When our intelligent and necessary emotion – ANGER – becomes unhealthy and damaging

Across Australian Demographics in Today’s Climate: A Review of Current Statistics and Research | webbtherapy.org | 2025–2026

Introduction

Australia is navigating one of the most psychologically challenging periods in its modern history. Converging social, economic, and political forces — including a cost-of-living crisis, housing unaffordability, the lingering aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing climate anxiety — are placing significant strain on the mental health of people across all age groups and demographics.

According to the National Mental Health Commission’s National Report Card 2024, approximately 3.8 million Australians aged 16 and over — nearly one in five — experienced a mental disorder in the past year, with anxiety and depression the most prevalent conditions (NMHC, 2025). This document draws on the most current Australian research and data to provide a demographic overview of the psychological and emotional issues affecting Australians today.

1. Children & Adolescents (Ages 12–17)

Young Australians are experiencing rising rates of psychological distress at a level that represents a genuine public health emergency. Multiple intersecting pressures — financial insecurity in the home, climate anxiety, social media use, and disruptions to schooling and socialisation — are placing extraordinary demands on developing minds.

Key Statistics

Psychological distress: A 2025 headspace survey of over 3,000 young Australians found that nearly half (49%) were experiencing high or very high levels of psychological distress. Among 12–14 year-olds, the rate was 31%, rising to 65% among 18–25 year-olds (headspace, 2025).

Financial stress: The Mission Australia Youth Survey 2025 found that 64% of young people aged 14–19 identified cost of living as Australia’s most pressing national issue — the highest level since the question was first asked in 2010, and up from 56% in 2024 and 31% in 2023 (Mission Australia, 2025).

Mental health concerns: Two in five young people (39%) reported stress related to their own mental health and wellbeing, and nearly one in five (19%) reported experiencing high psychological distress in the weeks prior to being surveyed (Mission Australia, 2025).

Gender differences: The ABS National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing (2020–22) found that 34.2% of females aged 16–24 reported high or very high psychological distress, compared with 18% of males in the same age group (ABS, 2023).

At-risk subgroups: Distress rates are especially elevated among LGBTIQA+ young people (77%) and First Nations young people (59%) (headspace, 2025).

Contributing Factors

The National Mental Health Commission (2025) identifies multiple drivers of deteriorating youth mental health, including increased financial insecurity, concerns about climate change, shifting social connection patterns — particularly the move to digital interaction over in-person connection — changes in sleep, screen time, and nutrition, and the disproportionate socioeconomic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on young people’s lives.

2. Young Adults (Ages 18–35)

Young adults are among the most psychologically vulnerable groups in Australia at present. They face a unique confluence of pressures: the transition to independent adulthood, entry into an unaffordable housing market, tertiary education debt, precarious employment, and an uncertain political and economic landscape.

Key Statistics

Prevalence: Young adults aged 18–34 report the highest rates of mental health symptoms of any adult age group, with approximately 45% experiencing symptoms in 2025, up from 40% in 2023 (NMHC/AIHW, 2025).

Cost-of-living and mental health: A 2025 Compare the Market survey found that 72% of Gen Z respondents said cost-of-living pressures had worsened or triggered anxiety and depression, impacting their health, sleep and relationships — the highest rate of any age cohort (SBS Insight, 2025).

Housing stress: Australia’s Rental Affordability Index labels all major cities and regional areas as ‘critically unaffordable’ for people on lower incomes. A 2025 longitudinal study tracking more than 10,000 Australian renters found mental health declines sharply once housing costs exceed 30% of income (The Conversation, 2025).

Loneliness: Recent data suggests that 1 in 4 Australian men aged 15–34 report feeling lonely most days (Psychology NSW, 2025).

Emerging Concerns

Social comparison via social media, economic precarity*, and the perceived impossibility of home-ownership are contributing to a pervasive sense of hopelessness and deferred life milestones. Many young adults report anxiety about the future as a core psychological preoccupation.

*Precarity definition: the condition of existence without predictability or security, characterised by instability in employment, income, and social safety nets.

3. Men (All Ages)

Men represent a persistently underserved demographic in mental health. Cultural norms around masculinity continue to suppress help-seeking, while suicide rates among men remain disproportionately high across all age groups. In 2024, men accounted for 76.5% of all suicide deaths in Australia — a ratio that has remained largely unchanged for decades (ABS, 2025; AMHF, 2025).

Key Statistics

Suicide: 3,307 Australians died by suicide in 2024, of whom 2,529 (76.5%) were male. The age-standardised suicide rate for men was 18.7 per 100,000, compared with 5.5 per 100,000 for women. Men aged 40–44 accounted for the largest proportion of male suicide deaths (10.5%) (ABS, 2025; Life in Mind, 2025).

Working-age men: The number of suicides in men of working age (25–64) reached a record high in 2024 (AMHF, 2025), with males aged 60–64 experiencing an 18% increase in age-specific suicide rates from 2023 to 2024 (ABS, 2025).

Help-seeking gap: While men are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than women, they make up less than 40% of people seeking mental health support. Research indicates that 1 in 8 Australian men experience depression or anxiety, but fewer than half receive treatment (Psychology NSW, 2025).

High-risk occupations: Suicide rates among male construction workers are approximately double those of other male workers, with an age-standardised rate of 26.6 per 100,000 compared to 13.2 for other male workers (Lancet Regional Health, 2024).

Somatic presentation: Men are more likely to present with physical symptoms of depression and anxiety — chronic headaches, fatigue, back pain — rather than emotional ones, often delaying diagnosis and intervention (Psychology NSW, 2025).

4. Women (All Ages)

Women consistently report higher rates of psychological distress, anxiety, and depression than men. Additional psychological burdens arise from gendered experiences including domestic labour, caregiving, family violence, reproductive health, and workplace inequity.

Key Statistics

Distress rates: In the 2022 National Health Survey, women aged 18 and over were more likely to report high or very high psychological distress than men. Among young women aged 18–25, the rate was 34.2% — the highest of any adult demographic (ABS, 2023; Dharmayani & Mihrshahi, 2025).

Financial stress: 56.6% of millennial women surveyed in 2025 reported that cost-of-living pressures had worsened or triggered anxiety and depression (SBS Insight, 2025). Single mothers and women in casual employment are particularly vulnerable to financial-related mental health impacts.

Suicide: Women aged 25–29 had the highest age-specific female suicide rate (9.8 per 100,000) and accounted for the largest proportion of female suicide deaths (12.3%) in 2024 (Life in Mind, 2025).

Income and distress: Research from Dharmayani and Mihrshahi (2025), using Australian National Health Survey data, found that psychological distress increased as personal weekly income decreased, confirming income insecurity as a significant driver of poor mental health among women.

5. Older Adults (Ages 65+)

Older Australians face a distinct set of psychological challenges shaped by major life transitions — retirement, bereavement, declining health, loss of independence, and changing living arrangements. These experiences, when compounded by social isolation, can have profound effects on mental health.

Key Statistics

Loneliness and social isolation: According to the AIHW (2024), approximately 16% of Australians aged over 65 experience loneliness, and 11% are socially isolated. Research suggests loneliness may increase the risk of premature death to a degree comparable to smoking or obesity (Ausmed, 2026).

Depression in aged care: Approximately 52% of older adults in residential aged care experience depressive symptoms, while 8.2% of community-dwelling older adults experience depression (ScienceDirect, 2021).

Men aged 85+: Older men are at particularly elevated suicide risk. In 2024, males aged over 85 had the highest age-specific suicide rate of any group at 31.2 per 100,000 (Life in Mind, 2025).

Digital exclusion: Australians aged 65 and over remain the least digitally included age group, with an Australian Digital Inclusion Index score of 49.7 compared to the national average of 63.0 (NMHC, 2022). This digital exclusion compounds social isolation, particularly post-pandemic.

Contributing Factors

As identified by Engel and Mihalopoulos (2024) in the Medical Journal of Australia, the ‘loneliness epidemic’ represents a major public health concern in older age. Life transitions including retiring from work, loss of friends and partners, declining physical health, and the move to residential aged care all increase vulnerability to loneliness, depression, and anxiety.

6. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples experience significantly higher rates of psychological distress and suicide compared to non-Indigenous Australians. These outcomes must be understood within a broader cultural, historical, and social context that includes the ongoing impacts of colonisation, systemic racism, intergenerational trauma, and ongoing barriers to accessing culturally safe services. Mental health in this context is better understood through the framework of social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB), which encompasses connection to Country, family, kinship, community, and culture.

Key Statistics

Psychological distress: In 2022–23, approximately 30% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults experienced high or very high levels of psychological distress in the four weeks prior to interview (ABS, 2024; NMHC, 2025). This is more than double the general population rate of 14% (ABS, 2022).

The role of discrimination: Analysis of the Mayi Kuwayu study (2018–2021) found that 42% of First Nations people experienced high or very high psychological distress; among those experiencing everyday racial discrimination, the rate was 49%, compared with 32% for those who did not report such discrimination (ABS, 2024).

Suicide: In 2024, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had an age-standardised suicide rate of 33.9 per 100,000 — more than triple the non-Indigenous rate. This rate was 6.5% higher than in 2023. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men, the rate was 55.1 per 100,000 (Life in Mind, 2025).

Anxiety: Anxiety was the most common mental or behavioural condition reported in the 2022–23 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Survey, affecting 21% of respondents aged two and over; it was 1.5 times more common among females (25%) than males (17%) (ABS, 2024).

Access to services: Around one in four First Nations people aged 15 and over (26%) would have liked to access mental health support but did not in the 12 months prior to survey, with access barriers particularly pronounced in remote areas (ABS, 2024).

7. LGBTIQA+ People

LGBTIQA+ Australians continue to experience disproportionately poor mental health outcomes compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. These outcomes are directly linked to experiences of stigma, prejudice, discrimination, and social exclusion — often described through the lens of minority stress theory. Progress in legal rights does not automatically translate to psychological safety or equitable mental healthcare.

Key Statistics

Mental disorders: People with a diverse sexual identity are three times more likely to be diagnosed with a mental disorder compared to heterosexual people (ABS, 2023).

Self-harm: Trans and gender-diverse Australians are twice as likely to engage in self-harm throughout their lifetime compared to cisgender Australians (ABS, 2023).

Psychological distress in youth: Among young people, LGBTIQA+ respondents reported a distress rate of 77% — significantly above the general youth population rate of 49% — in the Headspace 2025 survey.

Suicidality: Members of the LGBTQIA+ community report suicide attempts at rates up to 10 times higher than the general population (Lifeline, 2025).

Healthcare barriers: In the Private Lives 3 national survey, 57% of LGBTIQ respondents reported being treated unfairly in the past 12 months based on their sexual orientation, and 77.5% of trans and gender-diverse respondents reported being treated unfairly based on their gender identity. Only 43.4% of LGBTIQ respondents felt accepted when accessing health services (AMA, 2024).

Rural/regional compounding: Research published in 2025 found LGBTQ+ people in rural and regional communities experienced compounded psychological harm due to conservative social environments, limited peer connection, and inadequate access to inclusive services (Tandfonline, 2025).

8. Financial Stress as a Cross-Cutting Issue

Economic pressures represent one of the most significant cross-cutting determinants of psychological distress across all Australian demographics. The confluence of rising housing costs, elevated mortgage rates, rental stress, and a persistent cost-of-living gap is affecting people’s mental health in tangible and measurable ways.

Key Statistics

Financial stress prevalence: Close to 7 in 10 Australian households (69%) are dealing with significant financial stress, with 57% struggling to afford household essentials including groceries, utilities, and healthcare (Real Insurance, 2024).

Mental health impact: A 2025 Compare the Market survey found that nearly half of Australians (48.7%) said cost-of-living pressures had worsened or triggered anxiety and depression, affecting their health, sleep, and relationships (SBS Insight, 2025).

Housing stress: In 2024–25, an estimated 1.26 million low-income households were in financial housing stress, spending more than 30% of their disposable income on housing (AIHW, 2025). Almost half (44.5%) of households with a mortgage spent above this threshold (AIHW, 2025).

Skipping healthcare: Almost two-thirds of financially stressed Australians (65%) have skipped essential medical appointments — including mental health appointments — due to cost (Real Insurance, 2024).

Beyond Blue’s Clinical Spokesperson Dr Luke Martin has noted the bidirectional relationship between financial stress and mental health: financial hardship affects mood, cognition, sleep, and relationships, while poor mental health in turn impairs a person’s capacity to manage money and seek help — creating a cycle that is often difficult to escape without external support (HIA, 2026).

9. Summary of Key Themes by Demographic

• Children & Adolescents (12–17): Rising psychological distress (49% high/very high); financial stress at home; social media pressures; climate anxiety; loneliness; academic disruption. Elevated risk for LGBTIQA+ youth (77%) and First Nations youth (59%).
• Young Adults (18–35): Cost-of-living and housing affordability crisis driving anxiety and depression; loneliness; identity and purpose challenges; deferred life milestones; highest mental disorder rates of any adult cohort.
• Men (All Ages): Persistent help-seeking barriers; disproportionately high suicide rates (76.5% of deaths); somatic symptom presentation; high-risk occupations (construction); financial and work-related stress.
• Women (All Ages): Higher distress and anxiety rates; financial vulnerability; caregiving burden; family violence; cost-of-living impacts; elevated suicide risk in young women aged 25–29.
• Older Adults (65+): Loneliness and social isolation; depression; bereavement; loss of independence; digital exclusion; very high suicide risk in men aged 85+.
• Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Peoples: Intergenerational trauma; systemic racism; high distress and suicide rates (33.9 per 100,000); cultural disconnection; access barriers to culturally safe care.
• LGBTIQA+ People: Minority stress; discrimination in healthcare; three-fold increase in mental disorder diagnoses; elevated self-harm and suicidality; rural/regional compounding factors.

Disclaimer

This document has been prepared for informational and professional development purposes. All statistics and research references were current as at April 2026. Data from some primary sources have been collected in prior years; readers are encouraged to consult primary sources for the most current figures. This document does not constitute clinical advice.

Human-Kind. Isn’t that lovely. We have moved away from the patriarchal term mankind – ‘man’ who has not always been ‘kind’, necessarily – toward equality between the sexes and acknowledging gender fluidity. Noah touches on this. If you’re interested in the evolution of humanity and how we are capable of co-operating as a global community, give this book a go. You may experience information overload – but when condensing 2.4 million years into less than 500 pages, Harari goes alright. I’m someone who didn’t pay attention to history at school so I found this book enlightening, empowering and also disheartening at times. Harari writes about the breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. The power of human imagination, math and language has been instrumental in the development of humankind into an apex predator, and the destruction of everything else.

In our previous article (read it here), we asked why men do not seem to express emotion as easily as women do. Was there some pathology, or should we just put the differences down to male-female tendencies? We identified Dr Ron Levant’s notion of “normative male alexithymia” as representative of one side of the controversy: namely, that, yes, men do have a restricted range of emotional expression compared to women, but it’s so pervasive in society that it’s normal (Schexnayder, 2019).

On the other side of the debate were researchers such as James Thompson (2010), who – while acknowledging men’s relatively greater “stoicism” or restriction emotionally – nevertheless insisted that it’s invalid to conflate alexithymia with maleness, especially given that men’s holding back from emotional expression is largely culturally induced. Yet we observed that the issue should be dealt with, given the male-female suicide ratio in Australia, the U.K., and the United States of about 3:1 – and the fact that suicide is on the rise in all three countries.

We concluded that therapy might be able to help, and that is where we go with this article: to a discussion of just how we as mental health professionals might be able to help men deal with an outdated but strongly held socialisation pattern which has impacted their emotional expression, and through that, their capacity for growth, satisfying friendships, and intimate relationships. 

We tackle the question in two parts. First, we share psychologist Barbara Markway’s (2014) take on how to help men out of the double bind that leads to their emotional repression. Then we suggest therapies which might be able to assist.

Deciphering the code

Markway (2014) insists that dismissing men as “the feelingless gender” is not only unhelpful, but also wrong. They just, she says, express their feelings using a secret code: one which even they themselves cannot decipher. Let’s do some translation.

Men convert one feeling into another

Let’s say you’re a guy, and you’ve just found out that a good friend of yours has been cheated in business by her business partner: a business you yourself helped them set up. The cheating transactions will cost your friend thousands, and maybe her whole business. You may erupt volcanically, vowing to help your friend sue the partner for all they are worth, or maybe go threaten the partner within an inch of their life. If you react this way, you are showing anger and not a little pride, which are acceptable “male” emotions to express. Hiding underneath them could be sadness for your friend, and even a shared sense of vulnerability, but these are more “feminine” emotions, which by socialisation you are not “allowed” to express. So you convert them into “male” emotions of anger and pride.

Men may shift their feelings into another domain

Are you male, and basically an exuberant, affectionate sort? Markway claims you may not necessarily let this show in your personal relationships, but on the sports field, lookout; you’ll be hugging, high-fiving, and butt-slapping with the best of them. It’s ok in that domain, she says, for men to express strong feelings of delight (over a goal made, say) and affection.

Men may somatise their feelings

Let’s say now that you’re female, and in an intimate partnership with a guy. You make plans to get away for a holiday, but no sooner have you checked into the five-star hotel at the fabulous beach than he gets a migraine and is out of action for that day at least. What’s going on? Markway observes that, with the structure of work, many men are able to squash down feelings, but when they are away from that structure, such as on weekends or holidays, their emotions and needs surface. Not wanting to acknowledge them, many men will convert strong emotions into physical symptoms, such as headaches or back aches. If asked about it, some men would have the conscious belief that women do want them to show their emotions, but only certain ones, and only in amounts they (the women) can handle. Men who deviate from this are, as we have noted, judged to be poorly adjusted or not “manly enough”, because – at the root of it – they are bucking their whole socialisation model.

Men’s emotional expression can put us all off balance

When men do get in touch with emotions, the result can catch everyone off guard, as it may seem to come “out of the blue” and be overwhelming. In fact, for any of us, when we chronically stuff down feelings, we don’t get the practice of handling strong emotion. When it does come up, then, we are ill-prepared to deal with it. Think, for example, of the person stoically putting up with an in-law criticising their partner, probably repeatedly. At some stage, there will be “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” – just one criticism too many – and the person may unleash a massive emotional response, consisting in part of stored-up feeling from previous violations (adapted from Markway, 2014). 

It’s not that these ways of directing emotion “sideways” are bad, but if a more direct emotional expression is desired, how can we help our male clients escape from the clutches of restrictive socialisation?

Re-setting the code

It’s a big job to help someone move past lifelong “training” in a given direction. In the case where the client is keen to make changes in his way of dealing with emotions (that is, his issues with emotional expression are ego-dystonic), psychodynamic therapies and the social constructionist narrative and solution-focused therapies may be hugely helpful; we briefly highlight these, while acknowledging that other therapies, such as motivational interviewing and CBT, may also have a role to play. In the case where the man is dragged into session because his partner is experiencing huge frustration but the man himself does not see that he has a problem (that is: his issues with emotional expression are ego-syntonic), we can look hopefully to emotionally focused therapy, although family therapy and other couples modes, such as imago therapy, likely have much to offer.

We put the psychodynamic therapies right up front in our discussion. Why? If, as is generally claimed, men’s emotional responses are because of socialisation and/or attachment processes, then that therapy may be most efficacious which can take the client back to the root of those processes: the early childhood years when all of us – for better or worse – began to be socialised into our respective “tribes”.

Jung’s psychoanalysis

Carl Jung espoused the essential wholeness of all human beings, but believed that most of us have lost touch with important parts of ourselves. Life’s goal of individuation demands that we give expression to the various components – often conflicted – of our psyche. These typically repressed components cause psychological disturbance until they are made conscious. Each person has a story and when mental illness occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected; healing comes when the person recovers and owns his or her own personal story (Sonoma.edu, n.d.).

The story will include symbolic archetypes. A man could, for example, be modelling after the archetype of the Invincible Warrior, which could express part of who he is, but he may have repressed the complementary Nurturing Earthmother part of himself (due to that part being discouraged culturally). The task in therapy, then, would be to help the man discover his Nurturing Earthmother side. The two sides, harmonised together, could transcend either archetype and help such a client come into greater wholeness (Geist, 2013).

Psychosynthesis

Similarly, Psychosynthesis, a transpersonal psychology, asks clients to work with body, feelings, and mind to synthesise, or integrate, the various “selves” inside them into a harmonious whole. Psychosynthesis postulates “subpersonalities”: parts of ourselves which constellate and act out in order to meet needs or to defend against needs which seem unable to be met (Assagioli, 1965). Thus, the same man – in angst because of being constrained from tender, loving expressions or emotional sentimentality – may discover an angry subpersonality within himself: one which, he later discovers, is in conflict with its opposite number, a “Sentimental Sally” subpersonality which, while weaker, nevertheless is driving the man’s behaviour from underground because it is not acknowledged; its needs for permission to express a softer side will continue to cause it to act out in some way until those needs are met.

Thus in this mode, therapy consists of finding out what conspired to prevent the man expressing his softer side and working out how it can find expression appropriately in the man’s life. Sentimental Sally also has to work in with the angry subpersonality (as the two will vie for dominance), and both must cooperate with the man’s greater, whole psyche. Somewhere along the way of this, the man is likely to recall early events which shaped his way of being: for example, leaning into his mother for a cuddle when upset and being pushed out and told, “Big boys don’t cry”.

Schema therapy

In some ways, schema therapy would seem to combine the best of several worlds. From its psychodynamic predecessors, it inherits its basic notions that mental health troubles arise from early needs not being met. Five areas of basic human needs are outlined, such as for secure attachment and autonomy/competence. Frustration of these engenders 18 domains of early maladaptive schemas (EMS), from mistrust and abandonment to emotional inhibition (Young, n.d.). The schemas are perpetuated in a person’s life, say practitioners, through cognitive distortions, self-defeating life patterns, and unhelpful schema coping styles, which cause others to respond negatively, thus reinforcing the schema(s) (Young, 2012a). 

In the psyche’s effort to heal, individuals set up relationships similar to the unsatisfying ones which originally engendered the EMS, and thus the unhealthy object relations which stultify growth are continued. The therapist can ask the “lonely child” or “angry child” in a person to set up dialogue with the “healthy adult” in order to heal the overcompensating, avoidance, or surrendering responses that perpetuate a given schema (Young, 2012b). From cognitive behavioural therapy (schema therapy’s other “parent”), there are therapeutic interventions to reframe the cognitive distortions: irrational thoughts are collected in journals/diaries, for example, which are then refuted through rational replacement thoughts.

Narrative

Narrative therapy assumes no single absolute reality, but that realities are constructed by individuals, families, and cultures, and then communicated through language. They are organised and maintained by stories. What is true for us may not be true for another person or even for ourselves at another point in time. In the narrative, social constructionist paradigm, there are no essential truths and we cannot know “reality”; we can only interpret experience. The narrative mind frame, unlike empirical work searching for facts, exhorts us to bring forth our novelist selves. This means that we can understand our client’s story from many perspectives. The work of narrative therapy is to elicit various experiences of the client’s whole self, determine which selves (parts of the client) are preferred in the new narrative, and then support the growth and development of those new selves and their accompanying stories (Ackerman, 2017; Archer & McCarthy, 2007). 

Thus, if a male client has experienced being emotionally stifled in the interest of becoming “manly”, he can be helped to understand how such definitions of masculinity are inherently constructed by society rather than being empirically true. He can be helped to, first, find “sparkling moments” when the issue of being emotionally constricted was not as much of a problem, and then to find ways to “grow” the self – and/or the moments – that were less restrained, more inclusive of perhaps a softer, more emotionally permissive self. In doing this, he is re-storying himself and re-constructing the “reality” that he and those around him will live about what constitutes appropriate masculinity. 

Solution-focused therapy

Like its narrative cousin, solution-focused therapy emanates from a post-modernist, social constructionist paradigm, meaning that it shares with narrative therapy the understanding that there is no such thing as an objective, absolute reality. Rather, reality is co-constructed, so the “truth” of a client’s life is negotiable within a social context; fixed, objective “truths” are unattainable. Clients’ lives have many truths (O’Connell, 2006). Just as narrative therapy tries to elicit the “sparkling moments” in which the problem wasn’t as much of a problem, so too solution-focused therapy enquires into what a miracle would look like if the problem were to be “fixed” or to go away; in fact, much of the therapy has this present or future focus. 

The therapist thus elicits the client’s preferred future. Suggestions for change are based on clients’ conception of their lives without their symptoms (i.e., the healthiest, most empowering vision of themselves and their lives that clients can generate). Changes the client makes will have a ripple effect, generating behaviour to change the whole system (Seligman, 2006; Archer & McCarthy, 2007). Thus a solution-focused intervention could see a male client generating a vision of himself as a fully expressive man living in a community which accepts both his “traditional” male side and also his more emotionally liberated self. The therapy would be likely to search for times and places when this had already occurred.

Emotionally focused therapy (EFT)

Obviously in cases where it is the partner expressing angst and the man sees no problem in his flatter emotional demeanour, the therapies which may be more helpful are those which work with both partners to see how to accommodate both sets of needs and behaviours.

EFT is an empirically supported humanistic (couples) treatment that includes elements of experiential, person-centred, constructivist, and systems theory, but is firmly rooted in attachment theory. It is based on the concept that distress in intimate relationships is often related to deeply rooted fears of abandonment, as an individual’s emotional response to these fears may be harmful to relationship partners and put strain on a relationship. The insecurity may show up as partners asking questions such as, “Do you really love me?” “Am I important to you?” “Are you committed to our relationship?” “Can I trust you?” When intimate partners are not able to meet each other’s emotional needs, they may become stuck in negative patterns of interaction driven by ineffective attempts to get each other to understand their emotions and related needs. 

EFT reinforces positive bonds that already exist, and fosters the creation of a secure, loving bond between partners where there is not one. It does this through expanding and reorganising important emotional responses, which help to shift each partner’s position of interaction while initiating new cycles of interaction that are more beneficial for the relationship. In the non-judgmental environment of session, participants are able to contact and express deep emotions and experiences. In voicing their deepest concerns and conflicts without criticism, they are able to address them and move on to more collaborative, productive behaviours (GoodTherapy.org, 2018). 

Thus if the female partner is experiencing the despair of little emotional validation from a man who does not readily show emotion, he can be helped to see how, if he learns to do that in a way that is meaningful to her, it can benefit not only her but also the whole relationship. She can be assisted to recognise the ways in which he does show emotion – albeit “sideways”, such as Markway (2014) describes above – and to learn to accept how he is without criticism, asking directly at times for her needs to be met. EFT helps people learn to interact with their partners in more loving, responsive, and emotionally connected ways, which can result in a more secure attachment and – we say – greater freedom of emotional expression.

Summary

It’s easy to agree that men generally do not show as many emotions, or as intense of emotions, as their female counterparts. What we have seen to be more difficult is assessing whether a given man is pathological or not in the apparent emotional holding back. Without judging that, this article has demonstrated that there are several options for response if a man’s emotional expression seems greatly inhibited. One is to understand the ways in which men “convert” emotions: to other emotions, to other domains, or to their bodies. The other option is to encourage the man – either alone or with his frustrated partner – to attend therapeutically to the roots of the inhibition, which are likely to reside in insecure early attachments and/or socialisation against expression.

References

1. Ackerman, C. (2017). 19 narrative therapy techniques, exercises, & interventions (+ PDF worksheets). Positive Psychology Program. Retrieved on 10 October, 2017, from: Website.     
2. Archer, J., & McCarthy, C.J. (2007). Theories of counselling & psychotherapy: Contemporary applications. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, Inc. 
3. Assagioli, R. (1965). Psychosynthesis: A manual of principles and techniques. New York and Buenos Aires: Hobbs, Dorman & Company.
4. Geist, M. (2013). Reflections on psychology, culture, and life: The Jung page. Cgjungpage.org. Retrieved on 22 July, 2019, from: Website.
5. GoodTherapy. (2018). Emotionally focused therapy. Goodtherapy.org. Retrieved on 22 July, 2019, from: Website.
6. Markway, B. (2014). How to crack the code of men’s feelings. Psychology Today. Retrieved on 17 July, 2019, from: Website.    
7. O’Connell, B. (2006). Solution-focused therapy. In Feltham, C., & Horton, I., Eds. (2006). The SAGE handbook of counselling and psychotherapy. London: SAGE Publications.
8. Schexnayder, C. (2019). The man who couldn’t feel. Brain World. Retrieved on 17 July, 2019, from: Website.
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10. Sonoma.edu. (n.d.). Handout on Carl Gustav Jung. Sonoma University. Retrieved on 13 November, 2018, from: Website.
11. Thompson, J. (2010). Normative male alexithymia. In search of fatherhood. Retrieved on 18 July, 2019, from: Website.
12. Young, J.E. (2012a). Early maladaptive schemas. Schema therapy. Retrieved on 8 June, 2015, from: Website.    
13. Young, J.E. (2012b). Common maladaptive coping responses. Schema therapy. Retrieved on 8 June, 2016, from: Website.    
14. Young, J.E. (n.d.). Schema therapy: Conceptual model. Retrieved on 8 June, 2016, from:Website.