Tips for Men on Removing Blocks to Emotional Intimacy

For many men having a healthy and complete relationship is oven difficult because of the blocks to emotional intimacy that exist. To help understand where emotional blocks to intimacy stem from for men and for tips on removing blocks to emotional intimacy, I have interviewed psychotherapist Guy D. Burstein, LCSW.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.
"For the past fifteen years, I've worked in Portland, Oregon as a psychotherapist, first in community health settings, and then for the past ten years in private practice. In 2004, I completed two years of advanced post-graduate training in Contemporary Relational Psychoanalysis, and have practiced meditation for twenty years and taught mindfulness meditation to personality disordered patients at intensive outpatient treatment centers.

I have particular training in adult difficulties stemming from early childhood trauma, abandonment, emotional isolation and neglect, as well as helping facilitate characterological transformation for clients challenged by chronic and troublesome personality traits. Since 2005 I've been founding board member and volunteer therapist for the Returning Veterans project, which provides free counseling for returning veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, and have expertise treating combat veterans for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) and depression."

Where do blocks to emotional intimacy stem from for some men?
"Tens of thousands of years of human evolution has genetically and environmentally 'hard-wired' men to fulfill certain adaptive functions. With our body strength and endurance, as well as the hormonal effects of testosterone, we are ideally equipped to guard our territory and fulfill the role of protector and provider for women and children, and thereby guaranteeing our collective survival.

When men fulfill our prescribed responsibilities, we are rewarded by the continuation of our genetic heritage and with group approval (in the forms of food, sexual status, leadership) forging a strong incentive to continue acting in these communally accepted and individually gratifying ways. Our feelings of pride activate the reward centers of the brain, resulting in surges of the 'feel good and powerful' neurotransmitter dopamine.

Social reinforcement and genetic drive has resulted in traditional masculine archetypes of power: the macho, stoic, unfeeling rugged individual. Add to this the power of the 'pleasure principle', the idea that humans gravitate towards pleasurable experiences and avoid painful ones. For men, fulfilling our roles creates the pleasurable feelings of pride, while failure is typically experienced as shame. Of the painful emotions (shame, fear, anger, sorrow), shame is for most men the most noxious. Generally, our culture does not teach individuals how to feel, nor to value our feelings. Men in particular walk around experiencing life cognitively, from the neck up like heads on a stick: unfeeling, unconsciously craving uninterrupted pleasure and fleeing from emotional pain."

What are some tips for men on removing blocks to emotional intimacy?
"I believe the most important step for men to lead more fulfilling lives is to begin feeling. In our culture, emotionally sensitive men are devalued as being weak, or feminized. Actually, research indicates that individuals in the androgynous range, that is, men who have both the masculine traits of power and efficacy and feminine traits of empathy and emotional warmth, are the most happy. So teaching men that first, it is acceptable to feel, and second, how to feel, is the most important first step.

To me, of the many forms of intimacy, emotional intimacy is the most fundamental for the creation and maintenance of satisfying relationships. Emotional intimacy means being willing to share one's unrehearsed, spontaneous thoughts and feelings. Emotional intimacy also means being 'present', that is, being in touch with one's own feelings while talking to or listening to another. Presence means actually feeling the biological affects, the signatures of emotions that typically occur somewhere in the physical body as an experience of warmth, pressure, ache, tingling, clenching etc.

So many of us fear that when we actually start to attend to these feelings, we'll be overwhelmed by them, lose control of ourselves, or that these feelings will never stop. Nothing could be further from the truth. These feelings are evolutionarily designed to signal us of important information. To deny them means they'll continue to activate themselves. The classic psychological defense mechanisms (denial, repression, rationalization), as well as behavioral addictions (workaholism, gambling) and substance abuse are all methods of avoiding or numbing painful emotions. As Carl Jung has said, 'that which is resisted, persists,' that is, avoiding feelings guarantees that those feelings will emerge so long as they're defended against. So many blocks to creativity, and so much fatigue can be attributed to the immense energy we expend unconsciously to prevent ourselves from feeling.

Freely feeling what arises is like surfing: sensing a wave approaching and committing to embracing the ride, whatever may come, either pleasure of pain, and seeing it through to the shore. The surfing analogy is apt, as emotions, even strong ones like grief as well as attractive ones like joy, tend to come in wave after wave. And the practice of accepting pain is what transforms pain, through the process of self-aware acceptance, into resilience, compassion for others who themselves experience pain, and finally into wisdom. This practice develops acceptance, and I believe that 90% of our psychological work is learning to accept, with the remaining 10% being learning how to change our situation."

What type of professional help is available for men that have a difficult time removing the blocks to emotional intimacy?
"As a psychotherapist, I deeply believe that the key to successful healing depends on emotional intelligence and awareness. As some individuals, particularly men, have been so fully socialized into traditional masculine stereotypes and therapy has been so stigmatized in popular culture, I believe each individual seeking help needs to be 'met where they are', so I don't promote a particular formula or universal curriculum.

A powerful method of developing emotional awareness is through body/mind therapeutic modalities, which directly teach clients to become aware of the bodily signals of emotions and encourage patient acceptance of the many varieties of emotional experience. These are therapies like Somatic Experiencing, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), and Hakomi. Some clients find that therapeutic massage or other mind/body healing such as chiropractic treatment or acupuncture awakens emotional experience that has been 'stored' or encoded in the body.

Most psychotherapy entails verbal and cognitive processing, and for some client, thinking and talking awakens emotions. Experienced therapists look for those fleeting feelings and potentiate them by lingering in those subject areas or redirecting clients to stay in the experience. The creative energy released by paying close attention to emotional experience often releases outdated habitual thinking patterns of neurological pathways and allows for new insights and neurological growth.

Even without focusing on the biological affects during psychotherapy, there is incremental client acceptance and tolerance of the feelings that arise during verbal expression accompanied by non-judgmental and attentive listening. Much healing can be slowly encouraged without frightening an unprepared client through too direct or cathartic an emotional release. This applies to couples/marital counseling and group therapy, where clients are carefully exposed to their own and others' emotional life and asked to become aware of their own feelings, learn to express them directly, and finally develop the capacity to manage, cope with and accept their reactions to the expression of others. This work encourages confidence in one's own strengths, and finally the ability to listen compassionately to another without resorting to unhelpful defenses.

Rather than continuing the outdated masculine 'survival of the fittest' paradigm that promotes competition, fear and distrust, therapy can create conditions where we're not threatened by the other and their differences. Ultimately, through this work, we can accept the painful feelings of being disapproved of, being misunderstood or disagreed with, without threatening our very deepest self identity. In this way, we encourage individual and social bonding, compassion and collaboration."

Thank you Guy for doing the interview on tips for men on removing blocks to emotional intimacy. For more information on Guy D. Burstein or his work you can check out his website on www.guyburstein.com .