What Therapy and Coaching Can’t Give Men

All right, and welcome back. So on this episode, I want to continue in my series about men's groups.

And specifically, I want to talk about how men's groups are really this third way and kind of a third place that our culture and men are really needing in this moment in time. So I'm going to go backwards here and first talk about this idea of a third place. Right. This was kind of made famous back in the day when they started Starbucks and really zeroed in on this idea that in America in particular, we basically had home and work and we were just moved back and forth and that what people were craving was a third place somewhere I could literally go that wasn't home and wasn't work.

For relating, for relaxing, and for socializing. Here's the thing. A good men's group can. Can actually be that whether it's a physical space and place you're going into or a virtual room you step into, it's somewhere to take ourselves that's outside of that typical dichotomy, but going deeper to take this third thing even further. What I mean by third way is I think men's group really helps fill the vacuum in between therapy, coaching.

Right. Because men's groups as a third way is a place to really practice presence, getting real and growing with other men and being relational with peers. This is really key. So in terms of kind of the landscape and why something like a men's group can be so potent and powerful right now. Right. First, let's start with coaching, something I do with men all the time. And I love. I've been coached. I coach. And coaching is. Tends to be focused more on optimization, performance, and outcomes.

Right. It's about changing behavior and often has a fewer future focus to it. And we all need that sometimes, right? We need someone to watch us swing the bat and give us feedback. Hey, do you realize every time you do that, you pull your left leg back and that's influencing how you hit the ball, et cetera. Coaching is really that. It's that feedback on our performance and with an aim to get somewhere. And it's very useful. And like I said, I believe in coaching, relationships, therapy, the other end of that spectrum.

And, you know, these are less binaries and more ends of A pond that you can put a stick into. You know, it really overlaps in different ways. But therapy tends to be more about introspection, healing, looking at the past and, and how it's influencing how I'm showing up in the present. Right. So therapy is about healing. Coaching is more about optimizing. Right. We can't really play a full game of ball if we have an injury.

Sometimes we have to go back and we have to fix that. And then we can really work on our performance and strategy and technique again in that coaching sense. And these go hand in hand. We need them both. I have also been in therapy. I am not a therapist, so I don't do that per se, but I've been in therapy. I guide many men that I'm coaching into therapy because it works in a slightly different way. It's coming at things from a different end of the spectrum and they're both needed. Right. We need to heal the past and we need to have a focus on the future. Men's group really is about this third place in between, which is about what's happening right now relationally between me and my peers.

And it's about real time feedback, brotherhood and deep presence. And what's so key about this is right, there's this wild research study that came out of Canada and it's kind of painful to think about, but 60%, 60% of men who had died by suicide had actually seen a mental health professional in the prior year, meaning they did reach out, which interrupts a lot of our preconceptions about what men do with their pain and even was a big eye opener for me.

The key to that though is whether it's coaching or therapy, some need still wasn't being met in my hypothesis, again, this is just me, is that men's group was the missing medicine, peer connection and brotherhood was the missing nutrient that helped the insights from therapy or the insights from coaching land and stick in a man's nervous system and actually be the place where he gets to put all of that into practice. So the key is, men don't just need insight.

We need belonging, challenge and emotional connection with other men to feel alive and to feel part of now. The thing with a coaching or a therapy relationship, and again, I do these things, is they are not necessarily peer based. The gift of them is we are paying for a certain structure that is not bilateral. It's not going back and forth, right. Unidirectional. And instead the whole point of it is attention's going one way. The coach or the therapist is putting their attention on me.

And that can be profoundly important and healing in our development. But that's very different from, well then, now I'm going to put my attention on you and you're going to put your attention on me. And that's really what a men's group excel at is this flex, flow, relational capacity where sometimes I'm holding you, sometimes you're holding me, sometimes I need to ask for support, sometimes you need to ask for support, sometimes I take the lead, sometimes you take the lead. And in this peer accountability structure, real brotherhood and belonging that I've talked about before starts to form in men's groups, fill this incredibly important missing gap for so many men.

And they work. Right. The men's groups. I'm most passionate about helping men start, even though I often give them some frameworks and can step in as leader at some point, always involves a handoff, meaning it's going to be your group. I'm not just going to lead it, which crushes the hierarchical thing and makes it peer led. We're led in a circle. It's decentralized in that sense. Right. I've talked about this a lot, where each man has to take ownership. If he's not getting something from the group he really wants, it's on him to bring it forward.

And that buy in creates so much more impact for a men's group and it feeds our belonging needs. This thing we can't necessarily get from coaching or from therapy. Right. My men's groups, I'm part of a couple and some have sunset it as I've moved around the country around the years. But they are the basis for the majority of my community now as well. The guys I'm in group with, I know their wives, I know their kids, my wife and kids know theirs. We go camping together, we do barbecues together.

It is the basis of our social framework, my social framework as well. And that deep, deep community is incredibly nourishing in a way I've never gotten from coaching, I've never gotten from therapy. And that starts with a men's group. And this does actually count for virtual groups as well. Men who I've only sat with for about seven years now in zoom containers and I consider intimate members of my family in my life now, men's groups are built around shared agreements, embodiment, vulnerability and truth.

Right. We're practicing all of these things in a group. We can practice these things again in coaching or in therapy. But it's different in a men's group because it is relational. We are actually having to work our relationships. You will get triggered by another man in men's group. You will not always see eye to eye with another man in men's group. And that is actually important. That's one of the great gifts about it, that friction is what grows us, is what causes us to deepen our relationships.

And men who, who can move through friction together, whether we're moving together through something in my life, you're supporting me, or particularly, we are moving through friction that you and I have, right? There's some withhold, there's a clearing, there's some fight we have, there's some hurt, and we bring it forward and we deal with it. That bonds us very, very deeply, right? That witnessing that connection, that challenge, that activates our whole vasopressin system, which is what really bonds men, right?

Our connection often comes through moving through struggle together. If we're not moving through struggle together with other men, we are often not nearly feeling connected as we could be. Now, why now? Right? I've been talking about this on this podcast for a long time and there's just a crisis, right? One in five men have zero close friends these days. We need these challenging environments to bond as men. And they are a modern rite of passage, right?

That takes us into connection from isolation. And society in so many ways is trying to isolate us. Because when we're isolated, we go to the computer for connection. And when we go to the computer for connection, guess what? We can be sold. Shit. So it is revolutionary, I'm not joking, to build a peer based men's group in this day and age where you are getting your connection from other men and humans. And this is only going to accelerate in the next couple years with the advent of AI and chatbots and virtual Personas and characters that can give us the sense of connection, but they are not connection.

Real connection must involve friction. Real connection must, must involve people who move up and down a range of being fully present and totally available and regressing and collapsing into our vulnerability, into our shadow and negotiating that friction and tension with each other. That is what creates connections we will trust for the rest of our lives in. We need this third way, this third place of men's groups now more than ever, right?

Because when we don't have it, we are opening ourselves up to all kinds of manipulation and control which we're seeing at a wide scale right now. And yes, a men's group's not going to fix every single problem, but I guarantee, if more men were getting Fed from a local or virtual group of trustable men, they would be less susceptible to coercion, to control, to manipulation. Right. There's lots of research studies that talk about the best way to make sure if you're a parent, your kid doesn't succumb as easily to peer pressure.

Right. Poor decisions. Being guided from seeking the approval of peers is when they have a strong bond with you, they will prioritize that bond over the peers. You know, this connection I have with my parents, they taught me this one thing. Yeah, they're wanting me to do this thing. But no, right now, that connection is more important to me. It actually inoculates kids against peer pressure. In my life, I have found the exact same thing to be true of the men's groups I'm in. What do I mean by that?

Is the more I trust men who intimately know me, my background, my pain, my shortcomings, my goals, and that I'm vulnerable and transparent with. It's their feedback I care about. I do not care about the feedback of strangers who do not know me and are just projecting over an interpretation or image of me. Doesn't mean I'm not going to listen, but I'm going to weigh them less than I am. The men in my men's group who, if they come to me with something and share something they're seeing about me, I am going to listen.

And because I'm going to listen to them more, I don't have to be swayed by other people. It actually empowers us as men. This is so. So key men's groups have changed my life. I've been part of a couple different ones which I've talked about. And many times they have helped me deal with a crisis in my health, my relationship, my work. And sometimes it's been the kind of thing I could only get from a collective.

Maybe I was told something by one of my therapists, but it didn't quite ring true. But I can tell you the power of sitting in a group is when there are six, seven, eight other men staring back at you, reflecting something. When they have done that to me, I've had to sit long and hard and really grok. Well, either all of these men are wrong in the feedback they're giving me or my conception of what is happening, that's the error.

And when it's just one person giving us that feedback, it can be really easy to find a way around it, to make it wrong, to outmaneuver it. We have very sophisticated minds, but when it's that many men, it's pretty hard, right? It's like, wow, either they're all delusional or I am. Which one is more likely? And many times that has helped me transform decisions in ways I relate to myself, around how hard I am on myself, how much blame I take, the level of shame I work with, huge things my men's groups have helped me with in these last years and they've also helped sharpen me up to be able to go back and have really empowering, challenging conversations, particularly with my wife, about things I want or a pathway I see for us that I never would have done without the support of that group.

So what's really key about a men's group is it's not a replacement for therapy and it's not a replacement for coaching, but it is the third leg of the stool, right? If you really want to accelerate your transformation, you add this piece in. Sometimes we need to be in therapy, sometimes we need to be in coaching. I would argue we pretty much always need to be in a community based men's group of peers, right, where we're all in it to support each other. And there's a momentum to that, right?

My, one of the good friends of mine from my Los Angeles group used to call this the sunlight effect. Right. When another man comes in and shares a win or we see transformation on him, it. It's like a ray of sun hitting us of, ah, this feels good. There's some hope for me too. If this man can change, I can change. And it has a momentum as one man starts to crush it. Often a whole group will start to crush it in some pretty profound ways. And it also gives us space that, yeah, if one man brings forward his vulnerability or pain, it always makes it easier for the other men to do it.

We can really accelerate our growth with this third way, a men's group. Something that's neither coaching nor therapy, but it's quite literally a space or place that's separate from home or work. We can go into and practice the skills of presence, relationship, honesty, transparency, vulnerability, speaking our truth, all of that with actual human beings that care about us and that are going to help grow us forward.

That friction, right? Robert Bly calls it, you know, sharpening the iron of each other that hones us. It makes us stronger, it makes us clear we need that feedback, particularly from other men. The masculine part of all of us grows through feedback and challenge. If you do not have other men in your life tracking you and giving feedback, you are not as sharp as you can Be you might have the story, you have it all figured out. You might have the story, you don't need any help.

But the honest truth is you are not stepping into your full capacity as a man. And a coach can only see so much. A therapist can only see so much. But I can tell you, the more eyes you have on you, the more that can be seen. And the power of a men's group is even if seven out of eight guys are all right there with you, there's almost always one guy whose tuning fork is a little different and may pick up on something about you, your experience, your behavior that you never would have seen before.

This is the power of, kind of the collective wisdom of a group where every man is bringing their deepest sensitivities, deepest gifts and deepest learnings and truth to the collective, to the group. And that can help grow us even faster. So if you're tired of just moving between work and home, relationship, career, right, a men's group is the place for that. It is neither just future based like coaching or, or just past based like therapy.

And yes, I know there's gradations and all those, but men's group is about where do I put it into practice? Right here in this group. Because again, I've seen it time and time again, I've seen it with myself. How you are showing up inside a men's group will reflect how you're showing up in your life. Are you too dominating, just talking, not attuning to other people that's going to show up? Do you withdraw, withhold, wait for the perfect time to talk and then almost never have anything to say or never actually speak up that'll show up in your men's group.

Do you avoid conflict that'll show up in your men's group? Because a men's group is a real living relationship, right? With lots of different guys and all your shadows, all your shortcomings, they're going to get kicked up there. And that's not the problem, that's the gift. Because then you start to get to work it there and you can get the type of feedback, support and love that is really unique to a group. Again, that is neither coaching nor therapy.

It's something else. And when you can do all three of these together simultaneously, if you have the resources, you might cycle through them if you don't. But. But they are like the ultimate cross training on your life. You will perform better and when I say perform, you will be living more of the life you want to live. It's not just Based on outcomes. Right. You will be experiencing in your body now, not then the things you want to be feeling more of.

A group is going to call you to do that in the present, in the actual circle itself. That's the great gift of a group if you're ready to step into a group. The easiest way I've created for that is the men's group experience. You can head over to men's group to learn about joining a group and even learn the tools to create your own if you're not already part of one. Now, there's lots of different men's groups I run in the world. There's lots of different groups out there.

But again, I'm just going to reiterate, the ones I'm most passionate about are the ones that you're going to end up leading. You and your peers. When you own it, it becomes an entirely different beast. Right? Because then you're not paying someone for your time. Oftentimes, as I guide men, that's a way to kickstart things. I'll give you the structure in certain of my programs I will facilitate with you, but eventually going to hand you the keys to your group because that's the one that's going to last a lifetime. And those are the men that are going to show up when you get married, when you need help in a health crisis, or like me, when it's 8pm and you're moving into a new house with your wife and you're way behind and she's a little frightened because she's like, we're going to be here till midnight unloading.

And that doesn't feel good to me. So you call up your men on the bat phone and you say, hey guys, I need some bodies here at this time. And what would have taken four hours takes 25 minutes. With men who care about you, care about your family and care about your life, therapy and coaching, they can't create that for you, but a good peer based men's group can. All right, until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men.

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