The Reclaimed Man · Episode 12

Neediness Was Quietly Running My Life

For most of my career, neediness was quietly running my life. It took me a long time to see it.

Some years ago I had a patient I’ll call Susie. For months she loved her care. She’d lie on the table and ask question after question, and I remember thinking, she gets it. Then we got to a conversation I’d been looking forward to for months, and she gave me an answer I didn’t expect. Everything I believed about my work was sitting right there in my mouth. What I actually said was two words: “Oh, okay.”

Part of that was skill. But skill isn’t the whole truth. We had a lovely relationship, and I didn’t want to risk it. I didn’t want to risk looking needy. I didn’t want to risk the relationship, or being wrong. And if I’m honest, that wasn’t one moment. That was a career.

This episode is Part 2 of the Reclamation Triangle — three sides, and on each one a word for where a man believes he is and a word for what he actually came for. Broken. Lost. Settled. Dangerous. Worthy. Called. These episodes are the map, not the how. Lost might be where you are right now. It isn’t who you are.

Lost isn’t a man wandering around wondering who he is. It’s a man wearing masks. One for work. One for his wife. One for the kids. One for the blokes on a Saturday morning. Every one of them has the same job: give the people in front of you what they need, keep things calm, never cause an issue. Wear them long enough and you can’t remember the face underneath. Underneath lost is needy.

And here’s what took me longest to see. I once stood up in front of the registration board, in front of the whole profession, and moved a vote of no confidence. I ran next door the night of my neighbour’s fire. When it wasn’t about me, I could take a stand without thinking. When I had to back my own worth, I stepped back. Dangerous for everyone else. Needy for myself.

The opposite of needy isn’t confidence. Some of the neediest men I’ve known were the most confident blokes in the room. The opposite of needy is worthy. In this episode I come back to soul worth and lived worth, and to what neediness really is: a man trying to pay into his soul worth with his lived worth. Trying to earn the one thing that was never for sale. The account was full the whole time.

So this week, when you catch yourself saying the thing that keeps it calm instead of the thing that’s true, ask yourself one question: what am I trying to prove?

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Some years ago I had a patient.

I’ll call her Susie.

She came to see me right at the start of her pregnancy, and she loved her care.

She’d lie on the table and ask question after question.

We talked about her nervous system.

About her pregnancy, and the birth, and the little one growing inside her.

About what I believed chiropractic could do for a family, well beyond a sore back.

And she was eating it up.

Every bit of it.

I remember thinking, she gets it.

She really gets it.

Then, late in the pregnancy, we got to a conversation I’d been looking forward to for months.

When were we going to check the baby?

In my head, that was already decided.

As soon as possible.

Of course.

And she looked at me.

Almost blank.

Like I’d asked her something strange.

“I won’t be getting the baby checked.

The baby doesn’t need to be checked.”

I’ll tell you what I said in a minute.

But notice where I was standing.

Everything I believed about my work was sitting right there in my mouth.

And the only question was whether any of it was going to come out.

Most of us know that moment.

Maybe not with a patient.

With your wife.

A business partner.

A mate.

Your own father.

What your heart wants to say is right there.

Your truth is right there.

And you have to decide whether you’re going to let it out.

You’d think what lets you say it is courage.

That some men have the guts to speak their truth and some men don’t.

I’m not so sure.

I think there’s something underneath courage.

Something that makes a man able to be courageous in the first place.

Last episode was all about a kind of strength, and I’ve had plenty of it in my life.

It just wasn’t there for me in that room.

We’ll get to what that something is.

But if you’re new here, let me catch you up, because we’re partway through a bigger conversation.

This is a three-part series on what I call the Reclamation Triangle.

It’s the map for this whole show.

Three sides.

On each side there’s a word for where a man believes he is, and a word for what he actually came here for.

Where he believes he is: Broken.

Lost.

Settled.

What he came for: Dangerous.

Worthy.

Called.

These three episodes aren’t the how.

Everything else I do on this show is the how.

These three are the map.

Think about the maps app on your phone.

You type in where you want to go, and before it gives you a single direction, what’s the first thing it does?

It finds you.

That little blue dot.

Where you’re standing right now.

Because the route to anywhere depends on where you’re starting from.

And if it can’t find the blue dot, it can’t take you anywhere.

That’s what these episodes are for.

Finding your blue dot.

Last episode was the first side.

Broken, and dangerous.

Broken is what a lot of men believe they are.

But what’s actually happened is quieter than that.

They’ve become harmless.

Their force has been turned down, year after year, until there’s not much of it left you can see.

And dangerous doesn’t mean violent.

It means capable.

Force in you, and the control to choose what to do with it.

When something goes wrong, a man can cower, he can explode, or he can handle it.

And the thing I most wanted you to hear: the force never left you.

It’s been turned down, not taken out.

Today is the second side.

Lost, and what’s on the other side of it.

Same as last time.

If lost is where you are right now, that might be true.

But it’s not a prison.

It’s not who you are.

It’s where you are.

And at the end of last episode I made you a promise.

I said we’d talk about what a man is really looking for when he can’t find himself.

I’ll get there.

But first I want to show you what lost actually looks like.

Because it isn’t what you’d think.

It’s not a man wandering around wondering who he is.

It’s a man wearing masks.

You’ve got one for work.

One for your wife.

One for the kids.

One for the blokes on a Saturday morning.

Maybe one for your parents.

And you’re good at all of them.

Every one of those masks has the same job.

To shape you into whatever the people in front of you need.

To meet their needs.

To keep things calm.

To make sure you never cause an issue.

And here’s what that costs.

You never actually show up.

Not the real you.

Not who you are underneath, letting your own light come through.

Because underneath all of those masks is a thought you’ve probably never said out loud.

Who I am isn’t enough.

So I’d better show up the way they need me.

With the guys like this.

At work like that.

At home like this.

Wear them long enough, and you can’t remember the face underneath.

Which takes me back to Susie.

Remember where we were.

Months of care through her pregnancy, and she’d loved every minute of it.

We’d talked about her nervous system, her baby, the birth.

And late in the pregnancy I asked when we’d check the baby, and she looked at me and said, “I won’t be getting the baby checked.

The baby doesn’t need to be checked.”

Here’s what I said.

“Oh, okay.”

That was it.

I was gobsmacked.

And right there, in that moment, I put my mask on.

The one that wants to be liked.

The one that doesn’t rock the boat.

And I let it lie there.

Part of that was skill.

Back then I didn’t have the communication skills to handle it well.

Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have told her anything.

I’d have asked.

I’m interested in that.

Tell me more.

What’s your understanding of kids and chiropractic?

But skill isn’t the whole truth.

We had a really lovely relationship, and I didn’t want to ruin it.

And here’s the part that stays with me.

Susie stayed on as a patient.

She referred her husband in.

The two of them came in for years.

And they never brought either of their two kids in.

I want to be really clear about something, because this isn’t a story about Susie getting it wrong.

I don’t need her kids to come in.

I didn’t then and I don’t now.

People get to make that decision, once they’ve got all the information.

That’s the point.

She never got all of it from me.

Not because I’d run out of things to say.

Because I didn’t want to risk it.

I didn’t want to risk looking needy.

I didn’t want to risk the relationship.

I didn’t want to risk being wrong.

So I didn’t put my authentic self out there.

And if I’m honest, that wasn’t one moment.

That was a career.

By most measures I had a very successful one.

A busy practice.

Twice voted Chiropractor of the Year.

A lot of patients who loved coming in.

From the outside, people would look at it and go, that practice was amazing.

But I knew there was a part of me I was holding back.

I believed this work could be so much bigger in people’s lives than fixing a headache or a sore back.

And I did a little of that.

I invited people in, a little way.

I never bared it all.

It wasn’t only at work.

In my family I’ve always been the mediator.

The one in the middle who brings everyone together.

There’s real value in that.

But it’s come at a cost.

I’ve rarely taken a stand.

Because a stand polarises people.

It makes you magnetic to some, and it repels others.

And if you need everyone to like you, you can’t afford to repel anyone.

What I’ve come to see is that so much of what I did had neediness underneath it.

Everything I was doing, I was doing to validate my worthiness.

My loveability.

I needed my patients’ approval.

I wanted them to like me.

That’s what lost actually is.

Not a man who’s gone missing.

A man who’s handed himself out, one room at a time, in exchange for being liked.

Broken had harmless underneath it.

Lost has needy.

Now, if you heard last week’s episode, you might be scratching your head.

Years ago, as president of the Victorian Chiropractors Association, I stood up in front of the registration board, in front of the whole profession, and moved a vote of no confidence.

And what we were fighting for was the care of children.

So how does that man say “Oh, okay” to one mother, about one baby?

It took me a long time to see it.

When I stood up in that meeting, it wasn’t about me.

I was going into bat for the profession.

For other chiropractors and their patients.

Same the night I ran next door to put out my neighbour’s fire.

When it didn’t have to be about me, I could take a stand, and I barely had to think about it.

But when I had to bank on my own worthiness, my own loveability, that’s where I stepped back.

Dangerous for everyone else.

Needy for myself.

And maybe that’s you.

You’d go to war for your kids, for your team, for a mate.

But you can’t back yourself in a room with one person who might not like you for it.

And here’s what that costs.

Every time I don’t follow through on something I believe, it’s a small wound against my sense of self-worth.

One small wound doesn’t do much.

A career’s worth of them is what lost feels like.

And if any of that is you, that’s your blue dot.

So if needy is what’s really going on, what’s the opposite?

Because it isn’t what most men would guess.

Most men would say confidence.

But some of the neediest men I’ve known were the most confident blokes in the room.

The opposite of needy is worthy.

And I have to be honest with you here, because this side is new for me.

Dangerous, I’ve had moments of across my whole life.

This side I’ve only really started living in the last couple of years.

Mostly in the last twelve months.

For a long time I’d heard the idea that you’re born one hundred percent loveable and one hundred percent worthy, in the eyes of the creator.

I believed it in my head.

I’ve even said it on this show.

In episode three I talked about two kinds of worth.

Soul worth, which is given to you.

You can’t earn it and you can’t lose it.

And lived worth, which is what you contribute, and that one you do earn, every day.

What I’ve come to see since is what neediness actually is.

It’s a man trying to pay into his soul worth with his lived worth.

Trying to earn the one thing that was never for sale.

Think of your worth like a bank account.

Every day you’re out there working to make deposits.

Being liked.

Being right.

Getting the patient to say yes.

Getting the room to agree with you.

And it never feels like there’s enough in there.

And then one day you find out the account was full the whole time.

It was always full.

It was always going to be full.

I didn’t have to prove myself.

But hearing that wasn’t enough for me.

I had to have a relationship with the creator to actually see it, and to step into feeling it.

I told that story in episode eight.

What matters here is that knowing it in your head and feeling it are two very different things.

So.

I promised to tell you what a man is really looking for when he can’t find himself.

He’s looking to be loved.

Not admired.

Loved.

And he’s been trying to get it from every room he walks into, because nobody told him it had already been given.

There’s one way neediness showed up in me that I suspect shows up in a lot of good men.

I’m a helper.

I always want to help.

And there’s a saying I keep coming back to.

When you get between someone and their rock bottom, you end up getting squashed.

In episode five I talked about the drama triangle, and the rescuer.

What I didn’t say then is this.

The rescuer is needy.

He wants to be the hero.

He needs you to need him.

And a lot of what looks like generosity in a man is really him trying to make another deposit.

So how do you tell a needy man from a worthy man?

From the outside they can look exactly the same.

Both helpful.

Both busy.

Both good blokes.

The tell is this.

Does he need to be right?

A worthy man doesn’t need to be right, because the result doesn’t make him more or less of what he is.

A needy man does, because every result is a deposit or a withdrawal.

The simplest version is one question.

Why am I doing what I’m doing?

Am I trying to fill the account?

Or am I giving from an account that’s already full?

So what does worthy actually feel like, for me, now?

It comes two ways.

Sometimes it just turns up.

Often in meditation.

A tremendous sense of love, and connection, and that I’m on a path.

Sometimes in the middle of an ordinary day, out of nowhere.

And sometimes I have to reason my way back into it.

I can feel the neediness.

It sits right here, in my solar plexus.

An uncomfortable feeling.

Usually it shows up as a decision I’m struggling to make.

And I’ll stop and ask myself: what am I trying to prove here?

Am I trying to take responsibility for somebody else?

The most recent time I caught my own neediness was last week.

Last episode was called Every Man Should Be Dangerous.

And I was nervous about that title.

I didn’t want to upset anybody.

I knew some people would see that word and think toxic masculinity before they’d heard a thing I said.

And then I caught it.

That’s exactly the thing.

Not wanting to upset anyone.

So I asked myself, am I taking responsibility for somebody else’s opinion?

If they listen to the episode, it’s very clear what I’m saying.

If they read the description, it’s very clear.

The rest isn’t mine to carry.

So I put it out.

And the man who put that episode out there is very different from the man who didn’t say anything to Susie.

That’s the thing underneath courage I talked about at the start.

Worthy doesn’t make you louder.

It lets you take a stand, because you’re not betting your worth on how it lands.

These days it almost feels like I’m making this show for the creator.

Not to prove anything.

Not to be liked.

It’s the conversation I want to have, and I want to be proud of it.

And this is what I want for you.

I want you to know that you are worthy.

Worthy of your wife.

Worthy of your kids.

Worthy of a great life.

Worthy of abundance.

Worthy of happiness.

Worthy of a relationship with the God who made you.

Not because you earned it.

Because it was always yours.

Which brings us back to the blue dot.

Lost might be where you are right now.

A mask for every room, and you can’t remember the face underneath.

Underneath lost, what’s really going on is needy.

Trying to earn your way into being loved.

And worthy is what you came for.

Not confidence.

Not being liked by everyone.

An account that was full before you made a single deposit.

If you take one thing from this, take this.

You can’t fill an account that’s already full.

And every time you try, you give a little more of yourself away to the room.

So here’s what I want you to do this week.

First, just look.

Look at how much of your life is spent showing up to be liked.

At home.

At work.

With your mates.

How often you say the thing that keeps it calm, instead of the thing that’s true.

How often you’re trying to show someone you’re worth having around.

And when you catch it, ask yourself the question I ask myself.

What am I trying to prove?

You might be surprised how much of your week that is.

I was.

Then be honest about what it’s costing you.

Your energy.

Your relationships.

The man you’d actually like to be.

Second, in one of those moments, listen for the other voice.

The one underneath the mask.

What does the real you actually want to say, or do?

With your wife.

With your kids.

With your business partner.

With your mate.

And then imagine doing it knowing the account is already full.

Knowing that however it lands, it can’t make you more or less of who you are.

Notice how different that feels.

Third, take one step.

Just one.

Pick one place this week where you take the mask off and let him show up.

It doesn’t have to be big.

It might just be a question, where before you’d have said “oh, okay.”

So here’s what I’ll leave you with.

If you knew the account was already full, what would you say?

And what would you do?

Next time, the last side of the triangle.

Settled, and what it means to be called.

I’ll see you then.