Transforming Veterans Affairs: A Commitment to Change and Accountability

Speaker 2
Why is that so hard for people to see someone else's perspective?
Speaker 1
Well, two things. One is because, you know, that unreliable narrator thing that we think that we are right and we don't want to be told. And so what we hear when we say there's another perspective, we're not saying you're wrong. We're saying there's more to the story. So there's a difference between their perspective is valid as well, is not saying your version is wrong. We're saying there's more. So people hear it, though, as you are wrong. And the other part of it is that there's a lot of shame, that people are sticking to a certain story because if they allow that other part of the story to come in, the part that they're responsible for will probably come up, and they feel a lot of shame. So when I see individuals in therapy, they come in and they tell me a story and they leave out the parts that they are embarrassed about, the parts that they feel like that was not my finest moment.
Speaker 2
Like what? Give me an example. Like, well, I screamed back or I
Speaker 1
did this. Yeah. Like, you know, here's what happened or here's, here's, this is, this is the situation. And my, my partner did this, or my mother did this, or my child did this or my boss did this, whatever. And they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on. And they're very relevant to the story. But that's shame, right? And so, you know, that's why the therapeutic relationship is so important because you get to a point where you really trust the therapist and you're able to be really honest about what happened.
Speaker 2
How much does shame shape our stories? Oh,
Speaker 1
so much. I think that, you know, as humans, we want to belong. And what shame is about is I'm not going to belong. I'm not going to be loved. The greatest human need is, you know, how can we love and be loved? And when you feel like there's something I did that people will look upon badly, they might not like me if I tell them this. That's just, you know, wired into us. It's
Speaker 2
like the ego death to us. It's like the emotional death. If like, if someone knew this about us, they would not love me and I would emotionally die.
Speaker 1
And I would be alone.
Speaker 2
And I would be alone, yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah, and we need other people. I
Speaker 2
felt like this way for many years where I opened up about sexual abuse about seven years ago and for 25 years no one knew because I was so ashamed. And I felt like if anyone knew, how could they possibly love me or accept me? Or how would anyone want to date me or my family? How would they not disown me? These were the stories that I was writing. I was a bad editor. How does someone who's done something that they're not proud of in the past, who's had something done to them that they're not proud of, whatever, they've been in a situation that they feel shame around, how does someone start to process that shame to heal so that it doesn't continue to run their life and keep them imprisoned?
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I think they do what you did, which is you started talking about it. And I think you have to choose your audience, which is really important, especially as you're just starting out. So you want to make sure that you're... Don't tell your
Speaker 2
abuser who's the toxic relationship who's yet.
Speaker 1
Well, you know, I think you have to really choose someone who's safe. And if you don't have those people, you know, I think a therapist is a really good place to start. But I do think that it's harder for men to talk about anything, whether it's sexual abuse or even, you know, just sort of like anything they feel vulnerable about. And so men will come into my office and they will say to me at some point, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And then women
Speaker 2
say that.
Speaker 1
Yes. So, so here's the thing. Women will say that they'll say, I've never told anyone this before, except for my mother, my sister, and my best friend. Right. Right. Right. I told my book club, I told, you know, whatever it is. They've told, like, a few people, but they feel like, because women, it's acceptable for women to talk about these things, and so they feel like they haven't told anyone because they still feel like there's some degree of privacy around it. Men literally have told no one. And even if they have like a great partner and they have close friends, you know, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our culture is not okay. Even though we say that. So this
Speaker 2
is funny. Even though women say, I wish you would open up. I wish you'd be emotional. I wish you would cry and be more sensitive. But then when they are, they're like, I need you to be strong right now.
Speaker 1
Right, so this is exactly what happens in couples therapy. So I'll have two people sitting on the couch and I have a couple. And say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman says to the man, like, I really want to get to know you. I feel like we would connect so much more if you would just open up to me. I want to know what's going on inside there, right? And he does. And let's say he tears up. Let's say he actually starts crying in a way where like his body is convulsing, right? She looks at me like deer in headlights. She's so profoundly uncomfortable. And this is the thing that she was asking for. So what she'll say is, I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me. And I don't feel safe when you're vulnerable with me. It's like Goldilocks. It's like not too much, not too little, but right in the middle. That's how vulnerable you can be with me. I've
Speaker 2
been saying this for a long time, that I feel like this is one of the main things that hurts all intimate relationships. Yes. When a person doesn't feel safe to share their emotions to the person that says they love them the most, and actually makes them wrong for it, or makes them less than, or retracts their love they're vulnerable. So I don't know the solution for this besides saying this all the time and besides saying ladies, like if you want a vulnerable man who's emotional, you have to accept him when he's emotional.
Speaker 1
Well, not just accept, but embrace. I mean, that's
Speaker 2
the thing. Encourage that. Because it's so much harder for a man in general in our society to be vulnerable based on what we've grown up with and based on what we see, that if you're not encouraging it consistently and celebrating almost, why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share if you're going to make them wrong for it? Well,
Speaker 1
right. So that's exactly what happens. There's somebody I write about in the book who, you know, there's this tragedy that happens in the family. And he feels like he has to be the rock for the family. Always, right? My wife, she can cry about this. She can be sad about this. But if I break down, I'm the thing holding everything up. And that was just not true. Actually, that was the thing that was making their marriage not work, that was making him feel anxious and not sleep and not function well, right? And that was the thing that got his wife to at a certain point saying like, I can't be in this marriage if we can't connect. But he thought he had to be the rock for the whole family. He could not feel his feelings. And instead, what happened was when he finally said, no, actually, this is tearing me apart too. That's when they started healing. That's when they started getting close to each other again. What
Speaker 2
advice would you have to any woman entering a relationship, a new relationship with a male partner? I
Speaker 1
would say make sure that there's no double standard in the relationship. Make sure that if you want an open relationship where there's lots of trust, you feel like you can come to each other with anything. You know, there this, there's a saying about like, you invited the lie, which means that when you don't give people the space to talk to you about something that's difficult, they will keep things secret from you. They
Speaker 2
won't share with
Speaker 1
you. They won't share with you. And they will start keeping lots of secrets from you. And then they'll be like, later on, they'll be like, really, this was going on in your life? Why didn't you tell me about this? Because you created a culture in which they couldn't. So if you want to feel safe and secure in the relationship and you want that openness, then you have to really embrace it. And make sure that you're embracing it not just with your words, but with your actions. So your partner comes to you, they talk to you about something, and you don't try to kind of shut it down. You don't get profoundly uncomfortable. You know, if your friend, like your girlfriend came to you and did that, like, you know, your best friend, you would be like, oh, you know, however you would be to them. Why are you going to be different to this person who is the person that you're spending your life with?
Speaker 2
Why are, again, I don't want to generalize all women, but why are women in general, I guess, wired that way? To not feel safe when a man opens up and shares an insecurity, a vulnerability, why are women wired that way? These
Speaker 1
are artifacts, a culture that taught men and women, girls and boys when they're growing up. This is how you are in the world. Right. And you see this as parents. Right. So I have a son and I saw this. It was profound for me to see this. So when when my son got to a certain age, when he was little and he would fall down and, you know, he would cry or whatever it was, you know, everybody would be like, oh, honey, at the park or whatever. Little boys. Okay, at a certain age.
Speaker 2
At like two, three, four, five.
Speaker 1
Yes, all of a sudden it was like girls, they fall off the jungle gym, everybody's there. Boys, they're crying. It's like, oh, it's okay, shake it off, shake it off. I was horrified. Shake it off? Like he might even have a concussion, right? Shake it off, right?
Speaker 2
mean this is my whole childhood it's like you know you play football I mean I remember breaking my wrist in a game in high school and then just saying tape it up it was just like my wrist was broken it's like hanging there right no it's broken I tape it up I keep playing because it's just like oh keep it playing unless you're dying I remember I broke my ribs in a game and I could not breathe. And I was just laying on the ground. I could not move. So I had to be like taken off. But you break an arm. I had a concussion once. I just kept playing. Like, it's just, oh, just be tough.
Speaker 1
Right.
Speaker 2
Right. It's hard for men, making sure men stay accountable, but it's hard for men to, who have that mindset to switch it off then be vulnerable and then switch it back on. We'll have to be tough and strong.
Speaker 1
Well, so it's interesting you're using the words tough and strong because I think that what happens is that men start to associate tough and strong with not feeling. Like, I'm not going to feel the pain of my broken wrist. I'm just going to keep playing. I'm not going to feel the pain of this breakup. I'm not going to tell anybody about it, right? About how much pain I'm in. I'm not going to tell people about the pain of my sexual abuse because I'm going to be strong. And what they don't realize is that strength is actually being able to talk about these things. So when people make the call to come to therapy, I'm looking not only for what's not working in someone's life and why they're there. I want to know why now, why this week or this month did they call? Because that, to me, is a sign of strength. And I'm looking for their strengths as much as what's not working. So they think, a lot of men think, and they'll say, they'll say like, oh, I'm so embarrassed that I'm here. Women tend not to say that. Women are like, I'm so glad I'm here. I've been waiting to do this. Right? So to them, it's a sign of strength that they came because they value their health in that way. Men are like, I can't let anybody know that I'm here. Like it's a weakness. And I have to reframe it for them and say, no, the fact that you are here is a strength. That's
Speaker 2
why I think it's really cool that Michael Phelps is talking about therapy and talk space and basketball
Speaker 1
players too.
Speaker 2
Love and all these people talking about, about DeMar DeRozan.
Speaker 1
Yeah. i
Speaker 2
think it's really important for for us to see models of men that were inspired by i didn't really see that growing up of like a man that was going through challenges they went to therapy or dealt with sexual abuse and talked about it open i never saw that model so i just felt like oh i'm the only one dealing with this. This doesn't happen. But when I started to open up, it's crazy the amount of men that you mentioned, like men never share, even to a friend. They never tell a soul where a woman in general might share three friends before they come to the therapist and say they've never shared. When I opened up about sexual abuse, there were hundreds of essays from men emailing me, but also when I did it in person in kind of a private kind of group therapy session, so many men came to me privately after the session and said, I'm 55 years old, I've got three kids and my wife doesn't know, my kids don't. Like no one knows. This happened to me over and over again when I was nine. More people would open up that no one knew. It's like, what happens to us when we have a secret around the shame that we're so ashamed of and no one knows? What happens when we hold that in? I
Speaker 1
got the most heartbreaking letter in my advice column, this dear therapist column that I write. And it was from a man who was, you know, I think he was like in his 60s, maybe he was in his 70s. And he said, I have this secret and nobody knows. And I am so profoundly lonely. I'm so profoundly lonely because he has like tons of friends. You know, it wasn't that he was, that he didn't look lonely in life. He said, inside, I am so lonely because I've carried this around with me for my entire life. I have not told a soul. And I feel like I'm pretending, like I'm one person to everybody else. But they don't know everything. They don't know this thing that is so important to me. And I wrote back to him. And that letter got such a big response because everybody felt so much compassion for him and just wanted to say to him, please talk about this. Please tell people who you really are. Please don't pretend. Please take the mask off. Yeah. Right. I remember the same thing happened when I saw Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan on a panel and they were talking about depression and anxiety and how much they suffered. room, right? And all of these men raising their hands saying like, I, we need to talk about this. And, you know, what was, you know, people wanted to know about their experience. And I remember DeMar DeRozan talking about like, he was like having this anxiety attack and he was driving and he was driving to the stadium and he saw this big billboard of him, you know, that he was like this guy who had it all together. He's like, I'm having a panic attack in the back of the car right now and no one knows. Right. So that's what I see in therapy with men. And that's what I think in relationships. We have to be so aware that men have all this extra baggage and to really create a space for them to be who they are, who they really are, and not some image of what our culture thinks they need to be. For
Speaker 2
someone watching or listening right now saying, uh, men have so much privilege, men have so much rights, men are, you know, so much fortune and opportunity, like, who cares if they have baggage? Like, it doesn't matter because they've been, Yeah, oppressing they've been privileged for many many years. So deal with it.
Speaker 1
Let me tell you something part of toppling the patriarchy is Allowing men to have feelings because it gives women more equality too So if you if you give men these privileges of and I say it a privilege, right, to be able to be who you are, men then have the space to make room for women. It is something that privileges everybody.
Speaker 2
When you give permission for men to open up and not shame them or not make them wrong, it actually gives you more power as well?
Speaker 1
It gives. So the reason that a lot of men, there's so many. I mean, this is a really complicated topic, but I can say that this is what I see, that when men are given the permission to be vulnerable, women are given the permission of power. Wow. And that's that's so that's what happens is like you need to level things. So
Speaker 2
if women want more power, more say, more opportunities in general is what I'm hearing you say. The more you embrace men for the vulnerabilities that they have or the insecurities or the shame they have. And you celebrate them for their emotions. The more they're willing to connect and open up opportunities back in return. And also
Speaker 1
it gives women power in another sense. Because when emotional lives valued, okay? So women, it was always like, oh, these are women's issues, right? Anything that was in the emotional realm, these are women's issues. But men, we're talking about the really important things, but women, they have all these emotions, right? So that's not really relevant. That's like, they have their little things over there.

#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs

Shawn Ryan Show

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts