Men and feelings. For a lot of men, those two words were never meant to go together.
So many men were taught they have to be strong, and that crying is weakness. Don’t feel it. Don’t show it. Toughen up. And so they learn to push it all down and carry on, often for decades.
I understand it from the inside. If I’m honest, I spent years shutting down rather than feeling. When emotion got too big, I disconnected from it entirely. So when I sit with a man who has learned to armour up, I’m not across from him. I’m beside him.
What changes when a man lets himself feel
One of my clients, Chris, came to me the way many men do, certain he didn’t need help. But over our work together, something shifted. In his own words, he learned that it’s okay to cry in front of his kids. To show them he’s upset, and that he’s a normal person with real feelings.
“I learned very quickly, it’s okay to cry and cry in front of loved ones. It was okay to cry in front of my kids and show them that I’m upset and I am a normal person.”
Read that again. His children will grow up knowing that emotion is safe, because he let himself feel it first. That is a gift that outlasts almost everything else he could give them.
Why men and feelings belong together
An emotion is energy, and when it’s suppressed it doesn’t disappear. It gets stored in the body, and it surfaces later as tension, as distance in our relationships, as a reaction that feels far bigger than the moment deserves.
Crying isn’t the opposite of strength. Letting the people you love see you feel is one of the bravest, most connecting things a man can do.
For the men, and the people who love them
If you’re a man reading this and you’ve been holding it all in, you’re not weak. You’re human. And you don’t have to carry it alone.
And if you love a man who shuts down rather than shares, know that it usually isn’t that he doesn’t feel. It’s that he was taught not to. Sometimes all it takes is seeing one other man say it out loud.
This is the work I do, with men and women both, helping people feel what they’ve been holding and move through it. If something here resonates, for you or someone you love, I’d love to work with you.
Watch Chris’s full story here.
With care, Anna x
