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And welcome back to George nor with Foster for Jerio FoST. What is your definition of aggression?
Well, aggression, you know, takes a lot of forms, George, but you know, basically, it's it's when your emotions take over your body physically. Now you're reacting, and then it's an outward expression, either on an inanimate object and often on another person.
You can be aggressive and not anger, though, can't you?
You can. Sometimes aggression is something that you know, you can actually be positive. It's more of an assertiveness. You know, you channel it into something that's positive. But for some people, aggression is an external act that is directed to hurt someone else.
I mean, you could be aggressive in business, you could go for it and you could be very successful that way.
Yeah, and that's what that's what I call assertiveness. You know, it's really taking all you know, your intellect and your emotions and putting them in a positive direction.
In the moment, we're going to show you, folks, how you can reduce your anger on a regular basis. What about the sections men, women.
Well, yeah, it's just a different expression really Georgia. You know, you take that back to hormonal kinds of things. The testosterone is something that is aggressive. It's the kind of thing that you know, often triggers at least helps in the delivery of anger from men, whereas women, their hormones are a little different. They will experience changes more often than men, but they don't have that quick thrust as
often as a man had. So, you know, we often come kind of come up to the conclusion where we say, you know, well, men are more angry than women. That's not necessarily true, it's just displayed differently.
I saw a clip of comedian Jim Carrey when it was first on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he was funny, And then I read his bio and it says that he has had a lifetime lifetom of depression. He's been taking medication. They claims that he's off it now. But what makes somebody depressed? That's different from anger, right it is?
You know, although you can the anger can be an outgrowth of depression. But you know, when when people come to see me, the first thing I'm going to do is go physical with him and say, okay, let's get
you to a doctor. Let's find out if we've got any harmonal things going on, or thyroid or high blood pressure, and we're going to try to see if we can where those narrow transmitters are, those of those chemicals that stimulate the brain, and when they're not doing their job the way we'd like him to, then we talk about something called clinical depression, which is simply your brain not
being able to perform its daily functions. Then you can go you know into you know, a panic mode in lots of anxiety, or you can go into a whole depressed, if kind of a thing where you have just a difficult time motivating yourself to do anything.
Robin Williams killed himself with depression.
Correct, Yes, is what the type of depression?
Yes, Louise disease?
Yes, what is that? Well, it's again it's it's a very severe kind of depression, uh, you know, and and it's that one is just so hard to get out of. And in his case, you know, he felt that it wasn't going to get better and it tended to be a debilitating kind of the thing. So he just said, you know, enough is enough?
Is there something wrong with the brain?
Well, it's people will always look at the brain. But the brain and the body are so syncd up. I mean, you know, you can't have one working well without the other. Uh. So, you know when you talk about depression or you talk about anxiety, George, whatever you're dealing with, it's always a mind body connection that you're dealing with.
Is there such thing as anger management?
Sure, that's what we were saying before. Absolutely, you know that's you know, but a person has to want to do this. A lot of a lot of people, particularly men, will get to the point where they're going to lose everything and they say, well, I've got to go take care of this anger so I don't lose anything. Not it's really not the right reason to get there. If you if you admit that you're anger, you know that this is happening, it's affecting your life, and you'll want
to do something about it. There's there's so many counseling programs that work, some summer individuals, summer group. Uh. You know, there's medication involved at times if necessary, We'll talk about dietary change. There's all different kinds of things, and that's how we're going to manage anger on the physical, emotional, and the intellectual base.
Are there different types of anger?
There are many kinds of anger, you know, people when we talk about anger, we talk about what we typically see is what we call rapid anger. You know, it comes out and it's screens at you. But there's anger that's born out of fear of frustration. There's pain based anger. Uh, there's reactive anger where we're reacting to something. Uh. There's one of my favorites that you know, so to speak, is righteous anger, where we really believe that we can
use anger to positively change the world. You know, those kinds of things, volatile anger, anger for control of other people. There's all different kinds of anger. So when we go into anger management or into treatment, we're gonna we're gonna want to define what type of anger a person's using. And there can be several.
What causes somebody to get so angry so quickly?
Well, that's often we're a physical thing, you know. Uh again, you know, the the the mind. What happens in anger situation or is the mind gets the gets the stimulation. First, you know, it comes on and you realize something happened, you don't like it, But then the body kicks in and when that body kicks in. You know, for some people, you know, they see red and they see red fast and they're not and they just cannot turn it off. That's that rapid anger I'm talking about.
You have five tips thoughts on how to reduce anger on a regular basis, So let's go through those.
Yeah, let's let's you know, well again, when we talk about anger, I always say to people who were talking about those three things that physical, emotional, intellectual. The first thing when it comes to anger, if you really want to reduce that, make an appointment with your primary care physician. Try to determine if there's any physical problems.
What do you tell them?
What do I tell the people that when I'm.
The what do you tell your doctor when you go to them?
When you go to me? Say you might say my counselor sent me, or you just want to go yourself and say, I'm experiencing a lot of anger. Oftentimes I can't control it, or it's doing this kind of damage, whatever it may be in your life, and I just want to make sure that there's nothing physical that's causing this. Our monal issues, thyroid issues, high blood pressure, those types of things, you know, and they'll do the blood test, they'll they'll you know, they'll you start there, because it's
really it's almost abusive on a therapeutic end. If we're going to try to work through anger with someone and we haven't sent them to their their physician, you know, we may be working with all these emotional and mental things and we haven't ruled the body out. We got to rule the body out first and make sure that that's not what's starting the problem.
Somebody gets laid off from work. Is that normal to get angry about that?
Sure?
Sure that that's such a that can be such a life changing event. You know, and people may get angry first. But what we want to do is be able to, in any situation take that step back and say, Okay, this has happened in my life, it hurts, I'm scared, i'm angry, whatever, But now I got to I got to flip the switch here and I got to do something or this is going to get a whole lot worse.
How many different kinds of anger are there?
Oh my god, here I have a in my book, I've got about fifteen. But you know, if you're break it down and get into some of the more obscure ones. You can probably get twenty or twenty five kinds of anger. I've put the important ones in, you know, and you know when you hear that, you know, just when the
people say, my god. Really, but really it's just about diagnosing which one it is or which two or three, because you know, you may have rapid anger, and it may be something that you know, you that comes from physical sources and maybe something you use to manage people or or to control themselves. You know, when we get into all that and we start doing the family histories and and and the personal history for the person, we
can see where all that's coming from. And what sounds like a whole lot of different kinds of anger are really just what's happening on the person's timeline. And when we go and we we address all those various things in their life, we can take care of anger one at a time, or sometimes two or three at a time.
What is your retaliatory anger?
That's when you want to you know, someone does something to you, you know, uh, you know, you're you're at work and got this person who's always you know, uh, stealing your work, so to speak. And now you say, well, I'm gonna I'm gonna get this person, I'm gonna retaliate, and I'm going to do something to hurt them, And then you conjure up something in your mind and.
Then you deliver passive aggressive anger.
Passive aggressive anger is that sneaky one. That's the one where uh, again, someone does something to you and instead of confronting it, and it's often a byproduct of someone who cannot it doesn't isn't good at confronting it, you know, good at talking about what's on their mind. So what they do is they do some of these some plant stine things. They'll hide people's things. They they'll say they're going to do something and they won't. They'll give them
the silent treatment, that kind of thing. Uh. And really it's just a misguided way that to get that other person to try to understand that you're angry without ever admitting that you are based you know, Uh, I always tell people most anger comes from fear and insecurity of some sort, or at least on the emotional intellectual plane. Yeah. So when we we're afraid of something, particularly men, you know, that's what we do. We get angry because we don't
want to face the fear. So a lot of times what we're getting angry about is because we're afraid and we don't know how to how to deal with that pain. You know, pain is one of those things where, if you think about it, you know, you've got this horrible tooth use an example, and you know you're maybe a little angry to begin with, but now that tooth is man, it's robbing, and you don't want anyone near you. You know,
someone says something and you're going to react. You're already at a point where internally physically it has taken your nervous system and you know, just pumped it up, and so now you're angry. And and in cases of chronic pain, we'll see that a lot of people there angry a lot more often because the pain never subsides.
If you're not in a good mood. Is that anger, No.
Not necessarily, you can you again, sometimes that's just you're physically you're tired, you're worried about something. It can be hormonal. Uh, it can be the kind of thing where you know something is just relentless, it's in your life and it just doesn't quit, you know, so you're overly focused on it. But You don't have to necessarily get angry about it. It just it just may consume you when you obsess kids.
On how to reduce anger. What about settling past issues one of the big ones.
I always call them undercurrents, and you know, if you don't settle those, they're always running. They're kind of at an idol, you know, on a scale of one of ten, maybe a one or two. But what happens is then something trips the switch a little bit. You get a little angry, and that's you and those unresolved issues begin to come to the top a little bit, and they just exacerbate the whole situation.
Focus on your internal language, that's a big one.
What we find is, you know, you think about it, we spend so much time in our own heads and what we say to ourselves, the way we deal with ourselves internally, that's what translates into what we do. Thoughts tend to turn to actions. So you know, when I deal with people and I'm working with anger, I'm always teaching them, let's slow down on the internal stuff. Let's not be so rapid, you know, Let's not be so
angry in the way we think about things. Let's calm that down a little bit, start putting a little bit of a positive turn on things. It really helps.
How important is it to get help for your anger?
Well, that's the most important thing for a lot of people. You know, they can't get through this on their own. Some people can go into accounting situation or just have a friend of someone to talk to and they get through it pretty easy. Others it's just not going to happen, and you have to make a decision about how long in your life you want to be angry.
Some people have short fuses.
Come Well, again, that could be physical. Uh uh, you know environmentally, you know, you're if you're brought up in an angry home and it was abusive and it was you know, people are getting yelled at and hitting, all
those sorts of things. You learn that, so you know, it's always a combination, George, of fiscally what you're dealing with, environmentally, what you solve, the way you think, and how that turns outward, how fast your life is going, whether you're going to feed your emotions or your intellect, it's all that stuff.
Is it better to let your anger out rather than keep it inside of you?
Well? Yeah, eventually, you're gonna you're gonna let it out anyway, if you're going to try to hold on to it, Eventually it's coming out one way or another. It's just about the choice that you that you make. You know, if you want to let it out at someone, well, now you're causing problems and you're hurting someone else and you become that person who is doing that. So then that kind of defines you. If you're going to let anger out, you know, you want to find some positive
ways to do that. I always tell people, let's make a list of positive things you can do to vent your anger, and that really changes it for a lot of people.
How do you feel about meds?
With me and meds, it's always a last ditch effort. I mean when nothing else works, you know that's the case. Or they go to the doctor and he says, well, gee, you have this thyroid issue. Well we're gonna put meds in the picture as far as it thinks. Like antidepressants and anti anxiety, you know, I used to treat people for years and years without those and we were highly successful. We just come to depend on that stuff because it's a quick fix.
How did you get involved in all of this fust.
You know, I was that kid growing up or whatever. You know, It's just it was me and from the beginning, you know, I love to listen to people and just had that knack for figuring out solutions with him. So from the time I was probably fifteen or so, I was the kid everybody came to the you know, to talk to. I listened. So it just took off. So I formalized, we got the education, and I've never turned back.
Are babies generally born happy or depressed?
Generally happy? I mean, you know, we don't see signs of depression that early. Uh that doesn't mean that the the genetics aren't there, We just don't see it at that early age. And then you know, it's it's kind of thing that evolves in time and so once but once they get into you know, kindergarten age, sometimes even a little earlier, we can start seeing signs of anger and or depression.
But how much of it is family based?
A lot of it can be, you know, you're it's that genetics and environment and you put the two together. Uh, you know, sometimes you know, we can have people brought up in abusive homes and they and they grow up to be very nice, very sensitive people. On the other hand, we the same family can produce someone that's so angry and gets into all different kinds of other things when they get older. It's a combination between your genetics and what you're dealing with in your environment.
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