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The Gay Man’s Healing Journey: What Is The Inner Work And How Do We Actually Do It · Gay Men Going Deeper

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Gay Men Going Deeper, a podcast by the Gay Men's Brotherhood that showcases raw and real conversations about personal development, mental health, and sexuality from an unapologetically gay perspective. I'm your host, Matt Lansdell, and joining me today is Michael DiIorio. So today's topic is the gay man's healing journey. What is the inner work and how do we actually do it? So we're going to be talking about this term healing journey. You know, I use that a lot in my. In my. My work. And I've shared that in the practice or in the episodes about, like, what, you know, so I want to maybe share about what that means. But yeah, in this episode, we're going to talk about what inner work actually means, what that looks like, why so many gay men are drawn to it. Especially now. I'm finding over the course of a lot of years, I find, you know, this is becoming more and more prominent. A lot more gay men are seeking therapy and these sorts of things. What wounds we're actually healing from. What does that even look like? And how healing becomes less about fixing yourself and more about coming home to yourself. Okay. And Michael and I are going to share a bit about our own healing journeys and how we support others on theirs. Okay. So healing journey is just that. It's this. It's learning how to undo the shit that we had to do in order to survive this crazy world as a gay man and learn how to come back into the relationship we have with ourself. So it's about developing a sense of self. It's about healing from our past so we can be more present in our lives, these sorts of things. As gay men, we have what I like to call developmental gaps in our development. You know, if you think about developmental delays that we have, it's like, you know, the. The development of our authentic self. That's just one. Right. And think about how hugely that impacts us, right. When we have. When we can't fully be ourselves. Even if it's just one area of our life, which is our sexuality, which influences our relationships, it influences so much. That is a huge developmental milestone that we miss. Right. Having a safe nervous system, not having to walk into rooms and scan everybody. Is it safe to be ourselves?
• 2:09
  Speaker B: Right.
• 2:09
  Speaker A: The impact that has on our nervous system is a ton of hyper vigilance. We can't land and just be ourselves.
• 2:15
  Speaker B: Right.
• 2:15
  Speaker A: Unconditional acceptance for just being who we are was not something we experienced. Learning how to court and share attraction with people were interested in developing interpersonal skills through that process of dating when we're younger and having crushes. It's not stuff we really got to do. Right. So you can see why we need to heal because we have a lot of developmental milestones that we didn't hit. So healing is a part of like, yeah, healing from the grief of that. But then there's also this element of education and skill development. Right. We need to catch up on some of these skills. So relational skill development's a big thing. So between therapy and between coaching and these sorts of things, there is definitely. Michael and I can share really, you know, what we have done and then also what. What we support our clients through. So. Yes, and then the last thing I'll say to here is it's, you know, a lot of us develop protector parts. So if you think about all the things I just listed, we develop parts in ourselves that protect us from having to experience the pain or the retraumatization of things like rejection and shame and maybe bullying or violence towards us. So these protector parts, they actually. They're protective. Yes. And they're adaptive. But then what they do is they become protectors to connection. They protect us from connecting with others in authentic ways. So a lot of the work that I do specifically is helping people heal and integrate these protector parts so they can become more authentic and have a more meaningful connection, more intimacy in their lives. Okay. So that's kind of. I just wanted to lay that foundation so people can get a sense of where. Where we're going. But I'm curious for you, Michael, like, when I use the term inner work or even like healing journey, like, what does that mean to you as a gay?
• 3:55
  Speaker B: I feel like we could do multiple episodes on this topic. But it's not a healing from being gay, because there's nothing wrong with being gay.
• 4:04
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 4:05
  Speaker B: It's a healing from unlearning the shame we attached to being gay due to the fact that we are social conditioned to believe that being gay is wrong. That's a very long explanation, but it's an important one because there is nothing wrong with being gay. But we live in a world that social conditioning has made it such that that that was the main dominant thought for most people growing up, at least in my era, maybe not, but even still today, for sure. So, yeah, that healing is really about unlearning that shame. It's not necessarily about becoming a new person. It's not necessarily even about fixing yourself. It's just about becoming less governed by those survival strategies, those protector parts. And Being that person that was always there, that little boy for me, that was always there from day one that I had to maybe shut down or that felt scared. And to. For 18, 19 years of my life and more, be in safety mode and protect report mode and survival mode, while my straight counterparts didn't, they didn't have to worry about the same shit I did. And so that person that I am was always there. I don't need to be somebody new. I just need to recognize what that social conditioning is and how it plays a role and how it affected who I am, my sense of self, how I relate to others, how I avoid others, how I avoid intimacy, all of these things, because it does have an impact. And, and that's it. That's the healing. It's, it's, it's understand, understanding how that conditioning got there. Recognizing it's not your fault, okay? And then seeing, oh, hey, this is still, this is still showing up in my life in this way, in this way, in this way, in this way. And the good news is if you learned something, you can unlearn it. And that is the inner work part.
• 5:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I like that concept of unlearning. I think we, we get the, the heterosexual male's owner's manual. Yeah, that's what social conditioning is to me. It's an owner's manual that we get from society, from church, from government, from all these places that tell us this is how you have to be to be acceptable in our society. And as gay men, we're like, wait a minute, this, we're reading through this owner's manual. It's like, what? Like, this isn't me, right? And then we have to. What, what usually happens is we have this experience of shame, which is, there's something wrong with me. Why am I not like everybody else? Right? So shame is a big piece in, in this. And I think you can go two ways. When you have, when you see that you have the wrong owner's manual, it's like we can go into this self rejection, shame mode or we can go into this like, okay, I'm different and I'm going to embrace and accept these parts of myself. And I think, you know, for me it wasn't, it wasn't like just a choice to be like, oh, I'm over in this camp and I'm going to embrace and accept myself. I ping ponged back and forth between these two camps for a decade and right. I would have moments or days where I was accepting parts of myself and then I would reject and so I have. I've had a very strong relationship with self rejection for most of my life. That was fueled by shame, Right. For feeling different. And it wasn't until I started seeking therapy and different, different get, you know, getting on a healing journey, getting on a spiritual path. I even call that. For me, it's been about the, you know, developing greater consciousness that I was able to see that, you know, I was created perfectly. Like, who I am is like, this is. It's. I'm beautiful. I was created exactly the way I was meant to be created. And it's taken me a long time to get to the place where I can say that and mean it, but it's. Yeah, so that's what it kind of means to me. Like, this inner work is, is clearing out the debris and the shit that we've gathered from, from society that doesn't serve us and choosing to unsubscribe from it and then choosing to build our own definition of, you know. And for me, I think a lot of it was masculinity. Right. And what does it mean to be a man? Like, I had to re. Rewire my brain into new concepts of that because I think masculinity is a big, big factor in this because I think people equate and even for me, like, you know, like sensitivity, Ma and homosexuality, there's an interconnection between all of these. And I think those, those three things in our culture can be viewed as if you're less masculine, you should have shame for that. If you're sensitive, you should be. You have shame. And if you're a homosexual, you should have shame. So it's like we have to learn to negotiate with these concepts differently.
• 8:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's funny we're having this discussion today because yesterday in the Gay Men's Brotherhood, we had, We. I had a connection circle. Yeah, it was called the Lasting Impact of Growing Up Gay was the. Was the name of it. And maybe it's worth having another one because it's such an important discussion and what we talked about in that connection circle. By the way, guys, you should come to our connection circles. Go to our website, Gaiman's Brotherhood.com to find out when the next one is. But yes, yesterday it was the Lasting impact of growing up gay. And it was about this. It was about how growing up gay shapes your operating system and how we didn't know it at the time. We didn't know we were adapting to survive and for safety. We just, we just did what we had to do and we just thought that that was life. So the work, and we talked about this in the connection circle. The work was learning what we absorbed, deciding what still serves us. Because not all social conditioning is bad. A lot of it is really good. We want to keep it. But then practicing new ways of unlearning. Yes. And then practicing the new ways of being that. That fits the man that we are or the man that we want to be. Because being gay does not mean you're broken. It just means that we've adapted in some ways brilliantly. Right? There's that whole aspect of it as well. Like our adaptations are pretty fucking cool. But in some ways, perhaps it's time to upgrade that software because what kept us. What kept us safe at 16 for me, kept me stuck when I was 26 and 36. Okay? And even still, to some degree now, I still see these patterns showing up. And so I think it's worth doing the inner work. The inner work of shame. Seeing where. Cause you know that word. I know people don't always. They're like, oh, no, I don't have any shame. I'm fine. I don't think that's true. So you have to understand how shame is showing up. It's very sophisticated. And you. Most people don't actually recognize it as shame until you kind of, you know, pull the thread on it. And then I was like, that's shame, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:55
  Speaker A: I. I wouldn't even say shame is sophisticated. I'd say it's a basic bitch. But we are sophisticated. We at protecting against having to feel it. Right. Like the human mind is so miraculous that we can actually lie to ourselves and believe it, which is denial. Right. We can choose to. To be in.
• 10:12
  Speaker B: And.
• 10:12
  Speaker A: And it's just crazy. So. And that's. That's the inner work, right. Part of that. I. I wrote down a list of things for me that are part of my inner work. And becoming aware of my patterns, it's a big one. So becoming aware of my patterns to avoid shame, right? Like, it's a big one. As soon as shame would even get close to me, I would just divert, change, thought, distract, grab my phone, right? And I. That's. That's a. That's something we need to become aware of in therapy to be able to therefore then disarm that part so we can start to learn to work with shame and be with shame so we can learn how to tolerate it in our body. Right? So, yeah. And then I'll just read my list here. Healing emotional wounds and protective Strategies, I think so for me, emotional wounds is like all the things that people have said to me along the way. I remember, I remember a couple comments that people have made about, about being gay and just like how hurtful it was and things like that. So, you know, working with those wounds, grieving those wounds, getting angry about, about that and then becoming, healing the protective strategies to that. Right. Which is again just becoming aware of how am I protecting myself in ways that are, are no longer serving me. Right. That are keeping me in my own prison of myself and not allowing me to be authentic or connect with people or have intimacy. Learning how to feel my emotions instead of avoiding them. I think that is a big, big chunk of the inner work. And we've done like endless episodes on this and talked about it. So reconnecting to my authenticity was, was a big part of my inner work. I think I've lot of my life people pleasing and I think I was very aware of everyone else's needs but not very aware of my own. So I had to like actually redevelop a sense of self along the way and be like. Because I was trying to be what everybody needed me to be as a way to kind of be liked. But I feel like I lost myself along the way. That was more in my like teens, early 20s kind of thing. And I had to re. Refine myself and then yeah, I would say developing self trust has been a big part of my inner work. Like, and I'm still on that journey. Like self belief, self trust is super duper hard for me. Even though I show up and I'm public and I do all these things, there's. I still have insecurity, I still have doubt. Can I do this right? These sorts of things. So learning how to, how to stand in that.
• 12:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's that. There's so much, there's so much there's no shortage of in a work. And I want to say I don't know anyone who's ever done, you know, there's always another layer of the onion. There's always another piece we didn't see. There's always a blind spot we didn't know we had until someone points it out. So it is not about. It really is not about. This is such a cliche. But it's, it's not the destination. It really is the journey and the manual coming always. It always is. And the menu are becoming is not fixed and the men you are becoming is ever evolving. And that is the whole point of life as far as I'M concerned. Right.
• 12:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think we can heal to a point where we return to functioning and then we don't feel like we need healing anymore. But what I think you're. You're speaking to, at least the way I, I interpret it, is like our spiritual path, our personal development path. We're always growing and improving as human beings, but I do think we can get to a point where we can feel healed, where it's like we are. Like, I'm no longer, like, for example, my addiction. Like, I healed the part of me that was fueling my addiction. So I no longer am dysfunctional in substance use. I'm able to function as a.
• 13:23
  Speaker B: Right.
• 13:24
  Speaker A: So I think we can get to certain points in our healing journey. But that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be things to heal again. Right. You lose, you have a heartbreak or you lose your mom or your dad, there's going to be healing. So we're always negotiating with, with healing.
• 13:37
  Speaker B: Right.
• 13:37
  Speaker A: It's a vista, part of being human.
• 13:39
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. My next question is, why does being gay often create the need for deeper healing? Like what, what do we experience as gay men that we. We need to heal from?
• 13:50
  Speaker B: Well, I think you named a bunch of them there. Again, I don't think we need to heal from being gay. I think we need to heal from. We need to unlearn the shame, the shame we attached to it. But we need to. What we learned is how to survive in a stray world without being. Without at least trying not to be bullied and trying to fit in and, you know, learning how to scan our room, all the things that we talk about so often here, learning how to fit in at the expense of ourselves, you know, being the. Being the boy or the person other people want us to be instead of being who we actually are. Because being who we actually are might mean getting rejected, getting abandoned, getting bullied, getting hit. Literally getting like, physically hit. It could mean all these things. So obviously you're not going to do that. You're going to just fit into your little box that society gave you, read the script that society gave you, and that erodes your sense of self. But it's not your fault. It's not your fault that it does that. It's just, again, the world we live in. And a lot of that work of becoming healed, I guess, is. Is again recognizing where that's showing up, how it affected you. Because not everyone is the same. A lot of people put up a lot of walls to protect themselves. And guess What? Those walls that kept you safe are now the walls that keep people out. Even though you're, you're not necessarily. You're safe, quote unquote safe, you're. You still have the walls there because you haven't learned how to connect and you haven't learned how to, how to bond with other people. So there's so many adaptations that we could have picked up along the way that we're not even aware of. And there is, there is being shaped by that. Social conditioning can easily make you think that there's something wrong with you, but there's not something wrong with you. You are just different. Different is not the same as wrong. Yeah, and that's the healing part for me. Because once you point where you are, you know, functioning as you say, once you're functioning and you're on solid ground, then, girl, let's get going. Like, that's, that's the fun part. That's where I like to. That's where I like to have my coaching come in. Because then we're like, okay, now we're just getting started. Okay. Like now we're at a level playing field with everybody else. Watch me. Right? Like, let's see what we can do. And, and then it becomes empowering and it becomes liberating. Not, not just at a place of, you know, functioning, which you need to get to. You can't, you can't get to empowered and liberated without getting to a place of healing and grounded.
• 16:00
  Speaker A: Totally. Yeah.
• 16:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 16:01
  Speaker A: What do people often seek? Like, what are the pain points people to come to you for? Like, why would they seek out coaching with you? Common themes. I know it probably varies so much.
• 16:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you see, at the end of the day, it does really boil down to self worth and self confidence, you know, and that shows up in so many different ways. It shows up in their. Afraid to take action in their life. They're afraid to date, they're afraid to. They're. Or on the other side, they're afraid to leave a relationship, they're afraid to leave a job. They're afraid to start over. So fear is a big one. And that fear stems from a lot of a lack of self trust, so self esteem. Because when you have. When you don't believe in yourself and don't trust yourself, it's such a shitty feeling. And I've been there. And I know if you're listening to this, you know that feeling of like feeling stuck in your own life and not feeling able to do something about it, but that's not True. You can do something about it. You just need some skills, some practice and some support. And with that, you know, anything is really possible for you. So to take it to themes. Yeah. It's usually at the end of the day something that goes back to a lack of self worth or self esteem that manifests itself in. I work with guys on their careers, I work with guys in their marriages and relationships. I work with guys and coming out building businesses, like really, it runs the gamut. I work with CEOs, really, really high, high achieving type guys. I work with students. I work with older men who just came out in their 60s. Like. And that's the, I think that's the best part of my job is it's, it's never the same and it's always different and I personally love that. But at the end of the day it's always, it's always the. About self worth and re. Establishing that sense of self so that you can live your life and live the life that you want to be and be the man you want to become and have your own back the entire, the entire path forward.
• 17:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. What are, what's one thing. I know there's lots of, lots of things, but what's one thing that you find is essential for developing more self confidence or self worth?
• 17:47
  Speaker B: What I think what I just said is having your own back. So that, that inner voice, that inner critic, inner shame, inner judgment is the default for a lot of guys. Yeah, I think. And so when your roommate living in your head is constantly nagging at you, criticizing you, judging you, it's obviously going to erode your sense of self and self esteem. So it's really about developing. You know, we might have talked about it in episodes called reparenting yourself or self compassion, self love. There's so many different things that you call it self trust in that personal, in the personal development world. But it's relating to yourself like you are because you are worthy, whole, brilliant and beautiful.
• 18:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker B: And that's really, really hard for a lot of people. But it's not impossible. It's a skill. I certainly didn't have that skill. I wasn't, I, I certainly didn't have that at all. But you can learn it. And when you do have your own back, it's not about being better than anyone. It's not about being cocky or arrogant. It's really just about on your worst day being able to, to come home to yourself and love yourself. Even if you really fucked it up that day, even if you know you, you are not Living up to your own expectations.
• 18:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:58
  Speaker B: Having that sense of groundedness in yourself.
• 19:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It's reminding me of my. When I was struggling with. This was about eight years ago and I was getting all of my worth and all of my validation from outside myself in my, from my body and my appearance. And I remember moving, I moved to Asia and I grew out a big burly beard and grew my hair out and I almost kind of look like. I remember my aunt actually said you look like a homeless man. But my, it was very intentional and I, I was turning off the taps of external validation because I was so reliant on it. And I think for me that is a, that's a, that's one of the ways that I would suggest if you have very low self worth, I would look at how you're getting a faux sense of worth right from outside yourself and there's high likely that you're an overachiever, you're perfectionistic, you're people pleasing, you're thirst trapping, you're doing the things. And again, I'm not shaming this, I'm not saying this is bad, but if you want to truly learn how to intrinsically self value, you need to turn that off for a bit. You need to sit with unworthiness within you and you need to learn how to tolerate that and get the data and the wisdom from that unworthiness and then that'll transpire and transmute into having a deeper sense of love for yourself. For me, it was a long journey, like it was. I was in Asia for a year. I didn't have. I was basically a recluse. I went inward and did all this work. I stopped going on social media and getting my vow value from my body and thirst traps and stuff like that. And that was the birthplace of me learning self worth for the first time in my life. And I'm still learning it. Like don't get me wrong. But I find that. And then what you can do is you can start integrating external validation back into your life. But if you're addicted to it, you gotta, you gotta starve yourself from it. In my opinion, it's very, very hard. If you have a pipeline coming in that's just feeding you external worth, it's gonna be really hard to develop it internally if you, if that pipeline's constantly flowing worse worth to you. Do you know what I mean?
• 20:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, but that's also social, social conditioning as well, right Everyone, all kids are taught because we have to, to rely on external validation from our Parents to know if we're being a good boy or not a good boy. If we're for doing things, if we're living right or if we're misbehaving. So we're trained for that, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But again, it's. It's. For me, it's all about learning patterns.
• 21:10
  Speaker A: Right.
• 21:10
  Speaker B: Like that. That's. That's really what this work is. It's seeing where that shows up, why it's there. And then. Okay, that's interesting. Now, I've taken this adaptation and it's a little bit.
• 21:20
  Speaker A: So, yeah.
• 21:21
  Speaker B: Common ones we talk about are being hypervigilant, learning to scan a room, being very guarded with people, editing yourself, hiding yourself. All those things. We've talked about them so much that help us, helped us, and then suddenly they don't.
• 21:34
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:34
  Speaker B: And. And the validation. My point was the validation comes into that. No one taught me. No one sat me down and said, michael, let me teach you how to internally validate yourself.
• 21:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:43
  Speaker B: But I will say the work that you and I do is exactly that. We are those people who sit people down and say, okay, so. And so we are now going to teach you how to do this. Because you probably didn't get taught that school or by your parents, at least I certainly didn't. But there are so many people out there doing this work. Coaches, therapists, healers, what. What have you. So many different ways to do this work, and they are doing that. So that's a great thing about living in the era we are now. There's so much, so many resources out there to teach people how to do that.
• 22:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just made another list. So I have a list of what we're actually healing. And this is just from my own practice, from what I see in the sense of like. Like, you know, that's. This is what I specialize in. I specialize in healing and relationships. So I, I bring people on healing journeys. So the first one is shame. Like, when you're working with gay men, you're always working with shame. It's, it's, it's always there. It takes a while to get to it and to create a conscious connection with it for the individual. Because a lot of times people have no idea what shame even looks like. Feels like they just know it brings up this feeling in their body, but they don't know how to relate to it. So developing a relationship with shame, learning how to name it, learning how to process it in the body, learning how to deactivate these parts of us that are conditioned to thinking we have to feel shame when we don't.
• 22:55
  Speaker B: Right?
• 22:55
  Speaker A: Like expression of our sexuality. Why? We don't have to feel shame about that, but yet we do, right? So how can we undo that, that part? Abandonment and rejection, these are really big things that I think a lot of people are healing from rejection wound after rejection wound after rejection wound. And they never actually took the time to be with them. So there's lots of grieving, feeling like they're too much or not enough. Like, I can't even begin to describe the amount of people that I've worked with over the years that have struggled with the not enoughness. We all. It's a part of the human condition, I think, to feel like we're not enough. And then what I. One of the areas that I have been doing a lot of work with is the fear of intimacy and, like, intimacy building capacity for intimacy. And that obviously comes from, like, a fear of vulnerability, these sorts of things. Body image, wounding. It's a big one. I see with a lot of gay men not feeling like they love their bodies, the relationship they have with their bodies is very transactional, like, these sorts of things. So it's like, how can I learn how to value my body again and have respect for my body from places other than the mirror? Or what people tell you about your body or how they treat your body, right? It's like, how can I learn how to be in my body and love my body? And then nervous system dysregulation, I think, is a big part of all of this. You can't do any of the above work that I just mentioned without working with the nervous system. So we're healing our relationship to our nervous system and moving from a relationship that is kind of encoded with survival into more of, like, thriving. How can we be in a nervous system that feels safe and engaged? And we understand our nervous system, so that's a big one. And then loneliness and a lack of belonging. Those are two things that I put. Because it's such a core thing of our. Of our culture. Like, I find there's so much loneliness and so much lack of true belonging in our. In our community. Because if you think about all the things above, right? Shame, abandonment, rejection, fear of intimacy, fear of vulnerability. Those are all the things that we need to overcome. So we can therefore land into a place where we can let ourselves belong. If we feel shameful or we're scared of intimacy, there's. We're not going to let ourselves belong. So when we don't let ourselves belong, we are. We have a deep sense of existential loneliness or aloneness in this world. And I think a lot of gay men struggle with this. So we're healing all those parts above so we can learn how to let ourselves belong again. I think is a. Is a big piece of it. Yeah, that's also.
• 25:13
  Speaker B: So I think that covers, like, mo, I'm gonna say, most gay men's experiences and maybe things that we struggle with. But you said something that not enoughness. There's a. I run a group called Foundations, which is exactly what we're talking about. Foundations for me is my, like, entry level program, I guess, where it's literally called Foundations for Gaiman because we talk about this, like the foundational stuff that we all need to know and the stuff that I go back to with everyone, whether you're 25 or 75, everything that you just said. And one of the. My point was, one of the modules is called the Not Enough Monster Within Us. And it's the second one after the. After Shame. We do a whole thing about shame. The. The next one is Not Enough Monster Within Us. And in that group, it's a group program. In that group, it's so. People find it so relieving. I'm gonna say when we share and we all talk about our own Not Enough Monster, and by the end, they're like, oh, my gosh, like, I thought that I was the only one that had this, which is just Shame, by the way. And so it's so important to know, you know, if you're listening to this and you. And you kind of are new in this work, you're not broken, you're not alone. This is, again, very, very common. Yeah. And it's totally fixable, too. Like, when I say fixable, I mean it's something you can work on and heal, as Matt was saying. So everything you said. And you know, it's funny, Matt, everything I. I pulled up my course outline. Everything that you said is in there. The not enough monster. Self doubt to self trust, External and internal validation. Gay men and emotional intimacy and then belonging and becoming. So I think. I think you're onto something there. I think we. These are. These are. As I said, I designed this as the main things that I go back to over and over again, which is why I put it in a program called Foundations.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right on. Yeah, Lots of stuff. But I want to just kind of point this out because some people might be feeling like, oh, this is so much Right. Like, yeah, I don't want to have to go through all this. It's like, it's a heavy, it's a heavy thing to, to look at. But I want to point something out about trauma. I think a lot of gay men, we deal with developmental trauma when we start working and healing on the other side of somebody that has been to the places we've been as gay men, when we come out of that, we have, like, scarring, but our scar tissue is like our fuel. It's like we, we, we, we have this deep awareness of ourselves. We have this deep kind of courage and we faced a lot of fear and, and these sorts of things that we become really unstoppable, become very powerful. So if you're at a place where you're just either starting this or you're in the thick of it, just keep pushing because I promise you, on the other side of, you know, healing, some of this stuff is like this very powerful, courageous version of you that is waiting to, to emerge.
• 27:48
  Speaker B: That trauma can fuel your freedom, but you have to do the work and the healing. You can't just jump from traumatic freedom and empowerment. You really do have to go through that very painful, sometimes journey. What makes it easier is having obviously support and doing it with people. Like the Gaiman's Brotherhood is exactly built for guys on that journey and very varying aspects of it. So, you know, when you recognize, as I said, that you're not alone, it does help. And it can actually, dare I say, be a little bit fun. And we can have some fun with it too. It is very deep, it is very heavy at times, but, you know, sometimes you just gotta laugh at it too. Like, like, what a, what a funny thing that we do. Especially when you notice it and you notice your patterns happening again. It does help lighten the load.
• 28:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I want to say before we wrap is, and it's just from my own scar tissue, what I've learned about myself is that the healing journey can become just another vehicle for shame and, like, self rejection. So just be careful for that. Because he tried to heal my way out of, like, loving myself and just being with myself, right? It was like everything needed to be healed. And that's the difference between healing and trying to fix yourself. Because when you try and fix yourself, it's coming from shame. It's saying, something's broken in me that needs to be fixed. And, and so, yeah, if you notice, like, you're obsessing over your healing, you're treating yourself like a project over identifying with Your trauma, constantly searching for the next breakthrough or the next healing or whatever like that. Yeah, just maybe sometimes. And what I always, you know, say with for my clients is take integration periods. You don't always need to be working on yourself. Pause the pursuit of healing and just be healed for a while. That's like, just. So, just allow yourself to land into, into that. So, you know, for every, I don't know, 12 weeks of work, you know, take a few weeks off and just enjoy life. I do that with therapy. I take therapy breaks. So I'll work with a therapist for, say, six months, do some deep work, and then I'll just go off on my own and live for a few months and not work on myself at all and just live and practice the new skills that I'm learning and practice the new awareness in my nervous system and the new capacity. So we don't always need to be working on ourselves, folks. We can take time to have fun and live life and, and whatnot. It's about balance.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: And life will always provide you with opportunities to naturally, organically practice those things that you have new insights and awareness about.
• 30:03
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:04
  Speaker B: Because awareness is great. It's good to have that. It is half the battle. But then behavior is where the application of it is. And that's not to say that, like, you have to go, like, create situations. I think, to your point, if you take integration periods, life will give you them, whether you want to or not. Life will give you the tests, and then that's when you have that moment to say, huh, I can go down that old path that I've always gone through, and I know that that's my pattern, and I know that it's not gonna end up good for me. Or I could do the hard thing. I could have that honest conversation. I can speak up, I can tell my partner how I actually feel. I can take the risk. I can do the thing. I can, you know, try something new and fail, fall flat on my butt, even though I've protected myself against that my whole life. But, yeah, taking that time to do the work, work and practice it, honestly, it, I, I, I say this a lot, but when people see me as someone who's confident, I'm like, it's just because I fall down a lot. And the act of emotionally, psychologically getting back up is the confidence that you might see in here on this podcast. It was, I just didn't, I didn't read a book. And it came to me through reading a book. It came to me through lots of failure, lots of up. Lots of criticism. I'm scaring everybody now. But the point is, in that moment is where the muscle is built.
• 31:21
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's resilience. Right. And we can read all the textbooks or we can even go to therapy. And there's. There's a lot of people that go to therapy, and they don't change. Right. Because we're not actually doing things differently. Right. We have to live differently. We have to choose differently. We have to relate to ourselves and our nervous system differently. So there's. There's a whole element here of. And. And be willing to get messy. Right. Like the healing journey and all this stuff. It's not linear. It's. It. Sometimes it makes no sense, and it just feels up and right. I've. So you just have to embrace the mess. Messy action. That's what I call that.
• 31:56
  Speaker B: I had. I had a session this week with one of my clients who is, like, so good at doing the work, like, in terms of, like, you know, getting the A plus kind of thing. He's a. He's an achiever, but he just felt so down on himself because of what you just said. He's like, I feel like I've taken, like, 10 steps back. I'm like, yeah, you're still on the path. Like nothing has gone wrong because it. You're right. It's not linear. And I've taken 25 steps back sometimes, and it has lasted a while. And. And I don't know. That's just what. That's just. Life is so, like, it's not about getting it right all the time. It's just about how you handle it when you don't.
• 32:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. What's. Before we wrap up. What's one. We'll each share one, like, tip or. Or piece of advice for people to do the inner work. What would you say is one thing from your own life that you've done that has packed the most punch? That you're like, y. This is something that. The.
• 32:43
  Speaker B: The line that I use every time in my. It's just constantly sitting in my brain, like, taped to my skull, inside my head. Yeah. Is in any situation, no matter what's going on, no matter what kind of chaos is happening in the world and in my life, my filter is, what kind of man do I want to be in this moment? One question and pause to answer it. Right. And in that moment. Because most people will. Will respond automatically.
• 33:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:11
  Speaker B: You know, fight, flight, whatever that is. Like, they have their automatic response. But when you stop and think, whatever your situation Is what kind of man do I want to be right now? That's your growth. Because most of the time in an adverse situation, we go. Like. In a challenging situation, we kind of go back to our automatic habits, which may be not the man we want to be, but when you can say, hmm, I am going to use this challenge, this moment as an opportunity to step into the man that I want to be. Be, then all of a sudden, it's not the man you want to be, it's the man you are.
• 33:41
  Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. I like that. What's the image that comes up for you when you think about the man you want to be?
• 33:47
  Speaker B: Well, I mean, it depends on the situation, but when it's. When it's in, like, that challenging situation, I usually want to be calm. And my instinct is not to be calm or. But overall, when I think about, you know, my. My future self and the men I want to be, it's.
• 33:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 33:59
  Speaker B: Calm, fun. Like, still, I. I have a joie de vivre and that I. I don't want to ever, ever lose, like, an optimism for life. Grounded, for sure.
• 34:08
  Speaker A: Yeah. Ground is a good one.
• 34:10
  Speaker B: Peace. Peace.
• 34:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:11
  Speaker B: Peace of mind. I think that's it. Grounded. Peaceful. Wise. I can say wise.
• 34:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Non. Reactive. I find reactive men are really hard to like. Yeah. It's like, take a moment, breathe. Like, this doesn't have to be dealt with in this second. When I'm triggered, it's like, how can you put your phone down and be with yourself? Right.
• 34:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. Especially in relationships.
• 34:30
  Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Relationships are the hardest for all of this stuff.
• 34:33
  Speaker B: In that case, the question is, guys, what kind of partner do I want to be right now? And you can also say, what kind of man do I want to be right now? But, yeah, what kind of partner do I want to be right now? And chances are, the behavior you're about to do is not the man you want to be right now.
• 34:44
  Speaker A: Right?
• 34:45
  Speaker B: Yeah. Or the thing you want to say is not conducive to the man you want to be right now. So take that. Take that. Take that beat.
• 34:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. What's yours?
• 34:53
  Speaker A: I think I've said this million times on a podcast, but I'll say it again, is slow down again. Always. The first piece of homework I give to my clients after session one doesn't matter what their goal is, because it'll serve everyone's goal. It's slow down by 10%. Right. And instead of defaulting to grabbing your phone when things feel a little uncomfortable, like, delay that by just two seconds. Be with whatever's there for just a moment, and then the next time it happens, delay it by a minute, then delay it, right? And just keep delaying so you can be with yourself. Because all the things that we've listed that need healing, you need to be able to be with them, right? So escaping yourself is not serving you in any way. So choose. Choose. You choose to show up for yourself in, in your body, somatically, when things feel hard, because it'll pay off big time. Yeah, you'll meet the. You'll meet the demons. You'll meet the parts of you that are driving behavior and emotion. And if you don't, if you're not willing to meet those parts of you, then your behavior is going to stay the same. Your emotion will stay the same. So you have to be willing to meet your demons and say hello to them and love them and work with them. And yeah, it's not easy work, but it's necessary for us and for our community. Like, and I always want to say this too, like, keep in mind that when we show up and do the work, I say this in all my group programs, you being here is helping our community. It's not just helping you because you're now going to interact with another gay man with greater consciousness and awareness. He's going to feel that, and he's going to pass that on. But if we bring our pain and our demons to each other and we project hatred and rejection and shame on each other, then guess what? That person projects out onto somebody else. And we keep our. Our. Our community toxic. Right? And in a lot of capacities, in ways our community is very toxic. In other ways, we have a lot of consciousness and we can. We can't. We have potential, I'll say, to be very conscious and loving towards each other, but I think so, yeah, doing our work helps our community, not just ourselves,
• 36:40
  Speaker B: and do it in community. I know as someone who's a lone wolf myself, it's. I. It's so much more. I don't know, easy, I'm gonna say for me to just, like, read books and listen to podcasts. Like, okay, I'm gonna do this in a fine journal. These are all good things. Do all these things, read all the books, listen to our podcast. But the work really does elevate and amplify when you can learn from others, like, to your point, Matt, like, when, when, when all of you listening out there can take this, apply it, and be the example for other people, you are, you know, shining that light, being that example. And like, Elevating that consciousness just a little bit. And then other people see you do it and then it gives them permission to do it. Not just permission, but it shows them how problem. Right. Like even just having an honest conversation or asking for what you need or having a vulnerable moment shows people that it's possible for everybody.
• 37:28
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Yeah. And if you want to be guided on this and access, because Michael and I both run group programming. So if you want to join and do some work with other gay men on this journey and do this work in community, which can be very, very powerful, very beautiful work, you can go to Gay Men's Brotherhood and there's a coaching tab and then Michael and I both have our websites listed there. So you can go and look and see what we're offering as far as group, group offerings. So you can join us on our journeys. Yeah. Any. Any closing comments from you or.
• 37:59
  Speaker B: No, I think. Yeah, I feel complete. There's, there's. Like I said, there's so much here I could talk about.
• 38:03
  Speaker A: I know, yeah, we could off shoot this into so many different directions. It's a big topic. But yeah, I want to just get the conversation going and then you can come and join us. I might actually host a connection circle on this. So stay, stay tuned. Maybe in September, October. All my. One of my topics will be around the healing. Healing it for gay men. So if you want to come and join us, go to gaymansbrotherhood.com there's an events tab and you'll be able to see the connection circles that we're hosting. And regardless of the topic, you can come and you can unpack this stuff. A lot of our topics relate to healing and growth and personal development. So. So come and join us in those. They do help us support our community. So all the proceeds from those go into the community, keeping everything alive and well. The connection circles. And yeah, if you are new here, subscribe to this channel on YouTube. We'd love to hear your comments on YouTube if from what this episode brought up for you, share the comments on YouTube because that is a really another place where we were building community is that comment section. People have a lot of thoughts, opinions and their voices being expressed there there. So express yours there as well. And yeah, keep in mind that this podcast and YouTube channel are viewer listener and viewer supported. So if you enjoy what we're creating, you can support the community by making a donation to the show. There is a link in the show notes and you can also use the thanks button on YouTube to show us some love there. And then we also have the early access option on Apple Podcasts to gain early access to episodes. And all of this support helps us continue making content content for you and supporting our community. So we thank you in advance. Until next time, everybody. Much love.