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4 - How Containment Reveals the Work · Masculine Containment

0:00
Hi, I'm Alex Sharfman, and welcome to episode four of the Masculine Containment Podcast, How Containment Reveals the Work.
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Now, first, I want to talk about what I think the goal in any relationship should be.
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It should be to have a secure attachment.
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A secure attachment means that both partners feel emotional safety, that there's stability under stress, that you can work through conflict, that there's openness and connection rather than bracing and frustration or fear.
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And a trust that conflict isn't going to destabilize your connection.
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You know, in a secure relationship, you know,
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There should be the understanding and the ability to work through anything that happens and to know that regardless of what the two of you face or what type of conflict there is in the world around you or what pressures you're feeling, that the two of you can return to a secure place where you can work through things with each other.
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where you can understand each other, hear each other, see each other, and have a relationship where you take that level of confidence that your relationship is that strong out into the world for both of you.
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And you have that relationship as the foundation of everything you do.
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And I think far too often...
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For a lot of people in relationships, they don't have this.
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They have some security, some stability.
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But there's always this question of, is the next conflict going to be the conflict that pushes us over the edge?
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Or is there going to be another conflict that pushes us apart for two or three days?
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Or what's coming next and what is the next thing that's going to happen?
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Now, in the market already, there's a discussion around secure attachments.
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They talk about emotional responsiveness, co-regulation, ownership of the impact you had, even repair after rupture.
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And that all matters.
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It's crucially important.
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But here's the issue.
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In my lived experience and the lived experience of tons of people that I've talked to, it's just not enough.
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That consistent pattern of trigger escalation, rupture and damage being done, then withdraw and then repair afterwards starts really causing a problem in the relationship.
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It starts making it so that neither partner really feels secure or safe in the relationship because there's this recurring issue with having challenges and being pushed apart.
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And so before I understood mass healing containment, my wife and I actually occasionally made progress.
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And, you know, we were married for 19 years before we started doing this work.
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Or we were together for 19 years before we started doing this work.
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And we were genuinely trying.
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You know, my wife and I, from almost the beginning of our relationship, we did therapy.
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We had hard conversations.
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We both read books.
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Sometimes we read books together together.
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We worked on our communication skills.
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We had increasingly better repair conversations.
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We put in a ton of effort.
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And we made progress.
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But oftentimes it felt...
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kind of haphazard and unfocused and cyclical, like we would make progress and then we would fall backwards.
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Sometimes we'd have major, major progress and then a huge regression after a breakthrough, after things were going really well.
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We would have this like breakthrough and feeling of closeness, then there would be a trigger and then there would be a step back.
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And in our relationship,
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And unfortunately, the relationships of so many people I've talked to, there was no stabilizing structure.
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This belief in the market that you can continue to have conflict, continue to have challenges, and then quote-unquote repair just didn't work for us.
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And it didn't work for so many other people.
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And so...
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You know, I know this is different than what's out there, and I know what I'm about to share is different than what's out there, and that's okay.
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That's fine.
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I mean, I'm not trying to argue with anybody, but I'm talking about lived experience.
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my lived experience, my wife's lived experience, and the lived experience of the men that I'm working with and the lived experience of the hundreds of women that I've now had interactions with that tell me things like, hey, we've learned that conflict needs repair and we're still really having challenges.
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And recently I made a post about like the challenges and how women feel conflict for a much longer period of time.
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And I've had women say things like, sometimes a major conflict stays in their body for weeks or months.
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And so and a lot of times I've talked to men and they just don't feel that same level of impact.
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And so containment really changed how we responded to issues in our marriage.
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And it really changed the tools with which we responded to issues in our marriage.
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And even more importantly, it really revealed the work, the work for me and the work for my wife, Katie.
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So this is it philosophically.
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This isn't like a theory.
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This was actually precision.
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Containment changed everything.
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When I started practicing masculine containment and calming things down and getting in my body and regulating and seeing it as my responsibility to go first and be present and grounded and lead with curiosity, so many things in our relationship changed.
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Threat decreases, escalation decreases, defensiveness went down.
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And when the threat was removed, what was left over became really clear.
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And that charity, sorry, that clarity changed everything.
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There wasn't a lot of charity involved, but the clarity really did change everything.
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See, here's what was different.
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Before containment, growth came in waves.
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The improvement we made wasn't really directional, so we would have growth and then we would kind of have regressions.
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Problems in our relationship were addressed in general.
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We didn't really know exactly what to work on.
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And we didn't really understand where the instability in our relationship lived.
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And here's what we need to understand.
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about every relationship and really about every human being.
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Every one of us has trauma.
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Every one of us has experiences in our past that are affecting our day-to-day in the present.
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They affect us in being more reactive.
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They affect us in getting triggered from things we shouldn't be triggered from.
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They affect us in making us feel like there's danger in the present when there really isn't danger in the present.
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They affect us because we have body reactions that really don't make sense.
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We're safe, but yet we feel unsafe.
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We're in the present moment, yet we feel like there's so much danger.
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There's something else going on.
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And that trauma...
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affects everything.
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And when you start practicing, or when I started practicing masculine containment, it changed things dramatically.
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Because when we had masculine containment, we now had a daily structure where Katie and I sat down every day and we would connect at a level of...
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stability for my my stability so first i started and so i became stable i would sit there i would have real-time feedback on my body as to what was going on i had precise identification of triggers because here's what i know in a heterosexual relationship in a male-female relationship for me as a man i know and by the way there's men who will argue against this there's therapists who will argue against this but you let me know how it lands in your body
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Here's what I figured out in my relationship and what I know today.
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When I'm sitting in front of Katie and she's telling me her truth, even if it's painful, even if it's frustrating, even if it's hard to hear, even if it is animated and loud and she's saying things that are really difficult for me to hear, what I know is that I'm not in danger.
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Right.
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And in early containment sessions, I literally felt like I was going to die.
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You know, I since December 26, 2023, I've been sitting daily with my wife and letting her express to me anything that's coming up for her and anything from our relationship and anything that has been buried and anything that she has suppressed and anything that she needed to get out of her body.
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And I always remind myself, the more difficult it is to hear, the more trauma is leaving her body.
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And here's what happened.
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I could sit through most of it and know the following.
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I'm hearing her truth.
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It doesn't mean it's the truth.
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It's her truth.
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I could validate her feelings, even if they weren't perfect, even if it wasn't exactly how I thought they should be said.
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Even if I felt like there were some things that needed to be changed, it was her truth.
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So it's okay.
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I didn't need to correct her.
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I could validate her.
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I could understand her.
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What I started understanding was that her feelings were beautiful and her being able to express to me was actually vulnerability leaving her body and suppressed emotions leaving her body.
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And here's what happened in those early containment sessions is for the most part, I was able to be there with her.
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I was able to lead with curiosity.
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I was able to breathe into my body, especially after a few weeks of doing this and realizing, one, I wasn't going to die.
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And...
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That when we did sit down for a containment session and she started talking to me about what was going on and she told me what had happened in the past in an active containment like ceremony is what we called it.
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Often there was an arc where she would get more frustrated and tell me more things and then she'd get more frustrated and then it'd start to calm down and start to really regulate.
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Yeah.
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And it was a feeling of power.
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It was a feeling of masculinity for me.
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I mean, I remember one night Katie actually asking me, hey, is this hard for you?
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And for the most part, it wasn't.
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I actually told her something that I've never said before about anything.
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I said, it makes me feel like a man.
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It makes me feel like I'm sitting here and I'm actually changing the situation and I'm helping you and I'm helping us and I'm making our relationship better.
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And I'm helping you get things off your chest and get things out of your body.
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And it really did make me feel powerful afterwards.
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Except for there were some times where it didn't.
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And there were some times where Katie would be expressing to me her truth.
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And she wasn't directly attacking me.
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She wasn't calling me names.
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She wasn't talking about my character, but she was expressing her truth.
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And there were times where I couldn't stay present.
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I realized it.
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I would feel myself disassociating.
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There were times where I could feel myself getting defensive and frustrated.
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There were times where I actually felt unsafe emotionally.
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There was times where my body reacted, where my hands got sweaty, where my chest would get hot, my face would get hot.
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And it wasn't abstract.
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This was like, hey, this thing that Katie is saying is really affecting me.
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And it was data about exactly how my body was reacting.
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It was exponentially more effective on understanding what was going on for me because I was in my body and it was immediate and I could feel it.
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And here's what happened.
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When I had those moments in containment sessions of physical activation or heat or tightness or the urge to defend or the urge to shut down or the urge to disassociate, it was
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And there was no threat in the room.
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There was no attack.
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It was just Katie's truth.
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Here's what I knew.
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I'm not under threat.
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And I'm having trouble regulating.
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And this is the work I need to do.
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And in the early days, I worked with an EMDR therapist.
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And sometimes I still do because things come up where I'm still triggered.
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I mean, we all have childhood trauma.
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And what I knew, and we all have life trauma.
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And what I knew was when Katie was expressing her truth and I had a reaction that was too big.
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I had a reaction that was too intense.
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I had a reaction that was...
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was alive in my body and I couldn't breathe through it and I had a hard time regulating and I had a hard time being there, that made my work undeniable.
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And so early on, I would take, what is the data?
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What is the thing that she's talking about or the thing that she's saying?
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And I would take it to an EMDR therapist.
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And I'm 53 years old.
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I've been in trauma therapy on and off since I was 26.
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I've done a ton of EMDR therapy and it really has improved my life.
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But when I did it after containment, when I was regulated and calm, and then there would be this trigger that would come up, sometimes once, sometimes several times, that trigger actually revealed what my work was with laser precision.
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Instead of this shotgun of just going to therapy and saying, I need to work on everything, I could work on the one thing that kept triggering me.
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And this was like...
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doing EMDR or trauma therapy on steroids.
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And it wasn't just EMDR.
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I did EMDR and trauma processing, and I spent time in neutral, and I would go on long walks, and I would really understand and come clear that, like, this is the thing I need to work on.
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And when I did, it was crazy how much easier everything in my life became.
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Not just sitting in containment with Katie, but,
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but everything in my life.
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Because doing that inner child work, doing that trauma therapy, increased my capacity massively.
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And because I was identifying the exact thing that made it so hard to stay in the present, that made it so hard to regulate, it was like I was doing therapy with precision rather than a shotgun approach.
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And it clarified things.
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It removed guesswork.
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It made it so that...
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The therapy that I did was infinitely more effective.
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Now, I wasn't the only one who did work.
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I'm going to get to that in a second.
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Now, see, here's why doing the work after containment was so much better than what we did before.
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Because before I was in pharma therapy and before I had done EMDR and I'd worked on our relationship and we'd done couples therapy and we'd done a ton of work.
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But when both of us were escalated and neither one of us was actually trying for containment and...
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Both of us were in this fight.
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It was like a fog.
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There was blame.
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There was confusion.
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There was a lack of clarity.
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Once you're escalated, it's hard to understand what's really going on.
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And so containment actually introduces order.
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It introduces sequencing.
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See, first I became contained and I started masculine containment.
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Then moved towards containment, became more and more contained and more able to sit with her, able to hear her truth, able to understand what was going on for her, able to validate her.
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And the times where I wasn't able to, that became my work.
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And so if there was no threat in the room, if there was no real physical threat to me and my body was reacting as though there was, this gave me the precise thing that I needed to go process.
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And occasionally it still does.
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It's much less frequent, thank goodness.
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And it's much less difficult these days.
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But I have an EMDR therapist on call that I'll go work with if I need to, to understand what's going on, to release pressure, to process trauma from the past.
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You know, I think one of the things that's really interesting about trauma therapy and trauma in general is that sometimes people will say things like, oh, I never really experienced trauma.
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Yeah.
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trauma is part of the human condition.
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And what it does to our bodies and what it does to the reactivity that we feel and what it does to our perception of reality is intense.
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It changes things.
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It causes us to have projections.
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It causes us to see things that aren't there.
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It causes us to see words as loaded.
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It causes us to see situations as dangerous, even when they're not.
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And by doing this level of work, this precise level of work of exactly where I was still reacting, it's,
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It has made me so much more regulated and so much more happy and so much more able to see what I should be doing in the world and so much more connected to my mission.
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It's been absolutely the best personal development program I've ever had.
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It's really changed everything in my life.
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And it's not just me who sees it.
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My friends talk about it.
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My wife talks about it.
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My kids talk about it, about how much more present I am, how much more aware I am, how much more in the room I am, regardless of what's going on.
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Now, that was my work.
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Now, containment also revealed the work for Katie.
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Because when containment started to stabilize our relationship, escalation decreased, safety radically increased, my nervous system was much more steady, especially after I worked on the things that I was still reacting to and processed those things and was even more in the room and more curious and more aware and more able to understand what was actually going on for her.
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Yeah.
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there were moments where Katie would admit she remained reactive.
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There was no escalation for me, no threats, just me being in the room with her, and she would have trouble letting go of things, and she would have trouble softening, and she would have trouble...
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Just being there with me.
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And so containment doesn't mean that men do all the work.
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Containment means that if we as men do the work first, we reveal those places that are still stuck in our lives, in our partners.
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We reveal the places where in the present she's still feeling triggered, even though there's safety, even though there's stabilization.
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And this happened more than once with Katie, where she went and worked with an EMDR therapist as well.
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And we didn't just do EMDR.
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We worked with the EMDR therapist.
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We read books.
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We would walk together.
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We'd talk together.
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We got relationship coaching and counseling.
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And by understanding what was still coming up for her, where she was feeling rage or anger or pain or fear, it gave her the opportunity to go and work on exactly what was going on.
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And here's what's interesting.
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See, before I was contained and we were in this pattern of trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then repair, oftentimes she would go to therapy, I would go to therapy, and we would work on that pattern.
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We would end up stuck there, like, here's what's going on, and we would get into the content of what those conflicts were.
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And the reality is, when you back away from those conflicts—
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And you can understand that a trigger does not mean you're unsafe.
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And every trigger doesn't need a reaction.
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You can respond instead of react.
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And every trigger doesn't have to have an escalation.
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As a man, you start understanding like, hey, if I am reacting to a specific trigger and I can't hold my center and I can't stay present and I can't stay curious, that's my work.
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And on the other side of that, if you as a man are contained and you're in the room and you're there present with your partner and she's still reacting, that's her work.
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And so both of us have done work over the past several years to be able to get to the place where now we're in a relationship where –
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I mean, I can honestly say, and I tell my friends this all the time, I tell the people, the men I work with, I tell women that I'm in a relationship where regardless of what comes up, I have the confidence that through containment and through sitting down with my wife and talking to her, whether it's in one of our planned ceremonies every day where we sit down and talk, or whether it's responsive containment where...
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she has a trigger come up or something's upsetting her, that I have the tools where I can help her work through that.
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And because I've helped her work through that over and over again, if something is coming up for me, she feels safe.
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She feels grounded.
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She feels secure.
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She can hear those things from me in a different way.
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And because I have practiced containment, I don't weaponize my feelings towards her anymore.
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You know, I think one of the things that happens to us in relationships, and this is important to talk about,
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Is it oftentimes either the man or the woman and I'll personalize this either me or Katie would be feeling some type of trigger some type of disruption some type of frustration.
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And we weaponize it against each other.
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We'd actually project that trigger that frustration onto each other like I'd be upset about something and then I would take it out on her.
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She'd be upset about something and take it out on me.
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Right.
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Well, now I understand if I'm upset about something, if something's frustrating me, I can go to her and sit down and talk to her.
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I don't have to weaponize it.
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I can actually communicate my feelings in a contained way where I can show my feelings.
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I can cry.
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I can get upset.
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I can get frustrated.
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But I'm not directing that energy at her.
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And before, even if I wasn't directing that energy at her, there was such a history of trigger escalation, rupture, withdraw, and then quote unquote repair that if I was emotional and I was frustrated, her body was already bracing against that.
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She was already scared.
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She was already in a place where that didn't feel safe for her.
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Now, on that same token, if she has a place where she's reacting and she's having challenges, I can hold containment and be there with her.
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And those feelings are not weaponized against me any longer because we created this relationship of safety and a real secure attachment.
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And that's really changed everything for us.
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Now, what's out there in the mainstream is.
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is interesting because what is talked about most of the time is that both both partners need to regulate equally.
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Both partners need to repair equally.
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Both partners need to take ownership equally.
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And it's true.
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But in practice, it's really difficult.
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It's almost impossible because when both people are activated, neither one of you sees clearly.
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And when both people are activated, oftentimes, and this is, again, lived experience, there are therapists that will tell me I'm wrong, and they often do,
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And there are people out there that say this isn't true.
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There are men that say, hey, I feel just as bad as my wife when we're in a conflict and my body reacts just as much as hers does.
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But here's what I know now after doing this work.
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Here's what I know now after having hundreds of conversations.
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Here's what I know now after working with men through this and seeing like literally miraculous results.
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And when I say miraculous results, relationships that were in complete rupture, getting repaired.
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People who were in no contact or separation, getting back together or starting conversations to get back together.
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Relationships where people were acting like roommates and scared of each other and frustrated and walking on eggshells and not knowing what to do next are getting back together and they're intimate and they're talking and they're connecting.
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This is like, it's amazing to watch.
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And it's such a mirror of what's happened in my relationship.
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You know, there was a point where my wife said, Alex, I don't feel seen.
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I don't feel hurt.
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I don't feel safe.
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And if something doesn't change, I can't do this anymore.
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That was like the ultimate, hey, something needs to change.
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And that's what drove me to figure this out.
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Because here's what containment does that...
22:14
Isn't in the market.
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Yes, we need to learn to repair it.
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Yes, we need to learn how to communicate better.
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Yes, we need to learn how we don't cause rupture.
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But if there's not containment in the relationship, there's no structure to it.
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Containment stabilizes first, then it clarifies, and then...
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It gives you this laser precision revelation of where each person needs to do the work.
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So, you know, I've often had men say, hey, do I do all the work forever?
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Well, no, not only do you not do all the work forever, but you shouldn't really look at this as work that you're doing for her.
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You know, a lot of men want to see like symmetry and a lot of men feel resentment.
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And by the way, resentment puts you in such victim energy.
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It's something we really need to get away from.
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But.
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That question of, hey, am I going to do the work forever or am I going to be the only one who's doing the work?
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No, because when you stabilize, when you create containment, it reveals where the work actually is for her.
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And when you stabilize and create containment and then you have times where you can't, there's times where you can't metabolize, you can't breathe, you can't transmute the energy because something is coming up too high for you, that's where you can go do the work.
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And so here's what I want you to understand.
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Not everybody's going to agree with this.
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but I want you to feel in your body where this lands.
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I want you to think about your relationship and think about that cycle, that five-step cycle that ends in my quote-unquote repair.
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Does it really feel like it's working for you?
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I know in my marriage and in the hundreds of conversations I've had and the patterns I've observed in other people is that it's not working.
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And relationship challenges are going up and divorces are going up.
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And in older relationships, 70% of women are initiating divorce.
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That gets blamed on so many things.
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But what I think really is happening is that when there's this level of instability in a relationship where there's constant conflict and trigger and escalation and rupture and, you know, damage being done and then withdraw and then some attempt at repair, it conditions the nervous systems in the relationship that that's just going to keep happening.
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And what that means is men get more used to withdraw and women get more used to being in conflict and their nervous systems actually stop trusting their partner.
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That doesn't happen to us as much as men.
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The reason is, you know, women feel much more unsafe in conflict in general.
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Again, there's men that will tell me they feel equally unsafe.
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I don't know that I believe it, though, because I've talked to way too many women and women walk around in fear.
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They walk around in fear.
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really feeling vulnerable.
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And when you look at man-on-woman crime versus woman-on-man crime, there's like no comparison.
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And that's happened throughout history.
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So even epigenetically, even ancestrally, women feel far more fear than men.
25:00
That's why I believe we need to go first.
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And so the goal, I believe, in any relationship is real secure attachment.
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But when you look at attachment theory, it's elusive as to how you get there.
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I mean, attachment theory is basically take that five-step pattern and get better at it.
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Get better at trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and repair.
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Get to the point where you're really, really good at repair.
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which might work for some couples.
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I'm not saying that it doesn't.
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I haven't met many who it has worked for, but I have heard and had hundreds of conversations where women tell me their bodies take forever to get back to normal, and their bodies don't trust their partners anymore.
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And they say things like, I love him, he's my everything, but when he gets close to me, my body reacts, it braces, it stiffens.
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Or they say things like, I love him, and I wanna be with him, I wanna be intimate with him, but I just don't feel it anymore.
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And I just can't do it anymore.
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And it doesn't feel good anymore.
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It hurts.
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It's frustrating.
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It feels sensitive.
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All of those things, I believe, are because there's a lack of safety in the relationship.
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And there's this constant pattern and constant bracing for when is it going to happen again.
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And so...
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When you practice masculine containment as a man and you start getting proficient at responsive containment when something comes up or active containment where you're actively calling your partner into a conversation and a daily meeting, we call it a daily ceremony.
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you change the dynamic of a relationship.
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And when a woman can be held in containment, when you create that container, that space, that security that she can soften into, that she can surrender into, not only do you create emotional safety and security for her, but in creating that dominance of yourself, not her, we do not want that on our nervous system.
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We are dominating ourself in that situation.
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Okay.
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We are bringing ourselves into the moment.
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We're leading with curiosity.
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We're letting ourselves, we're reminding ourselves and letting ourselves know that we are safe.
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When we do that and we let her soften into it, we also create polarity.
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Dominance on the man's side of himself.
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the opportunity for the woman to surrender, to soften, to lean into the man, that creates this level of attraction and polarity that is extraordinary.
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And it will make your relationship not just stronger because you have containment and you now created safety, but stronger because...
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As a man, you are sitting in your masculine.
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And as a woman, she has the opportunity to soften and surrender into her feminine, to lean into you, to feel safe with you, to be with you.
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Even if you're expressing emotions that are not weaponized against her, that can still be a moment of creating polarity, of creating this level of attraction, of creating this level of communication and vulnerability where both of you feel that massive attraction to each other and that massive safety and security with each other.
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And I had a shaman once tell me that first comes safety, then comes comfort, and then comes excitement.
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And I truly believe that.
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Because in masculine containment, when we create safety in the relationship, it creates this level of comfortability, this level of familiarity, this level of connection.
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And then everything can be exciting.
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I share with men often that the best aphrodisiac in the world is a woman feeling emotionally safe and secure.
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And I believe masculine containment gets you there.
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containment reveals the work.
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If you're willing to do it, it will change everything in your relationship.
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I fully believe this.
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And I feel like it's the missing link in so much of the relationship information that's out there and so much of the relationship instruction that's out there.
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Because when the work is clearly revealed and you're willing to do it,
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That's when growth in your relationship accelerates.
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That's when connection in your relationship accelerates.
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That's when you build this indelible foundation in your relationship where the two of you can face anything and come out the other side closer, more secure, more attached, more polarity, and more crazy about each other than you ever have been.
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And I know this from personal experience because I've lived it.
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And it's the most beautiful, amazing, confidence-building, connecting, capacity-building thing I've ever done in my life.
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And I've been in personal development my entire life since I was a kid.
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And I'm 53 years old.
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This is the best thing I've ever done.
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If you're a man who's interested in understanding masculine containment, you don't have to learn this on your own.
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In fact, I started an organization called The Brotherhood, a society for men, where together we learn masculine containment.
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And we have another container coming up soon.
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We're going to start interviews soon.
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And you may qualify to join us and learn this information and understand this better and be part of a brotherhood.
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Be part of a group of men where you can be seen and heard and be vulnerable.
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and see what other men are doing and do this together.
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Because this is difficult work, but when you do it in a group, it gets so much easier and there's so much validation and so much connection.
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If you're interested in learning this concept, this discipline, this martial art of masculine containment that will change everything in your relationship, but it will make you better at everything in life, go to thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
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It's thebrotherhoodsociety.com and register for the wait list for our next container.
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And if you want to take a deeper dive on masculine containment as a concept, you can go to our new website, masculinecontainment.com.
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Thanks for being here with me.
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If you have a minute, please subscribe and leave a review or a comment.
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I'd love that.
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I read all of them personally, and I really appreciate you being here with me today.