The Men’s Group: Snippet #2
“Darcy [the protagonist] felt ill at ease at the thought of spending the next two hours with a group of men he didn’t know. His heart beat at the speed of boiling water. His hands shook like they had the time he’d drank too many cappuccinos at a cafe in Seattle before breaking up with an auburn-haired beauty named Rhea. In his stomach there seemed to be a black hole sucking his insides into nothingness. This wasn’t a new feeling for Darcy. It was a familiar unease, the kind that made him want to run away.” - The Men’s Group, Draft One (2017)
I remember the first time I walked into the Dudes of Disruption Men’s Group in March 2016. I hid behind an heir of superiority. I’d already been doing personal development work for almost nine months and had experienced a ton of breakthroughs. In my mind, I was there to observe and learn what a men’s group was like so I could write mine and Nick’s novel.
I didn’t feel like running away, though that internal black hole is a sensation I know well, but I did feel uneasy about spending the next two and a half hours with a group of men I didn’t know. I put up the wall of superiority in order to protect myself and give myself an out from being truly vulnerable.
What mattered was my unease. That was what I could learn the most from. In fact, I still feel uneasy when in a group of men I don’t know. I fear judgment, fitting in, being understood, and connecting with them. Like Darcy, I often want to run away and hide.
It’s normal to feel that kind of social pressure, especially for someone like me who can be shy in larger groups. Learning this and practicing different ways of engaging with a larger group (especially of men) has been one of my opportunities in the Dudes of Disruption. That’s the wonderful thing about men’s groups: they give you an opportunity to practice what will most impact your life. Oftentimes, that unease is a sign that there's something to develop there.
But couldn’t it be an intuitive feeling that it’s something to avoid instead, you might ask. In certain circumstances, absolutely. Unease can tell you a lot about whether you feel safe or not. Often, not feeling safe is an indication you should leave. However, there are circumstances where it’s helpful to be judicious with your intuition, especially when you’re looking to grow and learn.
The Comfort Zone, as its name suggests, is where you feel safe. Outside of it, in the Learning Zone, things don’t feel as safe. Your intuition in circumstances where you’re purposefully choosing to step into the Learning Zone might be shouting at you to get back as fast as you can. It’s important to listen to your intuition, and even discover where it’s coming from, but also important to step forward in spite it.
David Peterson, who co-facilitates the fantastic Accelerating Coaching Excellence program with David Goldsmith, said something fascinating about intuition in the ACE Journey to Mastery. He said that intuition is based on our past experiences. So I can trust my intuition when I’m in a familiar experience, but when I step into an emergent experience that’s new and different, it’s possible that my intuition will be out of date. Intuition is information. You get to try on that information and choose how to use it.
It’s fair to say in the snippet above that Darcy’s intuition is telling him to get out of there and not go to the men’s group. Based on his past experiences in groups of men, this intuition may be trying to protect him from feeling belittled, made fun of, out of place, or wrong. That’s where the unease might be coming from. He doesn’t feel safe stepping into this new place and his body is manifesting those familiar uneasy sensations. What he chooses to do with that, of course, is what the rest of the novel is about.
What are the physical sensations you experience when you’re uneasy?