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Busy, Stimulated, and Disconnected: Gay Men & Escapism · Gay Men Going Deeper

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:06
  Speaker B: Welcome to Gay Man Going Deeper, a podcast by the Gay Men's Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health, and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. Today I'm your host, Michael DiIorio, and joining me is the lovely Matt Lansdel.
• 0:21
  Speaker A: Hey, guys.
• 0:22
  Speaker B: Today, guys, we are talking about escapism. Specifically, we're going to look at the ways that we use things like stimulation, pleasure, and productivity to avoid the reality of living our lives. If you've been paying attention, last episode two weeks ago, we talked about joy and play. It was a look at the way we intentionally enjoy life and use joy and play in a life giving, expansive way. At the end of that episode, I had made a comment about how there's another side of that, and that's why I wanted to have this conversation today, to kind of do a deeper look on the shadow side, shall we call it? Because a lot of the things that bring us joy and pleasure can also become ways that we avoid our lives. So the question becomes, when does it shift from living and enjoying to escaping? And there are no shortage of ways to escape. We might also call it numbing. We've called it that quite a bit as well. So those are two terms we use here. And there are the obvious ways, like scrolling, sex, substances. We talk about that a lot. But oftentimes, on the surface, it doesn't even look like escapism. Most of the guys that I talk to wouldn't even recognize it as such. They would say they have a very busy social calendar, or they're very busy with work, or they have so much to take care of at home with the family and the kids and the house, all these things. And it doesn't help that our North American culture actually rewards this busyness. And for a lot of folks, though, if you look beneath the surface, a lot of people are completely disconnected from their lives, from their relationships, from their partners, their friends, their children, and even from themselves. So that's what we're unpacking here today. The different ways we escape, why we do it, and what it costs us. And before we jump in, I just want to make a quick little caveat here. Not all escapism is bad. Of course they're not. Even the things that we do to. To escape are bad. We're not making any moral judgments about that today. Okay? What I want to focus on today is the pattern. The pattern. Pattern of behavior. Not what you use. It's not about what you use. It's about how you use it. Okay? And if you want to think of it as a spectrum, on the one side is what I would call intentional escape, which. The things that we all do, unwinding after a long day or a long week, having a drink, watching a movie, escaping into Netflix for a few hours, scrolling to escape the day. It does the trick. It's temporary. There's no downside to it. Okay, that's. On the one hand. We all do that. I'm not. We're not talking about that today. Today, what we want to talk about is this chronic pattern of avoidance, of using things. Constant stimulation of your phone apps, constant busyness, work, even anything. And there's no shortage of things, anything that we use to avoid living in the reality of our lives, which is oftentimes very difficult. And you might know you have this. If there's a deep resistance to being still being home alone, being bored, you might call it being alone, not having something on your calendar. Just. Just looking at that thought, feeling of like, oh, my gosh, there's nothing there to do or to. To.
• 3:15
  Speaker A: To.
• 3:15
  Speaker B: To distract myself. That's where maybe we're talking a little bit about avoidance territory, and we're going to dig deeper into that. So a quick question you can ask yourself now at the top of the episode is, if I had to stop doing this thing for a week, how would I feel?
• 3:28
  Speaker A: Okay?
• 3:28
  Speaker B: And our goal here is not to. Not to shame at all. And we're gonna First. The first thing that Matt and I are gonna do is completely normalize this for everybody. Okay? So first question for Matt. Have you ever found yourself in this kind of pattern of avoidance? And if so, let's. Let's normalize it. Let's talk about what it looked like for you, what it felt like for you.
• 3:43
  Speaker A: I've never. No, this is.
• 3:45
  Speaker B: Never happened.
• 3:46
  Speaker A: Unless you're a freaking monk that sits and meditates for 23 hours a day. You. You have this problem. Trust me. We're as human beings, we. Especially in. As human beings in the technological era, we are escaping. We are using our phones way too much. We are using Grinder way too much. We're eating, snacking way too much. This is part of being human. I think we're. We're all escaping ourselves. And like you said, off the top, I think it's. There's healthy escapism, or I call it, like, intentional or conscious escapism. And I think that's. It can be healthy because we can't always be with ourselves. The intensity of life can become too much. Sometimes our emotions can become too much sometimes and we can become flooded. And yes, the ultimate is to become good at regulation of our nervous systems. But sometimes it's tough, right? So we need to. Especially if we're going through really big things, big heavy things in our lives, it's sometimes a night out on the town and having a couple drinks with your friends, which could be looked at as escapism, can actually be exactly what your soul needs to bring you back to life or to ground you a bit. So, yeah, I think for me, it's definitely my phone. My business is ingrained in my phone. And so it's hard, right? Like, that's always the thing. And if I didn't have my business in my phone, I probably would delete all my social media and I would just become a more recluse, like, in that way, because I really do. I'm happier when I'm not on my phone and when I'm just connecting with people and I'm in nature and these sorts of things. But yeah, I think it's. It's. It's definitely. For me, it's. It's almost like a compulsion. Like, it's like my hand goes to grab my phone, or if I'm sitting there and all of a sudden there's stillness, right? Like the whatever flick shut off or the. My music shuts off and there's silence. It's just like, okay, what's the next thing that I have to grab so I can consume? Right? It's like we're. I feel this need to always be consuming something, which I think is like the void. You think about, like spirituality or Buddhism and these sorts of things, they practice detachment as a way to become comfortable with the void which is in all. It's inside all of us, right? And for a lot of us, that void is pain. It's painful, it's shame, it's despair, it's sorrow. It's all the things that are in that void that we're trying to avoid, right? It's funny that I've never made that correlation. Void.
• 6:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. Avoiding void.
• 6:13
  Speaker A: And it's a void. That's funny. Yeah.
• 6:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:16
  Speaker A: And I used to struggle with addiction, and I used to. Actually, my undergrad is in addiction counseling. I spent the first 10 years of my career working in the field of addictions. And compulsion is directly connected to addiction. And I look at compulsion as we. The some sort of behavior that we're engaging in to cope with pain, right? So we. We do these compulsive things as a way to regulate Our nervous system. So I do think that escapism is, is an attempt to regulate our nervous system.
• 6:44
  Speaker B: Absolutely. And you know, I talked about that spectrum. If you keep going down that spectrum, addiction is probably further on the other end of it where it becomes, it becomes a problem, that it does turn into a full on addiction. But a lot of people aren't necessarily addicted to things in the like clinical sense. But we do have a pattern of avoidance. Sure. Like the ways you said. And I really do want to stress this idea of the spectrum. Today is Friday, we were recording and I've had a long week. Guess what I'm doing tonight? I'm gonna shut my laptop. Once we're done all this, do the things that I like to do to kind of escape after or to unwind. What I would say is unwind. I wouldn't call it escaping after a long week, which is I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna go out tonight. You know, I'm gonna maybe have some friends over, drink, have a good time, dance. And that's my, that's what I'm gonna do tonight. So. That's such a good point. Have you though, Matt, been in a situation where you have found yourself in a compulsion loop with something where, where you were escaping your life? Maybe not quite addicted, but that, that part right before addiction, but not quite. Just enjoying life?
• 7:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, in the, in the, the addiction space, it's like no use, use, misuse, abuse, addiction. Those are the five steps that you would kind of take progressively along the continuum to move towards addiction. So you're probably talking about like more like misuse or abuse of something as a way to avoid having to be with myself. Yeah, I would say I do it like now in my life, like when I'm. If I'm struggling and I'm having a tough go and I don't want to be with my emotions, I don't want to face what I'm right. I will use my phone or I'll put on Netflix or, or something like that. But I don't know if it's for me, I don't know if it's pathological because I come back to my, my emotions always. So I think where it becomes problematic is when the escapism has high intensity and frequency and you're not meeting yourself ever. So it's just escape, escape, escape. Every time something comes up, you escape it. I look at my tolerance to be with something and if I use discernment and I assess, can I be with this right now? No, I'm going to escape, but I'll always go back to whatever is there, and I'll try to meet it. That's my. My compromise with myself.
• 8:51
  Speaker B: Exactly. That's such a good way to put it. I'll give you an example. In my life, when I was in the compulsive loop, and this was well before, actually, this is. This is what had kind of got me into things like personal development and my first hormone of therapy and whatnot. But it was after a breakup. I had, gosh in my late 20s, and it just really threw me for a loop. And at the time, I thought, okay, well, I'm just gonna move on, get over this, and, like, try not to think about him and not process that pain by going out and meeting as many other people as I possibly can. To not deal with the heartache, the pain, the loss, the grief, all of it. The shame of that breakup from potentially maybe the first person I actually ever truly loved, which was a big deal. And I was just gonna coast by it by like, okay, let's go have as much sex as possible. I lived downtown. I had grindr. There's no shortage. No shortage of it. And I did day after day after day, a lot. And guess what? Pain didn't go away. And the minute I had a moment, the minute that dopamine hit where it wore off of the hookup, of the sex, of whatever going on, as soon as it started to get back into, like, my normal reality, the pain was still there. The pain never went anywhere. I just kind of masked it with all these other things. And as soon as that kind of started to fade away, the fog of the hookup faded away. Guess what I'm left with all that same grief just festering there. And it dawned on me after months. It took me months of this. My life went downhill real quick in just a matter of months, but I finally recognized it. And that's what, again, what got me to therapy for the first time. But that was it. It was like, the solution is not to go distract myself with all of these guys.
• 10:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 10:24
  Speaker B: The solution was to cry and feel and be alone and grieve and feel sad and all and, like, just go through the heartbreak. That was my example. And that, honestly, that was probably one of the darkest, if not the darkest period of my life. I've. That was the clear line of when I was like, oh, my gosh. That, like, I've been. I've been lifing wrong for the first time. 30 years. And it really put me on a Good path to where I am today. Yeah.
• 10:49
  Speaker A: I'm curious if you had the same experience when you broke up with Star.
• 10:53
  Speaker B: No.
• 10:53
  Speaker A: Or was it different? Yeah, it was different.
• 10:55
  Speaker B: Very different. Yeah. I mean, I was a different person then. The breakup was very different. It didn't. It didn't hit me in the same way. It was more of a mutual ending, closing of a chapter jointly versus the first breakup was he broke up with me, came out of left field. I was in love with him. I was certainly not the more secure, confident person I am today. And I had placed all of my worthiness chips on him and our relationship and his love and his attention. And when he took that away, slammed the door shut like cold cut, I fell apart.
• 11:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's tough.
• 11:29
  Speaker B: Very different.
• 11:30
  Speaker A: The reason why I asked that question, because it's a testament to your growth, your maturity. Right. Because I think when. And we're not. When we don't have ways to regulate our nervous system and we go into these freeze or flight responses, which I think that's what distraction is. It makes it really tough to, like, cope. So when you're. As you start doing work on yourselves and working with your nervous system, learning how to feel your emotions, it's a game changer, Right. So I think you spend less time in that. In that distraction, escape escapism, and you're able to meet grief earlier. Right. So I think that's like the trajectory that we can all aim for. It's like, we don't have to be perfect. It's not like right after the breakup, you're going to sit and be with. Right? All this stuff, sometimes it's too intense. It's too much. We need time to pass. We need to distract a bit so the nervous system can land. So it's again, looking at, like, how can I discern and use this. This mechanism of distraction in a. In a way that is intentional and then come back to myself and so that's cool.
• 12:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Easy.
• 12:28
  Speaker B: No, it's not easy, but it is. The. The only way. The only way is. Is through it. And I think I keep wanting to reiterate this again, is I am not saying that things like going on grindr and hooking up and even going to parties and having sex and these. These are not. These are not. I'm not targeting the action or behavior. It's just understanding that that alone is not a solution. It is a band aid. It'll help. It'll maybe give you a bit of a dopamine hit. It'll give you A bit of a boost. It'll distract you for a night or for a weekend if you want. Absolutely.
• 13:01
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 13:01
  Speaker B: You know, by all means do that. But at some point you do need to, as you had said, come back to yourself, come back into your life and face whatever it is that you are avoiding, whether it's a breakup or a trauma, or sometimes it's even coming home into a negative home space, like a relationship that is not serving you anymore. And a lot of people actually try to escape their home lives in work and in other things.
• 13:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. It's. I think there's an under undertone that I think is important to mention, which is like capacity. That word is so important. And I've been using that word a lot, like just in my own life and like really understanding what, what my capacity is. Right. More work I've done, specifically, I would say the more somatic work I've done and worked with my nervous system, the greater capacity that I do have and you know, a relationship that I was in in the past. We had broken up for two weeks and then got back together. And in that two weeks, the guy that I was dating, he had slept with a few guys, right. In that two week period. And I didn't. I, for me was a huge measuring stick for me in my own capacity. Am I going to distract? Am I going to do this? But no, I got into therapy, I started being with my. Processing my emotions in the bath every day.
• 14:13
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:14
  Speaker A: I was starting to work with this stuff. And then when him and I got back together for a short period of time, it. That's what became very clear to me. And that was one of the reasons why I knew it wasn't going to work between him and I as we had very, very different capacities. And he doesn't have capacity to meet his emotions.
• 14:30
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:30
  Speaker A: He go turns towards sex or grinder or hookups as a way to regulate his, his nervous system. And that for me really showed me the lack of compatibility in being able to be with someone like that, because I need somebody who match me and has that same type of emotional capacity to meet themselves. So. And again, that's not, that's not a shaming thing. But it is, it is a testament to say, like, if you're only distracting yourself and escaping your nervous system and your, your emotions, you're not developing a relationship with that part of yourself, your nervous system specifically. It's really going to erode your relationship with yourself and your relationships with others, especially romantically.
• 15:09
  Speaker B: There is a huge cost that we don't talk about in, in this avoidance and distracting and numbing. All these people want to say escaping. I want to talk about not just, you know, these, these really heavy things like post breakup and, and, and the big things. Because a lot of my clients who I see this with are what you would consider successful, high functioning, high achieving kind of men sitting at the top of their careers, having a very good life. And they wouldn't, they wouldn't recognize escaping in the way that we're talking about it so far. But for them, what gives them the anxiety is things like slowing down, things like not being busy or not being productive. So work for them has become their avoidance strategy. And then it begs the question, Guilty, right? Like before, this is, this is good. We could talk about you then.
• 15:56
  Speaker A: Right?
• 15:56
  Speaker B: It begs the question, what, what are, what are you hiding from? And this is a really sneaky one in our culture because as I said at the beginning, in this culture is rewarded and it's not seen as a bad thing. Whereas, you know, it's easy to look at something like diving into sex or substances. It's like, okay, this, this is very clearly, you know, a compulsion issue when it comes to work. For whatever reason, we don't really see that. We don't recognize it as easily. And they'll also say, well, look at my life. I'm very successful. Like, I have a lot of great things. There's nothing wrong here.
• 16:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:24
  Speaker B: So let's talk about that. Let's talk about this version of escapism, specifically, maybe around productivity or work. Yeah.
• 16:30
  Speaker A: Well, I've had three periods of burnout in my career. This last period was the most intense, obviously because it was compounded. I don't think I actually healed the other two. I think I just did a little bit more dancing around and trying to put. Wrap it up in a different box and pretend like it was whatever. So this last time, it really, it eroded me. Like I had to actually reconstruct my nervous system. I had to redo a lot of deep therapy around healing the parts of me that were putting me into states of urgency, fawning. I think that was a big one. So I think it's, you know, it was, for me, it was, it was my way of coping with inadequacy.
• 17:05
  Speaker B: Right.
• 17:06
  Speaker A: Because if I disappoint people and they don't like me or I don't meet their needs, it really hones in on, I'm not valuable because I'm not meeting their needs. So I, I always thought I had to take on more clients or take on more work or start another Facebook group or do all these things, because that was where I was getting my worth, right? And I think that was when I had that realization that, okay, I gotta actually learn how to be with disappointing people, right? It was. It's a skill I had to learn how to disappoint people and be okay with it and how to set boundaries around. Around these things. And I'm a late bloomer in this area. It took me till probably 38 years old to realize this. I'm now 40. So it's like, you know, in the last two years, I found some freedom from this because I'm like, I'm not gonna hustle for other people anymore. I'm gonna. I. I can't. Right? Because it's just. It's. It's eroding my sense of self and. And whatnot. So, yeah, it's. It's very addictive. And if you look at culture, our culture rewards it. That's why busyness is worn like a badge of honor for most people. And it's like, yeah, I always say with clients, whenever I start working with clients, doesn't matter what their goals are. My very first suggestion to them, their very first homework, and it's going to stick with them throughout the whole time of working with me, is to slow down by 10%. That's. I give that to everybody and. And then we increase that and it's like, take 10 minutes in your day, once a day, to just shut off the podcast, shut off the music, be with yourself, just in complete silence for 10 minutes. Most people can't do it, right? They. It drives them crazy. And so that's your. Your litmus test, folks. If you can sit with yourself, even just for five minutes in complete silence with nothing to distract you, you're going to meet yourself. You're going to meet a part of yourself that is probably very uncomfortable. And that's. That's a big piece of the inner work, right?
• 18:49
  Speaker B: That is the work. If you can meet that part of yourself, become aware of it, you know, befriend it even, and understand that it's there to take you to the next level. It is the bridge to that next version of you is to sit with that party that you've been avoiding. If you see it in that way, yes, it's still going to feel whatnot. But if you look at it more as an opportunity or as a. As I like to. The word I love is curriculum. This is your curriculum to whatever it is you want. It is Such a. An honor to use the complete opposite word of what people might think it is. But it is such an honor to meet that part of you because it is authentically you. We talk about authenticity, but you're not being authentic if you're just only focusing on the parts of yourself that feel nice or feel good, or the parts of yourself you present to the world and not the parts that are truly in there.
• 19:35
  Speaker A: That's awesome. I love that. I like the word congruence for that. Congruency is like when we let everybody be at the table and we lead from that we let people see all of ourselves. Right. Like the scared part in me gets a seat at the table and he also gets to be visible. Right. Like when I'm congruent, it's very vulnerable. Right. But it is the most authentic parts of me. And yeah. So I love that. I love. I love congruency. When I see somebody who's being congruent. It's such a. It's such a attractive quality.
• 20:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. In the 360 degree review that I have on my website for. For gay men, which I encourage everyone to check out, there are. Last week we talked about joy and presence. That's one of the life skills I have on there. This week we're talking about two in particular. One is called intentional living. How present are you? And then the other one is about boundaries, which is really, really important. And then we're not just talking about boundaries in your relationships. We're really also talking about boundaries with yourself and your time and your energy. And these are life skills. I love that you called it that. That's what that triggered me is it is a life skill. Guys. These things are things that are automatic or we inherited from whatever culture, family life, but they can be changed. They can be changed, and that's really, really important as well. All these things that Matt and I are talking about, facing what's in there, feeling your feelings, creating boundaries. These are all things that can be. First of all, you have to notice what the pattern is. Be self aware. And then once you're aware of it and you see it, then you're like, okay, how can I pivot and change this?
• 21:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 21:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: Did you have something to add?
• 21:04
  Speaker A: No, no, it's just stimulating.
• 21:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. I want to just do a little mini invitation here for anyone listening that I'm actually hosting a connection circle on this exact theme. It's called Slowing Down Without Falling behind. And it's a space where we're going to actually pause, reflect and Talk this out with other guys who are potentially navigating the same thing. Even if you're not navigating this, by all means, please do join us. You probably know somebody who you're thinking of, like, oh, this sounds like my friend so and so, or it sounds like someone I know, or perhaps it's you. But we're just going to have a conversation in the connection circles about slowing down. Okay. The link will be in the show notes. If you're on our email list, we'll email you all the details there. Or check out gayman's brotherhood.com and go to the events section.
• 21:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. It's so important. So important. Slowing down is like, it's everything. It really is everything. Like, you can't actually meet the parts of yourself that you need to meet to heal unless you slow down.
• 21:55
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:55
  Speaker A: If we're going too fast, we're all. We're in cerebral energy, we're in mental energy, which is great for being productive, but it's not good for healing. It's not good for relating to other people. It's not good for listening. Like, there's so many things that. That come out of just slowing down.
• 22:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, this is a good segue. How do you know, Matt, if you can summarize for yourself, how do you know the difference for you when you are going from enjoying something just, you know, to have a nice, natural, intentional, conscious distraction to a pattern of avoidance in your life? How do you know the difference for you? What does it feel like?
• 22:32
  Speaker A: Well, I don't meet escapism and distraction from positive emotions. I don't. I don't need to distract myself from joy. Right. So if I'm in a state that feels uncomfortable, like, discomfort is what leads to distraction or, or escapism. So I always just look at, like, okay, what am I feeling? And if I'm feeling shame or inadequacy, I'm likely going to want to try and escape it.
• 22:54
  Speaker B: Right.
• 22:54
  Speaker A: Versus, like, if I'm feeling good, it's. It makes me want to move towards play and engagement with people and. And things like that. So it's. It also feels like this. A good example is actually when I'm. When I'm on the dating apps from a place of feeling good about myself and not like, grabbing and seeking and, you know, like, it's not coming from compulsion. It's coming from I'm already who. And I would just love to maybe share some time with somebody tonight. Like, that's, That's, I think, healthy versus, like, you know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and messaging 12 guys. And, you know, it's like, it feels like there's a speed to it that is just not attainable. You can't attain that speed, right? Yeah.
• 23:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's great. Something that I've learned to do for me was, is Grindr, or my phone in general, similar to you? Like, I have noticed when I don't want to deal with something, my phone is the easiest way to find, like, a million apps that will happily distract me because that's what they're designed to do. At any rate, what I've done in the past is deleted. Like Grindr, for example, which is probably my favorite distraction app. Temporarily just to see. Just to see what comes up in my brain and how does it feel to go from my phone, reach for it, and then like, fuck, it's not there. That kind of forces me into like, oh, okay. Then asking, why did I just do that? Why did I just instinctually grab that? Oftentimes it's because if I'm. If I'm. If I'm in my workday, it's because I. I've stumbled upon a roadblock in my work, a creative block or something, and, like, I just want to do this. Let's just go on Grinder. If it's in my personal life, it's usually out of boredom or loneliness. Like, I'm sitting on the couch alone. Okay. I might as well see Grinder. And so when you take that away, start to ask, you start to find out, oh, here's my patterning. When I'm feeling this, here is what I do, here's what I go for. Some people might go for a drink. Some people might go to the fridge and grab a snack, even though they're not actually hungry. Right? So notice what it is you do. And the best way that I've learned to do that is to actually take that thing away and then see what happens. See what happens in your body and in your nervous system when it's not there.
• 24:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think our. A lot of our work is to learn how to find the internal world interesting. But there's so much stimulation in the external world, and it's so much more to be interested by. But it's like, how can I make my internal world more interesting? Because, you know, that's. I think that's what meditation does. When we can start to connect with different dimensions or levels of ourselves, our inner selves. That's when our. We can stop grasping and reaching outside of ourselves, and we can start reaching within Ourselves and find whatever. Right. Maybe it's sensations in our body, maybe it's emotions, maybe it's bliss or nirvana or whatever. Right. Like that's the power of meditation or even just present moment awareness, mindfulness, these sorts of concepts. So it's.
• 25:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Embodiment, the somatic experience. Everything that we talk about when slowing down, it really helps get back into the body because. And again, when, when you're moving fast through life, your body pays the price. Stress. And you have no idea sometimes what the impact of stress has on your body until it's too late.
• 25:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:52
  Speaker B: One thing I want to name as well is, you know when, when I say that you take away the thing that you turn to for as like crutch, that doesn't necessarily mean you don't find another way to support yourself. You can recognize, oh, okay, I'm going to this thing because I'm feeling stressed. That doesn't mean you have to deal with it on your own. That could just mean maybe I need to find another way to support myself through this. That is not grindr or a drink.
• 26:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 26:19
  Speaker B: Okay, last question. What is the cost of constant numbing, avoidance growth?
• 26:24
  Speaker A: We only grow when we're with.
• 26:26
  Speaker B: Right?
• 26:26
  Speaker A: To be with self is what creates growth. And I think if we're not with self, we're not evolving, we're not developing capacity, we're not learning how to process emotion, we're not learning how to express our processed emotions to the people that maybe created emotions. Like there's so many things we're missing out on where we're not developing this. And I think you look at people actually, and I saw this when I worked in the addiction space for 10 years. People that were using substances for majority of their life, when they would stop using the substance, and I'm talking about like addiction, like full on addiction, they would be emotionally and mentally stunted. At the age that they started using drugs and alcohol, it was very, very interesting phenomenon because they're not developing, they're not actually developing capacity or emotional awareness. So they're, you know, when I worked in a drug and alcohol treatment facilities and like the amount of immaturity, the amount of emotional immaturity that I would see, it would, I felt like I was in like a junior high school, right. And these, some of these people were like 40, 50 years old. So yeah, when we don't meet ourselves, we don't grow.
• 27:27
  Speaker B: Very interesting phenomenon.
• 27:31
  Speaker A: What are your thoughts about that?
• 27:33
  Speaker B: I'm thinking of clients that I work with who kind of have stumbled upon this because oftentimes they will come for coaching. Not. They don't know that this is an issue. And then kind of we find it. They'll, they'll. They'll present with things like, you know, apathy, you know, feeling distracted or feeling like their lives on autopilot or not feeling like their life has direction. They're just kind of feel like they're kind of going through. Through things, going through life like there's no problem. Like they wouldn't, they wouldn't come saying, oh, I have an issue, that I'm escaping my life and not feeling my feelings. That's not what they present with. But it'll be like a lack of direction or it'll be like, oh, all my relationships are shallow. I have a hard time connecting with people, or, you know, I have a really busy life, but I feel. It feels empty. These, to me are the symptoms of when we go deeper into it. This is usually, amongst other things, what we find. So that's, I think the cost, long term and short term is you end up turning. You know, you end up on your deathbed looking back, thinking, whoa, what, what, what? What happened? Where did it go? Who's around me? And there's nothing there. Because you spent perhaps a life distracted, not living.
• 28:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, I want to leave the audience with maybe a tangible thing that they can do. So when I say slow down by 10%, I tell my clients, like, walk 10 slower. And 10 is just a number that I throw out there just to give people. It's, it's more so about the intention of just being mindful to slow down. So maybe that looks like walking slower, chewing slower, maybe scrolling on your phone slower, just slowing down things a little bit. And try and spend five day or five days, oh my God, five minutes a day with your thoughts and just observe them, don't attach to them, don't grab onto them, or just witness your breath. And just five minutes. That's it. Set a timer and do that. You'll be amazed how much just meeting yourself for five minutes a day and slowing down will transform your life.
• 29:20
  Speaker B: That's the perfect. That's a great action. I mean, anyone can do it. You can do it right after you're done this episode. Right, well, let's leave it there. And last, last word for me is, you know, we. We also need to give ourselves a bit of grace because of course we want to escape. Look at the world we live in. It's not easy to live in the world we do now. It's not easy to be a gay man in the world we are now. And so of course that desire is there. And of course we're not saying don't do it. Of course, go escape a little bit, enjoy, have fun, find the joys in life where you can find them. But just recognize the difference between enjoyment and avoidance. A pattern of avoidance. There's a choice. There's a difference between choice and compulsion, as Matt had said. And we're not saying stop escaping. That is not at all what we're saying. We do want you to know that you cannot have a good life, a fulfilling life in relationships if you keep escaping them.
• 30:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think a lot of us are running from fear. So if you can just pause when you are feeling the need to distract or escape and just hold your hand in your heart and say, I'm scared right now. Get curious about what you might be scared of and start engaging with that. Because yeah, if you look at Fawn, you know, freeze flight responses, their responses to trauma or fear. Right. We're engaging in them when we're afraid. So if we can start to learn how to work with fear and own fear and be with fear, then I think think we disengage from the four Fs more so well said.
• 30:47
  Speaker B: All right, we'll leave it there. Thank you to our viewers and listeners for joining us on this episode. Can be a little bit confronting at times, but we love our audience because you guys stick with us through the confronting stuff. It's not all daisies and rainbows out there. For all things Gay Men's brotherhood, please go to gayman's brotherhood.com, check out our events section. And please do consider joining me for the slowing down session this month. Have a good one. See you in two weeks. Bye, guys.