Male Trauma
Becoming Well started with a personal journey
- Home
- Male Trauma
Why It’s So Hard for Men to Deal with Trauma
(Taken from Chapter 1 of the book The Unbound Man)
“We feel we are weak, cowardly or over-emotional if we don’t keep our emotions under control. Men can’t cry.” – Mike Lew, Victims No Longer
The devastating cost of "manning up"
“You gotta man up!” As boys and men, we hear this expression or some variation of it all the time. “You’re not really hurt; you’ve just got to man up and keep going.” “No time to worry about that, just man up and deal.”
Manning up, sucking it up, or any way you name it is the opposite of asking for help. It’s part of the code of being a man that most of us are trained to follow from the time we are boys.
If you buy into these definitions of being a man and you suffer trauma, you’re in a bind. You hear those voices telling you that you’re not supposed to have feelings, you can’t be vulnerable, you should be in control, you need to man up. Then you do what far too many men do, at least at first, after they have been knocked down by one of those trauma buses:
- You deny. “Nothing really happened.” “That didn’t affect me.” “That was so long ago, it doesn’t matter now.”
- You minimize. “The abuse only went on for a while.” “Maybe I just dreamed it.” “I got hit, but I never had to go to the hospital.” “I didn’t want my mom to die from cancer, but that’s just the way things go.”
- You pretend. “That wasn’t abuse, it was just messing around.” “I’m not shell-shocked, I just can’t sleep sometimes.” “Sure, I got totally screwed in divorce court, but I’ve got a new girlfriend now.”
- You delay. “Maybe I should ask somebody about why I feel so depressed all the time, but I’m too busy with work stuff.” “I can’t talk about when I was sexually abused as a kid until I get old enough to understand all that psychological stuff.” “It hurt when my business went under and my wife left me, but I’ve got to focus on building up the next business right now.”
Sometimes men just rationalize away the problems left behind by unresolved trauma or choose some way to avoid dealing with it. We say, “Yeah, that sucks, but it’s time to get back to that work project.” We power through. We keep on pushing. But we feel so isolated, so alone.
We often try to outrun the pain and shame by throwing ourselves into the quest for success through wealth, fame, prestige or reputation. Yet as hard as we try to outrun it, we’re going to face the day when the pain, shame and other effects of not dealing with trauma catch up to us.
Trauma experienced in childhood and adulthood.
Abuse: Physical, sexual and emotional/verbal
Neglect: Educational, emotional and physical
Bullying: Adults who were bullied as children.
Traumatic Grief During Childhood: Death of loved one; parent or family member illness; parental suicide or homicide; financial/vocational/identity loss; loss of home, belongings etc.; job loss, bankruptcy
Cultural/Institutional Trauma: Legal systems; justice systems; educational systems; healthcare/mental health systems; religious institutions; cultural trauma (like gentrification); workplaces; collective trauma
Trauma experienced in childhood and adulthood.
Abuse: Physical, sexual and emotional/verbal
Neglect: Educational, emotional and physical
Bullying: Adults who were bullied as children.
Traumatic Grief During Childhood: Death of loved one; parent or family member illness; parental suicide or homicide; financial/vocational/identity loss; loss of home, belongings etc.; job loss, bankruptcy
Cultural/Institutional Trauma: Legal systems; justice systems; educational systems; healthcare/mental health systems; religious institutions; cultural trauma (like gentrification); workplaces; collective trauma
Attachment Traumas Other than Separation and Divorce: Trauma (physical or emotional neglect) in bonding creating an insecure bond often with mother; having a father who is unavailable either physically or emotionally; development of personality disorders; multiple moves or loss of friends
Systemic Trauma in Family and Attachment/Relationship & Fatherhood Loss: Parental substance abuse, partner substance abuse and codependency;* parent(s) having affairs; partner affairs; severe parent or partner relational conflict, separation and divorce; parent(s) incarcerated; partner incarcerated; mother treated violently or witness to domestic violence; death/illness of a parent; loss of seeing children due to divorce; parent or partner mental illness; victims of intimate/domestic violence; death/Illness of a spouse/partner or child; miscarriage or abortion; missing child/abduction
Critical Incident Trauma: accident, natural disaster, violent act or terrorism, medical trauma, combat exposure, violent act such as robbery, terrorism or school shooting, etc., crisis workers such as police, fire, etc.
It is not enough to simply work on the symptoms. Our pornography/sexual addiction, our infidelity, our intimacy avoidance and/or sexual avoidance. Our shame, our automatic negative thoughts, our walls that keep others away. Even if we have been sober in these areas for a while, sober is not well. It is time to face the trauma and heal from it.
