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A few years ago, a therapist told me he didn’t think I’d developed my relationship with masculinity. I agreed with him. I think my experience of what masculinity looked like as a grew up led me to reject it as something that I saw as being largely negative.

I reflected about my time at an all-boys secondary school, and how nasty a lot of the behaviour I experienced was. There was a general atmosphere of aggression, both physical and verbal. I felt unsafe a lot of the time, especially as I was the third smallest out of 120 boys.

There was a lot of ‘banter’, in the sense of putting each other down for the sake of a laugh or to feel superior. Another way of putting it would be collective, continuous bullying. Anyone who put a foot wrong or stood out in some way would be mercilessly shot down.

A lot of us would get the train home with girls from the local girls’ school, and when we came into contact with them, suddenly the boys’ behaviour became so much more friendly. I just couldn’t understand it. Why can’t they treat each other like this all the time?

Bullying and homophobia

Homophobia was also constantly hanging in the air. The word ‘gay’ was used to mean ‘bad’. Nobody had come out as gay by the time I left that school at age 16. If anyone had come out, I imagine they would have expected to be mercilessly bullied and humiliated.

I’ve got vivid memories of saying something in class and someone shouting ‘Shut up, Hix! You’re gay!’

I remember a time after a rugby match that my own team picked me up and dumped me in a huge puddle. They thought it was funny. I had a panic attack and started hyper-ventilating.

I did tell my mum that I was being bullied, and she put a stop to some of it by speaking to a teacher. But mostly, I felt too ashamed about what I was experiencing to talk to anyone about it.

I found it really hard to connect with people. I felt very alone, particularly for the first two years at that school. I even remember thinking that, if I stepped in front of a car, nobody would have cared. Of course, they would have done, but that’s how rejected and miserable I felt at the time.

What made it more painful was seeing how many friends my sister had, and the closeness and warmth I saw between them. It made me wonder if there was something wrong with me.

Looking back, it’s hard to think who my positive masculine role models were among my peers or in the media.

So given how negative my experience of so much male behaviour was, it made total sense to me that I hadn’t developed my sense of masculinity. Either consciously or unconsciously I’d rejected it as the opposite of who I wanted to be.

What even is ‘masculinity?’

In 1976, sociologist Robert Brannon came up with four key traits of masculinity in US culture. It became a key text in gender studies.

I think it’s quite a neat way of summarising what the traditional idea of masculinity is, and it helped me make a lot of sense of why my time at the boys’ school was so unpleasant.

1. No sissy stuff: no vulnerability, openness or showing any weakness. This involves concealing emotions and not showing kindness or affection.
2. The big wheel: having high status, being successful in business and sport, being strong, and having sexual prowess.
3. The sturdy oak: being tough, self-reliant, stable and confident. Having little need for emotional support. Being unflappable.
4. Give ‘em hell!: being aggressive, daring and willing to use violence if necessary.

I had the idea that I’d shrugged off this macho idea of masculinity as not relevant to me – not part of who I wanted to be. But, when I really reflected on it, I realised that these ideas have all affected me deeply in multiple ways.

1. Emotional disconnection

When I first started using the Headspace meditation app, Andy Puddicombe, who guided the meditations, would alway start by asking me to notice how I was feeling in that moment.

Every time I said the same thing to myself: ‘neutral’. ‘Neutral?’, I thought. How boring! I don’t want to spend my whole life feeling not much of anything. It made me realise how emotionally disconnected I was and how I’d always said I was ‘fine’. I’ve since discovered that ‘fine’ is an acronym for ‘Fucking Incapable of Naming Emotions’. For most of my life, I’ve either not known how I am or not been willing to say, for fear of contravening rule number one: don’t be a sissy!

The classic emotions for men to repress are sadness and anxiety, because they’re seen as weak. Anger is the only one that is seen as acceptable, because it’s an aggressive emotion. The Incredible Hulk and Rambo get angry, but they never shed a tear.

But I repressed that one too! I had a fear of upsetting people or causing an argument, so it’s only in recent years that I’ve been able to find ways of telling someone they’ve crossed my boundary.

2. Shallow friendships

I made two female friends in my first year of university who were a joyous revelation to me. They actually told me they liked me. And told me things about me that they liked. I’d never had that before!

Why do men so rarely do that? It might be due to the fear of being seen as gay, or perhaps a level of competitiveness between them. Being willing to be open with friends about my feelings and insecurities is something that I’ve only started being able to do relatively recently. As a result, I hadn’t felt close to a lot of my male friends, even when we were spending lots of time together.

3. Shame

I’ve only realised in the last few years how much shame I’ve experienced in relation to masculinity. When I was a teenager, I was ashamed of not being ‘manly’ enough, because I hit puberty so late. My voice hadn’t broken, I was still one of the smallest in my year, I didn’t have much body hair, and wasn’t very physically strong – all things that made me feel very inadequate. This made me assume that girls would never be interested in me.

As as an adult, I’ve felt inadequate about not having more money and being more successful with my business and had lots of insecurities about sex and relationships. The older I’ve got the more I’ve been able to notice a general sense of feeling not good enough rearing its ugly head.

But the act of writing and speaking about these issues has been immensely de-shaming. It’s helped me to realise how normal many of the issues I’ve experienced. So many men struggle with them but don’t talk about them.

As the author Brené Brown says, if shame was bacteria in a petri dish, it would be darkness that would make it grow and light that would make it die. That’s definitely been true in my experience.

Through my men’s group, therapy, partner dancing, meditation and reading around the topic I’ve now got to the point where I feel a lot more secure in my masculinity than I once did, but I think it’s a continual work in progress.

Emma and I have released part 2 of our conversation on masculinity which we started in Movember. I really enjoyed this follow-on conversation with Emma and would love to hear how this episode impacts you if you have a listen.

In our last episode, we talked about some of the huge challenges many men are facing—higher suicide rates, lower attainment in school, higher rates of homelessness, addiction, the pressure to suppress emotions and not ask for help. We explored how these challenges are so often dismissed, leaving many men feeling isolated or stuck in outdated ideas of what it means to be a man.

In this episode, we shift towards something I find way more hopeful— How might men who identify with these challenges, find an empowering way through them?

We explore:

🔹 An important quality men can embrace if they are to free themselves from the limitations of masculine stereotypes 💪✨
🔹 How to reconnect with your body and emotions (and why that’s essential) 🧘‍♂️💙
🔹 Why brotherhood and community are so important for men’s well-being 🤝💡
🔹 How the workplace can actually support men’s mental health instead of making it worse 🏢🧠
🔹 What to do when that feeling of “not being enough” creeps in 🤯❤️

Whether you’re a man or someone who loves and supports men, I invite you to have a listen and see if parts of this conversation touch you in some way..

🎧 Watch the video on Youtube above or listen on Spotify.

We would love to hear your feedback.

It’s Movember, so in our latest podcast, we’re talking about men. We take a closer look at the challenges men are navigating and discuss how societal expectations, toxic masculinity narratives, and a lack of positive role models have left many men feeling lost and disconnected from themselves and those around them.

Some of the sobering statistics we explore include:

• Boys often perform worse than girls in school and are 26% less likely to earn a degree.
• Men face higher rates of addiction, incarceration, and premature death—whether through workplace accidents, violence, or suicide, which men are three times more likely to die by than women.
• 54% of men voted for Trump in the last election, vs 44% of women

I’ve been running a workshop at different companies this month called “We need to talk about men”, and when I share these facts, people share that they feel sad, despairing, shocked but also not surprised. For me, it’s important to acknowledge these feelings because they show a care and concern that’s not apparent when people are raging at each other about gender issues on social media. We need to find more productive ways of talking about this issue.

In this episode, we all talk about:

• Why masculinity is such a hard topic to talk about at this moment in time.

• How cultural narratives around men can leave them confused about their identity and role.

• Ways to frame conversations about masculinity with empathy and openness

If you’ve ever wondered how to support the men in your life—or if you’re a man trying to make sense of your own journey—I hope this episode offers some insights and inspiration.

👉 Click here to listen to the episode:

And if you or someone you know would like to explore these themes in a more personal way, I invite you to reach out. I help men reconnect with their emotions, learn to love and accept themselves and form deeper, more authentic relationships. You can book a 30-minute call here.

Increasingly the way I’m working with people 1-2-1 and in groups is really challenging them to express their present moment experience. Not talk about how work has been this week, not talk about what’s happening tomorrow, just what’s happening in their mind and body right now, and how they’re relating to it. Are they accepting it or rejecting it?

In the podcast episode with my dear friend, relationship coach Emma Buggy, we explore doing this with each other. In all of our previous episodes we’ve had a topic like anxiety or anger, and had some sense before we start recording of what we want to share.

In this episode, there is no topic or plan for what’s going to happen. We just notice what we’re experiencing in the moment and try to share it with each other – and with you!

We felt nervous before we started recording – would it be of any value to a listener? Would it be overly exposing? Would it go anywhere?

The resulting conversation felt very alive, very honest and at times vulnerable. We witness intense sensations, body movements, fears about being judged, parts of us that want to be seen and others that want to hide… all unfolding moment by moment.

We were inspired by a practise called ‘Circling’, which we explain a bit about at the start of the episode.

You can listen on Spotify or watch it on YouTube, above.

I’d love to know what you think.

I was shocked, saddened and really worried at what I saw in the videos of the recent riots happening all over the UK.

They raised a lot of questions in my mind:, how do we put a stop to them in the short term, and keep people safe but also – why are they happening? I thought we lived in a tolerant society, where people from different faiths, cultures and ethnicities were reasonably well integrated and included in our communities.

How should we respond to people who are being violent, destructive and racist?

And is it possible that way we usually respond to these incidents might be creating the conditions that make them more likely to happen again?

I discussed all of these questions with my dear friend Emma, a teacher of Non-Violent Communication on our latest podcast, as part of a wider discussion about polarisation.

We look at the events through the lens of one social media post from someone who was in favour of the protests and one that was violently condemning them, attempting to understand what both sides are caring for in this conflict through the lens of Nonviolent Communication.

We discuss:

• The importance of humanising those with whom we fundamentally disagree and how not listening can create the conditions for future violence
• Whether fighting against opposing views is always the best approach, questioning whether it might actually worsen the divide
• How the deeply ingrained concept of good versus evil shapes our language and actions
• Whether force can be used with empathy and compassion
• What’s driving the anger behind violent protests
• The implications of labelling others as “terrorists” and how such language can foster more conflict
• The consequences of using dehumanising language and how it might mirror the very violence we’re protesting against, potentially escalating tensions further.

You can watch the video above or listen on Spotify.

On average, 12 men take their lives in the UK everyday. This rate is three times higher than it is for women and middle-aged men (aged 45–49) are the age group most at risk.

Whilst the reasons for someone to take their own lives are multi-faceted and complex, an open and compassionate workplace culture can encourage colleagues to look out for each other and reach out to those who need help.

In this 60 minute workplace suicide workshop, we share the story of 39 year old James who took his own life in November 2019. In this talk, James’ friend, Andy (a mindfulness and wellness coach) interviews James’ brother, Will (a professional in the construction industry).

Will shares the events leading up to James’ death, his own immediate reaction and subsequent coping mechanisms. In discussion with Andy, Will also reflects on the possible factors that led to James die.

Both passionate about sharing James’ story in a bid to prevent further tragedies, together the duo discuss:

• How suicide affects the family and friends
• Different approaches to coping with the aftermath 
• Why suicide is more common amongst men than women 
• What can be done to support men’s mental health
• How to open up conversations about suicide. 

As a professional in the construction industry (an industry which has a suicide rate three times higher than the national average), Will’s candid openness is particularly powerful.

Key outcomes:

• Encouraging people to open up about their mental health
• Reducing the stigma around talking about suicide
• Signposting people to mental health support

Testimonials:

“Thank you very much, it was a great session & a real privilege to be able to run a talk on such a sensitive and taboo subject in order to drive greater awareness. I liked the dynamic between Andy and Will, which worked really well. 

I have never received so many questions from the audience. I loved how the conversation moved from sharing James story to practical advice.”

– Michaela, Amazon

You can book an online or in-person session here.

When I first moved in with my partner, she said it was very unsettling that nothing seemed to irritate me. It absolutely did, I’d just spent my whole life learning to hide my anger using my old friend silent resentment 🙂 I particularly noticed how much of this went round in my mind when I was on silent meditation retreats. The same criticisms of other people replaying on a loop.

I often work with people who are at the opposite end of the spectrum – they frequently become aggressively angry with their partner or their children, and by the time they’re talking to me their relationships are at serious risk of breaking down. They’re often stuck in a cycle of losing their temper, apologising, feeling ashamed, and then subsequently losing their temper again.

But if silent resentment doesn’t feel good, and neither does expressing your anger to attack someone, what do we do with it? How do we handle anger skilfully?

That’s what I and relationship coach Emma Buggy discuss in this podcast.

You can listen to it on Spotify here.

If you’d like support in developing a positive relationship with anger, that creates more connection with yourself and those you care about rather than more disconnection, book a free 30-minute consultation here.

Today I’m sharing three stories of forgiveness that blew my mind.

Imagine you’ve made a video about an issue you really care about. You’ve spent hours producing it and you feel vulnerable about telling the world what you think, but you also feel proud of what you’ve created.

You then post it online and someone comments underneath it, ‘You’re a piece of shit.’

How would you react?

This didn’t happen to me, it happened to the actor, writer and activist Dylan Marron.

Would you be upset? Angry? Maybe just ignore it?

I bet what you wouldn’t do is call up the person who wrote it, ask them how they are (in a really friendly voice) and then enquire as to why they wrote it – with a genuine curiosity to find out.

This is what Dylan does is his podcast series, ‘Conversations with People who Hate Me’.

I found it completely intriguing, inspiring and captivating listening.

The conversations follow a similar pattern. They start with the person retracting the insult and admitting they got a bit carried away, before explaining what it was about what Dylan said that they disagreed with.

By the end of the conversations, they have seen each other as humans rather than two usernames attacking each other on the internet, and have usually genuinely bonded.

Now, imagine that you are a 10-year-old black kid taking part in a Scout parade and white people start throwing stones at you. When you get home your mum explains that some people hate you just because of the colour of your skin.

Isn’t it quite likely you would start to fear and hate white people?

What you probably wouldn’t do is spend years reading all the books you could on racism and white supremacy in an attempt to understand why people might hate you for being black.

What you almost certainly wouldn’t do, is arrange to meet one of the leaders of the KKK so that you could ask him questions about his beliefs, invite him back to your house for dinner, befriend him and start to attend KKK rallies so you could understand them better.

That is what musician Darly Davis did. He tells the story and it ends with the leader leaving the KKK and giving Daryl his Klan robe.

I found this awe-inspiring.

If your son had been murdered, would you be willing to meet the man who did it while he was in prison and ask him why? Would knowing that he was just doing it to be part of a gang make you more or less angry?

When he got out of prison, would you support him in getting a degree and a job so that he can make something of this life? That is what David and Joan did. You can listen to the story in the Radio 4 series ‘@04’. It moved me to tears several times.

Our media is full of people being shamed for their behaviour, and so rarely are there stories that really seek to understand why someone did something awful.

To my mind, this leads to a culture in which we think some people are just ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. It leads to a barbaric criminal justice system that throws people in jail to rot, without considering what led them to commit their crime. It means we end up with leaders like Donald Trump, who are willing to subject themselves to the shaming media because they are shameless. A more sensitive human wouldn’t be able to take it.

What’s incredibly inspiring to me about all of the people I have mentioned is that even when someone has verbally or physically abused them, even when someone has murdered their son, they chose not to write the perpetrators off. They stood firm in their belief that this is another human being who deserves understanding and forgiveness.

I’m sharing these stories with you because, when I heard them, they deeply inspired me. They showed me that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary acts of forgiveness that can transcend all the shaming and trolling that consumes so much of our social and national media.

And, hopefully, knowing that someone else has done it makes it seem a lot more possible that you or I could do it too.

5 min read

To people who hate Trump, this election result might have felt like a relief. The good guys won. But, as has been pointed out several times, this was not the rejection of Trumpism that many were hoping for.

He got more votes than last time, and those 71 million people aren’t going anywhere just because Biden won. Also, 70% of them believe it was not a free and fair election. That is a lot of people to have lost faith in the democratic process.

What interests me most about the US election is the level of polarisation, and the questioning of what is ‘truth’.

When the Brexit vote happened, there was a lot of talk about echo chambers. People in my social circles were sure Remain would win, because they didn’t know anyone who was planning to vote Leave and they couldn’t understand why anyone would.
It was widely believed that the Leave arguments were all based on lies and racism.

And it’s the same in the US election. People who support Biden, for the most part, have no idea how anyone could possibly support Trump, unless they are stupid, insane or evil.

As one of my friends put it on social media:

‘I mean, really, if this many Americans are still voting for someone that literally the whole world can see is an incompetent, racist, misogynist, corrupt, tax-avoiding, narcissistic liar with blatant dictatorial ambitions — in the middle of a pandemic and a recession — then there is genuinely no hope.’

However, Trump voters are also convinced that most, if not all, of these criticisms are true about Biden.

He is accused by Trump and his supporters of being senile and therefore incompetent; supporting anti-black legislation; sexual assault; corruption over his business ties with Ukraine; avoiding paying taxes; and being a pathological liar.

Also, just as Trump is arguing that this election has been rigged, the Democrats spent huge resources on arguing that the Russians had interfered with the 2016 presidential election and that Trump’s win was not legitimate.

To Trump supporters, their views are just as ‘obviously true’ as the Biden supporters believe theirs are.

So what’s really going on here?

How can we move forward if we can’t even agree on basic facts like who won the most votes?

Trump-voter hating is lazy
Personally, I think it’s lazy to think that if someone has a different view to you, there must be something wrong with them. We need to make more effort to understand the people on the other side of the debate — although it’s not really a debate anymore, it’s a shouting match!

What both Brexit and Trump voters seem to have in common is wanting to stick two fingers up to the establishment. Why? Because the system isn’t working for them and they are angry. They want someone to blame and someone to restore their faith in their country.

Death of the American Dream
A big part of the ‘American Dream’ is the idea that any individual can be successful if they work hard. Increasingly, that is no longer true — if it ever was.

The ratio between median household income and median house prices was 1.9 in 1970. It is now 4.1. In California, it’s 9.6.
During the same time period, wages have not kept pace and inequality has increased. The income of the top 1% has grown five times as fast as that of the bottom 90%.

Adjusted for inflation, the average cost of a university degree in the US has increased 161% since 1987, from $39,643 to $103,616. The average student now graduates with $29,800 of debt. For law students, it’s close to $150,000.

A recent analysis by the Center for Household Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that millennials have 34% less wealth than would have been predicted based on the experience of earlier generations.

There are a lot of young people living with their parents, saddled with debt, with no hope of buying a house and setting up a home for their family. It’s the same story in this country.

This isn’t just about economics, it’s about people losing faith in the myth that underpins their whole identity, and their sense of belonging, progress and meaning.

Not only does Trump channel their anger at the people they perceive to be to blame — corrupt politicians, rich financiers, a dishonest media and immigrants — he also promises to restore their faith in the country: to use the fact that he’s an outsider and a supposedly successful businessman to put things right.

I believe this also goes a long way to explaining why there are so many conspiracy theories around at the moment. It seems like some elite group of people are running things for their own advantage, at the expense of the majority.
Our civilisation needs a new mythology

As I’ve written previously, I think what’s really going on is even more fundamental than the breakdown of the American Dream: the myth at the core of our view of reality is becoming intolerable.

Philosopher Charles Eisenstein calls it the ‘Story of Separation’. In this story, we are all separate minds encased in flesh, in a world of separate competing individuals, all acting in their own economic and genetic self-interest, in a dead universe.

In what he calls the ‘New and Ancient Story of Interbeing’, we are all interconnected and interdependent. My wellbeing depends on everyone else’s, as well as on mother nature. By hating someone, I’m hurting myself. By being kind to someone or caring for the natural world, the whole system benefits. The whole universe is alive and conscious.

The financial and political systems in the UK and US have been built on the Story of Separation, and they are breaking down. It’s no one’s fault. There is no evil cabal making this happen; it is part of our evolution as a species.

Anti-Trumpers see the divide as being between stupid racist people and intelligent liberals. Maybe the real divide is between people who have lost faith in the system and those who haven’t.

I believe one of the best things we can do to aid this transition is to really stop and question ourselves whenever we realise that we are feeling hateful towards another individual or group. Are they really evil, or are they a decent human being, just like you, with a good heart, trying to make sense of this confusing world?