Joe Warren’s Reviews > Men's Work: A Practical Guide to Face Your Darkness, End Self-Sabotage, and Find Freedom > Status Update

"Learn to father the boy within you"

"A father's pain, if left unattended, will inevitably become the burden of the son."

The one rule of men: Don't talk about what it's like to be a man who is struggling. Don't engage in conversation about the failing marriage, the grief of having a parent die or the shame of having a business on the brink of collapse. Suck it up. Stuff it down. Deal with it like a man-alone.

This is the one rule you must absolutely break. In fact, breaking it is imperative to your health, fulfillment and well-being.

John Bradshaw author of the book "Healing the Shame That Binds You" said "Pass it back or pass it on."

The idea here is simple: either you gain awareness of what you have been given so you can make a clear, sovereign choice about what to do with it, or you remain ignorant to it and pass it on through your lineage, relationships, and community."

"What was silent in the father speaks in the son; and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Within all men is a hidden man. An unseen man. A man who, at some point in his life, bought into the narrative that suppression equals strength and survival. For many men, suppression has become a way of life.

The unseen man is a prisoner within you and often holds the keys to your sense of liberation.

"The shadow is a conglomeration of all you have tried not to be, wanted to hide from others, and avoided about yourself.

It consists of all the baggage you've tried to hide from your conscious mind.

The shadow is a fitting name because in many ways it consists of all the parts of your psyche and identity that we don't know about, or are too afraid to admit even exist. It is a literal lack of illumination."