m currently working on an article for the Fuller Youth Institute on boys and emotions — more specifically how we as a culture tend to sabotage boy’s emotions — making it unsafe for them to express[…]
Shutting Down Boy’s Emotions
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Category: Men
Men’s Disconnect with Vulnerability and Connection
The above is a quote from Chapter 8 in my new book (coming out May 1) What it Means to be a Man: God's Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. Vulnerability is one of the major themes that has emerged over the last 18 years in my work with men. Many men want...
Grandiosity: Terrence Real on Working with Men in Therapy
To understand the importance of leverage, you have to understand grandiosity, especially male grandiosity. Therapy and self-help have mostly focused on helping people come up from a one-down position of shame. But we don’t really talk much about what it means to help people come down from the one-up position of grandiosity. This is really pivotal in terms of working with men, because they typically tend to lead from the one-up, grandiose position, while women present in the more one-down, victim position.
Fathers, What Kind of Energy Do You Pass on to Your Sons?
"When a father tells a child that he can do something, he can do it. I don't know why that is, except to say that there is some mysterious energy that passes from the male to his children. It is some sort of creative energy that can make things be when they are not,...
Unfortunately, Sometimes Being a Boy is Not Emotionally Safe…
“Little boys and little girls start off with similar psychological profiles. They are equally emotional, expressive, and dependent, equally desirous of physical affection. At the youngest ages, both boys and girls are more like a stereotypical girl. If any differences...
Join Us for a Sneek Peak at My New Book — What It Means to be a Man
The last 6-7 months have been a blur as I was busy reading, researching, writing, editing -- and a whole lot of staring at a blank screen -- in preparation for my new book, What It Means to be a Man: God's Design for Us in a World Full of Extremes. It's my second...
Why Men Need To Identify And Develop Their Emotions
"Helping boys and men learn how to be both tender and tough, strong and bighearted, is a new ideal that will take some time to digest. But, having worked with men day in and day out for decades, I know from experience that they can reclaim the language of...
Why Men May Be Good At Their Job, But Not In Their Relationships?
I've been doing a lot of research for my new book (which all I can say at this point is about men). And as I have been doing research I came across this phrase that has really stuck with me: "they live within the boundaries of their competence." The Silence of Adam by...
Male Depression: The Men Who Suffer and The People Who Collude In The Process
I have to admit to you all that I knew little about male depression until the last ten years when I started reading more and more writers who were openly talking about it. People like Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer and Archibald Hart to name but just a few. The more and...
Can Depression Offer Us a Gift?
In Thomas Moore's book, Care of the Soul, he writes eloquently about the gift that depression may offer people. It's an opportunity to embrace emotions that we often don't deal with, leading us to a better understanding of ourselves and how we want to direct our life....
