Men, Emotions, and Mental Health Myths

Why are we doing this? We’re doing this to help you understand what we do!

We talked about a few things—your hair, your kids—but really, what we’re diving into is what it’s like to work in mental health, and more specifically, how men experience emotions and masculinity.

That’s the heart of the conversation, because it’s so misunderstood.

Mental health challenges aren’t always disorders. They can be emotional or situational issues, and there’s a lot of misconception around what it means to get help. We’re here to clear some of that up.

We want to break the myths and stigma. People often think it’s scary or feel afraid to reach out. As we mentioned in one of our videos, we want to be more approachable.

Let us make it easier—less intimidating—to come in and learn. Learn about you!
Not knowing yourself is like not knowing the third floor of your own house. If you don’t understand your emotions and where they come from, you miss out on vital information about who you are.

Quick recap from last week:
We touched on three negative emotions people often avoid or don’t know how to handle: anger, neediness, and sadness.

Say it with us: Anger, neediness, sadness are not bad things!
They’re not bad feelings.

We always talk about how people try to hide these emotions. Many believe they shouldn’t feel them at all—and that belief is often the root of emotional struggles.

We see this a lot. I even wrote a post about it recently that got some attention. While we see these patterns in both men and women, there are some key differences.

Here’s how I’d sum it up:
In our society, there’s still a stigma that makes it hard for men to express emotions while maintaining a sense of masculinity.

Women have come a long way in their ability to emote. It’s always been more socially acceptable for women to express feelings, but historically, we struggled with aggression.

Back in the day—before you were born, in the “Dark Ages”—women were expected to be passive. But we’ve come a long way. Now women are in the workforce, winning gold medals, joining sports teams. We’ve bridged the gap between aggression and emotional expression.

Men, however, haven’t caught up in terms of expressing emotions while still feeling masculine.

That’s why we’ve devoted so much of our work to executive men with relationship challenges. Society has made it even more complicated for them. Men are encouraged—and rewarded—for being aggressive in the workplace. But at home, that same aggression causes problems. If they’re passive, they struggle to express what they truly want or need.

Men, emotions, mental health myths, and misconceptions—this is a real issue.

With women, emotional challenges often show up differently. You might be surprised, but many women struggle with neediness.

Even though the stereotype paints women as needy, many of the women I’ve spoken to believe neediness is a bad thing. They try to please everyone—family, friends, partners—without considering their own needs.

They don’t realize it’s okay to be needy. Everyone has needs. We’re supposed to need others. That goes against the old stereotype where women were encouraged to be passive and dependent—like the husband had to take care of the wife.

Now, we’re seeing women who feel uncomfortable expressing needs, even though we know it’s normal.

Women are great at emoting, but anger is often a conflict for them—especially anger toward their children. They feel it’s not feminine or “right” to express anger.

Men, on the other hand, are often terrified that their anger will turn physical. That’s a key difference. I don’t see that fear in women as much. Men worry that if they admit to feeling anger, they’ll lose control and hurt someone.

They think anger goes from zero to a hundred instantly.

Why? Because that’s what they’ve seen growing up.
“When my dad got angry, he got angry.”

So they internalize the idea that anger is uncontrollable. They don’t realize that anger can be expressed in healthy ways. They’re identifying with their fathers—thinking, “I’ll be like him.” But what they saw was just the tip of the iceberg.

Their fathers likely buried emotions until they exploded. They missed the whole preamble.

We have to teach men that it’s the opposite:
If you don’t deal with anger, that’s when you explode.
But if you address it as it comes, you won’t reach that boiling point. You won’t lose control.

I still remind myself of that every day.

That’s why we’re here—to make this process easier to understand. Wouldn’t it be amazing if every person truly understood what we understand?

Thanks for joining us again today!
If you have any questions or comments, please call us at 757-340-8800.