Feel It Like A Man
Men’s work has been astronomically beneficial to my life, and yet if you’d told me 5 years ago that I need to feel my feelings in my body and release them I probably would have laughed you out of the room.
I have nothing to sell you, I have no personal interest vested in any of this. This is just something that has been an absolute gift to my life that I didn’t even know I needed, and I’m writing this article because I think that would be the case for most men I know.
In 2017 a few different friends of mine had come back from an Everyman retreat and were raving about it. Saying they watched themselves and other men tap into something deep inside of them that they’d never had access to or known was there. As a skeptic who hangs out in a lot of hippie circles, my first reaction was to roll my eyes. But there were enough of them saying the same thing that I suspended disbelief and got curious about what might have been so impactful. I’d already considered myself pretty high in EQ and self-awareness, plus through many years of therapy I figured there weren’t any more big hidden traumas to uncover that were quietly sabotaging my decisions. I was mostly curious about what could create such an enthusiastic response in these people.
The first time I went to an event with someone who was deeply experienced at men’s work, the facilitator, Owen, started talking about Zebras. And how in nature our reactions to conflict are fight, flight, and freeze. How in adult life, we’re mostly not physically fighting, or literally running away from moments of conflict in our lives, and instead we have these tiny freezes. He talked about how in nature after an animal “freezes” or plays dead, when the lion has walked away the zebra gets up and shakes out everything in its body. Owen said we’ve been doing these little freezes our whole lives without shaking it out. He went on that we think of trauma as these big events, and continued “Sure, If I punched you hard in the arm you’d have a bruise, but also if I punched you softly for an hour you’d have a similar bruise”. I got chills, and thought to myself “oh shitttttt.” It was a moment of recognition that I had years of unprocessed “little” grievances that were literally living in my body. That weekend I let out more emotion than I had in years of therapy before it.
One of my favorite things about this work is the permission it gives for men to feel what might otherwise be dismissed as “not important enough” to have feelings about. That’s what Owen’s bruise metaphor did for me. It gave me permission to feel YEARS of what I’d considered too little to have emotions about. Having participated in and led this work over the past four years, its been amazing to me how freeing that simple concept can be for people.
Hey, brother. I don’t care about the validity of your reasons. Whatever you are feeling, I am here for it. Your anger doesn’t need to be “justified” in this room, you’re allowed to just be angry and rage and scream and beat the crap out of Rockwell [picture] regardless of “reason”. You’re allowed to bawl or whoop wildly in joy for no “reason” at all. If it is there in your body, it is true for you, and that is enough.
The amount of time we spend justifying why our feelings are valid enough to feel has come to be mind-boggling to me. Even more so as the deeper I get into this work, the more frequently I find that the reason we think we’re angry or sad is not actually what we’re angry or sad about. We spend 10 minutes explaining how awful our boss’s behavior is to find that we’re angry at dad for something that happened 30 years ago, or crafting a story to illuminate how WRONG our partner is to find we’re feeling a sadness from an old heartbreak. We rant about how unfair social issues in our country are and blame absolutely everyone else, to find that it has almost nothing to do with politics, and there’s a small voice in us that is afraid and longing to be acknowledged.
Of course this doesn’t mean there aren’t horrifying things happening in our country or that there isn’t mistreatment from our bosses and partners, that’s there too. It’s just been my experience that more often than not the intensity of our emotion is not really about what we think it’s about, and without this type of work we don’t even notice. We just go around leaking our unresolved stuff all over the people we love and the things we long to accomplish in life.
I didn’t consider myself an angry person, but the truth was I wasn’t in touch with anger. I’d jump right away from the feeling and into my head for a reason not to be angry. I didn’t think I had much to be sad about, when in reality I just wasn’t in touch with my sadness. I’d jump away from the feeling to all the reasons “it’s not so bad”. You might read that and think, “why would I want to do a bunch of weird men’s group work to feel more angry and sad?” But the hard truth is that when we are not in touch with these emotions, they leak out. In passive aggressive behavior, in resentment, even in disease in extreme cases. The question is not if you have anger or sadness… you do. You’re a human. The question is ‘How do you relate to them? I was surprised to find how significant the difference is between recognizing sadness, and sitting with it in my body, asking “what’s underneath that?” “Does it want to say something… no not do you want to say something does the sadness want to say something?” It was this type of digging that actually helped release so much years-old garbage from my body.
I’ve watched men unleash RAGE on pillows and punching bags in ways that allowed them to go back to their wives with peaceful clarity and compassion. I’ve watched men bawl their faces off so when they go back to their business partners they speak with confidence and power. And look this isn’t the point… but the men we are underneath the cloudiness of our unprocessed emotional stuff is a way more attractive version of us than the alternative.
This might all sound really foreign and strange. I mean it can be really hard as men to even notice that these feelings are there in the first place let alone dive in. I grew up believing feelings were weakness. I’d learned that strength meant bottling it up and not getting rattled by what I had deemed as silly little emotions. It took years of therapy for me to actually even recognize what my feelings were. I remember in the beginning there was this consistent back and forth with my therapist that went something like this:
Max: “I feel like she’s mad at me”
Therapist: “How does it feel that she’s mad at you?”
Max: “I feel like if she’d just get where I’m coming from…”
Therapist: “No that’s not a feeling, how does it FEEL that she’s mad at you?”
Max: “Not good, I don’t like it”
Therapist: “Right, so what feelings come up?”
Max: “uhhh what are some examples of feelings?”
Therapist: You might be sad, scared, angry…”
Max: “I guess sad…”
I’d use “I feel like” for a whole lot that wasn’t actually feelings. It took me a long time to genuinely learn the difference between my thoughts and feelings. And a longer time to acknowledge them and give them weight.
One of the first things we do in Men’s Group is called a check-in, which is a literal description of what we’re feeling in that moment. For example as of writing this, I feel pain in my right eye, tension in my shoulder, I feel sadness and calm. It’s a practice of observing whatever is there. I like that we don’t use qualifiers in this section i.e. “I’m a little sad” “there’s some tension in my shoulder.” The theory behind this is as men we are constantly speaking in a way that diminishes our emotions or discomfort. Its a helpful way of giving voice to whatever is happening in our bodies beyond reason or norms. In my group, we laugh about how this is still hard to do even after so much practice.
This type of work is like going to the Gym of Emotions for me. It’s a practice that I now can’t imagine my life without, and when I’m out of practice I can feel that muscle atrophy. Evryman was my gateway, there are also others like All Kings, Mankind Project, Man Uncivilized, Brothers Helping Brothers, and I’m sure many more. Since starting this practice I’ve found myself much more direct and aware in how I resolve conflict. Much clearer in my expressions of desires wants and needs, both at home and at work, much more confident in my ability to move through the world, and better able to live more powerfully, confidently and lovingly as me. I’m so grateful for that, and if something in you is called to this, I want that for you too.
