The Engine Under Anger Is Care

Show Notes

Pull on the thread of the expectation gap long enough and you find something that most conversations about anger never reach: care. The reason the anger flares hardest in the relationships that matter most is that those are the relationships carrying the most weight of concern. When control slips in a lodge vote or a child won't listen, it does not just feel like a bad moment — it feels like a role failure. And that distinction is important, because the anger rushing in to fill that gap is not evidence of a broken person. It is evidence of someone who cares deeply and has not yet found a better way to express it.

This reframe does not excuse the damage that unmanaged anger does. It explains it, which is a necessary first step toward changing it. Brian makes the case that understanding the care underneath the control-urge is what allows a leader to begin deprogramming the reactive pattern — not through willpower alone, but by shifting the frame from outcomes to process. The goal is not a specific fishing trip. The goal is raising a capable adult. The goal is not a perfect lodge vote. The goal is a functioning, growing brotherhood.

Fathers often parent in deliberate opposition to how they were parented, which creates a pendulum rather than a foundation. The more durable move is to locate the generational pattern, recognize that blame serves no constructive purpose, and choose to be the person who shifts from outcome orientation to process orientation going forward.

• Care as the root source of the most powerful anger
• Why losing control feels like role failure, not just frustration
• The pendulum effect in generational parenting patterns
• Shifting from outcome to process as the durable cognitive fix
• Creating space for growth as the highest-leverage leadership behavior

The best form of control you can exert is the control of allowing — and now you understand why that line is true, not just what it means.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] So, we've been talking the past couple of days about fatherhood and leadership and anger.
[00:09] And I kind of want to bring some more stuff up here.
[00:12] It's really important, at least in my opinion.
[00:17] We started with anger as a signal, right?
[00:19] And then we looked at how that, you know, where that emerges from.
[00:22] And it's typically an expectation gap, the distance between the idea you have in your
[00:26] head of what's going to happen and what actually happens.
[00:29] And we looked at the outcome sort of focus, the way that men attach what they generally
[00:34] care about to a specific outcome or result, and then grip it so hard that it kind of dies,
[00:40] right?
[00:41] So, yesterday I said something that I want to use as the foundation for today, because I
[00:46] think it's where all three of these things connect.
[00:48] And it's the best form of control you can exert is the control of allowing.
[00:53] That line surprised me a little bit when it came out.
[00:57] Because, you know, I tend to riff on these things, but I think it's, you know, fundamentally
[01:01] true.
[01:02] And I think it points to the engine underneath all of the sort of causes for these angers
[01:08] that we get, these frustrations that build up over time.
[01:12] And it's when you start to look at that expectation gap and you pull on that thread a little bit
[01:18] towards the outcome focus, what you find underneath in that need to control is care.
[01:26] However, there is a fundamental desire that is caring.
[01:37] And that shows up as control or control like behavior, because you think, as we all likely
[01:51] do, that a father is supposed to be in control of his household.
[01:56] A worshipful master is supposed to be in control of his lodge.
[01:58] A business leader is supposed to be in control of the situation.
[02:03] So when control slips, when the vote goes wrong or the kids won't listen or all of that stuff,
[02:12] it doesn't just feel like a bad kind of like moment.
[02:15] It feels like a role failure.
[02:16] And that anger comes in to fill the gap and start kicking ass and taking names.
[02:20] But that place where you tend to lose control or have that anger flare up are the relationships
[02:33] that you sort of care about the most.
[02:37] You're not getting angry about the stupid stuff as much.
[02:45] The anger that matters anyway.
[02:47] You might get a flash of annoyance or an irritation or things like that.
[02:49] But the anger that really is a deep-seated, powerful thing are typically emergent from the places
[02:55] you really have the most care for.
[03:01] And so as we understand this, we can begin deprogramming the anger as part of that conversation.
[03:09] We can say things like, we're looking for this kind of overall directionality.
[03:19] We're looking for a deeper, more powerful relationship.
[03:21] Or we're looking for healthy and emergent adults that are coming from our children.
[03:26] And we need to, if we want them to behave in adult ways, we need to create space for them
[03:31] to do adult things while they're not yet an adult.
[03:34] We start the process of beginning to understand what we're building here is bigger than any
[03:42] one outcome.
[03:45] So in that, with that understanding in mind, you can begin to pull back your focus a little
[03:52] bit.
[03:52] You can begin to pull back and look at more into the process that we're going through.
[04:00] The process we're creating and not the outcomes.
[04:05] You're going to make mistakes.
[04:08] You will be in situations in your life that are out of control for reasons beyond your control.
[04:16] If you don't understand this, when the anger comes or flares up and you start making everyone
[04:28] in your life around you pay the cost for your inability to see where that's coming from,
[04:35] you are losing the narrative.
[04:39] You are damaging the relationships that matter the most.
[04:41] So as you work through this, as we work through this together, because this is a we thing,
[04:49] right?
[04:49] Your father did not learn parenting in the same way that you did.
[04:58] In fact, the way this typically works is the fathers that, you know, have then go on to
[05:05] have children tend to parent in a way opposite of the parenting they received.
[05:11] They perceive the parenting that they're there.
[05:14] They had gotten when they were growing up as one kind of way.
[05:18] And I'm never going to do that with my kids as the default response.
[05:22] So it creates this kind of pendulum effect.
[05:25] But, you know, there is no original sort of root cause here with this.
[05:29] There's no like, ah, well, this is the parenting defect that I'm paying for.
[05:32] That's eight generations old.
[05:33] Like there's no place that goes that matters as you build forward.
[05:38] This isn't about finding and placing blame or any of that kind of stuff.
[05:41] It's about understanding that you can be the place that moves from outcome orientation back
[05:47] to process orientation.
[05:49] And as you go, as you do that, as you gain this sort of maturity, you begin to create
[05:56] these spaces of allowing for growth and development.
[06:00] We'll come back at it tomorrow.