Shaun Coffey - Boys DO Cry: Addiction & Recovery Mental Health Advocacy

@Frank Sterle Jr. posted:

Thank you for sharing this, Teri, as it encouragingly exhibits self-awareness and honesty. As an introvert who has, for decades, been performing thought/emotion experiments (perhaps even more literal than those of Albert Einstein) involving my own (usually) angrily reactive yet unjustified thoughts and emotions towards another person or people, I’ve often made discoveries about myself I wish I hadn’t.  

As controversial social scientist Stanley Milgram (Obedience Experiments, etcetera) had said: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation” [The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India, 1979, V. R. Krishna Iyer].

Perhaps what makes me most concerned about a lack of societal/institutional attention on men's concerns/mental health is that by not properly addressing (other than demonization via news/social/entertainment media) what generally creates abusive men, for example, their abused sons and/or daughters can go on to abuse their own children — and so the tragic, painful cycle may continue.

As a mother of two sons, this resonated as I want them to live in a world where they can honor their emotions and are safe to do so. Thank you, again, for sharing your insights.

Peace,

Teri

@Teri Wellbrock posted:

Hi Frank, thank you so much for sharing your profound insights. Much to ponder here. And my gut response is, "Oh, wow, he's right!" As a female survivor, I had not paid much attention to way these horrors are reported. I'm glad I was able to have Shaun join me on The Healing Place Podcast to offer his male perspective on trauma-recovery, his ACEs journey, and ultimate triumph over trauma. Peace, Teri

Thank you for sharing this, Teri, as it encouragingly exhibits self-awareness and honesty. As an introvert who has, for decades, been performing thought/emotion experiments (perhaps even more literal than those of Albert Einstein) involving my own (usually) angrily reactive yet unjustified thoughts and emotions towards another person or people, I’ve often made discoveries about myself I wish I hadn’t.  

As controversial social scientist Stanley Milgram (Obedience Experiments, etcetera) had said: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation” [The Social Dimensions Of Law And Justice In Contemporary India, 1979, V. R. Krishna Iyer].

Perhaps what makes me most concerned about a lack of societal/institutional attention on men's concerns/mental health is that by not properly addressing (other than demonization via news/social/entertainment media) what generally creates abusive men, for example, their abused sons and/or daughters can go on to abuse their own children — and so the tragic, painful cycle may continue.

@Frank Sterle Jr. posted:

The author of The Highly Sensitive Man (2019, Tom Falkenstein) writes at the beginning of Chapter 1: “You only have to open a magazine or newspaper, turn on your TV, or open your browser to discover an ever-growing interest in stories about being a father, being a man, or how to balance a career with a family. Many of these articles have started talking about an apparent ‘crisis of masculinity.’ The headlines for these articles attempt to address male identity, but often fall into the trap of sounding ironic and sometimes even sarcastic and critical: ‘Men in Crisis: Time to Pull Yourselves Together,’ ‘The Weaker Sex,’ ‘Crisis in Masculinity: Who is the Stronger Sex?’ and ‘Search for Identity: Super-Dads or Vain Peacocks’ are just a few examples. They all seem to agree to some extent that there is a crisis. But reading these articles one gets the impression that no one really knows how to even start dealing with the problem, let alone what a solution to it might look like. One also gets the impression from these articles that we need to keep any genuine sympathy for these “poor men” in check: the patriarchy is still just too dominant to allow ourselves that luxury. … ”

Even in this day and age, there remains a mentality out there, albeit perhaps subconsciously: Men can take care of themselves against sexual perpetrators, and boys are basically little men. The same mentality that might reflect why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse.

I've also noticed over many years of Canadian news-media consumption that when the victims are girls their gender is readily reported as such; however, when they're boys, they're usually referred to gender-neutrally as children. It’s as though, as a news product made to sell the best, the child victims being female is somehow more shocking than if male. Also, I’ve heard and read news-media references to a 19-year-old female victim as a ‘girl’, while (in an unrelated case) a 17-year-old male perpetrator was described as a ‘man’.

Hi Frank, thank you so much for sharing your profound insights. Much to ponder here. And my gut response is, "Oh, wow, he's right!" As a female survivor, I had not paid much attention to way these horrors are reported. I'm glad I was able to have Shaun join me on The Healing Place Podcast to offer his male perspective on trauma-recovery, his ACEs journey, and ultimate triumph over trauma. Peace, Teri

The author of The Highly Sensitive Man (2019, Tom Falkenstein) writes at the beginning of Chapter 1: “You only have to open a magazine or newspaper, turn on your TV, or open your browser to discover an ever-growing interest in stories about being a father, being a man, or how to balance a career with a family. Many of these articles have started talking about an apparent ‘crisis of masculinity.’ The headlines for these articles attempt to address male identity, but often fall into the trap of sounding ironic and sometimes even sarcastic and critical: ‘Men in Crisis: Time to Pull Yourselves Together,’ ‘The Weaker Sex,’ ‘Crisis in Masculinity: Who is the Stronger Sex?’ and ‘Search for Identity: Super-Dads or Vain Peacocks’ are just a few examples. They all seem to agree to some extent that there is a crisis. But reading these articles one gets the impression that no one really knows how to even start dealing with the problem, let alone what a solution to it might look like. One also gets the impression from these articles that we need to keep any genuine sympathy for these 'poor men' in check: the patriarchy is still just too dominant to allow ourselves that luxury. … ”

Even in this day and age, there remains a mentality out there, albeit perhaps subconsciously: Men can take care of themselves against sexual perpetrators, and boys are basically little men. The same mentality that might reflect why the book Childhood Disrupted was only able to include one man among its six interviewed adult subjects, there being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse.

I've also noticed over many years of Canadian news-media consumption that when the victims are girls their gender is readily reported as such; however, when they're boys, they're usually referred to gender-neutrally as children. It’s as though, as a news product made to sell the best, the child victims being female is somehow more shocking than if male. Also, I’ve heard and read news-media references to a 19-year-old female victim as a ‘girl’, while (in an unrelated case) a 17-year-old male perpetrator was described as a ‘man’.