An Evolving Man Podcast

What changes when we stop asking “What’s wrong with you?” and begin asking “What happened to you?”

In Episode 173 of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross speaks with Ton Mazzone, filmmaker behind Traumality — an independently produced documentary exploring childhood adversity, attachment, trauma, the nervous system and mental health.

Ton spent years struggling with social anxiety and depression. After seeking medical help, he was given a diagnosis and medication, but little explanation for why he felt the way he did. Discovering trauma later became a profound turning point: his symptoms began to make sense as understandable responses to earlier experiences rather than proof that he was fundamentally broken.  Pasted text

Piers and Ton explore psychoeducation, ACEs, shame, Internal Family Systems, somatic approaches, male vulnerability, trauma-informed schools, incarceration, boarding school and the need for systems that respond with greater curiosity and compassion.

They also discuss the limitations of purely symptom-focused approaches to mental health and what might become possible if healthcare, education and leadership became more trauma-informed.  Pasted text

A powerful conversation about understanding the roots of distress, restoring agency and building a more trauma-informed society.

Watch Traumality:
https://traumality.com

Find Piers:
https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What happens when you step out of everyday life and spend a week immersed in meditation, teaching and personal development?

In this episode of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross reflects on attending Dr Joe Dispenza’s week-long retreat in Copenhagen, following a Progressive Retreat in Basel.

Piers had booked the retreats during a difficult period following the death of his wife Michelle. Although he had continued working and practising self-care, the retreat helped him recognise that grief, loneliness and a degree of depression were still present beneath the busyness.  Pasted text  Pasted text

He shares some of the most meaningful parts of the experience: the people he met, deep meditation, coherence healing, powerful experiences of sensing Michelle’s presence, and the immersive nature of days beginning early in the morning and continuing into the evening.  Pasted text

Piers also speaks openly about the challenges. Being surrounded by thousands of people brought up old patterns around people-pleasing, fitting in and censoring himself — patterns he connects with his experience of boarding school.

Ultimately, the week became a reminder of three simple things:

Gratitude. Joy. Presence.

A personal reflection on grief, spirituality, meditation, discomfort, healing and remembering to enjoy life rather than constantly striving to improve it.

Find Piers: Piers Cross website

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What if resilience isn’t about becoming tougher?

In Episode 172 of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross speaks with Russell Harvey, The Resilience Coach, about what genuine resilience looks like for leaders, teams and organisations.

Russell defines resilience as “springing forward with learning” rather than endlessly pushing through adversity. He describes the difference between surviving, coping and thriving, and explains why self-awareness, purpose, adaptability, support networks, energy and emotional intelligence all contribute to sustainable resilience.  Pasted text

The conversation also explores a distinction particularly relevant to Piers’s boarding-school work: resilience versus dissociation. If someone learns to suppress emotion, disconnect and simply endure, that may look strong externally while being very different from genuine resilience internally.  Pasted text

Piers and Russell also discuss toxic positivity, psychological safety, strengths-based leadership, purpose, team culture and why wellbeing initiatives cannot compensate for an unhealthy organisational system.

Russell closes with a compelling idea: optimism does not mean denying reality. It means acknowledging the scale of the challenge while also recognising our strengths, capabilities, relationships and capacity to respond.  Pasted text

A rich conversation for anyone interested in resilient leadership, emotional intelligence, psychological safety and sustainable high performance.

Find Piers:
https://piers-cross.com

Find Russell:
The Resilience Coach

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

 Can healing and self-development become so serious that we forget to actually enjoy our lives? 

After returning from retreats in Copenhagen and Basel, Piers Cross reflects on something he realised while away: he had forgotten some of the joy. 

In this short episode of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers explores how busyness, striving and constant self-improvement can pull us away from gratitude, connection and the simple experience of being alive. 

He shares three practices for reconnecting with joy: 

- Feeling gratitude rather than simply thinking it 

- Remembering positive experiences and people we have loved 

- Creating moments of positive connection through appreciation and praise 

- Noticing where life has become all effort and no flow

- Remembering why we started the healing journey in the first place 

Healing isn't only about processing pain. 

It is also about learning to live, love and experience joy again. 

🌐 https://piers-cross.com 

#HealingJourney #Joy #Gratitude #personaldevelopment 

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What is the first step in healing boarding school syndrome?

In this short episode of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross explores the importance of understanding and education at the beginning of a healing journey.

Drawing on Pete Walker’s work on complex PTSD, Piers reflects on how learning about trauma and boarding school syndrome can give language and context to experiences that may previously have felt confusing or uniquely personal.

For Piers, reading Nick Duffell’s The Making of Them was transformational. Suddenly, experiences he had carried privately began to make psychological sense.

Understanding is not the end of healing. It can open the door to deeper emotional work: grief, anger, embodiment, connection and learning to feel what may have been suppressed for decades.

A short reflection on boarding school syndrome, trauma recovery, self-understanding and where healing can begin.

Find out more:
https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

Why do so many former boarders struggle with perfectionism, overworking and the feeling that they are never quite good enough?

In this episode of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross explores the link between boarding school syndrome, perfectionism, the inner critic and burnout.

At boarding school, mistakes can carry a social cost. Vulnerability may be hidden, everyone else can appear to have it “sorted”, and achievement becomes a way of proving our worth. Underneath can sit a much deeper belief:

“I’m not good enough.”

Piers explores:

•  Why boarding school can encourage perfectionism 
•  The fear of mistakes, failure and vulnerability 
•  Fixed mindset versus growth mindset 
•  The link between perfectionism and the brutal inner critic 
•  How perfectionism can create burnout and an inability to switch off 
•  Why control can become a childhood survival strategy 
•  Learning to replace impossible standards with “I’m good enough”
•  Using calm, mindfulness and self-compassion to change the pattern 

Drawing on Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving and Emma Seppälä’s The Happiness Track, Piers offers practical ways to begin loosening perfectionism.  

🌐 Find out more about Piers Cross:
 https://piers-cross.com

#BoardingSchoolSyndrome #Perfectionism #Burnout

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What can the first day at boarding school feel like for a child?

Following Prince George’s arrival at Eton College, Piers Cross reflects on his own first days at boarding school and the psychology of leaving home for a large residential institution.

Drawing on the work of Nick Duffell and Joy Schaverien, Piers explores the “threshold moment” when a child begins to understand emotionally—not merely intellectually—that their parents have gone and they must now adapt to a new environment. 

The conversation explores homesickness, emotional suppression, dissociation, busyness, workaholism, attachment and the potential implications for later relationships and leadership. Piers also considers what Bear Grylls and David Cameron have written about their own experiences of arriving at Eton. 

This episode does not claim to know Prince George’s private emotional experience. Instead, it uses this moment to ask a wider question about boarding school, separation and emotional development.

Content note: Includes brief discussion of suicide and childhood loss.

 Here is the article I talk about: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/thames-valley-police-eton-college-unexplained-incident-b1272963.html 

Find out more:
 https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What happens when reaching the top still isn’t enough?

In Episode 171 of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross speaks with Julian Reeve, international keynote speaker, author and creator of the Perfect Equilibrium methodology.

Julian worked across the West End and Broadway before joining the team behind Hamilton. In 2017, while Music Director of the show’s first US national tour, he suffered a stress-related heart attack at 43. A subsequent repetitive strain injury eventually ended his performing career. 

That experience forced Julian to reconsider the relationship between achievement, perfectionism, identity and self-worth.

Piers and Julian explore why high achievers can become trapped in the belief that productivity equals value, the six organisational drivers of burnout, how leaders create cultures of either pressure or psychological safety, and why emotional intelligence, creativity and judgement will become increasingly important in the age of AI. 

They also discuss perfectionism as a survival strategy, the importance of play and permission in creative teams, and how individuals can begin identifying whether their burnout is being driven by personal patterns, organisational systems—or both. 

A rich conversation about burnout, identity, leadership, creativity and redefining what success really means.

 🌐 Find out more about Julian Reeve: https://www.julianreeve.com/ 

Find Piers:
 https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

Why are so many former boarders relentlessly hard on themselves?

In this short episode of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross explores the brutal inner critic that can develop through boarding school and childhood trauma.

Piers reflects on how being humiliated for showing emotion led him to begin attacking himself internally before other people could do it. What originally helped create protection and control eventually became an inner bully. 

Drawing on his own experience and the work of writers including Pete Walker and Nick Duffell, Piers explores perfectionism, emotional flashbacks, self-parenting, thought correction and learning to replace hostile self-talk with a kinder, more supportive internal voice. 

He also reflects on the importance of grief and embodied emotional release, and how learning to feel again helped transform his own relationship with self-criticism. 

A reflection on boarding school syndrome, trauma, perfectionism, self-compassion and developing a benevolent inner voice.

Content note: Includes discussion of past self-harm.

Find out more:
 https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/ 

What if difficult behaviour is not something to control—but something to understand?

In Episode 170 of An Evolving Man Podcast, Piers Cross speaks with Geoff Owen, founder of Biologically Aligned Parenting and author of The Parenting Assumption.

Geoff argues that children are born with innate needs for safety, certainty, connection and regulation. When those needs are not sufficiently met, behaviours we label as defiant, aggressive, withdrawn or difficult may emerge as adaptations.

Rather than immediately asking, “How do I stop this behaviour?”, Jeff encourages parents to ask:

“What is this behaviour telling me?”

Piers and Geoff explore parental stress, nervous-system regulation, punishment and rewards, high-performing parents bringing workplace management strategies home, learning through observation, attachment, boarding school and the fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses children may develop.

They also discuss a different vision of parenting: creating an environment in which children feel trusted, capable and secure enough to develop naturally.

A thought-provoking conversation about parenting, attachment, emotional intelligence and our assumptions about children.

Find Geoff:
https://geoffreyowen.com/

Find Piers:
 https://piers-cross.com

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Piers is an author and a men's transformational coach and therapist who works mainly with trauma, boarding school issues, addictions and relationship problems. 

He also runs online men's groups for ex-boarders, retreats and a podcast called An Evolving Man. 

He is also the author of How to Survive and Thrive in Challenging Times. To purchase Piers first book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Thrive-Challenging-Times/dp/B088T5L251/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=piers+cross&qid=1609869608&sr=8-1 

For more videos please visit: http://youtube.com/pierscross 

For FB: https://www.facebook.com/pierscrosspublic 

For Piers' website and a free training How To Find Peace In Everyday Life: https://www.piers-cross.com/community 

Many blessings, 

Piers Cross 

http://piers-cross.com/