There is a particular kind of man who has organized his life around forward motion. He is good at it. He has been rewarded for it. The career has advanced. The house in the suburbs has been purchased. The children are in the right schools.
What the Commute Reveals
The commute is a useful metaphor because it is also a literal reality for many of the men I work with. The hours in the car are neither work nor home, neither professional nor personal, but a kind of suspended state between the two identities the man maintains. In the honest moments, the commute is also a place where the question he has been avoiding has room to surface.
The Optimization Trap
The men I work with in the East Bay suburbs are skilled optimizers. But optimization is a strategy for managing what is already known. What it cannot reach is the interior life, the part of a man that does not fit into a calendar or a five-year plan.
The Numbness That Looks Like Stability
One of the most common presentations I see in men from the East Bay professional community is functional numbness. The man is not in crisis. He is performing well at work, present enough at home. But underneath the stability is a flatness that the man has learned not to examine too closely. He has mistaken the absence of crisis for the presence of health.
What Life Telling Processing Offers
Life Telling Processing is a contemplative-archetypal approach to men's therapy. Its central premise is that the interior life is not a collection of problems to be managed but a story to be told, and that the telling of that story, honestly and with skilled companionship, is itself the healing.
The Permission to Arrive
What many of the men I work with are ultimately seeking is permission to arrive at their own interior life. All sessions are conducted via secure telehealth. A free 15-minute consultation is the first step.