There is a certain way to feel that is actually a collapse pattern pretending to be your feelings.
Like a small child dropping their ice cream. That wail — that devastation — it's real to them in the moment. But it's not a feeling so much as a pattern. A collapse. And a lot of what men think of as their feelings are exactly this: ice cream drop patterns coming up, dressed as emotional truth.
We tend to massively exaggerate the importance of these feelings. They feel urgent, consuming, like the whole world just ended. And we respond accordingly — shutting down, lashing out, numbing, or spiraling into stories about what it all means.
Frustration and anger can help us work and do. But they are also energetically expensive — wasteful, when they're just the ice cream drop.
Other feelings are something else entirely. They are like opening a window to a breeze within yourself. Even sadness and sorrow, when they're real — when they're not a collapse — have a tender, liberating sweetness to them. They move through you. They open something.
What to do instead
If you take a few moments to actually have your feelings when you encounter a painful situation, you'll be more of yourself more of the time.
Don't dwell. Don't build narratives around it. Don't analyze what it means about you or the other person or your life. Just feel what is actually there for you in the situation — with complete openness — and then move forward.
It's a profound experience. Most men have never done it.
I've worked with hundreds of men who are stuck in numbness and dissociation. Men who haven't found their joy yet. Men who mistake collapse patterns for depth, or who avoid feeling altogether because the ice cream drop is the only feeling they know.
There's more available. I'll say more later.