Overtherapizing Men's Mental Health
Talking about emotions isn't enough for men's mental health - finding meaning through Function, Family, and Faith offers a better path.
culturefamilypsychology“Men need to talk about their feelings.” But when they do, they’re called attention-seeking.
“Men should be expressing their emotions.” But when they do, they’re labeled as toxic.
“Men can cry in public too.” But when they do, women get the ick.
You are actually supposed to be composed and suppress your emotions in front of people. If all men expressed our emotions directly and instantly, the result would be an inordinate amount of violence and crime. And while talking about your feelings is fine, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is usually downstream of feeling useless, powerless, or replaceable. Instead, we need to channel our emotions into productive efforts.
Controlling your emotions is not unhealthy - we’re just in the wrong environment for it. We have effectively defeated most natural problems we evolved for over a million years, and are left with societal problems that are infinite at any level of affluence (as classic Russian literature amply demonstrates). Men are not as good at solving those as they are at natural problems.
The other reason men’s culture has become “unhealthy” in modernity is that we’re increasingly giving up on following the main pathways to meaning:
- Function - work, charity, general usefulness to society. Email jobs, scrolling on social media, and playing video games does not help with feeling productive and useful.
- Family - most men will say providing for their family is the greatest purpose of their life, yet we are getting married and having children later and later in life, if at all.
- Faith - accessible to all, this path goes the deepest, and you can choose to follow it at any time - even at your very last breath. I have hope more of us will decide to.
In Small Bets we talk about working like a lion on the hunt. But humans were once hunters too - and some still find meaning in defeating natural adversities. If you haven’t, I recommend watching Happy People by Werner Herzog, or how some other indigenous people live to this day.
Maybe your instinct to go work on a farm is correct - if for nothing else, then to remember what it feels like when a problem is finite, physical, and responds directly to your effort. Then when you find yourself sitting around the table having dinner with family, pleasantly tired after a good day’s work - all your troublesome feelings magically disappear.
On to the next day!