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My second video collaboration with noted counselor/psychotherapist and best-selling author Ross Rosenberg is a conversation about the sources and impact of the Mother Wound.

[rickbelden]

I offer a free discovery session, which is a collaborative conversation designed to help you identify:

What you want most in your life right now that you're not getting.

What is standing in the way of getting it.

Specific steps you can take right away to get yourself moving toward it.

Visit rickbeldencoaching.com to sign up for your free discovery session so we can get you  moving in the direction of having what you want most in life.

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My brand new site menandthemotherwound.com is, to my knowledge, the first on the web dedicated to the Mother Wound in men. It includes definition and overview along with info to help both men and women learn about this important topic.

[rickbelden]

"The reason childhood things are a factor is because ... the unconscious has no sense of time. In other words, things that happened to us when we were 8 or 10 years old, if they're emotionally powerful, are still there at the age of 40, 50, 70, or 90." ~ John E. Sarno

rickbeldencoaching.com

[rickbelden]

Brand new! My recent visit with Ross Rosenberg includes creative approaches for healing childhood trauma, helping men rediscover/reclaim lost parts of themselves, and the destructive effect of rushing abuse/trauma survivors to "get over it" and forgive.

[rickbelden]

I'm very pleased to announce that the new book Insideman: Pioneering Stories About Men and Boys is now available at Amazon. This book is a companion to the very excellent insideMan website and I'm one of forty men who each contributed a chapter. I hope you'll check it out.

[rickbelden]

No one likes pain, and I’m no exception, but I've slowly come around to the belief that the pain of feeling is preferable to the pain of not feeling, and that the pain of being who I am is preferable to the pain of being what I’m not. As author Seth Mullins has written, “Sensitivity—even when it comes at the cost of great suffering – may be all that renders worth to existence in the end.” I think one of the important points he makes with that statement is that sensitivity is not the absence of toughness, but is, in many ways, the very embodiment of toughness. It takes a great deal of inner strength and resiliency to maintain your sensitivity in a world that seems to go out of its way to beat it out of you, often literally.

Rick Belden “I am a highly sensitive man” (via echoesofmercy)

Full article can be found at http://www.masculinity-movies.com/blog/guest-blog-by-rick-belden-i-am-a-highly-sensitive-man

[rickbelden]

New book from Dr Ted Zeff features my essay "Sensitivity in the Lion's Den"

The Power of Sensitivity: Success Stories by Highly Sensitive People Thriving in a Non-sensitive World

Dr. Ted Zeff has compiled 43 uplifting success stories, submitted from highly sensitive people from 10 different countries and shared here to help the international HSP community learn new ways to manage their trait and thrive.

A reader review posted for the book at Amazon says:

"I was also interested by chapter twenty-four's addressing of highly sensitive men. Rick Belden's story was very poignant as he encountered issues with a men's group and, more importantly, how he chose to handle it."

Click here to visit the Amazon page for this book and find out more.

[rickbelden]

A little poem about embracing the darkest day of the year.

[rickbelden]

My post "Unhiding Myself" is currently featured on Julie Clarke's Independent Child and Youth Counselling (ICYC) blog. Here's Julie's introduction to my post:

Rick writes from the heart; he expresses intimate feelings through an unfolding of words that uniquely express the emotional vulnerability that is all boys (and men). In our hyper masculine world the emotions and feelings are often masked by expectations, responsibilities and of course stigma. Rick breaks these barriers on a daily basis and there is truly so much to learn. It is my pleasure to share with you Rick’s written piece "Unhiding Myself" ...

You can read the full article here.

[rickbelden]

I'm making my first appearance today as a guest blogger on Jungian author Jean Raffa's blog with a video poem and commentary titled "Falling Through: One Man's Fear of Feeling" about my fear of feeling and expressing grief, sadness, and pain. Here's Jean's introduction to my post:

In keeping with my latest theme of the wounded masculine, I'm pleased to share this piece by guest blogger, Rick Belden. Rick is an author and a poet who has struggled to get in touch with his feelings throughout his adult life. As you'll see in this post, he's learned how to use his creative imagination to heal the wounds of his childhood.

You can read the full article here.

[rickbelden]

My article "Welcoming the New Generation of Highly Sensitive Men" is now featured on the website for the Good Men Project. Here is an excerpt:

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post called “I am a Highly Sensitive Man” in which I shared some of my history and experience as a man who is a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP). My post was then reprinted on the Good Men Project website, where it’s been very popular, and has subsequently been reprinted on numerous other sites around the world and shared widely across social media. I’ve been very pleased that so many people have felt such a strong connection with what I wrote and have found it so helpful. Many of the most powerful and moving responses I’ve seen have come from young men ...

You can read the full article here.

[rickbelden]

My article "I Am a Highly Sensitive Man" is now featured on the website for the Good Men Project. Here is an excerpt:

It's an ongoing challenge to see my sensitivity as an asset rather than a weakness to be feared and hidden from others. Men and boys are already living in a no-win, double bind situation around vulnerability; it is amplified for highly sensitive men and boys. If most men lead lives of quiet desperation, they also know that society and most of the people around them prefer they keep it that way. A man or boy who shows sensitivity and expresses vulnerability is always taking a risk. Shame and scorn, whether from other males or from females, remain some of the most powerful tools for keeping men and boys "in line." Most men are not highly sensitive, but many men are far more sensitive than they want anyone else to know.

You can read the full article here.

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Click on the image above to listen to my conversation about my book, Iron Man Family Outing, with Dr. Chris Blazina on his BlogTalkRadio show The Secret Lives of Men. You can read a transcript at http://bit.ly/hRFtxZ.

[rickbelden]

My article "Healing Is Not for Wimps" is now featured on the website for the Good Men Project. Here is an excerpt:

Sadness scares me. Grief, the experience of grief and grieving, scares me. But I also know that grieving, that being with grief and sadness, is one of the most powerful and effective ways of being with and transforming pain. When I let my grief and my sadness speak, when I allow those energies to stir in my belly and my chest, to move up through my heart and my throat, to enter the world as tears and moans and sobbing and wailing, I am cleansed. I am lifted. I can see again. I feel real again. Human. But entering that process is challenging for me. It’s tricky. Sensitive. I almost have to be taken by surprise. Like so many men, I’ve been conditioned not to feel such things (not directly anyway) and certainly not to express them, not even privately. The messages are clear: “Be a real man. Take charge. Control yourself. Don’t cry. Be tough. Don’t be a wimp.” If you are a man who is suffering, keep it to yourself. If you have to feel something, feel angry. Anger is manly and therefore safe to feel. Grief and sadness are not. Grief work is hard for many of us as men, and so much has to be learned (and unlearned) in order to do it. You have to be tough and soft at the same time, and you have to be present with what you’re feeling without losing yourself in the intensity of it. It’s not easy. Healing is not for wimps. The real tough guys are the ones who can do the work ...

You can read the full article here.

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Coming to Terms with an Absence of Elders

My article "Coming to Terms with an Absence of Elders" was published recently on the website for The ManKind Project Journal. Here's an excerpt:

I’ve been thinking recently about the deficiency of appropriate, effective male mentoring in my life and how it’s affected me. I’m 52 and it’s still affecting me, just as it’s affected me at every stage of my life. There’s a huge hole in my life where my father should have been (and still should be), but as big as that hole is, it’s merely the center of a much larger hole, the product of a male culture that is woefully inadequate to meet the true needs of men and boys ...

A second article of mine entitled "My Life with Iron Man" was also published on The ManKind Project Journal website last month. "My Life with Iron Man" was originally published on the Masculinity Movies website in October 2010 in conjunction with my review of the movie Iron Man.

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"wild cactus dancer" by Rick Belden

Rick Belden reads a poem called "wild cactus dancer" from his upcoming book Scapegoat's Cross: Poems about Finding and Reclaiming the Lost Man Within. This poem is available at http://bit.ly/fErzWe. You can see more of Rick's work at http://rickbelden.com and http://blog.rickbelden.com.