Starting Therapy From Strength, Not Deficit
Why many men disengage from therapy or avoid it altogether—and what to do about it
Atlas of St. Petersburg
Many of the men I work with don’t come to therapy because they’re falling apart. They come because something that used to work doesn’t anymore. They’ve handled pressure, responsibility, and complexity successfully for years. They know how to function, even in the midst of challenge.
What brings them in is a quieter concern: the sense that the tools and internal strengths they’ve historically relied on are faltering, and that effort alone is no longer sustaining them. They want solutions, techniques, a plan—something that helps them continue meeting the demands their world places on them. In my experience, men tend to disengage from therapy not because they lack the will or drive to change, but because the work sometimes focuses on what’s missing rather than what’s already working.
While well-intentioned, asking someone already under stress to slow down, feel more, talk differently, or try a bunch of unfamiliar techniques can create a sense of instability or uncertainty—both of which are distressing in high-pressure situations. Emotional awareness, vulnerability, and connection are important skills, but if introduced as corrective—as if something essential is missing—they can feel like a demand to abandon the very strengths that allow someone to function. That’s asking a lot of anyone, and it can feel unconscionable to someone already summoning all their resources just to get by.
In my work, I take a different approach. Rather than asking clients to set aside their strengths, we start by understanding them. The ability to compartmentalize when necessary, analyze, persist under pressure, and stay focused on critical tasks are not defenses to be dismantled—they are capabilities, a home base of sorts, the place from which all other work begins, and the place a client can return to if things start to feel uncertain. Treating existing capabilities as the foundation for the rest of the work, rather than an obstacle to emotional depth, leads to more effective therapy outcomes.
Once a client has confidence they can continue meeting their responsibilities, they’re better positioned to begin developing emotional insight, vulnerability, and empathy—knowing they have a set of skills that works and can be relied on as they integrate increased emotional awareness. In this way, awareness becomes another skill, helping guide decisions, regulate stress, and navigate relationships.
Many men find this shift alone can change their experience of therapy. The work no longer feels like a dismantling of identity, but an integration of skill. It moves the perspective from “everything I’m doing is part of the problem” to “how can we take what I have, combine it with what I’m not using, and get me where I need to be?”
Imagine a sports team that’s struggling to win. Defensively, they’re solid—they can usually keep the other team from scoring. Offensively, though, they can’t put points on the board. Every game becomes an exhausting effort just to avoid losing. A new coach comes in and decides the team’s existing methods are the problem, and the solution is to overhaul the roster. The result is predictable: the team scores, but now their defense collapses. Players don’t know how to work together. The system that once held them together is gone.
The mistake isn’t recognizing the need for offense—it’s treating the team’s existing strengths as incompatible with growth, rather than something to integrate. Defense and offense aren’t in competition. They’re meant to work together toward the same goal. Therapy works the same way: when a man’s existing capabilities are treated as a foundation rather than a liability, new skills—emotional awareness, vulnerability, relational depth—can be added without destabilizing the system that already works.
If you’ve spent much of your life being capable, reliable, and effective, starting therapy doesn’t have to mean setting those qualities aside. It can begin by understanding how they developed, what they’ve allowed you to accomplish, and where they may be under strain. From there, the work becomes less about fixing what’s broken and more about strengthening what’s already there while expanding your capacity to meet the next phase of life.
This approach isn’t about endless talking or dismantling your identity. It’s about restoring clarity and functionality first, then turning toward deeper questions of meaning, values, and direction once you have solid footing. For many men, that sequence makes the difference between therapy feeling destabilizing and therapy becoming genuinely useful.
If this way of working resonates, I offer a free consultation to help you determine whether it’s a good fit. There’s no obligation—just a conversation to see whether starting from strength feels like the right place for you.
