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Tony welcomes Magnetic Marriage co-creator Preston Pugmire, host of the Next Level Life Podcast, and award-winning life coach, onto the show to talk about the steps of accountability, and how moving from an unconscious reactor to a conscious creator will have immediate and long-lasting positive effects on everything in your life, from your marriage and parenting to business and personal development. You can work with Preston individually by contacting him on Instagram @preston.pugmire, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/prestonpugmire1 or through his website http://prestonpugmire.com
Sign up today to be the first to know when the next round of The Magnetic Marriage Course will launch http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic
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[00:00:00] Hey, everybody, welcome to Episode 280 of the Virtual Couch, I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist certified by Vilaboa, coach, author, speaker, father for all of those things and creator of the Path Back. And I cannot stress enough the momentum that is happening over at Pathbackrecovery.com. We have a powerful, strength based group that is growing and growing. It's helping people get past the shame and help people stop turning to pornography as a coping mechanism while addressing the areas of their life that may not quite be in alignment with their values, their goals, their entire sense of purpose, areas that I like to call the voids, meaning that when people don't feel connected in their marriage or their parenting or their careers or their health or their faith, that is when they often turn to the siren song of an unhealthy coping mechanism. So the Path Back is a program like none other, and it is changing lives. It has changed hundreds and hundreds of people's lives. So if you are anybody that, you know, is struggling to put pornography behind them once and for all, become the person that they always wanted to be the world's greatest husband or father or employer or employee or contributor to society, then go to Pathbackrecovery.com and download a short ebook that describes five common myths that people fall prey to when trying to move past pornography once and for all.
[00:01:09] Again, that's pathbackrecovery.com. And go follow me on Instagram, a virtual couch as well as on Facebook. Tony Overbay, licensed marriage, a family therapist, or just head over to TonyOverbay.com and sign up to get my newsletter and go there. Now, also sign up to to find out more about the magnetic marriage course. The next round is coming soon. So that is it. You're going to love today's episode. My guest is one of the few people that I feel matches maybe even exceeds my own level of energy. And we are we're going deep today. And you're going to hear me talk about something that I have never, ever talked about because before it used to bother me so bad. But with the help of my guest, it is now but a mere story along my personal journey. And I am so, so grateful for that. So let's get to today's episode of The Virtual Couch.
[00:02:08] Come on, take a seat.
[00:02:12] So I'm going to start with a story, I am a very old man. I'm fifty one. I think I'm pushing fifty two and I'm talking when I was in my 20s. So this is 30 years ago, older probably than my guess that I will announce very soon. And if you've already seen in the notes, it's my buddy Preston Pug, my Preston. Are you under the age of 30.
[00:02:32] Just 30. I am not under the age of 30 my friend.
[00:02:35] Ok, but so I go back probably twenty five, twenty six years ago. I'm with a group of friends. My wife's there with me and we go to this magician. It was in the Salt Lake area. I remember his name was Vander Mead and he brought people up on stage and he said a bunch of things and they did the classic cluck like a chicken or or bark like a dog or that sort of thing. But one of my friends were close to me, goes up on stage and they have her like her hands together and she can pull your hands apart. And I know that she was hesitant to even go up there. And finally he just taps her on her head and she comes back down. And I said, what has happened? And I've never seen this look in my whole life. She said, I have no idea what has happened. And I can still whenever I see her today, I can say he would say this thing hands Lukken tighter and tighter. So if I say that to her, then all of a sudden she gets this weird look on her face to this day. And I always thought, man, that's fascinating. Fast forward last year, about a year and a half ago, Preston and I are preparing the materials for our magnetic marriage course. And there's a particular module that's really about taking ownership, taking control of your life. And Preston had said to me, don't tell me anything about a particular issue that maybe you have a challenge with and bring it in. And we're going to film it live. And I'm going to work this module with you.
[00:03:48] And I thought, oh, that's that'll be cute. This will be fun. And so I bring in this thing, though, that was Eat Me Alive. It really was. And I am telling you, by the time we were done with this module, all of a sudden I'm now like my friend coming off the stage from me and I'm just sitting there thinking, I have no idea what just happened, but I really don't care about this thing that was driving me crazy. And here we are. What's it been now over a year since we probably did that person. And to this day, even in preparation for our podcast today, I tried to think about this thing in and give it some energy and it just isn't there. And I don't and I've said to president, I don't know what voodoo you did on me, but it was amazing. And it's part of our course. And yes, this isn't the sales pitch of of course, we are about to launch another round, so we would love for you to go and sign up for it. Tony Overbay, dot com slash magnetic. It's coming on September 13th. Thirteenth. Yeah, starting on thirteen. So we would love for you to do that. But I have been telling Preston I want to get him on the podcast for so long to talk about this module. And so I really want you to drive. I want you to talk about what is the voodoo or magic that you did. Could you snap your fingers right now and all of a sudden I'm Barkett saying something weird.
[00:04:54] Ok, so I love that you're talking about this. So I'm not a hypnotist.
[00:04:59] Ok, fair point. OK, yeah.
[00:05:02] But what I am is a life coach for business owners and entrepreneurs and just people who are interested in designing their life, people who are interested, they're drifting, they're a little bit stuck. And if they're crushin and some areas and then they have some things that just like a little bit of blocks. And so I help them remove those blocks. But one of the things that I did with you, let's take it back to Vandeman. I mean, like he said, he had her put her fingers together and clasp them. Then she couldn't unlock them. Yeah, but what I'm going to do and what we're going to do during this podcast is we're going to pull back the curtain. We're going to reveal like what that looks like and what it means, not from the hands clasped together perspective, but from what it means to allow yourself to remove the blocks in your life, the things that you keep running over and over and over in your head, the the parts of your life where you're stuck either in your business or in your relationship or in your personal life, just like your relationship with your creator or in your health and fitness.
[00:06:03] These are the areas of life where you can get stuck. And the thing that's fascinating to me is that when people have the courage to be able to understand how to take control, then it becomes simple analogy that I use is if you're driving along, you've got this amazing Lamborghini, you just bought it and it's just phenomenal. And you're so excited to drive it. And you get in there and you go, you push the gas down and it won't go like, why isn't this what is is going like? It's just like it feels like you're driving it through water and what's happening. So you get on like maybe it needs different fuel. So you change the octane level on the fuel, then maybe it needs oil change because it's still feeling sluggish. Or maybe I need a new seat covers. So I get new seat covers is a metaphor by the way, and covers and you try that and it's not working like, oh, what should I do that needs a different color. So you paint the thing and it just won't go. Won't go. Don't go, and it turns out you had the outbreak engaged the whole time
[00:07:12] And maybe done that before, and so
[00:07:15] The emergency brake doesn't prevent the car from moving at all. It just if you drive it with the brake engaged, it just makes the car smell funny. And and it just like feels like you're just there's something you can't break through it. That's what I hope people do, is release the emergency break in their life so that they can use the same amount of effort. If you ever release the emergency brake on the Lamborghini, all of a sudden you push the gas, same amount of effort as before. Everything just works. And so if people are feeling stuck in their life of feeling, drifting in their life, not really sure exactly what they're doing, what their purposes or something like that, dude. Understanding how to take control, releasing that emergency brake and then being able to be intentional about what you're doing, what your values are, where you're needed to take accountability and then just moving forward is that's the key to be able to break through to that next level. And that's what we need to do.
[00:08:15] We did. And you said the word, I very much enjoy accountability. And I feel like that was the part when we dropped this module in the magnetic marriage course, I didn't realize how significant it would be. And anybody that's hopefully that's listening. They've heard the episodes that we've done about the four pillars of a connected conversation and. Yeah. And all of those things. But you can set up that framework to have a productive conversation. But oftentimes when people are no longer in tit-for-tat mode or pursue withdrawal and they are having the conversation all sudden, there's some stuff that's getting aired. In one of the biggest pieces I didn't realize till we put that module in there is now somebody has to take ownership of it now. Somebody has to take accountability of what they're now what we're putting out there. And that's why I felt like this module was it was a lot more it was more powerful than I anticipated.
[00:09:00] Yeah. And so with this thing that's really, really important is to recognize that it's not about blame. When we talk like that, what we're going to talk about today and just in your life and stuff. And when I work with my clients, we remove the word blame and fault from the conversation because it's you get screwed either way because you're saying, oh, when I'm blaming somebody else. I'm giving them power over my emotions, my reaction, my stubbornness, my situation, like I'm giving them that power. But the flip side of that picture, a pendulum. And over here, the pendulum and you put it right here and this is unhealthy blaming of other people. And if you let it go and you're not being you're not controlling it and create being intentional about creating what you're doing, then it'll swing all the way over to the other end. And then you're going to say, oh, well, I'm going to just take accountability and then blame myself. Yeah. And you get to judge yourself super harsh. And so think about this, Tony, if you ever blame somebody else for something. Yes. Yes. How does that work out for you?
[00:10:12] But it doesn't. And I feel like it is sometimes that's just is impulsive thing that we do because we just we want somebody to blame because it couldn't be anybody but himself.
[00:10:20] But here's the thing. Have you ever blamed yourself for something?
[00:10:22] Yes, that is.
[00:10:23] How does that work
[00:10:25] Out for you? It doesn't get anywhere either.
[00:10:27] Exactly. So this is my philosophy. You don't blame others. Don't blame yourself. This is the shift that gets to happen because what successful people and by successful I'm talking about like happy people who are emotionally mature and able to move through life as a conscious creator, those type of people are they are not people who are stuck in the blaming aspect of it. And it because here's the thing. It's not about blame or fault. What it is, is about understanding your role in the situation, even if you didn't like, even if you weren't like at fault, and when you understand your role in the situation, remove the fault and the blame from it, then you can actually create something that works moving forward, because people that are stuck, people that are unconscious, people that are reacting, people that are drifting, people that are holding grudges and not being able to live the life that they want to live. Those people are stuck in the blame cycle, whether it's with other people or with themselves. And it is a real paradigm shift to get out of the blame energy and get into the 100 percent accountability. And here's a here's a good example of this. And we talk about this is with a red light. If you are at a red light and you have driven there with your hands are at 10 and two and you're driving the speed limit, you're not talking on your cell phone. You're not texting. You're just you're being a good driver, conscious driver. Then you stop at a stoplight and then, boom, you get rear ended. It's so easy, our brain wants to I guarantee the people that are listening to this, their brain is going to fight against what I'm about to say.
[00:12:31] I knew that I was thinking about this one earlier. This is. Yeah.
[00:12:34] And what if I told you that if you removed the word fault, and I'm not talking from an insurance perspective, yeah, OK, let the insurance people at the place look OK. You were parked. You were at a red light. It's not your fault. It is their fault. But if you take that out of the equation, what it allows you to do is move forward, because if you say no, it's their fault. I was doing everything right there to blame then. OK, you've given all your power to them in that situation, and I am and I'm not I'm not talking about insurance. So the question to ask yourself is instead of, well, what's my fault in this? You just say, what's my role in this? And so if I ask you that, what's your role in getting rear ended,
[00:13:28] It's so funny because even though I know where we're going with this, I still find myself wanting to say, OK, but it's really not my brother that I mean, it's not the word fault. The role was I was in a car sitting at a red light and a car ran into me. That was my role. I was there. I drove over there.
[00:13:45] I drove there. Yeah, you there. And I've been hit like I've been hit in a car where it wasn't my fault from the insurance perspective. But here's the deal, man. Like. You were there, and sometimes that's all it takes, because if you really think about it. If you weren't there, you wouldn't have gone. And so
[00:14:07] No judgment, judgment, no
[00:14:08] Judgment. And that's the thing is it was like, well, me being there didn't warrant like, that's a pretty aggressive punishment for the crime of being at that red light greed, man. Absolutely. Greed, again, not what we're talking about, because when you do that, you go down the path of. Well, yeah, but yeah, but and it turns into so this will get into what you were dealing with when we did this module in my office. But like when you have a situation that occupies your mental state and you can easily rehearse it and you can tell the story to yourself or to other people, and it gives you any sort of negative energetics when you talk about emotional energy and it gives you any of that. Then chances are you are you are holding on to it and you're giving it power. Yeah. And so when you say if you're at the red light, you be like, oh, I was there. I got hit. What what am I going to do about it now? What am I committed to as I move forward? What is it? Because there's a lot of questions you can ask yourself and we'll get into those. But I just wanted to set that up in the context of, like, accountability and what your role is and things so that we could have this conversation. So go for them when you came in and tell me where you're at and then what you experienced as we had the accountability and the taking control
[00:15:40] Situation, I have the full confession. Your person I went and found our module and then I watched this part again because I just wanted to feel that you could feel my energy as I was describing this event that happened for the first time. And I can't even get back to that place from a negative energy standpoint. But so I shared with Preston something that I still have only shared it in our course. But it was this experience where for six years I ran around a track in my local city and I did that to raise money for kids and schools. Sounds very noble. And it was an entire community event. One year I ran 111 miles. The peak year was one hundred twenty five miles. I would come out in a limousine, somebody donated and the kids are all around the track and the middle school band learned to play Rocky or eye of the tiger in the news, was there every year, and I would run with the kids all day during their PE classes and they would all come out and there was photo ops and everything. And then at night we would have this community event.
[00:16:35] There will be food trucks and there would be a deejay and people would stay all night and run with me around this track and there would be lights and people are playing kickball and soccer on the infield of the track and there's tents set up. And then when I finally finish and cross the finish line at eight a.m. the next morning, then there's a community five K that was held. And so it was an amazing event and it raised thousands of dollars every year. It was back when there were budget cuts happening and there were threats of removing school sports and music and all kinds of art. And so we were doing this to raise money and to build this sense of community. And it was one of the greatest things that I've been a part of. And it was scary when I volunteered to do it and my kids all went through that middle school. And so they got to be the person that their dad is doing this thing and running the track. And it was amazing. Preston So that sounds cool.
[00:17:24] I can feel it. I can tell you're leading up to about to break my heart, man.
[00:17:30] Yes, I am. So year seven, I'm still I'm excited. I really am. And it's in the November time frame. I remember very well. And I'm at a wedding reception, as a matter of fact. And the event was always in April or May. So we're months before the event. And someone came up to me and they just said, hey, I don't know, I just want to I just want to let you know, give you a little heads up that there's a new there's new people in the parent teacher organization and the new parents there and there's new administrator at the school. And I just want to let you know they're going to let you know they don't want to do your event anymore. And I just I was devastated because all the things I just shared with you, I've received dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of of emails about people that were saying they finally were able to go out, exercise or connect with their kids. I spoke at all the schools. I would get recognized everywhere I went from people saying that's the guy that runs or that sort of thing. And so right here over a punch bowl at a wedding of somebody I barely knew, I'm being told, yeah, we don't really want you to do that anymore.
[00:18:30] Thanks. And what did it feel like then?
[00:18:32] It felt horrible. And I just felt like I didn't even know what to say. And I remember feeling just so invalidated and unappreciated. I wanted to just defend myself. I went to my wife and I said that they're taking the run away there. And she's like, What are you talking about? And I could even get all the words out because I just thought, but this is what we do. This is our community thing. This is what this is. So this is a great thing. And just I just got told. Yeah. New people and they said it's too much work. And then I started feeling all of these emotions around. They think it's too much work. But the guy running the hundred and twenty five miles that also goes and takes time off of work, the two or three weeks leading up to it and goes and speaks at all the schools and tries to get kids motivated and then tries to get people to and goes and talks to the corporations and tries to get donations and but they don't want to take the Friday off and go out there. Right. Anyway.
[00:19:23] And there we go. I mean, we've seen what's happening right now. I can tell you there's elevation. It's not like you're emotionally elevated, but there's a different energy behind it now than there was before. Yeah, because now it's remembrance rather than current. Yeah, because you can just get yourself out of it now. Absolutely. Oh, so. Well, one of the things, of course, with people that I work with, they have there's so many, so many opportunities to have this type of a thing, whether it's with your spouse, whether it's with your job. It's with your boss, whether it's with your kids, so many opportunities to get elevated. A lot of people say triggered, right? Yeah, you get triggered by things and. I am again, I'm not talking about your fault, but when you realize and recognize your role in this situation, it allows you to take the power back emotionally that you had given to them that they didn't even know that you had given them. They have no idea how you're feeling this way, that it's affecting you as much. I've had so many things in my life with just acquaintances, with friends, with family members and things where they didn't know that I was giving them this power and I was allowing them to direct and dictate the direction of my life. And so that's what happens with drifting men. We use that word a lot, but so often we just either are stuck or we're drifting.
[00:20:56] And it's because we're waiting for something external to to create an emotional situation for us. And so the language that I use is it's unconscious reactor vs. conscious creator. So when I say unconscious, what I mean is you're just simply not aware because. When we have limiting beliefs, we don't recognize them as limiting beliefs, we recognize them as observed facts, and somebody who is reacting to things in their life is thinking that they are just being acted upon by all these external sources and they're just simply reacting to everything. But really what's happening is that they are allowing. These external sources to be the origin of their emotional state. OK, and so when you show up that way, then you're never going to be able to get out of that loop. It's a really self reinforcing loop. And that's why I said it takes courage to do this, because, like, when I work with clients in the next level of life, what it looks like is when they are committed at a level 10, they are they have the courage to be able to say, I am going to. Take a look at myself and my circumstances from a completely different perspective. And that perspective is going to be the thing that's going to set me free and it's going to break me out of the self referencing loop that I'm in in my life.
[00:22:33] And that's what I'm talking about, being stuck or being drifting. You're just going in circles in some area of your life because you're not being intentional about it. And when I talk about designing your life, going from drift to design, a lot of times people it's the first time they've heard that because they just you grow up and you do this and you do this and then this happens and this happens and you do what you're supposed to do. And there seems to be some sort of set path for you. And you're just following the path that is somebody who is unconsciously reacting to their circumstances. And then the flip side of that is you're consciously meaning intentionally creating your circumstances and you cannot create from a victimhood state. OK, everything is acting from the right. If everything is acting to you and at you, if you're being acted upon in every aspect of your life, then you are in a victimhood state and you cannot take accountability from that state and then you cannot create from that state. I know that a lot of things rhyme there that's on it. But yeah. So talk about what it felt like to move from unconscious reactor with this situation, with the run to conscious creator where you're taking control of your emotions.
[00:23:57] Yeah. And let me OK, I'm going to riff here for a second because I do it really I really like what you're saying. And I don't remember thinking this at the time that we did the module. But if I go into good old my therapist lingo of abandonment, attachment, that sort of thing, and I really do remember feeling like it didn't feel like me, even though I did feel like I was this unconscious reactor and that I was down on myself. I was sad, I was bitter, I was jaded, I felt stuck. I felt like I was this kind of giving myself a pity party. Those aren't things that I do by nature. And so I remember feeling like that just was it just wasn't me. And so the reason I go into that abandonment attachment stuff is I really did. And I know I've talked to you about this. It's in our course. I've done a bunch of podcasts about it when we get our attention young a certain way. So if we are typically used to getting attention by being more of a reactor, where then people are saying, oh, hey, buddy, it's OK. Well, let me help you with that or let me you know, I know a lot of people bring that energy to the table. And then but as I said earlier, it's not a mature way to deal with a situation or a subject. And so I really did find myself in conflict with not wanting to be a victim, but also almost recognizing this is some deep, I don't know, childhood abandonment wound or attachment wound where I'm wanting people to reach out and tell me it's going to be OK because I'm down. I'm having this pity party
[00:25:23] That's a trip to exactly so emotional maturity. This is the thing so fascinating is like physical maturity happens to us. It really does. No, you didn't do anything to go through puberty. It just happened at you. The same thing. All the people listening and we become adults physically without any effort. It's just a circle of life. That's right. Emotional maturity does not happen automatically. It is something that it takes so much work and so much like I use this word so often. But you get to create it intentionally. You if you're not doing it on purpose, it does not happen. Yeah. And so emotional maturity is the ability to ask yourself the right questions and. Seek self validation instead of external validation. Yeah, and and when you're saying, like feeling good, when you have a pity party and somebody is like validating your victimhood, it does feel good. I remember very clearly I was with a friend who had just broken up with a girl and I was talking to him and I call it like, I'm not going to buy your B.S. like you're selling it. I'm not buying it. And so he was telling me this stuff, this whole pity party, and its heart was broken, but.
[00:26:48] There was a lot of accountability that went into this, and it really he was in the tunnel, we've all been in the tunnel where you get broken up with and you're like just you can't see anything. You can't see the forest for the trees, I think. But I was in I was really being a person that was not being harsh with him. But I was like, hey, man, like, I know you're feeling this way right now, but. Let's look at this from a different perspective, and I'm trying to help him see it from a different perspective and that different perspective that I was trying to show him was uncomfortable and I was asking him questions that he did not want to answer right now because it would force him to not be in victimhood mode. And this is this is actually when I was in college and I was talking to him doing this, and he left the room and and he went and went somewhere and I went somewhere else to like in the course of the night, we end up and like less than an hour later, I was with another group of people and he called somebody that was with me.
[00:27:55] It was in our group of friends. He called them to complain about this situation because he knew that they would go all into, oh, man, dude, you totally got screwed over, like just buying the story, buying the B.S. And when you are surrounding yourself with people and I'm talking about like first and foremost your own self, when you surround yourself with people who are. Not going to lovingly and compassionately hold you to a higher standard of excellence so that you can reach the next level, which, oh my gosh, it is uncomfortable when somebody holds you to that standard. But when somebody lovingly and compassionately does that, it can be the biggest breakthrough that you've had because it gets you out of that, gets you out of that drifting, and you get to hold yourself to a conscious creator standard that is completely different and unconscious reactor standard. And you're no longer in victimhood, you're in accountability and you're in creation mode. And it doesn't mean you have to go create a business. It doesn't mean you have to do all these different things. So what did it do for you? I mean, talk about what I just discussed there.
[00:29:06] Yeah, yeah. No, it's so good because I really what you're saying in the it doesn't feel comfortable. I think we talk about this in the course. This is one of those things that when you brought the polarity module and accountability module to the course where we really learn we're so afraid of contention that we avoid tension altogether in that tension, when somebody is able to really say, hey, tell me what you did there, what was your role? And that can be really uncomfortable. But that tension is where I really felt like the growth came and that's where I felt like this. Aha moment when you were really saying what role did you play? Not the fault, but what role did you play? So I really didn't feel like and it wasn't as difficult as I thought either. And and I realized that when you're getting this validation through self or validation through your accomplishments or achievements, I feel like that is a whole other level or version of accomplishment or versus the when I'm getting my value or needs met through this kind of pity. But again, I feel like if people if that was the way that they grew up is that if that was the way they got their needs met, if they weren't modeled, parents bless their hearts who weren't taking ownership or accountability.
[00:30:10] I give this example often where there was a girl that I was working with and she's waiting outside of this high school gym. Her mom shows up an hour or so late to pick her up. She's the last one out there. And then she the kid gets in the car, the kid's angry and the mom says, hey, don't you raise your voice with me. Do you realize what I've been through today? And this isn't all about you? And I even thought, man, even that is modeling, not taking ownership or accountability instead of a mom even saying, I am so sorry I lost track of time or I'm sorry I'm late or I get why you're frustrated. And so a lot of times, even as adults, we don't know. We haven't had this modeled and it's scary. And so we worry that if I take ownership or accountability, then I don't know what's going to happen. Everybody's going to take away my my my driver's license or my
[00:30:55] My, my,
[00:30:56] My birthday. Yes. And they're gonna raid my bank accounts and whatever else. But instead, it's like I just say my bad and what that can feel like.
[00:31:04] Yeah. But it can feel like the end of the world to tell. Yeah. To take to take a look. So you're talking about looking at something from somebody else's perspective. I so I'd say never judge another person until you've walked a mile in their shoes because then you have their shoes and you're a mile away by the way then yeah you can judge them and there's no repercussions at that point. But when you. It what you're talking about is it's asking the right questions. Want to change your life, change the questions that you're asking. I'll give you an example. Say you're in a boat and you're out in the ocean and you've got 10 people on the boat and it starts to get sinked, I think is the correct word starts to go down. Frigging people are running around screaming, there's wind and water and everything like that. And you see a life raft and the life raft holds a maximum of nine people who. How do you decide? Which person doesn't get on the boat? So what's happening in your brain?
[00:32:18] Ok, honestly, I am the world's worst swimmer and I have a pool and my wife can swim like a champ. And so I'm very insecure about my swimming abilities. So I know I've got to do whatever I can to get on that boat. And it stinks as if I'm on land. If somebody says, hey, there's help a hundred miles away, OK, I'll go like I'll run. But on the water, please. I would like to get on the boat first.
[00:32:38] Yeah. So you went there, you went, oh, I can't swim. So again, this is a hypothetical. It's a metaphor, but. Bottom line is, think about all the listeners that are listening right now, what did you think of where did your brain go? Oh, how do we decide who gets on the boat? OK, now. How do we decide who doesn't get on the boat rather really, but nothing about this, you're going down. You're out in the middle of the ocean, people screaming water and wind everywhere, and you're going down see a life raft and it says maximum occupancy, nine people. How do you figure out a way to get all 10 people on that nine person raft?
[00:33:22] I don't know, I'm still worried about here's the thing,
[00:33:24] I'm not against this metaphor, but where does your brain go? It goes it opens a different door. Yeah. And it walks down a different path. And you're going to get to a different answer to change your life, change the questions that you're asking. If you say to yourself, how do we figure out who doesn't get on the boat? You're going to answer the question.
[00:33:46] Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. This is good.
[00:33:48] But if you say to yourself, how do we figure out
[00:33:50] How do we get all 10?
[00:33:51] How do we get ten people on the nine person boat? You're asking different questions. You're going to get a different answer. You're going to arrive at a different solution. And because you're thinking you're thinking at the level of the solution, not at the level of the problem.
[00:34:05] I like what you said there is that I was so honestly, I'm going to sound dramatic here, but I was so focused on just the swimming part that I didn't even hear you change the question. And so I feel and I feel like that's what people will often they're so in fight or flight mode or they're already like down that path, who knows how long. And so they're not even present or hearing the question.
[00:34:26] That's the value of a coach or a therapist because they come in and you can they can ask you a question that is something you've never thought of before or something that's got you a little bit like. I work with people who are willing to and ready to make a decision to make a change. They're not interested in the illusion of change. They're interested in actual change and. When you change the question, for example, when what how about this, what questions were you asking yourself after the people closed down your brother?
[00:35:00] It was all kinds of things like we don't understand the value of the run or why didn't they can ask me first or why didn't they go to me to find out how much work it was or those kind of.
[00:35:10] Yeah, valid, valid, valuable questions. So for the listener, like, if you're listening and you're thinking, OK, there's this situation or there's a circumstance with my life, with my money, with my relationship, something. And your brain will be like, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but they did say that, yeah but he did do that. Yeah. But that they did screw me over in that way. And it cost more than they said there was something like that. I'm not talking about pretending that the situation isn't there. I'm just talking about asking a different question in the situation with the lifeboat. We're not talking about how do we pretend that the lifeboat or how do we pretend the boat isn't going down, but it's freaking going down. You know, what we're doing is we're asking a different question so we can get a different result. We're focused on the solution. So if you if you ask yourself. Why do I always mess this up? Or if you ask yourself what's wrong with me or if you ask yourself, how can I make this better on the surface, that sounds like a good question. But what you're doing is you're looking for all the problems, right? Or if you say what's how come nobody how come things don't work out for me or how come I can't seem to break through this? OK, that is the that is asking the question.
[00:36:27] It's the equivalent of in the metaphor it's asking is how do we figure out who doesn't get on the life boat. Yeah. So you change the question and it can be a small tweak. But here so here's some of the questions that I asked people in the context of the how to take control exercised. Right. The accountability exercise. There's four steps of accountability. First one, you guys just recognize that it's not about like your emotional state is not about them. This is not with you in the running situation, your emotional reaction to that was not about what, it wasn't about them, it was about your reaction to it. And that's really it's a hard thing to get through. But the second one, here's here's some of the questions. Second step is to ask different questions, which is how did I contribute to this show? So if you say, why do why did they screw me over or why didn't they come ask me or why don't they know how much how good this is for the community? I also like that. Yeah, you're going to get a different question, a different answer. But if you ask yourself. How did I contribute to this? What energy did I bring to the table? And then my favorite question asked. Yeah, what was I pretending not to know then?
[00:37:41] That one right there. And that's the part that I know we talk about that in the course. We've done that in the group coaching. That's been the most powerful part, I think, of some of the group coaching calls we've done. And that's the thing I brought into my office that has been so powerful, that part right there. I've got a couple in my office and asking one of them. Yeah, what what was I pretending not to know? And I think about that one a lot. And if you go through these questions that you're asking right now to what energy they bring to the table, if I'm being honest with myself, I really had let the control of the entire event over the years be in the hands of someone else when the entire time if I was being honest, I knew I probably could have. And most likely I always say I don't want to shoot on myself, but I probably should have still taken control of it. But I wanted other people to do it so I could be this. I come on the track to Rocky Run and the Hero or Save the day, and I wasn't willing to admit that at the time.
[00:38:36] So when I look back on that and what energy I bring to the table, how did I contribute to the situation is I didn't have control of that run to begin with. I had handed that out to other people. And that was something that I wasn't willing to confront at the time that I remember so powerfully when you were taking me through this exercise that and I never even expressed that before. And then so then that what was I pretending not to know? I still remember I was pretending not to know that someday the run might end or I was pretending not to know that other people may have a different view of what would raise money for the school or other people may now have a completely different energy around the concept of doing some run for twenty four hours. Or I was pretending not to know that there were a lot of other people involved behind the scenes and that there and I didn't know what their experience was and so much.
[00:39:21] They're perfect, man. You were ready to go for it. You were willing to do it. And so from there you get to the third step, which is what's your lesson? So what? So once you understood, like how you contributed to it, how you created it, allowed it to happen, what was your lesson to take away from that? And I'm not even talking about like with the run necessarily. I'm just talking about your what is the lesson to be gleaned from that for you?
[00:39:48] Yeah, for me, it really was. If I wanted to make that, if I was giving it the importance that I thought that I was giving it, that I needed to take ownership of it more, basically, I needed to take accountability or ownership for this run itself, that I was pretending not to know that I could have played a much bigger role in the organization of the the downtime during the off season. All of that. There was so much there that I needed to learn. And since that time I have and I love that you said that, I didn't even really put that together. But in any project that I'm working on since that since we even went through that, I tried to say, OK, I need to make sure that I am if this is a project that I feel passionate about, then I need to be involved in this project, because if not, then I need to be willing to accept the fact that it may go a different direction.
[00:40:36] Yeah, perfect. And so how and then this goes into the step four, which is what are you committed to as you as you take that lesson and implement it? What is it that you're committed to as you move forward?
[00:40:52] Yeah, for me then it's if I am going to be involved in a project and I really feel like it's something that I want to invest my time and energy into, then I need to take ownership and accountability of the project and my role in it and not just sit back and just let it happen and then get the butt hurt, as the kids say, when when all of a sudden it isn't going the way I want it to. That's how I can't.
[00:41:14] So how has that shifted so from last year to now, how has that shifted the way that you interact with people in your business and in your family and in your life
[00:41:25] Ownership, taking ownership and accountability? I felt like that was something that I was pretty good at, but I feel like I wasn't even aware of the level of things that I maybe would just pass along is something that I wasn't taking accountability or ownership. And so now it's it goes from everything. If I didn't get back to somebody instead of, oh, man, I meant to get back to you, it's hey, I completely spaced responding back to your text or I didn't write that down or my my bad is become something that has been so powerful. And every day I have to tell you, there was a an ecclesiastical leader that I was working with that I was there paying for someone's services and they owed me a little bit of money. And so I was sending this invoice out and I'm getting nothing back, nothing back. And I start to get really frustrated and I don't know how to be frustrated. I'm a very kind person in general, so I'm trying to muster up this. OK, this is very frustrating. And at one point he responded back and you said, hey, no excuses. I blew it. I just didn't respond to you. And I I literally wrote him back and said, that's awesome. Thank you. Yeah. I have nothing to say to that. And I really felt. Thank you, everyone. One of my kids. Says when they come in and then they say, man, I blew it, sorry I did this or whatever, it's I'm leaning. Hey, no, I appreciate it. We're human. Thanks for thanks for taking ownership of that.
[00:42:41] So it is a game changer. And so what I do is this is just one piece of living a next level life and being a conscious creator so that you can really be on fire in your relationship and in your business and in your personal life, your connection with your creator and your health and fitness like the four main areas of life. When you are being intentional, you have a set of values, you have a personal mission statement, you're taking accountability for things. You're being a conscious creator. You're moving through life intentionally rather than drifting, and you're designing things. That is that is the secret to leveling up. And so. It's been it's been so fun, man, I began this coaching business like three and a half years ago, and to be able to work with, like at a high level is you see people you change people's lives all the time. You change, you change mine man. Like, I think that working with a therapist is really, really important. I work with a therapist. His name is Tony Overbay. And and then also working with a coach like a therapist is going to be able to assist you with what has gotten you to this point, like understanding the a lot of the origins of things. And then a coach helps you say, OK, now what do we do moving forward? Like a very specific set of actions and like a framework and a path to be able to have that structure. But bum, bum, bum, bum, now I know where I'm going, what I'm doing, and there's an energy and a purpose to how I'm approaching life in general. And that's just that's the one two punch man
[00:44:20] Is I'm smiling, laughing because it's like you do this. You literally coached me through this and it's game changer. And then the module's you did unipolarity, game changer. And I'm smiling because I get silver sometimes when we were talking about other things to do to say, right. So what I do next year and I'm like, yeah, I know, right. Yeah. What do you do. You're like, no, like literally what do I do next. I'm like, I don't know man. So but here's here's some more real cool things I can say. Like that motivates you. Right.
[00:44:46] You're talking about when we're going together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like I want you to tell me. OK, cool, cool story. I like that you you just blew my mind with what you said and I don't know what to do with it. It's like you handed me this amazing shiny new tool and then I'm like, but I don't know how to build anything with it. Yeah. I don't know what to do with it. And so that's where I come in with with other aspects of life. I'm not an expert in the things that you are an expert and it's so cool. That's what I do. Other things.
[00:45:17] Absolutely. So that's why I really I couldn't wait to get you on and to the timing's good because we're going to we're going to open back up the the magnetic marriage course. And and we've done two rounds. And honestly, it's been phenomenal. It's everything I had hoped that would be. And in more it's cliche, but it really is. But this accountability piece did more for me personally than I ever anticipated. And I might have said this at the beginning. I don't think I gave it the energy that I wanted to. But yeah, I kind of joked about it. But when you were saying, OK, I think this would be really important to have and I really thought, oh, it'll be nice. Presence helped me so much. Put the four pillars together and they connected conversation scripts and so this accountability thing in there. But boy, it is just when you can implement this accountability piece into your life. Yeah, I feel like you. It is one of those things, as we call it, a paradoxical intervention. It's the thing that is you think will be the hardest thing to do actually is easier than you think. And then it becomes this thing that just infects every part of your life. And so it's just amazing
[00:46:15] Because when you operate at the level of conscious creator, when you operate at the level of emotional maturity and taking control, then you're then you are you're in control and you're designing and you're deciding where to go. And if people don't know exactly you think they know that they want to know where to go, I help people figure out where they want to go. Yeah. And I trying that out of them and that's getting them out of the loop.
[00:46:39] So I would I hope it is OK. I would love to put your info in show notes and that sort of thing and people can reach a hundred percent.
[00:46:46] Let's do that. I actually just opened up a couple of spots for one on one because like in a group situation with like within magnetic marriages, everybody should take the magnetic marriage cause it's so good. But in the sometimes you deserve a little bit more custom coaching. So if you're ready for that, if that's something that you feel like you're ready for, then definitely just. Yeah, like I said, I've opened up a couple more spots. And so I want to be able to assist. If somebody is of an audience member of Tony Overbay, then they're my people, man.
[00:47:14] They are. No, I agree.
[00:47:16] I listen to your show. I love your show. That's how I got to meet up with you in the first place. So, yeah, if you're thinking about that and here's the cool thing. If you're thinking about it, you know, right now, you know, if you're drawn to this, if it's for you or not, because it's not for everybody is it's not. But if you're ready to really step it up and get into that level of commitment and really figure out where you're going and what you're doing with a set of tools that's going to help you get there, then work with work with me to the next level of life coaching. I mean, so this is what you do go to Preston Buckmeier.com or this is the best way to the best way to message me is on Facebook or Instagram. So it's Preston.PugMeyer or just Preston Buckmeier on on Facebook or Instagram. Just DM me and I respond, although
[00:48:04] I cannot wait to hear of then down the road somebody's coming on and they're going to talk about their conscious creators story and
[00:48:11] Beautiful man.
[00:48:12] Yeah, it'll be nice. It will. A you know, it is always a pleasure. We talk every week and I can't get enough of it, so I had to bring him in.
[00:48:18] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
[00:48:19] So and so. People to come take the magnetic marriage course and you're going to get the person I do in some group coaching and it really will it will improve your marriage. That's that's not good enough. It will take your marriage to the next level and it will really teach you a framework, a way to communicate, and it just puts that to that passion back in the marriage. And now we've got a nice track record of showing how effective that can be. So we would love to have you on board with that as well. So, Preston, if I could be so bold, I really do feel, even though you were just taking me through this when we were creating the course, I want to give my own stamp of approval of somebody working with you one on one, because whether you know it or not is we've created this course. You have coached me and you have worked with me one on one. And it really has brought a tremendous amount of new skills that I brought into my therapy office, which has been phenomenal, but even more so in my life, the accountability piece that I pass along to my kids as well, and also just me being able to take ownership of a lot of it, even just the simplest things that I realized that I would just blow off as well. This isn't as important to to necessarily own. And so I really appreciate the work that you've done in helping me with that. If anybody is even remotely thinking about this or any of this resonated, then please reach out to Preston, because I cannot recommend him enough to help you really take ownership and accountability of your life. It's going to take your life to a whole different place. And I'm telling you, you only have one life to live, so just get going on it, find that purpose and and then just start taking action on it. And this is a huge piece of commitment press to do right now.
[00:49:49] Under to. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mark. Thanks for asking. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Later.
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We all get angry, but what do you do with that anger? Is it healthy to express your anger? If so, in what way? Should you punch a pillow, or a punching bag? Or should you just hold it in, grit your teeth and smile through it? Tony breaks down the article “7 Myths About Anger (And Why They’re Wrong)” by Amy Morin https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201512/7-myths-about-anger-and-why-theyre-wrong and tells you exactly what you can do with your anger.Head to http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic and get on the waitlist today to be the first to know when the next Magnetic Marriage Cohort begins!Please subscribe to The Virtual Couch YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/TheVirtualCouchPodcast/ and follow The Virtual Couch on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/virtualcouch/
Tony's FREE parenting course, “Tips For Parenting Positively Even In the Not So Positive Times” is available NOW. Just go to https://www.tonyoverbay.com/courses-2/ and sign up today. This course will help you understand why it can be so difficult to communicate with and understand your children. You’ll learn how to keep your buttons hidden, how to genuinely give praise that will truly build inner wealth in your child, teen, or even in your adult children, and you’ll learn how to move from being “the punisher” to being someone your children will want to go to when they need help.
Tony's new best-selling book "He's a Porn Addict...Now What? An Expert and a Former Addict Answer Your Questions" is now available on Kindle. https://amzn.to/38mauBo
Tony Overbay, is the co-author of "He's a Porn Addict...Now What? An Expert and a Former Addict Answer Your Questions" now available on Amazon https://amzn.to/33fk0U4. The book debuted in the number 1 spot in the Sexual Health Recovery category and remains there as the time of this record. The book has received numerous positive reviews from professionals in the mental health and recovery fields.
You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program The Path Back by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs, and podcasts.
Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ
----- TRANSCRIPT ------
[00:00:01] So a couple of weeks ago, my wife Wendy and I decided that we wanted to go see a movie and where we live in California was at the time relatively still closed down and just up the hill and across the California state lines that Nevada and Nevada had movie theaters that were open in limited capacity. But more importantly, they had popcorn with movie theater butter. So we looked at the calendar and we set our sights on going to a movie. Didn't matter what movie, but we were going to a movie in Reno, Nevada, and we were just eager to go and do and again, truthfully eat movie theater popcorn. So on the way up the hill, the traffic really wasn't that bad. And at one point we were just talking and and having a fun time. And we watched as this little fast gray sports car just zipped right in front of us. And I am talking right in front of us to the point that our car itself slammed on the brakes because we had some sort of auto cruise control that kept us at a safe distance from the cars ahead of us. And as that car cut in front of us, I said something like, that guy seems like he's in a hurry. And then Wendy and I continued our conversation and then is a bit of adrenaline, ran through my veins because I'm human.
[00:01:09] 20 or 30 seconds later, I change topics of conversation. And I just said to my wife that I felt like situations like those when a car cuts me off in traffic are almost like my mindfulness midterm exams. So I never have suffered true road rage. But I would absolutely be lying if I said that there weren't times where something like that would happen and I would immediately see Red and I probably would have driven fast right behind the car for a while to, I don't know, show him that I was mad. And I have processed so many stories in my office, people who have actually pulled people over or who have gotten into fights or have cut people off or have done a brake check or followed people for miles and miles out of their way as their anger just completely ruled their emotions. So changing your relationship with anger is a process, and it doesn't come easily and it doesn't come without intentional work on recognizing and admitting when and why you react with anger. So story number two, and before I jump into story number two, let me just say that the true irony of story number one, as it as we were heading up the hill to Reno to stay for a night and watch a movie, we received an email that theaters less than five miles from our home.
[00:02:19] We're opening up that very day, but everybody needs a little road trip now and again. So back to story number two, Rusty Eyer and I met each other in what could have been sixth grade, seventh grade. And we played basketball together many, many times and recesses and I think junior jazz leagues or junior alto hockley's. But Rusty was a good friend and he was a really good basketball player. And Rusty grew and grew and grew while I didn't. And then he moved out of our boundaries, our school boundaries, and ended up playing for rival Jordan High, the Jordan Beat Diggers. I was an alcoholic. So during our sophomore year of high school, we played Jordan and admittedly I was kind of cocky and I thought I was pretty tough. And Rusty fouled me at one point. And I remember I jumped up and I ran over and I was just I was mad and I got in his face or truthfully, I probably like his belly button. And I remember Rusty just kind of swatted me away like a little bug. And I went flying across the gym floor and I jumped up and I and I realized at that moment, oh, Rusty could crush me.
[00:03:23] Now, Rusty meant no harm. I had run up to him like I was going to do something with that simple suwat. I honestly vowed right then and there that I needed to get rid of my temper. And I swear to you, it left me and it really never came back for the most part. And I have told that story. So many events, corporate events, youth firesides, with clients in session, talking about making a decision and then never looking back. And I will never forget Rusty. And unfortunately, I learned at a high school reunion, actually my twenty year high school reunion. So that was quite a quite a number of years ago that Rusty had passed away far too soon. And I wrote about him in my twenty year high school reunion recap at that time. And his wife, Nikki, had reached out through an email a few days after that. So again, this would have been almost twelve years ago. And she thanked me for sharing his story then. And I'm happy to share it now that twelve years ago she shared with me that she read my then blog entry on my twenty year reunion to her and Rusty's kids, and she said that through some tears they had a really neat way to spend their night remembering their dad.
[00:04:21] So with that in mind, I really am grateful that Rusty either tossed me across an old gym floor some thirty five years ago. So once again, I hope his family stumbles on this podcast and someday they know that he truly was a great guy. That's done a lot of good for a lot of people, even just in the stories that I'm able to tell.
[00:04:37] But coming up on today's episode of The Virtual Couch, we're going to talk about anger and we're going to cover seven myths about anger and why they're wrong. And this is an important episode today. Anger is something that I talk about, I would say it's fair to say, on a daily basis. And so this article we're going to talk about an article by author and therapist Amy Maurin about seven myths, about anger and why they're wrong. And we're going to talk about the. Add in so much more coming up on today's episode, The Virtual Couch.
[00:05:13] Hey, everybody, welcome to Episode.
[00:05:15] I should have looked. I think it's 253 of the virtual couch. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified Michael Hamako, Trijicon Alibaba, but creator of The Path Back, an online pornography recovery program that's helping people reclaim their lives from the harmful effects of pornography. If you or anybody that is trying to put that behind you once and for all. I feel like I'm rattled right now. But I am determined not to rerecord this intro. But go to Pathbackrecovery.com. There you'll find the short ebook that describes common mistake that people make when trying to turn away from pornography once and for all. Again, that's Pathbackrecovery.com and my magnetic marriage course with Preston. Buckmeier has finished.
[00:05:53] The first round is complete. We are going to be announcing a new date of when the next round of the magnetic marriage course will be launching at any moment. So if you head over to Tony Overbay, dotcom magnetic there, you can sign up to find out when that next round is going to launch. And it was phenomenal. It was. I will I will have so much more to talk about with that. Interviews with people, testimonials, all kinds of things. So plenty more coming up there. But the first one sold out in a few hours, which was kind of a trip. Now we're going to have a lot more people in this next round. But please go to Tony Overbay, dot com slash magnetic and you will find out more about when it is available and head over to Instagram and find me a virtual couch there. And Tony Overbay, licensed marriage and family therapist on Facebook, and I have started to engage a bit more with the newsletter. So if you even aren't interested in the magnetic marriage course, there is a place where you can sign up on Tony Dotcom to find out about things that are coming up. Exciting things. And I will I will leave it right there. So today's topic is anger, and I love busting pop psychology myths. And so one of the myths that I hear so often and I talk about it on occasion, is this myth that the way to deal with anger is to punch a punching bag or hit a pillow or go scream outside or any of those type of things.
[00:07:13] And while I understand them and I have been doing therapy long enough that even when I started working in the first nonprofit that I did when I was in grad school, I believe maybe my brain has made this or inflated this story more than I really maybe more than it really was. But I feel like every office had one of those Bozo the Clown punching bags. And so I I swear to you that I remember receiving training or maybe it was just passed along by other therapists that the Bozo the Clown punching bags were in there so that if somebody got really mad, then you just had to take it out on Bozo the Clown. And I remember at the time thinking, yeah, makes sense. Or have them scream into a pillow or punch a pillow or any of those kind of things to express their anger. And I remember the more that I got into doing therapy, the more that that just kind of didn't make a lot of sense. And I remember at first, without having any data to back this up, feeling like what you were really teaching your brain, the more I learned about the way the brain works and the brain is, it's a series of habits and patterns. The more that you engage in a pattern or a habit, the more your brain thinks, OK, this is what we do. And so your brain actually then has it's almost like a software program that preloaded.
[00:08:23] So when you are starting to get angry, it wants to skip some steps. And once you get right to the end, you know, when your brain really believes this is what habits are all about. Right. But when your brain really believes that this is what we do, we start to get angry, then we get really angry. Then your brain's like priming the pump to say, all right, this guy is getting angry. He's going eventually hit a pillow or punch Bozo the clown or chase somebody down in traffic or really yell at somebody else so that he can then be finished being angry. So it kind of tries to start to get you there quicker. So it really made sense that wouldn't we want to start to train our brain, that when you start to get angry or your mood starts to get elevated, that you would do far better to start to calm yourself down, in any way that that would work, whether it's a good old mindfulness breathing exercise or whether it's going outside or getting in touch with your feelings, your emotions are trying to hear the sounds around you or the smells or that sort of thing, because then what are you teaching your brain? You're teaching your brain that when we get angry, eventually this guy is going to calm down. So let's go ahead and start calming down. So it seemed to make so much sense.
[00:09:28] And so that's why I wanted to put together an episode really on anger. And I found this article called Seven Myths About Anger and Why They're Wrong by Amy Morrin. She's a licensed clinical social worker and she's author of the book Thirteen Things that Mentally Strong People Don't Do. So let's hit each one of these seven myths and then I want to throw some commentary out. So the first myth that Amy talks about is that anger is a negative emotion. She says it's not bad to feel angry. Anger is a normal, healthy emotion. And in fact, a lot of really good things can stem from anger and angry feelings can lead to positive change. Yeah, she talks about many social injustices, have called for people who became angry. What if Martin Luther King Jr. had never felt angry as
[00:10:12] an example, so anger, I want to look at that as a negative emotion, anger is just that. It's an emotion. So I find that a lot of people and this is where I will probably have a recurring theme today when people say, I know I shouldn't get angry. And again, I will say every day of the week that no one likes to be should on, not even our own brain. So when we tell ourselves what's wrong with me or I know I shouldn't be angry, I like to reframe it. I'm doing it right now as I'm holding my hand up in the air as if I am holding some something to show someone else. And that is your your thought or your feeling. So instead of saying I, I know I shouldn't feel this way, I love reframing things to say, check it out. I'm feeling angry, because when you look at feelings that way or emotions that way, when it's more of a oh, check it out, I'm getting I'm getting charged right now or man, check out the sadness I'm feeling, then you can kind of step back and take a look at that emotion and really take a look at it from all angles. And you can see. All right, what's leading to this emotion, what's leading to this anger? And it has taken me however many minutes this is into this episode to reference my very favorite therapeutic modality, acceptance and commitment therapy, which we will again refer to from this moment forward in this podcast as ACT and Act talks about you have those feelings and emotions because you are a human being and because you are the only version of you that has ever walked the face of the earth.
[00:11:32] So if you are angry in a situation, it's not that anything is wrong with you. There's no I know I shouldn't feel angry or what's wrong with me for feeling angry. It's a I'm a human. I've experienced life up to this point in a certain way that no one else has. So check out this anger. I'm feeling angry. I'm noticing that I'm feeling angry, and an act there's some really neat techniques to be able to take a step back. So instead of I'm angry, it's I'm feeling angry. I notice I'm feeling angry. I notice I'm feeling angry because I'm feeling what a lack of control in this situation or I'm feeling unheard or I'm feeling like this is the only way that anyone will listen to me. So when you really look at that, anger is not a negative emotion, but anger is an emotion, then it's a little bit easier to kind of step back and say, check out this anger.
[00:12:19] So that's one of the first myths that I think I would that I love that we're debunking. Or one of the first myths about anger that we're discussing is that anger is not a negative emotion. Anger is an emotion. And so it's not bad to feel angry, but it is the first step in trying to realize why am I feeling angry right now? You know, let's let's kind of look at all the data. And that's one of the first steps to being able to learn to change your relationship with anger or have a different reaction when something that has previously caused you to feel anger happens like take the example I give at the beginning of this episode, a person cutting me off in traffic. I used to feel very, very angry. Now I realize, OK, the person cut me off in traffic. It's not that they think that I am a horrible person. It's not that they purposely saw our car and said, I know what I'll do, I'll cut that person off. And that what really ticked them off because I don't like that person. There was none of that. I mean, I can only imagine or they could only dream if I was that special that I had that kind of control over the universe.
[00:13:18] But I don't I'm driving. They cut me off. That's interesting. Was it scary? Yeah, my my body thought it was because the adrenaline came rushing in about 30 seconds after I noticed the event because I'm human. And would it have benefited me to go chase that person down and give them the what for teach them a good lesson? I don't believe so. But being able to change my relationship with that anger and being able to be fully present, we were able to work through that within seconds. There wasn't really anything to work through. It was more of a noticing things. And when you really look at the concept of emotions in general, we have them all the time. We have several tons of emotions even in every given minute. So at that moment, I chose to not engage in that emotion. And this is one of those fun things I love where I know I've done episodes where I kind of take on a little bit of that, hey, just choose to be happy in the morning and you will I feel like that is a great start, that I'm going to make the choice to be happy. I'm going to focus on happy things. I'm going to set myself up with with some good old happiness, confirmation bias.
[00:14:21] I'm going to look for the things that would bring me joy instead of looking for the negative aspects of life. But in the same breath, I can choose to be happy. And then when negative things happen throughout the day, when I do find myself losing my patience or my temper or control or someone does something external that affects me, and instead of if I realize that I'm not happy in that moment feeling like, well, what's wrong with me? I chose to be happy. It's another example of why we had emotions throughout all all throughout the day so we can be hanging on to this this happiness throughout a day and then something can happen that will cause us to not feel happy. And instead of saying, well, there goes the day, it's fascinating to be able to step back and say, OK, now I'm noticing anger or now I'm noticing fear or now I'm noticing hope. And so that's a. I feel like that's one of the best ways that you can realize that I have a lot of emotions, so I'm not going to I'm not going to chase after this one. I'm not going to chase after anger right now because I don't find it very productive.
[00:15:24] Ok, myth number two is that anger is the same thing as aggression. And a lot of people confuse angry feelings, aggressive behaviors, and combine them as if they're one in the same. So while feeling angry can be a healthy expression, a healthy behavior, aggressive behavior isn't, aggressive behavior is again, a control issue. It's not something that is going to keep a conversation going. It's not going to be necessarily helpful or productive because there are a lot of ways to deal with anger without resorting to threats or violence or aggressive behavior. And this this causes me to think of primary and secondary emotions. And I know that I've had a couple of episodes where I will reference primary and secondary emotions. And as a quick reminder, a primary emotion there. They're fairly simple to understand. They are your immediate reaction to events. So there's going to be some precipitating event and that's going to cause you to experience an emotion. The example I love giving is when my kids went through this phase where they loved scaring me when I was young father, they were younger kids. You would come around, you would come around a corner, and all of a sudden a kid would jump out at you and scare you and you would immediately react. You would. And then you would say, OK, come on, guys, knock it off. That that's not funny. And so the primary emotion was actually surprise or the primary emotion was embarrassment of reacting the way that I did to my kid.
[00:16:48] And then a secondary emotion is then and this is why it gets turn's emotions into these complex reactions. So the secondary emotion increases the intensity of your reaction. So the secondary emotion is when you feel something about the feeling itself. So all of a sudden I'm feeling anger about being embarrassed. And so differentiating between primary and secondary emotions is a pretty powerful coping skill. So if you view anger as, again, an emotion and you can separate that primary or secondary emotion, maybe I'm angry because I feel injustice, or maybe I'm angry because I feel like something is unfair. I'm angry because I was embarrassed. Or so if you look at anger again as a secondary emotion, a lot of times separating that secondary and primary emotion allows one to avoid aggression. Let's go to myth number three is that anger management doesn't work. And I hear this one often have said on occasion that when you are a beginning therapist, a lot of times you're given some pretty interesting gigs. I think I was about to say bad gigs, but I don't want anyone to think that if they are going to anger management class or if they've been even mandated by a court or their some condition where they have to go to a 52 week anger management course, because that's that's what a lot of them are. They last an entire year and they're weekly.
[00:18:10] But anger management does work. So anger management not working is a myth. So when people lack skills to manage their anger, Amy Martin talks about their emotions, can cause problems and all kinds of areas of their life. And that's where I feel like when you look at anger as a control issue, a lot of people and I'll go gender stereotype, a lot of men really struggle with anger because they don't necessarily have the ability to use their words. Being a little facetious when we're talking about talking to kids, "hey use your words, buddy. Don't don't throw a tantrum. Don't pout". those the lack of being able to express oneself can result in the secondary emotion of anger. And at times that anger can just lead the person's every interaction. So what anger management does is it allows people to recognize better ways to cope. So, again, a lot of the relationship troubles or career issues or legal problems result from an unhealthy expression of anger. And so these anger management classes are going to a therapist or learn in mindfulness tools or all of the above can help individuals reduce aggressive outbursts. Myth number four that she talks about with anger is that anger is all in your head and anger involves a lot more than just your mind. And if you think about the last time that you felt really angry, she points out that it's likely that your heart rate had increased to your face, most likely grew flushed and your hands maybe shook.
[00:19:35] And that's because anger evokes a physiological response. And it's that response that often fuels the angry thoughts or aggressive behaviors. So learning how to relax your body or relax your mind becomes a key to reducing aggressive outburst. And here's where you might want to have your finger ready on that advance button on your podcast player. But I had someone literally yesterday in Sessions who I've worked with for quite a while, and I'm so grateful when people feel safe enough to ask these kind of questions. But it was the old question again about mindfulness and hearing me talk and talk and talk about mindfulness or talk of abouthe app Headspaces that I use to practice a mindfulness activity and saying, OK, I, I hear you say it all the time, but I really don't understand, is it trying to clear your head of thought? And it is absolutely not trying to clear your head of thought. And the reason I bring it up with this myth number four of anger being in your head is when Amy Mirin talked about a physiological response, is that your emotions are designed to lead your logic. And that's one of these amazing things about the body. And it is such a go to bit for me now to talk about. But it was a very real experience in my office where one morning I opened the door.
[00:20:50] I walk a client out and I look down on the ground. And at first glance I just thought, that's something on the ground. I really didn't know what it was. I now kind of like to give the example of, hey, if it's a shoelace, then my immediate reaction is still going to be to pull back a little bit and then look down and say, oh, it's a shoelace. So in reality, my emotions are leading the way of my logic. My emotional response was there before I could even think of whatever this thing was on the ground. This thing on the ground happened to be a little snake, a little garter snake that had gotten into our building. And when the next client came walking in from the waiting room, we looked down and I said, OK, that's a snake. And I realized I have to I have to be calm and then get the snake out of the office. But the example then is there are a lot of times now that if I glance down on the ground, my first response is a visceral response, a gut response, an emotional response. And then my logic kicks in and says, OK, that's not a snake, that's a stick or that's a twig on the ground. Or when I walk out the back door of my office to get to my car, there is this little sponge that's been on the ground for I can't tell you how long in the first two or three times I look down, it seems so out of place that I have this visceral or emotional response automatically before I realize it's just the sponge.
[00:22:02] I don't know what I thought it was, but I have this physiological response. So when your emotions leave, your logic, your emotions are what already get, your heart rate increased and when your heart rate starts to elevate, then your fight or flight response is beginning to kick in. Your body is starting to do what it's designed to do, because if your heart rate elevates your cortisol, starts flowing through your body, the cortisol, it it says, hey, amygdala, hey, you know, fight or flight response, Neanderthal brain, caveman brain, reptilian brain, wake up because there might be danger that might be a snake on the ground. And then once you look and your heart rate's already getting elevated and you see that it's just a stick, then we can kind of calm your jets, we can cool down. And when your amygdala is firing up, when the stress hormone cortisol is firing up there, the part of your brain that is more logical, this prefrontal cortex, frontal lobe, it is it is shutting down. If you had yourself a nice functional brain scan going, you would watch as if light switches were turning off all the parts of your brain that are there to process and make sense of things.
[00:23:05] And so this physiological response that anger provides is there inherently for a good reason for that fight or flight response if you're about to get attacked by a wooly mammoth or a saber tooth tiger. The problem is when people go to that anger response on a regular basis, that actually becomes the the brain's path of least resistance that kind of defaults to this this visceral or angry response. So anger is all in your head again is a myth, but you need to practice mindfulness, in other words, on a daily basis. If you are practicing breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, letting your thoughts run, letting your thoughts go, and then when you recognize that your thoughts have run or they have gone, then not beating yourself up about about, OK, man, I'm not even focused on my breathing anymore. But then coming back to focusing on your breath, I've thought often about doing a meditation episode where I do a nice guided meditation and I think I need to do that at some point. I was literally going to do it for episode 200 long ago. Now we're episode 253 and I, I still and pulled the trigger on that. But while I love an app like Headspace to do a daily mindfulness activity, there's also ones called 10 percent happier. There's a lot of them out there. One of the simplest ways to practice mindfulness, I literally do this just about every night as I go to bed and I do this when I just have even 30 seconds or if I pause a lot of times, if I'm somewhere like at a church or in a line or something, and there's just a pause while you're waiting for some something to happen, you breathe in through your nose and on the breath you count one and then breathe out through your mouth and on the out breath you count two.
[00:24:40] So then on the in breath, you would count three, the outbreath you account for and just try to get to ten. It sounds easy. It sounds simplistic, but it's fascinating to watch on a lot of days I'm, you know, one, two, three, four. And then I'm thinking about lunch. And then when you recognize, OK, I'm no longer counting, then don't don't beat yourself up. Just kind of be aware that I'm no longer doing the mindfulness activity. And then I start over at one and two, you know, in and out. And every now and again I'll find myself at 15 or 16. So I even blew right past ten. But what You're doing as you are practicing this almost catch and release of thought, so your thoughts start to wonder and Rove and go, and then when you are aware of your thought, then you come back to the breathing or come back to the breath.
[00:25:24] And when you are doing that in through the nose, out through the mouth breath, you are literally lowering your lowering your heart rate and calming that fight or flight response down. So anger not all in your head. And there are things that you can do to practice learning how to bring yourself back to the present before your brain goes all Neandertal or goes all fight or flight. But here is myth number five is honestly one of the reasons why I wanted to do this episode. Myth number five, that venting your anger releases it. Punching a pillow, trashing the room or screaming to your heart's content doesn't actually release your pent up rage. In fact, research suggests that venting your anger in this way actually has the opposite effect. The more you vent in actuality, the worse you'll feel. And I like to look at it this way. Your brain wants to operate on patterns. Your brain doesn't like ambiguity. And the more that it can develop a pattern, the quicker that it can put that pattern away into this habit center of your brain. And if your brain can pull out of the habit sooner, it's going to use a lot less electrical activity. So your brain is designed to make things habitual, whether it's habitual thoughts or habitual actions. So if you have this this pattern of behavior in your brain where you get angry and then you punch a pillow or you punch a Bozo the Clown doll, or you go out and do a nice primal scream, then what your training your brain to do is when your your heart rate elevates the cortisol releases and you get angry, then you eventually are going to take that anger and then really explode.
[00:26:59] So you're creating this pattern of behavior of that. Instead of when I get angry, then I call myself down. It's when I get angry, I have to just explode to then complete this cycle or this pattern. So what I love encouraging my own clients to do and what I've been practicing myself for ages is when you start getting elevated or you start feeling angry, then you've already been practicing this mindfulness technique. So your emotions are already locked in and saying, OK, when this guy starts to get angry, when his heart rate starts to elevate, we already know that he's going to do his whole breathing thing and bring himself back to the present. So let's go ahead and start him breathing. You know, let's go ahead and start calming that heart rate down. So it says if it's not that I don't ever get angry, but that emotional response or that impulsive response to anger isn't as likely to fire, you know, automatically. So venting the anger, it's a myth that that then releases the anger in reality, learning how to be aware or notice anger. Do a quick check in and see if you can separate that primary and secondary emotion and then being able to turn back to some nice centering or breathing exercise.
[00:28:10] The more you do that, the more you're going to create this new pattern of behavior around anger. And when you feel angry, instead of needing to vent the anger, your brain's already going to go into this Zen mindfulness mode. You're gonna be grabbing your yoga mat and your ponytail and then being able to sit there and be more present, which very quick side note or tangent. I think that that is a funny reference because I'm bald guy. So when I talked about learning mindfulness or going all Zen, I would talk about, you know, you're trying to get to this point where you literally are sitting on the floor, cross legged yoga mat robe, ponytail, and that's my impression or my view of what Zen looks like. And when I had a client at one point where I think we had had a zoom session and so we're talking and I'm talking about this mindfulness and I threw out the ponytail and yoga mat reference. And then I think it was it was a couple of weeks later and this person had reached out to me and threw a message and it said something remind me something about mindfulness. And I went to Amazon and I found a clip on Ponytail and a yoga mat. And I just sent these two links and I thought it was one of the most clever responses known to man.
[00:29:14] And then I didn't hear back from the person. When we met up again, he said, hey, so was I supposed to buy the the clip up ponytail or the yoga mat or. I don't know if that was intended to me. And then I felt really embarrassed because I had not laid out that I that was my attempt at humor, that if I'm sending you the the clip on Ponytail and yoga mat, that means I am encouraging you to go all Zen and mindful. All right. Myth number six, we're almost done. So let's let's get through this one. Ignoring your anger makes it go away. So I feel like that one, you probably can answer this one yourself. So suppressing anger here. We just talked about venting anger and venting your anger releases it. So ignoring your anger, though, doesn't actually make it go away. I know that can sound contradictory, but suppressing anger isn't healthy either. Smiling to cover up your frustration or denying your angry feelings or allowing others to treat you poorly in an effort to keep the peace can then cause you to then actually internalize your. Anger or it's it's causing. It's causing you to turn your anger inward and immigrants, that is suppressed. Anger has been linked to a variety of physical and mental health issues, from hypertension to depression. So what that is saying is that you don't need to just eat or swallow your anger.
[00:30:27] But if we go back to that myth number five of that venting, your anger releases that and that, we're saying that that's false. Then what do you do with your anger? You don't want to suppress it. It's literally being able to be aware of your anger, being able to tap in again. Is this a primary or a secondary emotion of being able to acknowledge my anger, not try to push my anger away, make room for my anger, breathe through my anger? Because if we remember this whole concept of what is called psychological reactance or that instant negative reaction of being told what to do, we do that in our own head. So if I'm telling myself to not get angry, my own brain is going to say, I'll do whatever the heck I want. In fact, I'll get more angry. So being able to recognize that anger, notice that anger. And it's so funny as I'm sitting here and I didn't record video on this one today, but my hand I'm holding my hand up in front of me because I'm so I want you to reframe instead of that, I'm angry. What's wrong with me? It's a man. Check this anger out and I'm holding it up in my hand in front of me, because if we can separate that, I'm a nice person, but I may get angry and we externalize that problem.
[00:31:30] Then we start to look at will win. When does this anger come upon me? You know, this anger, if we externalize it, look at it as if it's a black cloud. And when I am feeling we'll go with the traditional hault, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, that acronym that maybe when I'm feeling one of those emotions or one of those things is happening in my life that then here comes anger. It descends upon me. I'm still a nice person, but look at this. Here's anger, so I can't ignore it either. So acknowledging it, there you are. Anger, you know, even thanking my brain for. For what? The purpose that it's trying to is maybe trying to get me to feel angry because I have a primary emotion of feeling unheard or there's injustice or things aren't fair. So my brain's already preloading the the old hey, you get mad about this now, you know, do we need our secondary emotion of anger? And so being aware of anger, make room for anger, don't ignore your anger, but then just venting it or breaking dishes or yelling or screaming isn't a way to deal with it as well. So it really is being able to acknowledge it, make room for it, breathe through it, go back to the present, turn to value based activities, things that mean something to you. And that's the way that we're really going to to work through anger.
[00:32:39] And the seventh myth that Amy shared is that men are angrier than women. And she said that research consistently shows that men and women experience the same amount of anger, but they do express it differently. So while most men are more likely to be aggressive or impulsive in their expressions of anger, the research shows that women are more likely to use an indirect approach, like maybe cutting someone out of their lives or maybe being a little bit more passive aggressive with the comment. So if you feel like you are being picked on as a man, that you're you're not given any breaks or you're it's assumed that you are always the angry one and that the woman in your life never experiences anger. I would say that they they you both experience anger. But again, it's how that anger is expressed. So let me kind of go through a little bit. She gives a little bit of data on healthy ways to deal with anger. And again, this is Amy Mirin, and I really appreciate what she shared in this article. She said, The best way to deal with anger is to really find a healthy way to express it. So turning anger into something constructive, such as creating positive change or responding assertively is the best way to cope with angry emotions. And that before you can express these emotions, then you really do need to understand how you're feeling.
[00:33:47] So it's important to to identify when you're feeling disappointed or when you're feeling frustrated. And again, that can be part of practicing. What's your primary emotion? What's your immediate reaction? And then that secondary emotion is, in essence, reacting to the reaction and pay early pay attention to early warning signs that you're you're feeling angry. Are you becoming angry because you can really start to notice the patterns of behavior. You can start to notice triggers, because if I know that every time my kid, if they come in late from for curfew, that I'm going to be angry because that's a pretty easy one, then then work on calming yourself before you need to have that exchange. If your kid's coming in late from curfew and so that you don't already you haven't already been consumed by anger because of you. It's fascinating, too. If you look at that example in particular, a lot of times that that's a that's a good old attachment wound or an abandonment wound where we may sit there as a parent and feel like I have to get angry or my kid isn't going to hear me. And so while we may have created that pattern of behavior, that doesn't mean you can't change that pattern of behavior. So if you go into a situation like that and you are calm because you're working on your anger, that doesn't mean that your kid isn't going to respond in anger because that's how they maybe feel like they have control of a situation.
[00:35:01] And so all you can really work on is you. And this is one of those things where I feel like being able to model a good behavior is is going to go Incredibly far with your kids, whether it's modeling an apology or modeling, taking ownership or accountability or modeling, that I'm going to go into a situation and not resort to a anger response, because when you're in a calmer state, you know, that's when you can take steps to actively problem solve issues or express yourself in a more productive manner. And Amy, talks about increasing your emotional intelligence can prevent you from saying and doing the things that you might later regret. And I talk often about my emotional baseline concept that self care is not selfish. And so I feel like it's important to fill your tank first or to grab your mask first. Before I was doing the I'm drawing a blank here. But when you're in the airline, when you're when you're flying, you know, the oxygen mask that put your oxygen mask on first before helping others or get to higher ground before you can lift someone else or all those wonderful cliches, but you do need to have yourself in a really good spot to be able to recognize, deal with and work through anger so that you aren't necessarily just working out of this emotional response. I would encourage you to go listen to an episode I did a couple of weeks ago on self differentiation.
[00:36:16] That one I've gotten. If you didn't listen to it because it sounds boring, that one, I've received an incredible amount of feedback because what a self differentiation means is that is being able to still maintain a connection with someone, but also being able to have your own opinions and thoughts. And one of the biggest keys of self differentiation is being able to separate your emotions from your logic. Because we get so caught up in our feelings, we get so caught up in our emotions that that can hijack us in attempting to have a positive, productive conversation. So I am going to call it good right there. I do have and maybe I was laughing at one point where I was telling someone that I'm really good at saying, here's what you will make this a part one and part two. I'll talk about these other things and then I'll fix the HDD. I don't know what what that would be if impulsivity of putting out a podcast or what's hot that week in my mind. But sometimes I don't get to a part two. But when I initially thought about doing a podcast on anger and I found these seven myths of anger from Amy, which I really appreciated using a basis to have this episode, I also found a book that was talking about 50 psychological.
[00:37:25] I don't know if it said myth's or not, but Methy was it's better to express anger to others than to hold it in. And it but it just goes heavy into the data, which I think is really, really fascinating. But maybe I'll talk about that in a future episode. But in essence, it has the data, the research all the way back from a lot of research done back in the 80s and 90s and then the early 2000s on the fact that, yeah, and expressing yourself with anger is not the healthiest way to deal. You don't have to go punch the punching bag or break the dishes or yell to use a primal scream that it is more productive and healthy to be able to learn to deal with one's anger as far as calming oneself down, because now you're going to start setting this new neural pathway of when I get angry, I am going to eventually breathe and calm down and your brain's going to start preloading that that program and you will find yourself surprisingly calm and even some of the most triggering of situations like when I started this podcast today, having someone completely cut you off right in traffic and realizing that's interesting or having your kid really come in hot or angry because they feel guilty or they they're you know, they don't want to deal with their own primary emotion and having you not react. And it's an amazing, fascinating thing to do.
[00:38:42] It's the end of the episode. And I once again skipped right past the Betterhelp.com/irtual couch ad that I had planned on throwing in earlier. So if you happen to still be listening, I would just love to encourage you to go to Betterhelp.com virtual couch. You'll get 10 percent off your first month services of online therapy. I got a little tag lines here that might as well read them. What are you waiting for? Your you owe it to yourself to at the very least, just check it out. Go ahead. And whether you're dealing with depression, anxiety, some of the frustrations of getting back to some sort of normalcy in your life, Betterhelp.com has a bunch of licensed professionals that you can connect with. And up to 24 to 48 hours, you can communicate with them through text, email, that sort of thing. So go to Betterhelp.com, slash virtual couch for 10 percent off your first month services. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you're still listening to me, maybe you're doing something where you don't have access to your hands. If you if you feel so inclined, feel free to go hit a rate or review wherever you listen to your podcast that always helps other people find the episode. And if you found something productive today, feel free to share this episode on social media with a friend, that sort of thing.
[00:39:52] So have an amazing day. And taking this out, as per usual, is a wonderful, a talented Florence with my favorite song.
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These two simple words can do more to diffuse a potentially charged situation than almost any other in the English language. Personal accountability is a skill that can be developed, and when acknowledged, “owning it” can cause a ripple effect in your life, and can have a significant positive impact on your relationships. In today’s episode, Tony references the article How To Help Your Child with Accountability by Erin Leonard Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/peaceful-parenting/201902/how-help-your-child-accountability and then applies this information, and more, into our adult relationships. Why is it so difficult to admit fault, and how does our own lack of ownership of our own problems affect our children, as well as our relationships with others?
Ep229 Accountability
[00:00:00] Coming up on today's episode of The Virtual Couch. Own it, own your part of your own life. We're talking about accountability today. Are you one who says "my bad" or are you one who typically says "that wasn't me, it wasn't my fault". We're going to talk about how to own your own part of your own life. We're going to talk about how to model accountability to your kids. That and so much more coming up on this episode of The Virtual Couch.
[00:00:32] Hey, everybody, welcome to Episode 229 of the virtual couch. I am your host, Tony Overbay and I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified mindful habit coach, writer, speaker, husband, father of four and creator of the all new revamped Path Back Recovery Program. If you are trying to put pornography behind you once and for all, then please stop by. We're talking literally yesterday. The Path Back site has been completely revamped, rewritten from the ground up and things added new features, weekly phone calls, Q&A calls that are coming up, accountability forums, all kinds of good stuff.
[00:01:10] So head over to pathbackrecovery.com and check that out. And you if there's that, we've revamped even the ebook five myths that people believe when trying to overcome pornography, we put that behind them once and for all. So just stop over there at path back recovery. Dotcom and I have been very, very grateful, pleased, excited about the number of people that are signing up for to learn more about my magnetic marriage course. So you can do that by stopping by Tony Overbay Dotcom and just just sign up to find out more. There's still the free parenting courses on there as well and links to all of the podcasts and podcasts that I've been a guest on. And there's just a whole lot happening. So I'm really excited about that. But I want to and please head over to Instagram. I have a couple of people that are just amazing that are working with me behind the scenes, that are posting some quotes from different episodes. So the the Instagram traffic or feedback is is has been amped up as well. So you can find me at Virtual Couche on Instagram and again, stopped by Tony Overbay dot com and sign up to find out more about the magnetic marriage course that is going to I promise this is going to deliver. You are going to have a better marriage. You're going to have a more magnetic marriage. You're going to learn how to communicate more effectively by the things that we talk about in that course.
[00:02:26] All right. Let's get to today's topic, which is one that has just been I feel like it's it's always there. It's always simmering under the surface. But I feel like I have had so many examples that have just been popping up in front of me over the last two or three weeks, in particular just about the concept of accountability, accountability and ownership. And this is owning one's own part in their life, owning one's story, owning the story that they tell others. And I truly do want to say right out of the gate, I understand that taking ownership or accountability can be hard. It can be scary. It can cause you to sit in some pretty, pretty heavy emotions. And I know I've done episodes in the past on the concept of a primary emotion versus a secondary emotion. But often we are so attuned or so accustomed to not wanting to sit in that primary emotion that we immediately turn to a secondary emotion. And that secondary emotion can be blame. It can be pushing, it can be lack of accountability or lack of ownership. Here's what that can look like. A primary if let's say that we did something or we forgot to do something or we broke something or we lost something. And our immediate thought is that feels bad. We feel sad. We feel embarrassed. Here's one that I often hear as well.
[00:03:40] I mean, it's so classic or so cliched, but somebody loses their keys or can't find their wallet, their core, their immediate thought or reaction, if they really dig deep, might be embarrassment. You know, I'm a 50 year old adult who can't keep track of my keys. So instead of sitting with that embarrassment and saying, man, this stinks, I mean, I lose my keys all the time. I can't find my keys. I'm you know, in essence, I'm saying I'm embarrassed. I'm vulnerable. Instead, we immediately jump to the secondary emotion of anger, you know, what do you do with my keys? Yeah, you're always misplacing my keys, my stuff. You know, this is your fault. So there is some displaced secondary emotion that is the opposite of accountability. So the challenges of accountability, it can be it can be a river that runs deep. You might be someone that from your childhood, nobody took accountability. So this might be a learned behavior. And so it can be really, really scary to take accountability. And there can even be people who their role in the home is to take accountability or ownership for everyone's problems. And then that can also create this dynamic where people are so used to that one person taking accountability, saying, well, it must have been my fault or, you know, that's my bad, that then people don't learn to take accountability for themselves. So quick story time.
[00:04:59] A few years ago, my son and I were in Las Vegas. We were attending the NBA summer league. That was something that before everything shut down, it was it was a fun thing that we would do every summer. And we had rented a car and we were entering the parking structure of the Thomas and Mack Center where the games are to be played. And I just took a corner too tight in the parking garage. And I scraped this entire rental car up against the side, the passenger side door and the door behind the passenger side door. And man, I felt that there was a lot of resistance from this very large giant hard cement yellow pole up against the car that I drove right into the side of it. So I got out and it was funny. I think I had a towel in the car and I got out with the towel hoping I'd be able to wipe it off. But you cannot wipe off what ended up being several thousand dollars of damage to the rental car. And I remember just that my immediate thoughts or emotions were I was embarrassed. I was humiliated. Here I am with my son. We're going to have this amazing time. And I literally just rented a wrecked the rental car. And I have rented so many cars in my life and that has never happened before. I became a therapist, you know, 10 years in the software industry traveling around the world, I have rented cars and rented cars and driven them on the autobahn, everyday cars in Taiwan or Russia or all throughout Europe. And here I am making it into a parking structure and I just scrape up the side of this car.
[00:06:25] But I remember in that moment just feeling like when I did it, I did that. And so, you know, it just I just kind of said to my son, well, I don't think I can wipe off all the paint that has come off of the yellow pole under the side of this car. And it just took the energy right out of the situation, the negative energy. And my son and I had a good laugh and we were going to the games. And I remember it was such a blessing, such a gift of just taking ownership or accountability for it, because I knew that there wasn't anything I could do. I knew that I was going to return the car. I knew that I probably needed to put in a call to my insurance agents that I did. And then we were able to just just have fun and made a couple of jokes about the car in a couple of other scenarios. I think at one point there was a car giveaway and I thought, OK, this would be nice. This would be a kind of serendipitous or, you know, the universe giving back if I could win this car after wrecking that one. And it was just it was just nice. There was this nice to take ownership and accountability. And quite frankly, I really hope that that was something that I then was able to model to my son that, yeah, own it.
[00:07:34] If you do something, it's it's your bad. It's OK. It's perfectly fine. So and I had somebody recently let me know that they appreciated when I will work in experiences as as a therapist who sees a lot of ah a fair amount of people who work or in relationships with spouses who suffer from narcissistic tendencies or narcissistic traits. And so I feel like this is where this leads into a little bit of gaslighting. This is not the the main topic today of the talk about gaslighting. But I couldn't help myself. I feel like accountability is the is the alter ego of gaslighting, because in just the past couple of weeks, I was looking over a few dozen emails that I had received from people who learn about something like gaslighting from my podcasts. And I have a document now that extends to 60 or 70 single spaced pages of gaslighting examples that people send in. And again, here's just a few you made me lose my wallet said from an adult male spouse, apparently his wife. It also made him lose his keys, made him forget to set the dry cleaning out on the porch and that one alone. Let me kind of set the scenario and here's I just want to show you how empowering it can be to take accountability in this scenario. This was a topic brought up in therapy. The dry cleaning van comes every Wednesday. And this couple was in my office and the husband was furious because according to him, she knew that it comes on Wednesdays.
[00:08:54] Now, for the record, she's never been in charge of his dry cleaning. That is something that he has done for years. And we made sure and kind of had that expressed. But instead of him simply saying, I spaced it, I space that in the dry, dry cleaning bag out on the porch. I'll have to wait until next week. Now, just feel that we would have been done with that conversation. But instead, we spent fifteen minutes trying to have a productive conversation around her, knowing that what what had happened every week and that apparently, you know, he was kind of saying that when she noticed that he had not left it out, when she went out on her run after he left for work, then she should have gone up and gathered his clothes, put them in the dry cleaning bag and set it out. And I was very proud of her. She simply said, I've never done that. The bag isn't there when I leave for my run because I believe they pick up the bag early and you leave for work early. So there was literally no way for me to know that. Now, you would how I would love it if then the guy would say, you know, you're right, that's my bad at any point, eh? You're right. That's my bad would have ended the conversation.
[00:09:56] But to which he replied that she now needs to check moving forward to see if the bag is in the closet when she wakes up and if not to set it outside. And so and I wish I could just say that it even into there. Then when she tried to do a nice, emotionally focused therapy or magnetic marriage connected conversation, kind of a script here and say, I hear you. I can appreciate if that's kind of where you're coming from, that that would make sense to you. But again, when I wake up, it's often the dry cleaning truck has already come and gone to which then he said, then I feel like you should wake up earlier. So instead of him saying I need to take ownership and accountability for putting out my dry cleaning like I have done pretty much my the last few years as a as an adult male who who can do those sort of things and has seen it work with success, he now was going deep with I need you to wake up early every week to double check and see that I haven't forgotten to get my dry cleaning gathered up and set it outside. So, you know, it's 15 minutes of their life. And remember, they're paying me as I try to help them make sense of this conversation. So instead of him saying my bad, I spaced it. Oh, well, next week.
[00:11:08] And on that note, I feel like if he honestly came home and said "I totally forgot to set my dry cleaning, can you believe that?" there would've been a much higher chance of her saying, oh, man, that stinks. Hey, is there anything I can do in the future to make sure you get it set out? You want me to set an alarm on my phone Tuesday night? I mean, that that would have been more likely of a scenario had he simply owned it and taken accountability. So there and I just again, in the last two or three weeks alone, I just went through and typed in gaslighting in my email search field. And just a few more here. Here's someone that wrote in that one year, every time we passed a certain piece of yard equipment, my spouse would pause over it. He would ask questions about it. He it was obvious that he liked it. So then I bought it for him as a gift. And then he totally rejected it, saying, I didn't want this. But, you know, the spouse the wife said that she took this as I guess I didn't really know him and she took the blame. But of course, as time went on, he really enjoyed it to the point of where, you know, had he just initially said, man, thanks, I had been noticing this and I really like it, then that would have just shifted the energy in the entire conversation.
[00:12:21] There was another one where I thought this was fascinating. I was looking through an example that was sent to me where the wife said that she had had the husband was working on a project and she heard some huffin going on. And then an impatient question thrown out into the air, where's my hammer? And she said that this is typically been the indicator that she now needed to start looking for the hammer and rescue him from his frustration, because no doubt there was going to now be commentary about how she always moved his stuff and he could never find it when he needed it, although because of situations like this, she had long since stopped moving anything. They had anything to do with the project that he was working on. There was one more that I thought was pretty fascinating. And again, these are all just within the last couple of weeks. It was someone that was talking about they were getting ready to go to bed and the husband would leave things on the bed if the wife left things on the bed, doesn't get very angry and he did not want to go to bed until everything was off of the bed. But in reality, it was if all of her things were off of the bed. So she said this still ended up being a fight, but it almost ended up being a fight about all kinds of other things.
[00:13:28] The husband just said, is the bed ready? And the wife said, well, I've cleaned up my things that were on the bed. And he said, so it's not cleaned off. And so she said, if you're asking if I cleaned off all of your things, then no, I didn't. And then he said, man, with all that I do, you know, I've only been gone for a little while. What you been doing? I mean, I'm sure that you're going to tell me you've got a list of all these things that you're doing. But all I mean, you could have cleared off the bed because you know that I like the bed cleared off before I get in the bed. And she said, I hear you. I appreciate that. But I feel like I get in trouble every time I touch your things, because she had numerous examples of times where she had gotten in trouble touching his things. And then he said, well, this is different. I wouldn't be mad if you put my stuff away. And even though in her mind she knew that there were times where she had put his stuff away and then apparently not put it in the right places and then got in trouble for, you know, I can't find my socks or that sort of thing.
[00:14:24] So these examples, I just want you to get that vibe. And if you're hearing this and you're one of those guys or girls that does that is constantly saying, OK, you made me lose my keys, you made me forget to do my dry cleaning or put it out. Take ownership, take accountability. Yes, it is hard. It can be vulnerable, but it is so empowering. So I want to to move on to an article that I really appreciated. This is by a Ph.D. Her name is Aaron Leonard and she runs the Peaceful Parenting Blog from Psychology Today. And this article. And I think that we can apply this into adult situations, adult relationships, she says. How to help your child with accountability. Modeling accountability may be more effective than demanding it. And that alone is why I love this article, because modeling accountability is is is more effective than demanding it. If you are demanding accountability, telling someone you need to take ownership or you have to own your part of this. Again, my favorite one of my favorite psychological principles, psychological reactance, the instant negative reaction of being told what to do kicks in strong, when someone is told you need to do this, our brains naturally say, no, I don't. Again, even if it's a positive thing. So Aaron says that although teaching a child that being accountable is important, embodying accountability may be more effective. She said that selfish moments and mistakes are inevitable when parenting, yet a self-aware parent may try replacing justification for parental error with a sincere and simple I'm sorry, and that is so effective. And I run into parents regularly. I was going to say all the time, all or nothing statement, harkening back to my episode last week, but who often say, I can't say that I'm sorry or I can't express that weakness or vulnerability because then my child is going to run right over me.
[00:16:12] And if that is what you are thinking or saying to yourself, then bless your heart. But that is a that is a defense mechanism. That's a wall that you have built up to protect you from having to be accountable. So it is far more powerful to say you're right, I'm sorry, my bad. And so she even says this may seem so basic, but it's difficult for a few reasons. First, many parents work their fingers to the bone most days in an effort to provide for their child and give their child opportunities that they may not have been afforded. And the amount of sacrifice that a parent endures for the sake of their child is incredible. Yet this actually might prevent a parent from delivering an authentic apology when the moment arises. Aaron said that, after all, it is one small mistake in the midst of a million sacrifices. Right? She says yes. But it's also a golden opportunity to model accountability instead of excuses. She goes on to tell a story. And I feel like we've most likely we've all had this experience, whether it's in a parenting moment or even in a situation with their spouse. She talks about an example as a parent spending, let's say, all day, eight hours at a child swim meet, or you can replace it with soccer game or basketball tournament or anything. And then the parent has to go to the bathroom or the parent needs to take a phone call or the parent just gets distracted. And then they miss a moment. They miss a race. They miss a play. They miss a goal. They miss a basket.
[00:17:30] And then the child afterward is so upset that the parent missed that race or that that dunk or that that shot or that goal or any of these things that the parents first instinct is defend to defend themselves and remind the child that they were there for the first two events or they've been here all day or they've been here for hours and that they have so much other things going on in the work call was of critical importance.
[00:17:53] However, this doesn't help the child feel better, nor does it model the accountability because the parent is just justifying and excusing his or her transgression. Aaron says that although it's tough for a parent to swallow their pride and admit a mistake, it's often the quickest way to model accountability for a child. If the parent is able to say, I am so sorry, yeah, that's my bad, I made a mistake. I'm sorry if that hurt. The parent is one hundred percent accountable. In addition, the parent is not making the situation about them because they're focusing instead on the child and the child's feelings. And that leads to I mean, again, the child might suffer with a very brief moment in primary emotion of sadness or anger, but then it is going to dissipate and be much more effective then. Now they're going to argue about do you realize how much I do for you? So in this moment, the child will feel better because the parent exemplifies an understanding of how their mistake made them feel. And this maintains trust in the relationship and it reinforces accountability as a virtue. Second, Aaron said that parents often shy away from admitting a mistake because they want to maintain this position of authority. But often they believe that if they surrender authority, then they somehow lose control. Yet the opposite is actually true. A parent who owns their mistake is two big things here. A parent who owns their mistake is secure and they are self aware. So when parents make themselves vulnerable to a child by admitting their mistakes or admitting a fault or admitting that they're human, now they're communicating to that child that they are strong enough to handle accountability. So the parents leverage actually then comes from garnering the child's trust or respect. It's not about power and control. And I love that concept. I want you to look at parenting as a way to model trust and respect. And it's not about trying to model power and control.
[00:19:40] Third, she said that a parent frequently refrains from apologizing because the child also acted inappropriately during an interaction. So the parent then is tempted to solely focus on correcting the child's mistakes, but in doing so ignores their own. And think about that. Think about what you're modeling. If you're saying, OK, but look what you did, then in essence, you are literally modeling to your child to point out the fault in others before owning your own part of that situation. So if the parent takes responsibility for their part of the conflict, that is the most effective way to find your child being more likely to take accountability or responsibility for their own negative behavior. So she gives an example for if a parent's late picking up their kid from a practice and the kid ended up being locked out of the gym or scared or cold as the child gets in the car and they throw their backpack across the back seat and they scream, Where were you? A parent's first impulse is to reprimand the child for acting out and say, you will not talk to me that way, you will speak respectfully. Yet it takes the focus off the original problem, which is a bit unfair. Instead, the parent, I hope, will try to say something like, I am so sorry. I can imagine you are worried or you were cold. But man, I would love it if you didn't take that tone or you didn't necessarily scream at me. You can tell me that you're mad, but if you could do that without yelling, that would be, that would be so nice that I would be grateful for that.
[00:20:59] So hopefully if the parent owns their part of the interaction, then the child will follow suit and then own his or her own part. And again, this isn't going to be an instant, instantaneous action. It is going to take time to model a parent who is never wrong in their relationship with a child who gets what will raise a child who is never wrong in their relationship with their parent. So being secure enough to own parental mistakes helps the child own their own missteps with a parent and others. So we need to learn how to shed that defense mechanism and embrace vulnerability. And if we embrace vulnerability and we add some accountability, then that is going to truly cement this idea of trust and the ability to get close to someone. And I feel like that is such an important concept. That last paragraph that I that I talked about is that if you are never wrong, what are you modeling your kid, that they too will never be wrong. They have not then seen a modeling behavior of saying I was wrong or I take accountability.
[00:22:01] I take ownership. If I want to go big on this, if I talk again about the concept of a personality disorder, there's often this belief that a child, every child is self centered and that's what kids are. But then they move from self-centered to self-confident. So if a child never sees modeling of moving from self-centered to self-confident and self-confident is expressed in "my bad" self-confidence is knowing that I will take ownership and accountability for something. And that's OK. So this is why I feel like especially with the work I do, it is imperative that we model that ownership or accountability because that is confidence. It takes a great deal of confidence to say I did that. I own that. That's my bad. It diffuses the situation and then it models to those around us. That man, that person just owned it. They're confident. And I want to be similar. I want that similar respect from others around me. Maybe the respect that that you feel when you are around someone that truly owns their part of a situation.
[00:23:04] There are a couple of just random thoughts that I wanted to get to. That was the main part of accountability. But I just jotted down a few notes and it was this concept of it's not my fault and I'm just going to kind of go off the reservation here. This is not an evidence based model or study, but these are some things that I've written down over time. Have a little tab in my notes section when I'm working with clients where if something that is interesting that I think would make for a good topic of a podcast, I'll write this down. So I've had a few of these from the concept of accountability for a while now. So here's something I wrote. I wrote, it's not my fault.
[00:23:37] I believe that often underneath even things like a mid-life crisis or have had a couple of incredible sessions with people who have struggled with some issues around things like chronic pain or fatigue or some of the some low grade depression or anxiety that they have always believed that they would be fill in the blank. They always have believe that they would be a pirate or an astronaut or a professional baseball, football or basketball player married to a supermodel driving the Batmobile while living on the beach. So if that didn't happen as they get older, then it surely can't be their fault. It has to be somebody else's fault or worst case. Man, if it if it hadn't been for my anxiety or hadn't been for my depression or hadn't been for my trick, me or my bum shoulder, then I would have been all those things. Then I would have been the pirate astronaut, professional baseball, football and basketball player, married to the supermodel driving the Batmobile while living on the beach. So and I just had that awareness or that aha moment a few times in therapy where talking with someone where they've again, I know that this is a broad general statement. I feel like I know more than many who work with people who seriously struggle with mental health issues, that, of course, mental health issues are real. There is there is chronic anxiety, there is clinical depression, there are chronic pain.
[00:24:50] But there are some people, even possibly somebody listening today that wants so much more out of life. But they're afraid. They're afraid to try something new. They're afraid to fail. Or here's the ones that run into the most. They're afraid of what their spouse will say or they're afraid of what their parents will say or what their friends will say with their clergy members will say even what their kids will say. Will they be made fun of what if they don't succeed? And people who have who kind of run by this this fear of the what ifs that that can start to over time? I feel like it can start to morph into a little bit of a from the man I really wanted to do this and I would have if it hadn't been for. And fill in the blank, so I even feel like starting to take ownership and accountability for even some of the small things in your life can truly build. I believe this is a line up online precept of one precept principle where the more one takes ownership and accountability of even the small things, the more that it can lead to taking ownership and accountability of the big things which can lead to major change, which can lead to a very, very productive and amazing life.
[00:25:57] So this is what has led to I've worked with so many people that have eventually changed up their looks, what they wear, their hairstyles, the glasses that they wear, the little bit of stubble or scruff on their chin, or they bought the car that they always wanted because that's what they have always wanted to do. And they're going to own it. They're going to take ownership of this. I mean, I can't tell you how many times somebody has said I always wanted to own a fill in the blank. I mean, one recently was a guy who said, I always wanted a truck, but my parents said that, you know, we aren't truck people. Does that even mean, you know, we all have our own likes or dislikes based on our experiences? So here's a silly example, and it's really silly. As a matter of fact, it has to do with my wife, who I, I hope I put out there enough that I truly love more than anything in the world. 30 years we've been married. And it has been incredible. And I have to tell you, I talked about her on another podcast and I was in the middle of my workday and I got a text from her and it is that virtual couch unsubscribe. And I just respond back and like, what? And she just said, you mentioned me on the podcast today.
[00:26:58] You know, it's like I'm unsubscribing. So I got I got kind of a laugh out of that. But so with the pandemic, I'm guessing that it's safe to say that you are most likely using more hand sanitizer at this point. My wife is now either run off the road if she's riding her bike or fallen off the treadmill, if she's running on a treadmill or maybe stopped to pause to think, is he really going to go big on this? So hand sanitizer, I go big. A pump pumps a certain amount for a reason, by golly. And I use the full pump and I get it all over my hands, my arms, my clothes, etc. my wife, not so much. So guess what? That is how I like it. That is how I enjoy my hand sanitizer. I don't know why. And she'll often laugh and say, you don't need that much to which I say, OK. And then I send it, as the kids say, I pump that pump like there is the last time I'm going to pump that pump because I am owning it. Accountability. That pump didn't make me do it. I'm not going to make something up and say, you know, I heard some studies recently that anything less than a pump is is isn't as effective and spreads further, spreads the coronavirus.
[00:27:56] No, I pump the full pump and I dig it because I do, accountability. There's there's a concept that we often do look and try to find fault in others as more of this coping skill that if we can find fault in somebody else than what they do that, then it's a way for us to say I don't have to own what I'm doing. It's like I can let that person know that what they're doing is dumb. I mean, now I that was not a perfect Segway. I was not saying that my wife is not owning the fact that she only wants to use a little bit of hand sanitizer. I'm realizing right now in the moment that I just have some random things that are out on my page. But but I feel like that can I hope that one resonates that often when we're saying, well, we'll look at what you're doing instead is a way to not say, no, I'm owning it. I'm going to pump the heck out of my hand sanitizer. And, you know, that's what I do. I'm owning it, every bit of it. So accountability truly is the answer.
[00:28:50] I mean, it's this concept of, I mean, admitting to our own weaknesses or our own imperfections is it is a huge step in true connection, connection with yourself, connection with others. And yes, there may and will most likely be people who will take that information and feel like now they have something on us. I know now that, oh, there's Tony and his hand sanitizer thing again, but let them, you can only control your own actions. And I feel like accountability can truly feel overwhelming at times. And it will cause you, again, to feel emotion. After all, you're human. You will most likely have to sit with a little bit of those primary emotions at times. But remember that sitting with the primary emotion, that emotion is going to pass and you're going to go on to bigger and better things. You're going to own your life if you feel that primary emotion, a little bit of embarrassment, but then you turn to that secondary emotion of anger. Well, now we're just now getting angry at somebody because they're not because they're making fun of you for pumping the hand sanitizer. Who cares? Pump the hand sanitizer. If you feel a little bit silly, that's OK. You'll get through that. You'll go about your day and you won't be in this quarrel with somebody trying to now find data that backs up your position about hand sanitizer. So accountability is not a dirty word.
[00:29:57] I mean, it's about taking ownership of our own stuff, our own lives. And it can be hard, but a consistent pattern of accountability and taking ownership of our role in our situations over life, over in her life becomes over time a bit of a calling card. So people will learn, I think, that they can count on us or they can believe us for our word.
[00:30:15] So in in closing, you conclusion accountability, not a dirty word. It paves the road that paves the way to learn and develop new skills and to build deeper connections with others. And it also models the type of behavior that we want in others, in our own kids, in those around us, and it just takes the negative energy out of a situation by saying my bad, by admitting to our own faults or mistakes, then we just shed that role of a victim and we take back the power to kind of own our own behavior in that can lead to some pretty powerful changes. All right. Hey, thanks for taking the time today to to hear this. I hope that you will now go forward and find something today, even a small thing that you can just say to somebody I know I did that. I own that that's on me. And just let that power just run course through your veins.
[00:31:07] So taking us away, as always, is the wonderful, the talented Aurora Florence with her song. It's wonderful because honest to goodness, life can be pretty darn wonderful. And until we meet again, I will see you next time.
