October 3, 2025 • 40 mins
Overcoming Trauma and Embracing Vulnerability
In this episode of Real Men Feel, host Andy Grant engages in a heartfelt conversation with Aaron Gambel, an impact-driven life coach and men's group facilitator. Aaron shares his personal journey through a pivotal moment that led him to prioritize his mental health and ultimately pursue a mission to lower male suicide rates. Drawing on his experiences with divorce and emotional healing, Aaron offers insightful commentary on rewriting one's story, facing trauma, and the importance of creating safe spaces for men to express their emotions. Together, they explore the deepest challenges men face and the transformative potential of vulnerability and connection in men's groups.
00:00 Understanding the Subconscious Mind
00:20 Introduction to Real Men Feel
01:04 Aaron Gambel's Turning Point
03:40 The Dark Night of the Soul
05:06 Mental Health College Experience
08:51 Rewriting Your Story
22:17 The Importance of Men's Groups
35:21 Steps to Emotional Awareness
37:51 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Connect with Aaron
Aaron Gambel — https://www.aarongambel.com/
Tiktok — https://www.tiktok.com/@aarongambel
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/aaronmgambel/
Resources
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson — https://amzn.to/3KT6VLm
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. — https://amzn.to/3KStzn9
Still Here: How to Succeed In Life After Failing at Suicide by Andy Grant — https://amzn.to/4mSvk17
From the Core by John Wineland — https://amzn.to/433os9Z
Connect with Andy and the Real Men Feel Podcast:
Join me and connect with other like-minded men in the
Authentic AF Community | http://realmenfeel.org/group
Instagram | @realmenfeelshow & @theandygrant
Andy Grant Website | https://theandygrant.com for coaching, healing, and book info!
Real Men Feel Website | http://realmenfeel.org
YouTube | https://youtube.com/realmenfeel
#RealMenFeel ep 373
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's a really good description of kind of how our subconscious
works. And the quote goes like this.
Our brain will choose a familiarhell over unfamiliar heaven
every single time. My familiar hell is my nervous
system being blasted and in survival mode.
(00:21):
Hello and welcome to Realman Feel.
I'm your host, author, coach andhealer, Andy Grant.
You can learn more about me at the andygrant.com.
On this show, we have conversations that most men are
not having, but that all men andthe women who love them can
benefit from. Today I'm joined by Aaron
Gamble, an impact driven life coach and men's group
facilitator whose mission is to lower the rate of male suicide
by creating safe spaces for emotional growth, healing, and
(00:43):
connection. Drawn from his own journey
through divorce, fatherhood, andtransformation, Aaron helps men
rewrite their stories and reclaim their power.
And if you're ready to continue conversations like this, join
our private community, authenticAF, at realmenfeel.org/group.
Let's do it. Hello Aaron, and welcome to Real
Men Feel. Thank you for having me idea,
(01:03):
appreciate it. So Aaron, we are both members of
a a group, A club that I don't think really anybody wants to be
part of. Can you tell me about that
turning point in your own life where you really decided changes
need to be made? Yes, for me, that moment
(01:24):
happened five days after my 43rdbirthday.
I took my kids camping and for some reason, something inside of
me was just felt like I'm not the person that I am meant to
be, that I had lost myself. And it, it came in this
(01:46):
realization that I wasn't happy in, in the life that I had and
got home from camping and ended up getting into an argument with
my, with my wife at the time, normal argument, something that,
you know, happens often. But something inside me cracked,
(02:08):
and I went upstairs and I grabbed a bottle of Xanax and I
looked down at that bottle of pills, 25 or 30 inside.
And I thought to myself, I couldjust down all of these and never
wake up. And as I was lifting that bottle
to my mouth, an image of my two kids, who at the time were five
(02:32):
and seven, popped into my brain.They were downstairs in this
image, laughing and playing Uno in my living room.
That image literally saved my life.
I thought to myself in that moment, I cannot leave this
earth and leave them without a father.
(02:55):
I would be doing way more damageto them if I left.
And the next thing I had to do after that was make what I like
to call the biggest decision that I've ever made as a man,
and that was to put myself into the hospital.
So I called a friend and had himpick me up, said goodbye to my
(03:19):
family, told my kids that I was going off onto a job, which is
something I normally did in the film industry.
I would leave for weeks on end to go to a random city or state
to film a movie or TV show. And I checked myself into UCLA
Medical Center, into the behavioral health unit.
(03:40):
I spent five days at UCLA, two days of that five day, 2 days
into that, my wife came to visitme and she didn't come to visit
me to offer support or care or or whatever.
She she came to tell me that she's filing for divorce.
(04:01):
And to be very honest and clear with you, I was already at a
pretty low place. That was a breaking point for
me. And but it also at the same
time, like are you familiar withThe Dark Knight of the Soul or
the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey?
All 2. That was my dark night of the
(04:21):
soul. That moment I was at rock bottom
and I felt like after that, based on how I grew up getting a
divorce, was going through the rock bottom floor.
You can't get any deeper. At the same time.
That was the beginning of my Phoenix rising.
(04:43):
Because what happened after thatis I spent the next three days
at the UCLA Medical Center. And then I, the doctor suggested
that I go to a treatment center,a residential treatment center
where was all men. It's a place where you go and
it's a bridge between having a mental breakdown and regaining
(05:04):
back into society. And I spent 25 days there.
And I like to call that experience my mental health
college experience because because every day, six days a
week, from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, every hour on the hour, we sat
(05:25):
in this decrepit old living roomof this beat up treatment center
and we learned a new modality ofpsychology.
I learned DBTACTCBTI, also learned about emotional
regulation. We learned about breath work,
about yoga, about gratitude journaling, the list goes on and
(05:50):
on. I mean, I could name all the
acronyms in, in psychology because we learned every one of
them. And it, it was, it really was
like a college experience. And I sat in that beat up in
that beat up living room, and I took copious amounts of notes.
I wrote more than I've ever written in my entire life in 43
(06:10):
years up to that point. In those 25 days, I kept every
single paper. I, I absorbed so much of this
information because I wanted to figure out how to be the best
version of myself. I realized that I am in this
dark place. That is not who I am.
(06:31):
That's not what I want to be. And Andy, I think we're, we're
pretty sick close in age, right?Like you're in your 40s as well
if I had to guess. I'm in my 50s.
In 50s, OK, So we still come from that same kind of latchkey
kid upbringing, right? Yeah.
So a, a, a positive byproduct ofthe latchkey kid comes a sense
(06:55):
of resilience and a sense of, ofwhat I like to call grit.
And I know that I possess that. And this moment that I was in
understanding that I'm not whereI want to be was just another
chip to put on my shoulder of a of a task that I need to to
overcome. And that's how I looked at it
(07:17):
and I learned everything I possibly could.
And, and I'll be honest with you, a lot of the stuff that I
learned there, I, I do myself because I, you know, because
it's, it was amazing. And I've shifted my life because
it, I also use that in my coaching and I teach emotional
regulation. I teach, you know, nervous
(07:38):
system regulation and an understanding of what you know,
what your nervous system is doing.
It is now become a staple to whoI am today and, and what I do.
And I, you know, I, I left the film industry and now I've, I'm
working as a coach, as, as a men's group facilitator and, and
(08:02):
I'm trying to share what I've learned and what I experienced.
So hopefully somebody out there won't have to go through what I
went through. Hopefully I can save someone
from a becoming a, a statistic and or B having to go through a
hospital experience, having to go through putting themselves
into, you know, the behavioral health unit or having to go
(08:25):
through that experience. If it if somebody is close to
that and they hear my story and they see that, you know, they
can, they can do these things and learn these tools without
going through that experience, then I've I've, I've life goal
achieved. There's a lot to unpack there.
So one of the things you mentioned was that night real
(08:48):
thinking that you've lost yourself and you weren't happy.
So does that mean earlier in your life you, you were happy?
You, you feel, you felt you're on mission and purpose and doing
everything right and feeling good about that.
Oh, no, no. But I think in that moment I was
a step closer to purpose. I was just surviving up until
(09:12):
that moment. I, you know, I, I grew up in an,
in an, a pretty rough environment.
My, my parents were, I like to call them emotionally immature
parents. There's an amazing book called
Children of Emotionally Immatureparents.
First of all, that book was lifechanging.
It helped me rewrite my story and it helped me to do what I'm
(09:35):
doing now with the we are not the, I mean, we are not the
stories that we tell ourselves and how to rewrite.
You know, your story, that book had a lot of huge influence on
me in that in that way, because I realized that I am high
functioning in survival mode andI've lived, I've gravitated
(09:55):
toward careers that promoted that.
And it's just something that is pretty normal to me.
You know, there, there was a quote actually that that I heard
a couple years ago that that I use today.
And it, and I kind of live by it.
And it, it's a really good description of kind of how our
subconscious works. And the quote goes like this.
(10:16):
It's, it's our brain will choosea familiar hell over unfamiliar
heaven every single time. My familiar hell is my nervous
system being blasted and in survival mode because as a
child, my parents, I never I, I got really good at reading
(10:38):
people and being able to read where my emotional, where the
emotional level of my parents were in order to understand
whether I could say something ornot.
Because at any moment, you know,it's that walking on egg shells
sort of sort of experience. And that started really young.
(10:59):
Now, the positive side of that is that if I were, if I were to
choose to, to be in the, the military, I would have been a
phenomenal soldier 'cause when, when bullets are flying by, like
I would get ultra focused and dothe job at, at, at, you know, at
hand. You know, I, I, I know that I, I
gravitated toward careers, my first job, very, very grateful
(11:23):
for the person who, who helped me get to this position.
But first job I, I worked at was, was in a hospital.
I, I worked as an orderly and I was like helping people.
And then I, you know, moved intothe emergency room and was like
helping trauma cases and assisting as a medical
assistant. And I would work in surgery and
work in all these environments. And I believe that was because
(11:46):
my body, my brain, my subconscious was gravitating
toward that activated nervous system because that's what it
knows. That's what's familiar.
Now on the long run of that, it's not very healthy for you.
You know, the film industry is also the same thing like film
industry's freelance. Every second that we are not
(12:07):
filming, you're burning of half $1,000,000.
And, and that's the theme of, ofbeing on a, on a film set is
like, you need to go, go, go, orwe're going to run out of money.
And it's, you know, it's very nervous system, nervous system
activating. And I thrived in that
environment. To answer your question, no, I
(12:28):
didn't know what my purpose was.I, I wasn't happy.
I was just living and I was living in that, in that blasted
nervous system. I was surviving and I found joy
in small ways. And I think, you know, to, to be
honest with you, I would, I would used coping mechanisms
that were unhealthy in order to,to find joy, like drinking or
drugs or, or whatever it may be.Fortunately, I'm very lucky.
(12:51):
I don't have an addictive personality.
So none of that stuff became a problem.
And, and today, like I, I don't,you know, I'm, I'm pretty dead
sober. I, I don't drink.
I, I may, you know, I may play around with some micro dose of
psilocybin or something like that, but I don't, I don't do
any of the substances that I wasdoing prior to, to going into
(13:12):
the hospital. And I kind of realized that I
can function at a different level completely sober.
And that's, and, and I don't have to hide from my past or my
traumas. I can face that and understand
that. And, and that's what I really
try to try to teach in, in my own work now is like, listen, we
(13:33):
don't have to run away from that.
You can face it. You can face that shadow because
it's your own shadow and it's your own story and you have the
ability to rewrite that. It's going to take some work and
it's not going to be easy, but we but we can do that.
In your mental health college, you said that you had decided
(13:56):
you wanted to be the best version of yourself.
For WHO? For me for, for that inner child
in me. You know, it's interesting.
That's a really quick question, Andy.
Like I was going to therapy prior to to that experience and
I was trying to unpack my, some of my trauma and it wasn't
(14:19):
really working. And I realized that it wasn't
working because I was doing it for my family.
I was doing it to save my marriage.
I was doing it to save my kids because at that time, I was
operating under this idea that one toxic home is way better
than two happy homes. And that divorce was like
(14:44):
failure to me. And that that I would just be
repeating the same childhood traumas that I experienced on my
kids. And that was one of the biggest
crutches that I had to come cometo terms with in going through
this divorce, going through this, this experience that I
went through because I just always thought that if I get a
(15:07):
divorce, I'm going to fail. I'm going to grow up and my kids
are going to get a stepdad that is a piece of crap.
And you know, and, and they're going to live the same life that
I lived growing up. And, and to me, that was
ultimate failure. And once I got over that and
realized that I have to do this for myself.
(15:28):
And when I can, when I can heal myself, I can heal that inner
child within me. I can heal this, this body, then
I can show up as a good partner.I can show up as a conscious and
loving dad and, and you know, I can show up in my job as a
(15:48):
full-fledged human being and like really give to others
because I can't give to anybody else until I have fixed what's
inside of me. And, and I'm not going to sit
here and say that I'm fixed and I'm healed.
And you know, like, like, no, I'm, I'm not, I'm not at all.
I'm human. I'm still going through this
stuff, but I've taken some big freaking chunks out of that and
(16:12):
enough to know and I've learned enough to be able to help others
take big chunks out of out of that, that child, that trauma or
whatever it is. What inspired you to go from
It's Finally Time to take care of Myself to now I want to be of
service to others? That's really interesting
question. I think I've always had that in
(16:33):
me and I think what inspired me was the realization that this is
what I meant to do. You know, this, one of the
things that pops up for me is, is a story of that I, I often
tell is when I was working in the film industry, I was a
camera assistant. Like my job was to pull focus
and to make sure it's in focus. So to explain that is anytime
(16:55):
you've watched a movie or ATV show and it kind of goes out of
focus for a little bit and not in a creative way, but in a in a
sort of distracting way. That's somebody at my job
messing up. And that was the best they were
able to do in the however many takes it took them to get that
shot. So I had to be ultra focused on
(17:17):
what's happening during the rehearsals and when the director
and the actor are working out what that what that what's going
to happen on camera. I have to be very aware.
And what kept happening to me inthe entire time in my 15 year
career is there's a lot of a lotof stand around waiting time.
You're waiting for the actor to get dressed, you're waiting for
(17:40):
the lights to get turned on. So my job didn't really start
until we were getting closer to actually filming.
And what would happen is there'dbe these men that, you know,
were builders or the electricianor, you know, these these guys
who are old, been working in thefilm industry forever, never
(18:02):
been to therapy, never talked toanybody about any of their
personal problems, Would come and have a conversation with me
and we would quickly go deep. And then I would be in this deep
conversation talking to this person and telling me and they'd
be telling me these really like personal things they've never
told even their wives. And the entire time I'm looking
(18:23):
over going, I really want to be in this conversation, but I
really need to pay attention to what's going on over here.
And you know, I had this great, great camera assistant that that
I would hire all the time. And we would carry these walkie
talkies and have like the littleearpiece in our ear.
And he'd get on the walkie-talkie and he'd go, hey,
Chatty Cathy, come on. We got to get to work.
(18:43):
And what I then realized, this is a long, sort of convoluted
story to say that like being of service, having these deep
conversations, helping people get through whatever it is they
may be getting through was coming to me while I was doing
another job. And it it was, it was almost
like this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
(19:03):
This job in the film industry isjust kind of getting in the way
of that. So when I had that realization
that this was already happening,I started thinking like, how can
I, how can I do this for a living?
How can I make a career so I don't have to do the film
industry thing anymore and I canjust do what is already coming
in my direction. And that's what that's what led
(19:24):
me to helping others. I, I've always, I've just always
been that way. It it just, I just didn't
understand that you can make a job out of that.
So you talk about the importanceand the ability we have to
rewrite our stories. What part of your story did you
need to rewrite first? The first one, I would say, the
(19:47):
first story that I had to rewrite was kind of what I
explained earlier is that I'm not going to repeat the traumas
and the generational trauma thatI experienced on my kids.
Just the fact that I am aware ofthose is already 50% better than
(20:08):
than what I grew up in. Like I'm already already setting
my kids up for success because Iknow I'm aware.
Getting over the the one toxic home versus versus 2 happy
homes, that was a big one. And then really rewriting the
story. Like my story involves a lot of
(20:31):
a lot of self worth problems being heard, being seen, being
accepted. I had to understand that I
actually have a courageous voiceand that my voice can be heard
and that I am worthy of steppinginto the conversation.
And a lot of that came with letting go of the, the
(20:56):
victimhood idea that I was this damaged kid and that it's my
parents fault that I grew up this way and that my parents
were the reason why I, you know,have low self worth, that I
don't feel seen or heard. And, you know, they, they, they
were involved in that. But there's no fault.
(21:18):
There's no, you know, like I'm, I'm not a victim of my
experience. I had my experience.
I have the ability to overcome that experience now.
And that's what I kind of, you know, involved in rewriting the
story. It's like we're, I lived in
victimhood for a really long time and I was really good at
(21:38):
diffusing and, and placing blameand shifting responsibility away
from myself and, and putting it on somewhere else and putting
myself in the victim role. So getting over that and
understanding that whatever thathappened was 30 years ago and
that now I can make a choice as a man to face that or be the
(22:04):
victim and not take responsibility for those
feelings that I'm that I've beenhaving for 30 years.
That was the biggest moment. And once I started going in that
direction, everything started tochange.
So I know part of your mission is drastically lowering the rate
of male suicide. What do you think is the main
(22:28):
obstacle in the way for men asking for help?
I think to answer that question,we have to kind of go back to
sort of the old school model that that most of us men have
been, have been sort of programmed into.
And, and I, I, you know, I'm sure you've heard this and
anybody else who's relatively around our age and even some of
(22:50):
the younger guys probably have heard it as well.
It's this old mantra of you put your head down, you bury your
emotions, you work hard and you provide for your family.
And I think that is kind of a basis for the mind frame that
men have have been in for generations of even even beyond
(23:12):
yours, you know, both of ours. It's this idea that we're not
allowed to have emotions. You know, I was having a
conversation with a friend of mine about this just the other
day and he said something reallypoignant that really stuck with
me. And he said, you know, the only
emotion that a man is really acceptable in society to have is
(23:33):
anger. And it's not acceptable in a
positive way. But we're not supposed to cry.
We're not supposed to have shame.
We're not supposed to feel joy. We're not supposed to feel any
other emotion. But anger is maybe allowed for
me that is that's the reason whywe have the such a high
(23:57):
statistics we have. I also think that, you know,
it's not necessarily men's faults.
You know, it it, it's kind of like societal programming when
you have these generations of men that were raised by war
veterans who were raised by war veterans, who were raised by war
veterans, who all were taught tonot express or talk about the
(24:18):
things that they experienced, you know, down range or down in
in war. And I think of that has a ripple
effect on every other generationmoving forward.
You're just taught not to talk about it.
You bury that emotion and what'shappening is what you know that
I, I like to question, like whathappens when you can't bury that
(24:39):
emotion anymore? What happens when that emotion
comes bubbling up and you don't know how to process that
emotion? And I think that's the reason
why the second leading cause of death for men 45 and under this
is as of 2022 is suicide. And the first leading cause of
death is unintentional injury, meaning you could get hit by a
(25:01):
car, you could have something fall out of the sky and, and,
you know, kill you, You could, you know, have an aneurysm.
There's a, there's a million different, different causes of
death under unintentional injuryand suicide is just below that.
And again, like I was almost oneof those statistics.
So for me, like I want to lower that and I want to teach men how
(25:24):
to A, recognize their emotions and B, how to process that and
how to how to be aware that an emotion is coming up, what that
feels like in your body. So is to move from awareness of
suicide as an issue to real action about it all, about men
(25:47):
learning to feel, to express, toget to get the shit out of them.
Yeah, I think that's the first part of it.
Yes, awareness, you know, it's, it's, you know what one of the,
one of the big mantras that I have in, in the men's group that
that I run is men are we're fixers.
(26:07):
We're very analytical. You have an interaction with,
with, with your partner. You know, in my case, I'll use
myself as, as my partner by my ex-wife or whatever.
They'll come with an emotional emotional problem and the first
thing, the first unconscious thought that that us as a man,
that I am as a man, I'm going tosay I'm just using my own
(26:27):
experience is OK. How do I fix this?
What things do I need to do in order to to change this emotion
into from from sorrow or pain oranger to to joy?
What are the what are the steps that I need to take to do that?
But when it comes to being inside, in, in within us as men,
(26:51):
we need to learn how to actuallystep out of our minds and into
our hearts or into our bodies, because that's where the
feeling, that's where the emotion it is comes from.
You know, it, it also kind of lines with there's a, there's a
great book called the body keepsscore.
And the idea is that we store, we store our emotions in, in
(27:12):
parts of our body. And if we're not accessing that
body, accessing that heart, thenwe're not ever going to process
that emotion. And when you're, when we're
living, when I'm living in my head and trying to fix this
thing and not feeling it and it's, it's, you're just putting
(27:36):
a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. In your men's group, is there a
common fear or hesitation that that a guy displays like on his
at his first visit? Oh, always, yes, of course,
always. Fame is a really big thing.
I think for men, I'll use an example.
I'm not going to use any names because I like to protect
(27:57):
privacy. It's really important in in the
men's groups, but I can use the generalization and, and use a
name as one of the guys in the group.
He was new. He's very open gentleman.
He was OK with talking about what what, you know, what was
going on in the work he's been doing and, and where he's where
he's at and where he's moving and that and that was great for
being the first time in in the men's grip.
I was like, OK, this guy's, you know, he's doing the work and he
(28:21):
but then he mentioned something that was really interesting
where he said, you know, I've had a problem.
You know, one of the reasons whyI'm here is because I've tried
to talk to some of my friends about these situations and it is
hurt friendships where they likethose men aren't aren't able to
to receive that or to talk aboutit.
(28:43):
And then I don't and then I'm not, you know that like they
don't want to be friends. They pull back.
And what he was describing was was a level of shame of a fear
of if I be get vulnerable, how is somebody gonna gonna receive
(29:04):
that? And how is that gonna be
received? And in that moment, in that that
I just described, that wasn't received very well.
He lost a friend. So it's like you take one step
forward and it's it's not a great step.
You're sliding back five steps. You know, like now as men, it's
like, oh, well, we're going to we're going to be vulnerable.
(29:25):
It's very vulnerable to even share those kind of things.
And then and then extra vulnerable to talk about what it
is with another person. And if that person isn't able to
receive or hold space for that, it's like, Oh, well, I'm never
going to talk about that to another person at all, you know?
And so I think men's groups are amazing because it's literally
(29:48):
the space to have those conversations.
We're going in with an agreementthat we're not going to judge
anybody for anything that they say.
We're going to hold space, we'regoing to support.
And 9090% of the time, there's at least one to two other men in
that group who are going to raise their hand and say, I'm
experiencing that as well. And thank you for saying it
(30:10):
right now, because I also feel that way.
I also grew up that way. I also have had those same
thoughts. And now in that situation,
you're not alone. You're not with a group of
people who are going through thesame thing.
And that is true connection. And that's what we're that's,
that's what we're trying to do here.
(30:32):
You know it. There is a silent epidemic that
we talked about a little bit of suicide, but there's also a
silent epidemic of loneliness. I like to call it the, the lone
wolf syndrome. You know, most men, I, I would
say, I would say a lot of men in, in a, particularly in, in
getting into their late 30s and 40s, probably count on one hand
(30:54):
how many close friends they have.
And then out of those close friends probably gets down to
single digits on how many they can actually talk about deep
like emotional things that are going on.
So having a space that you can feel safe to, to talk to and to
open up and to, to connect with,it's, it's paramount.
(31:18):
It's it's funny, not funny with all the anti wokeness things
that have come about and making fun of, you know, safe spaces
and college students needing safe and all this stuff.
And it's still, I see it every day and it's what you're
describing. Men need to feel safe somewhere
in order to open up. You know what I'm very
(31:40):
fascinated with like masculine and feminine dynamics and I, I,
I study a lot of, I don't know if you're familiar with John
Wyland. He wrote this great book called
From the Core and he's very big on sacred intimacy and
relationships. And you know, there's, there's
this polarity that happens with,with masculine feminine and, and
men usually, you know, it can goboth ways.
(32:03):
You can have dynamics where a woman is more the masculine and
the man is more the feminine. And it's, you know, it's a, it's
a, it's a ever revolving sort ofpolarity.
And I think, I think what happens is under the normal
society and normal programming, US men, we're supposed to
provide safety for others. You protect your family, you
(32:27):
protect your partner, you provide safety.
A woman can open up and be loving and be caring when she
feels safe. We are the product of, of, of
making them feel safe, but we don't actually have anybody to
make us feel safe. And there isn't really a
conversation about other men helping other men feel safe.
(32:50):
So providing a space to be able to do that, it's powerful.
I also think, and this doesn't even go with men.
This is just people in general. We, we live in a time with
social media, 24 hour news, likeall of all of this thing.
We get more information than we ever have before in history.
(33:14):
And with all the different social media platforms and
everybody being encouraged to, you know, speak their voice and,
and show the world who you are, what you're doing there, there
comes this false sense of, of connection where you can like,
I'll use, use an example, Andy, I could watch your Instagram or
(33:34):
your, or your Facebook or your whatever, whatever social media
platform that you use and get a sense of like that.
I know you, we've never had a real conversation.
We've never been in the same space together.
But I know all the things that you have done based on what
you've done. That's not necessarily
connection, that's information. But when we get in a room
together and we actually sit down and we truly connect,
(33:57):
there's an energy that happens in that and there's a, there's
AI don't like to use the word healing, but but there's a
particular energy that happens when you feel connected to
someone. So we get this sense of false
sense of connection and that becomes from social media.
(34:18):
And now I believe that we're in 2025, we are now coming to a
premises or, or a, a pinnacle point where people are looking
for connection in person connection as much as they can
because we've all been living ina world of false connection.
So that's where men's groups come in, like like almost every
(34:39):
single time in a men's group, the ones that I've attended,
ones that I've LED, that I've been a part of, everyone feels
connected. Most of the men feel connected.
Like if you were to go around a circle and say what's the one
word that you could state after?After having this experience,
half of the people are going to say I feel connected.
(34:59):
And in my experience, it's that can even be the very first
meeting for. People.
Yeah. Oh, 100%.
Often guys are surprised how different better they feel from
just attending a single meeting.Yeah.
I mean, imagine what would happen if you start going
consistently. Yeah.
So if there's a man listening, stuck in shame, in anger,
(35:23):
perhaps even hopelessness, what would be the the first small
step that you recommend? I think the first small step is
to understand what that feels like in your body.
What does that feel like naming that emotion?
Being able to name it, I'm feeling anger, you know, there's
(35:46):
5 core emotions. I think it's joy, sadness,
anger, shame and despair. I might be missing one.
I usually have it written down. But if you can name one of those
core emotions and then be able to name where it comes up in
your body, that's the very firststep to then figuring out how to
(36:09):
regulate yourself when that's happening.
So that would be the first thing.
I think the next thing really isI, I'm really big into breath
work, breathing, breathe throughit.
A lot of times we want to disassociate or, you know, go to
a coping mechanism that may not be healthy and being able to sit
(36:32):
in that emotion and understand that it's going to process
through your body and to be ableto breathe through that
consciously. Like imagining what I do for my,
for myself, This is, I do this often is I imagine that I'm a
tiny little piece of oxygen that's just floating around in,
in the air. And that I'm going through the
(36:55):
experience of a breath going up into my nose, down my, you know,
and into my lungs and bouncing around in my lungs and then
coming back up and out my mouth.And just by by putting the
intention into that breath of following that little, you know,
(37:15):
tiny piece of oxygen, molecule of oxygen, it can actually help
you regulate whatever that emotion is.
Because now you're not thinking about that emotion.
You're not ruminating on whatever it is that pissed you
off. You're thinking about that piece
of or that molecule of oxygen and and you're allowing your
subconscious brain in the back of your head to go through and
(37:38):
process whatever that anger is. Cool, I like that I that takes
focus on your breath to the deepest level possible probably.
Yeah. Aaron, what's one thing you wish
more men knew? I mean, I think it goes back to
my mantra in, in the, you know, in, in the men's groups, it's,
it's we knew how to get out of our heads and into our hearts,
(38:00):
how to feel more, do less fixingand more feeling.
So Aaron, how can people best learn about more about you and
everything that you offer? Yeah, I've got a website at
aarongamble.com. It's GA MB ELAA, Ron
aarongamble.com. I'm also on Instagram at Aaron M
(38:23):
Gamble and TikTok at Aaron Gamble.
I also have a free five step guide to rewrite your story,
breaking free from the past and reclaiming your power.
If anybody's interested in that,you can just sign up on my
website and I'll I'll send you the PDF.
Awesome, Aaron, it's great to connect with you again.
(38:44):
We have so many similar experiences, good and bad.
And I, I've just, I just recently updated my book, still
here, How to Succeed in Life after Failing at suicide.
It's the 10th anniversary and I've, I've gone through and all
that. So it's all top of mind.
And you're just echoing so much of the things that I discovered
and thought I was alone and the only person going through these
(39:06):
things. So thank you for being you.
Thank you for sharing you and getting out there and helping
other men not have to go throughthe path that we've gone through
to realize they're meant to be alive.
I think thank you for saying that.
I appreciate that. And I also want to thank you for
giving me the opportunity to be on this podcast and to tell my
story because you never know whomay need to hear it.
(39:30):
I mean, I think that's why we, you and I are doing what we do.
It's because there is one personthat may hear this podcast and
it may gift for them and they meet, may ask for help that they
may never have known how to ask for.
And if one person doesn't have to go through what we went
through, that is goal. Goal completed.
(39:52):
Yeah, couldn't agree. Thank you for for the
opportunity to to speak here andfor doing what you're doing and
writing the book. And, and also congratulations 10
years. I'm I'm grateful that you're
here right now. And I bet you're the same way.
So many people will confess to me that they've made an attempt,
that they've thought about it and will say that they've never
(40:12):
told anybody else. And you are that walking safe
space. Yes, yes.
And other other men can be too, yeah.
Yes. Thank you for listening to Real
Men Field today. If this conversation resonated
with you, I invite you to join our authentic AF community at
realmenfield.org/group. A space for men to authentically
(40:36):
connect, share, and grow. Big thanks to my guest Aaron
Gamble for reminding us that when men feel safe to open up,
transformation is possible. Until next time, be good to
yourself.
It's a really good description of kind of how our subconscious
works. And the quote goes like this.
Our brain will choose a familiarhell over unfamiliar heaven
every single time. My familiar hell is my nervous
system being blasted and in survival mode.
(00:21):
Hello and welcome to Realman Feel.
I'm your host, author, coach andhealer, Andy Grant.
You can learn more about me at the andygrant.com.
On this show, we have conversations that most men are
not having, but that all men andthe women who love them can
benefit from. Today I'm joined by Aaron
Gamble, an impact driven life coach and men's group
facilitator whose mission is to lower the rate of male suicide
by creating safe spaces for emotional growth, healing, and
(00:43):
connection. Drawn from his own journey
through divorce, fatherhood, andtransformation, Aaron helps men
rewrite their stories and reclaim their power.
And if you're ready to continue conversations like this, join
our private community, authenticAF, at realmenfeel.org/group.
Let's do it. Hello Aaron, and welcome to Real
Men Feel. Thank you for having me idea,
(01:03):
appreciate it. So Aaron, we are both members of
a a group, A club that I don't think really anybody wants to be
part of. Can you tell me about that
turning point in your own life where you really decided changes
need to be made? Yes, for me, that moment
(01:24):
happened five days after my 43rdbirthday.
I took my kids camping and for some reason, something inside of
me was just felt like I'm not the person that I am meant to
be, that I had lost myself. And it, it came in this
(01:46):
realization that I wasn't happy in, in the life that I had and
got home from camping and ended up getting into an argument with
my, with my wife at the time, normal argument, something that,
you know, happens often. But something inside me cracked,
(02:08):
and I went upstairs and I grabbed a bottle of Xanax and I
looked down at that bottle of pills, 25 or 30 inside.
And I thought to myself, I couldjust down all of these and never
wake up. And as I was lifting that bottle
to my mouth, an image of my two kids, who at the time were five
(02:32):
and seven, popped into my brain.They were downstairs in this
image, laughing and playing Uno in my living room.
That image literally saved my life.
I thought to myself in that moment, I cannot leave this
earth and leave them without a father.
(02:55):
I would be doing way more damageto them if I left.
And the next thing I had to do after that was make what I like
to call the biggest decision that I've ever made as a man,
and that was to put myself into the hospital.
So I called a friend and had himpick me up, said goodbye to my
(03:19):
family, told my kids that I was going off onto a job, which is
something I normally did in the film industry.
I would leave for weeks on end to go to a random city or state
to film a movie or TV show. And I checked myself into UCLA
Medical Center, into the behavioral health unit.
(03:40):
I spent five days at UCLA, two days of that five day, 2 days
into that, my wife came to visitme and she didn't come to visit
me to offer support or care or or whatever.
She she came to tell me that she's filing for divorce.
(04:01):
And to be very honest and clear with you, I was already at a
pretty low place. That was a breaking point for
me. And but it also at the same
time, like are you familiar withThe Dark Knight of the Soul or
the Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey?
All 2. That was my dark night of the
(04:21):
soul. That moment I was at rock bottom
and I felt like after that, based on how I grew up getting a
divorce, was going through the rock bottom floor.
You can't get any deeper. At the same time.
That was the beginning of my Phoenix rising.
(04:43):
Because what happened after thatis I spent the next three days
at the UCLA Medical Center. And then I, the doctor suggested
that I go to a treatment center,a residential treatment center
where was all men. It's a place where you go and
it's a bridge between having a mental breakdown and regaining
(05:04):
back into society. And I spent 25 days there.
And I like to call that experience my mental health
college experience because because every day, six days a
week, from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, every hour on the hour, we sat
(05:25):
in this decrepit old living roomof this beat up treatment center
and we learned a new modality ofpsychology.
I learned DBTACTCBTI, also learned about emotional
regulation. We learned about breath work,
about yoga, about gratitude journaling, the list goes on and
(05:50):
on. I mean, I could name all the
acronyms in, in psychology because we learned every one of
them. And it, it was, it really was
like a college experience. And I sat in that beat up in
that beat up living room, and I took copious amounts of notes.
I wrote more than I've ever written in my entire life in 43
(06:10):
years up to that point. In those 25 days, I kept every
single paper. I, I absorbed so much of this
information because I wanted to figure out how to be the best
version of myself. I realized that I am in this
dark place. That is not who I am.
(06:31):
That's not what I want to be. And Andy, I think we're, we're
pretty sick close in age, right?Like you're in your 40s as well
if I had to guess. I'm in my 50s.
In 50s, OK, So we still come from that same kind of latchkey
kid upbringing, right? Yeah.
So a, a, a positive byproduct ofthe latchkey kid comes a sense
(06:55):
of resilience and a sense of, ofwhat I like to call grit.
And I know that I possess that. And this moment that I was in
understanding that I'm not whereI want to be was just another
chip to put on my shoulder of a of a task that I need to to
overcome. And that's how I looked at it
(07:17):
and I learned everything I possibly could.
And, and I'll be honest with you, a lot of the stuff that I
learned there, I, I do myself because I, you know, because
it's, it was amazing. And I've shifted my life because
it, I also use that in my coaching and I teach emotional
regulation. I teach, you know, nervous
(07:38):
system regulation and an understanding of what you know,
what your nervous system is doing.
It is now become a staple to whoI am today and, and what I do.
And I, you know, I, I left the film industry and now I've, I'm
working as a coach, as, as a men's group facilitator and, and
(08:02):
I'm trying to share what I've learned and what I experienced.
So hopefully somebody out there won't have to go through what I
went through. Hopefully I can save someone
from a becoming a, a statistic and or B having to go through a
hospital experience, having to go through putting themselves
into, you know, the behavioral health unit or having to go
(08:25):
through that experience. If it if somebody is close to
that and they hear my story and they see that, you know, they
can, they can do these things and learn these tools without
going through that experience, then I've I've, I've life goal
achieved. There's a lot to unpack there.
So one of the things you mentioned was that night real
(08:48):
thinking that you've lost yourself and you weren't happy.
So does that mean earlier in your life you, you were happy?
You, you feel, you felt you're on mission and purpose and doing
everything right and feeling good about that.
Oh, no, no. But I think in that moment I was
a step closer to purpose. I was just surviving up until
(09:12):
that moment. I, you know, I, I grew up in an,
in an, a pretty rough environment.
My, my parents were, I like to call them emotionally immature
parents. There's an amazing book called
Children of Emotionally Immatureparents.
First of all, that book was lifechanging.
It helped me rewrite my story and it helped me to do what I'm
(09:35):
doing now with the we are not the, I mean, we are not the
stories that we tell ourselves and how to rewrite.
You know, your story, that book had a lot of huge influence on
me in that in that way, because I realized that I am high
functioning in survival mode andI've lived, I've gravitated
(09:55):
toward careers that promoted that.
And it's just something that is pretty normal to me.
You know, there, there was a quote actually that that I heard
a couple years ago that that I use today.
And it, and I kind of live by it.
And it, it's a really good description of kind of how our
subconscious works. And the quote goes like this.
(10:16):
It's, it's our brain will choosea familiar hell over unfamiliar
heaven every single time. My familiar hell is my nervous
system being blasted and in survival mode because as a
child, my parents, I never I, I got really good at reading
(10:38):
people and being able to read where my emotional, where the
emotional level of my parents were in order to understand
whether I could say something ornot.
Because at any moment, you know,it's that walking on egg shells
sort of sort of experience. And that started really young.
(10:59):
Now, the positive side of that is that if I were, if I were to
choose to, to be in the, the military, I would have been a
phenomenal soldier 'cause when, when bullets are flying by, like
I would get ultra focused and dothe job at, at, at, you know, at
hand. You know, I, I, I know that I, I
gravitated toward careers, my first job, very, very grateful
(11:23):
for the person who, who helped me get to this position.
But first job I, I worked at was, was in a hospital.
I, I worked as an orderly and I was like helping people.
And then I, you know, moved intothe emergency room and was like
helping trauma cases and assisting as a medical
assistant. And I would work in surgery and
work in all these environments. And I believe that was because
(11:46):
my body, my brain, my subconscious was gravitating
toward that activated nervous system because that's what it
knows. That's what's familiar.
Now on the long run of that, it's not very healthy for you.
You know, the film industry is also the same thing like film
industry's freelance. Every second that we are not
(12:07):
filming, you're burning of half $1,000,000.
And, and that's the theme of, ofbeing on a, on a film set is
like, you need to go, go, go, orwe're going to run out of money.
And it's, you know, it's very nervous system, nervous system
activating. And I thrived in that
environment. To answer your question, no, I
(12:28):
didn't know what my purpose was.I, I wasn't happy.
I was just living and I was living in that, in that blasted
nervous system. I was surviving and I found joy
in small ways. And I think, you know, to, to be
honest with you, I would, I would used coping mechanisms
that were unhealthy in order to,to find joy, like drinking or
drugs or, or whatever it may be.Fortunately, I'm very lucky.
(12:51):
I don't have an addictive personality.
So none of that stuff became a problem.
And, and today, like I, I don't,you know, I'm, I'm pretty dead
sober. I, I don't drink.
I, I may, you know, I may play around with some micro dose of
psilocybin or something like that, but I don't, I don't do
any of the substances that I wasdoing prior to, to going into
(13:12):
the hospital. And I kind of realized that I
can function at a different level completely sober.
And that's, and, and I don't have to hide from my past or my
traumas. I can face that and understand
that. And, and that's what I really
try to try to teach in, in my own work now is like, listen, we
(13:33):
don't have to run away from that.
You can face it. You can face that shadow because
it's your own shadow and it's your own story and you have the
ability to rewrite that. It's going to take some work and
it's not going to be easy, but we but we can do that.
In your mental health college, you said that you had decided
(13:56):
you wanted to be the best version of yourself.
For WHO? For me for, for that inner child
in me. You know, it's interesting.
That's a really quick question, Andy.
Like I was going to therapy prior to to that experience and
I was trying to unpack my, some of my trauma and it wasn't
(14:19):
really working. And I realized that it wasn't
working because I was doing it for my family.
I was doing it to save my marriage.
I was doing it to save my kids because at that time, I was
operating under this idea that one toxic home is way better
than two happy homes. And that divorce was like
(14:44):
failure to me. And that that I would just be
repeating the same childhood traumas that I experienced on my
kids. And that was one of the biggest
crutches that I had to come cometo terms with in going through
this divorce, going through this, this experience that I
went through because I just always thought that if I get a
(15:07):
divorce, I'm going to fail. I'm going to grow up and my kids
are going to get a stepdad that is a piece of crap.
And you know, and, and they're going to live the same life that
I lived growing up. And, and to me, that was
ultimate failure. And once I got over that and
realized that I have to do this for myself.
(15:28):
And when I can, when I can heal myself, I can heal that inner
child within me. I can heal this, this body, then
I can show up as a good partner.I can show up as a conscious and
loving dad and, and you know, I can show up in my job as a
(15:48):
full-fledged human being and like really give to others
because I can't give to anybody else until I have fixed what's
inside of me. And, and I'm not going to sit
here and say that I'm fixed and I'm healed.
And you know, like, like, no, I'm, I'm not, I'm not at all.
I'm human. I'm still going through this
stuff, but I've taken some big freaking chunks out of that and
(16:12):
enough to know and I've learned enough to be able to help others
take big chunks out of out of that, that child, that trauma or
whatever it is. What inspired you to go from
It's Finally Time to take care of Myself to now I want to be of
service to others? That's really interesting
question. I think I've always had that in
(16:33):
me and I think what inspired me was the realization that this is
what I meant to do. You know, this, one of the
things that pops up for me is, is a story of that I, I often
tell is when I was working in the film industry, I was a
camera assistant. Like my job was to pull focus
and to make sure it's in focus. So to explain that is anytime
(16:55):
you've watched a movie or ATV show and it kind of goes out of
focus for a little bit and not in a creative way, but in a in a
sort of distracting way. That's somebody at my job
messing up. And that was the best they were
able to do in the however many takes it took them to get that
shot. So I had to be ultra focused on
(17:17):
what's happening during the rehearsals and when the director
and the actor are working out what that what that what's going
to happen on camera. I have to be very aware.
And what kept happening to me inthe entire time in my 15 year
career is there's a lot of a lotof stand around waiting time.
You're waiting for the actor to get dressed, you're waiting for
(17:40):
the lights to get turned on. So my job didn't really start
until we were getting closer to actually filming.
And what would happen is there'dbe these men that, you know,
were builders or the electricianor, you know, these these guys
who are old, been working in thefilm industry forever, never
(18:02):
been to therapy, never talked toanybody about any of their
personal problems, Would come and have a conversation with me
and we would quickly go deep. And then I would be in this deep
conversation talking to this person and telling me and they'd
be telling me these really like personal things they've never
told even their wives. And the entire time I'm looking
(18:23):
over going, I really want to be in this conversation, but I
really need to pay attention to what's going on over here.
And you know, I had this great, great camera assistant that that
I would hire all the time. And we would carry these walkie
talkies and have like the littleearpiece in our ear.
And he'd get on the walkie-talkie and he'd go, hey,
Chatty Cathy, come on. We got to get to work.
(18:43):
And what I then realized, this is a long, sort of convoluted
story to say that like being of service, having these deep
conversations, helping people get through whatever it is they
may be getting through was coming to me while I was doing
another job. And it it was, it was almost
like this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
(19:03):
This job in the film industry isjust kind of getting in the way
of that. So when I had that realization
that this was already happening,I started thinking like, how can
I, how can I do this for a living?
How can I make a career so I don't have to do the film
industry thing anymore and I canjust do what is already coming
in my direction. And that's what that's what led
(19:24):
me to helping others. I, I've always, I've just always
been that way. It it just, I just didn't
understand that you can make a job out of that.
So you talk about the importanceand the ability we have to
rewrite our stories. What part of your story did you
need to rewrite first? The first one, I would say, the
(19:47):
first story that I had to rewrite was kind of what I
explained earlier is that I'm not going to repeat the traumas
and the generational trauma thatI experienced on my kids.
Just the fact that I am aware ofthose is already 50% better than
(20:08):
than what I grew up in. Like I'm already already setting
my kids up for success because Iknow I'm aware.
Getting over the the one toxic home versus versus 2 happy
homes, that was a big one. And then really rewriting the
story. Like my story involves a lot of
(20:31):
a lot of self worth problems being heard, being seen, being
accepted. I had to understand that I
actually have a courageous voiceand that my voice can be heard
and that I am worthy of steppinginto the conversation.
And a lot of that came with letting go of the, the
(20:56):
victimhood idea that I was this damaged kid and that it's my
parents fault that I grew up this way and that my parents
were the reason why I, you know,have low self worth, that I
don't feel seen or heard. And, you know, they, they, they
were involved in that. But there's no fault.
(21:18):
There's no, you know, like I'm, I'm not a victim of my
experience. I had my experience.
I have the ability to overcome that experience now.
And that's what I kind of, you know, involved in rewriting the
story. It's like we're, I lived in
victimhood for a really long time and I was really good at
(21:38):
diffusing and, and placing blameand shifting responsibility away
from myself and, and putting it on somewhere else and putting
myself in the victim role. So getting over that and
understanding that whatever thathappened was 30 years ago and
that now I can make a choice as a man to face that or be the
(22:04):
victim and not take responsibility for those
feelings that I'm that I've beenhaving for 30 years.
That was the biggest moment. And once I started going in that
direction, everything started tochange.
So I know part of your mission is drastically lowering the rate
of male suicide. What do you think is the main
(22:28):
obstacle in the way for men asking for help?
I think to answer that question,we have to kind of go back to
sort of the old school model that that most of us men have
been, have been sort of programmed into.
And, and I, I, you know, I'm sure you've heard this and
anybody else who's relatively around our age and even some of
(22:50):
the younger guys probably have heard it as well.
It's this old mantra of you put your head down, you bury your
emotions, you work hard and you provide for your family.
And I think that is kind of a basis for the mind frame that
men have have been in for generations of even even beyond
(23:12):
yours, you know, both of ours. It's this idea that we're not
allowed to have emotions. You know, I was having a
conversation with a friend of mine about this just the other
day and he said something reallypoignant that really stuck with
me. And he said, you know, the only
emotion that a man is really acceptable in society to have is
(23:33):
anger. And it's not acceptable in a
positive way. But we're not supposed to cry.
We're not supposed to have shame.
We're not supposed to feel joy. We're not supposed to feel any
other emotion. But anger is maybe allowed for
me that is that's the reason whywe have the such a high
(23:57):
statistics we have. I also think that, you know,
it's not necessarily men's faults.
You know, it it, it's kind of like societal programming when
you have these generations of men that were raised by war
veterans who were raised by war veterans, who were raised by war
veterans, who all were taught tonot express or talk about the
(24:18):
things that they experienced, you know, down range or down in
in war. And I think of that has a ripple
effect on every other generationmoving forward.
You're just taught not to talk about it.
You bury that emotion and what'shappening is what you know that
I, I like to question, like whathappens when you can't bury that
(24:39):
emotion anymore? What happens when that emotion
comes bubbling up and you don't know how to process that
emotion? And I think that's the reason
why the second leading cause of death for men 45 and under this
is as of 2022 is suicide. And the first leading cause of
death is unintentional injury, meaning you could get hit by a
(25:01):
car, you could have something fall out of the sky and, and,
you know, kill you, You could, you know, have an aneurysm.
There's a, there's a million different, different causes of
death under unintentional injuryand suicide is just below that.
And again, like I was almost oneof those statistics.
So for me, like I want to lower that and I want to teach men how
(25:24):
to A, recognize their emotions and B, how to process that and
how to how to be aware that an emotion is coming up, what that
feels like in your body. So is to move from awareness of
suicide as an issue to real action about it all, about men
(25:47):
learning to feel, to express, toget to get the shit out of them.
Yeah, I think that's the first part of it.
Yes, awareness, you know, it's, it's, you know what one of the,
one of the big mantras that I have in, in the men's group that
that I run is men are we're fixers.
(26:07):
We're very analytical. You have an interaction with,
with, with your partner. You know, in my case, I'll use
myself as, as my partner by my ex-wife or whatever.
They'll come with an emotional emotional problem and the first
thing, the first unconscious thought that that us as a man,
that I am as a man, I'm going tosay I'm just using my own
(26:27):
experience is OK. How do I fix this?
What things do I need to do in order to to change this emotion
into from from sorrow or pain oranger to to joy?
What are the what are the steps that I need to take to do that?
But when it comes to being inside, in, in within us as men,
(26:51):
we need to learn how to actuallystep out of our minds and into
our hearts or into our bodies, because that's where the
feeling, that's where the emotion it is comes from.
You know, it, it also kind of lines with there's a, there's a
great book called the body keepsscore.
And the idea is that we store, we store our emotions in, in
(27:12):
parts of our body. And if we're not accessing that
body, accessing that heart, thenwe're not ever going to process
that emotion. And when you're, when we're
living, when I'm living in my head and trying to fix this
thing and not feeling it and it's, it's, you're just putting
(27:36):
a Band-Aid on a gaping wound. In your men's group, is there a
common fear or hesitation that that a guy displays like on his
at his first visit? Oh, always, yes, of course,
always. Fame is a really big thing.
I think for men, I'll use an example.
I'm not going to use any names because I like to protect
(27:57):
privacy. It's really important in in the
men's groups, but I can use the generalization and, and use a
name as one of the guys in the group.
He was new. He's very open gentleman.
He was OK with talking about what what, you know, what was
going on in the work he's been doing and, and where he's where
he's at and where he's moving and that and that was great for
being the first time in in the men's grip.
I was like, OK, this guy's, you know, he's doing the work and he
(28:21):
but then he mentioned something that was really interesting
where he said, you know, I've had a problem.
You know, one of the reasons whyI'm here is because I've tried
to talk to some of my friends about these situations and it is
hurt friendships where they likethose men aren't aren't able to
to receive that or to talk aboutit.
(28:43):
And then I don't and then I'm not, you know that like they
don't want to be friends. They pull back.
And what he was describing was was a level of shame of a fear
of if I be get vulnerable, how is somebody gonna gonna receive
(29:04):
that? And how is that gonna be
received? And in that moment, in that that
I just described, that wasn't received very well.
He lost a friend. So it's like you take one step
forward and it's it's not a great step.
You're sliding back five steps. You know, like now as men, it's
like, oh, well, we're going to we're going to be vulnerable.
(29:25):
It's very vulnerable to even share those kind of things.
And then and then extra vulnerable to talk about what it
is with another person. And if that person isn't able to
receive or hold space for that, it's like, Oh, well, I'm never
going to talk about that to another person at all, you know?
And so I think men's groups are amazing because it's literally
(29:48):
the space to have those conversations.
We're going in with an agreementthat we're not going to judge
anybody for anything that they say.
We're going to hold space, we'regoing to support.
And 9090% of the time, there's at least one to two other men in
that group who are going to raise their hand and say, I'm
experiencing that as well. And thank you for saying it
(30:10):
right now, because I also feel that way.
I also grew up that way. I also have had those same
thoughts. And now in that situation,
you're not alone. You're not with a group of
people who are going through thesame thing.
And that is true connection. And that's what we're that's,
that's what we're trying to do here.
(30:32):
You know it. There is a silent epidemic that
we talked about a little bit of suicide, but there's also a
silent epidemic of loneliness. I like to call it the, the lone
wolf syndrome. You know, most men, I, I would
say, I would say a lot of men in, in a, particularly in, in
getting into their late 30s and 40s, probably count on one hand
(30:54):
how many close friends they have.
And then out of those close friends probably gets down to
single digits on how many they can actually talk about deep
like emotional things that are going on.
So having a space that you can feel safe to, to talk to and to
open up and to, to connect with,it's, it's paramount.
(31:18):
It's it's funny, not funny with all the anti wokeness things
that have come about and making fun of, you know, safe spaces
and college students needing safe and all this stuff.
And it's still, I see it every day and it's what you're
describing. Men need to feel safe somewhere
in order to open up. You know what I'm very
(31:40):
fascinated with like masculine and feminine dynamics and I, I,
I study a lot of, I don't know if you're familiar with John
Wyland. He wrote this great book called
From the Core and he's very big on sacred intimacy and
relationships. And you know, there's, there's
this polarity that happens with,with masculine feminine and, and
men usually, you know, it can goboth ways.
(32:03):
You can have dynamics where a woman is more the masculine and
the man is more the feminine. And it's, you know, it's a, it's
a, it's a ever revolving sort ofpolarity.
And I think, I think what happens is under the normal
society and normal programming, US men, we're supposed to
provide safety for others. You protect your family, you
(32:27):
protect your partner, you provide safety.
A woman can open up and be loving and be caring when she
feels safe. We are the product of, of, of
making them feel safe, but we don't actually have anybody to
make us feel safe. And there isn't really a
conversation about other men helping other men feel safe.
(32:50):
So providing a space to be able to do that, it's powerful.
I also think, and this doesn't even go with men.
This is just people in general. We, we live in a time with
social media, 24 hour news, likeall of all of this thing.
We get more information than we ever have before in history.
(33:14):
And with all the different social media platforms and
everybody being encouraged to, you know, speak their voice and,
and show the world who you are, what you're doing there, there
comes this false sense of, of connection where you can like,
I'll use, use an example, Andy, I could watch your Instagram or
(33:34):
your, or your Facebook or your whatever, whatever social media
platform that you use and get a sense of like that.
I know you, we've never had a real conversation.
We've never been in the same space together.
But I know all the things that you have done based on what
you've done. That's not necessarily
connection, that's information. But when we get in a room
together and we actually sit down and we truly connect,
(33:57):
there's an energy that happens in that and there's a, there's
AI don't like to use the word healing, but but there's a
particular energy that happens when you feel connected to
someone. So we get this sense of false
sense of connection and that becomes from social media.
(34:18):
And now I believe that we're in 2025, we are now coming to a
premises or, or a, a pinnacle point where people are looking
for connection in person connection as much as they can
because we've all been living ina world of false connection.
So that's where men's groups come in, like like almost every
(34:39):
single time in a men's group, the ones that I've attended,
ones that I've LED, that I've been a part of, everyone feels
connected. Most of the men feel connected.
Like if you were to go around a circle and say what's the one
word that you could state after?After having this experience,
half of the people are going to say I feel connected.
(34:59):
And in my experience, it's that can even be the very first
meeting for. People.
Yeah. Oh, 100%.
Often guys are surprised how different better they feel from
just attending a single meeting.Yeah.
I mean, imagine what would happen if you start going
consistently. Yeah.
So if there's a man listening, stuck in shame, in anger,
(35:23):
perhaps even hopelessness, what would be the the first small
step that you recommend? I think the first small step is
to understand what that feels like in your body.
What does that feel like naming that emotion?
Being able to name it, I'm feeling anger, you know, there's
(35:46):
5 core emotions. I think it's joy, sadness,
anger, shame and despair. I might be missing one.
I usually have it written down. But if you can name one of those
core emotions and then be able to name where it comes up in
your body, that's the very firststep to then figuring out how to
(36:09):
regulate yourself when that's happening.
So that would be the first thing.
I think the next thing really isI, I'm really big into breath
work, breathing, breathe throughit.
A lot of times we want to disassociate or, you know, go to
a coping mechanism that may not be healthy and being able to sit
(36:32):
in that emotion and understand that it's going to process
through your body and to be ableto breathe through that
consciously. Like imagining what I do for my,
for myself, This is, I do this often is I imagine that I'm a
tiny little piece of oxygen that's just floating around in,
in the air. And that I'm going through the
(36:55):
experience of a breath going up into my nose, down my, you know,
and into my lungs and bouncing around in my lungs and then
coming back up and out my mouth.And just by by putting the
intention into that breath of following that little, you know,
(37:15):
tiny piece of oxygen, molecule of oxygen, it can actually help
you regulate whatever that emotion is.
Because now you're not thinking about that emotion.
You're not ruminating on whatever it is that pissed you
off. You're thinking about that piece
of or that molecule of oxygen and and you're allowing your
subconscious brain in the back of your head to go through and
(37:38):
process whatever that anger is. Cool, I like that I that takes
focus on your breath to the deepest level possible probably.
Yeah. Aaron, what's one thing you wish
more men knew? I mean, I think it goes back to
my mantra in, in the, you know, in, in the men's groups, it's,
it's we knew how to get out of our heads and into our hearts,
(38:00):
how to feel more, do less fixingand more feeling.
So Aaron, how can people best learn about more about you and
everything that you offer? Yeah, I've got a website at
aarongamble.com. It's GA MB ELAA, Ron
aarongamble.com. I'm also on Instagram at Aaron M
(38:23):
Gamble and TikTok at Aaron Gamble.
I also have a free five step guide to rewrite your story,
breaking free from the past and reclaiming your power.
If anybody's interested in that,you can just sign up on my
website and I'll I'll send you the PDF.
Awesome, Aaron, it's great to connect with you again.
(38:44):
We have so many similar experiences, good and bad.
And I, I've just, I just recently updated my book, still
here, How to Succeed in Life after Failing at suicide.
It's the 10th anniversary and I've, I've gone through and all
that. So it's all top of mind.
And you're just echoing so much of the things that I discovered
and thought I was alone and the only person going through these
(39:06):
things. So thank you for being you.
Thank you for sharing you and getting out there and helping
other men not have to go throughthe path that we've gone through
to realize they're meant to be alive.
I think thank you for saying that.
I appreciate that. And I also want to thank you for
giving me the opportunity to be on this podcast and to tell my
story because you never know whomay need to hear it.
(39:30):
I mean, I think that's why we, you and I are doing what we do.
It's because there is one personthat may hear this podcast and
it may gift for them and they meet, may ask for help that they
may never have known how to ask for.
And if one person doesn't have to go through what we went
through, that is goal. Goal completed.
(39:52):
Yeah, couldn't agree. Thank you for for the
opportunity to to speak here andfor doing what you're doing and
writing the book. And, and also congratulations 10
years. I'm I'm grateful that you're
here right now. And I bet you're the same way.
So many people will confess to me that they've made an attempt,
that they've thought about it and will say that they've never
(40:12):
told anybody else. And you are that walking safe
space. Yes, yes.
And other other men can be too, yeah.
Yes. Thank you for listening to Real
Men Field today. If this conversation resonated
with you, I invite you to join our authentic AF community at
realmenfield.org/group. A space for men to authentically
(40:36):
connect, share, and grow. Big thanks to my guest Aaron
Gamble for reminding us that when men feel safe to open up,
transformation is possible. Until next time, be good to
yourself.
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