The Roots of Male Violence

My colleague, Jed Diamond, an expert on male psychology and male health, wrote a very timely article, "The 5 Hidden Reasons Men Become Violent and What We Can Do About It to Make the World Safer." In the wake of the Ferguson situation, this subject is particularly relevant.

While violence is perpetrated by both men and women, and clearly both men and woman are impacted by violence (and contribute to a culture of violence), more men perpetrate violence and are the victims of violence than women.

Jed defines violence using the World Health Organization's definition:

There are three kinds of violence, all inter-related:

1. Self-directed violence (including suicidal behavior and self-harm)

2. Interpersonal violence involving family and/or an intimate partner

3. Interpersonal violence involving the larger community (individuals involved may be unrelated)

Here are five hidden factors that Jed cites as contributors to male violence:

1. The Male Brain is Not Wired For Empathy

Jed writes, "At its core, violence is a failure to empathize." When we don't empathize it is easier to "other" another human being, turning them into an object, separate from us, rather than someone we are inherently and inseparably interconnected with. Jed cites Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert on violence saying, "When our empathy is switched off, we are solely in the 'I' mode. In such a state we relate only to things or to people as if they were just things."

While most men have a capacity to empathize with others, because of the way men's brains are wired, it is much more difficult to do so than for women. Baron-Cohen believes it is because female brains are wired for empathizing and male brains are wired for building systems."

To help men grow their empathic capacity is conscious work. Placing oneself in the shoes of another person, listening for feelings and resisting an innate desire to problem solve are all parts of this work.

2. Males Have Higher Levels of Testosterone

Jed cites Dr Theresa Crenshaw, a leading expert on how hormones influence behavior: testosterone is a predominantly male hormone that women also have in smaller amounts. After puberty, men have 8 to 10 times as much as women do. Not only is testosterone responsible for men's aggressive sex drive, but also what she calls men's "'warmone,' triggering anger, competitiveness and even violence."

Jed references James Dobbs, PhD, who notes an indirect relationship between high testosterone levels and criminality. Dobbs studied young male prison inmates and found that those inmates with higher testosterone levels were often associated with more violent crimes and more prison rule violations.

To counteract the potential for violence, Dobbs and his wife Mary underscored the importance of keeping fathers involved with their children. Children raised with absent fathers are more likely to have delinquent behavior. Fathers can teach their sons that while "guystuff seems to be about building stuff, fixing stuff and blowing up stuff," it is better to focus on the building and fixing.

3. Males Generate Lower Levels of Oxytocin

Oxytocin, often known as "the bonding hormone," is associated with much of the good in relationships. Higher oxytocin can lead someone to act more generously and more daringly, including with strangers. Jed cites the work of researcher Paul Zak, PhD, who noted that oxytocin makes "people friendlier, more empathetic and more trusting," and that empathy drives moral behavior.

Not only do men tend to have lower oxytocin levels than women, but even more so, testosterone blocks the effect of oxytocin. Jed cites the work of Shelley Taylor, PhD, who suggests the difference in oxytocin release between men and women "accounts for women's greater willingness to reach out for others when they are under stress ('tending and befriending') rather than the male reaction of 'fight or flight.'

If men are going to increase their oxytocin levels, and therefore, their capacity for empathy, they need to engage in oxytocin generating activities, like getting a massage, practicing yoga, and working to increase their bonds of trust.

4. Men Have Fewer Friends Than Women

Jed cites his own personal experience leading workshops, where it is common for women to have 3 or 4 close friends, and very uncommon for the same to be true with men. If men have any close friends, it is usually one close friend, often their spouse. And if there are problems in that relationship, men do not have a network of close friends to turn to for support.

Men are more likely to bond over activities not heartfelt shadings about their lives, struggles and triumphs. Jed cites the work of Herb Goldberg, PhD, noting that men are often out of touch with their emotions and their bodies. By "playing by the rules of the male game plan, with lemming-like purpose," men destroy themselves.

When they are isolated, men often become depressed. When they experience inner pain without proper emotional support, "men often 'act out' their depression and become more aggressive or even physically violent." Helping men learn to have close emotional friendships is no easy task. But it is important to change the dynamics of how men behave in relationships.

5. Men React More Violently to Shame Than Women

Jed defines shame with the words of author Merle Fossum: "feeling alone in the pit of unworthiness." And Fossman believes shame "is much more deeply rooted than most people often believe."

"Shame is feeling bad about who we are, about our very being." And it grows like a cancer. Jed notes the work of John Gilligan. "After working with thousands of violent men, Gilligan was able to get to the core cause. 'I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed and humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed, and that did not represent the attempt to prevent or undo that ‘loss of face’—no matter how severe the punishment, even if it includes death.' Jed concludes, "Men crave respect and can become violent when they feel put down."

So, to help reduce violence in men, finding ways to build respect and trust are essential. Only then can men risk sharing their innermost feelings. And without sharing feelings of shame, they will continue to incubate, grow and often drive behavior in ways that impact self and others adversely.

Helping men accept their pain, their difficult feelings, their deeper feelings and then share them with loving others is important to reduce the tendency towards violence--to self and others.

For the complete article, visit Jed Diamond's website, menalive.com

Altruism Is Good For YOU

Gordon Gecko may have said "greed is good," but from a physiological and well-being perspective, altruism is better. The Institute of HeartMath reports that "when we act in other people's behalf, we feel better, more secure and experience less stress."

When we are helping others from a place of care, compassion and pure intent, both our brain and heart produce oxytocin, the love or bonding hormone. Heart cells as well as brain cells produce "feel good chemicals"including dopamine and endorphins. Only genuine intent creates this hormonal benefit.

An article on altruism prepared by the Institute of HeartMath cites research that shows:

* altruistic people are healthier and live longer
* older people who are helpful to others reduce their risk of dying by nearly 60% compared to peers who provide neither practical help nor emotional support to relatives, neighbors or friends
* altruism promotes enhanced meaning and purpose, and the presence of positive emotions such as kindness that displaces harmful negative emotional states

When we can shift our focus to what we have to give, instead of what we have to get or take, what follows actually helps US. Is it paradoxical that in giving, we receive more than if we had only focused on our selfish self-interest? Perhaps this shows the difference in scope between the ego and the heart. Because the heart operates from a place of connection and interconnectedness, it understands the flow of life. When we operate from ego, fear or scarcity, we can disconnect from this very flow.

Hearts know how to balance self-care and care for others. When we use our intellects with the balancing perspective of the heart, we can operate from a sense of duty or obligation, when can lack pure heartfelt intent. Using our heart's wisdom and guidance is key to keep ourselves in the circulating flow of giving and receiving, rather than burning out from giving in a disconnected state.

Weight and Eating: When Life Is Hard To Swallow

When looking at weight and eating, there's lots of information available about the importance of healthy food and exercise. What is less commonly voiced is the role emotional stress plays not only in eating behavior, but also, in weight gain.

Dr. Dean Ornish, a visionary physician who has spread the message that "heart disease can be reversed through comprehensive lifestyle change,"1 notes that to lose weight and maintain weight, we need to work more deeply than with just what we eat and how we behave.

In "Why A High Protein Diet May Make You Fatter" by Kathy Freeston (see 1 below), Ornish notes, "The real epidemic in our country is not only obesity, but also depression, isolation and loneliness. As one patient told me, 'When I feel lonely and depressed, I eat a lot of fat. It fills the void. Fat coats my nerves and numbs the pain.'"

In this sense, we can both overeat when life is hard to swallow. And we can choose unhealthy foods to offer emotional comfort and soothing, since it may not be readily available in other, non-food-based ways.

Ornish points out that emotional stress plays a big role in weight gain, even beyond eating or overeating foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar.

1. Ornish notes that "chronic emotional stress stimulates your brain to release hormones that cause you to gain weight, especially around your belly where it's most harmful and least attractive." Long-term stress (which is sadly, defined as stress lasting 15 minutes or more) causes the body to produce cortisol, which contributes to stress-related eating and weight gain.

2. "Chronic stress also causes stimulation of hormones such as cytokines that promote inflammation." He notes that obesity itself causes a low-grade inflammation, "which in turn, tends to promote more obesity in a vicious cycle."

3. Because chronic emotional stress causes you to gain weight, using stress management tools may be necessary to lose weight and keep it off. So often, we ignore our emotional and spiritual needs, including our need for connection with self, a higher power and others. And when we lack connection, we feel a void. Meditation, mind-body tools and reaching out to others can fill the void with emotional, physical and spiritual nutrients not available in food.

It is important we pay attention to our emotional, spiritual and relational diet when looking at health and weight management. As we nourishing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and relationally, our bodies will response by generating oxytocin, the love or bonding hormone, and we will experience a greater sense of peace and well-being at all levels.

There is a lot of truth that when life is hard to swallow, we might really need a hug, a shoulder to cry on or a hand to food--not a bag of chips!

1 = From "Why A High Protein Diet May Make You Fatter" by Kathy Freston, AlterNet, March 18, 2010

Coherence and Incoherence and the Heart

This past Sunday, as I was leading a workshop on "Keeping A Vital Heart," I was showing the group a picture of the heart rhythms when a person is experiencing Frustration and when a person is experiencing Appreciation.

The difference in the images was very striking: while the amplitude between the high and low points in the "heart waves" was about the same, the patterns of the heart activity were very different. The heart pattern for frustration was very spikey, and irregular. The heart pattern for appreciation was much smoother and more regular.

Is it a surprise that we experience cortical inhibition and chaos when feeling frustrated, and cortical facilitation and coherence when feeling appreciative or appreciated?

The word "coherence" is very important in matters of the heart. Coherence means we experience life as purposeful, manageable and meaningful. The heart thrives on coherence and is stressed when our lives lack coherence.

I began to think about the word "incoherent," which is usually used in relationship to how someone speaks. Someone who is incoherent is hard to understand and may speak in a jarbled, chaotic and confusing style. We feel evoke more comfort in a listener when we speak coherently, and more discomfort when we speak incoherently. Interesting to see the parallel between our thoughts and words and the experience of the heart.

One of the workshop participants made a comment about an article she had read on how multi-tasking makes us stupid. As I reflected on this, it made a lot of sense. Multi-tasking can be chaotic, especially when taken to the extreme. The more chaotic, the more incoherent our thought patterns, actions, and most likely our feelings.

I would love to see the heart rhythm patterns of a person who is frantically multi-tasking as we so often feel pressured to do in our fast-paced world, and a person who is fully present and focusing deeply on one task.

Somehow, I suspect there would be parallels between the frustration and appreciation diagrams. Multi-tasking may make us "stupider" because we become incoherent, lose our grounding and no longer have a sense of what is most important. Multi-tasking surely is stressful, so our bodies generate cortisol, the long-term stress hormone. Focusing deeply on one thing is its own kind of meditation, and may release oxytocin, the love or bonding hormone that counteracts the effects of cortisol.

Perhaps we need to look for ways to be more coherent in all aspects of our life and reduce incoherence as well! This will bring us more focus, inner peace and healthier hearts!

Q

It just seems counterintuitive that by bullying people and focusing on one's own self-interest at the expense of others, one can achieve long-term success, and even be part of a sustainable society.
Today, sadly, there are too many examples of abuses of power, and societal structures where the bully emerges victorious and dominant. To make matters worse, many "common people," feel powerless to change or improve their circumstances, because those "in power" have made it virtually impossible to organize and do so.

So, it was very inspiring to read an article on Alternet today, written by University of California, Berkeley writer Yasmin Anwar, entitled, "Do Kinder People Have An Evolutionary Advantage." According to research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, there is "a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive."

This just plain makes sense. The people I define as most successful, and in decades prior to our current ones, were even successful in business, were those who displayed nurturing, compassionate and altruistic traits as well as good skills, pragmatism and a timely vision.

I worked at Digital Equipment Corporation from 1978 - 1985, a company whose motto was "do the right thing." That was what attracted me to work for Digital, and until market forces and too many MBA's diluted the entrepreneurial culture of founder Ken Olsen, this was truly practiced, not just preached at all levels: with customers, employees, stockholders, the community and other stakeholders.

My last organizational development project at Digital involved bringing 5 business units housed in the same complex in Merrimack, NH back to life. And by building a collaborative team, we succeeded in doing so in 9 months time. When I left, I gave my team members t-shirts that said "empowered and loving it." Not quite the way most people feel today when they come home from their corporate jobs.

The 1980's just seemed to be a more functional time in our society than the first decade of this century. And perhaps it was because people were more in touch with the empathy in our genes than they are now. Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley and colleague Sarina Rodrigues of Oregon State University have found that "people with a particular variation of the oxytocin gene receptor are more adept at reading the emotional state of others, and get less stressed out under tense circumstances."

Oxytocin, which is the love or bonding hormone, is secreted by lactating mothers to help bond with their babies, but also can be generated by snuggling, hugging, heartfelt communication, doing yoga or petting your dog. It makes me wonder if we focus more on emotional literacy and try to raise our own EQ's if we will raise the level of "social oxytocin, so to speak, and change the qualities of interactions in our world.

People who take care of others and focus on the greater good, do receive sincere appreciation from those they help. Today's world of self-interest might call the sincere public servant a "chump," but to me, that reflects a cultural heart wound and a generally low EQ.

Perhaps, if parents start modeling altruism, care and service to their children, we can build the foundation for a higher capacity for empathy in the next generation. Without this capacity, those invested in the "dog eat dog" model might destroy our ability to survive.