Very often we repeat the same mistake
Orginillay posted in my Substack “Beyond Words” https://substack.com/@davilahealing
When confronted with adversity, I’ve always gravitated toward philosophies that emphasized fortitude. The kind that felt familiar, respected, and encouraged by the people around me and by society at large.
Deaths in the family. Natural disasters. Losing mobility after back surgery. Through all of it, I reached for Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, for my meditation practice, or for the advice of friends to “just buckle up and beast through it.” To be a man. These practices helped me grow, and I’m genuinely grateful for them. But over time, I’ve come to see the one door they rarely open for most men, and that is the encouragement to truly get in touch with what’s going on emotionally.
Our culture is still uncomfortable with men crying, with men expressing the kind of pain that comes from abandonment or loss. That discomfort, when not addressed, tends to come out in ways that will bring us disappointment. We can still function and thrive, but that ever-present discomfort can become a metaphorical “pebble” in our shoe that ultimately infects the whole body.
For many men, feeling emotions doesn’t just feel unfamiliar. It feels unsafe. Our families, teachers, friends, and mentors often weren’t comfortable with that side of masculinity either, and like any muscle that gets underused, it weakens. We simply don’t have many cultural outlets for complex emotions. Sports help. Philosophy helps. Joking about painful things helps. But when emotions stay buried long enough, the pain finds other ways out, and those ways tend to look mysterious and disconnected from their source.
What I’ve seen in my practice is this: give a man a space where he can not just talk but actually feel, and something shifts. The emotions begin to release. He feels lighter. The automatic fight or flight reactions quiet down. And what I’ve noticed is that after the emotional release, the stoicism, meditation, and working out become genuinely more powerful. If we are no longer using them to numb out, they become even more powerful tools.
And of course, there’s no single path that works for everyone. Some men with deep trauma respond well to EMDR or somatic work. Others do better with parts work or mindfulness practices that welcome emotions rather than push through them.
But I’ve come to understand that the therapeutic relationship itself matters more than most people realize.
Finding someone who can sit with you without any judgment can be the first crack in the door. The beginning of building yourself up from the inside is the foundation that provides the ground for everything else. I’m grateful that we live in a time where we can have this conversation. It means something to just be able to bring this up. It may seem obvious, but it’s often the things most easily missed that matter most.