Day 35 - 4th Feb
OLD FONT
‘I was standing in the kitchen
My grandfather came in
And said
(For no reason)
And out of the blue’
"I can smell the shit through your ribcage."
We recoiled
Together
In reflexive unison
Like a defence line-up
Sorting itself out
Quickly
At the breakdown
He couldn't
Believe it
Felt reprieve
His whole childhood
Now impoverished
If I hadn't seen such riches
I could live with being poor
The thousand-yard stare comes now
And the group leaves him to it
For a wee while
You need time to just
let Cornea and fovea adjust
To that kind of perspective
Like looking through the scope
Of a long-range rifle
And not knowing what to shoot.
‘I grew up in a place
Where if you were gentle
You got annihilated'.
”Mmmm.’"
Beside me
Involuntary
Necessary
Visceral solidarity
Other men scoff
Or cough
Or think they don't need it
It's beneath them
They think
’For the weak ones’
They think
But it's just that they are too small to drink
From this font
Like a child
Who is scared
Who can’t clamber up
The warm stones
To the drinking fountain
In the old town square
Some elder stood up against it,
Will turn around
Lift them up
Under armpits
One fell swoop
And let them drink
Their fill
There they raise up
What they relegated
When you feel thirsty
You are already
Dehydrated.
Niall Campbell
Today's poem lifts two direct quotes from a men’s circle I was involved in.
I’ll obviously protect the identities of those involved, so some specifics are altered, but the sentiment remains unchanged. The quotes are verbatim. When something of real importance is said, it is often simple, impactful, and memorable. It is the truth.
The first quote was said as a throwaway comment by a man, almost in passing, about the type of household he grew up in. This guy was very financially successful but really struggling. As is often the case for men, the ‘never again’ attitude of childhood had hardened into a vicious business strategy that saw him undercut rivals, work preternaturally hard, and win big contracts through sheer force of will, bloody-mindedness, and ruthlessness.
But while the money rolled in, the love rolled out of his relationships. His business thrived, but his family did not.
He was, of course, a sweetheart in a cunt’s clothing, and this persona fell apart within a session or two. He then shifted—again, very common—into an empathy role for others and a minimalist role for himself. On paper, ‘nothing bad had happened to him’ in his childhood. He had an ‘intact family’ and a ‘good childhood.’
When new clients sit down and prematurely nominate such information to me, that is duly noted. We will return to such proclamations when they are ready. Because often, the client doth protest too much.
In the group, there were absolute horror stories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. It certainly wasn’t inappropriate for him to offer empathy to others. It helped him because he had a massive heart and needed to reconnect with its capacity to let empathy in.
But it became apparent, after a while, that he was over-identifying with others and minimising his own trauma.
This statement he made was apropos of nothing.
He told it like a ‘funny story,’ but what happened next reveals the absolute, integral importance of the ‘superorganism’ capacity of men’s groups.
Unconsciously, reflexively, the group heard this and recoiled. There was no thought, just feeling.
He stopped cold and realised that—looking around the room—men who had been through some of the most horrific things were empathising with him. Not in some patronising way, but truly and involuntarily.
It gently and immediately forced him to realise that his whole narrative about his childhood was misguided.
This is a very painful moment. It’s what I call an ontological shock. You are not where you thought you were, and you are not who you thought you were. It shatters core assumptions. It can be dangerous and destabilising, but it is akin to having to re-break a bone that was poorly repaired on the battlefield—set quickly by your mate in a field hospital—before it can be skilfully reset by an orthopaedic surgeon in a hospital, far away from battle.
The bone needs to be skilfully broken before it can be healed properly.
This is another advantage of the group because it immediately and in real-time corroborates across a wide range of men—representative of the types you’d see in any pub, gym, or office. Ask anyone familiar with group dynamics, ask alcoholics in recovery who’ve attended dozens of AA meetings. It’s all kinds of folks. So you get a pretty representative focus group about how fucked up elements of your life were and are.
This little throwaway story was not an aberration but an average Tuesday in his home. This was the water he swam in as a little tiddler fish.
He had just been given a long-range scope and a powerful capacity to snipe out his own adverse childhood experiences, which were derailing his life.
But he was not yet a good shot.
These breakthroughs need to come.
Art is an excellent way for them to happen.
The more I work as a psychotherapist with men who have experienced high trauma—first responders, veterans, survivors of childhood sexual abuse and violence, two groups with hauntingly similar phenomenologies—the more I see the need for an ecology of practices: overlapping, sensible, titratable ways that men can lean into their fucked-up childhoods, acknowledge them, and then pick the kids up from school.
I work on retreats with a freediver.
Learning how to freedive into the trauma of your own past is no less physically demanding and requires the same checkpoints.
You have to stretch yourself to go down there,
But you need to be as safe and calm as you are adventurous and assertive.
You need to know how to dive down and resurface in the same day
Without getting the emotional, psychological, or spiritual bends.
But, like freediving, it’s pretty amazing
How much people can extend their capacity
To dive down,
Sift through all the shit and silt,
And find the same pearls at the bottom.
The other line—"If you were gentle, you got annihilated"—was one I personally said.
I should clarify: I was not a facilitator in this group but rather a participant. And some of the trauma that the first chap was so empathic towards was mine.
The superorganism that is the group will call out of you things you did not know were functioning as unhelpful axioms in your system.
The sky is blue.
The grass is green.
And if you are gentle, you will get annihilated.
I am so glad I focused on this before having kids. Because I still occasionally lose it, and this is a shameful but common dad event—losing it at the kids. But I reduced my reactivity a fair bit before becoming a father.
Being gentle is not optional.
You have to be firm and in charge, but little kids, both boys and girls, thrive when their dad is more like Mufasa than Scar.
There is no getting away from it.
Vulnerability is key.
But men need spaces where they can take off their masks, sob in front of other blokes, and then be issued with some accountability. I actually don’t think the best place for this is generally the office, the family, or the internet. That is where it is currently and involuntarily happening for men en masse at the minute. Far better to have a more controlled and voluntary way to regularly step into this energy. Everyone around you will benefit.
But the pathetic and the powerful often co-mingle in a way that does allow men to go off and level up in some fairly quantifiable ways. This music video captures what I’m talking about where my words fall short.
I want to dedicate this poem and the associated essay to all the men who took part in this group with me. It wasn’t a pity party, and it doesn't require some BFF bullshit. We all showed up for each other, gave each other pats on the back and kicks up the ass.
We all need it.