Shadow Work for Nice Guys (with Luke Adler)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everyone. Super pumped to once again be joined by Dr. Luke Adler, my co facilitate for the Heart of Shadow program. And we have a pretty juicy and very exciting topic today that I think is going to land for a lot of you guys. And it's basically around shadow work for nice guys. So these are two areas I do a lot of work in as I've trained with Dr. Glover and work with a lot of men around relationship issues with nice guys. And in the end have discovered shadow work is really one of the keys for unwinding so called Nice Guy syndrome. And I think it's something both of us in our work with men have seen really showing up over the last years. And there's some reasons we can even talk about that I think at more of a meta and goal cultural level. But the idea that, you know, a lot of guys are coming to us wanting to get over Nice Guy syndrome and feeling the consequences of having moved through their life kind of embodying these nice guy traits, whether that's, you know, decades for some guys or even just kind of more recent discoveries, it's the real deal. And there is, this is the good news, there's a pathway out. And that pathway I think we have seen is most effectively walked by going right to the heart of it, so to speak, and facing our shadow head on.

Luke Adler: There's six nervous system responses that we all have, and they're reflexes, they're not things that we do consciously. They're ruled by the reptilian brain, the brain stem, the amygdala. They're connected to our innate sense of survival. And thank God that we have them because without them, our species, of course would have been obliterated many, many millions of years ago, likely. And fortunately we have this ability just to survive, just to hang on. And so what's strange about this idea of Nice Guy syndrome is we don't necessarily think of it as a survival response. We just think of it as, you know, maybe we kind of adapt to make things work better. We had instability growing up and so we were kind of caregiving for a parent or, you know, walking on eggshells. So we learned to be quiet, we learned to be kind, we learned to be nice. But prior to Even the behavior of being a nice guy or being a people pleaser or fawning is that fundamental survival reflex. So the six nervous systems will start out with the two primary ones, which most people know is fight and flight. And so, you know, in science, we talk about that as the sympathetic nervous system response is just. It's just a reaction, a reflex. But there are derivations on those two. So we have fight, flight, and freeze, which you can see, like, oh, freeze, flight, fight. All those have something to do with fear. And then from freeze, we have this variation of please. So the pleaser, the nice guy. And then we have another kind of version of fight, which we could call freak out, which is you don't necessarily fight, but you just freak out. And you're just running around like, oh, my God, I don't know what's happening. And you're kerflummixed and you're befuddled by life. And so there's just a sense of total disorientation. So you have fight, flight, freeze, please, freak out. And then the one that, you know, Jason, you and I talk about, but we don't necessarily talk about it as nervous system response is. And so that's. That's kind of that whole kind of porn level that we get into as men. We're like, oh, my God, I need to jerk off. This pain, this fear. I need to get away from my pain. So I'm gonna use that fuck reflex. And. And again, they're all related to survival. The pleasing, the fawning, the nice guy. Gosh, my first experience of this was kindergarten is burned in my brain. Kindergarten. There was a bigger kid in the playground, and he came over me and he was confrontive, and it was a reflex. I just stuck my hand right in between us, like a handshake gesture and said, will you be my friend? And he said, yes. And that was my winning formula. I was like, from that moment on, friendliness. Friendliness, right, was how I was going to get through life. And I was voted at the end of that year, the most congenial kindergartner. And it was like I didn't even know what congenial meant. I was like, okay, cool. But, you know, of course it means friendly. And that response is so ingrained in me to be friendly, to be kind, to be nice, that it doesn't occur to me, like I'm coming from a place of reactivity or fear or distress. But as I slow down that response, I can feel in my body, oh, I'm. I'm afraid Right now. And again, there's nothing wrong or bad about being afraid. It just becomes, I wouldn't say inauthentic, but it becomes less useful when I'm unconscious, that I'm just responding because I'm actually afraid of something right now. And the missed opportunity is that I'm actually not letting that fear inform what I really need to address in this relationship. I'm just reflexively so quick to want things to be peaceful and calm that that friendly guy, the congenial guy, the nice guy, has taken control. And of course that might lead in lots of my relationships to dynamics and agreements that aren't equitable, don't have an even exchange, that don't feel good in my life. And I've had to do it ton of work around that. But fundamentally how it exists in my mind body when the nice guy, the pleaser, the fawner takes over is that I'm. I'm afraid of something. And it doesn't mean I don't get to be a nice guy. I can still be nice and kind, but my work is where, where's this coming from? But where is this? What is the origin of this behavior?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think that's such a beautiful pointing to the depths of nice guy syndrome, which, right, like you said, is really fear based. And the primary fear that, you know, I've experienced now I've seen in so many men I work with, and you know, Dr. Glover would be right in line with this as well, is it's fear of losing connection and attachment. Right. The fear is if I am fully my authentic self, that will come at the cost of some kind of relationship and safety. And so what I'm going to do is always prioritize connection and attachment with other people and often at the expense of my own authenticity and truth. And the problem with that, what that ends up creating for so many of us nice guys, is we have tremendous issue with boundaries and conflict in building up, particularly over time, a shit ton of resentment and anger about our relationships because we're not bringing things forward in a direct manner because there's fear behind what would happen when I do. And you know, some guys I've told this story to, but man, I was like so conflict avoidant when I was young. I just did not have it modeled for me. I did not have access to that. I remember it was like a year or two after I graduated college. I was living in this little apartment with a buddy in, in Santa Cruz. And you know, I would work nights, so I was free days. I Think. I think I guess we had a phone. I don't remember. I don't even remember if there were cell phones yet at that time for me. But I was. I got a call and it was a fucking telemarketer selling. It's like this thing where they'd sell like bundles of magazines or some shit back then. And I was on the phone with this guy for 55 minutes and was so collapsed, I couldn't get him off the phone and I couldn't say no. And I was like stuck. I was frozen right in my sense. I couldn't even get into fight or any of that. I was like in a freeze state of just something as simple as click, I'm done. But he just kept kind of pushing and I kind of kept going along. I honestly don't remember if I gave him a credit card number or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't at that time and like, fell for the. The hook or swindle or something. But it was me just being afraid of voicing my truth, which was, get the fuck away from me. You know, I don't want this. I just did not have access to that in my nervous system at the time. And that was something. As a nice guy, one of the big places this showed up with me, I mean, even to the first time you and I met, we were on retreat somewhere and I'm like in fucking Hawaii doing all this deep shadow work. I was working. I had some pretty intense website clients. And I remember fucking pulling out my laptop on a break to handle some kind of crisis. And the man we were working with kind of looking at me like, what the fuck? What are you doing? But I just had no capacity to set boundaries and work and be like, no, I'm not available right now. That fire I cannot handle. And that's been one of my great pieces of shadow work over the last years, is just no taking space for myself, saying no to things, creating actual boundary in my life around my level of availability. But this is the kind of key thing is, you know, wherever it starts as a nice guy, there's some experience, as there often is in the kind of shadow work we do where we as men start to internalize that being ourselves isn't enough, right? And so there's some kind of way we have to be to win approval from others. And often that is some kind of agreeableness. And sometimes it's pretty extreme, like in your case, where it's. It's actually like a survival mechanism. And so this you know, one thing I want to be super clear about is we're not here to shame you. As a nice guy, I've got nice guy tendencies. A lot of us do. Oftentimes they are formed from necessary adaptations to surviving in our life. But like, all of those adaptations we often talk about, they end up not being the healthiest and most effective for when we're outside of those initial circumstances. But our body mind, our. Our habit, our psycho spiritual habit, doesn't know the difference. And so we're constantly kind of putting other people first, trying to make them happy. I mean, nice guy syndrome, in a lot of ways, you know, it is the root of this poison pill phrase we hear. Happy wife equals happy life, right? How many guys do we get coming to us that that is not the case? When you just continually acquiesce and say yes to whatever she needs, it actually erodes trust pretty quickly. And this kind of stuff shows up everywhere. And it is driven by sometimes, once we've read no More Mr. Nice Guy, okay, I can kind of see it, but for a lot of guys, it starts in the shadow, right? In terms of, okay, I've named even like, I do this, I do this syndrome. But why. Why am I taking these actions? And that's part of what you and I are pretty passionate about is going deep and really going under the hood to where did these nervous system adaptations start?

Luke Adler: And.

Jason Lange: And how do. What do we actually do about that? So we're not just, you know, shifting deck chairs on the Titanic, but, like, how do we really handle this? At the root?

Luke Adler: To.

Jason Lange: Really bring that forward? And then just final thing is, you know, this kind of shadow work for nice guys is. It is the path to authenticity because it starts, paradoxically, with us getting real with ourselves about what we're actually feeling. So it's very hard to be authentic with someone else if we aren't even being real with ourselves. Which might be something as simple as, I'm really scared. Yeah, I'm scared. I'm scared to tell my boss I can't work Friday because I'm afraid I'll fire me or, you know, whatever that is.

Luke Adler: But.

Jason Lange: But as we practice the shadow work and come into contact with that fear, guess what? That's you becoming authentic because you're actually feeling what's happening in your nervous system. And that completely transforms, becomes the first steps to changing the way we then show up in relationship.

Luke Adler: The real breakthrough thing that Jason and I discovered, you know, we've Been doing men's work for 20 years. But when we started Heart of Shadows some four years ago, four years ago, and started working together eight years ago in a men's group, we discovered this kind of missing ingredient in work. And what's difficult about what you're probably hearing right now is like, okay, I got it. I feel the origin of the nice guy of the pleaser is that I'm afraid. So if I feel my fear and I speak it and I'm authentic about it, that will lead to a more kind of vital, authentic, connective life. And it's like, yes, in theory, that is correct, but the how to is another matter. And so Jason and I are talking about shadow work. And the breakthrough which I'm getting to is the reason why we became this way, right? The reason why we, we, we settled our nervous system in the nice guy lane of the six nervous systems is because it was likely modeled for us or a healthier way was not modeled for us by mom or dad, but in particular likely dad, likely the male figure either wasn't there, was checked out himself, was a nice guy or some derivative of that combination. So the how to around this is what we want to highlight here. Shadow work is the method for sure. And shadow work is transformational work. So it's not technique based. It's about holding a vibratory lit space of love and care for you to feel things that you've never had the freedom or safety to feel. But there's one other thing that's required and that's the consistent presence of the loving masculine or the compassionate masculine presence. And you know, Jason and I didn't intend to discover this. We just did. It came through our innate longing to offer deep work for men. And that's the consistency of quality masculine presence over time. And in Heart of Shadow, that's what we offer is we offer this nine week experience where men get initiated into the culture of depth and care and authenticity with other men. And I'm being explicit about men and masculinity because when you start to experience the love and care of men over time, something that was missing in most of our nervous systems begins to be filled in. We feel that there's space for us to feel things that we were never allowed to feel. Mainly that it's okay to be afraid. In this case, it's okay to not know. It's okay to go through the typical archetypes that we were taught. We had to be, to be impervious to weakness, to always seem competent, to always, you know have an answer, to persist and to never show weakness. And so that. That masculine presence over time is designed in our heart of shadow program. We have nine weeks where the men bond. You have this incredible retreat. And then our intent is that the group continues independent of Jason and I, that the. That the 10 men that come together, they choose, should they want to, to continue the experience and to deepen the experience of care and. And collegiality and brotherhood over time. And it's so beautiful. We've had five cohorts move. Move through this program, and all five are together in some variation. And, you know, the, the. The. The formula works in a certain sense. And the cool thing about a formula is you take 10 things, you put them together, and they become one thing. They become one presence. And of course, Jason and I have our own men's group. Jason's part of some other groups, and I'm part of some other groups. But this, this. What's difficult to name here is as men who didn't have. Weren't brought up with this consistent depth, holistic experience of masculinity. And there's just. I've rarely met a man who has had that. I can maybe think of a couple that had dads that were really present, really there, and really authentic. There's this medicine that starts to come into the mind, body where we get to drop the nice guy. We get to discover who we really are, and this whole new world arises through us that feels so freeing and relaxing and becomes the basis and foundation for all other pursuits in our life, whether they're spiritual or economic or romantic or philanthropic. And the how to the remedy here, the healing, in my view, is really shadow work or which really is depth, very deep work that just goes deeper and deeper and deeper around connection, authenticity, and freeing up of your vitality and the consistent presence of masculine care over time. And that's what we're here to offer.

Jason Lange: Yeah, just. I kind of want to tie together a few things you just said there in that these are generalizations, so it doesn't always show up this way. But that, that absence of masculine presence in love, I think is so key because what I've seen for a lot of nice guys is they don't necessarily trust the masculine, both in other men and then often in themselves. And when dad's not kind of there, in a sense, to provide the loving version of masculine energy, it puts extra pressure on the connection with Mom. Right. And so a lot of nice guys in particular will have sometimes these kind of slightly more codependent relationships with mom, mom and her well being where we learn to adapt to keep her nervous system happy. And on the other side of that, right. So maybe dad himself was just passive, wasn't connected in the ways he needed to be. So we didn't have that model of the passive. The other thing you said with the counter phobic, right. I think shows up with a lot of nice guys too. Of oh, actually dad was the aggressive. He did hurt me, literally hit me or hurt mom or was abusive emotionally or physically or you know, the very many ways that shows up. And so the pendulum totally swings to I never want to be that way. And this is another kind of origin story we see of a lot of nice guys is the kind of baby in the bathwater then of seeing that damage that that aggressive masculine caused or sometimes it comes from the feminine too. But like aggression, what that causes, I'm just going to disconnect from all of that because I never want to be responsible for that in terms of bringing it to another. And you know, some of the deep work we do do with men is learning to differentiate between what is aggression, what is healthy angry anger, what is healthy boundary and being able to reclaim that is incredibly important. And it's really one of the main mechanisms of shadow work for nice guys. Which you know, you might be like, well what does that actually mean? And what it really is is it's stretching and practicing bringing energy into our nervous system, right? So that, that might be anger, that might be. No, that might be contacting our power. That might be really allowing ourselves to let the fear in. Like you said, that's been running the show of, right. I was just at retreat with a man this weekend and witnessing him do some deep work where he started, he went into his fear and breath, right? Was really fast, really shallow, body kind of almost shaking and him learning to be with the fear. It wasn't about getting rid of it. But suddenly his breath starts to slow down, finding his center in the fear which then actually becomes a tool to help navigate life in a sense. It's not, it's not something you have to live without, but holding that, building that capacity in his nervous system, quite literally stretching, okay, I'm stretching my nervous system to hold healthy anger. I'm stretching my nervous system to hold fear. I'm stretching my nervous system to be okay with the part of me that wants to fuck, right? That actually has desire. And I'm stretching my nervous system for how to keep a soft front while being in conflict and not backing down right. Something you and I have both had to practice in our own ways. And then just last one, in terms of kind of this longer term thing you were talking about, about the power of how we set it up to be a group, a collective that becomes an engine for you to metabolize your life, even well beyond the program, is you get to practice authenticity and conflict in the group, particularly over time. And that is the musculature. By doing it in the group, you're developing the capacities to, you need to be able to do it outside of the group. This is the safe dojo we kind of talk about of in group with agreements and deep love and connection. It's actually okay to go a little far or be a little sloppy. And sometimes we actually create that opportunity for men of, you don't know what your perfect no is sometimes, unless you've gone a little too big the other way. But then, ah, there it is. Now I know what that feels like in my nervous system or I've been so in my Nice Guy unexpressing for all these years and holding all these resentments. When I first open that door, it's like a tidal wave of messy, not clear language, kind of aggressive. The group can hold you through that, right? They're going to have boundaries around it, but there's space for you to find your way through that initial kind of sloppiness to, hey, now I know how to express my truth without dishonoring you because I've had practice and you've given me feedback. And guess what? The way I was doing it in group was almost certainly the way I was doing it in life. So getting the feedback here in group is the feedback I need to bring it to life. So you can consider the really unique group shadow work framework that we've created here is this is how you get out of the Nice Guy syndrome. This is the pathway out. Because it takes training your nervous system to have some different choices from those initial six responses that you were talking about of, ah, okay, I don't have to unconsciously drop into those now. Now I have men to help get me centered. I have an engine to help me process my fears or angers or whatever that might be so I can come into the world with so much more authenticity and truth. And guess what the great thing about that is that quickly helps you shake out who you really want in life and who you don't. Authenticity is one of the most powerful ways to develop deeper, real relationships. Another thing, you know, a lot of nice guys come into us are kind of desperate for. Because when you have the plastic smile all the time, it's not real. They don't actually know you. They don't actually see you. So many nice guys, you know, Last thing is, they have lots of friends or lots of relationships, but they often feel very alone because they're not showing up with their real self in authenticity. And that means, guess what? The real you can't be seen. And that's lonely. And what we've seen in the heart of shadow time and time again now is bringing that authenticity forward through all those crunchy or scary parts of our nervous system that creates the real connection. And as we've also talked about, when we start to get that real connection in our group, we less tolerate the bullshit connection out in the world and we less feel the need to fill our life with the fake ones. And instead, it's like, I don't give a shit what you think about me, because you don't owe me, because I'm not showing myself to you. And that's a choice I make, right? You're so and so or whatever. But these guys, they know me. They see me. I trust their feedback. I trust that they. When they tell me something, I listen. And with their love and approval, I can go out and, you know, in a way, cause a ruckus in the world and do the things I really want to do and not have to be so nice and instead be more in that kind place of, hey, here's who I am, here's what I want, here's what I see, right? Just very straightforward. And that does turn some people off. But those people aren't your people. That's the thing, right? It's going to call in the right people, which we've just seen through the heart of shadow time and time again, that you have to do. And, you know, again, I just. There's no hack for this, right? You can't think your way into having a more muscular body. You gotta actually get in there and train your nervous system. And the best way to train and overcome the debilitating fear that powers so many nice guys or the complete aversion to anger is to actually get into your body and do the shadow work in person and have people lovingly hold space for you to quite honestly go somewhere and feel something in your body you've never felt before.

Luke Adler: The other thing I want to offer men out there is that, you know, hopefully you get a vibe from Jason and I that we're. We're kind and we're. We're you know, loving, loving facilitators and teachers, and we are. And. And we have that ability to hold these really dynamic spaces. And Jason and I are. Are, you know, teachers and guides that invite challenge. We're not. We're not a. A school that says, hey, we're the authority, and you have to do what we say. And we've had men challenges challenge us in the groups in different ways, and we welcome that. And it's. It's not to say that we're authoritarian. We open ourselves up, we get vulnerable. And we realize that for some men, getting into a group or getting into a group where there's male leaders is really scary. And we just want you to know if you're out there, you're considering it, and you feel resonance, which, you know, likely you do, that you can bring that to us. You can challenge us. We welcome that. We want to be, and we stand to be a healthy form of leadership that. That welcomes that, that kind of spirit. And so September 22nd, we have another cohort starting of Heart of Shadow. If you're interested, you can find us on heartofshadow.com and hit the chat bubble. We're happy to get on a call, we're happy to connect via email, via any means, but this is a call we're calling to men out there that are looking to really step into leadership, step into authenticity, step into community. And here's the truth. We just can't do it alone. We can't do it alone anymore. That model doesn't work. It's a failed model. We need each other. And so we're creating these little communities of authentic, loving, masculine presence and really claiming what masculinity is. Which. Which is loving, compassionate leadership that doesn't back down, that never backs down, is persistent, it's consistent, it's so strong, it's so stable, and it's backed by a group of men that stand in the same vein. It's a kind of masculinity that just. It. It doesn't break. It. It bends but does not break.

Jason Lange: It's.

Luke Adler: It's like bamboo. It just snaps right back up. So we have this principle of infinite flexibility, infinite strength. That's what we're offering. And, you know, if you're looking at the price and you're thinking, wow, that's a lot of money, you know, honestly, I'd have paid 100 grand for this experience with what it's given to me, financed it, treated it as a school loan. So, you know, there's value here. The the value in the course is is absolutely there. We'd love to have you.