Emotional Debt
The Cost of Emotional Mutilation
by John Feldkamp
As we step into the new year, a common thread of the human experience is to lament upon the trials and tribulations of the previous trip around the sun. 2024 will be my year, we all whisper whilst making superficial promises of diet, workout, and some rendition of “Dry January”. Don’t get me wrong, these things are important, but they will dissolve just as quickly as they did in January of 2023 without some additional work. This is because changes in behavior have a transient half-life unless substantiated with a change in the thought patterns which underlie them. Many of us, including myself, aim for a clean slate – an absolution of the sins of the year prior. While hopeful, this false promise does more harm than good, as those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. This year, let’s reflect upon the emotional ‘baggage’ that tails us into 2024. As a gentle reminder, suppression is not the same as letting go.
In our weekly men’s groups, we routinely confront the concept of “emotional debt” as men rediscover a previously-severed connection to our childhood selves. Many exercises – whether they be mirrored reflections, inner child meditations, or simply open discussion have a proclivity for striking this nerve. The effect can be a shocking reminder that men’s work is, in fact, work. Emotional debt is the distance that we, as men, place between ourselves and reckoning with the emotional wounds that we accumulate as we grow up, through various means of escapism. This debt is built upon a series of “bad investments”: substance abuse, self-harm, suppression, seeking out co-dependence in a partnership, and so much more. For a gender that is so deeply imbued at a young age with the often self-destructive concepts of “man(ning) up” and “getting things done,” men are ironically terrible at taking accountability for healing our emotional wounds. In turn, this psychic self-mutilation (as described by Bell Hooks in The Will to Change), is projected upon others in our romantic, platonic, and professional relationships, and is a strong catalyst to the epidemic of male isolation.
So where does emotional debt come from?
I asked our most recent virtual men’s group cohort, the final group of 2023, to reflect on this question. One man, Mikky, profoundly noted:
“For myself, the denial of expression is born from a lack of safety.”
Many men might resonate with Mikky's words, but for those who don't, ask yourself: when you were a boy, what happened when you cried or showed emotions? What happened when someone; a parent, a sibling, hurt your feelings? What was the response from caretakers, from friends, when you express yourself beyond the confines of who you were told to be? Our society teaches men from a very young age that to express themselves is to be weak. Many parents will even refrain from comforting their infant sons when they cry, due to a misguided fear that they will develop an unhealthy attachment to their parents, and ultimately grow up “soft.” This perverted notion persists through toddler-hood; and soon, sadness becomes anger, resentment, and violence. Young boys mature around fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who refuse to cry in front of them, embrace them, or display tenderness (which is often confused for weakness). Some boys grow up with no male figure at all. The credo of nihilism is passed down from one generation to the next, often in the form of vile insult or savage exacerbation that is seared into the minds of so many of our young boys and men. When a boy is told to “man up,” he is really told to tone down his feelings, and emotional debt fills the space between.
This forces our boys to be callous, showing them that anger is the only acceptable emotion; an unsustainable dogma which teaches them that their emotions must serve an actionable purpose. In order to be valid and seen, their anger must be expressed through action: whether it be aggression, shouting, or physical violence. Feelings are not enough as they are. In fact, this may be the impetus behind school shooters – nearly all of whom are male. The lack of control, community, and instruments for emotional expression creates an emotional black hole that can only be satisfied by a grandiose act of “reclaiming” one’s power. Don’t believe me? Listen to Aaron Stark’s poignant story in the Man Enough Podcast in collaboration with StyleLikeU’s “What’s Underneath Masculinity” series, aptly titled “I Was Almost a School Shooter.” I find it so fascinating how quickly we will weaponize mental illness and use rhetoric such as “monster” and “freak” toward school shooters to subvert the discussion of the systematic ways in which we have failed them. This, of course, is not to say that the acts of terrorism committed by these individuals aren't horrific and inexcusable, but they are more predictable than the mainstream media gives them credit for.
How do we cope with emotional debt?
Interestingly, the things we are taught to value as men stem from a currency of external validation. That is, we deify both material items: cars, money, and designer clothes – as well as social “wins”, like job status or sexual conquest. There is a constant chase of something “more” in hopes that it will one day be enough. This is an antithesis to emotional fulfillment, and thus we seek to pay our emotional debts with an overly-inflated, valueless dollar. We don’t just fill our lives with worthless substance, we pit it against other men in an eternally-losing battle. The truth is, you’ll always lose this game. I liken it to my experience in medical school: it’s so easy to feel incompetent when someone else in the lecture hall has a better, faster answer to the professor’s question. This game of comparison is misdirected towards a single individual, rather than softened by the solidarity that everyone else in the lecture hall is just as lost as I am. And thus, it’s easy to feel like I don’t belong. Moreso, because I am pitted against every other man, there is a guarantee that every single man has something that I don’t. Not only are the goalposts constantly moved, but the opponent changes in parallel. Instead of celebrating the uniqueness of our peers, we are doomed to grieve our shortcomings through the lens of their successes.
The thought process is as follows:
Oh, he’s taller than me. Well, at least he’s not smarter than me.
He’s smarter than me too? There’s no way he’s stronger than me.
Wow, he can squat more than me? I bet I have more money than him.
He’s rich? I bet I can take him in a fight.
And so on…
We procure our significance off the backs of other men in an almost parasitic manner. This is because our value as men is determined by our perceived productivity (or as our capitalistic society defines productivity). And since our productivity is manifested into ownership of items and domain over social circumstance, we are conditioned to flaunt these “accolades” in an expectation of worship. However, none of these items are actually inherent to our being, so there will always exist a void that cannot be satiated by our ownership of them. Ask yourself this: if nobody else was around, would it really matter how many karats comprise the gold chain on your neck? In other words, as Jon Bellion puts it in his song New York Soul, pt. II:
“Money is not the key to wealth.”
What men really need to address this festering wound of emotional bankruptcy is community.
Unfortunately, in a world where men lack the skills to establish community or to navigate our wounds, we frequently belabor this emotional burden to our closest confidant, oftentimes a romantic partner. With 1 in 5 men reporting they have zero close friends, it’s unsurprising that men in heterosexual relationships tend to be deeply codependent on a spouse or partner. While emotional vulnerability is a sign of healthy intimacy, your partner should not be your sole emotional outlet, acting as a therapist. It is an unfair expectation which demands a romantic partner to inherit your emotional debt as their own.
Codependency enables several concerning issues for men, too: for one, these men will have nobody to confide in when their partner is abusive; or if they have concerns about the sustainability of their relationship. Even nuanced conversations about sexual health, which allow men to be better, more engaged partners, will not be had with as much liberty, for fear of shame or upsetting one’s partner. It goes beyond conversation, though: without a group of sensitive, compassionate men to embody non-sexual intimacy through hugging and other displays of affirmation, we will continue to associate these expressions with the act of sex, and thus only pursue them with our partners in times where we are really craving sex, or pursue sex when we are really craving emotional intimacy. This phenomenon may even explain why men become emotionally attached after sex (though this is admittedly a complex topic).
Other means of escaping emotional debt, and perhaps some of its greatest benefactors, are alcohol and addictive substances. Men are not only more likely to drink but also more likely to binge drink than women, which has tragic consequences such as motor vehicle accidents, chronic liver failure, and sexual risk and dysfunction; among many others. Many of these health outcomes further deepen our emotional debt, and using alcohol as a mechanism to cope with them unleashes a vicious cycle of self-induced emotional castration. Not surprisingly, then, liquor is synonymous with ‘manliness’ in American Media and beyond, to a laughable extent.
Dos Equis advertising campaign titled “The Most Interesting Man in the World.”
Not only is drinking seen as a way for men to detach from our circumstances, but also a way to detach from consequences and assert our masculinity.
What is the role of a men’s group in supporting men when it is time to “pay up?”
Human beings are social creatures. Throughout our evolution, community (or as it was previously known, tribal organization) has been a keystone principle for both physical survival and mental wellbeing. However, no two communities are the same – and this can be dangerous for socially-isolated men and boys just looking to fit in. Just ask Graham Finochio, who tells of his harrowing upbringing as a homeless teenager with nobody to turn to who was ultimately recruited to a neonazi organization in this fascinating episode of the Man Enough Podcast:
“So I was sleeping in a park in Huntington beach, and I had nothing to my name. I was like a long-haired, skinny, grungy, awkward kid. And this group of skinheads walked through the park. … I assumed they were going to jump me, but they didn’t. They invited me to a show, and through inviting me to a show there was a sense of community […] What really struck me was their posture. They were so proud, they were so boisterous, they were loud – they had all these aspects of masculinity that I […] did not. In a matter of six months I began modeling after that.”
Fortunately, Graham’s story isn’t just a melancholy epitaph of another boy lost to a failing system; the reformed skinhead turned feminist activist now uses his story to empower others to find communities to embrace them beyond divisions of hate. Lonely men and boys seeking to grapple with their emotional debt are often drawn to communities which seek to weaponize those feelings. Much more commonly, this premise specifically enables the violence against women and young, naive men exemplified by fraternity culture. Though not a new concept, fraternities use a similar framework touted by incel groups and white supremacist organizations, which is to seduce men in need of community, offer them solidarity through maladaptive coping mechanisms (such as alcohol abuse), and teach them to victimize themselves and find ‘brotherhood’ in antagonizing other social groups (often women and minority groups).
In contrast, there exists communities for men which offer loving and compassionate connection, accountability, and goal-setting to foster emotional skills in a safe and supportive environment. These spaces are invaluable to individuals who hope to address the mountains of suppressed emotion that burden them each day. In the words of Lewis Kendall, treasured friend and Content Director at HBC, as he thoughtfully reflects on his experience in our last 6-week men’s group of 2023:
“This group and men’s work in general has helped me start to unpack and pay off, little by little, some of that [emotional] debt. Leaning into the piled up emotions of my past, tending to the wounds of my childhood self, and generally releasing some of the pressure that has built up over years and years.”
The men’s groups and workshops we offer here at Hey Brother Co. operate with the mission of teaching men and boys to embody healthy masculinity, fully process emotions, embrace authenticity, and show up as compassionate, empathetic community leaders. Through exercises such as mirrored reflections, meditation, small group discussion and more, we can begin to redefine masculinity as an empowering tool for active change against the patriarchal script we’re handed at birth. We offer longitudinal engagements in the name of fostering connection and accountability, and continued communication within each cohort so that each man can continue to develop and deliver these practices into the world around them. Oftentimes, this call to action can be a challenge in itself – as the world outside of men’s groups still subscribes to the patriarchal ideologies of emotional mutilation and a looming call to domination.
This can be particularly frustrating for the men who are actively shedding these philosophies, like myself, and the women who have rejected it their whole lives but are subject to it nonetheless. There is a strong cognitive dissonance in carrying an anti-meritocratic mindset into an environment (like a place of employment) which operates under our hyper-competitive, patriarchal, capitalistic principles. As a medical student in a ranked curriculum, I am morbidly judged against the merit of my classmates. Most of the time, I have no choice but to participate in this paradigm, no matter how much I detest it.
A comic by Matt Bors depicting a man being scolded for critiquing an aspect of society whilst also participating in it.
In these moments, I am reminded of a key facet of men’s work, which is operating only under my own locus of control, and this is a lesson I model from my own experiences in our men’s groups. I may not be able to alter the chauvinistic tides of graduate level academia in a day, but I can personify compassion in my interactions with my peers, and display unconditional kindness to both those above and below me in the occupational hierarchy of medicine. I can bring breathwork to board meetings as a student representative, create space for those whose voices are spoken over, and exercise patience when addressing patient misunderstandings. I can acknowledge and withhold resentment from my superiors who are projecting their insecurity upon me when I make a mistake. Most importantly, especially as it relates to emotional debt, I can hold my own wellness as sacred as those for whom I took an oath, and hold myself accountable for the inevitable mistakes I make along the way. In so doing, I provide an example for those around me who would otherwise not believe an alternative script on masculinity exists.
To close, I offer you this: do not simply turn your back toward 2023 and set superfluous goals in the new year. Instead, offer an ear and listen to what your experiences in the past year have to teach you for 2024. Consciously examine the moments which brought you pain, and pay close attention to what you did in response to that pain. There are many ways to facilitate this practice: write a reflective letter of gratitude to your past self or a promising one to your future self, take these thoughts to your therapist, challenge your male friends to engage in emotionally-stimulating conversation, join a men’s group, or simply guide yourself through a breathwork ceremony as you navigate the feelings of 2023 and how they may pilot the fears of 2024.
Consider the following prompts in your ponderance:
What thought patterns are preventing me from real change?
What emotional debt did I accumulate in 2023?
How did I interact with these debts in damaging ways? Healthy ways?
Why do I turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms?
What communities can I engage with further to help me navigate my emotional debt?
Do not wash away the actions that haunted you in 2023, but do forgive yourself of them. Be kind to yourself, and take this call to action as an opportunity to be a better man. In 2024, we may want to join a gym, start a diet, or apply for a new job, but above all else, let’s love more.