Men Don't Know What They Don't Know

In October of this year, the American Psychological Association issued a report on stress by gender. Here is some of what they said:

In June 2008, more people reported physical and emotional symptoms due to stress than they did in 2007, and nearly half (47 percent) of adults reported that their stress has increased in the past year. More people report fatigue (53 percent compared to 51 percent in 2007), feelings of irritability or anger (60 percent compared to 50 percent in 2007) and lying awake at night (52 percent compared to 48 percent in 2007) as a result of stress, in addition to other symptoms including lack of interest or motivation, feeling depressed or sad, headaches and muscular tension. Women were more likely than men to report physical symptoms of stress like fatigue (57 percent compared to 49 percent), irritability (65 percent compared to 55 percent), headaches (56 percent compared to 36 percent) and feeling depressed or sad (56 percent compared to 39 percent).

I find this information intriguing because of the words in the first line: "people reported." Of course, there's no other way that researchers can gain this sort of information except by querying their subjects, and, of course, the resulting data are necessarily subjective. That's the problem: women are far more acutely in touch with how they feel. Men face some significant cultural barriers when it comes to expressing how they feel.

The first cultural issue that men face comes from the fact that, from their youngest days, boys are taught that 'big boys don't cry.' Guys are told to 'buck up,' to 'quit whining,' to 'stop being such a wuss.' They're told that, when the going gets tough, the tough get going (and, of course, being 'tough' is equated with being manly.

In addition, our culture insists that being aware of your body and sensitive to the messages it's sending you is somehow a 'feminine' trait and, since masculinity in our culture is not a birthright but must be earned on a daily basis, being accused of 'feminine' traits is tantamount to being disgraced. What is a male without his masculinity? Our culture treats this the same as being a human without personhood: a cipher (or worse: an freak of nature or an evolutionary dead-end).

An even more telling cultural requirement demands that men sacrifice everything for their masculine role: that of being the protector of and provider for his family. As (self-ordained) bread-winner, 'failure is not an option.' He expects that he must sacrifice his own comfort, security, and even health to fulfill his role according to the exaggerated requirements that he's borrowed from his family, his teammates, his co-workers and popular culture. Better for him to die of exhaustion at his desk than to fail to live up to these expectations.

The final nail in the coffin of male health would have to be our cultural obsession with medication. If it hurts, drug it! This seems a bit ironic, in light of what I just wrote, but, in fact, this preoccupation with getting numb has arisen as a culturally-acceptable way for men to handle the pain (that they want to deny that they have). Somehow, if you can make the hurt go away by popping a pill or two or downing a few cocktails (or ingesting any number of other analgesic substances), then the pain must not be real and can be safely ignored. Apparently, if it can be deadened, it can't be real.

The result of the cultural evisceration of males in English-speaking North America is that many (most?) guys wouldn't recognize a stress-related symptom if it were to knock them flat on their backs. So long as they remain unaware, these men are at risk of getting sucked into the downward spiral of the midlife crisis. The physical and emotional changes that occur around andropause can be a constant reminder to men that they're not as vital or as handsome (and attractive) as they once were. Trying to meet their own high masculine standards becomes ever more difficult as time goes on. This increases the stress that they feel, just when their careers and their families are also becoming the most demanding.

Learning to listen to the feedback from their bodies may be one of the greatest challenges to men at midlife in North America. Without the ability to develop this kind of awareness, they will almost certainly find themselves at the mercy of stress-related illnesses. There's a snide old saying that taunts, "Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down." One of the skills that goes to make up true Midlife Mastery is body-awareness: the willingness to pay attention to how you feel and react to changes in your environment, noting the changes, and then doing something about it. After all, your masculine role won't do you or your family any good once you're incapacitated or dead.

In the current global economic crisis, taking care of yourself has become more difficult and more important than ever. Remember guys, what you don't know about how you feel can not only hurt you; it can kill you.