Transcription
All right, let's go to Richard in Not So Normal, Illinois. What's up, Richard? How are we doing, man?
I'm pretty good. How are you?
Doctor John. Good. That was about a fourth or fifth grade joke I just made on behalf of your city. Do people call it "Not So Normal" all the time, or not really?
There's a lot of stuff that people call normal, not so normal. Oh my gosh, like my work life, right? And my marriage is not normal either. We could do this all day, man. What's up?
So, I am a Christian, a father of three, and a husband. And I struggle with anger issues. And yeah, so that's my question. How come, how can I deal with that? Having two younger kids and then one almost teenager. Uh, and if you have any questions, please ask.
Yeah, man, that's, I love how simply you put that, yet how complex all the things you just rolled out are. Um, who taught you to be angry?
Uh, so I don't want to throw my dad under the bus, but, hey, come on. Throw him. He's not listening.
Richard, let's be real. He's not listening.
I mean, I remember him being quite angry a lot of times and having a short fuse. And I feel like I'm the same way. And my son's five, and I see, I just see that in him too. And my wife can get angry sometimes too. And we're just kind of navigating this giant ocean we call life as best we can.
Okay, so you picked it. You, your dad loved you, probably a good human being, and he was an angry guy. And those aren't all mutually exclusive. We like to just dump people in these buckets like terrible or awesome. And almost everybody's more complex than that, right? So it's okay to call out your dad and still love him, right? And he doesn't need you to defend him. He's a grown man. So you learned a model of dealing with challenges and frustrations that, as you mentioned, that we just call life. And you learned to be angry. Paint me a picture of what anger looks like for you.
Um, so, I mean, so I've been working a lot in my church with my small group leader and my, my church friends on why I get angry about things or how it goes. But usually, it's like, I guess I don't get my way. And I watch my kids make mistakes that I've made in the past. And anger for me is getting frustrated, getting agitated very easily. And then if people raise their voice at me, I tend to raise my voice back. And that's, that's anger for me.
So take us all back to when you were seven, or maybe ten, and your dad lost his mind once, just got raged out. Do you have an incident that you remember?
Uh, yeah, okay, pretty, pretty vividly too.
Paint that picture for us when you're a little one.
Well, when, when I was younger, I remember my mom and my dad fighting one time, and my dad picked up a chair and hit the wall. Okay. And so my mom went upstairs and cried. And I didn't understand. And I went to be with her. And she was just sad. And I didn't understand what was going on.
Okay, so take us back. Transport us into that little boy. You saw that chair, or heard that chair smash against the wall. What's in that little boy? What's that little boy feeling?
I was pretty scared. I kind of went into a different room and kind of hid.
Okay, like, show us where are you hiding?
Um, so I hid in the living room, kind of behind the table. And then after my mom went upstairs, I quietly went upstairs after my dad left the house because he left the house after that.
Okay, so if, if we were just to like, distill everything down between a fight and a flight and a freeze, you went somewhere and got real still, right?
Yeah.
You were the, if you've seen like the National Geographic with documentaries or whatever, you were the baby deer that curls up real tight and just gets real still. My mom is dealing with whatever threat, right?
Yep.
Um, now when you think back on that, you happy that you're doing that to your kid?
Not at all, man. Because getting mad is okay. Getting frustrated. If you're not frustrated as a parent of a, of a teen and young kids, then you've got some screws loose. You probably should go see a psychiatrist, right? That's a frustrating enterprise. And then once you feel that frustration, once you feel that, even get mad, everything after that's a decision. And I hate to, to simplify it so much because I know people talk about being trapped by it or, um, controlled by it. And at this point in my life, I don't buy that anymore. Especially somebody who knows enough to know that they're reaching out to people in accountability groups and are trying and trying and trying. So the question most of us don't ever ask is, why are you choosing to repeat this cycle so that your kid has to experience that moment of frozen terror in a side room because they're scared of dad? What is, what is choosing that, that outcome? What does that get you?
Just more pain. It doesn't help. I know it doesn't help. I just, but you keep doing it. You're getting something from it. What are you getting from it?
[Music]
I feel, I feel like it's control. I seem, I feel like I want to control things really bad. I want things to go my way. And I get, I've become a child that's angry when I don't get my way.
There you go, man. And so sometimes we don't care enough about ourselves when we're first entering into, I want to change my behavior, I want to change my life. We don't care enough about ourselves. And we don't have a model of people who cared about us, right? If you, the story you just told, you were hiding in terror from your dad. And then your job was to go make sure mom was okay. And that's not a seven-year-old's job on either account, right?
Yeah.
That's not your job as a seven-year-old, man. Do you know what I did this morning? And I'm not making this up for theater. I'm just talking to my friend, Richard. This morning, I wrote a letter. I'm, I'm working with a counselor. I'm writing letters to my old selves. And I wrote a letter to teenage John. And it ended with, "Go laugh and do stupid teenage things. You're going to be all right." And I love you. And I'm letting these kids off the hook that have been protecting me for so long, man. And until you let that seven-year-old be a seven-year-old and not crouch in terror in your living room and then have to go take care of mom because she's broken up, until you can let that kid go, he's gonna continue to run your life for you. And he's going to continue to respond like a seven-year-old does, which is throwing things and pouting. And you're going to pass this along because your kids are learning this model too. That's the thing I don't want to happen.
I know, I know you don't. And that's why you gotta let that little kid go, man. You gotta let that seven-year-old copy a seven-year-old. And here's how that starts tonight. You write that little kid a letter. How old are your kids again?
My daughter is one, my son's five, and my, my other daughter's 11.
Okay, so you're in it, right? You're exhausted. And you're going to all the events in the evenings. And you got a five-year-old who's just running a muck, right? So you're, and then you have a one-year-old that just screams all the time. So you are struggling. Your marriage is probably strained right now. You're exhausted. And you're trying to wrap all this up into a pretty little Christian dad and brother. You're tired.
Okay, so here's what I want you to do. Number one, I want you to prioritize sleep. You've got to, for the sake of your family, you have to set a nighttime alarm and start going to bed.
Number two, I want you to get some time. And I want you to write that kid a letter, the one you just told us about. And I want you to write it from the perspective of you, as though you're writing to your seven-year-old self. And let that kid know, no kid should have to hide in the living room because their dad is such a child that he's smashing furniture against a wall. No kid should be that scared of his dad. And no kid's job is to go make sure mom is okay because she's an adult. She's a grown-up. And grown-ups should be able to work together to solve problems and not smash things and scare each other and hide from one another. And then at the end of that letter, I want you to process all of the way that kid's feeling. And I want you to re-feel that in your body. And then I want you to let that seven-year-old go play. And then from that moment, I want you to sit down with your wife. It may not be tonight. It may be tomorrow or the next day. And I want you to tell her, "I'm done being angry. Not done being mad. Not done being frustrated, right? But I'm done being angry. And I'm done responding like a child." I want you to give her permission to talk into your life. And then I want you to bring your five and your 11-year-old in. And let them know that you've been scary and that you've been sad. And that you're not gonna be scared and sad anymore, right? And from that moment forward, you're going to start working on little tiny things. Like when you feel yourself get angry, you're going to stop and say, "I'm going to step outside." And in your head, you're going to think, "Because I'm a grown-up, I'm not going to pass this on. I'm going to stare down this forest fire of child, of family trauma and child trauma. It stops with me." And it's gonna be slow. And it's gonna be frustrating. And you're gonna have idiots in your life giving you all kinds of stupid advice like, "You just gotta get that anger out, bro." If you try to get the anger out, it's going to re-groove your brain deeper and become more and more and more of a default setting. So you got to build new pathways. And it sucks building new pathways, but you have to. Because you got an 11-year-old and a five-year-old and a one-year-old. And they can't carry this on for you anymore, right?
Yeah.
Okay. Do you have somebody in your life you trust that's not a, that will walk along with you?
Yeah, I've got two people for sure.
And you trust them?
Yeah, absolutely.
And they don't give you stupid advice?
Nope. Like, "Yeah, bro, you should be pissed." They, they give me actual like, "Chill out, calm down."
No, they tell me that anger is sinning and that I need to be careful because I'll pass it on generationally.
Okay, so anger is not a sin. Anger is not bad. What you do with it is a sin. Yeah. Acting like an idiot is acting like an idiot, right?
Definitely.
Yeah. Being angry is a, if you try to stamp out anger, dude, you're trying to stamp out all anger. It means is that you care about something. It points you in the direction of something you care about. And so when you see your kid making a mistake, you care that he's not going to hurt like you hurt. And then your reaction makes sure that he hurts like you hurt, right? So all anger is is pointing you in the direction of something you care about. It's a good thing. It's wired into us, right? It's like you just mentioned, it's our default setting. It's what we do afterwards. And that, my friend, is a choice. And it's going to be hard to change. But your kids are worth it. And you are worth it.
They are worth it.
Yeah. Hey, hey, you, Richard, are worth it. Okay? You're worth being able to breathe. You're worth being able to sleep. You're worth not feeling this shame all the time because you lost your temper on an 11-year-old. Or you're rage angry. You're get, pro, tell me if I'm wrong. You're able to control it sometimes, but you double down and you compress it in your chest like a nuclear reactor. So everybody around you feels it. But you can walk through your house with a little bit high and mighty because you're not yelling or hitting anything. Is that fair?
Yeah.
Yeah, dude. Listen, that's almost worse. Not quite as bad as smashing a chair, but it's almost as worse. Because your kids feel that tension. And they backfill it with, "It must be their fault." And you know what they do? They spend the rest of their life trying to take care of mom. The rest of their life trying not to make dad angry. And that's not their job, right? So your job is to step outside on the front porch and breathe real deep. Your job is to get a night's sleep. Your job is to start every morning with what you're grateful for. Your job is to feel that anger and know it's there and know, "I love my kids. Bring it in, guys." Right? Your job is to not be immature and to learn new tactics, right? So don't let people tell you that feeling angry is wrong. It's not. Smashing stuff in front of your kids is wrong.
Yep.
Listen, you're a brave guy, Richard. And I'm really, really grateful for your call. Really grateful for your call. And if you can't tell, this is the pot talking to the kettle here. And I've worked a long, long time on being angry. And I'm gonna tell you right now, there is healing on the other side of that. I laugh a lot more than I used to, man. And I fall asleep most nights, not every night, but most nights. And now I love going to Little League games. And I used to not be able to go because I would get all right. And your family, generationally, right? We talk here at Ramsey Solutions about, you know, change your family tree when it comes to money. You're going to change your family tree when it comes to relationships and anger and peace. But I want to circle all the way back. Getting mad, that's not always your choice. Getting that lightning bolt of anger, that's rarely your choice. Everything after that is a decision, a choice. And you, my brother, are worth it. Your wife is worth it. And your three kids are worth it.