Your Transformation Station - 80. Highly Sensitive Men William Allen

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

(William Allen),  author of "Confessions of a Sensitive Man". Traditional masculine roles often include men who don't cry, express outward emotions, whether that is sadness or joy, but rather are expected to be "stoic and unemotional people". The notion of men being openly emotional is a breakthrough idea that is still being adopted worldwide, and gender stereotypes still play a factor in our cultures. https://www.ytsthepodcast.com/s3e80 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yes, I am emotional or I'm non-diagnosed bipolar or I am just completely crazy and fucking that's just okay. But there's so many different factors that we can explore. Exactly. And see, that's the important thing too. You were just saying it's internal dialogue, but has it been confirmed in the external world, right? Yes. And that's really what doing something like writing a book or like you're doing, doing a podcast. you actually can do that.

You can get external validation for some things that you think. Some of those things may not be true. They just may be true in your head because you had never tested them in the world before. So that's really one of the good things about externalizing some of these things. And that way you can get some kind of confirmation. How can you create a transformation in others

if there's no transformation in yourself? Join your host, Greg Favis. As your voice on the hard truths of leadership, your transformation station connecting clarity to the cutting edge of leadership. As millennials, we can establish change, not only ourselves, but through organizational change, bringing transparency that goes beyond the organization and reflects back into ourselves. Extracting, actionable advice, and alternative perspectives. that will take you outside of yourself. We are live here on Facebook Live.

First off, William Allen, welcome to your transformation station. Thank you. Good to be here. I hear you have a grandfather clock in the background. That's going to be fun for editing purposes. Do you take it out in the room? I do that. No, no worries.

stores. I like to try to keep the recording authentic with my witty humor and just hyper. Gotcha. I know a lot of people at a dealer podcast who would get very particular about stuff. So I want to meet their requirements. Hell yes. No. William, so you have an interesting approach with men in particular as far as it's not about just being authentic, but more about really expressing. the emotions that are inside, can you go into depth with how men should be handling themselves today? I think it's kind of morphed over the years into this ideal that we have in our Western culture, particularly, of men being stoic and unemotional and completely logical and sort of ejecting some of the most human characteristics that we all have, both male and female. on. That's being able to express emotion.

And one of the things, because I write about sensitive, you know, I'm a highly sensitive man as well, it's a personality trait. It's not some defect or disorder, is that it's very difficult for highly sensitive people to hide, mask, whatever, their feelings. A lot of times, their emotions, how they express things, how they perceive the world in a much richer way than a lot of times some of the other people in the world do. And this personality characteristic is, oh, about 20% of the human population, both male and female. So it's not something that's a female thing or a male thing.

It's both. And this 20% of the population, it's my conjecture that are, especially the highly sensitive men, are going to be the ones who help model. there seems to be an openness and kind of embracing this idea of why don't we look at what we've got as far as masculinity is concerned? And maybe it's time to start redefining that to really fit our time and our era as opposed to what might have worked 100 years ago or a thousand years ago. Let's look at what we have today and things have changed. Do you know that as well as I do? So there needs to be a kind of a re-look, I think, and maybe trying to redefine it in current modern terms.

And I think in a lot of ways, it actually could be a liberation movement for men. We're so bound up by these old conventional terms that it's unfortunate. A lot of men are not allowed to be fully human and express themselves fully humanly. So that's kind of the background on me and where I'm coming from, and especially when I'm talking about masculinity. Because I see masculinity like this. And a lot of men get put off by this because, you know, you start saying masculinity, and immediately the walls go up and they're afraid that you're talking about being a man.

And that's not what I'm talking about. Being a man is one thing. It's a biological thing and it's a hormonal thing. And so many things that go along with being. being physically a man. But then there's this thing we call masculinity, which is like a coat. Well, let me stop you right there because you're going to turn this into a monologue. I was going to let it go a little further, but you have a lot of stuff we got to address

before we go any further, William. So I do appreciate this. First off, yes, you're damn right. We do have something that's coming up as far as a new type of man, a new type of individual, a leader, however people want to call it. I've been sensing it ever since I was little. I could just see the separation between the older mentality where the original mentality of people being hard or just grinding through it and not having to express emotion that happy wife, happy life mentality. God, that pisses me off, just bringing that up.

I hate that. Say it for some reason. It just popped in my head. But that lifestyle, that type of individual is starting. starting to go away. And I feel like there's a lot to do with, I feel like the virtual side of things with people being actually disconnected, kind of punched it to a hundred. For people that have been the more self-reflected kind of people, is what I'm referring to before this virtual COVID come came in. With those types of people, I was one of those types. For being

constantly in my own head reflecting and reflecting, I feel like that is the very root cause of how this is starting to become what you are explaining. And now the fact that we are just noticing it is the fact that more men in particular, also women, but this focus, we're just talking about men, they have been reflecting and looking at their lives. And now they realize that I got some shit that's fucked up that I haven't dealt with. I'm an actual dick to people that I talk to. And it's a

whole new way of living life because it's when you're at home on the computer at work, you're now facing your own perceptions on what you think they think of you. Correct. And you can't even tell. So that's just the

worst part. But with you, let's get a little snapshot of your background so we can kind of introduce you a little bit so people know your expertise and what you have been studying, what you've been doing. Okay. I worked in corporate America for probably the bulk of my career. I was an IT manager at a large financial institution.

Retired about 10 years ago and started my own business, which was focused more in the area of my undergraduate degree, which is in psychology. Nice. I was doing what I called hypnosis coaching or hypno-coaching, and I was doing neurofeedback training with people. And I loved it. I thought it was a great thing to be, and I really enjoyed it. And it was during that time I started writing about sensitive men.

I felt like that's an area that was not really spoken too much about and started writing my own blog. and over the course of a couple of years, I had enough articles together and enough material that I wound up writing a book, Confessions of a Sensitive Man, which was my take on my experiences growing up from 50, 60, 70s in the southern U.S., especially because of the masculine culture that's down there and not fitting in and having to deal with that over the course of my life. So I wrote the book. I continue to write the blog to this day.

I do a lot of speaking about this on podcast, which is an excellent forum for getting out there since we don't have the opportunity to go out and speak in public as much as we used to. Yeah. So with your background, like, did you experience, now let's not go into that just yet. For this, for the sensitive man approach, for you studying researching that. Now, is that based off of looking at it from, because when I hear that, what comes to mind is astrology, and I've looked into it a little bit with my significant other. And we will go into the different personality types by the month and the year. And I'm a Pisces.

So I'm the one that's supposed to be intuitive also connected with my emotions. And then the other ones, I don't really see that. So are you utilizing that as the essence, none of that? And as far as why is it just coming out now? Well, I mean, this has been a personality characteristic of the history of mankind. It's only been in the last probably 40 years or so, maybe 50, where they started noticing this through psychological research. Dr. Elaine Aaron wrote a book about high sensitivity back in the mid-90s, and that's when it became a term that was accepted in the scientific community. So although I appreciate what you're talking about, some of the stuff that you and your partner have gone through, this is a valid scientific, evidence-based piece of research that's been done.

And the thing about sensitivity is it's more about environmental sensitivity, that is how. you relate to your environment. And, you know, that's basically the genesis. I try not to stray too far off of that. I mean, I have a lot of interests that are fairly eclectic when it goes to things like what you're talking about. But I try to stay within the sort of the boundaries that Dr. Aaron is set up about the scientific research that she's done is being done right now to support this trait. And it is an accepted trait in the psychology community. So it's not something that is all, you know, out and left field somewhere.

So that's supporting the nature versus nurture? Well, yeah, it does both. I mean, this is a genetic trait. It's not something you're born with. And, of course, the nurture part of it is that part where you interface with the environment. That does affect this as well. Okay. And in your research and understanding, we'll definitely get into,

to your book. I take weird approaches to try to take this conversation down different avenues. Well, go wherever you want to go. I'm here to answer questions. That's good. Excellent. Thank you so much. So do you feel like our social upbringing has a influence on our emotional aspect, whether it's we did get the proper care or did not, we still feel like that is a variable in how we are today. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I've seen so many people over the years that I've known personally who've had childhood is a very important period in our lives. I mean, not only we're learning in the first five or six years, most of the stuff we need to know to be able to socialize, to be able to get out and interface in the world. We're also learning a lot of things about ourselves. It's where our personality start to form and how we feel about ourselves and go out in the world and so forth. One of the interesting things about it is that, sensitivity when I was talking about is a spectrum thing. It's like there are those people in the high end that are highly sensitive, which again, I said it was 20% of the population. But everybody has a certain degree of sensitivity, right, that they experience. There's a big middle, if you think

of a bell curve, and then there's another end on the other side where people are less sensitive to the environment. And they're pluses and minuses for both. What they found out about highly sensitive people is that if the environment they're raised in has a profound effect on what they turn out to be. If it's a positive nurturing environment, they actually turn into very awesome people, more so than any other group in responding to a positive nurturing environment. If they are not in a positive nurturing environment, they become prone to neuroses and going into kind of a wilted state because that's not what you know with the kind of nurturing they needed so yeah you're absolutely right about that it it affects us profoundly all people in fact yeah you're referring with um harry harlowe when the nurturing uh wire mother versus the actual mother with the reous monkeys

yeah right as far as excellent yes and uh with being um in the moment as men and being emotional that's that's a good thing so if it's based off i want to hold that one okay i can take that one but i got to address this one thing because you mentioned it twice 20% you've mentioned that with the population what is your uh your source to that claim well it's doctor and various studies have shown it's an estimate of shit what am i lose uh it's i've seen it as high estimate is about 20% you know when you're talking about the human population you're talking a million and a half people have this um can you repeat that one more time we had a little bit of a an issue there okay well as i was saying the estimates are between 20% and sometimes as high as 30 and that's coming

from their estimates based on the population what they've observed um and so you know that's about a billion and a half human beings on a planet, high sensitivity is characteristic of my personality. Shoot. Okay. Hold on. I'm experiencing an internet issue for some reason. William, so with your book, tell us a little bit about that and what your book

address and what's something that we can really take away from it. I know it's a lot of questions there. Okay. Well, I'll kind of summarize it too. I wrote two books, right? Original one that I published about 2020 was basically an experiential perspective book. It was a story of my life and how I dealt with things, some of the things that I learned about being highly sensitive. And it's a good perspective book on high sensitivity and men, okay?

The book that I'm just releasing now is kind of a guidebook. It's what I consider to be like a trail guide, you know. You still have to walk the path, but it's nice to have a trail guide with you. And I touch on a lot of things that affect highly sensitive people. Some things like, you know, dealing with the sort of the crap you get, especially as a highly sensitive man at dealing with the world of people who have this ideal of masculinity that doesn't jive very well with sensitivity. I talk about how you can find the right work environment and the right livelihood for yourself, because those things are really important for sensitive people. The environment means a hell of a lot.

Relationships, how you deal with some of the strong emotions that you have, how to learn to regulate your emotions. I think that's one of the things that people, when they see a highly sensitive person, and that they don't often know how to react to them, especially if they're in a kind of an emotional state. And learning to regulate those emotions a little bit better is some of the things that we need to do as highly sensitive people.

I really emphasize brain training. I think this is a real important thing because, you know, as I was saying earlier, I had a business and neurofeedback. There are other ways of doing that, but I thought it was one of the best ones for me. So there are a lot of practical skills that I put into the book with my own experiences and some things that I suggest that I have learned

over the years. Okay. Now, with what you're describing, for me, I have its non-diagnosis, but I definitely, looking at my family and myself and how I am emotionally, I'm bipolar, not clinically diagnosed, but through my actions, through my understanding, my own personal. research. If I were to go into the doctor's office right now, they'd say, yes, you're 100%. There's no without a doubt. Now, the reason why I'm bringing that up is that linked to individuals who are highly sensitive? Let's say that there's not a cause and effect relationship, okay, but the idea is that

sometimes highly sensitive people do show greater signs of depression. anxiety, particularly. I don't know. There's been studies that tried to link schizophrenia and autism and a whole bunch of other things to high sensitivity and they couldn't come up with a relationship between the two. However, you know, as I said earlier, if you grow up in an environment, you're a highly sensitive person and you grow up in a very caustic, abusive environment. Yes. You're naturally going to have some downside to that. You're going to have symptoms of perhaps some neuroticism as well.

But they're not, they're not necessarily correlated directly with each other in that regard. Okay. That's, it was something that was kind of bother me a little bit. Like, what if that is linked to that? Because I've been through so much different shit.

I don't need to go through it on every fucking show. People don't want to hear it. Right. After a while, it's like, Greg, shut up. Tell us something different other than your past.

It's getting emotional. I hear you. So with, With your writing, what actually inspired you to go down this path in the first place? Well, to be honest with you, I, you know, I had a lot of questions. And there wasn't a lot of material out about specifically about high sensitivity in men. And so the two issues of masculinity and being, as we call it, HSP, highly sensitive person, they kind of wrap together for most highly sensitive men.

At some point, you start to question, are you a man? Are you masculine enough because you're showing emotion or because you see things different? Or you're more intuitive than logical or you're more creative than a lot of people are. We often associate that with being a feminine or femininity or feminine traits. And so that becomes a question. And so I wanted to dig deeper into this. And I wanted to write something that expressed that concern. And that's really what the first book was about.

And I've gotten a lot of very positive feedback from people who read the book that said, you know, you really nailed it. You really got what we're thinking. So that was one of the reasons, Greg, that I wanted to do that is because I wanted to make sure that, you know, this voice was being raised. These questions are being raised and try to get some answers. So you're referring to yourself. This was something that's been lurking inside you. Yes. And as it turns out, very often, you know, you find that once you test a hypothesis that you have internally in the external world, a lot of times you're right.

Sometimes you're wrong, but a lot of times you're right. And in this particular case, I hit a nerve with a lot of highly sensitive men who felt the same way, which is validating. of ways. And there's more books coming and there's more people kind of being aware of the trait now that there weren't before. And I think more books need to be written and more people need to be standing up about this. See, I like this because there's so many factors that can actually impact that. I mean, we can look at internal dialogue. If I keep telling myself over and over, God, Greg, you you fucking suck. You just don't know what you're doing in life. You literally can't do shit right you're not a man fucking i see people out there doing what they're doing and look at

you so that if i'm telling myself every day that isn't linked if that could be linked or it could be linked to something else when yes i am emotional or i'm non-diagnosed bipolar or i am just completely crazy and fucking that's just okay but there's so many different factors that we can explore exactly And see, that's the important thing, too. You were just saying it's internal dialogue, but is it been confirmed in the external world, right? Yes.

And that's really what, doing something like writing a book or like you're doing, doing a podcast, you actually can do that. You can get external validation for some things that you think. Some of those things may not be true. They just may be true in your head because you had never tested them in the world before. So that's really one of the good things

about externalizing some of these. these things. And that way you can get some kind of confirmation, you know, and find out for yourself, you know, a lot about yourself. Yes. Like that's what the whole point of fucking our parents is to help us put us on the right track. And we use what was been given. And that's how we navigate and negotiate life. And that is what you are using. So we, you're resonating. That's awesome. Is there anything else you want to share with our audience about your book and definitely I want to get in some takeaways here, right? So we have your last question and then we'll go into closing. So is there anything else that you want to get out with your writing?

Yeah. Let me just say this. There'll be a percentage of your audience that this will resonate with. They'll understand what I'm talking about, even if, you know, without all the detail. I would say if you suspect that you might be a highly sensitive person, go to Dr. Aaron's website, it's hsperson.com, and take the test. It's the only test that's out there. And it's a simple question-answer test. Take that and get yourself educated about it. If you test high enough on it, you recognize that. Whatever you do, don't feel like you have to suffer alone. There are a lot of people

out there who have this trait. Again, it's not a disorder, but a lot of times, you feel isolated and so forth. And if you're a male, you know, pick up my books and take a look and read through them and see if it doesn't resonate with you as well. Excellent. So let's transition over here. I just have a couple questions real quick. What are an act, what's an action item for our audience, regardless male or female?

What can they do right now to get in touch with their internal? dialogue and just kind of get level minded. Well, you know, I think for, because of the topic we've been talking about, largely been about sensitivity. Whether you are sensitive or whether you will know somebody in your life who's sensitive. I mean, when you talk about two out of ten people in the world have this trait and this characteristic, you'll know somebody. So do a little research on there.

Some great sites. All I got to do is Google, highly sensitive person or sensory processing. sensitivity, Google that, find some sites and get some information and start learning about it. If you're highly sensitive or you suspect that, do the same, but do it with a little bit more depth and purpose in it because you'll start to realize that some of these things that you've been carrying around with yourself all these years are perfectly normal in that sense. and it's a kind of a self-validation as well. You know, you were talking a minute ago about internal dialogue, thinking this way or that.

Maybe you didn't get the best upbringing. Maybe your parents didn't validate you, and maybe you were sensitive. This would be a good time to start exploring ways of finding validation through meeting with other people and reading books. And there's lots of webinars that are out there specifically for this trade. And after this podcast, if you hear, a pharmaceutical company come on the air and then all of a sudden it's linked to you being highly sensitive. And the next thing you know, you're trying out different drugs. You're down a fucking path. You don't want to be. Don't take that. We all have different levels of emotion that can impact us. But definitely look into it because there could be something much more that you haven't explored or you're ignoring and it's finally coming up to bite you in the ass.

Exactly. And I would agree with you. I wouldn't be surprised at some point down the road. The big pharma gets in on on this and starts labeling it a disorder. But I think the things that are most important, they already have in ways because of anxiety and things like that. They've got that base covered pretty well. I like to think of it in the natural terms, meditation, doing things like brain training, which is natural. You can do in variety of ways. And just keep it. yourself educated about how you are and how you are and that kind of thing. And you can navigate this world without having to be drug dependent. Beautiful. Now, William, you've already mentioned to our audience where they can go to learn more about your book and your writing. Do you have anything else? You want to leave our audience with any more action items, takeaways, whatever you like, the floor is yours. Well, I would say if you want to find out more about me and what I'm doing and how things are going, there's also going to be a highly sensitive man movie documentary.

It's going to be made this year, 2022. I'm real excited about that. But you could go to the sensitive man.com. That's my website. And there's an opportunity to get signed up to a newsletter. We'll keep you up to date on things that are happening. links to my books and also a blog that I think is pretty doggone interesting. Definitely.

I'll be sure to link that in the show notes, in the stream, and anywhere else where we can get this bad boy out there. Fantastic. Beautiful. Thank you, William, for coming on your transformation station. Thank you for having me, Greg. I appreciate it. You've been listening to your transformation station, your voice on the hard truths of leadership. We hope you've enjoyed the show. We hope you've gotten some useful and practical information.

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