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Welcome back to we can do hard things. We have one of our dearest pod friends here with us today.

She's a pod icon.

She's a pod icon is what she is. She's Podcon.

She's a pod icon.

She's just out there changing lives all over the place. Dr. Becky Kennedy is here today. Dr. Becky Kennedy is a clinical psychologist, bestselling author, mom of three. She's rethinking the way we raise our children, and in that, she's making us all rethink everything in the world. She has been named the millennial parenting whisperer, which honestly kind of annoys me because I feel like that is really ignoring all of Gen X, as per usual. But that's fine. By Time magazine. Dr. Becky is the author of the number one New York times bestseller, good Inside a guide to becoming the parent you want to be, which is just even if you're not a parent, just, by the way, none of that matters. It doesn't matter if you're not a parent, because everything that Dr. Becky says applies to every relationship in your life and maybe most importantly, your relationship with yourself.

Totally.

And how to reparent yourself helps me reparent myself. Yes. She is the founder of the good Inside membership platform and host of the chart topping podcast good Inside with Dr. Becky. Babe, tell Dr. Becky what happened this morning at your big, loud, sweaty gym.

Okay.

So sitting there, and usually there's like a few minutes before everybody gets started, and this gentleman in there, he was talking about his three year old and a new baby on the way, and all the other women were giving him notes, and he said, well, have you ever heard of Dr. Becky? And I said, no, I'm actually speaking with her today. And he was like, are you kidding me? She's guiding me and my wife through this process of parenting. And I just thought that that was a little fun. Little tidbit. It's not just the moms of the world. The fathers of the world are hearing you loudly, Dr. Becky.

I love the idea of just these dudes, like, doing those weights and grunting and then saying, have you heard of Dr. Becky in between? Yeah. I feel like that's a revolution.

It is.

Hi.

Hi, guys. No, thank always. You three always know how to make me feel good. I woke up really early today. It was one of those tough nights of sleep and so sudden boost of energy seeing you three. Thank you.

Well, we talked recently about we're always just like, can you come back? And then what do you want to talk about? Just tell us when you get here. Dr. Becky, we know it's going to be good. But you asked if we could talk about mom rage, and I was like, what's right? Right? So sister didn't even know of what you speak. And I have been thinking a lot about it since you suggested that we discuss mom Rage. And I want to say before we start that everything we're going to discuss today I have applied to wife rage, woman in culture rage, sensitive human rage, queer rage, news rage. It applies to every part of our lives. What we're going to discuss today, which is rage, why we have it, and what we do with it. But starting with mom Rage, I love, because I've been thinking this morning about when I was raising my little ones when they were little. I will tell you, mom Rage for me doesn't last when they're older. It's different now. I mean, it's a little bit of a mom low grade terror, but it's not the same as when you're raising young kids.

And I remember, Dr. Becky, I was thinking about whether I was going to tell this story or not, and I am going to tell it because we're never allowed to tell these stories and we're always afraid they're going to come take our kids away. And my kids are pretty much grown, almost emancipated.

Good luck.

Come get them.

Old enough ish.

So if you want to come get them, that's fine.

I'm not sure what you're going to.

Do with them, but I just want to say that I remember I actually wrote in Carrie on Warrior that while my kids were little, I felt like a dormant volcano. Like I was constantly just going to explode at any moment and trying to look calm. And I want to say I was trained for raising small children. I was an early childhood education major. I was a teacher of children. So I had every single skill you're supposed to have to be able to do this. Well, most people are just like, I don't know, they're a freaking engineer and somebody gives them a child and they have to figure it out. So I don't know how people do that. I will tell you that I had one moment, many moments, but I'll tell you about one where I had one in the tub. It was after a twelve hour day of being alone with three kids, talking to no one. I had one in the tub, one very cranky one who wouldn't stop screaming, and another one who was, like, hungry and needed dinner. And I was sitting by the tub, and I've been, after a very long day.

And the very cranky one who was standing in the hallway, she came and she started screaming again.

I can't believe you're going to tell this story.

And I just took the door of the bathroom and Dr. Becky, I slammed that fucking door so hard in this child's face. She was three. Slammed the door so hard, so close to her that it scared the living hell out of her. It scared the living hell out of me. And we recovered. I didn't know about repair back then, so I think I just said that it was the wind.

It's a windy, windy bathroom.

But I just want to start, there's probably so many people listening who have done things that are not that dramatic, who have done things that are more dramatic. And we're never allowed to talk about it because, well, we're going to talk about why we can't talk about it. But I remember mom rage all too well. So, Dr. Becky, what is mom?

Oh, first of all, thank you for sharing that story. And I also. Let me just start right away. Yes. I've had moments where I look at myself after. They're like, such out of body moments. I was like, did I just say that to my kid? Did I just use that tone? I don't believe in calling my kid a spoiled brat and saying this whole lecture and shooting these dart eyes. And I, too, have been there. I think every parent who loves their kid has been there. So when I think about what mom rage is, I actually think it's helpful first to say what it isn't, because mom Rage does not mean you're a bad parent. It does not mean you're a monster. It does not mean there's something wrong with you. It does not mean you've messed up your kid forever. It doesn't mean any of those things.

Great.

To me, what mom rage means is it's this combination of not having our needs met, not having any skills to manage anger, which I'm sure we'll get to, is one of our most important protective emotions. And shame. Right. And just sharing stories can help with that element. Not having your needs met, not having skills to manage anger and shame is a very combustible situation. And then it takes, as we all know, one tiny thing, and it is the match for this really explosive, scary moment. And you said it, glenn, in a way that it's scary to. It's. It's scary to know as well as to other people.

I just feel like it's made to be this deficiency of, you don't have what it takes. But for me, I feel like it's just, like, proof of human limit. There is a limit to one's capacity to respond to demands. Demands of physical touch or mental load or incessant problem solving, or just, like, the verbal abuse that children feel.

Yeah, what the hell?

The sensory overload, the time requirements. Even by tiny humans that you love, there is a limit. And so mom rage just occurs at the intersection between all of those demands and the human limit of you. And it should be unsurprising. But it isn't, because we have this myth that if a mom loves her kids enough, there will be no limit, and she will find a never ending well of patience and whatever resources to draw upon. But that isn't true. Humans have limits, and we butt up against them. And if other people, like, for example, if there's no such thing as dad rage, perhaps that just means that they are not in the position to butt up against those limits as much as.

Moms are to me, this way of describing it is really powerful as, like, a reframe, right? It's like a metaphor. Okay. So, to me, what moms do is metaphorically, with our emotions. We feed everybody. We feed everybody around us. We put things on the calendar. We show up for them. We go to soccer games. We do all of the things. And if you think about that as food, you're constantly feeding your kids or maybe even probably also family members around you. And if you think about what it would be like at the end of day one when you fed everyone else but literally never fed yourself, you'd probably be hungry, okay? But now it's day two. Now it's day three, and your body is probably giving you signals that you need to eat. And women have become expert at avoiding and pushing away those signals because acknowledging and taking care of our own needs has probably been learned to be threatening in our earliest relationships. So we ignore, and we ignore. And we ignore. Okay, well, what would happen if you went a week without eating? Actually, think about how loud the signal would need to be in your body to get you to eat.

I know in my body, you would have to be like, becky, stop. I have tried to have hunger signals in your stomach. I have tried to alert you, and I am actually going to scream out and take over your entire body to protect you, because anything at a lower level has not been heard. Like, when I think about moms and our needs in this way, because anger, at the end of the day is just a feeling that tells you what you need. That's what anger is. And by the time it converts to rage. We're starving. We're starving.

Isn't it interesting that anger is what tells us what we need, and anger is shamed out of women. So why would that be? Because if women start listening to anger as a signal towards what we need and start demanding it and taking it, then all of culture must be rearranged.

All of it. Wow. Yeah. And we can break this down to be smaller, right? Because I know sometimes I'm like, okay, my day to day life. I don't know if I'm changing patriarchy on my own, but how does this just even apply in our day to day lives for anyone listening? We all have mini anger signals really reframed as something I might need for myself. It might be as simple as I've been running around my house. I just need to sit on my couch. I need to sit on my couch for five minutes in relative stillness. Or I need. I don't know, to see my friends. Like, I need to see my friends separate from our kids. There are these needs we have. And when you pause and connect that to anger, we're probably actually not just angry at our kids. We're angry because our body is saying, yes, you have a legitimate need, and you haven't taken care of that need in a long time. And then what we say to ourselves is, what's wrong with me? I'm a horrible parent. We push it away. And, yes, any feeling we put a lot of energy toward pushing down has that much more energy to spring out of our body in an inopportune moment.

And this is why so many women out there, mothers especially, but so many women struggle to know what they want because they've put so many other people's needs in front of their own. I mean, stuff like, what do I want for dinner? It's like a foreign concept. And then that's also angering. How do I not know what I want? Well, it's this whole system, and you're doing it also to yourself in these family dynamics that you just keep giving instead of taking.

Do you think it's annoying, Dr. Becky, that it's called mom because, like, road rage is people getting mad because there's too much? So, like, why is it called mom rage instead of, like, too many demands and not enough needs met? Bullshit. Rage. Do you know what I mean? Why don't we have another name for it? Because that shames the person that shames the mother. Like, it's something wrong with me, as opposed to there's something wrong with the system in my home or in my culture, where I am supposed to be superhuman.

Yeah, I appreciate that. Reframe. I guess, to me, the way I see it and why I think mom Rage is just almost useful to compare to dad Rage, as an example, is, I think the reason for dad rage, they're generally different societal, sociological reasons. So when I think about the term mom rage, I don't think about it as much as blame, but differentiating. Like, why do women tend to have anger separately when their parents from maybe their male counterparts? But certainly our anger comes from the system that was not set up to support us, to help us.

And it makes it seem like when you say mom rage, it makes it seem like it has to do with the relationship between the mother and the child. And that's what pisses me off, because actually, it's not my fault. And a kiddo, it's not your fault. We don't have enough help around here. This mom rage thing is robbing both of us. It's not a kid's fault at all. So it doesn't really have to do with the relationship as much as lack of support around the relationship.

Yeah.

Is mom rage more common for some moms than others? Or are there moms that don't have mom rage? I haven't met any.

Yes. I think that before we become parents, we think a lot about swaddles and things like that. But probably any of us now who are parents look back saying, I think what probably really mattered was checking in about my boundary setting is checking in about how am I at doing things for myself, even if it involves inconveniencing others. Those things preexist having kids. We all have kind of different tendencies there. They then get massively exacerbated when we have kids, because being a mom is being put into this caregiver role. And if at that point, you haven't established, for many reasons, kind of practices around setting boundaries, thinking about what you need proactively taking care of yourself. Abby, what you said, I think about that a lot. Most women, you know your needs when they're not met, as opposed to proactively asking for them to be met. But that probably predated having kids also. Right. And so I think that the moms who don't struggle with this as much, we all get there, I think, would say, yeah, I actually do feel decent about setting boundaries. I do feel okay holding those boundaries. Even when people are upset.

I don't tend to feel responsible for other people's feelings. I care about other people's feelings, don't get me wrong. But I don't feel responsible for changing the way I live my life when I know I'm doing something good for myself. Just because other people are upset. Yes. And that is why, to me, the system 100% has to change. And I also believe there's things we can do as individuals while we're waiting that really help us build boundaries, help us protect our time. That's really important proactively. So we're all just a little bit less vulnerable to those moments that, again, really feel bad for us.

And again, when we build those boundaries. And I think about our family system a lot. Glenn and I take a lot of time during the day to make sure that we are taking care of ourselves. And what we're teaching our kids, our daughters especially, is that that's paramount. Take care of yourself. Put your mask on first before you can go out and help the other people. So this isn't just about you. This is also teaching our children how we get to set our own boundaries for their futures in their lives.

Yes. And, Glenn, that's the line I think I see quoted almost as much as anything else from untamed. The way we parent is a model for our kids. Right. We don't want to continually pass on the idea that motherhood is not martyrdom. And you don't pass that on with your language. You pass it on because your kids are watching your decisions. Right? I mean, here I am in California on a work trip, and before I left, yeah, two of my kids were like, why are you going? And you're missing this 100% legitimate feelings. And to me, it was very important to say, look, I understand that you're feeling this way. And here's what I'm doing on this trip, and I want to be honest with you. I feel really lit up by those things. I love those, and I'm not trying to even say. And that makes me a better mom to you. I don't even know. I think it's so interesting how we've had to justify self care as a form of caregiving. It's like, very od to me. Why don't I just deserve that period?

I'm resting because it makes me more efficient later. It's like, no resting to rest, assholes.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yes. And I do think about the intergenerational impact of, I feel so strongly in my own small family of at least knowing there'll be three kids out there if they choose to have partners who say, oh, motherhood is not self sacrificed. That's not what it is.

I love the psychologist Zilman, who is the one that figured out that the psychological effects of rage can last for days, and that the rage builds on rage so that you have these repeated aggravations that they call a sequence of provocations that build on each other. So the last one is when you lose your entire shit. And I was like, what is motherhood other than a sequence of provocations? That is the definition. And I feel like it's important to call out the elephant in the room, which is like, you can have boundaries with partners and work people and figure that out. But let's be real that often a parent's relationship with their kids is one that in any other context we would describe as a bad relationship, not treat us well. And if you had a friend that was in a relationship with someone who talked to them like your toddler talks to them, you would insist that her dignity and mental health requires that she leave their ass, but we can't. And so these provocations, it's different in some ways, right? They can treat us like absolute shit and we just have to be provoked and keep trucking like this is a reality.

Right. Dr. Becky, maybe you should talk to the.

Know. I know it's often the quickest solution. People say, but can't you just help my kid not do these things? And then I won't react that way. I understand.

You can't make them change. I'm just telling you, we spend years in a bad relationship provoked and trying to keep our shit together.

Yes, Anne, I'm going to push back on that a little bit, okay? Because to me, there's a difference between staying connected to our kids and feeling abused by our kids. And I do think boundaries come into play and it's a dance and you don't get it. Exactly right. Nobody does. But I don't know. Your kids are, I hate you and you're the worst mom in the world all the time. And you're meaning well. My whole life is taking care of you, right. So it feels very provocative. I don't recommend. And people will say to me, Dr. Becky, I'm doing what you said. I just sit there and I say it's okay to be mad. And I'm like, why are you doing like, I don't think I ever said that. Please don't say that and let your feelings out. And I'm like, oh, my goodness, that feels like close intention wise. Right? But what I would recommend in that situation is, again, if it's over and over is like, hey, I know you're upset and I care about that. And I also know you have another way to say that to me. And I cannot stay in this room while you say that to me over and over.

You're allowed to be mad. I'm going to take a deep breath. You can as well. And I actually really do want to figure this out. So let's find other language so I can stay in this conversation. We don't have to sit there and just, quote, be a kid's punching bag. But the alternative to that doesn't have to be, you're an awful kid. No iPad for a week. There's a lot in between.

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If someone asked you directly, like, why have we learned that anger is bad? Why have we learned that anger is something we should not show? Because moms, do we even feel angry? We feel guilty.

Yeah, well, anger is one of our most visceral emotions, especially as a kid. And our emotions are put there for evolution, right? They have evolutionary purposes, and our anger really puts us in touch with what we want and need. That's what our anger does. And again, that's useful, because when I'm older, if I'm in a relationship where someone isn't treating me well, I would hope I'd be like, you know what? I want someone to talk to me respectfully. I feel angry. That's a useful sign that my body's telling me this is not in alignment with my values. But when our kids are young, anger is also one of the most powerful feelings we have, right? And to me, the essence of what's hard in kids is that kids are born with all the feelings and none of the skills. And when it comes to managing feelings, you need skills. And the hardest feeling to manage is anger. So for kids, when they express anger, which is really, if you think about it, a tantrum. A tantrum is a kid's way of saying, I know what I want, and you're getting in my way of getting what I want.

Right? Still a hard thing for adults to experience, but definitely pretty messy for kids. And they are massively inconvenient to parents. That's what tantrums are. They're just ball of inconvenience. You're like, this is not what I want to deal with. I'm trying to get through the grocery store. I want to have a nice night. So what do we do to kids, and especially to little girls, because we have much less tolerance for their not, quote, good, compliant, easy, whatever we call it is euphemistic for please don't have any needs, and please don't make my life inconvenient at all. We send them to their room. Or we say, we don't do that in our family. And what do kids, and especially little girls learn? We take moments as kids and we learn attachment lessons, because as kids, you're not learning moment to moment. You have to make generalities to function in the world and to draw bigger conclusions about what's safe and what's expected and what's dangerous. So what do you learn? You don't learn. My mom doesn't like when I have a tantrum about ice cream. No, the lesson is when I get angry, people go away.

Yes.

And that's scary. And so it becomes very adaptive for your body to layer fear, to actually say that entire part of you that wants things for yourself, the signal for that is anger, but it's really just a part that wants things for yourself is not compatible with attachment. And when I go to those quote mom rage moments, let's say we're going to rename it, but let's just call it that for clarity. For this moment, I actually think that young part of us that wants things for herself, she's the one who's screaming out, she takes over our body. And in that moment and all the moments before when we've kind of closeted her, she's saying, hey, I'm here. And remember, I'm here to protect you. I know what you want. You need me. You need me. Listen to me. She's desperately screaming out.

It'S a tantrum. It's a grown up tantrum.

I think in tantrums, kids are really learning about their relationship with desire. And desire is anger. It's really closely connected.

Okay, so a mom, a person, a human, because this works in marriage, too, right? Rage is an unmet need. It works in every arena because I just feel like I'm starting to truly, through therapy, et cetera, understand when I am angry, what I want and need and what need I'm not getting and actually getting it. This is amazing. Incredible.

This is amazing.

This is amazing. Talk to the person who is me two years ago. Like, talk to the woman who is like, I don't know. I am furious. I'm a volcano. But I don't know how that's attached to my needs. I wouldn't know where to start.

Yeah. So here's what I'd start with. I would just start by saying to ourselves, and we can say this right now, because right after those moments, we're still so raw, it's hard to do anything new. Like, usually after those moments, if this is a new thing for you to try to be curious and compassionate with yourself. The best thing to do is just pure grounding, sensory breathing, naming things in the room. Super simple. That's all. Our body and brains can handle anyone. But in this moment, I find a lot of power when I just tell myself, Becky, every struggle has a story to tell everyone. Every rage moment that is a struggle has a story to tell. There's a story there. And understanding the story, this is where we conflate things doesn't, quote, make it okay. Like, we collapse. Oh, so it's okay. Understanding isn't approval. They're very different things. Understanding the story under a moment of rage helps us figure out what led to that moment. And I don't know anyone who thinks you can change your behavior if you don't know what led to the behavior in the first place. And so when you remind yourself, okay, this struggle, there's a deeper story, and it's an important story, like giving yourself that there's something important here, there's something to understand, and then reminding yourself to separate.

And this, to me, is always key. Like, I am a good person. That's my identity, who, let's say, had a rage moment. And if that's new, you'll watch those two things collapse so fast. I'm a horrible person. It's like, wow, okay, they just collapsed. My horrible moment somehow became, I'm a horrible person. We cannot reflect from that place. We cannot reflect because all of our energy is trying to figure out our goodness. We can't do any problem solving. We can't do any future planning from that state. We're in an abyss. And so when people say to me, am I letting myself off the hook? I'm like, if you want to let yourself off the hook for change, blame and shame yourself, that's the best way. You will not be able to change. If you want to keep yourself on the hook for change, remind yourself you're a good person underneath. Tell yourself that over and over. I'm a good person who is having a hard time. I've said that to myself eight times in a bathroom, 28 times. And something does kind of loosen a little bit, and then you can start to be curious.

And to me, a really important question after those moments isn't just what happened in that moment is only a part of it. I think we're saying, you get yourself to the cliff, you're going to fall off the cliff. It's not that useful to be like, well, why did I fall off the cliff when I was standing on the cliff. I think the better question is, like, when did I start driving down that road that ended in the cliff? Right. And we do. It's, like, laughable when you say it that way. But that's what we say to ourselves all the time. And usually that actually leads to something really productive to, again, make it more concrete. I know for me, exercising three days a week for 20 minutes, I don't do anything fancy. Abby, I'm not going to your gym. But that's all. And if I don't, my body feels different. I don't feel as capable and strong. I really don't. And I'll be like, oh, it's interesting. For the last three weeks, I've kept saying, oh, I can't do it for this reason, or, I have to be up to work. There's always these excuses.

Or when I look at my calendar, I'll say, wow. The number of appointments I have for work or picking up something for my kids or driving around versus the number of appointments I have for myself, that ratio is always off. But it's way off. And then when I start to intervene from there, it's not magic. It's not like. And then I never yelled at my kids again. Of course not. But it does really shift things. Yeah.

Because it's just taking care of your human self. I feel like in my moments of mom rage, which, by the way, if you don't have, like, a door slamming or screaming, if your mom rage, to me, I don't know if you've seen lost daughter or read that book. Okay. It's basically about mom rage. You have to see it. And the movie is beautiful. And there's just this moment where the mom, she's overwhelmed, and she has two little girls, and she's a beautiful mother who loves her kids, and she just grabs her daughter, and you just see her squeeze just a little too hard. I feel that moment in my bones. I see it as is a desperate reasserting of, I am a human being, too. I am human. I am human.

That's right.

And I think that's what mom rage was to me.

Like a.

No, I am human.

Yes.

And I'm as human as you are.

And that's why the shame and how we don't. Because I think in those moments, you're right. And I've had these moments with my kids in a power struggle or in a moment where I'm screaming, where I look back and I'm like. I think, in a way, I was looking for my kid to validate me oh, you're having a hard time too. Like I was looking for my five year old to say, okay, I know we're in this power struggle but you do have a point about wearing my jacket and I know you're doing that from a place of protection. I think by going after him you have to wear your jacket. Don't you know you have to wear a jacket? I was looking for him to say that and it's not a perfect antidote. Nothing is. But I do know when I've had a more recent conversation with one of my friends and just be like, how annoying are five year olds? Oh my goodness. How hard is it to parent a five year old? Or when I do, as cheesy as it sounds like, say that to myself more often. This parenting thing is hard.

I know I'm a good parent trying to take care of my five year old and he makes it so hard. And I look at myself in the mirror once in a while and say, becky, no one's saying this to you right now, but you could say it to yourself. It's better than hoping your five year old does. You are a loving parent who's trying and we're going to go out there and get the morning rush and you and I know I say in the mirror like we're doing this from a place of love. Let's go get them again. I feel like I've stepped four steps back from the. Which can make a really big difference versus being right at the edge.

Yeah, it's so important because it's like that is so counterintuitive that when you have a rage moment where you know that they didn't deserve that you feel like complete shit for it. None of that was commensurate. Like it was a little thing that the huge thing came out of. That is the exact opposite moment where you're going to look at yourself and be like, babe, you need some things. I'm giving you extra grace and compassion. You feel worse about yourself. You think you need to double down in effort. You think you need to try harder. But if trying harder was going to work, it would have already worked.

That's right. In our membership we have this text back feature where parents can text us certain acronyms or phrases, right. Because sometimes you do need to hear it back, right. And one of them is sts. Just stop the spiral. Right. And what you get back, there's a bunch of different ones but ours just reminders like you're a good parent. This thing is hard and we need that in the moment. Right? We're so alone. Aloneness adds to shame. Shame adds to the potential to rage. And so I wish for every parent to have throughout that feature or that friend where they can have that part of the cycle, like, a little bit interrupted. Right.

I listened to you on podcast recently about this, and you said, or somebody said that you can tell if you're in a guilt moment or in, like a. Oh, okay, we need to fix that. Or we need to figure out what we need. That's a different place than a shame spiral. And you can tell whether you're in the guilt moment or the shame spiral, because if you're in the guilt that will move you towards healing, you will be moving towards the help you need. And if you're in the shame moment, you will be staying away from the help you need.

I don't think I said that, but I credit whoever said that.

So I used to be a teacher, and I worked at a school. There were no white kids in my class, and they were mostly poor families. And the way the world reacted to angry moms who were not white was. It is more easy for white women to talk about rage and be forgiven for it. Right? We would have to think very hard before we would report things like it. Just kids would be removed faster than they would from a white.

Do you.

How do you talk about that?

The first thing that comes to mind is within gunside, we were talking about different people who work at good inside, like, meaningful things that almost they've learned about themselves just through working at the company. And before this airs, I'll get her permission to make sure it's okay to share. But what she shared, she's a black woman, said, I'll never forget Becky when you said in a workshop, anger is a sign that we've preserved access to our self worth. Because if anger is what you need, you really can't have self worth if you don't have access to what you need. The belief that you have a healthy entitlement to want and need things is intimately connected to feeling worthy. And she just shared. She goes that in my community, anger is terrifying, is bad, is wrong. The idea that anger could be connected to self worth is a complete 180. And I don't know if I have a solution as much as joining you and saying, you're right. It is a completely different thing for me to have rage, for me to yell at my kid publicly in a grocery store than if I was black yelling at my kid in a grocery store.

It is. But the more anybody tries to push away a feeling, or the more any of us learn that a feeling is bad and dangerous, the more explosive we are around that feeling because we never develop skills to manage that feeling. It's such an awful cycle. So I just want to say you're right. There is an inherent privilege we all have here in talking about anger and rage.

Feels like people from groups where anger is feared and rejected by the culture need even more spaces where they can express it freely and not be penalized for it, because we can do it on a podcast and a lot of people can't do it anywhere.

Yeah.

One recommendation of a resource for that, Ruth King. She wrote a book called Healing rage and another one called mindful of race. And she talks a lot about those intersections. And she also talks about rage as fierce clarity and untapped fuel. That it is like the seat of personal transformation, and we should not view it as a useless emotion or the kind of thing where you're like, oh, fuck that up. Okay, let's try to forget and move along that it is a very seat of useful transformation.

Quite a bit of work on my own self in terms of my access to anger, and I dare I say rage. And I do think that there's probably a subset of people listening to this that don't even relate because they don't have the kind of self worth, I'm speaking for myself, to be able to get angry because the attachment that I learned when I was a kid that any kind of anger people would go away. And so there's probably a lot of parents, they can't even bring themselves to rage. They're just living in a low level of depression, sadness, loneliness, confusion, or it's coming out sideways in different relationships. Maybe not at their children, maybe it's at their spouse. That's definitely something that I relate to more because I don't rage. I definitely feel it, but I don't express it. And I think that that can also be pretty dangerous.

Well, we can say many things about Freud, but to me, the idea that depression is anger turned know a powerful idea. And I think that's very true for a lot of women.

So if somebody's like, all right, I'm willing to consider the idea that the reason I'm so pissed at work, the reason why I'm so full of rage at home or with my kids or with my partner or whatever, is because I have some unmet needs. I buy that. What next?

Okay, so this is always my favorite part because that's my favorite thing is to go from deep thoughts into absurdly practical, manageable strategies. That's how my brain works too. So what I'd say to you, truly, is to carve out time. And that language is meaningful. I was just talking about this with Eve Rodsky. Women always talk about finding time or making time. Not a thing. You get to the end of the week, there's no time leftovers. You don't find it, as she always says, you're not Albert Einstein. You cannot mess with this spacetime continuum. You have to carve out time. And I would really say this, and I mean this very directly, carve out time for my mom rage course, it is an hour. And I mean this. And if it doesn't really change things for you, well, talk to you about it. Okay? Because what I want to make sure people do is they give themselves the respect of saying, I do deserve more than one tip about this, not just for my kids, but for myself. We really deserve that. And as a little preview, that's not the only thing I'll say is, to me, one of the first things we can do is actually to create a little bit of a different relationship with our calendar.

I think about, and I was referring to this before, protecting your calendar. And a lot of us really do live and die by our calendar. Like, we're like, what am I doing today? Right? And then we're like, am I free then? Oh, I guess I could go to that meeting even though I don't want to go because my calendar says I'm free, as opposed to gazing in and saying, do I want to go to that? But we can also use that to our benefit. And I would ask everyone listening here to go to your calendar and put on a block of time. And for me, when I started doing this, I wouldn't even know what. And I would just say, my needs matter. Do not cancel. That's what it literally said. Because I'd look at it and someone would be like, can you do this meeting? And if I called it something else, I'd be like, yeah, I'll move that around. I'll make time for that later. Never happened. But if it said, do not cancel, I tend to be pretty literal. I'm like, oh, I'm not free then, right? And I don't know. My calendar said, do not cancel, so I'm not going to do it myself.

From the past, bossed myself from the present and told me, that's exactly right.

Use your present self for your future benefit, because at that moment, you'll be panicked at the idea of how could I do something for myself? But right now, you can set it up. And what I want to tell everyone out there, okay, is I know as soon as you do this, this is what we say to ourselves. But I don't know what I would do. I don't know what I want. I don't know. Right? But let's go back to that idea that this rage moment is a sign that you're starving, okay? So if you haven't eaten for a week, imagine being at a restaurant and looking at the menu and saying, I don't know what I want. I guess I just won't get anything. Any of your friends would be like, just pick something. It literally doesn't matter. And over the course of trying different random things, you will eventually learn, which you'd want to do again and which is really not for you. And I really think self care is the same thing. And if what you do the first couple of times that you're like, I couldn't even make a decision. I just sat in my couch.

Okay, that's great. That happens sometimes on a menu. You get just like, a piece of bread, but it's still better for your body than nothing, right? And then if it says, as simple as saying, I've heard some people like to draw, I don't know. Okay, I'll take that from the menu. It can be completely random, but it's always better than waiting for some light bulb moment of being like, I love knitting. That's not going to happen. Just not going to happen. Right. So think about yourself as starving and realizing that anything you do that doesn't involve caregiving of someone else, because that's a way of pouring yourself out is part of a successful journey of figuring out what you actually do.

Amen. Okay, say it again. What we're writing on our calendar in.

That block, it's six words. My needs matter. Do not cancel, cancel.

Can we go into existing calendar things and write my needs matter? I am canceling 100%.

That's right. Never wanted to be in that meeting in the first place. That's right.

And maybe we'd have less rage if we did. Love.

Yes.

Wow.

100%.

We love you, Dr. Becky Hod squatters so much. Your needs matter. Do not cancel. We'll see you next time. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to? We can do hard things. Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the we can do hard things show page on Apple podcasts, Spotify, odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We can do hard things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. I give you tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

I walked through fire I came out the other side I chased desire I made sure I got what mine.

And.

I continue to believe that I'm the one for me and because I'm mine I walk the line because we're adventurous and heartbreaks on that a final destination we stopped asking directions the places they never been and to be loved we need to be known we'll finally find our way back home and through the joy and pain that our life bring we can do a hard thing I hit rock bottom it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem sometimes things fall apart and I continue to believe the best people are free and it took some time but I'm finally fine because we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that a final destination we stopped asking direction the places never been and to be love we need to be known we'll finally find our way back home and through the joy and pain that our lives bring we can do hard pain Sanchez and heartbreaks on that we might get lost but we're okay with that stop asking direction places they've never been and to be loved we need to be known we'll finally fight our way back home and through the joy and pain that our lives bring we can do hard things yeah we can do hard things yeah we can do hard things.