¶ Introducing Trey Tucker
All right, Mr. Trey Tucker, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How are you doing today? I'm doing great now that I get to talk to you, Connor. I appreciate you having me on. You got it, buddy. You got it. Well, uh you know, I've been following your work online and uh I thought it'd be great for us to have a conversation. You know, I think just some of the content that you've put out.
um I think resonates with with a lot of guys, a lot of men, a lot of young men, a lot of men that are going through transitions. Um I wanted to start somewhere More personal, if that's okay. Which you know, I I read a a bunch of your posts around you going through the loss of your father. And I think that, you know, we as men we can have such a tumultuous relationship with dad. You know, many men have dad in their life, but they're disappointed by that relationship.
or they have, you know, an exceptional role model, which is maybe more few and far between and they're they're scared to lose him or they didn't really know their dad or And so I'd like to start there. Um, what was it like after your dad passed? It sounded like it was a a pretty um pivotal and and trend uh transition in your life.
¶ The sudden loss of a father
It was and and the way that he died was really what was the initially the toughest part is he died in a single car accident and Seemed healthy. You know, he was in his sixties, so he wasn't necessarily young, but he wasn't what you would consider old either and he was in good shape and so I got a phone call one day.
saying that news and I I remember sitting at a restaurant. It's it's one of those flashbulb memories. So I uh vividly remember the restaurant and the booth we were sitting at. It was a Mexican restaurant. And I remember the the two friends sitting across from me. And they could tell by the look on my face as I was taking the phone call that something wasn't right.
And when I hung up I I just I remember feeling like I I don't I don't know what to say. And so it what came out was like incredibly calm. I just said, My dad just died. And I just kinda sat there as they looked and they didn't know what to say either,'cause, you know, what did you say in a moment like that?
And so I remember thinking, Well, I gotta get up to my mom and there was a part of me that wanted to to rush out of there like a superhero and save the day and then then there was another part of me was like There's nothing to be done. I I mean and obviously I'm gonna get to her but there's
Yeah, it was just a surreal experience and and so that initial three days, I I didn't get to grieve at all and I put this online too. And I'm glad you're asking about personal stories'cause that I think that's so much better than Stats and opinions and all that, but
Um, those initial three or four days, having to plan a funeral, having to deal with organ donations, having to deal with all the end of life paperwork and people that have questions and just it's just a m a pile of stuff that has to get done. And I couldn't not only could I not grieve, I didn't cry for at least four days and I really couldn't get a full breath. I mean it was it was just constant fight mode, you know, you the whole fight or flight mode. I I was not
fighting, fleeing. I was fighting. And then But finally, after all the decisions had been made and after all the funeral stuff was over, then I could I finally felt myself take a full breath. And it was at that point that the grieving process really started. But man, it that initial you get punched in the face and I mean, as a man you just you gotta go, you gotta get stuff done and not to say that you always need to suppress stuff but
There are times and seasons where you do have to suppress it and then you gotta come back and grieve it later. And I'll I'll answer whatever details you want about dad's death, but at least that's kind of an over overview of it. Yeah, I I read uh one of your I mean I read through something of yours where you were talking about the the loss of your father and you said men often grieve through responsibility and not through emotion.
And I was hoping that you could expand on that a little bit. What do you mean by that? Is that is that helpful? Is that something that we should be doing? Is because I think here's what I'll preface this with. I think for a lot of men, There's a there's a lot of noise around how we should go through the grief process. when we have a relationship and when, you know, we lose a parent or whatever it is. And I think for a lot of men it's like, well, I don't know.
How to grieve. You know, I don't know what that looks like because culturally I think we've kind of extracted grief out of the equation in many ways. And so what did what did you mean by men often grieve through responsibility and not through emotion?
¶ How men grieve through responsibility
Yeah. we often will go straight to responsibility before we feel stuff. And I think that's necessary for a lot of us because as men, we're wired to be fixers. And if you ask us to immediately divorce ourselves from the from the way that we're wired as fixers, I don't think you can effectively actually feel the emotions. I think, and there's some research that shows this. before you can get to the emotions, you you have to
get the immediate issues taken care of and you have to act in your nature in a healthy way in order to then get to the emotions. In other words, another way to say it is you have to do what you're comfortable with in order to then move to what you're not so comfortable with. So Myself, like so many of us We like being productive, we like getting things done. And so in the face of everything else that's out of control and uncertain, I at least know that at least for the short term I can do
this stuff, take care of these actions. And then I also made a deal with my grief, with my emotions, that yes, after all these immediate actions are taken care of, then every day I'm gonna sit down and I'm gonna grieve for 30 minutes. And I didn't really have any parameters on what grief looked like. I was I would just sit in a chair in my house and sometimes that meant looking at pictures of him.
Sometimes that meant writing him a letter that that I know obviously consciously that he'll never get, but at least it it was cathartic in my soul to to get those words that I wasn't able to say out. Other times it was just thinking about old memories, you know, basically whatever needed to happen inside. I let that happen inside. And if it needed to come out,
it came out, whether it was tears, maybe it was yelling. Sometimes I yelled at dad as if, you know, th there was no logic to this, but if it needed to come out, I let it come out. And journaling was a big part of that too. So I just I didn't put a uh uh uh prescription on it. I just knew grieving in general is
The the general definition is your brain has to catch up to what is actually real. So like if this is reality, your brain can't immediately just get there. The grief process is the brain catching up to what's actually real. And so, you know, you got the denial and the bargaining and the anger and all the all the things that we hear about, but I didn't let myself get bothered down into which stage of grief I was in'cause I just didn't think that was all that helpful'cause
It's like you're you're jumping back and forth between multiple stages. I didn't I didn't overthink where I was at in the process. I just knew that because of the trauma and trauma releases chemicals, which we call emotions.
If I didn't let those chemicals actually flow through, that they were gonna eat me from the inside out and then I was gonna have actions that weren't gonna be so healthy. So I just knew every day I was gonna give it thirty minutes to come out and Other times of the day I could feel it wanting to come out, but I was in situations where it wasn't appropriate to let it out.
And so I again I made a deal with it almost like it was a person living inside of me saying, Yeah, I feel you and I'm gonna deal with you and I promise tomorrow in the morning, thirty minutes, we're dealing with it then. And that for me, that worked in terms of
how grief should work for everybody. I I hate it when people should on themselves. You know, there's there's no one right way to grieve. The only wrong way to grieve is to not grieve it. And there are some exceptions to where if somebody really gets stuck then they might need some help. But I mean it may take
six months to even a year to really fully grieve something or someone. And I I don't I don't like it when people start trying to compare themselves to the other to the way other people grieves grieve or kind of put themselves on some sort of evaluative scale on how well they're grieving. I think just as long as you're doing it consistently and just paying attention to what's happening in your body, you're probably grieving right.
Yeah, I think y you at some somewhere else you were talking about this, you said I if I didn't y you wrote if I didn't grieve on purpose, I might not grieve at all. And I I think that's probably a very relatable experience for a lot of men. You know, I remember after my mom died um two years ago. she you know, after she left I remember the I remember being in this kind of situation of
Okay, I know conceptually what what I should be doing. You know, I've lost grandparents, I've had relationships and that w felt, you know, life, you know, altering and and brutal. Um, but I had never lost a parent and yeah, I only have one mother lose. And so i i I really found myself in this position of like, okay, what
should grief look like? What should I be doing? You know, am I doing this right? Uh and I think that that's the case for a lot of men. And I remember you having a conversation with a friend of mine And uh, you know, just he was asking how I was doing and I was you know, I just sort of sort of said, I'm just trying to allow this to come out naturally when it comes up, but I'm also allocating space during the day to have nothing else going on.
so that I can be present to the grief. And that was the that was actually the essential part for me because my tendency is to be in action, to be busy, you know, to have shit going on in the morning. You know, I had at the time I had a son who was whatever, three, and my my daughter was on the way, so my wife was pregnant.
Uh and so th I had there was plenty of distractions. You know, there was plenty of opportunities for me to be like, uh maybe I'll just go watch T V tonight. I'm not gonna think about I'm not gonna journal about this, I'm not gonna write. And what I ended up doing was trying to take on a a project of like almost paying homage to my mom.
you know, and and creating a um I so I my mom loved gardening. Loved it. It was like her biggest thing. You know, there's plants everywhere around the house. She had a garden in the backyard. And and so
Then that's not my thing. Gardening's not my thing. Uh, but my wife my wife likes gardening and we have some land and You know, and so I was like, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna buy us a raised garden bed and and build I gonna I knock I didn't buy it, but I like built all the materials for it and then built us a raised garden bed. And it was really interesting because as I was building it, that was like my time to be in relationship with the absence of my mom.
And, you know, so every day I'd go out and I'd work on it and um and then sometimes I would just talk to her, you know, as if she was there, as if I was like, you know, pouring her spirit or connecting with her spirit as I was And so I I've I felt like it was a it was a an actionable grief. I don't know if that's the right word to say, but like a grief with movement.
Um, I remember what you know, one day I was out there and I was sort of like having some conversation with her about how I missed her and I you know, I'm out there you like I'm crying and I'm like building this building this race garden bed. I was like, Man, it's
If the UPS guy comes up right now and you're like, What's going on with this dude? Like he's building a raised garden bread in his in his front yard and just crying his eyes out. Um, but you know, I think to your to your point, it's like we have to find
our own path towards that. You know, we have to find our own path towards grief. And so How what do you recommend for men who have something to grieve in their life that maybe they've been avoiding, whether it's The loss of a relationship, a job, a career, a business, a family member, what can they do to sort of take some steps towards that?
¶ Honoring someone through grief
Yeah. So first of all, I love the way that you grieved by literally building and working with your hands as you let those emotions out because You did what I did just all at once in in combination with each other. Cause man, there's there's nothing more cathartic just building something just by itself as a project.
for a guy'cause we're meant to build with our hands and and then I know through that physical motion, those emotions had more of an open pathway to release from your body. So yeah, well done on that. And in terms of a guy who maybe knows that there's something in there to grieve and hasn't maybe dealt with it yet, somebody told me something a long time ago that really stuck with me. They said, you know, to grieve someone is to honor them.
And if you won't grieve them, then you're also not honoring them. And I thought, Wow, that's that's true'cause and'cause I've lost other people as well and never somebody as significant as the loss of a parent but I thought, Yeah, there were times I remember just kinda acting like it wasn't that big of a deal and so therefore I didn't really grieve them well and therefore
I didn't honor the the strength of the relationship that I have had with them and the the depth of that love and connection that we had. So I would say, you know, if if somebody is grieving a person, then consider grieving them as a as a way of honoring them.
But so often it's not a person. You know, grief doesn't just happen when somebody passes away. It the way I I kinda explain it is it happens when there's a big loss in your life and when there's a big change in your life along with a death. So This could be the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship. This could be moving. Just just by your own choice, you moved to a different city or you graduated from college or had some other big transition. All of these issues are things to grieve.
I work with a lot of athletes. I work with uh quarterbacks at the collegiate level a lot and often they get injured and that's something that you have to grieve because these things that that you allow really into the innermost parts of your soul. They don't just leave easily. They they leave holes and gaps. And so if you don't acknowledge the meaning that the thing that has been lost.
has left and then it's you're not able to really move forward. You can do some actions, but you're just a a shell of yourself until you actually deal with some of those gaps. Yeah, I think that's a a great way to put it and And I think just scheduling it, you know, I think just scheduling time.
undistracted time. I you know, I find that we as men are so good. Like we're chronic distractors from emotions. Uh this is something that in in the Man Talks Alliance, we've got this beautiful community with like a thousand dudes from around the world and it's something that we talk about of like You know, how do we undo this? uh incessant chronic predisposition towards distracting ourselves from the the fundamental truth that's happening inside of us.
Because you know, m we've been conditioned to pretend like that is in you know, not valuable data or information uh inside of us. And so Yeah, well that's but uh say a little bit more about I mean, obviously that that type of jarring experience, that jarring loss, you know, sort of sudden I had a few years. Um, in some ways, fortunately with my mom before she passed, uh, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer and it ended up being
Um it ended up being this w wild blessing. You know, she had struggled with addiction for so long and you know, she struggled to get sober and and you know, struggle with sobriety. And then, you know, she got diagnosed with terminal cancer and got sober, you know. And so it was just this wild thing where I got two you know, sober years with my mom, which was really this beautiful thing. And so I you know, I I keep reminding myself of this, like the huge lesson for me was
Don't wait for the death sentence to change your life. You know, don't wait for the complete collapse to make change in your life. And that's m my lesson has has been very similar to hers. You know, I sort of inherited that lesson of waiting. so long until things get so bad that life collapses or things break down.
to make that change. And I'm curious about, you know, what was your relationship to your dad? What was it like to have him be gone so suddenly? You know, what what were the things that were unresolved? I'd love to explore some of that.
¶ The father wound story
Yeah, wow. I I've never gotten to talk about this publicly, so I'm glad you're asking. I think the best way to answer it is to start way back. So when my dad was five years old, his dad totally abandoned him and the rest of the family. Just changed cities, went to be with the woman that he was t uh cheating on with cheating with, so started a whole new family. So my dad at five years old was fatherless and When my dad was ten years old he
he missed his dad and he wanted to write him a letter just to update him on what he had been doing in life. So, you know, he handwrites this letter as a little ten year old handwriting is probably gonna look not s not really neat and legible, but he puts it in an envelope, puts a stamp on it, puts it in the mail.
And I remember talking to dad about this. I only heard him talk about his dad one time, but this was the story and it it stuck with me. I remember him saying uh those two weeks as I waited on that letter
it wa I s like I couldn't wait. It's and you know, this was the days before emails or texts or anything like that. So he literally had to wait for the post office to do its thing. And so about two weeks later, it as Dad was hoping to reconnect with his dad to this letter, He gets an envelope back to the He opens it up and he pulls it out.
And his dad had taken a red pen and marked up the letter, circling all the spelling and grammar mistakes in the letter. And that was the only response he gave. Wow. And I I remember I think I was about fourteen when I heard Dad tell that story and so I didn't really have a concept for of anything about psychology or anything like that. I just I just remember intuitively it hit me that there's no way that didn't mess that up.
I mean, how could that not? Even as a fourteen year old I knew that. And now as I look back, I have all the data and training to see what that can do to a kid or really of anybody of any age. But somehow dad from that age He became a really good dad to me. And as I look back I realized Oh my god. People fathered my dad. He never had a stepdad, his mom never remarried. But people stood in the gap for him.
and mentored him and just became fathers for him. And I I so wish that I I knew, you know, who they were or their families or anything like that so I could at least tell them about how things turned out. But because of the yeah, I remember ta him talking about there were two in particular. Uh he was just a a beach kid growing up in Florida and
Two men saw him just kinda hanging out and surfing throughout the day and not really having any kind of direction and they took him under his wing. And because of those two men, Dad was able to become the father that he was to me. And so You ask about some of the unfinished business with me and dad.
He had so many strengths. And just like any dad, there's always going to be some blind spots. And so for him, probably the biggest blind spot was he didn't really have any language around how do you deal with emotion. And specifically, how do you deal with situations where somebody reject rejects you or
that you put yourself out there and you fail. It's not that he purposely avoided those conversations. It's just I don't think anybody ever taught him. And so you can't give what you don't have. So he didn't really have an intentional conversation with me about it. And so I remember thinking, yeah, you know what? A lot of times we become what we needed the most when we were growing up. And I didn't know that I needed that stuff when I was growing up.
But looking back, I realized, yeah, those were some gaps. I didn't know how to deal with emotions and I didn't know how to deal with some of the rejections that had happened to me as a kid. And I remember for a long time, even even as I was getting trained in in becoming a therapist, I couldn't feel anything. I had so intellectualized everything in my life, I had plenty of grasp on my thoughts, but
from the neck down I was just cut off and numb. And I remember even thinking, like, why can't I feel anything? There's something going on here. This is this is not right. Like I just felt I would I would oscillate between feeling basically numb and then occasionally feel angry and then I go back to numb. I'm like, all right, that that ain't right. I know I know enough to know that ain't right. But I I remember telling dad one time as I was
getting my I was starting grad school. Is this was probably I I think I started grad school for becoming a therapist probably a year before he died. And when I told him that that was the direction I was gonna take. I remember him looking him in the eye and he said, Trey, I think this is actually your calling.
And to have that uh a hitch, just even talking about it, but to have that blessing from him was was just unspeakable joy and fulfillment for me because I gave him a book when when uh I think probably probably two years before he died and it's a book about fathers and sons and how to deal with father wounds.
And it was something that he barely ever talked about because he had a lot of resentment toward his dad, but again that that one time was the only time I ever heard him talk about him, but I knew there was there was real there were real gaps and pains in there. So when I gave him that book He kept it on his bedside's nightstand.
for the next two years, right until the day he died. And he would just he would read it regularly and I would find he had dog eared different pages of it. And uh it was healing for me to know that that through that book he was going through some of the work that he knew that he needed to do but
just never had any kind of tools or resources to help him do that. So it's a very long answer to your question. I'm not even sure I answered your question, but those those are some of the the things that come to mind with the with the gaps there.
You definitely you definitely answered the the question. I'm notorious for answering like two or three or asking two or three questions all at once. And so it's uh it's something something I'm working on still after ten years of of interviewing people is to reducing the volume and amount of questions that I ask. But no, that that's definitely um that definitely hits home. I'm I'm curious after he did passed, um, you know, after he died in the c in the car accident.
How did you reconcile with the things that were maybe unreconciled with? Because I think this is the big this is the big thing that I see a lot of men struggle with and and grapple with is how do I reconcile with the things that were left open? when I can't reconcile with that person anymore, you know, or
with that with that boss at that you know, at that that job. I got it got fired and and now I can't have any conversation about what the hell happened. There's no way for me to communicate my my how I feel about this or that The relationship's op uh gone, they've they've ghosted me, uh, or you know, somebody passes just sort of suddenly and out of the blue, and there's things that are unreconciled. And so how did you deal with some of that?
¶ Closure and unresolved conversations
Yeah, yeah, the idea of closure. Is that is that basically what you're getting at? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Man, how do we how do we tackle closure in a way that's bite-sized? I I I always hesitate to guarantee that you're ever gonna get full closure with a person or with an experience because I think that expectation is just unrealistic. I think there there's whether the person is still living or not, I just I don't know that it's not a good thing.
actually practical to think that you're gonna get full closure on everything and get all your questions answered. Now, you can get some work done and especially um especially when when there's been somebody who has died the the couple things that helped me the most were writing him those letters, like I mentioned earlier, and then
for me, my own faith in God, I I asked God to become a father to me, more so than than I had ever really uh leaned into before. So some of those gaps got filled in that way. But Along with the letter By the way, the letters for me were were closure because I got to express the stuff that needed to come out that I didn't even know was in there.
I didn't start out with some of these letters thinking that there was gonna be this topic that I needed really to address. I just started writing and then through that process I discovered like, okay, this needs to come out. And a lot of times with at least in my situation and a lot of other people's too, if whatever we need closure on, we don't necessarily need them to say something back to us as much as we need to say the thing that was in us.
And it a lot of times if you can just communicate whatever's inside of you, then the healing starts. It's it's very rare that somebody else's words or actions are actually gonna do the healing. And so it's really on us, whether it's been a death or s we've been wronged, it's it's on us to get as much of our own healing done as possible, because to me, healing is the best closure.
'Cause they we can't control them. We can't control how long they live, but what we can control is how we're gonna respond. And if we've been injured
Then we don't necessarily need them to say that they're sorry in order for us to heal the injury. And I remember this is kind of a a tangent here, but I remember I broke both of my wrists in elementary school and it was because of a fight that uh that I had gotten with this kid that he was bullying other people and so I kind of came at him'cause I didn't like the fact that he was bullying and I ended up getting my wrist broken.
And he never apologized, his family never reached out to us to apologize and and I remember my mom held on to that with with such with such resentment, like they never apologized and I always remember thinking like, well If he'd apologized would it have made my wrists heal faster? No, I just I had to go through the process and the physical therapy of getting my wrists back. So I never got closure with that, but
I did what I could do and I think that's that's at least the the biggest step of it. Now. If those steps don't work, then obviously there's types of therapeutic techniques. The empty chair is probably the most famous one, but a therapist can really help you guide guide you into some of those moments of closure, even when the person isn't around anymore. Um, but I think for the most part, people can get a lot of work done with with some of the stuff I was mentioning.
Yeah, I think it's I I think being able to write the letters, as you said, have the conversations, you know, with the sort of the essence or the spirit of that person even though they're not here. And I think sometimes that does need to be facilitated. You know, I've worked with countless men who have lost somebody and you know, they're they're just not able to
those closure conversations have just never been had in any way, shape, or form. And sometimes they actually need to be had for us to move on, even though it's not with that person. Uh in person. Um the other thing that I did was I built like a But like a little shrine. Um and so I've always on my desk I've I've had this one photo of me from a kid, uh w uh me as a boy, me as a kid, and it's me like sitting in this
you know, metal bucket with soap in it, and I'm d my face is dirty and I've got a band-aid on my knee and it's like outside. And that's sort of like how I It's sort of the epitome of who I was as a kid. I was always outside. I was always dirty from digging underneath things. And and so when my mom passed, I got a little um urn, like a little small one, and it was very, you know, sort of flowery and and whatnot. And so that urn sits beside
uh the picture of little me. And so that's kind of like a little shrine that I have and it's on my desk and I see it every day. And so, you know, sometimes when I come into my office, uh you know, I'll just connect with mom, you know, like connect with her. Uh and sometimes I'll feel into her absence and sometimes I'll
You know, just like take a moment and and you know, as maybe as ridiculous as it might seem to some people, I'll close my eyes and just be like, here's what happened, you know, and here's what I wish you could have seen. You know, as my daughter's been born and you know, I'm like here's here's what I I wish uh you were around for. And so I think there's that there's that act because I think that grieving isn't something that we do for a very brief period of time and then we're just done.
You know, I think that you know, I lost my mom two months two two years ago and still, you know, sometimes it'll, you know, pop back up the grief of Oh, I wish she was here for me to celebrate that with. And I think that that's beautiful, you know, I think that that's honoring the memory and the life of that person. You know, I I I don't think that people really die until they're not thought about any longer.
You know, and and so I think we have how we honor people's lives is by continuing to remember them and talk about them and and, you know, keep them in our lives even though they're not here. Um so I think that's that's something that, you know, if if it resonates with people might might be helpful. But
Let's let's shift gears a little bit. I'm curious, you know, you're writing uh a book called Tough Enough, Hone Your Habits, Cultivate Purpose and Forge Genuine S Strength. I'm curious what you see men struggling with and specifically, you know, youngerish men, like guys I was gonna say guys under their fifties. I'll categorize that as younger men. Uh but you know, most of the guys that tune into this show are between the ages of like twenty-five and fifty. Like that's the bull.
We have men that are younger, we have a lot of men that are that are older, but the bulk of it are sort of in that middle stage of life trying to figure shit out. Um so what do you see men going through and what do you mean by tough enough? What goes into that?
¶ Distraction and emotional avoidance
Yeah. Well, first you talked about distraction earlier and you talked about in the context of grief. And there is a healthy amount of distraction that we do need. We can't just always be working on ourselves and pulling the emotions out and all that. Like we absolutely need some distraction sometimes. So I don't ever want to demonize that. And it's probably one of the biggest issues I see with men, especially men, let's say, thirty and under. But anymore, and I mean, you see this as well.
it's kind of becoming ubiquitous in terms of the screen addictions and the just the inability to handle silence of any kind and this it's getting scary. I even see I saw a man probably looked like he was about sixty in the grocery store a few months ago and He was staring at his phone, walking through the aisle.
And it of it getting in people's way basically because he wouldn't get off his screen like, dude, you're not sixteen, you're sixty. Like so I I think any of these principles that that you and I talk about so much and work with all these guys with
I I don't think you can really pin a certain age on it. I think these principles are timeless and distraction is definitely one of the issues that I think we need to work with the most. But I and I don't even think distraction is the real problem. I think it's just a a symptom. I think the root is we're running from ourselves. And what are we running from is gonna be a more tailored question to each person, but You know, for me it's like when I was cut off from the neck down
I didn't know it, but I was running from stuff that was in there and didn't really know even how to deal with it and at least on a subconscious level I was too scared to deal with it. So I just intellectualized everything. And really intellectualizing is I think a version of distractions because you're really distracting yourself from the root because you just think about it all the time then it feels like you're solving it, but you're not actually solving it. And so
A l a lot of guys they'll run from themselves. Like I I know one of the One of my closest friends is is the biggest, toughest, physically toughest dude that I know. Like he can handle any amount of weight, any kind of fighting. He can do the cold plunges for like an hour, you know, all the all the stuff that would be physically challenging. He just hangs in there and it doesn't matter. But if you ask him to sit with himself and his thoughts for two minutes
I mean he would he would rather go climb a mountain. And I'm like, dude, you You're tough on the outside, but you got nothing going on on the inside. You're you're hollow and it and unfortunately that means you're soft because A man has to be dependent on not just physically but also emotionally in all all kinds of ways and so
If your family, your wife, your kids, whoever in your life needs you at an emotional level, you're you're gonna collapse. And so I that's one of my biggest things is how do we get each other, because it's not easy for me either, but how do we get each other to at least dip our toe in the water of just being quiet and then letting stuff come up slowly. You don't want to dive in all at once, but just starting slowly. Do you do you find that as well or is that just kind of my area?
Yeah, I find that the guys that are The guys that are sort of like very tough and very uh whether you want to call them high performers that are you know excessively disciplined. Like it's always like it's always that that that kind of goes hand in hand, right? The guys that are like excessively disciplined, you know? Um and to the point of being kind of rigid. that they're usually disconnected or or sort of afraid of their internal landscape.
And it's usually those types of men where it's like, Okay, take a breath, close your eyes and it's like, Oh you know, immediately it's you know, it's a very hard thing for them to do. I can't tell you how many like na you know, Navy SEALs, former Marines uh former military that I've worked with where the emotional work is the real big it's a real big battlefield, you know.
And so yeah, I think it's a a hugely tough thing. But I think what you're saying is is true, right? Being able to take time to slowly move towards those pieces, you know, to slowly dip your toes in the water of like Okay, I'm gonna sit down for five minutes and close my eyes and just breathe. And I'm not gonna expect myself to sit here for fifty and and enjoy that, you know. No. But what say a little bit more about what you see socially or culturally
weakening men. Like what? Because uh because when you look at when you do look at the stats and the data, men are undeniably in decline in pretty much every single category. Men are in decline. So what are some of the things that you see contributing to that decline?
¶ Cultural decline and angry sons
Yeah. Uh there's so much. Uh let's address the the voices they hear externally first because Uh people wanna talk about'em the most, but I don't think they're the most influential, but it's at least worth addressing that at least up until recently Men have been told we don't need you, we don't want you, just bring home the money and then go over there and get out of the way is essentially what a lot of men hear, whether it's spoken or unspoken. And I think when you hear stuff like that enough
you subconsciously start to just be like, Well, yeah, maybe that's true. So maybe I'm not all that important. I'm not so needed, you know, and and that's just like putting a lion in a cage. Eventually the lion's just like, uh, well, whatever. I'm I'm just gonna retire these parts of myself. So I think that is absolutely important. I also see it starting to come back.
But I also worry that now that the conversation is a little more toward the I hate to say pro men, like it's a us versus something, but to to be I mean, bringing men back into the fold. I see some people starting to abuse that and starting to get really unhealthy with it. And it just say more about that. What do you mean? The the typical Andrew Tate type of stuff is like now that now that the now that men are being
need it again. Like there was a New York Times article probably six months ago that the headline was something like, Men, where have you gone? Please come back. And that's great. But some people I see it's it's just taking the immature like uh the surface level toughness. The only yeah, men it's time for us to be men again and be in charge of the house and tell the women what they need to do and like
No, don't do that because we're just you're gonna swing the pendulum just as far back the other direction, if not even further. Um, and we can go into as much of that as you want, but that's that's the Yeah. So appealing because I I do think, you know, those things wouldn't have traction if they weren't I mean, one, they're polarizing. So let's just not pretend like they're not absolutely hacking the algorithm by getting people's attention by saying outlandish shit.
But it is appealing to some men. So what why is it appealing to some of those men from your perspective? Because it's a simple fix, at least in their mind. It requires very little of them to actually dig in and do the inner work. It it lets them lean into their base urges.
Whether that be strength or sex or money or, you know, their version of success, it just it allows them to be like, Okay, well this this is what I feel inside, so let's just do it to the max and then let everybody just deal with it'cause we're men. Like Like I get it, there there's a root of that, that that drive and that desire at its core has some healthiness to it, but its expression is not helpful, it's not kind, it's not self sacrificial, it's ultimately
to my benefit if I'm the one saying it. It's ultimately to make myself feel like I'm man enough. Or good enough or tough enough, which is one of the reasons I wrote the book. But we'cause I think one of the lies that men believe about themselves, whether they know it or not, is that I'm not good enough. And you can take the word good out and replace it with something else I'm not.
Athletic enough, good looking enough, tough enough, rich enough, whatever it is, but that word enough I that haunts men. And so when you when you take like you said, when you take something that's polarizing and the algorithm is going to feed out because it's a quick little sound bite and there's no nuance to it, it's just it's the easy just
low hanging fruit of like, Oh yeah, that's the solution. That's gonna make me feel like I'm good enough. So I'm just gonna lean harder into this version of masculinity and and I get it. Like I I want the quick fix as well. But that's also part of being a man is Okay, let me step back and let me think this through.
And let me add some nuance and some texture to this conversation and to the way I'm thinking about what it is not just to be a man but what what am I on this earth for?'Cause being a man's one thing, but to leave a legacy is another and to actually walk in my purpose is another and like you talked about with with grieving your mom.
those moments that you that you grieve and that you miss about her, those are a testament to the impact that she had. Not as a woman, that it's just an the impact that she had, period. And I think we get so caught up in living life for our own self and just chasing happiness and all the the current pleasures. I think we we just miss the fulfillment that comes from living selflessly towards something bigger. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, it's I think it's I think it's interesting because the You know, cult culturally we're living through this very interesting time where I I'm doing this I'm doing this piece that might actually be released before this, so it might have already come out. I'm not sure. But I'm doing this piece around the the death of the cultural father or the death of the social father, the societal father.
And how that archetype of the father, not just like the individual father that you or I have had, but this the sort of quote unquote patriarch of culture and society has you know, been poisoned and and dismantled and seen as the fundamental problem with existence and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think that I think that when that happens, when you start to uh eradicate or kill off the notion of a dare I say benevolent father, what replaces it is angry sons.
You know, what replaces it is uh violence and aggression and hostility that is completely unmitigated and uncontrolled. And I think we're living through this time. I remember having a conversation in the pandemic where I was I can't remember who I was speaking with. It uh it may have been Francis Weller. where he said, you know, we're going through a time where the it's the death of the hero. You know, the archetype of the hero is sort of decaying and and dying off.
And when that happens, certain role models for men start to die off as well. And now I think we've switched into this place of you know, the role of the father who would normally be responsible for, you know, maintaining some level of order, maintaining some level of direction, um, you know, law, coherence. That's that's the logos, right? Like the archetypal logos.
And I think that that is has been diminished to such a degree that it just creates chaos. It's complete chaos. And then you have these individuals that sort of represent one-dimensional versions of the warrior archetype, you know, uh one-dimensional versions of uh the lover or, you know, the tyrant king. And in the absence of you know, the the sort of archetypal father, those things look appealing because you have no other reference point.
And you have you have no other way to find your way to manhood or to masculinity. And this is why I think we've seen this rise of you know, what I what I call the the kind of the anarchist, you know, masculine, like the the Joker masculine, um, where they are just out there saying the craziest shit.
And it gets them clicks and views and it's you know, it's kind of like the adolescent man uh is getting so much attention. Like I I said this on a different podcast. I'm curious to get your take on on everything. I I promise I'll shut up after this, but I said this on a different podcast that uh you know, after Charlie Kirk was killed, you have the rise of somebody like Nick Fuentes.
who says the craziest things. You know, he's out there dropping the N word and, you know, like on live TV and I mean, and he just is the he's the epitome, the embodiment of the angry adolescent teenager who does not give a fuck. He does not care. And it's so appealing to so many young men and men in our culture and society because that archetype of the father has decayed.
And he's and he's sort of vanishing slowly. I think there's a resurgence in some areas, but I you know, I think that that's that's sort of gone. And so anyway, I've said a lot. I'll pause. I'm curious to get your thoughts on all of that and how it shows up with men.
¶ The absence of the father archetype
Oh man, I'm so glad that you're working on that piece and just this this message in general,'cause you're right. And I'm gonna take it back to grief for a second because like you said, the absence of a father creates angry sons. Anger is one of the most famous stages of the grief process.
And I don't think a lot of guys know that they're missing a father or a father figure. And they certainly don't know that they're grieving the loss or grieving the fact that that was never even offered to them. But the anger is there and the anger is the indication of the
something that's missing. And so yeah, I I think you're you're dead on with that. You know, there there was a guy, uh uh somebody told me this story. He he was walking on the city streets one day and he had a long day of meetings. And just back to back to back, just focused on the meetings. And he walked out probably five or six o'clock in the evening and he's on the streets and he smells the aroma of the food trucks start to hit him. And as soon as that aroma hits him, he goes I am so hungry.
And he was really he was hungry the whole day, but until that aroma hit him, he didn't realize what it was that he was really needing. And I think a lot of these guys that you're talking about that we're both talking about with the just the angry, stuck in adolescent mode. I think they really are hungry for a father figure.
And they don't know it because like you said, uh like what what movie or T V show can you turn on and find a true patriarchal father figure role that that you would look up to and say, Yeah, that's the kind of man I wanna be?
It's just so few examples to even let somebody get the aroma of, Yeah, oh yeah, that's what I need. Uh I don't know exactly what to do about that, but it is. We have a bunch of unfinished, uninitiated men who have the anger inside because they know there's something missing and they don't know what it is and so they'll just lash out and think that that's gonna somehow be the catharsis for it. But every time they do it whether it's a little bit more than a little bit.
The Fuentes the Fuentes kinda guys or some other voice or leader that they're following, it it feels great in the moment. You get this euphoric release of all the happy chemicals like dopamine serotonin and all that stuff when you listen to somebody like that or you you mimic whatever they're saying.
But it's just like an addiction. It feels great when you're doing it and then you crash and you're like, Well, I need more of that again. So let me go watch more of his videos or th you know, whatever that type of message is. So Yeah, you're right. And it's one of the reasons I I beg guys of almost any age, like if they're like twenty three or older, I beg them to mentor somebody younger. 'Cause we don't have enough fathers in the home. There's plenty of stats that show that.
But we definitely don't have nearly enough older men who are intentionally being a father figure to somebody that they're not necessarily related to. And I think that um among other solutions, those are those are easy steps to take. They're not they're not necessarily uh simple to pull off, but man, just to to have one person decide I'm gonna be a mentor, what what greater impact could you have?
Yeah. Yeah, I I agree. I agree. And I mean it's interesting'cause it's so anger can be so intoxicating, you know, and it can really be something that You know, there's a righteousness to it, there's a justification, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And you can kind of get caught. in a an identity structure and a way of being that is so rooted in just being pissed off. And I I've been saying for a while, I think that I think that Jordan Peterson's rise
Was really because he was the archetypal father that so many men needed in their life. You know, it's like, make your bed. Stand up straight, you know, my fellow Canadian. Uh but I think a lot of people saw what happened to him, which was he just got viciously attacked. You know, he got ruthlessly attacked for years.
character assassination, you know, I mean just on and on and on and on, health issues. And he didn't do himself some favors by g going off and talking about some things that he's just not an expert in. And so I think that that gave people uh, you know, just sort of added ammunition to attack him. But I really do think that he was the the sort of the last gasp of this social father archetype that was making an effort to help reform young men.
to say there's actually a better way than going down this path of violence and anger and hostility. And uh I mean it was just he I think he was so polarizing because of that. Um, because there's such a huge vacancy and and father wound in culture. But okay. Tell me a little bit more when when you're working with because uh a huge part of your work is about men going through transition.
And I think this is so important. You know, men transitioning their career, men transitioning out of a relationship. That seems to be such a big theme. What do you see uh when a man's going through a transition in his life? What are some of the surefire ways to identify that? AKA, what do you see men struggling with when they start to go through a transition? What are what are the pitfalls? What are the traps that we fall into as men?
¶ Identity vs. title in life transitions
Yeah, yeah. Well, I I'll just skip right to the root issue and then we can word back up from there. The root issue in a transition period is identity. And there's some other roots that are right next to it, but identity is the core of it. So let me go back for a second to some of those quarterbacks that I mentioned that I work with. The reason they get so nervous in a game is because at a deep level, they think that their identity is quarterback.
And if that's who you are, then any sort of mistake that happens on the field is a direct not just an attack on your identity. But it also makes you start to question, well, am I worth anything? If I have a bad game, what does that mean about my value as a human? And so I start to I have to work with these guys to separate their title of quarterback with their identity. In other words, who they are as a person. In other words, when
when they were born, it wasn't like their parents said, Okay, this is a quarterback you know from day one. It's like, no, this is this is what you do. And we're called human beings, not human doings. So I have to help guys really separate, okay, yeah, your job title, whether it's quarterback or accountant or whatever it is, or college student for the time being. That's just something you're doing. What's up to you is figuring out who are you.
separate from what you do because you can do a lot of things in your life. You can have a lot of jobs. You can take on a lot of different titles, whether it be a husband or a father or a brother or a son, whatever it is. All of those things can be taken from you in some form or fashion. So then when whatever all everything has been stripped away, then who are you at the end of the day? And what what makes you somebody that's Actually a person who's enough to
and worthy. And so if I can help them figure that out, then they can handle almost any transition. It's never gonna be perfect, it's never gonna be smooth, but at least they know They can walk away from one job, for example, and walk into another job knowing who they are, knowing that no matter how these circumstances go, it doesn't actually dictate their value as a human being.
Another way to look at it is if I if I know who I am But I'm walking away from my tribe or my my core friends, the people I really feel connected to. That's something that's gonna have to be grieved. And there is there is no way around that. There is no easy version of that. Because it's like we said, when you grieve something or someone, you're honoring it.
And the transition period can be really tough for a guy, especially because we don't make friends very easily, as as easily as women do, at least. Like I've done enough uh small groups I'm sure you have too. It takes probably six months or so for men to really start opening up and bonding. And then so many women's groups, from what I hear, they're like crying and hugging on each other within the first six minutes. So it's like we don't we don't connect so so easily. So we have to
Once we've bonded closely with friends, then we've really gotta intentionally find new additional friends. You don't ever well. You might not be as close to the old friends anymore, but you you really gotta be intentional at finding the new ones. And one of the to to go back to your original question, one of the pitfalls is A lot of times a guy will either just stick to isolation and stay in the distraction mode of maybe workaholism or
watching movies all the time or some sort of substance use. But more often what I see is he settles for guys that don't make him better. He just settles for guys that are like Either not necessarily dragging him down, but they're just passive and they're not gonna push him.
And they're not gonna take the time to really know him well enough to see like, okay, here's here's who I see you are at your heart, at your core, and let me now push you toward what I think your purpose might be, what you say your purpose is. Like, for example, I saw I talked to a a guy that I know who's in college and he's been living with these guys for about six months, his roommates and
And a lot of them it's a it's a southern college, but a lot of them came from northern states. And I said, Hey, what what caused these guys to wanna come all the way down south from way up north? And he goes, I don't know. I don't know why they came. I thought you've lived with each you've lived with each other for six months and you you don't even know but their story and how they chose to come to this school. So I think that's that's one of the titles is
I was gonna say this is like all those reels that you see online of like the wife asking the the husband and the the husband comes back and she's like How was your night out with the guys? And he's like, Oh yeah, it was it was good. What happened? Oh John's getting divorced. Oh, why? I don't know. But what happened? I don't know. You know? Like Yeah, that's that's it's like go go a little deeper. Let's go a little deeper around what what the hell's happening.
I l I love I love that. I mean dude, I used to be like that all the all the that was basically me. It was like, Oh, you're going through br okay. That sucks, man. You need anything? No? Okay. Like let's let's go out and get drunk, I guess. You know, let's get you hammered and and maybe get you laid and you'll feel better, right? Uh yeah. So I I think we're we're making we're evolving. We're evolving.
¶ Trey's book "Tough Enough"
Well listen man yeah, slowly, slowly. The this has really been fun. I've really enjoyed talking to you. Um, your book is coming out February twenty fourth, tough enough. Where can people learn more about you and your work and find the book? Yeah, I appreciate that. So rugged counseling is the the handle on all the different social media platforms.
And the book is on the typical places you might find it, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the all the places. So yeah, I I love being able to talk to you. I love the work that you're doing and the lives that you're changing. And I I'm so glad we finally got to connect one on one'cause we're We're right alongside each other on the battle lines here, so I'm I'm looking forward to seeing what other good we can do together. Appreciate that, man. Well everybody out there
Man it forward, share this episode with somebody that you know would enjoy it, um, maybe needs to hear parts of these conversations, even if you just send them ten minutes, say, Hey, listen to this time from this time. You know, sometimes we as guys, it's like you everybody has a busy life. Send them the five or ten minutes that they really, really need to hear that are going to support them. Uh go check out Trey's work. Uh he's got a great
Uh some great resources on Instagram. We'll have the handle for that. Um and uh check out his book when it when it comes out on February twenty fourth. And as always, until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.