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

Link: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-other-side-relationships/202203/why-men-struggle-their-emotions