Emotions and Feelings 101 (and maybe 102)

March 22, 2023
anger, anxiety, depression, feelings, relationship, self awareness, shame, trauma

Emotions, feelings, moods, all the same thing.  Right?  Not at all.  And understanding our feelings is so foundational to understanding ourselves and being able to heal in therapy I thought it would be helpful to put together this quick guide to share with clients to help you gain more understanding of your own human system.  There’s much more detail to all of this, but hopefully, this guide will help get the gist of what is happening inside you.

 

Our brains have evolved over thousands of years.  Some parts of our brains we share with reptiles, some with other mammals, and some are unique to humans alone.  Generally speaking, the lower parts of our brain are the most basic and most similar to reptiles.  As you move upward, your brain gets more sophisticated.  The lower parts of our brains are designed to keep us alive.  The upper parts help us connect with others, communicate, understand, and make meaning of life.  These are the parts that make us different from other animals.  But we also need to understand how the lower parts of our brain affect us too!

From: http://erikmessamore.com/what-is-emotion-regulation-and-how-do-we-do-it/

 

Emotionally speaking, the lower parts of our brain are responsible for instinctual survival functions in the face of a threat.  These are all actions that usually happen without our consciousness involved because the impulsive instinctual brain is faster than our cognitive brain.

 

Fight – get stronger and attack the threat

Flight – get away from the threat

Freeze – don’t move, play dead, so hopefully, the threat will go away

Fawn – act pleasing, innocent, harmless, and endearing so the threat doesn’t see you as a threat to avoid the conflict


Where our lower brains are not so smart is that in modern-day, the threat isn’t usually a tiger or assailant but could be a look from someone, a social media post, a raised voice from a friend or family member, an insult, or any number of things that raise our hackles in big or small ways.  Our brains sometimes respond in one of the above survival ways when our survival isn’t being threatened at all, especially if we have had past exposure to traumatic events.  

 

These four survival emotions get a little more sophisticated as we move to the mid-brain and with a little more awareness, they get shaped into the basic emotions that all humans in all cultures experience.  These emotions exist to help us relate to other people.  Different researchers have categorized them differently, but I like to use the five basic emotions that mostly rhyme to help people remember them.  MAD, SAD, AFRAD (afraid), GLAD, SHAME/GUILT.  Shame and guilt feel similar, but are two different things. Shame means I’m bad (unhealthy), guilt means I did something bad (healthy) to help us have remorse and repair.  

 

Notice most of these are what most people call “negative” feelings and only one is “positive.”  I think we evolved like this for a reason, to help us avoid doing things that cause us or people we care about harm.  But unfortunately, it leads to a negativity bias in our brains and a positivity bias in our external relationships trying to balance out the scales.  In reality, we need all of these feelings so there is no such thing as a positive or negative feeling.  They are all helpful information to help us understand our inner and external worlds.

 

If you can get a solid grasp of being able to feel and identify when you are feeling the 5 basic emotions, you have most of what you need to be an emotionally intelligent human being.  Being able to communicate emotions with others helps us to relate and connect with others, to understand and be understood, and to be able to give and receive support.  I consider this to be a foundational human skill.  As our relationships get more complex and we get better at communicating, we have need for more precise emotional words, so psychologists have invented various versions of the emotion wheel to show how these basic emotions get more nuanced.  

 

Some of these feelings can overlap, and we can feel multiple emotions at the same time.  So don’t misunderstand the wheel to be the ultimate truth.  See if you can find your own language for your own expression of your emotions.

Emotion Wheel

From: https://practicalpie.com/the-emotion-wheel/

 

As you can see, our feelings can go from quite simplistic and primal survival to emotions of relating to quite complex and nuanced.  That’s why it’s important to distinguish between emotions and feelings.  Emotions can sometimes feel big and overwhelming.  Almost as if the emotions have us more than we have them.  Feeling overwhelmed by emotion often comes from little awareness and understanding of emotions and triggers for them.  As we gain more awareness and skill, we can be a person having our emotions rather than our emotions having us.  This increase in awareness and distance from the raw intensity of emotion combined with thoughts turns them into feelings.  Feelings are very important information.  They help us make decisions about what is right for us and what we need to stay away from and can lead us to conscious action and/or communication.  

 

When we are consumed with emotion, we often don’t have access to critical thinking or discernment that is available when we are feeling.  Sometimes we even act out of an emotion, such as yelling at someone (anger/fight) or distancing ourselves or avoiding something (fear/flight) or going numb (fear/freeze).  This usually happens with little consciousness or choice.  So we are acting out an emotion (doing) rather than feeling and communicating about a feeling which is usually more helpful.

 

The more consciousness we bring to ourselves, the more choice we have to understand and act appropriately.  And we can often increase the time between the stimulus that causes the emotion and the response (impulsively or consciously) to act in a more appropriate way.  Without awareness, we respond impulsively or emotionally, which might cause more harm than good.  

 

Here’s a chart I made to visualize the process I’m talking about.  

As you can see, doing, feeling, and thinking follows the evolution of the brain.  Reptiles do without awareness or feeling.  Mammals have the ability to feel and relate to others but may not have words and thoughts like humans. Humans have all of the above with the addition of complex language and cognitive abilities.  One function isn’t necessarily better than another; we need them all.  Thinking can help us make sense of and respond more effectively to our emotions and feelings.  But when used to excess without connection to feeling or emotion or action, thinking can also disconnect us from ourselves, our life, and others.  So thinking, too has to be used and responded to appropriately, just like emotions. We need doing, feeling, thinking, and being all accessible to us at the right time and place.  

 

Further, overthinking and rumination often lead to a stuckness of emotion or feeling, which leads to moods.  Moods are more generalized, pervasive emotional states that can last days, weeks, months, or even years.   Emotions come and go, just like the weather.  When we try not to feel them by suppressing or repressing them, they can get stuck and lead to moods.   Unpacking moods, like being depressed, can take time to really understand all the inputs from both present and past experiences as well as the unnamed unexplored feelings that comprise the mood. 

 

As I said, this is a quick overview of our emotional systems.  There is some more information in the links above.  There’s a bit more to it, and some of this is a broad generalization to help distinguish what is happening. Understanding these basics help tremendously to help you understand yourself and others.  People often think that our thoughts control our feelings; and they do to some extent. But our survival instincts and the basic raw emotions that evolved out of them can be much more powerful than our thoughts.  Just try to control your feelings with thoughts when you get dumped by a partner you really cared about, lose a job that you loved, get into a physical fight, or anything else that touches into our survival needs.  

 

The way I see it, our thoughts and feelings and actions are all in relationship to each other, all equally valid, no one mode is more important than the other.  The more you understand what is happening inside of you and outside of you and have awareness of what emotions and feelings are being experienced, the more you can engage your full self and your relationships to prevent things from spiraling out of control into overwhelm,  unconscious action, or a stuck stagnant mood.   

 

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach and is a student of depth psychology. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

 

Relationships Matter: 6 Levels of Healthy Relational Safety and Depth

February 3, 2023
children, community, human experience, relationship

Relationships matter.  And to riff on the old adage, it’s not who you know; it’s how well you know them that counts.   Nothing happens outside the context of a relationship.  At the very least, we have (or had) parents, we have (or had) siblings or peers, we have coworkers or customers, and we have neighbors (even if we don’t know them).  It is in the context of these relationships that we give and receive things we need and learn about ourselves and our world.  And in our fast-paced technology connected world, it is hard to maintain relational depth.  

Even when I’m working with individuals who are not interested in working on their relationships, we have a relationship with ourselves.  How we talk to and how we feel about ourselves perhaps matters the most!  How well we know ourselves and how we relate to ourselves is the foundation of our ability to enjoy life and engage effectively with the world. 

One of the useful theories or lenses to use in talking about relationships is attachment.  In simple language, attachment is a way to describe how able we are and how safe it is to connect with another human.  Attachment begins at birth and changes throughout life.  If we are well supported and attuned to, it is easy for us to connect with others and easy for us to be alone.  If we hit roadblocks along the way, we can face various challenges in connecting with others.  This is most obviously seen in intimate relationships. However, peer relationships are also effective by our attachment styles.  This can impact everything from finding an intimate partner to having friends and social support, to parenting, to being successful in our career.  So if you have had struggles in any of those areas, read on to see where you might be able to heal and strengthen your relational abilities.

Attachment starts with a solid foundation, or solid roots, if you will.  With healthy, secure attachments, we can still stand tall in the strong winds and storms of life. And we can be at peace when the storms pass.  Without solid, healthy attachments, we get rocked, blown around, and are unable to rest and be at peace when there are no immediate challenges.  With unhealthy attachments, it is easy to turn to unstable comforts to feel better, like alcohol, drugs, unhealthy sexual behaviors, unhealthy people, screens – media, social media, video games, and more.  With a secure, stable attachment, we can use these things in healthy, appropriate ways and turn to ourselves or appropriate people for healthy connection and comfort.  

Attachment theory describes attachment as being either secure or insecure.  A secure attachment means the person is stable on their own AND can connect deeply with others to receive and give various forms of support or nourishment with appropriate levels of intimacy.  Insecure attachment can manifest as anxiety (anxious attachment style) if someone gets too close or too far, avoidance (avoidant attachment style) of getting close to someone, or a combination of anxious or avoidant (anxious-avoidant attachment style) feelings or behaviors.  

Dr. Gordon Neufeld has gone further to describe six levels of attachment that happen during our key developmental years.  These six drives can also demonstrate themselves in adulthood when we look at the types of relationships we have and how we connect or avoid our adult relationships.  Each of these six levels builds on the one before.  That is, if we are underdeveloped at one level, it is harder to move on and have healthy relationships at the later levels.

The six levels are:

Drive to be with – Attachment to physical proximity.  Being close to an individual. This is the most basic.  Being with someone in their physical presence.  Teenagers often like to hang out even if they are not doing anything in particular.  It is comforting to just be with someone and be able to see, smell, hear, and touch them.  This reassures us of our physical safety.  We need a home base, touchstone, and resting place, which serves as a compass point to navigate the greater world.   When this physical attachment is suitable, we can feel safe in the middle of chaos.  If not, we become armored and cannot be physically close, hug, or touch others.  

Drive to be like – Attachment to the identity/personality of an individual.  Once we feel safe enough in our body, the next level is the desire to be like or the same as someone we like or respect. As part of our identity formation, we emulate, identify with, imitate, and model after them learning behaviors, our core identity, preferences, dislikes, and social norms to fit into society.  We do this with our parents at an early age and friends or partners later on.  This serves to enable us to feel close while apart because we are acting like and remembering them (even if not consciously).  

Drive to be part of – Attachment to belonging and standing with a group.  Once we are secure enough in our individual identity, we want to belong to a bigger group.  Whether that is a nuclear family, extended family, class, school, sports team, peer group, political affiliation, national affiliation, ethnic affiliation, religion, profession, or any group of “like” people.  To feel like there are lots of people like us and on our side helps us feel secure and that we belong to something greater.  It creates a feeling of loyalty and the desire to serve, obey, or even defer to the will of the group.  

Drive to matter – Attachment to being valued by a group.  Once we feel connected to and part of a bigger group of people (or more than one), we need to feel like we are important to and worthy of care, respect, love, or esteem.   This is the drive for greater success and achievement.  Perhaps it is this drive that video games are tapping into for some, but often is incomplete, and people keep playing at excessive levels because it has to be had in personal relationships, not just with a score or standings board on a screen.  We all need unconditional positive regard – that is feeling that people value us no matter what we do or what we are.  When we feel this way, this frees people from a lifelong search for value, always trying to prove their worth which can then opens the person to further levels of intimacy and fullest potential rather than just trying to be important.  Without this value, people endlessly chase value externally through achievement, peer recognition, consumerism, unnecessary degrees, and more.

Drive for love – Attachment to being loved and emotionally intimate in our full authentic self.  Once we know that we belong, we are important, and we matter no matter what we do or how we are, we are available for true intimacy or “attaching at the heart.”  Again each of the previous stages has to have at least some level of health or intimacy can be superficial or motivated by seeking simple physical closeness (like just living together or having disconnected sex), identity, belonging, or value importance.  It is possible to have some intimacy without, but true intimacy with be limited by our needs to feel those prior levels.  This level of attachment requires a secure sense of self, identity, belonging, value, and the ability to be present with limbic attunement to the other. To be open and receptive to another and able to feel (all) emotions, give and share heart enables this level of attachment. The risk of course is that this opens us up to big vulnerability.  With healthy attachment, we can feel safest in long-term relationships (family or committed relationships).  But without healthy attachment, we have the paradoxical effect that the longer the relationship, the more threatening vulnerability becomes.  

Some studies are suggesting early digital intimacy undermines this need for this emotional intimacy.  In a long-term relationship, healthy attachment at all these levels of attachment enables us to weather storms of disagreement and difficulty and stay attuned, committed, and attached to work through problems rather than separating or avoiding.  Knowing we are connected and attached at this level helps people remain caring and open toward someone despite periods of distance and separation due to hardship or travel. It can set the stage for deeper levels of psychological and sexual intimacy that are not possible when there are missing pieces in any of the lower levels.  Knowing we are securely attached in this way we can be shielded from wounding from the world, less reactive to hurts from our partner, and able to keep a soft open heart in face of wounding and stresses of the world.  Without this, we blame, attack, withdraw, close off, and seek to control, change or manipulate to keep ourselves safe.  I think this is essential for full psychological development and maturity, especially with the state of the world today.

Drive for psychological intimacy – be fully known to – Attachment to our full authentic whole self.  At this level, we are secure and have no secrets that divide us from ourselves especially, but also with a few select others. We can be fully honest with ourselves about our most hidden shameful thoughts, feelings, desires, or experiences, and we are able to share secrets with appropriate, trustworthy others, and we are not shamed for those secrets.  This is important for children when considering the previous states of attachment needs and the need for connection with a parent. What your parents don’t know about what you did won’t get you in trouble, but those secrets cause a divide and distance, making love and acceptance inaccessible.  Even if parents could love and accept the transgression, the personal feeling that it must be kept secret causes a psychological separation that takes a toll. This level of secure attachment makes known what you normally keep hidden, allowing greater ability to accept yourself and others. This is different than just knowing about (indirect/impersonal) or being exposed to it secondhand or intellectually.  We must be the ones that shares the thing we fear to share.  With an intimate partner, we have to be the one to physically or metaphorically take our clothes off, be seen and witnessed, and have the experience of still being loved despite the secret.  This happens after one has shared from their heart and has the ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts and feelings and behaviors.  We all need to be seen fully.  Social media and  capitalizes on this need, but ineffectively because it is impersonal incomplete and does not address the need for physical presence, attunement, mirroring, validation, touch, and seeing the person’s care and acceptance. 

So much more could be said about this as it is an in-depth and complicated topic.  Simply knowing this is only the first step to repairing and living from these six levels of attachment and relational depth. But I wanted to at least sketch this outline as I’ve found it helpful for many of my clients in identifying and understanding relationship challenges.  Being able to have a healthy attachment at these six levels builds strong roots to weather the stresses and storms of life.  And our attachment strengths and weaknesses don’t just show up in our relationships with others, these factors all show up in our relationship with ourselves! 

It’s hard to thrive in the world without a solid foundation, and without deep roots, we get blown over easily.  I also believe that being able to have a solid foundation through these deeply rooted levels of relationship helps us to create togetherness and relationships that can be healthy and solid despite differences, which is essential to resolve the extreme polarization that we’re experiencing in our world manifesting as us-them divisions, increased racism and  nationalism, gender and culture wars, or further separations in our relational and community lives.  When we have solid attachments as described above, we can have a solid sense of self, to become our own person, belonging in the community, aware and nurtured by the ways we are the same, celebrating the ways we are different, and can talk about any and all of it honestly and vulnerably without it devolving into a battle and more separation.  We can be different and still securely attached, connected, and rooted rather than blown away in the storms of our inner world or our outer life. 

For more information:

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach and is a student of depth psychology. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

New Podcast: My Life is the Medicine

My Life is the Medicine is a new podcast hosted by Chuck Hancock.  Chuck sits down to have conversations with people to look at how life has provided numerous lessons and initiations already that we sometimes overlook. Instead, we get lost seeking new, bigger, or better experiences.  

In the age of abundant experts and gurus, we take the subversive stance that you are actually the only expert you need for your own life. By looking closer at your own life experiences – both the ones that felt good and the array of challenges you had, you can harvest all the wisdom and medicine you need to guide your unique life and offer your unique gifts and wisdom to the world.  We have conversations with ordinary people to look closer at how everyday experiences of living life have shaped us and taught us profound lessons.  Often we don’t think much of our choices and experiences, but in reality, they all have a profound meaning.  Instead of just moving from one thing to the next, we can slow down and pause to integrate the initiations that life has already provided, to become even more whole, balanced, and able to bring the medicine of our life, the medicine we’ve already been given, into the world.  

Found on most major podcast players including Spotify, Apple, and Google.  You can find links to these and other players on the podcast page here: https://mylifeisthemedicine.buzzsprout.com/

Or listen directly below:

Opening in Men’s Group

November 22, 2021
anger, anxiety, community, coping skills, feelings, goals, group, masculinity, men, mindfulness, personal growth, relationship, self awareness, self care, self esteem, stress reduction, therapy

If you’ve been wanting to join the Men’s Group, good news! There are two openings for new members in our Men’s Interpersonal Process Group.

This men’s interpersonal process group can help you get more real, more honest with yourself and others propelling you into deeper relationships and deeper success through challenge and support by other men. It is a real-time lab, where you will experience yourself and others with greater awareness and be able to try new behaviors and ways of
relating to being more effective in your life.

All topics and goals are welcome. Common themes are anger, depression, anxiety, personal identity, masculinity, relationships with women and/or other men, assertiveness, sex/sexuality, disconnect from emotions, work problems, fatherhood, confidence/self-esteem, accountability, honesty, spirituality, and finding purpose and meaning in life.

This group has been running weekly for the past 5 years facilitated by Chuck and over a decade prior to that facilitated by a psychologist who retired passing it on to Chuck. The long-running stability, diversity of age, background, and experience of the members, and experience of the facilitator are rare.


The ideal man will have had previous or current experience in therapy or other personal growth, but motivation and desire for greater self awareness will also enable you to benefit if this is your first growth experience.


All men are welcome in this group. You are welcome with all of your struggles, your gifts, your challenges, your gender, your sexuality, your personality, your pain, your shame, your questions, your desires.


All of you are welcome here!
Tuesday Evenings
5:00-6:30

$50 per group. 8 week minimum commitment, but most people will want to continue on long term for the support, authentic relationships, and unique opportunity to grow with a safe, established, circle of men and trained, experienced, professional facilitator.

Facilitated by: Chuck Hancock, M.Ed., LPC. Chuck has over a decade of experience participating in and leading men’s groups, experiential groups, therapy groups, wilderness groups, interpersonal process groups, ritual and rites of passage programs, and teaching college courses. Chuck is highly trained in treating trauma, mindfulness,
somatic therapy, and is a member of Colorado Group Psychotherapy Society and a perpetual student of intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship patterns.

Relationship Skills for Men* 5 Week Online Course

February 13, 2020
change, community, masculinity, men, relationship, Uncategorized

Relationship Skills for Men* 

(Men in this context means male/masculine identifying person)

1 month Thursday lunchtime online zoom meeting

March 26 – April 26, 2020.  Thursdays @ Noon.  

In all my work with men – be it as clients, in men’s groups, close friends, or family, the number one consistent theme that causes the most stress (even with men who have everything else they want) – successful career, hobbies, friendships, etc.), is having successful relationships with women* (women meaning female/feminine identifying person).  

If you have have this struggle, (or maybe don’t currently have it, but find yourself in cycles in your relationship where this comes up from time to time) and still haven’t learned how to resolve it, you owe it to yourself and the women in your life to carve out an hour a week to learn how to better relate to the feminine. You probably know how good it feels to be in a healthy, satisfying relationship. And you probably know how bad it feels to be in a poor, unsatisfying, or unhealthy relationship.  

This course will empower you to become the skilled and competent leader for healthy relationships in your life and in your romantic partnership.

In this lunchtime online Zoom meeting we will:

Zoom online meeting view
  • Learn losing strategies and winning strategies for healthy relationships
  • Learn practical relational skills for more connected, peaceful, and rewarding conversations
  • Learn skills for managing conflict
  • Learn how to de-escalate when tensions, stress, or anger get high
  • Learn how to identify and regulate emotions with you and your partner
  • Begin to identify the relational patterns that cause problems between you and others
  • Learn how self-esteem, self-care, and how you treat yourself show up in relationship 
  • Be fully present and engaged with mind and body with mindfulness and awareness exercises
  • Learn the difference between co-dependence, self reliance, and interdependence
  • Explore healthy sexuality in relationship 
  • Learn to take personal responsibility for what is ours, and set boundaries around what is not
  • Practice in real time to build skill and confidence in your ability to apply them with women

Relationship is a full contact sport!  It takes our full presence, awareness, and training to properly utilize our primary relational tools – our mind, our heart, and our body.  There are many great books and podcasts to give you the knowledge you need, but you can’t just read a book or listen to a podcast and know these things and expect to have better relationships.  Actually practicing these tools and concepts with other men, giving and receiving feedback, and then utilizing them during the week with your partner will accelerate your learning and skill level.  This course is packed with information to help you understand the why, effective tools to implement in your relationship, and it also includes a brief amount of time to practice in the safety of Zoom breakout rooms with other men.  If you can communicate using these tools with other men, you can do it with women.

We will become a community of support for you as you learn and apply these tools and concepts.  You’ll be given handouts with specific instructions and key ideas each week to ensure you can have the support you need in real time, in your pocket.

Why study relationship skills with me?

I’ve been participating in and leading men’s work for almost a decade, as well as practicing as a psychotherapist. Just as important as my professional experience and credentials, my life experiences as a husband, father, son, brother, and friend and shaped me most, trying and sometimes failing at practicing what I teach.  Before becoming a therapist, I was a software engineer who grew up in the south with all of the rules about being a man. Many of them were misguided and not helpful. My world was ruled by logic and reason alone. I was involved with lots of groups, I played sports, studied martial arts, and was smart and successful, but I struggled with relationships. Nobody taught me how to relate effectively and how to have the courage and strength I needed to be honest with myself and others.  I understand the world of men and talking to men about relationships can be different than talking to women. I’ve studied the best authors, researchers, and practitioners in the field such as the Gottmans, Relational Life Therapy with Terry Real, Ester Perel, Emotionally Focused Therapy, as well as the most important relationship topics such as attachment, somatic trauma work, sex therapy. In addition to all the theoretical knowledge, studying finely attuned somatic psychotherapy such as Hakomi and IFS as well as very somatic and non verbal forms of martial arts, jiu-jitsu, and dance have taught me even more about the dance between direct assertiveness and receptive attunement. Even with this breadth of knowledge and understanding, there are still days where I struggle and get tripped up, just like anyone else.  Having references, ongoing support, and accountability to using these tools is essential when we stumble. So I’ve taken the best tools from these experts, translated them into real life applications and created this course so you get to be your authentic self. You won’t sound like you are communicating from a script, you will be honest and authentic, and you can immediately use these ideas and tools to shift your stance, become your own leader, and improve the way that you relate with women so you can get started right away with healthier relationships.

I’ll show you how to live and embody a strong masculine relational stance – one that is wise, compassionate, active, effective, open, receptive, and can handle anything that comes your way.

Investment of Your Time and Money

This course is designed for anyone to use their one hour lunch break, once a week, for one month from the convenience of their phone or computer to skyrocket their relational skills.  No travel time. No excuses. 

$50 per session.  1 hour per week. 4 week commitment.

However, if you haven’t decided your skills and relationship are worth the investment, here’s how I’ll make it even more worth your while:

Sign up by March 2nd and pay only $40 per session 

Attend and participate in all 4 sessions so I know you have the built the foundation, have the necessary background information and you are invested in your relational life, and you will be invited to attend a free bonus meeting where I’ll answer your questions, go into further depth of any topic covered, and provide coaching about a specific relationship issue you have, if you choose. 

If you are ready to commit to improving your relationship skills for yourself and your partner, sign up by March 2nd and for only $160 you will get 5 weeks of instruction and an opportunity to get direct coaching and feedback on a relationship issue you are facing.  This brings your cost to only $32 per group! Consider that is a 5 hour program for the price of ONE individual therapy or coaching session. 

If you are hesitant or late to commit, don’t worry. You can still get all 5 sessions for $200.  Still a great deal! You, your partner, your relationship, and your life satisfaction are worth it.  

Course Outline

March 26 – April 26, 2020.  Thursdays @ Noon.  

Week 1

  • Setting the Foundation
  • Communication Basics
  • Healthy Interdependence vs Codependence, enmeshment, or self-reliance
  • What is Your Relationship Dream?
  • Practice and Homework

Week 2

  • Creating Safe Secure Relationships (as opposed to anxious, avoidant, or distant relationships)
  • De-escalating conflict and stressful conversations
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Practice and Homework

Week 3

  • Turning Up The Heat – Appropriately, Skillfully, and Wisely
  • Giving and Receiving Feedback
  • Getting What You Want, Getting What You Need
  • Male Sexuality and Pornography in Relationship
  • Practice and Homework

Week 4

  • Bigger Picture and Moving Forward
  • Repairing After a Regrettable Incident
  • Self Leadership and Relational Leadership – Achieving Balance in Thinking, Feeling, Being, and Doing
  • Practice and Homework

Week 5 * (Bonus for those who engaged and participated in all 4 prior sessions)

  • Review and Diving Deeper With Previous Topics
  • Questions and Discussion
  • Live Coaching on Your Personal Situation Challenge

These are just the highlights and main themes of the course.  You can be assured we will pack much more into each hour we spend together.  If you are not convinced you need this, ask your partner and get their feedback.  Or if you have a specific need or question about the course, reach out to [email protected].  

Registration and Preparation

When you are ready to commit, there are four steps to take:

  1. Complete the registration form here or below.
  2. Click the Buy Now button below and send your payment for the course.  $160 for Early Commitment by March 2nd. $200 after March 2nd.
  3. Be sure your computer or phone is ready to use Zoom meetings.  Join a test meeting if you have never used Zoom before.  Having video is best to view material, but audio and phone only will suffice if needed.
  4. Be sure you have reserved 12:00 MST on your calendar for the meeting dates.  We will start and end on time. There is a lot of material to cover, so be sure you arrive on time with your technology ready to go.  

I look forward to connecting with you and learning how to be a stronger, more relational man together.

Facilitated by: Chuck Hancock, M.Ed., LPC, EMDR II.  Chuck has over 9 years experience participating in and leading men’s groups, experiential groups, therapy groups, wilderness groups, interpersonal process groups, ritual and rites of passage programs, and teaching college courses. Chuck is highly trained in treating trauma, mindfulness, somatic therapy, and is a member of Colorado Group Psychotherapy Society and a perpetual student of intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship patterns.  

Download a printable flyer below to share with someone who could use this course.

Relationship-skills-for-menDownload

Elemental Masculinity

New outdoor nature based men’s group offering starting in March as soon as the group is full.

elemental masculinity flyer

Learn more:

Welcome Home

 

Building Blocks of TRUST

With these elements, trust can be built, and it can be destroyed.

While it is common to make trust black and white and say things like, “I trust you” or “I don’t trust you,” trust is anything but black and white.  It is actually more of a spiral, you can trust someone with one piece of information, but not another.  Then trust deepens, and that thing that wasn’t safe to say or do before becomes safe, while there are still other things that are unsafe with the current level of trust.

Charles Feltman defines trust as this:  “Choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” And his definition of distrust follows with, “What I have chosen to share with you that is important to me is not safe with you.”  Wow.  That is clear.  That “something” could be anything.  Your feelings, hopes, dreams, desires, wants, needs, body, favorite objects, or anything important to you.  So, how we trust, really?

 To learn how to trust, Dr. Brene Brown dug into her own research and research by a well-known relationship expert John Gottman. Gottman says: trust is built in small moments over time.  Stopping what you are doing to attend to someone in need or pick up the phone to check in when you are thinking about someone and asking about specific things you know are important to them builds trust and connection.  Failure to choose connection and support when the opportunity is there is a betrayal of trust and relationship, such as when your obviously upset partner walks in the door with a big sigh and you ignore them choosing a screen instead.  

An example I use often with clients is a jar of marbles.  We automatically give more or less marbles to other people when we first meet, based on how they look, talk, common people they know, credentials, and our own degree of trustworthiness.  Each marble represents a building block of trust, either given freely or earned by demonstrated trust. Breaches of trust can be small, like not returning a phone call or text, or they can be large like a damaging lie, slander,  or an affair.  The marbles can be dumped out slowly or quickly, but they have to be put back in one at a time.

Another surprising finding by Dr. Brown is that asking people for help when needed helps prove trustworthiness.  It shows we won’t take on more than we can handle and we will ask for help when we do.  When we don’t do this, people won’t come to us because they don’t believe we can handle what they want to ask or share. This one was huge for me and speaks so much about honoring ourselves and our limits and boundaries.

Diving deeper into trust, we see when we trust, we are BRAVING connection.  With ourselves and with others.  Brene Brown came up with the acronym BRAVING to describe in more detail the components of trust.

B – Boundaries – When I know your boundaries, and you hold them, and you know my boundaries and respect them, there can be trust.  Without clear boundaries and respect of boundaries, there is distrust.  Boundaries create safety; safety creates trust.  Its why we build fences and walls.  So much more can be said about this, I’ll save it for a future post.

R – Reliability – There can only be trust if you do what you say you are going to do and I do what I say I’m going to do consistently over time, not just once.  How many times do we not do what we say we will do.  “It was really great seeing you.  Let’s get together again soon for lunch.”  And it never happens?  I know it’s just a saying and everyone says it, but trust is broken.  Let’s just share the awkwardness of knowing it may be a while before we meet again.  Being reliable creates trust.

A – Accountability – You are allowed to make mistakes.  I can only trust you if when you make a mistake you are willing to own it and make amends and you can only trust me if I am allowed to make a mistake, be honest about it, and make amends.  Being accountable creates trust.

V – Vault – What I share with you, you will hold in confidence.  What you share with me I will hold in confidence.  When we gossip about someone sharing something that is not ours to share, we think we are connecting over juicy information, but we are proving ourselves untrustworthy.  Keeping confidence creates trust.

I – Integrity – I cannot be in a trusting relationship with you unless you act from a place of integrity and encourage me to do the same.  What is integrity? Doing what is right, even when nobody else is looking.  Brene’s definition is far more challenging and eloquent. “Choosing courage over comfort.  Choosing what is right over what is fun, fast or easy.  Practicing your values, not just professing your values.”  Let’s meet each other in integrity.   Being in integrity creates trust.

N – Non-Judgement – I can fall apart, ask for help, struggle, suffer, and make mistakes without being judged by you and you will find the same with me.  Without this, we can’t be safe to ask for help and we can’t truly reciprocate it.  When we assign a value to reaching out or needing help by thinking less of the other person or judging them in any way for what they are doing or feeling it destroys trust.  Or even more importantly when we think less of ourselves for reaching out or needing help, we are consciously or unconsciously thinking less of the other person for their needing help.  You can’t have true trust if you are judging the other person, or ourselves in big or small ways.  Acceptance creates trust.

G – Generosity.  Our relationship is only trusting if you can assume the most generous thing about me and my intentions and then check in about it if it doesn’t feel right.  I will do the same for you to help us both stay in integrity.   There is a lack of trust when we assume poor intentions and don’t check it out with the other person.  Assuming positive intentions and having unconditional positive regard creates trust.

Building trust, strengthening the weak spots, and sharing about breakdowns in trust facilitates connection.  Trust makes connection easy.

And these same principles apply to trusting and connecting with ourselves as well as trusting and connecting with someone else.  Looking at ourselves: How well do we know our own boundaries and honor them?  How often do we do what we tell ourselves we are going to do?  How good are we at admitting and forgiving ourselves for our mistakes and shortcomings?  How good are we at choosing who to share with and how much is in our best interest to share?  Are we in integrity with ourselves and our value?  Can we refrain from judging and being critical of our thoughts and actions?  Do we assume that we are doing our best and had positive intentions?  By these measures, do we really trust ourselves?  

When we become aware we are not trusting ourselves or are in connection with ourselves, reflecting on these definitions can give us benchmarks.  This map shows us where our obstacles are to deeper relationship,  trust, and connection  are happening so we can name it, repair it, and ask for what we need from ourselves and from others.  It’s important to build trust first within yourself.  

When you trust yourself and are in integrity with yourself, or own it and make amends quickly when you are not, it is easier to be a trustworthy person, which makes it easier to assume the good intent of others, to respect your own and other people’s boundaries, and have honest check in’s with others, and build safe, trusting relationships.  

You can use BRAVING as a benchmark to identify breaches of trust in yourself, in your relationships.  And then it’s easier to correct course and repair trust faster.  

 

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

Spread Your Shame and Pain – Intentionally

How Leave No Trace (LNT) Camping Ethics Apply to Your Shame and Pain

Yes, you read that right!  Scatter your shame and pain, intentionally!  What have you been doing with your shame and pain?  If you are like most people, you hide it, deny it, or perhaps unload it on one best friend or your romantic partner.  But the problem with that is it comes out sideways, when you least expect it.  Or it stagnates and rots inside you.  Or you overburden your best friend or partner expecting too much.  So what do you do about it?

In LNT principles, you minimize your impact on our environment by scattering cool ashes and scattering your strained dishwater.  Why?  You pack out trash, but you don’t want to carry dead organic material from the past with you.  That is best left to return to the earth to be broken down and fertilize the next generations of life  And leaving a pile of waste is an eyesore, attracts animals, and over-taxes one spot.  Especially if you leave food scraps in a pile, it will decompose and stink.  

Pain and shame is a natural organic human experience.  Just like the lifecycle represented with food and ashes.  Our emotional “yucky stuff” needs to be handled just like physical “yucky stuff.” It can’t be ignored, don’t let it accumulate, don’t leave it for others to deal with. Give it a proper treatment by straining out the big bits, and dispersing the small pieces where they don’t cause harm and in some cases can even nourish other forms of life.

Shame and vulnerability researcher Dr. Brene Brown advises that we handle these feelings just like we strain our dishwater or separate ashes from incompletely burned charred firewood.  First separate what you do from who you are.  You may have done something you regret, but it doesn’t mean you are bad.  Guilt is feeling bad about what you did, which can be a healthy emotion that causes a change in behavior.  Shame is saying who you are is bad.  This is destructive and causes future harm, to yourself obviously, but to others in your life as well. Shamed people shame people.  Don’t allow your shame to fester, rot, or accumulate or it will impact others by you shaming or judging them.  

After we strain our dishwater or cool our ashes, we spread them so we don’t concentrate them in one spot.  The next step of dealing with shame or pain is the same.  Find lots of people who can share a little bit of your story.  Shame lives in secrecy.  The best way to free yourself of shame or pain is to shed light on it rather than hide it.  Unloading everything on one person can be too much.  But by having good friends, a partner, family, a support group, a therapist and/or therapy group, etc you can share appropriate parts with trustworthy people, eventually freeing yourself of the burden, while not overtaxing one person.  

If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too. – Brene Brown, TED Talk (linked above)

Doing what I do, I am exposed to the pain, shame, and trauma of lots of people.  And of course I’m human too and create plenty of my own!  I’m trained to work with these hazardous feelings and am better equipped than your average friend, but even I can’t hold that myself. And you too may have experienced more than your fair share of “yucky stuff,” so this tip can apply to you too. Over the years of doing therapy, I’ve assembled my own pain dispersal system.  I have my own therapist, a men’s group, mentor(s), a peer consultation group, and several good male and female friends, a great relationship with my romantic partner, and spiritual practices and rituals that I can share and disperse my own pain and “yucky stuff” with.   Due to confidentiality, I obviously can’t and don’t talk about other people’s details, but I certainly can talk about my own pain and how I am impacted by what I experience in my life.  Often that is a better way to connect anyhow.  People don’t always need to know the details, and often can’t even relate to your specific experience, but everyone can connect and empathize with the feelings you have.  Get to the point, get real, and connect on your shared emotional human experience.  And assemble a your own personal tribe of people so each person can handle a little bit, and nobody gets overburdened, especially the people closest to you.

When you don’t own your story, your story owns you.  When you own your story, you are free to edit and re-author it any way you choose.  When you don’t own your story, it controls your feelings and behaviors, often perpetuating the shame and pain. When you own your guilt, shame, or pain and spread it intentionally, it doesn’t harm you or anyone else.  In fact, sometimes it can be a gift to teach others from your experience.  But when you hold it, deny it, or repress it, it rots and overburdens you.  It gets worse and will get spread unconsciously and possibly cause more harm to you and others in your life.  With great circle of trustworthy people you can be real and vulnerable with, you can unburden yourself, without burdening others to free yourself up to write the next chapter of your life with more joy and ease.  Spread it! Carefully and intentionally.

 

Bonus Videos on the Topic:

Here’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) expert Jon Kabat Zin speaking about this topic and to use mindfulness with these feelings.

And for a lighter more humorous look, here’s comedian Kyle Cease.

 

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

Expanding Beyond “Mindfulness”

January 5, 2016
change, depression, embodied, experience, feelings, growth, human experience, meditation, mindfulness, outdoors, relationship, stress reduction, therapy

As I was hiking this morning, I was watching myself, being aware of what I was doing, thinking, feeling, and sensing and a thought occurred, that mindfulness is about so much more than our mind.  As a former software engineer, I was living in a world of thought and cognition, which of course is helpful for many things, but not everything life gives us.  There is so much more to the mind than just thought, and if our definition of mindfulness is Sun shining through the treesonly on thoughts or the absence of thought, there’s so much more we are missing.

Don’t hear me wrong, being more aware of our thoughts, evaluating them as fact/opinion, true/false, helpful/not helpful and working to actively change thought is an essential first step.    It is the foundational basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which has been the primary treatment for a couple decades now, but of course there is more.

First let’s be clear that our “mind” is different than our brain (the lump of cells in our skull).  And even our brain is not just thought.  As anyone who has seen the movie Inside Out will know, there are memories, emotions, core beliefs, and more that shape our personality and all are contained in our brain.  (As a side note, if you have not seen this movie yet, go see it!) Our “mind” is much broader and includes all of the components of the brain mentioned above, the remainder of our nervous system, body, and more.  Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine defines the mind as “an embodied and relational process that regulates energy and information flow.”

His definition is dense and can be broken down into much detail, but for now I just want to elaborate on a couple of points.  The mind regulates information flow – taking in information from our environment, information occurring within us, and information that may or may not leave us through expression.  The mind regulates energy input and output, such as the clamping down and low energy state known as depression.  The mind is embodied, that it is includes our central nervous system and peripheral nervous system that runs throughout our body and feels and expresses through the body.  And the mind is relational – our mind is influenced, shaped, impacted, and includes our relationships of the past and present.

So when we talk about mindfulness, we have to keep in mind that our mind is not just our brain, which is not just our thoughts.  It’s helpful to start with tools that help us learn awareness and focus, but then we also need to keep in mind that when we talk about mindfulness, we also need to consider and work with body-fulness, emotion-fulness, sense-fulness, thought-fulness, memory-fulness, self-fulness, other-fulness, relation-fulness, heart-fulness, personality-fulness, habitual behavioral pattern-fulness, and all the other components of being human.

You can try some exercises and see a diagram of this on my Mindful Practice page.

To explore all these areas, it takes awareness, skill, willingness, patience, and it is quite helpful to have a guide.  After all, how do you explore the relational aspects of mind by yourself?  Further, most of us tend to stay in our habitual comfort zone, and having someone to help point out the things we are not seeing on our own is an important part of the process of growth and healing.  Exploring all of this is what Dan Siegel calls “Mindsight,” and I call it your Inner (and outer) Life Adventure.

Happy exploring!

 

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

Living Bigger than Your Goals, Bigger than Yourself – Your Mission

January 1, 2016
change, community, goals, growth, mindfulness, new year, personal growth, plans, priorities, relationship, resolutions, values

A reflection on Relationship, Connection, Trust

Around the new year, I reflect on the past year and reevaluate my direction for the new year.  This year, I’m clear that I’ve made a lot of progress on my goals, and yet they are big enough that I’m still working toward them.  Sometimes it takes years or even a lifetime of revisiting and refining the same things to accomplish the things that are really important to us.  That’s what it is like to live your mission.  What is your mission?

My mission is connection.  Connection to myself, to others, to my community, and to the world as a whole.  And partly because we teach what we need to learn for ourselves and because I want to share the gifts and lessons I’ve

Taking Steps, Exposed, Vulnerable

Taking Steps, Exposed, Vulnerable

received in my life, much of the way I work with individuals, couples, and groups invites people into deeper connection with themselves, each other, and the world as well.  Your mission may be different, yet I’d bet there is something in what I’m learning about living my mission that will help you with your mission as well.  (Or if nothing else, you might find some ideas that help with your relationships.)

In recent years, I’ve learned that the two biggest things that hold me back are fear and lack of trust (which are closely related by the way).  So when I stumbled on a video of Brene Brown outlining what it really takes to trust, I ate it up.  It shined a spotlight on where I’ve been falling short in my mission and inspired me to take more responsibility for trusting and connecting – both to myself and others.  Wait, so what is trust?

Charles Feltman defines trust as this:  “Choosing to make something important to you vulnerable to the actions of someone else.” And his definition of distrust follows with, “what I have chosen to share with you that is important to me is not safe with you.”  Wow.  That is clear.  So , how we you trust, really?  

To learn how to trust, Brene Brown dug into her own research and research by  as well-known relationship expert John Gottman. Gottman says: trust is built in small moments over time.  Stopping what you are doing to attend to someone in need or pick up the phone to check in when you are thinking about someone and asking about specific things you know are important to them builds trust and connection.  Failure to choose connection and support when the opportunity is there is a betrayal of trust and relationship.

Another surprising finding is that asking people for help when needed helps prove trustworthiness.  It shows we won’t take on more than we can handle and we will ask for help when we do.  When we don’t do this, people won’t come to us because they don’t believe we can handle what they want to ask or share. This one was huge for me and speaks so much about honoring ourselves and our limits and boundaries.

Diving deeper into trust, we see when we trust, we are BRAVING connection.  With ourselves and with others.  Brene Brown came up with the acronym BRAVING to describe in more detail the components of trust.

B – Boundaries – When I know your boundaries, and you hold them, and you know my boundaries and respect them, there can be trust.  Without clear boundaries and respect of boundaries, there is distrust.  Boundaries create safety; safety creates trust.  Its why we build fences and walls.  So much more can be said about this, I’ll save it for a future post.

R – Reliability – There can only be trust if you do what you say you are going to do and I do what I say I’m going to do consistently over time, not just once.  How many times do we not do what we say we will do.  “It was really great seeing you.  Let’s get together again soon for lunch.”  And it never happens?  I know it’s just a saying and everyone says it, but trust is broken.  Let’s just share the awkwardness of knowing it may be a while before we meet again.  Being reliable creates trust.

A – Accountability – You are allowed to make mistakes.  I can only trust you if when you make a mistake you are willing to own it and make amends and you can only trust me if I am allowed to make a mistake, be honest about it, and make amends.  Being accountable creates trust.

V – Vault – What I share with you, you will hold in confidence.  What you share with me I will hold in confidence.  When we gossip about someone sharing something that is not ours to share, we think we are connecting over juicy information, but we are proving ourselves untrustworthy.  Keeping confidence creates trust.

I – Integrity – I cannot be in a trusting relationship with you unless you act from a place of integrity and encourage me to do the same.  What is integrity? Doing what is right, even when nobody else is looking.  Brene’s definition is far more challenging and eloquent. “Choosing courage over comfort.  Choosing what is right over what is fun, fast or easy.  Practicing your values, not just professing your values.”  Let’s meet each other in integrity.   Being in integrity creates trust.

N – Non-Judgement – I can fall apart, ask for help, struggle, suffer, and make mistakes without being judged by you and you will find the same with me.  Without this, we can’t be safe to ask for help and we can’t truly reciprocate it.  When we assign a value to reaching out or needing help by thinking less of the other person or judging them in any way for what they are doing or feeling it destroys trust.  Or even more importantly when we think less of ourselves for reaching out or needing help, we are consciously or unconsciously thinking less of the other person for their needing help.  You can’t have true trust if you are judging the other person, or ourselves in big or small ways.  Acceptance creates trust.

G – Generosity.  Our relationship is only trusting if you can assume the most generous thing about me and my intentions and then check in about it if it doesn’t feel right.  I will do the same for you to help us both stay in integrity.   There is a lack of trust when we assume poor intentions and don’t check it out with the other person.  Assuming positive intentions and having unconditional positive regard creates trust.

Building trust, strengthening the weak spots, and sharing about breakdowns in trust facilitates connection.  Trust makes connection easy.

And these same principles apply to trusting and connecting with ourselves as well as trusting and connecting with someone else.  Looking at ourselves: How well do we know our own boundaries and honor them?  How often do we do what we tell ourselves we are going to do?  How good are we at admitting and forgiving ourselves for our mistakes and shortcomings?  How good are we at choosing who to share with and how much is in our best interest to share?  Are we in integrity with ourselves and our value?  Can we refrain from judging and being critical of our thoughts and actions?  Do we assume that we are doing our best and had positive intentions?  By these measures, do we really trust ourselves?  Can we achieve our mission if we don’t trust ourselves?

When we become aware we are not trusting or in connection with ourselves, reflecting on these definitions can give us benchmarks.  This map shows us where our obstacles are to deeper relationship,  trust, and connection  are happening so we can name it, repair it, and ask for what we need from ourselves and from others.

To tie this all together:  Do you know your mission?  Are you living it?  In every small moment?  Can you achieve your mission alone or is it so big do you need the help and support of others?  You probably need strong relationship with yourself and others to achieve your mission. Do you have strong relationship and connection with yourself and others?  Do you trust yourself to achieve your mission?  Do you trust others to help?  If not, where are your obstacles?

Thanks for joining me on this small part of my mission.  Will you join me for more?

 

Chuck Hancock, M.Ed, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of CO. He has completed comprehensive training in the Hakomi Method of Experiential Psychotherapy, a mindfulness mind-body centered approach. Chuck guides individuals and groups in self-exploration providing them with insight and tools for change. He also incorporates nature as a therapy tool to help shift perspective and inspire new patterns.

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