Author: Advisor to Men

ATM NEWS 13july2023 TAMING SHAME TAMING THE DOG

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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:
https://go.oncehub.com/ChristopherWallace

CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men ™
advisortomen.com

Coming this fall: The Man Course… 

Click to join the 10M Men’s groups here:

SUNDAY PRAYERS

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SUNDAY PRAYERS
The first few years of my life, I was a good boy. I attended choir practice with my dad when Catholic masses were still in Latin. I’d lose my place and be struck with fear and confusion… only to have the old man beside me reach down gently and show me where to pick up and rejoin the others. It’s a fond memory.
I guess I was there with him in church singing in a language I didn’t understand because I could read. I doubt it was because of my voice as no remnant talent has been detected in that area of my personal expression for decades…
But I’d like to sing. Sure I would. I write instead. Perhaps that’s it, my heart sometimes sings when I write…
I also used to believe in God. Perhaps I still do but don’t know it. Back then, I just took everyone’s word for the facts of God’s existence and to me it seemed reasonable that someone was running things.
After choir, I was in altar boys (unmolested) and served the parish for some years alongside my brothers and many others. All during this time, I remember I often prayed.
My father used to usher us to bed with the order: “Teeth, tody, prayers.” Tody was our word for the toilet.

So, I’d brush my teeth, use the washroom, and say my prayers.
For a time, surely I must have prayed to God that I would not wet my bed. Yet, it was not until grade two that my prayers in this regard were finally answered.
But back in those days, we prayed “morning, noon and night,” as they say. It seemed normal and prayerful encounters in many circumstances were regularities.
We don’t pray anymore so much. I blame the gay cabal in the Catholic Church ruining it for everyone. Nietzsche called it, but we won’t shoot the messenger.
You can argue that one without me.
I left the Catholics and became an Anglican in 1987. Better to have priests who can marry went my thinking, for wherever there are children, there must also be women. So, I let a Bishop slap the Catholic out of me in front of the congregation. Team Human.
Nowadays, we have mindfulness. Mindfulness is our new prayer it seems… only it’s not so new at all.
Considering its history right into the Bronze Age and before to the Indus Valley of India, breath and spirit have combined in a form of prayer for a long time. Possibly before we knew what prayer was, at least compared to the modern version.

I say fuck modern convention and I seek prayer… and act to pray, for prayer expresses a calling from the spirit.

And it is the spirit which speaks for the soul.

Nurturing that part of our existence brings the possibility of experiencing awe. Awe indeed.
Who has not been “awesomed” by a setting sun, the expanse of an ocean, or the heights of snow-capped mountains?
What about the Milky Way the first time you see them, far away from the lights of the city? And the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, making visible our atmospheric limitations?
And music which moves, paintings and art which captures, grand architecture which expands?
They say awe dwells right at the dividing line between excitement and fear. I like that conceptualization for it brings with it seemingly infinite potential and possibility.
When we bring awe into our world, we begin to see it everywhere… whereas before we may not have even known it existed.
Soon you see awe not just in nature, or in the blue skies and rising moon, but also in your spouse, your children, your coworkers and others around you. I sometimes see awe in you, yes I do.
You are awesome, really you are.
So, we have one hemisphere of the brain which is overwritten in childhood by an operating system predominantly focused on data, analysis, judgment and especially, conformity. It speaks in language and is focused on survivability and sociability. Call it the Servant Brain.
While the other, the Master Hemisphere, understands language but utters not a word. Rather it speaks in feelings and flashes of insight.
Thomas Edison advised us back in the day ”Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.”
Isn’t that what prayer was for?
I’m not a true believer in the sense that I don’t profess my faith conventionally. That doesn’t mean to say I will claim, “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual,” instead either.
It’s just that I prefer to see God as Good Orderly Direction, as my father suggested we do some decades ago when my son struggled and balked at the Scout Oath. Son #1 didn’t buy it, but the acronym’s lesson has been useful ever since. I’m loyal that way.
I see God as a metaphor for nature and the universe. Later, I learned that was Spinoza’s idea so I’m a Pantheist, I suppose.
What the fuck do I know? Oops, that makes me Agnostic.
I’m fine with not knowing. I don’t need to know.
In this way, I keep my bargain with my deceased mother when she told me on her deathbed, “Christopher, you’ve got to have a little faith,” and I promised her I’d leave room in my life for mystery.
Mystery can be a lot of fun. Scary sometimes, but exciting too.
So I pray. I combine prayer and gratitude and Edison’s advice and often ask my soul what it wants before I go to sleep. What am I feeling? I ask myself. What do I want? I add to my requests.
Last week I had some questions swirling around me while I was on a training, and it was suggested I ask God the following:
What do I see?
What do I hear?
What do I feel?
What do I know?
What do I need to do?
So, like a good Catholic boy turned Anglican man, I did what I was asked without faith or question. I said my prayers.
At 4am I was awoken with answers that came in as clearly as shafts of light through an open east-facing window from a rising sun in a cloudless sky. Clear enough?
It was pitch black outside, but the lights turned on inside me.
I had my answers.
Luckily, I know how to hypnotize myself back to sleep.
I did it again, and then again. Several nights and each night or the next morning at some point, answers came to me… always before noon.
I have a list of questions. I may save them up…
It’s free to be nice I say. It’s also free to pray and be nice to yourself and find answers like people have been doing for at least 2500 years and probably since the dawn of man.
I send you blessings of power and love. And prayers too.
Let us all pray.
This is the day…
To be true and free.

cw

The Record

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The Record

In grade three, our teacher was a nun who wore a full habit and had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen on a woman. She was strikingly good looking, likely provoking in me the first stirrings of love outside what I would have felt for my mother.
By then we had moved up from Halifax, Nova Scotia, when my dad was transferred to headquarters to continue his work as a writer with the Navy. I was born in Ottawa but at eight months, we had been shipped east, following dad as his career proceeded. They’d bought their first house in Ottawa before I was born, renting it out while they were gone those five years.
Before returning to Ottawa, my father dreamt that anyone who could speak the two official languages – English and French – would have a distinct advantage in Canadian society. Therefore, those children who were already attending English school in Halifax were transferred to French school in September when we arrived in Ottawa. My sister, our eldest, , and my two older brothers, were switched to St Thomas D’Aquin French grade school to resume their educations.
On the other hand, I myself hadn’t quite got to school yet in Halifax. In fact, I skipped Kindergarten because my birthday fell halfway through the year in December. The powers that be thinking it was better to start me fresh in the new language after we made the move. Disappointing as that was, I was so excited about being finally allowed to attend school that I even got ma to teach me rudimentary reading in my fourth and fifth years. It was with great anticipation that I looked forward to being in school every day like my brothers, instead of languishing alone at home without them.
You can imagine what a cruel trick it was for this little boy, in all the excitement of being on the cusp of joining the ranks of students like his siblings, to find that once finally allowed into grade one at St Thomas D’Aquin, I couldn’t understand a word spoken by either my classmates or my teacher. The reading I had worked so hard to master at ma’s knee was now useless. The kids in my class had all made friends the year before when I was still in Halifax; coming as they did from families where French was spoken daily; whereas, I didn’t know one word. I finally got to go to school only to find that all of my expectations were shattered, every last one of them.
I would spend most of my time there being either scolded or pitied by the nuns, fed peanut butter and jam sandwiches in their lunchroom when I forgot mine, or browbeaten for not speaking French and following directions. I registered very little of what was going on for that whole first year, unless, of course, someone broke down and actually spoke in English on my behalf, which all of them could do anytime they wanted, but rarely ever did.
I’d often try to answer questions posed to me by attempting mimicry when teacher would stand over me, pressuring me to answer something I could only poorly decipher from body language. Since teacher’s words were gibberish to my untrained ears, I’d speak gibberish in return. The other kids would erupt in laughter, infuriating the teacher. This would earn me time spent alone in the darkness of the clothing closet at the back of class, staring in the darkness at the wall, with a little light seeping in under the door from the classroom’s bright fluorescents, smelling the musty boots and coats drying there from being soaked with snow, listening to the kids and teacher carry on in an alien tongue I could not seem to comprehend no matter how hard I tried.
In the second year of my school career, a new Catholic French school had been built down the street from my parent’s home. No more school bus to take me away in the morning. Instead, I could reach it by simply walking 200 meters and come home for lunch every day at noon. About halfway through that second year, all of a sudden one day, I realized I got what they were saying. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was quite miraculous at the time, marveling as I did at the divide between ignorance one hour and comprehension the next. This made me listen even more intently, for now I knew what they were saying. From then on, I could pretty well discern what was going on, whereas before I’d been so hampered, relying mostly on observation to get through my days. In the morning of that momentous day, I knew nothing; by afternoon, I was one of them.
It still left me at a deficit contrasted with all the other kids, most of whom were from families that spoke French at home, having done so since birth. This was also the time when Quebec nationalism was simmering to an eventual boil, leaving some teachers with a clear prejudice towards the English. The nuns were pretty good, they served God, less so the nation; however, the lay-teachers at my Catholic school could be bigoted. And some of my classmates brought their parents’ prejudices to school with them. There was cultural snobbery around the French language at a time of great change in Canadian society.
What that meant was that I couldn’t bond as readily with the natural hierarchy of achievers in my class. My language weakness and delayed school start meant that I would have to choose friends from amongst the lower tier of students. Even then, none of this was lost on me. Predictably, I gravitated towards the sickly, the poor, the slow learners, the dysfunctional and the polio cripples from the start. They were the first tribe to accept me.
In grade three, I had settled into a steady rhythm of attendance and play. I had two older brothers, one a grade ahead, another a grade beyond that, and a big sister three grades up. I’d managed to find a few kids to hang out with, often bringing one home from school to my parent’s home at lunch- time, where ma would generously feed us both.
That year, Sister reigned over us with all the prudishness a 1960s nun could muster, an iron-fisted discipline laying quietly in ambush under her façade of benevolent kindness and a beauty that bespoke purity. Oh, those nuns, long used to being educators, were a tricky force to reckon with.
 Even our Principal, Mother Superior, an older version of my teacher in looks, with a handsome if not more beatified countenance, could inflict harm with a smile on her face. One day you’d receive a warm hand caressing your cheek as she smiled and looked intently into your eyes, uttering words of love and acceptance. That signature gesture of hers left you open for her next move.
On another day, as she roamed the playground looking for those who’d transgress the French only rule, or engage in boisterous behaviour, she’d move in with that same kindly look. Bringing herself closer, bending over slightly, her robed arm would rise as if to rub your rosy cheek. Only, instead of that warm touch, three inches from your face she’d mastered the short slap by sending a tremendous amount of kinetic energy through her hand and into your jaw. This would leave you stunned, completely undefended and reeling from your encounter. She would walk away scolding, muttering about how you had failed to measure up. It’s very possible that somehow she taught Bruce Lee this technique later.
My best friend was a French kid who’d been held back a year. Junior Lefebvre seemed to accept me for who I was. He was almost two years older and we were inseparable.
One day in class, out of boredom, we began to toss notes back and forth between each other’s seats. He’d send a swear word he knew; I’d try to match him by sending one back. He wrote, caca; I wrote back, pipi. He sent the same paper back with a drawing a picture of a full bladder and appendage. I added an inverted W to represent breasts. He again sent it back, this time adding a plus sign between them. I cleverly added in an equal sign after those two images and the word “bebe”, the French word for baby.
I’m not sure about Junior but at that stage, I had no idea what sex was, where babies came from, or much of anything else. When I got the last note, I competed accordingly and felt clever, as if I’d solved a puzzle, returning it through the air to Junior. Only, it was folded up paper, not the most aerodynamic of things, curling mid-air as it did, missing the target. Sure enough, the note landed on Ms goody-goody’s desk. Startled, she looked straight at me; I was caught looking back aghast.
Of all people, landing on Claire’s desk was a worst-case scenario. Not only did she lack a sense of humour, she was the smartest kid in the class, with little tolerance for tomfoolery of any kind. Sure enough, she opened that note, looked at it briefly, then stared right at me contemptuously through her horned-rims while I sat there with gaping jaw in disbelief at my misfortune, before heading immediately to the front of the class to ceremoniously place the errant note on Sister’s desk. The nun took one look at the scribbles on that folded page, and murmured something to Claire that could only have been a question as to its origins. I watched as Claire perfunctorily pointed straight at me, as if I was ten feet tall with nowhere to hide. Sister again said something to Claire and she returned to her seat. I looked down at my desk.
That was in the morning. Sister said nothing to me, but at lunch recess, she called me to the front of the class. I expected to hear about it then; surprisingly instead, she simply handed me a crisp white envelope and instructed me to give it to my mother when I went home for lunch.
 That posed a real dilemma. I’d never been asked to have a hand in my own demise before. I felt a strong survival reaction come over me as I weighed the pros and cons of whether I shouldn’t or should turn the letter in to mom. Finally, I thought, I’d better, but with an explanation. I’d frame things carefully and things would work out fine.
Arriving home, I stopped at the top of the stairs, just at the entrance way of the kitchen. There was ma efficiently preparing meals for those of us that made it home everyday from the same tiny school. I had the letter behind my back and asked her, “Ma, what would you do if I got blamed for something I didn’t do?” It was my opening gambit.
It was feeble but the best I could come up with at the time. The amateurishness of my approach was compounded when she answered, “give me that envelope in your hand behind your back.” She had spotted it and in her hurry, had grown impatient with how I was clearly trying to put things in a favourable light. She seemed to be indicating that she felt my attempt at influence was somehow a sort of cousin to dishonesty, the whole approach backfiring just as surely as the paper toss had earlier in the day.
She tore open the letter and uttered the most dreaded words she could, “Wait until your father gets home”.  Those words were powerful and final: life would now be put on hold until that threat resolved itself whichever way my fate determined. It was a sinking feeling, helplessly devoid of options or the benefit of sympathy from anyone. I was completely alone now.
I ate silently and returned to school. I finished the day there with no memory of Junior’s reaction, remembering only that Sister seemed to almost ignore me all afternoon.  It was indeed as if I now existed in a vacuum, a kind of suspended animation filling in for reality.
At supper, all nine kids sat on benches around a two-foot by three-foot table in the kitchen. The youngest would have sat in the high chair in the corner. Later, that space was replaced by a stool occupied by my eldest sister, watching over us in ma’s absence while herself eating at the counter. My father would arrive mid-meal, often in crisp uniform, wearing shiny half-Wellingtons I’d polished for him that morning, taking up his place with ma in the dining room to discuss their respective days.
From my spot in the kitchen, I could glance to the left and see them. Often, they’d close the door and cut us off completely for a bit of privacy. That may have happened on this day. If it did, I would have known it was because the letter I brought home was being read just then.
I didn’t eat at my usual pace, rather, I picked at my food much more slowly, like a condemned man, knowing that going to the gallows on a full stomach was not going to make a difference. The gallows were the gallows, not a place for appetites.
Finally, towards the end of supper, Dad came in and ordered me downstairs. He moved quickly and decisively and simply said, “Christopher, to your room”. The time had finally come and my body buzzed in fear and frenetic movement. Leaving my spot on the right side of the bench where I sat, I managed to squeeze between my father and the other kids and head down into the darkness of the stairwell to my room. Behind me, I heard my father rattle the “ruler” off the top of the door frame that separated the kitchen from the hall way where it sat up high, perched there for ease of access but effectively to intimidate as well.
The ruler came about because of my older brother. He is the only lefty in the family and the most athletic, a natural leader, courageous and principled.  He had always been meticulous about how he dissected things; from a very young age, he was frequently questioning my parents. He often stood up for all three of us older boys at some personal risk. This did not always go over well with ma, made worse while caring for a brood of nine.  She’d complain to Dad who, having exhausted all the thinner pieces of wood in his scraps on previous corporal punishments, finally resorted to making a permanent model that would last the coming years.
Made of pure Canadian maple, it was fashioned from a hockey stick handle he’d cut to size of no more than eighteen inches, the first few sanded down a bit to make a slightly rounder-edged handle. This proved unbreakable, and the rattling sound it made when it was removed from its regular spot was enough to cause a whole household of kids to freeze in their tracks in fear. In silence, we’d strain our ears for footsteps coming our way, or for voices indicating someone else was getting their due instead.
That day, arriving on my heels, my father told me to pull my pants down. I cried as I let them drop to my ankles for I’d never been commanded to do that before. I cried again when he told me to hang on to the bedpost. He may have told me I deserved it, or that I had it coming, but I don’t remember anything except for what he had to say to line me up for what I was about to receive.
He then began to use the ruler to spank me in full force. The first blow stung my flesh like hot water on a burn. The baby fat of my fleshy backside, ripe and cushioned, gave him ample target for which to aim. His first 27 hits came rapidly, and I withstood them, somewhat valiantly, him swinging that hardwood ruler from head-high down, before I finally dropped screaming to the floor in pain and fear. I begged him to stop, “No daddy, No!” All he did was say “Get up, get up!” and repeat the attack.
Once the strikes hit the mid-fourties in number, I began to fall to the floor almost after each one, the stinging forcing me to gyrate on the floor as if I was trying to shake the pain from my body, my wailing becoming louder and more pleading. “No daddy, no”, I’d say through my tears, screaming it at him myself after a time, my voice encouraged by the intensity of the pain I was experiencing. He’d only repeat the same command, “Get up!” and begin anew.
He’d try to get as many hits in as quickly as he could before I’d fall to the floor, writhing and attempting to escape, hiding his target by momentarily laying prone, facing him, screaming “Stop it daddy, Stop it”. Each time he’d return me to my position hanging on to that bedpost, my pants now off from kicking to get away, inexorably resuming my punishment, thinking all the while that with one more hit my tender flesh would be ripped open and I’d surely bleed all over and die. Having passed the extremity of my limits, I entered a mental state of sheer despair.
I gave up hope of it ever ending by way of showing him how much pain he was causing, instead, I tried to just exist in the reality at hand, each full hard blow sending me anew to the floor to gain myself a moment of respite, each time the blur of the room through my tears a dizzying scene of terror. I pleaded still but with much less force, trying to reason with him through my sobbing convulsions, “Please daddy, I won’t do it anymore”, hoping he’d stop, but it was all to no avail.
He never listened, the cold executioner in him having been awakened, there was no calling it off. It went on for 72 agonizing hits. More than half were individual strikes under full set-up, delivered with extra determination given my protestations, my lack of fortitude thereby making me contribute to the severity of my own punishment.
I know this figure because my brothers were listening, surreptitiously counting, informing me sometime after that I had set a new high number. Perversely, as if searching for a purposeful meaning to attach to the event, it was the empty present, the lump of coal at Christmas, the highly doubtful consolation: I had the family record.
In the end, I was left there crying, only to dress myself through my sobbing and resume my place at the supper table to try and finish my meal.  Oh yes, there was no escaping not finishing dinner. Even though it held no taste through my tears, traumatically permitting myself only to swallow, rather, to choke the food down in fear. I later cried deep heaving sobs whilst sitting on the edge of my bed the whole of that evening, into darkness and beyond.
The next day I awoke, resiliently buoyed by if not the admiration then at least the respect of my older brothers for having endured, their reassurances weak but somehow a tether to daily existence; comforted somehow that my screams had reportedly been heard by all the occupants of the houses around us; and now the lamentable but undisputed record holder of our family’s violence.
Sister enquired after me in the school hallway as we took off our boots and jackets before class. She asked if my parents had spoken to me. I told her they had, reassuringly telling her not to worry, that I was cured of acting out. I’d received my punishment; she’d get no more trouble from me. I remember being alert, my voice tinged with a sort of wonder at my own survival as I spoke with her, wanting her to be fully convinced.  It was behind me, though she had sent me to my travails at home, I was safe for now. I wanted this antagonist to like me, to cause me no further harm.
Then I lifted my shirt and readily pulled my pants down on one side to expose my flesh, as if offering her irrefutable proof that I’d been punished to her specifications. That whatever was in the letter she sent home with me, surely this would meet whatever demands she had made. From the middle of my back to just above my knees there was one continuous purple, red and bluish mass of damage: a kaleidoscope of swirling bruises and contusions that would take a month or more to heal. There were welts on the periphery of the striking area matching exactly the shape of the ruler, where an errant hit, likely because I had reflexively arched my back in avoidance, made my father miss the main target of my body. Where impact had hit upon already damaged skin, blood had leaked the way a scrape does, little droplets of red moisture showing here and there like macabre beads of sweat.
My pajamas had stuck to me the night before and lifting my shirt for Sister, my shirt tugged at my skin from the drying blood that continued to seep slowly from my broken skin. I watched her face. She did nothing less than recoil in disgust, her head snapping back briefly several inches or so. She quickly regained composure and with only the slightest of acknowledgement, she looked away and walked off.
I don’t remember her ever saying anything about it again, nor of her speaking with me one on one. The rest of the year passed quickly, or at least, I don’t have much memory of it. That she was always kind to me, in a sort of neutral way, is about as much as I recall. When I returned for grade four the following year, she was gone. I never saw or heard of her again.
A day or so later, my big sister took me aside, a subversive voice of disapproval towards our parents over the episode. She told me that she would soon grow up and get a job, once she found her own place I could come and live with her where I’d be safe. It was the first value judgment I’d heard about the ordeal, a spark of light lit in my belly like a hot coal, left there to smolder and smoke under the burden of my shame. On the one hand I understood that I deserved my fate; on the other, my sister held it out as unfair. She gave me hope. At eight years old, these were confusing times.
That wasn’t the first or last episode of my father’s violence; but it was the time the record was established. In the end, for the sake of all my brothers and sisters, I was somehow grateful that record was mine alone.
 

 

C K Wallace     2014 all rights reserved

WHAT IS A MAN?

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WHAT IS A MAN? (5 min read)

Men get confused about this issue. Some even get pissed off.

“What right do you have to tell me what a man is, they’ll say.

I get it.

I struggled with this for decades myself when I studied behavioural sciences in college and university decades ago…

Lucky for me, my old man once told me I wasn’t supposed to understand women, which made me study the literature even more over the last 35 years to arrive at the conclusions I present to you here.

Tell you what. Don’t let institutions of supposed higher learning do your defining because for the most part, they will fail you.

As I often say, you might lose your virginity attending college, you might not. But you will definitely lose your sense of humour.

Fuck’em if they can’t take a joke. 😉

I’m going to try to give you a working definition of what it means to be a man and I’m going to use the shield you see in front of you to do it.

Here’s some mythology to preface my remarks:

– Ancient Chinese tell of a chaotic world into which Pan Gu the Giant was born, who then pushes the heavens and earth apart to create order.

– Yin and Yang were born of chaos and reside at the center of the earth. They represent the intertwined nature of order and chaos.

– Yang is masculine action while Yin the feminine force of observation, the two expansive and contractive forces of nature.

– In the Yin and Yang symbol, order is white with a black dot, while Chaos is black with a white dot, each seeded with the other’s possibility. Order can become chaotic, and chaos can be ordered.

– The Greeks had a similar view of chaos as the natural state of the world in which the Gods were created to bring order. Chaos is first mentioned by the Greek Hesiod in “Theogony” some three thousand years ago.

The above gives us two Life Forces, Feminine Chaos and Masculine Order, both of which exist in us all. Though women will hold more chaos and men more order, at least, that’s the theory or the ideal.

I suggest that what is happening in our times is that in a great worldwide vacuum of male weakness, order is being supplanted by chaos.

Read the essay Men at Work to find out what brought us here:

Let’s contrast men and women’s lived experience.

She is the burdened female because she holds more negative emotion (which lets her see sickness in children and danger in the environment), menstruates, grows life inside her, and risks her own death in childbirth.

Think that counts as a burden? No male can ever know this.

She is precious because she has scant twenty good years of fertility while men can usually father children into old age. Men also use beauty to motivate themselves and her beauty is fleeting.

He has his own cross to bear as the expendable male. Nature usually makes more boys, 51 to 49%. More boys are born than females because more boys die in childbirth or are born with problems.

Most prisoners are male. More men commit suicide. Men die earlier.

All the riskiest jobs are predominantly male. Roofers, loggers, plumbers, mechanics, carpenters, miners, firefighters, iron workers, truck drivers, cement masons, power lineman, crane operators, highway workers and garbage collectors are more than 80% male.

But it is as a powerful defender that the expendable male earns his keep.

Work place deaths? 95% male. War casualties? 85% male. More than 80% of cops are male. It is men who defend families, and who teach brothers to defend sisters from predatory males.

Of course, there is some overlap between men and women. Missus doesn’t trust me to get the garbage out on time so has put the garbage out for the last 17 years. Bless her heart. Both sexes are relatively adaptable.

Men and women have always banded together to take advantage of each other’s strengths and to shore up each other’s weaknesses. Together, they are Team Human.

With all that said, what defines a man is his ability to defend. 

He is a powerful defender, or he is NOT a man.

I can hear the guffaws from here.

Let me give you an irrefutable argument as to why this is:

If you refuse to defend, someone else, one of the other MEN, has to step into the breech and defend for you.

Someone else has to risk their life to do your defending.

That’s OK if you are sick, injured, or a child.

And I’m not talking about conscientious objectors to something like the war in Vietnam. I’m talking about being under attack, culturally or otherwise.

It’s NOT OK if you are a grown male who refuses to be a man.

It is not manly to weakly abdicate your defender responsibility.

And leave it to some other brother to take up your slack.

To be a man you must defend life. Period.

This is how nature sets things up.

She creates life.

You defend life.

Together, we survive the suffering of our existence together.

One last thing. About 10% of people are dark triad types, meaning psychopathology, narcissism, Machiavellianism, or just plain cruel.

These personality disordered mother fuckers are most dangerous as males and often easily hide their disorder among us.

When men are weak and stop defending, who do you think rises to the fore and starts running things?

Exactly. Look around you.

Let that be your challenge my brothers.

I am calling upon you to stand shoulder to shoulder with me and other MEN in defense of meaning and freedom.

Join a men’s group near you or join me online in the 10MM men’s groups. 

Just make sure you bring the defender ethos to your tribe. 

Start by defending your body, the universal address of your existence.

Defend your spirit, which speaks for your soul.

Defend belonging, your family, friends, community and culture.

Defend your work, your business, your money.

And follow your masculine destiny as a man.

The world desperately needs powerful men.

Questions? Comments?

true and free
cw

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CONDOLENCES ATM news 14June2023

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Death is an inevitable part of life.

If you have lost someone dear recently, you have my deepest sympathies.

The truth is, all of us have lost or will lose loved ones. The deeper the bond the greater the ordeal.

As a man, you need to be ready for death.

Dealing with it will fall to you. It’s not your fault if this doesn’t come naturally, as a society we tend to make death and dying off-limits.

Amongst men, we need to talk about it.

In the second appendix of SIPPING FEAR PISSING CONFIDENCE, I tell of how I learned the phrase, “The Pain Stops Here.” Access the book to get the full story.

Essentially, a friend of mine with three sons lost the youngest in a tragic accident. His family was devastated: wife under unimaginable pain, his remaining two boys lost and confused.

Despite his own grief, in short order he gathered his remaining family and had them share their memories and suffering, promising they’d be heard.

Then he told them, “The pain stops here.”

They kept their memories intact and moved ahead in honour of their lost family member. It would have been an insult to his life to do otherwise.

My friend saved his family from a lifetime of self-recriminating regret in that one instance of masculine leadership.

It was hugely difficult, everyone cried, but they did it.

His sons grew up and started families of their own. I see pictures on FB every year as he takes his wife on their annual ski holiday. Bless them.

Leadership at times like these is a task that falls to men, to you and me.

Aim to be the most reliable person at a funeral, JP said…

Ma went after a two-day vigil at her home, surrounded by nine adult children and her husband of sixty-two years.

I had the privilege of leading my siblings in prayer for much of those two days. My father gratefully said I was the “emergent leader” of the family.

Bless his heart. He died five years later of dementia.

A man who uses his power and love in service of himself and others finds meaning and freedom.

Seems to me we can prepare now for the inevitable.

And heal us a little too.

If I may, the following is what has helped me over the years…

That you exist over there while those whom you care for exist elsewhere is an inadequate way to describe what it is to be humans.

Fact is… we exist in each other.

I have things that I say nowadays I know came directly from my mother.

Kids scrape a knee and bleed a little and I always think (and sometimes say) “that’s the badness coming out.”

“No rest for the wicked” is another one of hers… It just pops out of me.

Or the old man.

I was putting my two kids in the car seven or eight years ago and once in their car seats I said, “Watch your fingers, watch your toes, canteen open, canteen close…” out of the blue.

It was just like when Dad was putting us nine kids in the ’67 Pontiac Parisienne, one up, one back, baby on a knee, no seatbelts.

The old man retired a Lt. Commander, and that little ditty was what they said on the navy ships to close the canteen. He used it to get us kids to keep our fingers away from the jambs whilst he was slamming the doors shut.

When I said that to my children, it was the first time I heard it in over 40 years. But it came out automatically. From somewhere deep within me.

In that very instance, I was my father who exists in me.

He was not and is not gone at all.

There’s a ton of things that I have picked up from those around me over the years. Even if those people live in another city and I will never likely see them again, do I grieve them?

Or do I just remember “Oh yes, I learned that from so and so….”

It is similar when you lose someone you were close to. You may be unsure of where you exist in them once they pass on, but they are still in you.

The people you care about and spend time with echo endlessly down through time in you and others left behind.

Assuredly too, they appear… here and there.

Like my father and mother often do, as well as countless friends, some still around and some who are gone, they speak… through me.

Because they are not gone at all. We exist in each other…

We might keep grief around out of loyalty to our lost one. This is misplaced pain. Not a chance our beloved would want a lifetime of regret for us.

Better to honour them by living the best life we can.

Last night I was speaking with my Missus about these things.

OK, it wasn’t supper table talk but later in the evening. I remarked on how this was the best of times for us, that the children and her and me were connecting magically each day. She agreed.

I’m a quite a bit older than she is, so I told her that even when I’m gone, she will always have these moments to look back on. She said it would make her miss me. I told her I’d always be with her.

That even now, when I’m out and about, shopping or running errands, her words and image come to my mind and heart. Around the house it’s the same. She is always in me.

We have learned plenty from each other. I told her I would not want her to suffer my loss and reassured her that I will always be with her. She will also know she got the very best of me. That was my gift to her.

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of explaining this viewpoint to many men to help in being able to lead his family in their time of need.

For this, falls to men.

If not you, then who?

I send you blessings of power and love.

true and free…
cw

___________

I do free calls with men (and sometimes women) to see if I can help and sometimes I agree to work with them.

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CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor to Men ™

OEDIPAL MALE

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OEDIPAL MALE

You can look up the original story of Oedipus Rex, a play by Sophocles some 2400 years ago.

The short form is that a King is warned by an oracle that his son would slay him. When his wife has a baby boy, he tells her to leave the kid in the mountains to die. The boy is rescued by a sympathetic shepherd who gives him to a messenger who gives him to a different king.

Later as an adult, the boy consults an oracle himself and is told he is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Pissed, he leaves and swears to never return home.

So, he fucks off towards the city of Thebes. On his way there, he ends up killing a man in a quarrel over who has the right of way out on the road. Road rage has a long history apparently.

When he gets to the city of Thebes, he finds at its entrance a Sphinx devouring humans who don’t answer a question correctly.

Our man solves the riddle posed by the Sphinx to get in. Thus defeated, the Sphinx departs. The locals are so impressed that our man is awarded the kingdom and its Queen.

Sure enough, he moves in with the Queen, who, it just so happens, had been recently widowed… after her King was killed while out on the road. Some time later, after our man is well settled in, a wizard reveals to them the truth of the oracle’s predictions.

With the gig up, the queen kills herself for breaking the incest taboo and banging her own son. Meanwhile, the son gouges out his eyes in disgrace for having witnessed his mother’s carnal love.

Some versions say he rules blind until his death while other another version mentions he’s sent packing. Either way, it’s creepy shit.  Fucking Greeks eh?

Freud seized upon this tragedy to speak of the Oedipal male: the boy in love with his mother and who secretly hates his father while seeing him as a rival for her love.

This my friends, lies at the core of male weakness all over the world. Man boys get stuck here.

My son was five when he overheard me call missus my woman at the supper table. “Dad,” he said, “Mommy is MY woman” he insisted. What ensued was the sweetest exchange between father and son, a push and pull that has gone on for two years (and is still ongoing).

Last year, I overheard him telling his mother he was going to marry her when he grew up. She told him she couldn’t but that he would always be her “Little Bear.” That’s her pet name for him.

Over the past two years he’s grown more accustomed to me. I’ve taught him a few things and let him hit the heavy bag in the garage. He accompanied me on walks after dark in the forest, testing the limits of his fear. He pushes the 5 lbs. dumbbells in my office. He tells me of how he will defeat all sorts of imaginary enemies. Now he sits with me on the couch sometimes. Recently, just to see, I asked him about whose woman mommy was, he told me, “How about we share her…” He is making progress.

And of course we do share her. Just as surely as he will slowly withdraw from the influence of his mother over the coming years and come more and more under mine. He will need this as the demands of life on a little boy add up and compound through adolescence to where he requires the powerful masculine to help him negotiate obstacles that are sure to be in his path.

This is the “cure” for the oedipal male: to move away from the feminine and towards the masculine. It is every male’s rite of passage, a necessity of male maturation. For now my son must bask in the glory of feeling fully loved by his mom. He must see her as his primary “angel of mercy” as she nurses him through his first ten years. He is delicate of heart, and my son’s medical conditions mean his mother is vigilant and near. He is secure in her love and attention and his confidence shows it. He’s fearless with people, will talk to anyone. And day by day he gains more masculine power from the safety of her support.

But eventually, her love and attention will suffocate him. His lifeforce will be that much stronger for having had her in his corner, as a foundation of security and tenderness he may call upon forever more. However, he will need to shed her chaos and move towards masculine order to find meaning and freedom.

At some point, the boy must leave the mother to become a man.

Absent this natural transition, and without this period of reveling in the embrace and security of her feminine love, the danger is that he will seek her out in others for many years.

Some men do this for life, and never get the message, never feeling satiated, carrying a mother wanting with them into every decade and into every failed or unsatisfying relationship. Every addict and pick up artist suffers from this effect. Many other men are needy and weak or tyrants and aloof. It’s the mother wound: a maelstrom of confusion and anxiety and expectations and fear…

And just as it is natural for my little boy to slowly move into the masculine, such is the cure for the adult Oedipal male. He must find men and learn to absorb the masculine while abandoning his over-reliance on the feminine. He must confront his weakness and find his power. He must reclaim his masculinity while getting out from under the spellbinding power of the feminine. Later he finds his own feminine aspect rather than look for his mother in others. The anima. He welcomes back his feminine side only after first finding his masculine.

He must reverse the flow. He grows to no longer expect love at all, but rather realizes he has an abundant reserve of masculine power and love within him to share with others. He must get out of his head and instead, open his heart. Not to receive, but to give.

He uses his power and love in service of himself and others to find meaning and freedom.

For he realizes that the only person in the world upon whom he may reliably count on with any confidence for unconditional love is himself.

Anything less and he remains a boy…

Stay powerful, never give up, This is the day…

©2021 CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE

Advisor to Men ™

 

REACH ME
Trained behavioural science counsellor for 35 years.
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10 REASONS NOT TO SHARE THE NMMNG BOOK (with your SO)

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10 REASONS NOT TO SHARE THE BOOK… with your SO

Big mistake to share the book with your missus. Better to make the changes on your own and earn and/or take respect and win hearts and mind to earn her loyalty. Off the top of my head, here are ten reasons you should not share the book with your gal.

1. Sharing the book with her gives you an excuse to say, “See, it’s not my fault.” This is true. But it’s also an attempt to seek maternal acceptance, which is your problem in the first place.

2. Sharing the book with her burdens her. She carries more negative emotion in general, something she uses to spot sickness and danger in her environment. Some of the stuff in the book applies to you and some or much of it does not. If she reads the book, you are on the hook for all of it.

3. Sharing the book with her means she becomes your examiner, and you must meet her expectations to grow all while she keeps score. I won’t elaborate on that, figure it out.

4. Sharing the book with her may trigger, “abuse of empathy is a woman’s birthright” when she’s feeling uncertain and out of sorts. You will have handed her an irrefutable position that is right… about everything.

5. Sharing the book with her means all of your faults are on the table, none of hers. Forget about broaching this in the future. You will have lost your moral authority.

6. Sharing the book with her was an idea Glover promoted when he was conducting couples counselling and was there to referee. Tell me about how Glover has moved into your house.

7. Sharing the book with her means she gets to evaluate every aspect of the Breaking Free exercises and Rules to live by through a “what does this mean for me?” lens. That cannot help but leave her feeling as if you are pulling away from her.

8. Sharing the book with her lets her know that you are preoccupied with your weakness. This tends to form even greater contempt. Contempt is the greatest predictor of break ups.

9. Sharing the book with her means that she walks outside every day and stares at the blue sky above and says to herself, “I have failed,” for her one job in life was to find a powerful man who would stand by and build a tribe with her. Instead, she chose a child.

10. Sharing the book with her is like talking to her in a foreign language. Why? Because women don’t get male weakness. Even female therapists don’t, and why I think they should be avoided. You don’t bleed out of your vagina every month; your body doesn’t balloon up grotesquely in pregnancy; you don’t risk your life delivering life; you are not saddled with worry and anxiety keeping a child alive as she is; and you don’t watch your youthful beauty come and go in the span of a few years like she does. You will never know any of this. And now you want to talk to her about what a pussy you are. Even if she knows you are a pussy, she will have as much empathy for your troubles as you do for her feminine woes.

It’s too easy to convince yourself that you are doing the right thing by sharing your weakness with your wife, but you should not trust your covert-contract, give-to-get, passive-aggressive judgment.

Instead, join a men’s group like 10MM and work out your shit amongst men.

Said with love and compassion, I’ve got your back…

true and free…
cw

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FEELINGS 1-2-3

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FEELINGS explained (5 min read + 1 min summary)

Brother, there is so much talk out there about men getting in touch with their feelings, it’s enough to make your head spin.

This is probably a good thing because men are good at suppressing emotion to get through immediate challenges, but it’s repression that bites us in the ass. Denying how we feel hurts us longer term.

Let me see if I can give you some simple truths.

Your emotions happen first when the body’s “Spidey Sense” figures out where it is in the environment. ex. raining, cold, hot, dark, light, at a beach, or walking through South Chicago at 2 am. etc.

It contrasts this with the body’s internal condition such as: hungry, need to take a piss, a #2, coming down with a flu or sniffles, allergies, a good or bad night’s sleep, or a sore back, knees, neck, or headache, etc.

These combine to create something called affect, which comes in two kinds: comfort vs discomfort or aroused vs relaxed.

Follow so far?

This affective state is sent up the nervous system pipeline to the brain in a process called interoception.

Mammals have seven affective drives: seeking, care, lust, and play, plus rage, fear and grief.

Emotions are what happens in the body while feelings are the labels you give to those affective sensations.

The brain takes the primary signaling from the body and runs it by secondary concepts formed from your databank of experiences (all the way back to birth) and creates a prediction.

Then, you either confirm or deny the prediction according to the social reality before you.

For example, recently, I saw a white Samoyed dog in my chicken pen while looking out my kitchen window. Snapping my head back to look again, I saw it was two white chickens, the one in the rear our big matriarchal hen fluffing up her feathers with her tail arching over her back.

Missus looked out at the bird feeder few days later and said, “Oh look, a duck.” Looking again she saw it was actually a red squirrel with its tail pointed out resembling a duck beak.

You overhear a conversation you interpret as negative and feel aroused, only to listen more carefully and realize they are actually saying something else. Now you relax and feel another way entirely.

We all do these sorts of things every day in all kinds of circumstances.

What this tells you is that what your brain interprets… is milliseconds behind messaging from the body.

What goes on in your head is a best-guess by the brain awaiting correction.

It’s also why we can be fooled by affective reality derived from those seven emotional drives. We can be blinded by seeking, care, play, rage, fear, grief… and lust.

Tell me about it. Ever happen to you?

Since you were a kid, those primary drive affects secondarily became states like empathy, trust, pride and blame, guilt and shame.

You later named those feelings in the “tertiary” part of your brain at the neocortex and formed beliefs about yourself and your reality.

That’s Feelings 1-2-3 you could say.

It’s why I teach that what people say is not so much a contract with the people around them and more like a trial balloon floated for feedback.

It’s why learning to paraphrase helps us understand each other.

The key is to realize the brain is predictive, not reactive

Your take on your emotions is derived from your experience.

You are run by your nervous system and your conscious awareness is along for the ride.

If you feel something today, you have likely felt it before.

There is nothing new to the brain. Everything is compared historically.

You see the ocean for the first time and the brain compares it to the big lake you went to as a kid.

Encounter a mountain range, the brain sees them as bigger hills.

Your feelings are unique to you because no one has ever lived your exact experience and no one ever will. That has social consequences.

Think of when you can’t seem to connect with someone you just met. It’s probably not that you are psychopathic (though you could be). More likely, you just don’t share enough similar concepts to identity with each other.

What does all this mean for you going forward?

To me, it means we take 100% responsibility. 100% ownership.

The advantage? The buck stops here.

Your freedom is in fully owning your thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Think about it: it’s all we ever truly own in life anyway.

You may realize the good news:
1. You can change your feelings by living new experiences
(doing things differently).
2. To change how you feel, change how you think and what you do.

Use your body to create different affective states.

Use your mind to change the interpretations of those states, experiences and even, memories, at the tertiary (interpretative) level of emotion.

Breathwork, mindful practices, self hypnosis, optimism and getting better at connecting with others are some of the best ways to do this.

Join a men’s group: make it a mandatory part of your life. Our need to belong is our greatest need. We are herd animals

My suggestion is you re-read this a few times and refer to it in the future.

If you can solve your emotions and feelings, you are in charge.

Here’s a summary:

Understanding Your Feelings: A Simplified Guide for Men

As men, we’re often taught to suppress our emotions, but this can come back to hurt us in the long run. Here are some simple truths to help you better understand your feelings:

  • Your emotions are the result of your body’s “Spidey Sense” figuring out where you are in your environment and your internal bodily conditions. Together, they create an affective state of either comfort or discomfort, and arousal or relaxation.
  • Your brain then takes this primary signaling from the body and runs it through secondary concepts formed from your databank of experiences, creating a prediction that can be confirmed or denied based on the social reality before you.
  • Emotions happen in the body, while feelings are the labels you give to those affective sensations. Your brain is predictive, not reactive, and your feelings are unique to you based on your individual experiences.
  • To better understand your feelings and take 100% ownership of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, consider joining a men’s group, practicing breathwork and mindfulness, and better connecting with others.
  • You can change your feelings by living new experiences, changing how you think, and what you do. Use your body to create different affective states, and your mind to change the interpretations of those states, experiences, and memories.

By understanding your feelings and taking responsibility for them, you can experience true and lasting freedom.

true and free…
cw

 

Advisor to Men ™

 

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WORK: 2 RULES

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WORK: 2 RULES

For many years, I operated a business running door to door sales teams. I started in the magazine business when I was a sixteen-year-old teenager out on my own. I always thought it was something I’d do until I found something better.

I did many other things over the course of my working life. The list of jobs I’ve worked at are numerous involving trades and warehouse and retail as well as forays into the unconventional. Eventually, I found my way into the behavioural sciences and counselling.

Early on though, when on a break from one of those pursuits, asking myself, ”what will I do now?” I often found myself back in door-to-door sales.

No matter where I was dropped in the world, I figured I could get a product, organize a workforce, and create a business out of thin air.

The cashless society nowadays would kill that. You need a debit machine to operate and the street entrepreneur is highly disadvantaged without them.

When print versions of newspapers were still viable, I had crews running door and kiosk sales in seven cities with up to a hundred and fifty reps and fifteen managers under me. The North American company I was privileged to work for even made me Senior VP, Canada.

I did that until 2015 and would have rode it into the sunset if not for the digital age killing legacy print media. Externalities, you see…

The following were the two most essential rules to my success.

Taking on new hires almost daily means constant exposure to a myriad of personality types, values, and experience. I was consistently challenged in every possible way.

But by putting the work first, we dampened the various egos and were able to collectively engage in this shared fiction we called “work” successfully.

Every venture I was involved in was made possible precisely because of this. It was my rallying cry.

If you have ever had occasion to team lead or manage, you will see right away how helpful this principle can be. If you are just starting a job, this keeps you focused on what is important. Make the job the boss.

The second rule is one of personal responsibility. You exist in a competitive world where others may be more advantaged.

I teach that all we truly own in life are our thoughts, feelings, and behaviour.

We also only have three things to offer the world: Time, talent, and effort. These are the great equalizers. You maximize time and talent with effort.

A person who can understand and use these simple truths in his favour, will go further.

Combined with “make the job the boss,” not letting anyone outwork you provides your best shot at excellence.

Decide to leave no stone unturned when it comes to your effort.

The Pareto Principle says that 80% of production comes from 20% of the people. This applies to almost anything. Be part of the 20%.

In summary, my two rules for success are simple but effective: prioritize the work and take full personal responsibility. Make the job the boss and don’t let anyone outwork you.

By following these personal promises, you’ll be on your way to running things.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out.

true and free…
cw

* As a former insomniac, I had to learn self-hypnosis to learn how to shut my brain down at night.
I still use these strategies to this day. Get your free sleep cure course here.
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INTEGRATION

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INTEGRATION
Let’s make sure we understand each other. Integration is about taking disparate parts of your psyche and integrated them into a meaningful whole. It is an act of reconstituting the self.

Integration is the process of combining various aspects of one’s personality, beliefs, or experiences and forming these into a cohesive and unified being.

It comes from the idea that people have distinct parts or aspects of themselves that don’t always work together harmoniously.

For example, a person may have conflicting beliefs or values, or they may have experiences which have left them feeling fragmented or disconnected. Often such persons are easily “hooked” by circumstances into responses which do not match the context before them.

So how does this happen? The short answer is Life.

A child arrives with an inborn temperament full of potential and possibilities. Ask any parent what is the same about their children and in no time, they will tell you what is different. Each child is a unique being, never seen before and never to be seen again.

Add to this, epigenetic influences on ancestral DNA affect your methyl groups. Methylation will turn on or off some of chromosomes in response to the environment, minimizing or exaggerating responses.

This is one way generational pain transfers from parents and grandparents to their descendants, a process exacerbated by the child’s inborn sense of justice. Let me explain.

Imagine three puppets sitting in a circle in front of some kids. The puppet in the middle takes a ball and rolls it to the puppet on the right, and that puppet rolls the ball back. Then the middle puppet rolls the ball to the puppet on the left and that puppet fucks off with the ball.

Afterwards, the well behaved and misbehaved puppets are placed before the kids with a cookie in front of each puppet. Each child is invited to take ONE cookie from the puppet of their choice.

Which puppet does the child take the cookie from?

If you answered, the misbehaved puppet, you would be correct more than 80% of the time, according to author of Just Babies, Yale University’s Paul Bloom.

We are talking one-year-olds, who Bloom says already have a rudimentary sense of compassion and even empathy, as well as a moral sense, and already know a bit about right and wrong.

Things usually go OK until the kid starts moving around more at age 3 or 4 years old. Then for his own safety, his caregivers direct him to behave certain ways, both for survival reasons and to socialize the kid so others will tolerate him as he grows (and help keep him alive).

Most parents and caregivers use a threat and reward approach. You do as I say, and you get my acceptance. This carrot and stick methodology works. Problems arise when a child’s caregivers use approaches that are beyond the child’s level of cognitive ability and emotional comprehension.

Children experience families physically. They attune to parents, especially the mother (the most important relationship).

At first, a child will use their innate sense of justice to resist, but soon they must give in to their caregiver’s demands. They have little choice: It is this caregiver upon whom they depend for their entire succorance. For life itself.

To pull off that neat little psychological two-step and allow the caregivers to prevail longer term, we incorporate this language-based operating system, usually in the left brain for 95% of people, as something Jung called the conforming ego. Freud referred to it as the superego.

The ego, or integrated nervous system, denies, distorts, and represses inner and/or outer reality to lessen anxiety and depression (Both are future-based problems).

The conforming ego is a lot like ghost-like voices of your parents and other caregivers pushing you around.

Get occasional imposter syndrome? Thank your caregivers.

Do you live with the dread that if people find out that you are not what you want them to believe about you… that they will stop loving you and abandon you? Thank your caregivers.

Feel a deep shame and brokenness? Thank the adults around you when you were a kid.

You cannot get away from belonging, from an existence that involves others. Our need to belong is #1 and underpins the whole emotional system.

When we connect, we feel good. If we disconnect, we feel bad.

The goal of integration is to reconcile these different parts and achieve wholeness and coherence. This can involve exploring and acknowledging all aspects of oneself, including the difficult or uncomfortable parts, and finding ways to integrate them into a more complete sense of self.

“A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.” – Jordan Peterson

Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, true for a Type One Nice Guy. (yours truly) But this quote speaks to the same process for all of us…

For the psyche is indiscriminate in the way it goes about fracturing itself into pieces and hiding them deep in the recesses of your mind.

What I mean is that it hides some of your good along with what it rejects as whatever perceived malevolence you may or may not have been dealing with in the moment as your younger self.

The problem with this is that over years and decades, that kind of compartmentalizing starts to wear down its container and bust out at the seams. You get leakage…

These hidden parts act out increasingly as you age. Louder, more insistent, more demanding, and increasingly with bad timing.

I know you know what I mean…

So you must do the work. No way around it.

And it will be the best work you ever do.

Your masculine destiny depends on it.

Questions? Thoughts? Comments?

true and free…
cw