My seventh-grade Spanish teacher arranged a conference with my mom and me to discuss my progress in class. She told us that while I was doing fine, mostly B’s, she could tell I was coasting, and with just a little more effort, she was confident I would become an A student. I still remember looking her in the eye and defiantly responding, “I’m fine with B’s.”
I’ve spent my adult life grappling with that reaction. My laziness was obvious: if I was getting B’s with near-zero effort, then why NOT coast? But why the defiance? Why, I’ll show you to care enough about me to call me out? It’s taken decades of introspection to embrace thirteen-year-old Adam, to understand what he was so scared of that he shut down all that…possibility. Too risky.
Twenty-five years later, reflecting on that experience, my chest feels tight, and my face feels flushed with the shame that I was not enough then, and only enough now in fits and starts. I became an excellent defensive player in this game called Life. My army of “loyal soldiers” — the narratives and personas that comprise my defense mechanisms — has protected me throughout friendships, romantic relationships, and especially my career.
June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and the most useful thing I can do isn’t to write about male vulnerability in the abstract. I can tell you what it feels like for me.
The shame inside became increasingly defiant as I first sequestered, then projected, all my shortcomings. Deep down, I knew that, just like in Spanish class, I was not doing the actual work of becoming the possibility. Instead, I was becoming an Oscar nominee for best performance — as an understudy. It was all inertia. Interestingly, I surrounded myself with people who were critical of me because I had internalized the shame, so the story I told myself was that anyone who called me on my bullshit saw me for who I really am and was therefore trustworthy. That also made me right. Big consolation. Conversely, those who lifted me up, loved me, saw my positive attributes, well, they must be blowing smoke because they only love what’s performative.
Throughout my career, I confidently sat in boardrooms and community leadership gatherings while my internal monologue spluttered: I am so out of my element and don’t belong here; I’m the dumbest person in this room. I’ve posted essays and videos about the work I’m doing, and felt that everyone on the receiving end is thinking, “he’s a moron.” Every setback brings the same narrative: You were never cut out to play with the Big Dogs. In the Tall Grass. Go home.
Dr. Brené Brown’s research tells us that vulnerability is the birthplace of connection, creativity, and meaning. And shame is what blocks it. Shame, not guilt, is the culprit. Guilt says I DID something bad. Shame says I AM bad. Guilt can be rectified; shame becomes identity. Shame for myself and many other men I know is perceived weakness. In our culture, too many men have been conditioned to equate worth with inviolability — to provide, protect, and perform with unshakeable certainty — the moment the cat’s out of that bag, everything else is a slippery slope towards the big reveal that is utter incompetence. Vulnerability doesn’t just read as equivocation; it confirms our worst fear that underneath the performance, there is a little boy desperate for an operating manual.
This week’s Torah portion, Shelach Lecha, gives us the oldest recorded shame spiral in Jewish history. Moses sends twelve scouts into the Promised Land to assess the possibilities for settlement. Ten come back and deliver an accurate report: the cities are fortified, the inhabitants are powerful. And then they add this: “We were like grasshoppers in our own eyes — and so we were in their eyes.” Translation: We think we are unworthy of this, therefore everyone else does, too. The facts were real, but shame prevented them from seeing a path forward. From seeing their own worthiness.
Two scouts, Caleb and Joshua, came back with a different take. Not because the giants weren’t real, but because they didn’t let the giants define them. That’s the difference between “this will be hard” and “we are not good enough.”
As a result of this internalized shame, an entire generation wandered in the wilderness because they could not enter a future they didn’t believe they deserved. You cannot cross into the Promised Land while still living inside the narrative that you are a grasshopper.
At 38, I am still learning what Caleb and Joshua knew: the work of becoming is not about being unafraid. It’s about being afraid and going anyway — because you’ve decided, despite the fear of failure, that possibility is worth the effort.
Vulnerability is no small risk. Which is why men learn, quickly and often painfully, to calibrate where it’s safe to land that Airbus. Among men, in the right container — a locker room, a sweat lodge, a late night with people who have known you long enough — vulnerability has a softer landing. When the container is safe, what’s real becomes accessible. Sacred, even.
In professional settings, vulnerability is too often anathema. Introspection reads as weakness — the wet blanket that rains on ambition and signals to your coworkers it’s feeding time. The higher I climbed the corporate ladder, the more my performative confidence protected me. Or so I thought.
With the people we love most, it’s the most complicated. Our partners want us to open up. And sometimes when we do, something happens because the vulnerability that feels so brave to us suddenly feels so dangerous to them. Doubt breeds doubt on both ends. Doubt that we can protect, provide, or show up. And once that happens a few times, the door closes.
Two experiences motivated me to really begin the change. The first was massive heartbreak. With the clarity that getting dumped provides, I confronted my inner dialogue and declared: Enough with not enough! Just shut up and do the work. The challenge for me was that I was so scared shitless I couldn’t even imagine the first step forward. And, with gusto, the inner monologue doubled down: Slow your roll, circle the wagons, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But it was broke.
The second was working with other men who were willing to share their experience of vulnerability. Through them, I saw that, as Dr. Brown teaches, empathy is the antidote to shame. We only get to empathy when we are willing to risk seeing ourselves in others. The good, the bad, the ineffably etched. They are the mirror we have to reach to see clearly. This is how we build the container; vulnerability is the packing tape that sustains it. Our alikeness isn’t a threat to our potency; our mythology is. And our mythology is inimical to possibility. Shame works to shut all that down.
So here is something I want to say directly to the people reading this — with love and without blame.
To the men who feel they have to carry the burden alone because you are certain you are unworthy of being loved in your entirety, I see you, I am you. We contain multitudes.
To the women in a relationship with men: I understand you want him to open up, and that desire comes from a good place. But consider what happens when he does. Does his vulnerability land as intimacy, or does it quietly shift something in how you see him? Does his uncertainty make you feel closer, or does it make you feel less safe? If the answer is complicated — and for many of us it is — then the container you’re providing for his full self isn’t holding. And a container that doesn’t hold what is entrusted to it gets relegated to the garage.
Men are not wrong to test the water before they jump in. They’ve learned, often the hard way, that the invitation to open up doesn’t always come with the safety to do so. Building that safety is not his work alone. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among men under 35. There are many reasons someone reaches that place, but somewhere near the center of all of them is this: the dishonesty that is invulnerability became unbearable, and there was no one and nowhere safe enough to land the plane.
I don’t have this fully figured out. I still Google phrases after meetings. I still feel the shame spiral whisper every time the business has a slow week. But I am learning, slowly, in practicing vulnerability with other men, in essays and podcasts, in Friday night conversations with my wife — that self-doubt is how we scout out the possibilities. It is the pause before the reset. Before the next settlement — the one that comes with a village and an airstrip.