HMC Glossary

Many men have little interest in examining childhood experiences because doing so can feel overly psychological, self-indulgent, or contrary to the familiar expectation to put hardship behind us and move on.

Moving forward is valuable. But we move more freely when we understand what we are carrying with us. Childhood experiences can continue influencing adult relationships whether or not we pay attention to them. Looking backward therefore has value when it helps us live differently in the present—not when it keeps us living in the past.

The past helps explain us. It does not have to define us.

Many boys grow up learning how to solve problems, not how to name emotions. Alexithymia is not a character flaw or a lack of caring. It is a skill that was never fully developed—and one that can be learned at any age.

You cannot express what you cannot recognize.

Anger has a particular place in many boys' and men's emotional lives. Boys often learn that anger is a more acceptable masculine emotion than confusion, sadness, insecurity, fear or hurt. As a result, different emotional experiences may eventually be expressed through the same familiar channel: anger.

This does not mean that men's anger is necessarily disguising another emotion, nor that anger itself is a problem. Sometimes a man is angry because something genuinely deserves his anger. An important skill is learning to distinguish between anger that communicates something important and anger that has become an automatic response.

Healthy masculinity makes room for anger while expecting responsibility for how it is expressed. Strength is not demonstrated by never becoming angry, nor by allowing anger to control our behavior. It lies in being able to recognize anger, understand what is underneath or behind it, and express it firmly when necessary, without losing control of ourselves or unnecessarily harming others.

Managing anger well is not about eliminating it, but having more choice in how and what we do with it.

Many men were encouraged to stay quiet, "handle it," or wait until frustration boils over. Healthy assertiveness means remaining loyal to your own values and needs while treating other people with respect. Healthy relationships are built neither on silence nor on explosions, but on honest conversations held early, calmly, and respectfully.

Silence rarely protects a relationship for long.

Attachment is not about blaming parents or explaining away adult behavior. It is about understanding the emotional habits we developed early in life so that we can choose which ones to keep and which ones to change.

Your first relationships shape much of you, but they do not have to define who you are tomorrow.

For some men, setting boundaries can be difficult precisely because they want to be good partners and fathers. Wanting to please, provide, protect, or avoid unnecessary conflict can gradually become difficulty saying “no,” “enough,” “I disagree,” or “this does not work for me.” Frustration is then contained rather than communicated, sometimes until it emerges as withdrawal or anger.

Parenting makes the importance of balance particularly clear. Excessive rigidity can become authoritarian; difficulty setting limits can become permissiveness. Children need warmth and responsiveness alongside clear, age-appropriate expectations and the experience of sometimes hearing “no.” The same principle of balancing closeness with limits applies, in different ways, to adult relationships.

Setting boundaries well requires self-respect: believing that our views, needs, and limits deserve a place in the relationship while recognizing that the other person's do too. It is therefore not the opposite of being agreeable, loving, or interdependent. Healthy relationships require both the capacity to accommodate others and the capacity to hold our ground when something genuinely matters.

Clear boundaries make healthy relationships possible.

Many boys grow up learning to communicate effectively when there is a task to accomplish, a problem to solve, information to exchange, or a position to defend. They may receive considerably less practice talking about uncertainty, emotional needs, disappointment, vulnerability, or what is happening emotionally inside a relationship.

This does not mean that men are naturally or essentially poor communicators. Communication is largely a set of skills, and skills can be learned and improved throughout life. For men, becoming a better communicator is the opposite of abandoning directness, independence, or a preference for solving problems. It means expanding the range of ways available to communicate—knowing when to solve, when to ask, when to explain, when to listen; when to say no more, when to let go, and when to allow ourselves to depend on another person.

In close relationships especially, being understood matters, but understanding the other person matters just as much. Good communication requires enough confidence to speak honestly and enough openness to listen. By listening openly, we often discover that we may not have understood everything correctly.

Good communication helps us solve problems in ways that allow us to grow together.

Many people think communication is the key to good relationships. More accurately, it is the ability to navigate conflict well. Relationships rarely end because two people disagree. More often, they begin to fall apart when one or both partners no longer feel emotionally safe, respected, or heard. Good conflict resolution skills help prevent exactly that.

The goal of conflict is not victory. It is understanding and progress.

Understanding our history can help boys and men take greater responsibility for their future without blaming themselves for where they started. If our early experiences were difficult, we may simply have more holes in the sidewalk to recognize and walk around than someone who had a more secure beginning.

The aim is not to become completely different from our fathers, mothers, or caregivers. It is to become more conscious about what we carry forward and what we choose to leave behind.

We inherit a starting point, not a predetermined destination.

We all use defense mechanisms—they are part of being human. The goal is not to eliminate them but to recognize them. The more aware we become of our automatic reactions, the more freedom we have to choose healthier responses. 

Awareness turns automatic reactions into intentional choices.

Dependency can be particularly complicated for men. Boys often grow up learning that competence, independence, self-reliance, and being in control are signs of strength. These qualities can serve men well. But they can also make depending on another person feel uncomfortable or even threatening to one's sense of masculinity.

For some men, personal history adds another layer. Previous rejection, unreliable relationships, or other painful experiences can make closeness difficult. Opening up, sharing uncertainty, trusting another person, asking for support, and allowing someone else to take the lead all require giving up some control. A man may therefore be very good at being dependable while finding it much harder to depend on others.

Intimacy requires both capacities. We need to be able to carry our own weight, but close relationships also require moments when we do not hold the wheel.

Strength includes knowing when to stand on our own and when it is safe to rely on someone else.

Depression in boys and men may sometimes be less recognizable. Distress may be expressed less through obvious sadness and more through irritability, anger, withdrawal, emotional shutdown, or seeking distraction and intensity rather than acknowledging the possibility of being depressed.

No single behavior necessarily means that a man is depressed. But when such behaviors appear alongside persistent changes in mood, pleasure, energy, sleep, relationships, or functioning, it is worth looking beneath the behavior rather than simply judging it.

Many men are accustomed to enduring difficulty and continuing to function. Resilience is valuable, but there is a difference between carrying a difficult period and gradually disappearing inside it. Recognizing depression and seeking support when needed is often what allows strength to return.

Depression doesn't always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like simply getting through the day

Many men who describe their childhood as "fine" later realize that what was missing was not food, safety, or education—but emotional connection, interest, warmth and emotional support. Sometimes the deepest childhood wounds come not from what happened, but from what never happened.

What is missing in childhood can echo throughout adulthood

Emotional regulation is not about suppressing emotions or "staying tough." It is about creating enough space between feeling and reacting to choose the response that best serves you and the people you care about.

You cannot control every emotion. You can learn to control your response.

Emotional volatility is not a sign of weakness or "bad character." It often reflects stress, unresolved emotional pain, or limited opportunities to learn healthy emotional regulation. The good news is that these skills can be developed.

Strong emotions are normal. Living at their mercy is no

Gaslighting is not a male behavior or a female behavior—it is a human behavior. Anyone can engage in it, consciously or unconsciously. Recognizing the pattern is not about assigning blame; it is about protecting healthy communication, spotting the dynamic and refusing to play along,  and preserving each person's sense of reality.

Healthy relationships help us trust ourselves—not the other way around.

Internal locus of control fits naturally with valuable masculine qualities of agency, independence, responsibility, and self-direction. But genuine independence does not mean needing nobody. It means developing a sufficiently stable inner base that our wellbeing is not entirely dependent on other people's approval, behavior, or choices.

In relationships, this means asking less “How do I make the other person change?” and more “What is mine to understand, change, accept, confront, or leave?” We cannot control life's conditions. We can become better at deciding how we meet them.

The world gives us reality. Our agency begins with what we do with it.

Intimacy can be a particular challenge for many boys and men. Many men desire closeness while having received relatively little guidance or modeling for how to create it. Independence, emotional control, competence, and self-sufficiency are familiar territory; revealing uncertainty, dependence, fear, or emotional need may be much less so.

Part of the challenge is that intimacy depends less on doing and more on being. Men are often comfortable expressing care by solving problems, providing, protecting, helping, or doing things together. These are meaningful forms of connection. But deeper intimacy sometimes asks us to stop doing—to remain present, listen, reveal ourselves, receive care, and allow another person to know us without immediately taking control of the situation.

This is the paradox of intimacy: closeness requires giving up some of the protection that distance and control provide. We become more deeply connected not by presenting only our strongest selves, but by gradually trusting another person with more of who we actually are.

Intimacy grows when we allow ourselves to be open, to listen, to be seen, and to be accepted as we are.

Projection is one reason self-awareness is so important. Sometimes what bothers us most about another person tells us something important about ourselves. That does not mean our perceptions are always wrong—but it is worth asking where they come from.

Sometimes the mirror we need is the person standing in front of us.

Resilience has traditionally been valued in boys and men through endurance, toughness, courage, competence, and the ability to carry on. These remain genuine strengths. But resilience is broader than simply tolerating pain or refusing help. Sometimes resilience means adapting, asking for support, changing direction, or allowing another person to help us regain our footing.

Resilience also offers an important perspective on adversity and trauma. Difficult experiences can have lasting effects, but they do not determine a person's future. Rather than focusing only on what has been damaged, resilience also asks: What remains intact? What can this man already do? Who can he rely on? What abilities, relationships, responsibilities, values, and sources of meaning can he strengthen?

Resilience is not about being untouched by hardship. It is about using what we have—and building what we still need—to move through it and develop.

At the Healthy Masculinity Center, we view self-awareness as one of the foundations of healthy masculinity. It allows men to move beyond living primarily according to external expectations about how a man "should" think, feel, or behave. A man who understands himself is less driven by impulse, fear, or the need for external validation. Instead, he is better able to make choices that are consistent with his values, his relationships, and the kind of man he wants to become.

Across many philosophical and contemplative traditions, including Eastern meditation practices, cultivating self-awareness has long been viewed as a path toward greater wisdom and freedom. Psychology has reached a similar conclusion. Understanding ourselves more deeply does not eliminate life's challenges, but it often helps us respond to them with greater clarity, intention, and authenticity.

You cannot change what you do not recognize.

Shame has particular significance in the lives of boys and men because masculine worth is often associated with competence, strength, status, independence, sexual acceptance, and the ability to cope. The cultural ideal can sometimes resemble a James Bond standard: competent, confident, desirable, fearless, and always in control. Few men can consistently live up to such expectations. Failure, rejection, helplessness, dependence, or public humiliation can therefore strike not only at what a man has done, but at his sense of himself as a man.

An important counterweight to shame is self-compassion: learning to judge ourselves less harshly for who we are, what we have or have not accomplished, and the mistakes we have made. This does not mean abandoning standards or responsibility. It means accepting that imperfection, failure, and vulnerability are part of being human. Comparing ourselves constantly with other men—their success, status, appearance, relationships, or achievements—can easily feed shame. Comparison is natural, but becoming less governed by it allows us to develop a more stable sense of our own worth.

We grow when we can face what we are ashamed of without allowing it to define who we are.

For some men, trauma carries an additional burden of shame. Feeling frightened, overwhelmed, unable to function as before, or no longer fully in control can conflict with expectations to remain strong, capable, self-reliant, and simply “man up.” A man may therefore struggle not only with the effects of what happened, but also with judging himself for having been affected by it.

At the Healthy Masculinity Center, we view trauma as one chapter in a man's story, not the whole story. Acknowledging its effects can help us understand reactions that might otherwise feel confusing or shameful. But understanding trauma should ultimately provide greater freedom in the present—not turn the past into a permanent identity.

Growth often comes from acknowledging the past without allowing it to determine the future.

Trust becomes especially difficult at life's uncertain crossroads: Should I trust this person or protect myself? There is no formula that always gives the correct answer. Sometimes experience and gut feelings deserve attention; sometimes closeness requires taking a manageable risk.

Trust is also something we build. In relationships, we become more trustworthy when there is as much alignment as possible between what we think and feel, what we say, and how we act.

For men who recognize that they have "trust issues," self-awareness matters. Distrusting everyone may lower risks and protect against disappointment, but it can also repeatedly close the door on friendship, intimacy, love, and support. The goal is therefore not simply to trust more, but to become better at deciding whom to trust, with what, and how far.

Trust grows through experience: enough caution to protect ourselves, and enough openness to let trustworthy people in.

Many men grow up believing vulnerability means sharing weakness, doubt, or loss of control. In reality, vulnerability is often an act of confidence and mental courage. It is not about sharing everything with everyone—it is about knowing when openness serves the relationship and choosing it intentionally.

Relational strength includes the ability to be authentic.