Walking Therapies Instead of Talking Therapies... Men’s mental health services need a serious rethink, because we're wasting money and pushing approaches that simply don't work.
For too long, therapy has often been designed around a narrow model: sit down, talk about feelings, disclose vulnerability, process emotions verbally, then repeat.
This works for a few men. But it doesn't work for most males.
John Barry, Martin Seager and the Centre for Male Psychology have argued for male-friendly approaches that understand how most men deal with stress, distress and grief. Tom Golden, through his book The Way Men Heal and his Substack Men Are Good, has made a similar point for decades: men often heal through action, purpose, problem-solving, responsibility, movement, work, humour, practical support and side-by-side connection.
This is why “walking therapies” matter.
Not only the literal action of walking, although that helps. But also therapy that moves. Therapy that does. Therapy that builds. Therapy that gives men agency, instead of endlessly asking them to emote on command...
The organic growth of Men’s Sheds shows this beautifully. Across Australia (and now around the world), men gather in safe male spaces, they work on the tools, repair things, make things, learn skills, drink tea and coffee, joke around, and have healthy incidental conversations.
Often the most important words between males are spoken while doing something else (fishing, driving, building, cooking, cycling, working, or playing pool)... That isn't emotional avoidance. It's male-typical connection.
Male mental health is fundamentally different from female mental health with less talking. Male grief isn't failed female grief. Male psychology isn't defective female psychology...
Men often need different doors into support: practical activity, trusted mateship, physical movement, mission, mentoring, fatherhood, faith, service, craftsmanship, and belonging.
If we want fewer men isolated, addicted, angry, ashamed or suicidal, then we need services that respect men as they are:
- Not lectures about “toxic masculinity”.
- Not feminised therapy dressed up as "universal care".
- Not systems that treat male silence as pathology, while ignoring the environments that make men feel judged, unwanted or misunderstood...
Walking therapies instead of talking therapies means this:
=> Meet men in motion.
=> Respect their dignity.
=> Build trust side by side.
And help men heal in ways that actually work for them...
@DanRepacholi @BrienLlew