Here's something I say plainly to anyone who will listen: victimhood doesn't serve men the way it serves others. That's not a dismissal of men's suffering. Men suffer enormously. What I'm saying is that the framework of victimhood, the way it's applied and encouraged in most therapeutic and cultural spaces today, is not what heals men. In fact, for most men, it makes things worse.
Men need to feel powerful. That's not toxic. That's not a red flag. That's a fundamental psychological need that most of the mental health world has been slow, sometimes unwilling, to acknowledge and address directly.
The Problem with Applying a One-Size Model to Men
Most of the psychology we practice today was built around models and frameworks that cater primarily to feminine psychological needs. Emotional processing, relational attunement, vulnerability as a primary healing modality. These things have real value. But they are not the whole picture for men, and in many cases, leading with them does more harm than good.
When a man comes in carrying real pain, real trauma, real damage from life, and the therapeutic response centers primarily on helping him identify as a victim of his circumstances, something in him shuts down. Not because he can't feel his feelings. But because deep in his makeup, something knows that's not the path out. He doesn't need to be a victim. He needs to be a man who has been through something hard and is now deciding what to do about it.
The research on men and help-seeking behavior shows consistently that men respond better to frameworks that emphasize agency, competence, and forward movement. Not suppression of pain. Not avoidance. But agency. The sense that I have some power here, that what I do matters, that I'm not just a leaf getting pushed around by whatever happened to me.
What Men Actually Need
Men need permission to be affected by their experiences without being defined by them. They need tools, not just tissues. They need to be challenged, not just validated. They need a space where their strength is respected even while their wounds are being tended to.
The young men I work with who make the most progress are not the ones who most fully embrace their victimhood. They're the ones who reach the point where they say: yes, that happened, and now here's what I'm going to do. That shift, from what was done to me to what I'm going to do now, is the turning point. Everything before it is necessary. But that moment is the one that changes everything.
If you work with men, love men, are raising men, or are a man yourself: understand this. The path to healing for men runs through their sense of power and agency, not away from it. Help them reclaim that, and everything else opens up.