Latino Men and the Emotions We’re Taught to Hide

Editor’s Note: This essay by Chris Bustos appears with permission from his main site, Unbound Ascent.

I grew up thinking I understood emotions. Happy, sad, and angry were the entire vocabulary and toolbox. If I were happy, I could show it because that was allowed. If I were angry, I could show that too because anger was practically encouraged.

But sadness? Embarrassment? Shame? Fear? Those had to be hidden so quickly that I didn’t just suppress them, I stopped recognizing them at all.

That’s the emotional reality most Latino men grow up in. We feel everything, but we can only show two things: happiness or anger. Everything else lives underground.

There wasn’t a single moment where someone sat me down and said, “Don’t feel shame. Don’t feel fear. Don’t feel disappointment.” But it didn’t matter. I learned the rules anyway.

When I was upset, my parents would immediately jump in to fix it, not to help me understand what I was feeling, but to skip over the discomfort of sitting with it. It was the only way they knew to support me.

If I shared something painful, I’d hear: “It’s not a big deal.” “Are you sure that’s what happened?” “Tranquilo, hijo, I’m sure they didn’t mean it.”

It wasn’t therapy. It was unintentional gaslighting dressed as reassurance. My parents weren’t trying to hurt me. They were trying to make the uncomfortable go away — for them.

And I was a sensitive kid who wore emotions on his sleeve. They saw it and felt it, but they just didn’t know what to do with it. So they minimized it, or deflected it. And in most cases, they just moved on.

And eventually, so did I.

I learned early on that sadness made people uncomfortable, so I hid mine behind jokes. If I were hurting, I’d get funny. If I were embarrassed, I’d turn myself into the punchline. If I felt ashamed, I’d make the room laugh so no one would see the truth.

Humor protected me from vulnerability. It also protected everyone else from having to witness the truth I was feeling. It was part of the reason why I could never understand the shame I felt constantly growing up. Soon, that shame almost always turned into anger. It was automatic. If I felt embarrassed, dismissed, sad, or misunderstood, the anger came out. And it wasn’t because I wanted to be angry, but anger was the only socially acceptable emotion for a boy like me to express.

“Real men don’t cry.” “Suck it up. No te quejes.” “Be a man.”

This didn’t always happen in my house, but definitely in my community.

So my anger filtered every emotion that wasn’t happy. Ironically, people responded better to my anger than to my sadness, because I was the funny, happy, socially outgoing kid.

It wasn’t until college (studying psychology) that I finally understood what had happened to me. I wasn’t “bad with emotions,” “dramatic,” “too sensitive,” or “overreacting.” I had simply never been taught the language of emotional experience.

Once I learned that sadness wasn’t the same as shame, that fear wasn’t the same as embarrassment, that disappointment wasn’t anger, it felt like someone had handed me a map to a country I had been living in blindfolded. Still, I might have seen a new map, but it took work to fully understand all its directions.

When I lost my job, the one that made me feel like a real “Man/Provider,” the shame was suffocating. Not because my family made me feel that way. Because my culture did. Not producing income meant I had lost my worth. If I hadn’t learned the language of shame, I would have turned that pain into an even worse anger (and for a while, I still did).

Instead, I slowed down and asked: Why do I feel shame? Whose definition of manhood am I living by? What if being a man isn’t just about providing financially? That’s when I redefined what a Latino man meant to me: A man isn’t someone who hides his emotions. A man is someone who understands them, works through them, and grows because of them.

Today, I’m more emotionally available for my wife, more present for my kids, and more grounded in myself.

Latino men inherited a limited emotional vocabulary, not because our parents didn’t care, but because no one taught them, either.

We don’t have to pass that on. Every time we choose honesty over silence, we’re breaking a pattern our fathers and grandfathers rarely had the chance to question.

So instead of hiding your pain well, showing how angry you can get, or appearing to be stoic, think about emotional self-awareness, honest communication, breaking generational patterns, and redefining strength as openness, not silence.

It’s okay to express feelings that our culture has historically silenced. Those we love and care for will only benefit when we do. So the next time you feel anger rising, pause for a moment and ask yourself: What am I really feeling underneath this? Is it shame, fear, disappointment, or embarrassment? Name the emotion honestly, even if it feels uncomfortable. That simple act is the first step in expanding an emotional vocabulary that you can pass on to others.

If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

Chris Bustos is a Latino father and business coach who helps professionals and entrepreneurs scale their businesses without sacrificing family time or personal well-being. His work focuses on redefining success through clarity, boundaries, and purpose-driven growth.

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