Men and their Mental Health
“Men have shame… deep shame but when we reach out and tell our stories, we get the emotional shit beat out of us. My wife… my daughters… even most my friends would rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall off.”
“Our singular, suffocating expectation is we cannot be perceived as weak. The perception of weakness is often very shaming.”
“They say ‘be afraid’. They say ‘share your vulnerability’. ‘Open up’.
However, the truth is they cannot stomach it. The truth is that when I am very vulnerable, when I am in fear, when I am angry when I talk about it, it can permanently change the dynamics of our relationship.”
‘I want you to be open… I want there to be intimacy, but I don’t want you to go there.’
“Show me a someone who can sit with a man in real vulnerability, in deep fear and be with him in it, I will show you someone who has done their work and does not derive their power from that man”.
Men and their Mental Health
Men and their mental health struggles can look different.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ ‘I’m angry all the time,’ ’I drink, snort, pop, inject, or smoke to cope,’ ’I can carry it all on my own,’ ’Fuck it… I don’t need anyone or anything,’ ’Why did I do/say that… AGAIN?!’ are ways that our struggles can reveal themselves.
Or a struggling man can take the form of working every day, smiling to his family and/or friends putting up a front when their is a fuckin storm going on inside.
What is the fucking point in complaining… nothing will change and no one will take care of me. Outside we are calm but on the inside is a ticking time bomb.
The world is a tough place for men, they are not getting the help they need.
Suicide, depression, addiction, divorce, homelessness, being estranged from their families and friends can all be the devastating consequences of this.
We need someone who will listen that is not afraid of your anger or power and can come up with ways to improve our lives.
Labeling Young Men as Toxic is Harmful
This World is Not Designed for Us
So, I started using my ‘energy’ in a more positive way… Was there a way to live in a city as an ape or as a hunter?
I started running… lifting weights… hiking… going out in nature… connecting with others… eating unprocessed foods and other stuff in life with this vision.
I am not designed to be sitting in a chair for six hours, staring at a computer screen. I am not designed to be cut off from others and eating highly processed foods loaded with sugar.
For hundreds of thousands of years, my ancestors never lived this way… it’s only in our lifetime that our bodies have had to catch up to this massive change in living.
Our bodies have not caught up… through this lens, it makes sense why so many of us feel like something is off…
I have often felt ‘wrong’ in this world. I had trouble at school… I self medicated… and blamed my self.
However, I big shift in my thinking really helped. I started to look at my body and how my mind worked and realized that I am not made for this world. The world changed so fast that my didn’t keep up. It was quite depressing, if I’m honest.
However, once I came to realize this, it helped me live in the fucked up place. I started to look at myself as coming from a long line of ancestors who were apes or hunters or warriors… so I started trying to live in a way that honoured my body and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. If I can’t change the world, it’s gotta be me who changes.
