When Dr. Jon Caldwell, a psychiatrist and Medical Director for Meadows Behavioral Healthcare, was a kid he worked at a golf course where his job was to pick up golf balls in the rough and take them back to the clubhouse. He saw that when a golf ball had been hit by a lawnmower, the shell would break open, and the elastics that make up the core of the golf ball would start to spew out.
You know where we’re going with this, right?
The inner core of elastics represents the internal pressure, emotions, and painful memories that influence how we, as men, respond to the various interactions and situations we find ourselves in day to day.
In this episode of the podcast, Dr. Caldwell explains the ways we tend to react to adverse experiences are related to the ways in which we did or didn’t attach with our caregivers as children. There is a lot to this idea of attachment and it is essential to understanding how men experience and engage in relationships as adults.
Caldwell also explains how, through mindfulness practices, we can learn to choose for ourselves how to respond moment by moment rather than reacting and letting fear, anger, or The Man Rules dictate how we show up.
