The Manosphere is a Trauma Response

A look at the Netflix documentary through the lens of male depression

Mar 22, 2026

Netflix released a documentary last week, in which documentarian Louis Theroux spends time with four of the most controversial influencers in the manosphere.

It is predictably horrific.

I debated even writing about it because I don’t think we should be giving these men any additional attention. But the documentary is a useful tool - in and because of its extremity - to illuminate how damaging patriarchy is, not only in the overt ways it oppresses women, but in the subversive ways it’s destroying men.

But first - what even is the manosphere?

The manosphere is a group of male social media influencers who espouse that “the matrix” - aka our societal institutions - are purposely designed to make men fail. They believe that men are born without value and have to build it by becoming wealthy as opposed to women who are born with their one and only value: beauty. They use a catchphrase from the Keanu Reeves Matrix film, “taking the red pill” which describes the moment when you are able to see that the matrix is rigged against you as a man. Once you have that clarity, you can follow their prescribed solution: purchase apps and courses from them, which will bring you financial abundance (but according to the doc. seem to only make themselves wealthier). Once you are wealthy, you can attract and control a multitude of female partners. These men flaunt the fact that they are in one-way monogamous relationships in which their female partners are monogamous, but they can sleep with anyone they’d like to. At one point, Myron Gains brags; “my woman is so down with this dynamic, she packs my condoms when I travel”. He goes on to say “I dictate when I put my dick in you. I’m the dictator of my relationship. I understand women better than they do. I’m not misogynistic - I love women.”

The magnitude of loathsome behavior and rhetoric in the film is truly mind boggling. You can’t look away from the provocation; which is exactly what the featured influencers understand and have monetized.

We could write all of this off as just a crazy subset of the population, albeit a subset with tens of millions of combined followers; but what does deserve our time and attention is a look at the culture that we’re all swimming in that created these men and the sobering fact that aspects of the way they see gender surround all of us.

Which brings me to Terry Real’s work. Real is a renowned couples and family therapist, who reportedly can command $7,000/hr. He has a brash, more confrontational approach than traditional therapists and in his couples therapy work, he isn’t afraid to call out a particular partner for their shortcomings, impressing on them the need for immediate change and then compassionately guiding them through the transformation, if they’re willing. His ability to catalyze change within a few sessions, after decades of intractable fights or bad behavior, is astounding. A man in couples therapy with him describes it here and you can listen as a podcast here.

Real wrote a book about male depression based on his experience treating men in family therapy titled, I Don’t Want to Talk About It. The manosphere documentary is almost a point by point visualization of the ways Real describes in his book that depression manifests in men and what it leads to. What’s astounding is that it was written almost twenty years ago; if you didn’t know better, you would think he wrote it about the culture today, perhaps even in response to this documentary.

Real starts the book by explaining that until the late 1990s, depression was thought of as a woman’s disease;

“The essence of traditional masculinity is the delusion of invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are, the more girly you are - and girly is quite emphatically not a good thing…Depression is a condition of vulnerability. A depressed man is not only overwhelmed, which shows he is weak, but he is overwhelmed specifically by feelings, emotions. What kind of real man lets his emotions get the better of him? For women depression carries the stigma of an emotional disorder. But it is not unwomanly.”¹

Real goes on to explain that we don’t see the qualities of overt depression in men; we see its footprints. We see all of the behaviors that men engage in to hide their depression, often largely hidden from the man’s own conscious awareness. Which is why we thought for a long time depression was primarily a female disorder. Instead of a prolonged sadness or loss of interest in daily activities, we see men burying themselves in work, wrapping themselves in anger, getting violent, self medicating, numbing themselves with alcohol. We see them alleviating their numbness with cocaine, with women, with adrenaline inducing behaviors. We see them walling themselves off from their spouse and kids in the pursuit of providing for the family; making money but opting out of relational dynamics. All of these behaviors are the footprints left behind by depression.

In the documentary, they interview two of Justin Waller’s followers, who speak about him in worshipful tones, implying he’s something of a savior to them. They say that Justin has taught them that men have to “nut the fuck up”, “man up” and “no ones going to give men a hand out”. One of them goes on to say that men are meant to suffer, they’re not meant to be happy and they don’t believe in depression before one of them admits that his own brother died by suicide, seemingly oblivious to the connection between his words and the fate of his brother.

The seeds for this depression in men are planted in the ‘normal trauma’ of boyhood.

Real explains that “at the earliest ages little boys are slightly more sensitive and expressive than little girls. They cry more easily, seem more easily frustrated and appear more upset when their caregiver leaves”². Girls are allowed to stay in that mode but boys are forcibly pushed out of it. “For most boys, the achievement of masculine identity is not an acquisition so much as a disavowal. When researchers asked girls and women to define what it means to be feminine, the girls answered with positive language: to be compassionate, to be connected to care about others. Boys and men, on the other hand, when asked to describe masculinity, predominantly responded with double negatives. Boys and men did not talk about being strong so much as about not being weak. They do not list independence so much as not being dependent. They did not speak about being close to their fathers so much as about pulling away from their mothers. In short, being a man generally means not being a woman. As a result, boys’ acquisition of gender is a negative achievement. Their developing sense of their own masculinity is not, as in most other forms of identity development, a steady movement toward something valued so much as a repulsion of something devalued….it is this loss that lays the foundation for depression later in men’s lives.”³

Sigmund Freud was the first to suggest that depression was a form of shame, an acutely uncomfortable feeling of being worth-less, less than others. For many men, such a state of shame is itself shameful, adding to their distress and pushing them to conceal it.

Many cut themselves off so deeply from their own feelings that they experience depression as a state of numbness. This experience of depression is not about feeling bad so much as about losing the capacity to feel at all.

Facing shame and a sense of deflated value - men go into grandiosity for temporary relief. Grandiosity is acting falsely empowered and engaging in behavior that proves your status as “better than”, “one up-ing”, having power or dominance over others. Grandiosity provides a defensive emotional layer that allows you to tell yourself that you are right, that you are acting in certainty, you are powerful, and if anything suggests you’re not; it is something or someone else’s fault.

The displays of grandiosity in the documentary are constant and relentless. One of the more heartbreaking scenes shows Harrison Sullivan and his friends using a dating app to arrange for a gay man to come and meet them, thinking he’s going on a date. When the gay man arrives, the entire group of them beat the shit out of him, live-streaming the entire incident to all of their followers.

In the clip below, you can see that Harrison is feeling insecure about his participation in the documentary and how he’ll be portrayed, so he immediately switches into grandiosity to sooth himself:

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These are, no question, extreme examples, so let’s look at more realistic ways grandiose behavior shows up in many of our lives:

Not asking for directions. Not admitting when you’re confused at work. Grandiosity provides the shield against the shame of not knowing.

Getting ahead of potential failure to minimize shame; “I didn’t try that hard.”

Responding to emotional fights in romantic partnership with logic; needing to be right at all costs so you don’t have to feel wrong.

Over identifying with work, status, image.

Framing emotional shutdown as strength. “I don’t let things bother me.” “I’m just not that emotional.”

Subtle superiority in relationships; needing to correct small details

Avoiding repair in relationships by going silent or withdrawing

Sexual or romantic conquest as validation

The men in the film are a symptom of a culture that has forced men to disavow anything related to the feminine, in particular the soft, relational skills of connection and emotional regulation. They have cut off half of themselves in the pursuit of maintaining their hyper-masculine identity effectively guaranteeing that they don’t have a fulfilling relationship with themselves or others.

I’ve heard Terry Real say in podcasts that he gets criticized for effeminizing men, which he vehemently pushes back on saying that what he wants is whole people; men and women who can both flex in and out of their fully developed masculine and feminine qualities.

In the book, Real concludes by saying that men need to “choose the hard work of re-accessing the very longings, skills, and responsibilities of mature relationship that were actively discouraged throughout his socialization.”⁴

And having just written about devotion myself, I particularly love this part: “When the critical questions concern what one is going to get, a man is living in a boy’s world. Beyond a certain point in a man’s life, if he is to remain truly vital, he needs to be actively engaged in devotion to something other than his own success and happiness.”⁵

A friend asked me to end this on a hopeful note, which I responded is a tall order but an interesting mental exercise.

So here’s my attempt at hopefulness: I find it comforting to understand that behind these displays of grandiosity are just little boys masking deep shame and depression. That understanding allows me to shift into some level of compassion for them. So we know the problem and we know why it’s happening. We know the solution includes the celebration and integration of both strong feminine qualities and strong masculine qualities in all children starting in childhood. As just one small example among many, it looks like this: allowing young boys to be emotional, nurturing their feelings in the ways we do for little girls. And teaching little girls to exercise their voice and have strong opinions without worrying about being ‘nice’. Implementing those things at a societal level is another story, but we have the beginnings of a road map.

As for the current manosphere influencers, my instinct is that their house of cards will collapse at some point. I don’t think you can live in such a dissociative state, actively defrauding others without eventually crashing out.

To the many, many amazing men out there, who are not described by this piece or by the documentary; We love you. We need you. We thank you.

And lastly, I leave you with Terry Real in his own words:

Footnotes

¹ Terry Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, p. 1
² Terry Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, p. 123
³ Terry Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, p. 130
⁴ Terry Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, p. 321
⁵ Terry Real, I Don’t Want to Talk About It, p. 322

Content Consumption

If you’re interested in more from Terry Real, he has a great conversation with Tim Ferris and he explains why men are floundering.
Ruth Whippman’s book, BoyMom, is an incredible look at what our culture is doing to little boys. She alternates between describing what it’s like raising her own boys and deeply researched chapters about what’s happening at a societal level at every age in boyhood through college and young adult years. Highly, highly recommend.
I’m enjoying this light read about six college friends, told through five parties over the span of twenty years.
I was on a Peter Crone kick this week; I loved this interview where he talked about the importance of ayurvedic medicine in his work and this one where we see his coaching technique live.

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