DOD240: Dad Moods

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's mad as hell, but still gonna take it some more. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:39 Eli: Grrr. I hate that you introduced me that way, Tom.

0:00:39 Thomas: Wow, it was

0:00:48 Eli: Oh, wow. That one really got to, all right. Interesting.

0:00:49 Tom: We will indeed take it somewhere though.

0:00:53 Thomas: Such a good example of shitty, stupid humor. For you as someone who is super funny to do that, it's like when you get a musician acting like they can't sing or whatever, you know, like a singer acting like it's really hard to do.

0:01:01 Eli: Right. Yeah. It's hard. It is tough.

0:01:10 Tom: I've been doing it my whole life. No exceptions.

0:01:10 Thomas: I feel like you nailed it. No, you're not a singer, Tom, so you're missing the point.

0:01:13 Tom: Oh yeah, that's true. Oh, extremely. Yeah, no. No.

0:01:14 Thomas: Tom, I just want to make it very clear. It's not a bit. Tom cannot hold a tune. No, Eli, I just want to say that was very funny. You know, you nailed that performance. I liked it. Appreciate it.

0:01:14 Eli: Yeah, thank you. Comes from my heart.

0:01:25 Thomas: Oh, wait, but anger. Grr, I'm mad that you're so good at things. I don't know.

0:01:28 Tom: No. What?

0:01:27 Eli: Grrrr. But guys, you know what makes me angry? The auto ads.

0:01:34 Thomas: What are those?

0:01:35 Eli: Yeah, that's right. They're ruining my podcast experience. I'm here trying to listen to a podcast, all of a sudden I'm getting a Verizon ad, I'm getting a Mint Mobile ad, I'm getting ads that are almost exclusively in Spanish. I wish there was a way to make these go away. Well, Eli, you say to me, your friend, best friend maybe, I will make those go away over at patreon.com forward slash dear old dads, where for as little as a dollar you get a commercial-free version of every single show, plus bonus episodes and behind the scenes bonus content. But you can only get it over at patreon.com forward slash dear old dads, like an angry Tom, and, a, what did I say? Dear

0:01:53 Thomas: Dear old dads. You said dear old dad. Which at least was still our show technically, but it's not. If they go to that, it won't be right.

0:02:14 Eli: Dads! Oh, come on, you gotta let Dear Old Dads fly. How dare you?

0:02:24 Thomas: See, Eli. I don' t know if you know this. The goal is to get them to be able to go to the website.

0:02:22 Eli: They just keep adding No, you know how hackers have, like,

0:02:30 Tom: Is that what the pitch is for? Yeah.

0:02:30 Eli: Googla.com and stuff like that. I have patreon.com slash dear ol dad, singular, and it is just for me, and if you look on the page you'll, you'll see it's just give.

0:02:31 Thomas: Yeah. Damn. Holy shit. A thousand patrons. You fucker.

0:02:41 Tom: What?

0:02:41 Eli: Yeah, no, I've got a ton of patrons. Yeah, absolutely.

0:02:43 Thomas: Well, we've got a lawsuit, a blossoming lawsuit. Here we go.

0:02:46 Eli: Come on. When would there ever be a lawsuit over the money associated with a podcast? Silly. Rip into it.

0:02:52 Tom: You know,

0:02:59 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:03:02 Tom: We're going to cover an email. Eli, can people email the show? Hmm.

0:03:05 Eli: They certainly can. If you would like your email answered, you can go to thedads at dearoldads.com. That's thedads at dear old dads dot com. And ask us your questions and we'll turn them. Well, why wisdom? We will give them our full brains, unlike this sentence. And you, you will have an answer that you like.

0:03:27 Tom: It doesn't, it's not a ringing endorsement in the moment.

0:03:31 Thomas: I don't know about that.

0:03:32 Tom: What if they have a private question, they don't want it right on the air, should they?

0:03:34 Eli: Oh, well, if you've got a private question, you should not email us because we're a podcast. You should send that email to your dad, to your real dad, to your actual dear

0:03:37 Thomas: Go fuck yourself.

0:03:37 Tom: Yeah, no, don't do that. Yeah, no, don't do that. Yeah.

0:03:48 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:48 Eli: Old dad and get advice from him.

0:03:49 Tom: All right, so this, this question comes from a dad to be. Dear dads, I'm not yet a father, though my wife is currently entering the second trimester of her pregnancy. Lately I found myself having a great deal of anxiety concerning regulating my anger. I've been dealing with an anger issue since I was a teenager, working to better myself for the past few years.

I do not have, by what most standards would be considered, a short fuse, though when I do reach the end of it, I can be rather frightening. I'm not a violent or aggressive person by nature, and in most situations I find myself in where I reach the edge of my fuse, I try to remove myself until I've calmed down enough to address it rationally. My primary fear about this is that I may be put in a situation with my child where that is not an option.

Whether it be directed at them or not, the last thing I want is to be feared by them. I hope that you may have some advice about how to deal with an anger situation in a reasonable way, or on how to do it, or how to handle it with the aftermath of it. Any advice on this topic you may not have would be appreciated, and I'm fully aware this may be discussed on air.

0:04:47 Eli: Oh, our favorite kind of emailer.

0:04:50 Thomas: The only kind that even matters.

0:04:53 Tom: There's a lot of stuff in here, Eli and Thomas. I think there's some interesting stuff for sure, but I think one of the things that jumps out at me is this person says they do not have a short fuse, but I kind of would poke a little bit at that and say, if you're having to walk away with some frequency in your life, like, things are getting to you.

0:04:54 Eli: Mm -hmm.

0:05:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:13 Tom: You might not think you've got a short fuse, but you don't have a real long one if this comes up enough for you to be concerned about it. Nobody can tell that I'm angry. When you grit your teeth enough that they break, that's chill. That's chill like a chimpanzee burying its teeth. Yeah.

0:05:18 Eli: You might be Tom and think that people can't tell when you're angry.

0:05:24 Eli: They think you're smiling. That's smiling. That's a smile.

0:05:29 Eli: Exactly. Like a smiling chimpanzee. The childhood favorite. Smiling chimpanzeen. Yeah.

0:05:34 Tom: Smiling while I rip your face and hands off. It's totally totally chill, totally chill.

0:05:37 Eli: I mean, when I read this email, I got to say, like, this is exactly the position that I was in, right? And I've talked about it on the show multiple times, right. I have a temper and I tend to make, you know, embarrass myself or make big scenes when I am. I do consider myself to have a long fuse, but I do have temper tantrums occasionally. And so this was something I needed to get control of.

I mean, the only question that I would ask is you say I have been working to better myself for the past few years. My only question is like, that's therapy, right? That's like professional stuff, not just apologizing and doing better. Right, a dad to me.

Be that is the one thing is that, like, as a person with a temper who did not do that work for way, way too long until there were serious consequences, and then I was like, "Okay, I'll do the work." I learned my lesson the hard way, right? Like, I know a lot of guys with tempers who were like, "I've been working on it." And I'm like, "Oh my god, amazing, you're doing CBT, ACT?" And they're like, "Oh no, I, in my head, I said, said to me, no more of that." And I'm like, oh, so you're, you're actively not working on it, right?

0:06:36 Tom: Yeah.

0:06:37 Thomas: Sorry, is that not enough? Shit.

0:06:42 Tom: I

0:06:42 Eli: Because, because here's the thing, here's The Thing. And again, I come exactly from this place I had to be. So square in with me. If you have an anger problem that makes you treat the people in your life badly sometimes and makes them feel scared sometimes, and you don't work on it, you're an abuser. That's what emotional abuse is. So if we work on it, we're not always going to be perfect, we're going to make mistakes. I get angry, I mess up, right? Everyone makes mistakes. But if you're not doing the work, you are a joyful, unrepentant abuser of those in your life.

0:07:16 Tom: I don't know about joyful, but I would take the rest of that sentence. I dunno about joyful. Like I wouldn't, I wouldn'T like yes. And a part of that, because I do think that there is a tendency for people to say, well, I would like to not be this way. So therefore I'm working on this problem. There are things where I'm like, okay, I would not be like this way in the future. If I'm not talking to a therapist about something, I, at the very least, am spending actual time, intentional time, reflecting on the problem, maybe writing about it, maybe doing some reading about it. Really trying to understand like, hey, why am I reactive when this comes up?

0:07:18 Eli: Yeah. Right. Exactly. Right.

0:07:54 Tom: Why is this something that bothers me? Why can I control myself better when I feel reactive over here than over there? I do think that there's some amount of self -interrogation if you're very intentional, very intentional that can be done on your own. I feel like I've made some progress with things that I've said, like, hey, I'm sorry. I will try to do better. And then I do literally block out time to try to think about ways to do that thing better. Like that shit lives rent free in my head until I think about it. So I do think it's possible, but like real fucking hard. And you got to be real intentional about it and you have to be the kind of person who kind of does that.

0:08:28 Eli: Right, the chances that you're able to do that well are so low. Just go. Go see a therapist. Right.

0:08:33 Tom: Just go see somebody as better advice. Like it is like I just want to acknowledge that, though. Like, yeah, yeah.

0:08:36 Eli: Maybe you can make your own cast too. I'm sure there are people who could make their own casts, but I wouldn't try. I know it's not me.

0:08:42 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:39 Tom: Yeah. The other thing that jumps out at me from this email is this idea. Like I'm going to read it right back. So my primary fear about this is that I may be put in a situation with my child where that is not an option. They're talking about like getting angry and having to remove themselves. If kids are making you that mad, that is definitely a moment where you have to be like, I have to reflect on why I'm reactive to kids. Cause like at the end of the day, it's not not personal. Like it's almost never personal. It's almost never intentional. And the stakes are likely pretty low most of the time when people lose their tempers, right? Like with kids.

0:09:22 Eli: And something that I want to point out is that you can always put your kid in a safe place and take a second. That was one of the first trainings we got when we did this baby class to deliver in the hospital. The implication is don't shake your baby. Be, but the way they teach it that is really interesting is like, hey, you can put the baby down in a crib, even if it's not nap time, they can cry for a minute while you get under control and get your body and emotions safe.

0:09:48 Tom: Yeah.

0:09:48 Eli: It is very rare that you'll be in a situation where you cannot be in the safe place. And again, as someone who's dealt with that anger, right? Have I told the Patsy story on air?

0:09:57 Tom: I don't know.

0:09:58 Thomas: Probably, but tell it again.

0:10:00 Eli: When Max was like first born, he had a pacifier when we were transitioning him into, you know, sleeping on his own. Well, he always slept on his home, but you You know what I mean? He had a pacifier and he would spit his pacifier out because he was swaddled and then he would cry. And that made me filled with rage, irrational, homicidal rage. And my parenting amnesia has deleted almost all the bad memories from that time of Max's life. But one of the moments that I remember very well is he had spit out the pacifier for the umpteenth time.

I was sleep deprived and just so mad and every part of my body was exhibiting rage except my voice and my right hand. So my right hand was very gently and very softly giving my baby back his paci, and my left arm and left leg and face were murdering someone in midair, just waiting for him to calm down and take the paci. And understand that, like, that's part of it. Sometimes you will be irrationally angry. And if you can be safe, that's okay.

That's a thing to accept about yourself, to forgive and move on. You're going to mess up. It's okay. Which sort of brings me to the next thing, which is that, like, you're going make mistakes. I have gotten

0:10:13 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:10:18 Tom: That's so good. Yeah.

0:10:57 Tom: Yeah.

0:10:58 Thomas: Well,

0:11:22 Eli: Angry at Max and I I have behaved inappropriately. And the most important thing is not to never get irrationally angry around your kid, because there are very few people who will do that in their lifetime, right. Yeah.

0:11:23 Tom: I

0:11:36 Thomas: And your kids are fucking, they're so, they do such anger inducing stuff.

0:11:41 Eli: Of course. What's important is how do you behave when you make a mistake? Because that's what your kid's gonna do. Do you go into denial and make a bunch of excuses? Well, you made me mad and you did this and I didn't want to feel that way, and storm off and tell everybody how much it's It's not your fault. Or do you own it and apologize and model the behaviors you want them to behave?

Because I promise you, your kid is going to have some of your tendencies. And if the way you deal with your bad behaviors is to deny them, because if you make a mistake, if you get angry, if you ever slip up, ifyou ever shout, ifyou ever make a bad decision, then you're a bad parent who can't be redeemed. Then you're going tohave that kid slip into those same habits with you. Or you can own those things.

And I've had multiple times and Anna's had multiple times where we've had to say, Hey buddy, that wasn't okay. I shouldn't have spoken to you that way. That wasn't a nice thing to say. One of the big things, just speaking to myself again is like, I really have to watch my making my emotions about Max on

0:12:41 Thomas: Hmm.

0:12:41 Eli: A regular basis, right? So like he'll do something that I don't like and my impulse will be like, that makes me sad but that's not his responsibility. Makes me sad is is not his responsibility. It's good behavior, it's bad behavior, it is a good choice, it's a bad choice. The responsibility for my emotions is not my point to share with him. My job is to model positive coping techniques when someone makes me mad and to talk about the behavior that he can make a better or a worse choice during

0:12:47 Thomas: Hmm.

0:13:10 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah.

0:13:11 Tom: Also think like your wife's in her second trimester. You've got a little tiny bit of time but you don't have a lot. And then like to Eli's previous point, now you're going to be sleep deprived. That's just likely to happen. And I don't think anybody's emotional regulation system is working at its best when you're really fucking sleep deprived.

0:13:23 Thomas: No, it's psychological torture. People, I hope, if you've been a parent, maybe understand, but when you get enough sleep deprivation and fucking noisemakers and just like general annoyance, like it's, it'S really hard, man. It's really hard.

0:13:33 Tom: Yeah, it is. I'm living on way too little sleep personally, but I do find I'm less emotionally regulated than I would like to be. I certainly am. Like Monday, I slept three and a half hours. Yesterday, four hours. I don's sleep enough. I just don't. And like, is that doing me a whole lot of favors in terms of my emotional emotional regulation? No, it's not. I also make more mistakes, which I am more reactive to. Like one of my, cause it's going to get to my other point. Like one ofmy sore spots or triggers for me in terms of like feeling emotional is when I fuck up, a little fuck up, and I'm like, it makes me fucking crazy.

0:13:48 Thomas: Yeah, imagine you're like Tom all the time. Yeah, Jesus. Yeah.

0:14:22 Eli: Uh

0:14:23 Tom: One of the things that you've got a little bit of time to do is to really do some self-reflection, and what the therapist can help you with this, but you've gotta identify your triggers

0:14:37 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:14:39 Thomas: Are you guys still there?

0:14:39 Eli: Yeah, Tom ran into an error in his session, so

0:14:43 Thomas: Well, Tom might have crashed out. Eli's on a tight schedule. So we'll see if he can get back in. But Eli, I want to ask you something while he's gone, maybe. And if he comes back and get his thoughts. I have an issue where I don't know if anger problem is at all the right thing for this particular thing. I definitely have some frustration issues for sure. But one thing that I'm struggling with is, oh, there you go. What is that noise, Tom?

0:15:11 Eli: Wind chimes. He keeps him right above his podcast

0:15:13 Thomas: I heard that wind chimes, and I thought your phone alarm was going off the entirety of last recording. Oh, he's gone. Okay. I got, I meant to ask him about that because literally I was like, is his fucking phone alarm going off this whole recording? I got to, that's, he has wind chines somewhere within audible recording distance. Distance, speaking of anger issues, everybody here, watch Thomas display, be a totally chill and cool about having wind chimes near your recording setup. Oh my god.

0:15:21 Eli: Mike, never ask Tom about his wind chime. Sometimes he has a tiny xylophone he keeps next to the mic. Hey, buddy. Hey, buddy, did you build a Rube Goldberg machine that turns on and off your microphone? You have to tell me. It's like being a cop.

0:15:55 Thomas: Okay, I think he's trying to get back in. We'll keep all of this anyway. Anyway,

0:15:58 Eli: Heath will do that sometimes. Like, something will happen near his phone and he'll just be like, nope. And I'm like, oh, it's okay, man, it was, it was you and And he's like, no, it wasn't. And I'm like, okay, okay.

0:16:10 Thomas: So I am having an issue where, and I think it's going to be maybe a similar thing that we need to do or that I need to do about it. But, OK, let's say your kid is about to tip something over, like a glass of fucking milk or something. And I would think most people's natural reactions would be like, oh, you know, like to try to like something like imminently something's about to spill kind of thing like that, That kind of issue.

And when I do that, my kids are affected as though I yelled verbal abuse at them, and I don't know what the fuck that is, and I do not know if it is me, like, but the thing is, if it's me somehow, if I am like too, I do know the way I am doing it is bad or something, I am, I do now how to fix that because it is literally I am talking split second, like somebody, it is almost like if somebody is falling over, it can be that too, like literally somebody is falling and I am like, oh yeah, you, you know, just that reaction you have. And then my kids act like I threw them in a fire. It's the weirdest thing.

0:16:24 Eli: Yes. Yeah. Right. Right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And that's a very common misconception that adults who want to do well have, is that kids are scared of loud noises and kids react to loud noises the way we remember reacting to being yelled at. And so what we internalize is I just yelled in an unhealthy way. The Happiest Toddler on the Block uses this great metaphor that he uses where he talks about, like, yellow light behaviors, green light behaviors and red light behaviors. Right. So if they're doing a green light behavior, something they should do, something you want them to do. Right, you praise them in a normal tone of voice. Yellow light behavior is a behavior where nobody is in danger. Nobody is unsafe. Everything's OK. And you can sort of correct them in the moment. And then red light behavior are behaviors that need to stop right now. And that's the priority. Right? Right. And you can have a conversation after you stop a red light behavior about, hey, buddy, I'm sorry. I know that was a little scary when I raised my voice just now, but those cars are really unsafe. Right.

0:18:05 Eli: And the example he uses is like when you snatch someone out of the road because a car is running a redlight, they don't go like, oh, you grab my arm. Right. And it's not the same as right because they don'T know. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah.

0:18:05 Thomas: Right, right, right. But a kid does that because they don't know what's going on. So they're like, oh, you abused me. And it's like, fuck. Okay. That's a great analogy.

0:18:22 Eli: And you CAN help them process because I remember one of the first shows that we ever talked about: don't hit your kids. And if you do think you should hit your kids, it's okay to hit you, right? Hit yourself, and then your mind will be changed. Someone wrote us in, very legitimately, right, not in a snarky way, and they were like, hey, like, there was this dangerous situation at the playground where he was about to push his sister off the jungle gym, and I sort of, like, grabbed him by the arm, but, and, like, that's a red light behavior That's a safety issue. Anyone who's tone policing you while you make a space or your children safe, they need to touch grass, right? They do not have an idea of what it's like, like, to keep people safe or even to exist in the world. But it is very natural for us as parents to turn inward in that moment and go, was that an overreaction, right? And that's when we rely on our partner and say, hey,

0:18:29 Thomas: Hit yourself. Yeah.

0:18:45 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

0:19:08 Thomas: Tom,

0:19:08 Eli: I think maybe I overreacted there. Did I over react to that? Or did I behave like that was a red light behavior when it was a yellow light behavior? Tom, are you back?

0:19:17 Thomas: Now I was just modeling anger management when I I was reminded that you seem to have wind chimes near your recording or something. And I didn't

0:19:26 Eli: Wait

0:19:21 Tom: Yeah. I gotta fix that, man. Like, we're in Illinois, so that means, like, it's always, like, a 40 mile an hour wind on, like, a calm day, so

0:19:33 Eli: A second.

0:19:33 Thomas: Notice it until last recording.

0:19:34 Eli: Are they actually wind chimes?

0:19:35 Thomas: Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, I thought it was your phone. You know how there's that one iPhone alarm that's like the do -do -do, do -da -do. Like, I was going to tell you last week, like, hey, Tom, was your phone alarm going off that entire fucking recording? And then I forgot because I'm too busy. Oh.

0:19:36 Tom: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:19:52 Eli: Oh, we lost Tom again.

0:19:54 Thomas: Oh, damn it. And it sucks that this has happened when Eli literally has the hardest of hard outs and we have to keep going with the recording. So sorry, Tom, we're filing you from the show. Yeah. He's, uh, you know, we, we don't have to give him his paycheck either. I think we can. Yeah. Yeah. You took it down as his whole house lost

0:20:04 Eli: We gotta leave poor Tom behind. Just like now the wind chime actually powers his pod track. Before it's a wind-powered pod track before. Yeah, exactly.

0:20:17 Thomas: Power actually. Yeah. Well, that's a really, um, that'S a really useful analogy though. Here's what compounds it. And maybe this is, you know, I want to make sure I'm not letting myself off the hook. It's not necessarily even red light behavior. It'S just like a reaction anyone would have if you're like gonna, oh, you're gonna spill something or, oh you're going to knock something over. Oh, you can, you know, like, it's just that involuntary kind of Yelp, you have like, oh yeah. You know? So I just want to make sure, like sometimes it's, it'S not as though it's like quote unquote dangerous behavior. And I don't want to hide behind like that justification, but at the same time, it seems to be the same kind of reaction. Although I'm sure if it was traffic, it would be, I'd be, you know, way more crazy about it, but yeah.

0:20:40 Eli: Right. Right. Well, and also that's why we can check in with our partner, right? You know, they spill a glass of milk and you go, fuck no, right? You can turn to your partner and go, was that too much? And your partner should be able to say to you, yeah, no, that was an overreaction. You go, okay, great, I am overreacting to stimulus, how do I work on that? I can do, you know, these, these kinds of things. I can do these kinds of things to make my reactions more reasonable, more peaceful, right? But it's also important that kids get used to sudden noises.

0:21:23 Eli: A healthy part of life is that sometimes loud, scary noises will happen when there is an accident. And you are safe. And you were okay. And it's okay to feel scared in those moments. It's okay if you're sad in those moment and to internalize them and make yourself feel better. And that it is very natural to want to blame the people who make loud noises sentences for how you feel, to go, I actually would have been fine with the milk spilling, but you said don't spill the milk, right? That is a normal emotional growth skill. It's a healthy one we can encourage in our kids. Hey, I'm really sorry that made you feel so bad, but that's how people are going to behave sometime, and, like, it's okay and you are safe, right? Helping them learn and understand that they're safe in those environments

0:21:00 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, Now that I'm putting it together, it's like, I just think I have such sensitive kids in a way that can make it really hard as having a sensitive kids and being not necessarily like, I'm not necessarily the quietest, most, you now, gentle spoken person all the time can be an interesting thing that feels shitty a lot. Like it feels like I'm failing a lot, hmm.

0:22:14 Eli: Yeah.

0:22:31 Eli: And You have sensitive kids because they do do feel safe sharing their emotions with you. We have all talked to the parents who were like, my kid never cries. And I'm like, that's terrible. Do you know that's horrible? Do you Know he's not sharing a tremendous part of his lived experience and maturation with you? That's awful. Your kid should cry all the time. They're a child.

0:22:41 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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0:23:00 Thomas: I wonder in terms of this emailer, I guess we didn't get tons of specifics exactly, but first off, Tom kind of interpreted it as he has anger around kids, and I didn't necessarily take it that way. I thought they were saying, what if I just get in a situation where I'm angry and the kid is around and okay. Okay. I was just checking on that. I think that's very different things, I guess. And it could be that the kids are going to make that person mad still. Like, obviously that could still be part of it,

0:23:19 Eli: That's what I took too. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:23:28 Thomas: But I wonder what kinds of things he's talking about. And I think it's going to be really fact dependent, I guess, is what I'm saying. Like it depends on what kinds of things trigger you and whether or not they're, Oh, wait, did I hear wind chimes?

0:23:41 Eli: Wind chime, Tom. Hey, I didn't mean to say all that stuff about your neck, Tom, I'm sorry. It's just, yeah, no, it's true.

0:23:44 Tom: Nope. Yeah.

0:23:45 Thomas: I did mean all the stuff about the wind chimes. Uh, just so you, I did mean all of that. Fix them, they're working quite well, Tom. They're actually functioning perfectly.

0:23:48 Tom: Fuck, those winds, I gotta fix those wind chimes. It's not, it's, they're out of fucking control. Well, I gotta add some weights to them or something, because they're just, they're too

0:23:58 Eli: Joe, did I ever tell you guys about the time we had a guest on? And I won't name them. We had a guests on again. They were a new ish podcaster and we had some listeners who were like, Hey, you should have this person on your show. They're so sweet. They had a television going in their room and we were like. Sorry, I'm hearing this thing. Does anyone have a noise? And the person was like, Nope, Nope.

0:24:15 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:17 Tom: Chiming?

0:24:17 Eli: Don't have anything. And we got like 20 minutes in and sweet blessings to Heath Bethesda. And right. Right. Heath goes, everyone take off your headphones and say all the sounds you can hear. And finally, this guy goes, oh, I can hear the TV in the room. And he was like, turn it off.

0:24:29 Tom: What? Oh my

0:24:39 Thomas: Oh.

0:24:39 Tom: God.

0:24:41 Eli: Well, because their partner was watching TV quietly. Right. And so for them, they were like, there's no way this is getting picked up on a bike.

0:24:42 Thomas: It's incredible. Yeah.

0:24:47 Tom: Look how we can, can hear everything. We can hear everything.

0:24:49 Eli: Yeah.

0:24:47 Thomas: Yeah. Like how Tom's family is watching those chimes quietly in the background.

0:24:53 Eli: Yeah. Just listen.

0:24:53 Tom: I know. I'm sorry. I'm Sorry. I Know.

0:24:53 Thomas: Yeah, because I get it. Yeah.

0:24:56 Eli: Maybe while your computer's breaking, you could go out there and shoot the chimes or whatever it is you have to do.

0:25:01 Tom: What I wanted to respond to, or I think what I was responding to, is the idea that kids will make you angry if you are a person who has not necessarily that kids are sort of like, but I also think that kids make us angry. Because a lot of the things that tend to be triggers, especially for men, are things like feeling disrespected, for example. That is a very, very common Trigger for a lot of men And for their anger right so that was a trigger For me was feeling disrespected That's a trigger for like a lot Of people I remember growing Up again like I'm older but like I Grew up Gen X like you didn't disrespect Your elders right that's like a big deal

0:25:06 Thomas: Yeah for sure.

0:25:07 Eli: Mm hmm. Right.

0:25:38 Tom: So that idea Of like being disresected And that's what I mean by don't take it personally That's shit idea to bring Into parenting that's just a bad idea And you're gonna have to find a way I think To say like one I don't like being disrespected, it makes me mad. B, that's insane. I have to discard that as the remnants of the past that it is. And C, my kids can't disrespect me. That's not how it works. They're learning. For a lot of people, the things that would normally be things that triggered anger, and maybe even anger in ways that aren't even unhealthy or unwarranted in many other adult to adult circumstances, they just don't translate with

0:25:38 Eli: Huge. Huge. Yep.

0:26:16 Eli: Right.

0:26:16 Tom: Kids. But so many people translate them emotionally, and in large part I think because, like, we tend to have physical, bodily reactions to things, and those reactions kind of self-reinforce this idea that, like, oh, like, I, I reacted physically to this, I know I don't like it, and then I'm going to justify that feeling, and it all happens in a second. It all happened super, super fast, which is why I think this work has to try to be done unpreemptively. Yeah.

0:26:44 Eli: Oh, absolutely. And you learn things about yourself, right? The beliefs you hold. And like, again, to speak to what Tom was saying, like, I had no idea how much I cared about fucking respect until Max was born. And I just really had to check in on myself multiple times to be like, well, that's not okay. He can't talk to me like that. And I was like, he's fucking three, you lunatic.

0:27:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:07 Tom: Yes.

0:27:08 Eli: Go write that down in a CBT diary right now. And like, that's, that's one of the things, right? Is, like, are you doing the work? Because another thing that I understand about anger that I think is really important if you are an angry person is that all anger comes from an inappropriate expectation. And that is a really, really hard pill to swallow if you're an angry person, because you hear that sentence and you go, no, people piss me off and they fucking do this. And he goes, no, you're not angry because of the things they did, you're angry because you expected different things and you demanded that thing be the world, right? Your anger is only caused by your unhealthy expectation, and when you start to question your unhealthy expectation, again, I only speak for myself here, when you started to question those things, oh boy, do you expose some toxicity

0:27:11 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:27:59 Thomas: Well, you shouldn't say unhealthy expectation because there is healthy anger, right? I mean, there's some level of being upset at stuff that makes sense. Like if you have an expectation that there won't be chimes during entire fucking recording. I mean it's like, Like, that's just an example that I thought of.

0:28:13 Tom: I'm going to open the window for you, Thomas, so we can really bring them in and get the full experience. I don't feel like we're getting the full experience.

0:28:14 Eli: Yeah, get it in

0:28:15 Thomas: Like, is that an insane expectation, Eli? Yeah. At all. Yeah.

0:28:22 Eli: There. Yes, you know, Tom, any expectation of his behavior isn't correct, it's crazy. You manage

0:28:29 Tom: Thank you, Eli. Thank You.

0:28:29 Thomas: Yeah, that is. That's fair. That's true. Well, I feel stupid.

0:28:32 Eli: Whose actions and emotions are you in charge of, Thomas? Your own. Your own expectations. That's all you can hope

0:28:39 Tom: Right?

0:28:40 Thomas: Oh, man. Man, it is tough. Tough. I wonder if there's a difference between how much it would affect your kids to see a parent angry at other stuff versus a parent angry at them, and, like, obviously there's got to be some difference there, but I mean, like, I just wonder about the difference between, like, oh no, it's not that I'm not mad at my kids, it's just I'm mad all the time at this other stuff. I wonder if that's, like, as harmful, or, you know, or, like, in the realm as of harmful, because it's still going to be, they're going to be emulating probably the things that that you're doing

0:29:10 Eli: For Absolutely, yeah. Am I having an appropriate reaction to this input? Because they're also experiencing big feelings, they're are also experiencing disappointment, right? And so when dad's computer doesn't work, if I slam it shut and scream, when my block doesn't fit in the square hole, what do I do? I slam it shut and scream. And the other thing is, and again, I say this as an angry person, like some of this stuff, as hard as I work, it's in the fucking hardware. It ain't going anywhere.

0:29:28 Tom: Yeah. Yeah Yeah.

0:29:39 Eli: But that doesn't mean you can't understand when you do wrong and hope for better for your kids, right. Max will absolutely, I guarantee you, he will be nowhere close to the angry man I am. Nowhere fucking close. People are going to be like, Max is sweet as sugar because he will grow up feeling safer than I did. Feeling more loved, feeling okay just as he is in comparison to me. And my anger comes from those mismanaged, inappropriate expectations I set up as a child. He's not going to have those. And it's okay for me to say, hey, I behave this way sometimes. That's not okay. You will be better.

0:29:28 Thomas: Yeah Yeah Hmm

0:30:21 Tom: One thing I want to add to a lot lot of people misinterpret stress as anger. I do it. I see other people do it. They're stressed and they kind of feel like they got to point that somewhere and kids stress us out. So like for me, what I've discovered is, like, it is a point of real stress for me when I feel under a time crunch, and I'm always under a Time Crunch.

0:30:33 Eli: Mm -hmm.

0:30:45 Tom: So I am always like behind, you know, I'm always running behind, I'm like trying to get more things done than is reasonable in the amount of time, so like, I'll schedule my time with no room for error, and then of course something will go wrong right, and if you throw kids into the mix, sometimes the thing that went wrong is a kid took too long to eat their cereal today, and whose fault is it? Is it his fault for eating his cereal too slow, or is it, to Eli's point before, is it my expectation, which was stupid, that I need literally no leeway or wiggle room in my schedule. That's obnoxious, right? So kids stress us out. And I think a lot of times everybody, when we're stressed out, we like to point that stress somewhere. And one of the things almost everybody does too, is they point the stress at people they think will take it.

0:30:26 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, yeah

0:31:06 Eli: Mm -huh. Yeah,

0:31:09 Thomas: That fucking little shit's fault. Hmm Yeah I

0:31:38 Tom: So people point stress at their spouses. And so they'll get snappy with their spouse when they're stressed, even though their spouse might not have anything to do with the reason that they're stressed out. But it's interesting, those same people rarely do it to their boss. They rarely do It to somebody where there's going to be repercussions. We do it more often to our family. So I think too, that if you're worried about like, hey, I get angry a lot, like, do you get angry A lot?

Or do you Get stressed a lot? And you're not sure of the difference. And I think that that's something that you spend some time working with somebody to self interrogate, and you can feel the difference, then, then what you can do in the the moment is say, I'm fucking stressed out. And that gets to be its own thing. And then that doesn't have to get pointed at anybody. Because stress is just an experience you have.

It's not anything that anybody else is responsible for and needs to be resolved by somebody else. It just like, yeah, I am fucking stressed. I had a stressful day. That's a thing that happened to me today. And then you can ask for some support too. That is the other nice thing about being better at identifying how you are actually feeling is then you could ask for support.

Because you are not the person who stalked off angrily down the street in order to control themselves, which I totally get and you should do if that's what keeps everybody around you safe, I'm not shitting on that, but I am saying, like, step two, if you can do a better job self-identifying how you feel, then you can say, I'm really fucking stressed out, I could use a little help, and that's just better, that's just better for everybody

0:33:05 Eli: Absolutely. All right, gentlemen. Before we go, scientists got bored after watching the Earth turn for 24 hours. So that's when they called it a day.

0:33:05 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:33:19 Thomas: Just realized

0:33:21 Tom: I've

0:34:11 Eli: Well, Eli, you say to me, your friend, best friend maybe, we will give them our full brains.

0:34:21 Thomas: I said Tom chimed in. I wish that would have been intentional, but it wasn't

0:34:26 Tom: Been chiming in a lot this episode. We'll see you next episode.