Loved the interview. I found it insightful and captivating to listen to. I always feel baffled to see how much emotional pain one needs to experience in order to look at oneself (haven't yet seen someone who investigated his beliefs due to physical pain). Even then it is not guaranteed people will seek to wake up. To me it seems a blessing to be given this opportunity. Also loved this: "It's not because I have good intention doesn't mean I'm making good descisions." This sounds so true to me as well. Without self-awareness my mind so easily convinces me to do things that sound good but are so detrimental. Such a deceiving fella at times! The interactions you had with Miguel and your process to more conscious-awareness really delighted my heart. I can imagine how confusing, yet novel and exciting this all must have seemed. And at one point so liberating. But you mentioning at around the 1:45:00 minute mark, how much doubt and even fear you have felt back then and if this stuff maybe could have been indeed a cult. How you (or the ego) couldn't even trust anybody who was involved. It sounds so overwhelming. I feel glad that you even saw this trap. Otherwise there would not be Pathwaytohappiness or this comprehensive Selfmastery approach. Much thanks. And also thanks to Anna for listening and asking interesting questions and giving you plenty of time to express and share the specifics of your journey. Cheers!
I am grateful for your willingness to talk about that turning point for you, Gary . It's curious that the voice that told you to leave and just to keep on driving seemed to also be coming from your mind but perhaps from a less traumatised part of the mind. Although you talk about being gaslit by your ex partner, I am almost positive that we can't be gaslight if we didn't learn those beliefs of I must be wrong and if I leave no one else will want me as children. Your ex partner was as you say providing you with an opportunity to start to interact differently with those beliefs rather than as if you were still a child with internalised voices of parents or teachers where you had no other choice but to stay. You don't refer to anything historic and seem to be saying you just learned it from your ex which doesn't feel entirely an ownership of any past trauma that you brought to the relationship . There is a lot on the internet about narcisstic relationships where there's kind of a belief that the narcisst is some irredeemable baddie and the victim "created" this bad experience and so can choose not to create bad experiences in the future by avoiding narcissists . Which is true but it fundamentally leaves out the part the Alanon woman was talking about. How were the traumatised ways that I learned as a child impacting this ex partner ? I'm generalising but men generally have been socialised to shut down emotionally, to kind of withdraw and observe or take a kind of superior or dominant position rather than emotionally expose themselves and that tends to evoke that kind of enraged response from their partners, who also are acting from traumatised responses of abandonment and rejection. Often boys who grow up in very violent physically and emotionally aggressive environments can desperately want to avoid feeling anger and unconsciously create situations where the other person expresses what they feel is not possible for them to do maybe because of their physical size. And I think we all desperately do not want to be like the parent/adults who traumatised us. Patriarchy has not done men any favours in shutting down the self expression that is necessary for true intimacy and women tend to be conditioned to feel that shut door as rejection. I also coped by choosing partners who I felt safer from rejection with but instead at times felt contemptuous and resentful. I am kind of indicating that all of us as adults we are working out our trauma with each other, everyone has some kind of ancestral or cultural imprint. So this idea of I will just go somewhere else to find peace is illusionary especially as our society is more and more traumatised. As is this idea that I will just train my mind - because it can simply another way to avoid feeling vulnerable in equal relationships, Maybe we can get away with it in unequal relationships such as teacher, therapist or parent where we have the power to divert but it will always cause problems in intimacy. I certainly have spent a lot of my life trying desperately to feel emotionally close with men who really were terrified of it. I turned into a therapist/mother sort of role and took on the kind of gaslighting that I subtly hear you doing about your ex. With that awareness going into relationships it is possible to clarify much earlier on, is this person really up for vulnerability and am I ? ....and if so, to work together as a team to assist each other in a less destructive manner. Some ideas anyway. Thank you for the provocation to get clearer about what I feel about barriers to intimacy.
I do agree that the majority of humans are working out, and acting out, many forms of trauma. While I didn't have abusive parents that traumatized me, I didn't develop a great emotional intelligence. But one of the big factors in my development was that I trusted people, and believed them. My partner had been traumatized, and I didn't know that, or how to deal with that. I took her at face value. If she told me something, I trusted and believed her. While she was very bright and aware, and had many helpful insights, she also viewed our dynamics through a trauma lens, and I didn't discern out those comments from the helpful ones. Over time they built up, and I went spiraling down.
Unfortunately the way boys are socialised in Western cultures is extremely traumatic and counterproductive to successful relationships - that they are taught to subvert any emotion that results in vulnerability into something else, we don't recognise it as traumatic and therefore we also don't recognise how this plays out in intimate relationships. We don't recognise how much this is connected to violence, infidelity, addiction and the rise in the numbers of people remaining single. Contrary to how women are trained to take the responsibility for maintaining relationships from a very early age, men simply are not conditioned to value relationships . They are conditioned to value strength and performance which is the opposite of the vulnerability necessary for successful intimacy. And that strength often is seen as a sort of moral superiority of being unemotional. When in real terms that unwillingness to engage vulnerably is the death throes to relationships. I don't know your situation Gary but everything about how reluctant you have been to talk about your story in the interview and your willingness to lay the blame for that relationship 100% at your partner's door of her trauma mindset suggests to me that vulnerability might be a huge challenge for you and a much more appealing solution to any troubles will then be to focus on discipline of the mind. Indeed that is the story of Western patriarchy and look how well that is going .
Thank you for this powerful interview. Love the dismantling of the fear matrix, not using fear as an advisor, but seeing it as an obstacle, and healthy fear being converted into awareness to act on.
Interesting and insightful. Thank you Anna and Gary.🙏
Glad you enjoyed it!
Loved the interview. I found it insightful and captivating to listen to. I always feel baffled to see how much emotional pain one needs to experience in order to look at oneself (haven't yet seen someone who investigated his beliefs due to physical pain). Even then it is not guaranteed people will seek to wake up. To me it seems a blessing to be given this opportunity. Also loved this: "It's not because I have good intention doesn't mean I'm making good descisions." This sounds so true to me as well. Without self-awareness my mind so easily convinces me to do things that sound good but are so detrimental. Such a deceiving fella at times! The interactions you had with Miguel and your process to more conscious-awareness really delighted my heart. I can imagine how confusing, yet novel and exciting this all must have seemed. And at one point so liberating. But you mentioning at around the 1:45:00 minute mark, how much doubt and even fear you have felt back then and if this stuff maybe could have been indeed a cult. How you (or the ego) couldn't even trust anybody who was involved. It sounds so overwhelming. I feel glad that you even saw this trap. Otherwise there would not be Pathwaytohappiness or this comprehensive Selfmastery approach. Much thanks. And also thanks to Anna for listening and asking interesting questions and giving you plenty of time to express and share the specifics of your journey. Cheers!
Thank you.
I am grateful for your willingness to talk about that turning point for you, Gary . It's curious that the voice that told you to leave and just to keep on driving seemed to also be coming from your mind but perhaps from a less traumatised part of the mind.
Although you talk about being gaslit by your ex partner, I am almost positive that we can't be gaslight if we didn't learn those beliefs of I must be wrong and if I leave no one else will want me as children. Your ex partner was as you say providing you with an opportunity to start to interact differently with those beliefs rather than as if you were still a child with internalised voices of parents or teachers where you had no other choice but to stay. You don't refer to anything historic and seem to be saying you just learned it from your ex which doesn't feel entirely an ownership of any past trauma that you brought to the relationship .
There is a lot on the internet about narcisstic relationships where there's kind of a belief that the narcisst is some irredeemable baddie and the victim "created" this bad experience and so can choose not to create bad experiences in the future by avoiding narcissists . Which is true but it fundamentally leaves out the part the Alanon woman was talking about. How were the traumatised ways that I learned as a child impacting this ex partner ?
I'm generalising but men generally have been socialised to shut down emotionally, to kind of withdraw and observe or take a kind of superior or dominant position rather than emotionally expose themselves and that tends to evoke that kind of enraged response from their partners, who also are acting from traumatised responses of abandonment and rejection. Often boys who grow up in very violent physically and emotionally aggressive environments can desperately want to avoid feeling anger and unconsciously create situations where the other person expresses what they feel is not possible for them to do maybe because of their physical size. And I think we all desperately do not want to be like the parent/adults who traumatised us. Patriarchy has not done men any favours in shutting down the self expression that is necessary for true intimacy and women tend to be conditioned to feel that shut door as rejection. I also coped by choosing partners who I felt safer from rejection with but instead at times felt contemptuous and resentful.
I am kind of indicating that all of us as adults we are working out our trauma with each other, everyone has some kind of ancestral or cultural imprint. So this idea of I will just go somewhere else to find peace is illusionary especially as our society is more and more traumatised. As is this idea that I will just train my mind - because it can simply another way to avoid feeling vulnerable in equal relationships, Maybe we can get away with it in unequal relationships such as teacher, therapist or parent where we have the power to divert but it will always cause problems in intimacy.
I certainly have spent a lot of my life trying desperately to feel emotionally close with men who really were terrified of it. I turned into a therapist/mother sort of role and took on the kind of gaslighting that I subtly hear you doing about your ex.
With that awareness going into relationships it is possible to clarify much earlier on, is this person really up for vulnerability and am I ? ....and if so, to work together as a team to assist each other in a less destructive manner.
Some ideas anyway. Thank you for the provocation to get clearer about what I feel about barriers to intimacy.
I do agree that the majority of humans are working out, and acting out, many forms of trauma. While I didn't have abusive parents that traumatized me, I didn't develop a great emotional intelligence. But one of the big factors in my development was that I trusted people, and believed them. My partner had been traumatized, and I didn't know that, or how to deal with that. I took her at face value. If she told me something, I trusted and believed her. While she was very bright and aware, and had many helpful insights, she also viewed our dynamics through a trauma lens, and I didn't discern out those comments from the helpful ones. Over time they built up, and I went spiraling down.
Thank you for explaining that - it's very helpful. Namaste
Unfortunately the way boys are socialised in Western cultures is extremely traumatic and counterproductive to successful relationships - that they are taught to subvert any emotion that results in vulnerability into something else, we don't recognise it as traumatic and therefore we also don't recognise how this plays out in intimate relationships. We don't recognise how much this is connected to violence, infidelity, addiction and the rise in the numbers of people remaining single.
Contrary to how women are trained to take the responsibility for maintaining relationships from a very early age, men simply are not conditioned to value relationships . They are conditioned to value strength and performance which is the opposite of the vulnerability necessary for successful intimacy. And that strength often is seen as a sort of moral superiority of being unemotional. When in real terms that unwillingness to engage vulnerably is the death throes to relationships.
I don't know your situation Gary but everything about how reluctant you have been to talk about your story in the interview and your willingness to lay the blame for that relationship 100% at your partner's door of her trauma mindset suggests to me that vulnerability might be a huge challenge for you and a much more appealing solution to any troubles will then be to focus on discipline of the mind. Indeed that is the story of Western patriarchy and look how well that is going .
Thank you for this powerful interview. Love the dismantling of the fear matrix, not using fear as an advisor, but seeing it as an obstacle, and healthy fear being converted into awareness to act on.
You are welcome.
Great interview. I love you Gary..
Thank you sir.