Part of the series Working With Feelings: Data, Breath, Literacy.
Every Visitor Brings a Gift ·
Befriending Your Feelings ·
Emotional Fitness for Men ·
The Data Inside Feelings ·
The Breath, Our Silent Regulator
What if resilience isn’t silence — but skill?
We’ve all been told what strength should look like. Stoic. Controlled. Unshakable.
But what if emotional strength isn’t about not feeling — but about knowing how to feel, without getting taken under?
In my work with men, I see it again and again: a quiet pressure to hold everything in, to manage life without complaint. Some carry this with a kind of silent pride. Others carry it like a weight they can’t name. Most never had the chance to learn another way.
We train the body — but not the emotions. And when pain builds up with no safe outlet, it either erupts… or it turns inward.
Richard Rohr once said, “If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.” That truth shows up everywhere: in fathers who lose connection with their children, in men whose anger leaks out sideways, in relationships that flatten under the strain of avoidance or control.
But here’s the thing: emotional strength can be built. Like any muscle, it grows with repetition, practice, and good form. And like in the gym, it starts by lifting what feels heavy — not all at once, not without support, but honestly, and without flinching.
Not Weakness, Not Collapse – Skill.
Many men I meet never learned how to stay with their feelings — not because they didn’t want to, but because nobody taught them how. In boyhood, we’re often taught to toughen up. Not to cry. Not to “make a scene.” Emotions get coded as private, even shameful. Vulnerability becomes suspect. you gro a thick skin, so nothing can bad stir you. However, that thick skin also keeps out all the goodies life has to offer: compliments, gratitude, and apologies, or reciprocity and presence.
But strength isn’t the absence of vulnerability. Real, authentic strength combines vulnerability and receptiveness with grounding and responsiveness.
Terry Real calls this the “half-life of male emotional training” — where men are expected to show power and control on the outside, while hiding fear, grief, and even tenderness on the inside. The result? A kind of shutdown that can last for years.
Re-opening that inner space is delicate work. It’s not about spilling everything. It’s not about theatrical catharsis. It’s about letting yourself feel enough to stay human — and learning how to work with what rises, not against it.
Sharing ≠ Emoting
A common mistake is to confuse sharing emotions with emoting them.
Sharing is active, conscious, grounded. Sharing comes from wanting to be known, from taking responsibility for oneself. Sharing respects boundaries.
Emoting often overwhelms, or unintentionally burdens others. Emoting seeks to radiate, infect, blame, project. Emoting is most often boundaryless; ‘I’m hurt, so you must hurt, too.’
True emotional literacy isn’t just about telling someone how you feel. It’s knowing what you feel, why it’s arising, and what it’s asking for. It’s being able to name your experience without collapsing into it — and staying connected, even when the feeling is hard.
That’s not easy work. But it’s transformative. For your relationships, for your sense of self, and for the way you move through the world.
The Inner Life Is Not a Luxury
In The Force of Character, James Hillman argues that ageing — and life itself — forces a man inward. At some point, what the world demands of you will no longer define you.
What remains is not your job, your strength, your sexual power — but your character.
And character is forged not through image, but through inwardness.
This isn’t therapy-speak. It’s soul work.
And it doesn’t require anyone to “fix” you.
Instead, it asks: What’s been left unexamined? Or: What emotions are you still afraid of — and why? And: What kind of man do you want to be when no one is watching?
These questions are not signs of weakness. On the contrary: They’re signs of a person holding themselves, courageously.
Emotional Fitness Is Quiet Strength
You can be powerful and still open.
You can feel and still stay grounded.
You can be vulnerable and still have boundaries.
Emotional fitness isn’t dramatic.
It’s built day by day — through pauses, reflection, restraint, and courage.
You learn to stay present when your body wants to flee. You learn to breathe through old stories instead of obeying them. You learn when to speak, and when silence is a way of respect — not fear.
And in doing so, you stop transmitting pain.
You start transforming it.
What does emotional fitness really mean?
You won’t see it in the mirror.
There’s no visible flex or tight control. But you’ll feel it — in the way your breath stays steady when tension rises, in the moments you stay when you’d rather disappear, in the subtle shift from bracing to allowing.
It’s how your chest opens instead of locks up.
How your voice softens without losing strength.
Emotional fitness doesn’t show up as dominance or detachment. It arrives quietly — in presence. In permission. In the refusal to collapse or perform.
It’s the strength to feel without shutting down.
To speak what’s real without needing armour.
To stay soft — and stay standing.
Emotional fitness isn’t a mood or an ideal. It’s a set of internal capacities: resilience that lets you take the hit without disappearing; intelligence that reads the signals before they get loud; agility that lets you pivot when old reactions flare. It’s being able to feel deeply and not get drowned. To show care without shame. To carry anger without acting it out. It’s the ability to name what’s happening — not to fix it, but to meet it. To meet yourself.
You don’t need to be rigid to be strong.
You don’t need to break to be real.
You don’t need to fake peace to deserve love.
Want to Go Deeper?
If you’ve ever felt the weight of your own shutdown — or sensed there’s more to you than what’s been shown — this isn’t just a post.
It’s an invitation.
For a look at how these themes play out in real life, read Strength in Reflection, Courage in Change — a piece that follows men who’ve turned emotional skill into quiet power. And if you’re curious about the cultural forces that keep men stuck in the first place, see Seeking Solutions — which explores what happens when men stop toughing it out and start turning toward what matters.
Part of the series Working With Feelings: Data, Breath, Literacy.
Every Visitor Brings a Gift ·
Befriending Your Feelings ·
Emotional Fitness for Men ·
The Data Inside Feelings ·
The Breath, Our Silent Regulator
