welcome to new beginnings with karen dell i am pleased to have a returning guest dr ed adams who is a psychologist specializing in males and masculinity and relationships yes so welcome back well thank you and thanks for having me back oh yes we had a great conversation before talking about your male nonprofit group as well as your new book that was recently published and we just couldn't cover everything you know we couldn't and so i wanted to have you back to talk about one man and compassion as as one topic and i think the flipside of that is we're hearing more about the angry man and under in exploring that because i think there's a linkage there you know one is kind of two sides of the same mir r and i you know as a psychologist i think you can help us kind of under wraps that so we understand it better and have compassion ourselves yeah so you know so many ways we could go with your so let's talk about the compassion side what are the ways that hinder  men from being compassionate and then one of the ways that we help them to become more compassionate and there's a certain self help in this as well sure there's we'll talk about self compassion ye biological coding to it is the ability to bond without the bonding element in our human experience we would not have survived as a species and out of that bonding and attachment comes the capacity to empathize with each other and then to care for each other a newborn baby would not survive but ours if it wasn't tended to and so we would disappear as i said before and empathy is an element of beginning stage or an aspect of our relationships and empathy is i understand what you're going through maybe because i had had a similar experience and so i could relate to your suffering or your pain or your joy or your success compassion goes another step further compassion is not only do i understand your suffering but i want to do something to help you to to to relieve your suffering so karen if you broke your leg and i said are really know how that feels because that happened to me once too and we not our heads in agreement of the of the discomfort that you're in that's each of us or being a pathic but if i say you know one of the things i needed when i broke my leg was to be driven places and so let me take you to the doctors or let me take you to your relative's house and and that would be an act of compassion  and also inside the act of compassion is the intention to be compassionate so if you think about human relationships in general the the the compassion element is so vitally important because it encompasses a lot of the other aspects of what makes relationships work but men somewhere along the line have  discounted or detached from compassion as an identity of their masculinity their men are compassionate in so many ways every day and in every so life situation  so the compassion is built in it's factory equipped but culturally we have begun to or we have detached that from an identity and in place a not cooperate and be compassionate with you my job is to is to be ahead of you or beat you at the game and so that plays out you know in a positive way sometimes but very often it's a negative so there's a replacement as you said factory equipped comes compassion which is the next it of empathy because it takes the feeling of i understand what you're going through to an action you know of not only do i understand it but i can help you yes let me help you yes and compassion is replaced with let me compete and i can see we see this play out in society great so there are more people in need physically i think of homelessness you see more of it in people you know there's some lack of compassion people have had some hard times it's been difficult times and sometimes we drop you know change in the cup and sometimes we walk on right so there's there's  miss that plays out here how do you replenish the factory equipment how do you know when it's not a time to do one ups manship it's not a time to do the put downs it's not a time to be self focused but to actually focus on others and how do we help young men i have two young sons how do i help them understand that and how do men help other men do it so that the game isn't i trash you as we've seen it played out in our political arena in a way that's personal actually in our political arena and then all of a sudden you're supposed to you know exchange the olive branch as the doves are supposed to feel and i'm supposed to be ok very good on board after you've actually personally attacked me it's come at that you know least in the political arena it's gone not just competitive but almost personal right there's a very dangerous in my estimation a very dangerous cultural norm that is is possible to be can imagine that inside of a family if compassion inside of a family was taken away and people didn't have each other's backs and and people did not care for each other or do what is necessary to relieve each other suffering the soul of the family would fall apart absolutely and so the in many ways the soul of the country is what we're what we're dealing with here and compassion plays in fact political level but on a personal level and people are given permission to be harder harsher more more less sensitive to one another and i'm not talking about political correctness what i'm talking about is the reality that you and i are connected we have much more in common than we don't and that we are that we depend upon each other and we need each other it's sane and you know that's that's san that's that's being that's sanity in set insanity is i will destroy you and i don't need you and i i can a way of life as a behavior is becoming vital it's becoming vital it's it's not an add on it's it's a real vital element of our ability to to connect with one another referring to there the others is is evident but to yourself is a concept that is pretty far into most men which is the notion of self compassion it's different than self esteem self compassion is an internal voice that talks to you like a best friend would talk to you it's the internal voice that said that says something like jim really glad i made that phone call finally you know it's like or i i said something to my son that needed to be said and good for me it's going through a maybe while you're suffering with a disease or you're and you're talking to yourself and you say you know i could i could understand my pain i can understand my suffering and it's as though a friend put their arm around you and that voice is there the alternative to that is i myself up gently you know and this self compassion is the alternative to that and then later on in the book i say this is worth repeating this is research that men who are connected men and women but men who are connected and involved in have a place of belonging and caring and being being helped and cared for in rich's life it extends increases the immune system's ability to fight disease there you'd be hard pressed to find a downside to that so i have a bumper sticker on my car that says compassionate men are happier when and people will pull behind me and give me a thumbs up or beat their horn it it doesn't take research i think to demonstrate that i think we all know that so the reason that it's not happening is it's considered sissified you know in a stereotypic male model that things that are on on the softer side of of of life things that the research shows that things men perceive as feminine are often the things that are rejected the most and because that  that identity of their masculinity is anything that's not feminine and if compassion is put in not as a human characteristic but as a feminine characteristic the stereotypic male will reject it as a part of himself so many so many things there are swirling through my mind one is let's talk about the art because explain how this demonstrates compassion or what is this demonstrating well around that abstracted heart shape are really it's like the heart in the midst of suffering and  it is the compassion a month there is not a listener or a person walking this planet that did this given moment isn't suffering about something and the suffering is on a continuum it could be very serious suffering on a physical level or could be distress about money or it could be distress about a relationship or disappointment worry about  relatives coming over to the house so everyone has their their current level of suffering and the suffering really wants to be soothed it wants to be comforted and self compassion is a way of self comforting but we also need that self comforting from others again like a friend coming over and saying you know it's going to be all right karen you know and i'll help you in the book we'll get through this and when you have people in your life and that supportive way and you have that internal voice that is being kind to you were self soothing to you you were more empowered doesn't take the suffering away but it and it gives you a relationship with it that's different than if you're beating yourself up way and there's a reframing that's happening as well absence so that  you know i think of the you know you have the rainy me on each shoulder so you have the one that is very good at beating myself up like you said you know we've done it again we've been here before when is this going to stop and then you try to nurture this one that says it's going to be fine yeah we face this before but you know we gain some knowledge in this isn't exactly the same you know you're going to be fine so i i definitely hear that so let's contrast this with the angry man in particular the angry white man because that's the what we hear what's going on well anger anger by itself is a desire includes very often a desire to hurt and and to pay backward to equalise you hurt me i'm going to hurt you back and so there's a lot of hurt out there and when men don't have the language to talk about their hurt when they don't have a wider emotional vocabulary to say maybe i'm disappointed or i'm i'm afraid or i am vulnerable or i am lonely the emotion that tends to be most accessible is an identifiable is anger so  it's sort of like gets distilled into that one expression of a multitude of possibilities and motions and it comes out as anger and that's acceptable also well what then the other ones that you've said another one say was of violence and another one was forgiveness i most people would stay dead defy the anger and the violence as masculine traits and the you're letting go a central piece too important to live it without it you're not happy or i mean it's the stakes are very high well the stakes are very high and now we have a new leader of the free world who operates in my opinion not with what we're talking about and fosters  ship more in your face and kind of street fighter then i think we've had in a while so it's going to be interesting because already i think there are people who feel emboldened by his words to act out some of this anger and they're not being compassionate and there is a sense that you'll be you know attacked and you know he's he's indiscriminate in terms of you know i'd right now he's having a twitter war with the union boss so i'm concerned about how we can get what you're doing with men mentoring men and understanding and tapping into being their better human selves getting wider appeal and i know that there are other groups that have existed my brother's keeper and other things but how do we get the message out how do we get people to understand that it's to be whole is to be what we're discussing here not one dimensional and it's healthy it's mentally physically emotionally healthy to display of variety in a range of emotions it's like you said it comes back to be equipped right does i think i think we we have to have a counterbalance the anger that you're describing and that counterbalance is present in our culture i mean there are compassionate people all over the place in our churches and our synagogues and our mosques in our view it doesn't mean having no boundaries what it means is that you see the interconnectedness of us all in april i'm going to be going to dubai in the middle east and i'm giving a workshop on come men and compassion and self compassion with the goal of connecting people working with men in the middle east with people working with men here in the states  and when you think about it the only way that mess can really help get cleared up is if on both sides there is a sense of greater compassion towards the other us within our own heart first and then reaching out to so that if everyone has a compassionate heart the world will change but absolutely we would recognize it absolutely absolutely we need to do more  because you know that's one area a think of syria i mean there's so many pockets across the world that need that kind of insight  there's as you said before he starts within and tapping into that and with garlands of our gender regardless of our race regardless of where this city or our religion or our geographic where we were born we all come with this degree and it's about tapping into it right and bringing voice to it yes absolutely so i i have pinpointed compassion is like the the central or quintessential element because if if that's developed  say in in your kids you see that developed in your kids then you know that they're connected you know that they they are less self centered you know that they can have a sense of community in a sense of of purpose in the world i mean it really when that's when that's developed it tends to be like a big were rock throwing in in a pond it has big ripple effects  think you'll be fascinating probably to do it after you come back from dubai you know that would be good because i would love to hear how that whole session went in terms of middle eastern men absolutely well thank you for tuning in and i want to thank once again dr ed adams psychologist author min mentoring then founder join us for an excellent show on compassion and the importance of compassion at this time of the holidays so thank you again thank you karen rishi thank you for two ending in