The biggest lie we tell ourselves as men is that disconnection is strength. In my conversation with Fireman Rob on his podcast, we explored how the very disconnection from our bodies and emotions that our culture rewards is actually what's slowly killing us.
We talked about how so many of us get rewarded in our culture for being disconnected. Push harder, work longer, stuff down the feelings, just keep going. That's what makes you successful, right? Except it all catches up eventually. Usually in our 40s when the fatigue, the health issues, the disconnection from what matters most starts showing up in ways we can't ignore anymore.
One thing I shared that still surprises me: when men finally do the work to actually feel what they've been avoiding, it usually takes about four minutes for the emotion to move through and dissolve. Yet we'll spend six months, even years, avoiding that four minutes. All that energy wasted on holding something back that just wants to be felt and released.
Rob's journey as a firefighter gave us a chance to talk about how men in service professions carry so much intensity and trauma inside, often without any real support for dealing with it. The same fierceness we aim outward at our jobs or challenges, we need to turn inward. Going boldly into all aspects of ourselves, the parts we're afraid of, that's actually one of the greatest gifts we can give our families.
We covered shadow work, nervous system regulation, why slowing down is so hard for men, and how learning to be truly present is what makes us powerful, not disconnected.
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Host: Welcome to the scorching arena of valor and the crucible of courage. This is the Forged in the Fires.
Jason Lange: Podcast with Fireman Rob.
Host: Here in the inferno of life's greatest challenges, heroes are shaped and legends are born. Every episode is a torchlight of wisdom, casting a glow on the paths walked by those who've braved the flames and emerged stronger. In this furnace of fortitude, we'll explore tell of resilience, bravery, and the unyielding human spirit. Each guest brings their own spark of insight, lighting up the darkness and guiding us through the smoke of adversity. With Fireman Rob at the helm, prepared to delve into conversations that smolder with significance and stories that kindle the soul. It's not just a podcast. It's a beacon for all who seek to rise from the ashes and glow with purpose. So stoke the fires of your curiosity and ready your heart for tales of triumph and transformation. The flames are roaring. The stage is ablaze. Welcome to the Forged in the Fires podcast. Let the journey begin. All right, welcome back to Forging the Fires podcast. I'm your host, Fireman Rob. Today's guest. Oh, man. Get ready. It is. He's certified. No more nice guy, coach. I love that. That phrase. He is an evolutionary man. He is an amazing individual who helps, really, men embody who they want to be. Jason Lange, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So excited to be here, Rob. Oh, this is.
Host: I love looking at your stuff because. Well, not only because I'm a man, and there's so many struggles nowadays and for men to be who they want to be and who they should be. Talk to me more about what became how this evolutionary man came to fruition for you.
Jason Lange: Yeah, well, it really started from my own personal journey. Right, right. Like so many great things, in a sense, I grew up here in the States, you know, had the typical kind of suburban. Yeah. Pretty good childhood.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: But that, as I got older, became clear that, you know, to no fault of my parents, they were doing the best they could, but there were a lot of nutrients I didn't get growing up. I didn't have a strong, masculine role model and my father. There was very little touch. There was almost no interiority or emotional connection in my family. It was just not something we knew how to do. Yeah. And, you know, that was all fine until I got into puberty in high school and had to start relating. Outside, outside of my family and found that I was often just very anxious and my body would tighten up and I would beat myself up didn't really know how to be in the world. And that kind of took me into this whole world of personal growth and development and starting a healing journey to discover what is it I need to do so I could be able to show up fully in my life and move towards the things I want. Right? And the work I do with men. Rob, one of the ways I define power is just the capacity to know what we want and move towards it in our lives. So a man who's in his power is a man who's able to move towards the things he wants. And so in that journey of having to go deep and, you know, do some therapy and coaching and get in touch with pretty wounded parts of myself, I discovered the whole world of men's work and men's groups and started getting connected to other men who were walking through the world. In a way, my body felt more relaxed being around. Right. You. I know in the work you do, you've. You've probably experienced this. There's certain men who have a certain type of presence or ease or just resilience and sturdiness to them that it actually relaxes those around us. And I was. You know, I started to meet men like that, and I was like, what is that? I want that. I want to be that when I grow up, right?
Host: So that's so true. That's so true. I. I want to go back. I want to go back for one second showing up for the man that you should be. That. That line, it stuck in my head, and I want you to just kind of. When did you start to do that for yourself to.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I think it was when I realized this is such a huge edge for so many men, and it was for me. But things started to change for me when I realized I needed help. There were things I needed support that I couldn't necessarily figure out on my own. And that was a really vulnerable thing for me, not having been raised by dad, who really was able to provide me any guidance like that. So I kept everything super close to the chest. And so many of us men do, right? We kind of learn this lone wolf. I just got to figure it out. Be tough, never show weakness, always move forward. And what I discovered was, wow, that is a pretty painful and inefficient way to grow through life. So true. When I opened myself up to. There's other people that have figured this stuff out that I'm right struggling with. And when I opened myself up to getting mentorship and guidance, I was really able to start stepping into my full self and in a, in a powerful way also take responsibility for myself, which was actually deeply empowering. Like, oh, okay, I know what wounding I carry in this world, and I don't have to be at its mercy, at its will. Right. I can do work to change my relationship to these parts of myself so I can show up consciously in any given moment and choose how do I want to respond instead of just unconsciously reacting, which for me was often from wounding or different closures from earlier in my life.
Host: I love that you keep giving these, these golden nuggets that just embed in my head. It's probably because I have issues with that. But this unconscious response, that's, that's so true in so many, so many men. And they don't really dive back into why that is. You know, how, how does that, how does that come forward when you, you kind of look at yourself and you go, gosh, why did I react that way? How can you take that one more step farther and start to build that understanding and that resilience to, to not do that? Unconscious, in essence, poor decision making.
Jason Lange: Absolutely. I would say there's kind of a two pronged approach. One is, which starts with deeper understanding. And so I call that process shadow work. Shadow work is the, the process of becoming more aware and conscious of what's unconsciously been driving us. Right. Literally, you think of the image of the shadow, like if it's right behind you and you turn your head, you can't see it. Right. It's always behind you, like that old kind of Peter Pan cartoon. And so oftentimes, illuminating our shadow happens when we're in a relationship because other people can see it really fast, or we start to notice there's certain situations or people that just trigger us and cause a deep reactivity in us that's not necessarily correlate to the stimulus they're giving us. And you know, you'll get this metaphor here because I've been using it a lot for guys here. But there's this process of shadow material, or we might call it trauma material, just really unprocessed emotional stuff in our body. Mind.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: How that, how I like to think of that stuff is anytime we stop ourselves from feeling a feeling, whether that's grief or anger or sadness or self loathing, whatever that might be, many of the things us men struggle with. When we stop feeling a feeling, the way we do that is actually by tightening our bodies, we literally will tighten ourselves up. If you imagine you were crying heavily and I said to you, stop Crying, right? Your body, you stop breathing.
Host: You just made me get intense up a little bit.
Jason Lange: Yeah, right? You can feel it.
Host: Yeah, I can feel it.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So that's. That holds that emotion in our tissues. And the way to think about that emotion is anytime we've held something in, what it's like is it becomes like kindling on the forest floor, right? There's all this material now, loaded up, ready to burn, that we never processed. So then we're out in the world and we have an interaction, you know, maybe someone cuts us off in traffic or whatever. And what would normally just be like a little spark of anger of like, ah, right, Dick, what are you to do that for, right? That little spark lands on our forest floor where there's all of this material, all of this, right, fuel ready to go. And so it blows up into a much bigger fire, so to speak. So shadow work is the process of going in and finding these unprocessed emotions that we literally hold in our body. And that, particularly for men, will catch up with us as we age, right? We have that certain amount of vitality in our 20s and 30s. And then once we hit our 40s, stuff starts catching up to us. And you know, one man I work with is a doctor of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. And he sees it, right? He sees it show up in people in autoimmune disorders, health challenges, depression, you name it, midlife crisis. This unprocessed stuff really starts to catch up with our bodies because even though we're just holding these emotions, it takes energy to hold them in place. So we actually get tired, we get fatigued. And almost every man I work with, what's one of their biggest issues? Energy management. Just having enough energy to be able to show up fully in our families, our lives, our communities, our work. So shadow work liberates some of that. So instead of holding that material, we bring it forth in a safe and vulnerable and sometimes really challenging but enlivening way. Then we pair that. The second part, we do the shadow work to understand and move the energy we with practices to help us just build more grounding and resilience in our nervous system, right? How do we learn to breathe, to slow our system down to ground into the earth? You know, you're probably someone who's lived this even more than me to stay relaxed and alert in intense, you know, overwhelming situations. That's really the maximal place to be, is we're relaxed, but we're alert. We're not overly rigid, we're not overly soft. We're just available. And for us men, when we can learn to cultivate that deep, deep grounded presence and resilience, particularly in relationships, it makes us unstoppable.
Host: That's crazy.
Jason Lange: No, no.
Host: I want to ask you because, like, I'm more calm in stressful environments. It's. It's.
Jason Lange: Yeah, sure.
Host: Weird when we get to the calm environments and I'm not doing anything. That is uber stressful to me. Yeah. How does that. How does that really correlate in life? Because it's. It's so hard to fathom. Like, most people. Like, that doesn't make any sense. I'd rather sit in front of a TV and then be at a car accident pulling somebody out of a car. Whereas I'm the opposite.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I think. I think on one hand, there's just a temperament thing. For some people, that's just their kind of natural temperament. On the other hand, you know, I don't know. You know, this is where we could dig in. Like, did you really want to dig into this? Right.
Host: And there.
Jason Lange: There just might be sometimes for some of us men, and I'm not saying this is you, because I don't know you yet, Rob, but for some of us men, what's hard about slowing down is when we slow down, we're often asked to feel more right. When we really slow down. Yeah. We get in touch with what's happening. Sometimes it's just physically feeling like, oh, my God, my body is wrecked. I'm exhausted. I've been pushing myself too hard. Sometimes it's feeling emotions. I found a huge correlation between that. So for a lot of us men, we don't want to slow down because nobody has ever taught us what to do with our emotions and how to be with them. Right. Basically, in our culture, what we're taught is you can drink it off, smoke it off, or honestly, ejaculate it off. So that's what most men do with their feelings. We try to get them out, we discharge them. And nobody teaches us that. Actually, there's a way you can. You can be with that, be with those emotions, move them in healthy way, so then your body can actually slow down and get into that more rest and digest kind of parasympathetic restorative state where you get to just be calm and enjoy that. So, you know, it could be a lot of things for you. I think there are some people that just, you know, we just light up when there's intensity. We do well in those situations. And most men I know, they don't want to slow down because when we slow down, we have to feel more. And nobody's ever taught us that.
Host: I think that's so. It's very true. I mean, for myself, you know, I. It's been a very long transition to be able to figure out my emotions, handle my emotions. And, and it's, it's a constant lifelong journey for me. And like you were saying, I think that's so powerful, like how to handle your emotions. Because I know from a fact, from being in the fire service for so long and when there's a rough day or rough calls or things like that, that I try to process it myself. But I mean, all these things are hitting home, but my processing is, is that unconscious? Okay, deal with it. Get on with life. You got things to do at home that doesn't work.
Jason Lange: It'll catch up with you, right?
Host: Oh, it always does.
Jason Lange: You had to discover the hard way. And that's where, you know, it's not necessarily our fault as men. I mean, we are generally rewarded financially in our culture by being disconnected from our bodies as men. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Right? Push harder, work harder, stuff down. The feelings keep going. No matter what, be tough. These are the messages we get. You know, work an 80 hour week, just do it, whatever it takes. Think of extreme sports or athletics. Those people, you know, sometimes some of those men are literally sacrificing their bodies, right, to play these games and play these sports. And for men that have to go into the service and war generally to be able to do some of that stuff, you have to disconnect from parts of yourself, right? From your fear.
Host: Definitely have to.
Jason Lange: From your heart. And that's what men traditionally have been rewarded for. So it's no wonder we don't know how to be in our bodies, right? And we're generally not celebrated for being in our bodies, right? Because, you know, then we have locker room culture and just masculine default culture of, you know, mocking each other and making fun of each other. If we show any weakness or any of that, and that just, it all catches up with us. And so this process of learning can be pretty challenging for some men. But what I found, man, is infinitely. They discover it's a lot easier of, oh my God, that thing I've been avoiding. I still fall for this stuff, Rob. Or I've been doing this work for 20 years and something will come up and I'll kind of get there's something there, but I'll kind of avoid it for three or four months and. And then I'LL be in a men's group or I'll do some work, and I'll finally go into whatever that emotion was. Maybe it's sadness, maybe it's rage, whatever. You know, here's the honest truth. Takes maybe four minutes to actually be in the emotion. And then it dissolves. It lets go. And after every time afterwards, I'm like, oh, my God, I just spent six months avoiding that. And I wasted so much time and energy, all I had to do is go right into it in a safe container. And when men are given that opportunity, the cool thing I see and one of the great joys of the work I get to do is literally seeing men come back alive, like life force. Come back into their bodies with more energy, more softness in their face, their nervous system, just all of this stuff. Men hold so much in our bodies, so much tension in our hearts and our bodies and our spirits because we don't know what to do with it. No one's ever really guided us. But. But the types of spaces that are now emerging for men are starting to create some places where we get to kind of lay it all down for once and get a lot of stuff off our chest, and our bodies get to relax. And then the wild thing is we become even more powerful, right? When we're not holding all this extra garbage, we have a lot more energy and strength and presence to put towards the things we really care about in life. And how.
Host: And how do you. How do you get away from. Because I. I mean, everything that you're saying, it, you know, it sounds like I'd be selfish. I'd be selfish about my time. How do. How do you get that mindset for that the. The man to be able to go, well, this isn't being selfish. This is actually being fulfilling who you are to be able to help others. How do you. How do you get behind that?
Jason Lange: Well, it's that. It's. It's this mindset shift from, you know, the platitude in our culture is you got to put the oxygen mask on yourself first, right? Like for the airplanes and stuff. Because if you're. If you're not. If you're not alive, you can't take care of anyone. So one of the big shifts I do have to make with men, particularly men who are raising families or have spouses or have jobs they really care about, is you're no good to anyone burnt out, right? You actually can't show up in the ways you want to show up. And the most important thing. And this is A, you know, kind of a mind warp for a lot of men. Oftentimes the most important thing we can do for those around us is just be present, actually be in the moment with them, particularly with our spouses, particularly with our kids. And the thing is, that takes energy. And so if we're not resourced or if we're holding all this stress emotionally or from our job in our. In where actually our presence is elsewhere. Right. Because it's on all this other stuff, or we're just exhausted or fatigued. We're not actually being present with our. The people we love or the things we care about. So I like to. You know, one of my teachers once told me, you want to serve from the overflow, right? So we want to fill ourselves up. So our capacity to serve other people is coming from an overflow, that which has such a generative capacity, and other people can feel it. Right? Wow, you're resourced. And for so many men, whether it's in the healing arts like me or in the service arts like you, you know, there's a. We got this whole thing, the wounded healer, right? We just want to serve, serve, serve other people. Yet we're sometimes literally dying inside of fatigue or exhaustion or malnourishment. And so this shift to taking care of yourself, I believe, is what allows you to truly take care of other people. And for the people we love, the other important thing it does is that's how you teach other people to also take care of themselves. We model it, we embody it right for our children, like, hey, I love you. And daddy's got to go on a hike today for a couple hours to just get resourced, spend some time outside so then I can come back and be fully present with you. That's how I can teach my kid that it's important for you to take care of yourself and not always put other people forward. People with big hearts like you, man. And I can tell just in this conversation, you got a big heart. You're never going to stop giving. That's just your natural. Right. That's your natural capacity. So the practice, the edge, is to balance it the other way with making sure you're taking care of yourself. You're going to naturally keep giving, I think, no matter how resourced you get. And that's a big shift for a lot of men.
Host: Yeah, that's so true. And I love the way that you put that for the family because it is. It is modeling and the generational differences from, you know, my grandfather to my dad to Me to my son, everything has changed in how you are able to, you know, the, the challenges that they go through, along with, you know, how we're able to have conversations, is totally different. What do you tell, what do you tell, like, the, the dads and the grandfathers and the people that are going through this to understand about that generational difference? Because I, I, I, I, I for myself with my son. I have son and two daughters. The conversation was different. It was, it was weird. It was like, I look back to my dad. My dad was my hero, my everything. But we didn't have that same conversations that I had with my son. It's. It's interesting.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I think there's more intimacy available now in terms of, you know, what's possible in some sense. I think a big change that's happened in the generations is, you know, there's been a lot of breakdown of different roles of what it means to be a father, what it means to be a mother, what it means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife. A lot of that. Well, you just do this and you're considered a success. That all got shattered. And, you know, in some sense, if you're familiar with, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Yep. Enough. You know, I know not everyone in our country is thriving, but our country is a pretty stable place to live, and what that allows for is higher order needs to become surfaced. So. Right.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: My grandfather, he was just, you know, his dad was a drunk living on the train tracks of Chicago. He was just surviving, working in, you know, literally toxic leather tannering factories when he was, like, 10 years old. Like, what a generational shift just between him and my dad and me. Right. Me, I've had the luxury of getting to worry about my interiors. Yeah. Worry about my emotional health. And on the one sense, you know, generationally, I think you can, you know, people can make up the story of, oh, kids have it so easy. They're worried about these things. But, but to me, that's like, that's the thing I want to fight for, that everyone in the world has this opportunity to do this more subtle interior work. And that generationally, like, that is the sign of progress, that you and your son get to have so much more nuanced conversations relationally and have a much more probably complex dynamic than previous generations where he gets to see you figuring things out as an adult. And I think that's one of the other things, too, that we get to teach our kids is the more we keep stepping into our own growth, the more we're teaching them this message that life's just about growth. You step on a path and you just keep trying to grow. You figure it out. And there's lots of. There can be lots of failures along the way, but the fact is, you just keep moving forward. And I think that's a really big difference. Generationally, that's happening along with. We're just getting to teach our kids, right, that there's a way to do all this. More resourced. How do you.
Host: How do you not feel like a failure? I mean, this is, you know, obviously talking from myself. How do you not feel like a failure when you're like, why did it take me so long to figure this out? Because I think a lot of men will. Will feel that failure part of, like, man, I'm in my 40s. Why couldn't I figure this out when he was younger? To be able to make myself better, to be able to help him.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I. I think we just have to be gentle and easy with ourselves and forgive ourselves from. I was doing the best I could with the toolkit I could. Right? Men in particular, man, once someone gives us the instruction manual, we'll tear into it, right? We'll figure it out. We're like, okay, someone finally taught me how to do this parenting thing or this relationship thing or this work thing. But a lot of us just. No one gave us the blueprint for this stuff, right? And our parents didn't necessarily have it. So we, you know, this is one of the beautiful. I call my. My groups Evolutionary men. Right? The idea is we take the best of the previous generation and we just keep growing it. So our parents, you know, they didn't necessarily have the opportunity to do a lot of the work in nuance that we did, but what they create for us is kind of the foundation for the. The next level. Right? And so you. You figuring this stuff out even now in your 40s and 50s, makes it easier for your children to do that because now you've walked territory that you're going to be able to guide them through later in their life as they get there. And we just keep doing that generation to generation. And, you know, that's crazy. My hope is it just keeps getting better and better, Right?
Host: And it's funny because my son. My son wants to go into the fire service or do something around those lines, and I'm like, oh, man, I don't know, you know, because I get nervous because it, you know, there's a reason the fire service as it's It's a great place to be, but at the same time, it's a very struggling it emotionally, it's struggling to really find yourself. How do you. How do you suggest men in these kind of professions, in the military, in the first responder community, how do you suggest that they start this course once they have a family, start this course, to feel okay with finding that emotion, but then at the same point relaying that emotion to their kids who may or may not want to go into that service? It's. It's a hard conversation.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I would say. I mean, I tend to think, you know, this is generalization, but, you know, every man's got. We've got a warrior inside. Right. Some part of us that wants to fight for what's true, good, beautiful and loving in our families and in the world. He. And one of the big moments we're in as a culture, as men right now is taking that same fierceness, that warriorhoodness, which we used to aim outwards at conquering the world or our jobs or extreme things, and now we want to turn it inward to, you know what? I want to boldly go into all aspects of myself that I might be afraid of and bring my full light in force there, and that my ability to kind of turn inward bravely like that, and really get to know myself intimately, that is one of the greatest gifts I can give my family and my kids and whatnot, because they see me becoming a wholer version of myself. And I would say, particularly guys in the military, guys in service jobs, you know, one of the places our culture is severely lacking right now is, as far as I know, definitely men in the military. I'm imagining men in positions like yours don't really get much care for what's happening on the inside of themselves. No. Right. We just.
Host: No, it's all off.
Jason Lange: Do all this stuff.
Host: Yep.
Jason Lange: And you're left to pick up the pieces of. Of all this intensity and trauma you have to carry inside yourselves. And that has a huge cost, I think we're starting to grapple with as a culture. Right. Right. Suicide rates are up for men. Abuse rates for drugs and alcohol are up for men. Men feel more lonely and isolated than ever. Like, it's. It's an extreme time in a lot of ways to be a man. And that's why, you know, I'm trying to spearhead this movement of one, one of the biggest shifts you can do is turn inward, and two, get help and realize you don't have to do it all alone and that we are meant to, to grow and thrive as in community, as men, you know, that's one thing the service and I imagine the firehouse does do well is you get that real strong bond with other people when you've gone through adversity together.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: All I do in my groups is bring along the interiors for that journey so we get to know what's happening on the insides for each other on those intense experiences or life journeys.
Host: I love that, I love that. Make sure you go to evolutionary dot man men. I should say Evolutionary dot men. You can find out more how to work. Sorry, I was just swallowing wrong. You can find out how to. More to work with Jason. You can find out about his groups, his events, unbelievable things that you're doing. I appreciate it because I felt, I felt the energy. I mean, that's half the battle is when somebody goes after something and is helping others to feel that energy and that positivity and that passion behind what you're doing. And I appreciate what you're doing, Jason.
Jason Lange: Oh, yeah, thanks so much, man. And thanks for creating a space like this for me to bring my gifts forward as you're sharing yours.
Host: Definitely, definitely. But I can't let you go yet because I got three questions for you. Are you ready?
Jason Lange: Awesome. I'm ready.
Host: All right. If you could go back to your 18 year old self and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that be?
Jason Lange: Go into therapy sooner.
Host: Oh, my gosh, that's. That's a perfect one. That's a perfect one. All right, here's the second one. If, if you could give people two habits to incorporate into their daily life, to continue to move forward, to continue to push forward, what would that be?
Jason Lange: Number one, spend some time, every day, if you can, at least every week, intentionally doing nothing. This is so deeply restorative. Set a timer. 10, 15 minutes. If you can be outside, even better. Turn off your phone, turn off all your things and just sit and do nothing. It is so restorative for our souls and particularly for men in ways that is pretty unfathomable until you do it. Number two, get connected. Right. For so many of us, men in particular, but really all human beings, when we're struggling, when we're hurting, our impulse is to pull inside and withdraw from our relationships. That's the moment you want to build the habit, to reach out to people you trust. The connection is the antidote. As a friend of mine, another man said, community is immunity. Those are the moments we want to turn towards community to build the deeper resilience inside ourselves.
Host: Nice. I love those. All right, this last one is going to be fun because I have no idea where you're going to go with this. All right, so if you could have coffee at a firehouse table with three individuals that can be deceased or alive, and at a firehouse table, you can ask any question it's going to be answered, who would those three people be?
Jason Lange: Oh, yeah. Okay, let me think about this. I definitely have to say Martin Luther King.
Host: Okay.
Jason Lange: Yep. Leonardo da Vinci.
Host: Oh, nice.
Jason Lange: And Cleopatra. I would go, oh, wow.
Host: Yeah, that's a different one. I like it.
Jason Lange: And I would ask them, what's the most important thing you learned in your life? Oh, wow.
Host: And you would be very, very knowledgeable after that, Right?
Jason Lange: Totally.
Host: Awesome. Awesome. Well, make sure you go to Evolutionary Men and find out more. Jason, it's better. A pleasure to have you on today.
Jason Lange: Yeah, thanks so much, Rob. Enjoy.
