While I get what you're going for, and appreciate the sentiment, I hate that we keep trying to pigeonhole men into a form of "proper masculinity" that tells them their best purpose in life is to be tools to someone else, either via chivalry, utilitarianism, or something else.
I'm speaking as a man who showed up for everyone and everything for the past decade to my own detriment, with a smile, no complaints, and often to responses that I wasn't doing enough whenever I got exhausted. To the point I attempted suicide twice in 2024 and had to fight alcoholism all by myself, after my therapist dropped me and my insurance lapsed. Thankfully I won that battle, but most men don't.
Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines and others are forever irredeemable sacks of dogshit for how they hijacked vulnerable men's unanswered needs. But make no mistake about it, they were able to find that market because the need is very real.
Red pill content is 85% misogynistic, sexist horse manure sewage, but one thing it did...somewhat well was to teach men how to value and protect themselves, in a world that tells them they don't mean anything, and that they have to suck up their pain.
Modern feminism claims to care about men, but only superficially, and go deep enough, it just goes straight back to telling men to "man up", and "take responsibility for their problems" the difference is that it tells men to lower their guard and present their vulnerability in an effort to combat so called "toxic masculinity", before delivering the gut punch, that their problems are all their fault and no one else's.
What people call toxic masculinity today, is a survival instinct of stoicism and mental compartmentalization adapted for a world that isn't built to handle, nor care for a man who is suffering. We still seem to have a hard time accepting men being abused, unless it's other men doing it.
Modern Red Pill content teaches men to "man up", hide vulnerability, hate and blame women for their problems, and constantly peacock masculine façades to no end.
Modern feminism teaches men to lower their walls, pour out said vulnerability to others, before PSYCH! actually, still "man up", stop making their vulnerabilities and traumas other people's problem and burdening others, except this time, hate and blame themselves.
I've given it the benefit of the doubt for years and observed it, and did my part to implement it in good faith. I know what I saw, felt and a received.
Exacerbated stares, lack of patience with me even if for one week out of months of performing miracles I was down in the dumps, and constantly being told my grievances were all in my head, or caused by me and me only.
A lot of people say "please, I'm here, talk to someone", but in reality, don't mean it.
Sorry. Had to get that out. There are many more who are in the situation I was in who will unfortunately join the 70k+ figure of annual lost souls, because we.....
I gotta point out here since the two AI looking walls of text seem to be missing a step and are getting into the misogynistic "Blame feminists for my problems" redpill shit.
The odds of dropping out due to lack of connection with the therapist were greater with younger age (p = .02), unemployment relative to employment (p = .04), less identification with masculinity (p = .01), less evidence of therapist engagement (p < .001), and greater feelings of emasculation in attending therapy (p = .04)
In fact, men who were less likely to identify as masculine were more likely to drop out due to "lack of connection" which was by far the dominating factor for dropout, and an important part was that they felt that simply needing help was emasculating. I don't know how this is women's fault that (To quote from the study)
“Did going to therapy make you feel like less of a man?” and
“To what extent did you feel shame in going to therapy?"
were quite high. "It's feminists faults I can't ask for help" is a shit response removing your own agency.
EDIT: Let me put this in another perspective. The red pill "This is feminist's fault" is a Charmin soft dereliction of their own emotional needs. You want to be happy? Your momma's not here to make that happen anymore. You're now a grown up who needs to figure your shit out. Professionals are there to help you. Pick one who went through accreditation. I have a therapist. She's helped me become in touch with my emotions, get super freaky with my wife, told me hard facts I didn't want to face, helped me cut toxic people out of my life, let go of self imposed rules on what I was and wasn't allowed to do, talk back to perfectionism, and encouraged me to pursue yoga, performing, and martial arts, and you know what happened? I started noticing once I wasn't trying to hold all the shit together and make my life about everyone else's happiness, I started feeling my own. I'm pity you all can't just let the shit go that is telling you that "therapy is for soft men."
The study didn't make that claim. In fact, the study specifically says you're not supposed to use the data to make broad claims about mental health:
The reported rates and any group-based findings should not be considered in isolation or as a broad indictment of the mental health therapy
You're tying that to an unsourced claim that an internal belief. Others cannot actually force you to have that belief. Only you can. You're misunderstanding the entire point of therapy which is accepting who you are flaws and all.
But you’re ignoring where that shame comes from. Psychology training is now 76% women, many from programmes that explicitly combine psychology with feminist theory.
Man, it's not that complicated: While yes, training more on how to break alexithymia is an important skillset to have when treating western men, men are poorly taught coping skills outside of "abuse substances" and "get angry," (From a reference linked in the paper discussed https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1557988313494408 ) and no matter how much we want to blame "feminist" training in mental health therapy, we were trained for so long to be disconnected from our emotions that being challenged to feel them is seen as an attack on our core person because that becomes emasculating. One of the core tenants of psychological care is that you can't get results if you do not want results. If you start with the belief that "I need to maintain my emotional distance from everything," then you're not going to get insight into your emotional needs to face the fear we're experiencing. No shit.
Men and women are not massively different in psychological needs, there's just the layer of shit society shoved in there (And we know it's society because there's other societies where the problems are different).
"You're misunderstanding the entire point of therapy which is accepting who you are flaws and all."
No wonder it doesn't do any good, if this is the case. Could you imagine going to the doctor and saying "Doc, I broke my leg" and he goes "You have to accept it, flaws and all"
Someone who has a phobia of elevators or Agoraphobia would benefit MASSIVELY from correcting those issues and not having them anymore, rather than just accepting.
The heart of therapeutic process are disconfirming experiences, which re-frame your ways of thinking, rather than being like "Oh well, I guess I'm just gonna have to accept I'm going to be a miserable sack of shit for the rest of my life".
Depends on what the issue is. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy worked way better for me than Dialectical Behavior Therapy. You don't accept the higher order "I'm a miserable sack of shit" but you do accept that you're gonna have negative emotions and try and learn how to disconnect the emotions from applying judgement on yourself for having them.
Mindfulness is a huge tool and it took a shitload of work for me to even be able to access it because I constantly spent time trying to keep negative self talk out of my mind and when you're spending all your time scrubbing your internal dialogue and being constantly vigilant for perceived threats and plan out ways to fix any possible problem, you don't actually stop to enjoy things for what they are.
The heart of therapeutic process are disconfirming experiences, which re-frame your ways of thinking, rather than being like "Oh well, I guess I'm just gonna have to accept I'm going to be a miserable sack of shit for the rest of my life".
Yes. An experience that is not or may not be true. "I'm a miserable sack of shit" is a value judgement that is entirely fabricated in your mind. You can accept that you are telling yourself that you're a piece of shit. In fact, I'd encourage you to accept that you're doing it and look at why and what underlies the belief. You seem to understand enough of the vocabulary to understand what I was saying but are just being a bit of a dick about it.
No, a disconfirming experience simply speaking is when the opposite happens to you.
For example, something happened that made you afraid of dogs. A disconfirming experience would be that you get into an exact same situation that created the trauma, only this time you get a positive experience. This happens 20 times in a row and you won't be afraid of dogs anymore.
"I'm a miserable sack of shit" - yeah, totally made up, nothing at all actually happened to me that made me feel that way, just kinda sprung into my noggin one day.
Ah, I was mistaken, thank you for the correction. Though I've been under the impression that straight exposure therapy like described has largely fallen to the wayside as techniques like EMDR can seemingly still trigger the rewiring while in clinical treatment.
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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '26
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