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Podcast Update: The Integrated Man Project Unveiled - A New Direction and Exciting Changes
171 Plays9 months ago
Welcome to the latest episode of The Integrated Man Project podcast. In this week's podcast, host Travis Goodman discusses the recent rebranding of the podcast and why it's now known as The Integrated Man Project. Travis shares his journey of transitioning from Therapy 4 Dads to The Integrated Man Project, explaining the reasons behind the change and his vision for the new direction of the podcast. He delves into the concept of being integrated, exploring psychological, spiritual, social, and physical integration, and outlines the benefits of striving for balance and coherence in these areas of life. Travis also gives a sneak peek into the upcoming launch of his coaching program and encourages listeners to join him on this new chapter. Be sure to stay tuned for more exciting content and updates in the future!
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Transcript
Introduction and Updates
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. First and foremost, I wanted to apologize for the delay. Not that I did anything technically wrong, but at least wanted to let you know, as I alluded in the previous episode, which has been a few weeks, it's been a minute since the holidays and
00:00:24
Speaker
kind of all the stuff been going on the back end that I want to now give it an update kind of family update on the podcast and I just want to thank you for tuning in first and foremost thank you for being on this journey some of you have been with me since the beginning about just over two years ago starting the podcast and some are have jumped in along the way and some are brand new
Rebranding to Integrated Man Project
00:00:47
Speaker
So I know the last episode, I talked about a change coming. And so I kind of wanted to use this episode with kind of by myself, kind of talking through the upcoming changes, which I'm very excited about and kind of talk about the new direction, which I've been kind of already been undergoing and already been transitioning to. But now there comes more, I think, explicit change happening. And the first thing you're going to notice automatically, if you haven't already, is the name of the podcast.
00:01:15
Speaker
I have been therapy for dads for the just over two years. And I am now this is now the integrated man project, which is also the name change on the Instagram account. So podcasts Instagram account have now been changed. The email address has been changed. The website will be changed and coming soon. That is TBD. That is something personally has taken me a little longer to get done just from it's just
00:01:40
Speaker
All back and stuff. I'm not a web designer, so that's something that just takes me a little longer to get done. I'm not an expert in that. I have either expertise, but website design is not my forte. So with that, that's taking a little bit longer because I don't want to do it well and have it integrated. Hence the name. I want it to be usable and friendly and make sense.
00:01:57
Speaker
and that's just something that's taken me a little bit longer, but this is now the integrated man project and a few things I want to talk about. One, I want to talk about why the name change, kind of be a little more open and honest and talk through my process. You're aware of why I'm changing the name and two, kind of a bit about what I mean by being integrated and to give you an understanding of kind of where we're moving.
00:02:19
Speaker
And I think you'll lay the framework for the podcast moving forward. I think this episode will lay the framework as well for kind of my coaching, launching my coaching business. Those that are new to this show, I work as a licensed therapist in the state of California, which I love doing. I'm still going to be doing. I still
Coaching Business Launch
00:02:37
Speaker
am doing.
00:02:37
Speaker
And at the same time, I wanna do, I wanna step into coaching, which enables me to kind of work with people outside of California, enables me to be more flexible and kind of wear a different hat and have a different type of treatment plan and work with people differently. And so with that, it's kind of all these things are changing. And I do wanna say those that have been with me from the beginning that I still deeply care about fathers. I am a father of three, so I'm not gonna be focusing on fathers, but it's gonna be more broad.
00:03:06
Speaker
And they kinda jump right into the name change. So the name was therapy for dads and while being a therapist, I'm all about therapy. I'm for therapy. I love therapy. I see the benefit of therapy. The reality is and the research shows this as well as just anecdotal research from my own experience and talking with others that the term therapy, just that word is so, it's still so loaded.
00:03:30
Speaker
A lot of times it's loaded with a lot of just negative connotations. It's loaded with a lot of apprehension, a lot of dismissiveness. It's loaded with uncertainty. I think to some degree fear due to not really understanding what it is. And if I take it from more of the more traditional man lens or masculine lens, just the words therapy is already going to be pushing up against a lot of that kind of rigid
00:03:54
Speaker
very narrowed view of what it means to be a man, i.e. like not wanting to get help, that men don't get help, they don't reach out because to do that would be weakness. So therapy automatically is put in that category as I must be weak, there must be something wrong with me, I must be broken. I think through this experiment, what I've found is that just the term therapy has been such an kind of an auto turn off.
00:04:14
Speaker
an auto kind of avoidance of, or scroll past, so to speak, or swiping past, whatever analogy that works for you. And I think with that, I think I might have missed reaching more men than maybe, than I could have, just because of the name. And that's with marketing. And I'm learning through this process too. I'm not a marketing expert. I didn't go to school for marketing. I didn't go to school for business. I wanted school to become a therapist and get training and to be a good therapist at that.
00:04:39
Speaker
And so with that, I've learned and it's just part of growing and evolving. And the show has even evolved since its birth back then, about two and a half years ago, how it started, it's evolved. And so I'm excited with
Focus on Integration
00:04:50
Speaker
this. And so the major reason why, again, is kind of removing the barrier from that term therapy, moving away from that. And yes, again, I still believe in therapy. I still see the benefit of it, but I want to be able to reach more men and just people in general.
00:05:05
Speaker
who could benefit from this because this show, while the aim is geared towards men, the reality is anyone could listen to this because the topics we cover are really for mankind. It's for all of us that we could all learn from. And while we might talk more from maybe like addressing men specifically, sometimes certain viewpoints and how men have been socialized, again, the topics themselves really are applicable to all.
00:05:29
Speaker
And so that's the main reason why, is I wanted to remove barriers, I want to be more open, more broad, and it's aligning too with my coaching, the coaching business that I'm starting here. And that is by the way TBD, that's going to be coming very soon. My hope is by, right now I'm recording this on February 16th, my hope is by beginning early to mid-March, my first men's group coaching program will be launching.
00:05:51
Speaker
And when that does, I will make an announcement on the podcast. You'll see it announced on my Instagram channel. And this Instagram channel is Integrated Man Project, just like this podcast is Integrated Man Project. It's all on there. I will make announcements and I'll have links and all those things if you're interested to sign up. And again, more to come, but I'm getting really, really, really close. I've been working with a lot of other
00:06:12
Speaker
men and women in my life that I trust and give me feedback. I've been working with other therapists, coaches, and just other individuals to kind of get some feedback at Insight Toilet so I can make this first program, this first round, the best it can be. I'm getting a lot of heads and eyes on it so I could really make it effective, useful, and efficient, and that's my goal.
00:06:30
Speaker
And so with this pivot, I now want to talk a bit more about what does it mean to be integrated? And if you just stop for a moment and just ask yourself, what does that mean to me? Just even just in your own head, like pause and ask, what does integrated mean? So when you ask that question, what initially comes up for you? What's your first thought? What's your first reaction? Emotionally, physically, where does your mind go? Just notice that. Don't judge it. Just kind of, oh, that's what I think of being integrated.
00:06:59
Speaker
because I think we're all gonna come in and that word's gonna bring up different things for different people. There's no right or wrong to it, there's no good or bad, it just is. It's that words carry meaning, words carry assumptions, words and carry interpretations, words. We interpret words too based on our experiences. And so you're gonna come into this thinking and have a perspective. And so what I wanna do is whatever that perspective might be, I want you first to be aware of it, acknowledge it, and then tune in to kind of where I'm coming from and kind of my vision for
00:07:28
Speaker
what integrated mountain project is about and really what it means to be integrated, whether you're a man or a woman, right? Whether this is really about that, being integrated as an individual, being integrated as a society, as a community, right? And as like a whole people group and a whole globe.
Exploring Integration Domains
00:07:45
Speaker
And so there's some domains I want to talk about and I'm going to talk a little bit about what it means to be integrated and disintegrated.
00:07:53
Speaker
because I think it's going to be important to differentiate between the two. So you have an understanding of, oh, that's what it means to be disintegrated, meaning disconnected, separate, versus what it means to be integrated, connected, whole, right? Balanced. So the areas I'm going to look at are psychological, spiritual,
00:08:10
Speaker
social and physical. So these are kind of the primary domains in life to which we exist, right? In the psychological, that is really your emotions, your thoughts, and kind of what's driving your behaviors. So what does it mean to be disintegrated psychologically?
00:08:27
Speaker
from a psychological perspective. Well, in short, what disintegration means really is that there's a disconnection or lack of coherence between your thoughts, your feelings, and like your behaviors or actions that
00:08:43
Speaker
If you are in a state of disintegration, you might be experiencing, again, a disconnection between your thoughts and feelings or a misunderstanding or a lack of awareness. There might be kind of like, if you think of a puzzle, like it's fragmented, there's pieces everywhere.
00:08:59
Speaker
And this could lead to different difficulties in life with how you cope with stress to the various mental health challenges to maybe an identity crisis, right? So it can manifest in a lot of different ways, but just think of it like there's really this, there's these, there's blocks between different aspects of yourself.
00:09:18
Speaker
And that will often tend to lead to some type of overly stressed life or other mental health issues. And that could manifest in issues like anxiety, depression, or maybe if someone's experienced early childhood trauma, they could lead to kind of someone having to cope and survive leading to some level of disintegration within self because they had to to survive. And again, it's gonna manifest in ways in your adult life or current life that may be rendering you not as effective in general within yourself.
00:09:46
Speaker
Now, what it means to be integrated, on the contrary, is that you're aware of your thoughts, your emotions, and behaviors, and how those interplay, and there's a harmony, there's a connectedness, there's an awareness, there's a movement of ease, and you're able to kind of manage your inner conflicts or difficulties or stress as well.
00:10:04
Speaker
You know, not perfectly, but well, you're able to kind of navigate those with some level of confidence. You're going to have agency to know what is best and what's most effective. And then when you do kind of maybe make a decision in your life or think something that's not so correct or something that's stressful, you're going to bounce back and recover more effectively. Integration also looks like you're able to, like I said, understand your emotions and have a consistent sense of self across those domains psychologically, like emotionally.
00:10:32
Speaker
your thoughts and your behaviors, like why you do what you do. There's also a level of resilience just to life stressors, able to kind of overcome, navigate, move through difficulties in life more effectively. Now, when you are integrated, it does not mean that you don't have a hard time. It doesn't mean that you don't get anxious or sad or overwhelmed. It means that you're able to identify those emotional states or psychological states
00:10:58
Speaker
but then be effective at how to address it. What do I need to do now versus getting stuck? Again, if you're disintegrated, you're more likely to get stuck in the mud of those psychological stressors of anxiety or negative thinking or ineffective managing stress in your life. But if you're integrated,
00:11:14
Speaker
you're better able to navigate those more effectively and move through it rather than kind of be rendered stuck in the mud. Now, that's the first aspect. Your first domain is psychological, which is very, very important because it deals with your internal world and how you see yourself, which definitely impacts everything else. And that would also align with kind of spiritual integration versus disintegration.
00:11:34
Speaker
Now spirituality means a lot of different things to a lot of people. It might mean organized religion. It might mean just some higher power. It might be tied to a purpose or meaning, a community, a belief system, but there is some another domain of life, the spiritual integration and disintegration.
00:11:50
Speaker
Now, it's going to operate very similarly to psychological integration versus disintegration. And the spiritual domain often is where we tend to derive meaning or purpose in life. What gives you meaning and purpose? What are you aiming at? What is kind of your higher calling or aim outside of your individual self? And again, that might look like a more specific religious affiliation. It might look like a higher power.
00:12:13
Speaker
or a belief in the world, or a concept like love, or being a good person, or spreading kindness. So there's a lot of different ways that people derive meaning within their spirituality. But that's an important aspect that is kind of next to the psychological aspect, this other domain of life, this spiritual domain. And that's something that we all have to navigate in one way, shape, or form in our life.
00:12:36
Speaker
You've probably heard of the term kind of a spiritual crisis or spiritual awakening or the dark night of the soul. These are all just different ways of saying there's this deeper sense of self, this kind of, some people call it like at their core of their being or their spirit or their soul. There's different, again, different ways of addressing this, but it's a domain that in the part of our journey that we need to be aware of.
00:12:58
Speaker
And this also will include being integrated is understanding your story and where you come from and where you are now within that domain, within that journey of spirituality. And so that's what spiritual integration would look like. Disintegration would often manifest in a lot of existential doubt, existential crisis, crisis of understanding of your purpose, or maybe like a midlife crisis could come out of this that we all heard and hear about having a midlife crisis that could come from that.
00:13:24
Speaker
Now, social. What does it look like to be socially integrated versus disintegrated? Well, part of disintegration socially is going to be where maybe someone is more socially isolated, maybe alienated. Maybe they have a difficulty of maintaining meaningful relationships, deep relationships.
00:13:41
Speaker
And when someone's in that state, and I think of a lot of men I've worked with over the years, I think can get stuck in this state of disintegration socially, especially when they feel like the lone wolf and they could kind of try and do things on their own without really seeking help or aid from others. And that could lead to a state of isolation. I've also seen this with men where they struggle with just forming more intimate bonds with other men and so it could lead to them
00:14:04
Speaker
kind of isolating, trying to conquer life on their own. And when they do that, they tend to suffer from higher levels of stress, more ineffective ways of coping. It might lead to more issues like drinking excessively, pornography use excessively, maybe overworking.
00:14:20
Speaker
And really, it's a way of trying to manage this kind of disintegration within social relationships. And some men not even struggle with how to form those. And there's a lot of reasons as to why that might happen. That could be how they were raised socially. What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be in a relationship with other men?
00:14:35
Speaker
What do you share or not share? And so that's going to impact how a man, even a woman might engage in relationship. And what it means to be integrated socially is going to look like you have the capacity and ability to maintain healthy connected relationships connected and also be connected to a larger community. If you are integrated socially, you're able to navigate social interactions more effectively, conflict with others more effectively.
00:15:04
Speaker
you're able to have the ability to empathize with others to whole other points of view. You're able to kind of contribute to others, to society as a whole in a more meaningful way. And that's vitally important because that also can drive purpose for individuals, for men, for women, to have a social connection. We are social creatures. We're wired to be in relationships. We're not wired to be alone. We are not wired to be lone wolves.
00:15:32
Speaker
And so it's vitally important that we have a level of social integration, not only on the personal level, like one-on-one with our family, with our friends, with our neighbors, with our coworkers, but also our community at large, our world at large, because we are connected to all things, not just our individual self.
00:15:50
Speaker
And I think of he recently did an interview with Dr. Dan Siegel off of his book, Intra Connected. Great book, by the way. Go check it out. I'll leave a link in the description. But his whole purpose of that book was he talked about how in the West we have a misidentification and misinterpretation of what it means
00:16:10
Speaker
of the self. And what happens is, he said in the West, we have defined self as just this one body. That this one body has no real impact or relationship to others. And he said that's been a huge rift in our society. And that we really need to understand that our self is not just this body, but our self is connected to each other. It's connected to our friends, our family, our community, our world. That when we begin to see that, we realize that we are really connected
00:16:38
Speaker
we are into and we need to be integrated in all things and then the final domain is like physical and this is very similar to kind of every other domain that physically if you're disintegrated you can have more likely to have more health problems more likely to be more fatigued and tired you're more likely to also not fully be aware of what's happening your body and not listen to your body's communicating like
00:17:00
Speaker
You're not gonna listen to the stressors or the pains and you might even brush it off like, oh, it's not a big deal. That could lead to other health issues. It could lead to not going to the doctor to get checked out. It could lead to maybe you being less physically capable, right? If you're not caring for your body, you just might be more fatigued.
00:17:20
Speaker
low energy things like that for example now if you're integrated you're aware of your body you listen to your body you are understanding when it communicates to you like oh my body's saying this it's like have an ache what's that ache about is it due to psychological stress or emotional stress or is that due to because i pull something you know
00:17:35
Speaker
playing with my kids or working out or at the office, whatever I did. When we're integrated with our body, we are always also tuned in and aware of what's happening. And when we're aware of that, it has this kind of, this go back and forth between the mind and body, right? We've heard of that classic argument, you know, the mind-body connection. And I truly, truly believe that our mind, our bodies, our souls are tightly integrated and interconnected.
00:17:59
Speaker
and we need to build our awareness on all these domains. And as we do that, we become more
Benefits of Integration
00:18:04
Speaker
integrated. And when we are more integrated, this is the whole purpose of why I want people to be integrated, because there's some major benefits. And some of those benefits include really a more holistic balance of emotional wellbeing. It can lead to more enhanced mental health. It could lead to stronger, more healthy, effective relationships. Being integrated means you can have a stronger sense of spiritual fulfillment.
00:18:28
Speaker
It could lead to better decision making, it could lead to more resilience to life's challenges and stress, to making more effective decisions in your life with your family, with work, with friends, just with you individually. It could lead a sense of coherence, meaning a consistency across all aspects of life where you feel balanced, you feel nourished, you feel effective, you feel energized. Don't we all want that? Don't we all want to feel those things?
00:18:52
Speaker
I know I do, I want more of that. And so that's kind of where we're going is this whole shift is really examining these areas of our life and kind of asking, am I balanced? Am I integrated in these aspects of my
Encouragement and Next Steps
00:19:05
Speaker
life? Or are there areas in my life that I need to pay attention to? Do I need to kind of put some attention to my social life?
00:19:12
Speaker
How am I there? Or do I need to put some attention to my physical life or my psychological life, my spiritual life? If you're kind of sitting there asking like, yeah, you know what? And thinking, gosh, I haven't really thought about my social life in a long time or I haven't really thought about my internal world, then this is for you.
00:19:27
Speaker
because we all are gonna have this from time to time. And even myself included that it's kind of a continual awareness of how am I doing in all these domains of my life? Am I really aware? Am I really engaged? Am I really moving forward? Am I doing the best I can? And what I tend to find is there's usually an area that I need to spend more time in. It's kind of a continual balance, a continual assessment. And so I want you to journey with me. I'm excited that you're gonna come along.
00:19:53
Speaker
And so as I journey, I'm excited for some of the episodes already have recorded. They're going to be released. I want you to stay tuned for the coaching program launching hopefully in the next month. That's my goal. I'm setting a goal for myself to get there. And if you have any questions, you could send me an email at integratedmanproject.gmail.com. You could find me on Instagram again at integratedmanproject.com.
00:20:14
Speaker
The website will be integratedmanproject.com as well, and it's not live yet, but it will be. And I can't wait to see what unfolds over this next season and chapter of this podcast, of the Instagram. And yeah, I'm just excited. I'm excited for this change. So stay tuned. Episode two, I guess, of this rebrand will be coming next week. And I cannot wait to see where we all go together. But until then, my friends, you have a blessed week.