Here's the tension every man in relationship faces: you want to be there for your partner when she's upset, but the more you try to help, the more you both spiral. I had a great conversation with Melanie Curtin about this exact paradox, how our instinct to fix or absorb our partner's dysregulation actually makes everything worse. For me, this was huge to learn because my default was to either try to fix it immediately or just get completely swept up in her nervous system. If she wasn't okay, I wasn't okay. And that doesn't help anyone.
We talked about what dysregulation actually looks like, both for men and in relationship. Sometimes it's that manic, wound-up energy where you can't slow down. Sometimes it's complete shutdown where you're offline and frozen. For a lot of us, we learned early on that we're responsible for making everyone around us feel better, which creates this pattern where we collapse into our partner's emotional state instead of being able to witness and validate what they're experiencing.
The real work is learning to be separate enough that you don't get swallowed by their dysregulation, but still connected and attuned enough to be present with them. I think of it like bamboo, sturdy but flexible. The energy moves through you, but you're not moved off your center. Your partner needs to feel that you're impacted, that you're hearing them, but that you're not collapsing or running away.
Building this capacity has taken me years of therapy, men's work, somatic practices, all of it. Things like breathwork, ice baths, physical practices that intentionally stress your nervous system so you can learn to stay present. And a huge part of it has been working with Violet to build better systems together, to debrief after fights, to understand our patterns and catch things earlier.
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Jason Lange: And so that discomfort just gets stuck in the body, and I wouldn't know what to do with that or, you know, oh, my God, I'm going to call a woman tomorrow. I'm feeling dysregulated about that because I'm scared about how it's going to go. I mean, sometimes it was around work stuff, sometimes it was around dating stuff, sometimes it'd be around health, you know, for some of us.
Melanie Curtin: Hey, everyone. Just a quick celebration before we dive into this episode. Something that's been alive for me lately is thinking about the concept of resilience and being able to bounce back and progress and growth. And I thought this was a great celebration around that. And I think it's apropos for this week's episode. So this is one of our clients, and he says this has been a difficult week. I am in the initial stages of a divorce, and I received legal paperwork from my wife's lawyer that seemed to be attacking me personally and painting me in a bad light. When I saw this written down in black and white, I had tons of emotions swell up in inside me. I was breathing rapidly and had anxiety, fear, anger, and doubt, which I could feel in my chest. I was able to identify it, feel it, and accept it. I did feel panicky for a day, but those feelings subsided much more quickly than they would have in the past. The other good thing that came out of this experience was I was able to relate my feelings to three other people that I trust greatly. I opened up and expressed everything I was feeling and received their support. In the past, I never shared any of the bad things going on in my marriage with anyone because I didn't want to disrespect my wife and cause others to have bad feelings towards her. It felt good to express what I was feeling, and it felt good to be able to accept other people's love and support. No more stuffing everything down and living in isolation for me. End of message. I was deeply inspired by this message. It feels like a lot of growth, and to me, it's inspiring to witness that, opening up that, receiving that. You know, one of my favorite parts about the work that we do is the community that we cultivate and the support that we create space for. And I think this is just such a good example of an incident that might have, you know, taken this man down for days, weeks, you know, who knows how long in the past he was able to move through pretty quickly and actually share his truth with people that love him and accept him and are rooting for him. And I want that for everyone. I want that for everyone. I want everyone to have that kind of support network and to be a web and for all of us to be able to support each other in that way. So shout out to that man. I see you doing the work, I see you growing, I see you expanding and I'm excited for what's next for you. And if you are ever interested in coaching, if you're listening to this and you're interested, you can always go to Evolutionary Men for that. And if you want to support the podcast and get access to our live monthly Q&As, you can become a patron. Just go to, to Dear Men Patreon. Just Google, literally Dear Men Patreon. It'll come right up. And if you join at a ten dollar a month level or more, you will get access to those Q and A sessions. And I hope you enjoy this episode. You can always get me@dearman podcastmail.com hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. This is a Jason episode, which I know some of you go through the library and listen to all the Jason episodes. So shout out to you if that's true for this one. Today we're talking about how to stay grounded when she is dysregulated. And this is something that we've touched on before, but we wanted to do a whole episode on it because it's, it's come up lately. And there are kind of two categories that we are looking at. When she's dysregulated because of something going on in her life and when she's dysregulated because of something happening between the two of you. So for a lot of men, that's the biggest challenge is when she's upset or stressed or anxious about something happening between you versus something happening in her life. But we're going to talk about both of those today. And yeah, before we start that, Jason, I would just love to hear from you about what, you know, sort of what your experience was before, before doing the work around this, this what, what happened for you when your partner was dysregulated.
Melanie Curtin: I really like that because that. And I'm realizing as we are getting into this episode, we should probably define terms a bit. What do we mean by regulated and dysregulated? Especially if you're newer to the podcast or this kind of work? When we're regulated, right, when we have a regulated nervous system, we feel relaxed, we feel grounded, we feel resourced. And when we are dysregulated, we feel stressed, anxious, out of control. Feel free to jump in here. I mean, dysregulated is. Is not.
Jason Lange: Yeah, the. The interesting thing about dysregulated is, you know, some of what we'll be talking about here comes from polyvagal theory, which is just theories of how our nervous system works. But you can be disreg dysregulated in both directions, meaning more of the kind of manic. I'm just, like, too wound up, ruminating panicky energy. I cannot slow my brain down. And I'm, like, worried. You can also be dysregulating that I'm totally shut down, I'm offline, I'm gone. I. I have no capacity to take action right now or be present in this moment. So dysregulation can look, you know, like different things, but the point really of it is we no longer have the capacity to shift our nervous system back to where it needs to be, which is often a little bit more in the middle. Sometimes we do want to get revved up. Sometimes we do want to slow down. Dysregulation is generally when we get stuck in one or the other. Right? We get stuck in anxiousness, and we do not know how to bring ourselves down into a parasympathetic state. Or we're totally dissociated or offline or just shut down, in a sense. And we don't know how to reactivate and engage to actually say a word to our partner or reach out in that moment. And so what we're talking about here is, you know, how do we help ourselves shift? And then how do we, you know, support a partner? Shifting in that sense? And there's a lot of things we can. We'll be talking about here today, about what that looks like. But the. It's. It's the ability to respond in some sense is. Is, you know, what regulating is. Okay, I'm stuck up here, and I know how to shift myself to somewhere else where I have even more agency in the moment. The ability to kind of step into the moment consciously rather than being stuck in this grounded, scared, panicked, angry or offline place. Right. Again, there's many ways this can show up.
Melanie Curtin: I'm glad that you mentioned that about dysregulation doesn't always look panicky. Sometimes it looks like disassociation. And if you. Often what we find is that people, human beings, tend to one or the other. We tend to, when we are dysregulated, feel one way or the other, meaning we tend to dissociate and become. Sometimes it can come across as cold or withdrawn or blank or. Or robotic. These might be words that you've heard or just the sensation of you're physically present, but you're not really here. Or it can be panicky, jittery, angry, reactive, you know, sort of hot and cold. You can kind of think of it as running hot or running cold. And I think it's important. Yeah. What you said about choice and how to mindfully be able to work with, with dysregulation is part of what we're talking here. But what I really loved about what you said was the first step is really just understanding what, what does it mean when I'm dysregulated? How do I know when I'm dysregulated? And for you, part of what helped you figure it out was the coping strategies that you had, which was your body trying to soothe itself. Right. Your, your, your body mind attempting to soothe and calm down would, was sometimes porn and masturbation or eating. Like you said, video games. You mentioned there's a lot of different ways that a lot of us self soothe and you use that as a clue. Oh, I'm self soothing. Let me kind of go back to what happened right before this. What was going on that, that triggered this state that I'm in now. And for some people it's really obvious what the event was that caused them to be dysregulated. But sometimes it's not as obvious. And I'm curious if you can share a little bit about that. And then I want to get into some of the questions because we have a bunch of answers from our men on this topic. But what was, as you started to get to know your coping strategies and we're looking back, what, what were often the events, the dysregulating events?
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean sometimes they, whatever it was, would be exasperated by. I wasn't caring for myself, so I wasn't getting enough sleep, I hadn't been eating well, which kind of in some sense creates bigger tinderbox for dysregulation in my opinion. But a lot of times it was for me, you know, something happened in relationship and I didn't speak up or set a boundary or ask for what I really wanted. So then there's some kind of resentment or just something sticky about something that just happened where I'm like, actually why did I say yes to that? Or why didn't I bring that forward when I had the opportunity? And then sometimes it was also just the other direction where it was more about getting worked up about the future. Right. You know, anxiety, in a sense, it's just worrying about something that hasn't happened yet. And so, wow, I don't know how I'm going to pay rent in two weeks. And so that discomfort just gets stuck in the body and I wouldn't know what to do with that or you know, oh, my God, I'm going to call a woman tomorrow. I'm feeling dysregulated about that because I'm scared about how it's going to go. I mean, sometimes it was around work stuff, sometimes it was around dating stuff, sometimes it'd be around health. You know, for some of us, when I was more unhealthy in my. In my weight, right, that was dysregulating in a sense of like, ah, it doesn't feel good to be in my body and. And yet it doesn't feel. It would feel so bad that I would get dysregulated that I would eat right and I would just feed the whole cycle. Right. So it actually feed into itself. And then that would bring up shame and dysregulation of, ah, why do I keep doing this to myself? So there's lots of different ways, or for me, a big one that I certainly uncovered, particularly as I, as I went in my marriage with Violet, was when the feminine's mad at me. Like when. When the feminine is mad at me and it's like super dysregulating or it's not even the. The latest layer of that onion is not even mad at me. When the feminine is mad, that is like very uncomfortable traditionally for me. And that would cause all kinds of dysregulation and then ways I try to soothe myself.
Melanie Curtin: Yes. And the payoff. This, this man talked about the payoff. He said there is a payoff if you can be the calm before and during the storm, because most men cannot. And the ability to be calm sets you apart from the competition and as a way to cement your relationship. For some reason that really called to me was a way to cement your relationship. And then when, you know, in terms of the. The advice, what advice would you give to a man looking to grow in this area? This man said you can't truly be present with another until you have been and can be truly present with yourself. A lot of the. A lot of nice guys are focused on the relating with other components. But this work starts with you. Even if you are in a relationship, give yourself room to grow and center before focusing on your competency with another. So, yeah, there's a. A lot there. And I think one of the last things that I want to say is that it's. It's totally normal to. Healing is not linear. We don't just step up and up and up and up. It's often two steps forward, one step back, and that. That is normal. And our culture doesn't really make it normal. We live in a culture that tells us that things, you know, you should have a five year plan and you should be going up the ladder. And there's a. There's a certain linear quality to that. But in the work that I've done, in the witnessing that I've had, it's more of an art, it's more of a dance, it's more of a finding our way together. Not so much with everything just cleanly happening in line. So wherever you are, I think is what I'm trying to say, wherever you are, you can get to where you want to be. And it might not be linear. You know, there are certain healing modalities, certain mentors that we need at certain points in our journey, and those shift over time. And you are the arbiter of what you need, your intuition, your guidance, that is what is the most critical. Because your intuition will always take you to what is going to be best for you. And that doesn't always look like the logical or most rational choice. It's a feeling. It's in your body, mind. It's a sense. And we were just talking about this on our recent coaching call about how, you know, many of the men that we worked with have said, I just felt like it was time. I just knew it was time to reach out. I just felt the call. So I just want to honor that because I think it's really important, particularly in our culture that says we should make all decisions from our mind, that there is a deeper way of making decisions and choices. And that's part of what guides you to the right work for you at this time. And it is also part of what can guide you in these moments of intensity. So if you are interested in working with us, you can get us at Evolutionary men. And is there anything else that you would want to add?
Jason Lange: It takes practice. And it's okay to be messy and imperfect. Imperfect in. In doing it. And one thing I know I've certainly learned is it's a hell of a lot more fun to practice this with other people too. So whether it's joining a program or getting into a men's group or going on retreat, building this capacity itself can be relational and fun.
Melanie Curtin: That's a great place to end. Relational and fun. Sam.
