I spent almost two hours on this podcast diving into something I don't talk about enough: why so many men are walking through life feeling fundamentally alone, even when they're surrounded by people.
Brian and I went deep into the nervous system piece. How most of us as men were taught from a young age to override what's happening in our bodies with our heads. You fall down as a boy? Get up, you're fine. Sit still in school even when your body's screaming to move. Play it cool in the locker room even when you're terrified. Work 80 hours a week even when you're burnt out. We're literally rewarded in our culture for being disembodied, and it's killing us.
We talked about the loneliness epidemic, which is getting worse. Twenty years ago, 3% of men reported having no close friendships. A couple years ago it was already 15%. I'd bet it's over 20% now. And here's the thing that really landed for me years ago: 80% of suicide deaths in the US are men. And in Canada, 80% of men who attempted suicide had actually tried to get help the year before through doctors or therapists. Something about the system isn't supporting men the way we need.
What changed my life, and what I've now dedicated my work to, is men's groups. Not the side-by-side watching sports kind of connection, though that has its place. I'm talking about the kind where men actually put their attention on each other. Where we practice slowing down and naming what's happening inside. Where we get to feel grief without shame, anger without judgment, exhaustion without having to perform being okay.
We also got into touch, which most men are chronically malnourished around. The power of what happens when a group of men just puts their hands on another man's body and his nervous system finally gets to relax in a way it maybe never has before.
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Brian R. King, MSW: Hey there, Jason Lange. How are things out there near Denver?
Jason Lange: Things are great. So excited to be here. About two days back into my new year here in 2026. So, okay, so we won't.
Brian R. King, MSW: We won't hit the gas too hard then?
Jason Lange: No.
Brian R. King, MSW: Feel free to one question I like to start off my conversations with is when you wake up each day, what two values are you committed to living?
Jason Lange: I would say presence and generosity. So being present actually in my life, in my body, with my kids, with my wife, and generosity, meaning not waiting to give in a sense of moment of kindness with my kids, with my wife, with my clients, really with anyone.
Brian R. King, MSW: That's beautiful, man. I really resonate with that now. I've been really looking forward to our conversation because your focus is so timely in terms of a cultural issue that's happening. I don't know if it's global or if it's just our country, the U.S. but it's all about men. Men and their current struggles. Where do they fit in the world? What does it mean to be a man even? Yeah, how do guys find friends? You know? And you've decided to tackle this. So what brought this topic to you?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, my journey here is kind of really from my own journey in life in terms of what I discovered I needed to thrive. And I was raised kind of lower middle class, white guy, northwest suburbs of Chicago. So in a lot of ways I had a lot of privilege and I'll a lot going for me. The one thing I discovered as I grew up in age and particularly became a teenager, that my family just, you know, no fault their own didn't know how to give was physical and emotional connection. So I grew up pretty isolated, not knowing what I was feeling inside, not knowing how to talk to myself. Being very introverted in a sense, and really uncomfortable with touch. And so, you know, when I was a little kid, I just dealt with that. Like, you know, you just survive. As in my case, I'm heterosexual. I became, as I hit puberty, I was interested in women and I discovered I would just get totally locked up in my body. I'd get sweaty, I'd get anxious. I didn't know how to talk to them, I didn't know how to share with them. And then I met some male friends at the time and I noticed, hey, it's a little different. They wrestle each other. Like they actually make physical contact. And it was just not an impulse inside me to ever do that in all the different pain I experienced around that and the loneliness and the isolation kind of got me on a journey of inner discovery and self growth that through a winding path really led me to two things that changed my life more than anything else. Somatic therapy. So therapy that actually brought me into my body and then men's groups, so getting into deep connection with other men where we actually got to practice sharing what was happening inside of us. And so I got into my first men's group when I was about 26 and it drastically changed the course of my life. Helped me make some bold moves, take some big risks in my life. I got dating, had my first relationships and basically was doing that just for my own well being. And then I just kept talking about it as I met people. I was like, yeah, I got my guys, we meet every other week. It's so powerful. Da da da. And other men started asking me, you know, well can I come join? Can I sit in? And at that time I was living in LA and we met in the office of one of the guys in my group, he was a therapist. So it's a tiny office, we could only fit eight guys. So I tell them no, you know, we don't have any room. But that inspired me to then just go on to meetup.com and start leading meds groups out of my living room in the middle of the LA of la, which I did for a couple years. And I just quickly discovered, wow, this is such a precious thing that I have in my life that so many men don't. And seeing the impact it had on them really had me change my director trajectory of my career and everything to I want to do this. I feel so enlivened connecting men to other men and helping men get the support they need, which was what I needed when I was growing up. And turns turns out all the drivers behind why we need that as men are really just accelerating the pandemic. Covid created more isolation, more work from home. We're now in the area of era of AI and chatbots and so many forces are really driving men to feel more lonely and more isolated than ever before. And you know, back in the 90s they did a a poll of men and at that time only 3% of men reported that they had no close friendships. So just none. They did it again a couple years ago it was already up to 15% and my sense is if they did it now, it would probably be more in the 20 percentile. That it's a growing issue and that it has a massive impact on our well being as men. And I think is part of what then contributes to this pretty alarming fact that 80% of suicide deaths in the US in most developed nations are with men. Men are 80%, yeah. Three and a half to four times more likely to commit suicide than women. And another mind blowing stat I, I found out at least up in Canada, that kind of really changed a lot of my beliefs. Even as a men's coach where that of men that attempted suicide, it was something like 80% had actually tried to get some kind of support a year before they did through their doctors or mental health clinicians or something. But point of that being something about the system wasn't really supporting men in the way they need. And my conjecture is what they really need is peer connection with other men. And that when we start to have that, this part of us that feels so alone, so isolated starts to relax and we actually realize, wow, more than anyone else actually other men in my life can get it can get the reasons why I feel all this. So throwing that all together, it's kind of how I've stumbled into this passion of mine now, which is really this mission that I think every man should be in a men's group.
Brian R. King, MSW: You laid out some tremendous stepping stones there. There's a couple I really want to dive into in particular when you talk about, you know, pre Internet stuff, how men would wrestle and get physical and whatnot. And one thing, couple things that have always repelled me to male relationships is, is the trash talking.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Brian R. King, MSW: You know, the one upsmanship, the being competitive, you know, putting each other down. I got no time for any of that. So I've, I've drawn historically to women that will talk about relationships and empathy and caring and compassion. And I lead it with my heart my entire life. And it's only within, I'd say the past five years even. And this is all because of the Internet that I've been able to find some heart centered guys that have really filled my cup because I can be male and I can also be compassionate and empathetic. So when you think back to how guys touched and wrestled and whatever, is that something that you, and you might have already answered this. Is this something that you eventually accommodated or made yourself do so you could connect or was that a turn off for you?
Jason Lange: So where it stemmed from for me was not necessarily just male, it was lack of touch in my life period. So there was no physical touch for me growing up. So what I noticed was it wasn't just women, it was with men that I was both. I was uncomfortable with touch around. Now I've never been into kind of the locker room horseplay, trash talking. And that is, for a certain group of men, the kind of default mode of connection because they don't actually know how to connect deeper than that. Through specifically men's work, men's groups, this kind of more conscious orientation to connection. I have been able to bring that online. And some of the closest men in my life, I feel very comfortable embracing or just wrestling with in a fun, playful way. You know, the. The model for this, you know, just. Just kind of put it out there, is like, when dogs tussle, right? They kind of wrestle, they're playing with each other. You can tell when they're having fun. And then you can also tell when one dog goes too far and the other one goes. And they make a sound, and then they pull back. Then they pull back, right? So it's not about making each other intentionally uncomfortable. It's. It's. It's about playing with that. And there's a version of that I often do with men in groups to help them discover what it means to just make full contact with another man, sometimes wrestling. But honestly, the thing that. That then opens up is what it means to actually embrace another man, right? Most guys do the. The dude hug. Okay, I'm gonna slightly tap your back.
Brian R. King, MSW: It's the handshake and the pat on the shoulder.
Jason Lange: Keep my body as far away from your body as possible because of homophobia or whatever. And what I've discovered now doing this work for many years is most men don't even realize how badly what they're missing out of when male touch isn't part of their lives. I'm just talking some basic connection, some, okay, arm on over the shoulder or an embrace, you know, which can be a powerful thing. And it changes men, right? Particularly what I've seen is it changes for a lot of men because they don't know how to get any touch me. Ned's needs met with other men. All of that gets put on the feminine and women, which creates a lot of pressure on those relationships sometimes. And for men in particular, then sex gets involved, and it all gets wound together when the fact is we're just humans and we all need to be touched. And so, you know, there's many layers to this with men, but it is quite powerful. You know, the experience I've seen men go through when a group of men just touch them, literally put a hand on their body, and their nervous system is able to relax in a way that sometimes it's never done before in their Lives.
Brian R. King, MSW: Yeah. And if you've never been touched your entire life, I can't imagine the kind of hyper vigilance you're walking around with.
Jason Lange: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, this stuff is hormonal. We are, we are wired for connection and touch. In our particular.
Brian R. King, MSW: Oh yes, oxytocin. We need it like crazy 100%.
Jason Lange: And so a lot of men are chronically malnourished when it comes to touch needs.
Brian R. King, MSW: And is that other men? Go ahead. This, this growing loneliness that you cited earlier, do you attribute it to the not knowing how to touch and connect?
Jason Lange: I would say both of those things. So touch is a piece of it, but also connection is the other thing in that most of us men, the default way most men relate is through what I call triangulation, which means you and me, we have our attention on some third thing and the connection we feel between us comes from having our shared attention on that thing. A sports game, an activity, literally a tv, you can name it. A lot of ways men interact, they're side by side, looking or paying attention to some other thing is kind of default. And it's not to demonize that there's a time and place for those kinds of passions, hobbies, connections. But what it misses is that's very different from when our attention is on each other. And so this is an experience many men I know were, I work with have of actually, I spent all day with my buddies yesterday, but then I came home and I still felt lonely because none of them know my marriage is in shambles or I'm about to lose my job because we don't talk about that kind of stuff, even though we spent all those hours together. And that has a massive impact on men. So learning the skill and capacity to put our attention on each other and connect under the default kind of things, Philosophy, sports, talking about things is massively transformational for men. You know, I think how you put it was like a heart centered connection. And oftentimes that's part of it is being able to talk about what's happening in our lives, in our bodies, in our hearts. And that's a skill that most men aren't really trained how to do from a young age. This is where all these cultural forces are kind of conspiring together to create this loneliness epidemic for men. Because from a young age it is changing, thankfully. But from a young age, you know, there's plenty of research, studies, some anecdotal and some actual studies. Right. Of oftentimes boys and girls are parented differently. Right. A boy falls down and gets a scrape. Oh, get up. You're fine. You're tough. Keep going. You got this. Girl falls down, it's handled differently. Oh, are you okay? What are you feeling? You know, we could slow down. What that parenting does from a young age is it paradoxically, it teaches boys, whatever's happening in your body, override it with your head. And then boys get put into schools, the mainstream school system, where sit still, pay attention. If you can't sit still and pay attention, there's something wrong with you. You have ADHD or you're a bad kid. Right. And so the school system is often telling us boys, that urge to move in your body, it's wrong. Override it with your head. And that has massive consequences for us boys. Just hormonally, boys often need to move their bodies more. You know, there was another research study that one of the things that's happening is there's a education gap that's emerging between girls and boys. Right. One study I saw said showed that you could basically totally eradicate that with two things. Hold boys back a year because they emotionally mature a little later and start the school day with 60 to 90 minutes of vigorous physical activity. Once boys have moved, no problem being still. But they need.
Brian R. King, MSW: Who did this research?
Jason Lange: I'd have to look it up. I don't have it memorized, but I can find it for you.
Brian R. King, MSW: Lately, some of the best studies I see are done elsewhere. They're not done in the States. Yeah.
Jason Lange: But these days, who knows? But. But so again, this all starts to conspire together. Then boys hit adolescence, where this kind of default, competitive locker room bodies are developing at different ages. Things starts to emerge where we quickly learn to be part of the group. I need to keep my cool. I can't show vulnerability. I can't show weakness. I have to fit in. Otherwise, all that locker room talk, all the bullying, all the ostracization that many boys do experience at the hands of other boys comes in. But again, that message, right, Is whatever's happening inside of you, lock it down, override it with your head, play it cool. Then we get out into the workforce, and in our hyper kind of individualistic, capitalist culture, what are we rewarded for? Oh, my God, he's such a hard worker. He sleeps under his desk. He works 80 hours a week.
Brian R. King, MSW: No matter what he's actually doing, you know?
Jason Lange: Yeah. He goes to work sick. Whatever's happening in his body, override it. So we are actually taught and rewarded in our culture as men for being disembodied. And that has massive downstream consequences to how we connect, how we relate, how safe we feel in our bodies, our ability to process things emotionally and deal with discomfort. We. Which when we're not taught the tools for what are you feeling inside and how do you work with that and express that and share that? What most men then default to is, oh, I'm going to reach for something outside of me to change my state when I'm not feeling well. Porn, booze, weed, tv, sex, overworking. I mean, you can kind of name your, your vice at this point, but that's where a lot of men fall prey to these things. Things when what they're really trying to deal with is emotional dysregulation. And no one's just ever taught them how to talk about, oh, actually, I'm really sad or scared. And the moment we start to work with that, the urge to use a lot of these things, you know, decreases in some potent ways.
Brian R. King, MSW: You really have a beautifully comprehensive grasp of this topic. That's, that's exciting. Question. Let's go back and talk to the dads.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Brian R. King, MSW: The dads who are now raising their sons. What do you say to them in terms of what beliefs, values, worldview? What would you say that they are best? I say this. What do they need to get for themselves in my toolbox in order to be more effective dads?
Jason Lange: Yeah, sure. The number one thing I think for a dad to become aware of is what is the state of my nervous system? Am I burnt out, stressed, tired, dissociated, angry, whatever that might be. Right. A lot of dads fall prey to this kind of older belief. That's starting to change that.
Brian R. King, MSW: Okay.
Jason Lange: My number one job is to be a financial provider. And as long as I'm doing that, I'm doing my role. But turns out, no. Oftentimes what then happens is dad is off working all the time. He's not present in the home. When he is home, he's stressed out because he hasn't actually taken care of himself and he's not really present with his kids, and he often doesn't know how to handle his own emotions. So one of the first things I say to dads is the best thing you can do for your kids is to take responsibility for the state of your nervous system and your pain. So to model for them that part of what being, what it means to be a mature man right now is that we all need help taking care of ourselves. So just like we go to the gym to work out our bodies, guess what? We need to Go to therapy. We need to go to coaching. We need to get into community to take care of our emotional body and our mental health as well.
Brian R. King, MSW: And I want to highlight the therapy piece for a little bit because that is something that can be a lifetime's work. It isn't necessarily a stepping stone on your way to a men's group. No, it's something that you get in it. And it is the ultimately, the most generous thing you can do for yourself.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Brian R. King, MSW: Is to get into a safe place where you can unpack that and realize, like you've been so beautifully illustrating is where are the gaps and what you need that you didn't get, and how do you now go about getting them? Now, I don't know if there are any men's groups in my area, but you said you do them online, so that problem is pretty much solved. But in general, if somebody is really reluctant to get into a men's group, they have assumptions about it. You know, I'm not going to feel safe. I don't like being vulnerable. I don't like asking for help from people. What do you say to those men?
Jason Lange: Well, if it's a father, I'd say, if you're not willing to do it for yourself, do it for your kids.
Brian R. King, MSW: Kind of hard to say no to that.
Jason Lange: Like you. Your nervous system will change. And what you're teaching them is a powerful right. Kids are like sponges. We can teach in the old didactic sense of kid. You got to learn this lesson. Here's what I've learned. The best teaching you can have as a father is your nervous system. In life, what are you embodying? I get help. I take care of myself. I know how to set boundaries. I get enough sleep. I eat healthily. I have connection in my life for when I can't hold it together. Sometimes I don't know what to do. And guess what? I can ask for help. I'm not perfect. It's okay to not be perfect. That's part of being human. That's part of being a man. It's growing. It's identifying our weaknesses and strengthening them so we can be more present for the people we care about the most in our lives. So I would say that to the fathers and then to the, you know, to non fathers, I would say, I mean, if just nothing else, you're going to get more of what you want. I've just. I've been in it for so long right now. And when men get into these potent groups, their physical health goes up. Mental health goes up, emotional health goes up. That often do better financially. Their relationships get better, their relationships with their kids get better. Because part of what a men's group can teach us to do is build that emotional toolkit most of us weren't given as men. So, right. In, in the kind of therapy world we call this interoception, right. Most people, proprioception, aware of all the
Brian R. King, MSW: little feelings and twitches and stuff inside
Jason Lange: your body, being aware of what's happening inside of us. And then I would mirror that with or add to that, being able to express it. Then like most men are very underdeveloped in that. And again, particularly if you got kids that are young, guess what? How do kids learn what they're feeling inside? They learn that when an attuned caregiver mirrors it to them so they can start to relate the sensation they have in their body with what that feeling, emotion or state is. That was something.
Brian R. King, MSW: Go a little bit more into attunement. That's a really important thing to understand.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So really it's this capacity attunement just means I'm going to slow down and my nervous system is going to feel into your nervous system so I can get a sense of what you're feeling, what's alive for you right now. Right. I'm going to get curious about you. What's great about being calm and present,
Brian R. King, MSW: like you said at the beginning, right?
Jason Lange: Yeah, being calm and present. And I mean, again, this is, you know, more and more what I consider is one of the fundamental things we should be teaching our children. Right. So I didn't get this. I, I didn't get emotional mirroring. So again, when I got into my 20s and well into my 30s, someone would ask me, including therapists, how are you doing? How are you feeling? My vocabulary for emotional expression was basically good, fine, okay, bad. That's about all I knew how to say.
Brian R. King, MSW: Yeah, you've got a great point there. That's all that was modeled. Those are your options, Right.
Jason Lange: I didn't know. Now I can. I have far more vocabulary, far more nuance, far more attunement to my own body. But as kids in particular, how we learn what's going on inside of us is when someone else mirrors it for us. So, right. I got a six year old and I got a one year old. My one year old in particular. Is that that age right now? Right. Where he sees something and he wants it and it's not safe for him to grab that. The scissors.
Brian R. King, MSW: I've got, I've got Three adult boys with autism, and one of them has a credit card. So that impulsivity is alive and well even when they're adults. I'll tell you that.
Jason Lange: Yeah. But let's say he wants to grab the scissors and I have to set a limit. I have to set a boundary. It's not safe for you to do that. No, we can't have that. That's not safe. And he gets frustrated, right? He starts screaming. He gets mad. He doesn't know what that feeling is until I get down on my knees and look him in the eyes and say, you're really mad right now, huh? You're angry that daddy said no to you and that you can't have the scissors because you want the scissors.
Brian R. King, MSW: You.
Jason Lange: You're mad, right? That is how he starts to associate. Oh, my God. This fiery energy I have in my body, that's anger. That's frustration. Ah, I'm feeling frustrated. Yeah. I am mad. Right. And it starts to connect the dots. So he then has a relationship with that sensation inside of him. Most, I think a lot of men in particular, we just don't get that training, right. We don't get people slowing down with us. I didn't get it. Most men I work with do have. Not got it. You know, there's occasionally something that did. But again, a men's group is a place where we get to start building that capacity. Because one of the great gifts of a good group is actually slowing men down and helping them connect to their direct felt body experience. What are you feeling right now? I hear you talking about da, da, da, da, da, da. But what are you actually feeling in your body? And you'll often see it, right? A man slows down, and then it's like his chest caves in a little bit. And the actual grief or the exhaustion in the moment he finally makes contact with it. And he might start to cry or grieve or, you know, there's so many different ways this could go, but he starts to actually connect to what's happening inside.
Brian R. King, MSW: As a member of the ugly cry club, I am a fan of getting on the other side.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Brian R. King, MSW: Letting yourself have that. That time, whatever it is, who let it all out. Because the other side is worth it. Even though the process might 100 might suck.
Jason Lange: Yeah. Yeah. Grief is one example that many men are afraid of, right? Because they were. They were shamed for it. They were never taught how to feel it. They were certainly taught not to feel it in front of other men. But once we learn to work with it, it's like, oh, okay. That doesn't have to run my life anymore. When I'm sad, I can be sad. It's fine.
Brian R. King, MSW: Feel unsafe and helpless when you have a lot of shame around crying. But from what you're describing, once you're in the group of other supportive people and males, there's that unique strength that you feel like. One thing I was going to say earlier, I've recently become acquainted with a guy, and we become better friends. And when I hug the guy, it feels like I'm being bear hugged, not because he squeezes me tight, but because there's a sense of protection that I feel that I don't necessarily get with the woman. No offense, but it's. It's a different kind of safe.
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally.
Brian R. King, MSW: Right.
Jason Lange: A lot of the work I. I do with men, we talk about the different textures of masculine love and feminine love, and they're both needed. One's not better than the other, but it's like a different texture. It's a different flavor, and it hits.
Brian R. King, MSW: Do you have specific examples of that, or is it more subjective?
Jason Lange: I. I mean, it's pretty subjective, but, you know, one experience I see often with men is the type of love that. Right. So he's super popular these days, Terry Real, who's a really famous marriage and family therapist. He calls it. He's a great term for this. He calls it carefrontation. It's the type of care. I call this the spinach in the teeth moment. Hey, do you you aware you got spinach in your teeth right now? And I'm like, what? Huh? Oh, my God. I do. Oh, I feel so embarrassed. And then I go back through my day, and I'm like, why didn't anyone else tell me that? And then I look at you and I'm like, thank you for telling me. I've been walking around with spinach in my teeth all. All day. You are willing to be honest and direct with me, make me a little bit uncomfortable, but from a place of care. And that's one of the unique things in masculine love, which is when we start to know another man. It's not shaming a man. It's, hey, I know who you are, and I see where you're in pain or where things aren't going well. Man, I know this isn't what you want to be doing. Like, come on, it's time to have that talk with your wife or with your kid or with your driver. Right? There's a type of confrontation that's coming from care. It's not coming from wanting to cut you down, but it's wanting to come from actually building you up. And so many men I work with, they don't even realize how much they are craving that kind of love in their lives till they feel it. Wait, you mean you're actually paying attention to me and care enough about me to interrupt me and show me maybe where I'm off track from the life I want to be living? Right. It's a type of guidance. It's one of the gifts, kind of of masculine love. It's. It's speaking to kind of our highest self of, hey man, I see you're here, but I know you want to be here and I know you and I know you can be here. Right. Be this more loving presence for your kids or your wife or your co workers or whatever that. Or even yourself. And that interruption, that carefrontation is one example of this kind of masculine texture of love, as is the other one, which is really unique, I think, for the masculine, which is presence without any need. Right. I don't need you to be anything.
Brian R. King, MSW: I'm just being with you right now.
Jason Lange: I am just here with you. And that is revolutionary for some men
Brian R. King, MSW: when they start, especially in a culture of competition, 100%.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And that I've seen that change men so drastically. Right. Of just. Yeah, man, I don't. I. I have. There's nothing you have to do or be right now. There's no burden on your being. You get to just be exactly who you are. And that's a unique thing that doesn't exclusively happen in men's groups, but it can really happen in a really unique way there. Because so many men, some of its cultural, some of it's internal, walk through life feeling all of this burden about who they need to be for their family, for their co workers, for their community, for their church, whatever that, you know, whatever the story they concoct and they walk into a men's group and everyone's just like, hey man, you. You feel like crap today, that's okay. Just feel like crap. And they're like, what? I can just do that? And then their nervous system just downshift,
Brian R. King, MSW: telling somebody, hey man, you don't have to do anything, just be yourself. Some people in the panic because they don't know what that looks like.
Jason Lange: Yeah, exactly.
Brian R. King, MSW: I've been people pleasing my entire life. What do you mean be myself with. That in itself opens the door to opportunity.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And again, it just, it soothes the masculine heart. I have seen
Brian R. King, MSW: when you were Talking earlier about calming a man down, it sounded like you were talking about getting fight or flight, teaching them how to get out of that hyper vigilance and just
Jason Lange: most men how to rep most humans. Most humans these days, not even men, but. Right. We live in this incredibly intense culture and society and technology right now where there's more information than ever. Right. Literally just pouring in.
Brian R. King, MSW: We can shut it up. You have permission to shut it off.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And most men in particular get stuck in one or two states. So if you. If you've ever heard the term polyvagal theory, it's basically just kind of what are the basic states of our nervous system? Right? And most people have heard of fight or flight or freeze. Fawn is. Is another big one they talk about these days. But kind of fight or flight is basically we get stuck in sympathetic activation. Oh, God. I'm on alert. I'm vigilant. I have to take some action. I have to do something. Right? Go, go, go, go. Work, work, work, work. Check the email. Go, go. Boom, boom. Oh, more, more, more. Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine. Right. There's this. It's like we get stuck in fifth gear, and men will literally burn themselves out. And when they get burnt out, what will often happen is their body will actually crash them into dorsal vagal shutdown in a parasympathetic state where we just get knocked off online offline. It's like we go comatose. We just shut down. Could be sickness, could be illness, could just be numbness, and we just want to veg out. I don't want to do anything. Right. I can barely. I just. I'm here, right. And so guys get knocked down there and guys will knock themselves down there.
Brian R. King, MSW: So what you're saying, it's either full speed or full stop.
Jason Lange: Oftentimes we get stuck and it's like a very rocky. It's like if you've ever driven a manual car and you don't know how to shift smoothly, it's like you go from fifth gear and you try to go all the way down to first gear, and the whole car just stops.
Brian R. King, MSW: That's not a good idea, right?
Jason Lange: Yeah, you can't quite do it. So what connection men's groups in particular, One manifestation of this do is they actually bring us to the middle state, which is called ventral vagal. Right. It's basically this state in our nervous system where we're both relaxed and alert. And the main thing about it is we're socially connected. It requires eye contact face to face connection Sometimes touch certain types of sound and it actually relaxes. You can. You can put people in brain scan machines and you see what it does to the nervous system. Ah, right, I'm here. And most people find their ways to this sometimes and they don't know what's happening. But it's like, I'm having an amazing day, think things are going great, I'm not stuck in overdrive and I'm not crashing. So men's group can help bring guys into that more relational, connected state where they can get rest and digest, they can start to heal, and they're connected. They're not shutting down, but they're also not performing and posturing and going, which is where so many men end up hurting themselves. So a men's group, you know, we were talking about this thing. What can. What can fathers do?
Brian R. King, MSW: We.
Jason Lange: One of the biggest things you can do is take responsibility for the state of your nervous system. What is the state of your nervous system? Are you actually present and available for connection or are you wound up ruminating, exhausted, stressed, crashed out, sleeping on the couch? You know, whatever and whatever it takes for you to get to that more socially activated, relaxed, alert, present grounded state. That is the greatest gift you can give to your spouse, your kids, your family, etc. And a men's group is one of the biggest tools I found for where we can do that.
Brian R. King, MSW: I'm so glad we've had this conversation, Jason, because you have eloquently spelled out, hey, guys, this is what we weren't given our entire lives and we didn't even know we needed it.
Jason Lange: Exactly.
Brian R. King, MSW: But now that we figured it out, here's how you can go about filling in those blind spots so you can actually be a complete version of yourself. Yeah.
Jason Lange: Some of the deepest work I do with men are in these specific kind of somatic and shadow work men's groups. And when this starts to happen for them and they start to feel that connection and presence with other guys and, you know, sometimes guys are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and they look back at their life and realize I've basically been surviving with one hand behind my back. Like there was this whole fuel source and state of being I didn't even know was possible for me. I didn't even know I was missing. Now that I have it, I'm like, wow, this becomes a priority because when I'm fueled in this way, everything else gets easier.
Brian R. King, MSW: Right?
Jason Lange: That's the whole idea. Our work life, our health, our relationships, they improve when our nervous system is regulated and when we're grounded, particularly as men and when we're connected.
Brian R. King, MSW: Beautiful. You sent me some links that I'm going to make sure are included in this because. And I'm to go look at it, you know, and that's. That's just not pitching for you. That's honest because you've spoken to a lot of stuff that I. I'm reflecting upon now. So I want to look at it and I want to encourage any man that comes across this to at least take a look. And if you think you're not ready now, perhaps you will be, because this just sounds like a tremendous gift to other men. And I want to thank you for doing this work and I want to thank you especially for allowing me to talk with you and get this message and this opportunity out to a great many more people. So thank you. Thank you again, Jason, and I hope we talk again in the future.
Jason Lange: Absolutely. Thank you for helping me create a space to get the word out. Deeply appreciated. You're very welcome.
