Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

How mindfulness (and lots of therapy) is helping me tackle my toxic masculinity

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I witnessed something sad at a D.C. street fair recently. A smiling boy, all of six or seven years old, asked a face painter to turn him into a blue and purple butterfly.

“No, you’re not going to be a butterfly,” said his mother.

“But why?” the boy asked, his smile fading into confusion.

“Because,” she said. “Why don’t you be a tiger or a pirate?”

It wasn’t exactly abuse, but it was a glaring example of so-called “toxic masculinity.” Presumably, the mother thought her son should want to be fierce and aggressive rather than radiant, harmless, and feminine, like a butterfly.

Like all ideology, toxic masculinity is not natural but socialized —we learn it from other people. Many children—especially boys— receive messages from adults that lead to behaviors such as suppressing emotions, acting tough no matter what, and anti-femininity (“No, you’re not going to be a butterfly.”)

If that doesn’t resonate with you, think of your conditioning. Maybe you have body image issues or you’re a perfectionist or you’re addicted to work. We all have patterns of behavior that we learned from others or developed to cope with challenging situations when we were children.

Mindfulness wakes us up by making us conscious of this unconscious conditioning. It drives a wedge between our thoughts and the thinker of those thoughts, our awareness.

When we witness thoughts from a distance, we no longer have to identify with them. They’re no longer me—they’re stories forced on to me or that I took on to protect myself.

Awhile back, I visited my grandfather who was in the hospital with pneumonia. A nurse walked into his room and began to remove a breathing tube taped behind his ears.

“What are you doing? You’re hurting me,” he yelled. “Idiot!”

I’d never seen him scold someone outside the family. The nurse, a young Latino woman, was being gentle, yet confident. I wanted so bad to tell him to shut up and appreciate that she was trying to help.

Instead, I decided to let the situation play out to see what happened. I watched what thoughts and emotions were coming up inside of me. There was anger—a baseball-sized fireball in the center of my chest—but I also realized how lonely and afraid he must feel, having been plugged into machines for days.

I also admired the nurse. She stayed calm through what must’ve been a two-minute temper tantrum. I pulled her aside as she left the room to apologize for his behavior and ask if there’s anything I could do.

“No problem,” she said, smiling. “I’m used to it.”

As my grandfather had become angrier, I’d tensed up with my own anger. My mind tried to put out the fire by flooding with reactions and stories about being a “real” man, i.e., toxic masculinity: why can’t he ever calm down? He’s such a dick. I’m weak for not defending the nurse.

But mindfulness allowed me to see that telling my grandfather to shut up would’ve just made things worse. We would’ve gotten in an argument. I would’ve left the hospital feeling horrible for yelling at an old, feeble man. The nurse might’ve felt that I was questioning her professional ability.

Instead, I was able to let the judgments and emotions pass. I released the mental chatter and relaxed my body. The fireball in my chest was just another phenomenon alongside the medical device beeps, boops, and swooshes—it wasn’t overwhelming. This allowed deeper, more skillful thoughts and emotions to appear in my mind, thoughts and emotions more aligned with who I really want to be.

I’ve still got a long way to go in becoming conscious of my toxic masculinity, but I’m grateful to have found a practice—meditation—to help me along the path.

I’m sure the mother at the street fair was just trying to protect her son from bullying—perhaps unconsciously. But that’s the point.

Like most unhealthy behavior, toxic masculinity is an attempt to protect ourselves when we feel vulnerable. Anyone would feel uncomfortable in front of an old man yelling at a nurse. It’s just that, because I have a male body, I’ve been socialized to handle discomfort by being a “real man,” by expressing my anger, taking charge, and fixing things.

The point is, we all have these types of behaviors. Habits. Addictions. Things we don’t like about ourselves. Unhealthy ways of relating to partners, parents, children, and friends.

What we’re responsible for is trying to become conscious of them. Otherwise, we hurt people—including ourselves.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

The life-changing power of allowing yourself to be sad, angry, and afraid

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I recently bought marijuana for the first time in years, and on the way to the shop I was reminded of the power of mindfulness.

Playing in bands in my 20s, I used to get weed from a friend or bum off friends of friends. Drugs and alcohol were always just hanging around.

After it was decriminalized in D.C. in 2014, I began to wonder how to buy it. A friend told me, while shops can’t sell directly, they skirt the law by giving it away as a “free gift” with the purchase of merchandise, like a t-shirt. Supposedly, shops are routinely raided by the police.

Walking through the Columbia Heights bustle, anxious thoughts raced through my mind: what if the shop gets busted when I’m there? What if a cop sees me leaving?

Then came ego: I’ve got this. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

Then came self-judgement: why am I afraid of buying pot at 33 years old? Why am I smoking again? When am I going to grow up?

Then came logic: I’m a college-educated, white, heterosexual, cisgender man. Cops don’t care about me.

None of the self-talk helped. My shoulders and stomach were still tense. I still felt a little claustrophobic and off-kilter. I wasn’t going to talk my way out feeling anxious.

But then I remembered a story the spiritual teacher David Deida tells about his own teacher feeling jealous at a party. Deida sees the teacher’s wife across the room enjoying a conversation with an attractive man and asks his teacher, “Aren’t you jealous?”

His teacher responds, “Yes, but the fact that I’m jealous isn’t bothering me.”

In other words, the teacher was aware of how he was relating to his jealousy. Instead of making it a problem, he was allowing it to just be.

Mindfulness is often associated with focus and paying attention. But it also involves accepting rather than resisting what’s happening inside of us.

We often deny, ignore, or repress emotions we don’t want to experience. The mind tries to calm us down by telling stories (There’s nothing to be afraid of).

But think about what makes you feel better when you’re sad or afraid. It’s when your partner or friend or relative gives you their undivided attention without giving advice or trying to change how you feel. When someone let’s you be yourself, with all your messy emotions. When someone just listens.

Once I acknowledged that I felt nervous and a little silly about buying pot at 33 years old, the tension in my body dissolved, and I saw it as yet another of life’s adventures.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

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It’s okay to meditate, do yoga, etc., while fighting for social justice. In fact, it’s necessary.

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Four years ago, I left a cushy tech industry job to work alongside teachers, bus drivers, and other workers in the labor movement. Burying my head in the sand and looking out for myself hadn’t been enough.

Our society is so violent, backwards, and corrupt. I had to starting helping change it.

But sometimes I struggle to square my politics with my meditation practice. How can I sit in silence as corporations exploit workers, white supremacists march in the streets, misogynists fill the White House, and the rainforests burn?

That’s why I love this metaphor from the spiritual teacher David Deida.

It reminds me that there’s room for many approaches to dealing with life’s problems, that I don’t have to choose one approach over another, and that integrating so-called “self-care” with social justice is actually the healthiest approach of all.

Imagine yourself as a stained-glass window.

“You look at yourself and notice there are pieces broken out of you,” Deida says. “There are hunks of glass missing. You’re battered, abused, chipped, wounded, rejected.”

The first approach, therapy, is like fixing or replacing altogether the broken pieces of glass. It helps you function better by healing dysfunction.

Say, you aren’t getting along with your father. Your therapist could help you forgive him for how he treated when you were young, and over time the relationship might improve.

Meditation, yoga, and other similar practices are like wiping the dust from the stained glass so the light shines through. They increase the flow of life in the present moment.

Our minds are constantly stopping the flow by following thoughts into the past or the future. Meditation is practicing letting go of thinking and observing the flow (of thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions, sounds, all of experience), over and over again.

Doing meditation (or yoga) isn’t the same as therapy. Sure, it can feel therapeutic, but it’s not meant for investigating the causes of emotional problems. It’s about being here, right now.

“You can be broken as fuck, and still do good yoga,” Deida says. “You can be entirely dysfunctional therapeutically, psychologically, emotionally, you can be a wreck, and still be a master yogi. Yoga doesn’t fix the parts of you that are broken. It just takes the dust off.”

The third approach, spirituality, isn’t about fixing the broken pieces or wiping away the dust. It’s about realizing that you’re the light itself, whether you’ve meditated, or you’re broken, or whatever’s happening. It’s realizing you are “one with everything”—there’s no separation between you and everything else.

Prayer, looking at the night sky, being in nature, and taking psychedelics are examples of spiritual experiences.

Let’s make this concrete. Say, you don’t like your job. A therapist might help you manage the stress it’s causing you. Meditation, yoga, etc., might help you feel a little better for short periods of time. Spirituality might make you realize a job is nothing relative to the 93-billion-light-years-wide universe.

You’re probably wondering, what about quitting or getting a new job?

There’s a fourth approach missing from Deida’s metaphor, which I call “political economy.” This would be like trimming the trees outside the window, i.e., changing the environment around the window so more light shines through.

As the label suggests, this is the realm of politics and economics, i.e., addressing the dysfunction outside of oneself, in society. Examples: leaving your job, starting a union with your coworkers, protesting, running for elected office, voting, starting a business, hiring a career coach, etc.

In other words, therapy helps you function better within dysfunctional conditions. Meditation helps you flow with the conditions, whatever they are. Spirituality is unconditional, i.e., finding peace and freedom no matter what. Political economy helps you change the conditions.

Meditation, therapy, and spirituality, by themselves or even all together, aren’t enough. They aren’t going to end capitalism or white supremacy or patriarchy or [insert oppressive system here.]

We also need societal change, specifically, what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.”

Yet, raising taxes on corporations, restructuring the economy, or ending racism—which are easier said than done—won’t be enough either.

We also need to work on ourselves. It’s not one or the other.

Free meditation cheat sheet

I’ve come up with a cheat sheet to help you start and stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries,expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.