For many men, the midlife crisis doesn’t arrive as a quiet reflection. It arrives as relationship tension and emotional shutdown. It comes with the unsettling realization that something deeper is demanding attention. 

In this episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast, Marc Azoulay speaks with Mark J. Platten. He is the founder of the Integral Human Initiative. He is also a longtime men’s work facilitator and teacher of sacred masculinity. Platten draws from Jungian psychology, mythology and indigenous wisdom traditions. He focuses on decades of lived experience to explore what the midlife crisis is really asking of men.

Rather than framing midlife as a breakdown, Platten describes it as a summons. “If I am the same man at 50 that I was at 25,” he explains, “that means there has been 25 years of no growth.” In his view, the second half of life is not about preserving youth, status, or achievement. It is about emotional growth, responsibility, and inner work.

Platten’s story is deeply personal. He shares how navigating his wife’s menopause alongside his own andropause nearly unravelled their marriage. “Had I known then what I know now,” he reflects, “we could have walked that journey in a sacred way, side by side.” Instead, unresolved triggers, shadow work left untouched, and generational trauma surfaced with force.

Now in his late 50s, Platten is returning to men’s work with renewed clarity. He is calling this phase the King’s Return. It is a movement from the prince’s unconscious patterns into mature masculine leadership. As Azoulay guides the conversation, the episode becomes less about crisis management and more about meaning, responsibility, and the spiritual journey of becoming whole.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Ever wonder why so many men find themselves stuck in the same romantic patterns? Marc highlights the psychology behind working with men struggling with anxious attachment. He focuses on emotionally unavailable partners and recurring relationship breakdowns in this episode.

Early in the conversation, Marc sets the tone with a statement that captures the heart of the episode: “You’re not choosing her. You’re choosing your wound.” He explains that many men believe they are unlucky in love. When in reality, they are unconsciously repeating familiar emotional patterns. These are rooted in childhood trauma and early attachment experiences.

Marc describes how the brain prioritizes familiarity over well-being. Even when a relationship is painful or chaotic, the nervous system gravitates toward what feels known. “The brain doesn’t care if something is good or bad,” he says. “It cares if it’s familiar.” This dynamic plays out most clearly in adult relationships. It occurs especially for men with anxious attachment who are drawn to emotionally unavailable partners.

Throughout the episode, Marc blends attachment theory, psychoanalysis, and real-world clinical examples. He does so to help men understand how childhood wounds continue shaping their dating lives. The conversation is not about blaming parents or past partners. It is about building awareness so men can finally choose differently.

Get your free worksheet here: https://bit.ly/thepatterntest

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Midlife is often framed as a crisis, but is it really? In this roundtable episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast, host Marc Azoulay is guiding the conversation toward a deeper and more accurate question. What happens when a man’s identity no longer fits the life he has built?

Joining the discussion are Shana James and Silvan Summers. Shana is a relationship and intimacy coach known for her work on love and sex after 40.  Silvan is a somatic psychotherapist and therapeutic coach at Men’s Therapy Online. Together, they examine the midlife crisis. It is less about impulsive decisions and more about a profound reckoning with emotional truth and meaning.

Shana is describing midlife as a moment when “most of our dreams and fantasies have shattered”. But at the same time, it’s an opportunity to create incredible love and sex beyond anything we could create when we’re younger. She is emphasizing that identity is shifting, from who men were taught to be to who they actually are.

Silvan is approaching the topic through the body. “We experience emotion through sensation,” he explains. “If we don’t understand what’s happening in the body, we lose control over where our emotional life goes.” For many men, this disconnection shows up as numbness, emotional shutdown, and a growing sense of feeling lost.

Marc frames the discussion by naming what many men quietly experience: success on paper, but confusion internally. Careers, marriages, and responsibilities remain intact, yet something essential feels missing. This episode is examining that missing piece, not as failure, but as initiation.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Marc Azoulay unpacks a pattern he is seeing repeatedly in high-performing men. Success is increasing, but fulfilment is disappearing. Drawing on over a decade of clinical experience, Marc explains that many men are not actually chasing success. They are running from shame.

“You think making more money will finally make you feel secure,” Marc explains, “but every time you level up, you feel worse.” He describes men whose bank accounts are growing, yet whose inner lives feel hollow. Rather than feeling proud of achievement, they are experiencing numbness, burnout, and an ongoing identity crisis.

Marc notices that self-worth is becoming dangerously entangled with productivity, income, and performance in a capitalist culture that rewards output above all else. Men are being conditioned to equate value with work. “There’s no upper limit,” he says. “You can always do more, produce more, make more money. And there’s never a moment of enoughness.”

This episode focuses on how external validation quietly replaces identity, creating what Marc calls an “achievement addiction.” Promotions, praise, and financial wins temporarily soothe anxiety. They never resolve the deeper fear of failure or unlovability. Over time, this leads to workaholism, emotional disconnection, and eventually burnout.

Marc is guiding listeners through the invisible beliefs driving this cycle, while also offering practical ways to rebuild identity beyond career, income, and constant performance.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Ya'Ron Brown is approaching men’s mental health from a place of lived experience, clinical insight, and cultural awareness. He is a licensed counsellor, clinical supervisor, trainer, and host of the Resilient Kings Podcast. Brown unpacks one of the most difficult yet essential topics facing men today: male vulnerability and why it is so deeply resisted.

Brown is speaking candidly about how patriarchy shapes men long before they enter therapy. “No matter who we are,” he explains, “to some degree, we are baked into patriarchy.” This conditioning quietly influences how men define strength, suppress emotion, and measure self-worth. Many men are never taught how to explore identity development beyond narrow expectations of toughness, performance, and endurance.

Throughout the conversation, Brown is sharing personal stories. He illustrates how emotional repression becomes normalized. He describes how men often grow up learning that masculinity exists in a single lane. This leaves little room for curiosity, softness, or emotional expression. As a result, many men are arriving in adulthood disconnected from themselves. They are caught in cycles of seeking validation through work, relationships, or external success.

This episode does not position vulnerability as weakness. Instead, Brown is reframing vulnerability as a missing developmental skill. One that directly affects male identity, relationships, and mental health. As Marc Azoulay guides the discussion, the focus remains on helping men understand why they feel empty, restless, or angry. It highlights how reconnecting with vulnerability can change everything.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Ralph Brewer is the founder of the “Help for Men Brotherhood” and the creator of the “Dad Starting Over” community. Today, he is sharing a story that is becoming increasingly common among men. Yet still, it is rarely talked about openly. He is speaking as someone who has lived the full weight of divorce, rebuilding life, and single fatherhood. His story begins over a decade ago when he was navigating what he describes as “a giant holy-poop moment”. It was one defined by infidelity, uncertainty, and the sudden responsibility of raising three young children alone.

He reflected on the emotional upheaval men often face. “I can’t think of anything more emotional than the disintegration of a long-term relationship,” he says. Brewer has noticed that divorce is putting a mirror in front of men’s lives. It is forcing them to confront not just the loss of a partner, but the collapse of routines, identity, and stability.

Brewer explained how he begins coping by returning to the passions he abandons during marriage: guitars, writing, and creative expression. “It was part of my therapy,” he notes. Brewer described how rekindling old interests becomes his lifeline. This personal journey evolved into a platform that is now supporting thousands of men worldwide. Through YouTube, books, coaching, and the Brotherhood, Brewer is building a community for men who are facing divorce, breakup, co-parenting conflicts, and emotional rebuilding.

His message remains consistent: every great man he knows has a turning point. “Enough is enough,” he says. “This could be a big turning point for you.”

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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Joe Hehn is living through a story that many men fear, and few ever speak about. Joe not only shared a personal narrative; he also revealed a blueprint for reclaiming purpose after unimaginable loss. He is a mentor, corporate speaker, and mindset coach. Joe is guiding men toward self-awareness and emotional resilience. He does so by openly describing how his own world collapsed and rebuilt itself.

Before his wife’s cancer diagnosis, Joe explains that “everything on paper looked perfect”. Yet, internally, he was constantly stressed, anxious, and disconnected. His life changed dramatically one afternoon in Chicago. It was when a routine meditation on a park bench became his first spiritual awakening. “Everything is alive,” he recalls. “It’s like I’m stepping into a painting.”

But that brief moment of illumination was only the beginning. After losing his wife to cancer, Joe plunged into an emotional wilderness. “I didn’t want to die,” he admitted, “but I didn’t want to live either.” This became the lowest point of his life and also the turning point. He began the long process of grief recovery and rebuilding his identity. He did so when he was travelling through South America. He volunteered and reconnected with spirituality.

What makes Joe’s journey distinct is not only the scale of his grief, but his relentless pursuit of meaning. “Is this the life I want for myself?” he asked in Bolivia, bedridden and empty. That question became the foundation of his life’s new mission. Helping men cultivate purpose through mindset coaching, emotional healing, and self-awareness.

Connect with Joe: 

Website: https://joehehn.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvkQI_b9ocQK-Kcabbqjycw

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@joe.hehn

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joe.hehn

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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In this episode of The Men’s Therapy Podcast, host Marc Azoulay is sitting down with two deeply respected clinicians. Jack Lambert, LMHC, and Ben White, LPC. They explore the emotional landscape men confront during divorce. Their conversation is opening a window into an experience many men are living silently: the grief, confusion, and emotional shutdown that divorce often sparks.

Jack is working extensively with gay and queer men navigating major life transitions, including separation, identity loss, and the struggle to rebuild after relationship trauma. He notes that “divorce is often felt as a rock bottom, not because it always is one, but because culturally men are not taught how to handle emotional rupture.”

Ben mainly works with straight men across multiple states. He shares a parallel observation: “It’s interesting how often divorce is the event that finally pushes men into therapy. Something really life-shattering happens, and suddenly the wheels that were in motion for years become undeniable.”

Together, they shed light on why divorce isn’t just a legal separation. It’s an emotional reckoning. Their clinical insights reveal how men often reach this stage feeling isolated, ashamed, or stuck in anger, and how the process of emotional healing must begin with confronting the grief they have long avoided.

This episode isn’t simply about divorce. It’s about reclaiming emotional intelligence, rebuilding identity, and learning what healthier masculinity looks like on the other side of heartbreak.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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In this powerful episode of the Men’s Therapy Podcast, Marc Azoulay sits down to explain the “fixer mentality”. It is a pattern many men fall into when they compulsively help others, avoid emotional intimacy, and ultimately burn out. He explains, “When you’re always fixing, you’re not asking for help. That’s how the cycle begins.” Marc is guiding people to see how these patterns, rooted in dopamine addiction, stress response, and codependency, silently shape one’s identity and your relationships.

As the discussion unfolds, he highlights how men can become trapped in what feels like a heroic role. However, it’s actually a mask covering deeper emotional wounds. He says, “The fixer is addicted not just to helping, but to being seen as valuable.” Over the course of the episode, he explores emotional avoidance, the martyr complex, and why many men struggle to form genuine emotional intimacy. With clear, professional, yet compassionate insight, Marc is helping his audience understand these dynamics. He is offering practical steps to break free.

Whether you suspect you’re stuck in the fixer loop or you’re feeling chronically stressed and burnt out, this conversation offers clarity, validation, and a roadmap toward healing.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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For over five decades, Dr. Ronald Johnson has dedicated his career to understanding the emotional lives of men. What began as curiosity quickly turned into a lifelong commitment to men’s psychological development. “I come from a good family,” he recalls, “but you know, typical dysfunctional family as well. And so I have for a long time been interested in just, how do I feel, how do I think, what do I do?” 

Interestingly, his focus on men doesn’t start with men at all. In the 1960s and ’70s, therapy was mostly a female space. And it was through working with women that he became captivated by what wasn’t being said. “I saw these women, and what do they talk about? The men in their lives… I thought, I need to meet these guys.” When he eventually did, the revelation surprised him: “What do you know? They weren’t awful. I liked them.” 

From there, a practice was born. He famously placed a Yellow Pages ad that read, “Practice limited to men,” unintentionally pioneering one of the earliest male-specific therapy practices. Over the years, he has seen patterns repeat: anxiety, addiction, avoidance, grief, emotional shutdown, the father wound, and the profound hunger for emotional intimacy and male connection. His decades of work culminate in his book Balls: Men Finding Courage. In this episode, he is sharing raw, timely insights for men navigating emotional intelligence, healing, and growth today.

For more podcasts, blogs, and to get involved in the Men's Therapy Online Community, visit www.menstherapy.online.

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