The Power of Teamwork In Relationship + How To Heal Your Attachment Style

One of the biggest indicators of a long term, healthy, stable marriage is a hormone called vasopressin. Vasopressin is released when we solve challenges together, overcome problems together. We work as a team. Men have more receptors for vasopressin than women do, and that wanes over a while. It wears off. So we have to refresh it. We have to remember that we are a team. Women detect that through feelings. We don't feel like we used to. We don't feel close. We don't feel like a team. We are stuck in a boring rut. They instinctively, through their feelings, intuitively safeguard the relationship. So when the man says, no thanks, we are shutting off a tremendous amount of the value that they bring to the relationship. So that right there is why wives crave not to be in control, but to be listened to and to be trusted. To have their feelings mean something to their husband. Male and female brains are designed to work together as a system. They must, or everything falls apart. They're not meant to work individually. Men go forward and we build and build and build and we expand. Women follow afterward and they fill the space that men have built. They're the ones that make the structures that we create so much richer and better. But they rely upon us to build those structures in the first place, to build safety and prioritize that as we push outward.

Why do these things exist? This polarity of us versus them, what is that in the human psyche? How does that actually benefit us as a human race? Adam, welcome to the podcast.

Josh, it is an honor to be here. Thank you for having me.

You've been putting out some amazing work for quite a long time. Your IG is officially blowing up. We were introduced by Adam and the Mind Pump crew. So shout out to Mind Pump. And whenever Sal or Adam gives me someone that they think is smart and intelligent and making an impact like you, I listen. And so let's just dive right in, man. I look at the landscape of psychology and I'm always fascinated by it. We're kind of top up beings and modernity and modern society, but really. And you know, the best person who talked about this was Hawkins. The greatest space for many of us is the space between our head and our heart. And how do we close those down so we can actually operate in one sole unit as that person, as that being. But it's interesting, you know, you being a man, I think it's around 70% or so of psychologists and people with master's degrees like yourself are women. And then 30, 40% are men. Like what even drove you to pull the E brake and go way back? Like what drove you to dive so deeply into this field? Was it a heart based intuition thing where you knew, Was it a significant life events or amalgamation of a few? Like what was that for you? What's the genesis?

Yeah, I grew up in Central Valley of California, which is not as glamorous as the coast of California. The center valley is drugs and dust and bedroom communities that are pretty farmed out for anybody who wants to come in and just work on the coast. So the middle of California is just crushed with depression, with struggles with broken families. And I grew up amidst all of that. All of my friends, they struggled and everybody I knew struggled. Nobody could form really healthy, lasting relationships. If you want to, if you want to see ground zero of broken relationships, you go to California, unfortunately. And I grew up amidst all that trying to help my friends, trying to take care of them. I fell into this caretaker role of everybody. And by the time I turned, you know, 18, 19, it was time to go to college and I realized I can get paid for helping human beings and then get training to do that and then really advance that and then maybe even come up with ideas that would help them at the source instead of just all this triage I've been trying to do for all these friends that I've lost over the years. And it, it was eye opening. You go into a full trained education, get my master's degree, then three years of apprenticeship. There's a nine year training program to become a licensed psychotherapist. Now I'm a coach. It, I had to, I had to. It's been my whole life. There was nothing else for me to do.

You were essentially already doing it and you decided, hey, I'm going to make this my path, my career, my focus.

The world was messed up and I had to charge into it. If you see, see a house on fire, some people run away. I had to run in to try to save some people in there.

Okay, so essentially you're like someone in the Marine Corps, but for the heart and the mind.

The psychology Marine. There we go.

You go towards the gunfire. Well, you know, you don't become. You're a father of four children. Correct.

Five on the way. Number be born.

Five on the way. Amazing. And almost 15 years of marriage by the time we're recording this. This is 2024. Now. You are not able to hold all of that and do the, the level of work in the world unless you have some deep practices for your own self for your own psyche, for your own emotional health. Let's dive into how you and I, as men, regulate ourselves and actually see the world through different glasses. From a neurological perspective. Like, our neurology is so different than a woman's neurology. And I know this is part of what you talk. What are some of the key characteristics that are different about you and I as men and. And the women that are listening and watching too. How can you describe the core differences between the two?

Oh, man. So the male brain has been formed to observe in the back and then jump forward and act upon that observation, find a problem, act upon it, or be thinking and pondering on a problem and only act upon that problem. So our solution focus is overwhelmingly powerful.

Right?

If you want a man to build a cabin, he builds a cabin. Like, that's why we tools. That's why we build, that's why we create. You observe and then you focus into that. Now, the female brain observes in the back and then goes back and forth across the hemispheres to start analyzing, figuring out patterns, figuring out ways to enhance, ways to improve relationship patterns. The male brain doesn't really do that unless we are under heavy stress and heavy emotional anxiety. Then our brain starts freaking out and acting a little bit more like a female brain to try to assess threats. But by and large, the male brain is very solution focused. That's why we can walk by the. In the kitchen, we're focusing on a project, not even see the trash overflowing and on fire, and we don't notice it. And we walk right through and she's like, how did you not. The brain doesn't do that. The brain is solving another problem.

So you said back to front. Are you talking about the PFC and the posterior cingulate? What's the neurology there? What's actually going on?

So in the back areas, our senses, a lot of our sense areas are toward the back of observation, of detecting various things and seeing them or being aware of problems. Our language centers, reading things are also more toward the back. So we observe toward the back, but then it goes forward into the frontal cortex to start developing solutions to what we have observed. This is also why when you're in a conversation with a woman and she's sharing her feelings, you're observing, and then you jump to a solution. You're throwing solutions at her. This will fix it. This will fix it. And you're shutting her up. The message she's getting is, I don't, I don't care. I don't Want to listen. If a woman listens, it goes back and forth across the hemispheres, back in her brain. The data does. The male brain does not. The male brain does not process like that. It does not digest like that. It jumps to a solution. And unfortunately, they take that, usually as disrespect.

Wow, that's. There's so much to unpack there. I remember I was interviewing Alison Armstrong, and she gave this example of how women's brains can literally have, on a dresser drawer, seven or eight drawers open, and they know exactly what's going on in all of them. If you're in the female brain, but a man's brain, he's like, why are there green socks in the top drawer? It's totally different. We are kind of myopically focused. And in a way, I wonder how you feel about this. It's what has built civilizations. It's the part of masculinity and that energy that actually creates where a lot of creation emanates from. Do you feel that that structure was formed over evolutionary time in women's brains to be so multifactorial because of nurturing and caring of children? Or was it something else?

Think of it this way. Men go forward, and we build and build and build and we expand. Men are on the outside of the tribe, on the outside of the village, on the outside of the family. We build and expand and expand and expand. And that doesn't mean that we perf. Build everything to exact, perfect, minute, little detail. And we fill in all the relationship pieces as we go. We build and build and build, and then we keep building, right? Women follow afterward, and they fill the space that men have built. We build structures. They fill the structures and refine the structures and improve the structures and edit the structures. They're the ones that make the structures that we create so much richer and better. But they rely upon us to build those structures in the first place, to build safety and prioritize that as we push outward. Think of it that way. The male and female brain, they're meant to click together. They're not meant to work individually. Male and female brains are designed to work together as a system. They must, or everything falls apart.

The narrative in society. And we've covered this on a lot of different podcasts. One specific solo cast about feminism, and we've had a lot of conversations with Dr. Kelly Brogan about really the psyop and the lie of feminism. I've also heard you talk about Red Pill, which I want to get into with you. Why do these things exist? This polarity of us versus them, what is that in the human psyche? How does that actually benefit us as a human race? I personally think it doesn't. Anytime I'm dividing myself, red, black, white, Republican, Democrat, pro this, anti that. It's actually just all a illusion. But what's your take on that from a psychological perspective? And why is that playing out so profoundly in our humanity right now?

Yeah. So that's. We have a core survival adaptation to identify people who are not our group and then survive against them as needed. The. The idea is that this could have been from other branches of humanity during evolutionary processes. That might be why we have the uncanny valley effect. That does not look like me kill it with fire kind of thing. That. That could be it. Also to reject diseased bodies. But. But it could very well be Neanderthals that we said absolutely not. We have to kill that thing. It's not like us. But also rival tribes. Right. Resources are scarce. You're going to push out other tribes. It's. Racism is not about color. Racism is about. I don't like the people next door because I don't feel like there's enough resources for us to go around. People don't realize this, but in the 1800s, a lot of the Irish immigrants to America, the Chinese immigrants to America and then a lot of the African Americans who were here, they were all forced to compete at the very bottom level of society to barely survive. Right. St. Patty's Day, we talked about the corn beef. We celebrate that. That's a garbage piece of the food, the trash food that they would serve the Irish in the alley afterward. And then you had to spice it up to make it pal that. That those three groups operate at the very bottom level of society and formed deep hatreds and resentment toward each other as they competed desperately for the same level of jobs or their children would starve and die. Those rivalries are still very alive today in the United States, even 100, 150 years later. That's. That's where that mechanism comes from. So now we've got this deep division between men and women of you are a threat to me. It's threat detection from the out group. That's where you see extreme feminism on one side for women and extreme red pill content on the other side for men. You are a threat to me. I don't know how to work with you. Therefore you are my enemy. I must fight against you. That's where that's coming from.

It's so interesting because war, I believe I forget the German scholar. But it was a continuation of politics beyond normal means. And if you look at what's going on in social media, I'm sure you get accosted because you hold significant views. Anytime you stand for something, you're going to have people all around you that are going to challenge that, maybe even through you shade throw you hatred when you come across this energy of really you wanting to. What I get from you is you want to cast a shadow of peace and you want to deteriorate this division, this bifurcation of me versus you, us versus them. How do you manage that on a personal level? I know for me, when I started creating content in 2015, it took about five years for me to stop giving a fuck about what people thought of me. But especially. But yours, Adam, is very polarized. It's very interesting because you're talking about core differentiation between man and woman. There's the whole trans movement, there's the whole, I guess you could say, acceptance of all, regardless of boundaries. How do you deal with that? Especially in this current environment of what seems at times to be war, when really what I get from you is that you're just trying to cast a shadow of peace to bring people back together. How do you deal with all of.

That's a fantastic question. I have a wonderful, wonderful friend named Matt who has told me, adam, look, people are going to come at you, right? And you're going to have to really roll with that. So what are you going to do? And I said, well, I want to, I want to be peaceful. And he said, well, then you're gonna have to make them think you don't use. You don't have your, your enemies come charging at you and then you attack them, make them think about something. So like my, what I, what I do is this. When angry, radicalized, scared, really scared feminists come at me and they're angry, I say, in my mind, I think, you know, what are you scared of? What are you scared of that you're afraid I'm going to take away from you? You think I'm a big scary man, that I'm going to train other men to hurt you? Let me show you where I'm actually trying to help. Let me show you. Let me ask you, what would you like men to be doing? What would you like men to be doing? And they share. And I say, okay, how can we make men want to do that? And then they really stop and think, well, okay, how can we, how can we make men stop and think about it? And then I Teach them about attachment theory, right? I have angry red pill men come to me and I tell them, look, love and care and nurture, build trusting relationships. And they've been wounded and they're scared and they try to pick anything they can. I've had, I, I've done all my work on my mind. My body is not there. I'm losing weight over the last six months. Now I've got a trainer, I'm doing that, but I'm heavier than I need to be. So they come at me and say, why should we listen to you? You are overweight, you're this fat dude, who cares what you think. And, and I could say, oh, screw you. You know, I could get all mad and I don't. Honestly doesn't even bother me because I say this, you know, I have five kids, I have a beautiful wife, I run a great business, I love what I do for a living and I love my wife. And yes, I am losing weight, but look at me, right? Red pill. You guys say like you have to be 8ft tall, $10 billion in the bank, like 12 pack abs, or no woman will ever want you. But I have the life that you want. So what do you think I might be doing, right, that you guys don't know about yet? And they go and they have no response. I have yet to find a guy have a response to that. So what are they scared of and what is it that they really want? If you do that, that's how you get people on your side, care about what they care about.

That is so good because really the better answers come from really intelligent questions. And by better answers, I mean more loving, more connected. There's something you posted, I think a few weeks ago. It says a damaged man is incapable of love because he does not believe love will be freely given, only earned through works. Second part, really fascinating. He seeks false intimacy in lust and mistakes sex for acceptance. These men seek insecure women who believe themselves unlovable and who use sex to earn approval. I think the wounding that you're starting to unravel there, and I want you to unravel it a little bit more, is that when a man is damaged because of his upbringing, and by the way, it could even be generational. His grandparents, great, great grandparents. When a man appears wounded to a woman, he's going to, I guess, energetically or loa, attract a type of woman that may actually fit his broken piece just like that. And this narrative right here where a man will not ever be worthy of love. You have to be Worthy. You have to provide. You have to do all these things, and then you're worthy of love. It's a broken fallacy. It's just not true at all. But yet I believed it for many decades in my life before I found Kerry, Michelle, and I became a father. Love does not keep score. Love is not this freaking scoreboard on the playing field where it's like, you did these five things for me, so now I'll give you sex. That's not how it works. But can you unravel that a little bit more and maybe also juxtapose that with the red pill itself? That's the core narrative from Tate and all these people where a man is only worthy if he provides. I think I even saw Chris Rock say, the only people that are worthy of love are women, animals, and children. And I thought to myself, huh, that is a very interesting yet harmful take. So what do you make of all of this?

It's. It's. It is crushingly sad. So here. Here's what I'm going to show you is the research indicates that about 50% of American adults now have an attachment issue, right? Attachment is the way that we connect to other people to give and receive love. And we are. We learn this from minutes after birth up until age 6, age 7, age 12. Our whole childhood is about learning. Are people going to love me? Do I live in an environment where people will support me? Do I live in a place where people will love and care for each other? Or is it a fight for resources and survival and no one will help me? And is it my fault? Am I unlovable? Or are other people broken? And the brain starts trying to filter all this information from six months old, right? Do you pick the baby up really quick in the crib? Do you yell at the baby? Does mom have postpartum depression so she doesn't actually talk and laugh and smile to the baby, then play with the baby and give the baby attention and give the baby information you are worthy of love. I will pay attention to you just because you are here. You are special to me. I will always be here with you. Does mom do that? Or is mom distant? Is mom cold? Is mom on her phone all the time? Does mom not respond? His mom crushingly depressed, so she has no facial. A complete flat affect, what they call the flat affect problem. What is mom doing? What is dad doing? Is dad present? Is he gone? Does the child say, if I was a better child, dad would have stayed, even though Dad's, you know, who knows what Dad's doing. Mom has alienated dad, but now the baby thinks dad left on his own because the baby wasn't good enough. All kinds of messages come from this. I work with people who are adopted at birth who have attachment issues and their brain is telling them something is wrong. These are not my family. The smell. Babies come out knowing their mother's smell. And none of these people smell right to me. So I feel like I've been stolen from my family. There's all these pieces that weave together. But when you learn as a child that your mother only pays attention to you when you are interesting, that they only stop yelling at you when you are perfect, that you must get approval from other people by doing the right things, by pushing the right button buttons, that you don't deserve love and no one will ever care for you if they know who you really are. So you have to play games to make other people like you. You've developed this. This transactional relationship with the world where your worth is tied only to the dopamine that you give to other people and to the control that you have over the relationships. And that is where red pill comes from. Feminism. This belief that men are only worth what we can produce. That's where that comes in that women, all women are gold diggers. Women only want to take a guy. Today, just tell me I posted about the importance of, of connection and love. And he posted and said all women are parasites, right? That. That's that view of they just want to take from us. That's a harsh one. All women are parasites. It's as bad as all men are rapists. It's. The other group will never care about me and the other group. Someone from the other group has hurt me and I am scared and I don't think I will ever be loved or accepted. So I will push back and take control in the only ways I know how. And when you don't know how to get love, if you don't know that love exists, you take control instead. Or you spend your life earning approval from people you think have control.

It's almost like we are in humanity. We've been given a Ferrari, which is life. I mean, God creator gifted us life, right? And I'm not here to define what God is. Everyone can figure that out from our 600 shows. But I do say, and I wonder how you feel about this. This people who have a connection to something outside of them are less likely to be in bondage about the war versus me and you and us versus them. Do you believe that's true in your own life, do you see that play out with clients? Essentially, acknowledgement and honoring the mystery of why we're actually here in the first place, and a deeper dive into just the mystery and the beauty of life can, in so many ways, be an antidote to the war itself.

I only know three things. I only know, really, three things on this topic. And I will tell you those three things in order. Audience out there, you guys can fight over this, tell me if I'm right or wrong, but I only know three things. Number one is that if you have never experienced love, then it makes no sense when somebody else talks to you about love and you can't factor it in your calculations, and you will never, ever feel safe without love in your life. And if you've never felt it, your life is so much less than it could be and so much more fearful than it has to be. Number two, if and when you actually discover what love is and you experience it with one human being on this planet, and you experience legitimate, real love with one human, whether that's a friendship, a partner, anybody, it changes everything because the world has 10 new colors in it, the 10 new smells, 10 new realities. Everything opens up in a way that never existed before. And suddenly things start to make sense, and there is suddenly joy and hope, and that is important. And number three, I have worked with a tremendous number of people from all kinds of different faiths, and. And in the absence of any kind of love or warmth or goodness in their world, it is very hard for them to really, truly believe in any kind of a God who might love them or regard them as war worthwhile. But once they feel love from another human and it's modeled for them, suddenly they have an image of God in some way that they can finally understand and grasp onto. And many of them take a second look at whatever their religious faith was before they lost it. Love is everything. Everything. The importance of it cannot be understated. I even saw Andrew Tate recently. Somebody asked him, would you consider marriage? And he said, him. And he paused, and he took a deep breath, and he said, in my younger days, I would have said no, but I'm really starting to second guess that and think about this. And. And there's something important about love that I didn't understand before. I'm paraphrasing. But he. He really went in depth. It sounds like he experienced some kind of love from somebody. And it. It can even transform Andrew Tate. I think it can transform just about anybody.

Oh, you're. You're Preaching to the ultimate choir. Whether it's spiritual, esoteric, or logical, we all have a choir that we listen to. Some people call it an echo ch chamber. It's where we give and receive information. Twitter, Instagram, all these places that are kind of harbored safe spaces where we delete people we don't like, and we have this manufactured connection through social media. And if people could just rewind and listen to what you said a couple times, I think that is actually the starting place for the rest of our conversation. Because when we look at why things happened, I don't think it's as important as how we can be the person that we can be. If I go back and I start psychoanalyzing my life and I break down my father, my mother, and all these things, it's great to have understanding. I'm not here to say that understanding is wrong or bad. I actually think it can be quite powerful. But to go deep into why things happened and what that meant, how do you actually take people from that mindset in your coaching, in your workshops and put them into the actual beingness that love can be? In other words, how do you get them from A, the stuckness to B, the embodied aliveness that we all signed up for here on planet Earth?

Earth. There. There are two aspects that are truly important on this, and I'll show you how I get there. Number one, I bring people into the first session and I say, give me 20 minutes to talk about your past, 20 minutes to talk about your childhood, and we will not talk about it again. And they breathe this huge sigh of relief because they have this picture of, like, six months sitting there talking about their childhood. They've done that. Many of them have done that for 10 years in therapy. 20 minutes, let's talk about where the patterns came from. We're done. Let's not ever talk about it again. Right? I pull out a cigar and pretend to be Sigmund Freud as I ask about their mother. 20 minutes on that. Okay, now let's spend about 20 minutes talking about where you're at currently. What. What problems are currently existing. Okay, now let's spend about 20 minutes talking about what you actually want things to be and what you would actually like them to be. Let's talk about that. In one hour. You've gone from. Where have things come from? Where are they now? Oh, those are the connection points. Oh, I actually made this happen. This is a pattern. I'm falling. It wasn't random chaos. Okay, here's where I want to go next. Next So I want to go from here to here. What's missing? And I tell them two things are missing. Number one, Models. You need models for what is possible and models for the skills that you use to get there. Models. What is even possible? Is it even possible to have a loving marriage? What does a loving marriage even look like? Most people can't answer that. What does a loving marriage look like? Oh, they. They order you food when they get hungry too, so you don't feel left out. They have sex with you occasionally. They don't yell at you. Maybe they fold your underwear. That's a loving marriage. Let's talk about what a loving partnership actually looks like day to day in the conversations. Models. And then let's talk about the skills that you missed growing up because your family didn't have those skills and that's why you're here. So models and skills, those pieces. Number one. And then number two, what experiences will prove to you and especially to your emotional side? Right. Brain. Brain that only believes experiences. What experiences will unprove the childhood beliefs that you formed that your family was normal and it's not. What are the experiences that will prove to your brain that love exists and that people will actually care about you? Let's build those experiences and then use those models and skills to get you there so you have the experiences and transform your life. Experiential learning. It changes everything.

What I heard from you in, in so many words was it's a process of gathering evidence. So if I want these things where in your consultation and I'm sure in many sessions you go through getting clear on what somebody wants, I can't tell you in the people that are our members in the BREATHE program and all the different audience members that have written in, it's typically just the dumping of everything they don't want. There's this hyper focus on what they don't want. And I even catch myself as a human being because I'm here in the 3D plane, just learning and growing like all of us, I sometimes focus on what I don't want. I think we all do that. Right? So what is it about gathering evidence for what we want? But also, and this is key, not spiritually bypassing the healing that wants to come through. How do we hold both of those realities and move in the direction that we want to actually move in?

It's to live as if we are alive. So the, the famous behaviorist B.F. skinner said that if you give somebody a task that a dead organism could perform form their behavior will never Change the dead organism test. Stop doing that. Don't do that. Right. Stop this behavior. A dead organism can stop behavior and not do something. Okay? But that does not create transformation. The person will simply sit there with no alternative until they eventually forget the command and then we'll do it. Same thing happens with children. When you try to train your children to have healthier behaviors, you must give them the live organism behavior. Do this instead. And that's the piece that most people are missing. I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want this. What do you want? I have no idea. That's models. I have no idea what's even available to me. Please explain to me what's even available and then tell me how to get there. The live organism test. Live alive. That's the answer.

And just for the listeners who was B.F. skinner, is there a book or research we can put in the Show? Notes.

So B.F. skinner was a famous behaviorist. He studied pigeons, he studied rats. And he. He also said this, which was interesting, saying, the organism is always right. So whatever behavior you're doing did something at some point, it served a purpose. He was brilliant in understanding behavioral patterns of animals and then how that tracked onto humanity. The organism is always right. If you are following a pattern, it served you at some point, it likely no longer serves you the way you want it to, but it is still serving a purpose. So if you're doing something you hate and you say, I don't want to. To do X, figure out what purpose X is serving and then find a better behavior that meets those needs instead, without the drawbacks to it. That's replace.

Do.

Do the thing a live creature could do.

And so then I'm assuming that. And you can provide more clarity for us when you have a client or even when you're working in a group setting and you start to get clear, you start to get some headway on exactly what it is that people want. And then they move in that direction, right? With curves.

Courage.

And sometimes courage comes with setbacks and two steps forward, 10 steps back, vice versa. I'm sure eventually that people start to have some of the things from childhood pop up. I heard from you earlier that you said you don't focus so much on what goes on in childhood. There's an inventory process, there's an intake process that you guide them through so you can start to identify ways of being that they're projecting on their partners or that they believe about themselves that actually did come from childhood. Childhood. That's Very, very important on a spiritual and also a personal level. But when people start to move, the hurdles arise. And I always tell people, like, move in the direction you want anyways, because your stuff is going to come up whether you go forward or backward, it's going to come up regardless. So how do you gently and also powerfully guide people through the hurdles that come up as they start to move in that direction of what it is they truly want? Because that's where people stop. They encounter a hurdle, hurdle, and they stop because it's like, oh, this is how it always is. They start to believe the old beliefs, the conditioning, the poor attachment styles, and then any hurdles that come up that's deemed as unconscious evidence to keep them in victimhood state. Because the hurdle shouldn't be there. If I'm working with Adam or if I'm doing spiritual work, it's actually quite the opposite. But how do you get people to move through that hurdle or many hurdles in some ways?

Do you know what's so wonderful about feelings, even painful feelings, is that they are incredibly useful data. Incredibly useful data. I worked with a astoundingly brilliant somatic therapist for many a number of years. And he told me, during my formative years as a therapist, he told me, adam, remember this. Pain is only information. That's all that pain is. People are born without pain receptors. Their life expectancy is anywhere from 15 to 25. They usually die because they don't experience pain, so they don't learn what's dangerous for them. So they end up bleeding to death. They end up dying in some awful way that they would have avoided if they had been able to feel pain. Your pain exists for a reason. Feelings are are lights on a dashboard, on the car. You look at them and it says, okay, check engine lights on. What does that mean? Well, let's figure that out. Let's figure out what that means. Tire pressure. Low. Oil pressure. Okay, Your feelings are information on the dashboard coming up. So if you have a feeling feeling, you stop and you say, what does that light mean? Well, maybe it means something from childhood, right? You could stop and go back and say, okay, what does that mean?

What does that mean?

Oh, well, it means that I'm scared because this reminds me of something scary that hurt me in the past. That's usually what it means. Okay, well, I remember when my dad, you know, told me I wasn't good enough because I hadn't achieved the a hundred percent. I only got 90%. And so now I think everybody wants that from me.

Me.

Well, Is that true? Right. Cognitive piece came in. B.F. skinner was behaviorist. Then we started merging behaviorism with. With. With cbt. Cognitive behavioral therapy. So cognitive. We are cognitive beings just as much as we are beings of flesh. Cognitive. Is that true? Does everybody want that from me? Well, I don't know. I don't know. If everybody demands that I make 100% perfect on everything, well, let me stop and reality test with the people around me. Let me stop and check in for expectations. Let's ask my wife. Sweetheart, where do you want me to be? Is 100% mandatory? Or, like, on the. Like the dudes on Twitter? Tell me If I'm not 100%. Are you going to leave me walk if I. If I have a feeling, Are you going to walk out of the house, cheat on me with my best friend on the front lawn while I look through the window at you after 20 years of marriage because I had one moment of imperfection, like the guys tell me on Twitter, or is 90% okay? Is 80% okay? Where. Where is. Where is the requirement we start reality testing? Right. That's the answer. That is the answer is understand that your feelings mean something, but they're not always right. And then what do you want to do about them?

See, that right there is incredibly polarizing, because even. And I love you, babe. Carrie, Michelle, she'll say, I feel this, therefore it must be the totality. And maybe it is in that moment. But whether it's Peter Levine or whether it's anybody in the field of, like, the nervous system, the branches that control us autonomically, unconsciously, essentially, those are wired really early. So maybe for her, and maybe for any of us that are feeling something where we cognitively think it's true, because if we're feeling it, it couldn't be true. How do you unpack that to make sense to the body and the mind both? Instead of it just making sense, there was a feeling, there was a thought, oh, it must be true. How do you unpack that? With the reality test a little bit deeper.

Feelings are incredibly incredible, incredibly useful. Women, especially often rely on those feelings, because that's intuition. It guides them. It means something. This is why women get so hurt when men say, your feelings are stupid, and I will not listen to them. The ancient Grecian myth of Cassandra is very indicative of the female psyche. Cassandra, for anyone who's not familiar, was blessed by the God Apollo with absolute perfect clairvoyance. She would always know the perfect future. But when she rejected his advances, he then cursed her with an additional piece was that she would have absolute, crystal clear clairvoyance and always know the future, but no one would ever believe her, ever. And she was cursed. And that's the female psyche in a nutshell is when they're in romantic relationships, my feelings mean something and I know the truth and I'm intuitive. For example, really quick research indicates that one of the biggest indicators of a long term, term, healthy, stable marriage is a hormone called vasopressin. Vasopressin is released when we solve challenges together, overcome problems together. We work as a team. Men have more receptors for vasopressin than women do. And that wanes over a while. It wears off. So we have to refresh it. We have to remember that we are a team. We have to remember that we keep working on things. She is our, she is our ally. And then that turns us toward her during a crisis. It rekindles oxytocin, desire for bonding and intimacy with, with her. And it creates a new honeymoon phase. And we must do that periodically. Women detect that through feelings. We don't feel like we used to. We don't feel close, we don't feel like a team. We are stuck in a boring rut. Our vasopressin is wearing off. We should reintroduce stress and solve it together. Hey, babe, we should go camping. We should do something new. We should try something, something special, lead me on an adventure, introduce stress, and then resolve it together. And then we'll vasopress and bond. Even though they don't know, maybe the hormone, they don't know what's happening. They instinctively, through their feelings, intuitively safeguard the relationship. So when the man says, no thanks, we are shutting off a tremendous amount of the value that they bring to the relationship. So that right there is why wives crave not to be in control, but to be listened to and to be trusted and to be. To have their feelings mean something to their husband.

Yes, and this plays out on such a grand scale. I know that. But literally millions of people are dealing with this. Let's just talk about the North American continent. But we know it's for the world. There's this modernity, almost disease where we have to have the best things, have the best kids. There's almost like this unconscious competition, specifically in America, maybe Canada. You're in Wisconsin. I'm sure you get the whiff of this at times. There's this subtle competition where women compete through different ways than men compete. Men compete by having more zeros on their bank account, having more boats or more Cars or more things. But women compete in a different way. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit, because I think that's also some of the unhealthy dynamics that fuel the part of modernity that quite frankly, I don't want to play in anymore. It's just not something I'm interested in. But what is the different dynamics about how women and men compete? How does that play out?

Female hierarchy is fascinating and it's not studied any, anywhere near enough. We've done studies with the chimpanzee hierarchy, which is really the closest thing that we have. Their female hierarchy is astounding. But the human hierarchy among females is incredible. Keep in mind that for women, your relationships are your status, and then the resources that you're able to command are also your status. Not necessarily the resources you bring in, but the resources you command. So the resources and the relationships, those are two gigantic indicators of female status, especially among women who don't have a larger life purpose other than survival or hedonism, which is really what we've collapsed into on the North American continent is survive and engage in total hedonism with no long term plan. Now, the couples who are fighting against each other, competing against each other, they usually don't have a longer term plan. My wife and I, we don't have to compete with anybody because we're competing with ourselves continuously to build a stronger legacy. That is all we care about is building a stronger legacy going forward for our family, for our kids, grandkids, great grandkids, how good can we give it to them without destroying them. How much, how much inheritance can we give them? Financial, but also skills, also wisdom. A spiritual inheritance, right? A relational inheritance. What can we pass on to the next generation? That's our competition. So we don't butt up against other couples and say, hey, we're incompetent competition, let's be better than them. We bought up against other couples and say, how can we work together to enhance each other, enhance each other's families so that your family thrives and so does mine. Healthy women do that. Healthy women don't form nasty clicks and then fight each other. Healthy women form huge, wonderful, flowing family structures that then resonate and create deeper intimacy for everybody involved.

There's healthy ways that people can recover and vent. I mean, look at brunch on any given Saturday or Sunday where there's a bunch of women together and maybe some of them are married, some aren't. And it's just basically a cat fight session about how terrible men Are. Well, men do that too, in their caves, or they go watch sports for a whole weekend and drink beer. There's these unhealthy dynamics of venting. What's a healthy way for us to vent as men and women? Like, what does healthy venting actually look like? Maybe I've heard from John Gray, who sat on this show a few times. He said, you should actually never complain to your woman. You should actually never, never vent to your woman. But twofold. How do we vent to each other in a healthy, conscious way as men and women? And how do we vent to our friends in a healthy, conscious way while still upholding the sacredness of the relationship?

I have a perfect example of this that has always stuck with me. When I was going through my training programs and becoming a therapist, there was a woman that I worked with, and all she wanted to do every single day was complain about her husband, husband to all the other women at work. She would just complain and complain and complain, complain. I would walk through and overhear, and every word she said was a complaint about her husband. Until one day I just kind of. I was in the same room, and she. And she started venting to me. And I said, wow, sounds like you really hate your husband. And it stopped her in her tracks that hard. And she said, what do you mean? She said. I said, I've never heard you say a single good thing about him, so I can only assume he's a horrible monster, that you absolutely hate him. I'm sorry you're married to him. And she was so blown away. She's like, no, my. Like, started stuttering. I know, he. But. And. And then she just shut down at. She shut down visibly right in front of me, like, trying to calculate. And then she just walked away. And then she came back to me a couple days later and said, Adam, I just want to thank you. I had never been aware that all I was doing was just negatively complaining about my husband. From then on, she would say a concern about her husband, but then ask somebody, what could I do about. About this solution? Focused sharing. Solution focused venting. Share a concern. Look for a solution. That's the proper outcome. It was amazing. Her marriage turned around in a matter of weeks. When she started doing that, all of a sudden her marriage turned around and she was telling us, like, guys, it worked. It was amazing. I actually talked to my husband, and he did this, and he did, and it's. It's wonderful. And we finally got to meet him, and he was a nice guy all along. Wrong. He was a Wonderful man. And it transformed their marriage in a matter of weeks when she started having a solution attached to the venting.

I wonder if there's ever a time where it's actually healthy for a sacred marriage, a sacred, intimate union for a man or woman to vent outside the relationship. Is it only with a trusted therapist like we work with a woman named Margot Running? I absolutely love her. We just launched an episode a few weeks back about some very deep, powerful, healing work that we did.

Saw some of that. It was fantastic.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. I mean, it was literally groundbreaking. And we've gotten more messages and more flooding of just feedback about the depths of vulnerability that people are now looking at. In other words, like you said earlier, what. What. What is possible? What's the evidence I can gather about what I actually want versus me being stuck almost, Adam, in a trench or in a groove of where I am and just incessantly complaining about that.

And let me say really quick about that. I actually respect both of you tremendously for doing that, because the world needs people who have platforms to stand up and say, this is what's possible. Let's show you. Let's show the world a couple working diligently to resolve issues instead of just splitting off, having different partners, being angry, having a messy divorce. We've seen enough of that. You guys are creating a huge counterpoint that the world needs. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you for seeing that. Thank you for acknowledging that. Man.

Man.

Yeah. So I'm. I'm. One thing I've learned is that when I was young, one of my. Because I have a very, at times, anxious attachment style. So as Carrie and I work towards secure together, of course, like a perfect puzzle piece, she had more of an avoidant tendency from childhood. And so before. Before we jump off this pod, which we got to go into attachment styles, because it's not. It's not only attachment Adam, on Instagram that y' all need to follow, but it's so much depth of your. Your work. But I wonder, Adam, what is a healthy way for me to go outside the relationship so that I can actually learn, not just to vent, not just to tell people how crazy my partner is. For her and I both, and for all of us in intimate relationships, sometimes when we're this close to the elephant, we can't see the whole thing. Is it just with a therapist, is there trusted cohorts we can go to? I lead a men's group here in Austin, and there's 10 of us that we have A very structured way of giving and receiving feedback. Feedback, which is something I learned from Johnny Blackburn and also John Weinland. So there's structure there. But what does it look like for you? How do you, how do you tell clients and how do you share with your clientele to have those trusted networks outside of themselves with the sole intention of positive feedback, of actually moving them in direction that they want to go? What does that, what does that even look like?

Two pieces here. Two pieces. I always have two pieces. So it's two pieces. Number one is know the two different sides of your brain. Brain, right? You have your calm logical side. That's 20 year, 20 year thinking long term. This is where you would consider yourself is over on the calm, logical side. The emotional right side is like five seconds in the future. Maximize pleasure, minimize pain, and handle all my feelings and everything over here. This is like a drunk monkey with a gun. This is your calm self over here with everything that you want. Be aware that when your emotions go much higher and you've got something that provokes you repeatedly, it drains the functioning of your logical brain to fuel these emotional storms. So when you're like this, oh, no, something's upsetting me, you're like this. You need to go to a brain that is calm and level like this, low emotion, high logic, and then do what we call processing, right? Process with them. You talk it through and you actually link in and lease their, their logic. Because you can't let me think logically about this problem and how I feel, but also feel better as I go. So when someone listens to you vent, that's what that's supposed to be is they're supposed to listen and say, oh, is it like that? Oh, what do you mean, is there a problem here? And they, and they help you process it so you don't feel scared. You're borrowing their nervous system and you're borrowing their logical brain and it diminishes your emotional agitation. Get back to logic. Then you begin sharing solutions. Then you've been thinking of ways through this. Women do this very intuitively. This is why women do what they do. And they share and connect. They're supposed to kind of guide men into that a little bit, but men are supposed to do that as well. But women do this beautifully. Number two, every brain, but especially men are like this is. We are meant to connect in a massive, what I call the male solution network. We are like data nodes that are all scattered across the Earth. 3.5 billion male data nodes that are supposed to link up into a vast blinking net of data nodes that share solutions and data about problems. And we are supposed to see one guy solves a problem and we it ripples outward to everybody else over generations. So everyone has that solution. That's how we got fire. That's how we got the wheel. That's how we have cell phones. That's how we have the Internet. That's how we have everything that we has been passed down to us is this, this data node cluster that passes things down. Now what has happened is men are now isolated. It's individual little data nodes thinking I must solve every problem in existence alone without any input from anybody else. Not only problems from the past but problems from. From the future. Every single problem. And that man becomes trapped. That man becomes depressed. He inevitably hits a problem he can't solve. He doesn't have the skills for it or the training. You connect up to another data node that has your data. Whether that's a therapist who's a specialized mentor is really what a therapist is. Another kind of mentor. In old days they had uncles, grandfathers, fathers, everybody. All kinds of mentors were trying to replace the kith and kin network now with a bunch of paid professionals and. And pseudo families basically. But you connect to data node clusters that have solutions and then you gather all of those solutions. That is the answer. So share so that your emotional brain levels out and is calm and then seek solutions from healthier networks. That is the answer right there.

Yeah. A key indicator of like I loved how you said you're actually borrowing their nervous system. That's really big. Whenever y' all are out there and you're getting advice from someone that you think is trustworthy and you notice that they're actually telling you what to do and agitating your nervous system more or encouraging the faults that you're complaining to them about their partner. It probably ain't a wise elder. It probably ain't a skilled psychotherapist. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I've definitely experienced that. And I work to regulate myself when giving and receiving feedback from men or just friends so that I can actually let them borrow my nervous system. It's so key.

Key.

It's so key.

There's something that's interesting here. So I've done some research on the formation of more that racist out group kind of rejection. And what's fascinating is some of it is learned when children are 2, 3 years old and they see somebody who's very, very different from their parents or from those the Clusters, they're around. I'm very white, so I'll just use this expression. A small, you know, a white child from a white family walking along, and then they see a person with very dark black skin, and they go. And it's unusual. So then what they do and you know this, what all kids do, is they go and they look at the parent to see what their parent is doing. How is mom or dad reacting? Is mom or dad scared? Did they grab my hand tighter? Did they pull me in closer? Are they scared? Are they nervous? Are we hurrying past that person? Are we scared? Is this supposed to be scary? If the, if, you know, if this person with dark skin wakes up and says, hey, how you doing? And the dad says, oh, and gives him a big hug, Bug. Now we've learned, okay, people with dark skin don't have to be scary. They just look a little bit different. It's kind of like wearing a hat. It's just a little bit different, right? They learn this. They learn these differences from us. So when you have lived your whole life being scared, scared, scared, and you find a mentor, it's you trying to look up to your mentor and say, are they scared? Like, I, my. My husband is talking about, you know, whatever it might be. My husband mentioned to me that he's not very happy. I'm going to share that with my mentor. Does my mentor say, you need to leave this guy. He's going to leave you. He's going to screw you over. Men who don't think that this is just the beginning, right, their nervous system goes up and you go, I should be scared. But if you walk in and your therapist or you pastor or priest or whoever it is, they say, well, you know, that can. That's. It's good that he's sharing that with you. He's actually speaking to you about it. What are some other things that he has said or have you. Can you ask him some questions? Let's look at that. Let's. Let's think about this. And they're calm and they're steady and they're methodical. Their. Their emotions don't spike. They stay like this. Your emotions say, oh, I don't have to be scared. I can calm down. And that is exactly what you need to look for. Like you said, don't look for the person who's escalating with you. Look for the person who has already done the work and is not scared. That will help.

There's something that, you know, when I was doing research for our interview that I Just love. And I don't see too much of your family online and you obviously have your personal reasons for that, but I immediately wanted to know, is he in relationship? Is he a family man? And when I heard that you were, it just made my nervous system actually relax because I can really trust you. There's nothing in my mind that's further from the truth than a 23 year old life coach who's coaching people about relationships who hasn't been in a relationship for three years. It just doesn't make any sense. But we live in a, a world of mass marketing where messages can be delivered on Instagram and there can be false profiting and false wisdom being thrown out when people finally come to you. How do you think most people even find you, by the way? Like, where are they? Who are they? What are, what's going on in their life by the time they get to you?

Oh, it's so fascinating. So I, I just had somebody this morning, it was a men's coaching group. They picked up one of my tweets about the world needs more masculine masculinity, Healthy, mature, secure masculinity that provides protection for others while also maintaining right, good authority over self. Good, good sovereignty over self. I posted and they were like, I was like, yeah. And they jumped in like, you have no idea what the world's like. You should, you should be ashamed teaching men like that they should be responsible for other people. How dare you do this? And you should. Instead everybody goes, go follow this other men's coach who has been divorced four times so he knows what reality is really like. And I just posted a reply that said, you know, why would I listen to advice from somebody who's been divorced five times or four times if I'm trying to build a healthy marriage, why would I do that? Exactly. No reply. No reply. So, number one, look at who you're actually talking to. If you're going to take advice from somebody, make sure they're living a life that you actually, actually want to emulate.

Make sure you want a piece of what they have in some way. Maybe you don't want the totality of Adam's life, but maybe you really love the core aspect of his life that you're receiving wisdom about. For finance, for physical, for personal trainers. You wouldn't be with a, with a really big overweight, smoking cigarettes. Personal trainer, right? So if you want to learn from somebody about relationship of self and other, go to someone that's actually living out in their life. They're embodying that That's a virtue they're embodying of you, correct?

Absolutely. So how do people hear about me? Is usually those angry people post my message up to try to own me. Right there. There was a time for a while that both. Both Tate brothers went after me and they started reposting me to their audience.

What did they go after you about? My weight.

My weight. You know, I was. I was overweight at the time, and I honestly was. I needed to get myself in trape, and I have been. But they went after me and they were like, look at this guy. He's giving dating advice. He probably has no idea what he's doing. He can't get girls. He's an incel. We can fix him. And I just replied like, hey, just so you know, I've got, like, at the time, I've got four kids, been married for 14 years at the time, like, very happy. I understand where you're coming from. And people see that and they're like, and. And their audiences are so hungry. Like the red pill guys who are out there posting all this material, the guys who follow them aren't bad guys. Guys who try to learn red pill are not bad guys. They're scared guys. They're injured guys. They don't really want a relationship where they have to become avoidantly attached and then seek control over anxiously attached women to try to get revenge for their hurt or. Or try to control a woman to keep her. And the only way you keep her in your life is through ruthlessly controlling her and making her afraid at any time that you can abandon her. They don't really want that, which is why most guys burn out on that. And then they say, what else is there? This. This. You know, I'm hungry, but this food tastes like dollar bug crap. What else is there? Is there anything else? And I say, hey, look, I've been married 15 years. I got four kids. I'm very happily married. I don't look anything like your gurus. So. So you know that the message isn't that you have to be 8ft tall and you're ridiculously jacked. Here's what you actually need. Come sit down and I'll talk to you about what a woman actually wants from you and how to sort the healthy women from the unhealthy women so that the good ones will actually be attracted to you. And they come stampeding over, over. So as much crap as people give men today for not caring what women want or being shallow, man, every. Just about every man I talk to is Looking for a loving wife that he can work hard and take care of and raise a family together. And all he's looking for is peace and loyalty where she doesn't backstab him and just cares about him and some warm affection. That's all he's really looking for. The bar is on the ground. It's just most of those guys don't know yet that they can get that.

Yeah, I find that a lot of the Tate brothers crowd. And look, some of the things, not definitely not all, some of the things he says in the right context are actually of service to men. But so many things come from this almost David Goggins lens where it's like, suck it up, pussy. You have to look like this and you have to train hard. You know, I think he even has a phrase, he says, stay hard. It's like, how could you possibly use that as a sustainable fuel source for loving relationships? And how could that ever work?

I can tell you. So in warrior, warrior cultures, those. Those advanced warriors, what they usually have is avoidant attachment style. So they grow up in a system that creates this belief, this inner belief that resources will never be shared with them, they will never be cared for, and that they must become ruthlessly hard and control their environment and their interactions with other people at all times. So what they have is immensely low levels of oxytocin. Oxytocin is the love hormone. It's the hormone released when people love and accept you and care for you, and it creates warmth and fulfillment. There's a research done recently on fathers with newborn children. They measured the spontaneous displays of affection, love playing with, hugging, kissing their newborn before and after a spray of oxytocin up the nose. And they measured, after the oxytocin spray, fathers were way more affectionate, interacting with their child, playing, playing with their child, way more after the oxytocin. So we know that the oxytocin has a huge effect there. That is what warriors look at you and say, you are softening, is when you have the expression of oxytocin. It also releases gaba gamma aminobi uric acid, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that shuts down the expression of cortisol, the release of cortisol, the severity of cortisol, and it diminishes it. Because you feel loved and cared for. You are a network, your network will absorb the blow instead of you alone absorbing a blow. And so you. You become more nurturing, so you're softer, you're not hard. They say, stay Hard. And the reason I think they've done that is because they probably have immensely low oxytocin levels. And as they have gained oxytocin levels, most likely, I think that's why Tate is now talking about love and marriage and saying, I'm taking a second look at it. I think it's oxytocin. So, yeah, stay hard works if you never want to be happy.

Or stay hard works if you look at Hawkins scale of frequency, right. The lowest human emotion that we can experience on a hertz level is shame and guilt, then apathy, then fear, then it goes up to acceptance. But to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I'm not a Schwarzenegger fan, I don't know if you've seen the Terminator movie. He said anger is more powerful than despair. So anger is actually more of a higher vibrational frequency. It's not a high frequency, but it's higher than despair or apathy. So I understand these young men, especially in their low 20s. I mean, I was absolutely one of them. I probably would have jumped right on the Tate bandwagon in like, you know, 2003, when I was 23. I. I understand why these characters exist in our world. It's because they are existing to bring people up to a higher frequency. Hopefully, though, and this is the key that I want everybody to get. Don't get stuck at that same frequency. There's so much more abundance, there's so much more. More richness of life to experience than just being stuck in the stay hard mentality, like for. And I wonder how you feel about this. I almost get. And I read his book because I, I wanted to understand him.

He's.

He's an interesting character. We're all in a movie here, dude. He's an interesting character. And in his book he lays out just incredible trauma from his father. I mean, incredible amounts of beating and violence. And I can see even in his media that he puts out now, he's almost getting a feeling of aliveness, of maybe norepinephrine and cortisol just from the actual trauma that he's doing to his body with these hundred mile runs and things like this. What do you make of these characters out there like that? It's not just goggins, it's also some forms of Tate. It's also a lot of the people in the red pill community where unless you have a perfect six pack and unless you suffer and unless you enjoy suffering and you crave suffering, then you're somehow less of a man. They're Getting something from that. Because we all know in psychology, like, we always get a reward from something, even if it's unconscious. What is the reward that. That men are getting from following these characters in the movie called Life? Like, what are they actually getting from this?

So there's two. There's two elements here that I want to bring to life. One is that there is specifically a gene, it's the war called the warrior gene. It's also called the criminal gene. It's maoa. The MAOA gene, when you get angry, it blocks the reuptake of dopamine so that your anger actually creates a surge of dopamine in your system where you feel really overwhelmingly good. And anger actually makes you feel better. It reduces pain. It can give you, like, blackout fighting. A lot of fighters have this, but it can be like anger is more powerful. Right. About anywhere from 10 to 12, maybe 15% of each population throughout nations has this. In nations where they've been depleted by warfare, you see a lot fewer of them have this. But other nations have a high preponderance of this everywhere. Where the Danish raiders went, we called them the Vikings. But the Danes, really, wherever they went, they conquered. They spread their MAOA gene even more. So it's linked throughout Europe of the red hair, genetic often, or an overhanging craggy brow. Don't fight me, my head will come down. You can't cut my eyes out. I'm going to be very angry. Right, right. The Irish, the Scottish, the reason we fight, they. They fight so often is, is partly because of this gene. The reason American south had a dueling culture with more of the Scottish inhabitants versus the north, who didn't have a much of a dueling culture with the Brits, very different gene pools, higher expressions of MAO aging down in the South. So that's, I think, one reason that we see these guys that rise to the top. The MAOA gene allows them to do that. And we're all like, wow, look at that guy. He is like running 50 miles and then punching himself, himself in the face and screaming and yelling and getting angry. And then he runs another 50 miles and then he chainsaws a bear in half. And like, how is he doing that? And I think it partly may be that MAOA gene of anger makes me feel good and dopamine can take me anywhere. I think that's part of it. And then number two, I think we're following those men because masculinity largely almost died off in the West. So many of men died from both world wars from the grind, from the factories, from the dust bowl, from the Great Depression. And then many men checked out and just burned out right through all kinds of problems. So masculinity almost went away and it became the area almost of angry women who then stepped in and said, we will be masculine, we will govern the home, we will protect ourselves, we will tell our daughters, never trust men. Get your own degrees, get your own careers. And then we rate. They raised their sons to be this child fled fledgling version of masculinity, of never oppose anybody, be a good little boy and be our pet. Be dumb, be domesticated, be docile, never threaten the superiority of women because we don't trust men anymore. I think that men like, like to Tate brothers and I have, I have no enmity for them at all. I don't agree with them in any way. But please, please don't come, please don't let me come across that I hate them or anything like that. I don't. I think that they represent. And the reason men are so, so thirsty for that content is they represent a juvenile, an adolescence of masculinity emerging from fledgling hood out of the shadow of women stepping forward and saying, no, I am a man. I won't let anyone tell me what to do. I'm going to headbutt a tree, I'm going to stab a, a wolf to death and then wear its coat. I'm going to do whatever I want. I'll sleep with lots of naked girls. You'll see like a 15 year old adolescence stepping forward, forward, saying I'm a man. But, but they're not yet. Right. I believe what we're seeing is a rebirth of masculinity for the next era. What's coming next after the Tates? What I think they're maybe even evolving into. I think what Jordan Peterson is trying to guide people into. But maybe he isn't even there yet himself. I, I think the reason that we're all following these m men is we're trying to emerge into a secure, mature masculinity that is coming next that I think will take, take our, our place back in the world as men sitting in the world, taking, making sense of the world, creating order from chaos. Masculinity has to come into its full adulthood. And I believe that's a piece of where the Tate brothers are.

Yeah, the puzzle piece is here right now on the table. So what makes a man truly embodied in his masculinity, especially now in 2024?

Two things. It's always two things. Personal sovereignty, total personal sovereignty. And I mean control over his fears, control over his childhood traumas, control over the way he relates to other people, control over his nervous system, control over his discipline of self, control over his reactions, mastery of self. But full, full sovereignty of self. Fixing your attachment right, getting your body right, maybe getting your finances right, getting your skills in line, being fully your own master is level one. I think that's the first piece, and I think that's what the adolescents are learning. And I think that's the first piece. But the second piece, responsibility. The full embracing of responsibility without flinching of the people you choose to take responsibility for. Whether that's your children, whether it's your brother, your family, whether it's people you start a business and you now responsible for the people under you, whether you become a leader of some kind, whatever it is, the full embracing of responsibility without impeding on your personal sovereignty so that you can maintain that and protect those people. Because you can only protect and serve and care for. Because by the strength that you yourself have built and your mastery over self, they must interplay and they must work together in tandem. That is MA is mature masculinity.

Also, I feel, you know, she said it's always two. I feel what holds those two together is honesty, because it's very easy. We've heard this phrase in media, fake it till you make it, bro. Which I think is complete and disservice. I think really what it is is be it. And I Learned this from Dr. Jade Tita, so I'll give him a shout. I'm not going to plagiarize, be it, until you see it. So that way you're being honest with oneself. Like so the two things that you had on left and right, and you place those together. There's also a acknowledgment of honesty as to where you are as a man on that path of maturation. So it's easy to say, well, I have my finances in order, I have my body in order. I have a connection to higher power. I'm taking care of my emotional health, my mental health. I'm doing all these things. But there's also this. This other ingredient that I wonder how you feel about. I know it's played out for me for sure. I'm 43 and just now I feel like I'm really touching the essence of my own real masculinity because of becoming a father, being sleep deprived, paying people, running a business, doing all the things shackled, as Jordan Peterson would say, a beast of burden. This responsibility to which you speak, that's where you really find out your honesty. That's where you find out your truth. To hold. Those two things that you said may be separate, but actually they're held together by the honesty of acknowledging where the hell we actually are and not trying to fake it until we make it. In other words, if I make this much money, can I be at peace with that? If I'm in this type of relationship and I'm healing these three core attachments, great. If I'm working on childhood trauma, cool. It takes the pressure out of it. It allows us to actually do the work instead of shame spiraling us, telling us that we should be somewhere that we're actually not. That's, I think, a big piece that we could add. Maybe there is threes. Maybe it comes in twos and threes with these answers.

I love it. And you know what you've added? There is a dimension of purpose. Masculinity must serve a purpose. Right? We didn't just evolve so that men could be, oh, look at me, I'm personally sovereign. And. And then go to the grave with nothing accomplished. You gain personal mastery. Mastery and sovereignty so that you can become responsible, so that you can step forward and build, so that you can create, so you can make a legacy. Manhood must have purpose to have any sort of meaning. Right? You do not masturbate as a man. Masturbation is pointless. As a man, being just masculine and personally sovereign and just living your whole life, look at me, I'm personally sovereign. That is masturbatory. Gaining self mastery and then leaning into it and seeking out that yoke that you are meant for and pulling others forward and building that legacy. That is the purpose of manhood. Manhood. Nothing without purpose.

There's a couple areas I want to go in. I'm just going to go with my gut. I promise you guys. We're going to go over attachments because we have a little slice of time left, so we're going to get into it. I know, I've been teasing that a little bit. It's the core foundation of a lot of Adam's work, so. But I got to ask you about porn because porn ruled my life for decades and it was only through plant medicine and spiritual healing and really a recognition of the honesty of where I really was and kneeling before God and saying, I don't exactly know how to do this. Can you help me, being open to some other something other than myself to try to heal it or fix it? After 10 years of battling with porn and figuring out, like, what am I actually going to do? Well, it's not going to come from my mind. My journey with porn did not come from my mind. Letting go of porn came from my heart, came from my purpose, came from my own maturation. And it was earned. I really had to earn it. And my heart goes out to so many men and women. By the way, I think the majority of users of porn are women. If you look at Gary Wilson's work, he wrote that amazing book, your Brain on Porn. And he talked about the limbic system and how there's this constant variable reward with pornography, and it actually emasculates men because it trains men's limbic systems and their neurology to not be vulnerable with women, to therefore victimize themselves and make themselves not approachable by women and not loved by women. It's such a disgusting spiral pornography. It's way more than just what's on the screen. Speak to that, please.

So I have so many of the guys that come into me. They are obsessed with pornography, and they dive deep, deep into it, and that's one of the big things. They call out immediately and I tell them, we're not going to worry about the porn. And they say, why? What do you mean? Like, this is a huge problem in my life. And I say it's a symptom. Okay? If you're getting headaches from a tumor, you don't treat the headaches. You treat the tumor and the headaches get resolved. Porn is a symptom. Let's go through this really quick. You might have seen me done this before, do this before, but I have big five big five brain chemicals that we need to pay attention to when it comes to relationships and attachment, okay? Oxytocin. You feel loved and safe and cared for with other people. You are accepted. When you are open and vulnerable, people accept you. They love you, they care for you. Oxytocin. Really important. If you have bad attachment, you get almost none, and you're a junkie for it. You're starved for it. Avoidant women, by the way, they might develop a phobia of this and run away. There's all kinds of things for avoidant women with oxytocin. They won't have sex facing the other way sometimes, most of the time, it's an interesting factor. Number two, as you have oxytocin in your system, you release some. Something that we talked about called gaba. Gamma aminobiuric acid, that inhibitory neurotransmitter. It shuts down stress, it shuts down anxiety, antidepressant. It does everything. It also helps release melatonin so you sleep well at night. Chronic insomnia comes a lot from these two people's pieces missing right here. And it helps with magnesium usage in the body so that you don't develop muscle aches and cramps. Push up your neck, your shoulders, right? If you don't, if you don't have good GABA and oxytocin, you'll get a lot of shoulder aches, a lot of headaches. But when you have good relationships, you have that. When you have good relationships where you solve problems together, you also get called, what's called vasopressin. I've solved a problem. You are my ally, you are my friend. I release vasopressin. It does like a hundred different things in the body, but it helps you bond with other people, especially men. Military bonding, business partners bonding, stuff like that. That's it. And serotonin, right? Long term mood, long term feel good, long term value. People have bad relationships, usually fix state on exercise and food and sun tanning to try to like get the dregs of, of serotonin as much as possible. But they'll tell you, if I miss even a day at the gym, I'm a disaster. My life goes on the toilet. I have panic attacks. That's low serotonin. Usually you're supposed to get that through your relationships and through quality of life. And then the last is dopamine. It's basically sugar. I am not feeling good. I want to feel good. Okay, that's dopamine. It's supposed to just inform you about what feels good and what doesn't. But when you have attachment issues, when you don't connect with other people, people, when you don't receive love and care with other people, when you don't solve problems with other people and you don't converse openly with other people, your brain looks like this. Your brain gets dopamine. You are obsessed with dopamine. I feel stressed. Dopamine, I'm sad. Dopamine, I'm tired. Dopamine, I have low motivation. Dopamine, I am whatever. It is just dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So video games, sugar, fast food, porn, anything in the world, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, that's all I have and that's all I will ever be able to get because I've never had anything else. And this creates an obsession with pornography because it is everywhere. It is everywhere. You have to fight to get it away from you. You don't have to go look for looking for it anymore. You battle actively against not seeing it. Today, if you have a social media account, unless you live under a rock, you see pornography about eight times a day. So dopamine. Dopamine, Dopamine, dopamine. When you fix attachment, the brain does this and then you have all these other fulfilling things. It's like, do I want to eat nothing but can chocolate candy bars every single day for 40 years? No. I would eventually like steak, serotonin. I would eventually like, you know, all these other foods, all this rich, fulfilling food, all of these good pieces. And then when you have all those other pieces, you don't need the dopamine binges. So the temptations are this big. It's like, oh, pornography. I remember that. Yeah, no thanks. I think I'm gonna go have a good conversation with my best friend. It's don't treat the symptom, guys. If you have. Pornography is an issue, it's an issue. But. But treat the problem, treat the attachment, treat the relationships, treat the life.

I love how you broke down the neurochemistry of healing, because that's exactly what I went through in about a three year period. It was because there was a foundational belief that has been sussed out through many different practices and sessions that I just didn't love Josh. I first of all didn't have the faculty to love him. I wasn't modeled that from mom and dad. And by the way, I love you, mom and dad. It's all right. You weren't modeled it either. Right? This isn't about demonizing our parents. I take sovereignty, I take responsibility. Much before this conversation where you've illuminated it so great. I take responsibility for how I am in any given moment. And I don't blame what's happened in the past, but I do lean on the understanding and the compassion of what a previous version, a younger, more innocent, more malleable version of Josh might have looked like. And I actually physically hold him. I've had many practices, Adam, where I go into the past and I hold Josh and I love him and I give him healing in those moments that he just needed. I essentially, from an NLP perspective, walk a timeline backwards and then reprogram, reassociate, re pattern the things that have happened for me instead of to me. There is so much liberation in that dude. If everybody gets one thing from this podcast, the five neurochemicals, you talked about everything leading up to this crescendo in our conversation. This is really about love. You already said it. Love is everything. Love is the most important thing. How do we love ourselves? How do we develop the faculty to love ourselves? It's not something we can download in a book or a PDF. You actually have to do the work. There's no spiritual shortcuts for love. There's no highway bypass. It's in the trenches every day. And you know who's. You know who's taught me the most about love, man? My children and my lady. Yeah, they teach me the most about love because how I show up for them is exactly the narrative I have inside of my own psyche for myself. So that is really the crux of porn. Like you said, it's a symptom. It's not the problem. It's the thing that's showing up because the problem is unconscious. The problem is so deep that you actually need scalp skilled professionals, maybe breath work, maybe some mindful psychedelics. Right. That's a whole nother topic. We'll have to have you back on to talk about all the different facets of healing and psychotherapy.

Maybe I'll fly down and see you. That would be a great.

Let's come out to Austin because it is so fascinating what's going on right now in this, in the psychotherapy and psychedelic world and how many also false prophets are there and how to navigate that world as we round out. Let's give. Let's give the gem. The attachments that we form in utero in childhood, young adulthood, they play out in such a grand scale and they play out publicly, by the way. Let's go into this as we say goodbye. This is really the meat of your work. I mean, your work is multifaceted. There's so much to your work. But. But at the center of it all is the same thing that's on your. Your IG Attachment. Adam, so what are the core attachment styles? There's some camps that think there are more than four. How many are there? And just briefly, on a high level, one. What are they? Let's start there.

Really quick disclaimer on this. I used to refuse to talk about attachment styles at all, because when you talk about them, people pick them up and they say, this is my new astrology sign. This is who I am, this is who I will always be. And this explains everything. But this is. The list limits me forever. So as everybody goes through this, as you listen to it, don't say, this is where I'm at and this is all I'LL ever be. Listen to this and say, this is where I'm starting today. Where am I going to go?

That's it. So that's it.

There's three insecure attachment styles. And then secure attachment style. Let's look at the bad and then let's model the good. So let's look at the damaged rather, and, and the unloved. And then. And then model the loved.

And I like that. Reframe. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Insecure attachment styles, three of them. Number one is anxious attachment. Somewhere along the line you got love and then it was withdrawn from you and you have become obsessed with. With getting it again. But you believe that you were the person who lost it. You believe somebody took it away because you didn't act right, you weren't lovable, someone didn't care about you. Can you earned it that way. You think there's something wrong with you on the inside. Everybody else can see. So you have to constantly play a game of earning approval and making people feel good so that they will never see that you are unlovable. You become codependent, so you serve other people, have massive problems. You find people have problems, but you're also vulnerable to people, people who make you feel good because it finally makes you feel loved for the first time. You need to get in control of that sense that you are worthless. And you need to identify where that came from, which was, somebody loved you but didn't love you the way they were supposed to, so you feel like you lost it for a bad reason. That's where that comes from. Number two is avoidant attachment style. You probably very, very little received any love at all. And you saw other people fighting, arguing, screaming. There was something, something wrong with them in your perception. And other people were not to be trusted. During times of stress especially, you thought you had to solve everything alone. There wasn't something wrong with you, but other people would reject you, they would hurt you, they would use things against you, they would take from you, they would never be fair with you or take you seriously. So some avoidant people just become very nervous and unethical, but stay away from other people. And I get guys in my coaching practice all the time who are 35 who have never had a girlfriend. Wonderful men, by the way. Very financially successful, but no girlfriend because they've always been afraid of connecting to other people. Or you become very manipulative. Very few people do this, but it happens where you have to manage other people, you have to love bomb other people and make them feel loved so that they will serve you, so they won't hurt you. It's not really about being evil. It's about trying to be safe. All both of these are about being safe. And then there's a third one, which is you were so hurt over and over and over, that one attachment style wasn't enough. So you formed both. You are both anxious about yourself and believe you are unlovable in relationships, but also fearful of trusting other people. So you start with one and then flip to the other. Once you are inside a relationship, and especially based on what the other person's doing, you flip flop, flip flop. Very chaotic, very sad, very hurtful for you on the inside. You will always feel chaotic and unstable until, like the avoidant person, you learn to trust and open with other people and receive some love and then balance with the other person as well. Right. The avoidant person needs to learn that love even exists. They watch me for about six months to a year, and they'll tell me, adam, I've been watching for a year, and I never wanted to speak to you because I thought you were scamming me. But now I actually think it might be true. And it is, because they're so used to getting hurt by other people. Sure. So it's. Those are the three styles. Avoidance, avoidant. No. Anxious, avoidant. And then what's called disorganized cannot be neatly organized into either category. Okay, those are the three insecure attachment styles of research shows about 50% have that.

Would you also for that third category, I've heard it described by Hendrix and others as vacillator or ambivalent. Is that in the same category?

That as well. Fearful, avoidant. Sometimes it's anxious, dash, avoidant. There's like five names, which is. It's a chaotic naming scheme, which is just as chaotic as the thing itself.

It's perfect for the third category.

Name it. Yeah, it's. It's. Yeah. You got a bunch of disorganized people together and said, what are you gonna call it? And they all argued over it. Right. And then burned the house down and jumped out the window. That's probably what it was. But yeah, it's. It's just this. I am never safe, so I must always hyper adapt into my environment by either running away or people pleasing or. Or believing that I am worthless. I will serve or I will run away. Whatever it is, I will always be afraid. Is. Is what it is. They're afraid to be alone, but afraid to be connected. It's both.

I Love how you, I love how you started it. Before you get to the last one. I just got to jump in real quick. Everybody, this is not a sentence. This is not who you are in perpetuity. I just want to remind them because, because what you're bringing to us next is really what we're all working towards and that is to be secure. That's what we, that's what we ultimately deserve.

Absolutely. So the research shows that around 50 of people maybe have a secure attachment. I think, think the research, now that that's on the forefront seems to be maybe like 35% of secure attachment seems more like it. It's, it's going down. It's actually going the wrong way, you guys. So secure attachment is. Your parents raised you and they gave you consistent love, right? Not permissive love, but what we would call authoritative parenting style. I am your, I'm an authority figure, but I care for you. I, I protect you, I grow you, I listen to you, I take you seriously. You have a need. I, I work with you to solve it. So I, I have a seven year old son. And no one will be shocked to know that a seven year old boy wants lots of toys and loves eating ice cream and wants all kinds of unreasonable things all the time. And I don't yell at him and say, that's stupid. No, absolutely not. Because I'm your dad. Do what I say. Stop talking to me. He asks for something and I get down on his level and say, okay buddy, tell me what you're thinking, tell me what you're wanting. And I listen to him and I say, okay, let me present this idea right? If you eat ice cream every single day, have you eaten, ever eaten too much ice cream?

Yeah.

What did you feel? Feel really sick. Now imagine if that was every single day, all the time, right? Would you like to feel sick all the time, forever? No. Okay, now we've identified balance, right? Let's figure out a balance point for how sick you want to feel versus how healthy you want to feel. Here's healthier foods that are going to take care of you, right? You raise your child as an apprentice adult. If you were raised as an apprentice adult with respect for human dignity and cooperation during conflict, you believed that your parents would cooperate with you during conflict and so will other people and that you were worthy of human respect and dignity. That is secure attachment. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to be a system where you work together as co humans that builds secure attachment. And you can love other people and receive Love you are. Your nervous system is calm. You work with other people. If they don't work with you, you move right on to the next person who will, because, you know the majority of people will want to work with you. And you have great boundaries. You can say no. You can be calm and you can be fully connected and build intimacy. It sounds like a magic fairy tale about unicorns farting fairy dust. But for. But this is secure attachment style, and you can build this. You have to understand what it looks like. You have to understand what those relationships look like on the daily, and you have to practice the skills to do it. Then you have experiences with people who give that to you, and it rewrites your whole nervous system. All of your programming, everything shifts and you become more secure over time. So, like you said, it's not a sentence. Get out of prison.

Yeah. Wow. So good. Honestly, we're going to get to do a podcast number two, just because there's so much material here. You know, maybe as we round out our podcast today, the. The one thing for me that I've actually never thought of, this is why I love podcasting, because I just. I learned and I exchange wisdom. And this is what we're all doing, is we're all moving towards peace and we're moving towards order, and we're moving towards secure in ourselves first, when we meet the right partner. And when I say right, I just mean someone that can actually show us in a loving way the parts of ourselves that are blocked and then we do that for them. Right. There's the imago that is talked about in your field. The imago is someone that is the perfect match, the perfect mirror for us to be able to see the parts of ourselves that we. We literally cannot see. How do we stick in? How do we know when to grit or quit? I'm dropping a bomb on your lap for the last five minutes of our pod. But how do we know when to grit or quit? What is a way we can first know thyself and then know if the other person is a right fit for us? Because sometimes with Carrie, Michelle and I was perfect, anxious and avoidant clicked and we're on the way to secure. But two, avoidance. Don't work. Too anxious. Don't work. Work. And then two ambivalence or two. Two chaos and disorganized. Oh, my God. That's a cyclone of hell.

It's fire at plus more fire. Yeah.

Yeah. So how do we. How do we know when to grit or quit?

Number one, gain your personal sovereignty. So that you are capable of cooperating during conflict. You cannot play games around them. You can't be under the table. You can't be trying to schmooze them. You can't be running away from the conflict. You need to be able to go into the conflict without having, having a confrontation or an appeasement. You go into the conflict and have an honest conversation. Look, here's where I'm at. Here's what I'd like. What do you like? And be able to ask questions without being elevated emotionally. Go into a conflict, low emotion, high logic. Be able to cooperate during a conflict and then assess if your partner is cooperating during conflict as well. Will they at least cooperate with you? Relatively low emotion, relatively high logic. And work with you to solve a problem as a teammate, or are they trying to solve things against you, defend against you, play games against you? Are they pushing buttons? Whether it's avoidant or anxious, are they cooperating or is there a problem during conflict? Guide them in that direction and let them know you want cooperation. See if they will follow you. If you cannot or they cannot, then you have a serious problem that will not function either. You need to fix your attachment. And I've got programs for that. I got the attachment boot camp video course that will show you how to do that. That, Josh, I think your listeners get 50% off if they use that code.

Right, which is amazing, which I believe the code is, Josh. And it's, it's actually on the screen right now, y'.

All.

So if you're already sparked by this, just click and go because it's an amazing deal and this stuff works. I, I, I'm living proof that this stuff works. So it's on the screen now. If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify, it's also, you can tap your player wherever you are. So please, please, if you feel intuitively about this, that you're getting a little flutter in your body, like, oh, this is the way. Trust that, that, Trust your body on this one. But please, I digress.

Thank you. Appreciate that, man. It means a lot. Go from there and fix your attachment so you can do your half and then see if they're going to do their half. If they will learn or, or will cooperate with you during conflict. Any, any partnership can work. I've learned that. I worked for years as a licensed marriage and family therapist. I worked on the cases other therapists gave up on. I worked with couples who had three, four, five other therapists. I continue doing that now as a coach. Coach. But Any couple can make it. I believe if you are both willing to do the work and cooperate during a conflict, if they have that, it'll work. If they refuse, it will never, ever work, and you will never be happy.

Yeah. On your website, it was great. I saw you said, no case is hopeless if you're willing to do the work.

Correct.

And isn't that really it? Like, people go through such torment. I think human relationships are such a duality. They're so beautiful and so rewarding, and they can be, at times, torture and terror and so challenging. But, gosh, they don't have to be this way like our ancestors. Adam, can you imagine if 150 years ago, this was out like it is now? And when I say this, I just mean the wisdom that you're sharing. There could have been so much less suffering in the world, and there's always going to be some degree of suffering, but, gosh, we can shorten that suffering curve so drastically with just the right kind of wisdom applied at the right time. Time, that is the ultimate equalizer.

And isn't that proof of that solution network we talked about? Early humans are meant to connect in a data cluster and share all these solutions. That's the story of humanity. We are connecting and continuously solving problems and handing those pieces down. That's why I'm here today. Sigmund Freud started psychology. He was crazy, but he started a lot of it and brought it mainstream, at least. Right. Carl Jung, Carry it forward. All people, all kinds of people. People who've carried it forward. And here you are and I on a podcast, 120, 140 years later.

Yeah.

Talking about this, making it mainstream. It began somewhere. It's continuing. And the people listening to this, you guys have a part to play in that network as well. So let's carry that message forward and learn to love each other better.

Yes. And please, y' all do your work. I'm not saying that from shame or blame. I'm saying that from empowerment. Like, yeah, good God. We get. We get to do the work. We actually get to do the work. It's so liberating and so amazing that there is a path. It's on the screen right now. Joshtrend.com forward/attachment. That's the link that'll get you right to Adam's bootcamp. And there's so many things that we're going to talk about in our second pod as we say goodbye. It's a question that I've always been curious about, ever since I was a little Boy, man. And maybe even in the past life, too. It's, how do we live our life? Well, what is the whole purpose of this thing? Like, you know, on wellness and wisdom, we talk about the five sides of the wellness pentagon. The physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial ways that we either nourish ourself or starve ourself. I think today in a lot of ways, we hit all of them because loving ourselves and knowing our attachment, it really fuels and feeds every part of the house we live in, the house you live in out there in Wisconsin, and the body you live in, and even the work you're doing on yourself to. To improve your own health. And after, you know, five kids and 14 years of marriage, like we all go through seasons, the season that we're approaching as a humanity in 2024, how do you define wellness? What does wellness mean to you? What do you believe wellness can mean to us in 2024?

I go back to Freud initially, who said wellness. The definition of wellness was to be able to love and to work. Those are the two things he said indicated wellness. I will say it a different way. I will say the purpose of this life and the indicator of wellness is can you love and can you make things better for the ones who come next?

On that note, Adam, thank you for joining us, y'.

All.

Before we see you again on another episode, this is Josh and Adam saying goodbye, and we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk with you soon. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

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