Being a Nice Guy Isn’t the Problem — This Is (And How Grown Men Evolve Out of It) l EP. 71 l

Being a “nice guy” isn’t a personality flaw.
 It isn’t weakness.
 And it isn’t a life sentence.

What most men call “being a nice guy” is actually a protection system — a set of learned survival strategies that once kept connection safe… and now quietly suffocate masculine presence, polarity, and self-respect.

In this episode, I break down:

• why “nice guy” is not one trait, but a system of parts
• how people-pleasing, conflict avoidance, indecision, fixing, and self-abandonment are protective, not broken
• why labeling yourself a “recovering nice guy” keeps you stuck
• how these traits form without “trauma” or a dramatic childhood
• why what protects a boy eventually frustrates the man he becomes
• how to evolve out of nice guy patterns without killing parts of yourself

This episode is not about becoming aggressive, dominant, or emotionally shut down.
 It’s about developing grounded masculine leadership — the kind that no longer needs these parts to run.

If you’re competent in business but feel muted, flat, or disconnected at home… this episode will change how you understand yourself.

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Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:02.52)
Being a nice guy is not a life sentence. It's not a personality trait. It's not even a trauma response. In this episode, I'm going to change the way you think about being a nice guy and how to evolve out of those traits.

Harrison Orr (00:24.622)
Most men think that being a nice guy is just one trait and it's not, like as if it's a label, which when guys identify becomes more of an issue than it actually is. But what I see over and over again in coaching, in marriages, in men who are highly competent everywhere else except at home is a system, a protection system. So the nice guy isn't weak, it's not a weakness,

being a nice guy, being these traits, even though that's how it can definitely feel, it's an over adaptation, right? At some point in the nice guy's life, his nervous system learned that staying agreeable, avoiding conflict, suppressing desire and putting everybody else first kept him safe, kept him accepted, connected and loved. And of course that system worked.

until it didn't, right? For a lot of these guys, until they're years into their marriage and they feel like roommates, they feel like they've lost themselves and they just feel stressed and disconnected everywhere. Because what protects a boy will quietly suffocate a man and ultimately frustrate a man who is highly competent in his business, but doesn't feel the same level of respect and success at home. So in this episode, I want to break down what I call the nice guy

protection system, the different parts that make that up, how they're formed and what they're protecting, what they might be protecting and why they hijack you most as soon as pressure or emotion hits. Not to shame them, but so that you can understand and lead them because the goal isn't to kill these parts. The goal is to become more of the men they no longer need to run. They no longer need to step in to protect. And

Harrison Orr (02:28.618)
If you're new here, you're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harrison Norr. I've coached almost 500 men to be more calm, more grounded, better leaders of themselves and their marriages. And the nice guy trait, the label, should say, the label comes from Dr. Robert Glover. And yes, there are certain traits.

that he kind of describes, but if that's all you understand of being a nice guy, it's very easy to just slap that label on, I'm a nice guy, or I will be a recovering nice guy, as if it's like a life sentence. And even in the way that he describes it, and a lot of other people describe things like this, they describe it almost as like a trauma response. And...

I have a bit of an ick in using the word trauma. If you're like me...

a privileged middle-class human who was never abused as a child, never went through massive homelessness or poverty or abuse, be it physical, mental, sexual, or anything like that, then using the word trauma might feel a little bit excessive, right? It might feel like, don't have fucking trauma. Like, what are you talking about? Like my parents were good. Like I was fine. And I want to kind of chat

change that language because even in the psychology realm, know, they have what's referred to as big T trauma and little T trauma. And just to me, the fact that you need to differentiate meanings based on whether it has a lowercase or an uppercase letter tells me we need a better word. We need a better term for this guys. How they describe it, if you hadn't heard those before, big T trauma are the ones that I listed, right? You were raped, you went to war, you saw your mate's leg get blown off like something massive.

Harrison Orr (04:23.472)
traumatic happened in your life. Little T Trauma is when you felt an extreme emotion like you were embarrassed, you were ashamed, you were whatever, and then your brain, your child brain in that moment created a system so that it would protect you from ever feeling that emotion again, right? It would people please, it would avoid conflict, would keep you small to avoid you from being seen or exposed.

whatever and Like yes the term trauma can essentially just mean how you respond to it like you know life-changing an event right how you respond to it I get that but I think we can do better. I propose a new way of framing this type of quote-unquote trauma as a complex equivalence

Right, we already have a term for it. That's already a phrase or a term that is used. And a complex equivalence is simply when we assume that one thing equals another. We assume that because dad forgot to pick us up from soccer practice or he was two hours late, that he doesn't love us. That we are no good. like this assumption that we've created when we were a child. And that's not just a child's brain. I'm sure...

All of us do this in our current life, in adults even, right? The complex equivalence of she didn't answer her phone when she's out with her friends, therefore she's cheating on me. Or she did do this, therefore she's lying. Therefore it means she doesn't love me. Therefore it means this story.

Funny thing is as adults, we have a story or a self perception of ourself and that story that we're creating that equivalence to justifies that story, which often you play that out long enough and creates a self fulfilling prophecy so that that part of our brain can say, see, I told you, you were right to believe this. Anyway, side segment. Coming back to the traits of the nice guy, right? This is...

Harrison Orr (06:36.394)
Parts, right, parts of us. You may have heard me start to refer to this if you haven't heard me talk about parts at all. As a brief introduction, we all use the term, a part of me wants to do this, a part of me wants to do that.

part of me wants to work my face off and just see how much money I can make and grow the biggest business I've ever been the most successful I can possibly be. But then another part of me just wants to be a grounded present dad. I wanna be present and have more life work balance and things like that. Part of me wants to this, part of me wants to do that. So we already recognize that there are parts to our mind. We're not just one mind.

there are parts and that doesn't mean you're insane, it doesn't mean you're schizophrenic, it just means that you're human, that's part of the experience. So what the nice guy umbrella term essentially is, is a series of parts that have responded to a moment in childhood in predictable ways. The most common parts.

that accumulate to create what's called a nice guy. The people pleaser, the conflict avoider, the indecisive or directionless part, the everyone else comes first part, the good or the safe boy, the anger suppressor.

and the responsible fixer, the one that has to fix everybody else so that he can be okay. Now these are not the only ones, but these are the most common ones. And you might resonate with a couple, if not all of those. And the reason that I wanna break this down is because when we look at all of it, like if we just say, I'm a nice guy, how do I not be a nice guy? It's vague, right? And in the vague, there's no specificity, there's anxiety, there's overwhelm.

Harrison Orr (08:40.112)
and there's no direction, right? How do I address that? It's kind of like saying, I wanna have a successful business. Okay, what's failing in your business? Is it your offer? Is it your marketing? Is it your sales? Is it your delivery? Like, where is it? Okay, where we figure out then the bottleneck. Okay, this is the symptom, this is the behavior that needs to change so that we can address that.

And then when we look at these different parts, we can then work with each part to understand it and then to address it. We address them one by one, not all of them. So it's not like you then just suddenly become not a nice guy. You work on the one that is most prevalent for you. And that might be you avoid conflict. Like you realize that that part is having the biggest impact on your life and your marriage. So like, okay, cool. I'm gonna work with that part.

work with that part and then, okay, cool, now I don't feel so afraid of dealing with conflict, dealing with hard conversations. I can have those and still feel safe and navigate those and I've got reframed how I experienced those. Amazing. Then we move on to the next one.

And the beautiful thing about this framework of working with parts is it's not exclusive to being a nice guy. This is not the only use case for this. You can literally use this same framework for every trait that is getting in your way. Every part of you that has an intention that you want to understand and maybe shift a little.

But before we get into this, one of the most common ways of thinking, and I used to think like this, of I hate that I'm such a yes-man. I hate that I avoid conflict. I hate this. And that negative energy towards essentially a part of us only makes it stronger.

Harrison Orr (10:36.76)
like only makes it dig its heels and claws in tighter because we have that negative viewpoint. And to be a little bit more specific, that hate or that negative emotion is coming from another part of us, not our true self. Our true adult grounded man self is comprised of states like calm, confidence, compassion, creativity, connectedness, curiosity, like the eight C's.

what it's referred to. And so unless we're feeling that, it's another part of us that is projecting those emotions, you know, often a part of us that sees those nice guy traits as being a weakness, being a liability, being like a problem that needs to be eradicated. And so now we've got two parts in conflict.

but we're not gonna go that deep today. I just want to walk through the psychological breakdown of these traits and of what I call the nice guy protection system. So for the first one, we've got the people pleaser, right? And this is one that I see a lot when a man tells me, I don't know why I'm so exhausted. I'm so tired by the time I get home. I've got nothing left, especially after my wife's asked these things of me, my kids are trying to pull my attention.

And then so we walk through his day and he's agreed to things that he didn't want to do. He said yes when his body wanted to say no, he's softened like his response or his truth to people just to please them, to not upset them, to not rock the boat. And...

I look at his calendar and he's doing all this stuff that he doesn't want to do. And not from a laziness standpoint of like, I don't want to have to do this work. But like he's agreed to things that do not serve his personal life. They don't serve his business. Like they are things that should either be delegated, deleted or outsourced. And so underneath that niceness is

Harrison Orr (12:53.656)
quiet fear of if I disappoint them, I will lose this connection. If I like the part is essentially protecting him from losing that connection. So think of this way and this will help you have compassion towards each of these parts. And that's the goal here, right? Understanding and compassion, because from a surface level,

When you seek to understand someone and you can truly understand why they do what they do. And for our parts here, for example, you understand that they are here to protect you. Notice what that instantly does. Think of all the traits that you have right now. Maybe you're anxious, maybe you avoid conflict, maybe you're a people pleaser. And then just say to yourself,

That anxiety is trying to protect me. The part of me that wants to please people is trying to protect me. The part of me that avoids conflict is here to protect me.

Just notice that if you have a little shift, if there creates a little more space inside you, if there's a little bit more lightness, if there's a little bit more compassion or desire to understand this part, when we realize that it actually has our best interest at heart, that it's not a bug to fix or to get rid of, it's a survival, it's a protective mechanism, right? It's a firewall.

and

Harrison Orr (14:41.26)
way a lot of men, I'm gonna go through a few examples of how these things can come up or be, how these parts are birthed when we're younger and they might resonate, they might not. These are just examples, right? It's not the same for everyone, but some of these might land. The origin of being a people pleaser is often that love is conditional, right?

Your parents only liked you when you're a good boy. They didn't like you when you're emotional. They didn't like you when you made a mess. They didn't like you when you did this. And maybe they said those words, or maybe you just felt that, right? They were angry at you. They were like, maybe they hit you or they did whatever when you were those things. But if you were quiet, sat still, did everything that they asked, then they would praise you like, thank you. You're so helpful. You're so easy. Like, you know, that's when you would get the, love yous and I'm proud of you.

whatever else you kind of got in that moment. And so the part of you then learns, if I want to, if I don't want to be rejected, if I don't want to be abandoned, if I want my parents love, I have to, I have to please them. I have to be a good boy. And so our nervous system then starts to, to learn that I need to manage other people's emotions. If everybody else is good, I'm, I'm good.

I need to please other people first because if they're good, I'm good. That's the core state there. Now you notice a couple of these overlap and so they're different for everybody but these are just general terms. The next one is the conflict avoider. The conflict avoider.

Harrison Orr (16:22.216)
is

The conflict avoider is someone who's not calm. Right, he is not just...

trying to navigate, trying to find peace, just trying to navigate things. He's constantly braced, constantly tense, right? He feels this tension rising in himself, like either the tension in his chest, the pit in his stomach, know, the tight muscles, every time he has a conversation with his wife or someone and there's heightened emotions. There's the, you know, there's a...

she's highlighted something that he hasn't done and incongruence in what he said he would and instead of staying present and maybe owning that his nervous system just goes into a says a bullet right will change the subject will go quiet will defend himself if he if he needs to and goes into like it's not worth the fight maybe over apologize and

retreat, right? I need to, I can't handle this. I need to, I need us to be good again. And then so later, once that that settles down, maybe he feels cold or distant, or just like irritated that he responded in that way. Because he knew the truth of the matter, he knew what needed to be said, what needed to be owned, or the conversation needed to be had, but couldn't own it.

Harrison Orr (17:56.729)
Couldn't speak into it. And so in the moment, sure, the conflict may have been avoided, but not permanently. It was just deferred. Like just kick that can a little bit further down the road, sweep that shit under the rug and that stuff piles up. And then the typical nice guy to trade, sweep it under the rug until once every couple of months, huge blow up, all of that come spewing out.

tank is emptied, and then we start again. And every deferral of this conflict or these hard conversations essentially teaches this nervous system that honesty and that tension, those emotions are dangerous and that the suppression of those emotions, of those conversations is safer.

which it doesn't connect the future blow up to that as, okay, that's something that we need to address. It just treats in the moment, right? That's what our fight or flight response is essentially doing. Doesn't think about other contexts, it's just in that moment then and there. How do we survive this? How do we get out of this emotion or this state? And this is often birthed in younger years from conflict, of course.

feel when the conflict is felt as overwhelming, chaotic, or is unsafe. Or maybe anger from others, maybe anger from dad, or even from mom, felt unpredictable or punishing. And it may not have always been directed at you. It could have been the way that you saw mom and dad interact. That also...

teaches our nervous system, you know, this past, you know, saw this happen and learned, cool, I don't want to be on the receiving end of that. So I'm going to make sure that I avoid conflict. say, I say, yes, I, I, you know, I over apologize. do all these things just to, to avoid this. And it's protecting often that

Harrison Orr (20:12.906)
emotional overwhelm, right? It's being seen as the bad one, being seen as wrong. Like we're worried, often worried that if there's conflict, it's going to lead to the end, right? If we have conflict, if we argue, if we fight, it's going to mean that she doesn't love me. It's going to mean that she leaves me and then I'm to be alone and unloved and abandoned and like extrapolated out to that extent.

And so that protective part is like, I won't let that happen to you. So we're going to avoid this. That's easy. Sometimes this even includes white lies to avoid truth or honesty. And the shutdown in these moments.

is the typical response. Right? I definitely used to feel like this whenever there was rising emotions or the threat of conflict. My brain would almost just shut off. I would go into complete freeze mode. Like, I don't know what to say. I don't know. I can't even articulate my thoughts.

And so I would apologize. I would just say what I needed to in that moment to steady the emotions, to not rock the boat, to bring everything back to stability. And then finally I could breathe again. And then later on that's when that frustration, that irritation would all accumulate because I'm like, I used to think of myself as a relatively...

smart human being, like I know how to use my words, I know how to describe what I'm feeling and what's going on, but in those moments I would just go blank. And because it was such a default response, I didn't have conscious control over it, it was even more frustrating. Like I'd lose control of my mind and my body, like what the fuck? So it's annoying.

Harrison Orr (22:13.176)
The next part is the indecisive or the directionless part. This is a little bit deeper. This in terms of adult life.

is the overthinker, like her overthink's decisions, defers to his wife, using phrases like, don't care, whatever you want, up to you, always looks for reassurance before acting, right? Okay, am I making the right decision? Is everyone gonna be happy with me? Is everyone on board with this? Does everyone else agree? So if this doesn't work out, I can say it wasn't just my decision or just me, like, you know, there's other people that were agreeing that this was the right decision or that I can kind of point the blame to.

This comes from not always, but often a moment in childhood where decisions were then either criticized or corrected.

they were told that they were wrong, that there wasn't good enough, like mistakes were shamed rather than guided and rather than being seen as learning opportunities. You're wrong, you're an idiot, you're stupid. And every time there was that opportunity, there was that association with feeling criticized, with feeling shame, with feeling not good enough, like you're wrong.

and maybe even humiliated or judged depending on the situation and nobody likes feeling any of those. So this protective part learns, cool, I'm not gonna let you feel that. I'm gonna make sure that we don't decide. Then it goes into all of those forms of expression, again, to protect us from that emotion.

Harrison Orr (23:56.099)
The underlying phrasing here is like, if I don't decide, if I don't pick the direction, I can't fail. I'm not at fault, I can't be blamed. I can't be criticized, I can't be judged. And this is one of the ones that kills the polarity and the connection in marriages so, so much. Because your wife isn't looking at you to be perfect. She's not even looking at you to be a dictator.

She's often looking at you to make a decision and have a fucking spine. Like looking at you, tell me what you want, make a decision. Not so I can berate you if you're wrong, but because that's what the masculine does, it makes decisions. She will tell you, no, I don't feel like that. If that's not on her cards for the day, but it's not about being right or wrong, it's providing direction.

And again, we're not shaming these parts, but we're here to understand the parts. And then once we can understand what they're protecting us from, what they need from us and like start to go into this, like this deeper state, then it becomes a lot easier to navigate these parts. And ultimately.

lead from the adult self that now has all the resources, the strengths, things that he need, experiences that you need to realize that, okay, I can make a decision and if I get it wrong, I'm not gonna be humiliated. Or if I am humiliated, I can handle it. I'm a big boy. That I can experience conflict.

I can stay calm in it. can navigate it. It's not going to mean the end of the world. It's not going to mean that like people are to get angry or lose their shit at me and it's going to be the end of the world. But these parts, interestingly, when you start to create a dialogue with them and you ask them, you know, how old do think I am? They are stuck in time. They are stuck in the moment that they learned this behavior, which is often seven, nine.

Harrison Orr (26:04.238)
13, 12 years old. And so it's very often freeing for this part to learn that, oh shit, you're actually 40 years old. You're actually 55 with a family, with this business, we've done all this stuff. Like, wow, man, that's cool. And if you haven't experienced it, this is the first time you're hearing this. I know this sounds, I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds crazy to have these parts of you that you can have a conversation with that live inside you and all these things. But like we started the podcast.

Everybody always use that term, like a part of me always do this, part of me always do that. Other schools of thought use phrases like the inner child or my shadow or these other parts of us, right? So it's not psychotic. It's not make believe or spiritual or anything like that. It's just the way our mind is. All right, onto the fourth one.

We've got the self-erasing caretaker. This is the one that puts everybody else first, that has completely lost touch with his own wants and desires and feels resentful, but doesn't know why. He puts everybody else first. And I see this so often with business owners that have this disconnect at home because it often comes from like...

Logically, they tell the story of, well, I love my wife. If I give her everything that she wants, if I put her first, then she will be stress free. She will be happy, happy wife, happy life. And they get to a point where, I actually had this with a client this week who said, I don't know what I want. I've been...

for years running through the filter of what do they need? What will make them happy? What will keep me out of trouble? And now that I get to decide what I actually want, I have no fucking idea. Which is both a freeing and a somewhat scary place to be in terms of that limbo. But it's a necessary part of this journey to actually find that self again.

Harrison Orr (28:22.818)
This part, this self-erasing caretaker is often learned that, learned when it was recognized as his needs being too much.

You're too needy, you're too much. And then his emotional attunement flowed one way only towards everybody else, totally outward. His needs were never recognized, never seen as important. And it was you look after everybody else. For some people, if their parents were divorced or dad wasn't really present or was aggressive to mom, for whatever reason, if mom often needed protection, this is how a lot of

I need to look after mum. It doesn't matter what day I've had, need to look after mum. I need to make sure that she's okay. I'll be her shoulder to cry on. I'll look after her. I'll take care of her needs. And if she's okay, then I'm okay.

And a lot of adults will then label this as humility even, right? If I have needs, if I express those or my wants or desires, then that's me being selfish, right? It's me being a burden. So if I put everybody else first, then I'm being humble, I'm being nice, I'm being all these things that many men and even society have then labeled as positive traits.

But when we look at what the underlying meaning is and the sacrifice in order for those, then maybe they're not so positive.

Harrison Orr (30:00.911)
The nervous system learns through this, that learns safety through self abandonment. If I abandon myself for everybody else's needs, then their needs will be met and that they can't abandon me because I have created those needs for them. It also somewhat creates a little bit of dependence often as well because if I meet their needs, they need me to have those needs met and then I am of use, I am a good boy, I am needed and required. They won't leave me.

And then their happiness and everything else just gets put on the back burner. Like my needs don't matter, my happiness doesn't matter, what I want doesn't matter. Keeping everybody else happy is the goal.

If you've experienced that, sure, it feels good sometimes in the moment, but eventually you start to get resentful and frustrated and maybe even you don't know why. Like I'm doing these things for other people. Why am I so resentful? Often because you've put their needs ahead of yours and this is where covert contracts come into play.

especially if there's, well, I'm doing this for them if they do this for me. And what they do for me usually isn't a specific need or ask. It's definitely not verbalized, but it's something that we want from them in exchange. It's like, I want to be liked, I want to be invited, I want to be loved, and I don't feel that in return. So we get passive aggressive. Those guys get passive aggressive. They get nasty, they get resentful. Not fun.

So number five is the good boy moralizer. And this part is sneaky, right? The one that prides himself on being a good man. He's respectful, he's polite, he's controlled, but suppresses a fucking lot of emotions like his desire, his anger, his edge, like his sharpness. All are...

Harrison Orr (32:01.938)
suppressed, like they feel wrong. So he pushes them aside, he buries them down, like he should never experience those. And maybe labels it as maturity, or self control or even regulation. But no one actually feels that as regulation, like especially your wife, she won't feel your presence. If that's you, she will feel predictability, in the sense that you won't express emotions that you will push all that stuff down all the

of being good, being neutral, not rocking the boat. But the polarity and the realness and the connection doesn't come from goodness. It comes from being felt, being grounded, being embodied in your masculine energy, which this part learned was unsafe to express. There was a part of you that learned that

masculine energy in the form of being.

being dangerous, right? Having the potential for anger, for aggression, for these things was seen as rude, as wrong, as like dangerous in a bad sense, right? Not dangerous in the sense of like you can access these when you need to, you're like, you are safe in that sense because you have the ability to defend yourself and defend your family, but you know when to use it, like in the unhinged and uncontrolled way. And so,

He learned that approval was tied to being polite, being compliant, being agreeable. If I never raise my voice, if I'm never aggressive or angry, then I am safe. Therefore I am good and people will love me. And this often, this type of man or in this part of you would judge yourself hardly.

Harrison Orr (34:03.15)
partially I should say, for anger and sexual energy. Like that primal aggression and lust is seen as bad, right? Those are bad needs to have like, you're more evolved than that. You shouldn't have that. And this part of you, as part of that suppression learns that, is protecting you from being seen as too much.

You're too much, you're too any, like you're all of this, like I can't deal with that. And like, since I've been aware of this, I've been very mindful of the language that I use with my son. Like he is an absolute whirlwind of energy.

of obviously emotions as a total all toddlers are but I'm very mindful of saying you're too much calm down settle down like that type of language because I don't want him to learn that his his expression and his rawness and his personality and like his wildness is something to be to be shunned or to be suppressed.

because I don't want him to feel that he is then rejected or punished for that rawness and that expression. The underlying belief of the good boy is if I'm good, I'll be loved. And that, as you've probably seen or probably heard and started to identify this, this goodness that is associated with this is

more like a level of weakness, right? Because if you are not angry, if you're not aggressive, if you don't fight, if you don't have those and don't express them, then that's not, that's not good.

Harrison Orr (36:05.72)
That's not control. Like if you can't access something, then it's not control, it's weakness. Like being strong, being powerful is being able to access those, but having them under constraint, right? Knowing when and how to use them.

And so as we start to understand, show compassion for, know, like heal and integrate these parts of us, then we get to change these beliefs. Like I can be angry because that's a human experience. Doesn't mean that I need to yell. Doesn't mean I punch people or punch holes in walls. It means that I can feel an emotion because I'm a human being. And it doesn't make me good, bad, anything. It just means I'm a human.

how I decide to act on this, how to verbalize this, what to do with this, is then what you might say would categorize someone as quote unquote good or bad. But again, I would even argue that it's all contextual.

If you use that anger and that aggression to then fight someone who is physically threatening you or your family, I'd say that's a pretty good use of that trait and that part of you. If you use that towards your wife or your kids, yeah, not so much, right? So the goal, in my opinion, of this journey is to bring these parts home, right?

integrate, understand and integrate these parts, thank them for protecting us, but being able to relieve them of these duties, and of the system that they've created and then used since we were like very young, obviously, and then they get new roles. We learned that then anger is not bad.

Harrison Orr (37:56.271)
Hard conversations and conflict are not bad. Being rejected is not bad. It doesn't mean death. It doesn't mean we're unloved. It doesn't mean we're incapable or any of these other beliefs that we've picked up or these complex equivalences that we've created along the way. We've become much more capable through this journey. And now the last one I've got here is the hyper-responsible fixer.

All right, similar to the good boy, similar to the self-erasing caretaker, this one tries to solve emotions instead of leading through them. When your wife gets emotional, struggles to sit there and just allow it, goes into, why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? Here, let me do this. Like having to solve the emotion instead of allowing it.

This part over explains and justifies or negotiates to fix. Not because it's uncomfortable for anybody else or anybody else needs this solution, this fix, because this part is uncomfortable in that emotion. And because of...

because of that, that part takes on that emotion of the person in the situation. Like that part feels the emotion that the other person is there. And some people will say that this is empathy, but that's not very helpful, right?

If you're too empathetic, you take on that person's emotions, then who's going to stabilize the ship? Who's going to stabilize the energy of the room? Who's going to be the rock, the lighthouse in the storm here is now we're both all over the place. The analogy that was given to me early in my coaching days was if you're, if your client is in the hole, you know, if you're in the hole, the emotional hole, so to speak,

Harrison Orr (39:52.863)
It serves neither of us for me to jump down in there with you. Now we're both fucking stuck in the hole. My job to stay outside the hole, allow you to have whatever, allow you to get whatever you need from the hole. Maybe you're digging for treasure to uncover an emotion to allow it to happen, whatever. And when you're ready, I'll throw you a rope, throw you a ladder, help you back out.

not by solving your emotions, not by suppressing your emotion, not by any other means other than holding that space. But this was learnt by many men, many boys I should say, many people in those younger years when they had to learn to stabilise the environment, right? When they were...

hyper attuned often to maybe mum or dad's energy, right? If they got home and one was super tense and they learned that that tension led to arguments, led to fights, led to pots and pans being thrown, led to being spanked or punished, or maybe mum or dad was a drinker. If they were, you know, the aggressive type of tipsy that led to more punishment or physical issues. So in order to prevent those, that part of

that wanted to protect you from that situation, those emotions, tried to fix. It felt responsible for other people's moods. So if I kept mom and dad in a good mood, if I could make them laugh, if I could help out for dinner, if I could do all these other things to fix this situation, then it wouldn't lead to fights, aggression, violence. Because this is...

And it's protecting us from that fear of chaos and emotional unpredictability. Like we don't know what's gonna happen there and not the pleasant surprise unpredictability on Christmas morning of how bad is it gonna be? Are they just gonna swear at me and call me some names or I'm gonna get my ass kicked? So that part did what it had to in that phase of life and was there to protect you.

Harrison Orr (42:07.896)
The underlying belief with this part is if I manage everything, nothing will fall apart. Like there's a level of control for this part, right? If I can manage everybody's emotions, if I look after everybody else's needs and everybody else has their needs met, everybody's in a good mood, everybody is stable and everything, then we're good, right? Then everyone's good, so I'm good. And,

A lot of men in that space find themselves fucking exhausted. And then also like it's not enough. Especially learning that your wife doesn't want you to fix her moods. They're her emotions. For her to have, for her to experience, for her to deal with, everything. Sometimes she wants you to help fix it. Amazing.

Sometimes she just wants you to stay present. Sometimes she just wants a hug. But when we go in there to try and solve it, you've probably heard, if that's you, you probably heard things like, you're not even listening. You just don't understand. Like, I don't know why I bother. Like it either escalates because she gets frustrated or she completely just checks out and just doesn't share any of that because like, he doesn't fucking listen anyway. Like, why do I bother? And that can be very frustrating for...

a logical man who doesn't quite understand both understand her emotional needs in that moment, but then also understand the part of him that is coming out in that moment that doesn't feel safe in her emotions, like because he takes on her emotions and feels very insecure, unsafe in that chaos, so he needs to suppress it and move on. So nobody has their needs met. Nobody feels good about that situation.

Harrison Orr (44:05.036)
Now these parts show up in different times. It's not one cure, right? It's not even a cure. If you've identified with these parts, you're recognizing that these parts are showing up more than you'd like in your life. The good news is that we can heal them.

The good news is that there's nothing wrong with you. The good news is that you're not broken. This is not a life sentence. The good news is that when you can show compassion for these parts, when you can understand and give these parts essentially what they need to provide that safety so that they can trust you, so that you can then start to lead from the amazing adult, grown up self that you are, then these parts will no longer run your life. And this is...

This whole parts piece is the second layer to the model that we operate off in the ground and man method. There's the nervous system down the base because if you're not regulated, if you're still reactive, then nothing else will work. The nervous system we regulate, we regulate the nervous system I should say to create a space between stimulus and response from a physiological standpoint. We take ourselves out of that fight or flight.

then we do the parts work. Parts work is then what creates the space between the part and the adult self in that moment.

So normally a nervous system will respond to keep it to go into fight or flight. We slow that down. So that's not a factor. Then our part will step in because it's reactive as well to go into the same system to keep us safe and protect us from this thing that, you know, the system that has been running since it was incepted. We create then space so that the adult self can choose that, you know what, I can handle this hard conversation. You know what I want to say no, and I can say no, and I'm to be safe. You know what? don't have to fix your emotions right now.

Harrison Orr (46:06.416)
can actually sit in this. And then we start to create trust in those parts and we start to get to lead that. Repetition. that wasn't as bad as I thought. There's safety in that. And then we move forward. If you want to explore that for you personally, reach out and let me know.

You can apply for coaching in the link below. But if you're just understanding a lot of these frames, I hope this has been helpful. I hope this has changed the way that you think about these traits, maybe even loosened the grip on the label of being a nice guy or what else is going in your life. And maybe you don't even identify as a nice guy. And I love that. But maybe you even identify as like, cool, I'm not a nice guy, but I still fucking avoid conflict. I'm not a nice guy, but I still try to fix my wife's emotions.

and still don't know how to handle those emotions. Cool. This will explain that. So every one of these parts formed for a reason. They protected connection when you didn't have the capacity yet, because you're just a child. But protection is not leadership. Presence.

grounded masculine presence is. So like we said at the start, the systems and what works for a boy to survive won't work for a man, especially in this phase of your life where those survival traits are also creating the distance and the separation in yourself and in your marriage.

The moment a man can stay regulated in those motions, both from a parts and identity standpoint, and also his nervous system, the parts stop running the show, the adult self can step in and lead. And that's where you get to step in as the man that you want to be.

Harrison Orr (47:58.572)
Like every, most men know, okay, this is the type of man that I wanna be. This is how he handles conflict. This is how he has hard conversations, how he handles pressure. This is what enables that version of you to step forward, to be present. And it's not about banishing these parts. It's about showing compassion and understanding and allowing them to heal and find a new role.

Harrison Orr (48:31.682)
With that, no real action items from this episode, more of an understanding and a mental model. But with that, don't be sorry, be better.