A lot of men arrive in counselling after months or years of trying to manage things alone.
That was certainly the case for me. It wasn’t that I was consciously against therapy — I just didn’t think I was struggling badly enough to justify it. Like many people, I assumed I should probably be able to sort things out by myself.
Why men delay coming to counselling
Instead of speaking with someone, we attempt all sorts of other ways of dealing with our challenges. We throw ourselves into work, start a new fitness regime, distract ourselves with projects, overthink the problem endlessly, or convince ourselves that a change of job or relationship will finally make things feel different.
Often, the men I work with in counselling sessions are still functioning outwardly. They’re going to work, replying to messages, looking after other people and keeping things moving. But internally something feels off: life has become heavier, flatter or harder to enjoy, and they no longer feel quite like themselves. On the outside things might look OK, but inside there is still something gnawing away, which can be harder to recognise or vocalise
Can counselling help?
From both personal experience, and my work as a counsellor in Oxford, I firmly believe that it can.
Stripped of all fancy theory and therapeutic jargon, at its core, counselling is about spending some time with another person who is deeply interested in you, your life, your struggles and also your successes.
While friends, partners and family members can offer support, they often have their own stake in the situations we’re struggling with. Sometimes they want to reassure us, offer advice, or relate things back to their own experiences, which may not always give us what we really need.
What is counselling like?
Counselling is different in that it provides you with much more opportunity to discover for yourself, in a confidential setting, what you really think and feel about your experiences, relationships and your current life situation.
I have frequently witnessed the sheer relief that clients feel after the first couple of sessions when they’ve begun to unburden themselves of much that they had stored up for a long time. Often, what we uncover as we speak can surprise us.
For those that stick with it for a little longer, counselling may become about sifting through what emerges from our conversations together and taking another look at some of our underlying beliefs and assumptions to see if they still hold true for today.
How things can begin to shift
Gradually, this might lead to changes outside the counselling room – for example, in how we’re managing our emotions or how we’re interacting with other people around us – or can be more about feeling, and working through in the sessions, those things that we might have been avoiding confronting.
In both cases, things will begin to shift as will our feelings about the things that currently have us down, worried, stuck or angry. So even in the most dire of circumstances, counselling can help things to begin to feel clearer, lighter and more manageable again.
Starting counselling in Oxford
If you recognise something of yourself in this article, please remember that you do not need to wait until things become unbearable before seeking support. Counselling can simply be a place to pause, take stock of what’s happening, and begin understanding why life has started to feel harder than it once did.
If you would like to explore counselling for men in Oxford, you are welcome to get in touch. I offer an initial conversation where we can discuss what’s been going on for you, what you’re hoping for from counselling, and whether working together would feel like a good fit.
