Secret #40: Detoxifying Masculinity with Russell Kolts
In this episode of 'Life's Dirty Little Secrets,' hosts Emma Waddington and Chris McCurry are joined by Dr. Russell Kolts, a clinical psychologist and professor at Eastern Washington University. They discuss the complexities of masculinity and anger in today's society.
Dr. Kolts shares insights on how societal expectations shape male behavior, the challenges men face in expressing emotions, and the importance of creating safe spaces for men to be vulnerable. The discussion also covers the role of temperament and upbringing in emotional development and highlights the impact of competitive social contexts on behavior.
The episode emphasizes the need for both men and women to support emotional expression and vulnerability in boys and men to foster healthier relationships and communities.
Topics Discussed:
Detoxifying Masculinity and Anger Management
Societal Expectations and Gender Differences
Creating Safe Spaces for Men
The Consent Conversation
Timestamps:
[01:27] Discussing Masculinity and Anger
[02:01] Challenges Men Face with Emotions
[06:05] Impact of Upbringing on Boys
[08:35] Societal Expectations and Gender Differences
[19:46] Creating Safe Spaces for Men
[30:34] The Consent Conversation
[31:26] Influence and Community Role
[32:58] Redefining Masculinity
[37:56] Toxic Masculinity Misunderstood
[40:10] Modeling Emotional Strength
[48:41] Supporting Emotional Expression
[57:11] Teaching Emotional Regulation
About Russell Kolts
Check out An Open-Hearted Life. Shambhala. 2015.
Learn more about The Compassionate Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger. New Harbinger Publications. 2012.
Read Buddhist Psychology and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: A Clinician's Guide. The Guilford Press. 2016.
Russell Kolts is a clinical psychologist and founder of the Inland Northwest Compassionate Mind Center in Spokane, Washington, USA. Dr. Kolts regularly conducts trainings and workshops on Compassion-Focused Therapy, as well as on mindfulness and compassion practices. His professional interests lie primarily in the application of CFT and mindfulness approaches to individuals suffering from problematic anger, trauma, mood, and attachment-related difficulties. Kolts has published and presented research in diverse areas such as positive psychology, PTSD, psychopharmacology, mindfulness, and compassion. In his personal life, Dr. Kolts enjoys family time, reading, meditation, outdoor activities, and listening to and playing music.
For more information, resources, and links regarding Compassion-Focused Therapy, visit www.compassionatemind.co.uk
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Secret #40: Detoxifying Masculinity with Russell Kolts (1) LDLS Episode
Introduction and Guest Introduction
[00:00:00]
Emma Waddington: Welcome to Life's Dirty Little Secrets. I'm Emma Waddington.
Chris McCurry: And I'm Chris McCurry. And today we are delighted and pleased to have as our guest, Dr. Russell Colts. He's a clinical psychologist and a professor at Eastern Washington University here in the state of [00:01:00] Washington. He's the author or co author of six books, including the recently published The Anger Workbook, as well as The Compassionate Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger. The open hearted life with a forward by his holiness, the Dalai Lama and the compression focused therapy made simple. So welcome Dr. Coles.
Russell Kolts: Oh, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
Discussing Masculinity and Anger
Chris McCurry: So today we are going to talk about manhood, masculinity of all those things that are so much in the news right now. Part of the culture. Yeah. Part of a lot of questioning and a lot of uh, sort of heat going on in the world. Particularly in the political scene. Tell us about masculinity and anger and lay it all out for us.
Yes.
Russell Kolts: Start with the [00:02:00] small questions.
Challenges Men Face with Emotions
Russell Kolts: So I I think that men are in a really tricky place right now. I think that from I've worked with a lot of men and I've worked with a lot of people who struggle with anger and there's a lot of overlap between those two groups. And so we talk a lot about things like masculinity and things like what it's like to be a man.
And the message that I hear. Again and again is that when growing up these men received all these messages about how they're supposed to be and how they're allowed to be and how they're not supposed to be and what they can feel and what they can express and what they shouldn't and then they internalize those messages.
They learn all those things about how it is how you're supposed to be if you're going to be a man and then they grow up and when they start Transcribed Behaving in those ways, then they feel like people turn on them and say, oh, you're bad. You're not supposed to be like that. You're not you're not allowed to act [00:03:00] like that.
And so it feels like there's a real trap there where at that point, they don't know what to do. And so there's more anger. It's you're telling me the way I am is not okay. I'm only being the way I was taught to be my whole life. I don't know what to do.
Chris McCurry: And there's, then there's probably more searching for models of some source of tell me what to do here.
Russell Kolts: Yeah. Yeah. And at that point, it becomes even more tricky, I think, because in the sort of technological world we live in there are all sorts of models competing for the attention of the disaffected male. And a lot of those Are maybe people who don't have who either are not that emotionally intelligent themselves or maybe have a political agenda or something like this.
I think there are a lot of messages that say, no you, you want to [00:04:00] be forceful and uber masculine and the problem is the culture, right? And instead of if you find yourself connected with those sorts of models. Instead of pausing and reflecting on your life and how it's going and what kind of person you want to be you can say stuck, stay stuck in the anger and the frustration and all of that and externalize and blame other people.
Chris McCurry: In all your research and your clinical work, do you find that some people are just more vulnerable to this kind of getting stuck, getting trapped? By virtue of temperament or upbringing or things like that,
Russell Kolts: Yeah, I I think it's all of the above. I think that clearly there's some temperamental factors going on. Some people, for [00:05:00] example, I think are born experiencing anxiety really frequently. It's really easy for them to feel anxious. They feel anxiety on a daily basis or more often.
And that emotion can color or flavor their life in particular ways in an ongoing way and irritability works the same way, right? So you can have folks that for me, for example, I'll use myself as an example because I I've talked about this in my books and things. I almost never feel anxious on a daily basis.
It's very rare for me to feel anxious which is both good and bad. It's pleasant because I don't have to deal with it on a daily basis, but it means on the rare occasion that I come up against something that does make me anxious. I have almost no internalized coping skills I'm a psychologist, so I have an intellectual understanding of what I should be doing, but it's not reflexive because I hadn't had to use it, but it's very easy for me to respond with irritability.
It's very easy for me to get thrown in [00:06:00] that way. And so I think that is a factor that can, I think, make it tricky.
Impact of Upbringing on Boys
Russell Kolts: If you're someone who already tends to respond in those sorts of ways, and then when you mentioned the environment people are reared in if they have models, and this is, I think, one of the really tricky things if you're growing up as a boy, and you have models of men who don't treat women very well, or ridicule you when you become emotional, encourage aggressive behavior things like that are modeling it.
I think that makes it trickier, too, because, of course, the child in that situation is going to learn those behaviors. It
Chris McCurry: right? And those are
Russell Kolts: to Yes, difficult to not. And those are often authority figures that the child wants to a not be punished by and be [00:07:00] be accepted by. Yeah. And so they're going to, they're going to identify with the aggressor. And model those behaviors themselves and on.
Absolutely. And of course, when we look out into the culture right now, we see lots of those models, too. We see. Very prominent people modeling ridiculing others, name calling rage. And I think part of what that does is it sets a model that other people can learn from.
But also validate stuff that we don't necessarily want validated, right? I remember when my son was very young, when he was a boy, and he said something I'm not even sure what he said, but it just wasn't very nice, and I said we don't really want to talk like that about other people, or, it wasn't about other people, because he didn't ridicule other kids, but I don't know what he said, but it was something that we redirected him on.
And he [00:08:00] pointed and he said president. So and so talks like that all the time. It was really hard for me in that position because then I had to say yes, but just because even the president of the United States, if they act like that, that doesn't mean it's okay.
But when you see that stuff, that sort of vitriol modeled. It, of course, people are going to pick that up, of course, they're going to think, oh, that's okay rather than reflecting on, is that really how I want to be? Is that really the sort of person I want to be?
Yeah.
Societal Expectations and Gender Differences
Emma Waddington: just backtrack a little bit in looking at the sort of trajectory of how do we get to the place where men feel like this in this trap? And I find it really. Interesting to think about how our society. And our parenting, our communities are shaping boys to become these men. [00:09:00] And why is it that there is such a.
We're still in 2024, encouraging boys to be more stoic, more independent, bigger risk takers have more sort of clarity. Like we're not expecting the same from girls. Like I was, as I had a talk yesterday about what about our boys and preparing for the talk, I was looking at all this research on how differently we treat little boys to little girls, even women. it's really stark. The fact that we, even as women, and I say it even as women, because I think somehow we should know better. think of it because we know what we need as girls and women, and why are we doing something different for boys? But there is this idea that boys should be capable of taking risks and stepping out.
And so from a very young age, we're pushing them out to got, you've [00:10:00] got this, you'll be fine. And actually I was reading research that boys brains developing slower. So they actually need more care and they need more words of affection or just as many for sure as girls do. And yet they're getting less.
And they're also expected to apparently one of the other pieces that was really interesting is that parents will are more likely to describe distress as anger in a baby boy than in a baby girl. So they're mislabeling or already assuming. That it's anger. And so it seems like from a very young age, we're already shaping these little boys into becoming these men who do experience more anger and off feeling in this trap, because we're not giving them permission to have more of a variety of feelings.
We're expecting much more in terms of their ability to stand up for themselves [00:11:00] and be independent. As a boy, mom, I'm learning so much and challenging so many of my own stereotypes, which unfortunately. I have and my two boys, I've got 14 year old, 11 year old are constantly challenging me because I do make assumptions without even realizing it.
And I'm quite psychologically minded and I'm trying to bring them up in the most, Non gendered way, but I still slip up. And one of the, my 11 year old said something a couple of years ago that really caught me in my tracks. And he asked me one day, he came back from school and he said, mom, what do you think happened if a boy cries in math? And I said, so my initial reaction was to say everybody gathers around him and. Makes him better. And he said no, everybody moves away. And the teacher maybe goes to [00:12:00] him. If at all, what do you think happens if a girl cries in math? I said, Ooh, everybody gathers around her and he says, yes. And that's unfair because sometimes boys want to cry too. And I felt so sad and I think he was nine at the time, but it was such a harsh reality. And I know he's right. And. It's wrong.
Russell Kolts: Yeah. And there's more than he's saying, because there's a fair chance. That boy will then be ridiculed sometime for days or weeks or months to come.
Emma Waddington: You're
Russell Kolts: it's, It's a tricky thing to show vulnerability. We we saw, we had, I, because he's underage I'm even hesitant to talk about it a little bit.
But. The democratic convention has been going on in the states recently, and there was a very famous, I guess it's been in the media a lot. the vice presidential candidate for the Democrats is a guy named Tim Waltz from [00:13:00] Minnesota and his son, Gus. Tim, when he was giving his talk, he just commented on how he, how much he loved his family and how, how proud he was of them. And his 17 year old son, Gus, got up and was really excited and he was pointing at him from the crowd and yelling, that's my dad. And he was crying
Emma Waddington: Oh.
Russell Kolts: because he was so proud and so moved. And it was really interesting watching the response. I think most people were really moved by that, but pretty quickly after there were a few people who criticized him and attacked him and ridiculed him.
But that's predictable that's the stuff we're talking about, but the other thing that happened that I think is just as insidious. Is that then a rush of people came to defend him, like millions, hundreds of thousands anyway, people on TikTok, people all over the place were rushing to defend him, but the [00:14:00] way they defended him was by saying, this kid has a learning disability, he's neurodivergent, they were defending, you're making fun of a neurodivergent boy, he's a neurodivergent boy, And even the ones who were defending him were saying, it's okay that he cried, because, he's, Neurodivergent.
He has this disability or this diagnosis, and that makes it okay that this 17 year old boy cried. And that broke my heart. That broke my heart, because what I wanted to say, and luckily a couple people said it, and I retweeted or I, I reposted that. It doesn't matter if he's neurodivergent.
It's not. That what is wrong with a 17 year old boy or girl being so proud of his father that he's moved to tears
Emma Waddington: I
Russell Kolts: or when his father from that stage says, I love you [00:15:00] and I'm so proud of you to be moved by that. I wow, that we would even to defend that we'd have to say he's not quite normal.
So it's okay that he was crying,
Emma Waddington: Yeah. Quite. Quite.
And I think we both genders have responsibility there. That's what I'm coming to realize is that this narrative about boys and men needing to be it's okay for them to be angry, but not sad comes from both men. And women, like I, I work with a lot of male clients and the consistent narrative is I can't get emotional at home. I. I need to be the tough one and my sons will say that to me, they'll say to me, mom, you don't get it. We can't be emotional. We need to be strong and I feel quite powerless because [00:16:00] I'm, I believe that in order for the world to be a better place, we need to look after both men and women.
This idea that we women, I think have been really good at stepping up and standing up for themselves and asking for help. And they're still much better than men asking for help. And I think it's in our interest as women to, to help men and help our boys do the same because we want. I think we want men who are more in touch with their vulnerable feelings and have great empathy and can connect with us and our children, and yet that's not what we're shaping boys and men to be like. That's right.
Russell Kolts: there's first I want to echo what you just said. It is really [00:17:00] tricky. And I think there's so many dynamics that, that shape men in exactly these ways. And I actually, before I provide the hopeful part, I want to highlight something you were talking about in terms of boys and how they're not nurtured as much.
They're not you don't get that. Paul Gilbert who's the founder of compassion focused therapy, which is the therapy model in which I do a lot of my work, has a theory called social rank theory. And what he talks about is how different contexts, social contexts, pull different evolved competencies.
And so what happens is if you put people Men are women, although there are differences there, in a nurturing or a cooperative social context that will pull for the development and display of cooperative behaviors, right? And they will learn those repertoires and they'll engage in those behaviors. On the other hand, if you put them together.
In [00:18:00] a competitive social context, what you get is rank based responding, trying to be you get competitive responses. And what happens is those competitive behaviors sort out fairly quickly. And so you get your winners. And then you get a lot of people trying not to be the loser. You get a lot of people around not looking badly in front of others, not losing face.
And what happens is when you're in that position where you're trying not to lose, where that's your motivation that's linked with depression and all kinds of nasty stuff. And so I think that what can happen, particularly for boys and men. Is that you have a lot of competitive social context that pull on those competitive sort of competencies.
That's what people learn to do. Those are the behaviors that tend to engage in, and those are the behaviors that they're reinforced for, or at least that they [00:19:00] see other boys being reinforced for. I think I mentioned before we started recording when I presented at a men's conference, I had a slide with two pictures on it.
One was Travis Kelsey, who's an American football player for the Kansas City Chiefs, a tight end enraged, yelling at his coach, right? It's a pretty famous picture that was in all the papers. And then there was another picture of him kissing Taylor Swift, probably one of the world's most desirable women after winning the game.
What's the message there, right? So there's we see this modeling of. If you're good at this stuff, if you're a winner you get the girl, you succeed, you're but here's the hope, here's the hope.
Creating Safe Spaces for Men
Russell Kolts: When we create social contexts that allow men to be feeling beings and that are safe for men to be feeling beings, [00:20:00] they'll do it.
I've seen that in Anger group after anger group, I've done in compassion focused therapy, but actually the most powerful example I have actually when I went down to San Diego to give a talk, it was the APA division 51 men and masculinity conference, and they invited me to come down to keynote that and I came down and gave that talk and I invited my friend Khalil Islam's work to go with me because I wanted to highlight his work.
Kahlil does a lot of great stuff but he is a moderator on a Facebook group that's called A Bunch of Dads. And that's what it is. It's a bunch of dads and it's a bunch of men that get together and it's, the context is talking about being a dad and fathering and things like this. Now it's heavily moderated.
You've got to be, when you set up these contexts, you've got to. To to make sure that the common obstacles that you can predict aren't going to be problematic. So they have rules, no political [00:21:00] posting no nasty, hateful stuff, things like that. And they have to delete posts and toss people out all the time, I suspect.
But what I see on this page, when I go, every time I go, is there'll be guys they'll be doing things like asking for advice on how to fix their car or how do you do this or that? But you'll see post after post also of guys saying guys my wife just said she's going to divorce me and we've got two kids And I'm terrified I'm going to lose him.
What do I do? Or, my kid was just diagnosed with autism and I want to be the best dad for him I can. What do I do? Or just being really vulnerable and asking for help on these really tricky life situations. And what [00:22:00] you get a few jerks, but the majority, the vast majority of responses, you can see guys coming out of the woodwork, saying, validating, saying, man, I feel for you.
I went through that and it's awful. Encouraging them saying you're going to get through this, just try this or that to activate coping skills. And actually offering pragmatic help as well. So doing all the things you hope they'll do. And this isn't a therapy group. It's literally just a bunch of dads.
And here's the thing that's most, that's best about this. Actually, maybe that's not best, but this stands out to me. The last time I went on that page, there were 66, 000 members of this group. I'm all, people like talking to me about men's groups, and I'm all about men's groups. I think it's great to get.
Eight or ten or twelve or fifteen guys together to do this emotional work. [00:23:00] But my question is always, how do we scale it? How do we make it culturally relevant? Because, although I want to change the world fifteen guys at a time, that's not even for a lot of people out there, right? Sixty six thousand guys, that's a lot of guys!
And if these are guys who then are behaving as emotional beings for their boys, so that's, those are the kind of places where I find hope. Where you see, and it's pretty rare these days, but you find a context where you can create a space that's safe for men to be feeling beings. This signals, we value how you feel.
We care about what you have to say. Then men do it.
Emma Waddington: Yeah, that is really beautiful. Makes me very happy because for me, it's, it, I find it incredibly just moving to hear the men supporting each other. Cause I think yeah, [00:24:00] it's interesting that the context of being a psychologist is where I see more men than women at the moment, which feels like a real privilege.
And a lot of the men that I see tell me that I'm the only person they confide to.
Breaks my heart, and these are high functioning men men who are in amazing jobs and yet they don't have anybody else to talk to. And, the stats show the last time I looked, it was, I think, 15 percent of men don't have a single person to confide in.
And I think another 30 percent do have friends, but they wouldn't talk about the hard stuff.
Chris McCurry: Yeah. I'm surprised those numbers aren't higher.
Emma Waddington: Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe they are higher, which is really sad given that we know that men are more likely to complete suicide and the vast majority of those will never have [00:25:00] told anybody about their despair.
Russell Kolts: Yeah,
Emma Waddington: It's
Russell Kolts: those contacts can be really hard to find,
Russell Kolts: but I think the point you make is really important. We need men to, to create those spaces. We need men supporting other men. And one thing that you've said a few times, Emma, that I've appreciated is we need women supporting men too.
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Russell Kolts: But I also recognize that there's some trickiness in that, I think, for women, because.
I think if you're a woman, you can simultaneously see men struggling, but when you look out at the world and you look
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Russell Kolts: the things that have made your life more difficult or that have hurt you personally. Very often it's going to be men or it's going to be the actions of men and things like that. And we [00:26:00] also live in a world where still yet in many places, if not most places, men hold most of the power, And there's a male privilege is a real thing. There's a lot of stuff that women have to deal with. That men just don't have to. So I think it's a hard sell. I think for some women looking at all of that, looking at how they've been hurt by men, looking at how men behaving badly, and there are no end of examples to that and seeing all of that.
It's a hard sell for that woman to go, Oh, and now you want me to help men too?
Emma Waddington: That's
Russell Kolts: Why does it always have to be about men, right? And so that doesn't mean men don't need help. But what I think it means is that men have to do something that maybe we're not equipped to do as we could do, which is find ways to create these spaces and to help one another.
And I actually, I think that's doubly important because there's a little bit of research on male social influence. I talk about this a lot with my son [00:27:00] and with his college student friends, because one of the things I'm interested in is reducing rates of sexual assault, which is largely perpetrated by men. And what we know is that women. Create a social influence from women to men about topics like sexism and stuff like that doesn't have a whole lot of effect on the men that engage in those behaviors, but there's some research that shows that. Actual social influence from other men is much more impactful
Emma Waddington: Wow.
Russell Kolts: they look up to says, man, that's not okay, or what the hell are you doing?
Walking her up to your bedroom. She's drunk. She can barely walk. That's right, man. Get down here. What are you doing? That social influence makes a difference. When a man says something terrible about women and another man says, what are you doing? That's not cool. That's not okay. [00:28:00] That, that communicates something I, one of the things I really appreciated about the me too movement is it gave the opportunity for my then 14 or 15 year old son and I maybe 13 to have some really important conversations and one of them was like, okay Dylan, you're going to have to decide what kind of man you want to be when it comes to sexual assault and how you treat women.
Are you going to be one of the minority of guys that does this terrible stuff? Yeah. Are you going to be one of the, what is it? 70 percent 80 percent 60 percent whatever. But the majority of guys who doesn't do it, but who also doesn't act to stop it. Who's I'm not, I don't do that stuff. So I don't have to worry about it.
Or are you going to be someone that acts to change it who recognizes that a man you can influence, you can actually influence your friends to not do that stuff. And so I think, It was, I really appreciated being able to have those conversations [00:29:00] and it's been, I've gotten reports from his girlfriends that says he treats women very well.
Emma Waddington: great You got good data there.
Russell Kolts: And it was dating success. It's been great. So
Emma Waddington: Hooray I think Wonderful. Thank you for that. I think it's what it's just got me thinking about I really appreciate you saying the piece about women, you know when i've talked to women about not mothers of boys are Generally quite aware of this, but those who don't have boys Less so and feel that why men have been the culprits of most of our problems.
So I'm not going to stand up and look after my, the men, let them sort this out. But I think the other piece you're pointing out to, which feels really relevant to me, Is the part that sort of men play for each other because I think [00:30:00] you know on the one hand We want women to be a part of this movement to support men on the other hand Women can't influence men as much as men can influence each other And I think that has been my experience as a mother like when my boys were very young I made a point of buying them dolls and kitchens and pushchairs and You Talking to them.
I had every feelings book possible. I bought rebel stories, rebel girls, bedtime story for rebel girls.
The Consent Conversation
Emma Waddington: I bought women in science like they had every feminist text out there and they were fine with it until a couple of years ago where they've started to push back on me. And I had a conversation with my eldest a couple of years ago, we had the whole conversation about sleeping [00:31:00] beauty, not consenting to the kiss.
I remember he pointed out, he must've been about eight or nine. He pointed out to my daughter, who's much younger, who was enjoying the sleeping beauty. And he said she didn't consent to that kiss. That's out of order. Brilliant. This is brilliant. And I remember my daughter was like, I like this movie. Leave me alone because he was like, I don't like this. She's not consenting anyway.
Influence and Community Role
Emma Waddington: Fast forward a few years and I talked to him about consent again, and he turned around and said, will you be having this conversation with your daughter? And that was an important question because a part of me thought, no probably not because I wouldn't worry about her pushing for situations where there isn't consent as much as I'd worry for him to really understand about consent.
But what that moment made me realize is that I no longer have as much influence probably that he's You know, they get to an age where they think I [00:32:00] don't get it because i'm the mother And it's probably where fathers need to step in more but the community needs to step in more like other men in the community need to step in and go That's not cool or we don't talk like that or think about that again, whatever it might be.
And I think that's where women we can be in the background, but we can't be the ones having these conversations. And really, I'm just reflecting on what you said and thinking, actually, yes, that is, that makes sense to my sort of, in my experience as well as a mother, that, yeah, there is an important role for men in this development in helping.
Boys become men that are more confident and able to assert themselves when they don't agree with a behavior, when they don't agree with something that's being said or done,
Russell Kolts: which, which is Interesting.
Redefining Masculinity
Russell Kolts: I'm glad you [00:33:00] stated it in exactly that way, because those are traditionally male characteristics. I can be confident. I can be assertive. And what you're talking about is a way for boys and men to learn to be masculine, to be confident, to be assertive in ways that actually aren't harmful. That aren't about pushing other people down or aren't just about regulating dominance But are about how do we become better men? How do we stand up for the stuff? That's really important
Chris McCurry: in your TED talk, your TEDx talk that we'll have a link to on the show notes, as well as links to your books. You talk about we need new ways of being strong.
Russell Kolts: Yeah, I think this is actually really important. I would be real careful here but
Chris McCurry: don't bother.
Russell Kolts: I think well, I [00:34:00] know I mean in the context of my field, you know I've had a lot of conversations and sometimes i'll meet a guy And we'll be talking about stuff with men and it'll be a guy who's very passionate, but also very I'm trying to describe it, but it's a, there's this sort of.
Kind of psychology guy persona or it's just really I don't even know how to language it. But it's like almost over correcting like it is almost hyper feminized version of being a man. Not in a stereotypical way, but just in kind of a Men need to be more emotion, but I don't even know how to talk about it, but what I know when I see it and it's the kind of thing that every other man who is not in this field would look at and say, that's the guy.
I don't want to be right. [00:35:00] The guy who's constantly talking about my feelings in these sort of. Wimpy ways and so i think that what we need and this is tricky to talk about because i don't want to shame anybody i don't want to you know. And anyone who says we need to create emotional spaces for men to be able to feel i want to support that work but i think sometimes when we're in our little silos are little silos in the world of mental health the way we model what that looks like is something that men who aren't in that world.
Would have a really hard time identifying with and so I think what we need are. This is why I think I love compassion because compassion is about turning towards struggle and suffering And the essence of that is courage and you're [00:36:00] turning toward the hard thing and demonstrating that and you can be emotional while you do that.
But you're that, that's strong, right? There's and it's not a uniquely, it's not a masculine strength or a feminine strength. It's a strong thing to turn towards something that's difficult. But what we need are models of men doing that our boys can look at and go where there's a guy and he's being assertive and he's being strong and he's doing it in the service of being helpful and oh, look, he got moved while he's doing it.
And that's okay, too. I think we need models that. That people can identify with and that's really tricky because we've got all these different messages coming from different places
Chris McCurry: even talking about being stoic that term has become twisted over the centuries. The [00:37:00] stoics were not about not feeling things. They were very much about feeling what you were feeling when you were feeling it. But then when you weren't feeling it, You're move on. And, but it was more about living a virtuous life, living a life of value and using your values as your guiding principles and emotions were a part of that.
So it just puts my teeth on edge when people talk about you have to be stoic. It's that doesn't that doesn't mean you're not feeling stuff or pressing your emotions. You just have to do it in a principled. values driven way.
Russell Kolts: yeah tell me you don't understand what Stoic is without telling me you don't understand what Stoic is right. But I think we do language as you folks know, it can be very tricky.
Toxic Masculinity Misunderstood
Russell Kolts: One thing that's become a hot button issue for a lot of men is this term [00:38:00] toxic masculinity. I've been in several groups of men when the word comes up, they get angry.
They just get infuriated. And when they hear the term toxic masculinity they think it means masculinity is bad. Like all masculinity, man being a man, maleness is bad. yeah. And I think probably we need to find a better way of talking about it just because it carries so much cultural baggage, but I've been surprised.
I've been in rooms with groups of men, male prisoners and veterans and all kinds of traditionally male spaces. And they'll be raging about this. I'll say, guys, just hold on for just a second here. Let's just before we get too worked up, let's just consider what does this word masculinity mean, right?
Okay. And from my understanding, it's the sort of implicit cultural agreement we've come to about all the stuff that that makes [00:39:00] that what it means to be male, right? We've come to these ideas about if you're a man, you're like this and like this and like this and all toxic masculinity means is that some of our ideas about how you should be if you're a man, maybe aren't very helpful.
Chris McCurry: And not very helpful to the men themselves.
Russell Kolts: men themselves. And so I'll ask, I'll say, so how many of you have ever felt weak when you were moved or tearful or when you felt scared? Have you ever had an emotional reaction like fear or anxiety or sadness? And then there was that voice in your head that said, no, you're, you can't do that.
You're weak if you do that. And if you're in a group of men and you ask that question, you get a lot of hands going up and even more heads going down. Just looking at the ground, remembering it. And it's if you've had that experience, you have experienced toxic masculinity, because that's one of those ideas we [00:40:00] have about what it means to be a man that just isn't very helpful, particularly for men.
This idea that if you're a man, you can't be this. You can't be scared. You can't be tearful. You can't be whatever.
Modeling Emotional Strength
Russell Kolts: It's all bullshit, but it's this stuff that's out there in the culture, and we need to find ways to counter that, and we can counter it by talking about it with our boys and men, but I think it's much more powerful if it's modeled, if different ways of being strong are modeled, and boys can see the men they look up to that are implicitly countering it.
Those ideas, and that's why I think, by the way, I think things like that bunch of dad's Facebook group are so important because what happens if you join that group, other men doing that stuff about a lot of the people that post that vulnerable post have been there for months, and they've seen other guys being courageous in that way, [00:41:00] and they've seen them being reinforced.
They've seen other men rushing in, validating them and saying, Oh, man, this is really hard. How can we help? Mhm. And after a while, you develop the courage to do it yourself.
Chris McCurry: One of the stories that came out recently about Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, was when he was a high school teacher, one of the students, not one of his students, actually one of his wife's students, wanted to start a gay alliance club at the high school and a tricky business. And Waltz, as the football coach, decided to be the faculty sponsor, because he knew that if the football coach was the sponsor, that would make it okay for a lot of the more traditionally male guys in the school. So that's [00:42:00] just a little example, I think, of the kinds of things that can just bend the arc a little bit.
Russell Kolts: And when you do that, you give all those boys permission to step out of that little box they've
Chris McCurry: The boys in either side, either group the, then the football players get to step out of their box too.
Russell Kolts: Yeah that, those were the ones I was thinking about.
Emma Waddington: So here's the invitation I guess, because as you were talking about role models, I'm thinking how do we get people, how do we get men to step up more, and to feel. Confident, because sometimes in certain communities that can be a really big deal, can be quite scary to do.
Russell Kolts: I think that's the tricky bit, right? How do we create that context? [00:43:00] And honestly, I think the more we have conversations, again, I feel bad because he's 17, but I think this Gus Walls conversation, the last week has probably culturally been a really good one. because I think most people who are undamaged.
Can watch the video of this kid crying and saying, that's my dad and pointing with pride. I don't know if you've seen it. I
cry every time I see it. I cry every time I see it. It's so moving. And I think most people can look at that and say. That's good.
Chris McCurry: When I saw that, I thought of my son and I would want him to be pointing up saying that's my dad. And you would want that for Dylan too. And, Emma, you'd want that for Nico and Leo,
Emma Waddington: Yeah. My goodness. [00:44:00] Absolutely.
Russell Kolts: at that and see that's a good thing and he's emotional and Maybe there's space for men to be emotional because I think again I think it's been exaggerated because there were a few people that came out and ridiculed him But not very many actually. I, so I think having more of these conversations, having more of those Facebook groups, having more we've got actually I've seen a lot of posters on Tik TOK who have been speaking to this and modeling these sorts of things.
So I think I'm not very technologically savvy logging in to this this website so I could do a podcast is the most technical thing I've ever done on a computer. But there are a lot of young people who are using the internet to really get a lot of messages out there.
And I think increasingly this one is there. And I think the, for me, the [00:45:00] advantage of taking that approach. Is you've got the capacity to reach so many people,
Chris McCurry: right? So we can be hopeful that the generations coming behind us will have a new ethos around this and be promoting these ideas and modeling these things and you get You know, more people who are in, positions of authority and status who can be helping us out in this way. So final,
Russell Kolts: I guess the one bit of encouragement that I would give any male listeners that might have tuned in if they're thinking what could I do or whatever? I think there are lots of instances that men find ourselves in where we could say something, right? [00:46:00] We could say something that models what we're talking about.
The challenges, some sexist thing that somebody says. Or that and in other ways counters some of this stuff. And I think that because we have this sort of internalized memory of being the, being your nine year old boy in the maths class, knowing that if I cry,
be hell to pay, I think that, that sort of learning, that threat learning reverberates for a long time, and I think there are a lot of men who carry that with us and that keeps us quiet in those instances when We want to speak and I guess the thing I would say to those male listeners is take the risk
and, maybe there'll be social consequences, but I think a lot more often what you're going to get is a lot of [00:47:00] other men going, someone said it and feeling really validated because they were thinking the same thing and they were fighting against the same wall and.
When we model that stuff for other men, we make it more likely they will then take that risk in the future. And I think then we can get that. Things moving in the right directions like we need that first domino of all over. But I think there are a lot of men who really would love to be in situations where it was okay to be feeling beings who really would, and so if we can model that stuff, I think we can give others permission to do it too.
Chris McCurry: so whether it's the conference room where you work or the scout troop where, you know the child feels vulnerable because it's the first camping trip and he's feeling homesick or in all the different sports events that people have where [00:48:00] there are opportunities for people to just shift the narrative a little bit and model those more accepting inclusive, welcoming kinds of ideas and behaviors.
Russell Kolts: I saw a meme I think that I had posted a couple years ago on Facebook and I reposted it, but it was, someone had posted, overhearing a dad. Talking to their kid in the grocery store and what he was saying was yes, it is brave to go on a roller coaster. It's also brave to say that you don't want to go on a roller coaster,
Chris McCurry: Nice.
Emma Waddington: That's awesome.
Russell Kolts: And to model the complexity That's right.
Powerful stuff.
Emma Waddington: It really is.
Supporting Emotional Expression
Emma Waddington: And as a woman, like listening and thinking about what men can do, what can we do? What could we do to support this movement? Do you think?
Russell Kolts: Oh, gosh, that's a good question. That's the question I haven't thought so much about. I think actually the thing I would invite women to [00:49:00] do. Obviously, there's the things you can encourage and stuff like that. But the thing is, I would invite women to do really is to like notice. How you react
Do display emotion when men do that and see are you? Recoiling or do you think it's a good thing or is there a part of you goes?
Oh, because I think there are a lot of women who I have heard from a lot of men I will say that they say when I express emotions other than anger and things like this. I see my wife Shrinking back from me. I see Her look at me like I'm not as strong as I should be. And so I have to believe that does happen sometimes.
So I think just to to be reflective on how do I, how do I relate to all that stuff? And the other thing that we haven't talked a lot about today is anger. But I [00:50:00] think that the number one thing I would ask from women in relation to men in our struggles is if you see a man.
Acting out in anger. Now I would never ask a woman to hang and be abused or to stay when someone's harming you. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But when you see a man who becomes angry or irritable try, and this is very difficult because your brain, your evolved brain is trying to get you to do something very different, but try to recognize that man is struggling in the same way that someone who is anxious is Or scared is struggling, right?
He's struggling with a different threat emotion, but in each case, you've got someone who's caught up in a threat emotion that they don't quite know how to control and what happens, I think, in our culture. And this gets in the way from a lot of men getting a lot of help is that when we see someone who's anxious, we want to reassure them, right?
We see someone who's sad. We want to [00:51:00] comfort them. We see someone who's angry. We want to distance ourselves. We don't see them as struggling. We see them as a jerk. And I think if we can begin to see that person as someone who's struggling with a situation they haven't quite learned to control, that sets us up to respond to them in a compassionate way rather than to condemn. And I think if we were, if we respond in a compassionate way, we're giving the man permission then to be a feeling being. And maybe some of those emotions that so often lie underneath the anger. Like the sadness or the anger that he's taught himself not to feel or express
Emma Waddington: Hmm.
Russell Kolts: will be safe enough You know to come out and he can really work with that stuff, too
Chris McCurry: And to begin to disconnect the emotion from the automatic. Behavior that's habitually associated with it. That's been reinforced over time.
Emma Waddington: Yeah. And I guess [00:52:00] one of the things that I often think about with anger with my clients, my male clients is that anger is a stand in for everything else. That's the original, the sort of what we would call that secondary emotion that, but it's it's, I tell my clients that is a big flag that you need to go deep into what that's about.
And I agree that that's what I would do with my clients. It's a difficult it's one of what I call my Jedi skills. To sit there and listen to what feels like a lot of anger and sometimes attack and blame. And to be able to say, goodness, that's a lot of feeling what's, what else is going on for you is difficult, but a great invitation wherever we can to do that.
And I think you're right that I've asked myself this too when I see a man who's feeling very vulnerable, like I remember [00:53:00] my, my first, I very clearly remember my first adult male client who cried and he cried, like cried for a whole session. And I remember feeling very differently to my female clients this is whatever, 15 something years ago, but I remember noticing that I felt very different and I've now got many other tears under my belt from men.
And so I feel much more at ease, but it wasn't easy. I remember feeling a bit out of sort of place that this is something that felt quite new. And I didn't know what he might need. And then I thought he needs whatever I need. It's the same, but I imagine for a lot of women, that isn't the case that it's, this is really new and we need to challenge our perhaps stereotypes around I feel more at ease when my, my partner has it all figured out.
And. He's got this and he's strong and [00:54:00] an emotional and actually how can I make room for some of that uncertainty when he is feeling emotional?
Russell Kolts: Yeah I think you know, it's the same as it is with all stereotypes, like having grown up a white male in the culture I grown up in it's not really a question of Do I have some sexist tendencies or do I have some racist tendencies? Of course I do,
this culture where that's sort of modeled and taught So it's it's if I want to not be a sexist person and not be a racist person Which of course I don't want to be either sexist or racist.
Rather than just pronouncing that I am not those things what I really want to do is look for it
Emma Waddington: Yeah.
Russell Kolts: when does it come up when you know and when I see it if I can get curious about that and go, Oh, there it is, right? That's my program and kicking in. Is that really what I think?
And I think women can do that. It can get curious in the same [00:55:00] ways because it's not your fault if you've internalized those messages about manhood and masculinity that white men have. Of course you would. You're in the culture where it's taught, it's modeled in the movies. And the songs and the music, it's in that sports, it's in the air we breathe so the extent to which when we catch ourselves going into it, we can just pause and go out.
There we go.
Emma Waddington: Yeah. so flagellating, right? Instead of beating ourselves up for it, we can just go, that's my growth. That's my growth. That's where I got to do a little better. I
I love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in that same way, I had a couple of parents who've come up to me, women who in some of my talks about nurturing boys and helping boys, they become especially the big feelers. Cause we have some big feelers out there they worry about their boys having big feelings in a world that doesn't have room for big feelings in men.
And they worry about. If we encourage it too much, are they going to be overwhelmed [00:56:00] in society? Are they going to cope when society is bullying and shaming their emotions. And I guess that's again, an opportunity for women to question that stereotype, isn't it
Russell Kolts: I'm so glad you said that though, because what that tells us is that our job is actually much bigger than we think it's not, we can't just, I think the point is a really good one. These mothers are making is a really good one. We can't just teach our boys. It's okay to feel and express your feelings.
I'll pick on Brene Brown a little bit here because I think she'll be all right. But I've heard her criticized a little bit and I haven't partaken enough of her media to know. But the shtick that vulnerability, lean into the vulnerability, be vulnerable.
And I've actually heard some black feminists say you can only, you should only be vulnerable in spaces where it's safe to be vulnerable,
Emma Waddington: Yeah, I'm into that. Absolutely.
Russell Kolts: and if we teach our boys, just feel and express your feelings, feel and express their feelings, and then put them out [00:57:00] into a context that's not prepared to respond to that, we're setting them up to actually have that punished and then to shrink back underneath the shell even further.
Teaching Emotional Regulation
Russell Kolts: Even more so, so I think what we want to teach them is it's absolutely okay to feel your feelings, find ways to express them in different contexts that are likely to be met in reinforcing ways, which means teaching them the ability to discriminate context, teaching them context sensitivity, where is it safe, where are the relationships, where it's safe to share my emotions, and where are the ones where, I'm getting cues that maybe it's not so safe and to be able to discriminate those and then make sure they have context where it is safe.
And it also why we want to teach them some emotion regulation, some self soothing skills. What can you do when you're overwhelmed with emotion to help soothe? [00:58:00] Because I think part of the tricky thing with men is that you've got a lot of men who never were taught to self soothe. They didn't have a context that taught them what to do when you feel emotions because they didn't they, parents never used emotion words.
I've heard man after man, client after client, women too, tell me when I said what did you learn about emotions and how to deal with them, how to work with them when you're growing up, they'd say things like I don't remember my parents ever using the word anxiety or anger. I saw it. I saw them angry.
I saw them anxious. I saw them scared sometimes, but no, they never talked about what do you do when you feel that?
Chris McCurry: We had euphemisms in my family you weren't angry, you were getting your cage rattled, and in various expressions like that. But yeah nobody back in the fifties and the sixties, that was not part of the curriculum
Russell Kolts: No. So if we want men to be able to do this, we have to teach them that the feelings are fine. [00:59:00] Teach them context, sensitivity, figure out where you can express where not provide them context that are going to be. Amenable that are going to be safe, but also teach themselves soothing and emotion regulation skills, things they can do when they have a big emotion and they're in a context where sharing it, in a raw way, isn't going to be met well, because vulnerability is great, but only in a situation where you're safe.
Chris McCurry: let me just say, thank you, Russell Cole. And maybe we need to do this again and talk more about anger and talk about the. The threat system and the safety system
Russell Kolts: to. Yeah. Anytime you'd like to have me back. I'd love to. This is, I love that you're putting this stuff out there.
Chris McCurry: that's great. Thank you. Thank you so much. All
Emma Waddington: I love this conversation. It felt really important and it's given me, because as as a woman, I wanna support the men and the boys. I want it to be a better world for all of us.
Chris McCurry: Yeah. It's very timely. [01:00:00] All right. Thank you so
Emma Waddington: Thank you.
Russell Kolts: Thank you. Take care.
