Men and Emotions: Who's the Judge?

Do you need thicker skin?

Justin Lioi

While many people enter counseling because they’ve been told they need to be more “emotional” (whatever that means…) another grouping of people have been told they’re “over-sensitive” and they tell me they want a “thicker skin.”

When I first heard this years ago, my thought was “Wow.”

We, counselors, train to support people in becoming more aware of and accepting of their emotions, so it was a surprise the first few times I heard this plea:

I want to be less emotional. I don’t want my heart on my sleeve. I need to be better at holding things in.

Initially, it seemed the antithesis of what we do, but I came to the realization it was all connected by the same root:

I don’t want to be controlled by desires, whims, flights, and feelings. I want to be more in control.

So says the guy looking for anger management, so says the dude who’s told he needs to be more open about what he’s thinking and feeling, so says the man who cries at a small, perceived slight.

Control your emotions. Well, this is going to be tricky.

Who’s the Judge of Your Emotions?

First, let’s look at some of the language that gets thrown around when it comes to emotions.

I’m interested in the prefix “over”:

• Over-sensitive,

• Over-emotional,

• Over-excited

Name some more if you like. It’s interesting to me because the judgment is already in the word “over”. Who gets to decide what’s sensitive and what’s over-sensitive? There’s no hard and fast rule. How come we don’t use "under" as much as "over"? Is there some societal proclamation against too much, at least when it comes to feeling?

Were you told at some point that you’re an “over” or did the message come out in more subtle ways that you have to hold back what you’re really feeling because it’s not acceptable. It’s too much.

Maybe it was too much for them and had nothing to do with you.

As a boy, I got these messages, but I persisted into at least 7th grade. God, the shame that came up again and against as I still was that sensitive kid. It took a little longer, but I got the message and entered my teen years through the Man Box, too. As an adult, I’ve had to work my way out.

Context, Environment, and the Unacceptability of Emotions

I think it’s important to take into consideration context and environment when people talk about developing thicker skins. By different environments I mean home life, workspaces, attending cultural events, or intimate conversations.

Are any of these more accepting of emotions than others?

And what does gender have to do with it? Is it more acceptable for a female-identified person to cry at work than a male-identified person—or does her crying reinforce stereotypes of weakness, thus preventing her from “fitting in?” Does she need to change, or does work culture need to change? And what happens to the guy at work who cries? Is it taken more seriously because it’s coming from a “man” or does he quickly fall down the rungs of success because of this?

Sure, there are people who seem to use crying as a weapon. Are we supposed to stop expressing ourselves assertively because someone’s crying? Or maybe their tears are an invitation to know that they are being affected deeply and this is their way of handling the stress. Handling the criticism. Handling the anger. Can we allow someone to cry while still doing our jobs—and not having our own discomfort spill out or judgment of them?

I’m not providing any answers here, I’m just questioning our acceptance of each other and how we all respond differently to stress. Why are people’s emotional responses to stress not as acceptable as the “suck it up” response is? I’m not talking about a do-or-die crisis when surviving is the main goal. I don’t want my EMS working taking time out to cry while I’m bleeding to death—but that’s not necessarily the case in other work environments.

Do people need to go to therapy to stop crying when they get a less-than-glowing performance review, or do they need to trust themselves, and does their boss need to be more accepting of different ways of handling stress?

Handling it NOW

Given our current socio-political climate, the culture is not changing soon. So when people show up to counseling to become less over-emotional, what to do?

Generally, very emotionally expressive people who want to be less emotionally expressive spend an awful lot of time and energy attempting to hold back their feelings. Squelching that anger, that fear response, those tears.

They come to counseling bound and determined to NOT. BREAK. DOWN.

But the feelings are going to come out, and you need a place to let them. Counseling isn’t a place to practice holding them in, it’s a place to fully, powerfully, feel those feelings so that when you’re sitting with a boss the strong fear that you will “lose it” will gradually become less urgent. You’ll have had a release, and you’ll know that you will return to that counseling space to let lose all the stuff inside.

Because when you are emotionally expressive in therapy you get to simultaneously feel those emotions and go deeper to understand them. Not to control them. You can also learn to not let them control you.

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