00:00:01 Rosemary

If you’ve completed or are currently enrolled in Compassionate Inquiry training, you’re invited to attend the third International CI Conference in Vancouver, Canada from October 30 to November 1. Dr. Gabor Maté is returning as our keynote speaker and masterclass presenter. Enjoy engaging workshops and inspiring demonstrations with Sat Dharam Kaur, CI facilitators and practitioners. Whether you join us in person for three days of shared inquiry with CI cohort, partners and colleagues from around the world, or attend virtually to focus on the teachings, tap the link in the show notes to learn more, take advantage of early bird discounts, and secure your place. And yes, there will be dancing.

00:00:54 Kevin

How do we create spaces that are safe enough, respectful enough for men who may not engage in this sort of thing to come along and do it? Maybe that’s the question I’m asking, because somebody has to do something.

00:01:09 Tony

I’ve been really lucky to be around beautiful men all along my journey. I remember when I was 15 and as I say, I got the job in a supermarket back in the mid-80s, late-80s and there was these couple of hippies and they’d set up a kind of a program, a well being and healing program. But the… one of the managers in the supermarket, they came into the supermarket and they were looking for young people who were at risk. Although I didn’t know this manager, he’d identified me and he said to me, would you be interested in going? He says, I’ll pay you, it’s two days a week and you go into the city. And we went in and we spent… and I can still remember today, it had such an impact on me at such an early age. And they got us out into the Wicklow Mountains and we’d done some hiking or we might do some art and these were all just alien experiences to me.

00:01:59 Stephen

I was also thinking about… as much as I was mentioning mentors, I was also blessed with my mum and my granny who were also able to say, “Wise up.” You know, it wasn’t just about having my dad and my grandfather as role models and other men around me. It was also having healthy women around me as well that were as a kid, growing up, as a teenager, and for all the times that I got things wrong or messed up, but there was still somebody there to say, “You messed up. We’ll still look after you, you know, you’re still alright.”

00:02:38 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:02:55 Kevin

So welcome to another edition of the Gifts of Trauma Podcast from Compassionate Inquiry. My name is Kevin Young, and I’m really chuffed, delighted to be joined by two friends, colleagues, two men, Mr. Stephen Brown and Mr. Tony Coffey. I’m going to ask you both to introduce yourself in a moment or two. And I just want to maybe lay out the theme of our conversation. And it’s around being a man in the world today. And this conversation came out of an invitation by Sat Dharam Kaur for me to step up, talk to some men, get curious about what’s going on in the world with men today. We’ve had a couple of conversations that have been really fruitful. The conversation will be curious, compassionate, and kind. Not suggesting that we have the answers, but maybe we can offer some insight. I was thinking about this conversation, gents, before we landed here, and I thought it was really important for me to say that having these conversations, I don’t want it to seem that we are coming from a place of ‘poor me,’ ‘poor us.’ When I look around with what’s going on in the world today, we look at sexual abuse, domestic violence. Those victims of those things need to be held front and center. It’s really important. I was looking at some figures for the north of Ireland, and over the last five years, there have been 30 women murdered in the north of Ireland, 29 of those at the hands of men. That’s a pretty damning percentage when we look at the hot topic, The Epstein fires and things like that. You know, this is men causing a lot of harm. And I just want to ensure at the start of the conversation that we’re keeping those victims, people that have been hurt, front and center. So their stories are the most important. And for me, if we don’t try to understand what’s going on, what’s happening, it just continues to happen. In fact, it seems to get worse. So that’s where I’m coming at, from this, just curiosity and holding victims front and center. So maybe I could ask you both. I know you both very well. Maybe I could ask you both to just introduce yourself and tell us who you are and what you do, and maybe if you have an expectation of the conversation, share that with me as well. Maybe I’ll… Tony, you’re on my left as I look at the screen. So maybe I’ll go to you first, Tony. Tell us who you are, what you do.

00:05:20 Tony

Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for the invitation. And it’s always a joy and a pleasure to share some space with yourself and Mr. Brown. I always enjoy that.  Yeah. I’m Tony. I’m an addiction counselor. That’s my bread and butter. That’s my background. I work in a drug and alcohol program here in Dublin and I primarily work with a low socioeconomic community, so people who haven’t got means and experience a lot of poverty. I’m also a CI practitioner, the mentorship coordinator for Compassionate Inquiry. I play a lot of golf and about three adult children now at the stage. And two dogs, because I know where you are at the moment. And my dog’s names are Elvis and Priscilla. So it’s quite fitting you are where you are, Mr. Young.

00:06:05 Kevin

Thank you, Tony. Tony, only you could have two dogs called Elvis and Priscilla. That’s wonderful and thank you, Tony. Thank you for being here. I’m really keen, Tony, to get into the nitty gritty of your work and what you do. You know, it’s fascinating work, and I imagine it’s difficult work, and you seem to be able to do that with compassion and kindness and love. I often hear you hold the people that you work with in very high esteem. That’s really beautiful. Thank you, Tony. Stephen. I know you’ve been on the podcast before, Stephen, but for anyone that hasn’t listened to that, tell us who you are.

00:06:37 Stephen

Thanks, Kevin. So Stephen Brown and I’m a neighbor of Kevin’s, actually. We actually only live about 20 minutes apart and we’re really only an Ireland halfway from Tony up in the north of Ireland. I suppose for me, work wise at many different roles. I’m somebody who likes a lot of variety in my life and so I’m working at facilitating bi-weekly groups for Compassion Inquiry and mentoring participants and training new mentors and a few other bits and pieces within the world of Compassion Inquiry. And then outside of that, I work with people on individual basis and group basis. Working with groups is my passion. And really what would have been most of my work up until the COVID era, where all the in person group work really stopped, for me. But yeah, that’s my passion, working with groups, and I suppose in the context of this conversation, I would say there was once upon a time where I would have been working a lot more with young men and maybe young men from backgrounds that Tony is still currently working with. Of course we go through transitions of life and who we get to work with. But this is a very interesting topic and I would, right now I notice, like my heart’s beating fast. There’s a nervousness in me of trying to get something right, or say something right. Yeah, whatever I say is what I say in this place. Yeah. Glad to be here too, with both of you.

00:08:05 Kevin

Thank you, Stephen. Yeah, maybe just giving ourselves permission, like I said at the start, exploratory, curious. I don’t know that we have the answers, but I’m really keen to ask the questions. I don’t even know what questions I’m going to ask, so I’m going to see how that comes. In our conversation. Last week or the week before, I spoke to a lovely woman, Susan Morgan. Susan’s a researcher at the University of Ulster. It’s called Taking Boys Seriously, the program, and she’s been researching that for the last eight years and it was happening before that as well. And she was helping us understand that young men, she calls it the educational pipeline. So from start to finish, young men perform… young men and boys perform much worse than young girls and women. And when I look around, just looking this morning at incarceration rates, drug use rates, suicide rates, men are faring a lot worse than our female counterparts. And I’d really love to know, why? What’s going on with that? And maybe we could tease out a little bit from both of you. How do we get here? How do we get here to this place where this is happening for men and the outspin of that, it seems to be that men are being much more violent, a lot more crime, then maybe looking forward, Where do we go? Where do we go from here? How might we as men in this healing world, if you want to call it that, how do we help? What do we do? Tony, maybe swinging back to you, if that’s all right. Tell me a little bit about, if you would, about your work and, Who shows up? What’s the demographic? What are people struggling with? What… what’s going on in your world?

00:09:37 Tony

Yeah, it’s really interesting when we look at numbers and stats and all that as you’re talking, Kevin, because I know like, in Mountjoy Prison here in Dublin, which is the main detention center, if you like, for Ireland. I think it’s 83% of the inmates are from five areas in Dublin, 83% and 90% of them, it’s all addiction related. So there’s only probably about 10% of the population are there for any other kind of crime. And up until very recently, they were still slopping out in that prison. They still didn’t have a bathroom, if you like, the facility of a bathroom. So it’s really interesting where I work, it’s probably 70% men and 30% women. Because in Dublin it’s a lot more difficult for women to access treatment than it is men, because of childcare, because of their responsibilities. So it’s actually a higher population of men we’d see than females, and all kinds of age ranges and all kinds of substance from crack cocaine, crystal meth, when weed, benzos, alcohol, you name it. It’s across the board and low socioeconomic communities. So people who have a difficulty to access proper treatment or proper counseling or proper services. They survive on maybe €280 a week paid off the state. And they live in these communities that have experienced, from the 70s and 80s, heroin epidemics and poverty and high crime rates. So it’s real community stuff, and really lots of intergenerational trauma too. And the amazing thing in that there’s two guys in our service at the moment, who are both currently detoxing off methadone, but both are single fathers doing amazing work with their children. So there’s good news as well.

00:11:26 Kevin

Yeah. Thank you, Tony. So Tony, tell me a little bit. Can we get inside the psyche, the mind of the people that are showing up? I hear you talk about deprivation, I hear you talk about deprived communities and tell me the sort of things that men are struggling with. What’s the story for a young man living in an area like that in Dublin? And how do they get to end up coming to addiction services where you are.

00:11:45 Tony

When they open their front door, it’s there, Kevin. There’s people dealing, there’s, they’re being groomed into gangs, they’ve been groomed into this kind of lifestyle of if you do this, if you do that run, if you do this run, you can make a few bob and like from a very young age, 7, 8, 9 years of age, they’re being groomed into that kind of lifestyle of dealing and trading and doing errands. And they grow up, it’s their world. It’s a different, it’s a very different world. It’s hard to describe it. It’s a bit like the Matrix if you like.

00:12:16 Kevin

Yeah.

00:12:17 Tony

Because it’s so normal and natural for them. It’s. That’s the world that they grow up in and they’re really tight knit communities, and they have their way of living and their way of being and their way of surviving.

00:12:28 Kevin

Yeah. Thank you Tony.  And Stephen, I’d love to hear a little bit about you. I know you started out your career a long time ago and it was working with a lot of young men in the north of Ireland who were coming from probably very similar backgrounds, socioeconomic struggles, poverty. And then we had the added ingredient of the war, the troubles in Northern Ireland. Talk to me a little bit about young men that you see in your sphere of influence. Talk to me about them coming through.

00:12:53 Stephen

It’s about them coming through today.

00:12:56 Kevin

Yeah. Even if you want to reflect on the differences of when you started out your career and today I’m just curious about what do you see out there in the world of men?

00:13:06 Stephen

Well, again, just to be clear, I don’t work with that many men today. That’s what I would have done. And once upon a time I would have been working with young men from the ages of 16, would have put them in the 16 to 25 year old bracket, and there was the odd young woman would have come into these programs. But I was really working with young people who had reached the stage where you need to go and do this program or you’re going to go to prison. And they had a choice. That was one particular program which really interestingly, by the end of the program, on their final residential, they did three residentials over the course of a year. On their final residential, everything kicked off like clockwork. First night of the residential, there’d be alcohol, there’d be drugs, there’d be fights, there’d be staying in and anything that would really just kick off. What we came to realize was that was a way of staying in the program because actually once that program ended, they were back in their communities, everything else was the same and they now no longer had the safe container of people who had their back that could see the possibility in them. And there was another program which we worked with, which was working with the fire service here in the north. And I actually did a research piece with all of the young people. Whenever that program came to an end, it ran for a number of years. We did a bit of research and celebration with the young people and the thing that they came back to and these kids were having to be in at 7 in the morning doing drills and tidying up and cleaning. And they’re kids that would ordinarily be lying in their beds until 12 or 1 in the afternoon. The thing that they said that supported them or kept them in it was the routine and the rules. And that was in such a contrast to everything else that was in their lives. And so there’s a part of me which really sits into, How do we find more mentors for young people? And I know that I am saying young people because I think it’s like I know this is about men, but actually for young people in general where they have role models, where they can see different types of behavior, And in a way I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but certainly on this island I would also include the impact of colonialism and the scars of that. Doesn’t matter where you sit on the island, if you’re on one side of a border, which I think that’s another topic. But there’s an impact of colonialism that is present on this island, and I think that is a factor. I did hear somebody saying just very recently, and you can’t quote me on this because it’s a misquote now at this stage, but there’s something like only 20% of children in the north of Ireland are living with both parents and in most cases I would imagine they’re actually living with the mother. So how do… We’re not even talking about how do kids get a good role model of a father. They may not even have a father on the scene or I don’t think it’s any way of a solution. But I do like the idea of being able to mentor young people. I don’t know, I’m sure there are probably some programs around that do that sort of thing. But it’s like a question like, we were in the Sahara last year, Kevin, and we were sitting with that question of how do you become a man or what’s it mean to be a man? And what does that mean and how do you know that? There’s nothing to mirror that back to you.

00:16:52 Kevin

Maybe I’m going to invite you both then to take your professional hats off and just give me your opinions and thoughts. Just being men in this world. I was reading this morning again, I don’t mean to be Mr. Statistics, but I’ve just been looking at this a lot. The number of young men between the age of 18 and 20. So very young men who have received jail sentences longer than their age. So bigger than their age. They’re receiving sentences of more than 18 to 20 years at 18 to 20 years of age, in the United Kingdom, and I’m sure Ireland’s the same, that has more than doubled in the last five years. So we’ve doubled the number of young men that are getting life sentences. I looked at the news the other day. There was a whole lot of news going on. But one of the really shocking stories to me was that a 13 year old had been arrested in England for stabbing two people, two teachers at a school. Like a 13 year old, that’s a child. Anyone that describes a 13 year old as any more than a child, I think, is misguided. And I’d love to know from you both what’s going on, what do you think? And hey, listen, I know we don’t have the answers and we don’t have all the insights, but just as men in the world, what’s going on? What’s happening?

00:18:03 Stephen

Well, first of all, it makes me terribly sad even to think… I think it was yesterday or today, there was a 12 year old shot dead in England, by a 14 and 16 year old. That’s who’s been arrested for. And the amount of deaths and starvings again in England, across the UK, across these two little islands. On one hand it is out of control and I also think we’re also have easier access to hear about these things. And in some ways, like when I was growing up, we were probably in a bit of a bubble, and you wouldn’t have heard about these things just so much. So we can hear about them now more often. But going back to… I find it incredibly sad and shocking that young people can end up in such violent lifestyles at the age of 12, or age 11, 7 or 8, absolutely shocking. And I think it’s incredibly complex as well. I don’t think that there’s, oh, you do this and then we solve that. There’s lots of issues around how to control knives and the selling of knives and so on, but a lot of it is just straight into the punishment then for it. And that doesn’t seem to be working either. You know, it is a deterrent? Hell no. And Tony had mentioned earlier about the grooming. It’s certainly, it’s active here as well where young people are getting involved and we still have some of the legacies of the troubles here, that people are being groomed in such ways. I have a very close friend who’s a youth worker who was able to tell me about young people that are taking part in riots, because they will get a certain amount off their debt. You go out there and you throw stones, you will get money off your debt to us for the drugs that you’re buying. So it’s like kids are getting caught up, and It’s not just about taking drugs, it’s actually getting them engaged and something that’s going to also. It’s another way to get a criminal record and in some way, like they’re damned once they get criminal records, it’s keeping them in that… this poverty even more so. Yeah.

00:20:12 Kevin

Thanks, Stephen. Tony, what do you think? What’s going on?

00:20:15 Tony

It’s interesting as you’re talking because what’s coming to me is my generation, right? So my generation is probably the first generation where I got to be in the labor ward and be with my wife when she was giving birth to our three children. My father would have been in a pub, for example. Right? That would have been the norm. And as they’re talking about, I remember if somebody was murdered, it’d be in the news for weeks, growing up. It would be such a rare event. And I think there’s a lot got to do with the breakdown, I think, in Ireland of the Catholic Church, if I can bring that in at the moment, and the state, because again, in Ireland, in this little island of ours, the church and the state had so much power. And Stephen mentioned colonialism earlier on, too. And I think a lot of our country was kept down for so long, and with the breakup of the Catholic Church, and there’s less respect now for different elements of the state, or arms of the state, if you like. There’s a lot more freedom and a lot more availability of weapons, a lot more availability of drugs, a lot more availability of earning big money. People are drawn to that.

00:21:27 Kevin

And why then, Tony, I know you mentioned a little bit about. But why young men? Why young men and men? What is it in us? What is it? And just an opinion. Hey, listen, I know you’re not a… You’re not a sociologist and you’re not an anthropologist, and you’re not any of those things, but just your opinion. What is it in us that’s drawn us to that?

00:21:44 Tony

If I go back to my childhood, I was always drawn to a little bit of madness. I like a bit of madness. I was the type of man growing up, or boy growing up, no interest in academia, wanted to be chasing girls, wanted to be smoking, wanted to be drinking. And I think in us, I think that’s… There’s a naturalness and normalness to that where we want to kind of experiment and push our boundaries. But then again, where’s the checks and balances? As Stephen was saying earlier on, with the mentors, where are the checks and balances now? If I think about it, and it’s not just men, I know this is about men, but I remember working with a very young girl. I think she was 19 a couple of years ago, and we were breaking for Christmas, and she was saying to me she was looking forward to Christmas Eve because that’s when she gets to do cocaine with her granny.

00:22:32 Kevin

And I’m not laughing at the humor, I’m laughing out loud.

00:22:35 Tony

Right?

00:22:36 Kevin

That’s just a crazy statement to hear, isn’t it?

00:22:38 Tony

And for her, this was like the ad where someone’s putting up the fairy on top of the Christmas tree. This moment where she gets to do cocaine with her granny on Christmas Eve, was a really special event for her. And something that kind of was her Christmas, that’s what it was about. So I think we’ve lost a lot of, kind of, our morality, in a way, and our compassion, community, connection again. Where do we gather? Back to the Catholic Church. Where do we gather as communities anymore? It used to be the Catholic Church, it used to be the pub. Where do we come together? So what’s going on? I think it’s this Western, the capitalist world that we live in.

00:23:19 Stephen

Yeah. You reminded me, Tony, of a young man from Belfast who was a third generation unemployed lineage of men in the family. And the family couldn’t get over that. They wanted to get a job. What are you doing getting a job? You don’t need to get a job. Just stay here with us. And it’s like, how do you break out of a mold which is so tight, without a support to do that, as well, you know, or very limited support to be able to break out of something like that?

00:23:51 Tony

Yeah. And just to say to that… I was 15, I was out of school. And not that I was ever in school, but eventually the trigger was pulled, and I got a job in a supermarket, mopping the floor. And my parents were delighted. They’re saying you live a job for life mopping the floor in a supermarket. That was the expectation again, coming from where I came from. I’m the first person. I went back to college at 34, and I’m the first person in my family ever to get a degree. Going back, I don’t know, a few hundred years, that wasn’t what was done. And even at that time, at 34 years of age, as a man with three young children and I was in college, the only person that knew was my wife. Because I was afraid to say it to anybody, because I was expecting to hear back. Who you? You’re going to college? You’re getting ideas about yourself or getting notions about yourself, because that’s the world that I come from.

00:24:48 Kevin

Let’s summarize a little bit, gents. So what I hear you say is we’re looking at socioeconomic struggles. We’re looking at, I guess, what you named Tony. This idea of neoliberalism and individualistic capitalist approach to life where we don’t see ourselves as interconnected. We don’t see ourselves as with a togetherness. We see a lack of role models, good role models, particularly for young men. And we see this sort of ingrained mentality that, ‘This is it, this is our lot, this is what we’ve got. Don’t go, get a job, stay here and do that.’ Suggesting that this is. And correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t want to put words in either of your mouths. You’re both suggesting that this is the cauldron that’s creating the issues and challenges that are arising for young men and maybe even young people. I noticed as well that the female incarceration rate has actually risen faster. It’s much, much lower, but it has risen faster than that of men. Is that a fair summation of where we are right now?

00:25:50 Stephen

Yep.

00:25:51 Kevin

Okay, so then I’d love to know as well from your place as having a, I’m going to call it a privileged place in the healing world. Noticing, recognizing as well, we’re all white men. We’re probably, I guess now all from working class backgrounds, but probably all middle class people and we have our own homes and cars, and etc. Talk to me then about who you see coming through the spaces that you work in any… I mean that might be in Compassionate Inquiry. That might be. Maybe you run groups and Stephen, I know you run a lot of groups and workshops and courses and that sort of thing. Are men showing up at those? Are men showing up in your compassionate and quiet bi weeklies? Are men showing up in your workshops and your groups and your retreats? Talk to me about that.

00:26:33 Stephen

We’re certainly in the minority. It would be a joke in our house if I’m away to train. ‘Oh, you’re off for the weekend with a group of women.’ Which is generally the case. It should be one or two, really. Interestingly, it became a focal point if I was a participant in last month in Belfast, where actually it was four men to three women. Such a rarity. Such a rarity that you should make certificates or something about. About this. But in a way I’m also, I am pleased though and actually some of the groups that I’m currently running where the ratio is not quite 50, 50, but I’d say there’s a couple I can think of where it might be four men out of every 10 people, which is higher than in a lot of spaces that I would be in. But the thing is, the groups that I’m running are not getting people that say, ‘Oh, I want to do something, I want to be a better man.’ It’s not reaching these young people or growing up people that we’re currently talking about. It’s out of reach to them. It’s not even in their social media or their sphere. Like how would they find out about it? People tend to find out about these things when the shit hits the fan. It’s when things go wrong for them, when things are intolerable and they’re able to maybe get into some sort of system that might offer some support for them and then they might get some counseling or some group work or something like that. And those are generally done on grassroots organizations anyway. Certainly I don’t see either of our governments doing a lot to address the issues on the ground. In fact, if anything, they’re withdrawing any money to support communities where we could be doing more for people. Again, I have no answer to that. You know, it’s how do you make these things affordable and accessible? And I certainly can’t work for free either.

00:28:29 Kevin

Maybe. Let me, Tony, before you answer it, let me, let me. If you were going to answer it, I want to drop another question in. So when I look at you, Tony in particular, maybe just in this trio, but myself, I grew up in a really difficult time and as did Stephen, in a very impoverished part of Belfast before I moved from there. And maybe we’re outliers. I’m curious, Tony, so how come you’re not one of the people accessing your addiction services, and you’re one of the people that is delivering the addiction service? What’s going on with that?

00:28:58 Tony

Well, I did. Yeah, I did a long time ago, Kevin, is the straightforward answer there. And again, I think I’ve been lucky, I’ve been really lucky to be around beautiful men all along my journey. I remember when I was 15 and as I say, I got the job in a supermarket and some of the first kind of EU money was coming into Ireland at the time, this is back in the mid-80s, late-80s, and it was these couple of hippies and they’d set up a kind of a program, a well being and healing program. But the one of the managers in the supermarket, they came into the supermarket and they were looking for young people who were at risk. And although I didn’t know this manager, he’d identified me, and he said to me, would you be interested in going? He said, I’ll pay you. It’s two days a week and you go into the city. And we went in and we spent… And I can still remember today, it had such an impact on me at such an early age. And they got us out into the Wicklow Mountains and we’d done some hiking or we might do some art and these were all just alien experiences to me. And then as I went along, I met really great men who just guided me as well under their wing. And then also, in recovery too, some really great men that kind of just took me under their wing and minded me and cared for me and women when I needed that too. But breaking out of that mentality, of,  This is our world, this is our community, this is what we’re entitled to. I think lucky, and I think also I suffered from what I describe as with my mates when I was younger, we grew up to all sorts, but I knew it was wrong. They didn’t at that stage. So I think because of my sensitivity, I was always aware we shouldn’t be at this stuff but yet still do it. Right, because of that peer pressure stuff.

00:30:40 Kevin

Tony. And please feel free to say no, but I hear you. And as you say that, I see that in myself as well, there was something in me that just knew. And I saw as you did that you were pointing to your heart. You were pointing to your heart there. Tell me a little bit more about that from the point of view. There are lots of young men like you and myself and Steven used to be young men who, I mean, we’ve just had all the stats. They’re going to jail, they’re getting involved in violent crime, they’re being abusive towards their partners and their teachers and etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. So talk to me with a thought on the young men that are out there doing that. Talk to me about that. What were you pointing at there in your heart? What are you talking about? My sensitivity. Almost as if you’re appealing to men that might be listening to this.

00:31:22 Tony

Yeah. There’s a kind of a inner knowing, right? An inner compass, an inner knowing, whatever kind of language you want to put on it. And as a young man, you can get up to whatever you’re getting up to, but when you’re alone in the bed in the fetal position and you’re reliving something, a memory or something that you’ve experienced, and it’s just about turning to that a little bit more and listen to that voice of knowing. And then hopefully, with luck, I’m a big believer in luck, that you choose a different path or… No, I’m not doing that tonight, or I’m not going there, or I’m not going to show up for that. I’m going to stay in or whatever way that looks like for you, just to stay safe. But I think it’s that turning inward to that inner knowing when you’re alone in the bed or whatever, and listening. Now, at the time I was doing that, I didn’t know what I was doing, if that makes sense.

00:32:08 Kevin

Sure, of course.

00:32:10 Tony

But I’m not sure if that answers your question, Kevin.

00:32:14 Kevin

I don’t even know if it was a question, Tony. More just really curious about that experience of maybe someone listening, someone here, someone hearing can say, yeah, I’ve got that too. I know what I’m up to isn’t great. And I find myself in a situation where it’s really difficult to do anything else or anything about it. And maybe just appealing to that, because if we can recognize our own potential and if we can see. That’s why I’m chatting to you both as well, because I recognize that you’re both men that really see the potential in others. And I know my experience of being with you both, even personally, is to be illuminated and enjoyed and I have that sense of being held, being seen, being witnessed. And it’s not. It’s not the same in a lot of the experiences that I would go into where there’s a lot of men, you know, there’s a lot more derogatory behavior, teasing, cajoling. So, yeah, with I’m going to just asking you to shine a little light on that little light. Without using too much poetic language.

00:33:07 Tony

Yeah. And I think what it is, is I think men are in pain. Kevin, if I can sum it up,

Kevin  there we go.

Tony:

It’s men are in pain, women are in pain, and young people are in pain. And who do you turn to? Who’s your support? Who can you reach out to? Who can you have a conversation with? And I had really some great friends too, where I could have them, kind of depth of conversations that I needed to have too. But there’s a risk. There’s a risk in that world. Of course, I’ve taken that first step.

00:33:39 Kevin

I know from my own experience, as I look back, probably highly sensitive. Really all I wanted to do was be quiet and fun loving and vulnerable and honest. And those attributes weren’t ones that went down too well in the environment that I grew up in. In fact, they were detrimental to one’s survival. So I learned to be rowdy and exuberant and take drugs and use alcohol to hide that vulnerability, that softness that was in me because it wasn’t safe to be soft. It wasn’t safe to be vulnerable.

00:34:10 Tony

And again, I just… speaking because, most of them, all they need and still need is a hug. But how at 12 or 13 years of age, or 14 years of age, and you’re hanging around with your peers and you’re doing whatever. Can you turn to someone and say, hey, give us a hug, Would you? It doesn’t exist now. I do think we’re getting better at it. We’re getting better at it. I think there is a lot more happening in schools now around emotions and around the body, far more than it’s ever happened. And I think that is happening. And there’s a lot more opportunities for men. Yoga classes, tai chi classes, fishing clubs. There’s so much more available to people than just the pub, or the nightclub, and alcohol, which is important. So I think we’re heading in the right direction. But it’s slow steps.

00:35:00 Stephen

I’m also thinking, and the pubs are that bloody expensive now for people to go for pint. They don’t spend that much time in them anymore. And certainly young people are not, you know, if a 17 year old in our house, they’re not spending that much of time going out to pubs and so on because. Because it is so expensive. And just certainly back for years of working with young people outdoors, which is where I did a lot of the work with them. And what you were sharing, Tony, and then also what you were sharing, Kevin, they would have come in and they were the hardest men, like young people, really tough guys. You’d cross the road if you’d seen them coming along. But we had the very fortunate opportunity to see them laughing and smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world. And that was such a wonderful experience to share with young people. Where in their home environments, in their communities. There was no space for that. You had to be the hard man, you had to be the tough guy. I agree, Tony. There’s certainly so many more opportunities and at the same time, they’re not taking them. We’re not actually. I don’t see that we’re able to transition many young men into these organizations until somebody comes along and cajoles them or says, you have to do it. I was also thinking about, as much as I was mentioning mentors, I was also blessed with my mum and my granny, who were also able to say, ‘Wise up.’ You know, it wasn’t just about having my dad and my grandfather as role models and other men around me, I was also having healthy women around me as well that were as a kid, growing up, as a teenager, and for all the times that I got things wrong or messed up, but there was still somebody there to say, ‘You messed up. We’ll still look after you. You’re still all right. Yeah.’

00:36:59 Kevin

It’s interesting, Stephen, because you’re landing on a spot now. And when I had the conversation with Satram, really recognizing that healthy masculinity promotes, and I use the word masculine and feminine without gendering it, and recognizing that many people define themselves as many things, but healthy masculinity promotes and encourages healthy femininity, which then promotes and encourages healthy masculinity. But that has to come again, that word of interconnected. It has to come through community. It has to be interwoven. And somewhere that seems to be disjointed. And again, I don’t expect us to have the answers, but an opinion. I’d love to hear an opinion. You know, Sat Dharam said to me, okay, so step up. What are you going to do about it? Here we are having this conversation. What are you going to do about it? And she wasn’t saying that it was my responsibility to fix the world. That’s not what she was implying at all. But she was challenging me, you know, she was saying, ‘Yeah, so there you are sitting there waffling, chatting all this stuff. What are you going to do? How are you going to step up?’ And maybe if I was to say that to us. So we are men in a privileged position. We are in this world, this healing world. We do have an audience. We do have training and resources at our disposal. What are we going to do? And I don’t expect you to kneel your foot to the floor and commit to anything, just in general, what can we do? What needs to happen? Can we step up?

00:38:26 Tony

Big question.

00:38:27 Kevin

‘Tis.

00:38:29 Tony

And for my private work, it’s about connecting with one person at a time, Kevin. And really just being with that person in that moment, in that space because the ripple effect of that again, for their family, for their children, for their community would spread out. And then in the organization that I work, again, because of my role, I can shape the program. And we have a lot of Compassionate Inquiry elements now in our program. Like, I’m a CIA practitioner, my boss has done mentorship. One of my colleagues has gone through the year-long training. Another one of my colleagues has just started in the February cohort. And another colleague starting in the May cohort.

00:39:12 Kevin

Wow.

00:39:13 Tony

Out of a team of kind of eight of us, we’ll have five of us who have gone through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:39:20 Rosemary

We’re taking a brief pause to share what’s on offer in the compassionate inquiry community. Stay with us. We’ll be right back.

00:39:30 Kevin

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00:40:21 Tony

And that really will inform a lot of the work that we do in our organization in terms of how we hold space and create safer spaces for people. Bringing in breath work, bringing in more outdoor work, bringing in more… They even have me now banging on sound bats and sound bowls and getting away with it. So it’s that it’s more because I know, and again, I know in Dublin, I know people who reached out to mental health supports, and reached out to counseling services, and had such poor experiences too, such really poor experiences, because it’s not just the communities. And again, to give you another example, the new National Drug Strategy is coming out for Ireland. And two or three weeks ago they sent a draft out and they forgot to mention anything about the community and voluntary sector, completely. That’s to give you the idea that’s 42 projects in Dublin, just in Dublin and around the rest of Ireland. They’re just excluded from the National Drug Strategy of Ireland.

00:41:22 Kevin

Wow.

00:41:22 Tony

Yeah. Now there’s no, there’s talks going on obviously in Leicester House and people are up in arms over it. So it’s about us as individuals, I think, shaping what we can with what we’ve got in the moment. Because the other stuff is just, it’s out of our power, out of our control from a bigger perspective. Yeah.

00:41:41 Kevin

Yeah, thanks, Tony. Maybe that’s… Stephen. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And maybe that’s the answer for us all, Tony, is to just to try to make a difference in our worlds. And I’m sure, without a doubt, and again, totally pulling this out of thin air, but I am sure that every single man listening to this, if he is in any way conscious or involved in this world, knows another man or a young man who could do with a hand on their shoulder. No doubt everybody knows a young man or a person like that. And maybe the invitation is then to go and put your hand on the shoulder and say, hey, how you doing? What’s up? That kind of fills me with a wee… I’m just noticing a little tinge of sadness that, that has left in my heart as I say that… the simplicity, yet the profoundness of just putting your hand on someone’s shoulder and saying, hey, sit down, have a cup of tea. Steven, where are you at with this part of this conversation?

00:42:34 Stephen

There was something Tony sparked in me just speaking now, which was making me think about, you know, there is a whole other side of this where I was thinking about some of the boxing clubs that I’ve been involved. I’m not a boxer of any sort. I tried it once, got knocked out, would not go there again. But actually, for young people coming into boxing clubs, and I’m sure it’s still happening. It’s community driven. It’s there on your doorstep. It’s given people, young men, an outlet. It’s helping them get in contact with their emotions. It’s getting them to temper their anger, if it comes out because somebody hit them and gets hurt. And I’m not just saying that’s all good for boxing. And I know many people will say, oh, boxing is a very violent sport. Yes, that’s true too. And more about the fact of, it actually is community driven. And actually, in some ways, I’m not surprised that the new drug strategy, Tony left our community. Really, they forgot about them. Hardly surprising. But I think in some ways it’s grassroots organizations and I think it’s also important to recognize there are a lot of people, certainly that I know of on this island, that are doing a lot of good work with young people, with young men. And I think that’s important that we also recognize that, and actually work to enhance that more, to develop it more. Because there’s certainly, yes, there are young people that can’t get caught into that, are outliers to it. But we also need to make sure that we keep doing what is working well and keep that in our vision as well. I like the idea of ‘adopt a young man,’ sort of idea. Yeah, doing that. But it’s also about the right time. And sometimes it’s not the right time, for young people. We had often said for a long time, and I think there was actually some academic research done around this, and this is going back to mid-90s, that there was a sort of idea that for young men to stop offending, to stop getting in trouble with the police, one of two things had they happened, become a father or become a partner. And when one of those things happened, for a lot of young men, their criminality, the things that they were doing that was getting them into trouble, their patterns, their behaviors, their drug taking, alcohol issues, those things diminished, if not stopping I’m also not advocating that we try and get all the young men into relationships as quick as we can, because I also. And going back to a bit of what you were saying, I know a young man at the age of 23 who has been through numerous services. And he said, I don’t really speak to another counselor. I get one and then I get another one six weeks later. And I have to go through the same stuff time and time again where we are missing out, joined up thinking and also supporting young people. It’s too fragmented. People are doing their best, but services are stretched. Whether that’s voluntary services or paid for services. I like the idea of… many indigenous cultures; would have talked like if somebody did, if somebody did something wrong or they outed somebody, it was brought into the whole village and it was talked about as a village and things were discussed and planned and how do we make sure this doesn’t happen again? In a neoliberalism, capitalist world, how can we… I think we’ve lost our villages?

00:46:08 Kevin

You know, I think, Stephen, I think we have. I think that’s a fact. I always find when I’m engaged in podcasts. This podcast in particular, the Gifts of Trauma. Each podcast almost offers me up more questions and desire to talk further, than answers. What about your friends? And maybe that, maybe this isn’t the right question because of the type of work you’re involved in and the type of people you are. But what about the men you see at your age? Guessing, we’re all men now. What about the men you see out there? Our own ages, our own communities. What sort of men do you see out there at our age? Are they like us? I don’t mean to ‘other’ as well. You two would be, you two would probably be outliers in the type of people that I would see around my community, that talk about this sort of stuff, that are engaged in this sort of work. What about that demographic? What’s going on with them?

00:46:58 Tony

The word that comes to me is asleep.

Kevin: 

Asleep, 

Tony: Asleep. They’re not conscious. They’re just going through the motions, going to work, having a life, raising children, raising grandchildren, waking up the next day, going on the treadmill, doing the same thing again. There’s a lot of that.

00:47:18 Kevin

I wonder, is there anything wrong with that? Or again, not ‘wronging’ people or ‘othering’ people.

00:47:22 Tony

But there’s lots of times I wish I was late.

00:47:25 Kevin

Yeah, there’s a lot.

00:47:27 Stephen

I tend to come in, to say the circle of people that I know of my friends and some that I know very well and some like, we hardly ever see each other. That is not my experience of them. But they’re also not interested in doing this sort of work that we all do. They’re not interested in doing groups. And certainly very few of them would even drink anymore, or anything like that. And so there, there is definitely… But that’s maybe just part of why I choose my friends. I don’t have friends that are outside of their sound… like I have sound friends that care about their families and those who are around them, but they’re not doing therapeutic work or healing work or meditation, like they think it’s a pile of nonsense. That’s also fair. But of course, there are many others people that I… That I also do not know.

00:48:21 Tony

Yeah. And just a caveat there. I have lovely friends too, who are conscious, just in case. Who might listen to this.

00:48:30 Kevin

Slagged off all his friends. Next night, Tony, he wants to go for a round of golf. He’s like wondering, no golf for a round the golf anymore.

00:48:39 Kevin

I can hear the… I can hear the fear. The fear arising that we’re just cutting us off.

00:48:43 Stephen

Perfect.

00:48:45 Kevin

And that’s not. That’s not. And I. I get it. As we’re asking. These are bigger questions, and maybe they’re just reflective of what we see. Those things we mentioned at the start with domestic abuse and violence and incarceration and sexual abuse, et cetera, et cetera. They’re bigger questions than that. And I think that’s part of the challenge, even having this conversation, having it with you two. I know your friends and they are decent people, and that’s the world we live in. And again, that question, I said at the start, someone asked me, why don’t many men come to the groups you run? And I’m like, I don’t know. Because they don’t come to the groups. I don’t. And that’s where the curiosity lies. How do we create spaces that are safe enough, respectful enough for men who may not engage in this sort of thing, to come along and do it? Maybe that’s the question I’m asking. And because somebody has to do something, this may be what I’m saying. Stephen, please go ahead.

00:49:35 Stephen

I’ve seen an article last week. I’ve actually just looked it up there. There’s a Irish priest who had moved to the United States, who’s en route to becoming a saint. And he moved to the States in 1886 or something like that, and he set up a village for young boys who were homeless, had nobody to look after them. And the quotes about him that stood out for me, he once said, I’ve always hated the cruel system that neglects boys until they’re forced into breaking the law. And he also said there are no bad boys, there is only bad environment, bad training, bad example and bad thinking. And for me,

K: Hear, hear. 

Stephen:

Just holding that, it’s like all the influences on the environments and we’re talking about what does it take to be a decent man or a kind man. We have to consider the environments that young boys are growing up in and what’s influencing them. And then it’s back to I can only influence what’s within my reach. I can only support what’s within my reach. But it’s also making me think some of this stuff is… It’s not new either.

00:50:53 Kevin

No, and you land on a lovely point, Stephen. I was thinking recently, I have a strange habit, or maybe it’s a good habit, living alone, quite often potter about at night and I call it, I have an evening discourse with myself and to think these things out. And I was thinking just till the end of last week and I was going to bed thinking to myself, there isn’t really any other experience, or any other situation where we would blame or shame the thing for having something wrong with the thing. If it’s a plant, ‘Oh, that’s a bad plant.’ Like our natural reaction is to think, oh, I put that in the wrong window or that’s north facing or south facing, I watered that too much or I haven’t watered it too much, or grocery shopping in the fridge if it goes bad. We like. We would never say that’s a bad yogurt. We would say, oh, having the fridge turned up, or I’ve left that out in the sun too long. Or we would always naturally consider the environment that something is in that is making it, that is spoiling it, except with people. And there seems to be. I love you’ve raised that point, Stephen. There seems to be. And again, it’s that victimology stuff. There’s something in the human being that when I can say, ‘That there’s something wrong with that person, I wouldn’t behave like that. I wouldn’t do that. That’s an effort to keep myself safe. I other myself from the problem because in our psychology we want to believe in a safe world and if I don’t behave like that, I’m safe.’ And we don’t do that with anything else apart from people. And maybe that’s a good place to start landing our conversation in that maybe there’s nothing wrong with men, maybe there’s a whole lot going on with the environment that we’re finding ourselves in and maybe appealing to that good nature. You know that priest who said, there’s no bad boys, there’s just bad thinking, bad systems, bad environments. Maybe that’s a great place to start with, recognizing there are no bad. I certainly believe there are no bad people. There are just processes and systems that have forced them to survive in a certain way or force them to react in a certain way. And I really like that quote and that thought Stephen.

00:52:57 Stephen

I’ll add a wee bit more to it, please. I read it to some of the groups that I work along with. It’s a book called, Edwardo,the Horriblest Boy in the Whole Wide World, by a guy called John Burningham. So it’s a kid’s book, very simple read, lovely little drawings in it. But it’s the whole idea of if you’re told you’re this, if you’re told you’re this, you’re going to start believing it and you’re going to start acting it. But what if we water it in a different way? What if we say something different? So Edwardo,the Horriblest Boy in the Whole Wide World.

00:53:31 Kevin

Thank you, Stephen. You’re making me think again, Stephen. And again I find myself with more questions than time. There was, I think it was the last Conservative government in the UK, you know how governments like strategies and sound bites. One of them was tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Do you remember that one here in the UK, Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. And from a victimology, from a compassionate point of view, there was no tough on the causes of crime because the causes of crime were the environment, the socioeconomic poverty, the lack of possibility, the lack of role models. They weren’t being tough on the causes of crime. That was a soundbite. And maybe there’s an invitation. If we were tough on crime and tough on the actual causes of crime, that’s not longer jail sentences, that’s not long, that’s not more punishment, that’s not harder sentencing. That’s looking at education, possibility, the arts, community, social deprivation, health services, sports clubs, the lack of those things. That’s the causes of crime. But I don’t see, from a governmental level, I don’t see people having those conversations. Maybe I’m wrong. Certainly see it in the community sector, but not. You said, Tony, the government even forgot to include the community sector in that.

00:54:51 Tony

Yeah. And that requires real political will for that to be there. And as we know, the people who are drawn to politics and positions of power, are not people that may have our model.

00:55:04 Kevin

Okay. Thank you for the conversation, gents. I really appreciate it, and maybe more questions than answers, but I think it’s just good to be having the conversation. I’m already noticing my mind going, Who? Where Is there a young man in my world that I can just put my hand on his shoulder and say, hey, fella, how you doing? What’s going on?

00:55:21 Stephen

I’m a young man. He’s laughing. Yeah.

00:55:25 Tony

Yeah. I had a young man in my office yesterday and fairly broken, and we happened to just go into the body just, as part of the work. And when he was in his body, I asked him what he just needed right now. And what came was a hug. So we gave an invitation, a hug, and we stood there for about a minute, and he just wept.

00:55:46 Kevin

Ah, dear…

00:55:48 Tony

Yeah, so we think hugs are really important and touch and just moments and timing, as Stephen said. And the other thing, if I can just say before we finish, I have really wonderful friends. They’re beautiful people. Wide awake. They’re wide awake, living their lives amazingly well.

00:56:06 Kevin

They don’t believe… They don’t believe you now, Tony, you’re protesting. You’re protesting too much. Yeah. Hey, and you know what I wish? I wish I was wide awake. I wish I was fully conscious. I wish I was living a life of bliss and never stumbling or tumbling or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or being a, yeah. Being a skitter, which would be a good Irish word. Being an old skitter. I wish I was doing that all the time, and I certainly am not. So there’s work for us all to do. Stephen, you’ve been here before. You’ve heard me ask this question, and I’m going to put a caveat and say you’re not allowed to give the same answer as the last time. Not often. I tell you what you’re allowed to say. I’m not allowed to say you’re not allowed to give the same answer as last time. Tony. What I often ask people when we finish up a conversation is, if you had the ear of humanity and you could whisper something into the ear of humanity, what would you whisper? And I’m going to get Stephen to go first so that you have an extra few seconds to think about that. Tony. Steven, what would you say?

00:57:06 Stephen

Well, first of all, I have no idea what I would have said. The last time.

00:57:12 Kevin

You said, you quoted Ram Dass and you said, “Be honest, be kind.”

00:57:17 Stephen

This time, the words that came in to me were from a song. To do a little dance, Make a little love, get down tonight. So there you go, that’s just what’s here in my mind right now.

00:57:29 Kevin

Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight. Thank you, Stephen. I appreciate that. I appreciate the playfulness and the seriousness of the invitation to do a little dance, Move your body, connect with someone, play some music. Tony, if you had the ear of humanity, what would you whisper into it?

00:57:47 Tony

I’m noticing the pressure of coming up with, I mean, really. And I think it was Ram Dass who said, I would say you’re worth it.

00:57:58 Kevin

Beautiful.

00:58:00 Tony

That’s right.

00:58:02 Kevin

Thank you.

00:58:03 Tony

‘And you matter.’

00:58:08 Kevin

Thank you. That’s a good place to close our conversation. That was a really beautiful conversation, gentlemen. I really appreciate that.

00:58:15 Tony

What did we resolve? Did we fix anything?

00:58:19 Kevin

Tony Coffey and Stephen Brown, I consider your time and your effort and your energy a great offering of generosity on your part, and I’m very grateful for it. So thank you. Thank you both for coming on the Gifts of Trauma podcast from Compassionate Inquiry, for giving us your thoughts and for letting us see your heart. I think, as well, to both of you, please take care of yourselves. You are worth it. You’re important. And if you fancy it, do a little dance, make a little love, and get down tonight.

00:58:47 Tony

Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Stephen.

00:58:49 Stephen

Thanks.

00:59:00 Rosemary

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