Vince Benevento is the founder of Causeway Collaborative, a male-specific counseling center, and the author of Boys Will Be Men: Eight Lessons for the Lost American Male. As a therapist, coach, and mentor who specializes in helping young men between the ages of 14 and 30, Vince has worked with both the combustible and the checked out, and developed a clear, experience-honed framework for what actually helps guys get unstuck, take ownership of their lives, and move forward with purpose.
00:04:28.900I was very resistant to receiving it personally, mostly because I wasn't ready to do the work.
00:04:33.640But I really couldn't find anything that spoke to me in terms of what I felt engaged to do.
00:04:41.320And so I started puzzling and being curious around what kinds of things young men would be open to and willing to do.
00:04:50.660And years later, came up with some stuff that has been useful when supporting young men trying to get their lives on track.
00:04:57.620One of the things you argue at the very beginning of the book is that talk therapy is largely useless for men between the ages of 16 and 30.
00:05:07.560And a pretty bold statement from a therapist of like, you know, 12 plus years or 15 plus years, whatever it's been, you know, 15 total, 12 as a licensed practitioner.
00:05:16.260And so, yeah, it's a bold claim, but I stand by it.
00:05:18.980I mean, I think young men especially don't have a lot of rich life experience to process through and to, you know, pick apart in ways that men, women, you know, more mature individuals do.
00:05:32.400And so I think part of what we practice and preach is the notion that therapy or the therapeutic support process for young men should be much more about doing and not talking.
00:05:43.240You know, men and young men in general, this is generalization, but usually true, learn better from doing.
00:05:49.040And so, you know, men, because they learn through experience, gravitate towards frameworks like mentorship and coaching, you know, as opposed to kind of traditional talk therapy, which tends to be a little more nebulous and a little more open ended.
00:06:02.700So, you know, we try to impress upon the guys we work with, you know, the setting of small goals, the step work in achieving those goals, the literal experience of going out into the community and doing the thing, you know, can be a little more impactful than sitting and talking about something that someone may or may not do in the week in between sessions.
00:06:21.340And just in addition and sort of separately, you know, I think back to when I was like 16 and pissed off, right?
00:06:28.060And I didn't have the emotional fluency to talk about my issues in the way that I do now, you know, and I would contend that men, as we know, and young men are typically slower to mature than their female counterparts.
00:06:39.740And, you know, particularly within the emotional realm.
00:06:42.140And so I think, you know, I didn't have the language to describe what I was feeling until years and years later and hours of work and therapy.
00:06:51.340And so I think if somebody is not engaged in that kind of process of self-discovery, it may be more productive and beneficial to do a thing rather than talking about a thing that you might not do.
00:07:00.960All right. So your approach is a little less conversation, a little more action with these young guys.
00:07:06.000Yeah, for sure. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:07:08.060Something you describe in the book is in your career, you've encountered two types of young men.
00:07:14.100The first type of guy is acting out, doing dangerous stuff, maybe has an addiction, is drinking, getting into fights.
00:07:21.340The second type of guy is pretty much the way you describe him is anesthetized.
00:07:26.180He just doesn't want to do anything. He just wants to sit at home.
00:07:30.740And you argue that the second type of guy is harder to work with. Why is that?
00:07:37.180Yeah, yeah. So, you know, on first blush, right, it seems almost unreasonable to make that assertion.
00:07:45.320I mean, the second guy is just kind of not doing a lot. He's not doing anything dangerous.
00:07:50.080He's not doing anything risky. He's not a danger to himself, not a danger to others. Right.
00:07:54.360So how could that guy possibly be more difficult? You know, I think back to I was the first kind of guy.
00:08:00.700I was the fighting, drinking, driving, acting out, you know, like getting into trouble, but just like the oppositional externalizing kind of guy.
00:08:09.280And when I, you know, go back 25 years to when I was that kind of guy, you know, I was a mess, but there was energy, you know, and momentum associated with that mess.
00:08:20.240Right. Like I had a girlfriend. I had a job. I had a car that I paid for, for money that I saved through my job.
00:08:27.640I was going to college. Right. So there is progression personally, and there's goals that are being set and achieved.
00:08:35.080And that guy's doing stuff. He may be doing the wrong stuff, but he's doing stuff nonetheless.
00:08:41.040The second guy isn't really doing anything. And this is the curious phenomenon that I talk about a lot in the book.
00:08:47.240It's like this sort of I call the second wave because, you know, I saw the first kind of guy 15 years ago when I started my business.
00:08:53.860And now we see the second profile of just, you know, anxious, isolative, apathetic, highly dependent young men who are not seeking to individuate in any way, shape or form.
00:09:06.500They're not excited to go get a job. We have guys who don't want to get their license.
00:09:11.780They'd literally rather have their mother drive them around in the car because they're so anxious about driving a car that they can't even consider the notion of having their own vehicle and taking themselves to and fro.
00:09:23.340And so, you know, the first kind of guy at least was doing a lot of stuff and was busy in the world and had energy and it was misdirected.
00:09:31.600But you could direct it. It's very difficult with this sort of second wave to cultivate, you know, an active process with a guy who's so inert.
00:09:41.420And this is where we have to move in the direction of really connecting with an interest and connecting with like the soul of that person to get them engaged in something that they care about so that we can start moving them in any direction whatsoever.
00:09:56.640Yeah, I've noticed this as well in my work with young men. So I've coached flag football. I'm a leader at my church's young men's group.
00:10:05.240I remember in flag football, you'd see those two types of guys. One guy was like super aggressive, had that just that kind of killer instinct, but he kind of messed stuff up.
00:10:15.580But I could work with that because like, oh, he's got this energy. I can direct that. We can refine his skill and he'll get better.
00:10:20.600Then you have the kid who just like, just a nerd, like had no drive at all. And it's just like, I can't work with this. And then in church, like you see the same sort of thing, kids where it doesn't matter what it is, they'll be engaged.
00:10:33.140They're excited. Even if they think the activity we're doing is kind of boring, they'll try to make something out of it. And then you have the boys where it's just like it's pulling teeth.
00:10:42.400You do everything you can to get them engaged. And they're just like, meh, it's so hard. So they lack that, you know, the Romans called it thumos, sort of that fire in the belly, that drive.
00:10:54.340And I'm seeing it more and more in young men as you are. What do you think is going on with this younger generation? You talk about how you see this a lot in Gen Z guys.
00:11:05.780What do you think is going on where you've seen this lack of thumos and drive in young men?
00:11:10.100Yeah, I don't think it's any one thing. I think it's a crock pot filled with a bunch of different things that make it hard to do this work with young men, and make it hard to connect with people in general.
00:11:21.960I think there's a tech piece for sure. There's a tech piece and a subsequent isolative piece in association with that. We see a lot of skill erosion.
00:11:30.820So like, as everything has become both automated and immediately accessible, we can have things done for us rather than do things ourselves.
00:11:41.740And so, you know, the old example that I used to give was like, not so long ago, in like the early 2000s, like I used to know how to get places, you know, and like now I just don't, because I just throw it in the ways just like everybody else.
00:11:55.480So I'm not paying attention to where I'm going anymore. And so that's like one very small detail of the day in which we live where, like, we're not exercising our brain, we're not exploring, we're not engaging with our surroundings.
00:12:06.720We're just passively moving through our day. And that happens, you know, more readily than we would care to admit.
00:12:12.600There's an instant gratification piece where like, I'm hungry. And so I just ordered Domino's and they send me a, you know, 44 ounce Coke and a pepperoni pizza for, you know, with the fee is $31.
00:12:24.800And I just swipe that or my parents swipe that. And, you know, there's no reward based system where you do a task and you get a reward and then you can subsequently use it for whatever purposes you see fit.
00:12:34.880So there's not a lot of delayed gratification and sequencing and work that goes into achieving goals.
00:12:42.660And I just think more broadly, because we're so flooded with information and kind of information that scares us, this pervasive culture of fear that we live in has raised the stakes in terms of the cumulative anxiety that we all experience as people, but specifically young men.
00:12:58.320And so, you know, young men are not excited to go get their first car and drive fast like they used to.
00:13:04.140Now, I'm not saying that that's behavior that we should, you know, relish upon our boys, but boys used to be excited about getting their car and shining it up and driving around fast.
00:13:13.360They're not excited about that anymore. They're scared and they're scared of things like that.
00:13:17.680And they're scared of talking to a girl and they're scared of getting a phone number and they're scared of going on a date, which is why they watch porn and lock themselves in their room incessantly.
00:13:27.700And so this fear that is pervasive in our young men has caused us to opt out of taking healthy risks.
00:13:35.240I'm not talking about inappropriate risks like the risks that I took when I was a younger man.
00:13:39.460I'm talking about healthy risks, age-appropriate developmental risks.
00:13:43.520And that, I think, has robbed us of, you know, some of the heart work and the soul work that is really important to being a young man.
00:13:50.980You also talk about how parents might have unintentionally contributed to creating this second type of young man.
00:13:57.640Yeah, you know, I think it comes from a good place.
00:14:01.340And I've seen over the course of 15 to 20 years of doing this work, 15 years of, you know, running my own business, 20 years in mental health in general.
00:14:10.920I have seen parents' awareness of mental health skyrocket, skyrocket.
00:14:21.620They even understand, you know, basic symptomology.
00:14:24.120Even parents who haven't been through, you know, around a therapy with a kid or, you know, have had a kid with mental health challenges.
00:14:30.320Your baseline parent understands and speaks the language of mental health.
00:14:34.340That was not the case when I first started.
00:14:36.900And so that has bore a lot of fruit in terms of the way we engage with our kids emotionally, but also just in terms of how you triage an issue and a situation.
00:14:47.180So it certainly comes from a good place.
00:14:49.340I think the unintended consequence is we pathologize, right?
00:14:54.360Like we pathologize a lot of behavior.
00:14:57.540And so if your kid is acting out, he's depressed, he's anxious, you know, he's got a mood disorder.
00:15:03.560And those things may very well, in fact, be the case.
00:15:06.840And so far be it for me to say in all situations that's not true.
00:15:10.320But sometimes he's just not accountable to his behaviors.
00:15:13.560Or sometimes he's acting out and being manipulative.
00:15:16.440Or sometimes he just doesn't feel like doing it and he goes in his room and he games for seven hours instead because he has the autonomy to do so.
00:15:24.440And there aren't the checks and balances in the system that will make it so that he can't do those things.
00:15:28.260And so I don't think that mental health is always the reason why someone is struggling.
00:15:34.100And I think parents, you know, jump to conclusions sometimes around, you know, pointing a finger at their son's pathology as being the rationale for what's happening when, in fact, a behavioral approach can yield better fruit.
00:15:49.060Yeah, and going back to that idea of anxiety, I think a lot of parents are anxious these days for their kids because, I mean, life in the 21st century, it is pretty complicated and complex.
00:16:01.960And there's this anxiety that, oh, my kid is not going to be able to make it.
00:16:05.920It's just there's a lot more you have to do to establish yourself in the world economically.
00:16:10.600So a lot of parents are like, I'm just going to do this for my kid.
00:16:12.980And I remember when I like when I went to college and here's a great example, when I went to college, my parents were like, oh, you want to go to college?
00:16:32.560They were just they wasn't like they were holding my hand.
00:16:35.160And then I see parents, you know, my peers today who've got kids going to college, they're doing all this stuff to get their kid into college.
00:16:42.540You know, signing them up for these prep classes, doing these elaborate college tours, helping them refine their essays.
00:16:49.720And I'm thinking like that that did not happen 20, 30 years ago.
00:16:56.960And talk about, you know, it's a really good call by you, Brett.
00:16:59.920But like talk about contributing factors to the collective anxiety.
00:17:04.180You know, I remember filling out those applications literally in pencil at my dining room table in the year, you know, 1998, you know, so like it's not that long ago.
00:17:32.840And I, you know, I mean, listen, I know a lot of people in this space.
00:17:37.920They do extraordinary work in this space.
00:17:41.180You know, the college space, the private university space and the game that is getting your kid into the best school humanly possible to set them up on a trajectory for life.
00:17:50.200And what I can tell you is the emotional pressure that kids experience as a result of like this conveyor belt that has been socially constructed for them, whether they fall alongside it or not.
00:18:03.260And by the way, I got kids who mostly don't fall on that conveyor belt and are trying to be shoehorned into it, you know, has a lot of challenging consequences for kids and for families.
00:18:13.140And I see a lot of kids who parents elect to send them to college because there's no other option.
00:18:20.300Like you have to drive around with a sticker on the back of your car that says where juniors going to college, whether they should be going to college or not.
00:18:28.080And so I get a lot of parents who call me in November, you know, the following semester and say, hey, you know, he didn't make it.
00:18:36.220And I think that the college is for everybody and you have to go to a top 50 school framework is not one that every single person should subscribe to.
00:18:48.200And I think the people who are having awareness of that in advance are far better suited than the people who are learning that lesson on the backside.
00:18:56.900And then, you know, when parents do, because it comes from a good place again, they want to help their kids succeed.
00:19:22.480And the job example is a perfect example because, you know, most of the people, I mean, I'm in Westport, I'm in Westchester, I'm in West Hartford, Connecticut, like, you know, pretty affluent pockets with a lot of, you know, high profile, high influence people.
00:19:35.060And so when their kid is struggling, you know, usually dad will come into the center and say, hey, I'm going to get my kid a job and such and such.
00:19:42.460And I say, don't you dare get your kid a job.
00:19:45.680Instead, let's support him in the process of him finding it for himself and navigating and figuring out where his strengths are and where his weaknesses lie.
00:19:53.700And that'll position us much better to help him down the line than it will if we just scoop something up and put it in his bread basket.
00:19:59.800So in your book, you've laid out several principles that guide your approach to helping young men that come to your clinics, these sort of disengaged young guys.
00:20:38.680I'm advocating that anything I've ever built, whether it's been, you know, my marriage or my relationships with my kids or my business or, you know, meaningful relationships, any of those things that matter to me deeply were patient in their growth process.
00:20:54.580Were things that were step by step, one after the next, after the next, after the next, were filled with trial and iteration and reset and debriefing and learning were messy at times.
00:21:06.120And were not a straight line, none of them.
00:21:08.980And I think that's the case, you know, when you build something of substance, you know, across life, you don't usually finish exactly the way that you start.
00:21:16.680And when you make a blueprint for something, typically these unforeseen challenges that come up along the way.
00:21:21.480And as long as you keep working step by step, day by day, brick by brick, it's a good mantra to set you up for success in whatever you're doing.
00:21:29.940So how do you help a young man start becoming a builder?
00:21:33.520So a young man who can, you know, look for a job, find a job, apply to college by themselves, build a relationship.
00:21:41.420How do you help a young man who just hasn't done that before?
00:21:44.760Because he's one of those passive anesthetized type young men.
00:21:47.540Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you begin with the acknowledgement that at some point, every person hadn't done it, right?
00:21:56.440So like, you know, me, you, everybody, we all had to get started somewhere.
00:22:00.820And so for me, I get really excited about vision work.
00:22:04.580And what I mean by that is helping a young man get excited about crafting a vision for where he wants to go.
00:22:11.460Young man or man, because we see people as young as 14 and we see guys, you know, into their early 30s.
00:22:15.620So crafting, co-crafting, leading, sharing a vision for what ignites you, what feels right, what have you felt purpose in doing, what have you done that's been exciting for you, and just dream boarding it and vision crafting and helping them get excited.
00:22:33.620One, because, you know, if this is their first blush with mental health supports, it debunks their preconceived notions about what it is.
00:22:42.160I want a guy coming into my office and feeling good enough that he wants to come back the next time of his own accord.
00:22:47.480And typically, this kind of vision work will draw them in in that way.
00:22:50.560And so we start with vision crafting and developing a sense for where you want to go and what you want to do and what you want to be.
00:23:01.100We go out and we learn through experience and service and shadowing and job acquisition and all these different processes.
00:23:06.720And we teach and instruct and we fill in the gaps as needed.
00:23:10.420So it starts very broad and very opaque, you know, to just cultivate enthusiasm, and then we get down to it sort of step-by-step, brick-by-brick.
00:23:25.400Maybe you have that session to lay out the vision, but then you're going to assign this guy homework, and then there's going to be follow-up.
00:23:32.160It's like, all right, did you get that application?
00:23:41.000And it's positioning a guy to be better off than when he started.
00:23:44.940And I don't just mean broadly around the process.
00:23:47.100I mean, in that hour, part of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get you farther in the hour you come see me that week than you were when you came in.
00:23:55.420So, you know, you come when you go see Vince and you think to yourself, wow, we're going to get a lot of stuff done today.
00:24:00.100So, like, one of my favorite processes to do with a guy, and it seems so simple, is to come in and work with a guy who's never had a resume before.
00:24:09.460A young kid, you know, 15, 16, 17, you know, now sometimes 18 years old, but listen, let's bang out your resume.
00:24:16.280And literally hand the kid a piece of paper that reflects to him everything he's done in his life to walk out of that session.
00:24:24.680And it doesn't have to be sexy and it doesn't have to light the world on fire.
00:24:29.020And I started doing this 15 years ago, and I know you could throw it in your chat, GBT, you could do it in two seconds.
00:24:34.260But the co-constructing of that process to build what you've done and to reflect to you what you've done so you can hand it to your parents and be proud of it, or you could put it in somebody's hands and go look for a job.
00:24:47.060Now that's actually reflecting to you self-worth about your own achievements and positioning you to get excited about the next thing we're going to do next week.
00:24:54.840So that's just one example, but it's a pretty good one.
00:24:57.220It's a very simple exercise that denotes how we get kids moving forward in that very tangible way.
00:25:02.220We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:25:06.220I've always been pretty disciplined about taking care of my body, working out, eating well, but for a long time, my skin was an afterthought.
00:25:12.980I didn't have a routine, and honestly, my face just looked a little tired and dry most of the time.
00:25:17.300I wanted something effective, but I wanted something I'd actually stick with.
00:27:56.600And, I mean, I even think about, like, when my kids were young, we'd go out to dinner, and, like, I remember watching people – you know, their kids were, like, 10, and they would order for their kids in the restaurant, you know?
00:28:06.460And, like, you know, when my kids were, you know, 5, 4, and 2, like, they were ordering food for themselves just because building that requisite skill is essential for everything.
00:28:16.360You know, like, you need to have a conversation with somebody, look them in the eye, and to whatever extent is age appropriate, engage with another human being, right?
00:28:23.740Now, the hardest part is the consistent and persistent commitment on behalf of the parents because you're going to get resistance very often.
00:28:33.640It's so much easier to just opt out on, you know, one or two or three occasions, and then a habit that you're trying to cultivate gets extinguished because you don't consistently curate it.
00:28:43.240So, you know, these kinds of – you know, the bank example that you gave, it's fantastic.
00:28:47.360Like, we should be trying to impart these life lessons and skills to our kids beginning as young as is appropriate.
00:28:54.040It just takes a lot of energy to do that over time.