Anyone who knows me knows I’ve always been a competitive person. Some of that certainly comes from my experiences in sports growing up, especially being raised in a highly competitive wrestling town in Pennsylvania that treasures its local team like my grandmother treasures her old photo albums. The rest of it, I believe, can be chalked up to the many social and psychological factors that encapsulate the title of this article. While I’ve learned to value this competitive nature by harnessing some of the positives it’s brought to my life, it took years to understand the pressure I put on myself. Today, as a licensed mental health counselor and owner of Blue Skies Brain Health, I’ve come to realize that the vast majority of men I’ve worked with feel a similar type of pressure in their lives. Where does this pressure come from? Why are we constantly feeling like nothing we do is good enough?

Let’s dive in. First off, it’s important to understand how our brains learn to think. How we think is learned over the course of our lifetime, but is especially malleable in our childhood. When we use a certain way of thinking over and over, those neural pathways grow especially strong in our brain. So what kind of thinking was used over and over in our childhoods that led to all this pressure we put on ourselves? Somewhere along the line we were clearly telling ourselves that what we were doing was not good enough. It all starts with how we received love and learned to process our emotions.

A phrase that always rings in my head from my childhood is “suck it up!” It always felt so normal hearing that from my dad, grandfather, coaches, uncles. I don’t hate that phrase – I actually find a lot of value to this day in being able to persevere during hard times and feel comfortable gritting my way through when life requires some grit from me. What I don’t like about the phrase is that it doesn’t leave room for feeling validated or supported in your emotional experience, and does not allow for healthy emotional processing. This was the piece I was always missing. Rather than being upset and having your internal voice tell you “it doesn’t matter, you have to push through” or “this doesn’t affect me,” honoring your own emotions may sound like “I feel really upset and I’m allowed to feel upset – let me process this, understand where this is coming from, and have a positive response to this emotion.”

Where does this “suck it up” culture come from in the first place? Survival. My grandparents were born in the Great Depression Era and, knowing what we now know about mental health, their brains were constantly living in survival mode. When your brain is in the “fight-or-flight” survival state, there is no room for emotional processing. Now I wasn’t there, but I could imagine that in 1930 when you have a household of 5+ kids with little to no money and little to no hope – there’s probably some yelling and “tough love” that goes on. They were surviving but there was no space to sit back and process their feelings in a healthy way. Guess what? The tough love that my grandparents received became wired in their brains and was then passed down to my parents when they were growing up. While my parents had more and more space to process their own emotions over the course of their lives, they still passed down some of this “tough love” to me and my brother. It’s not their fault and I love them dearly. And, quite frankly, having this broader understanding allows me to love them even more.

But when I didn’t have this understanding? I felt not good enough when I wasn’t holding the flashlight in quite the right spot. I felt not good enough when I didn’t achieve what my brother achieved. I felt not good enough when I lost a wrestling match (and cried hysterically when it all bubbled over). And that made me feel weak because men don’t cry. You can see how the brain starts to wire for some of these thoughts. Once the brain is wired this way it’s easy for it to keep wiring this way. In my teenage years I felt not strong enough when my peers hit puberty before me. I felt not attractive enough when I got broken up with. When adulthood came? I felt not smart enough when peers were making more money than me. I felt not lovable enough when others had long-term partners and I didn’t. I felt not entertaining enough when I hadn’t yet found my core social circle. And I definitely felt not good enough when what I saw on social media made it all look so easy. You get the idea.

So men, what does the “not good enough” epidemic look like in our lives? It could look like getting defensive when your partner asks you to do something, working way too many hours to prove your worth professionally, becoming obsessive over physical appearance (where are my gym bros at? – yup, that was me, too), people-pleasing and not saying “no” to plans, jealousy towards other men, reacting with anger in moments of shame, and maybe even avoiding your feelings with substances, screens, or sex. All of this is rooted in not receiving love in healthy ways as a kid. That doesn’t mean your parents don’t love you – it just means that maybe you received more reprimands or punishment when you did the wrong thing rather than “atta boy’s” and “I love you’s” to reward positive behavior.

You’re a man but you’re also a human. Humans have emotions. Stop acting like you don’t. For healthier emotional processing, start by naming your emotions: I feel hurt, I feel rejected, I feel shameful about my behavior. Try to do this especially when you’re feeling angry. Anger is just the mask we put on when we have other things we’re feeling because anger is one of the few emotions we were programmed to view as acceptable for a man to express. Next, practice self-compassion. You’ll need to reprogram your inner voice to have more self-compassion. Work towards noticing when the voice in your head is being really harsh and, instead, try speaking to yourself like how you’d speak to someone you love. Along with self-compassion, it’s very important that you interrupt the loop of overworking or overperforming. Ask yourself: “Am I doing this to feel good enough or does it truly serve me?” Then, replace this attempt to be perfect with presence instead. Take an hour break to do something that brings you joy with no outcome involved. Know that taking this break will allow you to be even more present and focused when you return. Say no to plans with friends when you’re feeling tired. Then, the next time you’re feeling social, know that taking that break to recharge is what will allow you to feel even more present and connected to your friends.

In other words, gentlemen, more isn’t always better. I’d rather have one delicious, perfectly ripe apple to eat than 10 mangled, bruised-up apples. Don’t let your brain’s childhood programming lead you to a personal life, work life, love life, and social life that are all bruised-up, mangled apples. Less is more, give yourself grace, and recognize the pressures that lead you to your current way of functioning. I assure you, with a little reprogramming – there is a happier, calmer, and more fulfilling way to live this life. Talking to a therapist can be a great way to start reprogramming and know you’re headed in the right direction. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you need help. If it does feel that way – this, too, is just outdated programming from generations past. All seeing a therapist means is that you care about the optimal functioning of your brain and, consequently, your life.

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