The genders are massivenly different in a lot of ways

and even if you think that the psychology of genders isn’t different, society treats genders differently and this either from the therapist who reacts differently to different genders, or from the patient who expects difference the point is the same: the construct of gender forces artificial difference, even if it’s not based in real “our brains are the same” science (which they aren’t - same as our biology isn’t quite the same)

equity is different to equality, and equity is actually what is needed

Your comment is just very one sided and that’s the side that has the most power on the planet and as a member of that side I have just as much perspective of you and I’m here to say – nah to most of what you said.

The only 'side' that has power is the wealthy. But keep banging your gender war drum, it probably gives you meaning and purpose in life to collectively blame 'me'n for all the worlds ills as if anyone who has a penis or wants a penis is entirely the same.

Drink that kool aid. yum yum. Donald Trump and his buddies thank you for your vote.

dude, you are the problem.

that's what you refuse to acknowledge. the problem is people like you, claiming that it's not your problem, and those awful men looking for help and advice should just 'go away'. because they upset you.

this is precisely how rich people feel about the homeless. 'just go away, we don't like you, but we refuse to help you and your very existence is an offensive to us.'

You can share them to fellow humans here now /c/reprieve@lemmy.zip

Nobody deserves this kind of pain

Agreed. I'm just saying you deserve to live. Whether you do should be your choice, not your doctor's or your government's.

Focus on fixing your country and making it a decent place to live. That way you don't need to go anywhere. That's what we've been doing for decades, and it works.

I'm a therapist who works almost exclusively with men. Here one pattern I've seen often:

• Man is conditioned from a young age not to identify, process or express his feelings
• Man doesn't share his feelings with anyone - friends, family, partners - for years
• Man sees woman as safe, caring and validating
• Man confides in woman only and continues not sharing feelings with others
• Woman becomes overwhelmed, resentful, dismissive
• Man gets the message that he never should have opened up in the first place

It can be true both that men need to open up more and should not treat their partners as therapists. We all need support systems because no one person can always be available to give us everything we need. It's not wrong to confide in a partner, but if that partner is the only confidant it's precarious for both. And I want to emphasize this is not the fault of a man, or men as a community. This is the result of generations of conditioning from both men and women, and both men and women play a part in the solution. I also want to recognize that many of us don't have a network of people we could open up to even if we wanted to, and many more can't afford therapy.

If anyone reading this can afford therapy, I highly recommend it. It's a place to undo some of that conditioning, to sit with someone who's committed to listening, caring, and not judging.

Where is he saying it's not his problem? He's literally doing the exact opposite and making it his problem.

Nonsense. The idea that all psychological issues are defined by gender is just the perspective of someone who's never made any meaningful progress through therapy and/or counseling. Mental health is not a gendered issue and the repetition of this misconception just leads more people to give up without even trying. Yes, the lens of sexual identity comes into play, mainly in terms of cultural gender roles experienced in your part of the world. But, a well trained, experienced therapist will have these considerations while exploring issues you present with. I would argue, that psychiatrists (which is an even moreso male dominated field) are much more of an issue, because their objective is not to help you come to conclusions about yourself. It is to medicate your symptoms away to allow you to function. I am sorry you did not have a good experience yourself, but that is not reflective of therapy, or counseling as a whole and your characterisation of men vs women in therapy is sexist and sounds more like male influencer talking points than lived experience.

i’d like to be very clear here… a lot of discussion about men’s spaces is thinly veiled sexism by incels… that doesn’t mean there’s not a problem, it just means that incels are attracted to “it’s not my fault”

that said, there’s a comment up thread that captures it pretty well

… mental health professionals all my 'issues' were blow way out of proportion … always 100% told me everything that happens to me is entirely my fault. they also told me it was normal/healthy to vent my feelings by doing productive things (like writing, exercising, relaxing), rather than viewing that as 'not addressing the problem'.

the issue with so much of this crap is that not only does nobody want to talk to men, it's that they don't want to listen and/or the tell us we are 'talking wrong'. even when we do talk to people, there is only a tiny window of acceptable things we an talk about and way we can talk about them or how selfish it is of him to vent/indulge his legitimate emotions.

… a man bursts into tears over his father dying of cancer and all the sudden everyone wants to tell him his reaction is too intense … someone in his life try to get him to 'open up' and then we he does he's met with nothing but hostility, disappointment, and eventually rejection

it’s a meme (not in a “haha” joke way: in the actual meaning of the world; a thing that is repeated often) these days that there are horrible men who tell women (re sexism) “you must have misunderstood”… and the point of that is that men don’t have the life experience as a minority to be able to understand sexism, transphobia, etc (people treat them differently, and even if they see it they often can’t identify it because they’re not accustomed to listening for it 24/7)

that same situation exists for men too… men are certainly not a minority, but nobody is allowed to say that someone’s experience is invalid… there’s a lot of people dismissing these experiences in this thread, and if it were reversed: a woman complaining about a man making a sexist comment, a gay man (of which i’m one) complaining about homophobia, there wouldn’t be any pushback at all because we’ve come to agree that this shit happens

we know that toxic masculinity exists, we know that societal expectations of men are sky high (the suicide rate for men in particular is HUGE)… we’re clearly doing something wrong, as a society, dealing with male mental health… when people come out and tell us their experiences, it absolutely is sexist to write off those experiences as invalid: “i don’t think that kind of thing happens because i haven’t seen it”, is absolutely (anything)-ist language

is it on the same level as problem as sexism or racism? probably not… but denying the problem helps nobody… denying the problem, in this case, makes the problem so much worse and pushes people to lash out and become sexist, racist, homophobic, etc (which is also not to remove blame from them - all those things are wrong and a personal choice and should have personal repercussions)

But keep screaming that anything that disagrees with your particular narrative that women are great and perpetual victims of men and men are always bad, I guess?

Incel talk

The only ‘side’ that has power is the wealthy.

Pivot to wealth inequality because?

But keep banging your gender war drum, it probably gives you meaning and purpose in life to collectively blame 'me’n for all the worlds ills as if anyone who has a penis or wants a penis is entirely the same.

You are the one who made the issue about differences in sex and/or gender.

No wonder you made no progress in therapy. You're completely obtuse.

Also, no one is blaming men for their life's problems. That person, would need therapy. Also, please don't speak for men as a pejorative, your views are not reflective of any kind of monolith within my sex as a class of people and continually self-victimising under the guise of speaking for men's issues is disingenuous and pathetic.

This is why you sucked in therapy and found it unhelpful. You're pissy, jaded and uncomfortable with the concept of being wrong. Classic men shit.

Empathy would fix that, show that you don't have to be so insecure because nobody else is that secure.

I expected you to mean people exhibiting toxicity and not reporting about it. I was surprised because the comments seemed civil at large. Thank you.

in australia we have (limited) free mental health services (i wanna say 8 free sessions with a therapist?)… this still holds true

it’s not only about money

Dude is nongendered everyone is a dude, nice try tho trying to pull this though

Another aussie here, Headspace is great too

yeah id say it’s not overt, but that’s kinda the problem… it’s almost difficult to identify, so when it comes to mental health for men a lot of the time society, therapists, etc almost gaslights us into thinking our problems aren’t problems

if it were overt it’d be easy to identify… the fact what it’s not, the fact that men are the majority, and are the problem in a lot of cases pushes people to certain conclusions (including ourselves about our own problems)

mental health is complex af

I don't agree