Rage Podcast

The speaker discusses the topic of rage and why it is not diagnosed as often as other mental health conditions like depression and anxiety. They explore the idea that rage can feel empowering in the moment and may be seen as a more masculine emotion. They also discuss the challenges therapists face in distinguishing between anger and rage and how rage can manifest in different ways. The speaker suggests that anger is about changing boundaries and gaining power, while rage is about gaining control and hurting others. They emphasize the importance of perspective and choosing how to navigate anger. So Liz, as usual, I'm going to start off by putting you on the spot, right? Why do you think we don't diagnose rage? It's such an interesting question. Let me think out loud for a minute. Because there are a couple of things that come to mind with rage, right? One, if we diagnose rage, I'm thinking about... My brain goes to the man who gets cut off in traffic, right? And jumps out of his car and starts screaming at somebody else, right? And I think so often that's what we think about when we think about rage. Okay. And my brain goes someplace else with rage, actually. My brain goes to more passive places, so the subtler ways it comes out. And I'm thinking about all of those situations that I can imagine rage. There's a moment where that feels good, right? Yeah, like in control, powerful. I am now the god I've been waiting to be. You know, like I'm shaking people out, you know? And so I think there's something where anxiety feels bad in the moment. Depression feels bad in the moment. Rage kind of feels a little good in the moment. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think about, like, I've been thinking about this for a while, as I tend to, right? But if you get too sad, for lack of a better, to be simplistic, we get you a depression diagnosis. If you're too sad for too long, right? If you're too anxious, well, we have several diagnoses for that, depending on where and how you get anxious, right? If you get too angry, well, I mean, before you're 18, we can diagnose you with oppositional defiance. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? But after 18, you're just mad. Oh, yeah. Right? And so, you know, those of you out here are like, well, there is a diagnosis for rage. It's intermittent explosive disorder. Mm-hmm. Okay. That's for somebody who impulsively rages out, not somebody who lives in a rage-based society. And actually, the moment I started thinking about this a lot, I heard an interview that I'm not going to be able to cite. But I heard an interview with a psychiatrist after a school shooting, and she said, Look, here's the deal. If the shooter had come to me the day before the shooting and even said, I plan to shoot up a school tomorrow, I certainly could admit him for being actively homicidal, so I could involuntarily admit him. But I would have to fake a diagnosis. Wow. Because is it depression? Well, he may or may not show signs of depression. Is it anxiety? He may or may not show signs of anxiety. Is it impulse control disorder? No, if he's talking about doing it tomorrow and yet he's homicidal. He's full of rage. He's full of contempt. He's seething. Yeah. I haven't written a diagnosis for him. Right. And that just stuck with me, right? Well, what are your thoughts about why dad is not getting diagnosed? Because what I was thinking as you were saying that is, right, isn't that interesting? We would diagnose the depression if we could find it, right? We would diagnose something else, but we couldn't diagnose this, like, just kind of steady stream of rage, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think I come up with all kinds of answers, right? One is the patriarchy. Yes. Of course, you know, the person who rages, like, there is something about rage. It's our inalienable right or something, right? Yeah, yeah. In a way that, you know, depression and anxiety tend to be more feminine characteristics, whereas rage tends to be more masculine. We'll probably have to do an entire podcast on masculine versus femininity and toxic masculinity versus toxic femininity, so stay tuned for that. But also I think that in some ways this relates back to the challenge of therapy podcast. I wonder if part of the reasons that beginning therapists don't challenge their clients is because we don't do a great job separating out anger versus rage. And so maybe partially because they don't know if this is healthy or not for clients to be experiencing, but also am I afraid of rage and don't know what to do with it, and so I avoid the challenge whatsoever. That was just a whole bunch, but what's your response to that? So I'm thinking about several things. I'm thinking about clients who have come in and projected, you know, let's use these words just as one for a moment, like anger and rage on me, right? So what I mean is that, Liz, I'm so angry that you're dismissive of me. And then when we kind of go down into it, and man, they're furious in the moment, right? Like there's so much fury coming from them. And in some ways, like me trying to figure out, like, how was I dismissive? Talk to me. Like the very last thing I want to do is dismiss you. Tell me what happened. Right. It's almost like a useless conversation, right? It's almost like not the point. Yeah, it's like they have so much rage against me. Yes. Their drive isn't to have a relational conversation. Exactly. And so then what, if I'm not afraid of that in the moment, I'm not going to say, geez, I'm so sorry. Like tell me, like I'll never do that again. Right. What I'm going to say, if I'm not afraid of it and I'm aware that this is dissociative rage to some degree, something was triggered in them. They're pissed. They feel weak. They feel something, right? They feel some level of not empowered. And so now they're connected to this rage. And they're going to go tell all their therapists, and that's going to feel good, you know. And the reality is, is that if I try to rip that away from them with my own rage, that becomes useless. If I identify with them this dissociative rage and I'm not afraid of it, that can go somewhere. But we have to identify it not as authentic anger. They're not angry at me because of something I did, and you're using your words to express anger. You're raging at me trying to regain a sense of control in the room. Yeah, I think that's a brilliant, like, difference, right? Because what would you see the difference of anger versus rage? It's funny, right? Because I see people speak to, I hate feeling angry. Like how many clients do you get in? Like that is just like I just don't let myself get angry. I hate that feeling. But I think being able to distinguish the felt sense, the feeling of anger versus whatever behavior that you choose to engage in after you've identified that feeling, right? True, right. Okay. And so I guess I see rage. I always think about the Bruce King, and I always think about rage being any emotion that comes out sideways. About what, Bruce? Bruce King. Oh, Bruce. Yeah. You read that book? It's Healing Rage. Oh, right, right. And in that book, she does a very good job of like saying rage is going to be any way that you are basically, I'm going to misquote, but basically trying to gain control of the environment, right? Yeah. And it can be really, really subtle. It can be with depression. It can even be with like being a hyper, hyper helper, right? Right. Or with panic and anxiety. Yeah. You can rage through panic. You can rage through helplessness. Yeah. Yeah, depression. Depression, right? Right. And so I guess I just think about the distinction between anger. Anger is, you know, anger is an authentic emotion. There are things every day that make me angry. The idea that I then get to control everybody around me because I feel distressed in some way. Oh, that's good, because I think like my definition, and like we can talk through, because I think there's a lot of cross over here. My definition of anger would be a feeling that you have that makes you want to, you know, I tend to say I think anger is the wisest of all emotions. It's the thing that tells us that maybe somebody is being intrusive or a boundary is being crossed or something needs to change in their life. It's a call to action. But it's about changing your own boundaries, your own self with a sense of power. Really, on the other hand, it strives to hurt others. I've been hurt. I need others to hurt. Whether that's a school shooting or like you're talking about, just coming in and saying, Liz, why are you being so dismissive with no chance of repairing a relationship? And the words that you're using make a ton of sense to me because I think what I'm saying is anger is about gaining power. Rage is about gaining control. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's funny because when you were describing the, you know, anger meaning that something, like a boundary in some way needs to shift, right? I was kind of thinking, you know, and it's just a funny way to put it. I think I wake up every day like and I experience some level of anger, right? Like the anger that I have to like, you know, I have to work for a living. Like I have a great job. There's definitely no reason I should feel angry about that. The anger that like I don't just have like a heated bathroom floor, right? Just these silly angers, right? Right. And I think my, the reason I kind of jovially speak to those is because the empowerment of being able to say, well, I can get bitter about that or I can embrace. Like, wow, I get to go to work. Yes, that means I don't get to stay home all day, but I get to go to work. I get to change my viewpoint. I get to, I have feedback, get to walk on the cold floor. Isn't that lovely that I have a lovely bathroom, right? Because you kind of change your perspective and then you decide how you want to navigate that anger, if that makes sense. I don't think anger always means a demand that something outside needs to change. True. Sometimes it does. Okay. When I think about, you know, somebody who has three children, you know, for a long time in our household, several years ago, nobody could seem to find a way to put a dish in the dishwasher. Right, right. And I make it to the sink, but somehow mysteriously, and there was no lock on the dishwasher, and yet nobody, not even fairly intelligent children, could actually get their dish to go in the dishwasher. Right. And so, to be honest, I started with rage. Why? Not like yelling, screaming, violent kind of rage, but more that bluster of, oh my God, why can nobody do this? If you don't do this, I'm taking your car away. Right. If you don't do this, I'm taking your phone. And I think it's typical with rage. My teenagers at the time all looked at me, rolled their eyes, and walked away. Yeah. Right? Because there's something about rage that's impotent. Yeah. There's something about rage that's just so out of control that they knew it was a control strategy. They knew I wasn't going to remember it the next day. And guess where the dishes kept ending up? Not in the dishwasher, right? And then finally I realized what I was doing, and I decided to use anger instead. And anger is a powerful emotion, right? So I got very centered in myself. And I realized I felt disrespected by these teenagers who weren't nearly as busy as I was and were laying on the couch while the dishes stayed in the sink. And I called a family meeting, and I said, here's the deal, guys. The dishes go in the sink, or the cars are mine. Yes. And all of a sudden, for the first time, there was fear in their eyes. And I maybe should then sign a contract. No, this is not a joke. This is why they're all being in their own therapy. And guess what? Once they sensed there was anger and not rage, the dishes ended up in the dishwasher. I think that's a great, great point. I think that it's reminding me of this, like, there were these times when I remember my mom just being frazzled with poor kids and being like, stop it. And you just, what you did was you dodged the rage in the moment, right? You're just like, mom's in the mood to stay out of the living room, right? But her words didn't really matter that much. When they mattered was, I remember, she said something really adorable. Like, I can say that now, but she said, all right, none of you seem to understand how to do X. I don't remember what X was. So each time you don't do X, you don't get an allowance. And she wasn't upset. She wasn't, there was no emotion. She was like, it's done. Right. Rage in general gives, when somebody rages out, it is because they feel powerless, right? We don't go to war with somebody we can negotiate with. It's interesting, though, because I find myself still feeling like I want to distinguish between anger and rage. Because to me, I think that one of the reasons I hold anger as sometimes something that needs to be dealt with and sometimes not is because it seems like people make anger, especially women, and I'm curious about why this is. They make anger and rage synonymous so often, they disconnect from any anger. Right. And if sadness can be on a spectrum and actionable at times, because sometimes it's just not, right? Can anger also be on a spectrum and actionable at times? And sometimes you just have to be frustrated. Right. Yeah. Sometimes it has an action plan and sometimes it doesn't. But if you allow yourself to have that full engagement of anger and realize, yeah, I'm angry, but there's really nothing I can do about it. I'll choose to not really engage with it that much, but I let myself have the emotion. I guess what I always think is that that makes the concept of anger more accessible, less entitled, and rage entitled in some ways. Yeah. Isn't it that anger has an internal locus of control and rage has an external locus of control? Oh, yeah. Well, would rage, their external locus of control? Anger is I am upset and there's something I can shift to make myself less upset. Rage is I'm upset and I can't be calmed until you hurt. Yeah, I think that's really well put. Which is fascinating, right? I told you my definition of rage, right? That my definition of rage is anger plus hopelessness plus entitlement. Oh, yes, yes. And I talk to all of my clients who struggle with rage resistance and it's interesting how many of them are like, yep, yep, and yep. Right? There's a truth to it because if you can just be angry, then you just get angry and you solve what needs to get solved and you set the boundary and you set. But it's anger plus this helplessness. My anger isn't going to do it. Either because the situation doesn't work and I need to get what I need out of anger or because I have this long history of anger not working. But we don't rage up, we rage down, right? We don't rage at our boss, we rage at our kids. We rage at our significant other, right? And sometimes we do rage at our boss. I'm not saying that, but typically we rage at people we see as, rage in and of itself is a dehumanizing thing, right? With anger, let's go back to the example of your student, right? When they come in and say, since they're seething and saying, Liz, you minimize me, you diminish me, you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're holding you as an object, not as a human, right? An anger response may be something like, hey Liz, I want to talk to you. I'm really angry and I just want to understand what happened for you when you said X after I said Y. It felt like you were minimizing me and man, that did not feel good. I got really angry. Can you walk me through what you were thinking? Because I care about you as a person and I want to work through this calmly. I'm having two thoughts. One is that I think people can do that in rage. So the words are important, but I think what is the intent? What's the felt sense behind the words? Okay, tell me more. Because I think that, I was picturing like the two heads of state, right? Like kind of coming together and if the threat that, you know, I don't even know how to describe this, but if the threat of one of them is that they're going to lose it and they're going to rage out at me and demolish me, right? And I was thinking, is that why we don't diagnose rage? Because as a patriarchal society, we use rage. We use the threat of rage, right? Right. But then I thought, oh, but actually, isn't it so much more impressive to do, that's okay. Like, you know, quote, it's okay that we don't agree. I have way more power than you, so I'm going to do what I need to do to make sure I get what I need, right? The threat of rage in that overt way where I've allowed you to push my buttons and lose control, right? I'm no longer being careful in my execution here. In some ways, we use the threat of that, like you have to keep the bulldog from getting upset kind of thing. Yeah. But in many ways, that's actually, it's a huge loss of control, right? It's childish. It's immature. Yeah, because how many, like, how many adult children of people who rage that we've seen, I've seen this a lot, who've said, like, right, my mom, my dad, whoever, raged at me, but I also saw this agility underneath. Yeah. And so I was both afraid of them and felt like I needed to take care of them. Right. Because I sensed that they were out of control. Yeah. Right? And that double bind is where people get stuck. Yeah. Oh, can't you feel that, though? Where there's times when it's like, right, I have to calm you down and say anything that I need to calm you down because you are no longer acting as a person in charge of yourself in this moment. Yeah, and maybe that's another good definition of anger versus rage. Anger is an emotion where you hold onto yourself. And rage can be an emotion where you lose yourself. Yeah, yeah. Right? And that's a self-responsibility piece in that moment, too. Yeah. Like, I sort of give myself permission to just binge on the rage instead of saying, hey, I'm going to be angry, but I'm going to hold you human, too, so I don't get to hold you in contempt. I don't get to give myself permission to harm you because I feel like I've been harmed. Yeah. Right? Yes, there was something you said earlier that I thought it almost sounds like rage is enmeshment, right? Like rage is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and tell me more about it, yeah. Well, so, okay, so let me see if I can link two things here. I think that somebody could come into a meeting and say verbatim what you said, which was, you know, a perfect articulation of what anger and collaboration sounds like. But I also think I've seen rage be behind that, like rage with the intent of my goal is still to intimidate you into doing what I want you to do. Right. And so there can be this threat, and I was thinking, huh, are we moving to cluster B? I noticed in those moments, right, where the threat is you can disagree with me, but I will demolish you in one way or another. So you're saying I can't do that without having a personality disorder? Because I don't, I mean, what if I just do it every now and then? Well, I guess I'm just saying that, right, it's a funny thing, right, because what if my student or client come in and they say, let's use student for this example, what if they come in and they say, you really hurt me when you said X, Y, and Z? I said, well, I just can't get on board with thinking that expecting you to turn in the paper at the deadline and then taking points off when you don't, I don't think that that's an unfair expectation, but it hurt you. And so if the reason that they're saying that is to get me to do something, right, to change the deadline, to put the points back on or whatever. Right, that's manipulative. Exactly. And so the entitlement and the threat can still live in that, in the voice, but the sense of let me see if I can actually collaborate, like let me see if I can actually come together without entitlement, the expectation that you admit that you're wrong and change it, but instead the true nature of I'm angry. I can deal with being angry. I've been angry before. It's not your job to make me not angry, but I want to bring this to you because I want to repair in one way or another. Yeah, I tend to say that mature conflict brings anger and an invitation for repair, and immature conflict brings contempt and rage with no invitation. Yeah, and in that invitation for repair, I think anger also allows for both repair, how do I say this, growth interpersonally but growth intrapersonally. Like I can come to you and say, Chris, it really pissed me off when you did this, and you're like, yeah, I'm sorry I picked you off, but I don't disagree with what I did. And I said, okay, why does that piss me off so much then? Oh, it pisses me off because there's a failed expectation in me. I shouldn't expect that people do X, Y, and Z. But there's a growth that can occur within me, if that makes sense. Yeah, so let's use an example. Let's say that we're friends, but every time we hang out, you show 15 minutes late. That seems very specific. And we're all accurate. And, by the way, I'm German. So I may say to you, hey, Liz, I'm really angry at you that you show 15 minutes late. And you're like, right, but dude, I run 15 minutes late. Well, then we have a decision to make about do I come in and say, right, but as part of this friendship, I really want you to show up on time, or do I say, okay, well, do I show up 15 minutes late? Like, what do I do? So anger gets complicated because there's a negotiation of equals that has to happen. Well, I get that, but I think if I can add maybe another category as well, what if it's just like, yeah, sometimes we annoy each other. Right. You know? Right. And maybe it's just I'm going to be angry every once in a while, and that's okay. Or if I'm not German, maybe I say, right. What my anger may say is like, to me, the difference of anger versus rage, and I get the dramatics here, but like, I might, an anger response, if it is that big of a deal to me, may be like, well, I need to figure out if this relationship is that important to me or not. Whereas a rage would be, I'm going to end this friendship because I'm not going to let her hurt me anymore. Right? So there's like a, sort of what you were saying earlier, there's a, they may be the same words, but there's a different tone. Right. A different intent. Exactly. The intent is you hurt me, now I'm going to hurt you. Yeah, well put. Versus the anger is like, man, if this relationship is too painful for me, I may need to set a different boundary in the friendship. Yeah, because I think that what I would, in this like fantasy world, the way I hope relationships go, right, is I hope that, you know, you would say to me, ugh, let's stop showing up 15 minutes late. I'm like, ugh, man, I'm going to show up 15 minutes late. Right? And then like. Which may be your own way of raging. It could be. In your own entitlement, right? It could, all of these things, right? Right. Like, all of them. And like, then in my ideal world, like, you say, okay, I guess, like, I grew up in a, you know, Chris grew up in like a German family. Liz seems to have grown up on some kind of Caribbean island where time doesn't matter. Right? Like, and so none of it, if we just kind of take all of this at face value, we just have different ways of viewing time. And then in that moment, we say, oh my God, look, I'm not waiting for you anymore. I went home. Like, I'll see you next time. Right? And I was like, oh, bummer. Okay, fine. Um, I'll buy first round next time. Right? Like, I think there's just this fantasy where anger gets to exist freely, and I just don't think rage gets to exist freely. You know? Well, yeah. And so I'm thinking about, like, I'm thinking about how this rage diagnosis that we're proposing would be different than intermittent explosive disorder. Right? So if we think about intermittent explosive disorder, individuals, they have difficulty controlling their aggressive impulses. The symptoms include verbal aggression at least twice a week for three months, or three behavioral outbursts or tantrums that damage property within 12 months. Okay. Now, many, many people have rage that wouldn't meet that criteria. Right. Right? You know, and I keep going back to school shooters just because I think that's in our society. Or we could talk about politics, if we want to talk about rage in that as well. But if we're thinking about a school shooter, there aren't a lot of school shooters that, like, later on would say, right, they started this fight, this fight, and this fight. But many, many of the school shooters, everybody around would say, yeah, we knew if something happened, it was going to be that kid. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And so what are we looking, what are we seeing that we're not diagnosing, not only so our kids can stop getting shot at, I mean, we could talk about guns and all that sort of thing as well. But also so that these kids can actually get a name for what's going on, getting a treatment plan, being understood, diagnosed, identified, and treated so that they don't do it. They don't have to go, their life gets saved from the same thing. Right. Yeah. So there's so many people that go under the radar. Let me see if I can distribute this back. There's so many people that go under the radar because they're not meeting this kind of DSM criteria of damaging property within this amount of time, et cetera, et cetera. And what I would say would be any distinction, I don't know if it's the distinction, is that, you know, are we talking about, this is all I don't know if I said, but, you know, is there some sense of, is there thought of I'm not getting what I'm supposed to be getting here, right? So is there anger coming from or that rage coming from I'm supposed to have something I'm not having and somebody else is to blame for that? Uh-huh. Yeah, so back to that external locus of control. I feel entitled to something I'm not getting. And, again, if we're never calling it out as rage, and we certainly don't have an entitlement diagnosis other than maybe NTD, but, again, a lot of people are entitled but don't meet criteria for entitlement. Right, yeah. And entitlement sometimes is justified and sometimes not. Of course. As a female right now in today's society, I'm feeling very angry because I feel entitled to have a right to my body and my, you know, my, you know, autonomy around abortion or those sorts of things. But other people may say that's an entitlement I don't, I'm not justified to have, right? So we could go off on that tangent. But maybe if we put this around, maybe this is what I'm hinting about is, so lots of people get sad and don't get major depressive diagnoses, right, or even adjustment disorders. Sometimes sadness is right. Right. Lots of people are anxious. All of us should be anxious. All of us need to be somewhat anxious or we'd walk out into traffic. Like anxiety is a helpful thing. Right. Is rage a helpful thing in smaller diagnoses, and when does it meet the threshold for this diagnosis that we're purporting, we want? I like the question, is rage a helpful thing in small, in small bursts, basically? So is it that sometimes it's appropriate and necessary to feel rage? I'll give you an example. This happened years and years ago, although my friend still hasn't let me let it down. We're walking in this little area of town, this little town large in St. Louis, and we're on sort of a dark alley, and we're walking together on a darkly lit side of the road, and all of a sudden I hear somebody running up behind us. Yeah. And she does the much more appropriate thing of going to the lit side of the street very gradually, and I had this rage response, I'll be really honest. I turned around suddenly and charged at the person. Yeah. Now, interestingly enough, I don't know what the person's intentions were. They had their hand in their pocket, and it looked like a gun, but I don't know. Right. But I turned around and aggressively said to this person, what do you want? Yeah. And the person startled and ran, right? Now, my friend on the other side of the road squealed, which I didn't think was an acceptable response to that. But to me, assuming my assumption was correct, that they were actually trying to grab my purse or whatever, I think rage was an appropriate response to that. I was in a threatening situation. I used rage to get myself out of the threatening situation, and I left with my wallet intact. I think that's brilliant. I think that's brilliant. I'm reminded of this moment when I was a kid, and I have a frozen leg. And my mom was trying to get me to the hospital, and there were street workers laying brick or something. I know, right? I know. I know. I was trying to clarify really quickly. But they were blocking the road completely, and I remember my mom getting out and screaming at them. And I thought, in some ways, I think that's an appropriate use of rage, right? It is with the intent of self-protection, of protection of my offspring. It's something where it's almost the accurate response in the moment. Right. Somewhat, right? The idea that you don't have the access to the well of, I will explode if I really need to, you lose a lot of power. You lose a lot of force behind, like, what if I need to pick up this car off of my child, right? Right. And so there's this thing where, yeah, do we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say all rage is bad, or do we want to identify, why aren't we diagnosing when that rage is out of control? Yeah, right, right. And so what would be out of control? Well, that's a great question. I think that where my brain is going is, I think we don't diagnosis because we profit off of it as a society. Well, we either profit off it or are hurt by it, but the people in power profit off of it. Exactly. Right, right. Yeah, I think that like, yeah, I'm thinking about so many situations where I think that there are people who are angry that we kind of want to keep them somewhat angry so they play particular sports, right? Good point. And then I think even with me, you know, like, entering gun violence, there is something where I do kind of wonder how many times people purchase guns out of, like, rage and entitlement in the moment. Right, right. Like, there's something where, as a society, saying what is too much with this rage thing, when is it effective and when is it ineffective, it's almost like we're struggling to identify that because what's actually an ego blow that I'm raising out of that versus what's an effective use of my rage. Yeah, I do remember, and I think it went viral, there was a short video during COVID of a store employee going up to a person and asking them to wear a mask. This man, and the man charged at her and said, I feel threatened. Oh my goodness. Right? And it was such a brilliant video because it was like trying to show that this person raging out from a victim stance had no business being in a victim stance. Right. Like, wearing a mask is not a threat to you. And then this rage response, aligning with this victimhood, gave him so much power in the moment. And it's a ridiculous example that's just, like, it's so metaphoric of, like, you know, what's the classic line of the biggest way to become a perpetrator is to convince yourself you're a victim. Right. And rage does that so well. Yeah. And I wonder if, I keep thinking about, how do you decide if you're too sad for too long? How do you decide if you're too anxious? Well, in the DSM, it all goes down to loss of functioning. Right? Are you lost of functioning? Can you not keep a job? Can you not, you know, complete your ADLs? Are you tanking every relationship? Right? And we do this with alcohol. Like, you know, I don't know. I drink occasionally, but not to the point where it interferes with my daily functioning. And would it be the same with rage? Like, right, we all lose it from time to time. But if it goes to loss of functioning, is that the issue? Right? I always think about, at the beginning of my career, I worked intake in an ER in a hospital. And very, very often, Friday night, usually around 11 p.m., you would have a 20-something-year-old kid come in having punched a wall. Right? And, of course, they said, oh, no, no, something fell on my hand. But, by the way, guys, if you punch a wall, there's a very specific break in your hand every day. And so the doctors would call me in, and my standard response to this was, well, does it hurt when you do that? And they'd say, yeah. And I said, you're going to do it again? And they'd say, nope. And I'd say, next time, we'll have a longer conversation. Right? Because the first time you rage on and do that, okay, but if you don't get the consequence and you continue to do it, then I think we're closer online, in the same way that alcohol or substances is continued use despite negative consequences. Okay. And what do you think of that as a template? I think it's brilliant that, like, basically when you connect to this, like, rageful power that you feel inside of you, right, does the consequence then cause you to go, oh, that was wrong. Like, I don't like the way that felt. Right? Like, what's the line with addiction? Right? Like, with alcohol, it's like, what's... Oh, with alcohol comes repeated trouble. Right. Yeah. I think what you're proposing is a similar thing. Like, when you're continuing to rage out, does the consequence, the negative consequence of the rage, not then cause you to get it under control? Yeah. So, like, and I don't know about you, but I tend to find that there's a rage-shame cycle. Mm-hmm. That rage leads to submission and shame, which leads back to rage, which leads back to submission and shame. And so what I hear you saying is, like, after the rage, are you able to go into guilt to create the change, or do you fall into a shame pit, which actually has no accountability, and then you just repeat the rage cycle? Mm-hmm. Like, that would be a whole different podcast is on shame versus guilt. That'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's a really brilliant way. It occurs to me that something that may be a way that we accidentally sidestep this as a therapist, right, as a whole, is what you just described to me I could see as almost a trauma response, right? Like, so I lose control of some way, and I rage out, and then I feel some sense of something about me is wrong, right? Well, right, but also, not to change the subject, but, like, I see this happening all the time with kids, where a kid will rage out, and the parent will say, well, they were just anxious. Right. And I'm not saying that's not true, but if you take a kid who's trying to get more power through rage, and you tell them they're anxious, like, you're not holding them accountable for the act, but also, you're confusing their drive, because anxiety isn't a forceful drive. Rage is. Right, right. And I think a lot of people rage out through anxiety. Right. Right. So, the ability, using anxiety, basically, to control the environment. Yeah. I always think about, if you're listening, my apologies for using your story, but a student of mine, this was a long, long time ago, we had given, everybody was giving a 15-minute presentation in class, and they had, like, signed up, you know, in order, and somebody came in, one of the students came in, and she said, I have to go first, I'm anxious. Now, this was a social work class, so everybody was like, oh, she's anxious, let her go first. And I looked at her, and I said, wow, where did you learn that your anxiety got to control the room? Yeah. Right? Yeah. And she sat down, and she went in her own time, and she came up to me afterwards and said, wow, that was powerful, because my anxiety usually does control the room. Yeah. And I said, right, which was that way too much power, right? Yes, yes. But one could argue that she was raging through anxiety. Mm-hmm. She was attempting to control everything. Right. During her anxiety. Yes, yeah. I think that, you know, I think that being able to diagnose rage, as we're talking about, can help us not only better understand and then, how do I say this, basically put, like, label it, put words on it, and then have an actual plan as a therapist to support somebody through that. Because right now, if we diagnose rage, I don't think therapists would honestly know what to do with that. Right. And so I think this diagnosis could be really useful. But I think one of the reasons it's useful is exactly what you're saying. The distinction between, I do want to understand, with your student, for example, as their therapist, it's not that I wouldn't want to understand why they felt they needed to control the room. I want to understand why rooms feel so out of control to them that they need to come in and try to do that. But I'd also want to reflect to them that their behavior is now showing up as the total control of the room. Well, that's so fascinating, right, because I think this takes us full circle to the first podcast, which is that as a therapist, are you going in and only having unconditional pleasure of regard for the anxiety and getting them to explore why they were anxious with the belief that if they just figure out the anxiety, then the rage will heal itself. Right, right, right. Or do you have to hold both? It's like your anxiety is really valid, and you don't get to control the room. So I'm going to challenge you on the controlling mechanism while I'm there for the anxiety and supporting you in that. But I'm also going to hold the accountability for, and you don't get to control the room. You know, it's fascinating, right, because those things seem, in some ways, as we talk about them, they seem like a separate thing, right? Like having empathy for somebody means that you don't hold them accountable. Holding somebody accountable means that you don't have empathy. And, man, they seem like the same thing, don't they? Well, not in today's society, I don't think. I mean, I think that one of the strengths that we have is trying to hold both. But I think we both struggle with trying to teach people how to do both, especially in a society that really, in therapy right now, sort of says, if we're challenging as a therapist, you know, and actually this is a great prelude to the next podcast, which is, if we're challenging that as a therapist, I always go to the Michael Foucault thing of, are we using therapy as a social control? So am I trying to get my client not to race so they're better, quote-unquote, citizens, they're more adaptable to the world? And is that the point? Is the point of therapy to get them to adapt to the world, or is the point of therapy to let them be a truer version of themselves, even if the truer version of themselves is a racial asshole? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. I think that's a great way to end it. I think so. I think so. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.