What’s the Emotional Age of Your Anger? (with Alistair Moes)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everybody. I am super pumped today to be joined by a very special guest. Alistair Moose has run Moose anger Management for 31 years and leads a team of multiple therapists who have worked with over 15,000 men and women. Alistair focuses on helping people reconnect with what truly matters to his clients and draws on neuroscience and the way emotions resonate throughout the body across generations. Through his work, people return to their core values and become more fully themselves. He works online with people worldwide and works with individuals, couples. And his anger management groups start every four weeks. He started facilitating those groups in 1995. And our paths have kind of crossed in a somewhat circuitous way where we've both met each other's wives and we know of each other, but this is kind of our first time really coming together. And I've just been watching him and what he's up to online for many years now and have always been very impressed and thought, I got to get this guy on the show. He's been in the trenches doing some really powerful work for a long time. So welcome, Alistair. So good to have you here.

Alistair Moes: Well, thank you for inviting me on the show. Really appreciate it.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And, you know, there's so much we could talk about here today. And we were even just talking a little bit before I hit record and tell. Tell people a little bit about how you kind of got into the work and. Yeah. What you've been up to these. These last 31 years.

Alistair Moes: Yeah. So back at the end of 1994, just to date myself, I. I just had a random networking conversation with somebody who asked me to run an anger management, you know, group for them, and. Which forced me to start my own company. And when they asked me, I. I said over the phone with absolute confidence. Yeah, totally. I could do that. Like, absolute confidence. And after I put the phone down, I'm like, how do I do that? But I'd been working in the field for six years by that time, and I'm, you know, knew actually how to do that apparently. And that kept on growing over the years. I did tons of other jobs and addictions and supervising counselors that worked with street kids and tons of programs. Worked as a social worker for about four months once and. And ended up just slowly growing in the business until I left everything else behind. And now I've been doing this for a lot of years. There's 10 therapists with us. And, you know, when I first started doing this work, it fairly quickly came to my attention that the role models I had growing up didn't have anger management very dialed in. So I did not have anger management really dialed in. I was too nice. It would all build up and then I'd freak out and lose it. And, you know, I spent the 80s bartending and managing bars, which had its own impact. Wow.

Jason Lange: And

Alistair Moes: yeah, so it became obvious to me that I needed a lot of work on myself, but I welcomed that. And all these years later, I continued to attend training and do group and individual breath work and attend therapeutic groups and all, all sorts of stuff. So I like this work because there's always more to learn. And I'm curious by nature, which is not true for the majority of my family. There are things that got passed down to me through the generations that were suboptimal, let's just say some of it around alcohol and drugs and things like that, and some of it just around. I come from a family with generations of just not talking about things. Like things would be blowing up and getting smashed. And the next morning, when I was a little kid, everybody just act like nothing happened. Which as a kid I'm like, awesome. This is the way the world works. But then when I became an adult and people held me accountable, I was horrified. Like, what are you doing? We're supposed to just pretend like nothing happened. And so it took me time to figure that out and, and really just to grow up because I didn't have a lot of emotional maturity when I was younger and. Yeah, and, you know, some bad things happen along the way that kind of, you know, threw me off course. And so I've been doing a lot ever since to help myself and also working with other men. And a lot of the guys can relate to what I talk about, about my experience and, and that brings people to acknowledge their own stuff. And I think so many of us, like my dad grew up, just keep it all in, never let anything out. And in the groups, guys just open up more and more and more. Not all of them, but most people just do it because it feels comfortable and it's an invitation. It's not anybody telling them to open up. I had a 79 year old in one of my groups earlier this year and he says to the guys, and there's guys from every age and every background, rich, poor, you name it. Sometimes it looks like the United nations in there and the 79 year old says, if you told me two years ago that I'd be going to an anger management class and that I would be going to counseling, loving it, I would have called you an idiot. Probably Worse than that. But the truth is, I love it. My wife isn't leaving me now, so that's good. And we get a long way better and life is more enjoyable. And so he was inspiring everybody in the group. So I love stuff like that. Like, I live for things like that, and I get to witness that in every group in multiple ways. So I feel gratitude, shall we say?

Jason Lange: Yeah, that's so great. And that has me curious. There's a little thread there. Question for you. What's something about anger that you believed back 31 years ago when you first got that invitation that maybe you don't believe anymore? Like, how's your understanding or concept or.

Alistair Moes: Well, when I was growing up, anger was really scary. Even my mom. My mom was only about 5 foot 1 and my dad was like 6 3. She was the one that was angry. She was the one in control. And as a little kid, anger scared me. And so I didn't really learn what to do with anger. And it just seemed like it wasn't a good thing. But anger has this beautiful life energy in it. And when we're stuck, when we're in a position that things aren't getting resolved and it's building up in us, anger, if we relate to it in a healthy manner, can help us get focused and put energy in a direction that is healing and helpful and expansive. Or, of course, when people call me, they've had the blinders on and have been really escalated and things are all or nothing super dramatic. Feels like the end of the world and they've blown up. And then they give me a call. Sometimes people ask, well, what's it like dealing with all these angry guys and women? And I go, well, by the time they call me, usually they're feeling shame. They're not feeling anger. They might still have anger in them for sure. We all do. But it's like, this isn't me, right? Healthy shame. And so every big shift in the history of the world started with anger. Whether we're talking about civil rights or all sorts of things with politics, human rights, racism. Gandhi probably kind of pissed off of the British occupying India way back when, but he did something that was nonviolent, it was very intelligent, very well thought out, and changed the world. And most of us aren't after changing the world, but making it so that after we've addressed a difficult conflict, we feel like, I did the best I could. Maybe it went my way, maybe it didn't go my way. You can tell that some maturity was involved when it doesn't go your way and you remind yourself it's not the end of the world, it's not always going to go your way, and that's okay. So there you go. Anger can serve us well. And we need to access anger in our relationships so that we speak up. Like, anger expressed wisely and with a connection to your heart creates more space for love because things get resolved or potentially resolved, whereas when people avoid those things. And I've met with couples where they've never argued and it's like, oh, that's not a good sign because, you know, I've met with couples where they're going through divorce, they never argued, but things built up and then one cheated on the other and things need to be resolved.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And I mean, I think you named certainly a pattern I've experienced and seen in many men I work with and that I think, you know, is really all that a lot of men in default culture know, which is either my over, my anger over, well, overwhelms me, right. And it comes out literally the blow up or I stuff it, stuff it, stuff it disconnects. And then resentments or frustrations or all kinds even, you know, autoimmune stuff can start to come up, you know, with guys I've worked with when they haven't expressed that 100%. And I work with a lot of, you know, I consider myself so called nice guys. Right. And anger goes, it's right hand in hand with the challenge of a nice guy to like you said, express directly something that may create confrontation or tension, but when we don't do leads to so much frustration. Right. And my family was a little bit like yours. Nothing was really talked about. As I became a teenager, my parents started kind of getting on the rocks and eventually divorced. And my dad's anger would come out, but all I ever saw was huge movements of anger and no change in behavior. Yeah, just right. Just kind of more like complaining anger, maybe you'd put it. And so I internalized something on top of my own nervous system. It was just like, what the fuck's the point? Right? It's not going to change anything. And I've had to like work really hard to unwind that over a few decades of the type of work we got connected through and men's work in general of. Yeah. When I'm not angry, when I'm not allowing myself to bring my anger forward in relationships that matter the most to me, I'm actually neglecting the relationship in our connection in myself.

Alistair Moes: Yeah, you're neglecting yourself first, and that impacts the relationship with everybody in your life, kids especially.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And so I do a lot of shadow work with guys, and so I have my own stories about this. But I'm curious you named right. You know, by the time guys sometimes get to me, it's not that they're necessarily in an angry state, but they're in a state of maybe shame. And you know, you talk about in your work and your social media and your site that you work with all this stuff underneath, what's often going on? You know, obviously you work with a huge range of people, but what are some of the common things you end up working with in clients that might surprise people that you're dealing with in an anger management context?

Alistair Moes: You know, one of the things that we do in the first session of the group is go through a lot of physiology and talk about the neuroscience, about what happens in your brain and your body when things escalate and why if we escalate enough, we lose connection with our heart, we lose connection with our gut, the, our emotional intelligence, and certainly our higher reasoning part of the brain goes offline if we escalate enough, even the part of our brain that develops memory can get choppy or blackout. Even without alcohol. Of course with alcohol, even more so. But when people come back for session number two, all I said at the end of session number one, because we went through all this stuff, is over the next week, just notice what happens in your body. The constriction in the chest, the feeling in the solar plexus, your gut, your shoulders, the grinding the teeth or clenching the jaw, which is usually about anger, the overwhelm in the forehead. And notice these things and the moment your thoughts become blaming and, or defensive, just notice all that with curiosity. You're just to witness that over the next week in yourself. And when you notice it in yourself, then you'll notice it more in the other. And so if we're disconnected from our own body, we can't connect to anybody else. So part of what we do is help guys come up with practices where they notice what's happening in their body and understanding that this is a feedback loop. And we can do things to have a positive impact or negative. Just like one of the most important things, if you notice you're getting angry, is to shut your mouth. And a lot of the guys, the first thing they do is open their mouth and words spill out. But one of the more powerful things, and it takes more maturity to listen than to speak. And so having the ability when, especially when you're getting angry. This is not easy stuff. Shutting your mouth, closing your lips, and breathing through your nose. And when we breathe through the nose, the sinuses condition the air so you get to 20% more oxygen and you know, from the air that you're breathing. Because often people are really tense and there are shallow breathing, and the heart compensates for that by beating faster and harder to pump the limited amount of oxygen around. And then that just spikes us up even farther because the heart's going faster and harder. Completely counterproductive. So shut them out. Breathe through the nose, deep into your abdomen, and you do a few of those, and that signals to the body that you're safe. And so we do breathing exercises. We talk about meditation and different practices, different somatic practices that help bring the body back down so that, you know, you pull yourself out of fight or flight, and then you can see the bigger picture. And you reconnect with your heart, your gut, what really matters to you. Then you're smarter and think things through. At least that's the plan. But really, the homework after that first session is just be curious and notice. And. And one of the interesting thing that things that happens is usually one guy's. One guy sees somebody else is losing it over the week and go, oh, my God, that's me. That's what I look like. It's like a mirror, right? And yeah, and it's just. I do this in groups because there's very few places where men hear each other taking responsibility. There's an old book by Ellen Jenkins, an Australian, called Invitations to Responsibility. And I just really like that term because when men hear other men, not me, they hear other men in the group saying, yeah, I did this and this. And then, wow, it really changed how things go, because so many men, all they do all day long at work is fix problems, deal with things that are going wrong or whatever. They're just, like, doing stuff, and then they get home and they try to do the same thing, and there's a disaster.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Alistair Moes: So one of the goals guys come up with, you know, and we have a whole list of different goals they can come up with. One of them is give your partner the experience of being fully seen and heard and valued, which really is helping them feel loved. And then they feel emotional safety, and then they can be themselves. Then you can have more depth of connection with each other. And when people really feel heard and seen and valued, at least half of the conflicts just, poof, they're gone. They just needed to be listened to. That was It. And sometimes there's more to it than that. But if they feel listened to, then that dialogue is gonna shift because you're responding with more maturity, more wisdom.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Beautiful. And very aligned with my experience, both personally and the work I do as well. And, you know, I'm curious to get your take on, you know, do you work in your groups or with individuals on, like, how do you distinguish the difference between, like, a healthy anger and, you know, aggression or the more damaging versions of anger?

Alistair Moes: Right. So we go into some depth about what happens in a relationship. If your primary method of conflict resolution is being passive or manipulative or aggressive or assertive. And I let them know, we all do all of these things. Don't pretend that you don't. That's just like, we're human beings. We do shitty things. We sometimes. And it doesn't matter how many years I've done this kind of work and how many books and how much training I take, I still mess up. I still make mistakes. And we're supposed to. We're not supposed to have everything figured out. I mean, you're never going to have everything figured out. That's not the point. The point is to learn from the mistakes we make so that we can make new and different mistakes, which makes life way more interesting. Yeah.

Jason Lange: Like, how do you tease apart, you know, or what in your mind is the difference between healthy relationship to anger and, you know, more distracting.

Alistair Moes: So healthy when, when you're doing something healthy, you're addressing the conflict from the adult in you. You're addressing the conflict from the. A part of you that knows it's not the end of the world if you don't get your way. You are listening, you're compassionate to yourself, to the other, and you're intelligent. You're recognizing when, okay, this, this conversation is going nowhere. And I'm not going to let somebody mistreat me or insult me. Like, you know, I can say, okay, like, we're done here. And that can be a very healthy thing. And the difference is I can say, we're done here, you fucking idiot. Or I can say, you know, we're not getting anywhere. Like, let's. Let's address this another day. And I'm, you know, exiting stage left here. Let's talk tomorrow or what have you. I'm not avoiding it, but I'm recognizing where, okay, this, this brick wall that I'm talking to right now is not getting anywhere. Let's just be honest with it. And if it's a family member, for instance, and There's a long history of them acting the way they do. Then your job is to expect them to continue acting exactly as they do and accept them like that. It's just stop fighting it and then choose how much time you want to spend around that person if it's really unpleasant. And sometimes that means, yeah, I think I'll take a break for a few years from you or a week or whatever makes sense. But I'm going to look after myself. I'm going to have a fiercely loving relationship with myself where I'm not letting people mistreat me and I'm not mistreating somebody else because that's not who I am. And I'm going to have my own back and going to act like an adult. Right. So Anna, I'm going to have a sense of humor about the whole thing because it's better if we can step back and see the humor in how we act like big babies sometimes and to be able to acknowledge that and connect with the physical sensations in our body and become more aware and talk out loud about it vulnerably. You know, I attend a men's group because I want to be around other men that open up and take responsibility for stuff and this is healthy to be around. I need these kind of things and I'm super grateful for my male friends that I can open up to and really talk with about these things and be honest with them because life is not easy sometimes for the majority of us.

Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. I love that frame of just healthy anger is when it's coming from that adult part of ourselves. Right. You and I were talking, I got a two year old, near two year old and it's been incredibly illuminating, you know, having had kids and seeing. Yeah. What really happens, you know, when a tantrum comes, there's no, there's no there there anymore. Right. It's just energy. And as I, you know, have continued into fatherhood, you know, I, I have this thing where it's just this realization, I've Talked to my 6 year old about it too, of like, well, sometimes daddy has tantrums too or like I can feel it now where like, you know, I say something a little cutting or a little biting or my anger comes up and it's not coming from the adult place. It's my little child having a tantrum because I'm not getting what I want just in the same way my 2 year old does. Right. And I can feel it, you know, now in my body. So it's such a simple but beautiful distinction.

Alistair Moes: Of.

Jason Lange: Yeah, you know, it's coming from that adult part, part of us. And not that just purely relate. Reactive kind of, you know, whether we call it inner child or just prefrontal cortex, totally offline, you know, part of the brain.

Alistair Moes: And pretty much all of us have experienced some kind of trauma or traumas growing up, and those exist in our bodies. And so I always talk with guys about, you want to really get to know the part of you that wants to lose it, and you want to be really in tune with the adult part of you that's breathing and thinking things through and connected to love and, you know, dignity and things like that. Because that part in you that wants to freak out, it's not a bad part of you. It's just that's there. And we're not going back in history. We're not regressing to two years old or four, six or whatever. We're connecting to those physical sensations in the body right now that lead us to feel like it's the end of the world. And it takes some courage to really allow yourself to feel that uncomfortableness, to apologize. Well, to feel the shame and the regret and the remorse, the vulnerable apology where you make no excuses whatsoever other than a commitment to change. Like, that's powerful stuff. But we have to be connected to how we carry this stuff and how this stuff has been there for generations. Definitely in both of my parents for different reasons. And going back generations, there's all sorts of stuff there. My Dutch grandfather was in prison for five years during World War II in Holland, and my dad was like 7 to 12 years old. And then after the war thing, you just don't talk about anything. You just smoke cigarettes and have a drink and look really good doing it, which my dad was quite gifted at that, but didn't know where to. Yeah, that had some negative consequences later in life especially. But. Yeah. And so I got really up close and personal with what happens when you don't talk about anything. You know, like, my mom died from an aneurysm very suddenly when I was 18. Like, just like she was alive and then she was dead. I never saw her again. My dad was so committed to don't talk about anything that there was. He didn't have a funeral, nothing, and just kind of avoided the topic. Took us kids to Hawaii, which he had never done before for Christmas. And, you know, it was like, let's just, you know, turn that frown upside down. I don't know. It's just. But I mean, he didn't have the emotional Maturity, and he didn't reach out, so he didn't know what to do and just plow on through. And then he made other bad decisions, but I won't get to. And I love my dad. I'm not here to blame him. I know he came through it honestly. And. And it's about owning what's in us today. It's understanding our history to help explain our present. Some people will argue that, you know, well, I'm this way because my parents or whatever, I'm like, come on, that's not real. That's a little kid talking. Right? That's not the adult in you who pulls back and sees the bigger picture. And, yeah, and there's lots to learn. So, yeah, I do shadow work and things like that, and sometimes I'll do group shadow work, you know, days with guys, because it's inspiring. I love that stuff. And just seeing men figuring things out and other men seeing them figure those things out, and really, it's so supportive. You know, you wouldn't think a bunch of total strangers going to an anger management group. And some of them, their lawyer said, you know, you should really go and do this. Lots of them don't have lawyers, but almost all of them want to be more in charge of themselves, want to be less reactive, more intentional, and that's all this is about. And then they get to hear each other working on things so that they're less reactive and more intentional. And that seems to inspire people, and it certainly continues to inspire me all these years later. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's. It's really cool. I had a guy, legally blind guy, who is the breadwinner for the family, recently attending, and it's like, yeah, he was, like, suicidal before he started, and he was completely inspired by the end of it and inspiring the other man because he is really listening and connecting with his partner, and he wants to do more work on himself. And. And, you know, we do this over zoom, and he's on his phone like this, so you see his, like, eyeball. But everybody's totally supportive. And guys are often anxious when they first step into the group, but they pretty quickly discover, oh, this is actually a safe place. And they're covering stuff that's really helpful, like, much to their surprise. And more often than not, people end up saying, oh, I wish I did this, you know, years ago, years ago. I say, you probably weren't open to it years ago, but, you know, the time is now. Now we can do something about it.

Jason Lange: So, yeah, yeah. So much resonance there and can just feel your career and your delight in the work you get to do, supporting people for transforming. And there was. There was something I wanted to chat with you about. We talked about briefly before our call, but you're really unique, I think, in that, you know, a lot of the world I swim in is kind of, you know, coaching and transformational work, which is often opt in, meaning someone is choosing to be there. And your program is unique, I think, special compared to that in the sense it's court recognized. Sometimes judges send men or women to you, usually lawyers. Lawyers. There we go. Okay.

Alistair Moes: Usually it's lawyers or sometimes probation officers, and sometimes HR sends their longshore workers their way or their truck drivers or, you know, or the nurse or the. Surgeon. The surgeon and medical professor being sent to us. I've had Multiple guys with PhDs in psychology attend my groups voluntarily, and I think they were all voluntary. But, yeah, it knows no bounds, that's for sure. But, yes, a number of them are sent there, and some of them are reluctant. And even the reluctant ones generally end up appreciating it a lot. And I've had guy, like, super, like, judgmental and critical and like. Like, come back to session two, hey, this stuff actually works. And then there's some guys who are just so stuck that they're not. They don't show up because it's voluntary. Right. I mean, whether the lawyer sends them to us. Right? I mean, that doesn't mean that they show up. They. And. And it's uncomfortable for them because all these other guys are opening up. And. And. And this includes transgender, like, it. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, like, what. What your history is. And when men are in the group, they. They get accepted as they are. And it's really impressive how, you know, gay men will out themselves in the group, and nobody really blinks an eye. And I think most people would think a bunch of, you know, anger management tough guys or they're all tattooed bikers or something. It's like, no, they're just accountants. And, yeah, sometimes there's a tattooed biker in there, but, I mean, that doesn't matter, right? It's like, everybody's accepted, and people feed off each other's energy and end up looking at this stuff. And I put my energy into the guys that are working on themselves, which is most of them. I'm not spending my time trying to pull the reluctant guy in there. I'm like, if they want to join us, great. If they don't want to, fine. Like, yeah, that's okay. I'm not here to convince anybody anything. It's. And I. And I'd rather feed all the positive stuff going on because that's where the inspiration is. Right. And that works better for me too. When couples call us, I say it's probably better if you each attend your group because we do women's groups as well. And because when I said each do your group and then go to couples counseling. Because when I've had couples come into my office and one starts like screaming and yelling at the other, I don't like it. It's very unpleasant. And I tell them, and you're wasting your money. I am not cheap. And if you want to spend, you know, $400 an hour and yell at each other, like, just give me the 400, go do that at home.

Jason Lange: That's great.

Alistair Moes: I don't want to be a part of it because it's. It's just spinning our wheels and it's. Yeah. So really, when I do see couples, all I tell them all we're going to focus on is that each of you feels heard and seen and valued, and that's it. Then there's more space for love in the room. And each of you really feels like the other gets you. Things are going to turn out pretty well. It doesn't have to be that complicated. And sometimes I'll do shadow work with one of them and the other one just witnesses that I'll go back and forth to do that. So lovely.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I love what you just said there. I mean, it's so great to kind of get the street level in the sense of the preconceived notion, I think a lot of people have, of who ends up in an anger management group versus the reality of a. Like everyone, you know, all kinds of different people show up. And I think that, particularly for us men, really points to, you know, you were speaking to this. Just the lack of training we get as men about how to be in our bodies, talk about what's happening in our bodies, communicate. And that often then leads to these blow ups or blowovers where, you know, no one ever showed us. You know, it was one of the things that really transformed me so much in my early men's work was getting to be around men who had a healthy relationship to their emotional body and in particular their anger, who could express anger. But here's the key. Never once did I feel unsafe around it. Right.

Alistair Moes: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And I had never, like, that had never been something in my reality.

Alistair Moes: As soon as I saw.

Jason Lange: Yeah. You know, and then you As I got to experience it, that was the, oh, there's a model for something else here. Nobody told me or showed me. You know, our culture just does not equip us, particularly as men. But really, as anyone, I think to, to know how to deal with this internal self.

Alistair Moes: Yeah, yeah. And the men come and do a six week group and I tell them, I said, the best predictor of the future is your past. So unless you keep working on this stuff, you are going to slowly slide back into whatever you were doing before you came here. And I tell people we give them a reduced fee to attend a second time. And everybody who does that finds it super helpful. I say come back before you need to think that through. Before you need to is the key. Because almost everybody comes back after there's another blow up and it's like, you know, it's. But, but that's it. We need to. And I live this to keep on working on ourselves because my background was, you know, taught me some bad things and I know those things are still in me at some level. And I'm really grateful because my kids show way more emotional maturity than I did at their age. But yeah, they have it. And, and I have regular deep conversations with them even though they're, you know, well into their 20s. And yeah, I did not have that with my parents. Like, I wasn't opening up to my parents. I would lie to my parents because that just seemed like that's what you do. And you certainly don't open up to them. You don't even really open up to your friends either. Wow. It's like. So you end up very alone and. Yeah, that's part of the really big modern problem when men come our way and they have no friends and they spend a lot of time on their own, just them and the Internet, whether they're married with children or not. And the more alone they are, the more challenging it is for them to learn and grow. Because we need, we can't grow without feedback from other people. We need to connect with other people so that we get things reflected. If it's just us on the Internet, it's like a lot of negativity and everything is the end of the world and super dramatic and we lose ourselves. Whereas when men actually connect with other men, they're reconnecting with what actually matters to them and they get to see that in other men. And good things tend to come from that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, well, you just, you just named something that I'd never quite connected the dots before on, but it's like I could see clearly now how, you know, the type of work you're spearheading and education about anger and how it works in our body. I mean, that's kind of becoming table stakes for just being able to navigate a sane online world. Because, because the whole thing is powered by outrage, right? That's how they make money. Like, they get your body into that state and then, you know, they've captured you, you know, in some sense. So, yeah, what you're teaching, you know, goes way beyond even just local relationships. But like, yeah, how do you sanely engage with a machine that is meant to trigger that anger in you?

Alistair Moes: Well, and so my son, I shouldn't brag too much, but my, my son tells me he reads every night I go to bed, him and his girlfriend, and they read books. And I've thought recently that, well, we all end up scrolling and spending time doing, watching all sorts of ridiculous things online. I'm no saint, right? And, and that seems to be exactly what the billionaire tech bros want us. They want us sedated, sometimes drinking or drugs or whatever, but also they want us distracted so we don't notice how much worse it is, how much harder it is to get by in today's world than it used to be. Like, people are struggling way more than they used to be. And if we're all watching stupid shit on TikTok, it's, you know, we don't notice, then we're not going to actually be intelligent with their anger. We're going to be outraged with it and everything's going to be black and white. And you can see that because a lot of politics is just name calling and insults, which is, you know, childish, is definitely single digits for emotional age. And, and I ask men regularly, you know, first I'll ask them, well, where did you feel that in your body? You know, usually there's some heat rising or, you know, what have you. And I'll say, what's the emotional age of that? And I'll say, oh, you know, maybe 18 or 21. So if you saw an 18 or 21 year old act like that, would that be accurate for maturity level? No. Okay, single digits for sure. Yeah, maybe like three or four. Because that's true for me, like four for sure. You know? You know, and you know, there's good reason for that, right? At four years old, we were living in South America and also my dad took me and my older brother in 1965 and flew with us to, and dropped us off in Holland with an aunt and uncle that we never met and left us there for six months and then came and picked us up and came to Vancouver, where I am now and just never really talked about. Wasn't until I was in my 20s that I went to my dad and went, hey, what happened there? Oh, your mom tried to kill herself. Okay. Just after my younger brother was born. And it's like, not a great start to life for him, but it's like, okay, that helps me understand so much. And these family secrets are in every family. And until we can pull back and actually be aware of them without judgment, like, just with curiosity, then we can recognize what's in us. And my mom had a really lovely heart. She could be very loving and kind, and I learned a lot from her, from that. But, you know, clearly she had a pretty severely depressed side and was medicated and stuff like that for many years. She was a nurse. But these things have a big impact. And then, like, you just can't talk about them with some family members. But it needs to move through us. Otherwise, we just hold that as this toxic shame that I'm a failure. And I tell all the guys, I said, we all have this inner critic. The thing is, the inner critic tells us that everybody else has their shit together except for us. And so you can't let anybody know. If anybody finds out the truth about you, it'll be the end of the world. Nobody will ever want to have anything to do with you ever again. You can hear the emotional immaturity in that. It's like fear. But you don't let anybody know you're afraid. You act like you have no fear. If anybody suggests that you're afraid, then you attack and blame and judge and criticize them and be defensive. But that's also letting your history run you. So we go into all this material in our groups and go into lots of detail about it because all, you know, pretty much everybody in the group, really, if they look, they can find things that help them understand how they became the way they are without blaming anybody else. Right. It's owning what's in you today. That's where your power lies. And getting to know all the physical sensations, the emptiness, the weight, the heaviness, the change in your breathing, the change in your heart. You breathe differently with every emotion, and your heart beats differently with every emotion. So when we get really angry and outraged, the heart gets really jagged and more erratic. When we breathe deep and slow and we're feeling at peace, then it reflects in the whole rest of our body and our brain. Because it's in a much more peaceful, rhythmic, predictable, stable, you know, beat. And yeah, and I grew up just ignore. If it feels too much in there, then drink. And I practiced that for years. But, you know, I gave it, you know, a good shot, but it didn't seem to get me where I wanted to go. So eventually I had to shift gears on that one.

Jason Lange: Amazing. Well, as we come to a close here, I'm curious. So, yeah, you know, 31 years you've been in the trenches here. Things are pretty intense in a lot of ways in our culture, but you've been really kind of on the ground helping people transform. You know, what, what gives you hope at this point, if anything, that you're seeing in men and women and people stepping into this work?

Alistair Moes: Well, you know, when I was first doing these groups in the 90s, if I asked the group of men, how many of you have practiced any sort of breathing exercise or meditation, maybe one guy would put his hand up. The group that I was just running last week, 3, 2, 3 to 3 quarters of them put their hand up. So this is just guys going to anger management, right? This is not hand picking people who are doing shadow work or something like that. And so men are more open to doing this work now. Men are more self aware in many respects and have practiced more things. People are more open minded. And, you know, I've worked with a lot of longshore workers, guys that load and unload ships and stuff like that, kind of historically a lot of Hell's Angels and, you know, rough kind of guys in that field. And now they request to come and work with us. Like usually it would be they're sent because they lost it at work. And so they get sent to do an individual program with us. And now they request on a regular basis to come and work because they've seen a positive impact on some of their, you know, members of the union. So I see that there's hope in the world. And I'm continually inspired by the work that the men do when they come and do the work. And more and more come and work with us every year. We've got a team of 10 therapists and I run half of the groups. And I have another guy, Trevor Bird, who runs half of the groups. And yeah, and women's groups, women are more likely to acknowledge their anger, so more women's groups as well. So, yeah, there's a lot of doom and gloom out there. And I think this work is more important than ever because people need to be dialed into what matters for them, what's their core values and, and being in alignment with that and just being aware and making conscious choices rather than just losing themselves in whatever addiction or scrolling or what have you. It's like your life and your family are depending on it. Time to do something about it is right fucking now. It's always right now. And there's always more to learn and, and be interested. Right. It's. It's worth it. It's my humble opinion. I know it's a little bit self serving, but I think the, the world is better off if there's more men doing this work.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Well, thank you for trailblazing and leading the way and impacting so many lives and what's the best place for folks to learn a little bit more about you or your groups and everything you're up to?

Alistair Moes: Yeah, Angerman Online is the website. There's tons of information. There's tons of podcasts and resources and videos there as well that are free. You can download the first part of our men's or women's book, like the first 40 pages. And of course you're welcome to join any of our groups or individual stuff. And, and I'm on YouTube, ooseanger management, among other platforms. Same thing. Oosenger management and I post like a demon. So I'm always on there relentlessly. Short videos though. And some of them I use humor because I think it's. I think humor and laughter are our intelligence. That we absolutely need to have fun and be silly and use humor in life. It's wise and it takes more maturity to be able to be silly. So act like an animal, which means you can act like a child while you're acting like an adult. Yeah.

Jason Lange: Well, beautiful. Thanks so much for your time and being here. I'll drop all your links and everything in the show notes and yeah, man, just deep appreciation for everything you're into.

Alistair Moes: Well, thank you. I think you're also doing some really powerful, meaningful work and the world needs more men like you doing this kind of work. So thank you. Thank you for that as well.

Jason Lange: Thank you much. And yeah, good to have you on the team. Say hi to your wife for me and I'll do the same.

Alistair Moes: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Until next time.