When Old Anger Returns

Anger can become a place we live without even realizing it.

In this episode of UNLOADED, Michael and Shannon have an honest conversation about emotional triggers, unresolved anger, old wounds, and the lifelong process of learning to respond rather than react.

From recognizing familiar emotions and carrying weight from the past to understanding fear, frustration, emotional overload, and self-awareness, this episode explores what happens when we stop feeding anger and start paying attention to what’s underneath it.

The conversation also dives into presence, perspective, processing emotions in healthy ways, spending time outside, disconnecting from constant noise, and learning how to carry life without letting old pain control it.

No scripts. No masks. Just a real conversation about anger, healing, awareness, and the weight we carry beneath the surface.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, I would like to welcome all of our listeners back to the Unloaded Podcast. This is Michael Seahorn. Shannon Morrow. We're glad everyone is back with us today. Shannon, how are you doing over there?

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Doing well. Yeah. Got a little caffeine. Get me through the Friday. I don't think I've ever seen you drink caffeine again. Nah, it's been a big week. I'm tired. This will get me through.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

So you're so you're the real dude right now. Tired, worn out. He's got a draft latte in front of him.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Dude, I've never I I was desperate. I've never even had one of these before. I'm just, what? Sugar and caffeine? Great. It'll do. It's good enough, man.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Just for all you listeners, man, I've only seen this dude drink water and tea. And I'm not talking like tea tea. It's hot tea. Yeah. Which I love. I'm a hot tea fan too. But I'm generally the guy over here with an extra large in-and-out cup full of the brim with unsweet tea. I don't like sugar tea, but uh I love unsweet tea, man. So I'm not casting shade about caffeine. So yeah, it's a little out of character, and uh yeah, I'll take it. We're good. We're good. I'm glad you're here. It's definitely been a long week, man. It's uh I've had a couple challenges along the way this week. Um just some personal things I'm I'm working in. I'm I can't share those quite yet, but um just kind of remind me of not going backwards in in the past because that's a dangerous place to go. Well, at least for me it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Um what makes it so dangerous?

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Well, I mean, I I've shared I'm I've been a pretty open book to the listeners since we've created this unloaded podcast, and uh, you know, my my past was riddled with just raw, just raw anger, man. You know that the the one thing I was so comfortable with and living in and just like using it. I think I've said it before, using it like a weapon. You know what I mean? It was just so easy to use. And I I just I had a little issue this week. Uh I'm I'm still working through that right now, but it just uh for like a nanosecond, I don't know how quick a nanosecond is, but it's pretty fast, right? Just for a nanosecond of time, I I felt uh just a real familiar tinge in in in the gut in that in that deep dark place, you know. There's your old buddy, hurrah. Yeah, and it it was very quick too. Uh it was it hit quick and then it went away. Um I I will chalk that up to maybe the last decade of just trying to be a better human being. And it made me really think about which we talk a lot about is just don't make things bigger than what they are at the time. And I know it's very good luck. I know it's very difficult. Um, it is very difficult to do, but I really do try to pull myself back when I feel a raw emotion that seems to be getting out of hand per se. If it's getting super intense or I feel like it's getting really strong, I I I have to take a step for a second. I I do some deep breathing real quick, kind of center myself out, and then I'm then I try to I always ask this one question. It doesn't matter what the the uh emotion is or what I'm feeling is I immediately ask myself, I and I say this in my head, I go, why are you feeling this right now?

SPEAKER_02 3:31

That's a big question.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

It is a huge question, but it has done me very well over the years because it does bring me back to right now, right? It brings me back. For me, it does, and the reason it does is because I think because of some of the practice I've done, maybe um when I ask myself, like, why are you feeling that right now? Well, now I have to be present.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

No, the the the question why we then start thinking about answers to the question why? Like, why am I feeling this right now? And what happens? Am I did I have I not eaten in a while? Am I just hangry? Am I you know have I been putting up with too much? You know, if you're trying to answer that question, it puts us into a very cognitive state and which actually can pull us out of the present.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

See, I look at it apo. I look at it apo. I look at it as because I was going back into the past of wanting to get angry and be angry, which I'm very good at, and I could I could do with the flip of a button. By asking myself the question, it pulls me out of the past. It brings me to the present moment of hey, why are you feeling that way? Well, I'm feeling this way because XYZ. The person said A, this person did B. I the guy cut me off. What's the big deal? You see what I'm saying? So when I when I look at that and ask that question to me, it brings my focus back to right now because I want to know, oh, why am I feeling like this?

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Nice. We have a similar process and the difference is essentially one or two letters. I'm I'm a little more basic in it. Like when I start uh deregulating, when uh I was getting hit by a big emotion that's oh, um, what am I feeling right now? What instead of the why, the for me, the why puts me into too much of a cognitive space trying to figure it out, it pulls me out of the present. What am I feeling? And then then I have to observe myself in that present moment. What am I feeling? What yeah, I'm of course I'm feeling really pissed off right now. And ooh, ooh, ooh, actually, uh I I can see actually this anger that I'm oh, underneath that is actually some some fear. Ooh, I'm worried about this thing happening. And so I got really angry that you know this it went the other direction. This thing could happen, and like, ooh, this is you know, a fuel that this is anger fueled by fear. And and if if I can identify the real of it of the realness of that in this moment, like just look at my emotion, acknowledge my emotion, have acceptance for of course I'm getting pissed right now, of course I'm feeling angry, of course I'm nervous and scared that this thing might happen, and that's okay, that's okay, okay, okay. Just simply identifying the emotion, acknowledging it, normalizing, having acceptance for, and then you can manage it much. It's a for me, that's the very present-centered focus of dealing with emotion.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Interesting because you know, like Shannon said, he's looking at the what, and I'm looking at the why. And if you look at our two pasts from the past, literally the past, it's interesting because even after this long of uh being in the self-help world of uh just being a better human being, I still have a hard time figuring out what I'm feeling. That goes back to decades ago, and Shannon and I've talked about that behind closed doors, and maybe one day I'll I'll open up about that. But there are many times because I was so rooted in the deepest, darkest anger, I couldn't feel anything else. I couldn't recognize anything else. And you and I talked relentlessly about that early on in my in my therapy sessions. I couldn't feel happy, I didn't feel joy or love, I didn't feel nothing. I felt raw-ass anger. Pure. So I think even in today's time, when I say it pulls me back to the present, it's because I might not still know what I'm actually feeling. Like, what is that feeling I felt? Was it was it anger? Is it frustration? Is it the same? Is it fear? You know, I don't know. So when I look at it, it's interesting that if I can pinpoint, oh, I felt that because this person said blah. And I go inside and I go, Well, maybe that's because I still have a little bit of a button, you know, because of what that person said, it it took me back to maybe a bad moment in my past, and then I felt like I had to defend myself or I had to now go on to the offensive instead of the defensive, right? All of these things happen in blinks of an eye, you know. So when this thing that I'm dealing with happened this week, this past week, um, I felt the tinge of anger come. I let it go, brought myself back to the present time, and just like why why am I why am I angry right now? Oh, I'm angry because I'm now projecting what I think is gonna happen in the future. And we talked about that in the last episode is if you go in the future sometimes that's gonna create a lot of suffering because now I am literally trying to tell myself this it could happen. Well, bro, you don't know because it's in the future. Well, what if this? What if that? What if, what if, what if exactly right. So I had to bring myself back again and go, hey, look at the situation for what it is, not what it could be right now. What is the situation you're dealing with right now? I looked at the situation, I said, okay, I'm looking at it, I understand it, I can't change it. It has happened. Now I'm gonna move on to something else because I've already registered it, I sat with it, I kind of okay, I now I can kind of put the dots together, right? But I can't change anything right now, I can't fix this right now, I can't make it better right now. So I'm gonna let it go, let it be, and then when I have to address this, when it comes up, whenever it comes up, tomorrow or Saturday or Sunday or whatever day it might be, then in that moment of time I will deal with it accordingly. And I know that's a very difficult to do in in this modern human world that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

You've been practicing this a while now, though. Yeah. It takes practice.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

It takes a lot of practice, and I'm still I work at it every day. Yeah. Every single day I work at it. But it has greatly increased my ability when I stopped rooting everything in the anger. It allowed my body and my subconscious and my mental, spiritual portions of my being to open up to other actual feelings. So I could feel joy, I can feel happy, I can feel peace, I can feel these things that I didn't or couldn't feel because I was so rooted in that anger, man.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

That's a yeah, wow. How relieving to finally be able to experience a much greater breadth of emotion.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, it's yeah, it's it saddens me sometimes because if I if I sit in the past and I, you know, just sit there and think about it, it's it makes me very sad because then I'm just kind of walling around in, oh, I shoulda, coulda, woulda, right? So then you gotta pull your ass out of that and say, hey, the past is the past. What's done is done. It's done. Now I just use it as my teacher because that's what we should be doing, right? Look at it, learn from it, and then it's a great teacher, man. History is such it's the only teacher that I think that you can really look back on and and and make like you can make actual changes today when I look back at my history and go, okay, well, I definitely used to handle this very differently ten years ago. And I know what that made me feel, and I know what it made me look like, and I know it had this very drastic negative road ahead, so I'm definitely not gonna handle that situation that way. So how do I handle it differently? That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Looking at it, asking the questions, wanting to improve.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Yeah, and and sometimes I'll be honest, and I think we've talked about this too, Shannon. Is sometimes I don't say nothing. Often. I'm irritated, it has triggered something, I'm not in a personal place or space at the time to deal with that. It's the wrong setting. Maybe there's people around, and I just have to acknowledge it, and I don't say nothing. I just acknowledge it in my head and I go, okay, I'm gonna come back.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah, and sometimes that's that that's when Michael gets scary when he goes silent. Uh-oh, Michael, because he's you can tell he's he's a generally nice guy. He's pretty affable, he's pretty, you know, just he has a lot to share, a lot of good things, and you know, and suddenly something happens and he just disengages and just kind of just period and nothing. And uh, where'd Michael go?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

It it makes people uncomfortable who know me, and by all means, if people are listening, I don't do that on purpose at all. I just know that my brother talks about it a lot, you know, growing up together, you know, he remembers lots of times when, you know, he he what my brother says is that my eyes go from this I have the I have very, very deep, dark brown eyes. I mean they're they're dark. My brother always tells people, he goes, You see my brother's eyes go black? Yeah, yeah, it's time to exit stage right. Like we're we're going to do something else, you know what I mean. Hopefully, I'm not that guy anymore today. I I really try to just be a better human being, and uh, you know, I'm I'm out here trying to just help people now, man. I want to help as many people as I can because man, life is such a joy, and there's so many exciting things to enjoy on the daily. You don't have to go to Hawaii, even though I highly recommend everyone go to Hawaii, okay? Just go once, just not at the same time. Not everybody at the same time. Good luck too, because those flights are always packed. Oh, and by the way, just this little free tidbit of uh information. If you go out to Hawaii, spend a little extra, man, book that first class or the business class, it's worth it. If you can go Hawaiian Airlines, I highly, highly, highly recommend them. I love them. It's a great little it's just a great thing when you're going over to Hawaii. So just a little free tidbit out there. But there's so much to enjoy in life uh every day, man. And I think especially in today's crazy, crazier times, maybe I don't know if that's a proper way to say that or not, but there's just so much going on. We're flooded with so much information, uh, so much news and social media. I mean, it's it's coming every second, man. It's we're just being bombarded with information overload. And I am a huge practitioner. Uh I I funny as this is gonna sound is I'm not a huge social guy. I do it because of my company that I built, and I do it for our podcast unloaded, but I try not to get into the scrolling doom. What do they call it? Doom scrolling or uh something like that. I don't know. Scrolling doom. Something like that, yeah. Yeah. You know, next thing you know, two hours is gone. Oh, yeah. You're like, what the fuck happened? Two hours?

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Oh getcha, man. You gotta watch out.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Two hours? What did I do? Nothing. I was watching, you know, AI videos on like crazy dogs or something. I don't know. Pick your choice, dude. Pick your choice, man. But so I try to I try to limit myself on that. So just enjoy, man, just go outside. I I know people sometimes I and I have a bad way of doing this too, is I still have a little bit of uh what's my wife call it? Uh she's like, you're always you always wanting to do stuff. Yeah, you can sit still, man. Sit, you know. So if I do sit still for an extended period of time, then she then I get the opposite. She's like, hey, you okay? You feeling alright? Are you sick? Are you good? Like, no, I'm just I'm good. I'm just chilling here in my office for a little bit, you know. Uh but I definitely recommend, and Shannon and I talk about a lot, and Shannon's a big proponent of it, man, is just get outside. And you don't have to do anything crazy. Sometimes I just go sit on the patio.

unknown 16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Destroy the weather, cold drink in hand, right? And just no headphones, no phone.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Yeah. That's hard these days. We're so you know, because it screen time's a very real addiction, I think, for almost everyone. And uh to allow ourselves to even what? Be bored, like, no, I'm just going to step outside. Hmm. Wow, look at the sky. Huh. Check out, you know, temperature, weather a little bit, those trees, maybe if there's any birds, you know, just and it it's so different than how we spend more time with a constant ding ding-ding ding ding-ding ding-ding craziness of um ons and offs way up there in the digital whatever. And um, you know, just return to real, like, oh wait, you know, what for there we're actually much more equipped for 300,000 years of evolution, and we're very attuned to what is real in nature, and just like, huh, you know, it's it but it feels so different sometimes that it it can get uncomfortable to just sit, as Michael said, with without in the headphones, without a screen, without any kind of electronic device whatsoever, and just like even if it's just for five or ten minutes, it allow yourself to be bored. It's kind of rad, actually, sometimes. Like, uh I know it's society's like, no, keep working harder, harder. No, no, no. Can I just just for a moment? Can I just can I just be bored for a moment? No, no, you know, just check it out. Try to be bored, man. When's the last time you've been bored? It it it's actually quite healthy for the brain.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

You know what's funny though is when when Shannon says the word bored, obviously from the era that we grew up in, that is drastically different meaning than it is in today's world. Right? But when we were bored, especially growing up in the East Coast in Baltimore, if we were quote unquote bored, it was generally because it was like, you know, four feet of snow, it's you know, eight degrees outside, you've got the norwinds coming in, and you're freezing to your bones, and you're just like, okay, I'm not going outside. This was eons before video games. So what were your options? Board games, right? Play some board games. Uh you could uh call someone on a thing called a telephone, which was connected by a cord, hanged on the wall. You could uh read some books, or you could just you know back in the day TVs were three channels. Yeah, uh ABC, NBC, and CBS. I think there's something else out there, but that when he says bored, that's what I go back to, right? Yeah. Like, man, I was bored back then. I was a kid. Nowadays, when Shannon says bored, one could assume when they see somebody like me just sitting out on the porch. I don't have a book in my hand, there's not a phone in my hand, I'm just sitting out on the porch. Maybe some people think that I'm just bored. I don't know, man. In in reality, I'm not bored at all. No, no, I'm just in that beautiful space of like Shannon said, Maybe like it's it's it's warm, but it's not hot. I'm just I'm just being uh hanging out in the moment of that time. And I don't look at that as being bored. I I am an anxiously uh no, I'm not even gonna say that's not true. I I am a worker at heart, man. I'm a deep worker at heart. You know this from my past. My wife drives her crazy, she knows it. My all my family knows it. And so sometimes I think it I I have to control it because it does uh it can consume my time. But I'll give you examples like when it gets really hot uh in the 90s, I had a very severe heat stroke uh episode uh in the military. So um to the point where like I was like needing an IV, but we didn't have any, so I drank piss hot, warm salt water, you know that what I'm talking about. Um so after that, if you didn't know that, then you're like twice as susceptible for a heat stroke down the road. Like I guess it's a thing, it doesn't go away. So I have to be cautious when I'm uh in the probably like above like 85 into the 90s for sure. Like, because I'll get out there and start working out, uh working, doing whatever outside, and I'll just keep going to the point where you are borderline, dehydrated, you know what I mean. So I have to be kind of cautious on that. So during the hottest part of the day, sometimes you'll find me doing things inside, whether it's a project, I'm working in my office, I'm working on the you know, social stuff on the for the businesses or whatever. But then in the evening time, I'm like, boom, right back outside. I'm like, okay, temp's down, it feels good. And sometimes it's like, you know, I gotta wash the side by side. I haven't done that. It's been on the list of dude for you know the last eight months since you took it out. I gotta, you know, I want to get my truck washed, I need to clean out this, I need to do this. I'm always doing something, and it just drives my family nuts, dude. My daughter, she's like, Dad, you need to settle down. Like, just calm down. But I am calm. This is just a space that I live in.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Yeah, yeah. That is your kind of calmness or happiness. Happy place is when you're moving through task, being productive, just staying engaged. And I guess that was to my point, you know, maybe not being bored as much for all of us worker bees out there that almost have to continually be engaged with something just to keep our focus or keep moving forward, feeling like we're being productive enough or whatever. But like it's just hard to do nothing sometimes. It's hard to sit down with the intent to just chill and not start getting antsy. Not all suddenly that that thought pops in your head and ooh, wait, just I've done it so many times. I think I just did it yesterday. You you get all settling, you know, just even for a meal or something. You do you get a pretty good meal all cooked up and everything, and you just start, okay, let's just sit down and eat and relax and enjoy the meal. And then like before I know I'll you know, pop up and oh wait, I forgot to get this, you know, this it'll be better with that. And oh wait, let me put this back in the fridge real quick, and oh we might as well just rinse that real quick and blah-blah. And it's just it's it's hard to uh step off for a minute of that continual work, work, work, work, work, you know, to just, you know, hey, can I allow myself to relax, to not be doing anything? No, no, no, that gets really uncomfortable. I start getting antsy. I man, there's gotta be something I gotta be doing. I need to, you know, you start looking around and start thinking, and before you know it, you're you're up again and you're doing something. And it's it's I I got buddies that they can't even sit, well, I'm the same way, can't even sit through a TV show, right? You you try, you you try to like, it could even be like something, I don't know, and you just like you sit there and it but it's just it's a screen, and you're like, man, like I'd rather go do my own thing.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Yeah, it's something that we, you know, I my wife and I always joke because you know my kids will burn through a season of something and you know a weekend, and my my wife and I've we've probably got five different things we've tried to watch over the years, and we've never finished any of them, you know what I mean. And uh I I try to make some time once in a while if if if the you know my wife wants to watch a show or something. We I I do try to make a little put a little more effort into that, but like Shannon is saying is I I being productive is my comfortability. And I know it's kind of sounds a little oxymoron in a way, but if I'm in my personal office at the house and I'm doing stuff for uh with for my business or I'm working on a website or I'm doing research or things like that, to me, that's resting. That's my rest.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Right? My physical stuff is getting the machine washed, getting the yard done, you know, getting the garden cleaned up, taking care of the chickens and doing those things. That's my physical stuff. But even in that, I enjoy that stuff, man. It's not like I'm just dragging my feet out the door, just screaming and hollering about I gotta go do this. No, man, I I like doing that stuff, man. To me, bro, that is peace.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah, yeah. No, it's harder at the end of the day when it's starting to get dark and everyone's like, hey, hang it up, man. It's dinner time. Come in. And you're just like, oh but I got one more hour of late.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

I can squeeze this out, man. And I think that a lot of this, what Shannon and I are talking about right now, a lot of that helps what we were just talking about earlier. When you're rooted in anger, sometimes it's easy to sit there and just stew on that, man. You just it's there. It's feeding it too. Yeah. Fuck that guy and this and that, maybe. Next thing you know, you've been sitting there for an hour or two just stewing.

unknown 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

So it's just so negative and it's so draining on your mental, spiritual, and physical body, man. It drains you so much comparatively to just recognizing it, okay? I'm angry. Roger that. I'm so let me sit with it for a minute. If I if I can't sit with it in a minute, okay. Let me maybe I'll put that in the safe or the backpack for the day. Maybe I'll come back to it later on. Maybe. Just don't do it too much because uh eventually the backpack's full, safe's full, just like Shannon and I've talked about. Next thing you know, it's leaking out, and you're going through these ups and downs. So if you do put things on the shelf, I still put things on my shelf, just like I told you guys this week. I have something on the shelf right now that I'll have to deal with when it comes, and when it comes, I'll take it off the shelf, or I'll take it out of the backpack, I'll deal with it. And when the resolution comes, maybe it doesn't. Maybe I don't get a resolution. Then at that point, I just have to let it be. It's over. I'm done. We're gonna move on. And uh I always try my hardest, and I I'm I'm still working really hard on this. I try to find a good lesson out of it. It's the only thing that keeps me really positive sometimes when I'm going through these um difficult moments of life, if you will, where you're just getting checked, or you're getting you're just like, man, this sucks right now. I really do try to focus more now on man, what what was it? Like, can I get a little lesson out of that? And and this is generally takes a long time down the road. It's not instant, it's not tomorrow, it's not a minute later. So maybe it could be, I don't know. For me, it generally takes a few days, a couple weeks, and then eventually. You know, maybe during my meditative time, I'll I'll it'll come up in my meditation time, or it'll maybe in my commuting time when I'm coming home or something, it'll just come back and be like, huh. A lesson was you know, this. Oh, okay. Makes sense now. And then once I get that check, if you will. That's it, man. Yeah. Case closed. Yeah. I could I don't need to put it in the backpack no more. I don't need to put it in my save. It's we're done. It's good. Truly, yep. Just move on. That way I can keep that backpack and save more empty. Because as life has it, we're going to need space. Things will keep coming at you. Right? Yep. So the more I can work through those things and the more things I can just check check off a hundred percent. I don't have to keep throwing them in the damn backpack, man.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Working through things, even if you just gotta leave it on the shelf for a while, but please return to it, please. Like, oh, oh yeah, that's right. And then just with a little space, a little time, and a little bit more perspective, and then to give yourself the opportunity to hmm, okay. You know, process it through mostly and and to ultimately release.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah, and don't don't be frustrated out there because you know, there are things that I still, you know, have in my backpack that are probably 30 years old.

SPEAKER_02 29:00

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Right? Forty years old. I don't know what the number is, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Most of us from our childhood, you know, those very formative years, very impactful, that are still really in there that way more than we think affecting even present-day behaviors way more than we are aware.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

It's been a good it's been a good podcast, Shannon.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Thanks, man. I I like how you uh you uh um yeah, label our podcast as good. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

It's been a good chat today. I appreciate you and your time and uh I appreciate all of our listeners out there. Um just like always, just a quick reminder, 988's out there. Um give them a call if you need some help or you just need to talk. And I wish the very best to everybody. Uh we got Memorial Day week's weekend is coming up soon. So whatever y'all do out there, enjoy some outside time and um just enjoy that little extra extra day off.

SPEAKER_02 30:01

And if this podcast happens to land after Memorial Day weekend, we hope you had a good Memorial Day weekend.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Yeah, I guess this one would be after. So hopefully you all had past sense of it. Or or next year. Yeah, that too. That too. Some of our recordings, I always forget we recorded the week before, so by the time you guys, sometimes we gotta front load them. It's all good, man. Anyway, hopefully everybody will have a good time out there and uh enjoy some time outside. As for Mike Seahorn, Shannon Morrow. We'll catch you guys on the next episode.