Hi everyone. Sean McGuire here was the Edmond Christian Counseling and I’ve got Heather, Ben, and Caleb today. Some are other therapists or a on a missions trip or probably serving the poor somewhere. But today we wanted to a introduce Ben Thompson. He has something to do, he’s really passionate about working with, especially men with violet anger and uh, even men in relationships or women that have anger problems. And he’s going to describe a lot of ways that we can work through our anger. So please tune in and when you do, I would love to hear where you guys are from. You know, we serve you every week because we want you to know that there is hope that no matter where you’re at, God can reach you, whether it’s through us, a New Vision counseling or your pastor or a friend that you do not have to walk through this life alone. And today we’re going to help you understand how you can use anger
as the resource, Ben. All right, thank you Sean. So I’m just gonna talk about there’s some reasons we get angry and what we can do about it. So to kind of start this, um, ask you guys say you’re good or bad, you think is a good or bad? Sometimes when I get angry it’s bad. But I would say oftentimes it’s, it’s not good or bad. Yeah.
Yeah. No, that’s a good answer. But I think society kind of tells us the anger is bad. Yeah. I think, um, parents teach their kids anger is bad, um, and marriages and is always bad at school. It’s bad. Um, I think that’s what kind of, what the message we’re getting from the world and here’s bad. You could use that money to resource. That’s something that can be used to invest to change something or can be used to buy drugs or to buy somebody off. So yeah, I think it can be both. Yeah.
We’re both really, uh, depending on how we use it, right. I think the message sometimes are prevailing message we get is, oh, it’s bad. Boy Did it all costs, you know, or, or stay away from that. And I think that’s really important and it’s not as even the message, you know, what messages did we get from our families? Sure. What messages do we get from church? Now, as I talked about the verse a lot, it says in your anger, do not. Sin. Talks about that in Ephesians and that always challenged me. He was like, Whoa, well that means sometimes we’re going to get angry, but the van day, the important thing is in that do not sin right now. But I think a lot of times what happens is we see getting angry at all as a sin. Right now we’re kind of behind the eight ball already.
What are we going to do when you have this anger? I sinned already. And then that just leads to more anger or more guilt, things like that. So we, so we look at that and try to understand that. I certainly grew up, the anger was something you really did try to avoid, do you had, it was just kind of a sinful to habit and dog about this sometimes with people is I had a brother who really, really rageful, had a lot of rage. She just really expressed that Edmond Christian Counseling anger. I just remember him running down the halls, cussing, yelling. And I thought, man, that that’s bad is anger is bad. But at the same time I was sitting there getting angry but not doing anything about it, staying quiet, not trying to make any waves, all internal, kept it in, just absorbed so much of it.
And what I realized as I got older is that was is detrimental to my health I think as it was to my brothers. Sure. Because sometimes, sometimes people will say this, but depression a lot of times is anger turned inwards and that really, um, really hit me. And so again, just cause I wasn’t expressing it didn’t mean I didn’t have anger. And sometimes we confuse that. Well, I’m not expressing it, so not have anger. We may have some that you need to deal with, but you’re just pushing it, pushing it down. If you guys had a similar experience to that for sure. So I was thinking your brother, so your brother probably put holes in the walls, he Damon’s your family, but you had holes in your stomach, poly for worrying, you know, getting ulcers because yours was all inward. So the toxicity stayed in.
Um, well I think a lot of times it helps see what his anger, first of all, what even is anger. Why is it there? And I think it’s important again, because let me look at the Bible. Look at scripture. It talks about God being angry. Are you angry at his people for now listening to turning the hearts away from him and we see this and think, well that’s God has that side. God has that angry side. In fact, in the Old Testament when it talks about him being angry at it, actually the word Austin talks about his nostrils flared. Cause I’m not, I can kind of flammer nostrils a little bit, but the anger that came out, right, that does good. Um, but anger really is just a warning sign to tell us something that something’s wrong or something is something is feeling very threatening. It’s simply that warning sign.
So I might increase some anxiety a little bit. Who knows what this is? How do you know, what have you seen that recently? Does anybody know? I try to never see that. So anybody catch on? What does it, does the check is it okay? It was on in is currently, I look at anger is a check engine light. Right? When we’re angry it’s trying to tell us something is not right. Something is going on. Um, now would it make sense to get angry at the light? Do you ever get angry at the light? You See the light come on and you’re just ticked off with the light? I get anxious. I get anxious. Right. Um, but what happens, what does that like telling you to do? Look under the hood. Look under the, that. All right, go on under there, see what’s going on. If I didn’t even take it somewhere and they can hook it up through the computer and it spits out a number.
No, I have the computer. Oh, you have the computers or you can have the computer like mechanic. Yes. Had come in for your mechanic problems. Um, counseling while he’s working on your car. You know what I get, I can talk to a friend. He worked in a a car dealership for a while where they bring, you know, bring their cars and he said at one point this guy kept bringing his light. The light just kept coming on and what these hold them to do is disconnect the light. Oh wonder where that goes. If you just disconnect the light. That’s actually what I did growing up. Just disconnect the load is not important. Don’t listen to it, don’t deal with it. Well, what’s eventually going to happen [inaudible] I actually looked up and I actually up the top five reasons. Our check engine light comes on auto zone.
Had it had an article on that so I know it’s not what this is about, but I thought it was interesting. It talked about your oxygen sensor and a few of us had that replace your gas cap is loose or missing. Wow. Catalytic converter needs replacing, right. Whatever, whatever that is. Maybe that’s from back to the future. I’m not sure your mass airflow sensor needs replacing or your spark plug, your plug wires need replacing. Yup. Now those are the top five things and really those things aren’t huge repairs if you take care of him, if you don’t, it gets a lot bigger. Um, I followed them all recently spent about $400 trying to figure out why he’s just stopping engine light was on their check engine light. They said after all this, uh, lady said, why don’t you just check the gas cap? He did, they got us gas, gas, put it on Xbox.
Um, yeah, so that might be very useful. Um, for some people there’s a lot of money, a lot of money. But I also thought, well, what are maybe Maurice and top five reasons we get angry? Why does her anger light come on? So I just put together five. I thought they were um, pretty valuable that the, you can kind of see the first is pain pain. And I would say that an emotional or physical, I don’t know about you guys. Do you ever like shut your hand in the door or done something like that is your first response at all? That’s nice. Where’d you get angry? You kind of have that sense. I don’t know. Some people can do it. That new commercial, there’s new geico commercial people like hitting their heads on stuff for the lab. That’s not me.
The first response is if you, unless you’re Sean, unless your shot’s going to be Lord, thank you for this adversity. I can trust you and that’s actually what Heather does most times. That’s right. I’ve actually seen it where there’s where there’s emotional pain, right? Somebody says something or does it just kinda hurts, right? It just doesn’t sit right and there’s that. So I can be one of those first reason. The second one can be fear. We’re afraid something’s going to happen in and re respond in anger cause cause why does that happen? If we’re furious, they’re afraid something’s going to happen. What do we need that anger? What do we need that response for our reaction? We need our body to be geared up for something if we need. Now that the problem is when we don’t need that to happen and still happen and we get in that fear. I was thinking a scary movie. You ever seen a scary movie had been with a lot of people. Some people laugh when it gets scary. Some people get really mad. You don’t know if you, even in a movie theater, you just hear him angry cause something’s popping out. Cindy will have that reaction.
No, that just made me think of, uh, like a dog that whenever they’re scared of them, they get kind of aggressive and it looks like anger. Like the dog is really mad at me. It’s wanting to bite me, but usually that’s because they’re scared. Um, uh, whatever’s leftover is happening right there. Yeah.
John Natural response. It is. It is. You know, and even in relationships, somebody is going to leave me if I, if I say this, it’s going to get worse or the fear or sometimes it’s a field that I’m going to get angry because this morning and you’re sending the cycle. Right. I can’t get Andrea, I can’t get any of you. That certainly was it. Can you get angry, right? Cause you know some of the things will go wrong. Third frustration. As I was thinking about this, I was thinking house projects. I have no done in house project without getting frustrated and angry reason why I don’t do house projects. Why would I want it to frustrated. Yeah. And then, and then I had children and there was another new level. I mean really is it that important that you put that leg in your pants first? So that is it.
That big of a deal and all of a sudden are just huge. This frustration, right? And soon as you want to tell your kids if you would just do it this way, we’d have no problems here. I wouldn’t have to get frustrated only every other day. I don’t need over other today. All right, so, so many ways and sometimes maybe, maybe, maybe people get so frustrated their spouses sometimes too. Sometimes just sometimes. And that’s the third reason. The fourth reason I just helped a broken rule. Someone has violated or broken a rule that’s important to you, right? They, they’ve, they’ve crossed a boundary. They said something or they just said something that doesn’t go with your values and really understanding that and understand what rule did that person just break. And we’ll kind of get into why that’s important.
It sounds like expectations aren’t met.
Yeah. The expectation is not met.
You know, Ben, something that sounds like you’re saying is that all of these elements of anger, the five elements that you’re ringing up have something that’s underneath the ink or some other emotion that’s primary.
And I don’t know if you segue that on purpose, but the last one is unresolved issues, right? Things coming up that we haven’t really quite dealt with or done anything about. And, and they’re, they’re right and we haven’t really resolved and work through them. And so they’re just kind of there. A lot of times I was just add onto the other anger, right? So that’s why you can be driving and somebody cuts you off. All of a sudden you are just allergic. I mean, you’re just angry. And what’s happened is finally you’ve had an acceptable place to be angry and he just piled it all on there. Right? And it just goes, and that’s what the car, sometimes we do that to our spouse as soon as we do that to our kids. And it’s like that wasn’t anger about you. I just brought everything home from work and I just let it out. It just, it just got on anger train and, and it got all over the place.
See that a lot. I know, I see that a lot with uh, married couples when they come in at, you know, at work I asked a lot of times it’s the guy, not always, but a lot of times and I, I say, you know, how are you able to so effectively control something you say is in controllable, at work and around your friends? Cause I’m sure if you have a normal job, um, that you get frustrated that there people in your career path that don’t want you to succeed or that you feel like you’re against you, but yet instead of yelling at them, getting in their face or cursing, you have different ways of handling it that don’t get you fired or put in jail. So what separates that? And I think one of it is we have boundaries now. We mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, no that are not to be crossed.
You know, my son reacts to me differently than he does his mom. He pushes me to a point, but then you realize there’s a, there’s something very sharp at the end of that point. And so he stops. But with his mom, it’s more of a blunt and so he pushes her much further. Right? And so I think if we see that, we can realize that it’s not about us necessarily. When somebody gets angry at us, sometimes it is about you. Sometimes it really is about you. When somebody gets angry, there are a lot of other times where it’s about what they, they’re bringing in. And so it’s beholden on the people that are experiencing that, that person’s anger to educate them, right. On how to, how to they want to be treated. Whether it’s you remove yourself from a situation. You said a hard boundary, you give the cops cause whatever that is because I think there’s both, right? So you’re saying sometimes sets, um, anger is something that we can also, as a spouse, if we see our spouse get angry, we can also find out why they’re angry and get a little bit more insight and rather than always saying, well, you’re the one dealing with the anger. Yeah. Is it, is that, I know that I struggle with that sometimes when the cavs projecting, but yes, I did get that cue. I agree with that too. It sounds
like what you’re saying then is that anger is a symptom of the problem. That check engine light is the symptom of the real problem and it’s a communicating to us that there was a problem. And you know, I’m, I do this with, uh, with our Kiddo. I do this with my husband. Uh, whenever I see anger, I helped them label it. Uh, are you, are you feeling frustrated right now? Um, are you feeling disappointed right now or, uh, when it was, my husband and I were pretty good at calling each other out and saying, you’re seeing kind of irritable right now. What’s going on? Instead of just reacting to that anger. Um, but labeling it for them and finding out what the underlying issue is, not just reacting to anger. Absolutely.
I know that Mary and Alaina daggers know that anger can be a very effective mechanism through which God can move to accomplish great things. I know that a lot of the people that I see and know, they don’t move in their lives in hard ways. They don’t press through boundaries unless they’re angry because they don’t feel like they had the resources and because natively where they operate, they avoid confrontation. But boy you get somebody angry. No, no, no. And go through any wall to deal with an issue because they just hit that critical women. That’s why they got anger can be a resource right tool. If we understand that it’s a value, it’s an energy that we get know. Thinking about something in your life that happened that was just so unjust, something you’ve seen on TV or something you’ve been personally a part of.
I know for me, when I was in 12th grade, which is a senior in high school, it’s about five or six years ago, and just kidding. It’s about 10. But this guy, his name was Joe, he drove a Harley Davidson in school. That means anything that you guys, when you take off his shirt, he had these knives, scars and there’s all these rumors and you’ve got the bar fights and all this stuff. And a senior in high school. So we were the same age except for, he was a sophomore and Joe didn’t like me, thought I liked his girlfriend, which was totally not true. I would never date here. Um, so he jumped me, he came up to me, he tried to fight me. I walked away and, and you know when you, you caught me at an inopportune time when my no friends around, he’d jump me from behind, started fighting.
And again, I, I pushed him off and I mean, then we ended up fighting, right? Because nobody broke it up and I had to knock them out. But it’s, what’s your story? It’s a true story. You can look it up on a Joe’s Facebook page. I’m just kidding. It really is true. But I remember sitting in the principal’s office and I said to the principal, I said, look, my mom was there, his parents were there, and I, and I said, he jumped me three times from behind. I said two times I walked away. But when he jumped me the third time and he hit me in the head before I even turned around, I had to engage and I even went like that and I felt so for so long was so angry because I still got suspended from school. I still got suspended and I had to deal with that anger in a way I could, I could go fight him again because he got, he wasn’t very Brian, you wanted to fight me again.
I mean, if you jump somebody from behind and you still lose us a bad outcome, but he still wanted to fight. So I had to find your way to deal with my anger towards my school, towards the principal. You know what the Guy said me? He said, you know, there are other ways to defend yourself. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, I’m not at, I may look like an engine, but I’m not an engine. Caleb. I’m not. I know, I know. It’s a surprise. So I wonder in your life if there are things that have happened to you, maybe in a marriage with your career, with one of your kids that’s just aren’t right and you’re struggling with this anger. And I would encourage you to ask God to give you the power to channel the anger and in some way or ways that can be a resource to you.
For me it was to focus on my college cause I was, I was launching into college and I didn’t want to ruin my opportunity because I got in a Edmond Christian Counseling fight and I looked like a hooligan. I didn’t want to ruin that. And so I really focused on college. I focused on putting myself in better situations. I learned a lot, you know, I may not have fought him, but I verbally, you know, just made them look dumb because he wanted to fight me and I wanted to go to school. So find ways that you and your own life right can utilize this anger, which I’m sure Ben’s about cello set up the three best ways to mom, I don’t need to anymore right now, but
what, what can we do, right? Because in these situations, what can we do? Because we want to be able to use that anger and use that to either help us or motivate us. That’s what anger is there for is to help us.
Good decision. It’s going to benefit
us, right? Help us get out of this situation or face a situation that we need to. So my first thing for everything is really first thing if you can do is take that pause, right? A lot of us think we just gotta go with it. But take that pause and that anger, you know, be able to take that and identify it for what it is. Okay. I’m feeling angry, right? And then when we talked about the car, then it’s time to go under the hood, right? So take that pause and then identify if he can simply just identify what the cause the anger is. And you, you’re telling me that you know with your husband, is it because of this and is it because of that? You got to go under and just see one simple way to do it, as I just say, most thinkers is either pain, fear or frustration.
If you can just think those three things. I was thinking, is it p FRF pain, fear, frustration. Then at least I’ve narrowed it down to about three things and instead of a million things that could be right and I think most of it go into those categories and now that identified that, I really think you really want to focus on what you can do. What can I do in this situation at this point? Because again, it’s 100 folks on everything we can’t control, right? And it got to do something about that and some about that. What can I do and is sometimes what you can do, all you can do is just just got to remove yourself and take a break and that’s the most that you can do. Sometimes you got to talk to somebody and and confront them about somebody. Sometimes you may have to fight back.
That is, that is what needs to happen. Uh, at that point we were talking about Jesus in the temple where he clears the temple out. That was the point. He could have thought there’s maybe a lot of stuff he could put at that point. What needed to happen was that simple needed to be cleared. That message needed to be sent that you are not treating that simple, right. That you are not following God in this and you’re using this in a very wrong way. So that that’s the, this what needed to happen. And so after you focus on what you can do, make a choice to something to do so somebody, if you’re, if you’re a rageaholic right, you your rage and like crazy, kind of like my brother, he would have to make that decision probably to, to calm down, to stop the car, pull over somewhere.
It was scary to ride in the car with him. Um, take that and do whatever he can. Now for me, a lot of times when I would need to do is say, hey, I need to say something about this. I need to tell you, you just did something that the violate one of those rules. Because if I don’t, I’m burying it and keeping it and you know, for, I know I got the ulcers right, I’m going from there. So it can be different for different people. Um, and the fifth Sui resolve have some kind of resolution, seek to resolve that in some way. Again, like for me that would be talking to that person or from my brother that would be taking that break, you know, praying about it, talking to somebody about it to get that resolution so it just doesn’t stay there. Those are kind of those, those, those five things that you can do.
Um, and, and again, I think maybe I had a six, but also always give yourself grace as well, right? Because that’s something that’s coming up with any, I’m, it’s really hard and if you don’t give yourself, oh, got angry again. Okay. Can, I can’t believe we’ve got angry. I can’t believe I said that. You can give grace and you can then do something about that. Um, but more condemnation on yourself and feeling bad about all the times you’re just going to leave the morning. So what can you do? And sometimes that means apologizing to somebody. You said it, I apologize to my children. You know what, I’m sorry. You know, Ben, one of the things that I’ve, I run into sometimes is, um, that anger comes up in a pattern often. And so maybe if you’re somebody like me, um, maybe the weight of the world is on your shoulders and he’d go home and he still feels the weight and you walked into the house and the kids are doing this and that and you feel like you just have to pick all the pieces up again.
And the weight of the world is just packed on. So, um, something I find is instead of just going straight into that pattern, maybe stop, you’re saying take a break, right? And it’s been 15 minutes outside of my normal day and try to recollect myself and be patient and maybe see what’s going on inside my own heart and then being grateful about something. If I’m grateful that I’m not angry, you usually, usually it’s hard to be both at the same time. So if I can be grateful about something that I can walk into the house and be ready for whatever comes out. Maybe it’s like my kids like to play ambush where they turn off all the lights and I walk in the door and it’s there. All these balls at me, I want it and know, Yell Out Ambush Eagle has landed the Eagle’s landing. So that’s Kinda fun and I have to make sure I’m ready for that.
Or maybe there’s just crying and wailing. So I just have to be prepared no matter what happens. I mean wailing, that’s like some of our staff meetings and to get that, and you know, anger is not that right, but it can be detrimental to our, to our health, to our relationships if either we’re just totally reacting in it all the time or for totally avoiding it. And then you kind of have these extremes say, how do you get more towards the middle, right? How do you to that point where you are dealing with it, you’re, you’re assertively dealing with that. You’re, you’re facing it, you’re working towards a resolution of it. And so you’re not one extreme or the other. So I’m trying to thinking, am I moving towards the middle here and get my moving towards the middle of this? I got to say something about it.
So Sean says something there’s, or is pushing that and I don’t say something about it. That’s a place. And the other part of that scripture is the reason not to let the sun go down on your anger. So the devil doesn’t get a foothold. And that’s where the devil can really get a foothold if I don’t say anything about it. Well now I’ve maybe put an obstacle between Sean and I if I don’t address that and do with death and that anger has now given Satan a place to get between that relationship when it happens in marriage is a lot too and I don’t think it means you can’t go to bed frustrated with your spouse. I hope not one, never go to bed, my wife, because we always live a peaceful life just yet, but can you be moving the direction of resolving that and dealing with that so it doesn’t take up a lot of residents in your heart. It’s of cause. That’s what it’s really going to affect things and and do things good weren’t there
were guys we hope that you have enjoyed the time. There’d be talk on Tuesdays and if we can serve you, we would love to partner with you and we’ve got a Edmond Christian Counseling team. These are some of the team and other parts of the team aren’t here, but we would love to serve you and walk with you along your journey in life. Whatever you need, wherever you’re at, God has something for you. You can reach us at New Vision counseling, that Org. You can follow us on this Facebook page or Sean mcguire.net and we’ll be here every Tuesday at 1230 and I think Heather, is it Heather or Katie next time? Hey Katie, who’s not here today, she’s be serving on missions or doing something fun, serving the poor and the soup kitchen, or maybe she’s prepared. She’s doing something really productive, I’m sure, but she’s going to be preparing and sharing next time. I’m not sure the topic, but I’m sure it’ll be good. So we look forward to seeing you again soon. Have a great Tuesday and God bless. God bless.