Should Men Be Skeptical of Therapy?
Welcome everyone to the Lion Counseling Podcast. I'm Mark Oddland, founder of Lion Counseling and certified EMDR therapist, where our mission is to help men to break free, to heal deep, and to become the Lions they were created to be. Well today's session is about men being skeptical of therapy and I'll just say it men men out there a lot of our guys a lot of our listeners are men My advice to you is that you should approach therapy with discernment. Not every counselor or therapist is the right fit. Not every worldview lines up with what men need most.
Mark Odland:And some approaches to therapy emphasize compassion over challenge, systems over personal agency, secular ideas over faith. And I'm not saying therapy is bad just being able to talk to another human being who cares can be incredibly healing. Just the nature of how it's set up. It doesn't mean that therapy is bad but it does need that does mean that you should have the right guide. It does mean that you should have discernment.
Mark Odland:A good therapist understands men's unique challenges, respects gender differences, honors your values rather than dismissing them. Therapy can be powerful, but it works best when you find someone who actually gets you. So first, I'm just gonna say it a lot of therapists are biased against men. Biasing as men. If you're hearing me say that and you're a guy my guess is you're not surprised by that.
Mark Odland:It's not like I'm hearing this for the first time from Mark Oddlin. We live in a culture where traditional masculine values, which I know a lot of our listeners hold, are frowned upon as somehow toxic, oppressive, maybe even violent or destructive. Right? Take values that a man just trying to provide and protect for his family, to work hard, to try to be devoted to his family and to his faith. Those things are almost like in this politically charged context seen as some kind of cue that you were a bad person.
Mark Odland:When a hundred years ago, that would just be the status quo. That would be just a normal thing in an understandable thing in a very kind of non controversial way of seeing the world. Right? But we don't live in that world today. We don't live in that world today.
Mark Odland:And so let's just do a thought experiment. Okay. So if you start therapy with a therapist, and we are trained as therapists, not to superimpose our worldview on our clients, to not be forceful, to not be evangelical, to be to be like religious about our view. It's not about us. It's about the client.
Mark Odland:Right? But that's not always the case. Oftentimes, you know, there will be biases. We're all human. Right?
Mark Odland:So as therapists, we have our own biases and we have our own beliefs, and it's our job to regulate those in such a way where it doesn't distract from the therapy process. And unless the client gives the green light, to engage therapy in a particular way, our job is to be caring, to be a good listener, to be reflective, to create a plan that helps the client move toward healing without having our belief system kind of be forceful or heavy handed. Right? All that being said, therapists and counselors are human. And so if you happen to be unlucky enough to be sitting across from a mental health provider who is silently thinking to themselves that by just by being a guy, that something is inherently wrong with you, or something is broken or defective, or, or because of that therapist's own beliefs or life experiences, They might have negative associations attached to their own experiences of trauma.
Mark Odland:It'll be very hard for them to be truly caring and objective. It might be hard for them to be curious about your story. It might be hard for them to be compassionate or empathetic, toward where you're coming from. And starting therapy, starting counseling is already, a vulnerable process. It's already, an act of faith and act of courage to step into that space and to pour out your life story to a complete stranger.
Mark Odland:And so, the last thing you need the last thing you need is to start to get vibes from your therapist that they don't like you, that something's wrong with you. Right? That's not a good thing. Right? So that's one reason to be discerning about counseling is you want someone who's not going to be biased toward you simply because you're a man.
Mark Odland:How do you I mean, what therapist is going to admit that during a consultation or in an initial initial phone call? Probably hardly anybody. But, and so you just have to use judgment. You have to use your own discernment to try to screen that to the best of your ability. Another reason to be discerning of finding a therapist is that a lot of therapists out there have a bias against something that a lot of men, a lot of us as men are looking for is accountability, practical solutions, and someone who can help support us in taking personal responsibility for our lives.
Mark Odland:Many of you know that I had a chance to consult with doctor Jordan Peterson, and and one of the reasons why he kind of rose to fame in this very unexpected way was because he tapped into a deep need for young men, not only men, but but but a lot of young men who were told that they were okay and special just the way they were without any actual movement in life or competency, or accomplishment. And so something deep in their soul yearned for something more, and he tapped into that. He became kind of this father figure for a generation of men who wanted to fight the good fight, you know, in a spiritual sense, in the moral sense. They wanted to have a cause to stand up for. They wanted to make the world a better place, and they needed someone to be honest enough with them to say, it's time, guys.
Mark Odland:It's time to make your bed. It's time to, it's time to respect those around you. It's time to respect yourself. It's time to, finish that, resume, apply for that job, take that risk. Right?
Mark Odland:There's something about being a man where whatever combination of how we're wired versus societal expectation is if a man isn't accomplishing things in life, again, right or wrong, it's gonna be difficult for them to have any kind of positive self esteem. It's gonna be difficult for them to find a spouse. It's going to be difficult for them to meet their goals in life. And so to have a therapist who's able to have compassion, but also balance that with accountability, encouragement, and just taking seriously the need for personal agency is so important. And sometimes that does contradict what we're trained to to believe in grad school about systems.
Mark Odland:Right? Systems theory, which is a grounding, a grounding theory in marriage and family therapy. And you also see this in politics is rightly recognizing and understanding that sometimes the best diagnosis isn't just what's inside an individual person, but in the complex patterns and systems that we're embedded in. And then that chain of cause and effect does impact us as people, right? And so we don't want to pretend that we are totally disjointed and separate from the forces around us.
Mark Odland:We are shaped by the forces around us. But that's just one side of the coin. That's one part of the truth. Some therapists will stay there as their worldview, as their operating system, as their way of conceptualizing, what you're going through. And although it can be extremely validating to understand how the systems of the world have made you feel trapped or or or made you feel stuck, that can't be the endpoint.
Mark Odland:The endpoint is acknowledging that and saying, as a person with agency, as a person with choices, if I stay in this stuck place, if I continue to blame other people, if I continue to let go of my own power, you're gonna stay stuck. Right? And so a recognition of patterns and systems always has to be balanced by personal responsibility, by the belief that I can I can make things happen in this life because I set my mind to it, because of hard work, because of faith, because of my mindset? Right? Those things keep people from saying I mean, literally, our website at Lion Counseling is escape the cage now.
Mark Odland:Right? And and for many guys, they're just sitting in that cage. They're just waiting. The door has been already broken open, and but but they've been conditioned to feel like a prisoner of their own lives. And so in my opinion, in my humble opinion, good therapy is finding a counselor, finding a therapist who doesn't just tell you why you were caged, but helps you leave the cage.
Mark Odland:Right? And helps you believe that that's even possible. Okay. Alright. Another reason.
Mark Odland:Another reason why it's good to be discerning is that there are some therapists who have a pretty strong bias. And again, I'm not trying to paint too broad a broad a brush here, but there are many therapists who are who are biased against Christianity, right, are biased against Christianity and some of the more traditional ways of seeing the world that a lot of you as our listeners do believe. Right? You you do have some more traditional values. And and in today's politically charged context, it can be easy to dehumanize.
Mark Odland:It can be easy to dehumanize the other, the person who sees things differently than us, the person who maybe has a different way of operating in the world. Right? And and so again, if if you are working with a therapist or a counselor, who no matter how hard they try, you can see the disgust on their face, you can see them clenching their jaw, or what they say or what they don't say, as you're sharing your story. It very well could be that they're not managing what we call in therapy, their counter transference. You know, we're people too, right?
Mark Odland:As therapists, as counselors, we have our own stories, we have our own trauma, we have our own life experience. And when our clients share their stories, we're not only listening, but it also interacts with our own experiences. It lights up memories in our own head, it activates emotions within our bodies. And that's why as therapists, we're encouraged to get our own therapy, because we have to have capacity. We have to have the steadiness to be able to regulate our own emotions.
Mark Odland:While we're simultaneously interacting with our clients as they're sharing their stories. And and if you are not able to do that, if you have such a strong worldview that is biased against a client because of their religion, for example, it doesn't go well. It's not a very healing experience. Again, if a therapist can at least stay neutral, at least find a way to have compassion and be curious, well then that can still be a healing experience, even if it's not kind of overtly Christian counseling. But of course, that's why a lot of men will seek out me and the other providers at Lion Counseling is because they're looking for a therapist who shares a general, the same general worldview, even if it's not identical, right?
Mark Odland:The same way of just knowing that if they share their faith, if they share their worldview, I'm not going to be gritting my teeth thinking they're crazy or stupid or evil, that there might be differences of opinion, but at at a base level, there's a shared understanding, and they don't have to justify why they're not crazy. They don't have to prove that they're not a bad person, that they're not evil. It's just this sense of, okay, I don't have to overexplain myself because I know my therapist kind of gets it. And then some clients will take it a step further. When I ask them what they're looking for when they say in their intake paperwork that they're looking for Christian counseling, they'll say, well, that means I want to be able to talk about my faith.
Mark Odland:I want to talk about scripture. I want a therapist who would be okay with saying a prayer at the end of session. If if if that's, again, if it's something that the client wants. Right? At line counseling, we go there.
Mark Odland:We're comfortable going there. We do so with discernment and discretion and humility, and and letting those clients take the lead. We're not we're not being heavy handed or pushing our stuff onto you. But if that's something that you want to be part of your therapy experience, that's what we're here for. So so yeah, there there can be a bias, there can be a bias against some of that.
Mark Odland:We live in what many people call a post Christian age. Our therapists and our professors have kind of usurped the role of priests and pastor. Secular society has become in a way its own religion with its own set of documents, own set of sacred cows, its own set of dogmas, its own set of hierarchical structures, and own set of sins. I mean, that's a whole another conversation, but it kind of ties into this idea that we are apparently wired as humans to worship something and to want to have certainty about certainty about things. And if we don't find that grounded in traditional religion, our hearts and our minds will try to find it somewhere else.
Mark Odland:And that's the irony, right? And we see this with our political discourse is sometimes those that claim to be the most tolerant are really only saying, I'm tolerant of those who agree with me. And if you disagree with me, I, the one who's the arbiter of all moral truth, and it's somehow the enlightened one that is wiser than all those who came before me, I'm in a position now to judge you. And so there's a lot of hypocrisy in our world. And again, as therapists and as counselors, we're not immune from that.
Mark Odland:Thankfully, our again, our training is to stay neutral, to stay compassionate, to stay encouraging, to join with the client, to understand their story and to develop a plan for how to get from point A to point B. And a therapist who can regulate their own emotions and implement those things in counseling is going to be a pretty good therapist. And if you can come away from therapy saying, you know, I'm not sure exactly what my therapist believes, but it seems like they care. It seems like they really listened to me. That felt good to talk through that.
Mark Odland:Okay, then it seems like they did their job. And and that might be all many of you need, right? But again, for those of you who are looking for something where you can more more overtly dialogue back and forth about worldview issues from a more nutrition counseling framework, sometimes that's a route that that the guys will go as well. And and that's why people find us find us at Lion Counseling. All right.
Mark Odland:Here's another one. Another reason to be discerning is therapy, even though we're highly trained as therapists and as counselors, at least a two year master's degree, followed by a nine month or year long internship experience in two years of super it's a long process, two years of supervision before we're licensed. There's a lot of education, a lot of experience involved. But as you well know, someone can be highly educated and not necessarily be be extraordinarily skilled. And so like any profession, there are plumbers who are very experienced and skilled and some that aren't.
Mark Odland:There are professional athletes that are extremely skilled, and some that get cut from the team. Right? Therapy and counseling is similar in the sense that each therapist, each counselor has their own set of skills, their own capacity, their own personality traits, their own intelligent level intelligence level. And and so there's there's just there's just something about that. You wanna find someone who can listen well, who has the knowledge, but then who also has the skill to be in a process with you.
Mark Odland:Right? And so I tell people if you have, this is a good one for you guys to hear, if you try therapy and it doesn't work, it doesn't seem like a good fit, don't give up on therapy. Just realize that it wasn't a good fit with this particular therapist. But within the profession of therapy, there are good therapists, there are skilled therapists, and you just got to do the work to try to find them, right? You just gotta you just gotta keep keep trying, trial and error until you find that good fit.
Mark Odland:And and at LionCounseling, that's that's part of the reason why we offer a free consultation. Free thirty minutes over Zoom or phone to to hear a little bit about your story, to ask all the questions you want to ask, to see if we're compatible, to see if it's going to be a good fit. And that process can make all the difference, and can take take the anxiety out of it, take the edge off the not knowing, and and then there's peace of mind. There's a comfort level. Okay.
Mark Odland:I met with I met with Mark. I met with this other guy, and it seemed like it's gonna be a really good fit. I'm ready to start counseling. So that that's that's the ideal scenario. So to kind of pull it all together, there's that question of, you know, how do you as a man find a good therapist or counselor?
Mark Odland:I think you just gotta ask some questions. You've gotta ask, when I read this professional's biography or when I talk to them in person, does it seem like they have a grasp of understanding my issues as a man and the ability to address them fairly? That's a question. Do I believe that they understand the importance of the expectations that are are put on men in this society? Right?
Mark Odland:And and that can be very different how how society sees the role of men and the role of women in society. Again, right or wrong, that there there's there's different challenges that females face that are unique and important and different challenges that males face that are unique and important to address and acknowledge. Another question to ask is is can my therapist respect and understand these these gender differences? And and can they see that the qualities that I possess are legitimate, that they are not that they could be qualities and not flaws that need to be corrected. Right?
Mark Odland:So I'll say something that could be a little controversial with some with some therapists, but let's take couples counseling. I've done a fair share of couples counseling over the years. And in grad school, it became very clear that, and it wasn't always said out loud, but basically the ethos of the curriculum was in couples counseling, men try to fix things, you know, and women want to be connect want to connect. And that's how a lot of conversations blow up. It's how a lot of arguments escalate to a place where they're not productive, right?
Mark Odland:And again, obviously there are exceptions to this, but but by and large, studies have shown that that women gravitate a little bit more toward seeing an importance on relationship, and men see more importance placed on things, on objects, on puzzles, on on things to solve, right? And so that comes up in couples counseling. The wife is is maybe sharing, about her day and something hard that happened. The guy, the husband, is is instead of connecting with her and empathizing and acknowledging how hard that was for her, he's already brainstorming how to stop her suffering by fixing it, fixing the problem. And there's a collision.
Mark Odland:There's a collision of wiring that happens in that moment. And and so my job as a couples therapist is, we were told in grad school, essentially, it felt like it was how do we train these men to be more emotional? How do we train them to raise their emotional intelligence? How do we get them to stop fixing things like this? And I bought into it.
Mark Odland:You know, hook line hook line and sinker. I I kinda drank the Kool Aid on that for quite a few years. And there's a there's a hint of truth to it, right? As men, myself included, we do have to learn those softer skills. We do have to learn to speak a different language.
Mark Odland:And we do have to be able to, put aside our our our need to to fix things in order to connect. But but here's the here's the caveat. Here's the here's the thing that's evolved with my way of seeing it is that thank god that so many of the men I work with are good at fixing things. Thank god that they think, about how to solve problems and how to solve puzzles and how to, how to ease the suffering through changes of the pattern and changes of the the system. Right?
Mark Odland:And and so so I think it's very subtle, but I think it's really important for your therapist to see something like that, for example, and to say, it's not that wanting to fix things is bad. It's not. Thank God that you have that quality because my guess is it makes you good at your job. It helps you as a dad. It's being able to do these kinds of things that literally hold civilization together and keep it from literally breaking apart.
Mark Odland:But we all have to stretch ourselves. Right? And so but that nuance is missing in a lot of therapy. A lot of men that I've talked to who've had a negative experience with therapy have felt like there's been a covert operation to quote unquote solve the problem by basically making them more like a female. If the husband could only think and act and feel the way that their wife does, then everything would be fine.
Mark Odland:And that's not helpful. It's not it's a very invalidating, very condescending way to view the unique things that men have to offer in this world and the way that we see the world. And in the best sense there can be it can work together, right? It can work together. And it's not that a man's way of thinking, again, this is a stereotype, of course, it's a generalization.
Mark Odland:But statistically, the way that men tend to think, it's not that that it's better than than the way the women tend to think or feel. It's not that that's better or that's worse. It's that they both are important. And acknowledging those differences, and the fact that they both have their place, and they both are deserving of respect is a part that I think is missing for a lot of men in therapy. Right?
Mark Odland:So, again, how much can you know this by reading a therapist bio online? You know, more than you more than you'd think you actually can discern quite a bit by the way that a therapist presents themselves and the words they use to describe how they operate. But that being said, you might need to have that in person consultation to know for sure, right? So all this being said, hope you, hope, hope men, you take away this message that I'm not anti therapist. I literally am a therapist and I think we all need it.
Mark Odland:I really do. Especially something like EMDR therapy where we're digging in to get root causes and healing things at their source. And so we can we can actually have healing, we can actually have restoration from these old wounds and these old insecurities that we many of us keep running from. There can be lasting lasting healing. So I'm pro therapy.
Mark Odland:I'm definitely pro counseling, but I but I just wanted to be honest with you. You need to be discerning. You need to be discerning about who you work with and and, you know, give it a session or two, but if the writing's on the wall and it's just there it's really not jiving for any of the reasons that I've talked about, it's okay to try someone else. You know? It's yours.
Mark Odland:It's your experience. It's your life, and you are worthy of having someone who can understand how you see the world and have compassion for it, who really gets it, but doesn't stop at compassion. Right? Who balances that compassion with truth, with reason, with accountability, and with a plan, to move forward. So I'll leave you with that, guys.
Mark Odland:If any of you do does wanna reach out to me, I know there are many, good therapists out there, and you have a lot of options to choose from. But, if you're interested in connecting with me you can go to escapethecagenow.com. I'm happy to do a free consultation, to talk more, see if it's a good fit. And as always, if you don't mind hitting that like button and hitting the subscribe button, notifications, it means a lot. It helps us get the word out to more men and keeps building toward our goal.
Mark Odland:All right, until next time. Talk to you later. Bye.
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