Luke combines Compassionate Inquiry®, somatic work, and healthy lifestyle strategies to guide clients towards greater vitality, authenticity, and inner peace. He leads yoga and meditation retreats and facilitates psychedelic-assisted therapy as a powerful avenue for healing and personal growth.
Warren utilizes Compassionate Inquiry®, psychedelic therapy, group facilitation, and nature retreats to help clients encounter more authenticity and possibility in their everyday lives. His own journey led him from religious fundamentalism to a life of hope, joy and deep community.
Both are fathers of boys on the cusp of manhood. Both have had to unlearn, dismantle, and rebuild. Both are now holding the lantern for others.In this excerpt, two men candidly share their experiences with shame, fear, and distraction and what becomes possible when men open up. Listen to the full conversation on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
WARREN:
In the environment where I grew up, the kind of unconditional love and support that all young boys need was mostly not available. I was met instead with religiosity and authoritarianism and some degree of violence. So my predominant experience relating to masculinity, as a 0- to 20-year-old, was fear. “You should be afraid and comply and hide everything else.” And that’s a pretty rough message to get about dealing with maleness, especially when you are a boy or young man. And the story that grew inside of me was: ‘You’re not a good person.’
I coped with that by trying to make people happy. I started an affirmation economy, and I was still working hard to keep afloat when my children came on the scene. My suspicion is that without a few key relationships and healing experiences, I would have continued to operate inside that economy—looking for enough outside approval to fill in the sense of emptiness on the inside—until my death.
Throughout my 20s, I didn’t feel that good most of the time. I could experience temporary relief through high-risk activities, extreme motorcycling and skiing. Their intensity cut through the inner noise. Being of service sometimes offered relief, but when I chose a career in service, it was insufficient to sustain any level of inner peace.
I would like to say that the first time I held my first daughter in my arms, I was like, this is it; I better figure out something different. That didn’t happen. I felt love, attachment and the desire to be a good dad. But the overwhelming sense of shame that permeated my life back then had such a grip on me that even imagining coming out of my coping mechanisms into grounded, present parenting was just impossible. So all three of my children arrived to a dad who was trying his best but was scattered, unable to stay present most of the time, and had by necessity learned to farm for attention and approval in the place of love and presence.
In my 30s, I got help. I had an affair, which was scandalous. As someone who’d spent a long time trying to earn approval and look good in everybody’s eyes, that wasn’t a great move. It was shocking to me. I struggled to make sense of why I picked this in the life that I had. When I got some good help and decent therapy, I understood. ‘Oh, because I feel shame constantly.’ And in hindsight, I’m thankful for all the learning and the fact that it ultimately knocked the first brick out of the wall of building my life on other people’s approval.
Somebody who helped me get a bit of a zoom out on my life asked, “When was the last time you felt like you were a good person to your core?” And I was like, “What are you talking about? Sometimes I feel less bad.” But the idea of feeling good all the way to one’s centre was foreign to me. And today, the number of men that I sit with whose deep underlying story is, ‘If my community knew me, I’d be exiled.’ Or, “If my wife really knew me, I’d be rejected.” They have this sense that they have to hide their true selves to have any relationship. But they’re not any worse than the rest of us.
LUKE:
I had a catalytic moment. That’s when the real work started to undo the programming that makes the ‘more, more’ mentality the default and normalizes acquisition, collection and external validation. Moving away from that was immensely painful and difficult, as the very relationships that you wish to be more present for are the same relationships that really challenge you to look at your own shit and to take accountability for your words, thoughts and actions. ‘Just because I had that beautiful moment doesn’t make me a perfect father.’
My greatest celebration as a man and a father is that I have a 12-year-old son who feels safe enough to share his own emotional states, call me out and tell me directly when I’m not present. So I’m able to repair and model accountability, and man, I go to bed at night thinking, “Wow, I never had these kinds of conversations [with my dad].”
I essentially taught my family how to say, ‘I love you,’ to each other, and my son became a catalyst for healing between generations. Witnessing my father’s emotional opening and vulnerability when he spent time with me and my son Jack, seeing him brought to tears as he realized he was never taught what it means to be in connection, in community, as a man. It was a really powerful moment. We were playing board games, three generations of us, when he said, “I just never knew, and I’m sorry.” And I said, “There’s no apology necessary. We’re here now, and we have this time now.”
WARREN:
In this season of my life, I’m a pretty big believer in the Japanese art of Kintsugi. When ceramic gets broken and they put it back together with gold, it’s worth more than it was when it started. In a similar way, the depth of my compassion for people is profoundly forged in parallel human experiences. I care when people are afraid because I know what it feels like and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I tell my kids I love them more than my dad ever talked to me. If I summed up the number of times I’ve told my kids I love them, it would probably add up to more words than I heard from my dad in his lifetime. It’s a different way of relating.
LUKE:
I was in a psychedelic session, and the client shared something that was so absolutely horrifying and traumatic that the part of me that was about to say “Not all men were like that” was extinguished. So I said, “On behalf of all men, I’m sorry that happened to you and that men did that.”
And if I could speak to all men, I would say, “So much of what is happening is the result of closing down, isolating ourselves and believing the ridiculous stories in our heads. Just opening up and sharing can create enough space for release, for processing, for curiosity to find its way through. So open up!”
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the full conversation, and if you like it, please subscribe, rate, review, and share.
Editor’s Note: This post is comprised of edited excerpts drawn from The Gifts of Trauma podcast transcript. Selected passages have been carefully woven together to create a cohesive narrative that speaks in the guests’ voices and faithfully represents their perspectives. – Rosemary Davies-Janes
