Men's Issues & male psychology 

Unlocking, encountering and embracing our male identity starts with tapping into your most primal awareness of your inner animal, holding it up against the social construct of the modern masculine, and making sense of the resulting contrast of internal desires and external expectations.

WHAT IS 'MANHOOD'

To look inward for answers about what makes you male, and what to do with what you find, takes patience, tenacity and courage. We will look across time (forefathers, philosophy, conquerors, tribalism), your current social ecosystem, your earliest encounters with masculinity and male-ness, and enhance how you see 'man' and how you desire to describe your own unique definition of a male self. 

WAR & PEACE

As men, we endeavor to make war in order to attain and maintain resources. Today, that warfare has taken on clandestine forms that include social media, competitive aesthetic physicality like narcissistic voyeurism and exhibitionism, rejection, materialism, and even gossip; the result is impaired intimacy. Within the modern male the existential opposite of war, peace, can seemingly only be achieved when our tasks of attainment are wholly complete. Because of the impossibility of feeling satiated, we as men are in a constant state of frustration, waging our wars unendingly (inwardly and outwardly) in pursuit of elusive 'peace'. If we don't find ways to undo and unbind ourselves from the fallacy of perpetual warfare, we will be in a state of cyclical, unsatisfying hunger. 

CRAVING CONNECTEDNESS

Sports, whether its the NFL, your local crossfit gym, or a recreational dodgeball league, provides sanctuary, stimulation and satisfaction. Males depend on and thrive in socially interconnected conditions. This craving for connection can be fleetingly and superficially met digitally, but it is only when we are initiated into a tribe or create our own, with meaningful human contact, that we feel most powerfully whole, as one within many. Tribes satisfy our desire to be inspired by other men, physically connected with other men, and witnessed as men. Those powerful bonds can start within singularity, like male-centered therapy.

POWER

There are many myths about power that we struggle with across our lifespan. Emergent desires and conventions around control, prestige and power can dominate and distort our relationships to others, our relationship to ourself and warp our dreams and hopes into ambitions that are often more informed by the external world than by our own inner essential self. We will examine, understand and refine this internal thirst, toward a clearer and authentic articulation of more compassionate, honest and purposeful goals.

AWAKEN THE ALPHA

There is a feral psyche within men that is often clouded or diluted over time by a variety of external and internal forces, working to suppress your inner animal. Some of our greatest frustrations as men - existential, mental, sexual and social - are direct results of repressing aspects of aggression, connectedness (physical and emotional), desires and passions, and a profound need for achievement. These deeply held frustrations poison our understanding of self, our interactions with our brothers, our intersections with success, and our reactions to perceived failures. Change is overdue.

Andrew Merrell LMFT

Founder & Lead Therapist, Aim Psychotherapy

Contact me at Andrew@AimPsych.com or reach me by voicemail at (310) 954-1560.

Aim Psychotherapy is a private practice mental health collective of therapists devoted to working with men who are ready to challenge themselves, face themselves and express themselves — to heal, ask, answer, change, grow, learn, mend what hurts, amplify what is working and eradicate what isn’t. Andrew Merrell LMFT #102724 is the founder and clinical lead therapist of Aim Psychotherapy & Associates.