When men open up, and share that they don’t feel safe.
“No, if he is mean to you…go back and tell him. Turn around now, and off you go”.
This is what small boys, often of elementary age, get to hear. This way of handling upsetting situations for boys lingers through generations.
Although I agree with learning to face the situation at that moment (for girls too), there is also another side to it that we definitely need to take into account.
“Because he’s a boy”, is what is regularly said.
Somewhere in our thinking pattern there is still the idea that little boys innately feel less anxiety than girls when facing situations and so ‘they have to face the battle’.
Do you also feel that sentence pressing on your shoulders?
Girls are still more often taken under the parental wing, and get to sit safely on the bench next to the parent and observe the situation behind a safe shoulder.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that there is also another downside to this way of handling things for your son or student.
When boys are taught that it is okay to not ‘feel safe’, and the notion that you can open up about not feeling safe, already from the formative years…you have a winner in front of you.
For a young boy to assess the situation and then decide if it is worth it to act upon, requires high emotional self leadership qualities.
In that way he learns how to be able to stay true to himself and that needs to be built.
If a boy doesn’t feel safe to open up about the feeling of unsafety, then he can become one of the many silent male sufferers in adulthood.
In every situation in which you are not true to yourself you will eventually feel the inner- and outer consequences.
Now back to safety.
For a man, feeling safe isn’t something that is automatically installed when they are born. Although the largest part of the population surprisingly thinks it is innately ‘there’ within men and preferably in every situation out of convenience for others.
So to some it might come as a complete surprise that adult men also don’t automatically feel safe in this world.
Before he opens up with someone, he pauses and checks in with himself if the situation is nurturing enough with the other person.
What’s the reason he does that?
Many men have that feeling in the back of their minds that their words or expressions will be used against them, because that has been actively demonstrated at times.
If a man can build that trust in his own intuition, stay true to himself and the safety calculation from the get go, it will create better long term results.
Happier relationships for example.
Being bullied or outcasted in formative years doesn’t help either in choosing a well meaning partner without borderline, bipolar or narcissistic traits.
Maybe you are challenging yourself to look for situations that aren’t safe, like in sexuality for example.
You might doubt your relationship at times, because you wonder “is this normal?” or “is this how it is supposed to be?”
“Where is the line?”.
The fine line in the sand is not always that obvious anymore, when your safety has been tested in prior situations.
Sensitive people don’t always realise that the things that they are feeling are indeed unexpressed feelings that can creep up now and then, preferably when you least expect it.
Suppressed emotions can clearly cause diseases in the long run.
Even when society says that ‘anger is THE first and foremost emotion that men feel, oh well… and maybe 2 others emotions’.
Men don’t talk about it that much, sometimes because they can have the feeling that they are overlooked anyway.
“What’s the use anyway?!”…shrugging shoulders.
As parents and educators we can help build that emotional landscape in which it is obvious when to respond versus react.
Navigating if a situation is safe for you, trusting your intuition and calculation at/in that moment prevents hyper vigilance and a nervous system that always has to be ‘activated’.
So let’s help our boys and men to treasure their intuition and sensitivity close to their heart.
This doesn’t only apply to the deeply sensitive men.
It’ s important to talk about this, especially because of the triggers of feeling unsafe with current politics in the world.
