A Man's Field Guide
Cognitive behavioral tools and the Every Man’s Battle framework, without the lecture.
- Written by Brett Larsen, MA, LPCC-S
- Grounded in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Every Man’s Battle
- 15 minutes to read, tools you can use today
Most men were taught to handle it alone. This guide talks plainly about anger, pressure, isolation, and integrity, and gives skills-based tools you can use at work, at home, and in the truck. Faith is part of it if you want it, and it is not forced on you if you do not.
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Open the guideOr call Brett: (513) 204-9295If you have been carrying it alone
- Anger is the only feeling that comes out easily, and it is costing you at home.
- You are the steady one for everyone, and there is nobody steady for you.
- Work is fine, or looks fine, and something underneath is not.
- You have thought about talking to someone and decided you should be able to handle it yourself.
Practical, direct, and built for how men actually change
Catch the reaction before it fires
The CBT skill for spotting the thought that turns a comment into a blow-up, and the thirty seconds you have to use it.
Handle the hard conversation at home
A script for saying the true thing to your wife or your kids without it turning into a fight or a shutdown.
Integrity that holds under pressure
The Every Man’s Battle framework in one page: what accountability looks like in practice and why isolation is the enemy.
A straight answer on counseling
What it is actually like to sit down with Brett, what you will and will not be asked, and how men use it without making it a big thing.
The approach has a track record
Nothing in this guide is a hunch. It is the same Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Every Man’s Battle work Brett does in the room, trimmed to what you can start on your own.
Men are about half as likely as women to receive mental health treatment in a given year, even though they experience distress at similar rates. The gap is about help-seeking, not need.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, annual reports.
Cognitive behavioral approaches to anger produce moderate to large reductions in anger and aggression across dozens of studies.
Beck and Fernandez, meta-analysis, Cognitive Therapy and Research, 1998; DiGiuseppe and Tafrate, review, Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 2003.
Accountability and structured community are the core of the Every Man’s Battle approach to sexual integrity, which has been used with men for more than two decades.
Arterburn and Stoeker, Every Man’s Battle, WaterBrook, 2000; New Life Ministries workshops.
15 minutes, start to finish
- 01
What the anger is covering, and how to tell
- 02
The thirty-second catch: a CBT tool for the moment before you react
- 03
The conversation at home: a script you can rehearse
- 04
Pressure at work and the story you tell yourself about it
- 05
The Every Man’s Battle framework, one page
- 06
What counseling with Brett is actually like
Written for people who
Were taught to handle it alone and are tired
Want tools, not theory
Want faith to be part of the work, or want it left out, and want to be asked which
This guide is educational and is not a substitute for counseling or medical care. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
Brett Larsen, MA, LPCC-S
Brett has been a licensed counselor for 24+ years, holds independent licenses in clinical counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapy, and completed 3,500+ psychiatric assessments in a hospital emergency department before opening this practice. He sees adults in person in Cincinnati and by secure video across Ohio and Kentucky. The guide is written the way he talks in session: plain, practical, and without judgment.
