The Inner Lives of Men

have to be honest. You know, I was the week that I was reading this book in preparation for this interview. In my other life, in my life as someone who well I I don't perform stand up comedy anymore, but twenty five years as a stand up comedian. In my other life, there was a lot going on in my community where um, you know, a sexual offender who was credibly accused and admitted to it want a Grammy for

his comedy album. And you know, he'd been exiled for a little bit, but he came back and and anyone speaking out about like wow, that really makes women feel like they don't matter, and it does kick up a lot of trauma and anxiety, and and uh, you know, I live a life online, and I just am constantly whenever I speak out about things, or speak up about things, or just even talk about sexism and inequality and the nuance of any conversation about a sexual predator winning a Grammy.

I'm not saying I don't even know what I'm I'm not the argument I was good gets down to it should they never work again? It's like I'm not even thinking about that. I'm just thinking about how I feel, think about my feelings about the message it sends to other people in comedy that aren't men. And so I noticed this online a lot. Is like women are hawking through their emotions, their feelings. Men are coming back wanting to debate. It's all in their head, you know, and

and it's it's exhausting, frankly. But it was just one of those weeks where I am living online, I'm speaking out about something, and the harassment I'm getting is just un real. And it's happened before. It's a regular part of my life being a woman at all, but online

as well. And so here I am reading this book about men and their inner lives and how, you know, because of the patriarchy, they they are stuck in these ridiculous roles where they're you know, not supposed to show emotion because everything is so sexist that it's like if a man. Everything has been feminized to where like if a man does this, it's, you know, it's not manly, and so he doesn't do it, and it and it. It was just interesting because I my empathy was at

a negative two on a scalpeoe to ten. I was just like, don't just fix it already, everybody, because they're making our lives impossible, you know. But it was great to talk to Michael Addis because I mean, he's obviously aware of the consequences that's in the title of his book,

The Consequences of Silence. When men don't feel like they're you know, given any room in society to talk about their feelings, express emotion, it builds up and can cause anxiety up to dot dot dot someone is going on a shooting spright right, or someone is harming others, or at the very nest is just causing disruptions in relationships, whether romantic or family or friendships, or maybe just you're one of these guys online that just wants to debate

a woman which is talking about the nuance of a feeling and these are consequences. And what we talked about in this episode was that the scary part can be when it's not like, oh, well, if only men could talk about their feelings, there go back a step. They're not even in their own minds and hearts and souls recognizing a feeling. Like it's not that, oh, they have all the same skills that that that women do and you know, all kinds of different people, they're just not

able to verbalize. I mean, it's so much more than that. It's like this just complete disservice that this kind of patriarchal society has done to men. And that's you know what I'm what was screaming about, is that feminism helps men too, you know, break us all out of these stupid binds that that we have because of as Michael, and it reminds me of this episode the Big Pa, the patriarchy. So if anyone listening is like I don't want to hear about men, it trust me, you'll love

this episode. It'll be very healing for your soul. And that's how m he be in his book is like, I know what you're thinking. Really like, men have everything and now I've got to read a book about But it was a really great conversation about you know, whose problem this is, what can be done about it, and what women can do to help. And I think you're going to love his answer on that one. I will

not give it away anyway. So let's just introduce my guest today, Michael at his PhD. Has published more than seventy articles and books. Um. He is a recipient of the American Psychological Association's David Shaka Award and the New Researcher Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. He's the author of Invisible Men, Men's Inner Lives and the Consequences of Silence. He's a professor of psychology at

Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Again, so enjoy my conversation and I'll see you on the other side with this episode's take aways. All right, everyone, I'm here with Dr Michael Addis, the author of Invisible Men, Men's Inner Lives and the Consequences of Silence. And it's funny because I was reading your book and I was so glad that the way you started it is Invisible Men, Who are you kidding. The title of this book may make you

wonder invisible men? Who are you kidding? Everywhere we look, we see men's lives on television and sports and politics, at work and at home. Men are anything but invisible. Um. But at the same time, men's most men's inner lives remain hidden from others and often from themselves. But I'm just glad you put it out there because I do think, especially you know, being a woman, and I feel like society lately, men seem to be, for lack of a

better word, going through some stuff. And so a lot of times, and we'll talk about this more towards the end of the episode, a lot of times my empathy is really running thin, and it shouldn't because I have anxiety disorders and I want to use this podcast to

help others. But I do like that you recognize and are talking about you know, we're not saying that you know, men aren't out there, but but they're living two different lives right there, living their public facing life and I don't even mean like a celebrity, but does anyone, um, And then on the inside they're suffering from anxiety and I know someone listening might go well, duh, that's everyone with anxiety. But can you explain to us what's what's

so unique in men about about that? Well? I think we're you know, encouraged from almost day one to have this sort of public persona which lives up to images of what it means to be a man, what it means to be masculine. A lot of that is about being powerful, impactful, stoic um, more powerful than women. Right. I mean, this is this is where I think you're

strained empathy comes from. Is that if you look around, it's like guys or everywhere saying, look at me, but it's only part of me, right, It's the part that is um that fits those societal ideals, and a lot of times to achieve that, we have to sort of squash and hold back the part that doesn't have a frigging clue what's going on, and the part that's afraid or anxious or depressed or were super stressed out because saying I don't know what's going on and I'm struggling

is you know, essentially not very manly. So I think that's where the duality comes from. So yeah, and you know, the way I relate to this is I'll give you an example. In my I had panicked disorder. I guess I still do, but I'm not really panicking a lot. But where I used to panic all the time was airplanes, and sitting on the plane, I would compare and despair and look around at other people. Oh well, none of them are panicking. You know, that guy's reading a book,

that one's you know, doing a crossword puzzle. What's wrong with me? You know? Then shame and then shame makes

a panic horse all that kind of thing. And but I only have those experiences such a rationally, right, So I can't imagine walking around thinking like, for example, with the men that do know they might have anxiety, and we'll talk about the ones that don't, but thinking, um, well, I can't even let anyone know this, uh, you know, because for me on the plane it would be I would feel embarrassed or scared to let anyone know, and so I would hold it in, which would make it worse.

But thank god, those were only situational things for one to six hours of a time. But walking around the world that way, what can that do to a person's I don't know, personality, temperament, physical, does it kind of hurt their body. I mean, what what does that do over time to a guy that's stressful? You know? I mean what you're talking about is is is the consequences

of guys hiding our true selves from each other. Right, So one of those rules from early on about manhood is no matter what's going on inside, project externally like everything's cool. You know, you see this really coming out in um the adolescent and teen years. That's sort of super unemotional teenage boy is almost like an icon. Now nothing troubles him, and what happens is, you know, you

look at other guys. I remember this very clearly growing up, and it still happens now is looking at other men and thinking, well, he sure looks like he's got it going on, you know, like nothing bothers him. And so now I've got two issues, right, One is I'm struggling on the inside if I'm if I'm dealing with panic

or anxiety or any sort of vulnerable emotion. And then the second problem is it feels like there's something shameful about that because look around me, and other guys aren't talking about it, and they've got this long practiced kind of cool pose, right that that indicates or at least seems to indicate, everything's fine. And you know, and I don't mean to position myself as above that either. I'm sure there's a I've been told this by my students.

There's a lot of ways I'm capable of giving off sort of everything's great, you know, nothing bothers me sort of thing. And so, yeah, it's you know, it's not exactly the Emperor's close, but it's close. It's close to that. So tell me then about like why you got into

this specific kind of work. I know, you talk in your book about a friend of yours who's a PhD who was studying borderline personality disorder in men, and then you were saying that what she said is that, UM, men with bp D seem brittle, but women come across as fragile. And you were saying, you know, the differences with men being more more brittle if it seems like if you reached out and touch the metaphorically speaking, they

just might crack entirely. You know. Um, And unlike a lot of anxiety people with things that disorders, men aren't necessarily worried about going insane. It's sort of like, you know, if I'm insane, then I maybe I won't even know it. It's it's something different. I know that I just asked you three questions, but can you talk about how I got started in this and and what is that difference between you know, women might appear fragile, evnxiety, men might

appear brittle. So yeah, I mean, I went to graduate school in clinical psychology with the idea that I was going to become a psychotherapist and help people, you know, through talk therapy. UM started doing a lot of research on UM counseling approaches and one of the first things I noticed was that the majority of people coming in for therapy were women. The second thing I noticed was Wow, I'm the only guy in my graduate class here. And

the third thing I noticed was hot. Now that I'm the only guy around, I'm starting to see some of the things that I learned about being male that are affecting how I'm doing in graduate school and how I'm approaching this whole enterprise of you know, talking about emotions and trying to help people that old on a coalesced um. When I came to Clark University in the in the mid nineties, and I started getting interested in the question

of why men don't attend therapy as often as women. UM, do a little bit a little bit of research and see that not only do we not go to therapy as much, but we don't go to the doctor as much, we don't take care of our health as much, we don't disclose problems as much, you know, and the list goes on, and it's really sort of a curious thing. And so, you know, a lot of this led into an interest in how men get taught to or to not recognize problems in our lives, you know, all the

way back to like our things okay? Or not? Do I even know myself that things are going on that are difficult? You know, you mentioned to the frattle versus frattle versus Bridgil, the fragile versus brittle. There's a new diagnostic category. Um. That distinction actually came from one of my graduate school advisors, Marshall Lenahan, who was the you know, she developed this therapy for borderline personality to sort of dialectical behavior therapy, and she became world famous for helping people,

particularly people who were prone to self injury. And she was not interested in gender in particular, but early on in my career. I visited her one time UM and she asked me what I was doing. I told her about, you know, being interested in men's mental health, and she said, you know, the guys that I see, the very few of them with BPD, it's like they're they're like brittle

rather than fragile. And I asked her what that was about, and she said, well, like the women present as fragile in the sense that I have to be really careful around them, but the guys are like they're brittle there. They seem really well held together and if if you poke a little bit, they're fine. But you get this sense that if I poke a little bit too much, they're just going to explode into shatters. And I thought, what what an amazing metaphor that is, because I can

relate to it personally. And it was true to my experience doing therapy with men too, that I felt quite a bit more resistance to the idea that you might be suffering, the idea that you might be vulnerable. But it also felt that as as tough as that resistance was, there was almost in some ways more raw vulnerability underneath it, and in some ways that rawness is a byproduct of having to expend so much energy holding yourself together because of the fear of what would it mean if I

can't hold it together? You know, and we know what it means is you're normal. You're a human being, right, And I think it's important to for listeners to realize too that when we talk about men as being brittle, it's not that they're actually brittle and going to completely fall apart if they allow themselves to acknowledge what they're feeling. It's more that that that's the fear, right, and it's

this sense that I'm just going to explode. It's like I've seen so many men come through our research studies who will deny anxiety or depression, and you know, despite scoring off the charts on these standardized kinds of questionnaires, and well, and I'll say, so, tell me about that. So from your perspective, you're not anxious. Why is that? And they'll say, well, I know I'm not anxious because my wife has anxiety and she's a basket case. And I'm still able to get up and go to work.

So if I'm able to get up and go to work, that means I'm doing okay. And I'll say, what about what's happening privately? What about you know? I get it, you're you're doing really well and you're gutting it out and that's great. And so I'm not suggesting that you you know that you're crazy or that or anything like that, but in terms of like what it feels like on

the inside, what what's going on? You know in that sense, and you know, then it's like, if you can make that connection, it's like, well, I'm just explode on the inside. You know. That's it's it's overwhelming, But I don't have anxiety. How do you um what happens? I guess when a man that you're talking to does realize it's anxiety, does he does his worst fear come true and he thinks he's weak? Or you know, like what what's the reaction? Is there any relief or is it like does it

just turn into more problems? That's a great question. I mean, I think I think that all depends upon the context, right, So, so ideally it turns into relief because the recognition that you know that what I'm experiencing is not uncommon. There's lots of other people, and importantly other men who have experienced this, and you know, we don't have to look far into fortunately these days, into professional athletes, politicians, famous, you know, men with lots of I like to say,

lots of masculinity in the bank. You know, these guys too have struggled. So ideally there's relief. But as you I think you pick up on. You know, language can be really powerful, and a lot of us men grow up with a sort of femophobia. You know, if something's been labeled feminine, it is frankly fright If it's feminine,

it's frankly frightening. Um, you know. And so if anxiety quote unquote strikes a guy as shameful and weak, then his his initial reaction to it might be um, shame, fear, you know, um self, self hatred, guilt, and so on.

Hopefully they begin to understand, like I'm sure you've talked about many times on your show, that anxieties and evolved mechanism and all human beings, it's there for a reason, and an anxiety disorder is really nothing more than a sort of oversensitivity of a basic mechanism in the human body and mind. And that's you know, there's nothing to be ashamed of about that, and I was thinking, you know, it's we all know that caveman thing, and that gets

said a lot on this show. And you know, it's a back from when we were blah blah blah and we had this sense of danger was coming and humans, you know, we're able to you know, out we didn't. We had to use our brains to realize when danger was coming. So is there a danger? And I don't know if I don't know what what's going on out there in the in the world of helping men who have anxiety, But is there a temptation to and a

danger to, uh making anxiety masculine? You know the way they make Like now we're going to have shower gel for men and it's gonna smell like car grease, you know, Like, is is that something at one point people were doing? Are they still doing it? What do you? How do

you feel about that? I can't tell you how glad I am that you brought that up, because I've done a lot of these interviews and usually I have to bring that up in other words that yeah, yeah, that What you're talking about from my perspective, is this tendency

ultrually to man up mental health right. The idea is if we if we make it macho to talk about mental health, or macho to see a psychotherapist, like have the courage to change, or like that old Viagra commercial that I remember this going where this famous baseball player was like, I take batting practice, I take pitching practice, I take viagra, step up to the plate and call your doctor. It's like, I think I get the motivation to do that. You know. It's marketing to a stereotype

of men. But it comes at a cost, you know, because even though it might be changing the idea of what's manly into something more theoretically helpful or adaptive, it's also continuing this idea that men must be manly. Right now, we just need to do the opposite. We need to go from not talking about our feelings to talking about our feelings. I think the bigger problem is the idea

that men need to be manly. A right, Let's just let go of that a little bit and be like, let men be human, you know, and then we'll see the real improvements in functioning. I think we'll be right back. So I looked back. There was this book, Uh do you know the book Backlash by Susan Faludi quite well, Okay, I'm obsessed with it. I haven't read it since the nineties, but stayed with me, and I almost got this chill when I read it, thinking, oh God, I think she's right.

I don't think things are going to get better. And I think even though I'm in this, you know, it was the mid nineties. You know, we get Hillary Clinton first lady saying I'm not baking cookies. We've got Nirvana is like the number one band and he's going on Saturday Night Live and dresses and nail plashes, this kind of moment of feminism and men were embracing their human nous and not you know, there wasn't but there was.

There was both things as I was going on in culture, but I was in a little bubble, so I'm like, oh, everything's great and it's getting better. And I read her book that was like not blaming the women's movement, but saying, now that women are working, the men's roles are changing, and we're not doing anything to uh walk the men through it, you know, and they are going to there's going to be a backlash. And I knew she was right,

and I feel like I'm seeing it now. And what's so odd is when I meet, um, younger men who still fall into this, like you're talking about things have to be manly or I just keep thinking, when is I thought just certain generation had to die off and then we're done here, you know. So it's just interesting to me, Like I could understand if your dad was like, look at I was in you know, World War two, and I didn't sit around talking about my feelings, so

shut up. But now we're so many generations from that, Um, why is this still happening? Like where is this message coming from? Because there's so many examples the opposite, but it's really doesn't seem to have gotten better. Where's this message coming from? Patriarchy? But what what I mean? But that's what I mean is like, isn't the president of

patriarchy like dead? Now you know what I mean? Like so he president of patriarchy passed it down to his son, And if we're looking at patriarchy is like a corporation, I get it. But in other words, I guess it's like an impossible question where it's like there are, especially with social media, so many more examples now of being a man, which could just be anything, you know. Uh, but it still seems just as bad as when there was only the Marlborough man on to me. You know,

why am I being negative? Or is it getting better at all? Or why is it still happening? Yeah, I mean I think, you know, I mean I'm being facetious. Erarchy, I mean, you know, but I think on some level it's true like that that this idea that that it's not even idea, it's a it's a absolutely overrehearsed path of least resistance practice that people are born into in which men are supposed to be dominant in some way

over women. Has that changed, yes, in some ways? Right, Like I've got lots of young students in my classes, um, who who grew up with a sort of positive feminist ideology or just the absence of what is now called toxic masculinity. UM. And I see lots of young men who are, Um, they're not homophobic, they're not misogynist. Um, they're for all intents and purposes progressive in the way that they're thinking about things. And then there are also the sorts of actions that you see that would fall

under Susan Flute's idea of backlash. You know that for for, if women's increased access to power in society, you will see men threatened by this, um And I think part of that is that there's still a tremendous amount of economic inequality, There's still a trium endous amount of white privilege, there's um a lack of education, and I think a tremendous amount of fear for a lot of men. A lot of what some men feel entitled to is now threatened. UM. So yeah, you have to be on the on the

watch for backlash. Was it Springsteen and one step up and two steps back that song? But the problem with that is that just means you're gonna end up going backwards all the time, and that's not justful way to look at things. I think we're making progress, but I think I think it's up to us as men to model for each other more adaptive ways of being in society.

You know, I don't think this is on women. I don't think I don't think this is on on other people whose identities put them in in marginalized, repressed positions. I think it's on us. You know, I'm thinking because it's I think, you know, like I've always tried to say no, feminism helps men too. It takes the men out of their boxes which is causing them so much anxiety. And you still can be, you know, not less than

you're equal to. But with men, it's kind of like I don't know what women are gonna do to you know what I mean? Like it does seem weirdly like a men's problem and it's on men to solve. So that to me seems extra hard because who are men going to listen to? In other words, you know, like right right, well we yeah, we we were encouraged, you know, to listen to other men. That's part of living in

a patriarchal society. I think one of the challenges is it's not always apparent to guys what's what's to be gained here? You know. So if I let go of traditional notions of masculinity about toughness and emotional stoicism and dominance and so on and being a big wheel and making a lot of money, you know, where does that leave me? And you know, I can say us someone who's looked at the research, well, it's going to leave you with better mental and physical health, better quality relationships,

a better sex life, more sense of connection. To your children, right, and and a better ability to work with women and people of other genders right. So there's a lot to be gained there. But I think on some level you've got to You've got to experience that to buy into it, and you're more likely to experience it if you put yourself in a community of men enacting it. Yeah, but I don't I don't know how. You know, I guess

you'd have to actively seek that out. He you know, you do, you do, and you have to take risks to you know, it's like you have to. I'm just thinking about times I've been out with golf buddies and and been like, God, you know, how how's it going, how's it going on? How's it going? And I'm thinking, how's it going? It sucks right now? And this is a moment where I have to decide am I going to say it sucks? And when then they then when they asked me what do you mean? Or they say

are you know? What are you talking about? I have to be honest and say I don't. I feel awful, you know, I've been down on myself or whatever it may be, and not just gripe up out the economy or something right, and then you know, kind of putting yourself out there. Right, It's like then do they make a homophobic joke or are they going to say, hey, you know, I'm glad to send that, like let's all cut the bullshit here, like I feel awful too. I And is this do you notice like is this a

straight man problem or is this does this go? You know, I don't, I don't know about it. Has it only been studied with straight men or is it No? It's right. So there's just stereotype out there that that, um that gay men have transcended this this sort of restrictive masculinity because they have more access to femininity and emotional expressiveness. But the research shows that gay men er has affected by this as as much as straight men. So gay men struggle with you know, like what does it mean

to be masculine? And am I masculine? And enough they struggle with body image right with um a sort of hierarchy betwe ween more quote unquote feminine gay men and more masculine gay men and so on. So now, I mean I think that this sort of stuff affects people of a range of identities. What you see, I think is that, um, you know, at the risk of getting a little over intellectual about this, but you see gender

intersecting with other identities as well. So what it means to be a white straight man in today's society, UM, I think that's very different. Yeah, yeah, but I think that's in a hugely important, UM thing to talk about at some point in this discussion. Is that I'm seeing like the anxiety of the of the white man. Like it's I've never seen it this bad before in my opinion, my humble not a doctor opinion. But do you think there's some crisis going on or is it just that

we're seeing it because of social media? Boys? That's a good question, you know. I mean I think it's both. You know, if I if I, if I had to bet on it, um, things like COVID and um, just the incredible political polarity going on in this country. There's two major stressors right there that that that tear at the social fabric, you know, like and you know it's true for everyone, but let's talk about like guys, right

or white straight guys. Talk about people who historically have been in relative positions of power and have had more experience hiding their vulnerability. You've got two things here that are making it harder and harder to connect with other people, and we all need to connect. Loneliness is one of

the great understudied issues in men's lives. Um we did a study at my university where we asked students of all genders to estimate how much men in our environment at the university wanted to have closer friends, how much they felt lonely and wanted to share more of themselves with other men. And people of all genders and backgrounds estimated men to be less lonely and less in need of close connections than the men themselves actually report. So

that's to me fascinating, right. It's like it's like, yeah, there's all these angry guys out there, and a lot of them I suspect are lonely. The problem is they're they're ashamed of being lonely if they know they're lonely.

So you know, there's a couple of challenges there. Yeah, that's really tough because you know, first of all, now we've been you know, everyone's like locked in their home and varying degrees for years now at this point, and you know, the internet can be a great place to connect or the worst place, you know, if you want to find some toxic friends and and feel a sense of community. You know, It's like, but I think shame

and I wanted to talk about that. I'm always trying to get people to talk about shame on this podcast and be like, but isn't it like such a cause of panic attacks? And you know, your book really dove into that, is like, shame causes men so much anxiety. So it's like not even just this, like yeah, you're gonna be masking all the time. That can you speak to what does shame feel like and present like in men? And what is why are they what is the shame?

I mean, shame to me feels like I just want to hide, you know right now there is an impending sense of doom coming from other people and the way they're thinking about me. There's something about me right now that is so unacceptable. I just need to go away. And um, I think for a lot of men, shame is such a powerful emotion. First of all, because it's powerful for everyone. It's it's in our evolution, you know, it's there for a reason. But second of all, because

so many of us guys are shame phobic. We don't know how to deal with shame itself. We don't know how to say I feel ashamed. We don't know how to even own that we're concerned about being rejected, when we're when we are feeling ashamed, or that we're rejecting ourselves. I mean, it's just so many layers of vulnerability. It's it's it's it's a bit too much to swallow, frankly for a lot of guys. So do you like handle that on your own? Like you know, it seems like therapy.

You know, you've got to go to therapy to work that out. And and there's not a lot of like quick fixed things that you see going around about shame phobia, the deep level, not knowing how to verbalize shame. I mean, I never thought about that really until you just said it. M hm. One thing I think about. So I don't think there's an easy answer to it, but there's one thing that that that resonates with me. And I can't remember where I first heard this. It was somewhere back

in graduate school. But it's the idea that shame grows in the closet, and so, um, I make my own shame worse by hiding that which I'm ashamed of from others. Now, you know, I'm not going to confess everything I'm ashamed. You know, You've got to do it in small doses. But but for example, if I'm like I've, I've struggled with depression and anxiety for for most of my life,

you know, on and off. And it occurred to me probably fifteen years ago that you know, here I am being positioned and positioning myself as an expert on men and depression, and I haven't told anyone that I know what it's like to be depressed and that some days I wake up just really loathing myself and feeling like all of my accomplishments are are fake and and my life is fake. Well, so what you know, what good

is that doing me? To keep hiding that? It's It's what it does is it reinforces the idea that this is shameful. So I now talk about my experiences with depression. I'm guessing that's a big part of why you're doing this whole series right as you've found that that talking about anxiety not only benefits other people, but it also helps you absolutely. And you know, I was mistaken that younger people have it easier because they have the Internet.

So if they're anxious, they'll type anxious into Google. They'll figure it out. I didn't have the Internet growing up, you know. And then I realized I was totally wrong, and I was like, oh, well, well, I'd like to talk about it and help people give them breadcrumbs that they know where to begin their research. And you know, like what you're saying, so okay, so you're here, you've got depression and you're teaching it. You don't even want

to tell people you have it. So I'm assuming once you did, you were positively rewarded, right, you got really good feedback. People thought you were oh my god, thank you so much for sharing. And I mean, I'm assuming you've got like a Pavlovian response of some kind that made you keep doing it. Right? Interesting, Yeah, I would say overall, yes, yes, overall, it's absolutely been worth it.

The reason I'm pausing is that that, uh, it's absolutely been some backlash and some policing of my mask gualinity

to um yeah. And the thing, the thing, you know how I feel about that is um fuck you you know, like, um, I've it's interesting you know, I teach a Psychology of Men and Masculinity class every year, sometimes a couple of times, and I've been doing it for almost twenty years now, and there's this moment every time I teach this class towards the end of the semester, where the students sort of without planning it, they kind of come together on a point of saying, I get it now, I get

how this works, but what are we going to do about it? Like? How am I supposed to talk about all this with my family who raised me to think this way? How am I supposed to talk about homophobia? How am I supposed to talk about the importance of of of supporting women and you know, and and being profeminist or whatever it may be. And especially from the guys, it's I get this, I want to change, But my friends, right, they're going to ridicule me. And I always say, I

don't have a really good answer to this. You know. The truth is, if you're committed to a certain way of being, you also have to think through who you're hanging around, you know. So I mean I my friends, my guy friends, you know, sometimes they'll give me grief about stuff. But what I found is over time. If I hang in there, it is positively rewarded, and I start seeing it come out in them too. They start

being more honest about what's going on. They call me up one on one and say, don't say anything to the other guys, but could you help me talk through this issue with my wife that always cracks me up. That's so well, you know, it's um. You know, there's avoidance, right. People do that when they're anxious. So I'm not going to drive over this bridge because it makes me scared and eventually they can't go anywhere. But it seems like, yeah, if you of the only answer to avoidance is like

you're gonna feel anxious and you're gonna panic. Got to do it. It's like there's got to be an exposure therapy, right for men to take that first step and be their authentic selves and you know, fuck you, Like you said, if their friend friends can't handle it, they either get new friends or maybe they'll help, you know, open their friends up. Well, it's interesting to talk about exposure and um and and things like that. And I sometimes say uh and resist saying it because I anticipate lots of

hate mail. But I think masculinity can be really usefully understood as an anxiety disorder. I think it acts exactly like an anxiety. That's brilliant. Yeah, it's it's a coordinated way of responding to a perceived threat, which is exactly what an anxiety disorder is. It's also exactly like an allergy, right, and an allergy is is like an anxiety disorder to right,

it's not. It doesn't have all the same cognitive and emotional components, but it's still your body's way of saying threat, get it out of here, got to coordinate some sort of defense. Yes, right, exactly. And anxiety says, let's figure out, you know how I'm going to not have a heart attack. Let's run and hide. Masculinity says, let's pump ourselves up, let's put women down, let's shut our emotional lives down, you know, posture for other guys. It's very similar in

terms of how it functions. That's so genius too, because like and that, like the other things that we do when we're anxious that don't work, it makes anxiety worse, Right, it certainly can, Yeah, because why am I putting all this energy into into doing this? You know, it's like, yeah, flooded with stories. We'll continue the interview on the flip

side of a quick message from our sponsors. So you have talked about the three piece of silence with men personal silence, public silence, and uh wait, where's what was the third? Personal? Private and public? Okay, So in personal silence you talk about when the man himself doesn't even know he's in pain. And some men are raised in such a way that they get a mild version of a psychological condition called alexithymia. Is that how you said? And as you say, it translates to without words for mood.

And so you talked about in your book, like in an example of a conversation that you had with someone that you couldn't even get them to say words about how they felt because they didn't know. And so can you tell us more about alexithymia. Alexithymia, Yeah, it's I mean, it's a very common um disorder. And you know, the um psychologist and researcher Ron Levant has suggested that that men in general suffer from a sub centical version of this.

In other words, that the that the normal way when you raise men in this society tends to produce a mild case of not knowing what it is that you're feeling, so when you know. One of consequence of this is that when people will say to men, sometimes you know, whether this is an intimate partner or a physician or a friend, how are you doing? What are you feeling? What does that feel like when such and such happens?

The answer is often I don't know, or it sucks right. Um. And it's not necessarily because a guy is withholding, although it could be. It could also be because he simply doesn't know. Um. Sometimes it's just a bit of a bodily feeling like you know, I'm i'm my my, a tension in my chest, or it's an externalization kind of thing, like it just feels like I hate my boss, you know. And um, it's it's definitely a challenge because you know, if you can't name something, how do you do anything

about it? Really, there's a big challenge. Let's say someone has great parents, you know, um, whatever, every the perfect scenario to not raise someone in a sea of toxic masculinity. Mom and dad share chores, they both work, everything's great. Can you still maybe develop something like that because of like societal influences, like how much how much ConTroll to

parents even have over this? Yeah, you know, there's not a clear answer to that, but I I think it's important to avoid the idea that parents are sort of master chefs of their kids psychological development. You know, for one thing, we know that that kids are exquisitely sensitive to pure influences. You know, as as we develop, we're not really designed to figure out how to deal with our parents. That's true for the first few years of life, but we're designed to figure out how to deal with

the world we're going to grow into. And so peers tend to to to win out over parents. Um. That said, are you know parental influences also shape who we look for in peers. Um, you know, just as this is an end of one end totally. But for example, my father,

My father had his PhD in psychology. He was a very emotionally expressive guy, and you know, when I would struggle with bullies and such, you know, he would ask me, uh, crazy questions like, um, well, what do you think that guy is feeling as he's about to beat the crap out of you? Was a guy guy got really good at at analyzing other people's insecurities. And I have a

reasonable level of emotional intelligence. So in that sense, I was shaped, uh in a way that I was able to avoid some of the issues about you know, what it means to be a man, so to speak, and in other ways. You know, Um, I grew up thinking, you know, it's my world, UM talk over women. Um, you avoid things that are feminine. I remember, you know, my mom I was in high school and we were out shopping at the mall and she asked me to hold her purse from it. I remember thinking, I can't

hold that thing. You know, it's if I hold that, everyone's gonna see and you know that sort of stuff. So it's, uh, you know, it's complex world out there in terms of trying to figure out gender norms. For sure, Well that makes sense. I I interviewed um, a therapist.

We talked mainly about love attachment styles, and and we talked about people who you know, they've got all their different attachment styles, and she was saying, you know, honestly, like society can influence that as much as your parents. Like if people are seeing too many romantic comedies, are things that they think our love that really in real life would be more like akin to obsession or chasing someone that doesn't love you. And I was blown away

by that. Actually really didn't realize how much UM media and society and just the world influences us. I really am kind of blind to that. Weirdly, I think that that's really good news. Right. So we were talking earlier about about sort of what, you know, what kind of what can we do about this this these issues of men's ideologies and beliefs about about our own mental health and how we're supposed to be as men. And one of the things I always encourage people to do is

read more broadly, watched, watch different films. You know that there are other ways of being in the world. And I was just listening on NPR the other day and they were interviewing uh, a guy who had started reading romance novels at his at his wife's suggestion, because she

thought it would make him a better lover. And and it was so fascinating to me because my first thought was, how brave of this guy to go on radio and talk about following his wife's advice to be a better lover and not be talking about you know, well, this is how to you know, stay hard longer, and this is how to you know, like make her scream. What he was finding from these novels was how much communication mattered, how much humor mattered, how much just being real and

open and connected. And he was, you know, having a better sex life because of this. So, I you know, I think there's a lot of opportunities for learning out there from the environment. You kind of don't want to hear it from your wife or your mother or your girlfriend, like what you need to do, but lead someone to water,

they might learn. You know, Yeah, I know, I know, I have these fantasies about stuff like that too, that if if you could lead to the water, that that that men would realize too, that for example, in this case, like that kind of stuff about you know, different ways of being a lover is not just about learning how quote unquote to satisfy her, but to also enjoy this more yourself right, just to become more human in a in a broader sense. In this intimate context, it's just

it's a tragedy. And I think that's one of the things. You know, that this area of we're getting a little bit far afield from anxiety. But you know, I have a doctoral student working with me now who's looking at scripts about not prescriptions, but like ideas that as that young boys get about sex and sexuality from pornography at a very early age that not only have harmful effects on their sexual partners, but on themselves and their own

level of satisfaction and enjoyment. And to bring it back to anxiety, on the amount of anxiety that they experience in those encounters because they're so afraid of failure. So before adolescents, and this is in the in the public silence that you talk about that that men can experience that young boys are very free, um when they're younger, they're they expressed, tender, having feelings with friends and family, They've got an emotional vocabulary. But then adolescence there comes

the public silencing. So that kind of fits in with what we're talking about. Is that like eventually you go out into the world and you kind of adapt to the world and you start doing that anxiety response, which is like shoving it all in, don't show emotion. And is that would you say that the answer to why that happens is because like once you're an adolescent, you have more freedom and you are seeing things that are

outside of your parents influence. Yeah, I think so. And I think also that, um, you know that we've known for a long time that one of the key agendas of adolescence is identity formation. You know, who who am I? Where do I fit? And you see this coming up in terms of what kind of music do you like? Are you an athlete or not? What kind of clothes do you wear? A sexual orientation, which click you hang out with? And so to figure this out, this who

am I? Teen get exquisitely sensitive to feedback from other teams. You know, I raised a teenage daughter and I watched as this incredibly bright, wonderful child just got torn apart by other people's reactions to her. And especially now with social media, you know, in a very concrete sense, are you liked or not? How many times a day are you liked? And so with with young boys, I think raised to think about being masculine. Now they're in adolescence.

Now they're trying to figure out which group do I fit in? There raw and open and what we call the policing of masculinity starts to take over. And this this is where other people, boys and girls, frankly start to shape behavior very directly with things like homophobic insults and accusing boys of being gay or being a girl or a woos and so on, and so yeah, that's where you tend to see this, this move being really emotionally open and and and out there to being really

shut down. And of course it's different for for different boys, but this is the dominant trend we see. So in one of your case studies, you were talking about this man who had panic attacks and he kept saying, well, yeah, you know, I feel lists the physical sensations, but that's just stressed. This is physical, and you were pushing him too more that it was you know, do you have any shameful thoughts? You know, what are your thoughts? What's your inner life? And he was like, no, this is physical.

And I mean everyone who has panic struggles with us. You know, if people go to the e R, they think it's a heart attack. But in terms of helping men understand when they're feeling a physical sensation of a panic attack, what is the emotional life behind that? Like, I know we're not saying their thought in the moment literally causes it, but is it Is it that a lifetime of shame and shoving things down can then just

come out in panic attacks. I think the important thing for a lot of men to understand about anxiety, including panic attacks, is that the physical symptoms don't make it more real, and the psychological or emotional symptoms make it

quote unquote in your head. This is the dilemma that I see a lot of guys falling into, is that they assume that if their heart is racing and if they're sweating, right, um, that this can't be an anxiety disorder because it's a physical symptom, and anxiety disorder is a mental disorder, and that means it's in your head.

So in other words, I'm not making this up. Is what they're trying to communicate and what I try to help them understand, and I think a lot of contemporary treatment is oriented towards this, is to understand that anxiety is uh, bio psycho social right, Like, it has biological components heart racing, sweating, right, that sort of thing. Um, it also has thoughts and feelings, right, which, if you

look at the research, have biological components themselves. So there's nothing there's nothing more or less real about thoughts, feelings or sweat, right, it's all part of the anxiety response, and the fact that you're feeling it and it's really stressful is makes it real enough that you know you deserve treatment and you deserve compassion. Anxiety bites will be right back after a quick little message from one of our sponsors. You mentioned in your book GERD which I

which is another name for um heartburn. But that's not what you mean. You called it grandiose emotional restriction disordered. What is that? Well, you know what, it's not really a real thing. Um, Well, I like you made that up and I like it. Yeah, thank you for noticing that.

So what I was trying to do at that point in the book was to illustrate that as a society, historically in America, we have tended to call things that are more commonly seen as women mental disorders, and we've tended to accept more problems in men as quote unquote normal. So we so, for example, we see extreme emotionality as something called histrionic personality disorder, and we're worried. Historically it's

not so much true anymore. But certainly, like you know, women were criticized for not being able to contain their emotions and not being able to be rational enough. And what I was pointing out with this hypothetical grandiose emotional restrictive disorder or GIRD, was that, well, you know what, UM, being so emotionally restricted and thinking that you're you've got it all together and that you're wonderful because of that is equally problematic. We just haven't labeled it and put

in the diagnostic and statistical manual. So that's where GURD came from. I like that because, yeah, I'm referencing your book here, and I thought that was such a really good point that, UM, because we are more prepared to see stereotypically feminine behaviors as problems, we are more prepared to see women as suffering from psychological disorders than men.

But if we assumed that the ability to cry, refusal to worry about anything in a in an excessively high opinion of oneself, where markers of an underlying disorder perhaps GIRD,

we might see higher rates of mental illness and men. So, like you're saying, it's weird because in a lot of medical society we UM base things on men's symptoms, and like, you know, women's bodies are different in their diagnoses are often wrong because everything is based on men, and then this way weirdly, are you saying mental health is kind of based on women and everything outside of that is

seen as quote normal. Well, yeah, in a way, that's exactly what I'm saying, is that that mental health has been feminized historically. And what I mean by that is that we've tended to assume that mental health problems are more in the realm of women. Um that um, going to therapy is for women. I've heard plenty of men in our research studies say that, you know, it's part of a broader tendency, I think, to to see things that are less desirable in society and associate them with women.

So we you know, we're back to our friend Mr P the patriarchy. Well, so leslie to anyone listening, who's um feeling really seen by this conversation. Do you have an opinion should men see a male therapist? Is that help that with the modeling or does it really matter? You know, I don't. I don't. The research suggests, um, it's complicated, so there's no sort of dominant pattern here, So it's I certainly wouldn't say that men should see

a male therapist. I think if a guy is concerned that there's something not masculine about what he's going through, a male therapist could be helpful in confirming that now you you know, it's okay, like, uh, you know, there's a sense more power to normalize that from a male therapist. For some men, that's too threatening to talk to a male therapist, so a female therapist would be more helpful. On the other hand, um, you know, some guys tend to uh no, you probably want to edit this out.

This is the dynamics of this get complicated, right because a lot of a lot of or they just just sexualize the relationship or turn it into a UM you're my mother, and you're supposed to you're not supposed to

challenge me. You're supposed to nurture me. Um. And so you know, it's you know, the bottom line is find a therapist who's well trained and who you feel comfortable with, and who's familiar with the most contemporary, most evidence based treatments for the sorts of things that you're struggling with. It was something in your book you said that you know, the guy that was having trouble understanding that his panic

was also emotional. He finally was like, all right, all right, but I'm gonna tell my girlfriend and she's gonna be like, I told you so. Is that I told you so helpful? How can people better support the men in their life that are just starting to get help? I mean, I imagine that the I told you so is really not a great reaction. M Yeah, I think you're right. I don't think any of us like to be told I

told you so. I mean it's understandable that, yeah, there's a reason we say I told you so to people, But yeah, I mean I think it's I think that there are lots of ways that that that women can help men. I mean, I always give this caveat that the most important way for women to help men is for women to take care of themselves first and foremost.

I mean, there's a there's enough messages out there that women get raised with about their role as being responsible for men's emotional well being right and there, and lots of guys get into this pattern where we keep all of our vulnerability hidden except for a woman that we share it with. And that's a tremendous responsibility for that one woman. So women need to take care of themselves. Fortunately, one of the ways that you can take care of

yourself is by um allowing him to take care of himself. Right, So I encourage communication along the lines of I'm here for you, I care about you. UM, I'm not going to force you to do one thing or another, but I'm I'm I'm glad that you're taking care of yourself,

and let me know how I can support you. Yeah. Right, Because it's a great like kind of codependency boundary stuff where you don't want to you know, when someone getting better, like because you told them too, because they'll that'll bite

you in the ass eventually exactly. One of the things I like to suggest that helps reconcile this kind of paradox about the patriarchy, like how do we understand the fact that men are in power structurally in a patriarchy but appear to be suffering so much at the same time. And I like to think about the idea that patriarchy tends to oppress women and psychologically and socially restrict men.

So so being restricted is not the same thing as being oppressed, Like we can men can for ourselves and for each other reduce this restriction right, we can metaphorically untied the tight knot around the neck, right, take the tie off, be a little more open. So and and it's funny because you talked about the three pis in the book. Since I published that book, I've got another three piece. I don't know what it is about that about that letter, Um, but it's pain, power and privilege

go hand in hand as well, you know. So if we're going to talk about men's pain, we have to talk about men's power and privilege. And if we're going to deconstruct men's power and privilege, we got to talk about the pain part. Well, thank you so much. I know this is like we did not solve the issue, but um, I think we gave the men and my audience a good place to start, and the women listening, you know, a little assignment. And uh, I thank you so much. I'm so glad you're teaching that class. I'm

you know, hopefully this will get better in our lifetime. Yeah. Yeah, it's just you know, it's just boom boom boom. Oh you're welcome. Thanks for the opportunity. It's it's been fun. I hope you've got a lot out of my conversation. With Dr Michael had is whether you are a man, identify as a man or no a man? I think I think this for me was a very healing episode. So let's get to our takeaways. What can we sum up?

What are the key points that we learned today. One is that from early on, boys and men are taught that manhood is about no matter what's going on inside of you, projecting externally like everything is cool. But now that causes another issue. So a man is struggling on the inside dealing with panic or anxiety, or any vulnerable

and emotion. But now the problem is it feels like there's something shameful about that because look around and the other guys are also doing the posturing of projecting externally like everything's cool. Dr Addis got involved in even looking at the mental health of men specifically because he noticed that in his practice, the majority of people coming in for therapy were women. The second thing he noticed was

I'm the only guy in my graduate class here. And the third thing he noticed was now that he realized he's the only guy, he's starting to see some of the things that he learned about being male are affecting how he's doing in graduate school and how he's even approaching this whole enterprise of talking about emotions and trying to help people. Statistically, men don't attend therapy as much

or as often as women. Men don't go to the doctor as much, and they don't take care of their health as much, they don't disclose as much, and the list goes on. Men are not taught to recognize problems in their lives, all the way back to the simple question of our things okay or not? Does a man even know himself enough to say that things going on

with him are difficult? Michael Addis has seen so many men come through um in his research studies who will deny anxiety or depression despite having taken a written test and scoring off the charts of these standardized tests and questionnaires. A lot of men will say, well, no, I'm not anxious. My wife has anxiety, but if I'm able to get up and go to work, that means I'm doing okay.

Dr Addas has seen that when working with men, when explaining to them that actually what they do have is anxiety, it's not just stress or a physical symptom, that ideally the information is a relief to them because there is a recognition that what they're experiencing is not uncommon. But there is a complication when diagnosing some men because a lot of men grow up with what's known as a kind of femophobia. If something has been labeled feminine, like

mental health or having anxiety, it's frightening to men. And you know, anything that's feminine is frightening. If a man, uh, you know, thinks that anxiety is shameful and weak, than his initial reaction to being diagnosed with having anxiety might be shame for your self, hatred and guilt. What men and ever it needs to know? Once again reminding everyone that anxiety is an evolved mechanism in all human beings.

It's there for a reason. Anxiety disorder is nothing more than oversensitivity of a basic mechanism in the human body and mind, and there's nothing to be ashamed of about that. We're experiencing a cultural tendency to man up mental health or or all things that we're marketing towards men. The idea is we make it macho to talk about mental health or macho to see a psychotherapist, like like everything is some kind of viagra commercial. The motivation is marketing

to a stereotype of men. But that comes at a cost because even though it might be changing the idea of what's manly into something more theoretically helpful or adaptive, it's continuing the idea that men must be manly. What needs to happen is we need to do the opposite. We need to go from not talking about our feelings you're talking about our feelings and letting go of what's manly and what's not and let men be okay with

being human, and then there will be real improvements. Dr Addas believes there's still a tremendous amount of white privilege and lack of education out there, and so there's a tremendous amount of fear for some men who feel that

what they're entitled to is now being threatened. Michael Addas believes that none of this societal progress is on women to solve For men, he doesn't believe that any of these issues with masculinity are on other people whose identity has put them in a marginalized and oppressed position to figure out. He believes it's on men to figure out. There's a stereotype that gay men have transcended this restrictive masculinity because they have more access to femininity and emotional expressiveness.

But the research shows that gay men are as affected by this as much a straight men. So gay men struggle with what does it mean to be masculine? And my masculine enough, They struggle with body image, with hierarchy between more feminine gay men and more masculine gay men, and so on. What does shame actually feel like when someone's experiencing it, Shame feels like I just want to go away and hide right now. There's a impending sense of doom coming from other people and the way they're

thinking about me. There's something about me right now that is so unacceptable. I just need to go away. A lot of men are shame phobic. They don't know how to deal with shame itself. They don't know how to say I feel ashamed. It's a lot of layers of vulnerability and can be too much to swallow. Michael Adds believes the best way to combat that kind of shame phobia is to remember that shame grows in the closet, so you make your own shame worse by hiding it.

So now think about trying to confess everything that you're ashamed of and you can do it in small doses. A lot of people will say to dr Addas, I get how all of this works, But how am I supposed to talk with my family who raised me to believe in masculinity this way? How do I talk about homophobia? How am I supposed to talk about the importance of supporting women and being pro feminist? Unfortunately, Dr Addis is, there's no clear answer to this. But the truth is

to ask yourself. If you're committed to a certain way of being, you also have to think through who you're hanging around. For example, with with dr Addis, his guy friends sometimes will give him grief about talking about his feelings, but what he's found is over time, if he hangs in there, it is positively rewarded and he starts seeing

them talk as well about their feelings too. Dr Addis believes that masculinity can be really usefully understood as an anxiety disorder because he sees it acting just like an anxiety disorder. It's a coordinated way of responding to a perceived threat, which is exactly what an anxiety disorder is. It's it's also exactly like an allergy, an allergy is

like an anxiety disorder too. It doesn't have all the same cognitive and emotional components, but it's still your body's way of saying, hey, there's a threat, get it out of here. There is a psychological condition called alexithymia, and it's a very common disorder. It's suggested that men suffer from a subclinical version of this. In other words, the normal way we raise men in society tends to produce a mild case of of this, which is not knowing

what you're feeling. So the consequence is that people say to men sometimes whether it a friend or an intimate partner or physician, how are you doing? How you feeling? And the answer often is I don't know. The notion that parents are the master chefs of their kids psychological development is not really true. Kids are exquisitely sensitive to peer influences, and as we develop, we're not really designed

to figure out how to deal with our parents. That's only really true for the first few years of life. But we're designed to figure out how to deal with the world that we're going to grow into, and so piers tend to win out as more important than parents.

What dr Addis prescribes for you know, helping men kind of break out of this is, you know, when talking about the issues of men's ideologies and beliefs about their own mental health and how they're supposed to be as men, he always encourages men to read more broadly, watch different films, and and look at other ways of being in the world. Yeah. I mean, look, if you're listening to this, maybe you want to get more into a female comedian and you want to buy my new comedy album called Okay gen X,

which is available on iTunes and Amazon. I'm just I'm just throwing up plug in there for my you know, if you're a guy who's like I don't really normally listen to women comics and you're listening to this episode, there you go. It's a doctor's orders. Um. And then lastly, Dr Addis says, you know, mental health has been feminized

historically and going back to you know, femphobia. Uh, we tend to assume that mental health problems are more in the realm of women, and that going to therapy is for women and so against doesn't lead men to want to admit having mental health problems. But Dr Adds believes that there are the three ps that go hand in hand with, you know, kind of oppressing men in their own mental health, which is men's power, privilege, and pain. And if we're going to deconstruct men's power and privilege,

we've got to be comfortable talking about men's pain. And lastly, if you're a woman, identify as a woman, what can you do about the men in your life? But Dr Addis says, there's enough messages out there that women get, you know, that they're raised with about their role as being responsible for men's emotional well being. And a lot of guys get into a pattern where they keep all their vulnerability hidden except for a woman that they share

it with. And that's a tremendous responsibility for one woman. So women, the best way to take care of men is to take care of yourselves, all right, everybody, I hope you will send me an email anxiety bites a weekly at gmail dot com. We will do a couple more listener email episodes before the season closes out this August. We still have some great guests coming up. We'll be talking about things like a d h D and women um, anxiety, bullying, menopause,

all kinds of great stuff, so subscribe. Give this show a five star review on iTunes, it tones, that's do it on iTunes, who knows what itnes is, and then a Spotify now is allowing reviewing, so please do give a five star to the podcast. It helps more people find this and let's you know, the more people that find the podcast, the more people might start to feel better. So do all of that for me and we'll meet you back here next week. And just remember, yes, anxiety,

but but you're in control. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,