Dr. Michael Gurian: Why Boys Are Struggling — The Male Brain, Screens & What Parents Can Do

We're Out of Time

Dr. Michael Gurian discusses the crisis facing boys today, exploring how brain science, cultural shifts, and parenting styles contribute to

Key takeaways

• Boys' brains are wired differently, with language and emotion processing concentrated on one side, making traditional talk therapy less effective.
• Aggression is often misunderstood as violence; healthy male aggression through play and sports should be nurtured, not punished.

Main topics

• Male brain development
• Cultural fear of masculinity

Notable quotes

We're afraid of male energy, but we still want strong men—this contradiction is untenable.

Conclusion

Dr. Gurian calls for a reimagined approach to raising boys—one rooted

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Part of why men and boys are receding from culture, part of why they are isolating and are lonely, is that there is so much overreaction to everything they do. Because you think about, think about all the cancellations. What we're doing, what the culture is doing, is canceling, you know, it's 99 % men. Speaker 3 (0:37) If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call One Call Placement. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. Please, we're out of time. One Call Placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment Wellness and Spa and One Method Treatment Centers. Speaker 4 (0:58) Before we start the conversation today, I want to deliver a personal message. Every day, families across America lose someone they love to an overdose. Many of those deaths are preventable when communities have the right education, resources, and support. That's why I've partnered with the CDC Foundation through their COPE, Community Overdose Prevention Efforts campaign, and committed to matching every donation dollar for dollar up to $25,000. I've spent my life helping people recover from addiction, but if we can get to the place of prevention first, this would help save so many more lives. I hope you'll join me in supporting the CDC Foundation's overdose prevention work. at cdcfoundation.org slash cope. You can also visit the link below in the show notes to donate. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Speaker 2 (1:59) I sit Speaker 4 (1:59) across from families every day who are watching their sons slip away from anxiety, isolation, addiction, and mental health struggles. And the question I keep asking is, did this start when the drug showed up or did it start way before that? Today I'm joined by Dr. Michael Gurian, who spent his career understanding how boys grow into men. I want to connect the dots. What happens early in a boy's life? that quietly sets him on this path. Thank you for being with us today. I really appreciate it. Thank you for fitting us in. Speaker 1 (2:35) Thanks for having me. Speaker 4 (2:36) Of course. What's the exact moment boys start to break? Is it parenting, school, or culture? Speaker 1 (2:43) They're all important. I would put, truthfully, I put culture. My work is nature, nurture, and culture. So the way I would answer that question is we look at nature, we look at nurture, we look at culture. So nature is what they come in with, male brain, boys, you know, male genes, testosterone, all those things that come in that are relatively immutable. And then nurture is the wraparound family, usually nuclear family, et cetera. and extended family that's kind of taking care of that nature. So I talk about nurture the nature. That's one of my books, Nurture the Nature. What works best is figure out who that is, nurture that. That's what's going to work best. Culture, third, right? And I would say least, has the least influence until, right, the kids get to be teens, late teens, adulthood. Culture is having more influence there. So some things happen. Speaker 4 (3:39) Do you know where I see it, doctor? I'm the blame the parent guy. I've always been the blame the parent guy, right? For the most part. But I shifted with the culture and the social media, right? And now I think that that's the most important. What do you think? Speaker 1 (3:58) Well, I wouldn't say most important, but incredibly important. I mean, I'm definitely on record as one of those people who, since the smartphone, has been coming out and saying, nope. I mean, like Saving Our Sons, Minds of Girls. Ten years ago, I wrote those books saying, nope, got to keep the kids off of this. This is damaging to the brain. So for me, it's a brain. based issue. It's damaging to the brain. So there's, that's no doubt about that. Early on in life though, it's, it's more the nurturing systems and the parents and, and the school systems that are, you know, many of which are not on screens yet, but they're not understanding boys and, and in not understanding boys, it's hard for them to take, to nurture the nature of boys, to take care of boys. And, and certainly the culture comes in where the culture. pressure systems to act in a way that would be difficult for the boy okay so divorce fathering but let's say we have a divorce and let's say the father's gone okay that's a that's a huge trauma for the development of boys girls too but for the development of boys um uh so in in those and then then in often moms will just say yeah i don't understand these guys i'm i'm shutting down trying to shut down what's naturally boy um and that's having an effect on these boys but i as a mom don't even realize it until someone tells me give an example how so Well, I'll give an example. What I call aggression nurturance, which is quite different than empathy nurturance. Aggression nurturance tends to be more male way of doing it where we use aggression to nurture. So so rough and tumble play would fit in that category. Paternal nurturance, the way fathers tend to nurture would fit in that category. Nurturing male development through games. you know, through sports, through anything that involves aggression. And boys, of course, doing it to each other, throwing darts at each other, shooting each other with BB guns. I mean, all of this stuff is aggression, nurturance. The behavior looks frightening because aggression is confused with violence. So an aggression is not violence. Aggression is healthy. Violence is not. So often moms and female teachers, they don't understand aggression, nurturance. And they shut it down. They punish kids for it. They overly discipline. Speaker 4 (6:21) Is that what they refer to as the pussification of America? Speaker 1 (6:28) Okay. So I, of course, don't use those terms, but I... No, of course not. Those are... Hey, Speaker 4 (6:33) doctor, those are my terms. I'm not getting canceled. Speaker 1 (6:35) So I'm not... Oh, no, I'm not afraid of getting canceled. I just wouldn't use that term because what I think you're getting at with the term, though, is that we are afraid, especially women and female culture are afraid of males and of male energy. boy energy, afraid of it. Don't realize they're afraid of it, but are afraid of it. And so have a reaction to it that tries to shut it down. Isn't that Speaker 4 (7:06) unusual? Isn't that unusual though? Right? Because you have these women that want to be heard, not fixed. You want them to speak their love language. You want them to be consistent, right? But then you also want a real man, right? And the balance that you walk for these young guys today is just untenable. No? Speaker 1 (7:41) Gotcha. No, I hear you. It's very, we're in a very difficult situation where because of the fear of males. Speaker 1 (7:53) And there's a lot of reasons for that fear. And a lot of that, you're talking about culture, a lot of that is coming down through academe and through media, where males are just portrayed as being bad, patriarchal, domineering, all these things, and violent. So therefore, people are afraid, women are afraid, but they still want males. We still want a mate, right? We still want to reproduce. Evolution is still very strong in us. And so women do want... to mate and reproduce. And they do want strong men, men who are resilient. And so, I mean, you're right. What you're getting at is right. The guys are in an untenable situation. And this part of why they're withdrawing, receding, why we have more mental issues, more anxiety, more depression, you know, they are hit with, on the one hand, we don't want you to be male. We would rather we could. engineer you to be female. But on the other hand, as you're saying, they're hit with, yeah, but you got to succeed, man. You got to have ambition. I Speaker 4 (9:01) want you to walk me through the Gurian method. What is it? How does it change the way kids are taught and raised? Speaker 1 (9:09) Yeah, so about 30 years ago, a little more, I started using brain scans, right? So all of my work is brain based and I'm looking at scans of male brains and female brains and showing these to audiences and showing how different the male and the female brain are. And so the first thing is we train everyone, teachers, parents, counselors. I'll give an example. If you give me a chance, I'll give you an example of a counseling office, kind of how that changes. When we study the brain and we look at the brain, we see that, for instance, the female brain has word centers on both sides, right? The male brain mainly has word centers on the left. The female brain connects words with feelings and memories and emotions, which are in the midbrain, connects them on both sides, males on one side. So let's take. That's just one difference, but I'll give you another one. How does that, how does Speaker 4 (10:04) that manifest? What's the practical effect? Yeah, Speaker 1 (10:06) I'm going to give you the frontal lobe and then I'll show you how it manifests. So the other thing is that the female brain is operating about 80 % in the frontal lobe, which is impulse control, executive function, et cetera. Male brain is operating in gray matter areas further back, right? So put those together and then you look at a classroom or you look at a counseling agency. I'll use counseling. Counseling is set up for a person, and I'm a therapist, so I can admit this. It's set up for a person to come into an office, a small space, sit in a chair for 50 minutes and get into the frontal lobe and process emotions through words, right? How do you feel? How do you feel? How did they make you feel? For 50 minutes. So very few men. on average, stay with counseling, right? Because it's the wrong method to get at what's inside of them. Why? Why is it the wrong method? Because their frontal is not active. They don't Speaker 3 (11:09) have Speaker 1 (11:09) as many word centers connected to emotives and memories, and they can't answer these questions, and they get frustrated and they feel, you know, unheard. So we change counseling. Speaker 4 (11:18) Hold on, hold on, hold on. What questions? Speaker 1 (11:21) How do you feel? What do you feel? How did that make you feel? So Speaker 4 (11:24) they just can't name their feelings and they're frustrated because they don't know why. Speaker 1 (11:30) Okay. I mean, I think it's deeper than that, but fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. So then what we do is we train counselors to change that. So for instance, I, as a therapist, I always invite any of my clients to walk with me for the first 15 minutes. So it's still a 50 minute session, but we're going to walk for the first 15 minutes. Very few women take me up on that, although some do, but almost all the men do. Right. Okay. So they're already now, they feel better understood. Because we're walking and we're side by side. And rather than having the territorial instinct freeze their brains, which it will do if I'm sitting and looking them in the eye, we're not looking them in the eye. That's a great Speaker 4 (12:12) intervention. That is magnificent. I never even thought of that. That is beautiful. Go on. Speaker 1 (12:17) Yeah. So then another thing we do is objects. So the male brain is much more tuned to objects moving through space than the female brain is. And to access emotives, emotions, they become an object walking, but they also need to move objects. That's a lot of what the right sides of the male brain does. So we throw a ball back and forth when we're back in the office and we're talking. Now that they got to watch the ball and then their whole or talking stick. Some people use that, which is fine. Any object that's moving. Well, that keeps the brain going and now they're able to access more of what's going on. Right. So those are just two strategies that completely alter that 50-minute session. Speaker 4 (13:01) Do me a favor. Do me a favor. Tell the audience about the talking stick because that was beautiful. And if we're talking about the same talking stick, then I think that's a great way. And I've done that in my family too. When we all get triggered, I just walk over and grab something, a banana. This is the talking stick, right? Whoever's talking, everybody else shuts up until the banana is passed. Right? Speaker 1 (13:31) Right. Yeah. Yeah. We hand the stick back and forth. And many times what I use is a ball and we throw a ball back and forth because, you know, guys like it's like a little their brains got to be awake to catch that ball, you know, so they so they are attuned, you know, they're attuned and then they catch it. Talking sticks, a great one, a banana. Yeah. Speaker 4 (13:49) How much of addiction is actually a downstream problem of boys never learning how to deal with their frustration, rejection or failure? Speaker 1 (13:58) Addiction, of course, they got to have the genes for it. And those genes have to be triggered. If the genes get triggered, could their sense of failure trigger it would be how I would interpret then what you're saying. Is that what you're asking? Well, Speaker