Presence: Why You Struggle with Being Present and How to Change It

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Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships

Realness, Presence, and Purpose are Deeply Intertwined

The world is not reality which is one of the reasons we find ourselves in an unreal world that idolises the hustle, glorifies busyness, and confuses productivity with true purpose.

The result of all this is that we have generation of men who are rarely – if ever – truly present. In fact, many of them actively fear presence and so they’re constantly running around distracting themselves and trying to escape life by any means necessary (whilst still looking ‘busy’, of course, because ‘busyness’ is one of our core cultural values).

Let that sink in for a moment:

When was the last time you really felt right here, right now?

Not scrolling, not overthinking, not worrying about something, or getting ready to do the next thing on your list whilst you’re currently doing the current thing – just here.

In your body. With your breath. In this moment.

Chances are, it’s been a while and – if you’re like most men – it’s not your fault (though your lack of presence is a CHOICE that you keep making):

You’ve been conditioned away from your natural state of presence and taught to feel, think, do, and even BE something that you’re not.

That sounds a bit dramatic but there’s some good news too: presence is your birth-right and it can’t be taken from you because it’s just you REALNESS (and what’s real is always real).

It’s the secret sauce behind every great life, every true connection, and every meaningful pursuit…and you can reclaim it by starting to shift your focus.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Presence is essential for realness which is vital for mental and physical health.

What Is Presence, Really?

Presence isn’t just sitting cross-legged on a meditation cushion and fingering your bellybutton – nor is it staring blankly at a tree, pretending you’re enlightened.

Real presence is about being with reality as it is – not as your mind filters or manipulates it.

It’s about tasting something WHOLE instead of just the little FRAGMENTS of experience that we identify with and get used to.

Presence isn’t passive.

Presence isn’t bland or empty.

It’s a dynamic stillness that allows you to act without force, speak without fear, and love without condition. It’s when your mind, body, and spirit are all pointing in the same direction and not tearing you away from your real life.

It’s when you’re really ‘here’ in the now and not just lost in your head, your blocked emotions, and your interpretations.

When you’re present, you can actually see and be seen:

You see your partner, your kids, your mates. You hear your the voice of your own REALNESS and feel connected to something whole and true instead of getting lost in a fog of fragmented thoughts.

The opposite of presence is distractions:

An often involuntary (because you’re running on autopilot) where you miss out on your own life because you’re physically there but emotionally and spiritually AWOL.

This distractionism is the default state of the modern man: a ghost in his own skin – haunting his own life in the Void and wondering why everything is so quiet and desperate instead of being filled with colour and glory.

Why Men Struggle with Presence

Presence is our natural state but it’s not our normal state anymore for various reasons (there are probably way more):

1. We’re addicted to doing instead of accepting of our being: From a young age, we’re rewarded for performance over presence: school grades, sports championships, climbing the career ladder, and chasing achievement.

The more we do, the more we feel like we actually are something but this is only because we’re detached from what’s real about us and so we think that we need to ‘achieve’ our realness when all we really need to do is reach out and receive it (and still take REAL ACTION).

Slowing down feels like death to the ego which is why most of us are running around like headless chickens. The irony is that when we do slow down we can see what’s hiding behind the mask of ego and start being who we really are.

2. We’re terrified of stillness because in the stillness we find flow: Stillness can be a confronting experience – especially if we’re a human doing instead of a human being – because, when we stop, we hear the noise inside ourselves and have to face all the things we’ve been trying to distract ourselves from:

The judgements. The shame. The unresolved emotions. The shadow parts.

Presence forces us to feel, and many of us have never been taught how to feel safely and so we keep running. If we don’t feel, though, we can’t allow what’s actually real about us to emerge and so we’ll always be lost to the Void and feel a lack of actual presence in our lives (we’ll be living in a projection instead).

3. Our nervous systems are fried and so our thoughts and actions become erratic: Many of us live in a chronic state of fight-or-flight and so our nervous systems are stuck on overdrive (we have what’s known as Sympathetic Dominance).

In this state, we constantly feel on edge because we experience hypervigilance and overstimulation. We’re constantly scanning for external threats like emails, bills, and social rejection but also internal ‘threat’s like our own emotional ‘stuff’. In this state, presence is nearly impossible because our biology is hijacked and taking us away from reality instead of towards it.

4. The ego hates presence because the ego is unreal: The ego wants control and so it thrives on the past and the future, regret and worry.

On the other hand, presence requires surrender which dismantles the ego’s illusions and reveals the truth: that we’re already whole, loved, and enough because we’re already REAL and what’s real is always real.

What Happens When You’re Not Present?

When you’re not present, you’re living through the lens of a fragmented self (ego) placed between yourself and reality – a bundle of reactions and roles rather than a real, rooted identity.

Here’s what that leads to:

Shallow relationships: People can’t connect with you. You might be charming, charismatic, or whatever but you’re not felt because you’re not there.
Poor decisions: Without presence, you act from fear, habit, or impulse – not truth. You also end up trying to force life because you can’t trust (because your nervous system is screwed up) and so you lose a sense of flow.
Missed opportunities: Life is always offering you something real like a next step, a new opportunity, or a lesson in letting go but if you’re distracted, you won’t see it.
Inner chaos: Without presence, your mind runs wild and you become reactive, anxious, and out of alignment as the Gremlin takes over and pulls you away from yourself, the world, and reality.

The Masculine Power of Presence

Here’s the twist: presence isn’t just a feel-good concept that’s for hippies on park benches – it’s a masculine superpower:

True masculinity isn’t just about dominance or bravado -it’s about groundedness.

Being grounded means that you’re unshakeable enough within yourself and your thoughts and emotions to penetrate reality with clarity and strength…no matter what it throws your way.

Really, this means meeting life on its own terms instead of according to your own judgements or expectations. It’s about embracing that sometimes It is what it is and So be it.

When you’re present like this, you can hold space – for your loved ones, the challenges you’re facing, and your purpose.

Presence is the difference between force and flow:

It’s what lets you lead, love, and build something real without losing yourself in the process (though you’ll probably lose your ego in order to find yourself).

In short, presence is how you face chaos without becoming it.

Remember what Jesus said: “Be IN the world, but not OF the world” – that’s presence: engaged in this world of ours without being entangled in it or ensnared upon its thorns.

Awake but not overwhelmed.

Presence: The Portal to Potential

Presence is also how you unlock your potential because when you’re present, you’re connected to reality.

This is important because reality is the only place where anything ever happens (real always works, after all):

It’s the only place you can create, heal, grow, serve, love, lead or do anything even remotely true.

It’s where your purpose lives and where you’ll find yourself at your best.

When you’re present, your energy is focused, your instincts kick in, and your creativity flows; you stop being ruled by fear and start acting from wisdom.

You become more REAL.

How to Cultivate Presence: The Three Levels

Presence isn’t something you ‘achieve’ once and for all – it’s a practice of constantly tuning in and receiving what’s already and always there (reality).

It’s like a muscle that – like any muscle – strengthens with repetition and care.

Here are three levels of work to start integrating and becoming more present in yourself and your life:

1. Master the Mind

Learn to distinguish between real and unreal thoughts: Use tools like journaling, mindfulness, or the Thought Log (available for free on this site) to expose unreal ego patterns and shift your focus onto something real.
Question the mental noise and keep checking in with yourself: Ask: Is this thought true? Is it helpful? Is it even mine? Is it coming from a real place or from unreal fear and doubt?
Anchor to now with breath: A simple practice: 5 slow breaths through the nose, focusing only on the inhale and exhale. Repeat until you’re regulated (not just relaxed) and then keep going.

2. Regulate the Nervous System

Build awareness of your stress states: Notice when you’re in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn so that you know when you’re being present or not.
Use somatic tools: Breathwork, cold exposure, movement, or grounding exercises are all good (personally, I think yin yoga is the best practice for nervous system regulation).
Develop daily rituals that signal safety to your body: E.g., slow walks, stretching, silent mornings, etc. Check out the Morning Routine Generator on this site for more ideas: Morning Routine Generator: Pick n Mix Morning Generator for Realness.

3. Live with Purpose

When you’re on a real mission and know you’re vision, presence becomes natural – you’re not floating around wondering what matters. You’re actively engaged in life, riding the reality waves that come you’re way, and moving towards your vision.
Make sure that when you create a vision that it inspires you. It doesn’t have to be perfect—it just has to be real.
Ask yourself: What’s the realest action I can take today that aligns with who I want to become?

Three Practices to Start Today

Let’s make it practical – here are three presence-building habits to integrate from today onwards (if you so desire):

1. Daily Presence Check-In (3 minutes) Set a reminder on your phone, stop what you’re doing, close your eyes. Breathe deeply and ask yourself:

Where am I?
What am I feeling?
Am I ‘here’ now or lost in unreal thoughts?

2. Presence in Conversations Next time someone speaks to you, really listen. Like, really. No interruptions. No fixing. No thinking of what to say next. Just receive them.

Presence is the most powerful gift you can give because it’s REAL.

3. Digital Fasting Choose a daily window (e.g., first hour of the morning or last hour of the evening) to go completely offline. No screens. No stimulation. Just you and life.

These three things are all simple but totally effective – especially over time as the results keep compounding on themselves.

Presence is the key to riding the reality waves and finding wholeness.

Final Thoughts: The Return to Realness

You weren’t born distracted; you weren’t born fragmented – you came into this world fully present, alive, whole, and real.

You can start to return to this state of presence any time you CHOOSE.

Presence isn’t about becoming something new – it’s about remembering who you are underneath all the noise and unlearning the conditioning that keeps you from this.

You don’t need another hack or hustle; you don’t need to do another course or watch another thousand videos about enlightenment. All you need to do is to be here. Now.

That’s where your power lives because it’s where you’ll find your realness.

It’s also where your purpose lives and were you’ll feel most alive.

Stay real out there,

If you’re interested in coaching and you want to develop more presence and purpose in your life, book a free call with me and get started.

The Chase Dynamic: Addicted to Emotional Unavailability

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Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships

Kill the chase dynamic by replacing them with your own purpose or with somebody who can do the work.

Why People Get Addicted to The Push-Pull Game and Chasing Instead of Replacing

If you’ve ever found yourself entranced by some seemingly ‘perfect’ creature (really, just another human being) who constantly keeps you on your toes and leaves you in a chronic state of uncertainty about where you stand, then this article is for you:

This is something that most of us experience at some stage in our lives – getting sucked into relationships where the emotional highs and lows seem to fuel an addictive rush. We think that all of the excitement, questions, and drama that these emotional rollercoasters bring with them must ‘mean’ something incredible and romantic is taking place but, actually, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here’s something to make a note of from the get-go:

The ‘chase’ dynamic is not love – it’s a game that unfolds when one ego meets another and calls it ‘love’ (or something similar).

Far from being the raw and real, grounded connection we long for, the ‘chase’ is actually just rooted in an unhealthy dance between egos:

Real love doesn’t hurt (despite what they tell you), but this push-pull cycle sure does, especially when it’s built on emotional unavailability and lingering doubts, questions, and uncertainty (because real love is actually the surest and most stable thing in the world – not that it’s always ‘good’ and often means riding through some ‘bad’ times…not because of games and ego but because of life just being life).

The problem, of course, is that the chase can feel intoxicating and more like a movie than the mundane world we live in tends to be on a daily basis – which is why so many of us get addicted to it:

It’s an emotional rollercoaster with moments of bliss that make you feel alive but the inevitable drop leaves you questioning your worth and the very nature of relationships as a whole.

You may ask yourself, “Why, if this dynamic is so painful, do we keep returning to it? How is it even possible to get addicted to uncertainty and chaos in the first place?“

The answer lies in our deep-seated emotions and conditioning, often stemming from unresolved feelings of shame, fear, and unhealed past wounds.

In this article, we’ll break down why you might be attracted to emotional unavailability, the unhealthy patterns at play in the chase, and how to break free from this cycle to invite real love into your life.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

The chase dynamic is what happens when we confuse ego for love.

The Myth of “Love Hurts”

One of the most pervasive myths in modern dating is that “love hurts” – it’s a narrative we’ve been sold in movies, songs, and even through personal experiences that make us believe that pain and passion go hand in hand.

The truth, however is far simpler:

Real love doesn’t hurt at all (what does hurt is infatuation and it’s inevitable aftermath).

Love – true, unconditional love – is grounded in safety, trust, and emotional security; it doesn’t leave you on edge, wondering when the next emotional whirlwind will hit – instead, it nurtures, supports, and allows both partners to grow in their own way without constant fear or uncertainty of what might happen next (in the context of the relationship).

So, why does it hurt then?

The pain isn’t love itself but the result of what happens when we confuse love with the chase dynamic – a toxic push-pull that happens when two egos collide and infatuation brought into the mix:

When our egos get involved, we get attached to the thrill of the chase, the excitement of trying to win someone’s affection, or the fear of losing control. These dynamics are driven by insecurity, often stemming from deeper emotional issues like shame or abandonment fears.

The more emotionally unavailable the person is, the more we’re drawn to them because the ego has a scarcity mindset and believes that having things that seem to be ‘scarce’ somehow make us more valuable (a way of compensating for our shame and outsourcing our self-worth to outcomes).

Falling under the spell of the ego like this, we start to crave the validation that whoever (or whatever, for that matter) we’re chasing withholds, and before we know it, we’ve become emotionally hooked on the chase itself.

The problem here is that this cycle of uncertainty and unpredictability is not a sign of love – it’s a sign of emotional manipulation, miscommunication, and avoidance of real intimacy.

When it comes to the real deal, you don’t need to ‘chase’ it because what’s real is always real and will just ‘be’ in your life (if you’re real enough to receive it).

The Push-Pull: Ego Meets Ego

The chase dynamic begins when two egos interact – not two real human beings connecting on a deep, authentic level. When egos meet, they create tension n order to uphold the illusions that they’re founded upon – this means that there’s a desire to control, a need to feel validated, and an underlying fear of vulnerability.

Here’s the thing, though: egos are fragile because they’re totally unreal and so they’re built on the need for approval and external validation.

This is where the push-pull of the chase dynamic comes into play:

One person pulls away, creating emotional distance, while the other chases, trying to bridge the gap (normally after having had at least a taste of closeness).

The emotional unavailability makes the chase feel thrilling, but – in reality – it’s a game of power and control…one where the winner is rarely the person who’s looking for the genuine emotional connection of realness.

At its core, the chase dynamic is driven by two people’s fear of true intimacy:

Both participants are trapped in the story of wanting validation and attention without the vulnerability that comes with real connection. The chase becomes a way to avoid confronting deeper fears of rejection or inadequacy and so the relationship becomes about winning affection, not about sharing a meaningful bond.

The Cycle: Why You Keep Chasing Emotional Unavailability

Why do we continue to chase emotionally unavailable people?

It’s easy to think that we’re doing it because we’re “in love” but it often has less to do with love and more to do with unresolved issues from our past that cause us to become infatuated as a kind of distraction from this unresolved ‘stuff’.

The chase becomes a distraction, a way to feel important, wanted, and validated, even if it’s temporary (because this temporary feeling gives a release from the tension of being unreal with oneself).

At a deeper level, people who are emotionally unavailable often trigger something within us – usually some form of unmet need, fear, or insecurity:

This could be rooted in childhood, where you may not have received the emotional validation or consistency you needed – for example, maybe you were neglected or learned to suppress your emotions and so, as an adult, you’re unconsciously seeking out relationships that mirror this early dynamic, hoping to prove to yourself that you can fix what was broken. The only problem is, you can’t ‘fix’ what isn’t real or emotionally available to begin with.

Furthermore, there’s an addictive element to this dynamic:

The highs and lows – the moments of warmth followed by emotional withdrawal – become a kind of emotional rollercoaster and so your brain releases dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical, during the brief moments of connection which then drops when the person withdraws, creating an intense craving for the next hit.

This cycle is often mistaken for genuine love but it’s actually an emotional addiction.

The Chase Dynamic: More Than Just a Game—It’s an Addiction

It might sound dramatic to say that the chase dynamic is addictive, but it’s actually supported by science:

The highs and lows of emotionally unavailable relationships don’t just feel exhilarating – they trigger a very real, biochemical response in your brain that keeps you literally CRAVING more and losing control of your mastery over yourself (in most cases).

When you experience moments of connection in a chase dynamic, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that’s associated with pleasure and reward:

This “feel-good” chemical is responsible for creating that euphoric rush when someone shows you attention or affection, and it’s why you may feel an instant high when the emotionally distant person finally lets their guard down and lives up to the image that probably got you ‘hooked ‘in the first place.

You’re literally getting a hit of dopamine from this person, which your brain remembers and craves…Unfortunately, this means that the moment they pull away, that dopamine high crashes.

Instead of walking away, your brain keeps craving that next high and you fall into the trap of thinking things like: “If I can just get them to care about me again, I’ll feel better” (which just sends you on a wild goose chase and back into the push-pull dynamic of the chase dynamic).

This cycle of emotional withdrawal and intermittent rewards is very similar to how addictive behaviours work. The unpredictability of when you’ll get the next ‘hit’ keeps you hooked – chasing the next bit of affection like a literal drug.

Cortisol, the stress hormone, also plays a role here:

When someone withholds affection or creates emotional distance, it triggers feelings of anxiety and insecurity. This stress response can make the moments of affection or validation feel even more rewarding because your brain associates relief from that stress with the rewarding rush of dopamine.

Getting caught up in these endless cycles of tension and release is what causes people to waste years of their lives in these addicted dynamics.

In short, the chase dynamic in relationships is not just about emotional games (though that’s definitely part of it) – it’s an actual chemical rollercoaster. Your brain gets addicted to the highs of attention and the low, often painful withdrawal, which creates a toxic cycle that keeps you coming back for more, even when it’s unhealthy.

(If you’ve ever been ‘stuck’ in a relationship with somebody you ‘love’ but know is totally incompatible with you then this is why).

Understanding this biochemical process is key to breaking free from the addiction:

Once you realise that you’re not in control of your emotions in these situations – that your brain is literally addicted to the chase – you can start to take steps to regulate your nervous system and behaviour, resist the pull of the cycle, and move towards healthier, more balanced relationships that are actually REAL.

You may feel a sense of validation when you’re able to ‘win’ the affection of someone emotionally distant, but the reality is that you’re investing in a fantasy that gives you an ego boost (usually a ‘saviour complex’, in this case).

You’re not connecting with the person; you’re connecting with the idea of what they could be if they just showed up emotionally and this idea is usually just a projection of what you need to see – not what’s actually there – because of your own emotional ‘stuff’.

Red Flags: How To Spot the Chase Dynamic

Recognising the chase dynamic is the first step in breaking free from it.

Here are some red flags that show up as symptoms (though the core problem is your own shame and how it keeps you thinking you deserve this kind of relationship):

Emotional Unavailability: The person constantly pulls away, disappears for days, or gives you just enough attention to keep you interested but never enough to make you feel secure. They rarely open up or show vulnerability (though they often expect you to) and the relationship feels more like a game – or even babysitting – than a partnership.
Love Bombing: Initially, they may overwhelm you with affection, attention, and promises of a future together (future faking). This is often a tactic used to reel you in and get you hooked – making you feel special and desired before they withdraw, leaving you chasing after the affection you once had.
Gaslighting: When you try to talk about your needs or express concerns, they deflect, deny, or make you feel like you’re overreacting. They make you question your reality, leaving you unsure of where you stand. This just puts you in a position of weakness where you feel that you need to keep chasing to keep the ‘love’ going (when real love just goes anyway).
The Chase Itself: There’s a constant push-pull in the relationship and you feel like you’re always trying to ‘win’ their affection. When you finally get close, they retreat again. This creates an addictive cycle where you’re always trying to gain their approval but you never really feel secure or safe in the relationship (because it’s about ego, not love).
Avoiding Real Intimacy: They avoid deep conversations and when you try to talk about emotions or the future, they change the subject or make light of the conversation. They may even make fun of your desire for a real connection, framing it as “too needy” or “too much too soon” (not because you’re doing anything wrong but talking in a real way will threaten the mask/ego they’re locked behind).

Real Love is Stable: Breaking the Chase Cycle

Here’s the truth: real love doesn’t involve drama – it’s steady, secure, and based on mutual respect and emotional availability.

Here are some practical tips for taking real action if you find yourself stuck in the chase dynamic we’ve explored in this article:

Acknowledge Your Patterns: The first step is to become aware of your own tendency to chase and what’s going on in your relationship with yourself that makes you think you need to tolerate this in relationships with others.

Reflect on your past relationships and identify if this push-pull dynamic has been a recurring theme – understanding your own patterns will empower you to make healthier choices moving forward.
Heal Your Inner Wounds: Often, the chase dynamic is rooted in unresolved emotional issues, such as fear of abandonment or feelings of inadequacy and shame. Take the time to heal these wounds by working on unconditional self-acceptance, working with a coach that specialises in these things (book a free call with me here if you’re interested in coaching), or journaling about your past experiences and letting go of anything unreal you’re holding onto.
Set Boundaries: Learn to recognise when someone is emotionally unavailable and set clear boundaries. Don’t allow yourself to be dragged into a cycle of uncertainty and remember that you deserve a relationship built on stability, trust, and emotional availability.
Focus on Healthy Communication: Cultivate relationships where open and honest communication is a priority by learning to express your needs and desires clearly and directly. Give in a real way and expect the same from your partner.
Don’t Chase Validation: Stop looking for external validation through the chase dynamic.

Instead, work on building your own self-worth and confidence because when you feel whole on your own, you won’t feel the need to chase someone who is emotionally distant.
Trust in Stability: Real love thrives on stability – don’t settle for chaos or emotional drama. Trust that a secure, balanced relationship will feel calm and grounded, rather than like a constant emotional rollercoaster. Anything else is unreal in some way (this doesn’t mean things will always be ‘perfect’, though).

The chase dynamic ends when you dissolve shame and know your own value.

Conclusion: Don’t Chase ‘Em, Replace ‘Em

The chase dynamic in modern relationships is a trap many fall into – especially when we mistake emotional turbulence for genuine love.

Real love is not about chasing someone who is emotionally unavailable – it’s about finding someone who is willing to meet you at the same level of emotional availability, openness, and vulnerability.

If you’re with somebody that can’t give you these ‘basics’ then stop chasing them and replace them: even with your own purpose, somebody who’s done the work and can start being real with you, or both.

Stay real out there,

If you want to work on growing real and you’re interested in coaching then book a free call with me to start taking real action.

Overcoming Distraction: How to Stop Using Escapism to Avoid the Void

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Men/Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships

The Wages of Distraction is an Unreal Life

In a world overflowing with entertainment, stimulation, and endless options for distraction, it’s never been easier to lose yourself in empty and meaningless activities that have nothing to do with your real purpose (and not the ‘good’ kind of “losing yourself” where you eventually find yourself):

One moment you’re checking your phone, the next you’re deep down the YouTube rabbit hole or bingeing a Netflix series for the three-thousandth consecutive evening.

You know it feels ‘wrong’ at some level because you know that you’re really only doing it to escape from your life or because you’re not quite sure what to do with it – either way, you attempt to justify it to yourself by saying that you “deserve a break”, that it’s “harmless”, or that “everyone’s doing it” (so it must be the ‘right’ thing to do – given the world is in such a great state and all).

Deep down, though, a quiet voice nags at you from down there in the Shadow Territory:

“Is this really the life I want?“, “Is this the REAL me?“, “Is my life really supposed to be like this?“.

What you don’t want to accept in those moments of endless doom scrolling and bingeing is that this voice is real and it’s asking the right questions.

It’s trying to wake you up and call you back home because the truth is that distraction isn’t just about relaxing or having a break.

It’s about wasting your life.

Distraction and escapism lead to lives of quiet desperation.

The Void Behind the Distraction

Every man carries the Void within him at some point in life – that sense of hollowness, of something missing – an itch that can’t be scratched or a restless feeling that something indescribable needs shaking up in a big way.

We often try to patch the void up with dopamine hits in an attempt to overcome it:

Social media, porn, video games, processed food, alcohol, drugs, mindless scrolling, gossip, even overworking or anything else you can think of.

(Literally anything can be used as a substitute for the truth (the only thing that can really fill the Void) – see my book which talks about this in detail: Trust: A Manual for Becoming The Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace).

Despite our best effort to fill the void with these things, our efforts prove to be fruitless and the void lingers in our lives like a dark cloud. It doesn’t even shrink. It just keeps growing.

And the reason is simple:

Distractions offer a release from being unreal with ourselves, not the relief of our own REALNESS.

In other words, they give us a momentary escape from the tension we feel when we’re living a life disconnected from the truth about ourselves, the world, and reality but they do nothing to resolve the cause of that tension – a detachment from realness.

And why are we detached from our realness in the first place?

It’s always because of shame.

Shame makes us hide behind the mask of the Ego. It makes us pretend. It convinces us that who we really are isn’t ‘enough’ and so we start constructing a false self in order to to ‘survive’ in the world without ever really feeling connected to it.

This may protect us in the short-term but the mask can’t feel real love, real joy, real meaning and so – instead – we chase substitutes in the form of distractions.

We do this so we don’t have to feel the grief of what we’ve lost: our REALNESS.

Addiction by Another Name

In my opinion, distraction is soft addiction.

It’s insidious because it doesn’t always look dangerous but over time distraction can eat away at our lives until we’re totally off course and have become detached from our own flow and potential:

Watching TV, scrolling Instagram, or even endlessly researching self-help tips doesn’t feel bad but what it costs you when you add up all those hours spent on such activities is enormous: your presence, your power, and your potential.

We simply don’t realise how much these small, daily habits keep us locked in stasis:

They might numb us from the friction we feel – the discomfort of living out of alignment with truth but even this is a small irony because we need that friction because it shows us where the work is to be done and where there’s room to grow.

It’s a compass pointing us back home but if we’re too busy distracting ourselves to look at it then we’ll just get more-and-more lost – only to find ourselves looking back at our lives one day and wondering where it all went wrong (there wasn’t a singular event – it was a death by a thousand cuts caused by years of distraction and escape instead of facing reality head-on and building with it).

The World Wants You Distracted

Let’s be honest: we live in a culture that profits off your pain, disconnection, and shame. It keeps you pacified and passive so that you’ll stay in your emotions, never really solve any of your problems, but keep endlessly scrolling and clicking on things to give you that temporary release.

Free entertainment isn’t really free. Free porn isn’t free. Free social media isn’t free.

As they old saying goes: “If the product is free, then YOU’RE the product”.

‘Free’ distraction always costs you something: your vitality and your purpose.

And the longer you choose escapism over embodiment, the harder it becomes to find your way back.

But the way back is always there because what’s real is always real.

The Real Choice: Become the Void

When you’re feeling the void, you’ve got two basic choices:

Distract yourself from it and stay stuck.
Become it and transform your life.

What does it mean to become the void?

It means you stop running and sit with the discomfort so that you can face what’s underneath and start to reconnect to your own raw humanity.

It means letting go of the mask and, in doing so, reconnecting to the natural drive toward wholeness that’s always unfolding as you unconscious mind tries to make itself conscious and connects you to life as a whole.

This isn’t a one-time moment. It’s a lifestyle that involves putting yourself in the process of life as a whole and building flow (rather than just distracting yourself with tiny fragments).

Becoming the void means trusting that your realness is enough, that your emotions are not your enemy (just e-motion, energy in motion), and that purpose is found not in escaping tension, but in walking through it and growing a little more real day-after-day.

Your Distractions Are a Mirror

A lot of the time, the things you reach for in times of stress or boredom are showing you what you’re avoiding:

That compulsion to pick up your phone when you’re alone? That’s a clue. That third coffee you didn’t need? Clue. That endless string of YouTube videos you’ve watched this week? Clue.

Ask yourself: What am I avoiding right now?

And more importantly: What would I be doing if I was living from my realness?

The gap between those two answers is the work.

(If you’re interested in coaching then, book a free call with me if you want to start resolving this tension within yourself).

How to Break Free from the Grip of Distraction

If you want to stop using distractions to avoid your pain, you’ll need to rewire how you relate to discomfort, identity, and purpose by learning to better manage your thoughts, regulate your nervous system, and create a sense of purpose in your life.

Here are three powerful strategies to help you get started:

1. Master Your Mind: Learn to Distinguish Real from Unreal Thoughts

Believe it or not, not every thought in your head belongs to you:

Many of them come from the conditioned self – the ego trying to protect you from feeling exposed as your unconditional self (realness). The more you believe these thoughts, the more power they have over you because they affect the way that you feel and act (which leads to whatever results you get).

Use tools like the Thought Log (a tool I use with coaching clients) to separate the lies from the truth. You can also just write down some of your thoughts throughout the day, label them as ‘real’ or ‘unreal’ and practice focusing only on the ones aligned with your purpose.

You’ll be shocked at how much mental clutter dissolves simply by getting your mind right.

2. Regulate Your Nervous System: Get Comfortable with Discomfort

If your body is always tense, you’ll always be looking for a quick release and distractions (and addictions) offer the fastest route to that.

Training your nervous system to feel safe in discomfort by engaging in activities like breathwork, cold exposure, yoga, and meditation can help you to stay regulated so that you’re way less likely to suffer the negative effects of carrying physical tension.

Take daily pauses. Breathe deeply. Practise slowing down. The calmer your nervous system becomes, the less you’ll crave artificial stimulation and the easier it is to avoid distractions.

3. Cultivate Purpose: Find the Thing Worth Suffering For

When your life has purpose, you don’t need distractions – you’re too busy living fully and you also know what you want and so it’s easier to stay disciplined.

Start by asking yourself: What kind of man do I want to be? What kind of impact do I want to have?

Then reverse-engineer your daily habits to align with that vision and create a routine for yourself that supports your growth from one day to the next.

Purpose isn’t found in your head – it’s found through action:

Serve others. Build something real. Move your body. Speak truthfully. Get uncomfortable.

Rinse and repeat.

The Voice of Distraction vs. The Voice of Truth

You’ve got two voices inside you:

One whispers, “Just one more episode. One more scroll. One more hit”.
The other says, “This isn’t who you are. I’m more real than this”.

The first is a Gremlin – a parasite feeding off your stagnation and keeping you where you don’t wanna be (by feeding on your unexpressed potential every time you choose distraction over opportunity).

The second is your Real Voice and your job is to listen for it and act on it.

Your real voice won’t shout or beg – it’s calm, clear, and true.

The more you obey it, the stronger it becomes.

Keep asking yourself: “Who am I becoming with this behaviour?” – the answer to this will show you if it’s real or not.

Distraction can be overcome by removing the unreal and focusing on the real.

Final Thoughts: Becoming a Man Who Doesn’t Need to Escape

You weren’t born to live a life of avoidance or escapism.

Nor were you born to be tame, compliant, or endlessly entertained and pacified.

You were born to live with courage and purpose.

Escapism is just a habit that can be unlearned and on the other side of it lies a life that’s actually worth living…your REAL life.

Don’t settle for a life that gives you temporary relief from being fake; create a life that gives you lasting freedom by being real.

The void isn’t your enemy. It’s your invitation.

Stay real out there,

If you’re struggling with distraction, interested in coaching, and want to shift back into your real life, then book a free call with me to get moving again.

How To Spot Control Freaks (Before They Pull You Into Their Drama)

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Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships

Control Freakery is What Happens When a Shame-Driven Person Makes Somebody Else Believe that They’re In Control of Themselves

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re being slowly suffocated in a kind of emotional clingfilm? Everything looks shiny on the surface, but underneath, there’s a strange asphyxiation setting in.

Welcome to the world of the control freak.

They might come bearing flowers, compliments, and passionate attention – quoting Rumi and talking about cosmic connections – but, soon enough, the mask slips, the drama begins, and before you know it, you’re second-guessing yourself, apologising for things you didn’t do, and wondering if there’s something ‘wrong’ with you and asking yourself when you lost your spark.

Let’s be real: control freaks are everywhere.

They can be found in romantic relationships, friendships, families, work dynamics, and even spiritual communities. This means that spotting them early is a life skill we all need if we want to protect our peace and keep ourselves in the flow instead of banging our heads up against a brick wall.

What really drives this kind of control freakery? Why are they so invested in orchestrating everything and everyone around them? Why do they have to be ‘right’ about everything all the time? Why can’t they just learn to loosen up and enjoy life?

This article will answer all of these questions and more so you can smell control freakery a mile off and then do something about it (without being a control freak, of course).

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Control freaks need to possess because they can't appreciate

The Psychology Behind Control Freakery and Control Freaks

At the heart of control freakery lies one thing: shame.

Not the healthy kind that reminds you to apologise if you knock over someone’s cappuccino and then disappears – no, this is a deep, toxic and unresolved shame that tells someone they’re fundamentally unworthy, unlovable, and unsafe at the very level of their being.

Control freaks feel this kind of toxic shame to a much higher degree than the average person and the worst thing that they can imagine is having to actually face this shame (which is unfortunate because facing it is what makes it eventually dissolve).

This being the case, they project it onto others – desperately trying to manage their environment and the people in it to avoid triggering the shame lurking in the shadows.

It’s not so much about the people they try to control but about their fragile ego:

To keep the ego intact – which is what is keeping them from facing the shame – they need control, they need power…and they need you to play along.

That’s ultimately what control freakery is all about: making sure the narrative supports their ego so they don’t have to face the shame that hides behind it.

Red Flags: How Control Freaks Hook You In

There a number of common tactics that control freaks use to hook you in and make you easier to control (normally by getting you addicted to their good graces and then withdrawing their attention so that you’ll do their bidding in order to get it back).

Here are some common red flags to look out for:

1. Love Bombing

In the early stages, a control freak can be intoxicating (because you haven’t realised they’re trying to control you yet):

Think candlelit dinners, intense eye contact, grand declarations, and 47 texts before lunchtime – you’re their soulmate. You’ve changed their life. You’re special.

Unfortunately, this isn’t actually love – it’s just control in a glittery dress:

It ‘works’ because love bombing creates emotional dependence fast and you can end up giving them a sense of control before you realise what’s actually going on.

2. Gaslighting

Ever walked away from a conversation feeling like your brain was on backwards?

That’s gaslighting.

It’s when they deny, distort, or reframe reality to make you doubt your memory, perception, or sanity.

Control freaks use gaslighting as a weapon because it keeps you disoriented and easier to manipulate.

Suddenly, you’re the one apologising when they were out of line (because you started to believe their narrative instead of the actual truth).

3. The Chase and Withdraw Cycle

These people often operate like emotional fishermen:

First, they throw the line out with attention, flattery, and desire – then, once you bite, they pull back.

This is commonly known as the “push-pull game”.

This intermittent reinforcement keeps you addicted as you keep hoping for the warm version of them to return, not realising they’re controlling your emotional rhythm in order to get whatever it is that they want from you (which will always be to support their ego and to keep that shame at bay).

4. Control Masquerading As Care

If you bring attention to their control freakery, they’ll say it’s because they “worry about you” or they “just want what’s best” but what they really want is your COMPLIANCE.

“Are you really going to wear that? You look so much better in blue”.

“I don’t think you should hang out with them. They don’t really support you”.

“I’m just looking out for you. You overthink everything”.

It sounds like concern, but it’s really an attempt to dominate your choices and the way that you identity (which, again, will always be an identity that supports the narrative their ego needs to keep its place in their lives).

5. Victimhood Olympics

Control freaks are rarely self-aware – if you call them out, they might collapse into martyr mode:

“Oh, I’m the bad guy again,” or “I can never do anything right“.

By flipping the script like this, they avoid accountability and make you feel like the villain.

All this is is emotional manipulation dressed up as self-pity.

6. Micromanaging and Hypercriticism

Whether it’s your schedule, your tone of voice, or how you stack the dishwasher, control freaks need to have a say about it and what they usually say will be that there’s something ‘wrong’ about the way you’re doing whatever you’re doing.

This is hardly ever about the actual issue and is almost always about their own inner chaos being projected onto you (so they don’t have to face that shame).

In other words, it’s just more projection because by fixing your ‘flaws’ they can avoid facing their own and actually growing real.

7. Silent Treatment and Withholding

This is emotional manipulation 101:

When control freaks don’t get their way, they might go quiet, withdraw affection, or make you work for their attention. This is because they think you’re ‘hooked’ (which you might be) and that you’ll start dancing to their tune again to get another breadcrumb of affection from them.

This passive-aggressive strategy keeps you in emotional limbo, unsure of what you did ‘wrong’ and desperate to fix it.

This desperation is what they feed on because without it their control freakery wouldn’t have any power over you. This is why cultivating an abundance mindset is one of the ways to overcome these kinds of control freaks and to go and find healthier relationships instead (see this article for more about abundance mentality: The Abundance Mindset: Don’t Chase It, Attract it).

Why You Get Pulled In

If you’ve ever found yourself drawn to a control freak, don’t beat yourself up:

Often, it’s because they mirror something familiar from childhood – a parent who made love conditional, or a caregiver who only approved of you when you behaved a certain way.

These dynamics tap into your attachment wounds – the part of you that wants to be chosen, seen, and loved ends up tolerating manipulation because it feels like home.

But that doesn’t mean it’s healthy – it’s just familiar and something that your ego has found itself being built upon.

The Shadow Dance

In Jungian terms, we all have a shadow self – the unconscious parts of us we’d rather not admit to:

Control freaks are locked in the shadow dance: projecting their fear, shame, and inner chaos onto others to avoid facing it in themselves.

The thing is that if you stay in this dance, you’ll just end up losing your own rhythm. Their need for control becomes your daily chaos.

Practical Tips: How To Protect Yourself

1. Don’t Get Hypnotised By Intensity

Intensity is not intimacy – just because someone is expressive and attentive doesn’t mean they’re emotionally safe. Take your time and watch for consistency.

2. Trust Your Gut

If something feels off, it probably is. Your nervous system often knows the truth before your brain does. If you feel drained, confused, or like you’re walking on eggshells, pay attention because this is your body’s way of telling you that the control freak in your life is a threat and not a person you can be safe and real around.

3. Name What You See

Bring the behaviour into the light. “I noticed that when I said no, you gave me the silent treatment which seems disrespectful to me”. If they deflect or attack, that tells you everything you need to know.

4. Set Boundaries Early

Boundaries aren’t walls – they’re doors with locks. If someone resents your boundaries or tries to bypass them, they’re showing you they’re not safe and that they’re own ego is more important than the relationship.

5. Refuse The Guilt Bait

Control freaks love using guilt to manipulate and to make you feel obliged to buy into their game:

Don’t bite. You’re not responsible for someone else’s emotions, expectations, or unhealed wounds (though that doesn’t mean hurt them on purpose – just that facing them is their responsibility).

6. Don’t Try To Fix Them

You can offer compassion but you can’t do their inner work for them. Trying to save or change a control freak often backfires and pulls you deeper into their web. In fact, trying to ‘fix’ or ‘rescue’ people might be one of the reasons that you keep getting locked in this dynamic in the first place.

7. Seek Support

Whether it’s therapy, coaching, or a brutally honest friend, get someone in your corner who can help you stay grounded and see things clearly so you can create a solid strategy for overcoming the unhealthy effects of control freakery.

8. Walk Away If You Need To

Sometimes the healthiest choice is distance. You’re not cruel for walking away from manipulation – you’re just keeping it REAL.

A sacred mantra I like to use when it comes to relationships is “Gimme something real or GFTO”.

A control freak relies on you saying yes to them but no to yourself.

Final Thoughts

Control freaks are not inherently evil. Most are just scared, shame-driven people trying to manage their inner turmoil by managing the world. around them.

But that doesn’t mean you should let them manage you.

Your peace, your power, and your clarity matter – you weren’t born to be someone else’s coping mechanism but to be the REALEST possible version of yourself.

Stay aware. Stay grounded. And always, always choose connection over control – especially when that means choosing it within yourself.

Stay real out there,

If you keep finding yourself in relationships with control freaks then you probably need to work on some of your own ‘stuff’ – if you’re interested in coaching, then book a free call with me to get started.

Loneliness and Men: Why Men Are Struggling to Connect

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Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships/Shadow Life

The Epidemic of Disconnection, Fragmentation, and Purposelessness

We’ve all heard about the irony of the modern world:

There has never been more technology aimed at connecting us and yet men have never felt more alone and disconnected from themselves and each other.

We scroll through feeds, swipe through dating apps, get in endless textual relationships, spend all night on video calls, and send emojis instead of expressing anything real (with actual words).

All of this distraction can even be ‘fun’ sometimes and even feed into our egos but – when the noise dies down and the screen fades to black – many men are left facing a silence they can’t quite explain: the heavy emptiness of the Void and the loneliness that this brings.

This is no longer just a side issue or a ‘cultural talking point’ – it’s a modern epidemic and it’s getting worse and worse.

Let’s dig a little deeper into this issue and what we can start to DO about it.

Loneliness vs. Solitude (Ego vs. Realness)

The first thing that we need to understand to make sense of all this is that there’s an important distinction between loneliness and solitude:

Loneliness is being alone with your ego – the echo chamber of unprocessed shame and the internal critic’s greatest hits on loop. In this sense, loneliness isn’t just the experience of being cut of from others but also being cut off from your self.

Solitude, on the other hand, is a sacred place for real growth: It’s where you reconnect with the part of you that isn’t posturing or pretending and where you can taste your own realness. It’s where the mask slips off and you remember who you really are.

In solitude, you are alone with purpose; in loneliness, you are alone with pain.

Most men spend their lives avoiding solitude because they confuse it with loneliness but, paradoxically, the less solitude you have, the more likely you are to be lonely because you’re never really with yourself.

And if you’re not with yourself, how can you ever truly be with anyone else?

The Hidden Root: Disconnection from Purpose Leads to Male Loneliness

At the heart of male loneliness lies something deeper than unmet social needs: disconnection from one’s real purpose.

A man who doesn’t know his purpose is a man who feels lost – even in a crowd.

Many men today are living on autopilot, ticking boxes handed down by society:

Career, money, fitness, sex, status…but these are all surface-level pursuits (which means you could pursue and even achieve all of them without ever learning about your own realness).

If your life is not aligned with something real, you’ll feel the absence of that realness in every interaction and this will be projected out into the world around you:

You’ll attract people who match your mask, not your soul; you’ll be surrounded, but unknown – and that’s the most painful flavour of loneliness there is.

Purpose is magnetic because when a man reconnects with truth and acts on his purpose, he naturally attracts those with similar values, interests, and mindsets. That’s when a real tribe starts to form – not from effort, but from alignment.

Ego and the Shadow Self: The Great Saboteurs

So why do so many men stay disconnected from purpose?

It’s because it’s buried behind the Ego and hidden in the Shadow:

The ego is the part of us that wants to look good, win approval, and avoid shame at all costs. It builds a persona designed to be liked, admired, and accepted.

On the other hand, the shadow is everything that we have to disown or hide to keep the illusion of the ego in place: the fears, doubts, wounds, and insecurities we’d rather not face but also some of the more ‘positive’ things like our true goals, values, qualities, and emotions (the shadow can be comprised of both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’).

Most men construct their identity to avoid the shadow but the paradox is that your real purpose is often hidden inside the very parts of yourself you’ve rejected. Until you face your fears, your loneliness isn’t going anywhere. Because the people you’re meant to connect with can’t see you – only the mask that you wear in order to keep hiding.

In short, you can’t form real bonds while wearing armour because intimacy requires realness and vulnerability. These things can’t exist with ego and this is the main reason so many people find themselves being lonely: thing think they are the ego and forget that it’s just something that they have and can change any time they like.

Loneliness and the Transactional Mindset

There’s another reason men feel disconnected: we’ve been conditioned to treat relationships as transactions and so we look at things in terms of tit-for-tat instead of realness.

Modern culture is obsessed with ‘value’:

We’re told to optimise everything – including ourselves and so dating advice becomes a marketing strategy and friendships are evaluated based on utility and social capital before the basic human level of connection. Even spirituality is sold like a lifestyle brand and about using God as a kind of vending machine to get whatever you want by pressing the right buttons (read more about this kind of spiritual bullsh*ttery here: SPIRITUAL BULLSH*T & DIVINE NARCISSISM).

The result? We show up looking to get, not to give.

But real connection doesn’t work like that.

Loneliness thrives when we approach others thinking, “What can I get from you?” but real connection happens when we ask things like “How can I give you something real?“.

When you lead with presence instead of performance, people feel it and can relax around you and be real and authentic in return.

This means that the right ones respond to you and the rest fall away – which is good, because they were never your people to begin with.

What you’re left with is your tribe.

Real Connection Requires Realness

Most men say they want deeper relationships but what they actually want is to feel safe being real (because that’s what a ‘deep’ relationship is: one or more people being real together).

You don’t get there by chasing connection. You get there by becoming someone who lives from truth.

That basically means:

Dropping the act.
Being honest about your struggles.
Speaking from the heart, not from the script.
Valuing presence over polish.
Giving and receiving, not just taking.

This often means being the first to go deep, even when it feels risky and being the first to name the thing nobody else wants to name. The first to say, “I feel that too” and shining some light onto those places that people fear because of the darkness (even though they’re completely real and just being avoided because of everybody’s shadow ‘stuff’).

Sure, this can be super uncomfortable but it’s also powerful because realness is magneticL

It also leads the way to others diving in and doing the same.

And that’s when connection happens – not through performance, but through the resonance of realness meeting realness.

The Power of Brotherhood

Loneliness often feels like a personal failure that reflects on us badly in some way (another reason that loneliness is usually time spent alone with our ego instead of our realness).

But it’s not. It’s systemic. The truth is that modern life isolates men because – for whatever reason – we’re not taught how to build brotherhood.

Instead, we’re taught how to compete, how to tough it out, and how to do it all alone (even though nobody is really alone in reality so it’s a flawed strategy to facing life in a real way).

The truth is that men are not meant to live in isolation because we’re tribal creatures:

We’re meant to grow alongside other men who challenge us (“iron sharpens iron”), witness us, and walk with us through the fire.

A real brotherhood doesn’t demand perfection – it demands presence.

If you’re struggling with loneliness, ask yourself:

Where are the men I can be real with?

And if you don’t have that yet, be the one to create something: Start a group. Share your truth first. Reach out. Take the risk.

Because the alternative is spiritual starvation and that’s the loneliest thing in the world.

Practical Steps to Reconnect

Here are some ways to move from loneliness to connection:

1. Reclaim Solitude

Stop avoiding time alone with your ego. Instead, make space for solitude that’s intentional and linked to your purpose, not passive. Go for a walk without your phone. Sit in silence. Journal without a goal. Let the noise settle so you can hear what’s underneath and figure out your next real moves.

2. Audit Your Life for Realness

Where are you being fake to gain approval? Where are you hiding parts of yourself? Get honest about where the mask is still running the show and begin to take it off, bit by bit. This is Shadow Work and will level you up hard because it will help you integrate whatever you’ve been avoiding that is actually essential for you to feel real.

3. Create, Don’t Consume

Instead of numbing loneliness with distractions, channel it into creativity:

Write, build, move, make.

When you give something real, you reconnect with yourself and others feel it.

4. Join or Build a Men’s Circle

This can be life-changing. Spaces where men speak openly and without judgement are rare but they are growing.

Don’t wait to be invited or give up if this is something you know will serve you: If you can’t find one, create one. All it takes is a minimum of two men and a willingness to be honest.

5. Shift from Transactional to Relational

Next time you speak to someone, drop the agenda. Focus on PRESENCE instead and listen deeply. Only speak if it’s real. If connection is your intention instead of acquisition the whole dynamic shifts.

6. Lead with Vulnerability

This is a superpower because the more real you are, the more you magnetise others who are ready to meet you there. Yes, some people will reject it (because of their shadow etc.) But those aren’t your people so whatever – keep going.

7. Reconnect With Your Purpose

Ask yourself: What would I be doing if I wasn’t afraid? What do I feel called to give, not just get? Start small but start acting. Purpose isn’t a grand performance – it’s a quiet returning to truth that will help you grow more real every day.

Loneliness is a consequence of blocking ourselves from our own realness.

Final Thoughts: You Are Not Alone

If you’re a man struggling with loneliness, hear this:

You’re broken, you’re not weak and you’re definitely not the only one.

What’s actually happening is that you’re living in a culture that taught you to hide, to numb yourself with distractions, and to perform instead of acting from purpose.

But that’s not the end of the story:

You are also ashamed of your REALNESS and this is preventing you from acting in the world in a real way that will connect you to your people.

The moment you begin to choose solitude over self-abandonment, realness over ego, and presence over performance is the moment you start to reconnect – not just with others but also with your self.

This is when everything changes because the opposite of loneliness isn’t company. It’s realness.

And that’s what the modern man is truly starving for.

Stay real out there,

I can help you to shift away from loneliness and into your real purpose – book a free call with me to get started.

Emotionally Immature People: Seeking Power Over Connection

Published on

Life Philosophy/Mindset/Psychology/Relationships/Shadow Life

Emotionally immature people play games to keep you under control

On Not Letting Emotionally Immature People Ruin Your Life

Let’s be real from the get-go:

If you’ve ever found yourself feeling like you’re playing emotional Twister with someone – pulled up close one minute and then shoved away the next – then you’ve likely dealing with somebody who fears real intimacy.

There’s nothing ‘wrong’ with this as intimacy can be a pretty fear-inducing thing sometimes (seeing as it asks us to let go of our masks and illusions etc.) and so these ‘Twister Players’ aren’t necessarily ‘bad’ people – they’re often just deeply wounded and, as the old saying goes, hurt people hurt people.

Nevertheless these wounds might be a reason but they’re never an excuse and they can still cause relationships to be twisted into endlessly tangled games of control, confusion, and pain.

At the heart of all this is a simple but brutal truth:

Emotionally immature people don’t want connection as much as they want power and control.

This isn’t because they’re evil masterminds (not always, anyway) but because they’re terrified:

Terrified of vulnerability; terrified of facing their own emotions; and terrified of being truly ‘seen‘.

This article will explore why emotionally immature people tend to chase power and control rather than connection, how the dance between the Ego and the Shadow Self plays into it, and what you can do if you find yourself entangled in one of these painful dynamics and want to set yourself free.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

Emotionally immature people fear intimacy because intimacy involves a lack of control

What Is Emotional Immaturity, Really?

Before we begin, let’s make a point not confuse emotional immaturity with naivety or light-heartedness:

Emotional immaturity isn’t about being playful, young at heart, or being in touch with your ‘inner child‘ -instead, it’s about an inability – or plain unwillingness – to face and process emotions in a healthy, conscious, and REAL way.

Essentially what this means is that emotionally immature people often haven’t developed the internal tools to regulate their own discomfort, communicate with honesty, or take accountability for their actions.

Instead, they try to manage their internal chaos by controlling their external world – most often, the people in it – so that they can keep their Ego (accepted self-image) in place and keep whatever is going for them in reality at bay.

The most common and seductive way emotionally immature people attempt to gain this kind of control over the world is tor try and acquire power.

Let’s explore this a bit more:

Why Power Feels Safer Than Connection

To really connect with another human being is to really be ‘seen’ and to be seen is to be vulnerable.

This is ‘good’ news if we have any degree of mastery over our emotional ‘stuff’ and our own inner world but ‘bad’ news when your emotional world is filled with unprocessed pain, fear, and shame.

For someone who has spent their life avoiding their inner wounds – perhaps due to childhood neglect, trauma, or shame-based conditioning and identification – emotional closeness can feel like standing naked in the middle of a battlefield.

This being the case, people who feel this way end up protecting themselves the only way they know how: by attempting to staying in charge (by any means necessary).

What this all boils down to is a simple principle:

Power lets them stay above you, rather than beside you.

If they’re ‘above’ you, they can’t be abandoned; if they’re ‘above’ you, they don’t have to feel their shame; if they’re ‘above’ you, they can keep pretending they’re safe.

The problem, though, is that “above” – in this context – is an illusion and if you let them drag you into it then you’re whole life becomes unreal.

The Shadow Dance (Ego vs. Shadow)

This is where the Shadow Dance comes in (see my book Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World for much more about the mechanics of the shadow self).

In short, it goes like this:

The Ego – the conscious self we like to present to the world wants to be seen as desirable, in control, lovable, even evolved but the Shadow – the unconscious storehouse of everything we reject or suppress (both ‘good’ and ‘bad’) holds the opposite: everything that’s actually REAL about us (because the ego itself isn’t real – it’s just a filter that we view reality through).

This is important to understand because emotionally immature people often project a highly-curated version of themselves, especially at the beginning of a relationship. This highly-curated version is just an extremely rigid ego-identity that they’ve created in order to hide from all of the emotions that they’ve sent into hiding into the Shadow Territory (often unconsciously based on whatever they went through in the past).

Because they really need you to see them in alignment with this curated self-image (so they can keep hiding from themselves), they put a number of control strategies to overwhelm you and to suck you into the myth they need to build around themselves:

You might’ve experienced some of these things yourself in romantic relationships:

Love bombing where they shower you with affection, intensity, and promises of forever.

Sex Bombing where you get to taste mind-blowing chemistry, fantasy-fuelled passion, and an inexplicable magnetic pull that convinces you this person must be ‘The One’.

Of course, love and amazing sex can both be incredibly real but when it comes to emotionally immature people it’s never about real intimacy.

It’s a performance designed to get you hooked:

They aren’t bonding. They’re baiting.

Once you’re hooked – emotionally invested, vulnerable in pursuit of more affection, attention, or whatever else you got hooked to, and perhaps even trauma-bonded – they flip the script.

Suddenly, they become cold, distant, upset at every little thing, and hard to read – they withdraw affection, start criticising, create confusion.

What’s messed up is that this isn’t random or just a case of a crazy person being crazy.

No, it’s strategic.

Just like a cat playing with a mouse, they enjoy the power of knowing they’ve ‘got’ you because it soothes their insecurity and keeps that shame at bay (though it’s always following them around like a ghost).

Once it reaches this stage, you’ve entered a part of the game where you simply can’t ‘win’ – you care more than they do.

You’re off-balance but they feel strong.

As far as they’re concerned they’ve got you exactly where they want you to be and you can now serve your purpose as being the supply of attention and validation they need to keep that shame and other emotional ‘stuff’ hidden from view.

You might have thought you’d found love but you found a dance between your ego (the thing that made you buy into the illusion) and theirs (the thing that made them act in this way).

Unfortunately, real love requires real self-awareness…and they haven’t got there yet.

(And if you’re in this situation, it might be worth asking yourself if you’re there or not too).

Communication or Obfuscation?

One of the most maddening things about emotionally immature people is their inability to communicate directly:

If you’ve ever tried to have a serious conversation with someone like this, you’ll know it often feels like trying to nail jelly to a wall whilst you go round in circles and lose your wits.

A typical argument or even just discussion will go like this:

They dodge the truth.

They avoid accountability.

They use manipulation and ambiguity to protect themselves from being ‘exposed’ (because that ego is protecting them).

They will pretty much say and do anything to avoid facing their inner reality which is the very thing they’re trying to outrun.

Instead of talking it out, they’ll drag you into all kinds of things you don’t want to be dragged into:

They’ll become passive-aggressive.
They’ll flip the script and make you the problem (even if you literally haven’t done anything).
They’ll ghost, gaslight, or guilt-trip you and anything else that makes you think you’re the problem.
They’ll create drama to distract from the real issue and to deflect any truth that may be coming their way.

Whatever the technique they use, you can be sure that the aim isn’t resolution – it’s self-protection.

Love Bomb, Withdraw, Repeat

Let’s look closer at the classic pattern many emotionally immature people use to get people ‘hooked’ and then get power and control over them:

The Hook

At first, they come on strong – you’ll feel like you’ve met your soulmate because they mirror your values, interests, and aspirations, say all the right things, and want to see you all the time.

They might even talk about future plans very early on (which – if they have no intention of acting on these plans – is called future faking).
The Shift

Suddenly, something feels ‘off’ (to put it lightly):

They pull away and become vague; they stop complimenting you and start criticising literally every little thing that you do. They cancel plans at the last minute and their attention starts to dry up as the love bombing begins to fade (because they know you’re ‘hooked’).

You start to feel anxious and confused, like you’ve done something wrong (even though you probably haven’t – though, of course, you should always be open to looking at yourself).
The Manipulation

You reach out, try to connect, and try reignite a conversation or to talk about what the problem might be:

Maybe they give you some breadcrumbs – just enough to keep you hoping and trying to win them over. Or they might criticise you for being “too much” or “needy”.

You internalise it and try harder to please them but this is totally pointless because it’s a game that you’ve been set up to lose from the get-go.
The Power Trip

At this stage you’re officially ‘hooked’:

You’ve lost your centre and they have emotional power over you (and know it).

Most likely, they’ll never fully return to the version of themselves you first met because this was a carefully created version of themselves based on the cues you gave them about who you are and what you’re looking for in life.

They’ll keep playing with you like a cat toying with a mouse so they’ll give you just enough hope to keep you invested (by occasionally giving you a glimpse of that version you got hooked to in the first place).

All they really want is for you to keep chasing them because it soothes their fear of abandonment and keeps that Ego in place and the shame at bay.

This isn’t love. It’s emotional theatre.

And it’s all designed to keep them from having to face the one person they fear most: themselves.

The Real Reason They Fear Intimacy

Let’s strip this back to the root again:

Shame.

Emotionally immature people often carry deep-rooted unresolved, toxic shame – a belief that they’re fundamentally flawed, bad, or broken at the very core of their being.

This existential kind of shame creates a deeply rooted assumption that if they were truly known or ‘seen’, they’d be rejected.

So they wear a mask and try and get everybody else to act like it’s the real thing by using the kind of controlling behaviour we’ve been talking about.

This means that they only show parts of themselves they think are ‘safe’ to reveal – if they show anything at all.

And the parts they believe are unlovable? Those go into hiding, buried beneath defence mechanisms, manipulations, mind games to keep people chasing them, and a fortress of emotional avoidance.

Ironically, what they fear most – rejection – is what they eventually cause to happen to them with their behaviour.

Usually, they don’t have the maturity to connect the dots and so the cycle just continues over-and-over again until they either hit rock bottom or they lose something irreplaceable and have a wake up call (and even in these cases many emotionally immature people will still keep blaming the world and refuse to look at themselves).

Are Emotionally Immature People Narcissists?

Not necessarily. Narcissism is one possible outcome of emotional immaturity, but not the only one.

Many emotionally immature people aren’t grandiose or attention-seeking – they might be avoidant, passive-aggressive, or people-pleasing and have some narcissistic traits without being a full-blown narcissist.

What they do have in common is this:

They can’t handle emotional honesty. Not with themselves, and definitely not with you.

What You Can Do

Whether this is a parent, a partner, a boss, or a friend – if you’re in the orbit of someone emotionally immature, you need to ground yourself in reality because the bottom line is that they won’t.

Here are some tips:

1. Stop Playing the Game

Recognise the pattern we discussed above (love bomb, withdraw, repeat):

If you feel like you’re always chasing closeness, always confused, always the one trying to fix things then you’re probably in the game.

Step out because the only way to ‘win’ is to stop playing.

2. Strengthen Your Centre

Emotionally immature people thrive on destabilising others because it makes them feel powerful (they want you off-balance so they can feel steady and in control).

Reclaim your power by reconnecting to your realness – your boundaries, your values, your voice.

Start putting yourself first and learn to stay regulated and in control of your nervous system and the way that you interact with the world.

3. Don’t Chase Clarity From Chaos

You won’t get emotional honesty from someone who’s running from themselves because their words will often contradict their actions.

Trust the pattern, not the promises they make or the things that they say to appease you and try to bring you back into the game.

4. Hold Them Accountable Without Expecting Change

You can bring attention to their behaviour but don’t expect them to suddenly become emotionally fluent. The goal isn’t to change them – it’s to stop being manipulated by them.

Sometimes, it’s best not to say anything and to find a way to move on because they can’t take any accountability in many cases and will just flip it back on you somehow.

Again, accept that this is a game that you can’t ‘win’ so don’t play.

5. Work On Your Own Triggers

If this dynamic hooked you, then you probably have some work that you need to do on your own emotional ‘stuff’:

Often, emotionally immature people magnetise others who carry their own unresolved wounds -especially around abandonment, self-worth, or co-dependency.

Healing those parts by working on your own Shadow Dance (between the Ego and the Shadow) will make you immune to the game because you’ll become more REAL.

(And it’s only the unreal ‘parts’ of you causing you to get locked into the game).

Emotionally immature people are often terrified of themselves (even more than the average person)

Final Thoughts

Emotionally immature people don’t seek connection – they seek refuge from themselves and they’ll use you to do it.

The more afraid they are of intimacy, the more likely they are to try and control the relationship rather than participate in it.

Understanding this doesn’t mean you excuse the behaviour but it can help you stop personalising it because – at the end of the day – their emotional avoidance isn’t a reflection of your unworthiness but a reflection of their fear.

The moment you stop trying to decode them, fix them, or get back to the version of them you thought was the real deal – you free yourself.

Stay real out there,

If you’re dealing with any of the issues discussed in this article then book a call with me and I can help you find a way forward.

The Fear of Being Seen: How You Hide Who You Really Are

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Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Psychology

What if the World Could Really ‘See’ You?

Have you ever walked into a room or amidst a group of people and immediately felt the need to put on a different version of yourself?

If so then it might be that you have a fear of being seen.

There are myriad masks that we can wear in these kinds of situation:

Maybe you act a bit cooler, a bit tougher, a bit less emotional, or a bit more successful; maybe you downplay your interests, change how you speak, or mask your uncertainty with bravado and by turning up the volume.

If so, you’re not alone:

Millions of men do this every day – often without even realising it (because it’s an unconscious coping mechanism to deal wit the stress and uncertainty of being in an uncomfortable situation). We shape-shift to fit in, attempt to manage impressions by curating our interactions, and avoid saying what we really think.

Beneath all of this unreality is a common, haunting fear:

What if they really ‘see’ me?

This article will help you to understand what’s going on here and what to do about it.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

The fear of being seen is always about not being who you really are.

The Inner War and The Fear of Being Seen: Judgement, Shame and Projection

The fear of being seen isn’t just about social awkwardness or introversion (though that’s often what people get told and then end up being prescribed anxiety meds or whatever to mask the core issue) – it runs much deeper and to the primal level of our relationship with ourselves.

Even though everybody really wants to be ‘seen’ in their realness, the fear of being seen is always about conditioned shame – the persistent sense that who you really are isn’t good ‘enough’ because of some BS that you picked up somewhere along the line.

When you’re driven by this kind of shame, you start to believe that if people saw the bigger picture about who you are – your doubts, your sensitivities, your past mistakes, your deeper dreams – they’d turn away in disgust and never want to look at you again.

What hold so many people back here is that they don’t even realise that shame is what’s running the show because they’re so used to experiencing themselves and life like this that they just think it’s who they are (in other words, they identified with the symptoms of the shame and assumed that was their real personality).

Instead, of feeling the actual shame and then seeing it for what it is – an illusion – they distance themselves from the actual feeling and start to experience it as judgement.

Not just fear of being judged but the act of judging themselves. Harshly, relentlessly, silently, and endlessly.

This usually shows up as an inner gremlin or voice that is constantly playing a broken record of accusations and negative thoughts that keep them stuck and locked inside themselves.

To make matters worse, this judgement is often projected out into the world around us which just serves to reinforce whatever the judgement of ourselves (caused by the shame) is telling us about ourselves.

In other words, we imagine others are thinking the exact same critical thoughts we have about ourselves:

“They’ll think I’m weak if I show emotion”.
“They’ll think I’m stupid if I speak up”.
“They’ll think I’m arrogant if I own my gifts”.
“They’ll think I’m not good enough unless I act like them (instead of myself)”.

This projection just leads to chronic self-editing:

You never quite say what you mean. You hide behind jokes. You tone things down.

Or maybe you overcompensate by defining yourself by performance alone, power trips, or perfectionism- anything to earn approval without risking exposure of the real you and what you’re all about in truth.

To make matters worse, over time, that becomes the version of you the world sees and starts to think that you actually are (in the worst worst cases, you start to believe this about yourself because you forget that you’re just wearing a mask).

But here’s the (romantic) tragedy…

You Can’t Love or Be Loved If You’re Not Known (Because of the Fear of Being Seen)

When you hide the truth of who you are, the world can only connect with the mask.

And what happens next?

Your friendships feel surface-level, because they are (seeing as the deeper truth about you is being hidden).
Your romantic relationships never quite click, because you’re not really showing up (and so you can’t have the real intimacy that relationships thrive on between two whole people both moving into deeper wholeness).
Your work lacks fire, because you’re not building it on what matters to you (because you’re only focused on what makes you ‘acceptable’ to society and not your own realness).
Your opportunities feel hollow or off-track, because they’re matching the persona, not the person (and so you never seem to get a ‘break’ and think that means you’re broken).

The mask might get rewards here-and-there but not the ones your soul is looking for.

Underneath it all, the shame remains – in fact, it often grows louder, because every success you achieve while hiding reinforces the belief that the real you isn’t ‘good’ enough to earn those things…and so the cycle continues.

But it really doesn’t have to be this way.

The Real Problem Isn’t Fear or Being Seen – It’s Avoidance

Fear is human and is sometimes a good thing because it can save us from physical danger (though we often confuse emotional discomfort for actual danger and this causes all kinds of problems).

Either way, the problem isn’t the fear itself – it’s how we respond to it.

Most men feel fear and try to manage it by staying comfortable, shrinking inside themselves, or by being fake. These things might work in the short term but in the long term it always backfires.

Why?

Because it reinforces the shame.

Every time you avoid being real, you’re sending yourself a message: “The truth of me in my realness is either too much or not enough.”

You’re telling your unconscious mind – the thing that really determines the course of you’re life and what you really intend – that you’re better off hidden.

Doing this isn’t ‘noble’ or ‘humble’ in some way (despite how the Ego might try and sell it to you) – it’s just a clearcut case of self-rejection.

And no amount of external success can soothe the ache that creates and the Void it causes you to spend the rest of your life ‘living’ in.

The Solution: Real Action Dissolves the Fake Self and the Fear of Being Seen

If shame is the glue holding your fake self (ego) together, realness is the solvent that sets you free.

But here’s where it starts to get practical:

Being real isn’t just about talking about your feelings or being ‘vulnerable ‘on social media – it’s deeper, more embodied, and much more powerful.

Being real means aligning your actions with the truth of who you are – even when it’s uncomfortable.

You can’t think your way into wholeness; you have to live your way into it.

Day-after-day.

That’s why the only real antidote to the fear of being seen is ACTION – not forced, performative action but real action—the kind that chips away at the false self and invites the real one to emerge from the shadows over time.

Real Action Looks Like This:

Speaking up when it matters – even if your voice shakes (as the meme goes).
Sharing an idea you truly believe in – even if it’s unpopular or misunderstood by most people.
Following a calling that excites and terrifies you – even if no one else gets it (because you know that it’s between you and God).
Letting a friend or partner see your flaws – even when you want to run (because you know it will take you deeper into intimacy in the context of the relationship).
Setting a boundary – even if you’re scared to upset someone (because you know it’s real and you have self-respect that goes beyond the fear of emotional discomfort).
Choosing integrity over image – even if it costs you approval or other things that really don’t matter in the scheme of things as a whole.

These are the moments where the false self of ego starts to show cracks and the realness hidden underneath can start to breathe again.

The more you act in alignment with the truth of who you are (your realness), the more that truth becomes the only ‘thing’ that you need to identify with – not just in your private life but something the world begins to see, feel, and respond to wherever you are.

What’s real is always real and this applies to you too.

Why This Changes Everything and Helps You Overcome the Fear of Being Seen

Once you stop hiding from yourself, something strange and beautiful happens:

You become magnetic.

Not in a superficial “look at me” sense but in a deeply human sense.

People are drawn to realness like oxygen – and, especially in a world full of facades, authenticity stands out.

It also opens the door to the kind of opportunities that only the real you could attract:

Conscious relationships.
Creative collaborations.
Work that lights you up.
Growth that feels rooted in realness instead of forced.

This is the ‘stuff’ that nourishes the soul – not just the ego.

But none of it’s possible if you’re still wearing the mask.

Maybe it’s time to ask yourself:

Am I ready to be ‘seen’?

How to Start: 5 Practical Steps to Break Free of the Fear of Being Seen

If all of this is resonating, then here are some grounded steps you can take to start peeling back the layers and living in a more REAL way:

1. Name the Shame

Start with radical acceptance of yourself:

Where in your life are you hiding? What parts of yourself do you feel aren’t ‘acceptable?

Write it down. Get to know your inner critic. Once it’s named, it starts losing power (especially if you stop feeding it).

2. Notice the Mask

Begin to track when you’re slipping into performance mode instead of presence:

Is it at work? On dates? With your mates?

Ask: “What am I trying to prove right now?” or “What am I afraid they’ll see?”

Awareness is everything and the first step in transforming your life (followed by Acceptance and Action – book a call with me to learn more).

3. Do One Real Thing Daily

Commit to one small, real action every day – something that breaks the pattern:

Maybe it’s saying what you really think. Or wearing what you actually like. Or asking for what you need.

Momentum and strength builds with reps so keep doing one real thing daily and watch your life get more real.

4. Find Safe Mirrors

Surround yourself with people who reflect back realness, not an image (because of their own shame). This might mean upgrading your circle. Most likely, it might mean going first – showing up as you are and inviting others to do the same.

5. Build from the Inside-Out

Allow your purpose, business, career or anything else to be built on the truth – not the mask.

Stop chasing what looks impressive and start building what feels real.

That’s how your outer world begins to match your inner world and you can finally be ‘seen’ without being afraid of what it looks like.

Final Thoughts: You Were Never Meant to Hide or to Suffer the Fear of Being Seen

The fear of being seen is ancient, primal, and totally understandable in an unreal world.

But it’s not the truth.

You weren’t born with shame – you were taught it. And now you get to unlearn it based on the CHOICES that you make – not all at once, but moment by moment, choice by choice, truth by truth.

There’s a version of you that doesn’t need to impress or perform, that doesn’t need to explain or prove, and that doesn’t need to hustle for validation.

That version is already here.

Waiting.

Stay real out there,

I can help you to overcome the fear of being seen and to step into your real life – book a call with me to start moving forward right away.

The Illusion of Success: Why Chasing Achievement Leaves Men Feeling Empty

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Psychology/Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Shadow Life

The Illusion of Success and What to Do About It

In a success-obsessed world it can be easy to define ourselves by our goals but, unfortunately, many men find themselves chasing goals that ultimately leave them feeling hollow and unreal – this suggests that something has gone ‘wrong’ somewhere.

This article explores the deeper psychological and spiritual reasons why ‘success’ in the form of ‘achievement’ alone rarely scratches that inner itch that calls us towards fulfilment:

We’ll look at how shame warps our desires, how society’s version of ‘success’ often disconnects us from our truth, and why realness – not reputation – is the only foundation that truly holds and gives us what we’re truly looking for.

You’ll discover how compensatory behaviours rooted in unresolved shadow aspects keep you stuck in cycles of overwork and under-fulfilment and – most importantly – you’ll learn how to reclaim your power by reconnecting with the truth of who you are and what really matters (your REALNESS).

With practical steps and real insight, this is a wake-up call for any man who’s tired of wearing masks and ready to live from purpose, not performance.

Let’s dig a little deeper:

the illusion of success comes from following the world and not your realness.

The Role of Shame: Twisted Desires, Twisted Direction

Before we even talk about success, we need to talk about shame because shame is the invisible hand that’s constantly steering the ship of our lives off course:

Most men don’t realise it, but shame distorts your desires:

It convinces you that you’re not ‘enough’ as you are in your realness and that success is the only way to earn your worth (because you fall into the trap of thinking that your realness is something you need to ‘achieve’ instead of simply ‘receive’).

It quietly implants the belief that if you can just achieve more, prove yourself more, get more validation, then maybe – just maybe – you’ll finally be able to say you’re okay.

This kind of striving is rooted in a lie because shame doesn’t just affect how you feel – it affects what you want. It makes you chase things that don’t actually fulfil you because you’re not chasing from a place of realness, you’re chasing from a place of ego and compensation.

This is why so many men climb the ladder of ‘success‘ only to eventually find it’s been leaning against the wrong wall.

When you don’t heal your shame by returning to the truth about yourself, then your ambitions are built on compensation, not conviction – you want power to make up for feeling powerless; you want validation to patch over self-doubt. You want attention because deep down, you don’t believe you’re worthy of love without it, and – with this emotional ‘stuff’ driving you – it all just feels so hollow, even if you ‘win’.

Before we talk about the illusion of success, then, we have to realise that most of us are under an illusion about our desires in the first place – we’re chasing things not because we actually want them but because we need them to keep the ego that we created in reaction to our own shame in place.

In other words, until you face your shame, you’re not choosing your path – you’re reacting to pain.

The Cult of Success

Success is one of the few socially acceptable obsessions for a man (even though obsession is often frowned upon as a weakness):

From childhood, we’re programmed to chase it – grades, trophies, money, girls, admiration, and status. We’re taught that to be a “real man” is to be a successful man.

And so begins the hamster wheel and all of the endless ‘chasing’ that comes with it.

What’s ironic however is that most men have no idea what success actually means to them because they’ve never really sat down to think about it or talked to anybody about figuring it out.

Instead, they’re chasing a vague image that was handed down by their parents, their peers, or society at large – a collage of cultural noise—status, wealth, muscles, women, reputation.

This collage might shiny on the surface but, for many, the more they achieve, the emptier they feel (because they’re chasing something that only seems meaningful on the surface and not that is actually aligned with their real values and deepest intentions).

When you think about it, the lesson here is pretty clear:

Success isn’t real unless it’s rooted in REALNESS.

Realness Over Reputation

Realness is your relationship with the truth and you’re ability to keep 1) uncovering the truth, and then, 2) living and breathing the truth.

It’s not about society’s truth. It’s not about your parents’ truth. It’s about THE truth and your ability to understand it from the point of view of your real relationship with you actually are.

This means that your real ‘success’ comes from the core of who you are underneath all the masks which is why shifting into a real gear can be so uncomfortable:

Most men have no idea who they are without those masks.

Part of the problem is that we’re constantly taught to measure ourselves by external results: for example, money, career, relationships, or how many people envy us on Instagram.

But those things aren’t real – they’re just symbols imbued with emotional and cultural meaning.

They only mean something REAL if they’re expressions of the truth – not substitutes for it.

When a man is disconnected from his truth, everything he builds is shaky and his life is on a tenuous and unreal foundation:

He might build a successful business, an impressive physique, or a polished reputation but if it’s not grounded in authenticity, it can never satisfy him.

At the end of the day, you can’t outsource your own wholeness and trying to do so just leads to a deeper and deeper sense of fragmentation.

The Shadow Dance: Compensating with Success

Enter the Shadow Dance – the ongoing tug-of-war between your Ego and your Shadow Self:

The Ego wants to be seen as powerful, smart, successful, capable but…
The Shadow contains everything you’ve rejected, buried, or refused to face – your shame, fear, insecurities, and the values, goals, and desires you’ve labelled as ‘unacceptable’ (even though they may bring you great joy or be totally healthy).

What most men don’t realise is a lot of the ‘success’ they chase is actually an unconscious attempt to compensate for what’s hidden in the shadow without giving up the ego they’ve become dependent on (to feel a false sense of ‘safety’ in the world).

Feel powerless? Chase dominance. Feel unloved? Chase validation. Feel unworthy? Chase achievements.

Absolutely nothing you gain externally will ever fix an internal fracture because what you’re really looking for isn’t success – it’s integration.

Wholeness.

And the bottom-line is that you can’t access that while parts of yourself are still living in the dark – no matter what you chase or try to find ‘success’ in.

Good Things Become Bad Gods

It’s not that achievement, money, women, or ambition are ‘bad’. Far from it. They’re good things. Very good things, in many cases.

The problem is that they become bad when you treat them as the only thing that matters (and become outcome-dependent which means investing your self-worth in these things because your shame has detached you from it).

Many men lose themselves not because they were chasing the wrong thing – but because they turned one good thing into everything:

They sacrifice their health, relationships, peace of mind, and self-respect on the altar of ‘success’ and then they wonder why they still feel empty and filled with shame when they reach the top.

When ‘success’ becomes a mask rather than an expression of something real, it leads to burnout, anxiety, and numbness.

You’re working hard, but you’re not working true, and so you take yourself out of life and put keep yourself locked in your head instead.

You Can’t Fill the Void with Trophies

There’s a Void inside every man who’s disconnected himself from the truth about himself, the world, and reality. It’s not depression, exactly, but something much deeper – the existential ache of being UNREAL.

And here’s the truth most men don’t want to hear: you can’t fill the Void with trophies because ‘success’ never has, never will, and simply doesn’t fill the Void.

What does fill it is a sense of purpose. Real purpose that reconnects you to yourself. The kind that strips away ego, heals shame, and brings your whole being into alignment and the natural drive towards wholeness that’s in every single one of us.

Purpose isn’t just about doing or even being – it’s about becoming. This means that it’s not so much about the goals (though they’re really important) but about the process of becoming more whole, more honest, more integrated.

It’s not something you achieve. It’s something you live by letting go of all the unreal ‘stuff’ you picked up and focusing on something REAL.

Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Realness

Define Success for Yourself
Stop using society’s scorecard:

Sit down with yourself and ask: What actually matters to me? What kind of man do I want to be when no one’s watching? What values am I willing to suffer for as I bring more of them into the world?
Identify Compensatory Goals
Look at what you’re chasing and ask: Is this coming from truth or is this an attempt to compensate for shame, fear, or insecurity? Be honest with yourself. Most of your goals will have both. But the awareness changes everything and makes sure you know why you’re doing what you’re doing (so you’re not just acting on autopilot because of ego).
Do Shadow Work
Start a daily or weekly practice of self-inquiry:

Journal about what you reject or judge in others – these things often points to ‘parts’ of yourself that you’ve disowned. Embrace what you’ve buried and unravel the threads that need pulling. There’s gold in the darkness that you can build into your life.
Embrace REAL Purpose
Choose purpose over performance:

Real purpose connects you to others and requires service, integrity, and truth. It might not impress everyone – but it will fulfil you deeply more than any external idea of ‘success’ ever will.
Deconstruct Shame
Notice the voice in your head that says You’re not ‘enough’.

Question where it came from: Whose standards are you really living by? Are they yours or are they inherited?
Let Go of the Image
Stop curating a brand and start becoming a man:

The goal isn’t to look good but to become good from the inside-out.

When you focus on realness, success becomes a by-product, not a burden that you’re endlessly carrying with all that chasing.

why lose what's most important just because you bought into the illusion of success?

Conclusion: Success Without Realness Is Just Another Costume

The world will keep telling you that ‘success’ is about metrics – money, followers, six-packs, and an endless grind of empty busyness.

The quiet truth is pretty different:

Real success is becoming the man you were designed to be, not the man the world expects you to be.

When your version of success is built on realness, it nourishes you, grounds you, and heals you (because it brings you back to wholeness).

When it’s built on shame, ego, and overcompensation, it becomes just another form of self-abandonment (because you become fragmented).

Next time you find yourself striving and not getting anywhere, take pause. Because success without realness isn’t success at all. It’s just a gilded cage.

Stay real out there,

If you’d like to overcome the illusion of success and grow real and you’re interested in coaching then book a call with me.

Why So Many Men Feel Empty (And What to Do About The Void)

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Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Psychology/Shadow Life

The Void: Why Do So Many Men Feel Empty?

There’s a gnawing emptiness that a lot of men feel but rarely talk about – a kind of Void that they seem to be constantly outrunning. It eats into their sense of presence and makes them suspect that there must be ‘more’ to life. Much more.

(Not that they ever know what this might be…they just know it must be ‘there’ somewhere).

The more that they try to ignore this sense that something is missing, the more the blackhole of the Void seems to consume them. It’s an endless itch that can’t be scratched, a bottomless pit that can’t quite be filled, and – no matter how much ‘success’, money, sex, or validation they chase (even if these things do give a little release here-and-there that soon fades away like a fine mist) – it never goes away, no matter how much they try to ‘think’ themselves out of it.

This is because they’re trying to fill the Void with things that don’t fit:

The Void isn’t just loneliness, boredom, or even existential dread and angst – it’s something much much deeper: a disconnection from truth.

When I say “Truth” here I mean the unfashionable, ‘absolute’ truth of wholeness – in other words, the real deal. Not just “my truth” or “your truth” – which are both really just interpretations – but “THE TRUTH”.

This isn’t just about conceptual facts and ideas but the unshakable core of who you are beneath all the layers of conditioning, labels, ego, and avoidance:

When a man is disconnected from this truth, he falls into shame, and shame opens up the Shadow Dance – the internal battle between the Ego (the mask he wears) and the Shadow Self (who he really is when he takes the mask off and integrates whatever he was hiding from himself).

Keeping this dance going – in an attempt to ‘protect’ the Void-identity/Ego that he has become identified with and attached to – is what keeps him stuck and keeps the Void having power over him.

The only way out is to face the truth about yourself, the world, and reality again:

You don’t escape the Void by numbing yourself to it or by trying to fill it with external things; you ‘fill’ it by becoming it – because it’s just a signal that your relationship with yourself and life is distorted – and by returning to reality, to purpose, and to a sense of something bigger than just ‘yourself’.

This article will put you on the path to becoming the Void and returning home – but, first, let’s look at why so many men fall into it in the first place:

Men feel empty because the have put themselves in the void

The Common (But Failing) Strategies Men Use to Fill the Void

When a man feels the emptiness of the Void inside himself, his first instinct is usually to reach for something external to fill the gap.

Unfortunately, external ‘solutions’ don’t actually work – they just provide temporary relief from the tension that’s been caused by being unreal with oneself. This temporary release of tension may seem helpful at first, but all it ends up doing is creating dependencies and compulsions because we think we ‘need’ these things to get a taste of being real (when we don’t because what’s real is always real).

Here are some of the most common ways men try (and fail) to solve their own emptiness:

1. Addiction (Drugs, Alcohol, Porn, Food, Work, etc.)

Addiction isn’t just about substance abuse – it’s about anything that gives the illusion that you can escape from yourself and then becoming dependent on this illusion to keep hiding (though the truth always comes out in the end).

It could be drinking to ‘relax’ (when really you know it’s to escape), vegging out in front of Netflix to avoid thinking about whatever you’re facing, or endlessly scrolling social media to avoid confronting real life. The problem is, these things don’t solve the emptiness. They just silence it for a while – until it comes back louder than before because it grew in the shadows whilst your attention was on something else.

2. Distraction (Mindless Entertainment, Video Games, Over-Socialising)

Distraction is the close cousin of addiction and is just about using unreal things or relationships to avoid facing the real things that need staring down in your life:

Instead of facing reality head one (which may suck in the short-term if you’ve been away from it for a while), many men fill every second with empty stimulation – background noise, social media, gaming, or mindless socialising.

The Void isn’t being filled in these cases – it’s just being ignored as you try to fill the emptiness with more emptiness (when it can only be filled with something and that means finding your own REALNESS).

Ignoring the Void doesn’t make it go away – it makes it worse.

3. Seeking External Validation (Women, Status, Achievement, Approval)

Some men try to fill the Void by chasing women, money, or status:

They tell themselves things like, “If I just had more women, more money, more respect, then I’d feel whole” -but this can and never will work because the only solution is the TRUTH and all of these external things are being treated as a substitute for the truth.

Many of these things can be ‘good’ and maybe even fulfilling, but ‘good’ doesn’t mean the ‘best’ and -when it comes to filling the Void – the only best thing is the truth.

It’s the only medicine for the malady of the Void – all these other medicines will eventually just become poison because you’re using them in an unreal way.

Start on a foundation of truth and then bring these things into your life. Not the other way round.

4. Over-Intellectualising (Philosophy, Self-Help Overload, Analysis Paralysis)

Some men don’t turn to addiction or distraction; they turn to thinking their way out of the problem:

They read every book, listen to every podcast, and theorise about life endlessly – but they never act. Why?

Because deep down, they know action requires confronting themselves, and that’s terrifying so they stay stuck in the loop of consuming information without ever integrating it.

This kind of information consumption is really just a form of worrying: it feels like you’re doing something to solve the problem but all you’re really doing is playing with ideas and concepts and not touching reality with anything that you DO (and that’s the only way back to the truth and away from the Void).

The Shadow Dance: Why You Can’t Think Your Way Out of the Void

The real reason men struggle to escape this emptiness is because of what I call the Shadow Dance – the constant push-pull between the Ego and the Shadow Self.

The Ego is the mask. The version of yourself that you present to the world, shaped by what you think will get you approval and success. You wear this mask because of shame – some unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ you picked up that made you fear the truth of who you actually are.
The Shadow is everything you reject, suppress, or disown about yourself. Your fears, weaknesses, and unhealed wounds along with some of the ‘good’ things that we’re acceptable to your ego like your joy or your love or your real purpose (again, because these things got shamed and so you sent them into hiding).

The Shadow Dance causes problems in our lives because of a simple fact of life as a human being:

Unconscious intentions always triumph over conscious desires.

If your unconscious mind (where your Shadow ‘lives’) believes that real growth will expose you to pain, rejection, or failure, it will sabotage your conscious efforts every time.

This is why many men stay stuck in cycles of self-sabotage and never get out of the Void and back into realness – they’re fighting themselves without even realising it.

No matter how you identify on the surface-level and no matter what you ‘tell’ yourself with your conscious mind, the hidden ‘stuff’ will always win.

You can reverse engineer what’s going on in your life to see what your intentions really are – check out this post to learn more: Hacking the Unconscious Mind: A Psychological Hack for REALNESS

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action: The Path to Wholeness

To truly move beyond the Void, you must engage in a three-step process (this is the process I use with my coaching clients – book a call if you want to go deeper): Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.

This is the framework for real transformation (no matter who you are or where you’re trying to get to):

1. Awareness: See the Void for What It Is

The first step is recognising that the emptiness you feel isn’t random or unfixable -it’s always a symptom of disconnection from the truth about yourself (and identification with the Ego which is just a character we play within the dreamworld of the Void).

Start digging deeper into your relationship with yourself to see where you’re fragmented instead of whole:

Where am I living inauthentically instead of being real?
What emotions, fears, or truths am I avoiding?
What patterns keep repeating in my life and what does this say about my unconscious intentions?

Self-reflection and radical honesty are key here because until you see the problem, you can’t fix it – you’ll just be forever running around in the Void and rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic whilst it sinks.

2. Acceptance: Stop Resisting the Truth

Most men fight against reality even though real always works and reality always has something to teach them:

They suppress and resist emotions, deny their past wounds, and cling to false identities (ego) but healing always requires acceptance of your past, your emotions, and even your failures (because acceptance can only ever lead back to the truth and solve the problem of disconnection).

Start facing some of the facts:

Accept that the Void exists for a reason (you have lost touch with you’re realness).
Accept that suppressing emotions only keeps you ‘stuck’ (because emotions are e-motion, energy in motion and the only thing that stops them naturally being integrated and becoming whole is the mental blocks of ego and void-identity).
Accept that change is possible, but it starts with facing reality (so you’re building on something solid and not just empty ideas in the sky).

3. Action: Align with Truth and Purpose

Awareness and Acceptance mean nothing without real Action:

Action in this sense means moving towards what is real and away from false distractions.

You can change your life by:

Pursuing a purpose that aligns with the truth in relation to you and your life (after raising awareness and acceptance of what this is)
Practicing emotional integration instead of suppression (by acting on the real things that are calling for expression from your Shadow Self).
Facing fears head-on rather than avoiding them (because then you’ll see that most fear was actually just F.E.A.R: False Evidence Appearing Real).
Building relationships rooted in honesty, not validation (by understanding that the truth is the greatest foundation of all, not the things or people you try to fill the Void with).
Learning to regulate your nervous system so that you have the energy and presence to face life in a real way (without seeing threats where there are opportunities etc.) – check out this article for more on this: Nervous System Regulation for Realness: Finding Your Natural Rhythm

When you take consistent, real action, the Void begins to dissolve – not because you’re ‘filling’ it with distractions, but because you’re removing the layers of fragmentation that created it in the first place and becoming who you were meant to be.

The cure for the Void and when you feel empty is to face the void and the emptiness

Conclusion: The Path Back to Wholeness

The Void isn’t some mysterious curse that you have to live with – it’s just the consequence of living a life that is out of alignment with truth.

When you stop avoiding yourself, stop numbing yourself, and start becoming yourself, the emptiness fades because – at your core – you were never ’empty’ to begin with…you were just buried beneath layers of fragmentation, fear, and false identities (and thought this filter was the truth).

The world will tell you that you need more things to be happy but what you really need is more realness and this means LETTING GO of a lot of the unreal things you have been chasing.

When you can trust and let go like this then you’ll find more truth, more integration, more purpose.

Because – as the old Chinese proverb says – “Tension is who you think you should be but release is who you are.”

Stay real out there,

If you’d like some guidance on becoming the Void in your own life and you might be interested in coaching then book a free video call with me.

Emotional Suppression in Men: Why Hiding From Your Own Feelings is Destroying You

Published on

Creativity/Life Philosophy/Men/Mindset/Psychology

Introduction: The Cost of Keeping It All Bottled Up

One tale as old as time is that men have been told to man up, suck it up, get some balls, and stay strong and – although these can all be great strategies when faced in a REAL way – this often leads to a lot of confusion about how to best ‘handle’ emotions as a man (despite emotions just being e-motion, energy in motion and so a very real and universal part of the human experience).

The message that often gets pumped out is clear: emotions are a sign of weakness.

But what if that very belief is the thing that’s making you weaker (because it’s unreal and the only ‘strength’ comes from being real)?

What if emotional suppression isn’t protecting you but slowly destroying you from the inside-out? What if it’s not emotions that are a sign of ‘weakness’ but resisting or suppressing our emotions because we FEAR them because we don’t understand them?

The truth is that emotions are not your enemy:

In fact, they hold the key to your power because they can lead you back to a more solid foundation of realness and presence (if you know how to handle them properly).

Unfortunately, a lot of men have no idea how to process their emotions at the most basic level – let alone express them in a way that strengthens them rather than saps their energy and making them weaker.

This article will explain why emotional suppression is a ticking time bomb, how it affects your mind and body, and what you can do to reclaim your emotional strength and grow real.

Let’s dig deeper:

Emotional suppression leads to many problems but only has one 'cure'.

The Reservoir of Unresolved Emotions

Every human being carries a reservoir of unresolved emotions inside themselves and men are no different (no matter how ‘tough’ or ‘stoic’ they might be):

Some have deeper reservoirs than others, but all men, without exception, have stored emotional baggage from their past because this is the human condition we’re dealing with here and humans are always gonna human, no matter who they think they are.

We’re not just taking about traumatic experiences here, btw – this ‘reservoir’ includes every suppressed frustration, every ignored disappointment, and every grief that was never fully processed.

It’s all just sat there….waiting to be released at some stage.

It would probably wait forever if it wasn’t for one simple and inevitable fact about life: life will squeeze you and when it does it will show you the ‘juice’ that’s inside the reservoir.

Whenever life applies pressure (and it always does in the end) – whether it’s through relationship problems, career setbacks, financial stress, or unexpected hardships – what’s inside that reservoir will come pouring out out of you in the way that you instinctively react to whatever it is that you’re going through.

Some men leak anger; others might collapse into apathy or depression. Some drown their emotions in alcohol, porn, or mindless distractions. But the juice that spills out when squeezed is only revealing what was already inside – not what’s ‘in’ the situation you’re reacting to in itself.

(This is why two totally different people can react to the exact same stimulus in totally different ways – their ‘reservoirs’ contain totally different emotions).

The question is to ask yourself at this stage is pretty simple:

What’s in your ‘reservoir‘ based on the juice that keeps coming out when you get squeezed?

Is the juice ‘sour’ because you’re carrying something like resentment, insecurity, shame, or rage? Or is it ‘sweet’ because you’re managing to cultivate resilience, clarity, and peace?

The more REAL you get, the more sweet it becomes (and it all starts by facing your emotional ‘stuff’ and not suppressing it).

Why Suppression Fails: The Truth About Emotions

The problem with suppressing emotions – i.e. sending them into hiding and avoiding them whenever they show themselves – is that they don’t disappear even if it looks like you’ve sent them deep underground.

All they do is stop being given the attention they need to be able to move in a healthy way and so they become blocked and stop flowing in the way they need to. All this ends up doing is creating resistance that turns to (inner) friction and when that happens it just builds pressure that will eventually explode.

Remember: Emotions are E-motion, Energy in Motion.

They are meant to move through you, not be trapped inside you (besides mental concepts and false identities). When you resist them, you create inner friction, and that friction leads to stress, anxiety, and eventual burnout (because, as Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists“).

Unchecked emotional suppression can lead to a bunch of systems that can mess your whole life up (and then make your emotional life even worse):

Chronic stress and burnout because of all the energy it takes to keep resisting.
Unexplained anger and mood swings because things keep leaking out of that reservoir.
Depression and apathy because you’re denying your real self.
A lack of real connection with others because the real you is always in hiding.
Health issues (high blood pressure, digestive problems, weakened immune system) because of the stress and pressure you put on your nervous system.
Addiction to substances, porn, workaholism, excessive gaming, etc. because you need a quick ‘release’ from all the tension you’re carrying.

The bottom line is that avoiding emotions does not free you from them at all – instead, it makes them control you in ways you don’t even realise.

The Role of Projection: How We Externalise Our Inner Conflict

To complicate things a little more, we can say that most men don’t even recognise they have an emotional suppression problem because they unconsciously project their unresolved emotions onto others.

Projection is when we attribute our own internal struggles onto people around us because we’re not emotionally ready to face ourselves.

This can affect the way that we see the whole world around us (because perception is projection).

For example:

A man who is deeply insecure about his worth may constantly judge others as weak or incompetent (to hide from his own perceived weakness).
A man who fears emotional intimacy might label his partner as “too emotional” while dismissing his own feelings (because he’s not ready to face his own ‘stuff’).
A man who harbours suppressed anger might pick fights over trivial things without realising it’s his internal resentment driving the behaviour (because he’s angry with himself for some reason).

Projection can derail our whole lives because it keeps men blind to their own issues and stops them from healing and growing real (because it takes the focus away from their relationship with themselves and shifts it ‘out there’ instead).

How to Break Free: Releasing Emotional Suppression

The alternative to this kind of emotional suppression is to stop hiding from your emotional ‘stuff’ and to start using it as a source of power.

Here’s some ways that you can do it:

Acknowledge What You’re Feeling (Without Judgement)
- Stop seeing emotions as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and just see them as information about reality. If you feel anger, frustration, or sadness, for example, then don’t fight it and try to act like it’s not there. Just allow it to be whatever it is.
- Ask yourself: What is this feeling trying to tell me?
Stop Resisting Emotion – Let It Move Through You
- Remember: Emotions are e-motion, energy in motion. The more you resist, the more they persist (so every time you act like it’s not ‘there’ you just make it worse).
- Instead of bottling up anger, channel it into something constructive that’s aligned with your purpose or vision (exercise, deep breathing (4-7-8 breathing is always good), writing, movement, or even screaming into a pillow if needed).
- If grief or sadness arises, allow yourself to feel it fully rather than suppressing it with distractions. Try to figure out what you’re going through the process of LETTING GO of and stop holding onto anything unreal (remembering that you can’t lose anything real).
Regulate Your Nervous System
- Most men are stuck in a constant state of fight-or-flight and have what is known as Sympathetic Dominance. Learning to calm your nervous system will help you process emotions without being overwhelmed because you won’t experience them as a threat (instead you can feel safe with them and let them and observe them).
- Try breathwork, cold showers, yoga, meditation, or exercise to help you regulate your nervous system as a whole.
Communicate Openly
- Being real doesn’t mean dumping your emotions on others and being ‘needy’ or identifying them – it just means being honest. Instead of suppressing or exploding, learn to communicate with calm assertiveness and to own what’s yours without justification or unnecessary explanation.
- Example: Instead of silently resenting your partner for something, say what you actually feel and need and set the boundary.
Embrace Healthy Masculine Expression
- Masculinity doesn’t mean emotional suppression – it means emotional mastery. Real men own their emotions and use them to fuel their actions and purpose, rather than being controlled by them. When you resist them with emotional suppression, it means that you’re NOT in control.
- Anger, when harnessed correctly, becomes drive.
- Fear, when understood, becomes wisdom.
- Sadness, when accepted, becomes depth.
- Always look for the lesson and lean into it. Every emotion is teaching you something so you can can be grateful for it instead of trying to resist it.
Surround Yourself with Men in Touch With Their Realness
- If you’re surrounded by men who only reinforce emotional suppression and keep their masks on, then it’s time to level up your circle. Find men who embody REALNESS and who own their emotions rather than run from them. Iron sharpens iron.

Emotional suppression just means that your body keeps the score anyway.

Conclusion: Emotions Are Not Your Enemy But Emotional Suppression Makes You Your Own Enemy

Hiding from your emotions doesn’t make you stronger – it makes you fragile and more easily controlled by the world around you (because you could lose your balance at any second).

Real strength comes from understanding, processing, and integrating your emotions so that they work for you, not against you.

Remember: the juice that comes out when life squeezes you is what was already inside – if you want to be a man who remains steady under pressure, start working on what’s in your reservoir today so that what comes out is more sweet than sour.

Stay real out there,