Without Fear, There Can Be No Courage

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how important it is for men to go to therapy.  I think everyone should be in therapy.  Not because everyone is going through a mental health crisis, but because I think having a better understanding of our thoughts and emotions is never going to hurt us.  

I think a lot of men don’t go to therapy because they’re scared, and I think men have been conditioned to believe that being scared is a weakness.  In order to be a “man,” men have to “face their fears,” but really what ends up happening is that they suppress their fears.  And we learn it as boys, in school.  Because our education system values percentage grades more than students value learning, boys learn in a hurry that it’s better to look bad than it is to look dumb.  So boys act out when they don’t know something, or they learn to avoid situations that make them uncomfortable, or even to avoid situations where they think they’ll be uncomfortable.   And by avoiding discomfort we never address that which instills fear in us in the first place, so we suppress it.  

And so, because those boys turn into men one day, men are afraid of opening up to someone to talk to them about their real selves.  Their selves whom they may not even know.  And never mind the fear of opening up to someone, but the fear of being introduced to, and having to face (your real self), a person you might not really like that much is stifling.  Boys and young men are still bombarded by messages of what being a man really means and that message rarely includes advice on going to therapy.  But even Marcus Aurelius would be supportive, and would even encourage, a man to seek professional help.  

I started going to therapy because I needed help figuring out the world I was living in.  The pandemic was a really hard time for a lot of people, if not for everyone, and I needed help wrapping my mind around what was going on in the world.  Personally, I didn’t mind being told to stay at home.  I’ve got a lot of space to stretch my legs and I was able to spend a boat load of time outside listening to and learning from nature.  But I digress.  The first therapist I was connected to was through my Family and Employee Assistance Program.  And while that therapist wasn’t a good fit for me, it gave me the courage to try to keep looking for someone who would be able to help.  I remembered that a good friend of mine co-founded Juniper Counseling Center and I reached out to them to see if there was a therapist who would be able to meet with me.  I met my current therapist three years ago, and I am so thankful for her.  

While I do sit on a couch while I’m talking to my therapist, once every two or three weeks, depending on the time of year, I don’t lie down on it while she just writes down everything I say.  It’s a conversation.  She helps me reframe thoughts and ideas I have about myself, or the world I’m living in, so that I’m not so hard on myself all the time.  “Instead of saying [this], why don’t you try thinking about it this way…” might be part of a conversation we have.  My therapist talks a lot about radical acceptance therapy, which drives me nuts, because I know it’s the right thing for me, but it’s also really, really hard.  

Another thing I really like about my therapist is that these last five or six years, I have started learning more about the Stoic philosophy and so when I first met with my therapist I told her that Stoicism really resonates with me, and she has allowed me to use a mash up between Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (which has its roots in Stoicism) and Stoicism together.  She knows how to talk to me so that I can understand what I’m thinking and what I’m feeling in a way that makes me feel like my own person.  But I want to get back to how hard it is to go to therapy.  My therapist and I talk a lot about my inner critic and one time my therapist even had me moving from one seat to another while she facilitated a conversation between me and myself (my inner critic).  It was weird and uncomfortable.  Another time she facilitated a conversation between me and the person that I thought was giving me a hard time (played by me), and it also was weird and uncomfortable.  Sometimes she tells me to close my eyes and tell her where I feel a certain emotion in my body.  It’s weird and uncomfortable.

But it is necessary.  It’s so helpful.  And no matter how weird and uncomfortable an exercise might be with your therapist, no one is going to know, and no one is going to see you.  It’s totally confidential.  But sometimes it hurts.  Sometimes we have to go deep and get into old wounds so that I can heal properly from them.  Sometimes I have to wait two or three weeks to finish the work that was started, and that can be uncomfortable and challenging.  I haven’t cried in therapy yet, but I’ve come close a few times.  And that’s okay.  It’s okay to not be okay.  If you start to cry during a therapy session because the work you are doing is so hard and/or hurts so much, you are on your way to being a very manly man!

So I get it, the thought of going to therapy and maybe talking to somebody about something that you haven’t told to anyone before can be daunting. But therapy is a manly venture.  Wanna know why?  Because courage is one of the Stoic Cardinal Virtues and without fear there can be no courage, and it takes a mountain of courage to open up to someone you don’t know, and may never really know.  Finding the courage to overcome that fear can open up doors for you.  It can help quiet the noise in your head that maybe you’ve been keeping quiet with substances like gummies or alcohol, or food, for good.  Substances help quiet the noise quickly but they don’t help you heal from the hurt that is causing the noise in the first place.  I’m really proud of myself for asking for help, because asking for help takes real strength.  I’d be really proud of you too, reader, for reaching out and asking someone for help.  

Love you bro,

Derek