How I became an emotionally resilient man
And learned how to stop pig wrestling...
One of my clients recently signed her final divorce settlement papers, and is getting ready to celebrate with a big party. She’s made many small changes in her life since she started down the path of taking responsibility for her own emotions and spirit.
The dark night of the soul she has been journeying since she realised “I’m f***ing done” and took the first step to separation, has taken two years to traverse. In doing so, she has released many negative emotions and self-beliefs that had her addicted to the codependent behaviours that were not serving her.
Elizabeth Gilbert is an amazing author who has inspired and empowered many women to choose self-love and self-responsibility - however the story of delicious adventure through Italy told in “Eat, Pray, Love” feels like it is completely unattainable for most of us.
In the circumstances of separation and divorce when co-parenting with two children, taking ourselves off on a solo delicious adventure to Italy of deep wandering, self-discovery and self-empowerment feels as almost as unlikely as becoming an astronaut. Possible, but highly unlikely to happen. When you’re a separated parent with kids, making big changes is too risky. But as you will see, delicious adventures are still possible.
The changes my client has been making have been 1% changes. Taking it day by day, coaching and leading herself and her kids as she navigated the storms of divorce.
She has spent a year wading through the cesspool of Internet dating, and in the process becoming extremely discerning about what she does and does not want and why. This dating exploration has shown her why she chose codependency, and what her unconscious fears were that needed to be released and integrated. In the end, she resolved to go no-contact with some family members and close friends that tried to blame, shame and manipulate her for not choosing codependency. Letting these people go has not been easy for her - it’s been heart-breaking. And at the same time, the journey has been a juicy delicious adventure of self-discovery.
The small 1% changes have compounded themselves like interest, and now she’s living in a house and circumstances that she absolutely loves. Her kids are so engaged and aware and they all have learned to deal with the co-parenting situation without drama.
In many ways, the path she has travelled is far more richer, deeper and in many ways much more empowering than the narrative in “Eat, Pray, Love”, because in navigating the storms of divorce, she’s not just empowered herself, but her two children also. She has shown massive leadership in raising the EQ and SQ of herself and her kids, so that they are all emotionally resilient. Her mental fragility is gone.
Now that the divorce papers and the court-room are almost finally settled, her ability to deal with situations that previously would have had completely stopped for months has massive improved, and she deeply feels the sovereignty of being able to deal with anything that comes her way.
Her life now has joy in it every single day - which was not her experience when she first separated. And she has negotiated with her kids and her ex-partner that she can take a long travel trip from North America to Australia. Her business is now really taking off, and her prosperity is growing so that she can now do some long-distance travel.
Her wounded-healer has emerged from the dark night of the soul and with it her leadership, prosperity and sovereignty have expanded.
The concept of the wounded-healer goes back to prehistoric times. The massive contribution that can be made socially, artistically and economically by those folks that successfully pass through the darkness and heal themselves, seems to be a forgotten outcome of psychology. Not all who wander are lost. And not all who are lost need to be found. There’s value in wandering and getting lost.
This ‘dark night of the soul’ journey of being lost is represented as a story of enlightenment in many cultures and religions. Buddha did not find peace until he gave up looking for enlightenment. Jesus spent forty days and nights lost in the desert considering his destiny.
What seems to have been lost-in-translation is the message that for all of us, the passage through the dark night of the soul is an absolutely mandatory step in creating our own growth. We are meant to spend some time in contemplation of our existence when we feel completely lost. We are meant to fail and get to what feels like rock bottom.
Jung was the first to describe it as a personality archetype - the wounded-healer - a person who has found wisdom, insight and skills in the journey of healing themselves.
It creates leadership and presence in themselves, prosperity in all areas of life and mindful self-sovereignty.
Yet we see many people not choosing to heal, and instead choosing a path of addiction to shame and blame. This choice to stay stuck in the drama and reject the opportunity to learn and grow is a conscious choice to be addicted to victim-thinking. And there’s a payoff in that, because they get to avoid self-responsibility.
I recently came across a Dr Han Ren on Instagram who in one of her reels “called-out” white privileged educated men who support feminist outcomes for their inability to deal with feedback or criticism - or be able to hold space for a woman’s anger and frustration when they’ve done something wrong.
Her own anger and frustration were clearly top-of-mind when she labelled these men as fragile, and delivered her rant as a scolding for their privilege and entitlement. Shaming and blaming them. It seems curious to me that someone that has a PhD in Psychology would want to publicly demonstrate low EQ.
Having lived in Singapore for over 4 years now, I’ve observed that scolding is a national pastime of the Asian Tiger-Mom’s here. So it was interesting to me that she chose to dramatise the observation by delivering it as a scolding as she also appears to be an Asian Tiger-Mom. My observation might not be correlated at all but she very clearly felt entitled and privileged to do some non-consensual racial scolding of another group of humans on social media. From a compassionate perspective, I wonder just how much scolding she endured during her childhood that leaves her so addicted to the drama that she ends up making posts on Instagram that get her a bunch of vile feedback from the trolls.
Scolding “fragile men” on Insta is highly unlikely to get any of them the insight that they need to choose a new path. In the best-case scenario, it’s like scolding a fish for its inability to climb a tree - it's futile. In the worst-case scenario it is “pig wrestling” - you get covered in sh1t and the pig loves it. I’m really not surprised she got some really negative and vile attention from the trolls the previous time she made the same post.
BUT, the concept she raised is a valid one, that a large proportion of men find it really challenging to deal with anger and complaint, and have trouble holding space for women to do that. I raised the subject of ‘male fragility’ with a woman this weekend who I hold in high respect, and she was equally frustrated with men.
I was a ‘fragile’ man for many years. I ended up divorced twice, because I was not able to be resilient and completely unable to deal with my emotions and the emotions of my spouses
And, lack of emotional resilience - low EQ and low SQ - is an accurate observation for a lot of us humans - not just the men identified by the Instagram post. And it’s caused by scolding and emotional abuse during childhood by caregivers.
My first book on anger “Angry-as-F***, but no idea why?” doesn’t just talk to fragile men, it talks to all genders who have been brought up in families where anger and scolding were commonplace. It needs to be better recognized that we’re all involved in creating new fragile generations by doing this scolding.
How I became an emotionally resilient man was by doing the emotional clearing, which then gave me the insights that allowed me to improve my EQ and SQ.
My first book on anger was originally designed to inspire men to lift themselves out of the cycle of outrage and inspire self-leadership. When I started writing it in 2017, I thought if I could just stop one man from harming himself, or someone else, then it would be all worthwhile.
My second book “Rescuer-in-Recovery. No one is coming to f***ing save you,” was designed to recognise the trap of being the hero or the saviour and the addiction to “always having to be right” and inspire self-forgiveness in the wounded-healer to put them on the path to heal themselves. This book is for all those people that like to scold their children and everyone else. Because they’re burning themselves out trying to save everyone else. This addiction to being a saviour is what got me divorced twice.
My third book “I’m F***ing Done,” on divorce, was designed to recognise the trap of blaming and shaming ourselves and others in order to feel like we belong and inspire self-responsibility and ownership for the circumstances of our own creation.
What is required to find our way through the dark night of the soul, when we finally realise our way forward is to release our addiction to drama, is the healing of ourselves through radical self-compassion, self-forgiveness, and self-responsibility.
In my fourth book “Making Darkness Visible”, I talk about how my clients and I created lives of delicious adventure as a result of actively engaging with the darkness and clearing our unconscious emotions and limiting beliefs that hide in the shadows.
My book describes how I, and my clients, became emotionally resilient by clearing my own sh1t when I learned to release the emotions of shame and guilt and stop my spirit from engaging with the anger, the rescuing and the victimhood. Clearing our sh1t is not an easy path - we are directly engaging with the darkness that holds us trapped in the drama.
There are gifts that can be accessed by actively engaging with our darkness and clearing our sh1t. The gifts of inner strength, courage and power are all directly accessible by dealing with the most disempowering emotions. The result is a massive gain in our EQ and our SQ, and the reward is a delicious adventure of leadership, prosperity and sovereignty.
There are gifts that can be accessed by actively engaging with our darkness and clearing our sh1t. The gifts are inner strength, courage and power, and they are all directly accessible by dealing with the most disempowering emotions. The result is a massive gain in our EQ and our SQ.
The reward of choosing to actively invest in ourselves is a delicious adventure of leadership, prosperity and self-sovereignty.
Please like and subscribe, and if you’re a corporate professional or an entrepreneur that is interested in doing the work in becoming emotionally resilient - and gifting yourself and your family with huge leap in your leadership, prosperity and sovereignty then check out my blog and contact me.
