 This is Will Spencer from the Renaissance of Men here for the Red Man Group. I'm here with Dr. Sean T. Smith and Ken Curry, the therapist. And we're going to have a discussion today about men in inner work, men in therapy, and I'm very grateful to be here with you guys today. So I'd like to start out the conversation by just giving the men and the audience and the men watching a sense of your backgrounds, your both authors, speakers, men's groups. So just talk a little bit about your experience and your backgrounds. We'll start with you, Ken. Sure. So I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've been doing this work for about 15 years. The primary part of the work that I do is working with men, about three-quarters of it. So I do have men's groups and the other quarter of what I do is I work with couples, helping them through marriage difficulties and that type of thing. I have some books that are available and also on my website, SolidMan.com. I also have the different things that are available with my groups and an online community that I'm developing, the Solid Brotherhood. And so shout out to those guys, if anybody's listening, from the Solid Brotherhood. I also want to give a shout out to my grandson, Lucas. Today is his first birthday, so happy birthday, Lucas. Thank you. And Sean? I would also like to give a shout out to Lucas, happy birthday. Happy birthday, Lucas. I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been in private practice for 16 years or so. And of course, before that was many years of training. I worked in places like prisons and county jails and I worked in Bosnia for a bit with an organization that exudes mass graves and returns their bodies to the families and so forth. So quite a bit of kind of hardcore training and private practice. I started out kind of specializing in anxiety disorders because when you say you specialize in anxiety disorders, everything comes through the doors in the guise of an anxiety disorder. And over the years, I've taken on working with couples, which is fascinating work to try to help two people build something together or put something back on track. It's like playing chess. It's a wonderful challenge. And I also work quite a bit with men. The reason I found myself in this space is I wrote a book called The Tactical Guide to Women, which is about the standards that men might consider having when they're thinking about bringing a woman into their life as a partner. So here we are. So I'm a man that's been very personally benefited by therapy from men's groups and from individual work with the therapist. And I find that the men's space overall, the man's sphere or the men's movement, whatever you'd like to call it, is really good at teaching men that they can work out many of their issues under a barbell. But the space isn't quite so good in saying that, well, maybe there are some things that can't be worked out through action that have to be worked out through talking and that men are very resistant to opening up, very resistant in particular to seeing therapists and perhaps sometimes for good reason. So I want to start the conversation by saying, you know, what are some of the things that men who are considering therapy can potentially get out of the practice because I think part of it begins with men not understanding what therapy is for. So what are some of the benefits that men can hope to get from a good therapist? And we'll break down what that is going forward. So start with you, Ken. Sure. I want to, actually I'm going to go the opposite of where you're talking because I do think there's a lot of benefit in men moving their bodies and doing things. I think of how men process grief especially, and that's why I'm bringing this up because the way that men for decades, no, not decades, centuries, maybe millennia, when the way that we would process grief is we would do something. And so you think about it, back in the day we would dig a six-foot hole. We would build a coffin. We would slaughter the calf for all the people that are coming over for the funeral. There were really significant things that we would do as men that were significant that was our process of moving our bodies and doing something significant that was part of our healing and dealing with grief. So I think I just wanted to reiterate that there's a really powerful part of us doing things as men to be able to deal with things that are deep going on with us. However, I do think where therapy comes into it, being able to talk through and process and tell the story and be able to reframe the story of what's actually going on is a really powerful part of our journey as men. And so being able to understand what is really happening rather than what we think is happening or what we've been told that is happening about who we are, about what's going on, about what's happening with the world, all those narratives and stories have been something that we've been told since we were brought out of the womb. Somebody's been telling us a story about what life is, who we are, and therapy, talk therapy in particular, is the whole thing of talking through that. What do you believe? Who are you? What's going on? What is this? What's happening inside of you? And being able to talk, there's something that is really significant with the power of words, being able to express words, being able to name things, being able to say what is going on, and having the challenge of what is that and finding out the truth about what's really happening is a really, really profound part of our journey. Yeah. And Sean, therapy is about creating options. It's all about expanding your behavior repertoire so that you're not driven by old autopilot behaviors and putting words to it as a big piece of understanding the patterns that you're repeating in your life and then creating some options around it. I also am a huge proponent of moving your body and doing things as part of, particularly for men, as part of getting themselves on track. But you were talking, Ken, about men doing things when they were dealing with some kind of tragedy. There are things physically to do. Well, when do men talk? Men talk when they're doing things together. And part of that has gone away. And so there's a couple of things that are really important with therapy is that that piece of our lives, to some extent, has gone away, not entirely, but also there's a ton of research. And people have been piecing together this therapy process for decades now. And believe it or not, a good therapist is efficient and can get you down the road much more quickly than you're going to be able to do it by yourself. Now, you can do it by yourself. Certainly, there's books and resources out there for everything. But somebody who really knows what they're doing. If you walk into a good therapist's office, even if you don't know exactly why you're walking in it, first, the words are going to start to form around what it is that you're doing there. And we might as well jump into the topic of what do you look for when you go to a therapist. And one of the things you look for is during those first one or two sessions, do you come away with the sense that, okay, you got a clearer sense now of what the challenge is. And you have somebody who's aligned with you and helping you get over whatever it is that you're struggling with there. So when you say aligned with what the challenge is, unpack that, like with the individual goal that someone wants to accomplish in their life or what they're up against that they don't know how to solve, like break apart challenge a little bit. That a lot of times when people come to therapy in individual therapy, can you work more with groups? I work exclusively with individuals. And a lot of times people will come in, whether they're coming in individually or as a couple. And they don't know exactly what it is, but they know that something is not working. Something's not firing on all cylinders. And the first challenge is to start to build some words around that so that you can actually put a handle on it and say, okay, this is the pattern that I'm struggling with here. And this is, you know, eventually we want to get to the point where you can say, this is the part that belongs to me, this is the part that doesn't belong to me and the part that belongs to me, I'm going to go after it like a pit bull. I'm going to tackle this thing and I'm going to build some options for myself. Do you see it working differently in couples counseling, couples therapy? As far as what, what do you see? In terms of like setting a goal up front. Oh, by all means, I think that's one thing that would definitely be a challenge I would lay ahead for anybody in engaging in therapy is being able to really think about what do I want to accomplish. And if you're, that would be one thing as you discern, if you, if you want to work with a certain therapist, it would be are they one who works with goals and wants you to move from point A to point B? I think a lot of times guys won't want to enter into therapy because you know, you think about this endless loop of how are you feeling, what's going on, tell me your story, whatever it is without having a really significant goal. And I think yeah, definitely working with couples, you know, what do you want to accomplish? Where do you want to, you know, when will we know when therapy is done? I think that's a really profound question that most therapists don't ask and they don't pay attention to this is when it's done. So we have, you know, an idea of here's when we're done. We're able to do five sessions, eight sessions, you know, whatever, but we know when we've made it to the goal that you've gotten. So yes, for sure. Yeah, I like what you said about taking the therapeutic process and sort of making it something that you can kind of put your hands on because I think there's this image in popular culture, like for example, the Sopranos, you know, there's Tony Soprano going into a therapist's office and manipulating that whole situation and it sort of was this cultural entry of therapy into the cultural conversation, but it was very nebulous. It wasn't really well-defined where this is what I hope to achieve and this is what I want to get out of it. It was just like I'm just here to talk about my issues and then it totally, it didn't show what therapy is really about and created sort of the wrong impression for a lot of men who walked away thinking that, oh, this is what therapy is and it's kind of nothing, right? It's a chance to take advantage or something like that. Well, I'm going to jump in there because yeah, there is a place for, we're going to set some specific goals and we're going to try to get there, but then there's also a place for therapy that is more open-ended like Dr. Melfi, you know, and so a lot of intensity happened between Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi and it's not, I'm not saying it's a great example of great therapy, but that open-ended of the man going in and saying, I don't really know what's going on. The ducks are bothering me. I, you know, I can't really wrap my head around this. I need you to help me put some words to it. That's where it started with them, if I recall correctly and unfolded over a long period of time where she was just helping him. She was being manipulated by him, but she was also helping him put words to his experience and helping him see some things that she knew he was seeing but wasn't acknowledging like his mother trying to off him, for example. She saw it before he did and that made him furious, but that's the sort of thing that good therapy can also do, which is just let's look at what's going on and put words to it. So it's kind of this room for both. There's like, well, this is what I hope to achieve and also I don't really know why I'm here, but I need to talk to somebody about what's going on. Yeah, and a lot of the work I've done has been very goal-oriented. Like I need to know how to ride an elevator because it's really interfering with my life. So there's a specific goal and we have a very specific way of attacking that, but there's other ways to work too. And I think, Will, I was kind of thinking, kind of pushing the goal because I totally am with Sean, there are times when there's times when it's important to let this out and talk it through and let the stuff that's been packing in my life for so long, I need to unpack it and let it and tell my story and maybe there wouldn't be a specific goal or outcome that I'm looking for. But I think the biggest thing that I'm, that why I'm pushing the whole idea of goal or even saying that is there's a really significant level of hesitancy for men to move into therapy because we think it'll just be this endless loop. And I think being able to, especially as you go into it going, I have a little bit of, not a little bit, you have a lot of authority as you move into the therapeutic process to be able to guide it how you want it to go. And if you don't want it to be something that is just an endless loop of talking about stuff and you want it to be something that's more goal-oriented, you have the capability of making that happen. And so I think that's why I was kind of pushing in on that, but I'm totally with Sean as well. Yeah, there's sort of like a tension of opposites where you could have sort of a goal-oriented approach to it and that's totally valid where you can also have just kind of an open-ended approach and there can be room for both. There can be like some days maybe more goal-oriented, like in my therapeutic process there were some days where I was dealing with a specific thing and then there were other days where I was just like, I'm just going to take this apart and just kind of riff for a while until the thing that comes up that I'm really dealing with. And so you kind of have to hold that tension of opposites. Like it can be this, but it can also be this and there needs to be room for both. So since we're on the subject, Tony Soprano saw a female therapist and Sean, you and I had talked about this before the panel about whether men should see female therapists or not. This seems like a good place to jump in. You know, the therapeutic profession is heavily female. Should men be seeing female therapists or should they be looking only for male therapists? Or both? Yeah, that's a tough question because the profession, excuse me, the profession is so dominated by not just women, but dominated by feminist ideology. And so to answer the question, I guess you really have to back up and ask, what is good therapy? How do you identify a good therapist and then how do you weed out the ideologues because that unfortunately is an extra challenge for men that you need to make sure you're working with somebody who isn't trying to push something on you and we have organizations like the American Psychological Association that is openly instructing psychology students to push a political agenda on their patients basically and it's just unbelievably unethical. But all that aside, should a man see a female therapist? Yeah, it depends. If part of what you're struggling with is that you have the same old experiences with women over and over and over. Maybe women have never worked out well from you starting with the ones that you grew up around. And if you think of the therapeutic relationship as a relationship, then one of the things that's going to happen is the patterns that you have been enacting out in the world are going to show up in the therapy room. And if those patterns center on women, then okay, it's going to show up and if it shows up with a man, that's fine, a man's going to be able to identify it. But if it shows up with a woman and it shows up with a woman who is number one skilled and regards herself as someone who has pride in her skill set in her profession and number two is actually doing the job and not trying to push an agenda, which I guess would fall on her skills. Then when that pattern shows up in the therapy room, that's where the goal is. That's where she'll be able to say, all right, I see something happening here. Do you see something happening here? Let's put it on the microscope and check it out. And for that to be able to happen with a woman might be magic for that guy. You concur with that, sounds like? Well, to a degree, yes. No, with what Sean's talking about, if this woman has that skill set, not a problem. I'm just questioning, I would question which women have a skill set to do that. Which therapists in general have it? Because we were talking earlier about how so many in the men, how so many men in the profession have been feminized in. As well. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go ahead. And so, no, but it's also, so I agree. And that's just part of the vetting process of a therapist. But as far as I think generally, and gosh, generally a man, most of us wrestle with the whole idea of in our lives putting women in a position to where they're the golden-haired goddess or they're on a pedestal or they're the one that provides us with our identity and our well-being and my value and they knight us with our manhood. And so we have given women that space to give us this. I mean, this is a big part of the No More Mr. Nice Guy with Dr. Robert Glover, the whole idea of external validation where I don't have a strong sense of self so I need something outside of me to be able to provide that for me. And many of us, if not most of us, have looked to women to be able to provide that for us. And so when we do have a female therapist, it's like she is and she represents that golden-haired goddess oftentimes. And so it's like that becomes a problem. And so I think, so my challenge would be, yes, if you can find a therapist, and this is what's so hard because, like we said, so many therapists are women now and it's really hard to find a good male therapist anyway. And so if you, but if you're, gosh, you'd really have to check yourself is what I'm looking for is validation from a woman and therefore that's why I'm choosing a female therapist. That's going to be a massive problem and it'll be really difficult to deal with that problem because trust me that problem of having that external validation and needing that from a woman is a primary problem that you need to be able to overcome. And the question would be, can I do that with a female therapist? Like, yeah, she's a good therapist. She's going to pick up on that like that and she's going to be able to help you notice it. She's a bad therapist. She's just going to get drawn into your old pattern. Right into it. You know, I'd given some thought to this and I had seen female therapists for many years and had never made any progress. I saw a male therapist and made very rapid progress and I had landed on the side of, okay, I think men should see male therapists and women should see female therapists. But listening to you guys talk, I can sort of see that, you know, especially considering the sociopolitical situation in the country and in the therapeutic profession that maybe the priority shouldn't be on the sex of the therapist but the quality and the skill of the therapist. And if you can find a good therapist, go to see that good therapist and ignore everything else because finding a skilled therapist will be, let's say, sympathetic to men is an increasing challenge. And if you find whichever sex they are, go for that one. And I would say there's a... Because we're kind of talking about a therapist who's going to be in working on a pretty significant part of your life. And they're, trust me, I know a lot of really competent female therapists. I work with a number of them. There's a lot of amazing women therapists. I'm not going to say that's not the case. But if you're working with trauma and let's say you need to do a season of EMDR or something like that, if it's something that is a season of something, I think that's totally, totally fair to be able to pursue a female therapist. But like I said, if it's that core issue of my identity and what I believe about myself, then I'd really do my best to try and find a good male therapist for sure. Well, so let's go into how... Now I'm going to ask the hard question of the day. How can someone find a good therapist and how can someone find a good male therapist? And you could take either of those questions or both. We'll kick it over to Sean. Okay, I need a minute to think about this because this is a really tough question. It's almost two questions. How do you find a good therapist? And then how do you find one that hasn't been poisoned by ideology, which unfortunately, I think it's one of the biggest problems in the profession right now. And I think one of the ways to start... I mean, there's the inner that that will help you find people in your neighborhood to see. But then I think really the way to find that good therapist is to sit through a session and observe them. And there are some things you should look for. There are a few questions you should ask. I don't think that interrogating the therapist is going to get you very far because it's better to watch what they do and how they do it. There's one question that I think everybody should be asking right now when they go to see a therapist and that is a question. What social or political issues do you think it is important to discuss with your clients? And it's a trick question, of course, because the answer is none. I mean, I work for you and I'm here to work on your agenda. If there's any other answer than that, then I mean, just walk out at that moment. But then beyond that, looking at that first session and just getting a sense of, okay, how do I feel when I walk out here? Do I feel, am I walking out feeling like I have a better sense of where I'm going? Is the problem contained a little bit better? And it may take a long time to, well, it shouldn't take too long to define the problem. It may take more than one session, but really watching the person in that first session and seeing what they're focused on, are they focused on trying to identify the problem? Maybe you've already identified the problem. So then are they focused on trying to understand that problem? That's what you should be walking out, the sense that, yeah, this person's on my side and they understand what I'm trying to accomplish. And at least so far, it feels like they have the skill to get me a little bit further down the road. So now for Ken, so there's a couple of questions. I want you to tag on to that, like the questions that a patient or a client should be asking a therapist in the first session, but also if you could comment after that about how to even find one like in the phone book or on the internet or something like that, like what the actual, I guess you might say, technical process of finding a person would be. But after you answer the question of like, once you get into the office or even before, you know, once you're in email or something like that, how does that whole process go? Let's break that down. Yeah, it's really, really in, gosh, I love Sean's questions, you know, those are really, really important. I think the, because there's a number of ways that you can find a therapist in your neighborhood, psychology today and some other categories or online things that really help you to be able to find somebody, it always starts with either an email or a phone call or that type of thing. I think probably the most important thing, besides what Sean was talking about, because it's really important to vet this person. Is this person a person who's going to respect me as a man, respecting masculinity, not disrespecting me as a man, being willing to empower me as a man? I think that's a really significant question. What do you think about the concept of empowering men? I think, I'm all for it and great. But I think the most important part of this whole thing as you vet this person is listening to your internal intuition. Your gut is going to tell you the things, I mean Sean was kind of talking about going through a session and being able to listen and see and how do they move. Your intuitive is going to show you and tell you there's something going on here that's not quite right or there's something going on that's exactly what I need. Your gut's going to tell you exactly if this is the person that you want to work with. And so you really have to listen to your intuitive process as you're working through this, especially on the front end, if you feel like there's a red flag or there's something going on, then listen to that and go, what is that? Why do I hesitate or why do I not want to open up or why does this feel like I can't really trust this person? That's going to be a really important part of this process because you have to remember that you are the one that's in charge of the process. You don't have to hire this person. You can fire them after the first session or the second or the third session. You're in control of this. You don't have to lock in and say, okay, we're in it for six months. You can see, all right, this isn't working out for me because I don't feel like this is a good fit. That's a really important part of this whole thing, for sure, listening to your intuitive. Yeah, that first session should feel very different than talking to a friend or a bartender. And it should feel different in a good way. You should walk out feeling a little tired and you should walk out feeling pretty good. Can I say the tired thing? That concept of, yeah, you should feel tired. Trust me, the work that you're going to do in therapy, the work, it's emotional work and it will exhaust you. And it is something, it's really tough, exhausting work. And I think that's a great, like how Sean said that. You should feel a level of exhaustion because if you've done good work, you're going to feel something heavy as you move out of the office that day. So I think I want to find a way to draw a distinction or put some nuance into, so a man goes into a therapist's office and how to differentiate between when his intuition is telling him that something is off versus his own, perhaps natural instinct to avoid doing the work, right? Because I can imagine a man getting into a situation being like telling himself that something is off when in fact he's just trying to avoid confronting something within himself. How can a man know whether that is a true instinct? Yeah, that's interesting because like Sean just used the illustration of a man or a person needing work to be able, or help to be able to go on an elevator. And it's the same thing. It's like when you go into therapy, the thing about it is, is you are going to be required to open up. You're going to have to tell your story. You're going to have to reveal your fears. You're going to have to talk about what's really going on inside. And so it's equally, if not as fearful as anything you've ever experienced in your life. Like if I'm fearful of going on an elevator or an airplane or spiders or whatever, you're going to feel it. And so that's a really good question, Will, because it's like you're going to feel the need to close off or oh my gosh, I'm opening up too much or I don't want to do this or this feels dangerous. But man, that is good because it's like the difference between the two of listening to your gut and listening to what's going on with your fear, it's not far off. And so you're not, and it's not comfortable. And so, man, I don't know how to answer that because it's like, it's so close. That's a great question. Yeah, John. I think whenever you have something like that where you're ambivalent, the answer, usually a useful answer is collect more data. Give yourself permission to not have to answer this question right now. I'm going to collect a little more data. I'm going to check it out and then maybe it starts to clarify for me. So give it some time to kind of process. Yeah, don't make a call right away. Yeah. So this brings up the question you mentioned, openness. This brings up, and we were talking about this at lunch, the question of vulnerability, both being vulnerable and the word vulnerability itself as something that sort of has a kind of charge around it. Like there's nothing directionally wrong with the word, let's say, but the way that it's kind of used doesn't serve men. So I wonder if we can just unpack that a little bit because it seems like it's being misused in so many ways. Yeah, there's no doubt it's been misused and it's been misused as if a man is vulnerable, then he's weak, a man is feminine or a man is submissive. All those types of words kind of come up with the word vulnerability. I like to think of it as it's very close to the word courage. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to be open and vulnerable. And so courage is not a problem when we talk about masculine values or virtues. Courage is always one of the highest values or virtues. And so when we go to open ourselves up, it takes a hell of a lot of courage to be able to go to that space that is scary as hell that I don't know what to do with that opens myself up to massive amounts of uncertainty and it's something I've hidden away and I've talked away and I don't want to look at. And it's scary and it takes a hell of a lot of courage to be able to do that. And I would call that vulnerability, but to your point, vulnerability feels like a really dangerous word because I'm like opening myself up to be killed or to be harmed or whatever. And that's what it feels like. I think when you do open yourself up and start telling your story about what's really going on with another human being, it feels like that. It feels dangerous. It feels like, what the hell am I going to, what's going to happen here? What, what's, but to be able to really deal with your shit, you got to open it up and go, what is in here? Because every one of us are carrying a hell of a lot of stuff. And so in order to be able to process it and to be able to think about what is this? What is my pain? What is my trauma? What is the things that I'm afraid of? Why am I anxious about this? Whatever it is, you have to go into that space and it takes a lot of courage to go there. Sean? About vulnerability? Yeah. I was thinking a little earlier today that in all my, 20 years I've been doing this in one form or another longer than that actually, I don't think the word vulnerable has ever come up in any meaningful way in my career unless it's talking about an army's vulnerability or something. But never in this sense, it's just kind of an irrelevant word as far as I'm concerned. We're here to do some work and the work's not going to be easy, so are you up for the job or not? That's all there is. That's great. Even saying the word vulnerability, I'm kind of aware of how heavily politicized how that word is essentially used as a weapon now. Like men need to be more vulnerable and they're not saying it. People who say things like that, they're not necessarily saying it in a way that's like, no, this is to benefit men. It's actually, the feeling is if it's to weaken men. It's like, maybe we could set that word aside and come up with our own language about how men can best take advantage of openness and bring the tactical virtues of, like you said, courage. Well, there's an honor and openness as well. Like, no, this is honorable for me to go and deal with my shit. You know, this will help me show up better as a man. Help me be more honorable. Help me be more masterful in my life. And certainly it takes strength. So maybe there's a way to frame it. It's like, no, this is a very masculine pursuit to deal with inner work and to fight those inner battles, to set aside the word vulnerability altogether. Ken, I think I heard you say something earlier today. Correct me if I'm wrong, but when a woman, when a wife is asking a husband, a significant other is asking her man to be more vulnerable. What she's actually asking for is, we just talk to me. Just tell me what the hell is going on inside of you. But we hear it as, bear your belly and say that I can gut you. And that is some guy's experience. Exactly, exactly. But it is, she just wants to know, what are you feeling right now? You know, what are you experiencing today? That's all she wants. And even that, but even that, this is what I'm feeling. This is what happened today. It's, this is what I want. Just the simple things. Even that is vulnerable, because what is she going to do with that? It's an open openness, but it is. It's, what is she going to do with it? This, so this openness, vulnerability, you mentioned intuition. I find that a lot of men, and this was certainly my experience for a long time, didn't really have a good sense of what was going on in them beneath the level of the neck. You know, it's like, what's going on in this? It's kind of a big, it's either, I'm either cut off from it or it's either a big soup of things that I can't separate, one from the other and intuition and feeling, kind of go together with that. And how can, and Sean, I know you and I have talked about the nature of intuition. How can men begin taking apart the things that are actually going on in their body in terms of emotions and feelings to develop the language to have these conversations? I think one of the things that's really helpful with guys regarding intuition is to just think of it as nonverbal information processing. And I got this idea from a paper that was written in 2000 by a researcher, kind of a rock star researcher named Matthew Lieberman. And he talked about that that is essentially what it is, that we have lots of things bubbling in our mind, our brains all the time. The brain is a modular organ and we have parts that are verbal and we have parts that are nonverbal. And the parts that are nonverbal are still noticing things because information is bubbling up through the reticular system and some of it's being filtered out and some of it isn't. But some of it gets filtered into nonverbal parts of the brains, being very sloppy in my language here, but those nonverbal parts of the brain are going to speak to us nonverbally. So we're going to have an increased heart rate. We're going to have butterflies in our stomach or whatever it is. But this is a nice scientific, accurate way to think about what intuition is. It takes the mysticism out of it for anyone who's uncomfortable with mysticism. If you like the mysticism, you can add that back in. But you can start with the scientific basis of, this is what it is. This is how it works. You can listen to it or you can not listen to it. Ken? No. You get to follow that. I'm not taking that one. That's this pretty much good stuff in there. No, I just, the concept of being an integrated man comes to mind. Yeah. So so many of us are so stuck in our head and we're just here. We think about it. We process stuff. We get the analysis paralysis. And like you said, the neck down becomes fairly irrelevant where we're not listening to this. And so whether it, you know, I love the idea, Sean, you're talking about that nonverbal, all the language that comes to us nonverbally from our body or from our intuition or instinctive or even you think about a good humor comes from underneath and then comes out. And there's so many things that are going on under the neck, below the neck that are just our spirit, our heart or, you know, the things that are our soul and different things down here that we're not integrated with. We're not connected with. And I think that's probably one of the most profound parts of therapy to me is reconnecting a man with himself. And I think that's a really, really significant part of the therapeutic work is so many of us are disconnected from ourselves. And so being able to reconnect, you know, intuitively and all the different categories that we have, our emotions are a really big part of it that we're disconnected with. And I think that's a big deal. But I'm trying to connect that with what Sean just said. I don't know how. No, I see what you're saying. I mean, it's learning to, like we're used to thinking thoughts in our head in language about our lives or whatever's going on in front of us. And I like the way that you put it, Sean, where there's information, you know, coming up from the nonverbal parts of the body, essentially, and it filters into the nonverbal parts of the brain that then communicates with us nonverbally. I really like that image because it makes sense. Like, why? Something's happening with my sense over here. It's intuition. My body is somehow picking up information that I can't quite put words to, but I'm still perceiving it in a nonverbal kind of way. And learning to listen, that seems quite easy to do once you know that that's what's going on, your body interpreting language through the mechanism of your brain, I guess you might say. There was this American, I guess you'd call him a psychologist, philosopher, his name was William James, and he came up with this theory of emotion. It's called the James Lang, James Lang, two different people, theory of emotion. And his idea was that not that we're running because we're scared, but we're scared because we're running, meaning that we see ourselves doing something physically and then we respond to it emotionally. And for a long time, psychology kind of poo-pooed that, I thought it was kind of a silly notion, but there's been some research that has, compelling research that has come out and said, it's really, it's a two-way street. That William James was correct that yes, we are scared because we're running and we're running because we're scared. It's a two-way street. And so as information is coming in through your senses, parts of your brain are gonna activate parts of your body. And then other parts of your brain are gonna notice that your body's activated and there's these two-way streets going all over the place. And that's where you get the choice because all of this stuff is going on, all of this two-way information between your brain and your body is going on, you can listen to it or you can ignore it. Now most guys who are disconnected from it, like my guy was, they come by it honestly because if you're raised around traditional men and something happens to you, they're gonna tell you to rub some dirt on it and keep going, which is an unbelievably important skill to have. We just have to make sure that we don't lose the other side of it, which is that, yeah, we're gonna rub some dirt on it, but we're also going to pay attention to everything that's going on to the best we can. What I think is really interesting is I know that you're very well-versed in the clinical literature, scientific clinical literature. And Ken, you and I have talked a lot about Christianity and faith and so I'm dealing with that duality and I really wanna get into that, but before we get there, you've talked about traditional masculinity rub dirt on and that just makes me think of the whole thing that's going on with the APA that I feel like we have to talk about first because it's kind of the water that we're swimming in and before we can get to the science and faith conversation, I just wanna talk about the APA and what it's trying to do to traditional masculinity while we're here and then we'll move on to other more interesting subjects, I guess. More interesting. I mean, that's a big deal. It's unpacking to see the expression of things that are going on throughout our culture and the way that it's taking a unique expression within the APA. And so it's interesting in the expression of it, but for what it is, it's like, oh, that again? So let's just talk about it now and let them go away. A little context. The APA has been overtaken by political ideology. I guess you'd call it political feminism, essentially. And a couple of years ago, they put out these guidelines for working with boys and men and I think a reasonable assessment of those... Wait a second. I think you need to say, what is APA? Oh, yeah, that's important. The American Psychological Association. Thank you. And they are, what are they? They are not a governing body per se, they are a professional organization. And the reason they have clout as a professional organization is that they are the go-to organization for accreditation. So if you have a training program for shrinks and you want your students to be taken seriously in the marketplace, you will seek APA accreditation. That's ultimately where their power lies. And they wield a tremendous amount of power because of that. And they also are influential legislatively and within the states. So thank you, that's the APA. They periodically put out these treatment guidelines and most of them are frankly kind of boring. They're not very interesting, like treatment guidelines for schizophrenia. Here's what the, they'll say, here's what the current thinking is on how schizophrenia operates and here are the standards that psychologists should be striving for in treating this thing. And you'll have treatment guidelines for all kinds of things. Every once in a while, treatment guidelines for all kinds of conditions in particular situations. Every once in a while, they will veer into a more political slant where they will have treatment guidelines for working with girls and women. Treatment guidelines for working with this demographic group or that demographic group. And a few years ago, they came up with the guidelines for working with boys and men. And these guidelines, I think a fair assessment of them is that there are some good points in the guidelines. For example, they acknowledge the importance of fatherhood and they acknowledge that children do better when they have fathers. So that was, I don't know if that was a painful admission for them or not, but they said it. Primarily these guidelines were a way of advancing feminist ideology in the clinic. And so what was the question? I thought... I'll just help men understand what the APA guidelines are, what their intentions are, how the whole thing works that they're trying to do through the therapeutic professions. Right. So there's this line that they became infamous for. And it wasn't in the guidelines. It was in the APA's article about the guidelines in the APA monitor. And they said that traditional masculinity marked by, I'm going to get these out of order, but there's stoicism, competitiveness, aggression, dominance. That's what you get the idea. That they are inherently bad. That they are... What was the exact phrasing? That they are... Competition. Competition. Yes. Thank you. That these are on the whole harmful. Rather than saying, okay, something like stoicism, which we're just talking about, stoicism, a little boy gets hurt, his dad says, respond dirt on it. What that man is teaching that son is, right now there's a job to do and I need you to manage your emotions. And that obviously can be taken too far. That can degenerate into all kinds of problems like alcoholism, compulsive gambling, you name it. But there's this complete failure to recognize that there's a positive side to stoicism and competitive and aggression. And... What were the other ones? I don't know. Whatever they are. Dominance. Yeah. There's a positive side and a negative side. They only see the negative and if you're being stoic or competitive or aggressive or any of these things, you are toxically masculine and you are... You're mentally ill, basically. I don't think that's overstating it. And it's the therapist's work to remove those categories. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Out of your life. We have to fix you. We have to fix you. Yeah. You cannot be so stoic. Squeeze that masculinity out of you. Make you obedient. Domesticated. Domesticated. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, what you guys are saying, you're joking about it, but this is very real. They're a therapist that do this. They take this as their professional obligation to squeeze the masculinity of those five characteristics out of men in the office, in the therapeutic process that they think that's their job. One of the primary authors of the guidelines said in this monitor piece about the guidelines, he said, if we can change men, we can change the world. Meaning, I take that to mean, one man at a time, they're going to domesticate us and they're going to change the world into I don't know what his vision of the world is. Right. It's not my vision. I can tell you that. But I would totally agree if we can change men, we can change the world. Yeah, the principle is valid, but like maybe the way you're doing it, not so much. Not so much. Well, so... Hey, man. It's Anthony Johnson here, founder of 21 Studios. I appreciate your time watching the first half of that episode of the Right Man Group, starring Will Spencer, the host and Ken Curry, the therapist and Sean Smith, the psychologist. The second half is even better and if you want to watch the full video early before YouTube, you can go to 21University.com. Link in the description directly to the episode. You can watch it there for free with a free 30-day trial. You can also get a free trial with our app on the iPhone and Android app stores. Just go to the app store and search 21University. It'll pull right up. Now, if you just want the audio, the full audio episode, the other 45 minutes of this episode, you can actually get that on our new locals for fans at 21Studios. Just go to 21Studios.locals.com and the full audio is posted there. 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