The quiet struggles men carry
This is the first in a new series, Reflections on men, emotion and therapy, exploring the quieter emotional pressures many men live with. In this opening piece, I look at the hidden weight men carry, from the expectation to be “the strong one” to the emotions that go underground, and how therapy can offer a space to put some of that weight down and reconnect.
A different sort of exhaustion
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from holding everything together.
Many men arrive in my therapy room with lives that look, from the outside, entirely functional. They are dependable partners, committed parents, reliable friends and colleagues. They’re often described as calm, capable, steady.
And yet, something feels heavy. Not dramatic. Not catastrophic. Just quietly, persistently tiring.
This isn’t because men lack emotional depth or insight. It’s because, for much of their lives, the world has tended to reward their competence far more than their complexity.
How silence is learned
Most men learn early on which parts of themselves are welcome and which are better kept out of view. This learning is rarely explicit. It happens through everyday moments:
a joke made when a boy gets upset
a father who never speaks about fear
the subtle praise that comes from “getting on with it”
the way emotional needs are treated as weakness.
None of this is about blame. Families do their best with what they’ve known. But over time, these experiences form a template. Feelings are managed, rationalised or pushed aside. Vulnerability becomes something to control rather than explore.
But what’s pushed down doesn’t disappear. It settles in the body. Men often describe it as a tightness in the chest, a constant low-level tension, difficulty sleeping, irritability that seems to come from nowhere, or a sense of being oddly disconnected from people they care about. Life is “fine” – but flat. Or strained. Or hollow.
The cost of being “the steady one”
In therapy, we often explore the cost of always being the one others rely on. When you spend years being strong for everyone else, it can become hard to know what you are carrying. Needs are postponed. Feelings are delayed. Help feels unnecessary or undeserved – and asking for it is nearly always out of the question.
Many men believe they should be able to manage on their own. That struggling means failing. That asking for support risks letting people down. But strength that never bends eventually becomes brittle.
When fear, sadness or uncertainty are pushed away for long enough, they often resurface as anger, shutdown or numbness. Not because something is wrong – but because the system is overloaded.
What therapy offers instead
Therapy isn’t about fixing masculinity or turning you into someone you’re not. It’s a relational space – often the first one – where a man is allowed to be unsure, tired or not okay… without the world collapsing as a result.
In my work, we don’t rush. We pay attention to what’s happening now: the tightness in your body, the urge to minimise, the pull to stay in control. We notice what’s been held alone for too long. We explore the patterns you’ve inherited and ask – gently – which ones are still helping, and which ones are simply exhausting and no longer fit for purpose (if they ever were). We find language for experiences that were never encouraged to be spoken aloud.
This work isn’t about losing strength. It’s about finding a version of strength that includes vulnerability rather than excluding it, and leaves room for you as well as everyone else.
An ongoing conversation…
This is the first in a series exploring the quieter, often unspoken aspects of men’s emotional lives – the pressures, the coping strategies, the inherited patterns, and what can shift when there’s space to be met as a whole person in therapy. Next time: The pressure to cope – why many men delay asking for help.
If something here resonates, you don’t need to have the words yet. Curiosity is enough to begin. And if you’d like support with this work, please get in touch to arrange a free 20-minute introductory call.