Dear sensitive men…
You are likely the person your friends, partner, or colleagues turn to when things get difficult. You’re a listener, a thinker and a problem-solver. But while you’ve become an expert at understanding others, you might feel like a stranger to yourself.
A growing sense of disconnection
The problem with being the person everyone else relies on, is that you gradually become a stranger to your own internal world. When you’re constantly scanning for the needs of others, you learn to silence your own.
You push the difficult stuff down to keep the environment around you calm. You make yourself small to keep the peace. You prioritise being seen as dependable, reliable and strong.
This isn't just about ‘not knowing how you feel’, it’s a survival strategy that helped you navigate life. But the cost of that strategy is a growing sense of disconnection - a feeling you’re performing your life rather than living it.
You might feel a heaviness, frustration, a quiet exhaustion. But because you don't have a map for it, you keep pushing forward hoping the feeling will go away on its own.
In daily life, this might show up as:
Absorbing others emotions ~ being the anchor in your relationships while your own needs remain unacknowledged
Being the social butterfly ~ feeling overstimulated, or drained by busy environments, yet staying anyway
Saying ‘yes’ when your body is screaming ‘no’ ~ agreeing to a request even though you know it’s something you really don’t want to do
Putting on a mask ~projecting a version of strength because your natural sensitivity feels like a liability
How we reconnect with ourselves
The intention of my therapy, is to create a space where you can experience what it’s like to not have to look after others. Where you can speak about your inner world without fear of being interrupted, judged or dismissed. And discover what life could feel like when you get to finally put down that weight.
Here’s what else I find helpful when working with sensitive men in therapy:
Listening to your body ~ when we feel unsafe our body reacts first. We might contract our shoulders to make ourselves small, feel an urge in our throat to speak and fill a space, or hold our breath to supress an emotion. If we begin noticing these uncomfortable moments, we can practice new ways of responding - actually experiencing what it’s like to not abandon ourselves in order to feel safe
Meeting yourself with tenderness ~we’ll get to know the part of you that learned ‘the only way to survive is to be there for others’. Using a creative tool called Internal Family Systems (IFS), we’ll explore how this part helps to protect you, while creating space for discovering what other needs of yours might be yearning to be met
Moving forward ~ if you struggle to know what your needs are, or what really matters to you, we can take a look at your values. Beyond being dependable, helpful, reliable; what else is important to you? We can then focus on building habits, and boundaries, so you can stop making yourself small and start living more in alignment with who you actually are
Next steps
If you’re interested in giving this a go, reach out to me via my contact page, or directly book yourself in for an appointment.
References and further reading
The Social Consequences of Expressive Suppression: Butler et al. (2003)
Research shows that when one person in an interaction suppresses their emotions, the other person’s blood pressure also rises, and they report feeling less "connected" to the person suppressing.
Gender and depression in men: Addis, M. E. (2008)
Michael Addis has done significant work on why men specifically use suppression and the ‘stoic mask’ as a survival strategy. He identifies that traditional masculine norms often lead men to engage in ‘avoidant coping.’ Instead of feeling the emotion, men often experience it as physical fatigue, irritability, or quiet exhaustion.
Associations between conformity to masculine norms and depression: age effects from a population study of Australian men : Rice, S. M., et al. (2021)
The very things we are taught make us 'strong,' like emotional self-reliance and the ability to be stoic, are actually significant risk factors for depression. The study highlights that the 'mask' of control we wear often leads to a higher internal burden, even when we appear successful to the outside world.
