Men, You're Not Meant To Feel Emotions Like Women

Many analytical men avoid their emotions because they've only seen emotions expressed in ways that feel overwhelming, irrational, or out of control. In this talk, you'll discover seven common misconceptions about emotions and learn why feeling your emotions doesn't mean losing control, becoming weak, acting impulsively, or talking about your feelings for hours. Instead, you'll explore a grounded, balanced approach to emotional awareness that allows you to stay clear, strong, and connected while experiencing your emotions. This talk is ideal for men who want deeper relationships, greater inner peace, and a healthier relationship with their emotional world.

Transcript

Men, You are not meant to feel emotions in the same way that women do. And that is really important, Because if your whole life you've watched your mother, Your sister, Your girlfriends express emotions in ways that look dramatic, Intense, Over-the-top, Or irrational, Of course you're not going to want to feel emotions. And if you don't want to feel emotions, That's going to make it really difficult for you to access and feel it. Emotions. I'm Noah Elkrief and I've been coaching smart analytical men for over 15 years. And in this video, I'm going to address seven of the most common misconceptions about feeling emotions based on how you've watched women feel emotions throughout your life. And before I go into that, I do want to say, Of course, Women can experience and express emotions in every possible different way. But for many of us who have difficulty feeling our emotions, One of the causes is because we've watched women throughout our life express emotions in ways that we don't want to feel and express. The first misconception is that emotions will take you over and you'll lose control. And just because you've seen women in your life be taken over by their emotions and lose control, That doesn't mean that's the way it has to happen for you. So for example, For me, Emotions take up anywhere from 1% to maximum, Maybe 60% of my experience. So even in the most intense emotions, Whether that's fear or grief or anger, It basically never takes up more than 60% of my experience. So there's always at least 40% Of course, That's fine, But it doesn't have to be that way at all. I like to feel emotions, And that's not the way that feels most aligned for me. The second misconception is that if you're emotional, You have to speak, Act, And make decisions from those emotions. Or put differently, Maybe you've seen women in your life make poor decisions, Say messed up things, Or, I don't know, Just be irrational when they're emotional. And that's totally not necessary For me, I basically have a rule and that is I don't make decisions from emotion I don't speak from emotion unless it's a very small percentage of my experience So if i'm angry, I don't speak unless I have a very high percentage of access to myself to my My wisdom and my clarity. I want to make decisions speak and act from clarity and emotions are for me Unreliable sources of decision-making in what to say and what to do so you can totally feel emotions have emotions and not act speak or Yeah, Make big decisions or even little decisions from emotion that we can decide after a lot of experience I see you know what? I don't want to make decisions from emotion I don't want to speak while I'm emotional unless I have emotion and also have access to my clients So if I'm afraid or angry, Of course I can speak from it. But if I check first, Is this really what I feel? Is this really how I view things? Is this my truth? Is this the way that I want to express it? Then I have enough access to my wisdom and clarity that it makes sense to speak or act while feeling. So I don't speak from the feeling, I can speak or act while feeling. Of course still connected to the emotion at the time. The third thing is that the idea that we're meant to feel like women is based on the idea or a misconception that we're the same. You know, That we should be feeling the same way that they do. That if they cry a certain way, We should cry in that way. If they express fear in a certain way, We should express fear a certain way. And maybe we don't believe that, But maybe women have told us, Why don't you feel emotion? Why don't you cry? Or we might a part of us might be impacted. But women and men have entirely different, Of course, Biology, But I'm not going to go into that because I'm not a scientist, But ancestral history. So for me, I've seen firsthand what trauma in my ancestors has done to me, Whether it's my father's experience, My grandfather's experience, How that impacts me, My beliefs, And how I relate to emotion. And so if you think about throughout history what the role men have had to play and what they've had to do versus women, It makes a lot of sense that emotions won't be as big for us or it'll be harder for us to feel emotion. So if we're at war and we have to kill someone, Yeah, It's going to be hard to do that when we're connected to our feelings and our heart. Or if we watch our friend die right next to us, It's going to be hard to keep going if we have a lot of access to our feeling and our heart. The same way with hunting. We have to be focused, Driven, With a goal and we're going for it. We have to protect the family, We have to provide for the family. That's not a space for emotion. Whereas historically, Women needed to be connected to their emotion, Or in other words, It's more advantageous or helpful to be connected to their emotion in order to take care of the children and not abandon them. So we're disconnected from our emotion in order to sort of abandon the person who just died and keep going, And women are set up where it's more helpful for, You know, The survival of the species for them to stay connected to their emotion. And that has a really big impact, That it's harder for us to feel emotion and we're not meant to be overtaken by emotion or operate through emotion the same way that women are. The fourth misconception is that feelings have to be dramatic or intense. They do not. You know, When I feel sad or hurt, Oftentimes I feel it internally. I'll feel emotion at a restaurant. Nobody will have any idea what I'm feeling. I'll feel it in a train. Nobody will know. If you're standing right in front of me, Probably 70 to 80 percent of my feelings, You'd have no idea because I feel it internally. I don't need to show it. I don't need to cry. I don't need to scream. I don't need to make a fuss about it. I feel it inside. And even if I do cry, I often do what I call a two-second dry cry. So it might look like. . . And then it's done. You know, It's not something that has to be intense. Even, And that doesn't mean I'm not feeling deeply. I could feel the depth of hurt of my mom being mean to me or being bullied. I can feel the depth of fear of, You know, When my father wasn't around or no one came when I was a baby. And I can feel those feelings all the way back to really, Really early on. And that fear, I can hold it. Of course, It's a skill that I've developed over time. But we can hold deep, Deep feelings and contain them without it being like over the top dramatic and emotional. And that's not to say dramatic and intense are bad. There are moments where I've felt that way too. It's just to say that that's not necessary, That you don't have to feel it in those ways, That you can feel the depth of emotion, The fullness of emotion without it ever being so intense or dramatic or even noticeable from the outside. The fifth thing is quite important and that is if you've seen You know women in your life expressing emotion in vulnerable ways. You might have thought that they're weak And that they're less solid and that might have been true that when you watched a woman expressing vulnerable emotion she seems weak Fragile, You know a mess But just because you saw a woman in a fragile state expressing emotion doesn't mean emotion is fragility and that's really really important because Because for me, Emotion makes us more solid. Emotion has definitely made me way more solid, Because for example, Maybe for you and your relationship, Or for many men in their relationship, We get defensive. Why do we get defensive? Because when they say something, It kind of hurts our feelings, So then we have to defend it. Well, Basically that means we're fragile. If we're taking something personally, It means we're fragile. Just because we're not expressing emotion doesn't mean we're not fragile. For me, If we're scared to feel emotion and we take things personally or get defensive, That's being weak and fragile, Which is okay, There's nothing wrong with it. To become truly solid inside to feel really really strong inside we have to feel emotion because you know if we get insulted criticized you know that we're not enough that we didn't do something well enough whatever if we can just feel that like oh i feel not enough and just like have a little cry inside or outside and explore that then it can resolve and if it resolves the next time our wife expresses disappointment or criticism it no longer hits any, You know, Child vulnerability. It almost no longer hits that unworthiness inside of us. And that's how to become truly strong. That by expressing vulnerability or being connected to our vulnerability, Even if we don't express it, And resolving it, That's how we become solid. It might look weak in the moment, But it doesn't mean it is weak to feel it. And also, I can feel the vulnerability without it being expressed or seen at all. Like if my partner were to do something or to ask for something, That hits unworthiness or inadequacy in me. I can feel it inside without needing to look weak. I think sometimes. . . The way I relate to emotion is. . . An emotion only makes me feel weak if I'm fully and 100% identified with it. So, For example, If I'm a child and my mom insults me or criticizes or yells at me, I feel really weak, Right? I'm powerless. I'm helpless. Why is she saying that to me? Like, I am actually really weak. I have no power in that situation. But if my wife says it, The only way I like criticizes me and it brings up that same inadequacy, The only way I'd feel really weak is if I'm 100% identified with the child. But for me, Let's say I'm 30% identified with the child, That I'm identified enough with it to be able to feel the emotion. I don't want to disconnect. I want to feel it. So for me, Feeling the emotion means I'm 30% connected to the child's feelings, And the child is feeling weak and vulnerable, But I'm 70% still connected to my own strength and power and clarity and wisdom from the man. So the 30% is sort of weak and vulnerable, But I'm still holding it and containing it within the strength and wisdom of the man. And then I'm taking care of that part, That vulnerable child part, To help resolve it so he can feel more stable, Solid, And in his power. Now the sixth misconception is that feeling emotion makes you needy. This is very, Very common because if our wife is always asking for approval, Asking for reassurance, If we've, You know, Our mom always did that our whole life, Then we can connect emotion with being emotionally needy. And it's a little bit nuanced because there's two ways to express desire and need for love and care. So if I'm like, Do you love me? Can you please tell me that you love me? I'm seeking reassurance, Which you could say is needy or not, Depending on where I'm coming from. So it is totally healthy to seek reassurance. It is totally and completely healthy to seek reassurance that if I feel insecure or scared, I can say to my partner, Do you still love me? Are you mad at me? Do you still like me? There's nothing wrong with that, But of course if we've suppressed emotion our whole life and think we need to be solid all the time and become hyper-independent, We label it as needy and that it's bad to even ask for anything from another person. But it's actually really healthy to ask for reassurance, To ask for support. However, There is a way That seeking reassurance is needy and that is when we seek reassurance in a way that will never reassure us So if the women in your life have over and over again asked for reassurance They're trying to get something from you that they're not meant to be getting from you right so That's when it's really being needy that i'm Outsourcing a need that I should be finding within myself So if I feel insecure and I'm constantly asking, Tell me I'm handsome, Tell me I'm good enough, Tell me I'm wise or I'm funny or something. And my cup is never filling up, That means I'm being needy. Whereas if I ask for reassurance and it makes me feel relaxed and that's steady for a while, Then probably, And maybe I don't even need it as much moving forward, Then that's a healthy way to do it. And so, If I'm connected to my insecurity, If I'm connected to my unworthiness, If I'm connected to my loneliness, If I'm connected to my fear, Then maybe that will cause me to desire reassurance more often. That's fine. However, It only makes us needy if we don't know how to take care of the inner child within ourself. Right? So if I feel alone, I say, Can you please come back? Can you please don't go out with your friend? Like come here, Please, Please. I'm being needy because I'm saying the only way to fix my emotional pain right now is for you to take care of me. That's being needy. Whereas if I feel an emotion, And it's only 30% of my experience, 30% of my awareness, And I recognize that's the child's pain, The child's insecurity, Fear, And loneliness, Then the adult me can take care of the child And me taking care of the child in me is not being needy at all. I'm self-sourcing. And then I can still ask for love and care from my partner, But in a way that's not needy because needy implies I need them versus I desire reassurance. Yeah, There's a big difference between desiring reassurance that actually is supportive versus trying needing something from them that they can't ultimately give us and we're not meant to get it from them. Take care of ourself in it. The seventh misconception is that being emotional means you need to talk about emotion all the time. That you need to have these, Like, Long emotional conversations that kind of go in circles that never really get anywhere. I don't like those types of conversations and I never, Ever, Ever, Ever, Ever have them. They're just not a part of my experience because for me, A conversation You know, It reminds me of that saying, Like, If you can't say it quickly, It means you don't really understand it, Right? If you can't say it simply, It means you don't understand it well enough. So an emotional conversation that takes more than a few minutes is probably because the person having the emotion or the person receiving are confused and not clear about what's really going on. So for me, If I have an emotion, I explore it within myself, Maybe resolve it within myself, Or if I need, If there's something between me and my partner in it, I first explore really what she did or what happened, And then I bring something very clear, Very specific, And then it gets resolved, And she does the same for me. So it resolved quickly, In a couple minutes, Because Yeah, Emotions in loop and just talking for the sake of talking is not something that's necessary. I don't desire that even though I'm fully connected to my emotions, Super super sensitive to all the even minuscule emotions inside of me. I don't have any desire to talk about it for hours in circles. It's not needed to be emotional. It's not needed to have that.