Talk Therapy Is Not Built for Men

Most therapy asks men to use tools they were never taught to hold. Talk therapy was built on emotional fluency that men were trained to avoid. It’s time to build spaces where men can heal through embodiment, connection, and presence—not just words.

The Silent Room

If you’ve ever sat across from a man in therapy, you can feel it—the quiet.

Not the kind of silence that invites depth,
but the kind that hums with shame and confusion.

He wants to speak but doesn’t have the words.
He wants to feel but doesn’t know where to start.

He’s here because something in his life is falling apart—
a marriage, a job, a sense of purpose—
and someone told him, “You should talk to someone.”

So he does.

He finds himself in a softly lit room,
across from a kind stranger who asks,
“How are you feeling?”

And he freezes.

Not because he doesn’t feel—
but because he doesn’t speak that language.

The System Wasn’t Built for Us

Talk therapy is sacred work. It’s a place for reflection, repair, and transformation.
But the model wasn’t designed for men.

What started as a male-dominated science of analysis and prescription
has become a field largely held by women—
one that prizes empathy, emotional fluency, and verbal exploration.

That shift was beautiful, necessary, and healing for many.
But the majority of clients were women.

We weren’t raised to name what we feel.
We were taught to manage, to endure, to fix.
We were allowed anger and ambition—
everything else got buried under competence.

We made emotional vulnerability a feminine trait.
Wild choice, if you ask me.

So when therapy asks a man to sit still and talk about his feelings,
it’s asking him to enter foreign terrain without a map.

It’s not that men can’t do this work.
It’s that the system doesn’t meet us where we are.

My Own Silence

I know this because I’ve lived it.

As a therapist, I’ve spent years learning how to listen,
how to hold space, how to sit in another person’s truth.

But as a man, I was raised in the same silence as everyone else.
I didn’t grow up talking about emotions.
I grew up reading the room, fixing the problem,
translating tone and body language into action.

My emotional vocabulary was one syllable long:
fine. mad. tired. good.

When I first went to therapy, I performed competence.
I gave articulate answers, stayed calm, used the right words.
But I wasn’t talking to my therapist—
I was talking around myself.

It took me years to realize that the performance was the problem.
That the “good client” mask was the same one I wore everywhere else.

And when I sit across from men now,
I see that same mask—polite, thoughtful, disconnected.
They’re trying to “do therapy right,”
but therapy was never built for the way their bodies carry pain.

How Men Actually Heal

Most men don’t heal through endless talking.
They heal through doing. Through contact. Through witnessing.

They open around campfires,
in the garage,
or on a long drive when the silence is allowed to breathe.

They heal when there’s rhythm, breath, and purpose—
when the body can move, sweat, or shake loose what words can’t reach.

For men, safety doesn’t always come from being understood.
It comes from being trusted with something real.

When a man feels useful, he remembers he matters.
When he feels seen without being analyzed, he remembers he’s human.

That’s the ground where healing grows.

The Cost of Disconnection

We are living in a moment where men are lost.
Directionless. Uninitiated.

We don’t have elders anymore—we have influencers.
We have no constellations to navigate by.

Most of us are just making it up as we go,
trying to be good men in a world that doesn’t know what that means.

I’m raising a son now, and I feel that loss every day.
I want to give him a wide, living map of masculinity—
but our skies are empty.

So I improvise.
I make rituals.
I let him see me cry, apologize, play,
and try again.

But I know he needs more than me.
He needs a village of men.
Men who know how to listen with their bodies,
who can hold a boundary without shame,
who can show him that love and strength were never opposites.

Reclaiming What Was Stolen

Somewhere along the way, we decided that beauty was feminine.
That art, tenderness, and reverence were for women.

And in doing so, we robbed ourselves of half our humanity.

The real men’s work isn’t about dominance or stoicism—
it’s about remembering what was stolen.
It’s about rebridging connection to self,
to each other,
and to the sacred.

We need therapy that helps men remember—not perform.
To speak, not just with words, but with presence.
To rediscover the language of the body,
the ceremony of being alive.

A New Model

A therapy built for men wouldn’t discard talking—it would expand it.

It would:
• Begin in the body. Breath, movement, grounding.
• Honor silence as communication.
• Bring men together in circles, around fires, in shared purpose.
• Treat emotional numbness not as resistance, but as grief.
• Make space for initiation—for the kind of truth that transforms rather than diagnoses.

Therapy wouldn’t just be about symptom reduction;
it would be about remembering how to live.

The Work Ahead

Talk therapy is not built for men.
But we can build something new.

Spaces that don’t just analyze us—
but initiate us.

Where vulnerability doesn’t mean exposure,
but belonging.

Where we can remember what strength feels like
when it’s guided by tenderness instead of fear.

That’s sacred work.

Not fixing men—
but bringing them home.
To their bodies.
To their truth.
To each other.

Coming Back to Ourselves

Men don’t need to be fixed.
They need rooms where they can unclench.
Where the body can speak.
Where silence is honored.
Where someone is willing to sit with them without rushing them into emotional fluency they were never taught.

When those spaces exist, men soften.
They remember.
They come home.

That’s what this work is really about—not talking for the sake of talking, but reclaiming the parts of us that were never given a language.

And that’s the heart of what we’re building.

Sacred Work

At Sacred Work, Katie and I created a practice designed for this kind of healing—steady, embodied, relational, and human. Whether you’re a man trying to make sense of the silence inside you, a partner wanting deeper connection, a parent stretched thin, or someone simply ready to grow, we hold a space where you don’t have to perform or figure it out alone.

In person or through telehealth when needed, we meet you in the truth of your life, without pressure or pretense.
Just real presence.
Real connection.
Real work that brings you back to yourself.

If you’re curious about what therapy might look like with us, we’d love to talk and see if it feels like a good fit.