Overcoming Shame in Men’s Rehab
Societal norms indicate men should be strong, never ask for help, and avoid failure. These social norms can make it difficult for individuals with addiction to admit they have a problem and ask for help.
It can be especially shameful for an individual to attend a treatment center with mixed genders as it might be more likely to exacerbate feelings of shame associated with thoughts of failing as a provider, a partner, or a strong male character. But with drug and alcohol treatment for men, this doesn’t have to be the case.
Centric Behavioral Health can help you find top-rated addiction treatment in your area.
What is Men’s Only Rehab?
You can find men’s only rehab that offers gender-specific treatment. At such a rehab center for men, you can reside full-time for residential programs or visit your treatment center daily for outpatient programs.
With these, you can choose:
- Drug and alcohol treatment for men that only offer therapy and counseling to men or
- Men’s only rehab that is also led by men
Many male clients don’t feel comfortable opening up and being honest about their work pressure or their issues at home if they are in a group setting with other females. This can include female facilitators, therapists, or psychiatrists. For that reason, you can find a rehab center for men that is overseen by men too.
But not all people feel this way. Studies indicate that sometimes men prefer a rehab center for men that women run because of gender biases and sexism in the male population.
Benefits of Drug and Alcohol Treatment for Men
When you attend men’s only rehab, you can meet in group therapy sessions with other male clients, learn coping skills, improve your communication with individuals who are feeling the same types of pressure, learn stress management techniques, and find profound support from everyone around you as you deal with your addiction.
Expressing Emotions
One of the most significant hiccups to successful treatment is opening up and expressing your emotions. Many men who need substance abuse care are uncomfortable with that level of intimacy and self-reflection.
This can come from many sources. Some men have difficulty because of the way they were brought up. Childhood upbringing can leave some male clients believing that they are weak if they express their emotions or that they aren’t strong providers if they talk to other men about how they feel. It can leave male clients with a severe and profound sense of shame.
For some male clients, this means they:
- Dismiss certain emotions
- Channel things like fear into anger
- Equate expressing how they feel with losing control
- Project their feelings onto someone else
- Get deeply uncomfortable when others open up to them
There might even be physical manifestations of this, such as a male client being told his entire childhood that standing up straight was something only snobby elite people did and therefore choosing never to stand up straight and dealing with chronic back pain, and turning to drugs and alcohol to self-medicate.
Attending drug and alcohol treatment for men can allow you to work with professionals trained to help you identify things like mental health disorders or childhood upbringing that may have contributed to these situations. Those same individuals can help you learn how to express your emotions better, knowing that you are doing so in a safe environment surrounded by other supportive males who are going through similar things.
Anger Management
The second biggest take up to successful treatment for men takes the form of anger management issues. Many men are not taught how to deal with their anger, which is tangentially related to an inability to express their emotions. This means that anger from daily stress can build up.
Men who are expected to be providers and protectors might not realize the weight of that stress, especially when they are unable to communicate how they feel on a regular basis. Men who might be unable to admit their fears or financial concerns, parenting issues, or workplace problems, especially to their family or the partners and spouses in their lives, are more likely to bottle those feelings up, leading to severe mental health disorders like depression or anxiety, anger management problems as those feelings escape in small, angry bursts, as well as addiction.
Men who struggle with chronic stress or anger management are more likely to relapse, which is why it’s essential to find drug and alcohol treatment for men that offers gender-specific programs to overcome this.
Centric Group can connect you to a men’s rehab center in your area. You deserve to get help, to express your fears, and to overcome your addiction.
Let us help you find men’s only rehab today and start getting the help you need.
