134: Using Anger & Shame to Set Boundaries with Karla McLaren

Anger and shame Two emotions that I don't know if any of us have been taught to like let alone embrace.

My friend and guest today, Karla McLaren loves both anger and shame because they are powerful messages that lead us to deeper healing and growth. We've been taught to stay away from these beautiful emotions for so many reasons, but they are truly here to give us feedback and help us grow.

Karla McLaren, M.Ed., is an award-winning author, researcher, workplace consultant, and empathy expert. Her grand unified theory of emotions revalues even the most “negative” emotions and opens new pathways to self-awareness, effective communication, and healthy empathy.

When it comes to setting boundaries, Karla teaches us that anger is essential because it points us to our values and the things that matter to us. As she shares with us, shame helps us to live up to the morals, codes and agreements that we've made. Unfortunately, many of us learned about shame by being shamed.

In this episode Karla shares with us some valuable ways to understand our anger and our shame so that we can use it to set healthy boundaries for ourselves and create healthier relationships and satisfying lives.

Karla will have you looking at both anger and shame in a whole new lens. And once we begin to see both of these emotions in a different light, they become less scary and have much less of a hold on us. In fact, we can start to use them as they were actually designed for.

Listen to Discover:

• What anger is and why it is such a valuable emotion
• Why we fear big emotions like anger and shame

• Why we blame emotions for causing problems, when in fact, emotions arise to help us deal with problems.

• Why anger and shame are essential emotions for setting healthy boundaries.
• Why we blame these emotions (anger and shame) for people’s lack of emotional skills.

"Shame helps me live up to the morals, ethics and agreements that I've made. And if I start to step out of true with that, shame is going to say "Hey, what, hold on, there's some things going on here."-Karla McLaren

"When you are a friend, you are that trusted person that is you've been brought into my too deeply into my circle." -Krista Resnick

"I think a lot of times when people hear the word boundaries, they see a brick wall." -Karla McLaren

"Anger represents what we value, what we stand for. What matters to us." -Krista Resnick

"Anger, is a deeply loving emotion. You can't have a healthy relationship unless you have your anger working well." -Karla McLaren

" I define boundaries as who I am in this world, and what's important to me." -Karla McLaren

"When we can't access or have trouble accessing our anger, we will inevitably have trouble activating implementing our boundaries." -Krista Resnick

"Anger is the emotion that helps us set boundaries." -Karla McLaren

"We've been taught extensively not to pay attention to our emotions. We've been taught that there's such a thing as a negative emotion, which is nonsense." -Karla McLaren

"Anger doesn't have a violence component to it. But most of us have only seen anger as violence." -Karla McLaren

Krista Resnick | The BOLD Experience

Karla McLaren | Empathy Academy