August 28, 2019 • 48 mins
We've discussed vulnerability on Life Amplified before. But not quite like this.
Men's mental health has become such a major issue recently. Society is opening up more to male vulnerability, but we don't seem to know how to have the conversation. How can men open up and disclose how they're feeling? How can it truly affects their relationships?
This week, Dan welcomes Rissa Wray. She's a multi-faceted healer who works in movement, massage and mentorship. Her special focus is relationships with ourselves and with others, at work, at home and at heart. She's working with men toward building lasting, meaningful connections.
This conversation isn't just about men... it's about everyone.
Topics discussed in this episode include...
- Five steps we can take to harness our vulnerability and be able to open up to be honest with ourselves and with others.
- Why vulnerability is not something men are taught as children and how that affects their adult relationships.
- The media, our culture and how it shapes men's views on vulnerability.
- Why men have been conditioned to hide their wounded parts.
- What we see today as masculinity in news and politics isn't true masculinity.
- The importance of communication among men: How we need to have deeper connections and build deeper conversations.
Find Rissa on Instagram @RissaWray
Find Dan on Instagram @cscdanmason
Join the Life Amplified Power Tribe on Facebook to keep the conversation going! facebook.com/groups/lifeamplified
To learn more about Dan and how you can work one-on-one with him, visit creativesoulcoaching.net
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Episode seventy seven, The Power of Vulnerability with Riss Array.
My name is Dan Mason. I was overweight, getting divorced,
battling depression, and feeling trapped in a career where I
was successful but bored and unfulfilled. And it's actually the
greatest gift I've ever been given. I used my pain
(00:20):
as a springboard to discover my life's purpose. Now I
want to share the same tools and strategies which helped
transform my life with you so you can live life amplify.
Renee Brown is the godmother of research on shame and vulnerability.
She says owning our story can be hard, but not
(00:40):
nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.
Embracing our vulnerabilities as risky, but not nearly as dangerous
as giving up on love and belonging and joy. The
experiences that make us most vulnerable only when we're brave
enough to explore the darkness while we discover the infinite
power of our lights. We have talked about vulnerability on
(01:01):
the podcast before, but one of the angles that we've
never covered is vulnerability when it comes to men. And
they came across an interview that Burnee Brown did recently
in the Atlantic, where she says messages of shame are
actually organized by gender. I want to read you this
quote from an interview that she did with Andy Hines.
Berne says, quote most women pledge allegiance to this idea
(01:23):
that women can explore their emotions, breakdown, fall apart, and
it's healthy, but guys are not allowed to fall apart.
She went on in the interview to explain that men
are often pressured to open up and talk about their feelings,
and they're criticized for being emotionally walled off, but if
they get too real, they're met with revulsion and burnee.
Brown actually admits that there are times earlier in her
(01:45):
life where she was guilty of this herself. She says,
after doing years of research on this topic, the most
shocking bit is that men's shame is not primarily inflicted
by other men. She says, it's actually the women in
their lives lives who tend to be repelled when men
show the chinks in their armor. So why is this
an important discussion? Number One? Men's mental health matters. I
(02:09):
think it is one of the most pressing issues facing
us as a country right now. If you look at
the amount of mass shootings that are happening literally on
a daily basis. Of them are committed by men. Also,
the level to which a man feels safe to self
disclose in his romantic relationship is going to affect the
dynamics of the marriage, and it will affect the amount
(02:32):
of intimacy that they're able to experience with a partner.
So I wanted to go deeper on this, and ironically,
the best resource I knew to come in and have
a conversation today about male vulnerability is a woman. Risk
Array is a dear friend of mine. She's multifaceted healer
who works in movement, massage, and mentorship. Her special focus, though,
(02:53):
is relationships with ourselves and with others at work, at home,
and at heart. She's working with men towards building lasting,
meaningful connections. This is going to be a wide ranging
discussion that she and I have today, but Riska will
share the five steps we can take to harness our
vulnerability and be able to open up to be honest
(03:13):
with ourselves and with others. She'll explain why vulnerability is
not something men are taught its children and how that
affects their adult relationships. We're gonna talk about the media,
our culture and how it's shapesman's views on vulnerability and
why so many men have been conditioned to hide their
wounded parts. We'll talk about what we see today as
masculinity in the news and in politics, isn't true masculinity.
(03:37):
And we'll talk about the importance of communication among men,
how we need to have deeper connections and build deeper conversations.
If you love what you're hearing today, please share this
with a friend. You can screenshot the podcast, upload it
to Instagram. You can tag me at c sc Dan Mason,
and you can find Rissa at Rissa Array, r I
(03:57):
S S A, w r A why. Or you can
also continue the conversation. And if there was ever an
episode that I think needs to have a deeper conversation,
it's this one. We're gonna be taking your thoughts, your questions,
your AHA moments in our life. Amplified Power Tribe. That's
our private Facebook group. You can find us there. A
link is in the show notes. And don't forget we're
(04:20):
gladly accepting your honest reviews right now on Apple and
I'm running a special contest through the end of September.
For every honest review that you leave, I'm gonna make
a donation to Feeding America that will help us feed
one and sixty hungry Americans. Plus each person who leaves
a review goes into the grand prize drawing for your
(04:41):
choice of a new pair of air pods for you
to listen to the podcast on, or I will send
you an Amazon gift card. So leave those reviews once
you check out the podcast. You don't have to kiss
up to us, just leave your honest feedback and we'll
get you in that grand prize drawing. In the me time,
sit back, relax, we are going to do a deep
(05:03):
dive on the power of vulnerability with Riss Array. Riss Array,
Welcome to life Amplified. It's good to have you here.
Rissa is an amazing soul special person. Newer when I
lived in Florida is a yoga teacher and now she's
stepping out and evolving and doing amazing healing work in
(05:26):
other ways. And we're going to talk about some of
that coming up today. But the big topic today is
about vulnerability and vulnerability with men, which probably is already
incited a pseudo panic attack for some of the men
listening today, But for some of the women listening, they're like,
(05:46):
oh my god, yes, I wish my man would be
more vulnerable. Why is this such an important topic in
twenty nineteen, and why is it really like paramounts for
just how we we grow as a society and where
we're headed into the future. Well, that's a big question. Actually,
it hasn't been my experience necessarily that men might shy
(06:09):
away from this topic. I think actually, after sharing my
opinions on the subject recently on social media, a lot
of my male friends reached out to me directly just
to say thank you, and just to say that they
really resonated with hearing this topic given voice. So I
think it's actually really pertinent. I think I think this
(06:31):
is going on inside of men, and it's hard to
just snap your fingers and reconfigure what you've culturally been taught,
what you've witnessed in your father and your grandfather, and
your male role models in movie stars and on television,
you name it. So I think that on the news
we also see a lot of violence committed by men,
(06:54):
even men killing themselves, and it's it's not just men.
Of course, we live in a pretty mass giving culture,
um that wants to dominate, that wants to know, that
wants to be in control, and I think that the
byproduct of that is violence. I think it's violent against
yourself to expect yourself to be in the know and
(07:15):
in control all the time. And I think it's violent
against other people of course as well, to then project
those expectations onto them. You and I were talking about
some statistics earlier this evening of these mass shootings that
we've seen over the years, and now they've you know,
we're almost numb to it because it's become a daily
basis committed by men. Over of gun owners are men,
(07:39):
and the suicide rates. Men are three and a half
times more likely to take their own life than women.
So clearly there is something going on with men with
masculinity and what is the crossroads that we're at. Well,
another statistic that ire and recently, let's say, I think
(08:01):
it was fifty something percent of women have experienced violent assault,
and that's just a general term violent assault, and over
sixty of men have experienced violent assault. So more men
and boys are abused general physical assault abused than girls,
(08:21):
And this is where we're at. We had a me too, movement,
But where the where's the men to movement? Where's the
men's dignified path to healing? And that's what really concerns me,
because shame and blame aren't working, of course, in your estimation,
and you have felt called to step in and get
more personally involved in working with men on this. Why
(08:42):
is it for you that a woman is the right
person to help a man facilitate the healing. Yeah, that's
a good question. I doubted my role in this realm
for a while. I had heard and seeing that it's
important for men to give each other permission, which I
totally agree, like please, But I also know it's important
(09:04):
as a woman to witness and validate feminine and by
feminine I mean vulnerable, non controlling expression of emotion in men,
because the perception might be that to be a real
man you never cry, and women don't want to see that,
they want a provider and whatever. No, I'm a woman
(09:25):
and I really want to see it. I respect you
more to give yourself permission to be a whole person
who experiences a whole range of human emotion, who can
hold space for yourself in expressing those emotions, and who
can lean into an honest, mutually supportive relationship where you
(09:49):
express those honest feelings. What you're saying is beautiful, and
what you're saying also flies in the face of generations
of cultural programming that we have experienced as men, where
it's about you gotta work, you got to achieve, you
have to strive, you have to dominate in your career,
you have to be a provider that you have to
(10:11):
have the biggest toys, that you have to have the
nicest car. You know, we still see this in commercial advertising,
you know, to be that guy. It's about, you know,
driving the nicest car, having the best job, you know,
having the hottest women beside you. There's been so much
of that, and I don't know if you remember from
last year the Gillette campaign that they did about the
(10:32):
best a Man Can Get, where they were showing this
new version of masculinity where fathers were stepping in and
stopping the boys from getting in a fight or stopping
bullying on the playground. There was outrage on YouTube like
that that campaign had more thumbs down than likes because
people were just so outrage that we're, oh, we're just
(10:54):
gonna turn our boys into little girls. There were people
out there who thought that, what is your answer to that? Well,
that's just fear. I mean, if you've been taught that
you have to be a certain way to receive love
and validation and power, then you're just going to perpetuate.
It's the same logic of hazing. This was done to me,
therefore I do it to you. But if we stop
and think, like, oh, where is this really taking us
(11:16):
to a morally bankrupt culture where we all just dominate
each other? Like, clearly that's not working. I think people
know in the back of their minds that that's not working.
I think people are hungry for real connection and real, healthy,
equal loving relationships like that. With some of the statistics
(11:37):
that you mentioned about loneliness, loneliness is also a predictor
of early death in an unhappy life. So people don't
want to hang around you if you're a big bully.
Bullying doesn't get you love. In your experience in dating
in relationships, how is it that you see men are
(11:57):
showing up in relationships that we need to be doing differently. Well,
of course this is my experience, but also talking to
my friends and anecdotally it's not just me. I see men,
they hit a wall when it comes to emotions, and
they're absolutely terrified to go any deeper. They don't have
(12:19):
the experience, they haven't practiced successfully going down that path
and owning feelings, talking about feelings and not being maybe,
like you said, just called names abandoned. And my experience
has been just to hit that wall and they shut down.
(12:39):
You know, they lashed out. One of them lashed out, um,
most of them shut down. Some of them run away
and ghost, some of them have blamed themselves. Just think
they're broken. Better off alone, that was what one of
them said, better off alone. And it just broke my heart.
And it was really sad being in a relationship trying
to be in an equal partnership with these people who
(13:02):
have been emotionally stunted, essentially because it hurts me because
I needed them and I needed them in a way
that exceeded their capabilities and I can't fix them. And
so I'm stepping into this role of like, I don't
have a need from you. I want to help you. Actually,
I can be a third party. I could be a
safe person just to help you and encourage you and
(13:24):
coach you to face these hard feelings to take risks
in your relationships to form healthy and loving relationships with
trustworthy people. It ain't an easy thing. The number one
need what I've seen in my coaching for feminine energy
partners in a relationship is a need for safety. Of course,
physical safety, I mean, we don't just want to make
(13:47):
the mine of demarcation physical abuse right, But emotional safety.
I think we all need to feel safe. It's number one.
But can a man who his non embraced vulnerability and
is up here, you know, just kind of living in
the achieving and striving and the rat race, the competition
in your estimation, can a man who is living in
(14:09):
that world, who's disconnected from emotions, can he make his
partner feel safe. I don't know about making his partner
feel safe, but I know that if your self worth
is determined by all of these external things, then how
would you even know if someone loved you for the
real you? If you're only used to loving yourself for
(14:30):
these external things, If you don't love yourself for the
inner vulnerable you. If you do love yourself for the
inner vulnerable you, and other people feel safer around you.
Really the point of relationships, particularly romantic relationships, But I
think that this is true of friendships and connection. The
point of us being in relationship in the first place.
(14:54):
A lot of people think it's about as you know, connection,
it's about getting married, it's about raising a family somebody,
what's netflix with it's about the sex. Really, the emotional
needs that we have in relationship are intimacy, you know,
emotional intimacy to have somebody be there with us and
be able to see and hear and witness the parts
of ourselves that we're not even sure lovable and who
(15:16):
will still accept that. And then besides intimacy, it's also
about growth. You know, you want to get into a
relationship with somebody that you are continually growing with, and
certainly if you know I see this a lot where
people come to me to work on their relationship. One
partner does. But if you've got one partner doing the
work and the other isn't, eventually they're going to grow apart.
So intimacy is the byproduct of telling the truth. It's
(15:40):
about speaking up. What's true for you is that the
biggest issue right now for men and your estimation is
being able to to just open themselves up fully and
share all of themselves and not just the ship that
looks great up on Instagram and Facebook. My favorite definition
of intimacy is simply communicating on a personal level. If
you're not communicating on a personal level, you know, if
(16:02):
you talk about the football game or something surface conversation, yeah,
which is a way of bonding. I think that was
one of the things that we looked up. Men tend
to bond over an activity. They're not going to sit
face to face and just look deeply into each other's
eyes and be like, here's what's going on in my marriage. Like,
that's just that tends to not happen. It can, and
(16:23):
it does. I have I have male friends who do
communicate courageously like that, and it's because they've learned that
it's important. They've practiced it, and they are fed and
nurtured by it, and they are felt seen. They feel
seen and heard and supported because of it. So they've
experienced success because of it. But I think that I
(16:44):
have worked as a massage therapist for the past seven years,
I've worked as a yoga teacher for the past five
and I've held space for men and in this way
that they really need and they really blossom in in
these um, you know safe environments where they don't. They
let their guard down, and it's really beautiful. And and
(17:07):
I think that it takes practice, and it takes courage,
and it takes mental emotional maturity, it takes self nurturing.
It takes a lot to be a courageous person, not
just when you're paying someone behind closed doors to take
a load off every once in a while, but when
you're actually deciding every day to wake up and to
(17:30):
be you, to be on a bashelor you to not
pretend that everything's fine, or to when you're hurt, lash
out an anger instead. It is not easy. It's not
easy for many women I know, just as much as
it is for many men that I know. So in
order for us to embrace vulnerability, you've come today and
(17:51):
you've given us five steps to be able to help
both men and also women who are leaning more in
their masculine energy. Is that fair to say that this
can help people really embrace, become whole and find that
sense of vulnerability so that they can build better connections.
They can have a more meaningful life, a healthier life,
(18:12):
a life full of love, a life full of meaning
and authenticity. I want to give some perspective for the
man who's listening who might not be far into a
self development path because we, you know, we throw around
a lot of spaces as coaches and his healers about
oh holding space, and people are like, what does all
that mean for me? I'll give a practical example on
(18:35):
what it was like for me to actually embrace and
feel safe in my masculine energy. Because my dad was
super alpha in his career. My dad accomplished a lot.
My dad was the CEO of a major corporation corporation.
My dad was a wonderful man and a good father.
Despite all the traveling, he was still home and he
would have like the w W E wrestling tickets to
(18:57):
the baseball tickets. We spend time. But my dad also
did not do emotion and that reflected in his marriage
because my mother was the one who was the super
masculine energy, but almost you know, in a toxic sort
of way. You know, my mom was somebody who was
actually hurt by a lot of masculine men growing up,
(19:19):
so she morphed into the thing that hurt her as
a protection mechanism. But what the dynamic that that creates
for children and a specifically Little Boys, is if you
grow up in a home. You know, Dad can be
super alpha in his career, but if he comes home
and he's passive at home in the marriage and mom
(19:41):
is super alpha and mom's the masculine energy, it creates
a situation where for me growing up, I had to
assume feminine energy in order to complete that dysfunctional dynamic.
When I was up in my masculine energy, that created
a turf war with my mom because she had to
assert power and came over the top. And that usually
endedn't either, you know, some sort of physical abuse or
(20:05):
emotional abuse even worse. To make that even harder, when
I would get sad about it as a kid and
my dad was you know, my dad wasn't there emotionally
and Mom was in her masculine energy, I usually got
belittled if I was sad and told what, you're being
a baby. You're feeling sorry for yourself. So anger wasn't
(20:25):
safe to feel, Sadness wasn't safe to feel, and I
just kind of became a guy. Through most of my life.
It was numb. I didn't feel anything, but I modeled
after my dad, and I became very career oriented, and
I was completely emotionally cut off because I always believe
that on some level, if I were in my masculine
energy that it would make a woman angry. And that
(20:45):
was the dynamic that I had, and and it totally
affected the way I showed up in relationships because I
was a guy who was way passive. You know. I
was always like, I don't know where do you want
to go for dinner tonight? And like women would be
like a whole I'm making decisions all day at work.
Can you just do something? Can you make a decision?
But I was I couldn't step up and be assertive
(21:05):
like that. So you can imagine what that made my
dating prospects like in my twenties, you know, because most
good women are like, well, you know, this guy is
kind of a pushover. He didn't have it together, and
women who were sort of looking for a man to
be submissive were very drawn to that. But then I
found and that's really what my marriage was is I
(21:25):
recreated my parents marriage, you know, as being the guy
who was super successful pass it in the relationship. She
didn't respect me, and I created that dynamic again. And
when you're not in that place of feeling emotionally. I'll
speak for myself. Right when I was not in a
place of feeling like it was safe for me to
show up emotionally, I lived on the surface. I can
(21:47):
make a lot of jokes, could talk about TV shows,
talk about movies, talk about celebrity gossip, but don't ask
me about me. And that was really, really, really tough
for a lot of years, and it led to depression, anxiety,
and suicidal ideation. So you know, I have so much
respect for the fact that you're creating this dialogue and wanting,
(22:11):
you know, to be a source because I think that
there are men listening today who have never had that
experience of a woman or a female figure really encouraging
them to share and letting them know that it's safe.
So that's really really beautiful in terms of what you're doing.
And I know that you came today and you have
some specific steps that can help men start to come
(22:33):
out of the isolation, come out of the loneliness, come
out of not come out of achieving, because that's part
of masculine energy, but get them also into feeling instead
of just doing thank you for sharing them. That's really powerful. Team.
It's funny in my work because you know, with my
clients I deal with about women and there are men
who reach out and they fill out the application, but
(22:53):
women's time to commit to coaching. They're like, I don't know,
and could actually be because it's harder sometimes to be
witnessed and showed that vulnerability to another man, you know,
like even on a primal level, you don't want to
be the weak member of the tribe. So I think
that that's why it's so beautiful what you're doing to
be able to be a safe place for men to
(23:17):
show this other side and know that it's okay. Yeah,
I know that it's encouraged now, that it's good, now
that it's the path to growth, because nobody I think
maybe surface level life you can get stuck in, it
can feel safe because going deep like who knows you
open Pandora's box, who knows what's going to come out?
And so safety and security and having a social support
(23:41):
system is really important. And you mentioned my five steps,
and you know I totally made these up. I gathered
them from other resources and sources of inspiration, of course,
but a social support system is imperative because it's not
a matter of if you'll need to reach out. It's
a matter of when, because how can you transform if
(24:04):
you've always got your hands on the wheel, you know,
you're doing driving the bus, and you've got to be
able to let someone else tag in so you can
take a nap, rest, recharge, recuperate and wake up a
new or you know, totally break down. That is a
part of it. And I think that's the other thing
is like sometimes right where surface level, we go deep
and sometimes spirals out of control, and that's normal. That
(24:27):
is normal. You know, it's normal to to experience catharsis
and surrender and to break down and to cry. And
I've heard it called ego death and the same fears
of death get triggered in resistance to doing that, to
letting yourself go through that process. And if you've never
done it, then you don't know that right when you're
(24:49):
resisting at the most and right when you don't want
to let go the most is actually the time when
you need that cocoon of safety that's provided by know friends,
family members, people you trust, people who have proven to
you that they're trustworthy. So that's step one is support
system for the man out there. Because we've seen the
(25:09):
statistics of men say that they're lonely. A lot of
men in studies that I've seen in the number varies
say that they don't have a best friend. Women can
relate to each other through an emotional level. That's what
we know, like Sunday boozy brunches. Men relate to each
other through activities. You know, there are men who like
(25:31):
to go play basketball. There are men whould like to
play sports. There are men who are involved in churches
or social groups or you know, political organizations. But to
relate in an emotional level, where does one go to
create that in their life? Reaching out is a risk.
So let's not pretend that it's just this safe, beautiful
thing and you're always going to be supported by the
(25:52):
person you reach out to. Nope, it's a risk. But
hopefully we can take smart risks here and we can
look at the people who have shown for us. Who
would you call if you were taken to jail? Who
would you call? Who would you call if you were
taken to the hospital. Who would you call if your
business needed support? Who would you call if you needed advice?
(26:17):
Who would you call if you needed And then this
is kind of again at the bottom of the list,
but it's what I do. Who would you call if
you needed touch, an intimacy and love? Who would you
call go out to lunch? Who would you call if
your sad? So if you don't have answers for those,
then then I really think maybe you're not looking hard enough,
Maybe that you've just isolated for so long and it's
(26:38):
time to against all of your fears, step out into
the world and to watch who shows up when you
reach out. First, it's over the small things, and then
you build trust by each action. You say, men relate
more based on action. Who do you watch the football
game with? Who do you get a drink? With these
small actions where someone shows up, they can show up
(26:59):
for bigger stuff, you build it up. I picture a
guy who's like going to call up his dude this
weekend and be like, Yo, so we got our fantasy
football drafts coming up this week, and then hey, can
I talk about how I'm feeling emotionally broken afterwards? But
maybe there is somebody that would share that experience. Because
if that many men are feeling lonely according to statistics,
(27:20):
then it means other men are looking for somebody that
they can not the only one. It's right. Yeah, that's
why I love. Like when I go to like personal
development events or seminars, usually overwhelmingly women in the room,
but the guys who are there, those are like my people.
This is why I want to step into this work
because I'm a safe person you can call and just
(27:41):
by practicing with me or a therapist or a coach
or whomever, by having a successful feedback loop of reaching
out for support and having that need met, you will
rewire your brain and rewrite that story that says I
can't reach out something's wrong with me because I'm sad
(28:01):
something's wrong with me. No, you're going to reach out
and you're gonna have it reinforced and you're gonna know
nothing's wrong with you. That makes perfect sense according to
what you've experienced. And I'm here for you. I see you,
I validate you, I mirror you. It's okay, it's good.
Thank you for reaching out. There's part of me in
the back of my mind that laughs, because we as
(28:22):
men have these stereotypes that we can't even pull the
car over and ask for directions, you know, like thank
God for the GPS systems. Now it's like sort of
saved millions of marriages. I feel like all the course
of the year, there's part of as if we're resistant
to even asking for directions, how do we ask for
help when we're hurting? You know my perspective just coming
as a man myself. There are many times I've had
(28:44):
mentors and coaches, you know, I still have them in
my life. And what has happened through my own relationships
with my mentors and coaches is giving voice to some
of those things that are the most shameful things in
my life, some of the parts of me that I
didn't think we're lovable. That it's created space where I've
(29:05):
been able to now share this. I was recently at
a seven day trauma retreat where I was able to
share some really really personal, deep stuff from my childhood
with other people. Uh, it's allowed me to share that
now with friends more openly selectively. And you know, even
you and I were at the beach yesterday and you're trauma. Yeah, right.
(29:28):
I think a lot of times what people don't realize
is that the place you're not willing to go when
it comes in terms of self disclosure, are talking about
your feelings. It's because that's the place you think the
love will stop, and the minute that you can give
voice to those things and have it witnessed and be
heard and have somebody Like when you and I were sharing,
the first thing you did after I shared is you
(29:49):
just gave me a huge hug. There's something so powerful
in that, though, because then you're not living in the regrets,
the shame of your childhood, the guilt, all those other
low vibe emotions that keep you stuck. So super super beautiful,
and thank you for sharing that with me. Yeah, shame
keeps things quiet and hidden. Shame grows in silence and
(30:13):
in darkness. And just by knowing this, you can coach yourself.
You can coach that inner child who's afraid that the
love ends at a certain place. And when you wise
up to your own bullshit, you realize, nope, nope. Take
that little baby child by the hand and guide them
into the light. Find a trusted friend, and you need
to speak that shame to break the spell. Sure you do,
(30:34):
and it's you can write about it. You can talk
to a therapist about it, you can talk to a
coach about it, trusted friend. These safe places. First, you
reinforce those safe places, and then you start to take
those safe places with you, it loses its spell, it
loses its charge. You become more resilient. And by experiencing
that space holding from others who are more practiced, you're
(30:56):
able to learn how to hold that space for yourself
and hold it for others. And one of the worst
stories that we tell ourselves in the back of our
minds is that we're alone. We're the only ones to
feel this. And then you see you hear somebody talk
about it, and you're like, oh, ship, they do it too,
And this I hope people know when you talk about it,
someone else is listening and going like, oh my god,
(31:17):
I'm not alone. I'm not the only one. So you
don't know where you inspire by your honest self divulgence.
And we all have trauma. We've all experienced traumatic experiences.
And it takes practice. It can't just you can't just
sit in a corner by yourself and think yourself into change. Yeah,
you have to practice it. You have to feel it,
(31:39):
like literally, right a hug that I could say, oh,
how wonderful with my words, or I could hug you,
and you know by that hug that that's connection, that's love.
That's acceptance, and you feel it in your body, You
feel it in your nervous system in a way that
words can't express. This all leads really nicely into the
second point that you have, because I feel like, yeah,
I feel like we already sort of we're already headed
(32:01):
down the road. The second thing that you said is
important for embracing vulnerability is self nurturing. Define self nurturing, well,
I guess it's the opposite of self punishing. And the
analogy that I like to think of is, you know,
so two people can step on a yoga mat, and
one can be there to kick their own ass, and
the other can be there to self nurture and to
(32:25):
feel their body and to receive the sensations of their
own emotions, of each part of themselves, and to think
nurturing thoughts. And by nurturing thoughts, I mean validating thoughts,
I mean accepting thoughts, I mean tender thoughts, I mean
loving thoughts. So you can think it's so funny going
along with this analogy. People are split on mirrors in
(32:48):
yoga classes. Some people love mirrors and some people don't.
And I think mirrors are what you make of them,
right if you look in the mirror and you think,
oh my god, I'm so fat. Look at my ankles.
I don't know, ankles, I don't know I pick that.
But the other person would look into a mirror and think, hey,
I'm doing all right today. Or you can think like, whoa,
my hips are out of balance. What if I move
(33:08):
them slightly to the right. Oh that's better. Okay, let
me feel this, let me digest it, let me feel this.
And this is balanced. This is balance. This is balance.
And that's what I do personally on my yoga mat.
And I love mirrors because I could be on my
yoga mat thinking like here, I am perfectly in balance,
and then I look in the mirror and I am
totally out of whack, and then I have to adjust,
and then I have to feel it. I'm trying to
(33:32):
re educate my own sensory perception of myself. And so
self nurturing is about attitude. It takes some self discipline,
it takes some holding yourself accountable, maybe even setting up
some social accountable structures. You can lean on the people
in your support system. And self nurturing also involves letting
go right. So if it's habit replacement. That means you're
(33:52):
letting go of some stuff that maybe you've been doing
for a long time. Maybe diet coke is your favorite
thing in the world. Okay, you're going to have an
emotional loss when you let let go of diet coke.
Maybe that's what you drink with your dad growing up,
or your mom growing up, or like, you have some
emotional attachment to these dysfunctional habits, patterns, behaviors, consumptions, and
(34:14):
you need to let yourself grieve those dysfunctional things because
it's like losing an old friend that was there for you.
It was there for you, but you're a little older
and a little wiser now and you're going to change
it on purpose. You're gonna let yourself process that feeling
and you're going to replace it with something else. Self nurturing, then,
at the end of the day, is taking care of
not just your body, but your emotional well being. To write,
(34:38):
self nurturing requires action and attitude, positive attitude, So that's
where the emotion comes in. Let's just think that there's
a lot of people who be like, well, yeah, self nurturing,
I go to yoga and then they're you know, they're
they're they're doing the poses that they're never actually processing
any of the stress, frustration and sadness, shame, guilt, or
(34:58):
they're not using yoga as a to self awareness and
self empowerment, they're using it as a form of exercise,
repetitive and tuning out. Or I'm a yoga teacher, I
see people who and either the product of their lives,
they have resistance to to letting go. Or if if
I come up and offer an adjustment um or you know,
(35:18):
some guidance, there's like I'm doing it wrong. They're afraid
and they retaliate. But we step on the yoga mat
to transform step number three. When we talk about embracing vulnerability,
you say it's about setting boundaries. Tell me more about that.
Why is that so closely related to vulnerability. Well, you
(35:40):
can only be vulnerable in safe containers, and setting boundaries
is creating safe containers. It's stating clearly what's okay and
what's not okay. Setting boundaries means you need to get
in touch with yourself about what's okay and what's not okay.
And I think that path of self nurturing can can
(36:01):
help you tap into those feelings and give yourself permission
to tap into those feelings and to change your mind.
And simply stating what's okay and what's not okay, and
not you're okay or you're not okay, just this isn't
okay or this is okay. It helps you create a
safe container for yourself. It means you want to keep
(36:22):
showing up and existing in relationship with someone under these
circumstances where it's safe for as far as your support
system goes. I don't know if it's possible for someone
to deliver unconditional love all the time. I know some
moms out there might disagree with me, but that's that's okay.
But even your support system, each and every one of
those people needs different boundaries, and those boundaries are earned. Right,
(36:47):
So the person who has earned your trust, you go
to a bar and watch a football game. Okay, they
show up when they say they will. Okay, they've earned
some trust. Now say they violate your try. Okay, they
say they're going to show up and they don't, and
and then it becomes a pattern. And then you set
a boundary and you say, hey, I can't meet up
(37:08):
with you on Thursdays anymore because I keep showing up
and you're an hour late and I just don't have
that kind of time or I feel disrespected, so we
can hang out at another time, but Thursdays don't work
for me anymore. How much of setting boundaries is the
way you're explaining it about being truthful? But speaking your
truth with other people? Does it start with being honest
(37:31):
with yourself? Yeah? Absolutely. If you're pretending like nothing bothers you,
then why would you set a boundary? And I think
this is actually why people ghost in stonewall and run away,
because they don't actually admit that something hurt their feelings
and stand up for themselves. They just run away from
it and pretend like nothing's wrong, and it actually ends
up hurting them worse. Like, you haven't even set boundaries
(37:52):
for yourself that it's not okay to let people walk
all over you, Like what kind of messages are you
sending to yourself about your own self worth? And then
what if the other person had no idea that they
hurt your feelings? You're leaving this gaping void and the
other person is usually going to fill in your story
for you, and it's usually the worst possible story, so
(38:12):
they're making up the story that you're a horrible person
when you could, on the other hand, just say, Hey,
I'm having a really hard day and I can't make
it to watch the football game with you when I
said I could, and I'm really sorry, but I'm going
to be there as soon as I can. And that
on a self divulgence usually does a lot to maintain
these more healthy, loving, equal relationships where there's mutual respect.
(38:34):
Two steps left. When we're talking about vulnerability. Oh lord,
this one's going to be the hardest for people. I
feel like if they're tracking with the not that the
other steps can't feel difficult when you're doing it, but
this one's a big one. Let's talk about apologizing. Yes,
the art of apology. Apologizing is the superglue of relationships.
(38:55):
You and I have talked about this when we've spoken
about trauma. What makes something particul reularly traumatizing is not
what happens in the moment, but often what happens afterward
and then the meaning that you make of it. So
if someone does a bad thing, huge betrayal, violation, and
then they abandon you afterwards, they just don't talk about it,
and they piece out and they bounce or they pretend
(39:16):
like nothing's wrong, and then you internalize thinking something must
be wrong with you to feel so hurt and bad
and wrong because of it. Or in safe relationships where
we are equals and where it's safe for us to
take responsibility and admit that we did a wrong thing.
We're not a bad person, but we did a bad thing.
That takes a lot of internal strength. It takes a
(39:38):
lot of social support to know that. Maybe before you
apologize directly, you admit and take responsibility for your part
in a more complex situation of pain and hurt and
betrayal or abuse or trauma. But to own your part,
to practice telling it, maybe you need to. Maybe you
don't to to other people first, safe people first, people
(40:01):
in your support system first, and then you can apologize
directly and the relationship can mend. And that is one
of the hardest things in the world, and I know
because I've done it. One thing I'd add to that
is a lot of times we talk about love, right,
we think love is what happens during those first like
three months of relationship. Yeah, where you're not really meeting
(40:22):
the partner, you're meeting sort of their press agent and
their publicists. You know, you're getting like the best, but
they're showing you all the best parts of themselves. It's
my potential, yeah right, but it's not reality. Then once
sex happens, you know, then we're sort of chemically bonded.
Then it's dopamine oxytocin and the butterflies and the stomach
and the euphoria, and that's all great and good. But love,
(40:46):
all that chemical reaction wears off, usually six months to
a year, and then you're left with the relationship. Love
is what's happening after that, and the love is built
in the repair is what I'm hearing you saying. You so,
knowing how to repair and apologize. Knowing how to repair
is essential because conflict is inevitable. Conflict is just differing opinions, logic, desires, needs,
(41:11):
and that exists because you're different people. But you're different
people who exist in relationship with one another, and conflict
can be negotiated and managed and learned from. You can
actually become stronger and more resilient through dealing with conflict
safely and personally. I've I've been through conflict that come
out the other end in a relationship stronger than ever
(41:33):
where I learned something about myself and my own triggers.
I've also been through conflict that was extremely unsafe and
it was very hard for me, but I had to
take a step away from from those people. One final
step to embrace vulnerability. Well, I don't know now I'm
looking at the list. I'm like, maybe this is the
hardest one. God, if any of these were easy, we
(41:56):
had all be more vulnerable. The f word forgiveness, forgive.
This is super hard because even if you can forgive
other people, oftentimes you can't forgive yourself. And that's why
we talk about step one and step two and how
they're completely inter related your social support and your intimate
loving relationships and your relationship with yourself. I don't think
those two things can be teased apart. I think they
(42:17):
really inform and reinforce one another. It's such an internal process.
But Desmond Tutu and m Foe too to his daughter,
have written a wonderful book on the subject called The
Book of Forgiving, which is incredibly moving if you have
the chance to read it, and they talk about a
fourfold path of forgiving, and it relates wonderfully with all
of these other steps that I've made up about being vulnerable,
(42:41):
about um, about you know what it takes to live
a meaningful life. But anyway, the fourfold path of forgiving
is step one sharing your story, ideally with the one
who hurt you. Sometimes that's not safe, and so you
need to maybe write some letters that you never sent,
or tell somebody else about it. And what I love
about this book because it's like sometimes you're going to
(43:01):
talk about it a lot for a long time because
you're processing it. So if you've been beating yourself up
just for talking about the same thing that's been bothering
you for a while, stop beating yourself up so much
about it. You're processing, whether you know it or not.
Step two is naming the hurt. So maybe you talk
about the story, but then you get to why did
(43:22):
this hurt me so much? I've heard it's called affect labeling,
where you name the feeling, and just by naming the
feeling and calling it by its name, it kind of
breaks the spell. So it diminishes the effect, especially of
that negative emotion on you. So you share your story,
you name the hurt. Step three is you grant forgiveness,
(43:43):
and step four is you renew or release the relationship.
So even though this is heart wrenching, it's also extremely empowering.
You really know your own resiliency by your past capacity
to forgive and forgiveness is not spiritual bypassing, is not
pretending like nothing's wrong, because that ship comes up again,
(44:03):
and there's a natural arc to forgiveness. I think a
lot of times we're told, you know, spiritually that oh
you have to you know, you have to forgive. Well,
you don't have to do anything before you're ready, so
you have to feel all those emotions. And you know,
the other thing that I would add is forgiveness. You
know a lot of times the reason we're resistant when
it comes to vulnerability, as we think somehow it it
(44:25):
gives a green light to the incident that happened, or
it makes it okay if we forgive. And ultimately forgiveness
is a selfish act. Well yeah, it's a self oriented tool,
you know. It's it's admitting that the past can't be
changed and really trying to change how you relate to
the past so that you can move forward. Forgiveness doesn't
(44:47):
mean that you have to leave that person in your life.
You can forgive somebody and be like there's the door
by girl boy, you know whatever it is. I think
that those are the biggest barriers that come up for
people when it comes to forgiveness and then forget. I mean,
my God, forgiving yourself is like, you know, we could
do a whole our episode just on that, Riss Array,
(45:08):
amazing conversation. Vulnerability, masculine vulnerability super important now more than ever.
And if somebody is listening today and they're moved by
the message and they would like to work with you,
find out more about you, to do a deeper dive
into all of the things that we've discussed today, how
(45:29):
can they find you online? I'm on Instagram at Riss
array r I s s A w r a Y.
My website is moving dash Meditations dot com. I am
riss Aray and that's Ray with the W like Fay Ray.
Please reach out. I am here. I would love to help.
Awesome conversation, my friend. Thank you so much for being
(45:50):
you and for for all the wisdom today. Thank you
so much for having me Dan, It's been a pleasure,
beautiful calm station. And it's not just one about men.
This is about how we show up together in relationships. Uh,
This is about support, this is about love. It's about
(46:10):
building a higher sense of acceptance and really something that
I've been working through personally over the last year. I
think if you talked to the last few girls that
I've dated since my divorce several years ago, one of
the things that they would say is Dan has a
hard time opening up, and I'll give you the honest
story behind that. There was a time in a pretty
(46:32):
significant relationship when I came forward and shared a part
of myself that I've actually never even talked about on
the podcast before. But I shared my story of being
sexually abused as a young child by people that I
trusted in my life, and rather than being met with
love and support, I was actually met with a lot
(46:52):
of resistance and anger that I spoke up and shared that,
and in that relationship, that's the minute that I quit
so disclosing, And even though she and I were together
another two years after that, it's probably the moment that
the relationship was over. You know, you can't have intimacy
unless you're able to have an honest conversation with your partners.
(47:13):
So this applies to everybody, you know, It's just about
having a deeper conversation and you know creating love amplified.
If you will, I'd love to know your takeaways and
ah ha moments. You can join us over in the
private Facebook group our Life Amplified Power Tribe. We got
the link for that in the show notes. Don't forget
you can screenshot this podcast to upload it to Instagram.
(47:34):
You can tag Rissa and I. I can be found
at c sc Dan Mason would love for you to
give me a follow, and you can find my beautiful
friend at Rissa ray R I S s A w
r A Yde. Don't forget to leave those honest reviews
up on Apple. We're gonna get you in the grand
price drawing for that new pair of air pods at
(47:55):
the end of September. And as always, turned down the
volume when your naked tivity, turned up the volume on
your purpose so you can live life amplified. I love you,
I'll talk to you next week.
Episode seventy seven, The Power of Vulnerability with Riss Array.
My name is Dan Mason. I was overweight, getting divorced,
battling depression, and feeling trapped in a career where I
was successful but bored and unfulfilled. And it's actually the
greatest gift I've ever been given. I used my pain
(00:20):
as a springboard to discover my life's purpose. Now I
want to share the same tools and strategies which helped
transform my life with you so you can live life amplify.
Renee Brown is the godmother of research on shame and vulnerability.
She says owning our story can be hard, but not
(00:40):
nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.
Embracing our vulnerabilities as risky, but not nearly as dangerous
as giving up on love and belonging and joy. The
experiences that make us most vulnerable only when we're brave
enough to explore the darkness while we discover the infinite
power of our lights. We have talked about vulnerability on
(01:01):
the podcast before, but one of the angles that we've
never covered is vulnerability when it comes to men. And
they came across an interview that Burnee Brown did recently
in the Atlantic, where she says messages of shame are
actually organized by gender. I want to read you this
quote from an interview that she did with Andy Hines.
Berne says, quote most women pledge allegiance to this idea
(01:23):
that women can explore their emotions, breakdown, fall apart, and
it's healthy, but guys are not allowed to fall apart.
She went on in the interview to explain that men
are often pressured to open up and talk about their feelings,
and they're criticized for being emotionally walled off, but if
they get too real, they're met with revulsion and burnee.
Brown actually admits that there are times earlier in her
(01:45):
life where she was guilty of this herself. She says,
after doing years of research on this topic, the most
shocking bit is that men's shame is not primarily inflicted
by other men. She says, it's actually the women in
their lives lives who tend to be repelled when men
show the chinks in their armor. So why is this
an important discussion? Number One? Men's mental health matters. I
(02:09):
think it is one of the most pressing issues facing
us as a country right now. If you look at
the amount of mass shootings that are happening literally on
a daily basis. Of them are committed by men. Also,
the level to which a man feels safe to self
disclose in his romantic relationship is going to affect the
dynamics of the marriage, and it will affect the amount
(02:32):
of intimacy that they're able to experience with a partner.
So I wanted to go deeper on this, and ironically,
the best resource I knew to come in and have
a conversation today about male vulnerability is a woman. Risk
Array is a dear friend of mine. She's multifaceted healer
who works in movement, massage, and mentorship. Her special focus, though,
(02:53):
is relationships with ourselves and with others at work, at home,
and at heart. She's working with men towards building lasting,
meaningful connections. This is going to be a wide ranging
discussion that she and I have today, but Riska will
share the five steps we can take to harness our
vulnerability and be able to open up to be honest
(03:13):
with ourselves and with others. She'll explain why vulnerability is
not something men are taught its children and how that
affects their adult relationships. We're gonna talk about the media,
our culture and how it's shapesman's views on vulnerability and
why so many men have been conditioned to hide their
wounded parts. We'll talk about what we see today as
masculinity in the news and in politics, isn't true masculinity.
(03:37):
And we'll talk about the importance of communication among men,
how we need to have deeper connections and build deeper conversations.
If you love what you're hearing today, please share this
with a friend. You can screenshot the podcast, upload it
to Instagram. You can tag me at c sc Dan Mason,
and you can find Rissa at Rissa Array, r I
(03:57):
S S A, w r A why. Or you can
also continue the conversation. And if there was ever an
episode that I think needs to have a deeper conversation,
it's this one. We're gonna be taking your thoughts, your questions,
your AHA moments in our life. Amplified Power Tribe. That's
our private Facebook group. You can find us there. A
link is in the show notes. And don't forget we're
(04:20):
gladly accepting your honest reviews right now on Apple and
I'm running a special contest through the end of September.
For every honest review that you leave, I'm gonna make
a donation to Feeding America that will help us feed
one and sixty hungry Americans. Plus each person who leaves
a review goes into the grand prize drawing for your
(04:41):
choice of a new pair of air pods for you
to listen to the podcast on, or I will send
you an Amazon gift card. So leave those reviews once
you check out the podcast. You don't have to kiss
up to us, just leave your honest feedback and we'll
get you in that grand prize drawing. In the me time,
sit back, relax, we are going to do a deep
(05:03):
dive on the power of vulnerability with Riss Array. Riss Array,
Welcome to life Amplified. It's good to have you here.
Rissa is an amazing soul special person. Newer when I
lived in Florida is a yoga teacher and now she's
stepping out and evolving and doing amazing healing work in
(05:26):
other ways. And we're going to talk about some of
that coming up today. But the big topic today is
about vulnerability and vulnerability with men, which probably is already
incited a pseudo panic attack for some of the men
listening today, But for some of the women listening, they're like,
(05:46):
oh my god, yes, I wish my man would be
more vulnerable. Why is this such an important topic in
twenty nineteen, and why is it really like paramounts for
just how we we grow as a society and where
we're headed into the future. Well, that's a big question. Actually,
it hasn't been my experience necessarily that men might shy
(06:09):
away from this topic. I think actually, after sharing my
opinions on the subject recently on social media, a lot
of my male friends reached out to me directly just
to say thank you, and just to say that they
really resonated with hearing this topic given voice. So I
think it's actually really pertinent. I think I think this
(06:31):
is going on inside of men, and it's hard to
just snap your fingers and reconfigure what you've culturally been taught,
what you've witnessed in your father and your grandfather, and
your male role models in movie stars and on television,
you name it. So I think that on the news
we also see a lot of violence committed by men,
(06:54):
even men killing themselves, and it's it's not just men.
Of course, we live in a pretty mass giving culture,
um that wants to dominate, that wants to know, that
wants to be in control, and I think that the
byproduct of that is violence. I think it's violent against
yourself to expect yourself to be in the know and
(07:15):
in control all the time. And I think it's violent
against other people of course as well, to then project
those expectations onto them. You and I were talking about
some statistics earlier this evening of these mass shootings that
we've seen over the years, and now they've you know,
we're almost numb to it because it's become a daily
basis committed by men. Over of gun owners are men,
(07:39):
and the suicide rates. Men are three and a half
times more likely to take their own life than women.
So clearly there is something going on with men with
masculinity and what is the crossroads that we're at. Well,
another statistic that ire and recently, let's say, I think
(08:01):
it was fifty something percent of women have experienced violent assault,
and that's just a general term violent assault, and over
sixty of men have experienced violent assault. So more men
and boys are abused general physical assault abused than girls,
(08:21):
And this is where we're at. We had a me too, movement,
But where the where's the men to movement? Where's the
men's dignified path to healing? And that's what really concerns me,
because shame and blame aren't working, of course, in your estimation,
and you have felt called to step in and get
more personally involved in working with men on this. Why
(08:42):
is it for you that a woman is the right
person to help a man facilitate the healing. Yeah, that's
a good question. I doubted my role in this realm
for a while. I had heard and seeing that it's
important for men to give each other permission, which I
totally agree, like please, But I also know it's important
(09:04):
as a woman to witness and validate feminine and by
feminine I mean vulnerable, non controlling expression of emotion in men,
because the perception might be that to be a real
man you never cry, and women don't want to see that,
they want a provider and whatever. No, I'm a woman
(09:25):
and I really want to see it. I respect you
more to give yourself permission to be a whole person
who experiences a whole range of human emotion, who can
hold space for yourself in expressing those emotions, and who
can lean into an honest, mutually supportive relationship where you
(09:49):
express those honest feelings. What you're saying is beautiful, and
what you're saying also flies in the face of generations
of cultural programming that we have experienced as men, where
it's about you gotta work, you got to achieve, you
have to strive, you have to dominate in your career,
you have to be a provider that you have to
(10:11):
have the biggest toys, that you have to have the
nicest car. You know, we still see this in commercial advertising,
you know, to be that guy. It's about, you know,
driving the nicest car, having the best job, you know,
having the hottest women beside you. There's been so much
of that, and I don't know if you remember from
last year the Gillette campaign that they did about the
(10:32):
best a Man Can Get, where they were showing this
new version of masculinity where fathers were stepping in and
stopping the boys from getting in a fight or stopping
bullying on the playground. There was outrage on YouTube like
that that campaign had more thumbs down than likes because
people were just so outrage that we're, oh, we're just
(10:54):
gonna turn our boys into little girls. There were people
out there who thought that, what is your answer to that? Well,
that's just fear. I mean, if you've been taught that
you have to be a certain way to receive love
and validation and power, then you're just going to perpetuate.
It's the same logic of hazing. This was done to me,
therefore I do it to you. But if we stop
and think, like, oh, where is this really taking us
(11:16):
to a morally bankrupt culture where we all just dominate
each other? Like, clearly that's not working. I think people
know in the back of their minds that that's not working.
I think people are hungry for real connection and real, healthy,
equal loving relationships like that. With some of the statistics
(11:37):
that you mentioned about loneliness, loneliness is also a predictor
of early death in an unhappy life. So people don't
want to hang around you if you're a big bully.
Bullying doesn't get you love. In your experience in dating
in relationships, how is it that you see men are
(11:57):
showing up in relationships that we need to be doing differently. Well,
of course this is my experience, but also talking to
my friends and anecdotally it's not just me. I see men,
they hit a wall when it comes to emotions, and
they're absolutely terrified to go any deeper. They don't have
(12:19):
the experience, they haven't practiced successfully going down that path
and owning feelings, talking about feelings and not being maybe,
like you said, just called names abandoned. And my experience
has been just to hit that wall and they shut down.
(12:39):
You know, they lashed out. One of them lashed out, um,
most of them shut down. Some of them run away
and ghost, some of them have blamed themselves. Just think
they're broken. Better off alone, that was what one of
them said, better off alone. And it just broke my heart.
And it was really sad being in a relationship trying
to be in an equal partnership with these people who
(13:02):
have been emotionally stunted, essentially because it hurts me because
I needed them and I needed them in a way
that exceeded their capabilities and I can't fix them. And
so I'm stepping into this role of like, I don't
have a need from you. I want to help you. Actually,
I can be a third party. I could be a
safe person just to help you and encourage you and
(13:24):
coach you to face these hard feelings to take risks
in your relationships to form healthy and loving relationships with
trustworthy people. It ain't an easy thing. The number one
need what I've seen in my coaching for feminine energy
partners in a relationship is a need for safety. Of course,
physical safety, I mean, we don't just want to make
(13:47):
the mine of demarcation physical abuse right, But emotional safety.
I think we all need to feel safe. It's number one.
But can a man who his non embraced vulnerability and
is up here, you know, just kind of living in
the achieving and striving and the rat race, the competition
in your estimation, can a man who is living in
(14:09):
that world, who's disconnected from emotions, can he make his
partner feel safe. I don't know about making his partner
feel safe, but I know that if your self worth
is determined by all of these external things, then how
would you even know if someone loved you for the
real you? If you're only used to loving yourself for
(14:30):
these external things, If you don't love yourself for the
inner vulnerable you. If you do love yourself for the
inner vulnerable you, and other people feel safer around you.
Really the point of relationships, particularly romantic relationships, But I
think that this is true of friendships and connection. The
point of us being in relationship in the first place.
(14:54):
A lot of people think it's about as you know, connection,
it's about getting married, it's about raising a family somebody,
what's netflix with it's about the sex. Really, the emotional
needs that we have in relationship are intimacy, you know,
emotional intimacy to have somebody be there with us and
be able to see and hear and witness the parts
of ourselves that we're not even sure lovable and who
(15:16):
will still accept that. And then besides intimacy, it's also
about growth. You know, you want to get into a
relationship with somebody that you are continually growing with, and
certainly if you know I see this a lot where
people come to me to work on their relationship. One
partner does. But if you've got one partner doing the
work and the other isn't, eventually they're going to grow apart.
So intimacy is the byproduct of telling the truth. It's
(15:40):
about speaking up. What's true for you is that the
biggest issue right now for men and your estimation is
being able to to just open themselves up fully and
share all of themselves and not just the ship that
looks great up on Instagram and Facebook. My favorite definition
of intimacy is simply communicating on a personal level. If
you're not communicating on a personal level, you know, if
(16:02):
you talk about the football game or something surface conversation, yeah,
which is a way of bonding. I think that was
one of the things that we looked up. Men tend
to bond over an activity. They're not going to sit
face to face and just look deeply into each other's
eyes and be like, here's what's going on in my marriage. Like,
that's just that tends to not happen. It can, and
(16:23):
it does. I have I have male friends who do
communicate courageously like that, and it's because they've learned that
it's important. They've practiced it, and they are fed and
nurtured by it, and they are felt seen. They feel
seen and heard and supported because of it. So they've
experienced success because of it. But I think that I
(16:44):
have worked as a massage therapist for the past seven years,
I've worked as a yoga teacher for the past five
and I've held space for men and in this way
that they really need and they really blossom in in
these um, you know safe environments where they don't. They
let their guard down, and it's really beautiful. And and
(17:07):
I think that it takes practice, and it takes courage,
and it takes mental emotional maturity, it takes self nurturing.
It takes a lot to be a courageous person, not
just when you're paying someone behind closed doors to take
a load off every once in a while, but when
you're actually deciding every day to wake up and to
(17:30):
be you, to be on a bashelor you to not
pretend that everything's fine, or to when you're hurt, lash
out an anger instead. It is not easy. It's not
easy for many women I know, just as much as
it is for many men that I know. So in
order for us to embrace vulnerability, you've come today and
(17:51):
you've given us five steps to be able to help
both men and also women who are leaning more in
their masculine energy. Is that fair to say that this
can help people really embrace, become whole and find that
sense of vulnerability so that they can build better connections.
They can have a more meaningful life, a healthier life,
(18:12):
a life full of love, a life full of meaning
and authenticity. I want to give some perspective for the
man who's listening who might not be far into a
self development path because we, you know, we throw around
a lot of spaces as coaches and his healers about
oh holding space, and people are like, what does all
that mean for me? I'll give a practical example on
(18:35):
what it was like for me to actually embrace and
feel safe in my masculine energy. Because my dad was
super alpha in his career. My dad accomplished a lot.
My dad was the CEO of a major corporation corporation.
My dad was a wonderful man and a good father.
Despite all the traveling, he was still home and he
would have like the w W E wrestling tickets to
(18:57):
the baseball tickets. We spend time. But my dad also
did not do emotion and that reflected in his marriage
because my mother was the one who was the super
masculine energy, but almost you know, in a toxic sort
of way. You know, my mom was somebody who was
actually hurt by a lot of masculine men growing up,
(19:19):
so she morphed into the thing that hurt her as
a protection mechanism. But what the dynamic that that creates
for children and a specifically Little Boys, is if you
grow up in a home. You know, Dad can be
super alpha in his career, but if he comes home
and he's passive at home in the marriage and mom
(19:41):
is super alpha and mom's the masculine energy, it creates
a situation where for me growing up, I had to
assume feminine energy in order to complete that dysfunctional dynamic.
When I was up in my masculine energy, that created
a turf war with my mom because she had to
assert power and came over the top. And that usually
endedn't either, you know, some sort of physical abuse or
(20:05):
emotional abuse even worse. To make that even harder, when
I would get sad about it as a kid and
my dad was you know, my dad wasn't there emotionally
and Mom was in her masculine energy, I usually got
belittled if I was sad and told what, you're being
a baby. You're feeling sorry for yourself. So anger wasn't
(20:25):
safe to feel, Sadness wasn't safe to feel, and I
just kind of became a guy. Through most of my life.
It was numb. I didn't feel anything, but I modeled
after my dad, and I became very career oriented, and
I was completely emotionally cut off because I always believe
that on some level, if I were in my masculine
energy that it would make a woman angry. And that
(20:45):
was the dynamic that I had, and and it totally
affected the way I showed up in relationships because I
was a guy who was way passive. You know. I
was always like, I don't know where do you want
to go for dinner tonight? And like women would be
like a whole I'm making decisions all day at work.
Can you just do something? Can you make a decision?
But I was I couldn't step up and be assertive
(21:05):
like that. So you can imagine what that made my
dating prospects like in my twenties, you know, because most
good women are like, well, you know, this guy is
kind of a pushover. He didn't have it together, and
women who were sort of looking for a man to
be submissive were very drawn to that. But then I
found and that's really what my marriage was is I
(21:25):
recreated my parents marriage, you know, as being the guy
who was super successful pass it in the relationship. She
didn't respect me, and I created that dynamic again. And
when you're not in that place of feeling emotionally. I'll
speak for myself. Right when I was not in a
place of feeling like it was safe for me to
show up emotionally, I lived on the surface. I can
(21:47):
make a lot of jokes, could talk about TV shows,
talk about movies, talk about celebrity gossip, but don't ask
me about me. And that was really, really, really tough
for a lot of years, and it led to depression, anxiety,
and suicidal ideation. So you know, I have so much
respect for the fact that you're creating this dialogue and wanting,
(22:11):
you know, to be a source because I think that
there are men listening today who have never had that
experience of a woman or a female figure really encouraging
them to share and letting them know that it's safe.
So that's really really beautiful in terms of what you're doing.
And I know that you came today and you have
some specific steps that can help men start to come
(22:33):
out of the isolation, come out of the loneliness, come
out of not come out of achieving, because that's part
of masculine energy, but get them also into feeling instead
of just doing thank you for sharing them. That's really powerful. Team.
It's funny in my work because you know, with my
clients I deal with about women and there are men
who reach out and they fill out the application, but
(22:53):
women's time to commit to coaching. They're like, I don't know,
and could actually be because it's harder sometimes to be
witnessed and showed that vulnerability to another man, you know,
like even on a primal level, you don't want to
be the weak member of the tribe. So I think
that that's why it's so beautiful what you're doing to
be able to be a safe place for men to
(23:17):
show this other side and know that it's okay. Yeah,
I know that it's encouraged now, that it's good, now
that it's the path to growth, because nobody I think
maybe surface level life you can get stuck in, it
can feel safe because going deep like who knows you
open Pandora's box, who knows what's going to come out?
And so safety and security and having a social support
(23:41):
system is really important. And you mentioned my five steps,
and you know I totally made these up. I gathered
them from other resources and sources of inspiration, of course,
but a social support system is imperative because it's not
a matter of if you'll need to reach out. It's
a matter of when, because how can you transform if
(24:04):
you've always got your hands on the wheel, you know,
you're doing driving the bus, and you've got to be
able to let someone else tag in so you can
take a nap, rest, recharge, recuperate and wake up a
new or you know, totally break down. That is a
part of it. And I think that's the other thing
is like sometimes right where surface level, we go deep
and sometimes spirals out of control, and that's normal. That
(24:27):
is normal. You know, it's normal to to experience catharsis
and surrender and to break down and to cry. And
I've heard it called ego death and the same fears
of death get triggered in resistance to doing that, to
letting yourself go through that process. And if you've never
done it, then you don't know that right when you're
(24:49):
resisting at the most and right when you don't want
to let go the most is actually the time when
you need that cocoon of safety that's provided by know friends,
family members, people you trust, people who have proven to
you that they're trustworthy. So that's step one is support
system for the man out there. Because we've seen the
(25:09):
statistics of men say that they're lonely. A lot of
men in studies that I've seen in the number varies
say that they don't have a best friend. Women can
relate to each other through an emotional level. That's what
we know, like Sunday boozy brunches. Men relate to each
other through activities. You know, there are men who like
(25:31):
to go play basketball. There are men whould like to
play sports. There are men who are involved in churches
or social groups or you know, political organizations. But to
relate in an emotional level, where does one go to
create that in their life? Reaching out is a risk.
So let's not pretend that it's just this safe, beautiful
thing and you're always going to be supported by the
(25:52):
person you reach out to. Nope, it's a risk. But
hopefully we can take smart risks here and we can
look at the people who have shown for us. Who
would you call if you were taken to jail? Who
would you call? Who would you call if you were
taken to the hospital. Who would you call if your
business needed support? Who would you call if you needed advice?
(26:17):
Who would you call if you needed And then this
is kind of again at the bottom of the list,
but it's what I do. Who would you call if
you needed touch, an intimacy and love? Who would you
call go out to lunch? Who would you call if
your sad? So if you don't have answers for those,
then then I really think maybe you're not looking hard enough,
Maybe that you've just isolated for so long and it's
(26:38):
time to against all of your fears, step out into
the world and to watch who shows up when you
reach out. First, it's over the small things, and then
you build trust by each action. You say, men relate
more based on action. Who do you watch the football
game with? Who do you get a drink? With these
small actions where someone shows up, they can show up
(26:59):
for bigger stuff, you build it up. I picture a
guy who's like going to call up his dude this
weekend and be like, Yo, so we got our fantasy
football drafts coming up this week, and then hey, can
I talk about how I'm feeling emotionally broken afterwards? But
maybe there is somebody that would share that experience. Because
if that many men are feeling lonely according to statistics,
(27:20):
then it means other men are looking for somebody that
they can not the only one. It's right. Yeah, that's
why I love. Like when I go to like personal
development events or seminars, usually overwhelmingly women in the room,
but the guys who are there, those are like my people.
This is why I want to step into this work
because I'm a safe person you can call and just
(27:41):
by practicing with me or a therapist or a coach
or whomever, by having a successful feedback loop of reaching
out for support and having that need met, you will
rewire your brain and rewrite that story that says I
can't reach out something's wrong with me because I'm sad
(28:01):
something's wrong with me. No, you're going to reach out
and you're gonna have it reinforced and you're gonna know
nothing's wrong with you. That makes perfect sense according to
what you've experienced. And I'm here for you. I see you,
I validate you, I mirror you. It's okay, it's good.
Thank you for reaching out. There's part of me in
the back of my mind that laughs, because we as
(28:22):
men have these stereotypes that we can't even pull the
car over and ask for directions, you know, like thank
God for the GPS systems. Now it's like sort of
saved millions of marriages. I feel like all the course
of the year, there's part of as if we're resistant
to even asking for directions, how do we ask for
help when we're hurting? You know my perspective just coming
as a man myself. There are many times I've had
(28:44):
mentors and coaches, you know, I still have them in
my life. And what has happened through my own relationships
with my mentors and coaches is giving voice to some
of those things that are the most shameful things in
my life, some of the parts of me that I
didn't think we're lovable. That it's created space where I've
(29:05):
been able to now share this. I was recently at
a seven day trauma retreat where I was able to
share some really really personal, deep stuff from my childhood
with other people. Uh, it's allowed me to share that
now with friends more openly selectively. And you know, even
you and I were at the beach yesterday and you're trauma. Yeah, right.
(29:28):
I think a lot of times what people don't realize
is that the place you're not willing to go when
it comes in terms of self disclosure, are talking about
your feelings. It's because that's the place you think the
love will stop, and the minute that you can give
voice to those things and have it witnessed and be
heard and have somebody Like when you and I were sharing,
the first thing you did after I shared is you
(29:49):
just gave me a huge hug. There's something so powerful
in that, though, because then you're not living in the regrets,
the shame of your childhood, the guilt, all those other
low vibe emotions that keep you stuck. So super super beautiful,
and thank you for sharing that with me. Yeah, shame
keeps things quiet and hidden. Shame grows in silence and
(30:13):
in darkness. And just by knowing this, you can coach yourself.
You can coach that inner child who's afraid that the
love ends at a certain place. And when you wise
up to your own bullshit, you realize, nope, nope. Take
that little baby child by the hand and guide them
into the light. Find a trusted friend, and you need
to speak that shame to break the spell. Sure you do,
(30:34):
and it's you can write about it. You can talk
to a therapist about it, you can talk to a
coach about it, trusted friend. These safe places. First, you
reinforce those safe places, and then you start to take
those safe places with you, it loses its spell, it
loses its charge. You become more resilient. And by experiencing
that space holding from others who are more practiced, you're
(30:56):
able to learn how to hold that space for yourself
and hold it for others. And one of the worst
stories that we tell ourselves in the back of our
minds is that we're alone. We're the only ones to
feel this. And then you see you hear somebody talk
about it, and you're like, oh, ship, they do it too,
And this I hope people know when you talk about it,
someone else is listening and going like, oh my god,
(31:17):
I'm not alone. I'm not the only one. So you
don't know where you inspire by your honest self divulgence.
And we all have trauma. We've all experienced traumatic experiences.
And it takes practice. It can't just you can't just
sit in a corner by yourself and think yourself into change. Yeah,
you have to practice it. You have to feel it,
(31:39):
like literally, right a hug that I could say, oh,
how wonderful with my words, or I could hug you,
and you know by that hug that that's connection, that's love.
That's acceptance, and you feel it in your body, You
feel it in your nervous system in a way that
words can't express. This all leads really nicely into the
second point that you have, because I feel like, yeah,
I feel like we already sort of we're already headed
(32:01):
down the road. The second thing that you said is
important for embracing vulnerability is self nurturing. Define self nurturing, well,
I guess it's the opposite of self punishing. And the
analogy that I like to think of is, you know,
so two people can step on a yoga mat, and
one can be there to kick their own ass, and
the other can be there to self nurture and to
(32:25):
feel their body and to receive the sensations of their
own emotions, of each part of themselves, and to think
nurturing thoughts. And by nurturing thoughts, I mean validating thoughts,
I mean accepting thoughts, I mean tender thoughts, I mean
loving thoughts. So you can think it's so funny going
along with this analogy. People are split on mirrors in
(32:48):
yoga classes. Some people love mirrors and some people don't.
And I think mirrors are what you make of them,
right if you look in the mirror and you think,
oh my god, I'm so fat. Look at my ankles.
I don't know, ankles, I don't know I pick that.
But the other person would look into a mirror and think, hey,
I'm doing all right today. Or you can think like, whoa,
my hips are out of balance. What if I move
(33:08):
them slightly to the right. Oh that's better. Okay, let
me feel this, let me digest it, let me feel this.
And this is balanced. This is balance. This is balance.
And that's what I do personally on my yoga mat.
And I love mirrors because I could be on my
yoga mat thinking like here, I am perfectly in balance,
and then I look in the mirror and I am
totally out of whack, and then I have to adjust,
and then I have to feel it. I'm trying to
(33:32):
re educate my own sensory perception of myself. And so
self nurturing is about attitude. It takes some self discipline,
it takes some holding yourself accountable, maybe even setting up
some social accountable structures. You can lean on the people
in your support system. And self nurturing also involves letting
go right. So if it's habit replacement. That means you're
(33:52):
letting go of some stuff that maybe you've been doing
for a long time. Maybe diet coke is your favorite
thing in the world. Okay, you're going to have an
emotional loss when you let let go of diet coke.
Maybe that's what you drink with your dad growing up,
or your mom growing up, or like, you have some
emotional attachment to these dysfunctional habits, patterns, behaviors, consumptions, and
(34:14):
you need to let yourself grieve those dysfunctional things because
it's like losing an old friend that was there for you.
It was there for you, but you're a little older
and a little wiser now and you're going to change
it on purpose. You're gonna let yourself process that feeling
and you're going to replace it with something else. Self nurturing, then,
at the end of the day, is taking care of
not just your body, but your emotional well being. To write,
(34:38):
self nurturing requires action and attitude, positive attitude, So that's
where the emotion comes in. Let's just think that there's
a lot of people who be like, well, yeah, self nurturing,
I go to yoga and then they're you know, they're
they're they're doing the poses that they're never actually processing
any of the stress, frustration and sadness, shame, guilt, or
(34:58):
they're not using yoga as a to self awareness and
self empowerment, they're using it as a form of exercise,
repetitive and tuning out. Or I'm a yoga teacher, I
see people who and either the product of their lives,
they have resistance to to letting go. Or if if
I come up and offer an adjustment um or you know,
(35:18):
some guidance, there's like I'm doing it wrong. They're afraid
and they retaliate. But we step on the yoga mat
to transform step number three. When we talk about embracing vulnerability,
you say it's about setting boundaries. Tell me more about that.
Why is that so closely related to vulnerability. Well, you
(35:40):
can only be vulnerable in safe containers, and setting boundaries
is creating safe containers. It's stating clearly what's okay and
what's not okay. Setting boundaries means you need to get
in touch with yourself about what's okay and what's not okay.
And I think that path of self nurturing can can
(36:01):
help you tap into those feelings and give yourself permission
to tap into those feelings and to change your mind.
And simply stating what's okay and what's not okay, and
not you're okay or you're not okay, just this isn't
okay or this is okay. It helps you create a
safe container for yourself. It means you want to keep
(36:22):
showing up and existing in relationship with someone under these
circumstances where it's safe for as far as your support
system goes. I don't know if it's possible for someone
to deliver unconditional love all the time. I know some
moms out there might disagree with me, but that's that's okay.
But even your support system, each and every one of
those people needs different boundaries, and those boundaries are earned. Right,
(36:47):
So the person who has earned your trust, you go
to a bar and watch a football game. Okay, they
show up when they say they will. Okay, they've earned
some trust. Now say they violate your try. Okay, they
say they're going to show up and they don't, and
and then it becomes a pattern. And then you set
a boundary and you say, hey, I can't meet up
(37:08):
with you on Thursdays anymore because I keep showing up
and you're an hour late and I just don't have
that kind of time or I feel disrespected, so we
can hang out at another time, but Thursdays don't work
for me anymore. How much of setting boundaries is the
way you're explaining it about being truthful? But speaking your
truth with other people? Does it start with being honest
(37:31):
with yourself? Yeah? Absolutely. If you're pretending like nothing bothers you,
then why would you set a boundary? And I think
this is actually why people ghost in stonewall and run away,
because they don't actually admit that something hurt their feelings
and stand up for themselves. They just run away from
it and pretend like nothing's wrong, and it actually ends
up hurting them worse. Like, you haven't even set boundaries
(37:52):
for yourself that it's not okay to let people walk
all over you, Like what kind of messages are you
sending to yourself about your own self worth? And then
what if the other person had no idea that they
hurt your feelings? You're leaving this gaping void and the
other person is usually going to fill in your story
for you, and it's usually the worst possible story, so
(38:12):
they're making up the story that you're a horrible person
when you could, on the other hand, just say, Hey,
I'm having a really hard day and I can't make
it to watch the football game with you when I
said I could, and I'm really sorry, but I'm going
to be there as soon as I can. And that
on a self divulgence usually does a lot to maintain
these more healthy, loving, equal relationships where there's mutual respect.
(38:34):
Two steps left. When we're talking about vulnerability. Oh lord,
this one's going to be the hardest for people. I
feel like if they're tracking with the not that the
other steps can't feel difficult when you're doing it, but
this one's a big one. Let's talk about apologizing. Yes,
the art of apology. Apologizing is the superglue of relationships.
(38:55):
You and I have talked about this when we've spoken
about trauma. What makes something particul reularly traumatizing is not
what happens in the moment, but often what happens afterward
and then the meaning that you make of it. So
if someone does a bad thing, huge betrayal, violation, and
then they abandon you afterwards, they just don't talk about it,
and they piece out and they bounce or they pretend
(39:16):
like nothing's wrong, and then you internalize thinking something must
be wrong with you to feel so hurt and bad
and wrong because of it. Or in safe relationships where
we are equals and where it's safe for us to
take responsibility and admit that we did a wrong thing.
We're not a bad person, but we did a bad thing.
That takes a lot of internal strength. It takes a
(39:38):
lot of social support to know that. Maybe before you
apologize directly, you admit and take responsibility for your part
in a more complex situation of pain and hurt and
betrayal or abuse or trauma. But to own your part,
to practice telling it, maybe you need to. Maybe you
don't to to other people first, safe people first, people
(40:01):
in your support system first, and then you can apologize
directly and the relationship can mend. And that is one
of the hardest things in the world, and I know
because I've done it. One thing I'd add to that
is a lot of times we talk about love, right,
we think love is what happens during those first like
three months of relationship. Yeah, where you're not really meeting
(40:22):
the partner, you're meeting sort of their press agent and
their publicists. You know, you're getting like the best, but
they're showing you all the best parts of themselves. It's
my potential, yeah right, but it's not reality. Then once
sex happens, you know, then we're sort of chemically bonded.
Then it's dopamine oxytocin and the butterflies and the stomach
and the euphoria, and that's all great and good. But love,
(40:46):
all that chemical reaction wears off, usually six months to
a year, and then you're left with the relationship. Love
is what's happening after that, and the love is built
in the repair is what I'm hearing you saying. You so,
knowing how to repair and apologize. Knowing how to repair
is essential because conflict is inevitable. Conflict is just differing opinions, logic, desires, needs,
(41:11):
and that exists because you're different people. But you're different
people who exist in relationship with one another, and conflict
can be negotiated and managed and learned from. You can
actually become stronger and more resilient through dealing with conflict
safely and personally. I've I've been through conflict that come
out the other end in a relationship stronger than ever
(41:33):
where I learned something about myself and my own triggers.
I've also been through conflict that was extremely unsafe and
it was very hard for me, but I had to
take a step away from from those people. One final
step to embrace vulnerability. Well, I don't know now I'm
looking at the list. I'm like, maybe this is the
hardest one. God, if any of these were easy, we
(41:56):
had all be more vulnerable. The f word forgiveness, forgive.
This is super hard because even if you can forgive
other people, oftentimes you can't forgive yourself. And that's why
we talk about step one and step two and how
they're completely inter related your social support and your intimate
loving relationships and your relationship with yourself. I don't think
those two things can be teased apart. I think they
(42:17):
really inform and reinforce one another. It's such an internal process.
But Desmond Tutu and m Foe too to his daughter,
have written a wonderful book on the subject called The
Book of Forgiving, which is incredibly moving if you have
the chance to read it, and they talk about a
fourfold path of forgiving, and it relates wonderfully with all
of these other steps that I've made up about being vulnerable,
(42:41):
about um, about you know what it takes to live
a meaningful life. But anyway, the fourfold path of forgiving
is step one sharing your story, ideally with the one
who hurt you. Sometimes that's not safe, and so you
need to maybe write some letters that you never sent,
or tell somebody else about it. And what I love
about this book because it's like sometimes you're going to
(43:01):
talk about it a lot for a long time because
you're processing it. So if you've been beating yourself up
just for talking about the same thing that's been bothering
you for a while, stop beating yourself up so much
about it. You're processing, whether you know it or not.
Step two is naming the hurt. So maybe you talk
about the story, but then you get to why did
(43:22):
this hurt me so much? I've heard it's called affect labeling,
where you name the feeling, and just by naming the
feeling and calling it by its name, it kind of
breaks the spell. So it diminishes the effect, especially of
that negative emotion on you. So you share your story,
you name the hurt. Step three is you grant forgiveness,
(43:43):
and step four is you renew or release the relationship.
So even though this is heart wrenching, it's also extremely empowering.
You really know your own resiliency by your past capacity
to forgive and forgiveness is not spiritual bypassing, is not
pretending like nothing's wrong, because that ship comes up again,
(44:03):
and there's a natural arc to forgiveness. I think a
lot of times we're told, you know, spiritually that oh
you have to you know, you have to forgive. Well,
you don't have to do anything before you're ready, so
you have to feel all those emotions. And you know,
the other thing that I would add is forgiveness. You
know a lot of times the reason we're resistant when
it comes to vulnerability, as we think somehow it it
(44:25):
gives a green light to the incident that happened, or
it makes it okay if we forgive. And ultimately forgiveness
is a selfish act. Well yeah, it's a self oriented tool,
you know. It's it's admitting that the past can't be
changed and really trying to change how you relate to
the past so that you can move forward. Forgiveness doesn't
(44:47):
mean that you have to leave that person in your life.
You can forgive somebody and be like there's the door
by girl boy, you know whatever it is. I think
that those are the biggest barriers that come up for
people when it comes to forgiveness and then forget. I mean,
my God, forgiving yourself is like, you know, we could
do a whole our episode just on that, Riss Array,
(45:08):
amazing conversation. Vulnerability, masculine vulnerability super important now more than ever.
And if somebody is listening today and they're moved by
the message and they would like to work with you,
find out more about you, to do a deeper dive
into all of the things that we've discussed today, how
(45:29):
can they find you online? I'm on Instagram at Riss
array r I s s A w r a Y.
My website is moving dash Meditations dot com. I am
riss Aray and that's Ray with the W like Fay Ray.
Please reach out. I am here. I would love to help.
Awesome conversation, my friend. Thank you so much for being
(45:50):
you and for for all the wisdom today. Thank you
so much for having me Dan, It's been a pleasure,
beautiful calm station. And it's not just one about men.
This is about how we show up together in relationships. Uh,
This is about support, this is about love. It's about
(46:10):
building a higher sense of acceptance and really something that
I've been working through personally over the last year. I
think if you talked to the last few girls that
I've dated since my divorce several years ago, one of
the things that they would say is Dan has a
hard time opening up, and I'll give you the honest
story behind that. There was a time in a pretty
(46:32):
significant relationship when I came forward and shared a part
of myself that I've actually never even talked about on
the podcast before. But I shared my story of being
sexually abused as a young child by people that I
trusted in my life, and rather than being met with
love and support, I was actually met with a lot
(46:52):
of resistance and anger that I spoke up and shared that,
and in that relationship, that's the minute that I quit
so disclosing, And even though she and I were together
another two years after that, it's probably the moment that
the relationship was over. You know, you can't have intimacy
unless you're able to have an honest conversation with your partners.
(47:13):
So this applies to everybody, you know, It's just about
having a deeper conversation and you know creating love amplified.
If you will, I'd love to know your takeaways and
ah ha moments. You can join us over in the
private Facebook group our Life Amplified Power Tribe. We got
the link for that in the show notes. Don't forget
you can screenshot this podcast to upload it to Instagram.
(47:34):
You can tag Rissa and I. I can be found
at c sc Dan Mason would love for you to
give me a follow, and you can find my beautiful
friend at Rissa ray R I S s A w
r A Yde. Don't forget to leave those honest reviews
up on Apple. We're gonna get you in the grand
price drawing for that new pair of air pods at
(47:55):
the end of September. And as always, turned down the
volume when your naked tivity, turned up the volume on
your purpose so you can live life amplified. I love you,
I'll talk to you next week.
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