The American Masculinity Podcast is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and award-winning men's advocate. Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, trauma, fatherhood, leadership, and growth. Each episode offers expert insight and practical tools to help men show up differently — as partners, fathers, friends, and leaders. No yelling. No clichés. Just grounded, thoughtful masculinity for a changing world.
Episode Summary
Being a good therapist isn’t just about technique. It’s about presence. It’s about knowing how to hold space without flinching, how to challenge without shaming, and how to stay steady when someone finally tests whether you’ll leave as everyone else did.
In this episode, licensed therapist Timothy sits down with trauma clinician Bianca Thomas for a raw, deeply grounded conversation. The discussion centres around men in therapy, gender dynamics in the clinical room, and why so many men struggle to feel safe opening up. Together, they unpack what actually helps men heal and where the mental health field still falls short.
You’ll hear us break down:
- Why do men test female therapists? How boundary-pushing, sexual comments, and humour are often safety bids, not disrespect.
- Vulnerability vs. emotional collapse: Why men fear that “opening up” means losing control, and what healthy vulnerability actually looks like.
- The gender gap in clinical training: How modern therapy education often overlooks male socialization and leaves clinicians underprepared to work with men.
- What builds real safety in the room? Directness, credibility, humour, and consistency.
- Rupture and repair: Why conflict in therapy isn’t failure, but one of the most powerful healing tools when handled well.
- Sex, shame, and silence: How sexual dynamics show up in therapy, and why avoiding them does more harm than naming them.
- Why do men need other men? The role of community and “me too” moments in helping men finally seek support.
We stay with the pressure men carry every day, the pull between connection and self-protection, between showing up and staying guarded. This conversation doesn’t promise quick wins or clean solutions. It offers something more useful: honesty about what men actually need to heal, grow, and stay in the room.
Guest Information
- Licensed trauma clinician with extensive experience working with men, trauma survivors, and complex relational dynamics.
- Co-founder of Evolve Ventures, focused on helping individuals build emotional regulation, self-awareness, and healthier relationship patterns.
- Known for her direct, grounded therapeutic style and her work helping men develop emotional safety, vulnerability, and accountability without shame.
- Focus areas include men’s mental health, trauma recovery, attachment, emotional regulation, gender dynamics in therapy, and relational repair.
Note: Bianca Thomas appears in this interview in a personal and professional capacity. The views expressed are her own and do not represent any licensing board, professional organization, or affiliated institution.
Fact Check & Clarifications
We compared this discussion to peer-reviewed psychological studies, sociological research, and recent scholarship on masculinity. The most crucial explanations and affirmations for are listed below:
1. Men lack social permission to acknowledge and express emotions.
What was said: “Men are not given a space to really acknowledge what they're feeling. To even be allowed to have feelings, let alone to go to another group of people and say, ‘Hey, I’m sad.’” (Bianca)
Status: True
Detail: Men have been trained to repress sensitive emotions like loss, fear, and sadness, especially in Western countries, according to a large body of research. Normative male alexithymia is a term commonly used to describe this condition. Men's emotional lexicon is restricted, and emotional disclosure is discouraged, particularly in social situations. Boys and men are often penalised (socially or in relationships) for showing vulnerability, while being praised for emotional restraint and stoicism. Cultural standards limit where, how, and with whom emotional expression is seen as appropriate, but this does not imply that males lack emotions or a desire for emotional connection. Research regularly demonstrates that men are more afraid than women of social rejection and status loss when expressing sadness, which perpetuates emotional isolation and quiet.
Source: Wong, Y. J., Ho, M. H. R., Wang, S. Y., & Miller, I. S. (2017). Meta-analyses of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of counseling psychology, 64(1), 80.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-56584-001
Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American psychologist, 58(1), 5.
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2003-02034-001.html
Why it matters for men: This supports the lived experience that many males describe in therapy: emotional repression is not a personal failure but rather something that is learnt, reinforced, and dangerous in relationships. Understanding this makes it easier to reframe emotional expressiveness as a cultural talent rather than a flaw or shortcoming.
2. Sexual vulnerability in male therapy clients is under-addressed in clinical training.
What was said: “The sexual vulnerability for guys in session is consistent. And it’s one of the things our graduate programs don’t do very well, talking about how clinicians hold sexual energy during a session.” (Timothy)
Status: True
Detail: Sexual and erotic content, particularly from male clients, frequently appears in psychotherapy. This is supported by research and clinical opinion. It is frequently connected to vulnerability, attachment requirements, and emotional safety rather than just sexual purpose. Because many males are trained to identify vulnerability primarily with sexual or romantic circumstances, studies on erotic transference and countertransference reveal that male clients may use sexualized language to communicate closeness, appreciation, or emotional disclosure. However, numerous evaluations of psychotherapy training programs show that graduate programs offer scant, uneven training on controlling sexual emotions, erotic transference, and "sexual energy" during sessions. When addressed, the focus is often on ethics and boundary violations rather than on how to clinically hold and work through sexualized dynamics without shaming or prematurely shutting them down.
Source: Gabbard, G. O. (2016). Boundaries and boundary violations in psychoanalysis. American Psychiatric Pub.
Hayes, J. A., Gelso, C. J., & Hummel, A. M. (2011). Managing countertransference. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 88.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-04924-013
Why it matters for men: Male vulnerability can be misinterpreted as a threat or misconduct when doctors lack the necessary training, which feeds men's anxiety that being emotionally open is harmful. When sexualized content is handled skillfully, men can feel vulnerable without being rejected, which promotes better relationship patterns and helps separate emotional connection from sexuality.
3. Gaps in clinician training for working across genders, particularly with men.
What was said: “The field has not done a good job in teaching clinicians how to reach across genders… there’s extensive training on women, trauma, and marginalized identities, but an assumption that men’s mental health was already covered — even though that foundation is generations old.” (Timothy)
Status: True
Detail: Conventional psychotherapy training has placed a greater emphasis on trauma-informed care, feminist psychology, and culturally sensitive work with women and LGBTQ+ populations. It occurs often without a parallel, updated framework for engaging men as men, as supported by recent studies. Although male subjects were historically the focus of early psychology and psychiatry, this emphasis represented white, heterosexual, cisgender men in mid-20th-century social circumstances rather than the relational, emotional, or identity issues that men experience today. According to research, many clinicians don't get any formal training on how masculinity affects therapeutic alliances, male help-seeking hurdles, emotional restriction norms, or masculine socialization. Lower retention, a weaker connection, and higher dropout rates among male clients have all been associated with this disparity. However, it would be inaccurate to say the field ignores men entirely. Rather, training has not evolved at the same pace as shifting gender dynamics, leaving many clinicians underprepared to adapt older models to modern men’s lived realities.
Source: Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American psychologist, 58(1), 5.
https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2003-02034-001.html
Why it matters for men: This acknowledges that males frequently feel misinterpreted or subtly chastised during treatment without portraying it as a sign of a clinician's dishonesty. Individual failure is not the problem; rather, it is systemic and educational. It emphasizes the importance of deliberate, male-responsive treatment approaches.
4. The belief that women want men to show vulnerability through emotional breakdowns.
What was said: “ I think a lot of men have this idea that women want to see them be vulnerable in this like completely lose control breakdown kind of way, and that's just not helpful.” (Bianca)
Status: Can be clarified (largely accurate, but incomplete)
Detail: Research consistently demonstrates that men's emotional vulnerability is valued when it is contextual, controlled, and accompanied by responsibility rather than when it manifests as emotional overload, dependence, or lack of self-control. According to studies on heterosexual attraction and relationship satisfaction, women typically react favourably to men who can express their feelings in a clear, thoughtful, and emotionally aware manner. However, when vulnerability shows up as an uncontrollable emotional collapse without self-agency or containment, women may feel overpowered or unsafe. Additionally, clinical research makes a distinction between emotional dysregulation (emotional dumping, collapse, or externalized distress) and healthy vulnerability (identifying emotions, expressing meaning, and seeking assistance). The conflicting social messaging that encourages men to "open up" but seldom teaches them how to do so effectively is the cause of the bewilderment that many guys encounter.
Source: Brody, L. R., & Hall, J. A. (2008). Gender and emotion in context. Handbook of emotions, 3, 395-408.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303365863_Gender_and_emotion
Why it matters for men: This explanation makes it clearer to males that being vulnerable is about learning emotional literacy and regulation rather than losing control or causing suffering. Particularly in close relationships, it reframes vulnerability as a strength-building talent rather than a dangerous emotional risk.
5. Men experience more violence than women, contributing to higher suicide rates.
What was said: “Men experience more violence in their lives than women do. It’s why men have a higher suicide rate than women do.” (Bianca)
Status: Can be clarified (partially true, but causation is more complex).
Detail: There are two components in the claim that need to be distinguished. First, while women are more likely to encounter sexual violence and intimate relationship violence, men are more likely to face physical assault by strangers, non-sexual violent crime, homicide, and exposure to violence in public places. This gendered pattern of violent exposure is consistently evident in large-scale crime and public health data. Second, although women report higher rates of suicide attempts, men indeed have much higher suicide fatality rates globally, frequently three to four times higher than women. However, recent research refutes the idea that exposure to violence is the only factor contributing to men's greater suicide rates. Instead, researchers point to a combination of factors: socialization toward emotional suppression, lower help-seeking behaviour, higher use of lethal means, substance use, and desensitization to physical pain and risk factors that can be influenced by repeated exposure to violence but are not reducible to it.
Source: Värnik, P. (2012). Suicide in the world. International journal of environmental research and public health, 9(3), 760-771.
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/3/760
Why it matters for men: This explanation avoids oversimplifying men's suicide risk while confirming a fundamental fact: men are frequently raised in settings that normalize risk-taking, physical harm, and emotional restraint. Knowing how exposure to violence, masculinity standards, and mental health interact enables men to seek assistance without placing the blame on themselves or feeling that their results are unavoidable.
Full Citations / Further Reading
Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American psychologist, 58(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.58.1.5
Brody, L. R., & Hall, J. A. (2008). Gender and emotion in context. Handbook of emotions, 3, 395-408. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483346274.n122
Englar‐Carlson, M., & Kiselica, M. S. (2013). Affirming the strengths in men: A positive masculinity approach to assisting male clients. Journal of Counseling & Development, 91(4), 399-409. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2013.00111.x
Gabbard, G. O. (2016). Boundaries and boundary violations in psychoanalysis. American Psychiatric Pub. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2016.16040417
Hayes, J. A., Gelso, C. J., & Hummel, A. M. (2011). Managing countertransference. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 88. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022182
Levant, R. F., Wong, Y. J., Karakis, E. N., & Welsh, M. M. (2015). Mediated moderation of the relationship between the endorsement of restrictive emotionality and alexithymia. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 16(4), 459. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035705
Värnik, P. (2012). Suicide in the world. International journal of environmental research and public health, 9(3), 760-771. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph9030760
Wasserman, D., Cheng, Q. I., & Jiang, G. X. (2005). Global suicide rates among young people aged 15-19. World psychiatry, 4(2), 114. PMID: 16633527
Wong, Y. J., Ho, M. H. R., Wang, S. Y., & Miller, I. S. (2017). Meta-analyses of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of counseling psychology, 64(1), 80. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000176.