Recovering From Childhood Issues, Difficult Mothers, Bullying, and Low Self-Esteem By Healing Your Past

I was recently interviewed by Christopher from The Craft of Charisma podcast about the work that I do with my clients to help them regain their natural confidence. The full interview ran over two hours as we went deep into many of the issues that have impacted our self-confidence in the past, how we worked through them and how we both now help other men too.

It was a really fun conversation with lots of twists and turns as Christopher and I had been on very similar life journeys. So sit back, grab a cup of your favourite beverage and listen to this epic interview where you will learn about:

• Overcoming family patterns of emotional disconnection and poor social skills

• The impact of bullying and not fitting in as a child and young adult

• Learning to deal with emotions and express how we feel

• How telling boys “don’t cry” shuts down the normal trauma healing process

• Recovering from a controlling, dominating mother

• Healing from emotional abandonment and parental enmeshment

• How unresolved parental conflict can lead to post-traumatic stress symptoms

• Overcoming bullying by learning to be assertive as an adult

• Using music and creativity as a part of the healing process

• Learning to handle anger differently from my father and mother

• How trauma causes us to contract physically and in our personality

• Overcoming anxiety and fear with assertiveness

• Finding fun ways like music and art to work through childhood issues

• How our mother’s criticism of our father rubs off on us

• Why emotional expression is the key to effective therapy

• How to express and release fear from the nervous system

• Externalising rather than internalising fear, anger and shame

• Working through high school bullying by going to music college

• Overcoming self-consciousness and self-judgement while singing

• Learning to name what is happening in our bodies to release nervousness

• How I overcame perfectionism by writing an performing a song about it

• Learning to laugh at the things that used to be frightening or painful

• Naming basic emotions: anger, sadness, guilt, fear, shame or disgust

• Learning to express anger constructively

• Dealing with other people being triggered when we express ourselves constructively

• Using comedy and humor to sort out issues

• Expanding your comfort zone by taking an acting class

• Unlocking trauma and suppression using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

• The challenge of recognizing childhood emotional abandonment trauma

• How having children brings up a parent’s unresolved emotional baggage

• Using our values to take action even when we are feeling fear

• The challenge of being more emotionally aware, open and present

• Letting go of judgments by identifying and releasing the emotion behind them

Then in the second hour of the interview things get really personal and interesting:

• Learning from hero’s journey stories about growing up

• How to navigate an uncertain world without needing to control everything

• My spiritual journey from Christian to militant atheist to learning greater tolerance for other people’s belief systems

• Jordan Peterson’s Psychological Significance of The Bible Stories lectures

• Frodo’s journey in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy as a metaphor for growing up

• Questioning our parent’s beliefs, behaviors and interpretation of life

• Joseph Campbell’s work on mythology

• Creativity, channeling and the unconscious imagination

• Writing an angry song called Everything Is Fucked in a yoga class

• Learning to tolerate your mother’s distress when being your own man

• Expressing trauma can turn your worst experience into your best experience

• How to clean up uncomfortable interactions so they don’t accumulate or become traumatic

• Using interactions with other people to heal unresolved issues from the past

It’s an epic!

Listen to the full interview in two parts here: