Angry at the Right Things: Interview with Bronwyn Schweigerdt

welcome back to another episode of Christian Natural Health today I'm very pleased to have bronwin schwager with us

bronwin may be the most evocative psychotherapist you've ever heard instead of fixing people's messes her

goal is to elicit feelings you're most ashamed to have such as hatred and betrayal she knows that even though

feelings are invisible they don't evaporate but store away in our bodies when they're disowned Ronin has a

master's degree in counseling and and another in nutrition she's a public speaker author and licensed

psychotherapist welcome bronwin thanks for joining us you're welcome Lauren yeah absolutely so what's your backstory

how did you become an anger expert that's kind of unique yes um so my backstory is more a

backstory of how I became a therapist as well actually um so my first like like

you read my first degree or my first Master's and career was in nutrition and I was not planning to go back to school

and get a second MERS or a second career yeah um but I fell myself into a very

very severe depressive episode um and I went to multiple

therapists and you know each time and this was back when it was in person only

um and each time I would be sitting there thinking to myself during the

session you know I'm hardly functioning right now but I'm still pretty sure I would make a better therapist to me than

this person and I went through about four different therapists during that

season that's not just my lifelong experience but right yeah and none of them were a good therapist for me um so

I decided part of my healing Journey for that depressive episode and I had another after that was that was even

worse in a way but but for that episode going back to school and getting my

Master's in counseling psychology and I'm getting my hours I really wanted to

be that therapist that I needed myself and be that for others um and so in

retrospect looking back at that depressive episode and the subsequent one that was not worse in in maybe um

acuteness but worse in like it lasted much longer like years sure um I see

that the common denominator was suppressed anger and I

started kind of putting together the pieces like and not just anger betrayal

so betrayal is a specific type of anger is when someone we have expectations of

like a parent or a partner or you know someone really close to us is not

meeting those expectations um it's not just any old type of anger you know anger can be at

someone who cuts you off in the freeway sure but there that's not a betrayal and betrayal is so much deeper you know and

um and so I realized you know each time it was this betrayal you know my first

first was when my husband we had just moved and relocated about an hour and a

half away but it was like the dark side of the moon for me because I knew no one and I didn't have a job I mean I lost my

job when we moved and my daughter I just have one child it she was just starting school so I was like alone all day in

this new city I didn't want to be in my husband's off at work my daughter's at school and I'm just like so

lonely and when I tried to share that with my husband like when we first got

there I just have this memory of the look on his face was just like not

empathetic at all and we've talked about it now it's been like 15 years now but

in hindsight it wasn't like he was just withholding empathy to be cruel but you

know he ascribed to that old world view of like you know if you just if I just

withhold empathy if somehow he thought if I gave my do my wife empathy it would

enable it and it would get worse and her her neediness and her pain would somehow

worsen and then she'd be just a mess and so if I withhold it it'll help her just

Buckle through and just like buck up and get over it right but for for

me that look on his face and that withholding of empathy was very much

reminiscent of what my mom did to me my whole life which I think was more for

the cruel objective of just withholding empathy from me and so it triggered this betrayal and yeah and so

that was actually so the loneliness was bad enough but then on top of that that betrayal from my current attachment

figure who's doing something my mom did my whole life um was just too much and

it just sent me down so that was that and if at that time I had you know

really felt valid to feel that betrayal and to feel that anger and said to my

husband you know what Steve you're doing what my mom did and I know your intention isn't to be cruel but I need

you to be my attachment figure right now I need you to show me empathy and it's not going to make things worse it's

actually going to make things better and if he had and I think he would have then

you done that yeah and that would have saved me from that major major depressive episode sure yeah and so it's

really about being aware and knowing that our feelings matter that they're valid that we're entitled to feel their

feelings it doesn't mean you know we're going to explode and become a raging

angry person it just means we're gonna say to ourselves you know what bronwin

you're entitled to feel this this isn't bad to feel and you can Channel it out

of your body by assertiveness and saying hey this is what I need from you right

now I need you to not betray me and so that is really my expertise is because

so many of us just have such a unhealthy relationship with our anger we dissociate from it in in many respects

and and one is a common one is just going to our heads I mean our our brains help us dissociate they from our

feelings because this is all logic and so we logic we say oh well he didn't mean to do that and so we can just

pretend it didn't happen and pretend we don't feel betrayed and it doesn't help

doesn't help because the feelings are very much alive and well and I like to say you know even though our feelings

are invisible I mean I believe they're more real than the couch I'm sitting on right now they're more real than this

laptop they are real and they don't just dissipate Into The Ether if we ignore them they very much haunt us and they

stay embodied in us and they cause us to get sick one way or another so you know

my big ones were through depression but most of my clients come to me with profound anxiety and anxiety is the same

thing it's it's anger suppressed in our bodies or disassociated from that's still in our bodies interesting so when

you were seeing those four therapists who didn't help you and they weren't trying to address that was there like a

Common Thread of approaches that they use that are maybe fairly typical for

most therapeutic approaches that aren't in your opinion very useful and that maybe you learned when you were in

school yeah yeah so they kind of rain like span the whole range but some

therapists will just the first one I went to will just sit and listen and go

uhhuh uhhuh oh right how does that make you feel uhhuh and like and and and so

you're just like no your job is to be a mirror your job is to help me see myself a true reflection and so that's not just

I mean listening is really vital but without that reflection like well

bronwin have you noticed these patterns and what you're saying have you noticed that this is an echo of an earlier time

in your life you know without that reflection back not getting anything that's that's not helpful and then I

think the other end of this spectrum that's really common is actually kind of in um it's kind of compensating for the

uhhuh uh-huh only listening therapy which is more CBT or DBT therapy where

um it's not much listening at all and it's more like just symptom management

but it is a lot of feedback and so it's kind of like trying to compensate for

the only listening but it's going way too far where you know that and I had

that too where the therapist is listening to you for maybe 10 minutes and they're like well what about going

for a walk every day you know when you're you're you're saying you're depressed like walks really help and

you're like I could Google that or that's just like common sense you know I don't need a therapist and you're not

being a mirror either because you're not really understanding what you're doing there with the DBT and CBT um therapy

and what I call alphabet soup because there's act there's all these acronyms

but what all they're doing is really managing symptoms and it's very superficial so the symptoms are

depression the symptoms are I can't get out of bed the symptoms are you know I'm overeating but let's get to the root and

the root are the feelings which are usually anger betrayal a feeling of

Abandonment or rejection and those things are all very much you know different facets of the same thing sure

absolutely and so I have a feeling I know what you're going to say to this but what's your perspective on medication in that

situation well of course that just manages the symptoms and so how how sad

is that that you're just like that medication is just kind of helping you

better with the root problem that you're not actually addressing and so that's what

anger is though anger isn't something to avoid or dissociate from as a lot of us

see it as because we just only associate with people who are explosive and and

violent or verbally violent but anger is a light on the dashboard of our emotional car saying you know what

something's wrong you need to check under the hood and resolve it and bring it to resolution and so our anger is

that signal that warning that saying there's something there's a root problem

and we need to bring it to resolution and so when we can have develop a

healthy relationship with our anger you know saying you know what I can feel this right now I can just feel

it in my body all I'm GNA do is just allow myself to feel it in my body and

it's going to tell me what I need to do it's going to give me information vital wisdom for to move forward and so that

that is usually some kind of assertiveness and or boundary or

accountability yeah is this something that you learned in school or did you kind of deduce it on your own you okay

not at all not at all not their perspective they don't seem to believe or or is the traditional view that the

feelings aren't coming from someplace real like is it just that they're a

chemical imbalance or what is what is the prevailing well in school they don't give you one um Theory they they kind of

expose you to all these different theories and and there are theories called like emotionally focused right um

there's uh internal family systems which is more of a novel Theory um which is

working with you know I don't use that per se but working with the inner child that is a theoretical um philosophy and

so they kind of expose you to all these different ones but you are just like supposed to learn about them all and

kind of pick and shoes and most therapists call themselves eclectic where they're using a little of this but

they're not you know for me the the real theory that works is what we call

attachment Theory because attachment Theory um believes that you know in our

early childhood with our primary attachment figures our young selves

learned things that need to be unlearned currently and learn we learn those through what we call imprints so you

know if I like I mentioned I had a mother who didn't show me empathy or compassion and and so that's a trigger

for me now in the present so if I'm talking to you Lauren and you're like

yeah yeah and then you start looking away and I'm still talking and you're looking away like I little bronwin is

very triggered because that was a big imprint for her on you know feeling

rejected and that was something and so when we get that awareness and we go oh that's little Brun wi feeling rejected

and and instead of me exploding I can say hey Lauren are you is this a bad

time like it looks like you're distracted and then maybe you're like yeah actually my daughter's calling me

and she just got an accident and I'm like okay good to know right let's reschedule so I can be productive with

that feeling of rejection instead of just you know I can Master it instead of it mastering me right right absolutely

interesting so um is there ever an easy way or easy is I'm sure none of this is

ever easy but um is there a way to help to identify when the emotion that is

stuffed is because of a true trigger in your past as opposed to a thinking

process that's warped do you know what I mean by that like how can you distinguish well how do you approach

that when it seems like somebody has a distorted view of the world and maybe they're angry about something that

either didn't happen or a distortion of something that happened where they believed something else about it how do you how do you use this approach in a

situation like that well can you give me an example are you thinking of something specific yourself right now I'm thinking

of something along the lines of like catastrophic thinking uh like beliefs about the world as in like I'm always

going to be a failure or everybody's always going to reject me or something along those lines do in in your

experience is there always is there always something that was completely legitimate the the

foundation of that or can it ever just be that the focus because my understanding of of cognitive behavioral

therapy for example maybe I didn't know what it was um but I thought that essentially it was recognizing if

there's a false thought pattern that is keeping you stuck helping you to shift out of that as opposed to trying to dig

up the foundation so I wanted to know is okay okay well I mean that's a really

good point you're bringing up you're right that's what cognitive behavioral therapy is and if only it were that

simple as just like identifying this faulty belief and going oh that's not

it's actually not true so it if it if that worked CBT would be awesome because

you don't have to dig into the past and it would be so quick and efficient and all these things that it was designed to

be but the thing is we you know so that's why I say we dissociate into our brain so that's that's up here in the

prefrontal cortex right but where our attachment wounds are are in the limic

brain which is where our feelings are so even if we are able to

intellectually you know change our thought thinking system that

hopelessness that the spare is still living and active and very much alive and active and that is what we learned

in our early childhood from those early imprints so what I lead my clients on

and I spend a lot of my podcast on this I have a co-host she's actually my best friend Katie she's not a therapist and

um but she allows me to do some of the exercises that I do with my clients on

her in the podcast because my goal is that the listeners will be able to do this for themselves so people who aren't

ever going to be my clients can take this in um but so I lead my clients in

what's called an in I call it an integration exercise and so the goal of

therapy ultimately really should be helping people to integrate and that is integrating with our own inner child

that causes the integration of those different parts of our brain so it's

complete it's whole it's integral that healing isn't just in our adult Minds

it's really where it started that hopelessness that despair that you were alluding to and if we don't do that that

hopeless and and despair will continue to show up maybe different thoughts or different systems it will still mess

with us in some way even if we've intellectually you know changed our

thought patterns sure yeah so with your example of your mom when you were growing up like that level of of wound

is there a process by which you kind of let go and forgive or is it more about

focusing on when you're triggered by that memory now and not letting that

Master you which one is the focus or is it a combination of both yeah so you

know for me to go to go back to those imprints the early imprints it could

just be one memory that's emblematic of a host of things um and I I lead my

clients and then like I said for my podcast listeners too sure picking one of those memories that's emblematic of

feeling that level of rejection from the mom so I would lead let's say I did this with Katie I would say okay you know

what's the look on little Katie's face when she's being you know rejected by her mom and so and then I lead adult

Katie to enter that memory and then let little Katie know you know what Lil K I

know you feel rejected and unwanted and unloved but I need you to to hear the

truth for me and what I know now which is you were rejected but you were

rejected because that was a mom problem not a little Katie problem

100% a mom problem and little Katie you are loved and seen and wanted by me I'm

here now and I'm going to be that person for you who sees you unconditionally who

always is that mirror back to you who reflects your worth and your importance to me and you're precious to me and you

belong to me and you've got me now you've won my approval and so I need you

to know the truth about what I see when I look at you and so it's just letting

go of that original attachment figure healing with our ourselves right and

then once we are able to do that we've unlearned that we are unwanted so that

trigger's gone um not like 100% but it's really subsided um and when we think about that

parent you know when they heard us we're really able to see them more

objectively you know and so because we don't need them to be the parent we're

like kind of free like oh I am that person for me now and so I can see you

more you know in a way I am really angry by what you did but in another way I see

that you were so wounded internally too and I feel you know pity for you because

you were just a little child yourself you know and so we have that level of objectivity right it's like you've

you've delink the limic hijacking kind of a thing yeah exactly so and what would you say is the

relationship between the anger that gets Unearthed from some of this and like the shame trigger is are they

related yeah so I think that's a that's another great question um they shouldn't be related and you know I'm my next

episode actually I I have my my notes for I'm actually going to talk a lot about this um so the word

emotion means like motion it means things that evoke motion so anger

sadness these feelings are in our bodies and they're they're giving us wisdom and insight for what we need you know our

feelings tell us what we need so when we feel sad we need to cry not by ourselves

but we need to cry with someone who can hear us and May behold us and validate us and you know what's sharable is

bearable so we need to feel seen and felt by someone else um when we're angry

we need to be validated by someone else we can do that for ourselves as well which is optimal um but anyway emotions

are designed to move us they're designed to give us wisdom into how to heal but

shame is not an emotion shame is just a feeling okay and we a lot of times I think we

conflate it with other emotions it's not it's not meant to move us it's not you

know yeah what's that like a state of being almost it's a state of being and unlike all the other feelings feelings

are there from birth they're you know god-given we we were born into the world with feelings that are designed to give

us wisdom shame is actually a social construct shame is always learned always

learned and so it's not it's not native it's not a native feeling and it doesn't

move us anywhere it actually shuts us down and it in it shuts us down so much

that we dissociate from it I um I have

you know had clients tell me like when they start dissociating because they're ashamed of

themselves they start doing things it's like they feel feel like they're not even in their bodies and then later

they're like I can't believe I said those things I can't believe I did I mean talk about Jackal and Hyde shame

that's what it causes us what we call in therapy to split interesting shame makes us split and a lot of people do split

from their own anger because they were taught that it's by their primary attachment figure that it's shameful

don't feel angry that is shameful so we split from our own anger and we

dissociate from it and and then it it Masters us instead of us mastering it by

channeling it out in healthy ways right it Masters us and so but then those same

people when some of them when they're confronted by it later they're they don't even remember it or they're in

this kind of denial because that's another kind of splitting or dissociation where they're like I didn't

I didn't say that like that you know and and that's all shame it's only negative

it's only damaging yeah so part of the process sounds like getting people if

they if they have that idea that anger is bad rewriting that and recognizing

that it's okay and it has a positive impact or positive uh purpose what can you can you briefly state that what is

the Positive Purpose of anger the Positive Purpose of anger is to give us

wisdom to how to resolve a root problem and anger is is always a secondary

emotion not a primary so under the anger is some kind of hurt again usually from

a feeling of rejection abandonment betrayal yeah interesting so um one of

the things that you you know uh occasionally talk about is the fact that the idea that there's no such thing as

an angry person is this why because anger is kind of like a a higher level of something else that's

underneath no well that is true but I like to say that there's no such thing as an angry person because that's like

saying you know well I'm a breathing person and that person's not a breathing

person like oh all all humans have anger yeah and so I don't like that stigma oh

she's an angry person I'm not an angry person it's like are you breathing are you human then you have anger sure and

so it's just a matter of your relationship to your anger you're either likely suppressing it yeah or exploding

and there's very few people who are just in the healthy assertive Middle where they're like hey Lauren you said you'd

show up at 10 and you came on to call it 1020 what's what's up with that that's

that's my anger being channeled out in a healthy way that's assertiveness and it

it it you know gets underreported it's not as Sensational as what we associate

with real anger right but it's it is real anger sure yeah that makes sense so

um when people are first digging up um or unearthing some of the things that have been suppressed long term I imagine

for many people there's a fear that like what if I bring this up and I can't control it and that's part of the reason

for suppressing it I would imagine uh what do you say to to early or um

clients earlier on who have that concern or that fear they don't want to go back into to potentially bring up old

trauma yeah I there is a lot of fear but I don't think it's so much of that

as um fear of Abandonment how

so so most the people who come to therapy I would say the majority are um

on the codependent Spectrum those are the ones to have the anxiety that seems

to be more for codependents and codependents are the ones who come to therapy because they say bronin what

else can I do to help fix my relationships to help other people how can I twist myself more into a pretzel

than I already am to make everyone happy in my life and I'm like yeah you can't

and those are some toxic people and they're like oh no no no I just need to twist myself more into a pretzel so that

they won't be so angry at me and um and I talk a lot about codependency I have a

whole podcast on that but um but what they all have in common is they learned

very early in their childhood probably around age to when they first started to differentiate from their parents the

terrible twos and the parent didn't like that wasn't okay with the child

differentiating by saying no and mine and you know those things that two-year-olds say they learned maybe

with just a look on the parents face or maybe you know maybe words but maybe

more just like seeing seeing some silent treatment going on that if they show

their anger or differentiate or say no or have boundaries that Mom's going to abandon

them at least for a while mentally emotionally maybe physically and so they learn to

associate anger with abandonment and so deep down their inner child is so afraid

of their own anger because they're afraid of being all alone and rejected

and abandoned like they experience at that early those early imprints yeah interesting so you said that both

depression and anxiety can be manifestations of suppressed anger what would make

somebody kind of go in more One Direction than another anxiety versus depression or do they typically just

coexist in your experience do most people who are anxious also feel depressed and vice versa yeah I don't

really understand a lot of them will have both okay maybe be more on the

anxious side because it's so chronic um but yeah I don't really see any Rhyme or

Reason for why anxiety or depression but I will say um I actually believe that

all mental health problems are from dissociated anger so I had one client

she's still with me um she's doing great now but when she came to me she had um

she was actually diagnosed with um uh

psychosis and that's a very serious you know diagnosis like that's like where

they put you in institution she had really severe hallucinations at times um

and so but it was all suppressed anger and she's doing great now like she's the

healthiest person ever now um so and as my background like I said was a

nutrition I never would have believed this honestly like even five years ago

but now I see how much it causes physical illness um migraines I believe

are absolutely Suess suppressed anger um GI issues our suppressed anger especially

suppressed disgust that's where we feel it is in our gut um insomnia I

personally had insomnia for decades it's now completely gone but I think that was

yeah and then autoimmune disorders I really believe are very severe fear suppressed anger chronic and I believe

our bodies are speaking to us actually I believe when we can get out of our heads and into our bodies and really listen to

our bodies and learn to attune to our bodies um our th those are our inner

child speaking to us and saying hey bronwin you know for me my insomnia was

little bronwin saying you need to see our father for who he really is you need

to really stop associating from reality and being in denial about who he is you

need to see that he's actually just as evil as your mom and you need to have a boundary with him and the minute I

started doing that I started sleeping like a baby for the first time in 30

years so yeah and so how does your first

degree in nutrition play into your practice does that ever is that is that part of the recommendations that you

give your clients as well no um that would be again more of a CBT

approach because um it's treating symptoms I really see our relationship

with our bodies and ourselves once we heal that or even start healing our

relationship with ourselves we naturally want to self- nurture and that is through a healthy

diet and I I think you know the CBT folks have it all wrong if you you can tell people what to eat they're not

going to last for more than a couple weeks until they heal their relationship

with the theirselves which is healing their relationship with their anger those are one and the same and so once

we start doing that I have clients come to me out of nowhere they'll be like I started shopping at the farmers market

and I'm like Googling all these recipes and I'm eating so much better and they

don't even know I have a master's in nutrition they have no idea that my first career was in nutrition

they're just telling me and they're like I started exercising I just feel so good and so I feel like the more we start

internally coming to life the more we just want to be more and more alive and

those outward manifestations just come naturally it's fascinating very cool what have I not asked you that you want

to make sure you leave with our audience yeah so I would say to summarize you know um in a nutshell

our healing our relationship with our s means being true to

ourselves and not betraying ourselves when we do betray ourselves we are going

to get sick physically or mentally or both um and you know what being true to

ourselves is not selfish it isn't even like I don't even like the phrase putting ourselves first

I don't like that because that implies other people and other things are second and there's some kind of hierarchy I

when we're true to ourselves when we don't betray ourselves we come more Fully Alive that makes us

integrate and what we find is we have so much more to give others and we and they

most people not all because they're not all safe people but most people just enjoy us more because we're more alive

and they trust us more because we're more you know what you see is what you get we we're more integrated we're

healthier so everyone benefits from us being true to ourselves yep absolutely

where can people go to learn more about you yeah so my podcast is angry at the

right things and I think I have 20 episodes now soon to have 21 it's just

about uh 20 hours of me and Katie talking about all these things uh more

slowly and doing the integration exercises awesome well I will link to

that in the show notes and thank you so much Bronn this has been really fun appreciate it thank you Lauren thanks

for having me

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