Men’s Counseling

As a man in the 21stCentury, your needs feel like an afterthought. We are told to be strong, to “suck it up buttercup” as we were in days past, but also expected to be open with our emotions. When we verbalize our needs and emotions, we are rejected for being weak. Confused and hurt, many of us resort to the one emotion that seems half-way accepted, anger. And then we are punished for that, not just by society, our friends and family, but ourselves for losing control. 

Anger

Maybe you find that you have no connection to your own feelings. Often as men, we are unsure of what we are feeling because we lack the practice of introspection. When we are feeling emotions like fear, anxiety, sadness, disappointment, or depression, we convert those feelings into anger. Instead of feeling hurt, weak, and powerless, we instead feel strong and powerful. Anger is an emotion of action, and as men, when in doubt, most of us tend to act. You have likely found yourself angry, hurting someone you love. In my favorite scene in my favorite movie, Casablanca, the hurt (and drunk) Rick Blane says cruel things to Elsa, the woman he loves. Even though he wants more than anything to connect with her, he instead drives her away with his anger. 

Isolation 

In days past, there were more avenues for men to connect to other men and form lifelong bonds as brothers. Today there is a steady decline of friendships for men. For those of us who make it to the end of life, there seems to be no friends left, outside of friends we have along with our spouses. Likely you have said, “It is so hard to make new friends”. Men are in a crisis of isolation and disconnection from their community and family. I have heard the heartbreak of men who are disconnected from their wives who have become roommates not life partners. Loyal men who do not stray, but nonetheless are in marriages with little or no physical intimacy. A sexless marriage is a profound wound for a man. Men cannot share their lack of intimacy with close friends, if he has them. The disconnection with one’s spouse spills over to the children, reducing the man to feeling like nothing more than an ATM for a family which takes him for granted. 

When in Doubt, Work Harder

Men often want to be doing something to fix the problem, whatever that problem is. When men are faced with problems in their lives, they seek solace in working harder. Hard work brings its own rewards. We are encouraged to be good providers. Working harder can often seem the answer to “fix” whatever the current issues. However, if the issue is lack of connection with our wives, our children and our community, working harder can cause further alienation, making the cure worse than the problem. If we are sinking into depression, working harder avoids the self-care we need. 

Purpose and Meaning 

Men are directly told that to be a good man, a good husband, a good father, we need to get a job and support our families. Our culture places great value on men being productive. Even in the 21st century, the stay-at-home dad is looked at with suspicion. When we approach middle age, we ask “Is this all there is?” Your constant striving to get ahead, to get that next promotion, the better job, to make more money robs you of your tenderness, your peace, and happiness. It weakens your connection to you wife and family. You find yourself haunted by a sense of never being good enough. You can feel “If I can just get to the next milestone, the next achievement, then I can be happy then I can relax.” That thought is a lie. There is always another achievement. When you tie your meaning and our value to how much you make and how much you advance, you can never be happy with what you have. And if we lose that achievement, it can be devastating. I know, because I have lived through that sort of personal apocalypse of losing a high status, high pay job. 

Retirement 

Men often place a huge part of our meaning and worth into what we do for a living. Society reinforces this every time we meet someone new. Think about it: You are asked your name first, then “What do you do?” as if that is the most important thing to know about you. If we are not working at the time, you often will respond with a cloud of words in explanation, as if not working is something to be ashamed of. For the man who is retired, the answer to the question is often what you used to do, who you used to be. I have not yet retired, but I know that being a licensed professional counselor is part of my identity. I will have to be very careful how I lay that work down in the future. Despite being men of planning their whole lives, most men do not often act with caution and care when it comes to their identity when they retire. Suddenly, it feels like there is nothing to do. Power and status gone. A strained marriage can grow worse with the increased contact of being together all day. Your feelings of isolation increase with your lack of connection and loss of work relationships. Most devastating is your loss of purpose without a job.

How do we fix this? 

If any or all of these sound like your challenges, there is something we can do together. Men come to me for therapy, disconnected and unsure of what is wrong, but they know they have to change. We will work on new skills and strategies to manage things day to day. We will work together to understand your individual past and how you became who you are.You have built coping skills to give you a sense of power, a sense of place, and a sense of value. As a man, this often has meant denying or suppressing emotions and relying on your head over your heart. Emotions may come up to your throat, but you swallow them down. Together, we will work to find out what emotions are there for you and what they have to say

. 

Connecting to your emotions improves how you connect to others. Men fail to ask for what we need. When you ask my wife to go to dinner, you are not just asking for her to join you to eat; you are really asking for a time to connect. When you have sex with your wife, it is not just physical gratification, you seek the emotional intimacy to go with the physical. We have to understand this truth about our feelings so we can help others understand them. We will work on understanding your needs and then how to express those to family, friends, and others. 

We will delve into your truths of meaning and purpose. These are our core drivers. The stories we tell ourselves are how we make our place in the world. They are how we measure our value. It is our unexamined stories that lead us astray. We will explore your stories together, understanding how they are both uniquely yours, and how they connect to universal struggles. 

None of this is going to be easy. I can promise you will be uncomfortable. If you tend to be angry, I expect you will have times when you are angry. Confronting the parts of ourselves we do not like is difficult and scary. You are a man of courage and can do it if you choose it. This is a journey you do not have to be upon alone. As your therapist, I am there as a guide. I am not part of your family. I am not a friend. I stand outside your day to day life. You will have the opportunity to be honest, open, and vulnerable with me in a place with no moral condemnation, no castigation of weakness, and no rejection for being less than perfect or less than fearless. I know what it is like because I have been there as a man. 

What does “better” look like?

The goals of dealing with these issues are to move from coping with symptoms to addressing their causes. We do not want to just manage your anger, but for you to not get angry in the first place. By understanding your emotions and hearing what they have to say, you have the option to be in the driver’s seat more of the time. As you understand your needs and wants, it will become easier to express these in a way that builds connection instead of driving isolation. 

Understanding your sense of meaning and purpose crafted in your past, will give you the power to author those things for the future. Examining the “shoulds” of your life will create the option to decide what is truly important to you and who you want to be. As the intentional author of your own story, you will find increased moments of peace and gratitude for your life. Having learned these skills, you will create more moments of satisfaction. By having better insight into the forces that drive, you will have the control that you seek, instead of simply reacting. 

By confronting our fears and doubts, we can understand them, accept them, and be more fully ourselves. The great irony of vulnerability is that we see it as a weakness in ourselves but often as a strength in others. The courage to be vulnerable is one of the greatest strengths a man can possess. My hope is we can take this journey together to find that strength in you so that you can become the man you want to be.