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    Game Plan: A Man's Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness
    Game Plan: A Man's Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness
    Game Plan: A Man's Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness
    Ebook257 pages1 hour

    Game Plan: A Man's Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness

    By Alan Lyme, David J. Powell and Stephen Andrew

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    About this ebook

    If you're a man, get ready to unleash the hero inside, and if you're a woman, get ready to understand men like never before. This practical and provocative book is packed with the lessons your dad never taught you about living life to the fullest, free from addiction and other self-destructive behaviors. From "Growing up Male" to "Men and Their Children," Game Plan tells it the way only a man sees it and only as a man can hear it.

    David J. Powell, PhD, is president of the International Center for Health Concerns, Inc. and assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. He trains internationally on clinical supervision, family therapy, and men's issues in recovery. He is the author of Playing Life's Second Half: A Man's Guide for Turning Success into Significance.

    Alan Philip Lyme, LCSW, is clinical supervisor for the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment Grant Program in Georgia. Alan is a Motivational Interviewing trainer, an internationally certified clinical supervisor, and an internationally certified alcohol and drug counselor.

    Stephen R. Andrew, LCSW, is an international consultant and trainer. He serves as the chief energizing officer for Health Education & Training Institute in Portland, Maine. Stephen is a true visionary and is the creator of SpiritWind, a CD series for personal growth and recovery.


    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCentral Recovery Press
    Release dateNov 20, 2012
    ISBN9781937612047
    Game Plan: A Man's Guide to Achieving Emotional Fitness

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      Book preview

      Game Plan - Alan Lyme

      Section I: Being a Man

      One: An Environment of Risk

      What does it mean to be a man in the twenty-first century? To be a man in this millennium is to be in isolation. We are taught to be in competition with each other and to trust no one. We are expected to be sensitive to the needs of others. We are expected to provide for our families. How do we cope? Many cope by leading meaningless lives of desperation. Food, work, exercise, alcohol and other drugs, sex, sports, spending, religion, pornography, television, and the Internet are some of the ways we cope by avoiding the reality of our existence. Some men are fortunate enough to find support among their peers through social gatherings, church groups, or support groups. But for the majority, isolation is the key habit. When we isolate, we shelter ourselves from feeling. We cloak our emotions with superficiality—smile for the camera called life. Research on men’s issues yields the following data for the US population:

      The majority of children abused, neglected, and murdered are boys.¹

      Most of the children in foster care, shelters, and juvenile institutions are boys.²

      Seventy-five percent of student suspensions, expulsions, grade failures, and special education referrals go to boys, and school violence casualties and all other assault victims are included in this number.³

      Seventy-nine percent of suicides are boys/men.⁴

      Seventy-five percent of teenage suicides are boys.⁵

      For gay men, the rate of suicide is 1.5 to 2.5 times greater than for heterosexual men.⁶

      Seventy-two percent of the homeless are boys/men.⁷

      Ninety-three percent of prison inmates are men.⁸

      Ninety-nine percent of executed prisoners are men (since 1976, 1,264 men and 12 women).⁹

      Looking at these statistics compelled us to examine the underlying causes, as well as the ways every man—especially those in the grip of addiction and other life problems—is affected by those causes. Within moments of being born, males are often treated with less affection than females. Studies have shown that a newborn baby covered with a blue blanket will get touched less and will be spoken to in a firmer voice than the same baby in a pink blanket.¹⁰ Gender-stereotyping behavior on the part of adults, even those sensitive to gender issues, is endemic. This sets the stage for induction into the boy code, in which emotions need to be kept in check, violence is an acceptable response to emotional upset, self-esteem relies on power, and all feminine qualities must be rejected.¹¹ Boys may be starved for attention and put down as sissies if they cling and clamor for the closeness they need. Boys are traditionally taught to stuff all emotions through the often-heard retort, Boys don’t cry, or the more frightening threat, I’ll give you something to cry about. These early lessons teach them that it is not okay to show feelings, especially sadness or fear, so they stifle all emotion.

      Most men are conditioned to not feel or express pain, grief, or hurt. The feelings of love, joy, and excitement also can get numbed. Anger, though, seems to be permitted and encouraged. Anger is cultivated through team sports where the goal is to beat the opponent as severely as possible. Boys learn that men are expendable, a commodity readily traded for God and country. Many a five-year-old’s life goal is to become a soldier, to fight.

      As boys grow into teens they can easily become engulfed in a culture of cruelty, in which they are victims, perpetrators, or witnesses of daily violence and humiliation.¹² Growing up in New York City, David was exposed to violence in the schoolyard, often between boys fighting with each other, and on occasion, was mugged on the playground by other boys, having to fight his way out by hitting one of the boys with a golf club.

      Alan had similar experiences in England, where mobs of boys frequently clashed, violently attacking anyone they deemed unworthy, who supported a different team, spoke with a different accent, or had a different skin color.

      Stephen’s direct experience within the juvenile justice system brought him face-to-face daily with this culture of cruelty within peer and adult relationships.

      Boys are socialized to fear each other. This is the truest definition of male homophobia: the fear of males, which is rampant in our relationships with each other—that to be too close to another boy may leave a boy labeled as gay. In the maelstrom of puberty, such a label is social suicide. This creates a vacuum in which boys need emotional connection but may not have the social skills to obtain it in a healthy manner.¹³ Parental guidance during this period is often fragmented at best. Fathers are often absent, either physically through divorce or work, or emotionally through their own shortcomings. Mothers can be extremely protective or overly dependent. Some boys feel emotionally abandoned at a very early age. Few boys survive childhood without some form of physical or emotional trauma, resulting either from the aggression of their peers or from the emotional separation from their parents.¹⁴ Boys may learn to trust no one; instead, they should know how to take care of everything, how to fix everything.

      It is not surprising, then, that so many men seek comfort with alcohol and other drugs, and that for many that initial comfort becomes a physical addiction. The void created by the trauma of boyhood can be filled, even if temporarily, by chemical enhancement. Pain can be numbed, shyness can be masked, and anxiety can be tempered. The need for connection without intimacy can be met. But what happens when the substances stop working, when the consequences of using them become unbearable? The unthinkable act of asking for help can only be overshadowed by the inability to receive it when it is offered.

      Challenging Belief Systems: What Is It Like to Be Male?

      This is the dilemma: how can we teach men, who are socialized to be incapable of sustaining trust, that their only hope of relief is to trust and to allow themselves to become vulnerable with their peers? Since this is counterintuitive, the transition can be difficult. In essence, when men begin their journey of recovery and change, they are asked to challenge the very core beliefs they have lived by. In our work we ask the question, What is it like to be male? The answers invariably include the following: lonely; isolated; armor-plated; judged; seen as a threat to women, children, and each other; aggressive; expected to perform, provide, and protect. When compared to what we ask of men in treatment (to be vulnerable, share emotions, take risks, cooperate, believe, accept others’ ideas), it is easy to see how men could initially perceive treatment as threatening, if not impossible.

      Thus, we believe that when providing care to men, the first goal should be to create an environment in which they can feel safe enough to allow themselves to open up to each other. In a safe space, emotional movement can occur. In a care environment, this may require having an all-male staff with which clients may interact, thereby breaking the cycle of relying on women to meet emotional needs.

      There are five areas to address when helping men understand the how and why of their behavior. These areas, which will be explored in detail in some of the chapters that follow, are outlined here:

      1.Being a man: We look at our societal standards of real masculinity. Dovetailing with the work of Paul Kivel¹⁵, we examine the boxed-in stereotype that drives men’s beliefs about themselves, the roles that men are expected to fill, and the anxiety attached to those roles. We talk about the limitations of forcing oneself to fit inside the box, and the incredible social price paid by those who dare to challenge the boundaries.

      2.Men and their family of origin: We examine childhood messages and paint a picture of the dynamics that lead many men to a life of addiction and/or isolation. Where a man falls in his family lineage, the role of fathers in men’s lives, and how men can parent themselves if necessary are all addressed at length.

      3.Men and emotions: The emotion most commonly identified by men is anger. Anger is generally accepted and often expected from men in our society, yet when inappropriately expressed it is destructive to the fabric of our culture. The distinction between the emotion of anger and the action of aggression, which is often blurred by early modeling, is an important one. Rage is often an expression of that anger. The yearning for power and control translates to anger in interpersonal relationships. Normalizing anger, untangling it from rage, recognizing its emotional cousins, fear and shame, and opening a dialogue helps to begin the process of learning to express anger in a healthy

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