Real Skills Workshop - Community Event
Turn Anger into Oomph!
Real Skills Workshop: Be Calm and Confident
Hosts: Rick Wilkes (@Rick) and Cathy Vartuli (@Cathy)
Recorded Sun Apr 10 2022
Replay is below
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There’s Energy in Our Anger
Heat keeps us alive.
We generate heat inside us. A healthy human generates sufficient inner fire to keep their body quite warm, right? Drop just 4 degrees F (2 deg C) and it is considered life threatening. We need inner fire to live.
But… raise the inner fire too much and it’s also life threatening. Yes, a few thousand people have survived inner temperatures of 111 deg F. It’s not recommended. Being overly inflamed is deadly.
So what do we do with anger? Anger has fire in it. A synonym for being angry is… inflamed.
Many people have chronic inflammation in their tissues that coincides with chronic anger. Arthritis has been tired to anger. TMJ.
Actually, I propose that a vast array of chronic mystery diseases have their roots in anger that doesn’t have a healthy way of flowing, warming, and expressing.
I don’t know about you, but when i think of an “angry person” I think of my Dad drinking, or too many people taking their anger out on some innocent person, or even me punching the wall when I was a teenager and was seething with the anger from abuse I could not (yet) speak about and had no idea what to do with.
There’s life force in anger. There’s intelligence in anger.
It’s just that unless we develop skill with such fire, we end up burning out our body-mind and our relationships.
Lack of skill in moving energy can lead to people shutting down, too. Did you know shame is a “useful” heavy wet blanket to smother the life force of anger? Of course, wet blankets take aware our fire for living, too, leading to cold wet depression. Ugh.
Mercifully, there are other ways to move and harness this energy… to use the life force in our anger for the oomph to craft a thriving life!
We’re going to explore and practice together in this workshop. Want to join us?
Replay is below
An example… there were times in my life where I really could not afford (or get myself to part with) the money for support I needed. With the anger that rises in me from such times in my life and the lives other others I hold dear, I devoted myself to coming up with ways to provide support that isn’t always tied to what someone can “afford.”
This manifests as our gliding scale offerings… those who need a supportive gift get to attend as the guest of those who are in a position to share a bit (or more than a bit). Pretty “useful” redirection of anger energy, eh?
Oh! We also have a fresh new One-Time Circle Membership on a gliding scale that includes all Real Skills Workshops (and much more)!
Our anger can support our heartistry – the expression of what truly matters to us. Let’s do it!
Replay is below
Rick & Cathy
Your Emotional Freedom Coaches
P.S. Adira says, “I wonder… Are sticks like anger, where you can whack someone with them, poke with them, do magic with them, or even BUILD with them?!?”
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Good-Hearted Anger
It’s strange to realize that so much of what I’ve come to love in my life… has been clarified by anger.
Good-Hearted Anger. God-Hearted Anger. Anger that showed me – and continues to show me – what REALLY matters to me.
Matters to me enough that I’ll do something about it. Change my life. Change my business. Offer something boldly different.
I bought a piece of expensive software. It sucked. None of its promises were kept. I spent two hours on the phone with their support (back when it cost a LOT to make a long distance call), to no avail. No refund. Just… garbage. Lost $1500 in equivalent dollars today.
I did NOT realize it at the time (since I was not yet emotionally skilled) but: This outraging experience activated power within me. As a software developer myself, this experience changed my business back then. We started offering:
- 21-Day Free Trial – Love it or don’t buy!
- 30-Day Money Back Guarantee - no buyer’s remorse here!
- Toll-free support!! – Staffed by people who care
NONE of this was standard in the industry at the time. It cost a lot of money. And… the energy of being that clear about what matters to the heart of my business set us up to thrive “anyway.”
Notice this is different from something making us angry and asking, “What can I do to help?” Nothing wrong with that impulse, of course. The answer can result in direct action that alleviates suffering.
This is more: “What matters to me here? How can I adapt and co-create to make more of what matters?!?” This impulse takes our anger energy and flows it towards growing the world that serves all of us better. It can evoke stark clarity and provide the oomph we need to take action.
To use our anger this way is a Real Skill. In a world where too many use their anger to bang their heads on rocks (or doom scroll social media), this approach BUILDS for our Thriving Tomorrows. YES!
If this has you curious and a bit excited, join us for the replay.
Replay is below
Our anger can indeed support our heartistry – the expression of what truly matters to us. Let’s do it!
Rick & Cathy
Your Emotional Freedom Coaches
P.S. Adira says, “Does your anger feel big and orange and the dream out of reach?!? I know how you feel… and still we can smile! Who know what is possible!”
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Turn Anger into Oomph! - Workshop Session Recording
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Turn Anger into Oomph!
[00:00:00] Earn anger into of what an interesting notion, right? Certainly one that my dad would have gone, like get outta here. Anyway, my name is Rick from thriving. Now I’m here with Cathy, Vartuli from thriving now and the intimacy dojo.com. And we are so grateful that you’re the type of person that is willing to explore this with us.
[00:00:25] Yeah. Uh, I think it’s so powerful because so many of us have been taught that anger is dangerous, scary, something to be avoided at all, costs a sign that we’re not in control maybe, or that it reminds us of someone we loved. So. Going through this and fighting. I loved Rick’s article about how he used the experience of being angry and the energy to create something that was better for his audience.
[00:00:52] Like, oh, I had this really bad customer service. We can be angry and we can, and I there’s certainly been times where I called a ring doorbell for one, right. Recently, Rick got an earful about how, where they were just making me jump through every imaginable hoop. And I love how he took that energy and anger and like, how can I make the experience for my clients?
[00:01:14] My, the people that I’m working with so much better. So they never had that particular experience. And that’s a beautiful way to use all that energy. And a lot of us don’t even know how to access that. It’s just pushed either. Let it out in a. And we, we all need to vet sometimes I think there’s nothing wrong with that, but we, you know, there’s an occasional event and mostly suppression and nothing’s done with that energy.
[00:01:40] Um, so I just really appreciated you sharing that. Rick, I thought that was brilliant and very generous way to use the energy that you were experiencing. Thank you. You know, for me, I was thinking about what does, what did anger feel like to me when I was growing up? And it felt about as welcome as a kitchen fire, you know, um, like very disorienting.
[00:02:03] We need to put this out before, um, real damage is done. Um, you know, we, we, we actually had several kitchen fires in our family, um, growing up and so like that’s a vivid memory and my dad’s anger. Um, and like you said, I think.
[00:02:29] I tried to lay out what the arc is, and this is a possibility we are in this together. Um, that’s my, that’s why. I view this as a circle workshop. Um, and I invite each of us to take a moment and tune to the notion that there are some people sitting in a circle and we’ve experienced energy in our lives.
[00:02:54] Some of it has been at us or around us that we would label as anger. And we’re going to start tuning in an idea in that feeling in a moment.
[00:03:09] I believe that one of the reasons that I was drawn to tapping is that I wanted to be able to manage my emotions. I was watching a show about the great smoky mountains I live in that area and the national park and how they sometimes use controlled burns to keep the park healthy. Um, and that’s very different than the wildfires we’ve had, where even though they may be natural, um, they can impact, um, buildings and structures and, and areas of the park where maybe wildlife don’t have as much room to move away from it.
[00:03:51] Um, anger, isn’t a time where there’s. Try Kendall, right? Like a fire danger high say globally. There are a lot of places where fire, the anger danger is, is high. There’s a lot of dry kindling emotions. Yeah. I, I don’t necessarily label emotions as negative and positive. I know that that’s where EFT tapping, um, started was like certain emotions are more negative for me.
[00:04:24] Anger is, uh, it has an energy to it. It has a power to it. And I have a controlled heat source, several of them in my kitchen that I put to good use. We cooked breakfast on a controlled heat source in our, in our kitchen this morning. And so if we think about that anger, maybe we seen it only in the wildfire destructive kitchen, fire context.
[00:04:55] And if that’s been most, much of your life, um, you know, it’s a big club. Um, and, and maybe, you know, you’ve, you’ve gotten to a place where you avoid anyone or anything that might, might make you angry. Um, and I get that I’m an avoidant type of person. And I would like to propose that anger is a, is a very pure form of energy.
[00:05:27] It activates in us it, and it can guide and inform what’s most important to us. It’s a form of ouch, like, and if something’s an ouch for us, We can take that energy and do something with it. And that’s a real skill. That’s why this is a real skill workshop, because for most people, this does not happen just by default.
[00:05:51] And if you’re open today to maybe change and add some of the pathways, as Kathy said, venting, Hey, that’s absolutely a place where we can get the energy that’s in excess of what’s, right for us out of our system. And there’s an opportunity to channel it in other ways, too, to clarity, confidence, and change, adapting, and doing inspired action, um, for things that matter to us.
[00:06:23] And I love that. Um, so one of the things I’d like to talk about if it’s okay with you, Rick is just how to feel our anger, because that was something I didn’t really know how to do. Um, even after years of tapping, I had trouble with it. Growing up anger was something that was really suppressed. Um, and I think that certainly.
[00:06:44] Peop certain, um, demographics might find it a little easier because often for men, especially white men, it’s like, oh, it’s kind of okay. That if I’m to feel angry, that’s the only emotion they’re really allowed to socially express every once in a while. Um, versus a lot of people that are women identified, uh, socially our society, people of color, other they’re supposed to be quiet, like otherwise they’re dangerous.
[00:07:13] It’s really scary for people to experience the anger. Um, and I also had a lot of examples in my life where anger was really toxic because my mother and father would keep their anger down until they blew up and, you know, would get suppressed and ferment. And then you’re bringing up things that happened five years ago or 10 years ago.
[00:07:32] And it’s just really, it was really toxic to be around. So I just didn’t want to feel anger at all and feeling the pure emotion. Is very, it’s like building a muscle. I had to start like in, with one second in increments. So there was like that, oh my God, I’m going to feel this. And my, I had a lot of fear and shame.
[00:07:53] Someone shared that the anger and shame are really entwined. Um, we have a lot of beliefs as well that are kind of woven in to that, to the feeling like I, I, you know, I believe the anger was shameful. I believed that it was dangerous. I believe that it was meant I was going to say really harsh things, really cruel things to people.
[00:08:12] I laughed. So as they’re afraid to feel it. So I think the first step is just giving ourselves for one breath, allowing ourselves to just feel. And then let it go. When we experience an emotion and don’t try to change it, don’t try to shift it. It often shifts on its own, or it starts becoming more usable versus the pent-up anger.
[00:08:35] That’s just going to feels like it’s going to blow us apart and tear everybody apart. Um, so to build that muscle, if you can, if you can just think of something that made you feel moderately angry and just take a gentle breath. And all we want to do is actually we want to come out of our heads because it’s very easy to live in our heads and that was wrong.
[00:08:58] And this is good and this is bad and how dare they and all that. That’s not what we want to do. We want to actually let those thoughts go and come into our body and notice the sensations in our body. So for me, everybody feels anger a little differently. We’re all allowed to feel it. However we feel it, but I will often feel tightness in my chest, like a hot feeling sometimes in my throat and heart.
[00:09:24] And sometimes when I’m really connected, my whole core will be hot. Um, but ask your body, how does it feel anger think of that experience that made you angry, breathe into your body, maybe wiggle your feet on the floor and just notice, how has your body experiencing, what sensation, what nerve ending experiences are you having that, that helped, you know, you’re angry and you’re welcome to share that in the chat.
[00:09:50] If you’d like to,
[00:09:55] a lot of someone said, I’ve, I find myself feeling angry and then automatically shutting it, swallowing it. I don’t remember feeling, um, having a feeling angry as a child, only anxiety, uh, anger and shame are related or connected for in, and, um, Probably trained very young. Um, someone shared, I think that money, man, at least north America culture, anger is a more acceptable expression of anxiety and certainty than showing fear.
[00:10:22] I think that’s very true. Um, someone else, like don’t even feel it. Someone said, I feel at my stomach and sometimes I want to throw up. I love that you can experience that and thank you for sharing that. Um, I start breathing really slowly, yucky gut feeling. I feel sick to my stomach and very constricted around my chest, neck and head.
[00:10:45] So thank you for feeling that invite you to stay. If you want to just let that go for a minute. You don’t have to, like when we go to the gym, we have, Rick’s rubbing his hands. You can kind of shake them out if you want. When we’re experiencing emotions, that we have a lot of fear around having, or a lot of social stigma around having, or very little practice around having we’ll often feel that constriction, it will not feel good because part of us is like, no, let’s shove this down.
[00:11:14] And the muscles we have for shoving it down and ignoring it are really strong. We’ve been practicing them for decades. So if you can just do baby steps and let yourself feel just for a moment and then let it go, you’re teaching your system and I can experience this emotion and, and then I’m not gonna nothing bad happened.
[00:11:34] Look, I felt, I felt the sensations for just a moment. I can let know I can step back into where I’m used to or baby step building up the confidence that we can actually have the emotion. And then we’re, we’re not in, and we don’t have to do it in huge doses. So Rick used his anger, but to use his angry actually had had the experience of being angry.
[00:11:58] So many of us cut off our power source and we learned this from often where a very young and it was reinforced continually that anger is really dangerous. We shouldn’t feel it. It’s not feminine. It’s not safe. It’s not acceptable, whatever that is. So, um, Rick you’re already tapping. Would you like to do some tapping on this?
[00:12:18] Because I think that’s it. I wanted to say that part of what we’re doing here is to help ID. Now, your label may not be anger. Okay. So one of the ways that you can kind of ID what I guess a lot of us are calling anger is if you don’t normally. Anger. If you can remember something that was done to someone else or to you, that was an ouch, like, ouch, don’t do that now.
[00:12:52] And, and how, what happens in your body as you feel the pure ouch of the situation and this, those sensations are used, you could usefully use those sensations when we talk about anger. Okay. Um, you know, some people don’t have a whole lot of fire. They’re just so water and earth and a lot of other elements in a way that, um, the fire energy that most, we often think of as anger, doesn’t rise in them the same way, but it’s useful for like the ouch boundary.
[00:13:32] I want this to be different. There’s a kind of energy of, of, of that. Maybe you don’t feel that either, which is, which is fine. I don’t, so that’s what I would do. So, um, Kathy, we, we’re going to tap on the, the feeling and a core part of tapping EFT tapping. And if you’re new to it, thriving now.com/tapping is where you can get our free guide.
[00:14:03] A core thing about tapping. As we start with accepting those feelings. Maybe you were told that, oh, you’re not angry. That’s the best way to get me angry. I’m not angry, or I have nothing to be angry about, but whatever it is accepting, the feelings gives us, um, a grounded place to be with it. Even though I’ve done some things with these feelings.
[00:14:32] Even though I’ve done some things with these feelings. I’ve shamed them. I’ve shaman. I’ve swallowed them. I smile at them. Might’ve even numb them out. I have even numb them out. So we use Pasmore Kate to Rick, please. Password kicked to me. I was saying direct. I don’t know if other people use it. I know I do.
[00:14:57] Okay. I accept that. I have these feelings, except that I have these feelings. I have these sensations. I have these sensations eyebrow. I could call them anger. I could call them anchor anchors. Really human anger is really human under the eye, and I’ve seen it be really scary. And I have seen it be really scary under the nose.
[00:15:24] I’ve seen anger be really destructive. I seen anger be really destructive. Jen. I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to be that way. They wouldn’t let me be that way. They wouldn’t let me be that way. I’ve been around people that wanted me to suppress my anger. I’ve been around people that really wanted me to suppress my anger, uh, planning.
[00:15:51] I’ve been around people that were scared of my anger. I’ve been around people that were scared of my anger, high brow. I’ve been around people that denied my anger. I’ve been around people that denied by anger. I’ve been around people that it would be really a bad idea. And we are really bad idea to get angry in their presence, to get angry in their presence.
[00:16:18] And I accept, I have these feelings except I have these feelings. I have chin, I have feelings of anger at times. I have feelings of anger at times called on, and I want to do something useful with them. And I want to do something useful with those. And I accept where I am and how I feel except where I am and how I.
[00:16:41] That was weird and awkward as that had an awkward
[00:16:48] and you notice my style is to acknowledge it can be weird, awkward, scary, objectionable. We’re and if you’re tapping for yourself, you can, I can’t, I’m not allowed to be angry. I’m not allowed to be angry. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? The, I, I can’t, I’m not allowed to be angry. I’m not allowed to be angry.
[00:17:13] I learned that long time ago. I learned that a long time ago. I got so much anger. I’ve got so much anger. Chin. No, I don’t. No, I don’t come on. I can’t, I’m not allowed to have anger and that allowed them anger. Am I allowed to have anger in my anger starting to sense that I might have some inner conflicts anchor.
[00:17:38] I’m starting to sense that I have some inner conflict about anchor. Tapping is very forgiving. And it’s the kind of thing that you could just do. One thing that feels true for you, but like with Kathy, you lifted up, you allow yourself to feel some of it. You can put it down and you tap on being acceptable sensations, acceptable, meaning they’re human, and they might even be useful, but at least you’re not trying to fling them away in a way that’s damaging to your physiology, your sense of yourself, your sense of yourself as a good person, all the things that can come when we judge our own ouch, anger and clarity.
[00:18:34] So go ahead. Uh, someone asks, what’s the difference between anger and what is, where’s the line between anger and rage? I don’t know that there’s a specific line and I’ve been doing a lot of radical honesty work and may use just anger for anger, resentment for everything. Um, personally, I think anger is the general broad spectrum.
[00:18:55] Rage is probably on the far end where we’ve either been via, like our rights have been violated. Our power has been taken away a lot, or we’ve been bottling it up for so long. It comes out as a volcano kind of thing. So I would say it’s on a spectrum and anger as the entire spectrum, which is frustration at the low end rage or at the top end.
[00:19:15] Um, I do think that radical honesty does, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t take everything they do as the right way to do it, but I do think that they say we often get caught up in using the nuanced words as a way to suppress our feelings. And so they just like, just say, no, don’t say I’m frustrated or irritated.
[00:19:34] Just Sam angry, just kind of use the broad spectrum word. And I think that is kind of useful because for many of us that have suppressed emotions, we want to get in our head because we feel like we have more control. And that takes us away from our actual body’s experience of what’s going on. If that makes sense, because we want to be able to try to get in our body if we can.
[00:19:56] And, um, I also think. From some people, I do this. I never allow myself to get angry for many, many years, unless I felt justified. I felt very righteous about it. Like I felt like someone had really done me wrong and then I would plan it out and it would come out very righteous. And that’s not really how I want to interact with the world.
[00:20:17] And I really love the fact that we can just get angry because we’re angry. It doesn’t necessarily mean the other person is wrong. I think there’s so much associated with that in our society. That if I feel angry, the other person has done something wrong and that’s not always true. Sometimes it’s very true.
[00:20:34] Sometimes people are really stumped on our feet and sometimes we’re just angry because we don’t like what the other person did and maybe they didn’t do anything wrong. We just don’t like. And we are allowed to feel anger. We get to, we’re allowed to feel our anger with, if we can separate the feeling from someone else needs to do something different, or someone needs to apologize.
[00:20:56] Maybe they did something that really harmed us, but in order to feel the energy and use it, if we can disconnect the need to get someone else to do something and just come to our own feelings, that gives us a lot more power. When we link it to the requirement for someone else to do something or experience a certain way, it makes it much harder and it can come across as controlling.
[00:21:19] And the other person may have a lot harder time hearing us. I don’t know if that’s useful. I’m not saying that doesn’t mean they didn’t harm it. Well, it’s useful to me because this is something that you’ve been reinforcing with me as you’ve been learning this and sharing it. And it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this with you.
[00:21:37] You know, I noticed that the more that I accept anger as, as part of the emotional spectrum.
[00:21:49] So for example, if I’m at my limit for, let’s say receiving energy in, in auditory. Okay. And someone, huh? I’ll go straight to rage. Like my inner rage for me is, is, is not a subtle feeling. It’s like, all of my cells are now pulsing with this needs to stop for my benefit. Now they didn’t do anything wrong.
[00:22:21] They could have honked to let a kid know not to run into the road or, you know, I, I don’t know why they honked. Um, I can get very angry if I’m at my limit in the same way, if there’s too much noise just to people being in delight right now. So that’s a, that’s a pure example for me that if I focus on trying to get them to do something different, um, that’s my anger is righteous.
[00:22:51] You guys are too noisy. Pretty screwed, like, because I’m going to be always trying to make other people conform. Now, if anger says to me, I so need and value some quiet time right now, then the next moment I can, I can put in the earplugs and go into a dark room and kind of reset my system. And there there’s a spectrum of that.
[00:23:20] And I share that it’s vulnerable to share that because why are you getting angry, Rick? Well, because my body is like, it’s one of the ways that our body tells us we’ve reached or exceeded a limit or we’re in an environment, which is so not conducive to our thriving. There’s a signal here. There’s a signal.
[00:23:45] And I’d, I’d love for you to do a, a quick tapping with us, just straight in and like accepting that anger can be a signal that doesn’t isn’t necessarily about other people having to do things and change. Okay. So I might, you just take a gentle deep breath. If it feels good to your body,
[00:24:08] karate chop, I have the sensation of anger. I have the sensation of anger. I think that it makes other people wrong. It was a part of me that defines it as other people are wrong. How dare they do that thing? How dare they do that thing? When I need something different?
[00:24:32] I’ll dare. They do be so inconsiderate. I feel very angry at. I feel very angry at them. And part of me wants them to change their behavior. And part of me needs them to change their behavior. What if I can just be angry?
[00:24:51] What if I can just be angry? But if I can first deal with my own self, what if I can first deal with my own self top of that may, may be doing something wrong. They may be doing something wrong. My boundaries, yeah, and row, but I don’t want to give away my power. I am not wanting to give away my power side of the eye.
[00:25:15] First. I can deal with the emotion I’m experiencing. I choose to first deal with the emotion that I’m experiencing under the AI and not get, give it away by interacting with them first and not give it away by interacting with them first under the nose, I’ve been trained to think that they shouldn’t make me angry.
[00:25:38] Yeah, I’ve been trained to think that they shouldn’t make me angry. I shouldn’t make them angry. Nobody should make anyone angry. Nobody should make anyone angry collarbone. And we’re all humans and we’re all humans under the arm. Some of us are even doing our best. Some of us are even doing our best and head in.
[00:26:01] It’s okay to be angry. Okay. It’s okay to be hangry separate from his right or wrong, separate from who’s right or wrong. Ooh, I like that. Separate from just okay. To be angry, separate from who’s right or wrong. It feels like there’s a space in me that that starts to open up. Yeah. I think a D it decouples us from the other people because sometimes that other person is just never going to admit they’re wrong.
[00:26:39] They’re wrong. Sometimes they can never, they just, maybe they’re physically, they’re just on capable of it. Or their conditioning is too strong or whatever. If we decouple it, we feel our own anger. Get our own power clear our own system is someone shared. And I think this is very true. Suppressed emotions, especially anger, I think are very toxic to our body can make us very ill.
[00:27:00] So for suppressing it or waiting for the other person to like admit they were wrong or change their behavior, we are giving away a lot of our power and just kind of tamping it down in our body. Versus I can experience my anger, let some of the more intense part of it past. So just kind of, as we experience it, it just, it modifies and it becomes power.
[00:27:21] We can use to make a change. And maybe that changes. I’m not going to interact with that person or I’m going to do things so they, you know, to, to protect myself from that person. Um, that’s okay. But I think when we decouple it and deal with the emotion first and kind of let our system use the energy in a really powerful and good way, then we have a lot more standing in the world and our, our body can handle it better too.
[00:27:55] Uh, and some peoples someone shared that they had a lot of anger in their adolescents and twenties. Um, and then they wanted to be a better person, quote unquote, and they kind of suppressed, starting being mindful and suppressing anger. I think the really cool thing is we can be mindful and angry. And one of the ways to do that is to kind of get out of our thoughts, our head up in our head.
[00:28:20] We can create all kinds of story. They should. A lot of us go to our stories. First. I love to go to my story, how dare that person do this. They should have known that I had a bad day. I walked into the store and they said this thing, they laughed at me when I got angry and like, ah, I rubbed myself up a lot in my story, in my head up here, versus if I can get into my body and like, oh, what did they actually said?
[00:28:45] Oh, they said these words and they laughed. Okay. I can feel my anger. I can, like, I’m not, I’m just not getting in the story of it. I’m getting in my body about it. And I’m building up the capacity. Each time I do this for my body to process the energy a little better. So we often get in our stories and we embellish, or we take meaning from what people said and did versus like, what am I actually feeling in my body?
[00:29:11] And I can just feel it and experience it and let that power be useful for something. Um, and I think that’s a big thing to do, and it’s not easy to separate ourselves from our thoughts and just get in the sensations for awhile. First, once we get in the sensations, we may find that the thought isn’t that scary or big as it was, even though it’s hard to get into the sensory, even though it’s hard to get into this and say,
[00:29:40] And there is release in blaming others and there is release and blaming others. And there’s a sense of power and feeling like I can control them as a sense of power in thinking that I can control them. And it hasn’t worked out all that well, it hasn’t worked out all that well. And some people can’t even admit that they’re a part of the dynamic and some people can’t even admit that they’re part of the dynamic makes me so angry.
[00:30:06] It makes me so angry. I get so angry. I get so. I get so angry. I get so angry. Dare they? How dare they, they need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different. They need to be different or else I’ll just stay angry.
[00:30:35] I’ll just stay angry. Uh, really has not worked well for my nervous system that really has not worked well for my nervous system. I am looking for a new way to new ways to channel that energy. I I’m looking for new ways to channel anger, energy. I could use some own that doesn’t require them changing and they could use some of that doesn’t require they’re changing.
[00:31:02] And I think when you think of the freedom that comes from this, I was brought up in a family where if you made anyone else angry, you are at fault. Especially my mom, you were, if my mother got angry, obviously we had done something wrong. The problem is my mother doesn’t allow herself to feel anger unless she gets triggered by something.
[00:31:19] And, um, one, one instance, she visited me in Florida and I had an KitchenAid mixer. Um, I’d actually gotten it my, with my previous girlfriend. And when we broke up, I got it in the quote-unquote divorce. Um, my mother sees this kitchen and mixer and she was overtired. She hadn’t been taking care of herself, but she sees a KitchenAid mixer and she decides that my dad’s mom had given it to me.
[00:31:42] She hadn’t. Dad’s mom did have a KitchenAid mixer. My mother proceeded to throw pots and pans and screaming, everyone. And my stepdad turned to the neighbor who was there and says, those girls always upset her. I had no way to know that seeing a KitchenAid mixer would trigger her. I didn’t know what what’s that like when, when everything is really suppressed, a small match, a flame, like if the room is full of gas and someone lights a flame, or like late to match light a candle, boom.
[00:32:12] Everything was up. So a lot of times we are taught that anyone who makes someone else angry is like, there’s a lot of blaming and fault. And yet we don’t always know what makes us angry. We don’t know what will make the other person angry. So I think there’s a lot of when we decouple this. Um, the blame and the anger.
[00:32:34] There’s a lot more freedom for people can say, you know, I’m really angry at you for doing blah, blah, blah, but that doesn’t make your mean you’re wrong. I’m just going to feel my anger about it. I might even tell you about it. I might tell you about an angry voice, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong if it detangles that, now that doesn’t mean that sometimes people haven’t harmed us.
[00:32:55] That doesn’t mean something like me having a KitchenAid mixer. There was no, I have no way of understanding that I should not have had to pitch. I should not have to not trigger my mom. There are people that steal from each other, from other people or say very cutting things to each other. That’s a very different thing.
[00:33:12] And you can still decouple that where, okay, this person said something or did something very harmful. And I still get to feel my emotions separate from what that person says or does. So I just want to, the freedom that comes from just having that as really. Even though I really want that freedom, even though I want that freedom, not everyone holds that space.
[00:33:34] Everyone holds that space. Some people make me really wrong. Some people make me really wrong. If I get angry at all, if I get angry at all, I’ve been attacked and judged. I’m going to attacked and judged. I’ve definitely been dismissed. I’ve definitely been dismissed and that’s been really hard on me.
[00:33:53] That’s been really hard on me. I can tell the anger means something here is important. I can tell the anger when I feel angry. When I feel angry, I was unclear when I feel angry. When I feel angry, something’s important to me, something is important. Eyebrow. I want that space to be held. I want that space to be held.
[00:34:18] Ah, not everyone can, not everyone can and not every, and even some people can’t hold it all the time. Even some people can’t hold it all the time. I want more skill here. I want more skill here. I really want more skill with my anger. I really want more skill with my anger. It doesn’t deserve to be dismissed.
[00:34:43] It does not deserve to be dismissed. I definitely don’t deserve to be attacked. I definitely don’t deserve it to be attacked for being angry. Just makes me more angry. It just makes me gay or ashamed or is shaped. This is a powerful energy. This is a powerful energy from, I’m wanting more skill with it and I’m wanting more skill with it.
[00:35:14] So one of the things that you do for example is, you know, 98% of the time, you’ll say, do you have room for me to vet every, every once in a while, you’ll jump right into it. But again, like we’re human and. If you were perfect at it, I would feel, you know, like, how is she so perfect. Um, but like you’re exceptional at, um, getting to a place where, you know, that venting is one of the ways to me, like venting to me, if I’m in a place where, and sometimes I’m actually not in the place where I’m going to be useful, but I think I am.
[00:36:00] And you’re. Detecting that, um, we’ve had, we’ve had that, but like, if you’re, if I’m in a place where I can really be useful to you to hold that space, and, and as someone said in the chat, um, it can be a hurt that makes us angry. It could be that we’re scared and, or just that we didn’t get a chance to express ourselves.
[00:36:21] And we want someone to hear it as it comes out, which could have fire to it. And like, I really appreciate that you recognize that about yourself, that that’s useful to you. I get to experience you benefiting from me. Um, like some people vent and they don’t actually land in some place that feels grounded.
[00:36:47] Um, but. And so like, this is a part of our relationship and finding people that we can do that with. That said there are definitely people I love and care for them. Can’t do that, their nervous system, um, the way that they respond to certain energies, it doesn’t work that way. And so defenses and, and, and non skillful, um, you know, again, like I have strong feelings that, you know, attacking someone for being angry is not, is not helpful, but I’ve done that when I’ve been on our arc fault to say the least, I think there are times when just letting someone, like, if I’m dealing directly with the customer service and like they’ve been pulling me in circles for hours and hours, I think sometimes letting them know where angry is useful, but not attacking them as a person.
[00:37:44] And to do that sometimes I love that. It telling someone how they can be there for you is really useful. So if I just called up a, around like Rick, and didn’t say, could you be there just for me to vent, he might try to problem solve and I might want problem solving after I vented. I like, but it’s, I think it’s really useful to tell someone I need someone just to listen.
[00:38:06] I need someone to problem solve. Like letting people know how they can be there for you, lets them give that to you a lot better. And a lot of times we’re in the moment and we think they can guess, but they don’t, people don’t mind read very well that way. So. Telling someone I would like to vent for a few minutes.
[00:38:23] And I think one of the reasons I land early as I’ve been doing anger work for about 10 years, like working really intensely on my and feeling my anger. So there’s not maybe quite as big as talk pilots early on there might have been. Um, so I think that, but it’s useful to be able to just have someone you can tell you’re really mad at, you know, like someone third-party like, I’m just really mad about this thing that happened and be heard and loved and supported through that.
[00:38:49] And when we tell someone I’m, I’m not interested in problem solving or judgment, I just want you to listen for three to five minutes. Often most people can handle that. A fear of pretty specific about it. If they’re not really triggered by anger. So if, if that seems like something that would be useful for you.
[00:39:06] And I think the center is a good place to, you can type it out too. Like sometimes I like to write it out. Those stupid they’re awful. They should they’re, you know, they should not exist on this planet just because I’m really mad. And I want to say, I don’t want to say that to the actual person, but letting off the head of steam that came up while I was dealing with them.
[00:39:27] Now I have one of them. Didn’t actually feel my emotions and I can start coming up with a better solution. Well, maybe I shouldn’t use that company or maybe I should ask for a supervisor or maybe I need to wait until a few days to calm down whatever it is. I start having options. Uh, letting people know we’re going to take a break here in about 10 minutes, a little less, or a little bit more than 10 minutes, um, for seven minute break that we’d like to take.
[00:39:56] Um, so we’ve, we’re touching on this powerful energy. And again, one of our theories is that powerful energy is, can evoke, um, powerful change and also powerful damage, um, to relationships and other things. We’ve, we’ve seen that. Um, and one of the questions that I find useful as a coach coaching myself, being with others is what makes this really important.
[00:40:33] What is actually really important to me here. Um, to me, and this is where you, you can connect with the part of you that has those anger sensations. Um, so, so mine, you know, if I connect to that and say, well, what really matters to me here? You know, the first thing is like something that may not be the deeper answer and you can ask, well, what about that matters to me?
[00:41:14] And what does it, what does that matter? Why does, what about that matters to me? So for example, if somebody says something that I find, um, attacking, it’s not even at me. Right. So I’ll feel the sensation. Okay. And I’ll, if I ask, like what matters to me here, protection. Well, what about that matters to me?
[00:41:48] Well, I know for myself that if I don’t feel safe enough and protected enough by the community and by others that I’ll, I’ll lose my voice. I won’t, I won’t share what matters to me and that an attack feels like it, it, it shuts that down. It’s personal, it’s attacking the person rather than engaging, or even letting it go.
[00:42:16] So like protection, safety, people having their voice, you know, that, that really matters to me. It matters to me, for me to have a voice. And so when I see that happening, like, oh yeah, like that really matters to me. And when you start landing on it, you may find that your anger turns into something that has a different tone to it.
[00:42:42] Like mine becomes really earnestly emotional. 'cause, I’m not burning up with like, nobody should do that. Like, that’s true. I’m totally there. I’m a hundred percent. I would sign my name to that petition. And if I’m going to do something with this energy to turn it into something that looks like to me, it’s like, oh, cruel attacks in the public in a, in a circle or in a community or something like that just feels horrible to me.
[00:43:26] I feel myself starting to question whether this is a safe space really matters to me. Okay. Now what, now that emotion doesn’t feel like power, like strong. It just feels like. Wow. This matters to me. That’s an, that to me is an that as it, as I’m with it, like, okay, now where in my life can I, can I do this?
[00:43:58] Well,
[00:44:02] I’m going to really hold dear that personal attacks when I noticed them that, um, from like, if I, they arise in me, whether it comes out of my mouth or not to remind myself how much safety matters, um, to, to create spaces like the thriving now.center space. Like it’s a small group. It’s always easier than it is out on Facebook or Twitter or something like that.
[00:44:32] But it’s, it’s people that want to be safe and emotionally free and safety and respect are part of that. So like, I can put my energy into crafting a space like that. Now, do you see, maybe you can even tell if you’re a sensitive, empathetic person. Well, now Rick’s got a place to put that kind of energy and it doesn’t feel like protection as much as it feels like invitation, um, earnest attention to it.
[00:45:02] Um, holding a container that has certain. Um, precepts or concepts to that. Now I’m feeling different about that. I still, if that was my world that I had control over or was the moderator or something like that, I would still want to do something. But as soon as I started thinking about that, I get all shaky.
[00:45:26] This isn’t a sign. Sometimes when you’re out in the control realm, it was like, I need you to control that. Ah, bless you. Of course you do. You’re a good person. You know, you’ve got empathy you don’t want. Yeah. And the is going to come with things that are deeply intimately personal that are going to come from, with my interaction with these people.
[00:45:49] I want to just raise it to the next level. Deeper respect for their diversity or how they handle energy or how they, you know, to be more accepting as well as holding space. And I hope that that, you know, is, uh, yeah, go ahead. Okay. Oh, I mean, I love what you shared there and I love that you connect it to that.
[00:46:14] I think we should talk about that more after the break I do, like someone asked is, um, they’d heard that beneath anger is either fear or sadness and someone else brought up the anger iceberg, which shows anger at the top and jealousy and frustration and all those together. I think there’s some wisdom in there.
[00:46:31] I also think that. Often we have, we don’t just have one emotion, just like there’s not just one color. There’s many, many different variations. We might have sadness in their grief. Um, the iceberg shows jealousy and all these different variations of things. I think that sometimes anger is just by itself too.
[00:46:51] It’s not always the top of the iceberg. It’s not always mix, but often it’s not necessarily a cap on things. Sometimes it is different people use it in different ways. I think different social demographics. I’ve been conditioned in different ways to do this. Um, women often will feel anxious. Women identified folks and that’s because we’re socialized not, I don’t think it’s actually our genetics that make our, the fact that where we are.
[00:47:20] Our genitals don’t necessarily make us that way, but there’s a lot of social pressure for us not to get angry. So we may divert that energy into anxiety. So often there’s different emotions mixed in. And I think we’ll sometimes feel the one that we’re socially conditioned to feel first. So male identified people are more conditioned to feel anger.
[00:47:41] First female identified people are more conditioned in general to feel anxiety first or nervousness or fear. Um, but they’re mixed together. And we’re each individual and we’ve all had different life experiences. So I may feel one. And if we clear to say we’re feeling some anger and we clear some of that anger, we might feel grief pretty intensely because now the anger is quiet enough that we can feel that the grief or the sadness, and then we feel some sadness.
[00:48:08] And then we might be more aware of some anger. And I don’t think it’s ever, I like the anger iceberg. I like some of the ideas in there, but I don’t think we need to be locked into that. I think that each person is individual and as we process whatever’s next is naturally going to come to the surface and we can process that.
[00:48:27] We can feel that the same way, just like, how do I feel the sensations in my body? Can I be with it for a moment or two? Can I start clearing any beliefs that are blocking. Some shame, some guilt, some, I shouldn’t feel this it’s taking too long, whatever it is that’s coming up. We clear that we use that energy to create something better if we want to, or we just let it go.
[00:48:49] And then the next thing will come up. So it just, it keeps coming up until it’s gone. And I had, like, when I first was cry, I didn’t cry for like nine years after a big event in my life. Um, When I first started crying and I was really afraid, I’d never stopped. And I had a really great therapist at the time.
[00:49:07] It was like, you will cry as many. There’s a many tears in your body as there are, and you’ll cry until they were done. And then there are other things will happen in life. And maybe you’ll have some tears from that. I think emotions are like that. We have a lot of us have stockpiles of emotion that we’ve pressed down since childhood.
[00:49:25] And so may, we may have more built up than normal, but once we clear out most of that stockpile, we’re dealing with life as it comes. And as we keep, if we can just be with our body tap and clear, what’s coming up to kind of stop us. And then we have that power that Rick’s been talking about to create something new.
[00:49:42] We’re not using so much energy to keep everything down. Our body is not fighting that all the time we’re just actually dealing with. So I think of it as a living meditation. It’s like, what am I feeling right now? And one of my favorites right now, and there’s a lot of power in that. There’s a lot of freedom in.
[00:50:00] And that’s, that’s our, our pause point. Um, like the iceberg, there’s a lot of fresh energy if you’re not having to hold things down. And so that’s the, and we’re gonna, we’re going to get into that after the break, we’ll be back at the top of the hour, please. You can stay connected. We’re gonna go ahead and pause the recording.
[00:50:21] And if you’re watching the replay, we invite you to pause for a few minutes, at least to give yourself a chance to integrate and tend to your needs. And we’ll be back at the top of the hour. Welcome back. So, you know, a lot of the things.
[00:50:42] Yeah. And it’s an intense, because one of the reasons we’re doing this as a real skills workshop is that there’s energy here. Life force energy. And, you know, we’ve talked about people that suppress energy and then it gets triggered and it’s like popping this big bladder of excrement all over everything.
[00:51:08] Um, if we’re attuned to our energy and we feel arising or something that is, is really hitting us or activating us, we can tap into the infinite by, by pausing being with. It’s called a powerful pause. We did a workshop on that. You can find that at thriving now dot, um, center. And we ask what, what, what matters to me here?
[00:51:43] And we invite you to let the part of you that is feeling the feelings, be a partner in answering that question. As Kathy said, it’s hard when we’re angry, not especially at the energy, starting to come up and venting, um, or wanting to vent or get out. It’s sometimes hard to, um, get clear about what really matters.
[00:52:09] Um, and as you get clear about what matters, you’ve already opened a channel. So venting is a channel. For excess energy to get out of the organism, yelling as a venting, um, pounding on things as a venting. Um, there lots of things that we can think of as venting and it’s, you know, that’s healthy. Um, it’s one channel.
[00:52:39] The channel is I believe that the entryway to that is what matters to me here. And that’s going to, to, in, in my world, the emotional world, it’s going to be around, um, energetics, like, you know, the feeling of safety of the feeling that, that, that everyone at the table has a voice. Um, so when you get there now, you’re going to feel some energy moving.
[00:53:13] And by, as Kathy said, as. Helped us with that tapping. And you can go back to the recording and do that. Being with that feeling along with what, what matters to me here is starting to change the channels within your body. We have channels in our body. Um, and a lot of us have seen anger come out in the voice and in threatening behaviors and in destruction of a relationship, um, for those of us that don’t want to model that, um, where does the energy.
[00:53:53] And, um, I’m wondering Kathy, whether you could give us a little guided visualization and sensate guided sensation and being with the anger and also feeling grounded. So we’re not trying to suppress it or get rid of it its own, but we’re wanting to have it feel like it’s our energy rather than a destructive quality.
[00:54:17] Yeah, it really, yeah. I really appreciate that. Um, just as a segue to that, um, we’ve had a couple of questions about this. One thing, a lot of us have learned that expressions of anger are dangerous or scary. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, but yeah, I had to switch my ex. Um, so a lot of us have learned that the expressions of anger are dangerous and scary.
[00:54:40] And part of that is if we have a lot of suppression around our anger, we don’t let it out until we’re really stressed. Like we’re walking into the family dinner at Thanksgiving when we’re already like exhausted and we made a pile light and like all this stuff is there. So it tends to come out very strongly.
[00:54:57] Um, so we’ve learned often we’re not as embodied and we’re not as present with that. And we might also be sensing. Many of us here are very empathetic. We can pick up on people around us emotions. So if people around us are very triggered or unsafe feeling unsafe or anger, that can be really hard. So we’re not only dealing with our emotions, we’re dealing with other people’s emotions.
[00:55:21] And I want to be really clear. This is important to me when I was going through a lot of this work. And I’m still, I think it’s never ending in some senses. Um, if the person we’re angry with has passed away, if the person we’re angry with is not okay being around anger or it just doesn’t is not available for that, that doesn’t mean we can’t feel our anger and processing and get to the other side.
[00:55:44] There’s a lot of things we can do. One, we can process this ourselves or with a coach or in a supportive circle like this, or we can learn to open the channels and be grounded and present with our anger at the same time. And I do want to do a, uh, guided, uh, sense of that. We can also teach people that anger is not so scary.
[00:56:07] This doesn’t mean it’s going to work for sure. But if we start. Expressing small amounts of anger and, and letting them see that this is, it’s not, I wouldn’t recommend with someone who’s really triggered by anger. We can talk to them about it, but we can also demonstrate that we can be a little bit angry and nothing bad happens.
[00:56:27] The relationship isn’t over. You’re not going to like chop their head off with the nearest, uh, you know, object. And a lot of people are really triggered by anger. So it may be that they can get that and it may be, they can’t get that. We can, but first there for me, some of the people I’m angry at they’ve passed away.
[00:56:47] Or they’re just my mom. I don’t believe I’ll ever be able to be angry with her and her presence because I just think she can’t, I judge that she can’t handle it. So we do something called empty chair exercises, where I’ll put, I’ll put a chair there and I’ll pretend she’s there. And I’ll say what I need to say while I’m tapping and spitting and just being as angry as I want to be.
[00:57:07] Um, and then I can calm down enough to be at a point where I can feel my energy and I can feel I can be present with it. If that makes sense and is helpful. Um, we can’t guarantee someone’s going to be okay with, with anger. They might have triggers. They might have trauma around it. We don’t know. We don’t know how they’re processing what we’re saying.
[00:57:30] Maybe as part of the tapping and grounding or the tapping and grounding, including that there’s someone that week that really can’t, um, brain it for whatever reason, be with our anger, but it’s really direct it’s in the relationship, but they can’t be the one to hold that space. So I invite you to take a gentle, slow, deep breath, feel your feet on the forest.
[00:57:55] You can wiggle your toes. Notice the S just slow down enough to notice the texture of your toes are feeling and just actually feel it in the nerve endings, not in your head, don’t decide what your toes are feeling. Let yourself be curious. Notice the temperature of the air between your toes. And again, see if you can sense it with the nerve, the nerve endings in your toes, not with your brain cells that are trying to evaluate and get in the way of all this process.
[00:58:22] They like to be very active sometimes. Another nice, slow, deep breath. Feel your butt on the chair or wherever you’re sitting at. Just notice you’re supported. And you’re with all these really cool people that are curious about this too karate job. I’m a little bit afraid of my anger. I’m a little bit afraid of my anchor.
[00:58:44] I don’t want to get too close to it. I don’t want to get too close to it. So it’s very hard to be grounded when I feel my anger. So it’s very hard to be grounded when I feel my anger. It’s like a terrifying, toxic dragon, terrifying, toxic dragon that might burn everything to the ground, burn everything to the ground.
[00:59:06] Maybe that’s just because it’s been suppressed for so long. Maybe that’s just because it’s been suppressed for so long. Top of the head. My power has been suppressed for a very long time. My power has been suppressed for a very long time. Eyebrow. I can often access my power through anger. I can often access my power through anger side of the eye.
[00:59:30] That’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing under the eyes, but it’s been suppressed for a long time. It’s been suppressed for a long time under the nose. And a lot of other people are not okay with my anger. And a lot of other people are not okay with my anger. They’re not okay with my power.
[00:59:51] They’re not okay with my power collarbone. I would like to be connected and supported by my power. I’d like to be connected and supported in my power. I’d like to notice my anger. I’d like to notice my anger top of the head and know that I have a very friendly, powerful dragon to protect you. I have a very friendly dragon to protect.
[01:00:18] And just take a breath and notice, see what you notice coming up, the habits, the nose, those are things that are great to look at because we’ve been taught that. So one thing, little children, like I watch a DRS. Sometimes she she’s 17 months old. She wants something. Rick says, no, it’s like the world has ended that poor baby goes into child’s pose.
[01:00:40] And her heart is a heart rendering prize because she can’t play with the TV remote. Um, her life imagined to her little brain. Her life feels like it has ended as we know it. Um, that’s very toddler like when we’re a little, we don’t know how. To handle our emotions and Rick and gem will pick up the baby.
[01:01:01] They’ll hold her. They’ll they’ll tend to her as she feels these things she’s learning that she can have and constant emotions and get through it with support. Many of us had very intense emotions and no one to support us. So we learned that intensive motions are terribly scary and overwhelming when we were a little child.
[01:01:21] That was definitely true. And for a lot of us, we’ve had this suppressed for so long. It’s there’s a lot of pressure built. It feels really frightening. So all we have to do is imagine dipping up, like if we have this huge well of anger or any other emotion, we can imagine taking this very tiny ladle and dipping up just a little bit and learning to process just felt a little bit at time.
[01:01:44] We don’t have to process it all at once. Um, and as we start processing it, the thing is it can feel, I know my brain is like, well, I’m just dealing with this. Thimbleful, it’s an, and it’s like 15,000 tons of anger. Like, how am I going to get through it? The really cool thing is when I process that thimbleful my system, the channels, as Rick talked about, start opening up, my system starts learning that I can handle a little bit of it.
[01:02:09] I get a little more confidence. I get a little more skill and the next time maybe it’s still assemble for, and the next time it might be two thumb ruffles. I’m starting to learn to be with this. Our power is separate from our anger, but it’s fuel often my anger or intense emotions. And as we get the channels clear, they start flowing more effectively and we could have this really beautiful tamed dragon that’s at our disposal, not something that’s wild and toxic and suppressed and lashing out.
[01:02:44] And certainly I still, that’s why I call Rick when I want to lash out at someone I’m like, oh, stupid idiots. They should never be allowed to reproduce. Like, just venting. I’m allowed to say in that container whenever I want it doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything to harm anyone. I just mean I’m letting off some steam and then I can access again, the channels that are much quieter, the ones that are more useful, where I can take action.
[01:03:11] So if you can start imagining, we often talk about the survival brain, like where like there, there you imagine it as a part, a friend of yours. So part of you, if you can imagine your anger, if you can start shifting it from this toxic malevolent out of control dragon, that’s going to raise all nearby villages, it, start making friends with it and taming it.
[01:03:35] Then there’s a lot you can do. Dragons can be very powerful. They can fly very fast. They can heat heat our house in our cold, they can help us, you know, if someone was trying to attack our house, we could send the dragon out to flame them down. Um, in that if that analogy works for you, it’s very useful to have a friendly, trained dragon to help you.
[01:03:57] Yeah. And that’s so as we open up these channels yeah. As we open up these channels, you’ll start noticing that, um, the, the, the primitive brain is not the only solution. So if, if I’m angry at someone and I want to fight them or run away from them, that’s, that’s not, that’s primitive. It’s very human and not as useful.
[01:04:27] Taking a pause, however long that is to get to the place where I’ve got around some choices that I would like to make oomph, meaning I’ve got some life force to make some changes like, oh, I’m noticing that, um, there’s this whole dynamic around food. So, and it makes me angry at times. And I could like be angry at, or I could get clear, like the nourishment of me and the people I care about matters.
[01:04:59] And yeah, I’m going to need some to make changes there because it’s not a sweet spot for me. I am not a chef. I’m not excited about it, but owner says, okay, I get angry about it. It matters. And when people are dysregulated because we haven’t eaten or there, you know, so can you start feeling like, oh, it starts looking like saying to your partner, Hey, the nourishment of our family and the balance that comes from good nourishment on available when we need it without a lot of difficulty and decisions when we don’t have that resource matters to me.
[01:05:36] And I’ve got some, um, to make some changes there would, would you be open to exploring some of those things now that’s very different than I’m tired of you being hangry and coming downstairs and radiating evil to all of us and like how. If that was coming at me, I have to be defensive. And that’s where I know that there are people on the planet that you can be angry at and they don’t get defensive.
[01:06:07] I am not one of them. If you are angry at me and you’re giving me the raw primal at, I have to put up an energetic. My, my, my system is too wired for that. Um, I own that about myself. I, it’s not a defect. It’s part of my neurodiversity. I can be with other people’s anger for other stuff, because it’s not actually coming at me with my name on it.
[01:06:34] And so like, that’s why one of these things is important to me is because if someone. Vince to someone else. Right. And they get to a place where they’re clear about what they’ve they do, whatever they need to, they go for a walk, they journal, they meditate, they go and, you know, to the gym and throw some people around in a somewhat controlled way.
[01:06:59] Um, whatever it is that, that you do to move energy. And then they get to the place where, what matters to them. If somebody comes to me and says, look, I have a, I have for this in our life to make the we space better. That is very different. And that’s me. I know people that you can say, I am so pissed off at you and they’ll be like, wonderful, good changes coming.
[01:07:24] I love you. That’s not me. Um, I appreciate that. There are people like that. So if you aren’t that person or don’t have that person in your life, that. This is a pattern. This is a way to channel is to say, I’m not going to ignore my anger. I’m not going to just see or feel helpless that I can’t change them.
[01:07:47] I’m going to get to the place or the world. I’m going to get to the place where I have owned, because I know what matters to me. And I’ve got energy. Now, you know, that icebergs got a lot of fresh water in it, even though it’s in the middle of the ocean, that’s a trick. And I start looking at ways that I would like to adapt for the may space, what I need as well as the we space that I, we spaces I’m part of and then choose to put energy into it.
[01:08:18] And that will feel really good to you. You can be really angry about something that’s happening on the other side of the world and start feeling helpless because you anger and. What do I do? This is where, what matters to me? Peace, kindness, um, safety. Okay. I’ve got on for that. Where do I act? Oh, okay.
[01:08:40] Right here at home. Right toward myself. Right toward a friend. Um, oh, I noticed that one of my friends, um, was not treated very nicely in a thread where they were really vulnerable. I’m going to just call them up and say, Hey, I just wanted you to know that. I appreciate that you have a, you have a voice.
[01:08:59] And is there anything I can do to support you in feeling safer and respected? Because I love you and God, that’s what, that’s one of the things that we can look for to me, that’s part of emotional freedom and. What’s coming up for you all. We have about 10 minutes in this workshop. This is an ongoing, um, exploration, um, all these real skills, um, work together.
[01:09:26] But if there’s something coming up for you that you’d like us to tap on, um, in this. This final segment. That would be cool. Okay. Well, while we’re waiting to see if anyone shares, um, I have found that with certain of my friends, I’ve practiced with them. Having them sit in front of me. I’m just like, I want to practice being was telling me what I was angry about with you and the amount of trust and ease we’ve built up as we’ve done that.
[01:09:53] Um, I have a couple of friends now and they’re like, I have something I’m angry at something. I want to share it with you. I’m getting all giddy because we’ve learned that there’s trust and that we can clear it. And I really I’m honored that they were willing to trust me enough to share their, their anger.
[01:10:07] Um, so there that is possible. I actually laugh sometimes only this one person shares it cause I’m like so glad they’re actually sharing rather than my it up. So just a thought there is a, there is a side to that where it can be, uh, with certain people that you connect. I really admire the work that you’ve done there.
[01:10:26] Thanks. We have a hand raised, do you, should we.
[01:10:35] Um, can I tap on something like your, your, um, KitchenAid mixer story? It reminded me Kathy of something. So something similar. So it’s like 35 years old. And you started talking about that and I started getting angry. So can we tap on a specific incident? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, when I was 25, I took a trip from Seattle to San Francisco and I was telling my parents, I was really excited.
[01:11:02] My mom just says, that’s going to be boring as hell. And I don’t remember what I said in response, but it was probably something like, fuck you. And, and, and she, um, she takes, she was cooking dinner. She takes the spoon, she throws it and turns to my dad and says, cook your own damn dinner. And he turns to me and says, you’re not very nice story.
[01:11:26] You know? So now it sounds funny, but, but it was like, wait, I was defending myself from this attack and now she’s turned on you. And now you’re telling me I’m not, I’m not nice. And then it’s just like karate chop, this convoluted response to anger, convoluted response to anger. She lashed out at him. She lashed out at him because she was upset at something.
[01:11:52] I said she was upset at something I said, and dad blamed me. And then dad blamed me for something I just shared or something. I just shared. The truth is I was excited about my trip. I was really excited about my trip and she said, it’s going to be boring. And she told me it would be really boring top of the head, the word she used, where it’d be really boring.
[01:12:16] She’s actually said, it’ll be boring as hell. Okay. That really upset me. That really upset. Side of the eye. She said, it’s going to be, as it’s going to be boring as hell. I said, it’s going to be boring as hell under the eye. And I said, fuck you. And I said something like, fuck you. That’s what happened.
[01:12:35] That’s what happened to that. I’m still mad to this day. And I’m still mad, even though I hadn’t thought about it for years, Colorado, how dare she tell me my trip was going to be boring, Sarah. She told me my trip was going to be boring under them. I’m really mad about that. Really bad about that. How could that she didn’t know for sure.
[01:12:54] She didn’t know for sure. It felt like she wanted to ruin it for me, eyebrow. I made a story that she wanted to ruin it for me. I made a story. She wanted to run it for me side of the eye that may or may not have been true. Air may not have been true under the eye. And I get to be angry about that. I get to be angry about that under the nose, the word she used hurt my feelings.
[01:13:15] She used really hurt my feelings when I’m angry at the tone, she used angry at the tone sheet. I’m angry, probably when I’m angry at the word, she is angry at the word she used under the arm. And I’m just going to feel that anger right now. I’m just going to feel that anger right now, top of the head, there’s more to this story.
[01:13:34] There’s more to this story. I ran. I’m just going to take this first segment first. I’m just going to take this first segment. First side of the eye. She said your triple be boring as hell. She said, my truck would be boring as hell under the eye. And I’m mad at her. And I’m mad at her for saying that under the nose, I was excited about my trip.
[01:13:54] I was so excited to go to and I still get to be excited about my trip. I still get to be excited about my trip collarbone. She said it will be, was boring as hell. She said it would be boring as hell under the arm. She said those words. She said, exactly those words help the head. I’m very angry, very angry, and just take a breath and notice the feeling the sensations in your body is just that first section.
[01:14:24] What are you noticing in your body? Um, and then tightness in my chest. Okay. So just notice that tightness, maybe put your hand there, if that feels good and just be with that sensation for a moment, it’s a sensation. It probably doesn’t feel super comfortable, but it’s not actually harming you. It’s a sensation.
[01:14:44] Don’t try to change it. Don’t try to make it go away. Just be with it and notice that sensation, maybe breathe into it. If you want,
[01:14:58] just notice that it still feel tight in your chest. Does it feel more or less? That’s probably more. Okay. So if that tightness wanted to say something, what would it say? Um, just say I’m angry that I was really excited about my trip and her response was to say something really negative. Okay, karate chop.
[01:15:21] I didn’t want her to say something negative about it. I didn’t want her to say something negative about it. And she gets to say something negative. If she wants, when she gets to say something negative, if she wants, I don’t like that. She said something negative. Don’t like she said something negative and she gets to say what she says.
[01:15:38] She gets to say what she says competent. I get to feel what I feel. I get to feel what I feel. Eyebrow. I have tightness in my chest. I have this tightness in my chest side of the eye. I feel angry about it. I feel really angry about it under the eye and probably some sadness too, at some sadness to under the nose.
[01:15:59] I wanted to be excited about my trip. Wanted her to be excited and support me. Yeah, Jen, I wanted her to encourage me. I wanted her to encourage me. She didn’t do that. They didn’t do that. I mean, the I’m going to get to have all my feelings about it. I get to have all my feelings. I have a lot of tightness in my chest, have a lot of tightness in my chest and it’s okay to feel tight in my chest.
[01:16:26] It’s okay to feel tight in my chest and just take a breath and see if you can just be back with that. Whatever’s going on in your body again. Don’t try to make it stay and I’m trying to make it go away. Just be with it in the moment. What are you noticing? It’s better. Okay. So you’ll see better. What does that mean?
[01:16:45] It means there’s less tightness. Okay. Ask that tightness there. Meaning tightness when it wants,
[01:16:54] um, to be accepted. Okay. Meaning by her. So let’s just, if you can, I’m going to kind of just switch it around and go fucking mom. I’m still mad at you still mad at you, even though you’ve been Ted for 22 years, I get to be mad at you until the end of time, I got to be mad at you for. You hurt my feelings or hurt my feelings and I will never ever get over it or get over it to the end of time until I ended up time.
[01:17:28] Top of the head. Fuck you. Well, mom, I, bro, I get to be mad at you. I get to me mad at you side of the, I can feel it as long as I need to feel it. As long as I need to under the eye, it’s just a sensation. It’s just a sensation under the nose and that’s okay. That’s okay too. My body is still holding onto this.
[01:17:48] My body’s still holding onto this collarbone, which means there’s some things to be processed means there’s a few things to be processed and it’s all. Okay. It’s all. Okay. Copy of that. I’m actually feeling it right now, actually feeling it right now, which is clearing the pathways for more, which is what clearing the pathways for what?
[01:18:09] For more, for more just so you know, freedom. Yeah. So I can have freedom if you want, just to pick a breath. What are you noticing in your chest? Um, there’s still like the sort of rock sitting there, but it’s a lot less, I mean, I wasn’t ever allowed to be angry, so yeah. Yeah. If you can just be with like, cause we’re running out of time on this, we want to wrap this up here, but you might want to, if you want to pull up a chair and pretend your mom is there and just tap and tell her, fuck you over and over again, just take the first segment of that and just, you know, just be with that sensation and or tap and say what you want to say to that chair, pretending your mom was there.
[01:18:52] Um, that can be really useful just to, to be with the emotion until it passes. Um, and a lot of us haven’t practiced this a lot, so we’re not very efficient in the first part of it. Like as we get more into this and the channels open up, we can get a lot more efficient. Um, and then ask yourself if there’s something you can do for yourself some way you can use the energy to make your life better.
[01:19:16] That might be really helpful. I appreciate it. Bringing new forward. Thanks, Kathy. Yeah. Good job.
[01:19:26] I, I heard the desire for support and you know, that’s something I, I share and
[01:19:37] I appreciate that when, when you do this work and, and you can see that there’s a place where we have to be with the feelings, they’re intense, that rock, like in our heart, they energy is really present and you stay with that forever, maybe around that event. Um, or it clears and processes or other things.
[01:20:01] Around it do. When we get clear about what really matters to us, I believe that that’s one of the things that is core to emotional freedom work, because what we’re saying is, yeah, there are these traumas and situations and dynamics that really activate me. They were horrible back then they still feel like shit.
[01:20:25] And now what if there’s a healing segment of this? And that’s what we do. And we seek not to rush it. Part of the real skill image here in this workshop is also then like, well, what really was mattering to me even outside of the movie or the story, what really matters to me? What kind of world do I want to live in?
[01:20:52] Where, where do I want to put my energy? What do I want to cultivate in my spaces? A supportive, if somebody tells me. I assure you now, if somebody tells me that they’re going on a trip, having just touched Margo’s experience, I’m reminded inside of me, you know, people shoot down other people’s dreams all the time.
[01:21:18] They, they quash them. They, they give their own impression of what it would be like. Oh, that would be terrifying for me to do. Okay. Is that the world right now? I’m really attuned to, you know, I bet there’s somebody in the next month that’s going to share something with me. I might even invite it. Like, what’s live for you.
[01:21:38] What are you looking forward to? And I’m going to channel some oomph because I’m pissed off at her mom too. Right? Like I’m like, ah, um, but what matters to me? Yeah. Supportive relationships. I’m going to be more attuned to it because it matters to me. And that’s why one of the reasons we do this in a group is so that we get an opportunity when other, when other people are sharing to say, oh, that matters to me too.
[01:22:07] And I can channel energy there and your channels of like, oh, this matters to me. This matters to me. It means that less often do we have to stay stuck in the energy of anger, which is asking for processing and resolution, it’s intense. And we get to be more in that’s my belief. That’s what I’ve noticed in my life.
[01:22:29] I still feel like there’s so much energy in my being that I can channel in this way in a healthier way. Um, healthier meaning toward more thriving, you know, sweeter, we spaces.
[01:22:47] Yeah, I love seeing you out here and doing this work. I think it’s so important for your own health, your own power in your life and the world. Like we’re role modeling that we can be ourselves and our emotions can be okay. Um, and I just really appreciate all everyone share. Thank you. All right. Our next workshop, we will be sending out to the email list.
[01:23:11] So if you’re not already on the list we invite you, or if you’re seeing this chances are you already are, but if you happen to see this on YouTube, go to thriving now.com join our community or the thriving now at that center, which is where we have, um, engagement around the real skills and other things that matter for a thriving life.
[01:23:30] So thank you, Kathy. Appreciate you. Bye. For now.
We covered…
- Identifying the body sensations you get when angry or having a boundary crossed
- Getting into your body and practicing being with the feelings for a short time – like lifting a weight at the gym and just as strengthening!
- Releasing beliefs and old patterns about anger (tapping)
- Feel. Get clear about what really matters to you in this situation. Give the life force (anger) additional channels. Adapt and act from that oomph.
Resources Mentioned
Great to have you on this journey with us!
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Thank you so much for this workshop. Just rewatched and got even more out of it. Wanting to do open chair work like @Cathy suggested. It was a good reminder for me to think about having anger as a pure and welcome emotion separate from a story or a righteous blame…something i get to tend to by venting to a skilled friend or some other release eithout it coming out sideways and startting the shame, self blame spiral. Such a eirthwhile topic to bring more emotional freedom to our lives.
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I have been venting at a spot on my couch. Forgot to do tapping while I was doing it, but it seemed to help, anyway. Funny what a lot of heartfelt FUCK YOU’S will do.
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Yes! I have done it before in my car where you can scream as loud as you want. Might be time for another drive. Last time i was hoarse from it though. Also if it slips into crying, that can be dangerous.
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This is deeply insightful. I notice and understand that it always circles back to the question of “What matters to me MOST?” Seems like such a simple question, but very very tricky to unravel and accept. But everytime when you talk about the concept with a new topic, I’m always enlivened to hear new insights that you and Cathy provided! I have been engaging with meditation a lot more these days and I can definitely affirm to the need to constantly ask ourselves when Cathy said “What am I feeling into right now?” and giving it the PAUSE, space and quite literally… the breath it deserves to have a long time ago. Thank you for all the insights!!
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I have used my vehicle for screaming as well…make sure the windows are rolled up…check that you don’t have passengers…and let 'er rip!!
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Re-reading what you wrote, feeling into it for myself, the question is more decisive for me if I ask, “What is mattering to me most right NOW?”
…and not a prioritized list, trying to find the most-est. For example, I saw someone ridiculed online today. Made me angry-sick for a moment. Asking what matters to me most right in that moment, it was “kindness.”
I went and wrote a kind response to an email I’d received. I felt my stomach smile. An oomph of kindness.
I do believe there is an intelligence in the inquiry, about where/how the anger energy can flow. It could have just as well been what mattered to me most was “my freedom to get the fuck away from people who treat others that way and enjoy nature!” – and gone for a walk. That HAS been my “most” at other times.
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Indeed. We become short sighted immediately when swarmed by emotions and events. And asking ourselves what matters RIGHT NOW can be what’s sufficient for healing and recovery. Taking things a step at a time. Or as this video shares, one day at a time…! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhWFddWz1Nk
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This is GOOD!! Just what I wanted to hear RIGHT NOW. Thank you. 
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SO GOOD! Thank you! Appreciate the tuning…
I even posted it on Facebook!
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I’m new to this community. This is the first video I’ve started to watch! So timely for me, because I’ve felt irritation, frustration and even rage most of the day today. I have so much anger inside. I will definitely try some of these suggestions and tapping. Thank you 
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Welcome @Barbs ! Great to have you with us!
This workshop continues to help me. For example, I am recognizing how much anger masks and keeps me from feeling (or acknowledging) helplessn! Ooops. So where do I go when I am actually helpless to make the recent past or present… different… the way I want it, not the way it is?
The oomph here is about focusing my energy towards who I want to be… anyway… which for me is absurdly calm and confident . And curious. There’s a lot going on, so to speak, in every aspect of my world (and THE world) that can evoke a lot of anger if / when I don’t tend to where and how the energy is moving for me and in me.
How’s the energy move in you? Do you have a sense of where you’d like to direct your oomph?
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Thanks so much for this @RickThrivingNow! I absolutely love this idea of thinking more about how the energy wants to move in me. How does it want to express itself! That is such a powerful befriending way of living and being with this strong emotion. I am going to connect with these parts of me that are struggling, (I have lots of them) and listen. I get a sense the anger would like n’a expression, also more sense of autonomy and sharing of gifts with the world. Less hiding and shame. More about ally and inner champion. A strong voice. A wildness - to be true to who I am. Also, to allow myself to vocalise irritation and frustration, to stop waiting for it to pass, or numbing it.
Looking forward to watching the replay of letting go I’m sure that will also help in this process.
I’m so grateful to be here, thank you 
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So much wisdom in what you wrote here. Thank you!
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Very interesting the way this concept is expressed in the video. I have been saying those words a lot over the past year. I had started to judge myself and expect more from myself this year, but the reality is that I am still just picking through each day and trying to get through them as best I can. Some
Days more successful than others. Sometimes I feel such a desperation for meaning and happiness that I am stuck in emptiness and feeling dead for most of the day. Sometimes something external to me gives me a holding point for some action and movement.
Largely I feel like I am wasting my life and the beauty and opportunity that is there for living and enjoying life by constantly feeling terror or emptiness and no willingness to do anything.
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