Why Do We Men Avoid Counseling?
I have written elsewhere that we get stuck in our own world. We need help to become better people, but fail to get help. Counseling is super valuable and especially us men fail to get it. It leaves us stuck and leaves our families and coworkers in a less blessed place. We need to do better.
Why Do We Men Avoid Counseling Like Me?
I am one of those. My wife sought out and got hundreds of hours of counseling. I went to marriage counseling with her when she pointed a gun at my head. After three years of marriage counseling, we were changed and still needed more, but lacked money to keep going. God helped us those last steps by business crisis that I mentioned.
Amazingly, Counseling made my life better. I am a better man for the Counseling I got. My kids are happier. My wife became much better all because I got and responded to Counseling. I also accepted Counseling from my wife and even kids. Glorious.
I am familiar with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy. Notably, these are different, and if you read up on them, you may see which will help you the most. I am good at cognitive, but it was obvious my family saw I needed EFT, so we did that.
John 3:1 is inspirational and familiar.
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!…
I take inspiration from God saying we can be children all out lives. Even more so, Jesus even implores us to become like children, and I do not think He meant just for one brief moment.
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3
14 Do everything without grumbling or arguing, 15 so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.”[c] Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky. Phillipians 2
Humility and Childlikeness Are Signs of the Kingdom
What is a proper child? Open and curious and learning, even absorbing, Let’s be men like this. Then our families will honor us even as we desire to be. The honor will be earned for we will follow Jesus still in Ph 2.
Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
I think we can at least bow as far as seeking Counseling when our family needs it from us.
Furthermore, the Bible says men should lay down their lives for their wives and not exasperate their children.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Eph 5:25
How big a step is Counseling? It takes humility and an ability to see ourselves as God’s deeply loved children. Let’s go there, for the glory of God.