Part 1: Where Do I Start? What is Emotional Health? You cannot have a healthy or an unhealthy emotion. Your emotions cannot be "sick." Emotions are completely natural and arise from the conditions in which we find ourselves. Emotions are like the weather. Storms come and go, clouds form and disperse, fog rolls in, the sun shines brightly. Weather is not good or bad. It is neutral. When we talk about bad weather and good weather, we are talking about the judgements we are passing on it, and these judgements always have to do with how the weather is hindering us or helping us. Feelings are the same. They come and they go according to certain "systems." The difference between weather systems and emotional systems is that we create or at least have some control over the conditions that create these feelings. Likewise, as we can decide how to respond to the weather, we can decide how to respond to our feelings. An emotionally healthy person is someone who does not block their feelings, but has their feelings. It has been said, if you don't have your feelings, your feelings will have you. Psychologists use the word "repression" for what we do to our feelings. We press them down. When you press anything down, it doesn't go away. It intensifies. Think of water or air under pressure. It will not be contained. It must get out. If it can't get our in natural ways, it will get out in other ways. Our feelings are the same. They must get out. We must learn to "have" our feelings. Not just because of the damage that repressing them will cause but also because of the pleasure we miss. Incredibly, we repress pleasurable feelings as well as unpleasurable ones. The mechanism of repression becomes so ingrained that we shut down, repress, and stifle all emotions. The emotionally healthy person is the one who has their emotions, in whom the emotions flow like water. The image of the flowing stream is a good one for understanding our emotions. Water goes where it will. When we dam the stream, the land (our consciousness) becomes flooded. The same thing happens when we dam our feelings. The river overflows its banks and what started out as an innocent flow becomes something destructive and problematic. When we talk about raising emotionally healthy children, we are not talking about what we need to do to them. We are talking about what we must avoid doing. Children are born with powerful, healthy, fully-functioning emotional lives. Why then does this child develop into an angry, acting-out child or a depressed teenager? Sometimes the answer lies in chemistry, but more often the answer lies in the environment in which this child finds him or herself. This environment includes all the people who clip, trim, water and fertilize this young plant. Some kids grow up to be flourishing, fully functioning adults. Others grow up to be stunted dwarf versions of what they could have been. We are not talking about raising the perfect child. We are talking about raising children to achieve as much of their inner potential as possible. We will not be able to control every aspect of their environment, and they, like us, will inevitably end up with limitations in some areas of their development. But the bonsai tree can be as beautiful as the willow growing in the wild by the water's edge. They have had very different lives and very different stories to tell. One has been highly conditioned; the other has had greater freedom, but they are both beautiful. That is what this book is about - how to raise children to be beautiful adults. In the end, this is a book about the future, about the adults we are raising right now. The future needs our children to be healthy, whole and strong, so that as adults they can create a better world than the one we have left to them. Emotional Health Starts with the Adults in a Child's Life If we want to take our children somewhere, we have to go with them. We cannot "send" them into emotional health while we remain stuck. This is the great opportunity and the great challenge of parenting - to change ourselves. Many parents bring their kids to me to be "worked on" but the parents need to do some inner work themselves. The mental and emotional health of children depends very much on the environments in which they live. Children absorb the emotional tone of the household; they are intimately affected by Mom and Dad's stress level. If we want our kids to be happy, we have to get happy ourselves. If we want our kids to have strong self-esteem, then we have to work on our own. For our kids to be healthy, whole and strong, they must have role models very close to them who are healthy, whole and strong. These are not things we can preach or teach or train into a child. They must be part of the environment and the culture of the home. It seems like a daunting task, because we immediately think this means we have to be perfect parents. This is not what it means. What it means is that we are parents on a path, in a process, a work in progress - you can choose your metaphor. The fundamental fact is that a good parent is a conscious parent; they think about what they do and they ask themselves how they could do things better. They think about their own family of origin, their own upbringing, and they ask themselves what they want to keep and what they want to let go of. Conscious parents are not just working on their children; they are working on themselves. They want to become better people. They are trying to become the kind of parents they want their children to have. Parenting happens over many years. Growth and change should be a constant. We need to model for our children all through the developmental changes that to live is to change and grow and come to greater awareness. I feel sad when I meet parents who have stopped growing, who are not interested in changing themselves - only their children. I am what I am. I know what I know. I'm doing the best I can. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum is the parent who over-analyzes and over-thinks every tiny decision. This is not healthy either, and it is often motivated by anxiety and fear, the fear that I am a bad parent, and I'm going to "screw up" my kids. We have to begin with a positive, open-ended, confident approach, and above all, we have to have a sense of humour. As my mother was fond of repeating, "If you don't laugh, you'll cry." The great gift of parenting is that we get to work on ourselves. We begin by thinking we need to know everything about parenting and our children are blank canvases for us to paint on. What we end up learning is that our children have been sent to teach us something. Let's not miss this opportunity! Parents are not the only adults in a child's life. Teachers, caregivers, extended family members, neighbours and adult friends of the family can have a huge influence in a child's life. We need only think back on the adults in our own childhood to realize their importance. All of us can name a teacher, a relative or some other adult who made a significant impact on our lives. The emotional health of these adults was a key factor in whether they influenced us for good or for bad. When adults work on their own emotional health, all the people in their lives benefit. As parents, we sometimes need to play the role of gatekeeper in terms of which adults will have extended time with our children. With relatives this can be a very difficult issue. We hear sad stories of grandparents who do not have access to their grandchildren. Sometimes this represents unresolved mental health issues in the adult child who seeks some kind of retribution on his or her parents, while other times there may be sound reasons for keeping the amount of contact to a minimum. Another place where adult mental health can become an issue is in the classroom. We cannot always choose our child's teacher, and sometimes the situation can become toxic. Noah was an extremely sensitive boy who absorbed the emotional state of those around him. He had a teacher in grade 5 who would explode with anger on an almost daily basis. She would yell and shake furniture, and blame her anger on the behaviour of the class. Noah had trouble sleeping, a churning stomach and his grades suffered. He told me this story when he was in grade 10, and I could see the memory was still very strong in him. One of the toxic teachings he received from this situation is that children are responsible for the emotional state of the adults in their lives. If I'm mad, it's your fault. It's your job to keep me happy. It's your job to manage my emotional state. This teaching is more common than we realize, and it can come from any significant adult in a child's life. What Kind of Men Do We Want Our Boys to Be? When talking about the emotional health of boys, we need to start with a vision of what kind of men we want our boys to become. As Stephen Covey says, we need to begin with the end in mind. When we look at men we admire or men we don't, we might ask ourselves, what kind of parenting did that man have? Men are not only the products of their parenting, but it is an important factor, and we as parents stand to learn a lot by asking this question. The issue of emotional repression is a particular issue for males. Boys are socialized from a very young age to hide their emotions. Girls, on the other hand, are allowed a much broader range of emotional expression. The long-term repercussions of this are profound. The central thesis of this book is that if we raised healthier boys, the world would be a significantly better place. Many of the problems we face as a society and as a species are directly influenced by the way we raise our boys. The growing gap between rich and poor, the destruction of the environment, street violence and war, the subjugation and abuse of women - all of these phenomena have significant roots in the male psyche and male culture. I am not talking about the intrinsic biological nature of males. I am talking about the way males are shaped and formed by the cultures and institutions they grow up in. We are all products of nature and nurture combined. Sometimes our nurturing enhances our nature; sometimes it degrades our nature. This is what we need to talk about. As we come to the end of four to five thousand years of patriarchy, we are being forced to re-define masculinity. It is a great opportunity for growth and renewal and liberation. Our boys are lucky to be living in such a time, and they are even luckier when they have adults in their lives who are aware of how they function and what they need. We want men who are strong, confident and whole in the best sense of these words. The Strong Man Strength has come to be associated with power over others and is too closely aligned with violence. The strong man is the violent man. This has got to change. The strong man is the man of focus, commitment, determination and self-discipline. The strong man has the courage to do what needs to be done, to say what needs to be said. The strong man plays a vital role in his community, and sometimes that means critiquing his community when he thinks it is going in the wrong direction. The strong man stands firm in his convictions. He fights for what is right and true. He works to protect those in his care. The Confident Man Confidence comes from having a world view, a vision, an over-riding goal or orientation in one's life. A confident man knows what he stands for, what he believes in and lives his life in that way. Every choice is made in light of this vision. Confidence does not mean arrogance. It does not mean self-righteousness. In popular culture, the confident man listens to no one. He is always right and condemns those views that are different from his own. The truly confident man has humility. He holds onto his truth, but is always open to growth, change and learning. He is not just confident in what he is; he is confident in what he is going to become, and he is confident about making the decisions in his life that will take him there. The Whole Man So many men are broken and fragmented. They have neglected or rejected huge parts of themselves - their intellects, their emotional lives, their spiritual lives, their bodies. They become money-making machines, buying machines, sex machines, power and control machines. The image of the robot has become the shadow identity of the male - the thing we all fear becoming because we see how close to it we are. The whole man uses his intelligence for analytical and critical thought. Analytical thought asks why is this happening? Critical thought asks should this be happening? Is it good or bad, right or wrong? This intelligent thought becomes the basis for action in one's life and in the world. The whole man is willing to get up off the couch and do something. The whole man experiences the full range of his emotions. He is open to the emotions of others. He thinks of these passions in a positive light. They animate people and make them loveable. He is open to the light end of the emotional spectrum as well as the dark end. He can laugh and cry. He can feel joy as well as anger. He is capable of intimacy - with women, children and other men! The whole man acknowledges his own spiritual dimension and the spiritual dimension of reality. He knows that science and reason cannot explain everything, that there is a deeper reality that we cannot see, that we can only intuit (what was once called faith). He has the spiritual awareness to throw up his hands in awe at the wonder of nature and the universe, to see it as something mysterious and profound - to be respected, not exploited for material gain. The whole man lives in his body. He does not deny his body. How many men refuse to see a doctor, or only go when there is a glaring problem? Men allow themselves to focus on two things: their muscles and their faces (and, in secret, their genitals). This is what the body has been reduced to. The whole man takes care of his body through diet, exercise and sleep. The whole man who is comfortable with his own body becomes comfortable with the bodies of others. As he stops treating his own body as an object to be controlled, he stops seeing other bodies the same way. The whole man is a sensual man. He can take pleasure in all five senses. As he becomes comfortable with his sensual self, he is able to meet the sensual needs of others - especially those he loves and who love him. Raise Emotionally Healthy Boys and Change the World The topic of raising emotionally healthy boys is more important than ever before. Emotionally damaged boys may grow up to be our criminals, our abusers of women and children. They can grow up to be our addicts, our war-mongers, our environment destroyers. They grow up to be our power-junkies, our Wall Street greed demons, our purveyors of conscienceless capitalism which leads to poverty alongside gross consumption. I say "our" criminals, abusers, etc. because the responsibility for these things does not lie just with the individual, nor does it lie only with men - as though there was something inherently wrong with them. The responsibility for the way boys grow up to be destructive men lies with all of us. At the same time, these problems are the result of a cultural inheritance called patriarchy. (The term comes from the Greek word patriarkhia meaning rule by the father but more broadly understood as rule by men). In the West, patriarchy is slowly crumbling, but it still persists as the dominant social paradigm. Politics, business, religion, education and the family itself are all based on a patriarchal model: top-down power and control, competition, repression of emotion, conformity. The most important thing to say about all this is that it is not a conscious conspiracy on the part of men to "rule the world." Patriarchy is a social system rooted in a deep psychic fear - fear of the loss of power and control. Cultural anthropologists have suggested that patriarchy is ultimately rooted in fear of feminine energy. Men are afraid of female power, and all our social institutions are a defense against the feminine - the other half of ourselves. Men are as much the victims of patriarchy as women are. Patriarchy is not only sustained by those for whom it works (the Donald Trumps and the Kevin O'Leary); it is sustained by those for whom it doesn't work! Feminism has had such a hard ride because it is the first social movement to seriously threaten patriarchy. It is the inevitable antidote that we need. The frustrating thing about feminism is that it has often held up the patriarchal yardstick of success for women - you too can now sacrifice yourself on the altar of power, status, money and possessions. Men eventually agreed to let women in on the game on the condition that the game itself cannot change. I had hoped that women would enter patriarchal structures and change them, but I have not seen this happen - yet. They have adapted themselves to the "old boys club" in order to gain entry, and so the corporation implicated in environmental destruction or human rights abuses continues to operate unchallenged under the female CEO. One of the keys that might unlock the grip of patriarchy is the emotions. To the extent that men are divorced from how they feel, they accept bizarre and damaging life situations. Women are emotionally healthier than men because they are permitted a broader range of emotional response to their lives. Men are trained to have a muted response to their own lives. They learn this lesson so well that even when situations are intolerable, they press on in silence. In 1854, Thoreau wrote, "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." He wrote this in a time we think of as bucolic - the rural past of an innocent North America. What would he say about the millions of commuters who pour into office towers each morning and pour out again to the suburbs each evening? While feminism was a rational response to social injustice, we cannot deny the important role played by emotions. Women not only thought but felt their situation was unjust. Perhaps we are driven to action more by feelings than by thoughts. Men have yet to harness this energy. We are very good at thinking, but we are not so good at feeling. To put it better, we are not so good at having our feelings. Because men are human organisms designed much the same as women, we have as many feelings as they do; we have just learned to suppress, ignore, rationalize and medicate those feelings until they become transformed into other things. When men become emotionally healthy, social change will become more possible. As long as men are emotionally unhealthy, things will stay the same. We begin the project of social change by changing the way we raise boys. So we begin with the important question, what do boys need? Excerpted from Raising Emotionally Healthy Boys by Michael Reist All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.