Author: Advisor to Men

NAKED TRUST

 

NAKED TRUST
Orgasms equal trust. Orgasms between a couple are the ultimate physical manifestation of “Are you there? Are you with me?” the two essential ingredients to attachment (presence & loyalty).

Therefore, when we have regular orgasms with someone, we tend to trust them.

As I like to say, “without trust, you’ve got nothing.”

My mother had ten pregnancies in twelve years resulting in nine children. My sister moved into my parent’s home in a basement suite when the old folks were nearing their eighth decade in age so she could keep an eye on them. Every Friday night my dad tiptoed into my mother’s room and they were intimate; she could hear them. They went like this until ma got cancer again at 85 and passed away some months later.

Dad died a few years later but he could still get his dick hard from what the staff at the old folks’ home told us.

The need for sexual touch never leaves us. We like to be touched by someone we trust, always down to let our partners play with our balls and to fondle her pussy. It’s the grand and not-so-secret of privilege and submission we each accord other… and it never goes away.

My woman once raised rabbits and when she’s not up to a full copulation, she may engage with me in the shower, something she calls, “servicing the rabbit.” This is a nod to the rule of placing the female rabbit in with the male for mating (she says to never do it the other way around as the female rabbit might kill the male for intruding on her territory. Ouch!).

I often “service her” in the mornings when I’m half asleep and she’s… well, just lying there. The point is that quickie orgasms between a couple are one of the easiest ways to ensure and protect your intimacy bond. It says, “It is I… who has access.”

So, how do you swing this with your woman? You need to negotiate it.

It’s either that you assume the sale at the beginning of your relationship and secure an agreement with her… that this part of both your needs never shall wane, or you need to kick start it now. Men lead; women command.

What if there are children? More reason to set this tone outright or reclaim it.

When the airline attendant does a pre-flight address, they announce something like, “In the event of a loss in cabin pressure, masks will fall from the ceiling in front of your seat. Please ensure you put on your mask first before attending to small children.”

This is a good simile for the mindset you need regarding you, missus, and the kids. Parents need to put themselves first. It’s the pair-bond that must hold priority, for without it… the children are imperiled. The best thing you can do for the children is stay together.

The best thing you can do for yourselves is to live harmoniously, modeling power and love, putting your marriage and relationship first.

Orgasms are like insurance against divorce. Rare is it we leave someone who is giving you regular orgasms.

Orgasms act as an attachment barometer.

I encourage you to have this discussion, to tell your woman some of what is contained here. See if you can get her to agree to make your physical life together a priority. Over the years I have found most women who embrace this are quite good with it, capable of feeling as salty and as earthy as nature intended.

I flirt endlessly with my gal… careful to never appear needy. The idea is to sell her on our differences. She can express herself verbally and perhaps get her nurturance needs met through her girlfriends and the caring of children and in some cases, by looking after elderly parents.

You admire the scope of her emotional life but share no such tendency of your own.

Instead, like many things about men, you are rather unidirectional. It’s one of your great masculine gifts, the ability to concentrate on one task to the detriment of all other distractions. You also are less hampered by needs for emotional regulation comparatively.

Men are more action oriented. We men express ourselves physically, and our lust is its primary manifestation. Can she feel lucky that she is the object of your desire? Can you be that man?

Never let a man leave the house hungry or horny, goes the maxim. Plenty of truth to this one for sure.

Everyone likes to be someone’s chosen.

Women choose a man for his power potential and kindness, and his ability to deliver sustenance.

You acquiesce to her choice, enamoured by her smile, her interest, her hip to waist ratio, and her invitation.

And what of the silly notion that she’s always vying for a higher status male?

Let me just say that she likely bet on you when you had nothing, putting the lie to this idea. Only if forced she’d choose in her best interests because she could. Should she not? Trust me, be her powerful man and her preference is to stay put. Why? Because people will do almost anything to appear consistent. You are the devil she knows. Give her orgasms, you devil.

Ideally, even when she’s not up for immediate orgasmic action she may circle back and take care of you both at some point later. Usually that day or the next. You do a version of the same. You neither pout, nor sulk, nor ever, ever beg. It’s like sleep makes diet and exercise healthful… and orgasms make marriages work. She understands this because there is a part of her that needs it too. It’s clear between you.

It’s a question of mindset. Your woman can understand this precious gift between you needs to be maintained with regular orgasms. It’s how men express themselves and we don’t have a woman’s emotional depth to act otherwise. Don’t you dare let anyone shame you into believing this is somehow selfish or wrong. Nonsense. That’s an argument begging rebuttal, to be met with unapologetic masculine desire.

I’d urge you to pick your time (when both are amenable to discussing how to last forever) and have this frank discussion to make sure these desires are not left unmet.

Ideally, from the start you could insert orgasms somewhere in your vows, either outright or as a secret word to signal your intent with each other. “In the name of God/The Universe, I, (groom/bride’s name), take you, (groom/bride’s name), to be my (husband/wife), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish by providing endless orgasms, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

What if you have a fight? “Don’t touch me!” might be yours or her reaction. You need an understanding this could happen. Make a deal right now that reconciliation is sealed with an orgasm.

Better still, let it be known that each may turn to the other for reassurance at any time and request proof of commitment, sealed not with vague notions of love, but specifically with orgasms. Are you with me? Be bold, create a win-win for you both.

The two great life forces which largely govern men and women are that she is the burdened female precious creator of life, you are the expendable male powerful defender of life.

She is burdened under the caregiver dilemma, something gifted to her by nature herself. Wherever she finds her self in the world, it is women who are nature’s primary caregivers. She wants to avoid seeming selfish while at the same time holding a secret fear that she will be taken for granted as she serves those around her.

Monthly she bleeds for near half her life, she is smaller in strength and size, she risks her life to bring forth life, and worries out her children forevermore while using her negative emotions to spot sickness in those around her and danger in her environment.

She is precious because her fertility lasts but a couple of decades giver or take. Her looks follow suit. She stops having children of her own in her forties so that she might help her daughters raise theirs. Thank the heavens for Grandma, and the Grandmother Hypothesis.

He is the expendable male. More men are born with developmental issues and more die in childbirth. Nature makes more boys (51% to 49% for boys unless under drought or during war in which case the ratio reverses in favour of more girls being born) in regular times to compensate. 85% of cops are men. If there is a war, 85% of deaths are male. If there is a workplace accident resulting in death, more than 90% of those deaths will be male. Highway workers, plumbers, electricians, etc etc, are primarily male.

The difference between a male and a man in my opinion is that men defend. For if a male cannot defend, some other male must step into the breech and defend on his behalf. This is where the rubber hits the road regarding masculinity.

Men and women have aligned with each other over thousands of years to take advantage of each other’s strengths and shore up each other’s weaknesses. Men tend towards larger groups while women tend to have a small group bias. Because of this, men build cultures while the sisterhood stress tests them. Ideally, that arrangement holds great promise if we can each acknowledge the other’s contributions.

What’s required is a Team Human understanding of our gifts  and how we complement each other.

The narrative online and in academia is relatively recent. Nature is ageless. I’d bet on nature.

Trust is what made homo sapiens who they are. Orgasms between men and women

ORGASM


ORGASM

Consider women’s sexual peak is later than men’s, and by a far margin. The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex says, “Most men in adolescence and young adulthood report more frequent orgasms than do older men from all sources, including nocturnal emissions, masturbation and intercourse…

On the other hand, women experience their highest number of orgasms from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties.” So, why would that be?

In my view, given these years are smack dab in the middle of her pair-bonding days, and she’s likely long with child if it’s destined to be so, we ought to realize female orgasm is less about reproduction and more about intimate attachment.

Same with men. Each ejaculate has from 40 million to 1.2 billion sperm. At just once per day, the math for procreative possibilities in a year are mind-boggling. Fuhgeddaboudit.

Remarkably, a woman’s ovulation period is 12 to 24 hours… once per month. Yet, she can blow her stones every day of the week all year long at any hour she chooses.

Why would nature give her that ability for just 12 hours ovulation 12 times per year? Or, 12 days out of 365?

At just 3%, man, something doesn’t add up.

I think the reproductive aspects of sex between adults is a minor function embedded in intimacy which primarily uses orgasm as its bonding agent.

The bonding hormone oxytocin is released during childbirth and when else? Orgasm. With benefits from increased serotonin to greater blood flow to the brain. Post-orgasm, women keep producing oxytocin for a period of time.
It’s about the orgasms. OK, I’ll go further and suggest sperm is the glue which holds us together.

And, that’s not even considering sperm as nutrition: with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and which, when ingested by a woman whichever way, may also play a role in mitigating a woman’s anxiety and depression.

Come on, it’s super bonding glue.


Also, just think of what that means… to have an orgasm in front of someone. Usually stripped naked, the body and its every crevice is exposed so that your partner has full access. You lack weapons or protection: no armour or shield, nor a dagger hiding under your cloak or fur. Caution is thrown to the wind.

There is no hiding during orgasms, it’s a surrender to each other.

The abandon of orgasm sends your face into contortions of pleasure where you must risk your partner’s glances. Only she sees you this way, just as only you see her this way.

(For me, if a woman doesn’t make good faces when she’s coming, there is no hope for us. Her smell and climaxing facial expressions are what determine if we shall meet again unclothed. If she shudders during the moment, even better. I have no idea where this comes from in me, seems shallow, but it’s real).

Think of the moment of orgasm and its inherent temporary loss of control. Who is it… that “stands on guard for thee” while you engage in your moment of bliss?

Of course, your companion does. We do it to, and for, each other.
What is she first… this woman you profess to love?

Is she first a mother? a worker? a businesswoman? a friend to her gal pals? an advocate for your children’s education? a community member? a churchgoer? All these and more I’m sure.

But she is first a sexual human being.

This is her essence and no amount of time or bearing of children changes this essential fact. She is sexual, treat her so.

Burdened by the caregiver’s dilemma, caught between not wanting to appear selfish and feeling taken for granted by the very people she looks after… you are her defender.

You see the real her, the authentic wild woman she keeps in shadow.

What of it that her best fertility years are two decades between 15 and 35, though her best orgasm years go another decade or more far beyond?

What does this say? When you consider living to 50 years was a full lifespan until a couple of hundred years ago, it may mean she gets hornier as she ages.

It requires a male defender by her side who makes her feel safe enough to visit this side of her egalitarian spirit.

Can you be such a man?

Questions? Comments?

true and free…
cw

CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men ™
[email protected]
advisortomen.com

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PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE MALES

 

Should a man be passive aggressive?

How would you know?

The Mayo Clinic says this”
“Passive-aggressive behavior is a pattern of indirectly expressing negative feelings instead of openly addressing them. There’s a disconnect between what a person who exhibits passive-aggressive behavior says and what he or she does.”

Why not? What about Machiavelli and The Prince?
What about Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power?

I’d argue that being passive aggressive is more of a feminine trait (rest in peace ma). And keeping in mind that we carry both forces within each of us, with one of course usually predominating according to sex.

It’s just that being passive aggressive is based on lies.

And NOT lying is one of our greatest challenges.

When we lie we are incongruent and others can see it or sense it.

Most of our problems are sourced in the bullshit we tell ourselves.

Let’s have a look at general sex differences (and note that exceptions don’t disprove the rule).

Consider less than a 2% dissimilarity in DNA separate men and women.

Not much until you consider the DNA differences between humans and chimpanzees is also just 2%.

At least a quarter of human genes express differently between men and women, maybe more. Most illness I’ve read about, the disease presents slightly differently in men and women.

Sex differences are sometimes a matter of life and death.

Let’s take a look at how we compete with each other to unravel the passive aggressive question.

Men tend to compete head-on to determine expertise and accord each other a hierarchical ranking (context dependent).

Afterall, not everyone can be quarterback… just as not every quarterback can play on a defensive or offensive line, catch passes, kick field goals, cover and tackle, run for touchdowns, etc., etc.

Men evolved together to find out who can do what. Even the apprentice-journeyman-master craftsman levels follow this requirement.

While the term alpha is a misnomer, meaning it doesn’t at all apply to humans, colloquially (commonly) you could say every one is an alpha in favourable circumstances to them.

For example, it doesn’t matter how much money you have or how big your muscles are, if your car is stuck in a ditch in the Appalachians at 3:30 am, the only top dog there will be the never-finished-high-school tobacco chewing hillbilly who shows up with his tow truck to pull you out.

(Apologies for the stereotypical characterization of Appalachian tow truck drivers as hillbillies. It will make more sense in the next paragraph)

Men also dominate each other with teasing, ball busting, and in extremes, bullying. Originating in the male child’s rough and tumble play,  men push each other to test mettle (guts, courage, etc.).

This makes sense… for if you can’t stand up for yourself how will you ever stand shoulder to shoulder with me and defend against the enemy?

Boys know from a very young age that they are life’s defenders.

In the real world, mom is not there to protect you, son.

Speaking of mom, women usually compete differently than men.

They are necessarily egalitarian by nature and adhere religiously to the principle that there is safety in numbers.

Let’s say you and I hunt and kill a deer, we’d split the carcass and you might get the organ meats if you made the kill-shot.

Back at the homestead, handing over the victuals to the woman, she’d make sure to feed adults, teens, grandparents, the sick and infirm, and especially children–kids and babies. Mom makes sure everyone eats.

Safety in numbers and distribution equality are built in to her. Women compete with other women and are loathe to stray very far from the norm.

An over-preoccupation with equality and sameness in our culture is a clear sign it has become feminized. This comes from a good place yet has negative consequences only men can address. More about this in another newsletter.

Since women spend from 50 to 90% of disposable income, my impression is that the economic system to stay viable must serve them first. That’s how we got ’90s shows like Everyone Loves Raymond and the like.

Men invented capitalism, think about that.

Psychologist Susan Pinker (sister of Harvard’s Steven Pinker) says the way women compete is to maneuver covertly while using mean remarks, social exclusion and by winning over each other’s friends and allies.

This is not restricted to antisocial females nor their psychopathic sisters, and represents the typical “mean girls” clique found in any high school. It’s THE reflexive approach for most women.

Women tend to have one, two, no more than five best pals whom they guard jealously from each other and use for emotional regulation (Baumeister, 2010). This is an essential aspect of most women’s existence.

Missus sends a picture of almost every supper she cooks to her best pal.

Men don’t do that.

Men typically engage with many different groups of men with whom they pursue work, family, leisure and other activities. It’s why men also usually need a reason to meet up.

I’m going to see a buddy I have known for almost fifty years tomorrow. I haven’t seen him in months. I promised him five signed copies of my book. He wants to talk to me about some new dame he’s seeing. Reasons.

Men are pretty good at suppressing emotion and don’t typically “wear their emotions on their sleeve” in group settings because that could be used against you (see male ball busting above).

The male equivalent for the emotional regulation women engage in with her girlfriend is the man banging his woman. Keep that in mind.

These differences in how we compete can also be dangerous in ways that every man needs to be aware of and take into account. Hell I teach this stuff to my kids.

For example, if two men argue about something, the possibility of punching each other in the face tends to restrain them both and keeps things civil.

Argue with a woman and you may find she goes behind your back and ruins your reputation with others (mean remarks, social exclusion, winning over friends and allies)… so that someone else punches you in the face.

This is one reason why for many years as women entered the work force in greater and greater numbers, most people still preferred a male boss.
Women included.

This is still true but men have gotten used to women in the work place and half of men now say they don’t care if their boss is a man or woman.

Men are highly adaptable, so that makes sense. I can’t tell you how many women I’ve counseled wounded by being ostracized by other women. I ran large sales teams and used to teach this to my young charges, both male and female, and what a relief when they knew what was up!

I often say abuse of empathy is a woman’s birthright. This is a formidable survivor trait in the sisterhood and when she feels threatened she is likely to resort to low blows while exploiting emotion and tossing the rules of fair play out the window.

Read The Crux Bamboozle in SIPPING FEAR PISSING CONFIDENCE to find out more about how women experience fear differently than men.

She arrives as a female burdened with being nature’s designated caregiver and precious creator of life. Besides the risk of childbirth, her burden is more negative emotion and the scarcity of a short fertility period.

Nature gave her a man to balance out these chaotic forces within her and so he provides order as the expendable and powerful defender of life.

With considerable overlap, together, they are Team Human.

Acting passive-aggressively towards others and longing for emotional validation are unbecoming traits in a male.

It is embracing chaos over order.

Doing so may be channeling his mother’s influence.

As such it is unmanly and signals him as a boy.

And the boy must leave the mother to become a man.

Questions? Comments?

Powerful, true and free…
cw

Advisor to Men ™
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UNDERSTANDING PORN

UNDERSTANDING PORN
This week we break from our integration series to get to the bottom of the porn affliction decimating male confidence in this digital era.

The first thing I want you to understand is that you are run by your nervous system with conscious awareness along for the ride. Furthermore, the brain is predictive, not reactive.

Your nervous system is trained by experience (what else?), so if you feel something today, it is likely that you have felt it before.

There is nothing new to the brain. You see an ocean; the brain has seen a big lake. You see mountains; the brain has seen a hill. Everything is compared to what the brain knows already.

The brain takes in information from your environment through your skin and senses creating an internal condition called affect in two kinds, valence and arousal. Simply: comfort or discomfort, aroused or relaxed.

This internal state is kicked up the neuron chain into the brainstem where the brain considers the circumstances and then runs the messaging by your databank of prior experience and learned concepts from all the way back to birth.

From this, a hypothesis or prediction makes it into your awareness… which you then prove or disprove using the social reality before you. All done in a few hundred milliseconds. It’s amazing.

How many times have you walked in on a conversation and thought people were saying one thing, and found yourself getting pissed off, only to listen more carefully and then relax after you discover they were actually saying something different or were not even talking about you? Happens all the time.

Or caught something from the corner of your eye and gone, “Whoa, what was that?” only to look again and see reality… knowing your brain had fooled you into seeing something that was not even there.

This is the predictive brain in action.  It works really well most of the time, and luckily, it corrects! The concepts the brain learns are critical here.

All addiction is an addiction to fear. What do I mean by that? It means that when stress hits certain people who have had their nervous system trained in such a way, they tend toward putting their physiology into a combined excited/fear state. It both feels normal and may temporarily relieve stress, although maladaptively (in a fucked way).

Furthermore, dopamine and adrenaline always fire together.

The addiction use effect is a fight, flight state that changes breathing, blood pressure, and heart rate. More importantly, it narrows focus and thereby relieves stress by turning many thoughts into fewer or different thoughts.

Normally this mechanism is used to escape life threatening danger.

The addicted use it to deal with a bad day… or any day.

A man is not thinking about his tax bill or how brakes on the truck need to be done or how he’s not seeing his wife’s pussy often enough while he has his dick in his hand and watching porn.

You have a brain and a brain stem, a spinal column that commands peripheral nerves instantly for fight or flight, and a nerve called the vagus which winds all over the inside of your trunk to every organ, your stomach, your skin, even to your balls. It has two parts, upper ventral vagus and lower dorsal vagus.

The lower dorsal vagus nerve is known for rest and digest. This part of our nervous system controls digestion, sexual function, and immobilization (the freeze part of fight, flight or freeze).

The upper ventral vagus controls heart rate, breathing (lungs) as well as the throat and voice and facial muscles. Whereas your peripheral and dorsal nerves for freeze, flight, fight are there in the first months of gestation, the ventral develops in the third trimester presumably when the baby starts to hear its mother’s voice.

In infancy, “motherese” from mom’s sing song voice as she talks, coos and coddles and holds her baby further develops the ventral vagus.

Mom is the primary caregiver 99% of the time and the ventral vagus is how you connect first with your mother and from there, eventually learn to communicate and regulate emotion with others.

A baby will seek facial expressions and voices of caregivers to be comforted. This human need never, ever goes away.

How well we connect with others is a pattern largely set over the first fourteen years of life.

As adults we achieve emotional homeostasis (balance) and feel safe, accepted, understood and belonging through ventral connection.

I explain how porn use activates first the fight, flight peripheral nervous system (using the neuromodulators dopamine and adrenaline) and then the dorsal vagus—specifically the parts governing sexual function and post-orgasm immobilization.

Talk about narrowed focus…

While using porn, like any addiction, there is no true ventral activation and so, no possible homeostasis (internal emotional balance). This then affects relationships, decision-making, motivation and every aspect of being.

After engaging in sex, an old saw has a woman complaining how the man has fallen asleep while she stares at the ceiling wide awake. Some men use this porn-induced immobilization as a sleep aid.

All addictions activate the peripheral and dorsal systems while tricking you into thinking you are also using the ventral vagus to connect with others.

I show how this works in the book SIPPING FEAR PISSING CONFIDENCE in that the booze buzz making a person glib and friendly amongst others is more likely derived from a weak form of hysterical strength.

Find that explanation in the book’s introduction. The Crux Bamboozle section of chapter one also sheds light on how this works.

Similarly, the porn user gives himself the semblance of human connection by listening to the oohs and aahs of pornographic video, and seeing the facial expressions of the players involved, and imaginarily associates himself in the scene if not as a participant, as a present voyeur.

I believe this confuses a brain that has evolved for real human contact, replacing it with a phony substitute, and thereby creating unreal concepts for the predictive brain’s use going forward.

An exception might be using porn with a sexual partner, but even then habituation occurs and escalation is required over time. If a couple watches the screen more than each other, the same shit as follows happens.

A porn habit erodes his natural ability to get his dick hard and perform sexually with a real live partner because his brain’s conceptions are all out of whack. The simulation throws off the brain so much that eventually he either can’t get it up for real pussy, or live pussy seems so tame he can’t get excited enough to orgasm.

This kills confidence. Plain and simple.

It has to, and it can’t be any other way.

His mind has been infiltrated by the equivalent of replicating digital brain worms feasting and supplanting his neuronal connections to crowd out his old concepts.

Furthermore, it becomes his dirty little secret, tragically compounding his shame.

The shadow parts of his personality—those parts he hides from others and even from himself—grow in the darkness… like mushrooms in the damp cellar of his psyche feeding on his old conceptual roots.

His identity becomes façade and charade. He claims less for himself under this compromised existence. His only sure thing is porn.

He also can no longer find or build towards a life of real meaning.

His deeds feel hollow, relationships are compromised, and overcoming obstacles only bring him back to porn as he falls deeply into weakness as his confidence heads south.

By default, he gains no freedom from the suffering of this existence.

A decade or more may go by.

He may realize one day that he did not in fact live those ten years… but rather, he has lived the same one year ten times…

So he endures, held in limbo, folding in on himself, puzzling loved ones, remaining disconnected from them while suffering quietly…

… with nothing to look forward to but relieving his self-inflicted stress…

… with his dick in his hand.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Questions? Comments?

True and free…
cw

1. Need help with this? Don’t fuck around brother. Call me, invest in yourself.
Since 2014, all my clients have resolved their addictions.
I’ll show you how to defeat porn and take back your life.
You may want to do this today
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CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men ™
advisortomen.com

2. If you have read or listened to SIPPING FEAR PISSING CONFIDENCE, we appreciate your review. During a recent call Robert Glover called it the best book he’s read on addictions and a top-three must read book for men. (send me your review and I’ll send you some stuff)

Blessings! Stay powerful…

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INTEGRATION #2 YOUNGER SELF vs ADULT IDENTITY

INTEGRATION #2 Younger Self vs Adult Identity

If you remember last week’s message about Locus of Control, you know I think it’s a first step along the integration journey.

Hopefully, many of you have gone online and taken the free assessment I linked and now have a better idea of how to improve your locus scores.

This week, I want to bring your attention to the reconciliation between your Younger Self and your Adult Identity.
I’m not a “trauma is everything” type as I don’t think that’s useful.

I don’t mean any disrespect to the traumatized out there, and I count myself among them, it’s just that it can become shrouded in avoidance, like a dark and humid basement a child dare not go into (I have one of those).

It can become an excuse too.

As in “why do you drink?” Answer: “I have trauma, man!” You stopped drinking and started again, why? “I have trauma, man…”

Now the brain is thinking “how else it can leverage this to avoid taking responsibility and continue to live according to my whims?”

That’s not for you.

However, I will tell you that you are run by your nervous system and conscious awareness is along for the ride.

Furthermore, your nervous system is trained by experiences.

In fact, there is nothing new to the brain, it compares everything in front of it to what it has seen before.

Been to a lake as a kid and now you stand before the ocean, the brain says, “I have seen big water before.

Drive into the Rockies for the first time, the brain says, “I’ve seen hills.

Not only that, if you feel something today, you have likely felt it before.

The brain takes your databank of prior experiences and comes up with instant hypotheses about the circumstances you are in which you then disprove or confirm using the social reality before you.

So, let me repeat: if you feel something today, you have likely felt it before.

This also means that if you want to feel differently, you must do new things to provide your brain with new concepts to use going forward.

This facet of integration becomes necessary because of the way the brain adapts during aging.

Studies show us that even a one-year-old child knows if someone is treating them or others unfairly. Children have a keen survival sense, and know how they are being fucked over (if at all) by the people around them as they grow.

When a child encounters situations they find unfair or where they feel powerless, or where they are of “two minds,” their rudimentary operating system will step in “to deny, repress, or distort, inner and/or outer reality to lessen anxiety and depression.” (Vaillant, 1998)

Conforming with caregiver imperatives helps two-fold: to keep you alive and to become socialized (if you are reading this, the first imperative was successful: a cause to celebrate! while the latter is a work in progress).

This operating system is installed in a child mainly through language, often under a “threat and reward” (carrot and stick, if you will) style of parenting.

This full nervous system OS is also known the the ego… and is continuously updated throughout childhood.

Only a man’s prefrontal cortex doesn’t come online fully until he’s aged twenty-five or thirty.

At which point, absent parental feedback, he becomes totally responsible for his own neuroplasticity.

He needs to do his own operating system updates.

Failing this, parts of his existence will still be run by his Younger Self.

You can imagine (and might already suspect or know) how this turns out.

He encounters some situation and responds emotionally out of context, leaving himself and those around him dissatisfied and uncertain.

Some men build a defensive wall of denial in order to manage shameful feelings that are often decades old in origin.

And, the bitch is these things in a man’s life don’t tend to get better on their own. They tend to get worse.

In fact, if you consider the human life cycle and peg life expectancy at eighty-two years, the low point average in happiness is age forty-seven.

I know from working with hundreds of men that this has much to do with failing to update our operating system by integrating the Younger Self with a strong and powerful Adult Identity.

When you do the work, in some ways you in effect become your own father.

It’s up to you now and forever. Parents often regress to “old children” as they near the end of life. You become their parent.

This is part of that process.

Understanding your past frees you to create a compelling future.

That’s part of what it means to Integrate. You reparent yourself.

It requires courage… but is the best work you will ever do.

Nothing I have done on the personal development front has been more rewarding. Despite looking like I had it together, I suffered..

After carrying a secret “piece of shit” shame for fifty years, I did the work using plenty of curiousity and acceptance, and was finally free.

I want that for you too.

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek,” said Joseph Campbell.

Questions? Comments?

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw


INTEGRATION #1 LOCUS OF CONTROL

INTEGRATION: LOCUS OF CONTROL

Let’s talk about Integration.

No one bothers to explain this one outside relationships. I see many who are fond of focusing on attachment as the cause of their troubles, and there is some truth to ideas such as codependence and fusion.

In fact, codependence is quite normal.

Couples who have been together a long time finish each other’s sentences, and when together their heart rates and blood pressure synchronize. They also report being happier and tend to live longer.

In the strictest terms, fusion refers to a baby who, having been grown and connected to its mother by womb and umbilical cord, arrives not knowing that she or he is, in fact a separate being until the second half of the first year of life.

Still, children experience families physically.

A child will attune to caregiver nervous system activation for survival.

This same mechanism broadly later gives you the capacity for empathy, compassion, and the mirror neurons that allows you to sense what others might be feeling or thinking by watching them carefully.

Clearly, remaining monogamous to mother is not good for men. The boy must leave the mother to become a man.

Furthermore, moms are supposed to be more anxious than dads. It’s an adaptation that helps her keep you alive. Kind of important.

Dad is there to counter this necessary negative emotion with leadership and reassurance. If dad is absent, or checked out, or too busy, mom’s influence will prevail.

Until a man confronts and transcends his early life influences to emerge as a separate entity capable of standing fully on his own, he will, in many ways, remain set back emotionally.

He will tend towards failing to control his own destiny.

I believe locus of control is essential to personal integration.

Locus of control speaks to where you place responsibility for what happens to you in life.

Is life happening to you or for you?

Is everything up to fate or luck?

Or do you create much of your own?

My own locus of control shifted considerably when I was in college studying behavioural sciences.

Growing up I had four sisters and four brothers, smack in the middle a family of eleven. But there was significant violence and passive aggressiveness and not enough love to go around.

God bless them all.

I felt powerless to do anything about the daily injustices prevalent in our household. In fact, the violence and pressure left my nervous system in the “fight” mode of freeze, fight, flight for many years… well after the old man tossed me out of the house at age fifteen.

He said there was room for only one rooster under a roof and since it was his house, I had to go. The rooster is now my totem animal.

I’m not proud of it but out on my own I fell in with a tough crowd of older drug dealers and assorted miscreants.

I spent almost two decades as a gangster thug during which, at one time or another, I was shot, stabbed, run over, hit with baseball bats.

I did time for shooting people and various other crimes against society.

I was an emotionally unregulated and disintegrated mess.

Something had to give.

Only now I had a wife and son to look after.

I got off the dope and the streets and took drug rehab… and then talked my way into college without even having a high school education.

Later, I graduated “with honours,” first in class, winning the Academic Council Award each academic year in the process.

In my first semester of studies, instead of the usual “Gulag Archipelago” type stuff I read when I was a crook, I picked up “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale.

That’s when my locus of control changed.

I was walking between classes and thinking about things, trying to match what I was learning and my experiences to form a coherent and functional “model of the world” when it struck me (like epiphanies do).

“Happiness is a decision,” I said out loud.

I was free of victimhood there and then. If you come to my house today and ask my children what is happiness, they will tell you it’s a decision

Thereafter, my locus of control became more internal than external.

I realized my fate was in my hands and whatever powerlessness I had grown up to accept was all in my head (and heart).

I could choose to live a different life.

So, I did, and here we are.

Most of my pals from those days are dead and gone, many of them tragically.

Also, one hundred and eighty thousand people died around the world yesterday.

Not me. Not you.

About ten years ago after watching a clip online with a man exhorting other men on a beach to either memorize Invictus or get in the water and carry one of their comrades, out of curiousity I looked the poem up.

I have recited it out loud every morning since.

I recommend taking in a little Invictus every morning, like a vitamin.

Where are you on the Locus of Control scale?

Go to this link and take the free assessment. It’s the same one I use with my clients. (you can also get a PDF for under ten bucks)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/tests/personality/locus-control-attributional-style-test

Follow the advice and begin to integrate your locus control to a more internal orientation… and watch your life change.

Stay tuned, as we’ll cover more facets of male integration.

Questions? Comments?

Stay powerful, true and free…
cw

THE QUADRANTS


QUADRANTS: 4Ps

So, I’m off to an event Labour Day weekend involving a short out of town trip and hotel stay.

I don’t drink or smoke, or involve myself in any of my old shenanigans, so it’s an opportunity to plan both the final quarter of 2023 and lay down the basics of 2024.
One of the men convinced me to do this a couple of years ago and I’ve adopted it as my own. That’s the advantage of consulting a tribe of men.

Labour Day weekend used to mean the working man’s holiday and end of summer. I make it a solemn time to reassess my life.

 

I happen to have a birthday in early December so I use that to mark my final edit for next year’s goals. By settling things before the end of year, I can enjoy Christmas knowing future plans are in place.

 

This is the Quadrant Shield I use to tell the truth about my life.

 

Physiology is the first quadrant because everything starts with health.
As you know, I’m a devoted sleeper as ALL health is predicated on sleep (pretty sure Matthew Walker says as much in Why We Sleep).
Sleep first, diet and exercise follow
I eat mainly meat and whole plants. Little sugar and even less processed foods. I do some kind of exercise every day.

You may have an address on a street somewhere, but the universal address of your existence is that body of yours. Physiology first.

 

Prayer is quadrant two for very good reasons.
I’m not necessarily referring to conventional prayer but if that’s what works for you by all means pray to God. I see God as a metaphor for nature and some, meaning I leave room for mystery.
I like Jung’s Synchronicity and seek and marvel at the interconnectedness of all things.
More than this, someone pointed out that including some kind of higher power or expansion of the self while following your goals has a two-fold benefit.
It means you are not alone and because you have begun a dialogue with your spirit, the greater calling of your mission prevails.
Your masculine destiny becomes sacred.
To these ends, I use optimism training end of each day. I ask what good things happened that day, why they are important, and how to get more?
I do an AAR—an after-action review. What was supposed to happen today, what did happen, what did I learn?
I practice short (one to three minute) mindfulness exercises and body resets on a schedule throughout my day.
I have a whole ritual to follow each morning and start my day with gratitude by remembering that on average 180,000 souls died yesterday.
If I can open my eyes, I’m not one of them.

Above all I do my best to live up to my values. I have taken the time to discover why they are important to me.

 

People is my next quadrant.
First, I want to first ensure I have a good connection with myself.
That includes knowing the truth of Yes and No.
Reciprocity underpins our interdependence and men and women have always banded together to take advantage of each other’s strengths and to shore up each other’s weaknesses.
Success requires cooperation. Every successful person has help in the background making it happen.

Most of our happiness also comes from a sense of harmony with others. We are relational animals: Team Human.

 

Production is my final quadrant.
These are the fruits of my labour, the results of following my masculine destiny. It matters less how I do it and in an abundant world such as ours, the possibilities for success are endless.
Metaphorically, it is in a man’s nature to hunt (or its equivalent).
So, if you and I head into a forest and slay a beast for meat, it is unlikely that we will be able to consume it all.
If you dealt the fatal blow to the animal with your bow or spear, perhaps we decide that you should get the organ meats too… after first thanking the Gods for our good fortune.
We divide the rest which we cut and carry out.
Returning to the cave or village, we share our bounty with others of our tribe. The caregivers among us make sure everyone eats.

Nature has made it so that men produce more than they consume.

 

It is only by first asking myself what are the absolute truths of my life in each of these four quadrants that I can make plans to improve.
For without being true to myself I cannot trust myself.
As with all relationships, without trust, you have nothing.
Questions? Comments?
true and free…
cw

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The Expendable Male: Prison Justice Day 2013

The Expendable Male (6 mins)
August 10th is Prison Justice Day.

Back when I was a guest of the state all those decades ago (not a period that I am particularly proud of, but it is what it is…) we would grub for every food advantage, often finishing each other’s meals.

An extra dessert was bargained for like contraband.

But on the 10th day of August, we pushed back our trays and refused to eat the ‘Jug-up’ that was usually a highlight to the dreary days despite being food of consistently low quality.

So no food for me today. Coffee is fine, water is plenty.

The ratio of male to female prisoners is 10 to 1. It’s testosterone.

Like they say in French, “nous avons tous les défauts de nos qualités,” which translates as “we all have the faults of our qualities.”

Women can be both gifted and burdened with higher empathy and negative emotion. It helps them spot sickness in those around them (especially children) and danger in their environment.

This blessing is often overwhelming (that’s where you come in to help her balance things – see Team Human below).

There’s a meme that floats around the internet listing predominant male roles such as roofer, logger, veteran, plumber, mechanic, carpenter, coal miner, firefighter, iron worker, truck driver, oil rig worker, police officer, cement mason, power lineman, crane operator, highway worker, garbage collector, construction worker from 80% male (truck drivers) all the way to 97% male (plumbers).

I’m still waiting for the day a couple of gals will show up in spring and clean out my septic tank. I won’t hold my breath (while I hold my nose – just kidding, I don’t really do that… despite the stink).

Cops are something like 85% male. War deaths are 85% male. If there is a work place fatality in North America, 90+% of the time that tragedy will involve the loss of a man’s life.

She is the burdened female precious creator of life.
He is the expendable male powerful defender of life.

With overlap, they are Team Human.

Sometimes, in context, our gifts bite us in the ass.

True for men too as much as for women.

More boys die in childbirth and are born with problems. Preemie girls are almost twice as likely to survive as do boys. A plethora of conditions affect boys more than girls including attention deficit, Asperger’s, dyslexia, etc..

Even more so than it is with girls, a boy’s relationship with his mother as primary caregiver is especially critical to his development.

In Canada, child psychologist and professor of pediatrics, psychiatry and psychology at The University of Montreal, holds the Canada Research Chair in Child Development and won the 2017 Stockholm Prize in Criminology for his work studying delinquents.

Recounting his days studying aggressive boys in the Montreal school system during a podcast last year, he said his early research surprised even him.

If a mother has problems like depression, anxiety, drug or alcohol addiction, her male child has a greater propensity to aggression and later juvenile delinquency.

If she has only a female child, the aggression only shows up when that little girl grows up and has male children of her own.

Tremblay had good success intervening with mothers, having a positive effect on her children.

Studies have been done on men and women playing a contrived game where profits could be shared at a player’s discretion. The twist is researchers added the ability to electric shock each other.

Brain imaging revealed that male subjects who observed the selfish players being zapped registered pleasure in their brains while empathy areas were not activated.

Not so the women, who showed empathy for both the good guys and the bad guys in the game.

At Rooster Acres, my Missus can clean and gut culled animals but leaves the killing to me.

Because of testosterone, men have less ability to hold off competitive, aggressive and vengeful impulses.

Workplace shootings are almost always male, school shooters are male.

Accidents are number four on the list of things that kill men, occurring at twice the rate of females.

We also kill ourselves at four times the rate. The annual Darwin awards are typically going to be male “winners” … as losers.

And more of us end up inside.

Add in attachment theory John Bowlby’s finding from many years ago about male children being separated from their mothers under the age of four and having a higher likelihood of becoming antisocial later on.

A more recent study from Nevada said teens in trouble with the law whose mothers stood by them tended to grow up fine. Those with no mom standing in their corner had a higher rate of antisocial personality disorder as adults. One of our men is a “juvee” guard and confirmed this recently.

The famed Grant Gluek study tracking almost 800 Boston men since the late 1930s found men with warm maternal relations made more money as adults. Those without… had a four fold increase in dementia.

My old man said his parents both broke his heart. He died of dementia.

So while there are some bad ass muthas that should probably stay inside forevermore, most guys inside are not antisocial or psychopathic.

We are people makers and typically the men I did time with were males with fucked up backgrounds coping the best they could. Many were addicted as well as immature (I was both).

Dealing with many men on the fringes of society for four decades, I’d say a lot of them just take a long time to grow up. The more prosocial values they are exposed to as they age, the better they do.

Look at the Titanic deaths: women, 434; children, 112; men, 1680 died for a survival rate of less than 20%.

If my Missus had to choose between me dying and either of my children, I’d be out of there. That’s how it ought to be.

We are the expendable males. And just as no woman has a choice over her burden as a woman, neither do men get to question nature’s wisdom.

It’s women and children first.

This is my personal view of things:

For all its advantages—like a 95% reduction in starvation deaths in my lifetime, or how it lifted 6 out of 7 billion people beyond the dollar per day existence of 200 years ago by 2017—capitalism subsumes relationships, families, cultures, govts, professions, ecosystems, and anything else in its path.

This has especially weakened the male population worldwide. We did this to ourselves.

It is men who teach men how to be men.

So today I’ll skip food. No “Jug-up” for me. I’m not asking you to do the same, just to recognize and appreciate male expendability.

And if you feel up to skipping dessert, more power to you.

I send you blessings of power and love…

true and free,
cw

Reach me if you want to talk.
I sometimes agree to work with a man…



SCAPEGOAT VAPEGOAT



SCAPEGOAT VAPEGOAT
Often I hear from men who are struggling in an area of their lives, and they tell of these challenges as undeserved, unpredictable and mysterious.

They may describe everyday life in terms of their own innocence, or with a semblance of stalwart courage in the face of what seems like “the unfairness of it all.”

It could be a problem with a relationship, and that’s fairly common. More typically it involves the difficulty of adhering to good daily habits, or of gloomy thoughts undermining their good intentions.

One man it’s a purposeful life, another his lack of exercise, still another is eating shit food and reaches for candy and desserts. Another speaks of the futility of it all, or of finding little or no reward for their hard work.

Over zoom, it is then I’ll often see such men reach down and haul on a vape pipe, attempting to be nonchalant but clearly hiding what they are doing in plain sight… and then blow smoke as discreetly as they possibly can.

None of them make the connection.If you read me you know that I discovered some years ago that ALL addiction is an addiction to fear.

All addictions have an effect on heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and by engaging in drug, alcohol, food, porn, gambling and yes, even vape addiction, we compulsively take “another hit” to boost the fear state.

This allows us to “narrow focus” and momentarily relieve stress.

How? Well despite the physiological fear state created by any addictive behaviour mentioned, all of them allow you to take many thoughts and turn them into fewer or different thoughts… and this is where temporary relief is found.

This is what fear is supposed to do: when in danger, it narrows focus so you can attend to things important to staying alive in the circumstances.

Only there’s a problem: repeatedly relying on any of these things to change your thinking creates a nervous system which seeks more and more fear to achieve the same temporary relief.

Soon the odd hit of the vape pen is replaced with more numerous hits on the pipe. That’s basic habituation.

And since you believe you are not or only mildly addicted, you can spread your risk around too.

Instead of opting for MORE vaping, at higher doses, you can use porn, food, gambling, or your miserable existence with its accompanying regret and loss of faith in the future instead.

While not your preferred addiction, they’ll do in a pinch.

That way you can tell yourself “See! I’m not vaping as much!”

Or, “at least I’m not smoking cannabis” or drinking alcohol or shooting heroin…

How we lie to ourselves…

And some men cannot see that their fear seeking is what lies at the root of their negative affect, because they have inadvertently trained their body to crave fear, to want to be in a physiologically aroused state and it’s what is normal to them.

Some men go and pick fights with a partner or coworker. Others allow themselves to be drawn into fight with feminists on the internet. Been there, done that… last week in fact.

I have clients who went offline for months during the last presidential election.

It’s fear seeking.

And until you call it out, you will be run by it, possibly forevermore.

Let’s get a few basics understood: You are run by your nervous system and conscious awareness is along for the ride.

If you feel something today, you have felt it before. The brain is predictive, not reactive.

It works on hypothesis.

It takes in information from your environment through the senses (eight of them) and adds that to the body internal state (hungry? get a good night’s sleep? allergies? hydrated? etc.).

This interoception creates affect (comfort/discomfort, aroused/relaxed) which is sent up through the brain stem to the periaqueductal gray and the brain.

There the brain uses your databank of prior experiences and formed concepts to come up with a prediction, which is then confirmed or denied by the social reality before you.

The nervous system is trained by experience. Humans are 50% internal and 50% relational beings. Most men who are fear seekers learned to be this way a long time ago.

So… men who work with me intensively for a few months inevitably get to the bottom of all this. My track record on this one is unparalleled, mostly thanks to the motivated men whom I have worked with and who helped me discover these deeper processes.

Those who don’t work with me sometimes resolve their addiction by taking the Taming Shame course and joining the 10M Men’s Boards, or from reading my book (SIPPING FEAR PISSING CONFIDENCE) and making the necessary changes. I salute you muthas,… for your courage, your intelligence and your resolve.

It’s no substitute for the real thing… but pretty good. Because the odds are against you. Let me explain. Your integrated nervous system acts as your O/S and receives regular updates when you are a kid which slow as you age. It’s also known as your ego.

The ego denies, distorts and represses inner and/or outer reality to lessen anxiety and depression.

This operating system works well, until it doesn’t. We should recognize that the ego gives less fucks about your long-term plans or identity and is wired directly to your order lower nervous system.

After all, the ego is about preventing anxiety and depression, both conditions of the future felt in the body (I call anxiety a temporary loss of faith in the future, for example, and we have already established that feelings start with interoception).

In fact, most of your thoughts emanate from your body and it’s easy to see how the ego filters for less anxiety or depression and is fine with more addiction. It’s doing its job.

Of course, addictions kill people. The physical ramifications alone make them deadly. And it’s not just food, or drugs and booze.

I have worked with young men who have lost half a million gambling and become suicide risks. The shame of porn can be a contributing factor.

But addictions also kill the spirit, and the spirit speaks for the soul. How so? Addictions kill confidence. Sheer displacement (edging out one thing for another) does that. You can’t have it both ways.

And confidence is your juice. Life is painful without confidence, so it deserves defending.

What if every craving you feel is really your spirit making you uncomfortable… so that you will manifest your most powerful life?

If your idea of spirit is of a ghost blowing smoke up your ass that may be the problem. For the truth is that when necessary the spirit will drag you painfully through the mire to get your attention.

And you will either make your suffering pay by becoming something more… or succumb to your discomfort and reach for temporary relief. This is where the normally wise ego becomes your enemy.

This will largely determine what kind of man you will be. And how your life will turn out since your life satisfaction is directly related to how much uncertainty and variety you can tolerate.

So, you must use your malaise as a signal and decide one of these: to retreat… or push through resistance to a new you.

And leave the scape goat vape goat bullshit behind.

They are for lesser men.

Questions? Comments?

 

true and free

cw


I do free calls for men and sometimes agree to work with them.
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Or click here:
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ATM NEWS 13july2023 TAMING SHAME TAMING THE DOG

There are two new videos added to the Taming Shame course.

Hundreds of men have taken this course and those who get through it say it’s one of the best they’ve taken. Here’s an example…

The first added video deals with the brain’s 70,000 thoughts per day and how most of these emanate from “interoception,” that is, messaging the brain receives from the body.

I explain how lower order nervous system fight, flight and freeze functions are responsible for much of what we think.

Afterall, the brain exists to support the body and 80% of neurons (in the hundreds of millions) from all over the body signal towards the brain.

You can name that part of your functioning; I call it the wolf. It’s a dog.

The wolf gives zero fucks about your dreams and aspirations.

Feed-Fuck-Kill-Run-Hide is what it does.

Useful at times, to be sure….

… but you don’t want it running you full-time.

The graphic up top gives you the full picture.

How do you know the difference?

Well, I’m big on claiming an identity and this shield tells you why:

So, the idea is this: If you have a thought that runs counter to a rule you have set for yourself, that’s the wolf. It’s the dog in you.

ex. Not eating after 9PM and think, “I could eat a small bowl of Cheerios.”

ex. Not drinking and think, “I could have one beer.”

That’s the wolf and your dog needs an instant repudiation.

Don’t let the dog (or wolf) run you.

Make sure you are living up to the identity you claim for yourself.

The second video refers to the Younger Self process.

At times, you may be emotionally triggered by circumstances and don’t respond appropriately because of “unfinished business” in the backrooms of your psyche.

Everyone has versions of this so don’t think it’s just you.

The Taming Shame course shows you how to defeat shame while updating your operating system more in line with your adult identity.

We’ll cover the process in a future ATM News… and you can access the Taming Shame course and see for yourself at this link:

https://services.advisortomen.com/courses/taming-shame

Being able to tell the difference between your higher order thinking and your lower order thoughts is a life changer.

All progress begins with truth.

It is only by being rigorously honest with the facts of your life that you will find and maintain forward progress.

It is critical that we as men stop lying to ourselves.

And that you claim the identity of your destiny.

So… I encourage you to begin listening to the moans, growls, whining and barks coming from the dog in you.

If you are in danger then by all means, use the wolf to get out of trouble.

But the rest of the time, cage that motherfucker…

… and go live intentionally.

Let me know how it goes.

I’m always interested in your victories, big or small.

Respond any time to this email with questions or comments.

True and free…
cw

want to talk? I offer free discovery calls and sometimes work with people.

Book here:
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CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men ™
advisortomen.com

Coming this fall: The Man Course… 

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