Emotions are one of the facets of men over 40 going through or in a post-divorce recovery state that can throw him for a loop. It can be dealing with coparenting or just going through a divorce. Most men have no clue how to handle the sometimes overwhelming nature of emotional turmoil. I have found and interviewed The Emotions Doctor - Ed Daube, Ph.D. Coming from sunny California, his mission is educational, for most people have no clue how to handle some of our out-of-control emotions. Not just in divorce but in life in general.
In this conversation, Ed, a psychologist and author, discusses the importance of understanding and managing emotions, particularly in the context of divorce. He shares personal experiences and professional insights to explain how emotions can be viewed as tools and how they impact decision-making while emphasizing the need to recognize primary emotions and avoid using anger as a secondary emotion. Ed devotes his retired life to teaching the mainstream public how to positively grow through emotions. He understands they are not a hindrance but tools for our survival. Thanks Ed.
Entertaining and/or Informative Topics:
A non-drinking alcoholic
Emotions as tools, master and utilize them
The 5 primary emotions
Always scanning for threats
Flight or fight
Take a pause and take a deep breath
Failure is not a lack of success
Suicide
Validate your kids emotions and give them permission to feel
You can’t control the other parent
Are you divorced or single
Educate to what emotions are and get the ability to master them instead of being controlled by them
Coparenting at its best
Learning how things don’t work
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Don't Pick the Scab Podcast with the premise of connecting men over 40
[00:00:17] with the tools and community to thrive in their divorce recovery either before, during
[00:00:22] or after a divorce. carrying a slab of meat. He never caught her, and I don't know what he would have done if he had, but he never did. So that was kind of an overview of how our family dealt with emotions. So I get into graduate school, and I finished all of my coursework, and I was doing an internship in San Francisco,
[00:01:42] and I decided I wanted to learn about how to deal with men
[00:01:47] and women who had drug abuse problems, emotions. They called me a non drinking alcoholic. What is that? I remember saying that. What exactly is that? What exactly is it is when you're an alcoholic, you cover over your feelings with drugs and alcohol. For me, I covered over my feelings the same way they did. But my mechanism was to get into my academics. Okay. So it was a non drinking alcoholic. So it
[00:03:04] took him six months to help me to talk to my young women, and men by the way, mostly women,
[00:04:21] because they understood the concept of tools,
[00:04:24] whether it was a cell phone or it was a remote control.
[00:05:24] So that was how the emotions as tools model came about. So then after 32 years, I retired, about 17 years now.
[00:05:30] And when I got out, I began to look around and realize that in our society, we are woefully
[00:05:35] inadequate in teaching others how to deal with emotions.
[00:05:40] So you get into things like you see on the news, this celebrity beats up his girlfriend
[00:05:44] and says, I didn't do it.
[00:05:46] My anger made me do it.
[00:05:47] No, the anger didn, discussed, and surprised. So what tends to happen is this. When men feel an emotion such as anxiety, which is a future-based emotion, the message of which says there may be a threat out there and
[00:07:04] the threat may hurt me. Men do not feel comfortable with the emotions of anxiety and they do angry because we feel powerful when we get angry. So that's anger is a secondary emotion. So what are some of the ways that men over 40 divorcing can master, you know, some of the general ways? Okay, let me take a step back a minute here and explain the emotion cycle and how emotions work. We are constantly all of us scanning our environment for threat.
[00:09:26] it, what do I need to do about it? And then we can choose what action we want to take. That's where mastery comes in. The concept of management as an anger management that
[00:09:33] only applies, and this is where it's a misunderstanding, by the way, because most anger management
[00:09:38] groups will teach you how to control, how to suppress the anger, and that's a combination of emotions that if you don't know how to deal with, they're going to blow you away. So it's almost like you're not mastering the emotions, you're controlling them. Yes, and that's problematic because you can only control them for so long before you're going to begin to make negative, make decisions and act out negatively based on the feelings
[00:11:05] that you have.
[00:11:06] So what's the to me, that's okay too. But let's take a look at the next emotion of anxiety. Anxiety, the message is there may be a threat out there and that threat may hurt me. So anxiety tells you you now have to step back. Take a deep
[00:12:21] breath, take a step back from the situation okay, what have I done in this situation, which may have contributed to the divorce? That's a tough question for men to ask. But when you ask it, it focuses your attention on what you need to do, because maybe there was something that you as a man did, which
[00:13:43] contributed to that. And if that's the emotion and you're using your brain to make a decision about which action you're going to take, which is going to improve your life and work for you and improve your relationships.
[00:15:00] Rather than saying, I feel it, I'm going to act on it.
[00:15:03] That's when they're going to make bad decisions.
[00:15:06] Gens lead to bad outcomes. that I see available to me is to take my own life. Now, if you understand that, the intervention is, how then can I help the person make the pain go away? Well, I remember specifically I had a young woman I was dealing with and she came into my session and she said, you know, Dr. Dobby, I want
[00:16:21] to kill myself because I just, I can't do anything right the pain rather than to eliminate your life, now it gives you a way to make an intervention. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. And how does the role of hope interplay with that also?
[00:17:40] Cause that's moved in there too.
[00:17:42] Yeah, exactly.
[00:17:43] So what is hope?
[00:17:44] Hope says that there may be a possibility
[00:17:47] of a change in the future.
[00:18:42] define the word failure. Absolutely, that's a biggie.
[00:18:44] Failure is defined as a lack of success.
[00:18:48] And unfortunately, that's a really inadequate definition.
[00:18:53] If you take a look, if I go on a trip
[00:18:55] and I'm gonna drive from where I live in Oxnard
[00:18:58] to Santa Barbara, which is 50 miles north of here,
[00:19:01] so I get in my car.
[00:19:03] And for some reason, I don't make it to Santa Barbara. initial goals. But what he had developed was the adhesive that worked with Post-it notes. So he looked at what he had and how he could utilize it. Another example, that's probably not the best one, this will be a little bit better. They looked at Edison and Edison was asked, how does it feel, sir, to fail to develop a light bulb?
[00:20:23] You had 10,000 failures. He said, no, I found 10,000 though they didn't go anywhere. Exactly. And think, yeah. That's perfect, David. That's an excellent example of looking at failure. Things didn't go well. You found out what didn't work, and then you eventually ended up finding out what did. Something that's near and dear to my heart is a co-parenting.
[00:21:41] When I did co-parenting is you don't control to make sense to you. That's mom's way of looking at the situation. Now I'm not going to put mom down because that puts the kids in an untenable situation where they have to choose. I don't want to do that with my kids if I'm co-parenting. Now the. And it's almost like when you inoculate them, you're not having them choose between the two. You know, just you flag it pretty much open. You know, that's mom's view. This is my view. They both can coexist and let's keep it moving. Exactly. Because when you attempt to create a barrier
[00:25:42] or put mom down,
[00:25:44] the kids don't wanna make that decision.
[00:25:47] They love mom, they love you. I don't have to think about this and that's fine. If you have to go to work in your totally discombobulated by the emotion, then yeah, distract yourself, put the emotion aside, put it on the back burner and come back to it later. But ultimately, you want to be able to deal with the emotion directly.
[00:27:02] You want to be able to say, yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm gonna put a guilt hour on my calendar and When I'm alone and after dinner or whatever instead of turning the TV on I'm gonna focus on my guilt and my anger my anxiety Now when you do that You know if if you've got it on the calendar, you don't have to think about it anymore
[00:28:25] Correct if I've got an appointment with with you as my is my dentist. I'm not and I'm at work I'm not thinking about you. You to be. The issue is if you're denying your emotions all the time, or you're getting angry as a secondary emotion, you're not dealing with those feelings. And they'll come back to haunt you. Wow. Part of forgiveness, as you correctly pointed out, is letting go. But part of an identification. If I'm divorced, I'm still focused on the fact that the marriage is important in my life. If I'm single, I'm free. But it goes along with and is the next step to following up on forgiveness. Does that make sense? you because when you do that if you don't mind David I'll talk directly to your listeners go ahead when you do that you now are empowering yourself to deal with the emotions rather
[00:32:22] than feeling inadequate and weak and controlled by the emotions which you're