​Many men today feel like they’re falling behind, unable to meet traditional definitions of success. They see that others have succeeded, both before them and today, and conclude one thing: This is my failure.

In our culture, men are expected to be providers and achievers. You’ve “made it” if you can pay your bills and land promotions. The social status of another person is what we use as a shortcut to judge who he is. And so we assume others do the same about us.

When a man feels he hasn’t reached the level he should, he works harder. He will bring work home with him, physically or mentally. Anxiety over unmet expectations builds, making it harder to get things done and often leading to burnout. The looming fear of getting fired - the ultimate blow to manhood - becomes a constant source of stress.

These pressures are made worse by how work is set up. The primary goal of any employer is to get the most output for the least amount of input. So they put workers on a treadmill and gradually increase the speed. If they see you can run at 4 MPH without faltering, they increase it to 5. From 5 to 6. If at 6.5 MPH you struggle to keep up, then they now know what your max speed is.

Some employers may demand 7 MPH, and the job market is such that if you can’t do it, they will find someone who will. But either way the preference is that you alone do it. Paying you $60,000 to do a ton of work leads to more profit than paying two people $50,000 to do it.

So if we know work is naturally set up to always have us on the verge of breaking, why do we feel so terrible when we do?

Times are changing, but much of it is still to do with a pressure to “man up.” Our grandfathers overcame the fascists without complaint, so the story goes. Being able to work through pain is the highest cultural virtue. And that mindset is exploited by those who want things from you. If you are not able to cut it, then it is ‘your’ failure.

​Buy an expensive watch and you can convince people you have succeeded. If they are convinced, maybe you can convince yourself. Buy the biggest TV and you have the most impressive way to distract from the nagging pain in the back of your mind.

Go into debt. The same people who promote the idea that you must be strong, independent, and constantly working are more than willing to lend you money—at interest rates they control.

In therapy I see again and again that the symptom is not the real problem. Men come in all the time with vague feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They tend to want “tools” to get rid of the anxiety, so they can get back in the race.

But anxiety is not an ailment, it is a beacon. It is a red flag. It is an alarm going off that says “here, over here, this is what needs attention!”

Just addressing how not to feel anxious is putting a band-aid on a lopped off finger stub. We need to talk about how you got here in the first place. How we all keep getting here. And we need to question in what way we would like to participate in the culture that is exploiting you and grinding you down.

I often will ask “what does being a man mean to you?” I find that the answers are not usually ones that we have independently come up with. Rather they are usually just a re-frame of what we have been told being a man means.

Which to me means we are living someone else’s life instead of our own.

I was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine on the topic of being a people pleaser. Below is an excerpt from that article. The full version can be read for free on their website.

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What does “People Pleaser” mean to you?

A people pleaser is a person who feels compelled to give more than they receive in any kind of relationship. Their default thinking will be some form of ‘what can I do to make people around me happy?’

On the surface, it seems like being a person who wants to please others is a good thing. Can you help articulate a few of the challenges that come with being a people pleaser?

It does seem like a good thing on the surface. Certainly it is better than being the complete opposite. The trouble is the people pleaser invites others to take advantage of them. People pleasers will find there is inequality in their relationships. They are apt to grow bitter and feel that although they give so much to others, they get little in return. They may ask ‘when is it gonna be my turn?’

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How does people-pleasing behavior impact personal relationships?

If you establish in your relationships that you will give and give and not ask anything in return, the people in your life will accept that arrangement without much thought. People may assume you just take pleasure from giving. That you don’t want much of anything in return. Even well-meaning people can fall into this receiving without giving back trap. Receiving is easy, and if a person isn’t being asked for anything, it takes mental effort for them to notice that they should be giving.

The above is the more common scenario. But there are more dangerous ones. People pleasers attract people users the way a glove attracts a hand. It is common for the victim in abusive relationships to be a people pleaser. An abuser may be the type of person who consciously only wants to take and take. So they sniff out a person who was raised to give. The abuser unknowingly plays the role of that childhood parent or caretaker. And the victim will play their old familiar role, possibly not knowing a different role is an option.

This is exasperated by gender norms. Women are already conditioned to be givers in mainstream culture. If they grew up in a household that was both unstable and patriarchal, they likely would’ve received the message that it’s a woman’s job to quietly give and have no expectation of anything in return.

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Often while we say we want to change aspects of our lives that bother us, we don’t actually want to. That we actually prefer to keep the drama alive. This may be hard to accept. The drama appears to be everything you hate, so how could it also be your preference?

The answer may be that the drama is familiar. In discussing anxiety I often use the metaphor of ‘the tiger in the room.’ Anxiety is the fear that because we have endured traumas and stressful events in the past, we will again in the future. So we have to be anxiously on guard for it, we have to be looking around for where the tiger -the threat- is hiding. Relief from anxiety can then come when you see the tiger, when a bad thing is happening to you. Because at least then you are in a familiar experience.

The alternative is being comfortable with openness. That anything could happen, that there are no barriers, that anything can be in the room. This could mean a tiger is present, but it could also mean that love is present. It could mean a million different things good, bad, and neutral may be in the room. Anything may occur. If you choose to people please, then you will get the same familiar result. However if you choose openness, if you choose to take a new action, then you will get a new result. Is a new result what you want? Then take it.

Full interview here.

To book a counseling session, click here

Marilynne Robinson said "depression may be the inability to sustain narrative." This is a fancy way of saying that when we are in the depths of depression it is hard to remember that we are in the middle of an ever-changing story. We view that how we are is permanent.

Depression says at least one of these three things: "I suck, the world sucks, and nothing is going to change." This flies in the face of the facts of the world though. The only thing constant is change. And the world or ourselves cannot be simplified to just 'sucking'.

If there is one thing common in all times of depression I have seen or experienced, it is this feeling of certainty. Depression is famous for black and white thinking. We might believe that things are wonderful for others and terrible for ourselves, with no room for either to be only partially true.

It is so important then to catch ourselves in these moments. If we have thoughts that sound so certain and definitive, we need to apply the hand brake. We have to recognize that we are thinking more in our emotional mind and not our rational mind. And then we can question whether any conclusions we have drawn about ourselves or the world are really 100% true.

(Read more about applying the brake to our thoughts here)

(And a trick on how to think differently here)