Video Transcript: Anger’s Impact on Health & Wellness

Anger Management Video 12 – Anger’s Impact on Health & Wellness

Here we are at Session 12, and before we get into that information, I want to do a quick recap of what we have been talking about over these last eleven sessions.  And we'll include all of that and you can follow along if you'd like by looking at page 15, the bottom of page 15, and then 16, and 17, and that will then take us up to Session 12.  And we'll get there but let's take a few minutes to bring us all up to speed on what we've been describing here with regard to anger management because I want you to be able to teach this so well, that it sticks in your mind, and gives you the authority, the confidence, and the ability to share this with others and help change their life like it's changing yours and changing mine.

When we deal with a subject of any kind and we're willing to take the risk of sharing it with others, what we're doing is benefiting just not ourselves but those that we share with.  And it becomes more reinforceable for us as well.  

So we'll look at this first slide here. And we look at Building Healthy Relationships.  This was on page 15. And it says – 

• Be honest is not a policy, it is more… it is a way of life. And, 

• Be loving, recognize all are worthy of… dignity and respect 

• Be congruent, make sure that your words and your actions match, and that means spending time ensuring that that's taking place.  And then we said that 

• Precision is a valuable tool in all of this; an extremely valuable tool

And you want to be able to manage all of your behaviors, and healthy relationships to establish an effectiveness that goes beyond this moment and takes people way past where they are, helping them expand their awareness and become more effective and all that they say and do. 

So I want to add another piece of information here, let me pull this slide up and get it positioned for you.  Take a look at page number 16.  On page number 16, we've looked at some defensive behavior triggers.  And if you recall, when we got to this we said that there were some reciprocal, self-protective behaviors that we used.  And we can go back and relook at those but more important than that we have to guard against having defensive behavior triggers and so I'm suggesting that we need to stop doing some things and start practicing others.   And that's what this points out.  You want to stop trying to control and recognize that we're entitled to freedom as are others.  

We need to stop blaming and pointing the finger.  If you recall, in Session 10 we spent some time describing that, and how important it is to stay away from it.  Stay away from that blaming mentality.  And that's what the diagram can help you do.  Recognize that your Dominant Need is just that, a Dominant Need, and it has consequences and responsibilities attached.  

We need to stop judging, and we start evaluating.  We need to recognize indifference and replace it and practice being more objective.  So objectivity is the goal; to be as objective as we can possibly be.  We need to stop providing and getting misinformation and seek the truth.  And when we do this, it really pays a dividend for us and for those around us. 

Let's stay with this handout. The predictor of healthy relationships is empathy.  We move from empathy:  to empathize requires putting ourselves in someone else's shoes.  So when we look at those first two bullet points, empathy is identifying with the feelings or thoughts of another person.  And to empathize requires putting ourselves in someone else's shoes.  And the obstacle to empathy is prejudging a situation or making assumptions. 

So if you notice here, and I'm on page 16, at the bottom of the page, it says recognize everyone has their own unique filter.  And we have to accept that filter and recognize that everyone has a filter.  And so then we accept the fact that it's a wise system.  The first two are required to crawl into another filter to see how the world looks from there.  

In other words, we have to be willing to move from sympathy, which is a place where you can't help anyone, you can only stand with them, and move to a place of empathy where we try to recognize what they're filtering and how they're filtering this information that they're receiving.  

And then accept the fact that as a wise System, that filtering that they have and the filtering that we have is valuable. And the first two are required to crawl into another’s filter.  So we begin to start seeing it from their perspective and their point of view.  

And please step away from pre-judgment.  Please stop value-judging others.  Only observe, only observe. 

So looking at this, let's take a look at some examples of filters.  And here, again, I want to put this slide up here, so you get a chance to see it.  And we'll do that –

Common Ground.  If you want to look at page 17, you can find yourself on page 17, that'll be a good place to be.  Common Ground, you want to look for as much meaning as possible, so it can be shared.  So filters are present in both cooperative and conflict situations. And that's what they look like.  And we talked about states of mind and states of reference, memories, interests, assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, expectations, physical environments. 

I know when I first started coaching, it turned out to be something completely different than what I anticipated it to be.  And that happened because what I was expecting to come out of it was not what was coming out of it.  It was my willingness to be a good listener and by being a good listener, help those doing most of the talking to have a platform where they could hear themselves think out loud. So that's the way I filter information today.  I didn't do that when I started coaching.  But in the last fifteen years, it's made a tremendous difference in how I coach other people. 

So look for the common ground so your meaning is shared.  And these are some examples of that.  Everyone but a hermit practices empathy.  And everyone has the potential to expand their perception and knowledge to practice making it automatic habitual behavior. 

So as we move this slide to the next slide, we're looking at Session 12, Anger’s Impact on Health & Wellness, and this is a very exciting few pages.  And this information can be invaluable to you, when preparing yourselves to teach an anger management class and to manage your life more effectively. 

So if we look at what you see here at the top of the page, ‘Stress is Life’ is your body's nonspecific response to outside stimuli.  And there are two types, and they're listed here, and you have it in your notes.  EU-Stress is good stress, energy, it is a feel-good stress that produces excitement.   And DIS-Stress is bad stress. It saps your energy, lethargic feeling stress that produces unwanted fears and behaviors.  Now, life is a combination of both EU-stress and DIS-stress.  

And I'll tell you a little story that will kind of emphasize why this is such an important piece of information for us to couple with our ability to share with others what we know about anger management in our own lives and in the lives of those around us, and how we've seen it exhibited by others, how we've exhibited ourselves, and then when we start teaching it and sharing it with others, we help them through the same challenges that we faced ourselves.  But it requires us to recognize precisely what stress is.

Stress is life. You are in a state of stress because you're breathing.  And because you're breathing and you're hearing this message we know that you are in stress, because the body is stressed because your muscles have to work.  Your breathing has to continue.  Your eyesight has to blink to clean and clear your eyelids are doing so to clean the eyeball, so you're able to see.

The words you pronounce all are pronounced through the muscles in your lips, your tongue, and your teeth, what we call your vocal variety, your vocal sounds come from these articulators, which are your lips, your tongue, and your teeth.  And these are used to make sounds, and the sounds come out of your mouth and go into your ears.  5780 is the year the mouth and the Hebrew calendar.  And God gave us two ears and one mouth, I've said this before, I'll repeat it here, it means we need to talk less and hear more.

Now, in this environment, where we're doing sessions through video, you get to hear this information over and over again if you're going through these and revisiting them.  And the value is found in the repetition of that.  But you're in a state of stress. 

Hans Selye, the world's foremost authority on the subject said there are two kinds:  EU-stress is buying a house, it's having a baby, it's driving in a brand new vehicle, it's getting a nice new set of clothes.   DIS-stress is paying the mortgage payment, getting up in the middle of the night to feed the infant and then making sure they have shoes and clothes all the way through to their teenage years and beyond. That's a DIS-stress. DIS-tress is the anxiety that we feel when we're in an unfriendly environment, the anxiety we feel when someone gets upset and raises their voice.  That's DIS-stress. 

What's interesting about both types of stress is your body doesn't know the difference between real and imagined stress.  It only knows what you tell it.  One example would be that if you're standing on a street corner, and you start thinking, I'm going to get hit by a car, I'm going to step out into traffic and accidentally get run over, your body begins to react to that as though it happened because your body doesn't know the difference between real and imagined.  It only knows what you tell it. 

And there are various places on your body that send pain signals to your brain.  But those don't happen as quickly as the event itself.  If you cut your finger, it takes nanoseconds but eventually that hurts.  But it doesn't hurt immediately.  But then the pain signal goes to your brain.  Now, there are acupuncture points on your hand, where they can put a needle and stop that pain message going from your cut finger to your brain.  And then they can sew that up with stitches if that need be without you feeling anything because they cut off the signal to your brain. 

And sometimes when we are in a catastrophic event, we respond to the event before we recognize that it's been catastrophic.  I saw a gentleman struck by a car who got up and started walking before he realized he had been struck by a car.  And by the time I got there, and everyone else gathered around him, he was sitting on the curb.  The ambulance came and took him away, but he was going to be okay.  But he took three or four steps after being struck by the car before he realized that he'd been struck by a car.  So your body has to respond. 

We said that if you're on a path and a rattlesnake makes a noise, your gut reaction is to move out of the way.  And that happens before you can think about it.  But there's a little piece of your brain called the hypothalamus, and it sits right back here at the top of your spinal column.  And that drops a hormone, endorphins, into your body to help you deal with stress. 

You also have another mechanism here called the amygdala, and it sits on both sides of your brain right below the hippocampus, which is right here on the side.  The hippocampus is the memory part of your brain so you remember certain things.  And oxytocin is what helps you with those memories and helps lock them in. 

Amygdala is that piece of information that comes to you that cautions you in your body and sets you up to manage stress.  Full situations; distressful situations.  And so the amygdala drops a different kind of chemistry in your body called cortisol.  And both of these two fight against each other.  

Now in distress, you're going have had more cortisol in your body, which makes it harder to go to sleep than you are oxytocin, which makes it easier to go to sleep.  Now that little bit of chemistry is not nearly enough to become a brain scientist and that's not what this is about.  But it does simply help you understand clearly that there is a difference between the two types of stress, and the fact that life is stress, and you have to live it.  And yet, when we look at it the way we've been describing it, there are some things about it that we need to look at. 

So let's take another slide here.  Let's look at this.  Strategies to Manage the Stress of your Life.  Distress is dangerous, it creates the deadly duo.  And the deadly duo, you see it here in your notes, is fear and guilt.  It's a combination of the two - fear and guilt.  

Now, if we look at it, and we recognize that fear and guilt kind of surface, well, how does that happen?  Well, if you're thinking about these chemicals, the oxytocin, which is that comforting chemistry that takes place in our body has a shelf life, for lack of a better way of describing it, it's about half the shelf life of the cortisol.  So that means that DIS-stress lasts longer in your chemistry than EU-stress.  That oxytocin lasts a shorter period of time than does the cortisol. 

So the physical changes in your body are an increased heart rate, headaches, sweaty palms, muscle tension, blood pressure, upset stomach, all of this.  And I'm suggesting here that you have to exorcise the fear and guilt distressed anger brings on.  Fear and guilt based distressed anger needs to be named.  It needs to be specifically named.  

I became upset when they told me that my car repair bill was twice as much as I had been told it would be.  So you have to name it.  You see its effect.  All of a sudden, you felt your face get flushed.  And you glanced in a mirror that they had across from where you're standing and you realize that your face is pink, and it's red, and your ears look like they are two tomatoes because they really got red, and they're very hot.  

Then you realize that the trigger was placed there.  The trigger was they handed you this bill, and you're looking at it and it's the worst outcome you could have possibly imagined because your budget said I can afford the $500, I can't afford the $987.50 that this bill now is.  

And so you name it, you see it placed, faced.  It’s tested: is this reality or not?  What do I do?  And how do I take action?  So it has to be banished by figuring out what action you need to take to make this manageable.  And if we're able to do that, we end up with a lot better approach to managing that stress that's in our lives. 

So I want to tell you a little story that happened to me many, many years ago and because it happened, I have been talking about stress and living my life in a way that has managed the stress that's come into my life over my lifetime.  And I've done it better than I would have had I not known this information as a very ambitious young man.  And I was very ambitious. 

And I was in business for myself at the age of 23 years old.  And I had been in business for myself my entire life.  And the business that I was in was a people oriented business and I had several employees; several meeting more than ten.  And all of a sudden one day I was having a very difficult time breathing.  Now this is fast forwarded from 23 to 27.  So over those four years, this business operation that I had, which continued to grow, was causing me a lot of stress. 

And I went to the doctor and the doctor put a mustard plaster on my back and said that that should help and it would help me sit up straighter and it would also give my lungs an easier chance to breathe.  But on Monday morning, I was still uncomfortable.  So he sent me for an x-ray.  And in that time, he did not do x-rays in his office.  I had to go down the street to get an x-ray.  And I stood in front of the x-ray machine, and they x-rayed my chest.  And I had to go to the telephone - that's how long ago it was that you went to the telephone on the desk.  And he had had the x-rays delivered to him.  He had looked at them and now he wanted to talk to me.  

And he said, Mr. Reusing, “Have we ever taken out your lung?”  And I said, “What?”  He said, “Have we ever taken out your lung?”  I said, “No.”  He said, “We can't find your lung.”

Now, that's a very terrifying thing to say to someone who's 27 years old and has never had a sick day in their life.  I'd been a very healthy young man to that point.  They took another x-ray.  I was called back to the telephone after they had been delivered to him and he had looked at them.  He said, “We found your lung.”  I'm excited.  He said, “It's collapsed.” That's a very scary word. He said, “Your lung is collapsed and we need to fix it.  So I want you to get in your car and go to the hospital and meet me at the hospital.”  I'm just terrified.  He said, “I'll meet you there.”  They did. They brought a wheelchair out. 

After I parked my car, I started walking in, they saw me and they came out with a wheelchair, put me in the wheelchair, took me upstairs, did some tests.  And then a lung doctor came to see me and said with my collapsed lung, they were going to take me up to the operating room.  And they're going to insert a tube in my chest and let the fluid drain off my chest so that my lung could re-inflate.  That's what they did.  It was the most painful experience I had ever had to that point in my life. 

They literally poised this tube that almost looked like a sharp knife on one end.  And they had me take a deep breath. And as I exhaled, they inserted it into my chest cavity.  It was horrible.  And for three days, this fluid drained off of my lung and I became well. 

After I left the hospital and I went back for my checkup, I said to the doctor, “How in the world did I end up with a collapsed lung?”  And he said, “Oh, you probably were under some stress.” Well, that drove me to everything I could read on stress.  And that's where I discovered Hans Selye, and how he explained the Stress Syndrome, the body's nonspecific response to outside stimuli.  That's what it is.  

And I went on a quest to learn as much as I possibly could about stress. I began talking about it and teaching it in my classes.  And I live it to this day.  And I firmly believe that if you're dealing with anger issues, you're trying to teach people how to deal with anger issues, you need to have a component in that teaching, to help people understand the value that they will find in managing stress more effectively. 

And I can fast forward to today and tell you that for my entire life I have practiced stress management, which means when I find myself in stressful situations, and I'm describing stresses, stressful, and stress situations, but we're talking about EU-stress or DIS-stress, and guess what you get to decide which it’s going to be.  When I find myself in those stressful situations, I will take a deep breath.  I'll take another deep breath and one after that.  And I will count the seconds between the breaths of taking in oxygen holding my breath and then releasing it.  And by doing so I'm exchanging the gases from the oxygen to the carbon dioxide that goes out of my body. 

And I'm giving myself…are you ready?... an oxygen sandwich because two thirds of every breath you take goes to your brain first.  So this three-pound mechanism up here and my skull is operating my entire body.  And if I were to say I weigh 150 pounds, 147 pounds of who I am, physically is operated with 1/3 of the breath that I take, and the other two thirds go up here.  So your brain is oxygen starved all the time and always wants more.  And so the amount of blood that you can get to your brain is what helps you become more effective at dealing with stress. 

Now, I teach classes on this.  And it's important that you understand as much as you possibly can about managing the stress in your life, because it helps you manage anger, because you'll start stepping away from, or adding a calm spot, or finding a thinking break.  You'll use all of the resources we've been talking about, to help you manage it in yourself, and teach it to others so they can manage their anger more effectively.  But what it amounts to is doing things very specifically.

If you will join me on page 19. I'll give you some examples of this.  And what we'll do is we'll be able to put this whole session, Session 12, into a nice, neat bow that will wrap around this entire 12 sessions that help you deliver the message that anger management is a must have ability and skill, especially if you're in a leadership role, especially when you are interacting with others and you need to manage your thoughts, your words and your actions.  You need to manage the behaviors and change the behaviors that need to be changed so that you can be your best self and be your best self more often.  

And these 12 things that we're going to read out here and talk to you about can be very helpful. And I'm going to paraphrase, that's all I want to do is paraphrase.  So let's just take a look at what this might look like for you.  And as we go a little bit further into this, let me just find the last little piece here.  And I want to make sure that I've got just the right slide up here.  Okay, let me position the next one and we'll get started so that I can bring this to you at the end of this and it'll be what it needs to be.  Alright, if you're on page 19, you're on the right page.  

Learn how to deal with and manage anger. That's number one. You want to be able to vent steam when necessary and do so recognizing that your emotions need to be managed.  They can't be controlled, but they can be managed.  This is far better than bottling up your anger and letting it rule your life.  It can rule your life and ruin your life.  Anger can put you in a situation that unmanaged can put you in a horrible life sentence.  I've seen it happen.  Sadly, I've seen it happen.  

A young man, whole life ahead of him, he did not learn how to manage his anger.  He had a fender bender and killed the man who ran into him, and serves a life sentence for his rage.  Sad story.  But it's the consequence of acting on that Dominant Need at the moment.  So that Dominant Need never needs to be an expression of anger that is so embedded that it causes you great duress in your life. 

Take time to relax.  When you feel tension building up, get away from it and develop a form of relaxation.  Maybe you like to read, maybe you like to fish, maybe you like to paint or sculpt. Maybe you like to work with your hands doing woodworking.  Maybe you like to go in the yard. It doesn't make any difference what you're using, but you take time to relax which means you take yourself away from what it is that's stressing you.  And by doing so, you add a peacefulness to who you are that makes you a lot more attractive, emotionally and physically to everyone. 

Here's number three:  Place your tasks to easily handle them.  Place them and plan them in such a way that they're easier to handle.  For example, if you've got a task that is seems overwhelming, overwhelming and working with and trying to deal with things that overwhelm, if it's going to take six hours, do it in increments, do it in small bites, 30 minute increments, and set a timer and stop it at 30 minutes and walk away from it.  But plan it in such a way that your tasks are easily handled.  You should plan your work, including simple choices so you can do things one step at a time.   

I know exactly how long it takes for me to replace a trash bag.  I don't like taking out the trash. But it's a joyful experience because I know it's ninety seconds.  And I can look at that and say it's ninety seconds, I can pull out that bag and put a new bag in, get it to the trash, and it takes ninety seconds.  That little bit of planning as corny as it may sound can make a big difference in your life. 

Get away for a while:  Getting yourself involved in something entirely removed from what you do all the time is an excellent way of getting your mind off your problems.  Let's suppose that you go away for two days, and you come back and get 157 emails.  How are you going to manage that?  Get yourself a beverage that you like; get an iced tea, a hot cup of coffee, cocoa, whatever it might be. A carbonated beverage, a glass of wine, whatever you decide will make this a more pleasant task.  

And then look at the 157 emails and divided into four groups. And then divided by four divided by five, three, it doesn't make any difference how you divide it.  But then what you do is you find out from that first increment, how long it takes to respond to those twenty emails?  Is it forty minutes?  Is it thirteen?  What is it?  That's one way to do it.  And then realize that this task is going to take this long.  

And then you're going to decide how you're going to break that time up.  Are you going to do two segments now one segment later, and one tomorrow, whatever that plan is for you.  But get away for a while.  Plan your tasks well, getting yourself involved in something entirely removed from what your job is, be realistic at setting your goals.  Each one of these interacts with the last.  

So if you're learning how to deal with and manage anger, you're taking time to relax, you talk about your problems, you plan your tasks to easily handle them and you get away for a while and you be realistic in setting goals, stop biting off more than you can chew. 

I know entrepreneurs that have the life sucked out of them because they tried to do too many things at one time.  If you decide that you want to do multiple things, great.  Make a list and decide on the top five, and then do not beat yourself up if you only accomplished three.  The other two will continue to be there.  And maybe one of those is so overwhelming that you need to break it into increments.  

Learn to accept what you cannot change.  If you attempt to change something over which you have no control, you are going to be frustrated.  Learn the limits of your power and influence. And we suggested to you that you write down, my job is to manage the moment and scratch it out and replace the word job with joy.  My ‘joy’ is to manage the moment.  And my ability to do that is based on how willing I am to recognize I can't control anything.  And there are things that will not change with all the effort I put into it.  And so if you accept that fact, the next fact you can accept for yourself is I too can do what I need to do and in order to do what I need to do, I need to manage moments incrementally and stretch it into a series of moments that give me the kind of time I need to deal with what I have to deal with. 

Number eight, listen to your body. This one is extremely important. I go back to being 27 years old, and recognizing that I wasn't paying attention to the signs, to the signals, that I was getting from my body.  And I will tell you this.  Everything that you deal with that gives you distress will have a physical imprint on your body.  

I've seen it happen over and over.  I've seen it bring down people in high places who ended up with catastrophic diseases and challenges because their body just overtook itself because of the distress in their lives.  Suicide, tragically is someone who has decided they can't handle the distress their life is bringing them.  You get to choose.  You get to make choices.  Please don't make that kind of a choice. 

And that's what you want to help people understand; that if they go to their Heavenly Father, that's the very best place they can be to deal with what overwhelms them and recognize that God has your back.  So in all of this, this is what we come to listen, listen, listen.  Pay attention, and interact with God to help you through those moments when you struggle.  

The 12 anger management sessions will add another step on the preparation to live, manage, and teach others, according to many biblical references. And I have one here, it's from John 10:10.  Jesus said, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” You decide what you want, you decide what it will be.  

Let's take a look at this last slide and notice here, that what we have is a final statement, and then we have that quote from John 10:10.

This final word is here as a reminder that this material is valid for you, based upon your willingness to absorb it and teach it in a way that brings home each one of these messages so it clearly helps you define how you manage and deal with your life.  

As you go back to your ministry, your coaching, your social work, as you go back to your parenting, as you go back to teaching those classes that you already teach, please be reminded that your ethos, your enthusiasm, your spirit within comes out in all you say and do.  

And my hope is that this and these last 11 sessions, in addition to this one, are helpful to you in dealing with this very important subject of managing anger, conflict, frustration, anxiety, all based on fear and guilt.  And remember this:  God has forgiven us when we've asked for forgiveness.  Now it's time to say, I forgive myself.

I hope all of you take away from this, those pieces of information.  They're going to be valuable to you and so valuable you want to share them with others. 

God bless. Thank you.