The need for men’s counseling and competent counselors in men’s struggles

It sounds simple, doesn’t it. Counseling is out there, therefore it should automatically be open to men. Counselors are out there and therefore they should be competent to address men’s struggles. Right? Yet when you look at the thousands of faces on directories and websites, can you really say you feel understood, seen, and connected by these clinicians? To their credit, and a sense of fairness, they may be focusing on issues that aren’t inherent to men. Stuff with age, gender, or super uncommon experiences for example. Women dealing with pregnancy struggles, elementary school boys with confidence issues, or super specific traumas that only happen to so many people. Specialists in these areas have earned their place in servicing these clients. But what about the rest? All the “I specialize in anxiety, depression, and trauma” blanket clinicians, all the “Have you felt this way? Then I’m the right therapist for you” therapists, all the ones who you feel like they blend together and nobody stands apart. So, you feel lost in a sea of decisions, an unconfident “good enough?” when you finally choose. This is where the need for competent men’s counseling and men’s counselor/therapists comes.

Counselors and therapists for men who are educated, trained in how men think, feel, and be able to navigate men’s inner and outer worlds, and if possible, have the lived experience of the men they see. Clinicians who know how you feel when you lose a parent or a child, who know what happens inside when you ask yourself the question “Am I man enough?”, who know how you feel in a world that never loved you enough to show you how to be a man. Specialization has become a growing force in the therapy and counseling world. But if you were to search up “Men’s counseling in…/ Men’s therapy in…” and add your city, results at best are therapy sites that don’t even address counseling with men, subpages of centers for mental health where you don’t even know who you’d be counseling with, or actual men’s counselors and therapists who are sparse and few between. Is it enough? Most would probably agree we need so many more trained and educated clinicians in the areas in which men struggle.  Yes, things get deeper once you start adding other parts of your identity. Being a black man, a gay man, an old man, young man, poor man, west coast/east coast man, religious or atheist kind of man. But how can a clinician even get to that deep level of understanding if they first and foremost don’t simply understand you, as a man?

So what does this actually look and feel like? It looks like you waking up one day and knowing you’re ready to pick up the phone and call a therapist to help change your life. You go on your phone or computer and when you search up “Men’s counseling”, “Men’s therapy”, you don’t scroll through pages of search results, pages of directories. You go through 1-2 maximum. You see a familiar face, one that carries the knowledge of what you’ve been though. You read words this person has written and make you wonder if they’re inside your head. They convey an approach that aligns with how you see the world. Direct perhaps. Or maybe you lead the way. It could even be a joint effort. Someone who lets you come to your own conclusions. Or someone who cuts through the shit and tells you exactly what you need to hear. This person could be any of these and more. Because you didn’t have to search in agonizing and tedious repetition. You found someone specifically just for you. Someone who addresses you as a unique man, with very unique lived experiences that only a specific kind of therapist can help with. Because when you finally come across this counselor, you know immediately that they are the one for you.

How do “we” get there. In part we know there is a demand for it, but do therapists and counselors feel it? Every clinician has attained the education to provide therapy, as well as once licensed has demonstrated competent knowledge in their field. But they can’t know absolutely everything about every subject matter and population. So when they get enough clients where the therapist can support themselves financially, and those clients don’t express the need for deep understanding, then there is no driving force to go further into developing themselves as a clinician to meet the needs of community. That community includes you, men. What this looks like is enough men seeking out therapy and starting once they have found a therapist that truly speaks to them while showing competence in men’s issues. To the therapist that has yet to grow, this is going to look like enough men contacting them and telling that counselor that they don’t appear to be a good fit to address that man’s struggles as a man. If the therapist is worth their salt as a clinician they should at least question why prospective male clients would turn them down. Which in turn one would hope this leads to an introspective process on the therapist to grow in a way that addresses the men who actually call them. This goes for any clinician, and yes that includes any who identify as men. Simply being a man doesn’t qualify one to know how to transform and address the mechanisms of change in another man. Men are built differently, not only through natural disposition but also by how our families, communities, and greater societies shape us. So the need for continuous development of a clinician to address those processes is integral to addressing the struggles of the man sitting in front of them. This is especially important for clinicians, again even clinicians who are men, to educate and train themselves on men’s struggles and processes that sit just outside the clinicians background themselves. Such as integrating competency into racial/ethnic/cultural experiences, generational struggles, socio-economic differences, religious understanding, geographic origins, and sexuality/sexual identities.

Next post… “Words every man wants to hear”