Therapy speak for men
A different dictionary for men's emotional states
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Therapy speak is getting more and more popular. 20 years ago nobody heard of these words, and now they’re the subject of memes. It’s stuff like:
Holding space
Toxic
Intergenerational trauma
Healing
Self-care
Most of these terms have been popularized by women and queer writers through blogs and social media. Nobody is spelling out the meaning of these terms, and, most of the time, people don’t need to. The words themselves resonate with their audience. Women and queer folks get the gist.
Straight men don’t get the gist. Our cultural context is different. The phrases often sound too academic, too vague, or too filled with emotional judgement for us to resonate with them.
And so when these terms get used, we tend not to engage. We either nod our heads in silent confusion or dismiss the statement as therapy bullshit. I think this is an issue. A lot of these terms are just as useful for men as they are for women and queer people, but we don’t have language that makes these concepts make sense to us. If we did have labels, we’d have greater interest in exploring our emotional landscape.
Take PTSD, for example. PTSD was officially recognized as a mental health condition in 1980. That was the first time the US put a label on debilitating mental conditions being the result of external events, and not individual weakness. Now we estimate 7% of US veterans have PTSD and can design treatments around it.
But PTSD aside, men tend not to put labels on their inner emotional landscape. It hasn’t been a popular part of our culture. For women and queer communities, these labels get popularized all the time. For men to gain greater emotional awareness - something most men seek in some way or another - we need to create terms that work for us. We need a different dictionary.
The dictionary
Luckily, we’re not starting from scratch. Men’s group leaders have recognized this issue for decades and have using different language. Here are some of the terms I’ve heard men’s group leaders use in an attempt to use terminology that resonates more with men.
Holding space => Active listening. Here’s the 2015 blog post that popularized the term “holding space.” It’s 1,850 words about how to present with someone when they’re going through a tough time. For a lot of women, it resonated so hard it popularized a whole new term. For a lot of men, it’s wordy and vague. When I hear men teach the exact same concept, they use a different term: “active listening,” which is listening and asking clarifying questions. For men, it doesn’t need to get more complicated than that.
Intergenerational trauma => Legacy. The concept of parents leaving their kids with emotional baggage is useful and universal. But “trauma” invites a victim mindset, which isn’t necessary for the vast majority of stuff we inherit from our parents. Ish Iguarta, cofounder of the men’s group All Kings and a leader of men’s groups while in prison, uses the term “legacy” instead of “intergenerational trauma.” Legacies can be good and bad, big and small. By using the term “legacy,” men are invited to look into the good with the bad, and assign as much emotional weight to things as they find useful.
Vulnerable => Transparent. Asking a dude to be vulnerable implies that there’s an emotional weight that he’s hiding. He needs to feel something, and then share it. Andrew Horn, who leads the men’s group Junto, uses the term “transparent” instead of “vulnerable.” I dig it. Asking a dude to be emotionally transparent is just asking a dude for honesty. That’s simpler. There’s less judgement and expectation involved, and they get at it exactly the same thing.
Positive / negative => Useful / not useful. A lot of therapy, and the modern world in general, encourages labeling things as positive or negative, good or bad. These can be vague and judgmental terms. Andrew Horn often uses the terms “useful” / “not useful” instead. I find this is more specific and personal, and so it resonates with me more.
Healing => Feeling pain or feeling possibility. “Healing” does little to describe emotionally moving past something. I’ve never once understood what someone is referring to when they say they’re on a “healing” journey. The men’s work leader Bill Wich once described all healing work to be either a) feeling pain to get over pain or b) feeling possibility so we can do more things. I find this more useful. It describes what the “healing” process looks like and what the goals are: feeling safe and doing stuff.
Masculinity => Manhood. “Masculinity” is like the term “caucasian.” It checks an academic box and is a part of zero people’s actual identity. It usually only comes up with the phrase “toxic masculinity,” so it also carries negative vibes. Whenever I hear the term “masculinity” get used in emotional work, I know the audience isn’t men. I prefer “manhood.” Nobody has to explain what “manhood” is to me. Any dude can feel it. Boys aspire to it. Masculinity, by contrast, feels like something I have to research.
Processing emotions => Feeling. In my humble opinion, “processing emotions” is a term folks use to make “feeling” sound complicated and worthy of academic discussion. And to anyone who says “processing emotions” encompasses more than just “feeling,” I say this: no it doesn’t. I will die on this hill.
Mental health => ???. Mental health, in my view, is the final boss of therapy-speak terms. It’s ubiquitous and yet absolutely blows at describing what it’s supposed to. For one, mental health is about emotions, which are felt everywhere - not just in our heads. Secondly, “mental health” has come to mean not having problems like depression or anxiety. It does nothing to explain what actual “health” looks like.
To fill this gap, I’ve heard the term “mental fitness” or “mental strength” get used, which speaks to a certain resiliency that I find attractive. But using workout analogies for mental states feels limiting.
Jonny Miller, a men’s group member and teacher of the course Nervous System Mastery, uses the term “emotional fluidity.” Emotional fluidity refers to the ability to
be aware of our emotions
feel our emotions
welcome all of them without getting overwhelmed or shutting down.
That, to me, is exactly what the goal of mental health is. My only gripe is that “fluidity” can sound like a physics textbook. If anyone can come up with a term that feels more intuitive, I would be eternally grateful.
The mission ahead
I think this project is vital to men’s mental health. It will take decades, and requires thousands of people adding in their two cents until we words that resonate. If you have a preferred term for some vague therapy word, throw it in the comments. Let’s build the dictionary.
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this is dope. thank you
Yup. Therapy terms feel inherently gynocentric. Using man language for manly men is certainly more useful. Smashed it bro.