How to unlock the door to your own cage

One of the ways men are socialized is to lock their emotions and thoughts in a cage, the cage they construct to protect themselves from the world. The problem with this cage is that it keeps everyone out, and the man locked in. It creates an isolating experience that can numb a man because he doesn’t know who to let in or trust, and he doesn’t feel like he can let anyone in.

I remember feeling that way in my own life. I had put walls up around myself and I would only let someone in so far, before I shut them out. I couldn’t share my emotions or have uncomfortable conversations. I shied away from getting into conflict, because I just wanted everything to be harmonious, but at the same time, within myself there was a tempest of emotions and thoughts I wasn’t being honest with myself or anyone else about.

In that kind of situation, it can feel like you are inside a cage. That cage is partially of your own making and partially a consequence of patriarchal indoctrination which convinces boys and men that in order to fit in they have to lock their emotions down. It’s hard to live in that cage, because it makes us small and traps us in a place where we can’t relate to other people around us. It’s a cage that can ultimately kill a man, because it locks the man down from the full expression of his being.

Even though we are in the cage, we have the power to do something about it. We can let ourselves out of the cage we’ve locked ourselves in. That’s sounds simple enough, but actually getting ourselves out of that cage can take some work.

I remember the first time I really allowed myself out of my cage. It was when I was attending a men’s circle for the first time. I had never attended a men’s circle before and I was nervous. If I shared what I was going through and what I was feeling, would the other men make fun of me and put me down? Still I made myself go. I wasn’t the first man to speak that night or even the second or third, but as I heard each man share their emotions and what they were going through I felt like the door to my cage swung open. I wasn’t alone.

I knew I could step out of that cage. I knew all I had to do was speak up and share what was going for me and I could take my first step out of that cage. So I did it. I spoke up and shared some feelings and experiences and even though it was scary in the moment, it was also liberating. I took my first step out of that cage that I had built around myself.

I didn’t share everything in my heart that night. It took me a few months before I got to that point, but when I finally, fully opened up in a men’s circle I felt supported by the men that were there. None of them judged me for my mistakes, my emotions, my thoughts or everything else I had been keeping buried within me. They just listened and heard and witnessed me. It was freeing.

If you’re feeling locked up in a cage within your own life and you don’t feel like you can let anyone in, I want to encourage you to join a men’s circle. There is something really empowering about sharing your space with other men and letting them bear witness to your truth. Men need each other to unlock the doors of the cages we’ve constructed about ourselves. We need to know we’re not alone and know that we can share who we are without having to filter it. We’ve been taught to filter who we are, but being part of a men’s circle can help you stop filtering yourself. It can help you rediscover the genuine person within.

What is Safety?

What is safety? What does it mean to be safe? With yourself, another person, or in general? I answer these questions as I explore what it means to be safe to me, as a man, and I examine the assumptions that men make about a sense of safety and why that can be so problematic. I share some personal example of own work around safety.

How to be present with your Anger

Anger is an emotion that has been labeled as a negative emotion that is to be avoided or repressed. But pushing down anger doesn’t help you avoid it. If anything it causes you to compartmentalize anger and then you don’t know how to be present with it or express it healthy. I get frank about handling anger and discuss my own challenges around my anger and what I am continuing to learn as a result.

3 tips for becoming present with your emotions instead of stuffing them down

One of the challenges that many men face is around becoming present with their emotions. I can relate to this challenge because for a long time I stuffed my own emotions down and even when I began to experience and express my emotions, I still struggled with being fully present with them and expressing them in an appropriate and mature way. I think this is really a human challenge, but men struggle with emotions because we’ve been systemically taught to repress our emotions and not express them.

It is possible for anyone to learn how to express their emotions with sensitivity and awareness of the emotion and of the other people who are involved, but it requires some practice and work. The following three tips can be helpful for anyone who is working on becoming more present with their emotions.

Tip 1: Your emotions are not your identity - When you’re feeling an emotion it can seem overwhelming, especially when it seems to take up the entirety of your being. It’s important to remember that your emotions are not your identity. They are responses to experiences you are having and they are important to acknowledge but they are not who you are. When you recognize that an emotion is not the entirety of your being, it can help you be present with it and also accept that it is just one facet of the experience you are having in the moment.

Tip 2: Take deep breathes and go slow with what you express - It’s really easy to get flooded with emotions. When that happens it makes it harder for you to be present with the person you’re with because you’re feeling those emotions so intensely. A practice that I have found helpful is to take deep breaths and to also make sure my feet are planted on the ground so I’m fully present with what I’m feeling in the moment, and at the same time paying attention to what the other person is saying. Another practice I’ve sometimes found helpful is to actually do a physical activity such as pushups because the physical exercise is giving me an outlet for my own emotions while allowing me to take in what the other person is saying.

Tip 3: Taking breaks can be helpful in both the short term and long term - When you are feeling emotions, sometimes the best choice you could make would be to go for a walk and take a break from the immediate experience. This doesn’t mean you’re running away, but it does mean you need to communicate that you need a break so that you can separate out your emotions in the moment from the overall experience. You still want to acknowledge those emotions and one of the most important ways you can do that is to be honest about what you are feeling.

What tips would you share around becoming present with your emotions? How has becoming present with your emotions helped you communicate and show up better?

Am I Good Enough?

There’s a Type O Negative song which asks the question, “Am I good enough, for you?” It’s a question that sums up my experience as a co-dependent person, but it also sums up my experience as a man. I’ve asked myself this question, “Am I good enough?” for most of my life and it represents the pressure that I have felt around being a man. I don’t know if other men ask that question of themselves, but I know I’ve asked it and so often it has really represented a pang for acceptance in my life, but acceptance from what?

Acceptance from my dad or my mom? Acceptance from my family, friends, lovers, or society at large? At times those answers might fit that question, for a given moment, but when I dig deeper into it, I find that none of those answers are really satisfactory. And invariably with these people I find myself ask performative questions. Am I good enough son? Am I good enough lover? Am I good enough friend? In a given moment, looking for the answer becomes a quest for validation from other people, and regardless of the answer, whether its in the affirmative or negative, the validation falls into a void.

Am I good enough for myself? It’s another question I ask and on the one hand it has a performative element based around how busy I am. Am I doing enough, am I justifying my existence to myself (and any/everyone else)? It’s a question that has driven me to DO so much. And yet it has never produced a satisfactory answer.

Yet this question, when asked of myself, doesn’t have to have a performative answer. It doesn’t even have to have an answer. It can simply be a question I ask. The answer, the only real answer, has to be found in my own validation of my self. While someone else might be able to affirm I am good enough, the person who really needs to know it is myself and who else can provide that answer? I

The not good enough wound is a deep one for me. It brings with it a lot of pressure to perform, and its linked to a shadow around recognition that I’ve battled with a lot in my life. When I find myself asking this question I have to get real with what’s behind the question. What’s real is that I’m carrying a wound from my early childhood where no matter what I did or how I did it, I learned I wasn’t good enough. I would strive to find get value from other people because I felt empty inside.

I eventually learned there is only one way to answer this question. You fill yourself up with the love and validation that no one else can give you. This doesn’t mean that you don’t value other peoples’ expressions of love and care for you…if anything you’ll value them more because you won’t be craving them from a place of neediness and codependence. Instead you’ll be valuing them from a place of grounded awareness and be able to genuinely receive that love.

Self love isn’t a cure all, but it can help with this question of am I good enough. It’s helped me answer that question and sometimes I have to come back to it, when that question rears up again, but its the only answer I know that truly addresses the emptiness within that prompts that question.

How to Value Yourself

I discuss the importance of valuing yourself and how it builds up your confidence as a person. I share some processes around how you can value yourself better and how to recognize when you aren’t valuing yourself.

How to receive as a man

I talk about the male capacity for receptivity and how we ignore a fundamental aspect of ourselves when we block ourselves from receiving. I discuss examples of receiving and how you can become a more integrated person when you learn how to receive.

How to Father yourself (and why you need to)

When I was growing up I had an absentee father. He often traveled during the week for his job and when he did come home, he parked himself in front of the TV with a drink in hand and didn’t want to be bothered. On the occasions when he and I interacted it was more often than not because he was called in to punish me, which usually consisted of a combination of mental and physical punishments. I grew up and eventually had a better relationship with my dad, but I never really knew him or knew how to interact with him. My relationship with other boys and later men was one of distrust. I didn’t trust men because I didn’t trust the person who was my father.

Eventually I learned to trust men, but I realized that I still didn’t trust the energy of the father. The father, as an archetype, felt like a patriarchal oppressor who tried to dominate and control everyone around him and did his best to suppress his son out of a need to control him. When I recognized this about my relationship with paternal energy, I began to also see how this distrust played itself out in interactions I had with other men in any role that vaguely resembled a father figure. The question I faced was how to heal my relationship with the father archetype while also disassociating that energy from other men. I didn’t want to project my father issues on other men, and I was realizing that I was doing that sometimes.

My solution to the issue involved learning to parent my inner child the way I had wanted to be parented by my father. I had to father myself, and in the process heal the wounds I had around the father archetype. Some men heal these wounds by having children of their own and making the choice to be a different father than the one they grew up with. I chose not to have kids because I didn’t want to be a father. Ironically I was a step parent for a time, but that experience confirmed that I wasn’t the type of person who ought to be a parent. I had to take a different approach to heal my wounds around the father archetype.

I started my process by doing some pathworking and parts work with my inner boy. In those processes, I asked him what he needed from me. In one case, what he needed from me was to know that I would keep him safe by staying committed to my choices and following through on those actions. He also needed to know that I would still make time to play because play was essential for his happiness and when I worked all the time, it reminded him of my dad. Making the effort to reassure that part of myself helped it feel like it didn’t need to protect me from possible choices. It allowed me to step up and follow through on my mission and purpose.

I am continuing to father myself and in that process I’m getting better at recognizing when someone triggers a reaction that’s based on my projections around my father, both positively and negatively. These realizations provide me another opportunity to father myself because when I react to someone that brings up energy around the father archetype, I can examine my projection, separate it from the person and father my inner child while also releasing the charge around that other person. This is helping me change my relationships with people in my life, while also healing my relationship with my inner child AND my inner father.

Sometimes we can’t heal the relationships we had with people in our lives. That doesn’t mean we can’t do some kind of work that brings an element of healing in our lives. By working with inner our inner child, inner parent, etc., and recognizing when we are projecting onto other people, we can transform our relationship with ourselves and the people around us. If that’s something you need help with, contact me for a sacred masculinity coaching session and we can take a look at doing this work together.