Unmasking masculinity -- helping boys become connected men | Ryan McKelley | TEDxUWLaCrosse

you I find it remarkable that we were all asked as presenters to come here and talk about turning points and if you were paying attention you'll notice that almost every single one talked in some way about connection whether that was connecting through others through disconnecting with technology or connecting at the dinner table or even connecting with their own bodies so I'm going to continue that discussion today and talk about connections between masculinity and social connectedness I've been doing this long enough to realize that talking about men's issues can be a challenge right oftentimes we talk about things that men do we have to be able to hold two competing truths in our head at the same time so well it might be true that men are more often perpetrate acts of physical violence it's also true that most boys and men are not physically violent in fact most of us are trying to get through life as good decent human beings but the problem is we tend to focus on the extremes we miss what's going on in between I came across this image the other day I think it there's no there's no better one out there to talk about masking emotions this individuals name is Christian Hopkins he just released a conceptual photography project on Flickr the documents his struggles with depression and found this far more therapeutic than seeing any therapist alright so today I'm going to talk about how we socialize boys and men to mask their emotions now ten years ago I made a career change to get into this field I never would have predicted that I'd be up here talking about men and masculinity and that's what I'd be teaching right in fact when I start my clinical work there weren't a lot of men in my program and I remember actively resisting being the man therapists right that everybody referred their male clients to but we're talking about turning points so today I want to share historical professional and personal ones that have led me to this point so I want to begin with a little known historical turning point that happened about 800 years ago in 13th century Europe now at that time the holy roman emperor frederick ii of germany i was in power it was known to be uncharacteristically scientifically minded for a pope during the Middle Ages he was curious about what the natural language of God would be as we wondered if we didn't speak to infants they didn't hear adult language what would just emerge actually and really this is an empirical question you can put this to a test and back at that time he thought you being what he was he thought it might be Hebrew as the first language or could be Latin or Greek I suspect there were European kings elsewhere who might beg to differ right but at that time in history it was not uncommon for women to die during childbirth and so these infants would be raising these large orphanages by wet nurses so he devised a simple experiment took about 20 infants and these are the instructions all they were to be was to have their basic needs met fed clothed diapers changed under no circumstances where the caregivers allowed to interact with them talk with them cuddle play do all the things that we expect with infants the experiment was a dismal failure by accounts written by a monk at the time all of them are dead within several weeks now you and I might know this is failure to thrive in modern day we know the importance of connection so much so even neonatal intensive care units have changed their practices from 50 years ago right now the encourage contact between the parent and the sensitive children because it reduces health complications and decreases time spent in hospital and improves development across the board alright so we learned from that story about the richness important of social connection and after that I have to show you this picture right so you feel good you know speaking about emotional attachment these are twin pygmy marmosets who are born in twin pairs and the metabolic challenge is so great by the mother to feed them that the males often have to kick in and do a substantial amount of caregiving so much so that even non-related males will come in and they'll carry these babies around all right this is attachment at its finest and that's what I'm going to talk about today and I want to make some arguments that you know we socialize boys away from attachment now back to the story of about the importance of connection in both physical and mental health I'm willing to bet if I pull the audience right now and asks you with the primary risk factors for cardiovascular disease or I think in short order we'd come up with the usual suspects right inactivity hypertension cholesterol smoking right if you're not familiar with relative risk what this means is if you are somebody who smokes you are two-and-a-half times more likely to develop CV disease and somebody who doesn't smoke all right this is our conventional understanding of health now upwards of 30 years or so of epidemiological research has found another culprit and this might surprise some of you social isolation people who are socially isolated are three times or almost three times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease that somebody who is socially connected now this is not an abstract idea this is not me with a political or religious ideology this is not new ageism we have study after study after study this shows us very clear evidence on the role of social connectedness now what does this have to do with men and boys and men all right some of you might hold the stereotype and maybe some of you might uphold the stereotype of men being less emotional than women are being stoic or the favorite phrase boys don't cry I'm here to suggest otherwise and actually research suggests infant boys are actually more expressive in both range and intensity than infant females and interestingly if you watch a group of two or three year olds at play both boys and girls you see this wide range of negative and positive emotions it's actually kind of hard to distinguish between the two because they're so similar but the stories start to to change over time right around age six and they get into kindergarten these paths start to diverge now if we fast-forward into adolescence the young adulthood we start to see a new pattern this is one of my favorite photos colleague of mine at Clark University by name of Michael Addis his father took this on a street corner in Oklahoma back in the 50s I think you and I can what this guy's feeling right and there's probably some pretty good rules about what he's allowed to show and what he's not allowed to show and that's we're gonna be talking about today now there was a recent study actually a series of them that looked at an ask men and women in America and it was kind of equal representation of European American african-american Asian American they wanted them to generate a list and then rate emotions that are culturally acceptable for men and women here in the United States and at the end of that the results suggested that men were allowed to display these three emotions at greater rates anger contempt and pride whereas women were allowed to experience joy compassion sympathy fear and a host of other ones now we're talking about emotional expression at this point right but that doesn't tell the whole story if we hook these same individuals up to equipment that can measure our autonomic nervous system responses and these are the things that we once thought we couldn't control like heart rate you know skin conductance sweat muscle tension breath rate and then we expose them to stimuli that can evoke or elicit strong emotions these gender differences disappear so we're not so different on the inside but it's very clear that we have some differences expected on the outside what happened or what's happening to employees and men back in 1987 so we know the name of long came up with this male emotional funnel system so we all come into the world with a full range of vulnerable emotions you can see some of them there behind me fear shame but over time we teach our boys to reach annal them into anger and aggression and it's not that we like these displays but we tolerate them and sometimes even accept them in our men but what you don't know and you don't see is that half second before anger came and I'm going to make the argument this is the true primary emotion all right if we feel shame anger rises up to defend against it all right so I'm really interested in what's happening in that moment right before this is Christian Hopkins again with this remarkable photo or we teach boys it is not okay to be vulnerable it's not okay to be hurt right but it's okay to cover that up with either anger or silence the problem with that is if we take that over the lifespan the more we do that the less connected we are with our own emotional states and we can actually lose our ability to detect those subtle changes in our emotions and if we extend it one more layer we also then over time lose or impair our ability to detect those and respond to those in others as well so now we've really created a problem when two people are supposed to be interacting now it's not all about well actually one thing I want to ask you I want you think about the person in your life non family member who's closest to you how do they go from being a complete stranger to being somebody whom you trust chances are over time there's that reciprocal vulnerability or you finally that you found somebody for whom you could be yourself you have to worry about that judgment but it's not all about negative emotions it turns out those same people who stilt those knave emotions report less compassion joy and all these other things these positive things that we take for granted right as part of the human experience and as psychologists we call that making a pact with the devil right you can't get one without the other now what's remarkable be a human being is we have this giant forebrain and we can make these decisions we can say you know what you know I just broke up this individual I'm never going to get hurt again I'm never going to be vulnerable never going to show weakness but when we do so we end up muting our experiences on both ends and then that makes it harder to connect with people my next turning point is a professional one so I had a male client as late 30s came to his first session just angry aggressive a history of violence I didn't want to work with him I from write right off the bat I knew that but a couple sessions in I found out he had just an incredibly tragic trauma history he himself had been a victim of severe physical abuse he had perpetrated physical abuse kid poly substance addiction had declared bankruptcy several failed relationships but all he ever showed was anger there was no hurt there was no sadness and just anger every time in the couple sessions and he said to me you know what I know what you're trying to get me to do and I'm not going to do it I haven't cried in 25 years and I'm not going to start now I said look to be honest with you I don't care whether you cry or not but my goal is to help you get in touch with what you're experiencing and if that involves crying then so be it I said I wasn't really curious I said so what do you find so aversive about the idea of crying and he looked me straight in the eye dead serious and said I'm afraid that if I start I'm going to crawl up in a fetal position and never be able to stop so so that told me he was well aware of what he was masking in controlling that situation now you can probably suspect where the story is going to go right eight about eight weeks after that came in we're having a session and all of a sudden the tides change and here he was and he just wept wept openly for the first time in 25 years in front of a man no less right there was no anger there was no shame it was just calmness and stillness and I was actually very emotionally moved as well and at the end of it he kind of you know once it was kind of all over he looked really relaxed and he looked up to me and he kind of smile and he goes huh now I see why people do that right but I had a little turning point then I said you know what if being the man therapist means that I can be part of this journey with these individuals then you know sign me up this is something I want to do professionally now another thing it's easy to challenge these norms I study this stuff I teach I research it I encourage my male clients to do it right but I stumble with it all the time so my next story is a personal one so a couple years ago a colleague had sent me a link to a photo project called days with my father on days with my father calm Philip Toledano is a uk-based photojournalist and he chronicled his father's struggle with Alzheimer's disease so I'm here at my kitchen table tears streaming down my face I was alone so it was okay and I heard my daughter you know say Papa you know time for dub time and so my gut reaction was to shut this thing down right wipe my eyes and I start rationalizing it's like oh you know what she's never seen me cry it's gonna confuse her I might freak her out I don't know explain this so I went on we had our normal evening later that night I was lying in bed and saying oh my gosh you know I just missed this opportunity you know it could been a teachable moment say a daddies cry too and she could get that I mean she would understand you know she cries and the lights were too bright in the morning when I wake her up right but I had kind of put myself in check and I missed that and so I want to ask you all you know how many opportunities have we missed with men in our lives to be vulnerable and be honest there but I find a fascinating irony in this men's issue stuff because men are also I tend to score higher on risk-taking behaviors and women strive myself to a kite in a surfboard sign me up right do whatever these guys are doing the swinging fool no yes please going out with your best friend putting arm in the shoulder even look in the eye and say you know what you mean a lot to me I'm really glad you're in my life this one is supposed to cue crickets chirping right we don't do those things and by the way it doesn't count the I Love You Man six beers in the bar time right that's not what I'm talking about here is very different than that all right which brings me to this turning point for you all right social changes are required this massive organized movement I mean all it requires is each one of us make one small change our lives right to get people to respond in a different way right to put down this mask but it's a misconception that I'm out here spreading a message that men have to stop be you know stop being men I'm not asking them to radically change who they are when I work with men on this issue I really say hey this is another skill that you can learn and that you can apply in the right situations and I'm not saying that we have to do this in all situations you and I know very well that there are places that we find ourselves where that emotional control and restriction is called for and it's necessary my concern is that when we take that and that is our default mode in our human relationships so we come into our workplace we come into our family we come into our friendships with just that blocking and the masking but changing this doesn't have to be complicated I came up with two simple tips for us just even start with one is let's eliminate phrases like man up boys will be boys stop acting like a girl I just acknowledged that these are common human emotions we all experience and they don't have to be gendered in any way the second point is let's redefine what it means to be courageous and if you think about it doesn't require courage to hide behind a mask requires courage is to be open and vulnerable no matter what the outcome and that's really what we're asking and what I ask men to do so I want to end with an observation I made a year ago I was taking my two kids trick-or-treating and a group of four boys we're probably at 11 to 12 or engage what I call competitive trick-or-treating right so there's like darting from house to house trying to fill up these bags and they whiz by us on the driveway and this one guys you know yells to his friend he says you better a shoe they get up to the house and get their candy they bound off the porch sure enough the kid with the untied shoe takes a digger onto the concrete and my first reaction was here it comes right there this guy's going to get it but that's not what happened so his friend gets down on one knee puts his hand on the shoulder and says man are you okay because okay I am fine succeed that's why I told you that's why I wanted you to tie your shoe I want to see you get hurt are you sure you're okay and the friends like yeah yeah I'm fine so cuz if you're not okay I'm sure all of us will be just fine going back to my house we can stop trick-or-treating we can just hang out and his friends are nodding their head are you sure you okay he's like yeah no that's fine we can keep being out there it's like well Lisa let me tie your shoe and he gets down those other knee and ties his French shoe and then they go off sprinting to the next house but I learned a lesson that night because I had my own expectations and they were proven wrong and I'm willing to bet if we turn off the nightly news and sometimes our news feeds and our social media sites and just look around us you're going to see a lot more of that happening than we know and by recognizing it and seeing it then we start to make small cultural shifts where people learn that it's okay and it's not going to be judged negatively or punished so back to this image my wish for you as an audience is to walk away from this and commit to removing the mask at least in some small way now I've been met with criticism with this message and it's using the form of but are we going to woo safai or safai our American boys and men but I want to remind you of the male emotional funnel system so if you hear this message and you feel this like defensive anger pop up what was it that you experienced right before that right and what truly do we have to fear by doing this so when you go back out in your lives I want you to be courageous be vulnerable and just take one small risk with something your life to make a deeper connection thank you for your time you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 236,742

Keywords: ted talk, tedx, Masculinity (Quotation Subject), TEDx Wisconsin, ted talks, English Language (Human Language), tedx talk, University of Wisconsin LaCrosse, TEDx, ted x, United States Of America (Country), ted, tedx talks

Id: LBdnjqEoiXA

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2013