Would more men be open to going to therapy if they had resources tailored specifically for them, and if the office had Emotional Support Animals for appointment use?
I am an actual licensed therapist and while there are a number of real actual creating barriers specific to men pursuing mental health treatment there are a few factors I’ve consistently seen that are ubiquitous across gender, race, sexuality, class, etc
Money, time, availability
Therapy is inaccessible. I am a therapist who mostly works with insurance companies. They pay me about 100-115/hr. My clients will often have a high deductible health plan which means they need to pay this $100-115 per session until they hit their deductible, which can be 5,000+ dollars. It’s a lot to ask someone to pay $100+ weekly. On top of that they still usually have a responsibility afterwards of (typically) 10-30% so $10-34.5 per meeting which is still a notable weekly cost for many people on the high end especially after shelling out $400+ a month for months on end.
Other clients have PPO insurance which is a fixed cost per meeting but this can vary wildly. More affluent clients have excellent PPOs where they might pay $10-20 per meeting which is not terrible. But that’s rare. We are often covered under the “specialist” copay and many PPO plans have tiered provider coverage now. So a copay for me might be $50 or more per meeting (the worst I saw was $125 which was absurd because it was actually $27 more than I’d get from the insurer in question).
So you have this on top of these plans taking hundreds of dollars out of each pay check. “Well budget for it”. Hard to do because the need for therapy can be inconsistent and many of these people are coming in fo(and specifically symptoms like poor money management). Then on top of that even if you do budget for it you have the inherent issue that the need for outpatient therapy is often not dire/acute so if something more pressing comes up (eg a serious dental/medical issue, car breaks down, short on rent) therapy might be the corner to cut if it’s already established because in the overwhelming majority of cases you won’t die without it; it will just lower your quality of life (sometimes significantly so)
Then comes the time portion. Even if you can get past the cost barrier you have the availability of the therapist and yourself. I’m a night owl and I work late but many of my colleagues don’t. I’m pretty nontraditional though, no kids and my partner is very career oriented themselves whereas many of my peers tend to value the traditional 9-5 much more so they can be home for their children and such.
So when you go to schedule with someone it’s often that you can only get seen during business hours. It’s one thing when it’s a doctors appointment that you have once every few months that you need to duck out of work for but a weekly hour long engagement is much harder to explain. This brings back in the masculinity issues - many men find this basically impossible to disclose to the workplace and basically wouldn’t even try to get an exception for weekly therapy. Even without explicitly saying so asking for 1 hour open a week consistently for a doctors appointment is going to be perceived as therapy by many. But stigma aside many of us simply can’t do that. I’m on the practitioner side and I know I’ve ignored my own physical health at times because it was inconvenient to schedule doctor appointments during my workday.
Our systems of employment (at least in the USA) simply do not provide or protect for medical leave, even when it’s very brief and especially when you are a low level employee (executives and admins tend to have less of an issue ducking out for doctors appointments in my experience at least). There is no legal right to paid or unpaid time off for medical appointments in the USA and that is completely disgusting in 2023.
The final piece is practitioner availability. I have a waitlist through October at the moment and am not accepting new clients. All of my colleagues are in the same boat. The old practices I used to work at constantly call me to see if I’ll take any referrals because their waitlists are so overloaded. The hospitals and clinics I have referral relationships with email me every week for updates. It’s extremely stressful. Every new client, especially adolescent, complains that they are happy to finally have someone after waiting 3-6 months. Even if someone wants a therapist they have to wait ages. It is not uncommon that I get someone and when I call them to start they say they don’t even remember why they called in the first place.
We need more people doing the work. Or ideally we need to make societal reforms so that there are less people experiencing mental health issues. I’ve been doing this almost 15 years now. I, and anyone who doesn’t exclusively work with the rich, can tell you that a significant degree of what we work with is people who lack resources and not proper mental illness. I mean, it is depression and anxiety, but it’s because they have been paycheck to paycheck for years or theyre under a mountain of student loans or credit card debt and the stress is just too much to bear. And their jobs won’t give them raises and there aren’t any other jobs out there that pay more. Not everyone is a software developer or investment banker that can jump ship to another 6 figure job with cushy benefits. Most people work jobs that pay 40-60k with shit benefits and little upward mobility.
To answer your question more directly:
In my opinion it’s a systemic issue based around that super fun phrase everyone loves, “toxic masculinity”. I personally do not subscribe to gender labels but I am amab/male presenting and get a lot of male clients as a result. Many of them tell me they hide the fact that they are in therapy from everyone but their partner. This is indicative of the problem; that being in therapy is weak. That being in therapy makes them a bitch, a wuss, all kinds of pejorative terms. It’s bad, is my point.
So part of the answer imo is not in having doggies and cool dude stuff in the office. Its far more complex and involves redefining masculinity to still including things like being a lumberjack or carpentry or whatever. From there though you need to shed the part where it means you have to be emotionally numb to everything, constantly display strength, embrace the fucked up misrepresentation of stoicism that has you shove all your feelings into your stomach, and glorify anger, rage, and violence as the only appropriate means of emotional expression.
this could also be extended to the stigma surrounding therapy itself and the tendency to associate therapy need with weakness. This is an issue that goes beyond therapy though; there are people who won’t see medical doctors for the same reason even though they’re in physical pain. Our pride is our downfall.
Tldr make therapy cheap and accessible, make protections for workers to seek medical care, increase the amount of practitioners (or decrease the need for them), and systemic reform to the societal concept of masculinity and pride. So probably gonna take awhile
This was quite simply the greatest ‘not rant’ I’ve read in a long time. Really well reasoned and I completely agree (although, in New Zealand we don’t suffer from nearly as much pressure).
One of the things that really keeps me repelled by conventional therapy in business hours is not just the time out from work, but it’s the emotional hangover that lasts hours or days in some cases. Fuck trying to pokerface my way through that one - one drop of verbal praise and it’ll be the ugly waterworks all over again…
God, emotional hangover, that puts it so well. I did three sessions and I was a complete wreck the whole week after the 2nd and for a few days after the 3rd. My therapist is now taking an extended leave of absence and I don’t know if I have it in me to try again.
This is a fantastic response, and it’s good to see someone taking a practical view of time/money/availability concerns.
One aspect I haven’t seen raised much is a slightly subtler parsing of the whole masculinity thing. Perhaps it’s generational (I’m genx), perhaps it’s cultural (I’m not from the US), but I think perceived weakness is a misreading of the motivation, or perhaps even a more-acceptable out, for many guys.
Perhaps this might give someone out there an angle they find useful, who knows?
A chunk of it from my perspective, and as best I can gather for a lot of guys I know, isn’t about being seen as a pussy, it’s just… my problem to deal with, not something anyone else has control over or responsibility for, any more than they can go pee for me when I need to. The anxiety here isn’t jocks kicking sand in your face, it’s the sitcom dad asking what the hell you expect him to do about it, idiot.
It’s associated with and caused by cultural gender norms and the way we’re raised, but I think it’s a misleading oversimplification to suggest that it’s just about not appearing masculine enough. It’s not about being ‘man enough’ to tough it out, it’s that as men, they’re taught that the only resource they have is themselves.
And a second major facet is that for a lot of guys, losing control of their emotions in and of itself represents painful catastrophic failure. While guys definitely get punished and shamed for displaying vulnerability, the flipside of that is that they tend to rely on the resulting rigidity for refuge and protection. But especially since they get no opportunity to practice controlled, minor release of negative emotions, that protection is all or nothing; one good crack and the entire structure collapses. And that’s not the cathartic but ultimately healing purge people think of it as, but rather a terrifying, traumatic and destructive breakdown of everything that’s holding them together. And most guys I know would no more put themselves in that harm’s way than they’d shove their arm down a garbage disposal.
Again: caused by shitty gender norms, but the connection isn’t the one people usually paint. We’re no longer told during our upbringing that boys don’t cry; that’s a horrible relic of the bad old days. Instead boys are told that only babies cry. Crying isn’t feminised, it’s infantilised. The shame associated is not due to being inadequately male, but inadequately adult (but only if you’re male). This of course does women no favours; when men see crying in women as accepted and encouraged, what they hear is that women must be fundamentally infantile on some level themselves.
If we want to see better emotional resilience in men specifically, and better use of mental health resources by men, I think the most effective change would be a cultural shift creating a safer environment in which they can be vulnerable. There’s no use telling men that they should be vulnerable, in a society that will just hurt them for it; the ground needs to be prepared first. That means a hard, critical look at gendered expectations around emotional expression in children, and a significant change to how they’re raised. It means treating phrases like ‘man-baby’, ‘man-flu’ and ‘male tears’ as toxic and offensive on par with racial slurs, and a bunch of surrounding attitudes treated like the ingrained racism of boomer grandparents.
It’d be really nice if we could stop telling people how to do their gender altogether, and stop using gender-compliance as a proxy for admirable character traits. Every time well-meaning people promote the notion that Real Men Are (generous / honest / hardworking / etc.), they’re pushing the converse, that insufficiently-masculine people are (mean / shifty / lazy / etc.), and that makes the whole problem worse, not better.
This is pretty much what I meant by that fucked up misinterpretation of stoicism
Like you have the actual Aurelius stoicism which has some very good value; everyone should read meditations once or twice. But then it’s been cliff notes’d and perverted by a bunch of people into to lose the message entirely from “be in control of your emotions” to what you’ve described: horrific rigidity to keep it all in at all times until of course it doesn’t work anymore and you break down spectacularly. Like somehow the message has gone from “control” to “emotional numbness”
A similar dynamic has happened with nihilism where some the writings on it are not so bleak and terrible; that it is an expression of freedom. But over the years it’s been perverted into nothing matters, why bother
reminds me of this
There is no legal right to paid or unpaid time off for medical appointments in the USA and that is completely disgusting in 2023
Does FMLA not cover this? I had a coworker that was able to use that to call off basically whenever they wanted because their doctor put in for it due to stress.
FMLA is unpaid leave. This is a major oversimplification, but it’s so an employee can take an extended leave from work and return to their job afterwards. And even though it’s unpaid, there are still a lot of limitations on it.
Maybe the company I work for is going above and beyond then and just calling it that because there’s definitely a paid version of FMLA I’ve seen people use. Even for shorter periods and intermittent health problems.
Maybe the company I work for is going above and beyond then and just calling it that
That’s what it sounds like to me. Well, actually, it just sort of sounds like your company is calling normal paid sick leave “FMLA”. It’s nice to have, regardless of what it’s called, and very sad that it’s not a given everywhere.
That’s for long term medical leave, like if you need to go to rehab. I mean for being able to go to like a single hour long doctors appointment. There is no protection for that whatsoever. If you need to go to a doctors appointment during work hours your boss has every right to tell you to go fuck yourself; you are not entitled to time off for a doctors visit even if it’s unpaid
Therapy is never a cure. If you have a problem then therapy can help you confront it and deal with it, but if we have a massive society-wide mental health crisis it will not be solved by each man individually seeking therapy.
We need meaning in our lives, something worth dedicating ourselves to, and the means to pursue it. Mercenary capitalism won’t provide that.
In short, I don’t see an answer. I think it will get worse.
Addendum:
Most importantly, this new wave of mental health problems is not caused by a new wave of “not being vulnerable.” It’s a societal issue and must be confronted there, not shunted onto each individual man.
Therapy gives you the tools to help achieve that. You are completely underestimating it.
If it’s one big cause that applies to millions, then no, individual therapy cannot fix that massive problem.
Yeah that’s true. There’s just not enough therapists.
Even if there were enough therapists, and even if they could actually help, you’re still talking about fixing mental problems instead of preventing them.
It does prevent them if caught earlier. There are many that are simply incurable so idk your point.
If these mental problems arise from the living conditions of the masses, no amount of therapy can prevent them. Many that seem incurable might just be failing to escape psyche-wrecking situations.
Do you wanna cure cancer, solve global warming, and solve global hunger too while you’re at it? Yeah I’d love to live in a magical perfect world too.
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I can’t afford hundreds of dollars an hour, and if I could I’d be in a vastly better place anyway.
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I see thinking as something I do, not something that happens to me. As such, my inner Red Forman takes a deep fucking breath at the idea of paying someone else to tell me well don’t do that then.
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My goals would involve the damage not being done in the first place. My coping skills in the face of what did happen, I’m honestly pretty impressed with. Unless you’ve got a time machine and a shotgun, there’s not a lot you can offer me.
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Some support would be nice, but the suggestion that being angry about the harm done to me is a flaw on my part that needs fixing… rankles, you know? (and at the same time, validation-as-a-service would be as empty and downright masturbatory as extracting an apology from an AI)
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Dog-as-a-service, heck yeah. I don’t really want to pay psych prices or go get my soul flayed as a condition of entry, though.
This is actually very interesting and gets at the heart of the problem in many different ways. Very true that there’s a money barrier that excludes some that might be most in need of services. There needs to be a more focused effort on providing assistance to those who need it at reduced rates or with additional insurance help.
But the bigger problem still remains with helping men (and women frankly, but moreso men) to understand what therapy/counseling is and is not. For years psychologists have been naming symptoms and diagnosing individuals with such and such disease or shortcoming on the part of the individual. Just like everything in the corporate world, they rely on statistics and numbers to come up with definitions for problems and for solutions.
I’m currently enrolled in a master’s program to obtain my licensing for professional counseling, and I can tell you that the attitude on that is finally starting to bend. I hear what you’re saying about not wanting therapy to simply be a self-affirmation circle-jerk because it doesn’t feel helpful to be told how wonderful you are by a person just to be knocked right back down again in a real-world experience.
But beneath even your resistance there’s still an admission that support can be helpful. In my personal opinion, I think counseling/therapy is a purposeful space to open up about experiences and feelings that you wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to express. Talking to yourself or talking to animals is helpful, but simply being able to unburden your thoughts to another human being that doesn’t know you and won’t judge you (or at least… they’re paid not to judge you) for your opinions or past mistakes can be a hugely beneficial step towards true healing.
Ultimately no counseling or therapy techniques can be effective until you decide they can be. It’s about helping to reframe your thoughts in ways you might not have considered, and it’s also meant to give you useful tools for coping with feelings both now and in the future. Successful counseling is one in which the client feels comfortable and confident about how to deal with the hardest parts of human existence.
More needs to be done to educate people about what they can expect from counseling so they can make their own decisions about whether or not it would be useful to them. Being able to word vomit my insecurities with a stranger for an hour is surprisingly uplifting and helps me clear my head towards whatever’s coming next.
the suggestion that being angry about the harm done to me is a flaw on my part that needs fixing…
If the day ever comes when you would prefer not being angry about the past, when you would prefer to embrace joy on a daily basis, then and only then would therapy be worthwhile. As long as you’re not lashing out at others with your anger, then only you, alone, are being hurt by your anger.
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One reason I dont want to do therapy is simple paranoia. Anything you tell your therapist can be subpoenad by a court. That alone is enough to keep me from trusting a therapist with anything of substance.
That said, anything in my life that might motivate me to do something that would land me in court is probably something I should see a therapist about.
Truth is, I’m unlikely to do anything that would land me in court, so I should probably see a therapist about this paranoia.
Maybe you’re really a bit paranoid. I don’t think those doctors will give away your secrets easily. They’ll fight and have a lawyer on their own and try to make it impossible. Their job demands trust from their patients.
And the court isn’t supposed to ignore your rights either, unless it somehow fits the crime. So you should be completely fine if it’s some lesser crime dealing with drugs, stealing or something like that.
And isn’t this hearsay anyways?
This may change if somebody’s life is on the line. But then you’re probably really a criminal and deserve to be prosecuted.
Still, you could ask your therapist not to write anything down. There is nothing to be requested if it doesn’t exist in the first place.
(Maybe there are a few exceptions nowadays since this culture war in the US took off.)
I am a man who has been to therapy a few times during my life. I’ll not try to sell it as a be all, end all solution but it can be helpful.
At least as helpful was a men’s support group that I went to while divorcing.
I think the bottom line is that men need to connect with men and talk things out sometimes. However you do that, with friends, at a support group or with a therapist does not really matter. Male isolation is real and that is what we as a society should be very concerned about.
Therapy costs money. There aren’t really enough therapists in the market to get help to everyone that needs it, so the resources are “rationed” to people that have the most money. Even if the resources were tailored towards men (and I’m unclear how taht would be different from any other patient-centered therapy?), unless more men had the resources to pay for therapy, it’s not likely to make a difference.
Moreover, as someone else said, many of the things that are causing anxiety and depression in general–not just in men–are not things that can be solved with therapy. Therapy can’t make you feel better about climate collapse, for instance, or seeing your ability to afford housing spiraling out of control.
In this economy?
In the US I feel like it’s just as much of an issue of access as it is, perhaps, a stigma that you “aren’t a man” if you go to therapy.
Therapy is expensive, and health care doesn’t always cover it.
The US government can find little space guys, but they can’t find me a good affordable healthcare plan.
The thing is, no one has to know you’re going to therapy. You don’t have to tell anyone and your therapist shouldn’t be talking about you either.
“Where were you? Why do you need time off every single week? Aren’t you going to the dentist a lot? Are you seeing someone else?” People like bosses and spouses don’t take kindly to “my whereabouts are none of your business.”
Often it really is none of their business.
Your employer should not have to know anything more than that you have a medical appointment. Any more is none of their business.
If you don’t want to tell your spouse that you’re seeing a therapist, your spouse may have issues to deal with and your relationship may also need a therapist. But it should be possible to go during work and they should never know.
Best wishes, my friend.
The reason I don’t go to therapy is because of the expense and the horror stories I’ve heard from people I know trying to make appointments and find a good one. My job actually has a free counseling service we can use but everyone I know who tried it says it’s an absolute joke.
As for emotional support animals, I have a dog at home, having one in the office would just be a distraction.
Most of my problem and the dudes I talk to os that we don’t see a way forward to actually improve our lives. We’re stuck in a dead end financially while everything just gets more and more expensive.
Disclaimer at the beginning, my reply is purely anecdotal and based on my own life and experiences. I can’t speak for everyone else.
I really don’t think that talk therapy is best suited for most men. Men don’t process emotions, conflict, or fears in the same way that women do. We have been shaped differently by societal norms, and don’t have the same foundation to process our issues simply by talking about them. We have been taught to shut up and deal with situations on our own. Talking about our struggles and asking for help is a sign of weakness, and even if we manage to ask for help, the chances that we will truly open up are slim.
Again, I can only really speak for myself, but for talk therapy to truly be effective it has to be more than just talk. We need a foundation; maybe starting with something like cognitive behavioral therapy to give us the tools to understand how to process our emotions would be a good start. Men are taught to understand and explore only a small handfull of emotions. Anger, jealousy, fear, happiness, and if we’re lucky, love.
I personally have had to do a lot of work on my own self, and my own understanding of my emotional landscape, just to begin to be able to open up. I can honestly say that even if I had spoken with a therapist - and I have had the opportunity to do so - that it probably wouldn’t have been useful to me, at least not in the past. Maybe now it would be useful to talk to a therapist, but in working on myself I feel that I have also learned to move past many of my own issues, or at the very least am on the right path to be able to handle them on my own.
Anyway, that’s my two cents.
So I honestly believe that therapy for men would look vastly different…
It would be a gym, or an auto shop, or woodworking shop where you can work with your hands while you talk about it. You’re entirely right, men deal with it differently, and the biggest thing we do differently is that we talk while DOING something rather than just sitting on a couch.
Open a wood shop where I can spend an hour a week building a shitty spice rack while talking to someone about my issues, etc…
Anyways, I have done plenty of regular therapy, but I can see why many men struggle with it
Animals might be a nice feature, but if that is the selling point of the session ibdoubt much will come of it.
Therapy that tries to have me accept the fucked up state of the world is a non starter.
I would rather die than participate, enable, or support a corrupt and mal-guided society.
Honestly i do not think there is any hope for me. I can not trust anyone, so therapy isnt going to work. The only way for me to escape is death.
I mean, you don’t have to accept the current state of the world as good or natural because of therapy But you’d probably have to accept the state of the world is currently happening and that should be accepted because, well, it is, regardless of good or bad.
Honestly, the world seems like it’s always been a brutal place. Nature is fucked and most things die being eaten alive. With all it’s flaws, society is still far better than the jungle.
The goal of therapy is not really to convince you society is our only real choice and therefore it’s good. A therapist would probably be able to suggest healthy ways you can participate in your community that gives your energy against the corruption of society a positive outlet that can help you participate in making a difference, instead of feeling helpless or engaging in potentially negative thought and behaviour spirals.
Give it a try homie, talking things out with a professional can give you perspective of your own opinions and how they are formed, and how to process them in a way that is helpfu to you specificallyl.
It sounds like maybe you don’t want to accept something that might suggest your opinions or beliefs on society may not be 100% correct, or that someone trying to shift your perspective is a personal attack or judgement or manipulation - which doesn’t sound healthy.
Therapy isn’t some trick, it should help you understand and accept your own limits as a human, healthy boundaries with others, how to begin trusting people or how to identify those who are more likely to be trustworthy, and give you better understanding of your own agency and how to let go of things that are beyond your control, or individual abilities to influence/change.
No amount of therapy with teams of the world’s greatest therapists will matter if you don’t want to understand and grow into a better version of yourself though!
My life is evidence hunanity is evil by nature, deed, and desire.
I have been exploited and betrayed by family, friend, coworker, teammate, manger, etc.
There is no one i trust in this world because everyone i did trust, broke that trust to steal from me.
I have no desire to help or enable such a species.
Humanity has shown me its true nature, and my concious soul is revolted.
Death is the only way to move beyond the pain, suffering, and evil of this existence.
Even if you have been greatly wronged by everyone you trust, that doesn’t necessarily mean you were ever even around trustworthy people. So personal experience may feel like the only reality or truth but once you realize that it’s only true specifically for you and only up to this point, you might be able to understand its not a universal rule or experience.
There’s so much to experience beyond pain, loneliness, distrust and suffering (outside of incurable medical pain)
It does exist and it is available to you, but when anyone has their trust destroyed beyond repair multiple times it will take work to let the pain go and look inward and forward to get what you want out of life.
For all I know, you’re the asshole in everyone else’s life and you blame them for breaking your trust - or you are a complete victim who has been taken advantage of every step of the way and it’s impossible to conceive of a person existing who isn’t working every angle to take advantage of you.
You do have agency and you can control how you think and feel about most things. It sounds like you are convinced that life only exists in a single, permanent, unchangeable state - and if you don’t attempt any change in this perspective it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
But once you realize the control you can exert over these thoughts and perspectives you’ll hopefully realize that despite other people, when you’re an adult life is what you make of it, not what it makes of you.
It does take monumental, constant effort. Especially compared to how easy it is to give up/admit defeat/believe things are permanent and unchangeable. Doubly so if that’s the mental state you’re already in.
Therapy can give you the tools to climb the mountain, but it’s not gonna move your arms and legs up the mountain for you.
I look around and its not worth it.
Humanity is a crude and barbaric species. It was a mistake for my soul to inhabit this vile creature.
And if IATA, even more reason for me to off myself.
Ive been patient, waiting for justice, waiting for people to realize exactly what kind of society their behaviors are manifesting. No such luck.
If anything people are naturally drawn into a rhetoric (sic.) based tribal facism.
And humanity will inevitably disrupt a peaceful equilibrium for their own gain.
I’d rather not be part of that.
Have a problem? Go into therapy. Now you have two problems!
You are now poor too.
I’d be interested in petting doggos and hanging out if that’s what you mean by tailored, but not any traditional therapy. Going affects my employment opportunities, which I care about far more than my mental health. If I wanted to not suffer everyday of my life I’d shift my priorities, expectations, push my boundaries or off myself. Since I haven’t done those things yet, things must be fine enough.
I would have a very bad opinion of any version of myself that was happy or content while being aware of all the terrible things we human beings get up to.
The only way I could be convinced to genuinely engage with therapy is if I thought it’d achieve some material goal of mine like making more money. Proving some positive correlation in earnings or attainment of things that men normally want with therapy would probably help. I’d reluctantly go and commit completely if I thought it’d significantly improve the likelihood of achieving my current or future goals. No dogs necessary at that point, just data.
What would it mean to you to tailor resources specifically to men? How would they differ from resources available to everyone generally?
Most men, myself included are so emotionally stunted that before we even begin to go through therapy we literally need to be taught how to feel.
need to be taught how to feel.
And before that you’d need to convince a lot of us that that would be more useful than the current situation.
Thats something I didn’t even realize was a problem until you just said it. Ive gone through a lot of emotional development and therapy and Im still not completely convinced the old way wasn’t better.
It probably comes partly out of the social dynamic that causes the tendency to value men primarily by their usefulness rather than who they are personally. Feeling gets in the way of me getting shit done, earning money to support my family, etc., so I turn feelings off, mostly. I could turn them back on and learn to manage them and whatnot, but if that doesn’t make it easier for me to earn money, fix the house, etc., or worse, actively gets in the way of those things by taking more of my work time or making it harder for me to want to do those things, then I don’t have an incentive to be genuinely emotionally connected.
Also, evident confidence in one’s ability to handle shit helps to make dependents feel happier and safer, so experiencing uncertainty, fear, and other such emotions tends to act against one’s own interest in getting shit done and avoiding drama that distracts from shit getting done.
So yeah, it’s kind of a question of ‘who do you want to be?’. Personally, I put a fair bit of effort into suppressing ‘negative’ emotions (fear, uncertainty, sadness, envy) and try to encourage positivity (curiosity, joy, whatever the word for the opposite of envy is (ChatGPT says ‘mudita’, vicarious joy). I figure this tends to blunt some of the more subtle and nuanced emotional states since I’m kind of artificially managing the states, but it is a practice that helps people who depend on me feel stable and safe so they can do the things they want to do, which is important to me.
Compassion is probably the hardest to manage this way, mostly because it is a response to sympathetic feelings of negative emotions. Like, if I see someone who is sad and I am suppressing my sadness emotions this also has a heavy damping effect on my sympathetic sadness which is what usually triggers compassionate behavior. So I have to kind of manually watch for situations where sympathetic responses are appropriate and ease up on the suppression a bit (but not too much) to allow the empathy to kick in.
Men, in general, are perfectly mentally healthy. There are men who suffer from such things as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder–these men require medical treatment for these disorders as much as I require glasses for my myopia. These are medical problems that require medical solutions.
I am not one of those men. I’m one of the many men who operates under a constant layer of depression, anxiety and anger. For men like me, “Therapy” is pretty much a scam. What’s the difference between going to see a “therapist” and going to a fortune teller to read some tarot cards? It costs a lot, insurance won’t pay for it, it takes up a lot of time, and nothing about your situation is ever improved. I’m depressed and anxious and angry because society by and large doesn’t work. The rich are ruining the world for the rest of us out of sheer greed. I’m a widely skilled man, I’m an auto mechanic, a carpenter, a pilot, a programmer…I’ve never had a job that paid all of my bills. And there is nothing.
Nothing.
NOTHING.
NOTHING!!!
that a master’s degree in a tweed jacket can write on a legal pad that will fix that.
“Resources tailored specifically for them” What “resources?” They ain’t got no “resources.” They’ve got a box of tissues and a stack of board games for the neglected/abused children they have to handle. They don’t have a July that isn’t the hottest on record, health insurance that pays for eye glasses, or stable food prices in there.
Talking about “emotional support animals” makes me think that this is a question of marketing. Therapy for MenTM where the therapist wears flannel and a bushy beard with a waxed mustache, the whole place is wood paneled, there’s pictures of axes on the walls, all the furniture is brown leather. Focus groups have shown this is effective for marketing hygiene products, kitchen implements, clothes and alcohol to men, maybe it’ll work for mental health counseling.
Yup.
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100% correct
