Having an Emotion: It’s a Guy Thing, Really!

Men and male behaviour can often seem downright incomprehensible, even to us men. Our apparent inability to express emotions, along with our often obsessive fascination with sports, has been the fodder of stand-up comedy and sit-com gags for ages. Most of us will likely have heard partners at some point or another complain that we lack the emotional intelligence to open up and truly bond with them. So what’s really going on when it comes to us men and our feelings?

While men may seem to be simply opting out of outwardly expressing closeness or any of the myriad emotions that humans experience, there are a lot of socio-cultural forces at work that play a role in how we operate in the world. What it means to “be a man” is subtly mapped out in our societies, our communities and often our own families. These social systems tend to discourage men’s awareness of how our emotions actually feel and definitely don’t give us the tools to express our emotions effectively in a healthy manner. 

There’s No Crying In Baseball

Take for instance how boys are often encouraged to take part in competitive sports where tears and fear can commonly be ridiculed. Both boys and girls are socialized to believe that tenderness, empathy, physical demonstrations of care-giving and the ability to have a meaningful conversation with another male are inappropriate expressions of masculinity. The stereotypic ideal male is stoic, shows no pain, shows no fear, never or very rarely cries, is clumsily tender, is quick to anger and acts out. So we grow up with endless signals telling us that pushing our emotions aside is desirable for men.

Due to these socialization effects men often don’t recognize the difference between an emotion and a thought. Most men when asked what they are feeling will say such things as “I am contemplating, I am listening, I am processing what is going on etc.” These are descriptions of thinking not emotions.  

What Does An Emotion Feel Like?

Emotions are often manifested as sensations in the body. For instance, sadness may be experienced as pressure in the eyes and sinuses and a lump in the throat. Meanwhile, anger may be experienced as warmth in the face, heart throbbing and sometimes physical shaking. Grief may feel like an ache in the chest accompanied by watery eyes, while loneliness can feel like an emptiness in the chest. Anxiety or fear could manifest as a tightening of the chest, racing heart, tight throat, racing thoughts, tight stomach and sweating. More enjoyably, happiness and love often feels like a warm glow in the chest and a pleasant upward surge.

These physical sensations alert us that we are feeling a particular emotion and give us information as to the reason.  If a man is not aware of how he feels, how is he going to communicate what is troubling him? 

Living With Unacknowledged Emotions

Emotion is energy, and the effect of holding in energy for a long period of time can lead to physical and mental health problems. Life is one long series of challenges, conflicts, successes and grieving. If we have never felt free to genuinely be aware of, experience and express the emotions that accompany life’s journey, we can never find relief so that we can enjoy the riches living offers us as well.

Unfortunately, for many men, unprocessed emotions such as anxiety, fear, hurt, sadness, jealousy, loneliness can get converted to anger and be expressed as some form of aggression. For some men rudeness and even explosiveness to something like road rage are degrees of this conversion of suppressed emotions. In other men, hurt, loneliness, sadness and emotional neediness can perhaps be expressed as an excessive interest in sex. These issues can begin to feel like intrusions into our lives.

Male suppression of emotions can contribute to a whole series of addictive behaviour from alcohol abuse, gambling, affairs and many others in an attempt to anaesthetize the way they feel. “Mid-Life Crisis” may just be a time when all this suppressed material finally surfaces and the man does not know what to do with it. Men may also withdraw when they are overwhelmed or they can become unreasonable and abusive.

Sadly, a lot of men force themselves to push through this discomfort throughout their entire lives, and they miss out on much of what life has to offer. Sometimes, though, usually in our mid- to late thirties, we might start to recognize that something isn’t working. We are not happy, we feel stressed all the time, we are fighting with our partner more, we might be drinking more. Possibly our career is not going the way we had hoped. Without a healthy outlet some men may feel that they are failures. 

How Therapy Can Help

By chance, if a man is distressed enough, he might feel compelled to talk to his partner or a buddy at the gym or someone who confirms that he is suffering and that it is okay for him to look for help. Sometimes he is lucky enough to talk to someone who has gotten help himself and found it beneficial. This positive feedback can help eliminate the taboo about going for therapy or counselling. 

When men reach out to me, they are typically looking for relief and hope. I show my clients why they are experiencing difficulties, how we will manage their emotions in a more productive manner and how taking these steps can lead to positive outcomes in every area of their life. I help clients unlearn the cognitive messages that prohibited them from feeling their emotions in the first place. I also help them to identify what their emotions feel like—the sensations, not just descriptions of thoughts. And we work through the discomfort of living with emotions, which is sometimes difficult, as not all emotions feel good. 

Finally I encourage my clients to start talking about how they feel in concrete terms, such as “I feel sad, I feel hurt, I feel angry, I feel lonely, I feel happy, I feel jealous etc.” This helps them express what their needs are to their partner and others, and gives them a safety valve to allow some of the emotional pressure to be released.

Through the therapy process, a client can start to see that the new way he is managing his emotions creates more harmony at home, conflicts are resolved more easily, he feels less alone and stressed and he feels more in control in his career as he copes with challenges better and can focus, less encumbered by a lot of built-up inner pressure. There is reduced need for addictions to anaesthetize him. 

Taking the steps to learn how to have and process our emotions truly can make life more manageable and happier.