UNCHARTED: The Role of Gut Feelings: Transforming Shame into Strength and Assertive Action

Starting the conversation:

Are you responsible FOR your team or TO them? Courage is required to face and transform the internalized shame and disgust that influences our ability to use anger as fuel for the greatest good. Bronwyn Schweigerdt, psychotherapist and Angry at the Right Things podcaster, shares the role of emotion and how to transform shame into strength.

The next time you feel anger or shame, pause and ask: “Is this truly mine, or did I pick it up somewhere else?” You might be surprised by what you discover. It is the root of the myths society has about anger. Any unresolved anger and shame could be making you sick, harming your focus, and impacting your business’ bottom line. Self-accountability begins with being able to identify and leverage your emotions as fuel for growth.

In this program, you will learn that you are only responsible for your own feelings; the difference between healthy and reactive anger; and that performing self-work (behind the scenes) is necessary to be whole, and to do all you can to show up fully in the world. Jess Dewell talks with Bronwyn Schweigerdt, psychotherapist and Angry at the Right Things podcaster, about being BOLD by building your self trust to use emotion for assertive action.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Bronwyn Schweigerdt

What You Will Hear:

02:30 There is no way to eliminate emotion from our lives; emotions are fundamental to our existence.

• Emotions are part of the human experience and cannot be opted out of.
• Emotions do not disappear if suppressed or ignored, and will still influence us.
• Dissociating from anger, in particular, leads to negative physical and psychological consequences.

09:20 Anger is meant to propel us forward, motivating action and resolution.

• Anger is a driving force that motivates action and sets boundaries.
• The goal of anger is not to explode but to create repair and resolution in relationships.
• Unexpressed anger remains in the body, leading to physical symptoms and unresolved issues.

12:45 Our only true responsibility is our own emotional state, not other people’s feelings.

• Personal accountability means owning your reactions and emotions, not those of others.
• Many people are conditioned from childhood to believe they must manage others’ feelings.
• Releasing responsibility for others’ emotions helps foster healthy boundaries and self-respect.

32:30 Shame and guilt can be returned to their sources, allowing for personal healing.

• Shame and guilt are often learned from early relationships and family dynamics.
• Healing exercises can help symbolically return these burdens to their rightful owners.
• Practicing self-compassion by addressing childhood imprinting facilitates emotional integration.

38:50 The suppression of anger is a direct contributor to depression and other mental health struggles.

• Authenticity leads to personal thriving and positively impacts those around us.
• Betrayal of self creates stagnation, while loyalty to self brings growth and flourishing.
• Living as your true self is beneficial for you and for your environment.

46:05 Living authentically leads to personal and collective flourishing.

• Suppressing anger is frequently at the root of mental health struggles and physical ailments.
• Allowing anger to be acknowledged and expressed can initiate deep healing.
• The journey to healthy anger involves uncovering and addressing underlying shame.

45:45 It is BOLD to build self trust and a relationship with our anger.

Resources

• Bronwyn Schweigerdt on LinkedIn

Transcript

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 00:00
Our body still very much feels it even if we’re not in conscious of it. And so we’re dissociating from it. And really what happens when humans dissociate from our anger is that forms a template in our brain.

But that template will go on to live inside of our brain and unconsciously dictate our relationship with anger for the rest of our life unless we become conscious of it and do something to change it.

Jess Dewell 00:30
Maybe there’s a myth of an angry person that you can overcome. Maybe you can heal yourself. Like, I think I can heal myself and have a better relationship with anger and use it for good.

Announcer 00:52
Every leader needs a trusted partner for the moments that matter. This bold business podcast conversation is that partnership. Your go-to resource designed to break the inertia and refresh your perspective so you can start making moves.

Here is your host, an insightful truth teller who serves as the catalyst for getting the right work done and who asks the questions that truly matter. Jess Dewell.

Jess Dewell 01:18
Today in this episode, you’re going to hear about being responsible to your feelings and responsible to other people and what the difference is. You are also going to learn about how to tell if your anger is healthy or reactive and what to do about it or how to build it. And the work behind the scenes matters.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt and I talk about anger. We talk about how it shows up in the world. We talk about self-trust and make sure in addition to this conversation that you check out her podcast, Angry at the Right Things.

I know it’s in my playlist and it’s part of the rotation of content that I consume. Maybe there’s a myth of an angry person that you can overcome. Maybe you can heal yourself like I think I can heal myself and have a better relationship with anger and use it for good.

Enjoy the conversation. Let’s start here, Bronwyn. We live in this world where emotion is really necessary and yet we don’t know how to use that emotion for not only our own good but the greater good.

Is that something you’re also seeing?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 02:32
Yeah, but it’s interesting you say emotion is really necessary and it is, but it’s almost like you’re saying there’s some option to not have emotion and there’s not. And I think that’s actually a very common myth that we say, oh, she’s really emotional and I’m not an emotional person. And that’s, we do have emotions whether we want to recognize and acknowledge them or not.

And if we choose not, maybe we’ve been conditioned not to show or display or even feel our emotions. They’re still very much there. And what we’re doing is we’re actually dissociating.

And when we do that, some really detrimental things happen specifically with the emotion that is my specialty, which is anger. So when we dissociate from anger and we, that’s a very popular emotion to dissociate from because we can share joy, we can share fear or sadness, but anger, there’s just a lot more stigma around. And of course, there’s what we would consider inherent danger.

Like we might lose a relationship or maybe feel really uncomfortable with confronting someone. So there’s a lot going on with anger, which leads humans to dissociate more from anger than other emotions, but our body still very much feels it, even if we’re not in conscious of it. And so we’re dissociating from it.

And really what happens when humans dissociate from our anger is it makes us sick because that anger is still in our body and it doesn’t just disappear when it goes unacknowledged or unexpressed. It actually, I like to say it stagnates inside of us and it makes us sick. And so some of that sickness can be somatic.

It can be headaches, migraines. It could be vertigo. That’s not uncommon.

It can be gut disorders, insomnia. There’s a lot of research actually connecting disassociated emotion that we hold inside and autoimmune disorders, a lot of scientific research on that. And so those are the somatic issues, but then anxiety, depression, mania, which falls under bipolar disorder, OCD, ADHD, I believe are all also a result of us suppressing or dissociating from our anger and it’s still in our body and it haunts us.

Jess Dewell 05:08
I’m curious about when you said the stigma around anger, do you find that only in certain areas of the world or is that now global?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 05:21
That’s a great question. I think with men and women, it can be different within a culture, between cultures, with children versus parents. Culture can come down to within a family too.

Some families allow their kids to express anger and some don’t. Some families are more patriarchal, but yeah, I would say that stigma inherently for us as individuals is that we at some level believe we’re going to lose a relationship and be alone if we display anger for many people. So that, again, my expertise is in psychology.

I believe that happens when we’re very young, probably most commonly during what we call the terrible twos, which is when a child goes through their first stage of differentiation from the parent. It’s really important that little toddler say no, say me do it, say mine and differentiate from us. And as adults, most of us weren’t raised to allow a young child to do that and see the inherent goodness of it.

Of course, within parameters, we can have parameters, but we don’t know how vital that phase is for that child. And so if we communicate our disapproval, that can cause that child to have shame. If we give that child like the silent treatment, like a lot of parents will do that when they’re not happy with that child’s behavior, that communicates not only shame, but really it sends a message like you will be abandoned because for a little child to hear like a distance in mom’s voice or see like mom is distant through silent treatment or her eye contact is being withheld, that feels like they will die because they are going to be on their own and they’re only a vulnerable little child. And so that is intolerable.

What happens is that forms a template in our brain that associates us having a boundary or displaying our anger or being assertive with fear of abandonment and annihilation. But that template will go on to live inside of our brain and unconsciously dictate our relationship with anger for the rest of our life unless we become conscious of it and do something to change it.

Jess Dewell 07:50
Okay. So before we go any further, everybody, this is Bronwyn Schweigerdtt. What are three things that we want to know about you, Bronwyn, as we’re listening to the rest of our conversation?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 08:03
Yeah. So I’m a psychotherapist. I’m an anger expert.

I am a founder of the Center for Anger and Integration. And I lead trainings for other therapists on anger and what I call integration. I have a podcast, which is for the public as well as other therapists, which is called Angry at the Right Thing.

Jess Dewell 08:23
It is in my listen list. I’m going to be real with you. I actually keep hearing this come up in relationship to my consumption of both reading and listening around stoicism and how anger is fueling and how there are some very interesting things around that.

And I’m reading a book right now by Patrick David. That’s not really an oldie, but it’s a few years old now called Choose Your Enemies Wisely. And it’s about using anger as fuel to achieve your business goals.

It’s a really cool concept because he’s actually like, no, you don’t need revenge. No, you don’t need vengeance out there. You just need the right fuel to go.

And so I’m listening to you and I’m thinking all of these things are showing up at the same time. And I’ll bet they’re interconnected some. So my question would be, do you think anger is a fuel?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 09:16
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we hear a lot about the importance of boundaries these days, which I love because I grew up in the seventies. A boundary was like the center line on a road.

That was the only time you heard that word. And now like my daughter who’s 21, she’s need a boundary. I love that the young generation, like this is such a part of their vernacular.

We talk about boundaries. People will say I need to have a boundary, but as a therapist, I have found that if I am encouraging my client and I say, Jess, you really, it would really be good for you to have a boundary with this person. That’s actually not going to stick unless you feel the anger because that is the very purpose of that anger is to keep that boundary in place.

So anger is an emotion. And when we think about that word emotion, it is there to elicit motion, which is why that word motion is in the word emotion, right? So if we can see our emotions as there to propel us forward, to bring about resolution, and that’s really what anger’s job is to bring about repair or resolution.

So I liken it to like the light on the dashboard of our emotional car saying, Hey, check under the hood. The goal is to bring something to resolution. And so if we can start to see our anger in the same way and bring whatever that is to resolution.

So if I’m feeling angry and I am in touch with the anger and I say, you know what, Bronwyn, I feel your anger right here in your chest. I feel it. What does this anger need right now?

What does it need from me? Oh, it needs a boundary with Jess, or it needs to be assertive and say, Hey, Jess, we said we’d meet at nine. It’s nine 20.

This has happened multiple times. What’s going on? That’s actually me channeling my anger out.

When I say that, do I sound explosive and scary? No, I’m just being assertive. It’s not aggressive.

It’s assertive. And that is what anger does. And so now if you can really stick with this metaphor, I am expressing that anger out of my chest into words.

It’s not stagnating inside of my body, giving me a headache so that later at lunch, I’m going to have a headache. I’m not going to, it’s not going to haunt me. It’s going to use, or if I have a boundary or if I bring about accountability in some way.

So that is really the purpose of anger.

Jess Dewell 11:50
Okay. So we got to go backwards a little bit then, because I hear you being very clear with your words in those moments. I can recognize, I don’t have as much practice as you right now.

Cause I’m like, boy, would I wish that my anger always came out like that? So how much practice does this actually take? Tell me about what does when you feel angry?

I think it depends on where I’m at. Ultimately, if I were to, let’s see, I’ll just pick one. There are times where I recognize I don’t wish to be.

First of all, there’s a whole bunch of societal stuff. I’m already going to be seen as aggressive, no matter what comes out of my face, because I am independent. I am strong.

I’m willing to stand up for my beliefs. And if I get angry, I’m going to put somebody else that is going to make them uneasy.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 12:40
Okay.

Jess Dewell 12:40
So let’s actually talk about that.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 12:43
Okay. Because I think you represent a lot of people and I’m glad you brought that up. Okay.

So I think in the general sense, you’re saying, I’m worried about what people will think, right? Some people will get offended. Some people will take it the wrong way.

They don’t understand the context, what have you, they don’t know me really well, whatever. So this is really imperative. And this is something I talk about on my podcast, do with my clients all the time.

We are only responsible for our own feelings and for ourselves. We are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We are responsible to other people, but never for them.

And again, talking about conditioning, most of us were conditioned, unfortunately, by parents to feel like we are responsible for other people’s feelings. When our parent says, I’m really disappointed in you. That’s a way to say you’re responsible for my disappointment.

Right? But when we can come to a place where we’re like, you know what? I’m responsible to this person, but I am not responsible for the outcome of what I do.

That outcome, if they’re disappointed, if they’re offended, that’s on them. Those are their feelings and they belong to them, not to me. And when we adhere to this universal, invisible parameter, it’s like adhering to the law of gravity.

It just brings everything into order. And I know this is easier said than done, but I want to give you an inspirational example. So I’m 54.

I became a grownup because I was visiting with my father. We went out to dinner for his birthday to a very nice restaurant, his choice. And he was upset about the seating arrangement basically.

And I did what I could. And I just said, you know what? Oh, we’re going to do this.

And I knew he was not going to be happy, but there was no option. So he basically had his little temper tantrum, which is embarrassing, but he did it. And when he started to tantrum, other people could see it.

The host could see it. The waiters could see it. I and my husband was fawning over him, trying to make things better, which was my old response.

But I sat there and I told myself, Bronwyn, those are Mike’s feelings. They belong to Mike. Mike wants you to believe you are responsible for his feelings, but you are not.

Only Mike is responsible for his feelings. You are only responsible for your feelings. And when I did that, it was like, I finally grew up in that moment.

And he ended up apologizing later. I think I have really become an adult at age, basically 50, 51 for the first time ever. And ever since it’s just come much more naturally to me.

Jess Dewell 15:44
I have to feel it in my gut. If I’m feeling, if I’m this responsible for other people’s feelings versus being responsible to people. Yeah.

I really like this. I feel everything in my gut first. I can tell you if it’s going to be good.

I can tell you if it’s going to be bad. What I couldn’t tell you until recently was, is it mine? And because I am sensitive to so much to other people in my cases, Oh, that’s a little bit of joy.

I can run around and feel and be me instead of whatever this is. So I feel like I’m not, I have not had an experience like you out in the world yet, but I’m starting to feel some of that. And what you were sharing in your journey brought that up for me.

So maybe somebody else that’s listening is hearing something and going, Ooh, this is how it shows up for me. Great.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 16:33
Can we say claim it? I believe our gut is where our inner child lives. And so it’s very interesting that you were very connected with that.

Unfortunately, it’s also where shame lives. I believe the role of shame, it blocks our connection with our inner child. When we can dislodge shame, it’s like we come into ourself and we start trusting our gut more.

And we can discern is this person trying to make me feel responsible for their feelings? Or is this what I’m feeling? Is this valid?

It just brings about this clarity that is really life giving.

Jess Dewell 17:10
And I’ll tell you what, my gut does not lead me wrong in high pressure negotiations. It does not lead me wrong talking with strangers. It does not lead me wrong.

Now it does. I cannot listen to it and just go on the wrong. Let’s just be real.

But my gut is always there talking to me. And I feel really lucky about that. And now hearing you say that is also very interesting because I’ve always had that and never, but there’s that something.

So that’s something, would it show up another way for somebody else? If there was another default, if I’m on this journey, this is, these are some things that you’ve heard. So I can say, I actually might have some of this.

Keep up with this discernment of responsible for versus responsible to.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 17:53
Most people have got problems though. True. Yeah.

And so those problems are shame. We also feel disgust in our gut and shame and disgust are one in the same, but disgust is disgust of others. Shame is disgust with ourselves.

And when we betray ourselves, we feel that in our gut. So when we, where we feel betrayal we feel that in our gut. A big part of what I do is I help people to dislodge that shame because I liken what I do as a therapist, as like a midwife, I had a home birth 21 years ago.

And a midwife is someone who really trusts that the female body knows what to do, but needs a healthy space, a safe space to do that in. And so facilitate something, but they’re not bringing about all these interventions. Modern medicine doesn’t seem like it trusts the female body to know how to birth a baby.

So it has all these interventions, but midwives are very hands off, but they will intervene as needed, but it’s pretty light on the intervention. And I really believe that is the job of a therapist too. I believe that our body knows what to do.

And a therapist is there to help facilitate that healing and that wholeness, but shame and dislodging shame is really what is necessary. It’s almost a wound knows exactly how to heal, but if there’s something in it, some kind of pathogen that needs to be removed in order for that wound to heal or else it will just stay infected.

Announcer 19:42
The path isn’t clear yet. You don’t have to walk that path alone. This is the Bold Business Podcast.

Like and subscribe wherever you listen. Your host, Jess Dewell, is the strategic partner you’ve been looking for. Asking the questions that truly matter.

It’s time to break the inertia and get the perspective you need to make your next move.

Jess Dewell 20:10
When we experience gut discomfort and it becomes what we would consider chronic, not only is whatever we’re doing for our lifestyle or our sleep or our diet important, we also need to include our feelings about ourselves.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 20:30
I would just really simply say, what is making me feel this shame? What is it? It could be that we just lost a job and and that we put way too much of our identity in what we do.

The job loss is problematic, but it shouldn’t cause shame. That’s the problem is our relationship to what gives us our identity. It could be that we just got a divorce.

It could be the person that we live with like shames the hell out of us. And so our gut’s trying to tell us like, this is not good.

Jess Dewell 21:04
I was thinking we’re going to talk more about anger. However, I’m really interested in this concept of shame because my guess is this is a guess. So correct me please and expand on this and take us in the right direction of if we’ve got disgust on the outer side and shame on the inside, and that’s where we’re defaulting.

Is it because we have bottled up anger or is it because we can’t even get to the anger?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 21:29
I think the shame keeps us from getting to the anger. Absolutely.

Jess Dewell 21:33
Yeah.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 21:33
That’s why I like to bring them up because they definitely have a relationship. Okay. I think, so one of those spinoffs of that relationship is what I call reactive anger because there’s healthy anger, but then there’s also reactive anger.

And I think that’s the anger that gets all the news that makes the news is like those people who are just maybe hotheads and they’re just so reactive. Okay. So that’s not healthy anger.

Healthy anger is that warning light on our dashboard saying, hey, this needs repair. Reactive anger is actually oftentimes a result of when someone is feeling shame and they’re like defending. So let’s say you and I work together and I say, just, I really appreciate, you know, how you do this every day for me, but I’m wondering if you could just, you know, pivot a little bit on how you do that.

And that’s a fine request, but let’s say you are someone with a lot of shame and you can’t hear that correction or that redirection from me just triggers way too much shame in you. And so that now I’m going to see reactive anger and maybe you’ll say something like, okay, sorry, no one’s perfect, but that’s the reactive anger is to defend from shame. Is that also the physical anger?

When someone triggers shame in us, we feel disproportionate anger to the actual situation. Okay.

Jess Dewell 23:08
So healthy anger, the feeling that something is up, you equated it to a warning light. What are ways that we can cultivate, right? Whether it be mindset or our garden relationships, friendships, trust in ourself, right?

All of those require cultivation. What are some of the ways that we can cultivate and really harness that awareness of here is our indicator light. Here is where we’re at so that we can, could we cultivate healthy anger regardless of our relationship with shame and disgust?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 23:44
The more we dislodge shame, the more we’re going to be able to cultivate the healthy anger.

Jess Dewell 23:51
Can we backdoor in the other way? Cause here I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m listening and I’m like, I’m really glad I’ve already been on this journey a little bit. And I can speak to you in this from a place of compassion.

Because I think if I hadn’t, I think we’d be having a very different conversation because I’m like, Ooh, I can see how a past self of me might have wanted to say, or wanted to show up or would be feeling and trying to do something different in this moment. So I can even look at a past Jess and a current Jess and see that. And if somebody is listening, okay, I get this.

I’m not ready to admit claim or indicate to myself that I have shame. So maybe if I start here because I want healthy anger, could I do something? Because I’m guessing it’s going to lead to the other anyway.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 24:39
Well, let’s talk about shame a little bit more because everyone has shame. Every single human Okay. There’s nothing shameful about having shame.

I will say where we get the most shame, where that stems from is our childhood. It’s learned. Shame is not, it’s not an emotion, which children, babies are born into the world with all the emotions, but they’re not born into the world with shame.

Shame is not native to humans. Shame is taught from other humans. So that could be definitely by our parents.

And again, I’m a parent. I know I’ve shamed my child. We talked about it and we’ve worked to dislodge a lot of it, but that’s just what humans do by accident.

Sometimes not so accidentally, but we shame other humans. That’s just how we do things. And the goal though, is for us to dislodge that shame.

Okay. So let’s say you feel your gut, but it’s not the good feeling. It’s actually the shame, right?

So there’s a warning or maybe like it takes time, but you notice you’re having bowel issues. Right. Okay.

And, or it could be that you just felt shame because you yourself had a reaction to something where you’re like, Oh, that’s reactive anger. I think I felt shame when that person said that. Right.

So it could be any of those things. So I’ll give you an example from my life. So a few years ago, my daughter and I got in a fight and about an hour later, when I was calmed down, I was sitting up in this chair actually.

And I closed my eyes and I just said, what just happened? And I really replayed our conversation and I wanted to understand what triggered me exactly. And I realized my trigger was that she was silent in my presence.

And that’s something that lifelong for me, I have a very hard time, less or so now, but historically just if I’m in the presence of another person, I need to be there to be talking because if it’s silent, it just, that’s a trigger for me. It feels like rejection of that person. And so what I did is just replayed that silence that when she didn’t want to talk to me, which was her prerogative.

I got mad at that, but I just replayed what did that feel like in my body when she refused, when she said, I don’t want to talk right now. And I’m still, I’m sitting there with her and it’s silent. And I felt it in my gut.

And so I just closed my eyes, focused on that sensation in my gut. And what we can do is we let our minds just passively float back to the earliest memory we have of that same bodily sensation. And that will bring us back to what I call an imprinting memory.

My memory was when I was three and I was in the presence of my mom for a long time and she was just silent and she wouldn’t talk to me. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t respond to me.

She herself was really depressed. I realize now, but that created a lot of shame because when a parent doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t show interest in a child, that child always naturally concludes. I’m the reason I’m problematic, right?

The child doesn’t have the objectivity to say, no, actually our mom’s depressed. We don’t have that objectivity. So we create the shame for ourselves.

And so what I do then is we imagine, I imagined adult Bronwyn going to little three-year-old Bronwyn, getting down on her level, looking her in the eyes and saying, little Bronwyn, I know you feel ashamed because our mom is so non-responsive and I don’t blame you whatsoever, but I need you to see what I see. I need you to see that what feels like rejection of you is not a reflection of a you problem, but a hundred percent or reflection of a mom problem. So we’re going to put all the shame you feel in this cardboard box, and we’re just going to give it back to her.

And I say, here you go, mom. Turns out this has always been yours. It’s not ours.

Return to owner. And then I look back at little Bronwyn and I say, little Bronwyn, I see you. And I see what a precious little girl you are.

And you’re good. I see your goodness. You’re not perfect, but you’re good.

You’re a net good in my eyes. And you matter to me, even if you don’t matter to our mother, you matter to me. And now you can feel your feelings and I will feel them with you because what’s shareable is bearable.

And I asked for your forgiveness for my abandonment of you, because I didn’t realize how much you needed me to see you and to recognize you and how powerful I am for you. But I’m here now. And I’m committed to winning back your trust by attuning to you and not abandoning you again.

It takes 60 seconds. And that really heals that template within us that associates, you know, silence with shame or rejection. And we can do that for ourselves at each and every turn when we start to notice where shame plays a role in our lives.

Jess Dewell 29:56
That’s interesting. One of mine, I know that I’m feeling. And somebody says it was a waste of time.

Somebody said we got to the end. That was a 40 minutes and waterworks. And I was like, Oh, okay.

So I’m like, really? Was it? And I was able to name after I was able to breathe again.

Okay. Tears aside. I’m sorry.

You feel that way. Here are two things I took out of it. Something I missed that I’m really glad to have awareness of and the courage to ask you for help.

And that was the end of that conversation. But to know that your trigger is silence. My trigger was that is.

And so we all have them and to recognize that at least will help us walk through because I appreciate you sharing that walkthrough story.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 30:45
Yeah.

Jess Dewell 30:47
It’s only through the life experience that got us to where we are today that will allow us to see that in the past.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 30:56
Absolutely. So that when we do that, I call that an integration exercise where we integrate with our young self and it really heals people very quickly. It is very powerful.

And I will say just someone saying that was a waste of time. That’s hard for me to hear what I would come back with is I’d say, Oh, you and I have very different opinions on that. Thank you for sharing yours.

Yeah.

Jess Dewell 31:26
Yeah. I like that to have that counter response and to show gratitude for the different perspective in that particular space and place. It’s interesting.

It’s interesting to see. And it’s interesting what people will be willing to take responsibility for themselves. And when I say people, I’m including me in that because there are times I don’t want to take responsibility for something that I did because I’m actually ashamed or embarrassed and it’s really hard to come back around.

And I think if I were to project out working with our own shame first to be able to start building a healthy relationship and a strong indicator in our gut that is telling us that there’s something to address, then what? So you tell me, then what?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 32:14
Then what? Yeah. You know what I find as we give back that shame to the original owner.

So I did another exercise with my father. So this is in my imagination.

Jess Dewell 32:26
Yeah.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 32:26
It’s never out loud with anybody else. No, we do this for ourself. Exactly.

And one day I just pictured 10-year-old Bronwyn sitting at the dining room table where my father would, every night he would mock me at dinner starting at age 10. He just ridiculed me. And I pictured her and I imagined going to her, looking her in the eyes and saying, I know how much shame you feel, but you know what?

That’s his shame. So we’re going to put it all in this cardboard box and we’re going to say, here dad, this is actually yours, not ours. And by the way, we can do this with guilt as well.

And I find that guilt and shame actually are two sides of the same coin because a lot of parents make us feel guilty, not necessarily shame, but they work the same way. So we can give that box of guilt to the parent too. So yeah, as we do that, it’s after I did that though, with my father in my imagination, actually I had someone in my life who was trying to shame me.

And in the past, so you talked about the new Jess, the old Jess, the old Bronwyn would have just sat there and taken it in. I would have really believed what they were saying. And in fact, I have done that and it led me to extreme depression.

And I can share that story. That’s actually how I got to be a therapist and how I became an anger expert. And it all started with people putting their shame onto me.

And that’s what humans do. Like I said, we unconsciously most often, when we feel small, we can make ourselves feel bigger by putting shame on others, by belittling others. And that’s really what we call scapegoating.

That term really shows up here. And my dad did that to me every night. He would, I was the scapegoat for his own shame.

And so he gave it to me. And so when we do that in our imagination, when we give it back, it frees us up. And so here I am sitting with this person and they, in that moment, instead of just like taking it in, it was like I had an invisible force field between me and this man.

And I just sat there and I was like thinking, Oh, I know what you’re doing right now. It was like, I could see it. I could see him trying to give me his shame in a box, like all these boxes and the force fields.

No, you can’t penetrate. And I was just sitting there. Are you kidding?

And I held him accountable. He ended up getting fired. So yeah, yeah.

This is what we can do. We can just have that objectivity when we dislodge our own shame first for ourselves, with our parents usually, or some other bully. Then the rest of the bullies in the world, Oh, it’s a no-brainer.

It’s going to come naturally.

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Jess Dewell 35:49
We talk about boundaries and having them. They just, we don’t ever have to. Sometimes I find out I have built boundaries through what you were just talking about.

This stuff just happens. This work just has this result. Then I’m like, Oh, look, I have a boundary.

How interesting is that from doing this work? Now, personally, I will speak for myself talking about this. I’m like, I got you.

What makes me think that not only is this work important and it matters, but it’s the beginning of the work isn’t dealing with the anger, isn’t getting to know the anger, isn’t managing the anger or transforming it, whatever word you want to put in front of that anger. How do I know myself? Is this an appropriate takeaway from our conversation so far?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 36:33
I’m really glad you’ve kind of were able to articulate that. I think that is absolutely true. I think as we dislodge shame, we’re no longer divided within ourselves.

We’re able to connect to our true self. We’re naturally going to feel that anger and trust it and see what it needs from us. That’s just going to be a natural outflow.

But if we have a lot of shame, this isn’t going to work. Like it’s just not going to gain traction.

Jess Dewell 37:01
So the work you do and the work I do are similar in one way. We can get a quick result maybe, but it’s not lasting unless we do all the work that you can’t see the result of. And that takes time and it takes intention and it takes effort.

And sometimes we can’t see the end. And sometimes it’s a really messy in the middle of it. And it’s all necessary.

And that’s truly where the work is happening. Because if all we want is that outcome, then what? We’re actually missing the boat.

We like the idea of a boundary. We understand what it does, but how do we hold it and support it and integrate it and make sure it’s right for us if we haven’t done anything else? It will fall down if we haven’t done anything else.

Is that fair? Absolutely. Okay.

That’s my takeaway from this conversation so far, Bronwyn. That’s really cool because you’re helping me see this right now. Then we’re actually having a really good conversation because I like that when it is both ways.

So you had said you would be willing to share the story of your depression and how you became a therapist. I am very curious about that because that’s actually one of the things that’s like course correction. We thought we were doing the right thing in what we were here to do.

And we had something else that I don’t think we missed the boat. I think everything pointed in that direction and it was just a, oh, you’re actually ready now. Here we go.

Hard left right here because you’re ready. I’m ready. Was that how it actually felt for you in hindsight?

I didn’t have many feelings. You don’t have feelings.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 38:34
In hindsight, I’m like, oh yeah, what a godsend.

Jess Dewell 38:38
Yeah. Would you share that story with us?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 38:40
Absolutely.

Jess Dewell 38:41
How that was the catalyst for you to become involved and passionate about anger and being angry about the right things like the name of your podcast?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 38:50
About 17 years ago, I fell into a very serious depressive episode and I went to a bunch of therapists and I remember sitting on the couch of each one of them thinking to myself, you know what, Bronwyn, you are hardly functional right now, but I think you’d still make a better therapist than this person. So that kind of galvanized me to go back to school and get another master’s degree. Cause I already had a master’s in another field.

So that was like, okay, I think I need to become a therapist and be my own therapist and get those 3000 hours. So that was a cool thing. And that came from that first depressive episode and it also healed my depressive episode simultaneously.

But as love life would have it about a year and a half later, I fell into a much more pernicious and enduring depressive episode. The one I was referring to before where I, it was based in me taking on other people’s scapegoating, shaming of me. So that was not good.

I actually had to stop working. Like I was so depressed. I couldn’t work, function, what have you.

When I did finally get better and that took years, I started working again as a therapist and I started connecting the dots between what my client’s stories are and my own depressive episodes. And I started seeing that anger was the common denominator, suppressed anger, not anger, dissociated anger was the common denominator between both of my depressive episodes, all my clients’ depressive episodes, anxious episodes, panic attacks, mania, OCD, ADHD, all the things. And I was like, voila, I’ve even had a client who’s had lifelong migraines.

Her migraines stopped in therapy because she realized, oh, I’m just dissociating from my anger. So I have seen miracles by helping people connect to their anger, helping me connect to my anger. And again, like you said, it’s not a simple, straightforward journey.

We do have to dislodge that shame, but it’s also very empowering. One of the things I did when I was healing from that depressive episode is I wrote a letter of accountability, like an email to one of those people who bullied me and caused me to become depressed, who did things that gave me shame and belittled me to make themselves feel big. And I held her accountable.

I sent the email and I said, this is a one-way piece of communication. I just need to set the record straight. If you respond, it will go unread.

I will not read it. And every act I did like that, like further empowered me, further healed me. So it’s really about us reclaiming ourselves, taking back our dignity, taking back our lives by outsourcing that shame and then that connecting with anger.

Jess Dewell 41:54
So the people that are most important to us might be a parent, might be a partner, might be a child. How do we bring them with us in this?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 42:03
Yeah, it depends on how we’re interfacing with each person. Yeah. But yeah.

So with my husband, he’s actually the catalyst for that first depressive episode 17 years ago, was we had just relocated and I was very lonely. And I looked at him just like a couple nights after our move. And I think I was, I had tears in my eyes and he showed no empathy, just zero.

And now I’ve learned, and he’s learned too, that the reason he withheld empathy from me was because he didn’t want to feel guilty because he was the reason we moved. But he’s learning, we’re learning together, but he’s learning, he’s responsible to me, right? And so in that moment, he felt responsible for me.

And that will really cause us to not show up for people. And so in that moment, when I needed his empathy, I just needed him to say, you know what Bronwyn, I see how much you’re hurting and it’s breaking my heart. That’s all I needed.

But that made me very depressed because it reactivated my early childhood experience of feeling lonely and my mom withholding empathy from me. So yeah, so those kinds of things. But if I, in that moment had the wherewithal to say, you know what Steve, I just need you to show empathy and this is what I need from you right now.

If I could have catalyzed that anger out of my body and just been assertive and said, this is what I need from you, you know, that would have helped him do that too. But that anger, I didn’t feel it. I just associated and then that made me very, very depressed.

Jess Dewell 43:46
Thank you for sharing that. Because I know when we want to be part of something bigger, whether that’s within a household or within a with our partners. So our partners in life, our partners in our work, our partners in our community, whatever that is, it sounds like there’s a way forward.

It doesn’t have to be a severing and that, and the journey is the journey similar.

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 44:12
Yeah. So with Steve and I, it’s made our marriage so much better. It hasn’t been an easy journey, but it has definitely improved.

I’m being more assertive. He’s not feeling responsible for my feelings with my father that I alluded to earlier. It came down to an ultimatum that I said, you know what dad, I really want to be in your life, but you’re going to need to apologize for your abusive behavior of me in the past and become a safe person.

If that’s going to continue. So the court, he decided to not respond. And so I haven’t spoken to him in three years and I might never again.

And that’s totally fine with me. You know, it’s interesting. I had insomnia for 30 years.

Oh yeah. 30 years. And when I started waking up to just how toxic he is and feeling my anger and starting to hold him accountable, I just document things he had said and done in emails, try to hold him accountable.

That’s the only way he’ll listen is by reading it versus hearing it. But that’s when I started sleeping like a baby for the first time in 30 years, I got off all my medication. So I think for 30 years, little Bronwyn was like, wake up.

Why are you thinking of him as a good father? He’s not a safe person. And when I started trusting that, feeling my anger, holding him accountable, it gave me peace.

And I have no more insomnia. Does this self-work make us safe people to be around?

Jess Dewell 45:46
Absolutely. Okay. Then that’s where we’ll leave that because I’m like, Ooh, so tell me Bronwyn, why, what makes it bold?

What makes it bold to work with ourselves and our shame and our disgust so that we can have a healthy relationship with anger?

Bronwyn Schweigerdt 46:03
When we see a tree that is flourishing, like I have a tree in my backyard. That’s a hundred feet tall. It’s flourishing and a flourishing tree creates habitat shade refuge for thousands of creatures and even humans.

And when humans flourish, we do the same thing. We make the world a safer, more beautiful place. And so there’s nothing selfish about us flourishing.

When we learn to be true to ourselves, when we stop betraying ourselves, we flourish and everything around us improves as well.

Announcer 47:11
Thank you for listening and a special thanks to The Scott Treatment for technical production.