Supporting men to connect to their children and partners

An area I get a lot of requests for and do a lot of work, it is supporting men to connect to their partners that might have issues like anger, depression and anxiety. Many of my clients who are male note that growing up in Western NSW and the more regional areas outside Wagga Wagga often face more adversity as there is more isolation, less services to support them, but often, a culture that forms are not being seen as weak.

In areas like Cowra, Forbes and even further west such as Dubbo and as far a Lightning Ridge these issues are often worsened due to more isolation and being a considerable distance from services and supports. Due to this as men grow up they often can struggle to handle emotions and can have people such as teachers noting there is explosive behaviour, anger issues and in some cases violence. From the therapy perspective, though, we look at this to protect ourselves or struggling to have a healthier relationship with our emotions.

There can also be issues communicating emotions to others, as showing emotion for some growing up was punished or considered a sign of weakness. Often when people reach out for support it is usually when things have become more difficult to manage on their own, affecting areas such as their relationships, work and social group. Due to this, we often take time to develop trust but quickly investigate what we can implement to reduce and manage strong emotions in the moment.

Over time, as you work with a therapist, the idea is that we can begin looking at what situations can get us into trouble with our emotions, and which ones might be getting in the way of the things that matter the most to us. We will often find ways to better express and communicate these, as well as understand and process how we came to be like this, so we can make more sense of the reason why we react to things so strongly.

At times, it can also be useful to get couples and relationship support, as well as the other parties potentially seeking their own therapy. This can be more needed if both couples have come from difficult backgrounds were there was trauma or difficult experiences when growing up. This provides each party their own safe place to be able to explore their own response to things based on their own history, then being able to bring this to couples work and reflect on, if the person feels fit.