Do Men Experience Emotions Differently Compared to Women?
Do we allow our emotions to flow? (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)
And do we permit ourselves to be vulnerable and cry?
Content warning: this article mentions suicide. Please read at your own discretion. If you are in need of help, please contact the Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
To move through my depression, I had to reconnect with my emotions. This meant allowing myself to feel my emotions, instead of suppressing them, which had been my go-to strategy for years. I had to understand and accept emotions as part of the human experience – and I mean any emotion, including the so-called ‘negative’ ones like fear, shame, sadness, or jealousy.
Addressing my long-lost emotions, mainly through crying, was essential for my healing journey.
Since I Learnt to Cry Again, I Now Wonder If Men Don’t
After allowing myself to cry again, which I had rarely done for the prior thirty years, I paid attention to tears and how crying showed up around me. I witnessed tears in children, sometimes in women, but I seldom saw a man cry. I could not recall any of my male family members crying, nor my male friends.
Emotions were a rare conversation topic between me and any man. Whenever I asked a man in my environment about their feelings at any given moment, the answers were usually along the lines of “not much”, “nothing really”, or simply “satisfied”.
This made me ask questions:
Is there no connection between men and their emotions?
Do men simply not express their emotions?
Do men experience emotions differently compared to women?
Have men “conquered” their emotions?
Have men “risen above” their emotions?
Do emotions simply flow through men without being noticed?
Whenever I spoke to a woman about this, I received answers like “I feel men are not connected to their emotions”, “I really don’t know” or “Men just don’t talk about emotions”.
I sensed a strong discord and continued exploring.
Men, reportedly, have higher suicide rates. The Australian government says:
Males have consistently higher rates of suicide than females
Since 1907, the male age-standardised suicide rate has been consistently higher and more variable than the female rate. Variations in the overall suicide rate in Australia have been largely driven by changes in the male suicide rate.
Wasn’t this a clear sign men were not okay?
Why did I not hear about this? Why was no one I knew talking about this?
In his book “I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression” published 1997, Terrence Real states:
“Little boys and girls start off with similar psychological profiles. They are equally emotional, expressive, and dependent, equally desirous of physical affection. … If any differences exist, little boys are, in fact, slightly more sensitive and expressive than little girls.” P. 123
Both genders display emotions in their early years and start on similar terms. Being the mum of two boys and one girl, I had been able to observe this myself.
From working with my depression, I also knew I held childhood trauma which, I believe, everyone experiences. My inner wounds, when viewed from an adult perspective, often didn’t even ‘qualify’ as trauma, but certainly had felt traumatic when experienced as a child.
Terrence Real comments on this:
“A child’s personality and his neurology … are still developing. Relatively mild childhood injury can have long-lasting effects because it occurs while the very structures of the personality, body, and brain are being formed”. P. 106
He goes on:
“Childhood damage many not result merely from violation... Active trauma is usually a boundary violation of some kind, a clearly toxic interaction. Passive trauma … is a form of physical or emotional neglect. …. The absence of nurture and responsibilities normally expected of a caregiver, the absence of connection. In an instance of active trauma, a boy might come home with a badly scraped knee and torn, bloody pants only to have his father scream at him for ruining his clothes. In an instance of passive trauma, a boy would show up with a badly scraped knee, and the father would promise to be there in a moment only to stay on a business call for another ten minutes while the boy waits beside him, bleeding.” P. 107
As a child, I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions accompanying a traumatic experience. So, I swallowed them.
Later, as a mother, when I felt overwhelmed with my parenting responsibilities, I replicated what I had observed and experienced in my own childhood. Instead of acknowledging my children’s emotional needs and teaching them to be emotionally resilient by owning my emotions, I reverted back to my childhood wounds. This meant I subconsciously passed on my unhealed childhood trauma to my children. My children reflected back to me how I showed up. Screaming was answered with screaming, or aloofness. The cycle continued.
This was true for all of my children, regardless of gender.
What Are the Signs Men Are Not OK and What Could Unlock Their Healing?
However, I wanted to better understand the link between the seeming “lack of emotions” in men and male mental health issues.
Terrence Real says:
“Traditional gender socialization in our culture asks both boys and girls to ‘halve themselves’. Girls are allowed to maintain emotional expressiveness and cultivate connection. But they are systemically discouraged from fully developing and exercising their public, assertive selves. Boys, by contrast, are greatly encouraged to develop their public assertive selves, but they are systematically pushed away from the full exercise of emotional expressiveness and the skills for making and appreciating deep connection.” p. 24
I was able to observe this tendency in our younger son. Even though I had learned the importance of teaching our children about emotions and we actively applied these lessons, our younger son moved into the direction of disassociating from his emotions. Societal teachings were present. Not only the parents acted as role models, but teachers, school, sports clubs, grand-parents and friends all left their marks.
Real says:
“Studies indicate that girls are permitted to remain in that mode (of connection, expressing emotions) while boys are subtly – or forcibly – pushed out of it.” p. 123
Did this mean our society did not permit boys to feel and express their emotions? Did this mean boys learned to disassociate at a very early age from feelings like sadness or fear because we did not allow them to feel these?
Real says that while depressed women tend to internalize their pain, boys and men tend to externalize pain as they are more likely to feel victimized by others and will discharge distress through action. (Refer to page 24).
“By far most violent acts, both inside and outside the home, are committed by males.” p. 113
Wasn’t this another indicator that showed many men were, in fact, not okay?
”One reason we are numb to the psychological drama that can result from boy’s violence is that we have been lulled into viewing it as normal, as if it were an inevitable aspect of their development. Active trauma so saturates boy culture that many of us take it as “natural”’. p. 116
“Men are not supposed to be vulnerable. Pain is something we are to rise above.” p. 22
Could it be that we didn’t allow men to heal their mental health issues because we, as a society, didn’t allow them to show up as vulnerable? Which would be a key, or maybe even the key, towards unlocking healing?
“For the …. depressed man, what lies at the center of the defence or addition is the disowned … depression he has run from. And in the center of the …depression lies trauma. …. No matter if the injuries have been quiet or loud, depressed men carry inside a hurt, bewildered boy whom they scarcely know how to care for. The moment of contact with that disavowed pain is the first step towards restoration.” P. 87
I’d like to add that I, as a female, had not learned to connect with my emotions or how to be emotionally resilient. I shut myself down at an early age as well and disassociated from “feeling” as much as I could. Depression took over and I internalized my pain until I became too overwhelmed and actively searched for help.
I suppose every human being would benefit from healing their inner wounds. And it would help if, we, as a society, allowed men and women alike to be vulnerable, to show up emotionally, to allow our tears to flow and to accept our humanity. Which we all share, regardless of how we identify or how we are raised.
