What Every Man Should Know Before Starting Therapy (Top CBT Therapist)

Being a good therapist isn’t just about technique. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing how to hold space without flinching, how to challenge without shaming, and how to stay steady when someone finally tests whether you’ll leave as everyone else did.

In this episode, licensed therapist Timothy sits down with trauma clinician Bianca Thomas for a raw, deeply grounded conversation. The discussion centres around men in therapy, gender dynamics in the clinical room, and why so many men struggle to feel safe opening up. Together, they unpack what actually helps men heal and where the mental health field still falls short.

You’ll hear us break down:

• Why do men test female therapists? How boundary-pushing, sexual comments, and humour are often safety bids, not disrespect.
• Vulnerability vs. emotional collapse: Why men fear that “opening up” means losing control, and what healthy vulnerability actually looks like.
• The gender gap in clinical training: How modern therapy education often overlooks male socialization and leaves clinicians underprepared to work with men.
• What builds real safety in the room? Directness, credibility, humour, and consistency.
• Rupture and repair: Why conflict in therapy isn’t failure, but one of the most powerful healing tools when handled well.
• Sex, shame, and silence: How sexual dynamics show up in therapy, and why avoiding them does more harm than naming them.
• Why do men need other men? The role of community and “me too” moments in helping men finally seek support.

We stay with the pressure men carry every day, the pull between connection and self-protection, between showing up and staying guarded. This conversation doesn’t promise quick wins or clean solutions. It offers something more useful: honesty about what men actually need to heal, grow, and stay in the room.

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Transcript

Tim: 0:00

So how do you navigate that? Like guys come into your office, what do they tend to avoid with you that they maybe wouldn't with a guy in the room?

Bianca: 0:08

A lot of sexual dynamics, like I have a client right now that I'm working with, he finally admitted like, no respect for women. Don't even wanna kiss them on the mouth. You are just gonna do what I want you to do to me. I just wanna have the, and I don't ever wanna see you again. And I was like, whoa.

Narration: 0:24

Bianca is the specialist, clinician and founder of Evolve Ventures, whose radical blunt force approach to male trauma is breaking the silence on the hidden crisis of modern masculinity.

Tim: 0:34

Sounds like your practice has been really thriving and you work with a lot of guys in your world.

Bianca: 0:37

A large proportion of my clients are trauma survivors and a big. Proportion of that is men. I know a lot of guys, their tendency is to just shut down because that's their default. Men have a higher suicide rate than women do. Women attempt more men succeed more? Because

Tim: 0:54

I imagine with you and most guys having those experiences that they test you, that somewhere in the first month of therapy they start dropping things to test your ability to hold things for them. How do guys tend to do that with you?

Bianca: 1:05

It's incredibly uncomfortable for me to say this, but like.

Tim: 1:14

Thanks so much for coming on. I, I've really been looking forward to the conversation because with the field being four to five women and so many guys looking for different things in therapy, I'm really excited to talk to a female clinician about how guys can do this better in the room. So thank you so much for being here.

Bianca: 1:29

Thanks for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation as well. A lot of guys need to hear it.

Tim: 1:33

Yeah. Well, it's, it's so funny. Uh, when I do these presentations for the state and go out and do trainings for female clinicians, they're always kinda surprised when I say, whenever I close with a patient, I always recommend that if they come back to therapy and they decide not to come back to me for whatever reason, that they choose a female clinician. Just because different things come up in the room depending on who you're sitting across from. And so it's a great way to kinda expand out your work and go deeper after you're ready to transition to, even if you've already started with a guy.

Bianca: 2:00

What are some of the experiences that you've had that led you to that to clients?

Tim: 2:07

Uh, my own therapy experiences, to be honest, like different things in the room. When I started, uh, kind of shopping therapist, different things came up with guys, different things came up with women, and they were both important. You know, like the, like our training is right. You gotta work with what's in the room. Freud wasn't all wrong, he was just really coked up, but he had some good ideas in there.

Bianca: 2:28

Well, when you're running the experiments on your kids, I mean you're,

Tim: 2:32

what are you gonna do? Get a limited

Bianca: 2:33

sample set?

Tim: 2:34

What are you gonna do? So can you tell us a little bit about your background working with guys? It sounds like your practice has been really thriving and you work with a lot of guys in your world.

Bianca: 2:44

Yeah, my, my favorite work has been working with guys like I, I obviously have a lot of female clients that I work with, and I predominantly work with trauma survivors. Not all of my clients, but like a large proportion of my clients are trauma survivors, and a big proportion of that is men, which has been so wonderful. Not wonderful that they have it, but wonderful that these guys are finally taking a chance to reach out and to. For help is, I mean, I, I know you know this, I know you've probably experienced this personally and you probably hear these stories all the time, but like, men are not given a space to really acknowledge what they're feeling. To even be allowed to have feelings, let alone, to go to another group of people and be like, Hey, I'm sad. It's like, oh, you're sad. Get over it. So a lot of the guys that come to see me, they've had a lifetime of things like that happening. Whether it was their fathers, their mothers, their sisters, all of the people in their life, not just the men. We typically tend to think it's like, oh, men just being toxic With men. It's like, no, women are also extremely toxic men. Like you see a man cry and you instantly get the egg. It's just, it's very destructive. So a lot of the men that come to see me, they've had a lifetime of challenges and instances like that where they've never had a safe person at all. To express to, and the idea of going and being vulnerable with another man, it seems impossible.

Narration: 4:25

Mm-hmm.

Bianca: 4:25

To them. So my, my mission partner and I, Amelia, we are very blunt and can be very bold in the way that we communicate things, which is why I think a lot of men have gravitated toward working with me because they know that I'm not going to. I'm not just gonna sit back and ask how that makes them feel. 17 times like we are gonna have an honest conversation. I'll be as blunt as possible with you if that's what feels safe for you, and we'll actually get into it and get to the roots of things in a way that like you can finally give yourself permission to in a way that you haven't in the past.

Tim: 5:09

Yeah. I think that's the, the kind of way to do it whenever I'm training other clinicians about what kind of changes between men and women in the room. Mm-hmm. Is, and this, remember we're talking about this in very broad terms, right? Like, men are taller than women. There's plenty of the women that like direct, there's plenty of men that like soft communication. But the, if you're working with women, generally speaking, they're looking to have emotional safety created first, right? They want another safe, they want another ground, is like comfortable for them to then work. Mm-hmm. Guys want. Credibility that the work is gonna work before they open up for the soft bits, right? To like come in there like, all right, what are we doing to fix this? Let's go. And I think that's where the women that I know that tend to work best with men are a little bit more direct, like one of my favorite colleagues to refer to as a former parole officer. And there's a couples therapists, she's great. I'll do it. She's great. Super kind. But also, you know, she drops F-bombs in sessions. It's great. So how do you navigate that? Like guys come into your office, what do they tend to avoid with you that they maybe wouldn't with a guy in the room?

Bianca: 6:16

A lot of sexual dynamics. Yeah, like their relationships with women. Personal, like sexual matters like. Like I have a client right now that I'm working with and he's had a very, very destructive relationship dynamic with women and he it in six months of us working together and he finally admitted like, no respect for women. I don't even wanna kiss them on the mouth like, you are just gonna do what I want you to do to me. I just wanna have three sums and I don't ever wanna see you again. And I was like. Okay. He is like, I just feel like a pig telling you that, and I, I don't want to disrespect you. So it's a lot of things like that. But also, honestly, it's like, I think it's any semblance of vulnerability. I mean, the idea of sitting in front of a woman when men are taught over and over and over and over again, women don't wanna see weak men. Then be in a room where a woman is literally telling you like, it's okay to be weak here. It's like, no, I can't. No I can't. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna die. Like terrible is gonna happen to me. Like, you're gonna Houdini me and pull the rug out from under my legs at any point. So like, no, I can't let the shield go. So it's anywhere from like that will matters. And the way that they're engaging in relationships with women and other people to even down to the simplest like. Body awareness.

Tim: 7:59

Yeah,

Bianca: 7:59

like any sort of vulnerability or others' connection.

Tim: 8:07

Yeah. The sexual vulnerability for guys in session is consistent and it's one of the things I, I think our graduate programs don't do very well is talking about how clinicians. Sexual energy during a session. Mm-hmm. And because so many guys, when we're raised, were taught that the only person you can be emotionally vulnerable with is somebody that you're physically vulnerable with. And so I've had, and it's been 10 years, but not only twice, but I've had two heterosexual guys express like, Hey, I'm feeling something I haven't felt for you like ever before. This is weird. And then when you dig under it, it's like, oh, just because of the norms, man. Like you're not gay. This is not a thing. This beard is not for you. Like, like you just, you, you just don't feel safe being v vulnerable without that.

Bianca: 8:53

Yeah.

Tim: 8:53

So how do you navigate that with guys when it comes up?'cause I imagine it does,

Bianca: 8:59

it's incredibly uncomfortable for me to say this, but like, I know what I look like. Mm-hmm. And I know how guys perceive the way that I look like, and so I'll bluntly have that conversation, like, listen. I know what I look like. I know your perceptions of that. I know that being vulnerable with a woman in general is incredibly hard, let alone a woman that looks like me because I'm not here for that. You are not here for that. So I will make sure that I'm doing what I can do to as respectful as possible. How can we make sure that we're both doing that? Together. I'm just very blunt and honest about it.

Tim: 9:44

Well, and it sounds like just getting ahead of it, right? Like if you catch, like if you catch a vibe, naming it, addressing it and processing it, instead of waiting for some guy to like take a shot that he shouldn't take.

Bianca: 9:56

Yeah. Which has happened many, many times. And I'll have to understand, I'm probably the only woman in your life who's ever actually really sat down and had a deep, intimate conversation with you. How do we help you build that in your other relationship?'cause that's the sole purpose of me being here is to help you for when we're not working together anymore to do this out in the world.

Tim: 10:19

Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people don't always understand the frame that like a therapeutic alliance and a relationship is a training wheels relationship. We have safety because of the boundaries in the office and who we are to each other. This is practice for you to feel what connection feels like to, to feel what these skills can do and then take it out into your world. I imagine some of the guys, uh, leave afterwards, but the ones that stay, I've gotta believe that the work gets a lot stronger after that conversation.

Bianca: 10:48

Uh, the men that I work with and have worked with, I've worked with for years, like they, they almost always end up staying because they're like, oh. She's not trying to hurt me. She's not gonna manipulate me. She's not gonna take advantage of this. Like she actually is considerate about me and cares about me in this way. Okay, let's test it. Like I get tested all the time, like they'll throw digs or they'll say this or they'll say that to kind of see if I'm gonna like maintain my staff. And I always do. And they're like, oh, okay. Nothing's gonna happen here. I'm like, no, nothing's gonna happen. What do you think is gonna happen? And they're like, well, when I did this with my girlfriend, she told me to be vulnerable. But then when I did, she said it was unattractive and left. Or like she threw it in my face, or she went and cheated on me or this, that and the other. It's like, yeah, makes a lot of sense to happen here. Like the point of being here is for that. So let's keep working on that.

Tim: 11:57

Yeah, I see that a lot too, where guys come in and people just don't give them the space to learn how to do it well.

Bianca: 12:06

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 12:06

And so, so many wives email me afterwards where they're like, he just fell apart. And I'm like, he's literally never shared sadness with you before. Like, what are you two doing to kinda create some safety and some room for that. And yeah, he's gonna get better. He's still working, but there's gotta be a little room for him to fail. And have you most people, have you seen that

Bianca: 12:28

video?

Tim: 12:30

Which one? Yes. Probably

Bianca: 12:32

he had, he had this, he put this video out recently. I'm sorry if I cut you off. I think the video glitched, he had this video that came out and he said he's been working through depression. He's like, finally, he finally gave himself the permission to acknowledge that he was depressed. So he's like, you know what, I'm gonna just like. Let it be okay. He said he was like sitting on the couch catatonic for like three days before his wife finally noticed what was happening. And she's like, it poked him. She's like, are you good? He's like, no, I'm really sad. And she goes, uh, sucks. And he's like, what the hell? So then the rest of the skit is like. Women don't know what to do when a man actually shows emotions. They're, you're either allowed to be fine or angry and there's nothing in between. And I've seen that with men a lot too, where I'll ask like, okay, tell me another emotion. They literally can't name it. They have no idea. Never been a thing they've even been introduced to.

Tim: 13:40

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a, a big part of the, the training that I do with the, the female clinicians is to kind of validate how people bring their experience to you to then expand their vocabulary. Because otherwise, as a female clinician, right, you're carrying everything that's happened to that guy with women, which is a lot to hold. And so if there's no validation of where they're at. They just immediately feel critiqued, not because the clinician is like, that's not generally what I hear from the female clinicians I work with, but if they don't go, yeah, that's a normal feeling. She tore your heart out. Like that's generally my experience with it. Guys will talk in more visceral language. They'll talk in a more physical sensation, like my stomach direct almost threw up as opposed to I was really scared. Right, and I think that's the, the art is acknowledging when you've got that person that's really body based and really physical in themselves, and at least has that awareness to build off of, to then add vocabulary to it. Instead of doing what a lot of therapists do, which is just focus on the emotional language right away tends to disrupt things pretty hard. Hmm.

Bianca: 14:48

Yeah. It's. My, my mission partner and I, we, we have a podcast like I had said, and we put an episode up, it was last week. Mm-hmm. And we were basically talking about like modern dating and a lot of the challenges that are happening, like in modern relationships and modern dating. And one of the things that we had said was men, up until recently, women have always wanted more from men. But nev women never really had like. A voice or the ability up until recently to actually put their foot behind it because of just a lot of the challenges that have happened between male female dynamics along long time. In general, women are putting this much greater emphasis behind the asks, but a lot of women are also like. But I'm not gonna help you because I'm sick of it and I'm sick of being responsible for you. So like, go figure it out and then come back. Men are like, uh, okay, how? Like, what am I supposed to do? I've never done this. I've never, I've never had this conversation. This was never modeled to me. This has never really been, this has never been a thing. So like, you're getting frustrated. You're telling me you want me to be different. I literally have no idea what to do. What am I supposed to do? And we were talking about like one of the, one of the best things that men can do in that instance. Obviously, number one, get a clinician, but like the ability to be around other safe men who model that. And obviously we're not talking about like red pill society.'cause we mentioned that in, in that episode too, where that's where a lot of. Unfortunately, a lot of guys have leaned, it's like, oh yeah, men's group, rah rah. Like let's go do this. But it ended up bringing them in the complete opposite end of the spectrum. So yeah,

Tim: 16:48

they found the wrong men's group.

Bianca: 16:49

Yeah. So like getting around other men who show. How safe it is to, let's say, go to the body or to name emotions in a new way, and then bringing yourself around women who are emotionally intelligent enough to handle a man's feelings. Like if you allow yourself to do that. Those are gonna be two really critical, well, three, if you find a therapist, like three really critical components. Or navigating that and learning how to name emotions and have body awareness and to make new behaviors and thoughts and so on.

Tim: 17:30

Well, I think that's the piece that's kind of missing in the conversation around how women are responding is they're so tired of it and they put their foot down and they know what they want, but it's all new to everybody. I like, this has not been a dynamic that men and women in this country have done, and so the idea that women without help. Are gonna be able to just welcome a guy in with open arms after all the things that she's gone through after all the things her mother went through. I think that's tricky and it's almost why, generally speaking, whenever our client comes in, they're almost always sent by their partner or their couple's therapist.

Bianca: 18:02

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 18:03

Right? They either, they either come in, go figure out how to do that, but then inevitably they have to go into couples therapy because it changes the communication dynamic so drastically that it's really hard to do. Just with each other, without any frame of reference. And I think that patients trying to get a go both ways, but getting that support for it is one of the more under discussed aspects of it.

Bianca: 18:26

What have you seen in your practice regarding how. Um, these men typically do in like a couples counseling setting.'cause a lot of the men that I, it's like a lot of the male clients that I've had that end up going to couples counseling. It typically almost always ends up being a triangulation where it's like the therapist and the female partner against the male and he's like, am I even here? If this is gonna be a bashing session? Like for the majority of men, that's the experience that I've seen. Or they have a partner who like. Is just completely unwilling to acknowledge her side of it. Yeah. And how she's contributed to it. So those are obviously like it's the majority of what I've seen. I'm not necessarily saying that's the majority of everything that has happened, but what have you noticed with that?'cause that's been the experience that I've had with male clients.

Tim: 19:21

So generally speaking, I don't see it happen as often with a licensed marriage and family therapists that are trained. That's great. I see it happen with a lot of couples, counselors are stepping outside of their credential. So people that are like out here, it's called licensed professional counselor, where we're trained for one person and then they go do a weekend training and start doing couples work.

Bianca: 19:40

Mm.

Tim: 19:40

And the other thing is, is the main modality within couples therapy is emotionally focused therapy. Which when done well with guys is fantastic. Right. It brings 'em into the fold, but when it's done poorly, it's just two women sitting across from you telling you're you're doing it wrong. Yeah. And that's what they experience a lot of. So having a network of couples, therapists that can hold space for both of those is really important. I think it's also important to like say that like everybody goes to couples therapy, well not everybody, but the vast majority of us go to couples therapy with the same thing in mind. Fix my partner, right? Like, like we all go into couples therapy. We're like, can you see this? Do you see that? What I'm dealing with? Can you fix that? And then inevitably the couples therapist says something that you've been saying to your partner for like two years, and they're like, huh, I've never heard that. That's a really good idea. I think like it's just hard to not acknowledge that this is, this is just kinda the process of couples therapy is you're going to get a new voice involved to hopefully be heard in a different way, but also hear your partner in a different way. I think a lot of it's just that, that poor training, lack of credentialing. Right. Uh, I also find that folks that are gottman trained. Which is that really skills based data based on how to argue if they've got those credentials, it happens a lot less often where the guy feels ganged up on because everybody's just talking to how to have the argument as opposed to you're an ass for having it.

Bianca: 21:05

Yeah. Yeah. I step Perls work has done a lot of, her voice has been really. Transformational for a lot of men too, like her work on affairs and what leads to that? When I read, when I first read her work on that, it, it blew my mind. It was like, 'cause you think of someone having an affair, you think of someone being unfaithful or you think of just different relationship dynamics in general and you automatically have a judgment. It's like you just must be a terrible person. You just must be whatever. And when you actually give yourself permission to see the 17 layers under that final behavior, it's like, oh, so many needs, so many emotions, so many challenges, so many desires and wishes, and all of these things had gone unmet for so long, and now you're just pointing the finger at this one thing that finally happened when. Just the final straw wasn't like everything that happened underneath that. So if you don't have as a clinician the capacity to see, like to withhold your own judgment, 'cause we all have them, right? We're humans, like we're not robots. We have judgment, we have thoughts that come up and we think of our own experiences or how would I feel if my partner did that? And if you, if you have the capacity to suspend your own judgment, which is super hard, but if you can do it and really sit and understand, okay, what would, what, imagine you were a good person. What would've led a good person to do that? Like, give someone the benefit of the doubt. If, if I were to assume, and if I were to give you the best, the phrase, like the most reasonable. Reason possible.

Tim: 22:57

Like Anna wakes up, a good person can land here and now we're gonna map out how you got here.

Bianca: 23:01

Yeah, exactly. How did you get here? How did it end up being that, you know, a really good person could do that. If you give yourself permission to do that, you'll see everything underneath it. Like I have a client right now, he hasn't had sex with his wife in three years.

Tim: 23:17

Yeah. That's always hard.

Bianca: 23:18

And it was like, have you. Brought that up to her. Like, have you guys had a conversation? He's like, yeah. I literally went up to her and I said, I don't wanna force you into anything, but like I'm at the breaking point where like if I don't get physical affection, like I'm gonna have to find it somewhere else. And she goes, you gotta do what you gotta do. And he was like, what the hell does that mean? What? Like, what do I do in a circumstance like that? There's always so much underneath the surface of most of the challenges that men are facing, like whether it's in intimate relationships, friendship, relationships, whatever. And I just feel like thankfully there's a lot more awareness and there's a lot more. There's so many more conversations happening, but not enough to where it's reaching the majority of men and where the majority of men feel as though it's safe enough to take that step into it.'cause nobody wants to be the one guy in the friend group that like brings the the therapy book with them. They're like, Hey, I'm learning this thing. And they're like, Hey, go to hell.

Tim: 24:31

That's usually how I get my referrals is a guy comes in six months later, like four of his buddies call me. Like that's, you know, all of a sudden they see somebody doing better and they wanna know how, and then they finally got somebody. But I'm, I'm also, at this point in my career, I'm usually people's like third therapist, right? Like, they've tried other people, they've tried to go through insurance, they get a generalist, it's not working. Um, and I think that's a, a big part of the problem is that the field has not done a good job in teaching clinicians how to reach across genders. Right. We've got a lot of training on trans folks. We've got a lot of training on careers folks. Uh, the male clinicians, myself included, got a lot of training on social justice issues and trauma issues with women. But the presumption was, is because so much of the early field was based around men's problems, men's mental health, that it's carried, but that was three generations ago. Now things have changed and it's not, people aren't making the transition, I imagine with you, and most guys having those experiences that they test you. That somewhere in the first month of therapy, they start dropping things to test your ability to hold things for them. How do guys tend to do that with you?

Bianca: 25:45

Usually a lot of sexual comments

Tim: 25:47

like, can you handle this? Can you handle this? Yeah.

Bianca: 25:50

Seriously. Hey, I've had, I have a client right now, he was in prison for 20 years. So like I've heard, I've heard everything you can think of. I mean, I've heard clients telling me about like the terrible things that they did to other people and like the shame that they have around that. I've heard clients saying that terrible things that have been done to them and they don't know how to navigate it. Bad clients like just say the most. Anes things just to to, mm-hmm. Exactly what you said, test me and to get a reaction and to be like, is she gonna run away like everybody else did? And when you can really show someone, like, no, you can say whatever you want. I'm not going anywhere, obviously within a reason. Right. If you're being like, insanely disrespectful, you're threatening and whatever, like, we're not gonna well, but like. That was in prison. Literally, I, he was telling me a story of some woman he was trying to like, have sex with on top of a car, and I could see him looking at me telling the story, being like, oh, is she gonna react to this?

Tim: 27:06

Mm-hmm.

Bianca: 27:08

And I just sat with him in the conversation and he was like, oh, okay. And I called it out. He's like, like later on I was like, you were testing me at that, weren't you? He's like, yeah, yeah. I was like. And I do. He was like, I'm still here, aren't I?

Tim: 27:24

Yeah. I think, I think it's always tricky. What, so for the guys listening to this, right, they're probably the guys that are looking to go to therapy with a female therapist or already with one.

Bianca: 27:35

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 27:36

If they're feeling unsafe and and need to get some security, that's a pretty like sludge hammer way to get it and test it. What are some of the ways you've seen guys do that artfully some ways that they've. Requested from you instead of bashed you to kind of build that alliance a little faster?

Bianca: 27:57

A really hard time asking for it.

Tim: 27:59

Yeah.

Bianca: 28:00

Honestly, it's been a lot of me prodding, like in safe ways. So like along, along the conversations, along the dynamic, along the time that we were working together, I think a lot of guys enjoy working with me because I'll add a lot of humor. To the work that I do. Like I, I grew up around a lot of guys. I was always friends with guys. I was very much like, I just got along with guys a lot better when I was growing up. So it's not, I just found for me it was, it was easier navigating those conversations. Mm-hmm. And understanding that like you are putting on a facade right now because. This is how you've learned how to be. So if I can kind of do this song and dance with you a little bit, I know eventually you'll feel safe enough to let your guard down. So guys will like over time start gently expressing like, like I'll hear them repeating things that I've said and I know that that's the entryway into like, God, this is taping in. Wow. Yeah, it's coming. It's coming. So like. I'll, like, I'll start noticing them saying things that I've said or repeating things that we've talked about or, you know, using new terminology. And that's usually the entryway that I know. It's like, okay, I can bring this up now. I can, I can navigate this now. And then eventually I'll have guys where it's like they finally feel safe enough to just like. It say it with their whole chest, whatever it is that they're thinking, whatever it is that they're feeling, feeling safe enough to cry and like letting that be okay because they know that my intention isn't to like force vulnerability. To actually like let it be okay if and when it happens. Like my goal isn't to make you cry. I think a lot of women, I think a lot of, I think a lot of men have this idea that women want to see them be vulnerable in this like completely lose control breakdown kind of way. And that's just not helpful. That's how women sometimes express emotions. But like men need to feel, from my experiences and from what I've seen. Men need to know that. Like not asking you to put on a show. Mm-hmm. Not asking you to show emotion in a specific way that feels completely unnatural to you.

Narration: 30:37

Yeah.

Bianca: 30:37

I just want you to know that however you're feeling it, I'm here and I will hold space. And that then gives them permission to express it in whatever way feels safe to them. And then eventually to like cry or show deeper emotions or use. Just other tools and skills that they didn't have before.

Tim: 30:59

I think that's really in alignment for how I guide people to explore therapy with women when they're doing their screens is if the clinician kind of directly addresses the differences and directly invites you consistently. To be vulnerable. It's a lot easier to show up gradually instead of with the hammer. Mm-hmm. And so as the patient look for those moments, when the clinician notices something and say something, don't flinch. Right. Just, just lean into it a little bit and say, yeah, I'm worried about sharing this with you like you're a woman and I don't, I don't wanna hurt you. I don't wanna be judged. And that's okay. Like if you talk about it in the session, there's room to address it. The therapist I've been working with now, we've been working together for like six years.'cause as a clinician I'm gonna be in therapy forever, right? At least once a month just to make sure my stuff's like packed up enough that it's not landing on my patients.

Bianca: 31:52

That's great.

Tim: 31:53

And yeah, it's what I recommend all my students do. I know it's expensive, but you know, it's the only way to know. We had a pretty big rupture two years in. Where I was telling her about a time that I was really uncomfortable with the way and the place that I was attracted to somebody.

Bianca: 32:13

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 32:14

And she just blew it off. She was like, Tim, you're really making a big deal outta nothing. It's really, really normal. And I was like, you're not hearing me. Like this is a big deal for me. You know, my history, this is my family history, this all connects to this. It's a big deal. And then she kept dismissing it as small

Bianca: 32:30

Wow. And.

Tim: 32:32

I didn't yell. I was very good. I like raised my voice a little bit though. I was like, you're not hearing me, you're not listening to me. I'm leaving for you. And well, and then we came back the next session, right? Like at that point we'd been working together two years. So there's like a definite repair and she jumped in and immediately was like, I'm really sorry. Let's talk about what happened, let's talk about what to do better. And from there we had a closer relationship. And so I think that's another thing that, that more patients just generally need to do, but even more for a male patient with a female therapist is be willing to have a boundary, but also be willing to have the repair if they're game for it, right? Because people make mistakes, clinicians make mistakes, happens all the time. But it's just a matter of are we modeling relational repair? Doing our job well.

Bianca: 33:24

Has that ever been modeled in any other aspect of your life? For the grand majority of people, men and women, nobody has seen a really healthy rupture and repair. But to have an idea that that's gonna be possible for you in this setting feels extremely alien. I've had clients mid session where I'm like, I can see them visibly shutting down. I'm like, that was a, that was a really. Hurt you didn't it? And they're like, wait, I'm allowed to say that? I'm like, yeah, of course you're allowed to say that. I tell clients as soon as I start working with them, the very first session, I'll say something along the lines of, listen, you and I are a team. I'm not above you. You're not above me. We are a team. So let's work through this together. There's gonna be times where you're gonna come into the session and you're gonna be like, I don't wanna fricking see you today. Like I want nothing to do with you today. There's gonna be other times where I say something and it's gonna piss you off, or it's gonna bother you. Or we might have a little bit of a rupture of, need you to tell me that. I know you've probably never experienced that in other relationships, and I will show that to you over time, but I'm telling you right here, right now, if there's ever something that bothers you, I give you 100% permission to say it, even if it's not perfect. And we will help you eventually get to the point where you can say it in a better or a more adaptive productive way. And people have no idea what to, how to respond to that, and you're just outright. Seeing it. Like that's amazing.

Tim: 35:06

Yeah. When I do that, it's during the disclosure where we start talking about clinical boundaries. How if you're my patient, we're never getting a beer, you're never gonna be in my life, we're not gonna never gonna be friends, period. Like that's just how that works now. And it's because it makes it possible for me to hold that for you indefinitely.

Bianca: 35:24

Yeah.

Tim: 35:26

That's the whole reason for the therapeutic alliance in the clinical room is that you can show up raw, you can show up unskilled, knowing the person across from you is holding their crap together for this hour and has the skills on how to sit with you while you figure it out. But that only happens because we don't have to go home and listen to you on the couch. Or like if you're not paying your rent, it doesn't impact us or whatever the struggles you're having are aren't landing on us in our lives. Right? So I think that's another thing I always tell people to watch for is if your clinician is overly disclosing their life.

Bianca: 36:01

Like,

Tim: 36:02

like, and it happens. I've, I've done it, uh, a few times, right? I think everybody falls into that trap a little bit, but it's something to catch of. Like, she just spent, or he just spent five minutes telling me all about his husband. Like, that's weird. I thought we were gonna talk about my girlfriend today.

Bianca: 36:18

Yeah. There should never be disclosure unless there's a purpose. A

Tim: 36:23

hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Bianca: 36:24

Like ever, like the amount of clients that have told me that their therapist spent half the session telling them about their divorce, it's like, why do you know that?

Tim: 36:33

Yeah.

Bianca: 36:33

Why do you know that? Why do you know their kids' names? Why do you know all of this information? Like, that's, that's so tricky, inappropriate. But then you'll see the other side where it's like they literally. Don't utter a word. Yeah. They're just a, like a brick wall.

Tim: 36:48

Well, I, I think it depends. I got a guy who does Freudian therapy and he says three sentences a session, and he does great work with guys that are in cells. I don't know how, I can't do it in three sentences, but he does. Right. It takes all types. I I kinda come up on that line quite a bit because it's pretty common in my sessions to say guys like us and so it, it seems like you can model the generalize, like, divorce is hard. I've been through one. Like that's a good way to normalize it. But if all of a sudden you're going into the details of what happened in your life, a

Bianca: 37:18

hundred percent.

Tim: 37:19

If you're going into like where you're at, the best advice I ever got from it was my first professor and he said, I've been doing this for 20 years. Anytime you ever have a thought to disclose something from your life, don't sit on it for that session. And then if it comes back around, you'll have thought about why it needs to be in the room. And 90% of the time I find that it didn't need to be in the room. And that's held pretty true for me.

Bianca: 37:48

That's really

Tim: 37:49

great. It was really solid. Like, oh no, no. I like, I gotta go talk to my friend about that. I'm pretty pissed off. Okay. Check.

Bianca: 37:55

Yeah,

Tim: 37:56

maybe Joe didn't need to hear about that while he was talking about his dog.

Bianca: 38:03

You have to do it in a very tactful way if you're gonna do it. Like, you have to have a very, very clear, definitive reason for why you're doing it. Otherwise, the person really is gonna be like, is, are they here for me or for them?

Tim: 38:20

Yeah.

Bianca: 38:20

Like that made, that had nothing to do with what we were just talking about. Or I feel like now I have to take on your burdens, which is what happens to a lot of guys. Mm-hmm. And they're not. Their thoughts, their feelings, their experiences aren't really heard. So it's like, okay, here's another setting now where someone is just talking me about them and now it's not safe for me to share anymore.

Tim: 38:45

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's hard to come back from, but as a patient, if your therapist has done this where they've taken up to your time and they've maybe shared more than you're comfortable with, again. Give them the chance to repair it, right? Say something, and if they do it badly, go get another clinician, right? You can always go shop clinicians. I know a lot of clinicians oddly get offended that people shop therapists, but I think that's dumb. We're providing a service.

Bianca: 39:14

I tell people you should. It's like dating go date around seeing you get a vibe with

Tim: 39:17

a hundred percent right. More than anything else, good therapy boils down to vibe. That's most of our outcome is that you can respect me, I can respect you, and we can have a conversation after that. It's all gravy. Yeah, but give somebody that you've worked with a minute, a chance to repair with you because it, like what happened with my therapist, our work got better, we were stronger. She a better understanding of me after that rupture, right? But if I hadn't have said anything, or I hadn't have come back for the next session to, and my thought was going into this, the session after that was either we're gonna close out, like this is gonna be our goodbye, or we're gonna fix this. And I was comfortable going into the session with either, either outcome,

Bianca: 39:59

how much work had you done on yourself to that point to be able to draw that clear divide in the sand? Because I know a lot of guys, their tendency is to just shut down and because that's their default. So like for the men listening so that they can hear from another man. Yeah. How much work had did you have to do to be able to advocate for yourself in that way? But to know it wasn't coming from a shutdown, it was coming from a, I've actually really taken the time to think about this, and if this can't be repaired here, this is a clear divide in the sand.

Tim: 40:32

A lot. I almost punched my first therapist, third session. He was pretty bad. Um, whoa. He, uh, he was very clearly burnt out. He got fired a month later having, I didn't report him. Nothing happened there, but he got pretty insulting and I'm a very large man in a room alone with him. Um, and so that was kinda my first instance of like, oh, like I don't, that's a big boundary. Maybe I've got work to do. That was my clue. Right that this guy yelling at me in a session was enough to make me wanna hurt him.

Bianca: 41:00

He was yelling at you?

Tim: 41:02

Yeah, he was really fried. I got done dumping all my trauma on him and I didn't know what I was doing yet. Right. I like was in my first semester of a therapist. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was just trauma dumping. He didn't do any containment. He didn't help me navigate it at all. I get done with the end of the story and he is like, well, have you journaled about that? And I didn't know that journaling is a tool that you can actively use. I, at the time, thought journaling was just like, so you remember things, right? Yeah. And so really confused. I look at him, I was like, well, like what about the way I told you that makes it un, makes it sound like I'm unclear about what happened? And he's like, well, if you don't wanna fucking work. And then I looked at him and I was like, you need to be very careful how you talk to me. I'm a very large man in, we're a room alone. So, uh, that was the first boundary. True, and I would call that very ineffective. True. I do not recommend that behavior. That's not a way to show up pretty much anywhere, right? If nobody's coming at you with physical violence, responding with physical violence is a terrible choice, right? Um, two, like, Hey, I'm not getting my needs met. I'm leaving. She was therapist five. You know, that's okay, right? Like it took some time. But I think if somebody had shared something like this with me early that like, Hey, if you're paying for the service, if you're going to this place, your boundaries matter. This is a really powerful place to practice those. I think I could have done it in two or three therapists instead of five. Right? Like little information on the on the front end goes a long way to the back end.

Bianca: 42:35

Men are not taught that boundaries?

Tim: 42:39

No. We're taught like a two to a 10. Right. Either like notice you're uncomfortable and stuff it or react. Yeah, I just actually, I'm releasing a video the week we're recording this on the 10 scales from DVT. Right. On how to escalate a boundary and that comes up so much in my work, just helping guys figure out that, you know, if you've got your 10, you know you can have it too and be comfortable. If you know you can go to the 10, it's a lot easier to just scale to what's effective.

Bianca: 43:07

Yeah.

Tim: 43:09

So. I've lived our conversation around like clinical work and, and how that goes. What are three kind of practical things that you wish male clients walked in with? Female pa uh, female clinicians having on the front end to make their work better? I

Bianca: 43:31

like skills and tools that they had or awarenesses.

Tim: 43:36

Like, I'm gonna go into therapy as a guy with a woman. What are some things I'll, I should know that will make this a better experience for me?

Bianca: 43:43

Oh, it's gonna

Tim: 43:43

trigger

Bianca: 43:44

every wound in you. It's gonna trigger every wound in you possible. Like be ready for it. Oh, that every, every thing that you've heard, every narrative you've heard, every lesson that you've learned about. What to do, what not to do. Who to be who not to be is going to get triggered. And women are really good at sniffing that out.

Tim: 44:06

Mm-hmm.

Bianca: 44:06

If you're with a good therapist, she will have grace with you and like help you navigate it. If you're not with a good therapist, she's gonna try to like pull that outta you ASAP Rocky. And that is not effective. So be come into it with the awareness that you are gonna get triggered. I'm into it with the awareness that this is gonna be probably one of the most uncomfortable things you've ever done. It's easy for men to get the shit beaten out of them because men are, men experience more violence in their lives than women do. It's why men have a higher suicide rate than women do. Women attempt more men succeed more because from a very young age, you are taught to normalize violence and to have aggression and harm done to you normalized. So. It's gonna be uncomfortable in a way that you probably haven't experienced before in an inter in an interpersonal relationship. Just come in with the awareness of that and understand that this person is not trying to like expose you. They're not trying to hurt you. They're not trying to get something from you. They're trying to help you become and understand yourself the best way that. You can,

Tim: 45:24

and you're gonna trip on some things along the way.

Bianca: 45:26

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 45:27

Yeah. I, I wanna challenge one of the data points because I just looked all this up for a paper and it turns out that men and women experience violence at the same rate. It's, uh, two outta 50 people.

Bianca: 45:39

Mm-hmm.

Tim: 45:39

Men tend to, um, have assaults. Women tend to have interpersonal and domestic violence, but the population as a whole experiences violence at the same level. I think what happens is. Men are socialized to not think of it as being assaulted. Mm-hmm. It's just the cost of business, right? Like somebody punching you in the face in middle school was just part of being a guy as opposed to that's violence perpetrated on you.

Bianca: 46:01

Right?

Tim: 46:02

Like and that wasn't a fight. That wasn't okay. You didn't sign on for that.

Bianca: 46:07

Right. From what I've heard from men and from some of the things that I've seen in tandem with what you're saying, I mean, even the way that boys play. Oh yeah. And the sports that they play and things in that way. There's way more violence, like physical violence Yeah. Than what women experience, so that makes perfect sense. Women experience more like interpersonal violence in that way, but like physical violence, men mm-hmm. Men have a much higher propensity to experience from a very young age. Rough play is allowed, rough play is accepted the way that. The way that families play with little boys versus little girls is radically different. So men grow up basically having all these experiences to say, don't nurture your body.

Narration: 46:56

Yeah.

Bianca: 46:56

Don't your body isn't the vessel. Like, oh, you're gonna be soft. You're gonna put lotion, go rub some dirt in it. Like just these very destructive. Narratives that men experience, they experience a lot more physical violence, which makes them have a higher probability of using more lethal methods.

Tim: 47:16

Yeah.

Bianca: 47:16

Getting, getting into fights, using a gun, um, swerving their car off a road because they know like, this is what's gonna do it like in the literature about what makes people complete suicide, a desensitization of pain. Is a, and like the idea of harm is a massive contributing factor. So when you're getting hit all the time, you're not gonna cut yourself because you're, you cut yourself all the time, so you're likely to do something way more aggressive. So those were my first two points. I think the third point would be, I guess, do a little bit of research of like. Basic emotions and like what that might be, or like go talk to people about what their experiences have been or like do a little bit of research about what, what good therapy should look like.

Narration: 48:17

Yeah.

Bianca: 48:17

Like go watch, go watch a video on, you know, men entering therapy or if you know anyone who's done it in a little bit of exposure before going into the situation so that you're not completely going in. Blind to it so that you have at least a little bit of awareness as to what you're getting yourself into.

Tim: 48:37

Yeah. Yeah. If they're, if they're watching this, they're already kinda getting prepped, which is great 'cause there's so much bad content out there on therapy and guys and what it's supposed to look like, and that's hard to suss out. I, I love when people have a friend that they relate to. That recommends a therapist to them that worked for them, because that means like the vibes probably like a line up really, really well. So I think you're 100% right. If you've got people in your life that you know have done some work, find out where and see if you can go to the same place. It goes a long way. Like if I go to some like, like super somatic therapist with scarves and yoga pants, that's um. That's not my therapist. Right. They do great. That's not your vibe. That's not my vibe. It's not my vibe. I need to, I need my therapist to call me an asshole every now and then. Like that's my therapist. Right. Like, and it's okay. Like I'm not ragging on the somatic gal with the scars. Like there's a lot of people that need that, but it's okay that that's not what you need. And there's a lot of different ways that therapy goes.

Bianca: 49:46

Have you seen, um, that's so funny. Have you seen the documentary on Netflix and Waves and War?

Tim: 49:53

No,

Bianca: 49:54

it's super fascinating. So it looks into the Navy Seals team and guys who went through like these really horrific operations that they, um, that they had to go through. And it looks at them in the aftermath of that and the severe PTSD symptoms. Mm-hmm. They had, and it follows these like. Six guys in particular who were on teams similar to one another.

Narration: 50:23

Mm-hmm.

Bianca: 50:24

And it basically shows what happened to them in the aftermath of that. Like they all had attempted suicide multiple times. They were cheating on their wives, like severe. Um, dissociation and numbed out and checked out and it, it shows the, them going to Mexico.'cause that's the only place you could get psychedelic treatment done at the time. And they were working with, they were working with Stanford University mm-hmm. To like help set them up at, because Stanford didn't have the FDA approval to do those studies, but they were affiliated with this organization that did in Mexico. So it followed them. Going to this treatment center in Mexico, and I think it was Iboga or something like that. It was some sort of psychedelic treatment that they had undergone and their experience finally getting help in a way that actually helped them for the first time. But what was really special was once one of them did it, they could finally go to the other guys and be like. Dude, you know what I was like before you saw what happened? I know you're going through the same thing. This radically changed my life. And them seeing another SEAL guy do it and talk about it. Mm-hmm. They were like, oh, he did it. Okay, I'll do it too. And then all of them got together and they've helped like hundreds of their SEAL team friends go through that process and actually get help and then seek out therapy and do. Some of these treatments that actually worked. The power of having someone to be able to say Me too is, is

Tim: 52:01

what way?

Bianca: 52:02

Absolutely critical because most guys are not gonna go on their own accord and do it. Wife or their partner is gonna push them into it, or it's gonna be mandated because they did something and now there's a ation either at their job or in wherever the setting is that's requiring them to go. So the ability to have other men in your life that say, dude, I did it too,

Tim: 52:25

thank cool.

Bianca: 52:26

Like it actually worked. You know what I was like, and now my life is radically different. I promise it's gonna work.

Tim: 52:34

That's the biggest point of post-traumatic growth that I find, like I came up with this. I thought it was a model somebody else came up with. This is just me talking. Apparently I called up my old mentor to find out what book it in. It isn't. So take that for what this is. But the first stage is you're living in your trauma and you think it's normal. Second stage is you know that your trauma isn't normal, but you're still living in it. Third stage is learning how to live without the trauma,

Narration: 53:00

and

Tim: 53:01

the fourth stage is making meaning with the trauma by showing other people the way out. I think there's just such healing that occurs when you make your painful experience and your growth. Useful to other people. It gives it some service behind it. It's super healing for the people that do that too. So that's the other thing. I think more people I wish they would know when they go to therapy and they really dig into these types of work is you can be the first in your group. Like you can be the example that changes so much for so many just by being honest about what you're doing. It's huge. Yeah. I love that, that they followed the six guys I that. I'm still struggling with some of the psychedelic stuff 'cause I feel like it's the wild West right now. There's a lot of clinicians. I are doing like everything from like Stanford protocols to doing mushrooms with clients to pro. I don't know what I, I don't do any of it until there's a protocols, until there's some kind of training where I can get a certification. I'm good. Like I've seen it all. Um, I

Bianca: 54:05

don't, I don't think that's effective, but Okay.

Tim: 54:07

I. I can't say, um, doesn't sound right to me though. Um,

Bianca: 54:14

that's, that's definitely interesting.

Tim: 54:16

Yeah.

Bianca: 54:17

So I'm definitely at the same boat with you as that until it's like Ed more like, it's just, there's a lot of people who are very credible that are doing it, but like, again, just like with anything, you have to be careful who you go to. Like even getting a tattoo. If you're in some random dude's basement, that's probably not the best place to go get a tattoo.

Tim: 54:35

Yeah.

Bianca: 54:36

So like, be mindful of where you're going to get help.

Tim: 54:39

Yeah, some white guy and dreads on the side of a mountain probably isn't the right spot. Um, too much shade there. I think somebody's gonna comment. Uh, we're right up on the end of time. Uh, and I do wanna get a little bit of your story for people 'cause I think your answer to this question is gonna be really powerful for folks. What's a truth about masculinity? You learned before you were 12. That's remained true throughout your life.

Bianca: 55:14

Learned before I was, there's so much pain embedded into it.

Tim: 55:24

Hmm.

Bianca: 55:26

I've, I've yet to meet a man who identified as like this ultra masculine dude who didn't have so much trauma and shame and harm enmeshed with it. Like there's very few men who ever have safe, other, like truly safe masculine men teaching them about masculinity. I've yet to meet someone who like. Didn't either have an amazing mentor who showed them or didn't have to go through massive pain to eventually realize the truth about it.

Tim: 55:58

Mm-hmm. I think that makes a lot of sense. When you, every time I talk to another clinician and these kinda questions come up, that awareness of other people's experience with those moments tends to start early, right? There's a reason why we found ourself in this very strange job.

Narration: 56:15

Yeah.

Tim: 56:16

Well, I can't tell you how happy I am that you're out in the world and that you're doing the work you're doing. I always love when there's powerful female clinicians doing this kind of work because so much is needed. Mm-hmm. And like, like we talked about earlier, right? Different things are gonna come up in the room with you than me. And so we need all the clinicians showing up in the best way possible. And I think a lot of female clinicians could model off if you and do better.

Bianca: 56:38

I appreciate that very much. Thank you.

Tim: 56:41

Yeah. How do guys find you? If they were looking to work with you, what would that look like?

Bianca: 56:46

Um, you can go to our website, so Evolve Ventures, tech, we have all of our information on there. I'm also on all of the socials, but the, the best place is either through email, oh, Bianca, at evolve ventures tech.com or on Instagram, evolve with. Bianca, I'm super responsive on all of those platforms.

Tim: 57:05

Thanks so much for coming on. I wanna make sure I get you outta here for the rest of your day.

Bianca: 57:08

No worries. Thank you so much again for having me. I'm sincerely grateful that I got to be here and talk to you and your audience.

Tim: 57:15

And that's our conversation with Bianca Thomas. I hope that you find a clinician just like her. If you're out there looking for a female clinician, we're really lucky. She's out there in the world, and while female clinicians specializing in men are rare, they're not as rare as you think. As always, we wanna do some fact checking around here. There were two things that Bianca and I were talking about that could use a little bit more nuance. The first one is how men's experience with violence contributes to their success in suicidality. We don't wanna minimize how painful suicide is. And we need to recognize that women attempt more, men succeed more. There's a reason why four times as many men complete suicide as women. That said it's more complicated than just the violence. Some of it's because of how we're socialized, where we don't seek help. So by the time that we crash and burn, it's really, really dark. We're much more likely to be less risk adverse, so we're more likely to be familiar with lethal means and that exposure of violence. In the world means that we're more likely to understand what deadly violence looks like, and that's why we complete more. I just wanna take a minute and highlight the nuance there, and I don't think either of us talked to anything wrong about it, but it was worth adding something to the other one is that men believe that women want them to just be vulnerable to the point where there are a puddle of tears. And I think anecdotally, that's absolutely my experience with guys when they come in, why they're worried about the idea of emotional vulnerability is they think it's. This snot ball cry fest of just complete collapse. And it's important to recognize that women do want emotional vulnerability from men in heterosexual relationships most of the time. But they want healthy vulnerability, which is being able to be in the emotion, express the emotion, but still communicate where you're at and be effective in that moment with your partner, which is a heavy lift. And I don't think anyone's really expecting guys to do that out of the gate. Right away if they're paying attention. But it's important to acknowledge that that is real and something that men should be trying to achieve. So those are the two things that we could add a little bit to after the conversation that I hope help you. If you've made it this far, you're probably a regular listener. You're noticing that we got a team, right? We're changing things around here. What do you think of the intros? I'm really debating as to whether we should be using a voiceover guy or whether I should just go back to doing it. I kind of like doing the intro just 'cause I, I like being the face on the screen. Maybe that's my ego. But a professional voiceover guy is probably doing a pretty good job. So what do you think? Do me a favor. Leave me a comment about the changes that we're making and what you think about 'em so that we can continue to make this the best podcast we can for you. Thanks so much for listening. This has been American Masculinity, and my name's Tim Winkey. Hoping you have the best day.