Controlling Anger

What's up everybody?

Welcome to OneShurns.

Good to see you.

My name is Greg.

This is Kim Moorhan.

Kim is a uh clinical counselor.

Uh she has her master's in counseling from Ashland University.

Uh I don't know what the mascot is.

Go Eagles.

Eagles?

I don't know, is it?

I I don't know.

You said that last time.

Yeah, go Eagles.

Uh we have no idea if that's Ashlyn's actual mascot, but uh shout out to Ashland.

Uh Kim not only is a clinical counselor, but she trains clinicians and uh is here with us today.

And on top of all that, she's my sister.

Alright, that's my sister.

Like my sister's sister, like the one that I went and slept on her floor when the boogeyman was after me in the middle of the night, sister.

Alright.

And uh so thankful for you, Kim.

And um a couple things from our childhood that I remember.

One, I do remember sleeping on your floor quite often.

I appreciate your hospitality.

You know, you you um you know, you you kept me safe from the boogeyman, but you helped me develop toughness by sleeping on the floor.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah, I didn't I didn't tell you till much later that I also was afraid, so it kind of was a but I wasn't about to sleep on the floor.

Yeah, I have to tell you what I was very jealous of you as a child, that uh especially My brilliance.

The brilliance was that was a big part of it.

Yeah, uh the second was you never had a zit.

Yeah, true.

She has like porcelain skin, like never had a zit.

I had zits everywhere, all right?

Like every day, all the time.

So I was like, man, how'd you get by with that?

And then um, but the other thing is I remember my memories of you growing up, especially when you became like a teenager, was in your circle of friends, you were always that friend people went to when they were going through a hard time.

Um, you you just had a knack for helping people feel safe, you had a knack for helping uh people walk through things and supporting people uh even at that age.

So I I saw the seeds of what you're doing now, uh, all the way back then.

God gave you that gift.

And so thank you for going and adding education to that, adding your own life experience and other people's, and it's cool to see you do so much good with what you're doing.

And I want to say thank you for bringing it to us today.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Well Church.

I uh I asked, I actually called Kim like a month ago because I was working on this content, and uh today's message we're in a series well done.

Okay, how do we live lives well done?

Uh we want to do well with our lives, how do we do that?

So we've been talking about things like how do you deal with your stress, how do you deal, uh, overcome your pain.

And so I called Kim about a month ago on like anger, because I think everybody deals with anger in some way, and um I was I had some theories and things I wanted to run run by her, and she started dropping so many gems on me.

I was like, you know what, let's collaborate, let's do this together.

Uh, but let's let's kind of get this going.

Like um, we're we're we're Christ followers, we're Christians, uh, which does not exclude us from feeling anger or dealing with anger.

Uh let's wrestle with this question today: how should Christians deal with their anger?

Yeah, I think this is a really important topic, and to get the conversation started, I think it's important that we remember that all emotions serve a purpose.

There aren't good emotions and bad emotions.

There are clearly emotions that are easier to have, that we tend to enjoy those positive emotions more.

The negative emotions are just as important as the positive emotions.

So I think some of us had gotten an impression that when we became people of faith that that really life then turned into love and joy and peace.

And that was all we would feel.

But that's just not the case.

All emotions serve a purpose, and so anger is good.

It is you as a healthy Christian should feel angry.

And anger is intended to give you energy to actually right or wrong.

When we feel angry, it's because we either think an injustice has been done, or something that's really important to us gets blocked, and so we become angry, and that kind of burn, that energy, gives us the courage to do something about that.

And so it's important to recognize that that you can be angry and that that doesn't make you ungodly.

Yeah, I have to be honest, like it caught me off guard.

Like when I gave my life to Jesus.

Okay, I had dealt with anger all my life, right?

When I was younger, I would have outbursts of rage or or lose my temper or whatever.

And I assumed that when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, and the spirit that raised Christ from the dead lived inside of me, and I learned a few Bible verses and taught a few lessons, like all of that was gonna dissipate, I wasn't gonna have anger anymore.

And then all of a sudden I realized even though I did all of that and all of that was true, I still wanted to cuss people out sometimes, or I still I'm serious, like I still wanted to go off.

I still felt the same feelings of aggression.

So what happened is actually I felt ashamed of what I felt.

So so so then that made it worse because I felt anger, then I felt ashamed of the anger, and because of that, you know, then I wanted to deny that I felt what I felt, but then I was angry at whoever triggered me to make me feel angry because I don't want to be angry, but now I'm angry, now I'm ashamed too.

Right?

So it's just like it kept spiraling.

And you actually helped me delink shame from anger.

Like if you're angry, that's okay that you feel what you feel.

Feelings are not wrong, they're just feelings.

Right?

We're not robots, so I can't go just flip a switch and now I don't feel that anymore.

It is in me, and it's not wrong to feel that.

So once I could delink my shame from anger or feel bad that I that I feel angry, now actually I could do something productive with it.

Yeah, and I think that's really important because it's the difference between being angry and being an angry person.

It's not part of your identity.

Even if you're angry, it doesn't mean that it is part of your identity, that you can have angry feelings and not be an angry person.

So if we're looking at how to be healthy in this, I think the very first step is we have to recognize anger in our life.

We have to become aware of where it's at.

Now, for some, that's very easy.

You can find it very easy as they uh become angry, but for many people, anger had they have a complicated relationship with anger.

And anger is whether we realize it or not, is a character in the story of our life.

We all have anger as one of the characters.

So for some, that character of anger, if they were to do a little comic strip of their life, might not even be pictured on that comic strip.

Because growing up, maybe they didn't see a lot of anger.

Maybe they didn't see things that they identified easily as anger.

And so anger was like the boogeyman.

If somebody got angry, it was like a weird thing.

For some, anger was the main character in the story of their life.

And so what you have to do is figure out what kind of a story has anger had in my life, because that absolutely um affects how I interpret anger, how I become angry myself, and how I feel about anger.

So in some of our families growing up, uh anger wasn't socially acceptable.

Or maybe anger was the norm.

Or maybe everybody got mad and then no one said anything about it ever again, and you didn't know what to do with it.

So it's really important to recognize your own personal story and the character that anger has played in your life.

Yeah, so if you come from a family where it was socially unacceptable, and so we lived in artificial harmony, or we swept it under the rug, or whatever that might be, you might actually uh be living in denial that you deal with it or that it was a thing.

It just looked different, right?

So I it is interesting in Ephesians 4, 26 and 27, we'll just start in 26.

Ephesians 4, 26 says, be angry and do not sin.

So what I take that to be is it seems that there's an assumption by Paul in Ephesians 4 that we will be angry.

It doesn't say, like, hey, there's some jerks out there that get angry sometimes, and for those of you, make sure you don't sin in your anger, or hey, maybe someday, sometime something might stir you up and trigger you and make you angry.

If that would so happen, you might want to handle it.

No, it's like be angry.

Like you are going to.

Um, I actually, this was the reason I called you uh a month ago, was because I I had this theory around, okay, you have, well, think of an anger spectrum uh in terms of personality and the way it's dealt with.

You have prototypical angry people, okay?

Or people that deal with anger, right?

Prototypical.

So they're like, uh maybe they have they're effusive in their anger, um, they look angry, they got steam coming out the ears, uh, it's a volcanic eruption, it leads to aggression.

Uh when it's handled at its worst, it's abuse, it's it's uh verbal abuse or physical abuse, but that that that's the prototype.

Like if we're drawing a character, we know what that person looks like.

And usually those people know they're angry.

You know, they might even admit it, yeah, I have anger issues, I deal with.

Um and then on the other end of the spectrum, you have people that uh maybe have a different personality type, right?

So if you think of other emotions like joy, like there's some people they just they're more laid back, they're more chill, um, they're not effusive in their personality.

So even joy, like if you ever had a friend, you're like, Are you are you enjoying this?

They're like, Yeah.

Like, no, but this is awesome, right?

Like it's like like this is cool, and they're like, Yeah, this is amazing.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, they're just not that personality type.

So if joy manifests in different ways, so does anger.

And so I think because of that, sometimes it flies under the radar or it's camouflaged, even to that person, because to the one person it creates aggression and a ton of energy, and to somebody else, it might actually manifest as like I lose hope.

Um, you know, I'm actually demotivated, like I don't even want to get out of bed, and so it might look like depression or something like that, but yet actually what's in there is actually some anger, but it might even go undetected or misdiagnosed in my own mind.

Yeah, I think that that is absolutely true, and I think that the other part of this conversation that's important as well is to recognize that some people are external processors.

So as soon as something happens, they immediately have a lot of thoughts, a lot of words, a lot of maybe animation depending on their personality type, maybe not.

Um, but there are a lot of the world that they're internal processors, and internal processors aren't less intelligent, they're not like it's slower to come to some conclusions, it's the way their brain processes.

And so they might experience a situation and all these pieces come popping up, but they have to kind of get alone for that to begin to make sense, and that really influences this conversation because for one thing, those people often where the external processor is just unloading, they're they're they're figuring it out as they go along.

The internal processor is just kind of taking it all in and they can look like they're agreeing, or they can look like that they they don't care, or they can look like all sorts of things, but really their brain's just trying to kind of make sense of the story and figure out what's going on, and then later they begin to think about it and really discover how they feel about it, and so the internal processor and external processor not only influences what the anger looks like and when the anger kind of shows up, but it also influences um the relationship.

Then beyond that, there is how we deal with it, and so there are some people based on personality, like you said, who they just explode.

They say all the things, maybe they're an external processor, so they have words and feelings, and they're gonna bring it all right then in that moment.

But then there are those who their temperament kind of backs up.

They start getting a little hesitant, they start getting a little, they they begin to protect themselves a little bit.

And they could be the one that kind of they ice you out a little bit.

They might not come back yelling.

Frankly, I'd rather someone come back screaming at me because I have something to work with.

But often they just go cold and then it turns to ice and the relationship turns to ice.

And I think that it's important to recognize it can show up both ways, and and also part of it being that some is aggression and some is more passive aggressive.

It's it's a withholding of sorts.

So uh the the idea being whatever your personality type is, don't live in denial that you're dealing with anger.

Absolutely.

So the very first thing we want to do is to recognize the anger, identify it, and admit it because it's there.

The second thing we're gonna want to do is we're gonna listen to it because anger is trying to tell you something.

You wouldn't be angry if there wasn't a message to get from anger.

So I want to go inside to figure out what's going on and what is the message I need to learn from anger.

And so um, a lot of times the energy behind it can go stagnant and just become tension inside of you if you don't actually use that energy to give you courage to face that wrong that you need to write, or to face that um desire that's been blocked, or whatever it would be.

Listen to the anger, it's trying to teach you something and tell you something that's very valuable.

Yeah, so uh by the way, the the idea of delinking shame from anger, in other words, I'm not ashamed that I feel angry.

For me, the ability to do that was revolutionary in that be when I stopped feeling shame about it, then I could actually start listening to it and value it and embrace it.

And then I start learning from it.

Now it really does have value.

So until I did that, I wasn't able to learn from it.

Yeah.

Once I did, and you start listening, okay, what is this anger trying to tell me?

You start noticing patterns, you start seeing things, you start learning things.

So uh you you might notice uh a pattern, like, man, I tend to always get angry in this situation.

Or these types of people, like this certain type of person, tends to trigger me.

And I can go, why?

Why is that?

If I'm not careful, I'll just go, yeah, those people, they're so bad.

I'll I'll focus on all their bad traits.

Instead of going, what but there is a reason that that certain type of person hits, strikes a chord with me, they open up a wound in me, or they make me angry.

And so uh now I can start to get underneath that and recognizing patterns.

I remember um uh my wife and I, when we first got married, I noticed over time a pattern that we would end up getting into an argument or a fight, usually right before a big event, like something really important that was like high stakes or really important, and then we would we we would have a fight right before.

And it happened like a bunch of times, like it happened like five times in a row or something.

And I remember getting uh like noticing that pattern, and and and before I really was it dug into it, I I would just get upset with her.

I'd be like, why do you do this every time?

Like there's a big moment, a big event.

Why do you always do that?

What I didn't realize was that the the high stakes, the stress of the event, uh the worry about the event uh was causing both of us to be in a headspace where we were more irritable, uh where we were less gracious, uh, where things that normally would have just not been a big deal became a big deal, and I was just as guilty as she was, but through that lens, I felt like she was the one doing something abnormal.

Once I could notice the pattern, now I could step back and go, actually, this is what's happening.

So once I see that pattern, now I can start digging and peeling the layers back and going, well, why do I feel so much stress about that?

Maybe I feel fear about that event because I feel like if I fail at that, my identity's on the line.

You know what I mean?

I'm gonna be considered unsuccessful, or I'm gonna see myself as unsuccessful.

Well, dude, that's a whole other issue than just whatever she did to get under my, well, I think she did to get under my skin.

Like that's a whole deeper thing.

If I can deal with that, I have less pressure going into the event, right?

Or or I look and go, what am I, you know, there maybe there's a fear within that thing.

Or maybe I just don't have the tools yet to deal with stress.

So stressful situations do this to me, and then then now it causes volatility.

But it is you'll start listening to the anger, it'll show you a pattern.

That pattern has a lesson in it if you learn from it.

Absolutely.

And I you highlighted something uh about just not having the internal resources, and I think that's really important.

In in counseling, we'll often say don't deal with important things when you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

What if you're always hungry?

I mean, I'm asking for a friend.

Okay.

Then uh address it as you eat a snack.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So right after you eat.

Right.

Then I want to go to sleep.

Yeah.

So when it comes to those, well, that's another problem.

So you know what?

Set up a time with me and we'll work that through.

We'll problem solve.

Um, but the other thing to recognize is a lot of times when someone's really upset about something.

Now I'm not talking about getting cut off in traffic and being annoyed, but really upset about something, the question I almost ask is, what are you afraid of?

Because it's almost always something feels at risk in me, and and I'm I'm afraid.

And so if we can take a look at that and and really dig underneath it, we we first admit that we're feeling angry.

Second, we want to listen to it, see what's in there, dig into it a little bit, and then third, how do we deal with it appropriately?

And I would say that one of the things we want to do is we want to deal with it in an appropriate time manner.

So if you're somebody, this is gonna depend on your personality, but if you're somebody that tends to react right away, then it needs to be dealt with pretty soon, but not while you're still amped up to kind of calm down a little bit.

If you're somebody that easily lets things go and you just let things go under the carpet, then while you have that anger uh charge in you, that courage, you're gonna need to deal with it, but we wanna deal with it in the appropriate time set.

And then I think secondly, what's one of the most important things is that you need to know, we each have to figure out what are our warning signs.

We need to get to know ourselves and let our awareness around the issue of anger really raise.

And so, for example, for me, I I've got a tell with anger, and my tell is I start feeling this urgency, and I'm like, I gotta deal with this now.

Like, I need I got all the words I've got right now.

And so for some, they may their tell may be I don't want to get together with anyone, I'm kind of completely by myself, and you've got to figure out what is it for you that begins to let you know, hey, there's some anger kind of going on.

What's your tell?

Yeah, I actually I I talked about some of this a little bit last year with the church because I so I think you've got like the moments, like you said, like something that takes you from zero to a hundred real quick, right?

Like you're like, man, I uh something makes me want to blow my fuse, right, in a moment.

But then I think there's also if you were to fly to 10,000 feet and look at your life in seasons, um like, hey, I'm hungry right now or I'm tired right now, in terms of within this 24 hours, but there's also like I'm exhausted now in this season.

I'm so tired, which then means in some way I better find rest and restoration or healing or whatever.

Otherwise, in this whole season, I'm irritable.

Yeah.

So uh last year I took some extended time off last summer to try to rest because I found myself in that zone.

And and for me, actually, it was uh I had an somewhat embarrassing situation.

I I had a I mishandled a conflict with a really good dude, really good guy.

Um, it was one of those things uh he was under my skin, and I was uh I I've I believed this lie in my own head over the years that I can just say one sentence and be done.

You know what I mean?

Like he he was talking and I was saying to myself, don't say anything.

Because if you say anything, I open my mouth as a pressure release valve, right?

Like you think about words of affirmation are how you show love, but the same way you show love is also how you inflict pain.

So so, like for me, like I'm I I want to chew you out, or I might want to give you a peace of my mind or whatever.

And so this guy uh in my mind I thought, don't say anything.

And then I thought, well, just say this one sentence and you'll be done because it's well-crafted sentence.

And um and then I opened my mouth and the floodgates uh opened up, and it felt so good I couldn't stop.

You know, I just and by the way, I have over the years thought that everyone's feeling as good as I am in that moment because I feel like I'm letting off steam and I'm thinking this gotta everybody's feeling the feeling this, you know, this is relieving to everyone, but actually, I'm just transferring the pressure over to them.

Um, anyway, I did that and and I didn't do right by this guy, so I had to call him and apologize.

And sincerely, I felt terrible uh later.

And uh and then I talked to a mentor and he asked me that that question, you know, he's like, Well, man, how do you know?

You know, like you know when your gas tank's on E because it comes up and you run out of gas, but like, how do you know you're emotionally on E?

How do you know you're mentally?

Like, what are those warning signs?

And I didn't know, I didn't have an answer, so I just floundered around a bit in the conversation and worked my way finally to something, and I realized what it was.

My my first warning sign is the desire to be mean.

Like, I hadn't even been mean yet, I hadn't even said anything yet, but I the fact that I want to be mean because when I'm in good health and good energy, I don't want to be mean, I want to be the nicest guy in the world, man.

I just want to help people out.

I want to be generous, like I want to throw my weight into helping everybody I can, but when I'm emotionally in debt or I'm exhausted or I'm angry, I start, I start wanting to be mean, but I'm a preacher, man.

I can't be mean, so I gotta I gotta live vicariously through mean people.

Like I see somebody do something mean, I'm like, get them, bro.

You know, I like find myself attracted to mean comedians, you know what I mean?

I'm like, oh, that's funny.

You know, I I can't say that, but she did, you know.

That was get them, girl.

Like, I I like, you know, but again, the fact that I even feel that way, because when I'm in good energy, like if somebody's mean, even if it's funny, I'm like, oh, come on, you know, don't do that.

Like, that's not real.

Right?

Like, and so so when I recognize that trigger, uh, now I can start dealing with it.

And I do think it's important to deal with it at its onset as early as possible.

By the way, I want to throw this a little in as well.

Like you mentioned, your personality type being when you feel angry, you want to go deal with it right now.

And and and I think it's wise to deal with it, but to understand what deal with it means.

Because deal with it the wrong way, it might be the wrong time for you to go knock on their door because they didn't answer your text.

You know what I mean?

I text you, I called you, didn't answer.

We're gonna do this right like we need to have this conversation right now.

Well, you can deal with it right now or start dealing with it right now, but dealing with it doesn't necessarily mean we need to talk about it right now with them.

Because there may need to be, we don't want to become an iceberg and become icy, but we might need to cool off a bit.

So dealing with it isn't just one thing, like, hey, we're gonna talk this out.

It may not be the moment for that.

You might not be in the right headspace, they might not be in the right headspace, um, but being proactive is the move.

Uh, it says in Ephesians 4, 26, okay, let's go back to that.

Be angry and do not sin.

Look what it says next.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

Okay, don't let the sun go down on your anger.

That's not saying legalistically you have to be past your anger by sundown.

Because that's not always possible.

Yeah, there's some things you can move on and be cool by bedtime, but there's plenty of things that are so big, there's no way you're gonna just move past it by the time you go to bed.

So it's not saying that you should be over your anger, it's essentially saying deal with your anger immediately.

Don't let it grow into something.

And now think about this.

Let's connect a few dots in scripture real quick.

Okay, so don't let the sun go down, be proactive.

Think about Galatians 5 that talks about the fruit of the Spirit.

So the evidence of the Spirit.

In other words, if the Holy Spirit's working in your life, this will be some of the fruit.

One of them is self-control.

Think about that.

It's not that you're a bystander and God comes down and just controls you.

It's actually the ability to control yourself.

And so when Paul says in Ephesians 4, deal with your anger quickly, don't let the sun go down, and he says, so you don't give the enemy a foothold or an opportunity to the devil, is essentially this.

If I don't deal with this quickly, that fire could rage out of control, and now a fire extinguisher ain't gonna get it done because it's burning down the forests.

It's raging.

Or I've gone so icy, I didn't just have a little bit of ice, I am like a polar ice cap.

And it's gonna take a very long time for me to thaw out or unfreeze.

And so the idea of getting it quickly at its onset.

Again, let's connect another dot.

In James chapter one, James says, hey, temptation leads to sinful action.

Sinful action leads to death.

By the way, temptation doesn't have to lead to sinful action, but temptation has a tendency to live, uh lead us to sinful action.

Temptation doesn't lead to death, it leads to sinful action that leads to death.

What is anger?

Anger often creates a temptation.

I'm tempted to go off.

I'm tempted to burn this place to the ground.

I'm tempted to shut everybody out.

I'm tempted to be vindictive.

I'm tempted one way or another.

And so how do I overcome that temptation and don't just have it manifest as a sinful action?

Well, I do it by catching it as quickly as I can.

I get on it, I start dealing with it, I don't let the sun go down on my anger, I don't give the enemy a foothold, and the quicker I get it, the quicker I keep it from going to a raging fire or to becoming a huge glacier.

Here's the thought I want to leave you with.

If you don't catch anger before it becomes rage, it will catch fire and do irreparable damage.

You don't want to do that.

Yeah.

So you highlighted this a lot of places where you had self-awareness, and I think that's one of the big challenges is that often we we want our motives to be right.

We want, we, we want to think that we're thinking the best and it's and and and aiming for the best, but honestly, we have to really look at our motives and get really gut honest with ourselves and recognize that whatever is in there, I don't want it to stay in there.

I want that to be able to come up and out.

So we're gonna deal with it quick.

We're gonna we're gonna uh deal with anger at its onset.

Secondly, we're gonna look for the warning signs, we're gonna become as self-aware as we can.

And then thirdly, I I'd like to propose that I think dealing with anger is a spiritual practice.

I think it is truly something that we need the Holy Spirit to help us with.

Holy Spirit, give me self-control.

Sometimes self-control is keeping myself from doing something, sometimes self-control is making myself do something, and so to recognize that I need the Lord's help with this, that in my own nature, I want to get even, I want to be understood, I want to hurt or to to be um someone who can get my own needs met.

But in my in Christ, when I am Christ, I'm a new creation.

And so I go to Christ and I say, Lord, I only have so much energy in a day.

Please don't let me spend my energy on this thing that is weighing me down.

And I begin to, as a spiritual practice, say, Lord, I surrender every day of the week.

I am going to mess this up.

Every day of the week I'm gonna go for what serves me.

But Lord, I need to have your mind.

I need to have your heart.

And so one of the things I pray is, Lord, please take my heart from this.

And I and then I ask him to help me see the other person's side and how to how he loves them and how I love them.

And so I think um I take Jesus' example, and on the cross he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

And in that moment, I believe that he was talking about the centurions, I think he was talking about those who were crucifying him, but I think he was talking about his friends that betrayed him, and I think he was talking about you and me, knowing that we would only kind of see through a glass darkly, and it would be, you know, our motives wouldn't always be obvious.

And so he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

So I want to go to Corinthians, second Corinthians, and take every thought captive.

And so as soon as early as I can, I want to grab that thing and say, in the name of Jesus, give me the power to operate in who you've created me to be to take authority.

I I love that.

You know, you you're referring to it as a spiritual practice.

You know, it's interesting you look at a lot of Paul's language is proactive in terms of us taking action with the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, like, for example, he says, throw off this or take on that, right?

That's that's active on our part.

Like you said, the you the verse you just quoted, take every thought captive.

Right?

Anger can capture me, and and and then I I start doing what it says, versus Paul flipping it and saying, No, you have the power.

You've been given the power of the Holy Spirit to control yourself to actually take a thought and letting instead of letting it run rampant and make a fool out of you and make you do stuff that you'll regret, and and and now I have to be uh in the sinful action or I have to respond this way.

No, you're empowered, throw that off, take this on, take that thought captive.

Like that's powerful, powerful language.

Um, all right, let's get a couple rapid fire and then we'll be done.

Yeah, um, you you you talk to me about secondary gain.

Sometimes people can't let go of anger because it's giving them something over here they don't want to let go of.

Yeah, so with secondary gain, I'm getting something from this.

So maybe, you know, I don't like to be angry because I don't want to be a mean person, but maybe somehow it feels like that anger is protecting me.

Or sometimes I people will feel like if I give that up, then I'm saying whatever that person did is okay.

And so there's this false sense of like protection from it, and so there's a secondary gain.

Or sometimes when something's happened to us, around that anger and that um that thing that was horrible, we get this care from the community around us.

And so if I forgive, if I no longer have that to rant about, well, how am I gonna get my needs met?

And so usually that's not conscious, but it's really important to take a look because if you if this thing keeps coming up and you're trying to problem solve and it's not going away, then there's something that's maybe locking it into place and you may be getting a secondary gain from that.

Yeah, I encourage you actually, uh, those can be really hard to see, right?

Like what you just said, like, because actually the thing that might have helped you start to heal at now at the phase you're in is actually blocking your next step, right?

So, like when you when it first happened and and the injustice took place or somebody wounded you and you went and your friends rallied and they were they were supporting you and they were angry on your behalf and they were angry at that person, and and that felt good.

The people loved you like that and they supported you like that.

Um, but then the idea that maybe I'm holding on to this because this keeps reminding me that they're supporting me instead of going, if I move past it, you know, I won't have that evidence.

That's a hard thing to see in your own head.

And I think there's a lot of those types of secondary gains, whether it's, hey, I feel nobility in the fact that I was victimized and I feel more noble here, or uh, you know, I was on the wrong end of it, and so like to give that up uh now gives up that feeling.

There's a lot of stuff in there.

Uh, I would encourage you to pray and ask the Lord, Lord, would you show me maybe something I'm holding on to that's keeping me from being able to move past this?

I'm gonna give you one more thing and then and then we'll uh we'll go back into worship.

Um I want to talk real quick about appropriate ways to vent.

Okay, so so I mentioned earlier about the pressure release.

This is bottled up, don't deny it.

Whether you tend to go ice or fire, okay, whatever your personality type, how do I deal with it?

I I want to give you uh just a real quick grid to work on.

All right, you're thinking, how am I gonna vent this?

Think who, what, when, where, and why.

Who, what, when, where, and why.

Who?

Who do I vent to?

I would encourage you, like when you're going to do this, you need to find somebody who's wise, somebody who's mature, uh, somebody who you trust, not not necessarily your ride or die best friend.

All right, because your sorority sister or your fraternity brother may not have the maturity in the moment to guide you in the right direction.

Sometimes we're in when we're in anger, we could kind of go either way.

And and so, like you might have uh somebody who rouse you up when you actually need somebody to calm you down, or you might have somebody that's calming you down when you actually need to be stirred up.

So, someone that has the wisdom to understand the situation, to know you well enough, to give you good guidance, wisdom, make prayerful decisions, and and also who is the appropriate person to talk to?

Okay, so hey, I I don't want to go vent to my dad about my husband, okay, because that's gonna now affect that relationship.

Or uh, you know, I don't want to go vent to my kids about my wife, okay, because now that that's confused everything.

I'm making them pick, okay.

I don't want to do that.

Who is the appropriate person?

So who, what, what do we need to talk about?

I I think this is one I've learned the hard way over the years.

Like, I always thought going right to the person and telling them everything uh was like the courageous, honorable character thing to do.

I think there are some things that in a safe space you need to work through, and then I need to really think through what do I need to say to that person.

You don't need to go necessarily say everything to everybody that you think and feel and call that just being honest.

All right, there's some wisdom in that.

And so uh one of my mentors says, everything that's said needs to be true, but not everything that's true needs to be said.

So sometimes you gotta work that out over here and then only say this because now I can't unsay it.

Do I really want to put that on them?

When, when is a big deal?

When is a huge deal?

Okay, is do we need to have this conversation right now?

The fact that you said you know your trigger is like, dude, I want to have it right now.

Well, you might go, we need to have the conversation in a few days because I gotta calm down.

I know this is not the right time.

Or maybe they're not receptive right now, they're hurting too much, right?

They need some space.

And so the win is really, really critical.

Um, where?

Where's a big deal?

Should we have this right here, right now?

Is this the right place?

Should we work this out in front of people?

Okay, is this do we work this out on the internet?

Is it should I post about this?

Like, like what do I do?

The where is tremendously important if the goal is progress.

The the last one is why?

And I think you gotta be honest with yourself.

Why am I doing this?

Am I doing this uh trying to be vindictive?

Am I doing this uh because I need a pound of flesh?

Am I doing this so that I can grow, so that they can grow?

Is am I really trying to grow through this?

Why, why am I doing this?

So I think if you kind of uh work your way through those things, it'll help you to be honest uh with yourself and actually have a good plan moving forward.

Hey, would you put your hands together and give it up for Kim More?

I'm gonna invite you to stand up on your feet.

We're gonna take a moment and we're gonna go back into worship.

Uh, but I want to encourage you, whatever you walked in with today, to take a moment.

And instead of allowing uh maybe anger, whether it's icy or or hot, uh, to cause you shame or to have you dealing with it on your own or trying to cope with it, allow the Holy Spirit right now to stir up actually hope that you can get beyond coping into healing.