Latest / Masculine Containment / 49 - Why the Person You Love Can Bring Out the Worst in You
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome.
- 0:01In this episode of Masculine Containment, I want to respond to a comment on one of my Facebook posts that is kind of a composite of a lot of comments that I get about how women are puzzled, how men don't understand how to act in relationships and why they keep causing rupture and why they keep causing challenges.
- 0:21And it's...
- 0:23A comment or a comment like it typically makes me want to react.
- 0:27And it's kind of ironic because if you look at the content of the Facebook post, I shouldn't be reacting.
- 0:32And so that's why I have to calm myself down.
- 0:34And I'm going to explain the whole thing in just a second.
- 0:37But first, I just want to take a second and say thank you.
- 0:41I think I'm up to 40 something episodes of the Masculine Containment Podcast.
- 0:46And it is still just getting started and getting the word out there about it and getting more and more listeners to this podcast.
- 0:52You know, I podcasted from 2016 to 2024 with a show called Momentum.
- 0:59And that got into the top one half of 1% of podcasts.
- 1:02I was really proud of it.
- 1:04When it was done, it was done.
- 1:06I did over 900 episodes, and it's kind of humbling to be starting over and have this podcast that's thankfully in the top 5%, but still, listener numbers are low and we're growing.
- 1:17But I wanted to just thank you for being here, for listening to this, for supporting this show, and for being here with me, because I feel like this is the most important work I've ever done.
- 1:29And sometimes when I look at the numbers, I get discouraged, and it feels like, oh, man,
- 1:34Should be more, it should be bigger.
- 1:35You know, what I used to do before was so much bigger and so much more significant.
- 1:40But then in the last few weeks, I've been doing interviews for our next Brotherhood container where we get a group of men on a call and we talk about what's going on in their lives.
- 1:50And so many of those men have said, I listened to the podcast and it's already changing my life.
- 1:56Or I listened to the podcast and started applying some of it and it's already improved my relationship.
- 2:01I listened to the podcast and for the first time, I understood myself in a way that I hadn't before.
- 2:06And so.
- 2:07I use that to keep me going.
- 2:08You know, I'm sure the numbers will be there.
- 2:12And I'm a metric driven guy.
- 2:14And so they're so important to me.
- 2:17But also the impact is what's really important to me about what I'm doing now.
- 2:22And so, again, I just want to thank you for being here.
- 2:24Thank you for listening.
- 2:26Even though this isn't one of the top podcasts out there, you found me.
- 2:29You're here with me.
- 2:31And I am so deeply grateful.
- 2:34So I want to talk about this comment that I got on my Facebook post and so many comments like it that I get.
- 2:41So first, let me set the context and I'll share with you what the post was about.
- 2:45The post is about my wife telling me she didn't feel seen.
- 2:49She didn't feel heard.
- 2:50She didn't feel safe.
- 2:51And if something didn't change, she couldn't do it anymore.
- 2:53Or couldn't do this anymore.
- 2:55And it was one of the most shocking, most frustrating, most triggering, most like hitting a brick wall things that I've ever had in my life.
- 3:04And it sent me on this quest to figure things out.
- 3:06It sent me on a two-year sabbatical.
- 3:08I studied relationships and sex and intimacy and
- 3:11really wanted to get inside of this.
- 3:12And I remember the day where I figured out what I was doing in our relationship.
- 3:16And this is what I've shared with men.
- 3:18And men have told me like, holy crap, Alex, I do all four of those.
- 3:20I've now talked to hundreds of men on the Brotherhood interviews.
- 3:25When I say hundreds, I think we're somewhere in between three and four hundred.
- 3:28And...
- 3:30All of them confirm.
- 3:31So far, all of them have confirmed that they do some of these four things or all of them.
- 3:37So when emotions are present for us as men, the first thing we do is we try and explain them away.
- 3:42Like logic.
- 3:43Hey, you shouldn't be feeling this way.
- 3:44You don't need to feel that way.
- 3:47Here's all the reasons you shouldn't feel that way.
- 3:48The second thing we do is defend.
- 3:50Hey, I didn't mean to do that.
- 3:52That's not how I meant it to be.
- 3:53You know, I'm...
- 3:55That wasn't my intention.
- 3:57The third thing we do is we withdraw.
- 3:58We shut down when emotions are present.
- 4:00It's like, oh my gosh, I'm going to not say anything.
- 4:02I don't want to make it worse.
- 4:04I'm going to shut down.
- 4:05We implode.
- 4:06We pull all our emotions inside.
- 4:08Or the fourth thing we do is we explode.
- 4:10If emotions are present, whether they're directed at us or not, I know I did this.
- 4:15We overpower the emotions.
- 4:17We...
- 4:18do anything we can to make them go away.
- 4:21And I shared this in a Facebook post, that that's what I did, and that's what my pattern was.
- 4:27And so many men that I talked to have the same patterns, the same four things.
- 4:32Like I said, over 300 men, and 100% of them say they do at least two or three of those, I'm pretty sure like 90% plus say they do all four, maybe 95% plus.
- 4:44And I had a woman make a comment on my Facebook post.
- 4:47And I want to answer the comment.
- 4:48I want to speak to this comment because if you're a woman listening, this might help you understand why these things are going on in your relationship.
- 4:55If you're a man listening, this might help you understand why you do these things in a relationship.
- 5:00Because here's what I know.
- 5:02I know this in my heart.
- 5:03The men that I've talked to, I don't know about every man out there, but the men that I've talked to, the men who've connected with me on interviews, the men who have joined the brotherhood.
- 5:12We've had three containers so far.
- 5:14There's been 218 men who have gone through this program.
- 5:17And we have another container coming out September 4th.
- 5:20And I think we've got like 60 something that are already signed up.
- 5:24The men that I've talked to want to stop this.
- 5:27They feel responsible.
- 5:29They feel challenged by it.
- 5:30They know they're causing rupture.
- 5:32They know they're causing frustration.
- 5:34They know they're causing distance in their relationship.
- 5:36And they show up on the calls and they say, like, I want to be more present.
- 5:39I want to be more grounded.
- 5:40I want to stop doing this.
- 5:42I want to stop reacting.
- 5:43I want to stop being triggered.
- 5:45So many of them say things like, I know this is me.
- 5:48Like I know I'm the one causing rupture.
- 5:49I know it's happening and I'm doing it.
- 5:52I just can't get to the point where I stop it.
- 5:54So they even have awareness and acknowledgement, but they're still doing it.
- 5:58And here's the comment that I got.
- 6:00And like I said, when I get comments like this, like my first reaction is like a little, my first, what first happens is a little bit of a reaction.
- 6:08Like I get a little triggered and I'll tell you why.
- 6:11This woman said, I'm a bit puzzled when men claim they don't know what to do about it.
- 6:15Do you act this way at work with your boss, with your pals?
- 6:20Not that I can see with the men around me.
- 6:22So apparently, they are perfectly capable of being civilized and learning to listen.
- 6:26Just apply the same principle to your romantic relationship and you're good to go.
- 6:33So first, the tone of that comment is a little dismissive and like oversimplification and like it makes me defensive.
- 6:42Like if I'm really honest, my first feeling is always a defensiveness because defensiveness for me, because I certainly wasn't trying to do this.
- 6:51And defensiveness for the men that I talk to that are like literally tortured by this,
- 6:57They are beating themselves up.
- 6:59They are in self-loathing and self-hatred.
- 7:02They're watching their relationships slip away and they don't know how to stop it.
- 7:06They're causing distance between them and the person that they love more than anything in the world.
- 7:10And oftentimes it doesn't stop there.
- 7:13So many of them are having challenges, not just in their relationship with their partner, their girlfriend, their wife, the person they love the most, but also with their kids.
- 7:21They're exploding or withdrawing or doing the same things to their kids.
- 7:26And as men, when we explain, defend, withdraw, or explode, here's what happens on the other side.
- 7:32The person doesn't feel seen, doesn't feel heard.
- 7:36We're sending them into a reaction.
- 7:37We're sending them into
- 7:39a central nervous system stimulated state where they aren't present anymore they aren't aware and most of the time when we're explaining defending withdrawing or exploding we're not present we're not in our bodies we're trying to do anything we can to make the emotions go away and so when i get a comment like this just apply the same principle to your romantic relationship and you're good to go i first get defensive but the good news is i've been getting comments like
- 8:10Here's what I now know.
- 8:11First, this person doesn't really understand what's going on.
- 8:15And they're simplifying it because right now, there's this attitude towards men need to change, men need to do something different.
- 8:25I'm not saying that that's wrong, but there's also this attitude of men want to do this.
- 8:31There's this blaming culture around men.
- 8:35When I make a post where I say men don't feel safe,
- 8:38One of the things that happens all the time is women will come in and say, well, do you know how women feel?
- 8:42And I'm like, I've published extensively about how women feel safe.
- 8:45A lot of men have told me that I've explained how women feel vulnerable and unsafe in the world to them in a way that they've heard it for the first time.
- 8:53A lot of women have actually told me that I've explained how vulnerable and hurt and scared and activated women feel in the world so that they understand themselves better.
- 9:04But if I make a post about men feeling unsafe and reacting or men feeling unsafe and getting triggered, the defensiveness comes rolling in like it's our fault, like it's men trying to do this.
- 9:14And so that's why I wanted to record this podcast, to respond to this type of a comment, but also to respond to the belief that as men we're trying to do this.
- 9:25There's nothing further from the truth.
- 9:27I mean, I've sat with this forever because for way too long in my marriage, I did these four things.
- 9:35Katie would be emotional, and I would tell her all the reasons she didn't need to be emotional.
- 9:39Explain.
- 9:41Katie would be emotional, and even if it wasn't directed at me, I would defend like something was attacking me.
- 9:48Or I would withdraw and explode, and I want you to understand why.
- 9:52So first...
- 9:54There's a number of reasons why this happens to us, but if we had to sum it all up, it's our wounding, our conditioning, our trauma, the things that have happened before, the things that are in our bodies, in our nervous systems that are not present in the moment, but get us to react as though they are.
- 10:12And I'll start with one of the simple ones.
- 10:14As men, we have 100% of men that I've ever spoken with have experienced suppression,
- 10:20We've been told that emotions aren't safe.
- 10:22We've been told that we shouldn't feel emotions.
- 10:24We've been told that our emotions aren't welcome.
- 10:26We've been told that we shouldn't cry, we shouldn't react, we shouldn't be emotional.
- 10:31I mean, I remember hearing it as a kid from my dad, that men don't cry and that I was too emotional.
- 10:36And so what did I learn how to do?
- 10:38If I felt an emotion, I learned how to stuff it down, how to suppress it, how to hang on to it, how to push it inside.
- 10:44And man, when you do that over and over and over again, it's like a pressure cooker.
- 10:48You're just stuffing it down and stuffing it down and stuffing it down.
- 10:51And then something comes up and you react.
- 10:55You know, the men that I talk to often say things like, I'm not trying to do it.
- 11:01It just happens.
- 11:02And I know that sounds like an excuse for some people, but it's not.
- 11:05I know exactly what they're talking about.
- 11:08They say things like, when something comes up, I'm like talking before I even made the rational decision to say something.
- 11:15And I find myself saying things I didn't want to say.
- 11:18And for some men, they are reacting and talking and don't even have like an understanding that they're saying things they don't want to say.
- 11:26Because for so many of us, this has become one of those patterns.
- 11:29It's like programmed into us.
- 11:31We've all experienced suppression.
- 11:33We've all experienced like being told we're too much where we shouldn't be having emotions.
- 11:38We shouldn't be seeing emotions.
- 11:39So we've been trained that emotions are unsafe.
- 11:43Now, the good news is that can be untrained.
- 11:45We can move in another direction.
- 11:47But there's more reason.
- 11:49Another reason is childhood patterns.
- 11:52You know, I worked with a shaman once who explained childhood patterns to me in a way that really stuck with me.
- 11:58He said, as humans, we honor our family.
- 12:01We honor our parents by repeating childhood patterns, whether they work for us or not.
- 12:08And as human beings, we seek honor.
- 12:09And so we continue to act out our childhood patterns.
- 12:12And when I've had men in the brotherhood, and when I talk to men one-on-one, I ask them, like, where was this behavior modeled for you?
- 12:19Where was the behavior of withdrawing or exploding modeled for you?
- 12:23And every one of them can say it was my dad, my grandfather, my mom, somebody who watched me when I was a kid, an adult I was around a lot.
- 12:31So we've been trained conditionally.
- 12:34Like, in the moment, we have watched people respond this way.
- 12:38And so our bodies pick up those habits.
- 12:40We're repeating childhood patterns, not on purpose, not because we want to, because that's just how we are as human beings.
- 12:46We model what we see.
- 12:48We see behaviors and we start acting those behaviors.
- 12:54And so much of it is picked up from the people around us.
- 12:58Another reason we react this way is wounding.
- 13:01Like so many of us carry wounds.
- 13:05Wounds of not being seen, not being heard, not feeling like we're enough, feeling abandoned, feeling inadequate.
- 13:12It's happened to almost all of us.
- 13:13I mean, when I say almost, I've never met a human being who doesn't have wounding.
- 13:18I've never met a human being who doesn't have some feeling of I'm not enough or I don't feel seen.
- 13:23I don't feel heard.
- 13:24I feel inadequate.
- 13:25I never met a human being that didn't have an abandonment wound.
- 13:28Something has come up for me over and over again in my life.
- 13:31I've spent a lot of time processing the abandonment wound and...
- 13:36It was so prominent in my life that when Katie, my wife, would leave or go on a trip, I mean, I would like check out and just be in this place of barely surviving and barely being okay.
- 13:48And I know that sounds crazy because before I was with her, that didn't happen.
- 13:52Before I was with her, I was just, I lived on my own and I was okay being by myself.
- 13:58But when we're in a primary relationship...
- 14:00With a woman, especially for men, and with a man, especially for women, I don't speak to same-sex relationships because it's not my lived experience, but I think it happens there too, and I'm pretty sure it happens there.
- 14:12But what happens is that relationship brings up our childhood wounding in a way that's super dynamic, just like being a parent.
- 14:22So when we're in a relationship, that relationship becomes important to us.
- 14:26It becomes our primary attachment.
- 14:27It becomes the place where we're connected.
- 14:30And so when something happens that triggers us, when something happens, it's unexpected.
- 14:34When emotions are present.
- 14:37relationship triggers us so much more than, like this woman said, at work or with your boss or with your pals because it's our primary attachment.
- 14:46It's because it's so important to us that it triggers us more, that it causes us to react.
- 14:52And so much of that is around wounding and feeling our wounding and feeling all of those things come up.
- 14:58Another reason is so many of us have trauma.
- 15:02Trauma from when we were children.
- 15:04We have, you know, events that happen to us.
- 15:07And like, I've studied trauma so deeply.
- 15:11I remember when I was younger, I used to think there was people who had trauma and people who didn't.
- 15:15But now I just understand trauma is part of the human condition.
- 15:19And one of the habits we get into as humans is saying, like, that person has way worse trauma than I do.
- 15:25So mine's not that bad.
- 15:26So mine doesn't matter.
- 15:28And here's what I've learned.
- 15:29We all have trauma.
- 15:33We've all been traumatized in one way or another.
- 15:37And one of the ways I explain to people, like, what it is is...
- 15:41It's those times in our life where the situation that we're in, in the present, is so overwhelming that our body can't process everything that's going on.
- 15:50Our mind can't process everything that's going on in the moment.
- 15:54And so it's getting stuck in our body.
- 15:56It's being carried with us.
- 15:58It goes beyond that moment with us.
- 16:00Some of it gets suppressed.
- 16:01Some of it gets held on to.
- 16:03Some of it becomes tension in the body.
- 16:04Some of it becomes armoring.
- 16:06Some of it becomes central nervous system activation.
- 16:09And so when somebody tells me, like, I don't remember a lot of my childhood, I'm like, yeah, I mean, me neither.
- 16:15And it's because there was so much going on that we really couldn't be present with it.
- 16:20We felt overwhelmed by it.
- 16:22And so I've never met a human that doesn't have trauma.
- 16:25You know, I think it's interesting.
- 16:28We've been around for...
- 16:30A long time as human beings, but really only in the past 40 or 50 years have we started studying trauma and started understanding just how much it affects us and how it activates our nervous system and how it can cause disease and how it can keep us like locked in position.
- 16:44And it causes central nervous system activation, which affects our digestion and our breathing and our heart rate and so much more about the body.
- 16:51It can actually cause autoimmune disease.
- 16:54And so, so many of us have trauma that we react to.
- 17:00And so, as a man, you walk into a room, like, I'll personalize this.
- 17:06And it's hard to talk about.
- 17:08Because there was times where I would walk into a room and Katie would be emotional.
- 17:12And...
- 17:14I'll show you with you what I did and what I do now.
- 17:16But when she was emotional, I'd walk in and I'd immediately feel the activation in my body.
- 17:22And so often I would just get out of there.
- 17:25But I would feel the activation of my body and feel like the reaction coming in my body.
- 17:29And honestly, like that was actually a step in the direction of understanding this.
- 17:34At first, I didn't even know I was feeling a reaction in my body.
- 17:37I would just walk in, she was emotional, and I'd start reacting.
- 17:40I'd start explaining, defending.
- 17:41I'd withdraw, I'd explode, there'd be something.
- 17:44And it was because of all the things that happened to me when I was a kid and the conditioning that I had and the wounding.
- 17:50And it's not just me.
- 17:51It's actually epigenetic.
- 17:53Like we now know that if there's trauma in your lineage, and I say if there's trauma, there's trauma in your lineage, that that actually gets carried forward.
- 18:02There's this really interesting experiment that they did with mice.
- 18:06where they would expose mice to cherry blossom smell and then shock them.
- 18:12So cause a traumatizing event with cherry blossom smell.
- 18:15And then those mice bred and had baby mice and they were separated from their parents.
- 18:19So there was no communication going on, but the baby mice would actually react as though there was trauma when the presence of cherry blossom smell was there.
- 18:28And so they were actually reacting to what their parents experienced and,
- 18:32And that happened like four generations or five generations of mice.
- 18:36I can't remember if it was four or five that they continued to react as though there was trauma.
- 18:40So we as humans, same thing.
- 18:43Some of it's epigenetic.
- 18:44Some of it's not just the trauma we experienced in our lifetimes.
- 18:47And so all of this works together to get us to react.
- 18:50And so I would walk into the room and there'd be emotions present and I'd
- 18:56I would be in this reaction and shut her down or explain it away or do something that made it so she didn't feel seen and didn't feel heard before I knew what I was doing.
- 19:07And oftentimes, the fallout from that, there was so much noise in doing that, that oftentimes the fallout from it was like a fight over something that didn't matter.
- 19:16And we would look at context like, oh, the other day when you did this, and this is how I reacted and you, and we'd be fighting over context when really,
- 19:24When I had some time and I was able to zoom out and see the big picture, it's like, hey, here's what's happening repeatedly.
- 19:30There's one of these four patterns present.
- 19:32I need to slow things down.
- 19:33And so what I do now, I walk into a room, and if I can feel something's off and I feel like Katie's emotional, I just start getting curious.
- 19:41I ask her questions.
- 19:43I want to understand what's going on for her.
- 19:45And I want to get really clear on what's happening so that she can get it off her chest so she can tell me so that we can shift the moment.
- 19:51Because so often, what I used to do caused escalation.
- 19:56It caused this trigger present, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then I'd come back and repair sometime in the future.
- 20:01And man, did I waste a lot of my life doing that.
- 20:06But now when I walk into the room and emotions are present, I'm going to be like,
- 20:09I can handle them then.
- 20:11I can stay in my body.
- 20:12I can be present with her.
- 20:14I can breathe and ask her questions and let her get it off her chest.
- 20:18And you know what happens so often?
- 20:20Like now, I can't remember a time where this didn't happen.
- 20:24Where when I asked her questions and I stayed curious and I understood what was going on for her and I empathized with her with compassion and didn't feel like I needed to bail, two things happened.
- 20:34One, she felt better.
- 20:38Like, that is so significant.
- 20:41It's so significant for me as a husband, and now also as a father with my two daughters, which took me a long time to catch up to my daughters.
- 20:50You know, I started doing this with Katie way before I started doing this with my daughters.
- 20:54But...
- 20:56It took me a long time to figure this out.
- 20:59But now, as a husband, I can walk into the room, my wife's having a reaction, and I can help her get to a better place.
- 21:08Near 100% of the time.
- 21:09I can't remember a time where I couldn't do that recently.
- 21:12And the second thing that happens is when I'm in that place of listening to her and asking her questions and understanding what's going on and I can feel her anxiety going down, I can feel the trigger going down, I can feel the emotions coming out of her body, I can feel her releasing and feeling better and getting into her body and softening and being present, I feel this feeling of capacity, like massive capacity.
- 21:37When I compare that to that withdrawal period, that withdrawal period was never a feeling of capacity.
- 21:43It was a feeling of beating myself up and why did this happen again?
- 21:47And I'm so frustrated and I wish this wasn't happening.
- 21:50And like just thought loops like crazy and feeling stuck and constrained and like held in place.
- 21:59And now on the other side, asking questions and remaining curious and understanding what's going on for her, I actually feel capacity.
- 22:06I feel strong.
- 22:07I feel capable.
- 22:09I feel energized by it.
- 22:12And oftentimes she too seems like energized and kind of happier and like she's back to herself afterwards or back to her happy self.
- 22:21Not that her being emotional isn't part of who she is, but getting stuck there or me pushing her further into that does not need to be a part of our experience anymore.
- 22:29And it's completely changed things.
- 22:32And there's one other like major reason why this is so important.
- 22:38As men and women, when we get into a relationship,
- 22:41Here's what happens whether we want it to or not.
- 22:44Our partner becomes a mirror.
- 22:47Our partner becomes a reflection, especially for men.
- 22:50In so many ways, your partner is mirroring back what you give her.
- 22:54So if you're withdrawn and anxious and upset and frustrated, you're going to get withdrawn, upset, anxious, and frustrated back.
- 23:01Because whether we want it to or not,
- 23:04When we're in a relationship, our partner becomes a composite for all of the feminine wounding we have in our lives, all of the issues we've had with women in our lives.
- 23:15That's like all present.
- 23:16And for her, same thing, all the masculine wounding and all the time she hasn't felt seen and hasn't felt heard.
- 23:22They're all just under the surface.
- 23:24So when we trigger each other and escalate and rupture ourselves.
- 23:28That's why we say things we don't mean and why we get aggressive and why we're in our inner child and why we're reacting rather than responding.
- 23:37And why we're causing so much noise in our lives when it isn't really necessary.
- 23:42Because again, today, it's gone from like me walking in and Katie being emotional and thinking like, oh God, not again, to, hey baby, I've got you.
- 23:52Like, tell me what's happening.
- 23:54I love you more than anything.
- 23:55I want to know.
- 23:56I want to understand what's going on for you.
- 23:58How does it feel?
- 24:00Is there anything I can do to help?
- 24:02You know, what do you need right now?
- 24:05And it changes everything.
- 24:07And so...
- 24:10What I know about men is that none of us are intentionally causing this cycle.
- 24:19At least none of the men I've talked to.
- 24:20You know what?
- 24:20I want to be careful with what I say.
- 24:22Maybe there are some men out there that intentionally cause this cycle.
- 24:24Maybe there are some men out there that are sadistic and really want this to continue going.
- 24:28I haven't met them.
- 24:30I think that gets projected on a lot of men.
- 24:34Intentionality gets projected on us because we look capable, we look like we're in control, we can go to work, we can hang out with our buddies, we can do other things where we don't look triggered and out of control, but then we get into a relationship and it's like, oh, they must be doing it intentionally, just like this person said.
- 24:50Just apply the same principle to your romantic relationship and you're good to go.
- 24:56Sorry, each time I read it, it's kinda like, come on.
- 25:01Because if it was that easy, there wouldn't be couples counseling.
- 25:04If it was that easy, there wouldn't be thousands of books written on how to make your relationship better.
- 25:09If that was that easy, if it was that easy, over half of relationships wouldn't end in divorce.
- 25:14If it was this easy, people wouldn't be struggling as much as they are today.
- 25:21And it's for the reasons that I shared.
- 25:24And so, if you're a guy listening to this, here's this extraordinary opportunity for you, brother.
- 25:31And I want to share what's happened in my life.
- 25:35When I started understanding these four patterns, explain, defend, withdraw, and explode, and I actually started understanding the origin of those patterns, that place of trigger, and I slowed things down.
- 25:51And I started really understanding what was happening when I got triggered.
- 25:55Everything in my life changed.
- 25:57And by the way, I'm not perfect at this.
- 26:00anything but.
- 26:02I think of this like discipline that I learned called masculine containment, this discipline that I share as a martial art, progress over perfection.
- 26:11You're never going to be perfect at this.
- 26:12I'm not perfect at it.
- 26:13I don't even aspire to perfection.
- 26:15I don't even want to think about perfection.
- 26:17I just want to think about making progress and doing better every day.
- 26:21And when it comes to understanding this, the phrase that I tell myself all the time is slow is fast and fast is slow.
- 26:28Because even today, like even this week at night when I've been tired and I've gone through a whole day and I've had a lot of stuff going on and I've had a lot on my mind and I've recorded a podcast and I've been in meetings and one of my kids will say something at night and I'll feel that trigger happening.
- 26:47And as men, I think one of the things that really helps us to understand is that we feel it in our body first.
- 26:54So often we think that the issue's up here, that we can logic our way out, that we can think our way out of it, that we can overpower our bodies with our minds somehow.
- 27:04And I think it's so much better to work with your body.
- 27:07And here's what I mean by that.
- 27:09When I say slow is fast and fast is slow, when you're in a situation where you feel that trigger coming up, slow things down.
- 27:17Take a breath and feel where you're feeling it in your body.
- 27:22If I think about where triggers come up for me, it's like a tension in my shoulders and like a heat in my chest.
- 27:27Sometimes my face gets flushed.
- 27:29I know my heart rate accelerates a little bit and I kind of like tense up all over and feel like I'm about to be in a conflict.
- 27:39And so when I slow things down and I feel my body doing that, these days I've trained the trigger so many times.
- 27:46I've looked for it.
- 27:47I've expected it.
- 27:49When it shows up, I take a deep breath.
- 27:53And I breathe into my masculine core.
- 27:55And I know that sounds so woo-woo, but what I mean by that is I breathe into my body and I breathe into my body.
- 28:01into my stomach, I breathe into my pelvis, I breathe like I'm sending energy all the way down to my feet to get myself grounded, to get myself present.
- 28:10The highest expression of masculine capacity is presence.
- 28:14The highest expression of masculinity, the deepest expression of masculinity is presence.
- 28:19Not aggression, not yelling, not screaming, not fighting, it's presence.
- 28:24Being grounded and in the moment, being here in the moment,
- 28:29And when we train the trigger, we can actually teach ourselves to be more present, more grounded, more in the moment over and over and over again.
- 28:37And so when this happens to me today, I pause, I breathe, I show myself I'm okay.
- 28:43I feel the feelings in my body.
- 28:45I don't try and push them aside.
- 28:46That's what I did for most of my life.
- 28:48And every time I pushed them aside, it was that same suppression that happened to us as kids.
- 28:52Starts that pressure cooker, that building up, it's going to come out sideways somewhere.
- 28:56But here's what I now know and feel today is that when that pressure starts building, when that stuff in my body comes up, I don't have to react.
- 29:04I can slow down.
- 29:06I can actually choose how to respond.
- 29:10And sometimes my choice of how to respond might be, hey, I need a minute, and I'll be right back.
- 29:14I love you.
- 29:15I need a second.
- 29:16Or my response will be to slow things down and ask a question.
- 29:20Or my response will be to slow things down and say, man, I kind of felt triggered in that moment.
- 29:25Sorry about that.
- 29:26What was going on?
- 29:27Or how can I help?
- 29:31And it's not explain, defend, or withdraw, cause abandonment issues, or explode, feel like a threat.
- 29:40And so as men, when we understand this, when we understand where our triggers come from and why we react the way we do, and that there's another option, you know, explain, defend, withdraw, explode is what we all do, but the fifth option is stay.
- 29:54Be present.
- 29:55Be aware.
- 29:56Train that trigger over and over again.
- 29:59Because here's what that will do for you, not just in your relationship with your partner, not just in your relationship with your kids, not in familial relationships, not just in familial relationships, but in your entire life, it'll change things.
- 30:12I've had men in the brotherhood go from kids who are estranged and not talking to them to connecting with them and talking to them again.
- 30:18Holy crap, I'm sweating a ton.
- 30:20Light blue shirt on a podcast is not great.
- 30:26You can tell progress over perfection.
- 30:30I've had men in the brotherhood who have experienced like tremendous improvements in their relationships with their parents, with the people around them, with maybe relationships that have been estranged.
- 30:41It's not just with your partner.
- 30:42It's with everybody.
- 30:44And when you train this trigger and you increase your capacity to stay in your body and stay present, you actually start making better decisions from a place of being right here, right now, seeing all the options available, not being in fight or flight, not being in a central nervous system reaction.
- 31:00And so what we've also seen in the brotherhood over and over again is men who have signed the biggest contracts they've ever had.
- 31:06They're doing better at work.
- 31:07They're doing better in their lives.
- 31:08They're succeeding in ways that they weren't succeeding.
- 31:12And so it comes back to understanding why this happens, what we can do instead, and training the trigger over and over again so that we can do it consistently.
- 31:23I hope this landed for you.
- 31:25And I really hope this helps you to be more present, be more aware, stay in your body, and understand that life doesn't have to be one series of trigger escalations and rupture until the next one happened and the next one happens and the next one happens.
- 31:41Because if you're like me, you lived in that place for far too long.
- 31:45And I can tell you from personal experience,
- 31:47Now that my wife and I really don't experience rupture, and now that my kids and I have so much better of a relationship, and now that I don't feel that triggered and that coiled-up snake ready to pounce when something happens, everything in my entire life has gotten easier, and I hope the same happens for you.
- 32:06And if you related to this podcast to anything that I shared, I would love to have you check out The Brotherhood.
- 32:12It's an organization I run where men from around the world learn masculine containment together.
- 32:18And it's one of the most intense and amazing experiences I've ever had.
- 32:23It's small right now.
- 32:24Like I said, we've had 218 guys go through it and we're gonna have maybe 60 or 70 go through this next container.
- 32:29But I would love to have you check us out and start getting on our mailing list and get what we send out every week.
- 32:35You can go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com to learn more and sign up for the wait list.
- 32:41You'll get all of our mailing.
- 32:42And if we're in an active interview period, you can do that as well and sign up for an interview to meet me personally and have all your questions answered.
- 32:49And one last time, just wanna thank you for being here.
- 32:53for listening, for wanting to do better, for wanting to understand this concept that has changed my life, and I hope it changes yours.