Doing men’s work in counseling offers you the chance to make contact with pain that is often covered by depression, addiction, anger, and abuse. From there, healing can take root.
MORE ABOUT MEN’S Work in COUNSELING
Sometimes, identifying patterns of behavior in the interest of changing isn’t enough – we must also examine the specific culture of an individual: in this case, the culture of men. Men and male-identified individuals face an overwhelming set of stressors that impact how identity is defined, maintained, and managed. This list includes the American cultural tendency toward “rugged individualism” depicted in media, social movements that expose the toxic role men and “maleness” often plays, traditional roles that define in limited terms the value that men bring to relationships, classic stereotypes or rigid ideas of fatherhood, and more.
With men’s work, we go deeper to unearth the pain and suffering so often endured and left unspoken—typically to tragic and destructive ends. We examine generational wounding, and what we’re asked to carry on behalf of our fathers, and the fathers who came before them. We make contact with our role in relationship and fatherhood, identifying the opportunity to serve as a bridge of healing between what we learned and what we teach our children. We break patterns of performance-based esteem, and move toward greater comfort with developing self-esteem that’s based in and supported by our closest relationships.
“First, the covertly depressed man must walk through the fire from which he has run. He must allow the pain to surface. Then, he may resolve his hidden depression by learning about self-care and healthy esteem.”
What YOU CAN EXPECT WITH MEN’s WORK
Individuals will be supported to go deeper inside themselves, adopting a working vernacular to identify, name, make space for, and work with their emotions and feelings
We’ll unmask the “covert depression” that tends to show up in life as addiction, rage/anger issues, broken relationships, workaholism, avoidance, grandiosity, and learn to put down these defenses, in service of working with the “overt depression” at the heart of the issue
Reconnecting with yourself involves a process of learning how to practice attunement and self-care, restoring the broken relationship that’s been internalized (often since childhood), setting aside our defenses, and sharing our pain with a trusted and present witness who can model radical acceptance, warmth, and love
Journaling, embodied movement, music, breathing, creativity, role playing, and more may all play key roles
All photography provided by Full Send Media.