When Anger Is Really Grief | Parental Alienation & Emotional Healing

In this conversation, Lawrence turns toward one of the most misunderstood emotional experiences in parental alienation: anger. Rather than viewing anger as the core issue, he reflects on how fear, grief, shame, helplessness, and emotional exhaustion often sit quietly underneath reactive patterns. Drawing from lived experience, recovery work, and nervous system awareness, Lawrence explores how alienated parents can become trapped between emotional suppression and emotional overload while trying to hold onto connection, identity, and hope.

Blending emotional insight with grounded recovery principles, this conversation explores people-pleasing, emotional eating, black-and-white thinking, and the ways unresolved emotions quietly shape relationships and behavior over time. Rather than chasing perfection or emotional control, the focus becomes learning how to stay present with difficult emotions without collapsing into them. Living fully while navigating parental alienation is not giving up, it’s an act of resilience, honesty, and integrity.

Key Takeaways

• Anger is a doorway, not a detriment, to understanding ourselves.
• Primary emotions are signals that need to be felt and processed.
• Secondary emotions often serve as protective strategies.
• Building emotional capacity is a gradual process that requires practice.
• Community and support are vital in emotional healing.
• Addressing fear underneath anger can transform relationships.
• Systemic family anger affects everyone and needs awareness.
• Self-compassion is essential in managing emotional struggles.

Chapters

00:00 - Understanding Anger in Parental Alienation
03:00 - Exploring Primary and Secondary Emotions
05:50 - The Role of Fear and Control in Anger
08:41 - Navigating Relationships and Anger Dynamics
11:59 - Chronic Anger and Its Impact
14:50 - Systemic Anger and Its Ripple Effects
17:44 - Practical Strategies for Managing Anger
21:02 - Building Emotional Capacity and Community Support
24:04 - The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing
26:57 - Final Thoughts on Anger and Relationships 

Support & Community:

Parental Alienation Anonymous (PAA): Join our free 12-step support group with 16 online meetings weekly for parents, grandparents, family members, and previously alienated individuals seeking healing and recovery.

PA-A.org: Parental Alienation Advocates is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to fostering education, advocacy, and support for individuals grappling with the distressing impact of parental alienation, estrangement, erasure, and family disconnection.

All our services are free and sustained by grants and community donations. Your support helps us continue offering these vital resources.
Donate here: https://pa-a.mykajabi.com/donations-for-the-12-step-program

Connect with Us:
Email your questions or insights: familydisappeared@gmail.com
Like, share, and comment to help us reach more families in need.

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:
 
 Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email-         familydisappeared@gmail.com

Transcript

Are You Stuck In Anger

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Are you angry? Are you angry all the time? Can you not seem to be able to get away from the anger, the frustration, like all this crazy emotion that pops up? And we're talking around not having access to your kids, not having access to your grandkids, maybe not having access to your parents or grandparents. We're talking about anger associated with parental alienation, estrangement, erasure. Do you have those feelings that just overwhelm you and you just don't know what to do with them? Is that the life that you're living? Are you curious about what's really happening and what's driving the anger and the different aspects of anger that actually come into play and what to do about that?

Community Resources And Support Options

SPEAKER_01 0:43

If you're new to the community, welcome. We have over 140 podcasts taped over all different kinds of subjects. Anything that you're looking for between therapists, judges, panels of parents, panels of previously alienated young adults and adults. There's so much wonderful, great information. But today we're going to be talking about anger. And we're talking about anger today because a person in the community said, Hey, do we have any particular podcast really talking about anger? And I'm like, wow, what a great subject. There's so many nuances and so many places to go with that. So thank you, Sue, for sending out that email. And if you're out there and you want us to talk about some subjects or investigate some stuff, family disappeared at gmail.com. I'm doing the solo, but we'll definitely get some experts on here to talk about anger as well. Not that I'm not an expert, you know. And when I say that, like I'm an expert in my own mind, which is me trying to be funny, but when I say it out loud, it just sounds silly. So whatever. Hope you enjoyed that. I dressed up today. I'm wearing a duck shirt. So if you don't uh have video on, you are missing a spectacle. And I used to call myself Papa Duck when I was connected with my kids and they were younger, and I'm still Papa Duck. Like that doesn't get taken away from me, but the anger definitely blunts that. So welcome to the community. We have some great stuff in the show notes. We have a free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous, lifesaving has changed my perspective and my relationship to every single person in the world. It's a wonderful community. It's free, and it might be great for you, and it might not. And if it's not, find a community. This is all about having support, people rowing in the same direction, working on themselves, and it's about finding a path back to ourselves. And anger, anger is a great lens to explore. And just a reminder, we're a 501c3 nonprofit. Please donate. And you're not donating for yourself, you're donating for the person that hasn't found the resources that we're creating yet. Everything we do is free. Everything's going to remain free. There's some people that really help to support the community, but very few. We'd love to add you to that. Donate what you can, become a monthly donor. Please like, share, comment. We want to hear what you have to say about stuff. You know what I mean? We don't want to be just be throwing stuff out into a vortex. And I want to know, like talking about like specific anger and stuff. Is this useful? Does this feel like a little bit of a waste and you prefer having some guests on here talking about a bunch of different stuff? I'm not really sure. You know what I mean? We're all just practicing the best we can. For me personally, like I have been angry a lot. And I've been really angry in the beginning, and a lot of the anger stemmed from not really understanding what was going on. And I thought anger was kind of like a detriment, and you're not supposed to express it. So the thing is, anger is not the problem. Anger is the doorway. Anger is the access point. And this is about recovering a relationship with ourselves so we can be the best possible parent, grandparent, young adult, adult, family member, whatever. It doesn't really make a difference. This is about exploration. Just sharing a short segue with you. Like I remember early on in parental alienation, and I didn't have any language for parental alienation. I didn't know anything. And I happened to have my 20-year high school reunion. So I was 36 when stuff super started going sideways, and I could actually track stuff happening in the family. I didn't know what it was. You know what I mean? So as I said in the past, I was just trying to become gooder and better and thought that would be okay. And the kids would just snap back into place. But I remember I was 38, 20-year high school reunion. I went out with some friends for dinner and I was talking about the divorce I was going through and the challenges with the kids. And I was really, I was angry. I was pissed. And in doing that, I'm also coloring the situation and the relationship in such a way that the people listening to me thought I was a little bit nutty. And they started asking some questions because it seemed like I was pushing all the blame in one direction. And anger really was an outlet. It made me push everything in one direction. And I did that because I didn't want to actually feel. I didn't want to feel my feelings. I didn't know how to feel my feelings. I didn't know what feelings were. I really thought that anger was a primary emotion. And what we're going to discover today, it's not. So let's jump into the show.

Emotions As Signals Not Problems

SPEAKER_01 5:10

So emotions are signals. They're not bad. Sometimes they're really, really, really good, and maybe sometimes they're neutral. But when we're having different emotions going on, it's actually our body signaling to us that something is going on. Right. And this can come out in anger. This can come out in crying, joy, sadness, whatever. It also can come up in our body, tensing up, having spasms in our shoulder or our body locking up and not being able to function. Like emotion really presents in so many different ways. But today we're actually going to be talking about some of the primary emotions, so then we can dig deeper into anger, which is the primary topic that we're going to be talking about today. And again, emotions are saying, hey, this matters. Something's going on. Maybe something is unsafe. Maybe something really, really, really good is going on. And it also feels sometimes like it's unsafe. Like if you just listen to the PTSD episodes that we taped, like the body can't distinguish between this flux of emotions that are coming in. It just gets overwhelmed, and the nervous system thinks it's in a fight or flight state, whether it's a good input or a bad input. So let's talk about primary emotions. These are the emotions that we're born with. These are the core emotions that all the other aspects and then secondary emotions and some of our projections, fears, people pleasing and stuff kind of like stem from. So we got fear, we got sadness, grief, joy, love, and shame. And these are all beautiful things, and all of them are affected differently within the aspects of parental alienation. And just like touching on something, even though we're going to be talking on fear, like for me, my joy, my ability to play went offline a lot when I lost contact with my kids, because that was the primary place that I would play, would be with my kids. So to get back to that place of feeling safe and wanting to play with people and just life in general, it takes a lot, a lot of energy. And the reason is, is I didn't really feel the grief and the loss of this joy. I just went to the anxiety, to the fear, not to the fear, to the anxiety, to the anger, to the frustration, to the trying to fix and change stuff. So you see how I have this primary emotion. I bypass the primary emotion. I jump into the secondary stuff, and I'm never actually dealing with what's going on. You know, and from a 12-step perspective, the 12-steps give us an opportunity to uncover, discover, and discard. So we're uncovering things that we don't really know ourselves. We're discovering what to do with that. We're we're getting resource tools, therapists, 12-step meetings, whatever it is that works for you, prayer, meditation. And then we're discarding some of these old ideas and old mainframes because they're really bypassing our ability to show up for our own lives. And why this is so important is our kids, our parents, whoever it is, that's not fair to say that they need a healthy mirror, but us being a healthy mirror for ourselves, the people around us get like this reflection off us too. And then this outward kind of ripple, like when you throw a stone in a pond, kind of ripples out. But it's really about us coming home to ourselves and actually coming to our primary emotions, dealing with them. And from that place, you know, things can actually change in the family system and the whole family sees a different way to be. And it's not our job to do their work for them, it's our job to do our own work. And by doing our own work, it attracts this whole different sense of direction, maybe. You know what I mean? Think about it. You're driving to In N Out Burger, and there's just one way to go, and you go that same way every day. And sometimes there's traffic, sometimes the road's closed, sometimes you can't get there. But if you just look for another path and re put it into your GPS system, you find a way around it. And this is what we're talking about. We're talking about getting back to the primary emotions, what's underneath that and what's driving it. And these primary emotions are incredibly vulnerable. Like we're not taught how to feel these, how to process these, how to move these through our bodies and our family of origin. You know what I mean? That's why you hear a lot of sarcasm, maybe at the dinner table in the family, maybe the shouting, people pleasing, trying to be as good as you possibly can, and then you'll be loved. Like these actual primary emotions underneath them, need these strategies to kind of like deal with what's going on, because we're never taught how to feel or process those. And again, we're gonna come back to anger, but we're just kind of setting the table on this. I just want to like name the secondary emotions that get built on the primary emotions because we can't really process and metabolize those, right? Anger, anxiety, control, people pleasing, numbness, like being overly happy, this overfunctioning in this happiness, because if we can over-function, then other people will be happier and kinder, and then the world will be okay. But you can see how these can be derivatives of some of these other primary emotions that we're not feeling. So, secondary emotions are protections, are strategies or tools that we've had to implement through our whole life in order to survive. This isn't a bad thing, this is a human thing. So, whenever we're kind of like digging a little bit deeper, this is not to make anyone feel bad or they've done something wrong. This is just, at least for me, how I was programmed or what my life looked like and uh how I navigated the world. And as I'm curious, as I'm feeling creative, like from this email I received from Sue, like, what is under anger? What else is there for me? And as I put the show together, then I start to see more parts of myself and I go, oh, oh. And then I can identify certain things I'm doing in my life that I call anger or frustration or crabbiness. And I see how I'm just not really feeling my actual emotion. I'm really not naming what's really going on because I don't have the skills, and I'm just falling back to these secondary strategies or third-tier strategies, and they serve a great purpose for us to be able to survive our lives. And at a point, let's be curious. And today we're curious about anger. So, how does everything connect? We know that fear is a primary emotion, and under fear we have anger. But under anger, we can have also different layers of different kinds of fear. Even though it's a primary emotion, it's also driving the secondary emotion to a certain degree. So it might seem confusing, but it's moving around in different directions. But if we're not actually addressing what's really going on, then we can take this fear and we can put it under anger and we can, you know, make the cheese or some mayonnaise on the sandwich. But it's just another way of kind of distracting ourselves. So we can have fear under anger, grief, helplessness, rejection, not being good enough, not being seen, not being heard. The desire for perfection can be under anger. You know what I mean? Because if we can just be perfect enough, then we'll be lovable enough, then everything will be okay. If I can just do enough stuff, then I'll be the dad that my kids want, and they will start talking to me again. You know, like that's craziness. It's it's really crazy making. You get it up in your head, it can actually drive you completely insane.

What Anger Is Really Doing

SPEAKER_01 12:31

So what is anger? Anger is our nervous system saying something is not okay, right? Something is not okay. And this can materialize in so many different ways. We generally associate anger with negative situations, but I also want to bring this back into the conversation, and we spoke about this in the PTSD episodes again, that sometimes having really good stuff happen can generate anger too. Oh my God, I just got a call from my child, and I'm angry that they didn't talk about more stuff, right? What's really happening is I'm fearful maybe that I'm never going to talk to them again. I'm fearful maybe I said the wrong thing. Like, let's look at it that way: like the good and the bad. A real life example that we all go through when alienation starts to happen and we don't have the language in for, we don't know what happens, we're just crying, we're upset, we want our families back. We want everything to be okay, but it manifests as I'm angry, I'm furious. Why is that person doing this to me? They did this, they did this, that that happened, that person, this stakeholder, that judge, this therapist, that ex, that child. You know what I mean? In the beginning, you're just angry and just furious. You know, and in reality, what I want to do is I wanted to fix it. I wanted things to go back to normal. I wanted to expose it. I wanted the world to know what was going on. You know what I mean? If I can just let everyone understand what's going on, then they they will come on, you know, kind of be like on my side, on my team, and we'll go get this, we'll take care of this, and we'll correct it, we'll fix it, we'll make it right. You know, and the whole conversation around right is uh is that's a tough one too. So we're gonna skip that for now. So in the r reality, when alienation starts, I was terrified. And anger gave me energy. It's weird to say, but anger gave me energy. It kept kept me going because ultimately I felt powerless over everything. So it's good to see as these emotions fluctuate and specifically anger, like it's doing something, it's helping me titrate through something and maybe it's even giving me the energy to show up one more day. And it's not a bad thing. It's just a strategy. And I think as we're talking about this, it's also important to realize that other people are using these same strategies. Our children, our grandchildren are using these same strategies. They're just trying to survive. And when they get angry and they say, I hate you, they feel powerless. They're scared. You know, fear is one of the primary emotions. They don't know what to do. Why wouldn't they get angry at you? Right? Like we look at all the places we're getting angry. Why wouldn't my children tell me I'm a terrible dad? Why wouldn't they tell me that they hate me, that they never want to see me again? And these are extreme examples, but let's just, you know, take it back a notch and just go, oh yeah. When I'm in abject fear and I get angry, I can be an ass. I can be super rude to people, I can talk over people, I can cut people off on the freeway, I can do some things that I'm not gonna do when I'm actually in my body and in my mind and feeling in my emotions and actually aware of what's going on. So let's just keep this in the forefront that this is kind of like um when you go to the eye doctor and they do all that flippy thing where they run those lenses through your eyes and you can't see anything clearly. That's what anger does. That's what jumping from fear to anger and not really dealing with the fear part distorts what you're actually able to see. And as you have those corrective lenses and corrective experiences and start working yourself, you you actually get to a prescription that you're able to read the letters on the wall. I think that's a great analogy, but I have no idea you'll have to let me know. And I would say for me, like anger, sarcasm, talking loudly, it feels much better and safer than vulnerability and even grief, even extreme joy and happiness, like the anger, the frustration, the moodiness, much safer. I'm gonna pick that one. That's what I'm gonna use to navigate life. And it doesn't work for me. You know, it does it work for you. Is it working right now? Are there places that you can see this anger or whatever manifestation of anger that shows up in your life, how it's destroying and eating away a lot of the relationships? You know what I mean? And and now I can watch those behaviors and I can see how destructive they are with certain people in my life that I love.

Control Repair And Owning Our Part

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And a lot of the times I can own it and go, whoops, oh my God, that was super crappy, and that must have really, really hurt. And I'm sorry. And is is there anything else you need from me? And this is kind of like my repair process, and then I can share what was actually happening for me. And and sometimes I'm I'm gonna ask, are you are you curious for me to share what I was actually feeling? And I'm just gonna say, like, I was feeling scared. I was in fear that I'm never ever gonna hear from my kid again. And and I got angry at you because you asked the question about their shoes. You know what I mean? It's simple as that, or it can be as simple as that, and it's so much more complex than that, too. Anger or whatever form it takes in your life, it feels like something is moving, like there's some sense of control and power, and that's a strategy to take those things back. I don't know if you had this experience as a child, like your parent yelling at you when you did something wrong. You know, you're smoking a cigarette or you're doing something that you aren't supposed to do, and the parent just wants to help you and tell you that that's not the greatest thing to do, and they get bigger and they get angry and something like that, and they're just trying to exert control. I try to exert control with my kids all the time because I was just scared. I just wanted them to see the reality and what was really going on because I didn't want them to struggle. And it came out in this sarcasm and tone of voice and stuff like that, and that's my form of anger. Other people's form of anger might be more overt and be hitting the wall, and other people's form of anger might be a lot less covert, and it's just people pleasing and saying yes to everything, but that it doesn't cause any less harm, it just looks different. Just uh to break in down some of these ideas a little bit more when I'm trying to control the narrative on something, and especially early on in parental alienation, I'd I'd send text messages or leave voice messages for my kids telling how much I love them. But there's always like a there's a motivation behind that to get them to see things my way, for them to understand, for them to take my side, just to get them to say that they love me. You know, just get them to show up somewhere, you know what I mean? There was just this desperation to control any part of the narrative so I wouldn't die. Like I really think it's as simple as like that. Like I really thought that I was gonna die because the pain is so extreme. And I know if you're out there listening and you're a regular part of the community or you're new to the new to the community, that we can all relate to this. Like the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the confusion is overwhelming. So why wouldn't I want to control stuff through the text? And I will also say that my messaging with my kids now is completely different. I don't need to control the narrative. I can advocate for what I would like. I can have agency, I can be very clear about my communication, I can ask for consent when I'm looking for different things, but I don't need to try and control it. You know, in another really weird way that anger manifests, and and I don't really understand this, was in those sleepless nights, in the ruminating thoughts, yeah, and just replaying conversation over conversation. You know, even the idea of uh, what if this never changes? What if I never see my kids again? You know, there's a sense of anger there, frustration, you know what I mean? And it's a derivative of fear. And they're realistic feelings to feel, but I can't keep feeling them forever. Like I don't have the capacity to hold that level of emotion in my body forever. So if I don't actually go back to the fear and address the fear through support, like I can't do this by myself. You stick me in my head with just me and my head, and I'm in a dangerous neighborhood, I'm I'm gonna have a problem. Like, so the trajectory has to change. I had to find community that I could find support. I had to find a platform to work on myself, and I chose the 12 steps, which is an empowerment program, and it doesn't cost anything, it's free. And then I also got therapy, and I also took a bunch of different trainings and learned how to communicate and learn how to do all these different things. But these help me break down some of these emotional constructs that I was carrying around that were actually trying to kill me. My own anger, even though it was aimed outwards, was internally just ripping me apart. I would think you could understand that and relate to that. Oh, I'm just gonna take a breath with that. I'm gonna put on my really cool new glasses that I just got, and not sure why I'm doing that, but I just needed to take a break because I felt like a lot and I wanted to show off my glasses if anyone's

Boundaries People Pleasing Hypervigilance

SPEAKER_01 21:49

watching. And you know, a really, a really difficult one about in the anger, and that's hard to tie back to anger is the is the people pleasing. You know, if I'm just a little bit nicer, if I just tolerate a little bit. More if I don't ask for what I really want, if I just go along with the scenario, if I give up some of my parenting time, or if the other parents texting all the time or dropping off food or whatever it is, you know what I mean? That people pleasing is a derivative of anger. And for me, the access and the amount of text and voicemails when I'd have my kids on my visitation tough was out of control. And dropping off food and random stuff was out of control. And I thought that was okay. You know what I mean? And then I'd get angry about it and I didn't really get back to the fear. And if I would have got back to the fear and saw what I was scared about and dug in a little deeper, I would have had to look at part of my anger was because I didn't have any boundaries. My anger was because I thought the more access I give my kids, the more they were going to love me, and I didn't have any boundaries. You know, that's big stuff. This is a rough one for me. It's underneath the fear and part of the anger, and that's the hypervigilance. Every message, every word I say, how I conduct myself, analyzing tone, trying to decipher everything. And then when I don't understand stuff, learning more stuff, so I have more stuff that I can understand and learn. And I gotta say, like educating yourself, being emotionally literate, communication literate, incredibly, incredibly important stuff. And still there's a level of hypervigilance that in my case actually keeps me separate from people a lot of times because I'm super conscientious of how they're communicating. And sometimes I can't just meet people where they are and then just enjoy them if they're not super present with their communication. And I think that's part of the hypervigilance, which is part of my fear, which is related to my anger, is just that why aren't people more present? Why aren't they there more available? Why don't they understand what's really happening? And I'm projecting everything outwards, where if I just come back to myself, like what am I really needing in this moment? What's going to make me feel safe? What's going to help me deal with my fear? And then everything changes again, you know, and even the relationships with the kids, grandkids, or with your parents and grandparents will significantly shift when you can identify the fear and see that you actually have agency to take care of yourself or resource yourself outside of your family, and you will no longer have to carry that fear into the relationships because you're resourced, and then that angle will start to dissipate because you won't have to fall into this old strategy. But this takes a lot of work, new neuropathways, working on yourself, practicing new muscles, and then it changes. And if you're a parent struggling to connect with your kids or grandkids or other family members, this is gold. Start to work on these things and your relationships will change. And this isn't theory, this is fact in my life, and this is fact in so many other people's lives that I'm friends with within the community that I'm watching them change. And when they change, their relationships are changing too. And it might not be with their kids, grandkids, parents, whatever the direction you want to connect on. It might just be with the person at the grocery store. And from that place, they just keep building and things start to shift. That anger starts to dissipate. We feel scared and we can take care of ourselves and we feel scared because we have community and because we have tools. And then it gives the relationship space to breathe and change too. Right? If nothing changes, nothing changes. I'm sure you've all heard that. And this is a change. I'm angry. Let's figure out what actually the primary emotion is. How do I resource myself? And how can I move through it imperfectly? Imperfectly. This isn't linear. I'm not always going to be not angry. Some days I'm just going to be angry. And if you don't like it, go talk to someone else. You know, that's the reality of it. I'm just going to be angry fewer days. You know, one day at a time, I'm going to be angry fewer days. I would say, like, when we're talking about anger and we're talking about parental alienation, estrangement, or racial, whatever you work, and we're angry. We're angry at our exes. We're angry at their family members, and we're angry at our kids at some point, then the therapist and the judges and the other stakeholders and the person at the market. It doesn't really matter. And this big thing that I think I experienced really deeply, and I'm curious if you did, is when anger shifts from anger to chronic anger. And chronic anger is not me punching the wall every day. Maybe it's me being sarcastic. Maybe it's me people pleasing. Maybe it's me being so hyper-vigilant that my whole body's on lockdown all the time and I start getting chronic pain and chronic illness and things happening. Right. But I'm in this chronic anger state that's just driving all these other things. And I never think to address the actual anger. I never address the actual fear. And if I never actually go and address the fear, then I'm just kind of like, I'm looking for Seattle, but I'm in Portland. I ain't gonna find Seattle in Portland, right? And this takes concerted effort and is tiring as hell. And a lot of days I don't want to do it. And most days I do a lot of good things. And sometimes I take a break and I don't do anything for a little bit because I need to resource myself and not think so hard. And that's I think that's gracious with myself. And if you're new to this, you're perfect, you're learning just like the rest of us. If you've been doing it a while or a longer time, keep doing it. Let it keep changing. You know, anger's evolving for me now. You know what I mean? I've been in this story 20 years, I'm no longer stuck in it. A huge amount of time, like I'm out in the real world. This default world that we live in seems like that's where everyone lives and what I've always identified with. And then kind of like in Alice and Wonderland, you go down the bunny path and you land up, you know, there's like the ten of spades and the rabbit and whoever else is down there. And in those places when you're down there and there's the rabbit and there's the ten of spades and stuff, that's when I'm actually getting to meet my emotions. I'm actually looking at my fear. And I'm like, oh wow, my fear is like the ten of spades. Like I can clearly see that. Like, how how do I manage this relationship with the ten of spades? I talk to it. I get someone to help me talk to it. Yeah, I start to work on it. I go to support groups, I look for spiritual help. I don't know if that analogy makes sense, but I think it's fantastic. And I'll share about that story at another date in a little bit deeper detail because it's a good one. Yeah, you don't want to miss that one.

How Kids Experience Anger

SPEAKER_01 28:38

As we're talking about anger, I think we really need to highlight the the young people's experiences, whether they're kids, young adults, adults that have been through parental alienation or estrangement or ratio. My God, can you imagine developmentally growing up in a family system like that, how challenging it is? Can you imagine being in a kid in that story where you're getting conflicting stories? You're having emotional pressure from both parents. Like my kids got emotional pressure from me, and my emotional pressure is I wanted to be loved. I wanted to give them corrective experiences, or at least what I thought was a corrective experience. But in doing that, there was also this need to show them that maybe their other experience wasn't the right one. And me trying to negate a different experience, like how's the hell's that corrective? You know, I'd be angry if I was a kid. I'd get pissed off at me at a certain time, even though I'm doing a lot of really good things. Like at a certain time, like their bodies can't take any more of these conflicting ideas, or this is the way it's supposed to be done, da-da-da-da-da, whatever you want to say. Right? God, I couldn't imagine that. You know, the the fear of losing uh a parent. God, I don't know what that feels like for a child. I never had that. I never had to metabolize that in my body. I never had to like work through that as a young adult or adult, but that's destabilizing. And I think that's why we see a lot of these behaviors, even from young adults and adults and people in their 50s, 60s, and maybe even 70s. And people might never work through this, and that's great. You know what I mean? That's ultimately and none of my business. And I'd love to be a beacon for folks that do want to, you know, work through some of this stuff imperfectly. And what I'm telling you is my experience, and it's pretty good. And it's a perfect no. The other people that know more, 100%, and other people know less, 100%. But find the perspectives that you like and build your own. You know, take what you like and leave the rest, is what they say in 12-step program. And same with this podcast. My gosh, some of this stuff is great. And I'm sure there's some things that you're like, yeah, please leave that stuff. Leave that stuff, leave that stuff. You know, and getting back to the kids, you know, how does their anger show up? You know, what uh silent treatment, refusing to get in the car, refusing to eat, rejection, insults, keeping distance, not introducing you to their friends. You know, the name calling, them rejecting your family, your pets. That's fascinating when someone has to reject a pet as good or bad in order to survive, but they're not dealing with the fear, and all they have is this anger, and this amber, anger has to get blown through something. So, right, even like I hate your dog, they're projecting their anger through the dog because they can't metabolize that or keep that in their body. So it makes sense that they're angry at the goddamn dog. And if you would have told me 15 years ago that my kids not liking my dog would ever make any sense to me, I would have said, You're nuts. You need to be institutionalized. Get out of my face. And today I'm saying, Oh my God, if I was that child, I'd be angry at my dog too. You know, bad dog. It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. Especially when you take it to that level. It's like a beautiful animal that just has nothing but love to get, and there's no capacity to even let in any of that love because they have nowhere to put all that fear which manifests in anger, which manifests in all these other different components that we're talking about. Like this dog stuff is important here. This dog analogy is rich. I also want to add in a another thought, and we've been talking about this in several

Systemic Anger And Black And White Thinking

SPEAKER_01 32:20

podcasts. And if you haven't heard anything about systems, we're mad. Hey, you're making my kid not talk to me. So I'm mad at my ex-spouse. I'm mad at my child for not talking to me. So this is kind of like a one-on-one relationship. When we take a step back, then we're looking at the family system. The mom, the dad, the children, and they could just be partners, it could be two moms, two dads, whatever the configuration of the family system is, it doesn't matter. But when we take that step back, we can see, oh, it's not just about my relationship with my partner, it's about my relationship to the whole system, and the whole system kind of moves together, especially in the nuclear family. And then we extrapolate that out, and then we have our relatives, our parents, our siblings that are like the next layer of the family, but they're not really part of the nuclear family. And systemic anger can be projected at the whole family, outer systems of the family, other members of the family, or close friends that aren't even related to it, but we're just angry because they're consoling our ex, and we're like, can't you see they're nuts? You know, and then if we even take the systemic anger further and we start bringing other stakeholders, that that anger's at the court, that angers at the judge, the therapist, the one person that showed up that shared something. Like we're so angry at these different stakeholders on the systemic level that we can't even function in the world. And and the the scary part is as we get angry with the whole system that we're in, then we start to get angry at the person at the gas station, at our boss, at different people. And sometimes we're okay. It's okay to do that. But just being aware how this systemic anger just spreads and infests everything. And if you feel like everything in your life is crap and breaking down, come back to the anger, track the anger back to the fear, get some help around it, and you'll see certain parts of your life that you thought were impossible to change or to live through start to kind of like dissolve. And the lens that you're looking through becomes clearer and clearer. Like if we go back to that the I Doctor analogy, those things keep clicking and it just gets clearer, and your vision just gets better, and you're like, whoa, now I see that that person wasn't trying to kill me. They were just offering something that I didn't like, but I didn't realize I could have just said thank you and yeah, and still love the rest of them. I think that's the thing. There's like this all or nothing black and white thinking that you see so much with parental alienation, and you really see it clearly in anger, especially when it's really heightened, is you can't see anything in between. You can see the black and the white, but you can't see all the other great things that are happening too, even in relationship to some of these people or some of these stakeholders. So again, systemic anger is everything, every system, everyone in the playing field. And just super important to bring it into your awareness to start to track your own behavior because unfortunately, the only thing you have any control over is yourself. You have agency to develop a loving and kind relationship with yourself. And it starts with actually feeling your primary emotions, building skills, building community, building support. So wherever you show up, you can be a more integrated person. And that's what we talk about in every show. Today we just happen to be focusing on some more of the nuances around anger.

Daily Tools To Interrupt Anger

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Okay, so we've spoken a lot about anger. We've spoken about some resources with anger community, you know, 12-step program, building resources, professionals, you know. But what can we do on a daily basis when anger comes up? So A, I would say, notice it. I'm I'm angry. I'm angry. You know what I mean? This doesn't mean that I'm screaming in someone's face that I'm angry, you know what I mean? Like I'm noticing inside myself. It's called titrating. Like if 100% of your energy is focused externally outside of yourself, then you can't ever figure out what's going on inside of you. So you want to only focus some of your attention on the outside of you. And sometimes I would say it's probably it's about 80% like around you, and then the other 20% is kind of like checking in with yourself. And then sometimes you're gonna titrate and actually go a majority inside, and this could be around people, and this is the best that you can do, or it could be around people, and you say, Hey, I'm just gonna take a moment for myself, I'm gonna run to the restroom, I'm just gonna step outside, grab some air, and then you can go fully internally and really check in with yourself. But sometimes it's messy, there's no clear cut to anything. So I'm angry, and like, you know, and and I don't have to act immediately. You know, and I know that I have a lot of issues with like sugar and food, and I use that to kind of like work with my nervous system sometimes. And sometimes it just clicks in, I go get a Snickers or an ice cream or burger, whatever it is. Like there's no time to think. Anger's the same way. Don't act immediately. You know what I mean? A lot of strategies, if you're in 12-step programs, call your sponsor, call another person in the program, go to a meeting, journal, sit quietly for a couple minutes. Like we really want to discover like what's underneath us, what's driving this anger. You know, and by taking these couple pauses, we can actually start to look what's going on. And if you're in a place, feel it. God, I'm feeling so much just fear. I'm just so scared that I'm never ever going to talk to my loved one again. I am so scared that I'm not gonna get through the day. I'm just so scared because my grief, my loss, my stuff is just overwhelming. This fear is just crippling. And then you want to build capacity. And you build capacity by practicing these simple things over and over again, by taking a pause, by not saying anything, by feeling your feelings, by reaching out to people for help. This is what 12-step is. It's really funny. And this could be what your your religious community is like or your other support community is. It's about building capacity. Like when you're a newborn, you're not running at the same speed as when you're two years old. And when you're two years old, you're not running at the same speed as when you're five years old. You're building capacity as you go along, and we're building emotional capacity. And as we build emotional capacity and we keep practicing it, then we get better at it. That's why you go to school. You learn how to add one plus one, and then you do multiplication, and then you mix multiplication and division and everything together, and you build capacity. And this is just about building capacity to deal with anger and noting when something shifted. You know? My one of my first sponsors used to have me write a list like what would happen when I would go down this kind of like bunny hill and I was around my ex-wife. He's like, write what actually happens once you start to get in the ruminating thoughts, into the anger. Then what happens? Then you start sending texts or you start having anxiety attacks, or what happened, and like what's that path look like? And he had me keep that with me so I could understand what this bunny trail is. Because it's not very different anytime. I'm not very different every time, I might have different nuances, but then I had that thing, and then he also had me write a list of 10 people I could reach out to when I needed some help. And the nice thing about community and 12-step community in particular is there's just thousands of meetings every day all over the place with Zoom. It's everywhere. If you need a PAA-specific meeting, we have like 18 or 20 meetings a week. There's so many ways to resource yourself, and it takes energy and it takes practice and it takes building capacity, and all that stuff sucks. And all that stuff is the greatest reward in the world that you can't see what it is until you do it for an extended period of time. You know, and I and I'll also say, like, as we reconnect with loved ones, or we bump into relationships that have been tricky, like a lot of this like anger pops back up, or some of the behaviors, the people pleasing, the manipulation, the sarcasm, these things pop back up, and they pop back up because they're familiar and they're default systems that are built into our nervous systems. And we need to interrupt them the same way by taking a pause, by taking time. And sometimes it's messy and we don't do it well. But the more we practice, the easier it gets. And for me, as I'm rebuilding my relationships with some of my kids, God, those interruptions are loud. They're like, God, I want more, or this should be different, or this should happen. And the more I give it space and I resource myself and I call a friend and I go to a meeting or, you know, therapist, massage, whatever it is, go take a hike. It gives it space to change. It's super magical. So if you're listening and you made it this far through, I want to tell you this. Your anger makes sense. My anger makes sense, but it's not the whole story. You know, underneath it is something that needs attention. Your little person inside of you that's been told all these different things that this is the way to cope and stuff needs some love and attention. And we can build capacity, we can build resources, we can build community. There's so many wonderful things we can do to take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

So I implore you to be curious about anger.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

I implore you to be curious about any secondary emotion that comes up and really dig into it and see what's

A Real Text Thread Trigger

SPEAKER_01 41:55

there. I had an experience this week where uh I had an interaction with my ex-wife. I have not had any interaction in five years. Her name popped up on my phone and it was easy for the first couple texts, and then it was like I was in it. You know what I mean? It was like all the old dynamics, and you know how it's like super sticky, and and even though you have so many different skills, there's this other thing that keeps attracting you. And I want to blame her, like she's pulling me down into it, but that wasn't my experience. It was just sticky and it was familiar, and I wanted uh I wanted to see what the stickiness felt like again. And I got involved in a couple conversations through text that I could have handled differently, and it was a my lack of boundaries, and it was driven by the people-pleasing part of me, which is connected to my anger, instead of just realizing that I was scared, maybe resourcing myself differently. I think having some different kind of boundaries, I would have saved myself a lot of headache and a lot of anxiety and a lot of fear. And we both worked through it in an imperfect way. And I didn't rush it, I didn't have to make something happen. I was super clear at a point, and I did establish a boundary and let go. And when I did that, something changed. And I'm not sure what's going to happen or not happen because of that interaction, but I was good. I was good to see how quickly my behaviors pop, I can't even snap my fingers, snap right back in, and I'm right back to that person I was in the beginning of parental alienation, just wanting everything to be okay, just wanting to nice it to death, just wanting to fix it. I think that's really for me is fixing it because that hypervigilance kicks in. And if I can just make this right, then everything's gonna be okay. And it didn't work. It didn't work. It didn't work 30 years into my program and five years into my PAA program. But I will tell you this that ARC, because I built so much capacity, was very quick. I could identify my feelings, my emotions, my strategies, what I was doing, and also that I was not a victim and that I was the one that was actually driving some of the. Behavior by some of my old strategies. So I hope one more time that's useful. I share this often when I do a solo show. Geez, I hope this lands well. I hope it's useful. Please email me at family disappeared at gmail.com. Love to hear your thoughts, other topics. Let me know if you like the solo things. If you just want me to keep quiet and bring guests on and interact with them, like any kind of feedback is always useful. Great resources in the show notes. Please like, share, let people know what we're doing. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. Donate. And you're donating to help the next person. You're not donating for yourself. You're already here. And unless you do that, we cannot continue to bring you resources. We can't bring you trainings on anger and building capacity. Like, how can we go out and afford to hire some people to come in and put together a protocol and have stuff accessible and free to everyone unless some of the people with resources in the community are helping to support that. So think about that in case no one's told you yet today. I love you. I have a hope you have a beautiful day. Thanks for coming and playing in the sandbox. Going to put on my super cool glasses at the end of the show. So if you're here, you get to explore these with me. If you're not on uh camera, they're like black and white glasses, and I look kind of goofy, and it feels good to look kind of goofy. And please like and share. Some people need to hear this stuff. And uh, we appreciate having you around the community. See you soon.