The Double Edge Sword Of Emotional Stoicism For Men.

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depression, anxiety, and despair.” 

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The Double Edge Sword of Emotional Stoicism For Men. 

You're a guy, a dude, a graduate student, an intern in a law office, a parent, a high school coach, an electrical apprentice, career military man, what does it mean for a man to be emotionally stoic? Do you think everyone listed above might have a different definition of what being emotionally stoic means for them, as a man? My guess is, most men aren’t really thinking about what being emotionally stoic means for them. I believe any time a man hears the word emotions, they default to connecting it with being a pussy. You’re not a man if you share your feelings. Don’t ever share your feelings, it’s a sign of weakness and everyone will see and know that you aren’t strong and dependable. 

I’m here to tell you that centuries ago and multiple generations before my time a false narrative has been passed down to boys from their father that being emotional is a sign of weakness, it’s actually the opposite. It takes more effort and courage to make a personal inventory of any resentments or harms that you’ve done to other family members, your spouse, your children, business partners, relatives, past girlfriends, I could go on and on. I’m sure most men will disagree with me and that’s fine. Some men might  ignore this entire video all together because even listening to topics like this is annoying and a waste of time. It may be for you and if it is, good for you. I would say you’re one of the lucky ones who has figured out a way to more connected with your emotions and feelings. 

Being emotionally stoic is a double edged sword for sure. One side of the swords reminds you not to share your feelings and the other side of the sword reminds you NOT to ask for help. Asking for help might even be harder for some men because they are admitting out loud they can’t figure out this problem. At least when you’re emotionally stoic, you can stuff it all inside your body so no one can actually see it. You’re a pussy for talking about your emotions and your even a bigger pussy admitting defeat and throwing in the White Flag of defeat. Damned it we do, damned if we don’t. 

You tell me, does this sound like a welcoming mental space to lay your head down at night? Have you ever experienced what it would feel like to have no thoughts running through your head for even a short period of time? Soundness of mind sounds like a record album someone  came up with in the late 60’s. 
I’m here to tell you one simple thing, if I can take stock of my emotions and share my darkest secrets with a trustworthy friend or mentor, then anyone can do it. ANYONE. That includes you, the only requirement is to jump in with both feet and admit you can’t sustain all the pressure and stress you’ve loaded up on top of you over the decades of your existence. More to come for sure. I’ll see ya in there. 

Keep smiling, 
R-

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Transcript

Welcome to the In Between Man Podcast, where men can be men.It's true.Listen, before I get into today's rant, which I have a sort of an understanding of what I'm going to do, I want everybody to consider checking out my Etsy store.And the question you might be asking yourself is why?So if you're single like me and you're justYou just know that you can't provide any emotional stability to any female right now and you're not in the business of being a player because you never were and you don't want to be.There's a lot of garbage out there that we got to be careful of.We got to keep our eye on guys.There's a lot of TikToks out there about guys going out on a first date with a woman and all of a sudden she just decides to order 5 meals for their kids.and is expecting this frickin' guy to pay for it.This is the first time they meet, right?Like, are you serious?So, with that in mind, I got you, okay?So, I'm gonna show you this card.It's a really enduring card.It's a card that just has a guy holding a girl against a dark sunset, and at first glance, any woman's gonna be like, oh, that's nice,but wait till you open it up.So it says this.I was thinking about you today and I wanted to let you know you really need to brush your teeth.And it's got a picture of Peter North onThese are Peter North's emotionally vulnerable everyday greeting cards.now what's great about this is all you have to do is initial it you know what i mean so on your way out when you tell your date that you're going to go to the bathroom you just hand this to the waiter pay the bill and then you're out but what could happen is on the back of a card i've i've put a spiritual messageAnd this is the spiritual message for this card.And it says, Since God's love and grace is unconditional, and your love isn't, knowing your love for me is only based on my ability to provide financially, I wish you all the best in your career as a teacher.there you go so i got 4 of these things and you can check them out at the yetsy store they're i think uh you can get 4 of them for uh 20 bucks and uh that includes shipping and they're all made i have a a company that makes them on demand soIt takes a while to get them made.So if you bought them today, it would probably take 4 to 5 days to get them made.And then probably another 4 days for them to get sent to you.But I just want to be full disclosure to you.So if you like the emotionally vulnerable everyday greeting cards from Peter North, check it out.You could have a little laugh with your date that thinks that you should pay for her entire platoon of kids that she hasn't fed that night.I don't do that.All right, today we're going to talk about the concept of toughness and resilience.And you might be saying to yourself, what the fuck are you talking about?Why would we ever talk about toughness and resilience?Well, the reason why is because it's one of the values that arein the traditional male value system, which every man is taught growing up.So when you think about toughness and resilience, do you have an experience that you remember as a kid where your dad was watching you play basketball or watching you play football or watching you play wrestling?And, you know, you either gotdestroyed in wrestling in under 2 seconds or you took a huge lick on the football field or you got dunked on by somebody else.And at that age, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, you know, you're upset.And so you start to cry because you just got, you know,Dunked on you just got beat real fast, and it's normal that you would cry if Your father was like mine, and he came up to you and said stop crying Don't you show any weakness to that kid don't be a fucking pussy listen pull up your fucking tears We don't do that here all right and get back out there Be a man get back out there and make an epic playRight.And so from that day forward, you understood that it's probably not in my best interest to share my emotions.It's probably not my best interest to, you know, ever consider that sharing my emotions is a positive thing.And if you grew up with toughness and resilience, that's exactly what he taught you there.Right.You got to be tough.Right.And you got to be resilient.You got to get back in there and you got to make shit fucking happen.And that I don't think is a bad thing.But in the example that I just shared with you about don't being a pussy and don't talk about your feelings that has, in my opinion, is an underlying thread that runs throughout the traditional male value system that sets us upSets us up for failure.And what do I mean by that another word for being tough and resilient?Could be and maybe you've heard me say it before emotionally stoic Right so emotionally stoic is Let's just say different than toughness and resilience Assuming that your dad doesn't call you a pussy right?Emotional stoicism is a behaviorthat inhibits you that you make the conscious decision to say, I am not going to feel that.So instead of feeling it, maybe crying or getting emotional, you just freaking gulp it down, you stuff it.Right.And you try your best to ignore it because you want to be stoic.You want to be dialed in.You want to show that you're tough and you'll figure it out later.Can any of you identify with that concept?Can any of you identify if you have brothers or let's just call it sisters?Let's just say you're the oldest brother in your family and your sister is the second below you.She's the second oldest.How many times do you remember coming homethat your mom is listening to your sister who's crying, talking about something that's upsetting her.You might even had your dad walk in to grab a beer and be like, Don't be such a pussy, Sally.You know, and your mom be like, Don't talk to her like that, Ned.You know what I mean?Like,her mother is absolutely letting her daughter know that it's perfectly okay to share your feelings it's perfectly okay to be upset right and that that is something that you as a woman are capable of doing and can do furthermore what are one of the things that women doA thousand times better than men.I don't have a problem with saying it, right?Women are innately built to talk about their feelings.Guys are not.So when they have something that they want to work on or that they need to get out, they talk about it.which is sometimes an enormous pain in the ass.If you're married to a talker, you know what I mean?Like just need to talk.But in this case, right?Like the immediate reaction is there's something toxic in my brain, in my body.I have to get it out.I don't know why, but I'm going to talk about it until either I'm no longer worried about it anymore or I'm overRight.It's the act of talking it out loud that gets them through potentially whatever they're upset about.Right.So that action, hopefully, for that example, hopefully makes sense to you.If you've seen it before, maybe you've been dating a girlfriend.She does it like that.I'm a Gen X guy.So, you know, that kind of stuff was very relevant, you know, when I grew up.The problem with being emotionally stoic especially at an early age is that you get into a default routine of not sharing any emotion and the problem with that isis that if there is emotional abuse, or sexual abuse that happened, you know, in the family, and even, you know, it doesn't have to be sexual abuse.I mean, just the fact that you think that you shouldn't talk about your feelings is bad enough.If you compile it with terrible acts of sexual abuse, rape, penetration, whatever it happens to be for a man or a woman, the likelihood that women are going to talk about it is actually pretty high.Not a lot of women want to talk about it because they're ashamed and feel shame.And men 9 times out of ten will never talk about it.And they will continue to stuff itin their body at a young age and that will be their mantra that'll be their default process on how they handle any emotional challenges or any acts of uh emotion come out where they might feel compelled to talk about it or not they're going to be grounded and rooted in thisunrealistic dynamic that you shouldn't talk about those things.Right.Especially sexual abuse and those kinds of things like that is that's a whole different level of itself.But if you didn't have that happen to you, you've also grown up learning that I'm not going to talk about stuff, especially that stuff.That's what emotionally stoic means.It means that I'm presented with emotions.I will be able to bounce.They will bounce off me and I will no longerFeel them and I will no longer accept that they've happened to me and the reality is that's a lie It's a straight-up bold-faced lie and We are teaching men Through generations my dad's generation my generation that it's okay to be emotionally stoic in any circumstance Don't do itDo not do it.So what can happen if you take that initiative to believe that?Let's just walk it through.If your default reaction or your default methodology is stuffing and not dealing with your emotions, here's what happens.based on my experience.This is what I believe happens is,You develop a narrative that that's the way that's the best way for you to deal with any emotions.And it starts young and it progressively gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.It happens when you're an adolescent.It happens when you're, you know, graduated from college.It happens in your early years of marriage and even beyond.And when you think about that,Okay, when you think about that that trajectory that could be 4 decades of stuff and stuff I said that stuff and stuff of Pushing down any emotion deep-seated you know a random a random personal attack right and Your you have no idea how to cope with that you have no idea how to talk about it So what do men do?they eat it they eat it and it gets to the point where men can no longer eat it anymore and when that happens the flip side of being emotionally stoic takes over and we refuse to ask for helpbecause that's another sign of weakness.I've talked about this a lot and I really am spending today wanting to talk about it because I want to ask all of you a simple question.A simple question that will determine whether or not this applies to you.OK, and the question is, do you have a personal secret that you have said to yourself that you will never share with anyone, that you will take it to your grave and you will be sure it never surfaces under any circumstances?Do you have a secret like that?Do you have secrets like that?More than one.Now, if you're one of the people that says, I don't have any of that, that's a good thing.Because what's probably happened is you've woken up to this reality that it's okay to talk about your feelings and you've worked with either a therapist or you've worked with a coach or you've worked with someone to help you build a process that you can manage your emotions through.and effectively get them out of your body in a healthy, hopefully a healthy way.None of this stuff is going to feel healthy at all because it's going to require a man who has stuffed their feelings for call it 3 or 4 decades to relivewhatever secret that they've kept for so long, like it happened yesterday.Now that's really not the case, but that's how they're going to feel.If I talk about this, I'm going to relive this experience and I just don't fucking want to do it.And you know what?I'm not.And that, you know, that's your choice.What I'm saying to you today is in the modern world that we're living in,where some of our traditional male values have been criticized and overlooked.Those things are adding on top of this frustration that we have with refusing to talk about our emotions, talk about our emotional pain.And so it's adding additional, it's adding additional discomfort on top of an already really discomforting situation.And soWhat I'm saying to you, and this is not by I'm not saying that I have a fucking magic wand and I'm not saying that, hey, if you come here and you do these 5 tips in tomorrow, you'll be a fucking master.That could be the farthest thing from the fucking truth.It's actually the opposite.This stuff.Keeping in mind that we have a track record of years of stuffing.Is doesn't feel like a solution.It doesn't feel like an alternative that's worth considering.So what men typically do in response to thatis to continue to keep drinking, continuing to keep using recreational drugs and walk around fucking miserable.And they take out their anger on their wife or they take out their anger on themselves.They take out their anger on their kids.They take out their anger on their family members.Right.And what starts to happen is all of this toxicity that we have in our body starts coming out sideways because we can't get away fromWe can't get away from it.We can't accept that we have to go through reliving that pain again and bringing it to the surface that I am literally fucking stuck because I'm not going to ask for help.Do you see this cycle of just madness going on?Now, here's another component that is also worth considering as well.And I have talked about this before, but not to the extent that I'm going to talk about it today, because I do believe wholeheartedly that it's very, very relevant, especially for men.Now, it has been biologicallyscientifically confirmed that women seem to mature or their prefrontal cortex within their brain matures quicker than it does in boys.And the prefrontal cortex is responsible for a lot of executive decisions, how to deal with emotions, how to work through problems, how to organize problems, right, like how to walk throughchallenging times, the prefrontal cortex.For men, that's not the case.It takes a lot longer for our prefrontal cortex to actually mature.And as a matter of fact, it doesn't fully mature until we're between the ages of 24, 32.So imagine going through life till you're 24, not havingthe the mental bandwidth to handle and walk through and Think through in a positive healthy way these challenges Right.So we're already behind the 8 ball because This part of our brain is still maturing now that doesn't mean thatyou're not responsible for hurting somebody that doesn't mean that you're not responsible for you know and being accountable for any of your actions that you've taken prior to becoming or even it's just further confirmation that guys are just more all over the place you know likeHere's a perfect example.I'll never forget it.Like my wife came downstairs one day and she's like, I think Gavin, I think my son, I think so and so, I think Gavin took a piss in his closet.I was like,She's like, yeah.So she's like, do you want to go upstairs and talk to him?I was like,So I go upstairs, I go, Hey, what happened in the closet?He's like, I don't know.I just had to take a piss and I took it in the closet.I'm like, oh.You have a bathroom right in your room that you could use to go to the bathroom.He's like, I don't know.I just did it.And I was like, I totally get that.That would probably be something that I would do.As a matter of fact, it is something that I did.And I'll share this story with you, too, because it's a true story.And I'm sure I'm making it public.Quick, I won't go long, I won't go on a tangent.Just like my son's story, here's my story.When I was ten years old, my mother had my middle sister with my stepfather.So Jessica was born.So I'm ten years old, she was born, and now I'm not an only child.so my mom's friends are coming over they're bringing over snacks they're bringing over treats they're bringing over food right but a lot of the energy and a lot of the um attention is being pointed to my sister and my mom and not around me which is what it normally would be before she came here so i was a little resentful i was freaking angry about that whole thing really mad as a matter of fact i got so madThat one day I was sitting in front of the television and I had to take a shit like a fucking shit.You know what I mean?And I'm like, you know what?I have access in my bathroom to a window that goes out to the roof.I'm going to open up that window.I'm going to go top of the roof.I'm going to take a huge shit on this whole house.And that's exactly what I did.I got up.I went into my bathroom.I opened up the window.I crawled out the window.I crawled around and ran up top to the top of the roof.I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't angled.It was like, you know, at a manageable angle and just defecated on that thing.And then I just came back inside.Obviously, I had to wipe my ass, so I wiped my ass.I closed the window and that was it.I didn't think about it.But occasionally, over the course of the next couple of weeks, I kind of felt bad.You know, like I shouldn't have done that.So I think I was in the car with my mom.Maybe she was driving me to swim practice.And I said to her, Mom, what would you think if someone took a shit on the roof?I think I said if someone pooped on the roof and she literally started laughing, but then quickly stopped.And I was like, what's so funny?She's like, nothing.I know your question is serious and I'm going to answer it for you.And she's like, I would say to you that if someone did do that, that they're probably really mad at everyone in the entire house.They're really angry.And that's okay.They're allowed to be angry.if they went on the roof it's dangerous and there could be a chance that they slip and fall off and then get injured and that's just not good for anyone who's willing to do that whether it be your dad or whether it be anyone else like it's just don't go on the roof it's a scary place and then she followed up with but I but despite that I would probably tell that person just to clean it up and I was like reallyThanks.And then I hopped out of the car and I went to swim practice.But sure enough, that night I came home.I crawled out my window.I went back up to the roof.I grabbed a stick.I'm telling you, this was a mound of shit.And I just flung it.It had gotten cold.So it was petrified now.You know what I mean?It was like wood.And I just heaved it off the roof.And I came back downstairs and never talked about it again.And neither did my mother.Untilone Thanksgiving dinner when she shared this entire story with our entire family.And from that day forward, I was the shit on the house guy.True story.But it speaks to the fact that there are a lot of times when young boys are growing upthat they don't even understand what they're doing.Doesn't even make sense to them.They're just reacting and just acting out and just being silly.And there's no rhyme or reason to it.And I can identify with that, coupled with the fact that I had ADD and a learning disability.I was like, you know, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.So my mind was always running a hundred miles an hour and I could never stand still.I digress.And the purpose for talking about toughness and resilience and being emotionally stoic is I want nothing more for anyone who's listening to this to understand that if you have secrets or one in particular secret that you have told yourself that you will never share with anybody, I get it.I had the same exact thing and I had the same exact thing and I didn't want to share it with anybody and I didn't until I had to and what I can tell you isI had someone that I knew wasn't going to, well, I thought wasn't going to judge me.I trust that they weren't because they showed me that they're not that type of person.But I went and shared all my secrets, all with this person.And it was not easy and it was really scary.And I avoided doing it for a long time.And I probably drank a lot of drinks and smoked a lot of pot to avoid thinking or even remembering that I had done some of these things.And when I did finally share it, it was like I was levitating above the ground.And that can happen to you.if you believe that what i'm saying to you is true now you might be asking yourself well how do i do that well you know we can there's still more to come and if you have a secret you know what i would say that you do just put it in the comments not the secret just the word secret that way i'll know that there's other people out there especially men that are struggling withmale value of toughness and resilience and being emotionally stoic what I would also say to you too and I'll leave you with this is that I believe this is my own personal opinion that many a huge majority of men all have secretsSo to think that you're the only one is wrong.We just hide it better than most and refuse to look at it more than most and hope that it will go away when it never really will.it never goes away.One of my favorite quotes that someone said to me once is, what you don't work on nowyou work on later.And that's confirmation that if you stuff something when you're ten years old, it's still right there.It's not going away.And if I can do it, if I can do this, talk about this stuff and share with you my thought process and even the process that I went through in order to do that, is that a benefit for you?Does that make you feel any better?Or does that still not make you give a shit?I would imagine that most people, sorry, that most people that are watching this, most guys are going to be like, no fucking way am I doing that.And I would say to you, okay.But what I've seen happen to people that take that route isit's it boils down to how much emotional pain can you withstandBecause as you get older and more tired, it gets harder and harder and harder.please consider checking out my Etsy store.The link is in the link tree backslash the in-between man.It's L-I-N-K-T-R dot E-E at Etsy.theinbetweenman.com you can check out uh within the description the uh link to the uh state of american men uh survey and obviously our wrap up but do me a favor do yourself a favor grab a beverage i got a little iced tea you know you normally know that i really like the iced tea and i'll see you in there