Happy Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month! Much of my content focuses on women’s mental health and experiences however I do work with men as well and very much enjoy doing so. One of my favorite parts about working with men is being able to create a safe space that allows them to tune into their emotions, recognize their highly sensitive nature, or express their big emotions without shame, as we live in a society that doesn’t typically support these experiences for men.
I can’t remember the first time I was taught that men typically don’t show emotion. I’m sure it came up throughout my education, but I really got to experience first hand in my five years working at Juvenile Hall. Day after day young men between 13 and 23 would tell me that they were raised to hide emotion as it was a sign of weakness. Colleagues trained me on the importance of addressing this belief system with the kids, and it was a huge part of anger management groups, substance use groups, and processing trauma. The only acceptable emotion to show for these young men was anger.
Any therapist will tell you that anger is often the second emotion to arrive on the scene and the tip of the iceberg if you will. There are hundreds of visual aids that therapists use to illustrate to their clients that below the surface of anger are much deeper and vulnerable feelings like embarrassment, shame, fear, betrayal, and pain to name a few. Instead of being taught how to name and manage these emotions, men have generally been shown in a variety of ways that if they embrace the above mentioned feelings they are displaying weakness and vulnerability and it will be used against them and threaten their sense of masculinity. As Robert Smith of The Cure would say, “boys don’t cry.” Which persists into real men don't cry.
As it turns out, this societal preference toward male stoicism and aggression has had lasting negative impacts. We have only recently recognized the importance of making sure children receive education about emotion identification and regulation outside the home. Because of this, so many children were previously only taught what was taught or role modeled in their family of origin (if anything), and little boys especially were left with harsh ideals that shamed them into repressing as much emotion as possible for the sake of masculinity, and to display anger and aggression to show strength. This has contributed to a huge assortment of social and emotional problems for all genders. Unmanaged anger leads to hostility, aggression, and violence. The inability to deal with intense emotions that arise in relationships such as fear, jealousy, insecurity, and the need for connection lead to estrangement, infidelity, and even abuse. And if a man is actually deeply feeling, perhaps highly sensitive, these issues are all amplified.
Societally, we equate being highly sensitive with weakness. What a tragic misconception! Although it can feel quite burdensome and isolating at times, being highly sensitive is a special gift that allows people to have a deeper experience of life and the world around them. Despite what years of social scripting, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy have taught the masses, sensitivity is not a gendered trait and it doesn’t make a person inherently weak. It is true that Highly Sensitive People are more prone to overstimulation, burn out, and being overwhelmed, but this must be taken into consideration with a comparison of how much more stimuli they are taking in than the average non-sensitive person. In short, if everyone absorbed as much stimuli as Highly Sensitive People (HSP) do, they would also be overstimulated, overwhelmed, and/or get burnt out! By understanding this, we can then see this trait as a strength that allows the communal group to process more information in a shorter amount of time than it would be able to without the HSP. What an individual and collective strength indeed.
The general public has finally started to see the value in normalizing a wide range of emotional experiences for men and encouraging them to express any emotion freely, even with tears. Those in relationships with men want an emotionally available, supportive, and compassionate partner. Individuals hoping for parenthood want their co-parent to role model healthy expression and management of emotions and have the bandwidth to deal with whatever challenges parenthood brings. Societally we want to see less violence and increase community safety. This cannot happen without supporting the emotional needs of men and giving them the tools and resources they need to develop emotional literacy and intelligence. Emotion is at the heart of true connection. Let’s celebrate men embracing connection.
Happy June!
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