New Year, New Man: Redefining Masculinity with Dr. Steve Poulter

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2:53Again, that's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. The mail room. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. The mail room. Welcome to the mail room. All right. Thank you, Long Transit, for getting us into the show. Welcome back to the mailroom where my producer, Jordan Runta, and I, Dr. Jesse Mills, address all aspects of men's health, separate the fact from the fiction, the trendy from the tried and true, and bring guests with all different backgrounds together to talk about it.

3:37I'm once again joined by Jordan Runta in his inimitable production style and sartorial excellence. Equal parts Brooklyn and the Great Northwoods, where Bob Dylan may have cooked up some flapjacks for you before he headed down to Delacroix. Man, I just got tangled up in blue. Jeans and flannel. Jordan, great to see you, man. How you doing? It is great to see you. Happy New Year. What a way to kick off the New Year. It's amazing. I'm so excited. It's my delight to introduce the audience to Stephen Poultry. He's an L.A.-based clinical psychologist, more than 35 years experience helping individuals and families navigate complex emotional and relational challenges.

4:13He's a dear friend. He's widely recognized for his work on men's mental health, shame, and the lasting impact of father-child relationships. I'm going to tell you, there's a lot going on to Dr. Poulter's resume. He draws on this unique, diverse background as a former law enforcement officer, a seminary graduate and ordained minister. He brings depth, clarity and real world insight to both his clinical work and public speaking. Not only can he arrest you, he can save your soul and tell you why it's worth saving and unpack what got you in this in the first place. So we're going to be very excited to figure out how this all comes together.

4:47He's also the author of eight acclaimed books, including Modern Masculinity, The Shame Factor, The Art of Successful Failure, and Father Your Son. I have read both Modern Masculinity and The Shame Factor cover to cover. And both have greatly influenced me and how I interact with my family and how I engage my patients in my practice as well. They're great reads. They deal with complex issues in a straightforward fashion. Modern Masculinity, which is one of his most recent ones, reflects over 60 ,000 of in-person clinical experiences. I did the math on that. That's 2 ,500 days or close to seven years, about half of an odyssey.

5:23Dr. Poulter speaks nationally on modern masculinity, father and son and daughter dynamics, and emotional development and healthy identity formation. And also, if that's not enough, he serves as a clinical director at Huntington Treatment Center and has the life chops to back up his work as the married father of four children. Wow. I mean, wow. I got to hear your creation story, Stephen. And you just, you got to tell me how this all comes together to make the mind, the man, the person that you are. I want an fMRI of your brain. Yeah. I want to know it all. Hey, Dr. Jesse, that is a very gracious introduction.

6:00I feel like I've lived three or four lives in this current lifetime. You know, sequentially. I joined LAPD to get some life experience. So that was how it started. It was a very arduous journey. Can I tell you one story? Just one story. We got all the time. this is you it feels like hill street blues first day on duty on swing shift three in the afternoon all of a sudden 9-1-1 shots fired and i'm with this vietnam veteran as my train officer and get this house and the woman the girlfriend has shot her boyfriend through the eye oh and exit wound comes out the back of his head now i had never seen brain tissue that magnitude and having to sit with her for eight hours to see if she'd make a spontaneous statement and my partner kind of hits me goes hey welcome to the nfl yeah that's how every month doc that was something like that i would just scratch my hand go okay that's for another world yes yes from the world it's helped me as a psychologist to understand how these things escalate right well and that's i mean again now you have to process your own trauma of seeing something like that which is early lessons as a trauma surgery resident i can think of first time i saw brains on a gurney and it was same deal i I mean, what do I do?

7:13Just kind of scoop this back up and put some staples on. But again, the reason that these people end up in our ERs is a part of what we're going to talk about today, is the mental health impact of why guys do what we do. And I'm a urologist. You know, sexual health and reproductive health is my expertise. And I get to see guys at their most vulnerable times, which I think is also what makes us get along so well together, is that that's exactly what you do, too. And mental health has definitely changed the way that I look at my practice. It's invigorated how I look at my practice, especially just with learning from you and reading your books.

7:49And one of the most important lessons I've learned after treating thousands of guys is how to listen. And I think in your book, In Modern Masculinity, it hits on so many heavy topics. But one of the most important things is, well, I don't even want to try to summarize. I want you to get into it. But it's how to listen. So let's talk about it. tell me how we unpack this issue of modern masculinity. I mean, one of the things we do on the show actually, is we try to separate this alarmism from disturbing trends to what is real, you know, what is the science. And so is this a real issue? Is there a modern men crisis?

8:22And is it different than like when you're on the force and working in Los Angeles as a police officer? Talk to us about that, Stephen. I want to say there's more awareness. I think it was always there. You know, it's like a riptide on the surface. It looks fine. You get in the water, you can drown. I think now we're aware of the riptide. We're more aware of it. I've made five statements today, Dr. Jess, I was going to read. And one of them is men are realizing they're no longer emotionally bulletproof. Yeah. That's one of the changes I've noticed. Guys are admitting we are not emotionally bulletproof.

8:55And that's what I think is different, Dr. Jess. Men now, Now, especially under age 40 or under 35, guys, they're willing to go to therapy. They don't want to do it like we did, our dads, you know, guys over 50 or 60. And that's how my book got published. I had to go to a committee. There was 15 people, five guys and 10 women. It was the women under age 40 who voted yes for the book. Because their husbands and the stigma of mental health, they wanted to address it. Wow. And the women over 50, Dr. Jesse, they all voted no. So it was the younger women say, no, no, no. We got to talk about this. Women want us to do better.

9:32Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, I think what you said is that we didn't, you know, we didn't learn this. And we've always been taught to be stoics and stoicism is having a moment. But I think people do get stoicism mixed up a little bit with just playing through pain and not really addressing the issue. So let's unpack that a little bit, Dr. Steve. Yeah. Tell me how to be a stoic and how to be a modern man, but still be vulnerable and let people in. That's fine. As I always tell guys, one of them is how to have boundaries, emotional boundaries for ourselves, knowing where we stop and start and not be like watercolors where we just kind of flow into people or we're just cut off.

10:14And having emotional boundaries is realizing we have limits. And that means being aware, doc, of what we have. But before I even get into that, I always talk about the four parts of masculinity, being compassionate, empathy, having a life plan, and you're part of something bigger. Your life has a purpose. In each one of those, there's a lot underneath it, Doc. But I find guys now, they've got to learn to like themselves. We've heard that forever, like your core self. And I call it hugging the cactus. If you hug the cactus long enough, it's going to breed humility. If you stop short, it breeds narcissism.

10:48And part of hugging the cactus, Doc, like you said, is listening. you'll listen to yourself you know the story in here you got to listen to it i like the metaphor of hugging the cactus because it it's going to hurt at first that's the work yeah you know you see all the time in your surgery the guys have recovery doing the work of recovery and i tell guys part of the work is the pain emotionally facing it yeah okay so then walk me through that we have a trauma we face the emotion are there steps of accountability to to get through that Walk me through that, Steve. One of the doctors, I kind of talk about the five steps.

11:22One of it is developing tolerance, and that's not personalizing everything. And it's not about you, but a circumstance. I tell a lot of guys, part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing that this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward. Make it part of your story or make it the whole story. I call it woundology, or you want to keep moving forward. It's a part of the fabric. It doesn't have to be the whole fabric. And, Doc, that's what I find to be the big fork in the road for a lot of people, a lot of men. Like, you see guys all the time who resent their dads.

11:56I'm always like, you have a choice to let it go and move forward or stay stuck with him. Again, I love your metaphor because I imagine being in that valley and when you're in the past, you keep walking forward, but you're going to still look back every once in a while, right? Do you look back? Do you turn into a pillar of salt or you just keep looking forward? Or do you at some point say it keeps getting farther and farther away and the trauma is buried enough now? What I tell people is we put it on the bookshelf. It doesn't control you. It's on the bookshelf. I can pull it off and read it. It's still part of my bookshelf, but it's not controlling my day-to-day living.

12:34It's not consuming you to a greater or lesser degree. I know. I love it. That bookshelf is a great metaphor too. I mean, I think it's so good. But people like women who've been sexually assaulted, it's part of your story. We're not going to erase it. You don't need amnesia. Put it on the shelf because you've read that book. You don't need to keep reading it. Right. And I tell it to men who've been molested, Doc. You see them all the time. I tell it's part of your story. Put it on the shelf. And put it on the shelf. There's a lot of work to get it up there. Yeah, I definitely, I'm going to have a case study for you.

13:08And we're going to talk about some of those things as well. So then back up to what we were saying about this, you know, this modern masculinity, it's always been there. But yeah, but is it is it being amplified? Is this a you talk about toxic masculinity, which is sort of in the social parlance these days. I'll talk about that. Is it a thing? Are people becoming worse at it? Or, you know, you read one story and it's we're kind of out of control, toxically masculine. And another story is that, you know, men are being beaten down and not allowed to be true guys anymore. And so how do you walk that tightrope of being a true guy and still being a guy?

13:51Yeah. Doc, I tell men, you got to go indoors and you got to own your life. And the reason why I think the Me Too movement got so loud, because as men, we weren't holding the brotherhood accountable. So women had to step up and call us out. Whether it be guys at work, different things like that. but toxic masculinity was Carl Jung's term. It's the dark side of masculinity that has not been resolved. Like the thief in the night, that's toxic masculinity. It's that part of your closet, you haven't opened it up yet. It controls you. I always see guys who are toxic, they're immature or they've got something they just haven't resolved.

14:29Once that gets resolved, whatever amount of time or work it takes, then there comes empathy and some compassion. Because if you have empathy, you can't hurt other people because you know what it feels like. You know what you're doing. You feel what you're doing. And that's part of the key. I talked to a lot of men about that. Yeah, so in other words, we all have the gene, if you will, for toxic masculinity. But once we're able to express, process, the next stage of that is empathy. So in other words, there are some guys that are just never going to reach empathy without some kind of help or some kind of awakening.

15:03You know, I agree with you. LeBron James has eight different coaches. We all have coaches in life. We need coaches. We need mentors. Indiana football, you'll say, did not function on its own. They have a coach. They have a system. And it works. Yeah. And that's therapy, Doc. And, like, coming to see you, there's a program. And guys get in that, in the medical program. A lot of healing comes. But you're not going to do it on your own. Right. That's probably one of the biggest things that's changed is that show Ted Lasso. Yeah. They talk about the Diamond Dogs. We all need each other. And I think isolation, I'll get into that in a little bit, Doc, but.

15:37how deadly isolation is. Wasn't Diamond Dogs a David Bowie reference too or something? It was. Yeah, tell me. A long time ago. Jordan's a Rolling Stone guy. 74. 74, the Diamond Dogs. Yeah, what a great show. What a callback. Oh, my God. The value of that. Yeah. And he also resolved the issue with his father. His father committed suicide. And he never wanted anybody to suffer the way he did. Yeah. I thought, so profound. I mean, that is one of my favorite shows and resonating shows of all time. And it's up there with cheers, with the same idea of there's this place where everybody knows your name.

16:12And you get in and that was a very untoxically masculine, although they were definitely some inappropriate moments on that show. But in general, it's that same idea of a brotherhood where you can go and be vulnerable. Doctor, that's probably the biggest word. If you ask me about modern masculinity, vulnerability is a strength. That is a superpower. Because if you're vulnerable, Doc, you have the agility to be flexible, to be understanding. You have the mental athletic ability to do a lot more. Yeah. And really reach people. That's a progression though, Steve. I mean, you know, both of us came from very toxic careers, if you think about it, right?

16:54Surgical training, you know, I couldn't show up on my first day as an intern and be vulnerable, right? I mean, I had to build up a wall. I had to be ready to be up for three days at a time, not asked to take a bath through big, never eat, never sleep. And you and law enforcement, that's the same deal. So if you look at somebody starting their career after whatever traumas got them to that point, you know, you just can't be there on day one and say, I'm going to be vulnerable now. So how do you counsel a young person in a profession about how they can be true to themselves, admit that vulnerability?

17:29with, but I mean, cause right now I can, I can walk out into my clinic and tell anybody the most vulnerable aspect of me. Cause I'm already who I am. I've already made it right. Just like you've already made it. We're established. Yeah. But how do you do this? I tell young guys, be a velvet covered brick. Okay. Because you can be soft and there's a backbone to you. And soft doesn't mean you're weak. Soft doesn't mean you're crying dark like at work or that first day when I saw that, having the backbone allows you to feel stuff. That's why I call it the velvet cupboard break. And I tell young men, being aware of your emotions doesn't mean you have to sit in them.

18:04Being aware of them is part of your health. So there's not this imbalance, the dis-ease and also boundaries, knowing when and where to be open, you know, having boundaries at work when you're younger, that was not the place. In fact, when the guys heard I was trying to get my PhD, I rolled my head back. I got every call to do a death notice. Oh, wow. Oh, that's a next level hazing. It was hazing. Because we don't want to do it. You're equipped. I'm no more equipped than you are. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's hazing and a dump at the same time. Yeah.

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22:02I wrote the book Modern Masculine almost like here's some steps on how to move forward if you're feeling stuck in your life you know I find a lot of guys blame a lot of blame in psychology looking back and blaming their parents or their wife or their circumstances and I say the way out of the valley of this fear again is responsibility what's your role in it you've got a role in it you're not innocent you know a good relationship tennis game dog takes two to play you don't know 100 of your side of the court but you only own 50 of it right doctor i'm sure you have men come in they get divorced and they say they never saw it coming they had no idea and i go that's not true you didn't want to know but it was there so what are your tips for awareness then and i i always talk about this in my practice yeah somebody comes in to me is i ask them when do you think the wheels came off you know when did you when did you stop getting a normal erection when did you stop you know when did the weight start going on when did the wheels come off how do you give somebody a mental health insight for when those wheels come off that if anybody's listening right now yeah and they're thinking i think i got a great marriage you know uh but dr steve says you know maybe i don't so give me some awareness tips i tell guys for instance you haven't had sex with your wife in seven years doc i heard that last week before christmas i go what did you think?

23:22Well, we just didn't. I go, but eight years? Seven years? I can get seven weeks, but it's a denial. The other thing I ask guys, what got you to come in here? It's pain. And you see it in your book, you know, your shoulder's falling off, your penis isn't working. Yeah. Physical and emotional pain moves us, unfortunately. Yeah. A lot of guys go to therapy doctor after their wife leaves them. She begs, she begs, she begs. No, no, I don't believe in it. then they get served at work and I get a call to meet them at 7am the next morning. And usually 90 % of the time she's not coming back. And that's Jonathan Gutman's research.

23:58She's not coming back. Yeah. If your wife wants to go to therapy or your girlfriend, go. It's a form of love. It's a form of compassion, support, go. You're going to learn something. Let me ask you this then. What if you have an evolved, empathetic male that you're seeing in therapy because he's getting there before the problem gets out of control and he goes to his partner and says i think we should go to therapy and his partner says no i'm good what do you do with that what do you do with somebody that has a reluctant partner to to put in the work as they say i'd say meet her where she's at find a way to connect with her and many times the guy the therapy comes across doctor like you're going to the principal's office like you're in trouble and you've got to go to the principal's office when When you have a reluctant partner, there's a reason why they're scared.

24:48There's something they're scared of. Genuinely, emotionally. Maybe because marriage might be in serious trouble. And the other partner doesn't want to admit it. Being calm and understandable will get you much further. Right. Getting your partner to open up. There's a reason why she doesn't want to go. Or she wouldn't be with you. Together you have kids, you got married. There's a reason why she's with you. I always tell the guy, you know why she doesn't want to go. What do you think it might be? Talk to her about it. You know when to talk to her. You know when not to talk. Yeah. Doctor, it's a real delicate.