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How To Deal With Haters (Without Getting Defensive) · Gay Men Going Deeper

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:05
  Speaker B: Welcome to Gaiman Going Deeper, the podcast by the Gaiman's Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. I am your host, Matt Lansdell, and joining me today is Michael Diorio. Welcome, brother.
• 0:21
  Speaker A: Hello.
• 0:22
  Speaker B: Okay, today we are talking about dealing with haters. And we're not really, really exploring questions. We're just going to kind of wing it. We're going to roll with it, but we're be really kind of looking at why people hate, the impact that hate has on us. We can speak from. For ourselves, Michael and I, and then ways to deal with. With hate or haters. We're going to unpack this. This is something that really. It affects all of us. I'm sure we've all dealt with haters. People that are more visible are going to deal with it more. And Michael and I are pretty visible being on this podcast. So it's there. Yeah, that's why I chose this topic. I think it's. As my visibility is increasing and I speak my truth more loudly from a larger platform, it naturally leads to people rubbing people the wrong way. And so it's. This has happened since the very beginning of my career, since I started being public, and I've had a lot of growth in this area. And I want to share it, I want to talk about it. So I'm looking forward to that. And I want to just point out that hate is rarely about us, but how we relate to it, how we respond to it, it reveals everything about us. Okay, so that's the premise of. Of this episode. Let's. Yeah, let's just dive right in. Let's look at why people hate. Why do you think people hate, Mr. Michael?
• 1:39
  Speaker A: So many reasons. It's. It's actually a really good question to ask yourself when you are on the receiving end of hate. That is a great question to start with. I wonder why this person feels the need to say this or to do this or to see me as the object of their hate. And that's how I reframe it. It's like I'm just an object of something that they already have inside of them. And that hate that they is theirs, not mine. And I just happen to be the object of it. If it's not me, it's going to be somebody else. And then the question is why? What is it about me or what I said on that podcast or what I posted there that has made them want to hate me? And I think a lot of the time it really depends on what it is, right? If it's. If people see me in a very expressive, authentic, you know, what's. What I'm looking for, unapologetic way, which I do. I do present as. Sometimes I think they don't like that because they themselves are very repressed in whatever way, in their authenticity and their sexuality and all the ways that I am not repressed anymore. So I've healed my shame and that I am expressive and I just say, say the things that matter to me and I don't give a. They give a lot of. And are confined in a prison of that they give or that society gives, and they're stuck in it. And they see me outside of that prison and they hate me for it, and they're like, no, if I'm stuck in this prison, then you need to be stuck in it too. You shouldn't be having fun. You shouldn't be saying, you shouldn't be, you know, living by your own rules. That's it. Like, I. I live by my own rules in a lot of ways. And I think people hate that about me.
• 3:06
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think your. Your visibility, just in general, people's visibility will trigger people who feel invisible.
• 3:14
  Speaker A: Right.
• 3:15
  Speaker B: Um, so I think projection is. Is a big piece of this. People are going to project onto. Onto us what they disown in themselves, right? So if you think about people who we've. We've got comments. I remember one comment that with me is like, on YouTube, somebody said something about how I lisp, have a lisp or something like that, and I could. And being an empath, I can feel people too, right? I can feel even through. Through, like, written stuff, Like, I can feel the energy that was put into this comment. And it was like, this is somebody's internalized homophobia in themselves, and they're projecting it onto me. So they're playing out their shame on and trying to play it out on my screen, right? And that's, I think, what. Where. That's the number one thing for me, I think projection is the number one thing. So it's like I look at it like I'm not being attacked. I'm actually being mirrored. Like, people are mirroring to me, me, but it's not through my eyes. It's through their eyes, right? How they perceive me, the character that I need to be in their story is what they're showing me, right? So whenever somebody's projecting hate onto me, I've learned how to get curious about it and be like, why is this person like, hurling this at me. What does it say about them? So I've tried my best. This is so hard to do. And it's like. It's like God's work, truly, to try and be compassionate. When somebody is projecting hatred or jealousy or envy or whatever they're projecting, it really is hard. It's hard to be curious and compassionate. If you can do that, you're doing some really good work, inner work, because it's easy to get into the. You, you know, and. And, you know, keyboard warrior back at them and stuff like that. So, yeah, projection, I would say. Big one. Big one, big one, big one.
• 4:55
  Speaker A: Another one that just came up is we had. Just had this episode, last episode, Distraction. I think for a lot of people, it's so much easier to look around at other people's lives and hate and point their finger and complain and judge and tear them down than it is to look at their own lives, which is probably a mess. If you have that much negativity that you have to hate on everyone, then, like, what are you avoiding in your own life? What. What is it that is the work that you're not doing? What. What is it that's missing from your own life? So a lot of the times, I think it's just so much easier to judge and hate on others than to take responsibility for the mess that they've created in their own lives.
• 5:34
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, good. Well said. And I think for me, that's an easy term to use, would be unprocessed pain. Or Eckhart Tolle calls it the pain body. And people that are trolling on the Internet, they have a massive pain body, which is just a collection of unprocessed pain in their body. And that hurt or that pain, it needs to go somewhere, so it's being discharged from. From them onto others. Which brings us to the adage of hurt people, hurt people. It is true, right? Like, when somebody's hurting, they want misery to have company. They want to create hurt in somebody else so that they can. Right? And we use the analogy, and we have on this podcast for years, around the crabs in the bucket and the type of people that are haters, they don't want to be pulled out of the bucket. They want to pull you into the bucket. They want to pull you into their hurt, into their pa. Pain, Right? And so I think a lot of it is they actually. The work, the therapy and the work for people that are haters is they actually need to be seen in their pain, right? But they're doing it in this subconscious, kind of really toxic way. Right. But when they, if they were to go into therapy and start working on themselves, they. They need their pain to be validated and to be seen in their pain so then they can stop spreading it. Right? That's the work.
• 6:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, I 100 agree, but I think how they do that is instead bonding to other people who are also in that bucket. And instead of, instead of saying, oh, I want to be seen in my hate, the way you said it in a therapeutic sense, which makes sense. Like, it's good. They find other people who also hate. And then there's a whole group of haters going around bonding together. And they call it connection, they call it friendship, but it's just gossip, complaining, tearing people down, and you'll call it community. But it is a very low quality. I wouldn't even call it connection.
• 7:14
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, yeah. There's like, I can't quote anything specifically, but there's a body of neuro around bonding. I can't remember where I. Where I read this, but it's to do with. That's one of the fastest ways to bond is through the hatred of other people.
• 7:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, right.
• 7:29
  Speaker B: And you know, I hate to. To slag on. On gay men, but I think unconscious gay men are like the queens of this. They're really good at this, of bonding over that. You know, look at that guy over there and like, judging. They're very judgy. They can be very catty and mean. And that's, you know, that's kind of. I don't think those guys are listening to our podcast. But if the people that are listening to our podcast might be affected by guys like that. Right. So if you are, you can now understand the internal workings of somebody who engages with the world like this. Right.
• 7:58
  Speaker A: Or you might know somebody, whether it's in your circle or in the periphery, and if so, send them this episode. Maybe a year ago, Pepper and I did an episode about gay friendships, and we kind of looked at a expose on what people call friendship. And like, oh, yeah, we're friends. And a lot of the time it is, as you said, actually just gossiping, complaining, and bonding over these kinds of things.
• 8:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is sad. Sad One that I, that I thought of was like, identity protection. And you look at this in the world right now, this is so huge around division. Right? Division in the world and Republican and Democrat and blah, blah, blah, all this political crap. And you know, just the, you know, when somebody is saying something online that challenges your ideology and your ideology is so connected to your identity. You're literally protecting your identity when you're, when you're dealing with that. So haters might come on and be like wanting to tear you down, wanting to. Right. Belittle your ideologies because it threatens their identity.
• 8:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 8:55
  Speaker B: So I think that's a big piece of this as well that's happening and playing out in our world in a big way. Any other ones that you can think of reasons why people hate? I think we covered a lot of the main ones for.
• 9:05
  Speaker A: I think, you know, when I think of haters out there, I think a lot of them feel very justified that they wouldn't call themselves a hater, they wouldn't identify as a hater, but not until someone maybe tells them, hey, you're kind of negative. You kind of look at the world in a very negative viewpoint. Not to say that I'm advocating for toxic positivity at all, but there's a difference. And we probably, again, the listeners of this podcast, probably all at least know at least one person, maybe someone in your family or a friend who just has a very negative outlook on life and they don't recognize that they're a hater or that they have a lot of hate. And I, I sometimes feel sorry for them because I want to say there's a better way to live, my friend. A self inflicted emotional state that you found yourself in. And it, it like you might feel justified in your hate, you might feel some sense of goodness like keyboard warrior ing and, and, and, and being very negative at people and judging them and criticizing them. But I promise you, it's self inflicted. It does not when I'm the object of that hate doesn't hurt me at all. But I promise you, you're the one carrying that hate. That hate is yours to carry for the rest of your life. And it might give you some sense of satisfaction to criticize people, but if they don't allow you to get to them, you're just carrying it yourself.
• 10:16
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 10:17
  Speaker A: You're paying a very high price for all that hate and negativity.
• 10:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's like drinking poison, expecting the other person to die. Right. Like with anger. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because it made me think what you're saying makes me think of like this discernment between disagreeing with somebody and hate. Because I do think that there's a line between those two. I think you have trolls, you have haters, you have these people who are just constantly disagreeing and they go online every day to try and find ways to stir pots and. Right. And again, I think this comes from pain body. It comes from unprocessed pain. I want to make the world feel how I'm feeling internally. So you're trying to stir up, you know. But I do think disagreement can be healthy. And if you, but if, you know, if you look at the way that disagreement can be delivered and this may be where I'll say politicians do it. Well, they, they, they tend to be able to disagree without being using swear words or degrading people or. Right. Like, and sometimes it can go into that. But for the most part I think they're, they, they show composure and, and maturity when they disagree.
• 11:18
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:18
  Speaker B: Whereas you see some of the things online, it's like, oh my God, like the name calling and these sorts of things. So there's a way to disagree that can still maintain the humanness of, of love and compassion in these qualities. It's like. But I think haters feel the need to make somebody else wrong so they can feel right. That's not a disagreement. Disagreement just means I'm going to stand in my truth.
• 11:41
  Speaker A: Right.
• 11:41
  Speaker B: And I'm not trying to make you wrong so I can be right. I'm just going to stand in my truth. Right?
• 11:45
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: So there's a fine line between that and. I just wanted to state that I
• 11:49
  Speaker A: think feels like a lot of people have lost that skill to do as you say, to stand in disagreement with mutual respect given political climate. I don't know what it is just with the world, I don't know what it is, but I sense that this was a skill people, more people had, not everybody, but more people had 10, 20 years ago.
• 12:10
  Speaker B: Maybe that's an episode we can do is disagreeing with integrity or something because it's, it really is like disagreeing is important, but I think disagreement in a healthy way is about honoring both perspectives and not agreeing with the other person's perspective. You're disagreeing. Right. But honoring and saying, you know what, I can see where your perspective comes from. Even though it doesn't. I don't agree with that. I can still. You can let somebody be in their absolute truth and you can still maintain in your absolute truth. When we start hating or disagreeing from an unconscious and negative way, it's often very emotionally charged. It's dehumanizing, it's loaded with shame.
• 12:47
  Speaker A: Right.
• 12:47
  Speaker B: So that's. We're, we're hurling stuff around when we're, when we're doing that.
• 12:52
  Speaker A: And if this person that you disagree with is someone who is in Your life. I'm thinking a family member you can't. You can't quite listen to. They're not just a random stranger on the Internet. Then everything you said. And I would add to that boundary setting. So I can have you as a family member who is part of my life and who might disagree. Let's say they don't even like that I'm gay or they don't like gay people. Right. Something really personal to me. I can disagree with them on that. Clearly. And I don't need to make it mean anything has gone wrong. And I can set very clear boundaries about how I interact with them and how much access I give them to my life. As adults, we get that choice.
• 13:32
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 13:32
  Speaker A: Right. So it could be like a parent, a sister, a brother, someone really important to you. You don't necessarily need to cut them off. You can if you want to, but like, we make it mean. Like, I have to change their mind. They're. They're my. They're my parent. They have to be okay with this. And no, they don't. They get to do whatever they want. They don't have to like that about you. They don't even have to love that about you. And you don't have to hate them for it either. Isn't that nice? You can say, okay, that's really disappointing. That really sucks. That really hurts.
• 14:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:00
  Speaker A: I can see from, you know, that perspective or from that era or whatever their reasoning is. Religion often has a lot to do with it, why you would feel that way. And although I'm disappointed, I'm going to leave that here and I'm just going to create a boundary between us. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:15
  Speaker B: I love that. Yeah. Disengagement has been the most powerful thing that I've ever done to heal the things I've been struggling with, which is burnout. Because I thought I had to respond to every single Instagram comment that I ever got or. And Facebook and all these things. That's what I literally would think. If I had a red dot, I had to respond to it. And I sense just dis. Disengaging. Like I don't need to engage. Even if with people are sending love, there's a heart button. I'll heart it.
• 14:41
  Speaker A: Or.
• 14:42
  Speaker B: Right. If. Or if people are sending hate, I don't have to respond. I can just let it sit there. And it's amazing what happens. I've had people respond from my lack of response and sometimes I'll energetically send love or these sorts of things and I'll have People, like, maybe DM me, and they'll, like, apologize or they'll delete their. Their hateful message, because somebody in that moment might be feeling something really terrible. They might be in a really painful place, and then they come to their senses 15 minutes after they just wrote that, and they start to feel remorse. Right. So if I were to. To take the bait and get into this fight with them, all I'm doing is creating a ton of discomfort for both nervous systems. So it's like, disengagement can actually be a very, very powerful tool, but the ego doesn't like it because it means. Well, if I'm disengaging, then I'm telling you that you're right and I'm wrong because I'm not willing to go to war with you. It's not how it works.
• 15:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. Think of it as a. As a tennis match. They lob the. They lob the hateful ball at you, and the expectation is you're gonna lob it right the fuck back. But if you just watch that ball and walk off the court, then what?
• 15:48
  Speaker B: Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Okay, let's go into just the impact and maybe not from a global. Like, we can. You know, everybody's gonna have their own way. They're impacted. I'm curious about you, and I'll share vulnerably as well. Like, what's the. Been the impact of hate in your life? And maybe you could even think of a time where somebody was hateful, like you were dealing with a hater or something like that.
• 16:09
  Speaker A: There's two. There's two. If it's. If it's a comment or something. Someone who doesn't like what I said on this podcast, which happens a lot, that doesn't bother me as much as it used to, but it does bother me when it's coming from someone that I know and who knows me. Like, when the call is coming from inside the house, I have a much harder time because I'm so disappointed that they don't know me better than that. Or. My thought is, you should know me. You should know how I'm actually like a random stranger on the Internet. You don't know me. I mean, I don't. It doesn't matter what you say to me as much. So what was the. What was the question? How do I deal with it?
• 16:50
  Speaker B: Yeah. With the impact of. Of hate on your life or dealing with a hater?
• 16:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, it really depends. Sometimes it fuels me. You know, if I get someone saying, like, someone say, once you Know, I, I, I've seen you, I've seen you at the gym. You're, you're no angel. I'm like, yeah, I know. Next, what do you got? And then it just, it just fuels me to want to do more. I'm like, well, let's talk about what it means to be sexually empowered. Let's talk about what it means to own these things. Let's talk about what it means not to have shame around the things you enjoy. And so sometimes it's fuel, sometimes it makes for great content, creativity. So keep it up, boys. I mean, sometimes it hurts. Sometimes if it's someone that really, I think, knows me and they, they'll say things like, what makes you think you're, you're qualified to talk about that, given what has happened in your life? You know, you, for example, you shouldn't be talking about relationships. You broke up with your partner. And I'm like, yeah. And that's exactly why I'm qualified to talk about relationships, because I know the full 3,180 cycle of falling in love, being in love, living together, all that comes with that conflict, communication, realizing that maybe this isn't the right person, talking about that, breaking up, moving out, heartbreak, grief. I'm like, find me, find me someone better to talk about these things. Please, please do. And I would assume that a friend knows that because they've seen that journey. And, and I would hope that they would say, oh, wow, Michael, you'd be really good at talking about that. Not what makes you think you can talk about that. That's what really hurts me when I think that they should know better, but that, you know, looking at that now, saying that out loud, that's just my expectation of them, that they should know better. But hey, sometimes people don't and they're allowed to have their opinions.
• 18:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's such an irritant when people throw their qualifications around and they're like, you're not qualified. You don't have a PhD.
• 18:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:31
  Speaker B: How can you be talking about this? It's like, no, that's not how it works. Okay. Impacts. So, yeah, geez. This happens all the time to me. Like, I feel it all the time. It's a bit of a sting at first. I go, I notice that there's, there's a heat that comes up in my chest a little bit. My heart starts to pound a little bit, lose my, like, my breath gets shorter. And then I, I go into defend, defend, defend, defend. Like, I, My fight response comes online first. That's always how it works. And then I'll do some, whatever, shake it out, move my body, something just to kind of discharge some of that energy. And then I can start to connect with like, okay, what's going on here?
• 19:13
  Speaker A: Right?
• 19:13
  Speaker B: And I can, I'll, I'll discern. Like, obviously if there's a strong reaction, then there might be something there. And oftentimes it's actually, it's actually not the wound that they are, they're not creating the wound, they're hitting on a wound that was already there. That's, that's what I have to work with. So I'm like, okay, what old wound is being activated right now? As soon as I can start looking at it through that lens, I'm like, okay, this has nothing to do with this person. They're giving me an opportunity to practice self compassion. And I'll start to look at it like that. But yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Like, there's, there's the initial sting, there's the, the feeling of I'm in trouble. Like I, I, it's very common for people, CPTSD survivors to feel that, like, I'm in trouble, I did something wrong, I'm bad, I'm wrong, these sorts of things. And I think that's still part of me. I have a little inner boy that is like terrified of being in trouble, right? And being, you know, whatever. So it does feel like there's, if there's a threat, a threat response that comes online with that. And then depending on my day can be like, I can have this feeling of like, oh, like, why are people like this? Like, I can feel sensitive. Like, why do we live in such a mean world, right? And it makes me just want to like, go and live off grid somewhere. Like I can get into those mentalities where I'm just like, man, like this world is so dark and so loaded with, with, with this type of energy, you know, I can feel that. And then also that's when I, I know I need to get off of social media. Like put down Facebook. Because Facebook is a toxic cesspool lately. Like, if I'm being completely honest, it's changed dramatically. All the social media platforms have changed. Like, Instagram is like every third post is an ad for some. I'm just like, oh my God, this is just, it's too much. So, yeah, that would be the impacts on me, I think. But then as I move through all these, these experiences, it leads to tenderness, like in me and it leads to like my own self compassion. It leads to my own love for myself. So there is. There is. There is a reason why it's happening, right? But it's learning how to move through those layers, right? Which is what we can talk about next is, like, how to handle. How to handle haters. Like, when. When it's coming at us. How can we. How can we do this from a conscious perspective? And I know it's so easy for us to move into passive aggressivity or aggressivity or whatever it might be, but that's not what we want. We don't want to perpetuate hate with hate. We want to. This. This podcast in this community is much more conscious than that. And we're. We want to be, like, leaders in this area where we can start to lead with love, lead with compassion. So, yeah, how do you handle that? How do you handle haters?
• 21:43
  Speaker A: Yeah, you nailed it when you said defensiveness as the automatic response. I don't. I mean, I'm a human, so that is the automatic response to want to feel like, let me show you how you're wrong. Let me. Let me convince you how you're wrong. It's my automatic response. Now, the automatic response is not usually the best one to go with, as I've learned, but what I will do, and this has been such a game changer for me, is find the ways that they are right and agree. So if someone comes at me with some kind of hate, like, you're such a bitch. This guy's such a. I'm like, yeah, I am a hundred percent. I can be very bitchy. And there is a part of me that is such a. And the thing is, when I do that, it disarms my me completely because there. There is nothing that anyone can say to me that I have not already thought or said to myself, which is perhaps one of the benefits of having a very loud inner critic. So whatever you're coming at me with, I'm like, yeah, okay, you're right, I am. And so then I can see it. I'm like, okay, yeah, I can see why you would think that, because I am sometimes that way. So that is probably the. Like, that. That gets rid of all the defensiveness. It's just like, yeah, okay, you're. You're picking up on something that is actually there. And you. You kind of talked about that earlier, Matt. That our.
• 22:53
  Speaker B: Our.
• 22:53
  Speaker A: Our. Our issue with hate is not their hate. It's our thought about it. People's hate can't hurt you. It can't come out of them and into you. And Hurt you, it just doesn't exist. They will come at you with something, you'll have a thought about it. And if your thought about it is they're right, that's going to be what gets you. So sometimes they're right. You got to own it. You got to own it. You don't have to tell them that. All right? But for like, in my own mind, I'm like, yeah, I am a bitch. She's totally right. Or he's totally right about that and that disarms it. And then I can be like, okay, then it goes into that self acceptance work. I have accepted the part of me is bitchy 100%. I have accepted that part of me is not nice. I'm not a nice guy. All the things you want to say, that's true. And so when you have done the work to accept all those maybe exiled parts of you, those shadow parts of you that perhaps are not the nicest things about you, when you've done that work and you know that they're there, that hate can't hurt you. And that's the key. They're just picking up on something that's already there. And. And yes, it still hurts, sending the automatic responses offensiveness. But when my second thought is, how are they right? Then it disarms me. The second thing is if and depends on where it's coming from, like, whose opinion am I giving my energy to? Are they worth it? If it is a stranger that I've never read before, Your opinion means very little to me. If it's especially with something personal about my character, if it's about my work, that's different. But if it's someone that is a friend or someone again, who I would think knows me, then I might give that more weight and I would really consider where this is coming from and maybe where they write, maybe do I need to make amends in some way? Like I'll evaluate that with a little bit more tenderness than a random stranger.
• 24:30
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I like that. And asking yourself, like, and just getting curious, you can play a game out of it. It's like, what, what character am I? Am I playing in their story?
• 24:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, I can understand how people make meet me for the first time and think, oh, this guy's kind of like cold. Like, yeah, I totally get that. Sometimes I can totally see how you would read me as cold. And I don't, I don't blame them for it. I just own that. Yeah, sometimes I come across that way.
• 24:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's why it's important to not judge people based off of first impressions or judge people through other people's impressions of them. Yeah, because we all have moments where it's like, you know, you could catch me in like the worst possible time and I could be so disengaged and so sad inside. And then this person's like, this person doesn't like me, right? And we're all personalizing people's. It's like, no, we don't need to do that. Right? So, yeah, I wrote down six things. So how to handle haters. So regulate. First, don't react. That's the key. Like, because what you're doing is you start reacting right away. Boom, boom, boom, boom. You're just. Now you've entered, you've thrown a bomb of Molokov cocktail into the fire. And it's like bright, it's bigger and it's. All it's going to do is now you're just projecting back and forth, back and forth, right? You're not actually being with self, right? You're trying to diffuse something that's been lit inside of you and you're trying to diffuse it outside of you. It's not going to work. So be with. Be with your nervous system. And then once you have discern, is it feedback or is it projection? Is it disagreement? What is it? What's going on here? Get curious, right? So discernment is going to be really important. And. And obviously too saying, like, well, if this person said something that is absolutely 100 not true about me, there's nothing in it that's mine. It's not going to bother you, right? But if there's a little bit of something there, it's like, okay, what is this playing on? It's probably not about them and what they did. It's maybe something, some sort of childhood wound or something, right? So getting curious and then don't abandon yourself. This is so important, right? Because this part of you that's now. You're now aware of, it's now yours. And you're gonna work with it. That's. You gotta be with you, right? Take a moment, set your phone down. Be with the feelings that are coming up. I'm scared right now. I'm hurt right now. I'm right. And. And try and be with the vulnerable emotions as opposed to projecting anger or defensiveness. Because the vulnerable emotions are the ones that we can transmute and move and they can lead to healing, right? So that's why I always say, like, haters are actually teaching me how to have more self, compassion More self love to be with myself. Every time this comes across my desk, I'm like, shit, okay, there's more work, there's more something and it gives me an opportunity for growth, right? So it's actually backfiring for haters. They're, you know, if you do the work and you do this properly, then it's backfiring for them because you're growing and they're not. Right? So it's a good way to look at it. And then boundaries set boundaries. So, so important because again, disengagement for me, it's like, no, I'm going to leave that comment there. I'm going to let my, everyone in my, my community can see it. That's great, fine. But I'm not going to engage with it. And if I'm having a spicy day and I feel like engaging with it, I'm going to try my best to be tactful, right. In the way that I deliver my message. And, and then the last one for me was a build, Build capacity to be misunderstood. I said this earlier. It's like so, so important. Like, not everyone is a demisexual, highly sensitive, empathic gay man.
• 27:43
  Speaker A: Right?
• 27:44
  Speaker B: People are going to come across my work and be like, what is this guy on? Like, this is not how I see the world. This is not how I use Grindr. This is, this is not how I hook up or whatever. And they're gonna have judgment towards me. And that's okay, right? I'm, I, I'm learning how to build capacity to be misunderstood and just be fine with the fact that I'm in my own lane and someone else is in their own lane and they, whatever they do in their lane doesn't have to have anything to do with what I'm doing in my lane.
• 28:08
  Speaker A: Right?
• 28:09
  Speaker B: So that's, that's been, that's been my life's work since starting the brotherhood. It's really, I've gotten lots of medicine of like how to work with, with being misunderstood. And I think it's just my life's, my life stuff. Honestly. It's like I've come in with this chironic wound around belonging and belonging injuries and like feeling misunderstood. And it's just like, okay, I'm here to master this in some way shape or form and then to teach it. So I'm still on that track, but it's, it's coming along.
• 28:36
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think you're doing a great job. Yeah, I love, I love those things. And I like that last part about letting people be wrong. About you is something that I've really learned in doing the work. This kind of putting ourselves out there on 280 whatever episodes of this podcast. A lot of people disagree with what I say, and I used to have a hard time with that. And the automatic response was, well, I'm going to say less. I shouldn't. I shouldn't say things because I'm going to get hated on or they're. It's going to upset people. And that's not the answer. That didn't take me long to figure out that was not the way I wanted to live my life. So the other answer is, I'm not going to change anyone's mind. So the only other answer is let them. Let them have their opinions. It's. It's their opinions. It's even. There's a difference, though, between an opinion feedback and hate. Opinions are fine feedback. I will. Let's. I will legit process and listen to if it's provided in a constructive way. Absolutely. I'm not saying I don't listen to feedback. I do. But when it's hate and it's personal and it's an attack and it's. It's just full of that energy, then I can just. I've learned to let them hate. And. And all the things that we've talked about here today has come from this work that we do on this podcast and how I show up on my personal Instagram or, sorry, my business Instagram, because, yeah, a lot of people don't like it.
• 29:47
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad that you're still. You're doing that. It's amazing how far we've both come since day one of this. It's been six years, right? Six and a half years or whatever. And the. Our visibility and we're both. We've both faced fears around visibility and stuff, so it's.
• 30:01
  Speaker A: And I want to give a shout out to the lovers because there's a ton more of y' all who say wonderful things, who send us emails, who meet me on the street and give me a big hug or on the dance floor a lot of the times or whatever it is at the gym. And it's so nice if I'm feeling down, which, you know, obviously I'm not immune to, like, feeling disappointed by this, but in those moments, it really helps to be like, this is one or a handful of folks compared to an ocean of love and support out there. So thank you to all the lovers out there. We. We love and accept your love and it helps to Negate the haters.
• 30:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. And if we did a podcast called Dealing with lovers, it probably wouldn't get any traction, so. So why don't you, in the. The listener, viewer, in the comments of YouTube, drop love. Drop love. It doesn't have to necessarily be for Michael and I, but just for the brotherhood, for your experience, maybe an experience that you had with someone in the brotherhood. Drop some love. Let's get some love pumping down in the. In the comment section on this YouTube video.
• 31:00
  Speaker A: Love it.
• 31:00
  Speaker B: And when does this episode air, Nicole?
• 31:02
  Speaker A: This will be the 30th. April 30th.
• 31:05
  Speaker B: Okay. So tonight, y' all come to my connection circle. It's called facing your fear of rejection. So it ties right into this. This episode. If you made it through this episode to call to action, come and join me this evening, and let's talk about the feeling that comes up when we're dealing with haters or rejection. These sorts of things. It's all kind of intertwined. So would love to. To have you come there and spend the hour and 15 minutes with me, so. All right. Any closing comments, Mike?
• 31:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. If you want to do that, go to our website. Yeah, Gaiman's, brotherhood.com, yes. It's in the show notes.
• 31:39
  Speaker B: And go to the events tab, brotherhood.com events. And you will find us there. All right. Was lovely just spending this time with you.
• 31:47
  Speaker A: You as well. Thank you as always.
• 31:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. All right, much love, everybody. Until next time. See you in two.