Why Men Struggle with Their Emotions
"Boys are still often taught to separate from their feelings.
As is the case with many men, it’s always been hard for me to know what I’m feeling. I would observe my behavior and from there try to deduct what’s going on inside me. I believe this difficulty might have played a role in my choice to be a therapist. Clinical training has taught me firsthand how to better recognize, own, and verbalize my feelings.
Covert male depression
An important source of understanding this phenomenon is Cambridge, Mass. psychotherapist Terry Real. His seminal book, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, describes how boys endure the “loss of the relational”—being forced to separate from their feelings and their mothers on the way to becoming “men.” They learn to turn away from their fathers and their own pain toward work, money, success, sex, drugs, and other distractions. They covertly experience depression, which manifests mostly as numbness, boredom, apathy, limited emotional range, and cynicism.
When I begin talking to such men about covert depression, they initially display surprise at the idea of depression but then quickly feel validated and understood. Their partner’s eyes light up as a new empathic discourse starts to emerge. Normalizing the emotional struggle of men helps the partners join forces to heal the hidden depression.
Permission to feel
Accompanying the covert depression is another crucial phenomenon—what’s officially labeled normative male alexithymia. The American Psychological Association defines it as ”a subclinical form of alexithymia found in boys and men reared to conform to traditional masculine norms that emphasize toughness, teamwork, stoicism, and competition and that discourage the expression of vulnerable emotions.”
The inability to feel or describe emotions—considered normative among men—was what these men (and I) have been suffering from all these years. The fact that it’s normative doesn’t mean that it's natural or good. In fact, boys are born just as sensitive as girls. But through the socialization process, boys lose permission to feel and become disconnected from their core.
So you want to feel?
Feeling is natural. We’re born feeling. But disconnection from feelings is often imposed on boys. Here are some useful suggestions for those wanting to overcome the imposed emotional handicap.
Choose to see that feelings are what make us human. The unique human essence is emotional. Therefore, if you want to enjoy life to its fullest, you must dare to feel the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Expand your emotional range. The wider your emotional range, the livelier you’ll be.
Choose to believe that the key to your joy is in your pain, so open yourself to the darker shades of emotions as well as the lighter ones.
Understand that joy is a verb, and therefore must be consciously practiced in order to rewire your brain and inscribe it in your life.
If you do all this, you’ll feel free in your relationships, because after all, love is to feel free."
*I've always wondered why we tell little boys to "stop crying" when they are upset. We don't tell this to little girls as often as it's told to little boys. As they get older, they begin to become cold to the world and aren't able to effectively express their emotions. Being "manly" doesn't mean not feeling how you feel. We need to change the stigma of men's mental health.*
If you are a male, do you feel as though that you were taught to hide your emotions? What can you do to help recover from this?
#Stigma #Men'sMentalHealth #Emotions
Awesome post! This is all too true. The downside though is that young girls reinforce "alexithymia" behaviors when they choose to mingle and date boys with those behaviors. Young girls call boys weak, sensitive, emotional etc. etc. Frankly, young people aren't going to make "correct" decisions. Everyone is going to conform to what they believe is desirable to their peers, and those that "fail" to achieve that success will live with the internalized shame of not being able to be desirable. We may teach our young boys how to be in touch with their feelings, but if they aren't reinforced by their peers then it's for naught. Those teachings will be extinguished by adolescence.
@AmbivalentGrin I totally agree! It's definitely a combination of society and family pressures. If they conflict, then boys may struggle with how to actively express their emotions. Thanks for your insight!😊
Yes definitely. Emotions weren't allowed in our house. Any crying and you would be asked if you wanted a reason to cry. I struggle every day with emotions. Questioning what I'm allowed to feel. If what I feel is the right way to feel. Those lessons have caused me to push everything down and deny and ignore what I feel but they do show up in unhealthy and unexpected ways. It's made it hard to reach out for help with anything. Therapy has helped alittle but it's still a big struggle and I spend alot of my time numb to everything
Thank you for shedding some light on this :)
@mytwistedsoul I'm really sorry that you had to grow up in an environment in which emotions weren't really allowed to be expressed. It seems that a lot of families raised their children like this, but hopefully we are moving into a more accepting time period :) I am proud of you for working through all of this!
@fruityPond7887 Thank you :) It's slow going though
@mytwistedsoul There's no rush! Take your time and you'll get there!
@fruityPond7887
I completely agree with what this article says, thank you for sharing! I think it is very important for boys to be able to express their emotions freely when growing up and there is definitely stigma surrounding the men's mental health that might be blocking their proper emotional development.
@globalBraid3744 I agree with that! I would be very curious to see if any research has been done on boys' emotional development and I would also be interested to see if there are differences with different cultures!
@fruityPond7887
I have read some research on the emotional development of boys. This one was quite interesting: https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct03/boys. This one is about emotional expression in children and gender differences: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3597769/. However, I think there is a lack of studies about how exactly suppression of crying impacts young boys.
@fruityPond7887
This post really hit, the stigma is unbearable at times Amazing post
@KyleBorg I am sorry to hear that the stigma is hard to work through sometimes. I can imagine it's not easy if you are a male to express your emotions. Many people still feel that men should be "manly" and it's not fair.
@fruityPond7887
Feelings makes you weak, if you show you care, they'll just walk all over you, whining is a turn off for women, its best to shut off the feelings or bottle them up, ever be vulnerable to anyone, you are bound to get hurt, stop trying to make this seem like an abnormality, we shut it off because feeling them is more scary, it can push you off the edge or spiral you into darkness, our escapes are the only thing which saves us, nothing else can, of all the things, definitely not feelings.
@mickey2100
That can sometimes be true, but for someone not to care about your feelings simply because of your gender, that's not right in any circumstance. We are all people who deserve to feel all emotions and to express ourselves in the way we want. It may not be attractive to some people, but honestly who cares, as long as you can love yourself and know that you are a good enough person, that can make up tenfold about the people who stay by you as long as you don't show your real self to them. Nothing matters more in life than being real with yourself and being real with the people around you. I know people have gotten hurt through their emotions and people stepping all over them because of them being seen as vulnerable or weak, but it doesn't mean that people can't overcome those adversaries and rise up from their struggles, it's better than just bottling up your emotions until eventually you cave in, and at least then you'll know who really cares about you, and who really wants to be around you.
@MikuoniandBlueCheese This was written perfectly! Thank you for sharing your thoughts!!
@mickey2100 I'm sorry that you've had a bad experience with expressing your feelings. I promise you that there's nothing wrong with expressing them and not all women are going to feel that men expressing their emotions is seen as "whiny." You are allowed to feel the way you feel and you shouldn't beat yourself up over any emotion. It is human!
@fruityPond7887 I am grateful that you wrote this article. It is straight to the point.. take it or leave it. I appreciate your effort. Thank you.
@originalFaith74 Thank you for your kind words! I appreciate you taking the time to read! ❤️
Amazing post!! Thank you so much for speaking on this and raising awareness !!
@safespace22 Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!
@fruityPond7887
This is definitely something people need to be more aware of.
I've got a strange perspective. I'm a guy who was raised being passed around family members - almost all of them female. So, I was very encouraged to show and not hide my feelings... Except by my dad, who just didn't like how I wasn't basically a macho clone of him. I'm glad I didn't waste my life trying to impress him. Still, I ended up falling into the category of men who don't really show emotion. Partly it was a survival thing. Society at large doesn't often care about someone's feelings. But also dealing with messed up circumstances and self-shame. A lot of mine specifically was that I couldn't save someone important to me from something. But I felt I should've been able to, even though I was only 14.
Overall, my addition is this. It's easy for a guy, who's a lover on the inside, to feel like he's forced to be a fighter.
@Torean
" It's easy for a guy, who's a lover on the inside, to feel like he's forced to be a fighter. "
And the damage this does to us, and to others around us, is incalculable.
@InquireWithin Men deserve to express their feelings like everyone else💙
@Torean Thank you so much for sharing. I'm sorry that you had to go through this. Sometimes when we have traumatic events happen in our lives, we shut down our feelings so that we don't need to feel them anymore and I can understand that. I'm sure it's harder when you're a male. Thank you again.
@fruityPond7887
I wonder if it was harder as a male, but probably not. I think it's harder in a different way, a way with a lot of pressure and responsibility.
@Torean Definitely! There are hardships for both genders, but some are easier for one and more difficult for the other and vice versa :)
@fruityPond7887 yes it is true in many cases that boys are conditioned to be tough and divested from their feelings.
It can often take therapy to get back to a place of feeling again. It may involve wading through piles of unprocessed feelings. It can be messy, but there is a way back to being a feeling being.
Never give up, just keep on moving toward the goal. Find people that are open to feelings and do not try to convince others who are committed to the societal "norm".
@soulsings Yes your response is perfect! There is ALWAYS a way back to where we once may have been, but where life has taken a toll. Nothing is ever permanent and we can always work towards new goals <3
@fruityPond7887
This post was amazing.
Even as a woman, I have always wondered why men hide their emotions and think about this side of the socialization process, clarifies a lot!
@grasiela7063 Yes! I think sometimes it can be hard for us women to understand the other perspective because we may be raised so differently, but taking the time to sit down and understand is what's important. We are all different and that's what makes us special!