Mental Health

                I first became acquainted with Dr. Pamela Wible when I read her book Physician Suicide Letters Answeredin which she exposed the pervasive and largely hidden medical culture that has claimed the lives of too many doctors and medical students. It felt very familiar and personal for  me because I was once a medical student. I still remember the excitement I felt when I was accepted into three medical schools. I chose U.C. San Francisco where I was awarded a four-year, full-tuition fellowship. But I soon began to feel the demands, pressures, anxieties, and doubts that assail medical students and doctors alike. Here are some of the specifics that Dr. Wible reported in her book:

• Today a physician told me she lost 3 colleagues to suicide in the last 2 months. 

• Loma Linda Hospital just lost 3 young doctors to suicide in 6 months. 

• Mount Sinai had 3 docs jump in less than 2 years—from the same building.

• An anesthesiologist recently told me he lost 8 of his colleagues to suicide.

I had the good fortune of interviewing Dr. Wible recently delving more deeply into her experiences with doctors, medical students and other healthcare providers and learning about the Ideal Health Clinics she has helped create and support. You can watch our interview and discussion here.

Dr. Wible goes on to say,

“Each suicide should be fully investigated, yet few receive root cause analysis of the specific circumstances leading to their deaths.”

In a TEDMED talk Dr. Wible gave in 2016 she shared the moment she realized how big a problem physician suicide is.

“I was sitting at the memorial service for the third physician that we lost in our small town in just over a year,” said Dr. Wible. “And I sat there in the second row of his memorial service, and I just started counting the suspicious deaths of doctors and I realized I had quite a number of them, including both men that I dated in medical school.”

Her comments took me back to my own medical school experience at U.C. San Francisco Medical Center. Prior to the beginning of classes the six students who, like me, had received fellowships to attend medical school were wined and dined across the bay in Marin County at home of one of our professors. The message was clear:

“You are the elite and have been accepted into an exclusive club. Follow our lead, accept the demands of membership, and you do will have the riches that accrue to those who follow the rules and work like crazy.”

Once classes began I soon began to see the dark side of being a member of this kind of club. I felt the pressures, demands, cruelty, and bullying, that are baked into the medical school experience and later, if you survive, into the kind of medicine we were being trained to administer.

I was one of the lucky ones who left medical school before things got worse. I transferred to U.C. Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, earned a master’s degree, and later went back to school and earned a PhD in International Health. I was fortunate to create a healthcare practice that avoids many of the pitfalls that cause so much harm to both healthcare practitioners and patients.

In talking to Dr. Wible I learned that she has been helping physicians leave what she has coined “assembly-line medicine” since 2004. Her model is now taught in medical schools and is featured in the Harvard School of Public Health’s newest edition of Renegotiating Health Care: Resolving Conflict to Build Collaboration.

In a recent interview with Rectangle Health, Dr. Wible was asked about the pressures so many doctors feel these days that can cause them to feel stressed, depressed, and overwhelmed.

“Well, medical careers have always been challenging with immense pressure coming from all angles,” said Dr. Wible. “Physicians witness ongoing trauma and death without getting mental health support. Over the last 10-20 years we have been forced to treat more and more patients due to high-overhead practices. In a giant practice with 90% overhead, physicians have to see 30 patients a day just to pay the bills. It’s production-line medicine that takes all the joy out of the profession.”

Dr. Wible went on to say that the problems physicians face can be traced back to the training and experiences they have as medical students.

“Patients are very confused about why they aren’t getting good healthcare. To understand why, you need to go all the way back to day one of medical school to find that your doctor was bullied, overworked, and sleep-deprived. Medical students who are abused become physicians who are abused, and who may even abuse their own patients. This is the cycle of healthcare abuse.”

I still shutter when I remember my own medical school experience and how much it parallels what Dr. Wible has seen in the years she has been hearing the stories from doctors and medical students.

“If you treat a student like a robot that’s supposed to memorize all sorts of minutiae,” says Dr. Wible, “you’re going to have a doctor who can repeat all these interesting factoids, but who can’t connect with you.”

Although I avoided the detrimental effects of medical school, I have witnessed the impact on the doctors I have seen for my own healthcare. I just never realized how widespread the effects were. As Dr. Wible points out,

“Physicians are taught to over give, and be workaholics to their own detriment. Our current economic model is certainly willing to take advantage of people who will work excessive hours–let’s keep the factory workers moving as many days as possible so that we can make a lot of money. Let’s face it, the primary revenue generators in health care are basically doctors. There are many layers of people embedded on top that want them to keep working at faster and faster speeds so that they can make more money off of them.”

She calls for a different way to treat our healthcare professionals.

“We are humans, not machines here to do some kind of assembly-line work,” says Dr. Wible. “We are spiritual beings having a finite human experience and that’s how we need to start relating to each other. We are telling the doctor to be like a machine, and if you’re broken, leave the hospital; you can’t be a doctor anymore.”

Launch Your Ideal Clinic and Learn About a New Medical School

                When I spoke with Dr. Wible I asked her about what she had been doing over the years to help doctors develop their ideal clinic. It began with her own willingness to ask patients what kind of healthcare they wanted and needed. She listened to what her patients were saying and found a way to create, and fund, her own ideal clinic, which she later taught to others. She offers a course that addresses some of the most important things she has learned and is teaching to others:

• Patient Success Secrets. Claim your vision, define your ideal client and learn the top 10 tips & tricks to attract a ton of loyal patients for life to your ideal clinic, coaching, or consulting practice.

• The Joy Of Doctoring. Overcome fatigue with enthusiasm by turning work into play—and GET PAID more to do what you LOVE for your ideal clients.

• Mentorship & Networking. Pair up with a mastermind partner & discover the benefits of asking for help. (Hint: mentoring is the best CME!)

• Creative (& Cost-Saving) Business Strategies. Ultra-low overhead secrets revealed. Discover unique office locations, innovative staffing solutions, even make a Do-It-Yourself EMR. Save 86% on malpractice insurance (& get your office liability policy for FREE).
• Boost Your Self-Confidence Now! Break free from fear-driven medicine. Recover from perfectionism. Reclaim your power. Learn 7 simple strategies to lead with confidence & courage.

• Build Your Community. Engage your town to help you design, create & fund your clinic. It’s easier than you think! 

• Financial Freedom For Physicians. Discover the top 12 medical business models and find the right one(s) for you.

• Media & Marketing. Never waste money on advertising. Be media savvy and publicize your unique message for free. Learn 3 tips for online marketing mastery that work well for any health professional seeking ideal clients.

I am on Dr. Wible’s mailing list and was pleased to receive the following announcement:

“I’ve just launched a med school. After helping 1,000+ docs launch ideal practices, people have been begging me to start a school for years. Traditional med schools provide technical skills, not emotional, spiritual, or business mastery. In fact, suicide rates increase during med school.”

She went on to say,

“We’re a happily unaccredited virtual school free to teach in the most honest, uncensored, and transformative ways with stellar faculty & guest speakers. We’re not replicating what med schools do well. Not teaching neurosurgery, though we dive into neuroscience and soul surgery. Did I mention tuition is just $500?”

That is definitely the type of medical school I wish I had attended. Dr. Wible also told me that the school is open to other healthcare professionals, not just medical students and doctors. I know the skills she teaches are very helpful for psychologists, social workers, and others working in the healthcare field.

If you’d like more information about Dr. Wible and her work, you can visit her at https://www.idealmedicalcare.org/.

If you would like to read more articles about how to improve your mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual health, you can subscribe to my free newsletter here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post The Healthcare Revolution Is Here: Meet the Maverick Doctor Who is Leading the Way appeared first on MenAlive.

                Whatever your political beliefs or where you live in the world, if you’re willing to open your eyes, heart and mind, you know that humanity is not doing well. We are in serious danger unless we change our way of being on planet Earth and need all the help we can get. Kelly Wendorf may be just the person who can give it to us. I first learned about Kelly’s work from my friend and colleague Chip Conley who is the founder of The Modern Elder Academy, the world’s first midlife wisdom school.

                Chip and his team were offering a program at their Santa Fe Center titled Applying Ancient Wisdom for Personal Transformation, with guest faculty Kelly Wendorf. The description was intriguing.

“In this Owning Wisdom workshop co-facilitated with EQUUS founder, coach, author, and ‘CEO whisperer’ Kelly Wendorf, you will be invited to enter through Nature’s doorway into a deeper, more profound relationship with yourself and the world around you.”

                I immediately purchased Kelly’s book with the mysterious title, Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living. I recently had the great pleasure of having a free-ranging discussion with Kelly about her fascinating life, what she has learned from indigenous elders she has met in her travels around the world, and her love and connection with the wisdom of horses. You can engage with our fascinating discussion here.

                As the founder of EQUUS, her mission is to liberate the leadership capacities of the conscientious, empathetic, accountable, and kind individuals who are most qualified to guide humanity into a future where we live in greater communion and connection to nature and to ourselves. 

                When I read her book, I was impressed by the range of experiences and wisdom she has acquired over the years, including expertise in the field of neuropsychology. She quotes one of the leaders in the field, Dr. Mario Martinez, author of The MindBody Code. Dr. Martinez says,

“All cultures, East and West, have their own unique ways of punishing those whose ideas and behaviors run contrary to established beliefs. These forms of punishment cause emotional damage that surfaces in the form of three archetypal wounds: abandonment, shame, and betrayal.”

                Dr. Martinez goes on to say,

“I discovered something profound. There is a healing field for each of the three wounds. Commitment heals abandonment, honor heals shame, and loyalty heals betrayal.”

                When I interviewed Kelly she described an experience she had with the group of Native American healthcare practitioners and community leaders from the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Kelly said,

“When they all entered the arena to meet the horses, the horses responded in a bizarre fashion. Normally when people enter the herd, our horses are curious, or may show off, be agitated, or take turns meeting each person. In this case, not one horse acknowledged any person in the entire group. It was as if the people weren’t there.”

                From long experience Kelly knows that the wisdom tunes into deep truths about the humans who visit.

“What were the horses reflecting?” she asked the participants. “If we assume that the horses have a gift of teaching, what might that be?”

                It took a while working with the group but she discovered that every member of the group held shame for simply being alive, brought about by their collective historical trauma as displaced indigenous people. Drawing on the wisdom from Dr. Martinez, she and her horses were able to help the group reclaim their honor, loyalty, and commitment to life.

                In many ways we are all wounded by our collective historical trauma that goes back more than 6,000 years and we all have much to learn from elders who have been successful here on Earth for 56 million years. Interviewing Kelly and reading her book gave me a profound insight into what all humanity could learn. Imagine being in the presence of wise elders who recognize our individual woundedness and disconnection, who can see through our defensive shields, give us honest feedback about the state of our dis-ease, and guide our healing.

                Kelly asks in her book,

“What if you had a source of wisdom, a teacher, a mentor, who had been around for a really long time and who had mastered the big challenges that we are trying to figure out about how to live here on Earth?”

The answer is that we do and we all have access to it if we are willing to live and learn.

The Five Pillars and Two Superpowers That Kelly Wendorf Offers the World

                Kelly says,

“Based on my observation of multiple herds, wild and domestic, and a lifetime of working with horses, it is my experience that equine culture is organized around five pillars: Safety, Connection, Peace, Freedom, and Joy.”

                Take a moment to breathe and imagine a world where humanity was organized around these five pillars. What kind of leadership would it take to support our safety, connection, peace, freedom, and joy? Clearly, not the kind of leaders that dominate the headlines in the news today. Kelly observes.

“The leader is the one who is not the mightiest or the most domineering but who cares the most—a true definition of a servant leader.”

                She goes on to say,

“The leader, or the head of the family, is chosen based on their ability to maintain these pillars within the herd system. How exactly does a lead horse govern and keep those five pillars intact? Through two superpowers: care and presence.

                Kelly concludes saying,

“Care is that genuine desire to attend to the needs of others. Synonymous with love, care is unconditional love with responsibility. Presence is the ability to be wholly here in this present moment, in this limitless sense of totality here and how. Presence enables care to be acutely responsive to the moment, in each moment. Without presence, care can be inaccurate or ill-timed. Without care, presence can remain aloof.”

What Equus Offers

                I invite you to check out Kelly’s work at Equusinspired.com if you answer “yes” to any of these questions:

• Do you sense something more is possible for your life?
• Are you called to something deeper?
• Do you long to be challenged and inspired?
• Are you ready to really move the needle in your life?

“Welcome to a powerful approach to self-discovery and personal and professional development,” says Kelly. “Our evidence-based experiential processes leave you changed, meaningfully impacted, and clear about your next steps forward. Our work sits at the nexus of science, ancient wisdom and social innovation, and is designed to create measurable results through the following:”

• Coaching

“Coaching is one of our most popular offerings and sessions are both in-person and remotely by phone or zoom.”

• Courses

“We offer online courses throughout the year on varied topics based on the mission and values of ancient nature-based wisdom, neuroscience, contemplative wisdom, innovative leadership, and life-long learning.”

• The EQUUS Experience

“The Equus Experience is our award-winning personal and leadership development process that changes organizations, and transforms individuals, families, leaders, and teams.”

• The Wisdom Circle

“A mastermind and group coaching platform and innovative approach for navigating transition, developing leadership, and developing self-mastery developed by Kelly Wendorf, Founder and CEO, and ICF Master Certified Coach.”

“If you feel inspired, come visit EQUUS in beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico, we welcome you,” says Kelly. “O’ghe P’oghe (White Shell Water Place), the original Tewa name for Santa Fe, is located on unceded territorial lands of the Tewa and Tanos people. We acknowledge the Traditional and Ancestral Carers, past, present, and future, of this land.”

To connect on-line, you may do so here: https://www.equusinspired.com/

If this article was helpful, please share it with others. If you would like to read more articles and connect with me and my work, you can visit me at https://menalive.com/. You can subscribe to my free weekly newsletter here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post Why Humanity’s Future May Depend on Our Connection to Our 56-Million-Year-Old Elders appeared first on MenAlive.

In Part 1, I discussed the origin of my own search for masculinity growing up with an absent father. I also introduced you to Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman and their book, Boys, A Rescue Plan: Moving Beyond the Politics of Masculinity to Health Male Development. In Part 2, I expanded the discussion to draw on the work of other colleagues who are recognizing that healthy masculinity, like healthy femininity, are opposite sides of the same coin and must be created supported together for the good of all.

Jungian psychologist Robert Moore and mythologist Douglas Gillette wrote a powerful and mind-expanding book, King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover: Rediscovering The Archetypes of the Mature Masculine. They also understand the importance of Rites of Passage to assist males in developing into healthy mature adult men.

“In the present crisis in masculinity we do not need, as some feminists are saying less masculine power,” say Moore and Gillette. “We need more. But we need more of the mature masculine.”

They go on to say,

“There is too much slandering and wounding of both the masculine and feminine in patriarchy, as well as the feminist reaction against patriarchy. The feminist critique, when it is not wise enough, actually further wounds an already besieged authentic masculinity.”

I met Robert Moore and Doug Gillette shortly after the publication of their book. We three had a connection with Robert Bly. I had met Bly several years previously and shared a cabin with him at a men’s gathering in California. He gifted me a copy of his book, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, co-written with James Hillman and Michael Meade. Robert wrote:

“To Jed with love and in the mood of brothers.”

In the introduction to King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover, Moore and Gillette say,

“During Bill Moyers’s recent interview with the poet Robert Bly, ‘A Gathering of Men,’ a young man asked the question, ‘Where are the initiated men of power today?’ We have written this book in order to answer this question, which is on the minds of both men and women.”

Decoding the Male Psyche–The Four Archetypes of Mature Masculinity

                “The four major forms of mature masculine energies that we have identified are the King, the Warrior, the Magician, and the Lover,” say Moore and Gillette. “They all overlap and, ideally, enrich one another. A good King is always also a Warrior, a Magician, and a Lover. And the same holds true for the other three.”

                In my book, Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity, I detail what I’ve learned from Robert Moore and Doug Gillette. Here is a short description of the four archetypes:

• King—The energy of just and creative ordering.
• Warrior—The energy of aggressive but nonviolent action.
• Magician—The energy of initiation and transformation.
• Lover—The energy that connects one to others and the world.

Moore and Gillette believe that the problems we see with men today—violence, shiftlessness, aloofness—are a result of modern men not adequately exploring or being in touch with the primal, masculine archetypes that reside within them. Like the great psychoanalyst Carl Jung, they believe that men and women possess both feminine and masculine archetypal patterns—this is the anima (feminine) and animus (masculine).

Each of the archetypal energy potentials in the male psyche has a three-part structure. Think of a triangle. At the top of the triangle is the archetype in its fullness. At the bottom of the triangle are twin dysfunctional aspects, either having too much (+) or too little (-) of the quality.

The King in his fullness at the top is powerful and nurturing.

At the bottom, the dysfunctional

Tyrant (+)           and            Weakling (-)

                The Warrior in his fullness is forceful and peaceful. The dysfunctional pairs are the

                                                Sadist (+) and the Masochist (-).

                The Magician in his fullness initiates and transforms.  His dysfunctional pairs are the   

                      Detached Manipulator (+) and the Denying “Innocent” One (-).

                The Lover in his fullness is connects and protects.  The dysfunctional lover are the

                                             Addicted Lover (+) or Impotent Lover (-).

                I believe we all recognize many of the dysfunctional aspects in men, including male leaders. 

Healing the Father Wound

                In order to move from a world of where we have men who express their mature and healthy King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover energies, we must heal our father wounds and experiencing healthy Rites of Passage. In my book, 12 Rules for Good Men, I have a chapter titled, Heal Your Father Wound and Become the Father You Were Meant to Be.

                I work with many men whose father wound has interfered with their success in love and marriage, limited their career success, and kept them from being the man they most want to be. I have also developed an on-line course for healing: “Healing the Family Father Wound.”

                Do you suffer from a family father wound? According to Roland Warren, former head of the National Fatherhood Initiative,

“Kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. And if a father is unwilling or unable to fill that hole, it can leave a wound that is not easily healed.”

For millions of men and women, the father wound influences our health and well-being, but we are not aware that it exists.

Here’s The Father-Wound Quiz I use in my counseling practice to help people assess whether they may have been impacted by an absent father. Please check off each statement that is true for you.

1. My father died when I was still a child (  ).
2. My parents divorced or were separated when I was young (  ).
3. My father was physically present, but emotionally distant (  ).
4. Growing up, my father worked a lot and he didn’t have enough time to be with me (  ).
5. My father was very critical of me (  ).
6. I never felt I could please my father (  ).
7. My father rarely said, “I love you, I’m proud of you, I believe in you” (  ).
8. One or both of my parents had mental health problems (  ).
9. One or both of my parents had drinking or drug problems (  ).
10. I sought out father-figures to help compensate for my father’s absence (  ).
11. During adolescence I often got angry and sometimes got into fights (  ).
12. During adolescence I was eager to fall in love or had early sexual experiences (  ).
13. Having a best friend was extremely important to me (  ).
14. I felt lonely and depressed growing up, even though I covered it well (  ).
15. As an adult I have had difficulty finding and keeping a healthy relationship (  ).
16. I’ve been married and divorced at least once (  ).
17. I have difficulty committing to a relationship (  ).
18. I sometimes pick partners who aren’t good for me in the long run (  ).
19. “Looking for love in all the wrong places” may have been written for me (  ).
20. With my own children, I worry about whether I’m being a good parent (  ).
21. I’ve vowed to be a different kind of father than my father was for me (  ).
22. I have been very successful at work, but less than successful in my love life (  ).
23. With my spouse or partner I often feel like a critical parent or a demanding child (  ).
24. I haven’t made as much money as I’m worth or become as successful as I want (  ).

Even those with healthy, involved fathers will check off a few of these statements. However, if you checked six or more, you may be suffering from the effects of an absent father. The more items you checked, the deeper the wound is likely to be.

Experiencing Healthy Rites of Passage

Bill Kauth is the co-founder of the ManKind Project. It offers one of the most powerful rites of passage programs I’ve ever experienced. I first met Bill Kauth in 1980 at a conference that had emerged from the consciousness of the women’s movement. I immediately felt I had found a kindred spirit. We were both impressed with the positive energy of women coming together to break out of the old restrictions that society had placed on them. It felt good to support women, but we also recognized that men needed to find their own support and break free from their own restrictions.

I still remember my own introduction to the New Warrior weekend (Now called The Mankind Project’s  New Warrior Training Adventure) . It was 1991, twelve years after my men’s group began. We joked that we felt like “an old married couple.” We knew each other well, felt safe and comfortable, enjoyed ourselves immensely, but were growing a bit bored hearing the same stories. We decided to attend the New Warrior weekend. Although it’s impossible to describe any kind of ritual initiation because the real value is in the experience, here are some of the things I learned:

• Being with other men in this well-crafted weekend experience was transformative. I felt a host of feelings: Anxiety, confusion, exhilaration, joy, and true brotherly love. By the end, I felt more myself, more deeply connected to others, and with tools that I could use to be more successful in life.

• I broke through my “Mr. Nice Guy” image to share a lot of my woundedness and anger. I found that my anger didn’t destroy people. In fact, it was appreciated, and there was a group of supportive men to help me guide my anger and who taught me ways of expressing it that would help, rather than harm, myself and others.

• Most of my life I felt like the Lone Ranger figuring things out on my own, doing what needed to be done by myself, solving my own problems. I thought being stoic, independent, and self-sufficient was what it meant to be a man. During the weekend, I learned to be part of a team, to work together in support of shared goals, and found that success was sweeter and more lasting when achieved together.

Being part of a men’s group that has been meeting for forty-six years has been a great gift that I recommend to all men. In my book, 12 Rules for Good Men, I talked about the long history of men’s groups.

“Looking back on our heritage as men to our lives as hunter-gathers over the last two million years, one of the things that stands out to me is that men spent considerable time in small groups with other men.”

I concluded,

“Bottom line—Being in a men’s group combats loneliness and keeps you alive and well.”

If you’d like more information about my work and upcoming opportunities, please visit me at https://menalive.com/.

If you are not already receiving my weekly articles and newsletter, you may do so here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.

The post In Search of Mature Masculinity in a World of Wounded BoyMen: Part 3 appeared first on MenAlive.

In Part 1, I discussed the origin of my own search for masculinity growing up with an absent father. I also introduced you to Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman and their book, Boys, A Rescue Plan: Moving Beyond the Politics of Masculinity to Health Male Development.

                Another colleague I had the pleasure of interviewing is Gary Barker, founder and CEO of Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. In a recent article, What is a ‘masculine’ workplace, anyway? Barker says,

“In his recent appearance on Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg said that workplaces need more ‘masculine energy’ and that the workplace had been ‘neutered.’ I began to ask myself, what about workplaces exactly have been neutered? And what masculine energy is Zuckerberg trying to bring back?”

                We are living at a time where a regressive kind of masculinity is coming to power throughout the world. We see it with the election of Donald Trump, who once again has ascended to the U.S. Presidency. We are also hearing more about a certain kind of masculinity represented by media personalities Joe Rogan and tech billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.

                Gary Barker says,

“The bottom line: a restrictive old-school version of masculinity is generally not good for men ourselves, for the people in our lives, nor for businesses. Nor for the world.”

                Richard V. Reeves, Founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, offers timely wisdom about the importance of paying attention to the problems of boys and men and the dangers of our failure to do so. Reeves was recently interviewed on John Stewart’s The Daily Show by comedian and actress Desi Lydic.

                “Politicians on both left and right have failed to engage constructively with the problems of boys and men,” says Reeves. “Views on what it means to be a man in the twenty-first century have hardened along partisan lines, but people can hold two thoughts in our head at once. We can be passionate about women’s rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men.”

                In these polarized times with conflict between the left and the right, too often one side blames the other. Some believe that If women are not doing well, it must be men’s fault or if boys and men are not doing well, women must be to blame. But Reeves recognizes that men’s and women’s issues are opposite sides of the same coin and must be solved together or not at all. Says Reeves,

“Too often, there is the belief that men don’t have problems. Men are the problem. And if we continue to just see men as problems rather than having problems, then it’s going to be a very, very, difficult time for us over the next few years.”

                Ruth Whippman is a feminist mother with three boys who was confronted with these conflicting views of masculinity. I interviewed her and wrote an article, BoyMoms and BoyDads: What We Can Learn From Ruth Whippman & Richard Reeves About Sex, Power, and Parenting. In her book, BoyMom: Reimaging Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, Whippman says,

“While the left branded masculinity as toxic, the right sold it as the answer to all our problems, with both politicians and online influencers peddling a new brand of wounded, furious manhood, drawn from a combination of superhero fantasies and defensive rage.”

                Whippman goes on to say,

“Everywhere I turned inside my own brain I found contradiction and hypocrisy. In the fevered, absolutist climate of #MeToo, it is hard not to start to see men as the enemy… Disoriented, I veered wildly between disgust and defensiveness. While the feminist part of me yelled ‘Smash the patriarchy!’ the mother part of me wanted to wrap the patriarchy up in its blankie and read it a story.”

                Failure to recognize and take seriously the problems of boys and men lays the foundation for the rise of authoritarian leaders that we are seeing in the U.S. and around the world. Internationally acclaimed historian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been studying and writing about men like these for many years. In her book, StrongMen: Mussolini to the Present she describes leaders from the past like Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler along with contemporary leaders like Vladamir Putin and Donald Trump. She says,

“For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth treasure, and the protections of democracy.” She goes on to say, “They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority.”

                Like all authoritarian rulers, they are really not “strong.” I believe they are actually very wounded men who feel frightened and and are forever looking for “more”—more validation, more love, more recognition—to fill an inner void that they are reluctant to address. Rather than being healthy, mature men, they are “boymen” who have never truly grown up.

                Prior to Donald Trump’s November 2016 election, I wrote an article, “The Real Reason Donald Trump Will Be Our Next President,” that was posted on my website on May 7, 2016. This was written at a time when few people, including Donald Trump himself, believed that he would be the next President of the United States. In the article I said,

“Our presidential candidates reflect the view we hold of ourselves. Donald Trump is a wounded man and has suffered abuse, neglect, and abandonment as a child. Many of us resonate with his rage.”

                My clinical experience working with men in the U.S. and around the world, convinced me that though males occupied positions of power, too many felt wounded and disempowered and would vote for “strongmen” rather than “healthymen” if given a choice. Clearly in the recent Presidential election the majority voted for the Donald Trump and Republicans rather than Kamala Harris and the Democrats, including many men and women who had previously voted Democratic.

From Artificial Intelligence to Evolutionary Intelligence—From Boy Psychology to Man Psychology

                In my book, 12 Rules For Good Men, Rule #4 is “Embrace Your Billion Year History of Maleness.” With all the talk these days about “artificial intelligence,” it is good to remember that human intelligence has been evolving on planet Earth for three to four-million years. In researching the book I wondered when did “males” and “females” first evolve in evolutionary history.

                At the beginning of the chapter describing Rule #4, I quoted the cultural historian Thomas Berry who said,

“The natural world is the largest sacred community to which belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.”

I believe that it is clear to anyone who is willing to see the truth than our disconnection from the natural world has produced a kind of destructive and artificial intelligence that is undermining our life-support system that is necessary for our survival.

                Our modern confusions and conflicts about “masculinity” and “femininity” keeps us from recognizing and appreciating the evolutionary history of “male” and “female.” In his book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, Matthew Fox says,

“The universe invented sex and sexuality one billion years ago.”

                According to mathematical cosmologist, Dr. Brian Swimme and historian Dr. Thomas Berry, in their book, The Universe Story, they say,

“Life first evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. Prior to the evolution of sexual reproduction, cells divided into individual sister cells.”

Swimme and Berry call this living organism Sappho.

“But one billion years ago, a momentous change occurred. The first male organism, Tristan, and the first female organism, Iseult, were cast into the ancient oceans.”

                This was the first love affair and, as the story goes, the rest is evolutionary history.

                In their book, Boys, A Rescue Plan, Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman go into great depth in helping explain the confusion about sex and gender and conclude,

“Human beings are sexually dimorphic. Our chromosomes set us up that way in utero. We develop during our lifespan as male and female in body and brain, even as particular brain characteristics in a male or female lean toward extremes or middles.”

                They go on to say,

“Dimorphic doesn’t mean stereotyping. It doesn’t mean one boy-type, one girl-type, with no variety. Sexual dimorphism creates averages and means for male and female on the brain sex spectrum.”  

They backup their findings with data from a host of scientists.

According to David C. Page, M.D. professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the Whitehead Institute, where he has a laboratory devoted to the study of the Y-chromosome,

“There are 10 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them is sex specific. We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome. Men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease.”

Marianne J. Legato M.D, is founder of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine and author of numerous books on sex, gender, and science, including, Eve’s Rib:  The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine. She says,

“Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their internal function but in the way they experience illness.”

Just as there are biological and evolutionary differences between male and females there are differences between man psychology and boy psychology. In their book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, say,

“In their radical critique of patriarchy, some feminists conclude that masculinity in its roots is essentially abuse, and that connection with ‘eros’—with love, relatedness, and gentleness—comes only from the feminine side of the human equation.”

They go on to say,

“Patriarchy is the expression of immature masculinity. It is the expression of Boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow—or crazy—side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted masculine, fixated at immature levels. Patriarchy, in our view, is an attack on masculinity in its fullness as well as femininity in its fullness.”

For most of human history, there were Rites of Passage where boys were initiated and supported in moving from boyhood to manhood. But now, as Moore and Gillette point out, men are fragmented—various parts of their personality are split off from each other leading to often independent and chaotic lives.

“A man who cannot get it together is a man who has probably not had the opportunity to undergo ritual initiation into the deep structures of manhood. He remains a boy—not because he wants to, but because no one has shown him the way to transform his boy energies into man energies. No one has led him into direct healing experiences of the inner world of masculine potential.”

I was fortunate to have experienced several initiations throughout my life and now help guide others. You can learn more about what we do by visiting us at MenAlive.com and MoonshotforMankind.org.

The post In Search of Mature Masculinity in a World of Wounded BoyMen: Part 2 appeared first on MenAlive.

When I first read Dr. Julia DiGangi’s best-selling book, Energy Rising: The Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power, I knew it was a game changer for improving our love lives, our work lives, and the most important life we have—the inner life with our emotional selves. Dr. DiGangi is a neuropsychologist who completed her residency at a consortium of Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

            I recently interviewed her and we explored her unique background and skillset, her family challenges, the surprising reason she got into the field, and how her work has impacted the world. I wrote an earlier article about her work, “The Neuroscience of Emotional Power,” and here we go deeper into the three critical “marriages” we all must address according to David Whyte, author of The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self, and Relationship.

            “There is that first marriage, the one we usually mean, to another,” says Whyte, “that second marriage, which can so often seem like a burden to work or vocation and that third, and most likely hidden, marriage to a core conversation inside ourselves.” 

Understanding Emotional Power

            Humans are complicated and emotions can be confusing. But all of us want to know ourselves and feel good about the person we know. We call our species “Homo sapiens,” which means “the wise human.” We often think of being wise as being smart, able to think clearly and make wise decisions.

Humans, particularly those humans known as males, often put too much emphasis on our thinking abilities and not enough on our emotions. Dr. DiGangi defines emotional power simply as

“Your ability to stay strong in the midst of life’s inevitable challenges.”

Whether we want to be strong in the face of a challenging marriage or want to be able to stand strong when having to make a difficult business decision, we do best when we tap into our emotional power. We recognize the value of a passionate love life and a satisfying and successful career, but we also want to feel good with who we are inside our own bodies, minds, and souls. Yet, many of us fall short.

Emotional power is the foundation for achieving success in all areas of our lives.

“Your emotions are, in many ways, the final judge of your experiences.”

says Dr. DiGangi.

“Until you understand how to work more effectively with your emotions, it’s easy to expend tremendous energy yanking at ineffective levers of change.”

In our interview Dr. DiGangi introduces her findings on “neuroenergetic codes,” including the following:

How to Transform Your Emotional Pain into Emotional Power

            All of us try and avoid pain and seek pleasure. It’s the core of our evolutionary based survival mechanism. Yet, we want to do more than survive in life. We want to thrive. To do that we need to learn to overcome our brain’s automatic pain avoidance response and turn our emotional pain into emotional power.

Dr. DiGangi reminds us that our brains create a whole lot of sensations that are both painful and pleasurable, but they all reduce to two kinds of emotional energies. She calls them: Emotional Pain and Emotional Power.

Emotional Pain includes any type of negative sensations you feel. These can include things like anxiety, fear, worry, irritation, anger, shame, etc.

Emotional Power includes any type of positive sensations that makes you feel worthy. These include positive sensations we call confidence, strength, resilience, importance, etc.

            Here’s the basic fact of neurobiology: The most effective, scientifically supported forms of behavior change are based upon people transforming their relationship with the feelings they’ve been avoiding.

            “Over the years,”

says Dr. DiGangi,

“I’ve worked with many people who have experienced extreme trauma—everything from soldiers who experienced of trauma of war to survivors of rape and child sexual abuse. In all cases, the healing came from helping people regain the courage to move towards the feelings and experiences they have avoided all their lives.”

            She looks at some of the common ways we avoid pain in our love lives. Check the ones you recognize:

• Becoming attracted to people who are unavailable.
• Bailing out on a relationship that could be good and avoiding dealing with what is scaring you.
• Finding fault with little things a potential love interest does or doesn’t do which creates emotional distance.
• Trying to change the other persons behavior instead of dealing directly with your fears.
• Jumping into a new relationship and avoiding looking at what went wrong in the last one.
• Fill in your own example here____________________________________________.

She goes on to describe common ways we avoid pain in our work lives. Check the ones you recognize:

• You are excited about starting a new project, but you’re afraid it might fail so you avoid doing it.
• You want to tell someone at work that they said something that hurt your feelings, but you’re embarrassed so you put off telling them.
• You’re having trouble with one of your employees who keeps making mistakes, but you’re afraid they might be hurt by your criticism so you avoid telling them.
• You feel you’ve taken on too much work, but you worry that saying “no” will make you look bad, so you reluctantly say “yes.”
• You want to advance and take on more responsibility, but you have a difficult time making decisions that might upset people you care about, so you hold back.
• Fill in your own example here____________________________________________.

She examines common ways we avoid pain in our inner work with ourselves. Check the ones you recognize:

Do you spend time…

• Being worried what other people think of you?
• Iirritated by what others are doing or saying?
• Scared you did something wrong?
• Anxious that you’ve upset others?
• Terrified that if you lived your life as you desire you’d be rejected?

When she talked about the ways we try and compensate and create stability, safety, security by getting caught in the “overs,” I felt some uncomfortable feelings of recognition. How about you? Do you…

—overthink looking for the perfect solution?

—overanalyze things trying to be sure you haven’t missed something important?

—overgive to make sure that people like you and they don’t disappoint anyone?

—overreact to keep people from taking advantage of you?

–overwork so no one can accuse you of not being on top of things?

–Fill in your own example here____________________________________________.

I added overdo. I often feel that everyone depends on me—my family (Carlin and I have six grown children, seventeen grandchildren, and two great grandchildren)—plus, I have clients, and work colleagues—I tell myself I’ve got to do more or the world is going to collapse and the people I care most about will die.

            I found a lot of what she said to be counter-intuitive, but right on the money, particularly when she said that one of our main problems in life is our attempts to avoid pain. Rather, than go with our desire to avoid pains, Dr. DiGangi recommends that we “Pick a more powerful pain.”

      Here’s an example from my own life. I played basketball in high school but have always been short and slightly built. I would get bounced around and dominated. I decided I couldn’t do anything about being taller, but I could get stronger. I started with leg presses. At first I could only do three sets of ten with 100 pounds. As I built up my leg muscles I could eventually do three sets of ten with 200 pounds. It was painful, but the benefits were worth it. I could stronger and more able to be successful engaging a sport that I loved.  

      When I could lift 200 pounds, it wasn’t that 100 pounds no longer existed. Each time I did a 200-pound lift, I first had to add four 25-pound plates to get to 100, before I could add four more to get to 200. Here’s how this analogy applies to emotional pain.

      Like many couples my wife and I divided up our duties. Although she worked outside the home, I was the primary “breadwinner” and she did most of the bill-paying, taxes, food preparation, and cleanup. In March she slipped and fell on a wet sidewalk. She suffered a broken hip, needed hip replacement surgery, and suffered a stroke.

Suddenly, I had to take over all the things she had been doing, in addition to taking care of her health needs when she came out of the hospital. I also had to continue carrying out my ongoing work responsibilities. At first I was overwhelmed, irritable, frustrated, resentful, and angry. I knew none of this was her fault and I desperately wanted to step up to my new duties, but I was afraid I would fail. At first I wanted to escape, to run away from the pain of increased caregiving. But as I stayed with it, I let go of my frustrations, resentments, and fears. I gradually gained confidence as I embraced the more powerful pain by confronting my fear of failure, the worry that I would screw things up or let my wife down or even make a mistake that would cause her health to worsen or even cause her to die.

I kept at it and over a period of eighteen months, I gradually took on more and more weight and gained increasing power as I felt more competent, confident, worthwhile, loved, and loving. Rather than running away from my initial pain, I picked a more power pain that I thought I couldn’t handle but surprised myself that I could become emotionally stronger.

As Dr. DiGangi says,

“When it comes to a tough circumstance in your life, you really have only two options: run from it or become more powerful in the face of it.”

Your nervous system packs 150 million years of evolutionary power. You are built to handle hard. Going after what you want in your life is powerful precisely because it is painful.”

            I hope you found this article helpful. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. DiGangi’s work you can learn more here: https://drjuliadigangi.com/. If you’d like to learn more about her upcoming program, “The Age of Energy,” you can do so here: https://drjuliadigangi.com/the-age-of-energy/.

            I write weekly articles to share my own wisdom to improve your personal and relational skills and to share with you the wisdom of colleagues whose work is transforming our world. If you are not yet a subscriber, you can do so here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post Dr. Julia DiGangi is Bringing Emotional Power to the World appeared first on MenAlive.

I was 25 years old on November 21, 1969 when I held my first-born son, Jemal, in my arms shortly after he was born and made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to do everything I could to create a world where men were fully healed and engaged with their families throughout their lives. When our daughter Angela was born on March 22, 1972, I first became interested in ways boys and girls, males and females, were similar and also different. I soon launched MenAlive.com as my window to the world to share my books, articles, and online programs.

            My wife, Carlin, and I now have six grown children, seventeen grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. We quietly celebrated my eighty-first birthday on December 21, 2024. My commitment to the wellbeing of future generations continues and my work with boys and men has expanded. In 2019 I invited a number of colleagues who I knew were doing great work helping improve the lives of boys and men to join me in what I called a Moonshot for Mankind and Humanity.

            We soon started an organization, MoonshotforMankind.org, and I wrote a new book (my seventeenth), Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity. In the final chapter of the book, “Join Our Moonshot Mission For Mankind and Humanity,” representatives of the founding organizations shared their reasons for joining. The founding organizations and current co-founding organizations are:

• Warrior Films. https://warriorfilms.org/
• Shana James Coaching. https://shanajamescoaching.com/
• ManTherapy. https://mantherapy.org/
• The Good Men Project. https://goodmenproject.com/
• The Mankind Project. https://mkpusa.org/
• MenAlive. https://menalive.com/
• MenLiving. https://menliving.org/
• Men and Boys Compassion Coalition. https://www.globalcompassioncoalition.org/topics/men-and-boys/mci-members/
• Diverting Hate. https://www.divertinghate.org/
• The Man Whisperer. https://www.themanwhisperer.co.uk/
• Wish For Wheels. https://www.wishforwheels.org/

As we begin 2025, it is clear to me that things are not going well in our world. Violence is on the rise, as is depression, addictive escapes, deaths of despair, and suicides. Our environmental life support system is on the brink of collapse. Yet warriors for the human spirit have always arisen at times of trouble when our families and communities are at risk. This is our time. Do you feel called to act?

I believe that males are both the “canaries in the coal mine” alerting us to the fact that we face a clear and present danger, as well as the hope for humanity. I am inviting a select group of men who are ready to join me on the hero’s journey of a lifetime—one where we heal ourselves as we commit to healing our families and communities.

            Hero’s journeys are never taken alone. They are too perilous, unpredictable, and likely to fail without a map, companions, and a guide.

            Your Map: I was blessed to join a men’s group that has been meeting regularly for 45 years. Over the years, we have developed a map that we’ve used to live fully, love deeply, and make a positive difference in the world. 

            Your Companions: A cohort of men who feel called at this time in their lives to join with other men to make this journey together.

            Your Guide: I have been a mentor to men, healer, and leader for more than fifty years. I am the author of 17 books on men’s mental, emotional, and relational health. I have earned a PhD in International Health and a master’s degree in social work and work with individuals and organizations throughout the U.S. and around the world.

The practice map I will share with you was first described in my book, The Warrior’s Journey Home: Healing Men, Healing the Planet, which was published in 1994. In work leading up to the book, I drew upon ancient wisdom about the true nature of  warriorship. Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa tells us, “The world is in absolute turmoil. These teachings are founded on the premise that there is basic human wisdom that can help solve the world’s problems. This wisdom does not belong to any one culture or religion, nor does it come only from the West or the East. Rather, it is a tradition of human warriorship that has existed in many cultures at many times throughout history.” 

            Chögyam Trungpa goes on to say, Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word ‘warrior’ is taken from the Tibetan pawo, which literally means ‘one who is brave.’ Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness. The key to warriorship and the first principle of the  vision is not being afraid of who you are.”

The Real Problem With Men

            Many believe that the problem with men is that we are inherently destructive or unsuited to be successful in a world where physical strength is no longer necessary and relationship skills that women often possess are not natural to men.         These are mostly media myths.

            The real problem with men is that we have become disconnected from nature and disconnected from ourselves. We don’t know who we are and are afraid to find out. We may put on a good front, but deep inside many of us feel lost and alone. We act like adults, but inside we feel like perpetual Peter Pans who never grew up. We hunger for women, but also resent them because we feel so dependent. We know we need to grow up but don’t know where to go for mentoring.

            If this resonates with you, know you are not alone.

A Cohort Guided by Dr. Jed Diamond is Forming Soon.

The World Needs You. Your Families Need You. You Need You!

If you are a man and this resonates with you, I would like to hear from you. If you are a woman who knows a man you feel would be interested, please pass this invitation on to them. Women have their own work to do in these times of transformation and change. But men and women are in this world together and we need to support each other.

            Among the many colleagues who reviewed my book, The Warrior’s Journey Home, was my Aikido instructor and mentor Dr. Richard Strozzi Heckler, author of many books including In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Military. He says, “Jed Diamond draws a compelling thread between the loss of our warrior values, the desecration of the planet, and our pervasive addictions. He then outlines a set of clear and pragmatic practices that can return us to a deeper connection to ourselves and the natural world.”

Here’s what you can expect when you join:

            We will meet for a free 2-hour mini-intensive (Date to be determined). You will learn about the three archetypal wounds that men have experienced: Shame, Betrayal, and Abandonment and the warrior practices that heal them: Honor, Loyalty, and Commitment. You will also learn about the cultural editors that perpetuate our wounding and cause us to disconnect from ourselves and to continually look for love in all the wrong places.

For those who decide to continue together, we will open our hearts and minds to each other, learn that we all have something to teach others and we all have something to learn, and we can commit to supporting each other on our individual and shared warrior’s journey home. I am still developing the program, but it will likely include these elements:

• Each week you will receive one of my lessons articles: “Life Lessons of an 81-Year-Old Men’s Health Maverick,” which will have two lessons I’ve learned that you can reflect upon and apply in your own life.

• There will be a dedicated community space where you can share your experiences, ask questions, and get support and feedback from the community.

• Once a month we will meet together. There will be a short talk with wisdom you can use, followed by discussion, sharing, and suggested “warrior practices” you can engage.

• Twice a month you will receive a video program with me in dialogue with some of the world’s leading experts on Gender-Specific Healing and Men’s Health including the following:

Mo Gawdat, Former Chief Business Officer at Google X, bestselling author of

                           Solve For Happy.

Marianne J. Legato, M.D., Founder Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine,

                            author of Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan        

David Katz, M.D., Founding Director of Yale University’s Prevention Research

                            Center and Senior Science Advisor to Blue Zones.

Riane Eisler, President and Founder of the Center for Partnership Systems, author

             of The Chalice & The Blade and Nurturing Our Humanity.

Richard V. Reeves, Founding President of the American Institute for Boys and Men,

                                                             author of Of Boys and Men.

Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly Hunt, Relationship experts, authors of Getting

                               The Love You Want and How to Talk with Anyone About Anything.

Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor, Harvard-trained neuroscientist, author of My Stroke of Insight

                           and Whole Brain Living.                  

Dr. Warren Farrell, Author of The BoyCrisis and Role Mate to Soul Mate. 

Dr. Julia DiGangi, Neuropsychologist and author Energy Rising: The Neuroscience

                       of Leading with Emotional Power.

Shana James, Marriage and family therapist, author of Honest Sex who is rumored

                                to be “A blend of The Dalai Lama and Dr. Ruth.”  

Dr. Gary Barker, International voice for healthy manhood, gender equality and

violence prevention. CEO of Equimundo.  

Chip Conley, Co-founder and CEO of the Modern Elder Academy and author of

                       Learning to Love Midlife.                                

Dr. Margaret J. Wheatley, Author of Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality,

                       Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity.

Ruth Whippman, Journalist, documentarian, and author of BoyMom: Reimagining

                       Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity                       

Michael Gurian, Journalist and bestselling author of 32 books including The

                                 Wonder of Boys and Boys: A Rescue Plan.

Kelly Wendorf, Author of Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for

                                  Leading and Living.                   

There are four pillars that support this healing journey: 

• Becoming your authentic self and being the best you that you can be.
• Learning to love yourself, your family, and your community, deeply and well.
• Embracing your calling and bringing your unique work to the world.
• Being a source of clarity and strength at this challenging time in human history.

If you would like to learn more, please drop me a note to Jed@MenAlive.com and put “MenAliveNow” in the subject line. I will send more information as soon as it is available. I also invite you to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, if you haven’t already, to hear about my latest articles, announcements, and classes. https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.

The post MenAlive Now: Taking Action in Support of Our Children appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 5: Our Home Attracted Death Like a Magnet

Our home attracted death like a magnet. In 1949, the same year my father was committed to Camarillo State Hospital, Holly, a close friend of the family, shot himself. I remember going to the service, confused and afraid, but no one talked about why he died. Yet, everyone knew it was suicide. Years later I was looking through our attic and found nine of my father’s journals written between 1946 and 1949. They were a goldmine for me, giving me insight and understanding about my father’s inner world, his hopes, dreams, and the demons of doubt he wrestled with all his life.

 There were numerous entries about his friend Holly, a fellow writer, written three years before the death. He described the pressures Holly was facing in the years leading to his suicide.

“When a theme possesses you the way Holly’s theme possessed him, good writing must result. You begin to see and understand what a herculean job novel writing is, how much guts, stamina, endless sweat and stick-to-itiveness you need.”

My father also felt the same force driving Holly to despair.

“How alike Holly and I are in our basic situation in life. We both struggle trying to make a living, feeling a furious hate inside, the hot breath of necessity blaring down our necks, the constant finger about to stick itself in our noses and telling us ‘times up. It’s too late.’ Now you’ll have to make it by working at what you loathe. The hands of the clock point to twelve.”

The same year that Holly died, my closest friend, Woody, drowned in the river near our house. He was my best friend and his sudden death left me feeling sad and lonely. I tried talking to my mother about my feelings, but she was caught up in her own fears. “Oh my God, I’m so glad you didn’t go with him to the river,” my mother said as she hugged me tight. “That could have been you.” I put my own feelings aside and tried to assure her that I was O.K. and wouldn’t go near the river.

My mother was preoccupied with her own death. From the time I was born, when she was thirty-five, I knew my mother was about to die. She talked about it all the time. “I just hope I’m around to see you off to high school,” she would tell me. Her voice was always light and breezy, but it chilled me to the bone. When she was still around when I went to high school, she wasn’t reassured, she just moved her imminent death a little farther down the line. “I just want to see you go to college before I die,” she would tell me.

I was seven when the “Forester man” came for a visit. He sold life insurance, but his story made it seem that he was here to offer protection and support. Though we had little money for essentials, my mother bought the whole package. My mother signed up for insurance on herself, so I’d be taken care of when she died. She also bought an insurance policy on me because “it’s never too early to think about your wife and kids.” As a dutiful son, I felt proud to own an insurance policy to take care of my family when I died…while I was still in the first grade.

I began to see death as a companion, a deadly twin that shadowed my dreams. I slept alone and had developed a ritual to enable me to go to sleep. I had to arrange the sheets and blankets in such a way that I created a safe cocoon and when it was just right I could fall asleep. But every night I would have the same dream:

I awaken and get out of bed. I walk from my bedroom into the dining room and from there into the kitchen and the living room. Somewhere along the way a dark figure jumps out carrying a long knife. I immediately begin to run away. I know if I can get back to my bed, I’ll be safe. But I never make it. I’m stabbed and wake up screaming.

My mother never seemed to hear the screams and I didn’t want to worry her. When I finally told her the dream she offered no clue of the cause, nor did she seem concerned. The dreams continued, but I never discussed them with her or anyone. Yet, my own preoccupation with death took hold in my subconscious, only to surface many years later in college. I took my girlfriend to see the play “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece about growing up in a crazy, dysfunctional family. My girlfriend hated it. I felt I had found a kindred spirit who was telling my story. One small section spoke deeply about my own life to that point.

In the play, as his family unravels around him, the younger son, Edmund, tries to make sense of his place in the family drama. He says:

“It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, and who must always be a little in love with death!”

After I stopped visiting my father in Camarillo, my mother and I never talked about him. It was as though he was dead or had never existed. We became a family of two. My mother never mentioned him and I told kids in school that “my father died,” which got me a little sympathy that I never got when I said he had a “nervous breakdown and was in a mental hospital.”

Life Lesson: When adults deny the reality of depression and suicide children are left to grapple with their confused feelings alone.

When my mid-life father took an overdose of sleeping pills and was committed to the state mental hospital the adults in my life couldn’t deal with the reality of his feelings of despair. My mother was consumed by her own terrors and denial and chose not to visit him in the hospital. She tasked my uncle and me to make the weekly visits to see my father. Family and friends didn’t talk openly about the death by suicide of my father’s close friend, Holly, another struggling creative artist.

Men die by suicide at rates four times higher than the rates for females and is even higher as men get older. When we deny our early wounding, it often turns into depression, which can lead to suicide.

Life Lesson: Although depression and despair that can lead to suicide can impact everyone, it is more prevalent among sensitive, creative, men and women.

Kay Redfield Jamison is Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is the co-author of the standard medical text on bipolar disorder and the author of national best sellers An Unquiet Mind: Memoir of Moods and Madness, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, and other books.

In Touched with Fire, she begins by quoting poet Lord Byron as he talks about himself and other creative types.

“We of the craft are all crazy,”

said Byron about  himself and other creatives.

“Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”

Where has depression shown up in your life or in the lives of people you love? Do you consider yourself a creative person?  Do you see a connection between your creativity and times you felt down or depressed?

I look forward to hearing from you. New training opportunities coming in 2025. Drop me a note to Jed@MenAlive.com if interested.

If you appreciate these articles, please share them. They are my labor of love. If you are not already a subscriber, feel free to do so here.

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These are times when there is much chaos, confusion, and conflict in our lives and in the world. We need supportive programs that can help us to survive, thrive, and prosper during these times when old systems are collapsing and new, more sustainable ones are coming into being. Humans have been walking for a long time, before we were even human. I walk everyday because it brings me joy. It also reduces stress, prevents depression, and if done with loved ones—human or canine—can improve your health and help you live a longer, healthier life.

When I saw the list of new books coming out from one of my favorite publishers, New World Library, Walking Well by Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman grabbed my attention. I’ve been walking my whole life and I’ve been a healthcare provider for more than fifty years helping men and their families to live long and well. The only period of my life when I didn’t walk every day was when I was running and training for things like the world-famous Dipsea race.

            First run in 1905, the Dipsea is the oldest trail race in America. It is run every year on the second Sunday in June. The scenic 7.4 mile course from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach is considered to be one of the most beautiful courses in the world. The stairs and steep trails make it a grueling and treacherous race. And its unique handicapping system has made winners of men and women of all ages.

            Now that I’m in my eighties I prefer walking to running. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Michael J. Gelb. We talked about his work over the years, his previous books, and his most recent book, Walking Well: A New Approach For Comfort, Vitality, And Inspiration In Every Step, written with his friend and colleague movement artist and educator, Bruce Fertman. You can watch my interview here.

            The world’s leading authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development, Michael is a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, innovative leadership and executive coaching. His books include Samurai Chess: Mastering Strategic Thinking,  The Healing Organization: Awakening the Conscience of Business to Help Save the World, and his most well-known book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci which has sold more than one million copies.

            When I first began reading Walking Well it didn’t seem to fit with Michael’s other books. It didn’t look anything like Samurai Chess or a business book that could change the world. I wondered how it could help me think like Leonardo da Vinci. But after reading the book and practicing what I learned, I was beginning to change my mind.

When I interviewed Michael, I shared my initial reservations, which he addressed directly.

“I’m glad you shared what you did about your initial skepticism,”

Michael said.

“You picked up on the subtle aspects of the book. I think Walking Well actually has the most potential of anything I have ever written to change the world.”

I agree. We all know the health benefits of walking, but most of us don’t walk much. After reading this book, not only will you want to walk more, but you will learn how to do with much greater ease and joy. Gelb and Fertman introduce their book Walking Well with this wonderful quote from poet and essayist Gary Snyder.

“Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.”

I began walking to enjoy the health benefits of walking, of which there are many, and I learned more from Walking Well.

“W.A.L.K.I.N.G. is a mnemonic acronym to help you remember these evidence-based benefits”

say Gelb and Fertman.

Weight regulation.

“The simplest, easiest, and most enjoyable way to regulate your weight is to increase the number of steps you take every day and to gradually quicken your pace.”

Arterial flexibility.

“Arterial stiffness is a critical predictor for cardiovascular disease and stroke. A meta-analysis of the research on the effect of walking in promoting arterial flexibility shows that people who walk fewer than 5,000 steps a day generally have stiffer arteries, compared to those who take 7,500 steps every day.”

I started a program in our community to get everyone doing a 10,000 step fun walk. We did regular community walks and many continued walking on their own and in small groups. Its nice to know that the research shows that there are health benefits with even fewer steps, though I love walking our whole route.

Longevity.

“Decades of research make it vividly clear that if you walk more, you’ll live longer. Along with a healthy diet, loving relationships, and a sense of meaning or purpose, daily exercise, especially walking, is one of the key predictors of longevity.

Kidney health.

“The American Society of Nephrology reports that walking may have ‘profound benefits’ for those suffering from kidney disease.”

This was a new and important one for me, since I developed a kidney problem when I failed to take a full course of antibiotics. I’ve been walking and my kidneys are healed. I had no idea there might be a connection.

Immunity.

“Walking is an ideal exercise for boosting immunity. Daily walking helps to protect against colds, flu, pneumonia, and many other ailments.”

Neuroplasticity.

“Neuroplasticity is the revolutionary theory that your brain is designed to improve with use. Daily walking, especially in nature, is one of the best ways to generate this positive influence.”

Gut health.

“Walking is good for your digestion. It helps regulate your gut microbiome optimizes your metabolism, soothes irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and eases acid reflux. It helps prevent colon cancer.”

Another health benefit I would add is that walking may be the best, easiest, and most enjoyable way to reduce anxiety and prevent depression, health problems which are becoming increasingly prevalent in our world today. One of my favorite books is a small volume by best-selling author Thom Hartmann called Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being.

“Trauma is nothing new to the human race,”

says Hartmann.

“We are certainly familiar with trauma in the modern world, from acts of war and terrorism to crime, child abuse, and the pain our dysfunctional, standards-driven schools cause our children.”

Hartmann notes that humans had to deal with mental and emotional wounds in ancient times just as we do today and asks a profound question.

“So how had humankind historically dealt with trauma for the past two hundred thousand years, before the advent of psychotherapy?”

“The mechanisms for healing are built into us,”

says Hartmann.

“Five million years of evolution, or the grace of God, or both, have made our bodies automatic healing machines. So why wouldn’t the same be true of our minds and emotions?”

Hartmann believes the mechanism built into humans through evolutionary time is the simple act of walking.

“Inciting the movement of nerve impulses across the brain hemispheres helps people to come to terms with their past. They stop being frightened by their imagined futures and feel comfortable and empowered in the present.”

Thom Hartmann concludes simply,

“Walking while holding a traumatic memory in mind in a particular way can produce this result in a very short time.”  

Maybe this ancient reality is why some of our healthiest, happiest, and most creative humans have made walking the cornerstone of their lives.

Michael Gelb and Bruce Fertman tell us that Leonardo da Vinci

“loved to walk through the streets of Florence, Milan, and Rome, but he especially praised the virtue of walking in nature and generated many of his ideas while ambling through the countryside and strolling by the sea.”

“Thomas Jefferson, the genius who crafted the phrase that reflects our universal quest for the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, praised walking as the best possible form of exercise, and yes, he also invented a pedometer to keep track of his mileage on his daily walks around Charlottesville, Virginia.”

I hope you check out Walking Well: A New Approach For Comfort, Vitality, And Inspiration in Every Step by Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman.

You can learn more by visiting the website: https://walkingwell.com/

You can reach Michael at: https://michaelgelb.com/ and Bruce at www.BruceFertman.com

If you enjoyed this article and would like to learn more about my work, you can contact me at https://menalive.com/.  If you would like to read more articles on improving your mental, emotional, and relational health, I invite you to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter.

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Part 4: Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul

            This is my fourth post in the series. If you would like you read the others you are welcome to do so, though it isn’t necessary to read them in order:

1. Where I’m coming From: My Origin Story.

2. The Day My Uncle Drove Me to the Mental Hospital.

3. Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

            I spent a lot of my life trying to escape the reality of my childhood trauma. After spending a year trying to be the dutiful son who imagines he can save his father and become the family hero, I finally had reached my limit and told my mother I didn’t want to continue the Sunday drives with my uncle to visit my father in Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

            My father had been committed for “treatment” when I was five years old and I spent a year of terror visiting my father. On the final visit, my father asked my uncle, “Who’s the kid with you, Harry?” I felt crushed that my father didn’t even know who I was. I was told that he was in a hospital getting well and my visits would help him. But it clearly he wasn’t getting better and I felt I had failed my father by not being able to heal him and failed by mother when I refused to be “her brave little man” and help my father.

            When children are asked to take on adult responsibilities, we do our best to do what our adult caregivers ask of us. We want to be like the super-heroes we see in the movies or read in our comic books. When we inevitably fail, we take it personally. We feel guilty and ashamed and often blame ourselves.

            We often try and escape from the impossible bind we find ourselves in. My mother continued her own escapes. As a child it never occurred to me to ask why my mother didn’t visit my father or why I became her stand-in. I just went along with the program until I couldn’t do it anymore.

            Like many children who experience early trauma, I pushed the memories down into my subconscious. I tried to erase the past. When kids in school asked about my father, rather than telling them he was committed to a mental hospital, I told them he had died. We can’t escape our past, but I didn’t know that when I was young. I needed to escape to survive.

            It took me a long time to learn that what we deny or try and bury from our past doesn’t go away. They return in our dreams as nightmares or show up in our relationships like demons of fear, anger, jealousy, blame, and shame.

Some trauma survivors have great difficulty becoming successful adults. Their trauma and the impact it has on their brain function causes them to have major problems with self-esteem, difficulties with relationships, and problems with career success. Others appear to become super-star achievers. 

That was true for me. I took a lot of the repressed energy and put it into achieving success. I became a sought-after therapist, an author of a number of best-selling books, got married, had a child and adopted a child as we had agreed when we were young college students. I fought off my illnesses, depression, and suicidal thoughts. It wasn’t until mid-life that I began to address my childhood wounds.

I attended a number of Men’s Gatherings, with Robert Bly, Michael Meade, and James Hillman. Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, helped be better understand my childhood wounds, the demons I was running away from, and soul’s calling I was looking to find.

“The Soul’s Code, says Hillman, “is about that call, that sense of fate. These kinds of annunciations and recollections determine biography as strongly as memories of abusive horror; but these more enigmatic moments tend to be shelved. Our theories favor traumas setting us the task of working them through. We are less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as a time of unnecessary and externally caused calamities that wrongly shaped us.”

            Hillman wants

“to resurrect the unaccountable twists that turned your boat around in the eddies and shallows of meaninglessness, bringing you back to feelings of destiny. For that is what is lost in so many lives, and what must be recovered: a sense of personal calling, that there is a reason I am alive.”

He believes we come into the world with a certain destiny and many key experiences in our lives, even ones we might view as traumatic, are in the service of that destiny or calling.

“For centuries,” he says, “we have searched for the right term for this call.”

He lists the most well-known:

• The Romans named it your genius.
• The Greeks, your daimon.
• The Christians your guardian angel.
• For some it is Lady Luck or Fortuna.
• Plato called it paradeigma, a basic form encompassing your entire destiny.

One of the ways our genius or daimon makes itself known to us is through our names or nicknames. The story in our family was that when I was born my parents were sure I was going to be a girl and when I emerged they were at a loss for names. My father decided that I should be named after his deceased nephew, Elliott. My mother didn’t like the name and cried for three days until he agreed to go with her choice of John, after her dead father. My official name became John Elliott Diamond.

Growing up I didn’t like the name. I was called Johnny, which didn’t seem to fit me well. When I went to college I changed my name to Jed. It felt short and sweet, strong and powerful, distinctive and a little mysterious. I’ve been Jed ever since. For most of my life I was angry at my parents for thinking I would be a girl and naming me after dead relatives.

Upon reflection, I realize that the whole process was in the service of my unique destiny and calling and guided by my unique daimon. I do, in fact, have a lot of feminine energy. My wife and I joke about it. I’m very intuitive, cry easily, am emotionally aroused to extreme highs and crashing lows, and easily empathize with others. These qualities have helped me excel as a therapist. My name Elliott unites me with my ancestry though my father’s line and John connects me with my mother’s heritage. My chosen name, Jed, expresses my own unique sense of self.

Another aspect of my family history that falls into place when looked at through the lens of destiny is my early experiences with my father’s depression and hospitalization. For most of my life I viewed my whole experience visiting my father as unnecessary and traumatic. I blamed my mother for making me go, blamed my father for abandoning me, and blamed the world because I had to grow up too soon and didn’t have the caring family support I imagined all other kids had.

Life Lesson #7: We each have a destiny or calling in life.

Like most professionals, I have a business card. Mine say: Jed Diamond, PhD, Helping Men and the Women who Love Them Since 1969. I’ve always talked about the beginning my career coinciding with the birth of our first son, Jemal, on November 21, 1969. But reflecting on James Hillman’s work, I realized, my destiny or calling is as a healer of men and their families and I actually began in 1949 when I went with my uncle to visit my father in the mental hospital.

Even at the age of five I was getting my chance to see what really goes on inside a mental hospital, to reflect on why men have “nervous breakdowns,” and how it all impacts families. Even my own bouts with depression and mania can be viewed as “on the job training” for my life’s calling, rather than simply a product of genetics, upbringing or the inevitable effects of childhood trauma.

I’ve come to believe that the guiding purpose of our lives is to recover our full life-story and get in touch with our true calling.

Life Lesson #8: Traumas and tragedies that happens to us are not punishments or problems to be overcome but life-lessons from our daimon.

My parents were not traditionally religious but definitely Jewish. If they had a patron saint it would have been Albert Einstein who said,

“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence – these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.”

In Jewish tradition there is a story that we our whole life history is part of our destiny. Before we are born, we are shown our whole lives by the angel, Lailah. And the instant the child emerges, the angel lightly strikes its finger to the child’s lip and the child forgets what was shown. The little indentation below our nose on our upper lip is reminder that we each have a destiny to find and follow.

“We must attend very carefully to childhood,” says Hillman, “to catch early glimpses of the daimon in action, to grasp its intentions and not block its way.”

Hillman concludes with the following implications:

• Recognize the call as a prime fact of human existence.

• Align your life with it.

• Find the common sense to realize that accidents, including heartache and the natural shocks the flesh is heir to, are necessary to it, and help to fulfill it.

• A calling may be postponed, avoided, intermittently missed. It may also possess you completely. Whatever; eventually it will out. It makes its claim. The daimon does not go away.

In his book, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul, storyteller Michale Meade says,

“Fate involves those things which are woven into the fabric of our soul from the beginning. Fate can be seen as whatever limits, restricts or even imprisons us. In seeking to live our destiny we inevitably encounter the obstacles of our fate. Fate and destiny are an archetypal pairing within each soul.”

Think about your fate, our wounds and traumas. What pain from the past have you repressed or attempted to deny, minimize, or forget?  What old tragedies have popped up from time to time to bedevil your peace of mind, comfort, and joy? Could the tragedies and problems from your past actually be in the service of your daimon? Learning about our life’s calling and daimon demand our attention forever. The little indentation in our upper lip always reminds us that our work is not yet complete. Who knows, maybe the journey even continues after we die.

If you’d like to read more articles about our mental, emotional, and relational health, I invite you to join my community and receive my free weekly newsletter here. You can “unsubscribe” at any time if it no longer serves you.

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