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36 - Does Every Situation Deserve Containment? · Masculine Containment

0:01
I had an exchange with a friend this week that I think would be really valuable for the listeners of this podcast.
0:05
It was valuable for me.
0:06
It got me to really think about containment, to think about this work, to think about what I'm doing, to think about what I've done.
0:12
And my friend sent me a video from an influencer who talks about polarity.
0:20
And the premise of the video was that this influencer was upset about how in a lot of spiritual spaces, language around polarity has been used to put men in situations where they can be abused.
0:34
And what he was saying was,
0:36
That in a lot of polarity work, in a lot of relationship work, that there's this belief system that's emerged that a man should just be present and should just take whatever happens in a relationship and become a spiritual punching bag or become a relational punching bag or a doormat.
0:53
And whatever his partner does, he should just sit there and put up with it.
0:58
And I hear this all the time on social media.
1:01
I hear objections to this all the time, especially from reels that we have that are shorter, that explain part of containment, but don't explain the whole thing.
1:09
And so I think this is an opportunity for me as someone who's sharing this information and for you as someone who's interested in learning this information to understand this concept deeper.
1:20
Because oftentimes when men see something about containment where I say, you know, you should be calm, you should be present, you should hold space for what's going on, you should be contained in every moment with your partner.
1:33
Men say things like, so should I just sit there and take it?
1:37
Do you want me to be abused?
1:38
You're setting men up to fail.
1:41
One person, I've shared this before on the podcast, it was the most creative comment I've seen.
1:45
One person even said that I was a fictional avatar created with AI by a woman to set men up to fail and to set women up to be able to do whatever they wanted.
1:56
And that was actually one of the funnier things that anybody's ever said on social media about me.
2:02
And so I got this video from this friend of mine where the guy basically says, you know, if we keep telling men that they just need to be in the space and stay there with their partners, they're going to be abused.
2:14
And I agree.
2:16
I texted back to him, containment without boundaries.
2:19
I texted a lot, but part of it was containment without boundaries has a chance of becoming a situation where a man is abused and can be abused.
2:28
And I want to make something very clear.
2:29
Like I know that there's women out there who act in abusive ways.
2:33
I know that there's women out there who use contempt and name calling and abusive behaviors with their partners.
2:40
And I've seen it.
2:42
I've seen it in the brotherhood.
2:43
I've heard firsthand accounts of what men go through and it's horrible.
2:47
I saw it in the learning experiences that I had when I was on my sabbatical and even before that.
2:51
Yeah.
2:52
And so I want something to be very clear.
2:54
Like, I believe it's true that containment without boundaries and just sitting there and taking it is a dangerous situation for a man to put himself in.
3:02
It is not what I'm suggesting.
3:05
In fact, healthy boundaries matter.
3:07
They protect the relationship.
3:08
They radically increase polarity.
3:12
And so when I texted him, he actually sent back and said...
3:15
This is what this podcast is about.
3:18
He said it takes incredible nuance to know whether a moment really deserves containment or whether it's time to put your hand up and stop the abuse.
3:28
And he said, you know, just holding containment feels like it's really difficult and it deserves a lot more explanation and a lot more unpacking.
3:36
And I agree.
3:38
I think there's probably a lot of men who watch my videos, who watch or who listen to this podcast, who are wondering the same thing.
3:46
And when he asked me this question, does every situation deserve containment?
3:52
My answer wasn't about her.
3:53
It was about him.
3:55
See, here's the issue.
3:56
I want to go through four things or five things on this podcast.
3:59
Okay.
4:00
The transactional misunderstanding of containment?
4:03
Which moments deserve containment?
4:06
What containment will actually bring to your life and give you?
4:09
Boundaries in containment?
4:10
And why this work is so hard?
4:13
Let's start with the transactional misunderstanding of containment.
4:16
I think this question comes from a single misunderstanding.
4:20
See, when men hear this work, and I know it's new.
4:24
I know it's new.
4:24
Like, let's be very clear.
4:25
This concept of masculine containment, this concept of staying present, this concept of being in your body, feeling your feelings, but not weaponizing them.
4:33
This concept of not exploding or imploding, but creating presence and being there is a new concept.
4:39
This isn't something we see in the world.
4:41
In fact, in the world, we see the opposite.
4:44
We see examples of men exploding.
4:46
We see examples of men imploding.
4:47
I know throughout my entire life, this is what I saw.
4:49
So I thought it was normal.
4:50
I thought it was the way it is.
4:52
It has been normalized.
4:54
But I thought it was the normal way to behave.
4:56
I thought it was the right way to behave.
4:58
I thought it was like, that's just who we are.
5:01
And so oftentimes men think things like, does she deserve containment?
5:06
Has she earned containment?
5:08
Is this one of those moments where I should contain myself or is this the moment that I stop containing myself and finally I get to react?
5:17
And I understand.
5:17
I understand those questions.
5:19
You know, I've spent a lot of time putting this podcast together and putting this outline together.
5:24
And when I think of my younger self, I would have asked all of those questions.
5:31
If I didn't understand this work, I would have been...
5:34
really wrapped up in those questions and I would have been confused by those questions and I probably would have used those questions as a justification to walk away from this work there's definitely a time where I would have done that and going through a decision tree like this like does she deserve containment has she earned it is this one of the moments where I should be contained or should I explode or should I implode
5:58
Going through a decision tree like this is actually overwhelming and is going to make everything in your life more difficult because here's –
6:06
How I see containment.
6:08
Here's how I see this discipline, this work, this martial art-like discipline.
6:12
Containment isn't something that's transactional.
6:15
It's not something you offer another person.
6:18
This is a discipline you practice for yourself.
6:22
Yes, it's for those around you.
6:23
Yes, it's for your relationship.
6:25
Yes, it's for your kids, your employees, your team members, your co-workers, the people around you, your community.
6:30
Yes.
6:31
But the reason to practice this work and the reason to practice containment and to step into higher levels of containment is for you.
6:39
Because the moment you make containment dependent on somebody else's behavior, you've given your nervous system away.
6:47
You've given your capacity away.
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And it's exhausting.
6:51
And it guarantees that you'll lose yourself because we can't control another person's behavior.
6:57
So if we make our behaviors dependent on that person's behavior, if we make our ability to stay present, to stay rational, to stay in our bodies, to have our full capacity available to us dependent on another person's behavior, we are always going to lose containment.
7:11
So the decision isn't, does this moment that I'm in deserve containment?
7:17
The decision is, who do I want to become in this moment?
7:22
Do I want to have my full capacity?
7:23
Do I want to be present?
7:25
Do I want to be grounded?
7:26
Do I want to be aware?
7:28
Or am I going to choose to get into a nervous system reaction where I explode or I implode?
7:35
This brings me to my second point.
7:37
Every moment deserves containment.
7:40
Every moment.
7:41
Because you, me, I deserve containment.
7:48
This is what I wrote back to him.
7:49
I said, every moment deserves containment because it's about you, not her.
7:54
And when I think about this...
7:58
It's interesting, you know, there was recently an exchange on one of my posts on social media where somebody was arguing against containment and talking about their partner and somebody else, not me, another man who's done this work who hasn't worked with me, who's done it somewhere else, who's gone deep, said, here's what I know about doing the work.
8:14
If you're still talking about her, you're probably not doing the right work.
8:18
And I'm paraphrasing.
8:20
But here's why I believe he said that.
8:22
And here's why I fully agree with that.
8:25
When men get into this work, when men join the brotherhood and they start learning what containment is, they start learning that this isn't about another person.
8:34
This isn't a transaction that I contained and then I get something or I contain and then something should happen.
8:41
They start learning that this is about us.
8:44
This is about me.
8:45
This is about me being present, me being aware, me being not in a place where I'm completely losing my capacity.
8:54
and getting into a place where I'm not present and I'm not aware because here's what I know for myself, and you can try this on for you.
9:03
Every time I implode and withdraw, I lose capacity.
9:09
Every time I explode, I lose capacity.
9:11
I actually lose access to myself.
9:14
When I'm in a place of explosion or implosion, when I'm in a place of too much energy or withdrawing all my energy, my clarity disappears.
9:22
My leadership disappears.
9:23
My discernment disappears.
9:25
Right.
9:26
And that's true whether the person I'm with is in a healthy or unhealthy behavior.
9:31
That's true whether she's calm or dysregulated or he's calm or dysregulated, whether they're being respectful or abusive.
9:39
There's no situation, none, that becomes better for me because I lost containment.
9:46
And I don't know every situation in the world.
9:48
I've thought through this.
9:49
I've meditated on it.
9:50
I may be wrong.
9:51
And if you think I'm wrong, please make a comment and let me know.
9:54
Because I don't know that there's a situation.
9:56
I haven't been able to find a situation that is improved by a man losing containment.
10:04
Even in a life and death situation, if you are present and grounded and aware and able to respond rather than react, able to discern what's going on and see all the options available, even then being in a place of containment is a better place to be.
10:22
You know, I'll share from my personal life, like I've been doing this work for years.
10:29
But like we say in the brotherhood, progress over perfection.
10:31
And I am nowhere near perfect in this work.
10:35
Nowhere near.
10:37
In fact, recently, you know, for years I've been contained with my wife.
10:42
But sometimes with my kids I lose it.
10:45
And it's...
10:47
challenging, you know, and there's this part of me in the moment that feels justified because my kids have done something wrong and I need to be the authority and I need to tell them that they're wrong.
10:59
And so I react and sometimes I explode and I get too loud and I get too aggressive.
11:06
And I have two daughters, you know, they're they're both smaller than me.
11:10
They're both nowhere near physically as capable as me.
11:12
They're younger than me.
11:14
And when I do those things, I
11:19
I'm not helping them and I'm not helping myself.
11:23
When I explode with one of my kids, even if they did something wrong, even if they have a behavior that we've talked about, even if they've crossed a boundary or violated a rule or done any of those things, when I explode, which is my go-to, not implosion, but...
11:39
well, actually, you know what?
11:40
That's not true.
11:40
My go-to is like to explode and then to withdraw.
11:43
And when I do that to my kids, I explode and I withdraw.
11:47
Here's what I know, like in my heart, and here's what I understand it.
11:51
Maybe this will help you.
11:53
I'm repeating the pattern.
11:54
I was trained as a child.
11:56
I was raised by a father that had four forms of communication.
11:59
It was
12:00
explosion, withdraw for long periods of time, punitive teasing, and then occasionally he would connect with me around the objectification of women.
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There wasn't a lot outside of that between my dad and I.
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And so...
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I'm reenacting the patterns that I was trained when I was a kid.
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I'm reenacting the, let's be honest, I mean, it's hard to say, but I'm reenacting the abusive behaviors that, reenacting the abusive behaviors that my dad had with me.
12:31
And it's because it's what I saw.
12:33
It's because it's what I was conditioned.
12:35
It's because it's what felt normal when I was growing up, right?
12:40
And, you know, just recently we've had some issues with one of our daughters where instead of exploding, instead of imploding, I've stayed contained.
12:47
And it stayed in my body.
12:49
And just recently, one of them came and sat down with me and said, Dad, I want to tell you everything that's been going on.
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I'm having a really hard time.
12:57
And what we thought were the issues weren't really the issues.
13:00
There was a lot of other stuff going on for her.
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And she shared openly and she shared transparently.
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She shared emotionally.
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It was really difficult to hear as a father.
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But in that moment, I also know, like I know right now, if I look back at that moment, had I yelled at her,
13:17
Had I raised my voice, had I brought too much energy to the situation and then withdrawn, we wouldn't have had that conversation.
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I wouldn't know what's really going on with my kids.
13:26
I would have felt justified.
13:28
Most points of my life, I would have felt like it was justified.
13:30
Like, hey, I'm a dad.
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I have to do that.
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I had every right to explode.
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I had every right to withdraw from her.
13:36
I had every right to be in my feelings.
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But instead, as we were going through this, I was breathing.
13:45
I was feeling my feelings.
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I was realizing how often, and this happens to all of us, how often when one of my kids has something going on, it's triggering my childhood issues from that time period.
13:58
My kids are 16 and 19.
14:00
But I can tell you at each new age, I've had this mirror of who I was at that age.
14:07
And I know now that so many times I was responding to that mirror.
14:12
I was responding to my childhood.
14:14
I was responding to the past because here's what I know in situations with my kids, with my wife, with just about anybody.
14:23
In 99.9999% of them, there is no actual real physical threat.
14:30
And as a man, when we are responding through explosion or implosion, when we are pulling everything inside and stuffing it down, or we're exploding and like reacting all over the person we're in front of, we're acting as though there's a real physical threat.
14:47
We're acting as though we are under threat.
14:51
And we're not.
14:52
And so we have to ask ourselves, okay.
14:55
Why am I reacting this way?
14:57
What is it that's making me react as though there's a threat?
15:01
And this creates a massive opportunity.
15:04
It's created a massive opportunity for me.
15:07
Because when things have slowed down in the brotherhood, we always say slow is fast and fast is slow.
15:12
So when I get into a place when I can feel myself starting to react, I slow things down to a crawl.
15:19
And I ask myself what I'm feeling.
15:21
I take a breath and I feel what's going on in my body.
15:24
First, there's physical sensations.
15:26
You know, for me, often it's tightness in the chest, tightness in the shoulders.
15:29
It's like my body almost goes into a fighting position or into a fighting stance.
15:34
And then I ask what's coming up for me.
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And so often it's feelings of anger and frustration.
15:39
And you know what?
15:41
For me, often with my kids, it's also embarrassment and shame and so many feelings that I had when I was a child.
15:49
And I slow those down and I breathe into them and I stay in the present moment.
15:55
Not by suppressing my feelings, not by repressing what's going on.
15:58
I stay by understanding what's happening for me.
16:01
Again, not perfect.
16:02
I don't want it to sound like I do this every time and I don't want it to sound like I do this perfectly.
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I don't.
16:07
None of us do.
16:08
This is a martial art like discipline that takes time.
16:11
It takes practice.
16:12
You train for it.
16:13
You actually train your triggers to understand that every trigger is an opportunity not to explode or implode, but to stay, to be present, to understand what's going on for you, to reveal your own work, to reveal my own work.
16:25
So much of my work has been revealed through staying contained.
16:31
And so I ask the question all the time, what is available to me when I stay contained?
16:38
Because here's what I know.
16:39
When I'm uncontained, everything changes.
16:43
The options that are available aren't really visible.
16:45
And I'm not going to be able to do that.
16:48
When we are in a place of lack of containment, when we take a trigger and we get into that place of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then coming back and trying to repair, let's just focus on that rupture part.
17:01
When we're in a place of trigger, escalation, and then rupture, what's happening is we are losing control.
17:08
nervous system connection.
17:09
We are losing connection and attunement to ourselves.
17:12
We're losing connection and attunement to the other person.
17:14
And we're slipping into a survival response of fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.
17:20
And so containment creates discernment.
17:25
And I think this is one of the places where this work gets misunderstood.
17:29
This is one of the places I really had to work through for myself because containment isn't a response.
17:37
You know, containment isn't like, hey, does this situation deserve containment?
17:40
So I'm going to have the response of containment.
17:43
Containment is the state from which you have the ability to choose the appropriate response.
17:49
Because without containment, like I just said, we go into this survival mechanism, fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.
17:55
And here's what science tells us, not me telling you this.
17:58
This is what science tells us about these survival mechanisms.
18:02
Fight, flight, fawn, or freeze.
18:04
Fight is like we literally want to fight our way out of it.
18:06
Flight, we want to run away.
18:08
Fawn, it's like we just kind of collapse into the situation.
18:11
Freeze, we don't know what to do next.
18:14
We get into a place where we're completely frozen.
18:16
We don't have anything to say.
18:17
I've been in all four of those.
18:20
And here's what science tells us when we're in one of these survival mechanisms.
18:24
The options we actually have narrow.
18:28
Because we're in a survival mechanism, our bodies, our mind gets into a place where it's all about survival.
18:34
So it's not every option available to us.
18:36
It's the immediate options available to us so that we can survive.
18:40
And not only do they narrow, the future actually pulls forward.
18:45
It gets shorter.
18:46
It's only the next period of time.
18:48
Like only this next short period of time is what's available to us to understand what we should be doing.
18:53
So when I get into a conflict with one of my kids and I get into fight, fight, fawn, or freeze, I'm not thinking about, hey, if I yell right now, there's going to be a repair to do.
19:01
I'm not thinking if I, like, lose containment right now and I act in a way that brings too much energy to the situation or I withdraw from this situation.
19:10
I'm not thinking about what's happening to them.
19:12
I'm not thinking about how they're going to feel.
19:13
I'm not thinking about how that's going to affect our future relationship.
19:16
I'm in a survival response of right now.
19:18
Right.
19:19
Everything in a survival response becomes fight, defend, escape, withdraw, win, lose, punish, protect, react.
19:27
You stop seeing reality for what it actually is and you only see threat.
19:34
Here's the key.
19:38
You see threat where there isn't an actual real threat.
19:42
This is a discussion we have in the brotherhood all the time.
19:46
a discussion of why am I reacting as though there's a threat when there isn't a real threat here?
19:52
Why am I reacting as though I'm unsafe when I'm really not safe here?
19:57
We just wrapped up the third brotherhood container.
20:00
And on the last call, one of the things we do is we let men share, like, what the biggest lesson that they have learned.
20:08
And one of them really hit me.
20:10
A man got on and said, what I've learned is that I'm safe.
20:16
And then he went on to share that he's had a career in law enforcement and he's been 15 years on a SWAT team.
20:23
So to the outside world, this is not a man who appears like he feels unsafe.
20:29
This is a career law enforcement officer who has specialized training in SWAT.
20:36
And I've known a lot of first responders in my life.
20:39
And if you've ever known somebody who has SWAT training, that's like special forces military training.
20:43
Maybe not as intense, but pretty dang close.
20:46
And their lives are on the line all the time.
20:49
And what he learned in the container was that in conversations, in conflict with someone who is nowhere near as trained as he is, and nowhere near as capable, and nowhere near as capable of violence and threat neutralization as he is, he learned that he is safe.
21:07
Because when you're contained...
21:10
You actually see that there is no physical threat and possibility opens back up.
21:15
Your options get wider.
21:17
There's more of them.
21:19
Your view of the future actually becomes a real view of the future and not the threat that is not there but feels like it's there right now.
21:26
You see that there's no actual threat.
21:29
And honestly, that is the most important part of the work that I've done on myself is like showing myself I am safe.
21:36
And there is no actual threat.
21:38
I don't need to lose containment.
21:39
There's no reason for me to lose containment.
21:42
And so from there, I can decide.
21:44
In this situation, do I stay?
21:45
Do I leave?
21:46
Do I ask another question?
21:47
Do I stop participating?
21:49
Do I say, hey, I need 10 minutes?
21:51
Do I set a boundary?
21:52
Do I stop this conversation and refuse to have it because it's not going in the right direction?
21:58
Even up to and including, do I end this relationship with this person because it's unhealthy for me?
22:06
See, containment doesn't answer those questions.
22:09
Containment lets you see the questions, stay in your body, have your capacity available so that you can make the right decision around those questions.
22:19
Because here's what I know in my life, and here's what I know that even science teaches us.
22:25
A dysregulated nervous system reacts.
22:28
A contained nervous system sees all the possibilities available.
22:32
And because we see possibility, we can choose the appropriate response, not reaction.
22:38
We can choose the appropriate response.
22:41
This is why containment has mattered so much to me and changed my life so deeply.
22:45
Not because it tells me what to do.
22:47
Not because it's the option I choose.
22:50
It's because I train for containment.
22:53
I work with my nervous system.
22:55
I spend time in neutral.
22:56
I walk.
22:57
I stay crazy hydrated.
22:59
I make sure that I'm present and I'm grounded so that I can actually see what should happen.
23:05
I can choose my response.
23:07
I can go through life not creating this wrecking trail or wrecking ball trail of trigger escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then repair.
23:18
Because so much of my life when I was caught in that pattern with my wife, with my kids, with team members, I mean, I did it with everybody.
23:26
So much of my life was about repair.
23:29
And so much of my life was being in that place of after the rupture of feeling productive and trying to get things done, but, you know, not wanting to think about it.
23:38
So it's the thing that I was thinking about all the time and being in this place of kind of disassociation, but still trying to do things and pushing through and making things happen and functioning at such a dramatically reduced capacity that when I look back now, I'm surprised I got anything done.
23:55
And, you know.
23:58
I've seen this firsthand.
24:01
In this last Brotherhood container, there was one brother, one member who got on a call early on.
24:08
And, you know, typically men share a response or share something that's coming up for them.
24:13
And it takes a couple of minutes.
24:14
But this exchange took quite a while because he got on and started talking about his wife.
24:19
And he said, I just need to share that she's mean to me.
24:23
And she yells at me and she calls me names and she's abusive.
24:27
And he went into excruciating detail.
24:30
And as I was watching him, he had a massive emotional response.
24:34
He was crying.
24:35
He was having a hard time getting the words out.
24:38
And then I looked at the screen and I could see the other members who were on the call.
24:41
And there were so many of them that were also having an emotional response.
24:44
Because maybe they've been there.
24:47
I was having an emotional response.
24:50
You know, in my 20s, I didn't know it, but I was in an abusive relationship.
24:55
And I didn't understand I was until I went to a therapist.
24:59
And we had a couple of sessions where we talked about my relationship preparing for EMDR therapy.
25:05
And he said, you know, Alex, you were in an abusive relationship.
25:09
And it was such a foreign concept to me.
25:11
I didn't even know men could be abused.
25:14
by a woman I didn't like at the time when I was younger I thought like what are you talking about I'm an abusive relationship I actually felt challenged by it I felt like weak and felt like you know what are you talking about like I'm abused I didn't get it but when the therapist played back for me what I told him was happening in my relationship he said you know you were treated with contempt and you were treated with aggression and you were treated with
25:40
behaviors that are abusive and that's why you're having such a hard time getting over this relationship and so i know what that feels like and i know what it's like to be in a situation where you don't feel like you can win but you're also just being triggered and challenged and and treated in a way that's unfair and that's why this next part of containment is so important boundaries actually become stronger through containment
26:09
Let's go back to where this conversation started, where I shared with my friend that containment without boundaries has the chance of becoming a situation where a man gets abused.
26:20
I want to come back to the guy in the brotherhood who was sharing.
26:24
This was earlier on one of our calls, and he shared what was going on in his relationship, and it was, I think, the call right before we discussed boundaries, or maybe it was on the call where we were discussing boundaries.
26:33
Okay.
26:34
Because I believe something really crucially important, not just about containment, but about relationships, boundaries are crucial.
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And oftentimes what's happening in relationships, especially between a man and a woman, is that we are acting out our childhood patterns.
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I know I did this with my wife over and over again.
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My father would explode, then withdraw for hours, sometimes days, sometimes weeks.
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And if I'm honest, probably sometimes months.
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when I was growing up.
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And I would do that with my wife.
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And that is abusive behavior.
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Like, I was in a place where I was acting out childhood patterns that were abusive behavior.
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And she was doing the same thing.
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She would treat me with contempt and explode and yell at me and...
27:21
all kinds of other things and so we were in this deadlock of trigger escalation rupture withdraw then trying to repair and we did that for far too long we were repeating childhood patterns we were repeating what we were taught what we were shown and and
27:38
Boundaries are crucial and so important.
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And that's a discussion I had with this man in the brotherhood.
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He said, you know, what do I do?
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And I said, well, you need to have boundary conversations.
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Like my suggestion is you have boundary conversations.
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But here's how you have a boundary conversation.
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The problem with the majority of boundaries that are set in relationship, period, any relationship, is that they're set during a time of lack of containment.
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I'm so guilty of this with my kids or with Katie.
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I'll focus on my kids because it's easier.
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So often I would explode and be angry with them and lose containment.
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And then at the same time, I would set a boundary.
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It's like, you did this thing.
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So now you're grounded or you're going to lose your phone or you can't have screens or you need to go to your room or whatever it was.
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And I don't want you to do this thing again.
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And the problem with setting a boundary in a place of lack of containment, in a place of reaction, is that for me, what was happening was I was threatening.
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I was punishing.
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I was trying to gain control.
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I was trying to get the behavior to stop.
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A contained boundary feels totally different because that, an uncontained boundary, feels punitive, punitive.
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It feels like punishment.
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The person on the other side of an uncontained boundary is going to be triggered into their childhood, and now we're off to the races again.
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We're right back in that old pattern.
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A contained boundary is totally different.
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It's calm.
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It's clear.
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It's firm.
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It protects me, explains what I want in the situation.
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It also protects the relationship.
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Boundaries are protective for a relationship.
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And so what I shared with this brother in the brotherhood was that he needed to get into a calm space with his partner, not reacting, but responding and sharing his truth.
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And then he needed to sit down with her and say, look, you know...
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I love you.
29:39
You're important to me.
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You are the most important thing to me.
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But when you call names and you get aggressive and you're challenging my masculinity, which these were all things that were happening –
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uh it makes it really difficult for me to stay in conversations with you and it puts me in a place where I feel like I'm subject subjecting myself to abuse and so here's the behavior I'd like to see differently like I'm okay with you getting emotional I'm okay with you getting upset I'm okay with you even getting loud but when you turn it on me and weaponize it against me it makes it so that I don't know how to stay in the situation when that's done from a calm place
30:20
it changes the situation.
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Oftentimes it's heard and it protects things.
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And if the relationship can't survive a healthy boundary, then containment also gives you the clarity to see that, hey, I've asked for this boundary over and over again and it's not being met.
30:37
I'm not being met.
30:39
I'm not being met in my containment.
30:40
I'm not being met with like what I need.
30:43
Now, thankfully for this member,
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He was one of the other members that shared on the final call.
30:49
And as members were sharing their biggest lesson, he actually raised his hand.
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And I was really curious to see what he was going to say.
30:55
And he actually said that his relationship was in a totally new place and that they're not getting divorced and that she's sitting down with him and he's hearing her, but she's also hearing him.
31:08
And that those abusive behaviors are not there because he had the conversation with her and she's no longer showing up that way.
31:18
That's life-changing.
31:21
You know, I recently was sent a reel.
31:23
A lot of people send me stuff.
31:25
And I was sent a reel by kind of a red pill thought leader, one of the guys who kind of blames everything on women.
31:33
And it was a short reel where he just said, oh, you get called a name, you're out of there.
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She yells at you and tells you you're not a man, you're out of there.
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He had all these, you're out of there.
31:42
These are just like on-off switches.
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You need to get out of there.
31:47
I don't agree.
31:49
I think as men, we need to slow down and ask ourselves, what have we done in this relationship that we're triggering her inner child to act this way?
31:57
Have we set a clear boundary from a place of containment where we've asked for it to stop?
32:03
Have we gotten to a place where we're calm and we're present and we're grounded and we've had the discussion about how this is affecting us?
32:09
Because if we haven't done those things...
32:13
If we haven't approached the situation from a place of presence, if we haven't set a clear rational boundary that protects the relationship, if we haven't asked for the behavior that we want, it's very likely that we're in a place where our reactivity and our implosion or explosion is triggering her reactivity and her explosion or implosion.
32:33
And we're both in our inner child.
32:36
And from that place of inner child, we're saying things we don't mean in a way that we really shouldn't be saying them.
32:42
And so is she.
32:45
And so if we use this on-off switch of, ooh, she called the name, that's the trigger, I'm out of here.
32:49
You know what's going to happen is you're going to be in the next relationship.
32:53
in that same place of reactivity, not having practiced healthy boundaries, not having practiced rational boundary setting, not having practiced containment and being present and aware.
33:03
And it's highly likely that next woman eventually after the honeymoon period, after everything feels great, gets triggered and does it again.
33:09
And you're going to be out of there again.
33:13
I'm certainly not saying put up with this behavior.
33:15
I'm saying understand where the behavior comes from.
33:17
Understand your responsibility in it.
33:19
Understand her past trauma, her wounding.
33:22
Understand that inside every person you talk to, especially your partner, there is a wounded little child that has been abandoned and abused and yelled at and hasn't been seen and hasn't been heard and hasn't been validated.
33:38
And so often...
33:40
When we're in a place of conflict, we're not dealing with the rational adult.
33:44
More often than not, we are dealing with that challenged, frustrated, terrified little child.
33:50
And when we understand that and we can contain ourselves...
33:54
We can start helping the other person see how their behaviors affect us and we can change the relationship.
33:59
We can take responsibility for being the catalyst that shows her her behavior, shows her her work, shows the other person where they may be in a place where they're behaving in a way that is not how we should behave in a relationship.
34:15
And that can change everything for the better, not just for us, for them, but the person that's most affected, the person that gets the most benefit from it, the person that grows the most in this process is absolutely us.
34:32
As I practice this work, when I'm in conversations with Katie or when she brings something up to me and I can feel a reaction happening, I can feel that desire to get out of containment.
34:43
I can feel that like response of wanting to get angry, wanting to get frustrated, wanting to explode, wanting to implode.
34:49
I slow things down and I ask myself like, what's really happening here?
34:54
And what is really coming up for me?
34:57
And oftentimes I take that into time in neutral.
34:59
I lay down and I say, okay, why is it that when Katie said this, I'm responding this way and I just have no input.
35:05
I put an eye mask on and I lay there for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes in kind of a state of meditation, but more in a state of contemplation of like what's happening.
35:14
And it shows me my work.
35:15
It shows me where that came from.
35:17
I often think about what's the first time I felt this way.
35:20
And it comes from my childhood or it comes from my career or it comes from a moment of embarrassment.
35:26
It comes from a moment that I remember where I was in a shame spiral.
35:32
And it's being triggered in the present.
35:34
And by doing this, by bringing this up, by taking it to time in neutral or going on a walk or when it really gets serious, taking it to my EMDR therapist and doing a session around it.
35:44
What I'm doing is I'm processing that past trauma.
35:48
I'm becoming more present.
35:49
I'm increasing my capacity for any conversation, for any situation.
35:53
I'm making it so I can stay present through more and more.
35:57
You know, my mom passed away a few years ago.
36:00
brilliant woman, not without her faults, but I learned so much from her.
36:05
And one of the things she told me when I was young, and it took me really like almost a lifetime to figure it out, what she would say, we're not responsible for our feelings.
36:13
We're responsible for our behaviors.
36:16
And I always like, remember thinking like, those are the same thing.
36:20
Your feelings cause your behaviors.
36:21
It's the same thing.
36:22
Well, it's not, it's not a foregone conclusion.
36:25
If you can start understanding why those feelings are coming up and what their origin is and what's happening, you can change how you respond in the world.
36:34
And that's why this work is so hard.
36:40
Because we've been taught that our behavior is most likely dependent on somebody else's behavior.
36:49
It's been modeled for us.
36:51
Most of us saw it in our houses growing up.
36:52
Think to yourself, where did you see that?
36:55
Where did you see one person's behavior being dependent on the others?
36:59
Where was he being talked to you about it?
37:00
Like a lot of us as kids had one parent that would say, well, I reacted because he did this or I reacted because she did this.
37:07
Right.
37:08
And so not only was it modeled, it was explained to us, it was embedded in us that our behavior is dependent on the other person's behavior and the reactions and getting into this place of loss of containment is totally normal and it's okay.
37:22
You know, we think things like if she would just or if she stopped or if she changed or if she did this or if she did that.
37:29
And containment actually asks a completely different question.
37:34
regardless of who is doing what, regardless of what she's doing, or the person in front of you is doing, who are you going to become?
37:44
This is uncomfortable.
37:46
It's really uncomfortable.
37:47
It's been uncomfortable for me.
37:49
Because as men, especially in recent history, you know, I'm 53.
37:52
I was born in 1972.
37:53
I was born in 1972.
37:55
Back then, trauma wasn't really discussed.
37:57
Abuse wasn't really discussed.
37:59
Like that's come around.
38:01
Like the understanding of trauma and the understanding of repression and the understanding of suppressing our emotions and them coming out sideways and what it does to our nervous system has all really come up in just the last few decades.
38:12
And it's like something that's being studied more and more right now today and we're gaining a deeper understanding of it.
38:20
And because that hasn't been discussed and it's a new field of study, like relatively new, a lot of us have been taught that we do have trauma and we do have wounding and we do have attachment issues and we do have conditioning and challenges that come up for us.
38:38
But we haven't been taught that that is just the first step.
38:43
Awareness of what is happening for us, awareness of the trauma and the wounding and the attachment issues and the conditioning is step number one.
38:56
But so often, so often I talk to men.
39:00
By the way, I could add this conversation with my younger self.
39:04
where they say things like, the way I respond to that is because of my childhood wounding.
39:09
Or I've had men say things to me like, little Alex just has a really hard time responding in this situation.
39:16
I kind of chuckle because it sounds infantile, but that's what we've been taught.
39:20
We've been taught that it's our inner child.
39:22
We've been taught that it's our wounding, our trauma, our attachment style, our conditioning, all these other things.
39:27
And that that somehow is an excuse or justification for us to lose
39:32
containment for us to react for us to explode or implode here's what i now know doing this work not just with myself but with i think so far in the brotherhood 218 men have joined and what i've seen over and over again is that when we understand these things our trauma our wounding our attachment styles our conditioning what's happened to us in our lives where those
39:58
And then we take the next step of actually sitting with them and processing them and understanding them and forgiving ourselves for what's gone on and understanding where those reactions come from.
40:10
Everything in our lives changes.
40:14
Understanding is step one.
40:15
What you do next is where you gain capacity and presence and awareness and the energy you feel like you've lost and the focus you feel like is gone and you get yourself back.
40:28
So I want to leave you with where we started.
40:31
Containment without boundaries has the chance of becoming a situation where a man gets abused.
40:39
It's not what this work is about.
40:41
This work is not transactional.
40:46
It's not about somebody else.
40:47
This work is about you.
40:49
It's about becoming not the best version of yourself.
40:53
It's about revealing who you really are, which is the best version of yourself.
40:58
You know, in the personal development world, they talk way too much about becoming something different, changing who you are, stepping into a new identity, stepping into something completely, you know, that you've never done before.
41:09
And all of those things may have their place.
41:13
But what I found for me and what I've seen in the reflection of the men that I've worked with
41:18
And even what I saw in the reflection of the people who I coached for the last few decades in business is that...
41:25
When we understand our trauma and start processing it, when we understand our wounding and start letting go of it and understanding that it doesn't have to drive our lives and make our decisions for us.
41:34
When we understand our attachment style and we can see our behaviors and sit with them and start saying, hey, there's a different way to relate here.
41:40
When we see our conditioning and say, I can let go of this.
41:43
This isn't who I am.
41:44
This is what I've been taught.
41:45
And this is how my nervous system has been wired from my life experience.
41:48
And anything that's been wired can be rewired and unwired and changed.
41:52
What I see is that people reveal themselves to themselves.
41:58
We become who we actually are without all of those things.
42:03
And that person, for me, is a person with far more capacity, far more presence, far more awareness, far more skills and abilities and talents that I didn't even know I had.
42:14
I never thought I would be running a men's group where men tell us that they've changed their lives.
42:19
When I go to Trustpilot and I read what people have said on that website about the brotherhood, it brings me to tears almost every time because I didn't know I was capable of this.
42:30
This is not the plan I had for my life.
42:33
It was revealed to me.
42:35
through containment and processing what's happened to me and understanding myself better and seeing that I could do something that actually changes the world one man at a time and has changed my world by working on myself.
42:51
And so...
42:53
Containment is not a choice you make.
42:56
It restores your ability to see reality clearly enough to know what you can do next to see your options and respond instead of react.
43:07
And it's not transactional.
43:09
It's not about whether another person deserves it.
43:11
It's about refusing to lose yourself because when you remain contained, you regain your capacity, your clarity, your discernment, your ability to lead.
43:20
And that's what every moment in your life and every moment in my life deserves.
43:27
Thanks for being here with me today.
43:29
I so appreciate you listening to this podcast and listening to the information I put out.
43:34
If you have any questions, please leave a comment.
43:36
I look at all of them and maybe take a moment right now so that I can keep this ad free.
43:41
I don't want the pressure and noise of ads to get in the place of you listening to my information.
43:46
And so take a moment and share this with somebody.
43:48
Share this with a man who needs to hear this.
43:50
Share this with somebody you need, who you love.
43:52
Share this with somebody whose life can be affected by understanding this work deeper.
43:56
Send it to them now and please leave us a rating and review.
44:00
I'd appreciate it.
44:01
And if you're a man who is interested in the brotherhood where we show men how to move forward with this martial art like discipline of containment and change your life and the lives of those around you, improve everything around you, your business, your capacity, even your health.
44:20
Go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
44:22
I'd be honored to walk this path with you.
44:24
Again, it's thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
44:26
Thanks again so much for being here with me today.