Turn Anxiety Into Action

BRAD SINGLETARY, LCSW

Founder, Producer, Host, Men's Coach

BRAD SINGLETARY, LCSW

Founder, Producer, Host, Men's Coach

Inactivity and idleness makes anxiety worse. I’ve had that experience myself. There is nothing more painful than simply sitting with your worry and fear and the tension created in your body by anxiety. ⁣
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In the most difficult times of my own life, I have found that movement saved me. Sometimes it has been exercise, sometimes organizing my garage or building something. You could re-frame the feelings of anxiety as a signal that you should be DOING something. Your body is literally giving you sparks of #energy and without somewhere to put that, we sit painfully in the excess. ⁣
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Get busy. Do the work. Get off your bed or couch. Change your emotional state by changing your physical state. Channel the blood flow to your muscles and your mind in the pursuit of some project or task you’ve been avoiding. ⁣
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You may experience a pounding heart, racing thoughts, tension in your muscles or an upset stomach. Do something productive. Direct that energy toward something valuable. ⁣
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One man I worked with was unable to control his anxiety. He was in intensive outpatient therapy and was under the care of a psychiatrist, but none of the meds were effective or had intolerable side effects. The doctor encouraged him to “walk until he is tired.” He ended up walking 25 miles per day. He lost weight, got a sick tan, worked through some of his troubled thoughts, and found some #peace because he was also improving his sleep. ⁣
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Sitting around worrying just doesn’t help. Take the cues from your body to move. ⁣
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Recently I was dealing with some particularly intense anxiety and I began cleaning my house like a freak. I was scrubbing things and sweeping the cobwebs out of the corners of my garage. It worked. While there may be other needs that must be addressed by a professional, see if you can get control of those emotions by using the power of intention and mindfulness to engage in somethingt srenuous.

Alphas Know How to Love

There are many contributors out there in the manosphere. They preach messages about six-pack abs and the ability to use a bow and arrow and they portray images of themselves in front of their Lamborghini’s and jets. That’s not necessarily our brand of #masculinity.

An Alpha knows how to love.

First, he understands what love is. Mature love is a relentless pursuit of meeting the needs of those in his circle, including himself. It is not merely the passive feeling that one has in relation to the lover, the child, the friend. It is active effort toward meeting the needs of other people. Love is a verb and requires your self-affirming, yet selfless, actions.

Love is an understanding of himself. An Alpha knows who he is at the deepest level and is confident and secure in himself. He is unwavering in his acceptance of his distinguishable qualities and he appreciates who he already is and knows who he can become.

An Alpha understands the specific needs of those to whom he attempts to extend love. He knows how to speak their language. He knows how to forgive those who may not even be deserving of forgiveness. He understands that, above all, love is sacrifice.

Love is sacrificing the self. After understanding his own value, he appreciates and respects value in others. He knows how to make sacrifices and is willing to lay down his weapons against others and fulfill the needs of those in his tribe. When he has wronged another, he promptly admits it. He makes amends and seeks to show, after his genuinely appropriate rebukes, an increase of love.

Love is giving. He responsibly meets his own needs without taking away from the resources of time and energy that he might reasonably give away. He seeks out the downtrodden and brokenhearted and makes every possible effort to comfort the weak, the weary and even the wayward.

Alphas epitomize love in their attitudes, actions , and attributes. Who do you need to extend more love to: yourself, the most significant people around you, the stranger? Engage with a tribe of capable men so that you can learn how to love.

THE WORK WILL NEVER BE DONE

What’s your job right now? What business do you need to be handling? Focusing at work, playing with your kids, getting the bill payments sent out? Dude, you have to be serious and intentional with every moment of your time. Get your $#!+ done. The substance of stress is unfinished WORK. .

That will never change. The work will NEVER be done. But it must be done. We want to follow the path of least resistance…it’s wired into us to be that way, to preserve our resources and “save” our energy for when bears attack. .

But there aren’t any bears. Today it is heart disease. Unpaid taxes. Trash cans that have to go to the curb. A sink load of dishes. A problem to solve with your significant other. Getting a grip on your addiction or other compulsive behavior. Helping a friend. Saving for a vacation with your kids. CHILD SUPPORT. .

Whatever your business, handle it bro. You’re a frkng WARRIOR and you were made to win. You have power you dont even know exists yet. Find it. Pray for it. Strengthen it. Need some help? Contact us so we can set you up with a coach, resources, and people who can help you understand who You. Really. Are.

The 3 Options You Have When You’re Angry

As I have worked with people over the last 20 years in a coaching capacity, I have found that one very common issue underlies people’s pain, stagnation, worry and failures: anger.

I’m not talking about the kind of anger where you are throwing things around you too make people feel scared or relieve some intensifying arousal based on momentary hatred or rage. I’m talking about anger that you don’t even realize is anger.

The Freudians would say that depression is anger turned inward. I find that to be so true; low energy, sadness, feelings of worthlessness, and lack of motivation are often really just anger in disguise. Conversely, much of anger is merely a masking of sadness.

What gets us angry in the first place is often the unrealistic expectation that people must meet our demands. We don’t consciously march around with this kind of demand, it’s just an internal system of beliefs where we maintain that we must get our way. So we expect others meet our selfish demands and we demand that we are to be successful, respected, and given breaks.

So we become entitled and feel that things in life should fall into place just as we planned, and then when reality clashes with the fantasy of smooth simplicity, we get angry. The experience of anger is, again, not always the raging type that we think of when we talk about anger management classes and violence, but it can be passive in nature as well. How we feel anger is often in other forms, not just the classic fist banging, hollering and swearing we do when we lose control.

So what can we do when we’re angry about how something has happened, how we’ve been treated, something we have done ourselves, or the encounter of some other triggering event or adversity?

I love to use the acronym A. C. E. which which symbolizes the only three realistic options we have when we are angry.

A. is for adjust
C. is for complain
E. is for escape

ADJUST. Is something you are doing accidentally making the situation worse? Are your expectations unrealistic? Are you misinterpreting aspects of the situation? In general, adjusting or adapting is the only viable option with anger.

COMPLAIN. This is to confront the person or the issue with an explanation of why what is happening is not okay with you. So if someone is being rude, we can complain and tell them that they’re being rude and that we expect more appropriate interaction. What I have found, though, is that complaining or confronting people never really works. Those who would respect your complaint are usually so agreeable that they’re not causing you a problem in the first place.

That’s not always true, however. Sometimes people are unaware that their words or actions are offending you, and they just needed to be brought to the awareness of it in order to change it. But typically, complaining just doesn’t work. People either don’t care, or don’t want to make the changes necessary just to keep you happy.

ESCAPE. Sometimes the only option is to escape the situation or the relationship. For example, if you are in a public setting and become overly irritated or frustrated you have the ability to leave. Sometimes that’s all you can do. If you’re in a failing relationship and the other options haven’t worked after a long and diligent effort, escaping or leaving the relationship maybe your best response to what has been going on. If you are in the presence of fools who just don’t understand your vibe and you are becoming angry with theirs, you can always get away from them.

But many times, you cant escape. You need to stay at the job you hate because there are no other options. You have children and don’t want to be divorced. You are on a vacation and cant exactly leave the company you’re in for 10 days. Here’s where you go back to the other options.

Can you Complain? Will that work? No? Already tried that?

Now you’re back to adjusting YOURSELF. What this means is to take a look and see if anything you are doing is accidentally making it worse. Are your expectations unrealistic or selfish? Are you interpreting things to mean something they don’t? Chances are, maybe both of those are true. Alpha up👊💪

When You Should Never Say “I Don’t Know”

It happened again today–twice–by two different people.

There is no more counterfeit humility known to man than the use of the easy-out reply “I don’t know” when asked for an opinion. Two men did this today in my office and it put the nail in the coffin for me for my theory that this is one of the most likely of indicators that a man has become weak and lazy.

In the first incident, it was a man of maturity. A former engineering professional who is struggling in his marriage after impulsively quitting a career of 35 years due to a new female manager’s bossy ways. This reactive move put he and his lady in a bad spot, first financially and now emotionally

This man is a former soldier who had spent time abroad serving in the United States military. He had been an avid runner, even completing marathons, I believe. Today, the flashing red warning-light buzzing about my office was his frequent use of the escape-artists most elementary tool: “I don’t know.”

When we are asked about matters of fact or of information that we simply do not have, the best and most honest answer may indeed be an admission of innocent ignorance. I’m not talking about never being able to admit your lack of knowledge on a subject. I’m talking about your opinions.

In this case, his wife asked, “what can I do to be more supportive?”

Maybe that’s a tough question. Maybe that requires some contemplation and brainstorming. I triangulated the dialogue by suggesting he instead say, “let me think about that one, Babe. I need a minute to just work on that question.” That’s a pause button on the football game while you go take a piss, instead of abandoning the whole televised 4K event.

Give yourself a minute, dude. It’s normal to need to think for a moment. Or a day. Or a week. But to follow a request for an opinion with I don’t know is just pure and simple indolence.

The other fellow that did this today was a teenager. He was nervous about being in a therapists office and wasn’t sure what it was all about since his mother brought him in without much explanation about this encounter with me. But he had been playing a particular musical instrument for 5 years and when I asked what his favorite musician was, he did it, too. SMH.

Really, bro? You’re in an advanced performing group with this specialized instrument you play and eat, sleep, and breathe this thing and you can’t tell a fat, bald stranger your favorite artist? He really froze up! Surely for him, there is some anxiety or some other deeper issue going on that we will address as part of our work together. But this is an everyday deal for me as I coach and counsel men and young men in all kinds of situations, seeking help for a wide variety of difficulties.

The principle I am trying to teach here is that of discernment. We must decide. Perhaps ALL of our thinking is judgement in which we must figure out between options.

Am I too close to this car in front of me?
What time do I need to start getting ready to be on time?
What is the most appropriate thing to wear to this important interview?
What do I want for lunch?
What can my wife do to help me?
What is my favorite _______________________?

Discernment is one of the Red-9: the nine attributes of an Alpha. That characteristic means many things and part of that is to “have my own opinions and assertively express them, even if they are unpopular.”

Sometimes you won’t know. Sometimes you need more information. Sometimes it isn’t convenient to discuss. Sometimes you don’t want to cast your pearls before swine. Sometimes, you’re being a chicken shit and you need to decisively figure out your opinion and express it. To me, that is one mark of a strong man: he can easily express his opinion on a variety of topics, especially of ordinary, every day matters that he won’t first need to do a book report on.

Carry on, brothers. Try to never say you don’t know. Go get your Alpha game on.