Quick test: how do you deal with your neediness? If you just cringed, you found your enemy emotion.
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Psychiatrist Dr. Laura Dabney has spent her career working with successful men who buried three feelings so deep they stopped recognizing them: neediness, anger, and sadness. In this Deep Cut from the vault (recorded in 2019), she maps what each one turns into when it goes underground: neediness becomes compulsive giving, sadness becomes relentless positivity and joking, and anger becomes the blowup you swore you'd never have. Jon goes first: the punched wall, the need for validation he'd been dressing up as contribution, the positivity that was really sadness-avoidance. Then Dabney lays out the way back: accept the feeling, catch yourself invalidating it, journal with a purpose, and start with you before you manage everyone else's reaction. It ends with the story of a patient who couldn't ask a woman on a date and now sends her postcards of his four kids.
IN THIS EPISODE:
WANT THE BOOKS?
The book list we mention in this episode: over 100 books Front Row Dads recommends, the ones that changed how these guys operate at home and at work. Free at frontrowdads.com/books
WANT THE FULL STORY?
The full conversation also covers stopping anger before it becomes a blow-up, why men funnel every emotion into sex, and the boundary conversation that saved a military man's marriage. Hear the whole thing: "How Men Deal With Neediness, Anger and Sadness with Dr. Laura Dabney" : frontrowdads.com/74
