Stuck In Fear After Hours

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Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, masculine journey after hours. Time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The masculine journey after hours starts here now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. And we are finding ourselves still stuck in fear.

I tell you what. Hunker down in this bunker is a scary place to be.

It is. It's a fearful place to be. It can be it. Yeah. It didn't have to be back in there. And so whether your bunker, whether you're hunkered down, is fearful or not may depend on how you react to certain things. But in the after hours show, we do hope to go deeper and so that this time we're gonna go deeper. By just asking some questions and just being as transparent as we can be on how we've handled this topic of fear. And I promise you, next week we're gonna get to the resolution. Yes or no?

We're going to hint about it because there's yeah, there's no point. Just talking about fear all the time if there's not a solution. Right. Right. And the solution is perfect. Love drives out. Fear is what first John Ford tells us. And so that's what we're trying to get to. We're trying to get to the perfect love part and how that, you know, shows up.

But in order to get there, we kind of have to talk about how this fear sometimes arises and and, you know, shows its ugly head in our relationships.

And we do have a great clip. So we do have a good clip. And I don't think any of us have seen the movies. We have no idea of the canal. I want to go watch it now, though. Yeah. Would you want to tell us a little bit about the clip? That was your clip?

Well, yeah. This is this is a clip from a movie called Johnny Darko. And if you've seen Johnny Darko, you're you're probably also thinking.

I think Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko. Is Donny on the clue? I think it's Johnny Darko. It's Darko. It is. It is. It is.

It's a Darko kind of clip.

We're not gonna got Donnie Darko. Anyway, the that. Yeah, the clip is is basically in a in a high school class.

It's a very parochial school. Uniforms are worn here. And there's a teacher that is the quintessential teacher who is super excited about the topic today. And she's basically talking about love versus fear. And so she has drawn a timeline on the board, basically a fear on one side, love on the other side. And she presents questions to the class and they have to get up and read the question and then put their X someplace on the timeline. Are they operating out of fear or are they operating out of love? And you can actually hear the fear in the first little girl's voice as she has to get up and do this. And it's a high school class. So you've got a bunch of smart elec, you know, kids in there. Probably I was in the class and this could have easily been me. That's why I identified with the clip, is this is definitely the way I'm going to answer this question probably.

I can't imagine you wearing a uniform.

That is true. That's very hard with a bit of a deal. Yeah. It probably would have been a deal breaker. So go and play the clip.

As you can see, the lifeline is divided into two polar extremes, fear and love. Fear is in the negative energy spectrum and love is in the positive energy spectrum. Excuse me. No duh. Is a product of fear on each card is a character dilemma which applies to the lifeline. Please read each character dilemma aloud and place an X on the lifeline in the appropriate place.

Syreeta one NIDA has an important math test today. She's not about to test for several weeks, but does not study. In order to keep from failing her class, I need to decide to cheat on the math test. Good.

Good. Very good.

Mr. Darko Lingling finds a world on the ground filled with money. She takes the wall to the address on the driver's license. He keeps the money inside the wallet. I'm signing this form. I don't get this.

Just place an X on the lifeline in the appropriate place.

No, I mean, I know what to do. I just I don't get this the lump things into two categories. Things aren't that simple.

The lifeline is divided that way. Well, life isn't that simple.

I mean, you cares if Lingling returns the wallet and keeps the money, has nothing to do with either fear or love. Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions. OK, but you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else. If you don't complete the assignment, you'll get a zero for the day.

Donald, let me preface this by saying that your Iowa test scores are intimidating. So let's go over this again. What exactly did you say to Miss Farmer?

I'll tell you what he said. He asked me to forcibly insert the lifeline exercise Korten to my anus.

There's a laugh track there. There's there's your laugh drag. It's it's the after hours here, though.

We watch that clip on YouTube. And obviously, it's it's funny you're watching, right? Watching. We could, but it's still funny on its own. But there is some truth in what the teacher's saying. In a way, if you think about it, when we're on this topic of fear and love. You're either moving in one direction or you're moving in the air.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. You can't be moving in both directions. Yeah.

And that's why I would have been. And it was Donnie Darko. Yeah. That's why I probably would have been Donnie Darko, because I don't want to have to. You can't tell me. I've got to move to fear. I gotta move to love. I mean, that's that's me. I'm. You don't tell me what to do. You know, type of guy. That's who I am. And what are you afraid of. I.

Exactly. Exactly. I'm afraid that if you force me into a situation, it's going to end badly and I'll probably make the wrong decision.

And I will probably say something stupid like Mr. Darko did and get myself into the principal's office, which let me just put it this way. When I was in high school, I would come home regularly and my mom would say, oh, Darren, Tom called today.

Well, Tom was the vice principal. Okay. So not many people were on a first name basis with Tom, but my mom.

So next week, I think you're going to switch and start working on breaking Darren's agreements with so many of them.

We need to work through. Yes, yes. Yes, yes, indeed. Just as I do. Just as Harold does this, as all of us do.

But now we are going to continue moving towards love. Right. Yeah. Move away from fear. But fear is something you've got to can understand. What do I do with that topic?

As men, generally, it's expressed as anger. In a lot of cases, if we feel like it's unjust, especially. Yeah.

And so one of the questions that I asked. You know us to think about was.

How do I react? To other people treating me badly. Do do I react in fear?

And to just ask that question is the way I react when other people treat me badly and maybe it's a maybe it's an all out assault on my character or something, and we'll talk about that. Rodney, we talked about it before the show, and that was you had something really cool to say. Hope you didn't forget it. Like Sam and I did last week and we couldn't remember what it was. Robert Dole us. It's really cool, too. Yeah. I was really cool. We just don't remember what it was. And so there's that reaction. But then there's there's also what if, you know, you're reacting out of fear when someone is continually just treating your heart badly? Not not really in a horribly mean sort of way.

But but just they're not treating it well all the time. And do you find yourself. Entering into a relationship with that person or walking in the relationship with that person, fearful of how are they going to. How are they going to hurt me today? How are they? You know, how hard is this day going to be that I've got to spend all day with this person type of thing?

And what you constantly hear in those situations is people use the term. You know, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells.

Yes. All the time. Yeah. What they're saying is I'm scared. I'm scared of what? The reactions. Right. Right.

Yeah. I think if you ask that question for me, a lot of times it depends on whether I feel like their treatment of me was just or not. Initially, it's always anger. I mean, to be quite honest, it makes me mad initially.

And then I typically will sit back and say, OK, do I have a piece of this? Is there something in this that I own? Because if I own it, then maybe some of that reaction in their mind at least, was justified. And I can try to understand where it's coming from, you know, and that helps me kind of cope with it. But when it's just an all out assault on character, I don't do very well with it. I don't react well to it.

In particular, it's when they are going after something that you believe, whether it's true or not.

But if you agree with them, at least for me, it's far more painful and going to get a lot more of a response than if it's something that's totally out of left field. And the same thing goes with how close relationship I have with this person. A stranger can call me everything but a nice guy all day long and I don't care. But as soon as a loved one says something that's painful, it's a whole different reaction again. Yeah, it's usually anger. And sometimes that turns into depression, which is inward facing anger. But a lot of it does come out of anger and it might go on up anger. Being angry was a a. Bad thing, it was a sign of you haven't found the right way to handle this. So anger was never acceptable and it took me 30 years before I would even acknowledge that I was angry about something.

Yeah, there's definitely ways that you can take this. And then he wants to get you to take him in all these directions. You don't care which one you pick, just whatever what he thinks is going to do the most damage. Right. You can walk in anger, right. You know, I have a right to feel this way because I was wronged. Right. You can you can live there. You can walk in acceptance of things that aren't true about you and start to believe them. You know, that's what happens with people in abusive relationships over time. They tend to believe those things, whether they were initially true or not. They did. They tend to believe them to be true. When it's happened long enough or if you're able to, you step into avoidance. You just can't avoid any type of contact with that person. All right. Very, very rarely do we go out in a way that produces a lasting result that's healthy.

Anger has always been an issue for me going back to early childhood. But the classic example of how other people saw my anger when. My son was a teenager. My older son. He knew every one of my buttons and he'd keep pushing until he found the right one. So every day I typically arrived at work. Foaming at the mouth. My staff fixed up what they called a mood meter and put it on the door to my office and it was, you know, had a little arrow that you could spin around. And it was so long ago, I can remember all the words they had there. But it was it was my mood meter that. Were any of them good, Harold? No.

OK, just check. And they were all old English or Latin. But yeah, it was engraved in stone.

But how did that make you feel? Harold, with you saw that? I'm sure there was some humor to it, but how did that make you feel?

Well, with my attitude back then, it didn't matter.

Yeah. You know, it was they were right.

But I was in fact, it was just very difficult period in time because of the contrast between what I wanted out of my son and what he was willing to give. And, you know, it was one of those cases, a kid that could have had straight A's, even a Plus's, if he just gave a little bit of effort and he brought home days and this spit in my face.

Was I your child? Sounds like Harold needs a mood ring. So.

So when it's.

So when you know, somebody is reacting out of fear and they're reacting badly, if you can be objective and go, whoa, whoa, wait, wait. They're acting badly. But it's because they're scared. So you think about a dog. Right. Your pet who has been wounded. Right. They're hurt. And you're trying to help them. Correct. And yet you you might even tell your kids, be careful.

A wounded animal is very dangerous. Well, so as a wounded person. So if. But if you can understand it that way. Oh, wait, wait, wait. It's their wound, their wounded ness that is causing them to react in fear.

They're treating me badly, perhaps because of their fear.

You know, Rodney and I were talking about that before the show, about a time when, you know, a person that I worked with basically, you know, told my boss a lie about me because a customer had called and said, why, you know, this has not been done yet. And when my boss started asking about it, the excuse was, well, I told Darren I needed those things in order to get this finished. But he never produced these things. And.

And in my first reaction when my boss confronted me and he wasn't all that kind about it, when he confronted me, my first reaction was fine, I quit. If you're going to believe what one of my employees said about me that's been here six months over me, that has a relationship with 10 years, you know, going on 10 years with you, then fine. I just quit. That tells me what kind of integrity you have. And so I lash out at him in anger because, you know, it wasn't even about fear for me anymore at that point. It was an assault. And so I'm just angry. And so I react in anger. But if I can see a wait, that guy told my boss this because he was scared. He was scared he was going to lose his. He was scared that, you know, he was going to get in trouble and he reacted badly. I was the victim of it, obviously, although I wasn't, you know, I mean, I didn't lose my job. I didn't get a cut in pay. I didn't get my hands slapped. I had I had a difficult conversation with my boss that made our relationship actually deeper and better in the in the end.

But at the time, it felt like I'm the victim of this guy's fear. And so the question is, is.

How do we turn that in and react out of love? Because perfect love drives out fear. So my reaction to that guy for a little while was not perfect love. Let me tell you, I wasn't mean to him, but I wasn't treating him with perfect love either.

I was documenting every conversation I had with him to say, you know, if you'd lie about me again, buddy, you're out of here type of thing. Instead of perfect love. And I'm not exactly sure what perfect love would have been in that particular instance, but it definitely makes a difference.

If I can see that, I think there are fables along those lines that we've told our children over the years about the the wounded animal and so forth, that they seem mean. They seem angry. They seem scary. But really, they're just hurt.

Yeah. You get the lion with something stuck, and it's Paul. Yeah, right. And it's reacting out of that, I think. For me, it's a lot easier when I think of the context of work to do it. I just got a pie. Those themes, things at home, you know, when I'm at work and somebody is really upset about something. It's typically a fear based reaction. You know, I build houses. That's what I do. But if they're they're angry about something in their home and I can get past the anger and start digging in and say, okay, what what's upsetting you? What why are you angry about that? What is it about that that concerns you? What are you afraid of? Right. In another word. And I can start getting down to you and get down to the issue. The issue is they don't know how to deal with something. A lot of times they're afraid it's going to cost money they don't have. Right. And once you know what the issue is, then you can address the concern and the fear, the anger, and that stuff tends to go away.

Yeah. And Darren was talking about mundaneness. So where can we go to find out about wound us and how to deal with that? That's where the boot camps for. We're not going to be able to get into that on the air over a podcast where it takes a lot of pikas. But when you go in and you bring up the subject and you touch upon things that are kind of deep and personal in someone else's lives and you talked to God, you start to understand more. And what it's done for me, isn't I? I see my woodenness quicker and I how I react and how I play with that. So I'm more aware. But what it's done for me and pointing out in my wife, my kids, other people and I'm close to people work, you know, seeing their woodenness or trying to at least trying to understand it a little bit relationally, that changes a lot of things.

Like you were talking earlier, Darren, about when it was a character issue when. Somebody that's there for six months.

You're taking word without asking me anything that I've had a relationship with you for ten, but you're you're really attacking my character here. You're getting in deep. And those are the places where it hurts. And those are the places in which, like, for me, it's not always, oh, I'm going to lash out, but I'm going to do more along the lines of what you did. And I'm going to have this investigation. I'm going to have this long, drawn out attack on somebody else or I'm going to at least I'm going to dig up some dirt because it's like the gloves are off. We're going to go fight to win. And I'm Melissa going to be able to defend myself if something comes up and be able to as rural, all this other stuff out, take those notes, you know, and do all that. It drives you to behave and run into fear, which is what we keep saying. Don't do. Don't do like Bob Newhart. Stop it. You know that. Go back and run towards the love side and. We say it, but do we do it? When do we do it? Understand those situations and start reflecting? It's one of the things we do in America. Teach approvement so much. It's like just stop. Reflect. Are we going the right way? Do we need to change? We tried some things. How did work out? Do we need to go this way? And in doing that and trying to understand what the masculine journey is and the things that Elders is kind of helped us with it. It comes together and it starts to formulate a completely different me. And it comes in a different me in the midst of one I'm going through now. Forget about years ago, sometimes even six months ago or a few days ago. Where are we now? Where is this person now?

Where am I at now and how do we figure that out? And the way we go towards beer is living in the smaller story. It's it's all good. It's all about me. And when you're in that mode, you're going to be headed toward Sfeir all the time. But when it becomes about others, you can turn towards love. Well, the things that really hit me when you were talking is how often it's not. And not only is it not about us, the anger is it even towards us? It's a well, you're talking about being at work and you're only up from the stuff at work. And you go home and you decide one will be myself here. And I'm not going to be courteous to my wife and I'm not going to be loving towards my children. I'm going to give them what I got all day. That's heading towards the your side in a it's hard.

Rather, you may not have heard this. I know I've heard it in the past. Don't try that work stuff out. Me.

So you've got to be a little bit a code. Convert it cold. Hard about that. Right.

But but it's the same principle. You know, when my my son's upset, my daughter's ups, you know, whatever, I need to take that same approach of trying to understand the why behind that. You know, when we can get there, then we can really deal with that issue and we can move more towards love. You know, anything else that I'm trying to do is probably not going to lead in that direction, but moved towards the timeline. Down towards fear.

Yeah. And that good word that you use y can be a dangerous word, right? I used it for years, whether it was at work or at home, as a way to go deeper into understanding a diagnostic tool. And I'm telling you, I didn't realize the condemnation that can come along with Y. Oh yeah, exactly. Because even though I say, OK, so why is that. You know, comes across as, oh man, you're condemning me and you're trying to really find out what's in there about me. And so it's like born to rephrase that so much better and to. So what is it about that that scares you? You said you're scared. So what is it about me saying this answer or me coming home and doing something or whatever it happens to be in that and it changes the mood and it does keep them on the defense. And it's like it helps a hawk. It helps at home if you just keep people off the defense.

Yeah. And honestly, it why was reaction for me? Because so many times I used as a hammer.

Yeah. You know. And so that was a well earned, you know, at least in my case. Yeah. Well as you do diagnostics, it gets down to some is quote unquote fault. Yeah. Right. And when I'm trying to find fault, it's not gonna end well.

Yeah. Back to Harold. Logical. We're gonna find this out and figure out MANSER Right.

When I when I'm dealing with it, let's let's determine where fault lies. That's not typically going to end well.

Right. How soon can I get out of this and get onto something else? I want to you, don't you?

You talked about a class that you know that your company. Yeah. Put you through years ago. And it all. Let's talk about that in a second. And but this leads into that. That is when I. Since others are fearful because of my actions, how do I handle their heart?

I wished I would have learned this a long time ago, and I wish that I would always handle it correctly now. I don't, though. A lot of times when when Sheila or my family or you guys as a band of brothers, I suggest something and you guys go, oh, you know, and and react with a little bit of concern.

I won't call it fear necessarily into it. Yeah. Trepidation. Yes. That's not exactly fear. It's worse.

So but, you know, when somebody reacts that way, I feel the assault, you know, that's what that's where the enemy comes to me is. Oh, well, they've spent enough time around you.

They should trust you more than that. They should know you're not trying to scare them. They should know that you're not trying to hurt them. And so that's what the enemy comes at me with.

And I have to learn that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait.

And that's where it goes. Back to the introspection part that you talked about earlier, too. I have to ask myself, wait, I have done some stupid things that scared people so they have a right perhaps to go well there and that's that you're gonna scaring me a little bit here and not take that as a personal assault.

Yeah. The class that you're talking about, my company I was with years ago in Indiana, sent us to some marriage classes. You know, people, they put them on. They were very good about doing that. And there's a couple, Emerson, Elkridge and his wife and I remember name, but they had a love and respect was the name of their their series that they taught on. And in the one piece that I really took from there. And honestly, it's probably the only piece I took from that training, but it was really powerful. My life was what they called the crazy cycle. And the crazy cycle is talking about a man and woman relationship. When when I or anyone actually. But when a man reacts on lovingly, a woman's reaction is often disrespectful in nature, in his eyes. And when a man doesn't feel respect, he reacts and lovingly. Right. And so you get the cycle going where she doesn't feel love. So she doesn't act in a respectful manner. He doesn't feel respected. So he doesn't act in a loving manner. And it could be just it could be gender reversed. Right. But that is a constant relational cycle. When you think about it. That's what you see spinning.

Right. And that's what we talk about. The only way you break that is you move into the love arena. Right. Right. And you start to try to understand that other person and see where they're coming from and ask the right questions and enter into love, which we're going to talk about next. We can finally get unstuck from this fear. Yeah, we're gonna move. In our lifeline towards love, we're gonna give some love. Yeah, we're gonna move to that end of the spectrum. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to say, but the positives in the meantime go to Mask on Journey Dorji. Listen to some past podcast. But more importantly, go and register for the upcoming bootcamp coming up November 12th through the 15th at Park Springs up in Providence. I don't want to say Rhode Island, but North Carolina, it's a wonderful place. It's going to be a great boot camp. Go register now. We'll see you next week.

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