I don’t know how else to describe it, but all my male friends and family are very unemotional. Not in the sense that they don’t feel anything, but that they are a lot better at handling them and I feel like I’m not. I’ve tried meditation, therapy, healthy eating and a better sleep schedule but nothing works. I still anger and get upset at the smallest things and I feel like I’m less masculine than my friends. Im even known as the super emotional guy in the group and they often tease me about it, which makes things worse. My family constantly talk down to me as I don’t work out much and am very thin and short while my younger bros are jacked and tall. I don’t know what to do and really needed to get this off my chest. Thank you.
You’re good bro. Having emotional depth means you are capable of a larger spectrum of experiences that other men can’t relate. Embrace it, because you can feel a level of joy looking at a sunset or exhilaration driving a sports car on a track or extasy eating a perfect steak, at higher orders of magnitude more than other men.
Imagine the difference between us and you is that you are straight up raw dogging everything, while everyone else feels muted as if covered by a condom.
Epic response bro! Thanks. Its fun to think of it like that, like I’m living a more raw unfiltered life than most, I guess.
Dude, you know, killing an entire town because you couldn’t wait in a line to get your milk like everybody else is not entirely a healthy thing, nor any of your “health” pipes are.
Jokes aside, your original post gives me a feeling that the very idea of not suppressing your emotions all of the time for the sake of masculinity is not yours, really. You mentioned your friends and family, who do seem to exert the macho behavior in unhealthy ways.
Get in terms with yourself first and foremost, because you’re the person you spend most of your time with one way or another. Allow yourself to feel anything and carefully analyze when and why you feel, then try to understand whether you want to have that kind of reaction to things at all. Personally, I have always found honest writing helpful, because it makes you go through things in details, which makes it invaluable when dealing with emotions and reactions.
Also, being constantly talked down to or annoyed or belittled or simply experiencing any kind of stress is a very prominent contributing factor to feeling like you’re not right. In some cases, it may help to find another group of people to regularly communicate with, finding comfort in some different pattern of behavior, one that makes you feel good and like you belong. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to ditch other groups - just make sure you experience the opposite of what depresses you on a regular basis. I can’t find any examples, but the Internet is surely full of understanding and caring people that you can probably try and bond with to have a good time together, with your thoughts being really far away from anything that makes you feel like you’re “not masculine enough”.
Lastly, try your best to calmly persevere when it makes sense to. Suggesting a person to do some sports for the sake of their own benefit is one thing, which you absolutely can politely decline if you don’t care because you’re the one living with the consequences, but making a person feel uncomfortable because of the emotional range they experience is plainly moronic (again, unless the person really needs some help, but shaming is no help).
Life isn’t static. Who knows, maybe you’ll manage persuade everyone around you to be more mature and welcoming and understanding, or even notice yourself changing and becoming in more direct control of your emotions, ending up chuckling looking back at your today’s self - I know I did.
So, cheer up, Dude. You seem like you got this, and believe in you.