On Friday September 26th I presented at the New England Association for Family and Systemic Therapy's annual conference, "State of Therapy 2025: The Future of Our Profession".  I am the president of the organization, a 501c6 non-profit whose mission it is to be the stewards of family and systemic therapy practice in the New England states, so I also had emcee duties for the day and was part of the planning committee.

The topic of my presentation was "When the Manosphere Invades Therapy: Working with Today's Lost Boys and Men."  It was an exciting, important and challenging topic that needed to be approached with directness, honesty, vulnerability and a bit of humor.   Here is the write up from the program.

The statistics are overwhelming and the causes are not fully understood - or are hotly debated. But one thing for sure is that boys and men are struggling. Therapists today - for those males who are self-aware enough to go to therapy or the ones dragged there kicking and screaming by parents and partners - are struggling to break through ice walls of defenses, misunderstandings of stoic philosophy and evolutionary biology, and an online culture weaponizing and profiting off a crisis of masculinity. This workshop will examine how to break through to men and young men adrift in a sea of toxic messaging without labeling, blaming and shaming.

The reception to my talk was overwhelmingly positive (despite one tech issue where I had to improvise and paraphrase a video that crashed my slideshow).  An unexpected moment of emotion when talking about my own therapy experience and the impact of my mentor, Dr. Bill Flaxman, who passed in 2024, elicited applause because I connected it to the content of the session.  Specifically I turned it into an unanticipated live demonstration of self-disclosure and encouraging vulnerability and authenticity in working with men who are inundated with messaging on social media about how therapy doesn't work for us and has a bias favoring women and false definitions of "stoicism".

Additionally I spoke about the importance of using humor in therapy and told some funny anecdotes from both my therapy career and my prior work in the entertainment industry (See the picture below of a beardless young me with legendary comedian Steve Allen.)

In addition, in my capacity as president, I was able to connect with representatives from AAMFT (American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy) and CTAMFT (Connecticut Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. (Seen here with Miranda Croteau, NEAFAST's chair of Training and Education and the Board of Directors of NEAFAST respectively)

Overall it was a great, albeit exhausting, day at Clark University in Worcester.  Interestingly Clark famously hosted Sigmund Freud for five lectures in 1909, his only U.S. appearance.  It was exciting to present on such hallowed ground.