Josh Mortensen (00:03.258)

Okay, looks like it’s working. All right, Roy Wing, welcome back to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Roy Wang (00:04.994)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (00:09.267)

Thanks for having me again, Josh. Excited.

Josh Mortensen (00:11.5)

Yeah, absolutely. Do you actually pronounce your name Wang? Did I say that correctly? Roy Wang. I can say that over. I’ll start over then, because I think it’s probably pretty common that you get Wang here in America. But I actually have, I spent some time in East Asia. I lived in Korea for a while as a Mormon missionary, and so I would have pronounced it Wang if I was over there. But yeah, let me try it again.

Roy Wang (00:13.294)

Thank

Roy Wang (00:18.336)

Wang, Wang, yeah.

Roy Wang (00:28.055)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (00:34.304)

Okay.

Josh Mortensen (00:39.808)

Okay, Roy Wang, welcome back to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Roy Wang (00:43.394)

Thanks for having me, Josh. Good to be back again.

Josh Mortensen (00:45.794)

Yeah, absolutely. So we got connected several months ago. I think it’s probably been about six months since we first connected and talked here on the podcast. But I think I originally came across you through your Twitter handle, which is the sacred wild man. And through that, you do some work with men and, you know, it’s like kind of, I guess it would be like shadow work and addressing things like the…

Roy Wang (00:52.206)

Yeah.

Roy Wang (00:59.576)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (01:13.742)

you know, thoughts on the mother or core beliefs on your mother or your father, the kind of the world you came up in and then, you know, how do you work with those kinds of things? But I reached out just to, because I thought we had a great conversation before and I was interested in reconnecting and I am really genuinely curious just what’s on your mind lately and what you’ve been working with lately and kind of exploring that.

Roy Wang (01:16.291)

Mm.

Roy Wang (01:36.27)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so sort of the top two things that I written in the email reply when you reached out again, I think the first one was a theme that I was noticing with some clients. This pattern that Freud termed the repetition compulsion. And I think it’s probably one of the most brilliant things Freud came out with. He came out with some other stuff too that can be

questionable, but it was super fascinating to recognize how for some of my clients, even for myself, these repetition compulsions, like these patterns and themes in our lives where most of the time we’re just unconsciously repeating these things as though like our psyche is trying to resolve something that we’re not yet conscious of has been a theme that I’ve seen for a number of my clients. And then the second thing, which is the one that I’ve been

thinking about a lot and also I’ll be making a longer YouTube video about this is the shadow feminine and abuse from women. I think that’s a conversation that much of I would say Western society probably isn’t quite ready for. I think probably just hearing it itself, there will probably be pushback from people like, what are you talking about abuse from women? Like everything is from men and the patriarchy.

So that’s one that I’ve been thinking about quite a bit.

Josh Mortensen (03:11.182)

Yeah, very interesting. Let’s take some time to dive into both of those topics. Yeah, I could see how people would want to push back on this idea of any kind of negativity being directed towards masculinity or towards men because we’re supposed to be the dominant, powerful group in society. But I see this all the time. I think it’s very prominent. And I think that we’re conditioned to

just kind of brush it off and just kind of deal with it. But yeah, I would love to talk about that. But let’s start with the first one with Freud’s repetition compulsion. Yeah, maybe you could give us like some deeper explanation of what that is and maybe some examples that you do see in your work with men.

Roy Wang (03:41.966)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (03:49.24)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (03:58.518)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So this idea or concept of repetition compulsion, the one that I have been seeing from one particular client was this cycle of anger and shame. Those were like closely linked together. He would frequently get angry and then feel ashamed that he was so angry.

And then he’d be so angry that he felt so much shame about being angry and the cycle continued. later this also got wrapped up in sexual desire, sexual arousal. So there was so much, it was like tension around sexuality, around anger and his connections to women or his attempts to like try to connect to women, talk to women. And

The thing that I started to kind of pick up on, which later than I asked him, was

I think you actually are somewhat addicted to this anger and shame. as much as you hate it, you don’t like it, you want it to be done. It didn’t seem like on the level of his unconscious, he actually wanted that. Because one of the things that I do in my work is assess for any objection, not conscious objection, because consciously people are always like, yeah, I want to be done with this thing. I don’t want to suffer anymore.

be in pain, but I assess for any unconscious objections. So I would ask him some series of questions to assess, are you sure you would like to be done with this anger and shame thing? He’s like, yeah, okay. So I said, okay, so I’m going to repeat something I like for you to repeat it after me, which is I would love to be done with this anger and shame, but that’s not actually okay.

Roy Wang (06:03.192)

And then he’d say it. And I was like, yeah, what did you notice? Was that just completely ridiculous to say? Just felt silly? Or was there some agreement to it? He’s like, that’s crazy. You would think that’d be OK, absolutely OK. But yeah, there’s something inside that agrees with that statement. No, it’s not OK to be over this anger and shame thing. So that began a journey of peeling apart the deeper layers, constructs within.

his unconscious mind that like early beliefs formative events that caused him to form like an identity, a complex around why it was not yet okay to get over this anger and shame. And part of that reason was because his psyche was still attempting to resolve an old event, old data where that anger and shame

was something that he couldn’t resolve on his own. It was like in relation to parents, in relation to his first relationship.

Josh Mortensen (07:10.266)

All very interesting. The idea of anger and shame in general is interesting to me because just as a core emotion and emotions and the labels we give them are just very difficult in general because an emotion is something we experience and then the label that we give to that emotion is just a word or just a sound, which is all words are initially is just the sound that we give to this

Roy Wang (07:16.173)

Okay.

Josh Mortensen (07:40.736)

emotion as a symbolic representation of the thing. And so then we have this

You know, maybe there are some deeper core emotions that we experience, but it seems to me that anger is not actually a core emotion. It seems like it’s a secondary emotion in the sense that, you know, we may feel angry at something, but if you explore it deeper, then you realize that really you’re feeling another emotion that is being ignored in some way.

that, or that you don’t want to actually experience or entertain. And so then it manifests as this anger. so, in that sense, it’s probably makes sense that it’s very much tied with shame, because there may be a feeling of sadness, a feeling of rejection, a feeling of being ignored. And with that comes shame. And then also the anger is,

is that secondary impulse then to demand that that other thing be recognized or appreciated. But beyond that, maybe I’m curious what you think about this. The anger and shame is not actually probably the solution to the problem, but it is in a sense something that the individual or the psyche can have power over, some level of

Roy Wang (09:11.342)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (09:19.908)

control or assertion. Is that why it lingers so long or is it a… Yeah, I don’t know. What are your thoughts on why anger and why shame, I guess is my main question.

Roy Wang (09:32.718)

So there’s two ways I look at it. One is from the level of the psyche, or you could say the soul, the facet of our existence or essence that wants to grow, wants to expand, evolve. And then the other would be from the level of, say, the subconscious mind, the part that has kind of taken in these

programs about how what beliefs, what behaviors are the ones that I must operate under. There’s a specific like a false self or not self identity. The subconscious mind runs. So those are kind of the two lenses that I look at it from. So why anger? Why shame? You know, I think this it varies person to person based on whatever that experience is. So in

His case, sort of like the general theme was a desire from parents, whether that was father or mother, but there was desire like, I want your attention or hey, I want closeness. Now, when that was met with rejection, whether that was the parent yelling and shouting or just saying like, like, no, I don’t have time. Don’t don’t bother me with this. Go go play with your sister or your brother or whatever. The

Developing mind of the child takes in this message that my desire in relation to my primary caregivers is Bad like that’s as an egocentric child. That’s the only meaning that you can make I’m either bad or I’m great, know everything it has to do with me and so What is first just an uncomfortable feeling like you talked about emotion or sensation what is first?

just an uncomfortable sensation, has a meaning or filter applied to it. I wanted something. Dad yelled at me or mom dismissed me. So therefore what I want must be bad.

Roy Wang (11:43.394)

That’s not a great experience for the child. They don’t know how to metabolize or digest that. So it kind of just like stays frozen and stuck within their mind. And yet at the same time, like we can’t help but have desires as human beings. There’s things that we want to experience, desire to connect with other people. And so now anytime desire comes up, there’s that little…

red alert that gets flagged that says, wait, but desire bad. Remember? Remember the last time you brought out desire? This is what happened. And so it creates this kind of a mind fuck really of, okay, I’ve got desire, but desire is bad, but I still have desire. And I think that’s where the cycle and these knots that get entangled of anger and shame come in. Like I feel

ashamed of the desire that I voiced. I’m never going to do that again because I don’t want to experience that pain. But damn it, I have my desires, you I want to experience this. And so that’s where the anger comes in.

Josh Mortensen (12:51.778)

And of all desires, probably the most pressing, especially as a child, is the desire to be accepted by your parents, by your tribe, by your environment, because it’s inherent to your survival. If you’re not accepted by these people, then as a social species, and then also especially as a young member of a social species, if you are not accepted by this group,

by your parents, then your very being is at risk, your life is at risk. yeah, I think about that, I haven’t thought about it in a long time, but for a while, it was something that I really wrestled with to try to help me kind of understand some of my own challenges and some of the things I had to figure out for myself in the way that I, and I didn’t necessarily come up with this, but you could go find this, a lot of people have talked about it and, you know, but.

in many ways, you read something and you hear something many times and until you can kind of internalize it for yourself and what it means for yourself, it doesn’t necessarily have the effect. But once I could see that a child growing up in an environment like you’re describing where their desires elicit some kind of anger from their parents or some kind of, you know, just being brushed off or ignored from their parents in an environment like that,

a child being so young without the mental faculties to really wrestle with what’s happening, they have to then, they have to come to these kind of binary understandings of what’s happening. And for a child, one of those answers is going to be that in an environment like this, my parents are not, they’re not good enough

at accepting me and protecting me and keeping me safe. And so you could blame the parents and say, these people are dangerous for me to be around. But as a child, we all know that that answer is actually, especially a very young child, that answer is untenable. You can’t, because this is the environment you exist in. And so you can’t just simply abandon your parents and go find other parents. And so the natural second option is to say that it is

Roy Wang (15:04.557)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (15:11.118)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (15:16.482)

something wrong with me in the same way that you were saying you begin to equate my desires as something that’s bad. And the other way that you might think about it is that just something’s wrong with you, something’s broken with you, maybe you’re not lovable. And because the only way to survive in that environment is to internalize it as you, you’re the problem, it’s your fault. And I think that’s like the idea of the complex that you’re getting at as well.

Roy Wang (15:18.094)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (15:37.486)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (15:45.838)

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s where the way the repetition compulsion takes form in the present day is like that. That core belief and identity for the most part is outside of conscious awareness. The only way it becomes conscious is through projection, which I think it’s like a brilliant mechanism of the psyche to try to make conscious what is unconscious. So then we can become conscious of what’s unconscious is.

would we know unless we have some external mirror. So that repetition compulsion can be, know, manifest in relationships where, let’s say, a guy continually is going for women who are a little bit more cold or distant, very difficult to please, that becomes his sort of template that he is drawn to.

And that’s where the repetition compulsion takes place of, it’s never enough. Somehow it’s never enough. But if I can try really hard, hopefully I can finally be enough to make up for the time that I was not enough like that formative experience. So that becomes a repetition compulsion. Let me find these relationships that continually mirror to me this sense of I’m just not doing enough. I can never be enough for these women. It can also take form in

gambling pornography, like the the nervous system, like emotion, emotional states, and like arousal patterns are a huge part of these repetition compulsion cycles. Like one I can even think about for myself that was sort of wild to peel apart was I had observed in my pornography addiction that

frequently what I did was I’d have a period of time where sometimes it’s like essentially a whole day, hours of just browsing and collecting photos. And then after like I had consumed all of that, I would just systematically delete all of them. I’m like, okay, I’m not doing that. And it would happen multiple times. And something that’s important along this healing journey for people is

Roy Wang (18:12.27)

The shame part is super important to bring compassion to. So I could observe that behavior without doing the shame piece on myself. Like, okay, let me just look at this as an interesting pattern. Like, why does this keep happening? Why do I keep collecting and hoarding and then I just delete everything and do that multiple times over? And I don’t know if this is for certain, but the kind of interpretation I came away with was…

Growing up, I had a very enmeshed relationship with my mom. She was like the helicopter mom, the devouring mother who was like over my shoulder criticizing or assessing everything. There was always an opinion to give about what I was doing or wasn’t doing. And it was a close relationship. There was also a sense of like, get away. Stop being so close to me. I want out of this. And I was like,

maybe that’s kind of the repetition compulsion that’s playing out here. There’s like a desire to have this close relationship, that love, nurture and softness that I had so wanted but never got. But then also like, get the hell away from me. And when I came upon that interpretation, like the charge of those repetition compulsions significantly just dissipated.

to the point where it’s like, yeah, of course I could go look at porn and collect these photos again, but it just didn’t occur to me as interesting anymore. So there’s some ways it can take shape.

Josh Mortensen (19:49.422)

Fascinating, Yeah, fascinating, just observing yourself enough to get to the point where you have some kind of an understanding of the pattern and then also going a little bit deeper and then trying to conceptualize the purpose of the pattern or the source of the pattern and then that alone alleviates at least some of the urgency for the symptoms in your life. Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think that…

Roy Wang (20:05.358)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (20:17.902)

Well, first of all, what you were saying about approaching the shame with a little bit of compassion, empathy, just gentleness, softness, even just as an example of what you’ve just done, to be able to get into a subject that is for a lot of people, very uncomfortable, very scary, very shameful, right? That’s like kind of the point. But just to be able to do it for yourself. And then obviously you’ve done a lot of work to be able to just sit here and share it, you know, with whoever may be listening to this. It is a…

Roy Wang (20:35.982)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (20:48.154)

Yeah, I think the same thing about myself. obviously, the interesting thing about it is, as long as you keep, it’s almost like forever you’re gonna have some kind of impulse compulsion, kind of like that repetition compulsion cycle. I don’t know if you ever can fully 100 % get rid of it. And I think a lot of times they move around. But the more that you can just…

observe yourself as kind of an interesting subject rather than that tight identification with your patterns and that does bring about so much shame. It seems like just that alone is a big, is like a very helpful step in the process in general when you can stop being so defensive about denying or projecting outward or blaming or using anger as a way to

Roy Wang (21:20.366)

in the next class.

Roy Wang (21:25.368)

Uh-huh.

Roy Wang (21:38.574)

Mhm.

Josh Mortensen (21:45.23)

block even yourself from exploring yourself or being honest about yourself with somebody else.

Roy Wang (21:50.082)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Because after, in a way, the anger and the shame become almost like these smoke and mirrors, these distracting trails that actually keep you from awareness of what’s the core drama.

Josh Mortensen (22:12.366)

Yeah, the core drama, that’s a really interesting way to say it because at some level there is a form of archetypal story playing out in that there’s this drama that goes back and forth inside of you. You’re probably familiar with Theo Vonn, he’s a comedian. I don’t know how long ago, but he had another comedian named John Mulaney on his podcast and John Mulaney was really, he was like,

Roy Wang (22:29.667)

Mhm.

Josh Mortensen (22:39.796)

shooting star level comedian had a bunch of specials coming out was doing all sorts of stuff and He was always this like really squeaky clean guy always wore a suit Everybody saw him as like this very nice kind of almost young kiddish type person and then he had this big blow up in his career because he suddenly was in rehab and nobody from that from a you know a I think maybe other comedians maybe knew what was going on in his life, but as far as

you know, just people who watch comedy or who, you know, were fans of his. They had no idea that while he had this squeaky clean kind of suit and tie version of his career over here, he was also just taking every pill and snorting every drug and like smoking everything he could possibly get over here. And it was really interesting because in his interview with Theo Vaughn, he told Theo that when he was younger, he had a psychiatrist who he went and visited with.

I think he was probably like 17 at the time. And the psychiatrist told him that he had two different people inside of him. He said he had this nice guy who just really wants to do the right thing and treat people well and get ahead with whatever it is he’s trying to work on. And then he told him that he also had a gorilla inside of him and the entire purpose of the existence of this gorilla was to ruin everything that the nice guy wanted to do. And I think that a lot of people actually probably struggle with that.

Roy Wang (24:01.624)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (24:06.138)

Like when you are, you know, have dreams, have goals, and it may be career goals, it may be, you know, to achieve some kind of a thing as far as finances or a business or art or creativity or, you know, achieve some kind of status. At the same time, we have relational goals. We want to find significant others. We want to find spouses. We want to raise children. We want to become, you know, the best that we can become.

Roy Wang (24:06.669)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (24:34.708)

And I think everybody probably has that version of themselves. And then on the flip side, everybody probably, and I could say for sure that I have this where there’s some other part of you that is trying to make sure that it’s trying to do everything it can to make sure you don’t achieve those things. And it may just be a different way of conceptualizing the same thing that you’re talking about, like saying, like there’s this gorilla or there’s this complex and the work to

figure that side of us out is probably the same process that you described in just observing yourself and being willing to keep going deeper and deeper in that observation to kind of get to the question of, what is the source of all of this?

Roy Wang (25:22.062)

Yeah, yeah, and ultimately that grow apart or saboteur, you know, is really just kind of serving a protective function. Well, you know, what is it guarding? And so that’s where bringing in compassion, separating the meanings and associations and identity from the

felt sensations. Okay, yeah, great. I understand like this is what that inner work can look like even just through processes of visualization and active imagination. Okay, what is it that you want to protect me from? And when you can go through those layers, you know, gently taking your time, not trying to just jump out of it so you can be fixed and squeaky clean all of a sudden, then you’ll start to get answers from

that aspect within the psyche, right? The guerrilla or the saboteur will say some things like, I don’t want you to get hurt again. I don’t want that same thing to happen again. And that way you get another step closer to that core drama where the energy got stuck.

And then the closer you get to that, then you can begin to harvest and alchemize the energy that was there, because that’s also a ton of energy. It’s a ton of energy to maintain the repetition compulsions. And so when you have that available, then everything else that has felt like, you know, I can’t get ahead in my life, there seems to be this obstacle. It’s like, okay, the obstacle was placed there so you can become conscious of the unresolved conflicts within your psyche.

once you clear, dissolve, and resolve that, the energy that was the obstacle is now the way. So it’s very powerful work. Definitely harrowing as well.

Josh Mortensen (27:20.494)

Yeah, I know that feeling for sure of just being tired and not knowing why. And then at some point, maybe I didn’t even ever identify these type of complexes or these kind of internal dramas as the reason why I was being drained of my energy. But I came around to addressing some of them and just instantly the energy level that I experienced in my life changed. And it’s a fascinating experience.

Roy Wang (27:47.787)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (27:50.402)

One question I have for you though, think just because you do work with people on this process, know, when, just you as yourself as Roy, when you approach these type of subjects with people, I’m curious what your thought process is around.

Josh Mortensen (28:15.008)

maybe around like, is there a concern for you about participating in this with somebody else? what, you know, if something comes up and is it going, I think I want to ask this question because it’s like part of me, there’s a part of me that does want to be able to help people and maybe in the similar way that you do. But at the same time, there’s like a fear of

Roy Wang (28:41.848)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (28:45.142)

opening a can of worms that I’m not prepared to handle. So going into these explorative processes with people into their own psyche, into their own complexes, is there like a concern for you that you might open a door and you’re not prepared to that person with whatever comes out of that door?

Roy Wang (28:48.6)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (29:07.822)

Mm hmm. Well, in the case that it’s something that I can tell right away, like this is something beyond my scope of expertise, I will cap it. say, like I get the sense that this is something that is outside of my scope of expertise. So, you know, let’s make sure we get you to somebody who can support you in that, because there’s definitely areas within this work that I am not.

equipped as well as somebody else who might specialize in that specific thing. But 99 % of the time, I’m all for it. Like, let’s get into it. And I think this goes back to the whole archetype of the wounded healer. you can only take somebody as far as you’ve gone yourself. So I’ve had enough of those experiences in my own life where I’ve gone

into the dark sewers of my unconscious mind to salvage the gold from what seems like darkness, pain, bitterness, depression, and brought myself out of that with the support and guidance from other people. So there’s been enough kind of time and experience in those realms to know like, I kind of have a sense for how this goes. And I gauge

based on the person in front of me. Like how much are they ready for? How deep can we go or how fast can we go? It varies person to person.

Josh Mortensen (30:42.2)

Yeah, that’s actually a really good answer. and that, that very thing was on my mind. Like you can’t, as a guide, you can only take somebody as far as you’ve ever been. You know, if you get up to that edge of the, that, to that boundary, like, which is as far as you’ve ever gone and, and they need to go farther and you haven’t been there. you know, I think, honestly, I think that that’s a challenge in, in all kinds of mental health and spiritual health.

Roy Wang (30:51.436)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (31:09.722)

practices or whatever you may call it. Like even in the, you know, going to a licensed therapist or going to a religious leader for advice, I see the same challenge comes up where if that person has never explored beyond that point, it’s going to be really, in a sense, I think that they may actually unconsciously hold you back from wanting to go that far. So, you know, the example you gave is if you see somebody approaching that, then you’re like, okay, I haven’t been there.

Roy Wang (31:33.134)

Mhm.

Josh Mortensen (31:39.364)

So let me find you somebody who has, let me take you to somebody who can guide you beyond this. Which I think is a really, you know, just being able to acknowledge that openly with somebody, bringing it into consciousness so that you’re both aware of what’s happening, I think that’s super valuable because at least even if you don’t have the ability to take them there, you’ve helped them identify where they need to go and then maybe they can go find somebody who can. But yeah, would, yeah, there’s a.

I guess I’ve gone pretty deep and I’ve gotten pretty dark for myself in a way where honestly, yeah, there were times where even back years ago when I was doing therapy and I would bring something up and it would not bring it up in the sense that something terrible that I had experienced something terrible, but just bring something up in the sense that here’s something I want to explore in my psyche. And I would see this unconscious reaction from

Roy Wang (32:33.422)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (32:37.402)

my therapist where they immediately wanted to just divert the conversation into a different direction. And it was only years later looking back on it and having read a lot and experienced a lot where I was like, oh, they were acting as my guide, but they just weren’t there yet. They hadn’t experienced it themselves.

Roy Wang (32:44.856)

Mhm.

Roy Wang (32:53.486)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s an area where I think for people who are seeking to work with some professional, whether that’s like a coach, shadow work coach, life coach, relationship coach, therapist, whoever it is in the healing field, certainly asking questions to discern, know, is this someone who would be able to support me? Do you get like a felt sense that this is someone who can support you?

I was fortunate with my first therapist that I worked with. He didn’t shy away from these things. He was very much willing to go into them, which was so helpful. think that’s why it contributed to so much healing at a seemingly rapid pace. Because I remember I came to him once with a dream. Like, hey, I had this wild dream and I feel incredibly disgusted about it, but I feel like it’s rich with symbolism.

And it was basically a dream where I had sex with my mother in this dream. I was like, there’s nobody else I could talk to about this. Certainly couldn’t talk to it. I think we talked before about church and religion and how.

At least at that time when I was Christian, I had identified as Christian in that community group I was part of. would not have been anything anybody would have been prepared for. Probably would have been like, give it to God and we’ll pray for you. That was about it. And this therapist was or is a Christian counselor, but he was just like, wonderful, amazing. Like, wow, what a rich dream. Let’s get into it.

Roy Wang (34:40.674)

so incredibly supportive for me. kind of now on the flip side with a client that I’ve been working with recently, that was one of the first things he said was, like, hey, I’m just like, this is so much better than therapy already. I’m like, I’m glad you’re okay with going deep into these areas, because I feel like I couldn’t do that with my therapist. more like the therapist is like, I’m treating you as a sort of sick patient.

Josh Mortensen (35:08.11)

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it doesn’t feel good in a psychological or spiritual setting to be treated as a sick patient. It feels much better when the person with you feels more like a co-explorer or a co-traveler. Yeah, that’s interesting. the idea of having a dream where you’re having sex with your mother, that’s something that I had never talked with anybody either, but then my twin brother and I kind of went through this

Roy Wang (35:22.862)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (35:37.742)

we kind of went through our psychological journey of kind of this death rebirth cycle, leaving a religion, trying to figure out the world, figure things out. And it was only then that we really, sadly like, yeah, most of my life, my twin brother and I, we were not very open with each other. But fortunately in the last say 10 years or so, we become extremely open with each other. And so we have had conversations about those kinds of dreams. And when you can, I mean, even,

to linger on that specific type of dream. When it happens, it can be so uncomfortable, so, just kind of like, why? Why would that happen? Because it can, know, how dreams can feel so real. But to have somebody to talk about it, to see it as, as what, you know, maybe how a dream should be interpreted as something that is a message from the psyche or some kind of psychological process that’s going on.

Roy Wang (36:15.182)

Mhm.

Roy Wang (36:22.194)

huh, huh.

Josh Mortensen (36:38.244)

but it doesn’t have to be taken literally, it doesn’t have to be interpreted literally, but at the same time could teach you some things about those relationships and why the heck you would, your psyche would put something like that together. Very helpful, extremely helpful to have somebody to actually talk to when something so weird happens. I’m curious if, just since you brought it up, what message came out of that for you? What was the learning from that such a crazy dream and then having such a good?

Roy Wang (36:41.528)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (36:56.664)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (37:03.064)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (37:08.719)

counselor or therapist who would be excited to explore it with you.

Roy Wang (37:11.438)

Yeah, yeah. I don’t remember his interpretation, unfortunately, but I did. I wrote a blog about it and I titled it Breaking Up with Your Mother. That was the title of the blog. Breaking Up with Your Mother. And to me, the symbolism of that dream was, I can even describe it. There was a line of boys having sex with women or

whether was women or it girls, I don’t recall, but there was a line of boys having sex with girls and that was like the thing they had to do to then become men. And I remember specifically in the dream, I turned towards my mother and I said, I don’t have any girl here to do that with so then I can become a man. Like, can you substitute for me?

So just from that, was unquestionable to me. The message from my unconscious was, this is the fused mother-son relationship that you’re in. This is the mesh relationship, right? You’re so married to her, you don’t have this external woman or girl that you can break apart from and sever that psychological bond, that psychological umbilical cord to your mother. She’s tied to everything.

even to you becoming a man. And thereafter in the dream when there was the sexual act between us, it was just disgust. Like there was no pleasure in it. And then after it was over in the dream, I took a shower. Also quite symbolic of washing away shame. So that was as uncomfortable as it was, it was also incredibly illuminating of, wow, this is like the depth of

how deep that bond goes.

Josh Mortensen (39:07.866)

Yeah, that’s really interesting. think in speaking with people through this podcast and going to, go in, um, I’m in Boise, Idaho. And so they have a, an interesting group here for like the friends of Jung. And I think they have these all over the place, but every now and then I’ll go and they’ll do, you know, lecture, a lecture, or they’ll do like a dream workshop. And one thing I see people talk when it comes to dreams, one thing I see people kind of assert all the time is that the dream is.

either confirming to them that they made the right decision or they did the right thing, or the dream is almost is trying to be prophetic in a way where it’s trying to tell them what they should do. But I don’t necessarily from just from my experience, and from some of the stuff I’ve read in the union world and other places, I don’t think the dream is doing that. think in general, what the dream is doing is showing you how things actually are. Like from a Buddhist perspective, like

Roy Wang (39:53.358)

Hmm.

Josh Mortensen (40:06.848)

not like no longer, no longer seeing the world through some story, but seeing it as it actually is. And it’s really interesting that that’s how you were able to view the dream in the sense that, you know, this is obviously this act is disgusting to me, but it’s symbolic of something that is happening. I do feel, probably, you you probably do feel that same, at least a version of disgust with that situation. Fascinating.

Yeah, that’s, I do want to get to this other topic that you brought up about the shadow feminine, but this whole idea of what you’ve been discussing as far as this repetition and compulsion kind of back and forth that, you know, comes from Freud and then you’ve seen through your experience. Everything that you’re describing as far as how to address it, it reminds me of shadow work and I think you would probably call it the same thing.

Roy Wang (40:36.654)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (41:05.326)

But even the very process that you described of focusing on, you know, just paying attention to the pattern, paying attention to the underlying emotions, paying attention to, or just asking the question why, what is the source of this? It reminds me of this conversation I had recently with a Jungian psychologist named Dr. Connie Zweig, and she has a great process for shadow work, which is very similar to what you just described.

Roy Wang (41:22.37)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (41:35.104)

in that it’s becoming aware, having mindfulness, kind of separating yourself a little bit from your actual experience and just observing it, and then continuing to dig down into those questions of what is this and why. And then also when I brought up the gorilla and you renamed him really quickly, you named him the saboteur, that was also reminiscent of what she was saying because once you identified this character inside of you,

or this archetypal energy inside of you that is compulsive towards the behavior, then giving it a label makes it really easy to actually work with it. And so, you if you call it the gorilla, if you call it the saboteur, I think labeling it names that are not necessarily negative inherently, the gorilla is a little bit of a brutish name, but the saboteur is a great name. And then also,

Roy Wang (42:17.482)

huh. huh.

Roy Wang (42:24.686)

Mhm.

Josh Mortensen (42:33.464)

you let’s say if it was drinking or, you know, a compulsion to pornography or whatever it may be, you could give it a name that doesn’t necessarily have to feel negative. It could just feel like this is just identifying that character. And then once you’ve, once this is all, this is all like a process of bringing it into consciousness. And that’s, that’s the kind of the main emphasis, I guess, of her shadow work is bringing it to consciousness by identifying it and labeling it. And then you can have a

Roy Wang (42:53.486)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (43:02.829)

huh.

Josh Mortensen (43:03.522)

a back and forth communication with it.

Roy Wang (43:05.389)

Yeah, there’s many creative ways to work with it. There’s, you know, was it internal family systems, Richard Schwartz parts work.

Another woman, Sandra Ingramen, Soul Retrieval, I think is the name of the book. And yeah, it’s about like these orphaned parts within our psyche. And you could give them a name such as, you know, the guerrilla saboteur. Or sometimes what I mostly do is like, let’s create a symbol for it. Like, let’s create an avatar character. Like, what’s it look like if we were to give it a color, if we were to give it a name for one guy? It’s like Frank. I’ll name him Frank. It’s like, great.

So what’s Frank trying to protect you from? These are very creative ways to work with it. So it’s not like some dangerous, deadly thing. Because yeah, by bringing it into consciousness, by connecting and relating to it, you can actually build a relationship and understanding. It’s only when that doesn’t happen, things get dark. There is, are you familiar with a man named Gary Ridgway?

Josh Mortensen (44:15.844)

No.

Roy Wang (44:16.472)

So he was known as the Green River Killer and he had

like raped and killed some dozens, more than dozens of women and like buried them. And later he cooperated with the police and the agreement was, we won’t like execute you, but you’ll get life in prison if you help us find all the bodies where you buried them. And his story was fascinating to research because what I had found, like he didn’t ever mention a relationship with his father.

It was always about his mother and how he’s like, I didn’t like my mother. Like she would always belittle me and I wanted her to stop. It sounded like she was very cruel and verbally abusive, but she would also do things like he said she would just like sunbathe naked outside in plain view of him. And so he also admitted there’s like sexual arousal. So he hated her and he was also sexually aroused by her.

And to me, it was kind of uncanny, the repetition compulsion of how with all these female victims, there was rape and then there was killing. Like the sexual arousal and then the rage or hatred being reenacted with all of these women. That was probably far more terrifying for him to actually do with his own mother. So then what happened? The psyche projected it.

outward as this drama that got repeated over and over and over. So like when you can work with those, know, Freud might call them drives or impulses, but we can work with those within the psyche in the realm of active imagination, visualization, or even drama therapy. You, you significantly decrease that amount of psychological tension that

Roy Wang (46:20.93)

then can explode outward like it did for him.

Josh Mortensen (46:25.272)

Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty brutal example of how far it can go. Yeah, crazy. What about, okay, let’s switch over to this other idea that you brought up around the shadow feminine and how maybe our Western society is not really ready to approach some of the outward manifestations of this. So yeah, give me a deep dive into what you’re thinking and then we can go from there.

Roy Wang (46:43.096)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (46:50.018)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the shadow feminine is one that I think it connects to the whole mother complex for me because this is I learned it firsthand in relationship to my mom. And the reason why I find it so fascinating and worthwhile a topic is because, well, one, I don’t see too many people addressing it. And two is because

I think about like the different forms of abuse. There’s covert abuse, there’s overt abuse. Overt abuse most often is associated with men, the masculine or the yang energy, and then covert would be the feminine, the yin. And the thing about overt abuse is

There’s usually no question about it. Like if you and I were walking down the street and let’s say we had two other women, two women friends walking with us and we’re four of us walking down the street and then we see a guy who is sexually assaulting a woman. None of us would be like, I wonder what’s going on there. are they is this a dance, a ritualized dance that they’re doing? It would be pretty clear. Like, no, this guy is sexually assaulting this woman. Let’s go and we got to stop this.

So overt abuse is like right in your face. could tell. Covert abuse, however, isn’t that way. It’s a lot more inconspicuous. And for that reason, it’s harder to even identify or name. Like the four of us, right, let’s imagine now we’re walking down the street and then we walk by a mother and let’s say her son, because I’ve been talking about the mother son complex and bond.

And let’s say as we’re walking past this mother and son, we hear the mother say off hand to her son, I can only hope you don’t turn out like your dad.

Roy Wang (48:58.444)

She didn’t lay a hand on him. Is that abuse? It’s almost hard to say. Maybe it wasn’t. But we have no idea how that registers within the psyche of that little boy. What does it mean when mom said, can only hope you don’t turn out like your dad? And how does that shape his life in invisible ways?

Josh Mortensen (49:24.386)

This subject was really important for me in figuring myself out and my own relationship with my mother, my parents in general. When you talk about overt abuse, you’re right. It’s so obvious that

I think that when you do come from an abusive household, let’s say there’s a lot of overt abuse, there’s a lot of hitting, a lot of threats, a lot of objects maybe being thrown at you or like real physical abuse. And so even when you come from that environment, you may grow up not realizing that you were abused because it just seems so normal or because the people, your parents or your older siblings, the people in that environment.

are reinforcing this idea that it’s normal or that you deserved it or, so you can get through life. And this, this happened to me, like you can get to an older, you know, a grownup age, not realizing that what you experienced was abuse, but for the most part, for the most part, it’s not that difficult to, especially if you see, see it happening to somebody else to go, Whoa, that’s abuse. That’s mistreatment. That’s, that shouldn’t be happening. But this idea of covert abuse,

it’s much more, it’s not like it doesn’t happen physically. And that’s the reason that it’s difficult to identify. It happens through words and through reactions. happens through, and again, one of the more challenging reasons that it’s so difficult to identify it is that it doesn’t always, so your example was kind of a, this kind of stinging statement or this like,

You’re saying something cruel to somebody, but it can also happen in a way where nothing is said at all. It can happen through ignoring a child. It can happen through neglect. And so that’s what was really difficult for me for figuring some of this stuff out is that you can’t, it’s not about something that did happen. Oftentimes it’s about something that didn’t happen. And you.

Roy Wang (51:15.246)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (51:19.47)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (51:34.112)

you deep down in your psyche, you probably needed that thing. But given the environment you’re growing up in, you didn’t know that you that you deserve that thing as a child. And as far as deserving, for me, when I think about, when I think about adults deserving things, I don’t think that adults deserve anything. I think that unless you’ve made an agreement with somebody, then this idea that you deserve something is a very limited concept in my mind. But

as a child growing up in any, know, a, growing up in a home, I think that just the fact that you’ve brought a child into the world, it means that that child does deserve certain things of you, at least until they’re at some age where they go off on their own. But yeah, this idea of not getting the thing that you really need and that being a version of abuse is really,

difficult for people to, I don’t know, it took a long time for me to get to the point where I recognized what that was. And if I remember, there was a book that really helped me. It was just called CPTSD, so complex PTSD. It’s by a guy named Peter Walker. And he really lays this out in a way that helped me to see what that was. And once I saw it, like once I saw his way of laying it out, then all of a sudden all these memories come back to me of times where, you know,

It was like negligence. was emotional negligence where you need something from your parents but they don’t give it to you. So yeah, I definitely think like I could recognize what it is you’re talking about. And I think that it’s, yeah, I think that it is probably more pernicious than we give it credit for.

Roy Wang (53:08.334)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (53:19.678)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s something that the reason I say, you know, abuse from women, abuse from the feminine is

I see it more from women, but men can also abuse from the shadow feminine. Because the way I view it, know, other people don’t have to see it this way, but this is just the way I see it. How I conceptualize it is that yin force, that yang force that exists within all of us, the polarity of the masculine and the feminine. And that can be expressed by both men and women, generally men being more in the masculine core.

women being in the feminine core. But this is something that can absolutely be seen among men as well. But I like to highlight it as like abuse for women and the shadow feminine because

In our day and age, I don’t see a shortage of call outs on men. Like you need to do better, need to step up, you need to stop doing these things. Like there’s already plenty of voices there. so, and not so many on the shadow feminine and abuse from women, which is why I want to speak to it because what had surprised me even as I was, like I first started

talking about this in 2023. This was on my old Instagram account, but I was doing Q &A’s as well just to ask women like, what have your experiences been with the sisterhood wound? Because the only reference I had was a movie that I never watched called Mean Girls, but I had kind of a general gist of, okay, yeah, women can be pretty mean to each other if they want to be.

Roy Wang (55:16.814)

But I was so surprised to hear stories from women where two women specifically DMed me saying, I’ve experienced sexual and physical abuse from men. That was still nothing in comparison to what I’ve experienced from women. And that doesn’t apply broadly to every woman. Everybody has their own experience for those two women. Like that was very much their reality. But it was…

It was very moving and surprising to hear that because most of the time, right, we hear about overt abuse and the scars that it leaves. And it certainly is dark, pernicious and awful. And the scars it leaves when men do that to women. But I was so surprised to hear these stories of how women can behave quite cruelly to one another. And there’s a, there’s like a

you know, unspoken contract in the way that you must behave around women as a woman to make sure you’re in good standing and not, you know, the nail that sticks up and then that gets hammered down.

Josh Mortensen (56:27.372)

Yeah, it seems like the maybe the covert or that the overt abuse is kind of just a quick stab by a sword is just death quickly. But the overt abuse is going to be little cuts over time that add up to maybe just as painful or just as damaging just as scarring of an event. It’s just it’s spread out and so it can in a way it can become even more

Roy Wang (56:37.006)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (56:56.984)

I don’t know, internalized, it can become more pernicious, it can be more malicious over time because of the consistent, predictable nature of it. I remember years back, Jordan Peterson on some podcast or maybe some interview where he talked about the idea that most people think that men are more aggressive than women. And he was saying, you know, research shows that that’s not true, that they’re actually about

Roy Wang (56:59.607)

Roy Wang (57:07.192)

Mhm.

Josh Mortensen (57:26.83)

they have about the same level of aggression. The difference being very similar to what we’re talking about here where men have a lot more physical strength. They can use anger in a different way and kind of a physically threatening way. And so we see that as aggression. But in reality, if you take women and you look at all of the small kind of passive aggressive or even just outright

I don’t know, what you might consider like nasty behavior towards each other, trying to do the character assassination and put each other down emotionally. They can be just, you know, it’s a different approach, but they’re just as aggressive as men are.

Roy Wang (58:07.51)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I wrote down some traits, qualities of the shadow feminine. And I’m curious, like, which of these stick out to you or ones that you see, especially in our, collective society. I like to look at it even just on a, the level of collective consciousness, how it’s taking shape. So what I have so far is groupthink, character assassination, which you mentioned.

Josh Mortensen (58:18.85)

Yeah, this will be interesting.

Yeah, okay.

Roy Wang (58:37.75)

Gossip, keeping score, or grudges. Deflection, crocodile tears, weaponized guilt tripping, and gaslighting. Those are the ones that I’ve written down as an exam.

Josh Mortensen (58:51.638)

Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, I would say all of those jump out to me. That group think idea is really interesting because if you think about the feminine, the drive of the feminine is often harmony. so, know, men get together with their friends and there’s just inherent conflict, not bad conflict, from a negative sense, but men want to challenge each other.

Roy Wang (59:06.862)

Mhm.

Roy Wang (59:21.208)

Hehe.

Josh Mortensen (59:21.478)

And they, you know, me and my brother, we get into conversations that we disagree so vehemently that it makes my wife uncomfortable and she has to leave the room. And then five minutes later, we’re just laughing about, you know, how like heated we got with each other. We’re like, we did it again, you know? And it’s just like fun. But women, there’s this like different type of need to create harmony.

Roy Wang (59:35.234)

Yeah, yeah.

Roy Wang (59:50.286)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (59:50.978)

And oftentimes they can do it in a way where they, a, oftentimes they’re trying to create more of a short term version of harmony rather than a long term version of harmony. So you can achieve harmony really quickly by a biting remark that forces somebody to shut their mouth. And then like, okay, we’ve achieved harmony, right? You can achieve harmony by stifling somebody’s emotional outburst and demanding that they, you know,

quiet it down so that there’s no harmony. But those in the long term, those types of approaches for achieving harmony are gonna be detrimental to the relationship and detrimental to the individual psyche. And so there’s that in a sense is this kind of covert abuse that we’re talking about. I have one example actually just recently, and this is.

Roy Wang (01:00:22.136)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (01:00:31.896)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (01:00:37.784)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (01:00:44.906)

It’s like personal because it happened to my daughter just recently, and she’s young, she’s like 11 years old, but she has this friend who calls her up and starts complaining that my daughter is being mean to her. And my daughter’s asking, well, can you give me examples of something that I did? And the girl can’t give her examples, but then she says she’s so hurt by my daughter that they can’t be friends anymore. And so this to me,

Roy Wang (01:01:11.15)

Hmm.

Josh Mortensen (01:01:14.618)

So I spent the last two weeks or so with my daughter kind of asking her about it, how are things going? Have you reconnected? Have you been able to express your feelings to this friend? But one of the other things that I talked to my daughter about is like, if she can’t give you specific examples of something that you did that was painful or hurtful or mean, then this is actually on her. This is probably her insecurity and her sensitivities.

Roy Wang (01:01:32.502)

Yes

Josh Mortensen (01:01:43.194)

using your, like, in a manipulative way, threatening to end the relationship so that she can have control. And so this is kind of like a version of covert narcissism. And so that’s another, just from my personal life, that’s another example of things that I’ve seen is this type of emotional manipulation where I can’t give you examples of what’s happening, but if you don’t stop it, then our relationship is over.

Roy Wang (01:01:48.494)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Roy Wang (01:02:00.945)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (01:02:04.865)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Roy Wang (01:02:08.59)

Yeah, I think that’s a great example. I think that like the weaponized guilt trip, you know, and the threat of the relationship, the threatening of the relationship is huge as a like, if you don’t value this and clearly, you know, you didn’t value it ever. And it hits heavy. It hits very heavy. Because again, I think women, as you said, the feminine prioritizes group harmony.

And so when that is threatened, it can be deeply painful. And that example of, know, I can’t give you any examples, but I’m deeply hurt. And if you care about this, you know, friendship at all, I think about how that’s operating in terms of on the collective, the state of relationship between men and women. The rebuttal that I’ll hear often from women is

Like in so many on Instagram, some content, whether it’s a post or a reel, that even just like challenges women a little bit, there will be some comments and be like, so like, we’re talking about this yet there are still women who are being sexually abused and killed and blah, blah by men every single day.

And that’s probably true. Somewhere around the world in a 24-hour or even an hour period, something is happening to a woman that is being perpetrated by a man. Absolutely. But that would be an example of the deflection. The shadow of femininity. The deflection. No, I don’t want you to look at this. want you to look at this. Let’s focus on this. And it doesn’t ever address or take responsibility to, all right, let’s, well.

this is where the conversation started. Like now it’s getting trailed off somewhere else because of emotions and the emotional manipulation. And seeing how a lot of good hearted men have responded is the guilt trip has been successful of gosh, we men must be awful because yeah, I see women crying and I’m hearing their stories and you know, we can’t keep doing this and

Roy Wang (01:04:30.292)

that then has turned into for some men like this internalized hate of themselves or misandry, internalized misandry that then gets projected out onto other men. Like you men suck, you need to do better. And it’s like this carousel of misery that goes round and round and round.

Josh Mortensen (01:04:50.424)

Yeah, and it definitely manifests in adult relationships in a kind of codependent manner. when the man, and it goes both ways, but since we’re talking about it from the men’s perspective, when a man becomes responsible for his partner’s, his girlfriend, his wife, he’s responsible for her emotions.

then anytime her emotions are negative, something she doesn’t want to experience, they’re not pleasant, it’s his fault. And in a lot of, I’ve seen this, you know, I’ve married for 17 years, so my wife and I have had to work through a lot of this stuff. And then we also, you I have other friends who they’ll call me up, my God, I can’t, you know, it’s happened again, like I’m being screamed at, I’m being blamed, I must have done something, but they can’t quite articulate what I’ve done.

but it’s my fault. And a big part of that obviously, a big part of the blame does lie with women. But in a certain way, the roles of men and women in a relationship being the masculine and the feminine or the ordering and the chaos, and chaos is a difficult word for women to hear. maybe rather than chaos, it’s the differentiating function and the undifferentiated function.

these two things where it’s the man’s job to, or it’s the masculine’s job to see and point out what is happening. And in some cases, in some cases there may be a chaotic feminine or kind of a toxic femininity in the relationship in such a way where order is never going to win out. But.

At least as a starting point, if you’re going to achieve some kind of a balanced or healthy kind of non-codependent relationship, I think that oftentimes the man is going to have to step up and lead the way. And it’s not an easy thing and it takes years to figure out. so there is kind of a, yeah, it goes both ways. It goes both ways, but.

Roy Wang (01:06:55.182)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (01:07:10.308)

there probably is some level of…

you know, spiritual or mental or emotional chaos that that even the best man couldn’t overcome.

Roy Wang (01:07:24.008)

Mm hmm. Yeah, I agree that there’s a responsibility on men to be able to speak to this, to point it out individually in the relationships, but also, you know, could say collectively because I do see it as an act of service the masculine offers to the feminine.

Josh Mortensen (01:07:47.916)

Yeah, that’s a good way to say it because it’s not a competition. It’s not one winning or the other one losing. In any relationship, if one of the parties has won, then they’ve both lost. Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off, but that was an important part.

Roy Wang (01:07:59.074)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no, because I’m glad you brought it up, because this was one of the things that my wife also. that’s news, right? I got married this summer. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:08:12.878)

Whoa, I didn’t know that. Yeah, congratulations. Yeah. So now we all know you’re talking from real experience. This is great. Beautiful.

Roy Wang (01:08:18.902)

Right, right. Something she shared that was beautiful. At this time, we were still just friends when she saw me posting about this. But her feedback was like, hey, I’m so glad you’re talking about this topic. I don’t understand why more men don’t speak to it. Because from what how she sees it, it’s that the I think chaos is actually a very fair word, that there’s an aspect of

the feminine and the yin that is chaos and pure potential and all its, you know, lack of order, right? Cause it’s just creative potential. And so even if say in a marriage, the wife is like having a hard time and there’s a lot of emotions and she throws out this thing, that thing, that thing, this thing, all which ways, you you don’t see any particular direction in that moment.

the man comes in to bring stability and clarity when he is grounded in himself and not projecting his own wounds to be like this clear laser beam that pierces through the chaos and says, hey, this is what I think is actually going on. It’s not about this, it’s not about that, it’s not even about this. It’s about, my sense is like, this is what’s going on. And in that moment when he can bring that gift of discernment and clarity,

There’s just like a huge sigh of relief in her. She doesn’t have to spin in the emotional chaos or storm anymore. There’s a release. Sometimes that can come with like tears as well, or just a sigh. Yeah, yeah, you’re right. And it can be as simple and silly as, I haven’t eaten anything yet.

And that’s why I’m cranking.

Josh Mortensen (01:10:11.14)

Yeah, but in a real way though, some of these examples of maybe this behavior that would be toxic femininity or the shadow feminine, as you put it earlier, these are complexes as well. These are just ways that people, men or women have learned to manage situations in their lives, emotions in their lives and…

And sometimes people are ready to hear it and sometimes people are not. it may be, especially if you have a very trusting relationship with your spouse, like you’re describing, you can kind of just in a very calm way, kind of say, hey, this is what I think I’m seeing. And if it comes across in a…

helpful way in a loving way and that person does not have their defenses up and they’re ready to receive it. It can be like you’re describing this kind of like, okay, what a relief, you But I have seen an experience in my own life where to get that message across, has to come with a little bit more force and to get past those defenses. And when that happens, same thing, same thing, there’s this gradual.

Roy Wang (01:11:27.26)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:11:34.744)

Maybe not in that moment. In that moment, there’s like a lot of tears and a lot of just overwhelming feeling of finally, it’s like finally not putting the projection out there, but having it come back and just the, you know, the feeling of that is very difficult. But over time, yes, you do get to that point where it’s like, this burden is no longer on my shoulders. But I guess my point is that sometimes it can be a very difficult conversation that requires a lot of emotional stamina.

Roy Wang (01:11:46.286)

Mhm, mhm.

Roy Wang (01:11:56.014)

Mhm.

Roy Wang (01:12:05.23)

Yeah, 100 % building emotional mastery within himself. Because yeah, the storms can get intense at times. Did you ever watch the, I think, I can’t remember. Oh, X-Men Last Stand. Did you ever watch the X-Men movies? Okay, okay. Yeah. So I made a meme about this to illustrate it. And I think it’s very accurate, which is there’s Gene.

Josh Mortensen (01:12:14.788)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:12:23.623)

No, it’s been so long since I’ve seen an X-Men movie. I don’t even know which ones I’ve seen.

Roy Wang (01:12:34.87)

Are you familiar with the characters like Jean Grey and Wolverine? Yeah. So Jean Grey, like most powerful, like psychic, you know, or esper there is. And then there’s Wolverine who has the regenerative ability. So we could call that emotional stamina. And in this scene, Jean Grey is just like destroying everything. Magneto is beside himself. like, what have I done? What have I created? And as she’s destroying everything, Wolverine is walking towards her.

Josh Mortensen (01:12:36.578)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Roy Wang (01:13:03.574)

And she continues to shoot waves of, I don’t know, telekinetic shocks. So his skin kind of peels away and stuff. And finally he gets towards her and then she tears up and she’s like, they have a little conversation, but she’s like, save me from myself, seemingly. And spoiler for anyone who hasn’t yet watched it. But what he ends up doing is he like,

takes out his claws and stabs her.

effectively killing her. And then there’s like a smile on her face, just like, finally there’s peace because she’s not possessed by the dark phoenix thing within her, which we could say is a shadow feminine. And it was kind of hilarious. Yeah, but it was hilarious to make that into a meme because I’m like, sometimes that’s exactly how it feels. There’s these emotional waves and storms that come and the

Josh Mortensen (01:13:51.396)

That saboteur gorilla, yeah.

Roy Wang (01:14:05.41)

could say, symbology or metaphor to that, not actual killing, but it’s like a slaying of the shadow feminine or any sort of egoic wounds that she’s still attached to, that then brings about the peace and the relief. So I think this all serves to illustrate that really, men and women, we are made for each other. The yin is made for the yang, the yang is made for the yin. And as long as we try to separate and

even give up those gifts we have to offer to each other, we do worse. Like, I don’t believe that if the world was just men, it’d be phenomenal. Nor do I believe if the world was just women, it would be phenomenal. There’s like two shows that illustrate that pretty well. was an episode, not an episode, but a show called Boys and Girls Alone. I think it was like a UK show where they separated

boys, I think they were like 11 or 12 and girls 11 or 12 in like separate houses. And it’s like, you guys are free, totally free, no adults to tell you what to do. Have at it. And in the beginning, like the boys was absolute chaos, anarchy, like Lord of the Flies stuff. And they started to like run low on food. You know, people were snacking. There was no real order. And then later they started to establish

hierarchy. Two boys emerged as leaders and then sort of everybody self-organized through challenge into their respective hierarchies and then there was order. And then for the girls, in the beginning there was like kind of order right away. But then later there was you know gossip, there was backstabbing, there was kind of emotional manipulation and all of that.

to the point where some girls decided to leave the show early. And then the adult version, was, I think it was an episode of Survivor, but it was just the men and then just the women. And then some of the Red Pill podcast will use that as material to say, see, when it’s just us men, we’re all happy. It’s you women who create all the trouble. But the whole example there was, yeah, the men kind of self-organized into their hierarchies.

Roy Wang (01:16:31.628)

got food, got water, fish and all that. And then the women, like there was disorder, there was gossip, backstabbing, you why do you get to be in charge? Like, so I think taking into the extremes of it’s just men, just women by ourselves. If it was just men, I think the world would be a lot less beautiful. Maybe we’d have things running, but there would be no, I don’t know, play. There’d be nothing higher to live up to. If it’s just women, it’s

Josh Mortensen (01:16:57.722)

Yep.

Roy Wang (01:17:01.176)

Catty and bratty.

Josh Mortensen (01:17:03.232)

As counterintuitive as it may sound, think that like if you look around the world today, most of everything that’s been built, especially things that have been built physically, roads, houses, plumbing, electricity, built by men, know, oil, steel, built by men. But at the same time, if there weren’t women, we would have never built it. There wouldn’t have been a drive to build it. so, you know, it’s just like our Western myth being the Adam and Eve,

Roy Wang (01:17:22.99)

That’s right. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:17:32.834)

in the Garden of Eden, the feminine brings the apple to the masculine. And that’s what tears down the walls and forces the masculine to go reestablish order. And I think it’s just how we play out. And I agree, like we have this, to kind of add to that, we have this Western myth around romance and how there’s this idea that we’re supposed to complete each other. And…

When you take that myth literally, I think what you get is a codependent relationship because you’re expecting the other person to literally complete you. But when you take the relationship from the perspective, I guess of kind of what we’ve been talking about when it comes to shadow work, looking inward, being willing to push each other to become better, you do end up like the myth does work. You end up with somebody who in the very beginning you got really excited about.

because your psyche thought you were gonna go into these patterns with them and finally solve those patterns that you experienced in your childhood. And that can be real if both partners are willing to work and like really work at it and kind of suffer through it. You both can get to a point where you stop projecting onto each other and you just appreciate the other person for exactly who they are, for like a real person. And you can help each other kind of get over those childhood patterns or complexes.

Roy Wang (01:18:38.126)

Mm-hmm.

Roy Wang (01:18:49.134)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Josh Mortensen (01:18:56.504)

It is a real thing. just, it takes, doesn’t, it’s not like you just get married and then it’s happily ever after. It’s you get married and then the work begins.

Roy Wang (01:19:01.87)

Z

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with what you said about the, if there weren’t women, men wouldn’t have reasons to like build some of these things. And I agree. I think, yeah, I think many of us would be happy with like a hut somewhere and just shopping wood, carrying water.

Josh Mortensen (01:19:16.858)

Men can live so comfortably with so little. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:19:26.426)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fishing from the beach, Roy, this was a lot of fun. I really appreciate you coming back and talking with me. Actually, these two great topics, and I think we could keep going on them and dive even deeper. Maybe we should make this a regular thing every now and then. Yeah, I think it would be a lot of fun. If people want to find you in your work, where would they go?

Roy Wang (01:19:39.374)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, no problem.

Roy Wang (01:19:50.542)

You can go to my website, http://www.sacredwildman.com and that’ll have all my information. You can also find me on socials, YouTube, Instagram, X, all the same, at sacredwildman.

Josh Mortensen (01:20:06.006)

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. It was fun and let’s do it again. Okay, okay,

Roy Wang (01:20:09.836)

Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you, Josh.