Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
Starve the Ego Feed the Soul
The Healing Gap: Why Both Men and Women Must Own Their Work
The divide between men and women has never been more pronounced in our culture, especially when it comes to who bears responsibility for healing relationship wounds. Drawing from years of experience as a counselor and my own personal journey, I tackle the dangerous tendency to place blame solely on one gender while absolving the other.
Most relationship discourse online falls into one of two extremes – either men need to do all the emotional work while women are already evolved, or women are manipulative while men are just logical beings responding to provocation. Both narratives miss the fundamental truth that healing requires mutual accountability. As someone who's witnessed countless therapy sessions where men and women voice remarkably similar complaints about their partners, I can attest that shadow work isn't gender-specific.
What makes someone truly attractive goes beyond physical appearance or social status – it's their commitment to self-awareness, their ability to own their past without blaming others, and their courage to remain open despite previous hurts. This balance of strength and vulnerability creates a magnetic presence that transcends conventional attractiveness. The "Holy Trinity," as I playfully call it, is emotional maturity, a good heart, and yes – physical attraction matters too.
My personal battle with chronic pain following botched surgeries has taught me that making excuses never empowers us – only taking action does. The same principle applies to our relationships. We can't control how others show up, but we can control our own healing journey. When both partners commit to doing 100% of their own work rather than a transactional 50/50 split, relationships transform from battlegrounds into sacred spaces of growth.
Are you ready to move beyond blame and into the challenging but rewarding space of mutual healing? Share this episode with someone who needs to hear this message, and let's start building relationships where we rise together rather than tear each other down.
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Warmly,
Nico Barraza
@FeedTheSoulNB
www.nicobarraza.com
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Speaker 1:I'm so excited to be back with you today. I know I was supposed to launch an episode on Monday, but I purposely didn't because I'm holding out. I'm having a very special guest on the show for our 100th episode in a couple episodes here. Now I'm not going to say who this is, but if you do enough research you can figure it out. She's the only guest to be on the show three times and this is going to be her fourth time. She has just launched her first book recently. She has had incredible success in the past couple of years after launching her podcast. Her work speaks for itself. Honestly, I'm a huge fan. We've become friends since I first interviewed her, I think in 2021. Amazing human being Can't wait to have her on the show. So if you do some research on the show, you go back and you see the only person I've interviewed three times on the show. This will be her fourth time and you can look forward to that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, today I wanted to talk about a post that I wrote and this is just a solo episode, by the way a post that I wrote just yesterday, and it really was just calling light to women that are healing and showing respect and gratitude for women that are actually doing the work and not just talking about it. And, of course, I focus on men a lot in my work too, but since I'm a heterosexual man, I felt the need to write towards women, since I'm pointing out what I find sexually attractive and what I find attractive, and so here's the post. I'm going to read the post and then the caption, and then I'm going to get into the comments, and then the majority of people and women were really supportive, liked it, and then I got this one comment of this female basically tearing down men and blaming men for things in totality. And this is the exact problem that I'm speaking to, in the relational sense that we really have to both be accountable. Both men and women are accountable for things.
Speaker 1:If we continue to blame one sex or one gender, we're not going to be healing, we're not going to be progressing. It doesn't matter if you've been hurt. It doesn't matter if you think patriarchy is the problem of society, if you believe in toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, whatever, however you want to define it. Human beings need to heal together and women have just as much work to do as men. That I guarantee you. Men have just as much work to do as women.
Speaker 1:People like to say men are more emotionally stunted or not as developed. I'm like look, this is the society we've built. If you feel that way, then we only have ourselves to blame for that. And how are we going to rise together? It doesn't just fall on the onus of one gender to fix things. That's just not how it works. All of us are responsible for things. And if we can't get to that point to realize that and we keep blaming one and thinking that we're in this holier than thou sort of elitist area because we're of a certain sex or gender, we're not going to be healing, we're not going to be having healthy relationships. We're going to be having controlling divisive relationships hidden behind these facades.
Speaker 1:So let me get into this post because I really do like what I wrote and I think the majority of people that interacted with the post did. And again, I don't post things to always be agreeable. I really respect and value men and women disagreeing with anything I'm writing or thinking online, but do it in a thoughtful way. If you're going to be logical, be emotionally solid, if you're going to present counterpoints and be thoughtful, that's so welcome. If you're going to throw shade, if you're going to personally attack, if you're going to bring your inherent shadow-filled bias of just bashing another gender or another sex and ignorance, I'm sorry there's no place for that. For for mine, my place is not going to be that, that sort of inclusivity where ignorance and, um, you know, uh, like myopic mindsets are going to be tolerated. Now, there's a time and place for that in therapy. There's a time and place for that in counseling. There's plenty of other pages. You could get support on that and get yada, yada and rah rah. You know, but that's not what we're doing here. If you want to present a counterpoint in a thoughtful, logical, emotionally sound way that you know isn't trying to attack somebody, then great. But if you're going to do the opposite, then I'm definitely going to speak up about it. So just wanted to start the conversation with that. But here's the post.
Speaker 1:There's nothing sexier than a woman who's healed enough to stop blaming, focused enough to build her life and soft enough to stay open. That's the real shine. Here's the copy. There's something undeniably sexy about a woman who's doing the work, not blaming everyone for her past, not drowning in anxiety or letting it run the show, not trying to be the loudest in the room, not trying, not blaming all her relational mistakes on exes or armchair diagnosed narcissism or society. Accountable, loving, steady, calm, grounded, she stacks her bricks. She keeps her heart open. She doesn't need constant external validation because she's already built a home inside herself. She's not tearing other women down to feel better. She's not gossiping like it's a hobby. She's building, not breaking, lifting people up, not stepping on them to feel tall. That energy unmatched, a good heart, emotional maturity and a nice butt. Let's call it the Holy Trinity. If you know a woman like this, tell her. If you're working to become her. Keep going, the world needs more of you.
Speaker 1:So I wrote this from my perspective, being a heterosexual man being attracted to women. But you know me and you know my work. I focus on men 50% of the time and what we need to improve on and all the things being a man and knowing my own mistakes, knowing my own shortcomings, understanding the society culture I was raised in, the beauties and the incredible parts of that, and the shadow parts and the parts that taught me things that are unhealthy. The problem, I find, is that I don't find a lot of women calling their own gender out in the same manner, and I think it's really important that we both hold our genders accountable but also call people in.
Speaker 1:Now, 99% of people that interact with this post mostly were women that commented, were super supportive, like this is great, awesome. And again, I'm not just doing this to be agreed with. But if someone's going to disagree, be thoughtful in it. And there's this one be agreed with. But if someone's going to disagree, like, be thoughtful in it, right, and this there's this one lady that commented and I just want to read her her comment, because it's sort of speaking to the exact problem that I'm addressing. And so here we go. I love when men tell women what they think is sexy. Well, majority of men walk around totally unhealed, unable to process emotions and emotionally inept and mature. And so here's my responses. Now we go back and forth. I'm only going to read a couple of responses.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go down this rabbit hole and give this person too much airtime, because I think they're very biased and really speaking out of their shadow. But I really want to speak to this sort of larger idea in culture and in society between men and women, and how we men can consistently blame women, how women can consistently blame men, and how that gets us nowhere, how we either rise together, we fall apart. We're either going to build a better relational environment or relational ecosystem, or we're not. We're going to keep playing by the rules that generations have set before us. We're going to keep being divisive. We're going to keep being drowned in our phones, drowned in dogmatic rhetoric on the internet that keeps us trapped in these echo chambers between our ears, where we consistently think we are right and only our experience is the truest one, and then we find other people that are just like us and then we put ourselves in these communities that are very much the same. They lack diversity in thought, they lack diversity in experience. They lack diversity in belief structure. So here's my response to that comment.
Speaker 1:It's interesting you comment this as a heterosexual man. Women are whom I'm attracted to, so I can't really speak on what I find sexy with men. However, you are implying that nearly half of my content doesn't focus around the healing of men, which it does. Women have just as much work to do as men, that I can assure you. But I don't disagree with you that many men are walking around unhealed and causing pain through their trauma or unresolved trauma. Yet you make it seem like it's just men alone who need to do the work. That perspective I find myopic and I wholeheartedly disagree with. And I said also men shouldn't be shamed for verbalizing qualities they are attracted to, just like women shouldn't be shamed for it. It's about understanding those qualities and knowing why they exist inside yourself. What you're looking for and why, is it from your shadow or is it from actual, like a place of healthiness? I feel like you're trying to throw shade on a positive and empowering post. Plenty of other pages to do that on Instagram.
Speaker 1:So this lady keeps commenting and I'm gonna leave these comments up. You can go back and read them, but it's it's less about this human being, um, who, who? It's interesting because she gets into this thing where, like, she's like, oh, I don't even follow you. This post came up on my, my feed and I'm like, you do follow me. I just screenshotted it, you know.
Speaker 1:So it's like it's weird to like just start lying in a post to perpetuate, sorry, or propagate your, propagate your own narrative, and that's what I find men do too, right, like we get in these arguments and we have so much pride and I'm sorry, whoever tells you pride is a healthy thing. It's healthy, like, maybe 5% of the time. 95% of the time, it's fucking your life up. It's preventing you from intimacy, it's blocking you from intimacy, it's preventing you from connection, it's preventing you from admitting you're wrong, seeing your own bias, seeing your own ignorance. I mean, that's really what pride does. It shields us from our own bullshit. So the most prideful people, I find, are usually the most ignorant people, and that's really unfortunate.
Speaker 1:Now, it's okay to have pride in your work, pride in who you are, that stuff, but if you have too much pride where you can't admit that you have shit to work on in reality and actually work on it. I found that now people they're like oh yeah, I have stuff to work on, everyone has stuff to work on. It's so easy to say that, but are you really working on shit? Are you really practicing self-awareness? Are you really trying to understand the other person's perspective? Now, in this circumstance, this person I got to be honest. Their perspective is super biased.
Speaker 1:It's just literally focusing on men and I'm like yo, men have tons of work to do, sister, I got you. Absolutely, I'm one of them. Right, I'm doing it, I'm here. But women have just as much work to do. And if we can't get to that point and admit that within our own respective genders, we're missing the boat here. We're not going to be on it together, right and so if you're out there and you're a female and you think that only males have shit to work on, I'm sorry, it's just not true. And if you're out there and you're a male and you think that it's just women's responsibility to do the work and hold the emotional space and do all that, I'm sorry, that's just not true. We all have work to do and equal work. It's not one side or the other. I believe it is 100% of the work on one side, 100% of the work on the other side, and that's how we get better together.
Speaker 1:But this narrative I find consistently popping up on social media and it's empowered by other therapists, by other people in the mental health space. We'll focus on toxic masculinity until we're blue in the face, and I applaud that. We need to talk about the unhealthy parts of the masculine. But how many people do you hear talking about toxic femininity? Do you even hear that word? Often, no, you don't. Do you even hear a lot of people talking about the shadow feminine? Not a lot. There are some, right, but why is it so much more rare? It's because if men speak on it, they're shamed for it.
Speaker 1:Because you're a man, you shouldn't be mansplaining to women, right? But this is another thing I want to separate. It's like a man having an opinion is a man having an opinion. A man talking down to a woman because she's a woman is mansplaining. Understand the difference between the two. Men can have opinions. Men are allowed to share their feelings based on their experiences with women and fellow men, period. Women are allowed to share their experiences based on their experiences with men and other women period.
Speaker 1:But if we're going to share a biased experience that just paints one gender in one light and we're not able to do the self-work to have enough self-awareness to understand that, we're just looking at one side of the picture, just one side of the equation, and calling it the total truth. It might be your truth because of your bias perspective, but it's not like the truth and reality, because there's always another side to things. Right, and that's really what self-awareness allows you to do. It's a consistent practice and it's never perfect, right, and so, like, my problem isn't with someone, like saying something that is imperfect or offensive or whatever, it's the fact that they double down on it instead of thinking about what they're saying. Right, and that's the problem within our society is that we have so much ignorance now in so many different ways, not even in the relational space. You know that we really need to be aware of that. We need to not only be aware, we have to start working towards changing it.
Speaker 1:This post that I posted I find this incredibly empowering. I'm like this is what's sexy to me Someone who's working on themselves, someone who's not just blaming the other gender, someone who's literally owning her side of the street, looking at her childhood trauma, pursuing her goals, but also not just so self-indulgent and selfish and focused on herself and her looks and her money, but also open to connection, staying open, not becoming jaded because she's been hurt. And that same thing applies to men too, but I'm speaking to it from a heterosexual man's perspective, so I was focusing on women, but I've talked about this with men too. It's like women talk about what they find sexy in men all the time, right, and there's a lot of shallowness behind that too. Oh, I want someone that's six foot, six figure income, you know, whatever this and that. And then there's depth too, but rarely are people calling that out, you know. And so I'm saying this because we need to really be honest about the disparities in both of these genders. And if you want to talk about gender fluidity and all these different things, that's fine, but I'm just breaking it down to two right now, because that's the world that I'm speaking to right now.
Speaker 1:It's like the heterosexual problems between men and women. These exist in gay relationships, they exist in transgender relationships too, but those relationships also have different drivers around them too, so I can't speak to them because I don't have any experience right, I'd have to have someone else. But in heterosexual man woman relationship, this is what I'm speaking to because primarily this is a lot of the clients that I work with and I have, let's say, you know, throughout my practice and I'm not practicing a ton anymore at all, but throughout my practice, like the past five years of working in this space as a counselor, I've had men come in and complain about the same thing Women lying, women putting all this pressure on them, women telling them that they have to change, that they have to do this right. Women cheating, you know, women not showing up as good parents, or you know all these other things. And then I have women come in complaining about men cheating, men not showing up as good parents, men being super angry, men not being able to communicate their feelings right.
Speaker 1:And then you find, like these parallels of like, okay, people are complaining about the same thing and they're not doing their work. I'm like how are you showing up, how are you trying to be better? Well, I'm trying to communicate, but they're never listening to me. I'm like, well, have you also tried to listen to them? Have they tried to? You know, like we need to listen to each other, right, and it's really hard to do that when you think you're right all the time and you might be right legitimately, but if you're in a relationship with someone who you know can't hear you and you can't hear them, you're not relating anymore. So you're not even really in a relationship. To be honest, if you think about that, I know we hate to hear that, right, but if you're not trying to relate, then how are you in a relationship? You're just literally coexisting in space and probably not enjoying that, and nothing we do is ever meant to be enjoyed 100% of the time.
Speaker 1:That's a fallacy. That's not reality for human beings. We are fallible creatures that are always going to fuck things up, guys. But I think the small amount of us that are committed to being better not just externally like look at me, I got money, I got this stuff, I have this title, I have written these books, I got this following but the people that are committed to being better on the inside, where they're not just focused on the external, where they're really trying to be better human beings for themselves, for others, where they're trying to be accountable for the trauma that they come from, not for the fact that it happened, but for the fact that they're owning it and it affects their behaviors and their thinking and really changing that and not dumping their anxiety, their depression, their pain on other people. For those that are practicing actual empathy, we're seeing other people's pain right For being understanding, for trying their best to soothe it while not overreaching, while not parenting right All these other qualities I could get into that are healthy. Those folks are the ones I gravitate towards.
Speaker 1:That's the kind of content I want to be reading, the one that is really calling both men and women in to heal, to work, to work together. You know, that's what I want to believe and I think we have to believe and walk towards the world we want to create and we have to actively engage in it. This sort of like bias ignorant, you know it's all on men, it's all on patriarchy. It's just, it's ridiculous, it needs to stop. Honestly. Same thing if you're a guy and you're blaming everything on women. You know, it's just ridiculous, it needs to stop. So that's really what I want to talk about today.
Speaker 1:You know, we have an obligation doesn't matter how old you are to leave behind pieces, people, things that are better than when we found it. I believe we're the caretakers of earth, even though we haven't been over decades. It's not just about the planet, it's also about the people, everything that's alive here. I'm not getting into like woo, here I'm just being real, like if you want a better world, if you want better relationships, create them right, connect with people. And if you find people you can't connect with, who are ignorant, biased, you know going to keep blaming just, you can't. It's not your job to fix everybody. You know you got to let go of that. I know I had to right.
Speaker 1:I don't exist on the internet to change everyone's opinion. I think that would be very ignorant of me to think I'm always right too, but I really do try my best to be as unbiased as possible and to help others. It's always been a commitment of mine. I know I've fallen short plenty of times in my life, but I do think I've done a lot of good with the content, with the work I've done with this show, and I try to focus on being around people who embody those values, because I want to have more of that in my life. I want to have more people that are really looking at their own psyche, their own shadow right. It's really easy to read a self-help book and follow people on the internet and think you're doing the work. That's not the work. The work is in real time. The work is catching yourself in the thoughts, behaviors, is not being a keyboard warrior hiding behind your shadow, just trying to be validated somewhere on the internet.
Speaker 1:So how do we change things? We keep having these conversations. We look for our own internal bias. We connect with opposite sex. We connect with people we're attracted to, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually. We applaud when people are succeeding, when people are becoming better, when men and women are healing and progressing, and not just because they went to some ayahuasca retreat or did some Joe Dispenza course or whatever other thing, but they're like really healing, that they're actually not acting in the shadow, that they're not running in fear, they're not making excuses, they're actually becoming champions of their own life and therefore they're spreading that to other people. And that's the kind of stuff I'm here to celebrate. That's the kind of content I want to write to and you know, ultimately that's the kind of person I want to be and keep attempting to become. And, you know, stay in that sort of thought process. You know.
Speaker 1:I think one thing that's living in severe, chronic pain has taught me with my shoulder and I guarantee you, even though I don't talk about it a lot, I'm in pain every second of every day because of what these surgeons did to my arm and what they got away with is that I have to consistently try to let go of that person that I was physically and let go of the anger that I have towards these surgeons that are medical doctors, that multiple of them got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to cut my body open and make it worse and then shrug their shoulders and say, hmm, sorry, I don't tell you, man, here's another number to another surgeon. Right, and no matter what kind of relationship trauma you've been in, trust me, it's not as bad as like your physical body being hurt. Right, If someone like hurts your physical body in a legal manner and gets, it's just. I couldn't even wrap my head around what that would be like before this experience happened, and so the reason I'm bringing this up is because I have to rectify that on a daily, weekly basis and try to find peace with my own life. Even though my arm is hurting, like it hurts when I sit up straight, it hurts when I lay down, I can never rest.
Speaker 1:People are like, oh, do this, it's mindfulness ice bath. I'm like, dude, you don't understand. Listen, if you've been in severe, physical, chronic pain from someone cutting your limb, then please stop. I've tried it all, not that it's not worthy, I do those things, but it's just, it's not. It's not going to fix things. I'm not going to, I'm not going to grow a new arm all of a sudden unless someone helps me fix it internally. And so, again, the reason I'm bringing this up is because that's a practice of mindfulness every day. Right, I think people don't see how much work I do in that arena, even people close to my life, you know, they think they understand, but they just can't really relate to it unless they really try to practice empathy and put themselves in my shoes, which a handful do and a handful don't, you know.
Speaker 1:And I'm sharing this because if you want to be a better partner, if you want to be a better parent, if you want to attract like better, higher quality people in terms of like emotional intelligence in your life, you have to start practicing that. You have to start being better internally. You can't just keep blaming everyone else. You have shortcomings. You got to look at those things. It's not okay just to write them in a journal and say I have them. You have to start working on them. You have to get better. That's just how it is. There are no excuses in this. It is not empowering to make an excuse, it is empowering to make an action. So just remember that.
Speaker 1:As always, I appreciate you being here. I'm looking forward to the next episode. It's about to launch this Monday. This is a little weekend treat for y'all. Hopefully you enjoy it. I know I kind of rambled a little bit, but that's what the solo episodes are about, so I'll probably stop apologizing for it. Yeah, thank you for being here and I'll see you next time. This episode is brought to you by Soul Soil makers of naturally, ethically sourced ginseng skincare. Their flagship ginseng tallow balm is handcrafted in small batches in the Appalachian Mountains, blending Korean herbal wisdom with Appalachian tradition. Ginseng naturally stimulates collagen, supports anti-aging and reduces inflammation, and countless reviewers say it's helped eczema, psoriasis, acne and more. Visit soulandsoilcom and use code FEEDTHESOUL for 15% off your first order. That's S-E-O-U-L-A-N-D-S-O-I-Lcom and use the code FEEDTHESOUL.