Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Prior to becoming a counselor, I spent six years working in sexual assault advocacy and response. Three years in the Air Force and three years in college campuses. I trained over 3000 airmen and hundreds of [00:00:10] college students in bystander intervention, community advocacy. And through that whole period I showed up for those who have been hurt.

Speaker 2: Since then, I've spent 10 years as a clinician serving men, the [00:00:20] accused, those who have been hurt, and plenty of men that are terrified of becoming either. This isn't legal advice. This is therapeutic guidance from someone who's seen the destruction wrought by these [00:00:30] things for the accused, the accuser, and the communities involved.

Speaker 2: I'm nervous about doing this. It's gonna upset people. People I've worked with in advocacy and people I've worked with in [00:00:40] supporting men, there's gonna be those who are mad at me for advocating for care for the accused, and there's gonna be people furious with me for acknowledging that most accusers are coming forward with [00:00:50] their truth.

Speaker 2: This is hard, and I'm worried about it. But if we don't do this, nothing changes. We can't come outta the other side with accountability without care. [00:01:00] So if you stay with me through this, I promise on the other end, no matter who you are in this process, you'll come out knowing more about who you wanna be in your community.[00:01:10]

Speaker 2: Par part one, taking the initial head, what's happening in your body and your mind as you hear these things, and how to hold it without making it worse. [00:01:20] The second gathering information and resources, acknowledging what's happened, what's happening, and who's gonna help you through it. The third, [00:01:30] accountability with yourself, with your community, and with the accuser.

Speaker 2: Notice the public isn't on that list. A massive public declaration of your innocence won't do you [00:01:40] any favors. The public square and the internet at large is not designed for nuance or care. Your job is to get through this with integrity. Safety and with your [00:01:50] values intact. If you can do that, you'll eventually come out on the other side, getting back some of what you're losing, your footing, your self-respect, and being seen as the man that you wanna [00:02:00] be.

Speaker 2: So let's talk about phase one, taking the hit and stabilizing yourself. So the first thing to recognize is [00:02:10] if you're watching a video on this, something terrible is happening to you right now. Your system is responding in fight or flight. You're experiencing powerful anger, shame, and [00:02:20] fear. Anger wants you to reach for control, punish who's hurting you, so they don't do it again.

Speaker 2: Fear wants an immediate response to make sure that this isn't happening. And shame wants you to do everything that you [00:02:30] can right now to make sure that your group continues to accept you. It's important to understand that these feelings are primal. The same parts of your brain that light [00:02:40] up when you're under physical threat or in pain are lighting up right now.

Speaker 2: That's why it feels like there needs to be an immediate response, and this bad news is no [00:02:50] immediate response you make right now is gonna make this better. So we've gotta talk about how to slow that down and how to stabilize. Every adult has tools that they know how to use to get through [00:03:00] the hard things, and the tools tend to be grouped in three kinds of tools.

Speaker 2: You've got your cognition and your thoughts, your feelings, and your body and behavior. And depending on who you [00:03:10] are, you tend to lean on one of those. And there's no right or wrong answer here. All of them are useful, all of 'em are needed, but you wanna start with the one you know you're good at. [00:03:20] You wanna start with the one where you know, you get traction the fastest with, because this is going to be hard and you're gonna need that.

Speaker 2: I want you to think about the three, like a navigation setup, your cognition, your [00:03:30] thoughts. They're the map of the territory. They're how you know what's happening and what's happening around you, and can avoid obstacles and hazards on the way your emotions are. Your compass. They're telling you the [00:03:40] direction that you need to move.

Speaker 2: They're giving you a path forward. They just don't know whether there's a building or a lake in between you and it. And your body and behaviors are the car. They're the means of [00:03:50] transport. They're how you're gonna get there. You can move through the world with any one of these, but it's not gonna go well until you get all three.

Speaker 2: Let's talk about how to get each one back in a line [00:04:00] so that way you can engage as the man you want to be. So for a lot of us, our body is where we go. There are a lot of guys out there that they don't know what they're feeling. They can't [00:04:10] articulate the emotion they're experiencing, and they don't always have a plan, but they know if they go work out or they go just do the damn thing, they feel better.

Speaker 2: If that's you, you're starting here on your [00:04:20] body. This is where doing some kind of grounded breathing, whether that's square breathing or any of the number of exercises and ways to do it, pick one, doesn't matter. [00:04:30] Look up another video. Get on an app. Figure out a breathing technique that's going to regulate your system and slow it down.

Speaker 2: Right now while you're going through this and you're taking that initial hit, your breathing's [00:04:40] probably erratic. It's probably like you're in a sprint. We need to slow that down. We can do a cold water reset. So when you're angry and afraid, your body temperature actually [00:04:50] rises. That's why we call it hot headed.

Speaker 2: You literally are running a fever. A way to cool is with cold water. Either fill up a sink with water that's cold as you can get it to [00:05:00] and put your face into it to about here. So just your ear and hold it there for a slow count of 10. This is gonna help you catch your breath and our face has the most [00:05:10] heat sensitivity on our body, so it's going to help us lower the body temperature.

Speaker 2: If that doesn't work, you can get into a cold shower for a few minutes. We wanna bring [00:05:20] the body temperature down and we want to get it to get a system shock so it resets. You wanna move if you're just sitting there and spinning, take a walk. Go to the [00:05:30] gym, do the kinds of movement that help you feel better, that help you get thinking again, that help you clear things out.

Speaker 2: Another one is just being [00:05:40] in where you're at and in your body. Right? We call it grounding. This is where you're testing the sensations around you. You're reminding yourself by these sensations that [00:05:50] nothing is immediately happening that's going to kill you. This is feeling your toes in the carpet. Naming three things you can see, three things you can hear and three things you can feel getting [00:06:00] into the moment instead of where your fears and your anger are taking you.

Speaker 2: And then you're gonna handle the basics. You're gonna make sure you're eating, you're gonna make sure you're drinking, you're going to be doing the [00:06:10] things that make you feel better. The types of food that feel better not comforted necessarily. Better. Some comfort food does both, but you're gonna take care of your [00:06:20] basic needs.

Speaker 2: You're gonna take care of what you can take care of right now, there's a lot of other skills in that toolbox. These are the ones that tend to work for people in general categories. If you're a person that's really good [00:06:30] here, you already have some tools, great use them. Let's talk about the feelings. This is where guys tend to be less good, but there are plenty of men who are good at this and everyone [00:06:40] needs to get better at this.

Speaker 2: So our feelings. Our feelings give us direction, different feelings. Want different things to happen in your world and in yourself. Let's [00:06:50] name off a few of what's happening. Fear is seeking safety. There's an immediate threat and it wants safety. Worry is the impact of what could be fearful, and it wants a [00:07:00] plan.

Speaker 2: It wants to know there's gonna be something you can do to mitigate the risk that what you could be afraid of occurs. Shame. It wants belonging. It wants to know that you're not gonna end up [00:07:10] alone in the wilderness. With your life at threat guilt, guilt wants, repair, it's, I did a bad thing. It wants some way to know that you [00:07:20] can make a little bit of what's happened, better reminder of your worth.

Speaker 2: Last one we're gonna talk about is sadness. Sadness wants rest and acceptance, and wants to slow things down [00:07:30] and find acceptance by naming what each of these emotions want. And when you experience them, it's gonna give you an idea of how to move forward. So if it's [00:07:40] fear and it's that safety, remind yourself that you are physically safe, that nothing is happening right now in this moment that's going to physically [00:07:50] hurt you or threaten your survival.

Speaker 2: Worry is gonna be hard. Worry wants a plan. You aren't gonna be able to make one in this state. So to make that plan, to get that worry addressed. You need to [00:08:00] find some calm so you can start with a plan. You can start working on the things that you're gonna do through this thing, but sometimes you gotta talk, worry off the ledge a little bit to give you the [00:08:10] space to do that.

Speaker 2: For the shame. You can't do that one on your own. You need to contact someone who sees you and loves you, or at least respects you [00:08:20] and will believe that you're the good man that you want to be. They might challenge what's happening. They might challenge you on what's been done or what hasn't been done, but they see you and they [00:08:30] accept you, and they're gonna be there for you.

Speaker 2: You need to retouch those connections, whoever they are for you. That's how the shame is gonna get mitigated. It's gonna remind you you're not gonna be alone through this. So it needs [00:08:40] space. It needs to be calmed so that way you can get to that repair, you can get to that path forward on how you're gonna do better for you or whoever is [00:08:50] involved that you're feeling guilt about.

Speaker 2: And then for sadness, you're gonna let it slow things down. You're gonna let sadness do its job. You're gonna sink into the couch. Your breathing's gonna slow, and you're gonna [00:09:00] accept that. This is what's happening right now. It's not what's gonna happen, but this is happening right now and there isn't much we can do about it right now.

Speaker 2: You're gonna give it that [00:09:10] space to settle into that. These might come by really fast when it's just happening. Our feelings can feel like they're kind of all over place because they're pushing and pulling every [00:09:20] time one moves. Take it as far as it lets you before another one jumps on and just kinda ride that down.

Speaker 2: As you get further into what that emotion needs, eventually things will slow [00:09:30] down for you. And the last one on the list is the cognition, the way you're thinking, your map of the territory. So this is where most guys think they're good and a lot of guys are. So the first one is you're [00:09:40] probably thinking too fast to be useful right now, so we wanna slow that down.

Speaker 2: A great way to slow down your thinking is by journaling, whether that's just free journaling, putting it all out there and putting it, [00:09:50] getting a pen, getting a keyboard, and just word vomiting. Every thought that you're having to get it out and slow it down, that's fine. If you're a prompt person, try these.

Speaker 2: What is [00:10:00] actually happening right now today? Not what's gonna happen, not where things are going. What's happening right now today? What do I know and what am I assuming? And the last one is, [00:10:10] what am I trying to plan for? Okay? Any one of those three prompts are gonna give you some direction and give that thought a little bit more of a channel.

Speaker 2: And by using the journal to ground through them, [00:10:20] it's gonna help you not spin out. The next one is a visualization exercise. I know this sounds like a little bit of a hippie thing. It works. Imagine yourself in a safe place. [00:10:30] Go through and look up any number of them. There's a lot of great videos on it. Go find one that works for you.

Speaker 2: Somebody taking you to a safe, calm place where you [00:10:40] can sit in your own head and slow things down. It doesn't really matter which one you use. There's a lot of them. Try a few figure out which one works best for you. And the last one is we [00:10:50] wanna make sure your thoughts are being useful and not just spinning.

Speaker 2: My favorite tool for this is the rule of three. If you have the same thought come by three times where you notice it, [00:11:00] you're spinning. It means it's happened a lot more than three times, and you're a pretty bright guy. And so if it's coming through three times and you don't have an answer now, you're not going to just now.

Speaker 2: So that [00:11:10] means your mind is stuck. You're not gonna think your way through this right now. So instead of sitting there and wrestling with the thoughts, change what you're doing. Okay? If you're sitting at the computer [00:11:20] reading all this stuff that's going on, get away from the computer, go make some food, go make your bed, go do something else.

Speaker 2: If you're in the apartment and you need to get outta the apartment, go take a walk. Whatever it is, just [00:11:30] change the behavior and the environment you're in to give your mind a chance to reset so that you can bring back that logic that you're so good with and try to get some traction again. Those are gonna be the three.[00:11:40]

Speaker 2: Doesn't matter which one you start with. Remember every guy does it a little different, and that's okay. Start where you're good and then move through the others to ground to make sure all three are in [00:11:50] alignment so that when you go to move, you're moving in coordinated effect. Last word of caution here is we wanna avoid an effective coping, whether that's substances, [00:12:00] pornography, video games, whatever it is that's gonna shut things off for you.

Speaker 2: Be very careful with them because all that does is pause things. Your system is still [00:12:10] dysregulated. It's just putting a pin in it. And so sometimes we need that. But be very careful and try to do the other effective coping way more than you're using any [00:12:20] of these tools for escape. Remember, grounding isn't feeling better about this.

Speaker 2: You're not gonna feel better right now. It's accepting that it feels like shit and you need to move through [00:12:30] that, like the man that you wanna be. And the only way we do that is if we know we can hold the feelings we're experiencing. You're going to keep experiencing this. Part one is [00:12:40] not something that you do and move through like a list.

Speaker 2: It's something that you're gonna have to keep coming back to. It's important to note here that however you cope and whatever coping you get to, it's not permanent. [00:12:50] This isn't a one and done thing and this isn't. I'm regulated now and I will continue to be regulated because I was, this is gonna be complicated.

Speaker 2: You're gonna have to come back to these skills over and [00:13:00] over and over on repeat to get through this because it's probably gonna go on for a while. Yeah. The goal is to remember that you can do this, that you [00:13:10] can ground and accept that when you're dysregulated, you need to stop what you're doing and go back and ground.

Speaker 2: It's gonna save you a lot of pain and a lot of mistakes, [00:13:20] and it's gonna make it so that whatever it is that you have to clean up. You have less to clean up than you would've otherwise.

Speaker 2: Now that you're [00:13:30] regulated, you can start to think again. Assessment is about slowing down enough to figure out what is happening. We're gonna break it down into three parts. Your resources, your knowledge, [00:13:40] and your acceptance resources are gonna be key through this. If this is important enough to you that you're looking up a video online on how to handle it.

Speaker 2: Don't do it by yourself. [00:13:50] Whatever else you have going on, your shame might be telling you. Your ego might be telling you something, might be telling you that you have to go at this alone. It's wrong. You're not gonna get to the real [00:14:00] story of what happened on your own, and you're not gonna have the resources to come out the other side of this with what you need to continue to be the person you wanna be in the world that's gonna take a team.[00:14:10]

Speaker 2: So let's talk about the different parts that might need be needed for that team. You might need some or all of these. The first one is gonna be legal. Find a lawyer that specializes in these scenarios. [00:14:20] They're gonna protect your rights and your livelihood. Whatever else happens, you need to be able to meet your responsibilities.

Speaker 2: On the other side of this, the next one's hr, human resources. Whether it's a school, a place of [00:14:30] work, the government, whatever's happening, whoever's investigating this, they're not your friend. They're there to protect the organization, not you. But it does mean you need another source of [00:14:40] information that may be a lawyer, that may be an outside HR professional to help you understand the process of what's happening and what's at risk.

Speaker 2: The next one's gonna be clinical. You need help being [00:14:50] regulated. Those skills I took you through are gonna get you through the today, but this is gonna be going on for a long time. Get the grounding and help that you need to get through this. Find someone who specializes in men. If you [00:15:00] can find somebody who's helped other guys through this process, it's gonna be really powerful to get what you need to come out of this as the man you wanna be.

Speaker 2: The next one is community. You [00:15:10] need a small group of people that care about you, care about who you are in the world, and care about who you want to be in the world. These aren't just people that are getting [00:15:20] angry about what's happening and defending you. These are people that'll hold you accountable.

Speaker 2: These are people that when you say, I messed up, they're who you want to hear on how to do it [00:15:30] better. They need to care about you individually and within the group context. If you're a person of faith. That can be a preacher. If it's just friends, people [00:15:40] that you love, family, that can be enough too. It might be a men's group.

Speaker 2: If you don't have any, go get around. Other guys that are struggling, go get around. People that'll call you out where you need to be called out, [00:15:50] but also hold the good man that you are and that you're trying to be the last one's public relations. If you are anyone of fame, whether that's connected to your livelihood in any way, you probably [00:16:00] need a public relations expert.

Speaker 2: And be careful who you pick their job should be to help you come through this without antagonizing people. Look at the different people that have [00:16:10] gone through and fought with counter allegations. It's never gone well for them, not because they're a bad person, but because in the public eye. If all they know about you is that you're a [00:16:20] public face where someone's accusing of misconduct, whatever you say, however you go after the other person is automatically tainted.

Speaker 2: Find someone to help you make sure that the messages you're [00:16:30] putting out are in alignment with your values and what you want, and in protection of what you've built to the extent that it can be protected. These people aren't about helping you manage [00:16:40] excuses. They're not here to avoid accountability.

Speaker 2: They're here to help you find out exactly what's happening, exactly what's at risk so you can make the informed [00:16:50] decisions. No one in any of these groups can make these decisions for you, so make sure to use those resources where they're necessary. Now that you've got your team together, it's time to gather your [00:17:00] facts.

Speaker 2: What happened? Be ruthless with what you know, what you don't know, what you're assuming. Make sure that you use the support. This gets really [00:17:10] dysregulating. Don't be afraid to go back to phase one and Reregulate. As you go through this, you need a clear head to get to the memory of what's happened and what's going on.

Speaker 2: We wanna [00:17:20] look backwards as what happened. What was the event that occurred that is being reported on? What is the relationship with the person reporting what you said, what you did. [00:17:30] Then we wanna move into the present. What is happening right now? What is actually happening? Where are these accusations landing on you?

Speaker 2: What are they actually saying you've done? And [00:17:40] how are people actually responding? Now we wanna ask three questions. What do I know? What am I assuming? And what do I need to verify? If you do this [00:17:50] effectively, you might realize that half of what you're freaking about is just social media noise. That this is something that's not gonna directly impact you as hard in your communities as you think it is.

Speaker 2: Just remember why you go through it. Facts come [00:18:00] first, stories come second. And having accuracy in that is gonna be the first step towards you having accountability with yourself and with the people involved. Get [00:18:10] what happened down in front of you Once you have down what's in front of you, now it's time to find out what you need to accept.

Speaker 2: This is the hardest part. Everything in you [00:18:20] is gonna be fighting to protect your ego and protect yourself from what's happening, the emotional impact, the hurt that you may or may not have done. Acceptance doesn't mean approval. It doesn't mean [00:18:30] that you agree with everything going on, but it means that you're accepting what happened in the past and what is happening now.

Speaker 2: It means pausing the fight long enough [00:18:40] to make a plan forward. If you can't pause the fight with the acceptance, nothing else happens. You may not be the monster that someone says you are, but you probably hurt somebody. At a [00:18:50] minimum, you very likely made a mistake on who you're spending your time with, and there's probably worse mistakes than that along the way that don't align with your values.

Speaker 2: You made mistakes, maybe. [00:19:00] Remember that intention is not impact. You need to accept the impact of what's happening, both for you with the allegations and for the [00:19:10] person that you may or may not have hurt. It's important to get these things. Clear, because without 'em, you can't repair with yourself, with your community, with anybody else.

Speaker 2: You need to get [00:19:20] clear on accepting, this is what I did. This is what I said. This is what I agreed to understand where you're starting from so you know where to go. Once you've stabilized [00:19:30] and accepted what's real, now you can take the time to figure out what your responsibilities are, who you're responsible to, and who you can or can't get accountability with.[00:19:40]

Speaker 2: Now that you've accepted what's happened and what's happening. We can move forward to that.

Speaker 2: If you've made it this far, you've already done some of [00:19:50] the hardest work anybody can do. You looked at what's happened and what's happening and accepted the reality of it. Now it's time for accountability. We're gonna break that into three parts. Accountability with yourself, [00:20:00] relational repair, and community reintegration.

Speaker 2: You've gotta start with yourself. You've gotta look at how you've been behaving and what's been happening, and check it [00:20:10] against your values. Are you living as the man that you want to be? And how do you move forward closer to the man that you want to be? That starts with the honesty that we [00:20:20] developed in the second phase.

Speaker 2: You looking at what's happened and taking direct stock and knowing what your story is around it, not what other [00:20:30] people conflate it to and not minimizing it to protect yourself. But what you did, what you said, what you agreed to, and its impact you have to take that [00:20:40] honesty that developed in the second part to come anywhere close to being able to love yourself again, to repair with yourself, and to move forward as a whole man, it's [00:20:50] important to acknowledge that it wasn't necessarily your intentions, it was your actions that did the harm.

Speaker 2: Good men trying to be decent in the world hurt people. Owning that harm [00:21:00] isn't surrender. It's how we grow. It's how we get better. The goal here is to move away from the shame of I am a bad person to the guilt of it, [00:21:10] I did this. This is what I'm doing to be better in the world. If we get stuck in that shame cycle, if we take this on and we don't allow ourselves room to [00:21:20] see a path forward, it can kill us.

Speaker 2: And I'm not exaggerating that. Most of the guys I've worked with that are suicidal, it's almost always tied to a great shame, and [00:21:30] that's how we move into responsibility, where repair lives, that repair is so hard to find. I'm no different than anybody else. I've hurt a lot of people in my life over the years, [00:21:40] and every time it's happened, the same thought almost always pops into my mind in the immediate aftermath.

Speaker 2: But I'm a good guy and I think that because I am one. But [00:21:50] anytime that thought comes through my head, it's almost always in an attempt to avoid taking on the impact of my actions. And I've been lucky. I've had people repair with me that matter to me, [00:22:00] but many of 'em, you don't get the chance to repair with that accountability can't come from them.

Speaker 2: The harm was too great, or the distance is too far. All I can do [00:22:10] is move forward in new ways and make new mistakes, and ideally help other people learn from the mistakes I've made along the way. That's what my patients have taught me. I've seen so many guys come through these [00:22:20] things as better men and helping others be better in the world rather than retreating and hiding with their shame.

Speaker 2: They've come forward on the other side of the [00:22:30] mistakes to help others and rejoin community in powerful ways. That's the goal. It's never perfect. There is no way to move through the world without hurting people, [00:22:40] but you move through the world better when you're willing to take on the impact of what you've done so you can get better.

Speaker 2: Once you've had that self-accountability, now it's time to see if relational repair is [00:22:50] possible. Not every relationship can be repaired and nor should it. It's important to do this in safety and integrity. This isn't about gaining forgiveness [00:23:00] for something you've done. It's about repairing the damage that what you've done is caused and it's complicated.

Speaker 2: Get help, get a sponsor, get a therapist. Get somebody to [00:23:10] guide you through this process, because it's incredibly fraught and easy to do poorly. We don't always get to repair. Sometimes the best thing we can do is leave the person in [00:23:20] peace so that we can move forward in our community and help other people not make the same mistakes we have.

Speaker 2: If you have the opportunity to repair with somebody, do so in a good [00:23:30] apology. A good apology has three parts, acknowledgement of what your action was, acknowledgement of the impact your action had on the person that it hurt. [00:23:40] And no demand for forgiveness. The reason why that's important is it's not performative.

Speaker 2: It's not about getting them to solve your [00:23:50] mistakes. It's about owning the mistakes impact so that you can move forward in your values. You use that awareness that you built to name the harm without excuse, so that way you can [00:24:00] move forward as a better man. Sometimes that isn't possible. Sometimes you're not gonna be able to repair with the people you hurt.

Speaker 2: When that happens, there's no direct conversation letter, [00:24:10] anything that's gonna go forward where that person reconnects with you. All you can do is own what you've done. Acknowledge your responsibility and the mistakes [00:24:20] you've made so that way you can move forward in better ways, and ideally help others not make the same mistakes that you have.

Speaker 2: It's felt so much better for me [00:24:30] taking my mistakes into the world and helping other guys do better. It's not that I'm ever gonna get a chance to repair with some of the people that I've hurt. It's about helping others not make the same mistakes. By [00:24:40] rebuilding that community and in joining that community in more effective ways, it's gonna help you have a better life.

Speaker 2: Now that you've repaired with yourself and taken as much space as you can to [00:24:50] repair with you hurt party, now it's time for that community reintegration. A lot of these cases, guys lose community. We lose our role, we lose our [00:25:00] trust, we lose our ability to be in the places that we've held status and connection in, and you're not gonna get that back immediately.

Speaker 2: All you can do is move forward with integrity [00:25:10] and be the man that you wanna be to the people around you. If you do that, you slowly build back that trust. You work back to the roles that you learned how to do. [00:25:20] You get to the place where you are a better person in the community than you were when this started.

Speaker 2: But it takes time and it takes integrity. You show up [00:25:30] with the knowledge of what you've done, the acknowledgement to the people that need to see it and. Helping other people do better, helping yourself show up better, [00:25:40] not in some kind of preachy, performative way, but by being in your integrity and moving through your community and your world in ways that are in alignment with the values and the lessons learned.[00:25:50]

Speaker 2: Service helps restore dignity by doing these things, by showing up in these ways in community, it helps you trust yourself again, and it helps others trust you. [00:26:00] There's three really powerful, distinct ways that we have to do that. The first one is clinically talking to a therapist like me to help guide you through the process of naming what's [00:26:10] happened, understanding the harm that's been caused.

Speaker 2: Helping you figure out what your values are and how you need to be in the world to like who you are, and be there for the people that [00:26:20] matter to you and help you get the skills required to reconnect to your world in a way that's gonna be productive for yourself. There's a lot of really good modalities and a lot of really good clinicians that can [00:26:30] help you with that.

Speaker 2: Another one is Community Resources. 12 Step is probably one of the best models for community accountability. There's a lot of research documenting [00:26:40] exactly how to go about it, and it's a wonderful model. If addiction has been part of this, if substance has been part of this, it's a powerful way to get [00:26:50] guidance and have a framework on how to rebuild both yourself and your community in ways that are gonna empower you to be a better man.

Speaker 2: And the last one is social restorative justice. There's a lot [00:27:00] of really angry people about how. Harm has been caused and we need them. We need them being fiery and letting us know what's going on, but it doesn't help rebuild. Restorative [00:27:10] justice is about acknowledging what's happened and being better in the world to make it happen less.

Speaker 2: This is where showing up to different causes in going to the marches around the pain that's been caused. [00:27:20] Guiding other men and helping them do better than you did, and being an example of what growth looks like in that community. It doesn't mean performative. It doesn't even need to be loud, but [00:27:30] being a guy who shows up better in the world and being seen doing so, really helps other guys see opportunities to improve themselves.

Speaker 2: Any one of these three models is gonna be useful. [00:27:40] In an ideal world, you have all three supports to reintegrate into community in a way that's gonna be effective. The counselor is gonna help you do so internally and make sure that you're grounded [00:27:50] as you reenter some kind of community. Whether that's 12 Step or a men's group is gonna help frame and hold the guidance that you need to do so well.

Speaker 2: And restorative [00:28:00] justice showcases that you're not just performing for yourself and individuals around you, but you're trying to help and improve the community at large. If you do these three things, [00:28:10] I promise you, the things you've lost may come back, and if they don't, the things you build will be so much better and so much more powerful in your world than [00:28:20] what you lost.

Speaker 2: Be the man for the world that you wanna build. If you've made it all the way here, you're gonna have a chance at rebuilding the world that you want. That accountability isn't gonna be [00:28:30] performative. It's going to be about being the men you wanna be moving forward with people that help you do so. I, and so many guys I've worked with, have come through these things to become better [00:28:40] men, and you're taking the steps to look at what's happening, address and acknowledge and move forward as a better man if you do those things.

Speaker 2: We [00:28:50] can make a better world and you can live a better life. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this and learn from it. I really hope it helps you navigate this hard, [00:29:00] painful moment in your life to come out on the other side stronger, better, and more connected. Thank you for being the man that's trying to do [00:29:10] [00:29:20] that.