Master Anger Like A Boss According To The Anger Management Experts

Anger Got Your Relationship In A Bind? Time to Learn Some New Tools

Look, we all get angry. It’s part of being human. But let’s be real—if your anger is running the show, name-calling, or making you a walking pressure cooker, it’s time to try a new approach.

In this episode of The Evolved Caveman podcast, I have a serious talk with Dr. Thomas DiBlasio, an anger management guru, and we unload some real knowledge on how to put out the fire when life seems to douse you with gasoline and your spouse is the match.

And let’s be real—anger has spiked since 2020 – COVID, politics, the economy, financial concerns, job fears, parenting issues, on and on. Shit is crazy. Domestic violence has shot up. People are irritable, hostile and pessimistic with all the stressors – financial stress, layoffs, dwindling 401Ks, and annoying people. Believe me, I’ve sold over 20,000 of my online anger management courses over the past several years. I’m very proud of this as I feel it makes the world a slightly kinder place!

So, What’s In The Mystery Box Of This Episode?

Dr. DiBlasi and I share about:

🔥 How to spot anger early—before you go nuclear

🔥 The best, proven tools to turn the volume down on anger and irritability (fast!)

🔥 How to use Jedi mind hacks to shift from rage to happiness (yes, it’s doable)

🔥 How to calm others down when they are fit to be tied (hint: don’t tell them to just relax!)

We’re talking effective, science-backed tools from two internationally recognized anger experts. This ain’t just theory—we’re giving you the anger hacks to get ahead of the anger tsunami before it destroys your relationships, your health, and your sanity. You don’t want to end up alone, in a loin cloth in the gutter, do you?

If you’re tired of feeling as if the anger doomsday clock is about to hit midnight, hit play now and start taking control of your anger before it takes control of you.

🚀 Listen in and reclaim your happiness! 🚀

Dr. Schinnerer, with over 20 years of experience, has coached individuals ranging from Army Rangers to CEOs, focusing on the evolution of men in areas such as leadership, health, relationships, purpose, anger management, work, and self-mastery. His passion lies at the intersection of high performance, success, and happiness. ​

For more in-depth resources (such as Dr. John’s Online Anger Management Course, Anxiety Relief course, Happiness course and other necessities!)…

Visit Dr. John’s High Performer Shop

Tune in to The Evolved Caveman podcast to explore these topics and more, and take the first step towards a happier, more balanced you.

To listen to this powerful episode on Podomatic (of course, where this insightful podcast is hosted), click here.

To watch the video, click below.

To read through the transcript, see below.

How To Master Your Anger Like A Boss According To The Anger Management Experts – Transcript

Dr. John Schinnerer: Hey everybody and welcome. This is Dr. John back with the latest emergency episode of The Evolved Caveman. And I say emergency because I believe there is a growing anger epidemic to go along with the virus pandemic that we’re dealing with. And I have on the show with me today Dr. Thomas de Blasio, and I’m thrilled to have him here with me.

And I’m going to read a few stats about what I see as this growing anger problem, and then I’ll bring on Thomas. As far as I can tell, there’s a new enemy in the war on coronavirus, and that is the anger, fear, and irritability that follows after weeks of forced isolation. So let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

And the statistics are a little bit thin because I was looking for increases in anger and domestic violence, and only in the past two months. So this is all, somewhat anecdotal or somewhat from police statistics. So in Italy, the first lockdowns began around February 21st of 2020. And they covered most of the province of Lodi and Lombardy and affected about 50, 000 people.

Since March 10th, Italy has been in a nationwide [00:01:00] lockdown. So tensions seem to be beginning to rise. And there was a video from a resident in Palermo recently and he said, we don’t have a single euro left. We won’t last another week like this and warn that revolution could break out if the government fails to provide more relief.  And particularly in Italy’s poorer southern regions, it seems that the initial resiliency that Italians showed in response to the outbreak is fraying, as residents bristle at the ongoing restrictions on their day to day life. So these scenes that we used to see of Italians singing from their balconies seem to be giving way to frustration and anger.

And the situation in Italy has shown that one of the more important fronts in the battle against COVID 19 will be psychological, maintaining patience, compassion, peacefulness, and social order during this unprecedented time. So let me just do a couple more stats here. So in the United States, in Fresno, California, domestic violence calls have increased as coronavirus continues to spread.

The Fresno Sheriff’s Office saw a large increase in [00:02:00] domestic violence reports, 77 percent more reports of domestic violence in the week of March 16th to 22nd than March 9th to 15th. So that’s week to week. And they said that they attributed the increased violence due to spikes in individual stress, due to depression, fear, and financial uncertainty.

In San Francisco, California, job loss by the coronavirus has made it even harder for some domestic violence victims to leave their abusers, which also increases stress. and the likelihood of violence. So there’s a growing concern nationwide about how to keep victims and survivors safe when they’re forced to shelter in place with their abusers.

And I cut out some of these stats, but in Montgomery County in Houston, they reported a 35 percent increase in domestic violence cases filed this month as compared to this month. In London, England, the Asian Women’s Shelter has experienced a 33 percent increase in the number of calls since their shelter in place order.

These are some of the stats that I could gather, and I cut out about half of them just to save [00:03:00] time. But it’s critical to realize that children are also suffering in these circumstances, because simply witnessing abuse can take the same toll on young people’s mental health as actually being abused themselves.

There’s also evidence of an increase in quote pressure cooker cases where there has never been a history of violence previously and people who have not shown violence in the past are suddenly put into a situation where numerous stressors are quickly piled one on top of the other and they’ve got no tools to manage this stress.

Unemployment, parenting, the new role of playing teacher for your children, rent, global stress, health concerns, financial worries, dreading an unknown future, and nowhere to go to get a momentary break from people in the household. Self isolation is important to fight the virus, and it can be dangerous for those living with anger and abuse.

One thing is certain, during a global crisis, And during natural disasters, family violence increases. So services to support [00:04:00] men who are using violent and controlling behavior, or men who are on the receiving end of abuse, need to be available at this time. And that is what we are doing here today on this show.

Dr. Thomas DeBlasio and I are going to be talking about anger, how to manage it, what we can do about it, so that we can provide services. To the men in some of these situations. All right. So let me bring along Tom and let me introduce him first. Thomas de Blasio is an assistant professor at St. Joseph’s college, where he teaches undergraduate students and researches anger, aggression, domestic violence, and revenge.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: He’s given over 30 presentations locally, nationally, and internationally. In addition, he has 10 publications, mostly focusing on anger and aggression. He’s a member of the American Psychological Association, National Anger Management Association, the Association of Domestic Violence Intervention Providers, Among other things, and he is currently working on research related to motivational interviewing, anger, revenge, and intimate partner violence.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: He’s also currently [00:05:00] working with clients at My OCD Care, and I will have links at the, in the show notes and at the end of the show if you would like to contact Thomas. Thomas, how you doing?

Thomas DiBlasio, Anger Management Expert: All right, John. Thank you for having me on today. I appreciate it. Thank you for

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: coming and thank you for listening to that really long introduction.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I don’t normally do that, but I think that we need a context. For what’s going on here. Yeah Go ahead. What were some of your thoughts after hearing that?

Thomas DiBlasio, Anger Management Expert: Yeah I think to your point too. It’s not really a surprise that the raids are skyrocketing right now You know, I think given the fact that people are forced to be With somebody else right people aren’t meant for that right people aren’t built to be hibernating right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Just even by our nature. We’re not built for that by any means we’re social beings you want to get out I think one of the biggest things here is people feeling like they don’t have a choice and I think that’s so important. I think. Related to that is the idea that our choices are certainly limited, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We went from being able to do maybe a hundred different things to maybe only [00:06:00] 10 things. And I think those 10 things though are still really important. I still think we can pick from those 10 things. And even that means maybe you can’t do your top 15 things now, but you could do number 16, 17, 18, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You could still do something. I think recognizing we still have some choice in the matter, although I think it’s a very hard pill to swallow. Is still really important. And I think when we recognize that choice and kind of allow ourselves to reframe, we have a much brighter outlook on everything that’s happening right now.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah, I think the topic of choice is interesting. If I choose to go away for a week with my fiance, just the two of us, and we spend most of our time in the hotel room and I don’t know, on the beach or something, that choice has everything to say about that. I’m happy and grateful to be there. Whereas now, if we’re stuck together for weeks on end and our choice is taken away, it’s much easier for us to, those little drops of irritability and resentment and stepping on each other’s [00:07:00] toes can build more quickly.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. And I think to your point whether it be for a week away, even a day, like inside watching just Netflix all day. I think a lot of people have probably done that before. And now that might be the, you’re getting the routine of only doing that. And so not only do you feel as if there’s no choice on something that you may be once found enjoyable, you’re not finding enjoyable, but it’s also for an indefinite amount of time, which is also another factor here.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And it makes it very challenging to deal with. I think related to this is, all this is as you called it, a pressure cooker. And so people are really building up and feeling very annoyed and irritated and angry. And they lash out at one another. And actually a lot of the research shows that most domestic violence is a form of emotional expression.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: It is not instrumental. And so just to define those phrases. So instrumental means you’re doing it pretty much just for fun. You’re aggressing on somebody with the intention of it just being amusing to you. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. You tend [00:08:00] to find that higher on high levels of sociopaths and psychopaths, certainly.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Whereas domestic violence leads to emotional expression, it means that they don’t have another way of expressing themselves, right? They don’t have the tools and the skills to express what they’re trying to say, meaning I don’t like what you’re doing, right? I’m feeling really irritated right now. I just need a break.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I need or this hurts

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: my feelings.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, that’s a big one that I,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: when I look at myself and I look what’s under anger for me, 90 percent of the time I would say, Oh shit, someone just hurt my feelings.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. I think that pain, there’s this big debate about anger being a primary secondary emotion.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. Can I stop you there? What’s your thought on that?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: So I think that it can be both. I think that anger is a primary emotion sometimes, but we’re talking about that underlying pain, right? So just use your example about 90 percent of the time it’s pain. The other 10 percent is probably the primary is when anger is primary emotion.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: See, I knew there was a reason I liked you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I’ve had this debate with therapists in my office suite, and they’re like, [00:09:00] anger is only a secondary emotion. I’m like no, it, maybe it’s mostly a secondary emotion, but it’s not only a secondary emotion. And for those of you that don’t know, a secondary emotion is, a primary emotion is one where it just comes out as a result of the situation.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And the secondary emotion means that I’m feeling anger, but there’s another, Emotion that is underneath that anger that might have come up really quickly like a third of a second Like you slip on a banana peel you fall down you get embarrassed and then you get angry at your girlfriend for laughing at you But what people see is the anger but what is underneath the anger is embarrassment

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And we don’t I think most people don’t have the terminology for that, the awareness and the terminology for that, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I think a lot of people will go, especially guys will head towards that anger, right? To protect themselves. And I think that it’s important to recognize the functional component of anger, right? That anger is functional. It does protect us. And it also pushes people away. And it protects us by pushing people away.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: In fact, the number one anger trigger are people [00:10:00] we like and people we love. I have romantic partners, right? The people we work with, our best friends are the most, most likely to get under our skin before anybody else. And so what does anger do? Again, it protects us because when you’re showing anger, people are not as likely to laugh at you now for slipping the banana peel, but now they may not want to spend much time with you.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: They may want to have distance themselves from you. all together. And especially when this culminates and keeps going and going and it’s repeated, it makes it very challenging to be around somebody who can’t be, who are not in touch with their emotions in that same way.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So let me go back a little bit.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I’ve been doing a lot of research on how we men are socialized because I think this really plays a big part in this. Now, granted, there’s other factors, genetics, I would say, but, and how you were raised, but I think the socialization piece is huge here. And I talk a lot about the man box culture and I love this idea because we were all brought up in the man box culture.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: We didn’t choose it. We didn’t ask it. It’s not our fault, but I would argue it is our [00:11:00] responsibility to find tools to evolve past those parts of it that you want to evolve past. And basically, the Manbox culture is those rules that we’re, that we’ve learned from a very young age. It starts at the age of four, and We don’t even realize we’re getting taught them, but some of the rules are things like don’t feel, be self reliant, be invulnerable.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: We’re cut off from most of our emotions, be aggressive, don’t back down, be the provider in the family. And some of those things are good, but I would say most of them. It’s really hurt us as adults. And what happens is, if you are, as a kid, think middle school, high school, if you show too much sadness or fear, someone will insult you, usually one of your friends or another peer and say, dude, don’t be such a pussy.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Don’t be a bitch. Don’t be a little girl. If you show, and then what happens is you’re like, I don’t like the way that feels. I’m going to jump back in the man box. And if you show too much love, joy, romanticism, excitement, flamboyance, they say something like. Don’t be [00:12:00] a fag, don’t be gay. And you jump back in the man box.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And the problem with that is it cuts off two thirds of the emotional spectrum for us. And we think that’s normal. So what are we left with that we can publicly convey without fear of humiliation? It’s lust, stress, and the big one. anger, some degree of anger, irritation, annoyance, frustration, rage. So most of the things that we feel as men, if we don’t have awareness, if we don’t practice, this gets funneled through that anger lens and almost everything comes out as irritation.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: We know depression comes out as irritability in men. To what extent do you see that kind of coming into this discussion?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I think it’s a big part of it. I think the fact that we don’t have the emotional recognition, emotional awareness, right? And I think that probably people are listening who are even saying, I just don’t feel those emotions.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I’m sure that it may seem like that to you, and I don’t, I hope this doesn’t come across as condescending, but I’m sure it may seem like that to you. And in fact, everyone feels those emotions. . But we become so buried and deep [00:13:00] inside that anger, right? ’cause that’s what society builds us, and builds into us that of course we’re gonna think.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We don’t feel those emotions. Yeah. And just as an example of how deep. the societal ingraining is and how early it is Kenneth and Mamie Clark did a bunch of doll studies back in the 50s related to race. And they would go ahead and pose two dolls in front of a child, white children and black children.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And the dolls are also white and black and the children between three and six years old. And he wanted, they wanted to go ahead and establish how young do people internalize social norms. And what they found, they would ask a series of questions, including, which dolls, the good doll, which stalls, the bad doll.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Right? Which doll is the evil doll? And what they found is that a lot of the black kids, again, three to six years old, would point to the black doll as being bad. And on top of that, when they asked, now, which doll are you? As the last question, they would start crying or even pick the white doll, right? And some would answer without an [00:14:00] end, would be able to answer perfectly fine, but a lot of them picked the white doll and started crying.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so it goes to show, again, three to six years old, they’ve already internalized racism. And so how, so of course that this starts at a young age, right? We are built into this box, right? We’re born in this box. And I agree with you. It’s not our fault for being born in this box. And we have a responsibility to go out of the box.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah,

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: it’s so powerful to me. It’s the air we breathe. It’s if we’re fish, it’s the water we swim in. It’s so close in front of our face that we can’t even tell that it’s there. And so one of the reasons I keep talking about this concept is to try and gain a little bit of daylight between that mask we wear, the way in which we’re socialized and who we truly are.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Because I think you’re right. A lot of men out there would be like, I don’t feel anything. Yeah. And it makes me think of lexothymia, right? That either you’re emotionally numb, or you just don’t have the words to put on how you feel, and you haven’t connected them with certain physiological states.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: [00:15:00] Right, and why would you have the words to put on what you feel? You’re not, yeah,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You’re not encouraged to do that ever. You’re, on the other hand, you’re probably embarrassed, mocked, and humiliated if you even look at that growing up.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yes so it’s funny to piggyback on one of the examples you said earlier related to your life.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I, I’ve certainly Had times where I was thinking, why am I engaging this argument right now? What am I gaining from this? And I had to do some digging and realize that it was just based on my own insecurity, right? I’m engaging this There’s no benefit here. I you know, I think the debate about politics can go back and forth quite a bit, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But oftentimes people are so rigid in their own stance that people just keep Going ahead and debating just for your own insecurities. And this doesn’t have to just apply to politics. It applies to religion. Most debates I would even say, but there’s certainly times where I engage in debates and I had to think, okay, who am I trying to prove this to?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I’m not going to change their opinion on this. And I don’t really even need to. And so all I’m trying to do is justify to myself that I’m smart [00:16:00] enough or that I’m good enough, right? And so it comes off as this, I’ll call it verbal aggression, whether you raise your voice, right? This stubbornness and maybe even, cursing, saying, what the fuck are you saying?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And it doesn’t make him, even insulting, you’re a freaking idiot, yeah. So it comes off that way. Again, I have to double check myself a little bit here. Why am I doing that? It’s really just to prove something to myself and I don’t recognize that in the moment because when we’re angry, it’s very hard to recognize anything in the moment.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Let me ask you this. Pardon me for interrupting. So I think that when we’re in that angry state, we’re trying to get the other person to realize how right we are. And that’s all we get concerned with, if you and I are in an argument, I’m externalizing all blame onto you. So you’re wrong.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I’m just trying to browbeat you into the understanding to the point where you go, Oh, wow, John, you are so right. Like I, I don’t know what I was thinking and that’s never going to happen.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Cause I’m right.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. And that’s one of the things that’s so intoxicating about anger I think is [00:17:00] that the self justification, the indignance, the it’s.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s energizing, it’s you feel absolutely vindicated, absolutely justified in everything that you’re doing and saying because you’re so fucking right.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and to your credit and to your point with this, there’s this thing that was done back in 1994 that found that the only emotion people want to experience more than anger is happiness.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so the fact that anger is I’ll say egocentronic or that was so congruent with the state we want to be in makes it so reinforcing. And so it’s so challenging to stop that, right? If you want to be in that, why would you ever want to stop right in the moment you want to be in it? Maybe outside of the moment, you don’t really want to be cursing at your significant other.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But in that moment, it feels so good, and it’s so much, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s so much better for us to come off as aggressive and protect ourselves. That to come off as soft or a pussy.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And from an evolutionary [00:18:00] perspective, if we’re aggressive and protect ourselves, then we live to fight another day.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I take all these emotions back to when we were living in tribes and how did they serve us because all those negative emotions, let’s say anger, fear, sadness, they all served us really well when there was daily death threats out there, saber toothed tigers or bears or whatever it was. Like if you’re a really fearful caveman and you hear rustling in the bush and you take off and you run back to the cave, you’re safe and you live for another day and then you’ve got more of a chance to procreate.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And everything comes from that evolutionary perspective,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: think anger is very narrow minded, right? And so when we’re angry, we have tunnel vision and that’s it. We can’t see very much more than that. That’s really about it, and I think when we’re angry, we forget that there are also some disadvantages for anger from an evolutionary perspective, even to be as when, what are you doing?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You’re pushing people away. And so it’s protective on some level, but in the longterm, it’s not. In the long term to go back to that tribal mentality we’re going ahead and [00:19:00] pushing away the people that also need to help serve us, right? It’s a dual relationship. And so it becomes very challenging from a long term perspective to sustain that type of relationship, and so we end up pushing people away again, the people we want the most in our lives and the pushing away.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So let’s go to some more like. Like one of the things that I talk to my clients about is just the metaphor or how you visualize emotions in yourself. When I was a kid, I used to think of I’m like a bucket for emotion, right? And you just, you try and contain it as long as you can.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And you take as much shit as you can and you take all the embarrassment and anger and shame and sadness and fear. And you just put it in a bucket and if you can put a lid on it, great. But eventually, you get enough drops in that bucket and inevitably. It overflows and you break down you go volcanic you get violent you get depressed whatever it is You internalize it externalize it and so i’m always trying to change the metaphor for them So the first one is, you know You’ve got a bucket of positive emotions and negative emotions And we need to focus more [00:20:00] on that bucket of positive emotions because we’re shit at that Honestly so just that awareness.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Oh, hey I got a bucket of positive emotions and I really need to learn how to cultivate positive emotions more. But how do we Stop those little drops of irritations from getting into the bucket or how do we dump the bucket of negative emotions out?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, I like that. How do we dump that out? And I think you know Look, I think there are ways to dump out the bucket and there are times there are ways to put a small leak in the bucket right to drill a hole at the bottom, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You’re

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: going to my next metaphor.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: you’re jumping ahead.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I’m sorry. I’ll backtrack that

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I think Look, it’s very easy to say, do things that are relaxing, right? It’s very easy to say that. And it’s very difficult to think that in the moment. And so I think what’s really helpful is to have that list ahead of time and to create that list before you’re in the moment. Because if I ask you, if some, what is your reaction when someone says, calm down?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: It’s Oh, that’s great advice. Thanks. Why didn’t I think of that? Yeah.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You’re angry. I always tell people like whatever you say to someone that’s angry, they’re [00:21:00] going to say, fuck you. Basically. Just chill, relax, take a deep breath. Fuck you. That’s yourself, I would argue.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yes. Yes. I have

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: to

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: learn that skill.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I think you can learn that skill by thinking about it ahead of time and before you even in this situation, right? So let’s plan ahead, right? Let’s create a list of, any between three to 10 things you can do, right? Especially now, given everything going on with coronavirus and I think people are just a little bit more on edge in general.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And we have more limited ways to deescalate the situation, right? But still there are ways, right? And so for some people, it’s deep breathing. Maybe you’re lucky enough, we can go ahead and go for a walk, right? But just to go back actually to deep breathing for a moment, there’s some research that shows that’s one of the most effective ways.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And Yeah, and if you, because if you think about it for a moment how can you be angry if you don’t have a physiological reaction, right? I can tell you to think about an angry thought, but it doesn’t mean anything unless you have that arousal with it. So anger is a multi component. Break down

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: [00:22:00] the physiological reaction for us.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Sure. So there’s increased heart rate. There’s muscle tension, right? There’s usually sweaty palms as well. Perspiring and perspiring in general, right? The only difference between males and females in anger is that females are more likely to cry, which You know, I think it’s very obviously goes right back to our cultural norm, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Socialization,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: yeah.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That you’re not supposed to cry as a guy. What’s interesting is that most people don’t even realize that they have the muscle tension. They don’t realize that they have the physiological arousal when they’re angry, right? And that’s actually a big cue to ourselves that we’re angry, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so how do we go ahead and recognize this ahead of time? So there’s something called progressive muscle relaxation, which I would really recommend. I think it’s so helpful because if you can practice that outside of your anger episode, you can start to recognize the muscle tension in your body beforehand.

Thomas DiBlasio, Anger Management Expert: And I love using that with my clients. It really, because that allows you to take a deep breath when you’re in the moment. If you practice it enough, it allows you to take a deep breath in the moment, reconsider the situation and be like, [00:23:00] is this really what I want to do right now? Is this really how I want to treat the person I love?

Thomas DiBlasio, Anger Management Expert: No, probably not. So let me do something else. I think it’s more adaptive. Maybe that means just going for a walk for 10 minutes, right? Cause you can’t think of anything else to do right now. Or maybe that means, look, you’re going to be more vulnerable, which we can, that’s a whole like two hour conversation right there is vulnerability, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: If not way more than that. But maybe you decide to be more vulnerable and you say, I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me right now. And I preach your perspective and I don’t share that perspective. And I want, I’m feeling really hurt from what you said. And I want to work this out with you.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And that’s so hard for people to say, particularly guys.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I’m still working on that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. It really is. It really, it’s a challenge for me too. Sometimes to go ahead and to be that vulnerable saying, look, I want to work through this with you. There’s a collaboration approach, but even before that you say, I’m feeling hurt.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. So it’s funny, I was I think exercise is another great tool for managing anger. We can get to that. Especially

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: weightlifting, I would say, in particular. [00:24:00]

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Weightlifting and running.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s extra energy. I see that emotion, like it needs to move, and it’s trying to energize us to, defeat something or move an obstacle out of our way.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So lifting weights gets you to the point where you’re so exhausted. You can’t be tired anymore.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a great thing that I actually love doing with my clients sometimes too. And I’ll change the exercise based off what’s going on for the client and their own kind of health concerns, but even doing as many jumping jacks and many pushups as you can to the point where it’s exhausting, and the, A few weeks ago, about five weeks ago, I went through how many I could do without stopping, not even a little bit, right? And so I was able to knock out 101. I was very impressed with myself. I’ve never been able to do that before. That’s quite good. Yeah, I was very impressed.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I was never able to do that again. I probably won’t be able to do that again. But I couldn’t move after that. I would, I was laying flat on the floor with my face against the rug for a good few minutes. I can’t go ahead and aggress on anybody. I don’t even want to speak at that point, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so Yeah, go ahead. Good.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So I was gonna say, but back to that idea of breathing, [00:25:00] like one of the things I’ll do with my clients is I’ll explain that autonomic nervous system and the importance that has in these emotions and the importance of deep breathing. For instance, so we’ve got the autonomic nervous system coming from the brain.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s the bundle of nerves running to every organ in your body and it splits into two systems. One is the sympathetic nervous system. The other is the parasympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the fight, flight, freeze, or the stress response. Parasympathetic is responsible for the relaxation or the rest and digest response.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And what I find with a lot of the men that I deal with is that sympathetic nervous system is either on a hair trigger or always on because of how we’ve been socialized. Many of us are hypervigilant. And so you got to understand that we need to turn off that fight flight freeze response in order to relax.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I think we need to practice that skill through something like deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation when we’re not getting angry, [00:26:00] when we’re calm, so that we have a better chance of accessing those tools or that, that sympathetic nervous or the parasympathetic nervous system when we are getting activated.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. And I couldn’t agree more with you on that. I think trying to activate more of the rest and digest trying to not engage as much with the increased heart rate and the muscle tension trying to decrease that is really the first step for the multi component. process of working with anger, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Because that allows you, I would,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I would say, I would back up a step and say awareness is the first step because yeah, to your earlier, right? That most of us don’t even know when we’ve got the muscle tension because muscle tension is so prevalent for us. We don’t know when our heart rate goes up because we’re not used to tuning into our body.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And so one of the things I’ll tell a lot of men is I need you to get out of your head. And into your body, take your attention out of your thoughts. And I need you to start paying attention to your body as much as you can, because we’re so rewarded growing up. We’re socialized to think problem solved to get good grades.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And we [00:27:00] are comfortable staying in our heads. But that’s not the whole picture. And Descartes really fucked us several hundred years ago when he said, I think therefore I am, man, I bought that shit for years. I think therefore I am. I’m a good, that was completely wrong. It’s all about mind body connection.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So to take your attention and put it into your body and begin to learn when your heart rate is increasing, when you are getting muscle tension in your neck or shoulders or jaw or hands or forearms, because that’s when you can go, Oh shit. Something’s annoying me. And if you can get on it early, you can nip it in the bud.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yes, 100%. I couldn’t agree more with you on that one, right? Trying to Awareness is certainly the first step, right? And then I think the physiological component, right? I certainly, anecdotally, have had clients who say that most of their anger seems to centralize in certain areas, right? So I’ve had clients before who say their back of their neck, their right shoulder, which is this bizarre place when I think about it, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Their hand. If that’s their

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: tail,

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: It [00:28:00] is. Yeah, they can

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: identify that tail, do that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And it doesn’t matter if I think it’s bizarre. I even told him I’m very transparent like that. So that’s an odd place for you to have good for you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Okay, I don’t get that, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and you know what? It’s great that people can recognize it, right? That’s really what it comes down to. It doesn’t, I don’t need to recognize it for you. You need to recognize it. It’s the fact that you know that. A hundred percent. That’s great. Another physiological tool that I use a lot is it’s tip right from dbt in particular, decreasing one’s heart rate, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: So what I have them do, it’s activated a million dive reflex. And I love this one. I think it’s fantastic. I show it to my clients. There’s a YouTube video on it. Just type in a million dive reflex into YouTube and it’s a

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: million

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: dive reflex. Okay. Yep. And it’s about a minute and 38 seconds long. I’ve watched it too many times.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: In fact, that I know that it’s on my head. Yeah. And you can watch this person hold his breath for a minute and a half. And I’m not saying do that, but certainly to hold your breath for a little bit, right? 30 seconds a minute. And you can see his [00:29:00] heart rate cut in half from 76 to 38. And it’s very impressive.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Cause I’m holding his breath. Just from holding his breath. Yeah. Holding his breath underwater. So he fills up a sink with water and he does that. Yeah. And I’m not expecting people to do that for a minute and a half. If you could do it for 30 seconds. Great. Take 10 seconds.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And then do it again. Yeah. I definitely can’t do a minute and a half. I feel like. Maybe as a kid, you maybe go ahead and try to hold your breath underwater for a bit, right? Yeah, I could only ever do a minute and five, right? I probably haven’t gotten any better. You could do that even get 30 seconds, take five or ten seconds, catch your breath and then do it again and then again, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And he’s using a Fitbit or an equivalent too and so you can see the heart rate go down. Yeah, so it’s so much

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: of this is tied to our physiology and our breath, doing breath work is huge and back here I wanted to mention to the audience that you know, Tom mentioned progressive muscle relaxation and Tom Do you have an audio file that you could share with that?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Because I’ve got one I’ll put a link to so Yeah, great If we could do both actually because I think some people [00:30:00] vibe with some people’s voices more than others

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And if you’re trying to relax, that’s a big deal

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: right. It is. Yeah.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So I would appreciate it if you would be willing to share that and then I’ll link it in the show notes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: But it also makes me think of, Viktor Frankl’s quote about, there’s a gap between stimulus and response. And in that gap lies choice, lies freedom. And I’m paraphrasing, but I talked to my clients a lot about that and there’s neuroscience that shows that there’s a third of a second between when your rational mind is in charge of you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And when your emotional mind rears out and. takes control. And that’s a third of a second. So that’s the gap. So that’s where we need to be aware of. That’s where we need to be in the present moment. That’s where we need to be tuned into our bodies so that the more we do that, the more we can lengthen that gap.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Third of a second, half a second, five seconds. The more you do that, the more you have time to think, reinterpret, reframe. Deep breath, get the hell out of the situation, whatever it is you need to do to take care of yourself. You get better at it with practice.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. So it’s [00:31:00] funny when I first learned about study, I was, I love that study, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I thought it was great

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: because it was, you were in the right place then Tom.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, it’s

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: true.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I, I, because what it meant was you know, it adds even more hope, right? Because as you’re saying, you’re reconditioning your body, but it doesn’t mean, just because you feel this way right now doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: The fact that you do have that choice, right? The fact that you have that choice between when the information is sent to your amygdala, and I think your frontal cortex, I think is where it goes after that right? The fact that you have that is amazing, right? Because you can keep working on that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You can expand that, right? You can go ahead and You’re not a victim to the way you’re feeling, right? But rather you can choose to change your response, your emotion, your thoughts, so I

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: was going to write a second book and I was going to entitle it, Stop being your brain’s bitch. Ha!

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: My mom said you can’t use that word in the book title. And I was like, Mom, if you look at, top, the three of the top ten in nonfiction have the word fuck in the title. Ha

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Ha! Was that [00:32:00] Manson’s book? Was that the time with Manson? No,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Manson Faith Harper, and there was one other.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Faith Harper wrote Unfuck Your Brain, which is a great book on trauma, actually, and written for the layperson, and she swears like a sailor, oh my god. I actually hit her up on Twitter, and I was like, hey, I need you to come up. Actually, her first tweet that I saw was Hey, I got a news for all you people out there that got a problem with the language that I use in my book.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Go find another fucking book. And I was like, Oh, I like her. And so I DM’d her. And I was like, Hey, I need you to come on my podcast. You can swear as much as you want. And she DM’d me back. She’s I’m in.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s awesome. Sharp as a whip. That’s amazing.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah, just a little levity in there. But yeah, I think, we’re on the same boat here. On the same track that A lot of this has to do with physiology. A lot of it has to do with awareness. To me, a lot of it has to do with Reframing intention, like I find intention is a big part of it, right?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: That if you, if someone does something to transgress on you, if they do something that crosses your [00:33:00] boundaries or annoys you, if you interpret it as intentional, you’re gonna be pissed off or angrier. If you say, Oh, that was probably just a mistake. Not a big deal.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And the research shows that people have a higher Hostile attribution bias, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: People have higher who are higher in trade anger have higher levels of hostile attribution bias, right? And I think about this also in the other way oftentimes too, right? So if somebody When we place expectations on people, it becomes very much about people needing to live up to these expectations.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I want to talk about what needing means in a little bit, but people need to live up to these expectations, but when we don’t have these expectations, suddenly anything nice that someone does becomes the most magnificent thing in the world, right? And so can I think about, let’s say.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Parents, maybe they, they take care of you they pay for your clothes when you’re younger, pay for your food, maybe cook for you and maybe, at some developmental level some of this will start to decrease but [00:34:00] maybe they also pay for some of your college if you go to college whatever it is.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And, we might say thank you. That’s, but that might be about it, right? Maybe do a little bit more than that. But if someone buys you a coffee at Starbucks, right? And out of the blue, don’t expect it. The person just goes, let me get the next five people online. Just put them on my tab.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And you walk up to line the line and you go, someone goes, oh, it’s paid for already. That’s amazing, right? It’s the best day of your life. Suddenly, right? It really puts you in a

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: good mood for the rest of the day. It does.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. And so that expectation really has a lot to do with the way we feel, and so because we didn’t have that expectation, the negative X, we didn’t have expectation that person should be nice to us, it ends up being that when they are nice to us, it’s really quite pleasant.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And the same thing, I think it’s true the other way, when we have the expectation that they should be respectful to us at all times, every time.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Oh, respect is a killer.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: It is. It’s so disrespectful to me. Yeah. Yeah. Is it

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: really?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: There’s [00:35:00] the interpretation that they did it deliberately, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Meanwhile, the person could be cutting you off because they’re trying to go somewhere else that they’re really rushing to get to the hospital right now. We have no idea, right? But because we don’t know, what’s the point? What’s the, why is it helpful to you to go ahead and think about a negative way? It’s not helpful actually, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We don’t actually know what’s going

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: on. I’m always talking with clients about, pick the interpretation that serves you the best. So if we go back to your example on the freeway, let’s say you’re doing 80 in the fast lane and someone comes up a hundred and is riding your ass on the freeway and you’re like, I’m dude, I’m going fast enough.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And then. That always it triggers anger for a rage for a lot of people because there’s several boundary violations there depending on how it plays out, you’ve got two choices or well, I guess two or more, but you could just, the typical one is that guy’s an asshole.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Like I’m going to make him pay and you tap on your brakes a little bit and you start to fuck with him and then it can escalate and get all sorts of crazy. That’s more typical. I would say some way of. Some variation of that. The other way you can do is just pull over [00:36:00] one lane, let the dude go by and think to yourself, maybe he’s got a pregnant wife in the backseat that needs to get to the ER.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Maybe he’s got a sick kid that needs to get to the doctor because we don’t know. We’re making these stories up in our heads. All the time. So look at the stories you’re telling yourself and pick stories that serve you.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And look, I’m a big proponent of being as realistic as possible, and so the truth of the matter is we don’t know. So let’s go ahead and pick the one as you’re saying that best serves you. But if you could pick a story that we don’t even know is accurate anyway, pick one that best serves you, right? Pick one that’s gonna be the most helpful to you. And I think I got, I

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: got a question cause I’m geeking out right now.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah, no one I’ve had on the show has ever been able to answer this question. And I think you can

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: a lot of pressure.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. Should I wait a little bit? I can build the back.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Go ahead. Tell me. Okay.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Tell it, talk a little bit about the difference between state and trait anger. Anger versus hostility.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. So trait anger is a genetic predisposition to be angry more often, right? Whereas [00:37:00] state anger is much more about just the specific incur, occurrence, the specific incident that you’re referring to, right? So trait anger, there’s some research that shows that anger is about 25 to 33 percent genetic.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Some of the research varies a little bit, but it’s about one quarter to one third. It’s based on genetics, which means that 67 to 75 percent is based off your environment, right? Which means you have a lot of control over how you respond to your anger. And so trade anger, again, it’s just genetic predisposition to act a certain way to be angry.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But the state anger is each specific episode.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And my understanding of the hostility as a trait is that you’ve got more predilection or you’re more inclined to interpret. A lot of situations hostily, negatively, with malice and those interpretations are killers.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: She did that on purpose.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: She’s trying to make me look bad.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Those

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: interpretations, absent of information to prove the truth [00:38:00] of them. Don’t serve us at all. And so the and this goes back to awareness, right? So part of it is awareness of your body and your physiology. Part of it, I would say is are the awareness of the thoughts in your head and the stories that you’re telling yourself, the interpretations you’re making of other people’s intentions and actions.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: . Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s why I think it’s so important to try and think realistically, right? I think Albert Ellis was. Created this idea of rational that we used to call rational therapy. Then after a few transformations, rational mode of behavior therapy.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s a good way.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. And I use it with a lot of my clients. And I think about, he said anger is predominantly, at least the underlying component is based off shooting on yourself or shooting at other people. Or also masturbation is another phrase he used. But essentially saying that someone should, must need or have to act a certain way.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: They should treat, be nice to you. They have to be respectful to you. They should use their blinker. They shouldn’t yell at you. But the truth of the matter is that, that’s not true, right? [00:39:00] You don’t want them to, and I’m not saying I want someone to start yelling at me, and start cursing me out, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I’m not saying I want that. But I’m saying that, it’s not true that you should, they shouldn’t do that. No one has to do anything in life, except die. That’s the only thing we have to do. We don’t have to pay taxes. There are consequences, for that. And thankfully two months, it’s been pushed for two months if we have to file federal taxes, so I have a little more time to avoid it.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: No, I’m kidding. But, You don’t even have to pay taxes. They’re just consequences for that, right? So it’s still a choice. The only thing we have to do in life is die. That’s it. And so when you’re thinking about this, when we’re using these words, should, must, need, and have, it becomes so rigid and so fixated.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: This is the only way something could happen. And that makes our anger skyrocket. Whereas if we recognize that we would like them to act a certain way, we realize that we start to have so much more compassion for ourselves and other people. And we could get into what that means in a few minutes, i,

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: My brain just explodes when you’re talking and I forget [00:40:00] 90 percent of what I’m thinking and then I’ll go with one. But one of the things that one of the neurons that just connected just now was the idea of playing, I’ve been playing this game with myself recently where I’m just.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: With curiosity and non judgment, watching myself play, I guess I would call it, the social police. And just like driving, right? Oh, he should have used his blinker. Oh, that was an illegal lane change. Oh, he shouldn’t be going that fast. Or why are they going so slow? And just these judgments that come out and, I think they used to make me angry.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I’m like, It doesn’t fucking matter. If they don’t want to use their blinker, that’s their choice. It’s their life. It has nothing to do with me or, people cutting in line or, like just, we have all these rules in our head and I don’t know where the rules come from, maybe partly it was how mom raised me or mom and dad raised me of, you shouldn’t do that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You shouldn’t do this. You should treat, tell the truth. Don’t cut in line, give people, the right change. [00:41:00] I don’t know. But everyone’s got them.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and I do think it goes right back to this social script, right? It’s the idea that, society built these rules for us, right? And where you grow up really changes what these rules are.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But I think there is some that are certainly universal, right? But yeah, everyone does have these rules, right? And so I think a lot of people will play the social police game. And you know what? I think, again, I think this goes right back to what we’re talking about. The idea of Even if it does impact your life, it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have done it, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so actually, Albert Ellis created the Ellis Institute over in New York. I’m in New York, so I’m just pointing to the city right now. But but he created the Ellis Institute in New York and there was ended up being a bit of a fallout between the two. The Ellis Institute as an organization and Albert Ellis himself.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. It ended up being, this larger story. And he gave everything he had to the institute. And so when he ended up needing, money to pay some medical [00:42:00] bills there was pushback. He didn’t. Yeah. Yeah. And so as a result he ended up going to court and, I have to give him a lot of credit.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: He really stuck to his philosophy that, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be doing anything different. I want the money. I need the money to survive. And it doesn’t mean that they should be doing anything different. And so I have to, I really want to have a special place for people who not just walk the walk, but also talk to talk and walk the walk, and he really did that, and he’s not just talking out of his ass, right? He really lived by this philosophy. That just because you want someone else to do something different, and even if it negatively impacts you, doesn’t mean that they should. We all believe we’re doing what we think is right in that moment, which is why we’re doing it, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Or we believe that’s what we want to do in the moment. And if we can recognize that, then suddenly we’re allowing people to do whatever they want to do, right? No one responds well to other people telling them what to do, right? You’re not gonna respond well to me saying exactly what you should be doing all the time, [00:43:00] right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so why are we trying to ascribe our rules of life to them? Let them live their life. Doesn’t mean you have to like it. I just want to keep stressing it. You don’t have to like it, but it doesn’t mean that they should live your life either.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. And I think those rules of shoulds and should nots it’s and, part of it, what, what I work with clients is a lot is that internal awareness, because I think in men in general, we’re so externally focused, which that’s a really interesting point here too, because With this global pandemic, we are forced to turn inward.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I’m really hoping that men out there will take this opportunity to turn inwards and be curious about what’s going on internally in their own internal landscape of thought and feeling. Because I really think that the more we get into that, the better this world gets, the more aware we get of ourselves, the more we learn to spend time, more time in the present moment, the better this world gets, the more we learn to communicate, the better off things are.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I look at this time as. Being in a cocoon [00:44:00] that you know, this is time to do internal work to do metamorphosis to figure out Where is it? I want to go when we do finally emerge from this and what’s the new stage of life that I’m entering? And how do I want to be? What’s the new narrative that I’m telling myself as I walk into this next chapter?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah So it’s funny because people talk about, do, right now you could do all the projects that you in the house that you’ve been wanting to do that you never got around to, right? That’s what people keep saying to do right now. That project could also just be working on yourself. I have a friend right now who has told me that they’re meditating five times a day right now.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Which is amazing, right? It’s amazing that they’re doing that. I’m still trying to figure out how to do it once, right?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I do, I think that’s one of the foundational skills also is some form of meditation. I teach mindfulness, but I think we need to learn to stop doing and start being.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: After all, we are human beings. And I think that’s the foundational skill because that [00:45:00] increases your level of awareness of what’s going on in your head and your body. It also teaches the skill of attentional control so that you can pull yourself out of, automatically go into a negative future or negative past and bring yourself via focus on your breath to the present moment.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And, to me right now, I’m doing that hundreds of times a day because The future is uncertain. I don’t know what’s coming in the future. I don’t know how this is going to shake out How I think it’s gonna have a massive impact. I think it’s going to shape, you know Our brain structure. It’s going to have an impact on that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s going to impact how we socialize It’s going to impact do we shake hands? It’s going to impact the use of zoom more. It’s going to impact. How do we do meetings? It’s going to impact geez obesity domestic violence pregnancies all sorts of things The more I get caught up in that negative future The more anxious I get, the more anxious I get, the more prone I am to anger.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And so to keep bringing myself back via focus on my breath to the present moment is really the best [00:46:00] strategy that I have right now.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and I love that you said that, to recognize what makes you susceptible to anger. Recognizing that train of thought is gonna make you feel more anxious, which is gonna make you feel more angry, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I think it’s so important to recognize what our triggers are, right? What makes us more susceptible to the anger outbursts and the anger episodes, and so I think a big part of this is, We can stop the path before it even, before even walking down the path. We don’t have to go down that path, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: A lot of the times, right? So for me I love, I used to work at a nursery and so I love the smell of magnolia trees and cherry blossoms, right? Or just what they look like even, freshly cut lawns, right? Love that. And so I even have my window open just because I love the smell of that, and so For me, I can’t, I can’t spend hours upon hours outside right now, but I can still get that smell back. And that’s reminiscent of very fond memories for me. And I think that everyone can do something like that even just to interrupt that [00:47:00] pattern because the more we’ve walked down that same path the easier it is to walk down and again it’s if you take your pen and draw a straight line on the paper, and you just do that repeatedly over and over again in the same place, it becomes so ingrained.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And when you try to write over it, just gently, you’ll find that you just go into that groove. You’ll find, you’ll fall into that same groove. And we’re no different as a behavioral pattern, right? We’re talking about behavioral patterns. If we don’t break that behavioral pattern, by first recognizing that it’s even a thing, it’s so important, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But if we don’t break that behavioral pattern, Then, of course, we’re going to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Mindlessly. Automatically.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Unconsciously. You don’t even need to, but it’s happening. Awareness. Yes and that’s why that awareness is so important. And I’d really encourage people to go ahead and look at their angry episodes, see what gets them going, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And then, but also at some point, figure out what emotions really underlying the anger, right? Because I think that there’s probably a good chance you’re feeling hurt. And

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: if I can jump in there, I think it’s really important to look at our angry episodes with curiosity and [00:48:00] compassion. And non judgment because I think there’s a lot of the only phrase I can come up with is meta emotion or feeling about feeling so you get really angry you lose your temper you scream at someone call them names punch a hole in the wall whatever you do and Then when you when the anger passes You feel shame.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You feel embarrassment. You feel sad. You feel guilt. And that stuff accumulates over time. Those are drops in that bucket of negative emotions. And until we find ways to empty that bucket, and I like your idea of drilling holes, but we’ve got to find ways to empty that bucket and fill up the bucket of positive emotions.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And the extension of the metaphor that I talked about earlier was, I remember I had a client come in years ago, and he was talking about that, that the bucket would fill up and overflow. And so we were talking about different metaphors and I was like, He said what about a strainer, like a colander?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I said, yeah, that’s great. I think that’s really, that’s the next step, right? Is, you got a colander, you pour the hot water in there with the pasta. And all the hot [00:49:00] water goes right through the colander. And all the hot water is all the shit that you want to get rid of. Anger, fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, stress.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It just passes right through you. Because emotions aren’t meant to stay with you. They’re messengers. They’re meant to stay with you for seconds, not years. And. So we were talking about that and okay, yeah, that’s a way better, the good stuff sticks with you, the kind words, the compliments, the positives.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And as we were talking about this, I said, I really need something with bigger holes because I’m getting negative emotion all day long in the job that I do, right? And and you are as well. So I thought of, this huge fishing net with big gaping holes in it, stretched across a river. And it’s my imagination, my visualization, so I can do what I want with it.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So in my imagination, all the water running, rushing towards me is the emotion of the day. And I would say the majority of it is negative

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: because

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: of the negativity bias of the human mind. And the good stuff or the bad [00:50:00] stuff just goes right through that net on a second by second basis. And the good stuff, kind words, compliments, good deeds, all that sticks to the net.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: magically. And I like the metaphor idea of just let that shit go through you right away. What are your thoughts on the

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah I like that metaphor you use for yourself. I think that’s great. I do think that Christian Conte does some work on anger as well. And he has a book actually on metaphors to use in therapy and a lot of them are based off anger or surround anger, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And and I read it a few years ago now. And I think it’s pretty helpful. I think if he does find metaphors to be helpful, I think that there’s some research showing that to be helpful as well. Yeah. And I like that you’re I like your metaphor though, the net, and I really believe what you’re saying too, in terms of if we let things stick to that net that are negative you’ll find a bunch of fish, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You’ll find a ton of fish and you’ll find some big fish, right? But if we don’t give it as much credence or if we don’t [00:51:00] look at it as much, give enough attention. Or focus on it so much that fish suddenly shrinks, right? It no longer becomes a giant fish becomes so much smaller and just goes right through the net, and so that’s also

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: what anger does.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I, anger, when we’re angry, we over focus on negative things or those things that are making us angry. We just drill down on it. And as you mentioned, you get hyper focused and have that tunnel vision on that one thing that’s really pissing you off.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. And then it grows

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: in size when you do that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and there’s some research by Raina Vaca over in California who looks at rumination, right? Rumination is a big moderating variable with anger and aggression, right? Meaning when you’re angry and you keep thinking about it over and over and over and over again in your head, you’re playing it through, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s not the same thing as trying to work it out. All that’s doing is making you more angry, right? And all that’s gonna do is lead to aggression. And exercising, I love that, going to work out, but I think that’s a great way to get your mind off it, going ahead and watching a comedy, go ahead. Yeah.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Or a gratitude. I think practicing gratitude, [00:52:00] things that you’re grateful for. And I, when I teach gratitude you can start easy, three things you’re grateful for each day, they’ve got to be different things each day. They can’t be the same things over and over.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Otherwise we had. Adapt to it and the hedonic treadmill kind of that kicks in and we just habituate

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah, I was saying with gratitude you start off simple with three things You’re grateful for each day and those things have to vary you can’t do the same things over and over Otherwise you habituate to it and it doesn’t help you out.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: But you know to me there’s three layers of gratitude There’s that which you are grateful for that’s obvious Like I’m grateful for my mom and dad and their health. I’m grateful for the place that I live in. I’m grateful for my children, that kind of thing. Those are the obvious things to me. The next level is being grateful for things that you have to look a little bit deeper for the less obvious.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Like I’m grateful for having the use of my legs. I’m grateful for Being able to feed myself with a fork I’m grateful for living on a planet that has oxygen that we can breathe And then the third level is being grateful for the biggest [00:53:00] challenges in your life So for instance something like i’m grateful for the contentious divorce that I went through Eight years ago because it taught me to really fine tune and master The emotional management tools that I teach to my clients

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, so I love that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I I’m a big follower of stoicism, right? Try and read something about stoicism every day. And try and live that out that day. So talk about gratitude. I guess my gratitude to be stoicism. But, I think with that, a big component of it is. They say wish hardships on the people to whom you’re closest with whom you’re closest, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I think that’s so interesting and it’s exactly paradoxical, right? It’s exactly what you wouldn’t think to do. Stoicism talks about how that builds character, that builds us up. And I think it’s very hard when you’re going through the hardship. I can imagine right now, if I’m going through a very difficult time and I can’t afford things and I’m thinking I’m left here isolated by myself or I’m domestic violence incident right now, [00:54:00] I can imagine saying, yeah, it’s easy for you to say that right now.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. It’s very easy to say that. And, I think that everyone has hardships, but can we use them as tools and avenues to build our character, right? So going right back to that fishing net metaphor, right? You’ll find a bunch of fish that’s going to go there, right? But that’ll come through your net will come to your net.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: You’re it’s up to you to let them go through the net. And I think that’s so important that hardship could be just going right through the net and could eventually actually become the thing that cap that gets captured by the net in terms of a positive thing. We wanted to go through the net as a negative.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We wanted to stay in the net as if it’s a positive and we can change our perspective. Then we can do that. I think, again, that’s so much easier said than done. It takes a lot of practice

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: to do that. All these things take practice. There’s no easy way I would say they all take practice and effort.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I think part of it to dovetail on your point is training our attention to focus more of the [00:55:00] time. I don’t think we can do this all of the time, right? Unless you’re a Tibetan monk that has done 10, 000, 10, 000 hours plus meditation. But I think we want to spend more of our time focusing on what’s right in our lives.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: What are we grateful for? What’s good? What’s Going well to offset that negativity bias that naturally takes hold of our mind without any training.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, that’s

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: a big deal. And that’s why my anger management class is like I’m always I’ll teach like one tool to increase positive emotions or thoughts and one tool to reduce the intensity of anger or angry thoughts.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, I love that. I do. I think that’s great because it’s not just enough to say tell someone, hey, don’t do this, right? Hey, don’t be angry, right? Because first of all, it’s not realistic, right? Yeah. The second thing is it’s not helpful to say, don’t yell at the person. We want to also help you figure out what to do, because at the day, if you don’t know what to do, then you just go back on the same pattern that you already do.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so you have to, and so it’s so helpful to know how to actually communicate. And that’s [00:56:00] why I think, being vulnerable and having compassion can really be drawn in. Yeah, go ahead.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: There’s so many ways to go on this. So I know. Okay. So here’s what I want. I want to go to vulnerability and then let’s wrap it up with your best tool to either dump out the bucket of negative emotions or fill up the bucket of positive, but to speak to vulnerability.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: For a moment, like I, I see so many men that have so much armor on. That, they’ve, they’re successful in business. They’ve worked hard on their body, they’re fighting jiu jitsu or MMA and They, to me, I always look at muscle as armor, as fancy clothes as armor. That, what are you trying to protect?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I think that what we’re trying to do is not allow people inside to not show how we’re truly feeling, to not communicate because That fucking, that scares the shit out of us. That’s scary. That, to me, [00:57:00] takes courage to be vulnerable. That, to me, takes courage to go spelunking in the depths of your brain, of your mind.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, no, I think it’s incredibly intimidating. I’m actually just taking a deep breath right now just thinking about that, I really am. It’s actually really funny because so I’m also a volunteer firefighter in my town. And so there’s a lot of it’s a whole separate conversation about what that’s like.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s volume number two of this interview. I’m down. I’m game for it. But yeah, so with that though so for me personally it’s not, I don’t think it’s courageous for me to go into a burning building. I really don’t. Because I’m not afraid to go into it. I’m Okay, so we

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: differ on that one.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I’m grateful for you going into the burning building. Everyone

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: has

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: strengths. Mine’s gratitude.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah, it’s just not intimidating to me, right? I’m dressed, or we call it [00:58:00] donned, right? And my equipment and my gear. I have the hose with me. And I’m with people that I trust with my life.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And for me, it’s not intimidating. I literally am trusting them with my life. Whereas and I think Gandhi actually speaks us a little bit to courage is not going, not doing something you’re not afraid of, it’s going ahead and doing something you are afraid of. And so how do you go ahead?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: People often hide their emotions, try and conceal themselves, and try not to feel all those negative emotions because they’re so afraid of it. And I think what’s really funny is that trying not to feel those emotions doesn’t make you courageous. Doing something that some people would view as anxiety provoking and you don’t, doesn’t make you courageous.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: It’s doing it when you still feel anxious.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. Yeah. I define courage is overcoming your fear or walking through your fear. If there’s no fear, there’s no courage.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s right. Yeah. It’s no different than just me painting the wall. It’s no different from that. It’s still [00:59:00] lacking courage. Now, I guess

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: okay, wait, let me back you up a second.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So what is it that men are afraid? Why are they afraid to go into their emotions? What do you see? What do you know?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, I think that we’re not, men aren’t built that way, right? Men, I’m sorry, men are not conditioned that way, right? Let me rephrase that, right? So we are certainly not conditioned that way.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: So go ahead and to think about Feeling anxious and sad, right? And to feel ashamed and guilty, right? Even if you do, you try to push that down, right? I think substance use is a great example of that, right? You go ahead and use to not feel those emotions.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Oh yeah.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And then you end up feeling more of it as a result of using.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so how do you combat that? And so a big component of that I think is that we have to learn. To be okay with those emotions. That takes a lot of time. I think the big thing is that if we think we aren’t I think feeling those emotions makes us think that we’re not good enough, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That we’re bad, we’re damaged, and we’re wronged in some way, right? That we are not good [01:00:00] enough human beings, right? That if I was really that good, I wouldn’t be feeling ashamed right now. But all you’re doing actually is building it up. So now not only is it just a small hill, but building it up to point becomes this larger mountain.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Maybe even the size of Mount Everest at this point, depending on how long you push it down for. And so how do you go ahead and start to chip away at that mountain, right? It takes a lot of courage, especially if it’s the way you’ve been acting for so long, right? Which of course most men are, most men do rather.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: When I think, one of the things I see if I can jump in there is that men they’re afraid of emotion because they think they’re going to get overwhelmed. And dominated by the emotion. And one of the things I’ve heard from some of the executive clients that I have is that, often I’m trying to get them to be more vulnerable and open with their wife at home because, they’re killing it at work, but then they go home and that’s where a lot of the misery is.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And it’s often because, the wife says, I can’t connect with my husband, which is the biggest complaint I hear from wives. And we’re trying [01:01:00] to dip a toe into that emotional realm. And they, the fear that I’ve heard is if I open up at home, if I start to get vulnerable at home, I’m afraid that it’s going to come out at work and I won’t be able to control it.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s such a good point. So many thoughts on this. So I think, yeah, I know. We’ll need multiple volumes. Not just two. Yeah, I think that, look, I think that the truth of the matter is I have had clients where they start to open up and that is the case. They feel like they can’t control it.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And on some level that might happen. Because you don’t have, you may not have a lot of the tools or you may not think you have a lot of the tools rather to deal with the emotions. And the question to really ask yourself is that, when do you think you, I don’t want to think about this the way you’re acting right now, is it really working for you in the long term?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so the fact that your wife is saying, I can’t connect to you, and [01:02:00] that, maybe even thinking how long can I do this for, I think it really asks you to think about what’s important to your life, what’s important in your life, right? Who’s important to your life? What does that look like?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And if you’re, if it’s so important to you, keep your wife in your life, you might have to start changing things, right? You might have to act a little bit differently because what you’re doing right now isn’t working in the longterm. And I think the big part of that. is being vulnerable with your wife, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Being vulnerable, showing those emotions. It might come out sometimes at work, but those experiences are usually few and far between and usually only a little bit in the beginning. And I’m not going to say most clients get that. I also want to put that out there. Most clients don’t even get that from me.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Oh, so can I

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: share a great firefighter metaphor with you?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, go for it.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You’ll love this. So this actually came out of the self compassion work from Kristin Neff, and she talks about this notion of backdraft. Where, when a house is on fire, the fireman, volunteer or otherwise, don’t just come rushing into the house [01:03:00] that’s on fire because when you walk into a room with the house on fire, the fire sucks up all the oxygen in the room, you open the door and what do you get?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: The

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: combustion. It actually goes right over the top of your head.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You get combustion. You get fire rushing out at you, which could be life threatening. So what do firefighters do instead? They go up to the roof and they start poking holes in the roof to allow oxygen into the house. So then once oxygen is in, you can go in and go safely into each of the rooms.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And the idea being that with emotion, we can do the same thing that you can, once there’s oxygen in there, once there’s light or attention there that you can safely go into each of the rooms. And if it’s too much for you, if it’s overwhelming, just slowly close the door and back out. And you’ll be okay.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I love that metaphor.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s great. That’s great. For multiple reasons, right? Also, I just, I’m biased towards it to begin with, but no, but I love that

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: most.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. It’s great. No, that’s such a great metaphor because I think that you’re right. I think a lot of times when people do find it [01:04:00] overwhelming, it’s because they’re trying to do too much too quickly.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And that’s not the goal, right? For me, and I just knowing a little bit of it, I’m sure we share the same philosophy on this is that therapy, right? For me is for how to enhance the client’s life. And so if breaking down at work probably is not enhancing your client’s life, right? That’s just my guess.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And so how do you go ahead and work with that? So we want to help you reach your goals. The very first thing I asked my clients when they come in is what do you want to have therapy? Because this isn’t for me, right? Therapy isn’t for me. I’m on the other side of the seat, right? This is about helping you.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I will argue that I certainly get a benefit after every single client I see. And it’s the

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: altruism.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, the lack thereof. Is it really

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: altruistic?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I don’t care. It helps both.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: That’s right. There’s a good synthesis by Baumeister and Bushman would say that, it doesn’t matter if it helps, if it’s truly altruistic.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Isn’t it great that we live in this we’re built evolutionarily speaking in a way that we can feel goodness and from altruism, or just doing good things. Yeah. [01:05:00] Baumeister is one

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: of my heroes.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. He’s awesome. I can’t believe what he does. Jeez. But yeah, I think. Try the clinician there and is trying to help you moderate and modulate the emotions, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We want you to succeed and we want you want to succeed too, right? And so trying to rush into a burning building isn’t really probably very helpful at that point

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: So I think with that you could rush

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: into a burning building when you have the tools and the knowledge to do so

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Right not in the beginning, right? Not in the beginning. Yeah, so I’ll use any that metaphor yeah, I was just thinking actually how there are times you rush into the burning building if there are kids inside, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: At that point you all bets are off and you rush in. You don’t care that you just let some, you just stay low to the ground. And so even then you might be, and you might get to get the kids. So even then, actually, it’s a great example of the metaphor is that you can still do more than you think you can.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Not always recommended to do that. But you can still do more than you think you can.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: But I think the point of my bringing up that example is I [01:06:00] think that we fear emotion. And part of the reason I think we fear emotion is that we hate to be embarrassed. And I think most of us have had some experience of our emotions betraying us, like where we broke down and cried in front of.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: a group of people, or, we got so angry that we did something we’re really ashamed of, or we had a panic attack in public. Those are examples to me of our emotions, quote unquote, betraying us. And I think once you have an experience like that, you’re like, fuck that, I’m not going back there.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. I never want to experience that again. I’m going to, I’m going to rip those emotions out and leave them in the gutter.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. But you can’t do that. Cause how do you get through, like how you could have healthy relationships, right? And so I was thinking about how this relates to vulnerability, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And Your wife is asking you to be more vulnerable, right? I think it’s so important to be vulnerable, to communicate a certain way. And I think they’re probably, to go ahead and say again, what we said in the first part of the show is, communicating, I’m feeling hurt [01:07:00] right now.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I want to work through this with you, right? And I’m feeling really hurt from what you, by what you said. Can we work this out? And try to communicate that, right? Try to communicate any other emotions you’re feeling, right? I’m feeling embarrassed even by what you’re saying. Anxious, right? That’s the thought of losing you.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And I think it’s so important to be vulnerable and I think it’s also important that for us to recognize that it may not always work. We may not always get what we want, but just because it doesn’t work every single time doesn’t mean we stop it. Anger doesn’t work every single time either, right? It doesn’t mean we stop it.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: There’s a great study that was done over in a Romanian prison, actually. And it looked at, can you teach a service training? Pretty much a, if then statement. Or when then statement, when you do X, I feel this way, I would prefer you not do that. Trying to teach that basic two sentence those two sentences, nonviolent

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: communication.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. Yeah. And to people who have a history of violent behavior and [01:08:00] What they found by they measured in three different ways, right? There was a inter rater component where the staff just wanted to look to see kind of rate. Subjectively, did people were they less aggressive?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Did they notice a difference in their behavior? They looked at number of aggressive incidents with other, with the guards, as well as other inmates. And I believe there was also a self report component to it. But. What they found was that worked, teaching aggressive people, or people with a history of aggression and violence, actually were able to learn how to do that.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And what it means is that we could all do that, but I think part of the reason why that worked so well is because they were all clearly coming from the standpoint of what the other person was coming from. They understood, oh, they’re saying this to me right now, that means he’s not trying to go ahead and make this into something.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: So it goes back to getting rid of maybe that hostile attribution bias. It goes back to saying, to recognizing where that person is coming from saying, [01:09:00] you know what? Maybe my expectation of this person is wrong. Maybe they didn’t push me on purpose. Maybe they actually just fell into me and the fact that maybe someone

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: else pushed them into me.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. That’s probably more likely.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And to the fact that they’re using those two sentences of course we can use it, right? Of course we can go ahead and use those sentences as well. And the fact that it was getting effective in a prison. I think speaks volumes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. Yeah, it makes me think of the importance of mindset, too, because I run into that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: One of the things I start off with also is the, a lecture about fixed versus growth mindset, because I get so many men coming in that if they’re not in denial, About a problem that they’re having they don’t believe they can change it So it’s you know to the denial mindset of love me as I am like I’m fine Like there’s no problem here or it’s a fixed mindset of I can’t do anything about this

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, I can’t

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: change

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: right

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: and so and if you believe you can’t change guess what?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You don’t change. And so I think it’s a really important step to [01:10:00] start at, to teach that idea of the growth mindset and just go through our days with curiosity and look, cause these mindsets are context specific. So you might think you can learn communication skills at work, but not at home.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Right.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You might think that you can manage your anger at work. But not at home. And so you got to go through your day and look with curiosity and say, okay, where do I have a fixed mindset? Where do I have a growth mindset? The growth mindset being, belief that you can change or learn and grow through perseverance and effort.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, and I think you, I think everyone has the opportunity and the ability to grow, right? And this actually relates so nicely to the research of motivational interviewing. Because it shows that one of the biggest factors in terms of people actually changing is people believing that they can change.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Exactly. And the therapist believing it too, that they’ve got the confidence. Yeah. The fact that they can help this client, that’s the biggest, I in research I’ve seen in the past, the biggest determinant of the success of a therapeutic relationship is does the therapist believe in themselves that they can help this individual, [01:11:00] their confidence level.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And truthfully I a hundred percent, I hundred percent believe. Everybody can change, right? I do. I think it just takes changing the environment. I think it takes the person wanting to change. And I think it maybe takes finding the right fit with a therapist. But I believe that everyone can change.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: that’s a big piece too, fit with therapists.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, 100%. And look, if people couldn’t change, we’d both be out of jobs right now, so the fact that people can change is what’s keeping people clinicians in business, right? And so I think that just goes to speak to say, why couldn’t you change?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: We’re not that special to think that we also couldn’t change.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: No I agree. And okay, so we’ve been talking for an hour and a half and I really appreciate your time. And in wrapping up, like what’s your best tool for the, either the positive side or the negative side? I’ll give you your choice.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: How about I say one of both? How about that?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Okay, that’d be great. Even better.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: All right. I think one thing you could do to prevent a lot of the anger episodes is setting a schedule beforehand, right? So set a schedule the night [01:12:00] before, right? I’m thinking right now, given everything with COVID going on, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Setting a schedule for the night before for the following day. And I think it’s very important to put something on that schedule. You have something to look forward to. And that also may mean changing things up a little bit, right? I know a lot of. Therapists are trying to tell clients to go ahead of the same thing every single day But I know that can sometimes be boring for people you know what like maybe on tuesday you speak to one of your friends, right?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But on wednesday you’re going ahead and you’re really looking forward to that half a tub of ice cream, right? Which I ate last night. So I might be finishing on the top tonight. Right the half brother. But I think it’s important to change up So it’s not so routine And you have a schedule for yourself and you can follow it, but at the same time, it’s something different each day.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And with, along with that too, is try and separate your living space, right? To this side or this portion is the relaxation component space. This year is a workspace. This year is for [01:13:00] spending time with others. I think doing that and communicating that is so important.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: The positive side is, I guess it relates a little bit to stoicism, but I’m a big fan of building self efficacy and that people really are much stronger than they realize they are. And so my brother’s in the Navy, and I remember reading one of the Stoicism passages was actually from someone in the Navy.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: And, the Stoic philosopher interviewed someone in the Navy, rather. And the guy had said that he tries to push himself to the limit every single day, right? But he feels so empowered right after that, right? And I think that’s so important. Do something for yourself every single day. And it doesn’t have to be you don’t have to really push yourself to the limit every single day.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: But do something, surprise yourself, learn. You are much stronger than you realize, you can do so much more right than you realize you can. And so try and tap into that, but you only ever realize you could tap into it once you push yourself. And so I really think [01:14:00] that’s important to put in your schedule.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah, I think the daily routine, it’s one of the things I’ve been talking with clients about the past few weeks. Just get up at the same time every day, just like you were going to work at least Monday through Friday. Get up, have breakfast, have your coffee, do some physical activity. If you don’t want to do it in the morning, do it in the afternoon, but you got to get moving somehow, whether it’s pushups, planks, sit ups.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Resistance bands. You can check out videos on YouTube and Instagram, and there’s all sorts of ideas out there. Yoga. We’ve got to stay physically active. And then I think learning right now is a really big deal. So I’ve been telling clients, let’s brainstorm some things that you want to learn.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I don’t care what they are, but if you’re curious about them, let’s go after them. Because I think I’m looking for Everything and anything that we can do right now to give us those little positive emotional boosts, whether it’s practicing gratitude or exercise or calling old friends on FaceTime, anything that we can do, we’ve got to be mindful of keeping our mood up.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And so even, I’ve been, I did this podcast on hope based on Rick Snyder’s [01:15:00] research and, added, a values component. So it went values, goals, pathway agency, and. I think the more tools we have to keep our mood up the better off we’re gonna be because we’re gonna be in This for a bit.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah, I think we have to buckle down a little bit the more we can get into that routine of Setting the schedule and wake up at the same time Exercising and doing something you look forward to each day building that self efficacy. I think the better off will be

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s funny. I had a client recently I think today that you know is depressive and he said to me He was talking about something he wanted to do and he said, yeah, it’s too bad.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I don’t have the time. And I was just like dude, I call bullshit.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I don’t ever want to hear that during a quarantine. That is absolutely false. And so again, back to the idea of watch the narrative, watch the story, watch what you’re telling yourself. Yeah. So you said you had two tools. Do we cover [01:16:00] both or?

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: Yeah. I try to combine them a little bit.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Yeah. And so I’ll throw in one for the negative side. I think one of the greatest tools that I know of comes from Fred Luskin, who was the director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project. And 15 years ago, I didn’t even realize there was a Stanford Forgiveness Project and, We won’t hold it against him that he, works at Stanford.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: He, he has the book called forgive for good, which is outstanding. And he basically went back and reconceptualized forgiveness, broke it down into steps that we can go through and came up with the roadblocks that people run into in forgiving. And, some of the, I’ll just skim through this really quickly, but there’s a mini course on forgiveness on my website But there is so we forgive not because we approve of what was done to us We forgive solely as a way to let go of our old stale anger.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So forgiveness doesn’t mean I approve of what happened That’s a big one because that’s where we get stuck on it Forgiveness doesn’t [01:17:00] mean that You forget what happened. It just means you forgive. So it’s forgive. You don’t have to forget because we don’t want to put ourselves out there to be abused over and over again by domestic abuse people, for instance.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And some of the places that we get stuck we get, we confuse an unforgivable offense. With an unwillingness to forgive. So that wording confused me for a while. So let me break that down. It’s basically, there are some really shitty things that happen in life that we say, that’s just not forgivable.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Rape, murder come to mind. So we say to ourselves, I can’t forgive that. And that’s not true. We can forgive it. We’re just not willing to forgive it. Now, if it happened recently and you’re not willing to forgive it, fine. Give yourself time. It might take three months, six months, a year. I don’t know.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: I can’t really put a timeframe on that. However, You can forgive anything that the research that Fred did was he went to Ireland and worked with [01:18:00] parents who had lost their children to bombers in Ireland, and he went to the inner city here in the US and worked with parents who had lost their children to gangland violence, and he got the parents to forgive the murderers of their children and the list of health benefits as a result is Mind boggling.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: It’s less depression, less anger, less anxiety, less stress. More frequent positive emotions. You become a more forgiving person in the moment. So shit that bothered you on the day to day just rolls off your back more easily now. So if people can forgive the murders of their children, most of us can forgive lesser stuff.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: In my life, or in our lives and yeah, I’ve, I worked with a girl who, she was a beautiful 17 year old girl, and I gave a talk on this after actually a murder that had happened in our society, in our community, and afterwards she said, I’ve been angry at my mom for years because she forced me into prostitution at the age of 14, and I’m gonna work on forgiving her for that, [01:19:00] and it’s holy shit if she can do that I don’t have anything that compares to that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So there’s layers of forgiveness too, to be aware of. So one is forgiving others. That’s pretty obvious. And when you start this, it’s all mental. You don’t go face to people. You do it all in your head. It’s just a mental exercise. And I do it when I go to bed at night. So I put my head on the pillow and when I first started doing it, Honestly, I had a long list, I was, I had to go back to my childhood, I forgive my mom for that, I forgive my dad for that, but it’s, it all happens at the speed of thought, so it really doesn’t take that long, but as you practice it, the list gets shorter and shorter because the lesser stuff kind of falls off the list.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: You’re like yeah, I’m pretty good with that. I’m not that angry about that anymore. I don’t have a grudge there. Yeah. And so that’s helpful. There’s allowing others to forgive you, which takes practice. There is forgiving yourself, which is a bitch. That one’s tough. And and I think we really have to practice that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: That’s self compassion. It’s self forgiveness. And that one’s hard, but you get better at these things with practice. [01:20:00] It’s like the new skill of riding a bike. When you first tried riding a bike, it felt awkward. So do these skills. Keep practicing them. The other one that’s interesting to me is, forgiveness of God.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And I remember I went on a radio show years ago and I said this and I thought, Oh man, I’m gonna get crucified. Pun intended.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I’m just wondering, and

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Can I laugh about that or does that make me mad? I don’t know. I think it’s funny though. But I remember I was a school psychologist early on in my career and I had a teacher call me about a GATE student.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: So a young girl with, IQ in the 99th percentile. And she said, would you see this young girl? She was fifth grade. And she said, she just lost a baby niece. And she’s been crying for three days straight. And I was like, and on the phone, I said, yeah, sure. When I hung up the phone, I was like, holy shit.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: What do you say to someone who’s just lost a six month old? I don’t know what the fuck to say. And I was a little bit, I was scared, right? What do you say? I had no clue. But anyway, she came [01:21:00] in, and she starts telling me that, she’s close friends with her cousins, and they live a mile away, and her aunt had a baby six months ago, and the baby died of sudden infant death syndrome, SIDS.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And there’s nothing you can do about that. There’s no one to blame for that. But anyway, she started crying and, we were talking a little bit more, and I said, it seems to me like you’re angry. And she looked at me, puzzled, I said, it seems like you’re angry at God. And she, and I had asked about her beliefs in God prior to that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And she said I couldn’t do that would be a sin. And I said yeah. At one level, I get that. I understand the thought and, I said to the extent that you believe God had some hand in creating you, whether it’s, evolution or intelligent design or creationism, he also created your emotions and your brain.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And to me, he’s all knowing and he’s loving and he’s forgiving. So he knows that you’re angry at him. He’s already forgiven you for that anger. And that [01:22:00] anger to him was like a drop of rain in a rainstorm. It is no big deal. And he understands. I just want to give you permission to be angry at God because that makes complete sense to me on an emotional level.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And so she, we kept talking and she dried her eyes and went back to class. And I got a phone call the next day from her mom and she said, is this a psychologist that spoke to my daughter? And I was like, oh shit, I’m going to get in public, I’m going to get in trouble for talking about God in a public school system.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Here it comes. And she said, that’s my negativity bias. And she said I just wanted to say thank you because my daughter came out of her room for the first time in days. and engaged with the family again. And that’s a really huge step. So I don’t know what you said, but it was super helpful. And that moment made me realize that there are things that happen in life that we have no control over.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: There’s no humans to blame. Coronavirus earthquakes, hurricanes, sudden infant death syndrome, cancer, you name it. No one is to blame for that stuff. But our emotional mind still needs someone to blame, I would [01:23:00] argue. We still get enraged indignant. And I think that most people’s mind goes to some higher power and says, how could you let this happen?

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: And to me, that makes absolute sense. But until we are aware of it and realize it and talk about it and allow for it, it continues to eat us up. So I think also you got to look at forgiving your higher power, however you want to phrase that and allow your higher power to forgive you. Because there’s 85 to 90 percent of the people in the U.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: S. that believe in a higher power. And I think we got to work with that psychologically. Interestingly, I did these two kind of mini courses for Simple Habit. So they’re like seven courses, about 10 minutes each. And they each kind of include this little meditation. One was on anger management. One was on forgiveness and those bastards removed one of my classes on forgiveness.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: The one about forgiving God and I phrased it, they said can you phrase it as higher power? I was like, [01:24:00] yeah, sure. I don’t care. So I did that and then they removed that class. So now I’m working on forgiving them.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I love how you tie it all together. That’s great. I’m going to bring it home with that.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Tom, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I can’t, I’m really grateful for your time. This was, I think a really necessary conversation for a lot of men out there. And I can’t express my gratitude enough.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I love being on here. I love what you’re doing. I think it’s awesome work that you’ve done and that you’re continuing to do. And I want you to know that goes appreciated. So thank you.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: My pleasure. Thank you for being here. And let’s let’s stay in touch and continue the friendship and let’s do this again down the road.

Thomas DiBlasi, Anger Management Expert: I would love that. Absolutely. Anytime.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Fantastic. All right. That is it for the latest emergency episode of the Evolved Caveman on anger and domestic violence and tools that you can use to turn down the volume on anger. So thank you very much for listening. And as always, Tom’s bio and links, oh, and the progressive muscle relaxation files will be in the show [01:25:00] notes.

Dr. John Schinnerer, Mens Counselor: Thanks again for listening. Bye bye.