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Men's Issues revisited
by Boudi Maassen
I'm prompted to write by the article in the Blue Mountains Village Views about Karen Bellette and the Men's Centre in Hazelbrook, and Martin Rymer's response to Karen Bellette. At first glance, it seems nice that Karen has noticed that men who are vulnerable don't appear to have support.
However closer scrutiny reveals that this is simply not true. In my capacity as a male counsellor and a member of the Blue Mountains Counselling and Education Centre, I know that there are a number of competent private and public sector counsellors available for men and adolescent boys in the Blue Mountains.
Over the last ten years in the Blue Mountains there has been an active coalition of men working in a number of ways to gather other men together to look at the constraints of the personal political and cultural belief systems that have underpinned Masculinity, or what it is to be a man. As Steve Biddulph and other men point out, many males are suffering as a result of destructive and limited beliefs and practices as to how a man can be in our society.
The Blue Mountains men's network for a number of years provided a forum for discussion, ideas and workshops. There is now a Blue Mountains Men's Health and Wellness Association which is an outreach of the Network. These developments are exciting because there is a big need for the concerns of men and boy's health to be researched, articulated and presented in such a way that creates recognition and political change, that acknowledges that men and boys are also suffering in our society. For example, young male suicide rates and other forms of "at risk behaviour" continue their upward trend. Winmalee is acknowledged as a high risk area, as is the Hawkesbury.
These developments are not in opposition to the advances made by women, I see them as complementary. However these developments need to be Men's business. I agree with Martin Rymer, men do best with male therapists in most cases and for complex reasons one of them being the role of males in initiating males. As in many spheres of male life, men have mentored or inducted other men into new levels of experience, this also applies in the work of healing men with psychic and emotional wounds.
I now want to reflect on why are males often reluctant to seek help for physical and emotional ailments, because as a male therapist in the Blue Mountains I have noticed a lot of male ambivalence in taking up therapy. I offered a year long therapeutic men's group charging a small weekly fee the equivalent of a single inexpensive restaurant meal or three packets of cigarettes and wasn't rushed off my feet with inquiries - and I am not the only trained male therapist with this experience. I believe that many men are reluctant to spend money and time on their own well being, and will only attend counselling under duress from their mostly female partners or as a response to a crisis, and in most cases, will cease exploration once difficult symptoms temporarily subside, or when the therapy begins to uncover unpalatable truths about themselves.
A lot of men would consider that more than five sessions with a counsellor means that you are mentally unstable, or worse still, can't sort out your own problems. But five sessions with a counsellor cannot undo a lifetime of habitual repression. Many men are happy to spend considerable amounts of money to increase the performance and power of their cars or computers, but they won't spend on themselves in order to improve their functioning as healthy emotionally available human beings.
Many men appear to be happy to expend vast amounts of energy on being a provider, bringing the goods home, placing them on the table and then wondering why their families aren't that interested or that grateful. The truth where I sit is that most men disappear into provider roles and career structures because they are distrustful of intimacy with themselves, and their loved ones.
Men have also been hoodwinked to believe that the only form of intimacy that they can express is of a sexual nature. I think that a lot of men are afraid of emotional intimacy with their partners because they would have to re-learn and reclaim the emotional alphabet which includes such feelings as vulnerability, uncertainty, sadness, fear of dying, grief and loss; and learn to express those feelings to their partners.
As well, men need to confront those less than desirable aspects of personality which are mostly Trojan horse gifts from their fathers whose emotional unavailability was a suffering for men growing up. Unfortunately many of us now as adult men are not much different from our fathers. To uncover the truth of our real natures requires careful reflective work. The good news is, our investment will reap a reward a hundred times over, and as a result, directly improve the quality of our relationships with partners, wives and children. This is one example where the trickle down theory really works.
It seems to me that men can raise the quality of their own lives by investing in their personal growth with male therapists in group or individual work. Group work and individual work with trained male therapists over a length of time allows for respectful self discovery and an opportunity to talk about and have feelings in those areas of our lives where we ordinarily find it too difficult to talk about, and to have permission to re-examine the way we view ourselves.
I would like to finish here by saying that changes are occurring, men are taking steps to reconstruct other models of masculinity. This is encouraging, however models of masculinity that omit personal change are of limited value as real change originates from within. Group and individual work is a unique mechanism to facilitate a change of heart. If this article provokes or heartens you, call me. My name is Boudi Maassen from the Blue Mountains Counselling and Education Centre on (047) 826833.
To contact the Village Views, send us an e-mail to: bmvv@hermes.net.au