| Emotional work is inner work. Because boys and men have been
socialized to repress their emotions (excepting anger) inner
work is needed to help them develop emotional confidence (intelligence).
However the mere idea of emotional work brings up fear for
many men. They feel inadequate and powerless in this realm
and believe that women have better emotional understanding
and agility (quickness). This powerlessness born of emotional
confusion is one source of the rage that has men lash out
at their partners and needs to be addressed in batterer programs.
Women have grown enormously from the women’s social
equity movement and are seeking partners in men who have similar
emotional maturity but unfortunately many men are lacking
this competence. Men’s socialization has resulted in
an arrested emotional age and this spells disaster for men’s
relationships with their partners and children.
Steve Morr-Wineman writing in the Men’ Resource magazine
“Voice Male” says “Male Socialization traumatizes
boys by crushing their emotional capacities—teaching
us not to feel, not to acknowledge vulnerability or “weakness,”
teaching us that it’s shameful to cry—setting
up vicious cycles of aggressive behavior driven by internal
powerlessness among boys and men.”
During their childhood boys who expressed fear, doubts, anxieties,
depression or even excessive joy were soon teased, isolated,
threatened or beaten into stoic conformity. The impact of
this repression is vast, and is, I believe, a foundational
cause for the violence that men perpetrate at all levels.
Emotional or inner work helps men become authentic, happier
in their own skin, calmer, nicer, safer to be around, and
is a necessary step towards our personal and collective evolution
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