Episode Overview:

In this heartfelt episode of 5 Year You, Andrew and Catherine take on the delicate topic of anger—how it manifests, why it’s often misunderstood, and how to manage it constructively. They share personal experiences, reflect on their individual relationships with anger, and discuss the importance of self-awareness and healthy outlets. Whether you’re prone to bottling emotions or experiencing explosive outbursts, this episode provides practical strategies for dealing with anger in ways that foster growth and maintain harmony.

Key Topics Covered:

• Understanding Anger: How anger is a natural emotion but requires thoughtful management.
• Self-Awareness Cues: Recognizing physical and emotional signs that anger is building.
• Healthy Outlets for Release: Practical tools like exercise, breathing techniques, and creative outlets for managing anger.
• Boundaries and Communication: How to let others know where you’re at emotionally to prevent escalation.
• Releasing the Pressure: Andrew’s Instant Pot analogy for anger management and why it’s important to find controlled ways to let emotions out.

Actionable Steps for Listeners:

1. Identify Triggers: Reflect on situations or behaviors that tend to ignite anger and start recognizing early cues.
2. Practice Deep Breathing: Use techniques like box breathing to calm your body and mind.
3. Create Healthy Habits: Incorporate regular exercise, journaling, or mindfulness practices to prevent anger from building.
4. Set Emotional Boundaries: Share where you are emotionally with those around you to create understanding and space.
5. Seek Connection: Talk to a trusted friend or therapist to work through unresolved anger.

Quotes:

Catherine’s Aha Moments:

• "You can feel however you want, but you can’t act however you want."
• "Anger is just an emotion; it’s not bad. What matters is how we choose to handle it."
• "Thirty minutes alone can be transformative—I call it my recharge time."
• "You deserve to have a calm life, and that starts with managing your emotions."
• "Being self-aware isn’t a destination; it’s an ongoing practice."

Andrew’s Aha Moments:

• "Anger is energy that needs to go somewhere—if it doesn’t, it festers inside."
• "The Instant Pot analogy: release your emotions gradually, or they’ll explode."
• "Deep breaths aren’t about fixing anger; they’re about creating space to respond better."
• "Helping someone else when you’re angry can shift your mood entirely."
• "Doing good feels good—it’s a great way to redirect your emotional state."

Glimmers of the Week:

• Catherine: Attending her first hockey game and watching Wicked during a Thanksgiving trip to Canada with Andrew.
• Andrew: Spending American Thanksgiving with Catherine, enjoying shared meals and creating new traditions.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Anger Management Workbook for Women by Julie Catalano – A practical guide for understanding and managing anger.
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk – A deeper dive into how unresolved emotions impact the body.

Connect with Us:

• Visit Five Year You to sign up for emails from your future self and gain insights on managing emotions.
• Follow us on Instagram @fiveyearyou.

Disclaimer:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not substitute professional advice. Please consult a healthcare provider for any medical or emotional concerns. Some links mentioned in this episode may be affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our work!

Thank you for tuning in! If this episode resonated with you, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could benefit from these tools. See you next time!

Do you ever get angry?

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Silly question, we all do.

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But how do you handle anger?

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How do you move forward through it?

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And most importantly, how do you cope with yourself when you're angry and how to help

others cope is what this episode is all about.

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And I think it's gonna be a little bit of a touchy subject because it's anger.

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And I think anger in general is kind of like, it's just like a hot stove, right?

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You're like, okay, I know I'm not supposed to touch it, but you know, I gotta do something

about that heat.

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How you doing, Kat?

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I'm good.

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If you're watching on YouTube, you will see that I have brought my smiley face hat to this

interview about anger, this podcast episode about anger, I should say.

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So I am dressed and ready for the occasion.

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I like that.

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So this episode was your idea and I really like it.

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It's not something that I, mean, my whole life I was really tamped down with anger.

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It wasn't something that you exhibited.

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The dynamic that I had just didn't allow for it because of my sister and her sensitivities

to noise and just any kind of aggression really.

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So.

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It's I'm kind of discovering anger in a safe way as you would call it in my, you know, in

my later years.

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What would you say to somebody like me who is like, how do I handle this?

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You know, when I get angry, what do I do?

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Well, it's a good question.

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I was actually going to encourage you to give listeners some background because if this is

their first time listening to our show, they might not know.

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I know you've talked about your sister a lot in previous episodes, but they might not have

understood that reference.

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And then that can give us a jumping off point, like just sharing some of our personal

experiences and how we've had to learn and adapt to anger and handling and all of that.

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Absolutely.

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My sister had, has very, very severe autism.

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She's, I would say she's kind of trapped.

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She's a 40 year old trapped in a three year old's body.

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And growing up, she would get terrible migraines all the time.

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Like it was, you could set your clock to it.

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You knew like it was Monday afternoon, she would have a migraine and it would last for

usually a couple of days.

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As I went through all this, I had to get quiet and then there was other things that came

up.

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My sister abused me.

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She was very violent with me and I was never as angry as I could get.

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I knew better than to retaliate against my sister who really didn't have control over

faculties when these things were happening.

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But

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I also ended up swallowing a lot of anger that didn't have many releases over the years.

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And so my coping way of doing that with my anger just was, I don't know if it's common or

not.

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I never know if my experiences are common.

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I'm starting to, the more people I talk to, I'm getting like head shakes going like, no,

that wasn't normal.

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I, maybe this is a normal anger thing.

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Maybe it's not, but I find that.

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experiencing anger led me to just feel on edge because that energy had nowhere to go.

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mean like what is anger?

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It's this buildup of energy.

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It's like a fight or flight response that doesn't have a release in my case.

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But for many other people it comes out in very different ways.

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It comes out with passive aggressive I think would have been my only release which isn't

really a release.

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It's just like burying it deeper.

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Another one would be, you know, just explosive outbursts, which I lived with because of my

sister, but I personally was never like that.

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And then there's just like that internalization too, that I just, I'm not, I don't know

how to handle it.

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So it just kind of sits there and I feel terrible and like a pressure cooker with those

types of things.

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Yeah, and you know that this is my sentiment, but I still am very sorry that you had to go

through that as a child.

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know, no child should have to, you know, tamp down their anger, but also like tamp down

their joy just to avoid, you know, noises and things like that.

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And all of us, including the people listening,

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have likely had some type of experience or some type of negative experience with anger,

whether they saw like the wrong ways to handle it, or they've had to learn on their own

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how to handle it, or maybe right now it's something they're struggling with.

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they don't know the next steps to take.

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whether or not someone has been in your exact situation, they likely have encountered

anger and like the discomfort that it causes outside people and within yourself.

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Yeah, thank you.

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Well, thank you for saying that in the beginning and for normalizing some of the stuff in

a positive way.

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I appreciate you doing that.

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Sure.

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Sure.

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I know for me, I have seen a lot and have been around a lot of examples of explosive anger

in my lifetime.

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And it's really been in the last couple of years that I have been...

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very insistent upon having a calm home and calm environment.

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And what I had to do in this process and what I continue to do is I had to realize that I

actually had a ton of anger within myself.

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Initially I thought I'm in this home, I'm solo parenting, I'm...

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you know, going to have this like home where we feel our feelings and everything is very

soft.

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But I had a lot of unresolved anger that I've had to work through.

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And when it came out, it always came out in moments of high stress, of course.

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It was more likely to come out when I've had a bad night of sleep.

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And I know that a lot of parents can relate to this, you know, like maybe snapping at your

kids or something and you feel terrible about it later.

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I always apologize to my kids like when I snap at them later because I want to set the

example for them for how you should handle big things.

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Now a couple things about me is I am very sensory sensitive.

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I think that you know had I been a kid my kids age today

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there would have been a lot more things in place to like manage that, you know, like

there's, there's like sensory days at museums and things like that.

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That is me to a T.

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And, but of course, when I was a kid, there weren't, they weren't anything in place like

that, right?

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So even now, I find that I've got to manage a lot of sensory overload.

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And one of the coping things that I do, and one of the things that I've instituted in

place for myself, is I let my kids know where I'm at, at a 10.

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So if they are maybe having a hard day, or they're tired, maybe there's a little bit more

whining, or a little bit more sibling disagreement, or something like that, I can say,

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Guys, I'm just letting you know, mommy's at an eight.

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Because a few years ago, I would have just like tamped it down, tamped it down, dealt with

it, tried to fix the problem, made dinner anyway, and something would be the last straw.

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And I'd be like, I'd yell, I'd be like, go to your room or do whatever, like it's bedtime,

like turn the TV off, whatever it is.

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But now what I do is I try to let the people in my life ahead of time know.

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where I'm at on the scale and then I have to take extra steps to put myself first and it's

up to me and it's my responsibility to pull myself down on the number chart and get myself

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back to a baseline so that I can be a better mom, partner, worker, all the things to

everyone else.

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So thank you for sharing that.

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I'm gonna dig into this a little bit more if that's all right, just because I think what

you're expressing and what you're explaining are very, very common for a lot of people in

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the population where it's, you know, it comes out often in the wrong place and on the

wrong person.

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Mm-hmm.

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And there's nothing it's there's no finger pointing with that.

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It's just we need to know we need to have two things.

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First of all, we need to have self-awareness because then we can change.

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Right.

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So for you, when you start to get angry, what are your cues?

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What are the things that you start to kind of go, you know, I'm not 100 percent all right

or I'm at a I'm at I'm getting to a 10 as you as you phrased it.

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an incredible amount of impatience.

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I do feel like I have a well of patience I have I have twins I have you know been a

work-from-home mom since the time they were born I have I am able to manage a lot of chaos

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and run a business in the midst of chaos but And so I can usually very calmly tell my

kids.

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All right, I'm noticing you two are

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disagreeing again on who's sitting in the front seat.

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know, and instead of being like, you know, suck it up, do rock, paper, scissors and like,

or both of you sit in the back or whatever, you know, I'm just like, you know, you need to

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go talk about it amongst yourselves, learn how to negotiate or whatever.

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But I noticed that if my like immediate tendency is just to like snap or be like, my God,

I can't deal with this.

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I know that I'm getting to that point of like impatience.

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running out of steam energy.

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Like I think every day I wake up with a well of patience.

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It's just like this little bucket of water I'm carrying around, but things test my

patience, right?

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And yeah, I can handle things like I can handle slow lines, traffic, all these things.

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It's usually at the end of the day when the little bucket only has a few drops left that

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I can feel it.

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It's the it's the impatience and the impatience leads to overwhelm because then it's like

my gosh I have so much to do this is too much for me too many places to go too many things

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left on the checklist and then I just kind of spiral.

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Okay.

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Thank you for sharing that.

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So what are your ways of diffusing these things as you start to notice them coming up?

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What do you do to diffuse?

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You mentioned kind of like letting people know, but I'm more talking about like there is a

physical sensation in your body as this is happening that's probably getting ignored.

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And I know for myself, it's like, by the time you point out that I'm angry, I've already

been angry for a while because I'm just not that aware.

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And I think there's a bit of shame in my instance too of like,

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like, you know, there it's like, you're not everybody calls me calm all the time.

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So I feel like when I'm not living up to that.

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Yeah.

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So, but so for you, like, what do you do?

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You're you're at you're at a 10 you're at a you're at a 20 or 100 if you go that high, I'm

not sure.

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But you know, whatever you are at, what do you do?

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Well first, I will answer your question of what I do when I'm out of 10.

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Your comment reminded me of something like Ellen DeGeneres said.

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I think she did her standup after her show and she was like, you do not know how hard it

is to be like the funny, nice person all the time.

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You can't yell at anyone in traffic, like you can't put a toe out of line.

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And when you were saying like,

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You know, everyone's like always saying how nice and calm Andrew is and he is, but I can

see how it would cause a little spike of shame.

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Like if you are feeling that way, you might be like, everyone thinks I'm nice and calm,

but I'm so mad right now.

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And as part of that, Andrew, think it's good for us to say on this show is one of our

beliefs is that there are no bad emotions.

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There's just emotions.

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there are emotions that feel better.

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our bodies there's emotions that we'd like to have but we we've said this before right we

wouldn't know happy without sad we wouldn't know joy without the anger we wouldn't know

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these things we wouldn't know feeling healthy without being sick sometimes and so the

contrast is necessary and for that reason there are no bad feelings however what I tell my

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kids all the time is you can feel however you want you just can't act however you want

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Right?

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So we have to have different, right?

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So they can be feeling mad, but they can't, you know, yell at people in the middle of

target or something, right?

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You know, not that they ever would, but it's like, you can have the feeling, but we all

have to find ways that work for us.

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I'm happy to share the coping skills that I do when I'm at a tent.

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but they're very specific to me and my personality.

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And that's why we always talk about self awareness.

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So you have to be, you meaning our listeners have to be aware of what it means for you,

what it brings out in you and things that work for you.

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So for me, highly sensory sensitive and a major introvert.

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So when I'm at a 10, the thing I need the most is to recharge my battery.

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And Andrew can attest to this, the miracle of 30 minutes alone for me.

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I can go in my room for 30 minutes.

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I can put on a fiction book.

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I can get under the covers.

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I can even set like a 30 minute alarm on my phone and not sleep, but just kind of just

chill.

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And.

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what I feel in my body when I'm angry is I actually feel a sense of heat in my forehead.

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I feel like I have a fever.

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I feel like I could touch my fingers to my head and it's like burning hot.

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I feel that sensation and so for me personally given how my personality is 30 minutes by

myself like cools that heat off of me.

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It takes all the things that are like

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quickly on me and it just brings it down to where it literally takes 30 minutes and I can

come back and do what I need to do.

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That's good.

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For me, again, I'm still gonna, I'm just gonna kind of go over my process.

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Usually somebody is pointing out that I'm angry or I will like look down.

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My tell was always my fist and it's not like I'd be like, you know, making fists.

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I would just be like, my hands would start to clench.

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I think it's maybe a better term.

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was tension.

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Yeah, it was a clenching.

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Same thing with my jaw.

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And so when those things happen, I recognize that there is what I'm holding onto is the

absence of the feeling.

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If that's something you can hold onto is meaning like I'm angry, but I don't want to feel

angry.

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And my, but my body is coming up and it's going like, no, we're angry right now.

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We've to do something about this.

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So what I'm trying to find balance with right now is for ways to release it.

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So, you know, I've

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Punching a pillow works for a lot of people.

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It gets that physical energy out I've done that once or twice.

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I'm not a very violent person So to me, I'm like, you know wanting to apologize to the

pillow afterwards for hitting it, which doesn't make a lot of sense Yeah So one of the

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things that you know, recently I did was I have

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like a vibe platform and it just just shakes you basically like while you do your

exercises so I just did like a quick circuit on it for five ten minutes and it just kind

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of helps to get that energy moving along so you know it's cold outside I didn't feel like

going for a walk but I could use to go for like a walk or a run I come back feeling a lot

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better breathing is another one that just starts to I find that that works better in the

beginning

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Meaning like if I'm starting to go like, you know, if it just as an example, if you were

to say like, you know, like that was a dumb idea and I get offended and get a little

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angry.

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Not that you've ever said that, but no.

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But yeah, but when that happens, like I'll just be like, OK, that, you know, take a couple

of deep breaths and just focus on the exhale, letting that energy that's starting to build

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up come out.

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And that's really how I try to look at things is.

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If there is an energy that is building up inside of you, which is being caused by anger,

which is like your heart races, your body tenses up, that energy needs to be dispelled one

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way or another, or else it gets buried inside of you in a way that it'll come out later.

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It might come out in 20 minutes.

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It might come out in two years at the most inopportune time.

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So I think part of it is just knowing.

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what works for you and finding those healthy ways to kind of release it.

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You you were over yesterday and we have that Instant Pot and there's two pressure valves

on it and when you want to let the, when your cooking's done, there's a ton of pressure in

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this thing and you can do it one of two ways.

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You can just let that pressure kind of release gradually and naturally on its own.

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which is really good if you're not really hungry and wanting to, you know, just let it

cook.

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But most likely you're starving and you want to let it out and there's a pressure valve

for it.

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And when the pressure comes out, it's like, it's burn your finger off type of hot.

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So you have to be very careful with that.

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And I think that's a really good analogy for kind of looking at ways of, you know,

releasing your anger in a way that makes sense.

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Because if you don't,

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release it in those two ways.

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That pressure stays inside the pot inside your body and it's going to come out and it is

not going to be pretty.

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You are going to get spaghetti all over the walls.

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It's going to just explode.

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It's going to be dirty and nasty and you're going to wish you had listened to this podcast

and come up with a few different tactics for handling it.

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I don't know why I'm shamelessly plugging a podcast for anger during the anger episode 20

minutes in, but here we are.

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My promotion skills will get better.

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Andrew, you know, I just want to say that was a good analogy.

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you know, and I got it in by the end of 2024.

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It's so.

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Instapot, right?

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That's a great analogy for it.

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So interesting, too.

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Here are a couple things.

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Let's just give a couple ideas to people.

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So lots of people like running, in fact, like...

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We read a whole book on exercise this year and the runner's high is a real legitimate

scientifically proven fact.

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I think a lot of people exercise and run daily to prevent themselves from ever getting to

a 10.

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So there's things that you can do to manage daily to get there.

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Exercise is one great thing.

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I have a rebounder that Andrew bought me.

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It's really fun.

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A lot of people can change their mood very quickly with music.

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Fun song on the radio, dancing is another thing that is scientifically proven to improve

mood.

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Moving your body, again, lots of people take a walk, things like that.

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Talking to someone, calling a friend, letting off that anger.

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Helping someone else is another thing.

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I was like in a really frustrated mood earlier today and I ended up talking to my brother

about his new baby and we were just talking through different things and he was asking me

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questions about what I did when my twins were babies and I just felt like we had a really

good conversation and I was able to help him and my brother's just really smart and easy

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to talk to.

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We chatted about a couple of like different things in the news lately and it just...

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It just changed my mood because I focused on him and his little cute baby was cooing in

the background.

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It just made me feel so good to get to chat with him.

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Sometimes just calling somebody, calling a friend, even if you don't talk about the issue

at hand or what you're angry about, just changing the topic is good.

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Watching a funny show, anything.

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There's so many things you can do.

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And it's taken me a long time to learn about, you know, the 30 minute recharge my battery

time.

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The kids know what that is.

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Andrew knows what that is.

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And, but it's taken me a long time to realize that that's all it takes, right?

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I have to take, I don't have to like lock myself in my room for three hours.

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Like you'll learn over time what works for you, but it is important to be aware, know your

triggers and to then take the next step of believing that you are.

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worthy of having a pleasant and calm life and a good day.

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And when you feel that happening, you deserve to feel better in that there's things that

you can do to manage those feelings so that you don't do something you regret, say

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something you regret or harm the relationships in your life that are most important to

you.

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I like that.

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Thank you for sharing those things.

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Here's a rapid fire of some things that you can do.

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So first one is get out of your situation.

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You are, if you're angry, there's probably something in your environment that's causing

that.

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getting outside, getting some fresh air, sun on your face, going for a walk or run, great

ways to do it.

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Another one is to just, if you can't go outside because you live where I live and it's

just too dang cold, you stay inside and maybe do some jumping jacks, move your body around

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in one way or another.

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Another one is just breathe.

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Do some box breathing.

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Breathe in for four counts, hold it for four counts, let it out for four counts, and then

pause for four.

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And you just do that box breathing for until you feel better.

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Usually 90 seconds seems to be my magical number for that.

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Another thing we had talked about was stress balls.

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They exist for a reason.

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Punching a pillow, any kind of physical movement is going to help dispel that energy that

is building up inside of you.

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And even things like yoga or Tai Chi can also help you.

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It's just a matter of whatever you feel is the right thing for you.

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We're just trying to give you some things to help you cope.

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For some people, journaling about it can really help.

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Just kind of acknowledging where your feelings are.

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Angry typing, rage writing.

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Is that a thing?

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Did I make that up?

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Is rage writing a thing?

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It sounds really good.

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Yeah, we should.

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Let's not.

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Another thing is to reach out to somebody and just have a conversation, whether it's about

the topic at hand or just trying to help somebody.

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one of my big things for whenever I, cause I went through some really, really rough times

and I'm still coming out of, you know, some time, darker times.

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And the thing I like to do is make other people smile.

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So, you know, I live in a block that's like mostly senior citizens and I kind of like that

because they're grateful and you know, you just say hi and it lights them up because you

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know, that might be the first person they've spoken to today and that's really, really

nice.

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So trying to find a way to make somebody else happy.

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like the cute young strapping lad in his condo complex.

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He's so sweet.

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He picks up packages for people and like, I don't know.

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What are you like changing light bulbs for people?

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It's so sweet.

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Yeah, I kind of look at it like it's just good karma.

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I would hope that at some point when I'm in a place like that and you know, my neighbor

got really sick.

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We had to go with him to the hospital.

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He was dead against it, but I still I went with him.

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I sat with him in the hospital for six or seven hours in emergency because there was

nobody else there for him.

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And to me it's just being good.

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But again, doing good feels good, which helps get you out of that state of anger.

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It's an emotional state and I think a lot of the times we think we have to logically move

out of it.

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needs an emotional response of some kind to kind of shift you along.

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you know, like anger is that one where you kind of got to let it out in the ways that it

makes sense.

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and I liked your idea too, Kat, of just laughing, you know, like just of like watching a

show or something like that.

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We've gotten into watching some pretty good shows and it's like, no matter what we're

watching and it makes us laugh, it just...

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It's just a release of that energy and it's so much better.

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Yeah, it is.

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you know, just I feel like it's important for me to say on this episode, we are talking

about being self aware and releasing anger.

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And we did say that anger is an emotion and that there are no bad emotions.

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However, it's really important for me to note the distinction between, you know, anger and

violence, which is acting out anger.

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And I want to say that it is never okay for somebody to physically harm you or any of your

belongings.

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If anger manifests as holes in the wall, breaking furniture, things being thrown, things

like that, that is unacceptable levels of anger.

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What we are talking about, somebody like that who does things like that has far surpassed

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any number at any scale and your life needs major intervention.

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Nobody deserves that.

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So what we're talking about is general day-to-day feelings and fluctuations and just how

to make sure that you can get back to a state of calm.

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And so I just felt like it was important to say that.

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So no one ever thinks that we're condoning.

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anger by saying it's normal emotion.

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I just felt felt it on my heart to clarify that.

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I'm just getting a number up right here.

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If you are in a situation and you find yourself like that when you do not feel safe with

the person you are around, there are crisis centers that you can go to, there are people

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and places you can call.

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But if you are finding yourself in a situation where the anger has escalated to violence

and rage.

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then you need to remove yourself from that situation as painful as it might be.

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Your safety is more important.

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It's paramount.

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So thank you for bringing that up.

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And we can put some phone numbers into the notes too.

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Let's say a glimmer.

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I know I didn't mean to end on a heavy note, but I just felt it on my heart to say it.

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But I think we have a shared glimmer, and that's that we got to hang out all last week in

the flesh, in the person, face to face, as human beings, not through the screen.

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Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

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got to do, he came up here because it was American Thanksgiving and in Canada it was

Thursday so we just did you know normal human things and

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I went to my first hockey game, we saw Wicked.

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We went out to eat for American Thanksgiving because Andrew very kindly offered to cook

and make turkey and stuff and I was just like, no, let's skip it.

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And it was nice.

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I like that.

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I like that we were able to kind of forgo old traditions and create new ones.

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I did that in Canadian Thanksgiving or as you guys like to call the second weekend of

October.

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And we did it and it was really, really, it's nice.

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I had a really good time.

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It's also a lot nicer when you're not having to cook a turkey, I've discovered.

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yeah, not that I've cooked a ton of turkeys in my lifetime, but you know, definitely a

good cheer glimmer.

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We did attempt to take a walk outside, but it was negative 11 billion degrees and we

lasted about one minute.

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I think my eyeballs couldn't even see straight.

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It was so cold.

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Yeah.

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Catherine understands why I look younger than I actually am.

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It's because my face only ages half the year the other half.

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It is frozen cryogenically from the winter in Canada and that's okay.

351

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

353

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a really nice time.

354

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Thank you so much for hosting me and having me.

355

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And it was a lot of fun.

356

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do it again sometime.

357

00:30:06,759 --> 00:30:08,110

Yeah, we'll definitely do it again.

358

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Thank you so much for coming up.

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And for all you listening, thanks again for tuning in and we'll talk to you next time.