IF THERE’S ANYTHING as prevalent as the idea that men should be strong and silent, it’s the world telling guys they need to talk about their feelings more. These contradictory messages are being cranked out at max volume, so it’s not surprising that we feel conflicted and frustrated. As a therapist, I agree that it’s critical for men to talk about things, but people underestimate how many of us haven’t been shown what that actually looks like—or why it’s even important. And it is really important: When you strengthen the muscle of putting the right words to your feels, it can clean up a lot of mental hurdles and internal drama for you.
Here’s an example of what I mean: Everyone who knows me knows that mornings are my mortal enemy. I have two small children who wake up before 5:00 a.m. If I get up on the wrong side of the bed, I can be very grouchy toward my wife and kids. This throws off the energy in the crib and puts everyone else in a funky mood, too.
Identifying that “I’m angry” is a start, but it’s not really providing enough information for me to come up with a plan for what to do with this anger. First, I need to figure out what flavor of angry I am. When you put more specific words to what you’re feeling, it helps you diagnose some of the thoughts floating around in your head.
So if you’re feeling angry, walk a few steps beyond that: Ask yourself what kind of angry you are. Are you disgusted? Irritable? Most people handle those two feelings in different ways. If you just try to manage being “angry” by rushing to do what you think will fix it, you may end up still being effing angry because you scratched a spot that did not itch.
Get Specific
If you can’t get past a basic label like “angry” and decode what flavor of it you have, there are tools out there to help. A valuable one is a feelings wheel—a circle with targetlike rings and a few general emotions in the center (joy, surprise, anger), which radiate out into more specific emotions. (The Junto Institute has a good one here.) On the feelings wheel, “anger” dovetails into emotions like exasperated, irritable, jealous, and disgusted. Acknowledging the differences allows you to better decide what you need to do to regulate the intensity of the emotion at hand. So if you’re disgusted, perhaps you’re being influenced by the thoughts or behaviors of another person. If you’re irritable, maybe that’s a result of your mental bandwidth being overwhelmed. The first case you might address with a series of uncomfortable conversations, the second with a day reading in the park. Similar symptoms, different ailments, very different prescriptions.
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So You Can Name Feelings. Now What?
Sometimes it’s that easy—you name it and you tame it. But other times, you run into discomfort or guilt around what you’re feeling. Have you ever been grateful for something that you are also very critical of? Many people don’t think they can be both thankful for their well-paying job and frustrated with their crappy boss.
When discomfort happens, it’s easier to deny or overlook that challenging feeling. But that often leads to regret and resentment. Part of being healthy is giving your negative emotions permission to exist.
One way to practice that is by owning your feelings out loud. A great example of this occurred in the Minnesota Vikings’ week-two matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles in a play involving wide receiver Justin Jefferson. This kid catches everything routinely, but in this game he fumbled a would-be touchdown feet away from the end zone, which contributed to his team’s loss in an important game. He was visibly frustrated with himself. It would be understandable if he had gone off to sulk or stood stoically without saying a word. Instead, he turned to his teammates and tapped his heart to indicate “That’s on me.” This gesture showed true awareness of the situation and gave him some grace with his team, which relies on and supports him. More critically, he didn’t allow his mistake to become an indictment of his entire person. He isolated it as one particular instance, owned it boldly, and moved forward.
Foam-Rolling the Uncomfortable Stuff
If you aren’t ready to own a feeling out loud, sometimes you’ve just got to sit there and let the discomfort show you something. When you do that for a while, its ups and downs will change in intensity and/or frequency. It’s like foam-rolling your quads after a heavy leg day at the gym. You roll that thing to a part that hurts excruciatingly. Stay there and work on that spot. After a while, it feels better. And you might do that again tomorrow, and it might still hurt, but possibly not as much as it did yesterday. If you sit through discomfort and allow it to do its thing, your emotions will stabilize and emotional wellness will become more sustainable.
Putting words to feelings lets you sort through some of the complicated thoughts and behaviors you have and figure out how to have them less—or how to have them more. This helps you communicate with the world, but first, it helps you communicate with yourself.
This story originally appeared in the March/April 2024 issue of Men’s Health.
