Tim Churchward

I think that men can change. I don't think that we have to be bound by life experiences or by the legacy that's been left by our forebears, I think that we can, we can change and, and when that hope erupts in you, when you believe for someone else, even it's not for yourself, I believe for this kid that he could change. That's powerful.

Alex

Welcome to stories of men beneath the surface. I'm Alex Melia. Join me, as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

Some time, sometimes we can build up an idea of ourselves so much that it becomes a legend. We're in control. We're powerful, when actually, maybe the more courageous thing is to let people see who we really are. One of Tim church was first cases as a social worker was a 16 year old boy, who will call Ted. Ted had a really tough upbringing. He had learning difficulties and got mixed up in crime. He was arrested for criminal damage and assault, and was summoned to court. Tim was there to support him.

Tim Churchward

But out in the lobby of the core, we're just talking about cool. He's like, you know, yeah, whatever. It's very, like anti, very anti establishment. Very much like, I'm the winner, like, I'm the man and I'm going to walk this journey, no one's going to stop me. You don't like the swagger, you know, screw it, I don't care. Like whatever happens happens, they're not going to send me to prison. I'm just a kid. Like the all of these things. Proper East London boy, as you're walking from the lobby, you have to go through these big doors, but there's two doors. And and you can feel like the confidence ooze as he's in the lobby. And as he walks through this first door, you get the sense that the confidence has been eroded slightly, you walk past two security guards, and they're a lot bigger than you, right. And then you walk into the second door, and it's like, son, it's completely solid, takes a seat next to a solicitor, and you feel like the order of the moment, it hits you obviously serious. And then we have to do is you have to stand you have to rise and the magistrates walk in, they take their seats, and then when they sit down, you get to sit down. So in that moment, even the very physical activity of what happens in a call minimises this kid's ability to express his power or express like this sense of like, I'm in charge, like, my power has been taken away, I want to take it back. This is real sense of change in mood, his mom's in tears, he doesn't know what to do. And the magistrate say, would the defendant stand, and all he is doing is here saying, I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to talk to you while I talk to you. And it's escalating, and it's escalating and escalating. So you've got these two worlds colliding, this world where this young man has essentially his whole life, done whatever he wanted. And then he comes to a point where he is being curtailed, and he's railing against it. So you've got the justice world and the criminal world colliding. All you can see is the nervousness of the other team magistrate sipping their water, and you know what's going on, you know, they're like, this is gonna kick off, this is gonna kick off, security get called in, because he's gradually getting more and more and more animated, but also really aggravated with the situation, to the point where the magistrate says, you have half an hour to leave the room and calm down outside. Or we have to try and figure out a way to administer justice without you hit, at which point he picks up a pencil and throws it at the magistrate. I'm like, Hey, Ted, let's go. This was move. Let's walk out back to the lobby outside, go to the fog, whatever it was. So as we're walking, I'm saying to him, Hey, listen, you need to understand that this situation is not something that you can control. And actually, you need to understand that you don't always get what you want, exactly when you want it. And it doesn't have to be a fight. This doesn't have to be a war. Like sometimes what happens is, is that there are consequences to our actions. And the idea is, hey, like how to you as an as a young man? How do you as a young man deal with not getting what you want when you want it. And the idea of bringing maleness and masculinity out of an East End match show, when every war setting into a deferred gratification into a hate self control is a positive thing. And in the end, we decide that he's not going to say anything, but the way that he would be able to be at peace with the fact that he's in control is by the fact he doesn't have to say anything at all, is solicited can speak on his behalf. And so in the end, we walk back into the court and he sits still and he doesn't say anything. Ted gets what we asked for in terms of his order, it was called a referral order at that point. So then he He basically asked to work with me. And we leave. And he said to me, oh, so that means I get to see you again. I was like, Yeah, bro. Yeah, absolutely. We can work this out together. And he's like, aka, that's always happened. He went off with his mom, this was an Argo.

Alex

So, Tim, how did you feel in that moment when you and Ted were walking out of court?

Tim Churchward

I think in that moment, I'm like, there's hope. You don't like there's almost like this sense of, Wow, we could do this. Together. Like we we could walk a journey where your expression of yourself won't harm anybody else. And there's hope for you and your future, there's hope that you don't have to always be bound by the background or by the consequences of your activity and actions, in terms of criminality, but also in terms of your example your brothers and from a gang are involved in and whatever, there's hope for you. That's how I felt. And it's an emotional thing actually, like when you when you believe, or when you get to a point where you believe that there can be change in a person. Because you're told from a very, I mean, I don't know about you, but I was told from a very young age that people don't often change. But people are people they are what they are. And actually, I don't believe that I think that people can change. I think that men can change. I don't think that we have to be bound by life experiences or by the legacy that's been left by our forebears, I think that we can, we can change and and when that hope erupts in you, when you believe for it for someone else, even it's not for yourself, I believe for this kid that he could change. That's powerful, powerful.

Alex

And what happened after the court hearing, when Ted started coming to see you?

Tim Churchward

Yes, I mean, he went, got the buses mom. And then three days later, he was in the office to see me. And so three days later, he comes in, and he can't look, he can't look at me. There's no shame there. He's not ashamed. He's, he doesn't know how to interact like he can't do face to face. He can do angry face to face, he can do with like, hey, Oscar actually got punched in the head face to face. But he can't do the he can't do the intimate connection. He can't do the sense of the sense of connecting in with another man or human being whatever it might be. He can't do that. And over the course of that the next three months, all we do is I give him some paper to draw on. There's things we have to do as part of the court order, right? We have to get those things done. So give us a pen to draw on. And all he does the whole time is He grants me this is for once a week for three months, we've done 1213 session, and He grunts at me and he draws swastikas and skulls. That's all he does for three months. And so we're doing 15 minutes of the work we have to do. And I have to go through assessments with him. I have to go through the court order stuff with him, I have to go through all the things that that are traditionally meant to help a kid not reoffend. And I'll tell you, nothing works. Nothing. We do pictures. We try to figure out how to do stuff in story form, in in animated form, and nothing happens. I woke up one morning, I was like I literally I mean, I like for me, like I believe in God. Right? So I'm a Christian. I'm a pastor by trade. So I'm like, I literally woke up and said, Hey, God, I cannot do this. I literally cannot do the same thing with this kid. And I was woke up and I was like, I have to go take his PayPal. Like this is what this what happened. Let's go play pool. So I started free quid to play pool and this kid is gonna play pool his life. And he picks up a pool cue and he holds it away. And I'm like, No, do it this way. Turn it around, like do the chalk. Whatever. And as we play in Paul, he's awful. I mean, I'm awful as well. But he's absolutely awful. But it doesn't matter. Because we're not face to face. What? And I'm asking him the questions that I've been asked him for three months, and all of a sudden, it comes out about his life. I'm asking him, hey, like, what's it like at home? But really basic, because I'm trying to figure out hey, like, what's the experience you're coming from? So I'm asked him, hey, what's it like at home? At first? It begins with Yes. Alright. It's fine. You know? I'm okay, cool. So what do you what do you do? Like, like, what do you do at home is that I play Playstation. And then I'm like, okay, cool. So who else is in your house? And he's like, My Big Fat sweat brother. And I'm like, okay, so so like, what? So why is it a big fat sweat? Like, what what happened there for your brother? Like, what is that? Like? Do you not like him then like, what's, what's going on there? And as he opens up, what we get to is the fact that actually he's the youngest of five. We knew that but we didn't know that. He was living at home. The youngest of five and actually significantly bullied in his family home, because he's very lot he's he's cognitively slow. He isn't able to articulate himself. He's the youngest anyway, in terms of like the hierarchy of age. And actually what we find is Is that he, he hates being at home. His mother has no control over any of them really. But his older brothers are involved in crime they're involved in, particularly drug dealing. And, and basically, he is the punching bag. And and as we open up these these questions, I'm like, Hey, so like, what? What does that what do you do? But how do you handle that. And he's and he literally said, he can't hit his brothers because they're bigger than him. So he goes into his room, and he smashes his room up. So we continue to ask these questions and try and figure all this stuff out. And he's not looking at me, but the eye contact thing really isn't there. And because he doesn't know how to engage in that way. And so as we as we, as we wrap up your PayPal for 40 minutes, whatever else it is, we go, this session is over. And I just put my hand out to shake his hand and for the first time, he shook my hand for the first time. So the the connection wasn't eye contact, but the connection was a handshake.

Alex

The whole idea of eye contact is a really interesting one. Where do you think that whole thing comes for him?

Tim Churchward

Lack of eye contact can mean a whole number of things, can it so so. So for this kid, it wasn't shame. So sometimes lack of eye contact is like this sense of like you, you can't you can't look at someone because you feel shame in their presence or whatever, for this lead. My gut is and he'd be like, I'm not my master's degrees in psycho analytics and social work. So I've got somebody for this, but I'm not an expert, I'm not trying professional. But my gut is, is that I actually think eye contact to learn, learn behaviour, I think like understanding what it looks like, or feels like to engage with someone, especially as a man and I. And I know that this is that anxiety and social anxiety and shame. And those things are like, not just gender specific, but there is something about it being quite an intimate thing to do as a bloke, especially particularly young kids. I think with this lads with Ted, I think, I think for him, the idea of connecting with someone in terms of like a relationship, in terms of something that was a positive thing for him. I think for him, it was genuinely that he'd never, ever been taught how to hold a, an intense conversation or conversation or anything. So so so when I'm talking to you, like, I'm actually looking, we're on your mind, right, but I'm looking you in the eyes, because like, that's what you do. But I don't know if he knows, but for lots of people, they they're, if they struggle with it, and they go to psychotherapy, or psychologists or whatever they're taught, they're taught to look at people's eyebrows, but they're taught to look at their forehead. So when you're when you're doing public speaking, for example, if people's faces look blank, or that they look like they want to hit you or whatever, or they disagree with what you're saying, You're taught, hey, don't look in their eyes, look at their heads or just above. Because there's something very in depth about looking in someone's eyes, it's very, it brings out a lot of insecurity. For Ted, the insecurity was, I don't know what to do, that it wasn't like, oh my gosh, I'm shameful or unworthy. It was like, I just don't get it. I don't know what to do. And what I know is that if I looked you in the eye, the the intensity or the feeling of being out of control. So the feeling there, I don't know what's going on almost behind your eyes, I don't know what's going on in your brain that really isn't safe. That's not a safe space. I just think that's interesting. I think for me, one of the things that I learned work with young young people that offended was that if you, if you try and enforce a relational connection, like eye contact, they'll skip, they'll run their run away. But actually, if you if you're able to live with the fact that they probably won't look, you can build a relationship that will eventually make its way I guess, to eye contact but but I think one of the things that's really interesting, at least for me about eye contact is that really is your eyes really our gateway like that, like what you let into your eyes and what you see defines you. But also when other people look at you, there's there's such a intimate or intensity to the eye contact, intimacy or intensity to the eye contact. Because really what you're what you're what you're doing is you're trusting someone that they see you because when you when you're looking at someone is to be you're known by them, and you're allowing them to be known whereas if you avoid eye contact, what it means is there's a screen up there's like you you're not seeing you're not seen by someone and and I think like there's a there's an incredible journey for I think for a lot of people with anxiety but especially men to go one where it's like hey, like be known, that be known for who you are like not just the screen that you put up on the mask that you put on. And for this 16 year old boy, the control that he had over how we wanted to be perceived as match show man And the all this stuff. If he if he gave me a phone call to eye contact, well, it will be gone because I get to see him how I see him.

Alex

Like you said, it's a gateway, you you feel like if someone's looking at you in the eye, and you're maintaining eye contact, they'll see what you're thinking in your mind that you're not the man that you kind of want to be you're trying to, you're aspiring to that. But you still have these vulnerabilities. And you don't want them to see that. I think that's what this boy had as well. And did you have that when you were a kid as well? Yeah. So

Tim Churchward

as a kid, I think even peer levels, right? I don't know if you if you can relate to this. But I remember like, when when I was a kid, I like playing a game playing football, tennis, whatever, was really relationally building for me. Whereas a conversation like I was like, please, I don't want to, I don't want to talk to you. Because that means I don't look at you. And we have to like, like, do you normally it feels really weird. And I think like, as far as I'm concerned, eye contact was definitely something that I learned to do as a politeness. As opposed to like, I was like, Yes, I'm pumped about eye contact. Because the thing you're talking about vulnerability, and being seen and being known, actually, it means you have to you have to allow someone to perceive you in a way that you might not like, right, it's like, it's this this, it's a really interesting, interesting part of what it looks like for us to grow, I think as human beings, but especially as blokes, because, because I think like, as soon as we are in a situation where we cannot control how people view us, it means that we have to deal with who we actually are, rather than the hero complex we have about ourselves. You know, I mean, so. So we have this, we have this sense in which we, we end up at least for me, personally, I end up believing my own legend. And actually, it is like, men to believe that I'm legend, like, it's like this sense of hey, like I am, I'm fine. Like, I'm the hero, I don't need anyone to help me or rescue me or support me like, and allowing someone in an in specially in terms of like conversation or eye contact stuff allowing someone in, really is releasing for you. Because you no longer have to be this this person of who's basically fictitious. Like who's a superhero who exists only in comic books, you know, like, like, and it's amazing, because you actually get to join and have relationships with other men and women who can support you through life, and experiences that mean that you don't have to walk it alone. It's powerful. It's absolutely powerful.

Alex

I think about a lot of young people that I've worked with, because I was a primary school teacher in Hong Kong for a few years, and I worked in a primary school. And not many kids actually would maintain eye contact. But I remember times with my brother, who's now 19, when he was 1213 1415. And we would go to restaurants, and it's probably whether it was a good thing to do or not was I said to him, when the waitress comes and asks for our order, if you can mean I maintain eye contact with her, I will give you a pound, I almost had this sort of reward system in place where I would say that to him. And sometimes he would do it, sometimes he wouldn't. But it's kind of this feeling of I want to have my sphere of control. And I don't want like we said before, I don't want someone to look into finding out who I actually am because I want to keep that hidden and I want to keep that protected. And it's only now as he's getting older and he's becoming more mature. And he's he's coming across a lot more adults, I think that was the problem as well that maybe we didn't have that many. So many adults come into the house because of course, kids are happy to maintain eye contact with other kids. But when it comes to adults, perhaps they feel this sort of inferiority complex or this sort of this naivety or they feel less than them. I think that's probably I'm kind of giving you my experience of when I was a kid and I again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like to maintain eye contact with people as well. Don't have you've had a similar experience when you were a kid or were you very confident boy.

Tim Churchward

So I'm an identical twin. So there's two of us, there's two everybody on the planet. And so it was different, I think for me, because we always had someone I always had someone to bounce off and someone to like, have that kind of that intensity relationship with I guess, but I definitely relate to the adult thing and not maintaining eye contact with adults. Because you're looking up all the time. And they're looking down. And so that's hard. Because there's there's a sense of like physical, physical hierarchy there, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, I think. But I personally think that men that parents need to have power over their kids, not in like a domineering way but actually like hey, just do it yourself. But one of the things that you get taught throughout if you're involved in any child's life, and probably your primary school is that you get down to their level, like you like you get down to a kid's level. And you make sure that like what You're doing sure you're not domineering. But if you're having a conversation like you, you have it on the level rather than it being this towering presence. And so So when it comes to kids and adults, it's not just the eye contact, it's the, it's the nature of how that eye contact is maintained. Because you literally have to look up the whole time, in order if they're standing in order that you that you have that connection. So for me with, with my kids, what I do is, if we're talking about something that needs to be done, or if there's a consequence to an action, or whatever, what I'll do is, is that I will, so it's interesting to wear eye contact. I hadn't even thought about this until just now. But almost automatically, I will kneel. And I'll say, hey, Savannah, look at me in the eyes. Just look me in the eyes. And because what I want it to do is is I don't want, I want her to know, this is serious. But I also want her to know that actually, the eye contact is not about a discipline thing. It's about a love thing. So it's not about although love and discipline. They're not they're not different. Actually, I think discipline is a form of love as a part of life. But but the idea is, is that the the you're not looking at me, in my eyes, because there's a consequence of something you did, you're looking at me in my eyes, because actually, we are maintaining connection and building connection before there's a consequence. Because you need to know that the love that I carry for you far outweighs the consequences that you're about to receive. And so and so for me, I the eye contact piece, especially in children needs to be something that promotes the idea of connection and love, rather than the connection of dominance. So for Savannah, she's three that she's threenager, right? And it's like, Haley, like, how do I have a conversation with you in this moment, that makes you aware that the how you're feeling is fine. There's no issue with how you're feeling how you're demonstrating how you're feeling might not be okay, but how you're feeling is absolutely great. And actually, for me, that's when the eye contact piece comes in. Because she doesn't want you because Savannah different for every kid, but she doesn't need to touch her. She wants to be free from physical constraint when she's feeling emotional. And so what she, what she can do is she can look at you, she can look you in the eye. And I think like for me, for her to know that no matter who she is, how she's feeling, how she's expressing herself, that the eye contact that we have, maintains a level of connection through that process is really important. And one thing that I think men miss in life is the connection to another person, especially other men, that says, Hey, it's okay to feel how you're feeling. Like it's actually okay that you feel angry. It's actually okay for you to feel frustrated. And I don't want you to punch me in the face. But I'm telling you, I'm validating the emotion, I'm not going to validate how you express it if it's negative, but I'm further in the emotion in you. And I'm validating the reality of how you feel as opposed to you have to bottle it up until you go to the pub or get so smashed, that what happens is is that you end up getting in for fistfights and getting arrested by the police. I'm Mike. And I see that pattern over and over and over and over again with men, particularly where they have no outlet for an emotional conversation or almost like this sense of like inferiority, perhaps, or even the sense of, hey, I should not need this, I should not need to have a conversation about how I fit. Man, or whatever it is.

Alex

It's something interesting when you said about the connection side of when you're maintaining eye contact with someone because he's constantly in this protection is protected his ego is is trained to have this sphere of control is so small, that he's is constantly in this sort of protection mindset. So he doesn't want to connect with other people. He wants to stay in his safe place. And that's the only thing he's got control over. And that's where I suppose the compassion and where my heart goes out to him because he he doesn't have any sort of connection in his life.

Tim Churchward

Absolutely. And I think that's really important that, that we understand that when we feel out of control, we have two choices. You lean into feeling out of control when you try and take control back, or have three three choices, that one those those two, or you go to an environment which you can control, which normally means that you assert yourself as dominant. And so I think that there's and for Ted, for this kid that we're talking about this, this sense of needing to feel powerful is huge. So for example for this kid, he needed to learn that he could not just express emotion whenever he felt like it. Especially if it's damaging to other people. So his lesson wasn't, hey, bottle, your emotion but it was hey, there are appropriate forms and spaces for you to do this, like when you do sessions with me. And what's interesting is and if we talk if we go back to this idea that eye contact means vulnerability means showing yourself means actually be able to express yourself and being seen by someone else and will also do Going back to what we were talking about in terms of, hey, the places where you're able to validate your motion. What's interesting is, is that there's something really real about men needing to employ self control, so that they don't just get to express how they feel whenever they want. And this is like the, this is I'm not a massive fan of fourth or fifth wave feminism, but feminism began this movement of, of, of understanding that, hey, guys don't just get to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Like, it's something that's really important that we understand that you don't just get to express yourself, however you want in dominance, particularly for women in the feminist movement. And that's powerful. I think that's a powerful, I think we've gone way off the deep end personally, but in the in the in recent years on feminism, but that's a powerful thing that feminism began with, and, and the but what's happened is, is that that's turned itself into, hey, men don't express yourself. And I would personally see this as an outworking of some of the anti men feminist movements, which I don't think feminism began with at all. And so I think back then, so men are in this interesting situation where they're like, we must control ourselves, we must be able to hold on to emotion must be able to hold on to how we feel or like our needs, our desires, and only express them at a time that is appropriate. The problem with that is, is that when you when you replace, being self controlled, and having the places to express yourself positively in terms of how you feel, with just being controlled, that's when it bottoms up and becomes an explosion at a later time. And so and so basically, the men have, by far the highest suicide rate in the UK, in the Western world. So so and so what happens with women, and you can find all this information on the Centre for Social Justice. What happens with women is the a lot of the time that there are far more attempts, but they're far less lethal in how they administer their suicide attempts. Whereas men, there are fewer attempts, but they're way more lethal. And so what happens is, is that men have this really interesting dynamic to the expression of emotion, that tends to be explosion, because it tends to be bottled and then explode. So the idea that you actually have something in your life or people in your life, where you're able to maintain eye contact, if we want to use that as the symbolic nature of how to connect with emotion as a man, you maintain eye contact with them. You have those spaces where it's safe to express and validating to express emotion. And you don't bottle it up to the point where actually you're like, I can't do this anymore. I think it's really, really important. Eye contact his connection. Eye contact is allowing yourself to be seen and allowing yourself to be known even in your most vulnerable place.

Alex

It's interesting when we look at men and traditionally female jobs, social workers are predominantly female. Only 15% of social workers are men. After Tim's work with Ted, it got me thinking if Ted social worker was female, would he have had as much success as he had with Tim, should more men be in roles like this that we traditionally see as female? Tim's work with Ted made me think how much better the world would be, what kind of place would be in right now, if more men were able to become positive role models for young boys, and how many young boys would avoid going down the prison system and getting into a life of crime. I've done work as a substitute teacher in some bad schools in the UK, and in other kinds of roles I've had before. And it takes just one positive intervention for a boy's life to radically change for the better. There's some great organisations out there for example, lads and dads, which have an amazing contribution to society in helping young boys to become good men. Tim is clearly a great example of someone who walks the talk. And he's using those experiences to create a better life for his own kids. Are there boys or young men in your life that you can have a positive influence over? What can we do to help steer boys in the right direction, so that they can avoid the many potential pitfalls that life presents