A Man's Guide To Mastering Your Emotions - Connor Beaton

Why do men have a bad reputation with emotions, do you think?

(clicks tongue) Oh, man, uh, I mean, I think that we- I think that generally we feel emotions pretty intensely, and so when our emotions let loose, sometimes it's, uh, it can not be pretty. It can be loud, it can be big, it can be intense. Um, (clears throat) and so I think sometimes men have a bad rap because of that. I think that there's been a few generations of men that have been told not to feel, that their, their best emotional tool is suppression, is repression, is just like stuff it down, pour some whiskey over top, you know, light some weed up, and, and just keep soldiering on, right? Stiff upper lip, as I think they say in your country. Um, and so I think we've, we've gone through a few generations of men who used avoidance as their main tool with emotions, and because of that, cut themselves off from some pretty important data and information, and so a lot of men have just, you know, and older generations, haven't been able to speak the language of emotions, of what they're feeling, of what they're going through. Um, but I, I think having worked with men for over a decade, you know, tens of thousands of men from around the world, men feel very deeply. And I, I think it's not that men don't feel, I think it's that men feel very deeply, and we've, in some cultures, created a vacuum of being able to teach men what to do with their emotions, how to actually traverse through their emotions. So I, I think those are, are parts of it. Uh, I'm curious what, what your thought is on that though as well because even you talk to a lot of people in this space.

Yeah, I think you're right. Um, we don't exactly have fantastic emotional role models as men, and...

You mean Homer Simpson and, uh-

(laughs) Yeah.

... Peter Griffin are the, like the role models of emotional acuity? (laughs)

Yeah, exactly. Who's that, who's the guy that used to be like, "Ah!" and then would hit his wife, like pretend to hit his wife on like some sitcom? Who was that American guy? I'm not from this country, I don't follow.

I don't, I don't think that's, I think that's before my time, I'm not sure.

Y- M- It very well may be, yeah.

But-

You know, it was the '50s, it was a different time.

That's right.

The hands were softer. Um, (laughs) so, yeah, I think the role model of the kind of bumbling, unfeeling c- largely useless, semi-useless kind of dedicated but emotionally out of touch man, uh, I think that's got a lot to play into it. I think as well, (clears throat) you know, it's, it doesn't speak to many of the ways that men like to think about being masculine. I think one of the most common, uh, contributing factors when you ask somebody, "What is a masculine man?" would be mastery over their emotions, or kind of a, a reliable and controlled emotional state, some version of that. And, uh, feeling feelings seems kind of at odds with that. So, um, it's not, it's not particularly well-portrayed archetypally in the culture. Uh, I don't think it is a (clears throat) particularly proud thing either internally or rewarded externally by society. You know, for all that the world says we need men to open up more and talk about their emotions, no one has any fucking idea how to deal with a man that's going through a very intense set of emotions because they're either very aggressive or, even worse than that, very soppy. And you go, I have no, most of the time, people have no idea how to deal with that. It's scary. Uh, and then if you try to do that and you see, as you're unable to regulate, somebody else disgusted at your lack of regulation, you think, "Okay, I'm never doing that again." So, uh, yeah, maybe some more elements there.