Today we’d like to introduce you to Randy Cook.
Hi Randy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
This is my second career. I spent a 35 year career in health care. I went back to school to become a therapist after retirement. My therapy practice, Brothers Counseling, is devoted exclusively to helping men find honorable manhood within themselves. My work is an outgrowth of my own personal work from decades in men’s circles learning to love and beloved. My practice has two component parts. One is a clinical practice as a therapist where I see men and boys for all manner of psychological challenges. The other part of my practice is working with men on an informal basis through various men’s organizations to help men find themselves, share their experiences, and most critically, find it possible to be seen as whole by other men. This work has led me to understand much of the damage that toxic masculinity creates for men. Most men are, of course, perpetrators of toxic masculinity, whether intentionally or unintentionally, and men are also victims of that same toxic masculinity. Our society needs to re-examine what it means to be a man, so that we can find the generative honor of being masculine. This goal is the central purpose of my work at Brothers Counseling and Brothers of Odysseus.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
All roads have potholes and unexpected turns. My life experience teaches me that these are not necessarily to be avoided. What I have experienced as an obstacle has often revealed itself to be a mystery that I could not have imagined from my starting point. The challenges and obstacles are mostly, in my experience, part of my own limitations and opportunities. The biggest struggle I can name is the challenge of maintaining work-life balance, where self-care and family too easily take a back seat to even the most worthwhile ambition. Viewing time just like a resource, like money, how I spend my time and where I invest it has become a central focus of how I manage every day. Those lessons could not be learned without the challenges of balancing education with family, career with personal growth, self self-care with compassion for others. A major contributing element of success is the fact that I approach this work with a career’s worth of experience and the wisdom honed from countless mistakes.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Through a very successful career in the administration of healthcare organizations, I had the opportunity to learn how to lead, follow, encourage, and, unfortunately, discourage others. This life experience puts me in a unique position to apply that wisdom to how men navigate the process of healing from shame and guilt, ultimately arriving at a whole sense of themselves with the courage to both see others and be seen by others genuinely.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
I encourage, support, and attend many men’s groups in the Middle Tennessee area. Men can best support this work by finding a group where they are safe enough to feel compelled to be open, a higher standard than honesty. When men find that they are seen with acceptance and compassion, both they and the men around them are healed. By extension, when men find and live out honorable masculinity, families, communities, and societies heal.
Pricing:
- Therapy services are available through most insurance and on a sliding fee basis.
- Therapy is available for individual men, groups, and for fathers and sons
Contact Info:
- Website: https://BrothersCounseling.com
