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33 - The Case Against Masculine Containment · Masculine Containment

• 0:00
  Today I'm recording an episode that's probably been due for a little while, the case against masculine containment.
• 0:08
  Let me explain to you what I'm doing here and what I'm talking about is that the more masculine containment grows, the more this concept has grown, the more attention it's gotten, the more criticism it's gotten, and the more objections there has been, and the
• 0:22
  on this podcast, Masculine Containment, I'm an advocate for this process.
• 0:26
  I'm an advocate for what I think this does for men.
• 0:31
  And I actually think it's a good thing that criticism is happening.
• 0:34
  I actually think it's a good thing that there's pushback because every new idea, and this is a new idea, deserves to be challenged.
• 0:41
  You know, I share with people often about probably seven or eight months ago, my friend Jeremy and I were going back and forth on voice notes on text.
• 0:49
  And I was sharing with him this concept and what I'd done and how it changed my relationship and how I thought it could help him and change his relationship.
• 0:57
  And he transcribed our messages and fed them into AI.
• 1:01
  I think it was Claude.
• 1:02
  And Claude came back and said, this is some of the newest and most cogent and unheard of relationship advice so far.
• 1:12
  And I think it's some of the best relationship advice I've heard.
• 1:14
  And he sent me back that message.
• 1:16
  By the way, I'm paraphrasing.
• 1:17
  It might have been the words were different, but the sentiment was the same.
• 1:21
  And I remember thinking like, holy cow, this is like new.
• 1:23
  This is new.
• 1:24
  This is something that hasn't been shared before.
• 1:26
  This trainable martial arts like discipline is new.
• 1:30
  And for the past seven or eight months, I've seen it as my responsibility to not just understand what I know in a positive way, not just to understand what I know works.
• 1:39
  But.
• 1:40
  but to also understand what is the pushback?
• 1:43
  What is the case against this concept?
• 1:45
  What are the things that keep men from doing this?
• 1:48
  You know, for me, I've been in the online content marketing space for a long time.
• 1:53
  I've been selling courses that my wife and I have created since 2007 and courses that we've put together that entire time and one of my goals with every course I've ever put out is to understand the counter argument.
• 2:07
  What is the argument against what I'm doing?
• 2:08
  What is the argument against the information that I'm sharing?
• 2:12
  Because my goal is to create a process and a structure that if somebody follows it, it gets them a result.
• 2:19
  It gets them the result that's promised.
• 2:21
  It moves them forward.
• 2:22
  It helps them.
• 2:24
  You know, I think in the world of coaching and content, there's a lot of like be one step ahead of your client and, you know, you don't have to know everything.
• 2:31
  You just have to know the next thing.
• 2:32
  And I don't believe that.
• 2:34
  I think it's patently false and wrong and the wrong way to share information.
• 2:38
  I think if you're going to be sharing with someone a process, you shouldn't be one step ahead.
• 2:41
  You should be like at the finish line you are promising and a little bit beyond that so that you know what happens next for your clients so you can telegraph what's going on for them so you can understand what's happening for them.
• 2:52
  And since I started sharing this information in the first tiny little container of three guys, like I was ahead of what I was sharing and yeah.
• 3:02
  As objections came in and as people like pushed back, I wanted to understand.
• 3:07
  And, you know, I think some criticisms come from misunderstandings.
• 3:11
  Some are honest, intelligent questions.
• 3:14
  Some are kind of violent.
• 3:15
  Like you should see some of the stuff I get both in comments and direct messages online.
• 3:19
  I'll share a little bit about more of that later.
• 3:21
  But yeah.
• 3:23
  If I thought masculine containment was going to hurt someone, I wouldn't teach it.
• 3:27
  And so for me, the goal is to understand what is the counterpoint to this?
• 3:31
  What is the objection?
• 3:33
  So that I know that if there is an issue with this, I'm working into how I share it, how I teach it, how I share it with you in a way that it's not going to cause harm.
• 3:44
  It's not going to cause damage.
• 3:45
  We're not hurting people.
• 3:47
  And so today I want to talk through the biggest objections that I get.
• 3:50
  There's seven of them.
• 3:52
  and the ones that I've heard, and I'm going to give you like the argument for, and then my understanding of each one and why I think masculine containment is different.
• 4:02
  And I'm going to start with one of the biggest counterpoints that I get all the time.
• 4:06
  Someone will read or see one of my reels or read a carousel about masculine containment, about staying present, about staying in the moment.
• 4:14
  And what I hear is you're just teaching men to tolerate abuse.
• 4:20
  And I want you to understand, like, I understand why people think this.
• 4:24
  Because this is an entirely different way of approaching relationship.
• 4:27
  It's actually an entirely different way of approaching masculinity.
• 4:33
  And what we see as masculinity in the public eye, you know, when you think of like masculine, a lot of times what we think of is fighting back and going to war and overcoming the objection and raising your voice and pounding on the desk.
• 4:48
  And I believe the highest expression of masculinity, the deepest expression of masculinity is simple.
• 4:55
  It's presence.
• 4:56
  It's being in the moment.
• 4:57
  It's being here right now.
• 4:59
  And I hear things like you're telling men to stay calm no matter what.
• 5:02
  You're telling men just to take it.
• 5:03
  I'm actually reading from comments that I actually got online.
• 5:07
  And here's what I want you to understand.
• 5:08
  This is a misunderstanding because containment is not compliance.
• 5:15
  Containment is not self-abandonment.
• 5:17
  It's anything but self-abandonment.
• 5:20
  Containment gives you clarity and capacity to recognize your unhealthy behavior without becoming unhealthy yourself.
• 5:29
  And here's like one of the arguments I make here, one of the points that I make here is that, you know, when we, when I say containment is not self abandonment, here's what I think is self abandonment.
• 5:39
  When you look at the pattern, so many men are stuck in, not just in their relationships, but with themselves and relationships.
• 5:47
  with business colleagues, with team members, if they have them, with people that they lead, is there's this pattern of there's a trigger present, then there's an escalation, then there's rupture, then there's withdraw, and then you have to come back and make some kind of repair.
• 6:00
  And that's really clear in relationships.
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  You know, there's a trigger.
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  The two of you escalate.
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  You're arguing.
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  As a man, you're like trying to overcome.
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  And then you create rupture where things kind of feel broken and it feels like you can't connect anymore.
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  It feels like you need a breather.
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  You need some space.
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  You withdraw, which is not a productive period for either person.
• 6:19
  And then you come back and try and repair.
• 6:21
  Well, that also happens for CEOs, for people who lead teams, for people who are managers.
• 6:27
  You know, there's a trigger present.
• 6:28
  And with a team member, you get triggered and there's an escalation.
• 6:31
  And then rather than having like a calm resolution to the escalation, some type of rupture is created.
• 6:38
  I coached high producers and top performing business owners for years.
• 6:42
  And I can't tell you how often...
• 6:43
  They yelled or screamed or pounded on the table, caused that rupture with either one person or their teams.
• 6:50
  Then they had to withdraw and nobody was productive or people were wickedly like insanely obsessively productive during that period of time.
• 6:58
  And they had come back and try and repair.
• 7:00
  But what they didn't know is they were putting distance between them and the people around them over and over again.
• 7:05
  And so the goal of containment, when people say you're teaching men to tolerate abuse, the goal is not to absorb abuse, not even a little bit.
• 7:14
  The goal is to be the kind of man who can stay present and regulated and in the moment and actually set calm, firm, effective boundaries.
• 7:26
  When you're exploding, you're not setting boundaries.
• 7:28
  You're just making everyone around you react.
• 7:31
  When you're imploding and withdrawing from a situation, you're not setting effective boundaries.
• 7:36
  You're just causing a vacuum of presence, a vacuum of capacity for both you and for the person who's feeling you withdraw.
• 7:45
  You know, I was in another program during my sabbatical.
• 7:47
  I won't name the coach.
• 7:49
  It's not my style, but...
• 7:52
  really, really popular coach for sex, sexuality, and then some relationships.
• 7:57
  And I was on a Q&A for her and a guy got on and he said, you know, I'm having trouble with this because I'm sitting down with my wife and she says things like, you're not a man and you're just being a little bitch.
• 8:08
  And I remember thinking like, holy cow, she's going to tell him to set boundaries.
• 8:12
  Like that really needs to be a boundary.
• 8:15
  You know, taking abuse and contempt like that is not okay for a man.
• 8:18
  And what she actually said shocked me.
• 8:20
  She said, what role are you playing in her behaving that way?
• 8:27
  And I'm thinking, okay, she's going to say here, the role you're playing is you're not setting boundaries.
• 8:31
  And then she said something like, you're not being man enough or you're not being masculine enough.
• 8:34
  That's why she's calling you a little bitch.
• 8:37
  And I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, this guy's being set up to just take abuse and to try and figure out what this man enough means.
• 8:46
  And there really wasn't a clear and cogent explanation of it.
• 8:49
  It hurt me.
• 8:51
  It was one of those things where I'm like, man, it's stuck with me.
• 8:54
  And so.
• 8:55
  When it comes to masculine containment, I don't feel like I'm teaching men to tolerate abuse because containment doesn't replace boundaries.
• 9:03
  It actually makes healthy boundaries possible.
• 9:06
  When you're contained, when you're in your body, when you're present, when you're in the moment, you can say like, hey, I'm not going to continue this conversation when we're treating each other this way.
• 9:17
  Or, um...
• 9:19
  I'm in a place where I don't want to be talked to like that.
• 9:22
  And you can express yourself.
• 9:24
  You can express your emotions.
• 9:25
  But when we start name-calling and contempt, that makes it really hard to stay in this moment with you.
• 9:30
  And so I'm going to take some space.
• 9:33
  I love you.
• 9:33
  I'm not abandoning you.
• 9:35
  I'll come back later.
• 9:35
  That's a healthy boundary.
• 9:37
  And so I'm not teaching men to tolerate abuse.
• 9:40
  I'm teaching men to understand the difference between abuse and expression so that they can set boundaries where necessary and hold containment and create emotional safety and security where also necessary.
• 9:52
  The next objection I get really often is you're just putting all the responsibility on men.
• 9:58
  This happens all the time in comments on Instagram and comments on Facebook where men say, oh, yet another guru saying that it's all men's problem and it's our fault and we have to do everything.
• 10:08
  And there's always comments like, why should I go first?
• 10:11
  And what about her work?
• 10:12
  Why am I doing all?
• 10:13
  You know, I understand this.
• 10:16
  I totally understand this because in a relationship where there's been that pattern that I talked about earlier or where you're not meeting in the middle and there's not like closeness and connectivity, it can feel like the other person needs to do something for you.
• 10:33
  But the way I look at masculine containment, this martial arts-like discipline, this discipline that's completely changed my life and the lives now of dozens if not hundreds of men that I've worked with, talked to, listened to the podcast, contacted me through social media.
• 10:48
  What I share is, hey, this isn't about fairness.
• 10:51
  We have to stop looking at things as like fair or unfair.
• 10:54
  In fact, I remember in my relationship, not projecting this on you, but in my relationship, when I was stuck in a place of fair or unfair, what I was actually doing was I was in a childhood reaction like everything needs to be fair.
• 11:06
  Everything needs to be equal.
• 11:07
  This needs to be fair.
• 11:09
  And when I let go of that and said, what's my responsibility?
• 11:14
  That's where I actually was asking the question, what's my influence?
• 11:18
  What's my capacity?
• 11:19
  What can I step into here to make a difference?
• 11:22
  See, I can't control my partner.
• 11:25
  You can't control your partner.
• 11:26
  And any attempt to control another person is usually to increase the pressure and noise in your life like crazy.
• 11:31
  And in some ways, it'll drive you crazy.
• 11:34
  But what you can control is you.
• 11:37
  What I can control is me.
• 11:40
  See, here's what I know now in my life.
• 11:42
  The more responsibility I can take, the more change I can create.
• 11:47
  Responsibility like accesses my power.
• 11:50
  Blame limits it.
• 11:52
  So I want to take responsibility wherever I can because that allows me to say, hey, I can change this for me.
• 11:59
  And so in no way am I putting all the responsibility on men to fix the relationship.
• 12:04
  I'm putting the responsibility on us as men to be responsible for what we can.
• 12:09
  And oftentimes it's way more than we think it is.
• 12:12
  And when we understand this discipline of masculine containment, when we're present, when we're aware, we start seeing with clarity what we really want and what's going on and what's happening, where we need boundaries and where maybe we need a colossal change.
• 12:25
  Like maybe we're in the wrong relationship.
• 12:27
  I learned this from one of our members.
• 12:29
  He actually said it was his lack of containment.
• 12:34
  that got him into his relationship.
• 12:36
  And he realized that once he was present and once he was aware and once he was in his body.
• 12:41
  So one of the other objections that I get is you're just teaching men to suppress their emotions.
• 12:48
  And I understand this because staying calm looks like suppression for a lot of men.
• 12:58
  In fact, there was a time in my life where I would have believed this, that the guy who's just sitting there quiet while somebody's reacting or while somebody's emoting or while somebody's raising their voice, that that person's just suppressing his emotions.
• 13:09
  He's checking out.
• 13:11
  He's not doing anything about it.
• 13:13
  Like, he must be dying inside.
• 13:16
  And I understand why.
• 13:18
  Because...
• 13:20
  The example that we have in the world is like aggression equals masculinity and aggression equals like not suppressing.
• 13:27
  But there's another option.
• 13:29
  Suppressing actually means not feeling.
• 13:31
  It means not understanding what's going on for you.
• 13:33
  It means getting into your head or like not feeling what's happening and just holding it all together and white knuckling it.
• 13:40
  And when I was learning containment, were there times where I was like in that white knuckling place?
• 13:44
  Yes.
• 13:49
  was asking myself what I was feeling and what was going on for me and what was happening for me.
• 13:54
  Instead of exploding, which erases any of that inquiry or imploding, which erases any of that inquiry, I was doing everything I could to stay in the moment and understand what I was actually feeling.
• 14:09
  And over time, what happened was containment allowed me to feel everything that was going on for me and feel what was really happening for me without becoming controlled by it.
• 14:21
  That's the difference.
• 14:22
  So the appearance of calm may be disassociation.
• 14:25
  I totally understand that, but that's not what I'm teaching, and that's not what masculine containment is.
• 14:30
  Masculine containment is staying regulated and in your body because you're actually feeling what's going on.
• 14:35
  You're becoming more emotionally aware of yourself, not less.
• 14:40
  And so...
• 14:42
  You know, the argument here, you're teaching men to suppress their emotions, not really, not even close.
• 14:47
  Because containment isn't feeling less, it's feeling the feelings and learning how to react less.
• 14:53
  Reacting is not a given.
• 14:55
  We don't have to react.
• 14:56
  We don't have to allow every trigger to lead to an escalation or to an implosion.
• 15:02
  We don't have to allow everything that bothers us to affect us in a way where we check out in one of two ways, like too much energy, not enough energy.
• 15:11
  We can actually train the trigger, understand what's going on, understand why we're reacting to something that usually is not present in the moment.
• 15:18
  You know, if you're reacting and imploding or exploding at something, for example, that one of your kids says, like, you're not in a dangerous situation, so why are you screaming and yelling or why are you imploding?
• 15:32
  Why are you checking out?
• 15:33
  Why are you disassociating?
• 15:35
  It's usually something that's not from that moment.
• 15:37
  It's usually something historic.
• 15:39
  It's that trigger has a pattern in our lives where we've been triggered by it before.
• 15:45
  We felt emotions around it before, usually at a time where we couldn't do anything about it.
• 15:50
  And so that trigger presents itself again and it's off to the races.
• 15:53
  So I'm not teaching men to suppress their emotions.
• 15:55
  I want men to feel their feelings.
• 15:57
  Stop suppressing because that's how we really get into our bodies and understand who we are and what we want and what direction we want to go.
• 16:04
  One of the other objections that I get is this isn't masculine.
• 16:10
  Right.
• 16:12
  Man, I've heard this one over and over again.
• 16:13
  And I've heard it in some pretty, like, expressive ways.
• 16:17
  I've been called a simp, a beta, a bitch.
• 16:22
  One guy, even...
• 16:24
  wrote on one of my reels that he was certain that I was an AI-generated character, a robot created by a woman to influence men.
• 16:34
  And he was so confident that I was a robot, he actually gave like the company and the version of software that he thought was running that was me.
• 16:43
  which I find absolutely amazing because when I was a kid, and I'm autistic, and I didn't have a lot of, like, range in my voice when I was a kid, so I got made fun of for being a robot.
• 16:53
  So it happened again.
• 16:54
  I got called a robot because I'm not sharing something that's masculine.
• 17:00
  And I get it.
• 17:01
  I get it, you know?
• 17:02
  I mean, there was a time where I probably would have thought this.
• 17:05
  Calm and present gets confused with weakness.
• 17:10
  I'll say that again.
• 17:11
  Calm and present gets confused with weakness.
• 17:14
  And reaction gets confused with strength.
• 17:18
  And I understand this because it's the example we have, especially in the men's space.
• 17:24
  So many male leaders and men's space leaders, especially some of those who are really popular, who've had a lot of men that they've influenced, are almost in a constant reaction.
• 17:34
  You watch them online and most of their posts are angry.
• 17:38
  There's one who's worked with tons of men.
• 17:41
  And I followed him pretty closely to understand what he's doing and understand why so many men are influenced by him.
• 17:45
  And he is so in his wounding.
• 17:48
  But you know what?
• 17:48
  Wounding is relatable.
• 17:49
  Okay.
• 17:50
  Being wounded is relatable and being upset and frustrated and angry is relatable.
• 17:56
  And so he shares his wounding and every video he has, he's angry.
• 18:00
  And every time he's sharing anything, he's yelling.
• 18:02
  In fact, he's a coach.
• 18:04
  So he did a video on the future of coaching and how coaches need to be embodied, which I totally agree.
• 18:10
  But the irony was during the whole video, he was like chastising the person listening to it and yelling at him kind of.
• 18:15
  And I was thinking how interesting that the video is on embodiment and he's in a reaction.
• 18:20
  And as he's sharing this relatively benign content, he's still in a reaction yelling and screaming.
• 18:26
  So I get it.
• 18:26
  You know, the reality is anyone can explode.
• 18:30
  Anyone can withdraw.
• 18:31
  It's not masculine.
• 18:33
  Remaining present under pressure is one of the strongest things a man can do.
• 18:38
  Um,
• 18:39
  like in martial arts, you know, the fighter who wins normally is not in some out of control state.
• 18:45
  The fighter who wins is the one who's in their body, who's present, who's aware, who's seeing the punches come in slow motion, not who's seen red and losing control.
• 18:54
  I saw an amazing video online and it was shot at, I think it was a baseball game or a football game or something like that.
• 19:02
  And there was a guy who was on a lower step in the bleachers and another much bigger guy who was on a higher step in the bleachers.
• 19:09
  And the guy in the lower step was just kind of looking up at the guy and had kind of a smirk maybe on his face or a little bit of a smile.
• 19:17
  And the guy who was standing above him was screaming at him and yelling at him.
• 19:21
  And the guy who was standing on the lower step didn't move.
• 19:24
  He just stood there kind of with a little smirk on his face.
• 19:27
  He was standing in his capacity.
• 19:28
  He was standing in his power.
• 19:29
  He wasn't reacting.
• 19:31
  This bigger guy who's yelling and screaming couldn't knock him off center.
• 19:35
  And I was watching the video before I understood the context behind it.
• 19:39
  I was so impressed.
• 19:39
  I'm like, holy cow, this guy, like he is in his body.
• 19:43
  He didn't look disassociated.
• 19:45
  He looked like he was just there.
• 19:47
  And then I read the caption and the guy was a professional fighter and like a like accomplished professional fighter.
• 19:55
  So the reason that he didn't feel like he had to haul off and hit the guy or say anything back or do anything besides just stand there and be present was because he knew he was in control of the situation.
• 20:05
  That's masculinity.
• 20:07
  Being able to stand in the face of fire and do nothing, be present, be aware, know that you don't have to prove yourself, know that you don't have to do anything, that is about as masculine as it gets.
• 20:19
  And so remaining present under pressure is strength.
• 20:24
  And presence is the highest expression of masculinity.
• 20:29
  So the fifth thing that I hear all the time, and I get this one, I've already tried everything.
• 20:34
  Why would this work?
• 20:36
  And brother, I understand this one so deeply because I was there.
• 20:42
  I tried therapy and counseling and coaching and books and communication techniques and attachment styles and love languages and nonviolent communication and so many other things.
• 20:55
  And what was interesting was, you know,
• 20:59
  In a lot of cases, like therapy helped me understand what was wrong, but it didn't really help me with the next step of what I should do.
• 21:06
  And coaching kind of helped me see what was happening, but it didn't tell me like, here's what you do next.
• 21:12
  And I read books and the books were all about repair and I became a ninja at repair.
• 21:16
  So many books, so many relationship courses, so many communication techniques are about one of two things.
• 21:21
  It's either repairing once everything's broken or when you're in a reaction using some
• 21:29
  To make it so you sound better.
• 21:32
  I always joke with people that the problem with nonviolent communication, that framework where you say, I see what you're saying and you mirror back to them.
• 21:39
  The problem with nonviolent communication is most of the time when you're employing it, you feel violence right underneath it and the other person can feel the violence, not what you're saying.
• 21:49
  And so masculine containment is not a strategy like that.
• 21:53
  It doesn't teach some framework.
• 21:56
  What I share with men and what I've experienced myself is that when you step into a place of nervous system regulation, what I teach men is nervous system regulation and getting in your body and embodiment and staying in your body.
• 22:10
  And when that happens, you start communicating totally differently because you communicate based on what is going on in your nervous system.
• 22:21
  And if you're triggered into a survival mechanism, if you're triggered into fight, flight, fawn, or freeze, you're going to communicate from that place.
• 22:28
  Fight, you're gonna just go at them.
• 22:30
  Fight, you're gonna withdraw.
• 22:32
  Fawn, you're just gonna kinda stay there, complacent, disassociate.
• 22:35
  Freeze, you're just gonna check out completely.
• 22:39
  And when you can stay in your body and stay present, you actually change what's going on around you, especially when you are a man, when you create that masculine presence.
• 22:50
  One of the people that I worked with in this discipline in my first container of just three guys was Christian Hohner.
• 22:57
  And he's such a good guy.
• 23:00
  When he and I started working together, one of the things he told me is, Alex, you don't understand.
• 23:03
  I've tried everything.
• 23:03
  I've tried men's groups and therapy and I've read the books and I went to church groups and I did, you know, he tried so many different things.
• 23:09
  But nobody actually told him that he could completely change the situation through regulation, that he could completely change the situation through understanding himself better, by staying present, by hearing what was going on.
• 23:21
  Instead of checking out, instead of fixing it after the problem already happened.
• 23:25
  And so I totally understand if you're in that place where you've tried everything, why would this work?
• 23:30
  It's because it's different.
• 23:31
  It's a strategy that hasn't been taught before, especially when it comes to relationship.
• 23:36
  Now, the next one I hear from a lot of people, even some people that I know pretty well.
• 23:41
  And the comment they say to me, especially those who know my wife, Katie, they say, you know, this only worked for you, Alex, because Katie changed.
• 23:50
  Yeah.
• 23:52
  And I get it.
• 23:53
  I understand, especially for people who know Katie.
• 23:55
  Katie's amazing and committed to growth and committed to herself and committed to work and doing the work and doing the hard work and doing the inner work and all of those things.
• 24:05
  And they assume she did the heavy lifting in this process.
• 24:10
  In fact, just recently I had a guy reach out and say, this was on Facebook, he sent me a direct message and he said, it's unfair that you go on podcasts and share this material without your wife being there with you.
• 24:22
  And I thought like, unfair.
• 24:24
  man, this guy's really in a childhood reaction.
• 24:27
  Like I, to me, you know, I wanted to push back.
• 24:30
  Like my instinct is like, man, that's something I want to push back against.
• 24:33
  But what it felt like it was a cry for help and he probably was not in a very mature place.
• 24:37
  And so I said, hey, can you explain what you mean by unfair?
• 24:41
  And he sent back a message saying, you know, it's not fair because we don't know what she did.
• 24:45
  We don't know the other side of the story.
• 24:46
  We don't know what her part was.
• 24:48
  And, you know, she had to have done something for this to work.
• 24:52
  And I understand that.
• 24:54
  And the reality is Katie had always been working.
• 24:56
  We were working on this together.
• 24:59
  But I couldn't see how much work she was doing.
• 25:02
  I couldn't see the progress she was making often because I was constantly creating central nervous system disruption.
• 25:08
  I was constantly in a reaction.
• 25:11
  And so, yes, did Katie do work?
• 25:13
  Absolutely.
• 25:15
  But when I started containing myself, when I stepped into my body, when I stayed with myself, I could actually see the work she was doing.
• 25:22
  And I could actually see what work was hers and which work was mine.
• 25:26
  Like we differentiated what's hers, what's mine, and what's going on for me.
• 25:29
  And by the way, I had reactions.
• 25:31
  I didn't just step into containment and stay there.
• 25:34
  Once I started really focusing on this, I would say, man, this thing that happens is triggering me over and over again.
• 25:38
  I'd take it to my EMDR therapist.
• 25:40
  I'd lay down in time in neutral.
• 25:41
  I'd go for long walks to process, to understand what was going on for me, to untangle, to unwire that trigger.
• 25:50
  Because anything that's been wired in your central nervous system, you can unwire it.
• 25:54
  You can untangle it.
• 25:55
  You can stop that reaction from happening eventually.
• 25:57
  It takes time and it takes effort and it takes patience and self-forgiveness.
• 26:02
  But I teach those things and I show men how to do that.
• 26:05
  And here's what's interesting.
• 26:08
  Now that I've worked with as many men as I have and now that I've shared this with as many men as I have, there are a lot where their wife refuses to do work or their partner refuses to do work.
• 26:20
  And sometimes that looks like, not always, but sometimes that looks like they become aware that they're in the wrong relationship.
• 26:28
  And even though their partners didn't do work and even though their partners wouldn't meet them, you know what they say when they're leaving those relationships?
• 26:35
  They say things like,
• 26:37
  I've realized I'm not going to be met here and I'm not going to do this anymore.
• 26:41
  Or I've realized I have enough value that I shouldn't be in this situation.
• 26:45
  Or like Jared DeVolk, who I shared earlier said, you know, I realized my lack of containment got me in this relationship.
• 26:51
  So even if she doesn't do any work, which thank God my wife did because our relationships in the best places ever been.
• 26:59
  But even if she doesn't do any work, this still improves your life.
• 27:02
  Containment doesn't make your partner change.
• 27:06
  It might invite them to change.
• 27:08
  It might help them change.
• 27:09
  And in so many cases, men have reported that their wife feels like a different person.
• 27:14
  And their relationship feels completely different.
• 27:17
  And they're achieving things and feeling things and doing things with their partners that they never thought possible.
• 27:24
  So it's not going to make her change, but it creates the space if she's willing for her to change.
• 27:28
  But even if she doesn't, it creates the space to help reveal what's actually there for you and for her.
• 27:35
  And for me, holding containment, not exploding, not imploding, but really understanding where were those triggers that were deep?
• 27:42
  Where were those triggers that really got me out of control?
• 27:44
  Where were those triggers that I had a hard time stopping escalation?
• 27:49
  That was where I did work and my life's infinitely better for it.
• 27:53
  I'm so much more calm and at peace and productive.
• 27:57
  Like a lot of my life for anyone who knows my background has been about optimization and capacity and how can I do more?
• 28:05
  How can I have more energy?
• 28:06
  How can I get more done?
• 28:07
  You know, I've run a lot of multimillion dollar companies and I've helped a lot of people do the same in my business coaching.
• 28:13
  and I've been really financially successful.
• 28:15
  That's why I can do the work that I do today.
• 28:18
  And I have a lot of perspective around capacity and ability to get things done.
• 28:22
  And I can tell you that today, I get more done in far less time, like a fraction of the time that it used to take me.
• 28:31
  Because I'm here.
• 28:32
  I'm present.
• 28:32
  I'm not wasting time with escalation and repair and rupture and all those things going on around me, which was most of my life.
• 28:38
  Not just with Katie, but with my daughters, with team members, with clients, with people around me.
• 28:44
  I was almost in a constant state of reactivity.
• 28:46
  And it robs you of so much energy and so much capacity.
• 28:51
  I remember there were times in my life where mid-afternoon, I'd be dying to stay awake.
• 28:56
  I'd want to drink coffee.
• 28:57
  I mean, I used to live on energy drinks because I was leaking my capacity everywhere because I was uncontained.
• 29:04
  Lack of containment means you are leaking capacity.
• 29:08
  And today, I get more done faster than I ever thought I could.
• 29:13
  And so it's not only because my wife changed.
• 29:18
  Now, this is a big question.
• 29:20
  And this one scares men.
• 29:22
  What if I change?
• 29:23
  What if I do the work and she doesn't?
• 29:25
  And I know why men think this.
• 29:27
  They're thinking fear, hopelessness, protection.
• 29:30
  It's vulnerable to do the work.
• 29:33
  It's vulnerable to admit you have work, to make the changes, to reveal who you are to yourself without the guarantee that the person you care about the most will change.
• 29:45
  And here's the reality.
• 29:46
  There's no guarantee that you will.
• 29:49
  And I believe the person you should care about the most is you.
• 29:52
  I share with men in the brotherhood kind of a hierarchy of where I think our devotion should lie.
• 29:57
  I think as men, we should be devoted first to our higher power, to whatever that is for you.
• 30:03
  You know, for some people it's God, for some people it's Jesus, for some people it's Allah, whatever it is for you, Buddha, whatever your higher power is.
• 30:10
  I don't judge.
• 30:12
  I have my own.
• 30:14
  And I think that's where you should start.
• 30:16
  And then right behind that should be your devotion to yourself, to understanding yourself, to making yourself a better person, to seeing where your work is, to processing your trauma, your wounding, to letting go of conditioning, to revealing the man who's always been there.
• 30:33
  And so when someone says, what if I change and she doesn't?
• 30:37
  My answer is maybe she will, maybe she won't.
• 30:40
  But here's what I know is that either way, if you step into this work, you're going to stop making decisions from a state of survival.
• 30:50
  You're going to start making decisions from a state of presence and clarity and understanding what you actually want.
• 30:57
  You know what happens to so many men who are in relationships, especially once the relationship starts having challenges?
• 31:03
  When we get into this place where the relationship has challenges, we lean in and we're like, how do we fix it?
• 31:08
  How do we make it better?
• 31:09
  What do I do to fix this?
• 31:09
  What do I do to make it better?
• 31:10
  It's a thing that either we think about all the time or the thing we're trying not to think about.
• 31:14
  So as a result, we think about it all the time.
• 31:17
  And we lose ourselves.
• 31:19
  We lose an understanding of what we really want.
• 31:21
  We lose an understanding of what makes us excited.
• 31:23
  We lose our understanding of like what we want to do.
• 31:26
  It's why so many men numb and disassociate when they have time.
• 31:31
  It's like we work a lot and we don't have time to do the things that we want to do in life.
• 31:37
  But then if you're in this pattern of putting everything you can in the relationship and walking on eggshells and trying to make it better and trying to make her love you and trying to make it okay and trying to move things in the right place.
• 31:49
  What happens is that takes so much effort and energy.
• 31:52
  We lose ourself in that.
• 31:54
  And then we have time.
• 31:54
  We get off of work and we drink or smoke weed or watch porn or do a number of other things to disassociate mind and body because we aren't present enough to know that every minute is an opportunity and the time that we have should be well spent.
• 32:10
  And every time that we have time in the world, we can go do something that's exciting for us.
• 32:15
  But in so many cases, we forget what even excites us.
• 32:19
  I talk to men in the brotherhood about this all the time.
• 32:21
  We forget our preferences.
• 32:23
  We forget what we care about.
• 32:24
  We forget what we want to do.
• 32:25
  I was there.
• 32:26
  I was totally there.
• 32:28
  There was a time in my relationship where if Katie would leave and
• 32:33
  and she wasn't here, that was a trigger for me, and I would disassociate so hard that time without her would be time where I survived, rather than like go do all the things I've been wanting to do, and go do things that excite me and that are fun for me.
• 32:45
  Today it's completely and totally different.
• 32:49
  So what if you change and she doesn't?
• 32:52
  You're going to understand yourself better.
• 32:54
  You're going to understand what you want and what your preferences are.
• 32:57
  You'll sometimes containment does save marriages.
• 33:00
  Sometimes it reveals where boundaries are necessary.
• 33:03
  Sometimes it reveals that both people have work.
• 33:06
  Sometimes it reveals that the relationship shouldn't continue, that it's not the right place for you or for her or for both of you.
• 33:12
  But you'll finally know what you're actually dealing with because you're not dealing with this survival response.
• 33:19
  This fight, flight, fauna, or freeze that takes us out of mind and body and gets us hypervigilant and hyperactivated or disassociated and deactivated.
• 33:29
  And so if she doesn't change and you do, I still think things are going to go so much better for you.
• 33:36
  And there's so many men in the brotherhood who have shared exactly this.
• 33:40
  In fact, there's a couple of testimonials on Trustpilot, which is a site where a lot of men have left us testimonials, where they say exactly this, where they say, I understand myself better.
• 33:51
  I understand what I want.
• 33:52
  I understand what I needed.
• 33:54
  And I realized it wasn't what I had.
• 33:57
  And so if she changes, if you change and she doesn't, I know it feels vulnerable and terrifying to take a leap into that, but it's going to make your life better.
• 34:06
  And in closing, I just shared seven objections with you, but I think after hearing all of these over the last year, after talking to so many men, after talking to so many women, after now going through almost three brotherhood containers, next week is the eighth week of the third container and we're opening our fourth.
• 34:26
  Here's what I think the deepest objection to containment is.
• 34:30
  And it's one that isn't spoken out loud.
• 34:32
  It's like the unspoken truth about doing this work.
• 34:36
  It's that a lot of men feel like if I stop reacting, if I don't lead with anger or defensiveness or fixing or proving myself or withdrawing or shutting down or controlling, who am I?
• 34:50
  And I saw examples of this when I was a coach.
• 34:53
  I saw examples of this in the personal development world.
• 34:56
  I won't name names, but there's a pretty famous personal development guy out there who teaches breathwork.
• 35:02
  And one of the more famous breathwork processes or breathwork systems or, um, designed breathworks.
• 35:11
  And he teaches men how to get in their bodies and how to regulate and how to create presence and how to create, um,
• 35:19
  groundedness and understanding and he's pretty extraordinary at it i've practiced his stuff i've done breath work for i don't know 15 years now maybe a little longer and it's really good it's
• 35:34
  I had the opportunity to speak to someone that knows him really, really well.
• 35:38
  And they shared something shocking with me.
• 35:40
  His son, who's an entrepreneur and who runs his business, runs this guy's business.
• 35:46
  And it's grown to like multiple millions, maybe tens of millions.
• 35:49
  I'm not sure.
• 35:51
  But his son won't do any of his dad's work.
• 35:54
  He won't participate because, and when somebody asked him why, it was because he was afraid of losing his edge.
• 36:01
  And what I hear when I hear that is, I'm afraid of letting go of anger.
• 36:05
  I'm afraid of letting go of defensiveness.
• 36:07
  I'm afraid of letting go of control.
• 36:09
  I'm afraid of letting go of what I already know because I feel like it's who I am.
• 36:17
  And I get it.
• 36:18
  You know, years ago as an entrepreneur coach, I had this person who had committed to working with me.
• 36:27
  And we were in the final stages of putting together a coaching agreement.
• 36:32
  I don't do this anymore, so please don't reach out for coaching.
• 36:35
  But I used to coach people for a year at a time.
• 36:38
  And it was extraordinarily expensive.
• 36:40
  And...
• 36:43
  I was in the final stages of putting together an agreement and they saw a video that I made where I talked about not reacting.
• 36:51
  I mean I've been on this for a long time because what I noticed in the entrepreneurial world was the less you react, the more you grow.
• 36:57
  And the less you react and the less violent you are and the more present you are, the faster your company scales.
• 37:04
  But this particular person saw this video and they used it as a reason why they didn't want to work with me anymore because I wouldn't validate their drive to do everything all at once and right away and to grow the biggest business overnight and to grow for the sake of growing without having a real reason.
• 37:21
  And they told me they didn't want to work with me because I lacked intensity, which is funny because even back then and even today.
• 37:30
  Now, even though I practice this work, oftentimes people tell me I'm the most intense person they've ever met.
• 37:34
  I think containment has actually increased my intensity dramatically.
• 37:40
  I think it's increased my, not to think, I know it's increased my capacity dramatically.
• 37:47
  And it's because anger, defensiveness, the need to fix, the need to prove yourself, withdrawing, shutting down, controlling, that's not who I am.
• 38:00
  That actually masks who I am.
• 38:03
  That actually obscures who I am.
• 38:05
  When I let go of all of that, I actually revealed who I am.
• 38:10
  And...
• 38:12
  You know, this fear that containment will make you less of who you are, my experience has been the exact opposite.
• 38:20
  You don't lose yourself in containment.
• 38:23
  You recover the man you were before your nervous system learned to survive through constant reaction.
• 38:32
  And so that's why I believe that masculine containment isn't about becoming a different man.
• 38:36
  This isn't like a personal development program where you become somebody new.
• 38:40
  It's about becoming the man you always were before survival became your personality.
• 38:49
  And so if this is work that you're drawn to and you've had any of these objections,
• 38:55
  Go to our website, thebrotherhoodsociety.com, and sign up for our wait list and get on our mailing list and come to an interview for the next container where I will answer your questions personally.
• 39:05
  If I didn't cover your objection, if there's one that you didn't hear, please make a comment below and let me know if I missed something.
• 39:13
  Because I truly believe that this work will work for any man.
• 39:17
  This work will help any of us become who we really are, increase our capacity, increase our ability, get more done in the world, have more influence, and step into a place of responsibility like we never have before so that we can actually change the world for us so that we have the world we want to live in.
• 39:40
  Thank you so much for being here with me today.
• 39:42
  It's a privilege to put this podcast out, to do the work I do.
• 39:45
  It's the most exciting thing I've ever done and I couldn't do it without you.
• 39:47
  So I appreciate you being here.
• 39:49
  Please leave a comment.
• 39:50
  Let me know if I missed something or if you agree or disagree.
• 39:53
  And if you're called to this work, it would be my honor to walk this path with you.
• 39:57
  Again, thebrotherhoodsociety.com is the website.
• 40:00
  I look forward to seeing you soon.