The emotional realm is not a familiar one for most men, and this is unfortunate, because it greatly limits our ability to develop and deepen both the relationships with ourselves, and those in our lives. It's our emotions that lie at the bottom of our thoughts and behaviors, and take such a prominent place in our lives, yet most people aren't aware of them. Learning to speak from the emotions, and not just from our preprogrammed, reactive patterns could mean the difference between saving a relationship or marriage, or letting it die.

Many of the men that I speak with don't understand this concept, or think that emotions are in the realm of the "feminine," that to talk openly about one'semotions, especially the negative emotions, is emasculating and will chip away at our concept of self as masculine. In fact, relationships, and dare I say a lot of modern living, has required a fierce reorientation into the mode of emotions. Our wives and girlfriends expect us to be more "emotionally available," which is different than expectations from 50 years ago.

Many professions require the use of "soft skills" in the workplace, because traditional jobs are fast disappearing, taking with them the job descriptions traditionally suited to the male disposition. In short, the world is requiring more emotional intelligence from us.Fathers don't teach their sons these tools, and it's not something we learn growing up. We are socialized how to "be men," and in that process overlook the one major factor required in healthy development: being in touch with, and being abel to speak from, our emotions. Instead, men often suppress or push away their emotions, and don't deal with them, which causes depression, anxiety, dis-ease and a host of other problems ranging from the professional to the intimate.

Divorce or separation are often unfortunate by-products of lack of emotional awareness, as are drug and alcohol abuse, poor parenting, and violence.We can learn to self-actualize if we can learn to speak from our emotions. They have a way of helping us evolve in our lives, and break free from mental traps that we've set to cage us in. We can grow in our work, in our hobbies, in our character and in our relationships if we can tune into the emotions that are always present within us.Start by making meditation a practice. I use mindfulness meditation to help me access my emotions, especially when there are painful ones that come up inside. Emotions often reside somatically, or from within the body, but we need to be able to come out of our heads to get in touch with the "felt sense" of the negative emotion. Those emotions can often be found in places such as the shoulders, stomach, heart or throat.

Those places often house frozen emotions that generate suffering when we can't let them "pass through" our organic experience.Also, I think lessening the stigma of emotions with men is helpful, as is promoting more emotional awareness with men by starting with the acceptance of men's mental health suffering and treatment as a culture, and then on an individual level.

Men and emotional awareness can go together. Men have real emotions that women have, and the more we start to accept the nature of our suffering from an emotional perspective, the faster we can seek peace, balance and happiness for ourselves, and those in our lives.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Men’s counseling , or if counseling might be right for you, please feel free to contact me directly or visit our Men’s counseling page for detail.