There is a particular kind of man who walks into therapy and says, “I don’t really know what I’m doing here.” He might be thirty-eight, have a job, children, a house, a relationship, and friends. From the outside, he may look as though he is doing perfectly well. He may even tell you that himself: “I’ve had a good life,” “My parents did their best,” “Nothing terrible happened to me,” or “There are people who had it much worse.”
And yet something does not feel right. Perhaps he feels disconnected from himself or cannot explain what he wants. Perhaps he becomes angry very quickly, or shuts down when somebody asks him how he feels. Perhaps he finds it easier to solve everybody else’s problems than his own, is constantly busy, or cannot sit still without reaching for his phone. Perhaps he feels uncomfortable receiving affection, or compliments make him uncomfortable. Perhaps he does not know how to ask for help. Perhaps he has spent most of his life being the reliable one, the strong one, the funny one, the successful one, the quiet one, the difficult one, the protector, the provider, the problem child, the golden child, the invisible child, the peacemaker, or the one who never causes trouble.
Eventually, he reaches a point where he starts asking a question that can be surprisingly difficult for a man to answer: “Who am I when I am not performing the role that everybody else needs me to play?”
That question takes us into the territory of human needs. Children do not simply need food, shelter and education; they need relationships. They need to feel seen and to feel that their existence matters. They need encouragement, appropriate boundaries, affection, acceptance, and opportunities to make choices. They need curiosity from adults, somebody to ask them questions, and somebody to listen to the answers. They need to experience the feeling that their internal world has a place in the family. When those needs are repeatedly missed, a child does what children are remarkably good at doing: they adapt. The problem is that an adaptation that protects a child can become a prison for an adult.
What does a boy actually need?
Before we talk about therapy, it is worth asking a more fundamental question: what does a developing boy actually need from the people around him?
He needs safety, connection, affection, encouragement, limits, and opportunities to explore. He needs to experience failure without humiliation and to know that his emotions can be tolerated by the adults around him. He needs somebody who is interested in his thoughts and to know that his questions are welcome. He needs to develop a sense of agency, discover what he likes, and have permission to dislike things. He needs to learn that vulnerability does not make him worthless, being frightened does not make him weak, crying does not make him less male, and anger is an emotion rather than an identity. He needs to learn that asking for help is not the same as being helpless, and to develop a sense of himself that is not entirely dependent upon what he can provide for other people.
These needs are not uniquely male—they are human needs. However, boys can encounter particular pressures around how they are allowed to express those needs, which is where gender socialisation becomes important.
What happens when a boy learns that certain parts of himself are unacceptable?
A young boy might cry, and an adult might say, “Stop crying.” He might be frightened, and someone might say, “Don’t be scared.” He might want reassurance, only to be told, “You’re a big boy now.” He might be excited about something that matters deeply to him, only for someone to dismiss it. He might fail and be humiliated, or ask for affection and receive discomfort in return. He might express sadness through anger, and someone might punish the anger without helping him understand the sadness underneath it.
Slowly, the boy begins learning something—not necessarily through one dramatic event, but often through thousands of small interactions. He learns that some emotions are acceptable while others are embarrassing, some needs are inconvenient, some questions should not be asked, and while some parts of him receive attention, other parts of him disappear. Eventually, he does not necessarily need somebody else to silence those parts of him; he learns to silence them himself. That is where internalisation becomes important.
What does patriarchy have to do with this?
Patriarchy is often discussed as a system that disadvantages women, and that is an important part of the concept. However, gender systems also establish expectations about what men are supposed to be. Men are frequently associated with strength, independence, provision, authority, sexual competence, emotional control and self-reliance. Those expectations do not affect every man in the same way: some men experience them as empowering, others as restrictive, and many experience both.
The problem begins when a boy learns that his worth depends upon successfully performing masculinity. He is not simply encouraged to become himself; he is encouraged to become a particular kind of man. The message can become: Be strong. Be useful. Be successful. Do not be needy. Do not embarrass the family. Do not cry. Do not be weak. Do not complain. Protect your mother. Look after your siblings. Get a job. Make money. Get a woman. Have sex. Have children. Own a house. Provide. Do not fail. And if you do fail, do not let anybody see how much it hurts. That is a tremendous psychological burden to place on a developing human being.
What if the family system needs me to be somebody I am not?
Family systems are powerful. A family does not simply contain individuals; it contains relationships, expectations, alliances, boundaries, traditions, beliefs, rules and roles. Children quickly learn what keeps the family functioning.
- Perhaps Dad is unpredictable, so you become quiet.
- Perhaps Mum is overwhelmed, so you become responsible.
- Perhaps your parents constantly argue, so you become the mediator.
- Perhaps one sibling has significant needs, so you become invisible.
- Perhaps the family values academic achievement, so you become the successful child.
- Perhaps the family is religious, so you learn that questioning certain beliefs creates conflict.
- Perhaps masculinity is highly valued, so vulnerability becomes dangerous.
- Perhaps emotional expression is treated as weakness, so you learn to communicate through behaviour instead.
The child adapts. This is where one of the most important therapeutic questions emerges: Did my family learn how to accommodate me, or did I learn how to accommodate my family?
For many people, it is both, but sometimes the balance becomes profoundly unequal. The child changes—becoming quieter, louder, funnier, more successful, more obedient, more independent, the family therapist, the protector, the troublemaker, or the invisible one. The child changes themselves to fit the system, but the system does not change very much to fit the child.
What happens when the child becomes very good at adapting?
People may praise him: “He’s so mature,” “He’s so independent,” “He never gives us any trouble,” or “He’s such a good boy.” Everybody thinks the adaptation is evidence that the child is doing well. Sometimes it is, but sometimes the child has simply learned that having needs creates problems, so he stops expressing them. He becomes incredibly self-sufficient: he does not ask, complain, need, expect, or tell people when something hurts. Eventually, he becomes an adult who genuinely struggles to answer the question, “What do you need?”
That question can feel almost impossible—not because he is stupid or lacks emotional intelligence, but because nobody consistently taught him to look inward and ask.
Why can validation feel so strange to some men?
Imagine being a 38-year-old man and somebody says, “That sounds really difficult.” You might immediately respond, “It’s fine.” They say, “I can understand why that hurt,” and you respond, “It wasn’t a big deal.” They say, “You deserved to be listened to,” and you say, “Other people have had it worse.”
This can happen because validation is unfamiliar. Validation is not agreeing with everything someone says; it is recognising that their internal experience makes sense in the context of their circumstances. A therapist might say, “Given what was happening at the time, I can understand why you responded that way.” That is not the same as saying, “Everything you did was okay.” It is saying, “There is a reason this happened.” For someone who has spent decades invalidating himself, that experience can be surprisingly powerful.
What if nobody encouraged me?
Encouragement is different from praise. Praise often evaluates (“You’re brilliant,” “You’re the best”), whereas encouragement communicates something different: “Keep going,” “I can see how much effort you have put into this,” “You do not have to get it right immediately,” or “I believe you can work this out.”
For a boy who rarely received encouragement, adulthood can become dominated by self-criticism. He may achieve something and immediately move to the next target, receive a promotion and feel nothing, complete a qualification and immediately tell himself it was not difficult, build a successful business and still feel like an imposter, raise children and believe he is failing, or exercise consistently but hate his body. The internal voice is never satisfied because the adult is still trying to obtain the sense of worth that encouragement was supposed to help develop.
What if I was never accepted for who I actually was?
This can be particularly complicated when family expectations are strong. A boy may discover that certain parts of himself are celebrated while other parts are rejected, perhaps he is accepted when he succeeds, behaves correctly, follows the family’s values, conforms to expectations around masculinity, or makes the family proud.
The child can therefore learn a conditional form of belonging: I belong when I am the person you want me to be. That is very different from: I belong because I am your son.
This distinction can follow a man into adulthood. He may begin performing in relationships, becoming whatever his partner needs, whatever his employer rewards, whatever his friendship group expects, or even whatever his therapist expects. Eventually he asks, “If I stop performing, will anybody still want me?” That is not a superficial question; that is an attachment question.
What does being seen actually mean?
Being seen does not simply mean somebody looks at you; it means somebody becomes curious about your internal world. They ask:
- “What was that like for you?”
- “What did you need at that moment?”
- “What did you wish somebody had said?”
- “What were you thinking?”
- “What did you make that mean about yourself?”
- “What did you want to happen?”
- “What were you afraid might happen?”
For somebody who has rarely been asked these questions, therapy can be an entirely new experience. For perhaps the first time, another person is not primarily interested in what he can do, they are interested in what it is like to be him. That distinction can be enormous.
Why does being asked questions matter so much?
Because curiosity communicates value. When somebody asks about your internal experience and genuinely waits for your answer, the underlying message can be: “Your experience matters enough for me to want to understand it.”
Many men have spent their lives being asked practical questions: When will you be home? Did you do your homework? Did you pay the bill? Have you fixed the car? When are you getting married? When are you getting a better job? How much do you earn? What are you going to do about it?
Far fewer men are asked: Are you happy? Are you lonely? What are you frightened of? What do you wish somebody understood about you? What are you tired of pretending doesn’t bother you? What do you actually want? What kind of man do you want to become?
These questions can open doors that a man did not know existed.
What role can religion play in this?
Religion can provide meaning, community, moral structure, belonging and support. For many people, religious communities are important sources of care and connection. At the same time, religious environments can also participate in strong expectations about gender, sexuality, obedience, family roles and emotional expression.
This varies enormously between traditions, denominations, communities and individual families. Abrahamic religious traditions are not psychologically uniform: a Christian family in one community may look very different from a Muslim family in another, and a Jewish family may have completely different expectations from both. Even within the same religious tradition, individual families can interpret teachings very differently.
The therapeutic question therefore should not be, “Is religion the problem?” It should be, “What messages did I receive about who I was allowed to be?”
Perhaps faith provided you with belonging and meaning, but perhaps it also taught you that certain emotions were unacceptable. Perhaps it gave you a strong moral framework, but also created fear around questioning authority. Perhaps it provided community while reinforcing particular expectations around masculinity. Therapy allows those experiences to be explored without reducing the whole story to a simple judgement about religion.
What about school?
School is another institution in which boys learn what is expected of them. Schools have to organise large numbers of children, which requires rules, uniforms, schedules, deadlines, exams, behaviour systems, hierarchies, rewards, punishments, and standardised expectations. For many children, this structure is helpful, but for some children, particularly those who are neurodivergent or who experience difficult family circumstances, it can create significant challenges.
A boy may struggle to sit still, struggle with sensory stimulation, or struggle socially. He may be academically capable but inconsistent, bored, anxious, or dealing with problems at home. Yet the school may primarily experience him through behaviour and performance, meaning he becomes the disruptive one, the lazy one, the clever one who does not try, the difficult one, the quiet one, or the class clown.
Once again, a role develops, and once a role develops, other people begin responding to that role. The boy becomes increasingly identified with the behaviour, and eventually he may identify with it himself.
What happens when a boy becomes the joker?
The joker is an interesting family and social role. Humour can be wonderful, it can create connection, reduce tension, and help people survive difficult experiences. But sometimes humour becomes emotional camouflage. If you make everyone laugh, nobody asks whether you are hurting; if you turn everything into a joke, you do not have to admit that something matters. If you are always entertaining people, you become valuable, and if being useful has become your route to belonging, being funny can become another way of securing your place.
The man may therefore say, “I’m just a funny person.” Perhaps he is, but therapy might gently ask, “What happens when you stop being funny?”
What happens when a boy becomes the strong one?
The strong one is often admired. People rely on him, call him when something goes wrong, and he becomes the person who handles the crisis. But there is a hidden danger: if everyone believes you are strong, you can eventually become frightened to demonstrate weakness.
You might think, “If I fall apart, who will look after everyone else?” So you keep going, you work, provide, fix, protect, suppress, and carry. Then one day your body or mind says: Enough. The resulting crisis can look sudden, but often it has been building for years.
What happens when a boy becomes invisible?
The invisible child may not cause problems or demand attention, quietly observing everything while learning that attention goes elsewhere. Perhaps a sibling is more demanding, a parent is struggling, there is conflict at home, or the family simply does not have the emotional capacity to notice him.
He learns that nobody notices him unless he achieves something, or unless something goes wrong. He may become extraordinarily independent, which can look like strength, but underneath it there may be a profound longing: “Would somebody notice if I stopped coping?”
What does masking have to do with all of this?
Masking is often discussed in relation to autism and neurodivergence, but human beings generally can learn to hide aspects of themselves when they believe those aspects are unsafe, unacceptable or socially costly. A boy learns: This part of me gets laughed at, so he hides it; This emotion gets punished, so he suppresses it; This interest gets mocked, so he stops talking about it; This question creates conflict, so he stops asking; This behaviour makes people uncomfortable, so he performs something else.
Over time, the person can become extraordinarily skilled at presenting an acceptable version of himself. The difficulty is that eventually he may not know where the performance ends.
Could this explain why some men struggle to know what they want?
Possibly. If you spend childhood adapting yourself to other people’s expectations, you become highly skilled at asking, “What do you want me to be?” but you may become less skilled at asking, “What do I want?”
That difference can follow a man into relationships. His partner asks, “Where do you want to go?” and he says, “I don’t mind.” She asks, “What do you want for dinner?” and he says, “Whatever you want.” She asks, “What do you want to do with your life?” and suddenly he has no answer. It can happen at work, with friendships, sexually, or with family—the man becomes incredibly good at responding to other people’s needs while remaining disconnected from his own.
So why might therapy actually help?
Because therapy can provide an experience that some men have rarely encountered: a space where you do not have to perform a role. You do not have to be the provider, the strong one, the funny one, or the successful one. You do not have to know the answer, protect the therapist from your feelings, or make the therapist comfortable.
You can say, “I don’t know,” and somebody can remain curious. You can say, “That really hurt me,” and somebody can listen. You can say, “I am angry,” and somebody can help you understand the anger. You can say, “I don’t know what I need,” and instead of being criticised, you can begin discovering it.
That is part of what therapy can offer: not somebody telling you how to live, but somewhere to finally become curious about the person who has been living your life.
What if I think my childhood was normal?
This is one of the most important questions. You do not need to have experienced obvious abuse to have unmet emotional needs, nor do you need to have had terrible parents or a dramatic childhood. Your parents may have loved you, worked extremely hard, sacrificed enormously, and done better than their own parents, and you may still have experienced things you did not receive enough of.
Perhaps nobody asked you what you thought, affection was rare, emotions were dismissed, or achievement was valued more than curiosity. Perhaps vulnerability was uncomfortable, your parents did not know how to talk about feelings, or everybody was simply trying to survive. Understanding unmet needs does not require turning your parents into villains; it means understanding the environment in which you developed.
What if my parents did the best they could?
They may have, and their best may still have left gaps, both things can be true. Your father might have worked twelve hours a day because he believed providing financially was how he demonstrated love, and your mother might have sacrificed everything to give you opportunities. They may have loved you deeply, yet perhaps nobody taught you how to identify your emotions, ask for help, tolerate vulnerability, or asked you what you wanted. Therapy does not have to become a courtroom; it can become a place of understanding.
What does the 38-year-old man actually need from therapy?
Perhaps he does not need somebody to tell him that he is broken; perhaps he needs somebody to become curious about him. He might need validation, encouragement, acceptance, or somebody to notice the things he normally hides. He may need somewhere he can talk without immediately needing to solve the problem, to discover his own preferences, to grieve what he did not receive, or to become angry about things he was never allowed to be angry about.
He might need to discover that sadness does not destroy masculinity, receiving care does not make him weak, asking for something does not automatically make him a burden, and being seen does not necessarily lead to rejection. After decades of adapting himself to everyone else, he may simply need to experience what it feels like to remain himself in the presence of another person.
What if the real problem is that I became exactly what everyone needed me to become?
This may be the question underneath many of the others. You learned how to fit into your family, school, friendship groups, relationships, and workplaces. You learned how to be acceptable, useful, and to survive, and perhaps you became very good at it.
However, there is a difference between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in says, “I will change myself so that I can remain here.” Belonging says, “I can remain myself and still be here.” That difference can become one of the central questions of therapy.
Perhaps therapy is not about fixing you
Perhaps therapy is partly about discovering how much of you had to disappear in order for you to function:
- The boy who became quiet.
- The boy who became funny.
- The boy who became angry.
- The boy who became successful.
- The boy who became sexually competent.
- The boy who became independent.
- The boy who stopped asking.
- The boy who stopped crying.
- The boy who learned not to need anyone.
He did not necessarily become that way because something was wrong with him, he may have become that way because it worked. It helped him belong, avoid conflict, receive approval, survive school, navigate his family, manage relationships, and protect himself. But what protects you at eight does not necessarily serve you at thirty-eight.
Sometimes therapy is the place where you finally get to ask, “Do I still need to live this way?”
Perhaps you can stop being the strong one every minute of every day, stop being the joker when you are hurting, stop being invisible, stop automatically saying yes, and stop changing yourself before anybody has even asked you to. Perhaps you can begin discovering what you actually need.
The most important thing therapy can give a man is not another set of instructions. Perhaps it is the experience of somebody sitting across from him and saying, in a hundred different ways through their attention, curiosity, acceptance and presence: “I want to understand you.”
For a man who has spent thirty-eight years being valued for what he provides, protects, achieves, fixes and performs, that can be a profoundly different experience. Because sometimes the question is not, “Why can’t I cope?” It is, “What did I have to become in order to cope?” And then comes the deeper question: “Who might I become if I no longer had to?”
Men’s Therapy: Understanding Childhood, Masculinity and Emotional Needs
Why do some men struggle to understand their emotions, ask for help or know what they need? Explore childhood, masculinity, family roles and how therapy can help men reconnect with themselves.
Why do some men struggle to understand their emotions? Some men struggle to identify their emotions because they learned during childhood to prioritise strength, independence, achievement or other people’s needs. When emotional expression is repeatedly discouraged, a boy may learn to suppress his feelings and become highly skilled at coping without recognising what he needs. Therapy can provide a space for men to explore these patterns, understand where they developed and develop a stronger sense of identity, emotional awareness and connection.
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