If you are a man and you have come to this site, I offer your both my congratulations and my thanks. Congratulations in that you have found your courage and moved through fear to ask for help from another man. You are seeking to grow and change, and it is inevitable that we need other men as support, mirrors, and mentors in this journey. My thanks in that in seeking to grow you are beginning a process of shedding toxic cultural conditioning that will help yourself and the men in your life to heal. There is a generational and expansive effect to doing men’s healing work. It reaches out to touch your sons, your brothers, your fathers, your friends, and any other men in your life.
Men in our culture are wounded and one of our greatest wounds is our fear of vulnerability. Fear of being vulnerable is akin to fear of castration for many men. Showing what they feel to the people around them is a great fear and if it does happen that they show themselves there is often a great feeling of shame or embarrassment.
Engaging in therapy for men gives you a chance to move towards vulnerability and to practice an open and emotionally real relationship with another man. I have worked for years to undo emotional conditioning in myself and men I have worked with. We have been to taught to be fearless and tough by shutting down our emotions. In the process we have lost the ability to have authentic connection to each other and often in our relationships with family and partners. I used to believe that if I got in touch with what I was feeling and learned how to express I would lose myself and my masculinity in the process. What I have learned in my personal journey and my work with male clients is that with opening to our full self – allowing our emotional life to come forward, be communicated, and received, – we become stronger, more resilient, more flexible, stronger leaders, more empowered and better equipped to be part of a community. Since doing this work myself I have been able to love myself fully and give and receive this love to my wife, my family, and the community I serve. I have felt more whole and more balanced in my life, and been more empowered. The men I have worked with also report this outcome from our work together.
We are afraid of our emotions and the out of control vulnerability that comes with feeling them, precisely because we have not opened to them. Part of the work is learning how to relate to our emotions, how to feel them, what they are telling us. Our emotions only feel vulnerable and comprising because we have not listened for so long. Our emotional process is a powerful area of healing, strength, and wisdom – particularly when balanced by our logical reasoning mind. For most men the logic side is strong, in many cases too much so, and the work is more in learning how to feel and experience and know ourselves emotionally. Therapy is often the best way to know ourselves in this way and to heal, as it is a relational process and most of our wounding occurred in relationship.
Welcome and thanks for checking out this site. You have taken a step on an exciting and transformative journey.