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A New Vision of Manhood Embracing Emotions and Authentic Self

• Dr. Roldan • Season 3 • Episode 4

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As I sat across from Dr. Gabriel Cruz, I couldn't help but be struck by his resilience and insight into the often overlooked realm of men's mental health. Together on the Oroasis Community Podcast, we unravel a tapestry of personal narratives and cultural influences that shape the lives of men everywhere. Our conversation ventures beyond the surface, dissecting the intricate dynamics of masculinity and identity, and how figures from pop culture to personal heroes can guide us toward emotional authenticity and strength.

Join us for an immersive discussion that promises to redefine what it means to be a man in today's society. Dr. Cruz, with his inspiring background as a first-generation college student, brings to light the damaging effects of toxic masculinity and the liberation found in vulnerability and emotional expression. We tackle head-on the shifting paradigms within families and educational systems, urging men to dismantle the barriers of traditional stoicism and embrace a more open, progressive approach to mental wellness.
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Disclaimer:  I am a therapist, but not your therapist. This podcast is for informational and inspirational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional therapy. If you or someone you know needs help, please consult a therapist or contact a helpline.

Emergency Helplines

Speaker 1

Hello beautiful souls and welcome to Oroasis Community Podcast. I am Dr Roldan, your host. I am a doctor in clinical psychology, a BIPOC therapist professor and a mindful somatic coach. While I am a therapist, remember I'm not your therapist. This podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, but we have resources in our website and Instagram to support you in that search.

Speaker 1

Join us for a cozy, felt conversation about mental health, personal growth and mindfulness. We explore tools to care for your mind, your body and your soul. Check the footnotes for disclaimer, trigger warnings and additional resources for each one of the episodes. So grab your favorite cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate, wrap yourself in a warm blanket and find a coffee spot here with us to be kind to be brave, loud and strong in your search of mental health wellness. Welcome to your Oasis and welcome to Erasis Podcast. Thank you everybody. Get your cup of tea, your cup of coffee or any beverage that warms or cools your soul. Today we have a special guest. We have Dr Cruz, by your first Dr, who would like me to address you. Dr Cruz, by your first name, how would you like to be called?

Speaker 2

Gabriel is fine.

Speaker 1

Gabriel. Well, gabriel is an amazing guest and everybody here is going to have a treat, as always. Thank you so much for showing up for this episode, and the biography and all links for Dr Gabriel Cruz will be in the bio here. Also, any mental health resources that you may need. They are over here. Remember, today we're talking about mental health for men. Dr Gabriel, tell us a little bit about your story, because your story is a little unique, but at the same time is the story of any first generation immigrant. So can you tell us a little bit wherever you want to start the story?

Speaker 2

yeah, so thank you for having me, sarita. So I'm from North Carolina originally, which is where I live still. I teach at North Carolina Central University. I'm a professor in media studies. I like to joke with my students that we take the things that they love and then find out why they're terrible for us, because I study like race and pop culture and things like that. But as far as where I come from, that kind of thing.

Speaker 2

So I'm biracial, I am bi-ethnic. My father is from Durango, mexico. He's a ranchero right out of the fields, and my mom is a white American woman from North Carolina who got involved with the local Mexican immigrant population when she was very young and they started trucking in Mexicans from the border to work in poultry processing plants in North Carolina in the 80s. To work in poultry processing plants in North Carolina in the 80s, as she likes to remind me that. You know, back then there were only 12 Mexicans and one of them was my birth father, and now there's a bunch of communities here.

Speaker 2

So yeah, I'm a first generation college student. My father had a sixth grade education before he had to stop going to school to work full time. My mom completed high school when I started college. Later on she got her associate's degree, but that was much later in my college career at that time for me, and I have an associate's degree from a community college, associate's in arts, I have a bachelor's and a master's in communication studies and I have a PhD in mass communication and media.

Speaker 2

So that's kind of how I am where I am I am. I like to joke with my students that I'm much more comfortable like walked around a job site than I am in a classroom because I grew up doing like you know helping build houses my dad's a carpenter and that kind of thing. But you know, and when it gets rough I like to remind myself that you know, any day I'm not hauling shingles up a ladder onto a roof is a good day, so I should not complain so much. But yeah, I love teaching and uh and yeah and uh. My area of research and focus is race and pop culture, usually related to superheroes if you didn't do the math.

Speaker 1

That is around like 14 14 years of school, and the only reason I know is because I did the same thing. I went to English school, then I went to my AA bachelor's degree, master's degree and doctoral degree. So I relate a lot to your stories of like. When days get rough, my scapegoat was always anime, not so much of a superhero, but the anime, because they told the story of struggle.

Speaker 1

Community and this podcast is is that a community where we talk about the things that sometimes we're not allowed to talk in our community? Sometimes in our nucleus family they never talk about that. Or b is to stigmatize, such as mental health? And what I love about all heroes in anime is that you always have an origin story. And no origin story is pretty like it always comes with a lot of trauma, with a lot of injustice, racism. They have it all right. You give us a little glimpse of the origin story that a lot of us, as immigrants, we can relate. But what is yours that you relate to the most and what superhero that is a male you're like?

Speaker 2

oh, I love that so, okay, a couple things that come to mind. Number one I, I was in anime when I was young. I gave up on it for years and then my brother got me back into it. So I have a 20 year old brother who, uh, he'll be 21 actually in a few days, but he took me to go see, uh, demon slayer when it was in theaters and I was like, all right, cool, I'll give it a shot. I haven't. I, you know, I was watching anime back in like gundam wing era, that kind of thing. You know you, you hakusho and inuyasha and all that kind of stuff, and I was like, oh, oh, this is good. And now I'm all caught up on all of the demon slayer stuff.

Speaker 2

So, when it comes to my like in origin stories, that sort of thing, I grew up in, uh, predominantly white environments. When I was up until I was eight, I grew up around mexican immigrants and then we left and, uh, my mom and I left that community for a variety of reasons. Uh, her and my birth father had separated. And now my dad the man I call my dad is also a ranchero from Durango, because my mom has a type, but she's fine with me telling that joke. But I grew up in a lot of white-centered spaces, right, grade school, higher education, that kind of stuff. I didn't have a Latino professor until I was in my PhD program. Actually, it was the first time and I know that for a lot of my other students I am the first, or maybe only Latino professor they've had.

Speaker 2

So when it comes to like origin stories and superheroes, one of the ones I've always resonated with was Nightcrawler from the X-Men, if you remember him from like the 90s cartoon or from the movies more recently, or from X-Men evolution, that kind of thing in the comics obviously. Um, because so much of nightcrawler story, at least in the animated versions, was him trying to blend into society and I, if I try, I can pass as white or white adjacent, something like that. I do get like what are you from time to time from people, but like I can, I can pass. And so because I was always in these white spaces and because you know I grew up, um, primarily speaking English and that kind of thing, like I wanted to be a part of these worlds, because what kid doesn't want to belong? Uh, but I was often reminded that we'll know you're not one of us, right.

Speaker 2

If it was, maybe it was because of, you know, the way that I looked, maybe it was because of the clothes that I wore, because there was a lot of like goodwill clothing, right, secondhand stuff and that kind of thing. Or just having a name my name is Gabriel Cruz, but before that it was Gabriel Soto Lopez, and there's no blending into an audience with a last name like that, right, and so stuff like that. Not to mention that like this might sound a little heavy ended, but you know, like white folk have a look in a given area and I never looked like them, and so there was all these reminders that hey, you're not one of us kind of thing, and so so, yeah, night Crawler from the X-Men, who was always trying to like just find a way to survive in dominant society and try to be okay with himself, was a big deal for me. So, yeah, what I think about superheroes and origin stories, that's kind of what comes to mind first.

Speaker 1

Yes, Speaking about inclusivity and not being there, meaning you're there, but you're not there, kind of thing right.

Speaker 1

It's almost like where I call it the ghost, because everybody can see you but you don't know you're there. I mean you know you're there but you're not there. So I call it a ghost To my students. The same when I started in school, even though here in California and San Diego you have a multitude of ethnicities it's a mix of everything it was very hard for me to match with somebody because I'm not Mexican. I look Mexican but I'm not Mexican. I'm Guatemalan, which we're neighbors, but I'm half Spanish, half Guatemalan, which I always joke. I'm the bad guys and the good guys. Yeah Right.

Speaker 2

No, I got you.

Speaker 1

Right, right, Like I'm the good guys and the bad guys, but when I came here, I didn't speak the Spanish that I speak, because I speak Castellano. So like, wait, you don't understand me, but we're the same, we look the same, we do the same and I wasn't very excluded when I was in college. I came on as an adult. But let's speak about inclusivity. You have touched a little bit in your research and your classes and even in your podcast that it listeners. If you haven't, please go and listen to it. It's a treat, um, about whiteness and masculinity in media and how they're represented. Um, I don't like so much using the word toxic because it's more like we have been primed right. The systems have been primed to be that good. So can you talk a little bit about that and the impact of not only your classes but the topics that you choose to talk about masculinity and mental health and pop culture?

Speaker 2

Yeah, so I okay. So I teach media studies classes. Right now I teach a class called Mass Media and Society, which looks at how we shape media and how it shapes us in a very sort of circular ecological perspective. I also teach a class on American pop culture and diversity in media. So three classes total right now and I've taught variations of classes like this for most of my career. I've been teaching for a little over 10 years now, or about 10 years.

Speaker 2

So when it comes to masculinity and when it comes to whiteness or anything else, I try to be careful about how I go about discussing it, because I know in our broader mass media environment, particularly in the United States, there is a lot of baggage around phrases like white privilege, toxic masculinity and things like that. Right, and these are important ideas, but and this is just a bit of a footnote academics are terrible at doing PR. As a group of people, we're bad at it, which is why I started doing the TikTok stuff. In part, it's, like you know, because I'm so tired of I'm getting off on a tangent, but I'm so tired of people discussing these ideas not knowing what they actually mean. If you disagree with the idea, that's fine, but you should know what an idea is if you're going to disagree with it. But when it comes to masculinity and the idea of toxic masculinity and stuff like that, but when it comes to masculinity and the idea of toxic masculinity and stuff like that, the first thing that we talk about in my classes is what is a gendered expression? How do we organize gender expressions in masculine versus feminine? And then getting into things like androgyny or non-binary or queer, and we all know people, either personally or pop icons, who embody these different aspects either personally or pop icons who embody these different aspects. But I try to help my students understand that.

Exploring Toxic Masculinity and Gendered Expressions

Speaker 2

Like, if you think of yourself talking about the man, for example, if you think of yourself as a man, you were born a man biologically. In as much as that's a thing which is also complicated, that's its own complicated stuff to deal with, right? We talk about chromosomes or gonadal development or secondary sex characteristics, all that kind of stuff that often don't match up. Well, let's say you consider yourself born a man, that you are a man. I said, for how many of you are the same kind of man as your father, right? And most guys will say, well, yeah, pretty close. I said okay, how about your grandfather? Few less people are like, okay, well, maybe not so much. And I said and if you kept going back and back and back, you would probably find something along those lines Masculinity changes right Over time. What we consider to be healthy masculinity, what we consider to be toxic masculinity, we can boil down to some base components, but their expressions are very much bound by the moment in which they arrive.

Speaker 2

Right, my, my dad has. When he grew up you know, growing up in Durango, mexico had to do some really hard things. He learned how to like butcher a pig, for example, before he was 12, he wasn't doing it himself, but he knew the processes for doing it, that kind of thing which he jokes about. But also he imagined being a kid and learning the process of taking an animal's life and then carving it up. There's an emotional debt that you start to accrue in that capacity. Right, and he doesn't want his children to be that way. He doesn't want his kids to have to know that kind of life. I remember when one of my sisters decided that she wanted to start farming and stuff and my dad's like why it sucks. I think, no, don't do it. But that whole thing about your parents want more than what they had, but yeah, so.

Speaker 2

And then we get into like, okay, well, if your masculinity is different from your father's or different from your grandfathers or your uncles or wherever it happens to be, does that make you? And some will say well, yes, and some will say well, no. And my response is always well, before you say yes or no, we also have to question how do we quantify masculinity? Right? Because when I asked, when I asked that question, what I want you to do is ask well, why are we saying yes or no at all? Right, and so when we start talking about, like, toxic masculinity and things like that, and I address head on like hey, look, here's how you've probably heard it, here's how I know I've heard it addressed, right, this idea that masculinity is inherently bad, or anything like that, and so I give them an operational definition regarding that and I say and there are a few different perspectives, but they all kind of sit around the same idea of toxic masculinity is defined by, or is characterized by, the domination of others and the domination of the self. Right?

Speaker 2

There's a great therapist. I forget his name off the top of my head, but he's a family therapist who says that the lie of patriarchy is control, and that is, I think, exceedingly important. Right, because when we talk about like and I make this point to my students it's like okay, yeah, we know that using physical violence against someone else that you love is wrong. Right, by the way, we consider that, now, that has not always been the way that society has framed violence, right. So, and some people will go so far as to say, well, using physical violence against anybody at all, even in the defense of your life, is wrong. Right, which is another perspective as well.

Speaker 2

But if you do not allow yourself to feel things, if you don't allow yourself to express emotions right, your sadness or your happiness, for that matter. Right. If you don't allow yourself to feel just unmitigated joy about something, you're doing every bit as much harm to yourself as if you're not allowing yourself to cry. Right, and that is a domination of the self, because you've been told, as men, you have to be powerful, and power means control, and control means repression, right, and while, again, that manifestation may change across generations, it is, at the end of the day, like, still the same of like. I have to be able to control those around me as well as myself, and if I don't, I'm less than Right. Yeah, so that's kind of how we go about it, at least to prime the idea of gendered expressions and masculinity.

Speaker 1

And what happens when a group, according to the definition that we just talked, is the one that dominates and says you cannot ask for help, you cannot have feels. And, like you say, how can we feel joy and share it? Because one of the feelings, if you will, that are inherited top to masculinity is anger. You're allowed to be angry, but nothing else. You're allowed to puff and puff, but nothing else. So when we see in pop culture or even media, the vulnerability of others represented I mean, x-men is a perfect example, oh, my goodness, every single male in there I'm like crying with them and like I want to be with them. And one of the most iconic one, I will say is Magneto, because he goes through from being abused to being a victim, to being a survivor, to be the victimizer right, and in any book it was that. Well, she suffered from the cycle of toxicity and I was like no, she suffered from not being able to ask for help.

Speaker 1

And when she asked for help it was denied. So what is your intake about that? Spaces, and what kind of spaces? Even in your university, you have seen that they have changed with time. Can of, like you say, I grew up with only brothers. I'm the girl, I'm the baby and I'm the only girl. So I was like no, tell me about how you feel, tell me. But I was the feels person, right, the care bear, as they call it. And in the universities even though, depending how you, how you see it, california is very progressive in the sense of, like, talk about your feelings they have a lot of spaces in the universities and here and there At least, they try, in the sense that they put a lot of effort and say do it. But I noticed that they don't do it for every single one, right, they do it mostly for the females of whatever you identify as females, for the females of whatever you identify as females, but for masculinity they don't offer much to go and say I need help or I don't even know what I'm feeling.

Speaker 2

So I'm going to use an analogy for when I was working in construction. If you ever have to tear up flooring right, if you ever have to pull up whether that's wooden planks or something like that you need a pry bar, right, you need like a crowbar or something along those lines, and the hardest part is always being able to get that pry bar underneath the nails, right. So, like, when you pull out flooring, you gotta get out a hammer, you gotta bang on that pry bar until you can wedge it underneath the nails, and then you got to pull right. In my classes I'm only going to be able to pull right, I can't pull up the whole thing. We don't have the time, we don't have the environment, because, honestly, they're in a classroom with like 20 other kids I say kids, they're adults, but you know 20 other students, right. And so it's not exactly a conducive environment. So I try to think about like okay, how can we just loosen the four boards a little bit, so then later on they can rip the rest of it up, Right? And so when it comes to like you know pop culture and things like that, what I and what we talk about I say things like okay, when was the last time a movie made you sad? When's the last time it made you happy? Okay, and will they give some answer about being in theater or whatever? Okay, why is it so it's okay to express emotions in those theaters? Well, yeah, sure, of course. Or if you're at a concert, right, yeah, of course you have no problem. So then, why not in your living room, why not around your family and friends? And some guys will say things like well, I don't, I don't want to be seen as weak. Well, it's like, well, you're not weak, but like you just saw, you know, an action hero cry. I mean, he did a bunch of horrible, problematic things in a really cool way, admittedly, but like they cried, why is that acceptable? And not? Well, we know that's fake, it was well, hold on a minute. But that's a real emotion that people experience, right? So I look for ways to try to leverage that.

Speaker 2

The great thing about Magneto as someone who, because originally he was just a mustache twirling villain he had no, there was no like the Holocaust backstory comes in in like the seventies, right, with Chris Claremont bringing that to the character, and that has this great layer of like he was a child who wanted to be helped and rescued. If you ever read I think it's X-Men Testament, which is the Magneto story, which they took a bunch of the different, because at that point in the comics they had a bunch of different stories about Magneto and what his actual backstory was, and then they codified them into a graphic novel called Testament, which is just him escaping from a Holocaust concentration camp. And it is heartbreaking and in fact in that story, funny, funny enough, that this comes up uh, his father asks for help and is denied, right, his father, who's a german, uh, citizen, veteran of the military, goes to like the german administration says, hey, like he knows the guy. He's like, hey, you can help us, right. And the guy, the guy's like, no, I can't help you, bro, and then that's part of what precipitates them being sent off to a concentration camp, right, so that denial of help, and Magneto grows up thinking that people can't help you, even if they could, and they don't want to help you, right, and that is an idea that is at odds with the communities that we actually grow up in, or hopefully that we should grow up in, I should say right, um, and also, when it comes to like you know, uh, latinos and stuff like that. Like everyone knows vicente fernandez, right, everyone knows vicente fernandez, right, uh, and or juan gabriel or someone like that, but like vicente fernandez in particular is the biggest cry baby. Yeah, in the world. I don't know of an american, I don't know any musician in, uh, you know, north or latin, south america who cries more than that man right, and he was still manly, he, no one was saying that the gent that was any less because he sobbed on stage, right, and so it's.

Speaker 2

It's about trying to take those moments of cathartic expression that they allow themselves to have and then kind of like pulling that over into more mainstream environments, right, where they feel compelled or they feel open enough to do that. And that's tough. I've had students, you know, openly say, well, they don't think it's manly for you know men to cry and things like that. And and that requires a little bit of negotiation, in part because, like you know, at the end of the day, with students like that, I do the thing that my, my children do with me, and that is why. Why is that the case? Right?

Speaker 2

We had a almost uncomfortable conversation with my classes recently around the idea of sexual habits and women. And the guy was like well, you know, you don't want to grow with too high a body count. And I said, well, hold on, what does that mean? And why do you care? Like, well, you know, because you know she's been around. I was like, and you like, where do you stack up in all this? Right, and if, if it didn't involve you, what's your problem? So, but you know, and but keep asking why and why and why, until they have to be like well, because, because the answer of well, because, or that's the way it is, or things like that is not an intellectually sustainable position. At that point you have to set with the fact that you hold these beliefs and these perspectives for no real good reason.

Speaker 1

So in therapy I work with a lot of military first responders and active in law enforcement, so that's kind of my masculinity, right. And I, they always laugh when I go like why? And they say, and it's true, they always like because and I don't finish the sentence either and they're like, well, you know because, and I'm like because why we call it generational trauma or generational knowledge, if you will. But I was like that was the knowledge that we had because we were in survival mode. I mean, you guys are not escaping war, you guys are not, well, the military suppose, but like you're not escaping per se, forcibly, voluntarily. You were there but it's not like in other times that we have to stay countries, we have to stay escape civil war, for example, what kind of forever.

Speaker 1

It was one of the first times that I was able to see the genocide that happened in guatemala, where I'm from, and the actress who is the mom of Noam Ore is Guatemalan and I was like crying in the, in the movie theater and I have other friends at Guatemalan too that you know. Like you say rancheros, I don't cry, I don't do anything and I turn, and they were just bawling and and they say, well, it's a movie, know, and it's valid because that movie it makes you cry in the first five minutes and that is very cathartic for males to be or anybody to be able to just express how they feel. And also I use a lot of that to able to open a conversation. Let's say how you ever felt like that. Have you ever felt that destroy or want to hear somebody and stuff like that and having just that conversation in a third person, uh, like Punisher, they love Punisher talking about like the story and all that.

Speaker 1

They just love him. Um, and my favorite one is Spider-Man. Just he's, like you know, squiggly little college kid or high school depends which one you see and it has this grief and this responsibility that he doesn't have no tools to deal with. In your own story have you encountered, or how have you dealt with, the tools of mental health? Which ones have you put down, which ones you have brought and say, oh my goodness, this one I'm passing out, like to everybody that I know I was like. Oh my goodness, this one I'm passing out to everybody that I know.

Analysis of Masculinity and Mental Health

Speaker 2

So actually, before I answer that one, I'll go back to Spider-Man and the Punisher for just a hot second. So I worked on a project with a friend of mine, dr Lindsey Kramer. We did an analysis of the Punisher Netflix series. It was published in, I think, howard Journal of Communication, I want to say, but I think it was called Pleasurable Suffering and Marginality or something along those lines. But the idea was basically like Frank Castle is a man in pain and he deals with because this is also when we talk about masculinity.

Speaker 2

In my classes we bring up healthy masculinity, we talk about toxic masculinity, but we also talk about abject masculinity, which is a main theme in that article that we wrote, which is a main theme in that article that we wrote. And abject masculinity is the idea that men are designed to be disposable and that, by occupying a position in society as someone who is built to be disposable, they are then afforded certain privileges that do not help them recover from that disposability but do enable them in other ways, right? So, for example, soldiers, right, soldiers are meant to be on some level disposable. That's kind of the point, right, and we don't do things like from the veterans days at the baseball game or something like that, right, or these other like social things that don't actually help them necessarily, and as someone like I think it was Sebastian Younger, the war correspondent, said that actually that sort of stuff furthers the idea of alienation, that they are separate from everybody else, right, so, but anyway. So that's the thing that we talk about. We also talk about race and masculinity in the Punisher as well in that article, and as far as the Peter Parker thing was funny about the whole high school college stuff in the comics, peter Parker hasn't been in college since the 70s, but the version we keep getting is him as a kid all the time. And one of the recurring things about Peter Parker in the comics is that he's always going through a bad day, things are always going wrong for him and he has moments of intense vulnerability. And if we could see a version of Peter Parker on screen that is an adult that is having a hard time, where he has to talk to Mary Jane, his wife, or or Aunt May or the other Avengers, that he becomes close to, where he's like, actually discussing the things that are wrong with his day to day life, that would go a long way towards creating a model of masculinity that is heroic and action oriented and also very honestly grappling with the vulnerabilities of life. Right so, but that's not as marketable, I'm sure, or at least Disney doesn't think it is, right so, whatever.

Speaker 2

So, going back to the thing about like. Going back to the thing about like, what tools I've used. So my background, economically speaking, has been working poor to working class to. By the time I moved out of parents' house, they were about to crack the bottom of the middle class, and that's kind of where they are now.

Speaker 2

I like to joke that the difference between my upbringing and that of my siblings cause I have, I have four younger siblings uh, is a matter of tax brackets, right, in terms of difference. Now, I don't want them to go through things I did when I was young, right. I don't want them to, like, have to sleep on somebody's couch or go to a food pantry for groceries, right. But I say all that to say that, like, we didn't have resources for therapy when I was a kid, that wasn't a thing, right. My youth was prior to the American, prior to the Affordable Care Act, right so, like we didn't have insurance If you were sick, if I was sick, unless it got real bad. The solution was to like lay on the couch, drink ginger ale and watch Jeopardy, right, maybe put some like Vixx on or something like that.

Speaker 2

So a lot of my mental health stuff came from like kind of do it yourself kind of things. Now my mom, who has been a constant in my life, has always been high on emotional intelligence, on talking things through, and that's been a big deal right, that's been a big part of it. But none of the men in my life, certainly not my birth father I've seen twice in my life and to some extent my dad recently, but I'd grown up not very much because he came into my life when I was about 11. But not my grandfather or not my godfathers or my uncles or anyone like that. None of them had the equipment to deal with pain right, not in a healthy way. Their methods of doing so were to either repress it, to cope through some kind of substance use Alcoholism runs rampant on both sides of my families in part because of that or to just divert yourself with other things. Go do fun stuff, that kind of stuff. So it was a lot of do-it-yourself. It was a lot of trial and error and what worked and what didn't. It was a lot of learning from my mom, who did the best that she could to give me a language for expressing myself.

Speaker 2

I used to write all the time. I used to do a lot of expressing myself. I used to write all the time. I used to do a lot of creative writing. I used to do a lot of poetry and stuff like that.

Navigating Trauma and Building Emotional Communities

Speaker 2

I think one thing that was a game changer for me that I recommend to everybody else is autoethnography, and for those, if anyone's not familiar, autoethnography is the art of, or the science and art of writing about your own experiences and connecting it to broader scholarship. Right, so you contextualize yourself and you can see that there's other people who are being able to do. That has helped out quite a bit. I took two autoethnography classes from the same professor, once in undergrad and once at masters, cause I did both at the same institution and they were really helpful.

Speaker 2

My earliest memory is of my mom fending off a boyfriend who was violent and so being able to write about that and being able to, you know, express that as a 20 something and then sort of grappling with the ways in which that kind of you know anxiety about violence has proliferated in my life. I mean, I've, I've been a long way removed from that. You know that kind of life for a while by the time I was, you know, writing these things down, a while by the time I was, you know, writing these things down.

Speaker 2

But even still, just that, that concern about the presence of violence, or you know housing insecurity, or you know, you know things like that. I'm in retrospect. It's one of those things where I'm pretty sure I didn't go without anything, but I know my mom did.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 2

And then think, conceptualizing that as an adult golly, I'm a parent now. And who boy does that? Like that? Unlock things left and right.

Speaker 2

You know, um, especially when you talk about, like I joked with my wife, uh, she said you know, are you concerned? Are you nervous when we were having our firstborn, are you concerned? Are you nervous? You know, by being a dad for the first time and I joked that, well, you know, if I can, if I can stay in the kid's life for longer than two months, I'm doing better than my birth dad did.

Speaker 2

And she didn't think that was funny, but I thought it was pretty clever, excuse me, so so, but like honestly, uh, being able to sort of sit with these things and um and write about them and talk about them. And the other thing is too, this kind of gets back to what we're talking about earlier. Yes, a large part of the conversation is about whether or not men feel comfortable expressing themselves, but another part of it is and I would, I would encourage anyone in particular, but anyone who is listening to this and thinking well, I don't feel comfortable expressing myself. Okay, how much of that is you and how much of that is the people you're around?

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Right. How much of that is like you have a hard time in your, in the, in the, in the uh comfort and security of your own home behind closed doors, saying just out loud to yourself I feel X, y or Z, right, because that's uncomfortable for people. And then how much of that is fear of being rejected by other people. And if that's the case, is that fear warranted? And maybe it's not. And if it is, why are you around them, right? Like, yeah, my middle siblings are 20, about to be 21.

Speaker 2

And you know they were hit by the pandemic hard Right and a lot of those years. You know they were hit by the pandemic hard Right and a lot of those years. You know they were juniors in high school when it started. I think they were juniors in high school when it started and a lot of their socialization went out the window, right. And so I've been seeing them kind of grapple with being able to express themselves now, skills that in a healthy and well-adjusted environment they would have learned, you know, a few years ago, or would have continued to learn. They'd be further along in their progress, but through no fault of their own, the world went sideways, right? So, yeah, it's that, like I had a student I'm sorry, I was teaching at a community college. I was 24. No, I was like 23, 24 years old had a student in a relationship communication class that I used to teach. It was an older feller from up north, I think, in Michigan, probably in the 60s.

Speaker 2

And we're talking about emotions, we're talking about relating to other people, we're talking about like disclosure and healthy amounts of disclosure and things like that. And he says to me and there's not a hint of joke, no sarcasm, no anything in his voice. And and he says are you telling me that my feelings matter? And I was like, yes, my guy, yes, they do, and you should be around people who like believe they matter. Right, but that was that was like finding out we went to the moon for him. Like that was what are you talking about? Kind of thing.

Speaker 1

Yeah, right, right and and yeah, and that's. I always joke with the people that I'm around or because, as a therapist, they always think, oh, you only like academia and stuff. Like, don't like, I do reiki, I have done sound healing, you know all the other things, because not everybody is ready for, but everybody's ready to get help. And I always say that Not everybody's ready for therapy and dig in, but everybody's ready to help or get help in any shape or form that you have. For some it's games, media tech talk, for others it's sports and why not? But one of the main things that I was like we were raised feral. You know, like we were lucky, we were raised feral.

Speaker 1

The kids now, or the new Gen Zs or Gen X and all that kind of fight that they always have, is like they have a very different kind of issues when it comes to their mental health that we cannot even grasp. Like you say, your brothers didn't have that socialization and now, when they do socialize, sometimes it's like why they're so awkward. We're not just going to talk to somebody because they have their phones and they can talk to the phone, like that. That's how they socialize. So, to close out, what is one other, like journaling and writing, rewriting your story.

Speaker 1

What is another method that you have encountered to build community that's healthy, because sometimes you know they would say families first, and sometimes our families also. They want that kind of like hey, yeah, right, and then also they push us to be all these amazing things right, but the gap is so big that you're like how do I explain you, for example, that Vicente Fernandez was awesome, but he was grieving and he was not an alcoholic, etc. Etc. And they were like yo, that's just partying hard and finding your people? I would say you're the representation of the five people that you're around you and if you're the best of that group, you need a new group because you, you cannot be the best of that group, otherwise you don't grow right and that means emotionally, intellectually, economically, etc. Etc. Etc. So for you, how give people in your youngsters a tip in how to build a healthy, emotional community for them, because sometimes we don't know so I think one of the things I've had to learn is that it's okay for relationships to end.

Speaker 2

There are some relationships that are with okay From a strictly academic perspective. Relationships don't end, they just go through periods of inactivity, right, but the imprint they leave on your life is still there. And so what I mean is, like, I have friends, I have people that I was very close to in my youth, who I don't talk to anymore, right, who probably don't think about me ever and who I rarely think about, if ever, and at the time it would have been wild to think about that, like how could I ever not be, you know, intimately connected to this person? But the truth is, like you say, if you want to keep growing, you're going to find that your emotional needs, your intellectual needs, your social needs, are not being met, or have been met and are no longer there or have changed Right, and it's okay to leave relationships where they are, to leave relationships where they are.

Speaker 2

I have friends I've had to that I loved and to some extent still love dearly who I just could not be around anymore because they, one, they were engaging in in reckless behavior, dangerous behavior, and two, like they were not. Not only were they not going to help me grow as a person, at some point they were going to be a hindrance. I very firmly believe in loving to the point of sacrifice, but I also understand that if you try to save a drowning person while they're flailing around, they'll pull you under too.

Speaker 2

You can't help anybody if you are being pulled under they'll pull you under too, right, right, you can't help anybody if you are being pulled under, right. So I think that's that's kind of the thing that I would. I would emphasize, um, and sometimes you pick up those relationships again down the road, and sometimes you don't, and that's okay, right? Uh, I have also come to understand, you know, understand, or I've come to grapple with what forgiveness means, right, because so I'm, I'm Catholic. I was brought into the church when I was a kid and my mom converted and I came along for the ride.

Speaker 2

I have grappled a lot with the idea of forgiveness and I have come to accept, uh, in part informed by my Catholic faith and also by, like, the experiences that I've had, that forgiveness is not letting someone off the hook. Forgiveness is not saying what you did was okay, uh. Forgiveness, at least in my conceptualization, is saying, well, I'm okay, now I'm, I'm letting go of this thing. Uh, if you would like to have a relationship, we can start from this place. Uh, but that is going to involve, you know, some degree of atonement. That's going to involve relationship.

Speaker 2

We can start from this place, but that is going to involve some degree of atonement. That's going to involve some reconciliation, which is often an uncomfortable and painful process. So there are some people for whom I have had vastly negative impacts on my life and who I got to work to find a way to forgive for my own wellbeing, right, maybe it helps them, maybe it doesn't, but it would help me, kind of thing, and so, like I think that's. The other thing is like so yeah, on the one hand, like relationships come and go, they live and they die, and that's okay, uh, and also, forgiveness isn't, um, isn't absolving someone of the things they've done wrong. It is reconciling and finding a place to be healthy in relation to the things that were done to you, right, which can include really forming a relationship, but don't have to include that, right, yeah.

Living Authenticity

Speaker 1

Thank you for that. And just to wrap up, in our Oasis we have the saying like be kind, be proud, be loud, be 100% you. So, with that slogan, how can you live or out in? How are you proud, kind and 100% you? I try to be kind to everyone.

Speaker 2

I try to be kind by not being mean to people on the Internet. That's funny, a little troll being mean to people on the internet, that's I just. I just recorded right before we we started talking. I just uploaded a video about the issue about around the word latinx and just like leave people alone if they want to use it, quit being jerks. All right, if you don't like it, that's fine, but let people like have meaning in their lives, right, idiot? And and I only swore once and I think that's being no, but honestly, um, I try to. I try to make myself available to help if I can.

Speaker 2

I've had great conversations with grad students who have reached out to me like, hey, you know I'm thinking about, you know advancing, or people who are thinking about grad school or thinking about college or what have you. So I think, so that's. That's the kind part I think is in terms of being proud. I've actually struggled with that quite a bit. Uh, I developed a healthy sense and unfortunate amount of internalized racism in my youth. Uh, growing up hearing about all the terrible things that Mexicans are right, uh, particularly in, uh, in white central spaces, and so dealing with that has been tough, but I've, I've gotten to a point where, like, yeah, I am, and sometimes I wear cowboy boots to school, and you know sometimes and I've joined an organization called Latinx Ed here in North Carolina which is centered around helping young Latinos and Latinx folk get involved in going to school and also how to find meaningful positions in life afterwards after they go to college. So it's been a great experience, and so that was.

Speaker 2

Those were two. What was the other one? So, be kind, be proud. Positions in life afterwards after they go to college. So it's been a great experience. And so that was. Those were two. What was the other one?

Speaker 1

So be kind, be proud, be loud.

Speaker 2

Like what you like. I mean, as long as that ain't too bad, but like like what you like, be weird, for goodness sake. Right, like you know, laugh at the joke like uproariously. You know, one of the one of the ways in which whiteness tries to entrap all of us is is by setting parameters on what constitutes civil. You know existence and, like you know, I come from, like I said, you know Mexicans and white Americans, but in particular, I come from poor, the kind of folks you would call poor white trash, as well as you know come from poor, the kind of folks you would call poor white trash as well, as you know, mexican peasants, and all of them love to to engage in life in a in a loud way, right, so, like, don't be ashamed about it. It's who cares? If, you know, other people can hear you laughing or crying, for that matter, right, that's their problem.

Speaker 1

You, you live your experience and I also think you're allowed by your podcast, your tech talks, that is, representation in in a very quiet but loud way, you know, because you affect more people than if we were just having a conversation here. Now we can have a conversation with a whole wide world or the five continents, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2

I get recognized at conferences. Now Other academics walk in and it's like, oh hey, literally. I was at one in at one in DC a few weeks ago and someone was like you're Dr C is like, ah, maybe. I don't know if I am right now.

Speaker 1

Why do you want for me?

Speaker 2

It's like oh God, no, please don't, don't listen to me, I'm dumb, I don't know anything. Cause, for people who are not in academia, you may not be aware that, at least in my experience, a lot of folks I know sometimes we'll just sit and think what do I actually know? What have I learned? Because I can't remember most of it right now.

Speaker 1

Right right right. And then the final one. It was like be 100% you Meaning because that is such it does the question of the million right, and because that is such it does the question of the million right. Who am I? Why am I here? So, being 100% you means what to you?

Speaker 2

So I'm reminded of a quote from a poet whose name I cannot remember right now. I believe she's Japanese, american and it goes over my mask is your mask of me. And I think when I think about being a hundred percent me, part of it is understanding the kind of mask that other people have put over me and then deciding how I'm going to exist relative to that and a fancy academic way we think about that as a meta perception, right, perceiving how other people perceive us. And when I think about you know my authenticity and stuff I think about like I'm not. No one is ever all of who they are in every single moment, right. But whoever it should be, whoever we are, should be genuine, because if it's not, it's not going to be sustainable.

Speaker 2

The way that I like to describe my dad is that he is more solid than the ground he walks on. Is that he is more solid than the ground he walks on, like? I've seen him in a variety of environments and not once have I ever perceived him to be uncomfortable. That mean he wasn't, but certainly he didn't seem that way, even in situations where I thought there's no way. He's not like. You know, he's kind of the odd man out here, right In a variety of ways, but no, he's just never. He never comes across that way.

Speaker 2

And so part of that is being comfortable with who you are, right. So, just like, know the kind of shoes you're standing in and, wherever you happen to be, you're going to change a little things about yourself. But be genuine, because if you're not man, that's going to suck, right, it's going to wear you down, it's not going to be sustainable and it could even have, you know, severe health consequences associated with it or just your general happiness, right, which is also important. So, yeah, you know, and if you find yourself, if you find that you can't, then you know, figure out a place where you do need to be. I've taught in a variety of environments. I've taught at the community college level, the state university level, as well as the private university level, and I feel most comfortable in state schools because I went through state schools, right, state schools are filled with people like me, and so, like not to say that I used to work at a private university, Not to say that I wouldn't work there if it were a good job, that I were given my preferences.

Speaker 1

I'm in a space where I can be 100% authentic to who I am and same Love the state schools and have taught in all of them. But yes, my love is community college too.

Speaker 2

But so, oh yeah, I miss teaching non-traditional age students.

Speaker 1

Right, because you have all of them like together, like it's amazing the things that you can teach.

Speaker 2

Because they've been somewhere and they've lived a little bit and they have things to say, right yeah?

Speaker 1

As a professor, it's very fun to teach them and to finalize. Do you have any projects that you would like to shout out? Because this is like I say we shine all in the sky, so I want to give a space for you to kind of shine your star to anybody and everybody.

Speaker 2

Sure. So I'm on TikTok, twitter and Instagram, gacruise underscore PhD, where I do a bunch of foolishness and holler into the void. If you follow my Instagram, you're basically getting the same things on TikTok. There's very few things I don't post over. If anyone ever has questions, you can always email me at GACruisePhD at gmailcom. I have conversations all the time. I'm happy to send you any article that I have, so if you want access to something, just let me know and if I have it, I'll be happy to share it with you.

Speaker 2

The other thing is oh, I do have a podcast, office Hours for Dr, for dr c, which actually we're going through a major revamping. Um, we're going to start doing a seasonal model, uh, and have like a curriculum approach so that everything in the season works together instead of just doing, because we've been doing like once a week for three years now and my buddy and I are like, all right, we gotta like do something different because this ain't working for us. So, yeah, but like we'll, we'll in the last sometime in the last half we haven't determined yet, either the July or August of 2024, we'll start the next season, which will be things like critically analyzing media, with a common theme throughout, so that all kind of works together, trying to create more teacher tool kind of approach to it. And then the last thing is I am God willing in the creek, don't rise.

Speaker 2

I am going to have a book come out sometime next year. I signed a contract. I have to finish writing it. It's due uncomfortably soon but it is on. It's a short book, roughly 100 pages or so, on Latino identity or Latinx identity and mass media, looking at like news and pop culture and a special chapter on superheroes and things like that, but looking at the process of racialization and how that happens.

Speaker 1

So yeah, I'm really for you. I'm really for you, I mean. I mean, you've finished the dissertation. This is a piece of cake.

Speaker 2

Listen, yeah, yeah, here's the thing when I did in, in so my program, we didn't have comps. We had, uh, we had prelims, which are basically the same, right, okay, just a different name. And for us the prelim was uh, you had a week to answer four questions, right, and people routinely answered like, wrote more than like. I knew one guy who wrote like 80 pages in that seven day span, right, that's wild to me. I knocked out a solid like 50 to 60 pages. All right, that was in a week, but I also didn't have children and I didn't have a job, so like there was a time when I could just bam, you know, knock this thing out, boy howdy, it is a drag. I'm enjoying it, it's a good project, it's fun, but also it's a thing to do.

Speaker 1

Well, let us know when it comes out. In a while we want to promote you and just throw it to the whole sky and tell them hey, if you're Latino, you have to wrap this in your collection, as always thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much. Bye. As we conclude today's episode, take a moment to reflect. Be proud of the journey, for every step that brings you closer to who you truly are. Embrace the kindness towards yourself as you did to each one of our guests. Honor the bravery in your actions and celebrate the importance of mental wellness with us. And remember it's an exercise that we practice daily. Continue to grow and flourish, knowing that we are in this training for our mental wellness together. We are so proud to have you as part of our community, so join us on Instagram at Oasis Community Podcast for more inspiring conversations, valuable resources and supported content, including journals, worksheets and content in Spanish.

Speaker 1

Exciting things are in the horizon. Our Oasis community break rooms are coming soon to grab tools and take a break for your mental health. Also, we are featuring our six-month training ethical mental health coaching program designed for new and experienced coaches, as well as holistic and healing professionals. Enroll to create a safe and transformative experience to your clients. Links in the bio. Until next time. Take care, stay connected and welcome to our Oasis community.