This article was first published in the December 2025 edition of Counselling Matters, the members’ e-zine by the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society.
Who is this man?
A year ago, I wrote an article for Counselling Matters about my personal experiences as a 39-year-old male trainee counsellor on placement. I had completed 30 client hours, all online, and all with men. Since then, I have completed my placement, qualified as a fully-fledged person-centred counsellor with over 100 client hours completed, and, much to my malaise, turned 40. My clients remained exclusively men, both cisgender and transgender and of various orientations, ages and backgrounds.
In the year since writing the first article, much has happened. I continued attending the Men’s Campfire Supper when I could make it, I spoke at Loughborough University’s “Voices of Diversity: Why we need International Men’s Day” event as a panellist, and I joined the MenWalkTalk charity as a volunteer walk leader. I was interviewed by Denise Coles from the University EDI team for a podcast episode on the subject of “Men’s Kindness” in anticipation of International Men’s Day 2025, when I will also be leading a one-off men’s “walk and talk” group. It’s been a busy year!
I also lost several close friendships, most (but not all) with men. Men whom I had trained with for four years. As a man, a therapist, talking about my experiences working with male clients through their stories, these losses hit me hard. It would have been incongruent of me to not reflect on my part in these friendships ending; after all, I had been the one to remove myself from each relationship. I encountered boundaries I didn’t know I had with each person and, for a time, I was willing to overlook these limits because I loved each person and friendship in a way that I valued deeply.
I began questioning my approach to friendship. I began thinking I was the archetypal man we think of when asked “what does masculinity mean to you?”. Aggressive. Dismissive. Judgemental. Unforgiving. As I pondered these “masculine” traits, I began encountering my own arguments against them. In many ways, I refuse to be “boxed in”; I can be aggressive, I can be dismissive, judgemental, unforgiving… but no single characteristic, or combination thereof, defines me. I have capacity for such richness of emotion, thought and behaviour that trying to even identify the most dominant of these characteristics in me felt wrong. Let alone trying to attach them to the label of “masculine”.
Nope. This isn’t how I see myself. Hang on… it’s not how I see men. It’s not how I see anyone, when I look truthfully and deeply…
Joy division.
We live in a time of powerful men seemingly striving to divide and conquer societies all over the world. Men have always been the overall “winners” in western society, forming the vast majority of governments, oligarchs and influential holders of power. Men have prospered at the expense of every other demographic. But this isn’t the full story. Not by a long shot.
We can carve the human demographical cake in an almost infinite number of ways, each producing interesting insights. For example, in my introduction to this article, I chose to highlight the ways in which my clients identified in different aspects of their life. These aspects of self are, to a greater or lesser extent, important to both the individuals themselves and to others in different ways. However, the aspect of their collective identities that I consistently focus on is that they are men.
The Person-Centred Approach is wonderfully elegant in allowing us to focus on the individuality and phenomenological experience of each human in front of us. But in writing this article, I found difficulty in asking myself questions such as “how do I explore masculinity as part of identity in my therapy room?” or “have I found specific approaches, techniques, or styles that resonate more effectively with male clients?”.
What have I actually experienced that might be unique, or at least more pertinent, to men?
I began questioning whether my lack of client work with women had actually made me less able to answer these questions, as I had nothing to orientate my experiences around. And then it struck me. For me, the fundamental problem might be comparison and orientation around a “norm”. These concepts and practices are hugely useful in identifying gaps in equality and equity, needs specific to particular groups of people, and even more shrewd purposes like marketing. However, we risk losing our ability to see the human in front of us, playing into the corrosive agenda at play in the world today; an agenda of division, vilification and discrimination. Rogers’ theoretical framework invites us to adopt a “way of being” that allows us to prize a human for the beautiful, unique creatures we all are.
Men are, unequivocally, the majority of perpetrators of violent crime. They have started nearly every war in history. They are the main beneficiaries of the maintenance of capitalism and the Patriarchy. But not all men. In fact, not most men. Men, as individuals, are just as much ensnared by the system as any other group, unwittingly conditioned into the roles that benefit those in power. This does not in any way excuse the attitudes, behaviours and actions of men (or anyone) that oppress, control or attack. It does, however, go some way to understanding. And if we are ever to tackle the problems men both cause and face, surely we have to start with understanding?
So, in attempting to answer the questions above, here’s what I’ve found in my, to date, short career experience with men as clients:
I strive to offer the “way of being” Rogers described in the Person-Centred Approach. I make, and keep, psychological contact with the client. I sit in relation with the client, recognising their struggles and the part my authentic self plays in that specific relationship. I strive to suspend any judgement I make about the client based on what they offer me, offering them the safety to be, and show me, the fullness of who they are without reciprocity. I offer deep empathic understanding, not only of the world they’re explicitly communicating to me, but my experience of them in their relationship with me. And I offer back my experience of them as truly as I can, empathically working with where they are in relation to me.
The folly of essentialism.
I have moved on from my first article in many ways. My short experience in the counselling world, but significant and wholly relevant experience in the world of being human, has taught me that producing generalisations and correlations is a mixed blessing. The insights can be rich and useful. They can also stereotype, marginalise and devalue individual humans that don’t really fit in. Essentialism lies at the heart of humanity in some ways; it allows us to perceive threat and safety, choose our friends and enemies, and apportion resources and penalties. We’re hardwired to identify patterns and apply judgement in order to survive a dangerous world. However, in the civilised world we have attempted to build for our truly awesome species, I believe we need a framework upon which to truly see and accept each other. That is, if a more harmonious coexistence is indeed our aim. Carl Rogers was, in my view, way ahead of his time in offering us this framework in the Person-Centred Approach.
See me for who I am.
So, what do men need in the therapy room? The same as everyone else; to be seen, heard, understood, accepted and prized for the human they are. They don’t need to be typecast, stereotyped or pathologised in the counselling relationship. My first article is an important step on my journey to recognising the power of, and respect due to, the concept of phenomenology. It’s a step that I deeply value, because I can see my own journey in black and white.
What I believed and wrote isn’t untrue, but it isn’t the whole truth; meeting men where they are is a statement I stand by as critical for engaging in effective therapy. But I believe more deeply in the power of applying Rogers’ framework as a way of allowing for infinite nuance and bespoke approaches to suit the needs of men.
See me for who I am.
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