Counselling for Men
As men, we have had thousands of years of genetic programming & a lifetime of our cultures telling us that we are a certain kind of entity - often that we are invulnerable & invincible, that nothing bad's going to happen to us and that those we love will never die. It's also easier to think that we're in complete control - we don't need anybody to love or to love us and, if someone is close to us, we're somehow in complete control of them. We tend to follow this male stereotype propaganda, because the converse is frightening - that we and those we love will certainly die, that we are vulnerable and needy and that we sometimes cry.
Consequences
As a consequence of the mentality described above; -We tend to become less in touch with our feelings - finding it perhaps difficult to know if we are in danger or perhaps finding it difficult to appreciate moments of joy.
- We might have difficulty establishing loving, reciprocal relationships and so we could get to be quite lonely.
- We might even have a tendency to perpetrate acts of physical, sexual or emotional violence.
- We might develop costly defence strategies In order to stay in control of our inner and outer world - things like alcohol depedency.
- We'd certainly tend to be very reluctant to engage in psychotherapy, because it has an ethos exactly the opposite of machism.
What are the alternatives?
This masculine stereotype has advantages & disadvantages and has had a
mixed press in recent years - mostly negative. But, what are the
alternatives? It's quite difficult finding an emotionally intelligent
masculine way of being. A man who is assertive can so easily be
characterised as being, " a pushy male". A soft and gentle male easily
gets labelled as a wimp and is sometimes bullied in the workplace or at
school. This is one of the reasons why it can sometimes be more
difficult for a man or a boy to be highly sensitive than it is for a
woman. There is probably no easy way to be an emotionally intelligent
man, especially if we've suffered some trauma in childhood.
Perhaps it's best for each one of us to search amidst the male & female
aspects of our inner world and gradually allow our own variety of male
identity to emerge. I have a long and wide ranging experience of working
with difficulties pertinent to men in my work in the NHS, privately and
in the voluntary sector. I offer Jungian psychoanalytic therapy in person walking in the open air in Seaton, Devon. I also work online for anywhere in the world.
Michael Friedrich