Summary
Joe reframes anger as a flow of energy that, when unresisted, is actually a deep expression of love — we only get angry about things we care about. Unkinked anger looks like Martin Luther King or Gandhi: clear boundaries held in love. What most people call “anger” — yelling, violence, self-criticism, depression, feeling stuck — are actually symptoms of repressed anger, where the energetic “hose” has been kinked in different directions.
Joe teaches three key principles for working with anger: first, you can express anger without directing it at anyone (his pancake story with his daughter illustrates this); second, don’t judge anger or expect it to be logical — it moves as raw energy and only reaches clarity after it flows through; third, watch out for creating shame by breaking things or hurting people while angry, which reinforces the belief that anger is dangerous. He offers a free-writing experiment as a practical entry point.
Key Concepts
- Unresisted anger is love expressing a clear boundary
- Repressed anger kinks into depression, self-criticism, and rage
- You can express anger without directing it at anyone
- Anger reaches clarity only after it moves through
- The champagne bottle effect of releasing stored anger
Key Quotes
“If anger is unkinked it is really a deep expression of love. We do not get angry at anything that we do not have care for.”
“What we’ve been taught is anger is the way somebody tries to control us and so it’s a bad thing.”
“I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry and my little girl looked at me and she said ‘oh that was some good anger dad’ because she knew it wasn’t anger at her.”
“If you let the anger move all the way through then you get this idea — people feel stuck, they move some anger, they feel unstuck.”
“It’s like a champagne bottle — the pop happens, all the champagne comes out, and then you can learn to just enjoy it.”
“Anger does not talk like logic. Logic talks like a plus b equals c. Anger goes… clarity.”
Transcript
feeling stuck depression self-criticism and raging at people they’re all forms of repressed anger in this video we are going to talk about what anger actually is cuz it’s not what you think how the symptoms of repressed anger happen how to have a great relationship with your anger and some things to watch out for and then at the very end we’re going to give you an experiment that you can run so that you can have a new relationship with your anger so let’s start with what anger actually is the way to think about anger is that there is a tube of energy moving through you or an emotional experience that you’re having and if you constrict it or resist against it or try to repress it it Kinks the tube in different areas and if it’s Kink this way it sounds like this I’m not angry and if it Kinks this way it’s nice dress and if it’s kinked this way it’s you son of a and if it’s Kink this way it’s I’m such an I’m I’m so bad why do I always so the way it’s kinked tells you the symptoms that you’re going to have if anger is unkinked it is really a deep expression of love we do not get angry at anything that we do not have care for right so we wouldn’t get angry if something like brushed up against us in the subway but if somebody like hurt our kid we would get angry because we have a deep care for that and so if that anger is unresisted or if it’s met with a tremendous amount of Love is another way to say that then your anger looks like Martin Luther King anger or it looks like Gandhi anger it looks like anger that that is hey I am here in love but I’m not going to accept this it’s like a very clear boundary and that’s what anger ends up being when it’s completely unrestricted so often times in our society what people say is anger which is somebody yelling at somebody else violently that that’s what we think anger is but that’s not anger that’s repressed anger it’s anger where the hose has been kinked if you can’t express it one way you’re going to express it another if you can’t just say oh wow I’m angry because mom wouldn’t let me get angry then you’re going to put anger at yourself you’re going to criticize yourself or it could be that you had a dad who was a yeller who always screamed you said I’m never going to be like that or you felt internally so out of control when you got angry you’re like I don’t want to feel that there’s a lot of ways that you might have learned to constrict your anger let’s go into how to have a good relationship with anger so for some reason which is just mindboggling when you see it most humans think that there’s two options I get angry at somebody or I don’t get angry but there’s this like other option that’s like iaz I go get angry and I don’t do it at anybody I don’t I don’t yell at anybody I don’t break stuff I don’t destroy stuff I just allow that anger to move through my body that’s another option and somehow or another most of us just don’t even see it until you see it and then it’s like oh it’s just so obvious and so a great story about this is when I was coming to terms with with my own anger and learning to move it I was like I was like 35 37 years old or something and I had two little girls and every time I made pancakes I was like okay I’m going to make some pancakes and no matter what like when everything was about to burn and everything was going wrong that’s when the kids would ask me questions that’s when my girls would ask me questions and they did that one day and I stopped and I went I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry and my little girl looked at me and she said oh that was some good anger dad because she knew it wasn’t anger at her she knew that anger was safe and there’s nothing wrong with it but very few of us have ever been taught that what we’ve been taught is anger is the way somebody tries to control us and so it’s a bad thing so the first thing is to to have a good relationship is to realize oh you can express anger without hurting anybody that’s the most important thing the second thing is to not judge your anger so typically if we allow ourselves to express anger we expect anger to look like logic and if it doesn’t then we get judgmental of it right like anger does not talk like logic logic talks like a plus b equals c anger goes Clarity that’s how anger moves if you let the anger move all the way through then you get this idea people feel stuck they move some anger they feel unstuck people feel like they’re beating themselves up they move some anger they’re not beating themselves up as much anymore but if you expect it to be logical and judge it if it isn’t or judge yourself for having it or judge the thoughts that are coming through with it then you’ll never move the anger you’ll never get to the clarity on the other side now let’s move into the things to watch out for when you’re working with it and we’ve covered these a little bit already but let’s go into them with a little more depth the first one is do not get angry in a way that’s going to create some shame and the two ways that typically people do that is they get angry at somebody or they break something or destroy something that’s important to them while getting angry and either one they get to say oh see anger isn’t safe oh see anger is bad oh see I’m hurting somebody with anger and so it reifies that Loop of anger is something that’s not good to do so that’s the first thing so make sure that when you get anger you do it in a way that is loving and caring for you and everybody else around you the second thing is studies will show this if you start expressing anger especially if you haven’t expressed any for a long time it’s like a lot of anger is going to possibly come up so you’re going to be noticing oh my God I’m getting angry at this I’m getting angry at that which just means you need to move more anger in a safe place now eventually that starts going down it’s like a champagne bottle the pop happens all the champagne comes out and then you can learn to just enjoy it and and have the full experience of the champagne it’s the same with anger as that channel becomes unconstricted anger just looks like this oh no I’m not I’m not willing to accept that oh that doesn’t work for me it’s just clear boundaries and it’s Clarity of like oh I’m going to do this and I’m not going to be stopped because of what other people think right that that’s what happens when that anger is completely unmoved it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to get angry every once in a while but it the kind of it that Big E and flow of anger dissipates and then anger just becomes a very cohesive part of your life and it’s a another ex of Your Love in the world moving anger for the first time can be a little bit tricky so that’s something that we do in courses and that experiment isn’t going to be here but there’s a great way to just get started with your anger the experiment is simply sit down and write like free write non-stop writing without any thinking something that you’re angry at just anger anger anger anger anger you know use the word and get angry and ah like fully write but don’t do anything and just do the free right and if you look at the neurological studies of people doing free writing it allows them to kind of go past their logical brain so it’s very useful in that way and you get some movement in your body which makes it helpful but the important piece here is that you can’t allow the judgment to come in or expect the anger to be a specific way so your brain might say something like that doesn’t make any sense that you’re angry and the answer is like yes it doesn’t but I’m just going to listen to it and see what happens or you’re going to say something like you have no reason to be angry you’re right emotions aren’t rational that’s how it works okay great and you’re just going to keep on writing and if you allow yourself to write like that at some point you’re going to get to a Moment of clarity you’re going to see something that you hadn’t seen before you’re going to have some breakthrough and so you just keep on writing until you get that breakthrough so the experiment is to do that and I would suggest every other day for a while but definitely do it until you find a way to do that writing that gets you the Breakthrough which is just a way to do the writing without the Judgment without telling it to be one way or another thing without any pre-editing just letting it flow out thanks for watching the video I hope you got a lot out of it if you liked it and you want more hit like And subscribe and if you have anything you want us to cover just leave us a comment