Men are often pressured to wear masks to hide their authentic selves, suppress their emotions, and hold back from speaking their truth. Alexander Cottle, founder of The Unmasked Man, is helping men shed their masks through his empowering men’s retreats. Joining Daniel Weinberg, he explains how he got rid of his own mask of guilt, trauma, infidelity, and depression to unleash a man of action, empowerment, and inspiration. He explains the importance of doing shadow work to finally unmask yourself, how to stop idolizing “boy energy,” and how to lean into connections that bring out the best in you.
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The Unmasked Man: Turning Pain Into Purpose With Alexander Cottle
We’ve got Alex Cottle from the Unmasked Man men’s work group in this episode.
Alex, finally, we get to make this happen.
It’s a pleasure to be here, Daniel. Thank you for inviting me in.
It’s my pleasure. I bumped into a colleague of mine, who will remain anonymous. I met with him. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months. I was like, “What’s going on with you? You seem to have a little bit of pep in your step.” He says to me, “I just came back from Morocco. I had a very profound experience.”
How Alexander Became “The Unmasked Man”
I’m like, “Tell more. What was it?” He says, “I did this men’s retreat.” I said, “Don’t tell me anything. I want you to introduce me to whoever’s running that. I’d love to have a chat,” and so we’ve been in touch. You’re the Unmasked Man. I want to kick off with this. What were you pretending to be? What did it cost you? It’s because you weren’t where you are now.
It’s a question that I want to be honest and congruent with. Over eleven years ago, I had a TIA stroke. I was 27 years old.
What does TIA mean?
A TIA is a stroke that doesn’t clot. I wasn’t left paralyzed for life. I was temporarily paralyzed for about three hours.
Explain what a stroke is and get a little bit into that, so we understand it.
I’ll go back. I was an interior designer who was working in high-end residential interior design in New York City and London. I was flying all around the world to various spots and getting to meet exceptional people. I enjoyed it, but I was starting to be someone that I was not connected to anymore. I was starting to lean more into drugs to cope with my nervous system and the pressures, cocaine, and alcohol.
I was not being a man of integrity. I was cheating on my partner. I was going out and socializing. This had happened for five years. It was starting to build. It culminated with a two-week work tour in LA, and then later in New York. I was walking back from our offices in Central New York. I was staying at the Hudson Hotel just opposite Central Park. For two weeks, I’d had this pain in my spleen. It’s in my upper abdomen, spleen area. It was excruciating.
What I did was I was just drinking, snorting, and trying to get rid of it. I was pretending to be this guy who had it all together. I was ticking all the boxes. I thought I had a good wage. I was sociable. Slowly, this pain was trying to tell me something. I remember going up to my hotel room. This pain has exacerbated. It transcended down my left leg, my left arm, and my left face. I was being paralyzed. I collapsed onto the bed.
Were you on your own?
I was on my own. I crawled across the bed like a wounded animal to grab the phone. I placed it on my chest. I said, “I need help.” I mumbled in this incoherent voice. The receptionist didn’t understand what I was saying until she finally got 911 ambulance. They burst through the door. They threw me on the stretcher. They took me to Mount Sinai Hospital. That was the beginning of everything. I looked at the left-hand side of my body that night. It was not moving. I realized that I had been pretending to be so much for so many. I was jumping through hoops. However high you wanted me to jump, I would jump.
I would not please myself. I would override my needs. I was trying to be someone in the world because I wanted Daddy to see me. It was a complete mask. I was carrying so much guilt, so much shame, and so many buried emotions from traumas in my childhood that I didn’t want to face. I was lying there, looking at my hand, and just wishing this hand would move. Eventually, I started to feel in my thumb and then my forefinger. Within the next half an hour, I started to come back to the body. The left-hand body started to move. The next few days, they helped get me back to some form of normality. I was later put on a plane.
Had they told you early on that you’ve had a stroke?
Yes. They said, “We believe it hasn’t clotted. This is why you’re starting to get some movement back.”
What happens if it clots? Is that when you die?
That’s where you could die, or you could be paralyzed for a long time. I was very fortunate. I had all these tests. I was put in the MRI machine. I had lots of things on my head and body. I had my whole spine scanned. They were looking for all these problems, but the problem was with me. It was about how I was showing up in the world and going against the grain. They say the body keeps the score of what’s this going to cost you. It nearly cost me everything.
How old were you?
I was 27.
That’s a very young age to have a stroke.
That’s because it was heavily induced with stress. I’d become a workaholic. I was being pulled from London to LA. I was going to meetings in LA for 24 hours and then coming back. It was crazy. It was way too much for someone my age. I was a director by 27. I was too young. I came home, and I tried to take my own life. I’d hit rock bottom. I’d lost my job.
This is post the situation.
I told my partner what I’d done about my infidelity. I couldn’t go to work, so I lost my job.
Why couldn’t you go to work?
It’s because of my mental state. I was not in a good way, Daniel.
When you say you’re not in a good way, what did you see in your head?
I was depressed and having panic attacks. I was managing my nervous system with zopiclone, which is a sleeping tablet, diazepam, which is a sedative, and citalopram, which is an antidepressant. I was having regular panic attacks throughout the day. My nervous system was shot to pieces from all the cocaine. I was a real mess. I tried to take an overdose. After losing everything, I was like, “This is the only way out.” I thought back then that was the only way. I failed. I was found.
Who found you?
My mother. I can’t even imagine the pain in her heart that day when she found me. No parent should outlive their child. I was alive, but for a moment, she thought I was gone. That moment was incredibly scary and liberating. At the same time, it was the launchpad for the man that I would become and the man that stands before you now. That was the rock bottom that had to happen, Daniel.
That is wild. What was the truth in all that, that you were unwilling to face? What is it you’re hiding from? They got you to that place. On the surface, as what regularly occurs on the surface, as you also described before, it didn’t appear so by any means. The vision that I have of what you described is, if I had a mate who was 27, who was running around the world and doing his thing with very successful people. That’s who your clients were. You would look like somewhat of a rock star, to be honest. You’re talking about parties, drugs, and alcohol. I’m sure a lot of fun was had. It looked pretty amazing. Under all of it, clearly, it wasn’t. It was the exact opposite extreme. What was it that you were running from?
I was running from my truth. I had become the chameleon man. You want me to be something? I’ll be it. Every time I did that, I overstepped a boundary in myself. I overstepped my truth, my authenticity, and my integrity. I had become what I thought society wanted me to become. I was told to be a young man. To have success was to have a good job, a nice woman on my arm, and lots of money in my bank account. I’d achieved all that at 27, yet I was more miserable in my life than I’d ever been. If we were to answer this in a more spiritual context, which is the path that I’ve gone on to follow, I was denying the truth of my body.
You’ve had the success and the performance. I’m all for that, but you have to evaluate what the cost of that is. What is it you’re giving up? It’s not for free. Is the effort you’re putting in something? Are you fulfilling your passion? You obviously put yourself under extreme amounts of pressure and intensity, etc. As you said, the body keeps the score. At some point, if you’re not managing that properly, you implode.
I feel the mind is a good servant and a lousy master. I was living through my mind. What I cost myself in a spiritual context is the connection to my own soul. In Buddhism, we call it dharma, our life purpose. I was not living in accordance with my sole purpose of being here, the legacy and leadership that I want to leave behind on this earth. I was jumping through hoops for all these other people, becoming something for all these other people, and never truly listening to what I wanted, Daniel. Therefore, it cost me everything. It nearly cost me my own life.
That was a powerful realization and a powerful moment. Thank God someone was watching over me, that that did not happen, because I wouldn’t be here as a standing pillar to say I chose not to tap out. Not only that, it’s the amount of men and women as well, but the amount of men in particular that I’ve gone on to serve, to choose to stay, and to not leave and not check out early. It’s because of stress, pressures, and overriding your own passions, needs, beliefs, and talents that you want to bring forward in your lifetime.
Why Men Are Severely Lacking Connection
That’s the origin story. Coming back to the now, which is the Unmasked Man platform that you’ve created. There’s a lot of work that you’ve ground down. Explain to me how you get on that path. I say it like this. Often, these journeys happen post some cataclysmic event, or a big break, speaking from my own. It took a different term because of going through a shitty period. Yours is quite a huge event. It makes sense.
What I always try, and I guess what I want to challenge, is that you’ve taken this path, but for most men, that’s a luxury in terms of having the resources to invest in, “I’m going to go and check out who the real me is.” If I’m going to be a little bit cheeky, it’s a luxury to be able to afford to do it. It’s a luxury to, “I’m married with two kids at home. I’m putting them through school.” How do I put that on pause and decide I want to become an unmasked man? You’ve got to press pause and everything. You’ve got to jump into something and commit to doing something about it. How do you manage people’s expectations or what they have the ability to do for themselves?
I like to tell men that the first thing that we are lacking severely is connection. The opposite of addiction is connection. Many men are going to self-soothing mechanisms to manage their trauma through addictive patterns because what they’re deeply craving is connection. When we have a connection, we flourish. When we have brotherhood, we flourish. Most men need brotherhood, like they need air.
When we have a connection, we flourish. Most men need brotherhood like they need air. Share on XThe problem is that they’re not getting it, or they’re getting it in the wrong places. It’s obviously a little bit judgmental for me to say wrong because there are certain environments that are not necessarily optimal. What we also have is we have a lack of elder knowledge that’s been lost along the way. The Manosphere has come out with Louis Theroux.
That’s terrible. Have you seen it?
I’ve not seen it yet.
I watched it. It’s very sad.
I’ve been told enough about it. I’ve been training twenty facilitators how to go out there and change the world. I’ve been in training. That’s the only reason I’ve yet to see it. I’m going to watch it.
It’s very sad.
We have these idols that we are worshipping that are boys. They’re not men. They are boys dressed in men’s clothing. Most men are then encouraged to become that, just like I was encouraged to become that. Perhaps somewhere along the path, you were also encouraged to become that. Seventy percent of men in US prisons, for instance, are fatherless. They were brought up in a single-parent family. We need connection, not only in brotherhood. We also need the right form of connection. That is so judgmental, but ultimately, if we had better connections from this more healthy masculine approach, then we can transform the world that we live in.
Most men’s circles, when they move left, right, up, and down, are a prison. They isolate themselves. Maybe they’re surrounded by a lot of toxic masculinity, a lot of having to prove themselves, and a lot of sarcasm. If they’re in a circle that, when they move, it moves with them, and they’re supported and uplifted, then their life can dramatically change. To find that, they have to lean into the one thing that they feel conditioned or are conditioned. It’s an inherent shadow within man, which is to do everything alone.
Acknowledging Your Shadows And Doing The Hard Work
You said shadow. A lot of people you hear talk about shadow work. It would be very helpful if you explained to the audience what it means to do shadow work. What is a shadow?
Shadow is anything that we have deemed unacceptable by ourselves or by society. It’s anything that we’ve denied in ourselves. An example is anything that we’ve put in our shadow bag.
Give me practical examples.
We’ve put away our anger. Most men are nice guys. They’ve suppressed their confrontation energy. They’ve put their anger into shadow. I’m not an angry man. If I had a penny for the number of men who tell me that, I’d be a very rich man. In saying they’re not an angry man, what they’ve also suppressed is their power, because underneath their anger is a beautiful power. It’s a quality that a lot of men are not tapping into.
Another shadow could be their grief. In psychology and somatic trauma work, which is what I do, grief is always underneath anger. An angry man is a sad boy, but we must tap into the anger first. They might have suppressed their anger. They might have suppressed their grief. How do we suppress our anger? We can shame it. Shame is also a shadow. That’s the wrapping paper that goes around the anger, and then the anger goes around the grief.
There are these layers that we put into shadow. We might put our sexuality into the shadows. We might put our addictions into the shadows. We might not tell anyone that it’s going on, but they’re playing out in the background. We might put our envy or our jealousy into shadow, or we might be doing things unconsciously that we have no idea that we’re doing.
To transform our life, if we bring shadow out of the darkness into the light and keep an eye on our shadow. Which is why at the Unmasked Man, we wear black. We keep our shadow on the outside of ourselves. We can then transform our life. It’s because we cannot change that which we cannot own or see. It’s important in the work that we do that we claim it as well.
The shadow work is effectively acknowledging what your shadows are. It’s becoming very aware of them so that you can do something about them and knowing that that is something you don’t deal with very well.
Shadow work started to formulate through Carl Jung. It is a great example of how he brought this work into the world. He formulated twelve archetypes. In the 1990s, two Jungian analysts, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, formulated four of the twelve into King, Warrior, Lover, and Magician.
I remember reading a book about this, but you can refresh my memory on what the difference is between the four. What I do recall is that there is a boy sub-archetype in each of those. Is that right?
That is correct. It’s like a small pyramid with a larger pyramid going over the top. You have the boy psychology. The idea is that we move from our boy psychology to man psychology. We have the King in the North.
You tell us about the King.
The King is the sovereign North point of the compass. Each archetype is reflective of a point on the compass. The King is about the legacy, direction, purpose, what you want to leave behind, and how you want to be remembered. Color is white, gateway emotion is joy, and the shadow parts of this archetype are either a tyrant or an abdicated King. Which is pretty simple to understand. When we’re not in our healthy King, we can lean into a tyrant. We can see many tyrants in the world, or in the workplace, even. When a man is not living to his full potential, what does he do? He abdicates.
There’s a deflated shadow, and there’s an inflated shadow. When we are not in our man psychology, our most sovereign part of ourselves. We oscillate between these two shadows, Daniel. I abdicate all my power. I give rise to another tyrant. Suddenly, I realize that I’m giving away all my power. I don’t know how to have my healthy power. What do I do? I push too far, and then I myself become a control freak or a tyrant as well. The idea is understanding the parameters that I sit in, and then trying to move into the healthy qualities of that archetype. To do that, we need to observe our shadow.
A great example is the lover. In the lover archetype, we have an addict. We all know the addict inside of us. We all know many addicts out there in the world. We have an impotent. The inflated is the addict. The deflated is the impotent. The addict is looking for the eternal orgasm. He’s looking to lose himself because he doesn’t want to be here, now, present, alive.
The shadow is a dark place. We need a map to guide us. Share on XHe wants to escape life because his nervous system is over fried, perhaps, with the pressures of growing up into adulthood. To self-soothe as a child, he leaned into that mechanism that drew him comfort. That could have been alcohol, drugs, porn, sugar, or work, even. I don’t want to be here now, so I’m going to lose myself over here, because then I don’t have to deal with those emotions.
The impotent is a man who cuts himself off from all of that. Maybe I’ve had these addictions, and then I become so stringent on myself that I lock myself in a cave. I stop everything. A great example of this is sexuality. It’s an addict who’s expressing his sexuality too much. The impotent shuts down. He may be completely cuts off from his own sexual energy.
The problem is that the impotent then sees a world of grey, where the addict almost never sees the world because he’s always looking for the next hit. When we see these two parts of ourselves oscillating in between, we can start to move from the boy psychology to man psychology. We can start to live a more sovereign, healthy, lover energy, warrior energy, magician energy, and then King energy.
Is it the idea that you live a bit of all of them, or do people fall into one or two of the categories? How does it work?
You will have a predominant inflated or deflated. I myself am more inflated throughout the four, but then I’ll oscillate. The more I’ve become aware of my shadow work journey, the more I’ll see how quickly I oscillate. Since I can catch myself, I come into the center of the qualities far more easily. My addict’s online. My implodent’s online. My abdicated King came in there. It’s like boundaries to navigate. It’s a map to understand your shadow. Let’s face it. The shadow is a dark place. We need a map to guide us.
Can a man be fully unmasked while still chasing status?
He can be unmasked with that shadow. He can be unmasked and say, “There’s a part of me that still needs to be seen.” I’ve gone on this journey myself, so it’s an interesting question. On the way, you cannot go to the healthy quality of an archetype without oscillating first. Let’s say a man has abdicated. He can’t just go straight to the healthy. He needs to experience what it’s like to lean into a more tyrannical energy. It’s just a little bit. It doesn’t need to go full tyrant.
It’s to experience to realize, “That’s not where I want to be.” It’s more about becoming aware. You need to touch the hot plate to feel that it’s hot. I associate a hot plate with burning my finger. I’m not doing that again. It’s a bit like that. That’s a metaphor for life, though. I don’t think you can be able to feel certain experiences unless you have gone through them.
For example, I can say I’ve had some very challenging experiences, but you would understand what it means to have faced death. I could intellectually go, “I can get it,” but it would be in your core of what that is. You wouldn’t even have to try to process or understand that. You’ve faced it. Therefore, you most likely can have a greater appreciation for life, given that you’ve nearly not had it.
It’s about understanding what it means to have functionality in your hands and in movement. People don’t think about the loss of sight until something happens. The more bumps and mistakes you have, the more awareness and wisdom you have. It’s just how it goes. You’re very young. On a relative basis, you have a deeper understanding, perhaps, of what the journey of life means. It usually comes later for men. In my experience, on average, it’s mid to late 40s.
Why You Should Lean Into Connection
Maybe it’s the second life crisis, whatever’s going on in your life, where you start reflecting on whatever you were forced to reflect on in life before you experienced enough of life. Hence why it accelerated to where you are and what’s going on. If a man is tuning in now, who feels stuck or disconnected, and has a couple of minutes with you. What would you tell them is the first step in the process of making that change or even just acknowledging what’s going on?
It’s leaning into connection. It goes back to what I said initially. There’s the shadow of man. We explored what shadow means. The shadow of man is to try and do everything alone, to carry the bricks on his shoulders, to stumble, to fall, to get back up again and keep going, and to slide into his coffin all alone. That is innately built within our subculture.
The shadow of man is to try and do everything alone, carry the bricks on his shoulders, stumble, fail, get back up again, keep going, and slide into his coffin all alone. Share on XMen don’t like asking for help. I got this. Maybe with me, I got you.
When we ask for help, it requires an element of surrender, which men don’t like, because men like control. That’s the masculine principle. The masculine pole is to have that strength. However, we can lean into a men’s circle. We can lean into a friend. We can pick up the phone for the Samaritans. I did it all those years ago.
We can take a risk. How’s your life currently working out for you, honestly, behind the grind, behind the beer at the weekend, or the line of cocaine, or behind trying to look like you got it all together? Take a risk. Men’s retreats and men’s events are becoming more and more popular because the proof is in the data. Men are coming back from these experiences transformed, as you said.
The ones that I’ve interviewed on my journey into this whole men’s space, the ones who run the workshops, the ones that have been in the space for a while, and those that have gone through it, I have not heard of a positive to profound experience that was had. Having said that, beyond the people I know in that world, if I were to look at the network of men in my tribe, globally, the gentleman who went to your retreat, beyond him, I don’t know.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. I haven’t done a retreat yet. I’ve done a different type, more like a plant medicine story. This is not about that. I’ve done that experience, which is very profound, but this is very much tapping into all the things you’re talking about. It’s all the things I’ve been having conversations around, which is the passing on of tribal wisdom, the elders in the tribe, and what is man’s role. I’m all for it, but I will do it.
I’ve been doing this for a little while now. I haven’t done it yet. I wonder what it is that would switch the mindset of the man to go and do it. My thesis is that those who are going are all out of ideas. They’re like, “I need help. I’ve tried lots of things, exercise therapy, and numbing myself. I read about this. I’m going to try it.” It’s more out of desperation, as opposed to preventative medicine.
Why would you wait until shit’s bad to start forming your tribe? Why would you wait until your fucking life’s a complete mess until you do something about it? How do you change that mindset? What’s the average age of the men you get? Why are they coming to you? I want you to tell us what you are doing with them on the week or the weekend when they come back, and you can see their whole brain spun out. They’re like, “What just happened?”
The average age is 35 to 65. That’s the average age. You’re certainly right. Men start to inquire into a midlife crisis. It’s around that period. I was very fortunate. It happened to me early. It gave me the knowledge and the tools to be where I am today, helping men. How do we change it? We do this. We talk like we’re talking now. We challenge the stigma. We normalize this work out there in the masses. It is happening. You’ve probably heard of ice baths and the benefits of saunas and cold. You’ve probably heard of breath work.
I’ve heard of all of it. I’ve been exposed to it. I’m just saying to you that the stigma that has attached to it is that it’s a little bit cultish or woo-woo. It’s a little bit weird because you don’t know. You tend to put labels on things. If you don’t know, you’re going to put it into the weird camp.
The thing is, this is shadow work. Shadow work has lived ironically in the shadows for 40 years. This work was starting to be founded around ‘87 or’ 89, the mythopoetic men’s movement for men. Shadow work is coming out of the shadows. It’s being seen. It’s beautiful. We have a duty. The Unmasked Man has a duty to document this.
This is why we have a large Instagram following. This is why a lot of men have come to us through seeing the work through our reels and social media. They’re starting to realize that this work is out there. The leader might have some tattoos and a top knot and look like he spent a long time in Bali, Thailand, India, and all of that, which I did. The men who are coming are normal. They’re IT consultants, bricklayers, lawyers or interior designers. They’re men.
What’s the main motivation for these men to come to you? Tell me why they’re coming to you. Give me the buckets of why they’re coming to you.
The main motivation is that they have tried everything, or they’ve tried traditional therapy. Therapy has pushed them into deeper inquiry, or the feminine has sent them. It’s their wife. We’ve got one guy who’s done our whole suite. He’s done everything. He walked through the door so reluctantly, with his arms crossed. He said, “I’m here because my wife sent me.” After two hours with us, those walls broke.
He realized, and he crumbled. He was on the floor crying. He didn’t realize how much pain he had in his system and how much he’d been holding on for years. Given the opportunity, men suddenly realized the impact. They look different. The man that you saw looked different. There was a spring in his step. He looked younger because the energy that had been stored in his body, all that anger, and all that grief started to dissipate.
It’s because he allowed himself to tap into it. If thoughts are the language of the mind, emotions are the language of the body. We can’t outthink our feelings. We must feel our feelings. If we don’t, they get clogged up. What happens is dis-ease in the body. It’s so important that men lean into brotherhood, connection, and this healing work. To do so, we must break the stigma. It is happening. I’ve been doing this for eight years. I’ve seen it.
I can see on your Instagram.
There’s a wave. I’m inundated. There are so many men who are reaching out.
How The Unmasked Man Hosts Their Retreats
I saw that the next couple of events are all sold out. I want you to walk me through one of the retreats. What is one to expect when a man rocks up with them, “My wife sent me?”
Take away control. Put your phone down. Put your watch off. Take away control. Surrender the journey. That’s going to trigger you. I’m glad it’s going to trigger you because that’s the very thing we’re going to work on while we’re here. Start to open. Start to be vulnerable. You’ve got armor on. I’m going to respect that armor. You were brought up in a world where you needed to protect yourself.
What would life look like if we started to lean in to taking some of that armor off? We start to explore vulnerability. We do sharing circles. We do the ice baths and all of that, but this is surface-level connection work. Where the Unmasked Man is different is that I take men through deep trauma in childhood work. I regress them back using scenarios where I bring up times in their childhood.
Let’s say a man has had an abandonment wound from his father. His father was a drunk and left, or his father beat him. Every time that man goes out into the world, and he is reminded of a character that reminds his father. He abdicates and turns into that little boy again. He also has a high possibility that he will become his father based on the father that he had. We would take him back into what we call psychodrama work, where we get men to play the role of his father.
With consent, we intentionally trigger that man to feel the deep rage that he felt as a boy and that he was never allowed to express to his father when his father was beating him. He couldn’t defend himself. That level of rage can only be held in a large group of men because you need a large group of men to contain that bomb. We have techniques and tools to hold that man in that process to release that anger out of his body.
Underneath that anger is so much fucking grief. All those uncried tears and all that armor that he’d created to protect himself in the world made sense because he was protecting himself from the father that used to beat him, the bully that used to tease him, the teacher that put him down, the woman that hurt his heart and broke his heart, or the mother that was too controlling. We recreate these scenarios.
It could have been Dad. It could have been Mom. It could have been a teacher, a parent, or a bully. Perhaps that man lost his parents at a young age, and he never got to grieve. We would recreate that. We would recreate the scenario of death. He would get a chance to say goodbye. There are many different ways. Maybe he doesn’t trust men, so we’d create certain techniques.
I can’t give them away too much because there’s something that I’d want you to come and experience. These are ways to step into trust, ways to step into anger pieces, and ways to step into grief. Alongside educational work, understanding the archetypes, understanding the roadmap of the archetypes, breath work, and other things, such as empowerment workshops. You have to come and experience it to believe it and see it.
The Cost Of A Man Never Taking His Mask Off
What’s the cost of a man never having to take his mask off?
The cost is, in my opinion, a disease in the body, or a rupture of some kind in his life.
Ultimately, one implodes. It is what you’re saying. You can’t keep masks forever.
You can try your hardest, but eventually, that man will get ill, or the universe will have its way with him. It’s a hit rock bottom, or he’ll die a very bitter, angry, and resentful man.
What should men stop doing immediately, right now, if you had to give one bit of advice?
Stop following what is celebrated out there in our culture, which is very hard to do. It is this boy energy. We do not see men in our society. We see boys initiating boys. They’re idolized and celebrated as celebrities. They’re only there because we keep feeding into it. The thing is, the Andrew Tates of this world and other men who look good on paper to the men coming through. Especially the young men, hook them in.
I watched this documentary on these characters, these brands, or these icons that they have developed to appeal to these young men. I look at them. They’re complete clowns. They’re extremely unintelligent. I’m trying to understand what is appealing about them to younger men.
It’s because the younger men are in pain. What they’re doing is that they’re talking to some pain points, which then the younger men can identify with. Once they have got them, they can indoctrinate them with all the other BS that comes along with being this successful man, or what we think success is. What we should stop doing is idolizing the wrong type of energy, which is not man energy. It’s boy energy.
Stop honestly thinking that you can do it alone because you can’t. That is true sovereignty. Daniel, you can’t do it alone. I can’t do it alone. We can’t. It’s such an arrogant energy. It’s an armor that man has formulated to protect himself because, once upon a time, he probably had to do it alone. The two things are to lean in, not do it alone, and to stop idolizing the boy energy that lives in our culture.
Why Men’s Work Does Not Have To Be All Serious
I’m going to finish up with a funny one to put a little smile on everyone’s face. I’ve been exposed to this whole men’s work industry. There’s a lot of great stuff there. I would love to hear your opinion. Within the industry, what’s the part of the men’s work that you think is complete bullshit?
For me, it’s to take it so fucking seriously because that’s a shadow in itself. We need a level of seriousness. We need a level of presence to be real because the jester can be a mask. That’s an archetype in itself. It’s the man who’s deeply in pain. He’s laughing and cracking sarcastic jokes. His anger leaks out through sarcasm. However, men’s work doesn’t have to be all serious. In fact, when a man is doing the inner work, he can understand that along that path, he rekindles his play. He rekindles his hobbies. He rekindles the things that lit him up as a boy.
When I work with high-achieving men who have lost their way somewhere along the way, I say, “What did you do as a boy that you enjoyed?” Suddenly, their face lights up. Therefore, it doesn’t have to be the super serious shadow-exposing work. It can also be playful. If we can make it a bit playful, and we can make it a little bit tongue in cheek as well, and laugh at ourselves along the process. That’s how shame dissipates. It’s when we don’t take ourselves too fucking seriously. There has to be a bit of that.
There’s time for the serious work. There’s time to take the mask off and be real. The bit I don’t like is when it gets stuck there. We forget about why we are doing this. We’re doing this because we want to feel joyous, happy, go home, hug our kids and our wife, and fucking celebrate ourselves. Remember to celebrate. Remember to play and not be too stuck in this straight peg format that men’s work can be.
There is time for the serious work, and there is time to take the mask off and be real. Share on XAnswering Five Rapid-Fire Questions
Alex, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. You’re doing great work with your platform. I’ve personally been exposed to the positive impact of it. At the end of my interviews, I usually ask five quickfire questions. Whatever comes to your mind first. I’ll kick off with this. Who would you like to say sorry to given the chance?
It’s a dear friend. We had a disagreement.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I’m proud that if I were to leave this world now, I’ve already left a legacy behind.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting it least?
I had a surfing accident. I nearly lost my right eye in 2020. It’s the kindness of a family that found me passed out outside the water with a severe head injury and eye injury. I needed it the most. It was a very traumatic time.
What did your mother or father teach you that you fondly remind yourself of?
I don’t need them to see me. I see myself.
The final one is, what is your superpower?
It’s the ability to take a man deeper than the psychological realm to realize and reconnect him with his soul, his dharma, his legacy, and his leadership purpose on this earth in this lifetime.
That is definitely a superpower worthy of having. Alex, thank you so much. I enjoyed the chat. I hope to connect with you soon.
That’s been beautiful. Thank you, Daniel.
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About Alexander Cottle
Alexander Cottle is the founder of The Unmasked Man, an embodied men’s facilitator, coach, and spiritual teacher devoted to guiding men back to their truth.
Over eleven years ago, a TIA stroke shattered the trajectory of his life and opened the doorway to a deeper calling. What followed was a decade of study and self-enquiry through Eastern philosophy, counselling, yoga, and meditation, transforming his understanding of healing, leadership, and masculinity.
Alexander is known for his fierce yet compassionate work in somatic shadow integration, helping men face their pain, reclaim disowned parts of themselves, and transform wounds into wisdom. He has a rare gift for translating deep spiritual and psychological principles into grounded, relatable language men can embody in daily life.
Through The Unmasked Man, he leads retreats, trainings, and initiations across the UK and internationally, supporting men to step into purpose, integrity, and love while creating impact in their communities.
