Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. I'm your host, Deb Mazner. I'm a registered nurse, health coach, and alcohol free badass. I have found that there's more than one way to address drinking. If you've ever asked yourself if drinking is taking more than it's giving, or if you found that you're drinking more than usual, you may have reached your own alcohol tipping point. The Alcohol Tipping Point is a podcast.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: For you to find tips, tools, and.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Thoughts to change your drinking. Whether you're ready to quit forever or a week, this is the place for.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: For you.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: You are not stuck and you can change.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Let's get started.
Welcome back to the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast. Today on the show, I'm so excited to have a return guest. Welcome back to the show. Jillian Teets. She is the host of the very popular podcast Sober Powered. She was on the show originally. I had to look it up, Jill. It was 2021. It was episode 25 for me. Yeah. So it's been a minute and Jill shares her story there. So I'll link to the show notes so you can listen to her story. Some more of them. Just a little background about Jill since getting sober in 2019. That is what inspired her to start her podcast where she utilizes her biochemistry background to teach others how alcohol affects the brain and why it's so hard to stop drinking. In addition to being the host of the Sober Powered podcast and teaching anger management, Jill is also a chemistry professor at a university in Boston. So welcome back to the show, Jill.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Thank you. I can't believe it's been that long. Actually. That was surprising. I know, I know.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: I was like.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: Is that right?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: How. How have you been since 2021?
[00:01:54] Speaker C: I know it's been a bit. I'm really good, like, compared to 2021. Wow. I am. I'm great.
Yeah.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Well, wonderful. I know that, you know, you have your podcast, you're into teaching at the university now, and then you took anger, this emotion, anger, and became really interested in it. And now you do anger management classes and coaching along with that as well. And so I'm just curious, like, why. Why did you decide to take a deeper dive into anger?
[00:02:26] Speaker C: I'm an angry person.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Shocking, right?
[00:02:33] Speaker C: People say that.
[00:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: But even if you read some of my, like, if I texted you or something when I was angry, you'd be like, oh, okay, I can really. I can get there. But I was a very angry child.
And then eventually I started drinking, and then when I quit, I got really angry again. And I'm like, what is going on? Why. Why am I angry all the time? And it was so bad in my first year that I felt completely overcome with rage. Like, I couldn't even live my life. Sometimes it would last for days.
And that was what eventually inspired me to get certified as an anger management specialist with all the years of work on my own.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Wow. And so when you were drinking, were you drinking because you were angry or were all your emotions kind of tapped down? And then year one of sobriety, like, anger really reared its head, or can you talk more about that experience for you?
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I drank for lots of different reasons, really, because I couldn't handle any emotion or feeling of discomfort. And then on my really bad nights, a lot of them were fueled by anger towards another person. So I would drink at people like, oh, I'll show you.
Get drunk and ruin my life tonight. Take that. Like, they don't even know that I'm doing it. But it felt like I was drinking at them. And it would help the anger come down a bit in intensity until the end of the night when it would get even stronger. And then I would continue on that loop sometimes for weeks, just being angry about one situation.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense. You hear that a lot. People are drinking at other people, and that's the anger. And then, you know, as we know, once you quit drinking, then, like, it's just a big clusterfuck of emotions. There's just so many emotions. But you notice, like, ra. You called it rage. Rage was a strong emotion for you that first year, and anger was. And yeah, I. In all honesty, like. And I think we'll get into this how different people feel different emotions. But anger isn't one that I feel a lot, and I think it's because I maybe feel it in different ways. But when we're talking about anger, the emotion of anger, what is it?
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Yeah, you'll hear a lot that anger is pain's bodyguard.
That's a popular saying. It's a secondary emotion. It comes up to protect us from an emotion that makes us really uncomfortable. So the difficult thing about dealing with anger is you're not just dealing with anger. You have to uncover what this more uncomfortable emotion was, which you don't want to feel. So it makes it very challenging, so something could happen. You feel vulnerable, disrespected.
You feel small, embarrassed, humiliated, something like that. And it makes you feel so bad that you get angry so you don't have to feel small anymore. And then the anger, although you're expressing the emotion, Kind of.
It's more of like an avoidance protection thing almost.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Yeah. That's interesting. So you called it a secondary emotion in response to something underneath, like that vulnerability.
Are there other secondary emotions?
[00:06:48] Speaker C: That's a good question.
And I'm. I'm not sure, but I'm sure there are.
Can I google it?
[00:06:55] Speaker B: You can do whatever you want. I just, I don't think I'd ever heard it described as a secondary emotion, but it makes sense that you would bring that on board to protect yourself like you said it would. It. It's really designed to keep you safe.
[00:07:13] Speaker C: Yeah. So two other ones are fear and anxiety.
So you can get shame from those and you could get panic vulnerability, which can then both lead to anger. Anxiety can also trap you in an anger cycle as well. So if you have anxiety and you don't cope with it, you get this out of control feeling and that's really uncomfortable. So then you get angry to not feel the out of control feeling.
So I would say anger, to my knowledge, is the, is the big one. But there's probably some other secondary emotions. Something that's just nicer to feel than what you currently feel nicer to feel.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: What is, what is nicer about feeling anger?
[00:08:09] Speaker C: You feel in control, you feel justified, you feel powerful.
I think those are the main ones for me at least. It feels like your response is valid and it feels like it's not about you at all. It's about that other person and what they did, or it's about the situation and how horrible it. So it kind of depersonalizes it.
Like if I. The emotion I can't tolerate very well is embarrassment.
And if I feel embarrassed, then I'm, I'm beating myself up. Like, how could you say that? Or how could that person do whatever it was that embarrassed me or say whatever it was? And I really don't like that. So if I get angry, it's more like, how dare they? What's wrong with them? And it's not so much about me and my deficits anymore.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense because a lot of those emotions, even just, you know, the shame, sadness, a lot of those are so inward and self directed. And so anger is a way to express it and have it move outward versus inward. Okay, this is so interesting. Okay, and then how about anger looking different on different people, like women versus men, or how we, you know, I said I'm not typically an angry person, like outwardly loud angry, but I will let some resentment boil. I will have some simmering underlying anger. So can you Talk about just how different people express anger, how it shows up differently.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: Yeah, there's. So we can manage anger.
You know, that's the goal, obviously, for angry people. But if you're not managing it, there's usually two camps. There's people that are escalators and people that are stuffers. So you are describing a stuffer, and that's what a lot of people are.
They don't want to feel it. It's uncomfortable. Or if it involves another person, they don't know how to communicate it well enough to be heard and get the need met. So then they keep it to themselves. They have resentment.
If they're totally passive in their communication, the resentment's probably pretty strong. But they might also beat themselves up for not being able to stand up for themselves. They could also be passive aggressive and try to get it expressed that way. But really that just makes everybody uncomfortable and doesn't get the need met. And then on the other side, you have more of the aggressive type of people. And when.
When I say aggressive, it might make some of us think that comes with violence. And it doesn't always have to. It just means that your anger is more explosive, like you. That also makes you think of violence. So that wasn't a good word.
These people are not going to keep it to themselves. They're going to tell you what they think about it.
It may come with violence. They could get up in your face even. They will typically steamroll people or micromanage. I see this pattern a lot, actually, with women. Even though we think women would typically be the stuffers that resent everybody. They are. But some women are total steamrollers of their husbands, and they tell their husband what to do, but then he doesn't do it right. And they expect him to just know, but he doesn't. And it creates this whole thing with a lot of anger, and it builds and builds and builds, and then they blow a little bit to relieve some of it, and then it builds and builds and builds. So there's usually two different patterns that someone will have until they learn to actually manage the anger.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: That is so interesting. So escalators or stuffers, obviously, I'm a stuffer. Were you more of an escalator? Were you right, or.
[00:12:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm a stuffer.
I feel like I can have characteristics of both, but I can also be a really passive person. And that's something that makes me angry towards myself as well. Like, I can't.
I'll think of what I want to do or say, and then like I. My brain can't make it into an action, and the moment passes, and then I beat myself up. So I'm typically more of a stuffer, but I can only stuff it to a point, which a lot of stuffers, you know, everybody has a point where they reach that it's enough, and then it becomes more aggressive and explosive. Yeah. So usually keep it to myself and then vent it out to my husband or something.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Got it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
So. And this might take us back to some of your brain chemistry and your science background, but how does. How does drinking affect our emotions? I mean, I know we're talking about anger mainly, but that's just one of many emotions. So what role does drinking and alcohol play in all of this?
[00:13:55] Speaker C: Yeah, alcohol will bring down the intensity temporarily. Temporarily until the end of the night, when the intensity comes back, like, fivefold.
But in the beginning, like, people that are very overwhelmed by anything, stress, anxiety, anger, spiraling thoughts about trauma or whatever, anything that feels overwhelming or too much, even positive emotions, can make people feel overwhelmed. If you drink, it brings the intensity down a bit. And I used to tell myself, like, oh, it brings down the intensity, so then I can handle it.
But then I didn't do any handling. I would just, like, vent. And then I got even more angry. But it's a temporary thing, and we don't usually link the end of it, like the payback, where it comes back way stronger, to the actual drinking experience. So that's where people get in trouble. And there's also, if you imagine, like, we're all out at a bar, we've all seen, like, the girls that will typically cry at the end of the night and the people that get super happy in the beginning of the night. And then you will occasionally see someone that gets very angry and scary.
A lot of that is just which emotions you can access easier. Some people, like you were describing, can't really access anger as easily. But it's also genetics, like the way that your brain chemistry is, and then the way that alcohol affects it makes you more vulnerable to experiencing one of these emotions in a powerful way, like the crying, for example. That's not because the person is so overcome with sadness that they can't handle it. It's usually a brain chemistry thing that along with whatever they're thinking about that's making them cry. And it's the same for those angry drunks that people don't like very much or get afraid of. It's a. It's a brain chemistry thing mixed with an anger issue.
And the solution is don't drink.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah. That's so easy.
[00:16:17] Speaker C: That's it.
If you become an angry drunk, you can't, you can't like decouple it.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Oh, what do you mean? Yeah, like you never could. Like once an angry drunk, always an angry drunk.
[00:16:32] Speaker C: Kind of. Yeah. Like for me, I was a very sad drunk.
Really, really sad. And at the end I really dark and sad and I realized like, I can't decouple these things. If I get too drunk, I'm going to go to this really dark place.
100% chance. I had times where, you know, I took a break and I cured myself or whatever and reset my tolerance and all the things we say, but I would always go back to that place.
So if that's just where your brain goes when you give it enough alcohol, it's not your choice. It's not that you're missing the right strategy or tool. That's just how your brain operates when it's exposed to a bunch of alcohol. So a lot of people will be angry drunks themselves and they think that there's a way that they can stop it and you can learn to manage your anger.
But you're gonna get to that dark place when you get too drunk and things will come up like you can't get rid of everything that you're angry about are all your little sensitivities. I think the, the best example is like the angry guy at the bar who takes a perceived slight too far and starts a fight when the person like wasn't even thinking about them or disrespecting them in any way. They just have a real sensitivity to disrespect and they can learn how to manage that. But if you're drunk and you think someone just disrespected you, you can't really bring in your anger management tools in, in your drunk mind to regulate that situation. So it's always easy for that person to get back to that place that's.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Made such like a strong connection that that's your default when you're drinking.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like, like for me, you might expect with all the, all the comments I've made about being an angry person, you may expect that I could be an angry drunk and I wasn't really capable of that. I was more capable of being a sad drunk. I can also access sadness really easily and the reason I could get there was because of self hatred. So there's usually something that kind of wins some emotion for you, like people that have social anxiety or regular anxiety they're going to have a very different experience than I do because I don't struggle with those things. So they can access different emotions easier than me.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: So. So people are. So it's really kind of unique what emotions people are able to access and what you might be prone towards when you're sober might not be what you access when you're drinking.
[00:19:43] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I can get pretty sad, but never that sad ever.
And that was something amazing that I learned when I took a break. It's like, wow, I have been sober for two months and I have never been to that dark place in the whole two months. That's interesting.
So, yeah, it's really interesting how our brains respond to alcohol and different emotions and which emotions you can access easier. Also depend on your childhood and what you are exposed to. There's a genetic component, obviously with brain chemistry, but there's also what you were exposed to. Like, I.
I had some experiences when I was a kid that probably seemed like nothing to everybody but me, but I felt really, really embarrassed. And I felt like, out of control, like I couldn't do anything about it. Totally powerless.
And then as I grew up and collected more of those experiences, I observed some anger. Then I was like, oh, this will fix the problem. And then that became a huge trigger for me. Other people, maybe they had an experience as a kid that they got picked on or made fun of, and it made them hyper aware of how they show up socially. So they can access social anxiety really easily where I can't. It's just not how I'm organized.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah. This is so interesting. And it makes sense. I mean, we're all unique, different people. So then what's going on? That first, you know, when you first quit drinking. And like I said, there's a funny little picture of these two cartoon characters, and one's looking at the other cartoon character, and it's just like colorful scribbles, chaos coming out of his head. And one guy's like, what's that? That. And the. The one with all the chaos scribbles is saying, oh, that's just a clusterfuck of my emotions, buddy. But that's what it feels like when we quit drinking. So is that our brain rebalancing? What's going on there?
[00:22:05] Speaker C: Yeah, brain rebalancing.
Allowing yourself to feel when you haven't for so long. Because when you drink all the time, your central nervous system is depressed, like, your brain doesn't function very well. Certain things weaken, addictive pathways strengthen.
So when you stop Drinking. Everything's just kind of like freestyling out there. It doesn't know what to do. And all of these emotions that you've numb for so long, good and bad, are now just there. And if you mix that with not having the tools to deal with them, they become overwhelming really quickly and they can last a long time if you can't manage them. Well.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get back to anger and anger management, because that's your specialty. So what, what are you. You have listed five signs that you need anger management. What, what are those signs?
[00:23:12] Speaker C: Some of them we've talked about, but I think the most common one is this feeling of rushing.
Like you just are always rushing, even if there's no reason to rush. Everything feels so urgent. And that's why there's this reel that I really liked that most people didn't understand. Like the actual point behind the reel is this. This kid, I think he was like a 10 year old boy or something, he was coming home and he opened up the screen door and then he was putting his key in the front door and the screen door, like I think it slammed on him or something and he flipped out.
He lost it. He was so angry. So many F words. And it looks funny, like, wow, what a reaction. But actually this poor little guy is so angry and he's so at capacity that a door slamming on him is intolerable.
And that's like what I was describing with the more explosive people. They'll reach the limit and then they'll explode it out to vent some of it and it'll come back down. But, but they're not managing all that stuff that has piled up.
And this is a huge problem for a lot of people, whether they're angry or anxious or overwhelmed.
It's called frustration tolerance or your window of tolerance. You can think about it too. A lot of people think that, like, oh my God, I just go through my day and something happens and then I go from zero to a hundred and I get so angry and I don't understand why this is happening. And it's like, no, you were sitting at an 80, you walk around at an 80 all day, every day. And then these things that seem small happen to you, but your capacity is so small for what you can handle that it pushes you over your threshold for when you get angry. And you have to learn how to relieve all of that stuff that's sitting there to feel better. So when someone is close to their capacity, they'll get this rushing feeling and everything feels so Urgent. And a lot of drinkers feel that way, too. It's just like urgency for. For almost no reason.
So that's a huge one. You might also feel really frazzled all the time.
No patience.
Everybody's a freaking idiot.
If only they would just live by my rules for living, the world would be such a good place.
You know, like the one that used to always get me and still still does a little bit. But you pull up to Starbucks and some idiot has parked in the fire lane, even though there's a bunch of parking spots open, because I don't know why.
And that used to make me so mad. And I would focus on it. Who does that? And it would blow up my day. So somebody acting that way needs help with their anger.
I also see a lot of women.
I see the women steamroll their husbands and have that pattern. I also see a pattern between moms and their kids where they have limited patience for their kids. And then they start reacting and feeling urgent and frazzled, and then their kid picks up on that, and then they escalate each other and it becomes a whole thing.
The one I hear most commonly is, like, bedtime kids not wanting to go to bed. And it becomes a battle every day.
And then also displaced anger.
If you can't cope with your anger, you can't just stuff it for all eternity. Like, it's not going to go away just because you don't want to feel it.
So that's why you get the steamrolling women. They displace their anger on their spouse. Unfortunately, your spouse is like the easiest target for displaced anger.
I don't know what it is. It's like we think that they are punching bags and they're not going to leave. They're just going to deal with it. So they're a very easy target for displaced anger or road rage because you're anonymous in your big suv and you can just take it out on all the idiots on the road who are also kind of anonymous because you don't know who they are. And that's another way to try to vent some of it, but you're not actually coping.
And then I guess the last one would just be rage hangovers. Like that boy I was describing who got to that place where he was very, very angry. Once he comes down from that, it's going to take time to come down.
But once he comes down, he's not going to feel good. Like, when you have an emotion that's that big and there's so much behind it, like all the Cortisol and the stress that's being released, it doesn't make you feel good afterwards. And you have to recover physically from that as well. Like you might just feel really tired, sad, cranky and that can go on too. So people will get in a cycle where it's going to build. They vent it somehow, rage hangover, they got to recover. Then it builds up again and it just repeats and repeats and repeats and it's very tiring.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Well, I would think there's got to be like some long term health consequences too.
Remember they talked about type A and type B personalities and who had more heart attacks and strokes? Do have they done more research related to that sort of thing?
[00:29:38] Speaker C: That I have not looked into, but I'm sure of it. I know that I know someone who developed ulcers from unmanaged intense rage. It really does take a toll on your body. Just all the stuff that's going on when you're in one of those rage attacks, even if you keep it inside yourself the whole time, like it's just not good for you.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about some ways to manage it, some other coping tools.
What are some of the things we can do to manage our anger?
[00:30:22] Speaker C: I think the first thing is to try to understand why you're so angry.
And that's a hard one. But that work should be going on in the background the whole time. Like what are your anger triggers? Is it particular people?
Is it certain situations? Is there an uncomfortable belief about you that gets triggered and once you unlock that, it gets a little easier to manage.
Like for me I have a stupid belief just from things I experienced. Like I. When I was in grad school, the chair of the department told me, no one has any confidence that you will succeed.
And before that point I was a very hard worker. I thought that I was pretty smart and unfortunately I had linked career achievement and degrees to my self worth. So when that was said, it just broke me and I'm like, oh my God, I'm stupid. I had no idea.
So now anytime that gets activated, like I can't hand that has been a huge anger trigger. Like some of the biggest anger moments I've had in my adult life have been because that belief gets activated. And now that I understand that, I can deal with it a bit better. So that work should always be going on.
But I. The thing I always tell people is to sing and I know it's stupid. Sing. And they're always like, no, like I tell men to sing a song and they're like, why am I here? What is this? But it's relaxing. There's a lot of reasons singing is good. It's stupid. So hopefully it makes you laugh.
You can't laugh and be in a fit of rage at the same time.
Like truly laugh. Not a maniacal laugh. It activates the vagus nerve which runs down the vocal cords. So humming, singing stimulate the vagus nerve and that tells your nervous system to relax it also to sing, you have to breathe.
And people, when they're very angry, they will take really shallow breaths and they won't even realize it. And they're hyping themselves up physically and then they're hyping themselves up mentally, and then they're hyping themselves up even more physically. And it's a loop that makes the anger grow in power.
If you can regulate your breathing, you could take deep breaths. Like, you don't have to sing a song, but you could take deep breaths. But singing is kind of a way to force it. If it feels like you can't take a deep breath and you don't have to sing some good song that you heard on the radio. Like your. Your song could be 70% F words sung in a pleasant tone about whatever, I don't know, just something like that. And then eventually you'll make yourself laugh and you can move on from there. But it really. I do it myself. It really does work. I don't just say random stuff to try without actually doing it.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Wait, so you have a go to song?
[00:34:12] Speaker C: I usually sing a different song depending on what the circumstances. So I don't have a go to. But it always has a lot of efforts.
Sometimes it's literally just like, what the f, what the f. What the.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Like over and over. I could make it one. You could make that?
[00:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Always make it up. It's better that way.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Okay. I love that. I feel like those the first two tips you gave, the finding out why and then the singing can also apply to like if you're having a drinking craving, right?
[00:34:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, I really wanna effing drink. What the f? Like just sing a song about it and then eventually you'll laugh and move on with your life.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. What are, what are some other tools you have?
[00:35:12] Speaker C: Angry people really need validation.
I'm not going to say like a hundred percent, but most really just need to be validated and heard because a lot of times when you get angry, there's some threat that has happened to your ego, to who you are, and it makes you mad to try to deal with the threat.
So what my husband does for me is I will. He'll sit on the couch and I'll stand up. Not like, over him, but, you know, on the other side of the room.
And I'll walk back and forth and I'll just vent and I'll tell him the situation and I'll. I'll let the energy come out. I won't try to hide it. It's not directed at him.
And then he will hype me up.
And many people will try to give you advice or solutions to your problem. I don't want that. I don't want your advice.
What he does for me instead is he will be like, what the frick is wrong with that person who does that? Like, I can't even believe them. He'll do stuff like that to just really hype me up. And I'll be like, yeah, that's true. Who does that?
And we'll have this funny back and forth that eventually, like, he hypes me up so much and starts making it a little bit ridiculous that we both laugh. And then I feel neutralized. So just having someone that can hear you and validate what you're experiencing is really helpful. Whether they mean it or not. They're just validating that it's real. You don't have to look on the bright side. You don't have to reframe. It's just the way that you feel is the way that you feel.
[00:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of it is. Is that key right there, Just feeling it and letting it pass through you instead of, like, numbing it away or pushing it down or avoiding, like, it's really moving the emotions through you.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Because if I'm talking to somebody and they're like, that's not really a big deal. Like, I don't. And they play devil's advocate and they're like, oh, I don't think that person really meant that. Maybe they meant this. I feel like, oh, I must be crazy.
Or now I can't trust my reaction. Now I feel even more embarrassed, which is my biggest anger trigger. I feel like I have to hide how I feel, which isn't good for an angry person. And it gets stuffed instead of dealt with. And not. Most people can't provide a safe space for you to talk about your feelings with. So you can't just do it with anybody. You have to find the right people, the safe people.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah. What are some. What are some ways we can learn from that, though? As you were talking about That I was like, gosh, I could do a better job of listening to my kids, you know, and just listening and validating how they feel and not fixing anything and just. It is so helpful.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm also trained in crisis intervention, and that is the number one. Well, the number one rule is you have to be able to stay self regulated. The second rule is validate the person nonstop. Like, if you mess up on the de escalation and they start going back up, you go right back to validating to help them feel safe and heard. And then they start coming down. So it's always about validation. You don't have to agree. I think people get stuck on this idea that they have to agree with the ridiculous way that I interpreted a situation.
You don't have to agree with me, but it is how I feel. And validating me is just acknowledging.
Yeah, that is. I see that you're upset. That is how you feel. It's just validating. An angry person eventually needs to learn how to reframe. Stop making so many assumptions, stop putting our rules for living on everybody else. But those skills take time.
Validation doesn't. And it helps for everything. Like you said, not just anger. Every emotion feeling heard. It makes people feel safe and comfortable.
[00:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And it's. It's so simple. And I'm glad that you pointed out you don't have to agree with it and you don't have to fix it. And you're not reframing. You're just kind of just mirroring what they said to you. And. Yeah, that is. That's a good one.
[00:40:30] Speaker C: Yeah. My. My husband and I used to get in fights when I would try to go to him for support because he's not really that angry, and he thinks completely different than I do. And he would listen to my interpretation. He'd be like, whoa.
He'd be like, I don't think that that is what actually happened. And he'd try to downplay it.
And I felt minimized.
And that made me feel worse. So it took time for us to get to this place where he knows what I need. And that just comes from communicating. Like, no one's gonna know how to give you what you need unless you tell them.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: And especially if you don't know yourself what you need if you're not, you know, because that's a skill too, like tapping into what do I really need.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: Yeah. And that is another skill of anger management is actually understanding, like the anger is trying to get a need met.
What is it?
And then once you Figure it out. You can actually deal with the need and then you won't need the anger to show up and, like, protect you anymore.
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Does that go along with some of, like, the common human needs? Like, are there some core needs that we all have?
[00:42:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. It's just a different reaction to not getting your needs met. But it's. Yeah, it's not anything special. It's the need for safety, for connection, to feel cared about. It's all of those needs.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Mm. Yeah.
Well, what else would you add about? You know, we've talked a lot about anger and some ways to cope. What. What else do you want to share with the people who are listening?
[00:42:37] Speaker C: I would say that if you are listening and you're struggling with your anger, it's really important to learn how to handle it because it's not going to get better.
And there's a lot of different destructive routes that we can take to try to turn it down.
Like, people will wall punch, even sweet little moms. It's not just big angry dudes. People will wall punch people. They will self harm.
Eating disorders can go along with that. They will drink, they will use drugs, they'll scare people with how big their reactions are, things like that. And all of those are a way of you trying to cope with something you don't know how to cope with.
And it's not going to get any better until you actually learn how to cope with the behavior. Because all of those things that I described, they do provide relief. Like, someone doesn't punch a wall because they're a scary person and they just want to make everybody's day worse.
They punch the wall because they're feeling so much frustration that they can't tolerate another second of it. And punching the wall gives them relief, just like drinking gives us relief. All of these behaviors, you just gravitate towards different things depending on who you are. It's all about getting relief from something you don't know how to deal with. So you gotta learn how to first recognize what it is and then deal with the thing and then it will get better.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:44:30] Speaker C: How.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: How are you doing with your anger management now?
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Mine's pretty good, actually. I have really impressed myself with how I've handled some situations in the past few months.
Something. And I appreciate that question, by the way. Thank you. Something that I used to do a lot is I would have a nemesis everywhere I went.
So at jobs, usually I would have a nemesis there. And this person was always out to get me and ruin my life. And I'd focus Really hard on them and how they were all. They were the cause of all my work suffering. And even after I got sober and started working on my anger, I still carried that behavior. I was still adversarial and jealous in the first couple years of sobriety. It took time. Like, all of these things take time to deal with. But recently I had somebody make me their nemesis, and that has never happened to me before.
And I stayed cool. I didn't. I didn't hype up the situation, and two people have to participate for it to get hyped up and stay hyped up. So I didn't hype it up, and I was proud of that. But the reason I bring it up is because being on the other side of that, I learned so much, because the reason that they made me their nemesis was not actually reality.
Like, their perception of what had happened between us was so different than what actually happened. And then they reacted to that and it became a whole thing.
And just for me to realize that, it gave me a lot of perspective about my past.
Like, oh, think through all of these nemeses that you've had in your life. Maybe you interpreted the situation wrong, because angry people, we interpret things in very severe ways that mean bad things about us, and we can learn to change the interpretation.
So I felt very proud of that situation that happened. I hope no one else makes me their nemesis, but I thought it was very educational and informative to be on the other side for once.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, gosh, I just appreciate you sharing about your personal experiences and just. I think even for people listening who, maybe they're still struggling with their drinking and anger is the reason they drink, or maybe you have kicked the habit, but you still feel angry. Like, just to know, like, this is normal and there is help and there is hope, like, and. And it's just. It's so refreshing to know, like, we are still. We can continue to grow and change and learn new ways to cope. And I think that is such a great message of hope. So thank you for sharing your experience.
[00:47:49] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Well, how can people find you if they wanted to get help with anger management, if they want to binge your podcast or. And you have a community, too, so share how people can find you.
[00:48:04] Speaker C: Yeah. If you go to soberpowered.com, you'll find everything that you need in terms of sober or anger resources.
[00:48:13] Speaker B: Oh, that's wonderful. And I'll put the link in the show notes. And I just want to say thank you again, Jill. It was great connecting again. We should have three years go by.
[00:48:25] Speaker C: I know. I'm shocked. Thank you.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Alcohol Tipping Point podcast.
[00:48:34] Speaker B: Please share and review the show so.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: You can help other people too. I want you to know I'm always here for you. So please reach out and talk to me on Instagram alcoholtippingpoint and check out my website, alcoholtippingpoint.com for free resources and help. No matter where you are on your drinking journey, I want to encourage you to just keep practicing.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: Keep going.
[00:48:55] Speaker A: I promise you are not alone and.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: You are worth it.
[00:48:59] Speaker A: Every day you practice not drinking is a day you can learn from. I hope you can use these tips we talked about for the rest of your week and until then, talk to you next time.
