How to Use Your Emotions as a Catalyst for Transformation | with Ashley Frost

Michael: One of the things that I've been thinking about that set really true with me over the course of the last few years of my own personal journey is a bit of my relationship with anger and also my relationship with anger with myself, and relationship with anger with other people, and just kind of this whole topic and subject matter.

And Ashley, I'm super excited to have you on the show because I know that like me, you are a bit of an expert in this window. And so I'm curious why should anyone listen to our conversation today? 

Ashley Frost: Well, thank you first of all for having me and I think people need to be listening to this conversation because I can guarantee that their body is probably screaming at them, but they have no real way to understand what it's trying to say and what to do about it and what I'm noticing in the work that I'm doing, which is working with anger.

So yes, you can call me angry Ashley if you want angry actually, 'cause my second name is Frost. Maybe. I was just born to be working in this job. but I've been working with people for up to almost five years now, giving anger and emotional release sessions. And what I'm seeing is that people are stressed, people are sad, people are unmotivated, people are sick.

And most of the time the emotions, not just anger, but in particular anger is at the root cause of a lot of our struggles in society right now. So if you resonate with any of those descriptive words, you might wanna give the next hour or so a listen. 

Michael: Yeah. And I think you're spot on. You know, and one of the things that I sit in a lot is this idea that it is a conversation that we're not supposed to be having, tell me about your background. What was childhood like? I'll preface this. I don't think you become an expert in anger without having overcome some shit. 

Ashley Frost: Yes. That is also what makes, uh, anybody doing emotional release qualified is that you've actually lived through the thing that you're trying to then help people with afterwards.

It's actually the first job I have that doesn't give me imposter syndrome because I actually know that I've lived through that experience. for me, I didn't actually have anger issues growing up. I was the opposite, the deficit of anger, which is depressed. I had high functioning depression, didn't even realize this, but most of my childhood, and I was following the template of success that you are given of go to university, go to work in the big city, get a partner, get a house, follow the conveyor about until retirement and then death.

Thankfully, my body gave me a burnout already at the age of 25. A physical burnout where I was literally stuck in bed for two months, could not walk, could not move. Everything that I'd been using to numb myself on the outside crumbled away. And I was falling into this helplessness. This victim mentality of life is so hard, my illness is so hard, when is someone gonna come and save me?

The next doctor's diagnosis, the next partner, the next job, and essentially always outsourcing my power to the external. And in three, almost exactly three years ago, this is what we had just come outta February in 2025. So three years ago, the peak of that hit when I really had to make a decision, do I actually want to be on this planet?

Do I actually want to stay here? And I was so deep into the sadness and what got me out of it was actually this recognition. And I'd been to a retreat a few months before where I'd learned some anger exercises, like very simple things like yelling into a pillow or hitting them. And it was fun in the moment, but it didn't really land in my system until that moment when I was physically led on the ground in a yoga shala, in Myorca.

Like, do I actually want to be here universe? I really, I don't know right now. And something spoke to me that day and was like, Ashley, no one is coming. No one is coming to pick you up off the ground. No one is coming to save you. You need to go do this yourself. You are the person that can help yourself.

And this is the, what I call healthy anger is coming through. It's this drive, this motivation to actually pick yourself up when you know no one else can and should pick you up because it's also your own journey. The hero's journey to do that and to then go forward and take another step and to take another step and another step.

And now here I am three years later having focused particularly on this emotion of anger and. It's been a wild ride. Like I work with the terms anger, alchemy, and that's a very overused spiritual word, but alchemy basically means making gold out of the mud, alchemizing your pain, your experiences, your life into something that can bring some purpose into something that can bring hope, peace, clarity, health, whatever your personal struggle is in that as well.

Michael: It's really funny. I also had my kind of rock bottom at 25. And you know, I think that when you carry so much of the emotional weight of the world, and if you are depressed, and if you do have burnout, like those things definitely come and catch up with you. And I certainly, and I've said this many times on the show over the years, like I played the victim really well.

Like, I blame the world, I blame society. I definitely blame my parents. And, and look, it's not that your victim hood isn't holy and worthy because it certainly is. And I don't want to ever take anyone's victim hood away from them. Um, I think that's dismissive. I think that that really doesn't serve people.

But at some point you gotta be like, holy shit. Like, I am doing this to me. What I wanna sit in this space for a little bit, because one of the things that I saw, there's like this cycle that happens where you're like, I'm angry, and then it turns into victimhood and then I'm angry that I'm a victim. And now you're in this spin cycle. Can you share a little bit more about your experience in that space around being a victim, what that meant for you, and then can we talk about how you started to take the steps to get out of it? 

Ashley Frost: Yeah, well I wanna catch some language that was used then as well. 'cause when people are coming to work with emotions, we like to identify a lot with the emotion.

So you said I'm angry and this is already our ego, which is a protection mechanism, which is very necessary to survive as a human. It's just working a little bit too well. When we are over identifying with any emotional state, we like to become very blended with it. So it becomes so overwhelming that that is our only exist, only experience in that moment.

So I'm angry, I'm a victim. I'm so justified in this experience and I get identity from being in this state. And what helps to move through this is to, first of all, unblend from that. So instead of I'm angry, it's actually, I am feeling angry right now. This already helps you to take a step A aside, so the observing self-inside of you is able to notice that this emotion and energy, emotion, emotion is moving through you.

Even further would be, I can notice right now that a part of me is feeling anger that this part has a story, that this part has something that's potentially triggered it, that has some needs that are not being met or spoken to. And in that sense, you, this is similar to working with IFS, internal family systems, different parts work, where you can then start to notice, ah, there's a part of me active right now. There's a part of me that now feeling like a victim, okay, can I get curious? What does this part need? Can I get curious as to, does this part need to be expressed in some sort of way? And this is actually the thread that most emotional release sessions take maybe like a hundred times of that in a session of noticing your state, can I separate from it?

And it's what a lot of people who meditate actually do very well. They just also do it a little too well because they're staying up in the head actually, the body. So the somatic experience is also asking to be processed and to express. So a lot of my work is actually very body focused. You'll see workshops and sessions I'm doing where I'm getting people to make funny faces and express their emotions and to shake their body and to become like animals and to become shaking and sad and expressing and all the things that people find they've find very easy to do as a child.

But somehow as an adult, we've got all these layers and all these masks and they're so exhausting to carry. And that actually when you start removing them, not a lot of the stuff I'm doing is new. It's just remembering what we forgot from childhood and it actually makes it quite fun. 'cause healing sometimes gets a little serious and a lot of the spaces, it's regimented and intense and it's a lot when you have your core traumas and wounds arising and somewhere along that line, bringing a bit of playfulness into it, lightens that load, brings more connection to yourself and to others. And actually it's just made my job very fun in the last few years 

Michael: Yeah, it's powerful. And I think one of the things that's coming up for me, like I definitely agree with you, identifying as your emotion is a dangerous game. and that just takes a long time for people to rationalize the fact that your average emotion really only lasts 90 seconds.

It is the looping that it inevitably keeps us trapped. And then you become, I am sad, I am angry, I'm depressed, but nobody ever goes, I am happy. I am joyful. Right? And so it's like we, we tend for whatever odd reason, which, you know, having interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people on this show, some of the greatest minds in the world we are all trying to solve.

The question is like, why are we so attached to this idea of suffering? Right? Especially most times at our own hand. And that's so much of what I, I think that role of victimhood can be, right? You start to title it and you go, it, me, I am this. And it's like, that's not necessarily true. Then I think a lot of the things that come up in that space, these masks, they start to become identities.

Like you're like, I'm interchanging these masks based on my emotions, which generally some of them aren't even true. And that creates a space about shame and guilt and sadness and hurt and loss and then anger starts to play this role and. I think people have a lot of justification to be angry. I mean, there's a, space in which you, and this is just the way that I see the world.

There's a space in which you have almost no control over certain things and a space in which you have full autonomy. And those very rarely actually cross over. And so a lot of people are angry from anything from the government to social media to constructs to this and to feeling out of control.

And then on the other side, you have the autonomy of the thoughts, the music, the entertainment, the media, the food, the people that you're around, right? And so people feel this space of anger 'cause they're like, it's all out of control. And I'm like, well, but you only get to control what you're able to control.

But then it becomes consuming. We forget that we have autonomy. And that's the space that I felt when I came to that recognition. Life started to shift for me. 'cause I was sitting and I was like, wait a second, what do I actually have control over? How do people who feel like their anger's outta control?

It leads to burnout. Maybe they're ruining relationships, ruining careers. It's coming up in, you know, the road rage. It's coming up in the street when they're passing by and they feel out of control. Where do you start this journey of a, the reconciliation process, right? And allowing anger, which I think a lot of people are afraid of. And then B, like where do you start to utilize it maybe for the betterment of your life instead of it fucking everything up. 

Ashley Frost: Yeah. I love this. It's interesting the, the people who you see doing, like, I use this example a lot of the angry Karens or the road rage people. 'cause also as a, in Europe we see a lot of videos also coming from the US of like people getting really angry.

Michael: No comment. 

Ashley Frost: And you often, I guarantee if you ask a lot of those people, are you angry person? They're like, no, I'm not angry. I'm not an angry person. Like they're almost so dissociated from the identity of anger because it gets pushed down from a conscious way so much that it then comes up in these explosions.

I know this 'cause this was also the household I grew up in. I have a very sweet father who has a lot of repressed sadness and a lot of grief from a lot of things that happened that never really got a space to express. And the anger would get pushed down, down, down, down, down. And then it would come up in these moments that feel so they don't make sense, like dropping your keys or something happening and then this explosion happens.

And as a child, your nervous system's like that doesn't make sense why you're so angry right now. This is odd. And that's what I see with a lot of clients that that, first of all, not even aware that they have an anger problem. First and foremost, and for people who you can get curious about this, like I really just invite a curious in introspection as to all of the emotions where you are judging people for expressing anger.

What do you think when you see someone expressing anger? Is it something that you're drawn towards? Is it something that makes you cringe? Is it something that makes you want to shy away? I would get curious about how anger was in the household that you grew up with, with your caretakers in particular, also in the culture that you grew up with.

And for a lot of people that are over, over expressing, which is actually only maybe 20% of my client base, the majority of the people for not feeling it enough. But if you're over expressing, it's more common or not, that underneath that is actually sadness and grief. That is masks and really wanting to be looked at.

Whenever I'm in the gym and I see a lot of guys per peacocking around and parading themselves and showing off really aggressively, I know that underneath that is quite often a little boy that needs to be held and wants his mummy. So the invitation into vulnerability, the invitation into sharing from what is actually going on beneath the surface is the path.

But people only come to that path when they're called and the initiation hits so that you also can't force someone necessarily to start doing anger work. Most people come to me because their life has made it not optional. They're sick, they're having a breakdown, their relationships are struggling, and only then are they like, okay, I've tried ice bathing.

I've tried supplements, I've tried life coaching. I've tried quantum healing; I've tried Sam bathing. What else can I do? Maybe I need to actually look at those very shameful parts of myself that I do not allow and I reject inside of me. Oh, I really don't wanna do that, but I think it's time to look at my emotions.

And so at the bottom of that slippery slope is where I am, and I'm like waiting to catch these people. Like, hello, welcome. We're gonna be looking at all these parts of us. Mm-hmm. That we didn't wanna look at all of your lifetime. And that can feel very scary, but that can also be very liberating because when this, the emotion of anger is such a catalyst, it's a catalyst to your creativity, to your desires, to your boundaries, to your relationships, et cetera, et cetera.

I can talk about this for a long time and I think we will later. but I think people don't realize out of all of the emotions, how much fire and how much your life shifts when you actually change your perspective, that anger is not bad. It is actually a portal for you. 

Michael: Yeah. and I think one of the things that comes up is, you know, the, the self-vulnerability that's required in that journey is arguably one of the most terrifying things that you do is because you're going to have to play it.

You are going to have to address the spaces in your life in which you do feel shame, in which you do feel sadness in which you do feel grief. And I know for certain because I lived it, you did too. Maybe your certainty is not as clear as mine. 'cause we're two different people. But I, I felt like without the willingness to step down that path, I don't think I'd be here.

And for me, and, because I was suicidal and I did want to end my life and I attempted and I was in a very direct place for a lot of my life. And it was one of those things that the more I got clarity about why. I was angry and why I was sad and why I was depressed. I came to realize that it was because I really needed to work through things that I was keeping so deeply inside of me that were basically eating me alive.

And that's the thing that people don't recognize, and I didn't realize this either. And the idea of sitting and vulnerability in the initial phases of it actually felt shameful because we are taught, and I don't think this is necessarily exclusive to people who are in the states. I think this is really becoming generational around the world.

You're taught don't be weak, step up your game or you're taught to stuff it down When you'll see this, typically with women, more generally speaking, right, it, it's almost socially acceptable for a guy to go punch another guy in the face. But then for women just to shut down emotionally instead of dealing with it.

And when I stepped into my journey. I can actually speak to this to be fairly true, having been in over 200 physical fights, I look at that and I go, okay, that's really fascinating that we're told not to be angry. And yet anger is the very thing that's consuming us. I think that there's often a disconnect though, Ashley, in these conversations because people hear this and they go, yeah, but I don't really understand.

Can you shed from your firsthand experience and your journey, what was that like? That reconciliation, that removing the math, that stepping into vulnerability personally for you? What did that look like? Especially in the beginning? 

Ashley Frost: Yeah. In the beginning, I was fully consumed with grief and sadness. Like when I also did my training as an emotional release practitioner, I don't think I screamed once in the like 15 days of the training. I was just crying and crying and crying 'cause that's what was acceptable and it's all that I knew. And when I started to notice that the word anger is a very big word.

And we're, we don't have much relationship to it. When I started to look underneath that are the nuances. So if you imagine anger is the color red, okay? What are the different tones of red underneath that I was looking down at, okay, where I'm, where am I irritable? Where am I frustrated?

Where am I feeling pressured? Where am I feeling that there are expectations placed upon me? Where am I feeling jealous? Where am I saying yes to people when I actually don't want to be there? What rooms am I staying in when I actually want to leave? What conversations am I in that I actually don't want to be in?

Where am I smiling when I actually want to frown? Where am I being polite? And that's especially as an experience as a woman, you really get taught to people please to put other people's needs before your own. Because it's encouraged from a very young age to be empathetic and to be considerate and to be the good girl and to be really nice and to be, agreeable.

And I noticed so, so much growing up how much that was deeply embedded into my experience and it, it was literally making me sick. I work predominantly with women who have autoimmune issues, and it's all because they've basically swallowed down this fire that is then this acid that's eating away inside of the body.

But to answer your question, what really got me started, aside from the mental perspective shift, I almost went to the other end of the spectrum. I was like fucking angry. I was then tapped into like everything wrong with the world. I was letting all the fire up. I was essentially every evening for a year in my bedroom before going to sleep, hitting, yelling, screaming into my pillow, processing through 25 years.

By that point, it was 27 years of frustration, rage, grief, hurt, things from childhood trauma, everything that basically I couldn't get to in meditation. I was like, I knew this was here. I've journaled about this a thousand times, but it's not leaving my body. Like, why am I still? Looping and it was actually getting my body involved.

So getting into the somatic exercises, dancing, singing, yelling, all of the things I shared, like I do now in the workshops with people and tried to bring some fun. But I can only do that because I've actually gone to the point of getting to the messiness and the, stickiness there as well. So what a lot of people are forgetting is that they're, not getting their body involved.

They're not getting the somatics involved. And when you're just trying to write, of course, like journaling and meditating is great, but for me it was actually time to take some action. That's what really got me started in the beginning. That's what I'm helping people now in the workshops and classes that I do as well.

Michael: And that's so true. For me, it was martial arts. Right. And it played such a huge role in my life because I was like, I gotta hit something. I'm gonna hit someone, or I'm hitting something, but something's getting hit. 'cause I had so much fucking anger inside of me, like deeply seeded. and it's anger that I, I bore witness to that is really in that conversation about nature versus nurture.

And I think it was an nurtured into me to watch anger, but to misconstrue it with violence. And so I thought anger was violence, which these are not the same thing. And it was really through this practice of martial arts and yoga, the physical movements in which I saw the biggest shift. And I advise my clients all the time.

We have a group called Men's Monday, and so we have just this group of men. It's just us in this space doing this work. And I tell 'em all the time, some of you guys need to go hit some shit. Some of you guys are really need to take this thing out of you and do something with it. But what's really fascinating, and obviously I won't call any specific case out, but one of the things, you know, in a decade now of leading people through this healing journey, I often see there's this really deep association of shame that is parallel to the physical release. There is something about shame, guilt, embarrassment, that seems to walk along the side of why should I have to hit anything? Why can't I just do this? Do you see that too? And if so, how do you walk that path with clients? and if you've had that in your own experience, how did you overcome that for yourself?

Ashley Frost: It's interesting the, the, the female perspective from this, 'cause it's for a lot of men, it's very natural to, the hands suddenly come into play and they're like, they wanna go and hit something. 'cause it's a natural, something is a little bit more natural. And some of what I get a lot of the women also for doing is that we're, we're wrestling in some of these women's circles, like I'm getting them very physical, reminding that you are actually very strong, like your hands, your arms, getting them to do some pushups to actually get used to like, your body is the way to move through this, and when we are looking at shame, so shame is not actually a core emotion. So shame, guilt, anxiety, regret even, they're what we call a covering emotion. They're showing up to protect you from feeling the intensity of the, a core emotion underneath. Whether it's fear, sadness, disgust, guilt, excitement.

I work around the concept around the seven core emotions. Every school of thought is slightly different, but just from what I have noticed and served in sessions and when that is arising, we don't need to force through that door. So imagine shame is a door, is a door. And okay, we wanna get through that.

We wanna see what's, I wanna feel the anger. I wanna express it. I wanna go and have that big release. I wanna let go of it. And this is again, this agenda that we have of emotional release in itself is a very misleading word. We are not here to release your anger. We are here to, first of all, meet that doorway.

Let's get curious about that door. Cool. There's a door of shame here. Who put this door here? Definitely wasn't born with this door. Is this a door my dad or my mom has put here? How old is this door? Do I like this door? Where does it feel hard to open this door? Okay, is there something I need to do right now to move through that cover that's underneath?

And when we actually get to the emotion, whether it's sadness, whether it's anger that's underneath that, it's about forming a new relationship with it. We are not here when doing anger work or any emotions work. You're not gonna be rid of your emotions. Spoiler alert. They're gonna be around a lot more.

You're just gonna be welcoming them with open arms. Dancing with them instead of sword fighting with them. And that's essentially what emotional mastery is. Moving through your life, being able to flow with the waters of the emotions that arise. So when we have that agenda of like, no, I wanna get rid of it, I wanna feel good again. And it's like, well, to do that we have to go through the things that don't feel so nice. And also transitioning the language from good and bad. This binary terms of, like when I speak to people, I don't let them use the words Good, great, fine. Okay. 'cause I'm like, I don't know what that means. I have no, that's such a subjective word.

So does it feel pleasant or uncomfortable? Is it something that you want to feel, continue feeling? Or is it something that you feel you want to push away? So to get people more fluid also in determining what it is that they're noticing in their body, what are they feeling? And that's, that in itself is like learning a new language.

If you've been in your head most of your life, that transition down into the sensations into the body, it's sometimes I feel like. We are now receiving WhatsApp messages or emails, but our body is still sending faxes, and then there's just like a miscommunication going on of the messaging going between us, which we feel in sensations and pain and tingling, numbness, emotional waves that are coming up through the body.

Michael: What do you find is like the most common door that people need to open?

Ashley Frost: There's a phrase that the longest journey you'll ever take is the 18 inches from your head down to your heart. So maybe it's on a doorway. It's like a little trap door in the in the neck that's leading you then into the body space. yeah, it really depends on people's personal journeys, the, the journey.

Most people I know, and this is a big topic of bypassing, so I dunno if you know the word, like spiritual bypassing, you probably do. If someone's listening, they don't know that. It's when people are trying to just feel the good stuff. Like I wanna feel love and light and expansion and abundance, and I wanna feel so, so blissful.

And it's a lot of, the curse of also the new age spirituality world, where they're only looking at the, like the upper chakras, like the heart, the throat, the third eye, the crown, and they're like escaping. It's all the people also going to do medicine work. And they're like, everyone's up into the ether.

What they're forgetting is actually that the energy rises from the bottom up, from the root upwards. And for a lot of people, probably that's the doorways that need to be looked at the roots. When we're looking at developmental trauma is from in birth until six months. If you're looking at the sacral, which is where your needs and desires, like my teacher always called it, the dirty basement of the human psyche, where the sexuality is, where our creativity is, and moving up to the third chakra, that is where the source of a lot of our anger is our power, our autonomy.

I love that you brought that in right at the start of this episode. So when we don't go upwards and look at what's there, the shadows, the blocks, the beliefs that's hindering, then truly, truly, authentically going up to the heart and society is if you're looking at spiral dynamics stuck at the third chakra.

This is the place of ego, of money, of shadows, of power, of control. And you see this everywhere. You look at the unhealthy examples of anger that we see in war, in politics, in billionaires, in poverty. the society is really stuck here. And a lot of people, only when they start to a midlife end up having a midlife crisis.

Because what's happening is that they're heading into the heart and the feminine and masculine is trying to find this connection there where they end up living out their youthful dreams of maybe they have an affair or they buy a motorbike or they quit their job or they go traveling, or they have a breakdown.

Because actually then the, body naturally is trying to evolve, but it wasn't really given the space to, nowadays it's happening way earlier. So for me that was like 25. So society consciousness is getting quicker and quicker with waking people up. So that's, for me, the biggest thing I see is like, if you wanna really go into your heart, you need to go from the roots upwards.

Michael: And it is a journey, right? And it's a journey. I look at it a lot as an awakening in a lot of ways, and not in the new age woo, woo way, which by the way find to be insufferable to a lot of capacity because it's like, let's actually do the work. Let's get to the fucking root in the core of the reason why you're in this space and not just pretend that you're gonna touch grace and happiness all the time. And I'll speak for myself, but there. I having now helped so many people create real transformation in their life and watch the journey. There's always, in the beginning, a huge, huge phase in which we are only in this space about anger and grief and loss. and to avoid that and pretend that that's not a necessary function of the path, I think is what you find why a lot of people will, shy away from coaching and shy away from even the idea of, like you said, chakra, I'm out. Because you see so many of these people who are unwilling to like sit in fucking reality. And the, the thing that drives me most crazy is we can't live in the reality we want to live in. We have to live in the reality we're actually in. And in doing so, you can then create the reality that you want to live in because you have to prepare yourself for the success of actually having that life.

And it requires you getting in the dirt and in the mud and uncovering your soul and dealing with your shit. And it sucks and none of its fun. I mean, sure. Is there a capacity where you have these moments where it can be enjoyable and you have breakthroughs? Just Absolutely. But you know, in the beginning, I, I would say this with certainty.

If you told me the first four years of this 26 to 29, 30 years old for me, were going to be as unbelievably painful as they were. I don't know if I would've done it. Now, obviously in hindsight, it served me very well. It changed my life. It changed my family's life. It's changed so much, but holy shit, this work is hard. What are your thoughts around the people who expect this to be easy?

Ashley Frost: Sometimes I don't wanna come across like I'm this very spiritual girl. 'cause it's like people see me and they see the work I do and I'm like, well, no, actually I'm pretty down grounded in, in reality. And sometimes I, I can really just say like, this is just how it is on earth right now. And the what a joy also to be a human being on the earth right now that gets to feel the full spectrum of all of the emotions.

And that yes, there will be this, sometimes I like to call it like the dam burst and then all of the things that you've been held back at the start of the journey come through. But I can say from my experience and I, it sounds like from yourself, but at some point, you find a surfboard to ride the wave.

And at some point, you're like, wow, actually, like there's been moments when I've been so deep in feeling some grief and crying and I'm like, fuck, this is what it means to be alive. Like I could, that you could be numb, but actually this is what it means to be a human being. And there's so much beauty in that.

And I found so much connection with other human beings through being in that process. Whereas before most of my life was surface level conversations with colleagues, with partners, even the partner I had for four years during college. And afterwards, I realized until I did eye gazing with somebody at a random workshop that I'd never fully been seen even by someone I've been intimately together for nearly half a decade, did not feel seen.

And that's what's I think brings so much purpose into our life, is when we have authentic, real connections with people. And that can only come by being honest with first of all yourself about how you feel about what's going on, even if that's painful, even if that's a bit sticky, and communicating and sharing that and finding the people that also resonate with you in that.

For me, at least given it a lot of purpose with this. I mean, we're having this conversation now, like we, you wouldn't have met so many of your clients on that side if you hadn't gone through that journey as well. 

Michael: Yeah. There's a price to pay and that, that price is difficulty, but the reward, the receiving of what comes on the backside of that, like it's worth all of it. It's worth every penny you spend. It's worth every second of time. It's worth every tear. It's worth everything that you have to do to create the change, right? Because you, you have to be willing to give yourself success in your life. And one of the things that I love about what you do is, you know, there's these myths around this idea of, of healing, and one of the things that you talk about is like, healing is not about releasing, it's about regulation, release and reprogramming.

So there's so many facets and elements to it. I want to talk about the reprogramming part about it, because that's the integration. That's where the shift really happens. That's when you get to look back and go, Hey, the work is working. Wow. This is cool. Right? when I wrote Think and Broken, the first book that I wrote six years ago, I talked about the integration process.

I talked about getting to self. I talked about this journey of effectively reprogramming and I, I always tell my clients when they come in, I'm like, I'm gonna brainwash you. You should just know this 'cause your brain's dirty and we need to clean it up. what's reprogramming in this process around anger?

Right. Because I think we can be kind of clear regulation, you know, we kind of talked about that a bit. Release, you know, we've looked at that. A lot of these things we can do, but really, I think this is the third step is where the integration sits. What is that like for people? 

Ashley Frost: Yeah. And there's a little thing I just wanted to add that does link to this from what you mentioned before, like this journey of you have to give something. It's the archetypal hero's journey. Think of Frodo, he has to go into mortal. He has to give the ring sacrifice and leave a part of yourself in the metaphorical underworld to come back up to the surface world with the new lessons. And that's pro probably the reprogramming aspect that really lands.

It's like, what are you, you also need that time to also stop with the searching, to stop, with the releasing, to stop with all the regulating, to also give yourself moments to be like, what has shifted, what is different? And that only comes through retrospective looking. And you only notice you're healing when you look back.

You're like, ah, wow. I rea, I just reacted differently in this situation than I probably would've three months ago. Wow. I'm not triggered by this person. I'm triggered by my parent right now. And I definitely was a year ago. So from that side of things, there's a lot of peace and clarity that comes. The reprogramming aspect, this is where we're really getting with anger into the, into the alchemy side of things.

So what I really enjoy with anger is that when you've regulated. Which also can mean exposing yourself to big experiences. It's not always about downregulating, like a flexible nervous system can step into anger and step back out again. It can say, no, stop that, and it can come back out again. Hang on, I'm gonna say that again.

'cause my emojis Healthy nervous system lets you step into anger and then step out again. Like it really means that you, it's not always about, let me calm and let me get my nervous system relaxed. It's like, no. It's like, how can I expand the window of tolerance to any experience that my body is having is a really big thing.

And then with the anger, we're often think like, okay, I need to keep looking. I need to keep releasing; I need to keep searching. But what you'll find is that any buildup of anger, any emotional release you need safety. There's a buildup of tension, there's a point of catharsis, and then there's this point of the energy dropping.

And in this moment, this is the like post-release. Clarity can liken it to an orgasm if you want to. But there's something in that where the information then drops through of like, what needs to change right now? What in my life needs to change? What situations am I saying yes to when I don't want to? And that's where the reprogramming aspect comes in.

And then it's also about taking action, like anger really gets shit done. So, but it also requires you to, first of all, notice what needs to happen and then also take the steps towards that, not just, again, going back into the loop of like, Hey, well maybe, maybe it'll change, maybe not. And that's often where I find also accountability helps.

In my membership, we have a shadow work call that happens every two weeks and being seen also in the things that you are really struggling with, but also being held accountable that, okay, what are you gonna do about this? Like what can you do in the next few days that can keep this momentum that you've opened up this fire, you've opened the engine that's starting to go.

And for me, that's what's really important with this work. Like I do anger alchemy retreats and the last day is literally about what are you gonna do when you go home? How does this look like for you? And that I love is so different for every person. Sometimes your influence or your ability to make change in your life is about yourself.

It could be about your immediate family, could be with your colleagues and your team. It could be your community. It could be even on a global scale. Activism and having difficult conversations don’t need to be political. It can be on about being honest. It can be about caring about something in your immediate field. And yeah, for me, I feel the reprogramming aspect, links a lot to that as well. 

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. And I wrote a note here because it's something that felt really true. accountability ends victimhood, and that's something like in real time, I'm exploring this with you. 'cause it just connected a.to me.

And the reason that I say that is because it, it creating accountability. Requires you to walk the hero's journey because there's self-accountability, and most people struggle with that because self-accountability is really easy to let yourself off the hook. One of the things I frequently share with my clients is I ask them a question, are you taking care of yourself or are you taking it easy on yourself?

And these are not the same things, but accountability when you're sitting across. It's so fascinating. There's research about this, like people will give their animal the full treatment of antibiotics and make sure that they help every person in the world and they'll do all the things for everyone around them.

And yet the same research shows that if you have to give yourself antibiotics, there's only like a 22% chance, 22 to 30% depending on the study that you're actually gonna finish the round of antibiotics. Yeah. When you include accountability and you're sitting across from someone and you're like, Hey. You made this commitment not only to me, but more importantly to yourself.

Let's cross the finish line. And now the frame, which is, in my opinion, victimhood sits around excuses. Mm-hmm. Which again, by the way, all valid. I'm not taking anyone's excuses away from them. Hey, my mom fucked me up really bad. She cut my finger off when I was a kid. I was homeless. I get it. Like I fucking get it.

And I played the victim. But the moment you look out into the world and you go, I'm going to allow myself, and a lot of this is about care, which is misconstrued and doesn't always get applied to this idea of accountability from especially a group or or partner setting. It's about being cared for. Can you put yourself into a space of vulnerability to be cared for enough by another human being that they're gonna be like, Hey, you're not keeping your fucking promise you made to yourself.

Mm-hmm. And that can be super, super scary. But it also will just like Frodo, if he does, I love if he, if he is unwilling to go to the seven and be like, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna play my role, then the rest of them don't get to have the adventure. Yeah. If he doesn't sit with Gandalf and he is like, Hey dude, I really don't wanna do this again like, stop being a bitch.

Frodo like, let's go get this done. Like it doesn't happen. Soran takes over, everybody dies the end, but the accountability that gets created will force you into the hero's journey. There's just no way around it. And so I love that your community has that as a part of it, because that's the thing that creates the most shift when you think about.

Because these feels like in real time. When you think about accountability around this journey of like, what are you going to do with your anger? how can people start with a self-accountability? And then B, how can they create accountability outside of themself? Yeah. 

Ashley Frost: This is honestly something that clicked just a couple weeks ago after so many clients were facing a similar topic to this, because you also notice in sessions, so that's first of all, the person who maybe doesn't take action because okay, they care about their cat, but they don't feel worthy enough, or they don't have this inner belief that they deserve the full round of antibiotics, and so that self-sabotage is always at play and that maybe it should be showing up in other areas of their life.

And I found that in sessions it was sometimes difficult to bring people into feeling anger about something because they didn't feel like I. They deserve to be stood up for that they deserved, that they're worthy enough to be, to stand against something, et cetera, et cetera. So I was like, okay, what is going on here? Like how can you change that perspective shift? And this is the getting out of the victim as well. And we're working, you've probably heard this a lot, working with your inner child. Yes, of course you can meditate with your inner child, put a picture of them, your altar, but I guarantee you're probably still not feeling fully connected.

They are probably also not feeling fully regulated, safe and securely attached. What I found in the past six months, in particular with clients, that we would be doing an inner child process, that it was so much easier for them to tap into that anger by tapping into would you let this happen to your this little child? Part of you say there's like a 4-year-old present also for yourself. Even the young you that had this topic with your mother, like if they were right now, sat in this room on your lap and this was happening to them. Would you let it happen? And more often than not, this, advocating for someone else is actually easier.

The not letting harm happen to something outside of ourselves, even though it's your inner trial, it still feels separate. That is like a safer way to start accessing this defensive, protective that's not okay. Justified anger that's inside all of us. But sometimes it's so hard to put on the adult self that we have in the future.

People who also can't connect to the inner child. Sometimes we do get 'em to connect to pets. Like when I'm in the workshop sometimes and a woman is like, I'm like, we're stood in front of each other, and I'm like, tell me no, tell me. Say it. No, no. Try to like, push me back a little bit. And she's like, huh, no ha, I can't.

It's, oh, no, no. And I'm like, okay. I know this sounds very, very triggering, but imagine right now that your kid is behind you and I'm trying to get to your kid. Are you gonna be doing the same kind of response right now of like, oh no, it's fine. Just kid, my kid. That's no problem. Oh, that's okay. Oh, no worries.

I'm totally fine with this. And that's when sometimes being this slight protagonist that you are as a coach, that you are as a facilitator to, to start to push that edge a little bit to be like, you do have this fire inside of you. You do have this ability to defend yourself and people around you. And in particular, yeah, connecting to the inner child is when people finally are like, ah, now I have a, I have accountability because I'm not saying no to this person.

I'm not saying no to my boss right now. I'm saying yes to protecting that little kid of me because they deserve to be protected, because they deserve to be safe. They deserve to have their needs met. And this is when I have many clients who are potentially in anxious attachment or situation ships or really weird dating relationship situations where they keep just putting themselves in a situation because they feel.

That's all they deserve. I was like, yeah, I'll accept the crumbs, because that's what they had growing up from their parents. And so this re-parenting that happens where you as present day, you become this loving safe space for that little child part inside of you. Anything can happen in life and you'll be resourced.

Anything on the external can happen and that little part knows, okay, you're here with me. And this is why parts work is so phenomenal in this kind of work and that you need to do the physical bridge to the body with the inner child work. So what does that look like? For a lot of times that's if you have a particular age that's arising of which child is triggered in that moment.

So say, for me it was very young, it was actually at six months, I was separated from my mom 'cause she had a pregnancy and she was really sick and she couldn't look after me. Six months is like, you still think you're connected to the mother. Like the child's system doesn't understand that it's separate.

So to have this huge rift in my experience as a baby, meant that my trust in the world dec decreased my sense that when my needs are there, someone will meet them, went away. My confidence, all of these aspects that then grew up into addiction, to love, to sex, to food, to success, to money, to experiences that lead to the burnout stemmed from this separation.

So my practice was having a pillow, holding it as if I was genuinely holding a little six month old baby. How would you actually do that? You would be rocking it. You would stroke its hair, you would talk to it, you would move around the space. This completes the neuron pathway that meditation can't get to fully because your body remembers, and this touch that you're giving your body right now is actually being given to that little part because time is not linear. You're actually soothing the six months old, the little baby part that's activated in that moment.

And the more that this happens, the more you have secure attachment, the more these younger parts are not so triggered, the anger becomes less, the sadness becomes less because you've actually become this parent. And most of the time society, you look around, but it's actually just big babies where big, where adult bodies, but actually it's six-year-olds, it's five-year-olds, it's eight-year-olds that are re reacting, that are in the road rage, that are crying, that are behaving erratically.

It's not coming from this mental adult rational mind. It's this very young, normally under the age of 12 is where majority of the like court imprints happen. That then repeat themselves in patterns from teens and above. So that was a lot of cons, lot of talking. So I'm open to some questions, but this is really, majority of sessions are working on this topic like the inner child and reparenting ourselves.

Michael: Yeah, no, and I think you're spot on because here's the, here's the reality of it and, and I will even, I believe that we did society a massive dis, I believe that we created a space in society in which it's not for the betterment of people in which we made triggering punishable by death. And what I mean by that is for a very long time, safe spaces were about this thing where it's like, no matter what you say, you're not gonna get triggered.

No matter what you do, you're not gonna get triggered. No matter how you act, you're not gonna get triggered. We're gonna let you be your free, crazy, whatever self. Which by the way, please, I want people to be themselves, however. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-actualization being at the top, I don't believe you arrive there without deep inner work, which generally speaking is based on that space in which you're triggered.

Because without the trigger, without the moment, there's no awareness. And if you just walk around on fucking fluffy clouds all day long, you're never gonna have to face the darkness that's inside of you because we all have it. But that's the thing that creates the transformation. Is the willingness to be that.

And I always encourage not only the listeners of this show, but my clients especially, I'm like, good, let's get triggered. Let's see what happens when the world as a mirror reflects to us the thing that we need to deal with. Right. And that's the thing that I see as coming out of it. And I'm really, really happy because I think that that for far too long has created a winter that we're gonna pay a lot of dividends for over the course of the coming generations because that means too many people aren't doing this work.

I think safe space is like the ones that you create, especially at your retreats, which I've watched these videos of these men and women crying and angry and losing themselves and touching that emotion and healing that inner child. Like that's what it's about. It's not about you get to be safe just because you exist, which I wish we could.

Like I don't want this to be taken outta context, so I think it's incredibly important. I'm not saying you don't deserve safety in terms of your physical safety. I'm not talking about because of your appearance, not because talking about 'cause of the way that you think or the way you act or the way that you speak.

We all are entitled that I'm talking about you should get fucking triggered all the time because then you will build resiliency to actually face the world as a human being who's healed if you keep running, and I've seen this time and time again, if you run. If you cower from the emotional response that is invoked when you have to touch the darkness of your experience as a human, I don't know that you'll ever touch the highest level of being, which is self-actualization.

And maybe, I don't know that you'll ever touch it anyway, because we're always growing and we move too quickly. But that space that you talked about, like triggers are needed, you need to sit in that discomfort because, and then you need to do something with it, which is really what I see. And you know, I, when I was looking at, uh, and researching a lot of the work that you did a few weeks ago, and just seeing the physical reaction that humans have in the spaces that you share with them, the thing that comes to mind for me, I'm like, why don't we have this for little kids?

Why don't we have this for teenagers? Why don't we have this for the adults walking around like children and, you know, force it into like, Hey, let's go deal with this. Now, obviously neither of us can predict the future, but with the shifts that are happening in the world with this work, with the things that you do, like, what would you like to see happen, like around anger, around the conversation, around this deep work we're talking about? Like, what do you want to happen? 

Ashley Frost: Yeah. Wow. I love that question. I almost in the past wished that my corporate job, there'd been like a scream booth that you could just go in and like let out some steam if was needed. But in the bigger picture, what I really wish and what I see happening is this ripple effect. That slowly, the perspective of being exposed to anger, that it is something that is good, that is helpful, that is a catalyst that is on your side, that at least what I'm hoping is also with my work, that this is just rippling out. It means that the clients and the people I've spoken to who then speak to another person and another person, they, they have children.

They then start to look at their own triggers when they have a child that's then triggering them with their emotions as a, this is not something I need to punish, but this is actually an invitation as to what still needs to be given love inside of myself. So then that child grows up knowing that they're allowed to express all their emotions and that they won't receive rejection and disconnect.

They won't be punished; they won't be put on the naughty step. That actually the way to heal humankind is to be in that state of love and acceptance of all the parts of us. And so, of course, I would've fucking love if there's classes at schools where they can do emotional release practices, that there's spaces where people can come and to move their body and to shake and to talk and to share, and that eventually we are not so triggered by any emotions rising because people come to me and they're like.

It's funny, you work with anger because you're really not, you don't seem very angry. It's like, yeah, because of course I still feel anger, but when it arises, it's not an overwhelming tunnel vision trigger that's arising. It's something that comes up and I'm able, like a samurai to feel onto the sword, do I need to strike and come back again?

It's like very directed, very calm and grounded. And when you are calm and grounded and you can welcome the waves of your emotions, you make better decisions. You treat other people in a way that's in your integrity and like you say, you're ready to tackle this, quite frankly, mad world that we exist in.

From a state where you're not losing yourself and you feel, you still find those moments of calm, of peace, of freedom inside of yourself. And yeah, basically quality of life improves. That's at least for myself like I used to, and I imagine like if I met Ashley from like six or seven, eight years ago, she wouldn't even be able to tell you what an emotion is.

It's just something that happens to you. It's something that cool, like sometimes I feel down, sometimes I feel good. Maybe I need alcohol or drugs to feel good or to feel better, and to now know that I've really picked onto the nuances of this, these different facets of the human experience. Yeah, it's just really fun. 

Michael: Yeah. That's beautiful. Yeah, and you know, it comes back to what you said earlier, that you have to be able to feel the full range of emotions. And this is one of them that I think can be really practical. It, and it's, speaking of alchemy, which I think is a beautiful way to phrase it.

You know, what's, what is incredible, at least in, in my own journey and my experience is you can use this to build or to burn and it can be an amazing fuel for construction or destruction. And it's like, once you understand how to utilize the tool, it's like any skill that you have in life. and it's funny because when I started to understand the frames of anger, what triggered me.

Partners, family close, the normal things for most people. I was like, oh, wait a second. I don't have to yell. I don't have to scream; I don't have to be violent. I don't have to freak out. I can, I don't have to shut down. I don't have to fight flight, freeze fawn. I can be like, yep, I'm fucking pissed off at you. I'll talk to you eventually. 

Ashley Frost: Yeah. It's like I'm pissed off at you and I still love you. Yeah. It's like really bringing the heart into the, the process of discussions and healing of relationships through talking about it. And like you say, anger literally burns away the illusions. Yes. It purifies. It's, yeah, it's, it heals relationships and I think when we had a phone call a couple weeks ago, we talked a lot about, yeah, people talk about boundaries and anger and all about saying no, but the next step of that is, okay, but what am I saying yes to?

Like, I'm not saying. I still want to have this relationship with you. Mm-hmm. Like we need to talk about this because I care about our connection because I want to build something with you. And when we can really get over our ego when it comes to anger of like, they wronged me and this is not okay, and a boundary here, boundary there.

No, no, no, no, no. Cool. You're gonna end up in a world where you're disconnected and actually, if you can use, connect the heart and connect the fire to within your dignity, be like, this is the parameters that we can connect. But when we move towards community and move towards like, let's build a bridge, let's see where our bridges meet.

Instead of building a wall, then so much will shift in terms of authentically relating and being still in our own dignity and integrity.

Michael: Yeah. And I think that you'll see this shift happen where people stop abandoning each other the first time they get mad at each other. Yeah. It's like, let's grow some fucking resiliency in relationships with each other.

And, you know, I think that obviously the world that we live in, so connected through devices and the ability to just leave on a dime and, there's a million bajillion people we have access to now, and so on and so forth. It's like, yo, sit in the dirt with people, you know, stop running, stop being a coward.

I think a big part of the hero's journey that we talk about is, especially from a relational perspective, is like, yeah, you're gonna fight with your partner, you're gonna fight with your siblings, you're gonna fight with your best friend. It's like, are you gonna quit? Because that's not the same thing. And I think people are too fast to quit. Now, obviously circumstantially, there's a million reasons. Additionally, why, like, you know, you gotta bell, you gotta take care of yourself. I mean, obviously those aren't things we have to get to in this moment, but it, it really is. I think we need to take a stronger inventory of building resiliency in our lives and not letting these anger moments that dissipate be bad decisions, but instead really learn what you're talking about and really understand the ability to navigate them in a way where you're walking this path of regulation release and reprogramming 'cause it's gonna serve you unbelievably Well, my friend, this has been awesome, awesome, awesome conversation. Thank you so much for your space and your time. before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you, learn about you and meet you? 

Ashley Frost: Yes. Very easy. On Instagram at Ashley Velvet Frost. Yes, that is my full name. It's not a spiritual name. I was given that name from birth. same Ashley Robert Frost dot com. You'll find sessions. I'm coming to the US in May and June to give sessions and seminars on anger, alchemy, and giving retreats in Europe over the summer and autumn as well. That's where the easiest part. And I have a academy membership and a YouTube channel if you wanna see exercises and ways to get your body starting to move with that. That's called Academy of Anger on YouTube as well.

Michael: Beautiful. And of course, guys, go over to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Look up Ashley's episode for this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken? 

Ashley Frost: For me, being unbroken is radically unshaming the human condition and accepting all the parts of ourselves. 

Michael: Brilliantly said, simple to the point. Thank you so much for being here, unbroken Nation, thank you all so much for listening.

Please remember to like to share, to comment, to subscribe to all those things that people do if this brought you any value. But most importantly, share this with somebody in your life who you know will benefit from listening to today's episode, because that is a space to create accountability, to create change, to create shift, and ultimately to help them do what we all are trying to do. And that is to be unbroken.

Until Next Time.

My Friends.

I'll See You Soon.