Why Men Avoid Challenging Emotions

Something I say to every men’s group I host:

As men, we have become masters at avoiding the real pain, the real fear, the real grief, the real emotion.

We have not become masters at this willingly and intentionally. We have been conditioned to become incredibly good at it.

So good, that in fact, we don’t even notice we are doing it. It has become part of our identity.

We can call this the avoidance wound. And this avoidance wound is a generational trauma that runs in us men. Our great great great grandfather had it, our father had it, and now we have it, even though we might call ourselves different.

What is it exactly?

It is an unconscious coping mechanism to avoid feeling the real pain. Because feeling the real pain would mean taking responsibility for the consequences of this avoidance mechanism, all the pain it led to in the past. It leads to a feeling of weakness, vulnerability, fragility. The feeling of being exposed. Which feels annihilating to our masculine identity.

Because for decades, and much longer, from watching our father, from watching other men, we have been modelled the very opposite. And no, I am not just referring to “feeling all the pain”. Because getting stuck in there, faltering, is not the highest expression of masculinity.

I am referring to the few men who actually face their avoidance mechanism. Who no longer try to get away with a half open heart, a half presence, half commitment, and logically doing everything right. The men who feel it all, and then have the courage to love fully from that place of having their deepest wounds exposed.

Very few men, if none at all, modelled this to us when we grew up. And yet this is real masculinity.

Avoiding the pain, hiding, disconnecting, has nothing to do with real masculinity.

Acting from unconscious patterns has nothing to do with real masculinity.

There is always a cost. And the cost usually is: a woman’s trust. Intimacy. Taking the necessary steps to serve a deeper purpose. The cost is real, but if the avoidance mechanism is so strong, then we won’t feel the cost.

And that is the thing.

If we avoid it all, then we also avoid the consequence, and if we avoid the consequence, then how on earth can we even know that there is a problem in the first place?

That is how deeply it runs.

Real masculinity is to feel it all, because only by feeling it all can we truly become present with the consequences of our wounds, otherwise, we conveniently do not feel the pain we cause.

There is no quick fix to work through this. It takes an approach that meets you at the core, at the place where the avoidance was formed, and walks you all the way through to the other side.

If you’re ready to go deeper, click here to see my upcoming training courses or click here to access past recordings.