Most of the dads I work with got here after clearing a lot of hurdles. Not just the internal ones — the voice that says you’re supposed to have it together, that asking for help means something is wrong with you — but the practical ones too. Finding someone who actually seems like a good fit. Getting past the awkwardness of making the call. Figuring out where an hour of your own time is supposed to come from when the schedule was already full before kids entered the picture. By the time someone sits down across from me, they’ve already done something genuinely difficult.
I get it. The pressure on fathers to be competent, steady, and self-sufficient doesn’t go away when things get hard. If anything, it gets louder. The kids need you. Your partner needs you. Work needs you. And somewhere in all of that, the question of how you’re actually doing gets quietly dropped from the agenda.
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from running on empty while looking like you’re fine. I see it a lot. Guys who are killing it professionally, who are present at their kids’ games, who seem from the outside like they’re managing everything well and who are privately running out of runway. The irritability creeps in. The distance from their partner grows. The things that used to feel meaningful start feeling like obligations. And still, they don’t call anyone.
Part of that is cultural. Men are socialized to equate asking for help with weakness, and fathers get an extra dose of that message. You’re supposed to be the provider, the protector, the one who fixes things. Sitting across from a therapist and saying “I don’t know what I’m doing” doesn’t fit neatly into that identity.
But part of it is also practical. When do you even find the time? Between work and kids and whatever is left of your relationship, carving out an hour for yourself can feel indulgent at best and selfish at worst. So you keep pushing. You tell yourself you’ll deal with it later, when things settle down. Things don’t settle down.
If any of this sounds familiar, feel free to reach out. I try to make the first part easy: a straightforward conversation to see if it makes sense to work together. No pressure, no commitment. Just a place to start.