Keep showing up. You’re worth it.

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Welcome to the fifth Q&A for The Basement community. The Q&A for June will be released soon! Thanks for being patient with these.

As we said last month, the Q&A has become a part of our month that we really look forward to. Thank you for showing up to it.

Let’s keep it rolling with what questions remain for you, or what new questions have come up this month.

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Keep showing up. You’re worth it.

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Welcome to the fourth Q&A for The Basement community. The Q&A for May will be released soon! Thanks for being patient with these.

The questions last month were so vulnerable and courageous. The Q&A has become a part of our month that we really look forward to. Thank you for showing up to it.

Let’s keep it rolling with what questions remain for you, or what new questions have come up this month.

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Kelly has a fabulous new book called The Road Less Triggered- Turning Conflict into Connection with a Single Choice, and I’ll tell you what… he’s the kind of guy who can explain the complexity of your nervous system and relational patterns to you in a way that doesn’t make you feel like a science experiment. It helps you finally have words for something you’ve been experiencing your whole life.

We are both licensed therapists, so a lot of this stuff we cognitively know, yet we learned so much in this conversation that we’ve been chewing on. We talk about things like how anger is almost always a doorway into something deeper, how men in particular learn to block sadness before it ever surfaces, and why the question that changes everything isn’t “what’s wrong with me?” — it’s “what happened to me?”

If you’ve ever felt completely hijacked by a reaction you didn’t see coming (and if you’re really honest with yourself… you definitely have) this one is for you.

Listen and send this to someone in your life who could use some permission to feel what he feels.

KEY THEMES WE EXPLORE

• Why being triggered is normal and doesn’t mean something is wrong with you

• How to move from protection mode back into connection mode

• Why anger often points to sadness underneath the surface

• What it means to restore your sense of choice in conflict

• How boundaries can be set with an open heart

• Why healing turns 30-day conflicts into 30-second recoveries

🎧 Listen to “How to Be Less Triggered with Dr. Kelly Flanagan:” → Listen on Spotify / Apple / YouTube

P.S. Consider joining us in our private 3% community — The Basement.

The Basement A Structured Space For Those Who Want To Build Stronger, More Honest Relationships.

The Basement is a private paid ($10/mo) community designed for those who are ready to move beyond surface-level connection and engage their emotional lives with more clarity and courage.

Inside, you’ll find private Q+A episodes from member specific questions, guided reflections, and practical tools that support real change in how you show up in your relationships, your faith, and your inner life.

Welcome to the third Q&A for The Basement community. I said this would drop earlier this month, and yet again, we’ve dropped the ball. We’ll get better at this, I promise. Thanks for being patient!

We hope you enjoyed the April Q&A episode. Go check that out if you haven’t!

Let’s keep it rolling with what questions remain for you, or what new questions have come up this month.

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This episode is about what it means to restore your sense of choice in a triggered moment, and what is actually happening beneath the surface when your nervous system lights up. It is also, at its heart, a conversation about grief: the sadness most of us have been working very hard not to feel.

Remember, the Basement is not about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10 to 15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

What’s True for You Right Now

Before diving into the episode themes, take a moment to check in with yourself.

1. Think about the last time something your partner (or a close friend or family member) did or said made you feel defensive. What happened in your body in that moment?

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how connected do you feel to your emotional world right now? Not just anger or frustration — but sadness, fear, tenderness. What would make it a point higher?

Theme 1 — From Connection Mode to Protection Mode

Kelly opened by naming something most of us have felt but never quite had words for: that moment when you flip from being present with someone to being defended against them. He calls it moving from connection mode into protection mode. It happens fast. It often happens before you are fully aware of it.

He describes it as a three-part sequence. First, your nervous system activates (the pilot light kicks on). Second, your heart begins to close to the moment. Third, you choose — quickly and often unconsciously — to let that closing happen. And once it does, everything that follows is designed for protection, not connection. Even if it still looks like you are trying to connect.

What Kelly is after is not neutralizing your nervous system. That is not possible. What is possible is restoring your sense of choice. Acknowledging that you are closing your heart, and knowing you can choose to open it back up.

“It’s not the road untriggered. We all have a nervous system for a reason. What is possible is moving through it in 30 seconds instead of 30 days.”

— Dr. Kelly Flanagan

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Also, let us know in the comments what you think of the proposed updates to The Basement. We value your feedback.

Keep showing up. You’re worth it.

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Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. Small, achievable shifts. Progress, not perfection.

Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

THEME 1: Why Vulnerability Feels Unsafe

The way we developed a relationship with vulnerability when we were young is the way we will relate to it as adults. Jamie named this directly in session with clients: if someone is scared to be vulnerable now, the first question worth asking is how their vulnerability was treated growing up. Not whether they were told it was wrong, but how it was actually received.

What’s easy to miss is that you may not even remember being vulnerable and having it go poorly. You may have just stopped. If your nervous system learned early that the environment wasn’t safe, it may have made that decision on your behalf before you had words for it. That isn’t a character flaw. That’s your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do.

“Of course vulnerability doesn’t feel safe to you. When was it ever treated with safety?” — Jamie

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Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection.

Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

THEME 1: Power Over vs. Presence With

Amy walked us through the Duluth Power and Control Wheel, a framework developed in the 1980s by women who survived intimate partner terrorism. The behaviors it names (intimidation, isolation, emotional abuse, using children, economic control) share a common architecture: one person positioning themselves above another. Power over. Not presence with.

What struck us is how subtle the early forms are. A look. A silence. A stockpile of grievances that never quite gets said out loud, until it does. Amy described how each time a couple moves through the cycle of tension, explosion, and reconciliation, the frequency and intensity increase. It escalates quietly, then suddenly.

“The person who rescues me is also the person who tortures me. The rescuer and the torturer are the same person.” — Amy Alexander

In learning about this framework, a few important and uncomfortable questions came up for us. We hope you’ll look at them with us.

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Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW

Before diving into the episode themes, take a moment to check in with yourself.

When you hear the question “Why am I always angry?” Does it land for you personally? Where have you felt anger most this week?

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Here’s the 3% - running all of this has been quite the learning curve, and we dropped the ball. Sorry about that!

The podcast epis…

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Loneliness in men isn’t just a crisis of busyness. It’s a crisis of intentionality. We have relationships. We just don’t always bring ourselves to them. This week is about naming what you actually need, and then doing something small about it.

Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW

Before diving into the episode themes, take a moment to check in with yourself.

1. Think about the friendships that matter most to you right now. When did you last feel genuinely known in one of them? Not just seen, but truly known?

2. On a scale of 1–10, how lonely are you right now? Not as a verdict on your life, just as an honest check-in. What would make it a point higher?

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The Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

What’s True For You Right Now

Before diving into the episode themes, take a moment to check in with yourself.

1. Think about the family you grew up in. On a scale of 1–10, how emotionally available were the adults in your home? What number comes up, and what comes with it?

2. When you’re stressed or overwhelmed as a parent (or in close relationships), what’s your default move? Name it honestly.

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From self-care vs. selfishness to shame, anger, anxiety, and sexual temptation, we sit with the tension of what it actually looks like to do this work in real life.

We cover a lot of ground in the first session of Basement Q&A.

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This conversation was rich. It was also personal. Blake had a moment mid-episode that wasn’t staged, wasn’t scripted, and honestly captured exactly why this work matters. We hope this guide helps you go a little further into what the episode stirred in you.

Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection.

That’s what we’re practicing here. Not intensity. Not performance. Not oversharing. Just one small, courageous shift at a time.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember: the smallest shift matters.

WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU RIGHT NOW

Before diving into the episode themes, take a moment to check in with yourself.

1. What’s one area of your life right now where you feel stuck, confused, or like something just isn’t working, and you haven’t really stopped to look at it?

2. On a scale of 1–10, how willing are you to look at your own story right now? What would move that number up by one point?

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Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection.

That’s what we’re practicing here. Not intensity. Not performance. Not oversharing. Just one small, courageous shift at a time.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember — the smallest shift matters.

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Unfortunately, we’re not that smart, and we don’t have a clear solution. Like most things, this topic is grey. We hope we were able to offer some helpful thoughts in this episode. AI is like any tool in mental health; it can’t heal everything, but it can be helpful in the right context.

So, let’s put some effort into thinking through how you use it right now. What we don’t want is AI getting in the way of becoming the man you want to be or having the relationships you want.

Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

That’s what we’re practicing here. Not intensity. Not performance. Not oversharing. Just one small, courageous shift at a time.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember — the smallest shift matters.

If you’re like us and prefer to have a downloadable PDF of this guide, you can find it at the end of the post.

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If you’re like us and prefer to have a downloadable PDF of this guide, you can find it at the end of the post.

Remember, the Basement isn’t about becoming the most optimized, self-actualized version of yourself. It’s about practicing honesty. It’s about small, achievable shifts. It’s about progress, not perfection. Transformation happens when you move from consumption to engagement.

That’s what we’re practicing here. Not intensity. Not performance. Not oversharing. Just one small, courageous shift at a time.

Take 10–15 minutes. Reflect honestly. Share if you’re ready. And remember — the smallest shift matters.

Read more

Welcome to Three Percent— a podcast hosted by two licensed therapists where help you turn emotional walls into healthier relationships and provide spaces, tools, and honest conversations that help you deepen your relationship with yourself, others, and God.

If you’ve ever been in a season, or currently in one, where nothing feels easy and you’re just trying to hold it together, this weeks episode for you.

Some conversations stay with you. We think this is one of them.

This week, Blake and Jamie sat down with poet, speaker, and author Tanner Olson. Tanner is a close friend of the show and we’ve been anticipating this conversation for a while. It’s also the first time we’ve had live poetry read on the show! And trust us, you’ll want to hear it. He’s such a gifted writer.

About the Episode

Tanner’s new book, Getting Through What You’re Going Through: Notes and Poems for Hoping and Becoming, is like sitting down with a friend who doesn’t try to fix you but who just says:

I see you

I hate this for you

and here are some words that will help you get through this.

That spirit carried the whole conversation. Tanner talks about why poetry has a unique ability to name things we can’t quite put into words on our own, and why empathy almost always lands better than advice.

There’s a great stretch of the episode where we all dig into what actually happens when someone tries to fix your pain and how hollow that can be compared to someone who just shows up and stays.

He also gets personal. Tanner shares about a health scare that forced him to slow down and rethink how he was living. The stress, the striving, and the quiet ways pride can shape your pace of life without you realizing it. He gets honest about their struggle with unexplained infertility and their adoption process.

It’s the kind of honest that is so encouraging and fills you with hope.

A Few Things That Stuck With Us

• Healing rarely comes from more information. It takes presence, processing, and time.

• Rest isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s the bravest thing you can do.

• Creativity comes from living real life and paying attention.

• The most meaningful thing you can offer someone in pain isn’t a solution. It’s just being there.

More from Tanner

• 📖 ​Getting Through What You’re Going Through​ — his new book

• 📖 ​His other books of poetry & a childrens book on prayer​

• His Substack (14k+ subscribers) and Instagram (115k followers) are great follows if you want more hopwe in your feed

Forward this episode to someone in a hard season, or someone you know who’d appreciate a thoughtful conversation about hope, suffering, and what it means to keep going.

🎧 Listen to “Getting Through What You’re Going Through with Tanner Olson”→

Listen on ​Spotify​ / ​Apple​ / ​YouTube

P.S. - Consider joining us in our private 3% community -- The Basement.

The Basement:

A Structured Space For Those Who Want To Build Stronger, More Honest Relationships.

The Basement is a private community designed for those who are ready to move beyond surface-level connection and engage their emotional lives with more clarity and courage.

Inside, you’ll find private Q+A episodes from member questions, guided reflections, and practical tools that support real change in how you show up in your relationships, your faith, and your inner life.

​LEARN MORE HERE​

We’re glad you’re here. Keep coming back. You’re worth it.

-Jamie & Blake