I don’t know how else to describe it, but all my male friends and family are very unemotional. Not in the sense that they don’t feel anything, but that they are a lot better at handling them and I feel like I’m not. I’ve tried meditation, therapy, healthy eating and a better sleep schedule but nothing works. I still anger and get upset at the smallest things and I feel like I’m less masculine than my friends. Im even known as the super emotional guy in the group and they often tease me about it, which makes things worse. My family constantly talk down to me as I don’t work out much and am very thin and short while my younger bros are jacked and tall. I don’t know what to do and really needed to get this off my chest. Thank you.
Better identifying and labelling specific feelings is important, for sure, but it’s only one step. When I say “understand your emotional reactions”, I mean building an awareness of the childhood and youthful traumas that can inform emotional reactions well into adulthood in ways you don’t realise — because you’ve been specifically conditioned not to think about it.
This isn’t necessarily possible to navigate alone, and definitely requires a conscious effort towards dismantling and examining the thought processes boys and young men are taught from a very young age: that feelings are for girls, and girls are yucky, so if you feel things you’re yucky.
Feelings are for everyone.
I agree with everything you said.