Andrew Smiler has professional advice for you, if you find yourself counseling men.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the message that boys grow up with that subtly—or not so subtly—contribute to guys’ tendency to not ask for help. As eagle34 commented, that’s only part of the issue. What happens if the helpers don’t get it or they buy into the idea that guys should be able to solve problems on their own?
That’s not an idle question. In general, guys tend to ask women for help with “personal,” “emotional,” or “relationship” problems because women are generally considered to be better with those types of issues than men. If a guy turns to a therapist for help—something only about 10% of guys do according to Will Courtenay’s book Dying to Be Men—odds are that therapist is female. Although social work has long been dominated by women, the shift in psychology and counseling from male dominated to female dominated has occurred over the last two decades.
So what can a woman—or a man, for that matter—do to help a guy who needs to talk? In Gender in the Therapy Hour: Voices of Female Clinicians Working With Men, Holly Sweet and her colleagues offer practical (and theoretical) advice for female therapists who work with male clients. I heard them speak at last week’s annual convention of the American Psychological Association, and I think several of their suggestions are relevant for anyone a guy might ask for help, not just therapists. Here they are, in no particular order.
- Acknowledge that it can be difficult for a guy to confide in someone or ask for help when he’s having problems. Holly Sweet says many guys would rather have a root canal than talk to someone about their problems.
- Don’t assume he’s good at talking about his problems, even though he wants to talk.
- Give him time to gather his thoughts and find the right words. This may mean your conversation is punctuated by silences that are longer than usual; that’s okay.
- Don’t assume he knows what to expect from this type of conversation; if the thing he’s talking about is complicated, you may need to be explicit about the fact that the two of you can’t deal with all of it in a single conversation and that you’ll need to talk more at another time.
- He may not know specifically what to do, but he probably wants to. This is most obvious if the problem is about a relationship (family, work, romantic, etc.). Given that we do a pretty poor job of teaching boys and men how relationships work, he may not have a good idea of how to actually start a conversation about Topic X or what to do to “re-establish trust,” for example.
- He may not follow your advice or come back for round two, even though you both know it was good advice and further conversation would be helpful. There are many possible reasons, from the difficulty of asking for help, to concerns that he may become overly reliant on your advice (and thus lose his independence), to his decision to pursue a different approach, to … you name it. There’s also the possibility that you will be—or are being—seen as some type of threat to other important people in his life. Whatever happens, try not to take it personally; the lack of a second conversation probably isn’t about you.
- Don’t assume he’s a stereotypical guy. Even though he may fit some parts of the stereotype, he probably doesn’t fit it 100%. And even if he does, there are lots of things the stereotype doesn’t really address, such as feelings about children or parents.
- Don’t expect him to use feeling words—even “happy” or “sad”—with any regularity. In general, we teach boys not to think about their feelings, not to understand their own behavior in terms of emotions, and not to think about other people in emotional terms, so he might not be comfortable with those words. If you desperately need to hear those terms, that’s your problem, not his.
- In general, and especially for therapists, don’t assume you—or the broader “we”—know everything there is to know about male socialization. Although research was biased towards men until about 1980, it tended to ignore issues unique to men. In the last three decades, there’s been much more female-specific than male-specific writing. As a result, we don’t have a good overview of what male development or behavior looks like in the current day; it’s certainly changed from where it was forty years. Get educated (and keep reading The Good Men Project).
- Be aware of your own feelings, especially if you’re offering help on a regular basis. In the therapy world, this is countertransference: a therapist’s feelings regarding their client. Although we typically think about this in terms of romantic or sexual attraction—and there have been plenty of movies about that—you might find that he reminds you of a family member, co-worker, friend, etc., for good or for bad. If that’s happening, you need to recognize it for what it is and find a way to deal with it.
Read more Advice & Confessions and Health, Psych & Addiction.
Image of two men having an animated conversation courtesy of Shutterstock
About Andrew Smiler
Good advice especially on treating men like individuals and not a part of some monolith.
(Which I’m not sure how that happens considering that men supposedly have the privilege of being judged as individuals and not as a group.)
I think treating men as such is more about trying to create a magic bullet formula that will work on all men. Who needs to do research much less actually listen to men when you’ve already decided they are all the same?
3.Give him time to gather his thoughts and find the right words. This may mean your conversation is punctuated by silences that are longer than usual; that’s okay.
This is a good one as well. This is new ground for a lot of guys. Therapy can be a long process, with no quick answers, and possibly no answers in some cases. A good bit of advice to guys to not go into it looking for a quick fix. Take the time to gather thoughts and find the right words. And yes sometimes the wrong words may come out. Don’t fret over those wrong words, just work on finding the right ones.
Excellent and thoughtful article…!
I distanced myself from my karate sensei when I felt he was being inappropriate in requesting a certain kind of assistance from me….actually, I was quite offended…I literally sat on my hands for weeks trying to ignore his repeated text messages and not responding, because I felt his request was impossible for me to fill….and yet, I felt guilty and conflicted for ignoring him…though in the end it all worked out, and he obtained help through more proper channels… he’s “okay now” and we are communicating again….
Yes, it’s so tough sometimes figuring out the best way to help somebody….sometimes doing nothing is the safest and most appropriate thing to do, even though it seems difficult at first…
Thanks Danny, Thanks Leia.
@Danny: I think these suggestions are relevant for anyone, not just therapists.
@Leia: SOunds like a difficult situation. I’m glad it ended well.
I dig.
I liked the allow time for gathering thoughts part too. Some of my deepest moments talking to guys have come after sitting on the porch for awhile saying nothing and watching the bugs. Or sitting in a car for awhile. I would also add to that… learn to just listen. Don’t always feel the need to fix or comment, but just listen.
I would also add to listening respecting his right to have whatever feelings he is having and respecting and listening to his story as unique individual.
I’ve been blessed to get to experience so really profound moments with the guys who are my friends and the guys I work with professionally by doing this and value all that I’ve learned from them in those experiences too.
One thing I’ve learned from working with guys in a male dominated profession is that their body language and other non-verbal communication can be very different from women’s. When men are discussing a difficult topic, I’ve noticed they like to sit side by side, rather than face to face. They will not make much eye contact, and the more upset they feel, the less expression they may have in their face and tone of voice. This can be very confusing to women, as it’s the opposite of how we communicate. Women often make the mistake of trying to show a man support when he is expressing something difficult by making more eye contact, showing more emotion, and basically getting in his face (literally, trying to get him to turn around or look at us). Then we get frustrated when this just causes him to shut down! I believe this kind of non verbal mismatch also occurs when women are trying to get suport from men; we think they aren’t paying attention when actually they are trying to give us space, like they would want in a similar conversation.
With the exception of #9 this list reminds me of a baseball coach trying to teach right-handed batters how to bat left-handed. Yes, they can learn how to do this and with practice they may get pretty good but focusing on their left-handed hitting ignores the natural strengths of their right-handedness. In a similar way the above list tries to move men into a feeling/talking box that may not be their strength. I think there is a great deal of clinical evidence and some research that shows that men are more interested in working with their emotions through their actions in a subtle and quiet manner. As a clinician working with traumatized men I have seen this for years. Their work is often done either shoulder to shoulder or in a solitary mode. Most people don’t even notice and just assume the man is not dealing with it. Maybe better to teach therapists about batting right-handed then to expect men to fit into the prevailing feminized therapeutic box.
Oh look, Tom Golden playing troll.
The suggestions provided are for the people who help guys talk through their problems, whether those helpers are friends or professionals. If the list is like “trying to teach right-handed batters how to bat left-handed”, then you’re saying that the folks that men talk to about their problems are incapable of thinking about men differently. Or perhaps that the helpers should, for example, assume men are good at talking about their problems (#2) or they should assume all guys fit the stereotype of men (#7).
????
Andrew Smiler said: “Oh look, Tom Golden playing troll.”
Better that we focus on the content then to be sidetracked by name calling.
It seems the other posters understand what I was saying. You might want to read the Frost poem. It’s a beautiful example of what my post was trying to describe. Basically, men have unique ways to heal that very often go unnoticed and unappreciated. Better for therapists to learn men’s unique paths than to try and squeeze men into a feminine box that ignores their gifts.
I am reminded of Robert Frost’s poem “Home Burial” where the man and woman have just buried their child and are grieving in very different ways.
At one point he says “Three foggy mornings and a rainy day will rot the best birch fence a man can make.”
And she goes thermonuclear because she thinks he is being callous and thinking about fixing fences on the farm.
And that is what happens when a man’s feelings and way of expression are deemed as wrong and invalid.
Agreed. And this is why we need to tell/remind people that men don’t necessarily – or even regularly – communicate the way women do, and why we need to teach folks how to understand some of the ways that men communicate that seem to be unique/particular to men.
Thanks JustAMan for the reference to the Frost poem. I’d never read it before. It’s a classic example of a woman misinterpreting a man’s action following a loss as being cold and unfeeling. He, of course, was connecting his action with his loss and with honoring his child. She missed it as many people miss the beautiful healing actions that many men take following a significant loss.