The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be over in the United States. More than half the U.S. population has received at one least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and new daily cases of the disease are at their lowest point since the early days of the pandemic in April 2020. But that doesn’t mean that the stress and anxiety building over the past 16 months is gone, especially for men still struggling to articulate or even identify how they’re feeling when it comes to careers, relationships, or the stress they’re feeling after COVID.

Dr. Michael Addis is an award-winning research psychologist and a professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. He specializes in the links between social learning and social construction of masculinity, as well as the ways men experience, express and respond to the problems in their lives.

On this episode of Paternal, Dr. Addis examines why most men are still reluctant to seek help dealing with the problems in their lives, and how men learn as young children to avoid showing vulnerability or pain to their peers. He also discusses the value of lasting male friendships and the challenges men face in making them, the psychological effects of parenting, and much more.

Learn more about Dr. Addis’s 2011 release Invisible Men here.

Learn more about Paternal and sign up for our newsletter at www.paternalpodcast.com. You can also email host Nick Firchau at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions for men he should profile on the show. Make sure you subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening, then keep an eye on your feed for new episodes.