Why do you like working with men in therapy?

The best thing about working with men in therapy is, you get to hear the most personal things about them. The stuff that they don't talk to their partners about; the stuff that they don't talk to their friends about; and the stuff that they feel like they're not supposed to talk about.

It's really worth naming what a privilege it is to be let in, in the intimacy of the therapy room.

That privilege is not something that I forget easily: the respect and trust that I'm given by men in therapy. It really makes this job worthwhile for me, to be let into something so personal and intimate, and that trust is reflected back by me. How is that reflected back? The client leans in, he nudges himself into the process. He starts to believe that I’m the right guy to help him. He begins to trust. And then with that, the relationship grows and then he figure out what he’s really here to work on; the stuff that is beyond his behaviours, and is waiting for him just underneath his emotions.

It's always worth naming that men aren't the homogenous group that we might assume them to be. There's so much variation with why men attend therapy, how they are behaving, how they deal with it, how they work with it? But of course, doing this for years…I’m approaching a decade of this… there are themes that I pick up- such a big theme tends to be their purpose and what's expected of men. What they expect of themselves, based on this. As meaning is stripped from our jobs, and community dissolves around us, it can be very difficult for men to reckon with who they are, what they must do and how they need to do it. I’ve learnt on the job, how to work with men, I don’t feel it’s something which can be learned in a book.

So if you come to therapy with me and you are a man, I will attend to your needs with respect of that privilege; the same acknowledgement of the trust that you’re putting in me. I will seek to understand everything that has informed the man sign in front of me, and tells me exactly why he’s sitting in that chair. We will grow together, I will learn from you, as learn from me. This relationship will be the key to healing, the key to new patterns and new behaviours, the key to confidence without ego, the key to the past and the key to the future. Are you ready to put your trust in me?