Comment by PaulRobinson
1 day ago
We're still working a lot of this out because it's actually a relatively new thing culturally - my grandfathers generation would never have talked about mental health at all - but what is pretty clear is that most people do not talk enough about this, and do not deal with mental health very well.
That does not mean we should all be talking to everybody about it all the time. I take stuff into a therapy session I'm not going to discuss anywhere else, because if I started talking about it at work, or even close relationships, I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
But at the same time, we do need to talk to people about it. And there are some toxic barriers we could do with addressing.
Men are not "meant" to cry or show vulnerability in almost all contexts in almost all cultures. That's sad, because while we don't all want men breaking down in tears when their coffee order isn't quite right, we also know it's healthy for men to acknowledge and process difficult feelings like grief and rejection.
While most people realise it's not OK to tell a woman she'd look prettier if she smiled more, few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident. That causes problems I think we can all call out and name in modern dating culture.
According to some stats I just pulled up for the UK, surveys suggest that more than 75% of men report as having had mental health issues, but only 60% have ever spoken to another human being about it at all, with 40% of men stating it would have to be so bad that they are considering self-harm or suicide to talk to anyone, ever. This is horrible.
So, sure, perhaps we don't need to talk about Freudian analysis down the pub, and nobody at work wants to hear about you reconciling feelings about how you were treated as a child by members of your family, but please:
Most men need to talk to somebody about their mental health. And for many problems, that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
If you're reading this, and think that might be you, please, for your own sake, go talk to a professional.
You might not gel with the first therapist, counsellor, psychiatrist or psychologist you speak to. That's OK, they won't mind if you say you want to try a few different people. You can find people who will help in your town, on video calls, on apps, all over. Just speak to someone.
There was certainly quite a bit of deep talk about "integrity" and "character" in our grandfathers' generation, that was ultimately relating to issues we would now comprise under so-called 'mental health'. It's not clear to me that this medicalized framing ("...health") is necessarily and consistently better than a more traditional one focused on developing a well-adjusted character.
Integrity and character are about values and how you plan to behave and expect to have others behave towards you. They are not the same as your ability to process emotions that emerge as a result of that behaviour.
Having values is important. Integrity, humility, all of that, absolutely useful.
They are not in themselves sufficient to assure you of good mental health.
We care about the smooth processing of emotions, among other reasons, because when impeded it generally affects how we're going to plan and behave; especially when under some sort of stress. This is not something new to our generation; philosophers have had a clear undestanding of this for millennia, in both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions.
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Some other old-fashioned-y terms in this context: "strength" and "fortitude".
Men generally process negative emotions in private so others don't worry about them. This has led to the incorrect common viewpoint that men don't process these emotions at all, and attempts to make men process them like women do.
This is a brilliant comment.
I'd like to elaborate on something you touch on briefly:
> I'm asking people without any ability to help me with it to just take it and work it out with me, and that's not helpful.
> that somebody needs to be somebody with the appropriate skills and abilities to help them with it.
I think there's an important line to walk here. I think it's important everyone (men and women) are able to talk about their feelings and experiences with their friends - but I don't think the goal needs to be "helping work it out". Just sharing and listening can be liberating, can help ease the road to talking to a professional, and can help others see that others struggle too.
There is a tendency in conversations of any sort to be always searching for a "solution" or an "answer", instead of just listening.
(There's a lot of nuance here in choosing when to share, etc, but I just wanted to talk a bit about it)
Being frustrated with something at work and having somebody to rant about it with is one of the pillars of any friendship. Your friends can do the work of listening, empathising, reassuring and then helping you get past it and enjoying the beer, game or barbecue you're at. That's cool, I agree.
Having deep feelings of inadequacy and bringing that to the friendship at every opportunity is asking that friend to help you with those feelings, they probably aren't equipped to do that in all sorts of ways.
As with most things, it's a spectrum, not binary. Some friends would love to help you overcome childhood trauma, but most will not. Your partner may be able to help you deal with the way that family member behaves, but quite often, that's your thing, not theirs, deal with it. A work colleague might be able to support you when a co-worker is being a jerk, but might not have the skill or ability to help you manage your feelings or deal with that behaviour.
A therapist is trained to help you with those things your friends, family and colleagues can't. More specifically, they are trained to help you figure out what you are going to do about it.
Sometimes, when we talk to people about problems, we're "giving them the problem", as in, we want them to tell us what to do about it, or to actually do something about it. They often can't or won't do that - it's your thing. Therapists won't take it either, but they'll help you manage it as your thing.
A friend who is just there to listen, that's different, if the ask is just to listen and be somebody to talk to, sure, most friends have that ability and skill, and are happy to do so. But there's a lot of stuff people go through where that isn't enough, and asking those same people to do more is probably not going to work.
"few people see the hypocrisy in thinking it's OK to tell a man he'd be sexier if he was more confident"
Is that really a thing?
I mean sure there might people doing this, but it is obvious that telling someone they have too little self esteem, that this is a personal and can very well be perceived as an attack (especially by someone with low self esteem).
(Also I think the distinction is a bit weird in general. Isn't confidence sexy in women, too?)
I have been told this. I know men who have been told this. It doesn't help when you have low self-esteem.
Confidence is sexy. Smiling faces are more attractive. That does not mean you have a right to say that to somebody as if they "owe you" sexiness or attractiveness. Negging somebody who is feeling crap about themselves is not going to make them want to be with you.