TRANSCRIPTION 🔗
Lindsay: I'm going to send you something to read.
Mak: Generally people are willing to admit that they feel upset but not that they are angry We remember if you can't say something nice about someone don't say anything at all Forget that do the reverse And when expressing anger it works better to overstate the case since we too often underplay anger it is necessary to overplay it Most of us don't know how to identify clearly what anger feels like inside our bodies. We attend to our many racing thoughts focusing on the rightness or wrongness of the conversation we just had instead of tuning in to our experience in the moment. We ignore our racing heart and the flush of heat in our face and the tension building in our shoulders and the tightening of our stomachs. When we do acknowledge these feelings, we do so only at an abstract level that subsumes too much experience. We say we are upset about some general set of behaviors on someone else's part, even acknowledging upset is a first step. Some of us deny even that. The second step is admitting that our upset is anger. The third step is speaking resentments specifically and in contact with one's own body and the eyes of the other person.
Lindsay: ⁓ Again, you know, there's so much in here that I love that's great. ⁓ of course, at this point, the stuff that turns me off is just the dogmatic way that he presents it. You must do this for the of all. Forget that, do the reverse, ⁓ overstate the case. ⁓
Mak: As if... Yeah. Once again, this message is totally appropriate for some people in some circumstances to be this emphatic. Some people would benefit from hearing it that way. Not everybody all the time. So I want to continually like throw in these caveats. There's a whole lot of good stuff in there, but the way that it's packaged without any real context, without any sort of caveats when this might be contraindicated, then, you know, once again, that's when we get into trouble.
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. No. Yeah. I mean, this can be really, really great stuff for people who think of themselves as people pleasers for people who have been called doormats and relationships, you know, whatever, especially if people have felt that way in relationships in the past or just in their lives in general can be supported in practicing this kind of thing too. You know, ⁓ it can be so great. Like, like having support in doing this in a safe way, getting to practice it with safe people.
Mak: Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay: getting to feel in your body that like, I can say things out loud, I can say things directly, even anger, you know, can be such a good and healthy growth experience for so many people. And we're not all starting from that same place. Yeah, not everybody needs that same coaching. Not everybody needs to forget that when it comes to like, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. Like some people need more of that, you know, need to go more in that direction.
Mak: And I know that Brad was more subtle than that actually in workshops. He would tell different people different things and would be specific about that. He would say, for you, you do this, and then for you, you do this other thing. I'm telling you contradictory messages because that's what you need to hear right now.
Lindsay: Totally. Because you're two different people. Yeah, you're dealing with different things.
Mak: And that's good coaching. And I get that when you're writing a book to an unknown audience, it's a bit more difficult. And I guess maybe one of the ways to address this would have been to say, this is who I'm speaking to. It's these people in this specific situation. But then is like, well, you just really shrank your audience pool.
Lindsay: Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, or you have to make the book twice as long because you also have to like go back and frame everything like, okay, that thing I just said works for people who tend to, you know, show up as doormats in relationship. But if you're a person who's already saying shitty things to people all the time directly, you might need to go in this other direction with your honesty or your expression, you know, it's.
Mak: Right. Yeah. Or if you keep yourself shut down because you're in an abusive relationship. Right. It's not like, well, just be more assertive to your abusive partner.
Lindsay: that you can't currently safely get out of.
Mak: It's like, no, that's probably not it. It's for people that need encouragement in being more assertive, but like you say, in a safe context, and that the reason that they're not being assertive isn't because the context isn't safe, but because that they learned from previous experience that it wasn't safe to be assertive, but now they're in a new context, but they haven't gotten the message that this is a new context yet.
Lindsay: Indeed. The next section of this chapter is about other clues about denial of anger. So often people will respond with, I'm not mad. I just think that people should blah, blah. Or I just think that they shouldn't have said this, or I just think it makes more sense when, or I'm just irritated that there's a lot of denial of anger. There's a lot of not even realizing ourselves that we are mad about something. So, so Brad's just giving basically some, some clues here that you might actually be mad. about something when you're claiming that you're not. And those could be things like you find yourself gossiping about someone to other people rather than directly to the friend that it has to do with. You're breaking your word, even though you're trying not to. Another clue that might be a little harder to grasp is self-condemnation. Brad talks about if you're kind of stuck in this place of talking badly to yourself, if you are thinking something about like, ⁓ I'm so weak, I'm so stupid, I'm so incapable, I'm so incompetent that it can be ⁓ really worthwhile to check in with yourself about who are you mad at that might have something to do with this situation that has brought
Load full transcript
this thing up. Also, perfectionism, he says, is a good clue. If you are really caught up on doing something in a very particular way, that can be a good tip off that you might actually be mad at somebody else that maybe you have the impression of, like never thinks anything is good enough.
Mak: Yeah, caveat there. My guess is that perfectionism doesn't really point to some current relationship where someone is being too demanding of you. I mean, sometimes, yes, but probably most of the time, that's ancient history. You learned that perfectionism. ⁓
Lindsay: Good, yeah. Yeah, anger and appearance.
Mak: Yes, exactly. And so it's probably not the best thing to deal with that in your present moment relationships. That's really indicating that there's some work to be done on mom or dad or wherever it is that I learned that I have to be perfect in order to get love or whatever resources I needed as a child.
Lindsay: Sure, definitely. And sometimes in the moment things can help us get a view or a new understanding of where did this thing come from in the first place. Sometimes talking with the person in the moment that actually might seem like a much more surface level kind of thing can help us get in touch with or learn something new about like, ⁓ fuck, this is totally reminding me of how my dad used to be with me when I was growing up. yeah, so that can, yeah.
Mak: Yeah. That's true. It's true. Yeah, taking the first step and being honest about how it is that you're feeling in the moment can often accelerate the process of becoming aware of where that's coming from and then recognizing, okay, I still have some unfinished business with, know, from my past that I could deal with. Typically in, you know, a conversation with that person if that's safe or productive or in a therapeutic setting or whatever.
Lindsay: Yeah. And in workshops, this was something that was, that was acknowledged. You might be mad at a fellow participant in this current workshop who you've just met two days ago. You know, you're mad at them for this thing. And as you're expressing it to them, you might start to realize this has nothing to do with this person or like they were a small trigger in some way by saying something or doing some particular thing. But really this is stemming from what happened in the family that I grew up within. And so there's this way. that when you're in agreement with people about expressing anger in this way with each other, you sort of are, you sort of do have this understanding that you're kind of doing me a favor or giving me a gift right now by sitting here, hearing me out while I'm expressing this anger to you that is kind of a little bit about you but is mostly about these past circumstances, these past relationships.
Mak: Mm-hmm. And one thing that was missing, I think, from the workshops when we were going is informed consent about...
Lindsay: Absolutely.
Mak: this emotional processing all of the time. was kind of, Brad had us make all of these
agreements from the outset of the workshop, even for people who had never been and had no idea what they were agreeing to, that basically suggested that people would be radically honest with people all of the time, from the start until the finish of the workshop. He even had people say that they would be in the work of radical honesty for the rest of their lives sometimes. In any case,
Lindsay: Mm-hmm.
Mak: Of course then the idea is adopted that, I have to make myself available for you to do your emotional processing all the time, whether it has anything to do with me or not, you know? That doesn't work out well when we're kind of like pointing at these cult red flags, like that's a big one right there. This needs to be absolutely consensual on both parties. And it needs to be recognized that like, hey, this is 1 % about you, 99 % about my past. I want to ask you to do me the favor of sitting with me
Lindsay: Yeah.
Mak: while I express this stuff to you. Can you handle that? Can you handle that I'm kind of using you in this moment and that I'll be available for you to use me in certain moments and we're supporting each other growing together?
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is this the thing we want to take on together? Are we in agreement about this? Agreeing to it now doesn't mean every time I want to, you're going to be available. Like we're going to ask each other if you have the capacity, do you consent to this each time that we want to go into it? Because this is a lot. That is what you and I did not have. We sort of gave consent at the beginning.
Mak: Yeah.
Lindsay: and didn't have any idea about like, can we recheck in on that? Does it make sense to it? Just wasn't at all in our realm of in our awareness then, partly because Brad was saying like, do it all the time. Don't ask. It's for you. Go get it off your chest. Yeah.
Mak: No. We were totally boundaryless. And you know what? Like, imagine even if Brad were to have seen like how intensely we were going at it, he at some point would have been like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Give it a rest. Yeah.
Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah, take a break. Take a break. Yeah, I agree. ⁓ I feel pretty confident he would have said, you're not doing, you're not doing what I'm trying to teach you to do, you know, whatever. Like, yeah, you've taken it in a different direction too much, too long.
Mak: Right. You know, I think that he was a very boundary-less person, and so he promoted boundary-lessness to all of his participants, disciples of his workshop, whatever, to the point where I've poo-pooed on boundaries for years. would think, oh, that's for weak people who can't deal with whatever.
Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was laughable in the workshops when somebody would say like, that's not respecting my boundaries. It was like, ⁓ my God, what the fuck are you even taught? How ridiculous. Yeah.
Mak: Uh-huh. You're such a victim. Yeah. Right. Right. And I have very different view on that right now. I think I have such a respect. for that, like no, I'm not gonna be your punching bag right now. It's not my responsibility to help you deal with every little emotional trigger that you feel at every single moment. If I feel up to it, then yeah, sometimes I, you know, I wanna be supportive, I wanna be there for you and stuff. And like, if I don't have the capacity, like it's also my responsibility to be honest about that and say like, no, I'm not gonna take on your responsibility.
Lindsay: Yeah. And I'm just thinking about all of the people who did workshops with Brad and Tabor in the past. And Tabor had a different stance on a lot of this. He, back then, I don't know that he was using the word consent, but he would definitely talk about like checking in with the people first. Are you open to this? Can you handle this? And Brad would say like, no, no, you just go and do it. But I think.
Mak: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he was concerned with the impact on the other way more than Brad.
Lindsay: Yeah, but I do think about all of the people that did workshops with them in the past and yeah, how rigidly some people, I'm sure, took all of this on and how often people were just going and like ringing people's doorbells, know, yelling to them from the porch like Brad would tell them to do. Yeah.
Mak: Mm-hmm. Well this goes back to we mentioned Yeah, you feeling some stuff?
Lindsay: I just, like, just, because of some personal memories about,
Mak: Hmm.
Lindsay: You know, taking that on with my past partner who you're aware of after years of not talking with him, being at one of the workshops with Brad, doing some processing, you know, some like empty chair work with that person and me saying like, he refuses to talk with me. doesn't agree to it. doesn't want anything to do with it. And Brad basically just saying, you just keep checking in with him and you go show up at his house. I so wanted the permission to do that. I wanted someone like Brad to be giving me that permission and that push, but then I
Mak: ⁓ huh.
Lindsay: also felt so uncomfortable with it, so outside of my norm that what I ended up saying to that past partner in the message was like, Brad told me that I should just do it, even though you're telling you don't want it, you know, and that reply to me in a text like very quickly back was like, I don't live alone at my house. Other people are here who you would impact. Like I don't want you to come and do this. That would stress out my family member. you know, just like all of this, like
Mak: Yeah. Right?
Lindsay: very reasonable reply and you know, Brad shits on reasonableness, but it did kind of snap me out of this like, ⁓ fuck. And I still really wanted to go do that thing. I still really wanted that permission to mean that I could do it. But there also was like something I was receiving, something that was landing from this person responding to me saying like, please don't, please don't just show up at my house to tell me all these things you have to tell me that
has a real impact on me.
Mak: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay: people that I live with. So yeah, that's what came up for me in that moment when I was like, yeah, and I don't know if we can get back on track now for where we were right before.
Mak: Well, I want to say first of all, taking it to that extreme does not really help you so much. It kind of trains you that you need the other person in order to get over what it is that you feel towards them. And that's just not the case. It can be very helpful and it can accelerate the process under the right conditions. If the person
Lindsay: Yeah.
Mak: is vulnerable and open and doesn't take advantage of your honesty, your expression. If they were a benevolent person, then that can be very useful and very quick. In any other case, it doesn't really do you much good. And that was the kind of nuance that was completely missing from Brad's approach. And I think once again, that that goes all the way back to that story that he tells about when he was 10 years old. had the abusive stepdad. He beat him. I'm retelling the story now.
Lindsay: Mm. Yeah.
Mak: But he beats him over the head, sends him to the hospital, says, you ever hurt any of my family again, I'll fucking kill you. And so I think that that really kind for me sums up his approach then for people who have done you wrong in the past. I don't give a damn if you want to hear it or not. You are basically an abuser, but I'm the big dog now. I've got the baseball bat. Yeah. Yeah.
Lindsay: Yeah. Right, and I'm gonna take care of myself however I need to. And one of the ways I need to take care of myself is by telling you this shit now. Yeah.
Mak: Yeah, and there is a time and place for that, you know, but it's not for everyone all the time. It's not for most people most of the time.
Lindsay: Yeah. And you know, of course we know that in Brad's eight day workshops, he does talk about you need to also have ways that you can regulate yourself when you can't go and do that with another human being. And so he talks about meditation, yoga, but what he's doing wasn't really yoga, but whatever stretching movement, whatever the thing, you know, taking care of yourself, learning to soothe yourself when you can't get that co-regulation with another human being. So there is some talk.
Mak: Mm. Thank
Lindsay: about that but probably not enough when so much of what he's pushing is this go talk to that person by when will you do it you know that was like one of his big things we're not going to process this right now in the group unless you commit to go talking directly with this person and by when will you do that
Mak: Yeah. One of the main issues here is that grifters and self-help people who tell you how to live life are not able to walk with you through the process and get you back on track any time that you go off course or take any one thing that was said a little bit too seriously. And that's the issue with anyone, us included. We spent years stuck in this because that's what
we did. Rather than getting a qualified
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mak: ethical professional to be with you through a process and to not tell you what to do but rather support you in going where it is that you want to go and so that you don't end up in the situation where you did where you're like dropping responsibility for your actions and pinning it on your teacher or guru. Well, grad told me I need to do this rather than say
Lindsay: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, this might seem crazy, but it's justified because some person who teaches this stuff said, this is what I should do. Yeah.
Mak: Exactly. He's a PhD. He wrote a best-selling book. So I'm in the right and you need to suck it up.
Lindsay: Yes. Yeah. All right, we're going to jump right back in. Great. Okay, so Brad goes on to say, love your neighbor as yourself.
Mak: Let's do it. We're live, Lenz.
Lindsay: doesn't mean to lie. It means to tell the petty, unreasonable, unjustifiable truth, good and loud and direct. Try treating other people as shitty as you treat yourself. At times, being honest about your anger is the only way you have of sharing who you are. Telling the truth is loving your neighbor. This moves on to the next section of this chapter, which is called Stupid Questions, Dumb Ideas, and Bullshit Rationalizations.
Mak: I wanna stop you right there. That whole thing just sounds like justification for being an asshole. And it sounds completely contradictory to what he's saying about being outside of your stories and judgments and everything and speaking about your emotional truth in the moment. Which that, I mean, that's good. And that's about like taking ownership for how you feel in the moment. The way he's describing that right there sounds...
Lindsay: Great. Yeah. Yeah.
Mak: Completely different. It's just like justification for being an asshole.
Lindsay: Yeah, and it makes a lot of sense why when people read this book do end up doing radical honesty in a way that people relate to as brutal fucking honesty, you know? It makes sense that so many people have that impression of what this practice is because the person who created it is saying stuff like this. Try treating other people as shitty as you treat yourself.
Mak: Thanks Yeah. Why? What? What is the rationale behind that? It makes the, I mean, the other way around sounds like it could make some sense. know, love yourself as you love your neighbor.
Lindsay: Well, to put it a little more in context, the part that came right before that is when he was talking about self-condemnation and perfectionism being good clues that you might actually be mad at someone else. So it's kind of this idea of like, you think you're angry at yourself right now or you're being hard on yourself. It's probably because you're actually mad at someone else.
Mak: Yeah. Yeah. Once again, think that that's often, that's like old stuff. That's unfinished business. It's not like, okay, the person in the moment might be triggering some unresolved thing, but it's really not about them, you know? So being like, yo, I'm mad at you for, well, like, why does it sound ridiculous? Because it is, and it doesn't have anything to do with them. But so making it about them and justifying that, I'm just gonna tell you because it's true. It's like, well, yeah, but. Isn't it your responsibility to recognize that this is not truth with a capital T. This is reactivity.
Lindsay: Yeah, and I mean so much of that depends on who am I trying to do this with? Do my partner and I have this agreement that we can use each other in this way? I'm triggered by something you just said. I'm very clear that it's about something from the past. Are you willing to sit here with me so I can express this in the moment thing to you? Which can also support me in seeing more, getting over more from my past, but doing it the other way that you just described is a completely different thing.
Mak: Yeah, I think that very few people need to hear the message that he is putting out there in that section that you just read. It's hard for me to even think of a person or a situation where that would be appropriate or useful. Far more people need to hear the opposite, the contrary message.
Lindsay: Yes. And as I'm looking at it and listening to you saying that, I'm, I am trying to like see the, what is the message in here? I like to think that he's saying you are showing love to another person when you are revealing yourself to them wholly and, giving them space to do the same thing.
Mak: Yeah, there's a fine line. I mean, you shouldn't be so inhibited that you never ever let anyone see you disheveled or ugly cry or throw a little fit. But what this should not be is permission to throw fits and be in an infant and be reactive and justify that kind of reactivity and call it enlightenment, which is kind of what he does. So I think that we can be generous and try to like, sane-splain what he is, sane-wash what he is writing, you know? But like, stepping back from this, mean, kind of the big message is justification for reactivity.
Lindsay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, thanks for putting it simply like that. So. The next part that I mentioned to you is called stupid questions, dumb ideas and bullshit rationalizations. Almost seems a little silly to read at this point because we've already talked about like our stance on this. You said very, very explicitly what your stance is, which almost makes me want to read it more just to drive home what Brad's, what Brad's stance is. So he says, people ask me, why do I have to express my anger directly to another person? Isn't it possible to just forget about it or
Mak: Yeah. ⁓
Lindsay: just understand the other person's situation and forgive him? The answer is no. You cannot forgive someone else without expressing your resentment directly to her. What?
Mak: Ludicrous. Ludicrous.
Lindsay: Yeah. Here are some examples of reasons for avoiding it. There's no point in bringing it up again. It's over. I'm not angry
anymore. I believe in forgiveness. I think I do the same things I'm mad at him for doing so I can't really blame him. So he says all these explanations sound forgiving and noble, which they would be if They were experiences rather than ideas. The problem is not that these ideas are inaccurate or wrong. The problem is that ideas about forgiveness are not forgiveness. They don't even help. What you are left with is the experience of resentment and the concept of forgiveness and a deteriorating relationship. Forgiving someone with whom you are angry, actually experiencing forgiving him, only happens after you tell him what he did or said that you resent. Only when you allow yourself to experience and express anger openly will it disappear.
Mak: Yeah, I think there's a lot wrong with that.
Lindsay: Sorry, I just loved the little face you made. Yeah, I think there's a lot wrong with that. I mean, especially starting with the first sentence, you cannot forgive someone else without expressing your resentment directly. Yeah. And this just... Go ahead, sorry.
Mak: No, ludicrous. Ludicrous. does, go ahead. He described all kinds of different control patterns, avoidance mechanisms. He's spot on about all of that. Those are ways to avoid emotional experience. And what works better is to actually feel your emotional experience to work through it and digest it.
Lindsay: Really?
Mak: That does not mean that you need to do it in relation to the other person or by expressing it out loud to that person. You can do it in many other ways. You can do it silently by yourself with a trusted friend, with a therapist. You could do all kinds of different things. This is one of many possibilities that works really well for some people some of the time. And if it doesn't work, drop it. Try something else, you know?
Lindsay: Yeah. Yes. ⁓
Mak: It takes, there are a whole set of contextual requirements in order for this to work. And if those things aren't met, it probably is not going to work. So try something else. You know, life is an experiment. It's not a fucking cake. You can't bake life from a Mary Sue recipe book. And that's what he's trying to do is create a recipe for how to deal with things in an overly simplified way, assuming that like all situations and all people are alike. That's not life.
Lindsay: Absolutely. Agreed, indeed, and I do want to say when this does work... with and for whom the people it does, it's awesome. This is something that does work sometimes. And this is a way that I talk with people and practice with people in workshops and in coaching to express anger. And this is one option in the whole world, like you're saying, for ways to do this. This is one approach to a conversation for getting over anger. And I think there's a lot of value in it. We also know that like Brad at one point had a bumper sticker made that says radical honesty works pretty good most of the time. However, he would acknowledge that it doesn't always work, but then he would
also say like, it's bullshit if he won't go do it. ⁓ yeah, and trying to, yeah.
Mak: Exactly. You're doing it wrong. Keep trying. Take a break, but come back later and try it again.
Lindsay: Yeah, and that you aren't, you can't get results. You cannot forgive truly in a full-bodied way by talking to someone in an empty chair, by hitting a pillow.
Mak: It's really a shame because I think, you know, so many of the ideas that he's putting forth are good if they're contextualized and not presented so dogmatically. And if it's not being pushed on you like this is the one and only way, all of those other ways that you think work for you actually don't. You're wrong if you think that, I got over it because I tried writing a letter and burning it. No, you actually didn't. I don't care what you think. Why not just say, yeah, try writing a letter and burning it? Do you still feel angry? Okay, then why don't you try my way? And if that doesn't work, drop it and try something else, you know?
Lindsay: Mm. Yeah, go for it. Yeah.
Mak: What is it about us? I asked myself this question because I was dogmatic for so many years. Like, what is it that we want to be the one who knows the answer and is telling everyone else, I found it. I'm one of the only few who know and I'm telling you, if you don't listen to me, you're an idiot chicken shit loser.
Lindsay: I can't really relate to that. I know that might sound like a joke, but I actually don't relate to that part. So I can't, I can't help you answer that question. ⁓ Definitely not just a you problem, but I don't know that it's a me problem, but I obviously can see that it's a Brad problem and a problem of, many other facilitators or teachers for others.
Mak: No. that's a me problem. me. Right. Yeah, you definitely don't push things on people as hard as Brad did or as much as I used to, but it does seem like there was a certain way in which when you and I were in relationship that you were very convinced of that.
Lindsay: Yes. Very true, totally true. Yes. I think as a facilitator, I do not at all want to be positioning myself as my teacher or a, you know, like all of that is such a turnoff to me and always has been. I don't want at all to be taking on the role of let me tell you the way to do it. But in relationships with my partner, I absolutely take that on or did in the past, at least I can't say that that, but yeah, absolutely with you, I was very much locked in to way of being. I know the way to be. I know what's best.
Mak: Mm-hmm.
Lindsay: partly because I wanted what I wanted from you, you know? Like, it was like, so hard trying to control the relationship and the situation with you because I wasn't getting what I wanted, you know? And, and pushing harder and harder and probably picked up on that that was like, something that was effective with you and your set of whatever to sort of shame you, you know? And like, want to like whip you into shape with the particular things that I would say to you. Like, you're just a typical dude, you're doing all the same shit that other
Mak: Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lindsay: dumb dudes do and all of that kind of stuff. Just do it how I do it, just pay attention to what I'm doing and be better.
Mak: you I'm thinking there is potentially, in answer to my question, there is potentially a gender difference in the messaging that we receive and the ways that men learn that to be loved means to be respected and admired. And so any opportunity that men can come up with in order to position themselves as the one to be respected and followed and adored and admired.
Lindsay: Mm-hmm.
Mak: that's the thing to cling onto. And for women, it's oftentimes more relational. And in your case, you're describing something that you took and used that not in a way like I did in order to position myself above as a teacher and to be admired, but rather to control a relationship and to feel safe. Does that resonate with you?
Lindsay: It does, yeah. And there was something in there that you said, yeah. And I think before you got to that point, the question was, why do we feel like we need to be the person with the answer? That's something that's also really been taught directly and indirectly to boys, you know, and what's important in being a man is having the answer for everything. So I'm going to send you a portion to read.
Mak: My anger may not be right. Most resentments are irrational, unreasonable, stupid, and based on incomplete information. Making a successful case for how your resentment is right and how the other person is wrong isn't the solution, it's the problem. We human beings are all selfish and unfair and it's worse than useless to pretend we aren't. It is common for children to resent a younger sibling for being the baby of the family. Is that the baby's fault? Did the baby choose to be born last in the family? It seems unfair to resent people for things over which they have no control. It's unreasonable to resent parents for growing old, babies for crying, men for being men, or women for being women. But we do. Our decision to not express our resentment is based on a deeply held belief that our anger has to be justified, righteous, and legitimate. It doesn't. To be free of anger, we have to give up this belief and allow our resentments and other people's resentments to be expressed even if they are completely irrational. Okay, I agree and disagree. What about you?
Lindsay: agree with this in a lot of ways, meaning... ⁓ We are mad when we're mad. We talk in the workshops about how like your body is a better gauge for the emotions that you're feeling than your mind is. When we're mad and we are really mad, our bodies are doing certain things, tensing up, heat in the face, pounding heart. If that's happening, it's happening. And denying that isn't going to do anything good for us. I'm in agreement about that. Like we do get mad. about things that we can think are very rational, we get mad about things that are very
irrational, that don't seem fair at all, and it just is so. Most of us have this idea that like, ⁓ god, like, this person does not deserve for me to be mad at them right now, this is not their shit, this is my shit, I'm not gonna put it on them.
Mak: Yeah, I'm thinking that infants need their primary caregivers in order to co-regulate. In order to regulate themselves, they are dependent on someone else. Part of growing up is learning how to become independent. of other people to regulate your own emotions. So while an infant's primary and kind of only way to regulate themselves is in co-regulation with the other, I think that as an adult that should be a secondary kind of option at your disposal sometimes in the right circumstances, but that you are primarily responsible for yourself.
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Mak: And so that sometimes if I'm having trouble, I try to deal with this on my own and I just can't. Can you help me out right now? Rather than ⁓ reinforcing a dependence on, well, my go-to is anytime I feel upset, I need you to be available for me. Otherwise, I can't deal with what I'm experiencing.
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. I was just getting a little bit distracted because I was thinking about the self-regulation thing and about how Brad does teach about and encourage meditation and movement and, know, other self-soothing things. And then I'm thinking again about how intensely we took on doing this practice together when we were together. And the way that you said, like, I can't imagine that Brad would think that's the way to do it, the way that we were doing it. think he would say like,
Mak: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lindsay: The fuck are you guys doing? Give it a break.
Mak: think there are two issues there. The first step is that Brad is too dogmatic in the way that he teaches and speaks about things and the way that he adheres too strictly to his own ideas. I think that we took it a step further and without any proper adult supervision, you know, we became even more dogmatic than he probably would have coached us to be had he been around for all of it. So it was a little bit of...
Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mak: And I think if we ever go into detail about what happened in the radical honesty community and how things became super intense and kind of melted down. I think that one of the main factors in leading to that intensity and subsequent meltdown is that we were all so green, we were so early on the Dunning-Kruger effect, we were so early in our learning process and didn't have proper outside supervision that we took ideas that seemed to work for us and we stuck to them and when they didn't work we doubled down. And in order to justify that to We then taught others to do the same and claimed that it worked for us. Even when it didn't work for us all of the time, we would pretend that it did. And probably you less than a lot of other training. Like I'm going to throw myself in that camp of someone who became far too dogmatic in the way that they would teach it. But I was one of many, the majority, I think. And that led to this self-reinforcing machine that I don't know.
Lindsay: Yeah, I totally lost the thread here. I don't know if there's...
Mak: So while Brad did teach those self-regulation techniques, he under-emphasized them to the point that what we all walked away from was the way to deal with this stuff is to do it in relationship to the other person. In other words, reinforcing that our go-to is to co-regulate rather than to self-regulate.
Lindsay: Yeah, there's this way that I'm wondering does Brad push that all so much the way he does because he doesn't imagine a couple like us when we were together who spent all of our time together in a tiny space almost constantly interacting with each other he at least for the last probably two decades of his life has lived a pretty isolated life and isn't. Living with a partner isn't even close really to other human beings physically and for him taking this on maybe meant that like once a month he was having like a big or intense conversation with somebody and so the vast majority of the time he was Self-regulate he was you know meditating he was golfing. He was exercising. He was stretching I don't know. I'm trying to guess that something about the balance between self-regulation and co- regulation and I don't know because it does just seem obviously the way that we took it on was absurd but even just the way he's putting it out here seems absurd to some extent.
Mak: There are probably few couples or even people who ever took it on as intensely as you and I did.
Lindsay: But I also do think that at least probably other people who wanted to be radical honesty facilitators I'm guessing that most of those people did take it on Must take this on must initiate must instigate, you know on a daily basis I know we're not completely alone in that for sure wacky souls who like did a bunch of it
Mak: There have definitely been people who have taken it on in even more extreme ways than you and I. People who really took it as permission to be an asshole and to be aggressive and to overpower people and to cross boundaries.
Lindsay: Okay.