Re:Working with men

[Grevis Reid]

 My experience of men is that men are often looking for solutions( they like to "fix" issues and problems) and often this means they are thinking of solutions rather than  really listening  to others like children, partners peers and counsellors.

I often say if there was a "patch " to wear to fix problems such as poor communication and listening then all men and me included, we would be wearing one.

 

In the meantime men have to work hard  at improving relationships , listening , and taking responsibility for  negative,critical ,unthinking actions as well as feelings emotions,not having all the answers ,waiting,sharing,etc,etc.

Men in my experience, make uncomfortable things small (minimize) , don't like to be wrong( hence its someone else causing the problem) or just cant see beyond the immediate problem.(what do I need to do to stop her leaving- will I say sorry again? or just make some promises, like last time?) 

So teasing this out takes some persistence, some challenging , some normalising " men are often like this......., and remembering that men are supersensitive to themselves though  often rough with others (did I mention double standards?). men are scared of touchy feely emotions and yet are often very raw and emotional about themselves. The fact that they are only springing into action after 23 +/- years of anger and abuse or silence or avoidance doesn't mean they are insensitive, quite the reverse.

 

I advocate to men that they soften their demands from expectations of others to preference giving others room to respond and for men to look for what is working rather than reacting to what is not and report back on what they notice, and so on. They are often surprised at the results of simply stating their preference rather than having a fight about getting what they expect.

 

Some one said we should not declare war on men and I agree however, the damage needs to be named in order for men to see a quick fix wont be sufficient and not all men want to accept the level of change that is required. My experience is that men will only engage only to the point they can see a benefit. We all know change takes effort - regrettably not all men want to put in the hard yards as the change requires calling into question male privilege, entitlement, and other benefits of being male strong and right. Small steps - progress is a zig zag path

 

However I get a buzz when the light dawns .... a man I am working with said that after 12 months of work that he had realized that the person and the behaviour are different. He said he just couldn't see it before and suddenly the curtains parted and he could see. He can see people differently and he has a choice about his behaviour in response. WoW

 I am enjoying the discussion and the different approaches challenges etc. Cheers Grevis

[R & B Darracott]

I think this is very true, but we men are very defensive - perhaps that is programmed too!  We find it hard to overcome our (socialised the feminists would certainly say) prejudices and beliefs, and it takes extremely skilful work with men to develop their self-awareness to bring about effective attitudinal change.  This is not to say that women cannot equally be "critical,

negative, don't want to be wrong" but often seem to feel it safer to acknowledge that for whatever reason.  Yes, I think men tend to look for solutions, perhaps even quick-fixes.  Yes, usually different approaches do need to be taken, and yes, I think men often prefer to be counselled by men, perhaps "because they will understand better."  This may make an element of collusion in some cases something of a danger, albeit unrecognised and unintentional.  The more we understand ourselves, the better we can help other men.

 

Robin Darracott

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[David Grace]

umm

Doesn't everyone come to therapy hoping for solutions? Why else would you
come to another person and expose painful parts of your present and past?
I'm almost certain that women or men who come into therapist's consulting
rooms want a solution to the problem(s) they are facing.

Perhaps the word "solution" is what needs to be looked at. Are you saying
that most men want to be able to discover a concrete approach to the issues
that they are dealing with so that the issues can go away, while most women
are more comfortable or more accepting of working out ways where they may be
able to accommodate the issues they confront? Put another way - A man wants
the problem to go away, a woman wants to understand the problem and find out
how to deal with it.

Surely both approaches are appropriate: how many of us have pulled our hair
out when a woman is wanting to understand and accommodate the abusive brute
of a male who has just commmitted GBH against her. She needs to find a
concrete approach to make the problem go away. The frustration is just as
real when there is a man in front of you who wants you to give you a
concrete approach to navigating the intricacies of a family. He needs to
learn to understand his family, and learn to live in it, knowing there are
no concrete solutions.

I would hope that our task is to work with the person or people in front of
us to help them to identify the best approach to the issues that are
distressing them. So we as therapists need to have the skills to work both
sides of the street: help the person in front of you to be the concrete
answer provider sometimes, or the accommodator at a another time. For one
person, learning to find a concrete answer to problems will be confronting,
for another, learning to flow with what is happening will be an almost
impossible task. I'd say that part of a therapist's work is to help people
to become skilled in searching for and using both types of solutions and
knowing when each are appropriate.

As therapists we each have our own style of confronting our own issues, so
for some (perhaps most males) we will need to learn the skills of
accommodating and flowing with problems; for other therapists (perhaps most
females) we will need to learn the skills of finding concrete answers to
problems. Neither are better than the other, the skill is knowing what
approach is most appropriate for the stiuation in front of you.

David Grace

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[David Steare]

David,
You're linking here into one of my many hobby horses - that of change
versus acceptance. The Serenity Prayer, Person Centred Counselling,
DBT (Dialectical Behaviour therapy) and ACT (Acceptance & Commitment
therapy) are just a few approaches that may hold this dynamic as central
to our lives.
There may be some systemic approaches that are more change oriented
(e.g. strategic?) and some that are more acceptance oriented (reflecting
teams?). Within our field some of us may be more change oriented than
acceptance oriented, and vice versa, and this variability may also be
apparent in our approaches with some people more than others, and at
some times rather than others.
I agree with the idea that men and women tend to process change and
acceptance differently, but I wonder if 'working with men' might be
turned around to thinking about how we work differently with people
based on how we think about them? I remember back in the 80s, therapists
from the Women's Centre here in the UK developed some interesting ideas
about how male and female babies were handled differently when caregivers
knew the child's gender identity, and how they were handled similarly
when they didn't know or when they were dressed cross gender. I wonder
if this idea might be useful to how we think about working with men?
Winnicott's ideas around 'holding' in therapy seem important here,
especially when considering a similar visualisation that Thich Nhat Hanh
uses in his (Compassionate Buddha) approach to anger.
Warm wishes
David Steare

[Peter Stratton]

Not sure if it is getting away from the topic or not, but the baby research
that David describes was even more wonderful. Yes, if people were told it
was a girl they made more talking noises to the baby whether it was a boy or
a girl, and if told it was a boy they bounced it up and down more and talked
less. But also, the girls got talked to more and the boys got bounced more
even when the adults were misinformed about their gender. So right from the
start the babies were giving out signals that got different responses, as
well as the adults responding to the (mis)information in culturally
specified ways.

Best wishes
Peter

From Peter Stratton
Professor of Family Therapy, Leeds Family Therapy and Research Centre
Visit Peter's work-in-progress website:
http://www.psyc.leeds.ac.uk/staff/p.m.stratton/

[David Steare]

I've been thinking about a paper published in the Journal of Family Therapy
May 2007 edition: Back in the mirrored room: the enduring relevance of
discursive practice.

I reacted very angrily to the paper and couldn't work out why.
Then I thought that I would do some discursive practice with 'working with
men' in mind. Here are all of the specific references to men or to men in
roles:

"In the family therapy arena, this may take the form of a husband asking his
wife (without any prior negotiation), 'I'm going to the gym, where are you
picking up the kids from soccer practice?'
"For instance, men can conform to traditional constructions of masculinity
or they can resist and challenge these discursive invitations."
"For example, suppose a therapist working with a family in conflict directs
her questioning about the caregiving of the children to the father. In this
case, the therapist is inviting the father to take up a position within a
marriage of equals discourse."
"Husbands and wives are equally suited for economic and domestic
activities."
"There is wide consensus that gender discourses have tended to privilege the
interests of many men over the interests of many women."
"Will the therapist be curious about why many women, even today, sacrifice
career opportunities in favour of supporting their husbands?"
"For example, take the question, 'Tom, what do you think is going on in our
community where many women want their husbands to be more involved in the
social and emotional care of the children than they currently are?'
Choosing Tom to answer the question.and asking Tom 'what do you think?' in
front of Joanna is a example of the therapist being positioned by the
discursive shift that propels men to demonstrate more equity in childcare."

When I had done this exercise, my anger went away. However, I then began
to think about how I might react to such a discourse on the receiving end of

therapy, especially if I was a man/husband/father with no prior exposure to
such discursive practices.

In my previous post that Peter Stratton elaborated upon, I referred to the
work of the Women's Therapy Centre in London. I recently re-read Chapter 3
'The Great Taboo: Men's Dependency' in the WTC authors' 'What do Women
Want?' For me, there is a world of difference between the way that this
book describes men compared to the descriptions of men described in the JFT
paper cited above.

In thinking more about the way that I try to work with men (women and
children) I've felt drawn more towards mentioning an apparent non FT
approach: non violent communication as developed by Marshall Rosenberg.
For me, this approach offers more than the approach being advocated in
the paper. I wonder if others here find either or both approaches useful?

David Steare