Webb Therapy Uncategorized Understanding Complex Trauma and How It Shapes the Human Mind, Body, and Behaviour

Understanding Complex Trauma and How It Shapes the Human Mind, Body, and Behaviour

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A peer-reviewed exploration of how unresolved trauma rewires the brain, regulates the nervous system, and silently orchestrates our everyday lives.

There is a particular kind of suffering that doesn’t announce itself with a single, datable event. It doesn’t always arrive in the form of a car accident, a natural disaster, or a violent assault — the traumas most commonly depicted in clinical textbooks. Instead, it accumulates. It seeps in through years of emotional neglect, through childhoods spent walking on eggshells, through relationships that felt unsafe, through the ongoing experience of being small in a world that felt threatening. This is complex trauma, and its effects are as pervasive as they are often invisible — to others, and sometimes even to the person living inside them.

In 1994, psychiatrist and Harvard scholar Judith Lewis Herman first articulated the concept of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) in her landmark book Trauma and Recovery, arguing that the diagnostic framework available at the time failed to capture the full range of psychological devastation wrought by prolonged, repeated traumatisation — particularly when it occurs in childhood, within relationships, and from which there is little or no escape (Herman, 1992). Decades later, the World Health Organisation formally recognised C-PTSD as a distinct diagnosis in its ICD-11 classification (2019), distinguishing it from standard PTSD as a more severe subtype that is more common following repeated interpersonal trauma, with prominent disturbances of emotion regulation, self-identity, and relational capacities.

But the question that haunts clinicians, researchers, and the people living with it remains: how, exactly, does trauma get under the skin? And what does it actually look like — not in a clinical checklist, but in the texture of a real human life?

The Brain on Alert: What Trauma Does to Your Neurobiology

To understand complex trauma, we first need to understand what happens inside the brain when threat — especially repeated threat — rewires the system designed to protect us.

The human stress response is centred on what is sometimes called the threat triad: the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex. The hippocampus, amygdala, and the medial prefrontal cortex are all important limbic structures involved in the processes that undermine mental health, and hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system with sustained allostatic load along the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis has been theorised as the basis for adult psychopathology following early childhood trauma.

In plain terms: when a threat is perceived, the amygdala — our brain’s alarm system — fires first. The amygdala instantly sends signals to the hypothalamus and brainstem, which results in activation of the autonomic nervous system and secretion of cortisol and catecholamines, the key drivers of stress reactions. This is adaptive. Under normal circumstances, once the danger passes, the prefrontal cortex helps regulate the alarm back down. But when stress is chronic — when there is no “once the danger passes” — the system becomes recalibrated.

Research has demonstrated what happens to these structures under prolonged duress. Chronic stress exposure leads to dendritic atrophy in the prefrontal cortex, dendritic extension in the amygdala, and strengthening of the noradrenergic system. High levels of norepinephrine release during stress rapidly impair the top-down cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex, while strengthening the emotional and habitual responses of the amygdala. In other words: the rational, regulating part of the brain shrinks back; the reactive, threat-detecting part grows stronger.

Neuroimaging data reinforces this picture. Research consistently shows altered connectivity between the insula, amygdala, and prefrontal regions in individuals with PTSD, with hyperactivation of the amygdala and insula coupled with hypoactivation of prefrontal regions during emotion processing and regulation tasks — an altered connectivity pattern thought to contribute to heightened threat sensitivity and difficulties in emotion regulation.

The world’s largest childhood trauma study, published in 2024 by researchers at the University of Essex, uncovered a disruption in neural networks involved in self-focus and problem-solving, meaning that those under 18 who experienced abuse may struggle with emotions, empathy, and understanding their own bodies.

This is not metaphorical damage. It is measurable, structural, and neurologically real — and it shapes everything that follows.

The Body Keeps the Score: Physical Manifestations of Unresolved Trauma

Bessel van der Kolk’s seminal phrase — that the body keeps the score — has entered popular consciousness for good reason. It describes something clinicians and survivors have long observed: that unresolved trauma does not stay neatly contained in the mind. It lives in the muscles, the gut, the skin, the breath.

Individuals with C-PTSD often exhibit a heightened or diminished awareness of internal bodily sensations, such as heart rate or respiratory changes, which in turn affects their ability to regulate emotional responses to stress or trauma cues appropriately. This disruption of interoception — the ability to sense and interpret one’s own bodily signals — is central to understanding why so many trauma survivors find it difficult to know what they are feeling, or feel overwhelmed by physical sensations without understanding why.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS), which governs involuntary functions like heart rate, digestion, and breathing, is thrown into chronic dysregulation. Two PTSD subtypes have been proposed: a dissociative (hyporeactive) subtype characterised by extreme inhibition of emotion, and a re-experiencing/hyperaroused subtype characterised by under-modulation of emotion. One person with complex trauma may be perpetually activated — heart racing, muscles braced, breath shallow, unable to relax in quiet moments. Another may feel chronically numb, flat, and disconnected from their own physical experience. Both are responses to the same underlying dysregulation, expressed differently.

Common physical symptoms include persistent sleep difficulties and nightmares, chronic muscle tension, jaw clenching and headaches, gastrointestinal problems, and an exaggerated startle response — the flinch at a door slamming, the spike of panic at an unexpected touch. Perhaps most confounding is the presence of chronic pain without a clear medical explanation, which is increasingly understood not as psychosomatic dismissal but as a genuine physiological consequence of a nervous system that has been held in prolonged fight-flight-freeze activation.

Symptoms related to arousal and reactivity — such as irritability, hypervigilance, and sleep disturbances — are associated with dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, increased activity of the noradrenergic system, and weakened inhibition of limbic systems by the frontal cortex. Together, these neurobiological changes sustain the chronic dysregulation of systems responsible for fear, arousal, and emotional control.

For many survivors, these physical symptoms are the first — or only — place the trauma appears. They visit doctors for fatigue, for chronic pain, for digestive issues, never connecting these to experiences that may have happened decades earlier. The body, as van der Kolk observed, never forgets.

The Emotional Landscape: Feeling Too Much, Feeling Nothing, or Oscillating Between the Two

The emotional signature of complex trauma is not one thing. It is a constellation — and it is often internally contradictory. Survivors may describe feeling intense, overwhelming emotion that seems disproportionate to any visible trigger, while also describing long stretches of emotional numbness or flatness, as though a dimmer switch has been turned down on their inner life.

Complex PTSD was formulated to include, in addition to the core PTSD symptoms, dysregulation in three psychobiological areas: emotion processing, self-organisation (including bodily integrity), and relational security. The emotional dysregulation that characterises C-PTSD is not simply moodiness or sensitivity — it is a nervous system that has lost the capacity for flexible, graduated response, instead lurching between extremes: flooded and overwhelmed, or shut down and dissociated.

Shame is a central emotional feature, often more prominent than fear in complex trauma — particularly when the trauma was interpersonal and relational. Individuals with clinical levels of dissociation display increased levels of both state and trait guilt and shame, coupled with a tendency toward social withdrawal and an obsessive preoccupation with social interactions. This shame is not a rational judgement. It is somatic, preverbal, often arriving before conscious thought, producing a pervasive sense of being fundamentally flawed or different from other people.

Other common emotional experiences include persistent anxiety or a low-grade, free-floating dread that is hard to attribute to any single cause; depression; grief; and a deep difficulty trusting others — not as a choice, but as a nervous system default shaped by past experience of betrayal or abandonment. Rapid mood shifts, difficulty feeling pleasure, and a sense of being disconnected from oneself or from one’s life are also frequently reported.

What makes the emotional experience of complex trauma so disorienting — and so often misunderstood by others — is that these responses are frequently not linked to what is visibly happening in the present. A benign comment, a tone of voice, the smell of a particular place: these can trigger a cascade of emotion that, to an outside observer, seems entirely out of proportion. The key word is trigger — and it speaks to a nervous system that has learned to pattern-match present cues to past danger with alarming efficiency.

The Cognitive Architecture of Trauma: How It Reshapes Thought

Complex trauma does not merely colour how a person feels. It rewrites how they think — about the world, about other people, and most profoundly, about themselves.

Prolonged and complex trauma exposure leads to the establishment of highly probable hypotheses — for example, perceiving situations as unsafe or others as inherently dangerous — that are based on the impact of the trauma and the physiological response it triggers. Such trauma-based predictions often get reactivated in later situations, regardless of whether they match current sensory data, allowing them to override actual perceptions and elicit negative emotions tied to present circumstances instead of being correctly attributed to past events.

This is one of the most important — and least appreciated — aspects of complex trauma: it is a predictive system. The brain, having learned that certain patterns were dangerous, pre-empts new experience by applying old templates. What looks from the outside like an irrational response is, from inside the traumatised nervous system, a completely logical extension of what was learned.

Common cognitive patterns include intrusive thoughts and unwanted memories that break through without warning; flashbacks, in which the emotional and sensory reality of a past event is re-experienced as though it were happening now; difficulty concentrating; and what many survivors describe as “brain fog” — a sense of mental slowness or inability to think clearly that reflects the prefrontal cortex’s compromised functioning.

Dissociation deserves particular attention here. Trauma-related dissociation is a biological response to a stressful event in which the victim finds themselves in a completely helpless situation, to which the body responds by stopping processing perceptual, cognitive, and emotional information. In complex trauma, this can manifest as memory gaps, a sense of watching oneself from the outside (depersonalisation), feelings that the world is unreal or dreamlike (derealisation), or the more complete “spacing out” that renders a person temporarily absent from a conversation or situation. Far from being a dramatic phenomenon, many survivors experience low-grade, everyday dissociation — the phenomenon of “losing” large portions of a day, or not being able to remember much of childhood.

Complex trauma occurring within attachment relationships would interrupt emotional development and the development of social cognition and social information processing. This manifests in the cognitive realm as difficulty reading social situations accurately, misinterpreting others’ intentions (typically in the direction of perceived threat), and an impaired capacity for what researchers call mentalisation — the ability to understand one’s own and others’ mental states. Relationships become cognitively exhausting and confusing, because the mental models built from early experience are fundamentally distorted.

Negative core beliefs — “I am not safe,” “I am worthless,” “I am different from everyone else,” “I am fundamentally broken” — are not conscious intellectual conclusions. They are deeply embedded assumptions, formed in the crucible of early experience, that filter all subsequent perception. A compliment slides off; a criticism confirms what was already “known.”

The Behavioural Imprint: How Trauma Lives in What We Do

Perhaps the most visible — and most judged — dimension of complex trauma is its behavioural expression. The patterns that emerge from unresolved trauma are, in a very real sense, adaptations: strategies that once served survival and have since become habits the nervous system cannot easily relinquish.

Hypervigilance is one of the most consistent. The person who scans a room upon entering, who monitors tone of voice and facial expressions with exhausting precision, who cannot sit with their back to the door — this is not anxiety in the ordinary sense. It is a nervous system executing a threat-detection protocol that was once, in a different context, an entirely rational response to an unpredictable or dangerous environment.

Avoidance — of people, places, conversations, and feelings that echo past pain — is another core feature. Avoidance mechanisms are associated with reduced functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and limbic structures, reflecting processes of emotional and cognitive suppression related to trauma. The problem is that avoidance, while offering short-term relief from activation, prevents the nervous system from ever learning that the avoided thing is no longer dangerous. The threat remains vivid and alive precisely because it is never re-encountered in safety.

People-pleasing and difficulty setting limits are particularly prevalent in those whose early trauma occurred within attachment relationships — where expressing needs was dangerous, and whose sense of safety became contingent on managing others’ emotional states. The adult who cannot say no, who exhausts themselves maintaining social harmony, who feels profound guilt or dread at the prospect of disappointing anyone, is often unconsciously re-enacting the relational dynamics of a much earlier, much more constrained world.

At the other end of the behavioural spectrum: sudden anger, emotional outbursts, or what appears to others as aggression or volatility. The affective domain problems characteristic of C-PTSD are evidenced by heightened emotional reactivity, violent outbursts, reckless or self-destructive behaviour, or a tendency towards experiencing prolonged dissociative states when under stress. These are not character flaws. They are the product of a regulatory system that was never properly developed, because the environment that should have co-regulated it — usually a safe, consistent caregiver — was not consistently available.

Increased use of alcohol, substances, or other numbing or regulating behaviours is extremely common, and again, makes perfect adaptive sense: when the nervous system cannot regulate itself, external means of regulation become necessary.

Perhaps the most enduring behavioural signature is the re-enactment of relational patterns. Complex PTSD is associated with traumatic events that start earlier in life and are perpetrated by acquaintances or family members. When the source of trauma is relational — a parent, a partner, a sibling — the nervous system learns that intimate relationships carry particular qualities: unpredictability, danger, simultaneous need and threat. Those templates, if unaddressed, get applied to future intimate relationships with remarkable fidelity, producing cycles of conflict, dependency, or distrust that can baffle and exhaust both the survivor and those around them.

The Hidden Prevalence: Who Is Affected, and Why It Goes Unrecognised

A critical but often overlooked dimension of complex trauma is the breadth of experience it encompasses. While the public imagination tends toward extreme, dramatic events, trauma is substantially broader. Trauma exposure is common — lifetime estimates in the United States range from 50% to 89%, and in an international study of 69,000 adults, 70% reported lifetime exposure to a traumatic event and 30.5% reported being exposed to four or more traumatic events.

Crucially, C-PTSD is a stress-related mental disorder generally occurring in response to complex traumas — commonly prolonged or repetitive exposure to traumatic events from which one sees little or no chance to escape. This includes, but is not limited to, childhood neglect, emotional abuse, domestic violence, bullying, medical trauma, community violence, and the cumulative stress of marginalisation and systemic inequality. The question is not only what happened, but how long, how often, and within what relationship.

One of the most striking clinical observations is the capacity of highly traumatised individuals to present as high-functioning — capable, competent, even successful externally, while carrying an enormous internal burden. The dissociative and compensatory strategies that trauma produces can be extraordinarily effective at maintaining surface functionality, making it difficult for others — and sometimes the person themselves — to recognise that anything is wrong. The absence of obvious distress does not equal the absence of suffering.

Patients with CPTSD report earlier onset of trauma, more trauma perpetrated by acquaintances or family members, and more comorbidities than those with PTSD. This comorbidity — with depression, anxiety disorders, substance use, chronic pain, and personality difficulties — means that complex trauma is often treated piecemeal, its symptoms addressed in isolation from their common root.

The Path Forward: What Healing Requires

Understanding complex trauma is not merely an academic exercise. It is, for millions of people, the difference between a lifetime of confusion about why they are the way they are, and a coherent framework that opens the door to recovery.

The same neuroplasticity that allows the brain to be shaped by trauma also provides the basis for healing and recovery — the brain can re-wire, the nervous system can regain regulation, and evidence-based trauma therapies and intentional lifestyle practices offer concrete pathways to support this healing process.

Treatment approaches specifically designed for complex trauma — including trauma-focused CBT, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), and phase-based approaches such as STAIR — aim to work not just with conscious narrative but with the body, the nervous system, and the deep relational wounds that lie at C-PTSD’s core. Techniques such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, which has been found effective in addressing C-PTSD symptomology, incorporate elements designed to enhance interoceptive tolerance and accuracy, facilitating a more nuanced understanding and integration of bodily sensations with corresponding emotional states.

The recognition that persists through all the research is this: complex trauma is not a weakness of character, not a failure of resilience, and not a permanent state. It is a deeply human response to experiences that exceeded the capacity of the nervous system to integrate — often with very limited support and at a very young age. Its symptoms, however disruptive, are adaptations that once served a purpose. The task of healing is not to extinguish those adaptations by force, but to slowly build the safety, the relational experience, and the neurological capacity from which they are no longer needed.

If something in this article resonates — if you recognise patterns that keep repeating, reactions that feel disproportionate to present circumstances, or a persistent difficulty feeling safe, calm, or connected — it may be worth exploring with a qualified therapist who works with trauma. The body remembers. But it can also, with time and the right conditions, learn something new.

References

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Predicting behaviour: Social Psychological Models of BehaviourPredicting behaviour: Social Psychological Models of Behaviour

| Mitchell WebbMitchell Webb| 0 Comment|

Social psychological models of behaviour attempt to explain why individuals act the way they do in various social contexts. These models integrate individual, interpersonal, and societal factors to provide insights into behaviour. Here’s an overview of some key models:

1. Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) proposes that behaviour is influenced by:

– Attitudes toward the behaviour

– Subjective norms (perceptions of others’ approval)

– Perceived behavioural control (i.e., confidence in one’s ability to perform the behaviour [self-efficacy])

2. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) suggests that behaviour is the result of:

– Reciprocal interaction between personal factors (beliefs, attitudes), environmental factors (social norms), and behaviour itself

– Concepts like self-efficacy (belief in one’s ability) play a major role.

3. Health Belief Model (HBM), designed to predict health-related behaviours. Behaviour is driven by factors such as perceived:

– Susceptibility (risk of harm)

– Severity (consequences of harm)

– Benefits (advantages of action)

– Barriers (obstacles to action)

4. Cognitive Dissonance Theory explains how people strive for consistency between their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours. When inconsistency arises, they feel dissonance (mental discomfort) and are motivated to reduce it by changing their attitudes or actions.

5. Social Identity Theory examines how individuals define themselves within social groups. Behaviour is influenced by group membership, including in-group favouritism and out-group bias.

6. Attribution Theory focuses on how people explain their own and others’ behaviours. Explains behaviour as being attributed either to internal (dispositional) or external (situational) factors. For example, it is common for people to attribute negative outcomes in their life to external factors rather than internal factors.

7. Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) explains how people process persuasive messages and what determines whether those messages will change attitudes or behaviour. It’s often applied in areas like marketing, communication, and public health campaigns. The ELM identifies two primary routes through which persuasion can occur:

– Central Route; this route involves deep, thoughtful consideration of the content and logic of a message. People are more likely to take the central route when they are motivated to process the message (e.g., the topic is personally relevant or important to them) and they can understand and evaluate the arguments (e.g., they aren’t distracted, and they have enough knowledge about the subject). Persuasion through the central route tends to result in long-lasting attitude change that is resistant to counterarguments. Example: A person researching the pros and cons of electric cars before deciding to buy one.

– Peripheral Route, which relies on superficial cues or heuristics (mental shortcuts) rather than the message’s content. People are more likely to take the peripheral route when they are not highly motivated or lack the ability to process the message deeply, and when they focus on external factors like the attractiveness or credibility of the speaker, emotional appeals, or catchy slogans. Persuasion through this route tends to result in temporary attitude change that is less resistant to counterarguments. Example: A person choosing a product because their favourite celebrity endorsed it.

8. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) emphasizes intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. It emphasizes the role of intrinsic motivation—doing something for its inherent satisfaction—over extrinsic motivation, which is driven by external rewards or pressures. It suggests that behaviour is influenced by the need for:

– Autonomy (control over one’s actions); When people perceive they have a choice and are acting in alignment with their values, their motivation and satisfaction increase.

– Competence; Refers to the need to feel effective, capable, and successful in achieving desired outcomes. People are motivated when tasks challenge them at an appropriate level and provide opportunities for growth and mastery. Example: A gamer progressing through increasingly difficult levels, gaining skills and confidence along the way.

– Relatedness; Refers to the need to feel connected to others and experience a sense of belonging. Supportive relationships and positive social interactions enhance motivation and well-being. Example: Employees feeling a bond with their colleagues in a collaborative work environment.

9. Social Learning Theory proposes that behaviour is learned through observation and imitation. Role models and reinforcement play a key role in shaping actions.

10. Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change) explains behaviour change as a process occurring in stages: precontemplation, contemplation (ambivalence), preparation, action, and maintenance

These models provide frameworks to understand behaviours in contexts like health, decision-making, group dynamics, and social influence.

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Men and Emotions: From Repression to Expression published by AIPC (2019)Men and Emotions: From Repression to Expression published by AIPC (2019)

| Mitchell WebbMitchell Webb| 0 Comment|

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.
  9. Seligman, L. (2006). Theories of counseling and psychotherapy: Systems, strategies, and skills, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
  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.
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Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors. (2021). Finding Meaning: Masculinity in Crisis (Issue 358 // Institute Inbrief). Retrieved from https://mailchi.mp/aipc/institute-inbrief-179116?e=5e8ce9018dAustralian Institute of Professional Counsellors. (2021). Finding Meaning: Masculinity in Crisis (Issue 358 // Institute Inbrief). Retrieved from https://mailchi.mp/aipc/institute-inbrief-179116?e=5e8ce9018d

| Mitchell WebbMitchell Webb| 0 Comment|

Finding Meaning: Masculinity in Crisis


Many young men seek counselling because they feel lost (Seidler, et al., 2016). This happens especially in today’s world, where the boundaries of how a man is supposed to behave are shifting rapidly. It’s a difficult time for young men to find their place in life as they struggle to adapt themselves to changing social attitudes and norms; there’s plenty of content in the media illuminating harmful male behaviours, but there isn’t a legitimate mainstream discussion of how masculinity ought to be propagated. As a result, many young men are growing into adulthood without a map – they lack a male voice of compassion and authority to guide them on how to integrate masculinity into their lives.

In our writer’s experience, men who have been referred for counselling often have a very strong underlying sense of purpose and a desire to be good people; their anxiety, depression, and harmful behaviours are often symptoms of feeling unable to actualise their potential. It’s a counsellor’s job to help men articulate this sense of purpose in constructive and positive ways, and offer guidance on enacting their perceived purpose effectively. 

A study from the University of Connecticut has identified three major factors that determine whether men believe their lives are meaningful (George & Park, 2016):

  1. They feel that their lives make sense, and have continuity
  2. They are directed and motivated by meaningful goals
  3. They believe their existence matters to others

Researchers discovered that sources of meaning tend to fall into two main categories: meaningful relationships and a meaningful profession (George & Park, 2016).

There is no doubt that this generation of males is developing a unique relationship with masculinity, and it’s not necessarily for the betterment of their relationships or professions (Black & Westwood, 2012); men’s desire for professional success can be interpreted as a validation of the patriarchal system, while their pursuit of romantic relationships can be perceived as misogynistic (LeanIn, 2019). While some men are certainly exploiting systems which privilege them, often times the prevalence of this attitude discourages “good” men from progressing and developing themselves (Hoff, 2016). This article is not making a stance on any social/political issues: it is merely articulating some causes and concepts that can assist counsellors in understanding this very nuanced issue, so they can help men find meaning in the modern world.

What even is masculinity?

Masculinity and femininity denote sets of attributes that most people can intuitively identify – for example, it doesn’t take a discerning anthropologist to tell the girls section of the toy store apart from the boys section. But regardless of the value of this distinction, what exactly is the nature of it? Defining masculinity and femininity is a little more nuanced than simply referring to their apparent differences; not all people have the same understanding of what masculinity and femininity are, and how they manifest themselves. For example, conceptualisations of masculinity and femininity vary vastly across cultures and historical periods (Reeser, 2010); as such, there can be confusion about what these terms mean, and how we can embody them effectively.

Across time, however, typically agreed-upon standards for masculine conduct involve strength, courage, and leadership (Kimmel, 1994); these traits reflect a desire for meaning – you only inhabit strength and courage when a compelling reason to do so arises. Young men today, knowingly or not, are crying out for responsibilities that offer this type of meaning in their lives (Frankl, 2006). They want to know what it means to be who they are in the world right now – what can they do, and how can they best live? It’s time that we help them find the answers to these questions.

Currently, there is a lot of heated discussion about whether masculinity – or any kind of gender categorisation – is a genuine natural occurrence, or a mere social construction that we can/should dispose of; the question of whether masculinity is inherent in biology or if it arises through socialisation has been debated for hundreds of years (Martin & Finn, 2010). This is a question that does not have a black-and-white answer; studies on prenatal androgen exposure – among other developmental events – have shown biological links to expressions of masculine or feminine traits (Martin & Finn, 2010), however, it can be argued that these differences are exaggerated and articulated further by social influences (Wharton, 2012).

Whichever perspective you align with, an often unacknowledged aspect of these conversations is that while some forms of masculinity are harmful, some are also powerful forces for good. It’s possible (and advised) for men to have a productive and integrated expression of their masculinity (Jung, 2009) – one that allows them to use their strengths to achieve fulfilment. Unfortunately, the current culture is lacking in content which identifies what these strengths are, and thus fails to encourage men to embody them; as detailed above, many young men feel lost because of this.

It should also be stated that masculine traits are not exclusive to men; masculinity and femininity are not synonymous concepts to gender or sexual identity (Butler, 2006). That being said, this article is specifically addressing the mental health of men with masculine attributes. 

Why is masculinity in crisis?

There are a variety of reasons why young men feel uncertain about how to navigate the contemporary world. These include, but are not limited to, the following 3 observations:

1) The increasing separation between traditional male roles and the reality of modern life

The roles of men in the traditional household and workplace are changing. Men are becoming more inclined to be actively involved in child-rearing and housework. However, there is still often an expectation for them to maintain the traditional breadwinner role (Martin & Gnoth, 2009). Men are finding themselves stuck in limbo between the past and the future. Discerning one’s purpose thus becomes difficult, leading to feelings of emptiness (Rogers, 2010); men without a  defined mission will generally find themselves feeling a tremendous sense of lack (Deida, 1997). In this day and age, young men are extremely worried about what they will do after college, and the answer is likely “Go overseas for a few years, then come back.” This reflects a lack of encouragement to make powerful decisions towards meaningful futures.

2) A lack of positive masculine role models in society

For many children, fathers are either absent or not present enough, and this has lasting impacts on the way males view themselves and their sense of meaning/purpose in the world (Single Mother Guide, 2012). Men who grow up without an emotionally involved father has been correlated with long term effects including increased likelihood of dropping out of high school or college, and increased likelihood of substance abuse (McLanahan, Tach, & Schneider, 2014). These problems are exacerbated by the fact that many young men are searching for their place in the world and attempting to figure out what it means to be a man in today’s society – there is not always an adult male figure for them to look up to. 

The men who are often placed in the media limelight are there by way of some transgression or moral failing. While the modern world is rightly campaigning for positive representations of identities in media, it seems as though this effort circumvents men (Tarrant, et al., 2015). It is understood that men have historically tended to see themselves in positions of power and dominance, but this is not a reason to avoid exposing men to genuinely positive role-models in our current time. It is to the detriment of the mental health of many young men that we do not see more positive representations of masculinity (Tarrant, et al., 2015); ones that represent the compassionate and purposeful core of the masculine ideal.

3) Social media content either teaches men harmful ways of interacting with others, or degrades the concept of masculinity in general

The following two types of social media content are tough for today’s men to navigate. Firstly, there is a large online community of content creators calling for men to be ruthlessly successful; young men are bombarded with images of ‘alpha-males’ and are expected to adopt this image into their own definitions of masculinity. This makes it more difficult for boys to embrace their sensitive sides, leading to a lack of emotional literacy (Stratford, 2020). Content creators rarely offer antidotes to this effect, and are failing to provide helpful insights into the psychological reality of becoming a good man with a meaningful life. These online figures often try to convey an image that their life is perfect, when in fact this is often far from the truth; men are being encouraged to strive for false images of fulfilment (Stratford, 2020). This is a major concern for both men and women. 

Secondly, while some men are being plagued by the alpha-male image, others are being exposed to content that degrades masculinity in general. The conduct of certain men has been the object of fair scrutiny over recent years, and there are arguments to be made for how this conduct has been an expression of masculinity. There is, however, no grounds for suggesting that masculinity in general is problematic. This view has created a culture in which masculinity is demonised; while this might be a perceived course-of-action for eradicating its more toxic forms, the more immediate effect is that good men are feeling alienated and ineffectual (Rogers, 2010). Rather than encouraging men to be better, we are constantly reminding them that they are harmful; a result of this is a generation of men who are unmotivated and aimless (Salter, 2019). A study has found that male respondents who have experienced gender-based cyberbullying feel compromised in how they feel they are permitted to exist in society (Chen, et al., 2015). Men are seen as less attractive and less desirable to women when they post images of themselves on their Instagram account, as it is seen as the promotion of male dominance rather than a harmless expression of an individual (Fox & Rooney, 2015). This phenomenon leads to a significant decrease in men’s self-esteem, which results in paralysis and stagnation in their professions and relationships.

So, how can counsellors help men find purpose and meaning?

As counsellors, we can offer strategies to help men identify and organise the meaningful facets of their lives. Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, created logotherapy, which is based on the presumption that a man’s main motivation is to find meaning in life, as opposed to the pursuit of pleasure or power (Marshall & Marshall, 2012). Some techniques he used were dereflection (focusing on high-level goals instead of on themselves) and Socratic dialogue (open-ended questions to uncover dormant aspirations). If, for example, a client is passionate about saving the environment, this type of therapy can assist them in finding a practical way to focus their time and efforts on realising their potential in doing so.

Meaning therapy (Wong, 2010) incorporates aspects of cognitive-behavioural therapy and positive psychology, and helps people take on more meaningful responsibilities in their lives while encouraging them to pursue goals that serve others. It advocates psycho-educational approaches that equip men with the mental toolkit necessary to create a vision of an idealised future for them to begin moving towards.

Similarly, self-authoring is a process by which people organise their lives into a narrative structure, making their past, present, and desired futures more easily understandable (Peterson, 2005). By creating a map of one’s life, it can become far simpler to identify who you are, what you value, and what you need to do to be of most service to yourself and your community. As with most approaches that attend to creating meaning, it is based on reflection and awareness. 

A culture of masculine content creation must be encouraged to counter the fear of being construed as ‘too emotional’, or ‘not manly enough’. It’s time we begin working together to help young men find meaning, and develop a culture which is focused on stopping the cycles of toxic masculinity, whilst encouraging healthy expressions of masculinity in its stead.

In summary… 

Young men today are having a difficult time finding their place in the world. The current cultural climate surrounding masculinity – as well as the absence of positive role-models for younger generations – is leading to a decrease in the quality of mental health. Men must be taught how to integrate their masculine dispositions into their lives; how to lead, how to care, and how to love with purpose and commitment. There is an urgent need for discussion to take place around what masculinity means, and how we can encourage healthy expressions of it; it is my hope that this article has encouraged us all to begin engaging with this conversation. 

Recommended Links: Men In Mind Program (by Movember), Men and Emotions: From Repression to Expression (Article), Men, Emotions and Alexithymia (Article)

References:

  1. Butler, Judith (2006) [1990]. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York London: Routledge. 
  2. Cunningham, C. E., Chen, Y., Vaillancourt, T., Rimas, H., Deal, K., Cunningham, L. J., & Ratcliffe, J. (2014). Modeling the anti‐cyberbullying preferences of university students: Adaptive choice‐based conjoint analysis. Retrieved from webpage.
  3. Deida, D. (1997). The Way of the Superior Man. S.I.: Sounds True.
  4. Fox, J., Rooney, M. (2015) The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality and Individual Differences
  5. Frankl, V. E., Kushner, H. S., & Winslade, W. J. (2006). Man’s search for meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
  6. Hoff, C. (2016). Five Ways Patriarchy Affects Men and their Relationships. Retrieved from webpage.
  7. Jung, C. G., Shamdasani, S., & Hoerni, U. (2009). The red book = Liber novus: A readers edition. New York: W.W. Norton &.
  8. Kimmel, Michael S. (1994). “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame, and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity”. Theorizing Masculinities. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 119–141. 
  9. LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey survey (2019)
  10. Maria Marshall; Edward Marshall (2012). Logotherapy Revisited: Review of the Tenets of Viktor E. Frankl’s Logotherapy. Ottawa: Ottawa Institute of Logotherapy. 
  11. Martin, Brett A.S.; Gnoth, Juergen (2009). “Is the Marlboro man the only alternative? The role of gender identity and self-construal salience in evaluations of male models”. Marketing Letters. 20 (4): 353–367. 
  12. Martin, Hale; Finn, Stephen E. (2010). Masculinity and Femininity in the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 5–13. 
  13. McLanahan, S., Tach, L., & Schneider, D. (2013). The Causal Effects of Father Absence. Retrieved from webpage.
  14. Peterson, J. (2005). Self Authoring. Retrieved from https://www.selfauthoring.com/
  15. Reeser, Todd W. (2010). Masculinities in theory: an introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell. 
  16. Rogers, Thomas (November 14, 2010). “The dramatic decline of the modern man”. Salon.
  17. Salter, Michael (2019). “The Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity”. The Atlantic. 
  18. “Single Mother Statistics”. Single Mother Guide. (2012)
  19. Seidler Z. E., Dawes A.J., Rice S. M., Oliffe J. L., Dhillon H. M. (2016). The role of masculinity in men’s help-seeking for depression: A systematic review. Retrieved from webpage.
  20. Stratford, H. (2020). ‘Be a man’ – toxic masculinity, social media and violence: Innovation Unit: Creating impact – reducing inequalities – transforming systems. Retrieved from webpage.
  21. Tarrant, A., Terry, G., Ward, M., Are Male Role Models Really the Solution? Interrogating the ‘War on Boys’ Through the Lens of the ‘Male Role Model’ Discourse. (2015). Retrieved from webpage.
  22. Westwood, M. J., & Black, T. G. (2012). Introduction to the Special Issue of the Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Retrieved from webpage.
  23. Wharton, Amy S. (2012). The Sociology of Gender, second edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
  24. Wong, P. T. (2009). Meaning Therapy: An Integrative and Positive Existential Psychotherapy. Retrieved from webpage.
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