Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Personal Boundaries in a World of Social Chaos and High-Conflict Dynamics
Discussing boundaries, attachment styles, high-conflict personalities, and coercive control from Faith Harper’s book *Un-F Your Boundaries*. The episode highlights why setting boundaries isn't easy and how societal, psychological, and interpersonal factors influence boundary-setting.
Key discussion points include the importance of boundaries, which are not always intuitive and require intentional learning and practice. There are four main challenges to setting boundaries: social and societal pressures, attachment styles (secure, avoidant, anxious, and disorganized), dealing with high-conflict personalities, and patterns of coercive control.
The episode also touches on political language and boundaries. Some terminology related to boundaries, such as patriarchy and systemic issues, can carry political baggage. However, it is essential to navigate these terms to understand their underlying concepts without political bias.
Attachment styles play a significant role in boundary-setting and maintaining relationships. The breakdown of attachment styles includes secure (60% of people, based on research), avoidant (rigid boundaries), anxious (permeable boundaries with a fear of loss), and disorganized/fearful-avoidant (a combination of high anxiety and avoidance).
Coercive control is a form of emotional abuse aimed at manipulating and dominating another person. This form of control can occur in various relationships, whether heterosexual, same-sex, etc. It is distinct from high-conflict personalities as it involves strategic manipulation to erode someone’s autonomy.
Coercive control indicators include isolating the victim from friends and family, monitoring or restricting access to finances, communication, or movements, emotional manipulation such as gaslighting, threatening or intimidating behaviors, and enforcing strict rules or expectations to undermine autonomy.
Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles. In this episode, dan and I will continue discussing Un-F your Boundaries by Faith Harper. We're going to explore several key reasons why establishing and maintaining boundaries is challenging. The discussion will touch on topics like societal pressure, attachment issues, dealing with high conflict personalities and the concept of coercive control. With high conflict personalities and the concept of coercive control. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, where you can see all of our video episodes and our audio episodes and anything else we got going on. It's on the website. Thanks and enjoy Good afternoon sir.
Dan:Hey Dan, How's it going? I'm well, Charles. How are you Getting a little?
Charles:hungry. What you thinking about? I wish it was easier to eat rotisserie chickens in the car.
Dan:Maybe there's an opportunity there for you, huh the rotisserie bib or whatever.
Charles:I am hungry and it's starting to distract me, but we'll make it through this episode. We are still covering Un-F your Boundaries by Faith Harper. This episode is going to be really going to dive into why this is something that we have to learn about and work at, why it's not just easy to do this. What are the reasons that we have to work on boundaries, and they don't just come naturally and easy to us. And she does a great job at basically setting out four different kinds of reasons that we have to work at this Social slash societal problems, issues with our attachment and our ability to make and hold attachments with other people, dealing with high conflict personalities, whether that's our own or the people around us, and then something that I only learned about from this book called Coercive Control and what those patterns involved.
Charles:First, let me say, before we get into the social problems, she uses a lot of terms in this chapter especially that have some pretty heavy political baggage to them. I was thinking about it. The fields of sociology and psychology, at least in America, are fairly dominated by left-leaning, left-thinking people, and if you find yourself on the right or the center, then a lot of these words we use may have some emotional baggage attached to them that you don't like or that you feel uncomfortable with, and I was thinking about that. I wonder do those fields attract people that are already left-leaning, or is it you're exposed to the knowledge and the statistics that you get from a sociology degree or a psychology degree? Does that kind of push your political thinking a little bit more to the left that it's hard to say which it is? I could see a case for both. Yeah, me too, me too, and we will talk about these terms. I do want to address some of those as we go through and try to make them a little bit less.
Charles:There are ways to hear these words without getting upset, and there are ways to define them, to say, oh, I guess that kind of makes sense. It's not. Remember politics in this country in particular. Guess that kind of makes sense. It's not because remember politics in this country in particular. I don't know if it's like this in the rest of the world, but certainly in america the people with the most extreme and harshest positions are the ones that get the microphones put in front of their face and the people who have more nuanced and more informed opinions. It's like the both the traditional and the new media. We're just not as interested in listening to those people yeah, it's boring, man, exciting everyone wants to see the train wreck.
Charles:Yeah, we need you to spend as much time on our network or our blog or our social media account, our youtube channel, as as you possibly can, and the way we get you to do that is by keep throwing stimulating things at you, whether that's stimulating because you agree with it or stimulating because it makes you angry. We got to keep stimulating your brain, so you'll stick around the longest.
Dan:It's a drug man. People need that hit, and so they know where to get it.
Charles:Yeah, exactly so. When we use terms like patriarchy or rape culture, just yeah, it's the vast majority of people that not only came up with those terms but use those terms in the job that they do, whether that's as a psychologist or as a researcher or whatever. They're not thinking about it in terms of all men are shit. All men are rapists. Yeah about it in terms of all men are shit, all men are rapists. Yeah, that you that look there. There are some voices that believe those things and say those things very loudly, but it's not the vast majority of people that are in the fields of psychology or sociology, or even who have labels like I'm a democrat, I'm a feminist. They don't actually believe those things. There are reasons why some people can make a lot of money off of us believing that everybody who identifies as left-leaning hates men, hates sex, hates egalitarianism, and that's just not true.
Dan:And again, it's context. And in here, when she uses some of those words, she puts in a context where it's not meant to trigger. Context where it's not meant to trigger. And what you were talking about, I think, is on the media, they're using those words in a context which is meant to trigger, because it is going to an extreme and I think it's also blanketing and making judgments and assumptions, and that's why it is triggering, because it's, I think, being used. Those words are used a lot of times inappropriately and in too many and trying to apply them to too many situations where it doesn't fit, and that's why it's a little shocking. What are you talking about?
Charles:exactly. Yeah, god, I can't. There's people who believe this and they're allowed to get me that is sex cells, anger cells, nuance not so much. So it's very easy to try to make, try to portray things as black and white us and them as possible, and I think a lot of these legitimate words, terms and concepts get caught up in that tornado and so now when you hear them, you assume oh, I must be listening to some Marxist that wants to line up all the middle class people against the wall and shoot them in the head.
Dan:Yeah, it's all based on our experience, right? So if that's where we've heard those terms for the first time, the most we're in those triggering crazy situations, our bodies and our minds. We hold on to those memories on multiple levels and yet that could absolutely trigger some sort of emotional response, even when it's used in a different context, which it's good that you laid the groundwork here in this chapter.
Charles:It's good that you laid the groundwork here in this chapter for some of these terms. So let's talk about these social problems that can lead boundaries to being hard to set and hard to hold. One thing I will say is one of those words that I think people can get a little uncomfortable hearing is systemic when it comes to things like systemic racism, systemic misogyny, things like that. But the root word of systemic is system, and we all belong and participate in systems. We're in family systems, we're in economic systems, we're all in various kinds of systems, and our participation in those systems is going to be determined by really how much power we have in those systems. So your participation in the economic system of capitalism is going to be different whether you are in poverty or if you're a billionaire, and how hyped you might be on that system and how gung-ho you are about that system will be determined by whether you're a billionaire or you're someone living in poverty. Right, and you can say the same thing about family systems too, where if, when you're the parent who has both all the responsibility and most of the autonomy, where you determine the direction, when you're in a family system where your mom and dad make you do chores, it's like you're going to probably be less hyped on that than if you were the person in charge of coming up with a list of who's responsible for what chore and who's not, and she talks about the systems that we live in like a dominator model versus a partner model, where look here's where I'm coming into this discussion there are two things working against humankind, which are scarcity and evolution. We all want access to more stuff than we can just have, or we could just go out there and gather and or apes, and so, as a result, when we don't get the things that we want or we don't have access to the things that we want, we're going to have some animal-like reaction to that of oh, I I'd like a lot more than I have and I can't just go out there and get it. So now I'm going to react to the fact that I'm not getting everything that I needed every second and I'm going to act like an animal sometime. And then, obviously, it's our job as a society and as a family and as parents and as friends and as partners to invest in regulating each other in the okay. Things aren't always going to go the way that you want them to, and you still have to be an okay person to be around. And so now we're going to I'm going to hold you to that standard, you're going to hold me to that standard, and that's how we can help things get better.
Charles:So in a dominator model, basically what happens is the people who have the haves have more control and power over the have-nots, and the haves are going to use that control and that power to make their lives as easy as possible To have more, often at the expense of the people that don't have. And that doesn't just that's not just capitalism, that applies in every economic system that we've ever tried so far. The people with the haves are going to want to continue far. The the people with the haves are going to want to continue to be the people with the haves and, as a result, the have-nots could get screwed over occasionally. And the haves are okay with that because they're the haves and they want to keep having. And so I don't think there's any moral or ethical judgments of what I just said. That's the way humans and higher level primates have figured things out so far.
Charles:Now, maybe some point down the road in 20 or 30 years, when we have super advanced and super uh benevolent artificial intelligence that can say, hey, I realize you guys have been doing the best you can for the last 10 000 years, but the fact that I'm a hundred thousand times smarter than you? I came up with this other idea that's going to work better for everybody Want to try it and we might be like, yeah, let's give it a shot and see how it works, or we might not. I don't know. I don't know how things are going to change in the next couple of decades. If everybody has the access to resources that current day billionaires have, that might not take the current day billionaires. That's not going to lower their quality of life, but comparatively, they're going to look around and be like, okay, so everybody has everything that I have. That's. That doesn't feel right yeah, it's interesting.
Dan:You know what I mean. There's like a term for that right within psychology, and I can't remember what that is, but just that, you know, it's like a kind of keeping up with the joneses and right my drive and the drive.
Charles:My life doesn't feel as good if other people don't have it worse than me right, right, and you because right.
Dan:So what's the comparison exactly? Right, all this effort that I'm putting in, I'm not quite seeing all the benefits because I've. Everybody else has the same thing and maybe they don't look like they're putting in as much. That could be an issue exactly all these things.
Charles:There's a lot to that, but the partnership model that she talks about is basically where everybody has decided okay, the best life for me is also the life where other people have it pretty good too, and we've bought into that at some levels in this country, which is I'd rather live in a country where kids get to go to school and get an education even though they can't pay for it, yeah. Or I'd like to live in a country where the fire department shows up at my neighbor's house and puts out the fire at his house, even though he's not necessarily directly paying for that service. And we all agree that all right life has to be good at some base level for everybody. Otherwise, the people that it's the worst for are going to flip over the monopoly board and say this sucks, let's turn it over it goes deep too and it ties to our emotions and things like that.
Dan:So that's why I think people just get so riled up when it comes to politics. It all comes under politics.
Charles:It does. Yeah, it's all this. It does come into politics because it's talking about how we interact with each other, how we interact with each other, who has power, who doesn't have power. All that is what politics, both on the micro and macro level, is about. And, yeah, it's tough, it's like how do we adopt this idea of?
Charles:And I think the root of personhood and interpersonal respect is this idea of look, I'm an individual and I should have the right to people treating me with respect and dignity and compassion and, at the very least, not violence. But as a result, I have to remember that other people have those same rights and then, therefore, I have a responsibility to treat other people with respect and let them have autonomy and dignity and things like that. And it's on one level. If you're a deeply religious person who believes that we're all created in the image of God, and if we just zero in on what the creator of the universe wants for us, it'll be so much easier to just act as if we've got little pieces of God inside us and so all we have to do is, at our best, act like God does. But if you're a little bit more scientifically minded, or it's no, we're just a slightly less hairy version of chimps and bonobos, and a lot, of, a lot of those impulses aren't more than a few million years away from us and then it's okay. So we there's nothing magic about us that gives us the. That makes us an easy task for us compared to how difficult it is for chimps yeah and no, this is something that's going to take work and that we have to get okay with the idea that, because it's so easy and she talks about this phenomenon where we can look at ourselves as when I do something, it's okay because it's me, but if somebody else does this to me, then that's not okay anymore.
Charles:This exact. We have this lens that we view our own behavior versus the world's behavior through, where it's like when I act this way, it's okay because I've got a good reason and primarily being on me, and if somebody else treats me like that, like this, that's not okay anymore because they're them and I'm me and it's very hard to. It takes a lot of prefrontal cortex involved to be able to say, oh no, my behavior is not defined by the fact that it's my behavior, it's the quality and ethics of my behavior. They're held to a universal standard. So whether I'm the one doing it or somebody else is doing it, that doesn't determine whether it's okay or not.
Dan:Yeah, and that's just another reason to have some sort of outside professional to work with, even for just basic things, like a coach, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, whatever that is, to give you a little bit more of an objective feedback. So you can hear Take a step away from yourself, yeah, you can say so. You can hear take a step away from yourself, yeah, and they can guide you and inform you when you are acting inconsistent with probably what your beliefs and morals are yeah, all right, let's talk about rape culture versus consent culture.
Charles:Rape culture has been a tough that's a tough concept for me and you can probably speak about this in some ways that I can't Because, for example, you went to Rutgers. I went to a very small Bible college where, both as young men and young women, if you showing up for your first day of college 18 years old, maybe 17, maybe 19. If you were proudly proclaiming the fact that you were a virgin, you were a little bit looked down upon wow, yes, it was that conservative. It was not like that of Rutgers exactly. And I was gonna say, when you think about the level of sexual assault that takes place on college campuses, as is widely reported and stuff and and like now, I'm not saying none of that happened where I was, but if there was even a rumor that you got a little too handsy with the girl you were on a date with or you made your girlfriend feel uncomfortable, it was like some two or three people were probably coming to your dorm room and sitting down and saying, hey, I'm hearing this, what's going on? Wow, yeah.
Charles:And so again, listen, the conservative Christian environment that I went to college in. I'm not saying there wasn't stuff going on. That was not okay. But there was a sizable culture there that I participated in that was like, listen, this is how, as a young, unmarried person, we expect you to behave. And behave this way, behave this way. We're gonna look down on you for it and be like what's your problem? Like, yeah, you don't know how to, you can't control yourself, you can't act the way we're all acting, or at least saying that we're acting. And when you look at some of the things she talks about, with rape culture where sexual assault is tolerated or glorified or encouraged, yeah, that's just not something that I've ever been exposed to, because of the sheltered way that I grew up in my youth group and then in my bigger youth group, which was my bible college yeah, I'll tell you what that.
Dan:That level was never. I was never. Thankfully, I never heard anything related to any type of aggressiveness or taking advantage of somebody. That was still looked down upon. Now. You didn't have people coming to your door if you went on a date with somebody and you made out with them or something like that. That didn't happen and there was very much a promotion, at least within also the fraternity I was in in the greek life.
Dan:There was a lot of active programs run by the school and by individual fraternities about how to treat women and how to basically behave yourself and anti-rape things like that. Right, it was a big deal and they even my fraternity even said had etiquette classes. So, beyond just not raping girls, they taught you how, like they brought old school etiquette in terms of which fork to use, which fork to use. You let them walk into the restaurant first so they can pick the seat that they're sitting in. Typically you want them facing the the open air of the restaurant so that they're not like their faces and against the wall, like a lot of little things that sometimes, if you're not taught right as a kid growing up, yeah, so they went above and beyond to teach you how to be a gentleman, and that also included the way you treat women.
Dan:But there was never that extreme of what you had said and the only thing that would have been glorified or people talked about was oh hey, you got a date with that girl, or you went out with that girl, or yeah, okay, you got laid or you hooked up or whatever, but it wasn't. Oh yeah, I took advantage of her, or yeah, she's passed out and I was. That's the thing I met.
Charles:I remember from as much as people would be shocked to hear that, as in yes, and that's when I don't have anybody in my social circle and look part of it is enneagram eight over here. I could be a bit of a judgmental prick when somebody starts bragging about values they have that I look down on. They will know from the look on my face and the things I say to them. And if we were at Mathers and just met some new guy and he was talking about some date, he went on where the she was a little sloppy, she was a little out of it, but the sex was great, I feel like you, me and everybody we're friends with would be like oh, are you serious? What the what's wrong with?
Dan:you. Why are you bragging about that? Because that's the. So here's the thing. There's got to be groups where bragging about that is okay. Other one there has to. Yeah, we've seen tv and movies where that's the case, but I've never seen that in real life. Because, think about it logically, doesn't make sense. Why would you brag about something? Because there's no? Because, look, you're bragging about. I guess I would think that the bragging comes in terms of I am, oh like, I'm so attractive, gentlemen, I'm such a woman, or I have this, I have. So, I'm so smooth, I've got the skill set. They, she liked me so much, I'm so valuable, I was able to do something difficult. And the difficulty would be she's completely sober and aware and and excited to sleep with you, versus oh, I took advantage of her when she was weak. That's not something to brag about.
Charles:That's the easy way out for yeah, so, like somebody bragging, I beat a grandmaster in chess. That's amazing. How'd you do it? Well, I cheated. What exactly you exactly and what you're supposed to applaud the fact that you pulled up cheating so?
Dan:Yeah, that's not the skill set. That is, at least in my circles, what was glorified.
Charles:Here's something I have, and tell me if you've experienced this too, where I have been in interactions with other men, where they have bragged about infidelity and I mean cheating on your wife with a another woman who consents to the encounter is a really shitty thing to do, but it's not as bad as having sex with someone who didn't give you consent. But I still reacted, reacted, oh that's. You feel like you pulled something off, like you feel like you accomplished something, huh, and it's like it's harder to stay monogamous to someone for decades than it is to get laid one weekend.
Dan:I just feel like that is the tip of the iceberg for that person in terms of the issues that that guy or girl is dealing with, right. Yeah, by nature, basically revealing something that is so personal that you know you, you destroyed your commitment to somebody, right, and you're getting away with it. I almost feel like it's a cry for help. It's almost to me like, hey, man, what's going on? What? How did it get to this point? Like what, why are you still in this relationship?
Charles:if you're a cheat like and I feel like it's almost a weird way of, and maybe it's a stereotype for masculinity, where a guy doesn't know how to have a conversation about what he's feeling that oh so that's the way he presents it, the only reason I bring that in that shocking way is to offer evidence to the idea of okay, if there are guys that are out there who think it's okay to brag about cheating on their wife, then maybe there are guys that are out there that think it's okay to brag about cheating on their wife. Then maybe there are guys that are out there that think it's cool to brag about having sex with some girl who was passed out. I'm sure it's got again. It's got to exist and I don't want to dismiss smart people who say that it does exist.
Dan:Then that goes back to the whole word. Systemic, right Is that? Are those few exceptions, and how many exceptions are there? How prevalent is this? All I can do is speak from my own experience and I've never heard anybody to either brag about taking advantage of a girl or cheating, and I've been around almost 50 years and I haven't heard it yet. So from my own experience all I can say but compare that to I don't think it's systemic.
Charles:Compare that to the number of women that have told you that they were molested or sexually assaulted and at least in my circle, that's most of them. And so, okay, this is being done by somebody, that's fair. Okay, you know what I mean. If there's all these victims, there's got to be some number of perpetrators too. Okay, that doesn't work. Yeah, I didn't even I take it back, you're right.
Charles:Three out of five women are sexually assaulted in college. Yeah, I didn't think about that. I do think it is likely that, yeah, there is a disproportionate, relatively small number of the guys that are going out there doing most of the sexual. I don't think 50 of the guys are doing 100 of the rapes. I think it's probably a much lower number than 50, but obviously it's a number that's still too high. Sure, for this crime and victimization to happen, there's got to be a significant number of guys that are cool with this behavior and maybe they get together on Friday night and have a couple of beers and talk about how cool it is. I don't know.
Dan:And then again, some of them are probably repeat offenders, and that's just the way they operate.
Charles:And some of them might not even be doing it, but bragging about it is okay enough in their circle that they say that they're doing it when they're not, and it's good point. Right now you're promoting that culture, exactly okay. And so, again, it's yeah hard for me to understand when I hear credible authors and researchers talk about rape culture. It's okay. It's hard for me to jive that with my own experience growing up and my own experience being a man, but it's also the idea that since I don't hear about it, it must not exist. I can't jive that with all the women in my life who have been sexually assaulted, so it's.
Dan:Yeah, just to correct, I didn't say it didn't exist, but I have no meter for how much it exists.
Charles:You have to rely on the personal anecdotes of the people we care about and we have to rely on the statistics that come out from people whose job it is to gather statistics. And yeah, job it is to gather statistics. And yeah, it is a little bit of a disconnect for me, where it's okay this I believe this is happening at the levels that it's happening, you know and here. And yet I have nobody in my social circle who would turn a blind eye to this behavior.
Dan:And here's the thing because we don't operate that way. You attract the kind of people that you are correct, right? So birds of a feather. So you or I are not going to be attracting people who brag about those things, who do those things. So I think there's a little bit of that involved as well. So people who do those things are not going to go. Oh, I want to hang out with charles, because there's going to be other little things and other little. We just do it. I like that. That you'll jive with that, right? Yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah it could be.
Charles:Oh, charles, he's an uptight prick, I don't want to hang out with him because we can't even tell cool stories like yeah, good, I am, yeah, that's right, I'm not here for you, okay. Boundaries and politics we talked about that. If you come to the idea which you should, through either your, your healthy upbringing or the emotional, psychological work, I'm an individual worthy of respect, so therefore everyone else must be too. And once you get to that place, then yeah, you do have to also consider how easy or difficult is it for me to set and maintain my boundaries? Okay For me personally if some five-foot, hundred-pound girl developed an obsessive crush on me and decided I'm having sex with Charles and maintain my boundaries? Okay For me personally if some five foot a hundred pound girl developed an obsessive crush on me and decided I'm having sex with Charles, whether he likes it or not, my response to that would be put up your dukes. So let's see and I don't really have anything to worry about my boundary of yes, miss, young small thing, petite woman here, I don't want to have sex with you and I'm not going to. And then she's gonna. Oh, yeah, I'm gonna make you like good luck, but you reverse that upper body strength and that height and that weight, and her holding that boundary becomes a lot more difficult because she doesn't have, she can't, on a very basic level, exert the physical force required to maintain that boundary, and so that's one of the things that you and I've talked about before. As far as the level of comfort, she can't, on a very basic level, exert the physical force required to maintain that boundary, and so that's one of the things that you and I have talked about before. As far as the level of comfort and safety women can walk around with, compared to us, even if a guy who is significantly bigger than me decided that he wanted me, even though I didn't want him, it's still going to be a rough time for him. A rough time for him because if I decide to fight back with every ounce of muscle and adrenaline that I've got, it's yeah, it's gonna go poorly for him, even if he ends up getting his way. It's not gonna be a fun evening and where, with women trying to hold both boundaries against sexual assault or physical assault yeah, they have to do a different calculus than you and I have to do. Where it's okay, I could say no and then end up in a fight for my life that I very well could lose. So, yeah, our boundaries more difficult for some groups of people than others.
Charles:Idea of we're living on possibly million-year-old hardware where our impulse is oh, there's sweet, tasty, high-calorie food available. We should eat as much of this as we possibly can, because we could starve to death starting tomorrow. And so our bodies are telling us certain messages about the kinds of food we should eat, and not only that, we should eat that food, and then we should just lay around as much as possible to not burn that fat or those calories, because we might need them in the short term, right, and so we're programmed to be a certain way. And when it comes down to the equal rights of certain genders, certain minorities, it's okay. There are people walking around today in our country who remember what it was like to not be able to vote and not be able to drink out of the same water fountain and not be able to go to the same school, and there's people a generation or a few back that remember what it is to be a piece of property owned by other people, and that would count to both certain racial minorities and women, who you know, for for more time than now, women have been treated as property, either their dad's property or their husband's property, and different parts of the world, different groups, were like, oh, we took over your village, so now you're free labor for us until the day you die.
Charles:And while, as far as our laws are concerned, humans are humans, I guess, politically, you could argue that there are some exceptions to that when it comes to the types of medical care that you would like. I just had that conversation with a coworker yesterday, you and I. There is nothing that you and I could decide we want done to our bodies. Where we have to get the government to sign off on it being okay, yeah, where half the population doesn't enjoy that privilege, there are certain things that the government would say, no, you're not allowed to do that, and I'd be pretty mad about that if that applied to me. So, in a nutshell, the society that you live in is going to have an impact on the boundaries that people believe you're allowed to set and how far you're allowed to go to maintain those boundaries. Let's talk about the other three factors that will have an impact on the boundaries that you're okay with setting and that you're okay with maintaining how you attach to other people is going to be a big one, and we've talked about, or at least bounced around, the idea of attachment styles.
Charles:We've talked about, or at least bounced around, the idea of attachment styles. Basically, the relationship you have with your primary caregiver or givers is going to impact how you attach to people for the rest of your life, short of some interventions that you can pursue to change that. The four attachment styles are secure, avoidant, anxious and disorganized, and I like that. She made a great point in this book, which is they estimate 60 of people have secure attachments. The fact that she works in the trauma business it feels like it's not that high to her and the fact that I am not secure and so I am attracted to relationships and friendships with people who are also not secure. When I look at, I'm like there's no way it's as high as 60, but that's because I surround my pick myself with other.
Dan:again, right, our insecure attachment styles, because I do, yeah, and that's that's our whole experience, right, and that's the same thing. That's. As I get older, I realize not everybody thinks the same, nobody has the same experience, and it takes experience and time to realize that all those differences exist and to also not be scared of them either. Yeah, and don't react to them. Exactly.
Charles:Oh no, you're different from me. Therefore you're a danger to me. So you could. People can't just be different without being.
Dan:It is a new opportunity to experience something through a completely different perspective, and I always pick something up from that, even if it's not all positive, just like these books or podcasts, whatever. Sometimes I want to remember all of it and but sometimes but then I have to like back off and go look if I remember one thing that maybe changes my perspective or my direction. It was worth it. An attachment style quiz at some point? No, I didn't even I'm sure they, I didn't even I never thought taking I would be curious to see what your result was Me too.
Dan:All right, if you know of a good one, I'll take it Sure.
Charles:Yeah, taken, that's detailed enough, but not crazy lengthy, and you don't have to pay for a lot.
Charles:I love my online quizzes If it's the best one, you'll pay for it. I love that self-insight. I based on what I know of you, let's talk about it. So 60% secure and then 20% each for avoidant and anxious.
Charles:Avoidant basically means you have issues with trusting and depending on people and you are likely to have very rigid boundaries where you just say my way or the highway as soon as a. As far as fictional characters Jerry, elaine, probably George I would say they're probably all avoidant because they were always looking for some excuse to get out of a relationship on TV. But number two, what they turned those characters into over time where, at the drop of a hat, jerry would decide there was something wrong with the girl and he would break up with her. That's right, yeah, and George would engage in longer relationships, but he was miserable in them, and so I think that showed and then he'd look for an excuse, right, exactly. So I think they were probably all avoidant. Anxious attachers struggle with feelings of I'm unworthy, I'm unlovable, and, as a result, I'm going to have very permeable boundaries where, if I set boundaries at all, I'm not going to.
Dan:I'm afraid, because I'm afraid of losing what I have. I totally get that.
Charles:And then disorganized, also known as fearful avoidant. That's where I live. It's a really fun, really unique combination of both high anxiety and high avoidance. Oh my gosh. Yeah, so it is. Yeah, I don't want to say that it's the hardest one to live with, so that makes me special, but it is you are the one percent right. Yeah, yeah, the disorganized attachment, the fearful avoidant is yeah, it's a mix of high anxiety and also high avoidance of intimacy, and so it does lead to.
Dan:So how is that different than avoidant? They're not anxious about it, it's just like meh. This is the way I operate.
Charles:I am anxious.
Dan:You said anxious, avoided, so what?
Charles:fearful, avoided, fearful, avoided, yeah, okay, I fear that people will spend enough time around me to realize how unworthy and unlovable I am, and so I bring an energy to the relationship where I try to strong arm that from happening. That is my impulse, that is my instinct, that is not how I try to operate on a daily basis and I'm making progress moving away from that through therapy and through my recovery group. But that voice in your head the first thing you hear is that behavior means that she doesn't really love you, care about you, she's not going to stick around, blah, blah, blah. And so it does require burning some extra cycles to not let that define my reactions. Okay.
Charles:Number three is the presence of high conflict personalities in ourselves and others. So a high conflict personality, which we talked about a little bit in a previous episode. It's a pattern that leads you to want to increase rather than decrease conflict in your life, because and she goes out to say that this is not a, there's not people being shitty or manipulative, although sometimes it does feel that way rather, this is a reactive and adaptive behavior to say, okay, if I feel like things are spiraling out of control, the way I can get back control is by turning this into a conflict, because throughout my childhood I had to fight for my needs being met, so I'm pretty good at fighting for my needs being met. So if I turn this into a fight, I'll feel more comfortable that I've got a better chance of getting my needs met.
Dan:Yeah, that's. The irony is that it actually increases their comfort. Rather, for a lot of other people, makes them uncomfortable to have that conflict. For me, I'm the opposite, because I didn't deal with conflict that much growing up as a kid. So whenever I hear even like the inklings of it starting, I start to get that I don't like this kind of thing and I've made poor decisions in the past instead of being able to take a step back and manage it and handle it in a way that was beneficial, either that to either allow that person that space to to do whatever they wanted to do or and stay in that versus run away and just check out type of thing. So, yeah, I exhibited a little avoided stuff there. I don't yeah, yeah.
Charles:So for me it's. If a partner comes to me with, hey, you hurt me, you disappointed me, I find that to be unbearable, and so, instead of that, I'll start a fight about it, which also sucks. But suck is less than unbearable, so I'd rather let's turn things into a situation interest sucks yeah, because I'd rather be in a situation that sucks that because, yeah, it's, it's not as bad as this is completely intolerable. I can't handle this.
Dan:I feel like I'm going to, I'm going to die, I'm going to explode statement that they made and that there's no changing, whereas if you fight about it, I'm thinking maybe, hey, this could change. Right there, I could convince them that's not accurate. Right, that I'm not just accepting that I made a mistake or that I'm whatever they're telling me I am, which still might not be correct. It might not be accurate, it's just. Then. What are the alternatives?
Charles:theology right comes in with the idea of I. I cannot accept ownership of the identity that I'm someone who hurts people and disappoints people, because people who hurt people and disappoint people, they get left or abandoned. So I can't accept that I'm, that. I know that those are parts of my identity, that that's who I am. Therefore sorry, but I got to fight with you to convince you that I'm not a person who hurts people or disappoints people. So let's spend two hours yelling at each other and at the end of it maybe you'll agree that I'm not a person who hurts people, or-.
Dan:Yeah, yeah, I see it Okay.
Charles:But imagine what's the ultimate result of that. Obviously, it's people who are way more hurt and way more disappointed and way more likely to exit the relationship than stay in it. Yeah, it's this self-defeating behavior that we HCPs have to figure out some way to balance or regulate. Otherwise we end up, all in alone. 15% of people are estimated to use conflict to get control of situations that feel out of control. 15% would be considered high conflict personalities. Contrast that with less than 1% of people with narcissistic personality disorder, or around 2% of people who are histrionic. Histrionic is a term that I. It's a specific diagnosis that I feel like at some point soon it'll get its time in the sun where everybody will be. Histrionic is a term that I. It's a specific diagnosis that I feel like at some point soon it'll get its time in the sun where everybody will be histrionic.
Dan:So define that for everybody histrionic, because that's. I have not heard that until hearing this book. To be honest, with you.
Charles:A person with histrionic personality disorder seeks attention, talks dramatically with strong opinions, is easily influenced, has rapidly changing emotions and thinks that relationships are closer than they actually are hmm, huh okay yeah, I've had some people in my family of origin.
Charles:Okay, that one, okay, but that's around two percent of people. But one of the things I remark on online often is this idea that, okay, so, less than 1% of the population has narcissistic personality disorder. However, every person's ex has it. How does that math work? Every ex-boyfriend and every ex-girlfriend in the world is a narcissist, but the research tells us it's less than 1% of the population. We must be attributing this, this personality disorder. How could they not want me, the people who don't actually have it?
Charles:The other thing we've talked about that in our other podcast release, tbd. Every person who's been broken up with decides that their ex must have an avoidant attachment style, like they must. They can't possibly be secure or anxious because they left me. Therefore, they must be avoidant or maybe disorganized. Okay, but yes, and that that goes back to what we talked about toward the beginning was my behavior is okay because it's me. Where somebody behaves that way toward me, that's completely unacceptable. And so, yeah, everybody who's mean to me is a narcissist.
Charles:I'm obviously not a narcissist. I'm the most, I'm the most selfless, caring person in the world. Anybody who's mean to me. They're definitely a narcissist. We have a tendency to do that. And then you add social media to that, where my ex was a narcissist and it's everybody's oh my gosh, I feel so bad for you because my ex was a narcissist too and then you just have people piling on all these anonymous exes to make the person who's complaining about it feel better about their situation. So I understand where that drive comes from and that tendency, but the science doesn't back it up. All right. The last section we'll talk about is coercive control, again a concept that I was not familiar with until I read it in this chapter. Coercive control is not just a worse version of high conflict personality. This is when someone has a strategic, rational, ongoing mission to break your boundaries in service to their own needs and their own desires, and she really makes an interesting case on how this happened.
Charles:I feel like you just described every supervillain in every movie ever made right and really, from what she says, based on the research, most people involved in domestic violence would fall into this. Because look up until, depending on where you lived in the world or where you even lived in this country until the 60s, 70s or 80s, a guy smacking around his wife was just kind of like, oh, it's a thing that happens. I don't do it myself personally, but I get that. You know no big deal. Yeah, oh, it's a thing that happens. I don't do it myself personally, but I get that. You know no big deal. Yeah, where?
Charles:Now it is a big deal and it should be a big deal, but as a result of I can't just smack my wife around anymore. So I've got to develop new ways to manipulate her into giving me exactly the behavior that I require from her that doesn't leave bruises. Therefore, I will develop these other strategies, and usually that involves isolating her from her friends and family, from her social circle, from anything that gives her autonomy or independence. I've got a. I've got a couple of the strategy to take those things away from her so that really she just lives to serve my needs and, look's, it happens a lot again.
Dan:We don't have anybody in our social circle bragging about that they're doing this, but the data says that it's out there right, listen and when, if you're raised in that environment, you could think of that, hey, that's the way I operate, that's just the way you have the relationship and not even realize, and not even realize for sure to what extent that impact is having. And likewise, there are some people who've grown up.
Charles:In most cases, in many cases, the guy is going to be the primary breadwinner and so there are going to be certain things about that relationship where the guy has. But she also does say this can also happen in lesbian relationships, this can happen in gay relationships and it can also happen in heterosexual relationships, with the woman doing it to the man. But there's got to be that differential in status, whether that's a matter of income, physical size and strength, societal status. Look, if you're a famous woman dating a guy who's not, you could get to put him around in certain ways and demand certain things of him. That wouldn't be okay otherwise.
Dan:And I see maybe the common thread and I could be off here, but I'm seeing is that maybe both partners think they don't have options or they're coming from a place of insecurity. I was going to say that, yes, so that they tolerate that level of abuse.
Charles:The guys that engage in this, absolutely 100%, are operating from a place of scarcity where they think if I let her have independence, if she's just out there living her life and being fulfilled by her job, her friends or whatever, then she's not going to need me anymore because I don't really have that much going on. And if she realizes that then she's going to leave me.
Dan:This absolutely comes from a place of fear and scarcity, and part of that process is to instill fear and scarcity in the other person so that they don't have the option they have to be more afraid and feel more scarcity than I do. I can't let them see that they don't have the option. They have to be more afraid and feel more scarcity than I do. I can't let them see that they've got options out there.
Charles:That's why I think when people get controlling and Right, the great thing that she mentions at the end of this chapter that I absolutely love. Oh, there's a good part here, because I was getting a little upset here. The great part is that people and we're usually talking about guys, that that are involved in this course of control, they can get out of it, they can turn it around and they can have healthy relationships. You do require a certain level of self-awareness. You do require probably some sort of a rock bottom where you get to the point where you're like okay, this is not working for me, this is making me miserable. It's making the people that I think I care about, whether you actually do or not, it's making them miserable and there's something needs to change. This is a broken situation I'm in. I feel like I'm a broken person and I got to get out of this somehow. It requires getting to the point where you recognize things are terrible.
Dan:But then, if you pursue therapy, if you pursue recovery groups, there, there are ways to get over this behavior and leave it behind and get to a point where you can have healthy relationships with people yeah, again, I think this comes down to options and realizing that there are some other than you staying in something that's making you and your partner miserable, that there are other alternatives to what's going on.
Charles:Look. Unfortunately for a lot of people, whether you're one of that less than 1%, that really is a true blue narcissist. Or you've adopted coercive control strategies because you felt like you had to. If you're stuck in this loop of all of my problems are everybody else's fault. Everything bad that happens to me it's all on somebody else. I'm just trying to do the right thing and live my life and the world is a shitty place and people are always trying to take advantage of me and look, you know, you don't have to look too far outside of either celebrities or politicians to find people that go through life with that mentality of I only ever do the right thing and everybody else is trying to screw me over and take advantage of me and mistreat me. And if you hold on to that, if you hold on to the comfort of that feeling, you're probably not going to find yourself in a therapist's office or a recovery group. You're actually going to be able to do the work to make things better.
Dan:Now you reap what you sow, and I feel like, in this day and age where we're all so connected, you are actively choosing. I think most people who have internet and leave the house understand that there are other options out there and they're actually choosing.
Charles:True, yeah, so look, I know, I don't know I don't have direct friends like in my social circle that would say this to me, but I know I've got friends of friends and boyfriends of friends that are still on board the idea of therapies for the week. Therapy doesn't work, therapy's not going to do anything for me. There there are guys and probably women, but it's mostly a stereotype that it's guys walking around with that opinion of not just I'm not ready for therapy or I don't feel like I can start doing the work that I know I have to do in therapy, but literally therapy doesn't work, therapy's therapy isn't going to help anything.
Dan:Apparently, and maybe that method for them doesn't work. Maybe that's not what they're looking for, but maybe they're not looking at all right and yet maybe it's not therapy, maybe it's a coach, or maybe it's a book, or maybe a conversation.
Charles:It starts with an admission of I've got a problem that I can't fix on my own, and that is a vulnerable admission to make For sure. But you'll make it if things get bad. Your why's got to be strong enough, right? This was my favorite chapter that I've read so far. I did finish the audio book, but it's a short listen. It was only like a two and a half hour. Yeah, it's a tiny book. Yeah, the book's pretty small too, but this was my favorite part of it.
Charles:I really did enjoy going through this. Why are boundaries hard? Why isn't this easy? Why isn't this automatic? Here are the four reasons why yeah, because of social problems, because of attachment issues, because of people with high conflict personalities and this coercive control that you may be a victim of. And one of the things I decided when I was going through this chapter is I will list in the show notes some of these indicators of coercive controls If you're living with somebody or have somebody close to you that's doing these things, there are ways for you to figure out how to get yourself out of that situation when you're ready to.
Charles:And it's not just a matter of two guys on a podcast saying hey girl, hey guy. No, you're worth. You're better than this. You don't deserve this. You'll get help when you're ready to get help, and I feel like sometimes we will pile on people who are in a situation like that by just saying, oh, you should leave him, go get help. It was that easy. They, the people in these situations, would have already done it, and so I prefer the message of look, when you're ready, you'll do what you have to do. I hope you don't get hurt between now and then, but it's not within me to tell you okay, now you have to leave the situation.
Charles:When you're ready to leave and you are convinced that you've got the resources that you need, then you'll be able to get out of it, and whether it's when you're getting smacked around or it's a coercive control situation, all of the people who are concerned about domestic violence can help you with both of those. So you don't have to be getting smacked around to go to a domestic violence group or shelter to get help. You can just say look, my, my life is being locked down by somebody who's not me and it sucks, and I'd some help with it, and they'll be happy to help you.
Dan:Of course, yeah, my favorite chapter is coming up, where we're going to be going through a lot of things she lists out as boundary violations and it really opened up my eyes with a few of these and I don't know if you're going to be on board. We talked about it briefly going through some of these and sharing some of our own experiences and also, as it relates to some of these things, some of these boundary violations, such as somebody not cleaning up after themselves and is that a flexible boundary for you? Is it a solid boundary? Is it a flexible or permeable right or like where? What is that? And I didn't even realize, like that's a boundary violation and just I just want to have some great. I think we're gonna have some great conversations. I'm excited for it.
Charles:Yeah, me too. I look forward to getting into it next time. Thanks, dan, we'll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye, hey, thanks for listening to the entire episode. We certainly appreciate it. Please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom to see all of our episodes, both audio and video, and anything else we have to announce or talk about.
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