Making Space for Men to Be Human

In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about loneliness, emotional suppression and the growing need for spaces where men feel safe to be fully human. My guest this week is Stefanos Koutsoumpis, men’s coach and facilitator of online men’s groups focused on emotional well-being, connection and personal growth.

Stefanos shares his own journey of struggling with emotional awareness and social connection as a young man and explains why so many men feel pressure to appear strong while quietly carrying stress, shame and self-doubt. We discuss the challenges men face in opening up emotionally, why feeling heard can be so healing and how men’s groups create opportunities to practice vulnerability, communication and deeper connection.

Finally, we explore the ripple effect of emotional well-being and why supporting men’s mental health benefits everyone. Stefanos also shares his perspective on curiosity, connection and creating healthier conversations in an increasingly polarized world.

About My Guest

Stefanos Koutsoumpis is a Men’s Life Coach dedicated to helping men in their 30s-40s who feel stuck, disconnected, or unfulfilled despite outward success.

Through one-on-one coaching and his monthly men’s groups, Stefanos provides men with a sense of connection, accountability, and community.

With a background in mindfulness and a passion for supporting men through life’s challenges, Stefanos brings a grounded, approachable style that empowers men to move from stress and self-doubt toward clarity and authentic fulfillment.

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Connect with Stefanos:

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Transcript

Kim Meninger

Hi, welcome, Stefanos. I am so excited to have you here today. This is a really important topic that we're going to be discussing. I can't wait to dive in, but before we get started, I would love to invite you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Sure, thank you, Kim, for having your show. It's so nice being with you today. So, I'm a men's coach. I help men be happier with their everyday lives, without having, you know, to give up everything, and, and you know, the common saying here in Greece, where I am, is that I'm gonna give everything up and go and be a bartender in an island, and this will be my life. So the story is that before you do that, let's see where your life is really at, and what we can do with that, and I know that a lot of men are living in a lot of stress. There's a lot of pressure to compete or to deliver something. And there's not enough space for them to come out and be actual humans… human beings with feelings and pains and all the things that we have to deal with, so this is part of my work, and this is what I'm interested in doing and helping men do, be humans.

Kim Meninger

So, so important, and so timely. I know that the, the headlines, or the, you know, sort of the current conversation about men has been pretty bleak lately, and I, I think that there is a definite struggle that may be invisible to a lot of people I know. As a woman, I talk with a lot of women daily around the challenges of being a woman in the workplace, of being a woman in the world, and that same conversation doesn't seem to exist as commonly within men's experiences, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit too about what makes this so important to you. What makes what led you to doing this work?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

It's very important that they will have a lot of diversity, actually, here in the workplace nowadays, and we are seeing that the gender balance is shifting, and this is this is great, and in the same time, there's a lot of pressure in men to perform, and somehow there's a lot of pressure among peers as well, so it doesn't have to do with gender, and this is something that men used to do in NKs, and nowadays they are compared also in means of gender, so this tends to confuse a lot of people. For my part, growing up, you know, I'm from a small city, I'm from a family of four boys. I, when I was 18, I moved out of my city to study, and it was the first time in my life that I had to tend for myself, because traditionally growing as a boy, I didn't know to do much, at least not much around the house, so when I was 18, it was the first time that I had to learn some life skills, actually, which I believe they're super important, and beyond those life skills of cleaning and cooking and taking care of yourself, lately, later I discovered that I was missing other important life skills, words were social skills, knowing how to socialize with people you don't know, being a, you know, future employees, being friends, being girlfriends, or, you know, trying to do something new, and going into a new space where you know no one. How are you gonna be perceived, or how are you gonna behave, or how are you gonna, you know, hold up for yourself? So I was deeply confused, and I remember from my 20s to my 30s to be deeply, deeply confused, and I realized that I missed some, some positive influences, masculine influences my life. I didn't know what's meant to be male, and I didn't know actually what's meant to be human, and how to tend for myself. So I found myself missing a lot of social skills, and through the process of finding for my own and finding mentors and finding people to help, I, this is what led me here today, I, I came to have a skill of, of emotional skills, actually a toolbox of emotional skills that can be taught in. I realized that if other men get to learn about how to handle their emotional lives and to how to harvest their emotional skills, maybe they will be happier as well. And this is totally teasable. And yeah, this is what I'm doing now, and how I got here today. So, in a nutshell.

Kim Meninger

Thank you so much for sharing that, because you said the word human a few times, which really stands out to me, and I think that there's a way. As a woman, I have two boys who are aged 11 and 16, and it's very important to me that they grow up feeling safe to have emotions, feeling safe to be vulnerable, to understand how to have deeper relationships with their friends, with their partners, whatever that looks like, and so I think that I do my best to try to do, you know, my, my husband does his best, but there's a whole world out there that teaches you what it means to be a man, and a lot of the messaging I think is very harmful, and I wonder what you're seeing in terms of the demand for what you're offering. Do men feel safe to come to your groups, like, what does that look like for a man who maybe hasn't even gone down the path of thinking about these types of things?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so to give some context, I facilitate some men's groups online, purely online. So we're trying to create a space, and it's a virtual space, it's an actual call we where we get together and we are trying to create some space that's safe for people to open up and say what happened in their lives in the past week, what they are afraid of, what are their challenges they are currently facing, and also find some, some friendships and some accountability for their lives, because from what I see, men are lonely men, one in seven men doesn't have any friends at all, and the men don't feel comfortable with speaking about their lives and their emotions with their close people, so it's easier for a man to open up to a stranger, stranger in a bar, you know, than opening up to your spouse or to your brother or to someone you know since childhood. So this is this is a part of the experience of being in a men's group where we're giving men space to be listened to, and for many of us, I can't remember the last time we have been listened to, and if I take a personal example from my personal life, no, you know, some weeks ago I was in a trip to Italy, and when I came back home, I wanted to share some of my travels to the friends I've met, to my girlfriend, to my parents, and I remember that they wouldn't give me enough time to speak my mind. Every time that I would say something, there will be a reply like having a let's get it over with. Let's get to the conclusion. And no, I wanted to share, I wanted to speak, and I didn't have space to open up and speak about something that I was happy about. Now imagine what happens when you are stressed and afraid, and maybe you're not feeling safe about the subject, you are shamed, maybe there is, there is a lot of same in relationships, for example, and you are feeling same, and you still cannot open up because the other person won't give you the space, and this is something natural, I guess it happens in all human conversations, so we are trying to break this pattern and allow the men that are showing up in our groups enough time and space to really open up and tell what is going on with their lives, what is happening right now, and really let some steam off, because we're not having this opportunity in our daily lives. I don't know if it is because of how society world works, or maybe it's, you know, that we don't have a large attention span, but we don't do it nowadays.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, you're right. You're right. I think that what you're describing is human communication skills, right? That I think a lot of people feel are missing because we live in a world that's moving so quickly. There's a lot of immediate gratification that comes from social media, and just though we, the.. it's almost. A lost art, right, of these deeper conversations where we can go into the depth that we want to. It's all about, like, move on, move on, right? We've got other things to get to. So, what I love about what you're doing, too, is you're creating a space for that, but you're also creating a space to practice that, right, for people, especially who haven't really had a lot of chances to do this.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Yeah, exactly. This is what you mentioned, that word practice. This is where magic happens, because we might know a lot of things intellectually that we are supposed to do, but we're not given enough opportunities to practice them or enough repetitions when we do practice them and learning to, to listen to other people takes some practice and it takes also some it takes some courage from your side to be able to keep still in silence, so you will allow another person to open up, and, and when someone speaks, it takes some cards for you as well to, to feel uncomfortable on his behalf. No, maybe you are sharing something, and I'm feeling uncomfortable about what you're sharing, so I'm not giving you enough space. I should be able to sit with that feelings myself, and you should have the space to tell me what's going on, and vice versa. Again, when we are sharing, sometimes some subjects are very heavy. I mean, I've spoken with a lot of men who have gone through divorces, tough breakups, they have issues with their jobs, they have issues with their families, and these are hard subjects. And most of the time, we don't want to stay on these things, we don't want others to feel that they are taking pity on us, and we want to feel strong, or there are things that don't want to discuss at all, because they bring some pain, so again it takes some courage to be able to show up for yourself and, and speak your mind about what's going on, and just this action of being of speaking to someone, but what's going on right now, and hearing your problems through your own words is purely therapeutic for most of the people. You can feel that some weight is going off from your shoulders when you do that. It's different to think them on your own and numerate on these and go back all the time, and it's different speaking up for yourself and hearing your problems with your own words. A lot of problems are solved like this most of the time.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, that it's so true, because I'm somebody who processes my thoughts out loud anyway. It's part of who I am, and I am also somebody who has a lot of anxiety, and so when I'm sitting with a challenge and I'm replaying it in my own head, it always feels so much darker and so much stronger than when I say it out loud and get a chance to get it off my chest, and I know that men often feel pressure to be strong, to be stoic, to not have these feelings, and so I can only imagine the added, you know, the combination of not being, not sharing, but then not feeling like you even can share if you want to.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Yeah, yeah, exactly. A lot of people think that they are procrastinating or that they're overfitting things a lot, and, and this is, you know, part of stress of something bad that happens, and we know even from research, and maybe this is helpful to people who hear that that thinking of a negative experience makes it worse. Journaling about a negative experience, so actually writing down it can help a lot. So this can be a first step if someone is not ready to speak up and share it, and again for good experiences thinking about good experiences makes them even better, so it's the other the investing from bad experiences, so thinking and numeratoring back to good experiences can make them even better, and writing doesn't help that much, because it makes them seem, you know, a bit logical, but most of us, we have learned to think all the time back on the bad things and forget about the good ones, forget the good times, right?

Kim Meninger

Yes, absolutely, that is a big challenge that I, I often recommend to people to. You is just in terms of imposter syndrome, and a lot of the self-doubt that we experience, that we adopt conscious practices of acknowledging the positive, because our brains are wired to pay attention to the negative, that's going to happen automatically. What we really need is to have some type of a forcing function for the positive, because it goes right past us if we don't.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Yeah, they are saying that our mind is like a Velcro for bad thoughts and like Teflon for good thoughts, you know. They don't stick at all.

Kim Meninger

That's a good way to put it. I'm curious, because men's groups are becoming more popular, but there are statistically speaking, right, few men that are in these groups now compared to the general population. What do you think is maybe the challenge and the opportunity with having these spaces where select men, right, men who have chosen to be part of this experience, even if they're skeptical getting into it, come through this process, and then they go back out into the lives that they have been part of, where they continue probably to get some of those implicit and explicit messages about what it means to be a man. Do you think that that makes it more challenging for them? Do you see them influencing their own sort of friends and peers in taking advantage of this support? What is that? What's that relationship between inside the men's group and the outside world?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

You know, inside the men's groups we are practicing and will learn learning emotional skills and social skills. So, what you get is a smarter person, actually. So, not smart like book smart, but smart like street smart. They know how to handle the terms. Someone has more confidence in what is going on with his life, or what he's, he's doing. So, what you get when you have a more confident person outside who knows how to manage his own emotional life. This, this, like you said, this helps a lot other people. This opens up to the world, because even through mirroring, or even through osmosis, you know, he's letting out this energy. He's more helpful to others, because he's happier and he's more balanced, so he's doing more good, and others just by seeing a confident person take up something from him, and he's becoming someone who other people will come and ask questions to. Other people will come because he's really stoic. He doesn't seem as stoic, so he's a positive influence to the world.

Kim Meninger

I love that idea, that simply by showing up differently you are influencing the relationships that you have around you, because that just makes the ripple effect of their experience in these groups, so much more powerful. Do you find that there is an increasing demand for what you're doing? Like, how, how are you attracting people into these groups?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

I think that over the years, overall, as a society, we're becoming more aware of mental health, of the importance of mental health, and this also becomes important as a value in our lives. So people believe now that it's important, or they start to believe that it's important to feel good with themselves as well, while I think in the past it was okay, it's enough if I'm alive, if I have a job, if I have some kids, that's enough. So this is, this doesn't cut it anymore, at least for the Western people that I'm speaking to. So the overall, the awareness of our society is increasing on that, and this is a good sign, because we are growing up, we're maturing, so a lot of men who are showing up, they have a lot of experience with therapy as well, so they have already done some work with themselves before searching men's groups, where they come, you know, men's groups is like the gym, going to the gym to practice what you have learned, and to keep your gains. Something, if we do this analogy, so a lot of men have already heard of men's groups, at least the men that show up in our call, and they are. Growth-oriented in their lives, they are looking to better themselves and to improve their social skills and to improve their lives. So they are looking for something better, and this is also the ripple effect of the group, because you know we all have shared this, all the idea that we are the average of the five people we spend most of our time with. So, imagine how your life would look like if the five people you spend most of your time with are people who are looking to grow, they have the growth mindset, they are having their values that are okay. We should be happy as people and as a society. What will happen in your life? I mean, you take out all this negativity that you are having from our everyday conversations, and you, you sift to a more positive view of the world. So, this has a ripple effect, really, in your life, and it's a long-term effect, and it goes a long way. Someone who is happier, we know, and who has more friends, we know from research, that lives longer, he has a better immune system, so he doesn't get sick that much, and he's more helpful to others, he's more altruistic as a person, because he already knows how to take care of himself, and he's in a good position to help others as well.

Kim Meninger

I think that's so important too, because I think there's still a portion of the population who doesn't understand men's groups and might see it the wrong way because there there's sort of this impression that oh men still have most of the power right men, men seem to have an easier time in the workplace, that's why are we investing in men's groups, right? When then we still have these other pockets of the population that are still struggling, right? And I think that what you just said is so important, because men deserve to be supported in their own right, and you know I mentioned my own boys and what I want for them in their, in their lives, but also they make better humans, and the rest of the world benefits from that, right? We are seeing this today in our politics, we're seeing it in lots of organizations that men who do not have good mental health, right. Who do not take care of themselves psychologically have not just an effect on themselves and their personal circles, but on the world, and we all suffer when men suffer. And I think it's really important to recognize that this is an investment in humanity, right?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

It's 50% of the population, right.

Kim Meninger

Exactly, exactly. Are you, are you trying to talk to people, to men who are not there yet? Like, because I mean, there's obviously a selection bias here, and you could argue that the men who are taking advantage of men's groups are already a little bit further down the road, so they are. You mentioned some of them have been through therapy, they're a little bit more self-aware, they're being intentional about their girls, but then there's also a lot of, you know, sort of men who are doubling down on sort of what we used to refer to as toxic masculinity, right, and some of those behaviors, and trying to prove themselves as strong and dominant, and I wonder, do you think that there is a value in trying to actively target them, or do you think it's more a matter of the, the osmosis effect that you're talking about, of just having the men who are ready kind of bring this back into the world.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

You know, I'm from Greece, and this is where dialectics as a philosophy first was developed, and it was a way to have an argument with someone and come on top, so I discovered over the years that okay, this might seem like a good idea in politics, where we are having arguments, but it's not a good idea in human relationships, because even if you get on top in an argument, this doesn't mean that the other person is convinced, convinced to change as a person. So, in my view, it does. It's not helpful at all to have a direct argument with someone about their views of the world at all. And, maybe it's easier to show them some issues with their way of thinking by asking questions, like, okay, if someone believes that, okay, all women are trying to take advantage of him, okay, and there are a lot of men who think this way, so it's easier to go there and ask him, okay, what about your mother? Did she try to do that, and what about other relationships that you have heard of? Is X and X doing this as well between them? Maybe it's true for you, but is it in general true? And you're trying to show them that, okay, maybe your worldview is not 100% right? Maybe there is, there is something wrong there. And this is the opportunity to show them that, okay, our mindset affects how we view the world as well. And maybe you had some experiences, but there are conflicting experiences as well. So there's a different world out there, and a different worldview out there that you might want to explore at some point, and of course, we're not trying to change people based on our will, they need to want to make some change in their lives and bring some happiness in their lives, so this is the biggest promise. Okay, let's try to find a way to live our lives that will make us happier. We don't want to be the person who is always right, but we want to be the person who is the happiest, right? And this is where we tap into, and this is where I personally tap into in such discussions.

Kim Meninger

I love that you said that, because I think we are operating in a time, too, at least here in the US, where things are very polarized, and people, their highest priority is feeling right, often in very self-righteous ways. We spend a lot of time arguing past each other. There's no conversation, there's no dialog, there's no opportunity to shift mindsets, because when you feel like someone is telling you you're wrong, you dig your heels in even more. Right, you don't want to be, you don't want to feel wrong, you don't want somebody judging you and criticizing you, and so it doesn't create any space for a different way of thinking, and so what you just said is really important in the context of, you know, how we get more men involved in this conversation, but it's also really important to influence more broadly in the human experience, and just really kind of thinking to ourselves, is the way that I am showing up in the way that I am trying to influence others effective, or is it just more of making me feel better about myself?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

You know, it's like the anecdote about the optimists and the pessimists having a discussion about if the glass is half full or half empty, while the realist is drinking the water, so other people can have their arguments, and I don't care. I can have great vacations with my girlfriend, and you can believe all you want about how sketchy is the world, and I'm having the time of my life in a bit somewhere in Greece, so I don't really care about these discussions, you know, and, and I mean, I can detach myself from toxicity and find some happiness in my life, even in such a world that we're living today, and if I have to make a choice, I would make the smart choice for me, which is to feel better with myself than you know going up against a whole system that I want to change, and you know indeed I might be wrong as well, you know, I might have their own opinion, because who am I again?

Kim Meninger

That's a great point, but if you are choosing happiness and peace, and you know positivity, and you're, you're being, you know, you're a force for good in the world, shall we say, right? Then, who cares?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Yeah, exactly. Who cares?

Kim Meninger

Yeah, I am so grateful to you, Stefanos, for having this conversation. I think it's been very insightful, and I know that there are a lot of people listening who would probably love to stay connected to you. Where can they find you if they want to learn more about you and the groups and the support that you offer?

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

The best way to reach out to me is through my website, and it's Mindful Life dot Coach. So it's Mindful Life dot Coach. It's a strange domain, and in there they can have info about. My men's groups, and if anyone applies for the men's groups, and they tell me that they are from Kim, I'm happy to give them, you know, 50% off in the first month as a bonus, and also I have a small guide with five ways to feel happier today without having to start your life from scratch, and this is a free guide. There are five mini habits someone can start today, and within a week start feeling a bit better with himself.

Kim Meninger

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I'm going to put those links into the show notes. And thank you for the work that you're doing. It's so important, I think it's very needed, and I'm grateful that you're out there in the world doing this. So, thanks again for being here.

Stefanos Koutsoumpis

Thank you for the opportunity, Kim. Take care.