5 Reasons Why To Start Therapy for Men
Therapy is a powerful tool that can be beneficial to everyone. In my experience, men don’t always feel they can take advantage of therapy because they think it means they’re weak. Even if they don’t think it means they’re weak, they think their fears, worries, and struggles don’t merit therapy. They believe they have to do it on their own. Men are taught in our society to be independent and not need other people for help. Being macho and ignoring emotions are harmful messages we get as men. Pushing through it or sucking it up isn’t an effective approach to mental health. Your mental health matters and your sole purpose is not just to work and sacrifice over and over again.
In your family, maybe you were taught not to cry or feel emotions from a young age. Crying may have become unacceptable and another sign of weakness. Crying and feeling emotions is a central part of being human. Denying and pretending you don’t have them can create a lot of problems for you throughout life. It doesn’t allow you to connect to other people or to find relief from pain and suffering. Shoving it down until it blows up is what happens when you don’t allow yourself to feel or share how you feel.
Working with a men’s therapist isn’t going make you an “overly emotional” male
Just because you come to therapy doesn’t mean you will become an overly emotional person who cries all the time. It’s about helping you be able to communicate, take care of yourself, and cope in healthier ways. Therapy can be an opportunity to learn coping skills and to help you be more aware of yourself and others. There are many reasons why you should go to therapy, and I want to share 5 of them.
5 Reasons Men Should Go To Therapy
You don’t have to suffer in silence
You have likely had to go through many things alone and have even been taught that this is the only way to deal with things. Imagine being able to show up somewhere and talk to a complete strange about all the crap you have to deal with in life and this person actually cares what you have to say. Not only do they care about what you have to say but they’re invested in helping you find solutions to what you are struggling with without having to give anything in return. A therapist is here to help you without judgment or a personal agenda. As a therapist, I just want you to succeed. I’m here to help you with any small success and to feel the disappointment with you when you are struggling. You don’t have to suffer alone. It might feel weird talking about things when you aren’t used to talking about things especially with some dude you don’t know. It is a risk to use your voice and express those parts of you that have been made to be silent. Therapy does get easier, more natural, and you will find it actually helps you feel better.
2. You might not feel you can talk to anyone else.
You probably have family members and friends in your life. It’s not that there isn’t anyone you could talk to but you don’t have that kind of relationship where you talk about your fe
feelings. Even if you wanted to you don’t really know how to. It could be that you’ve tried to talk to people in your life, and they didn’t respond in ways that are helpful. You could have had experiences where you got in trouble for talking about your feelings or were given lectures for why you shouldn’t feel the way you do. It may even seem like people are uncomfortable with your feelings making it so you’ve never wanted to share them again. You don’t want to feel shame for talking about what you are going through. The truth is not everyone knows how to be helpful in conversations like this. Therapy can be much different than this. A therapist knows how to listen to you without making you feel stupid for what you have to say. My job as a therapist is not to give you advice, tell you what to do, or give you lectures on why you should just be more grateful. I want you to feel important, and your thoughts matter.
3. You haven’t been taught how to express emotions.
It’s reinforced that men shouldn’t show emotions or even be taught that men don’t have any other emotions other than anger. As a guy, you don’t feel you can be sad or embarrassed. As men, we feel all emotions but learn to dismiss them or bottle them up because it’s not ok to have them. In therapy, you can feel whatever emotions you need to feel to get better. As a therapist, I help y clients identify the emotions they are feeling. Anger is often a secondary emotion. This means that it’s the emotion covering up other emotions such as fear or sadness. Therapy can help you uncover what these are and to work through them. A goal of therapy is to help you talk about how you feel in open and balanced ways. You deserve to have your emotional needs met and find relief from feelings and experiences you’ve been caring for. Therapy helps you stop ignoring them because that doesn’t actually help you get rid of them. Coming to therapy can be an opportunity and place to practice doing this so you can do this with other people in your life. As your therapist, I want you to know it’s ok to feel those parts of you and to talk about how you feel. Again you aren’t going to be judged or criticized by me for being open about your emotions.
4. You have experienced trauma and you don’t realize it.
You’ve been through hard experiences that you’ve never really worked through. You’ve approached it like you do other things and that’s to set it aside or lock it up. You can rationalize to yourself why those experiences aren’t significant let alone traumatic. You may tell yourself again you’re just being weak. It’s also hard to feel like what you went through was trauma because you didn’t go to war or serve in the military. These aren’t the only forms of trauma. In fact, we don’t actually get to choose what experiences are classified as trauma because our brain decides. Your brain may feel like a major troll by replaying experiences or remembering all these cringe-worthy experiences. This is actually your brain trying to help you work through these experiences and keep you safe in the future. There may be something that happened when you were younger and that's why as an adult you do some of the things you do. It could be why you shut people out or turn to other things to try and dull the pain. Therapy can help you sort through these experiences and feel better. EMDR is an effective trauma therapy that can help you get your brain out of these cycles and lessen how much they bother you.
5. Therapy will improve your relationships with others.
When you don’t feel you can be open and vulnerable with people in your life, you might not have the quality relationship you might want. Relationships can just be surface-level when you aren’t willing to talk about your feelings and experiences. You might want to have a better relationship with your partner or spouse and going to therapy may give your more insight and tools to do this. Therapy can help you gain awareness of how to understand yourself and your responses to your relationship. The awareness gained in therapy allows for further healing to happen. When you are working on improving yourself, you will find relationships also change for the better. The dynamic of a relationship changes when one person starts to change. Therapy is a process that can help you do this. As a therapist, I focus a lot on relationships regardless of if you are married or in a romantic relationship, and this is a perspective I will use in the therapy process. We are relational beings and we form relationships everywhere.
Marcus Hunt Therapy’s approach to Therapy For Men
I enjoy helping men who are trying their best to be good people recognize how valuable they are. I have my own experiences being male and can have a shared understanding but it truly is your experiences that matter. Your experiences have shaped you positively and some negatively. My goal for you is to help you be able to feel more comfortable being vulnerable and real with people. Being guarded and doing everything yourself makes it difficult to have a fulfilling and connected life.
Begin working with a men’s therapist in Utah
If you are a man who wants to address your trauma and anxiety, therapy can help. This Provo area counseling center has a men's therapist that can help! To begin your therapy journey, follow the steps below:
Complete online forms and schedule the first session with a caring therapist
Begin therapy and work toward your goals.
Online therapy in Utah
I realize part of what you are dealing with is trying to balance your life. Between school, children, your relationship, and work, it can be hard to make time for therapy. In an effort to help you save time in your schedule and save the commute, I provide online therapy in Utah.
This means if you are located in Logan, St. George, Salt Lake City, Heber, Provo, Cedar City and more, I can help you.
Looking for other mental health services near Provo, Utah?
Therapy for men isn’t the only mental health service provided at this Utah County Counseling Clinic. Other mental health services Marcus Hunt Therapy provides include anxiety therapy, PTSD treatment, EMDR and trauma therapy, premarital counseling, marriage counseling, and LDS marriage counseling.
About the Author
Marcus Hunt is an associate marriage and family therapist at Marcus Hunt Therapy. Marcus received his bachelor’s degree in behavioral science from Utah Valey University and his masters in marriage and family therapy from Abilene Christian University. As a man, Marcus has a shared understanding of what men experience and wants to help men connect to their emotions, overcome their trauma, and be better spouses and partners. Marcus is passionate about helping put an end to the stigma that men have feelings that they don’t have to stifle.