Men Need more Testosterone, not more Therapy

Focusing too much on emotions is a feminine solution to a masculine problem

I recently interviewed Brandon Carter, also known as “King Keto” on Instagram. Brandon is a multi-millionaire who runs multiple businesses, mainly in the fitness space. I was interested in Brandon because while he has indeed been on a ketogenic diet for 8 years, much of his online content doesn’t focus on keto itself - keto is just a tool for him to stay productive.

We touched briefly on the effect that his father’s suicide had on him. He mentioned this in a short clip from an Interview with Habitstack:

“My rock bottom was when my father committed suicide. I was early 20’s and I remember thinking ‘damn if I had been more serious about success and more serious about the acquisition of capital… I don’t know what the number is, but there is an amount of money that if I had it, I could have helped him’
… I said that to my therapist once, years ago and she said: ‘oh you can’t blame yourself for that.’
Shut yo broke ass up. So I stopped going to her.”

[Brandon and the interviewer laugh]

“But it’s true.” 

I’d argue that this is a very testosterone-driven thought process. That is, Brandon wanted to discuss the event in terms of a problem and the solution, but the therapist wanted to focus on Brandon’s emotions (like blame or guilt). Seeking out therapy after such an intense experience was of course a very wise move by Brandon. Though, I wouldn’t be surprised if many male patients encountered differences in perspective considering 74% of the members of the UK Council for Psychotherapy are female and 75% of the therapists in the United States are female.

As this paper explains, “females and males can use different hormonal and neural mechanisms to respond to the same emotional event.”

Here’s what I’ll argue in this post:

・Based on the nature of testosterone, most men need a coach or mentor more than a therapist or shrink.
・Based on the nature of estrogen (and probably oxytocin), women may enjoy a therapist more than a coach or mentor.

Recently in another interview with Rachel Wilson, I brought up that there seems to be too many feminine solutions to masculine problems nowadays. Lately there’s a lot of talk about ‘emotional intelligence,’ expressing your emotions, getting in touch with your emotions, ‘processing emotions,’ being more ‘emotionally vulnerable,’ and so on. Further, this focusing on emotions is generally just assumed to be a good thing. Thanks to Carl Jung, we even have floating around in the Zeitgeist the assumption that integrating your ‘feminine side’ will make you a more complete man.

Stoic men used to be universally respected, but it appears that thanks to people like Sigmund Freud, more people are starting to view stoicism as some sort of pathological repressing of emotions. Freud argued that repressing emotions will punish you with mental repercussions later - something akin to how forgetting an entire raw chicken in the trunk of your car will inevitably punish you with a wretched stench right when you’re taking a woman out for a second date. That is, you better process your emotions or they’ll end up stinking up your mental space when you least expect it.

My journeys delving into the makeup of the mind via multiple ego death-inducing psychedelics and hundreds of hours of meditation led me to believe that most emotions are bullshit. That is, there are emotions that are effective in guiding you towards more meaningful connection with others and more satisfaction in life, and there are emotions that are not. In fact, many emotions are unwanted distractions. (Perhaps I’m not spiritual enough, though.)

So because of the differences between men and women’s neurochemical makeup, I think we can make a good guess about what is going to put men on a more long-lasting path of satisfaction with life despite the inevitable stress that life will gift us:

・Men need someone wiser than them (in general or in a given domain) who can teach them set worthwhile goals and to chart out plans of action, as well offer insights into what that they may need to change about himself (unproductive behaviors, unproductive mindsets bad social skills etc).
・While it may make some men feel better in the short term, for the long term, they likely don’t need someone who is going to mainly talk about how they feel about their dissatisfying life.

*Men also need to sleep well, eat a nutrient-dense diet that won’t make them fat, go to the gym, avoid environmental toxins et cetera but that’s for another time.

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Men have 8-15x the Testosterone of Women

I just finished reading Psychologist James McBride’s Heroes and Rogues and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior.

Here are some of the things about testosterone I thought were interesting:

-Testosterone increases strength, energy, concentration, confidence, and mood in general. McBride’s testing of his own testosterone suggested that he had 30% higher testosterone when in an optimistic mood compared to a dejected mood. Measuring testosterone in a small sample of patients hospitalized after having made suicide attempts revealed their testosterone to be low.

-Testosterone is most sensitive to success and failure in dealing with other people.

-Testosterone is associated with persistence and an “intensity” or focus. Men tend to focus on one thing where women tend to pay attention to many things at once. “Studies show that men and animals who are high in testosterone persist at what they start, and they work longer at a task without being distracted.”

-Men higher in testosterone are less likely to marry and to be satisfied with marriage.

-Blue collar workers generally have higher testosterone than white collar workers.

-Men in general exchange less sentences (they talk less) than women. Men’s conversations center around action and activities. Men with higher testosterone smile less often. Men lower in testosterone are more willing to engage in small talk. Better verbal skills are associated with lower testosterone. Men are less expressive about their own feelings and less concerned with the feelings of others.

“Men tend to drop what appear to be strong loyalties when they change work assignments, jobs, or sports teams. Women maintain lasting relationships around their home communities.”

This is what a female-to-male sex-change patient in Holland had to say about taking testosterone: “Your use of language becomes less broad, more direct and concise. Your use of words changes, you become more concrete… I think less; I act faster, without thinking.” McBride argues that because our male ancestors focused on skills for hunting and fighting, a simple vocabulary was sufficient. McBride says women have better verbal skills. I would argue that’s probably because social bonding was more important to them.

Note that:

・Men have 15 times the testosterone of women.
・Women have about 4 times the oxytocin of men.
・Women have 3-4x the estrogen (estradiol) of men.