paid attention to what I have to say. These places took abandoned warehouses and vacant offices and turned them into businesses made for organized chaos. Some are also marketed as an alternative to anger management, yeah. The one in my town has, makes itself available for gender reveals. Oh really?

Which I don't know what that looks like. I could see that maybe. I'm trying to think if you beat a cushion hard enough, like a couple twins pop out of it or something. I don't know. That's wild. Because they fill up a printer with either blue or pink toner. Oh, there you go.

You trash it till it spills all over. Yeah, I don't know if that would be, I wonder if the rage room, a lot of them I've seen, well, a lot of rooms, I noticed this happened too, there was a business like De-Evolution where a lot of escape rooms went under. Okay. And then they turned into rage rooms.

Oh, interesting. And then they just went out of business completely and just turned into one-bedroom apartments that have like a trap door on them or whatever. Um, dude, I remember we, there used to be a place in LA, downtown, they'd have a couple, it was like a Vietnamese establishment, and you would put on like a dog bite suit and these guys would literally beat the smack out of you for like 80 bucks for 15 or 20 minutes. Wow. My brother and I used to play that game when we were kids actually. We really would. We would play this game where we would pile up a bunch of like, we had, we were a sports family, right? So we had like all sorts of gear. We'd pile all this gear in the middle of

the room and we'd draft items. Like we'd each take a thing and then you'd put it on. And then we had like all sorts of gear. We'd pile all this gear in the middle of the room and we'd draft items. Like we'd each take a thing and then you'd put it on and then we had these big plastic tinker toys and we just beat the crap out of each other. I love that. Yeah, so it was great. Yeah. He's a lot older than me though, so I usually lost. Well it sounds like he was very, it seems very unfair that he would do that.

Yeah. If he was a lot older, like how old, like 12 years older? Just five. Oh, that's kind of fair. Even that's getting a little outside of the range of able to beat my brother age. Yeah, agreed. You should tell him that.

We'll let him know. Yeah, here's one right here, the rage room. There we go. Oh, somebody hit a... Maybe they did hit an ink toner, a toner cartridge. Oh, there's something that had a dangerous gas in it. They said nerve gas. Yup, that's something that had a dangerous gas in it. They said nerve gas. Yup, that's what you do.

Look. Gotta be careful. Yeah, you gotta be careful. Yeah, rate, I guess it's, I don't know if I've ever even been to one. I don't know if it was something that really excited me. So what would be healthy ways to process anger? I mean, some of them seem kind of obvious.

They don't seem that much fun. Right. Yeah, no, that's true. I think there's two them seem kind of obvious. They don't seem that much fun. Right. Yeah, no, that's true. You know, I think there's two ways of thinking about this. Like, the first way is to think about, okay, when I am angry, what do I do to deal with that anger, right? And that's where that study I was just telling you about, 154 articles that essentially find,

you got to find ways to deescalate, right? So what are those different mechanisms? And there are different ones for different people, but it's, it's the deep breathing, it's mindful walking. Um, it is, you go for a walk and you just think about your thoughts and try and relax, you think about nature, you think about whatever's going on. Cool study just came out, by the way, that found that, um, college students who go for walks, um, versus college students who go for walks and birdwatch that the bird

watching is actually better for their mental health than just going for walks. Really? And, and the kind of peeping Tom and on nature, I feel. I mean, it's true. Yeah. No, you're right. It's, it's voyeuristic. It's like, look, this bird's just trying to live its life.

I know here I am. Yeah. Look at this bird's just trying to live its life. I know, think about that. Here I am. Look at this bird just feeding his children. You're sitting there just googling in the windows. It's kind of crazy. Get out of that bird's business. But I think what's happening is that it forces people to get out of their head.

And so it doesn't have to be birds if you want to look at something else. If you feel more comfortable leaving those birds be. You can look at, you can just be like, I'm gonna identify leaves. Okay. Like, yeah, I'm just gonna absorb something out here. Yeah. And it's because then you're, it gets you out of your head to look at the thing and focus on the thing. And so, like, those kinds of de-escalation approaches are some of the best things to do. The truth is though, there's infinite things

you can do with your anger. And so sometimes you can channel it into problem solving. You can say, I'm gonna, because ultimately what anger gives you is energy, right? I mean, it gives you energy to confront the injustice. And so if you experience something that is truly unfair and you wanna do something about it, well, there's lots of things you can do, right? You can protest, you can write letters to the editor,

you can donate money, you can join all these causes to try and solve those problems. That's a really good, healthy way to deal with your anger. You can hire one of those planes to write something in the sky. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Stop smoking, love mom, it says on it.

Yeah, nice. I know, my mom wanted me to stop. Is that how she got you to stop? She runs you a plane? Nice. We did one year. Pretty sweet of her, kinda crazy. That's really kind, yeah.

But yeah, so you can put your anger into something. Yep. Is that legit, is that a real thing you can do? Like put that in, well I guess you already are activated. Mm-hmm, yeah, you know, this is the example I use. I came home, so when my kids were young, you know, when your kids are young, like the only thing in the world you want

is a little bit of time to yourself, right, at the house. And so I came home from work one day, and I think I knew in my head I had like 20 minutes before everybody else got home that I was just alone, right? And I thought, I'm just, I'm gonna live my best life for 20 minutes, you know? And then I checked the mail, and there was like a flyer in there.

Oh, damn, that's your best life. I feel you, dude. Guys have the worst best lives. It's like, I'm gonna live it off, dude. And I'll just eat like, I'll just like find an old can of peaches or something and open them and just try one. Just like a pudding cup. And like, here we go. And then your wife comes in and you're like,

oh, she's like, this is so sad. Yeah, this is, for 20 minutes I had this pudding cup. Yeah, but I'm gonna check this mail while everybody's just letting me be. I feel you, bro. Exactly. God, we're idiots. So I checked the mail and there was like a flyer in there

for some political candidate who was just saying like nasty stuff about this. I got so mad. So I spent that 20 minutes. I sent an email to the guy I didn't like saying, that was BS, what's wrong with you? I sent another email to the guy I did like and said, like, hey, thanks.

And then I donated money to the guy I was supporting. And so by the time I was done, family's home, you know? Right. And, but like, that's what, like, I was exhausted when I came home, but anger gave me the energy to do something. Like, now did I solve all the world's problems? No, but, but like I did something and it felt better afterwards to do that. Right.

And something that's more productive than just like, yeah, um, yeah, but like I did something and it felt better afterwards to do that. Right. And something that's more productive than just like, yeah, just like getting some spray paint and just tagging up a, yeah, writing profanity on a wall or doing, I'm trying to think of, or anything, anything that could be negative. Right. So yeah, because it was the male that made you negative. So then you're like, what am I going to do with it now? But those are like safe ways. Nobody's going to get hurt. Right, exactly. Yep. Is pornography causing a problem in your life? Do you find yourself watching porno

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what is it a warning us of? Yeah, I mean, it's one of it. So this is true of all emotions that when we feel them, it's one of our brain's ways of like providing us information, right? So when you're scared, that's one of your brain's ways of saying, hey, there's a threat, right? There's danger around. When you're sad, it means you've lost something,

and it's your brain's way of telling you that. Anger is one of your brain's ways of telling you that someone's treating you badly, that you've experienced this injustice and that you gotta do something about it. And then when your fight or flight system kicks in, that's your brain's way of saying, like giving you the energy to deal with that.

And so one of the best ways to handle anger is to channel that energy into solving whatever that problem is, right? Something positive. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like, but if you, some of it could go, cause what if you tell someone like, yeah, you should get into quilting

or doing something that's progressive, you know? And then they just quilt like a, you, a advertisement for saw to or whatever because that's how angry they are You know like that would be my biggest hit but I guess that would be like at least a nice piece of art Then they could sell. Yeah So yeah, I guess that does kind of make sense I mean chant I mean, so I love the the saw to quilt idea. Makes me wonder if that exists. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

But we should, but I mean, channeling your anger into art is a thing people do, right? I mean, that's a good, healthy way. I mean, poetry, other forms of writing, art. It's so hard, though. Oh, yeah. It's so hard when I close my car door, It's so hard though. Oh yeah.

It's so hard when I close my car door and I'm like to then want to draw something. Right. Unless I just write how I feel and just show it. But it's so hard, I guess that's the thing. It's like, how do you get over that? How do you get over, convert one moment into another so that you can,

cause that's really the key, huh? Yep. Well, and I think this is like what it takes to be, and ultimately like what I want and why I'm on social media and why I write things is because I want people to have sort of a healthier relationship with their emotions. And sometimes what that takes is like a de-escalation in the moment so that you

can still hang on to the, at least the thoughts of anger in a way that is healthy, that allows you to channel them into something positive, right? Cause the truth is like, even those emails that I've started out, I couldn't write those if I was in such a fit of rage that I wasn't making any sense. Right? You've got to come down a little bit. Yeah, even to get correct punctuation, you have to be almost like at a four.

Right. You've got a nine, it's all caps. Yep. It is dangerous emojis that you can get off, you have a VPN. This is one of the things that I think actually has made electronic communication kind of dangerous for people.

I used to have a professor when I was in college who said, hey, when you get an exam back, I don't want you to come talk to me about it for 24 hours. So I just want you to take some time to think about it, relax, you're emoting too strongly in that first 24 hours, take some time. But now, and that was easier to do back then because you weren't gonna see him for a couple days anyways, you didn't have access to him the

way you do now via email or whatever. Now, I think when people get mad, it's so easy to fire off a quick response, to fire off an email, to fire off a tweet or a text or whatever, that people can do things when they're feeling most enraged or when they're feeling most enraged or when they're feeling most upset. Yeah, yeah, and then it's really made it almost tougher

in person because you don't have, like when you're talking to somebody, you can't just like set them down for two or three minutes while you think about your answer and pee again or whatever you do. Yeah. Or get you a little dessert or something. But yeah, it almost gets like,

we want to communicate less in person in a way because online communication is kind of easier. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I think it is for a couple of reasons. One is you do, it is in some good ways, right? You have more time to think about what you wanna say and that's probably a good thing. But it's also easier in some good ways, right? You have more time to think about what you want to say, and that's probably a good thing. But it's also easier in some bad ways

in that you don't really, like right now you and I are talking to each other and everything I'm seeing, I can see how you're responding to it in your face, right? But if you and I were communicating over text, I have no idea how what I'm saying is impacting you. And so it's easier for me, it might be easier in that context

to say something cruel or hurtful or... Hopefully even. Yeah, you know, because I'm not confronted with what it did to you when you got the message. So I wonder what that does to us as people over time, right? Because it used to be, like if you wanted to, well, I guess you could write a letter, but it used to be probably more often you had to do face to face. More often. And so you had to get the real reactions, you had to get the real feelings of what was

going on. Whereas if you can just message it, it's still scary, but it's not, it doesn't, it must affect us differently emotionally over time. I wonder if that's valuable or not. Is this making any sense? Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think, I mean, I think what happens is a couple of things.

One, it's, it's, we get out of practice, right? I mean, you get out of practice interacting with people and it becomes really easy to forget how what you're saying is impacting them in a very real and meaningful way and how you may have hurt their feelings or whatever. Yeah. What about some other options for like

the healthy process in a vangor? Well, so yeah, that's one of the things we didn't get to is you can think about, like what we've been talking about is how you handle your anger once you're feeling it. What we haven't get to, is you can think about, what we've been talking about is how you handle your anger once you're feeling it. What we haven't talked about yet is how you can create a life where you're managing it better in advance. Meaning-

Yeah, that's what I need. Yeah, so if you think about that model I described before, you've got your trigger, you've got your mood at the time of the described before, you've got your trigger, you've got your mood at the time of the trigger, and you've got your interpretation. Well, you can intervene in any of those places. So you can, we don't have control

of every trigger we experience, but there are some we invite into our lives, either on purpose or on accident. Tiffany or whoever you're thinking about or anybody specific, it could be. Sure, I mean mean even things like, the example I always use is like, so I used to love scary movies.

When I was growing up I loved them. At a certain point I realized, you know what, these are having a pretty negative effect on me, right? I'm staying up too late afterwards, I'm getting scared, whatever. So I started watching them less often, right? We can do that with provocations. We can say, I'm not gonna watch the news as often as I used to.

I'm not going to watch sports as often as I used to, because it's getting to me in ways that aren't good for me. Yeah. Um, we can even say, you know, I'm going to change my commute up so that I don't find myself in traffic as often as I, I once did, I don't know if that's possible in Nashville, but right. But even if it's longer, it's like, I'm still going to change it up. So I'm just not,

because the traffic, that's a good point. Because sometimes though, we will recognize the things that agitate us and still continue to do them. What is that called? Yeah. I don't know if that has a name actually, but, um, but you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no. I mean, when people continue to sort of walk into those situations that leave them feeling frustrated. Yeah, it's like you want the edge taste, like you know it's going to bother you, so then you know you're going to be able to be angry.

Your anger almost becomes an addiction in a way. And the worst thing that can happen there sometimes is sometimes we so anticipate that a situation is going to go poorly that we actually bring it out of that situation. Like, we approach, you know, we're going to Thanksgiving dinner and we know our uncle is gonna be racist or whatever. And so we go there and we end up sort of, first of all, we're hostile to them in advance

in a way that it actually brings out their hostility back to us. And then also we sort of unintentionally like goat them into things. Yeah. And we bring it out. Like we'll even pass the black beans to them and then lose it on them for no reason or something, you know? Right. Like, and then it's just like we're just waiting in our head, you know? Or we'll ask for the brown rice and they'll look at it a certain way and they just, they can't handle it.

Yeah, it's like, and then it's almost like, yeah, it's like, a lot of times you set things up, you know how they're gonna be. God, that's such an instance, man. What do you do in that instance? Because that's a huge one, I think. Well, I think it's about what I like to call proactive emotion management, right?

So it's saying, okay, I'm anticipating that this situation is going to go badly. What are some things that I can do now to prevent it from going the way I think it could go? And so that might be, hey, let's give people the benefit of the doubt, right? That might be going into the situation and saying, you know, let's not assume that they're gonna do

and say the worst thing. Let's go into that situation. Maybe I minimize my contact with them. Yeah, it's Thanksgiving, but I don't have to be in the same room with this person the entire night. And I can minimize how often I talk to them. Maybe it's you and your partner, who you're at the event with.

You have like a safe word, right? When you're getting frustrated, that some signal that you can do to send them a message saying like, hey, get me out of this, right? I mean, there's all these that you can do to send them a message saying, hey, get me out of this. I mean, there's all these things we can do. It's just we have to be thoughtful about it in advance. And I think a lot of times we're not thoughtful about it.

Yeah, I'll struggle. I know sometimes if I know, sometimes I can cut myself off and I'll be like, hey, go introduce yourself in the beginning instead of keeping an air where it's like, you have something in your head. Because I'm in recovery, and so I'll have a lot of things, like I'll build a world in my head that's not really going on in the world around me.

And so, sometimes some of those things I can cut off, like, hey, go say, hey, how's things going? That way you've already created the first space of communication, it's been cool, everything's good. Then if they do say something, sometimes, if you're expecting somebody to say a certain thing, it doesn't really land on you the same way.

A lot of times for me it is, I'll keep myself away from people if I know I'm agitated. So that's one of the things I think you said of just being able to prepare a little bit. But then it's like sometimes it's like that isolation builds on my own agitation because I'm always just kind of in my own world processing stuff. Yeah, no, that's really interesting that like,

you know, we often do sort of create this world that may or may not be realistic. And we assume, you know, people are gonna be a certain way, they're gonna do a certain thing, or they're thinking. We do a lot of mind reading, and we assume people think the way we think they think. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, and what you just said about going up

and introducing yourself or saying hi or whatever, that's really interesting because what it does is it gives you the opportunity to realize that what you're thinking isn't accurate. Yeah, it's funny you say that because one thing we have learned a lot in recovery is just like not believing our brain. That our perception of things is off.

Yep. You know? I mean, that's really important and it's like you want to trust yourself, but you also have to leave some room to say, you know what, hey, my understanding of the situation could be wrong. And when I meet people, you know what? Hey, my understanding of the situation could be wrong. And when I meet people, I've gotta let them,

I mean, yeah, I can go in and I can be cautious, right? That's one thing, but I shouldn't assume that my understanding of them is 1000% accurate. Yeah. Yeah, and the more I isolate and stuff, the more that bad perception builds. That's what's fascinating to me. It's like it grows its own muscles.

Yeah. And that is, I think if there's a thing that I find sort of most dangerous or worrisome about modern day America or the world is the degree to which we are isolating ourselves, especially from people that we might disagree with. And the degree to which we're not having real conversations with people, where we can get an opportunity to learn how they think. We make assumptions about what other people are doing

and saying, and then we react to those assumptions more than we react to what's actually happening. Yeah, it is interesting how much we've become kind of puppetable by like, I don't know if I just want to say mainstream media, but by bigger stories maybe that we didn't write ourselves kind of. Yeah. Well, and when you think what like the social media algorithms do and how we end up seeing the content that we agree with more regularly, we interact with people who think like us more regularly, right?

We just are seeing that we're connected, I put that sort of in quotes, but connected to more people than ever before, but not really because one, we're only seeing a very specific sliver of their lives and we're not having this, we're not necessarily engaging with people who are different from us very regularly. I mean, do you guys notice that we're any angrier now than we were in the past? Yeah, this is, I wish we could go back in time and like have some sort of anger thermometer, right? That could measure anger over time

because this is the question that I think everybody wants to know the answer to is, are we angrier now than we used to be? And in so many ways, it sure seems like we are, right? Because we see tons of examples of it. We see so much rage. I think the parts that we don't have answers to is, one, is a lot of that rage just more visible now

than it used to be, right? Are we seeing it more now because of social media, right? So we get more stuff captured on video than we ever did. And that might be what's happening, that those things were happening before. We just didn't know. It could also be, you know, that particular expression styles have become normalized, right?

So yelling, screaming, those things are, like, hostility, those things are becoming more common. It's a good point, huh? Yeah, and so maybe that anger was there, but those outward expressions are much more common now. I think there is some reason to think we're angrier now than we used to be. I mean, I think like we're,

social, the stuff we just were saying about social media is definitely bringing out, I think more. With the illusion, I think there used to be more of, I think like tradition we had, it felt like there was more of a sense of togetherness maybe. I wonder if those things left people feeling more complete or safer in their country. I do start to notice that there starts to feel a little bit of like what could happen in 15 years, as opposed to that was never a thought when I was a kid.

It was always like, I feel like we're gonna be okay here. So I wonder if some of that just subconsciously starts to boil inside of you. I absolutely think so. I mean, I think one of the things we're dealing with, and I think a lot of this is post-pandemic, but not just post-pandemic, is anger dovetails pretty closely with anxiety, right?

That these two emotions are pretty similar. They actually feel pretty similar physiologically. So there's a lot of overlap there. And I think it's fair to say that Americans are, and probably worldwide, people are more anxious now about the future than they have been for a very long time. Right? OK, yeah. And that anxiety, it comes from a place of uncertainty about safety and financial security and all these things. Even having jobs. I mean, as they say, AI is going to, every day here,

AI is going to take your job. And the guy's like, I'm unemployed. And they're like, it'll take that job. You're like, Jesus, I can't even be unemployed anymore. But I think there is a little bit of fear. Even somebody who's just sitting on their couch watching, eating Fritos and just watching TV shows all day, that even that job's gonna be taken.

And be like, well, I'm gonna lose this. Right, yeah. I mean, I think that there is this, all of this uncertainty is leading to people, because I think in some ways, part of what happens is it leads to some competitiveness. It leads to like, hey, look, the pie is getting smaller that we all share, and I'm worried

that I'm not gonna have enough, right? And I'm not gonna be able to make ends meet. And all of that leads to frustration with your fellow humans. Oh yeah, because your perspective is suddenly, I've got to take care of myself instead of like, we have to take care of each other. Exactly.

And that gets a little creepy. Exactly. What do we do with pervasive anger at society and ideology situation out of control? I think that's another thing that happened during the pandemic is that I think that's another thing that happened during the pandemic, is that I think a lot of people in the United States and probably globally really started to feel like they couldn't trust each other.

And I think that happened in lots of ways, right? It was sort of a sense of, hey, people aren't going to, they're more interested in themselves than they are in taking care of each other, right? They won't do X, Y, people aren't going to, they're more interested in themselves than they are in taking care of each other, right? They won't, you know, do X, Y, or Z. They won't wear masks. They won't open things up. They're not worried about my finances. They're not, you know, they're only worried about their own thing.

And I think that scared people and led to a lot of animosity amongst people. When I think also people didn't know if their government cared anymore, which was even like a, which was probably similar in the sense that we're like, can I trust my government? Can I trust like, you know, you see stories like the opioid epidemic, and you're like the fact that the family didn't even go to jail or face any time.

And the amount of pain that that caused so many families, not to mention deaths. But I think things like that, it makes you start to question. So if you don't even think, if you can, I mean, you can always kind of question your government. I think that that's safe in question society

and what's going on. It's good to think curiously, but I feel like that was probably another thing that happened is people were like, I don't know. Every commercial's about drugs. Like, it's just like, who can I, where can I get valid information and who can I trust? And it probably became scary.

You're like, I have to start with myself. trust and it probably became scary. I have to start with myself. Yep. And I think that sort of uncertainty leads to feelings of frustration. And I think part of what happened too is that for some people they felt like, well, the answers here are obvious.

And so why don't other people see how obvious these answers are? And I don't know that the answers were necessarily obvious, but I think that people felt like, why can't people just do whatever and then we can get through this? Right. And when other people- You mean during COVID, you mean? Yeah, during COVID and then, yeah.

Yeah, I think people had just also just real different views of it. It was like in California, things were very locked down and then here, things were more open. Yep. And it was like, what's the best way to do this? It was hard to learn. Even, I mean, I live in Green Bay and we've got, there's the Green Bay public schools and there's other public school districts

that are connected, but they're all doing different things. And so there's a sense of, well, here we're doing this, five miles away they're doing something different. Why? You know, what's going on? And so then there's an anger and frustration

amongst the people who live in those communities. And then people saying, well, I'm gonna take my kids and send them to that school because they're doing this or I'm gonna, you know. And so all of these things started to bubble up and lead to frustration. Yeah, a lot of frustration. Yeah. And a really, I know how to do it.

People wanted to, yeah, the second you don't trust you or believe that your society that's built kind of has a, is looking out for you, or you can trust it, then it really, you gotta go back to yourself. Well, and then, I mean, imagine if we're not talking about society, we're just talking about a family, right? And you, as like a kid in a family, realize, wow, the other people in this family

aren't necessarily gonna do the things that are best for me. Right. It becomes real hard to continue to feel good about that and over time, right? People have to earn that trust back. And I think we're right now in a phase where people don't feel like anyone's

earning that trust back. They're just like, we still don't trust each other. They don't have my best interests in mind. They don't care about the same things as me. What am I gonna do? How are we gonna get through this? And I don't think anybody's got any answers to that. Yeah, yeah, I wonder if it's one of those things

that just takes time or, I mean, that's that. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder if it's one of those things that just takes time or... Right. I mean, that's always the thing. Yeah. I think you're right. I mean, I think time is going to be part of it. I hope that there are things we can rally around. Humor is usually a good one. Yeah, absolutely.

I know they're trying to put out like... I mean, you would say that. You're a comedian. That's probably true. I would hope to say it, huh? Yeah. trying to put out like I mean you would say that you're a comedian. That's probably true I would hope to say it on yeah, they just put out they just had a new show tires on Netflix, which is really crazy I've seen an ad for it. I haven't watched it yet. It's like different than a lot of stuff They put on there. It's just like it seems like it's from like totally like the 80s or something, you know, it's just kind of like Just humor without like judging that every person in the in the show has to have certain like,

but like, you're just letting people be they could be characters, like you could have a character you like, oh, that guy's hilarious, but I don't agree with them. Whereas to be like, oh, that guy, I'm not even to see if he is hilarious because I don't agree with the character right and it's like dude It's okay, you know so like just things being more possible or just open their brains to like okay a character Could believe differently than I do right yep, right because I think for a while It's been like I don't even want my characters to have any different views than I do. That's kind of crazy. Yeah.

When you think about that. Yeah, I mean there is. Like I'm drowning, but I only want a superhero to show up if he feels exactly the same way I do. Yeah. When it's tough, I mean like, you know, I think one of the tricky things we've had to deal with is that there are, that people can rally around.

There are opinions that people can disagree with and in an understandable, reasonable way, reasonable disagreements. But then so often, those disagreements are about real scary stuff. It's not me disagreeing about like, hey is cats a good movie? I don't know why I picked cats.

I think it's because my son loved the movie Cats. Oh he did? I haven't seen it, I don't think. Okay, I'm not gonna recommend it. Okay. Yeah, that's my advice to you. If you walk away with one thing from this episode is that you probably shouldn't see cats.

Fair. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, so it's one thing to disagree about that, right? Totally different if we're talking about things that like really do have real consequences for people. Oh, for sure.

Right? You know, like there's, there are some opinions that we can just agree to disagree. And then there's other stuff that is like, no, this is, like, this is real personal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't use to, people didn't use to care

about it that much though. Yeah. They did, I think it is interesting how much, like people used to never talk about politics that much. You would kind of say maybe who you were gonna vote for and kind of sometimes you give a couple lines about it, but you never, I feel like, would be like, oh, screw you for voting for that.

Like, it would never, even the thought would never come into your head, I feel like. Yeah, it does feel like it's taken center stage and I wonder how much of that is, I mean, it's probably, a lot of it is exacerbated by social media. I suspect the 24 hour news cycle also led to that too. Right.

A lot of stuff that create a lot of anger. Yeah. Yep. I mean, I think to be able to take a day off, half the day off, but now they're like, oh, you need a little more anger. Yeah. Well, and intentionally so. I mean, it's like, so there's, there's plenty of research

out there that says that,, news, or anything else that makes people angry or scared is far more luckily to go viral than other stuff, right? And so some politicians know that. And just purely from a financial perspective, if you put an ad out that makes people mad, it's going to get more clicks. It's gonna get, I mean, you double the value,

essentially, of that ad by making people mad with it, right? So there are people who are benefiting financially from our rage. And that's not just true with politicians. That's true with, you know, Fox News, CNN, et cetera. They wanna make people mad? Yeah. Yeah, instead of just having an article, they'll refr cetera. They want to make people mad. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah, instead of just having an article,

they'll reframe the title so it has an enemy. Yeah. Yep. That's pretty crazy. Dealing with anxiety and stress in the age of the 24-7 news cycle. Interesting. Let me see.

Whether it's the coronavirus, political divisiveness, threats of terrorism, or mass shootings, you might not be immediately affected by these issues, but constant exposure to to 24-hour news and social media, which is often heavily skewed towards the negative, can adversely influence your mental health and overall well-being. More than 70% of Americans believe the media blows things out of proportion, which may seem harmless, but it could lead to increased stress and anxiety.

Wow. The tough part is if we're addicted to it though. That's the tough part is that if we're addicted to it though. Right. That's the tough part is that if we're addicted to it. Yeah, I mean that's because, I mean, you know, people are drawn to this thing that ultimately causes them harm. Right. You know? What is that?

Has that always been? I mean, has it just been since the apple in the Garden of Eden, you know? I mean, information is, I mean, people crave information, right? I mean, that's another emotion that I like to talk about sometimes is curiosity, right? And people do crave information. It makes them feel good about themselves,

especially if they can share it with other people. It's like a form of social currency. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so knowing things is, you know, better than not knowing things. And so people are drawn to media. And then when that media makes them mad, they're more likely actually to share it with other people.

They're more likely because it gets the reaction they want. So if I came in here and told you just some sort of arbitrary fact, you'd be like, that's great. But if I came in here and told you something that made you really mad, now I'm getting a reaction. I'd be like, what the heck? Yeah. What are we going to do about it?

Exactly. It's pretty crazy. And then we problem solve. So we've really just, we've kind of like, death hacked ourselves in a way. Like, there's life hacks, and then I feel like there's death hacks. And I feel like Sonam's, the algorithm does that, you know?

Or the possibility to always have it at your fingertips. Because I'll find if I'd rather just chill or meditate or if I'd rather go find something to make me angry, I sometimes would like to find something to make me angry. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, because I mean, it does. I think for some people that anger feels powerful, right? I mean, it's like there's a sense, and we talked earlier about it sometimes feeling helpless, but there's a Right? I mean, it's like there's a sense of, and we talked earlier about it sometimes feeling helpless, but there's a piece of like the heart rate increase, the blood pressure increase, the muscle tension that leads to these feelings of excitement.

Yeah. Yeah, well, it feels like it activates you. Yep, exactly. Is there a such thing as like a healthy anger? And then what is the difference between like a healthy anger and a rage? Yeah. Is that noticeable? Yeah. So what I would say is that when it comes to anger, I tend to think of all emotions as not having, they aren't positive or negative on their own. They're just information systems, right? And it's good to feel things. In fact, if I had a wish for people, it would be that they felt the whole sort of range of emotions, right?

That that's what would be good for them. But in a nuanced way, meaning that they could evaluate whether or not this thing is that they're feeling is good for them or bad for them in a particular context. So when I think about healthy versus unhealthy anger, a big piece of it is what is it doing for me or to me, right? So am I, what kind of consequences am I experiencing? For some people, those consequences can be physical, right? They can have like heart problems or muscle tension or chronic headaches or things like that. Um, for some people, um, those consequences are like relationships.

They get in a lot of verbal and physical fights, online fights. For some people, those consequences are property damage. They break stuff. Oh yeah, steal stuff. Yep. So, I mean, sometimes though, it's like other negative emotions.

It's like I get mad and then afterwards, I feel guilty about something I said, and so I feel real sad later, or I get scared that you know My my partner is gonna leave me or or I'm gonna get in trouble And so they have these other negative emotions talk about people like that's me I'll get upset and then I will I'll apologize quickly usually But when I get in a moment of really being really upset, it's hard for me to manage myself

Yeah, and then do you end up feeling sort of guilty about it? Yeah, I feel remorseful. I'm usually good at being able to apologize pretty quickly. That's good. Being able to notice my space in it, but the fact that it happens at all, you know, is something that has been uncomfortable for me, I think. Yeah, man, I appreciate you saying that.

I didn't mean to interrupt you there. No, that's all right. Yeah, I think that's, you know, connects to, like for a lot of people, their anger leads to things like substance abuse. It leads to overeating. It leads to even, I mean, you know, substance abuse defined broadly,

like alcohol and nicotine included, right? People find ways of coping with their anger because they don't have better ways. And so they end up turning to drugs or alcohol. Oh yeah. And you know, and that's, that ends up having consequences. It's, yeah.

Was there more you want to say, sorry? No, it's, I mean, I think that sort of covers it, but I think the big thing is there are lots and lots of consequences to unhealthy anger, right? There's also lots of good things we can do with it, right? There's lots of ways that we can turn our anger into those positive ways. And so when back to when people think about, okay, what's the impact of this on me and on those people around me is to really sort of evaluate what the outcome is.

Right. So if you can take a moment to evaluate what the outcome is going to be. Like what's going to happen right now? I'm upset. So if I act on it, then I'm going to have to apologize later. I'm going to be probably then I'm going to be bummed out at myself. So now right now I'm upset at somebody else and maybe even at myself. And then later I'm gonna be, I'll have to apologize to somebody and probably then be a little bit disheartened in myself for my actions. So it's like, what do I really want, or do I just want things to kind of be chill?

See, I love what you're saying right now, because to me, one of the best lessons people can learn about anger or any emotion is, when I'm feeling it, I need to stop for a second and think about what my goals are. What's the thing that I... Where do I want this situation to end? Right. And sometimes, that is like, you know, if I get mad on my way to work, because somebody cut me off, right now I could drive them off the road

and get in a fight with them, but does that get me to work on time? In the way I want. Like my goal is to get to my destination safely. And so I should focus on that. And anything else that I try and do in that moment doesn't serve me. Yeah.

And I mean, I use an exaggerated example, but even giving them the finger or honking at them, all those things just serve to distract me from my actual goal. Yeah. And we can think about that in a gajillion different other places, right? If I'm, if I get, you know,

if I scroll in through social media and I see a post that bugs me, yeah, I can fight back or I can argue or whatever, or I can think about, well, why am I here? Why am I in this space? What is the point of arguing? Maybe there's a good reason to, and I should, or maybe there's a good reason for me to just scroll on

and not care. Yeah, and I was just thinking when you said that, that social media definitely kind of, it almost deflates our anger in some ways, because instead of a lot of times, it used to be maybe if enough people got anger about something They would go protest they would make a difference They would boycott they would not use a product or they would stand up

But now it almost feels like you can comment into Almost a vacuum because of how quick things disappear. Yep, and you can just say well I comment it or I say, you know Right. I did something. But then it kind of like just satiates enough. Yep. The human desire to do something where we don't end up doing things. And then we, as a group, get kind of further and further into this crevasse. I think that is a real problem.

I think you're absolutely, I do. I think you're absolutely right. That, that a big, a big part of what happens is there's this social media. I don't want to minimize social media activism because there are forms of it that are really powerful and really meaningful, but there are also forms of it that don't do much. Right? But I think you use the word satiate, right?

They give you a sense of like, I did something and because I did something, I can now rest. Right? I had my impact. Right, I had my human impact, but it's not, sometimes it's, and it changes so much. Right. It changes so much whereas like every day there's a new option almost. Yep.

So the thing you impacted is just, they've almost just replaced it with something new. Yep, and there's a new thing to be mad about too. You've got a new, both outlet but also thing to focus on. A new topic moved right along. Here's an article that was in the Atlantic. The problem with social media protests. Before the internet changes speed at which the world moves, movements were slower growing.

A year of organizing and directly advocating for change led to a 13th month long Montgomery bus boycott that began with Rosa Parks' act of resistance. Right, that's what it used to be like. By contrast, mass protests such as Occupy Wall Street formed rapidly but then lacking that underlying resilience created over time, often lost focus, direction, and most important, their potential to affect change.

Interesting. So, in some ways, it feels like what they're saying is when you put a lot of work into something in advance, then you want to see it through in ways that social media protests don't have that, right? It's like, you know, I've been thinking about this for a week, so I don't need to keep thinking about it. I mean, I don't have as much sunk into this. No, and if I close the app. I'm not even an activist anymore right right Interesting it's kind of interesting huh yeah, I grew up in a home

Where there was a lot of anger right it was probably our number one? Emotion that we had right you know it was just farm the table there It was like you got it was 100% grass fed. All right, all right. And it was just the only way that we communicated. How much of a responsibility is it of parents to like teach kids what their feelings are? Right, yeah.

I love this. So real quick, when you say there was a lot of anger, was it mostly like outward expressed, like yelling, screaming, screaming, throwing things, judgment? Okay. Those are like the main emotions, you know, and then humor. Okay. So but we otherwise it was just always, you knew somebody was gonna be angry. Where were you in the birth order? I was number two. I have an older brother and two sisters.

Okay, and the sisters are both younger than you? Yep, they're both younger. And everybody's alive still, pretty much. Okay. Pretty much. Yeah, I mean, some people are, you know. Got it. They're willing to risk it all, you know,

but some of us are doing our best. So, but yeah, so that's where we had, and that was just, there was a lot of anger in there. You know, I think that my feeling is with kids in particular, I mean, we can think about this from the, well, I'll start with what I consider to be sort of the golden rule of emotion and parenting, and that is that kids tend to express emotions the way their caregivers did. And so they tend to, and it's rooted in like age-old psychology that's called modeling, right? And so kids tend to model what their parents did. If mom or dad yell and scream, kids tend to yell and scream

as a way of dealing with emotions. Now, there's some caveats to that because simultaneously the other side is that kids sometimes get rewarded or punished for emotional expressions of particular types. So a kid hits somebody and they get punished for it. Yeah. Now, oddly enough, sometimes they get punished for it by getting hit by the parent, right? Getting spanked or whatever. Right, that's kind of wild when you think about it like that. Right, and so, or they get in trouble for yelling

by being yelled at. You know, so there's all sorts of mixed messages there. Damn. But to me, I mean, some of the healthiest things you can do with kids when you're trying to raise emotionally wise children is to talk about feelings often to give them the language, to have that conversation, to help them identify

what they're feeling. I think that's a big problem for a lot of people, for a lot of kids and continues is they don't know the difference between anger and sadness. They don't know the difference between fear and anger. Oh yeah, I would just start vibe, you know. Yeah. Every time you see that kid, he's just vibrating, you don't know what's going on. You got to show them a flash card or something, you know.

Yeah. And you say that's joy, that's anger, that's, but yeah, cause you don't know. Right. And so helping kids to, I mean, one of the things I like to do with my kids and is, um, and liked when they were young is to like unpack those emotional experiences with them and not just their own, but when they see a kid, you know, melting down or a kid getting angry or sad or scared or whatever to say, so what do you think's going on?

Where did that come from? Why, if we're watching TV and a kid reacts some way. Just so at least they can have in their own head, OK, this is what happens when this happens. This is what I look like when it happens. This is where I can start to see in somebody else what's going on, and then you'll recognize it in yourself and at least have some sort of,

you'll be the conductor in some way, as much as you can, maybe some of the outcomes, if not some of the origins of the feeling. Yeah, and then you can even talk through, what are some options for them now, right? Those kids, yeah, just had this, it's feeling really hurt, what can he or she do to deal with those feelings of hurt?

And I mean, I think those are all like good healthy ways, but I think it starts with wanting to make sure people are having those conversations, that people are really understanding it. Because part of what happens too, is that people can realize that, we like to believe and I've even been saying, look, your feelings are one of the ways your brain

tells you what's going on, what you're experiencing. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're rooted in logic or reality or that they're even really valid, right? We can be angry over a misunderstanding. We can be scared over something that's not really dangerous. And the feelings are real, right? We shouldn't minimize that, but we should take some time to like unpack them and talk about like what is, what's going on?

Why are you feeling this way? Yeah, I think that kind of stuff is important, at least because I think for myself alone, I didn't know a lot of feelings I was even having. I didn't know, I only knew a couple, like, I remember like, yeah, like certain things were going on, I wouldn't really have any feelings about it. And I was like, man, I never really had a lot of feelings.

So I think sometimes talk with your kids like, oh, this is a feeling, that's what that is, this is what's going on. Because otherwise you can just think you've been bonkers as a child, you know? Like if somebody doesn't tell you kind of what's happening with you. Well, a lot of times kids aren't really allowed

to have feelings, right? I mean, like that they're shamed for them, that the message is, hey, hold that in, don't let people see that. And then, I mean, of course that's gonna continue into adulthood where they don't feel like they're allowed, they don't feel like it's safe to express that stuff. I was thinking, if you allow your kids, right,

like space to feel their feelings, okay? Does that create in them, like, you know, recognize they're feeling something, allow them a little space to feel it, right? Yeah, does that create like more of like an emotional resilience in them? Which would just then, like, then when they're angry again, it would just kind of become another resilience in them, which would just then like, then when they're angry again, it would just kind of become another emotion to them sort of like, um, is that

make any sense? Yeah. I mean, I think what you really want. So then in the future they could cope better. So if it happens to them next time, I'd be like, okay. Yep. Cause what you really want is, I mean, you want a situation where your kids can, when they're feeling something, A, know what they're feeling,

B, have a sense for where it's coming from, understand like its root causes, be able to critically evaluate those root causes, and then know what to do with it, right? And I mean, and that's a level of sophistication that I don't think, frankly, most people are capable of. But it's because we haven't given them the space or the tools to do that over their lifetime.

And I think we're way better at this as a society now than we were when you and I were kids, right? Like we're way better at trying to provide those tools to kids, but it comes with them, it comes with people being able to have those conversations. To say, hey, let's talk about what you're feeling right now. Not in a, like, necessarily a judgment or punishy way. Like, hey, you just got real mad, you hit your brother.

Let's have a conversation about that. Let's talk about better ways to handle that. Let's make sure we make up for what we did. So it's not like it's consequence free. People oftentimes accuse me of being sort of wimpy and like, hey, you're letting your kids walk all over you. They gotta get punished or whatever. That's, it's not that it's consequence free.

It's like, no, we're gonna, we're gonna deal with, with those, with those feelings and try and figure out sort of the best way to handle it. And yeah, that helps them develop that emotional resilience going forward. Yeah, at least having some emotional understanding of yourself. Yes. But how do you then put the cap on it

where you're like, yeah, it's okay if my kid is, you know, like, how do we not turn into one of these societies where it's just like, oh, I don't feel like going to work today, so I'm not gonna go. You know, like that's, nobody ever feels like, oh, that's the first thing they should tell you when you ever go to school.

One day you're gonna go to work and nobody's gonna feel like it. That should be the first thing that they teach us. Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. Like the message also has to be that your emotions alone aren't necessarily reason not to do something. Yeah. You know, I mean that's the, you know, I have two kids, both of them are very, very awesome in different ways, but the, you know, the one

is he's a performer, he's a dancer, and he's in a lot of musicals and things like that, and he, one of the things that I can say about him is people, people often talk about how brave he is, and he is, but I know him well enough to know that he gets real anxious about performing and those things. He's feeling that fear. It's not that he's not scared. It's that he knows how to do things anyways.

And that's where you want people to get. Like you want people to get to a point of, right now, you know what, I'm feeling sad and I don't feel like going to work, but I also need to do it. I understand what my responsibilities are and I can work through that. And I think there's something to be said,

I mean, to me, that's a big part of what emotional resilience is. It's being able to feel things and then overcome those feelings at times. Right, yeah, and I think if you give your kids space for that, it feels like you're gonna, that that's an armor you can create in them as well. It's like, hey, you feel sad right now,

or you feel a little disappointed, this is how you can manage that right now, and look, five minutes later, wow, look, we're right back to where we were before, everything's good. So then when they have those things happen in their own lives, when you're not around, they're gonna have some sort of,

even if it's just brief little check-ins from a parent are huge. Well, you can, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, and this isn't just about parenting. This is about being a supervisor. It's about being a human being. You can be sensitive and have expectations, right? You can be sensitive to your kid's emotional needs

and have things you expect them to do. You can be sensitive to your kid's emotional needs and have things you expect them to do. You can be sensitive to your employees and have expectations of them. Right. And frankly, you can be sensitive to yourself and you can be sort of patient and caring with yourself and still have expectations for what you want to accomplish. Yeah, that's a tough one sometimes.

Yeah. Giving yourself some grace. Mm-hmm. I'm terrible at it. Are you? Yeah, I am. Yeah, I'm really hard on myself. for what you want to accomplish. That's a tough one sometimes. Giving yourself some grace. I'm terrible at it. Are you? Yeah, I'm really hard on myself. Yeah, me too, man. God. Probably back when we were talking about type A

at the beginning, that's probably part of it. It's like you're competitive, you're success driven, and that means you wanna accomplish certain things, and that means being a certain way. Yeah, it's interesting because I don't know when I would ever give myself the benefit of the doubt very often. I almost have to have someone say,

hey man, give yourself some grace here. Feel some pride. And then sometimes I don't blame this on my being a kid or whatever, but I think I never knew anything I never knew any nobody like I never knew what I was feeling or what was going on So I think even things like that with your kid like hey, man You can feel proud of yourself like I know some of it sounds lame probably in some senses

But the cost of not doing it with your kids, I think can be kind of immense Yep Because growing up not knowing, like having my own sense of what's okay for me, leaves me at the whim of what other people think is okay for me, you know? And that can just get kind of harrowing. I'm not, you know, trying to, like, whoa, is me.

That's not fully my story, but I could see it being really risky for folks, you know? You know, for me, one of the things that's been really helpful is to surround myself with really good people who care about me and that there are people who, you know, when I'm being hard on myself, sometimes it's nice to have a friend who can sort of step in and remind me like, hey, you know, it's okay to not have things happen exactly as you want them. It's okay to take a break and just be proud of what you accomplished today. And it's nice to have people in your life who can support you that way.

Yeah. So. Yeah, it feels like we always have to be making something better these days too. Yeah. Like that never, it'd be like, if you knew somebody and something was wrong with them, people would just be like, dang, something's wrong with him. You know?

And then 10 years later, people would be like, dang, how's Ernie? And then people are like, something is wrong with him. Like it had escalated, you know? Like he bought an empty swimming pool and he was spending time in there. And so, but now it's like-

Was that a real story? Is there a real person you know who bought an empty swimming pool? There was some men in our neighborhood that would kind of like meet up or whatever in like this empty swimming pool at night and smoke weed or whatever. Whenever I hear you drop an example like that,

part of me is like, did that just come from his brain or is that like a real thing? Oh no, that was a real thing. We grew up in a very shirtless area, if you will. It was very, a lot of people just, a lot of people whistling and no shirts. Just a lot of just people doing their best. That was a good description.

I like that. I can imagine what this area was like. We grew up in the stray animal belt, brother. So there was just a lot of, yeah. A lot of shirtless people and straight up. Shirtless people and no collars on these animals either. You know what I'm saying? Everybody was just risking it all.

Can we still have childhood anger as adults? Like what happens to anger from our childhood that is unprocessed? Or what happens to unprocessed anger? Yeah, you know, I think two things can be true here, right? I think on the one hand, yeah, we can absolutely still have anger and resentment and stuff that happened when we were a kid that we continue to be mad about forever.

I also think that it's never too late to process some of that stuff. And that there's no reason why in your 40s or 50s you can't start to deal with some of the stuff that you were mad about still from childhood. It might be harder. And I also think we have to be honest about what the outcome is gonna be, right?

I mean, we have to recognize that some of those things, I guess, think about what dealing with it looks like. Because I can't. It's a good point, you brought it looks like because I can't. It's a good point. You brought it up earlier with the other topic is like follow, think it, what outcome you want to have. What was the other one? Yeah, I know it's like, what are your goals here?

And I think the thing is like, you know, when you're, when you're, I'm 48 years old, right? When you're 48, you might not, you might not be able to make, to fix the bad stuff that happened that you're still frustrated by. So that can't be the goal, but maybe it is to forgive. Maybe it's to better understand where, if it is a person who wronged you,

where that person was coming from. I mean, those are all things that we can try and process, ways we can try and deal with. Maybe it's just to forgive ourselves for not handling it in a different way. Man, forgive ourselves for not being able to forgive people even. Yeah.

That sounds crazy. Right, right. Cause that sometimes it's like, that's crazy, I never thought about that. Sometimes it's not even that I'm upset anymore as much that I can't forgive the person. It's like I start to get upset at myself because I can't forgive the person.

So I'm not upset at the person anymore. I'm just upset at me because I'm having trouble forgiving. Is that crazy? Yeah, no, I mean not crazy. That's really interesting and insightful, right? I'm still mad at this person. I feel like I shouldn't be. And I'm struggling. Now I'm mad at me like I shouldn't be. And I'm struggling.

Now I'm mad at me, because I can't forgive them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sometimes that, yeah, I would just notice it can hop from one thing like that, and I don't even know exactly what I'm mad about. That's what, you know, I was thinking about it earlier. So I was once a really bad student.

Really? Yeah. Really? I know, that's surprising to people. Yeah, I really, really struggled in high school. And I actually failed out of my first university. And I know. And a lot of it came from a lot of different places. Like one of them was, so I was a diehard soccer player and soccer fan at the time. And I

had a hard time like not being more interested in that than in school. Okay, so you just loved soccer so much. Yep. And same thing. I drank too much my first year in college too. That was relevant. Not in high school at all, but in college, that was a problem. But also I just hadn't developed a lot of the study skills necessary to be successful. And so I still, years later, I still find myself sort of struggling with that, mad at myself

for not having done better, mad at myself for not having made more of my college experience. Because what happened is I took a break six months off. I traveled a little bit. I was very, very fortunate that I had a safety net. It didn't mean I was homeless. Right, you could afford to go somewhere and travel. Yep, and I could live with my mom for a little while

while I sort of figured things out in ways that a lot of my students can't. You know, and so, so having that, I went back to college and I kind of got it together right after taking a little break. But I'm mad at myself still for not having a different kind of college experience, you know? Wow.

Yeah, man, that's funny. I'll get upset at myself with like, yeah, that I didn't have a blast in college sometimes. Like that's just this general term that's in my head. Man, I'm upset that I didn't have a blast in college. But if I went and looked through a calendar and shit, people would be like, dude, you had a great time. It's like sometimes I don't even remember things correctly.

It's like my perspective of them isn't even clean and then, or clear clean and then are clear. And then I'll get upset at an unreal. And then I'll be like, fuck man, I got a fucking, or I'll be like, dang man, I got to enroll somewhere. You know, I could still be a mascot. I can't play, but I could still be a mascot. You know, you just start going. And then it's like, I'm in this weird anger against myself and it's maybe the perspective wasn't clear, you know? Well, a lot of times our emotions, our memories of emotional experiences aren't accurate.

Dude, why? And so, I mean, part of it is that we hit the highlights or the lowlights, right? And so, like, if you think about, actually somebody did a study on this, where they had people monitor their emotions over the course of a week-long vacation. And then when they came back, they took a survey,

how did you enjoy the vacation, right? And what they found is that there was very little correlation between those two things. Because when people are at the end of a trip, when they're saying, how did you feel, they're reflecting on the high points or the low points, right, and they're just thinking, and like the overall experience was super rad,

I was in Jamaica, it was great, I loved it. What they forget is, you know, how long it took to get their luggage, what they forget like getting stuck in traffic for hours and hours and hours. Doors, bugs, or whatever. All that stuff. And so. Violence or whatever.

Yep, and so they forget all that stuff, and they just focus on those other things. Or, and I think the same thing can be true of college. It's like you think about the high points or the low points. You don't think about the other elements, the things that happen, the day in and day out stuff. Or we think about an overall theme of what it was like, instead of those day in and day out experiences.

Yeah, I think it's called chunking or something. I'm not sure why our brain, our memory does that. I've been reading this book by this guy, Dr. Sangarath, but it's about our memories and stuff. It's really, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. Dude, sometimes when it comes to my anger and stuff. It's really, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. Um, dude, sometimes when it comes to my anger and stuff, I will even like,

like I think I remember being so angry. Sometimes as a kid, I almost, like I enjoy my anger in a way. Cause it's like, I had such a relationship with it. I don't know if that sounds crazy or not. No, it doesn't. I mean, I think that, I don't enjoy it as in I want to. No, it doesn't. I mean, I think there are people. Like I don't enjoy it, isn't I wanna like act it out or something or vandalize a shelter or whatever. But like that I want to,

like if there's a part of me still that when I get angry, it connects to that kid part of me that was angry. And it's like, this is, it's ours, you know? Well, I think all of us like, we've been talking about anger as an emotion and it is, but it's also sometimes a personality trait. It's a characteristic. Oh, really?

Yeah. It's a characteristic. There are some people who are just angrier than others, or some people express their anger more outwardly or experience more consequences. And because of that, I think with any personality trait, sometimes as human beings, we cling to things that we sort of like as defining characteristics, right? And so we cling to those as things

that make us proud of ourselves or that we enjoy or whatever. So maybe a person says, well, hey, I'm kind. That's just who I am, and I lean into that. Maybe someone leans into the idea that they're an angry person and that it's, you know, that's kind of how they identify. I think that's true, especially because, so... And this, I'm not advocating for this, but anger is how a lot of successful people get things done, right?

Do you ever watch the show Entourage? Yeah. Okay, so Ari Gold, that character, you know, that's rooted in a real life person, and he, who I think had, like, used those kinds of... Tactics. Yeah, tactics and used an angry, aggressive approach to manipulate people and to get people to do what he wanted, right?

And so, like, that's someone who I think probably appreciates that he identifies as an angry person. He appreciates that he identifies that way? Yeah, I think it's like this is just part of who I am and it's part of what makes me successful. Oh, I see. But then is that just a cop out of somebody that doesn't want to deal with their anger, though?

Probably. I think for a lot of people,'s them. I think they're scared to change. It's like I mean if this is the thing that I've identified as making me successful, well then dealing with it might mean that I'm no longer gonna be successful, gonna be good at what I do. But if it's a trait then, so it can be a real thing that some people are just... are? Yeah, I mean, I think like any trait. Like without any provocation, like without any. Yeah, I think there's still provocations.

I just think that they're quick. It doesn't take as much, right? And so it doesn't take as much of a provocation to make someone mad. OK. And it still, I mean, it still comes from a combination of upbringing, probably some genetics, you know,

that people are more likely to be angry much of the time. You know, and so it still comes from that place. What are parenting strategies to assist kids with coping with anger? Yeah. Like, not feeling anger very often or... Yeah, like what are some of those do you feel? Yeah, I mean I think for what I would say is there's,

when it comes to kids, one of the probably the most important things to do is help them develop the tools that allow them to sort of find ways to decrease their anger in the moment. Right, and that's oftentimes for kids gonna be deep breathing, it's gonna be, distraction is actually a really good one, so find something else you can do for a little while. Maybe it's, we talked about drawing earlier,

maybe it's playing with Legos, maybe it's petting your dog, whatever. Things like that that allow you to sort of deescalate. Yeah. The other side of it is, you know, helping kids identify where they have some control. And this is harder with kids because I think they have a little less control in their day-to-day life. Where can kids have control in their surroundings, in their environment? How can they sort of do less of the things that, um, that provoke, uh, that might provoke anger. Right.

My son is a, my other son is a diehard basketball fan, um, and he's, he's a player and fan. And so we've been watching the NBA quite a bit. Um, I'm from Minnesota originally. So. Okay. So you guys are in, huh? Yeah.

So we're, we're Timberwolves fans, but you know, and he handles, you know, they, they won last night. That was great. Uh, but they, they, they you guys are in, huh? Yeah, so we're Timberwolves fans. But he handles, they won last night. That was great. But they've been down a couple games. Down 3-1, yeah. And he handles it well. But it takes a toll on him. He gets sad.

He's 12 years old. He gets sad when they lose. And so that's the kind of thing that over time, you want to think about what kind of impact that's having. You want to think about how much it's influencing you. You want to think about whether or not you... As a parent, you mean?

Yeah. Like a kid doing something if it's something that like what they're engaged, what they're absorbing, you mean? Yeah. I mean, as a parent, you want them to be thinking about how much time they're spending and this thing that ends up having, taking an emotional toll on them. Got it.

Yeah. Is it good to let your children feel anger? Is it? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think like anything, I mean, up to a point, you know, I think it's good to let them because that's how they're going to deal with the, I mean, I think the art of dealing with emotions is, I liken it to exercise. I saw a poster of yours working out the other day, right?

You were on a run or something like that. Oh yeah, yeah, I like to run. Yeah, me too, every day. You do? I do, yeah. Oh wow. I think it's great, great for my mental health, great for everything.

But the thing about, I think it's similar, dealing with emotions is similar to exercise in that, you know, when you exercise, you push yourself to a place of discomfort, but never so uncomfortable that it's actually harmful, right? And I think you can do the same thing with emotions. You can push yourself into a zone where this emotion is uncomfortable with me, for me, but it's not so uncomfortable that I'm suffering, right? And so, it's like, I want to feel some fear

because I want to get used to dealing with that discomfort. And I want to sort of learn to cope with it, but I don't want to feel so much fear that I'm like on the floor shaking or anything like that. And with kids, I want them to feel, I want them to feel some anxiety and learn that they can just do the thing anyways. I want them to feel some fear, some anger and learn that they can just do the thing anyways.

I want them to feel some fear, some anger, and learn that they can do the thing anyways and work through it. That's a good healthy way to be. Yeah, it's just interesting when you think about that it's a parent's responsibility to do all of that. How many little things that they learn because of how the parents let them absorb it or what? I think one of the challenges is I imagine that our parents, our parents age, it wasn't on their radar to be thinking about stuff like this. No. That they just didn't know.

And so they weren't necessarily attuned to like what what kids might need Or benefit from from an emotional perspective. Yeah, it was a different time another thing that really I'll get angry is if I expect people to it's kind of unrealistic expectations, but it's Thinking people should know what I want. Even if I haven't explained it. Yeah, there's a name for this and it's escaping me right now, but there is that sort of like, it's like the opposite of mind reading. It's like they should be able to read your mind, right?

And know exactly, yeah. And so it's like, hey, why don't they know exactly the way I want this thing done? And then why aren't they doing it that way? Yeah, and for people who are ambitious and people who are success-driven, then that becomes a sticking point. It's part of that type A thing that I mentioned before.

It becomes a sticking point, leads to that frustration. Why isn't it happening the way I want it to? What other personality types and what types of angers do they have? Do they have all of specific angers or not really? You just find that type A has more. Yeah, I mean, type A is, I mean, originally part of how it was sort of identified was that it was that people with type A, with that behavior pattern, they called it at the time,

they were, that they were angrier, more aggressive. Yeah, because one of the things you mentioned was goals being blocked. And I guess if you have, if you're driven like that or have that extra like drive, which can be a blessing and a curse sometimes, then you would have more goals just even generally floating around in your head. Yeah. Another strategy, not that, not like the disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, but sort of an obsessive compulsive personality type is also associated with anger for similar reasons. It's like, I want things the way I want them. And because I want them this way,

when other people don't live up to that expectation, it makes me mad, right? You know, I want my home a certain way. And if people don't set it up that way, if they don't, if they won't do the things I want, I get angry. Or, yeah. And so it's like, you know, if they won't do the things I want, I get angry. Yeah, and so it's like, you know,

people who are really kind of rule driven or have want things in a specific way are just more likely to get angry. That's why, you know, if we think about some of those, what we call the big five personality traits, one of them, like people who are a little bit more open, a little bit more flexible are less likely to experience anger. Gosh.

Yeah. Gosh, those people are good. I would, oh, I almost feel like I would drink their blood. Is that crazy to say that? Because I just, I'll just, I wish I could have some more of that. Yeah, no, I get it. I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, that's the thing we know is that I think there's a real drive

right now in sort of modern sort of pop psychology to be really accepting of all personality traits. And I think, I mean, I get why we should be accepting and be supportive, but I think we should also acknowledge that there are some ways of being that might end up being a little healthier than other ways, right? And openness is a great quality, right? And conscientiousness is a great quality. Those things, agreeableness, right? And openness is a great quality, right? And conscientiousness is a great quality. Those things, agreeableness, right?

Those things are the kinds of things that help people be successful in a lot of ways and help them be likable and help them be happy. Yeah. What about in relationships? You guys talk a lot about that. Like, how do you deal with a, if you have a spouse that you feel like has some anger issues?

Yeah, that is really tough, especially because anger issues in families can look lots of different ways, right? Because there's the kind that is really scary and potentially like bordering on abuse where the anger is driven at the particular person, right? It's the angry husband yelling at the angry wife or vice versa, right?

And that's one way it can look. The other way is just a person who's just angry at the world doesn't necessarily take it out on the family. And that's actually the way my dad was. Like he was an angry guy. He didn't, I can count on one hand the number of times he yelled at me. I wasn't the victim.

It was usually the waiter or the gas station attendant or some other driver, you know? And so those, but that still has consequences, right? It still scared me as a kid, right? I mean, yeah, it would have scared me if he were yelling at me, but it also scared me when he's, right? I mean, yeah, it would have scared me if he were yelling at me, but it also scared me when he's yelling at a stranger.

Right. And, you know, those moments can really sort of take a toll. I mean, I think, you know, relationships are obviously tricky. I think a lot of times with relationships, it's gotta be about communication. It's gotta be about, like, a person being willing to do the work to try and change. Yeah and what kind of help do people need that have severe anger problems? That's the thing, I think

it's you know there are lots of things that people can do on their own without a professional but ultimately when the situation is bad enough people need to talk to a therapist, right? And how do they recognize when it's bad enough, do you think? Sorry, I keep stacking questions on you. No, that's all right, those are great questions. I mean, I think usually it should be driven

by the consequences. And to me, for me, if a partner came to me and said, hey, your anger is making me uncomfortable, your anger is scaring me, or it's making me, like to me, that's enough for me to wanna say, okay, I anger is making me uncomfortable. Your anger is scaring me. To me, that's enough for me to want to say, OK, I've got to do something about it. And if I can't on my own, well, then I'm going to go get some help.

Somehow, yeah. If it's not in a relationship, if it's just I find myself getting so angry, I'm like uncomfortable with it, or I don't like living with myself, or I'm drinking too much or whatever as a way of coping with it. Well then those are all ways that I can, those are all signs that I need to meet with someone

if I can't fix it on my own. Yeah. Yeah, cause most of my anger usually just comes out about work stuff. Right. You know, in personal and regular life, I'm usually pretty chill. Yeah.

But yeah, I think when it comes to work and wanting to get things done, yeah, and wanting to be like efficient or yeah, a lot of just unrealistic expectations. Well, it sounds like it's motivated, like that there's an undercurrent of stress there, right? There's an undercurrent of like, hey, if I don't meet these expectations, if I don't accomplish these things, something bad's gonna happen, right? And so I'm anxious because I have these goals

or I'm stressed because I have these goals and I get mad when things get in the way of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes the motivation, it's like, I think sometimes they come from an unrealistic space overall because sometimes I think I just havea- it's like, I think sometimes they come from an unrealistic space overall because sometimes I think I just have unrealistic expectations of myself, right? So that I'll never be able to achieve them, so I'll always be at a loss.

Right. And so then it'll couple with some, some like core belief I've always had that I'm not enough, right? That sort of thing, right? To me, that's how I've been able to kind of see that what some of that makeup is like. And I'm not trying to look at it as like, oh, woe is me, I'm just enough, right? That sort of, right? To me, that's how I've been able to kind of see that, what some of that makeup is like. And I'm not trying to look at it as like, oh, woe is me, I'm just looking at it. Yeah, no, that's great. And I would, I bet, I don't know this,

but tell me, you know, I bet sometimes those unreasonable expectations, the way that they matter, like boots on the ground in a particular week or day, is that you end up planning too much or trying to do too much you know and it's like you know you think to yourself well hey for me to achieve X I've got to get A, B, and C done this week and it's impossible to get

A, B, and C done in a single week yeah so you set yourself up for failure that way. Oh yeah a lot of time I won't give things a lot of breathing room right you know and that kind of is a bummer. I know sometimes you'll have a meeting with a frantic, like, oh, I wish this meeting could be another 45 minutes. But I only set up a certain amount of time because I'm too focused on the work aspect of it and not focused on the human aspect of it.

Sometimes that happens. I do this all the time. Like, one of my, you know, I set goals for myself. I do this every semester, right? I intentionally, I say, these are the things I want to do this semester, this year, whatever. And then what that translates into is,

well, that means that this month, I've got to get X, Y, and Z done. I got to do these things. And then that means I over plan for a particular week or day, and then I get frustrated with myself. Yeah. And then it connects back to that core belief that you're talking about of,

well, I'm not good enough, right? Or I ruin everything, I can't do this, what the F, you F, you loser. Too often the solution to that is that instead of giving ourselves grace and being patient with ourselves and saying, hey, we set impossible goals for ourselves, is we just say, well, we just need to work harder.

Yeah. Right? And then we feel crappy when we don't achieve it. Man, that's just a lot of my life is I just have to work harder. Yeah. I couldn't. Yeah, it was tough when I was to have fun. I would tell my friends, I've said this before, but my friends were like, let's go do this

thing. And I'm like, I can't go. I have to write a book. And that's where my mind always was kind of. It was like, you can't go do that. You have all this shit to do. Don't you know you have all this shit to do? And I would never even look at exactly what the stuff was.

It was just this gin. And I didn't realize that until recently. I'm like, well, what shit do I have to do? Like, I never even, I just assumed I had to do all these things. It was like this to-do list that was something was always being added onto. And sometimes it was like the worst part of my brain

was just gonna add things on there no matter what. Like unrealistic things, like look better. Like, all right, by 8 p.m. or whatever, you're like, this is crazy. We can't do, you know, just like, or just, you know, you should be different. Like that's, but that would be like the kind of just like vague thing that would be on this.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And then, and ultimately, you know, that to-do list never ends, right? I mean, you just keep adding to it because there's always more you can do. And so, and that's the problem. I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot lately

with work is that part of what happens is that we fill up the cracks. Like we fill up all the time with just more work. And this is particularly true of ambitious people is that they say, well, I can just keep going. Like there's no end. There's no end to the amount of work that I can find to fill in. And if I want to be successful

in the ways I want to be successful, then that's what I've got to do. And then that hurts, right? We suffer in the long run. Yeah, and it makes me think when you're talking about that, do we have just such un, like how do we temper or how do we perspectivize our goals for success?

How do we look at, can you help me say what I'm trying to say? Yeah, when is it enough, right? Yeah, like how can we even frame it for ourselves so that we're not just have this blind thing? Like you need to be successful so that it's actually specific and realistic, and yeah, and then when is enough? Right, well I mean because in some way, you said before you like running, I don't know if you do races, like if you've ever run, you know, whatever. But I mean, it'd be like- I don't do races. I would do them, but I don't do them yet. But it's like, if every race you did, the finish line just kept moving, right? Because

we move it on ourselves and we don't accept that like we've accomplished a thing. I do, I mean one of the things I do to sort of keep myself happy even though I have this personality style too, right, where I'm just constantly adding to-dos. One of the ways I keep myself happy is by really marking those achievements. Like when I've finished a thing, I treat it like an accomplishment. I don't just add to it. I stop and I say, we did a thing. Like, let's be happy about that. Let's be excited.

Now we can take a day before we move on to the next thing. So the next thing's still gonna be there for me. And I admit, I think there's something about me that I need that next thing. I don't know what I do. Like, you know, if you want to get to the root of like, what scares me most, it's retirement, right? Really?

Oh yeah. I don't. Retirement in the sense of having too much time then, or retirement in the sense of just not having like a specific goal, maybe. It's that. I don't know what my brain would do. I don't know how it would operate without a thing, without a thing to think about or like without work to think about. I don't know what it would.

Yeah, we got to find out, don't we? Yeah. Yeah, dude, we got to just torch your calendar and get a little weird. I feel like you just got, you know what I'm saying? Like, Get a little weird. Yeah. I mean, you know, just to see what God wants, but it's like, yeah. Torn ship again.

Oh, I can't imagine, dude, if somebody said, you can't do that, like, you can't work tomorrow. I literally, something would crawl out of me and go like this. Yep. No, I have, I've been, we got furlough days this year. You know what a furlough is? Like for disease or something?

No, we, uh, we, we had some, we had to take, uh, unpaid days, like forced to take unpaid days to save the university money and, um, and we're literally not. We're going to do that. Yeah. Everybody know right now, Dr. Ryan Martin is brought in. Yep. Yeah. So we're Ryan Martin is brought in. Yep. Yeah.

So we're literally not allowed to work, right? And so I shouldn't say this because I'll get in trouble, but I've been working on those days. I just don't use my computer because I'm not allowed to. I'm just on my phone doing stuff. I like on my phone, like, doing stuff. I'm on a different computer, just still working. So, yeah. I've worked sometimes to keep me away

from having to deal with my own personal life, I think, sometimes. Okay. Do people do that? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a real distraction for, I mean, that's part of what happens is, yeah. Yeah, because I think it feels manageable, you know, it just feels like I can control what's gonna happen, you know, yeah

Absolutely. I get that But that's okay. It doesn't mean necessarily a bad thing. No, I don't think so either. I mean, I think like There are lots of things in people's lives that can be fulfilling and and yeah in people's lives that can be fulfilling. And yeah, personal relationships are absolutely one of those things. And people should, they're good for us in a good jillion different ways. But people can be fulfilled by their work,

especially when they identify ways that their work is really meaningful. And not just to them, but to the world around them. And if they can see that, and then yeah, it's really fulfilling to do that work. I think what would make me sad is if I hit a point where I thought, hey, I've been doing all of this, and none of it really mattered. Right? To you.

Yeah, or to people in the world. Right? It all sort of went away. I don't think that's true of the job I do. I don't think it's true of the job you do. I think it matters to people and it matters to me. But it would be, you know, for someone whose job was to do whatever. Yeah. You know, they have-

I can see that happening. I could see, especially like as we get more technologically advanced and we take away jobs, you know, that people start to lose their purpose. You have to have some purpose. Right. Or you just, you won't have any, you won't care about yourself or anything. Right. Everything has to have a purpose.

Yep. And then for people it's about, well, where do they find that? Right? Because maybe it's not work. And it's OK if it's not work, right? It could be your hobbies. It could be your family. It could be seeing the world. It could be a billion things. Yeah. Yeah.

I do think, though, that sometimes with like, I wish there was just something that was like, hey, no more technology. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Like, we're doing fine. We don't need a robot sheriff and six Uber drivers hiding from him. All, you know, like, like, and everything, you know, it's like, that's what it just,

yeah, I don't know. I think about that sometimes, like why we wouldn't stop technology because it doesn't feel like it serves us sometimes at a certain point. Right. Yeah, well especially the way in which we have reacted to it. I mean, in so many ways, technology I think almost by definition is supposed to make our lives better

and supposed to make our lives easier, right? Yeah. And I don't necessarily see that happening, right? It makes specific tasks easier, but then we fill up that space with other work, right? You know, it like, have you ever tried to do some task that's really easy now, but have you ever thought about like what it used to be like when we were young?

To like- Oh yeah, dude, like I even just, even writing a sentence the other day, it was like, where are we? Yeah. I was like, what happened, dude? Is this, are we in like was like, what happened, dude? Are we in the, is this a war treaty or something?

I was like, what are we even? And then I was watching, it was a pencil, right? And I was watching the leg come out. I was like, this is crazy. This just happened, I cannot even believe it. Yeah, it's, I mean. When I think about how, I think honestly, it was like, it was getting my tickets for this flight. And I was thinking about how there was a time when you

ordered paper tickets and they came in the mail and you had to carry them with you. And you were all excited, yeah. Yeah, versus handphone. Yeah, you got a ticket to a concert. There were certainly things that added this, there was more of a, when there was more paper in the world,

things that, I don't know, things felt a little bit more connected. Even when there was a local newspaper and stuff and you got your name in it for something, or you got to see what was happening in your community, it was a big deal. They don't have a lot of those anymore. And so a lot of just like the value of being a community

that's not just like a national community feels like it's dilapidating some. I think that's true. I mean, I think that's the, there's definitely a degree to which people have sort of like locked themselves into their homes in ways that they're like, and they think they're interacting with people

because they are online, but they're not necessarily coming out and talking to their neighbors regularly. No, they're not even talking to their spouses or kids. They're always in their room on their devices, just ordering DoorDash or whatever, like exotic pistachios or whatever. Like people are ordering just a lot of weird stuff.

And then it just, at Christmas, they all meet up in the living room. Everybody's like, wow, mom grew a mustache, you know? And it's just, yeah, it's just, I don't know. It's a different time. Exotic pistachios. Yeah, yeah, dude. They're good, some of them are good.

Are they? I'm trying to think, Any other things you found that you get angry at yourself for, Dr. Martin? I think some things that like, the things that tend to jump out of me, a lot of them are things we've talked about. Like it's, I get angry at myself when I don't achieve whatever I set my mind to, whatever I've decided. And that's true, not just with work, but it's true with like personal or fitness goals or things like that. You know, when I, like I said,

I map out pretty specific goals and then when I don't achieve those things, I tend to get disappointed with myself. I think I tend to, I've become much more relaxed over time, not necessarily at work, but much more relaxed about just my interactions with other people that I meet every day. And I've sort of embraced that philosophy of,

hey, everybody's dealing with something and just, you know, I was going through security yesterday at the airport and for whatever reason, I think you'll appreciate this. For whatever reason I got flagged by their, by their like system. Yeah, get him. Guy's angry. You know the system where you go in and you have to stand there with your arms up and then it, and it like smells you or something.

I don't know. I don't know what it does. Really? Yeah. So it. Somebody said it is, they take the smell of you and just email it to Satan or whatever. And that scares me.

Well, I walked out and it lit up both my crotch and my ass. Like on their little monitor. And the guy was like, sorry man, we gotta pat you down. And he took me aside and I think I got a trainee. And he was a little rough with me, man. Yeah. And it was like, it was a, it was a rough pat down and it was.

Was he using more palms you think? Well, he. Palms are denser. No, he was, he told me, he walked me through this. Here's what I think happened. I think because he was a trainee, he felt the need to like do a real good job. And so he told me, yeah, he's like, because my supervisor's watching, I gotta. So this is why I'm telling this story,

is because I'm gonna grant this guy some grace and just say he's doing his best. He's got a new job. He's trying. He's trying really hard, maybe too hard. Yeah. But he did the thing where he put his hands like this and he padded me and he walked me through in advance.

He told me what was gonna happen. He also had to go up and down my legs. Oh yeah, that's a big one kind of. Yeah. It's like, if you just ask me if something's on my legs, I'll tell you honestly. Yeah. That's who I am.

Yeah. At one point he said, would you like me to take you someplace private? And I was like, no. I really don't. I want to be out here. You all met online? Yeah.

Craigslist. It was great. We met out in the woods. He wanted to. Oh. Dude, there used to be a strange encounters on Craigslist casual encounters. Oh, yeah?

Yeah, you could go on there and just meet strangers in the middle of nowhere if you wanted to. No, thanks. I did it. Did you? Yeah. I wish I wouldn't have probably. But there was definitely some different times

you just didn't know, you know. Just, gosh. I've only used Craigslist to sell stuff and we didn't meet in the woods. We just met at my house. TBD brother, you know. There's more to know, I'm sure. These are your books right here,

Why We Get Mad. Those are for you. Oh, thank you. You can give them away, but you gotta find someone named Theo to give them to, because I signed them. Oh, thank you. Now they're worthless.

Yeah. That's super cool. How to Deal with Angry People. Yeah, what do you tell people in this? Yeah, so that book, it's broken into two sections. It's got one that really explains where anger comes from, why people get angry, some of those angry personality types we were talking about.

And then it goes through like 10 specific suggestions for how you can deal with angry people when you interact with them. Some of it's like, how do you deal with people that you run into online? Some of it's like, how do you deal with people that you run into online? Some of it's how do you stay calm? Part of it's, you know, do you consider whether or not you really screwed up? Maybe the problem is that you blew it and you need to find ways to make amends.

So it's things like that. Is apologizing ever a bad idea, do you think? I mean, what I usually say about apologizing is that I don't think people should do it if they don't mean it. I mean, I think you should mean your apology. Yeah. And I think a lot of times we, you know,

so I think that one of the things we've done is by, especially with kids, a lot of times we force them to apologize. We say like, you gotta go say you're sorry. And you know, I think that actually sends a message of, well, apologizing is what you do to get out of trouble. And that isn't necessarily why we should apologize, right? We should apologize if we're really sorry.

I actually don't want people to apologize to me if they're not actually sorry. That is just a meaningless gesture. And it's weird too. They're still calling you names, but they're apologizing. Right, right. And so- Like, I'm sorry I called you a name, you little.

Yes. And then you're like, Jesus, God. And then, cause so if it doesn't lead to changed behavior, then what's the point? Yeah. So I think, so I think the flip side of that is when a person is sorry, they should apologize and they should do it well. You know, like they should do it effectively.

They should, you know, tell people what they're sorry for and they should make amends in a way that suggests that it won't happen again and I think that's where a lot of people fall short is that it's always a I'm sorry if or I'm sorry but uh instead of just I'm sorry. Yeah what can I do to make it up to you that sort of thing before you go I wanted to um I wanted to ask you, why do people, why is road rage such a thing? Why does that?

Yeah, driving is just the absolute perfect scenario for leading to anger, everything about it. I mean, truly, if you were an evil genius and you wanted to create a situation that was gonna make people mad, you would create one that looked like driving. Right, gotta get from here to here. Yep. I got goals, and there's people in the way of those goals.

Those people who are blocking them are anonymous to me, so I can think or say whatever I want. I can call them a total fucking idiot. And I don't know. They might be a genius, and I have no idea. There's all these unwritten rules of the road. I mean, there's written rules, but then there's also like, what speed should you be going? Right? I mean, right. So there's vagueness in there too, which can. Yeah. So it's the thing I often ask

my students is what speed should you go on the interstate? And because nobody says, you know, the speed limit, it's always five over, 10 over, 15 over, right? It's, and so if we have, if you and I are on the road and we have different, what's your answer to that? My answer, probably 11 miles over. Okay, so I'm pretty close to that. I'm like nine, right? I tend to set the cruise at nine over. So if you and I encounter each other on the road

and you're behind me, well, you get mad because I'm not obeying your arbitrary rule. And I get mad because you're a hazard. You're trying to ride my bumper or whatever because, hey, I'm already going fast enough. So these arbitrary rules set people off. All of that ends up leading. and then on top of that, it's kind of a nerve-racking situation.

We don't actually think of it. We've been driving long enough that we forget how anxiety-provoking it actually is, but it's dangerous, right? And so real harm can happen. And so all of that tends to exacerbate that likelihood of getting angry when people slow us down

or get in the way. And then I add to it that the consequences are so significant of people running people off the road when they get mad, people- Oh, I see. Yeah, just things like that, that those consequences, we see those, right? I mean, they're very visible.

In fact, we have seen more road rage-related shootings in the last two years than ever before, that people are getting aggressive. Oh yeah, if I'm aggressive, dude, and I have a gun, it's anybody's ball game, dude. There we go. Very unfortunate, very senseless. Visitors witnessed deadly Myrtle Beach road rage shooting.

Oh yeah, they call it murder beach now, I think. Every place is starting to be called like murder something. But yeah, people are just shooting. They just, I had a friend in New Orleans that died in a road rage. Yeah, it's crazy. It's really crazy, but. Yeah, it's crazy. It's really crazy. But it is, it's that intense moment.

But as a driver, if you can play it out in your head, like you were saying earlier, how do I want this to play out? The truth is, you probably want that guy to get a flat tire sometime the next day or whatever. That's fine. But right now, you wanna get to where you're going. And honestly, most of the time in those situations

I want to get as far from that person as possible. Yeah, like I don't I don't want to interact with them Yeah, you can't be out following them. What is this somebody road raging? This guy punched open a back window that's hard to do Oh, this seems like a she just popped the trunk boy damn bro she had a carrying oh she got a hatchet what who and he hit her those are children that's wild but it is crazy that one guy, he acted like they were crazy for coming after him after he went and hit their window. Broke their, yeah.

But it's crazy, you would think you just leave. If somebody broke your window, that dude, that guy or whatever. These incidents are everywhere now. I mean, you scroll through, I mean, that's the part of it. So I had a weird interaction right outside my kid's school one day where I was parked waiting for pickup and this woman came and she parked her car in front of me

and she was backing up and I got a little anxious that she didn't realize how close she was. And so I honked, but it wasn't, I mean, to me, this is what a horn is for actually, right? It's like to alert someone like, hey, you might hit me. Not because I was mad, I wasn't, I mean, to me, this is what a horn is for, actually, right? It's like to alert someone, like, hey, you might hit me. Not because I was mad, I wasn't, but wow, it made her mad. Like, she was really mad that I'd honked at her. But what was interesting is that she got out of the car,

and she came over to talk to me, and she immediately started recording. Like, she took her phone out and started, like, videoing the situation. I think thinking that we might... Things might escalate. Things might escalate and wanting it captured if it did. And I think that like, which I do wonder sometimes, what is, do phones, and I don't have an answer to this, do phones de-escalate situations or do they escalate them?

You know, like if... Right, once the show is on, now do I have to perform? Right. I had a soccer coach come yell at me one day, I'm not just me, like yell at the fans at a game, and I've often, I mean, he was out of control. I've often wondered, what would have happened if I'd just taken my phone out and started recording?

Would he have been like, uh-oh, I should back away, or would he? Right, or that would just exacerbate it. Yeah, and I don't know. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Wow, yeah, I should back away or what? Right. Or that would just exacerbate. Yeah. And I don't know dude. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Because that's interesting. It's almost like art imitates life or whatever. It's like, we're just w like if we're watching something violent happen and then we get involved in something violent, the first thing to do then a lot of times wouldn't even be to help. It would be to record. Right. Right.

Because that's what we just saw. If we just saw something recorded. Right. Gosh. It makes me, I mean, I, and I truly wonder is that, I mean, there must be circumstances where that's the smart thing to do where that is going to deescalate. Right. Um, you know, where people are going to start to sort of say like, Oh, I don't

want to be, I don't want to be famous. Yeah. I think if someone is probably urinating in your yard or something, then you definitely, I'm gonna record you and then be like, oh, I'm not gonna be doing this on that camera. On the camera, I'm gonna put my pants up or whatever. But I think if it's somebody who's just like,

I don't know, that's a good question. I think part of the question is how rational are they in that moment, right? You know, I mean, if they're... Right. They might be doing it as a safety mechanism. Yep. I'm gonna make sure things don't get out of control here. Right, right. Yep. But yeah, road rage commonly characterized by aggressive driving

is a factor in more than 50% of all car crashes that end in fatality, according to AAA. In fact, in a separate years-long study, road rage episodes resulted in about 30 deaths and 1800 injuries per year. This is, you know, it's funny. I, one of the things that I oftentimes talk to people about, and it's like, it's the, so I did a Ted talk on anger, a few, whatever.

You have seen it. Back a while ago. And so like the premise of that talk is that anger is good for you. There it is. That anger is like good for you in all these different ways. One circumstance that I would not advocate anger is, is behind the wheel.

Right. It's just, it, it feels like there's no good outcome that it, it just puts you in a dangerous spot and better to, better to just back away and, and let it go. Yep. Let it go. Yeah. What are good ways that anger, what is, when is anger healthy? Yeah. I mean, I think it's a lot of it is, um, you know, if you grant the premise that

unfairness exists in the world, that there are injustices in the world. And I do grant that premise then, you know, feeling anger, uh, as a, uh, is totally natural and healthy. And, um, it's what we do with it that is most recent. I mean, anger, like any emotion, it exists in us for, because of our evolutionary history, right? It exists in us because it encouraged our ancestors to like fight back.

And so it was a survival mechanism. And so from that perspective, it's still valuable. So the same way, you know, I get thirsty and I get a sip of water, anger motivates me to confront injustice. Right. And you're gonna need it too. I mean, if they didn't,

if we got rid of anger completely, it would be, then what if there were tyranny or something, we'd never be able to stand up to it, you know? Or what if there were, yeah. I mean, anger is behind all these social movements in really meaningful ways, right? And now we were talking earlier about protests and social media that, but anger is what's motivating

most of those in oftentimes in healthy ways. Right. Yeah. Yeah. of those in oftentimes in healthy ways. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Ryan Martin, I'm trying to think of anything else we can cover. I think we got a pretty good. Yeah, we went from flushing the toilet

before you're done peeing all the way to getting padded down by a TSA agent, by an overly aggressive TSA agent. I think we covered a lot. That's a lot of ground. Dr. Ryan Martin, thank you so much, man, for coming in. Yeah, thank you, man. This has been an absolute treat. It's been great talking to you and it's been fun being here. Yeah, I appreciate it, man.

It's been interesting to just learn more, a little bit about anger. And the thing that has helped me at times is that moment of thinking, how do I want this to play out? Yep, that's good. If I can let that get me, at that moment when you're about to open the card or whatever, you're about to go in the other room and say something, how do I want this evening to play out,

this afternoon, this next hour, this next week? Yep. Yeah, I agree. I think that I think that like that has to be thinking about that outcome you want. What is your desired outcome in any situation is so important. And then because the next question is, well then how do I get there?

What is the thing I have to do to accomplish this? And, you know, now the second piece is having the presence of mind to deescalate yourself in order to have that thought and be intentional about that, right? Yeah, if you can get to that thought, you're probably gonna be okay. Right.

I've noticed that for myself, if I can get to that thought, I'm probably gonna be okay, because most of the time I'm gonna choose, let's find a way to get this, let's find a way to just get through this. Yep, and I think for people who have real genuine anger problems,

they're not able to get to that thought. You know, that they're so escalated in the moment, it's this righteous anger that is driving everything they're thinking about, and they're not able to To to get to the place of okay. What's the rational healthy thing to do right now? Yeah, because I think preserving your peace is really key. I mean, I there's just everything is loud everywhere There's just everything is like

Signaling or letting you know Notification never ending now. I think just holding onto your piece and if you can remember that, how do I want this to end? How do I really want this to end? It's really good for any situation. Honestly, it's good for the small day-to-day interactions. It's good for big life goals. Yeah, business, it's like if you're calling

to make a deal with somebody, maybe they don't want the deal or maybe it's not, but do you wanna do deals with them for the next 10 years? How do you want things to look long-term? Does the price need to be that? Can it be a different price over five years and you still have a great business relationship? Yeah, do you have to win this argument?

Do you have to defeat that Pontiac Firebird that just flipped you off, dude? Right. You probably don't. Probably not. It probably doesn't matter in the long run that you that you win that. But how do you get through it today? How do you reach out to your sp- if you're angry, how do you reach out to your spouse and just say something nice? Just because you know it's going to make it better when you guys get home or when you see each other again so they're not going to have a tough day, right? You know, how do you even if you're mad at your girlfriend or something say look

Everything will be okay, you know Yep Thinking through To those long-term goals. What do you how do you want this situation to be and then and then? Charting the path to get there. I think honestly for a lot of people, the challenge is that they aren't able necessarily or haven't spent enough time thinking about that destination.

And being really intentional about, this is the outcome I want. This is the outcome I want today, this is the outcome I want. This is the outcome I want today, this is the outcome I want next week, and so this is the outcome I want for this drive to work, right, is to get there safely. Once you start having that thought, then it helps you stop diverging into stupid directions.

Yeah, yeah, sometimes I don't have that, and so then I'm at the whims or whatever. Right. You know, sometimes I'm just a little bit aimless. Which is okay, but, but, but it can be risky. Dr. Ryan Martin, thank you so much for coming in, man.

You bet, thanks so much for having me. This has been a treat. I appreciate it. I'm starting to finish, yeah. Yeah, been dealing with some anger and so just excited to get to talk about it and just think about it. So thank you for sharing your knowledge. Yeah, you bet.

Thanks man. reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take a little