Working With Male Youth

My work with boys and young men is about creating a unique space where they can openly wrestle with all the natural challenges of adolences. 

Boys typically arrive at therapy with a few distinct struggles:

• Slipping grades or trouble at school — not caring anymore, missing work, conflicts with teachers, a kid who used to be fine suddenly isn't.

• Depression or anxiety — though in boys this age it often doesn't look like sadness or worry. More often it looks like irritability, shutting down, or seeming checked out.

• Anger that comes out of nowhere — blow-ups, slammed doors, a short fuse over things that didn't used to set him off.

• Pulling away from activities and friends — quitting a sport or activity he used to love, spending more time alone, a friend group that's shrunk or disappeared.

While these issues aren’t necessarily unique to boys, boy culture exacerbates the challenges of adolescence. 

There's a moment — usually somewhere between fifth grade and high school — when a boy who used to talk to you, who used to cry when he was frustrated or reach for you when he was scared, starts pulling away. He gets quieter. More guarded. "Fine" becomes his answer to almost everything.

This is a pattern that emerges over and over. In one sense, it fits into a healthy part of adolescent development where fitting into social groups and separating from parents are both observed and natural patterns. However, this turning away is exacerbated by our culture.

Psychologist William Pollack named it the "boy code" — the unwritten rules boys absorb early: “don't cry, don't need help, don't show fear, handle it yourself.” Boys don't choose this consciously. They're responding, accurately, to social pressure — the risk of being teased, excluded, or labeled weak is real, and the instinct to avoid it is an understandable one. The challenge is in avoiding vulnerability many young men are left feeling incredibly alone as they experience their socially unsanctioned emotions in isolation.

My work is about giving young men a space to wrestle with life’s challenges. I often hear from them the relief that comes with being able to say something out loud.