As a practising Humanistic Counsellor and Coach, I mostly work with solo business owners around their relationships with stress these days. I help my clients see the unhealthy and unhelpful patterns around busyness; the more, more, more culture. Not the Andrea True song, but the hustle culture of seeking more work, more status, more money. We also work around the dreaded work/life balance metaphor to really underpin what they want to create, exploring their wellbeing alongside integrating the therapeutic depth of counselling with the future-focused goals of coaching.
The reason I moved into this work came not only from working with men but from my experience as a client.
I first started my career as a counsellor in schools. Being a man, the charity I volunteered for had many young men and boys referred to their service and were excited to be able to assign them to a ‘young male counsellor’. I was always told during my training that being a male counsellor would be an advantage. “There aren’t many of you,” I would hear. That was reflected in the room of a dozen trainees where there was one other male.
This wasn’t significant to me early on. I embraced the opportunities. However, what developed over the last four years of private practice was the recognition that something was missing. My male clients tell me over and over again that their experience with therapy was that it didn’t work for them. Their first therapy sessions were uncomfortable, leaving them “feeling worse,” “heavy,” or “depressed.” The pattern I would hear is they would be encouraged to explore how they felt, taken back to earlier memories, and encouraged to explore the emotional experience. They saw avoidance and judgment as a way to protect themselves from returning.
What Traditional Therapy Left Out
What I believe this traditional therapy process left out is the socialisation of men. Typically, boys are taught to be pragmatic about experiences, to move forwards not sit in the feelings. Although we now see more space and encouragement for this emotion-focused approach, there are generations of men who have difficulty accessing it. And this doesn’t just mean the over-50s. I mostly work with men in their 30s and 20s who have received the same type of parenting and socialisation that takes on this pragmatic approach rather than an emotionally socialised one. The “boys don’t cry” era.
I now see this play out as a parent. I have a seven-year-old daughter and watching her grow up through play at the same time as I trained and developed my counselling skills, I’ve noticed one key aspect supported in child development research: we play with boys and girls differently. When we’re playing with dolls in our house, I’m regularly told I’m playing “wrong” and encouraged to play differently. Typically, boys are still given toys around construction, destruction, warfare, superheroes, or group games.
Research bears this out: “Parents typically supply boys with trucks, toy guns, and superhero paraphernalia, which are active toys that promote motor skills, aggression, and solitary play. Daughters are often given dolls and dress-up apparel that foster nurturing, social proximity, and role play.” Similarly, “boys are more active, physical and play in larger spaces than girls. In contrast, girls are more compliant, prosocial and play closer to adults than boys.”
In our house, as I’m sure for many parents reading this, we actively try to encourage a mix of typical masculine and feminine play, building blocks alongside dolls, with no set roles (the girls save the boys equally to the boys saving the girls).
Bringing This Understanding Into the Therapy Room
This is all relevant to how we show up in therapy with a boy, young man, or adult male. It requires bringing genuine curiosity to how emotionally literate they are, how comfortable they are exploring their ‘felt sense’, and how much they want to delve into their past. I typically start with perhaps a more coaching-based approach: What do you want to achieve? This pragmatic, solution-focused style typically resonates with my clients. They feel comfortable with this language, and we gain momentum much faster than if we had started with a question like “How do you feel today?”
The problem with that question is that for many, they don’t know anymore. Through years of suppression, many men have rigid thinking and beliefs around their feelings, creating rules that only allow certain expressions: Fine. Pissed off. Alright. Fed up. Tired.
With a limited emotional vocabulary, men can find they’re on the back foot in therapy within the first five minutes, and then you spend the rest of the session trying to get them to move forward. Well, that’s what I found in my training hours as a counsellor and as a client.
When I tried something different, I was surprised at the depth we could move to. When I parked the direct emotions work and we talked about an outcome or goal, naturally the emotions would emerge, and I could then explore with my client, adding language to the sensations. In schools, they have dedicated staff for this: ELSA, Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (not the character from Disney’s Frozen). Many adults would benefit from this support of being able to articulate their feelings, regulate, and better understand them. So this is typically what we do.
A Familiar Story
A familiar story I work with: A client comes to me frustrated in their work and relationship, finding it difficult to relax or ‘switch off’. The temptation for many of us is to get stuck into the frustration, but if you hold out, I find there’s something magical that happens. Instead, I ask what they want to achieve, what they want to happen. Here we’ll likely hear something along the lines of being more productive, not distracted (being present), enjoying life more, or being able to relax. We then normalise that desire, always vigilant for the shame that can creep in. Just voicing their desire for these sensations could highlight a feeling of failure or weakness, if they’ve been socialised to mask worries, appear strong and independent, and not ask for help.
From here, we pursue the journey of achieving their goal, build the trust along the way, and here we see the opportunity to identify the ‘hurdles of emotion’. Instead of asking “How does that feel?” I ask “What is that feeling?” This simple shift moves the feeling from identity to awareness, and from my experience, my client is more comfortable not only expressing this but exploring deeper. They themselves become more curious. We go down the rabbit hole together. Here is a great space for some to use Plutchik’s Emotion Wheel, either explicitly or subtly, to build the vocabulary of emotion.
Writing this, I’m aware that it can sound like I’m bracketing all men in this category of being emotionally illiterate and unable to express feelings without shame. I don’t believe this is the case, but I do believe we can offer a deeper therapeutic experience for all clients when we consider how a client has been socialised to express their feelings.
Brené Brown has a lovely story about her work on shame. She was at a book signing when a husband and dad who had joined his wife and daughter asked her: “Why didn’t you include men in your work on shame?” She said she didn’t study men, and he responded, “That’s convenient.” He then went on to say that the women in his life preferred him to stay stoic, not vulnerable. Brené went on to research male vulnerability, and she tells it better than I can.
Practices That Work
Some of my favourite practices:
Mirror his emotive language to start. A few clients I had the privilege of working with had backgrounds in the armed forces. They had experienced significant challenges both personally and professionally and all feared the burden of sharing their experiences with me and other therapists. Some of this fear came from experience, I’d later find out. From sharing with previous therapists, they had felt they were too much or their story was too much to share. Part of this came down to the language they used, which was different to how we typically speak to our clients. This would sound like explicit, direct stories, with emotions expressed by expletives and a desire to wrap up the experience swiftly. For me, the reminder here is to see the privilege that the client feels safe enough to share this experience with you. Don’t probe it. Not always easy to do, especially when we’re motivated to nurture our clients and ease suffering.
Reframe “Man Up”. When clients bring up this term, I use ‘compassionate challenge’. We gain a definition where I usually offer two options: Does ‘Man Up’ mean embrace the vulnerability of sharing my experience and being courageous enough to seek help? Or does it mean shutting off that part of you and pushing through no matter the consequences? This reframe has helped me connect deeper with many of my male clients and further our therapeutic work together.
Build self-compassion. Where were you taught how to share your worries? Who modelled that it was okay to feel your feelings? When I use these questions with my clients, it’s no surprise that they have difficulties expressing anxiety, fears, insecurities, or sadness. For many of my clients, they’ve never been shown or taught a healthy way of expressing their emotions. It may instead be excessive exercise, drinking, smoking, any self-destructive behaviour, or expression of aggression (sometimes seen as socially acceptable behaviour in peer groups).
Reflecting on Masculinity
I often wonder, in this era of modern feminism, which I’m all for as a husband, father, brother, and son to incredible women in my life, what is the role of men? How do we navigate masculinity? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I will continue to facilitate space for this exploration in my work, personally and professionally.
