Helping a Man Expand

There are different ways of influencing others and taking advantage of the opportunity to help them find and experience their own power to change. Working in our own space and sphere of influence, we can capitalize on life’s natural events. For example, men experiencing divorce, job loss or death of a parent or a loved one, have the potential to experience a myriad of feelings. But many men don’t know how to process them. Helping him to begin to express some of these feelings (with some support) can help open a man up so he can begin to experience himself at a deeper level. He can begin to recognize the part of himself that connects to a similar emotion in another and feel supported. Do you remember the first time you experienced pain and loss? It’s not always easy to make sense out of it. But if we can face it and feel it, we have a chance to integrate the experience and move on with our lives despite the pain. For example, one of my clients, a young man in his forties never had the love and attention of his mother his whole life. He was the only boy of four children who lived through the divorce of his parents. His biological father was an alcoholic (who was not around), and his step-father was verbally abusive to him. He was very angry, but wouldn’t let himself feel the depth of his pain. He feared if he had any chance of having a relationship with his mother, he was afraid to criticize her choice of men. She would reject him further.

Things began to change when his mother developed terminal cancer. His anxiety and impending sense of loss began increasing. He didn’t know where to turn.

He and I met on three occasions. He quickly realized that he had been holding a lot of anger for a very long time and had affected not only the present preoccupation with his thoughts but had colored his outlook on dating and his choice of where he lived. He realized it was normal to feel that anger and that he was entitled to it! He also decided to meet with his mother and tell her how he felt. With the support of his sisters and his mother’s changing life situation (her illness and subsequent divorce of her second husband) he made a much-needed and satisfying connection with her.

His sisters and his aunt could see his dilemma, but he couldn’t. it was not until he could recognize and be conscious of the needs of his deeper self and validate their importance to him, that he could begin moving forward. Notice, he didn’t actually have to get angry in order to resolve this impasse…just recognize how he really felt and that he was entitled to these feelings. It was a new solution for him. You could imagine how an experience such as this, could deepen the sense of who he really was and catapult him in meeting his real needs in the future.

We don’t have to be able to treat the issues, but recognize them in ourselves or in others, and get them to someone who can assist in the process. Do you recognize certain dysfunctional processes in your own family? Can you influence maybe one member to look at themselves in a new way? Focus on the feelings, especially with men.

“Be the change you want to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi)