Episode 11: What to do With Anger

This weeks episode is about Anger.  It was inspired by a session I had with a client who had really been resisting feeling angry, which was something I could very much relate to.  I have always HATED feeling angry and have spent a lot of energy trying to NOT be angry.  

Anger can be a really strong and sometimes scary emotion.  And sometimes anger can drive  people to doing or say thigs they regret (when they can no longer tolerate the feeling) or to just totally shutting down and feeling stuck (when they are trying to avoid or push down the feeling).  

Allowing yourself to feel anger AND learning how to tolerate that feeling without being driven by it, is only part of the equation.  Because anger can feel like energy building in your body and that energy needs some kind of release.

So today I'll be discussing what I've learned about why it's so important to not only acknowledge anger and allow yourself to feel it, but also how to recognize when it's time to release some of that energy as well as some different ways of doing so.  

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Disclaimer:
This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for coaching, therapy, or any other medical intervention. Rather it is a resource for you the listener to learn more about yourself and your ADHD. Furthermore, these sessions reflect MY personal style of coaching and how I was trained, and are not meant to be a representation of all ADHD coaching.

All sessions being highlighted in this podcast are being done so with permission from the client being featured. Some details may be slightly altered in order to keep their identity anonymous.

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Transcript

Hello. Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me again on Monday morning, ADHD coaching. I am your host and coach Emily. And this is going to be a slightly different type of episode. It isn't really going to follow the model of what I usually put out every week. So yeah, just throwing that out there. It's a little different. I will include some parts of a session with one of my clients that is relevant here, but it's actually more so going to be about me and. How I've been learning to support myself and how I'm taking a lot of what I've learned about myself and my nervous system through coaching and therapy and books and podcasts. And. All the things.  I feel kind of funny about putting some of my own personal stuff out here. It feels pretty vulnerable. But I think it's important stuff that could help others. So I'm tolerating that discomfort. Just like I always talk about in these episodes and with my clients. Um, and I'm doing it anyways. 

It's most likely going to be a bit all over the place because the idea for it just kind of came to me suddenly in the thoughts are just kind of bopping through my brain, all disorganized and whatnot. So.  Enjoy. 

 Okay. So this episode is about anger.  And  I want to talk about anger because anger is one of the many emotions. I really don't like feeling. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. It definitely makes me feel like there's something wrong with me when I get angry. Like. I'm not a good person anymore or something. Make getting angry mean that like I'm a mean person because a nicer person wouldn't be getting so angry. , and sometimes I just,  I feel like now I'm a negative Nancy and I'll always be a negative Nancy and no one wants to be around me and overall, I really just hate feeling like I'm an angry person.  And listen, there are reasons behind this. I know I'm not going to really get into that here. But here's the thing that I have been learning. Being angry,  getting mad, feeling anger and rage bubble up in my body. It does not make me an angry person. It doesn't make me a mean person. It just makes me a human being who gets angry sometimes.  And it sounds so ridiculously obvious when I say it like that. But  this is something I really had not been able to recognize until very recently. 

 And for the majority of my life, I really haven't seen myself as a very angry person. I've always been like pretty chill, pretty easy going go with the flow.   Try not to get too bothered by things kind of person. Uh, I always felt like I shouldn't get mad about things. I also felt like it would only make other people upset if I was upset and I didn't want that happening. So I just kind of became like the peacekeeper that don't rock the boater. Yes. Qualities of people pleaser for sure. 

And now I've come to realize. It really wasn't that I didn't get mad about things. Like I definitely got mad about things. It's that I wouldn't allow myself to be mad about things. There's a slight difference there. Right? I would talk myself out of being angry. I would avoid people or situations that were making me angry. I would pretend something wasn't bothering me, even if it was. I would Gaslight myself into thinking it was silly or ridiculous. If I was upset about something.  I would really kind of turn inward and just kind of like shut it all down. And then kind of claim and probably fully believe that. I was just like in a funk. I was in a funky mood. If people were wondering why I seemed off. 

So that's kind of in the past how I had dealt with anger. But honestly, I don't really think I had experienced anger as intensely as I have since having kids or really, since my kids became toddlers.  And I'll admit even still saying that it does make me feel a bit like a monster because they're my kids and I love them. But also their kids and there's two of them and they're loud and stubborn. And egocentric and loud, and they're often very dysregulated and they fight a lot and they scream a lot. And they're constantly needing things and demanding things. And did I mention they're loud?  And if my kids ever listened to this, please, now I love you guys more than anything, but you're very loud.  And that leads me to another thing I've discovered about myself, which is that I am very overstimulated by sound, especially loud ones and overlapping ones and nonstop ones and ones that are screaming while there's also other sounds in the background. And.  You get it. 

So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with them that they're loud. It's just that loudness can be really overstimulating for me. And sometimes when I get overstimulated, I start getting really mad. And in this episode, you're going to hear me use the words, mad, upset, angry rage. All kinds of interchangeably. As I talk about this, I think they're all just, you know, they're varying levels of this emotion. To me, it seems to go from upset to mad, angry to rage, but again, For this episode, I'm kind of using them all in the same way. 

And while in the past, I could kind of just get away with talking myself out of being mad or isolating myself until I felt better or avoiding what was making me mad.  I couldn't really do that with kids because they're always around. And so then what was happening is because I couldn't use those coping mechanisms I had in the past to not have to feel the anger. You know, avoiding it, ignoring, pretending, isolating.  Uh, it just continued to build. And I was recognizing that I was getting really angry and some days I felt full of rage. And that made me feel really guilty. Because I was making feeling anger, mean something about me. I was making it mean that I wasn't a good mom because a good mom doesn't feel this way towards her own kids. Right. , I was making it mean maybe I can't hack motherhood because a good mom, isn't this affected by her kids, right?   I was making it mean,  maybe I'm just a mean mom, a mean person and who would want to be around. a mean person.  Was I aware of this in the moment? No. It's what I'm aware of now, now that I understand more about myself, my nervous system, my ADHD, my sensory needs. And my relationship with emotions. 

And so I try to not be angry by telling myself, you know, like take deep breaths. By reminding myself, like, man, they're just kids. They're supposed to act like this. When it was an option, I would be able to take some space from them. when I really felt like I was going to explode. And on the surface, these might all seem like perfectly fine ways to support myself. Right.  But they weren't because while I was taking deep breaths and trying to calm myself down, I was just fuming. And now upset that the deep breaths weren't helping.  And I still wasn't feeling calm. And reminding myself that, oh, come on. They're just kids. It was really validating because even though that's true.  I was still having a really hard time and I'm allowed to be angry, but now I was feeling bad about being angry. And taking space usually meant that I would just go up to my room  and spend. time scrolling on my phone, really trying to distract myself from how angry I was and just like hoping that the anger would eventually subside. But the whole time I was just reliving whatever it happened to make me angry. I was trying to figure out, uh, how much time do I have before I need to return. I would be guilty myself. for , not handling whatever the situation was better. And reading the fact that once I returned something was bound to happen, that would inevitably drive me crazy again.   So in all these cases, I was still feeling angry, but I was just trying to distract myself from it or talk myself out of it or push the anger down. In other words, I was really just trying to control it.

So that brings me to a session I had with one of my clients. She is a very smart, sweet, kind caring woman who has experienced a lot of really crappy hard things this past year. And recently she has been allowing herself to even just acknowledge the fact that she's really angry about a lot of it. But also she was essentially angry about being angry. And that's really similar to what I was kind of talking about at the beginning of this episode, when I was saying there were certain emotions, I didn't want to feel. For her, this is one of them as well. And recently she told me she doesn't like feeling negative. She's always been a glass half full kind of person and feeling angry makes her feel like she's a glass half empty person. Just like I thought feeling angry meant I was a mean person.  

You know, we do this. We kind of like attach ourselves to our emotions. We make ourself that emotion. And we often think we're going to be this emotion for forever. We can forget that emotions can pass. And this has to do with a lot of things may have to do with, you know, this lack of self-awareness. Or the inability to see the, not now, meaning see our past selves, our future selves.  Maybe the fact that we can feel emotions more intensely. , and we do have a harder time, reregulating ourselves, or just the fact that when we're dysregulated, it's hard to use rational thinking.  I don't know if I've quite pinned down why this is, but so many clients bring this up in coaching. And I definitely experience it myself. So then what we do is we resist, resist, resist. We try our hardest to not feel the emotion. Now again, is this ADHD specific? No, I do think this is true for so many people, but there are definitely some ADHD specific things that can contribute to it and kind of exacerbate it. 

So when my clients said to me, I hate feeling this way. I asked her what happens when she is resisting feeling angry. And she said she ends up just feeling stuck. She knows things she could do that would make her feel better. Things like walking or exercise. And then she just ends up ruminating on all of these things that she's not doing. And then just beats herself up for it. She judges the person, she feels like she's turning into this glass half empty type of person. She criticizes herself a lot. , and she also tells herself she doesn't have time to feel angry. Like she becomes resentful that she's feeling angry. She goes over all the things she has to do and how being angry is just keeping her from doing all that stuff. And then she's upset with herself for letting the anger get in the way.  And so what's happening is that when she feels angry, but she's really resistant or honestly, sometimes even angry about feeling angry.  Now I kind of feel like I'm talking in a circle, hopefully this all still makes sense.   Anyways, when she's resistant to feeling angry. Because she's thinking, I hate feeling this way. Well, the result is she continues to feel angry and now she really just hates herself. So you can see here resisting the anger. It's not helping. It's just kind of keeping her stuck and really frustrated with herself about it. 

 Now in a lot of these episodes, I talk a lot about the importance of recognizing, allowing, and tolerating different emotions in order to be able to get yourself to a more regulated place. 

Like that's the soothing part.  And this still totally holds true. And honestly is one of the more important and impactful things I've learned as an adult. I like to compare this concept to just. Turning the volume down on the emotion, the music still might be playing, right? The emotion is still there. It's just not as loud. And this can allow you to actually access your thinking brain again. So you're not just  driven by this emotion. 

But all of that to say some emotions need a bit more than that. And anger is one of them. Yes. Anger definitely needs to be recognized. It needs to be allowed and I'll add validated and yes, it's important to learn how to tolerate it. This can all be very necessary in the moment when you are feeling angry. So you don't say exploded a coworker or yell at your kids or punch a hole in the wall.  But when we continue to recognize, allow, and tolerate and tolerate some more and tolerate some more and more, the energy is just building up. And then what we're really doing is we're just trying to control that anger. 

And now that may seem like something we want to aspire to  because we don't want to explode or yell at someone. But in my opinion, it's not because anger is like excess energy in your body and that energy needs to be released. Tolerating anger is what can prevent a person from exploding or yelling in the moment. But controlling one's anger tends to lead to the opposite. Because eventually you can't control it anymore. And then it starts to control you. So you might explode or shut down or isolate. And oftentimes it ends up being over minor things or directed at the wrong person. And then the shame spiral begins and you go back to trying to control the anger again.  

Okay. I want to pause here to say like, no, this is not a brand new revelation that I've discovered all on my own. And I'm now sharing it with you. All many of you may, in fact already know this. It's just, it's newer to me and I'm simply sharing what I'm learning from others and coming to realize about myself and words, that make sense to me and hopefully you as well. 

So now I want to share how all of this played out this past weekend. When anger, reared, its ugly little head.  And maybe that's not how I should be referring to anger as that's probably the type of thing that perpetuates my disdain for this emotion.  But I'm still a work in progress and I still really do hate feeling angry. That hasn't changed now. I'm just more willing to feel it and release it.

So my kids, you know, the incredible yet very loud ones I talked about before. They were just having a day who knows why? You know, it's summer, they spend too much time together. They're kids, you know, they're five years old. Whatever it was, they were just at each other's throats. From the moment they woke up, they were whining and complaining about everything, fighting about everything, demanding, all the things. It was a lot.  And it was raining. We really didn't have much planned. And it was slowly turning into a survive until bedtime kind of day.  

So part, one of responding to anger started with just that the awareness that this was a hard day, the noise and behavior was getting to me. I was very overstimulated. And we were slowly becoming a fully dysregulated household. I didn't guilt myself for being very annoyed with them. At this point, it hadn't quite escalated to anger. I was just allowing myself to be annoyed with them and mostly allowed them to be in grumpy moods. I  say mostly because I for sure said things like, Hey, wouldn't it be more enjoyable if we could all just be in better moods and please stop complaining and fighting about everything. 

You know, I probably snapped a few too many times for my liking, but. Again,  mostly tolerated the annoyance of frustration. And the anger that was building about the day.  

  And then the sun came out and we realized we're going to be able to get outside and things seem to be turning around. And without getting into too much detail about why. My daughter really started losing it. And what probably started as like a smallish tantrum. Quickly escalated into a full-blown meltdown, which often happens with her. And I knew there was really nothing I could do besides let it pass. Yes. I of course offered her comfort and validated her feelings. But for her, this means a lot of screaming and asking the same thing over and over and needing to be right near me, like in my face, but I can't touch her. And a lot of screaming at me. And listen, she's getting her anger out. Good for her, not good for me. And also  this isn't a parenting podcast. If you handle this type of thing differently, that's totally fine. I let her scream. She needs it. I want it to be screaming as well. , so I understand why she was needing to scream again, it's her way of releasing anger and, you know, whatever else she's currently feeling.  Telling her not to make things worse, getting mad at her and walking away makes things worse. Trying to send her away from me. Like not going to happen. Makes things worse. Other times when she's more regulated, we do talk about what else she can do. That's not just screaming at me. But she's five. So she can't always access those things in the moment. She's still learning. So am I, we're all still learning.  

So anyways, the noise was really becoming too much and.  I also, I don't know if I mentioned it was like 90 degrees outside and very humid. So it was hot and sweating more overstimulation.  And I also know that when she's screaming at me, I tend to start having thoughts. Like there's nothing I can do to fix this, or nothing's working and I feel really powerless or I might think, why are you yelling at me? I didn't do anything wrong. Which makes me feel very defensive and  resentful. Um, and I also have this, like, I can't do this anymore, which makes me feel trapped and defeated. But in the moment, I just feel anger.   And as a quick side note, there are usually lots of other emotions hiding out underneath anger. That are really important to explore. But for now, we'll leave that for another episode, but. In the moment I just feel the anger. And it feels like it is bubbling up. And I'm very aware that I can't tolerate it much longer before I just explode. And that's what I realized. I need to step away because as I continued trying to just tolerate this anger, it quickly turned into trying to control it. And I knew that soon it would start to control me. And luckily in this moment I could walk away because my wife was there and I told her I needed to tap out.  I'm really trying to lean into what I'm now understanding about anger. You know that it needs to be released somehow. And I was either going to explode and yell at her, which I absolutely did not want to do.  Or I was going to start shutting down and maybe kind of like disassociate a little and just kind of turn into a robot and just be grumpy and irritable for the rest of the day. Or I was going to go inside and release it. in , a more safe, healthy way. And I do know the option to kind of remove yourself from the situation and, , Go release. Some anger is not always available. So a little bit later on, I will talk about some other strategies you can maybe use when you can't just walk away from whatever it is it's making you really angry.

So I went inside and this is what I did.  First I stomped to my room, like a sulky teenager, just stomped to my room. Slammed the door. Slamming a door feels so good when you're upset. It just does.  And then I put on my headphones and I played bodies by drowning pool. I thought about trying to sing what song that is. So you would know what I was talking about, but I will not do that to you, but look it up. It's a really good rage song. It's not like my everyday taste in music.  But it was perfect music to play while I was like, feeling really ragey. And then. I took a pillow. I lifted it above my head and I slammed it on the floor. And then I squatted down, picked it up and repeated that over and over and over again until I was like totally out of breath.  Then I paced around my room. My heart was racing. I was like gasping for air. And then once I caught my breath a little bit, I did it again and again, and again and again, until I kind of just felt like it was enough until I felt like I didn't need to keep doing it.  And it felt so good.  

And I know at least personally, it can also be really hard to allow yourself to do something like this because it can almost feel a little scary. Like it was for me the first time. I truly just allowed myself to go all out. But since then, it's definitely gotten easier. You know, we probably have narratives. We've built about people who are this angry. But anger is just an emotion, right? It's not good or bad. It just is. And we all get angry. Sometimes we get just a little angry. Sometimes full-blown rage.  And so I really make sure to notice if I'm like judging. And myself during or afterwards. And if I am, I remind myself why, again, it probably has something to do with thoughts that I have about people who are angry. And then I remind myself that. What I'm doing is actually so that I don't just stay this angry. 

 Okay. So after I caught my breath, then what I did is I laid down on the floor. And I did. a, tapping meditation. So that was the soothing part for me. That was the part that really reregulated me. And it's important to note that this part was really only effective because I allowed myself to release the anger. If I had gone up to my room and just done this part. It really would have been like when I just tried taking deep breaths, but then would be fuming because the deep breaths weren't helping. Releasing the anger then doing this meditation. Allowed me to really turn the volume down on the anger.

Like sure I can still be upset that I was being screamed at, or that there's so much noise but I can also now carry on with the day. And that's exactly what I did. I rejoined my family outside. My daughter was totally fine at this point, probably because she had released all of her anger when she was screaming at me. And then she got away from a very dysregulated mom who she was likely feeding off of. That would be me.  You know, a different version of me, a version who hadn't been learning all of this. Probably would have either stayed  and tried to just continue tolerating it and that wouldn't have gone well. Or have just gone to my room, lay in bed and do all those things that I mentioned earlier. As I scrolled on my phone, willing myself to not be angry. And then I would have returned in a grumpy mood. And because the anger would still just be like simmering in me. I would likely have still been really annoyed with my daughter and then even more annoyed at the fact that she was feeling totally fine and had moved past it. I would have been really easily irritated by literally anything else. And then also just annoyed with myself for being so grumpy.  So, when I tell you I'm really proud of myself or how I was able to support myself in this way, in that moment. I mean it like, it is not easy stuff to do. 

And here's why I'm sharing this pretty vulnerable feels somewhat embarrassing. Makes me cringe a bit,  story. Is because when that client I was talking about earlier, You know, even once she became aware of what was happening. She didn't really know what to do next. You know, we talked about the importance of not only allowing herself to be angry. But the need to release it as well. And she agreed, but also said she honestly didn't even know what that would look like.  

So here's just one example of what it looks like to release anger. There's lots of smaller, less time-consuming ways as well as some bigger ways of releasing anger. You know, smaller way I release it sometimes is just by going into the other room and like shaking my arms out,  really hard, like violently shaking them. , or clenching my fists really tight and then letting them go over and over again.  Sometimes I'll sit on my bed or couch and just start  kicking the crap out of the cushions or the mattress. Sometimes I'll do it with my fists as well. Uh, you know, this is what I often do when I can't really get away. Like there's nobody else to watch my kids.  Or I can't take as much time as I did in the example that I just shared. Um, you know, it's almost like many releases all throughout the day, which can prevent a big blow up. It doesn't mean you just magically get rid of all the anger. It just feels like turning the volume down a tad. 

One of my coaches used to use the example of like shaking up a bottle of soda. So if you picture a bottle of soda and throughout the day, people just keep picking it up and shaking it. And some people are giving it. little shakes. Some are giving a big giant shakes. At the end of the day, if you just open it all the way up, it explodes. Right. Which is sometimes what can happen to us if we let too much of that energy, that pressure builds. But if every once in a while, throughout the day you kept opening the top a little and then closing it back up. Opening it a little and closing it back up. At the end of the day, when you open it up, it's still going to be fizzy, but it's not going to explode. And I really love that analogy. 

Okay. So back to some of the strategies, um, singing really loud or humming is another great way as it can feel really similar to screaming, which can be hard to do in lots of settings, especially like if your kids are around or you're in public.  Or screaming can be really effective, you know, scream into a pillow, scream into the void, scream in your car or in the shower.  I personally once gave myself a sore throat when I screamed into a pillow. And then I thought I had COVID and it was a whole thing. So I get a little nervous about screaming. But it is still a really great release.  A bigger way. I also released some of my anger is by going to a boxing class once or twice a week, even if I'm not particularly angry, when I go, I've noticed it still really helps as just like a way to release. so many things. And then I'm just kind of like more leveled out on the other days.  I've also been to a rage room before, which is very cool. You just kind of pay to go break things  with a bat and  a crowbar. It's very cool. Um, I don't know, go chop some wood. If that's something you're able to do. Uh, my client, the one I was talking about before she had told me that she remembered a friend had recommended throwing potatoes against a tree or a wall. And I really want to try that sometime now. But my point here is that anger equals energy. You know that scene in fried green tomatoes, where Kathy Bates smashes that little red VW bug with her big station wagon and is  hysterically laughing.  Listen, she had a lot of pent up emotions going on. She had a lot of anger in there. And she had not found a way to release that. So that's what ends up happening. And while yes, that looked very fun and I'm sure it felt really good in the moment.  I also would have to assume it cost her a fortune, even though she said she had better insurance, I have a feeling, it costs her. So anger is either going to get very trapped and also end up trapping a whole lot of emotions underneath it and. keep you feeling very stuck and irritable and unable to move forward.  Or it's going to come out in a way that you might feel really bad about. And then instead of, or even on top of anger, you might then feel guilt or shame or embarrassment. It might come out in a way that costs you, right? Like it might cost you. Relationships or jobs or money. Or you can let it out in a healthy, maybe even fun way.

We just got our kids, some like these  superhero boxing gloves, and one of those inflatable punching bags that  pops right back up after you hit it.  Because I want them to learn early on that. It's totally okay for them to feel angry. And I want them to have positive strategies for releasing that anger. I will also likely be joining in with them and hitting that bag as well. So it'll be good for me too.  

 Thanks for joining me on this somewhat different episode of Monday morning, ADHD coaching.  I hope you get out there and throw some potatoes or scream at the top of your lungs. Or whatever other fun ideas you have, and I will see you next time.