Last night I went camping with a handful of guys. This is a subset of fellows I’ve met with regularly since October last year (2021). We meet most weeks as a Mens Group. If you’re unfamiliar the concept, by a Mens Group I mean a small group of male identified folks who gather for the purpose of growing as a person and becoming a better man. We do this by getting vulnerable while discussing our individual challenges, issues, emotions, and life experiences. Something special happens when a mens group is done well. The collective wisdom, perspectives, and energy of the group creates something I find difficult to describe.
I believe we all have an Inner Healing Intelligence that’s comparable to our biological healing intelligence. When our skin is cut the body goes to work healing it. In the same way, our psyches and emotional bodies have a self-healing propensity. This is less of something we “do” to ourselves and more-so something we allow to happen. It’s akin to how we can allow and support our bodies to heal.
There’s a tremendous power and importance in diversity of genders and identities, but don’t misunderstand nor underestimate the power of gathering together with others of a fundamentally similar life experience as oneself. I think spaces of homogeneity with a healing and growing intention provide a special kind of support for the Inner Healing Intelligence. Mens Work, Mens Groups, and the practice of embodied masculinity are fascinating and expansive topics to me personally and professionally. But I’ll dive more into it another time. For now, this is a context for something else: healthy conflict.
For most of my life I’ve wrestled with conflict avoidance and a powerful aversion to interpersonal tension. Its something I’ve been more aware of since circa 2015, and I’ve been actively working with it since 2018. I’ve made progress, but the work continues. I’ve found that there’s a lot underpinning these patterns for me. Family system dynamics, parental influences, childhood wounding, and the list goes on. I can map it out and tell a nice story about where I think the patterns come from, why they’re there, and how they work. But all of that cerebral stuff is not the full extent of what it takes to heal and change such patterns. I can’t think my way out of it. Believe me, I’ve tried, a lot. The mind work and ‘thinky stuff’ is included in the healing process but I must also feel and experience my way through if I want to make real and lasting change to the pattern. Corrective Experiences is the technical term in therapy world. Simply put, I can KNOW cognitively that conflict can be healthy and safe, BUT that won’t make as big of an impact as directly experiencing conflict as healthy and safe.
Last night, I had a powerful experience of conflict as healthy and safe. An unexpected debate emerged between myself and one of the guys. The content was about the principle and practice Leave No Trace while being out in nature. But the content of what we said isn’t important here. What matters was the experience. We got into it. I mean REALLY got into it with each other. What started as a disagreement and debate evolved into a very intense emotionally-charged argument. We went at it back and forth with each other while the other three men watched and listened patiently and intently.
Let me drop another technical term from therapy: containment. To be brief, this is the idea of experiencing intensity without overwhelm. To use an electricity analogy, its like having a whole lot of charge flowing through without a mental-emotional-somatic ‘circuit breaker’ going off. Containment is about maintaining a capacity to hold an intense experience without freaking out, losing it, shutting down, checking out, blowing up, boiling over, et cetera.
My experience last night was very intense, and yet we maintained containment. I got so angry with this guy. We got elevated and loud, and we were basically shouting with each other at one point. We were sitting down during the first half of it and all of sudden I felt a tremendous energy, like electricity surging through my body. I was subtly shaking. It became so much that without thinking I stood up with fists clinched and spoke very intensely with my friend. He commented on me suddenly standing up and he questioned what it was about. I moved toward him, as if to stand very close and face to face in an aggressive standoff, but instead I moved to stand beside him as I said, “I love you man. I want get close to you and figure this out together.” We stood next to each other, still arguing with intensity as we faced the literal and symbolic fire. We had begun arguing in verbal circles. The other men chimed in to ask useful questions and make honest vulnerable observations in the moment. It was a wise and well-timed intervention. Eventually the situation diffused through group conversation and ended with my friend and I agreeing to disagree.
All said and done, there was no maliciousness nor resentment toward each other. He and I spoke about our experience a few times as the night went on, and another time or two in the morning. The friendship, the relationship, and the emotionality between us was calm, connected, and respectful. We felt all there was to feel and said what came through. There was nothing unsaid. Nothing to left to clear. He and I rode from the mountains back to Boulder together and it felt great to have some one on one time to catch up. A bunch of us then capped off the camping trip with a cold plunge in the Boulder Creek that runs through the city. With a refreshing dip, a few kind words, and some good hugs, we bid each other farewell and “see you at Mens Group next Tuesday night.”
Conflict can be healthy and safe.
Conflict can bring us closer to each other and to ourselves.
Containment is important and essential.
Context matters.
We didn’t just go camping to goof off, play, and get drunk. This was a Mens Group campout. We gathered to meaningfully connect with each other, to share some experiences within the beauty and nourishment of the mountains, to grow as people and as men, and have some fun together while we were at it. We didn’t conspire to argue and fight, BUT we did agree our intensity is welcome in the space. We didn’t designed what happened, but we did gather with intention, commitment, trust, and containment to invite whatever may come through. And something big came through.
Don’t underestimate the power of gathering together with others with the explicit purpose and intention of growing, healing, and becoming a better person. Who knows how it might support the individual and collective inner healing intelligence.
My journey to re-pattern and end the conflict aversion continues, but I’m grateful to walk out of the mountains today with a special experience that is more powerful and more visceral than thoughts and words.
Conflict can be healthy and safe.