S5E4- Man vs. Bear: Unpacking Trauma & the Perceived Safety of Men & Women

In this episode, TLC & Dr. Lee delve into the sensitive issues of domestic and sexual violence, highlighting statistical data, historical contexts, and personal stories. 

They explore the 'Man vs. Bear' meme to draw parallels with deeper societal issues surrounding trauma and safety. 

The discussion extends to the emotional challenges men face, comparing it with the 'Woman vs. Tree' meme, emphasizing the need for emotional regulation and understanding inherited trauma. 

The importance of acknowledging and validating personal experiences is stressed, encouraging listeners to seek help, validate their feelings, and understand the significance of safety and being heard for overall well-being.

00:00 Introduction and Content Warning

00:59 Man vs. Bear: The Meme Explained

03:18 The False Dichotomy of Either/Or Questions

05:09 Personal Experiences and Research Insights

06:59 Statistics and Contextual Analysis

10:50 Historical and Societal Perspectives

13:25 The Reality of Domestic and Interpersonal Violence

15:52 Gender, Race, and Perceptions of Threat

22:13 Unreported Crimes and Statistical Challenges

31:04 Sexual Violence and Societal Norms

38:04 The Alpha Male Myth

38:48 Personal Stories and Peer Pressure

40:41 Objectification and Self-Worth

42:28 Emotional Safety and Vulnerability

44:24 The Impact of Social Conditioning

58:48 Generational Trauma and Domestic Violence

01:09:48 Emotional Validation and Support

Transcript

Episode 3_ Man vs Bear
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[00:00:00] Lee: Hey everybody! Welcome to this week's episode. We are going to be talking about a pretty sensitive topic. And, we have our content warning at the beginning of all of our episodes. Just the whole podcast is content warning because we're talking about trauma and pain and all those things.

And today's episode is going to be, uh, A little heavier, a little darker than our normal ones. And so just an invitation for you to take some time with this episode. If you need to pause, if you need to skip ahead, if you need to skip this episode entirely, we are going to be talking about violence particularly sexual violence.

We're going to be talking about domestic and interpersonal. And we're going to be looking at, some real life stats, some things that have happened both historically and things that are happening in our world today in terms of how we relate to each other in the most intimate ways possible.

So yeah. So we titled this episode man versus bear. And the reason that we titled it this was because actually TLC and I ended up getting in a really great, and I know it's a weird thing to say, but like a really great conversation around. Man versus bear. And if you're not familiar with man versus bear, if you go online right now, there's a meme or a, a topic and TikToks and reels and social media posts that's, women if you were alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear?

And there's millions of posts and comments on this now around I would choose the bear because, and. So when I saw this, I immediately went, Oh, I need to show this to you, TLC. And then we started talking about your perspective around this, my perspective around this. I actually asked you, I was like, could we do an episode on this?

So you went and looked up a bunch of research and 

[00:01:59] TLC: definitely some of the more difficult research I've done. 

[00:02:02] Lee: Yeah. And so today we're going to talk through, my personal experience around like reading these things, seeing these things and what came up for me.

We're going to talk about like when I brought it to you and what came up for you and what your some of your initial thoughts were, and then we're going to talk about this. From a contextual perspective, both historical and from a trauma perspective and from a relationship perspective in general.

And looking at this from a bunch of different angles, because the interesting thing about a choice or a dilemma like man versus bears, it's actually something that isthe type of question that leads to division. And maybe that's where we start. 

[00:02:47] TLC: Yeah. Yeah. In some ways I do, it almost makes me wonder as I was really thinking about it, how much of it was intended to be like a question as it's, laid out versus intentionally vague.

It doesn't say, where you're at, if you're. Forest maybe, or, what kind of bear or what kind of man you walk into, is the man a park ranger or, is the bear a polar bear who looks a little hungry? And this is a lot of range between those. 

[00:03:18] Lee: Yeah. And so what man versus bear is actually an either or question.

And either or questions are questions that we refer to in the trauma community as false questions because when we are dysregulated, when our nervous systems sense threat somewhere and they go, oh my gosh, there's something I need to fight against or something I need to protect myself from 

As humans, they love to boil things down to an either or, because it's the easiest way for us to make a choice. The issue is that when we boil things down to either or, we lose curiosity, we lose nuance, we lose the ability to go, hold on a second, let me scan out and not look at it from this very narrow perspective.

So it's questions like this, interestingly enough, are also yes, no questions. So there is actually, I wasn't planning on talking about this, but there's actually a, maybe you know the name of this type of question, but it's something as a lawyer that you can ask that in, it implies guilt, no matter what the person says.

And it's a yes or no question. That's have you stopped beating your wife? I used that one here intentionally because the man versus bear conversation a lot was around. Bears don't beat you in the middle of the night while you sleep or bears don't come home drunk and have their way with you or bears don't at least with the bear, I know X, Y, or Z is not going to happen with me.

Yeah, he might hurt me, but he might not hurt me in all of these different ways that men have hurt me. And so this question of have you stopped beating your wife? It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. If you choose one or the other, you're still wrong. And a lot of these questions of would you rather have this or this happen?

Our brain will set up that false dilemma, that false dichotomy. The thing is like you just said, there's a lot of different, contextual pieces that go into that question. And I'm a questioner, it's the neuro spiciness diverse in me. So as soon as I heard man versus bear, I started doing the same thing.

I was like okay, but if I'm going to meet them in the woods, do I know them? Am I on a trail? Are there other people around? Is it daytime? Is it nighttime? Do I have food? Do I have my kids with me? I was like, there's a lot of questions here that. I need more data to be able to tell if the man or the bear is a bigger threat, or if they're both threats, right?

So I can't just make a choice off of that limited data. 

[00:05:45] TLC: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, if you're locked into a room with a known serial killer. Versus, a panda. 

[00:05:53] Lee: Or what are the little yeah, like the little red pandas, like he could probably like bite the heck out of my arm, or a guy that's been, serving a life sentence for hurting women 

[00:06:02] TLC: or even to, I've heard people talk about it.

Yeah. You just, a random guy out in the wilderness, just standing there, Hey, how are you doing? Like a good, even that it does, it will change it. And so I almost went, as I was really thinking about it more, I just realized I'm like, I do feel like it was set up in that way to make it that dichotomous, yes, no choice, 

And I think that's where a lot of people get either, either leaned really into it, but also cause a lot of people to get really upset with the whole thing because that's the silly thing.

How would anybody choose? 

[00:06:35] Lee: Yeah. Like why are we even trying to make this choice and there were a bunch of people that were like of course you're going to choose the man because the man's less likely to kill you. The man's less likely to hurt you. And a bunch of women who have had very bad experiences with men, a bunch of men who'd had very bad experiences with men.

We're like no, I'd still choose the bear. And I think right there, that's something that's important to look at from a trauma perspective as well, because the emotionality of it, right? Logically, when you looked up the facts of okay, when people encounter a man on a daily basis versus when people encounter a bear, who's more likely to get injured?

The stats were like overwhelmingly you're gonna get hurt with the bear. 

[00:07:12] TLC: Yeah, I think if you had even distribution of if you all of a sudden made all the men in the United States disappear and turn them into, grizzly bears, polar bears, something like that, and you encountered some of the stats, I saw about like 40 unique faces, the average person on a given day.

If just stats, just your kind of 20 random bears on a given day while you're on your way to work, I don't know that I'd want to that seems like a hellscape post 

[00:07:40] Lee: so when we look at the stats, the likelihood that you're going to be grievously injured by a bear is much more likely than you being grievously injured by a man.

And. What's fascinating, and this is the stat that I'd love to hear you talk about, is when we look at domestic violence, and a lot of the humans that we are afraid of, right? Talk with our kids all the time about stranger danger. And we're always like, don't get into white vans with men, right?

Don't take candy from and. When you look at the stats and the reporting, what's so fascinating is the vast majority of interpersonal violence that happens to children and women happens by people they know. It is by their fathers, it is by their uncles, it is by their brothers or their cousins or their, it is by men that they know.

[00:08:30] TLC: And women that they know. And it gets really interesting. Cause I will say this is when I mentioned it was a hard episode to do research on. I think in part, it's one of those where, you know, a lot of times that things are bad and then when you really start going into it, it gets really dark, really fast in terms of all the different terrible things that can happen to you.

And. It really does in a lot of ways depend on, yeah, is this an acquaintance? Is this a person? Because, it's one of those terms of certain violent crimes. The FBI reporting statistics categorize violent crime as six different major crimes that are considered violent. And of those, you really have.

A majority of those that are perpetrated against and again, I think in the man versus bear It is a woman for sure walking in or does it actually say 

[00:09:23] Lee: Actually it's interesting because at first it started with women But then they were talking about there were a lot of men that were like look if i'm in the woods with man versus bear I'm choosing bear too and here's why 

[00:09:32] TLC: yeah, and I just think it's interesting because If you just look at bear attacks in the united states since 1900, I think I Saw the stat, there's only been 66 deaths attributed to wild bears.

But if you look at the amount of people that over a lifetime will encounter a wild bear, incredibly small. There's only a few hundred thousand bears max in North America, but if you're talking just in the lower 48 and then even more down to largely populated areas, the chances of somebody who lives in a city suburb, encountering an actual wild bear is astronomically low. So yeah, the chances, I feel like if you live in New York or, LA or something, or you live in the suburbs, it may almost give you that false sense of security of bears I've never seen a bear. I know, I don't know anybody who's been killed by a bear, but in the same way though, if you switched out bear for a dog unfortunately it's in a given year, I think.

Last year, it was 57 people were fatally killed by dogs. So almost as many people killed in a given year by dogs than are killed in the last couple of hundred years 

By bears. 

[00:10:48] Lee: Yeah. But still that's a really low number. And we look at the amount of people who are killed by men, which I don't know if you have that stat but here's the fascinating thing for me that actually just came up through this.

It's helpful to look at the man versus bear thing to actually see okay how dangerous are bears like you just said, though, it's not really about the bear. And what's so fascinating to me is that as humans, as women were taught, I should be afraid of being alone in the woods and coming across a random guy.

And we are not taught. I should be afraid of my family members, my uncle Joe, who creeps me out. I'm six years old and he creeps me out. Every anyone who has an uncle Joe, I'm not actually talking about a Joe, but I just chose a random name. Like my uncle. So and so who creeps me out. I don't want to sit in his lap.

Every time I do, I get really uncomfortable, but my family's Oh, but go over and sit with uncle Joe. Make sure you give him a kiss. Make sure you hug all of your family members. Like we do this. thing where we teach our children from a very young age, boys and girls, particularly girls. So we teach them, Hey, it does not matter if you consent to touching that person or not.

They are family. They are a loved one. You need to allow them to hug you, kiss you, sit on your, like you sit on their lap, all of these things, the likelihood you are going to encounter someone who is going to sexually assault or physically hurt you. In the outer random world the likelihood you're gonna get kidnapped as a child a child abduction, or you're going to, be hurt by a stranger is so low compared to who you are going to be hurt by in your family.

And I hesitate to talk about this. This is one of the things that you and I, you told me I don't want to know about it. Which I wouldn't tell you anyway, but cause it's confidential and I cannot tell you the amount of women that I have talked to both as a nurse practitioner and as a certified clinical trauma professional.

Who we're in a session or I'm taking care of them as a patient and they're telling me about who has sexually assaulted them It's not a stranger. It's a boyfriend It's a friend of their sibling. It's their brother It's their father. It's their grandfather. Like those are the four or five most common ones.

I hear brother father like grandfather uncle, You Boyfriend or friend of a sibling that's older. Those people are in your house. 

[00:13:25] TLC: Yeah, the one I saw the CDC said, in terms ofrape in general, a little over 51. 1 percent of female victims reported by being a close family member or intimate partner.

[00:13:38] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:13:39] TLC: And 40. 8 percent by an acquaintance, which is 92%. 

[00:13:42] Lee: of 10 times. the man that hurts you or the human that hurts you, you know them. And so I think that this is really important because the idea that we're choosing the random man in the woods, or excuse me, we're choosing the bear over the random man in the woods that's an actual situation where I'm like, Oh no, I'm choosing the random man in the woods.

I don't know this guy. He's probably just out here hiking. Yeah, I feel a little scared, but I know the bear is going to kill me. I know the bear is going to kill me. And this random guy, who knows? But I've got a better shot versus if I'm choosing a man or a bear, and I know that the home I'm walking into has abuse in it. That's an actual harder question for me to answer, which again, it's still man, because, people don't really survive bear attacks all that often. if they get to the point that they get in a physical altercation with a bear people don't survive that. 

[00:14:39] TLC: Yeah, I will say It's a weirdly American statistic, but they did a thing about how many they asked people if you got into a physical fight, like a bear was trying to kill you, how many people thought that they could fight them off?

And it was something like, it was like 10 percent of Americans said, no, I think I could win in physical combat. Realistically, the answer is no, you could not. If you are completely unarmed and that bear wants to kill you, there's not a whole lot that person is going through. And that was 

[00:15:04] Lee: Yeah. And I know that this is a thing that for a lot of people, this takes us into gun control and gun violence and all those things, and we're not going there in this episode. That's a whole different episode. And, am I armed? Yeah. Do I feel physically able or empowered to defend myself because at that point, like that's an entirely different conversation.

And I think a lot of people aren't, that brings in so many other pieces. The other thing is that if we look at this contextually, again, I'm the one asking the questions. I'm Like, why am I in the woods? So the, piece about this that was particularly painful for me when I saw a video on this and then really thought about it.

I've heard my black male family members talk about how they have been like primed to see themselves as threats in life. They're like, I try to make myself as minimally threatening as possible. I try to be as nice as possible as kind and considerate. And I use humor. I try to take the fear that some people have when they see me away.

And there was a a guy that was talking about, I can't remember his name, but he was on Tik TOK and he shared, he said, honestly, I get it. He's I get why some women would say I choose the bear. And the recognition that as a black man, I scare the shit out of some white people just by existing.

And that a white woman, hearing a white woman say that she would choose a bear over me, number one, that just feels awful. And I think for a lot of men hearing that, that feels awful, and I'm curious to hear your perspective on that in a second. But he said, I've 

spent my whole life being told I'm a threat to the police, so I need to show up in a very specific way because they're racist and they're going to hurt me. I'm a threat to white women. Emmett Till, how long ago was that? Less than a hundred. Yeah. 

Less than a hundred years ago, Emmett Till, black kid, what whistles. 

[00:17:18] TLC: Yeah. And even that people don't know. 

[00:17:20] Lee: he may not have even said, but like supposedly whistled at a white woman and gets lynched. 

[00:17:25] TLC: Or I've also heard that she may have said something to him, like and possibly having the shopkeeper over here or anything.

It became the fear of, oh no, I'm going to get in trouble. Cause that's, it's really depends, but it is very shaky. Something extremely minor, if anything. 

[00:17:40] Lee: Yeah. And that even if he did whistle at her, like he whistled, and so I'm listening to it from this perspective of going my entire life I've been taught I'm a threat.

There's a movie called the American Society for Magical Negroes, or something like that. And the whole point of this movie is, this guy is sayingthat Black people exist. To make white people's lives easier. And they're given magic to bring the threat level of white people down so that they don't get the black people killed.

They were like, if white people get agitated, black people die. And it's extremely satirical and it's, but it's got a big point to it around. Look, like my life doesn't feel like it matters as much as other people's do. And there was that case. Oh goodness.

I'm not going to remember the guy's name, but he now works for he was a birdwatcher and he was in the park. I want to say in like New York city. And that white woman called the police on him because he had binoculars or something. And it turned into this huge thing that I think that's actually where the term Karen originally came from.

And. It's really cool because now he has a job, basically like bird watching and making a kind of National Geographic or something. But that could have gotten him killed, is having a white woman call the cops on him in a park, aka in the woods. There's a man here and I feel scared.there are a lot of Black men in the world who've had the cops called on them and had violence happen. And on the other side of that I've had violence happen to me by a woman, sexual violence by a woman. I've had sexual violence by a man. And I've heard and seen all of these accounts of sexual violence by men.

And so I think that's what drove me so crazy about this entire thing, I got really Excited around, Oh my gosh, we're going to have a conversation around this. And then everyone was like, no, we don't get to have a conversation around this. you choose the bear case closed. And so I was just curious.

Cause you know, you and I didn't ever have a chance to really talk about this part. how does it feel? You're a white guy, blue eyes, I think very attractive, right? I think most people would say. You're like the, what is it, apex predator, right? Like you're the one who has quote unquote the most privilege, how does it feel when you hear women say I would choose a bear over you?

[00:20:02] TLC: Yeah, it was definitely, a weird thing because my brain immediately went to That's silly. Then it went more to then they don't understand how bears work or maybe this is just like a misunderstanding. So my brain goes to more hold on, let me pull up the stats.

Let me be like, yeah, no, this is crazy. Individual bear encounters. What are the likelihood you're going to get, kill nobody ever, people ever see the reverend, great movie, but with Leonardo DiCaprio, that's my brain goes there. I'm like, that's what a bear attack looks like.

And initially it took me a little while to realize I was missing the point. Because in my head, I'm like, That's ridiculous. some men are bad people, but like I'm not never killed anybody I would never do and it starts going into more of like I was Personalizing it like as more of an attack on me Whereas it's a little harder sometimes to zoom out and go okay.

Yeah, there are you know, what? I think 16,500 murders in the us. I think that's 2019 

[00:21:06] Lee: 

[00:21:06] TLC: like that's, that is not a super uncommon thing. 

[00:21:10] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:21:10] TLC: And I think there becomes a little bit of anger in my feeling of okay, but a violence, who's the most likely victim of violence is men.

And so my brain goes to this is it's not really a fair comparison because statistically speaking, that man would be more likely to hurt another man. 

[00:21:28] Lee: Can you talk to me about that? Because I know I just had a little hitch in my body when you said that. And so I'm sure that there are. All humans and particularly women who hear you say most violence is perpetuated against men.

I'm thinking about war and soldiers and that, but also, do you have other stats around that? 

[00:21:46] TLC: In terms of it's generally most of the, like I mentioned, taking aggravated assault homicide like basically buying from somebody committing like a, an act of serious aggression towards another person that puts them in the hospital, the point that.

That ends up getting the police involved because the FBI, that's the information they get. Generally, the perpetrator and the victim tend to be male. 

[00:22:12] Lee: Okay. Let me ask you about this because, we were just talking about the statistics and this is, I think, a really important thing because anytime you bring statistics into a conversation, you got to talk about where they come from.

You got to look at, okay, who's not included in this. And so that's my thought here of what stats might not have been reported or collected. And so I'm thinking of myself. As somebody who was sexually assaulted by an ex boyfriend in my parents home. And we called the police and they were like, I lived in a small town at the time, and they were like, Oh, let's figure this out. Family to family. Like, why don't your, why doesn't your family sit down with his family? And I remember my dad at the time being like yeah, you're not gonna want to put us in the same room. That's not gonna go well. You're gonna want to handcuff me if you're gonna do that. But I remember that conversation, and I remember thinking I wonder if that even then counts in the stats of I don't know if it gets even formally filed as violence.

[00:23:14] TLC: Yeah, it gets very weird because it really depends too on where you're located, what kind of information, whether or not that then gets passed up, gets catalogued, then gets handed over to different agencies, who's ever doing the things, how much of it is estimated. How much of it is actual? Because in some cases what that may then fall into if since they had to come out, the chances are pretty good that there was a report at least made now, whether or not what that ended up going to, since it didn't go to a district attorney and then have it be adjudicated actually out guilty, not guilty.

It happened. It didn't happen. Would probably be under a reported, like it was a reported case, which some of those, and that's where you start really seeing the variable between how many. Like cases of this specific crime happen. And normally you have a range, even when you have that data. So some of them are going to include more of in that case, would it have been seen then, cause that would be then in a public records and researchable would have been considered by some researchers as a potential Probable case as a would it be a likely case?

Would it have been that was a report, but since it never went through the whole process, we're just looking at ones that it went through the whole process. The person went to a jury trial was found guilty and was given some sort of a penalty phase. So it does get a little weird. Like you were inquiring that would be reported in some places almost assuredly, but in terms of saying In a statistical way that for sure happened.

[00:24:49] Lee: Yeah, 

[00:24:49] TLC: it probably wouldn't be 

[00:24:50] Lee: okay So then here's the other question that I think other people would have too because you were just talking we were talking before we started the episode You were like, yeah up until 1895 in great britain there were legal curfews on when you could beat your wife So you couldn't legally beat your wife between the hours of 10 a.

m. And 7 a. m. Or 5 a. m 

[00:25:10] TLC: Yeah 

[00:25:11] Lee: Basically, so the police didn't have to come out in the middle of the night. 

[00:25:13] TLC: Yeah, it was not to disturb your neighbors. Noise 

[00:25:16] Lee: disturbance. But that's People have to 

[00:25:17] TLC: work. They have to sleep. 

[00:25:19] Lee: But that's such an important part of this, is that if things go unreported, right?

You lose numbers around, is it even a crime? Because up until what, in the United States, 1970s, it wasn't a crime to rape your wife? If your wife didn't consent to sex. It didn't matter. So like you couldn't even as a wife go in, walk into a police station and say, yeah, my husband like brutally assaulted me sexually last night.

They're like you're married. 

[00:25:45] TLC: Yeah. If you're talking, even you just mentioned England and Wales in 1991 was when a marital rape was made actually a criminal act. Until that point it was marriage implies consent for sexual intercourse and esteem the husband's legal, right?

Therefore, no criminal offense is committed. If a husband And it has the quote, the quotes rapes his wife. And yeah, in England and Wales, at least that was apparently 1991, which that was like, when I said that it got dark readings of this, I'm like, wait a second, hold on. 

[00:26:18] Lee: I know you're laughing right now.

Like I heard the letter for a second. I don't want to be so clear to the listeners. Yeah. 

[00:26:24] TLC: And it's the insanity that, it took that long for them to make a crime about it. And so that is where it gets weird. So when I started really diving in to the historical, because in some ways, I know that there tends to be now with more media now with more eyes on things, sometimes we'll get more overblown of okay, maybe this is an issue, but the level to which people perceive it as a major issue for really anything.

The more eyes you have, the more news reporting you have, the more it gets in people's heads of oh, this is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem. And you start to lose perspective. But when I start going back, historically speaking, I was thinking, okay, so you know, 1900, 1800, 1700, what are the rates say would they have records of okay, this was at least reported in my head.

I was like, okay if this was reported. And then you start realizing, okay yeah, a lot of people wouldn't report it. And in a lot of cases, the reasoning for not being reported was because not only was it not really considered a crime, you'd mentioned in terms of, and not to go too deep into race, but for a long period, really until way more recent history than I would like to think.

If a white person raped a black woman, that wasn't generally considered a crime. If a black man raped a white woman, not only was that considered a crime, that would be punishable by either hanging or castration. 

[00:27:46] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:27:47] TLC: So it gets very difficult when you start trying to go back in time and say, okay, even like homicide rates.

I've seen some things that say 1800, you had almost three times the homicide rate currently, but it gets very difficult because you don't have the same level of investigation. That's where I always get a little nervous when you really look into stats because you're like, okay, yeah, there was more of a peak in violence in the mid nineties.

[00:28:11] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:28:12] TLC: Really you had a lot more of all the major violent crimes, you saw a spike and it has gone on a downward trend. Yeah. but it's, I feel like a lot of people will say see, look the murder rate is lower than it's been in, in quote, unquote, recorded history. What exactly recorded history in that context actually is?

[00:28:32] Lee: Keyword recorded and reported. 

[00:28:35] TLC: And searchable. Yeah. By researchers. If you look on the FBI database, you start looking, they really only have digitized wise. They started taking the numbers in the early thirties, but it wasn't really, you can't really find online versions before, I think it's 1984 to actually really get into those.

You would have to go into paper documents, books, go into the actual physical files. 

[00:28:59] Lee: And it, so I think the thing too, I want to be really clear on it's interesting cause we've had this episode planned for a while, but I've been reading this Book series called it's the boys of Tommen and it's in Ireland.

And it's, honestly, y'all it's one of the most graphic it's a phenomenal series. And I stayed up till two 30 the other night finishing the fourth book because it was so disturbing that I was like, I have to finish this to be able to go to bed. 

[00:29:25] TLC: Which for some people to 30, isn't a big deal for Lee Flay stayed up till two 30 read the book.

[00:29:31] Lee: Midnight for me, I'm burning the midnight oil, literally. this book is a spoiler alert for anyone going to read the fourth one, but there's an 18 year old boy in this. he, horrific domestic violence by his father.

He witnesses his mother being raped, consistently. it's bad. It's really bad. he starts using drugs at the age of 10 or 11 to with it, weed and Oxycontin and these things. then at one point he switches over to heroin because he's taking care of five little brothers and sisters.

He's trying to do all these things. He's sleeping two hours a night. at one point he goes to rehab and the therapist is talking with him the therapist about his first sexual encounter. And he's I was like. stoned out of my mind and the girl took me behind this club.

I just remember all of a sudden we were having sex. I didn't want to, I was stoned out of my mind. What was I going to do? I could barely move. And the woman goes you recognize that's assault. That's not appropriate. And he's but the one who chose to use the drugs.

I'm the one who chose to do that. and I'm going to get graphic here. Like I was able to have sex with her. Like I was able to finish the act with her. So and he's yeah, or the therapist is okay, but sexual arousal and, orgasm don't equal consent. And he was like, what?

You could just tell that he had never been taught that men were allowed to like, say no, and that his not being fully present wasn't. Like that wasn't an excuse for it happening. That was actually a reason for it to not have happened. And so I think about the statistics with men a lot, how many men, say no when they want to, or say yes, when they want to say no, and this, and by the way, y'all, this is not, this is across like any type of sexual relationship.

This is with people who are older than them. There is a assessment scale called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale. If anyone's interested in learning about this, it's very deeply tied to a lot of trauma work. there's a great TED talk on it by Nadine Burke Harris.

And she talks about, the bad things that happened to us as kids. And when they originally came up with the survey for the score, there were not a ton of things on it. And one of the things they added to it as they adapted and updated the survey was, sexual encounter with someone who's five plus years older than you.

And what was interesting for me personally was when I was a child, I had experiences of molestation with a woman who was more than six years older than me, but was not like a fully fledged adult. And that didn't count. And so a lot of men won't count that. They're like, Oh, I was 14 and she was 19.

And if you look at like in our society, American pie, if anyone remembers, that's the term where the term milk came from mom, I'd like to, and, but these boys are 17, 16, 17, this woman's mid thirties, our age. Having sex with a high schooler. Dawson's Creek was the same way. Pacey, he's 16 having sex with a teacher.

And we'd never framed that as assault. So like that stuff doesn't get reported either. 

[00:32:41] TLC: Yeah, it is. It is one of those weird things where it is, if there was I don't know, I heard somebody talking about that, like my 17 year old daughter and her 37 year old teacher, I found out that they were actually having sex.

That teacher is going to have some serious problems. 

[00:32:59] Lee: I 

[00:32:59] TLC: found out my 17 year old son and his 37 year old female teacher were having sex and be like, Oh okay, cool. Yeah. Hey what all the cliches, oh, that, that's not nearly much of an issue. And it's. It's weird though, because yeah, when you really think about it, it's estimated, I saw as I was looking at this, one, less than one in ten rapes where the rape victim being a male 

[00:33:18] Lee: are 

[00:33:18] TLC: likely to be reported.



[00:33:19] Lee: So ten percent of all rapes. 

[00:33:21] TLC: That no. Of men, when men are raped, Less than one in 10 would actually ever be reported. 

[00:33:26] Lee: That's reported. 

[00:33:27] TLC: including, from what I understand, that's including being raped by another man.

And in a lot of those cases, that actually is the main one getting reported. Between 2010 and 2012, so it's not as good, but when the definition of rape was changed to, include being made to penetrate, which would include, for whatever reason, being intoxicated or something like that.

The numbers weirdly enough came a lot closer to 50 50 in some cases. And then it was estimated, yeah, that CDC estimated 2012 data, 5 million males reported being made to penetrate another person in the preceding 12 months. Which total as far as the FBI reported rapes in the United States in.

Similar time frame was about 120, 000. 

[00:34:16] Lee: Yeah, but I can't think. Honestly, just being even peripherally associated with this field and talking with people I think that sexual violence within families and sexual violence against children, sexual violence between teenagers or, happening in this age range, like six years or older, I think that Sexual violence with parents, grandparents.

I know people don't want to talk about this. and it's something that I very rarely talk about. Y'all, this is happening way more often than anyone wants to speak to. And, I just have to wonder, when we talk man versus bear, I think that one of the biggest leading causes of this.

One of the things that's just massively hurting us as a society is this sexualization. Of men from this very early age of like y'all can't help it. Y'all turn 12 and you turn into horn dogs. Like you're supposed to be trying to get women all the time or even men, you're supposed to be trying to get laid all the time.

That is your purpose in life. Like we have, we sexualize. Boys from a very early age and the other thing that we do to them is we create performance based self esteem. We say, Hey, you're not like the definition of masculinity is so narrow and tight. That anything outside of that means that you're you're I'm going to just use the word, you're a pussy or you're weak or you're like fragile or you're not a man. And we make that so dangerous. We make it so dangerous to not be seen as a man that men are like I will do whatever I need to in order to protect it. 

But part of that is y'all aren't taught how to feel your feelings. 

[00:36:08] TLC: Yeah, absolutely. and it is one of those, 

If that happens and I was curious to get your idea on this, do you think it's because too, with all that being the case, would that then increase the, maybe the trauma of the act itself? Because, I can think of in some cases, but I'm not going too much into it, people that, I know that are close to me that have had situations where, could it be classified, within that no, I wasn't really wanting to, but, it ended up happening.

Now, for some people that would be very traumatic for some guys, but for a lot of guys, it's you what happened? Okay. I'm conditioned. I'm told. Okay. That's just another notch in the belt. No, whatever. The whole idea, if a girl goes out and gets with a lot of guys, there's all these negative stereotypes.

The guy does it. It's Okay. what a cool guy, like that's a good thing to have happen. I just wonder if due to that difference in the trauma that one would feel, is that why maybe in this context, why that seems like such a 

[00:37:08] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:37:08] TLC: I you go back to that book where she gets the A on her it turns into this big th over what happens in that book but everyone's familiar with that scarlet letter, right? There's even that movie with gosh, what is her name? She's the redhead EZA where she basically gets labeled as a quote unquote slut.

[00:37:27] Lee: And then, so she goes around helping all the guys increase their reputation by saying that they slept with her. Notice, her reputation gets tarnished when she sleeps with people, but then when men sleep with her she's my reputation's already ruined, so why not take it further? Their reputations go up.

Their esteem gets higher. And so I think that this is it, okay, we've got this toxic combination of men aren't allowed to feel their feelings. They're taught, you're not supposed to feel sad or embarrassed or whatever. You're supposed to be a horndog. You're supposed to go out there and get as many women as possible.

Don't be a pansy. Don't be a weak guy. Be that tough. Skirt chasing, dude, think that the more women I have sex with, or the more people that I am with the higher in esteem that I am. And there's so many podcasts out there, alpha male style that are like this, they're like high value men sleep with all the women and high value men do this and that.

And men just eat this up because y'all have been. bathed in performance based self esteem since an early age. And so how could you make it make sense in your brain? You're like, Oh, I didn't really want to say yes to her. But like also, my friends are like, pat me on the back and be like, oh buddy ha, you got drunk last night and went home with so and and you're like, okay I think I'm having feelings about this, but nobody ever even taught me how to feel the feelings.

[00:38:48] TLC: Yeah, before I started dating you, I remember there being nights, being really drunk, and I remember there was one time I ended up kissing two women in the same night. By the time it got around to different friend groups and got back, I had three or four different guys come up to me. The story had changed around for me making out with a few different girls to having like sexual pleasure from multiple different girls.

And it wasn't in a Oh man, did that happen? It was like, I swear I had a guy come up to me. He's teach me. How do you, how did you do it? How did it work? And I'm like, how did what work? I didn't even, I don't, he was acquaintance at best. I didn't even know. He was like, So I heard, two days ago on Friday, you, you got a world from two different girls in the same night, tell me how did you make that work?

How did that go? Why 

[00:39:31] Lee: the 

[00:39:31] TLC: that exactly? I don't even know. And I was like, where did you even hear about this? And it wasn't true. It wasn't even the case, but it was one of those where he felt comfortable enough to come up to me to help teach me your secrets. How did you do that?

And I'm like, Thinking just now, just hearing you say that, I'm like, yeah, the fact that was not only the people apparently had passed that around, like, how cool was this? How crazy is that? 

[00:39:52] Lee: That is, and I remember when we first started dating people told me, they're like, he's a player, he has a different girl every week, like, all of these things, and That didn't set off alarm bells in my head.

And number one, I had gotten to know you before I got to know your friends. So I think that was helpful. But number two, I'm sitting here going, that probably should have set off alarm bells. Now it was a bunch of rumors and stuff. And once I got to know you and like we had that conversation, but I remember being, that was when I was at a really low point in my life that I met you where I was like men are going to just use me, cause this 

was only a couple months after I was like sexually assaulted by someone else. I'm not taking that on as mine. I'm going to say that was done to me. But even notice that language right now, that's how we've been conditioned to say it. She her sexual assault.

No. The sexual assault that was done to her. So I had just gotten to this point where my brain went to the same place of my entire life I've been basically told, you are an object. And I think a lot of women get taught, conditioned this way, either intentionally, like by their parents, or just by society in general.

But I am something to be used. I am something to be stared at. I am something to be judged. I am something to be criticized. I am something to be weighed, measured, and figured out if I'm found wanting or I meet the standards or not. And so I spent a long time like half believing that, half not.

And then after that, the assault, I was like fuck it. If I'm going to have this scarlet letter, if I'm going to be made an object. Then I'm going to have some fun and I'm going to like, not care about how people are going to judge me or not, because they're going to judge me no matter what.

It doesn't matter. There's no way for me to maintain my propriety here or be like the good girl. And luckily I met you, but I think that was why there was a part of me that was like, Oh, okay. He's really popular. The girls really like him. Oh, I'm okay. I'm a catch because he caught me.

And looking back at that, I still believe you're a huge catch. And I believe I'm a catch too, but okay. That was fucked up. and that was 20 years ago. 

[00:41:58] TLC: Yeah, and the idea that I was gonna date somebody that I liked, like people thought, Oh, I wonder how long this relationship's gonna last. 

[00:42:06] Lee: bet on how long our relationship's gonna 

[00:42:07] TLC: I still didn't get that money. 

[00:42:08] Lee: that money. 

[00:42:09] TLC: There was a pool. As to how long this was gonna, but I think in part it was because people were like those assumptions. There were a lot of girls who were maybe interested in me. Yeah, and that if I could have more people then I would or I should or whatever else and the idea that I would Settle down oh, that seems almost strange.

[00:42:28] Lee: Yeah, I think that like I love that this is where the conversation went to because there is so much around this. And so it makes a lot of sense that I found. A good guy, right? I found a guy who genuinely loves me and cares about me and wants to provide for me and wants to protect me. And really everything you do toward me is with love in your heart.

And there are a lot of women who don't find men. Who are as emotionally intelligent who are willing to do the work that you've done from a psychological perspective and from like a conditioning perspective who are really willing to look at this stuff, who are willing to sit here and have this conversation.

There are a lot of men that their self esteem is so fragile because of how they have been conditioned. They have been taught, you are walking like a razor thin edge between being a man and not being a man. And the most important thing to you should be being a man. So when they hear this man versus bear and they hear people say that they would choose the bear over the man, that hurts, but they don't recognize it as psychological pain.

They don't recognize it as wow, it feels really hurtful and harmful. I'm over here doing every single thing I can to be a man. And I'm hearing that. They choose the bear anyway. And so there are a lot of men that are so angry and hurt and sad and confused because they have done what society told them to do, but they're not considered alpha males.

They're not considered super attractive. They're not considered these things. And so they've been taught. If you do all these things, you'll get a wife, you'll get a house, you'll get a good job. You'll be a contributing member to society. Like you'll get all the spoils of being a man. And then they grow up and the performance doesn't match and they're pissed.

[00:44:21] TLC: Yeah. That's when you start it's interesting. I had at one point went down and Elliot Rodger and some of the other, like the people who go on to commit like mass murder and stuff. The involuntary 

[00:44:33] Lee: celibate. Yeah. 

[00:44:34] TLC: Basically guys who's, who gotten to that point. And I feel like a lot of it is that conditioning where this is, How will you become this important person?

This is how you have this self worth and self esteem. And even some of the people that they would, they'd interviewed later, there was one woman I remember she said, he actually seemed like a decent guy and had a fair amount going for him, but he couldn't stop talking about the fact that no women wanted to get with them.

Like it became such a thing in his head that, that didn't end up working. But it's like, The idea that so many of these guys, they get this idea that that's how I'm valuable. That's how I'm seen as important by other people, by other men, by other women, whatever else. And when that doesn't happen, they feel cheated out.

They feel like I did all this. It didn't work. And then they have that bubbling anger a lot of times towards women, but also towards anybody who is in those, Relationships. I don't know, they have a certain name. I don't even, no, I don't go into any of the bs, but there's a name for the guy that's the, I don't know if it's like the Chad or the whatever guy that they're called, but he's you know this ultimate guy who's attractive or whatever else and gets all the ladies and how unfair it is because he's not as smart or he's not as, and they start really boiling that down as to that is their purpose.

[00:45:43] Lee: It's just, it's so fascinating because there's this other piece that we wanted to talk about that we hadn't talked about yet, which was. It's a woman versus tree thing that's come up. . So a lot of men in response to man versus bearer went who would you rather talk to alone?

Would you rather talk to a woman about your feelings or a tree? And all these men are like I'd rather talk to a tree because a tree's not gonna tell me that I'm a pussy. A tree's not gonna look at me differently and decide that they don't wanna be with me anymore.

[00:46:11] TLC: that's a judgment. 

[00:46:13] Lee: A tree's not going to judge me. Yeah. Like they're not gonna respond to me necessarily, but I can ask a tree for a hug and not be looked at. Like I'm a pariah, right? So it's really fascinating of you pull out this piece of, for women, there's this sense of physical.

Danger with men. And for men, there's this sense of emotional danger with women of can I show you my softer, more feeling and caring side? And are you going to turn me away? And I, it really does have to do with this. So we talked about women being objectified. Women are taught I am an object.

So we have this very, we think about the world, And how we impact it, but from this place of objectification. So we think of, okay, when I'm in this space, how does that affect? My husband, how does that like, how am I affecting all of these things around me when I'm used

and men have this other it's a similar form of objectification, but I like to call it instrumentation where you look at, okay, I am a instrument. So how can I affect change over here? Or what is my value? What is my usefulness? So it's actually another form of objectification. And I've seen this a lot recently coming up in the polarity world.

I'm doing the air quotes like the man men and woman polarity, feminine versus masculine. And, I got sucked into this in a little bit. 

If the question we're asking is who's right and who's wrong, and that's it. Like when we are pitting women against men and instead of going, okay. And I'm going to just speak heteronormatively here. Cause that's what I know. Like when we do this, instead of going, okay, what we're hearing from society as a whole is men don't feel like they can express.

their feelings. Men don't feel like it is safe for them to be emotional, even if that is angry or that is frustrated because they never learned how to express their feelings. And women are over here going we don't feel safe either because we've been taught our entire life that we're objects and that we're smaller, we're weaker.

Like we are supposed to, be in this position in relationship to men. And I don't know about you, but that's also a way of I'm not able to express my feelings because I remember being taught like men don't care about your feelings Men care about getting into your pants.

So they will say whatever they need to say. So you need to protect yourself against that. And I think that's just, if I think about all of this, that might be the saddest part for me, because when I learned how to actually start feeling my feelings again and not shove them down, and I learned how to communicate my feelings to you in a way where it wasn't like super judgmental or, it was just like, I'm feeling sad.

Because this happened, or I'm feeling angry, and that was one that felt very scary to show you. It was wild to me, how quickly, and not just with you, but with other humans as well, when I could vulnerably and clearly communicate my feelings without needing you to fix them. And I could be like, these are my feelings and they're valid and they get to be here.

How much safer my world started feeling because when I could communicate with people from that way it made them feel safer. And so then they were more safe with me. It's happened with my father. It's happened with multiple other men that I know really well. It's happened with women who have been, raised to be very like unemotional that I've been in relationship with.

It's been really fascinating. And When I learned like, wow, men feel unsafe expressing their emotions a lot of the times too. Like I've worked with some, several male clients at this point and just hearing how it it's so painful to hear how they were taught. 

[00:50:22] TLC: Yeah, I've seen like the terms of trends was a lot of things people asking men like, are you okay?

And it's no, yeah, of course not. Yeah okay, but am I still working? Oh, yeah, am I still going? That seems to be where more of the judgment comes in, not whether or not you're actually okay. That's an important, but are you not okay to the point where you Can't keep going. you can't keep providing you can't keep working because if you don't well, then that's it 

[00:50:49] Lee: can you speak more to that?

[00:50:50] TLC: Yeah, I think there's a lot of feeling for a lot of guys like okay if you're not Okay, but you can still push through and you can still do whatever then you can well, that's what vacations are for. That's what drinking a beer at the end of a hard day.

That's, why I think some guys get in that whole the woman should be doing X, Y, and Z and should be taking care of me because in a lot of cases, I think it's, I'm not okay, but there's no way to really feel like I can express that. But as long as I have a couple of these things, I can keep going.

I can still keep producing because it's the ones who don't. a lot of ways, that's at least what other men seem to look down on that person who can't provide for their family, a person who can't push through that's seen as, weakness and it's like, what are you doing?

[00:51:38] Lee: Yeah, 

[00:51:38] TLC: That's not an okay thing. And I know personally, at least at one point, that really was hard because it was like, okay, I have this job that I absolutely hate, but the idea of not doing it was crazy because it's you're married and in part there is, and I don't know if it's necessarily as explicit, but it's yeah okay, you don't provide for your wife, you don't go and work, you don't bring home the money, you don't do these kinds of things.

She'll find somebody who will, there's other men out there who, Who maybe make more money. And so it's almost the idea, and I wonder how much this ties into you can get a lot of different women, get a lot of different women interested in you, but in part that the idea is even like those incels I was mentioning before I have money, I have a car, I have a job, I have these tangible check boxes.

Why aren't I getting women? Because I think they get into their heads. That if I didn't have those things she would leave. So if I do have those things that you should 

[00:52:31] Lee: stay, what's also really fascinating. Cause I've been seeing this a lot. I'm in some communities where this has been happening.

I see a lot of women saying it's his job. It's his job as the man to provide for me. Like it is his job to pay for everything. It is his job to do these things. And I feel like, looking back 60 years ago, we heard this conversation in a very different way of it's her job to make sure that the kids are taken care of, that the house is clean, that all this stuff is done.

It's her job to have sex with me at the end of every night. It's her job to get out of bed and put on a full face of makeup. So I never have to look at her any other way. There's been, and I think that there are still several, like lots of men out there that believe that still. 

[00:53:11] TLC: Yeah. Or I saw this.

Women's magazine from the 1960s for your cousin husband comes home brush your hair put a ribbon and tidy the home have his tea Ready and put on some lipstick and a smile and a clean pinafore, which I don't quite know 

[00:53:26] Lee: Oh like I think that's like your apron. Yeah, 

[00:53:29] TLC: and don't bother him with your day He's had a busy day and in his day is more important than yours Don't ask questions if he's later stays out all night That was the advice 

[00:53:39] Lee: for being alive.

But that's also the time that women can't own their own house. Women can't get a credit card. They can't open a bank account. we got the right to vote 105 years ago. 

[00:53:48] TLC: even then, the amount of people, amount of women who were. It was acceptable to actually register to vote and then have a husband and wife vote differently in the same household that she didn't just vote with what he says.

I think that's one of those things that tends to get overlooked where people are like yeah, they've had the right to vote for a really long time. And it's 

[00:54:06] Lee: but did they? 

[00:54:06] TLC: Yeah. But at what point was that? There was even talking at one point of have your kids vote too, because that'll be great because obviously they're going to vote the same way that the husband says.

And so therefore the more kids you have, the more votes you get. And therefore the more power politically that you have with the idea of of course they're going to vote for the person you tell them to. And so it's yeah, they had it, but how much of it was really. independent women, really, and you may know more about this, but it was more, way more recent history.

The idea that if a woman was 30 years old, she wasn't married. 

[00:54:37] Lee: Oh yeah. Spinster. 

[00:54:38] TLC: Yeah. That's 

[00:54:40] Lee: but this is what's so fascinating is I think that the man versus bear and the woman versus tree really shows this like massive breakdown that's happened. Now I want to be really clear. I am not saying that it is worse today than it was before.

If anybody is like, Oh gosh, is she some right wing conspiracy? No, we're not going there. What I want to share about though, is there is a breakdown in as we have, as women gotten more rights and gotten more ability to survive on our own. There has been a breakdown around. We still need community.

We still need other humans. And by the way, like as a species, we still need to procreate in order to stay on this planet. And one of the interesting things I've seen in the work that I do with organizations is the labor shortage that is occurring. And that is going to continue to occur. When you look at the decrease in the amount of babies that are being born every year, we're seeing more women who are single than ever.

We are seeing more men that are single than ever. We're getting married later. We're having less children. And I'm not saying that like by that, by themselves, those are bad things. And I think that there's so much that ties into all of those stats. And when I look at, we have a problem with how we are socially conditioning and how we are showing up.

when women are happy or happier, not being in relationship. That tells me two things. One, we have created relationships and conditioned people to be in relationships in a way that doesn't feel good. And number two, I know as a woman.

that I was taught men are dangerous You don't need a man you should be able to survive on your own. you should never rely on a man. there were a lot of things that I was taught that actually harmed our marriage. Because saying to you, I don't need you.

I can survive without you. Like I could take the kids and be fine would be you have been raised with performance based self esteem. What is that going to do to you? 

[00:56:55] TLC: Yeah. Especially then too, it's not as much, traditionally there were a lot more terms of even just other social connections, clubs, stuff like that.

Things that people were part of. When that kind of stuff would happen, you had a lot larger support network. And yeah, not only just that, but also not having that level of interconnectedness, in person in some ways people have a lot more, I feel like maybe people that they know, or that they may know online or they know of, or in some ways they may communicate, but it's not the same level of that intimate communication.

I, something went rough for me, You go and you tell like your group of friends, whatever else. But yeah, and it's as you have less of that, as you have less close family and stuff like that, living closer together as people are further away, then only I feel like in some ways makes it that much harder in terms too.

So you want to try and keep that family closer. So it's yeah it's that. Performance based anxiety and also the inability to feel like you can really communicate that outwards. Do something with it besides the socially acceptable things. Put it into work, put it into whatever you're doing that is producing value in some way.

[00:58:10] Lee: Okay, 

[00:58:11] TLC: Yeah you're having some troubles at home. Okay. But not going to be having troubles at home if you're working 14 hours a day. 

[00:58:16] Lee: Yeah. 

[00:58:17] TLC: If you're working 10, 12 hour shifts. five, six days a week. And when you're home, you're sleeping. You don't have all that much time to have arguments and you're still providing and you're still producing and you're still being useful and valuable.

And at that point it's almost then if she were to like leave or something, we'll say what did you want me to do? 

[00:58:34] Lee: Yeah. I like, it's just, it's all so complex. I think the one thing that we haven't said that I think is super important, especially talking about how often the violence actually happens within the home.

Y'all this gets passed down. 

It gets passed down. Both through our DNA and through the way that we're nurtured and through what we see, like our children see so much and experience so much. And I can still remember a moment from my childhood seeing an elder that I cared about push another elder that I cared about, that they were in relationship.

And I can still see that scene in my mind clear as day. And I remember feeling like. Oh my gosh. It was terrifying, because it's oh this can happen? The yelling, the yelling can turn into that? No. And I still remember the first time that you and I got in a fight, and I shoved you, and I was like, oh shit I didn't know that I could get that mad.

[00:59:41] TLC: Yeah, and I think what's interesting, we touched on in a previous episode, but I think as research has gotten better, that was definitely one of those things, I could never understand until I started really learning more about terms of trauma and stuff like that. It was like, they would say, people who are abused tend to become more likely to become abusers themselves.



[00:59:59] Lee: going to like, they either become the victims of domestic violence or the perpetrators of domestic violence. 

[01:00:04] TLC: Exactly. And that the idea of wait a second. I'm like, but you saw how bad that was. And again, I'm not saying this is the truth, but this is where my brain went of Wait a second, but you saw how bad it gets.

You saw the negative outcomes that there was like a disconnect there. And I'm like, cause that makes no sense. If you felt like how bad it was to be abused, why on earth? And again, from a man's perspective, like you were abused, how on earth would you ever hit your kids? Shouldn't you know better?

And it really messed with me a little bit. Cause I'm like, It didn't make any sort of logical sense. Cause I'm like, more so than somebody who hadn't been abused or hadn't seen that, how dangerous that is. And I think it's when you really start looking at it through that trauma lens and you started looking at it through that generational, like genetically speaking other, like historical things going into that, where it makes a little bit more, not saying that like it's okay or anything by any means, but that it makes more sense why that might happen.

Yeah. That was really eye opening to me because that was one thing I could never logically make sense around because I'm like, how bad this is, how could you ever do something like that to somebody you love? And then my brain would go from there of something seems wrong.

[01:01:16] Lee: But that's it, right? Is you have these adults who never learned how to feel their feelings without harming someone else or harming themselves. They never learned how to regulate their nervous systems. You're around them all the time. Your nervous system is bathed in dysregulation. You experience the dysregulation from them.

You have other things just, dysregulating you, and then you grow up and now you have the power, you have the choice, you have the agency, but still nobody ever taught you how to feel your feelings. 

[01:01:43] TLC: You still don't know what to do with that. 

[01:01:45] Lee: know what to do with the anxiety, the terror, the fear.

And so you either implode and you hurt yourself. Or You cover it up and suppress it, dissociate, yeah, all that. Or you explode. And so I have to say, this is the other thing we didn't talk about that I think is important is, when you talk about intimate partner violence, whichever way you want to talk about it.

men are on the receiving end of intimate partner violence a lot, and we talked about things not being reported and things not being prosecuted, that is something that if, when we are in domestic violence situations, Not we, but like when humans are in domestic violence situations, it, we always portray them like in movies and in other places, a lot of times we portray them as it's the man against the woman.

And a lot of times it is please hear me. This is not me saying that a lot of times it's not. And way more often. Then we talk about it is both directions and it's just oftentimes the man is bigger, stronger, more powerful. So he does more damage and we look at it from the perspective of who did more physical damage?

The thing is though, is I think about before you and I really went through our Learning how to be more regulated in our nervous systems. And I think of some of the things I said to you during our fights, or I think of, those few times that I did shove you. And it came from a place of I know he's not going to hurt me or hit me.

So I feel safe enough to be able to say these things or do this. That's still, and I'm, I think a lot of people might be surprised hearing me say that's happened. I'm not proud of that. Like I, there's no excuse for me doing that. And. That really came from, I had no idea what to do with the utter dysregulation that I was experiencing in my body.

And, It came out that way. And when I think about the shame that I used to have around that or the shame around yelling, sometimes I would yell and I would go back and I was tracing up the line and I'm like, there was a yeller in my house growing up and there was a yeller in his house growing up and there was a yeller in my house growing up and it was, there was a yeller in their house growing up, going back to that.

I'm like, Oh yeah, I, that was normal. Versus in your house. It wasn't yelling. It was suppression. 

[01:04:10] TLC: Yeah. And the person who was the yeller, I think in my head, I saw the kid that I was closer to without going, name and names, but I realized it didn't work. And so I think in my head, I'm like, it never had the effect.

I think the person thought it did. So I was like, I don't know. I'm not saying it made it easier for me, but it did make it at least a little bit of what I was like that's not good. It's not very effective. 

[01:04:36] Lee: Yeah. I think this is an important piece to bring up because for a lot of women, there's a lot of shame around.

Yeah. Sometimes I do yell, or I do have that explosive emotionality. And we call them in crazy when they do that. We're like, Oh, she's a crazy one, right? Like your friend used to say that don't have sex with the crazy ones. He had a different phrase, but I'm not going to use it on here. Don't get involved with the highly emotional women because They're dangerous and how many men grew up in households where all of those emotions were suppressed and they're like, Oh, it's cool to have this woman who like expresses her feelings and says the things like, Oh, it's good to be with her because like I can feel my feelings too.

Sometimes that domestic violence is the only way I know how to feel my feelings is by fighting with someone. And so we can, we make that like very wrong and bad and I'm not saying it's healthy at all. It's understandable from a, if you look at it from a nervous system perspective, I can draw the conclusions around.

This is the only way that you know how to get those feelings out, or this is the only way you know how to process those feelings. And so it's not an excuse. This is something that I learned this statement and it's been so helpful. It's not an excuse. It's a reason. So when we think man versus bear, or women versus, woman versus tree, or whatever, We really have to look at the social context underneath of us and go, wow, you know what there's a historical context around what's reported and what becomes statistics.

There's a societal context around the privilege that some people have. There's also a very real societal context around what gets normalized and what doesn't. There's a emotional context around do I actually even know how to communicate with someone? Have I ever had experiences that allow that to be safe?

There is so much. And I think just centering the emotional regulation of that central family unit while kids are growing up and the ability to understand, hey, the outside world is going to try to objectify you or turn you into an instrument or make your worth tied to, Your productivity, it's going to do all these things to you.

And it's also going to tell you not to feel your feelings. And so like inside this home, inside this space, we're going to create safety for you to not find your self esteem in your performance, to not see yourself as an object, to be able to express your feelings and to learn how to do that safely and effectively without hurting yourself or others.

Like it's not man versus bear in the woods. It's the kids in the house. 

[01:07:33] TLC: And hopefully too, when people really look at this, maybe the one positive to come out of this whole thing is the idea of maybe the fact that some people will just see, man, bear versus man that, Oh, that's just silly.

That's stupid. I don't know. Not really look into it. Hopefully maybe it doesn't. Why would some people pick the bear? People tend to be logical. That's one thing that, I've noticed in lots of different things. May see somebody else as being completely illogical, but most people in their interactions do tend to be logical.

Those women who say bear versus man, okay, I want to go with the bear. You'd be easy to be like you just don't understand bears, you know what I'm saying? But looking at what they've actually experienced, they've never seen a bear, but they have seen men and they have seen men do bad things. And that is being logical.

In their mind, they don't, that's not like a fault, that's not like being stupid. That's not being like, oh, this person just is, doesn't have the intelligence level to understand the question. It's not a misunderstanding of the question. It is. It's a lived 

[01:08:39] Lee: experience. 

[01:08:40] TLC: It is. To them, they're being honest that bearer actually would feel safer.

[01:08:44] Lee: Yeah. 

[01:08:45] TLC: And really looking at that as that's a real thing 

[01:08:48] Lee: and that's a big deal. 

[01:08:49] TLC: Yeah. 

[01:08:49] Lee: It's perceived threat versus actual threat. 

[01:08:52] TLC: Yeah. 

[01:08:53] Lee: And I think we're both getting a little emotional about this. 

[01:08:55] TLC: Yeah, because realistically, if you're talking about terms of somehow you get killedthere's what I remember I saw in the stats, there's over 100, 000 people per year die accidentally of poisoning.

Yeah, there's all these other threats that are there. That aren't necessarily seen, but that doesn't mean the fear of a certain threat. It's like people are afraid of sharks after seeing Jaws, unless you live on the north coast of Australia or something where great whites tend to be congregating.

The fear of sharks is to be like that's silly. You should never be afraid of sharks. The chance of you ever getting killed by a shark are pretty much zero. But at the same time, nobody looks at that fear of sharks and goes that's a completely irrational fear. It's no, some sharks could eat you. It's a real thing. 

[01:09:42] Lee: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for exploring this with me. 

[01:09:48] TLC: Yeah. I'm glad I think from the get go, it was one of those, gets dark, especially when you just start seeing some of the stuff and understanding, looking worldwide and realizing how much of issues are, but it's just really trying to bring it down to that more personal level of recognizing.

That is what people feel. And in this case, those feelings are not, they're not wrong for that person, for somebody else, for maybe even in society in general, but for that person that's what they're afraid of. 

[01:10:17] Lee: You're speaking to emotional validation, and it's the same with woman versus tree.

If somebody says, I would rather talk to a tree than talk to a woman, why are we logically trying to argue with them? Instead of saying what happened? What happened to make you feel safer talking to no one, talking to an inanimate object, than talking to another woman? What did your mom do to you? What did your girlfriend do to you? What happened? And it's not to say that there's not harm maybe in the opposite direction from you to that person too. most of the time it's both. I have yet to have a conversation with a couple like partners that it's completely one sided. And where it's like a hundred percent, one person and 0 percent the other.

Sometimes it's been like 1. I'm not going to lie to you, but there's still, sometimes there's just a little thing. And that brings in a whole conversation around fault and responsibility that we're not going to have right now. please, if you have ever been through something like this and you haven't talked about it with anybody.

Because you haven't felt safe. We are not therapists. We are not, I'm a trauma professional. I'm not a therapist. I've talked to a lot of people about this kind of stuff. As I said, I've been through it too. TLC's talked to people about this stuff. He's got experiences of his own If you ever need a person to just talk to and maybe it's even just somebody to be like, yeah, that was fucked up and you deserve to go talk to somebody else to get help and get support working through it.

We're here. Sometimes it's helpful to just have somebody go, yeah, I get why you would choose the mayor. I get why you would choose the tree. And I know maybe you've been telling yourself a story for 20, 30 years that it wasn't that big of a deal. And sometimes the thing you need in order to be able to heal is for someone to be like, yeah, it was a big deal.

It doesn't matter if you were drunk. It doesn't matter if you were whatever. It doesn't matter if you pushed them with words or you did whatever, like you experienced what you experienced and that gets to be valid and witnessed. So until next time, thanks for listening in. We're here if you need us and we'll see you next week.

See ya