Anger Management — Full webinar with Michael Adamedes

0:00Welcome. This is the fourth presentation in the emotional series and it's titled anger management. In this presentation there are two parts. Part one, anger management and part two, the psychology of anger. But just before we start, I would like us to do a one minute centering exercise. So spine straight, head erect, eyes gently closed, and absolutely perfectly still.

0:36Take in a really deep slow breath through the nose and make a long sigh sound out through the mouth. Now take two long slow breaths in and out through your nose and bring your attention back to the screen. Welcome. We live in a fast paced, stressful world. So for most adults to sometimes feel frustrated is quite normal. And frustration is a mild form of anger. So what is anger?

1:52The dictionary definition of anger is a strong feeling of displeasure or hostility to a perceived wrong. It can mean anything from frustration to rage. And one of the problems with anger is that it can also become habitual response. It becomes the usual way. The usual way it works is that there's a trigger.

2:18A mistake's been made, someone's been rude or you may feel ignored. And then almost immediately you cycle into an anger irritation response. And often after the anger or irritation you may even regret the way you behaved. So what makes us angry or what, you know, how is anger put together?

2:45And anger has two parts to it. There's an energetic chemical reaction that's been set off. And then there's a psychological pattern of behavior that's being triggered. And it's that energetic experience, it's that an energy that's coming up so quickly that we have no real control over. And this chemical reaction is part of our fight flight response.

3:17And in this instance, it's the fight part of the fight flight response that's being activated. And then our body chemistry has gone into battle mode. With the psychological pattern, some past behavior is being triggered. For instance, as a child, I may have had an experience when my opinion was repeatedly ignored.

3:42And now I'm in a situation at work with a colleague who thinks who I think is ignoring my suggestions about a project we are developing. I'm annoyed and I want to tell her off. It could be a forgotten childhood memory of communicating with my mother that's now being activated. The body's gone into fight mode.

4:08The way in which the body's chemistry responds to a threatening situation is illustrated in the next slide. It's described in four stages. The first stage is the threat. There's an external event which is interpreted as a threat.

4:29Real or imagined and the majority of the time it is imagined. Then the brain in the second stage processes the signal of this threat in the amygdala and the hypothalamus, which sends signals to another part of the brain called the pituitary, which in terms releases a hormone, ACTH, which is a drenocortic hormone.

4:57And this hormone triggers the adrenal glands which sit on top of our kidneys to release cortisol and adrenaline into the body. The cortisol is a steroid hormone that increases the body's metabolism of glucose so that we've got more energy. And the adrenal and triggers the body's fight or flight response, which causes the air passages to dilate, so that we're providing more oxygen to the muscles.

5:30The blood vessels contract to redirect blood to major muscle groups. It reduces the body's ability to feel pain. It causes a noticeable increase in strength and performance and as well contributes to a height and state of awareness. Wow, it does a lot of things.

5:51And so this body chemistry is just going bang, bang, bang, big curves. It thinks I'm in danger. And after the stress is subsided, the adrenal and the effect can last up to an hour. So after I've had this experience of being upset, I can still feel our balance for some period of time afterwards,

6:13because this body chemistry still needs to be processed. So what do I do with all this energy and my annoyance and my anger? Well, I call this the emotional dilemma. There's no real dilemma.

6:29It's just, it can feel that way. You know, I'm in a situation I want to punch them, but I know I should hold back, or I want to tell them off, but I know I should keep quiet. So there are two needs that seem in seemingly contradict each other.

6:50One pushes out while the other one holds back. The first is this need for expression, and the second is this need for containment. You know, to take personal responsibility over the experience that's occurring. And so somewhere I need to give expression to this feeling and to these chemicals that have been released in my body.

7:17The simplest way to do this is to go physical. That's to do some physical exercise, to run, power walk, swim, have a bath or a shower. But if I'm at work, then I may not be able to go for a run. I could take a few deep breaths, walk out of the room for a few minutes, and hopefully calm down.

7:41Or go outside and walk around the block. I need to handle the emotion, the feeling of it. Or in extreme cases I could go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, and scream into my flora while it's flashing. Something like this.

8:00And just really push out the sound and push out whatever I'm holding. And just keep pushing, pushing, pushing until I run out of breath. Obviously you don't want anyone to hear you because it's disturbing from other people. And also what they think of you, if they hear you screaming in the toilet.

8:22And so, but it's an amazing process for releasing this charge. So you've got to be aware, I've got to bring my emotional temperature down. It's being affected by the body chemistry. So I've got to do something in a normal fight flight response.

8:43Our ancestral ancestors would have been walking through the forest and animal jumps out. And they would pick up their spear and defend themselves. And so there would be this huge amount of activity that takes place. And it would process the hormones.

9:02Here I am in a civilized situation at home with my spouse, with my friends, with my colleagues. And I've now been activated. I've got all this charge. It's not okay to dump it on them.

9:15It's going to create a whole lot of issues with everyone. And at the same time, I'm holding on to this charge. I need to dissipate it. And the sooner I dissipate it, the better.

9:30Do the breathing exercises. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

9:44You can trace five breaths using your hand. You could repeat it and do ten breaths, as I said. Walk out of the room if necessary. So bring the emotional temperature down, move away from the thing that's stimulating you.

10:01Or contain yourself until you have an opportunity to do so. The other side of the emotional dilemma is responsibility. And with responsibility, I'm talking about 100% personal responsibility. And it's like, the responsibility is with me.

10:22I'm saying that, yes, I've been activated by this external thing. But I have to 100% take responsibility for my response. And there are four things to be understood about personal responsibility. The first thing is no blame.

10:41I'm not wrong. They're not wrong. Yes, a mistake may have occurred. They may have made the mistake.

10:48I don't need to interpret it as being wrong. I just need to recognize we need to correct something. We need to correct a procedure. All there needs to be better communication.

10:58All they need to develop a skill set. There's a whole lot of other things. I'm not wrong. I haven't failed.

11:05I didn't hear something. It doesn't mean that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm not stupid. You've got to let go of the blame.

11:13The blame really confuses you and it affects the way you behave. The second thing is disidentify. This is a symptom that I've inherited. I'm behaving in a particular way because I'm experiencing this response.

11:31I've got to recognize that this symptom and this response is not me. Yes, it is affecting me. Yes, this behavior needs to change. I am 100% responsible for it, but it doesn't represent who I am.

11:47I am not my physical body. I'm not my emotions. I'm not my mind. And I'm not my behaviors.

11:54I'm something far greater. It's a similar thing to if someone comes to see me suffering from asthma. I would never think of them as an asthmatic, but rather a healthy person who sometimes suffers

12:11from the symptoms of asthma. The same with this. You are a healthy, whole, resourceful person who has now just been activated by some unresolved issue within you.

12:26The third aspect of understanding around responsibility, no one causes your anger. The anger is already within you. The other personal situation is just triggering it.

12:43Yes, I may need to move away from triggers. I don't need to be constantly stimulated, and I don't need to be constantly stressed. But my stress and the stimulation is something that's in me.

12:57If I didn't have this in me, they could behave that way, and it wouldn't affect me in that way. I may still choose not to be around them because why put up with this nonsense. But I'm not upset, I'm not reacting, I'm not annoyed.

13:12A good example of this is a quote by Osho. Osho is an Indian mystic, and it comes from the book of secrets. And the reason why I recommend Osho is that before he became, you know, in mystic, he was a professor of philosophy.

13:36And so his explanations of things are so good. It's so precise. It's so well explained. And he has a thorough understanding of the subject.

13:49So Osho is a pretty special reference, a pretty special person to go to. But the quote from the book is about a Zen master. And he says, one of the greatest of Zen masters,

14:08Ling Chi used to say, while I was young, I was very fascinated by voting. I had one small vote, and I would go out on the lake alone.

14:22And for hours I would remain there. Once it happened that with closed eyes, I was in my boat meditating on a beautiful night. An empty boat came floating downstream and struck my boat.

14:38My eyes were closed. So I thought someone is here with his boat and he has struck my boat. Anger arose.

14:48I opened my eyes, and I was just going to say something to that man in anger. Then I realized the boat was empty. There was no way to move.

15:02To whom could I express the anger? The boat was empty. It was just floating downstream, and it had come unstuck.

15:13So there was nothing to do. There was no possibility of projecting the anger onto an empty boat. So Ling Chi said, I closed my eyes.

15:27The anger was there, but finding no way out, I closed my eyes and just floated backwards with the anger. And that empty boat became my realization.

15:40I came to a point within myself that in that silent night, that empty boat was my master. And now if someone comes and insults me,

15:51I laugh and I say, this boat is also empty. I close my eyes and I go within. So the solution to the anger ultimately comes from

16:07some understanding of what's sitting dormant within me. The fourth thing to understand with personal responsibility is this very thing. The solution to your problem lies within.

16:22If you have a disagreement with someone, you may talk to them or attempt to rectify the situation. And that's a good thing, and it may be a temporary fix,

16:33and that relationship with that person can continue. But long term, the underlying internal psychology that made you susceptible to the upset in the first place still remains in place.

16:48And that is where the solution to your anger lies. And it's like, what is this programming? That results in me being upset when I experience that behavior or that type of person.

17:03Another thing about understanding anger and being able to eventually neutralize it is this next piece. Is understanding the difference between rumination and resolution.

17:19The word rumination comes from, you know, cattle ruminating, which means, you know, they eat the grass and then they regurgitate ruminating and then they chew on their carbon and they swallow it.

17:32So it's like going over the same piece of food twice or three times. And it's the same with us going over the same piece of thinking again and again. You're in the loop. You keep going around and around the same set of incidents

17:54and continue to gather evidence for your upset. Nothing changes. Your upset remains. For example, you know, my best friend didn't send me an invitation to their 40th birthday party. That's, this isn't real. This is just an example.

18:11And I heard about the party from another friend. Then I think to myself, why didn't they invite me? Don't they care about me? Are they upset with me? And it leads to me over analyzing the situation.

18:27And if I think about it too much, I get into what's called analysis paralysis. It's another way of saying, you know, I'm just worrying. I'm thinking and thinking and thinking about an issue and I'm not coming up with a solution. And so you're in a thinking loop and it's just adding to your emotional upset.

18:47And sometimes it's a bad habit and you get hooked in to being upset or thinking this way. And sometimes you get, you know, caught out in just thinking thinking. So with a while a resolution is completely different. A resolution is thinking about something, working it out and getting over it.

19:16So the purpose of our thinking is to resolve issues, this to resolve things. We want to work things out. Sometimes thinking is positive. Sometimes thinking is negative.

19:31Usually thinking is negative when it's associated with a lot of emotional upset. Because that emotional upset keeps you locked into a particular way of thinking. There's a simple guide to working out is something's rumination or resolution. It's called the 50 minute rule.

19:55If you haven't worked out a solution in 50 minutes, then it's unlikely you will work out a solution in your present cycle physiological state, in your present physiological state. You need to change the way you feel. Your present feeling state is creating a form of tunnel vision. Change your state by exercising, swimming, having a shower, going to sleep, going outside, walking in nature, taking your mind completely off what's going on.

20:32Because we're usually using the thinking to resolve our feeling. But if it's gone on for a certain period of time, our thinking will not resolve the upset. The thinking is making the upset worse. And you need to recognize I can't think this through anymore in this present state of feeling or in my present state of awareness.

21:01I need to break it, go away, calm down, get out of that feeling. And then I may be able to think it through as to why I felt that way. I've got to be a bit careful that I don't put myself back into being upset again. But there's no way you can do it.

21:24At that period, in that moment, the purpose of thinking about an upset is to resolve the problem. And let go of the emotion that you're feeling. And if it hasn't made you feel better in 50 minutes, then stop thinking about it. You need to be able to recognize whether your thinking is rumination or resolution.

21:47Because as soon as you do that, you stop putting fuel onto the fire. Rumination is yours, just going round and round, putting more fuel on the fire. So what do you do with your anger if you haven't as yet worked out the real cause of it? How do you manage your anger?

22:05If you're going to manage your anger, you must really work at it. There's no quick fix. It is a process of chipping away, chipping away, chipping away, chipping away. And sometimes you've got to be aware that there's a payoff from being angry.

22:21There can be this some benefit from being angry. For example, you're staying in control, you can feel justified, you want to punish someone. You're afraid to apologize, maybe afraid to be vulnerable. So just be aware, are you getting a payoff from being angry?

22:43Be aware of that. If there's a payoff and be aware, are you ruminating? Are you going round and round in circles, making it worse? But then when you, if you're really serious about releasing your anger, then you can use this sort of approach.

22:59And I basically put seven things together that I recommend. The first one is a management plan. And a management plan really can be as simple as what do I do when I become angry? I've got to kind of think it through before I'm angry.

23:18And in particular with someone who's close to you, if it's your spouse, if it's your partner and you're regularly annoyed with them, then you've got to think to yourself, I can't carry on being angry with them. I've got to break that habit. If I'm catching myself being annoyed, maybe I just walk out of the room for a moment, calm down and then come back.

23:40And I'm going to think about being aware that if I do walk out, they don't interpret it as me walking away from them, abandoning them or whatever. But I've got to work out what is going on. Or if someone's telling me something and I'm getting annoyed, then I may think, you know, what is a response that I could have? And it could be as simple as saying, let me think about it.

24:03Not you hear, yeah, fair enough. Let me think about it. I may have already decided that you don't agree. But if you start talking about it in that moment, it could create an upset.

24:14And so just let me think about it. I'll come back to you a little bit later on. And that's really an opportunity to allow you to calm down. So you need strategies around how to behave when you get angry with certain people.

24:29And particularly colleagues at work and your spouse or your family friends and family and friends. And so those strategies are important. You can't usually think about those in the moment. You've got a pre-plan that the second thing is understanding what trick is you.

24:51And it's understanding it from the perspective of the actual physical element of the trigger. Is it the words they use? Is it when someone says no to you? Or they think, no, you were wrong in this.

25:04Boom. No, I'm telling you what to do. And so is it the actual words they're using? Or is it tone of voice?

25:13When you put out the garbage, stop doing that. It's the tone of voice could set you off. So be aware of that. Or is it facial expressions?

25:23Just somehow they're looking sour. Or they've walked in and there's a darkness around their eyes and you immediately think, what's going on here? And now you're in fight mode.

25:37Is it their body posture? And it could be even just certain circumstances, certain times of the day, E.g. when something come before breakfast. Before you've eaten, it could be just very vulnerable.

25:52Or you're doing something and someone comes in and interrupts you. So just be aware, what are the triggers? If you're aware of the triggers and you're prepared, it's less likely those triggers will affect you in that way. So that is a management plan.

26:08So that's really just looking at how am I going to behave? When I do get angry and what are the things that are making me angry? The second thing is I've got to move the energy because this anger is just set off all this chemical reaction in my body. And so the simple thing, as mentioned earlier, is exercise, have a bath, sing, massage, breathing, being in nature, things like that.

26:38So I've got to move my energy. So for a period after that experience, I'm going to be charged up. And if I have, if it occurs at work and I'm upset for 15 or 20 minutes and then I've calmed down, it doesn't mean that the energy of that upset is dissipated.

26:57All that usually means is that it's submerged out of your conscious awareness and sits there. And you just gradually become more and more sensitive, more and more brittle. And so you are building it up, storing it. So you do need something when you get out of that situation where you can breathe, run, massage, get out nature and just really release it out of the body.

27:24The next one is to change your thinking. You know, to think about what's occurring differently, they're not having a goal of me, at me. I approve of myself, even if he or she disapproves of me. You could use affirmations. I'm okay, even if I don't feel okay.

27:46I love them, they love me. I don't have to give my power away to my emotions. This is just a chemical reaction taking place in my body. Change the way you think about it.

28:00Don't make it wrong, don't make you wrong. The next thing is you've got to have a work-life balance. If you're tired and under constant pressure, you're spending too many hours at work, then it's no surprise you're going to be upset. Because you're just exhausted.

28:16You're at the end of your tether. You need to take time off, relax, maybe learn how to meditate, do type G, yoga, join a choir, go and have fun with your friends. You need some way of de-stressing. So if you're under a lot of pressure, it's not a good recipe for managing your anger.

28:38The next one is diet. What you put into your body affects the body's chemistry and your moods. A general rule is no excessive alcohol, coffee, sugar and drugs. They're just going to keep blowing your body chemistry out of balance.

28:56A glass of wine on occasion, yes, sure. One or two coffees at the most per day, yeah, sugar really try and hold off. Watch the sugary foods, don't put sugar into your tea coffee and drink sugary drinks. It's just blowing your endocrine system.

29:15You're just making your whole physiology more susceptible, more sensitive to being upset. And you want to ground yourself, which means eating fresh, organic and in moderation. You want to eat food that makes you feel calm. And the next thing is talk to a friend.

29:39You know, talk to a friend that helps let go of some of the upset. Talk to a friend without gossiping. Talk to a friend without blaming other people. Talk to a friend about this is what I'm feeling.

29:50This is what's coming up for me rather than I'm surrounded by idiots all the time. And I can't trust anyone. And, you know, it all sucks. Talk to a friend about trying to understand yourself.

30:04And sometimes you can keep a journal. Some people really love journals. It's taken me a long time to keep a journal. And keeping a journal is another way of talking to a friend or talking to a therapist.

30:16I'm writing down how I feel what's good. And in doing that, it helps me discharge some of the emotion. And it also enables me to have some insight. I would write, write, write these things down.

30:29And a few days later, come back and read them. It may not necessarily give me insight in that moment while I'm writing into my journal. But often, if I've come back at a different time and read my journal when I'm not so charged, I'll get an insight because I'm looking at it with a different frame of mind.

30:48And another thing, the last thing is, you know, seek professional support. It's a good way, firstly, to get you started in understanding yourself. And especially when things are mounting up and you seem overwhelmed. So professional support, this person has experienced work with people for a long time.

31:07And they may be able to give you some clues. It also provides a frame of reference. They'll explain how people get a program, how your childhood can affect you, and refer you to certain books and enable you to think about yourself differently. They can give you a skill set to deal with your issues.

31:31Now, these seven things are for dealing with the symptoms of anger. So these are about managing your anger. I've got this anger. I've got to now contain it. It's not appropriate to dump it on someone.

31:45It's not appropriate for me to feel bad about it. And I've just got to move the energy of it. So this is really important in being able to manage it. But then the next part is we're looking to release the root causes of anger.

32:00And we need to go deeper. And this is what I call the psychology of anger. And in the psychology of anger, it's identifying both the triggers that set off your anger and understanding why these triggers are activating an anger response. You could be neutral, have no response.

32:25Or you could have a different response to a trigger, such as being afraid or sad or shameful. Or apathetic switch off and never want to talk to them again. But why is it anger? So why is anger being activated here? So the definition, well, not so much the definition, but the psychology behind anger is an attempt to reempower yourself.

32:53Real or imagined, it's a perceived loss of power. Most of the time, your anger is an imagined loss. A past usually forgotten memory is being triggered by a present time event. Sometimes it could be triggered with something as simple as someone cutting in front of you in traffic.

33:15And that person cutting in can represent a sense of loss. They will get there before me. They're going to win, I'm going to lose. Or it can be a sense of injustice. They're jumping the cue and they're not taking the turn in the right way. They're getting an unfair advantage.

33:35This could be tapping into a whole lot of early childhood memories about playing sport and being selected or not selected for the team. And in these situations, there are winners and losers. Good and bad, worthy and unworthy. But something has been triggered and it's to do with power in some way. So in order to understand that it's like, what is power?

34:03And the definition of power that I work with is the ability to maintain my position in space. It's the ability to maintain the space I occupy. It's my ability to hold my own reality, to be myself, to be authentic. It implies that you value yourself, yourself. You know what you want and that you're going for it.

34:33Most people don't know what they want and they're certainly not going for it. Because they've grown up around people who were not in their power. We learn from the behaviour of the people we spend the most time with in the first seven years of our life. This is where our personality gets set in place.

34:56And in particular, before the age of four. And that usually means mum and dad. Again, no blame, mum and dad have done their absolute best. They, in turn, learnt from their mum and dad.

35:11And this is a process of humans evolving. We're here to be real. We're here to be our own person. We're not here to live someone else's dream.

35:23We're here to understand what is it that makes me tick. But most people drift along and end up in some situation they don't really want. And then they have to work really hard to get out of it. If they're able to get out of it or a lot of people just find it too hard

35:43and just put up with it and just live a half life. And they go five days a week to something they don't like to do. And then they have a life two days of the week. And so they're only living two out of five days in a week, two out of seven days in a week.

36:01And so it's really like, you know, what is it for me? Who am I? And this discovery of self is a process of trial and error. And to learn what I really want and what's truly good for me. And the way I've learned is really by doing things that haven't been good for me,

36:21by being in relationships that didn't work, by working in situations that really weren't right for me. By promising things that I was saying yes to and trying to be good for rather than what is really right for me. So anger is a loss of power. And then what is power?

36:44A further distinction with power is that it sits in three states. So power can be described as inertia, activity and balance. It's like a pendulum swinging from one side to the other. It starts in inertia in potential.

37:03It's let go and it swings over to the other side, which is called activity. And eventually over time it comes into the middle and it's called balance. And so you can think of stage one, the inertia, as being victim from a psychological perspective. Here we are. I'm victim. I'm passive.

37:23Things are happening to me in stage two. I swing across. I'm reacting to the things that are happening and I'm pushing back against them. It's called the aggressor. I mean it's just means I'm pushing back. I may or may not be aggressive in that situation.

37:40And then in stage three, when I, if I'm eventually going through these two stages and work it out, I come into this place called the creator. And the creator is having it as I wish it to be. And I'm being assertive if I need to be.

37:56The anger, the energy of anger can be described as passive, aggressive or assertive. And so with passive, if someone's angry and they're passive aggressive, you'll find that in situations around you they're constantly making mistakes. So I'm not saying that every time a mistake has been made, someone is being passively aggressive.

38:22But if you're getting consistent mistakes and similar types of mistakes from someone around you, consider it. There may be something they're upset with and they're upset with you most likely. People that are impassive aggressive also forget things.

38:39They have a habit of being sick often. They're late. There's a lot of gossiping. They're resentful. And they may be out to get you, but it's a guerrilla warfare. They're doing it behind the scenes. They don't feel powerful enough to confront you.

38:57So this is anger in inertia phase. The aggressive phase on the other side is confrontational. They're critical, judgmental, competitive. They're having a go at you.

39:12And the ideal scenario is to come back into the middle and this is to be assertive. And assertive requires you to be sensitive to the other person's perspective and also sensitive to your own perspective and be able to express your own needs. And so being assertive means rather than being angry at someone,

39:37you're just saying, this is what I need. This is what I want. This is what I think is fair. And this is my perspective. Not, no, you're wrong. I won't do it. Or the other side in inertia being, yeah, sure.

39:52It's okay. Yeah, no, no worries. But really, there's no way in the world you want to do it, but you just say yes to it. Being assertive, not aggressive and not passive.

40:06And so to enter these three states, there are two forms of energy. There's two stages that power moves through. The first one is the expression of will.

40:23It's your ability to ask for what you want. It's to be, in a sense, not aggressive, but you push it out there. And then the developmental part, you develop this sense of your will,

40:39usually between the ages of two and four. So if your will is out of balance, if your will is, you're overly willful. You can look at situations in your early childhood.

40:51Most people can't remember it two and four years of age. That's why you need a process, a technique, to help you get back to that time. But it usually sits around the two to four time frame.

41:06The development of your will. The second stage is this stage of acceptance to let go, to let your needs be sublimated for the needs of the greater.

41:21In other words, become part of the team. And even if I'm occasionally disagree, you're part of the team and you're honour being a member of the team and you're prepared to go along with the general consensus of the team.

41:35And this is usually learnt from the ages of seven to fourteen years of age. And the stage people have most difficulty with is the second stage, acceptance, letting go. Because it also requires a sense of letting go of control,

41:53a sense of feeling safe. But you can't truly let go until you've been through a willful stage, until you become strong. You can't move from stage one to stage three in the middle imbalance.

42:09You have to go from stage one to stage two, which is to be overextended. And then you come back. Think of a pendulum.

42:19How it swings is it doesn't go from here, or it goes from here to there. And gradually, the momentum decreases and it comes to a standstill. This is the nature of you coming into balance.

42:32You see you're not expressing yourself. You're over express yourself. You pull yourself back, not quite as far. And then you express next time, not quite as much.

42:42And then gradually you find the middle ground. And so you have to, in order to surrender, in order to let go, you do that from a position of strength. You never do that from a position of power.

42:58Some affirmations with power, because I'm truly powerful, I have nothing to protect. The more powerful I become,

43:07the more gentle I behave. The long term solution to dealing with your anger is to look within and discover why the anger is being triggered. And what part of you feels disempowered.

43:22And what is this part of you that feels unrecognized, undervalued, treated unfairly, or fears failure? It can be anyone or a combination of these. It's developing self-awareness that is working out when and why the feeling is coming up.

43:43If you really get it, you will immediately feel better, and you won't be triggered by that event again. It's gone. It's gone forever. This next part is, it's a little bit more sophisticated,

43:55but it's like developing self-awareness. And I have a simple four-step technique for developing self-awareness. The first thing is, if I am upset, I would ask, where am I feeling it in my body?

44:10I want a physical location. And then I would ask myself, when did I first feel this type of upset in that part of my body? Because anger can occur for lots of different reasons

44:23and have occurred at lots of different times in your life, and there may be different triggers. So we're trying to connect the trigger that's presently occurring with a physical response in your body and give it a physical location.

44:38Make it up, imagine it. Play a game with it. We're trying to link that trigger with your psychology. So then I asked myself, once I've located it,

44:50say it's here in my solar plexus, when did it first happen? And then I would ask myself, what did it mean to me at that time? So for instance, it could be in a discussion with someone and I think they're ignoring me.

45:06I'm feeling this upset at sitting in my solar plexus. I'm asking myself, when did I feel this sort of upset in my solar plexus? And I immediately go back to the age of four, and I think to myself what's going on, it's me trying to get my mother's attention

45:25and she's ignoring me. She's talking to someone else. My sister's there. She's also giving her attention to my sister.

45:34She's not letting it go. She's not giving me the attention. And I'm feeling upset with her. The decision that I've made, what it means to me is that I am not important.

45:47I don't have any value. And if I think that's what my mother thinks about me, then that's usually what I think about myself. And so I've identified a situation in my childhood back to the age of four,

46:03something to do with my mother. And if I ever spoke to my mother about it, she would be absolutely surprised and horrified to think that I thought that because from her perspective, it would be nothing to do with not loving me or caring about me or valuing me.

46:19It would have been totally to do with just trying to manage a very overwhelming situation at that time when there's a friend there. My sister's wanting her attention, and I'm wanting her attention. I'm slightly older than my sister.

46:32And so she expects me to behave. And I've just gone into some story in my head about having no value. And so the next part of it is choosing to let it go. And so I've got to choose to let it go.

46:48I've got to make a decision. And so that belief no longer has any meaning to me. I let go. I value myself.

46:57I believe in myself. I am good enough. So I'm choosing to let it go. And so the self-awareness thing has these four steps.

47:08Recognize where you're feeling it in the body, when did it first happen, what does it mean to that part of you, that child part of you when it first happened, and then tried to shift the belief pattern.

47:23This is a shorthand explanation of working out what's called a timeline, going back into your past to understand it. So in summary, for managing your anger, and ultimately fully releasing any triggers,

47:41there are two things. Firstly, you've got to own your anger, which will manage your anger so that you can contain it for that time, and you don't create additional problems.

47:54So that requires personal responsibility, and having some way of moving the charge, moving the chemistry that's in your body, letting go of the upset.

48:04The second thing is understanding your anger. It's firstly a loss of power, and it's somewhere in your past. Where does it come from?

48:15Anger is really an attempt to reempower yourself. Long term, it will exhaust you. There is a point where you have to grow beyond that, reach a point of maturity,

48:32and see anger as the child's response, not being able to have something the way they wanted. So thank you for watching, thank you for listening, and a blessing and a joy to you all.

48:53And I would like to thank Radian Sokolov for marketing production and web design, and Aaron McFarland for camera sound and lights and post-production. And remember, breathe through your nose.

49:15It will be all okay.