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Consultation and Professional Workshops

We offer consultation and workshops to foster personal growth and create safe, caring, and strong communities. We provide these services to community groups, schools, churches, human service agencies, businesses, and other organizations. Please call us to discuss how we can tailor our programs to fit your organization's needs.

Anger Management Workshops

Men’s rage can be destructive in so many ways and so many places, particularly in their homes and places of work. In our anger management workshops, we teach different types of male anger, their relationship to other emotions, and an array of effective intervention and management strategies. We offer education and skill-building for therapists and other professionals to help men to recognize and manage their anger, express themselves assertively, resolve conflict, and work constructively in teams.

There are many anger management workshops. Most deal with what men should do when anger gets out of control. Ours does, too. But, we go further, explaining the real causes of destructive anger.

We provide anger management workshops in both half-day and full-day formats. We also offer consultation on how to manage anger and acting out in organizational settings.

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Boys and Sports

Sports provide a great context to train boys to be men. In fact, sports have historically been the training grounds to teach boys to be tough, powerful, and aggressive to conquer a competitive workplace, qualities that, at their worst, can lead to problems with domestic violence and anger management. Counseling and workshops on Boys and Sports at the Men's Resource Center show that men also need to be healthy humans, knowing how to be in respectful relationships and in safe and caring communities. While sports need to teach boys how to reach their athletic potential to pursue team goals, sports are also influential training grounds for helping boys to become successful partners, fathers, and citizens.

We offer a one-hour presentation or a half-day workshop on boys and sports. We also provide consultation to improve sports and recreational programs to coaches as well as athletic and recreational directors.

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Clinical and Professional Services at the Men’s Resource Center

We give presentations on the philosophy, mission, services, and history of the Men’s Resource Center of West Michigan to other agencies and community organizations.

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Developing the Sacred Masculine: Men’s Ministry and Support Groups in Churches

The purpose for developing the sacred masculine is so that men can have a greater capacity to be compassionate and loving toward themselves and others. We have learned a great deal about how the divine intersects with masculinity and are excited about sharing this with you. In fact, we believe that more peace and restoration will occur in our world when men make peace with their own souls. This program provides an opportunity for men to develop in a way that fosters mutual respect and intimacy in relationships, self-awareness, empathy for others, and spiritual growth. Although different than Bible studies, prayer groups, or participation on a church softball or bowling team, it is intended to complement, rather than displace these existing church programs, since we believe all men’s ministries have a role in nurturing their spiritual lives.

Men have a unique and often times surprising capacity to support and nurture one another. Spiritual movements such as Promise Keepers and 12-step groups such as AA and Alanon, encourage participants to move out of their isolation and into openness, vulnerability, integrity and a deeper sense of community.

Developing a support group for men within the church can put this spirituality into practice and create a mechanism for maintaining it. Although these groups can focus on specific issues such as substance abuse or help for a pornography addiction, not all men who seek a sacred place to share joys and connection with others are necessarily seeking healing from hurts or pains. It is our experience that a men’s ministry group provides a good balance of support and accountability without publicized themes. The invitation is simply for men to move out of isolation and into creating community among themselves.

The Men’s Resource Center offers awareness presentations, retreats, comprehensive consultation and training to churches, religious institutions and other community organizations.

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Gender Sensitivity and Sexual Harrassment

Before World War II, the United States had a divided workplace. For the most part women stayed at home or had one of three professions: nurse, secretary, or teacher. Today, men and women work in teams and often share power. While these changes bode well for women and the workplace, gender socialization often lags behind.

Socialization is the process by which young people learn how they’re supposed to think, feel, and behave. Male socialization has promulgated the belief that men have the right to be in control, to have their sexual needs met, to make decisions. In spite of advances in the workplace, many men hang on to outworn stereotypes that maintain their sense of entitlement. We help organizations and individuals learn to appreciate and respect gender differences through education, compassion and anger management. In fact, our workshops help others see how men and women are more similar than different. The goal is to help men and women work together in teams, respecting differences and building strengths. We offer consultations and workshops to corporations and other organizations.

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How to Prevent Bullying at School

Twenty-five percent of students in schools today are either perpetrators or victims of bullying. Seventy-five are innocent bystanders who are nonetheless affected by harassment and violence. Our schools need to implement initiatives that challenge the systemic nature of bullying. We show you how to prevent bullying at school through the development of innovative administrative polices, effective student curricula, and assertive intervention and prevention strategies.

It’s easy for students and staff to ignore bullying, and many think that bullying has little impact on the school as a whole. However, studies demonstrate that bullying impacts all students’ sense of emotional and physical safety. Research also shows that when schools teach staff and innocent bystanders how to prevent and intervene in bullying at school, they cultivate a safe and respectful school climate conducive to learning and growing for all students.

We employ a program that features elements of Jackson Katz’s MVP model and the Johnson Institute’s No-Bullying Program. The latter program is research-based and has been proven effective in all K – 8 school environments. We empower, educate, and enable schools to address bullying internally rather than fostering dependence on the “expert”.

We show administration, teachers, parents and students how to prevent bullying at school by helping them better understand:

We offer awareness presentations to comprehensive consultation and training to schools and other community organizations.

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Male Socialization: The Training that Kills

In spite of increasing awareness, most men are still at the mercy of rigid male training. They struggle with intimacy, self-disclosure, identity, an inability to express a range of feelings, and anger management or domestic violence, lacking workshops or counseling that is desperately needed. As a result, they often drink too much, work too hard, violate their marriage vows, and die young.

This workshop (1) describes the problem, (2) explores the maladaptive strategies used to deal with the pressure of male socialization, and (3) provides men with a more holistic definition of masculinity so they can experience greater intimacy and wholeness.

We offer this workshop to churches and other community groups. We design specific seminars to meet the needs of particular groups.

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Men and Sex Addiction Help

The hidden addiction. We all know the problem of sex addiction requires help, but we often don’t recognize its extent and severity. While seldom diagnosed and treated, fifteen percent of men are sexually addicted, engaging in voyeurism, exhibitionism, promiscuity, compulsive masturbation, use of adult establishments and/or prostitutes. Many men also lack needed help for a pornography addiction. In the last few years, the use of pornography has escalated with the advent of cyber-porn and cyber-sex. Sex addiction is progressive; without help the consequences magnify, leading to a duplicitous and deceitful life. Of all the addictions, sex addiction is predominantly a male problem, emanating from the toxic aspects of male socialization.

So many consequences. The costs of sex addiction, though less evident than alcoholism or gambling, are as pernicious for the addict as for those who love him: divorce, disease, shame, anxiety, depression and increased compulsivity.

Effective interventions. We explore the range, causes, and treatment of sex addiction. We examine factors such as male socialization, family of origin, non-relational intimacy, and personality styles that contribute to an addictive process which results in dysfunction and despair.

We provide a comprehensive program including psycho-education, support, and psychotherapy groups. We also offer trainings and workshops on sex addiction and help for a pornography addiction in a number of venues and are available for consultation.

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Men Who Abuse Women

Men abuse women to achieve power and control, and their behavior needs to change. Although accountability training is the cornerstone of most domestic violence counseling psychological deficits influence the need for and tactics of control. The more we understand the diversity among men, the more effective our interventions will be.

How can we treat the whole of the problem without abandoning our commitment to making men accountable for domestic violence? Through counseling and workshops, we explore the standard models of batterer intervention work, including the Duluth approach. We look at diagnostic models for identifying batterers and explore how we can design and deliver treatment for each of these personalities. Our goal is to help human service professionals be more effective in their work to end domestic violence.

We offer informational presentations, professional trainings, and full day workshops on domestic violence counseling, which provide individuals and organizations with the knowledge and tools to work more effectively in the challenging field of domestic violence. We also offer counseling on an individual bases and group therapy for men who want to create peaceful lives and more respectful relationships.

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Nurturing Dads

It’s our most serious task as men, and the toughest. While fatherhood has always been difficult, the challenge has grown more complex from one age to another. Our grandfathers faced problems in simply providing essentials. Our fathers may have had less difficulty with providing the necessities of life; however, it still wasn’t easy to create sons and daughters who met their expectations of high morals, fortitude, and success.

Today, fathers are expected not only to fulfill the traditional roles but also to be intricately involved in the parenting of children: creating lifelong bonds of intimacy, participating extensively in their lives, and accepting, even embracing their volatility in a chaotic and sometimes harrowing world. In this new millennium, men have still not yet been socialized to fulfill these new roles—roles that demand engagement, empathy, patience, and teamwork in parenting. Men often feel inadequate in meeting all these expectations: their frustrations emerge in anger and externalizing behaviors including drinking, workaholism, emotional abuse, and even domestic violence. Without couseling, these cycles can destroy men and their families.

The Nurturing Dads initiative helps men and those who work with men become better fathers by developing a new understanding of fatherhood. We also teach parenting techniques:

We desire that men have a new and hopeful vision of fathering, with increased confidence and more effective skills, and with the knowledge that they can do a man’s toughest job in spite of the sometimes seeming lunacy of their children amidst the pressures of a turbulent and aggressive society. We offer Nurturing Dads as a full-day workshop to professionals or to Dads themselves. We also run individual counseling and a twelve week Nurturing Dads group for Dads who want to improve their parenting at our Grand Rapids and Holland Office.

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Positioning Yourself as a Therapist (or Agency) for the New World of Drug Courts

In the last five hundred years, western civilization has changed in many ways: we’ve seen the rise of industry and technology, the development of democratic states, and a greatly enhanced understanding of man and his surroundings. We live in a very different world from people in 1500 AD.

But one arena, the court system, has seen little change. Though integrity and efficiency have improved, our courts have meted out justice and punishment using the same standards, procedures, and consequences for half a millennium.

In 1990, Janet Reno sparked a revolution when she initiated the first Drug Court in Dade County, Florida. Her ¬revolutionary action was born out of frustration with recidivism and overcrowding in prison facilities. Since then, the revolution has spread, leading to a transformation in how the courts handle offenders. The concept of therapeutic jurisprudence—that a biweekly appearance in the court itself can be an effective form of therapy—has found increasing respect.

Courts have partnered with treatment facilities, cutting recidivism in half, and their success has been validated by numerous studies. This drug court movement has spread across the country: there were 900 drug courts in 1999; there are 1200 today, and there’s a potential of 30,000 to 40,000 courts nationwide.

Drug courts need a lot of treatment providers, and we offer training for people who want to enter this new world of therapy. We’ll teach you how to build a new private practice with drug court and other court-referred clients.

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Raising Boys to be Men in the New Millennium

The changing roles of men and the evolving definition of masculinity have created anxiety and confusion. People disagree about the roles of men and women and their relationships.

Our boys and those who are raising them are troubled too, suffering from mental health, behavioral, and anger management issues. Our workshops show that boys are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, and four to six more times likely to commit suicide than girls. Statistics demonstrate that boys’ account for seventy-one percent of school suspensions, seventy per cent of the special education population, and ninety three percent of juvenile homicide. Why the precipitous drop in male enrollment in Michigan colleges with an average of only 40% male? What is going on in boys’ lives?

Society has traditionally socialized boys to be tough, aggressive, and competitive. They’re supposed to be in control of their relationships, and careers. At the same time, contemporary society is also telling boys and men to communicate, emote, and connect with others.

Clearly, it’s a challenge to raise boys today. At the Men’s Resource Center we believe it’s important to socialize boys to embrace their full humanity, and prepare them for the diverse challenges of the twenty first century.

We discuss these issues in a one hour presentation or in a half or full day workshop.

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Standing Up: Men’s Roles in Ending Domestic Violence

Historically, women have fought to end gender violence. But in reality, domestic and sexual violence is a men’s issue requiring preventative education, intervention, and counseling. Since men are the primary perpetrators of gender violence, they need to take a visible role in ending violence. We examine the obstacles that keep men from taking stands against gender violence. We identify ways to educate, equip, and mobilize men to be accountable for their own behavior as well as how to intervene in others’ behavior.

We often provide this presentation as an hour-long consciousness-raising activity, but it can be expanded into a half-day workshop.

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Understanding the Dynamics of Sexual Orientation

The Men’s Resource Center embraces the belief that we do not choose our sexual orientation. At the same time, we also believe that sexuality exists on a continuum.

Whether a man is straight, gay or bisexual, we seek to help him incorporate his values, beliefs and commitments into a fuller understanding of who he is.

The choices a man makes about his sexual life may differ depending on where he identifies himself on the sexual continuum as well as how he discerns what is most important for his own integrity and commitments in relationships.

For example, in our work with men, we have discovered some of the following:

At the Men’s Resource Center, we strive to understand each man’s particular sexual orientation and attendant relationship dynamics while helping men develop a sexual life that is fulfilling, sacred and satisfying.

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Working with Men in Counseling

Some things have changed. It’s a different, and in some ways, better world. Today men can cry; they can admit they’re in counseling. They can share their vulnerabilities with less fear of the ridicule associated with times past. Nevertheless, many of the men we see in counseling are frozen in time, fearful and unwilling to embrace their full humanity.

This new world presents us, as therapists, with extraordinary opportunities in our work with men. We can rethink our diagnoses and treatment plans, and re-vision the goals for our clients.

A new therapy. A new approach to therapy for men can emphasize men’s ability to change, letting go of strictures of rigid male socialization that have led them to externalize their anxiety and depression in workaholism, substance abuse and sex addiction. We can help them to understand the struggles associated with being male in an aggressive society and help them to adopt a new vision of what life can be like.

The new therapy emphasizes group rather individual counseling, experience rather than introspection. It’s both personal and political. It's more than cognitive-behavioral. It’s energetic, engaging, and effective.

We explore how we can re-socialize men, empowering them to create more fulfilling lives and more respectful relationships.

We offer Men in Counseling in a one hour presentation or in a half or full day workshop. We also offer consultation to organizations on how to improve and tailor human services to men.