To look inward for answers about what makes you male, and what to do with what you find, takes patience, tenacity and courage. We will look across time (forefathers, philosophy, conquerors, tribalism), your current social ecosystem, your earliest encounters with masculinity and male-ness, and enhance how you see 'man' and how you desire to describe your own unique definition of a male self. 

We work with men who are ready to face themselves, their past, present and future with courage and honesty; men who are prepared to take a closer look at their own reflection. In the pursuit of better answers about ourselves we cannot underestimate the power of asking better questions. We will be a proactive collaborative partner toward growing, expressing, exploring or resolving what you bring into therapy.

Old, young, middle-aged, masculine, feminine, nonbinary, overweight, athletic, skinny, muscular, heterosexual, heteroflexible, bisexual, pansexual, questioning, single, married, monogamous, consensual non-monogamy — the clutter and clamor of who we are, what we are or how we are is a perennial gauntlet of internal perception and external proclamation. Others want to define and confine us. We prefer to find liberation and optimize all that you have been, are now and may be becoming. At Aim Psychotherapy we seek to see the whole you and want to help you realize your fullest self. Self-actualization and integration of the whole self is often the most exuberant part of the partnership.

As men, we are often taught to take rather than give, to control instead of collaborate, to wage war and resist peace. This is nonsense. But it penetrates our young psyches and takes root. Today those same messages we got from a parent or our peers or a coach now comes at us from social media, competitive aesthetic physicality like narcissistic voyeurism and exhibitionism, rejection, materialism, and even gossip; the result is impaired intimacy. Within the modern male the existential opposite of war, peace, can seemingly only be achieved when our tasks of attainment are wholly complete. This system is more likely to erode us than to empower us. Because of the impossibility of feeling satiated, we as men are in a constant state of frustration, waging our wars unendingly (inwardly and outwardly) in pursuit of elusive 'peace' in the form of a kind of fullness that typically leaves us feeling empty instead. If we don't find ways to undo and unbind ourselves from the fallacy of perpetual warfare, we will be in a state of cyclical, unsatisfying hunger. 

Sports, whether its the NFL, your local crossfit gym, or a recreational dodgeball league, provides sanctuary, stimulation and satisfaction. Males depend on and thrive in socially interconnected conditions. This craving for connection can be fleetingly and superficially met digitally, but it is only when we are initiated into a tribe or create our own, with meaningful human contact, that we feel most powerfully whole, as one within many. Tribes satisfy our desire to be inspired by other men, physically connected with other men, and witnessed as men. Those powerful bonds can start within singularity, like male-centered therapy.

There are many myths about power that we struggle with across our lifespan. Emergent desires and conventions around control, prestige and power can dominate and distort our relationships to others, our relationship to ourself and warp our dreams and hopes into ambitions that are often more informed by the external world than by our own inner essential self. We will examine, understand and refine this internal thirst, toward a clearer and authentic articulation of more compassionate, honest and purposeful goals.

Some of our greatest frustrations as men - existential, mental, sexual and social - are direct results of repressing our need for love, approval, belonging, connectedness (physical and emotional), desires and passions, and a profound need for achievement. The act of repressing these needs/wants leads to conscious and unconscious frustration that can drive discontent, aggression, isolation anxiety, depression and addiction. These deeply held frustrations poison our understanding of self, our interactions with our brothers, our intersections with success, and our reactions to perceived failures. A central failing from our influences in youth can often lead to this repression — the instructions we are given overtly and covertly to sever the bond between our head and our heart; to live only in the thinking space (logic, decisiveness, rationalization, compartmentalization) and to divorce ourselves from the feeling space (love, loss, sadness, fear, anger, joy). Liberating and rejuvenating the heart, and repairing its connection to our whole self is vital…and that re-integration is exhilarating.