This week, I attended a workshop on what science is figuring out about the adolescent male brain. It was a good place to get some affirmation about what I have experienced in working with young men, and also to think about my male brain...
I took a lot of notes. They are kind of a jumble, but then, that is the brain at work:
Inter generational wounds
We carry what our fathers couldn't resolve in their lives
Coping mechanisms
Self medication
Violence to others
Violence to self
- Treatment takes away a coping mechanism and leaves one more vulnerable
Processing
What feelings do I have?
What did I learn?
What did I learn about me?
(We all need to process)
- What you don't know about what is inside you is toxic
There is no such thing as an unmotivated thing
We use an idea, or a tactic to survive, as a screen
Speech is not initially connected to emotion. For men, talking about feelings releases cortisol, the highest stress hormone. For females, a bonding chemical is released. Female: speech and emotion centers are connected at puberty. Men, never.
Men have to find a label, a second language, to talk about emotion and feeling.
For men, writing thus helps to safely express feelings. A bit detached, safely.
Women: speech centers are wired to sexual arousal. Men: no. So, women connect their speech centers in their brain to both emotion and sexual arousal. They are well connected, but men are not. Thus, it is hard for men to talk about their emotions and sex.
Disconnectors
Men
Sex
Alcohol
Women
Don't have these disconnectors
So, men are really good at disconnecting!
Relationships
40% of men have genetic emotional disconnect chemical
This contributes to short term relationships.
- Our culture has no rite of passage into manhood. Yet, our young men want and need the following elements:
Male box
You live here
The 4 walls-glued together by shame
- Feelings and needs
Don't have them yourself, so there is no me
Cut off self and others
- Competition
Everyone, all the time
No room for you
- Responsibility
Shame if you don't
- Sex and relationship
I am not important
Inside: a process, a highway
Loneliness to isolation to pain to rage
Rage is not necessarily violence to self or others
It is a fire, pressure needing to be released
Common response to rage
- Self medication
- Violence
We need to de-shame the release of rage
Young men are looking for a place in society, and to be themselves. Aren’t we all? What does our culture provide for them to get to that place? When young men act out, when they are violent, and self medicate, what are they really telling us? And, how do we respond?
Elements of male life and “treatment”
- Tribe
- Elders mentors
- Sacred text - the rules for being a good man
- Ritual/initiation
- Play
Treatment needs male focused curriculum
Staff training and selection
(Youth gangs provide these basic needs)
Male Treatment Processes
- Kinesthetic (movement) learning
- Para pathetic counseling (motion, spacial) counseling (not traditional venue)
- Action love (non verbal)
- Competition and challenge
- Writing to reflect and process
- De shame, respect, pride
- Aggression nurturance
- Confrontation (stand my ground, earning respect)
Our educational system has been designed to provide factory workers for the Industrial Age (assembly line work, structured, orderly, hierarchical labor). Yet, the system pays little attention to all learning styles, to the developmental stages of the male brain, and how we learn and communicate.
We don’t honor young men, and we don’t apply what we know about ourselves and our brains in fashioning a society that is embracing and welcoming.
I came away with some answers, and with some more questions, and a lot more to think about.
The journey continues...
Neal Lemery, April 6, 2013
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