Dealing with Anger Podcast

Underneath that, is there something that’s maybe contributing to that? Because a lot of times with anger there’s softer emotions that are under anger a lot of times, like feeling hurt or misunderstood and those sorts of things. And if we can recognize that, then again, that’s going to be helpful. 

Welcome friends to Breaking Bread, a podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. I’m glad to have you along. Brian Sutter is with me here today. Brian, we’re going to talk about anger. Yeah. Okay. Now, anger is a topic that’s all too near to us, right? But I’d like to set this up a little bit with just a reflection on conversations I’ve had with people who have made tremendous gains by their own admission with anger. And they would say that there was a time in their life that it really made a meal of them. And yet, part of their growth in this area was doing some counseling. And I’m not saying that everybody needs counseling. But the reason why I’m glad to have you here to have this conversation is, what are some of the things that we unpack with people to help bring freedom in the area of anger? 

Do you understand where I’m going to go? I think so. Yeah. I think that’s exciting. It makes so much sense what you’re talking about, and emotions are just such a complicated thing. They’re really hard for us to wrap our minds around. And anger would be, I think, at the top of that list, especially for Christians. I know I’m not supposed to feel anger, but I guess I do feel anger, and is it okay to feel anger? 

And there are so many questions around it, and I think that would be the starting point. Say a little bit about emotions and where anger finds its place. Yeah, so if you think about different emotions, they’re going to provoke different kinds of thoughts and different kinds of actions. And so, sadness, for example, would be an emotion that’s deflating, and it takes away energy and you feel yourself curling up. 

And one of the things that’s helpful about anger, anger is an emotion that’s very energizing. Now it energizes many times in ways that lead towards wrong behavior, and that’s where the Scriptures tell us to be angry, but sin not, because we know that the emotion of anger tends to have a propensity towards sinful action. 

So, emotions very often are an impetus towards some action, some response within us, a physical response. Right. Some fuel action more than others or you can see action, whereas other action is maybe kind of internal. And so, it’s one of those emotions that can be very externalized. 

And when you think of anger, most people think of the person who yells or it’s a hole in the wall. Exactly, that sort of a thing. Whereas you can also have those that that have a boiling pot that sits inside, and it stews and it stews. And from the outside, only those that know them really well would maybe be able to tell their anger, but there’s just as much anger. 

And then eventually you have that explosion. And so, it can manifest itself in lots of different ways. I think one of the tricky things with emotions is they feel like it’s another side of us. It’s another side of us that we have no control over, you know, like, I don’t want to feel this way, but I do, what am I supposed to do about that? 

Right. And a lot of times that leads to fighting with our emotions. Like we notice it, we recognize it’s there, but then, you know, I shouldn’t feel this way or what do I do with this? And it stirs a lot of questions that then actually tends to pour gasoline on it and tends to grow and get bigger. 

So, if we think about that boiling pot, we cinch down the lid, anger is going to build pressure, isn’t it? Exactly. And that pressure eventually is going to come out. And sometimes we find ways to work around it, but eventually you leave that pot there long enough and it’s got enough pressure behind it, it’s going to blow. 

And it’s going to affect people around us and it’s typically hurtful. You know, I think that’s maybe another category. You can probably take all the emotions and look, okay, which ones are going to really affect people. Boy, anger is right at the top of the list. Oh, it’s hard not to hurt people when that pot blows. Yeah, it is going to have a profound impact on our environment including those that were around, and I think for most of us we go one or two ways of that. One, we go into a place of just really getting frustrated and stuck in it. And then the guilt just piles up and we get stuck in that, and we don’t know how to get out of it. 

Others, we kind of go a different direction. We kind of deny, well, it’s not that bad. Or I was justified in that and going in a route that’s downplaying it. Both of which are going to really be problematic long term. And some of those things, if I understand it right, are really caught more than taught from perhaps upbringing. Say a little bit about that. 

Yeah. And I think that a lot of times forms our beliefs about emotions. In general, our experiences growing up and how the family dealt with emotions or what they talked about or what they didn’t talk about. What was acceptable and what wasn’t, all of those things start to form our beliefs around emotions. 

And generally, there’s a lot of really strong beliefs around anger. It’s that kind of mystery emotion, I think, especially in Christian circles where some, you know, kind of exile it. Nope, nobody feels anger. And if it shows up, you know, dad or mom are like really quick, just zip it up and nope, we put that aside. 

And others, you don’t really recognize it. And then it kind of fuels and that’s where you’ve got a lot of that externalized anger. And that’s going to have a profound impact on how you experience anger and also what you do with it. There’s even perhaps probably a level set or a norm within families, right? 

Right. That to be a fly on the wall in some interactions, you’d be like, man, these people hate one another when that’s the way they talk with one another, right? Exactly. There’s got to be some allowance for that too, right? Yes, and that’s a really great point in the sense that sometimes the way people interact with each other is just normal. 

There’s not actually anger involved, but if you’ve come from a setting where emotion was stifled and that’s not really acceptable, then you’re like, whoa, what’s going on here? And that may be just doing life. You could expect alarm then when marriage happens, right? Yeah. And one spouse brings a very different idea on how to talk with one another. 

Yes, you start to mix two different worlds. They’ve come from very different experiences. That’s going to be tricky for sure. Okay, so now let’s get into this. How is the light turned on for people who make progress with their anger? What are some of the steps you take maybe as you work with people in counseling that you are looking to uncover? 

Yeah, and I think it’s one of those things and this is probably the case with most things in counseling and maybe most things with emotions, it starts with really small basic things that generally when you hear you’re like how’s that going to be helpful? But at the very onset, if you can recognize when anger shows up, what that feels like for you in its very infant stages, that’s a really difficult task for most of us, but essential if we’re going to be able to handle anger in helpful, healthy ways. 

Sometimes a helpful visual is like the thermometer, and if you think of the thermometer, let’s say you get to 100 degrees on the thermometer, that’s going to be when the anger really takes flight. If you can recognize when your anger is at 25 degrees, and what that feels like, what do you notice going on in your body? 

What do you notice going on in your thoughts? What kind of things tend to trigger that? If you can handle that and address it at 25 degrees, you’ve got a lot of room to work with, versus if you don’t notice it until it’s all the way up into the 90s. You know, at that point it’s really difficult to get that ship turned around and so recognizing those things early and knowing what those things are can be really helpful. I think that makes sense. 

And so, our bodies are part of what tells us that. Is that true? We listen to our bodies in a way, right? Like so for some they might describe their chest getting really tight They know that’s the early phases of their anger. Others maybe feel a lot of pressure in their head, or their face starts to turn red or they can notice their fists start to clench up. 

And it’s amazing how that physical aspect of it can manifest itself in lots of different ways for individuals, but the same emotion is behind it. And if you can slow down and be patient and in counseling, what we call curious, you start to notice those things. And if you can notice it earlier. That’s helpful. 

You know, from my personal experiences, you just helped me reflect on that. Sometimes insult is added to injury because those things that start to happen within myself, I start to work against. For example, I have a hard time finding words. Now I’m angry about that. Exactly. Yes. Or I can’t corral my thoughts, right? 

I’m having a hard time focusing. None of those things are helpful. And yet, they’re all happening at the same time. That is one of the ways anger just can move so quickly, and that’s one of the tricks is that it can get to 25, that last 75 degrees can go really quick because of what you’re describing right there. 

You start to get frustrated about other things, and when that emotion Intensifies our ability to think and reason goes down accordingly, and therefore we don’t have nearly the brain power to say, wait a second, actually, maybe I’m not that mad about this thing. Or you know what? If I took a few minutes, maybe I would be able to use words. All of that is gone. And we’re just in a place where the energy that anger brings is ready to come out and do something to someone or something.  

Suppose I can identify 25 degrees, what next? And this one maybe would be really closely linked to the one just talked about. But I think another thing that would be really important is to recognize what are those things that tend to provoke anger in you. 

All of us have those things. Whether that’s something maybe that a child does or, a friend does or something that happens at work, or you fill in the blank. All of us have those certain things that really just get that blood boiling for us. And just to know what those things are gives you a chance as you go into situations. 

Boy, you know what? This is a situation that has a high probability of provoking that anger. And then that can help you again, start to pay attention to notice when it comes and that puts you ahead. I know if I’m tired. If I’m hungry, if I’m stressed, and those are pretty common kind of universal things that my anger is going to be much quicker to grow quickly. 

So, we know when we’re triggered, and I think that is a good companion to knowing our bodies that we are being triggered. Right. Both to know when we’re triggered and to know when we are being triggered, I think are important skill sets. Yeah, definitely. Anything to add to that? And again, I would just encourage you to slow down and really think about what are some of those things, even if you can, to ask people in your world, what are the things that tend to trigger you and what are the things that you tend to do when you do get angry so that you start to have somebody else giving you some insight on what are maybe those triggers? 

What does that look like? What are the things they notice showing up in your body or things like that would help indicate? Would you look any deeper? I do think many times to think underneath of that. Is there something that’s maybe contributing to that? Because a lot of times with anger there is. 

You know, there are softer emotions that are under anger a lot of times, like feeling hurt or misunderstood and those sorts of things. And if we can recognize that, then again, that’s going to be helpful. You know what? Whenever this person says something after I’ve talked, it feels like they’re challenging me, or it feels like they don’t respect me. 

And then that is actually then something that you can work through in your own mind and heart. Or, if it’s appropriate, you can talk to them and say, you know, whenever you say this or when this conversation goes this way, it seems like you just don’t respect me, or you don’t think I’m intelligent. Is that right? 

So that’s really helpful to say there’s sometimes a softer emotion underneath the anger. Is that what you mean by anger being a secondary emotion? Yeah. I’ve heard that phrase. Yeah, a lot of times people will talk of anger as a secondary emotion. From that perspective, that’s what they’re referring to, that it’s something that comes on the other side of a softer emotion. 

And a lot of times that comes because some of those softer emotions are deflating emotions. Whereas anger, even though it maybe is uncomfortable, is at least energizing and helps us do something. And so sometimes a lot of us are more comfortable with anger than we are, for example, with hurt or sadness. 

I think that’s very interesting. And so, it’s somewhat we’re acting, we don’t want to be passive in these moments. We want to be active in these moments. And since sadness isn’t going to help me be active, but passive, I explode. Hurt is self-reflecting and passive. Anger is explosive and active. Is that why we’re switching to that? 

Yeah, I think at least that that’s part of it. Could be. Yeah, exactly. Could be. And it’s important to take that into account and consider. So, one of the things to think about when, let’s say you’re in that conversation and somebody, you know, is challenging or it feels like they’re challenging you. 

And if that provokes anger, sometimes one of the questions might be is, is that actually what I’m angry about? For some of us, maybe we’re really insecure. Or we’re doubting our own position. And then when somebody challenges us, then our hurt or our questions, or even maybe our anger about something that happened earlier in the day, then gets directed towards someone or something that doesn’t actually deserve it, or it’s not actually what we’re upset about. 

So, we are attaching that anger to the wrong thing. Yes, and that is so easy to do. Sometimes we do that, we attach it to something that’s safer a lot of times. So, for me, or somebody else, it might be safer to be angry at our child than it is our boss. Or it might be safer to feel angry at the dog. 

Yeah. Or angry at myself. Exactly. Yes. Anger at myself is easier to manage because it’s all internal, whereas if it’s towards this individual that actually has been hurtful towards me, then I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do with that. Yeah. See, that’s really interesting. As I reflect on my own life, regret makes me angry and there’s nobody that anger should be pinned on with regret, but myself, right? 

Sure. But instead, it explodes out on other people. So that makes a lot of sense. Now here’s the light bulb that went on, Brian. God has given us emotions. God has given us emotions for good advantage, right? They have a purpose to bring out an advantage. Yeah. When we place and pin anger on the wrong thing, it’s not going to bring the advantage God has intended anger to have. So, this seems to be a pretty big key. Yeah, so help tease and sort that out. Yeah, and I think that’s exactly one of the big journeys here. That’s awfully scary. Do I think if you have the courage to step in to exploring that it can be terrifying. What am I going to find here in opening yourself up to that is a vulnerable thing and that’s where to do that, I would just encourage you to invite people to do that with. 

And again, that’s scary, but you’ll need some help navigating it. Just think of somebody who just seems really angry. We’ll just get a picture in our mind. And they don’t recognize it, or they do recognize it, but they’ve attached it to, well, I have righteous anger towards this person’s sin. 

And that’s what we tend to do. We tend to say, well, I’m angry about this, or we make it something that’s okay to be angry about, but actually maybe it’s something that we’ve been hurt by. And if we don’t slow down and really think about it, is that really the case? Is that really what’s going on and doing that in relationship with somebody who can challenge us and maybe ask us questions or make us think about it a little bit different way, we just keep coming up with the same conclusion and then we’re not actually getting the information from the anger that’s actually meant to help us repent and grow. This is where I’m going to interrupt my conversation with Brian and promise you that we will be back for our second final portion. 

In these last few minutes, we’ve really talked about the inner workings of anger and how to detect it and what we can do about it. But when we come back, we’re going to be looking at some very hopeful and practical things as well to take the poison out of our anger. And that has to do with what we believe and whether what we believe is true. 

So, you’ll want to be here for that. Thanks, each one for being here. 

To not lose heart when anger gets the best of you. And if it is something that continues to get the best of you to keep working at it, there is a great deal of hope. It’s not insurmountable, even though it’s going to show up from time to time. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

Excellent to have you along. Today we’re going to air the second part of a series on anger in a conversation I’m having with Brian Sutter. When we left off, we just started to open up the concept of using others to help give us insights into ourselves and our anger journeys. So, let’s go there now. To do that, I would just encourage you to invite people to do that with, and again, that’s scary, but you’ll need some help navigating it. 

Let’s say, think of somebody who just seems really angry. We’ll just get a picture in our mind, and they don’t recognize it or they do recognize it, but they’ve attached it to, well, I have righteous anger towards this person’s sin. And that’s what we tend to do. We tend to say, well, I’m angry about this, or we make it something that’s okay to be angry about, but actually maybe it’s something that we’ve been hurt by. 

And if we don’t slow down and really think about it, is that really the case? Is that really what’s going on and doing that in relationship with somebody who can challenge us and maybe ask us questions or make us think about it a little bit different way. We just keep coming up with the same conclusion and then we’re not actually getting the information from the anger that’s actually meant to help us and help even us repent and grow. 

Yeah, that’s really helpful. And the examples I think are really helpful too. Let’s take on this example we’ve been working with; a person who feels challenged and they get really angry. So, let’s suppose this person has the wherewithal to say, okay, I get angry like this. I know when I’m at a 25. I know what triggers it. That’s when I get challenged. How could that person engage with their support group or engage with their community, whether it be a spouse or a mentor or a good friend? How could that person engage in a meaningful way to help sort out this very issue? 

Yeah. Well, I think just putting it on the table with that support person is a start. So that might look like calling about getting together for coffee? I’m noticing that I tend to get really angry whenever I experience a question or something from another individual that feels like they’re challenging me, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that bothers me so much, and I’d like your help in exploring that. 

And then for the explorer, what doors would you try to push open? What would you try? Well, I think with that, a couple questions would be, is that only in this particular relationship? Is it something that’s unique to this relationship and maybe the way this person presents that challenge. 

So, then you would be asking, is this coming from a spouse? Or does this happen when your boss does it? Does this happen when your neighbor does it? Does this happen when your child does it? Right. Because all of that would be telling. Exactly. So, if it’s something that’s pretty universal then that gives us more information like, oh, that’s interesting. 

So, it’s not necessarily something probably about this person. It’s really more just about challenge in and of itself. And that makes it more likely, in my opinion, that’s probably something that maybe wasn’t part of your culture growing up. Let’s say dad said something, there were no questions asked. There was nothing explained, it was just dad says it. And that’s just the way you view how it should go. And you don’t even consciously realize that. It’s just part of your fabric, which means that part of the remedy then would be working out.  

My paradigm in starting to redefine some things like respect does not necessarily mean agreement all the time or challenge doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody’s against you or that they don’t think that you’ve got a good idea or that you’re incompetent. It just might be the paradigm they grew up in and if somebody throws something out, you want to make sure it’s a good idea. 

You’re really changing the messaging then. Oh, I’ve gotten challenged by my wife or my boss or whatnot, and it doesn’t mean necessarily they’re being disrespectful to me. What does it actually mean? That’s really the help that you’re providing that friend and trying to help them come up with what’s a helpful way for them to frame that, to process the reality.  

Yeah, that’s going to help them not move into anger, but more in this is their way of being a teammate and helping us make sure we come up with a good idea, the best idea. You see, now that’s really helpful too, because now we understand that anger is going to be deployed erroneously, isn’t it? And that’s part of our problem. It’s deployed erroneously because of misconceptions, inaccurate perceptions of the world, not interpreting our surroundings correctly. And I think that a big part of anger is we personalize what people say or do. And what that means is that we take it on as something that’s really negative about us or they’re attacking us. 

And that’s a huge part of anger. Another thing is that I think many of us hold our ideas or beliefs too precious. Now again, I’m not talking about core Christian beliefs, but just in general that we have a hard time being open to the idea that we might be wrong or that our idea could be influenced or shifted in a positive way. For most of us, that’s really a hard pill to swallow. Yeah, and as you were talking about there’s kind of a fear there that what if I’m wrong or what if I’m way off base. And so, we can kick against that fear by just being angry again, taking the aggressive rather than, well, maybe I am wrong. 

And that’s not the end of the world. Exactly. That part of life, hopefully, is that my ideas and beliefs get refined and they start to become more aligned with what is right and good and true, even if they’re things that aren’t core fundamental things, that’s actually a good thing and a part of growth and development, not necessarily a bad thing. 

So, I’m not sure if you use this phrase or not, taking yourself too seriously is really that. And it’s important for us to have a real growth mindset, isn’t it? Yeah. That we are works in progress and we start from the position that we don’t see it all perfectly. Yes. We’ve made mistakes. And we’re going to continue to improve and do things better. I mean, even starting with a mindset like that about oneself takes a ton of steam out of potential anger. Oh, my goodness. Absolutely. Yeah. It really does.  

So, let’s say the situation is universal, and then you kind of explore that. And that’s helpful. Now, if it’s just showing up in one relationship, then I think you explore it a little bit differently in the sense like, why here? Why in this situation and exploring that together? Maybe that’s because of the particular dynamic. Maybe it is because of the way they treat you. 

Maybe it’s not necessarily because of that, but maybe it’s that their certain facial expression provokes anger in you or their role. It could be lots of different things. But to explore what is it about that? So, is this anger a reaction towards correction? It seems to always come from my boss, or it’s always triggered by my spouse, or it seems to be triggered by church leadership, or it gets triggered by my kids. 

That would always be telling if it’s coming from a unique source. Right. And then too, a lot of these things do originate in our history. So that probably is going to take you down the same path. Oh, why is it that this always comes with my kids? Well, maybe that is because of the way you were raised and the way, unconsciously to you, you felt like kids were supposed to interact with a father or a mother or a boss situation. 

Maybe you had a boss in a previous job and the way they interacted with you has an impact on that. And would you be exploring those soft emotions that lie beneath? Exactly, that could be part, especially in that boss scenario, if there’s been hurt from a past relationship or even in the present boss relationship. 

Let’s say all of a sudden you just get angry over the last six months. Ah, but if I think about that six months ago, this thing happened, maybe this anger in the present is really more about I feel hurt by this and I need to work through that. So, there’s something that’s unresolved. Exactly. And so, part of the answer to my future anger is finding resolve in my past. 

Yeah. And again, one of the things to consider in this is we’re thinking about the starting point of recognizing ourselves, recognizing our emotions, recognizing what pulls it up. I think it’s important to recognize that if we tend to see the problem as ourselves, then to be a little bit skeptical towards that. 

If that’s our default, we’re always going to go towards, well, I just need to look at this differently. And you know what, if I could just do something differently, then the other person would do something different. There’s probably something there. But if that’s your default, you might also want to think about what else may be part of the puzzle? Not that you can change what’s outside of yourself, but at least to acknowledge it. Whereas if your tendency is to focus on what they need to do differently, and that’s kind of your default, then you may need to have a little bit of skepticism towards that and start to think about my perception. I wonder what could change about my perception or the way that I’m presenting that would be helpful.  

Because if we’re trying to fix our anger problem in these other places, we’re just not going to make the ground. Right. If we’re looking in places that we’ve always looked, then it’s probably not going to be helpful. What we’re looking for is what is it that maybe I need to do a little differently? What is it that I need to think a little differently about? Maybe that’s myself. Maybe it’s the situation. And we all have tendencies and just try to take a little bit different look at it.  

Yeah, that’s interesting. So, I alluded to, God was angry, right? We have in the Scripture, be angry and sin not. We have Jesus, right? The notorious turning over the tables, right? What exactly did that look like and what exactly happened in the temple? We don’t really know, but these are all charged truths that those who are angry really hold to. 

Yeah. So, I’d like you to speak to that angle. I think it is important to recognize that anger in and of itself is not wrong. I’ll never forget after having a few kids and they’re really young and I’m meeting with a mentor friend and just like, man, I just am getting so angry. It feels like all of the time. And his question was, well, do you think it is appropriate anger? Let’s talk through that. And that was such a helpful question for me to be able to ask, you know what? Some of this is okay. Some of this is appropriate and recognizing that is part of how God’s designed us and even the emotion that God experiences and displays in lots of different places. 

I think that’s helpful too to understand if it is appropriate and then am I being energized to do the appropriate thing? Exactly, which is sometimes where we go off the rails. That’s almost always the place where we go off the rails. The energy that anger brings can take us into places we know we shouldn’t go and sin comes on the other side of it. And that’s the part where I think it is so tricky. We don’t want to condemn the emotion of anger. Certainly, sometimes it’s not appropriate, but a lot of times, anger is appropriate, but we need to recognize it is one of those emotions that is really good at taking us into sinful behavior. 

And we want to recognize that and really work hard to slow down enough. Because when our mind is present, when we’re thinking wisely, we’re going to have a much better propensity towards being able to put off the anger and the sin that it wants to take us into. So, the big thing that I learned from this conversation, Brian, that I think is really telling, is that anger is not the problem. 

Truth is where it’s at. Do I truly understand what’s going on? Because my anger responds to what I believe to be true, right? Sure. And if I start from a place of falsehood, then the anger that it fuels is not going to be right and it’s not going to end well. Exactly. 

And this is what that inspection looks like. What is true, whether it’s my past or about what I’m hearing? What’s true about my soft emotions? Trying to undercover that goes a long way. Does that synopsis make sense to you? Yes, I think that’s a really good summary and picture of what we’ve been talking about and if we can consider that and work through it, I think that can be very helpful. Perhaps step one is for all of us to take ourselves less seriously to admit that perhaps we don’t see everything perfectly. 

There might need to be some reforming of what I believe to be true and that will go a long way and my emotions playing out appropriately. Definitely. And I think that fits for the person who knows they experience a lot of anger and being able to consider that as well as the person who denies that they have a lot of anger, but everybody seems to say, boy, you seem really angry or you seem really upset. 

And for that person to really consider what they would say they believe isn’t quite accurate. There’s a lot of other folks that seem to have a different perspective. What would be those earmarks of, I wonder if I’m an angry person? Yeah. What would be some things I could consider? 

Yeah, I think that would be one for sure that if others seem to think that you’re angry, that’s a pretty big clue. But it feels like everybody’s being really careful. And that maybe even would be a good question. And I’d encourage you, if you can, to ask people, do you see me as somebody who is safe to be around? Do you feel like you have to be really careful about what you share and that if you do share that it’s going to provoke anger? Sometimes people are careful to share for lots of different reasons, but anger could be a big one. And so, I would consider that.  

I think if you find yourself yelling a lot. That would certainly be a signal, or you can feel that energy rising up and maybe you just notice it, but you just feel it regularly coming up and it doesn’t take a lot. Those are probably indications of anger and just considering is that possible or not for you.  

You know, yelling. Actually, I’ve just got a pause on that point, Brian. When it comes to yelling, I’m not sure it’s ever had the effect that I hoped for. When I’m yelling, I’m thinking oh, this is going to be great. Yeah, I’m not sure I can name one example where yelling did the trick had the effect? It just always seems great in the moment and not good when I reflect on it. 

Yeah, I agree. I mean, the only thing that comes to mind that I would say is otherwise is when, let’s say a child’s running into a street and you yell, for sure that would be the danger. Exactly. But in general, yeah, that yelling, and again, almost all of us do it. Now, there are those saints that you hear of that you’re like, wow. My Grandpa Sutter would certainly have been one of those that, I don’t know that he yelled a day in his life, but most of us cannot relate to that. 

And that when we reflect on it, we recognize it. It really does not bring about what we hope for. But in the moment, we don’t care. It just is coming out. Interesting. Yeah. Other things that come to mind, Matt, would just be like if it’s critical, if it’s really harsh, the tone at which you’re sharing, and sometimes we’re not overly aware of our tone, but that would be something to pay attention to. 

If everything you’re saying seems really sharp and pointed and kind of corrective or critical, those would all be, I think, indications that there could be anger underneath the surface that would be helpful to work through. You know, as you mentioned your Grandpa Sutter, I thought one of the ear markers might be, if it’s not working, he probably was angry a few times, whatever, and it played out well as designed, had its good effect, but so much of my anger doesn’t have the value probably because it was in error.  

Yeah, and it’s one of those interesting emotions, I think, that in some ways, you know at the front end, it can be helpful and effective to bring about what we want if it’s like we’re trying to get somebody’s behavior to change. Sometimes anger can be helpful in that but over the long run we desensitize towards it. And so, then it requires more and more anger and then it loses its effectiveness. 

And so, if you find anger is something that you’re just always in, it’s probably a good indication that it’s not working and that may need to be a reset. Yeah. I really appreciate this, Brian. And I just want to echo again the hope that people can make excellent ground on their anger. 

Once an angry person, not always an angry person, necessarily. Is that true? Yeah, absolutely. And I think another thing I would want to say in that too, Matt, is that your anger, while it can be destructive, that being able to recognize it to be able to apologize and repair after it is so healthy and brings so much healing. 

And so, not to lose heart when anger gets the best of you. And if it is something that continues to get the best of you to keep working at it. There is a great deal of hope. It’s not insurmountable, even though it’s going to show up from time to time. Thanks for that. And thanks, each one, for listening in here to this podcast topic that we all can relate to. 

We’re all recipients of other people’s anger and we do our own share of shelling it out, but I trust that this conversation can bless you and really provide the hope that it has. That with truth our anger can come from a good place and end in a good place as God has designed it. Thanks.