Episode 53: Is anger helpful when you need to be honest?

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Hello everybody. So in today’s episode, I’m going to discuss why honesty makes us angry and how dishonesty affects the brain, specifically our dopamine and our motivation, and how radical honesty with ourselves not only allows us to speak our truth without anger and other emotions, but also rewires our brains, specifically our dopamine response.

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And then I’m going to go into how boundaries are not for other people and also that the real truth is never what you think it is and how to figure out what your truth is and how to honor it. And it doesn’t mean spewing emotional crap all over other people. So radical honesty and radical responsibility for your own needs is the topic of this episode.

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In a recent episode, I did a really deep dive into how addiction hacks the brain and how to hack the brain back. In the first half of the episode, I explain how pleasure and pain are balanced. They are inversely proportional. As one goes up, the other goes down. Think of it like a teeter totter. And so when you engage in high spiking dopamine activities, you get a lot of pleasure really fast.

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from cheap sources that you don’t have to work for, that throws the brain out of balance. And the brain’s job is to maintain homeostasis. And so the brain puts on the brakes. And the more pleasure we are experiencing from that cheap instant gratification method of achieving it, the more the brain counterbalances that with pain. So the longer you engage in high reward activities,

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the less effective they are over time and the more pain you get overall. And I’m not going to regurgitate all of that here, but in the second half of the episode, I give several different activities that allow you to restore your dopamine levels, boost your dopamine naturally in a way that maintains and increases your dopamine over time instead of constantly depleting it with.

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dopamine spiking activities. And one of the tools that I talked about was leaning into painful activities, specifically engaging in radical honesty. Being radically honest is inherently painful, which is why we tend to go into anger whenever we find that we need to express our truth.

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We have this belief that our truth needs to be explained and defended and validated, and that other people need to approve of what we’re saying. And this is how we give away our power, by believing that we cannot accept our truth unless other people accept our truth. And so we lash out as a way of bypassing the discomfort that is required for us to stand in our own truth by ourselves.

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But we can use this pain to our advantage when we feel the need to defend our truths or exaggerate or omit the truth. We can lean into that pain and heal our brain by resisting the urge to take the easy way out. Because our brains reward us for doing hard things. On the other side of that pain is freedom to live in our truth. You see, it is our own feelings that we are afraid of.

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not the consequence of our truth existing in the world. Emotional sobriety is understanding that it is not other people making you feel bad, rejecting or denying what it is that your truth is. It is your thoughts and feelings about what other people think about your truth that’s making you feel bad. And even if another person is trying to make you feel bad or angry, you’re not obliged

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to feel the way they want you to feel. Emotional sobriety is taking full responsibility for your thoughts and feelings and letting other people do the same. I teach the emotional ownership statement, which is a mantra that I use, and I’ve talked about it in other episodes, that blank, the circumstance, whatever it is, blank is not the problem. My thoughts and feelings about blank are the problem.

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So even when another person actually is upset with you, it’s your thoughts and feelings about what that means that are causing you distress. For example, my husband walked in the other night and I had been working all day and I didn’t even realize what time it was. And he walks in and it’s like 7.30 at night and I’m still at my desk and he says, what’s for dinner? And aside from the fact that, you know, he’s a grown man and could make his own dinner.

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I initially felt bad that I didn’t have dinner ready, because I’m a highly domesticated female who long ago accepted full responsibility for all the men in my life and what they’re eating at any given time. And as my children have left the house and I have decided to change the rules so that they work for me too, I have had to experience some disappointment about

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managing my husband’s expectations that when he walks in the door and there’s not dinner on the table that he feels let down. And I have options for how I respond to that. And emotional sobriety is zooming out and realizing that I don’t have to get upset because he’s upset. I don’t have to get upset that he subconsciously expects dinner to be made because, you know, for 30 years when he comes

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I’m not his first wife, but over time, I think the mansman served a lot of dinners. I don’t have to get upset that he expected that, nor do I have to get upset that his happiness, which we define happiness as reality minus expectations. So the reality is there’s no dinner, minus the fact that he expected dinner, that put his happiness at a negative level for a few minutes. I don’t have to take responsibility for how he processes that.

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level of happiness. I can just say, oh, I haven’t thought about what’s for dinner. What would you like to do? And most of the time, he doesn’t bat an eye. He answers the question, and we solve the dinner conundrum of the day. Other times, he’s stressed or tired, and I’ll see him roll his eyes or do something that indicates to me that he’s not pleased with me. And instead of taking that personally,

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I just kind of feel bad for him. Like, yeah, it sucks if you thought there was going to be dinner, and now there’s not. Like, it’s not about me. His feelings aren’t about me. His feelings, his emotional ownership statement, is that it’s not the lack of dinner causing his distress. It’s his thoughts and feelings about the lack of dinner. I don’t have to take that personally. And that is very freeing, but it also took a lot of courage to get to that place.

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to give myself permission to not worry about what somebody else is having for dinner, and to resist the urge to soothe his emotions at the expense of my own. Because we’re all adults in this story. And it’s very scary for some reason, especially those of us socialized as females, to allow other people the space to have their emotions without making it personal. But honesty, and dare I say autonomy,

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is freeing and the brain rewards this behavior. Because if I decided to take responsibility for the way my husband felt and either apologize and explain why dinner isn’t made and make it my responsibility or just be a bitch and be mad at him because he expected dinner and I didn’t make it.

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and who is he to expect that and patriarchy sucks and that whole thing. Either of those responses is a betrayal to myself, to my own truth. And denial disconnects us from our authentic self. It disconnects us from our bodies and it keeps us stuck in our heads because we’re trying to come up with a story that better fits the way we feel.

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instead of just acknowledging the truth of how we feel. And I’d like to pause here and say that the truth of how we feel isn’t big T truth. The big T truth in my story here is that it’s time for dinner. That’s it. It isn’t right or wrong or good or bad that I decide that it’s not my responsibility or that I decide that it is my responsibility. For years as a...

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quote, air quotes around stay at home. But for years, I stayed at home with the kids and didn’t work and fully expected and cherished my role as the dinner maker. That wasn’t bad, nor is it bad for me now to respect my role as a professional and my own needs as a working woman. And also, I wish I could have a wife. There you go. I said it. It would be nice if somebody made dinner. And.

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I can share in my husband’s disappointment that nobody has made dinner because I’m hungry too. But my point in sharing all of this is that if I wasn’t aware that how I feel is just a reflection of my inner beliefs, meaning my beliefs are causing my feelings, I wouldn’t be able to take responsibility for them. Instead, I would be focused outward at what my husband is saying or not saying. And I would be trying to fix that.

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in order to fix the way I feel. I would need my husband’s beliefs to match my beliefs in order to feel better. And that, my friends, is the root of codependency, where if you’re not OK, I can’t be OK. And if I’m not OK, you’re sure as hell not going to be OK. Instead, I can understand in this situation that my feelings of fear or hesitation to acknowledge dinner isn’t made.

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are a result of my own thoughts from throwback beliefs that the woman should make dinner and the man has a right to expect his dinner to be on the table. Those are throwback beliefs that I have chosen to no longer follow. I can take full and radical responsibility for the fact that I’m uncomfortable and even allow him to experience some disappointment and be okay with that as well. I can tolerate the discomfort.

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long enough to honor what I need, which is to change the rules. And full circle, leaning into the discomfort that is required to make that change is rewarded in my brain. It feels good to be honest and stand up for my own needs and my own wants instead of eating resentment while I make dinner. And this has very real consequences in the brain and our emotional health.

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Dishonesty disconnects our reward pathways from our frontal lobe. So our frontal lobe is what allows us to accurately narrate our lives and accurately assess cause and effect and be able to see the bigger picture. And it also allows us to plan for the future, to act in our own best interest, to tolerate momentary

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temporary discomforts for the sake of long term gains. When we are not being honest, we are disconnected from that higher level thinking. And we are being led more by our subconscious, which is just being driven to pursue instant gratification, or whatever will relieve our stress the fastest. And in past times, my belief was that the fastest way to feel better

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was to just get mad at my husband, get my ass out of my chair, and go make dinner. But that didn’t serve me in the long run, nor did it serve my marriage. And I have now seen from the other side of radical honesty that my husband would rather have an honest and happy wife than dinner. I mean, we’re going to get dinner, right? But me being angry and resentful and passive aggressive certainly didn’t pair well with.

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the lemon chicken and smashed reds that I was serving. And back when I used to drink wine every night, I wasn’t even capable of this type of self-awareness because I was drinking wine while I made dinner and being pissed that I was making dinner instead of pursuing my own career. I was stuck in a habit of telling lies about how I felt, about how much I was drinking, about what I really wanted. And this perpetuated the disconnect I felt from myself.

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from my own body because I wasn’t honoring my truth. I wasn’t being honest about my needs. I wasn’t taking radical responsibility for my needs because I was finding it easier to blame my husband and drink through it. But after I quit drinking and started leaning into my feelings and untangling all of the twisted thoughts that were jumbled up in there, I was able to see more clearly what it was that I actually needed. And I was able to take responsibility.

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forgiving that to myself and not waiting for him or somebody else to meet my needs. And I can tell you from experience 100% of the time, it is so much better when you look at a situation where you are upset or you are blaming somebody else for what’s happening to take full and radical responsibility for yourself. Because you’re your own problem here.

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And you’re also your own solution. And you can’t change your truth, which may be coming from subconscious beliefs that you actually consciously don’t actually agree with anymore. But they’re still programmed into you from childhood. And you’re afraid to address the feelings that are coming up that say, hey, I need you to relook at this agreement. I need you to relook at this rule that you’ve agreed to that no longer fits with our lives.

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or even simply it doesn’t work for me anymore. And I’m a person and my needs are just as important as everybody else’s. I mean, that was one of the radical awarenesses that I came to in recovery was realizing my needs were just as important as everybody else’s, including my husband, my kids, even my dog. But for so long, I had the belief that my feelings and needs didn’t matter.

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and that it was my job to make sure everybody else is okay. That was a belief that was creating my resentment. But instead of dealing with my resentment in an adult way, I tried to avoid it. I tried to deny it, which kept me on a hamster wheel of self-destructive behaviors because I was completely disconnected from my truth, my body. And I wanna reiterate,

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that our truths are not big T truths. We can choose what we believe. But again, we can’t change what we won’t acknowledge. And the longer we go in denial, the bigger the fear gets and the more irrational it becomes, leading us to do more and more irrational things because again, denial disconnects our frontal lobe, higher level thinking from our instant gratification.

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and instant stress relief strategies. The real truth is that shitty feelings are just a symptom of shitty thoughts. And if you take the time to process your feelings and allow yourself to be uncomfortable, you can reengage with your frontal lobe and see the really big picture and see that you have a lot of options. And the pathway forward usually just requires...

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that you tolerate some discomfort, some emotional discomfort about speaking what it is that you really need and want. So this week on our coaching call in the next chapter, one of the gals was talking about how she was concerned about an upcoming event because her husband’s family was coming over and evidently there’s been a lot of drama, there is a lot of toxic relationships and she feels disrespected.

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She feels criticized. She feels like nobody respects any of her boundaries in her own home and that her husband doesn’t stand up for her. And she was asking for support on how best to deal with this situation. She is 27 days sober. And in the past, the way she has dealt with all of this drama is to drink through it, which, you know, I understand that. And if you’re listening, you probably do too.

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And so I addressed this with her from the perspective of radical honesty. And the misconception that she had, that we all have, that even the group had in general, was how does she speak her truth to these people without becoming unraveled? But if you zoom out from the big picture, her truth.

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doesn’t need to be heard or accepted by other people. Our boundaries do not require other people’s participation. They don’t have to respect them. They don’t have to approve of them. They don’t have to acknowledge them. Boundaries are for you. They are for ourselves. They are the statement that if this happens, then this is what I am going to do. They demand nothing from anybody else.

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and they leave everybody free to feel how they feel and say what they wanna say and do what they wanna do. The truth here is not that her in-laws are rude and need to be put in their place or forced into whatever respectful behaviors that she deems necessary. The truth here is that she is hurting herself by not respecting her own needs.

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Her in-laws are not the problem. Going back to the emotional ownership statement, her in-laws are not the problem. Her thoughts and feelings about her in-laws are her problem that she needs to deal with. Her in-laws may indeed be toxic, horrible, manipulative narcissists. And they may also just be normal, fine people in a typical family dynamic. I don’t know. The truth here is that her in-laws are not the problem.

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It is her thoughts and feelings about what she needs that she is denying. And she is thinking that getting her in-laws to speak differently or do differently or show up differently is what’s going to make her feel better. But in reality, what will make her feel better is honoring what she needs right now. The truth is that it is not right or wrong how she feels.

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is activated. The situation hasn’t occurred yet and it’s already caused her massive amounts of stress. She’s been worrying about it for weeks and she’s worried about her own sobriety in dealing with this situation. And I asked her why she feels like she needs to be there, why not just opt out and she said the words, I have no choice but to be here or to be there. And

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As a coach, I know that this is a process, that taking radical responsibility for what you need and setting radical boundaries, it is really not for day one the uninitiated. But what I coached her into seeing is that she actually does have a choice. She has two legs and a driver’s license. There are multiple rooms in her home. And that she actually does have the ability to actually have a choice.

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to opt out and not participate in the situation instead of crossing her fingers and hoping she doesn’t come emotionally unraveled or lose her shit or end up in the pantry sucking down a bottle of wine. And I shared with her my own experiences of dealing with extended family issues. She, like I, has been remarried and so there are children and in-laws of people she’s not actually related to that.

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might be in her home because they are her husband’s family or her husband’s children’s family. And so even though it is her home, she’s living in a body that is her top priority. And having been in that situation, there are times when I can see a circumstance that I don’t do well in. I’m not judging the circumstances. Well, I mean, I am. I got thoughts about it.

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But in the end, I recognize that my thoughts and feelings don’t represent the objective truth. I may find a person or a situation to be toxic. That doesn’t mean that objectively it is. They might be completely lovely people in other situations. It’s just the way I am interacting or I am interpreting and experiencing it. And I do not have to put my body through that.

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And I can opt out. I can unsubscribe from the shit show newsletter by simply removing myself. And I can set that boundary on my own behalf. And that’s the difficult thing about boundaries. Again, they are not for other people to approve of or understand or validate or even respect. When you set a boundary, it is about where your body will be and what is best for your body.

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So it may be uncomfortable to leave your own home and leave other people to make a dinner in your kitchen because you don’t feel emotionally secure or safe enough to participate for whatever reason. It’s not about the other person. It’s about respecting your own needs like you’re a person who matters and that you’re a work in progress. And the more you respect your own needs in any given moment,

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your truth, whatever that is, and allow that to be, that’s the only way you can change it. And I know from giving myself permission to opt out of situations that I have found toxic, I have returned to relationships that are absolutely not toxic. I just had to get my own story straight. I had to give my own body the space it needed to learn how to expand my.

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stress tolerance, my emotional bandwidth, and be able to practice. I told her from her story, I said, it sounds like you’re going to need a PhD in emotional sobriety and marine green beret level survival skills to get through this couple hours of a Saturday afternoon. Why are you doing that to yourself? You’re not ready for that. And that doesn’t make you good or bad.

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or right or wrong, and it doesn’t make them good or bad or right or wrong. It just makes you radically responsible for your own needs and taking care of yourself, not putting yourself in a situation that you have good evidence of if somebody’s place in bets, that you could place a bet and pretty sure that’s going to blow your circuit breakers. It’s going to stress you out beyond your current.

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bandwidth. Like just accept your bandwidth. Just accept your needs. By meeting your own needs, you will be much more capable of showing up for others. So in any given situation, telling yourself you don’t have a choice to be there, to participate, to give, to serve, whatever, to tell yourself you don’t have the choice is denial. And when you’re in denial, it stresses your body out.

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It disconnects your higher level thinking skills from your ability to resist instant gratification. Only by telling the truth, acknowledging that you do have a choice, and acting in your own best interest, will you be able to access your higher level of thinking, to broaden your perspective, to see things from different angles.

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to allow other people to have their emotions without taking their shit personally, to accurately assess cause and effect, to be able to see that the way you feel is a reflection of your own thoughts, not other people’s words and actions, and that the only person that needs to take action on your behalf is you. You just have to learn how to tolerate your thoughts and feelings about

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other people’s thoughts and feelings. This is radical honesty. And this is how leaning into pain not only literally increases the pleasure and the dopamine response in your brain because you’re overcoming hard things, but also in reconnects you with yourself, reconnects you with your authentic self. So you’re no longer being jerked around by subconscious emotions that you refuse to acknowledge.

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Your subconscious emotion is filled with beliefs that aren’t actually true. And the only way to deal with that is to allow your negative feelings to inform you, and you take the time to bring the subconscious belief into consciousness, and then make a higher level thinking decision that’s aligned with your authentic self to decide how you want to proceed. But you can’t do that if you’re afraid of your feelings. So I’m going to leave you with a challenge.

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to explore radical honesty. And level one of this doesn’t mean that you have to tell your truth all the time, especially in early days of recovery where you know your truth is probably pretty shitty and you’ve got to deal with it. Radical honesty begins with being honest with yourself. And a couple weeks ago, I actually gave a client homework to keep a lie log. Don’t stop telling the lies that you still feel like you need to tell. Just start.

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keeping track of them. Just start noticing them when you’re doing it, and go into the feeling and just get curious. Just becoming aware of when you are not speaking from a place of your power and your truth, because you’re afraid of your reaction to other people’s reactions. That’s a really good start. Just stop telling yourself you don’t have a choice, because you always have a choice.

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and your body’s keeping the score, it knows that you do have a choice and you’re denying yourself because you don’t wanna deal with your feelings. So you can practice radical honesty or you can just keep a lie log and then revisit in quiet moments and reflect on your behavior and then practice visualizing what it would look like to show up for reals. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard,

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Please take the time to rate and review the show so that other people can find it. I really appreciate it. And check out the show notes for any resources I’ve mentioned, including links to follow me on Instagram and join my private Facebook group where I connect with my tribe every day. I love it in there and we have so much fun. And finally, if you’re ready to redefine sobriety so that you can feel excited about quitting

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Follow the link to my 10 Days to Spontaneous Sobriety course, where I will help you eliminate, eradicate, obliterate, cancel your desire to drink. Because looking and feeling your best is addictive, too. I’ll see you soon.