In this solo monologue, Connor Beaton argues that the primary obstacle to men’s psychological freedom and confidence is the habit of emotional suppression, which he frames as a "dragon" that must be confronted. He defines suppression as the cultural practice of pushing down emotions, needs, trauma, and pain in order to appear strong, citing a UK study where 92% of men who considered self‑harm reported extreme emotional suppression and 82% reported relational suppression as a major factor. Beaton explains that chronic suppression creates a "shadow"—an internal energy that sabotages health, finances, relationships, self‑worth, and personal goals. While acknowledging that temporary suppression can be functional (e.g., in crisis or professional settings), he warns that habitual suppression erodes resilience. He offers a practical roadmap: (1) identify suppressed fears, grief, anger, and needs; (2) write them down; (3) share them in trusted spaces such as men’s groups, therapy, coaching, or the ManTalks Alliance community; and (4) integrate these disclosures into one’s identity. He emphasizes that undoing suppression requires collaborative effort, not isolation, and that expressing rather than hiding emotions builds true strength, confidence, and resilience. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to comment, join the Alliance, and begin the work of confronting their suppression.
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If you want freedom and liberation as a man, if you want to feel good about yourself, have confidence, there is one dragon, one monster, one cave that you have to enter and face and confront in order to find the freedom and the liberation that you seek. And that dragon, that monster, is pretty simple. It is the dragon of suppression. Now here's the thing, for almost every single man, suppression is seen as something that we need to do in order to develop strength. In fact, so much so that in my book, "Men's Work," I wrote that we as men in masculine culture try to develop strength through the methodology of suppression. Suppression is the tool that most men try and deploy in order to try and develop strength, right? So let's dive into this because if you want to have better psychological health, if you want to have a better relationship with yourself in your actual intimate relationship, this is the key. It's the path. It is the way, if we could point to the way, right? I mean, in Buddhism they say the way that's called the way is not the way, But as far as I can tell, this is the path. So without any further delay, let's get into it. I'm Connor Beaton. Welcome to the ManTalks Show. If you haven't already done so, don't forget to hit like or subscribe and hit the bell notification so you can get notified because, you know, you need that these days. And there's a lot of AI slop out there. So if you want to consume real meaningful content that's going to help you, hit the button. All right. How do we define suppression? Why is it such a big deal? Well, I'm going to give you the darkest version of it, and then we'll work our way back. In studies that have been done out of the UK, they have found that, uh, for 92% of men who had considered self-harm or had actively tried an attempt to take their own life, 92% of them extreme suppression of their own emotions, of their own needs, of their trauma, of the abuse that they experienced, of the pain that they were carrying, was one of the primary causes. And for 82% of them, relational suppression, so not communicating emotions in their relationship, not communicating needs in their relationship, was a massive, massive contributing factor. And then the third factor was fear. Feeling like a failure and not having the capacity to express how they felt like a failure, not feeling like they could actually get out of that. And so we can see that for men, suppression is this kind of kryptonite. It's a kind of poison that when you suppress too much, long enough, hard enough, what ends up happening is the psychological and emotional material that you end up pushing down and suppressing becomes the energy that sabotages your life. So another way of saying this is that it forms your shadow. It forms the part of your psyche, the part of your identity, the part of your personality that actually acts against, it acts against your goals, your aims, the man you want to be, the type of intimacy and sex you wanna have, the type of relationship you want, the type of body that you want. It works against all of that. So the more that you suppress, the more that you suppress your pain, the more you suppress your grief, your anger, the more that you suppress those things, the more fuel, the more energy that it produces to work against you. And this is a challenge because within modern culture, we as men, we deploy suppression as a mechanism for survival. We deploy suppression to try and build strength, right? I mean, think about all the sort of clichés, big boys don't cry, you know, real men don't cry. That's really just saying, suck it up, stuff it down, right? Like, don't be sad, just numb it out, right? Pour some whiskey over top of it, push it down and march on. And, you know, if you are in battle, if you're in war, there might be a time where you genuinely need to suppress something. And there might be times in your life where you need to set something emotionally aside, right? It's probably not going to help you to go into a business meeting and, you know, break down crying. That's probably not going to help you. It's probably not gonna help you to walk into a meeting with somebody that, you know, you're trying to close a deal and you're like, "Whew, I gotta tell you, I'm super anxious right now. And if this doesn't go well, You know, I'm gonna go home and I'm just gonna ruminate about, like, that's not gonna help at all. So of course there are times where we need to set intense emotional experiences aside, where they're not necessarily contributing to a net positive outcome in that moment. But that doesn't mean that the core of our personality and how we deal with unwanted emotions and feelings and experiences is by pushing them down and setting them aside. So what do you do? How do you combat this method of suppression that has become so ingrained in so many men's lives? 'Cause here's the truth that I want to tell you. From my experience in working with tens of thousands of men for over a decade, what I have seen is that suppression is a wrecking ball in so many men's lives that comes in and ends up destroying their finances, their health, their sense of self, their worth, their confidence, the relationship that they have. It just comes in and creates a path of destruction. And their life radically and fundamentally changes when they identify the things that they are suppressing and they start to bring them to light in a meaningful, safe way with people that they can trust. This is a path of purpose and meaning. It is a path of change and transformation. If you want things to change, you need not do anything other than identify the things that you are suppressing. Maybe you're suppressing anger. Maybe you are suppressing discipline, healthy discipline and routine. Maybe you are suppressing grief and sadness. Maybe you are suppressing specific needs that you have and want in your relationship. Maybe you want to go out more or hold hands more, make out more, have, you know, cuddle on the couch more and, you know, watch whatever. But the more that you suppress those things, the more that you end up creating an energy and a part of your identity that starts to work against you. Because that pain, it's not that it goes away, right? The pain that you're suppressing, the insecurities that you suppress, They don't disappear, they don't vanish. They then need coping strategies and mechanisms to keep them at bay. All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. Uh, if you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the ManTalks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. And when you can't do that enough, or you're tired or you're distracted or you're super stressed out, then that pain or, you know, the insecurities, everything that you've suppressed, it pops out. And then you need more weed, more booze, more porn, more distractions to try and stuff it down, or you make unhealthy, unwanted decisions from that place. So what do you do? Very simply, you start to identify the things that you have suppressed. So what I would encourage you to do right now is get a notepad, get a pen and paper, and ask yourself, what are some of the fears, the insecurities, the emotions, and the truths that I have suppressed over time? What did I have to suppress in my childhood in order to survive and belong? What have I had to suppress in my intimate relationships in order to survive, belong, get my needs met? And what have I suppressed about myself as a man in order to fit in, in order to fit in with other men, society, business, work, et cetera. Once you identify some of those things, and for some of you, it's gonna feel overwhelming. For some of you, it's gonna be like, "Man, there's a laundry list here of shit that I need to deal with." What I encourage you to do is to find a space or a place where you can start to explore and express that which has been suppressed, okay? To explore and express that which has been suppressed. A men's group, a community, you can join the Alliance and check out the Alliance. There's 1,100 guys there. And a big part of the work that they are doing is looking at the things that they have pushed down through life, their assertiveness, their confidence, the needs that they want or have in their relationship. And they're doing the work to actually bring those things into their life. So you can find a men's group, you can find a therapist, you could find a coach, you could have other guys in your life that are just doing this work that want to live in this way, that are tired of pushing things down. And you start to face that dragon. You start to confront the fear of, well, what will people think if I actually talk about the abuse I experienced as a kid? How are people going to respond to me if I start to operate in a way that is more assertive, that is more direct, where I say no, where I actually communicate what I want and need? And you start to confront those things. But the big thing is, and I want you to really hear this, you cannot undo suppression in isolation. That will not work. You have to do it in tandem with other people, because when we suppress something, we are almost always doing that to try and belong in some type of a relationship. And how we undo that suppression is that we start to share that content and that material, whether those are needs, whether it's pain, whether it's a certain emotion, certain desires, we start to share that with other people and it becomes integrated, you've probably heard that term, into our sense of self, into our identity. So part of the antidote to suppression and part of undoing the suppression is that yes, you have to go face the dragon. Yes, you have to go into the cave. You do have to do that work. But a part of it is that you share your experience with other people. So find somebody, at least one or two people, that you can do this work in tandem with, that you can say, here's what I'm starting to bring forward into my life. I'm gonna start to be a little bit more assertive. I'm gonna start to say no to things that I don't wanna do anymore. Or, you know what? I'm gonna stop pretending like what happened in my childhood hasn't had an impact on me or didn't have an impact on me growing up, because actually it really hurt. And I have a lot of grief. I have a lot of sadness. I have a lot of anger. About the things that transpired, the abandonment, the neglect, the abuse, et cetera. So find the things that you suppressed, be able to identify maybe the impact that they have had on you, and be able to find spaces and places where you can express and explore what it's like to bring that out into your life, into your everyday life. So leave your thoughts below, maybe share a little bit about what you had to suppress or what you did suppress to try and garner strength, because the truth is that strength comes through the expression. It comes through the confrontation with the things that you have suppressed. The things that you suppress make you weak because you identify conceptually, these things are weak, they're unwanted, I don't want people to know about them or see them. And then when you start to bring them forward, it develops more resiliency, develops more competency and confidence. And you feel like more of a robust, capable man because you're not trying to develop strength through hiding things. You are developing strength cognitively, psychologically, emotionally, physically by bringing things forward and being honest and truthful and transparent in your life. And that develops strength and resiliency. All right, comment below, share your thoughts. Don't forget to man it forward, and I'll see you Next week.
