For many years, expressions such as “swallowing cry” and “boy doesn’t cry” have been naturalized in homes and schools, shaping an ideal of masculinity associated with strength, independence and emotional resistance. Currently, the impacts of this education are already known: affective irresponsibility, difficulty dealing with the complexity of their own emotions and, consequently, worsening mental health.
Data from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that the suicide rate between men is about 2.3 times higher than among women. In high -income countries, the difference reaches over 3 to 1. In Brazil, a study published in public health notebooks reveals that, between 2000 and 2017, the suicide rate between men went from 6.5 to 11.3 per 100,000 inhabitants – almost four times the one registered among women in the same period.
For Ana Tomazelli, psychoanalyst and president of the Institute of Women’s Research & Studies (Ipefem), the scenario lights the warning to the need to review practices from childhood, especially among boys.
“Starting early is vital for any type of learning that demands ‘internal’ maturity, especially for boys who, since childhood, are pressured to ‘do not do drama’ or ‘act as a man,'” Tomazelli tells CNN. “These seemingly harmless and religious background phrases are daily injections of affective castration. The child understands that feeling is dangerous, and expressing feelings makes her vulnerable – or, worse, unwanted,” he adds.
For the psychoanalyst, emotional education in this context is an “antidote against dullness.” “Teaching a boy to say that he is afraid, that he was rejected or missing him is to offer him emotional freedom,” he says.
What is emotional education and why is it important?
Emotional education is the ability to identify, understand, appoint, express and regulate their own emotions – and recognize the emotions of others with empathy. Inspired by the studies of Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence” (1995), the term proposes that success in life – personal, professional and relational – is much more linked to our ability to deal with feelings and deliver regulated/appropriate emotional responses to the world than to our rationalization capacity.
“In practice, emotional education teaches us what to do with anger, how to deal with fear, how to position us without hurting each other,” explains Tomazelli. “But it is not an exclusive tool of ‘bad’ feelings: it also acts on the regulation of emotions understood as ‘good’, so that joy, love or enthusiasm does not steal us discernment, for example.”
According to the psychoanalyst, working on emotional education from childhood can improve relationships already in adulthood, avoiding behaviors that can lead to fragile or toxic bonds such as emotional abandonment, affective dependence, jealous explosions, control or absence of dialogue.
“Behaviors such as gastling, lack of liability, inability to apologize or recognize the impact of their own actions are often the result of a childhood without space for emotional elaboration,” he says.
“To educate an emotionally child is therefore to form a wider adult, more conscious, less cruel – with others and with oneself,” he adds.
“Red Flags” and affective irresponsibility are related to the lack of emotional education
Recently, a series of women’s reports about bad experiences in relationships, especially in heterosexuals, has been taking account of social networks. Many list “red flags“(or” red flags “), characteristics and personalities considered warning signs for emotional problems or affective irresponsibility: Inability to talk about feelings, apologize or recognize errors, lack of empathy with the pain of others or reactions disproportionate to criticism and frustrations are some examples.
“The viral phenomenon of the ‘male red flags’ – reports of disappearing men who do not know how to keep their partners, or repeat cycles of betrayal and abandonment – is largely the symptom of a society that taught men to dominate, not to feel,” says Tomazelli.
According to the psychoanalyst, the affective irresponsibility seen in this history is cultural, the result of a masculinity that associates the bond of weakness, care for submission, listens to the loss of power.
“Men who have not undergone emotional literacy become often affective but illiterate empathic seductive. They are skilled at conquering, but fragile in sustaining intimacy,” he says.
Can adult men be emotionally educated?
Emotional repression already in adulthood can be reversed, but it is still a challenge. A survey conducted by the Idea Institute showed that 80% of men never did, although 74% report anxiety and 83% mention stress.
“The vast majority of men have never been taught to express emotions with words – only with actions (sometimes violent, sometimes silent). Opening space for this learning in adulthood requires courage, context and access,” he says.
“Not everyone will seek therapy. But it is possible to start with conversation wheels between friends, readings, listening practices, active paternity groups, workshops with men, or even influencers that deal with these topics responsibly,” he says.
Companies that have invested in male emotional health programs report positive impacts. Listening groups, lectures, training and self -care incentive actions have improved engagement and organizational climate.
“The most effective is when they realize that emotional intelligence improves everything: marriage, paternity, work, mental health and even sleep, but it is also about giving up small everyday privileges – and that, nobody wants,” he says.
For experts, transformation depends on a joint effort – parents, educators, leaders and society as a whole. “The masculinity of the future can, and must, be plural, sensitive and integral. Creating free boys to be whole is to pave the way for free men to be human,” he concludes.
