I had a powerful conversation with Aaron on Guys Dealings with Feelings about one of the most brutal paradoxes facing men today: we're told to be strong but not too strong, vulnerable but not weak, connected but not needy. We explored how our culture has created an impossible box for men, one where every move feels wrong and authentic expression becomes a minefield. Aaron brought incredible insight into why men's work isn't just personal development, it's survival in a world that simultaneously demands everything from us while offering no safe space to be human.
You know, there's this myth that men are supposed to be lone wolves. Don't cry, don't be vulnerable, push through everything, ignore what's happening in your body. From a young age, boys get the message that whatever they're feeling is wrong. Sit still for eight hours even though you need to move. Don't show weakness. And then we wonder why so many men are struggling with depression, addiction, autoimmune issues, why they're checking out.
The thing is, we can't actually ignore our bodies and emotions. They don't go away just because we try to numb them with work, alcohol, porn, whatever. All that unprocessed material gets stored physically. It takes enormous energy to hold it down, and eventually it catches up with us.
That's where men's groups come in. They're not just accountability groups or goal-setting sessions. They're places where men can finally become present to what's actually true for them. Where we can feel what we've been holding and have other men hold that with us. No shame, no judgment, just connection. Because real safety isn't the absence of threat, it's the presence of connection. When men finally share what they've been carrying alone, sometimes for decades, and have it received without losing that connection, it's transformative.
We also talked about calling each other forward, not calling each other out. Seeing the best in each other and holding each other to that. That steady presence of "let's figure this out together" that so many of us never got from our fathers.
Read Full Transcript Full episode text for reading and search
Host: I've come a long way in my journey since losing my son, but there's still a lot more to learn. So I'm sharing all that I've learned and continue to learn. I would like to ask a favor to anyone listening to Please like share, subscribe and follow wherever you're listening today. Give us a five star rating. This really helps move the message forward and doing so could change someone's life. You can find us on Spotify and Apple podcast under guys dealings with feelings and on YouTube and Instagram at it you thrive. That's the letter I, the number two, the letter U and the word thrive. So today I'm really excited, happy and thankful to have Jason Lange on. He's an embodiment coach, helping men find clarity in their life purpose and in their relationships. He spent the last 20 years helping men and I'm excited to talk to Jason because he's going to talk about a lot of the issues that we as men are facing both with finding purpose and with having healthy relationships. I'm so grateful that we were able to get you on today, Jason.
Jason Lange: I'm so excited to be here, Aaron. We were just chatting a little bit and already got me excited and pumped.
Host: Yeah, man. I've looked into some of Jason's stuff and it's. I'm excited to talk to him because he's really focusing on being a healthy man just to kind of kick things off. I'd like for you kind of give us an overview of how you're helping men find purpose with a little back story on, you know, listen to the interview and you're discussing the challenges men face trying to be a good human being without compromising who they are as a human. Specifically as a. Yeah, I think, you.
Jason Lange: Know, one of the challenges most men I know and work with come up across, and that I certainly came across, like you said, is our culture is inundated right now with what's wrong with men. You know, toxic masculinity all over the place. And the truth is this is good in the sense that there's some real problems that we've needed to surface about how men have traditionally acted in the past. Right. In historical context. But that's not all men are. And so one of the challenges a lot of men have right now is what am I supposed to be? What is a healthy, integrated, present man in the world these days? Most of us men grew up seeing kind of and experiencing and being painted a picture of what I kind of call the three major arcs. First and foremost, you know, just kind of the, the macho jerk, the my way or the highway guy that goes for what he wants, is mostly focused on himself and will take action regardless to a large extent of the consequences on other people of the planet, etc. And these men tend to get a lot of what they want, they tend to take a lot of action, but they often cause a lot of harm along the way. And we have many, many examples of what men in particular who are disconnected from their heart can do to people, the environment, etc. Now a lot of men, particularly in the like the 50s and 60s, started to grow up seeing and experiencing the negative impacts of being around that kind of man. They were abused by that man, they were neglected by that man, that man abandoned them, you know, whatever. Many of us have had those types of experiences with our fathers. And so there was kind of this pendulum swing in probably the last 40 to 50 years of what we kind of call the more typical nice guy. So this is a guy who's really sweet, really sensitive, deeply cares about the people around him and often prioritizes their well being above his own. So if that first man, we might say is kind of centered in his power center, his sexuality, his power, his power. His kind of, if you know, the chakras, kind of like the lower chakras, the second man, the nice guy, tends to often be centered around the heart, right? And it's a amazing evolution that we have more and more men showing up in this heart spaced way. But that often comes with problems. That comes with men not getting what they want, putting other people's needs above their own, having no capacity to set boundaries or take action on the things they want, or say no to people when it's appropriate to in some big ways and frankly to even sometimes just be in right alignment with their sexual energy as men, whoever they're attracted to that, wow, just because I'm attracted to someone doesn't make me bad or evil. And so there's limitations of the nice guy. And then there's also kind of the, it's a little more rare but third category. I'd say that I often associate more kind with grandfathers, but it's really anywhere. And, and that's kind of just the more traditional stoic, you know, I always use the image of many men actually had fathers like this or grandparents like this who were in one of the, you know, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and they never knew it. Like later on, and much later on in life, they find out their grandfather had been through some intense experiences, but that person just never shares a thing about it. So the stoic is the kind of I show up, I do my job in life, and I really don't reveal my inner world at all. And all three of these are failing men currently. They cause all kinds of problems in terms of our mental health and quite frankly, our physical health. And so a lot of the work I do, Aaron, is what is the new integrated way us men can show up where we're in our power. We. We're still connected to our hearts and sensitive, and we're aware of kind of what's most important in any given moment in our relationships in the world around us. And we're willing to vulnerably invite and lead those around us into that. And so my journey was kind of more of the numbed out, nice guy. You know, I was totally disconnected, really uncomfortable with my sexuality, addicted to porn, had a really hard time talking to women. Couldn't really get myself going on the things I wanted to develop myself in in life. And I got really lucky in my 20s in that I got plunged into men's work in men's groups. Before they were quite as explosively big as they are now, which, you know, 20 years ago you said this, and people were like, well, my church group, and that's a type of men's group. And that's really been the main one around. But now there's this whole other layer that's been evolving since then, which is really about us men discovering together how we can show up fully in our full spectrum, selves, heart and, so to speak, cock all together. Because that's really what the world needs right now. You know, I'm a pretty firm believer in the world doesn't need less men and less masculinity right now. We actually need more healthy men who are willing to call each other out, call out injustices, and do the inner work they need to do to be healthy, present people in their families, communities and relationships. So that's my first salvo there. I don't know if I quite answered it.
Host: No, you did. I love it and I love so much about it because, you know, like you say, all three of those are failing men. We are facing a crisis. I don't have the statistics off the top of my head, but men are killing themselves at an alarming rate now. I think you point out some crucial things, you know, I focus a lot on. It's just hard for us to even talk about this stuff.
Jason Lange: Yes.
Host: That I don't. I'm not happy, you know, because what's the, what's the normal response that one of our parents would say to that? Well, who gives a shit? Just put your head down, go to work. You know, doesn't know we want to hear you crying about how you feel. And so we face so much of that and wanting to talk about it. And so then we can, maybe we can open up that box. Okay, I want to talk about it a little bit. But then you're, you know, to your point, maybe then you're getting run over and, you know, now I'm getting run over and I, I don't feel good about myself because I'm being run over. And then you've got the macho guy who, he's not going to learn anything about himself. So finding true happiness is going to be next to impossible. Gaining material things to your point, you know, bullying your way to what you want, using a bulldozer to get, to get something out of a china shop. And, and, and then you have the guy who locks down and doesn't say anything to anybody about anything. In, in all of these. I find, and I mean, maybe you're going to enlighten me that you feel the same is that we're, we're, we're vacant of knowing what we really, who we are, what we want, where we come from, what makes us this way. Why do I feel this way? How come my buddies seem to put their head down and go to work and seem happy? You know, is, is coming home and drinking a few beers and watching TV the rest of the night, is that really fulfillment? You know, all these things are so massive and, and I'm glad that it is the tsunami that it is today because that means that some real progress is being made. I can only imagine what type of crickets you heard. I, I would have 20 years ago when you mentioned men's group, thought about a men's breakfast on a Wednesday at a church, immediately you probably tell them from the south and that's, that's very, very present men's group. So, you know, getting into that, you know, you work with men's group. I know you're a facilitator of that. So why are you saying. I heard you say accountability, which is huge. I'm big proponent of accountability and, and having people we can trust and not, I guess, you know, we choose a partner or something, it's a bad idea. We ask them to hold us accountable and they do it. Then we're pissed off because they did it. So finding a Men's group or, you know, you know, having a misery. What is this? Why have you found this to be so important other than accountability? You know, how are you setting them up? Where are you setting them as an online. Do you find in person kind of the nuances that go with your men's group theory?
Jason Lange: Yeah, there's so much here. And part of where I want to start on this is kind of what I call the myth of the lone wolf and. Or this idea, the man box, if you've ever heard it. But one of the big challenges us men are facing these days, and I know this is a loaded term that sets a lot of people off, but it's. It's real. And so it's the idea of the patriarchy, right. And the thing not a lot of people talk about, you know, it gets a lot of talk about how that harms women, but it's just as harmful to us men. And part of what I'm talking about here is, particularly here in the States, but I would say in a lot of cultures around the world, there is this pressure on men to be a certain way. And so we call this the man box. It's literally a box we're supposed to exist in. And if we have show any behavior outside of that, we're considered not a man. And so it's like a checklist. And, you know, it varies a little bit from culture and region, but there's some very big trends, like, never show weakness, don't be vulnerable, don't cry, take responsibility for everything. You know, there's some real positives to these things, but there's some real shadows to them as well that are very significant, and they have a deep impact on us men, particularly from a very young age. Many men I know have at some point heard this phrase in their life. Stop crying. You know, I see it in the world sometimes a parent coming at their kid with that. And when you really think about that, and I think boys are even more susceptible to this because crying is considered more feminine or weak or some bullshit thing we've come up with in our culture, what we're saying is, whatever you're feeling in your body is wrong. Overrule that with your head. Right? Overrule that with your thoughts. And so from a very young age, and then this gets accentuated even in our educational system, which at a young age starts to tell boys, sit still for eight hours. If you. If you're not, you're disruptive to the class. When boys in particular, we are very kinesthetic we need to move our bodies. It's actually how we learn. And so from a young age, from the educational system we're getting, whatever's happening in your body is wrong, it's bad, ignore it. And then we get these messages from other boys, other men in our culture, that basically don't be in your body as a man. So we are actively encouraged to get out of our bodies, which includes our emotions as well, because emotions always start as actual sensations in our physical body, always trace them. And so this intense thing starts to happen where not only are we encouraged for being out of our bodies, but in fact, in a lot of ways, we get rewarded for it as men. So sports, you know, push your body. There's much research now around stuff like football that literally destroys men's bodies. This is what we ask of them. Destroy your body. For our entertainment, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, which many men do these days, you know, put your health last, put your job first. And doing often very dangerous jobs. The majority of jobs that people die on, they're held by men. Toxic jobs, dangerous jobs, things like that.
Host: First responders.
Jason Lange: Yeah, for first responders, you know, it's certainly changing, but traditionally, kind of war in the military would send off our male bodies, you know, almost as discardable. But the point here is there's this whole system pushing men to be out of their bodies and emotions. Now, the thing is, we can't ignore that stuff. So no matter what, no matter how hard we try, we still have emotions and our bodies are still vulnerable. And so what men start to do response to that is to try to not feel. So men in particular are really good at turning towards things outside of themselves to not have to feel what's going on inside. That might be probably the most popular one in our culture. Alcohol could be weed, which is quickly catching up. Sex, porn, food, masturbation, tv, video games. Work. Yes, work is a huge one. Guys just get totally addicted to work, ignoring their. Their body and their heart. And so I just paint the picture of all this because then you combine that with the male culture a lot of men are raised in, which, particularly around that kind of adolescent age, you know, locker room culture is, you know, you share anything inside, you get attacked for it, you get bullied for it, you're often, you know, said to be weak for it. So men start to hold everything inside. So much gets held in our body emotionally and physically, and we'll have these intense experiences and we don't know what to do with our feelings. Nobody has taught us how to connect to our bodies, how to identify what we're feeling and then what to do with that. And that causes so much pain for men. And there's, to an external extent, you know, as young guys, we have, like, a certain amount of chi in our body, and we can kind of just grind through life. Then, as you may well have experienced, and I'm certainly experiencing my mid-40s, things start to change. Our energy, we don't just have a full tank all the time. Our bodies start to catch up with us. And particularly I found our unprocessed emotional material starts to show up as physical exhaustion, autoimmune disorders, addictions. And so many men go through life being told, you have to be a lone wolf. Other men are your competition and never ask for help. Don't share any vulnerability. If you do share a vulnerability, sometimes it's because your partner, your intimate partner, has asked you, I don't feel you. I want to know what you're feeling. You know, and then we share it, and they don't know what to do with it. And then that traumatizes us. So this all leads to this idea of the importance of men's groups. Our men's groups become incredibly powerful, safe space for us men to simply become present to what's actually happening in our lives and what we're feeling about it. And so this is a place, as I often say, where we can go to. To bring our emotional experience and have it held and we can be guided into it by other men. And, you know, a lot of men's culture and men's work culture is often, you know, know, oriented towards accountability and goals, which are great, but they often miss the step of first becoming fully present to what's true for us. So it's like, oh, I need to move on with my life and get this done, and then I can't get it done. And it turns out, pro. Part of the reason why is I've never actually fully grieved what's happened. So my body is actually kind of frozen. I'll wind this down in a second here. But to kind of tie it all together, when we think about emotional experience, like I said, it starts as physical sensation in our body. And if you imagine you came across like, you know, a young boy or girl who is just wailing in agony of grief of some kind, and you came up to him and you were like, stop crying. Breathing, they actually freeze the emotion in their body. So anytime we prevent ourselves from feeling something, there's an actual musculature it gets held in our bodies in a sense. So us men get achy, back problems, all kinds of things. And there's more and more research of in particular, it gets stored in our fascia, which kind of connects our muscles to our bones. But so we start holding these different emotional experience. And if I asked you right now, like, hey, Aaron, just tense your body, right? Squeeze all your muscles. And I was like, hold this for the next 20 minutes. Like, at first it's like, I can do this. This actually takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot to just hold. And so we're expending a tremendous amount of our metabolic energy and life force on holding these emotions at bay because we have nowhere safe to feel them. No one's ever guided us through that. And so in my world, men's groups can mean a lot of things, and there's a lot of ways to use them. But one of the most profound ways I've guided men and experienced myself is helping to guide each other deeper into our actual felt body experience so we can become directly connected to what's actually inside of us. And the moment we do that and we feel safe and guided to, to feel something, whether that's rage and anger, disgust, fear, sadness and grief, that energy starts to move again. It's like it starts to let up in our system, come in waves over days, weeks or months. But it starts to move and then there's more flow and suddenly we have more life force and vitality available to actually be present for our lives in.
Host: The way we want.
Jason Lange: So groups, you know, like, just to summarize it, they're a place us men can come together and get real with each other about what we're actually feeling and experiencing in our lives.
Host: No, it's great. It's safe. It's a safe space for a man to go be vulnerable and make himself aware of who he is by going through that vulnerability. So it's great. Have you found that one is better than the other as far as live versus virtual or they're all. So they're both equally great about their pros and cons.
Jason Lange: For both, there's a certain tangible magic you can only get being in the same room. Like literally just having that physical meat space connection that is really profound for a lot of men. But I've been shocked. You know, I started this stuff before COVID like how well can work. And you know, it's not quite as maybe potent as the in lie, live in person thing, but you can get like 80% of the benefits and it's way more accessible for a far larger range of men who might live in more rural areas or different parts of the country where they, Right. This just isn't around them. Right. They don't have, they're like, I want to join a men's group, but there's nothing here. So I really am been quite amazed at how well both work. And for some men, I will also share the virtual ones can be a good gateway because some men, one of the reasons they don't trust other. They actually don't trust other men either. Sometimes because they had an extraordinarily volatile father who was not trustable or, yeah, sometimes they were betrayed or bullied by other men, you know, at moments in their lives. So for them to come into a group of men in itself is extremely vulnerable. And sometimes a virtual group is nice because you're still in like the safety of your home. And it, it doesn't quite put some men into that same fight or flight energy that they might get exposed to in person. But inevitably, most guys I work with, even if they start virtual at some point, they want to get in the room with guys and just give them a hug and just have that like, oh my God, it's so great to meet you in person.
Host: I get it. I think you put, I think you put the pros and cons well in that, you know, you, you've got availability, you've got comfort and convenience with virtual, but not quite the intimacy, which can give you a little bit of a con. But I love that, I love the way you put it. So back to some other things you were saying. You know, you described. There's a lot of defaul jobs are jobs that default to man. And I get, and this is not, we're speaking in broad, we're using broad strokes, broad terms. I am aware of that. I'm sure that Jason is aware of it as well. So I, you know, people listening, don't you don't jump on us. We get that there are women doing these jobs. We get that women, some women are capable of doing these jobs as a whole though, these are jobs that are, we'll just call them man type jobs where the body, the physical being, which we can't help it. So, you know, if, if you're into creators, you can talk to creator about it, but there are differences in men and women and body structure, strength as far as physical strength, toughness. And I don't, you know, I don't know that that's nurture. But if it is, even if it is, we've got the toughness piece. And so things like war, things like police, firefighters, EMTs, those seem to fall towards men. The. The TV show where they go fishing for. In the. What is the Baltic Sea or whatever for crabs, like, the most dangerous job in the world. Right? It's all. Almost all dudes. Of course, there's a woman that shows up, but it's almost all dudes. And. And that's. That's okay. And that's fine. And that's part of it. But what goes with that culture of those men is. And it's a big net that a lot of men get caught in, but that's dominated by what you would define, I think is the macho man. So we also hear alpha male. I. I think I'm an alpha male because I'm pretty strong in my maleness, but I'm also very secure in it. So I'm okay with being told that I'm wrong. I'm okay with being told that that's not appropriate. I'm okay with being told that that's hurting someone else, so you probably shouldn't do it, that all those things are okay with me. But I have. You know, I was being raised by a single mom while she was, you know, I'm a boomer, so she wasn't ever home. She was always working. But, yeah, I was aware that we. It's okay to. To kind of say how I feel because she was a woman, so she was. She talked about how she felt. And that's something cool about women. You know, I think guys often bitch about it. Like, they're always bitching about their feelings. Now they're unloading their shit because it's going to pile up inside us like you were just telling us about. And the, you know, the body keeps the score, just like the book tells us. It's gonna come out. It's not gonna just stay. It's gonna come out. I think you're holding your body tense as an example, is a great. A great example, you know, or thinking about yourself just holding yourself in a plank position, just something like that, where your body is forced to exert all this energy just to hold kind of what you've stuffed down. So how do you deal with taboo hurdles that go kind of with being a man? You know, you've kind of discussed it a little bit. You've gone through it, and we just talked about it with Soldier, and, you know, I've. I've had other guests on you. We're not talking about in the heat of battle, when you're in the middle of fighting a fire, if you're in the middle of a chase, you know, we're not talking about these moments. You know, if your friend and your, your, your sidekick, whoever it is, dies in, in the line of duty, right then when he died is not the time that we're going to be dealing with this. But moving forward is going to you up as a human being because you witnessed and dealt with some heavy. So you need to deal with it. So there's a sit rep situation where once we're removed from the situation to become a healthier human, we need to deal with these things, we need to discuss them, we need to get them out so that we can go, go back to, I guess back to equal instead of being in the negative or in the red. So kind of how, how do you direct men to. I know you say in a men's group, in a trusted space, but then you also say, you know, we need to hold each other accountable. Like what is that line that we to. To not be the one who's called weak or the, you know, the wuss or, you know, I'm trying to keep it clean, the weak, whatever, all these things. How do you, you know, and I'm okay, like, call me whatever you want to call me. I know when we can get to that. But when. And you know, I met another great point where a female, a partner will ask us to open up about something. And you put it well, they don't know how to deal with it or they just don't like it. And so they ridicule and you know, they use it as against you as some, you know, look, you're such a sissy. This is how you are. And so, so how do you, how do you suggest a man.
Jason Lange: We talk about healing in a sense necessarily in the heat of the moment. And you know, I've worked with a couple of vets and it is one of the most painful things I would say of, you know, it's getting a little better. But how our country just completely lets down our veterans, whether men or women, when they come back around what happened inside of them, they've been gone away from their families, seen these intense things and loss and we just kind of medicate them and say good luck. And it's, it's really upsetting. But that, you know, the image here that's often used in the trauma world, right, is you can get like a deer, whether it's almost gets hit by a car or almost gets mauled. By. First thing it'll do is get away to safety. And then once it gets away to safety, what you'll actually see animals do is they shake. Their whole nervous system shakes to release all intensity that was inside them. So once they get safe, they process the intense experience. And that's kind of what we're talking about here, is we need to have somewhere to go. Because a lot of trauma in the world they've discovered. Research around this is not so much what happens to you, it's what happens right after that. And so there are people, you know, there's these amazing stories you may be familiar with with people that were in London during the blitz in. In World War II, when they were just. They were getting bombed literally daily, underground, in the tubes, in houses, you know, things just blown up, people dying all the time. And what's so fascinating about that intense time is a. They miss it. They actually talk fondly about that time. And part of why they do is because the level of community that was formed in that moment was so potent, all the divisions of class, race, ethnicity, religion broke down, and people just had to come together to survive. And because they were coming together, there was a tremendous amount of connection, actual connection, which, lo and behold, if you look for many of the signs for trauma, many of them didn't have it. They just. They came out and they were alive and they were okay. And this two different people can go through the same experience. One of them can be deeply traumatized for life and. And another one not because of what happens right after, which tends to be, is there a safe place I can go to process this, unpack it, and be in connection with someone? And when we talk about men's groups, you've maybe heard of this guy, Dr. Gabor, mate. And he has my favorite definition I've ever heard, which is not the absence of threat or conflict, meaning we never let anything bad happen. Safety, real safety in the interpersonal sense is the presence of connection. So if you and I have a safe connection, we can actually be in conflict with each other, right? I can be like, hey, man, what you did, da, da, da. And you're like, no, what you did, da da da. But if there's connection there, it's actually really safe. Where a lot of us didn't experience safety in our family of origin was. There was no connection there. And in fact, connection was threatened to be pulled away. So the types of groups I create, they emphasize connection. Can you stay connected to each other? Literally? You're a human being. I'm A human being. My heart is open to you, your heart is open to me. No matter what you're experiencing with each other, no matter what you share. And men in particular, I think, again, are very susceptible to carrying shame. This thing that. Oh, my God, I could never tell anyone this. And they hold it in their bodies for so long. And I've worked with many men who have been completely transformed by finally bringing something forth they had been carrying inside, sometimes for decades, Aaron, decades. And having it accepted in connection. Meaning I'm still. I still want to stay connected to you. You know, I might not think that was the best thing, but. But I'm not going to being. And that is so life changing for men and most guys, the way the masculine works, whether, you know, we're a man or a woman, the masculine part of all of us grows through feedback and being constrained and then breaking through it. So feeling our limits. And so in group, we weave this beautiful kind of thread of supporting each other when we're down, but then holding each other accountable when there's something we want to move forward in life. So the phrase here that often gets used in men's work is, it's not like I call you names or call you weak, it's I call you forward. Because what we practice doing is seeing the best in each other. Or sit a man down in my group and say, hey, man, I heard about what happened with your wife, and I know you can do better than that. I know you're better than this. What can we do to figure this out so that never happens again, right? So it's actually calling the best part of the man forward. And so many of us men are actually desperately hungry for that, right? Sometimes we get lucky enough through a father or a man in our life, or particularly a coach of some kind, someone who holds us to a standard and pushes us, and it's not always pleasant, but they actually want us to become great, right? To be the most powerful, expressed version of ourselves we can be. And that's really what a men's group can do with each other. So we all get together and we help each other get really honest and clear about what we want in life, how we want to get there, where we're missing the mark, and what we need to stretch into, hold each other to that. Like, hey, man, you said you were going to have that conversation with your boss. How did it go? And if it didn't go well or it didn't happen, we don't shame the man for that. Instead we say, okay, well, what happened? Why wasn't that possible? Let's figure this out. Like, let's figure it out. Let's make a different plan and try that. And, you know, a lot of guys I work with, Aaron, I say that's as I've become a father and worked with a lot of men if I could. Kind of my idea of father energy is just very simply, well, let's figure it out together. Like, whatever. Oh, that didn't work. You failed that test. You couldn't get that thing together. You're lacking the sport. That's okay. Let's figure it out. Let's try something. Oh, that didn't work. Let's figure it out again. It's just that, like, steady presence that helps keep us moving forward. And there is such a tremendous lack of that for so many men right now that, wow, this person doesn't want anything from me other than for me to thrive. And men's groups are an incredibly potent place. We can start to create that for each other.
Host: That's awesome. And so that folks can kind of know that you're speaking their language, can you give us some symptoms of these men who have some boiling over, whatever. I'm not asking you to diagnose what the man has going wrong, but how symptoms show up in their relationships as a result of these things often coming out in an inappropriate way.
Jason Lange: When we keep repeating certain behaviors that we realize are damaging to us in our lives and we don't know why, it's like, I don't know. I don't know. Why do I keep blowing up every intimate relationship? Why do I keep turning to the bottle when my wife didn't ask me not to? That's for one. Meaning certain things keep happening that we don't feel like we have control over. Often means it's tied to some kind of emotional wounding underneath that we need to get real and process. Sometimes it comes through. You know, a lot of men. I work with a lot of men in particular, intimacy. Because what I've kind of found is for all the reasons we've talked about, you know, plus, like, stigmas against therapy and, you know, for men and all this crap we're fed, one of the only things that'll sometimes get a man's ass off the couch is when the relationship falls apart or they can't quite get the one they've been wanting, their partner leaves them. You know, I work with a lot of guys, and they're early 50s, maybe to 60s, who got married, had kids, and then the kids get out and Wife's like, this doesn't work for me. Like, I don't even know who you are. You know, for 20 years, Chip, we've just been focused on the kids and that, you know, that's really tough for a lot of men because they thought they were doing the right thing, just focusing on their job and providing. That brings a lot of men to me. A lot of men that have issues with boundaries come to me. Substance abuse come to me. You know, increasingly these days, just feeling depressed. Like, I just. I just. I don't know what to do. I don't even really want to be here. Like, I don't feel alive. That's plaguing so many men. And, you know, coming out of the pandemic, in some sense, it just intensified, like, isolation. So many men are just lonely. A lot of our traditional structures for community and connection have gone to the wayside, you know, and there's this increasing move to even working from home, which cuts out one of the other big places. A lot of men got community. And so a lot of men are hurting, they're alone, and they keep. They feel stuck in life. Maybe that's kind of the summary. It's just like the sense of, I feel stuck and I don't know how to change. I don't even know what the rule book is. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do. But my life is giving me feedback that this isn't working and I don't know where to go from here. Most men I know, contrary to a lot of preconceived notions, they are down to do their inner work once they trust it's actually going to work.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: They want to know, like, if someone could just tell me what's the path, I will show up and do it. But for many men, they don't even know that there's a path available. Right. They're just kind of left hanging out there in the world of like, hey, man, just deal with it. Toughen up. So, yeah, it's. It's all kinds of stuff that draws men to me. But, you know, if you keep having experiences over and over that you can't quite explain that in some ways harm your life or your relationships, that's a really good indicator. It's. It's maybe time.
Host: Yeah, I put. When you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, but you really. I think you touched on something a lot of guys are dealing with, and it's. It's a result or a byproduct of this Idea that we don't talk about this.
Jason Lange: So true.
Host: And when I say this, anything that's going on inside of us, anything that doesn't. Anything that is not a solution to a fiscal or physical problem, we really don't talk about. And that means that we haven't been talking to our spouses for 20 years, to your point. And then all of a sudden, they hit us with a, I don't want to be here anymore. And, you know, you're thinking, what the did I do? I've been doing the same thing for 20 years, and that's her problem. And. But we didn't know, you know, that's what I was supposed to be dealing with. So I, you know, it's really great you're dealing with this, and yet it comes out in so many different ways. And it's not just your. I think to your point, into what I. The reason I asked the question, that's the, the catalyst is often a loved one, a spouse, a child, somebody calling your ass out to say, you know, how long are you gonna lay there and be depressed? Or how, you know, you can't act like this? Or, you know, if you keep treating mom this way, she's gonna leave. Or mom saying, I'm gonna leave if you keep sitting on the couch. And, you know, like I was saying, you go to work, you get up, you go to work, you get off, you have a couple beers, you watch tv, you go to bed, you do it again. And I don't know, for some reason, I think guys can do that a lot easier. And. But in relationships, that doesn't work unless your spouse likes to work, come home, drink a couple beers, watch tv, and go to bed if that's not what they want. That ain't gonna work for forever. And it shouldn't. And she should stand up and she should say something, and you should make changes and you should do a call to action and say, how the hell can I change? If you really love this human being, maybe you don't want her in your life either. And it's a great thing anyway. But if. If you don't make changes, then things are going to continue that way. And. And I think you hit the nail on the head, feeling stuck. When we're just stuck and we don't know what the hell's going on. There's probably something internally boiling that we need to focus on. And it's so tough for guys to deal with. So is there any a tool or a process that you could give somebody that's like I'm not ready to, to call you. We'll get to calling you here in a minute. But I'm not ready necessarily to jump into a men's group. But something that a man could start to pay attention to, to realize, you know, hopefully before wife comes and says I'm done with you, or before somebody says, you can't act like this, some things that they can focus on to say, okay, I'm feeling stuck now. What are some steps or processes I can go through to see maybe what's going on?
Jason Lange: A lot of men get extraordinarily uncomfortable with the idea lowing down. So we always have something we're doing and it can be very, you know, this is what can actually surface a lot to let's say pick three hours on a Saturday afternoon, could go out on a hike, could go to a local park, find somewhere and just no devices, no audiobooks, no music, no activity, no sports. Go sit until your body mind slows down. And in our culture, our tech culture, this is, you know, the cards are stacked in a ways and a lot of men are. I don't have time to that I can't. But this is like live or die stuff to just slow down, breathe deeply and feel your body. Like just start there. Once you start there, things will start to become clearer. So that's one activity. The, the intentional practice of doing nothing, which is very challenging for a lot of men, but can reap a ton of rewards in our awareness of what, oh, this is what I want, or this is what needs to happen, or this is what's unaligned. Two other kind of quick hacks I would name that I do with men sometimes around like shadow work. Stuff I do is make a list throughout your week of where do you get overly reactive? Like just someone you know says something like where do you get triggered? Someone cuts you off in traffic, somebody speaks up at work, I have no idea. But to start to track when does your body get very reactive, noting those those are going to be often a portal to some deep work. What's triggering that? It's often some kind of historical context being mapped on to the current moment. And then last one I'll share for, for kind of guys like me, kind of more on the nice drum. It's to start to notice same thing. Do a little journaling throughout the week. Where am I feeling resentful in my life? What is it I'm resenting and why and where? Because often kind of like the metal detector for I have an unexpressed boundary or need or want that I haven't been direct and forward about. And it shows up off a passive aggressive kind of resentment we'll start to carry throughout our lives of how come my wife never does X, Y or Z? You know, she's da da, da. And the truth often is we've just never owned. Oh my God, once a week I would love for her to just make me a nice dinner and rub my feet. Like sometimes it's that simple, sometimes it's not that simple. But be three things. Doing nothing, starting a little journal about where you. Getting clear about anywhere you might be holding resentment in your life can, can all be portals into what's really going on underneath.
Host: Yeah, I love that. I'm sure you've seen it.
Jason Lange: There's a trend. I heard about that.
Host: Yeah, they're calling it Raw Dogging, which I think is a terrible name because when we were younger it meant something totally different. But yeah, where guys are turning off all their electronic devices while on a flight and that is kind of a way that they're stuck in a park, if you will. And you know, I, I love the idea of using nature because of what kind of innately comes with that. Just being there, being present in what we were made to be part of which is this environment with all these animals and trees and what's going on in the ground beneath us and you know, whatever you can find and being, being able to sit there and absorb that and unplugging, if you will. I, I love all three of them at that. That one seems to be so easy. Yeah. Quote unquote. But it's, it's damn near impossible for so many to do. And, and it's telling. We're so addicted. The marketers have done well. We won't put this, this buying machine that is a phone down. And so they've constantly got our attention. So it's worked. So if we can unplug. I really like that one because of the simplicity that goes with it. The other two are gold as well. And I think that other. That people should really heed that advice and heed the, you know, the attention that that takes because of what, how easily it points out. There's this glaring problem in your life and if you'll just slow down long enough to look at it, you'll see what it is. You can start working on it. And as soon as you start working on it, you'll start to see positive momentum and you'll start to unwind all this tense bullshit that's wrapped up in Your life, and it's really fucking your life up. And so, man, I've loved everything you've had to say. I think that we aligned before we met. And so everything you say is. It's very familiar with me, with me and to me. And I've been through a lot of it, and I continue to work every day. I'm not. I don't know that I'll ever be completely healed, but I'm so much better than I was at one time. And a lot of the practices that you are helping men with are practices I've been through. I can 100% stand behind you saying, yeah, listen to what this dude's saying, because it's exactly right. He's not wrong. And, you know, there's a lot of negative, what I consider negative charges that say they're going, they're helping men, and I think they're pushing men to that macho definition that you gave at the beginning. And I understand. And I've had people confront me to say, you know, this is the weakening of our country and men in our country. And it's, it's. It's just from an uninformed place to keep it politically correct that you would say something like that. It takes incredible strength to stop, slow down, research yourself, figure out what's going to make you a better person and be a better person, and then you're a hell of a lot stronger tool, a hell of a lot sharper sword. You're a hell of a lot better than you were before you did that. It is not a weakening. It is a strengthening. And it becomes. We become stronger, we become better. And then we're pillars for our family, for our spouse, for our partner, for our community. And then we're the badass that we always envision. Envision we'd be. We just had to go through what they quote, unquote, call a weak thing, and that was to identify ourselves. So, man, I really love everything you said. And I'm in, in the description section of this episode, I'm going to be sharing a link to your websites where listeners can book a free exploratory call with you. And I'd like for you to please tell us a little more about what that call is and anything else that you would like to share with our listeners.
Jason Lange: Life. And for me to help you get clear. Right. One of the great things about men's group is we can often guide each other deeper than we can go alone. It's the great gift of the masculine, in a sense. So my job is to just help you become clear about what's true and what you really want in life. And if there's a way I can support you in that, I'll talk to you about different ways we could work together or programs, but sometimes it's just about getting this nugget of awareness that you're like, wow, that's enough for me to work with for six weeks, six months. I didn't even know that. So we just. We talk about you. You know, I'm not here to teach you anything, per se, in a call like that, but just to give you a space to talk about what's going on in your life and be really honest about it in a way. And, yeah, I would just say, you know, I really appreciated what you were sharing there at the end that, you know, some of the ways the culture and this kind of machismo is like, well, tell me, who's more afraid? The man who is terrified of his inner world and his emotional experience, or the man who's willing to go straight towards it? And one of the most profound gifts I got stepping into men's groups was being around other men who I got to see fully on one end, let's say, in their grief, their tears, their heartbreak. Yet I could still feel, wow, this guy is fucking solid. He is here. Like, he does not feel weak to me at all right now. I feel inspired by this man's humanness or even to the other side of, wow. This is a man fully in touch with his sacred rage right now, his anger, and yet I don't feel in danger at all. I feel profoundly safe. That anger, and it was having the experience of everything I've been taught about emotions as a man, as a man is bullshit. That real men. This is one of my first podcasts. Real men feel everything. They're like an open heart. You know, in some lineages, there's this. The warrior's heart is always broken because it's open. It hurts in a sense, but it's from that sensitivity we can take great action in the world. So it's not weak to feel. In fact, getting connected in community. You're so right. It makes you stronger, more resilient. You literally get sick less and live longer. The lone wolf thing we're fed is such a lie, because just look at nature. The lone wolf is actually the one that was kicked out of the pack. And they will die sooner. They will die sooner. It's not a badge of honor. We need each other. Doesn't mean we're victims. And just only rely on each other, but you will get farther and further in life enabled to support more people around you the better supported you are as a man.
Host: I love that. Yep, so true that a strong man is one who knows everything about himself. Man. I'm sure sure glad you came on with us today, Jason. Everybody listening. We're sure glad you took the time to listen. Hopefully we added some value to your day and your time because time is so valuable to us and we so appreciate you taking your time to listen to us. I hope you have a great day and we'll see you next time.
