Full Transcript for S01 E12: Blowhard?

that. Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. Right, who weren't much of a concern for him, whatever, but like he had these wives, I'm guessing, being the primary caretaker of their kids. He wasn't prioritizing that. He was prioritizing his freedom, you know? And he didn't have a fucking boss, you know? When would be the last time that Brad had an employer who he wouldn't want an employer because he would be fired? mak: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Well, and he threw off the shackles of ethical restraints in the psychotherapy world so that he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. Lindsay: Yeah. And I mean, so be it. Like he made his choices. And so the stuff that he's suggesting in this book and in his workshops work for someone like him in the ways that it does. mak: And I think just how we described before, as a way of justifying those decisions to oneself, you take that on then as a philosophy of life. It's not enough to say like, well, this is how I want to live my life. But when you're insecure about your own personal choices and the way that you want to live, you make that a should and a prescription for everyone else as well. No, no, no, no. The way that I choose to live my life is not just my choice. It is the right way to live. And if you disagree, you're full of shit or stupid. Lindsay: Yeah. Okay, I'm going keep this going. I'll just kind of sum this up. telling the truth about anger destroy my relationships? He says, we express only our appreciation and withhold our anger, we lose our ability to be fully present with the ones we love and sooner or later we become less able to appreciate them. Basically, this whole section is just about like, we're afraid that our anger will destroy our relationship. Brad is putting forth that withholding our anger is what's going to destroy the relationship. So this is the part where he talks about the thing that you mentioned earlier with the combustion engine. says, ⁓ a little practice, the explosions of anger become like conventional bombs, then like dynamite, then like firecrackers. The eventual goal is to have hundreds of tiny explosions a minute, like an internal combustion engine. This anger is good fuel to burn. It's a source of creative energy. Earlier when you mentioned that you said like that's been disproven. mak: The thing that has been disproven is called something like the hydraulic theory of emotion. And that's that what doesn't get expressed builds up like steam in a hydraulic press or something like that until eventually the pressure cannot be contained any longer and then either the machine explodes or you have some kind of pressure release valve. Lindsay: Mm-hmm. mak: The way that he's describing it is slightly differently. He's saying like, I mean, he's kind of pointing to the hydraulic theory of emotion, but then he finishes with this idea of lots of tiny explosions being like fuel and a combustion engine that like helps the engine run smoothly and stuff. I think that there is like some kind of sense in

that just, just that like when we repress our emotions, kind of, shut down and like, we don't have energy and we, you know, might even get sick. And that being in touch with our Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. mak: experience actually gives us energy and like propels us through life. That's good. But yeah, it's not so correct to think of something like, if I bottle this up then eventually it must explode therefore it's good for me to have little pressure release experiences every once in a while. That's not the best way to think about the expression of anger. Lindsay: Yeah, well, and he's saying not every once in a while, but like kind of constantly. I mean, the way he says it is the eventual goal is to have hundreds of tiny explosions a minute, which surely he doesn't mean anger. Hundreds of explosions of anger a minute. mak: Yeah, I wonder what he means by that because you can't have a hundred different emotional experiences or expressions a minute. Lindsay: So he goes on to say, paying attention to the experience of feeling in the body while angry is the key to learning how to use anger rather than have anger use you. That awareness of feeling in the body is what causes anger to change from a destructive force to a usable power. mak: I like this thing about being converted from a destructive force into a usable energy source. But I think that he's missing some subtlety and he's suggesting that anytime you feel anger for any reason, you should just express it in the moment. If it's to stand up for yourself or for someone else in a true situation of injustice or boundary violation, that is an appropriate and productive time to express anger. But it's too easy to take what he's saying as like, well, you didn't do what I like and I'm angry about it. And now I'm justified to tell you about that anger, even if, okay, it's my responsibility to get over it. But it's still reinforcing this idea that, well, My anger is justified and I have permission to express it now. It just can't be the way that we deal with all forms of anger. Lindsay: Alright, so we're talking about explosive anger and he also mentions just a little something about phony explosiveness and I mean, I think this is especially true for people who come into our workshops saying like, I have no problem being honest. People tell me I'm too honest. So this is one section in the book where he may actually be kind of speaking to that and talking about how noisy expression of anger is not always. Authentic often when people already think of themselves as good at being outwardly loudly Angry with somebody there's a really good chance that that's covering something else up that they are comfortable with that They are not comfortable with their grief or with their sadness or and so the comfortable place is to go into the yelling rather than to Let themselves sort of melt into what might be beneath that that is harder for them to just feel I'm gonna read this last little part from a section about experimental and experiential approach to curing anger sickness. So at the beginning of this section he's encouraging you to just like think of your like current life experience, think of anybody that you might be mad at. In what ways do I categorize them or judge them? And then he goes on to say, you contacted that person you're thinking of and told him forthrightly what you didn't like about him and quit there, chances are it would not improve your relationship. Don't stop with that. The purpose of expressing your anger directly instead of indirectly is to get in touch with the source of your own judgments. By the time a person decides that he doesn't like someone, she is already one step removed from the anger. mak: You Lindsay: So many of us will say things to remove ourselves from the anger, like, I'm not angry. I just don't like him or her very much. Or I just don't feel like he's the kind of person I want to be around. But these judgments are founded on one or more very specific incidents about which we were angry at one time. So we talk about this kind of stuff during our workshops. Often how relationships end or how we distance ourselves from someone is by all these little things adding up could be very minor instances of us feeling. Irritated with someone that do just add up. You know, I don't know I just don't ever feel like being around that person anymore mak: and that coming to that decision happens through the process of the buildup of small or big resentments over time. Lindsay: Yeah, so that's something I talk about with people that I'm working with and I also share though in my mind this expression of anger is But that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to choose to have every person in your life. You know, there obviously can be reasons that we get mad at somebody that just are not in alignment with how we want to live our lives, what we think of as healthy. And it could be that you get mad at someone, you get over it and you still decide, and this isn't someone I'm going to spend time with. So everything we just said isn't to say, get over everything with everybody, forgive everyone all of the time so that you will want to have them in your lives. mak: Mm-hmm. Yep. It can be a great pitfall in many instances. The anger is there for a good reason. It's to signal that there is an issue. Perpetual buildup of resentment could signal that there's just something wrong with the relationship. Lindsay: Yeah, like it was with ours. Which I'm so glad we can see now and can laugh about and ⁓ can have a completely different sort of relationship that does work for us. All right, so I'm sending a bit to now. mak: Ha ha. Yeah. The process of forgiveness involves the following six minimal requirements, none of which may be skipped. Number one, you have to tell the truth about what specific behavior, and this is from a guy who hates shoulds. Lindsay: And they all start with you have to. Yeah. mak: But notice he never uses the word should. He

always says you must or you have to in order to not use the dreaded S word. You have to tell the truth about what specific behavior you resent to the person face to face. Number two, you have to be verbally and vocally unrestrained with regard to volume and propriety. Number three, Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ huh. Yeah. mak: You have to pay attention to the feelings and sensations in your body and to the other person as you speak. Number four, you have to express any appreciations for the person that come up in the process with the same attention to your feelings and to the other person as when you are expressing resentments. Number five, You have to stay with any feelings that emerge in the process, like tears or laughter, regardless of any evaluations you may have about how it makes you look. 6. You have to stay with the discussion until you no longer feel resentful of the other person. Lindsay: So I fear us sounding like broken records, but I'm sure we would both say a pretty similar thing about this. There are lot of good suggestions in here, and I imagine that if this was framed in the way of, if you are someone who has consistently had a hard time expressing anger directly to people, if you're holding on to a lot of past anger, if you're distancing yourself from the important people in your life because you've held on to resentment, you may benefit from doing step one. You may benefit from doing step two. There may be something for you, experimenting with step four. So obviously there's potentially good advice in here for some people depending on how you take it on and of course being so rigid about this minimal requirements, none of which may be skipped. You have to, have to, you have to. It's just silly and whatever. We can look beyond that. mak: In a nutshell, what he's outlining is a step-by-step manual for a very particular kind of emotional processing that he learned from Fritz Perls and Gestalt therapy back in the 60s and 70s. This, in my opinion, should not be a prescription for how to live your life. This is a therapeutic model for emotional processing. You and I took this on as how to live our lives. And so we ended up doing therapy, unsupervised therapy, Lindsay: Mm-hmm. mak: each other for three hours a day. Lindsay: Boundary list unsupervised. So to wrap up that portion about the process of forgiveness, he says, after you've done those six steps, then and only then are you ready to make arrangements for the future or make any agreements. Any diplomat, bureaucrat, Democrat, labor leader, company executive, head of government, husband, wife, son, or daughter who attempts to do other than this is likewise full of shit. Include in that. mak: I'm sorry. Lindsay: I like that end part. some people can successfully, the way I'm putting it in my own words, some people can successfully get over feeling all the shit you're feeling in your body when mad with someone if you go and tell the truth about it and stick with the person. Give them the

opportunity to do the same thing with you. Feel through it all. Talk with the person about it. If you're in agreement to do that, sweet. Like so much good stuff can come from that. Yeah, there's so much of this that I'm like, I do talk about these things in some ways in, in the workshops that I'm facilitating. And I don't want anyone listening to this to think that I don't think that there's major benefits that are possible from expressing anger in this way. I do. And just like we've said a million times now, there are so many things to consider when taking this on. mak: Well, once again, this is a therapeutic process. And I think that a lot of people who come to the workshops recognize that in some way or another and ask the question, how do I take this out into my life? I can't go do this. And they're absolutely right. should not be meant to be taken on with every single person in your life at all times. And Brad was kind of specific about this too, that he had this lofty idea about the end of one-on-one psychotherapy and the emergence of group kind of democratizing psychotherapy, which I think is a very lovely idea. And it just doesn't work really because in order to do this kind of therapeutic process, a lot of conditions need to be met. Somebody who's qualified, has a lot of training and experience and who maintains a high ethical standard. He wanted everybody to play therapist with each other and that doesn't work out. That's a psychotherapy cult, which is essentially what we were in or what developed to some degree. Lindsay: Yep. So the rest of the chapter, he spells out some exercises that he wants people to take on, basically just like some guidelines for how to deal with anger going forward. Basically the exercises he starts with are thinking about somebody you're mad at. And then step two of the exercise is go call the person and then go meet up with your enemy and forgive them. mak: This I think he got from Est, from Warner Earhart. When you went to the Landmark Forum, did you go through that process of writing down and then, go call that person right now or tomorrow? Lindsay: Probably I don't totally remember and that sounds kind of familiar But then he goes on to say like you probably didn't just do those exercises that I spelled out. You're probably a coward. Cool. Here are some other guidelines I will just read the bullet points very simply but this is like pages of information that go with these bullet points Whenever possible talk face to face to the person with whom you are angry So definitely like not calling on the phone not texting this stuff I stand beside I think like if you're mad at somebody trying to sort it out through text especially mak: Hahaha! Lindsay: especially, is only going to make things work for the most part, pretty much across the board, even on the phone, because you can't really be with what's happening with each other. Next, start your sentences as often as possible with the words I resent you for or I appreciate you for. ⁓ I feel like we should be saying more about that. mak: Yeah, absolutely. The point there, I think that that's too restrictive. Better advice is to say, speak more about your emotional experience using I statements, simple language, and using primary emotions. I am mad, sad, happy about this thing, and keep it at that, rather than going into the explanations or justifications. Lindsay: The next point is to speak in the present tense. Even when you're talking about something that you're mad about from the past, he suggests speaking in the present tense so that you're avoiding just being in the description of something, but you're more actually like feeling into in the moment now the thing that you were mad about in the past as a better way to be present with it, to be able to feel it and get over it. mak: I disagree. I'd say if you're no longer mad, don't say that you're mad right now. If you're avoiding being honest that you're still angry about the thing by pretending that you were mad in the past and that you have gotten over it now when you haven't, then yes, I agree with that. But don't Lindsay: Yeah, which is largely what he's saying when he goes on ⁓ below this bullet point. Because so many people are so quick to say, I'm not angry, we often will do this. This is just an experiment for you to try on what it feels like in your body when you say that right now and to pay attention to what your body tells you about. Is this so for me or is this not so for me? The next point is eventually get specific rather than saying, I'm mad at you for being snobbish toward me as an example. says here, the person is going to end up just arguing back about I'm not a snob or this or that, get specific. What is the thing that they said that had you think of them as being a snob? Did they say like, I don't like the kind of food that you eat? See how specific you can get. Along with that sort of don't stop with general descriptions of behavior or general judgments. Avoid things like always and never because those are just stories about the person. Focus as much as you can on what did happen instead of what didn't happen. So instead of like I'm mad at you for not ever being spontaneous with me. Try to think of examples of the thing that actually happened. Is it that the person said, no, the last five times that you asked them to go do something. The next point is stay in touch with your experience as you talk. So your physical experience, the sensations that you're noticing as you're talking, the thoughts that you're having as you're talking, rather than just giving like sort of a rehearsed presentation to somebody about what you were angry about in the past. The next bullet point is stay there with the person the time it takes to exchange resentment. So ideally, obviously, you're giving the other person the opportunity. If they've agreed to sit with you and hear you out about what you're angry about, you're also giving them that opportunity.

And then you're not just cutting it off there. You're like kind of sticking with each other beyond that to see what else comes up. The next point is after you both have fully expressed your specific resentment, state your appreciation the same way. So the same way that we give the example of I resent you for, I'm mad at you for, he suggests doing the same thing with appreciations. mak: Mm. Lindsay: you for blank a specific thing that was said or done rather than an idea about something. And then keep it up is the last guideline. Sometimes after having this sort of conversation with somebody, we can go home and have like sort of a shame spiral, like you talked about, or we can have sort of a vulnerability hangover. All this new stuff might come up that has us want to completely avoid the person again, even if we came around to like a really lovely place at the end of our conversation. But whoa, now I'm still wanting to avoid this person again. So the idea of sticking with it or, you know, keep it up is like getting back in contact with that person. and saying, wow, I realize I'm kind of wanting to avoid talking with you after having that conversation, even though it seemed to go so well and, you know, continuing to be open about that. Then he goes on just to a sentence or two each about getting an agreement with people in a way that we've discussed a bit. Like, can we try on actually being honest with each other when we get mad at each other? We tend to not talk for two weeks if we get mad at each other. Do we want to experiment with doing something different? Can we agree on, you know, being more honest with each other? mak: and Lindsay: Have a conversation in a group about anger, which could be like your family group or a group of friends. Can you just like have an open conversation about how do you tend to deal with anger? How do we deal with anger with each other? mak: Yeah. That's Brad's way of bringing consent into the whole process without calling it consent. He would call it agreements or creating a context or something like that. But somehow we walked away with this negative attitude towards consent and poo-pooing the idea of safety while still acknowledging somehow, well, it's kind of better if the other person agrees, but it's not really necessary. Lindsay: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but actually you're saying that and then so that made me look back at the few sentences he has under this agreement to experiment with anger. Actually, the thing that he's saying is talk to some of your friends, your spouse, family members, whatever, and tell them to read this chapter about anger. So he's actually telling them, get everybody else on board with doing it this way so that you can all just tell each other you're mad at each other when you are in the way that I'm talking about. So there's that. I should have expanded on what he actually said and not just what I thought or hoped he meant. mak: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Lindsay: by a agreement. Ask for help from friends, like getting a mutual friend to mediate with you if two of you are mad at each other. He gives some suggestions for other books you can look to to do exercises from. mak: This is a therapeutic process that he's prescribing and I, after all these years of experience, I think that it's kind of irresponsible to suggest that people go and do it unsupervised. ⁓ Lindsay: Yeah. mak: that there is so much context and subtlety and experience that needs to be brought in in order for the process that he's laying out to be productive. There's way too many opportunities for shit to go sideways without somebody being there to. Lindsay: Definitely. mak: All of the stuff that he's saying to do, like when you're emotionally activated, you can't remember to do any of this shit. You're just off to the races. All of that stuff is gonna go right out the window, you know? Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, it takes a lot of practice to be able to keep those things in mind when you're in a heated conversation and it happened, you know, with practice, we can learn those things and we can use these tools. For somebody who's just reading this book and not going to a workshop and actually practicing with people in that sort of setting, there's very little chance of success. And still, I don't want to just say nobody will have success doing this because obviously we know that some people do have success just reading this book, taking the risk, going and being kind of messy and it works out mak: Mm-hmm. Lindsay: There are plenty of reports of that. I've had plenty of participants share that kind of thing with me. Plenty of people who talked about reading the book before coming to a workshop and like actually having plenty of real changes with family members, with friends. So I also don't want to just 100 % discourage people from trying to take that on. I also don't want this to look like a sales pitch for coaching or for workshops, you know, like you must do it with the support of a professional or whatever. Do what you want to do. If you want to take some of this on and you can do it in a way that's like with care for the people in your life. and you're not aiming to just dump your shit on people, great, experiment if you'd like to. mak: think in order for this prescription to be responsible, there has to be a lot more context given, situations where this is contraindicated. Because I totally agree with what you say. For many people, ⁓ this could work ⁓ And ⁓ am no longer comfortable Lindsay: Yeah. mak: making suggestions for people that have a potential for a high rate of collateral damage. And that was the attitude that Est... and a lot of the self-actualization programs had back in the day. And I think that Brad really walked away with that same attitude. And probably a lot of the kind of workshop-y spiritual practice groups today still have that attitude, probably far less. Lindsay: Mm. mak: But in any case, there were so many people that would come out of EST, for

example, and proclaim immediate self-actualization, major improvements in their life after just one weekend. There were also a lot of people who would become hospitalized, would end up with severe mental distress that would even lead to suicide sometimes, that was connected back to one weekend workshop doing that stuff. It was so intense that it kicked Lindsay: We're here. mak: off the emergence of some psychotic episode that had never presented itself before and may not have ever done so had they not had the experience. And of course they would deny and sweep all of that stuff under the rug. And Brad's way of doing a similar thing was saying, well, it works pretty good most of the time. And for me, that just doesn't work. That's not something that I'm comfortable promoting. Lindsay: Love you. Yeah. Yeah, pretty good most of the time, isn't good enough for you? ⁓ mak: No. Not if when it doesn't work, that means that people are being harmed. If something just doesn't work but there's no harm, fine. Lindsay: Yes, just the way it is laid out in the book isn't adequate for most people to do this in a way that will be healthy. Some people luck out and have success. I like to think that the workshops that we're doing are giving people more of a safe foundation to start to build upon for how to go out and have conversations like this with people in a way that isn't going to be harmful to themselves or others. mak: Mm-hmm. Lindsay: Because we have mentioned things like meditation and exercise movement as ways of self-regulating, I do want to mention that right at the end of this chapter about anger, he does mention the value of meditation and that as long as you aren't using meditation as a way to avoid direct expression of anger, he does highly recommend taking on meditation. And then he kind of just summarizes the chapter. Okay, I just spelled out how to deal with anger in your life. Why? And so I'm going to have you close us out. mak: Why do all of this? Being honest about anger puts you on the road back home to being alive like you were as a child instead of mind-deadened by what you have learned to lie about. Telling the truth about your anger is a way to get back to your experience of being, where you love yourself and therefore have something left over with which to love someone else. Revealing the withheld judgments and feelings you have hidden out of politeness and your protection racket is the difference between a life lived in hate and a life lived in love. you your life back. It is a way to feel complete and not be in need of someone else to make you be whole. It is one of the ways back to the path of the light that enlightens the light. That light of being that first clicked on in the womb and which still is humming right along now even as we speak. That is one reason. Here's one more. The survival of humankind depends on it. What is in this chapter on anger is the key to the undoing of... What is in this chapter on anger is the key to the undoing of destructive effects of civilization itself. Civilization is a problem like having a mind is a problem. Civilization and being civil is the source of war as well as personal alienation. Yeah, he loves those plays on words. Civilization, being civil, civil war, being civil is the source of war. Lindsay: And I want to point out this chapter about anger is in part three of the book about liberation of the being from its mind. Learning to deal with anger in this way is a part of liberating ourselves from being caught up in all of our mind gunk. Yeah. Any final thoughts to sort of bring us to a conclusion with this episode on how anger should be dealt with according to Brad Blanton? mak: There is a lot of good stuff in there and I find it frustrating to have to dig the kernels of useful reflection out of the sea of nonsense Lindsay: And insults, really. Nonsense and insults and yeah, poetics and place on words and and all of that There's a way that I appreciate someone being creative with the way that they write and having a voice in their writing ⁓ In this case, I probably appreciated that when I was younger and now to me it's I think pretty much just what you just said like Why the fuck the need to be so brash and insulting and yeah, you're probably a coward. You're probably this you're probably that it's like cool. I get mak: Mm-hmm. Lindsay: it and. mak: It just seems to come from such an immature and insecure place. To be so... Yeah, to be so self-aggrandizing, I'm gonna save the world, or I could, if all of you weren't so cowardly and stupid, and you would just listen to me. Lindsay: Yeah, that's like the only way I can see it now. Yeah. mak: and to claim expertise and absolute knowing over things that are very complex and to try to strip them down into something very simple and give prescriptions for how to live. It's just, it's so, what do I want to say? Try hard, blow hard. It's just eye rolling and like I just keep laughing when I read this just like it's a ridiculousness. Lindsay: Yeah. Yep. So what's your takeaway? mak: I get it, we're all looking for the answer. We're all looking for some simple way to make it all right and to make life tolerable. And I think that that's why you and I and lots of other people presumably cling on to this kind of stuff. And we think, ⁓ I finally found the answer. There's some security in that. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who are going to set themselves up to play that role for us because we're all hungry for it. And I don't know. There's just something that... After all that you and I have been through, I kind of want to point out the pitfalls in that journey. Because I think that had we found a better teacher, we could have grown faster, you know? Of course, you can always learn stuff the hard way through the school of hard knocks, but it's not necessary for learning. You can learn without having to suffer without so much collateral damage. Lindsay: Mm-hmm. I don't think Brad gave a damn about collateral damage and mostly just thought fuck it, be messy, go for it, which works out fine for some people and terribly for others. mak: Works out pretty good for the one who gets a best-selling book and becomes a cult leader. Lindsay: Yeah, and then lives alone in his yurt for the last 20 years of his life. mak: Pretty depressing end. ⁓ Lindsay: Yeah, you know, really, we pretty much did just focus on... how it didn't work for us, but I have had tons of experiences in my life, mostly outside of romantic relationships, expressing direct resentment to friends who were in on this with me. I've had lots of success getting over truly anger about big things too, where It almost felt like impossible, you know, like this is such a big thing that I've been angry about or something I've held onto for the majority of our friendship over the span of many years coming around to like, holy shit, I cannot believe we just got through all of that. And ⁓ my God, what a relief, what a joy in ways that were lasting and ways that then we had so much confidence in our ability to do that with each other ongoingly and then did continue. to express anger to each other in ways that I think are really productive and beneficial. Maybe just like ending on that note, we did just do a lot of shitting on Brad's approach to this. But if taking it on in the ways that you and I talked about sort of this revised version of what Brad put out into the world, a lot of good, a lot of true forgiveness and growth in relationships is absolutely possible. And then I also want to be clear, like, for the most part, that is not how I express anger to my current partner. It is not how I express anger to a mak: Mm-hmm. Lindsay: of my closest friends. So it's not something I do with everybody. mak: We do culturally need to figure out a way of how to deal with anger because we have not come to an agreement and it creates a lot of suffering in our individual lives, in our romantic lives, families, business. Like it's a very destructive force when we don't know how to deal with it properly. Lindsay: Mm-hmm. And we came back around to a depressing note and so be it. is the case. There are lots of good things, there are lots of bad things, hard things, lots of suffering, lots of joy. Here we are. mak: It's little... ...wimpy.