Transcript:

Angsty = Anger and Anxiety

 

Hi. Hey, welcome to the Us & Kids podcast. I'm your host Jan Talen. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, a wife, a mom, and a grandma. And this Us & Kids podcast is about how to be married forever while you parent together. And today we're not going to talk as much about marriage or as much about parenting. We're gonna talk about how to take good care of you because how you are is certainly going to affect your marriage, your relationship with your spouse and how you relate to your kids. You know, none of this is really easy. And in 2020 so far, none of it's been really easy. I'm going to encourage you, subscribe to the Us & Kids podcast in your favorite app. That way you can keep on learning and keep on developing your relationships even when the roads around us are bumpy.

 

I'm glad you're here. Let's get going. So the question I have is, have you had any new emotions lately? Are you tired of the same two or three showing up all the time? Are you liking what you're feeling? Or are they acting worse than an old glass of wine or a day and a half old peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Well, I realized the other day that I had a new emotion. Yeah. I don't know if I would call it a totally new, I do realize that I had a blend of two and they were off and running together and running tight. It was a blend of anxiety and anger. I know that we often say that anxiety and depression go together like peanut butter and jelly. Like that old stale one or the one that you snitched on all afternoon that the kids didn't eat.

 

But I also noticed that my anger and anxiety, we're running together and becoming better friends, than anxiety and depression. Their friendship was creating a fair amount of havoc inside of me and inside of my thoughts. I thought it might be time to break these two up, to divide and conquer. I had to see what are these two emotions actually doing? Cause when they team up, they're creating a mess. So I think of this a bit like when two of your kiddos are continuously pairing up together and then sneaking away and doing something, you're like, it's too quiet in the house. We're going to hear screams in a minute, and so you decide to divide and conquer. Snoop around, see what's both kids are up to. That's what I'm doing snooping around, seeing once what these two emotions are up to. Now I have a personal desire.

 

This is part of the DNA for Fun course is to look at what our desires are because that will help us make decisions about what we want to do. And I'm aware that my personal desire is to not, have my emotions run my life and that would mean I don't want my emotions to totally overrun my thoughts and my behaviors, at least not very often and not in the mundane of every day life. I don't care. I do like it when my emotions give me information. I think that's what they're supposed to do. Give me information so that I can use it in making a decision. I don't like it when they block out my rational thought and when my emotions refuse to listen to reason, like what is going on. So I sat myself down much like you would sit down your kids and I thought through the skills that I have, I'm looking for the one that is best and the one that I need the most.

 

That's another part of the DNA for fun is that N is what do I need? What skill do I need? Need to know what I desire, and then I need to know what skill I need. So I'm going to walk my way through a few of those skills and see what's which one I want to pick. Maybe I want two or three, I don't know. First of all, I wondered, am I struggling with my bonding and my connections in places that matter? I will agree. Social distancing has made me lonely. Zoom calls, although better than nothing, don't cut it for me in the long haul. So it could be that I need better connections. Well, I might need them, but I'm not sure if that's really going to make that much different in terms of what I need because in many ways, at least at the present moment, it's not a really viable option, but at least it's something that I can be aware of is that that's part of what my angry and angsty energy is about.

 

Part of why I'm anxious. So next I looked at another skill that I could take out of my necessary skills little list that I have and I thought about the skill named managing the emotional me. Well clearly that's not a bad idea because my emotions are managing me right now, not me managing my emotions. I told mr emotions, I think I work that one out a little bit more. So I'm sort of setting that one on the top shelf. Like I think that's a necessary skill I'm going to want. But first of all, I'm going to Snoop my way through the other skills that the DNA for fun course, would offer me, just to make sure I'm not missing anything. So let's see once too. I would need to listen better know how to do that or speak more clearly. It's not really hitting home to me as something that would really lower this blend of anxiety and anger, at least in the way I'm thinking about it right now.

 

For me, you guys might, as you think about your anxiety and anger, it might be something that you say, I need to learn how to speak up better. That would be a necessary skill and DNA for fun can help you do that. I do think I have to wonder maybe if I would benefit by speaking more about my emotional anxiety, but here's the trick that spins me because sometimes what I'm talking about it, it feeds the anxiety and the anxiety feeds the anger and then I just start to spin and I spin and I spin a nice spin faster than a merry go round. So I'm a little cautious about whether or not I want to use more listening or speaking. So I'm going to move down to the next one. The next necessary skill that I could pick, would be, I wonder if I want to use touch, would that help me feel better and calm down my anxiety and my anger.

 

We know that physical touch has such a deep connections to the calming spaces in our brains. Well, where am I missing touch? My husband and I are good. Okay. We often snuggle on the couch. We haven't changed it for years and years we've sat next to each other for 20 or 30 minutes chatting and watching something rather brainless. That would be one thing that I've kept steady, but I think maybe that it's not quite enough because I'm used to touching and hugging many other people in my life. Being connected to them, seeing them eye to eye, hearing their voices in automatic direct time and in the real same space. And so this not being able to touch I think might go along with my first one about wanting to be better connected. Okay. So I've sort of walked my way through the skills that DNA for Fun teaches because they're so core to how emotions and how we relate to each other.

 

I think I'm going to come back around to say that mostly I want to look at my connections that matter and I want to look at how I'm managing my emotions so they don't manage me. Well, I gave myself a little more thought and I realized I have started over this time of social distancing to just back off and step away from others. I don't really like video calls. I'm a little angry because I want to see them in person and so I'm anxious about when do I get to see them and I'm angry cause I can't. And the two blended together make me just want to sit back and watch everybody else chat but not really engage. It's a little, if I dare admitted like a three year old, my three year old self wanting to stomp my feet, say I want to see my people in person and don't boss me around.

 

Well, if I were able and if I were willing to apply the stuff I've learned from managing the emotional me to my three year old feet stomping self, I would probably be best and become more calm if I did some journaling. Okay. I agree with you. What three year olds do you know that journal? Right. Well, I decided I better tap into my 30 year old self. Hopefully that will connect to my three year old emotions and the two will work together. For me because of my spiritual base, I probably am going to add some praying both from my three-year-old heart that is anxious and lonely and just once my things back and my 30 year old heart and mine who's trying to make rational sense out of this life right now because I'm too stressed and I'm too lonely. I don't feel like I have good influence or impact.

 

I don't like that sense of hopelessness and despair and those things the into my anxiety. I also realized that my emotional self is really hungry for those visual and in-person connections. I can feel myself be a little frantic about when am I going to get that again. So my cycle is angry because I don't feel like I have any influence or choice that I'm being bossed around when I want to make my own choice. It sounds sort of three year oldish still doesn't it? And then my anger about lack of influence goes up and my emotional connections go down and then I realized that I am a bit love starved. A bit like a three year old that just got put in time out. No my three year old self and my 30 plus your old self is a bit anxious. I could also think of it but this is a bit like a person who has low blood sugar.

 

Or the person who gets hangry in a very real way. My anxious thoughts send me in circles about when I'll get to see my people again for real. And that feeds into, I don't have any control over this and that feeds my anger and my anxiety and our new emotional word for this is angsty. For those of you listening it's A, N, G, S, T, Y, and it's an angst, but it's really anger and anxiety. However, just knowing my emotions hasn't really changed them so far. I know them. Yay. Right? If I keep doing this, I'm going to be an emotional mess in a short amount of time and I'm fairly certain I'm going to take a few others with me. So back around to my desire is to not have my emotions own me or run me or wreck my life and taking into consideration what my emotions are and now me deciding to have me be the boss of them.

 

I'm aware of the circle and the spin they're sending me in and my desire is that my rational thoughts and actions become the boss of this angsty spin. Okay, how am I going to do that? I'm going to go back to what some of what managing the emotional me, that necessary skill is taught. What we learn in there. I'm going to have to spend a bit of time thinking about what is true because I can tell you when anger and anxiety start to spin together, they usually spin a web of lies and I'm going to have to think through what those lives could be. Something dramatic like I will be alone forever. No one will like me or even remember me and none of my friends really want to video chat with me either and then I will never see my friends again. I am really overreacting.

 

I'm not supposed to care this much that I'm missing them. It's not supposed to be that big a deal. My loneliness is a bad emotion. I should just ignore it. No, that's quite a list and when I look at it, I realize I need to balance that out with more truthful options like, well, really I probably will not be alone forever. In reality, I'm not alone right now. I am safe with my husband. I'm in good connection with my kids, my grandkids and my friends. They are remembering me. They do know me and they do like me. I will not be alone forever. Not just here on this earth, but also in the spiritual sense me, because Jesus does promise me, and you, that he will never leave or forsake us. It has been true in other tough places in my life and I am sure it is true now.

 

It's important for me with my spiritual base to remember that and use it. Caring for my friends and about my friends and my family is natural human behavior and it's healthy. It's not bad, not poor emotions that I care about my friends and my family. Missing them means that I do love them. They are important to me. They enhance and build up my life and my personal self and I build up theirs. That's the truth. Another normal human emotion is loneliness. I know this from the profession that I'm in working as a therapist, that loneliness, is the most common human emotion. It doesn't mean that it's fun. It simply means, Oh phew, that I'm not weird, but rather I'm being quite human. I usually tell clients that loneliness means you have something to offer others. Yeah, and it would be important to do so.

 

So that might mean cheering others on or giving some kind words or telling a great story. Maybe helping someone do something or bringing them something. So, so far my emotional me can and probably will settle down as I think more truthfully and as I care for others, lower myself focus. Some might call that stop my pity party, right? As I care for others, my loneliness and my low sense of purpose and connection will probably also go down because I'll be able to be more intentional about connecting and engaging. I think though that the emotional me wants to add one more thing and that is this being grateful part. It feeds in to the truthful part because the truth is that I really have a good life. I am safe, I am loved, I have plenty, so many other things, good, good things around me and in me.

 

Good, kind, uplifting and wholesome things happen to me every day. Some of them are intentional. Some of them are not really meant to land in my happy space, but they do. I am sure some of that is true for you too. I have to pay more attention to it and my emotions will settle down, when I do. Okay. Maybe are thinking, maybe I'm sort of thinking too nice list Jan, but I'm not sure it really cuts it. The emotions are too intense for me to even get there. My three year old self does not what to journal or think nice things. She just wants to scream and yell and cry. And sometimes I agree.

 

So I've also been talking to my three year old self into doing good body movement things. So for me, I'm in Michigan, we're trying to get it to be warm over here. I finally planted my spring flowers. Then I covered them last night because it frosted. Today, I hope to mow my lawn later. Intense exercise? No, but movement and sunshine, it's something pretty for me to look at and say I did that. An accomplishment is good for my brain and for my three year old self. Tomorrow I'm going to do my crazy workout workout. Today I'm making things pretty and enjoying some time with you, my friends. What else? I have to remember to watch funny things. Not the news, it's not helpful to me and I have to remember to smile even a fake one because if you get those muscles to work, I remember this.

 

It gets all of the hormones in your body to do a little shift into a better space as well as those big deep breathes. That sigh. It clears out all their carbon dioxide, clears out that adrenaline and helps the cortisol settle back out of your body. Cause right now I don't need those things. I'm safely talking to you. I don't need to be anxious. So what about you? What new emotions have you felt? What are you doing about them or what are they doing about and to you. The DNA for Fun course is a really good option for helping your personal space, but also your marriage and your parenting places in life. How can you do those all at once? You want to know, I'm sure you do for a minute. Let's talk relationship skills are very similar regardless of what relationship we're in, we just apply them differently. And when we focus on what we want and what our desire is, then we can decide, listen to the desire and decide on our necessary skill.

 

That's your N. It's the necessary skills. We'll teach those skills, help you practice them, give you good ways to make adjustments for your situations and then help you figure out how to apply them to the different situations because each situation has a little different recipe. It's a good course for just giving you balance and skill for any place in life, but particularly to focus on your marriage and your parenting skills so that that part of life, is really strong. It keeps that divorce word out of the conversations even when we're in this kind of 2020 mess. So I don't want to overwhelm you with that information. I just want you to know about it so that if you want to join our course, you can do that. Go to the website, www.usandkids.com and then just click join and you'll find out a whole lot more information from there.

 

And from there you can pick whether or not you want to use just a personal course for yourself and your spouse or whether or not you want to be a part of a group. I hope to see you there. No worries. If now's not a good time, just know we're going to be there steady for you and ready to give you as best support as we can. You're working hard trying to make it through the crazy 2020 virus we have. We're going to make it through this. Stay with us and take good care of yourself today. Help others who are feeling three to be come a happy and calmer three. You have good influence and good ideas cheering for you all and thank you for listening. We'll talk to you later. Bye bye.