Why do men often struggle with processing and talking about their emotions?
Even adult men as parents and partners can struggle with opening up about their feelings, processing their emotions, and seeking help. In order to understand adults, it is helpful to know and understand teenagers and boys.
In my practice, I have the privilege of working with male adolescents, teenagers, college students, and adults. They struggle with varied issues: anxiety, school/work motivation, managing Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), the divorce of parents, and more. Many parents express concern over their son’s lack of motivation, difficulty talking about their feelings, isolation, and anger outbursts. Parents will often ask: “Is this normal?”, “Am I doing enough?”, “Will they be okay?”. Although there are a myriad of factors affecting these boys especially in their teenage years, this article will focus on the impact of social media and family, and how to plant seeds in faith.
Social Media can potentially misinform and create a false sense of connection
Today’s generation is constantly bombarded with messages about identity, self-worth, and emotional well-being which often come from social media. While social media has its benefits, we must be aware of its impact on youth to better understand how to support them.
The COVID pandemic amplified the use of phones, increasing screen time and exposure to innumerable perspectives on mental health. Many teenagers learned to run a quick search on Google or turn to social media figures for answers about mental health diagnoses. For example on TikTok and Instagram, there are 10-20 second reels explaining symptoms of AD/HD, addiction, general anxiety, and how to deal with and overcome them. The rise in popularity in these reels and posts has led to a social trend in explaining and relating to a shared struggle. Sometimes, it can create an unhealthy culture of “glorifying” these shared struggles.
Although the spread of mental health awareness can be beneficial, it can also lead to misinformation and a false sense of connection. Teens may find themselves self-diagnosing and hoping to address their struggles based on information from social media. In my practice, I frequently find that males of all ages will solely search the internet and social media to understand their struggles and validate their feelings. They are often met with a sense of frustration and disappointment in themselves when solutions from social media figures do not work for them. This frustration may compound as they are exposed to even more similar posts influenced by social media algorithms.
If your teen is in a similar situation, being open and available to do research together can go a long way in starting a dialogue about your teen’s well-being. You may find the need for a mental health professional. But you may also find that your teen simply needed quality time with you to process their emotions.
Our families and cultures of origin set a baseline for our emotional health
Though social media may impact how one processes emotions, our families and cultural backgrounds play a much larger role in how we relate, communicate, and process life transitions and events. In Asian-American families, values such as harmony and practicality may discourage open communication about emotional struggles.
In my practice, I had the privilege of working with a student named John (name changed for confidentiality) whose father passed away from overdose. After his father’s passing, John struggled with how to process his feelings of guilt, anger, and sadness towards himself and the world. He unintentionally suppressed his emotions and burdens just like his father had. In our sessions, we uncovered how John had learned at a young age from his father’s actions to push through emotional distress and be a “man” of the household. Our sessions disrupted John’s ingrained understanding of how to process his emotions. Today, he continues to progressively allow himself to experience his emotions despite years of suppressing them.
How fathers process emotional turmoil and conflict are deeply internalized by their sons. If a father avoids processing their emotions, how can we expect developing teen boys to do better with theirs? The message to fathers here is not, “be better”. But for Christians, we must show teens there is a better way, even when we fail to live up to it.
The health of our relationship with our heavenly father will impact how we parent our own children. We need the gracious goodness of God to disrupt the ways we parent, even when we have the best of intentions. If we fail miserably to be a good father to our children, there are opportunities to surrender ourselves to God’s perfect parenting of us.
The Opportunity for Parents
Parenting is full of the unknown, regrets, and self-doubt about oneself and one’s children. Our role continuously changes as our children grow and mature, and we have an opportunity all along the way to plant seeds for God to water.
Developmentally and scientifically, teenagers are highly focused on developing a sense of autonomy and identity among their peers and may not share everything with their parents. The roles of the people in their lives can change as they learn who they are apart from their caregivers and parents. This does not mean they need their parents less. Instead, they may simply need them in a different way. Teenagers can often view their parents as a provider, supporter, and friend on stand-by. This can be extremely challenging for even highly loving parents who expect or have always held communication with their child from a young age.
Our children may image us, but they also image God himself (Genesis 1:27). He is the perfect author and parent, and we have the opportunity to show our children a better way in him as we steward our roles as parents. It’s difficult to admit that the answer to some of our teen’s greatest challenges are not from within our minds and hearts, but from God above. Entrusting their lives to him can be a fruitful seed we plant, for ourselves and for our teens who will grow up and remember their parents’ steadfast trust in God for their lives.
Planting seeds of wisdom, habits, and examples of how to love others as Jesus would have us sounds straightforward. Actually doing so can be more difficult when it seems like our teen is not responding to the effort we put in. However, practicing hopeful patience is another small seed we can plant. Just as certain coping mechanisms, like deep breathing, might benefit an individual years after learning it, the gospel seeds planted years ago can blossom at a later point in life. Even though our teen may struggle through most of adolescence into adulthood, our persistence in prayer and support for their needs may bear fruit much during a time we least expect.
Ultimately, God’s design of how boys develop as a teen to young men is an opportunity for parents to grow in their own faith. It can point us to model Christ’s love by trusting in his better way as our children grow up into who they are meant to be in Christ.
Photo Credit: Joshua Aragon