You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode 428.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Brooke: Alright, hello, my friends. Today, we are talking with dudes about their feelings. So, I had one of my best friends on, Ryan Moran. And we talked about – he talked about his feelings and how he processes feelings. And I had so many people write in and talk to me about how that episode was so profound for them and how many of my women students gave it to their husbands and to their friends.
And so, we decided to do a podcast with a collection of LCS male coaches. Yes, they do exist. They’re growing in numbers, and so I invited them to come onto the podcast to talk about their feelings. And they’re not nervous at all. They’re super excited, very relaxed.
And what is great about this is, we didn’t prepare anything ahead of time, so we are just going to really be authentic, raw, and original and talk about our feelings.
And one of the things I’d love you all to do – and I’m going to call on you each individually – is talk about your own experience with learning the Model and the tools that we teach and how you process your own emotions and how that’s helped you. And then, I’d love for you to talk about how you work with your clients and their emotions as well.
And we’re specifically sticking to men and their feelings because listen, it’s so different – the man I’m dating right now, this is hilarious, I was talking to him and I said, “What are you feeling right now?” And his answer, most often, is nothing. And I feel like that sums it up.
And I said to him, I’m like, “No, you’re feeling something.” He’s like, “No, dudes don’t have this happen to them.” And so, I tried to explain to him that they do. And I’m here also with my sons and their friends, and I was asking them the same question, and some of them were just like, “Good,” or, “Bad,” or, “Nothing.”
So, I’d love to open up this discussion, especially for my male listeners who have a hard time processing their feelings. So, I’m going to call on you. Please introduce yourself, tell me a little bit about you, and then let’s just dive in. We’ll start with you, Greg.
Greg: Hi, I’m Greg Nyman. I’m a coach here at The Life Coach School. I’ve been coaching for a little over a year. Before I came to know this work, I didn’t have emotions. Or, at least I didn’t think I had emotions. And that led to some really catastrophic health issues. Namely two heart attacks in 2020.
Brooke: Oh my gosh.
Greg: So then, I got with my sister, who’s a coach here at the school, and decided to become a life coach. I needed a change of careers. And honestly, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.
Brooke: Feeling your feelings?
Greg: Yeah, feeling my…
Brooke: You heard it here from Greg. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life is feel your feelings, yeah.
Greg: And going through Certification, it was a total mind shift change. And it got rocky. It got ugly. It got dirty. And I wouldn’t change it for the world. It was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. And if dudes knew how challenging it actually was to face your emotions, then there wouldn’t be this mantra of, “Just man up and just deal with it. Shove it down.” It's like, no, man up and deal with it because it is – I mean, it will come out in very, very nasty ways eventually if you don’t.
Brooke: Can you give us some specific examples? Because one of the things – I was talking to this man about it. He was basically saying, “I’m not going to sit around and feel my feelings. I have work to do. I have things to get done.” So, can you talk specifically about that?
Greg: Yeah, so okay, you’re going to feel your feelings regardless, whether you say you are or not. It’s just a matter of acknowledging it, “Okay, I’m going to not feel my feelings and I’m going to stuff them down and I’m going to get to work.”
Well, they’re still there. You’re still feeling them. You’re just not acknowledging them. So, if you bring them to the surface and say, “Okay, yes, this particular task at my job sucks. I hate it. And I don’t want to do it,” and I have all of those thoughts and emotions about it, and that’s fine. I’m still going to do it because this is what I’ve chosen to do.
The emotions can come with you and you can acknowledge them and you can bring them to the forefront. It doesn’t mean you have to sit and just dwell in them. You can go, “Okay, I’m pissed off that I have to do this and I’m going to do it anyway [crosstalk]…
Brooke: Yes, that’s so good. So yeah, he was saying, “You either feel your feelings or you live your life,” as if they were mutually exclusive things that we do. And listen, I love what you said, Greg. You’re going to feel them anyway, you’re just not acknowledging, you’re just pushing them away. It is affecting you.
So, I would love for you to speak just a little bit more about that. How is it affecting you negatively without you even realizing it, that you aren’t processing emotion?
Greg: Alright, so this is very real. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t eating, very irritable, the slightest little thing would set me off. In my particular life at the time, I either yelled or I cried, and that was it. I had no in between. I was either pissed off, or I was feeling nothing. There was very little happiness.
And then, it became overwhelming, and that’s when the first heart attack happened because I was so run down from hiding from my emotions for the past 40 years and just not acknowledging that, hey, what was happening is not okay, and it’s okay for me to feel that way, and it’s okay for me to say something to my boss about it and whoever else. It’s okay for me to stick up for myself. I mean, I’m a big dude. I’m six four, 370 pounds. I’m a very large individual and people large in stature, especially males, just feel like we have to do more and more is put on us and, you know, “Okay, you’re big, you can deal with it. Okay, you’re big, you can deal with it.” but you know, big dudes don’t cry, big dudes don’t have problems, they just handle things.
Especially in the industry that I was in, which was shipping and receiving, it’s very result-driven. There’s no thoughts and feelings. It’s just, you know, deadlines and moving boxes from one trailer to another. There’s no time to think, no time to feel. It’s just “Get it done. I don’t care if you feel bad. Just do it.”
Brooke: Yeah, I think, to reference what you said earlier, I think it’s like this whole socialization that we have that men are the strong ones and that showing emotion is weak. And so, I think it’s important – we don’t want you to go to work and be crying the whole time you’re at work. We don’t want you to be reacting to your emotions or emoting out in public. Although, sometimes that may be appropriate.
What we’re talking about is just knowing what you’re feeling and actually releasing it and processing it through so you can have a sense of awareness. And that, I think what you were referring to, takes so much more strength because what we don’t realize is men who are trying to be strong on the outside are terrified of their emotions on the inside. And that weakens us, emotionally and physically, it weakens us. So, I love it. Okay, let’s go to you, Patrick.
Patrick: Awesome, hey, Brooke.
Brooke: Hi.
Patrick: So, I’m a Scholars coach and I also work with guys who want to stop overdrinking. And I just want to say, I actually worked with Greg at the end of last year in one of my own Scholars calls with him because my granddad had passed away, and I was having a lot of trouble emotionally, like to cry, or that release of wanting to cry. And there were a lot of beliefs around it, kind of similar to what Greg was just talking about, right, like this false conception that we have to man up and just get on with things. And it uncovered a lot of stuff for me about thinking that I had to be strong. Like, I couldn’t cry, I had to be strong for everyone else. So, yeah, that’s just from one Scholars call. It was incredible.
Brooke: It’s amazing, right? And I think sometimes, it’s just like permission. Like, you are still a strong, capable human being who allows yourself to feel emotions. And in fact, it’s so important to feel your emotions because – I always say there’s two things. The reason you need to understand your emotions – and I’m going to let you speak, Patrick, but I’m about to go off on a little tangent, but here I go.
But I used to go into all these meetings with men and I would want to talk about feelings, and we were in there talking about money, right, masterminding about money. And I would explain to them, you have to be aware of your emotions. You guys are trying to outrun your emotions, and that will weaken you.
And everyone that I was in those masterminds with got burnt out because there was no, like what we were saying, permission to process emotions so you can be stronger and you don’t have to outrun yourself. So, tell us a little bit about how you process emotion, Patrick.
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s so good because it’s like, when we come to that acceptance, that I can have all of these emotions and it doesn’t mean anything about me still, I think that’s been one of my biggest realizations.
So, how do I process emotion? So, really it’s just about taking that time to get out of my head, to give myself a little bit of space from my analytical-thinking brain and just to notice what’s happening in my body, really just kind of slowing down.
So, I didn’t even realize I was doing it at the time because I had a lot of beliefs that I couldn’t feel my emotions, which is part of why I started this whole journey of, you know, signing up to be a certified life coach at The Life Coach School, then doing Scholars, is because I didn’t feel like I had that capacity. But obviously, it was a lie all along.
So, meditation at the time, I didn’t realize, just scanning through my body, that is feeling your feelings. So, just slowing down, noticing, observing, and that was really the journey. And there was a day where it just kind of clicked. It was like, oh, I have been feeling my feelings for a lot longer than I’d actually given myself credit for. So, yeah, it was really powerful just to recognize that.
Brooke: Yeah, you know, that’s so interesting because I think what some of us believe is that feeling our feelings means actively emoting, which means I’m either yelling or I’m crying or I’m acting it out.
And what you’re describing is, you can feel your feelings just quietly within your own space, just by scanning. So, if you’re a dude right now, if you’re a woman too, any gender, however you identify, right now, ask yourself how you’re feeling right now, and look to where you go for the answer.
So, Patrick, I love that you said that you go to your body for the answer. Don’t go to your brain. Your brain has all sorts of thoughts. Great, we love the brain. But where in your body are you experiencing – are you tense? Are you relaxed? Are you joyous? How does it feel?
So, if you’re one of those guys that’s listening to this and you’re like, “I don’t feel my feelings. I don’t know how to feel them…” yes, you do. You’re feeling a feeling right now. And like as Greg was saying, all you have to do is just acknowledge it. What is the feeling? And don’t let it be just, “Good.” Pick an emotion. Get a list of emotions off the internet and pick one. It’s really powerful.
So, Patrick, let’s talk a little bit about how people – and I’m assuming that you work with men and women…
Patrick: Just guys.
Brooke: Mostly with men?
Patrick: Yeah, just guys.
Brooke: Just guys, okay. So, how have you used the work on feeling your feelings to help people, men, stop overdrinking?
Patrick: So, I think really just helping them, as we’ve been discussing, just to understand what’s going on for them, to recognize that they are feeling emotions. There aren’t just these core emotions of angry or happy. You know there’s a whole spectrum of emotions and we get to explore what they are.
But through my journey of stopping drinking, they all started becoming available. Whereas any kind of over-thing that we do, they’re not there. We’re numbing them out. So, that process of removing those buffers that we have in our life really helps us to start identifying, so yes, I was angry, but it was more like a frustrated angry versus an agitated angry, do you know what I mean? There’s different flavors of emotion. So yeah, helping them to start identify them.
Brooke: It’s so important. And listen, if you’re out there and you’re like, “I don’t think I have feelings.” Just quit buffering and your feelings will come right up for you. And I often say, it’s not about stopping overdrinking, it’s about starting to feel. Because if you want a drink and you don’t have one, you are going to have an experience of a feeling. And if you really want a drink, you’re going to really have an emotion.
And for me, I did not think I could quit drinking. I did not think I could stop. But what I realized is, I thought I couldn’t quit drinking because I didn’t know that the solution was to just feel any feeling. And the truth is, we can feel any feeling. We are terrified of our emotions. But it’s unnecessary because, if we’re courageous, we can experience any emotion on purpose.
And like what you’re saying is, when your awareness increases, you can refine identifying emotions. And as you refine them, then you get more access to your brain and what you’re thinking, and then you can change them.
So, it’s really worth doing, dudes. I promise, especially if you want to drink less or porn less or social media less, anything that you feel like you’re overing, the solution is, stop doing that and let your emotions come up. And then process your emotions by, first of all, and this is what Patrick was saying and Greg was too, is just acknowledging them and then naming them. And the more specific you can be in naming them, the better. Alright, let’s go to you Jake.
Jake: Well hello, thank you so much for having me…
Brooke: Hello…
Jake: Hello. So, my experience with emotions during learning all of this was, I just thought it was such a mystery. I was very much behaving like an emotional child because, if I didn’t know, then I couldn’t take responsibility.
Brooke: Ah, yes, interesting.
Jake: Yeah, so I kind of devised my own very simple framework for feeling my feelings called FEEL. It’s like acrostic. So, the first step is find and follow the emotion, because emotions can change where they are in the body. And then explain, embrace, like E, explain, E, embrace.
Brooke: I love this. This is great. I’m stealing this, #brookecastillosmaterial…
Jake: Go for it. And then, the last one is learn, like learn and love, regardless of what the emotion is.
Brooke: So good.
Jake: Yeah, so simplifying it for me really worked after having all of this mystery around it, to take ownership and accountability for my emotion and how I feel. So, that’s how I process my emotions on the daily, and also with my clients, and also in Scholars. So, I’m a Scholars coach and I also do some copywriting for the School now.
Brooke: I love it. Okay, so let’s talk about this. This is actually interesting. I think that there is this conception that women are more emotional than men. Okay, so one of the things I’ve heard pretty consistently is that it’s hard for men to handle women’s emotions. This is a big generality.
But let’s just talk about it in terms of any gender, any other person is coming to you with a bunch of emotion, let’s say, at you, you know what I’m saying?
Jake: Yeah, yeah, okay…
Brooke: You know what I mean? Maybe it’s your boss. Maybe it’s your friend. Maybe it’s your significant other, whoever it is, coming at you. How, as a man, do you stay aware of what you’re feeling but also dealing with this other emotion coming at you? Do you have any insight?
Jake: That’s such a good question. I think it’s noticing and having a relationship with your resistance and becoming aware of that first. Well, if we are kind of entertaining and indulging in our resistance, then we usually carry things out in our A line that are unintentional.
Brooke: Right, and you know what, if we’re in our own resistance for our own emotion, right, which is what you’re saying, you’re definitely going to be in resistance to someone else’s emotion.
Jake: Exactly, yeah.
Brooke: And so, there is the stereotype that men will then try and solve for other people’s emotions so they won’t have to deal with them. So, there’s all this fixing that wants to have happened, “Let me fix your emotion.” And what I just want to offer to all of y’all is that if anyone is having an emotion at you, it doesn’t have to affect you. Their thoughts are creating their emotions. And if you can stay in that moment and just stay aware of your emotion, like what Jake is saying, if you’re not resisting your own emotion, you’re going to realize there’s space for all sorts of emotions. We don’t have to fix them. We don’t have to resist them. We don’t have to avoid them. It’s so, so important.
So, let me ask you this. What is the emotion that you most don’t want to feel?
Jake: It’s fatigue.
Brooke: Oh, interesting, okay. Now, is it physical or emotional fatigue?
Jake: Oh, it’s totally emotional. So, my indulgent emotion is fatigue. I’m like, “Ergh…” And the way that I’ve gotten around it is I just gave it a really fun French accent.
Brooke: Oh my god, tell us more. How do you handle it?
Jake: I just remember there was like one day where I was in the shower and I was so exhausted, like mentally. And I was like, “How could I have fun with my fatigue?” So, the loop that it gives me, I just gave it a French accent, and I had so much fun with it by the end of that.
Brooke: This is a fantastic idea for the thoughts in your mind that cause you to feel emotions you don’t want to feel, give it an amazing accent. This is a beautiful tip. I love it. Alright, Tommy, let’s go to you. Tell us what it’s like for you.
Tommy: What’s up, Brooke? Oh man, this has been an awesome conversation so far. I’ve been wanting to jump in, but it’s a panel, so I’ve been staying shut up, but I’m ready. My name is Tommy Geary. I’m a part-time Scholars coach. So, I coach Scholars and I also have my own coaching business that I run with my wife. We coach high-performing dads, help them find more fulfilment, more freedom in life.
And for me, I think emotions can sound fluffy and kind of woo for dudes. And it’s like our superpower. When we can start to feel, that’s the way we can change anything in our life. If you’re wanting to change a behavior, a habit, a relationship, the reason you’re not doing it is because of a feeling, and there’s something keeping you stuck there.
So, for me, anger was one, “I shouldn’t be angry. Anger is bad. I shouldn’t be angry.” And for me, that would show up as shutting down a lot, especially in my relationship with my wife or my parents, just shutting down, and then all of a sudden it would come out in bursts here and there, and I wouldn’t even know why I was angry.
Brooke: This is – let me just interrupt you here because this is key. And I think a lot of men don’t understand this concept. And we kind of referenced it earlier. Because I think, when you say, “I wasn’t able to feel anger,” I think some of us are like, “Good because we don’t want you to feel anger.”
And what we’re really saying is, we don’t want you to react to anger. And what’s so interesting is that the more you feel it on purpose when you are experiencing, the less you’re going to react to it. When you push it away is when you react to it. So, can you talk a little about the difference between feeling angry, or displaying it, or reacting to it, because it’s a very important distinction.
Tommy: 100%, yeah, when you said that, I could go a bunch of different ways, but I’m going to stick with answering your question. When I’m brushing my daughter’s teeth at night, that is a time of day where anger shows up for me, frustration.
So, here’s what I’m going to say, what feeling it is, and we talked about naming it, and I think looking at a feelings wheel could be awesome when people are really having a tough time with it. But you also don’t have to.
You don’t have to name it. You can name what you’re feeling. So, for me, anger shows up with tightness in the chest, real tight in my jaw. I usually scrunch my shoulders or make a fist with my hands and it gets hot, and bubbles up.
There’s a saying, “It just bubbled up in me.” That is real. That is the vibration of an emotion. And acting with that energy is me trying to argue with a four-year-old about brushing her teeth, and that usually doesn’t get me where I want to go and then I’m pissed that I got pissed and it’s all not where I want to go.
Brooke: Yeah, I mean, you end up feeling all this tension, right? This anger is bubbling up and you want to release it. That’s the urge, to release it by yelling or throwing things or however, acting it out in an angry way. So, how do you release it if you’re not going to do that?
Tommy: Yeah, so there’s a couple things. One is, you know, in that moment – now because I’ve practiced it, because I’ve changed my relationship with anger, I can realize that I can take a breath and be like, “I’m triggered right now. I get it. I’ve felt this emotion before. If she continues to act the way I don’t want her to, maybe I have to step out of the room and take a couple breaths, or ask my wife to brush her teeth that night,” whatever it is.
But the only reason I got there is because I practiced that. And I think that’s the work in Scholars. You can – Scholars is the practice ground for life. Come to a 20-minute call and I’ll just come with, “I’ve got anger and I want to process it.”
Because if our feelings are created by our thoughts, we can just think and feel whatever we want in that session. So, I could be angry with my – I could have anger in my body from last night, and then process it the next day, so…
Brooke: And that’s key because one of the tools that I teach is how to be the watcher of yourself. And that’s what awareness is all about. As soon as you watch yourself, which you just described so beautifully, Tommy, is like you’re watching yourself get angry and you’re able to describe it in such detail. The minute you can observe yourself, you’re out of it.
Tommy: Totally.
Brooke: You’re not at the effect of it. You, all of a sudden, have authority of it. And then you can pause it and you can be like, “I am so pissed right now. I am so mad right now.” Even just saying that in your own head, just acknowledging it gives you so much authority over it because you’re in that separate position of being able to witness it.
And that is a strong place to be because you can actually control yourself without resisting the emotion. You’re acknowledging it. You’re opening up to it, but you’re not reacting to it. And you’re right, it takes practice.
Tommy: Yeah, and then all of a sudden, your actions change without you even trying to change them. You’re just working on feeling.
Brooke: I love it. So, I think anger is one of the ones that takes the most practice. And one of the things that I recommend that everyone do is, at first, you’re only going to be able to process it afterward. You’re going to lose your shit. You’re going to get mad. You’re going to lose your shit and you have to process it after, “This is what happened. This is what I was thinking. This is why I reacted.”
And then, as you practice that, then you can start sometimes catching yourself in the middle of it, before you react, and you can pause and then you can process it and, like you said, go to a coaching session maybe and let it out later and talk about it. And then, you get so good that you can actually prevent it. You can prevent any kind of reaction.
Now, listen, we’re not talking about preventing the emotion. We’re talking about preventing acting out. Go ahead, Tommy.
Tommy: Yeah, I was – and it’s something that I’ll do with guys that are in Scholars because there’s guy coaches and there are men Scholars that we get once in a while, which I don’t know about you guys, but whenever I have a guy in my lineup for the day I’m like, “Yes, this is going to be awesome.”
Brooke: Yes, let’s go.
Tommy: Putting the emotion, or just the word emotions in the C-line, and what are our beliefs about emotions? What are our beliefs about anger? And that can kind of put a curious cap on for those thoughts like, “Guys don’t have emotions. I don’t know how to feel. Toughen up.” All of those, “Anger is bad.” And then you can see how the Models show up.
So, when I feel anger, I think anger is bad, and then I feel resistance, and then I push it down.
Brooke: Yeah.
Tommy: And you can put emotions in different parts of the Model and play around with it that way.
Brooke: Yeah, I think that’s actually a brilliant thing to question, is what are your thoughts about emotions in general? But then, what are your thoughts about sadness? What are your thoughts about love? What are your thoughts about empathy? What are your thoughts about compassion? Really understanding your own real socialization as a man growing up, and what do you really want to feel?
One of my belief systems around emotions is that the more emotional skill I have, the more willingness I have to feel, the more self-confidence I have and the more that I win. When you aren’t afraid of feeling emotions, you eliminate a lot of fear from your life. And I think, when men say, “I don’t feel emotions,” or, “I don’t want to feel emotions,” it’s because they’re afraid of how they’ll react, or they’re afraid of losing control, whether it’s in a negative anger outburst kind of way and then they’ll get labelled that way, or in a feeling sorry for myself, pity, you know, “I’m weak,” kind of way.
And what I want to say is, feeling your emotions on purpose without reacting to them is the strongest stance I think we can make. Because then, you set the biggest goals you can imagine because you’re not afraid of whatever emotion, may be part of that process, yeah, awesome. Alright, Cam, let’s go to you. You guys should come watch us on video too. We’re videoing this whole thing, so come to the Life Coach School website.
Cameron: We’re so pretty…
Brooke: Cam is so pretty. He wants you to see him.
Cameron: Yes, if my voice sounds weird, it’s because I am recovering from an illness. So, we’re just going to do our best today.
Brooke: I think it sounds great. Very sexy.
Cameron: Oh, thank you. It’s my sultry – my bedroom voice. My name is Cam Nichols and I am the life coach for shy introverts. I like to help them stop hiding and start living without being anxious all the time.
Brooke: Amazing niche. I love it.
Cameron: Thank you. And part of the reason I chose it – I mean, I am my client. But part of the reason I chose it is because, when it came to emotion, I was so emotional as a child. And then, I just learned to shut it all down, which I think a lot of us do, especially those of us who identify as male.
And so, we shut down. And then, if you’re shy and you’re introverted, then you start to isolate, then you start to numb, and you start to buffer. And so, emotions, I think, they’ve become my ultimate favorite thing in the world, even though a lot of emotions feel shitty, I still want to relish in them.
Brooke: Like what? Give us some specific examples.
Cameron: Yeah, so a couple weeks ago, I was having some profound realizations from growing up. And I’m not going to go into the details of that because I’m still working on some processing. But I remember standing in the kitchen crying, like sobbing, so mad, so furious. And it felt so fucking good.
I had not allowed myself to feel those emotions all at the same time. So it’s like feeling both the good and the bad, the positive and negative. Because I think we do that a lot more often than we realize.
Brooke: Yeah, because when we block all our negative emotion, we can’t get as much access to our positive emotion, right? I love that you said that. Sometimes, just letting an emotion out, just experiencing it, just allowing it, stop resisting it, it actually – even though it’s a negative emotion – it feels amazing to be able to just let it process through.
Cameron: Well, and I think it’s really important because especially – there’s a lot of people who emote internally. We kind of get in our heads and then we weaponize the thoughts against ourselves and the feelings and, “Oh, this feeling is bad.” But it’s like, yeah, our minds will lie to us. That’s how they’re designed. That’s how we train them to be. But our bodies won’t. They can’t. Our bodies can’t lie to us the same way our minds can.
Brooke: That’s so good.
Cameron: So, when we’re able to drop into the body, even just that sentence, “What am I feeling in my body?” That’s a huge mental shift for me when I say that because that does allow me to feel and then choose to emote if I want. Because again, when we look at the Model, a lot of people are thinking that the magic of the Model is the T-line, right? Your T-line creates your results. Like, no, it’s the F-line The F-line drives everything.
Brooke: Yes, that’s so interesting. As you were saying that about how the body never lies, I think it’s so interesting in relationship. And I’ll be curious about what your thoughts are on this, where I want you to feel something that maybe you don’t feel, right? And I’ll say to you maybe, “Hey, Cam, you should feel this way towards me.” Or, “You should feel this way right now.” Or, “You should feel this way about this certain thing…”
And I think sometimes, we can have shame about how we actually do feel about certain things because we don’t feel maybe the way we should. And I think that’s another way we can kind of lock away our feelings. So, how do you recommend we deal with that? You know, we start paying attention. We start seeing how we feel about things and maybe, you know, the body doesn’t lie, so maybe we start discovering truths about how we feel about certain things that maybe we didn’t want to actually acknowledge, especially when someone thinks we should feel a different way. What is your suggestion, as a coach, for something like that?
Cameron: I fucking love this question because this is basically my journey for the last several years in doing this work. It’s like, when it comes to relationships – well, let me backtrack a little bit. When it comes to feeling the emotion, why should we feel shame about feeling any emotion, about having any desire or want? It’s just a vibration, but Brooke, to what you said, a lot of people will feel shame around having a certain emotion toward something or someone.
Brooke: Yes.
Cameron: And it’s like, okay, what is the shame really about?
Brooke: But I think the shame is about, “There’s something wrong with me because I’m feeling this way.” I mean, I think it perpetuates this, “I can’t feel what I feel,” especially desire maybe. Right, desire, just natural desire that you have for something you may never act on, you choose not to or whatever, but you’re experiencing it, but you can’t acknowledge it and you have so much shame about it, what do you recommend for someone like that?
Cameron: I mean, the way that I personally handled it was kind of going back, I think it was Patrick who said this, but really separating myself from my emotions. Because yes, I have emotions, but I am not my emotions.
Brooke: Yes.
Cameron: Emotions make up part of who I am, they are the experience. But they do not make up my consciousness.
Brooke: That is so important. And I think that if you’re afraid of how you feel, you’re afraid of acknowledging how you feel for any reason, I think that’s really important. Your feelings are just caused by your thoughts, and some thoughts are programmed and habitual and unconscious. And because you have feelings that maybe you don’t understand or you don’t want to acknowledge doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.
And you can acknowledge those feelings. You don’t have to tell anybody. But you can acknowledge them and experience them. And if you do, the chances of you acting on them, or acting them out, or acting on them to buffer or resist them is so much less.
And so, your body is never going to lie. I love that you said that. And so, you trying to lie about what you’re experiencing in your body can cause so many - like what Greg was saying, can cause so many long-term issues. And it’s completely unnecessary.
Cameron: One piece that I want to add is think about how much societal programming we just naturally have from living in the world. When people are infants, when infants are infants, when you have a child…
Brooke: People are infants, yes.
Cameron: It’s like, okay, there are certain milestones, right? And if they’re not hitting the milestone, something’s wrong with them. Then we put them in school. So we learn so quickly what is “right” and “wrong.”
Brooke: Or good or bad. These emotions are good, these emotions are bad.
Cameron: And so, if you can start to recognize, okay, what is societal programming versus - it’s like if your grandma gives you an ugly sweater for Christmas that she made you and you put it on and you absolutely hate it. And then you just continue to wear it for the next 20 years. Like no, you have the option to take that shit off.
Brooke: It’s so good. And being told these emotions are bad, and if you have them there’s something wrong with you, and these emotions are good, they mean you’re a good person; if you’re experiencing anything that has been programmed into you to be negative or bad, you are going to have shame. And you’re not going to want to acknowledge those emotions.
So for example, lust, I remember when my kids were young and they were experiencing, and I was like, “No, that’s totally normal,” and they were so relieved. And I’m like, “You don’t act on it, you don’t have to act on it, you can manage it, but allow yourself to experience that and just know that that’s very normal.” And what if we believed that about every emotion?
Every emotion that we have doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you at all. You’re just having a vibration in your body. It’s not a big deal. Think of how many men could be set free by that. Especially the work that Patrick does too, it’s like, you build up so much shame around desire and urges and wanting certain things, so we try and push that all away.
I had the same experience with Chardonnay. I just loved it and I hated that I loved it, and I hated myself for having that emotion. And it’s until I was like, “Oh, it’s normal,” I understood the brain chemistry around it, then it completely set me free. And I think that’s true for all emotions.
Cameron: Emotions are not the problem. The actions that we take from emotions become a problem.
Brooke: Yes, that’s so well said. Awesome. Okay, let’s go to you, Solomone.
Solomone: Hey Brooke.
Brooke: Hey.
Solomone: Hi everyone. So my name is Solomone Ngata and I’m a Scholars coach.
Brooke: Amazing.
Solomone: And so for me, my experience was I think prior to coming to LCS and Scholars and Certification and all that, I was just one of those where I just had a lack of awareness. So I didn’t even know what emotions were.
I think I had an idea, but I didn’t know the actual breakdown of vibrations in your body. And so to me, with that lack of awareness and education on it, I just connected what I was feeling with the outside world.
Like, weather. If it’s a gloomy day, I’m going to be a little sadder that day. Or someone says something on the road, hey, that person and what they’re saying is what’s causing my anger. And so it was just very emotional childhood, connecting internal to external.
Brooke: Well, and you know, the issue with that, which is how most of us are socialized, other people hurt our feelings and we feel bad about things in the world that causes our emotions, is we feel like we have no control. So we just got to bury it and move on, right? Because the alternative is just to feel bad all the time.
Solomone: Exactly. So that was my experience. So that was prior to LCS. Now being here, getting certified, being in Scholars, it’s almost like you get your Master’s in emotions. Instead of just following the idea that you actually know the experience and you’re able to dive in a little deeper and tell what the different vibrations are, but it’s just been life-changing to gain that emotional education.
Brooke: That’s amazing. So when you’re coaching someone and they come to you and you say, “What are you feeling? What’s your now feeling? What are you experiencing?” And they say, “Nothing.”
Solomone: Well, that brought up - even with what you said earlier, with your boyfriend responding with the same answer, it made me think, it’s kind of like when you say, when you’re coaching people, you don’t allow people to say I don’t know. Because it’s a cop out. It’s almost similar to when someone says nothing, it’s a little cop-out answer where they’re blocking access to what’s going on internally.
So if someone is to bring that, I would just press a little bit further or harder just to allow them to dive a little deeper, drop into their body. So someone saying nothing, blocking access. Maybe they’re either remaining upstairs in their mind, or just blank. But just pressing them and prompting them to drop down, and hey, access that, what are you feeling? Sensations.
And then I love just the questions that we’re taught. Because those are just prompts to help redirect people from upstairs to downstairs. I let them focus on what does it feel like. The temperature, the color, the shape, speed, movement, all of those things.
Brooke: Yeah, you know, as you were talking, I was thinking about this. What we were talking about with Cam too. I think maybe when you’re in a relationship with someone and you ask them how they’re feeling, and they think, oh, they should feel a certain way. Like oh, I’m supposed to say loving right now, or I’m supposed to say in love with you, or compassionate, or excited or whatever.
And maybe what’s happening is the person’s feeling inadequate, or ashamed, or afraid. And when you’re taught that that’s not okay, you need to buck up and be tough and not feel that way - like you ask someone, “Hey, how you feeling?” And they say, “Oh, I’m feeling inadequate today.”
And then what we were talking about with Jake, then the other thing is okay, well, let me fix that for you, right? So, you should be feeling a certain way, and if you’re not, then we’re going to try and fix it because there’s something wrong with you and you should be ashamed, versus like, oh, welcome to Tuesday.
We’re feeling inadequate today, that’s very normal. We can be in the space of that. That doesn’t mean we have to not do anything or go crawl under the covers, although sometimes we probably should. But just acknowledging how we’re feeling and noticing that, and then also acknowledging that we do have agency and control, and that we can process that emotion and keep functioning, if that’s what’s going on for us.
But if we’re having that emotion and we don’t acknowledge it, we’re never going to be able to process it, digest it, let it go, understand it. That’s the problem, right?
Solomone: That’s why I think education and just learning more about emotions and what they are is so vital because what we’re not aware of, we can’t engage with it.
Brooke: Exactly.
Solomone: Or we don’t even know what the experience is. So educating yourself and then dealing with that other piece. Because that’s where I was. I had all these layers. Not only did I not know what emotions were, but I’m also a male, I’m also ethnic, so culturally speaking, emotions aren’t something we dive head first into. And so that was a big piece.
Brooke: And I think for so many men, especially because of the way that you’re socialized and what emotions seem to define something about you, whether you’re strong or weak. I mean, I think if you look at the socialization, it’s like, the whole time you’re growing up, big boys don’t cry and you should be strong and you should be capable, and then you get into a relationship, if you’re a man that gets into a relationship with a woman, then it’s complete opposite.
Tell me how you’re feeling, tell me what’s going on for you, I need to feel your emotions, I need you to be - I mean, I feel like it’s such a contradiction between what we’re expected. So I would just like to offer, as you start doing this work, I feel like you have to do it for yourself first.
And it’s not about telling anyone else how you’re feeling unless it's your coach who’s helping you process your own emotions. So this work isn’t about being more emotional for somebody else. It’s about finding your own strength. It’s about developing your own emotional skill so you can enjoy yourself more.
It sounds crazy that experiencing your emotions will help you enjoy your life more, and it will because as soon as you stop blocking your emotions, you will open up to all the positive. The negative ones too. But like we’re saying, when you open up to the negative ones, you can start kind of relishing in your ability to process them. I think it’s really powerful.
Okay, I’m going to go round one more time and I just want you to give me just a few sentences to - we’re speaking to men who are listening to this who are like, “I don’t really get it. I understand this is good, I hear what you're saying, but I don’t really get how this applies to me or what I should actually do next.”
So I think we’ll just offer a little sprinkle of advice for them. We’ll start with you, Greg.
Greg: Okay, so this actually applies to my niche really well, which is male weight loss. We all know the things to do, right? Eat right, exercise, do all the things, right? But there’s something holding us back. Some sort of judgment for ourselves that is preventing us from feeling the emotions, which are the reasons why we aren’t doing the things.
Like, I’m not worthy, or oh, I’m bad anyway, I’ll look stupid in the gym, or I really shouldn’t want these things. Once you stop judging yourself and meet that with compassion instead of judgment, you’ll be able to understand, okay, I went three days really, really good, and then I fell off the wagon, and that’s okay.
Get back up, start again, no big deal. You don’t have to beat yourself up, you don’t have to judge yourself. Yes, that piece of chocolate cake looked awesome and you ate it. Okay, great, move on, it’s okay. You don’t have to beat yourself up and just tell yourself all the negative things. No big deal. Feel the feelings, and meet your goal anyway.
Brooke: Yeah, and for all you men who are trying to lose weight, I love this example. If you eat the cake or you eat the thing or you drink the beer, whatever it is that you didn’t want to, you just ask yourself, “What was it I didn’t want to feel?”
Was it restriction? Was it anger? Was it entitlement? What was it you didn’t want to feel? Because if you don’t eat the cake, you’re going to feel something. And the more you feel something, this is the thing. Weight loss is my jam.
You will get better at feeling emotions the more emotions you feel. The better you get at emotions, the better you get at your life. And the more chocolate cake you eat, the better you get at eating chocolate cake. So just decide what you want to be good at. Okay Patrick, what do you have to say?
Patrick: I love that. So good. So I think for me, one of the biggest hurdles when I was learning how to process emotion is I was being confused about what it looked like, and how I was supposed to do it. So I think if any of the guys listening are in Scholars, come and process emotion with us.
Because what I found was the more that I was guided by somebody else, it enabled me to have that confidence in myself to do it. Once I started getting over the resistance and weirdness to sit in and being with myself, it just started making things so much easier. And now it’s literally a case of I can be out and about and I can be noticing what’s happening in my body.
Maybe even if it’s just a change in my heartbeat. That’s happened a few times on this call. So it’s just giving me information. That’s all emotions are. They’re information. They’re here to let you know something. So let’s just find out what it is.
Brooke: Yes. And listen, the more you know yourself and understand yourself and have awareness of yourself, the more available you are to your life and to yourself, and to your relationships too. So I think it’s, this isn’t that complicated.
As you’re walking around, ask yourself, what am I feeling? And your brain’s going to go, “You’re not feeling anything. You shouldn’t be feeling anything. This isn’t good.” And just be like, yeah, but what are you feeling? See what comes up for you. Alright, Jake. Go ahead, Patrick.
Patrick: One more thing. But even that question, what am I feeling, I notice resistance. Now I just say like, what’s happening in my body right now? Just that little reframe just changed everything for me.
Brooke: Yes. Love it. So good. Because then you don’t even have to use the word feeling. Just ask yourself what’s going on in your body. That’s a little sneak attack. I like it. Okay, Jake, go ahead.
Jake: Yeah, so if you’re not sure if this applies to you, men out there listening, it totally does. You’re not the exception. That’s what I have to say.
Brooke: Perfect.
Jake: I think knowing the Model and understanding that and come learn in Scholars, absolutely. But we’re always taking action from our emotions. And by design, some of them will be unintentional or negative, and some will be intentional and positive. And so the idea is not to eliminate the unintentional, but it’s to decide your discomfort.
Brooke: Yes. That’s so good. If you’re going to feel uncomfortable, you might as well get something from it.
Jake: Exactly.
Brooke: So it’s like the discomfort of not eating the cake, what are the benefits of that for you? And think about all the benefits that come from that, versus the benefit of having cake that doesn’t get you anywhere long term. So good. Alright, Tommy.
Tommy: So I think what I’d say to guys is that if this hits you, the life that we live right now is usually go, go, go, get shit done, plan, get something done, do it again, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish. And it’s helpful. We need that part of us to be successful in this world. But there’s another side, and that’s slowing down.
When we slow down, that’s when we start to get a little more familiar with our emotions, what’s happening in the body, and like Patrick said, our body is sending us signals. It signals, it’s information, and when you start to feel exhausted, when you start to feel burnt out, that is your body talking to you. And if you keep not listening by going, going, going, going, your body is going to shut down.
Brooke: That is amazing. And listen, this is what’s happening; you are trying to outrun your own inadequacy feeling. You’re trying to outrun your own doubt feelings. And you can’t. You can’t outrun it. So if you just slow down, I think people are afraid to slow down because they think they won’t finish the race fast enough, but the opposite is true.
If you slow down, then you can get leverage. You can find the emotions that will actually sustain you for the long run so you can actually get to the finish line. So well said. Okay, good. Cam.
Cameron: So my advice for men or anyone who are like, where do I start? Start with positive emotions. We talk a lot about feeling the negative and stuff, but it’s like, what’s the point? We also want to feel the good stuff too.
Brooke: That’s a great piece of advice.
Cameron: If you’re having a great day, why? What are you feeling? Truly, what does that feel like in your body? I was coaching a woman in Scholars just this morning, and that’s not something that she had ever contemplated was feeling a positive feeling intentionally.
Brooke: Yes. Because the whole point of really understanding your emotions on the first level is really kind of going, “Wait, I have feelings?” And then feeling them. But then we want to learn how to generate them, right? So how can we generate them if we don’t even know how they feel?
Start with the positive emotions. That’s great. And can you generate positive emotions on purpose? I love it. Okay, Solomone, what do you have?
Solomone: Awesome. So I love that there’s brilliance in the basics. So I just want to remind all the listeners, especially the male listeners, why we do anything in life is because of how we think it’ll make us feel.
Brooke: Yes, that’s right.
Solomone: Emotions are so powerful. It’s what’s in between you and what you want to be doing is emotions. What’s in between you and something you’re wanting to stop doing, it’s emotions. So identify those emotions. And lastly, just like thought downloads help us to create space between us and our thoughts, and help us see that we’re not our thoughts, identifying our feelings also helps us create that distance.
So we know we’re not these scary vibrations, unpleasant vibrations that we feel are connected to the world. Totally separate. So when that distance is there, we’re good. You’re not scared of it, it’s not going to kill you, just do the next thing.
Brooke: That’s so good. When you’re feeling an emotion, you don’t have to bury it. It’s not who you are. You can simply acknowledge it. By acknowledging it, labeling it, naming it, you get space from it. And I love what you said. Men, whatever you think you want, it’s only a feeling that you want. So don’t tell me you don’t care about feelings.
The only reason you want to be rich, the only reason you want to be successful, the only reason why you want to have that beautiful mate in your life is so you can feel a certain way. So it’s all about feelings. There’s no way around it. I love it. That’s so well said.
Thank you so much, gentlemen, for coming on the podcast today and talking to all of us about emotions. Especially kind of the socialization that men have we really wanted to address and talk about, and I want to keep these conversations going.
So if you are a man and you want some help and you want to talk about emotions, Self Coaching Scholars is a complete safe space for you to come and do that. Nobody is going to label you or think that you’re weak. In fact, we’ll think the opposite.
So have a beautiful week everyone, I want to thank each of you for coming on the podcast and sharing and being so vulnerable. I really appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you soon. Bye everyone.
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