Therapy Chat 32. Getting Up Close & Personal With Anger - Mindfully
May 12, 2016
39:43
Welcome! My guest for this episode is Dr. Andrea Brandt, a psychotherapist, speaker, and author who has much knowledge and experience to bring to the table. Her book, Mindful Anger: A Pathway to Emotional Freedom, explores revolutionary thinking on the topic of anger. Join us as we discuss mindful anger.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- Mindfulness and anger are not usually thought of as partners.
- Anger is almost always viewed as a negative emotion.
- “The Pleasure Principle” that humans live by teaches us to avoid anger.
- The goal? To get wisdom from your anger
- Anger helps us set boundaries, meet needs, and accomplish change.
- Andrea shares a personal example from her own family, where a passive-aggressive approach to anger stemmed from the murder of her grandfather by the Chicago mob in the 1920’s!
- Andrea later went through therapy and learned to get in touch with her feelings.
- She remembers being startled by the power of the energy in tandem with anger.
- “Anger is a very corrosive emotion if you don’t have the tools to deal with it.”
- Conflict and anger CAN strengthen relationships and don’t have to destroy them.
- Andrea shares how she uses snowglobe imagery to help clients deal with anger with mindfulness.
- “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”: how our anger belief systems are learned during childhood.
- Andrea’s book can help with anger in the following ways:Deepening your understanding of anger
- Learning new ways of perceiving and dealing with anger
- Using exercises to learn to benefit from anger
- Learning how to catch the impulse of anger
- Realizing what your triggers to anger are
- Learning to use assertive communication
- Using mindfulness and meditations in response to anger
- Helping passive-aggressive people deal with anger more directly
- “It’s not ANGER that needs to be managed, but the impulse that precedes the anger.”
- “Passive-aggressive people are deeply committed to INACTION.”
- Andrea discusses the mind-body connection to anger.
- How sensorimotor psychotherapy can be effective and powerful in dealing with anger
- Connect with Dr. Brandt at abrandtherapy.com or email her at abrandt@abrandtherapy.com. Find her book on Amazon!
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