I'm interested to know what happens when men try and get help. I've done a lot of work around men's help-seeking behaviour and know the story that "men won't get help" doesn't help us understand the issue.
In the past my experience in this field has come from helping men in 1-2-1 and group settings; helping others to help men and reviewing existing research on men's help-seeking behaviour.
My weight loss journey is an opportunity for me to observe my own help-seeking processes and what does and doesn't work for me. I have lots of positive experiences of getting help and support and one of my unhelpful patterns is that I end up clashing with people who want to help me.
In terms of getting help losing weight I have tried crowd-sourcing the help by sharing my need for help openly on social media. As a result I've been able to see those familiar clashes playing out externally as members of the crowd argue with each other over the best way to support me.
I'm going to share an example of one social media conversation that took place this week and want to be clear that everyone in this (edited) exchange has a good intention to help me:
Female Friend 1: You are in pretty good shape from what I remember.....I hate skinny men....a man needs a bit of meat on him!!
Male Friend: Not sure I like people undermining Glen's goals. Who cares if you prefer fat men??
Female Friend 2: I will second (female friend 1) on this. Healthy is good, but you can be TOO thin........mind you don't overdo it.
Now whatever you think of what the people in this interaction said, in terms of my help-seeking style, like the male friend who stepped into the conversation, I didn't find the help that my female friends were trying to give very helpful. Which then raises the following question about helping men---is it men's ability to get help or our collective ability to help men that needs to change?
I won't analyze this interaction further out of respect for the three people above who all have great intentions.
What I will say more generally is this. In terms of how we, as humans, try and support each other, I find the the transactional analysis (TA) model quite useful. One of the the basic concepts is that we are all made up of 3 alter ego states: parent, adult and child.
My ideal helping relationships would be adult-to-adult. The "adult" in terms of TA, focuses on our ability to think and determine action for ourselves, based on received data. So when I seek help (as an adult) I tend to work best with help-givers who can focus on my ability to work it out myself.
Now a lot of the time when it comes to giving and getting help, rather than getting into an adult-to-adult relationship, we get into a parent-child relationship.
Here's a simple table on the positive and negative sides of the parent and child ego states:
Ego state
|
Positive
|
Negative
|
|
Parent –
nurturing
|
nurturing
|
spoiling
|
|
Parent –
controlling
|
structuring
|
critical
|
|
Child – adapted
|
co-operative
|
compliant/resistant
|
|
Child – free
|
spontaneous
|
immature
|
I tend to view the nurturing adult and free child as feminine (not female) aspects of this model and the structuring adult and adapted child as masculine (not male) aspects.
When I clash with people who are trying to help, it's usually because I perceive them as being critical or over-nurturing (spoiling) and I respond in my childish way with resistance---which is the negative manifestation of the adapted (masculine) child---it has been said that I am a stubborn so-and-so!
It is often said that men are reluctant to get help---we are stubborn. I know from my experience of helping men that men do get help and generally respond well to healthy (feminine) nurture, healthy (masculine) structure and being treated like an adult who can ultimately work it our for himself.
I'll talk a little more about how I am applying the TA model in my attempts to help myself lose weight, tomorrow.
DAY FIVE NOTES
WEIGHT: 14 stone 9lb (healthy range 9 stone 7lb to 12 stone 12lb)
WAIST: 36-39 inches/94-99 cms (depends if I'm breathing in or out)
BMI: 28.7 (healthy range 18.5 to 25)
ACTION: Ran and walked 4 miles, drank lots of water, stayed off the biscuits, snacked on fruit, seeds and dried fruit
Tomorrow: Losing the will to lose weight
No comments:
Post a Comment