Silent Feelings, Loud Damage

We explore how emotional avoidance becomes the hidden engine of abuse and why anger is often a mask for shame, fear, and rejection. We share tools for naming feelings, building responsibility, and guiding young men toward honest expression.

• why avoidance, not anger, drives abusive behavior
• how childhood conditioning trains boys to hide emotions
• the real emotions under anger and control
• silent patterns like stonewalling, numbing, and overworking
• how distorted perception poisons trust and communication
• practical tools: feelings wheel, timeouts, “I feel… because… I need…”
• modeling vulnerability with teens and teams
• three weekly reflection questions for growth

This week, name what you're feeling instead of reacting to it. Then share this episode with a man who needs to hear it. If you have a son, sit him down. If he wants to talk or needs someone just to help process feelings and emotions, reach out. I am available and I am willing and wanting to help. For daily motivational and up-to-date content, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Excellence Above Talent. Remember, keep moving forward, never give up, and you are never alone in this battle.

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Avoidance
• 1:24 A Tragedy And Its Roots
• 3:20 Defining Emotional Avoidance
• 5:13 Anger As A Mask
• 7:10 Hidden Forms Of Disconnection
• 9:20 Distorted Perception And Control
• 11:20 Choice, Responsibility, And Tools
• 13:25 Personal Story: Naming The Hurt

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

You're listening to Excellence Above Talent, a podcast where we have the hard conversations about the lives of men and what leads us to achieve greatness and suffer defeat. Hear from other men's journeys as well, as we all learn and grow together to become inspirations to ourselves and those around us. And now your host, Aaron Thomas.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

What's up, my beautiful people? Aaron Thomas with Excellence Above Talent. We are back on our Conversation 24-week session. We are on episode 5 of why we are on episode 5 of why men become abusive. And the topic or title is Emotional Avoidance, The Silent Engine of Abuse. Most men don't struggle because they feel too much. They struggle because they refuse to feel at all. When emotions get buried instead of processed, they don't disappear. They come back as anger, control, withdrawal, and abuse. Today we're talking about emotional avoidance, the quiet, overlooked engine that drives destructive behavior. And we're now in this in our community, we are dealing with a a young man, 15 years old, who wanted to shoot and kill his girlfriend because I'm assuming she broke up with him. And you can't say that there wasn't a thought process behind what he did, because he knew that if he shot her at school, he most likely would have died. They would have definitely killed him. And I don't think he wanted to die. So instead of killing her at the school, he drives to her house, kills her mom and two of her siblings. And I'm making the assumption that if he could have processed the feelings that he had, if he could have sat down and realized that 90%, maybe even 95% of the people that you date or hook up with in middle school and high school aren't your forever people. But I don't think he ever had that conversation with anybody. And instead of him processing the breakup and moving on, he withheld it until it became dangerous. And that's the whole point of abuse. The silence of it. If I can not talk about it, at some point it's going to come out, and when it comes out, it's always going to be violent. It's always going to be some form of abuse. If you want to understand why so many men become abusive, you have to understand emotional avoidance. Not anger, not stress, not alcohol, not provocation, avoidance. Most men are not emotionally explosive by nature. They become explosive because they've spent years stuffing emotions down until the pressure has nowhere else to go. And when it finally leaks out, it doesn't look like sadness or fear. It looks like rage, control, silence, intimidation, shutdown. Or what is emotional avoidance? Emotional avoidance is when a man refuses to feel, name, or express what's going on inside of him. Instead of saying I feel hurt, I feel insecure, I feel overwhelmed, I feel afraid, he says, I'm fine, it doesn't matter, whatever, I'm just tired, or he'll say nothing at all. Silence isn't always peace. Sometimes silence means pressure. And men and young men are trained to avoid emotions. From childhood, boys are conditioned to believe emotions equals weakness. Vulnerability equals danger. Tears equal embarrassment. Asking for help equals failure. So we grow up emotionally underdeveloped. Not because we're broken, but because we were never taught how to feel safely. When a man doesn't know how to process emotions, his nervous system stays on high alert. Everything feels like a threat. Every disagreement feels like disrespect. Every boundary feels like rejection. That's when abuse begins to feel justified. Avoidance turns into something, and a lot of times it shows up in anger. But here's the truth. Anger is usually a secondary emotion. Under anger, the emotions you sometimes feel are fear, shame, insecurity, rejection, inadequacy, and grief. But anger feels powerful. The other emotions feel exposed. So most men choose anger. And anger becomes the mask that they wear to avoid dealing with what's really going on inside of them. Avoidance shows up in different forms. Emotional avoidance isn't always allowed. Sometimes it looks like shutting down during a conflict, stonewalling, which is essentially shutting down, not expressing anything, just looking straight ahead, sarcasm, passive aggressive behavior, disappearing emotionally, isolating, overworking, numbing with substance like alcohol, drugs, run into porn, or trying to find a hurt woman who's willing to give her body to him. Avoidance isn't just explosive men. Avoidance isn't just explosive men, it's disconnected men too. And both can be emotionally abusive. Emotional avoidance is dangerous because when emotions aren't processed, they build resentment, they distort perception, they fuel control, they sabotage communication. So if my perception of my wife is distorted and I think she is against me or she's sleeping with somebody else because of my insecurities, how easy would it be for me to open up to her? It wouldn't be. So you can't communicate your feelings and how you feel in that situation because you think she's already against you or she's already doing things that could hurt you. So you don't communicate. You avoid it. A man who avoids emotions will eventually explode, withdraw, manipulate, dominate, or punish the people around him emotionally. Not because he wants to hurt, but because he doesn't know how to regulate how he's feeling, what he's going through, his emotions. That does not excuse the behavior. It just explains the pattern. But we also have to understand as men, emotional avoidance is a choice. But you can also change that choice. At some point, avoidance stops being something that happens to you and becomes something you're choosing. Healing requires learning emotional responsibility. There's a feelings will you can get on the internet anywhere and download it, print it off, put it on your fridge, and it helps you name that feeling. What are you feeling behind your anger? Understand why you feel it and express it safely. Managing it without projecting it onto others. So sometimes when I was angry and I was punching holes in walls and throwing phones, it was because I grew up with the assumption that nobody really wanted me. There was this perceived rejection that I felt when my dad left. And I broke so many phones, not knowing why I broke the phones. When someone didn't answer a call, or when I called her multiple times, it immediately went to something bad was happening. My girl was banging another dude. Someone was killing them. All things bad. Nothing normal came to mind. And that frustration turned to anger, and that anger turned to me going to the store buying a new phone, but digging deep and trying to figure out I'm angry. Why am I angry? Because I'm frustrated. Why am I frustrated? Because I feel rejected. You can't keep saying that's just how I am. That's not honesty. That's avoidance in disguise. You have to call out what you feel, how you feel, and you have to have a deeper dive into those feelings. What emotional responsibility looks like. Emotional responsibility sounds like I feel overwhelmed and need a break. I'm feeling insecure and it's affecting how I'm reacting. I'm angry, but I don't want to handle this destructively. I need help managing this. That's not weakness. That's not weakness. That's discipline. That's maturity. That's growth. The hard truth is men who avoid, men who avoid emotions eventually become controlled by them. If you don't deal with what's happening inside of you, you will take it out on people closest to you. Not because you're evil, but because unprocessed emotions demand an outlet. The goal isn't to feel less. The goal is to feel better, honestly, and responsibly. If you want to break abusive patterns, you have to stop running from yourself. Your emotions aren't enemies. Avoidances. It's funny because after our basketball practice yesterday, we sat down with the team and we just talked about this kid who was 15 and what he did. And there were five questions I was asking them because I want I want to sit down and just kinda we wanted to sit down and the coaches and just kind of have a conversation about how they felt. And there's a curriculum called Coach and Breathing to Men. And the first question was, what is respect? And no one answered. No one answered because they didn't want to feel embarrassed. They didn't want to open up. They didn't want to have the conversation and talk. And it scared me because these are 15-year-old kids and they've already been conditioned to avoid what needs to be talked about in order to be better in life in this world. But our mission, our goal by the end of the season is to help build better young men. Wins and losses matter. Want to win a championship, but if we don't, when they leave that basketball court going into high school, they have a better understanding of their emotions and feelings and why they feel a certain way. The questions for this week are number one, what emotions do I avoid the most and why? What emotions usually turn into anger for me? Number two, that's number two's question. And number three, how would my relationship change if I expressed emotions honestly instead of avoiding them? It's a process, guys. It's a hard, difficult process of honestly looking at yourself and figuring out ways to make yourself better. But if you're trying to be the best man you can possibly be, and why wouldn't you? That's something you're gonna have to do in order to be better and do better for yourself and your family and your community. This week, name what you're feeling instead of reacting to it. Then share this episode with a man who needs to hear it. And as you all know, young boys are also in this fight. So if you have a son, sit him down. And if you feel that this podcast could help him, allow him to listen, and if he wants to talk or needs someone just to help process feelings and emotions, reach out. I am available and I am willing and wanting to help. Because this next generation, they're awesome young men, driven, motivated. They're trying to figure it out. And if I can be of service in any capacity to help them figure it out, I'm definitely here for it. If anyone hasn't told you today that they love you, let me be the first to say I love you. You're awesome, you're amazing. You deserve the best that this world has to offer. Do not quit, do not give up. The world does not get easier, but you get stronger. Y'all have a blessed day.

SPEAKER_01: 12:43

Bye-bye. Thank you for listening. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode. And for daily motivational and up-to-date content, follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Excellence Above Talent. And remember, keep moving forward, never give up, and you are never alone in this battle. We'll see you next time.