Us with Travis Stock

What shapes us more—the stories we inherit or the choices we make?
Brian Hooks and coach Travis Stock dive into a candid exploration of identity, where early attachment, social conditioning, and generational patterns intersect with resilience, transitions, and the hard work of becoming whole.

Travis shares his journey from child welfare to coaching, revealing how systems often punish instead of support, and what it takes to move from performance to presence. Together, they unpack nature versus nurture without the clichés, showing how subtle messages about worth and belonging can steer a life as powerfully as major traumas.

The conversation highlights transition theory and the delicate balance of challenge and support that fuels growth—reminding us that small interpersonal moments often reshape us more than big milestones. It gets visceral when Travis introduces Equus coaching, where horses mirror congruence—thoughts, feelings, and actions in alignment—and expose the masks we wear to stay safe. That mirror didn’t just inform his work; it transformed his life, catalyzing a coming-out journey and a career pivot rooted in authenticity.

Together, Brian and Travis question inherited definitions of success and confront the narrow scripts of masculinity that cut men off from sensitivity, emotion, and community. Instead of glorifying stoicism, they make a case for integrated strength—the kind that welcomes back the parts we exiled to survive.

You’ll leave with a richer vocabulary for identity—systems, resources, and somatics—plus practical ideas for right-sizing challenge, building support, and practicing congruence in everyday life.

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Your voice helps more listeners find these stories—and maybe reclaim a few lost parts of themselves too.

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Transcript

Welcome And Big Question

SPEAKER_02 0:07

Welcome to What Makes Us. This is a podcast exploring in how we develop as people through our experiences and connections between individuals, with groups, and amongst society. We'll be bringing on guests to discuss how they've come to be who they are. And along the way, we may end up learning something about ourselves. So please sit back and enjoy your listening to What Makes Us. Welcome to What Makes Us. I'm your host, Brian Hooks, and I am super, super duper excited about our conversation today. Today, our topic is what makes us us. I have to say, from the very beginning of our conversation with our guest today, Travis Stock, I have been really amped about this conversation because I think this is really the the big question that really sets us up for what makes us. So uh without further ado, I really want to uh introduce our my really good friend Travis. And we have known each other for almost eons. Almost, almost eons, right? A very long time. Uh and so first, Travis, please tell us a little bit about yourself and what made you interested in this topic today.

Travis’s Path From Social Work To Coaching

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Well, thanks for having me, Brian. This is super exciting to be able to reconnect in this format. Yeah, as you said, our friendship goes back a ways. We knew we met each other back when you were living in Seattle. Um I currently still live in Seattle. I met you through uh my now husband. Uh so I'm uh husband. I live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States in Seattle, Washington. I'm a social worker-turned coach. Um, I got my master's in social work focusing on child welfare and family sort of family dynamics, and found myself struggling in systems that were meant to help each help people, but were not helping people, or I wasn't confident that I was helping people. And so I made a pivot into coaching. And I found that coaching was a way that I could better support my clients, it was more aligned with my natural gifts and sort of was allowed me to show up with people in the way that felt right to me. Um, so that's a little bit about me. What makes me interested in this topic, as I kind of alluded to my background is in family studies, human development, and then social work with a child welfare specialization. And so so much of my early training and my early career was focused in focused on how we as people develop from childhood into adulthood. What are the stories that we're taught? What are the lessons we're taught? What are our attachment styles? Like, how do we feel safe or unsafe within our relationships with our caregivers? And I it's just become such a big frame for how I approach my work with clients and how I approach my own personal development work is to like kind of reflect on who was I taught that I needed to be in order to succeed or be lovable or to belong in this world. And I often talk about with my clients like the first half of our life is learning who we needed to be in order to do get all those things to get success, to belong, to be loved. And then so many of us go on this journey in the second half of our life of unlearning all that shit. So um, and so I'm always really fascinated about like what is it that makes us us? What is it that it's that sort of nature versus nurture uh exploration? There's parts of us that just come into the world with certain traits, and then there's parts of us that are taught how to be something and to develop certain traits within ourselves in order to uh make it in this world. So it's it's just something I'm really fascinated about that it's we're not just all fully in our adult selves at all times, moving through the world. We have these little inner children that make us uh that drive us sometimes and that um influence our behaviors and our choices.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love that. As you're talking about development from the very beginning, right? Child and family systems and dynamics, you know, it flashes back for me of my own counseling degree and and my focus was on college students, right? But it was taking into consideration what what environment they were coming out of and and then how they were gonna morph or you know, transform into the person they wanted to be in their college years and beyond that, right? Um, so I I totally understand the the interest and desire to kind of understand how people work. How do we how do we function? You know, this whole podcast truthfully is that thought process, right? What makes us? Um, and so I thank you for for bringing this topic up and um I'm really excited about it. So, you know, what got you interested in in kind of pursuing around, you know, understanding how you know how people come to be who they are.

Nature, Nurture, And Inner Children

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, I think it's my early career. Well, maybe if it's even before that, it's sort of reflecting on my own personal journey when I think about who did I think I needed to be in this world. And you know, as a as a gay man living in this world, I learned a lot about what I needed to be in in terms of like what kind of boy I needed to be in order to be manly and and how to like really truly fit in and belong. And and so uh I've constantly been looking at where have I learned to present as something? Where where have I learned to put a mask on and show up in the world in a way that is uh acceptable to the world? And what did that do to my sort of personal development as a person? What did that teach me? And so I see it in myself, and I often talk about it with my clients that so much of our socialization, even the well-meaning stuff, even the stuff that's very good intentions. I'm not trying to imply that all lessons that we learn as kids are bad, but I do think that it's worth looking at what are the things I was taught, what are the things I believe about who I need to be, and to really get curious about whether or not there are parts of ourselves that we had to leave behind at a certain point that were not acceptable, that were not valuable, that were not going to help us be successful. And then we overdeveloped other parts of ourselves. And so I see that so much in my own personal development work. I had a high level of perfectionism. I was there's a reason I got a 4.0 in my master's degree. I was trying to achieve and really like intensely achieve to try to make up for some of the internal things I was struggling with and to really uh cope with that. And so I think that my own journey led me into that. And then um, as I started trying training as a social worker, I was really focused. I liked working with kids, I liked being around kids, I liked helping kids, and so I did some behavior coaching with kids. And what I found was I'd go into people's homes to work with their kids and they'd sit me down and say, Hey, fix my kid. I'm gonna go and take care of what I want to do in my house. And, you know, I just kept seeing the flaws in that. Like a kid doesn't, a kid is a product of his environment or his or her environment. And so they the if the system around them, the parenting, the home environment, the stress levels, the emotions, the things that are said and unsaid aren't changed around them, the kid's not likely to change. Just because I spent a half hour, 45 minutes with the kid doesn't mean that that's actually going to change anything if the system keeps reinforcing how that kid shows up. Yeah. And so that happened. And then I was a social worker working as an investigator for child abuse and neglect. And so seeing people in some of the hardest parts of their lives and in in places where they didn't want me in their lives. And the systems were trying to help people help keep the kids safe theoretically. And yet most of we didn't have resources to do that really. And we were mostly just a punitive system that was punishing people for the stuff that happened in their lives. Like so much of that abuse and neglect comes from that, from the abuse and neglect that they experienced, as the the parents experienced when they were children, or the drug use that's going on, or the untreated mental health conditions, or the poverty. There's so much about how the system either supports or doesn't support certain parts of us that I'm just very fascinated about exploring. And so, yeah, like I said, it comes from my own personal journey, but I've just witnessed throughout my career that we aren't individuals that have complete choice of who we are at all times. And there's there needs to be more spaces for people to be able to like really do the excavation and inquiry and curiosity around who am I really? What do I actually believe? Not what was I taught, or what do I how who do I need to be in order to survive this moment? But who do I need who am I truly?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. And what what I'm hearing in there is a lot of environment, right? Like you brought it up, nature, nurture, the environment you're coming out of. And you know, as you are laying out, you know, your experiences with folks, you know, the the thing that got to me was, you know, all of these different moments are like you said, almost generational, right? The current kid is in front of you having this conversation about you know how they're impacted by their by their parents. But the parents need to have this conversation because they were interacting, you know, they were affected by their parents, right? Like there's this generational piece, um, this environmental piece that is coming up in my mind about you know what you're talking about and and how that does really affect us. And thinking about my own upbringing and my family's upbringing, you know, my my siblings had separate had uh, you know, for a time period were separated from from my family, and they had a completely different experience with their with their mother, uh, and it wasn't a good one. Uh, and so they had a lot of trauma that they had to figure out. And when they came back, they were a completely different kids than when they when when they were with us. And and that's what came to my mind uh of how things were kind of panning out for them.

Generational Patterns And Systems

SPEAKER_00 10:46

So it's there is just so much of that, that that generational piece that I think is important. I think when I'm when I'm sitting with my clients, when I'm working with people, I often try, at least from my perspective, they don't need to be in that perspective, but I try to see not just the person that's sitting right in front of me. I like I I need to know what is all that led to this. Right. I want to know all of that. And you know, I think that's kind of what makes me unique as a coach, because I think coaching can often be really focused on who are you right now and where are you going, sort of present and future focused. And that's very true to what I try to lean into, but my social work background, the back like the the part of me that blends that in, that does get a little bit um very curious about how did you get here though? Yeah. And what are those things that shaped who you are and what's unresolved and what was shaped in you? And so, yeah, I think a lot of people experience sort of like what your siblings did, which they're you know, I don't think any of us make it through this world without some level of trauma. Sometimes it's the big capital T traumas that are scary that a lot of us are worried about, and sometimes it's just like the messaging, the subtle messaging about our value and our worth that we pick up over time. And sometimes it's explicit and sometimes it's implicit. But the way that I'm playing kind of playing with that language of trauma is like the things that we didn't have the capacity to navigate at that time, and so we had to learn how to like separate ourselves from or distance ourselves from parts of ourselves in order to make it through that moment, yeah. And you know, we just don't live in a in cultures that very often help us go unpack that later or go reclaim those parts of ourselves that we had to leave behind in that moment. And so I yeah, your siblings are not the only ones with that experience, and and it's it's just a part of life. And I like to open up spaces where we can actually work on some of that.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

I you know, I think you you raised such a great important thing here, and it it it just clicked for me here. Trauma can be a catalyst to go either good or bad, right? And as that is something that is a catalyst for growth or for going back into your shell. I don't know the opposite word of growth is right now. Um how much of what makes us is also how we respond to the different challenges, the different things that are happening to us that really builds that I don't know, I sometimes the fight or flight process, the the resilience, the get back up, you know, like how important is trauma or or challenges, obstacles in our lives for us to be able to become who we who we need to be.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You know, it's something that I like I I have tension around this internally because it's like there's a there's an idealistic part of me that feels like I wish we didn't have to go through suffering, that we didn't have to go through trauma for growth. Um, there's a part of me that wants to believe in a world that we can learn and grow without it. And yet I've lived enough years to notice that there's no escaping suffering and trauma. Right. And so I I do think it's an important, it's a it's a part of how we grow. I think it's a part of the growth process. And, you know, I think in in many ways, living in the United States right now feels like we're in a really tough time that theoretically leads towards growth. Uh, in in best case scenario, I know there's a lot of fears that it's not leading towards growth. I vacillate between the two of those beliefs a lot.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

I I'm like sitting here, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah. But there's this piece that you said around like how we respond to traumas. And I do think how we respond to it does play a role in how we grow or not grow in it. But I also don't think back to the question of like what makes us us, I don't also think that it's um a level playing field where everybody gets a choice for how they react to certain things, like our life circumstances, our internal and external resources, our support systems around us, like those shape also how we respond to something. So you and I could go through the exact same thing, exact same experience, and you could relate to it from a place of no trauma at all, and I could be super traumatized by a certain that same thing. It all comes down to the individual and our like levels of sensitivity and what we've been through in our lives before, how much support we've received, how much validation and care we've received in our lives. So it is about how we respond and react to those things, but I don't necessarily know that all of us get that choice. And I think so much of what I like to help people do is see if they can help build some of those resources and resilience around things to be able to move through this world that will inevitably create suffering and trauma for many people for most, I think all people probably.

Trauma, Suffering, And Resilience

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Yeah, yeah, I I totally agree with you. I I think suffering is unfortunately almost a part of the human condition. Um whether that's uh imposed by others or self-imposed, right? There's gonna be a sense of suffering. Yeah, I I also try to find this. I don't know, this is probably just my own perspective. How do I look at this in a way that is gonna move me forward, right? Uh there's trauma that is legitimately trauma. And usually I've I my mind is focused around violence. Like usually that's a trauma around some kind of violence, um, versus you know, challenges, challenges, right? Like you are challenged to do something outside of your comfort zone or outside of your understanding, and you are put in a situation that you have to do it. Um, I've just been reading up on, I'm gonna get a little nerdy here. Uh, I've just been reading up on transition theory from uh Nancy Sloshberg. Um, one of my favorite theories, particularly working with students, and it's about how do you how do you respond to change? Um, and it's a great, great theory in my mind of of how do you move in, move through, and move out through uh events and moments in your life, right? Like something expected happens, you still have to transition that. Like you graduate from high school, it's a planned, expected thing. Um something unexpected happens, a car accident, and you need to something's changed now, you know, whether that's mobility or or financials or something like that, and you now have to respond to that change. Um, and I've been working at it through the through the thought process of how do you sense that in coaching. Right? Like as a coach, how do you help how do you understand when you see your client is going through a change, it is going through a transition, and they are either stuck in that transition or they're trying to figure out what's what's next. And so I've been trying to piece that together with coaching because I piece it together for working with college students. That's it was primarily the thought process of you know, helping college students transition into college, transition through it, and then transition out. And also all the small little incidents. And I feel like those small occurrences that happen in our lives sometimes have more weight than that expected college graduation, right? That interaction with your roommate, my higher education experience is coming out. That interaction with that roommate that went completely south, and you have no idea why it went that way, has more impact on you personally than say graduating, you know, the actual event of graduating from college. Um, which is an interesting in my mind, which is so interesting, right? That small thing versus that really big thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

But that small thing that I remember like my college graduation, it's like, yeah, I remember it, but it doesn't have the same weight as my college experience, the things I was going through during that time, the relationships I was building, the certain classes that I took. So I I for sure feel that way. You know, I I stole this from my husband because he also that's how you two met was through higher education. Right. So I stole this from him, but I use it a lot in my work with clients, is like the concept of student development theory. And what that says is that that college students, this is the studies are done done like with college students, but I think this applies to humans, that the right balance of challenges and support is needed in order to grow efficiently. If it's too much challenge, then most people fail and bail out. If it's too much support, they're not having to grow and stretch at all, and it's all done for them and they don't actually grow. So we really do need that right balance of challenge and support. And so I bring that in with my clients all the time. It's like we get to really assess what's the level of challenge you're experiencing, what's the support you have underneath you? What where are you, where is it out of balance? Where is there either too much challenge or too much support so that you can actually grow? Um, so I definitely like that sort of higher ed model that created this idea that like college kids are are stepping into their adulthood in a new way, most of the time. Right, right, right. There are sort of older learners as well. But that sort of traditional college age is people kids are like 18-year-olds, like young adults that are like um uh individuating from their families of origins, finding themselves choosing their own learning paths theoretically, and and they need that right balance of challenge and support. And I know plenty of college students that had too much support and didn't get it, didn't like grow because they didn't really have to. And there's two people some people that their life circumstances, it was all just too challenging. The finances were too challenging. I can't make this all happen. I have to go take care of my sick sibling or my parent or something like that. And now I can't make it because I don't have enough support underneath me. Yeah, so it's one of the ways that I approach that with clients is trying to figure out where are you at with that balance of challenge and support, and where can we add or subtract some in order for you to be able to grow effectively?

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah, yeah. I think that oh, that is that's a great thank you for bringing that up because I think that is super important. Um, the balance between challenge and support. And, you know, college is an artificial environment, right? So we kind of get placed in this in this one area, especially I would say four-year universities. They are really good to have that balance of challenge and support, um, at least within the academic structure and and to be able to have the student development services there. Community colleges, I think, kind of sometimes balance a little bit too much in the challenge because more people are focused in that in their life, right? Their life stuff has way more impact um and influence on what's going on for them. So, you know, they're trying to improve, they're trying to do something different. Um, but that challenge can be really high at the community college level. But when I take that out, take it out of the college system and put it into the real life, we have no way of really being able to create an environment on our own of this, you know, when challenge and and support are coming in, uh at least in my my in my thought process, right? Like I I can control how much support I have, right? I can I can be able to uh understand who's supporting me and and where they're supporting me and how I show up. Uh hopefully that is enough to be able to, I guess, you know, when challenge comes, be able to face that challenge. You know, um, and when multiple challenges come, be able to figure out how to navigate the best way through those things. That's just uh that's kind of where my brain is going right now.

Transitions And Student Development Theory

SPEAKER_00 23:51

Made me it made me laugh chuckle a little bit hearing you say when multiple challenges comes in, because that's how life is that life will never just serve you the one challenge and stack a few on top of you to the point where you don't know whether you can make it through that. And back to what you were saying earlier, like you know, sometimes the biggest growth moments come when we are when we aren't sure we can keep our head above water, when we are in over our pay grade and we have to stretch in a big way. I learned this really key. So I do a version of coaching that involves horses. I do experiential learning where I take people out and interact with a being that doesn't speak the same language as you do. But you but there's a relationship that's available. Both humans and horses are social creatures. We they belong in a herd, we belong in communities. We all both have power dynamics, we both um uh have social dynamics and socialization, and yet they just do it differently than we do it, um, being being animals, not having sort of the human prefrontal cortex of the brain that does abstract thought and thinks very linearly in time and and uses language. And so I learned this pretty clearly with horses. I think back to two stories come to mind. The first one is um uh my very first session um experiencing Equus coaching, being the one in the round pen, uh interacting with a horse and having somebody coach me through it. One of the biggest lessons that I took from that timeframe was how much um I was presenting in the world, how much I was showing up in the world in a way that I thought I needed to be. And those are all things I learned from childhood, as I sort of alluded to in the beginning. Like I was trying to be something that everybody else approved of rather than actually being myself. And what I found in that first interaction with the horse is that when I was presenting, I couldn't connect with the horse. The horse was not interested in being around me, was not interested in uh uh showing up in ways that I wanted to show up with the horse. But in the moments where the real me poked through, it changed instantly. And so I was really able to actually see that the presentation of myself versus just being myself is really getting in the way of my ability to really effectively be in the world. But I didn't necessarily know that I felt capable of taking such a big risk. My whole life had taught me not to let that uh that true authentic expression come through. Didn't feel safe to be there. And so to then now be uh sort of recognizing a new truth that I actually could connect to the world better, and this horse is mirroring that to me if I just truly showed up, but I don't feel safe enough to show up. That right there was one of those moments that it was like, I don't have the skill set yet to step into that, but I can see it. And so it changed my whole perspective on things, and then I had to work do the work to slowly allow little bits and more of myself to come forward and to test it out in the real world. So it's like it is those moments where we maybe something is bigger than what we think we can do that we actually um step further into that that that we grow the most. It's the catalyst for my coming out, it's the catalyst for a new career for me. It was I I moved quickly after that, I moved to another state to learn this work. Like it changed everything for me when I was able to see it and to step into it. But in that moment, I didn't feel capable of actually bringing that lesson into my life right away. It was a little too scary.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I am really excited to hear more about you know this equestrian coaching because I I just what you just shared is is profound. To be able to see through the mirror of a of an animal that you are not presenting your full self. Yeah, um, that's yeah, that that will definitely change change a lot about how you are showing up. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

It that's it's my favorite work. Like I can do a lot of really good work as a coach, either on Zoom or in a in a on a coffee coffee session or something like that. But there's something about being in the experience, in your body, moving, experiencing in a relationship with another being, having things mirrored back to you that may be something you like being mirrored back to you, or things you are not comfortable with being mirrored back to you. There's something about it that is really transformational for people and and fast tracks the coaching work that I'm doing with people. It fast-tracked my own development and I see it happening with other people too. The reality is horses are very sensitive beings, they rely on their sensitivity for survival in the world, they need to be aware of their environment as a prey animal.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

And so, and they have never been taught to, like many of us, like you know, as a sensitive boy myself, I was taught a lot that I was too sensitive and I needed to harden up in this world. They don't go through that same socialization, and so they feel what they feel. And one of the things that horses are really good at picking up on is when we are either congruent or incongruent. So, what I mean by that is they are really they can feel if our thinking, our feeling, and our actions are aligned or misaligned. If I'm thinking one thing but acting in a different way, or if I'm trying to pretend like I don't feel something, they they can pick up on that because what that does to our the human body is it changes our respiration rate, it changes our heart rate, it takes it changes micromuscle tension. And horses feel all that, and they don't second guess what that means, or they don't have a story about what it means, but they feel it and respond to it. So oftentimes horses will move closer to things they feel good about that feel congruent to them and will move away from things that feel incongruent or like someone maybe lying to themselves, um, which is all I was doing was I was presenting a version of myself in the world that wasn't really authentic. And I have a lot of compassion for why I was doing that. I I was surviving in a world that didn't feel safe. Um, and yet I as I developed and got older and had more skill sets to and more resources and support around me, I could actually take the risk to show up more fully as an adult versus what the child version of me needed in order to stay safe.

Challenge And Support Balance

SPEAKER_02 30:34

That's deep. I mean, that's really deep. I was just thinking as you were talking about it, I was like, wow, when did I or have I at this point become congruent with my own sense of self and uh and understanding? Um I used To tell this to a lot of uh my students, you know, they they were very uh focused on first impressions, right? Your first impression needs to be so good. That's how we it was always told to us, you got to have a really good first impression. Um and I used to say back, well, the first impression usually is the biggest lie because the first impression is what you think that that person wants to know or see in you. And so it's not necessarily your actual first impression, it's actually the biggest lie that you're gonna put out there about yourself so that you for some reason or another can feel connected to this person. Um, and it it it kind of messes up your relationship even from the beginning. Totally, right?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

I think you just so well described how I a lot of my early life, that's how I moved through the world was what does this person want from me? What does this person need for me? Who do I need to be in order to for them to like me? It really wasn't a grounded in a knowing of myself, it was who do I need to be in order for that for this to be okay? Right. And that's a tough way to live in the world.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

It is, and and and truthfully, we all are living that way, right? Because we yeah, because the importance of how people see us and and what you want people to see you uh what you're about is is so uh skewed. I would say it's so skewed. And I think you brought it up earlier. What do you leave behind as you're growing? Right. And what you're leaving behind is you don't want someone to have a negative impression of you, so you're only gonna put out what you believe to be is the best thing about you when it's actually what you want them to believe is the best thing about you, it is not actually who you are. Um right, and that's and so the perception, how we per want people to perceive us and what we feel like they how others perceive us is a huge uh huge undertaking. I think you said it beautifully. What do we leave behind as we are as we are growing, whether that's by choice or or not by choice? And uh, you know, a lot of times, you know, it's a it's a mixture of both, I think.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Totally. This comes a lot up in a lot in my work. Um, I work with people of all genders, um, and I love working with all different kinds of people, but I do specialize a part of my business in working with men. And it this comes up a lot in my work with men, is that in some ways I I I'm gonna say something that sounds a little dramatic, just to make kind of put it out on the table. It maybe isn't as as it may be not as scary as I as it sounds when I first put it out there, but just to make a point of it is that I think in some ways, and I think this is probably true for all people, but I'm just speaking for the male experience. Like there are the way that we're socialized as boys is inherently traumatic. It tells us that we have to leave whole parts of ourselves behind in order to be a man. It means we have to divorce ourselves from our emotions, we have to not be sensitive, we have to avoid anything that's involved with the feminine, or else we are hazed and either called slurs that are misogynistic or homophobic or both.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:09

Um and it teaches us that we can't be whole expressions of ourselves, we just have to be somebody that wins, that conquers, that's dominant, that is strong, that is stoic in the face of stressful things. And so I talk a lot about this with the guys that I work with. And I think the horsework is so helpful for me because I get to take guys into relationships with a really sensitive animal that didn't ever learn that that wasn't a good thing. They actually rely on it for their survival, right? Um, and so guys get to repattern what it is to see this big, powerful thousand-pound animal that also is very sensitive, that is also very attuned. And those are not skills that we were necessarily taught as men. And so um, I love that you had, I saw that you had another episode about um what makes us men. Right. And I just really I love that you had a queer trans person on there. Like that's so much of like what I love doing is like maybe there are different voices of men that are out there, masculine people that are out there, that can also help us learn how to re-uh integrate as whole people. It doesn't have to be this traditional model of masculinity that is pretty limiting and pretty um is creating a lot of havoc in our world and not just to other people, but to men themselves. Like the suicide rates are so high among men right now. Mental health challenges are really um uh peaking for men in our current world. And I think part of that has to do with who we had to leave behind in order to be successful in this world. And yet redefining what success is might allow us to really reintegrate whole the whole being that's a part of us, yeah. Um, but it's it's tough work because in order to re-incorporate those things, we have to reincorporate things we were told were the worst things we could be sensitive, emotional, feminine, any of those kinds of things.

Congruence Learned With Horses

SPEAKER_02 36:14

No, I I totally agree with you, and and thank you for bringing it up. Yeah, I love that episode with TJ, and I think we were all over the place when it comes to our conversation, but you raise such a great great moment here because you're right, like what we leave behind. I you know, in my household, uh it wasn't it was a very uh actually it was counter to what masculinity was, right? There wasn't a lot of conversation around you have to do this or this is how you're feeling. It was more about just being authentically you. Um, there was a lot of bravado in the household. My you know, my dad was in the Marine Corps, and uh so there I you know, honor and discipline was something that definitely stuck through, but it wasn't like it was drilled into our heads, it was just how he carried himself that I was very proud to see that I wanted to emulate. But when I got outside of my household, the outside influence, the misogyny, the homophobic stuff, all those things were from my the my friends and the people, the circle that I was around. And I didn't realize how much it had I had picked up on that until I think after college. And I and truthfully, I had to really I think when I for me, you know, I didn't get do the equestion coaching. For me, it was old school. I'm gonna have to like break some eggs and figure out what's going on with me. Um, you know, I you know, I was lucky enough to to go through a really strong program at uh of course at Vermont, and they kicked my butt and it opened my eyes to my own, you know, lack of understanding myself. Uh, I was stuck in just being a black man and was completely putting off what that what I was doing and the energy I was giving out to women and to other men. And and I was just completely oblivious to actually how I was navigating the world. My first impression really was just horrible, truthfully. Um, and it took me a lot of it took me a lot of you know tough conversations and sitting down and really being introspective about you know who I wanted to be and and how I wanted to engage in the world. And I still do that, right? We do that regularly. I think to because to be able to have these conversations, you have to be able to open yourself up to that and and be introspective of it. I that's one of the things I love about being a coach, right? It's because I'm not just coaching others, but I'm also doing that work myself, right? Like I can't be sitting there doing and saying, like, yeah, you need to get over this, but I'm still really hung up on it. Like, no, it doesn't work that way. You have to do that work.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

I tell that to my students, so I teach other people how to do that horsework, and I tell that to my students, I was like, Well, you've signed up for a career where you have to be in the middle of your own crap while helping other people with theirs. Right. And you know, I always tell them the best coaches I know out there are the ones that are doing their own work. If you can track your inner world, if you can do that introspection, if you can get a if you can notice when your ego flares up and wants to protect you and to move around it and find different strategies, it will help you do that with other people. And so I I so value what you're bringing to the table. What you're talking about is like that introspective work. And as I was saying, like, I don't think men especially are taught a lot of that. It's actually not very valuable to look at that. And you brought up being a being a black man, like, are there's so many different layers of what we learn we need to be? And as a gay man myself, like I was trying to figure out like who I needed to be, and like there's so many different layers of learning on top of what makes us us, is back to the sort of original part of this. And there's so many layers that we can investigate and get curious about and decide is that actually who I am, or was that just what I thought I needed to be?

SPEAKER_01 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

And I love that you're sort of modeling that and being a coach, a male coach out there, being a man out there that's doing that introspective work, because I don't think it's net necessarily naturally taught to many of us as men. And I think that we need to model that and we need to invite other people into that space because until we're willing to ask some of those questions, we can't really know who we really are.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Oh, yeah. That I mean, that's that's what it is, right there. Until you ask yourself the deep question of who are you, you're not gonna really be able to move forward. And you're gonna stay in that really weird first impression that you want to put out to the world, right? Like you're gonna you're gonna think that that's as you're gonna think that that's success. Yeah, right. That is that's what your marker, your bar of success is gonna be, and you're really gonna be leaving behind what could really be success of not just looking at yourself, but how you are engaging others in the world with who you are.

SPEAKER_00 41:17

Uh and just notice that that's a somebody else gave you that defin definition of success. That's not your definition of success. And until you're willing to define that for yourself, then you're operating in someone else's plan. And to me, that's not you being you, that's you being what you were taught you needed to be.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's that's that's good stuff right there. That's really good stuff. I'm you know, this conversation is so mind-blowing. I'm like trying to I'm trying to process where to go with it, but I am coming back to this. This is this thought this keeps coming back to me. It's this generational piece, right? You know, I I am who I am, but the person that most influenced me is who they are. Do I truly know who they are to be able to process who am I?

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Wait, say that again. I feel like I'm in an inception. Is this a dream within a dream? Like say it again.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

I just kind of I I just had to leave it there because it right. So the my brain broke. Right, right. So let me rephrase that. Let me see if I can rephrase that. So, you know, the person that taught me is who they are, right? Do I truly uh do I truly know who they are? Because what they taught me is is from their perspective. So can I understand who I am if I don't know who they are?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

That's a good question. I think I think most of us as people, like I I think the most influential people for most of us in the beginning is our parents. They're the caretakers, the people we're supposed to be able to trust, the people we are who have to provide for all of our needs. And some of us have had good experiences, some of us have had not so good experiences with those parents. Right. But I do think there is a a fairly common experience that most people go through, which is to begin at some point in their life seeing their parent as the person that's like, this is their first time on earth. This is also this is their figuring it out. They had parents that circled, so like really humanizing the parent instead of keeping them in that sort of parent role. So I think there's a natural thing of being able to see them for who they are and to understand them. Yeah. Um, and I think maybe that's helpful in uh a person's own experience of like figuring out who they are as an individual. Um, but I also think that sometimes people get stuck in trying to figure out who someone else is and avoiding doing the work of finding out who they are.

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Yeah, they yeah, I think that's a total pitfall. That's a complete blind spot of that of that thought process. And uh I also believe that when a parent gets older, when the roles switch, when the child becomes the parent and the and the parent needs the help of the child, right? Like as as we get older, you know, we see our we see kind of the bad habits that have come up from our from our parents. It kind of comes out as they get older. Um and and that becomes a little bit more like, oh, I didn't know that that was your habit. Uh that's not I'm glad I didn't pick that up, but I didn't know that that was your habit. And that's interesting. Well, where did that come from? And it's been it's been you, you know, all the different stories that come up, but I think to some degree, a lot of people miss that if they don't have a connection with their families to see kind of see that other side of your parent because you know, which I think, as you said, there's a pitfall there. If you're focusing too much on them and not focusing enough on yourself, you're not going to move forward, you're going to stay in the past. Um but I think I still think believe it's a it's an interesting avenue to be able to kind of process if you have that opportunity, right? If you have that connection and are able to experience that, I think that can open up a lot of different doors about not just yourself, but you know, about your family and and what is that history that is kind of traveling behind you that you may not know that you're continuing, um, whether you want to or not. Um and I think that's an interesting piece.

Masks, First Impressions, And Authenticity

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Yeah, I think one of the most effective ways to do that is to kind of reflect on our parents as humans with their own life journey that they were on. And I know I I learned a lot when I allowed my parents to just be on their own journey, and that there are some parts of their personal development that have nothing to do with me. Like there's a little kid version of me that was like everything was about me for a long time. And when I finally let them just have their own journey and their own work, that was really, I think, healing to our relationship. But one of the things I think can be really effective when looking back at someone else's journey is to kind of get curious about what are the choices they did or didn't have. Like, I think a really obvious example in the United States is like there are generations of women who couldn't vote, right? And then they were women that could vote. And then there were generations of women who couldn't even have a credit card or have their own finances, and then that's changed. And so it's like thinking back on like the generations before us had different kinds of choices they were making and different limitations placed on them. And I think sometimes that can be really effective to look back and like, okay, what were the choices my parents did or didn't have? And now what are the choices I do or don't have in these where we can actually see and give compassion to the journey they were on and then also free ourselves up to now go? This is where I put my coaching back hat on rather than the sort of more like therapeutic lens of looking to the past. I start to look at the future. Okay, now that you see the choices or the person that was there or the things they were struggling on, what are the choices you have now moving forward? And how do you want to make those choices? I often say the people that are attracted to working with me, my clients, I would even say it's all in my friend group too. Um, anybody that I am sort of bringing into my life are usually people that are like the pivot points in their family generational stuff. They're the ones that have decided, okay, this isn't working. And they're like, I'm gonna make new choices. It's a it's a I have it's a tough uh uh role to play to pivot the generational stuff. Um, it's lonely, it's hard, it's a lot of work. Um, but it's good work and finding other people that are doing that work, I think, is really beneficial and getting support around that. That's why I love having clients that are in that space because I I love being able to offer that support to help them as we kind of back to that student development theory, that challenge and support. They're experiencing challenge, but what's the support they need underneath them to really step in and actually make new choices that help free them and theoretically their generations?

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Yeah, yeah. No, that's that's amazing. That's amazing. You know, I I just started thinking about like how we uh used to be in interviews for student development, and they would come in and say, you know, challenge and support. I'd be like, Why are you saying that to me right now? Of course it's challenge and support, of course it is. But now in this context, I'm like, I it's not said enough. It's not said enough that you need both. You need both to be able to grow. Um and it should be, and it needs to be not just only in certain environments, it should be a part of our lives. Uh, because that right now is really uh it's a part of what makes us um truthfully is is that and um I'm excited for the work that you're doing uh and and for this and especially with men because it it is desperately needed. It is desperately needed that we really do need that time for ourselves um and not in the selfish way that has been happening the last eons, but in a truthfully, you know, looking not only at yourself but also how how you're looking at others and how you're being in community with others, right? Because that's it's kind of bringing men back into community uh in a way that is positive, engaging versus being isolating and and negative, which I I think you know, so I think that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

Uh it's exactly what it is. It's a it's in a connected way rather than in an isolated way. That's exactly what it is.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Yeah. So as we are coming close to our time, uh, what would you like to kind of share with our listeners as we're as we're kind of rolling out here?

SPEAKER_00 49:56

I think I'll go back to where we started this, which is around this whole like having to leave parts of yourself behind. I believe that you don't have to leave intrinsic parts of yourself behind. And it is often the things that we are the most cautious, nervous about, fearful of accepting within ourselves that will actually free us the most if we're willing to really embrace them. And I have a lot of compassion for why you're afraid to uh accept that part of yourself. I have a lot of empathy. I've been through a lot of my own rejection of self and shame work. And it's, I think shame is probably my biggest teacher throughout my life. And so I have a lot of compassion for why we would want to keep those parts of ourselves excluded or kept away and not shown and brought into the light. But I do think that's where freedom really starts to settle in for someone when you can really accept those parts of yourselves, when you can find people, other people in community that accept and and cherish and love those parts of you too. I think those are part of it. So I think I would just leave people with um, you don't have to leave real, whole, important uh delicate, wonderful parts of yourself behind in order to be okay in this world. It does take some work to find the right amount of support around you to let those parts be there and to be there safely. So I don't mean that that's not hard work, I just mean that it's important work and it is where you will find the most freedom, the most well-being, the most sense of belonging, the most sense of love when you're willing to bring those excluded and isolated parts of yourself back into the fold.

Masculinity, Sensitivity, And Men’s Healing

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Yeah, thank you, thank you for that. And I I would also love to add to this of of what you talked about congruence, right? Of the of being able to be congruent with yourself and and being a complete you. And if you as you bring these things back, right, as you bring what you've left behind, you are gonna find them more congruence in your life and in how you are navigating the world. Um, I also I think that's something that should be shared too, as well, because that was just really amazing.

SPEAKER_00 52:18

100%. And if you have any trouble figuring out what congruence and incongruence is in your life, go stand next to a horse. Or come stand next to a horse with me, they'll show you. You should make that a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_02 52:30

You should totally make you should totally make that a t-shirt. If you if you got trouble finding congruence, stand next to the horse.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Like we're getting a we're getting merch made.

SPEAKER_02 52:40

Yeah, yeah, you're getting a merch made. That is that is I will buy that. I will buy that merch. I will buy ten of those things. Yes, yes, that's awesome. Well, thank you, Travis, for coming on for tonight or uh tonight for me for today. Morning for me so much. I know, right? Thank you so much. This conversation has been just epic. Just thank you, dude.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

Oh, it's been a real joy. Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this. Uh, I couldn't be more happy to connect with you on this.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Yeah, and we are gonna have some more conversations about this equestrian coaching because um I think it's totally just mind-blowingly good. Uh I I think I want to experience it at some point. If I make it back to Seattle, I definitely want to experience it.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Oh, hell yeah. That's my favorite thing to do and to talk about. So I'll talk about it to London in the face for sure.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

All right, definitely the next side. Thank you for listening to What Makes Us. Make sure to rate or review this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or send it to a friend who you think will enjoy this podcast. Thank you for sharing your time and see you soon.