Day 32: How men keep themselves emotionally detached

In this video, Life Coach Luc Bouchard talks about how men distance themselves from emotional connections through behaviors such as sarcasm, being intellectual/rationalizing, willful ignorance, addictions, not asking for help or being vulnerable and grandiosity (which is thinking you’re better than other people).

Luc Bouchard has been a certified life skills coach for twenty-five years and he specializes in helping his clients live free and happier lives.

Find Luc at http://barebonescomm.ca

Partial Transcript:

Today, I'm going to talk about other ways in which men distance themselves from their emotions. I suspect that some of you who are watching this video or some of you men that are going to watch this may even not get through to it all because they're going to be really uncomfortable with the topic. It wouldn't surprise me if they will basically ex out of this video because it's just a bit too close to home. If you feel like doing that, I just encourage you to stick with it because if you want to exit this video, it's probably because I'm hitting a bit to close to home and on the mark. Anyway.

Other ways in which men distance themselves from their emotions and therefore keep themselves safe from those feelings are things like humor. You see someone that's always engaged in cracking jokes and never being serious, especially when the time calls for seriousness and it's appropriate for a serious time and they're always being flippant or funny, that's a way of distancing themselves from their emotions. Sarcasm is another really good way of keeping people at bay and holding people back because what happens is it has an edge to it and so people don't want to expose themselves because they're not sure what's going to happen with what's going to come out of someone's mouth next.

I often talk about men being really in their intellect, in their heads, and what that's about is that they're disconnected from their emotions and that if you're really in your cognitive process and you're really thinking and you're really intellectual, then what happens is that you're actually not connected to your body. The idea is that of course we're always connected to our body, but it's that we're our emotions live and where we actually feel the impacts of situations.

Examples of that will be things like if you have a knot in your stomach, something happens and you're stomach's upset. That's living in your body. If your shoulders are tense because you're under a lot of pressure, that's living in your body. If your heart is racing or you can't get a deep breath or if you're just physically tired because you've just been going and you're not even aware of it until your body shuts down, these are ways that you're actually not connected to your body. Emotions hit the body first and then we figure them out later if we are connected to our bodies. Men are renowned for being disconnected from their bodies and it's actually their intellect and their ego that keeps them out of that because we don't want to go there. We don't want to have that emotional connection because it's not safe because you've been told it's not safe.

Something else that men engage in quite a bit, and both genders engage in all this, but I specialize in men issues so I'm talking specifically about men, and that is willful ignorance where you're just plugging along and, "Oh! Did that happen? Oh, I never noticed that. Oh really? Bill's wife died? Oh. When that happen? Few months ago you say. Huh. Oh how awful. Should we go get groceries?" I'm being extreme, I'm taking it to the extreme, but willful ignorance is a great way of also being disconnected from self.

Another male behavior in a lot of ways is not admitting when they're wrong and always having to be right and just arguing and constantly having to intellectualize and rationalize. When I work with men who are really in their heads and in their intellects, what I do with them is, and this really pisses them off in a lot of ways because I constantly bring it back to their feelings and their emotions, I'll ask, "How do you feel about that?" He said, "I think that this happened". I said, "No. How do you feel about that?" "Well, I interpreted it". I said, "Stop. How do you feel?" They go, "I don't know" or they're very uncomfortable with it. In my work, what I'll have to do is actually teach them the softer emotions and the complexity of emotions so that they get out of their head. People who are really in their intellects have a difficult time being connected and that's a very safe place for them. They recognize that they don't want to live there anymore, but they don't know how to do it differently because that's where their sanctuary is.

Please see the video for the rest of the content.