The post When Men’s Work Isn’t Working: It’s Not You. It’s the Model first appeared on Owen Marcus.

Like all kids, I had little control of my environment. That would be okay if our environments were safe and supportive – but they rarely are. So, I attempted to control what little I could. This is a common pattern. We often build walls of control around us in our quest for security and predictability. It’s our way of attempting to shape our internal and external environments. The unfortunate side effect? We disconnect from our bodies, our emotions, and others. We trap ourselves in a fortress of our own making.

Fast forward to my adult life. I continued to exercise control but I started realizing its downside. The awareness began with a stark realization at work. In a room full of people, in a meeting where I was speaking, I felt utterly alone. I recognized that I was holding my experience, my authenticity, hostage to the fear of vulnerability. My self-imposed fortress had turned into a prison of loneliness.

When I started risking showing up authentically in my first men’s groups, I took the first steps towards change. I began connecting more genuinely to myself and, in turn, to others. I found myself transforming from a rigid controller to a spontaneous participant of life. To my surprise, I became more fun, more engaged. I was trading control for authenticity.

In the process, I drew inspiration from the wisdom of Indian philosopher Krishnamurti. He once told his followers, “This is my secret; I don’t mind what happens”. The essence of his secret lay not in disconnection, but in profound connection. He was so intertwined with life that he could let go of attachment to outcomes. I began to resonate with his philosophy. I committed to showing up as my authentic self, irrespective of the outcome. I did not always get what I wanted; but invariably, I experienced the growth I needed.

Challenging myself to share more, to let others in a bit more every day was terrifying, but it was also liberating. It’s a daunting task to face your fears, to open yourself up to the possibility of rejection or loss. It requires confronting uncomfortable truths about yourself. However, the reward is priceless – connection. I found that as I became more authentic and open, people responded positively. I built relationships that were rooted in honesty and vulnerability, rather than control.

What made this journey worthwhile was a deeper understanding of love, inspired by our friend Esther Perel’s insight, “There is no love without the threat of loss”. Yes, love and loss are two sides of the same coin. Facing the fear of loss led me to experience deeper love.

So, what do you control that is sabotaging you? Where does your survival strategy kick in to protect you with control? I urge you to embark on this journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance, where you will learn to let go of control and embrace life as it is. As you dive deep into your fears and let them go, you will realize that control was never about safety, but about fear. And the moment you start dealing with your fears, you will start losing the need for control.

The post Breaking Down the Walls of Control first appeared on Owen Marcus.

Our patterns are formed from how we train ourselves to deal with stress and trauma, and they can be limiting and disconnecting. But through the work of EVRYMAN, we can interrupt these patterns and reconnect with ourselves and others.

It starts with that first act of pattern interruption. It may take only one interruption, or it may take many disruptions to break an old habit or addiction. But each time we break a pattern, the next one becomes easier to break.

What pattern do you have that needs interruption? What is one thing you can do to break that pattern? The beauty of a men’s group is that you have a community of men that want to help you. They can offer feedback, hold you accountable, and honor you when you stay true to your course.

So take what was once unconscious and make it conscious. Feel what the disconnect was preventing you from feeling, and as you feel it, take a new action. Be willing to be confused and uncomfortable, because the feeling and mindful action will release you from the pattern that is running you.

Remember, awareness is a double-edged sword. New awareness brings new experiences and freedom, but it also makes you conscious of old behaviors of which you were unaware. But with the help of a men’s group, you can interrupt those patterns and live a more connected and fulfilling life.

The post The Power of Pattern Interruption first appeared on Owen Marcus.

We are very familiar with sadness as one of our core emotions. The held back sadness builds in us like our national debt, creating future liabilities. When we do not feel the pain of a loss, we may think we are free. As we all discover from this work, there is no escape. We carry the pain with us, albeit maybe buried below our awareness in the soft tissue of our bodies.

Speaking of burying it, In 1982, I had a Rolfing session where I sobbed and shook for possibly an hour as I released old sadness. I do not recall any old memories coming up; I remember the recent trigger was how my clinic associates were treating me. In that moment, I could no longer hold on to repressing my sadness about not being appreciated.

As tough as the build-up of unfelt or unexpressed sadness can be, it can be released with relatively little catalyzing. Once my dam cracked, the water rushed out.

Regret is subtler.

We feel sad about a loss. We have regret from not acting and missed opportunities.

We often combine regret with shame because we did not act or did not act unsuccessfully. We freeze our emotions. We shame ourselves for the lack of the ‘right’ action(s). Both create rigidity, which can be the dam holding back a set of emotions.

My clinic colleagues could shame me because I trained myself that my value was in what I produced and having others like me. When they said what I did for them was not good enough  and that they did not like me, I did my best to do what I learned to do well – I denied that I felt anything. Well, my Rolfer knew better. His caring and skill put the right crack in my dam of repression.

That experience set me on the journey of unpacking how I shamed myself about not doing the right thing and, more so, how I did not take advantage of opportunities. Even if the missed opportunity was not speaking up, I paid the price for missing it. Regretting my mistake taught me as a kid to avoid risk. You know what that created.

Because we do not get time back, missed opportunities can create a deep ache. I have sat with many men who did not tell a parent he loved them before they died. The regret, sadness, and shame became a heavy weight on their hearts.

Daniel Pink has an excellent 2:20 minute video about how to create your New Year’s resolution out of your year’s biggest regret. I suggest that everyone watch the video, list your regrets, and then choose your new resolution.

Slow down to experience your regrets. Let’s stop running from them and instead stop, turn, and face them. Feel what we so often run from. Where did you ‘fail?’ What did it feel like to not perform at the level you said you would – even if the only person who knew was you?

What opportunities did you miss? What does it feel like to never have those moments return? What is the habitual way you deal with that pain? Where do you feel the pain in your body?

You get it — use that one big regret to be a portal to other missed opportunities, regrets, and denied pain. Experience what it feels like to share what was withheld.

As I have said before, the antidote to shame is honor. If you share a shame, allow yourself to feel the honor of being a witness in your regret and pain. Take what was in the dark of repression into the light of acceptance.

What is a regret that can be a new goal for you? What are you willing to share that you hid?

I created a spreadsheet with three columns: failure, what caused it, and why I denied it. Then I went through my life and listed where I failed in business, relationships, health, school, sports, self-acceptance, and emotional expression. It will be a list that I will continue to add to. For now, my biggest failure that I have power over to change is asking for help.

The post Regrets to Success first appeared on Owen Marcus.

Along with not feeling and certainly not showing my emotions, I worked at being self-reliant. To ask for help was showing weakness. The thought that another could impact my experience, or that I could unknowingly impact another, was not possible.

My first experience with Ron Kurtz, the developer of Hakomi Therapy, the leading somatic-psychotherapy, immediately proved my beliefs wrong. Instead, I saw how; others unconsciously felt unconscious responses to interactions of others.  A subtle autonomic change in facial expression, shift in voice tone, or skin color change picked up by one person produced a response in another person – without conscious awareness. With training and practice, you could learn to use these micro-behaviors to support a man to deepen his connection to himself and others.

As you may have seen, as one man experiences an authentic feeling, others often have a similar response. One man shares how he feels trapped when his wife tells him she can’t feel him. The more he tries, the more she can’t feel him. He starts to cry as he says he loves her and feels like no matter what he does he can connect to his wife.

You look around the room and other men are also crying. The resonance of the man’s story and experience triggers other men to feel emotions they didn’t know they had.

Some explain this as mirror neurons — similar to those of the man sharing — firing off in others. Of late, some question this phenomenon. A more accepted explanation is that we co-regulate.

Stephan Porges’ Ph. D. research with the Vagus Nerve (the 10th cranial nerve) shows us that all mammals down-regulate the stress response by connecting to another. A baby stops crying when held. A scared patient relaxes when a loved one holds his hand. A man in a group expresses an old feeling when his group connects to his fear.

Our ROC (Relax, Open, and Connect) formula sets us up to fall in sync with one another.

As we connect — more often unconsciously — we increase our emotional and physiological resiliency and window of tolerance – along with neuroplasticity and tone.[i] When childhood trauma and stress occurred and was not physiologically completed often, we didn’t feel we were in an emotionally safe space where we could allow the physiology and emotions to run their natural course. Possibly the opposite occurred; others directed their fear towards you, a child who had no way to respond assertively. You need the love of your parents; consequently, you held back your natural response.

In our groups and couples workshops, the opposite occurs — we feel, and others accept those feelings as valid. As a result, we not only relax, but we also feel what was not felt in the past. With that, we are able to complete the physiological cycle and release held physical and emotional tension.

In the safety of others’ nervous systems feeling safe, our nervous system not only down-regulates in that moment, more importantly, our body also begins to learn how to down-regulate itself. So, for example, a child learns — or does not learn — how to calm himself by how well others trained him via co-regulations.

Begin to become more attuned to how you feel and express. Also, start noticing how that safety trains each one of you to bring it to others. Safety begets safety.

Dive deep into co-regulation by each person sharing how as a kid it wasn’t safe to feel. Share less from the analysis or story of it and more from experience. You may feel the emotions you could not fully feel about a past incident AS you tell it. Allow others to be the emotional safety you did not have in that past incident.

As a someone shares, feel their activation and ability to stay open to feeling your response. That is the key! By accepting your response, you are modeling and training another person that it is okay to feel and share his response. By stretching yourself to feel, you are serving the entire others. This is the essence of the power what we teach in our Hold Me Tight weekend couples’ workshops.

Hold Me Tight is a registered mark of Sue Johnson, Ph.D.

  [i] A term coined by Dan Siegel, MD, which is adapted into a guide to trauma treatment by Pat Ogden, Ph. D. Refers to the range of specific emotions, affective intensity, or physiological arousal a person can tolerate before becoming dysregulated and hyperaroused or hypoaroused. Expansion of window of tolerance is a common goal across many complex trauma interventions. https://www.complextrauma.org/glossary/complex-trauma

The post Co-regulation – Your Secret to Connection first appeared on Owen Marcus.

If you know me, you know that I started my journey shut down in every possible way. At least I was consistent. Growing up in a family where emotional expression was nonexistent, I had no idea there was such a thing as emotional expression. It is hard to say whether my Asperger’s Syndrome was a consequence of my upbring or an addition to being emotionless.

Along with ADHD, I have two clinical diagnoses that describe behaviors that most of us had or still have relative to being disconnected emotionally. Being so tense that you are unable to sit still and being so tense that you cannot express yourself often go together. Our bodies become tenser and tenser because all that we feel lacks safe ways and places to be experienced or expressed. Our bodies convert that emotional angst into physical tension. That tension makes us want to move to either release it or to distract ourselves from the more uncomfortable emotional tension.

Medicine and psychology continue to seek new names for our natural reactions to stress and emotional repression. Rather than understanding and connecting with us, we are dismissed with labels and drugs to manage our physical and emotional behaviors.

Many men have come to our groups and programs over the years frustrated and in despair because after all the tests, drugs, and treatments, they are still in pain and alone. The hope for these men, if only unconsciously, is that being with other men may allow them to be themselves, and with that, maybe they can relax and heal.

I was one of those men. I released a lot of physical and emotional tension from my previous healing paths, allowing me to feel more than most men, as well as the impact that my rigidity had on others. That awareness drove me to start my first group in 1995.

Realizing that I was not an abnormality but the norm was the first step to feeling safe to open up and release. Collectively, over the years, we became more relaxed and connected to others.

After I experienced the world of emotional expression first through the women I dated, then in my groups, I enjoyed living. I realized one of my blocks to expressing myself was not knowing that it was acceptable to express emotions, let alone see anyone demonstrate it. I had to risk the shame of not doing it right to do that. What was remarkable was that most of the men in my groups were taking similar risks; we were all in it together.

I would share – certain that I would be criticized — only to discover that I was honored for my courage and vulnerability.

Share a block you have about expressing to a friend. It may be a belief, a history of shaming, or rejection for failing at it. Then, if you had alexithymia, what would be a significant symptom? Or, what would others — such as your partner – name as your primary symptom?

Dive into the trauma or vulnerable feelings behind the behavior of not expressing. Do not go the route of telling stories or explaining them. Go the route of revealing the anger, fear, sadness, and shame about being locked up.

As you hear another man share, feel how his words are true for you. Where do you feel those emotions in your body? If you want, affirm his experience by sharing the impact his words have on you.

The goal here is to open up to what we often do not feel and rarely share. It may be easier to pick a particular incident that happened as a child that represents your childhood. For example, that time your father told you not to cry when someone called you a name. It might be the time you made a conscious decision not to feel or express. Often, it was several unconscious decisions to shut down because that was the only thing we could do.

If you are lucky to be in an EVRYMAN Group, you can make a different choice. Do that with your group.

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The post Where Are You on the Alexithymia Scale? first appeared on Owen Marcus.

I would go into the freeze response (being hyped up but not acting). I would be that deer in the headlights. I knew I needed to act but could not. Sure, at the last moment, I would act, or to be more accurate, circumstances forced met to act. Sometimes it was a business opportunity I kept thinking about. Or a relationship in which I was half in and half out.

Discovering that slowing down and turning to face my fears was initially intense. Yet, when I would allow myself to feel emotions and act while feeling them, it was more challenging. But each time I ended up a little freer. Even if I failed, I was freer.

If you are like me and the men in my groups, your thoughts run in circles around what you do not want to face. Having only your mind for support, it can be difficult at first to escape that cycle of over-analysis.

When asked what is at risk, we are forced to be honest about the consequences of action or inaction. What are your opportunity costs – what opportunities will you miss with or without acting?

Recently as I was teaching a group of therapists, they asked how to compel a man to seek help. My answer was to have him feel what would happen if he did not receive help. For many men, feeling the potential impact on his kids from staying the same gets him to risk seeking help. He does not want to end up being the father he had.

Ask yourself these questions as you stay present to your somatic and emotional experience.

What is at risk if…

I do not change?

I do change?

What are my opportunity costs?

What will I miss out on?

What will not happen?

What are my sunk costs (what have I invested that I might lose)?

Avoid the top-down approach of thinking your way through the process. As you ask yourself these questions, feel your body and emotions respond. Then, feel what is behind your reaction, your standard survival response. What is your vulnerable response?

Check in with the issue, opportunity, or challenge in your life that could use a deep dive. Pick one of the questions — i.e., what is at risk if I do not change? – and write down or speak to it. Then connect to the emotion you feel as you experience what you are communicating.

Dive deeper into what is at risk. As guys, we want to understand and fix – do not do it. It is often better to feel more and be more confused than to have a better understanding and clear plan.

Keep peeling away at what is underneath each answer. For example:

Question:        What is at risk if you do not go on vacation with your family?

Man:               I will not be with them.

Question:        What is at risk of you not being with them?

Man:               They will have fun without me.

Question:        What happens if they have fun without you?

Man:               I am alone.

Question:        What does it mean to be alone?

Man:                I am not loved.

You see how it works. There is NO script. Just keep asking questions that each answer sets up. Remember, you are going less for a realization, and more for a new felt sense of a deeper driver.

In the New Year

What is at risk of you not just taking on a new resolution but a new way to achieve it?

How do you go from being a voyeur of your life to being engaged in leading it?

What would happen if you did more than have a New Year resolution? How about also focusing on a new means to achieve your resolution? As I mentioned above, I committed to having my group support me to leverage my efforts.

What will you do to leverage your efforts? If you want to get in shape – get a trainer. If you’re going to eat better – get a nutritionist. If you want a better life – work with us in some compacity. You can take the fast-track coaching or a slower but equally powerful path that joining EVRYMAN has to offer.

Go beyond addressing the effect; address what caused you not to have achieved what you wanted in the past. Have this New Year resolution do more than deliver a new success. Have it create a new way to achieve what you want.

The post What Is at Risk? first appeared on Owen Marcus.

Once you have hit bottom, once you have survived your transition, you enter a process of integration, first with yourself then with your world. 

I am like most guys — I move fast when I want something and start going for it. I may hesitate for a long time, but once committed; I want to be done with the process and reap the benefits ASAP. I saw men in my clinic get out of pain fast and not heed our warning – you may feel better, but you are not well yet. It takes time for our bodies and emotions to complete the transition. 

The completion is letting the body fully release what was held for so long. You can have a big release with your dark night, but it will not be all that needs to be let go. Your body and emotions also need to recalibrate, and a new normal needs to be assimilated internally and externally. 

For years, you perceived yourself and others from who you were; being a new person may take some practice for you and others. Taking time to reintegrate with self-integration gives you a more solid base to stand on as you step out into your new world.

Men often report that their new self has different desires. You may not pursue some of the old activities entirely like you once did. Last week, I laughed with one of my coaching clients; a few of his favorite interests no longer interested him. It is like one day you wake up to realize many of the clothes in your closet no longer fit well or have you looking good. 

The integration process will continue to be a process of letting go of what no longer serves you. Again, it does not necessarily mean letting go of a relationship; it probably means letting go of how you used to show up.  

As you interact with the world, you are reintegrating yourself into your community. A man will often have a few relationships that do not feel authentic, and with that, his interest in connecting with those people is gone. There may also be people who do not want to connect with this new man or who want the old man to return.

When you change significantly, others can be threatened. It is as if your change challenges others to change – and their fear prevents them from doing so. It becomes easier to shoot the unintended messenger than change, which can be hard when it is a close friend who feels that way. Having your group can make a difference. The men of your group are committed to change, along with supporting and honoring you in your change. 

You thought that once you changed, you were done. Sorry, there is more. Reintegration often entails tests and reinforcement of your change. Life will give you opportunities to see if the old you or the new you will show up. Indeed, in the beginning, if only out of habit, the old you can show up. You will fail at fully embodying the change. Part of the change is having compassion for yourself and what you did to survive. That compassion is forgiving yourself — and possibly others — which you can see as more change and integration. 

Recovering from your mistakes builds strength and resiliency. It allows your change not to be a  rigid “should”, but a new way of being a more authentic self. See your test and possible failure as ways to deepen your change. 

Joseph Campbell speaks about the return to your community as an honoring for the journey you traveled. It is being seen and treated as being a new man. Just as we learn self-regulation from being co-regulated as kids, we learn in part who we are as a man by how others engage with us, and by how others reflect who we are. 

An additional part of reintegration is to share your new gift or power in some way. It may not be a conscious act. It may be showing up differently with others. For example, your old arrogance and impatience is replaced by compassion and patience. 

Over the decades through this work, I have seen hundreds of men want to share what they have received with others. It may be as simple as staying in their group after healing whatever it was that brought them to the group. Or it may be wanting to learn the skills that will help other men experience the change he received from men who were there for him.

There is honor and deep reward in giving to others what you worked hard to get. It is the final stage of reintegration. Growing to give in more powerful ways becomes the driver for some men and an enhancer of change.

A short review of the three steps:

Review

We start with letting go of what limits us internally and/or externally. That death demands grieving which allows us to release what was a limitation so we can move on.

Moving on is diving into what was behind the separation, the deeper, often hidden pains, stress, or trauma. Surrendering to what we previously could not fully experience and release is scary – and liberating.

Taking what is new into what ends up being a new world deepens roots to the new tree you are growing. The fruit from the tree becomes the unique gifts you bring back and your modeling of the journey.

All of this was traditionally done in an established process and with others that support the change. Sure, it can be done alone, yet it is easier, quicker, and more rewarding to have a community behind you.

How do you plan to integrate the changes you experience, be it deep change or the change of being with other committed men every week? Some methods of work and groups have you just do the work and change at their events or in their groups. At EVRYMAN, we want you to bring that change home. Test it, refine it, strengthen it, and share it.

Name at least one challenge or reward of being in your group that you will share with others in your life. In sharing it, what is the stretch – what makes it a challenge for you?

You don’t need to know the picture to share your experience. The first take on our change may not feel pleasant. Feel all you can as you share. Feel the challenge to take an inner experience and share it. 

Our partners want more of us. Often, this is what they want – more of our work, challenges, passions, failures, and successes. They want to feel a part of what we are creating.

The post The Arc of Change Part 3 first appeared on Owen Marcus.

As you let go of one connection or situation, there is a moment you are not holding on to anything, or it feels no one has a hold of you. This can be terrifying, and we avoid this at all costs – including enduring ongoing suffering by continuing to remain someplace that is no longer serving us. 

The challenging part is that in this place, we rarely have any structure supporting us. We do not know what is happening, nor do we have others there supporting or witnessing us. We are alone. Sure, at the pinnacle of this stage, you are alone. Yet, through the general process of change, it is much more graceful if you have support. 

Having one person who has traveled this path before with any consciousness helps. Someone telling you that you are not crazy and your panic is normal will calm you. As we see in our groups, others holding an emotionally safe place of acceptance helps us feel our deeper emotions attempting to release.

As mentioned before, the emotions and physiology we could not previously feel will want to release. When we cannot complete an action, in its essence – flight or fight — the physiological and, consequently, the emotional energy, accumulates. We become good at our survival patterns because as kids, that is all we had in certain moments. Perfecting these patterns gave us a lot. First, we survived. Often, we also retained the acceptance which we needed. 

The dam that we built up to hold in what was not okay to feel, want, or express breaks open at this stage. There is a moment when it feels as if our entire identity is collapsing. That dam of survival evolved to be part of our identity, as limiting as it was.

As Joseph Campbell describes, the transition from the ordinary world to the new one is a huge leap of faith – or, some would say, a big push off a high ledge. During the dark night of the soul, when you are falling for a moment that may last for hours, you feel much around the theme you are dealing with that you were unable to feel.

Being someone tightly wound, I had several of these liminalities. Even though I knew what was occurring and why, it was still terrifying in the moment of the fall, I felt like the life I created was a failure, I was a failure, and I would never be loved, succeed, or have my own life.

Understanding the process and having support, specifically the support of my group, allowed the pre and post fall to be much more graceful. As my friend and old-time group member tells people, knowing I was there with our group allowed Wayne to call me as he fell. That call saved his life, and he says that had we not been there, he would have killed himself. 

Practicing letting go in simple ways such as surrendering to your experience in a somatic mindfulness meditation or a big cry in your group sets you up to fall and enter this change process. Many minor releases put cracks in your dam, allowing your emotions to release, and it also trains your body not to hold on so much.

As a note: This entire change process is the core of the EVRYMAN Method we teach at the MELT and later in more depth with our Foundation Training.

Building upon what you discussed last week about the thing you are currently leaving in your life. Or if there is not a current situation or relationship, what will you leave or have recently left? 

Speak about the death of the old ways. What are you leaving behind, letting go of? As you speak, name your body and emotional feelings. Allow yourself to feel some of the pressure of the backup water behind your dam wanting to release – as you feel the fear holding it back.

Go beyond the story, reasons, and “should” to the experience. It may involve going back to being the little boy where it probably started. Speak to the place where a part of the man died – where he had to decide to hold back to continue to exist in his family. 

If you are the man doing the work, let the physical and emotional feelings overwhelm you. Let the men in your group hold and protect you. Allow yourself to fall.

Over the years, I have been honored to be a witness to over a hundred experiences of men letting go of deep patterns that trapped them in self-limiting lives. Our bodies what to release; they need the support they never got to begin to step out of the past. When we feel safe in a group, we start stepping through to another existence with the group’s guidance and support.

  [i] The word “liminal” comes from the Latin root, limen, which means “threshold.” The liminal space is the “crossing over” space – a space where you have left something behind, yet you are not yet fully in something else. It’s a transition space. From: https://transformationalpresence.org/alan-seale-blog/liminal-space-embracing-mystery-power-transition-will-2/ 

Check out the third post here.

The post The Arc of Change Part 2 first appeared on Owen Marcus.