Bonus episode · 10:58
Transforming Fury into Positive Energy & Caring
Anger carries energy; the question is where that energy goes next. Dan and Tom explore the difference between suppressing fury, acting it out and converting it into a protective or constructive response.
They look at triggers, physical signals and caring action, treating anger as information that still requires responsibility.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- Anger often points toward a boundary, injustice or unmet need worth examining.
- Notice the physical build-up early, before your range of choices narrows.
- The feeling can be valid while a harmful response remains your responsibility.
- Channel anger into a clear request, boundary or constructive act of care.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
Um so we're looking at anger I thought you so if you don't have depression through aggressive nature of disappointment for a squash game you might be on the opposite side of Fury rage and anger so um I I jokingly put it down as a as a topic saying putting a lid on pure anger and caring uh putting a lid on pure rage and caring through anger and Dan said yeah let's talk about that today so that is the segment of today.
Um I will talk about my little pieces um I did a course I feel like every time I someone speaks about the past I always were reminded of um Sheldon Cooper explaining physics to Penny and goes back in 1988 and it's like I don't want to know that just tell me what what you learn from it like an ancient Greece so back in 2022 that sounds probably better than just back before Christmas back in 2022 I did a course and it's basically.
Learning about triggers and emotions and stuff like that because I felt like it would be useful for me um as I felt like I was wrestling with understanding what my heart was saying to my body and head as I'm a quite logical person I knew something was happening subconsciously so I thought I'd explore through doing a course learning a bit more and then sort of yeah sifting through my heart emotions to understand what might be going on deeper.
Um and as I've been connecting my heart back to my body and bringing back connection which sounds so lovely and amazing I have connected rage back into my body um and I think it is an interesting one of I guess it's dealing with disappointment dealing with pain dealing with difficulty I think as a kid I used to get angry quite a lot people probably wouldn't know this because it's more internally I'd feel it but I know anger can look.
Very ugly it can be quite painful if it's done through punching people or um yelling at someone so I'd never tried to explode that angle frustration onto people a lot of the time I Channel it into I'd get frustrated that let's say I've I've lost the ball against someone in football or hockey and I'll basically chase them down and and exert that anger through my legs and class as a new source of energy um which would feel amazing.
Um but right at the moment I've only just started to get back into sport but before that actually having anger and frustration that you don't have anywhere to go with it can be actually quite tough because by looking at anger or frustration then it sort of in its face I think someone said it's a secondary emotion towards other things that's going down deeper but I think when it is feels like a ball of Fury inside you sometimes you can't look past that that.
You're just angry because you're angry and I think that's where sport for me was very handy to do Sport and then afterwards you would then simmer down to realize I was angry because actually there's been a buildup of dot dot like frustration at school or whatever um so yeah so we're talking about anger and how we deal with it what's our thoughts on it um trying to be caring not only to others but also to ourselves when we get.
Angry um but yeah so what's your thoughts on that I I think again from this podcast I was listening to yesterday so it's basically hard to I found the things just feel better live more um episode 275 how to become happier today it's easier than you think and um one thing that jumped out to me is they were talking about happiness is a default position when you were born you were happy and basically you cry because you are unhappy and then your parent.
Will resolve that issue to make you happy again so that's your default position is happiness and you want to basically in life always kind of revert back or kind of come back to to that state when it comes to anger um anger is just literally pure energy as Tom said you can either use that energy to punch somebody in the face or take a chunk out of the ground while playing golf or change the world with it right it's a it's a choice to do that.
And I think again when it comes down to secondary emotions and things there's typically this totem pole of personality traits and what typically happens is um like depending on where you are it's kind of like there's a split between the normal version of yourself and the shadow version of yourself which means this Shadow version is like like when you're your worst version of yourself and sometimes people hit like let's say taking like giving um like an offensive offensive joke right somebody will like.
Take the mick out of somebody as their like first position in the Shadow Self and then hitting out like physical outlash of something would be like the lowest of the low so it is in there it's just whether or not you get to it or not depending on the level of like the worst version of yourself as a degree whereas some other people have your first level of Shadow Self is bang the table or something whereas they would never ever.
Ever think to say some like cutting remark about somebody you know and I find that fascinating that each of us have a different order and it's kind of tied into Myers-Briggs and then looking at like Shadow Self um and I think it's fun something functions yeah I don't remember but this like Shadow version where is like what what is like anger to you isn't it like lashing physical lashing out is that like very very low um and if it's not if it's like higher.
On the or higher on the totem pole like Tom said it's like figuring out why and I think a lot of the time um you typically push it down because there is no positive way or you you don't think there's a positive way because people assume that fighting is the way to get out anger like fighting um in a physical sense rather than fighting for for example you know writing a piece of policy or writing an email to somebody like from a.
Um legal perspective or a Justice perspective or a um a fairness perspective and I think it's interesting when you think about cool I feel angry sometimes you feel angry because of um an injustice or an unfairness and actually that is a good quality and it just comes out as then anger whereas really it's like oh I'm actually I love fairness I hate double standards and I love the stability of that so then you can be like cool I don't need to be.
Annoyed that I'm like Angry all the time I could be like Oh I'm angry because I value fairness so if you can kind of go past that initial piece of energy to be like the emotional thing or the principle behind that energy it's more like reassuring um that that's the the case and then you can start working with it and Reckoning with it to be like cool if I value fairness then maybe I should just speak up for people more when I see something.
Happening maybe I should speak up more or if it's happening to me if somebody's bullying me at work maybe I should like speak up and like not allow that to happen because I value fairness rather than just angry and have that energy that then doesn't go anywhere or isn't utilized and ultimately pushed down and then raise its head because you go into your Shadow Self and you use that anger on or use that energy on somebody that doesn't deserve that to happen to them.
Um yeah you know I find that a really fascinating observation yeah I think it's reminded me of a social post I saw this week and it was basically something that garyvee's done is be friends and he's created created Created different characters and one of them is a decisive duck and basically the point of this duck is a little cartoon um and the point is do a decision and then you live with it you either learn that you've done something bad so.
Then take it onto your future or you learned that you did something good amazing you could celebrate it but actually by not doing a decision you're stuck in this sort of limbo world and I think so easily I don't know if it's um Christian background or or British background or whatever is when sometimes you've got anger you've either got people that are lashing it out headbutting people kicking people elements extremism and then you've got the bottling element and it's like you.
Don't need to go to the full extreme but it's like what could an action be and be decisive in it that it might not be the best decision but you can basically forgive afterwards say sorry um learn about the other person or learn about yourself and sometimes it is just going actually I'm going to try and do this a bit different because actually sometimes you carry that weight of I didn't do anything and I'm angry and I'm frustrated and now I've got shame now.
I've got Gill and then you feel even heavier going into seeing that person being in that situation the following day and it just gets bigger and bigger rather than just having a a light account with people it's sort of balancing and having a balance sheet but for your mental and emotions um like you would finances and it's recognizing yeah that you can just level yourself out not only through positives of nature but actually what does it look like.
Dealing with the negative side because that's just as positive than just getting stuck and staying in in the the positive nature because we can't always do that I think life is a roller coaster you'll have both so it's learning with coping mechanisms of how do you deal with both actually we're living through um different forms of Crisis so we might be on the spectrum of being in the negative and might be more frustrated more Angry than ever but it's like okay what does that.
Look like for my my personal life my friends my family my community my people I connect with maybe online further afield or globally and it's just yeah seeing what works and fleshing it out I don't have all the answers I'm still figuring it out um I know I've got a pull-up bar and I do a lot more press-ups so sometimes I get angry doing something physical massively helps me um plus it keeps me healthy and it means that I can focus my anger into pushing.
Or lifting myself so then I actually gain from it in the long run yeah ultimately if if if we frame anger as energy then how you dissipating that energy AKA using that energy out so it doesn't get stored up and build up in this sense of pressure um so is it the press-ups is it talking to somebody and venting to be like this situation really annoyed me and angered me and then also re relive like re um kind of like going past the energy to be.
Like what's the emotion is it because you really value fairness or like justice um and you hate double standards or whatever that kind of like back uh backwards kind of like emotion is that results in that anger.