Why we're launching a men's group

Resonant World has teamed up with an old friend to offer something new.

Previewing our men’s group with Daniel Simpson

Resonant World #4

This newsletter is based on a few core assumptions:

1. Collective trauma is a huge, overlooked reason why the world’s in such a mess.

2. There’s already a lot that can be done about this — and we’re learning more all the time.

3. It starts with bringing people together in intentional ways.

Though I hadn’t imagined I’d be getting to point 3. so fast, I’m delighted to announce that registration is now open for Embracing Change, a four-week transformative men’s group created by myself and my old friend Daniel Simpson to run online on four Sundays in October. Details here.

To be clear, what we’re offering isn’t designed to heal collective trauma. (If you want to read more about that kind of group work, then I’d invite you to explore Thomas Hübl’s Collective Trauma Integration Process, as described in his book Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, which regular readers know is among the main inspirations behind Resonant World).

That said, the kind of small group work we’re planning can be a great way to practice some of the skills of deep listening, clear communication and establishing what Hübl calls group “coherence” (more on that below) that form the building blocks of collective trauma work. Here’s Daniel and I discussing what we’re offering:

Where are all the men?

Since before the pandemic, I’ve been involved in either attending, co-facilitating or leading various online groups — and I’ve been amazed at how intimate, energising and inspiring they can be. For this week’s edition of Resonant World, I wanted to explore why I wanted to offer a men’s group, in particular, and how that relates to collective trauma.

During the 11 years or so that I’ve been on an active healing path, I’ve attended a lot of retreats, workshops and groups; the more off the beaten track the better. A lot of the time, men have been in a small minority — sometimes a minority of one. Of course, there are many men who are very active in these fields. But to risk stating the obvious, it seems that — for now at least — a lot more women are drawn to healing and self-development than men. The same seems to apply to the collective trauma work I’ve seen: women also outnumber men by a significant margin. This — I think — is a problem.

If we’re going to build a global healing movement capable of meeting the enormous challenge posed by collective trauma in all its many guises, we’re going to need more men to get involved. And that’s only going to happen if we can create spaces that speak to men’s challenges — and where we can support each other to work on our stuff. (Clearly, we’re going to need many other kinds of spaces too — this is just one tributary in a much bigger river. And I’d love to hear recommendations for pioneers exploring this and other tributaries to feature in future editions of Resonant World).

Vulnerability and challenge

So why hold a men-only group?

The first time I heard about the concept, I was sceptical. The idea of getting men together to talk about our feelings sounded very 1970s and slightly suspect — at least in my imagination. Maybe part of me felt threatened by the idea of opening up my inner world to men I didn’t know. I also wondered: Why bother? An all-male group would necessarily be poorer for lacking women’s perspectives, I assumed, so what would be the point?

My first encounter with men’s work threw these questions into a different light. It was in late 2018, and I attended a weekend men’s retreat run by Rebel Wisdom at a venue on the edge of London. It was extremely well facilitated, creating a safe space for a level of vulnerability around relationships, addictions and other issues that I suspect would have been impossible to have accessed in mixed company. (You can read an account of the retreat by a BBC journalist who took part here).

There was also something else I came to value: An overt element of challenge. Once we’d built enough trust to start sharing about the stuck parts of our lives, we also opened up the possibility of allowing other men to compassionately challenge us to get over ourselves. Out of context, this might sound harsh or even potentially harmful. But as part of carefully-run group processes held in the safe container of the retreat, I found this aspect incredibly helpful.

To cite a relatively prosaic example, I can still recall a former Royal Marine 15 years my junior looking me in the eye and saying: “I challenge you to set time aside each week to do your accounts,” after I’d shared about my worries about not being on top of my finances. I’m better organised on that front these days and, though I don’t attribute all my progress to that young ex-Marine, he certainly helped.

The Father Wound

The other big revelation I gained from Rebel Wisdom was learning about the concept of the Father Wound. I’ll confess I’ve not studied this concept in any depth, so what I’m offering here is very much my own interpretation. (I’d love to hear other definitions, or suggestions for further reading in the comments). To me, it boils down to the idea that men, as they grow up, very rarely receive ideal forms of connection, role modelling and initiation from their fathers. These deficits can leave us lacking a core sense of worthiness — that we either try to suppress through over-achieving, or which saps our ability to get our lives into gear. Just like nobody ever has perfect parents, every man bears some version of the Father Wound — and its effects can play out in many different ways.

As I learn more about how collective trauma cascades down through generations, it seems clear that the Father Wound is often a significant component in the transmission mechanism. To name one example that may resonate with many in Britain: Think of the generations of young men who were sent off to fight in World Wars, then came back suffering psychological injuries that made it impossible for them to be there for their children, thus inflicting Father Wounds on their sons.¹ Lacking healthy father templates, their sons passed the Father Wound down to their sons in turn, and so on. Uninterrupted, it’s a cycle that continues to this day.

But there’s good news too. It turns out that when men come together and serve as brother figures for each other, the Father Wound can be tenderly examined and gradually healed. The medicine, as the aphorism goes, lies close to the wound. For a very moving personal account of healing the Father Wound, I recommend this talk by David Fuller, co-founder of Rebel Wisdom. I owe David and his co-founded Alexander Beiner a personal debt for the work I was able to do at the retreat, and the inspiration I’ve drawn from the incredible variety of content they have produced since then).

We all brought our wounds, our addictions, our compromises and share of failures or frustrations. But in sharing openly, we also gained a clearer picture of each others’ potential as well. Culturally-conditioned habits of competition or comparison — which have caused me a lot of unnecessary suffering over the years — fell away in an earnest desire to see the best in each man, and support him to reach higher.

Rebel Wisdom led to another, longer online course run by my friend Paal Buntz that went deeper in the sphere of relationships and was powerful (life-changing, in fact) in a different way. I’ve been to one or two other men’s gatherings since then, but Embracing Change aims to blend together some of what Daniel and I have learned on our own paths with our new fascination with the art of group coherence.

Coherence

One of the elements of collective trauma work that I love the most is the concept of “coherence” — a mysterious process by which some kind of higher intelligence begins to work through groups where enough trust and mutual understanding has been established. Hübl describes it like this:

“When we come together in coherence to create a synchronized collective field….we experience heightened awareness of group presence. A high level of group awareness radically multiplies the flow of data through the group participants, uplevelling collective intelligence.”

Or, put another way: when you reach a certain threshold of trust and shared intention in a group, amazing things can happen in the service of change, growth and healing.

That’s the cause Resonant World and Embracing Change aim to serve — thanks for coming this far.

1. The impact of the Father Wound on daughters — and the topic of the Mother Wound — will have to wait for future editions of Resonant World.