Luc Bouchard with Solve-Act Life Coaching Services. I've been a certified life skills coach for twenty two years and I specialize in men's issues and how men distance themselves from their emotions so that they can keep themselves safe.
Welcome. Today is day thirty two of the seventy two day challenge. We are in the fifth week. The theme of the week is How Men Keep Themselves Safe. The daily focus is men in relationships. The topic is, guess what? Ways in which men keep themselves emotionally detached from others.
Yesterday I talked about a book by Terrence Real called "I Don't Want to Talk About It". It was a book that really dealt with how men deal with depression and that depression is seen by society as a female mental health issue and that if men are so deathly afraid of being called women and seen as a woman, how can they be depressed? Men engage in their depression in two different ways, overt and covert behavior. The overt is the obvious stuff that we think of depression as being emotionally flat and not engaged and just having no appetite and having a hard time with being excited about life and all that kind of stuff. The covert ways men handle it is through addictions and being distancing themselves even more so they don't feel the emotions and being performers in a lot of ways or through drinking and alcohol, working excessively, doing any kind of obsessive compulsive behavior, and my favorite, grandiosity, because that's a really great way of keeping yourself separate and apart from everyone else.
Other ways in which men distance themselves from their emotions and therefore keep themselves safe from those feelings are things like humor. You see someone that's always engaged in cracking jokes and never being serious, especially when the time calls for seriousness and it's appropriate for a serious time and they're always being flippant or funny, that's a way of distancing themselves from their emotions. Sarcasm is another really good way of keeping people at bay and holding people back because what happens is it has an edge to it and so people don't want to expose themselves because they're not sure what's going to happen with what's going to come out of someone's mouth next.
I often talk about men being really in their intellect, in their heads, and what that's about is that they're disconnected from their emotions and that if you're really in your cognitive process and you're really thinking and you're really intellectual, then what happens is that you're actually not connected to your body. The idea is that of course we're always connected to our body, but it's that we're our emotions live and we're we actually feel the impacts of situations.
Examples of that will be things like if you have a knot in your stomach, something happens and you're stomach's upset. That's living in your body. If you're shoulders are tense because you're under a lot of pressure, that's living in your body. If your heart is racing or you can't get a deep breath or if you're just physically tired because you've just been going and you're not even aware of it until your body shuts down, these are ways that you're actually not connected to your body. Emotions hit the body first and then we figure them out later if we are connected to our bodies. Men are renowned for being disconnected from their bodies and it's actually their intellect and their ego that keeps them out of that because we don't want to go there. We don't want to have that emotional connection because it's not safe because you've been told it's not safe.
Something else that men engage in quite a bit, and both genders engage in all this, but I specialize in men issues so I'm talking specifically about men, and that is willful ignorance where you're just plugging along and TA DA and, "Oh! Did that happen? Oh I never noticed that. Oh really? Bill's wife died? Oh. When that happen? Few months ago you say. Huh. Oh how awful. Should we go get groceries?" I'm being extreme, I'm taking it to the extreme, but willful ignorance is a great way of also being disconnected from self.
Another male behavior in a lot of ways is not admitting when they're wrong and always having to be right and just arguing and constantly having to intellectualize and rationalize. When I work with men who are really in their heads and in their intellects, what I do with them is, and this really pisses them off in a lot of ways because I constantly bring it back to their feelings and their emotions, I'll ask, "How do you feel about that?" He said, "I think that this happened". I said, "No. How do you feel about that?" "Well I interpreted it". I said, "Stop. How do you feel?" They go, "I don't know" or they're very uncomfortable with it. In my work, what I'll have to do is actually teach them the softer emotions and the complexity of emotions so that they get out of their head. People who are really in their intellects have a difficult time being connected and that's a very safe place for them. They recognize that they don't want to live there anymore, but they don't know how to do it differently because that's where their sanctuary is.
Another one, among others that we could cover, but I'll just stop with this one and that is not accepting help. That's a great way to distance yourself from your emotions. All these are really about being inauthentic with self and not being vulnerable and not being in a place of feeling weakness and what not.
Ultimately, why this is important is that how are you going to have an authentic relationship with your children and your spouses and other people if you don't have an authentic relationship with self? It's really that simple. If you don't know how you feel and if you don't know how you're impacted by people and if you don't know whether you're more than happy/glad/sad, how are you going to have good connections with people? You won't because you won't even know how you feel and you won't even know where that's at. You'll understand the more extreme emotions that are the harder emotions, happy, glad, sad, mad, but you're not having a real good connection with people, an authentic connection with people because they're not going to go there with you because it's not safe. It's not safe for yourself. Why would they want to do that? They'll stop it after a while.
If you want to be more connected with others, you have to be connected with yourself. It's really that simple. It's not rocket science. It's hard because we've been socialized and taught not to do it and sometimes it's been beat out of us, but really that's the pay off, a more joyful life, a more rich life. It's not about gathering more stuff and getting more crap, it's about connection.
I've talked to a lot of people in palliative care, who've worked in palliative care, and something they always say is that when it comes to the last person's moment of their life, what they always talk about is the connections they've had with people or the connections they've missed with people. That's what people reflect upon when it's all said and done, not how much they've gathered, not how many cars they have, not the levels they've reached in success. This is important because how do you want to live the rest of your life? What are you deserving of? What do you want to have? What kind of rich life do you want to have?
For a gender that prides itself on being strong, we really aren't. When we're so deathly afraid of what other people think, that's weakness. Men engage in this grave behavior called "a good defense is a good offense". I've put up walls. I've put up barriers. I've put up stuff to deflect so people won't see the real me because they might use it against me. The reality is that the more you're resolved with your warts, wrinkles, and the things that we find unattractive about ourselves, those behaviors we don't like, those behaviors that are shame-based, the more we are okay with those, the more people can't hurt us. X I wonder how many of you have left this video by now or how many people are still watching it. The ones that are sticking with us, good for you because this is tough stuff. Anyway. A lot of the inauthentic behavior is to not only distance ourselves from our emotions, but is to protect ourselves from other people hurting us. It's a way of keeping people at bay. It's not strength at all, it's weakness. I defy anyone to basically tell me that being able to posture and engage in grandiosity and put people in their place and be emotionally distant is a good way to be. We've been sold that as a bill of goods, that what we learned, but really? That's a quality life?
I challenge you gentleman who are still watching this video. How do you distance yourself from your emotions? What behaviors do you engage in to keep people at bay so that people can't see the real you, so people don't get a handle on those things we are so ashamed of and we're uncomfortable with? Do you engage in humor, sarcasm, grandiosity? Do you feel like you're better than people? Are you an intellect arguer and rationalize everything? I know I engage in all those things.
I challenge you gentleman who are still watching this video. How do you distance yourself from your emotions? What behaviors do you engage in to keep people at bay so that people can't see the real you, so people don't get a handle on those things we are so ashamed of and we're uncomfortable with? Do you engage in humor, sarcasm, grandiosity? Do you feel like you're better than people? Are you an intellect arguer and rationalize everything? I know I engage in all those things.
Quite frankly, under the realm of being authentic and open, I've been extremely authentic in these videos. Yesterday alone I was talking about my struggle with alcohol and how I was depressed and I didn't realize it. Is there a chance that people will use that against me? Absolutely. I'm not going to give my power though. They can't hurt me unless I allow them to. The more resolved we are with our stuff, the less people can hurt us with it. What stuff do you have that you're unresolved with, that you're deathly afraid of people finding out? These are hard questions. If you're squirming in your chair, good because you're not being authentic if you don't look at this stuff. I know. Many years running away from this. Anyway.
Luc Bouchard with Solve-Act Life Coaching Services. I've been a certified life skills coach for twenty two years and I specialize in inauthentic behavior and authentic behavior and what the difference is. I hope you have a great day and thank you for sticking with me in this video. This was a tough one. I suspect that some people bailed because of the discomfort level. You have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow for video number thirty three.
Take care.