Here's the paradox that keeps me up at night: we men can develop incredible precision with our bodies, mastering complex athletic movements and physical skills, yet we remain completely illiterate when it comes to reading the most basic signals our bodies are constantly sending us about our emotional state. In my conversation with Dr. Dan, we explored this fascinating disconnect between our external body awareness and our complete blindness to our internal landscape.
We dug into interoception, which is basically the awareness of what's going on inside our bodies. Most men I work with have incredible proprioception, they can hit a baseball or nail a golf swing, but when it comes to knowing what they're feeling? That musculature is completely underdeveloped. And here's the thing, when we're disconnected from our bodies, we're disconnected from our emotions. We're walking around stressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed, and we have no idea. We just know something doesn't feel good, so we reach for porn, alcohol, overwork, whatever helps us avoid dealing with what's actually happening underneath.
Dr. Dan and I talked about how this isn't just about individual suffering. This isolation and lack of emotional capacity is literally killing men. We're more likely to die of heart disease, more likely to commit suicide, and way more likely to lose the relationships we care about most because we never learned how to feel and communicate what's going on inside us.
One of the most healing things I've witnessed is what happens when men get into a room together and realize they're not alone. That moment when a guy shares something he thought made him uniquely broken, and five other men say, "Holy shit, me too." That's when the real work can begin. We get to see other men model what it looks like to feel anger without exploding into rage, to drop into grief without collapsing, to be vulnerable without being weak. And through that transmission, through those mirror neurons firing, we start to embody new possibilities for ourselves.
If you're a man reading this and something's resonating, don't wait for the crisis to build your support system. Head over to evolutionary.men and check out what we're doing, or just reach out. I'm passionate about getting men connected to resources, whether that's with me or not.
