 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. I'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, just 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 I'll 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. And Sean? Therapy is about creating options. It's always expanding your behavior repertoire so that you're not driven by old autopilot behaviors and putting words to it is a big piece of understanding the patterns that you're repeating in your life and then creating some options around it. And 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've got a clear 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 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, 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 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? In terms of setting a goal up front. Oh, by all means. 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 that would be one thing as you discern 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 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 definitely working with couples what do you want to accomplish? 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 an idea of here's when we're done. We're able to do five sessions, eight sessions, 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. 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. It's a chance to take advantage or something like that. Well, I'm going to jump in there and 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. 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 can't really wrap my head around this. I need you to help me put some words to it. That's where it started directly 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 with words to it. So it's kind of this room for both. It'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 write 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 yeah 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 time when there's times when it's just 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 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'm just 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 can 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 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 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 talked about this before the panel about whether men should see female therapists or not and 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? 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 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 a someone who has pride in her skill set in a profession and number two is actually doing the job and not trying to push an agenda which I guess would fall under 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 alright 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 okay 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 therapist in general have because we were talking earlier about how so many in the men so many men in the profession have been feminized and 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 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 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 now she's a good therapist she's going to pick up on that like fat and she's going to be able to help you notice it she's a bad therapist she's 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 and I 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 like go for that one and I would say there's because this is we're kind of talking about a therapist who's going to be in working on a pretty significant part of your life and 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 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 it's something that is a season of something I think that's 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 you find a good male therapist and you can take either of those questions or both we'll kick it over to Sean okay I need to think about this because this is a really tough question how do you 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 will help you find people in your neighborhood 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's some there are a few questions you should ask I don't think that interrogating you 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 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 that's great then beyond that looking at that first session and just getting a sense of okay I'm 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 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 is a 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 questions I want you to tag on to that like the questions that you know a patient or a client should be asking a therapist in the first session but also you know 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 like 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 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 and gosh I love Sean's questions you know the 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 that are 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 that's a really significant question what do you think about the concept of empowering men I think they go I'm all for it and great but I think the most important part of this whole thing as you 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 you know going through a session and being able to listen and see and how do they move your 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 guts 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 you know if you if you feel like there's a red flag or there's something going on then listen to that and go hmm what is that why do I hesitate or why do I not want to open up or why is 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 you can say alright this isn't working out for me because I don't feel like this is a good fit it'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 I'll just say the tired thing that 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 man 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 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 it's interesting because like you know Sean just used the illustration of a man having a person needing you know needing work to be 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 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 helpful 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 well because it's like you're going to feel the need to close off 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 useful answers 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 don't make a call right away 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 there's nothing directionally wrong 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 what to do with it opens myself up to massive amounts of uncertainty and it's something I 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 gonna what's gonna happen here 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 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 I was thinking a little earlier today 20 years I've been doing this in one form 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 is not going to be easy so are you up for the job or not that's all there is Even saying the word vulnerability I'm kind of aware of how heavily politicized how that word is essentially used as a weapon now 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 the feeling is if it's to weaken men 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 this is honorable for me to go and deal with my shit this will help me show up better as a man in real 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 the inner work and to fight those inner battles to set aside the word vulnerability all together 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 you just talk to me tell me what the hell is going on inside of you but we hear it as so 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 what happened today 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 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 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 you know 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 we're going to find 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 brain being very sloppy in my language here but those nonverbal parts of the brain are going to speak to us nonverbally 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 and this is how it works you can listen to it or you can not listen to it Ken? You get to follow that I'm not taking that one the concept of being an integrated man comes to mind 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 I love the idea Sean you're talking about that nonverbal all the language that comes to us from our body or from our intuition or instinctive or even you think about a good humor comes from underneath and 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 are 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 I see what you're saying I mean it's learning to 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 coming up from the nonverbal parts from the body essentially and it filters into the nonverbal parts of the brain that then communicates in a language 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 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 just 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 and 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 going to activate parts of your body and then other parts of your brain are going to notice that your body is activated and there's these two-way streets going all over the place and that's where 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 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 going to 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 going to rub some dirt on it but we're also going to pay attention to everything that's going on to the best we can you know 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 want to get into that but before we get there you've talked about you know 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 the science and faith conversation I just want to talk about the APA traditional masculinity you know while we're here and then we'll move on to other more interesting subjects I guess more interesting you know 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 like it's like oh that again you know so let's let's just talk about it now and you know let them go away the text the APA has been overtaken by political ideology I guess you call it radical feminism essentially and a couple years ago they put out these guidelines we're 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 the American Psychological Association thank you and they are 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 to 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 most of them are frankly kind of boring like they're not very interesting like treatment guidelines for schizophrenia 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 the knowledge 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 just said help men understand what the APA guidelines are what their intentions are how the whole thing works 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 their 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 we were just talking about stoicism little boy gets hurt his dad says rest on 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 alcohol and the pulse of gambling you name it but there's there's this complete failure to recognize that there's a positive side to stoicism and competitive and aggression and whatever the other ones 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 a 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 out of your life we have to fix you we have to fix you you cannot be so stoic squeeze that masculinity out yeah make you obedient domesticated domesticated absolutely I mean what you guys are saying you're joking about 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 but there is a way and Sean you explain this to me when we had talked previously how they're using those characteristics specifically to achieve their goals maybe you can just sort of share that with a man because I found that to be the most like kind of thing what did I say I might have been drunk at the time I might have both been so you were saying that the way that the guidelines are framed is that men need to use stoicism aggression competitiveness and dominance to undermine which are the core tenets of masculinity to undermine masculinity itself so it's supposed to take these characteristics and apply them for the purposes of destroying masculinity yeah yeah what you said yeah that's just Sean say it in your words yeah you said he said I think you said well I would just be repeating what you said you can do that okay no and just kind of you must see this this must be real with people in your professional network or therapists that you know casually like they do they actually believe this that's that's the part that I want to you know tie together no okay there there is this can tell me if you agree there's a pretty clear bright line between the academic and administrative side of psychology which would be professors and people who want to be in the APA and tell other people what to and then just nuts and bolts clinicians like me a big difference and I know so many women clinicians who are really good clinicians they don't buy into this and the reason they don't buy into this is because you're dealing with human beings on a day to day basis and when you're sitting across from man who's telling you that he's doing the best he can in his marriage and here's what he's trying here's what's here's where he's failing and you're actually seeing a three dimensional human being instead of a cardboard cut out defined by some ideology it's very hard to buy into an ideology that turns men into two dimensional creatures so there's this disconnect between the sort of the high level guidelines and the on the ground most practitioners now when you get into big agencies like I can use prisons because I was in prison I was in the prison so I worked in the prison system there's anything wrong with being in the prison system help some guys but when you get into that kind of agency work then you encounter these administrative bureaucratic types who want to impose this ideology because the kind of person who want who aspires to be at the top of the bureaucracy is the kind of person that's going to do these bureaucratic things and try to lord it over people and they have their ideology and they have succeeded in that bureaucracy because they have the correct ideology so they're going to make sure that the people they're supervising are pushing it onto their patients so in the in the setting where you have men who are potentially the most vulnerable the most in need they're the ones most likely to be receiving these these guidelines and the impact of that has always been the case hasn't it throughout time men who are the most vulnerable of the ones wow Ken is this something that you see in your professional networks and obviously not in your practice but in the therapist that you know so the people therapists specifically dealing with the guidelines and rejecting them accepting them you know yeah I think I think when you know Sean use the term nuts and bolts or whether you're a pragmatist where you're trying to find what works because you're wanting to help people I think most people who are therapists men are who they are they actually have a heart and they want to help individuals or families or couples to be able to succeed I think that's kind of a given it's a it's a good thing and I so I think I do think there's a number of people that are bought into the ideology but I think for the vast majority of people they're just wanting to find out how can we actually help people grow and help people succeed and help people overcome their difficulties I think that's probably it so I think the whole nuts and bolts thing is real because it's like the ideologies that the story the narrative that's being told about us as men is so much bunk it's total BS it's ridiculously wrong and it totally you know the whole thing of you know that we're all that is just the whole toxic thing I mean it's just ridiculously so wrong it's such a lie it's a false narrative it's not the truth and so I think when when people are actually wanting to make a difference they can't listen to that stuff they have to they realize that there's something else going on I mean it's the same thing as you see with the pickup artist world where they go you know women actually like strong men you know they're actually attracted to a confident individual how about that you know and so it's like they actually like a man who has these toxic masculinity attributes and so it's and so therapists are the same way they're finding out okay what is the thing that actually works for a lot of them so I want to I want to introduce some nuance and maybe push a little bit so the APA guidelines frame masculinity as the problem we here at the 21 convention red man group and many men in this space regard masculinity as the solution are there therapists that are outside of present company accepted that are recognizing masculinity as the solution because it's one thing to say I won't demonize masculinity it's one thing for a therapist say no masculinity is fine it's another thing for a therapist man or woman to say no masculinity is restorative curative and to recognize that are there therapists present companies there are yes okay please more share well one one man that comes to mind is a guy named John Berry he's out of the UK and he's very much saying what you're saying that things are out of balance he's not anti women anymore than we are anti there's a difference between pro men and anti women absolutely not zero some and he's saying that things have gotten out of balance in our profession things have gotten out of balance in the legal profession and we need to restore some of the balance and he's very he's put out a couple of great handbooks and a handbook is a collection of research articles essentially okay he's put out a couple of great books that look at the benefits of masculinity and how necessary it is and I don't know why that should be controversial and you know somebody put out a handbook on why feminine femininity is a necessary force in humanity that would not be controversial but anyway there's him and I'm going to draw blanks on other names but they are out there mm-hmm and you know some as well yes but I'm nothing's coming to mind mm-hmm well that's I mean that's that's really great to hear because it's because it would seem that so many institutions and you know with the API guidelines included that so many institutions are captured right that there's just monolithically captured with a with a or other forms of ideology but it sounds to me what you're describing is maybe things aren't quite so aren't quite so monolithic within the profession itself within the institution itself that maybe there are some that regard masculinity as toxic or destructive and others who regard no this is actually a solution and there's some conflict going on behind the scenes which I think is fundamentally a good thing that tension versus some sort of monolithic belief yeah things are rarely as bad as they look until they're 100% worse than they look then yeah okay not my thought came to the whole idea of the concept of mother nature bats last you know when it really comes down to it what is natural you know what what do we as humans actually kind of like what I was saying when it comes down to a feminine woman she wants naturally she wants a competent confident strong man in her life and so you think about that okay why would why would that be a natural movement of a feminine woman it's because nature is inside of us and all of us we're feeling the natural movement of masculinity inside our soul inside our body inside our instinctive that's basically saying this is what I want to be and I think the culture is kind of I mean there's so many crazy things that are culture the narratives and the stories that are being told that are just you're going that's insane when all the stories have been told and all the stuff has been done when it really comes down to it nature is going to bat last and nature is going to be shining bright and so it's like gosh I don't know what I'm saying with that no it's brilliant well I mean you're kind of reading my no no you're actually you're actually reading my mind because you know we're talking about men's natures masculinity being restorative the sort of conflict that's brewing in culture between different ideologies and I'm thinking here we are at the 21 convention you're having this discussion around men that are pursuing masculinity and here with a couple of therapists but you might not think would be part of this community but you are and so I wanted to get your perspective on the manosphere or the renaissance or the men's movement or whatever you want to call it what you guys see your roles maybe personally are or the role of therapists or the role of inner work because it seems like it's not something that's widely talked about but it's something that I think is really vital for men to confront as much as you know going to going to do hard things like go do hard shit and in the category of hard shit is therapy and that's something that needs to be done so I want to speak to the larger let's say men's movement community in the role that therapy could play okay I can bang I can start my role in this community I found my way into this community after with the tactical guide to women and that sort of introduced me to this community and that would have been around 2017-2018 and I've seen tremendous changes in the manosphere you know I guess everything evolves and changes but my role if I have a role in the man's sphere is simply to say hey here's what the research says and here's how you might use it in your life that's what the tactical guide to women was this conversation about therapy seems to me to be brand new and I know that that Anthony made that hat a while ago the one that says make therapy great again but the conversation that we're having right now I don't know that this conversation would have taken place two or three years ago no or even maybe a year ago but not certainly not two or three years ago because it seemed like back then it was the conversations we're dominated by some ideas about how women work and it seems like a lot of people said okay well now we got we got those ideas some of them we like some of them we don't but we're gonna move on and have different discussions so I don't know Ken what do you think? gosh so yeah so Sean you're a psychologist research you kind of come at it from a different angle I don't do research but no but you do read a hell of a lot of research you're really well read and that's what I really appreciate what you bring to the table where I bring something different to the table where as an LMFT with marriage and family it's more of a relational bent how do we relate not only with our women with our family with ourselves relating to myself and so I think the relationship category so I bring something different to that but I think being able to be in a space like this and have a voice that's really helpful because I think Sean you bring something really significant to the table and I know my voice of being able to talk about what are relationships and how do we actually do this and how do we actually strengthen ourselves internally and psychologically and emotionally I think are really powerful parts of becoming men who have a solid frame who have internal confidence and I think that's a really powerful part of this so I think that's what this whole discussion is all about whether it's about working out and doing well with our physicality or making a difference in our community or number of different things that Arthur's thing about art this morning was just profound about how that's such a significant part of our world and I think how men become a profound presence in our universe in our world, in our communities, in our families I think it's just a really significant thing and I appreciate the fact that that we're able to have a voice as therapists as you're a psychologist and being able to talk about these things I think it's really phenomenal that we're able to open it up to a number of different categories to be able to have the conversation about what it means to be a man and how we actually strengthen ourselves and empower ourselves as men it's just fascinated by it it's amazing a really natural broadening of the conversation from a lot of foundational principles like where can we take this maybe we can take it into therapy and families and faith and spirituality and some deeper ideas it seems like the possibilities have become almost endless kind of overnight in a way and it's so gutsy for anybody in this realm to be having this conversation because there is no reason any man should be trusting right now so this is an incredibly open-minded conversation I think you all would be congratulated Tony Anthony Johnson is certainly to be commended for bringing this up as a topic I agree I mean it's so vital for men to discover that again this is a form of this is an equally valid form of work for other kinds of work that you can do for self-improvement this holds just as much water if not more the progress that's possible became possible in my life after doing the work for a while led me here to this stage so I always like to invite men to consider walking down that road of therapy of inner work so that they can manifest the character and the man that they want to be and live the life that they want to lead and that's sometimes only possible in conversation so as the space has kind of expanded into new realms and I think the men's space is kind of going through a shift and new men are coming in as leaders like how do you suss out like who's a good leader to follow in a therapist's office we talked about it earlier but it's sort of in this men's space how do you suss out like who's authentic who might be a charlatan who might be taking advantage of you like what are some of the ways that men can look at a leader in this space and discern like okay should I follow this guy or not I think for me the category of setting you free probably determines that most significantly so if you're working with somebody you're reading about somebody you're reading their content you may be part of something that they're doing online if their intent is setting you free to do the best version of you to build the strength in you so that you can go and become and build and create your life and have a vision for creating the life that you want and doing that I think that's probably the number one thing but it seems like so many not so many there's only a few I think there's a lot of people you'll be involved with that want to do that go be strong go take care of yourself take care of business build your own business make things happen there's a lot of people like that the ones that kind of lock you in and hold you into an ideology and hold you into this little system and keep you in this locked into this those are the ones to really watch out for and that's whether it's kind of cultish or whatever I think that's an important thing just to distinguish if they're setting me free that's great if they're locking me into something that's not so great that's kind of how I'd say it I have a lot I want to say to that but I want to get Sean's take on as well yeah I would agree with that entirely if they're making their message about their ideology and of course the charlatans are always going to use the right language they're going to say I'm here to set you free but there's this little subtlety where it's about what I'm doing not what you're going to not your life and what you're doing and it's that me versus you and these guys talking about saving lives and I'm not talking about anyone in particular there's a lot of guys out there that are saying my system is saving lives and I think how how narcissistic is that because I get that comment occasionally because I've written some books and someone will sometimes write to me and say well your book saved my life and I take that for what it is which is somebody saying hey thanks it's a figure of speech it can't possibly be that I save my life I save their life for a couple reasons number one I've never written anything nearly profound enough to save anyone's life and neither has anyone that I know of but primarily let's say that they they mean it literally that they're actually saying your book saved my life just for the sake of our let's say that they're doing that the answer to that is no I'm sorry but you're wrong because the fact that you found something useful in my book means that you were looking for something in your book you would have found it somewhere else you saved your life because you took control over your problem you took ownership of it and you went out and you saw something and the guys that are out there saying things like I'm saving lives they're telling you that it's about me it's not about you that is such a good thing you're the one that's going to save your life you are the one that's going to do that that's such a good I love that shift and there's something to that in therapy as well when you sit down in the therapist's office the therapist isn't the one actually changing your life the therapist and at least in my experience the therapist is sort of a facilitator that allowed me to change my own life my own story the therapist didn't do anything to me just gave me the possibility to as we started out the conversation to retell the story that I was telling myself to tell it out loud for the first time and then consider the possibility giving myself options to retell it a different way but it wasn't the therapist being like you should tell the story this way I got to decide how I told the story for the first time there are very few people who get to say something like I saved a life and those people don't tend to actually say it like an emergency room doctor was talking about one recently that person the reason I think they can say I saved someone's life is because somebody comes in and that doctor is taking ownership and responsibility for that problem and that doctor is bearing the consequences of that problem there are very few professions therapists include although psychiatrists and psychologists are sometimes in that position where we have to take ownership of a problem but that's very rare unless you have a job that's specifically geared around that just something to be careful like the guru mentality it's like no no it's about it's about me exactly versus you the recipient of some information that's transformative in nature I want to talk about science versus faith or science and faith because I don't know that they're necessarily opposed to each other because I have the man of science and the man of faith and I just I want you guys to just duke it out so go duke it out this is awesome well no I mean what I think is really interesting about your characters I know you guys have been friends for a long time and you know as we said Sean you're really well versed in the clinical literature and your Twitter feed in addition to being absolutely savage everyone follow at Iron Shrink on Twitter he's great but in addition to the takedowns of the APA and the ongoing commentary you also reshare a lot of clinical literature and what you write about it demonstrates such a strong mastery in the way that I can get it as a casual reader like I can understand the way that you digest papers just in 280 characters or a thread or something like that and then Ken you and I had a conversation in depth about faith and Christianity and I think it's so interesting that you guys you know have been friends and you have these observations such different characters and I think that there's a lot in this space around science and the impact that it can have in our lives as men and how rational clinical data is important and also the importance of soul and faith in the life of a man so I just wanted to have that discussion for at least a couple minutes before maybe we opened up for questions I don't know what to ask you about that I know that's such a good question it's an interesting observation that you have Sean what are you going to say well I wonder if there's a similarity between us and like you say that I you noted that I post sometimes research and I'll phrase it in a way that I'm trying to distill what somebody else is because academics either they can't write or they feel compelled to write in a way that's inscrutable to most people and so I will try to distill things but I'm always wondering am I really understanding this or am I just really oversimplified and like I'm kind of a dumb guy that's commenting on an article and I'm never really certain to what degree I understand a paper that I'm reading and I wonder if you're the same way with spirituality that there's always a questioning and always a checking always that's one thing that I challenge my guys I just say question everything and that's what science does interesting that my type of faith is question everything question the narrative question the stories that we've been told and I think I don't think it was you I forget who we were talking about I think it was Jeff we were talking about Jesus and his parables and how every parable that he ever spoke created way more questions than answers and I think the whole idea of being a man who enjoys questions and it questions reality and questions the narrative that's actually science is what that's what science does is question the hypothesis well that's what religion does too and so here we are Will you're sitting there you want Sean and I to duke it out we're really good friends we respect each other greatly and I think that's what's fascinating about this whole thing is you've got people from all kinds of different what do you call it backgrounds traditions and but we're all here for the same exact reason we all want to empower men we want to make masculinity be something that is set free and we know that masculinity is the solution to a lot of problems and so I love this because it's like you're telling us to duke it out and I'm going we're not going to duke it out we're going to just be good friends because we can do that science and faith we're right here together it's awesome yeah ditto fantastic well in that spirit does anyone have any questions we'll wait for the mic to come on testing there you go great conversation really a lot of value here so I just got a couple of questions you mentioned something that therapy is about reconnecting a man to himself but I would sort of ask actually is that that's a great perspective but generally speaking what is the goal of therapy we generally define that and is there a consensus within the field around sort of that goal or that definition and then should everyone seek therapy because we all have issues so does everybody need therapy or who does and when at what point man what's your question to answer yeah I'll jump in I can be quick on this therapy should be about expanding your options of self autopilot because by the time we're adults we're all on autopilot to some degree therapy should be about turning off the autopilot and maybe what you're doing is working maybe it isn't but let's make it a conscious decision rather than an automatic one and then what was the second question should everyone be in therapy no I don't think so I mean some people things are going great got a good job got a good marriage you're happy you're healthy everybody's well adjusted everybody's functioning fine why not just enjoy that and I'd say a lot of times our issues problems we can resolve it with good conversations with good friends we can resolve it with managing things or exploring things with our faith of being able to really work with our spiritual community I think there's a lot of things we can resolve without therapy there's so many other resources and your question about the whole thing of connecting a man to himself I think that is primarily one of the most important goals of therapy because once you're able to become you know connected from here and here and my body and all the different categories once I'm able to be connected I can start at that point to start to resolve a lot of different categories a lot of problems a lot of issues I can find wisdom I can find direction within and I have more of an internal frame of reference and I'm able to actually explore and determine the direction of my life thank you for your question hello throughout this while I'm reading my notes I hear a recurring theme narrative and developing language to describe experience and I mean I've had my share of therapy I can play all kinds of fun stories about waking up in the middle of the night screaming and my neighbors are calling 9-1-1 because they think I'm being stabbed to death it's been a blast journaling has been a good thing but my mind keeps coming back to this developing the vocabulary and the language to actually describe experience and identify its relationship to our behavior in my experience is challenging we could propose tools activities something that might help us to get our heads around it to bring it from that intuitive non-verbal into the verbal level if you could speak to that I'd appreciate it sure I'll say something real quick gosh the non-verbal stuff we were talking about that earlier and our friend Alison Armstrong she will talk about how a man's mother tongue is non-verbal right and how you think about this with little boys if any of you had little girls and little boys your daughters your sons you know that the little girl speaks she starts talking like crazy most little boys are grunts and grind and if I had if women were here in the crowd it's one of the funniest things is if I talked to you guys about doing sound effects every guy in here could do a million sound effects women can't do them can't do as many and because we grew up on sound effects we do the bombs and everything machine guns and cars and trucks and horns and whatever and squeaky wheelchairs and it's funny how we just know how to do it non-verbal is our mother tongue and so to that question putting it into words here's the thing I believe and this is part of my spirituality is from my Christian faith from the beginning of time in the beginning God spoke everything into existence he used words he used his voice and he spoke it into existence that's how creation happened and then if you think about it in the beginning of the New Testament it says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God that's in reference to Christ and so the word the words created the word is Christ and so however this plays out the whole idea of the magic the brilliance the spirituality of words and vocabulary being able to put our experience put what's going on with us into words is more profound than you might ever realize so as men since our mother tongue is non-verbal being able to take this non-verbal stuff that's going on and putting it into words whether that's through talking to somebody talking to somebody in therapy journaling it praying it however we express it being able to put it into some kind of language into words is incredibly profound and it's an incredible part of our journey as men to become strong and to become understanding of ourselves and to become able to connect to ourselves yeah I would echo all that in particular the journaling part only because I've known so many men who've made it a practice to journal and it brought so many things into focus for them and it's not for everybody but if it's for you it's a wonderful practice it takes discipline and another way to start putting a specific technique to start putting words to experience is to develop some kind of practice for just observing what the mind does and that could be like a Buddhist practice like acceptance and commitment therapy there's a book called the happiness trap that is a great introduction to the more scientific side of observing your mind because when you observe your mind then you can really step back from what it's doing and not be so emotionally invested in what it's doing and so there's a couple of good basic techniques along with just talking to people talking to your buddies yeah thanks for your question go ahead thank you guys well I'd like to give you space to talk about the distinction between feeling and emotion and then I think you understand what I mean by that and Ken I'd like to see you've mentioned a lot about the feelings in the body and I want to know what is the extent of processing those feelings when is it too much when can a man in therapy be swimming in too many emotions and when is the cup if you're going to process fear is the vessel empty are we done yet what does that look like so one of the challenges of the English language is that we mix up the notion of feelings and emotions in some sense they're different things so sadness is an emotion but we say I feel sad and so I don't emotes sad would probably be a better way of putting it versus a feeling which is like it's almost like an intuition it's almost like a nonverbal sense it's trying to alert to something perhaps going on in the environment perhaps going on in the internal being I'm not a clinician I'm not professionally trained I'm sure that both these men can speak far more eloquently and with far more experience than I can about it but in my experience I mean a feeling and emotion has been very valuable and so the distinction that I've drawn is a feeling is something that's going on inside my body that I can use as information I suppose emotion can be this as well but I can use an information that can still be processed in a rational way sort of like well what's going on in my intuitive sense my feeling about something versus an emotion is an experience of overwhelming energy doesn't necessarily have to be overwhelming overwhelming energy that is similarly trying to alert me perhaps can be far more serious about my experience so a feeling might be something more low energy and an emotion might be higher energy both are sources of information that can be very valuable but an emotion is sort of like a more this might say full body kind of experience and I don't know that I'm articulating that as clearly as I have in the past but that's kind of how I draw the distinction between those two things just to separate the ideas that you can have a feeling about something and an emotional experience that's very different and maybe you too can speak about it from your own experience I wonder if answering the second part of that question the whole thing of how much is too much and I don't ever think that we're for some reason it feels like that we're able to process this stuff in the time that it needs to come out and so I haven't seen where it's too much but I'm not sure this is exactly what you're talking about but so often this was my case was that I had stuffed my emotional process in my life so much that I had stuffed that energy and stuffed that and I never took care of it never attended to it and it's as if some people would talk about it as being energy just packed into you just kind of stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and so when we start talking it out and we start processing it it's like little by little this stuff keeps coming out and it's packed in there it's really a lot of energy packed in there and so it'll come out in tears or it'll come out in anger or it'll come out in intensities and different things like that and it's like and it's a season it could be a year it could be two years but it takes time to be able to let this stuff out and move it out I remember one I had a whole season where it was like one time in particular was just this cathartic moment in my life where a ton of this just came washing out of me and it felt like too much I remember it was at an event and it was about my father and the cowboy stuff that was the big deal man I was telling Will this little bit of the story the other day and so the category of it just washed out of me and I was crying so much that my nose was snotty and my nose I was just could not hold it in it was pouring out of me and my nose I went to the bathroom to try to clean up and my nose started bleeding and it was just I was a mess but it was this energy about my father that had been released and it had moved out of me so this is how it works and sometimes it feels like too much sometimes it feels like a season where oh my gosh is this ever going to end but as you process it as you move it as you'll talk it out as you speak it as you name it all these different things it starts to move out of you and eventually you get to a place where you go I don't feel it anymore it's not in me anymore I don't actually deal with stuff in real time as it comes up so that's a really really profound thing and I know we're out of time and so I don't know what we need to do to Sean you want to take them just we have a couple minutes left if you want to just take a minute to answer that from your experience if you'd like to otherwise feelings versus emotions and is the vessel ever empty is also with the questions in there as well I'll start with the definition of emotions it's those basic which is like happy sad angry fearful disgusted they we categorize them under the heading of emotion because they serve the same purpose of either moving us toward something or moving us away from something so a lizard has feelings that's how it knows how to move toward something that is a petitive and away from something that is aversive but then feelings that gets so much more complicated because that implies to me that we're taking those emotions those basic emotions and we're piling all kinds of human ability to attach words and meaning and symbolism and history and I don't know if it's too I don't know what too much means are we capable of feeling too much are we capable of feeling too much I don't know it's not like our brain is an engine and you can red line it and throw a rod that's what you mean there's this theory called the spun glass area mind it's a very old idea it's so fragile that we cannot tolerate anything that's uncomfortable and that seems to have taken over our society that idea but the original spun glass theory of mind was that it's a stupid theory like our brains can't break from too much emotion or too much thinking or anything really now we can obviously we can be traumatized in a clinical sense like to where we start having highly heightened anxiety responses and so forth but just thinking and feeling now you can't really break your brain in fact one last thing people sometimes get into anxiety cycles where they do feel like they're starting to go crazy whatever that like if there's a condition called depersonalization where you start to feel like you're observing yourself from a distance and you feel out of your body and people will experience this and feel like they'll worry that they are actually losing their minds and it's going to degenerate and they're going to end up out of fear as you know the fear usually gets very catastrophic but very vague like they don't know where it's going they just know it's going nowhere good and part of the cure to that is essentially at some point you start challenging yourself as you're challenging the dangerousness of this because it's not a dangerous thing but as you're challenging the idea that this is dangerous and this is going to hurt me eventually you get to the question okay let me try to go insane let me try to actually go crazy and see if I can do it but you can't so I don't know where I was going with that no it's fine and for me the question is is the vessel empty it's sort of like what is the vessel how much the vessel is me how much of where do the boundaries blur between me and my family my family history where if you want to get into things like past lives or theological spiritual aspects is the vessel ever empty from a personal standpoint perhaps perhaps not but once you start expanding the sense of self beyond the individual then the question gets a bit more fuzzy the vessel is which would be a question for another time so this is a wrapping oh sorry we have one more question one more question okay cool I think you may have addressed some of the points in my question already with the verbalization piece but are there any resources like books or videos or podcasts or activities that you would recommend for men to do at home that address common issues you see or that perhaps provide a foundation emotional foundation that might minimize the likelihood of therapy with the caveat that there's no substitute for therapy I'd be curious to hear if there are some activities or resources you'd recommend for any man in these difficult times I can start with that so Ryan Micler talks a lot about how men can learn to work with their emotions that you can experience an emotion without acting on it so an emotion comes up in the moment it becomes quite powerful this is if you're alone and obviously in the therapist's office it's going to be very different and a men's group would be very different but in say the privacy of one's own home or perhaps even in public an emotion can come up and to look at the emotion as information and to experience it and to hold it and in my experience to allow the emotion to subside to the point where okay I've got this under control and now I can act and not to take emotion as something that I must act upon immediately and that can be very very important because sometimes acting out of emotion can cause men to do things that are uncalibrated now certainly it could be necessary in some circumstances to act on emotion for example anger someone's coming at you trying to harm you when you feel anger and you act in response not to say but there can be other situations where something innocuous can cause anger and be like I'm feeling anger right now this is anger I'm going to sit with it until I can speak or act in a calibrated rational way and to learn to work with that process I don't necessarily need to act on this emotion I can experience it and once the energy subsides then I can speak or act and that's a very wise way of working with emotions just in private to allow them to not suppress them and to not act out on them but to simply experience them and that can be done with practice so that's my answer to that question of you guys have some as well? I can jump in I think there are obviously myriad resources out there video books you'll never run out of resources but then you get into the question of quality control like how do you know that what you're stumbling across as you're looking for information is actually going to be useful and I think one of the most important ways to vet the information that you are taking in is to run it through the filter of is this idea or this framework or this information is it challenging me to examine what I am doing to create my outcomes or is it just putting the blame out there on women, on society, on mommy, whatever on Joe Biden whatever I think that's probably one of the most useful filters to try to do some quality control there awesome thanks guys yeah thank you this is the end of our live stream I think if you guys don't mind sticking around for some additional questions thank you Ken thank you Will thank you Sean my pleasure thanks for having me this is Will Spencer from the Renaissance of Men here with the Red Man Group and the Therapists let's make therapy great again welcome back to the convention's second patriarch edition live in Orlando, Florida welcome to the 22 convention welcome back to the 21 convention 2020 of Orlando, Florida being held for the first time ever at our very first and inaugural 21 summit event the 21 summit in Orlando, Florida well here we go we risked again with the 22 convention the patriarch and 21 convention all three stages together in one event not only did we sit down and say we're gonna come together in meet in mass but we're gonna take it a step further we are gonna dare have a conversation about the sex openly, honestly and engage the woman that's been like I am amazed that I'll well this one we did a brand new event, we did the second patriarch and we did the main event for the 19th time it's so much more than sitting in an audience watching a man on a stage the conversations and the hallways the connections the work that people make the challenging, the collaborations and that's what we need, it all starts with men and it's not just men that's what I like about this we don't want to overreact to feminism and then hate women, that's not it this is about men getting their act together doing what they're made to do you had meals you had to run security you had to run travel plans you had to ensure people were where they needed to be and it was pulled off with flawless execution it's evolved so much I really appreciate how Anthony has allowed you speakers to evolve and to grow and to share that and to encourage that with all the other men here to hear so much talk on family and fatherhood there's more depth, there's more room for who they could be is the word patriarchy or patriarch offensive to you in any way? not to me personally not at all, it's something that I cherish it I love it, I grew up wanting it you cherish the patriarch I do in mansplaining news, a 3-day conference for women led by men hopes to make women great again women need to be taught how to be great again not my words how to land a husband how to lose weight how to pump out a bunch of kids I don't think they need to fix the problems of women well it says the world's ultimate event for women in Orlando, Florida that's going to be the scene of the crime it's mansplaining peluzzo say no to the toxic bullying feminist dogma patriarchy is the future it's good to see it in person I'm just until I got here and saw it and you can see the people in the audience you see the men that are here committed to listening my idea of what the conference is the professionalism the staff, the way everything is organized it's giving me a different perspective about this particular idea and I'm ready to put some more fire into it welcome to dream world ladies and gentlemen