Fear, grief, sorrow and despair — all the emotions we don’t allow men to feel or express
Men don’t cry. Men don’t show emotions. Men must be strong. How many times have you heard this, or some iteration of this, being said? Most men in Pakistan hear it a lot — so much so that they often associate emotions and expressing emotions with femininity and try to distance themselves from it.
But what happens to someone who is told they should not cry or experience their emotions? What happens to someone who has to hide emotions so heavy that they threaten to consume them?
Men in Pakistani society are often conditioned to suppress their emotions, and they are usually shamed for expressing them. If you see a male abuse survivor opening up about their experiences on social media, you’ll notice a pattern in the comments — women are generally supportive, but many of their own gender often make jokes and ridicule them.
When they aren’t allowed to express minor emotions, is it any wonder that they find it difficult to cope with feelings that can drag you down into the abyss, emotions that can take years — sometimes even a lifetime — to process and understand?
‘I might die’
Emotions are often difficult to process and they’re often felt in stages. Grief, for example, has five stages. A common misconception about grief is that it can only be felt after losing someone to death. In reality, there are many types of grief, including anticipatory grief, which can occur long before losing someone to death, or even before losing oneself.
Anticipatory grief is a form of grief you experience when you sense that something significant is about to happen, and you begin to feel the impending loss. Medically, according to the National Institutes of Health, it is defined as grief felt before a loss, usually associated with a terminal or chronic illness.
Another type of grief is second-hand grief — the sorrow you experience when witnessing someone else’s suffering, like watching a loved one fade away, bit by bit, due to a chronic illness. But what happens when it’s you disappearing, piece by piece, because of the same illness? Second-hand grief is painful, but it often pales in comparison to confronting your own mortality.
That’s what happened when Ammar* fought blood cancer.
“I took months to accept it. It’s so strange — one day, you’re perfectly fine, and the next, your world is upside down. You’re suddenly faced with this illness that feels bigger than the sky, and you just don’t know what to do with yourself,” he said.
“Chronic illnesses are incredibly complex, and I only truly understood them when I went through one myself. I was a lively person, but suddenly I found myself bedridden, crying for my life. I’d call my parents and tell them I was about to die, convinced nothing would work out,” he said, his voice heavy as he recalled those painful days.
Ammar endured gruelling cancer treatments, losing weight, hair, and, to some extent, even his will to live. Some days, the pain went far beyond what he thought he could bear.
“During this period, I had so many emotions bottled up inside me. My younger brother stayed with me at the hospital, and on some days, I would take my rage out on him. It was just a result of my helplessness. But my friends, both male and female, were truly there for me emotionally, helping me cope with these difficult feelings so I wouldn’t lose myself,” he said.
But not all men are the same. Twenty-seven-year-old Ahmer* is battling a disease that remains taboo to this day — AIDS — has a different way of coping. He was 26 when his life was changed forever and he was injected with a used needle. Since then he has been fighting a battle every day, he says.
“I’m the patient, right? I was scared to tell my own family about this disease — not only would they be devastated, but they’d also question my character. I recall an instance when I told a friend who laughed in my face, asking, ‘how was the experience?’ as he winked. I can’t even put into words how enraged and helpless I felt,” he told Images.
“There are so many feelings inside me that I’m scared to admit, even to myself. I curse myself every day — why did I end up at that hospital? Why did I even get myself vaccinated? Why would I do this to myself, and how did I end up here? One day, I was at an MNC, having the time of my life, and the next? I’m waiting for death to arrive,” he bemoaned.
If not me, then who?
Anger and fear are two emotions that Pakistanis are no strangers to. The unstable political climate, challenging living conditions, and patriarchal conditioning men experience all contribute to a lot of bottled up emotions, which often manifest in anger. This frequently escalates into abuse.
But abuse is often a cycle — until someone breaks it.
Mikail* was subjected to brutal mental and physical abuse by his father. It left the 22-year-old growing up very angry.
“I would get into random fights for no reason. At 16, I started watching violent pornography and would fantasise about it. I frequently beat my sister, finding excuses to hit her, and derived pleasure from it,” he admitted, remorse colouring his words.
“By the age of 20, I was widely hated by women, and rightfully so. Until, my aunt, who’s a psychologist and a very empathetic woman, saw me and knew something was not right with me,” he explained.
Mikail’s aunt hosted him for a year in her home in a different city, where she began noticing patterns in his behaviour. As a mental health professional, she recognised this as a trauma response — the abuse had made him feel powerless, and he sought to regain that power by abusing those weaker than himself.
“An abuser would never target someone who’s stronger than them or holds power over them. My dad had power over me and my mother. If he had so much anger, why didn’t he ever raise his voice or hit his boss, who was supposedly causing all the stress in his life?” he said.
He is currently going to therapy, which he sought out after being counselled by his aunt and guided toward professional help. He calls therapy a “life-changing experience” because, not only did it help him reconnect with his feelings, but it also made him realise that the problem lay in the patterns he was stuck in.
“I would never, under any circumstance, justify what I did to my sister. It was a classic case of unequal power distribution, where I was well aware of how I could violate her and I did,” he said.
Compulsive abusive behaviour is closely tied to building a pattern in which the victim is abused, and the abuser then continues to abuse others. In most cases, the abuser doesn’t realise they are becoming part of the cycle that inflicted so much harm on them.
“I have dealt with so many cases where the abuser was raised in an environment of abuse, and since they felt weak and powerless back then, they now assert their power over members of the fairer sex, ie, women,” a psychiatrist experienced in dealing with male abusers at Liaquat National Hospital shared on the condition of anonymity.
“This is driven by the fear of being weak, so every abuser you meet would be one of the most scared people you’d ever encounter,” she added.
Bigger than the whole sky
Grief can be one of the most difficult emotions to deal with. When you lose someone to death, it transforms you — both physically and emotionally.
Men and women deal with grief in different ways. Each gender has a unique approach to coping with grief. In each of its seven stages, grief takes a person through a plethora of emotions.
Each kind of grief is unique and can change a person’s life, but often there is no grief as heart-wrenching as losing a child or a parent.
Haris* lost his 12-year-old son in a road accident that he and his wife survived. His wife went through major emotional turmoil, and he stayed by her side throughout. However, in the process of supporting his wife, he was unable to feel his own grief. He didn’t even know how to.
“My body operated like a robot the day my child died. From opening my eyes in a hospital room to learning that he was no more, I was in survival mode. I couldn’t stop thinking about my wife, a mother who went through the pain of losing her child, without realising that I was going through something similar myself,” said the 45-year-old.
“It happened two years ago, and while I was taking care of everyone in my family, I didn’t know what to do with my own emotions. Each night, when everyone was asleep, I would sit and stare at my son’s football. I taught him how to kick; we’d play every Sunday. How did life bring me here?” he said, his eyes flooding with tears.
“I cannot cry because I am everyone’s strength in this family, and if I break, who else is going to take care of them?”
Sikander* lost his father in his early twenties. He describes this as a life-transforming experience, dividing his life into two periods — one before his father passed away and one after.
“In the early days, I couldn’t even process what had happened to me because there was no acceptance. A figure who was so powerful, someone I looked up to, was no longer here. It took me a long time just to accept that fact; after that, it was an entire journey to deal with something so heavy,” he said.
“When dealing with grief, I emphasise acceptance and provide relatable examples. Coping strategies also play a part, like spending time with friends or engaging in spiritual practices aligned with their beliefs,” Jawairia Azhar, a psychologist and counsellor at BVS Parsi High School in Karachi explained.
Azhar believes girls deal with grief differently than boys do.
“Girls often have unique ways of coping with grief. They tend to express their emotions, whether through crying or journaling, which helps them process their feelings. They are often more expressive and talkative by nature, with a tendency to share their emotions with friends or family,” she said.
“Girls are also multitaskers, balancing school, work, and extracurricular activities. This diversification helps distract them from grief and allows them to disperse their emotions,” she added.
“To support children dealing with difficult emotions, it is important to remind them repeatedly that they are not alone in their struggles,” she added.
Women and emotions are often seen as synonymous, as we have historically been considered the population that cries more and feels more. However, with wave after wave of change, things have improved. At least among ourselves, we have come to understand each other’s emotions to some extent. With men, though, it is still very difficult. The patriarchy has convinced them not
The World Health Organisation estimated in 2019 that the suicide rate for men in Pakistan was 13.3 per 100,000. Suicide is also the fourth leading cause of death in the country, highlighting how talking about mental health remains a major taboo — especially for men.
This Men’s Day, we hope more men seek help when they’re struggling with their mental health and more people realise that the shame and stigma attached to seeking help should be eliminated.
The constant suppression of their emotions often leads to emotional expression manifesting as anger and this social pressure to suppress traps men in a cycle of silence and misdirected pain.
Emotions and feelings are an integral part of every individual, regardless of gender. Yet, Pakistan continues to struggle with the basic step of acknowledging and understanding emotions. The deep-rooted patriarchal belief of “mard ko dard nahi hota [men don’t feel pain]” gives birth to a damaging narrative, one that sustains the harmful effects of patriarchy on both men and women.
This cycle must end. To truly heal as a society, we must create spaces where men are free to feel, to express, and to heal — because emotions are not a weakness; they are what make us human.
*Names changed to protect identity of respondents