Why agency matters for men’s healing
As a therapist, I often gets asked, “How do I find purpose again? How do I stop feeling powerless under the weight of my past?” Whether you experienced childhood trauma, emotional neglect, or other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), one of the deepest wounds is the loss of agency — the felt sense that you can act in your life rather than be acted upon.
In this post, we’ll explore how, specifically as men, you can begin to reclaim agency in your life after trauma. We’ll ground the work in NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model), a therapeutic approach suited to developmental and attachment-based wounds. We’ll also weave in reflective prompts and practical considerations for those seeking men’s therapy, clinical counselling for men in Kelowna, or healing from male depression and trauma.
This is not a quick fix. But it can offer a pathway back to your own authority, your own voice, and your own felt aliveness.
The Challenges Men Face: Trauma, Disconnection, Depression
Before diving into the “how,” let’s map out some of the particular challenges many men face when dealing with developmental wounds, emotional neglect, or trauma:
- Emotional disconnection: Often, from early life, men are taught (implicitly or explicitly) to suppress feelings, particularly “weak” ones—sadness, fear, vulnerability. Over time, this becomes a strategy of disconnection rather than conscious choice.
- Survival strategies become scripts: The coping patterns you adopted to survive — “be tough,” “don’t rely on others,” “keep going no matter what” — may have been necessary, but they can calcify into rigid scripts. These scripts can limit growth, relationships, intimacy, and authentic self-expression.
- Isolation and shame: Many men internalize shame (“I’m weak,” “I don’t deserve help”) and believe they must suffer privately. This can intensify symptoms of male depression and anxiety.
- Loss of agency and passivity: When you’ve lived under emotional neglect or trauma, the impulse can shift to waiting, compliance, or inertia — letting life “happen to you” rather than taking action.
- Difficulty trusting help or relational connection: If early relational wounds were present, trusting others (therapists, friends, partners) can feel dangerous or impossible.
These dynamics are common in men’s therapy settings. Counselling for men — especially men’s trauma therapy — often begins with understanding these patterns, rather than just treating symptoms.
As you consider men’s counselling in Kelowna or clinical counselling for men in Kelowna, know that many local therapists integrate trauma-informed and somatic approaches. For example, local practices advertise offering men’s counselling that is “straight-up, trauma-informed, and built around who you are—not who you’re supposed to be.”
What Is NARM — And Why It Helps with Agency
The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is a clinical approach designed for developmental, relational, and attachment trauma.
Here’s a summary of what NARM offers — and why it can be a strong framework for men working to reclaim agency.
Core principles of NARM
- Resource-oriented / capacity focus
NARM begins with what is working in your system — the capacities, strengths, resilience you still hold. Healing is built on what remains, not just on what’s broken. - Present-focused inquiry
NARM emphasizes working in the present moment. Rather than re-litigating every detail from the past, it encourages following the way early patterns emerge in the here-and-now. - Integration of top-down and bottom-up
Emotional, cognitive, bodily, relational — all parts of your system are involved. NARM attends to both meaning-making and bodily experience simultaneously. - Containment over catharsis
Healing is less about dramatic emotional release and more about building the capacity to stay with difficult feelings (without acting them out or shutting them down). - Client as expert
In NARM, you are seen as the expert in your own experience, and the therapist’s role is more relational, curious, and supportive than directive. - Adaptive survival styles
NARM describes how, in response to unmet developmental needs, people tend to adopt survival strategies or patterns (e.g. compliance, avoidance, control) that, while protective early on, may hinder agency later.
By working with how your survival strategies show up today — in relationships, in your inner life, in your body — NARM helps you disentangle from those strategies and reclaim more authentic expression.
Why NARM is relevant to reclaiming agency
- It helps you see how “being stuck” in a pattern is not a moral flaw, but a survival adaptation that once served you.
- It encourages you to shift from “reacting” to “responding” — from old habit to present choice.
- It fosters curiosity, presence, and self-trust — qualities essential for reclaiming agency.
- It doesn’t force you to “re-live the past,” but invites you to transform how the past lives in the present.
As I like to say, in NARM “we support you in experiencing agency in the difficulties of your current life.”
Reclaiming Agency: A Four-Step Map (With Reflective Prompts)
Below is a practical four-stage map (inspired by NARM and relational trauma-work) you can use as a guide. Use the reflective prompts for self-inquiry or journaling. If you are in therapy (e.g. men’s therapy or counselling for men), you can bring these reflections into sessions.
1. Begin with Presence and Grounding
Goal: Anchor your system in somatic awareness, moment-to-moment attunement.
- Practice a brief grounding exercise (hands on thighs, feet on floor, noticing breath).
- Notice one bodily sensation (tightness, warmth, pulsing). Don’t force, just observe.
- Ask: What within me wants attention right now?
- Ask: Where in my body do I feel a sense of safety, comfort, or relief?
This step is foundational. Before pushing or analyzing, you want to cultivate a stable container in your nervous system.
2. Track the Survival Strategy as an “Adaptive Pattern”
Goal: Observe how old strategies show up now, without judgment.
When you feel stuck, disconnected, or triggered, start tracking:
- What is my impulse? (to freeze, push away, control, detach, comply)
- What emotion is present behind that impulse? (fear, shame, anger, grief)
- What narrative or belief arises? (“I must be strong,” “I’ll be abandoned,” “I can’t let people in”)
Reflective prompts:
- What does this strategy used to help me survive?
- When in my life does this strategy feel alive now?
- If I step back, how might this strategy now limit me?
In men’s trauma therapy, this step helps you stop identifying with the strategy and begin observing it as one part of your system, not the whole man.
3. Inquire with Compassion and Curiosity
Goal: Begin to disentangle from the survival strategy by approaching its roots with compassion.
- Gently ask: If there’s a younger part of me that adopted this strategy, what was it trying to protect?
- Bring curiosity to unmet developmental needs (connection, attunement, autonomy, trust).
- Notice: Are there parts of me that still long for something I never got (validation, safety, understanding)?
This is not about blaming your caregivers or re-living trauma. It’s about witnessing how the coping strategy began, held on, and now may be overstaying its welcome.
4. Claim Your Authority (Agency) in the Present
Goal: Shift from reactivity into intentional choice, step by step.
- Identify one small sphere of life (work, relationships, boundaries, daily habits) where you can experiment with choice.
- Ask: What would it look like to act differently — to choose rather than react?
- Bring in the embodied sense: How does my body feel when I imagine asserting that new choice?
- If fear or resistance arises (often it will), track it: Where is it in the body? What’s the impulse behind resisting?
Examples of agency moves:
- Setting a boundary with someone (asking for what you need)
- Saying “no” to a commitment that drains you
- Engaging in a creative act, physical movement, or expressed voice
- Choosing therapy, or committing to the inner work
Over time, these small choices build a feedback loop: each intentional act weakens the old survival strategy and strengthens your confidence.
Particular Considerations for Men, Male Depression, and Therapy in Kelowna
Men’s counselling in Kelowna & male-specific concerns
- Social norms and masculine identity: Many men internalize cultural messages: don’t show emotion, find solutions, don’t ask for help. These norms make it harder to even bring up pain, trauma, or vulnerability in therapy.
- Therapist fit and safety: For some men, seeing a male therapist or one explicitly trained in men’s issues can feel safer during early vulnerability.
- Stigma and shame: Shame is often a silent partner in men’s depression — a voice that says, “I should have handled this already.” In therapy, shame needs to be met with acceptance before transformation can begin.
- Somatic and relational work: Because many men are disconnected from emotional experience, modalities that include body-based or relational work (like NARM) can help bridge the internal/external divide.
If you’re seeking clinical counselling for men in Kelowna, look for therapists who advertise trauma-informed, embodied, relational approaches (some local ones already do). (thereflectere.com)
Addressing male depression through this lens
From a NARM-informed perspective, depression in men is often rooted in disconnection — from self, from others, from purpose. The survival strategies that once protected you may now lock you into inertia, passivity, self-judgment, or resignation.
To address male depression within this framework:
- Start small with presence and grounding (as above) — depression often dims sensation and vitality.
- Track the survival patterns that keep you inert (e.g. “I don’t deserve joy,” “I can’t move”), with curiosity not condemnation.
- Inquire about what those patterns were protecting (e.g. from disappointment, shame, emotional overwhelm).
- Begin making small choices — movement, connection, expression — even when it feels risky or faint.
- Lean gently into relational support: therapy, peer groups, trusted friends. Depression is rarely healed in isolation.
A Sample Reflective Journey (Illustrative, Not Prescriptive)
To bring the steps to life, here’s a fictional—but realistic—mini case (you can adapt it to your own story).
“Mike,” 38, working in construction.
Mike had a childhood where emotional needs were dismissed, and his father valued stoicism above all else. As he grew up, he learned: “feelings are weak,” “if I show pain, I’ll be ridiculed or ignored.” Over time, he’s grown distant from his inner life, struggles with irritability, and drowns in overwork to avoid inner emptiness.
- Presence & grounding
Mike begins his therapy by placing his feet on the floor and noticing a subtle tightness in his chest whenever he thinks of “opening up.” That tightness becomes data. - Track survival strategy
His impulse is to “shut down” or “push through” rather than pause. In relationships, he withdraws. Behind that is anger, but also a deeper fear of vulnerability and shame (“I’ll seem weak”). - Inquiry with curiosity
Mike gently asks: When did that voice start? He senses a younger part protecting him from being ridiculed by his father. That part kept him safe, but now it’s isolating. He also senses longing — for being known, for emotional connection. - Agency move
Mike experiments with a small boundary: He tells his spouse he needs 10 minutes of quiet when he comes home before talking about day stuff. He feels internal resistance (“I shouldn’t need that”), tracks the resistance in his body (tight throat), and persists gently. Over time, that little boundary gives him breathing space, which softens the reactivity.
Though simple, that little move ripples — it weakens the internal force of the old strategy, and re-establishes a sense that he has choice.
You can replicate a similar mini journey in your life, at your pace.
Tips for Maximizing the Impact of This in Your life (and therapy)
- Be patient — healing takes time. Reclaiming agency is gradual. Expect setbacks; they’re part of the process.
- Work with a trauma-informed therapist. If you’re in Kelowna or nearby, look for men’s therapy or clinical counselling for men in Kelowna that mention trauma, somatic work, relational models, or developmental approaches.
- Use journaling and embodiment together. When you track, write and notice bodily tone. Don’t intellectualize only.
- Bring a supportive friend or community. It helps to have one or two people who can just listen, not fix.
- Celebrate small wins. Every new boundary, every moment of choice, is a foothold in your regain of agency.
Why This Matters — Long-Term Transformation
When you reclaim agency, several transformative shifts begin:
- You move from reactive survival into intentional living.
- You rebuild trust in yourself: you see that you can make choices, even in small ways, and that you survive them.
- Your relationships deepen as you can bring more of yourself — your emotional life, your needs, your voice.
- You weaken shame’s hold, because you are no longer at war with your interior life — you can let it inform you rather than control you.
- Depression, stagnation, and resignation begin to lighten as you gradually re-engage with your aliveness and possibility.
From the vantage point of men’s counselling in Kelowna or men’s trauma therapy, this is often the deepest work: not just reducing symptoms, but restoring your authority, your autonomy, your inner compass.
If you are in Kelowna (or in BC and accessible virtually) and you resonate with this work, consider reaching out for men’s counselling, clinical counselling for men, or men’s trauma therapy rooted in relational, body-aware modalities like NARM.
You don’t have to carry your past alone. You can begin reclaiming your voice, your choice, and your aliveness — step by step.
Closing reflections
The path of reclaiming agency is not about rewriting your past or erasing your pain. Rather, it’s about gradually disentangling from the survival patterns that no longer serve you, and rediscovering the author within. For men who’ve grown up under emotional neglect, trauma, or adversities, the invitation is to step into life with increasing boldness, presence, and choice.
Men’s counselling in Kelowna, men’s therapy, and trauma-informed clinical counselling for men can provide the relational container, guidance, and support you need to walk this path. NARM, with its balance of somatic, relational, and developmental insight, offers one potent model for reclaiming agency from the inside out.