Episode 98
Exploring Resentment and Anger

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNZcvpRM30

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Description

In this episode, Brandon Burns brings Jason Friesema and Clinton Nicholson to the show to speak on resentment and anger. Our team explores the difference between emotions and feelings, resentment and anger, and provides clinical insights throughout every step.

Talking Points

1. Defining emotions and feelings
   
2. Defining resentment and anger
   
3. Maladaptive behavior
   
4. Understanding resentment
   
5. Importance of hard situations
   
6. Final thoughts
   

Quotes

“In the end, all of the power you need to become an emotionally healthy person is inside you. You possess everything you need in order to be successful on this journey. Knowing that, if you can establish that as a foundational truth, then every time an individual looks outside themselves for an answer or outside themselves as an excuse for why they are responding the way they are, you can bring it back to that accountability.”

– Clinton Nicholson, Chief Operations Officer

Episode Transcripts

Episode -98- Transcripts

Brandon Burns chief executive officer for Peaks recovery centers here in the great Colorado Springs Colorado welcome back to another episode you know I bring all the magic all the great episodes the hostess with the mostess joined by Jason friezma Chief clinical officer of Peaks recovery centers LPC Lac all the clinical things and Chief Operating Officer Clint Nicholson LPC Lac all of the other clinical things and today because of the viewers out there always curious about more information and insights I brought these experts on so we can talk about resentment and anger okay why are we talking about this today because the terms can often be conflated one might lead to another cause and effect relationship it also gets us into the discussion of maybe the difference between emotions and feelings and that’s where the clinical expertise is going to come in right we’re going to philosophize a little bit therapeutically speaking and so that’s what we’re doing today stay tuned walk through it we’re going to present some solutions at the end because that’s what we do at Peaks Recovery Center so here we are finding Peaks I brought my notes don’t get lost with these guys so we don’t get on tangents but resentment versus anger so WebMD
who to trust more I originally looked it up and they were like you have cancer I was like no WebMD I’m just talking about resentment so resentment is a negative emotional reaction to being mistreated according to the old MD description here right um and in my exploration of resentment and uh feelings I think there is a little difference Happening Here you guys want to you want to test the waters first you want to continue to give the definition I want I am really curious to seriously let’s know okay yeah well I think what comes up in my research around this yeah yeah right so non-educational just looking up online here is that uh the difference between resentment and feelings seems to come down to uh emotions like an emotional state right so when we have emotions it’s a maybe we’ll have to do some DBT here by the end of this but emotions is sort of an internal thing I’m having an experience I don’t know how to identify but it feels emotional right at the end of the day it we’re consciously aware of it where a Feeling is can be something that we are consciously or unconsciously aware of right and so before diving into the two you know anger and resentment terms out of this resentment to me is um similar to like a trauma response right you have the hardship you know somebody did something to you that formed the resentment you have the hardship somebody did something new the trauma experience right we take on this emotional feeling beyond the hardship itself and in that way resentment uh is what I’m trying to couch here is similar to like traumas and experience it’s the take away it’s the prolonging of the emotional distress that’s taking place from the original event that had happened am I right here we on track professionals Jason we’ll start with you oh okay uh and then you get are we on track Chief clinical um yes we’re on track next
[Laughter] you know resentments uh I it’s hard for me to hear that word and not think of hey I’ll be honest with you um it’s a big part of uh the fourth and fifth step particularly from a a and really um and from that lens like resentments are uh kind of the building list of uh well resentments of of ways that you have been harmed uh in the past that kind of accumulate and create kind of bitterness well and anger frankly um is is how resentments I think are viewed through the AAA lens Clint well yeah so I was exactly yeah and an anger expert I should be asking the questions that’s why we work so well together yeah uh I guess for me I look at anger as more of like an acute state right it’s something that happens in the moment it’s very it is a like an acute emotion that kind of flares up and then burns out pretty quickly as opposed to resentment which is more chronic it kind of has this sort of persistent underlying presence kind of like trauma like you ex like you were talking about um where you’ve created a narrative off of it and that narrative is being fed through um pretty much I don’t know like resentment requires a lot of energy it actually takes effort to sort of maintain a resentment and to maintain that anger so you’re constantly looking for validation for why that resentment is still true and in the end I think resentment is very disempowering it gives the other person or the other um whoever that resentment is towards or whatever that resentment is towards it gives gives them a lot of power because they’re basically controlling how you are responding and yeah so that’s does WebMD check out yeah I think that’s that so that was three paragraphs down in WebMD so you nailed that um it’s so yeah so frustrations disappointment hardships these are like normal aspects of life right for sure the fact that somebody’s gonna wrong you in this world you know when we get into solution we can talk about like what is in you know what is within and what is outside of our control but generally speaking like and we’ve talked about this on many episodes already whether it’s trauma whether it’s resentment now or whatever is the issue here you are guaranteed hardships in this life absolutely right and that people are not always going to show up in the best way that you expect them to show up uh in that regard and so we are going to be wronged in this process uh and then out of that right whenever the wrong takes place it feels like there’s an Adaptive response to it I think we tried a while ago to couch anger and some adaptive I mean this is like episode six or something a long time ago when we tried it a lot when we tried yeah we’ve grown a lot but there it it feels you know maybe anger isn’t the right term of an Adaptive response but like being frustrated about something might be like an Adaptive thing but when we think about adaptive things right right we’re thinking about something that’s protective and provides security against the person that’s front of us so I suppose in that regard an angry response that distances us from the harm right if that is the mechanism for distance then we can see that as adaptive to the resentment standpoint right we’re talking about something that becomes maladaptive in time we continue to be anger angry at the individual even now even though they’re like physically distant from us and not in a position to harm us in the way that they used to right absolutely and what’s interesting is that not ever every time not every moment of anger turns into a resentment right so you never usually there is some sort of insight that you can gain if you do explore your resentments so I think that that’s the one thing that the big book and the sort of 12-step world does right is it looks at those resentments and it really challenges you to look at like well wait why why was that a resentment why did I attach to that moment of anger and why did it become maladaptive as opposed to help me to you know like yeah create emotional space or to avoid shame or whatever adaptive function anger would usually play in those moments so but I think I think I’m going to push back or I don’t know if it’s pushing back necessarily what you said but like I do think there’s this place for anger for sure oh absolutely yeah Anchor’s great yeah yeah I practice it every day I’ve never seen it um I’ll Trust you on that yeah but I do think I’ve never seen it yet yeah I do think uh anger it can also be really disproportionate to situations right and I can’t remember who said it but uh if it’s hysterical it’s historical is a saying that I’ve heard recently quite a few times actually and I think that applies to anger like if a situation you know like is a kind of a minor violation of uh of being infringed upon and the anger reaction is an eight out of ten um that likely is pointing to there’s something else kind of going on inside of oneself uh and I think resentments I think don’t tend to burn as hot I think I think anger can burn hotter than resentments it feels like or or be a little bit more prominent uh or be resentments could be a little less prominent I think than anger um but they’re persistent like they’re persistent they burn longer if not hotter they are and I think you know I think a lot of a lot about resentment too I think it comes down to a couple things um kind of the resolution of that and I don’t know what M WebMD says about this uh as a trusted source and resentment and anger but well the doctors wrote it yeah yeah did they um pheas and philosophy
but I do think like the resolution of anger kind of or the resolution of resentments uh involves both kind of looking at yourself and figuring out what your own side of the street is and what kind of uh blame and and maybe shame one is discharging on the resentment then it also I think involves uh forgiveness as well um absolutely so well and I think it’s it’s important to differentiate between anger and like rage right like those are I think we often associate anger with rage and actually we use rage as like this is anger anger is not that necessarily rage is like a pretty it’s that eight out of ten nine out of ten sort of hysterical response to a situation then that is usually actually based in fear so um but yeah anger is super adaptive and as long as you know how to how it works within your own sort of emotional structure you know like how it functions within the way that you interact with people uh I have a very adaptive form of anger yeah it’s always there yeah can you describe it yeah right well every time no I won’t go yeah it for the audience out there cleanse indicators if he says the word cool you know he’s leaning yeah cool guys cool cool cool cool yeah yeah I’m gonna go walk around the block real fast so in the in the clinical sense of things how do you see like uh uh this is going to go somewhere more than just the question but how do you see like resentment and anger primarily resentments showing I mean I think patients A lot of the time will show us that anger you know kind of front and center but how do you see resentment showing up in clinical environments you know one-on-one with the patient in that regard
well we we interesting one of the activities we do uh is we literally Drop the Rock um uh and it can be I think we sometimes do it in our grief week but like uh dropping the rock I think comes also as kind of an AAA concept absolutely refer back to that again but like um you know like when we like there’s this metaphor about kind of having a backpack full of rocks basically where you just kind of continue to acquire um ways you’ve been wronged and then carry that bitterness and resentment uh forward for years and decades and and all of that and um that could get very cumbersome and heavy I think over time and and clinically we see it right like people you know angry at a you know at a teacher resentful maybe I should say at a at a teacher someone who wronged them as a child and then upset with the ex partner uh from a decade ago and and and it still carries uh kind of that emotional heat as if it as if a person were wronged uh very recently and so I think a big part of our process um can be to drop those rocks like to unpack those and uh figure out how to which parts again a person needs to own and then what they need to kind of forgive and and let go I mean I think with resentments it’s almost like you start to develop a relationship with them and you identify with them like those resentments are a part of your makeup almost as an individual because they require so much energy to maintain over time it becomes like your story becomes a part of who you are as a person so in a clinical setting or in a treatment setting trying to help somebody identify the parts of themselves that aren’t about that resentment that actually that resentment is um really not a defining characteristic of who you are as a person and then kind of working on the process of you were saying forgiveness I would call it letting go I think that you have to actually really learn how to emotionally let go of situations and allow them to be out of your control which is hard especially if you’re in recovery early stages of recovery for mental health and substance use what are the common you know high level common justifications from like our patients perspective of why they’re holding on to these resentments well I think carrying around resentments can feel powerful yeah I think it gives the Mirage that like you know like you know the world owes me something or these people owe me something or I’ve been wronged and that’s kind of why I’m down and I in maybe a little bit of that victim component but um but really it like it it it’s almost um a drug in and of itself I think where like that power is actually not power it’s actually uh a hindrance it’s uh it’s an anchor I think or or um yeah I yeah it’s a it’s a reason to not move forward it’s a reason to stay where you are and um even though you may be telling yourself that you’re a Warrior fighting these like injustices in the world really you’re just staying in your resentment and you’re not actually pushing through that or challenging it to or or seeing what the world would be like if you let it go because um because then all of the rocks are dropped you’ve got um and you have so much more room to maneuver and I guess you can climb like a lot more Mountains is that the metaphor yeah food it faded off the middle yeah it did I know yeah more finding Peaks right exactly yeah
so in in you know and playing into that kind of Victim Because it’s not just a treatment resentment and anger don’t exist just within like treatment like I think your whole world suffers from it you know in a variety of different ways but it does feel or it’s discouraging to think about it in the terms of like a victimhood mentality but we are holding on to something right out of an injustice and and in that regard I just wanted to cycle through that again because it’s maladaptive it’s not functioning for us it’s not adaptive it’s not providing any opportunity for us maybe the initial resentment uh was enough to push the person away to create that safety or whatever it is but at some point it gets to a moment where it’s no longer functioning in the sense there and you’re also holding on to something for which maybe even the person in the background had they known the resentment existed because some resentments are held seemingly at a level of not like they punched me in the face but like they didn’t say thank you when I walked out of the store you know and things like that or I wasn’t seated at the restaurant within six minutes you know or this person on Twitter said this you know those types of things is where we start to carry all of these things on in sort of a really toxic way so open open-ended but I mean I think I think that’s that’s a really great point and as you were talking about that I was reflecting on um when when I was in private practice another one of your favorite topics um you know I would get calls from you know usually mothers or partners of somebody asking if I did anger management therapy um and so much of anger management therapy is really about kind of exploring what is underneath the anger in my opinion like right like because there are there’s the Justified anger like we talked about but that tends to be pretty quick it doesn’t tend to get you in trouble really like if you if you if a situation happens and you and you respond with the appropriate level of anger like there isn’t usually a lot of trouble around that and so um I always used to tell people I don’t of course to do anger management therapy that’s kind of what therapy is kind of at its heart is that like kind of figuring out what is driving um this response and then you know obviously there are tools and stuff uh that are kind of DBT type related that where people can kind of learn how to calm down and settle themselves um in those moments and but again that does take that self-awareness piece with anger no I think yeah yeah I think you guys both bring up a good point that typically with resentment there’s a significant imbalance in the way that the emotions are distributed as far as the person holding on to their resentment and then whatever that individual uh whatever the resentment is towards a lot of times the person who is the um sort of the target of the resentment is pretty doesn’t even really recognize that it’s happening or it just may not be having the same level of emotional impact so you have this significant it’s it’s really destabilizing you know because you’re not necessarily living within the scope or like you’re almost like in a different world altogether as far as where your emotions are and where you’re investing your time and your energy so yeah and I just want you to know a lot of the therapy you do makes me angry so yeah you are a [ __ ] manager yeah yeah yeah that seems a healthy completely adaptive yeah absolutely yeah only in work environments right uh and so in uh as we’ve talked about the mythonormal gabramonte’s book he talks about and he uses both political figures we’re not going to go into the politics or the political figures but Trump and Hillary Clinton as showcasing their histories as individuals to highlight that these are traumatized individuals and that the traumatized is leading the traumatized in this regard the traumatized is electing those who are traumatized and then in turn we are being led by the traumatized and we can imagine from there without getting into it read the book The dysfunction that can come from such a relationship but I’m bringing it up because there are there are ways in which in relationships that we’re involved in that um keep this maladaptive energy moving forward and for me what comes to mind in like my personal experiences you know going back couple decades now like you know just post high school I had friends in that way where I was going through a what felt traumatic at that time but I was just learning that I was young and didn’t have all the toolkits to like lose a girlfriend at the time but at the time I was going through something with a girl but at the time my friends were like yeah man screw it screw her and all that you know that type of language just very supportive of the resentments that I was forming right and it felt now I’m in this cycle of sympathy not empathy of of like yeah I’m justified in this response and this behavior and then I met friends down the road who were like what’s your part in this and I’m like who are you to ask me what are you kidding when my part it’s like her fault and these types of things but what I’m getting at is like I think those are the most valuable relationships because they stop it in its tracks and they ask you to consider things outside of it and to put it in back into a framework of adaptive or if you keep talking about this I’m not going to hang out with you because we need Solutions and focus here and so curious you know just maybe a personal experience or just through the lens of you know sitting with individuals as well too how often we see people kind of reinforcing these behaviors in our lives and and really what I’m just trying to bring up for the viewers out there is just to be mindful where we’re in situations where maladaptive behaviors are being reinforced where it actually feels really good in the moment but at the same time it’s only reinforcing something that’s only going to negatively impact us moving forward
well here’s what I thought of when you were talking about this and I’m going to um talk about road rage for just a second and I don’t know if you know anything about it but um you know like it’s good yeah yeah I was here uh but I really think like somebody cuts you off in traffic right it’s really a it’s like a it’s like a violation of a one or two on the anchor like it it might be a little frustrating maybe a tap with a horn or maybe just you slow down and uh say ger and then move on with your day um because really you know that person probably caused you to be about two to two and a half seconds later than you would have been otherwise um so it’s really not that egregious now a person who maybe uh is having some issues with uh road rage again not talking about anybody in particular um like that a reaction that like an eight where like they’re hitting the ceiling of their car or maybe driving on the shoulder or something to get around them like in the moment that person feels pretty justified in that like their anger is real like I want to affirm that like that anger the anger is real now it’s a misdirected source of the anger I think and I think what you’re saying is that you’ve had friends in your past who have said you know what I think what what is helpful is when people are like um that’s a little bit of an overreaction there like what what part about that is you and what part about that is the driver what belongs to that other driver part of this belongs to you and we do need people in our lives like that and I think that’s what I think we try to do clinically uh as therapists to try to help people find that discrepancy and then um you know once something is conscious I think that’s when we can begin to change it um it’s hard to change to change things we’re not conscious of um so I mean that that’s my reply like we do need friends like you described and or sometimes we need even professional guidance in that way so well all of my friends are professionals so
[Laughter] exactly I think that you know friendships are an interesting little things sometimes aren’t they uh oftentimes you know friendships really are about providing like emotional support and a lot of times that support is emotional validation right like you want to validate somebody’s feelings like oh my God that’s awful like that must be so hard for you and the problem with validation is that it very quickly is a very fine line between validation and commiseration and once you’ve slipped into commiseration it’s just like man it feels good because everybody gets to get angry and everybody like finding that common enemy like that’s a real thing you know when you have like something to focus all of that sort of negativity on it is um it’s very empowering at least it feels empowering in the moment and initially it it can be um over time though it becomes very disempowering because you’ve given so much of your energy and so much of your anger and so much of your time and focus to this other person and they probably don’t even I mean when I accidentally cut somebody off going 60 miles an hour and the left lane of the highway I always wave when I do that and so I you know the person’s honking behind me but I wave and so I figure everything’s good they probably want to murder me you know but I’m I don’t I’m oblivious to that moment I don’t necessarily I it the social uh Moray that I have broken is not nearly as big of a deal to me as it is to that individual so yeah so I think that that is um my answer to that open-ended question yeah yeah driving what a great sport out there traumatized individuals driving among the traumatized yeah what could go wrong in this scenario right at the end of the day and and also too like you know driving is one of those things too that at least in my experience of road rage I’ve talked about on this episode I’m healing and so I can be vulnerable yeah for sure and you know and it’s it’s not the actual process of driving it’s not the person in front of me it’s not the event there it’s all of this historical stuff that’s added up that has led to this moment of snapping I was so fragile to this moment that I broke in a way that it broke into rage right to be consistent with the language you literally just described your resentment like that is because it is historical right and it is you have been feeding this narrative a little bit every day you just give it a little a little bit of this a little bit of this and it keeps it just powerful enough to where all it takes is a moment of vulnerability or where you just don’t have full capacity of your of your emotions for it to actually blow up yeah I mean the same you know thread not to go into traumiere but that is what trauma is doing as well too it’s creating that Frailty that emotional state and then it erupts in these settings and why am I behaving this way I have no way process of discovery oh it’s rooted in that and that’s why I behave in these sort of ways um but this leads to our transition right like how do we change out of these habits because we have so many things that are reinforcing it right I might form a resentment about somebody hitting me as a benign example and then I turn on the TV and the politician offended me and then I call my mom and I walk and she offends me and then I go home and my wife offends me and all these sort of things and now I have this pool of things that have happened to me that create justification to keep moving forward it’s not just the situation it’s the whole world that’s resenting me and I think what we find at Peaks for sure when individuals arrive you know in a place of addictive behavior and that sort of things that we’re trying to undo um they’re at the peak of this moment of build up like in their lives and it’s moved into the direction of justifying the habitual use of drugs and alcohol well because I was wronged here in all these situations and then over time this resentment build up I’m justified in consuming this because if you were me right and the victim sense of things you might do this too but we can’t live in that way of things so you know what are these potential solutions that you know we can lean into that habituates or recreates uh reflexivity that puts you know oneself into a position to really do the hard thing I think the first hard thing for example like coming into a treatment episode is to go into treatment to acknowledge at least there’s a problem and then give up the thing that’s creating any type of safety or security for you in that moment well what happens a couple days after the phenobarb wears off and that type of thing it’s back into the justification for not to be here uh in a revert you know kind of backwards right so this is where treatment is so supportive of this this is where movement activities a variety of different things are to our benefit to pursue and what we’re talking about here is just because you remove drugs and alcohol and you make that decision it’s nearly the easier decision when it comes to it rehabituating moving into a position where the next time somebody cuts us off it’s not punching the ceiling but like er you know and then it’s a UR into like a dang I just I’m gonna turn the music up a little bit and I’m like I’m just going to cool down I’m going to back off I’m not going to flip the person off this time these incremental things that move us in that direction
so the question is what is the solution for this well the question is what are solutions because okay there’s going to be right a variety of different ones but we have to um like resentment right the easy thing is to say I’m gonna go to treatment yeah yeah the hardest thing is when your therapist says or asks what would it be like to forgive the person well I don’t want to do that’s not why I came here I’m looking for other Solutions but really that’s that’s the hard thing that’s what we have to do in this example at least right yeah it’s I can’t get past the first thing I think that’s really important is really working on developing the awareness that there is a problem and uh and that the person coming into a program or whatever is part of that solution right it isn’t about we got to fix the drivers out there in the world or we have to for sure to fix the red lights and so they all can line up uh and turn green in front of me uh but really the the thing you like figure out your locus of control basically and what what what is within your control and then what are the things outside of that that um need to begin to learn how to let go or accept I guess um so it’s a little honestly it’s a little motivational interviewing of like uh you know again would when somebody in the heat of that moment like we described it it feels like this offense on the road is an eight out of ten even though it’s probably one out of ten it’s probably just Clinton and his big truck cutting you off right obliviously listening to NPR or country music um yeah um but I think uh uh I think we have to become aware of it right and I think I always go to you know when when somebody comes into Peaks for instance and they have uh an opioid addiction like it’s clear what the enemy is and they have people have no doubt that like this is creating major problems for me in my life um so they don’t have to spend as much time being like hey heroin’s really bad well they kind of know like they yeah they’ve been aware of that for quite a while but when when there’s these other nuanced things from a mental health perspective it doesn’t even have to be just anger and resentment like it takes more time to kind of unpack what’s really going on like what we have to turn a lot of lights on if you will to be like hey here are kind of the problems that are that maybe you would like to address so I think that’s the first kind of step in that process yeah man that’s uh it’s a big question I I actually think it’s different for everybody and that’s kind of a cop-out answer but um I think that there is a lot of I don’t know when you were talking I was kind of thinking that it’s this idea that in the end all of the power that you need to change your um to become an emotionally healthy person inside of you like you you possess everything that you need in order to be successful on this journey and so every time that knowing that if you can establish that as like a foundational truth then every time the an individual looks outside of themself for an answer or outside of themselves for an ex as an excuse for why they are responding the way they are you can kind of bring it back to that accountability and be like no no no no remember it’s everything is inside like you have the capacity to be in control right now because that’s inside of you the world around you is chaos and Mayhem and I don’t know maybe pointless maybe not who can say um but it’s that’s not the point the point is what’s going on in sight and here is within our power like this can be still this can be peaceful this can be calm because we can control that so I think that there is um I think mindfulness is really powerful I think meditation movement um I think that spiritual practice is really important can be really powerful over a long period of time um and again just this idea that you have to stop giving your power away like we give our power away left and right you know we’re constantly like the whoever you know when somebody gets really mad at me for cutting them off they gave me a lot of power in that moment like all of a sudden I’m in control of their feelings yeah like and I don’t want that control yeah trust me I’m a therapist I know how dangerous that is yeah like um but like being able to come into this space of like no like take back control of your life like this is stop letting the world control you and actually um we I think we couch it as accountability and I think that that has a sort of like blame shame sort of vibe but really it is about taking your power back so in um and we talked about this before the episode Clinton but two Traditions right in the cringe the Christian tradition I think we’re looking at Matthew 538 somewhere in there turn the other cheek right okay I have turned the other cheek I don’t have I don’t know if that’s the exact Biblical reference but it feels familiar here come the emails seriously teachings [Laughter] um but to turn the other Cheeks is to accept one’s insult or predicament without retort so we have a hardship we form uh uh a feeling about the experience in this case you know maybe somebody slapped us or whatever we’re being asked to turn the cheek um and to not retort and to be open more than anything to the fact that we might be slapped again right I think is what it’s what it’s taken away here but to also couch it in sort of stoic language as well too the stoics were big that nature is a causal feature of the universe and it’s a good thing but we are not in control of it we are not in control of our surroundings and so the only way to really apply judgment to a situation like being slapped in stoicism would be to say that you were in control of the situation in the first place we can only form a judgment around something we were in control of if somebody is hitting us or attacking us or cutting us off or sliding us on Twitter like whatever the case is what is our control over that moment or I mean not them yeah right absolutely and I and I think if we I think what’s fascinating about a concept like resentment and anger is we know that the solution is not external it’s internal we sense and we experience that yet we participate in it wholeheartedly and don’t move in the direction of positivity even though these great Traditions spiritual or otherwise have for centuries given us opportunities uh to find a pathway forward and that pathway forward is not the easy thing it is not the easy option it is the giving up of the ability to actually resent anything whatsoever and that’s probably going to be couch I’m going to go out on a limb here in any philosophical religious spiritual tradition we are not allowed to do the easy thing and continue in our misery and the suffering that comes from something like resentment and anger absolutely no I think that was really really well said I feel like there was a mic drop moment absolutely yeah well we’re not ending it there yet so oh but I think that’s um it is a very hard thing to do what is really the easiest thing which is to just not hold a judgment or hold a grudge you know to be able to just sort of like Let Go and Let Live you know that is we are told that that is cowardice that that is that we are doing something wrong that we’re not standing up for ourselves that we’re not um we’re not a strong person that we are um being controlled that we are being victims and it’s actually the opposite of that like there’s a level of irony to this whole thing that is really really interesting and um it really reminds me of like Viktor Frankl right and his this idea that the only thing you really have control over is your attitude towards the situation and it’s not necessarily about anger and resentment it’s about Hope and sorrow you know and to to have like true genuine Faith and Hope in a situation requires you to let go of the things that you can’t control and solely focus on your your own experience and the things that you do have control over so I thought it was really well said yeah and and to Victor Frankel’s point and to your point there as well too what he’s stating right is I I have the opportunity to control like my mental state in controlling my mental state it will not change the situation I was in he was in uh Nazi concentration camp hard to get out of that but within that he could control himself within that environment and I think outside inside that environment he carried that forward in a way that was meaningful in giving back in a huge way to the world society but to the to the point here you know it feels easy to opt out of doing the hard thing and moving away from resentment and anger and that type of thing so I’m curious this is kind of just a big question for you guys in sir clinical wherever it matters here but do you guys think that our current Society nurtures this path toward habituating these positive responses or are we in a society that does the opposite of that I mean I assume that’s not a rhetorical question but it feels rhetorical yeah like I said it up rhetorically yeah it’s rhetorical to me but but I’m just one human in this big world trying to control my resentment so you know I think I may have talked about this once and I kind of butcher the story I’m sure but you know Desmond Tutu’s book talking about the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the atrocities uh that occurred during that and then um like when Nelson and Mandela was put into power and they ended apartheid they had a Treme like just a huge amount of people that had uh unfathomable uh atrocities had been uh put upon the people of South Africa right and um and what Nelson Mandela and others figured out is that um if we try all these people and send them all to prison like it’s going to just create more chaos and actually fan the Flames of anger and resentment and and and divisiveness and so what they did um as a collective and as a nation they had they would bring in people that uh had committed these atrocities and had them confessed to everything they did in the court and then the court said you’re forgiven and then moved on and like power was like it created this really interesting Dynamic of like it showed that a culture like a society can do it a society can say we’re going to choose not to live in anger and resentment we’re going to choose that now obviously that can’t be the case all the time there’s a lot of complications and all that but like sure if that can be done in the in the face as an entire nation in the face of a apartheid like that’s I don’t know it seems like we could head in that direction But to answer your rhetorical question like of course like we are in the most divisive time in my life um you know that’s where I full stop yeah no I think you’re uh I actually think that it is I’m gonna use this term human nature Loosely um not philosophically so I know that you had like 18 definitions for it but uh I think that it is actually our default setting is to forgive our default setting is to have Grace for people to give them the space to be um I think that it’s an easier way of living I think that it’s a more uh peaceful way of living I think like internally peaceful I think that it is when you talk about like wellness and self-care and when you talk about happiness and prosperity usually it’s somebody who’s on that path on the path of Grace and uh and is able to sort of see the world for what it is and allow it enough space to be imperfect um culturally I think particularly in Western and American culture we we go Old Testament with our belief system and we have this eye for an eye we’ll sort of need like that we have to have retribution for whatever Injustice was done to us that means I am justified in doing the exact same amount to this other person like I need what my job is to cause the same amount of pain and anger or the same amount of distress in their life that I experienced in mine and that is a really um unhappy way to live and it is uh it keeps people trapped in trauma it keeps people reinforcing and living in these resentments because it allows you to keep energy flowing into that to those old stories into those old beliefs um and it never allows you to actually break free I mean there’s shackles as far as I’m concerned like it is it is really uh yeah it’s not great and I think the more we are the more divisive we’ve become over the last several years and um I think we get further and further away from what I would what I would identify as like actual happiness yeah the and you know I think it was All Quiet on the Western Front that’s what I yeah challenge you to watch recently and it’s uh you know World War One movie that is on the side of the German soldiers so this is pre-nazism of course in World War One um sometimes those gets conflated in in the world that like all wars were the same in the all people driving it but what was powerful about that movie for me was I’m sitting on the front lines with German soldiers yes they cause the word yes there is this sort of retributive justice that should be taking place but very quickly within it my experience was and maybe it was yours Jason that like these are people and there is this higher sort of political thing going on that’s driving the war but these people on the front lines and this is you know Sebastian younger talks about it too in the Afghan war and so forth like even American soldiers aren’t fighting for like who’s in power at the time and I’m fighting on behalf of the you know America they’re fighting for each other because they’re trying to survive a pretty hard situation they’ve found themselves in and so that’s the thing that carries them through not the politics or the stories or the rhetoric that’s going on uh throughout the world and that was my appreciation of the film but then the film comes out and then all of this you know sort of negativity comes around it of like oh we’re just reinforcing these terrible behaviors that took place in in sympathizing and empathizing with these people who cause such atrocities in the world and like yeah to the retributive sense of things I get where the attitude comes from but it was easier for me watching the movie just to start forgiving people and to think like these were just people put into a situation and in the beginning of the movie like you know they go into it they’re not trying to fight for anything other than like a plot they think they’re going into something exciting yeah and then they get there and find out it’s pretty detrimental and unforgiving and they lose all their friends in the process uh and so that’s a journey of empathy for me but the world wants to say something about well they caused it and they started it so we’re just going to hold on to that resentment and we’re not going to allow sympathy for this you know situation and so it is rhetorical to me in that sense of things that this is generally what we do as a society we don’t find time for that forgiveness and to move forward and move beyond the situation even though we have great exceptional people like Victor Frankl that have turned around and done just that and living in the most dire hardship you know type situations coming out on the other side and finding it within their heart and mind to find forgiveness for individuals to do the absolute challenging thing I mean I Victor Frankel is like one of the most powerful figures because I it’s hard to think of a tougher thing to go through than what he went through and he was able to find it and if he can find it why can’t we find it right and so easy route so likely what Society is providing and I think that’s where we get hit within treatment episodes now I’ve arrived at Peaks you guys help people right now fix it right like we’re gonna do the easy thing we’re somehow gonna sprinkle the cognitive behavioral therapy the DBT or whatever on to you I think what that does in its biggest way is provide that awareness that you were talking about earlier but the hardest thing you’re going to do after that is take those tools and actually go out into the world and pursue them one step at a time because we’re not going to go from awareness to Healing you know overnight but it seems like the happy life the fulfilled life the purpose-driven life is something that invites difficult situations in and one thing I think about is like in college I would go to ratemyprofessor.com which is blasting all these you know poor tenured professors out there but at the end of the day I was choosing the two star professors why because I felt like they were going to challenge me more you know especially in the school of philosophy it’s a Humanities credit some people just need to do a Humanities credit and I they think okay I’m going to do you know philosophy of Ethics or whatever and that’s going to be an easy a and I’m going to get out and then they get the hard ass professors like you’re in an ethics course and you’re going to take it seriously and we’re not doing benign you know papers here and I’m going to give you a c if you give me this will they get to see and they get pissed and they write that to me it was like I want to do the hard thing I wanted to learn philosophy I wanted to expand my mind and my opportunity why not I was in that sort of situation and so to me it makes sense that you know in my running marathons running a business working every day with you guys like this is hard [  ] uh at the end of the day working in treatment and this isn’t to like be a victim of it it’s it’s rewarding work it doesn’t lead to victimhood but it is [  ] challenging work absolutely um each and every day and it and I think our general experiences right we share these company-wide emails where we have success stories we also have non-success stories but within those sex success stories it’s really invigorating and empowering it reinforces What We Do It shows us why we’re doing the hard thing at the end of the day as opposed to you know I don’t want to undermine any job out there so I’ll stop there but do you guys sense that you know that the hardest part is the most rewarding is the most purpose-filled thing yeah
always like I think that’s what we’ve built our entire program on this is doing the hard thing like we ask our clients to do hard things yeah we ask our staff to do hard things yeah um is it it’s what makes us excellent I think and in a way too that’s what makes recovery so rewarding because it was [  ] hard absolutely I mean in this field like being being a therapist like I mean I I’ll tell people that I feel like I went to grad school to learn how to not judge people it is the hardest thing to not walk into a situation with judgment or if you do to identify that you have judgment look inside figure out why work through that compartmentalize that and then show back up again in a way where you can see and meet the individual for who and what they are and have an actual unconditional acceptance of that human being it is tough because there are some there are some wounded people out there and the more wounded the the harder it can be to find that connection um but yeah I mean like what else are we here for like it just seems like everything else seems kind of I don’t know just like whatever I this seems pretty powerful and it’s um yeah I mean it just and it never stops you know it never stops and for all the viewers out there I think this is a as we kind of take it out here this is a Common Thread in the experiences right when you know going I’ve talked about on this episode Jason participated in you know you sent me to do the trauma where July of 2019. yeah I’m 36 years old I believe at that 35 years old at that time and I was not a runner at that moment I was in any of those things it took 30 another year even 36 years to discover running as a benefit for like my life uh in that regard and so I was going to the gym originally and before I figured out you could run anywhere and stepping on the treadmill for the first time but just stepping into a gym when you feel shame when you feel insecure when you feel like I’m fat I’m unworthy this is never going to work um that self-doubt Creeps in almost immediately and I step on that machine for the first time you know 11 miles per hour or whatever you know right now feels like a walk but at that time I was exhausted and I felt [  ] stupid doing it you know excuse my language to the audience out there but I think it just reinforces how we commonly experience growth the first time we step into unfamiliar territory I’m going to stop presenting people today feel stupid about that I’m losing some I’m giving up something right in the process and I just want to acknowledge that feeling because we’re not talking about here at Peaks anything other than doing something that is absolutely challenging and difficult it will be hard it will be painful both mentally and physically but the promise at the end of it right is that if you put that foot forward you’re going to incrementally feel better in time to the point where now at 38 and a half years old wherever I’m at in this age framework right I’m running the best that I’ve ever done but also within that I’m pushing myself to not just be in this sort of place of mediocrity in the way that I consider my running experience I’m constantly pushing myself and to go from an eight minute mile to a seven to a 6 30 mile is painful and everything in my body in my mind at times is saying don’t do it shut it down go upstairs eat you know do anything other than you’re doing and I think that resonates for me and something I wanted to share with the audience and see if you guys have any other feedback or you know things you want to share about you know maybe even the journey that you’re on spiritually Jason as well too about the difficulty of just taking that first step forward and then continuing because it’s not easy yeah it is I mean I think Brandon I think I mean it’s interesting that we’ve taken resentment and anger and like pivoted to like uh this part and I think you know I I feel like I’m certainly on a spiritual journey and we’ve alluded to it the last couple weeks on here but I think um I think Peaks is on this a little bit too is we’re really trying to you know even continue to round out what we’re doing what we’re offering clients and and since we are asking them to do really hard things like they they need the support I think of having a good basis in kind of like what is the meaning of all this and what’s what’s uh what is my place in the world and in in what are my spiritual values and beliefs and what does my existence mean and all those sorts of things but like these things matter how do I find this meaning and purpose and um so I feel like I’m on a little bit of a parallel journey in in that way as well as um I continue to explore this through my own middle age actually so um yeah in the later stages of middle age yeah yeah yeah water Middle Ages yeah elderly middle age yeah now I I think um you know I had a uh an instructor it was I was taking a Buddhist philosophy class like in my a million years ago and I was doing my bachelor’s in New York and it was um one she said something to me that was so that has always stuck with me and uh she said something to the class rather she just said every any time that you were doing something because of a principle you should probably stop principles are rigid principles are void of context most of the time and they will um typically lead to suffering she said don’t live with principles live with purpose and because purpose has that there’s this connection piece right like you have you’re connected to the world around you and it can be and it’s fluid and it changes and it has room to sort of expand and contract and um I think that that it’s probably the only thing I remember from actually the first year of college but it was really powerful and um I think that it has been it’s something that I still uh kind of a mantra that I still tell myself and something that I still really live by I think um you know once you start forgiving I will say this it does get easier you know like once you can let go some of those big resentments um and especially the resentments that you have towards yourself those are those are tough but once you can start having that level of forgiveness it it gets a lot easier and um yeah you won’t ever go back yeah I think about I want to make sure I get his name right here the the Rich Roll podcast the reason I’m pointing it out is you know one he’s in recovery and I love that about his journey and his podcast but two his whole podcast is dedicated to like what we’re talking about here and I just wanted to bring that to the viewers because right check it out it’s an amazing podcast about these topics that we’re talking about how to motivate bringing you know leaders from all over the world athletes from all over and all these people have accomplished a tremendous things you will hear in every single story that it was difficult it was painful it was the pain cave it was the most impossible thing I thought I was doing in the very beginning moments of it and Mel Robbins one of the guests on it I love her energy just the tenacity uh and that she brings is is really great but she has a sort of a statement that she tells herself in the moment of hardship the thing that I am going through right now is preparing me for something in the future I don’t know what that is I don’t know how it’s going to come about I don’t know what that looks like but right now this is the moment and I’m live with him and hold on to it because it’s preparing me for this next thing and I think for me and what we go through kind of at work especially recently and all these types of things it’s it’s not something I’ve always been aware of or been telling myself but it’s been really powerful and these anecdotes I think can be really powerful when we’re struggling and going through things as a process and so to that point the more we read the more we listen the moment we open our hearts and Minds to Solutions and strategies of all the people who’ve gone through things that we seemingly look at and say wow it looks easy for them it started with a hardship uh in that regard and so I think incorporating that into this is a is a really big part of getting well whether it’s out of resentment and anger trauma or whatever’s going on right we need people to support us and show us that there’s a path forward in a world in which sometimes it’s easy to sit down and commiserate so yeah absolutely all right well with that then folks we’re going to take it out yeah two mic drops I’m not gonna pass this one up I just want to thank everybody again for joining us today on the special episode of Finding Peaks always my favorite co-host guest just a guest just guests on here at the end of the day I love hanging out with you guys um I this is always just a reprieve sometimes from the intensity of our work environment absolutely it’s nice to come on here and and just chat and roll through things in an authentic way and not have to you know fight you know people about it in the process um and to the viewers out there as well too it’s also reprieved just to come in here and talk to you and we hope that we’ve delivered something special today in regards to resentment and anger as silly as that sounds solutions for it uh at the end of the day but signing off here Brandon Burns chief executive officer for Peaks recovery centers find us on the tick tocks the Facebook the twitters all of our accounts are more positive than all the other accounts on there so check us out we’ll put up some quotes these positive things to help people forward but also opportunities to um see what we’re doing what we got going on future podcasts these types of things and uh I think it’s information at findingpeaks.com
ideas all those things send them to us that’s where these episodes come from resentment anger it’s about you the viewers at the end of the day appreciate you so much until next time