Summary
Joe and Brett explore anger as a misunderstood and feared emotion, distinguishing between feeling anger and using anger to manipulate or control others. Joe shares a story of expressing anger while cooking breakfast — jumping up and down saying “I’m angry!” — which his daughter praised rather than feared, illustrating what healthy anger expression looks like: not directed at anyone, just felt and moved.
Joe explains that anger serves three crucial functions: it reveals what you care about, signals a boundary that needs attention, and points to an underlying fear. When anger is repressed — because of childhood conditioning, trauma, or societal taboos — it converts into passive aggression, depression, disempowerment, and feeling stuck. The solution isn’t to direct anger at others but to express it physically and vocally in safe spaces (the car, the beach, the woods).
The episode also addresses how to be with others’ anger, the relationship between anger suppression and societal dysfunction, and the distinction between aggressive and passive-aggressive expressions. Joe emphasizes that a society welcoming anger becomes determined rather than dangerous, while one suppressing anger grows increasingly volatile.
Key Concepts
- Anger is love with a boundary
- Express anger without directing it
- Passive aggression is unowned aggression
- Anger unresisted is determination
- Childhood origins of anger repression
- Fear of anger drives conflict avoidance
- Anger reveals where we feel trapped
Key Quotes
“That’s what anger looks like when it’s not at somebody. It’s just you’re just angry. You’re just frustrated. It just is what it is.”
“Anger for me nowadays shows that there’s something that I care about. If I’m angry about something, it means there’s something that I care about and that I love.”
“A society that doesn’t suppress its anger is just determined.”
“If you get hacked out by a sword enough you’re going to dislike the sword. But then you don’t get to use the sword in the way that it’s useful, that is constructive and beautiful.”
“It’s not your job to love anybody’s anger. It’s your job to love yourself, all the aspects of you.”
Transcript
foreign I think it’s most dangerous if someone’s like okay I should be good with other people’s anger you shouldn’t if like you either are or you’re not and if you’re not take care of yourself and if you are greatly in just worry about loving your own anger and all the rest of it will take care of itself welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson foreign [Music] it may be that the most misunderstood and hated emotion in our society is anger at some point in probably everyone’s life words spoken and anger have cut us deep to the Bone actions taken from a place of Rage have broken relationships and door hinges and turned families and societies against themselves but where would we be without our anger and how can anger point to what we and others love and care deeply about what does anger look like when we allow ourselves to feel it fully and cleanly Welcome to our series on emotions and the wisdom behind them how are you doing today Joe I’m doing well it’s uh rainy spring day in Sonoma County so Joe what makes us so afraid of anger I think a lot of us have suffered abuse through anger right and I think a lot of us have abused other people through anger there’s a time in like development where you get so angry that you’ve like lose control you do something that you don’t want to do you say something that you don’t want to say and that often hurts other people and often we are taught pretty early on that getting angry can get you what you want or can oppress you if it’s a power over Dynamic one person’s oppressed and one person is apparently getting what they want and so no matter which side you’re on on that there’s a certain amount of shame that goes along with it you can’t feel completely 100 good with having oppress somebody and you can’t feel completely 100 good at being oppressed and so for all those reasons anger this what I would call this very beautiful amazing energy gets tabooed it gets hated it gets people are scared of it and then it becomes this weapon and this villain and then the whole society kind of points towards that anger is like an out of controlledness or something and they’re not they’re not making the distinction between the emotion of anger and somebody using anger at somebody using anger to manipulate so what is what is that distinction then between feeling anger in a way that’s not meant to manipulate or control it’s going and getting angry say out in the woods it would be a kind of a simplified example of it another example is like you know I’m I have this thing about cooking breakfast and my kids have this thing about like waiting unconsciously waiting for the moment when like all the pancakes have to be done at the right place and the eggs are blah blah blah right so it’s like that moment of like okay I’m totally focused and then that’ll be the time my kids might ask me for like three or four things at the same time or my wife will be like hey have you you know cut the lawn or whatever and not that I’ve cut the lawn in like decades or maybe ever but um and so there’s a story one time that was happening and I was just so frustrated and I put down my spatula and I jumped up and down I was like I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry I’m angry and my daughter who is I know she was like 11 she looked at me and she goes that was some pretty good anger dad I was like ah thanks that’s what anger looks like when it’s not at somebody it’s just you’re just angry you’re just frustrated it just is what it is like God damn it kid stop talking to me while I’m cooking dishes like I’m trying to control them right I’m using my anger to influence them to scare them into submission yeah and so yeah of course you know if you get hacked out by a sword enough you’re going to dislike the sword but then you don’t get to use the sword in the way that it’s useful that is constructive and beautiful so what is what is the way that is constructive and beautiful when when you’re feeling anger in the kitchen with your kids anger for me nowadays there’s a couple things one is it shows it shows that like there’s something that I care about if I’m angry about something it means there’s something that I care about and that I love right and so I’m in this particular case I care that I’m like cooking for my kids that I’m nurturing them that you know it’s like that I I’m taking my responsibility as a dad seriously like there’s there’s love and care there so that’s one of the things that teaches me the second thing it teaches me is that I have a boundary that’s being crossed there’s a way in which I’m not taking care of myself right and so in that case with my kids you know there’s probably three times that they’ve tried to interrupt me before and instead of saying hey sweetie I’m cooking could I just have you know time to concentrate and then we can talk over breakfast I’ve instead gone I should I should be okay with her interrupting me I’d be a good dad if I if she was interrupting me and I was good with it why am I not patient why am I so bothered by the fact that she’s interrupting me you know I did something like that instead of taking care of myself and saying oh hun I’d love to talk to you about that but let’s do it over let’s do it over lunch so that’s a that’s another thing so there’s a boundary that I that that I’m not taking care of myself and so that’s the second indicator and then the third indicator is that there’s something that I’m scared about there’s some way in which I’m scared that I’m gonna like make a crap breakfast and then everybody’s gonna make fun of me or whatever they’re gonna not want to eat it or you know I’m I’m not gonna can’t remember exactly a circumstance at the time but maybe I was scared that I was gonna make more work for my wife had already worked really hard that week with the kids or whatever it was right so that there’s also a fear there and so that’s also a really good indicator it’s like what is it that I’m that I feel scared right and and all that together is like if you feel that fear and you feel the care there’s often this feeling of trappedness that comes along with it too which is like okay I’m a bad dad if I don’t get the pancakes right cook the things right a bad dad if I don’t answer their questions I can’t win you know it’s like that and so those are the indicators of what the anger is and then so that really allows you to open up the whole thing but all of that is like this very intellectual process and in the case of this where you just let the anger move for a moment yeah I’m just so angry and they’re like that’s good Angry Dad like immediately I have connection again and immediately I had clarity and I remember after it was done I was like yeah and then we all kind of laughed and I said hey can you let me Focus for a minute until breakfast is ready they’re like yeah and that Clarity of action like this is this is what I need to take care of myself and you just do it and anger just talks differently than logic does you know logic talks like actually all emotions probably talk differently than logic does in the same way and logic is like a plus b equals c and therefore a minus C equals B that’s kind of the logic system whereas anger is more like clarity and so when you really allow the anger to move through without the resistance with the love you you find these great moments of clarity and empowerment you mentioned this thing about how there’s like damned if you do damned if you don’t thing where you feel trapped between these two and there’s these two outcomes you want to avoid being a bad dad in one way or being a bad dad in another way so like like anger seems to be something that comes up when we feel trapped there could be times that we are physically trapped and we’re angry but more often than not we’re just psychologically trapped we’re emotionally feeling trapped and so that that anger is our attempt our determination to get out of that trappedness like that seems like a healthy impulse to have how does that become Twisted into something that’s dangerous and damaging it feels like there’s a that’s a two-part question the first part of your question is how does it directly which is we then use the anger to try to control others but the the deeper question is like how does that even get to the feeling of trackness in the first place and that’s usually based on trauma right it’s usually based on so for instance I would be a fine father if I screwed up the pancakes and that’d be a fine father if I showed frustration at my kids right like none of those is going to make me a bad father maybe doing them over and over and over and over and over and over again on purpose or something would but right so I’m not actually trapped in that moment I’m not actually trapped but I’ve convinced myself I am and the reason that we convince ourselves we’re trapped when we’re not is often because of our childhood right because in my childhood for instance if I didn’t do something right I would get yelled at so I’m trying not to get yelled at so I feel trapped not because I’m trapped in this particular day and age I’m trapped because it reminds me of a situation where I was trapped as a kid so that’s the other thing that happens is that the feeling oftentimes we’re not angry at the situation we’re in we’re angry at a situation that we couldn’t control from our earlier Childhood Days and Trauma is basically the experience of being in an old circumstance instead of the circumstance you’re currently in I.E somebody who has PTSD thinking that they’re back in Iraq when they’re in the middle of Illinois well you put yourself back into a situation that’s not what’s occurring today so what makes us then so afraid of feeling that anger yeah yeah what makes us afraid of feeling it I think generally with almost all these emotions each one has their own particular thing right but with almost all negative emotions um people feel they’re scared of doing it because they think it’s going to make it last forever and then the other reason particularly with anger is that people think they will destroy things with anger right and you can see some of the other traditions where the the angry entity the angry expression of God whether it’s you know the Tibetan habit you know these angry expressions of the Divine and the Hindus have this these angry expressions of the Divine there’s this understanding that the destruction and rebirth is part of the natural cycle and that anger is part of that destruction and so it’s seen as kind of how things get built is by allowing them to be destroyed and that that conflict and the friction is part of the rebuilding it’s part of the evolutionary process for people and the anger felt when we get scared they were angry is that we’re going to destroy it we’re going to hurt somebody we’re gonna end a relationship but you know we’re not going to be loved anymore that’s the that’s the fear and and our brains you just watch it our brains don’t even notice in this moment that there’s another option it’s like if I I can’t get angry because I might destroy my friendship but they it never thinks oh well just go get angry somewhere else oh like what makes that happen if you really think about that for a second it’s like so I’m mad at a friend and then I tell myself well I can’t get angry at them because I might lose my friendship with them so I’ll just go get angry somewhere else nobody thinks that then it’s like no I’ll just repress the anger so what makes that so it’s because it’s not really about this fear of Destruction that’s happening it’s really about the fear that I will be destroyed by my own anger hmm if I let anger out I might lose myself in it maybe in the in the case of the friend the fear that we will lose the friend because we know that if we draw the boundary that we need to draw we might lose the friend right but even before the boundary even just like okay let’s say you’ve stolen something from me and I’m upset with you and I’m like well I can’t get angry because then I might lose him and you know it’s only 20 bucks let’s say but I don’t go okay well I’m just gonna like go to the beach and just yell and get really angry at Brett and then I’ll come back you know it’s just like what makes it that we don’t think that what makes it that the only options are angry at the person or repress the anger what limits our thinking to that small instead of I’m going to write something really angry and then I’m going to burn it up or I’m going to go to the beach and yell or all sorts of ways that you can express anger what makes it that we just don’t do any of that don’t even think to do any of those things yeah well something that comes up for me is like so many of us are never really alone in the woods or alone on the beach or so rarely in fact the time that we might be alone might be when we’re driving which might explain how so much road rage tends to come out when people feel alone but they’re actually interacting with others between metal and glass and that’s a moment where they can a rare moment where they can process their anger without scaring everybody around them or being judged yeah as a matter of fact I have a lot of my clients and they’re like I don’t have a safe place to be angry I’m like get in your car do you like do it on your commute I had this one um executive that I worked with and she you know when we first started working together she very much felt you know like a victim like she didn’t have control over this big bureaucracy I was like look here’s the homework just get angry every night on your commute every night just get pissed at everything that happened that you want to get pissed at and literally within like two or three weeks her empowerment changed significantly her level of empowerment changed significantly she didn’t feel as trapped anymore and I would say like a kind of a low-level Depression started changing for her into much more empowerment and I’ve seen that dozens of times and yeah maybe if a car is the only place you’ve got do the car if you know one executive I worked with the other day went to the beach you know went right up to the ocean and yelled at the ocean nobody could hear you know in San Francisco there’s always a way to do it and there’s always a reason not to because our brain will find any way that it can to not be angry if we were told as a kid that anger was bad or if we were punished for anger or if we got to experience as someone’s abuse through anger you know we’ll just we’ll shut it down in us and ourselves and we’ll suffer depression because of it and will feel like we’re like we can’t make the moves that we want to make we’ll feel disempowered because of it because we don’t have access to that beautiful energy of anger in a way that’s healthy and loving what if somebody has just a lot of anger built up and the drive home on a commute isn’t enough to release all of it so it’s just open to floodgates and the moment they get home they’re still angry and take it out on their family keep driving keep driving there’s no yeah I find a different way like walk in the door go oh I’m still angry hey guys look I’m really angry right now I don’t want to take it out on any of you I’m gonna go drive and yell for a couple 20 minutes and I’ll be back all right I I can’t imagine a husband or a wife going no no no no no no I need you to help cook they’re gonna be like great please don’t get angry at us thank you I don’t know I could imagine that I could also imagine somebody seeing somebody being like I’m angry and I need to go drive think that they’re being abandoned by that and try to stop it yeah I think I need to go drive or I’ll be back in 20 minutes I think is a huge difference between the abandonment and non-abandonment what I notice is that when somebody’s removing their love as a form of punishment they don’t give you a timeline all right yeah like hey Brett yeah I just can’t be around you goodbye or hey Brett I’m not able to be with myself and right now in a way that I want to be with you and so give me 20 minutes I’ll be back let’s start the conversation again hugely different things yeah it’s true what do you think the repercussions of having an episode on anger can you can you yeah repercussions of having an episode on anger is you know people might feel permission to just start abusing people in their lives with their anger um under the guise of um just moving my anger right yeah so for sure we’re not recommending anywhere that someone gets angry at another person I think that’s part of the shame cycle that’s part of the blame cycle and it’ll only make the anger more stuck so but I think the real repercussion of Anger of an anger episode or I think one of the real repercussions is there’s a series of people out there who’ve really been hurt by another person’s anger and they are going to be upset that anybody is saying that anger could be a beautiful and good thing and most likely because they’ve been hurt so bad by anger that they’re not going to be aggressive about it they’ll be passive aggressive about it and so the most likely thing that we’ll get is you know a series of subtle passive aggressive attacks you know built under like I don’t feel safe with this episode or you know some way of demeaning the conversation through a passive aggression I think that’s like the most likely scenario for an episode on anger or perhaps somebody blaming the episode on anger for somebody listening to it and then taking anger out on them yeah that could happen as well yeah yeah and again we’re not recommending anybody take anger out at anybody right that’s just resisted anger it’s like we’re talking about loving your anger we’re talking about letting it move letting it get out we’re talking about learning to have anger unresisted instead of being lost in your anger yeah so like something that we’re pointing to right now is like I’ve I’ve been feeling a little bit off in this episode talking about anger because anger is so uncomfortable to talk about or like to bring into like a conversation and it’s so deeply patterned in my system that even right now recording this episode I’m like oh my God people are going to get angry at me people are going to get angry at us um they’re gonna take it out on us it’s actually been blocking my clarity and my Wonder in this conversation yeah which is a really just interesting observation for myself yeah I I get you know having done uh back in the day these workshops these live workshops there was always somebody who would get angry at me in the middle of the workshop and I was really good when somebody was just like outright angry right they’d be like and I’d be like yeah tell me about it like please I want to hear it what’s the wisdom in your anger what do you care about that’s making you like this like I want to respect that and then get angry and then they would see that they were met and like it would all be done but the ones that trap me especially early on were the passive aggressive ones the ones where the aggression was done through the idea of safety or you know we didn’t make introductions and so I don’t feel safe and you know it was that way it was hard for me to learn how to deal with that because there was just kind of this subtle attack that wasn’t being acknowledged as an attack and it would undermine the group you know undermine everybody else’s ability to get things done and to learn what they were there to learn and what I learned was to just say hey great I really hear that you’re upset with something I’ve done can you help me by just being really just direct and angry with me about it just as an experiment like just instead of being passive aggressive be aggressive aggressive and as soon as I learned that you know and if they were game they would do that and then they would have this big smile on their face and I’d have a big smile on their face and they would feel the freedom of actually getting in touch with their anger um it was a whole different thing but it it messed with me because it you know at some point in in that process I was like oh I hope I don’t have somebody who’s doing that passive aggressive thing you know it dismissed me because I was a white man or dismissed me because I was a venture capitalist at some point or whatever dismissed me because I swore too much whatever it was right and and yeah it’s a it’s a challenge to learn how to love people’s anger in both the aggressive and the passive aggressive forms it’s a challenge and it’s so rewarding there’s a component of that that’s learning to love the anger but then there’s also a component of being okay with feeling the fear of you know somebody undermining the entire group so it seems like there’s two things here there is welcoming and becoming more and more okay with our anger so that we can be with people in their anger and comfortable with that yes um and then there’s also the like attenuating the fear response to anger the threatened feeling right the threatened feeling or the trauma and that can take time and be patient with yourself and draw good boundaries I think it’s most dangerous if someone’s like okay I should be good with other people’s anger you shouldn’t if like you either are or you’re not and if you’re not take care of yourself and if you are great lean in yeah just worry about loving your own anger and all the rest of it will take care of itself yeah it seems like the being the shooting oneself to be okay with someone else’s anger could easily put you in a position where you’re putting yourself in a position to receive more anger than your nervous system can handle correct that’s right which will then make you respond in ways that you didn’t want to respond correct yeah if your system goes into freeze if you are unable to maintain love draw a boundary remove yourself and learn and learn to love your own anger and it’ll all work out but there’s no rush in any of this it’s not your job to love anybody’s anger it’s your job to love yourself all the aspects of you so Joe what do you think given that we have so much anger coming up in our society right now what do you think society would look like if everybody was doing this if everybody had at some stage where people are welcoming each other’s anger and welcoming their own anger and drawing the boundary and removing themselves from a situation so that they can feel it and process it in a safe place like what would that look like far more peaceful far more loving let’s like look at a political debate for a second if somebody on one side of the fence as if there were a fence as if there was a side but one person on one side of the fence is really emotional really upset and really getting angry over something that somebody on the other side of the fence did and it’s not this manipulative at anger at anything right like like you see the pundits do and you have this anger and you and that they were met with love yeah how does that change how does it change like yeah I see that there’s something really important here that you care about I mean the crazy thing is on both sides of the political Spectrum on both sides is that people feel stuck and trapped in a country that they don’t want to be a part of anymore and they don’t feel like they can do anything about it so we’re incredibly unified in this way we all agree we all agree that the country is in the country that we want exactly and that we want it to change and we feel frustrated that we can’t get it to change but don’t care what side of the spectrum you’re on and if we can love and accept that in each other and if we can let the anger Express in a way that’s not controlling anybody that’s not shame based or blame based then our society has a determination to shift and that’s what you see like countries that are on their way up are countries who believe and understand that they have the capacity to change and then they have the capacity to grow and they have the capacity to become more powerful and there’s very few people in our country that believe that anymore almost everybody in our country seems to suffer under the delusion that Society is in a place where nothing can be done to make it better it’s like a taunt apathy and of course that makes you angry if you believe that how could it not something you care about so much like your children your friends your family your country all being stuck into a situation that that is no good for anybody yeah of course How would how could you not be angry does it really matter what side you’re angry at of course you’re going to be angry right it seems like there’s the sort of the Paradox there is that a society that is suppressing its anger is becoming more and more angry and dangerous ways yeah and a society that doesn’t suppress its anger is just determined yeah most societies I see kind of repress their anger not all but most suppress their anger but they they have better or worse outlets for the anger you know it’s no mistake that as all of our outlets for anger whether it be gyms or sports games or got taken away from us during covid that it started manifesting in other ways the anger has to get out it’s gonna get out the question is like how does it how does that get manifested in a way that’s healthy how do you do it in a way that’s respectful and loving and not at anybody so this was a lot of really good intellectual discussion and I’m curious if you have any any questions for our audience to sit with after this episode yeah I have three the first one is um what’s necessary for you to express your anger without hurting anybody or doing it at anybody what would it take for you to feel safe doing that and then another question I would ask is how can you love your anger unconditionally how can you love your anger the same way that you wish to love the kids that you have or the kids that you hope to have and the last question I would put out is what would it take for you to never get angry at somebody again and to allow yourself to be angry whenever you were oh yeah it’s does sound very interesting to sit with thank you Joe you’re welcome Brett it’s a pleasure to be with you again as always thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com thank you