Episode 131
131 - Don't Fuel The Rocket: Scott's Story
For more information on how to control your anger, visit angersecrets.com.
Scott's is the fun Dad who kept the laughs coming. Deep down however, he was dealing with a lot of unresolved pain. Over time, this pain turned into a rocket of rage, especially when he felt his daughters push back against him. After a series of explosive moments, Scott realised he needed to change his approach to anger.
In this episode we hear how Scott faced his past, took ownership of his anger and rebuilt trust with his family through The Complete Anger Management System.
If you are feeling like your anger is harming your relationship, this episode is a must-listen.
Key Takeaways:
- Suppressed anger can affect your family relationships deeply.
- Real strength comes from facing your past and choosing to change your future.
- Understanding where anger originates in the body can help manage it effectively.
- Taking ownership of your anger triggers is a key to rebuilding trust with loved ones.
- It's never too late to seek help for anger issues and work towards healing.
- The Complete Anger Management System provides practical tools for lasting change.
Links referenced in this episode:
For more information (and FREE resources) of how to control your anger, visit angersecrets.com.
For a FREE training on how to control your anger, visit angersecrets.com/training/.
To learn more about The Complete Anger Management System, visit angersecrets.com/course/.
Transcript
Scott was the fun dad, the one who made people laugh, welcomed his daughter's friends into the house, and tried to keep the mood light even when life felt heavy.
Speaker A:But beneath the surface, something else was building.
Speaker A:A rocket of rage fueled by years of silence, control, and pain he never got to speak about as a teenager.
Speaker A:He wasn't allowed to feel now as a father.
Speaker A:Every pushback from his daughters lit the fuse.
Speaker A:And when that rocket launched, it launched hard.
Speaker A:Explosions, shouting.
Speaker A:Confusion.
Speaker A:Regret.
Speaker A:And one day after the third major blow up in just over a year, his family drew the line.
Speaker A:Fix this or we can't keep doing this.
Speaker A:That's when Scott knew this wasn't about them anymore.
Speaker A:This was about him.
Speaker A:In today's episode, you'll hear Scott's journey through anger, shame, and healing.
Speaker A:You'll hear how the complete anger management system helped him take ownership of his triggers, rewire how he thinks about conflict, and rebuild the trust he thought he'd lost for good.
Speaker A:If you've ever felt like your anger is destroying the relationships you care most about, this is the episode you need to hear.
Speaker A:Because real strength isn't pretending you're fine.
Speaker A:Real strength is facing your past and choosing a better future.
Speaker A:Hello and welcome to episode 131 of the Anger Secrets podcast.
Speaker A:I'm your host, Alistair Duse, and for over 30 years now, I've been helping men and women just like you learn how to control their anger, master their emotions, and build calmer, more respectful, and more connected relationships.
Speaker A:On this podcast, I share the exact tools and strategies I've used with over 15,000 clients to help them take back control of their anger and live with more peace, confidence and clarity.
Speaker A:If you'd like some free support on your anger journey, including access to my free training or the chance to book a 30 minute anger assessment, call with me, just head to my website, angasecrets.com in today's episode, I interview Scott, a man who had struggled with anger for years before enrolling in the complete anger management system.
Speaker A:Let's jump straight in.
Speaker B:Welcome to the Anger Secrets podcast.
Speaker B:Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Speaker C:I grew up moving around a lot as a kid.
Speaker C:We moved state to state about every three to five years and I moved along with my family, of course.
Speaker C:Went to high school in Connecticut, ended up going to college in Maryland, worked in New York City for a while.
Speaker C:I got married, I had children and I got into a different career and I did that for about 10 or 12 years and now I'm about two years out from becoming a Full time science fiction author.
Speaker B:So what brought you to my anger management course?
Speaker C:I'm on my second marriage and my first marriage did not go well.
Speaker C:And as a result of that, I got divorced and remarried.
Speaker C:We're a blended family.
Speaker C:We have four daughters, all of them teenagers.
Speaker C:And what I have found is that all the stuff that was never resolved for me as a teenager is coming up for me as I watch them become teenagers.
Speaker C:And a lot of anger that I never dealt with is coming up now and they're seeing you and I just don't want them to.
Speaker B:Okay, what sort of situations are you talking about?
Speaker C:Largely it has to do with self expression.
Speaker C:When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to necessarily make my own choices.
Speaker C:I certainly couldn't speak up to my father.
Speaker C:I couldn't do anything I wanted to do on the weekends.
Speaker C:I just had to do whatever he asked me to do.
Speaker C:I could tell you a thousand stories about trying to ask for something and the answer was always no.
Speaker C:But it wasn't just no.
Speaker C:There was a lot of violence, both physical and mental abuse.
Speaker C:My father's terrible to my mother, terrible to me, and I just suppressed all of it.
Speaker C:And then I went through a lot of work.
Speaker C:I'd done seminars and I'd been through therapy.
Speaker C:But once I started to see how my daughters would react to me, typical teenagers, it broke me because I thought, well, I was never allowed to act like that.
Speaker C:How dare you?
Speaker C:And it just brought up all this rage that I'm not even sure I knew was there.
Speaker B:And how was that rage expressed?
Speaker C:Pretty bad at first.
Speaker C:I would give it warnings like, you're upsetting me or that hurts me.
Speaker C:But I don't think they truly understood what that meant in the context of me.
Speaker C:And I've told you this before, I see myself as an empty rocket.
Speaker C:And when I start to have little things that upset me, that rocket will fuel still won't take off.
Speaker C:And I'll start to feel tense and upset and I'll say, look, I'm getting upset.
Speaker C:They don't understand what that means.
Speaker C:But it's only when the rocket is fully fueled that it takes off.
Speaker C:And once it does, once it launches, it can't come back.
Speaker C:And so that anger can explode and bubble over very loud.
Speaker C:And there's a lot of demanding by me to make it right from the very people that I'm yelling at.
Speaker C:And they're like, what are you even talking about?
Speaker C:They have no idea where the rage is coming from, why it's expressed to them, and it's no good.
Speaker B:What effect was this having on your family?
Speaker C:I think that they began to lose faith that they're safe in the home.
Speaker C:I think I can't really be more honest than that.
Speaker C:I just don't think they felt safe anymore.
Speaker C:For the most part, I'm the fun dad.
Speaker C:And all the kids bring their friends over to our house.
Speaker C:But as soon as they see that one or two or three times, they start to back off and they don't feel safe.
Speaker C:And to me, that's devastating.
Speaker C:This is something I've never wanted for any of my family members.
Speaker B:And so was there one incident in particular that brought you to my management course or was it a series of things over time?
Speaker C:It was the culmination of, I would say, three pretty major blow ups which had all happened in the last year and a half.
Speaker C:First one seemed like an anomaly.
Speaker C:Second one was like, okay, what the hell's going on here?
Speaker C:And after the second one, I said, look, I'm going to look at this.
Speaker C:And I started to look at it.
Speaker C:But what I didn't realize was that they would not change, that the work had to be done on my side.
Speaker C:I guess I expected them to be nicer to me or less teenagery, if that's the thing.
Speaker C:And so after the third real bout of anger, it was made clear to me, fix this or there's going to be a change on our side.
Speaker C:And that scared the hell out of me.
Speaker C:And so I sought you out.
Speaker C:Thank goodness I found you and I've been doing the work.
Speaker B:Okay, so was it hard to even seek me out?
Speaker B:Like in terms of realizing you had an issue with anger, or was it pretty obvious?
Speaker C:Well, it was obvious.
Speaker C:The hard part was admitting it and being able to even use the word.
Speaker C:To this day, it's hard for me to say anger management.
Speaker C:To me it has always represented a failure in willpower, a failure in being smart enough to get past your own problems.
Speaker C:It's a huge ego blow for me.
Speaker C:So that was the hard part.
Speaker C:Finding you was not that hard.
Speaker C:I just did research.
Speaker C:I went online, I looked at a few videos.
Speaker C:Some I liked, some I didn't like, but yours resonated with me.
Speaker B:Okay, great.
Speaker B:And so what was it like starting my anger management course?
Speaker C:We got on the phone first and that helped.
Speaker C:I was surprised that you were so available, especially being a continent and about 12 time zones away.
Speaker C:But there you were answering the phone and so you made it really easy.
Speaker C:Of course, you're not a judgmental person either.
Speaker C:That was also good.
Speaker C:And it made Me want to trust you.
Speaker C:The other thing you did, which I really liked, was you gave me the space to come back to you.
Speaker C:You didn't force it on me.
Speaker C:You didn't try to sell me on anything.
Speaker C:You said, look, go out there and look around.
Speaker C:And I think that made the difference.
Speaker B:Okay, great.
Speaker B:So in terms of starting the course, what were the first things you learned?
Speaker C:The thing that really stuck out for me was just the tolerance scale.
Speaker C:Where do you erupt?
Speaker C:Where do you feel?
Speaker C:At first, what I don't think I realized until after I started doing the work was that you really feel it in your body before you experience it in your head.
Speaker C:The input is all communication, but the rage, that rocket that gets fueled, is physical.
Speaker C:And I don't think I realize that.
Speaker C:And so to be able to go through and to diagnose where on the tolerance scale you start to feel it, then where you start to realize that you feel it.
Speaker C:And then what's your point of no return, which is what I call it, has just been incredible, not only for my understanding, but I can communicate this to my wife as well and say to her, I'm at a four, I'm going to go take a walk or I'm going to go do something.
Speaker C:So she understands what I'm doing and why.
Speaker C:And therefore I build back trust with her to show her that I'm really doing this work.
Speaker C:So that's been an amazing thing for me.
Speaker B:Can you think of any examples of situations you've responded differently to how you would have in the past?
Speaker C:Let me give you the latest example of how the course has helped me.
Speaker C:One of my daughters, who's 18, lives with us still.
Speaker C:We sat down to have dinner and watch a movie.
Speaker C:And I'm a wiseacre, so I'll always say to the kids before the movie starts.
Speaker C:When we last watched the other movie, this happened because I just like to act like I'm an idiot.
Speaker C:And sometimes they laugh, but for the most part they roll their eyes.
Speaker C:This time, though, my daughter gave me a very visceral, angry reaction.
Speaker C:Stop.
Speaker C:I just want to watch the movie immediately.
Speaker C:I felt it in my body.
Speaker C:I felt the rejection that I fear and I felt the resentment that I feel.
Speaker C:Like, how dare you talk to me that way?
Speaker C:I could never talk to my father that way.
Speaker C:That's a huge resentment for me.
Speaker C:But instead I internalized and I shut it down inside me.
Speaker C:I said, don't fuel the rocket.
Speaker C:That's her reality.
Speaker C:She's allowed to be annoyed by wuth.
Speaker C:That's okay.
Speaker C:My wife is sitting next to him.
Speaker C:She knew what I was doing, I didn't react.
Speaker C:We watched 20 minutes of the show that we were watching.
Speaker C:My daughter loved, my wife, held my hand and I said, now it's time for me to have my secure exit.
Speaker C:I extracted myself from the situation without saying a word.
Speaker C:After about an hour of just being on my own and self soothing, figuring things out, it just dissolved.
Speaker B:How would you rate your response in that situation then?
Speaker B:How well do you think you dealt with it?
Speaker C:Really well.
Speaker C:I think that for someone who wants to be loved like I do, that's a huge breakthrough for me and I don't think I could have gotten there without just doing the coursework.
Speaker C:It's the coursework that really forces you to stop and take a look at every step of the interaction.
Speaker C:Not just how can I stop being angry, but really what happens when you receive that information?
Speaker C:Where does it go?
Speaker C:What do you do?
Speaker C:What are your filters at your mortgage?
Speaker C:Just to have an understanding of that process has just.
Speaker C:It's been incredible, awesome.
Speaker B:Nice to hear.
Speaker B:I always see how we respond to events that happen to us are a result of how we think about those events.
Speaker B:Any thoughts about that?
Speaker C:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker C:The way I think things and the filter through which I put information is always a very self filter of who's going to love me.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So how I react to an eye roll from my child is the same reaction as I might have had to neglect from my mother or abuse from my father.
Speaker C:It's the same.
Speaker C:I don't want to say victimhood because I don't feel like a victim, but it's the same feeling in my body of a rejection.
Speaker C:So that's the filter.
Speaker C:It's always for me, how are you going to reject me?
Speaker C:And that's been my filter.
Speaker C:It's still today, my filter.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Sounds like hurt and rejection.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:How do you feel about changing that?
Speaker B:Any confidence and ability to change that?
Speaker C:I do have a lot of confidence in the ability.
Speaker C:I'm coming up on being 60 years old next year and that's 60 years of programming.
Speaker C:It's going to take a while, but I'm sure I can do it.
Speaker C:It's just I know I'll fall on my face.
Speaker C:I know I'll have a mistake here and there.
Speaker C:But I think as long as I focus on my part in this, I have faith that I'll get there eventually.
Speaker B:Great.
Speaker B:So my course is an online course, obviously.
Speaker B:How have you found doing an online course?
Speaker C:I like the online course for several reasons.
Speaker C:You can do it at your own pace.
Speaker C:And I certainly don't want to zoom through it.
Speaker C:I really like to take my time, watch the entire video, stop it, do the work.
Speaker C:And then I like to take a couple days and see if those things come up in my daily life.
Speaker C:And when they do, I want to see if I can challenge myself to use the stuff that I've learned.
Speaker C:And now I'm more aware of how I react in the world.
Speaker C:I think it's gotten better.
Speaker B:And how have you found the group?
Speaker B:Zoom coaching calls.
Speaker C:I like them.
Speaker C:I'm really eager to get in there and start a conversation and talk, and I don't want to chew up all the oxygen in the room, but I really want to get in there and do the work.
Speaker C:I love that live interaction and how we help each other.
Speaker C:It's a.
Speaker C:I'll tell you this, Alistair, the first time I had this issue with my family, I did seek out maybe some, like a local men's group where I live, and I just couldn't find anything.
Speaker C:It's just not something you can find around where I live.
Speaker C:And that really disappointed me.
Speaker C:And for a while I thought, I'll start my own.
Speaker C:But I have children and a wife and a job and writing books.
Speaker C:So to find this group, even though we're all spread around the world, it's just been great.
Speaker B:If someone else is listening to this podcast episode and thinking about doing this course, what would you say to that person?
Speaker C:I think for anyone listening, if the only reason you're not doing it is because there's shame involved or you're embarrassed, that's the last reason you shouldn't do it.
Speaker C:You've upset someone in your life.
Speaker C:You've changed someone's life to the point where they now maybe have sprayed at you.
Speaker C:They may not feel safe.
Speaker C:And that matters because if you want them in your life, you owe them the ability to feel safe around you.
Speaker C:That's what changed it for me.
Speaker C:And I would say, look, just dive in, give it a shot.
Speaker C:Meet Alistair, talk to him.
Speaker C:They'll talk to you in person.
Speaker C:Take the first part of the course.
Speaker C:There's a lot of free stuff on the website that you can go through first.
Speaker C:Put your toe in.
Speaker C:See what happens.
Speaker C:Let them talk to you best.
Speaker C:I was terrified to do it.
Speaker C:I did not want to use the words.
Speaker C:And your management did it anyway, and I'm so glad I did.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:I hope this interview was helpful for you.
Speaker A:Scott's story is painfully relatable for so many men.
Speaker A:I've worked with over the years.
Speaker A:That feeling of trying so hard to be the good guy, the fun dad, the provider, the rock, while quietly carrying decades of unspoken pain underneath the surface is so common.
Speaker A:But Scott was honest about that rocket inside him.
Speaker A:He owned the way small things could suddenly ignite years of suppressed hurt.
Speaker A:And here's what matters most.
Speaker A:He did something about it.
Speaker A:He reached a breaking point.
Speaker A:But instead of blaming his family, checking out, or doubling down, he looked in the mirror, he took responsibility, and he made the brave choice to change.
Speaker A:And today, he's more aware, more in control, and more connected to his wife and kids.
Speaker A:He's not perfect, and he'll be the first to tell you that, but he's finally on a path that feels solid and peaceful and honest.
Speaker A:That's what I want for you, too.
Speaker A:So if you've been struggling, if you've ever lashed out or watched someone you love pull away because of your anger, I want you to hear this.
Speaker A:Change is possible, and you don't have to do this alone.
Speaker A:If Scott's story hit home for you and you're ready to take that first step, head over to my website, angersecrets.com youm can book a free 30 minute anger assessment.
Speaker A:Call with me or check out my free training.
Speaker A:And if you're ready to make a profound Change today, visit angersecrets.comcourse to enrol in the complete anger management system, the same program that helped Scott get to where he is today.
Speaker A:Okay, thanks for listening.
Speaker A:And remember, you can't control other people, but you can control yourself.
Speaker A:Take care and I'll see you in the next episode.
Speaker C:The Anger Secrets Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of counseling, psychotherapy or any other professional health service.
Speaker C:No therapeutic relationship is implied or created by this podcast.
Speaker C:If you have mental health concerns of any type, please seek out the help of a local mental health professional.
