MDMA Therapy and Male Emotional Vulnerability
In this conversational video, a therapist (Speaker A) and a participant (Speaker B) explore how MDMA‑assisted therapy can help men overcome entrenched patterns of emotional unavailability and vulnerability, especially in relationships with women. The therapist shares personal anecdotes about his own marriage and fatherhood, describing how MDMA acted as an empathogen that forged new neural pathways for empathy, allowing him to cry while rocking his daughter and to feel a deeper connection with his wife. They discuss broader gendered barriers—men’s cultural wiring, wives’ expectations, and the need to re‑pattern notions of masculinity. The conversation then shifts to the neurobiological window after a psychedelic session: a 2‑to‑2.5‑week period of heightened neuroplasticity comparable to a two‑year‑old’s social learning capacity, during which integration work is crucial. Practical integration tools are outlined, including high‑vibe music playlists, breathwork, sound baths, heart‑coherence exercises (hands‑on heart breathing), grounding, and minimizing exposure to stressful stimuli. The therapist references the HeartMath Institute’s findings that a coherent heart emits an electromagnetic field up to eight feet, linking heart coherence to emotional safety. They also address safety and contraindications, noting the need to screen for neurodivergence, trauma histories, and medication interactions, and describing a sequencing strategy of MDMA first to establish safety before introducing psilocybin or dissociatives. Finally, they touch on processing suppressed anger, using vision boards to shift focus from material goals to emotional moments, and the importance of surrender and authentic vulnerability in therapeutic outcomes.
Chapters
The Bible says guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. You know, Jesus and other spiritual leaders talked about, yeah, love with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, all of your body. Like, every aspect of you needs to be involved. But if a major chunk of it is cut off, it's like a dead zone.
One of the things I wanted to circle back with— so with men specifically and doing MDMA therapy, do you find a pattern or like a common thread when it comes to like a resistance to expressing vulnerability to the feminine?
100%. Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up. So my wife, um, and like a lot of, uh, wives complained that I was not emotionally, uh, available and connected. I'm like, what the hell? I don't know how to do that. I had no wiring for that. I couldn't get there. And she was like a walking heart, and I was like a walking mind. So you can imagine there's a little disconnect. And I was kind, I was loving, but I just did not even know, and I physiologically did not understand how to connect with her emotionally the way she wanted. Um, but MDMA, because it's an empathogen, it floods you with a sense of empathy. It's literally like it creates this new neural pathway of empathy. That I never had before. And I can remember after the first time I did it, I was rocking my daughter to sleep. I usually rock— and she was about 18 months old at the time. And I was rocking her and I just started tearing up. I just felt so emotionally connected and so loving to her. And it was like 3 days after the session. And I was like, "Wow, okay." And then my wife and I could connect at least for— now eventually my afterglow kind of wore off. But now I've done it enough that that pathway is there without the medicine. Like, I was tearing up with you guys as you were tearing up last night, you know? And I can get there. And like, I'll rock my daughter to sleep, you know, probably once a week where I just tear up. I just feel so much love. And my daughter now runs to me in a way she never ran to me when I would come home or whatever, because she feels emotionally safe and connected to me. And I'm empathetic. But it— I— for men that struggle with getting that emotional connection, we— and it's harder for us as men. We're not wired that way as deeply. Like, one research study found that average 7-year-old daughter has a more emotionally rich vocabulary than her dad. 7-year-old. And so I got like 4 years if I'm average. I'm above average. But, you know, because my 3-year-old is She's full of expression. But, you know, if I want to be emotionally connected, my wife wanted it to— I mean, our marriage was on the rocks many different times because of that. I mean, that was one of the factors. And now, like, we're better than ever. She feels more love and more heart connection, and I'm able to empathize, and I have that pathway. And I would say before it was a gravel road from my heart to my head, now it's like a 4-lane highway. And I couldn't have got there without the medicine.
So what would you say to men that say women don't actually want to see vulnerability, or let alone a man cry, because the minute that they show anything, that she'll see it as weakness and leave?
Yeah, I'd say sometimes that is true, that women will say that. And then, like my wife, when I started being more emotionally vulnerable, she then would say a couple weeks later, I don't want to say anything because then you'll be like a pussy and cry.
Oh no.
And so that was her, but she was also learning to re-pattern her nervous system. And then I'm also learning what type of vulnerability really means. It doesn't mean being a mopey mess necessarily, but it means being emotionally safe and connected to my wife. So I thought it, you know, women might say they want What they really want is they want to feel emotionally safe. So they don't necessarily want us to unravel before them because they might not feel safe if we unravel. And so we still need an outlet to unravel, whether that's another, you know, coach, therapist, another buddy, wise mentor, or whatever. You need someone sometimes be able to unravel, and I can unravel with my wife to some extent with certain things, but I can't do everything. You know, she doesn't really want me to unravel like she unravels. She needs me to hold space for anything and everything, and she has her girlfriends for that too, and her sister, but I've found, at least in my work, that the women, when they they say that they just want the emotional connection. That's really what they want. Because if Erica is a soppy mess for like weeks, you're like, you are— now you have to shift into masculine. Yeah. So, and men, we don't really want to be a soppy mess anyhow. That's not, not as natural for us.
Yeah, I think— yeah, and I think that there's a difference too between like wallowing and not letting the emotion pass through you versus just one honest expression. And I've had men in the comment section say that they took advice and they were vulnerable and they cried for the first time in front of their girlfriend and now it's their ex-girlfriend. And I think it's got to probably be a balance for a man. I know it's going to be different than for a woman. Like you can't bear all of it all the time. So being selective with it. But I would also have the counterpoint that if she's so scared of seeing you, then that's not your fault.
Yeah, correct.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's like my wife had to heal and re-pattern some ideology around what authentic masculinity looked like for her, um, because she grew up in a very, you know, toxic masculine environment. So 100%. And, and now we have that. But I'm— yeah, I, I would say, man, it's scary to emotionally unwind and cry. But, um, and that's not even necessarily the, the ultimate barometer of like emotional vulnerability. Do you cry?
Yeah.
But a lot of men I've worked with have— haven't cried in 20 years too. And then finally they open up and release. So yeah, yeah.
So yeah, I think too, like, being intentional with your partner and, um, sometimes realizing it's not the partner for you, or working together to where you're both operating at a higher level so neither of you are scared.
Yeah. And ultimately too, I see a lot of men where we need to be able to learn how to process our emotion instead of burying and suppressing it. And, and when we bury and suppress it, then often comes back out as anger. And that also doesn't make you feel safe. And like one of my clients right now, he's controlling his anger, but I'm actually trying to get him to unlock it.
Like anger management?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, I want it out. So he's like, be a raging bear for a moment, not with his wife, but be a raging bear to release it because it's so suppressed. And so tightly controlled. And that's making his power, that's robbing him of his power. When you're controlling your emotion, you know, the Bible says, "Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." You know, Jesus and other spiritual leaders talked about, you gotta love with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, all of your body. Like every aspect of you needs to be involved. But if a major chunk of it is cut off, well, your heart is like the source of creativity, the source of inspiration, the source of, uh, your magnetism. You know, HeartMath Institute has found that the heart is 65 times more electromagnetically powerful than your brain. So it sends out a stronger electromagnetic field that can extend up to 8 feet. But if you're disconnected, it's like a dead zone.
How's that measured?
Uh, ECGs.
Okay.
Um, heartmathinstitute.org, they have a lot of research on it. But it's like, literally, they can— if you're in heart coherence, which is where you're just connected and you're not in bitterness, not in rage, not in any of that, but you're just in this loving, centered state, you— your electromagnetic field actually extends out 8 feet. If you're not, it's like, it's like inches. And And so this is even kind of older technology. I don't understand it all right now, but it— like, you can feel it when you walk in. Like, I've been to a bunch of Tony Robbins events. The dude is connected and he's present. Joe Dispenza, Oprah, Michelle Obama, or Michelle— yeah, Michelle Obama. Um, uh, you know, so you— when people are in hardcore, like, I feel you guys are in heart coherence now. You didn't start the night off in hardcore.
No.
So, and you're in a glow and there's this trust and this energy and rapport that happens when you're in heart coherence.
Yeah, it's, I've been like so cognizant today of like what I'm listening to. I haven't been on my phone. And even when I went to put music on when I was getting ready, like what playlist do I do? I don't want to like take any, like anything that's going to kind of bring me down or like lower the vibration at all. What is the protocol to like, I guess, keep all the benefits for as long as possible and then be able to integrate it to where you're not like using something every other week, or— yeah, right, like you're not relying externally to get there and like you can trust your body to get back?
Yeah, so I really think it comes down about 4 or 5 things. First, like after the session, so back on the neuroscience side, you know, you have this acute window, acute subjective experience, which is while you're on the high. And that's 3 to 6 hours for most medicine. For MDMA and psilocybin, ketamine is 30 minutes to 2 hours, LSD is like 8 to 10 hours. But the 2 weeks after, up to 2 and a half weeks, you're in this critical period reopening. And it's basically where your neuroplasticity is equivalent to a healthy, like, 2-year-old, at least in terms of social learning. And, and so you're more prone to anything you do the next 2 and a half weeks is gonna be anchored in. And so you have a chance to reframe. You have neuroplasticity.
Pressure's on.
Well, you can enjoy it. You're still gonna do the normal things, right? But do like the playlist that we used where it's just a very pleasant and high vibe playlist. So listen to high vibe music, do breathwork, meditation. So that'd be the third thing. I love sound baths. Sound baths because your nerve— your nervous system in particular was in such a high anxious state unconsciously to some extent, or just not feeling safe. You want to keep recalibrating it back to safety. And then I'd say that there's another exercise called a heart coherence exercise I have on my YouTube channel where you just kind of connect with your heart. You put like both hands on your heart and you just breathe into your heart. Takes like 2 minutes. And you just bring your attention and your focus to your heart. Notice what you're feeling, notice what you're, uh, experiencing. Just breathe into your heart and feel your heart. We won't do the full thing, but you just feel and connect to your heart. And then you can also ground— like, you might— for you guys, I would have Eric ground you on a daily basis. Just put his arms firmly on your shoulders so you don't float off, but not force you into the ground. Yeah, not like a tree post or something, um, but hold you, connect, um, connect from the heart and notice what you're feeling. Um, and then also minimizing the toxicity, minimizing like exposure to difficult, high-stress people or situations for a couple weeks.
And does that go the same with books and podcasts and movies?
Exactly. Yeah, like don't go watch, you know, Game of Thrones or whatever, Black Hawk Down or something, you know, violent movie that would trigger your nervous system. And it can also mean minimizing, like for my wife after a session, because she's a highly sensitive person and she's also on the scale of autism a little bit. So being around my daughter too much triggers her. And she loves my daughter, she's a great mom. But it literally activates her childhood trauma still. Like, we've got two pieces of her complex PTSD, which is very hard to cure. We've basically got 90% of her PTSD out of her system, but two major triggers are like significant exposure to my daughter will— can sometimes, if my daughter is difficult, will trigger her childhood trauma of screaming, overwhelming children. So we got to work on that and then being late. For some reason. Being late was a big deal for her as a kid, and she was spanked really bad. I don't know.
Oh yeah, I get that. That's interesting with the neurodivergency. Do you notice anything different with medicine work and being neurodivergent?
Yeah, sometimes. Um, uh, I mean, not every medicine is safe for everybody, right? And so I gotta understand their psychological makeup, their, um, uh their history, their mental health history. Also, if they're on any medications, we want to go through all that, like I asked you guys. But you want to know, like, like, for example, I would not give someone a dissociative if they have been traumatized or scared by dissociative experiences, meaning like they did marijuana and it took them off in a wild crazy journey and they have a lot of trauma around that, then— and part of the process that I use, you know, we do MDMA first and then psilocybin afterwards because MDMA already floods your body with a sense of safety and then it makes a dissociative really powerful. And like, even for you with some of the trauma that you've been through, we needed to first get you associated and then I want to heal, release the emotion, unfreeze it, move it out of your nervous system and then allow your nervous system to recalibrate and then bring in a little bit of a cognitive dissociative that also helps you tap into spiritual connection, which you guys had last night, right?
Yeah. So that was only my second time doing like a bigger dose of psilocybin. And I was definitely nervous because we did— that was so cool. The body testing. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. So you would ask me a question and there was something that I would be convinced like I know the answer. The answer is I don't want this or I don't want more of this. I don't want to do that. I'm fine with this. And my body was almost the entire time saying the opposite of what my mind was saying. And I chose to listen to my body because that's why you're here. And I was trusting you and the experience. And I'm so glad that I did because I was definitely nervous. But when it kicked in my first time I did it, I didn't have a wildly visual experience. It was just like more in my body, like just kind of tremors. And then no context to it. So I'm like, I don't know why I'm shaking, but I'm just gonna trust that I needed this. And the time that we did it last night, I was like, Eric was actually getting kind of annoyed. And then I caught myself and I'm like, no, like be here with him. Like all of this is not why you're here. 'Cause I was trying to share with him what I was seeing and he was getting frustrated. I'm like, okay, so I stopped. But like I saw geometrics everywhere. I saw like creatures. In the beams and they were like playing and, um, they were like sending down these patterns. Yeah. And then towards the end of the night, it was like this, uh, bright teal, like light blue language everywhere.
Wow.
And I didn't know what it was. Like, I'm like, I can't read this. And Eric's like, ah, you shouldn't have said that to yourself because you would have been able to read it. And I was like, dang it, I'm such a novice. Um, so like maybe next time. And I was like, it— I think it again goes back down to safety. And I'm like, I've allowed it to actually get in. And then I was able to see, because Eric always has like these really visual experiences, and I'd always be like, how come he goes to Harry Potter land and I'm sitting here shaking? And that's all, you know what I mean? And I think it was like, congratulations, great high, a lot of resistance, you know. It's like me, me fighting the medicine. And what's really funny is the first time that I did psilocybin, I brought one of my friends, and she's very type A, and she did a huge dose. Yeah, and she's half my size. Yeah, nothing. Stone— like, she's just sitting there eating, watching me with my eye mask. She's like, I don't— and then I'm telling her my experience, like, I don't understand. So it's, uh, it's amazing how much you can fight something.
100%. Yeah, you can override a lot.
Yeah.
And I had another client, she's, um, oral surgeon and grew up Japanese. She's Japanese, but She, you know, her parents never told her, "I love you," never said those type of things. Well, she does the medicine and she resists and resists and resists. And of course she gets a massive migraine and headache the next day. But she also, when she did surrender in, she opened up and she was so affectionate and expressive, more than she'd ever been. And like my wife and I saw her, like it was in a ceremony, and it was like, wow, she is such a sweetheart. We could see her, but she's so Type A and so controlling that when she resisted, she wouldn't— nothing experienced. She didn't experience anything. But when she let go, she opened up in a beautiful way. So it is so much about surrendering in.
Yeah, yeah. Context is, is massive. And then maybe like, again, not the first time, because it's my second time, it's like, yeah, you just need a little bit more and you need the right person there. Yeah, I think Again, like having just you and Eric and like it being two men, like it just, it's like, okay, I'm good. Like I can let go here and relax. Just to reiterate too, like the week, the window is like two weeks.
Yeah, two and a half weeks.
Two and a half weeks. So I should probably put a calendar reminder to just be like very intentional. Man, that's gonna be so hard 'cause that means like zero scrolling.
Yeah, yeah.
'Cause you don't know what you're gonna see.
Yeah, true.
Yeah, yeah, depending on your algorithm especially.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Yeah, but I was doing, um, when I was kind of like, I don't know what to do or what to listen to, I'm like, I'll just make a vision board really quick and just like, just like find some stuff. And it's gonna sound probably trivial, but to me it was like this moment, um, when I used to do vision boards and Eric and I used to do it together and like cutouts, it was always like things. So I'd have— and they usually work, which is the scary part, but it was always things. It was like big house, fast car, big bag of money, jet, like all these things. And I think that's probably the average. And then I start doing my vision board and I'm like, huh, what do I want to put on this? And I found myself like putting— oh my gosh, it's so good. Like emotions, like moments. Like if you were to like capture moments of someone's life. I'm getting emotional again. Like kids tumbling in the grass and like an old couple walking down the street. And I'm like, that's what I want.
Yeah, 100%.
Like I have everything else, you know what I mean? Like I have everything. It's a different version. I have a car. Like what, you want a nicer car? I have a great house. Like you want a bigger house? What is that gonna do? And when I was looking at the stuff, I'm like, that's not, I just knew, like that's not what I want. And then when I listened, it's like all of these everyday moments, like cooking when kids are throwing dough in the air, like that kind of stuff. Which brings me back to the question that it just popped back up. So it was how powerful it was for me to see my body answer questions for me and using that as the barometer of truth truth or alignment. Um, and it was so obvious because my— again, it was like this, right? Or like tremors everywhere. It was, it was very like unignorable.
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