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Resilience Development in Action
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action
E.212 Beyond the Hero Complex: How Learning to Ask for Help Transforms Men's Lives
What does authentic masculinity look like in a world that teaches boys to hide their emotions from an early age? Leadership coach Lee Povey takes us on his transformative journey from needing to be the hero in every relationship to discovering the profound power of vulnerability.
Growing up with a narcissistic father who saw Lee's achievements only as extensions of himself left him with a deep question that persists even at 52 years old: what does it really mean to be a man? His search led him to therapy and men's groups where he discovered what had been missing—the ability to be seen, heard, and guided by older men who accepted him fully.
This conversation takes a dramatic turn when Lee reveals how a devastating cycling accident in 2010 forced him to confront his inability to ask for help. "I wanted to be always okay and I wanted you to be not okay so I could save you," he shares, describing how this "hero complex" had sabotaged his relationships and limited his growth. The vulnerability required during his recovery ultimately transformed every aspect of his life.
Both Steve and Lee explore why men struggle with emotional expression, introducing practical approaches for reclaiming our full emotional range. Lee's "cookie jar" analogy brilliantly illustrates how we lose capacity for feedback when we experience too much criticism without sufficient acknowledgment. The key to effective men's groups? Creating judgment-free spaces where men can first be heard before receiving guidance.
Whether you work with men professionally or are simply interested in developing greater emotional intelligence, this episode offers profound insights into creating spaces where vulnerability becomes strength. As Steve powerfully states, "If you ever make fun of my vulnerability, you're the asshole, not me."
Join us to discover how embracing our full humanity—including the emotions we've been taught to suppress—leads to more authentic connections, better leadership, and greater resilience in the face of life's challenges.
This discussion will continue on episode 215!
To connect with Lee, go to his website at www.leepovey.com
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Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone and welcome to episode 212. If you haven't listened to episode 211, it's with Gordon Brewer. Gordon is, you know came back. We talked about grief. He used to run a funeral home. He talked about that. He talked about the stress the first responders face, the trauma that they see, among many other things. So I hope you go listen to it then. But for episode 212, we are going to be talking to Lee Povey. Lee Povey is a high performance leadership coach, specializing in working with founders and startups. He's a lifelong entrepreneur, formerly elite cycling person. He also does a lot of help with high achievers and helps them motivate, lead and give them feedback. And as a podcast guest, he wants to be able to use his Olympic sport experience and the business world to discuss how to find more joy and success, particularly with groups, and I'm hoping that we talk about men's groups particularly. So here is the interview Getfreeai you heard me talk about it. It I'm gonna keep on talking about it because I love it. I've had about a year and a half 18 months practice with it and I still enjoy it and it saves me time and it saves me energy. Freeai takes your note, makes a trans and what you're talking with a client, just press record, and it does either transcript, it does a subjective and an objective, with a letter if needed for your client and for whoever might need it. So, for $99 a month, it saves me so much time that it's worthwhile. And if you do it for a whole year, guess what? You get 10% off. More importantly, this is what you got to remember because you are my audience that listens to Resilience Development in Action. If you do listen to this what you got to remember because you are my audience that listens to resilience development in action If you do listen to this and you want to use freeai, put in the code Steve50 in the promo code area Steve50, and you will get $50 off in addition to everything we just talked about. Get freed from writing your notes. Get freed from even writing your transcripts. Use that to your notes. Get freed from even writing your transcripts. Use that to your advantage. Freeai, a great service. Go to getfreeai and you will get one of the best services that will save you time and money, and I highly encourage you to do so. Well, hi everyone, and welcome to episode 212. Before we start, I want to give this tribute to one of my fallen colleagues, who was a parole officer, and I worked with him for several years. He passed away on Sunday, june 30th 2025. Joe Conner, this episode's for you. Rest in peace, brother, miss you, we'll always miss you, and God bless.
Speaker 2:Having said that, let's get back to the show. On the road here, I'm happy to really introduce someone that we just had, a 23. I never have these long pre-interviews. We just talked and talked. I'm like I probably should press record at this point, because it was such a common conversation of how men's group can help, how empathy can help and how being able to not be siloed really helps us see other people's point of view in a different light. And, um, yeah, it had to take. It'd be the commonwealth, uh, working on this, but uh, lee povey, welcome to resilience, developmentience, developed and in Action.
Speaker 3:Thank you, steve, lovely to be here with you and sorry for your loss.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's, you know, without going too long on him, a guy who was really doubting the help that mental health and substance abuse can do for his guys saw the good in me and never gave up and became a big proponent. You cannot replace a guy like that, you just can't. So, um, and he was fairly young too, which is unfortunate. Also that of cancer, um, so thank you. But, lee, we I got to know you very well and I, truthfully to our audience, I have a project going with him, probably in the next few months or years. That's how excited I am for you guys to get to know Lee. But, lee, how about you tell people about yourself a little bit, so that way?
Speaker 3:they know who they're listening to. Yeah, where would you like me to start, steve? There's a bit of story here.
Speaker 2:Well, for me, I think that who you are as a human being is key to think about where know where you come from, what you're doing now and what you hope to accomplish.
Speaker 3:Until you know, we all become dust yeah, okay, uh, product of a narcissistic, sociopathic father, and you know I don't say that like the, the trendy tiktok kids he really was. You know this was clinically diagnosable behavior. Did not care about anybody but himself saw me and, uh, the rest of his children as an extension of himself. He would talk about me winning races, as you know, his good sperm and stuff like that, and wouldn't actually ever say well done to me. He would just talk about me to other people as an extension of himself and how to kind of inflate his own ego. So at a fairly young age, you know I was smart, so I figured out pretty young that I didn't want to be like him, but I didn't really know what I wanted to be like and who I wanted to be, and I had a very strong vision of right and wrong, but I didn't really know what it meant to be a man. And even now, 52 years I'm 52 years old I'm still trying to figure that out and I find that question really interesting. When people say what's a man I'm like, well, I don't really know, uh, and people have these root answers of oh, it's this, or it's provider, it's a protector, and I look at the guys that turn up in my men's group and they're all so different and it's all valid and I think we'll get to that in a moment. So anyway, I had this childhood experience that was difficult and luckily I had a very loving mother that that helped me and guided me and, as we were saying just before the show started, recently moved in with me, which is wonderful and it kind of set me up with a lot of love. But I was struggling to connect with, know how to connect with men and have the relationships that I wanted with men especially. This journey led me to a therapist who was wonderful. I got incredibly lucky. The first therapist I worked with was a genius and just an awesome human being and he led me to men's groups. He was in men's groups himself. He was a leader of just an awesome human being and he led me to men's groups. He was in men's groups himself. He was a leader of the local group and he led me to men's groups. And I got again very lucky that the first men's group I joined there was a lot of older, wiser men. I was the youngest guy in it I was in my early 20s at this time and even though I'm a natural leader and and became a natural leader of the group and kind of pushed the dynamics of the group, because that's the annoying person that I am. I had this wonderful experience of older men loving me, seeing me, allowing me to develop and share of myself and giving me the feedback that I wanted and needed to hear and needed to develop the ability to hear.
Speaker 3:Uh, while this was going on, I was, um an elite athlete. I realized I wasn't going to be an olympian. I just didn't quite have that level of talent. I'm like a good national level rider, but I'm not. I know I'm not. I'm not going to go win a gold medal at olympics, and at that time in the uk there was very little funding in my sport track sprint cycling so it wasn't a viable career. Now it is, even if you're not quite going to be olympic champion. It's a career path that wasn't open to me.
Speaker 3:Um, family was poor, so I did what many young people do who are smart but don't have a great education, and we can maybe talk about that sometime. I'm autistic and dyslexic, which made school challenging for me. They didn't know this. I've only discovered both of those things fairly recently, but it makes a ton of sense why school was I was either the smartest person in the room or I couldn't learn, and the way that they were teaching me just didn't work for me. 12 years in real estate, six years with a large corporate company, which is actually a good experience for me, and I learned a ton and I luckily had some good leaders whose impact I still feel now as a leadership coach. And then I had my own company and had to learn a lot about how to lead and develop and build, and I started up pretty young this was still in my mid-twenties. I started my own company Eventually. Eventually I sold that company just before the property crash in 2008.
Speaker 3:I could see it coming and I still got lucky and I moved into cycling coaching and I was coaching young athletes part-time for fun and I turned it into a profession, ended up becoming the national team coach, usa cycling's olymp Development Program, which was a pathway program to the LA 2028 Games, and I loved that work so much. However, I knew there was something bigger. I'm only working with like 10 to 12 athletes at a time and I felt a calling to have more impact than that. I needed to have more impact. And then COVID came. That program got shut down during COVID and I'm sitting there going what's next? I heard a podcast from a leadership coach. Didn't even know that existed. I thought sometime I might be a consultant from all of my entrepreneurial work, but I didn't know leadership coaching existed and I listened to this podcast, shared it with my wife. My wife's a psychotherapist. We have a private psychotherapy practice as well, we need the sympathies.
Speaker 3:You're welcome. I said in my wedding vows to everybody no, I'm not her project, um. And I had this moment of realization this is it. This is what my life has been built into. It's. It's this kind of emotional coaching. And then I just needed to find my niche. My niche is working with men in groups and working with scale up companies on their leadership and working with their executive teams and helping them all be more connected and work better with each other, and that's how we've ended up where I am today.
Speaker 2:Well, there's so many things you said that I want to go for the wife therapist thing. I get it. When I started dating after my divorce I had someone who basically said well, you're a therapist, help my family. I'm like, ooh, that's no, no. So in one of my profiles it said I'm a therapist, but I am not your therapist, yeah, a therapist, yeah. And my girlfriend still to this day jokes around around that way. So I figured you'd like that story. You know, you mentioned something that maybe we can jump off.
Speaker 2:That I really, really enjoyed is that you joined a men's group, which is, you know, one of my questions I had is if you've ever been in the men's group. So that answers that. And you said they gave you feedback you needed. I would argue that a good group will give you feedback. You didn't want to hear, but you needed.
Speaker 2:I think that there's a distinction between the two, because sometimes we want to be validated, but sometimes we have a bunch of group that guys are going to like don't fucking shovel me bullshit and tell me that this is the greatest thing in the world, and I think that that's a little bit of like that dynamic that I wanted to maybe address with you a little more. You know sometimes the feedback is needed, sometimes it's not wanted but it's received. So how do you navigate all that? Because I know that I run a group for first responders. I've actually run two groups for first responders and that's the greatest thing in the world when guys go bullshit and to me that's like the dynamic that it creates and within the group is amazing.
Speaker 3:As a human being. One of my gifts is I can see the stuff that you can't see about yourself. I've always had that gift from a young man and I've wielded that gift clumsily and sometimes spitefully.
Speaker 2:Thank you Dan.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and as I've got older, I've realized that's not effective. And even sometimes, you know, when I wielded it clumsily, there was good heart there. I'd go up to an athlete at a velodrome and say, hey, why are you doing it like this? Why don't you do it like that? Instead, you'll be faster. I had no rapport, the messaging was poor, I hadn't built any trust and safety and I'm just telling them they're wrong. So you know they're leaving the exchange just feeling lesser than and I've had no impact, because they haven't actually absorbed the wisdom that I've got to share with them and I was sharing something relevant, like I. This is the better way of doing it. My athletes were super successful, broke hundreds of national and world records, so I'm giving you good advice, but the way I delivered it was so poor and I've had to study how to deliver feedback to the point now that I'm known as a world expert on delivering feedback and I run workshops on delivering feedback because I was so poor at it, steve. So being able to see doesn't mean that you can actually teach and it doesn't mean that you can share in a way that's impactful. So I had to learn that and that's what people come to me for now they come to me for the stuff they can't see or the others are afraid to tell them or don't have the skill set to tell them in a way that's impactful. So let's tie that to groups. There is a way that you can create safety and trust and belief that that person is giving me loving feedback so that even if the feedback stings a bit and you're like, oh, I feel very seen right now. Oh, that hurts, that's the part of my personality I don't like and you're reflecting it to me. Oof, that hurts that you can sit there with it and go. Thank you, I needed that.
Speaker 3:Some of the work that I've done with coaches, with myself, and I do with my clients and I do in my men's groups, is this shadow work where we talk about what are your genetic personality traits. So we start with what is it that you bring to the world? And we're all different and we have different genetic personality traits. Anyone who's a parent knows this. Your children are different, same genetic matter, like same mom and dad, yet they have developed uh, them develop. They're born with different skill sets, are born with different personality traits, and then the world meets them. You might be a super curious kid and there's lots of ways the world can meet that. The world can be like you're too much shut up so you dim that light and it becomes a burden rather than a gift. Or the world might meet you and say that's wonderful, tell me more. Or ask me more questions, or here's how you learn.
Speaker 3:That person's the person that goes on and goes and invents a bunch of things. The other person's if somebody ends up being depressed and they're not allowed to share that gift. So my gift is I'm very, very smart, perceptive. However, I would use that to control people, to be safe. That's how I kept myself safe from my dad. It's also linked to my autism, where I need certain physical safety. I need certain sensory safety. So one of my shadows is tyrannical Einstein. That's what me and my coaches came up with a name for it and it's I use my intelligence, the Einstein part, and Einstein's also well known as a very loving man, which I am, so it's kind of connected to that. But there's a tyrant part that goes with it to control people, to get what I want, to push people into areas that I want them in.
Speaker 2:Well, one of us would call that intellectualization, but that might be my Freudian side. But there's so many things like this is awesome because you talk about delivering feedback. You know, one of my all-time favorite sayings is from Brene Brown, and Brene Brown says honesty without hack is cruelty Absolutely. And Brene is one of my favorite people in the world. I never met her. I hope I do one day.
Speaker 2:But I tell people that you know they like, oh, you deliver honestly, but you're not mean. I'm like, yeah, because I used to hack, I mean and I also match you. So if you need a little more direct, you're direct. If you need a little more flowery, you're flowery. I'm not much of a flower, but I'll do it. And I think that that's what I talk about when you talk about delivering feedback, and I don't know what your thoughts on that are.
Speaker 2:But before we go to that, there's so many things you mentioned too the curiosity factor for kids to adults, to how you grow in your career, and what I tell people is, as a like what I liked about my best first responders, who continue to grow in their career.
Speaker 2:They're the ones who keep on being curious about learning different things. As a therapist, what I've learned to say is what I know fits in a thimble. It's about this big and it's as big as the world. So this is how much I know and therefore I want to learn from everyone, and I think that being able to be curious throughout your life shows a side of not only do you become a good leader, you become a good human being, and I know pre-interview we were talking about being good human beings first and foremost as an important factor in life, but I don't know where you want to go with what I just said. But that's definitely like my Brene Brown thing has always been one of my favorite sayings to tell people yeah, you and you know, part of it for me was to feel safe.
Speaker 3:I needed to feel smarter than you. I think because of my I don't think it's related to stuff with my dad, I think this is related to my autism and dyslexia that there were moments where learning was very difficult for me and I knew I was smart but I couldn't always display it, and because of that I think I took on this belief that I had to always show you how smart I am and therefore, you know I'm going to point out the things that you can't see about yourself, that you don't understand, because, hey, that puts me in a one up position, and Terry Reels, the therapist, talks about this a lot, about the one up, one down position, and I used to get a lot from that and I crashed in 2010.
Speaker 2:Can you explain that a little bit for people?
Speaker 3:yeah, so yeah, so you know there's. There's various models for it. The drama triangle is a good model for it, where you've got the hero position and the victim position. The hero is one up and the victim is one down, so you make yourself feel okay by. I am better than you. Then you've got, uh ta, the transactional analysis version as well. We got a parent adult child, so you take a parent position and force somebody else to be a child instead of two adults facing each other and equal relationships, and I realized that I was creating these relationships where I was the hero because it made me feel wanted, it made me feel smart, and then I was attracting people that wanted to be rescued.
Speaker 3:And I crashed in 2010 and broke my shoulder very badly and it was the first time in my life where I was truly vulnerable. You know I'd had vulnerable moments before breakups and things like that, but it hadn't made me really face myself for my own vulnerability in that way. So I had this crash. My arm was really badly damaged and I didn't know if it was going to work properly again. I ended up having to have two reconstructive surgeries before it did, and it was one of the lowest periods of my life and also one of the best, when I reflect back now, because of what it taught me. And what it taught me was I was terrible about asking for help. I wanted to be always okay and I wanted you to be not okay so I could save you. And that made me feel secure.
Speaker 3:And I had this realization that was not serving me at all the woman I was dating at the time. We'd been together four years. Within two months, we were split up because I was like, oh, our relationship only works when I'm the hero and she's vulnerable. When I'm vulnerable, it doesn't work. She doesn't know what to do with it. She doesn't know how to meet me there, and I don't blame her for this at all. I'd created that.
Speaker 3:Um, so I, I I left that relationship and I had to renegotiate a bunch of friendships. I asked one of my friends to take me to the hospital and he said well, just get a cab, it's a mile away. And I was like, oh, okay. What I didn't realize is what I was actually asking was I need you to come and hold my hand because I'm really bloody scared. I've never had an operation before. I'd crashed a bunch of times and got patched up by my local doctor. I'd never had to have an operation, never had an anesthetic, and I was scared the most scared I'd been in my life and I didn't even really know how to say that at that point, like, oh my god, I'm really scared. But I'm sitting in the hospital room absolutely petrified, and that's when it hit me I need to be able to tell people that I need to be able to ask for support, even if it's just someone to hold my hand.
Speaker 3:So the second operation, I had five of my friends come with me and I didn't even really need that many friends, but they just saw me and I asked for it, and it was a wonderful experience for me to be held by other people instead of it always being the other way around. And it taught me as well that there's so much strength in vulnerability, there's so much connection in sharing, and it improved all of my friendships, and some friendships ended because that person didn't want to meet me. Equally, they wanted me to rescue them, and it was like, oh, this relationship doesn't work for me anymore. And the way I dated changed. I was single for four years after that, as I figured myself out on what I needed and how I needed to be met before I met my wife, who's a therapist, and there is a reason that I'm dating someone who's married to a therapist.
Speaker 2:So it was just this massive pivotal moment that has helped me hugely in my career as well. I need to isolate that little audio and send it to my girlfriend. It's what I tell her all the time anyway. But no, I think that you know what I found was interesting is that also when you know people in the helper world. Yeah, again, I go back to my first responders all the time because this is what the podcast is about what I do for a living, but also even for me as a therapist. You talk about that differential. I never heard the triangulation that you just talked about, but it was powerful to me Because what I love about my job is I don't have to ask for help, I'm in charge.
Speaker 2:By the way, this is not 50-year-old Steve talking, this is Steve from 20 years ago. It put me in that position. I love that position and the more I grew, the more I realized that asking for help is not a sign of vulnerability or weakness. And again, I go to my first responders. There's a lot of guys who call me say, oh, yeah, I'll come in for therapy and they never do because they're so fucking afraid of what that vulnerability entails. Yeah, and I think that you talk about not knowing what to say and how to ask for help because they're so fucking afraid of what that vulnerability entails. And I think that you talk about not knowing what to say and how to ask for help. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for people to learn to do that? Because you crashed and you had to have surgery. I was scared shitless when I had to get sinus surgery and people are like it's just sinus surgery, okay, I've never been under anesthetics To me. I'm afraid I'm not waking up.
Speaker 2:Turns out by the way, just to share the story with everyone, including you. You'll find this funny. So apparently, when I woke up, I was combative. So apparently they need to now give me something if I wake up in order to not be combative. So apparently I was fine.
Speaker 2:But the point is is like I think that vulnerability has a lot to do with not asking for help and keeping that power differential you talked about. I call it power differential. I think we have the same language, you just use different words. How do we I don't know if convince is the right word how do we talk to someone who's like well, I need the help, but I'm not going to come and for me I'm a harasser? If you talk about the men's group, I talk about my first responder hey, where were you? Are you okay? And some people find that harassing and eventually they get what I'm doing. But how do we get people over that stuff? Because I think it's so important that vulnerability to me. If you ever make fun of my vulnerability, you're the asshole, not me. Me, that's how I perceive it, but I know some people struggle with that, so I I'm a little more rough than you are, so I want to hear how you would say it oh, I can be rough, I'm not everybody.
Speaker 3:Um, I think let's, let's go back one step. Which is why men struggle with it and, uh, my understanding from the research, from from my own observations, is we struggle with it because young men and boys are taught not to have feelings. What is the worst thing for a young guy is to show fear, and fear is part of vulnerability. So we get told from an early age stuff I would get told in the UK man up, don't cry, don't show them you're afraid. Right, be stoic, don't give away that power of showing you're afraid. Like it's not giving any power away. But that's what you get told. And then you know, especially between men, it's the don't be a pussy, don't be weak, don't be gay, you know. So you get the homophobic slurs. You know, for whatever reason, like why men think being feminine or like a woman is somehow weak because they give birth to children. We can't do that, but that's the, that's the insult, right for young guys. And you know, thinking back to my childhood, it's all about calling each other gay. That was like the biggest insult that you could do to each other or a pussy or weak. So you have all of this in about don't be this thing, which is just a normal part of human experience. You look at little children, boys and girls, and before they get that message in, they have exactly the same emotional range and reaction.
Speaker 3:So the six emotions I like to work with when men come to me, when anyone comes to me, but particularly with men is fear, joy, anger, sadness, interest and disgust. And fear and anger are typically the two hardest ones for guys to work with, because they've been told you can't be too angry unless it's about your sports team losing and you cannot be afraid like. There is nothing worse than being afraid. Fear is just a, it's just a thing. It's data. It tells us about our human experience. It tells us that we need to be prepared for something in the future. That's it. That's what it's telling us, and if we look at these emotions as neither negative nor bad, they are just experiences that tell us about what is going on in the world.
Speaker 3:We then get to use them and learn from them, and you know to now pull this back to your question as to why men struggle to join groups and struggle to be vulnerable is because they don't know how to sit with their fear, because they've been told fear is something they shouldn't have, and we actually need to learn how to sit with these emotions and let this emotion tell us something. And when you actually sit with fear, like any emotion, it's a fairly fleeting thing. It's a 60, 90 second experience of oh, I feel really afraid right now. Oh, what's that fear telling me? Oh, it's telling me I'm worried, I'm going to be judged by the other guys in this group. For what I share and that is typically the issue with vulnerability is, I don't want to be judged by the other people. And for me, men's groups to be truly successful, you have to remove the judgment, you have to go there and it has to be a judgment-free space.
Speaker 3:And this is where that balance of being able to give feedback is developed and becomes a real skill, because, to begin with, developed and becomes a real skill because, to begin with, I don't allow any feedback from the other guys. It's just come here, be heard and get used to being heard by other guys who don't want you to change, who don't need you to be different. They just need you to be you. And then you get to the point where you're like give me some feedback, guys. And the moment that a guy says, okay, give me some feedback, I'm now ready for it, then they can start to get that support of right.
Speaker 3:Here's some things that we see that can help you, and one of the things I love to do with groups is we do this round of acknowledgement and then opportunity. So it's OK, this is what I this is a great I see in you, this is the impact you're having in the world. And then here's some opportunity that I see for you, and typically how we get that wrong societally is we focus too much on opportunity and not enough on appreciation, and this is very true for the companies that I work with, and I use this cookie jar analogy, if you'll let me just play for a moment. And we all, we're all born with a full cookie jar, right, lovely, full jar of cookies, delicious cookies, and that is like our ability to absorb information, that, our ability to get feedback, and as we grow, we get more of the observational, critical feedback than we do appreciation, acknowledgement, typically, and every time that happens, that's something taking a handful of cookies out and eventually our cookie jar gets empty.
Speaker 3:We have no capacity to get feedback anymore, and you particularly see this in work organizations. You have that boss that walks in and everyone's like, oh fuck, what's he going to say now, correct? What's this guy going to say to me now? And that you cannot listen to that person, you can't learn from that person. So in a men's group, we practice on filling the guy's jars back up by letting them process, by letting them speak, by letting them share, by appreciating them, before we then say, okay, and here's some stuff that we see for you. And here's like, here's this story. You're telling yourself right, steve, we all have these stories. We're telling yourself here's the story're telling yourself what's going to happen if you let go of that story, what's the opportunity for you if you let go of this story, all.
Speaker 2:I can say is I think of Brene Brown when you say that, again, I do have a cult for her.
Speaker 3:She's a smart lady who says some very wise things.
Speaker 2:You talk about the emotions. That's actually we do. You know, I think you're like I'm going to start calling your brother from another mother because I do similar work. I talk about the core emotions. I'm sure you've seen a wheel of emotions. That's kind of what you described anyway.
Speaker 2:And I tell people like, for men, being happy and being angry is kind of okay, we can do that, but the rest of them the surprise, the disgust, the fear we can do that, but the rest of them the surprise, the disgust, the fear no, you can't do that, man, that's just not acceptable. And for women, the sadness is okay, with a little happiness, but the rest of it. Even fear is okay, but not always and not kind of, especially if you have kids, why would you be fearful? Blah, blah, blah. And what I tell people is we're usurping our emotional system anywhere from 50 to 66% by telling people that this is not okay. And I tell people, if you don't have all those six emotions at least once a day, then you are failing yourself as a human being and fear doesn't happen, you do have them, you have them.
Speaker 3:We just don't pause to go. What is it I'm feeling right now? First week of my men's group, the homework is I want you to stop yourself five or six times a day, four deep breaths. What do I feel right now?
Speaker 2:actually learn to listen to your human experience but I think that that's exactly where I was going, because you talked about humanity, and when you don't have humanity, you don't let yourself have that. You know, I didn't know if I was going to cry when I did that little tribute earlier and if I did, I couldn't have cared less. And what I mean by that is I'm never going to pretend I don't have emotions. Do I overtake on podcasts? Sure, I can overtake. It's my podcast. If I want to make it about me to hold 60 minutes. Who gives a shit? But in my sessions I also let myself have emotions, but I don't let it take over the session, because that's where you cross those ethics lines, in my opinion. But people, one of the best comments I get every single year, steve, I love you as a therapist because you are a human being and you let yourself be a human being. And to me, that's another part that we talked about earlier Talk about, you know, emotions, the acknowledgement, the opportunities you talked about all this, but acknowledging our humanity, and I think that that's what's been missing for a whole lot of time, for a whole lot of people now, and I think that that's where we need to, also in men's group. Being able to be human is something that you know, one of my.
Speaker 2:There's two rules in my group. You never talk about what's said outside of this group. You can be in your mind about it, but you never talk about it. And if I ever catch you, there's no explanation, you are out. I don't want to fucking hear it.
Speaker 2:And number two. The other one is you do not apologize. There is no apologies in my group. Do not apologize. There is no apologies in my group. You say what you say, don't apologize. I think I say we don't say I'm sorry. And sometimes people say, well, I said I apologize. That's different. I'm like smart ass.
Speaker 2:But the point is is I think that what you've talked about is really reaches all that and being able to get to that point of expressing yourself is so difficult for so many people because they've been usurped and they're emotional and to me, their central nervous system at a very young age, I think. Especially I look at the generation X and the generation Zs and I belong in the generation X, just like you. I think that that plays a lot in how you grow up and how it usurps your whole central nervous system. It usurps your whole central nervous system. This was so awesome. I need to shut off for episode 212., but the good news is is that for episode 215, I'm going to be able to put this one in for the second part, so please join us then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
