Netflix’s harrowing story “Adolescence” offers a powerful psychological insight into the lives of young boys caught in cycles of violence, confusion, and radicalisation.

It explores trauma, and how the choices made by one can ripple out and affect many. The issues highlighted in the series are painfully familiar, and we can no longer look away.

We cannot avoid the deeper questions.

But as I watched, I noticed something moving beneath the surface. Something that would not be examined in the news or discussed in Parliament. Beneath the behaviour is something else. A mirror reflecting a spiritual disconnection.

What is happening to the inner worlds of our boys? What happens when they are not just disconnected from society and family, but from themselves?

This brings us into the often discussed topic of toxic masculinity, but what I see, more truthfully, is wounded masculinity. Today’s boys are not offered a sacred path into manhood. In the series, we watch a young boy being questioned by a female psychologist who gently asks, “What does masculinity mean to you?” It is a question that should be asked more often.

In the past, masculinity was held with reverence. It was passed down through guidance, ritual, and the wisdom of elders. Boys were shown how to hold power with responsibility, how to protect without harm, and how to lead with the heart. Today, something very different is rising, rooted in ideology and a dangerous misuse of power.

This is where the digital world steps in. A boy searches for confidence, for answers, for what he believes is truth—and instead of being guided inward, the algorithm pulls him further out into ideology, performance, and the mask of a hardened man. The manosphere offers a false version of initiation. It speaks of dominance, control, and emotional repression. It uses pain but offers no healing.

There is no mention of wholeness. No call to integrate the feminine within. A boy’s capacity for intuition, empathy, and emotional intelligence is buried. In the manosphere, the feminine is mocked. And when the feminine within is rejected, so too is the feminine without. His relationships, his partners, even his mother, may be misunderstood, feared, or controlled.

This disconnection affects everything. Boys close their hearts. Relationships become battlegrounds. Self-worth is measured by status and success, rather than connection and inner steadiness. Many grow into men who cannot speak their truth or access their deeper emotional world.

If the masculine has been severed from its sacred root, then the feminine has also been silenced and distorted. This outer imbalance mirrors what is suppressed within. Boys are taught to harden. Girls are taught to hide their softness. They do not feel safe in who they are, and the imbalance is becoming impossible to ignore.

The wounded feminine appears in a world that judges girls and women on their appearance, their sexuality, and their silence. Intuition is dismissed. Emotion is seen as weakness rather than wisdom. And if boys are taught to fear the feminine within themselves, they will also fear it in others.

Masculine and feminine energies are not just about gender. They are sacred forces within every human soul. To be whole is to be in right relationship with both. To be strong and soft. To lead and to listen. To protect and to feel. But instead of balance, our children are being raised in a world where these energies are in conflict.

The sacred masculine has the capacity to hold space. To be still in the face of truth, to stay present with pain, to protect what is fragile. But when that energy is wounded and disconnected from its soul and from the feminine within, it becomes unsafe—even to itself. Boys are not taught how to grieve. So they lash out. They withdraw. They fear their own sensitivity and try to control it. Not just in themselves, but in others.

And underneath it all is grief.

The boy has abandoned himself in order to be strong. He never learned how to express his tenderness. He never received the love he needed. He was told, again and again, that he was not enough.

When masculine and feminine energies are in balance, grief is welcomed. Feeling is allowed. Pain becomes transformation. But when these energies are wounded, the masculine becomes controlling and the feminine becomes buried, shamed, or distorted. And in this wounded state, children are forced to choose. Feel pain or survive—most choose survival. And we see the result in the world around us. Knife crime, misogyny, disconnection, anger, and radicalisation.

But a time of change is coming. As more people begin to see these deeper truths, we have a chance to heal. We can allow boys to reconnect with the parts of themselves they were taught to avoid. Their emotions. Their grief. Their capacity to protect with love rather than control. They do not need to reject the feminine to be strong. And they do not need to perform to be worthy.

We must remember that we are souls first. We must find ways to guide our boys inward, toward wholeness rather than performance. They need rites of passage that do not come from a screen. They need mentors, not influencers. They need masculinity to be rooted in devotion, not domination.

We must invite the feminine back into our boys. Give them permission to cry, to be soft, to lead from their hearts and not from their egos. When we honour both the masculine and the feminine within, we create balance. And that balance ripples outward into the wider collective.

Our boys are not lost. They are searching for something real. Something sacred. Maybe it is time we meet them there. Not with shame, but with open hearts. Not with judgement, but with reverence.

Because masculinity is not a performance. It is the journey back to truth. To soul. To wholeness.

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