Helping Men to Build Relationships and Express Themselves, with Owen Marcus
Men often get left behind when it comes to therapy.
Owen trained and often taught with leaders in the fields of somatic and relationship therapies in the late 1970s and 1980s. Ron Kurtz and Peter Levine, Ph.D., taught him how to use body awareness as a powerful yet gentle way to produce significant change.
Men have been trained in different ways to perform, to fix, to solve problems; they are indoctrinated from a young age to do so. Female partners and spouses often ask for men to be able to empathize with their emotions. Owen believes that men can be both masculine AND vulnerable, once they understand that it is okay to discuss emotions and feelings.
Sometimes you can’t go in straight in the front door. This therapeutic approach is a window that allows people to start thinking about things in a different way!
Notes
🧔 Owen is a coach who works with men: it seems like men often get left behind in therapy. 01:06
👨🦱 He was immersed in the somatic psychotherapy approach: men hardly talk about their emotions. 02:06
⚡ Hakomi method: using the body as a vehicle to create emotional change. 05:20
🌞 Men are good at fixing things, but they need connection: emotional connection with women happens when men are authentic in their own emotional language. 08:33
⚠️ We aren’t innately flawed: men do not feel they are enough, and they think they are trapped. 13:49
🚩 Men think they’re being emotional, by using emotional words, but they are not connecting emotionally. 18:37
😇 Men are hungry for an environment where they can feel safe, and get connected in really authentic ways to other men. 24:56🗣️ Practicing with other people and having a practicing arena for therapists and couples: learning new skills and having mutual help. 29:58
🤓 Physiology of stress, the emotional aspect of it, and the impact of culture: when the box of understanding expand, men have more space for relationships and changes in their lives. 33:10
🛑 Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal theory: shame runs rampant for men – stop the pathway in which you are wrong. 36:07