Going through the emotions

Escaping toxic masculinity by allowing yourself to feel your feelings

I’ve spent a lot of the last year thinking about toxic masculinity. Realizing the different ways I’ve been exercising and have fallen victim to it. Particularly, the part of toxic masculinity that tells you that you shouldn’t display emotions: Like sadness, frustration, being overwhelmed, even being enthusiastic, or showing genuine joy can be off-limits. For me, it has been an almost embarrassing revelation to discover how the self-denial of engaging in how you feel is closely connected with the emergence of my depression.

My memory of my childhood is spotty, but I do remember that I started to learn that I shouldn’t display emotions in my tweens. It was embarrassing to be sad or hurt in front of your classmates. I remember particularly when I was between 13 and 14 and part of a particularly rowdy class, that display of visible anger and frustration when you were picked on, just made you more of a target. So I learned to stop. And being quick-minded and witty, I became one of those who could hide behind irony, sarcasm, and shallow self-deprecation. I have spent a lot of time in my teens and twenties trying to dodge critique and negative attention.

Being emotionally unprepared

But then life happens. And it brings trauma. Like losing your best friend. Or hitting the wall in your last year as a Ph.D. fellow, finding yourself in a job application conflict with the institute chair, and then quit the thing you had working towards for almost 10 years. Things you should be upset about. Things that will make you sad and vulnerable. Things that will make you cry. Where the healthy response is to accept compassion and kindness from others. While I had moments of grief with those close to me after my best friend un-alived himself, it soon became “I’m doing fine.” And I’ve mostly talked about the failed Ph.D. as being a victim of the academy as a toxic place and left it at that.

But where the behavioural patterns of toxic masculinity really kicked for me, was how I wasn’t dealing with not being able to get progress on my thesis while pretending that things were moving ahead. To me, being vulnerable and admit that I was overwhelmed, that I was going through a depressive state, and that I needed help, wasn’t there as an option. If help was offered by those who suspected that something was going on, I wouldn’t accept it. Instead, I chose to do things that came easy to me, and that appeared productive. And I chose to lie about how things were going.

Obviously, deception to avoid dealing with the emotion of failure¹ is a steep slippery slope. And it’s the cliché you have seen so many times in our popular stories and real life: The man who is keeping a secret from his partner, and slightly becomes more and more defensive, removed, and unable to be present. Eaten inside from the stress of being discovered while anticipating that the truth will come out someday anyways.

It’s weird to look back and find that you were that person, and because it’s hard to escape these internalized behaviors, still can be. And I know that it might seem unlikely for some of you because outside of the home, I’m masking, and I’m rarely challenged in a way that demands an emotional response. But to the few close to me, and especially my spouse, instead of masking, I’ve chosen simply not to address the hard™ things or limiting the conversation to be about how it’s about hard it is to be me (the narrative of being a victim goes strong in my family).

Having feelings about feelings

The first time I remember considering that emotions were a thing that you could have emotions about, was the summer when I had quit academia and was still upholding the deception… yes, I was lying about it… about getting my thesis to the finish line. We were road-tripping through the states and watched the Pixar movie Inside Out at a theatre (don’t remember where). It taught emotional maturing by showing that allowing yourself to feel the full range of emotions makes it less hard to deal with loss and life changes. I remember relating to this intellectually, but not actually being able to draw the lines completely back to my own situation. I was still being in denial.

So it’s not before 6 years later, I can say that I’m in another place. Where I finally can feel that allowing myself to be vulnerable is empowering. And that admitting failure comes with resolution. It’s so unbelievably obvious when you’re looking at it from the outside. But so shit hard to do, if you’re depressed, distracted, or tired. It takes practice.

So how does that actually look like? Well, the first part is practicing noticing that you’re feeling something, that you have some emotion. Then, acknowledging that you have this emotion. Then you’re ready to make sure you can sit through these emotions, knowing that they will pass, at that you’ll be fine at the other end.

For example, it’s especially in conversations with my spouse after I’ve been inconsiderate where emotions of embarrassment often occur. If she tries to be subtle about it, I’ll feel that initial spur of embarrassment, and historically I’ve chosen to just ignore and not address whatever it is. And if she has to actually bring it up more clearly, my response has been to try to explain how it’s not really my fault or that I’m a victim of circumstance. But if I’m being honest, I’m just mostly embarrassed that I had been acting selfish or just hadn’t thought a thing properly through when I should have.

So now I try to get to the place where I notice that it’s what I’m feeling I just say that I am, and then ask for 10 minutes just to be myself and sit through those emotions and let my brain do what it does. Then, typically, I’m ready to see the situation and my own behavior more clearly and engage in how it may have affected others. And yes, this can happen multiple times, because once you actually allow yourself to feel, there may be some feelings emerging.

Sadness is my spirit animal. At least sometimes.

Coda

I realize that the term “toxic masculinity” is politicized. But I sincerely hope that my use of it doesn’t come in the way of what I try to say if you aren’t on the political left. Because being able to validate and being aware of your own emotions and don’t let them come in the way of connecting with others, seems pretty universal to me.

And on that note, if you are one of those who are familiar with feminist theory and identify with the political left, that’s no guarantee that you’re not as much a part of the patriarchy and an actor of toxic masculinity. I have seen countless times, including from myself, that cis-men who say they are feminists have undermined their partners’ experiences (aka gaslighting) when it’s obvious that we’re avoiding sitting through the feeling of being embarrassed or just dead-ass wrong.

1. And the morisettian irony is that it’s by sitting through this emotion you discover that what you first felt like a failure, probably actually wasn’t.