Valiant Living Podcast
Welcome to the Valiant Living Podcast where we educate, encourage, and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom.
Valiant Living has been restoring lives and families since 2017 by providing multiple levels of care for men and their families. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission, Valiant Living has earned a national reputation as a premier treatment program, offering IOP, PHP, and recovery housing programs for men ages 26 and older. Founder and CEO MIchael Dinneen is a nationally recognized therapeutic expert, speaker, and thought leader in the behavioral health field.
On this podcast you’ll hear from the Valiant team as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at (720)-756-7941 or email admissions@valiantliving.com We’d love to have a conversation with you!
Valiant Living Podcast
Dismantling the Man Rules with Dan Griffin
When Dan Griffin found himself carving "F YOU" into his arm as a teenage boy who hadn't hit puberty, he wasn't just acting out—he was experiencing the profound disconnect between his authentic self and society's expectations of manhood. This pivotal moment led to a lifelong journey of understanding what he calls "the water we swim in"—the invisible but powerful gender conditioning that shapes how men experience everything, especially recovery.
Drawing from 30 years of sobriety and expertise in men's trauma work, Griffin articulates a revolutionary perspective on masculinity that offers hope for men struggling to reconcile recovery principles with their gender conditioning. "The man rules are for one core reason," Griffin explains, "safety." But these same rules—don't cry, don't ask for help, don't show vulnerability—directly contradict what recovery demands, creating what he calls "psychological dissonance" that can derail healing.
Griffin's concept of "conscious masculinity" offers a powerful alternative. Rather than rejecting masculinity outright or remaining trapped in rigid gender scripts, men can learn to make enlightened choices about their expression. Through awareness, acceptance, and action, men can reclaim their full emotional range without shame. "We don't need permission to be ourselves," Griffin asserts. "We need to let go of the lie that says it's not okay."
This conversation dismantles the false gendering of emotions and reveals surprising research showing baby boys display more emotionality than girls before conditioning takes effect. For anyone working with men in recovery or navigating their own healing journey, Griffin's insights illuminate why vulnerability feels so threatening and how men can finally integrate their authentic selves with their recovery. By understanding the "water we swim in," we gain the power to move beyond it—into a masculinity defined not by cultural limitation but by conscious choice.
Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to the Valiant Living podcast, where we educate, encourage and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom. I'm your host, Drew Powell, and I'm a grateful alumni of the Valiant Living program. Valiant Living offers hope and transformational change to men and their families struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. So on this podcast you'll hear from the Valiant team, as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at 720-756-7941. Or you can email admissions at valiantlivingcom. We'd love to have a conversation with you, but for now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, I have the distinct honor and pleasure of talking to Dan Griffin today.
Speaker 2:Dan, we're here. We finally made it happen, buddy. Hey, maybe One podcast at a time, we'll see.
Speaker 1:We're only we're only 30 seconds in, but we've tried to connect. We were 30 seconds in the last time we had internet issues and all kinds of stuff, but you are you're well worth the wait, my friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely I've been excited to have you on because you know you're you're a great thought leader in this space. You know I've been excited to have you on because you know you're you're a great thought leader in this space. You know you've you've been doing this work for a long time and I want to hear about your personal journey, some of the work you're doing, but specifically for men, since we're men's program. But, um, you've written books. I mean just you just kind of been doing a lot of stuff in this space. So truly mean it when we say we're honored to have you on the podcast and to hear from you. But if someone's not familiar with your work, can you just share a little bit about your personal journey and what kind of got you into addiction recovery and specifically with men?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, well like a lot of people in this field. Right, my personal journey is my recovery and but I guess why I got focused on men. And you know, we, we often will say, you know, it's where our wounds are that we can find not only the greatest healing but the greatest contribution if we're willing to look into that space and I definitely had some wounds around being a man, you know, I grew up and I want to preface this by saying, like I do a lot of work around men and trauma and kind of understanding the narratives that kind of hold us back, that we create, that we think have been created for us. And so I preface that by saying, like what I'm about to say, it's just a fact of my life experience. It's not a of the poor me narrative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, despite the fact that people have been through some serious, serious shit, man, I mean and I would never, ever, ever minimize disparage you know what some people have lived through. That's not my point, right, but I grew up in a violent, alcoholic home with a brilliant father who was an alcoholic and a mother who was just a codependent, right out of the book, a lot of abuse and and so that kind of you know that's, that's an experience for a lot of boys, unfortunately, and of course girls as well, but I'm focused on boys and men. Yeah, but then I had another interesting component happen, and that was around seventh grade, you know, some of the boys started hitting puberty. Eighth grade, more of the boys started hitting puberty. Then, eighth grade, I kind of I knew what puberty was, but I wasn't it wasn't happening.
Speaker 2:I wasn't growing, I wasn't hitting puberty. Ninth grade, start, high school. I had a choice that day to take a shower without my underwear or take a shower with my underwear on. And I chose to take a shower with my underwear on because I hadn't hit puberty and I was short man, I was five feet tall, and you know it was uh, humiliating, humiliating experience for me and that kind of was my high school experience. I got hazed. I was on the, the freshmen or the JV soccer team I think we had three soccer teams, so I think it was on the freshmen and I got hazed by the varsity guys who knew my sister who was older. I got put in a trash can, locked in lockers. You know I got all that stuff and and so, like that was. That was a horrible experience for me and so kind of had like the increase, my dad's alcoholism increased, his violence increased, um, various kind of family members were getting sick and the puberty thing.
Speaker 2:Like I just kept praying. You know I was catholic and I was at a catholic school and I I just kept praying. I was like please help me grow, please, please, help me grow, and it was like a daily, daily prayer, daily prayer right, and I would cry myself to sleep and um, and I share all that to say like that, didn't, I didn't grow. I didn't grow. Freshman year, I didn't grow sophomore year. And then one time during the end of my sophomore year I was fighting with my parents, which was a usual thing and I was just really depressed and really despondent and I came upstairs and I started carving F? You in my arm. Well, fuck you, not F you but, I, don't, I don't use that language personally.
Speaker 2:So I was carving that into my arm. But you know, I love to say I was carving that into my arm, make it sound tough and everything, but it was a sterilized paperclip, yeah, but you know it was still bleeding, right, my dad. My dad, you know, comes in and you know even something like that is going to cut through the haze of an alcoholic father, right, you know. And and then that started this journey where I got growth hormone shots for six months and you know there's so much I can talk about that kind of space. But in that experience was the narrative of not being a man, right, and it got frozen inside of me, frozen inside of me like one of those bugs, you know, trapped in amethyst that thought of not being a man.
Speaker 2:And so by the time I was six feet tall, by the time I was bigger, by the time I was, whatever, it didn't matter, I was still that trauma, you know. And that's exactly how trauma works, right? Trauma distorts reality. So, despite being six feet tall, I still felt like I was five feet tall and I still felt weak and all that stuff. And so I stood outside of masculinity and I had already long been using alcohol and other drugs, and and so like I started deconstructing masculinity as a way to try to find some solace for myself. If I'm not a man, if I don't belong with the men, then let me find what's wrong with them so I can be at least some degree of peace, that I don't have to be like them. I don't want to be like them.
Speaker 2:Interesting Wow have to be like them. I don't want to be like them, interesting, wow. And so that was this internal thing that I had going on the whole time, also trying to get guys to like me and trying to fit in. And then going to college and really my alcoholism taking off and and then I got into I'll fast forward four years, senior year, and like there was this convergence right, this convergence of recovery and sociology. And I took a sociology of women course, which I had no interest in taking, and a friend of mine invited me to do it and I was like sociology of women, like why would I do that? And she looked at me I still remember her looking at me, laura McClintock. She looked at me and she said, dan, it'll be all women, yeah, all women. I was in love with sociology. So these are going to be women who are interested in sociology. I was like, oh my God, I'm going to find my girlfriend, my wife, right.
Speaker 2:And it changed my life forever because I learned about gender and gender oppression and gender conditioning and patriarchy and all this sort of stuff that I had absolutely no awareness of. And then I talked to the professor and I said, hey, is anybody looking at masculinity and she said I don't know, why don't you go look? I think she knew, but wanted me to find for myself. And so it became my senior thesis just looking at masculinity, and. And that was at the same time that I had a guy in my life who told me he thought I was an alcoholic and told me that he didn't think it was going to get any better, um, and that I should, you know, really pay attention to that, and and and that is an interesting thing too, because that was when I was going to a adult children, an ACA group on campus.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Because I was convinced right here's the poor me narrative. I was convinced my father had ruined my life. Right here's the poor me narrative. I was convinced my father had ruined my life and and he was like, hey man, yeah your father's an alcoholic and yeah, he did a lot of things, but I'm listening to you talk about your drinking and you're joking about it and I have every bit of confidence that this is something. These are red flags that you need to pay attention to. So I had awareness of gender and gender conditioning and gender scripts when I went to my first 12 step meeting.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So that kind of came before, even recovery and sobriety and all that you were already had. That I did.
Speaker 2:I already had that, and so I. You may be familiar with some of the work that I do, but I talk about this concept of the water, and the water is our reality, that we're in like fish. You know fish in the water and we don't.
Speaker 2:We don't know it, we don't know we're in it, it's a water we're in and we can't see, we don't see and we don't want to see, yeah, yeah, and. And so part of it for me. I saw the water when I went to my first 12 step meeting and a man came up to me and tried to hug me. I saw the water when I was halfway through the meeting and this guy, Bud, started sharing. You know, and I'm in southern Virginia, so you can, you can probably imagine what Bud looked like. Right, I mean, bud had a big ass beer belly. Like, right, I mean, bud had a big ass beer belly. He had a grease stained white t-shirt. He literally had a hat on that said honk, if you love, tits.
Speaker 2:And I was like I was looking at this guy coming to the meeting and I was like what have I gotten myself into with these freaking losers? Right, anything to not belong or anything to, yeah, you don't have to be a part of. And then, of course, god's got an amazing sense of humor, because who should be the one sharing halfway through? But bud, wow. And bud isn't just sharing. Bud is talking about being afraid. Bud is talking about his fear, about his relationship with his spouse and his, his fear of having to his sobriety, losing his sobriety and all that and I'm hearing this guy talk about shit that I thought I was really one of the only guys who felt that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so what's what's powerful to me about that is that's like the water that we don't see still in a lot of ways as men. Is that? And this is a great thing? I got out of my master's research. I found this guy named Norman Denzen, who, he, he, he was one of the first sociologists to study uh, aa and um. You know there's a whole backstory or side story about him and his alcoholism and you know, um, you know nothing surprising that he went to AA to critique it and make it ineffective so that he could maintain his alcoholism. But one of the things he said was so incredibly powerful and honestly, it's become the foundation probably of all of my work. I mean, it planted the seed for me that I have just kind of taken in. And he said what is socially proscribed is socially or culturally prescribed in the 12-step society.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay, so yeah, well, yeah well, yeah, I will, because it's it really, it's the thrust of my work, right? So the way I've expanded on that because he wasn't talking about it from a gender perspective he was just like, wow, this is so weird. People talk about feelings in 12 step meetings. People are very communal in 12 step meetings. People are very communal in 12 step meetings. People talk openly. People, you know, ask for help, people do all these sorts of things. And you know, so he, he was looking at it from this fascinating kind of idea, from a sociological perspective, almost ethnographic study in some ways, and and so that stayed in my mind. And then I thought about it from a gender perspective, specifically for men. Like what does that mean? Well, it's, it's a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2:Think about the concept I call the man rules, some people call it the man box, man code, all this stuff. I call it the man rules for a very important reason Right, because we follow these rules, and if we don't follow the rules, there's consequences, and we usually don't have a lot of say in the rules that are created. But we have these man rules, right? So, like what I'll? Just, I'll do it with you, because I do with you know all my audience. But, like when you were growing up as a boy, what were the rules you learned about what it meant to be a real man?
Speaker 1:man either. Whether it was spoken or unspoken, it was be tough, suck it up. You know that kind of thing. Um, be a leader, it's you know, it's yours to carry the pressure, carry, carry the weight. This is me that you know. These are the subtle messages I received, not, maybe not, uh, that um, blatant or clear at the time. But yeah, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of hey, hey, don't show your emotions, don't you know that kind of thing? Don't cry don't cry, don't be vulnerable.
Speaker 2:Don't ask for help, right, everything's a competition, um, there's only, there's only one winner, and then there's a. You know, there's no such thing as second place. It it's just the first place loser.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean Like sex is intimacy.
Speaker 2:So there's all these things, and you said something that's like, really, really important.
Speaker 2:Drew stated for the most part, that's why it's the water, that's why it's the stuff that's in the background, because I can sit down with a man and he can do exactly what you did. He can name every single one of those things, and then I could say who sat you down and went over these as a list with you and why is it that the man that I talked to you know 30, 300 miles away, or six hours away, or five countries away, is going to say the same thing. How is that? And how is it that and here's the powerful thing, right? How is it that we have these internal rules, that we follow this script, this performance that we have constantly weighing on us, not saying that it's necessarily effective, not saying that it's healthy, but it's in there and it's encoded and it's very, very strong, right, and you have that. And then you come into 12 step meetings or you come into treatment, you come into therapy, and then what do we tell guys to do?
Speaker 1:It's almost the exact opposite. It feels like it's the exact opposite.
Speaker 2:It's almost the exact opposite. Learn to cry, share your feelings, be vulnerable, vulnerable, ask for help you know. Learn how to have. I mean think about valiant living or think about any kind of place that deals with sex addiction.
Speaker 2:You know, I mean, you have to truly unpack how corrupted masculinity has become with sex and intimacy and and it's like but that's not just for people with sex addiction, that's every, that's, every guy. Every guy is swimming in the water of that has told us that sex is everything when it comes to intimacy, right, right, so. So these things are opposite, and here's something that I always emphasize when I do this talk the man rules are for one core reason, and when you think about it from a trauma informed perspective, when you think about it from a existential perspective, we learn these man rules and we decide to practice and follow these man rules for one reason. What do you think it is? I mean.
Speaker 1:What goes in my head is it's survival like what we're told to survive.
Speaker 2:But what's the psychological component of survival? What are you seeking when you are trying to survive? There's only one thing at a core level we're all looking for.
Speaker 1:Well, again, I don't know if this is the right answer, but what comes mind is the, the love and approval, and, and you know, connection.
Speaker 2:Approval is great, but underneath love and approval is a more fundamental existential need okay, I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Safety, okay, yeah safety makes sense, yeah and so the the thing about this is like when you really start to unpack it and I wish I wish colleges and universities taught this and I really wish treatment programs really understood this, men's treatment programs especially really understood this, because it, it's a, it really it's not like when I do these talks sometimes you're like, oh, that's a, that's a, that's a fascinating idea. I'm like it's not an idea. It's not an idea. It's the psychological experience of dissonance that every man has and it gets in the way of our recovery if we don't notice it.
Speaker 2:So many men are able to stay sober and in 12-step recovery while still acting out some of the ugliest man rules, all in an attempt to be safe, but also because we haven't talked to them about them, we haven't challenged them.
Speaker 2:We're not deconstructing all this stuff while they're in treatment and we're certainly not deconstructing it, this stuff, while they're in treatment, and we're certainly not deconstructing it in 12-step communities. A lot of 12-step communities, a lot of those guys. They're acting that stuff out. It's like I'm just constantly amazed and I'm not trying to sound better than anybody, but it's more that I'm just saddened by the fact that I can listen to a guy give like this amazing share, amazing share, very powerful, just like deep, vulnerable, and then I can go out to lunch with them and just hear them just tell all these sexist jokes and be a complete dick, and it's like you do realize that's completely incongruent with how you just showed up, right? But they don't. They don't realize that because we're not talking about that in the 12 step community and we don't talk about it in the treatment programs. And we don't talk about it because a lot of the guys running the treatment programs haven't done that work either.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:And so I just think there's so much more we could be doing and and, at the core, this isn't about being better than others, it's about being our best selves, and it and it's and it's about us not co-signing each other's bullshit unhealthy bullshit, you know, but it is about safety. It's about love and approval. You're absolutely right, and it's about safety. And another thing I like to point out when it comes to trauma and trauma-informed care is, if the man rules are about safety, all right. So stay with me on this, because this is another.
Speaker 1:I think, very powerful insight. If the manuals are about safety and what we do in treatment and recovery and therapy is the opposite of the manuals, then what must that be? It's vulnerability and surrender.
Speaker 2:Right, it's getting real getting honest Right, and that's true. That's true, but the core part of it is it's also fundamentally unsafe.
Speaker 1:Unsafe yeah, risky yeah.
Speaker 2:Not just risky, like when we talk about how men's brains have been programmed around the gender conditioning of the rules. And we talk about trauma. When we're putting them in these situations of therapy and group and all that sort of stuff and we're asking them to go against the rules that keep them safe, but we're not acknowledging it, we're not calling it out, then we're asking them to be unsafe without us acknowledging that they they feel unsafe without them knowing that they feel unsafe, and then they're gonna go to what they know in order to stay safe.
Speaker 2:And what is going to keep them safe?
Speaker 1:drew yeah, they're gonna. They're gonna go back into survival mode and back to their instincts of hiding the back to the code they're gonna go back to the man rules how many?
Speaker 2:times have you watched men be vulnerable, men show up in really amazing ways and then the next thing you know they're picking a fight. They're, they're totally checking. They're doing all these things because they're going to their, their go to trauma response, fight, light, freeze, fawn. They're going to that in a way to try to protect themselves and a lot of the time it's because the programs and the therapists and the professionals, they don't understand the psychological aspect of what's happening, of what's happening, so they don't really. Actually, a lot of the times the therapists are patting themselves on the back oh look at Dan. Dan just was really vulnerable in group and it's amazing and all that stuff. But they don't take into consideration the effect that's going to have on Dan, especially three to six hours later, because men tend to have a delayed response when they have these incredible experiences of vulnerability.
Speaker 1:Almost like a vulnerability hangover. That happens a few few hours later and then it's exactly like a go right back to the old rules.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, brene Brown talks about the vulnerability hangover and that's exactly what it is. But what Brene Brown doesn't do I don't think because she came from a shame kind of perspective she doesn't necessarily talk about, perhaps understand it's a trauma response. You have the vulnerability hangover. That then leads you to the trauma response in an attempt to be safe, interesting. So now we see these guys acting out in different ways and then what do we do? Sometimes we have compassion for them and we put it together like oh dan's acting out, he just had a really vulnerable group, he's trying to navigate that. Sometimes we don't and we just like oh dan is being defiant, non-compliant right and is acting it's acting out.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So, and this is so good, man, I love this and not to just I don't want to just try to jump to well, what's the solution? But as you're saying all this, I'm definitely you're exposing some, some major gaps for for men here on how to kind of cross that bridge and live more. I don't know how you'd say maybe more integrated, where we can have these moments in a group. But it's like, how do we continue this into our life? What have you seen like in your work that has helped guys like you and me move from having a moment in a group or moment in a treatment center or an AA meeting to actually embracing this as a way of life? Or am I or am I jumping over tons of steps to get to the?
Speaker 2:no, I mean. No, I mean, look, I was thinking about this earlier today. Uh, I'm involved in a couple of projects right now. That's really got me thinking about this.
Speaker 2:And you know, there's a mentality in the 12-step community that's kind of like oh wait till you have 10 or 15 years and you're gonna be doing some really hard work. You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna see shit, man, that you know, you didn't even see coming. And I'm like, hmm, how many guys do we lose from the 12-step community? How many guys do we lose in their addictions community? How many guys do we lose in their addictions Because we're waiting for them to suffer enough? Uh, cause we're waiting for them to see the light. You know that we've seen.
Speaker 2:And so my whole philosophy is like I, I've got 30 years of recovery. Man, I've been through a lot. I have been in the mud, man, I have been deep, deep in the mud. I have been humbled so many goddamn times. It is ridiculous. And I'm like, wow, why didn't anybody tell me about that, you know? And so my whole philosophy is how about all the lessons that we're learning at 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years of sobriety? What if we took all those lessons and we made them available. We made the wisdom and the insight available during treatment. So guys didn't have to suffer, so guys might be able to stay sober longer, have greater chances of staying sober, might not have to lose a marriage or a core relationship as a result of not having dealt with some of this stuff. And so you know, I believe, one of the core solutions. Frankly, Drew, it's exactly what I said at the beginning man, it's, it's you got to see the water right. It's you got to see the water right.
Speaker 2:So so I've written five curricula, coauthored all of them, but three of them are for men right, helping men recover, healing men's pain and amazing dads, and every single one of them starts off with the men. Naming the man rules, because when you call it out, yeah, yeah, right you're supposed to.
Speaker 1:You're saying I'm in the water. Yeah, you're talking about the water from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, so, like every curriculum talks about, I use a little lecture about the water, because it's like you're about to see the water. This is what we're talking about. If you really want, you know, to see something see the water then here are the man rules, here are the woman rules, here are you know the the impact that that can have on us. And, um, I mean I think you said it at the very beginning with the solution by virtue of what never happened for you, you live, you have lived your life and continue to live your life, impacted by the man rules, but nobody ever sat you down and explicitly called them out. Nobody talked to you about them and said you know, can you imagine if every father and mother, whatever, like if every, every, every core family unit sat down and talked to their kids about gender and the gender rules and the rules that they followed, and if the parents could really be honest and be like yeah, let's see. So there are these rules like okay, don't cry, boy, that one has kicked my ass for 52 years and here's how. Don't ask for help. Oh man, I've been asking help for 30 years and it's still a struggle sometimes for me to ask for help. Don't be vulnerable. I hate being vulnerable. It sucks. I guess that's why it's called being vulnerable sucks. I guess that's why it's called being vulnerable. But I sure don't feel like much of a man when I'm doing it.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine if fathers had conversations with their sons that were honest and transparent about their own struggles trying to live up to the man rules and trying to deal with the voice inside of them that's telling them they're not man enough, they're not enough of a man they're. You know, the men walk around constantly on edge about their masculinity being revoked. Right, it's not so much of like we're living in, like this positive identity. We're living in this identity afraid of doing something wrong that's going to get us shamed or made fun of or our man card revoked, and so that's a huge part of the solution.
Speaker 2:And so every treatment center I've ever worked with, I've encouraged them to make sure that every man coming in talks about them, you know, learns about the man rules, talks about his experience with the man rules and then starts to put it in context, and then the concept that I use is called conscious masculinity. People are like, oh Dan, dan's trying to turn men into women and Dan's trying to do this and I'm like shut up, Just shut up, you're afraid. You're afraid of what I'm talking about, because you have your own internal conversation about masculinity and where you don't measure up, and so you're going to project that onto me and what I'm saying. I don't want men to be anything other than the best selves and I want and conscious masculinity is really driven by enlightened choice.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:In this moment I feel moved to cry and I'm not going to let shame or anything else prevent me from from crying. In this moment I feel moved to cry and I'm not going to let shame or anything else prevent me from from crying. In this moment I feel moved to cry and I can't. What's what's going on there? I need to do some work there. I need to ask for help. I'm afraid to talk to my spouse. I've got this conversation that I've been resentful about because I can't bring it up to her because I'm afraid them or her and him. Well, I don't care who your spouse is.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But it's like that's part of it, right, like it's, it's it's. Can you wear masculinity as a loose garment?
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow. I want to ask you about something just as it's come up for me as we're talking. When you hear the phrase and this has been thrown around in culture quite a bit when you hear the phrase toxic masculinity, I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't subscribe to toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1:I was wondering what your thoughts were on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, because I I've never liked that term.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:What I believe more in, and this was a colleague of mine came up with this. Sadly, I'm blanking on his name right now, but he says the toxic culture of masculinity. And that I believe, because guess who's complicit in the toxic culture of masculinity? Men and women, boys and girls, and and the thing that you know some feminists and some gender people and some you know supposedly woke people don't talk about is the toxic culture of femininity don't talk about is the toxic culture of femininity. Nobody wants to talk about that, but there's incredibly unhealthy women who are living by the extremes of the woman rules.
Speaker 2:Just as there's the man rules, there's the woman rules, and then there's the rules of gender that the trans community and all the gender fluid folks. They're challenging the rules and I'm absolutely convinced that the younger generation, they're not rebelling. What they're fighting against is the suffering and the misery of being in the box of gender. They're not saying I don't like masculinity or I don't like femininity per se. What they're saying is the box that you want to be stuck in, that you want to stick me in and that you've been stuck in and are pretending is making you happy when I know it's not. I don't want that I don't want that goddamn box.
Speaker 1:Right, right, yeah, it makes sense to me. I mean, I live in Nashville and I'm around a lot of artists. You know, and that's one thing that in the artist community, specifically, especially with men, that men have struggled with. What is a lot of these artists? They lend towards what would have been culturally labeled as feminine qualities or more feelers or more whatever, which I see a lot of people trying to reclaim a lot of that narrative of like, hey, that just because I'm a man and I I'm in touch with how I feel and communicate, whether it's through song or art or whatever you know it's, it's kind of like what you've been saying. It's like redefining these, these, these terms and these, these ideas that we've placed on people and it's like this is how. This is who I am.
Speaker 2:I said I'm showing up and it's kind of it's kind of beautiful masculinity, right, that's what you're saying there and we're not there yet as a society. The younger generations are doing a better job of it, but they're a lot of the younger generation's identity it's reactive, it's not as proactive. I don't want to be that, so I'm going to be this, but for some it's like you said, it's like because it's. It's really just about being a balanced human being. If, if you, if you like, I've always I was always a sensitive, emotional guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too, and I still, I still am and I still like I'm on my own journey of kind of finding my authentic masculine self. I'm really still trying to figure out what's the balance for me, because I also am, like, a strong personality and I can be intense and I'm very outspoken, as you can tell, and I'm funny, you know, and I'm very outspoken as you can tell and uh, and I'm funny, you know, and I'm irreverent you know, and it's all those things, and I'm, you know, I'm sensitive and I'm, and so it's kind of like I don't like the idea that there are masculine qualities and feminine qualities right
Speaker 2:and, and part of that is because, like there's several, there's several things that kind of contribute to that thinking. One, the latest research actually shows that boys are more emotional than girls. Baby boys, when they are like before the conditioning has gotten to them, baby boys, on multiple indicators, show higher levels of emotionality than girls. So that's fascinating in and of itself, right. So the whole gender conditioning thing is backwards in some ways, because then you're really like, if that's kind of a natural part of who men are, or at least a lot of men and boys, then like we've crushed. We've crushed the essence, right, right. But then the other thing is is that when you look at boys and girls, right, when you look at little babies, I don't think for the most part I mean, there are some people who do this, but for the most part you don't look at them and what they're doing and be like, oh, look how masculine he is, right, look how feminine she is. They're just doing their thing. That's my hope.
Speaker 2:My hope for us as a society is that we can learn to just like, we can just do our thing, and the more untouched by gender conditioning we can be at an early age, the more we can actually find our authentic selves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that Like who we truly are. Now I definitely identify as a man, and so for me it is conscious masculinity. Then, like, I literally think like, ok, like one thing I've I've been developing, so to speak, is, like you know, in 12 step community there's like this 10 step where people kind of reflect on the day, and I've been developing one that's much more male focused, and I've been developing one that's much more male focused and around the idea of, like, how did I show up as the man I say I want to be Right, how did I do that? Did I really do that the way that I wanted to? And then you use it as a checklist, not to beat yourself up, but just to have some accountability and to also note progress. Yeah, but, but I think you know more. Yeah, masculine, not masculine because, but but to a, a more man rules kind of approach right, right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting because just last night we had our our valiant alumni. We do a check-in meeting on Tuesday nights and one thing that I learned from people like yourself and Valiant is, as a man, there's just some times where there's things I can't control and I have fear over them. Or because I want to fix everything all the time, sometimes I don't allow myself just to be sad or to feel something that's like, hey, so I had something come up with my family this week. I was able to check it in with the guys last night and it was kind of refreshing.
Speaker 1:And this is I'm not I'm not bragging on myself because this is new, I'm new territory for me. I'm just saying for a lot of men, it's hard for us to say, hey, I'm feeling this thing, there's nothing I can do about it. At the moment, I can't control it. Um, so I'm just gonna allow myself to move through the sadness, but not to ignore it. But at this moment I just feel super sad about it and and it kind of like that's okay. And even still, even when I'm saying it now, that's so counterintuitive for what I feel like it's okay for us as men to just say, hey, I'm going to allow myself to feel right now, maybe easier for others.
Speaker 1:For me, that was always it, it was never. Just it's kind of shaped how I showed up in the world, because I'm like Enneagram seven let's just have fun, a good time, not feel anything. If it's painful, I'd rather just suppress it. But the problem is it starts coming out sideways on me, you know. And so what I love, what I love about what you're teaching, is you're permissioning us, as men, to have like the full range of human experience and to not feel shame around those things. But, like you said, it's feels like it's a matter of awareness, of saying, hey, here's what I've been here, the lies, I've been sold on this, and here's how now I'm I don't know how you would say it, but how I'm permissioned to show up in the world and it's okay. It's okay to have these, these thoughts and feelings and emotions.
Speaker 2:And absolutely. And, uh, I was thinking and I'm going to let me see if I can uh get my, get one of my books. Um, so, in my book a man's Way Through the 12 Steps, which was the first book I wrote, the very first chapter is called Feelings, and I end it with this statement, and I think this is a kind of a process that we all kind of go through. The process of discovering our feelings often proceeds like this First we become aware that we actually have feelings, yeah.
Speaker 2:Then next, we learn how to talk about our feelings, but it's a more intellectual process. For me, that meant talking about feeling hurt and afraid, while coming across as angry, or while laughing. When I spoke, while I could correctly identify a given feeling, my behavior didn't match. Next we learn to actually feel the feeling and identify that feeling. We learn how to express and feel all the emotions, including pain, sadness, fear and shame, and then, finally, we learn how to experience our feelings in the moment and let them pass through us. Men in this stage of awareness are living in the moment, unafraid to express how they feel.
Speaker 1:That's so good, dude, I love that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you. And you know, the funniest thing is is that when I wrote that book, I mean, this just goes to show like you can have incredible insight, but not you know.
Speaker 2:I was like in the second stage when I wrote that, even though I had awareness that there were five stages, you know, I was still. I mean, I was a mess intellectually, kind of just talking about feelings and occasionally feeling and emoting. And here's the other thing that I wish we taught in the schools and that's one of the mantras of my company is that we teach you what you should have learned in school, because I'm just so sick of having people say, why didn't I learn this, why didn't I learn this, why didn't I learn this? And I'm like I don't know anymore why you're not learning this, because I'm out here teaching this and talking about it and it's kind of irritating that there's not any kind of systemic shift at this point of like awareness.
Speaker 2:But one of the things that we have to come to accept and, I think, really acknowledge is that we have falsely gendered feelings and we've done it from a very, very early age. And so, as men, we internalize, because every man as you know, you just talked about it we internalize because every man, as you know, you just talked about it Every man, every man, the toughest man you may see, has fear, hurt, insecurity, shame, sadness, joy, elation. I mean all of them, all of them. We have been programmed from a very early age and we have been programmed from a very early age. So many of us were as soon as we had those feelings again. Sometimes it was explicit, but a lot of it was just all these like little, invisible electric fences that we spent our life kind of getting zapped by.
Speaker 2:And then we learned real men aren't afraid, real men aren't hurt, real men aren't afraid. Real men aren't hurt, real men aren't insecure, real men.
Speaker 2:and so so guys come into therapy, guys come into treatment, guys come into recovery and they're like I Don't have those feelings like they, like we genuinely believe we don't have them, but internally, like for me I don't know about you, but for me it never turned off. And so I walked around ashamed, constantly ashamed of what I knew I was feeling inside and there was no way I was going to express it outside and truly believed I was defective, that there was something wrong with me because other men weren't doing it. So when I got to the meetings and other men started, I heard men talking about feelings. I was like, oh shit, wait, you have them too. You have these feelings too. You feel afraid. I'm not weak for feeling afraid. Right because that, because that's what we did right In the false gendering of feelings.
Speaker 2:Not only did we falsely gender them right, women don't get anger, they get all the other weaker feelings. Men have anger and happiness, although we're supposed to pretend that we're happy. So we have anger and happiness and like, cool, you know, copacetic, yeah, I'm good man, I'm good. Yeah, bro, everything's cool, bro, you know, while we're dying inside right right so we have those three.
Speaker 2:And then all the other ones are weak and gay and for pussies, and you know that we, we, so we don't, we, we didn't just gender them, we put a large dose of shame on top of them, right, right, incredible amount of shame. So if you feel afraid and admit to feeling afraid, you should feel ashamed about that and if you feel insecure, you should feel ashamed about that and never talk about it and take it to your grave. And so we see that with men long into their recovery, man long into their recovery, they still like I. I remember I was driving in a car, five years of sobriety or something, and I was just really feeling afraid about something and I watched my money and I watched what I was doing to myself and saying to myself for feeling afraid mm-hmm, mm-hmm and I was like, holy shit, who is this?
Speaker 2:Tommy, a pussy right feeling afraid. I just feel afraid. There's no judgment man.
Speaker 2:So that takes a long, long time and I'm not there. I'm not judgment free with my feelings, but I'm much, much further along and I can tell my wife, hey, my feelings are hurt. I had a lot of shame coming up because when I couldn't tell my wife that my feelings are hurt, I had a lot of shame coming up because when I couldn't tell my wife that my feelings are hurt and talk about my shame and talk about my insecurity and open up to her about insecurity and fear I was having in other areas of my life, I was an asshole.
Speaker 2:Talk about it coming out sideways. I was also Mr Recovery and I was also a author of books and a keynote speaker and blah, blah, blah bullshit.
Speaker 1:Right, right, let me ask you this, and we can, we can wrap with this, because I mean it's, I mean there's so much here and we'll link this because I want people to get your, get your books. You know you mentioned Man's Way Through the 12 Steps, great books, but you've got several others and we'll link to your website. So I want people to track with you and and, um, you know, get, if they're not already, get familiar with your work. My question for you is help us guys that are listening right now, that are struggling to access certain parts of ourselves, certain feelings and I'll just make it personal for a second.
Speaker 1:I you know when I, when I got into recovery, the feeling that came to the top real quick was fear. Like I was able to feel fear pretty quick when I, when I had, you know, going to treatment, made me slow everything down, and so, when I couldn't, when I couldn't numb out with either acting out or just activity in general, and I had to slow down, fear came in strong. The one I really struggled to access was sadness. I didn't, and it almost felt like there was a part of me that was broke because things would happen. Even and I'm going to be real vulnerable here.
Speaker 1:Things would happen in the world that are tragedies, and I knew that I was supposed to feel sad, but I couldn't. It was like I don't know where it's at. I don't know how to get to the sadness. So I had to learn to even give myself grace of like. I don't know how to feel sad right now, and so, as I've been in recovery, I'm starting to be able to access a little bit more. But for those of the listening or watching right now that feel the way I do right now, which I feel so much hope and freedom when I hear you talk, because it's permissioning, it's permissioning me to say, hey, I don't have to feel shame around certain things that come up for me that I used to have to suppress. But how would you encourage us, as men, to even be able to begin to access these areas that we're just are so unfamiliar, so scary for us?
Speaker 2:Sure, let me say a couple of things. It's a great question. So one, as you were talking, what was coming up for me was like, dude, there's no permission needed. There's absolutely no permission needed. This is who we're supposed to be.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:That's the lie. The lie of masculinity is that it's not okay.
Speaker 1:That we need permission.
Speaker 2:We don't need permission to be ourselves. We need to let go of the lie that says it's not okay to be ourselves, that we have to live in this stupid-ass man box. That's crushing us, and we know it's crushing us. And so here's the only thing I know that works, and it works just like it works in every other aspect of recovery, right? Awareness, acceptance and action. Right, those three things Awareness and reflection have some kind of daily practice, literally about how am I showing up as the man I want to be, character step six and seven in the 12-step community, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:I created a worksheet where, basically, guys just write out like what are the most challenging characteristics of me as a man that play out on a daily basis? Right, what are my most challenging characteristics? Those are the defects, quote, unquote. Then on the opposite side are the assets, and the assets, and the assets are simply the opposite of those defects. I'm loud. How can I learn to to let others in? I'm um, angry a lot. How can I learn to allow my true emotions? You know, I'm, I'm, I interrupt people. How can I learn to pause? And it's like then practicing that reflection, right, that's awareness, awareness, awareness, awareness, practicing that reflection, looking at how did I do today? If we don't make it a practice, it's not going to happen, or it's just going to happen piecemeal and by happenstance. And so we're going to keep doing our men's groups, we're going to keep doing this stuff, but we're going to be talking around the core issue, which is the gender conditioning that is driving all of this Right. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Makes total sense.
Speaker 2:And so it's a discipline, and we have to make it a discipline, and I have to make it a discipline and I have to check in with others as well, and and it's like you know, like these, these man rules are so strong.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so awareness exception action awareness, acceptance, acceptance, acceptance, action, action.
Speaker 2:And that's straight out of alan on yeah yeah that's the mantra of alan on.
Speaker 2:But so you have the awareness of reflection. Then the acceptance comes in. Drew. The acceptance is the freaking compassion that we need for ourselves because of where. Wherever we are is okay, I struggle to cry, okay, that's okay. Guess what? You come by it honestly, because guess what, when you were first born, you didn't struggle to cry and I bet when you were one or two, you didn't struggle to cry. But after a million paper cuts, yeah, you learned not to cry, you were programmed not to cry and it's even like a trauma response. I mean, I can tell you my journey with crying, which is such an amazing release. A woman in a 12-step meeting once said crying is nothing more than taking a shower on the inside and I love that right and and um, but I I remember like from a trauma perspective, because I told you how I was crying myself to sleep all the time yeah because I and I was so emotional, I was so distraught, I was in so much pain, didn't talk to my parents, didn't talk to anybody.
Speaker 2:And one day, you know, at my worst I looked in the mirror and I berated myself, called myself a pussy. Stop crying you, fucking pussy, stop crying you, fucking pussy. And then I looked and I said I will never fucking cry again. Wow, man, that was like age 15 and I didn't, I didn't, and, and you know, and, and, uh, how did you get a journey, man?
Speaker 1:how? How did you break that journey? That's a heavy, because I look in the mirror and I say it's OK to cry.
Speaker 2:I look in the mirror and I say you're an amazing guy, dude and sadness is a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:So you're literally retraining, reparenting, read you know, that's it.
Speaker 2:Here's the water, yeah we have to Right, we have to redesign the code. Code that's what conscious masculinity, the. The rule is not don't cry. The rule is cry when you feel moved to cry and feel safe, right, safe to do so. I'm not, I don't, I'm not gonna cry in, you know, certain places. It's not, I don't need to. It's like the. The problem that some people have when they're they're hearing me is their fear takes over and their judgment takes over and they think what I'm saying is don't be a man. And I'm like I'm not saying that, right, I'm not saying that, oh, you're trying to turn everybody into women, and I mentioned that earlier. But it's like and I mentioned that earlier, but it's like I'm not trying to turn men into anything other than themselves, and with the deepest, deepest, deepest sense of who I am is okay.
Speaker 1:Well, we appreciate you listening to this episode of the Valiant Living Podcast and our hope is that it helped you feel educated, encouraged and even empowered on your journey towards peace and freedom. If we can serve you or your loved one in any way, we'd love to have a conversation with you. You can call 720-756-7941 or email admissions at valiantlivingcom. At Valiant Living, we treat the whole person so you not only survive, but you thrive in the life you deserve. And finally, if this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you'd subscribe and even share it with your friends and family. You can also follow along with us on Instagram and Facebook by simply searching Valiant Living. Thanks again for listening and supporting the Valiant Living podcast. We'll see you next week.
