A Man's Guide To Mastering Your Emotions - Connor Beaton
Here are the top 10 key takeaways from Chris Williamson's conversation with Connor Beaton that can transform how men approach their emotional lives.
1. Emotions are data from your body
Emotions serve as valuable information from your body, similar to how thoughts represent your thinking process. Connor Beaton explains that ignoring emotions is like making investment decisions without looking at a company's financial statements. You're missing critical data that could inform better life choices.
Making decisions based solely on rationality without emotional input creates an incomplete picture. This often leads to poor choices in relationships, career, and general life satisfaction. The fullness of life experience requires both rational thinking and emotional awareness.
2. Men often use avoidance as their main emotional tool
Several generations of men have been conditioned to suppress their emotions rather than process them. The common approach has been to "stuff it down" and avoid emotional experiences altogether. This cultural pattern of avoidance has left many men unable to speak the language of emotions.
This avoidance isn't because men don't feel deeply. On the contrary, men often feel emotions intensely but haven't been taught healthy ways to process them. This creates a cycle where men feel emotions strongly but lack the skills to navigate them productively.
3. Understanding the difference between explaining and expressing
Men tend to over-index on explaining rather than expressing their emotions. Explaining focuses on how things work, why something is a good idea, or how events will unfold. It stays in the realm of facts and logic, disconnected from emotional experience.
Expressing, by contrast, involves communicating your direct felt experience—what you're actually feeling in your body. When expressing, you can feel your body involved in the communication process. Learning to express rather than always explain creates deeper connections with others and with yourself.
4. Four steps to emotional awareness and mastery
The journey to emotional mastery begins with awareness of what you're feeling. Next, label both the emotional charge (anger, sadness, etc.) and its intensity (on a scale of 1-10). Then describe the physical sensations in detail—where and how you feel the emotion in your body.
Finally, identify what the emotion might be trying to tell you or express. Every emotion contains data and information that can help guide decision-making. This process helps create space between feeling an emotion and acting on it, allowing for more thoughtful responses.
5. Developing emotional tolerance is crucial
Many men have very low tolerance for uncomfortable emotions. When feelings like grief, sadness, or anger arise, they immediately shut down or explode because they haven't developed the capacity to sit with these emotions.
Building tolerance involves deliberately staying with uncomfortable emotions rather than avoiding them. Connor suggests practices like the "fire meditation" for anger—sitting with anger when it arises at low intensity (2-3) and simply breathing while noticing bodily sensations. This gradually conditions your nervous system to recognize that feeling emotions can be safe.
Over time, this practice builds emotional resilience and increases your threshold for emotional intensity. With greater tolerance, you can process emotions more effectively rather than being overwhelmed by them.
6. Grief needs expression and witness
Grief isn't limited to death; it accompanies all transitions in life. It can emerge after achievements, career changes, or relationship endings. Unlike some emotions that need containment, grief specifically requires expression and witness—it needs to be seen by others to be fully processed.
Grief that isn't witnessed often remains unprocessed, leaving people stuck. Many stay trapped in past relationships or experiences because they haven't allowed others to see their grief. Our culture's discomfort with grieving often leads people to hide their grief rather than express it.
Having someone who can witness grief without trying to fix it creates the space necessary for healing. This relational component is crucial for moving through grief effectively rather than suppressing it, which often leads to depression.
7. Emotions can manifest differently by type
Different emotions require different approaches. "Explosive" emotions like anger and anxiety tend to push outward energetically. These often benefit from slowing down practices like deep breathing and developing awareness of physical triggers.
"Implosive" emotions like depression and grief feel more like "an anvil on the chest." These often require expression, witness from others, and sometimes physical movement like exercise to process effectively. Understanding these different manifestations helps tailor appropriate responses.
Breath work can be particularly effective for accessing emotions stored in the body. Practices like Wim Hof or holotropic breathing can bypass psychological barriers and access deeper feelings, allowing for release and processing.
8. Men aren't incentivized to open up emotionally
Society doesn't reward men for emotional openness. Many men report opening up to partners only to face rejection afterward. Others experience ridicule from peers or diminished attraction from romantic partners when showing vulnerability.
This lack of incentive creates a double bind. Men are told they should open up more, but when they do, they often face negative consequences. Connor suggests "emotional shit tests" early in relationships to see if potential partners can handle vulnerability before deep investment occurs.
9. Finding purpose requires emotional connection
Finding deep meaning and purpose is nearly impossible without emotional awareness. Purpose requires moving through the territory of the unknown—your emotions—rather than avoiding them. The journey into emotional awareness, though uncomfortable, often reveals what's missing in life.
This connects to Richard Rohr's idea that until a man experiences powerlessness, he will always abuse power. Emotions often represent that experience of powerlessness—something you can't simply control or dominate. Learning to work with rather than against this powerlessness develops emotional maturity.
The willingness to be transparent about emotional experiences creates deeper connections. When you can honestly express sadness, joy, grief, or anger, you open doors to more meaningful relationships and a clearer sense of purpose.
10. Unstructured cognitive time is essential
Most men have very little unstructured cognitive time in their daily lives. Constant input from social media, audiobooks, and other stimuli drowns out emotional information trying to surface in the mind. This continuous distraction prevents processing emotions effectively.
Connor recommends dedicating 30-60 minutes daily to unstructured cognitive activities like stream-of-consciousness journaling or walking without audio input. These practices create space for emotional awareness to develop naturally rather than being constantly suppressed.
Finding supportive communities, especially other men working on emotional awareness, accelerates growth. While the tendency for men is to "lone wolf" emotional development, having others who can provide feedback and accountability makes the process more effective and sustainable.