Where are the high T psychologists?
The crushing weight of thinking about thinking
Is anyone else annoyed with how “deep” discussions of the mind, the psyche and such are almost always gloomy and dark?
What if it’s not because the mind is dark, but because the act of investigating the mind is dark?
Remember that observing something changes its nature.
You know what deeply investigating the mind sounds like? Rumination.
After a point, some forms of psychological investigation and talk therapy may just become a form of co-rumination.
Rumination is well known to be a key symptom of depression.
Further, what if ruminating on your mental state all the time lowers your T?*
*You may need to watch this presentation of mine to see how I got there.
Testosterone bolsters mood and makes people more stress resilient.
What women don’t understand about men
I had this thought after coming across this essay titled what women don't understand about men by Gor on Substack. It’s currently at 20,000 likes with over 1,000 comments. The author (who seems to be a man) isn’t technically wrong: Most things for men have to be earned. Most women have no clue what it’s like to be a man who has to earn the feeling of ‘worthiness.’ But it’s all laid out in this sad tone of ‘isn’t life so cruel and dark?’
My suspicion is that he would’ve written something else if his testosterone was 400 points higher.
“the quiet, invisible weight that men carry, and the wide gap between how it feels and how it’s understood - Especially by women.”
Quiet invisible weights, so deep.
“You don’t need to be told you’re not enough. The world says it in a thousand little ways. You just kind of know. Somewhere between being a boy and becoming a man, you look around and realise everything you want- respect, love, attention, peace- has to be earned.”
He writes:
“Most men aren’t afraid of women. They’re afraid of being seen and found lacking.”
“Vulnerability doesn’t get medals. It gets laughed at. Or ignored. Or quietly pitied.
Honestly I can’t help but just be annoyed by how gloomy it is.
Why not frame it as: ‘isn’t it cool that we get to level up and then we get more stuff? Isn’t it exciting to work hard and then have reality reflect back to you the fruits of your labor?’
Though, if I’m struggling with the difficulties of life, why would this gloomy post give me the strength to better carry these invisible weights?
Yes, life is hard, sometimes unreasonably so.
Indeed, I too suspect many women are completely unaware of how much constant effort being a man requires.
Yes, everything has to be earned… but the most fulfilling thing about life is overcoming the difficulties and earning the stuff. You would not be satisfied or fulfilled if everything was just given to you.
Say you boot up a new video game* and you have to start from level 1. No weapons, no skills, nothing.
“Why is World of Warcraft or Diablo II such a harsh mistress? It doesn’t respecting me for me, why can’t the game see who I am. Why must I earn the game’s respect to get these items?”
…Because it’s fun to get the items.
*In case the video game analogy didn’t hint at it already, for reasons discussed in this post, I think men are more likely than women to agree this view.
The essay goes on:
“And so men learn to cover [vulnerability] up. With arrogance. With overcompensation. With silence. With ambition. With abs. With money. With perfectly curated stories about how little they care.”
Honestly, what he’s describing are the functions of testosterone:
(1) “With silence.”
Leaning towards less verbal communication and more action is simply how many males operate. I somehow doubt this comes as a surprise, but in his book Heroes, Rogues and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior, James Mcbride explains that men simply exchange less words than women.
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. Men are less expressive about their own feelings and less concerned with the feelings of others.
Men aren’t ‘pressured’ by society into being silent so they can be cool … several studies reveal that testosterone simply affects communication. For example, one study found that higher fetal exposure to testosterone reduced the size of the child’s vocabulary at 18 to 24 months.
Per McBride’s book, 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 practical skills for hunting and fighting, less communication was necessary. I would argue women speak more than men probably because the goal of social bonding was more important to them.
Transsexuals attempting to masculinize themselves have been observed to experience an improvement in spatial ability but a reduction in verbal fluency.
(2) “With ambition.”
This is the core function of testosterone. It makes you more competitive; it increases the amount of effort you are willing to put into increasing your social status.
(3) “With abs.”
Testosterone increases motivation to workout and increases effort put into workouts.
(4) “With money.”
In line with point #2, various forms of research suggest that testosterone propels men to gather things associated with prestige and status, especially money. Lab games, investigations of actual traders, studies on administrations of exogenous testosterone all point to this.
(5) “With perfectly curated stories about how little they care.”
People (usually women) chastize men for not ‘opening up’ or ‘hiding their emotions,’ but the men probably don’t even know what exactly they’re supposed to ‘open up’ about. Lack of commentary on their emotional state doesn’t mean men are hiding their emotions or covering up their vulnerability. Research suggests that one of the functions of testosterone is to literally make men less concerned with their own emotions. Most men are likely not hiding their emotions, they just don’t care about them. Testosterone reducing emotional processing is a well known phenomenon. Which is probably why high testosterone men are more impulsive - less thinking, more action.
My bet is that the people who empathize with with and feel seen by the Gor post could benefit a lot from cleaning up their diet, hitting the gym, getting some sun, icing their nads, fixing their sleep schedule, eating plenty of zinc-rich red meat and so on to increase their testosterone.
Now, at the end of the day, if someone is stuck in a negative mental state, you’re not going to get through to them if you just outright say that their negative assessment of reality is incorrect- That them struggling and feeling beat down by life is ‘the wrong way to look at things.’ Gor is more likely to reach people who are struggling if he writes in a way that relates to them. So, ‘the article is too gloomy’ aside, the bigger criticism is this idea that typical male behaviors (points 1-5) are some kind response to not being able to be ‘vulnerable.’ That is, these behaviors don't necessarily indicate some sort of lack of 'emotional intelligence' - it's just how some men’s minds operate.
Dr.Robert A. Glover of “No More Mr.Nice Guy” fame is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a PhD in psychology. He might not have started High T but is certainly now. Dr Orion Taraban is a licensed psychologist who has normal to higher levels of T whom you interviewed. These men definitely do not fit the regular phenotype of the male psychologist, however. It seems lower T men are drawn to the field of psychology that is dominated by both talking and emoting (both of which high T men are not generally interested in).
Very good post and important