← Compassion in a T-Shirt
Compassion in a T-Shirt
Anger! And cultivating compassion to build true strength | Russell Kolts
00:57:36
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Compassion in a T shirt. My name's Dr. Stan Steindl and I really appreciate the growing interest in my channel and all of the wonderful comments that are coming through. Very exciting and encouraging. Keep them coming. Today I'll be speaking with Dr. Russell Koltz, who is professor of Psychology at Eastern Washington University. Russell has authored or co authored numerous scholarly articles and books. Of particular importance for me in my learning and implementation of Compassion Focused Therapy have been CFT Made simple and experiencing Compassion Focused Therapy from the inside out. But Russell has also pioneered the application of CFT in the treatment of problematic anger. In 2012, he published the Compassionate Mind Approach to Managing youg Anger, which was based on his work in correctional services, helping men to cultivate true strength via cft. And his latest book, due to be published by the end of May 2024, is the anger Workbook, designed to help readers discover the strength to transform anger with cft. He has other books, a remarkable TEDX talk, and conducts regular training and workshops. He's just a legend and an inspiration. And so I bring you Professor Russell Coltz. All right, well, Dr. Russell Coltz, I think the last time we met was pre Covid actually was in Edinburgh at the CMF conference. So I was very keen to sort of get to speak with you again. Welcome to Compassion in a T shirt.
- [01:59]
B
Yeah, thanks for having me. And it's interesting. The world was a very different place the last time you and I were in the same room together, wasn't it? Wow.
- [02:08]
A
It feels like just the other day and also a lifetime ago, doesn't it really? The whole. Those Covid years were very, very strange. But, but yes, I do appreciate willing to have a chat and, and in particular you have a new workbook coming out in the next month or so it is out in the uk, you were saying, but elsewhere in the world it's, it's still to come. The, the Anger Workbook. And, and I was really keen to kind of have a bit of a chat with you, if you wouldn't mind, about anger and, and ultimately about the. The Compassionate Mind approach to all of that. But, but maybe starting with what is anger and. And what isn't anger, I suppose.
- [02:56]
B
So I guess, I guess if we were to ask what anger is, you know, anger is an emotion. And you know, in Compassion Focused Therapy, we anchor everything to evolve motives. Right. So we have these basic motives that are designed to keep us alive and passing our genes through the flow of life. And you know, one of the primary things our ancestors had to do to be Able to do that was to stay alive in a world that had lots of threats. And so emotions really function to serve motives. Emotions are these psychological experiences that function to get us moving in the direction of a motive. And so anger is one of a family of threat emotions that we have that functions to, you know, to activate, to help us defend ourselves when we register a threat. And so when I talk about anger and I think it's important to acknowledge when we think about how anger works, it's really the fight part of fight flight, flee fight flight on freeze. Right. And so sometimes people conflate anger and aggression and they're not the same thing. Right. Aggression is a behavior. Right. Where anger is an emotional state, but it is an aggressive motivation. Right. It's a fight oriented motivation and it organizes our minds in ways that really prepare us to do just that. So when anger comes up, there's the physical experience that people are aware of in terms of the sympathetic nervous system kicking in and the arousal. But there are a lot of really interesting things that happen in the mind that are organized around defending ourselves in the those ways too. So one of the things we see, as with other threat emotions is there's a dramatic narrowing of attention and thinking and reasoning onto the threat, whatever the perceived threat is. So we tend to focus and have a hard time pulling away. But there's also sort of a, a compromising of being able to engage in a lot of critical thinking or being able to be reflective there that that sort of goes out the window as we focus. But what's really interesting about anger that's different from that, from like fear, anxiety is there's a corresponding experience of certainty. So when people are angry, they have the experience of knowing that they're right. Right. Even as we're more likely to be wrong because we're not nearly as good at critical thinking, empathy and things like that. And so when you combine that with a felt experience of urgency, that anger also carries with us the sense that I've got to do something right now. We can find ourselves acting in ways that cause problems for us.
- [05:48]
A
So there's kind of, yeah, there's this sort of threat and there's urgency to respond or deal with that threat. And then there's this sort of almost misguided but probably evolutionarily important sense that we have of knowing that, that, that we're right or that intention that, you know, that we must, we must act in this way.
- [06:09]
B
Absolutely. I mean, if you think about it, it's the fight response. So if you're in a situation where you have to fight to keep yourself safe, you, you're supposed, you want to act right now, right? If there's a bear on, on the trail in front of you, right, and it's charging you, you don't want to be thinking, well, is this, is it an endangered species? I mean, I don't want to bear spray if I'm going to hur. You get done with that, you're eaten. Right. So anger's about do it. Right. Commit act right now. Because if we have to fight, there's usually immediacy in the natural world, right? That's what it evolved. And that's as with some other threat emotions. That's one of the tricky things about anger. That's part of the CFT kind of tricky brain message. It's, it's in many ways a better fit with earlier times in the human story, right. When most of our threats that actually required fighting for most of us. In your average day, I don't know, when I'm in a faculty meeting and someone that says something that triggers my threat system, acting out my anger is usually not going to be the most helpful response.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah, he who hesitates loses his car park or something. And so anger is a bit like that. We don't want to hesitate, we don't want to sort of stop and think. You know, like, is that, is that bear hungry or is he not hungry or whatever. I love how you use the bear actually. That must be a Washington state sort of a thing. You know, Are there bears up there?
- [07:44]
B
There are, yeah. We've got lots of brown bear and we have. Actually they're reintroducing some grizzly, the Casket Mountains that are in the middle of the, in the middle of the state. Yeah.
- [08:00]
A
There is sort of a perfect kind of analogy for you. The, the bear is, is the threat as opposed to the, the lion or the. In Australia we have the drop bears, of course, which are those mythical creatures that mythical koalas that drop from the trees and causes threat.
- [08:19]
B
See, I've been told that in Australia everything will kill you. I mean, you'd have your collection of dangerous animals to choose from.
- [08:27]
A
Perhaps that', spiders, snakes, sharks, dingoes, crocodiles. There is quite a few of the different things. But yeah, so there is that sort of real evolutionary imperative, I guess, to respond to those dangers in a fight sense at least sort of with some sort of immediacy without too much thought or hesitation, but with a determination of knowing that, that this must happen and it must happen. Now, I noticed you said there that anger, in a way, makes more sense from the millennia ago when we really were battling kind of physical dangers and threats, and less sense now. And I wondered if you could sort of expand on that, because I suppose I was wondering what might be the function of anger now? Is it all more negative? Are there positives to do with anger in. In the modern world?
- [09:28]
B
Yeah. Well, first I. I do think there are lots of positives to do with anger in the modern world. I think functionally these days, anger makes a much better signal than it makes a strategy most of the time. And what I mean is that if we can learn to notice anger as pointing us towards something that goes. Goes against our values or something that is problematic for us, it can, it can orient us toward potential problems in our lives, and it's motivating anger can get us off the couch. Right. So anger can be very functional in, in. In alerting us to things that we want to address. But as a strategy, I think anger, if we're just blindly acting it out, doesn't serve us very well, I think, because most of the threats we face in the modern world are much more sort of socially nuanced threats. They're, they're threats that are generally. Instead of just acting with the immediacy and the immediate conviction of anger, we're usually better served by, you know, taking a few moments, slowing down, thinking about the situation from different perspectives, and then, you know, just unpacking the complexity of the situation. I think a lot of our threats these days are just a lot more complicated than maybe they were, you know, a thousand years ago.
- [10:49]
A
Yeah. Signal rather than strategy, in a way that the, the. The anger that we might feel absolutely tells us something. It gives us some clues about, you know, kind of the world around us and perhaps that social world around us as well. Perhaps things are against our values or maybe even putting us in a. In a kind of a danger. But strategically, it's more nuanced now, like, how can we be aware of the mind and select other ways to deal with those kind of threats as they are?
- [11:21]
B
Absolutely. And, you know, one thing that I've heard Paul Gilbert talk about that I think is also important to acknowledge in terms of anger is that the energy of anger can be used to fuel assertive behavior. It can be used to fuel behavior that really does require us to stand up in ways that, you know, in a vacuum might be uncomfortable. But if we can kind of harness that energy and channel in a way that it doesn't create problems, but allows us to Stand our ground when we need to stand our ground. Those sorts of things I think can be helpful in that way too. But you know, we're mediating that with judgment and with reflective thought so that when we respond, we're saying what we mean, not saying or doing things that are going to get us into trouble.
- [12:09]
A
So we have a sort of a motive which is kind of threat protection. We have an emotion which helps to kind of guide or signal that sort of sense of threat. And that might be anger. You mentioned earlier, aggression and now assertiveness as kind of actions, I guess that might then arise out of all of that. Could you just unpack those two for us a little bit more? You know, aggression versus assertiveness, perhaps?
- [12:36]
B
Absolutely. Well, I think, I think aggression is sort of anger driven behavior in its purest form. I think it, you know, and when people talk about aggression, all aggression isn't the same. So when I'm talking about aggression in this context, I'm talking about aggression that's motivated by anger. Kind of emotionally driven aggression, which is actually qualitatively different from what we might call instrumental aggression. Right. Or instrumental aggression is cold aggression. That's I'm gonna, I'm gonna kill you and steal your car because I want your car. Right. That's different from anger. Right. That's, that's cold. It's, it's calculation based. It's instrumental in usually pursuing some kind of a goal. But you know, anger, anger driven aggression tends to be sort of an unfiltered behavioral expression of that aggressive anger impulse that I talked about earlier. Right. And it's kind of a pure expression of anger. Whereas I think assertiveness is anger times social awareness. Right? It's anger, but not necessarily even anger. It can be, you know, just an awareness. You can be assertive without being angry. But I think when, when it involves anger, you've got some energy from the anger, but there's also a social awareness. There's a sense of, this is the, the objective I'm trying to achieve here. This is what matters to me. There's a filtering of the emotion through some social processing that allows us to behave or language it in a way that's helpful in, in terms of expressing our needs or what we want or our boundaries or whatever else. Right. And you know, the, the advantage of that is we're more likely to get our needs met. Right. So say we're angry because someone's crossing our boundaries. Right. Someone says or does something that crosses our boundaries if I just call them a name. Or act out, you know, maybe that halts the behavior in that instance, but the other person doesn't learn anything. They may, they probably won't even understand maybe what they did or it's certainly not what I want. But if I can filter that anger, if I can slow down my breath a little bit and think, okay, this is not okay, what do I want to communicate now and clearly articulate, okay, you know, this is what happened, this is what I want, makes it much more likely that the situation is going to turn out favorably is anger and aggression.
- [15:06]
A
Sort of. Often we shoot ourselves in the foot, don't we? Because we're sort of, maybe even the reason for that anger, the boundary crossing or violation and so on is, is quite valid or, or reasonable, but that gets lost because the person says, oh, well, you just got angry sort of a thing. And so all of a sudden, yeah, we, we.
- [15:28]
B
That. I think that's a brilliant observation, Stan. I think a lot of the times and, and by the way, this doesn't play out the same for everybody. Right. One of the, one of the things we talked about a little bit before you started recording just slightly were gender dynamics. And I think there's a lot more room culturally for men to be angry and to not be marginalized. I think it happens with men, but particularly with women, when a woman speaks in a way that communicates anger, very often the other person says, oh, you're just, you're an angry woman. You're, you're just being angry. It's very easy to, as you say, to dismiss someone because they're behaving angrily and completely ignore the content of their message, however valid it is, and just say, well, you're out of control. You need to, you need to calm down. Right. So when we, when we communicate in that sort of purely anger driven way, we set it up, set people up to be able to marginalize us and to disregard what we're saying. And I think that effect is, is, I think it's just, it happens a lot more and a lot more easily when you're a woman.
- [16:38]
A
Yeah. In fact, I've noticed just in my own work that even if a woman is being assertive and is quite skillful at assertiveness, that can get thrown in the pile of anger or aggression, you know, that it's, it's sort of somehow even that can be enough to have that person sort of dismissed or kind of labeled. Which is very tricky, isn't it, for women in particular?
- [17:02]
B
Oh no, it would absolutely. I can't imagine how Angering, that would be exactly. You're there, you made an assertive statement. You very clearly, intelligently and articulated communicate what you said. And the other person says, well, why are you so angry?
- [17:17]
A
Yeah, usually a man.
- [17:19]
B
Usually a man. Yeah. So, no, it really is. I remember there was. There was an analysis. I don't know if it was an actual study or just someone doing kind of an anal content analysis looking at the way different media outlets covered the election. But I remember in. I guess it would have been, you know, 2008 or 2012, when Barack Obama was running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination here in the states, and they had, you know, the two of them were debating. And when. When Obama would speak assertively, the. The media pundits would refer to him as forceful, and when Hillary would speak assertively, they'd refer to her as. Yeah, so, you know, very different. And. And what a. What a double bind. Right. How do you win? Yes. So I think. I think anger does make us more easily marginalized when. Particularly when we're. When we kind of step out of the realm of assertiveness into a little more intense place. And I think that effect. That effect is magnet magnified by variables like gender. Yeah.
- [18:35]
A
Is anger always threat system or coming from threat system? Is it sometimes anger arising out of drive system or is that where threat and drive are kind of both active there?
- [18:54]
B
Yeah. Well, anger, anger as a response, I think is and should be conceptualized as a threat response. Okay. But I think what you're getting at there is that threat and drive interact. You know, these three systems we talk about in CFT interact all the time. And one of the predominant ways that anger is triggered is when our drive pursuits are blocked. Right. When we settled on a goal, we're moving towards it, and something gets in the way that produces frustration, irritability, and not infrequently anger. So, you know, but that, I mean, when. When a dry pursuit is blocked, that registers as a threat.
- [19:35]
A
I see.
- [19:36]
B
Yeah.
- [19:38]
A
Because sometimes I. People ask me about road rage, for example, and often I feel like there's potentially two sources of road rage. One is, you could have killed me. And the other is, get out of my way. I'm trying to get something.
- [19:51]
B
I'm in a hurry. I'm going where I'm going. Yeah. I think it's both. Yeah.
- [19:55]
A
But both seem to kind of find their way back to threat system in a way. They're both kind of threat system activating, and drive might be a part of the situation as well. But the anger Itself perhaps is arising out of threat system. Perhaps there's some competition and maybe aggression comes into competition sometimes it's, it's tricky, like, I guess.
- [20:20]
B
Yeah, well, I, I think again, it evolutionarily, it makes a whole lot of sense that having a drive pursuit blocked. Right. You know, is, is perceived as threatening. Right. If my goals, you know, if I'm hunting and someone from a competing tribe takes down the deer I was hunting, that's a threat. Right. That's a threat to my life. Am I going to eat. Right. If I'm pursuing a mate and someone else scoops up the, the mate I have my eye on, that's a threat. That's a mating opportunity, you know, removed from the board, potentially. So I mean, it makes sense that these two systems, evolutionary are closely linked. Right. That something blocking a drive pursuit would be experienced as a threat and would activate the threat system. Right. And not just anger. Right. If I lose enough, dear, I'm probably going to be afraid that my family will starve.
- [21:20]
A
Yeah, anger.
- [21:22]
B
So I think it makes sense. Yeah.
- [21:26]
A
And I think wouldn't Paul say that assertiveness in some ways is actually arising out of perhaps soothing system or that sense of at least caring and being concerned for self and other and that the assertiveness and is therefore not so much threat system, but it's that ability to have that awareness, as you said, shift into something more like soothing system activation where we might be able to find a way to do the win win sort of thing with, with both parties.
- [21:56]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, I think we can think of assertiveness is as. I don't know if a blend would be the word, but the soothing system engaging with the threat system. Right. There's a recognition, there's a threat. I've got this issue nation to deal with, but we're able to regulate enough to open up our perspective because that's really what assertiveness is. You know, it's. It's opening up and thinking about, okay, how do I solve this problem? How do I address this potential threat in a way that doesn't create problems, doesn't cross my values, things like that. So that requires us to be soothed to the extent that we're able to think flexibly and you know, in many cases empathically in that way.
- [22:41]
A
You know, quite often I have noticed, I guess, that the people who might sort of, on the face of it appear very angry, that somewhere behind the anger is perhaps sadness. An example of that is a lot of my early work and my PhD and so on was with combat veterans and mainly male veterans, and there would be the anger there. But sometimes if you, you know, kind of created the right relationship, you know, you could sort of scratch the surface a little bit. And there was real, you know, deep sadness and grief that's behind that. And other times when someone's really presenting with a lot of sadness, somewhere behind that is, is actually anger that feels unable to be sort of accessed or expressed. And. And, you know, and sometimes that gives us a sense of where the work is in a way, you know, for sort of.
- [23:36]
B
But.
- [23:36]
A
But what are your thoughts on some of those ideas and how those different emotions relate to each other?
- [23:42]
B
Well, I. I think it's complicated. I think that a pretty common question that you get when you talk about anger is, is anger a primary emotion or is it a secondary emotion? And the answer is, well, yes. I mean, and these, these, these are labels that we give to emotions. But, you know, if you think about it, anger is a threat emotion. So, right. That threat, emo and. And there are lots of threats. Like, threats can be things, threats that come at me from the outside world. Threats can be thoughts and emotions that I create in my head, right? And very often it's the meeting of the two. Something happens in the outside world, I assign meaning to it, perceive that as a threat, and that triggers an emotion. And sometimes, you know, that emotion in response to the threat coming in or whatever is. Is purely anger. And sometimes there's another emotion that's happening, and I can have anger in response to that emotion, right? If, if, for example, I'm a man, and this is. This is not restricted to men, though I think historically probably a little more common if I'm a male who as a boy was socialized such that, you know, you can feel anger, right? When you, when you acted out in anger, you're like, oh, yeah, look, he's all boy. But boy, if you're anxious or you're sad, you're a. Right. You're not allowed to be that. If that's the messaging that I've internalized, then if I feel anxious or if I feel sad or if I feel any one of those other sort of vulnerable emotions that all human beings will at some point feel, that can be a threat. And I can that. And I can feel angry, right? I can feel angry that I'm feeling that. And, you know, as we explore in the multiple selves exercise in cft, I can be angry at the scared version of me, right? I can be angry at myself for feeling that, you know, and, and so I think and, and there will be some people who are socialized in exactly opposite ways. So maybe they were taught that you must never express anger. Right? You must never express it. That's bad. You can't do that. You know, again, it varies very much. And I peop. There are people of all genders who, who experience all of these dynamics. But I think historically you were more likely to hear that sort of narrative from, from women or girls were who were told that, you know, you can be vulnerable, it's okay, you can be sad, you can be scared, you can be anxious, but you can't be angry. Angry, you can't be, you can't do that. And so what can happen is the person, you know, when you tell people they can't express an emotion for enough times, they sort of figure out that they're not supposed to really even feel it. So it, There are some people who, when they notice anger coming up, anxiety follows because there's a sense that I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing. Shame. You know, we talk about shame a lot in cft. There are a lot of people, they notice anger and they experience shame. You know, I'm doing something I shouldn't do. It's bad. The fact that I'm feeling this is something bad about me that I need to get rid of. And as you say, that can underlie a lot of depression. You know, one of the things I appreciated the shout out for the new book, I, I happen to cheekily have a copyright here it is. One of the things I like about this book and I'm really proud of is that the first anger book I wrote 14 years ago or whenever it was, I talked a lot about externalized anger, but I really didn't get at that. Internalized anger, the anger problem that looks like depression and you can't express it, you can't be assertive, those sorts of things. And so in, in this book, it's, it's kind of like the Experiencing CFT from the Inside out book. It's module based, it's got a lot of reflections built into it. And you know, one of the things that happens when you ask people to do reflections, when you give them something to think about or a practice and then say, well, think about this and write about it. Some people freeze up because like, what am I supposed to write? I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And the way we solved that in the Experiencing Compassion Focused Therapy from the Inside out book was to come up with Some companion therapists who worked through the book alongside the client. And I did that in this book too. So we've got three people, three companions working through the modules with the reader, one of whom exhibits very shame prominent externalized anger, one of whom exhibits much more of a dominance oriented kind of social rank based form of anger, who kind of uses it in those ways. And then one, one character, one companion, Jordan has that suppressed anger and it, it shows how, how they work through that, those different forms of anger. So one thing I really like about it is I think through those companions was able to model different forms of anger and different ways of working with those things.
- [28:52]
A
Yeah, no, that, that really feels very helpful. I can, I can already think of, you know, kind of people that I'm working with where by those different sorts of, of ways that anger gets, gets presented, you know, is at play and funny the thought that's coming to mind a little bit and I wonder what you would say is in some ways it's this kind of core behavioral theory aspects to it, you know, like as we're growing up, what sorts of emotions get punished versus what sorts of emotions get reinforced and this, this experience over time and eventually here we are with kind of a certain relationship with the emotion itself and some of them, you know.
- [29:35]
B
Yeah.
- [29:35]
A
What, what do you think about that?
- [29:37]
B
Well, I'm so glad you asked that. I don't know if you meant that as a, as a setup question, but it's a beautiful one. I, I think that observation is the single best argument for a compassion focused therapy approach to working with anger because it has to do that. You asked about the relationship to the emotion and I have to say the, the world did not need me to write a book of anger management techniques. We've had several good books of anger management techniques for decades and there are, there are techniques that you can use. Now I do cover those in my books, but they're, they're, you know, some of them are unique to CFT and a lot of them aren't. Some of them are, have been there for a while. But the, a problem that I think many therapists would identify is that very many people who struggle with anger don't use those techniques. They don't use them. And I, and are less likely to present for therapy, are less likely to, to commit to working with the anger because of the relationship with anger. Right. They see it either as if I admit to having a problem with that, it's shame inducing. That means there's something bad about me or, or you know, they, they like the strength of it. Anger, Anger feels different from other emotions. It can feel activating in a way that helps us feel strong and that can be really seductive, particularly if you're someone who doesn't feel very strong in other important areas of your life. Right. If you don't feel very strong in your job and you don't feel very strong in your relationships, it can be hard to, to let go of that and commit to engaging with it. So I think the real strength of a CFT approach to working with anger is it helps people relate to anger compassionately to, to kind of courageously turn toward the anger and their, the problems they've had related to it and say, yeah, I didn't choose this or design this. You know, I, I, I, my anger plays out in ways that aren't helpful to me, but I don't need to be ashamed of that. It's not my fault and I want to do something about it. I want to, I want to build the life that, that I want to have. And so I think that's really the, the, the biggest advantage of compassion focused therapy approach to anger over, potentially over other approaches is that it's, it's, it's de, shaming people's relationship to anger and making it, I, I think, easier for them to, to say, I struggle with anger and I'm going to do something about it. One of the things that I did in this book and that I did in my first anger book and that I did in the TEDx talk, so I can say it to you because there are at least 300,000 people in the world that know that I historically have struggled some with anger and irritability in my own life. You know, never like lose relationships, lose job kind of stuff. But very early in my son's life, for example, I noticed myself modeling behaviors for him that I would never want him to struggle with. And having written just briefly in, in those books about my own struggle with anger or mentioning on The TED Talk, TEDx Talk, the probably the most common comment I've got when people from all over the world have emailed me to thank me for the books or whatever the thing they say most often is it meant so much to me to read that you struggle with this too, because it's like it gave them permission to say, I struggle with this. This is hard, right? I don't have to be perfect. This is genuinely difficult. And, and I think that's, that's what was missing. I think in some of the older anger resources there are A lot of. Of resources that I looked at with anger that have lots of good techniques, like the technology in there. There was a lot of sound, really good stuff in. But not all of them, but many of them. There was also an undercurrent of you're doing badly and you need to do better.
- [33:46]
A
Yes.
- [33:47]
B
There was this implicit messaging that was shame inducing and, and I think that was a barrier for people. And so. And I think there's already something that's kind of shame inducing or distancing about anger as an emotion. I talk about this in the TEDx talk. You know, if we see someone who's sad, you know, we kind of want to console them. Right. We see someone who's anxious a lot of the time, we want to reassure them. We see an angry face. We don't want anything to do with that. Right. Leave me alone. Back off. When we see someone who's anxious or sad or scared, we recognize they're struggling. We see someone who's angry, we don't always think they're struggling. A lot of times we think they're an. Right. That's an undesirable person. And so there's already this distancing that can happen that I think can make it hard for when. When anger is the thing you struggle with, to sort of accept that and admit it and commit to working with it. And I think CFT gives people a vehicle with which to do that. That's just inherently de shaming. I think that's the gift Paul gave us all with, with this model is this, this is a conduit. It's a way to. To connect with that motivation to. To do better.
- [35:02]
A
It's interesting that people have responded in that way because as you were describing it, your own experience of it, I felt within me this sort of bubbling up urge to say me too. Because it feels connecting when someone has the courage to say this has been a struggle for me. And then all of a sudden I feel like, well, yeah, and it feels connecting. It feels, you know, kind of validating and de. Shaming, I guess, you know, that the common humanity piece maybe is in there somewhere. That it's sort of. It's sort of even that is. Is very helpful.
- [35:40]
B
Yeah, yeah. And so I think it's important that we. That's why I was so excited when you reached out me to be on your podcast. Because I think the more we can get that message out there that anger is a threat emotion. It's not your fault if you struggle with it. Every person I've worked With who struggles with anger. We were able to connect the dots and it makes complete sense as to why they struggle with it. And you know, if we can, if we can name it as, yeah, this is hard. This is something I experience that's difficult, that just paves the way for us to say, okay, well what would be helpful in working with it and get people to that point then there's lots of stuff that you can do that's helpful. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:20]
A
So we, we sort of, we, we kind of learn that anger is somehow functional or we learn that anger is sort of not functional. We have difficult therefore relationships with kind of anger, but we also have difficult relationships with the various other emotions potentially as well. And all that is, is very mixed together. We're trying to kind of de. Shame all of that really. You know, it's kind of CFT really does help us to relate in a compassionate way to all of these kind of tricky emotions, tricky aspects of the brain. I was going to share with you the. In Australia there's a report that's come out, The Man Box 2024, which is a report of the Men's Project, a Jesuit social services initiative. And the man box is the notion that men often feel like they're, they, they're in a box, you know, that there's, it's sort of, you know, that they were defined, you know, by these sorts of things. And I just thought in terms of what you were saying before, one of the things they looked at was men's perception of social pressure to conform with certain Man Box rules. And that's things like, you know, self sufficiency, acting tough. So items there would be a man who talks a lot about his worries, fears and problems shouldn't really get respect. Men should figure out their personal problems on their own with asking others for help. A guy who doesn't fight back when others push him around is weak. And guys should act strong even if they feel scared and nervous inside. And you know, 18 to 30 year olds and 30 to 35 year old men that they're, they're sort of agreeing with all of those, you know, 40 to 50 to 55%. You know, like basically half of men kind of really agree that that's how men are seen and that's how we should, kind of how we should be, I suppose.
- [38:32]
B
Yeah. I mean, it really is a trap if you think about it. Even the way the, the, the, even the wording of one of those items. You read it, it, it emphasizes that strong means not anxious, not scared, not feeling Right. You shouldn't feel anxious. You should be strong. Like, they're different things. Yes, right. The anger groups that I developed that we ran in the prison for a number of years, the name of those groups were True Strength. Because I wanted to be core to this idea. What is strong is strong. Not feeling, you know, like a third of human emotions is that strong. Not being able to handle being scared. What's true strength? And I think for me, actually, the penny would drop in the group when I'd ask him, so. Because when we do multiple selves, you know, and we'd have them talk about the angry self and how that organizes them, and then sad self and anxious self, a lot of times when you'd get to anxious self and sad selves, the guys would say, literally, I, no, no, I don't do that. I feel anger, so I don't have to feel that. So, you know, the question then is, so what's stronger? The anger that you use to avoid feelings that are scary and uncomfortable, or the compassion that lets you find ways to feel it all? What, what is this whole idea, this whole notion of strength, you know, but, but I think you're getting. And that the man box idea, I think, is getting at something really important. And actually, I think it underlies. I think we're seeing escalating problems with male anger, actually, in a lot of cultures. And I think part of that is that at some levels of the culture, we're waking up to the idea that the way men have been socialized historically is not great. So ideas that men should be socially dominant, men should be this. Men should be. Or sexually dominant, rather, things like that. And there, there are different aspects of the culture. They're saying, we're not going to put up with this anymore. Right? You don't get to do this. And so I, I think there are a lot of men who, I mean, because the way we socialize boys hasn't caught up, right? So our expectations of men are beginning to change. But the way we teach boys to be men hasn't changed much yet, at least from what I hear from talking to boys and young men. And so I think part of what underlies a lot of male anger is confusion and frustration around the idea that, hey, I spent, you know, 18, 20 years learning how to be a man, taking in all these messages, trying to do all the things you told me to do. And now when I behave in the way I was taught to behave as a man, you tell me I'm a bad person, right? You. You people get Mad at me when I act as a man in the ways that I was sort of taught to be a man my whole life. And I think that's a, I think that is a trap. I think it is. And I think what it, what it tells us is we've got to do a better job at teaching boys how to be emotionally healthy human beings and how to interact with, with people who are different than them and how to feel and how to communicate and all of those things. Because I think it is very tricky. I think there are a lot of men who feel like they're being condemned for doing exactly the things they were raised to do.
- [41:55]
A
And a part of this report is really making the point that the man box rules. The sort of, the more people kind of might agree with the man box rules, the greater the likelihood of intimate partner violence. Basically. There's a correlation there almost certainly.
- [42:11]
B
I mean, Paul Gilbert, I think when he writes about things like social mentality theory and social rank theory, speaks directly to this. Right. One of the things Paul talks about is how different social milieu's pull at different, you know, motives being played out in different ways so we can get our needs met in any number of ways. So if it's a cooperative social milieu we're in, we will learn to meet our needs by connecting and cooperating and working together. Right. And, and we'll, we'll tend to inhabit social mentalities that are, that, that are associated with caregiving and connection. And Paul talks about if we're in competitive social milus, well, that activates rank based ways of engaging, competitive ways of engaging. And that's correlated with increased depression, increased anxiety, all lots of other negative outcomes. Well, think about, we're talking about, okay, competitive, competitive versus cooperative social mil use. When you read those descriptors of the man box, which one does that sound like? Right. Totally complete setup.
- [43:24]
A
Yeah, no, no, that's true. You can feel the, the rank kind of stuff, you know, weaving through us. And, and it, it leads to perhaps more aggression or intimate partner violence. But the final point in the, in the study is that it also leads to poorer mental health, little interest or pleasure in doing things. Feeling down, depressed or hopeless, thoughts of suicide, thoughts of self harm are all, you know, kind of highly correlated with, with, you know, more agreement with the man box rules.
- [43:57]
B
Absolutely. But if we think about it, it makes complete sense because again, if those man box rules are activating that rank based way of being in the world. Right.
- [44:08]
A
Yes.
- [44:08]
B
And you're in that kind of rank based way, you never really feel safe. You never get to that, that we get when we feel safe through connection. It's all about threat regulation. It's all about how do I feel a little less threatened. If I can be a little stronger, be a little more powerful, a little more wealthier, own a few more guns. I live in the States, then maybe I can feel a little less threatened. But it's almost like an OCD loop, right? I feel a little less threatened while I'm demonstrating my dominance. But you lay off of it for very long and the threat creeps back up. And so, you know, of course if you're doing that, you know, you're going to have problems with your social relationships. You're not going to feel safe. You're, you know, of course we're going to be more anxious, more depressed because the world is all about threat, threat regulation. And we're acting in ways that actually get in the way of actual soothing through forming, you know, real relationships with people who care about us and being able to be emotionally available and those sorts of things. So I think, I think it's real tricky and I'm really, I'm happy that you've got folks in Australia who are looking at that and I think that's happening in other places too. But it's, it's one thing that's really tough, I think since we're talking about men, is it's a lot easier to make people feel threatened than to help them feel safe. It's a lot easier. We have these brains that evolved to be very threat sensitive and you know, in, in, you know, I don't know that I want to even point people toward, toward people by naming names, but if you look on TikTok and in the blogosphere and, and that there are a lot of people that are just, you know, they're throwing Molotov cocktails. They're, they're, instead of encouraging men to, to own their anger problems, they're, they're teaching men that they're, they're being attacked. That, you know, and, and actually idealizing that competitive rank based way of being in the world. And you know, it's a lot easier to make people feel threatened than it is to, to help them feel safe. So that I think that's really tricky. The voices that are out there doing that. Yeah, yeah.
- [46:27]
A
Because it also gets clicks. Is, is what, you know, that's part of why they do it.
- [46:32]
B
Yeah, it gets lots of clicks and you know what happens, it validates the anger. If you've got a guy who's already feeling threatened and already activated, and someone's saying, yeah, it really is that bad, then, you know, it validates it. But the, you know, the, the, the, the proof in the pudding in terms of knowing that those guys aren't really committed to helping the people that are listening to them, is what you were saying. When you look at people who live in that space, they've got higher depression, they've got higher anxiety, they've got probably, almost certainly. What was the other thing you mentioned? I, I, you didn't say mortality, but there are several things, just thoughts of suicide. Suicide and probably higher suicide rates. Actually, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to mistakenly say something. I haven't looked at one of the studies for a while. But there's a lot of bad stuff that goes with that and there's a, there's a group of people on the Internet that are intentionally fueling that kind of thing.
- [47:29]
A
The other thing that's happening in Australia at the moment is, is the Stop Violence against Women kind of movement, really. And there has been a lot of attention to that and including, you know, sort of, well, protests or kind of gatherings and, and media attention and so on. And, and yeah, they really talk about sort of issues around respect and, and disrespect and, and men somehow, you know, kind of being taught to kind of disrespect women and that. That's a big part of what's behind it. I, I also wonder whether another big part that's behind it is, is more this. Well, I guess it's sort of what you're saying, which is that boys aren't really taught to regulate their emotions and, and create a relationship with their emotions. That kind of is, is sort of all the stuff that you were mentioning before. But I mean, what, what is it that sort of needs to be kind of targeted there, you know, in terms of trying to really reduce violence against women, specifically by men?
- [48:40]
B
I think good men need to step up. Yeah, that's what I think. There's some literature out there that seems to indicate that men and, and perhaps particularly men who engage in things like violence, sexual aggression and objectification, those sorts of things. Those men are not terribly receptive to messages that come from women about changing their behavior, but they are receptive or at least more receptive to social influence by other men. So while I think it is important to have, you know, women and everybody else protesting out there with their signs, I think what really needs to happen is, you know, when, when, you know, the college age male sees his fraternity brother or his mate kind of leading his drunken party date, who's too intoxicated to consent to anything, up the stairs to the bedroom that he says, dude, what are you doing? Stop that. She's too drunk. Get back here. You know, and when, when, you know, another friend makes an objectifying comment or, or, you know, something like that, for that guy to say, what are you doing? That's not okay. That's not cool. Cut that out. I think that's. I think we need more men, because I don't think most men, I mean, you know, whenever women start talking about these things, there are always people going, but it's not all men. It's not all men. Why are you talking about men like this? It's not all men. It's not all men. Probably it's a minority of men who do that stuff, but I think it's a majority of men who don't say anything about it, who don't do anything about it. And for a lot of people, I think that implies implicit consent. It applies, it implies that you can do those things and there are going to be no social, negative social ramifications. So I think if we really want to change those things, we need men to be courageous and be willing to call that stuff out. Right? Women are doing it and women will keep doing it, and I applaud their courage. But we need men to step into this void and say, no, this is our house. We need to take care of it. And, and to use the social influence we have that people of other genders may not have to influence men who are doing these things. And I think this is even more important because we've got these other voices that are channeling stuff that fuels this stuff. We need to have voices on the other side saying, no, that's not okay. This is not the man be. That's one of the reasons I really appreciated the Me Too movement. Because, you know, when the MeToo movement was really in the news and really picking up steam, my son was 12 or 13. And it really prompted some really good conversations. You know, we, yeah, we talked about this and what that movement was about. And I was, I, I got to say, you know, Dylan, you get to decide what, what kind of man you're going to be, right? Are you going to be one of the men that does these horrible things? Are you going to be one of the men that just kind of looks the other way and lets it happen? Are you going to be a man who tries to stop it who uses the power you have the privilege, you have to try and change things. So I think for the short answer is we need more good men to step up. And you know, and it's in that kind of.
- [52:07]
A
Oh, sorry, Russell. Yeah, it's in that kind of day to day, moment to moment interactional stuff too, isn't it? And, and men being willing to express that, you know, in the moment, but also sort of at the more kind of global level, you know, trying to compete with those other voices which are really, you know, sort of kind of doing a disservice to men and women and everyone by promoting these, these kind of much more threat based, I mean it's, I suppose it's not their fault either, but they are promoting a much more threat based way of thinking about what it is, be a man rather than true strength, you know, that, that, that you so nicely have coined.
- [52:53]
B
Yeah, I, I, I, I think it's tricky and, but you make a point which I think is a really good one. What I'm saying isn't that you need tons and tons of men to do what I'm doing right now and going out and monologuing about how this isn't okay and we need to do that. You know, most average guys, they're not psychologists, they don't do that. They don't talk like that. That's not what they want to do. And that's not what we need. What we need are men who, when they see it.
- [53:22]
A
Yes.
- [53:23]
B
To be able to say that's not okay. How would you feel if someone said like something like that to you, you know, or someone you loved? I mean, to just in these pithy little ways, it's not that hard to communicate, you know, disapproval and a suggestion to do something differently. Right. And I think to do that to, to, to just be assertive in those ways, to be able to just let people know that that's not okay. Right. And if you're, if you're going to act like that, right. If you're going to talk to that waitress in, in, in that way, I'm not going to go out with you anymore because I'm embarrassed to be around that. I don't want people to think that's what I'm about, you know, and so it's a lot of times it's just about using our voices to express what we're already feeling. Because I think there are a lot of good guys that when they witness that stuff, they do feel uncomfortable. They do feel, you know, not okay. But I think there's this risk of am I going to break? Am I going to violate the man code? Am I going to be rejected? Am I going to be the downer? Well, yeah, that's why we need a little courage. Yeah, right. You want to talk about strength? That's strength. Strength is standing up and saying something because you know it's right. Even if you know that it might, you might be risking a negative reaction from one of your mates. That's courage. That.
- [54:48]
A
Yes.
- [54:50]
B
Yes.
- [54:51]
A
No, that's really great. That's, you know, it's inspiring stuff. I mean, there's sort of the bottom up sort of thing and the top down thing and. But you know, men can really be a part of it. I mean, I, I know that.
- [55:05]
B
You.
- [55:05]
A
Know, it's harder to get clicks when you're a compassion person on the Internet, you know, in a way. But on the other hand, I think I posted somewhere recently, you know, compassion is hot right now, you know, like in a way because I think there is really a growing interest and you know, not least thanks to you and your various publications. I'll definitely put links to your earlier book and your TEDx TEDx talk and the current book on the. In the description.
- [55:36]
B
Oh, thank you. Appreciate it.
- [55:38]
A
And I have a copy actually of your first book just down there. The compassionate mind guide to managing your anger. So there it is. And, but yeah, if, if people would like to kind of engage with you or your work or maybe even be in touch. I mean, is there.
- [56:00]
B
Yeah.
- [56:00]
A
Where can people find you?
- [56:02]
B
I guess so. I'm, I'm actually not terribly hard to find. I did my website, they, they changed. I used to have a website and then the, whatever the program is, right, that housed it, they got rid of that and so I need to figure out how to build it again. So I don't have currently have. Well, what I have in lieu of a website is a really weird name. And what that means is if you google my name, you only get me, right? I'm the only K in the world which is good or bad depending on how well behaved I am. So probably the easiest way to track me down is through like the CFT made Simple book or page on Facebook. I'm through Messenger. I'm easy to find on Messenger. My, my email address is just russellcoltsotmail.com and I'm at Eastern Washington University. And if you Google me, that link comes up so I can be found in those ways. Right.
- [56:56]
A
And actually yes, there's a, a couple of other books as well that I'LL I'll include in the description you mentioned Compassion Focused Therapy from the Inside out. And also CFT Made simple, which by the way, has been a sort of. I'm constantly returning to that book in my own CFT work as a beautiful introduction and. Well, not just introduction, but ongoing resource for cft. But yeah, Russell Colts, thank you very much for being on Compassion in a T shirt.
- [57:32]
B
Oh, thanks for having me. Appreciate it very much.