What Protected You When You Were Young Is the Barrier to Getting What You Want as an Adult

When it comes to getting what you want in life as a man, whether that's your work, relationships, family, or any of the different aspects of a well lived life, one of the things I've noticed in doing many years of men's work, both internally with myself and leading it for other men, is an incredibly important moment in transformation.

And it can be summed up in this simple statement. What protected you when you were young is often the barrier to you getting what you want as an adult. So what does that mean? Well, essentially a large part of men's work and growth and development and transformation is about bringing consciousness to our unconscious patterns in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds.

These patterns are often set at a really young age, just as we're coming into the world, just as we're developing. Even if we had great parents, a stable family life, or if we had the most extremely difficult and challenging situations, our nervous systems have to learn to adapt.

They learn to protect ourselves, they learn to help us survive. So in an abusive household, we may totally shut down or we may become extremely sensitive, being able to tune into the most minute, energetic or physical shifts of those around us. We may learn to live in our own head. We may learn to boldly charge into any fear we have.

There's many different ways we learn to be when we're young. The wild thing when it comes to relationships is that becomes our home base, that becomes our default, that becomes what we think love should be. That becomes a pattern that we keep playing out through our attachments, through our attractions, through our choices in life, thinking it's going to finally get us what we didn't have as we were when we were young.

There's tons of research and stats now about epigenetics and, and how stress and the different stresses we experience in life make actual adjustments to how genes Are expressed in our DNA, and we pass those on, and we receive those from those that came before us. And so right out of the gate, our nervous systems are bringing with them a history of what it takes to survive, not necessarily what it takes to thrive, just to survive.

Added on top of that, we have our own experiences when we're young, Being impacted by our primary caregivers and those close to us. That starts to create these defense strategies, these defense mechanisms in our body mind into how we're showing up in the moment, right? Us guys often notice this is like, I couldn't help myself, right? Whether it was exploding into anger or shutting down or disappearing, that's one of these patterns playing out.

We're unconsciously fused with the survival strategy in our body mind. We're not aware we're not making a choice. Now, the thing about a lot of these patterns that we create when we're young Is they're necessary. They're usually helping protect us at a young age from. From trauma, abuse, neglect, or just not getting what we need.

They're survival strategies. They help us get by in a very confusing time when we're young. One of the crazy things about humans, Unlike a lot of other animals on the planet, Is we're born very, very unfunctional. Can't walk, can't feed ourselves. We can't really do anything. We are completely reliant on our primary caregivers.

We are attached to them. We need them to help us survive. Baby can't just get up and walk like other animals can when they're born. Human baby needs care, loving, support, touch, movement, and to be fed just to survive. So out of the gate, humans, we need secure attachment, right?

We have to keep the bond with whoever's keeping us alive intact. Now, that often comes into conflict with an important thing we learn to develop as kids, and that's knowing ourselves, Our authenticity, what's true for us in the moment, Our feeling state, our physical needs state, right? We have a need to authentically express what's happening for us.

Now, what often happens when we're young Is those two impulses come into conflict. My need to keep secure attachment with my caregiver and my need to authentically express myself in trauma. Our ability to authentically express ourselves Almost always goes by the wayside. We are either managing our own state or to get the secure attachments we need on the other side.

Or we start managing one of our caregiver states, we start modifying our behavior to take care of them. This creates a pattern in our body Mind karma in our system. And we learn strategies to get our needs met, to survive sometimes extreme situations like an abuse.

Whether it's physical, sexual, emotional, or other types of trauma. Being split off from primary caregivers, being neglected, being overlooked for a sibling, or being asked to grow up too fast. There's so many ways this shows up. But we develop strategies to deal with that. Can imagine it's like a little force field we create around ourselves to protect us.

Now, that's always necessary when we're growing up. Even the most perfect idyllic situation is gonna leave some scars, some traumas. And we're gonna develop patterns to help prevent those from happening again. Or we're gonna develop patterns to help ones that never happened to us. But happen to ancestors in our lineage from happening now.

This is where the work really is. This is where men's work is so important. This is where getting what you want in life comes down to this simple thing. Those defense mechanisms that we create when we're young to protect ourselves, that force field actually becomes the barrier to getting what we really want as adults. What protected us when we were young prevents us from getting what we want as adults.

Bringing consciousness and becoming aware of those patterns in our nervous system, Our attachment styles, our breathing, our way of being, our emoting. Bringing consciousness to all of that. So that we begin to have choice in how we're responding in the moment, not just reacting. Reacting is when we're totally fused with, right?

There's no consciousness there, just an automatic response. Most of our patterns from when we're kids are automatic responses. They're so deeply wired into us, Our work then as adult men, in men's groups and in coaching and in all the different modalities of personal growth and transformation. Is becoming aware of those unconscious patterns and bringing choice to them.

Seeing the pattern, then bringing enough breath and consciousness to be able to choose a different result. This is a huge one when it comes to dating and relationships. Been coaching a lot of guys over the last couple years to get into the types of intimate relationships they want. And this is an area where it shows up more than any other. Keep chasing the same unavailable people, which usually means we keep recreating the circumstances.

That our defense mechanisms were created in the past is informing the present and not in a good way. We're trying to bring to completion and get what we wanted as kids, as adults. And so we'll attract people who are very similar to our primary caregivers. And it'll feel really exciting and intoxicating and special or Anxious or often very buzzy.

It'll feel like home in a way that home was defined for us when we were even Pre memory ages 0 to 2. Something there will be showing up in the moment and the universe will keep throwing you situations very similar to that where you almost get what you want, but it doesn't quite work out.

Until you do that. That protective force field you created as a kid is actually going to keep out what you really want. The types of relationships, the types of presence you will want in the world, it's going to be a barrier to that. So a lot of the work we do in men's group is becoming aware of that in community, with support and yes, sometimes with a little bit of challenge, a little bit of feedback, a little bit of pointing out the things we're not seeing our shadow, right?

Hey, you keep saying you want this thing, but then you keep doing this other thing. Did you know that? Sometimes we don't even know, but it becomes really present, but it becomes really apparent to others. There's no hack for this. There's no shortcut for this. There's just awareness and practice. And you can't even really start practicing until you're aware of what's really going on.

Until you know the nuances of the attachment style, you're walking through the world with the patterns of your body, mind and your nervous system that are always going to be in. You been doing this work a long time and I got bad news. We don't get rid of these parts of ourselves. Instead, we learn to work with them and in relationship to them.

Like an old battle wound doesn't just go away, it informs how we move, how we act. We have to be in relationship with that part of ourselves to take care of that part of ourselves. But it doesn't have to stop us from getting what we want when we're conscious of our limits and what's possible and what we need to truly thrive.

It's simple, but it's complex. What protected you when you were young is a barrier to getting everything you want as an adult. You have to bring a lot of love, a lot of consciousness, a lot of practice to unwinding those pieces of your system. Men's groups, coaching, therapy, psychedelics, breath work, yoga, weightlifting, all of those things.

And so, so much more. You gotta do them all. It's like chipping away from every angle. To really get clear about what's there. And then to have the consciousness, to have the presence in the moment, to make a different choice, to move from automatic reaction to conscious response. That's what we're talking about. Gotta turn that force field off in the right moments.

And we gotta do that by honoring it, getting clear about what it did for us, why it exists, where it comes from in our lineage, why we developed these patterns of protection or habit or being in the world. You gotta know that story so you can honor that part of you, right? You're not getting rid of that part of you. Not going to disown part of yourself. That never works. Can't shame it, hide it, beat it out of submission.

You got to befriend it, know it, share its gifts, and then relieve those pieces of you from duty when it's not time for them to be doing their thing. And when you want something more, when you want something deeper, when you're ready for that next level of life. If you want some help, reach out.

I have drop in men's groups once or twice a month, which you can see on this site under the events section. And if you want to change your relationship, come karma, you want to go deep. We run a pretty intensive coaching program for men that really get into the heart of this and help you show up in presence in a different way. Until next time.