Why Men Think So Much (with Luke Adler)

Jason Lange: Luke Adler: So stoked to be back with my dear friend, teaching partner Jason Lange. And we are diving into the experience that all people have, but we see this in men a lot. And certainly there's been time periods when I've embodied this, and that's this. This kind of marriage, this vow to have to understand, to want to understand everything and in a certain sense, be very resistant to feeling. And, of course, what keeps. Keeps anyone kind of stuck in their head, stuck in the confines of the headquarters and avoiding the heart quarters, avoiding making that core great leap from your head to your heart to your body, to your guts, is usually the emotion that seals it all off, which is fear. And if fear is strong enough, there's even a kind of numbness there. But subconsciously, there's just a resistance to feel and then this profound kind of survival instinct to understand and. And it can play out like just an incessant need to want to understand, to want to know the reason why. So let's do it, Jason. Here we go.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think, you know, this. Obviously, it's not limited exclusively to men, but I think it particularly shows up in men. This. This thing will often label as I just want to understand. I think that's part of what we're pointing to here, is there's like a. Well, if I just got it conceptually or understood, it would all make sense, and I'd be okay. But underneath that oftentimes is a resistance to connecting to the direct experience in our body, which includes our emotional experience. Right. These things are deeply related, and it's amazing how easily we can gravitate there towards men. And it's one of the things in the work you and I lead, in the groups we lead, we have to really emphasize that left to our own devices, will kind of float back up there often conversation. Even a group that's deep, we'll kind of go there to that just more heady, conceptual level. And, guys, we love to talk about concepts of things, or we love to report on our experience more than actually feel our experience, right? So this is something we often see with men, is they can talk kind of about something, but there's like a little removal from it versus actually slowing down and connecting to that sensation underneath. And this ties in you know, with rumination, Nice guy syndrome, so many different things. And I've maybe used this. You know, we're just talking imagery before, but I think of the brain. Thought is kind of one of those old arcade pinball machines. So it's like we shoot the ball up and then we're slapping the paddles, trying to keep the thing bouncing around to make sure it doesn't fall through the hole at the bottom. And I find thought in rumination are often like that. And what the hole at the bottom is is what happens when we feel, when we connect to our actual bodily experience, which for a lot of men means, yes, slowing down, just actually slowing down and turning towards the moment. And oh, I'm feeling this. And that is so scary for a lot of men because A, they've never done it before, B, there's sometimes days, months, years, decades worth of unfelt material on the right there. And it's like, oh my God, if I. Something we've certainly heard is like, I'm afraid to go there because I don't know what will happen or if I'll ever come back. Whether it's my grief, whether it's my anger. Guys fear that. And you know, culturally, we've talked about kind of the man box and the patriarchy before, but a lot of men who were just mocked for showing any kind of vulnerability or weakness. So there's all these forces that are kind of trying to keep us away from that experience of connecting to our bodies. And one of the best strategies to do that is to think and to stay in the realm of the conceptual. One of my teachers once said, you know, the purpose of thought is to stop feeling in action. So like a thought literally stops emotional action in our body, which, you know, has a lot of pros. It's why we don't just club our neighbor and take all their stuff. We have like, we have this prefrontal cortex, right, that allows us to not just be at the whim of our primary impulses, but that as a culture and particularly as men, I think we now over rely on that. And then we kind of keep ourselves stuck in the moment of not really feeling and just kind of constantly running the pinball machine of rumination.

Luke Adler: An example in my life recently, and I've mentioned this in some recent podcasts, my wife and I were doing a shadow work session a couple session, and she wanted me to apologize for leaving her with the kids when our second was maybe seven months old. And I went to go teach a training and I left her for Four days. And she was kind of entering, like, the beginning of a postpartum depression, and we weren't aware of it yet. And so, you know, fast forward here six years later, and she's. She said, that was really hard when you left me. And, you know, in my mind, I'm going, well, fuck, we agreed. We agreed on this. And, like, you know, we made sure there was some support. Like, what am I apologizing for? And, you know, the facilitator was like, luke, can you see that your wife's in pain? And I'm like, well, yeah, I can see that. But what was in the way for me of getting into her world was this thinking, this thought of, I don't want to look like an asshole. I did not fuck up. Like, I did, basically, I didn't do anything wrong. You know, I was just feeling. I was justified. And that thought, which was pinballing in my head, wouldn't let me feel. And it wasn't so much feeling my own shame, but it was more like feeling the remorse of having not seen that, you know, not recognizing that my wife was really vulnerable. And I didn't want to feel that. I didn't want to own that. I. And so what I said is. And you just gave this example, Jason. I said, well, honey, can you describe. Can you describe what it was like when I was away? Like, what the. Like. Like, I need to know that. But there was a way in which I. I was deflecting. I was trying to. I was trying to find a way to feel okay about what I had done. And in the end, when I was able to just see her pain, which, honestly, I took me about 15 minutes to just see. All she wanted me to do was join her in her pain and acknowledge really had nothing to do with me, you know, my competence at all. Then I could drop into my heart and drop into being with her. But for me, there was really, at least in that example, there was a real block of this resistance to feeling incompetent or to being seen as incompetent. Just a couple other examples. I've been working with a few men lately, you know, in healthcare stuff, and for them, there's a fear of. I guess, to put it plainly, just a fear of death. Like, not wanting to consider that this health issue might lead to something more fatal and really looking for me to want to reassure them and. And kind of say everything's going to be okay, and in a certain sense, not want to consider that this could be serious. And so, again, bouncing around in the head wanting to kind of configure their understanding in such a way. And, you know, I have so much compassion for myself, for these men that I'm working with. And there are these realities. What we're pointing to is there are these realities we just don't want to face. And in not facing them, there's, there's, there's some impacts, like we're just not actually being accountable to what's in front of us and maybe not making the best decisions in my case relationally, my marriage, in their case, relationally, in terms of their health. And that's, you know, that's. That in either case it's not going to lead to the most optimal outcome, you know, so just a personal share there.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I, I love those examples of. Right, again, how that thought was preventing a connection from happening in a sense. Right. It's, it's a way to kind of buffer against reality. And some men will just perpetually go there and keep wanting to, to stay in that spot. And, you know, one thing we've been talking to our groups about is I think one of the great gifts men can now offer to each other is to help guide each other more into our felt body experience, to really connect with what we're feeling. And I think, you know, certainly in my experience, like I was mentioning, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons we avoid that is because when we feel it does tend to kind of promote or maybe demand a certain type of action in our life, like once we are actually come to the, the felt body experience, things tend to change. Right. And many, many people use the platitude. Now, I've talked about it before. Right. But emotion, energy in motion. So thought stops, that stops that whole process. But when we feel it again, often some kind of action comes through. And this is something, you know, we've seen in our groups that there's a way in the men's work world, and I do this sometimes, so I'm not saying it's totally wrong, but you can kind of come. Come to issues with men from more of a coaching side of things. Tell me the problem. We're going to try to fix it, help you, you know, figure out the next steps. And there's a use in that. But often the most profound shifts I've experienced and we've seen in a lot of men are when they connect to the truth of their heart and their body. Once that felt body awareness. And it's both an awareness and a felt body experience. I think that's what Makes it so unique. It's not just transcending and it's not just pure catharsis, but there's like a whoa, I feel this and I see this simultaneously. And when that happens, I. Their body, their own wisdom starts to just take root and something comes through. It's like, fuck, I gotta change now. You know, I might need some support in dialing in the logistics of that. But there's this. I now know and own that something has to shift here around this dynamic. I cannot do this anymore. And I sometimes use an example of. You know, one of my versions of this is before I met my now wife, I was in like a five year relationship with someone who, you know, I had a lot of love with, was very connected to. There were some longer term things that didn't quite match up with us. And there was a subtle way that over time I wanted her to be someone else and she wanted me to be somewhere else. So we weren't actually loving the person that was present, so to speak. And. But it was comfortable, right? It was, it was, it was more comfortable to be in that relationship than to be single. Like I was the majority of my life. And so I was able to kind of always justify or not feel what was actually happening and kind of talk myself out of it and maybe things would change or I need to do a little more work or whatever. And I remember very much one day we just kind of had this like really rough interaction and it started to sink in where I was just like, oh my God, like I am not treating her well and sometimes she's mean to me and every day I'm with her, I'm preventing her from meeting someone who's gonna just love her as she is without this kind of like little resentment thing that I was, I was holding on top of her. And once that actually came through, like when I dropped all the story and I was like, wow, I'm hurting my partner. I'm hurting my partner. By not being an all in, by not claiming her, by not being a full. Yes, I broke up with her like two hours later. I mean, like, it was a shock to her nervous system because it, you know, in some sense it came from nowhere. But another sense, it was just when I felt the truth of that, I was like, I cannot perpetuate this anymore. When I really allowed myself to feel her pain and my own pain in a way. But there was a place that I was just, you know, I was just hanging out in the thought realm until then. I would kind of bitch and Moan a little bit in some men's groups, but always justify why it was pretty good. And it was just an example of. But once I had the feeling it demanded a certain action of me pretty fast that I then had to move on. And I've seen that a lot with men we've worked with. Whether it's a career change or a relationship change or a big conversation, like once they connect to the depth of the emotion, it's like they can kind of go right through the fear and take action.

Luke Adler: Yeah, that, that piece of, you know, seeing, seeing it for yourself, seeing the truth with your own eyes, feeling it with your own body. And it's why, you know, you and I have both really put a lot of our effort into shadow work. Compared to more of a kind of an intuitive base or not an intuitive, but like a psychic style work where you're, you know, you're telling the client, you're telling the person, hey, this is what you need to work on. This is what I see as, you know, you need to kind of face in your life. And although that, that can be useful, it's often short lived for that exact reason that if you don't discover it for yourself, you're always going to be dependent on me. The, the coach, the healer, the, the, the, the advisor to guide your life and for periods of time that can be useful. But ultimately our goal is sovereignty. You know, our goal is certain kind of self sufficiency. Even though our work's very relational, it's being able to, to land within your own inner teacher, within your own. That, that's, that's a little bit two steps above but your own inner knowing. And it's why in our style of work like we will never, we will never lead with advice or guidance. We're always going to lead with feeling. And basically we teach people how to feel. We teach them how to begin the process of that descent or that great traverse from head to head to heart to guts. And that, that can be a very, that can be a very long journey for some people, you know, to make that transition, to get from the head, you know, down to the throat where like just the beginning of all the feeling lives. And gosh, I was working with someone recently and I said, I said, hey, let's do some work. You, you seem to be really fused, really identified with your inner critic. And they're like, well, how could, what, how could this not be true? How could the view that I'm a piece of shit and a burden to society not be true? And I'm like, well, it's not necessarily whether it's true or not right now. What's the. What the issue at hand is that you're fused with it. You can't see any other possibility. And so, you know, this person was trying to bat it back to me, but I don't understand. Can you explain it to me? And I'm like, I can't really explain it to you, but I can help you feel your way, you know, kind of apart or a way out from being kind of stuck with that point of view. And I think when we look at, you know, when we get stuck in our head, it can happen to anyone but any one of us. But when we're really in our head, we're really fused in some ways with a. With a critical perspective, a perspective that's really stuck in polarity and division and wanting to further delineate, right, further separate out yin and yang, good and bad, black and white. Differentiate each shade, each color. And. And that's a. It's interesting. In Sanskrit, they call this mayiya mala, which is the. The. The obsession with distinction. And it's a place that the. It's a place that the identity can get stuck in. Let me just. I just want to understand it more. Let me understand it further. Let me understand it further. And it. What it is, is it's a distancing from your core. And it's a way in which we just. We trying to cling on to a piece of reality that, you know, like I'm using. I'm clenching my fist right now. We're trying to clutch onto something for dear life because we don't want to let go and feel the bottom of that is a feeling of. For me, I use that word incompetence, but it's this feeling that something is wrong. Something is wrong with me, with life, with my relationship. Something is just fucked up. And we really don't want to feel that. We really don't want to feel that. But the cool thing about feeling that which you said, like, if, you know, I've experienced this, if I feel that I think I might die, is on the other side of that feeling is actually this. This access point to our wholeness and our integrated, connected self. It's an interesting paradox, it's an interesting phenomenon about reality that the doorway into our wholeness and connection is this kind of sphincter. You know, it's this. It's this occlusion, this kind of tight nut of something is deeply up here, something's deeply wrong. And, and because something's wrong, I'm sensing something's wrong, it must mean that I. I am wrong. I am not okay. And of course we know the truth is anything but that. There. There is a. There is a core that is. That is, you know, strong and connective and, and whose nature is to feel. Feel reality. So, yeah. I mean, there's something you said in a. In a show you put on Jason maybe a year ago, that, that the big. Which is connected to this idea that the fear, we all have a feeling is that the core of feeling is just the. The ephemeral experience of feeling that you can't hold on to anything. And so, you know, that that's the energetic mechanism of, like, oh, if I let go of my grip, then all I can do is just feel the changing weather, the patterns. And the beauty of that is that it doesn't mean you're. You've disappeared. It's more like you're in a flow state than a fixed state. And that's, you know, in our experiences, it's a really beautiful thing, even when the weather's not, you know, favorable.

Jason Lange: Yeah. For some reason, it's bringing up this phrase we've all heard, right. Of mind over matter. And what that's evoking in me right now is, you know, thought really is incredibly powerful to redirecting our attention. And whether it's fantasy, thoughts, rumination, it's a pretty effective tool for taking us away from our pain. Right. If we just really think about that, and that's often what we're doing in what men are cultured to is I'm going to move away from my pain by going up into this highly conceptual place of wanting to understand. Because, you know, the hope is, well, if I understood, then I'd be safe and there wouldn't be pain. Right. Then I won't have to deal with the pain. But, you know, the, The. The pain is inevitable. And, you know, I love this formula. Right. The meditation teacher Shinzen Young came up with of, you know, suffering equals pain times resistance. Right. Just kind of a simple Buddhist concept there, right. That it's like pain is inevitable. It's just data from your body, but then you ampl by resistance and oftentimes and then that leads to suffering. Right. Thought is often what we mean by resistance. Right. I'm just going to try to think my way out of this pain or explain it, or sometimes get. Just ruminate on it over and over and over again, where it's like, conceptually I get myself so wound up in my head about how angry I am, but I'm not actually moving that energy through my body. Right? And something we talked about on our last retreat that I'm using more and more is this idea that the type of healing work, this deep feeling we're talking about usually involves breath, sound and movement or some combination of those three, right? And when we see guys step into that one part of that or multiple pieces of that, they tend to feel more. Right. It comes out of the conceptual head place. And they have these embodied experiences that they've never had before that are hard sometimes, that are overwhelming sometimes. And that's where, you know, we're such big proponents of the group is. You know, one way I talk about men's groups or, you know, even intimate relationship, in a sense, is at its best. We get to loan each other our resilience and our nervous systems. So if I don't have the capacity to feel that all by myself in a group, they can hold it with me. You know, there's a. I always have this image for. From nerds who saw the first Guardians of the Galaxy at the end, there's this like super powerful crystal. And if one person holds it, they're like literally burn up. But when everybody holds hands together, suddenly that same amount of energy is actually being held in the collective nervous system and they can do it. And that's kind of a big part of. Of why the group thing is so important. And what men are just often not taught to do is, well, fuck, it can be hard to feel that much grief alone, but what we find is when we hold it in connection, there's so much more resilience possible, so much power possible. So the willingness of men to kind of step in and start to feel in community, I've seen also just resources us at a total different way to take this stuff on. And when we don't have that community, I think there's sometimes a little bit of an internal wisdom there of like, I don't know if I could just feel that alone, because there's a lot of things, you know, as I say, some things are not meant to be felt alone. We are communal co regulatory creatures. And for most of human existence, you know, loneliness wasn't quite as possible as it is now. Like, you couldn't just live alone for most of human history. You had to have some kind of interaction with other people. And in those interactions, you know, habits and routines and rituals formed to help people process emotions communally. Right. And that's something that's kind of been wiped away, that our work and other work, I think, is trying to create some spaces to bring back online because it is overwhelming. And so this tendency to kind of put our foot on the break of feeling and just go right up to the thought and the understanding or the, you know, I used to do this all the time, even from a different level of the, well, if I just read another book or listen to another podcast or understand more, then my behavior will change. And I cultivated a lot of awareness, but without the embodied felt experience that we're talking about, that's just information that goes nowhere. The transformation happens when it's the awareness coupled with the feeling, the catharsis, with the actually becoming directly connected to what is. And then things can change pretty, pretty fast.

Luke Adler: And just to emphasize what you're saying about, you know, the power of a group, why we need men's groups really, is that our modeling for most of us, not all of us, but when I say Most, I mean, 90%, maybe 95% of us as men didn't have the modeling for emotional co regulation with our fathers. The modeling was more about the traditional man box. Men are tough, men are impermeable to, you know, weakness, men need to be strong, etc. And so on. And so there wasn't this teaching of feeling. In fact, we were taught the opposite. We were taught not to feel, bury that down, persist, move forward. So when we get with other men energetically who've been trained that way, it amplifies that kind of behavior. Let's stay in our heads. And then we act like that. We act that way with women. And of course, women will only put up with that for so long before they're like, will you listen to me and be with me and quit trying to fix me? I mean, you know, she, your woman might like that in the, in the beginning because you're strong and you're a protector, but she wants to feel your heart at some point. So the group process is so important to, to model for each other and to. The phrase we've been using lately, co regulate, you know, the, the, you know, to use polyvagal theory, the dorsal vagal response to the. The ventral vagal response to the fight or flight to the, you know, I call it rest and connect or rest and digest. How do we make that transition from these various states of consciousness? And it's tricky because if you're in fight, flight or freeze, right, that's a, that's either a really inactive or incredibly active part of your nervous system. So to get from there to, you know, connect, rest, soft, soften the parasympathetic response. That takes some training. That takes some templating. And of course, that's what you and I offer when we lead and shape these groups. We teach people how to move from those states. But when. When you're stuck in your head, when you're. When you're really, you know, committed to stay in your headquarters, for sure you are in a fight or flight state at that point. And it's. The characteristic of it is that you are not feeling right. There's. There's a state of numbness. There's a lack of attunement. And again, I'm not saying it's wrong or bad. I'm saying this is the nervous system you're in now. Do we just want to be in. In rest and. And digest, connect all the time? No, we want. What we want is fluidity between the two. How do we go from, hey, get your. Let's get our ass in gear. Let's get to work. Let's get in the car. Let's, you know, wake up and show up. And then how. How do I soften? Oh, I'm soft now. Oh, I need to kind of move my body. Mobilize. All right, let's get up. You know, enough softening time. Right. And so that. That's a very advanced skill to move consciously from these. These states of. These states of being that. That are kind of varied within these two aspects of our nervous system. And that skill is actually very learnable. And it's much easier to learn in community because we get triggered into flight or fight because of community. Right. We get triggered into rest and digest because of community. Right. What is the energy that masculine people love? They love a beautiful, zoftic, feminine flavor of energy because it softens that kind of get up and go and move. Right. And so this is why in some ways, these. The polarities between the two. The two states, they balance each other. And if there's consciousness to them, you can really have a lot of fun. It really gets to be a fun thing. So when we're stuck in our heads, guys, it actually keeps a lot of stuckness in our relationship. It doesn't allow there to be flow between. Between any relationship. Right. And so being able to soften into these other parts of ourselves, or not necessarily soften, but flow into parts of our being is a skill that. It just makes every part of our lives flow and feel better, you know?

Jason Lange: Yeah, the, you know, another thing we've been talking To a lot of our guys about is right when you think about fight or flight, whether it's hyper vigilant and activated in that fight mode, or totally shut down and frozen and depressed, the shift we're talking about again in Polyvagal is when we bring the ventral vagal online, which is we can still feel both of those things, but in connection, right? In connection with other. And that's what allows a tremendous amount of movement in healing to suddenly spark. It's when we get stuck, isolated in one or the other that it's such a huge problem. And our thoughts can often do that, right? They're another mechanism for getting us stuck there or we're stuck there. And when we bring it forth into community, into connection, that often starts to change the signals to our body to allow us to shift with more fluidity. The, the other thing that I just feel like I want to tie into the thought thing is another platitude, right? But that, that which you resist persists. So anytime you try not to feel something, even using the power of thought in a weird way, you're helping to keep that reality true. It's like this. You start to magnetize more of the thing you're not feeling, right? That's the painful lesson I've had to happen, had to learn over and over and over again, versus the willingness to just, okay, I'm going to feel that. And when I learn to be with it, often it takes its, you know, the power kind of goes away or the charge. And in terms of masculine leadership, you know, one thing we've seen and witnessed in men is one of the great powers we have is just the capacity to be with, right? You're to some extent to your quality as a man. Not to break it down solely into this, but a lot of it can actually be determined by what are you willing to be with, when I mean be with. It's to stay in a relational connected space without collapsing, defending, lawyering up all the different things that so many of us men do, right? Just, oh, can I be with this? And it's often all of our partners want is, can you be with this in me? Can you be with this in our. In our kids? Can we. Can you be with this part of yourself? And the process we lead men through is helping men feel more equipped to be with anything. And when we're with it, the energy changes around it, often very fast. Like, I think that's again, the thing we're pointing to is if you feel super stuck with something, particularly for the masculine Often you can ask yourself, what am I not feeling? What am I avoiding feeling? You can't always answer that yourself. You know, the work we do. That's part of the point of shadow, is we can't always see our own right away, but other people often can. It's like, hey, I know, right? How often have you and I seen this? It's like we start to touch into something fiery, maybe a little anger. And many men don't realize it, but they'll still have a smile on their face. Like the kind of permagrine of, I'm still trying to kind of keep it light and jokey. When the actual bodily experience is anything but. And we see that and we say, hey, try saying that again, but without the smile. And then they drop the smile, and then it's like, thud. That that real moment of touching something in a truth occurs in that moment of like, yeah, I am pissed and it's not funny. And I see the many ways I've tried to ignore my anger by keeping it happy or fun or light or whatever that might be. Just as an example of, you know, it's where the reflection of facilitators in a group can be so powerful in helping us deepen into all of this, these parts of ourselves that we can't always see. So we can, yeah, come to terms and be with and be so much more connected to our truth and our actual experience. And if there's one other thing we've seen is it's trustable. The more a man actually connects to his truth, the more trustable he becomes, even if his truth is, wow, part of me feels like a piece of shit right now, and I'm just having a really hard time being here. Like, when the authentic truth comes out, connection almost always follows it. But when we try to pretend or prevent or avoid the feeling usually powered by thought and this deep wanting to know about, well, can you explain the concept of that to me or what just happened there? Right. Like, we. We get to. And I. I've been there too. Like, I want to understand it, but usually that's a way for me to avoid feel, and so often is for a lot of men. And, you know, I'll just share one last thing here that I just heard on one of the many parenting things I've been listening to. That just feels so true. That another way to think about what we're talking about here is there's often an inverse correlation between trust and control. So the less trust we're feeling, the more we try to Control and trust. You know another way to think about that, that maybe not people don't always do, but it's also safety. Like, do I feel safe? If we're not feeling safe, if we're not trusting that we're going to be okay, our level of control goes up. Then I got to control the moment. Right. And thought is one way we try to control when we're not feeling safe or we're not trusting. I'm just gonna figure this out and create a safe place conceptually for me. But when we start to learn the tools get in the community to turn towards our emotions, to turn towards our feelings, we can let go of the. Even the desire to know, why am I feeling this? Sometimes you're just fucking sad, and something's in your body, and it's not tied to something. And we just got to trust that, well, my body knows what to do, and I don't have to control this. And I think that's one of the physiological changes we often see in men as we do the work is the level of rigidity in the body starts to soften. And, like, at the muscular level, there's less control and there's more of a softening and, like, more energy. And, like, guys look younger, right. It's just like, oh, my God, all that tension in your eyes, like, it's gone now. You look completely different because that holding, that rumination, right, There's a rigidity, there's a tightening, that. An energetic cost, as we've talked about, that goes with that.

Luke Adler: Yeah. I mean, if you want to get a barometer for how much control is living in your body, you can just take your fingers and press into your jaw muscles and see how tight they are. See if. If they hurt. When you push into your jaw just kind of at the base of your molars. You can also press on top of your trapezius muscles, the top of your shoulders, and just see, you know, are those muscles really tight? And when you squeeze them, do they hurt a lot? That's. That's all the tension of holding it together, of keeping it, keeping it going, of carrying the load. I had a. I had a nightmare a few nights ago where I was at work and everything I was doing was going wrong. And I had it all set up. I had my office set up. But, like, I was trying so hard to keep things on track, and I was. I was so pissed off because literally, I went from one treatment room, I just couldn't get it right. I was staying too long with patients all of a Sudden there was a truck in the middle of my office and it was crashing through walls and I couldn't stop the truck. So it was this whole metaphor of wanting to control and being completely out of control. And as it was relating to something going on in my life, I could see, wow, this is a familiar pattern for me. And I could feel the energy within me that wanted to fucking control and feel safe, just like you described. And because I've worked this edge enough, I could see the work here for me is to truly let go and to just trust that I've put in the time that I'm prepared and that, you know, things will go how they're going to go, and they're probably going to be fantastic because I'm well prepared and the best thing I could do is be relaxed and ready to go. But the more I stay stuck in my head and try to over prepare and anticipate every possible problem that could happen, I mean, I'm literally creating that kind of rigidity and the lack of fluidity by being that, you know, so it was. It was just like another recent example of that. The other thing I want to highlight that you said is, and Lord knows I've done this and at times still do, when it's time to share something authentic, I will. I will smile and laugh a little bit and. And I can see I do that because I'm kind of married to the cult of cool in that moment. There's a way in which I don't want to look like I'm taking this too seriously. And there's a way that I'm using the humor, the smile to kind of shame the person in the situation. Like, don't make such a big deal about this, you. And so I kind of smile and really I'm afraid to own that I'm hurt and I'm pissed and I don't want to drop in and reveal that you've gotten to me. So I'm going to kind of play it off like, you know, everything's cool. And, you know, this is one of the cultures we all live in, particularly in the United States. I think Europe's got a lot of this, but like, hey, man, just be cool, play it cool. Stay in your head. Don't make a big deal. In other words, don't be a fucking pussy. Be tough. Don't take things seriously. Let it slide off your back. Like all of these cliche argument, cliche ending arguments. You know, these phrases like, hey, man, just chill out. It's like, oh, man, there's a lot of shutdown in that kind of culture. Right. And I grew up in Southern California, so that entire culture is based in the cult of cool. And I've had to work on, you know, catching when I slip into that over. Over the years. So that's. That's a. Just a fantastic example of kind of being stuck in your head and being driven by shame and a resistance to authenticity because of its perception of being looked at as weak. But bottom line, relationally, we don't pass go unless we feel, it just doesn't happen. And when we refuse to feel and instead want to build, like, I love. I love you saying lawyering up. Want to build the most brilliant case for why our point of view is right. And then if we're really smart, we'll actually maybe even enroll our partner in that case. Like, they might start to, well, shit, you are a smart motherfucker. I'm going to come along with you on this. I'm going to take your perspective. And now the whole system is off kilter. The whole system is divorced from feeling where it needs to go. And I see this in partnerships a lot. Like, one partner will try to build a case that has nothing to do with connection, but has to do with a right point of view. And then that relationship isn't about connection, and it's not about intimacy. It's about not feeling, and it's about control. And it's driven by an agenda, not by something authentic. And it takes someone, like you said, Jason, it takes someone willing to take the lead and step out of that kind of victim, perpetrator, rescuer triangle, which is a whole, whole nother podcast for us. And to say, no, no, no, I'm not going to participate in a narrative that keeps us stuck in this dynamic of rescuing, being the victim, being the predator. I want us to feel what's here. And what's here might be that this is not working. You're not listening to me. And of course, in relationship, often, why one person's afraid to really bring that to your example earlier, and I have a similar story, is that if we truly bring that truth, we know it could be the end of the relationship. It could also be the beginning of one. For sure, it's the beginning of something more authentic and real, and that could be staying together or not staying together. So I just. I just wanted to mention that I know we're not quite talking about that, but this, this headpiece really leads to this, this triangulation relationally within self, too. Right? Like the perpetrator victim, hero plays out as the critic, and then the rescuer inside, and then the inner child who's wounded. It just spins out of control. Right. So anyway, there we have it.

Jason Lange: Yeah, we'll just close with. Like I said, when we learn to be with whatever is happening in our experience emotionally at the gut level, we become more trustable and easier to be around and frankly, more attractive. That's something we've seen when we're just stuck in the ruminating head. It gets pretty old. I think we've all felt it. It's hard to be around that in others. And there's a sense of just kind of getting stuck there. And we can feel when other people aren't feeling, even if we don't always have the language for it. And there's always a little bit of relief when the true feeling comes through. Doesn't mean there's not going to be conflict or tension because of it. But at least we're connected in reality now, right? What's actually happening? And we know the cards are stacked against a lot of you guys and men, for all the reasons we've talked about in this episode and before, just know that it's worth it. Coming down out of the headquarters, as you put it, into the heart quarters and into the gut quarters, the payoff is extraordinary. And change, real change, comes from doing that. It can't just be up here in the concept, in the conceptual. It has to be embodied at some point. And so, you know, you can certainly come along, work with us in the heart of shadows sometime, but you gotta find a place where you can practice getting out of your head and into your body and your heart.

Luke Adler: Lots of love out there to all you men. And, you know, we're.

Jason Lange: We're.

Luke Adler: We have several cohorts out there, men, who are in groups and that are practicing this right now. So there's a growing community that's here to support you. And if you're listening to this, you're likely interested in this work. Jump in, we're here for it. And you'll be pleasantly surprised and likely blown away by the freedom on the other side. So check us out. Heartofshadow.com we'd love to meet you. We'd love to work with you.

Jason Lange: Take care. If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men. Apply.