If Deep Down You Think You Should Be More Like a Navy SEAL – Let’s Talk.
Trying to override your feelings doesn’t make you stronger. But connecting with them will.
Therapy for Men Ready to Go Deeper
Navy SEALs are pretty amazing. They can stay awake for days, swim for miles in freezing water, lug gear and teammates through surf and mud, and cut through tangled lines while holding their breath in full gear underwater. Their focus is laser-sharp; their pain tolerance, off the charts. They’ve been put through some of the toughest training a man can go through to learn to override every ordinary signal of fear, fatigue, and doubt.
Only 200-250 men a year can do it, and if you’re one of them, you don’t need me.
But if you’re not a SEAL and think you should be more like one, then maybe you do.
‘Conquering Your Emotions’ Is A Big Con
“Master your emotions.” “Conquer your emotions.” It’s the high-t, super-hot way to be. Do it, and you’ll get all the women you want and become a billionaire.
It’s 100% pure, unadulterated bulls**t. Trying to do it just makes guys isolated, depressed, angry, self-medicating and spending way too many hours playing videogames.
Because it doesn’t work, and it never did. But it’s not that different from what most of us have heard all our lives.
We Men Learned to Try Not to Feel
Nobody teaches boys or young men how to know what they feel, feel what they feel and share what they feel with others in ways that really work. Not here at least, not in hyper-individualistic, hypercompetitive America. If anything, boys learn that feelings are weak – something to control or ignore. Can you imagine Inside Out where the main character is a boy?
Then you get to adulthood and if you’re lucky, you find a partner you can feel your feelings with. And maybe you have kids with whom you get to feel playful, protective and tender. If you’re very lucky, you have some friends from childhood or college you can still let down and be your real self with.
But what if you’re not so lucky? What if it’s all gone sour? Or what if you have all of that, but inside you know you don’t really feel it – you feel hollow and alone? What if you have baggage from childhood or earlier in your life that you’ve never been able to put down?
The Reckoning
Sooner or later, there comes a time in every man’s life where life gives them more than they bargained for. Suddenly you realize you don’t have the skills to deal with all the feelings you’re having every day and into the night.
A Better Way to Live and Feel
Don’t Conquer Your Emotions — Connect With Them
Screw trying to conquer, master or “fix” your emotions.
It’s time to have a different relationship with the man living inside you –inside your body, under your skin. All the different feelings you have. All the different “selves” that make you “you.” Maybe even all the different boys you once were that nobody ever listened to.
And to do it without falling apart.
You don’t have to be good at always knowing what you feel. In fact it may be better if you don’t.
There’s a way of sensing into your feelings – sensing into how they feel in your body before they’re translated into words.
Then there’s a way to be with them and listen to them, without becoming them.
It’s totally liberating.
The Freedom To Feel
Imagine the freedom to feel – to go through your biggest, toughest emotions and come out the other side.
- To face what you’ve never been able to face.
- To have tools that free you to live from your truest, deepest feelings.
- And tools that keep your feelings from controlling you – not by controlling them (even the “unacceptable” ones), but by connecting with them.
This won’t make you a billionaire. But you’ll have far more personal and emotional power, strength and presence – the strength and energy to face your challenges – and the presence to come through much more for yourself and the ones you love.