Jamie Grant

Heather Parker

In this second episode with counselors Jamie Grant and Heather Parker, they talk about the gift of anger, how it is a gift to us as we learn to notice what’s going on within our hearts when it arises. In this conversation they explain where anger comes from, inward and outward anger and the possibility that anger is masking other losses.

Connect to Episode 1: Does My Anger Matter to God? if you missed it.

This episode is available on video as well.

00:22 Introductions

Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. Welcome to our podcast and video episode.

We have today guests who have returned. Two weeks ago in our podcast we welcomed Jamie Grant and Heather Parker, who are both licensed professional counselors. We have been talking about anger. We’ve been talking about all sorts of things, and we’re extending that today to a second session because there was so much information that they gave us that we want to dig a little bit deeper into anger, particularly as Christians.

So, Heather, tell us a little bit summarize a little bit of what we’ve already heard and talked about before we go into a new area of anger.

Heather >> Sure. So in the last one, we talked about the perception. Well, first we talked about anger—how do we see that in the image of God and really highlighting that God is slow to anger. There’s a real there’s a lot of restraint and it’s not long lasting. That is the truth of how we see anger in God.

That’s not always how we’re taught. Sometimes we’re taught that he is a rageful God but Scripture tells us otherwise. So we kind of hit a little highlight on that.

We spoke of the perception of anger in the church—that oftentimes anger can be viewed as sin or it’s bad. And if it’s sinful and it’s bad, then we’re bad.

Yeah. Jamie, you can jump in at any time too. Yeah.

We talked a little bit about just the perception of it really highlighting the difference between God-given anger that shows us something’s not okay. It exposes what we’re passionate about and shows us something’s not okay. It’s not sitting well with me and can eventually inform how we want to approach that. And really highlight the difference between that and a rage or acting out or the quick-tempered what we often see in families and society. And even often in our churches.

We talked about, yeah, just how anger—sometimes people in leadership will want to make sure that people stay away from their anger. And that comes out in an element of control and that can look a lot of different ways.

But overall, the messaging around anger as being bad or negative starts really young and is often widespread, especially in Christian circles.

Yeah, anything I leave out, Jamie?

Jamie >> I think that was a great recap. I think what made it a nice kind of segue into what we talk about today is you know, if there’s, as you were saying, like these beliefs around anger as being bad or if I’m taught anger is bad and therefore I internalize this message that I’m bad because I’m experiencing this emotion of anger.

There’s also some other messages that we get as children because we’re you know, this isn’t going to be a parent finger-pointing episode or session. But we are—we’re sinful people raised by sinful parents in a sinful world. So we’re going to get messages around our emotions based on how we’re brought up. If there’s this thing that I’ve split off from me yet, it’s part of being human, it’s going to go somewhere.

And so looking maybe in this episode, a little bit of what happens when this quote unquote bad entity, you know, we’re experiencing has either nowhere to go or has no place like what happens.

Kay >> Great. So we know that where is it going to go? I mean, where does our anger go? We’re used to the outward anger for sure. That’s what we see so much in our society right now is just outward anger. People who are actually enraged, as you’ve talked about.

So you want to talk about that? You want to talk about inward anger? Where do you want to start?

Jamie >> I’d love to start like at the beginning just before we look at where it goes, like because I think this example will show us from a sort of like a neuro-biological perspective of what happens.

And so if you look at an infant when an infant is born, they don’t have a lot of ways to communicate except by crying and that’s their means of communicating to their caregiver, hey, something’s off like my diapers wet or I’m hungry or I’m cold, I’m tired, overstimulated, whatever it is, I cry. And that’s really necessary and God-given because it’s the infant’s way of protesting. Something is wrong. And so when I can do that as an infant, the design is like caregiver attends to my need. And so it’s a very important and of course, survival component of life of being human.

Well, there have been studies and books written about what happens when a child’s cries or protests are not met. And, you know, initially they’re going to—if you’ve ever been around an infant that you’re not attending to—their cry is going to get louder or their protest is going to get louder. Eventually, it’s going to turn into sort of this rage full, like meet my need. And there is, again, a very specific purpose because as an infant, our survival depends on a caregiver meeting our needs.

When that escalated protest is still not met, what an infant does, what our brains do (this is not conscious, this is wired in) is we will begin to prune away the protest or the cry for our needs to be met.

And what ends up happening is a baby will eventually stop crying so they can have needs. They can be in soiled diapers.They can be an awful conditions and like not cry about it. That’s not because they’re a good baby. That’s because their brain is literally trying to keep them alive.

And if you’ve you know, again, if you’ve seen an infant wailing and throwing a fit, you can see how much energy it takes. Like you’re their faces red. They’re sweaty eventually, like they probably crash out from exhaustion. It’s actually the body the brain body’s way of preserving my life energy. It’s this survival mechanism of going, what my needs aren’t met.

So I’m going to I’m going to prune away this response. And that’s really important to understanding later as we get older where anger goes. You want to add anything to that, Heather?

Heather >> No, I think that’s the fundamental part of understanding why we have such complicated relationships with anger as adults. Because we’re not even aware this is happening as infants. And yet it is. And then we become very acquainted with the just the complexity of our relationships to anger as adults. But understanding everything you just shared is like and really important to knowing why and where that comes from.

Kay >> So are we ready to move on to outward anger versus inward anger?

Jamie >> Sure, we can. I let me add on here and then, Heather, I’d love for you to for you to jump in you know, so probably I’m going to guess, you know, the majority of your listeners didn’t maybe experience the far the extreme form of neglect. So, you know, that they were left in, you know, extreme conditions and their brains were not probably pruning off their anger or protest at this very, very young age. But I think there’s also like that sort of underlies the neuro-biological process that often we relate to later in life.

So growing up, when there’s different ways that I receive messages about my anger and again, I’m reminded of Heather’s story of her daughter receiving this message. So obviously these children that told her, you know, she’s angry is she’s not a Christian.

They have received the message about their anger, maybe overtly. But there’s so many covert ways or unspoken ways we learn about what to do with our emotions growing up. And, you know, as children, we have two needs. We have to have connection to our caregiver. Again, that’s we’re dependent on that for life. And then we have this need to be who we are and sort of this authenticity.

So there’s authenticity and attachment.

And so growing up, if I learn that when I have when I’m angry, let’s say if I come, then I’m really angry at my friends or something. And I’m maybe told by my parent, “Oh, there are people that have it worse.” Or a lot of people that I talk with relate to this message of “You’re crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

Maybe relate to being really upset as a kid and being told to, you know, go to your room until you can come out calmly. And these are just a few examples of ways that we learn that our own anger jeopardizes our attachment relationship with our caregiver because now I’m cut off emotionally from this person that I’m dependent on.

So what I do is I go internally and this is again, this is not conscious, but my brain is going, oh, attachment is threatened. Let me put this anger away. But it doesn’t it actually doesn’t go away because again, it’s like part of being human.

So I like to liken it to going into a pressure cooker. And that’s I think kind of where we can see it.

Heather >> Yeah, I think this is also where it gets into so much of what Jamie’s referencing the need for connection. You know, so much of that depends on your environmental expectations and demands. And so, you know, in some families, it going outward is a part of that. Like that’s how the family does things. The louder you get, the bigger you get, the more space you take up, then you’re more likely to get your needs met that way.

Some families, the louder you get, the bigger you get, the more space you take up, you won’t get your needs met. Learning to absorb the anger and hold it inward becomes the mechanism of survival or the strategy to get through that.

And so it’s just it’s such a there’s so many layers to how that takes place. That’s why I’m looking at the organic part of how it starts, like Jamie was referencing as a baby and then realizing how our environment also begins to play a part on how that’s expressed—out or in.

I think that part of it has to do with, you know, you’ve got all these layers of you got your family of origin, and then you’ve got your educational environment, and then you have your little community and then you have your spiritual community and then you have you.

And so it’s like all these filters are playing a part in what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable. And this is where I think it informs where people end up moving towards acting out or acting in depends on what’s going to keep them the safest and have them in a position to have the most attachment or connection that heavily informs which way they go.

I’m also reminded of like the sermon that you referenced Kay, by Tim Keller. He describes this as three different ways. He’s talking about the gift of anger and the God-given gift of anger like we were talking about earlier. But he says that, you know, there’s no anger, blow anger and slow anger.

And no anger is kind of like what I’m thinking. about as we’re talking about this, this acting in. It’s where I absorb it all. I pretend like it doesn’t exist, I shame myself for feeling the anger that’s there and it all goes inward. That often manifests in depression. If you think about the organic word of depression, it means to push down. Oftentimes depression is actually anger that is just being acted in and pushed down.

And so there’s that way of holding it in. Then you’ve got the blow anger, which is the quick-tempered method of I’m going to put it out on everybody else because it feels so intense. I’m not going to hold it myself.

Either way, whether it’s acted in or acted out. It’s a way that we’re trying to control or disconnect from our own protest from this place of this is not okay with me.

And that it’s truly only in the gift of slow; being attuned to what is happening in me. exploring the reality of what’s coming up and being able to tolerate it, that we can really access the gift of it. Yeah. That’s kind of where my mind goes to how that shows up tangibly.

Kay >> Want to add anything to that, Jamie?

Jamie >> No, it’s I’m curious what your next question might be.

Kay >> Well. I’m just, you know, my mind is going around as I’m listening to the two of you of people who are dealing with their anger inwardly and dealing with it outwardly. And so as we think of you, you know, you’ve mentioned several times that people always label anger as sin, which would not be correct because it’s a God-given emotion. It’s part of being the image of God.

But would you see either one of these inward or outward as worse or is it just— I mean, I think of the person doing outwardly sometimes hurts other people because of that.

Does that make it a worse way to handle it? Are they both just the way that our body handles it?

Jamie >> Yeah, I don’t know that there’s a worse. I think this is kind of what was coming to my mind earlier. I think we tend to think that outward, like any kind of expression of anger, outward is bad. And this, again, goes to some of the messaging that we’ve internalized either in our families of origin or our faith circles.

That expression of anger is bad. And so in even going back to growing up in an environment where an expression of anger may have jeopardized connection to my caregivers. If again, we’re using the premise that anger is a God-given emotion, it has gifts of informing us and giving us information about our greater environment and how we fit into that, if I’m internalizing that, that that’s a bad and that I’m bad. And that is actually also a very neuro-biological, I’ll say, like this is part of the neurobiology of attachment.

So what a child can’t stand is, first of all, they can’t simultaneously like love and hate a caregiver or a parent. Those are two very conflicting emotions that they can’t. They don’t have awareness to hold those together. So if I’m feeling angry as a child at my parent and that’s jeopardizing my connection with them, what’s going to happen is, no, I’m not I don’t have the awareness or the words for this. But it’s not like, “Oh, my parents doing something that’s actually not good or healthy or for me or bad.” What gets internalized is “I’m bad,” because that is necessary in order to maintain this love or this connection with my caregiver.

So what we call shame, this “I am bad,” is actually like so many times these internalized messages of kind of hate and contempt for the self, what I am feeling, who I am. We actually become very, very violent with ourselves. And it can be to the point of self annihilation, whether through words or actual, like, you know, attempting to take myself out of this world and like annihilate myself.

So I don’t think we can call outward, you know, displayed rage worse than inward, because the reality is God loves all people. So if I’m doing this to myself. And I don’t want anybody here with depression— like I’m not calling this a sin by any means. In fact, that’s one of my soapbox areas.

We’re looking at human responses— two ways that we’ve been taught to relate to ourselves. Where I get heated and sort of angry is these messages were given to us. We didn’t get the choice. We didn’t have consent and telling ourselves we were bad. This is a means of survival.

So it really breaks my heart when we get to adulthood and people are still internalizing these messages from childhood or from growing up in environments that told them parts of themselves were not okay.

Kay >> You want to add anything to that, Heather?

Heather >> No, I think that’s very well said.

Yeah, it’s heartbreaking, truthfully, because the acting inward on ourselves, I think use the words like self annihilation—and that’s just as devastating as people who are acting out on to others, annihilating others. It’s different sides of the same coin. You know, they’re both really harmful and impactful.

Something that is really interesting to me is that a lot of times people will associate, they’re acting out rage with anger, and there may be traces of the true God-given protest that something’s not right.

But oftentimes when it’s a rage and it’s being acted out in a pattern like that, what’s really underneath it is grief. And that can feel really terrifying. For some people, the rage is more is trying to control the grief, stay down. And so I know that’s probably another podcast for another day, but it’s an important piece of the acting out is there may be elements and traces of a protest but often what’s underneath the acting out is a grief that hasn’t been honored.

Jamie >> Yeah, that reminds me of a book that I actually I have listed as a resource. It’s no longer in print that you can still get it on Kindle. I will occasionally find like an old copy of it at Half Price Books or something, but it’s called Faces of Rage. And the subtitle is, I think I’ve given away all my books so because I loved it so much, I think it’s The Eight Losses that Lead to or that Underlie Anger essentially. And David Damico is the author. He’s a Christian author, and he looks at anger from a Christian perspective and really highlights the losses that underlie anger. And that loss can be is simple, if you will, as, you know, losing connection to a caregiver.

If I’m having emotions. And he gives lots of examples. You know, there’s an example in the book. It’s been years since I read it of maybe like an elementary-ish age child whose parent dies. And in an attempt to I’m going to say soothe the child. It’s a lot more complex than that. The grandma comes in and she’s like, you know, well, it’s going to be okay. We just got to get up and kind of move on with our lives.

And it’s like there’s so much loss there that’s going invalidated, if you will, which is one of the things that I mean, that can certainly lead to, you know, rage inward or outward later on in life, because how confusing. Like, what do I do with all of this inside of me?

Heather >> Yeah.

Kay >> Yeah. Grief is grief is really, really hard. And I know that my dad died when I was 33, and I picked up the message that, “Well, he’s in heaven. We don’t really need to grieve. We’re just going to celebrate.” And it took me years, years to grieve him because of that, because I would just push it now, push it inside and not deal with it.

I don’t think I became angry, but it was I mean, the grief was there, and I think that’s common in the church. That’s a common way to deal with death. And I don’t think it’s healthy.

So you you’ve mentioned I don’t know if you mentioned it in this episode or the last one, but you mentioned that anger can be a gift.

And I really like the idea of us concluding on this particular topic because I love that thought that anger can be a gift to you if you take the gift. So Heather, do you want to explain how that’s true?

Heather >> Yeah, let me start by saying this because I feel like this is this piece of this. And I feel like Jamie and I align on this, based on our conversations, there are a lot of models that hold anger as a secondary. Like it’s really hiding something else. It’s not quite so significant. It’s really a symbol of something else that’s going on.

That’s not really where we approach this. We really approach the gift of anger and the gift of grief as that’s what holds our aliveness. Like, when you think of being human and being alive, having the gift of life, anger moves us towards what matters.

Grief honors what has also mattered or what wasn’t there and should have been there. And so when we kind of hold this place, that grief and anger is it’s part of what being alive as a human is about. And so the gift of anger, if we can really slow down and become curious about what is it? I love the reflection Jamie did, just taking a moment to pause and think, what is coming up in me?

Like what about this is not okay with me? What about this is feels wrong? And giving it some space and becoming curious about it can provide clarity on, oh, this is what matters is, this is what my passion is about. This is what this is how I can in my love for, you know, whatever this is, I can make create movement. There’s agency in that.

And so for me, the gift of anger is that it creates the movement towards life. Really living a full life. And we’re not talking about the acting out anger or the turning inward and acting in anger. But if we really give it space, there’s just so much clarity in it— and movement. And so that’s when I think of the gift.

And I think of when Jesus flipped tables. You know, there was it wasn’t fast, it wasn’t flippant. It was he had had enough if he had seen enough and he had had enough and he said no more. That’s pretty powerful. And if we’re able to step into those places with a calm confidence to say no more, like that’s a gift. So that’s how I hold it.

Jamie >> Yeah, I love that. I’m so appreciating you’re highlighting the gift of life, like aliveness that it gives us. And I’m thinking of it on that smaller— is probably not the right word—but a more like individualized skill. Like, here’s an example for my own life that comes up is like recently I feel like I’ve seen more doctors than I would care to see in a short amount of time. If you’ve had interaction at all with our medical system, you know how frustrating it is.

I was having a really hard time getting any one doctor to sort of take ownership of some of the things that I was experiencing. And I was really, really finding myself angry about this and felt very uncared for and to the point where I at one point in my mind went like, I might as well just give up.

Like, I guess I’ll just suffer through whatever it is I’m suffering through. And I thought, wow, hold up. I mean, I’ve done enough of my own internal work to be really present to what was kind of happening in the moment. I’m like, wow. I’m like throwing myself under the bus just because somebody else won’t take it in, won’t care for me in the way that I want them to care for me.

When I can slow down and listen to, like, what is the message of my anger there? The message is I want to be cared for that message or that way of going about being cared for as an adult is not by expecting like somebody else to take care of me.

It’s like, oh, I get to take care of me now. My voice matters. My needs matter, me being taken care of matters, but it has to matter to me. I can’t expect anybody else to, you know, for my, you know, medical or whatever issues to matter to a doctor more than they matter to me. And so in that, it gave me this gift of going, “I matter and I get to care for me.” It’s okay if a doctor thinks that I’m sure they don’t even think about like me, but my thoughts are like, “Oh, gosh, they’re going to think I’m annoying or I’m going to, you know, they’re going to think I’m a hypochondriac or whatever.” And I have all these messages going.

Okay, if they do, like, what does that really matter?

Quite honestly, they’re probably not thinking that, but it gives me this gift of my own aliveness. Like, Oh, I get to matter to me. And so many times I think we’re adults walking around with expectations that other people are going to meet the needs that we had growing up, that we split off because our protest wasn’t answered or whatever was happening in the environment at large.

But we get this gift of when we listen to anger getting to show up for ourselves in ways that, you know, we may never have before. And in that it’s really honoring who I am and who God’s made me to be. It’s like I’m sure you’ve heard the old— I think it’s given as a joke sometimes—there’s a person stranded on a roof and they end up dying in the floodwaters rise and they die and they go to heaven like “God why didn’t you rescue me? And God’s like, well, I sent a boat and you didn’t, you know, you were like, no, I’m waiting for God to rescue me. And I sent a, you know, a helicopter and you’re like, “No, I’m waiting for God to rescue me. Like, what did you think the boat and the helicopter were?”

And the way I look at it is like, God’s given us anger as the people in the helicopter to go, Oh, there’s something going on here, and you get to matter to you because you matter to me.

Kay >> That’s great. Heather, if you want to add anything.

Heather >> I don’t know that I need to add anything to that.

That’s a great way to summarize it, for sure.

Kay >> Yeah, well, just give a final word to our audience before we close. Heather, what would you say to the women and men out there that are listening or watching this about anger.

Heather >> I would say be curious. Be open to the possibility that it’s not what you’ve been told and to the possibility that it’s more than what you’ve been told. Get to know what it feels like, and when it’s authentic and the ways that you shut it down. Get to know the ways that you might act it out.

So I would say just be curious about it, and try to hold the framework that it is okay. It is. We are made in his image and he expresses and experiences anger, the Trinity expresses and experiences anger. And so just get to know that in yourself. That would be that can be the hardest part.

Kay >> Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Jamie?

Jamie >> Yes, that’s for sure. Getting to know it in yourself, particularly as leaders in a church setting, in this in the case of this audience. Because if it’s not something you’re familiar with, we run the risk of hurting people more by giving messages of, you know, just make a different choice. Just put your anger away from you or don’t be you know. Don’t be depressed or pray more about it.

I mean, those things are all fine and good. But I think it’s a very partial—like it’s like a tiny piece of a much bigger story of human beings. And if we don’t get to know our own humanity as leaders, how are we going to lead the humans who are in our flock? How are we going to shepherd them well?

Often ways we respond are not choices. They are survival strategies. And they require time and care and being with rather than trying to make somebody into what we think they’re supposed to be, which is I’m not going to well. That would be a whole other podcast, but yeah, so just making space for the humans that we care for.

Kay >> You know, I know for me it’s really been through the Scriptures that I’ve recognized that it’s a positive to show your anger. The Psalms are so full of, particularly David, speaking his anger to God about what’s happening in his life. And that’s, that’s a real pattern for us to recognize the anger and to speak to God about the anger, as you said. And realize that he invites us to share our anger with him.

And he can help us work through it. He can help us see how it’s a gift and do all the things that you have been encouraging us to do in this podcast. So thank you so much for the time that you’ve given us, for the wisdom that you’re giving us, for the insight that you’ve given us into anger. And once again, you can contact them. Heather is at WaterstoneCounseling.org and Jamie, tell us again because I don’t have it written down.

Jamie >> It’s MetanoiaDallas.com.

Kay >> And you can also consider the book by Chip Dodd, The Voice of a Heart: A Call to Full Living. Tim Keller’s sermon The Healing of Anger and the Faces of Rage by David Damico are suggestions of other resources that you can go to.

And as I’ve said, our Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast has many other topics we have connections on our website at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org to all sorts of resources to help assist Christians.

So we’ll look forward to seeing you next time.