Welcome to the conversation. Men are told from a young age to push their feelings down. To tough it out. To rub dirt on it and move on. I’ve heard it. You’ve probably heard it too. And maybe for a while, that worked. Until it didn’t.
We all feel things. Deeply. Whether we express it or not, the emotions are there. And the longer we try to stuff them down, the heavier they get. Eventually, that weight becomes too much to carry. Some of us mask it with distractions… drinking, work, sex, food, gambling, endless scrolling… whatever we can do to avoid sitting with the feelings. But it all catches up.
The hardest conversation you’ll ever have is the one you have with yourself. Admitting that you’re not okay. Admitting that maybe you’ve been living behind a wall. And that wall? It’s not protecting you. It’s isolating you.
I’ve talked to men in their 20s, 40s, 60s, and beyond. Generations of us that were never taught how to process emotions. Most of us didn’t see that modeled. We were taught to show strength by pretending we didn’t feel anything at all.
But there’s a cost.
The truth is, a lot of us have opened up before. And it didn’t go well. Maybe you shared something and someone used it against you. Maybe your vulnerability wasn’t received in the way you hoped. And I want to acknowledge that pain. It’s valid. But I also want you to hear this... how someone responds to your vulnerability says more about them than it does about you.
Sometimes we unload everything at once. We finally let it out. But the person on the receiving end wasn’t ready or didn’t know how to handle it. That doesn’t mean your emotions are wrong. It means we’re still figuring out how to have emotional conversations in real time, with real people, and without guarantees.
I’ve found therapy to be incredibly helpful. But I’ll also be honest...therapy isn’t always a smooth road. You might try it once and have a bad experience. You might feel like it wasted your time, energy, or money. I’ve been there. I’ve felt that. But just like any profession, there are different kinds of therapists. Some good, some not so good. And a lot of times, it’s not even that the therapist is bad... they just aren’t the right fit for you.
There are therapy sessions where I walk out and feel completely drained. There are moments when something gets uncovered and I don’t want to face it. But those blind spots… the ones I’ve protected for so long… those are the ones I need to look at if I want to grow.
You don’t have to label yourself to make progress. Just observe. Notice your patterns. See what comes up. That’s how change happens.
Being human means feeling things. Men are human. So yes, we feel things too. And we deserve a space to process those emotions in a way that doesn’t make us feel like we’re broken or weak.
This conversation isn’t about being soft. It’s about being real.
And it starts with you.