#22 | Will Adolphy (P1) - A Therapist’s Journey Through Mental Health Struggles, Toxic Masculinity, and Self-Discovery

0:00:00 - Speaker 1

2016-17 that I was suffering. I'm far braver than I thought I was. That was a big surprise To stimulate me. You know my phone A dopamine hit. A dopamine hit, yes, exactly.

0:00:14 - Speaker 2

You're the Dolphy. Thank you so much for coming on, my friend.

0:00:18 - Speaker 1

Thanks for having me, guys.

0:00:19 - Speaker 2

Awesome, I'd love to start us off just saying can you tell everyone a bit about you, a bit about your story?

0:00:24 - Speaker 1

Sure, well, well, I so currently I'm a psychotherapist in private practice and I do that three days a week.

I also go around schools, I'm a public speaker, share my story and look at it through the lens of kind of masculinity, something called the man box, which I'm sure will cover lag culture and mental health, how I've essentially gone on a journey from having panic attacks every day at one point, um, not being able to leave my room, and going through severe bouts of depression, depression, suicidal ideation, and then where I am now, um, which is very much still on a journey, but of course, I'm sure that will always be the way, but I'd say that now my, my mental health is in a very different place and I've been surprised by, yeah, the fact that I was even able to stabilize, but also the joy, I think, that has started to come into my life and just the excitement and the love of life, um, and so I'm, I'm there to ultimately share that. And yeah, that's me professionally, um, obviously there's a personal side as well. Um, I love jujitsu and dance. I don't know, yeah, I don't know if you guys tried some.

0:01:46 - Speaker 2

I have tried it once. You see it all the time, but I feel like it's quite a trendy thing at the moment. It looks wicked though it is really trendy, isn't it?

0:01:54 - Speaker 1

I think Joe Rogan and the UFC they've made it really sort of popular I think Russell Brand as well is another guy that spoke about it on a podcast ages ago of popular I think Russell Brand as well as another guy that spoke about it on a podcast ages ago but no, I'd say, yeah, jiu-jitsu, running um and baking and starting to really, uh, get into my football again actually, which is interesting, uh, but maybe we can get to that later because it's been something that I am reclaiming, like these old video games as well. I've just started to watch fallout recently and I thought that was fantastic.

0:02:28 - Speaker 2

We talked about that. Chauvin's behind the camera. I know we talked about that the other day. Great series, I loved it, I loved it.

0:02:34 - Speaker 1

So now I'm kind of like for my 30 if I bought myself an xbox and playing fallout again and it's just like how can I have fun? I think that's where I'm at now. I'm like how can I get into my play again and start having fun like I used to?

0:02:49 - Speaker 2

yeah, I love that. I love to throw it back to the start and we're going to talk about everything you just spoke about there. But going back to the start, what was childhood like for you? And growing up? Because you're Surrey based as well, aren't you? Yeah, yeah.

0:03:01 - Speaker 1

I grew up in Surrey and went to school in Surrey, and that's how Joe and I got way back and, yeah, I grew up the way I describe my household was very up and down. One day there'd be shouting and laughing. The next day it'd be just calm, calm. Another day it would be chaos. So, yeah, very unpredictable, I think.

I also have to mention I had 19 surgeries um 19 surgeries yeah, yeah, by the time I was 12, I had 19 surgeries, so I had ear problems, it's something called a closteatoma and it's this non-cancerous skin growth that can be fatal if it's not operated on. And so I spent a lot of time in the hospital, and it wasn't until I started to read some of the literature before I trained to be a therapist about trauma, where I even started to piece together that that would have impacted my nervous system, right. So there was that part of my childhood, and there was also the volatile nature of the atmosphere, right, this lack of safety that I felt at times, and the way I describe it. It manifested itself as this activation of my nervous system what might happen next? So, hypervigilance, even now on the train on the way over here, I'm noticing, I'm getting activated, I'm in a highly stimulated environment, I breathe, I'm just regulating the whole time. I've got my crystal here as well. That kind of grounds me, um.

So, yeah, it's coming to terms with, I think, how my environment actually impacted me, and I think, developmentally. There was the house, there was the, the kind of violence between myself and my dad. Um, it was explosive, right, and it was a very charged environment. There was a lot of dysregulation and I actually dealt with this by moving out into my garden. So when I was 13 to 14, I took over my dad's office in the garden and I just set up my my safety den there where I played Xbox, I smoked weed and, yeah, I just kind of distracted myself, I'd say, from what was going on at school and what was going on at home and yeah.

0:05:41 - Speaker 3

If I could, if I take you back to the school days, because obviously that's where you and I would have met and sort of socialised together. We weren't necessarily in the same friendship group, but if I could take you back there to a time where certainly the times I saw you were parties on the weekends and stuff and you would always be in the centre of it all. You'd be stuck in first there, last out, really getting in amongst it the social.

You're picturing it now. So with that, would that have been part of that distraction for you, where you'd get stuck I won't go into the details, but throwing yourself in the deep end, whether it be the socializing, the drinking, everything else that comes with that as well. Was that a large part of that for you as well, in terms of a coping mechanism to sort of try and forget it's not happening at home?

0:06:28 - Speaker 1

Yeah, you know what, joe? It's funny because I think if I was speaking to you when we were 15, 16, and this is in contrast to when you opened up about your mental health I would have been really nervous around you, because I saw you and any of the lads that were in the rugby team. I really liked you guys and I wanted to be friends with you, and that's why I think I was trying to impress you and everyone by running into walls and you know, doing the drink and doing the drink, you know drinking, um, and this relates it kind of relates to something that really helped me to make sense of it, which is what was I trying to prove and what was I doing back then? And it's called the man box, this concept, this idea, right, and in the man box it holds all the rules that we have to follow in order to be real men. Right, and some of the common ones that people are now speaking about more regularly is be stoic. You should be stoic at all times, right? So keep your emotions contained. But there was another one as well. You know, be strong, be a protector, be a provider. These are the ones that people tend to talk about quite a lot.

But I realized that, given my frame at that time, I didn't really feel like I matched the mold for a rugby lad. So one thing I felt like I did have was banter right, or being a nutter. Let's say um, and that's my word. I'm using that word to, I guess, critique my former self, but I did run into walls and that's dangerous, very dangerous. Um, yeah, and there were times, joe, where I tell this one story, where I was at, um, a nightclub in guilford, um, on a monday night. Yeah, I know, you know, uh, the name that we're thinking of MNG to anyone that was clubbing back then.

And I remember there was this other boy there who I really wanted to impress and I decided to go up to another complete stranger and get physical, basically start on this person, prove how tough I was right and when I look back, I think that's what I was trying to do a lot of the time. I was Right and when I look back, I think that's what I was trying to do a lot of the time. I was really trying to, because I felt that level of insecurity. Within the only time I really felt some sense of ease was when everyone's attention, as you pointed out, was on me, right? So if I'm running into a wall, chances are people were looking at me at the party and then people were talking about me and it was the same. This night in the club started on, this person ended up in cuffs outside the nightclub and I remember being in these cuffs just thinking, not thinking anything, actually feeling a sense of relief, like like I could take a breath, like wow, look. And then years later I hear something like wow, look. And then years later I hear something it's better to have negative attention than no attention, right? And that really hit home with me because I thought, wow, well, I pretty much got expelled from school. I don't know if you know this, um, but yeah, on my last day of school, I decided to bring in a rope. It was called pranks day, um, and I'd been in a conflict with this younger boy two years below throughout the year, we just intimidating one another constantly. He stole our rugby ball. I went in for a very heavy challenge in football, that sort of intimidation tactics. And then on my last day, uh, I brought in the rope, I got everyone from my year to come in and we were just going to tie this boy up and, as I say it now it does. It sounds really shocking and when I say it to these students at school, they also feel shocked and I was lucky that one of his friends came in, defused the situation and I also said a racist slur to the guy that came in. The school were done with me by that point.

Luckily, no know, I'm going through recovery, right, and I joined a 12 step group and that was my first moment of working on myself, let's say going inward. This is four years ago now and I'm going through my inventory, which is step four. Right, you write down every resentment that you've ever had, every fear you've ever had, every excuse me, every harm I know it's very sensitive yeah, every harm I've ever been involved with. And it was in that moment with my sponsor where I really started to come to terms and access the guilt from that day and some shame and, yeah, it was really powerful and it took me that long because it just felt so normal, like it was for banter. I reached out to some of the guys to apologize and one of them said he thought we were joking.

I was joking by reaching out, say sorry, which was also really interesting to me because I thought, well, if the guys that were overtly harmed in this story also think it's kind of part of being young and there's a normalization around it, then I can't see it changing when my son goes to school with. I have a son, you know, and that's what I'm attempting to do now, really, which is go in there and start a conversation, using my own story as a way, and ask these questions like what was I doing that day? Why did everyone from my year join in? Why was I spearheading it? What was I trying to prove?

0:12:12 - Speaker 3

I'm sorry.

0:12:14 - Speaker 2

I got so many questions.

0:12:16 - Speaker 3

You remind me a lot of myself in many ways, because I was also that guy who who struggled at school for a lot of the part and I felt like I could play this avatar to overcommentate for my insecurity.

And I remember doing exactly that a couple years ago. I was listening to a podcast whatever I was listening to and on the back of it I thought I need to message these people who I was really nasty to at school, and it really didn't really click until genuinely my late 20s mid to late 20s I thought I was a dick to some people at school. Whether I meant to do it or not, I really hurt some feelings and when I did so, some of them got back to me and said, mate, like I didn't, I don't remember it. Some of them got back to me and said, wow, like I'm really unexpected, but thank you so much for apologizing. What? How did it make you feel going back to that same person and sending those messages to the people that you might have heard at school? How did it feel to do that?

0:13:01 - Speaker 1

it was scary. Yeah, it was scary, and it felt like I wanted to acknowledge it in some way. You know, I wanted to say that I see what I was a part of in some way, and, and I wanted to share that I there is something going on within me that is called guilt or shame, and one way of thinking about it is I love this description of negative emotions and, for those that are listening, I'm doing a runny bunny rabbit.

Yeah, there's this guy called um Marshall Rosenberg, who created non-violent communication, and it's a real incredible way of having courageous conversations with people. So if you get activated by a friend or something and you feel like you want to have that sort of conversation with them, but it's really scary, right, you don't really know how to have it because we're not taught how to have these conversations. And if we've grown up in an environment where there's been lots of conflict at home, then we're going to be really scared of having a conversation where we express how we feel in regards to someone else. Um, so he talks about feeling a sweet bad, right, right, and what I mean by that is I didn't want to be paralyzed by shame after what had happened and this is just one moment that I look back on and with this sense of regret, uh, I don't want to be paralyzed with shame, but I want to feel some level of guilt or shame. But if it's a sweet bad bad, then the level to which I'm feeling it is not overwhelming. So it's guiding me, right.

It's actually a signal from me or, if you're spiritually inclined, my higher self saying hey, that path that you're on, um, that's not where you need to go, you need to go over here. But I can only receive that guidance if I'm in tune with the feeling and feeling it. And so, as I'm writing this book as well, about my experiences growing up and going into what is now being called the manosphere, I am it's. It's a cathartic experience because I'm going back, like you said, and even reaching out to these, uh, other people that were involved. It does bring up the feeling, but I know that if, if the feeling comes up and it's going to guide me, then I will feel it. I need to feel it.

0:15:31 - Speaker 2

Love that right, I just want to touch on the manuscript. I know we're going to talk about it. I'm just so interested by what's the actual definition, yeah, of manosphere, for people listening right, so it's a phrase being used now.

0:15:43 - Speaker 1

It's an umbrella term to describe a collection of spaces online that have some correlation to men's rights. Um, however, these spaces are very fragmented. There's not there is a through line, I would say but these are spaces that are being called pickup artist spaces. There's the red pill community. There's Andrew Tate in there, a figure that I'm sure a lot of your listeners have heard of. There's incels, which is called involuntary celibate, and again, they all take up different sort of spaces. They have different views on the world. It's not like each community agrees, and you're looking at forums, you're looking at influences, so it's a complex time to understand. But one thing I will say, as someone who has been kind of immersed in some of the content that's now being called manosphere content, is that I think what pulls it together is that it becomes like a container for men that are carrying a lot that's unresolved within them and I could put forward why I think that's the case right, we've mentioned the repressing of emotions and it becomes a container for them to express that resentment right Towards women, towards the world, fundamentally, towards political correctness or what is being called wokeism, and so I had a lot of resentment within me towards the world for not recognizing at that time in 2016, 17, 17 that I was suffering because I was going through, you know, suicidal ideation I was.

It was at that point I mentioned at the start I couldn't really couldn't feel like I could leave my room at one point.

So, understandably, there's a lot of boys and men that are in that space that are feeling confused about terms like male privilege, for example, and that's kind of where I'm at right now is like how do I get involved in the conversation to bring in empathy for the boys and the men that are in the manosphere, but also where that resentment towards men is coming from, because it's not just come out of thin air, right? So it's that's the key word empathy. And you know, to bring it back to the school stuff we were talking about there, I think the reason why I was so mean to people at school at times was because I didn't have empathy for myself and I didn't have empathy for the people there. If I did, if I had a fraction of it for those boys, particularly for that boy that I tied up on that day, there's no way I would have been caught up in that, but it gets lost within a culture.

0:18:24 - Speaker 3

I love, that that's really nice. I wanted to take you back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago, when you mentioned recovery yeah do you, if you don't mind, asking what that entails for you and what that was about, and what exactly your own recovery for?

0:18:39 - Speaker 1

yeah, of course. Yeah. So, uh, I went into, uh, I had a kind of dependent relationship with alcohol. I did go into and you might remember the days of when I was with narcotics and got really sort of deep into that. But for some reason, it was a relationship that I broke up with my first partner and the amount of what I would call abandonment trauma that came up in that breakup, wow, I was completely floored, you know, just couldn't function. How old were you during this? Yeah, so this was not that long ago. This was 2020, july of 2020.

Yeah, so the way I describe it was that, for the first time ever, my suffering overwhelmed my fear of change, right, and it was at that point where I became desperate enough to get help, really because I could not break out of this relationship. I, whenever I was on my own, I couldn't be with myself. So then I would try and go back to the relationship. When I was back in the relationship, I couldn't be in the relationship. So it was this dance that I was in and eventually, I remember, with my partner at the time, I broke down.

After doing this dance, I, for the first time ever, the bravado dropped and I said I need you to be happy. It just came out. It's the most truthful thing. I'd say right, I need you to be happy. And it was at that point that I realized something. I was like, oh my goodness, you know, I wow, you know, like, wow, I said it, said it out loud, right, yeah, and I was very fortunate to have a brother at the time a best friend of mine and my actual brother as well, who was incredible, but my best friend, uh, who's also my best friend now. But he said it sounds like you need to go away and spend some time on your own. And I thought that's scary.

Spend some time with me like but something in me, right, something in me was pulling me towards spending time on my own. I can't describe what it was. It was like a sense and, and I was on a park bench in London. I'll never forget it. So I, that night, I went home and I booked an Airbnb. During the lockdown. Well, I think it was okay. I hope it was, but anyway, it was a long time ago and, yeah, I did. I'm never, never forget this moment.

It was the shift of direction of my life. I didn't come back a different person, but it shifted the direction. I went away and I took a journal. I took an ipod with a naval ravikant podcast. Uh, he was on joe rogan. He spoke about anxiety. Yeah, um, and I had that on repeat. And then I took a journal and I put my phone and my laptop down. That was the key, first time I'd ever done that and I go away on this on my own.

And for some reason, in the days leading up to it, even as I booked it, something shifted. It was like an act of self-love. I don't know what it was. It was an act of me voluntarily facing myself, which I don't think I had done in that way before. And what I discovered in actively facing my feelings was number one, I'm far braver than I thought I was. That was a big surprise. And number two, I can feel my feelings.

I didn't realize I could and I'll never forget the moment where I was away on this sort of personal retreat that I'd done, staying at this Airbnb. But I was walking around and you know it was the afternoon. I just really felt unsettled, right there was this anxiety in me. I just wanted a wank or a chocolate bar or just something to stimulate me. You know my phone. You know my phone a dopamine hit. A dopamine hit. Yes, exactly exactly that. And for the first time ever, I decided to just keep walking. And I found a waterfall and I just sat with it and it took courage I won't lie because I was like my god, I've never done this before. You know, I'm not feeding it, I'm gonna sit here and after about 40 minutes of sitting by that waterfall, I just remember feeling all right, you know, yeah hi guys, joe here, hope you enjoy part one.

0:23:06 - Speaker 3

Don't forget quickly to like and subscribe. Our stuff really, really helps the page massively. Here's what you can expect to find in part two, enjoy describe it as I was in freeze for many years.

0:23:21 - Speaker 1

There's a difference between self-esteem and self-worth. One way I had of coping with the loneliness that I felt in childhood was