The Emotion Men Struggle With Most Isn’t Anger. It’s Shame.

The hidden force driving emotional disconnection, hostility, and fear in men.

I’ve been writing a lot about men’s anger lately, and the more conversations I’ve had with men and women about it, the more I’ve realized that there’s another more insidious feeling under the surface.¹

Shame

For many men right now, their anger is coming from a deep sense of shame.

Photo by Anna Tarazevich: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-and-black-number-10-6136099/

What is shame?

Shame is the emotional response to feeling like there’s something fundamentally wrong or unworthy about who you are. It’s different from guilt where the feeling is rooted in the idea that you’ve done something wrong. With shame, the feeling is rooted in the idea that there’s something wrong with you. And culturally, it’s exacerbated by a society that teaches men to fear weakness, failure, or being seen as not enough. It’s exacerbated even more by a society that teaches men to fear emotions.

Shame’s direct and indirect impact

Researchers studied exactly this by surveying hundreds of men on their views of masculinity, shame proneness, fear of emotions, and anger.² What they found was revealing:

• Fear of emotions was the strongest and most consistent predictor of men’s overt hostility and poor anger control.

• Shame appeared to underlie men's fear of emotions, which in turn drove overt hostility, anger, and poor anger control.

• Masculinity norms contributed to shame, especially around emotional expression.

• Even when shame didn’t directly predict anger or hostility, its indirect role, by shaping emotional fear and avoidance, made it a silent but powerful force in men’s emotional lives.

Taken together, the findings suggest that while fear of emotions is the strongest direct predictor of men’s hostility and poor anger control, shame plays a powerful and often hidden role by fueling that fear. This is particularly true when it’s shaped by masculinity norms that equate emotional expression with weakness.

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What’s happening psychologically

When we get angry, it’s the result of some sort of provocation, our mood at the time of that provocation, and our appraisal of the provocation (see here for a breakdown of Why We Feel). So what’s happening psychologically is that when men experience relatively minor provocations (e.g., minor criticisms, being dismissed by a friend or coworker, being turned down by a potential partner), their internal appraisal of that provocation becomes oversized. It isn’t just, “I made a mistake” or “that wasn’t what I hoped for,” it’s “I’m failing as a man.”

It becomes a threat to their identity… and when people feel threatened, they respond with defensiveness and anger.

And right now in the United States, there’s this undercurrent of shame for many men who feel chronically inadequate. That undercurrent influences how they experience provocations throughout their life. Each time they feel dismissed or discounted, it becomes yet another example of how they’re failing and adds to the shame spiral.

The solutions lie with men

Too many male thought leaders out there are telling us that men are being mistreated. They argue that men are being shamed or attacked undeservedly. To me, that’s not the problem. The problem is that men are failing to address the actual issue, which is their feeling of inadequacy and their fear of emotions. And those problems can only be solved by men.

Here’s how:

1. Men need to be introspective. Men must develop the habit of looking inward with honesty, not defensiveness. This means recognizing emotional patterns, examining triggers, and asking uncomfortable questions like why did that make me so angry, am I reacting to the present moment or to something else, or event what emotion am I covering up right now?

2. Men need to get comfortable with the full range of emotions. I’m not suggesting men (or anyone for that matter) need to be “emotional” all of the time. What I’m saying is that men need to become emotionally literate. They need to learn to name feelings beyond just stress and anger. They need to accept that emotional vulnerability isn’t a weakness. They need to practice emotional expression in safe, constructive ways.

3. Where men are actually inadequate, they need to improve instead of pointing fingers. Sometimes the shame men feel is actually connected to real shortcomings (e.g., emotional immaturity, poor communication, selfishness, lack of follow-through, laziness). They need to own those gaps without without defensiveness and they need to commit to real growth. A hallmark of being a mature human being is a willingness to accept your deficits and to work on them.

The work of addressing male anger has to begin with men turning inward. It starts with them acknowledging the shame they carry, the emotions they’ve been taught to fear, and the growth they’ve avoided. They need to recognize that it’s not weakness to feel but strength to look at yourself honestly and decide to do better. If we want a future where men are emotionally strong, connected, and less hostile, that future starts with men doing the quiet, difficult, necessary work of healing their own shame.

1. Ok, so my regular readers know that I’m quite resistant to considering anger a “secondary emotion” (i.e., anger occurs as a response to another emotion like sadness or fear). For a long time, I’ve argued that such a take is actually really minimizing to people who have been genuinely wronged. That said, there are times when anger IS secondary and we may be dealing with that on a pretty large scale right now.

2. Jakupcak, M., Tull, M. T., & Roemer, L. (2005). Masculinity, shame, and fear of emotions as predictors of men’s expressions of anger and hostility. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 6(4), 275–284.