4 Mental Health Mistakes Men Make

Here are four subtle (and not-so-subtle) mistakes men make with their mental health—and how to unmake them, or support someone who is making them. 

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Whenever I called home from university in my early twenties, and my father came on, he would tell the me the latest provincial rugby news. I had played at school but had since stopped. He had never been interested in rugby, except when I had played. These facts made his turning to rugby for something to say doubly disappointing, and I longed for a more meaningful connection. For the longest time, that connection never came. I tried once to have a deeper conversation about things that had happened in the past, and he became enraged. I bent over backwards for you, was the response I got. That was true, and there was still stuff that I wanted to address.

One day, while home for the weekend, out of the blue he shared with me some things that had happened to him when he was young, things I had no idea about and which explained a lot about why he was the way he was. I recognised in the moment that he was trying to acknowledge some things about how he had treated me, and I appreciated it. The conversation didn’t go much further.

Later, when I left, he told me for the first and only time that he loved me. I cried for the first half hour on the road. Then one day, I received a pair of leather gloves in the post. They were classic old, brown rabbit skin gloves. I remembered as a child having asked if I could have those gloves when he grew out of them. Because I was always growing out of things. He had laughed and that laugh, because of many other mocking laughs I had experienced from him, had hurt. I still have those gloves more than three decades later.

Many men still tend not to talk about what’s really going on for them, or if they do, they don’t do it in the most constructive way

There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch where two sons call their fathers to talk. They ask how the fathers are. One gets sports updates; the other gets enquiries about their car. The sketch becomes more explicit about how the sporting team and the car serve as analogies for the fathers themselves. They’re not able to talk about themselves or their feelings directly. They can only talk about themselves in this way. It’s a moving piece and very real.

Men have come a long way since then, but many men still tend not to talk about what’s really going on for them, or if they do, they don’t do it in the most constructive way. This clumsy reticence can impact their mental and, ultimately, physical health. Then again, my father would have scoffed at the very notion of mental health as a concern. After all, he was disabled and mocked the word disabled: “I’m a cripple,” he would say, with as much emphasis as he could. (He had had polio as a child and wore a calliper and used walking sticks.)

Nevertheless, here we are, learning to address our mental health, which is why I had wanted to have the conversation with him in the first place. Here are four mistakes that men make when it comes to mental health.

Men’s mental health mistake #1. We’re so used to fronting up that we don’t know when we’re stressed and need to take a break.

You’ll know when you’re stressed and need to take a break when you have a heart attack. Ha ha. That’s less true now than it was a generation ago, but it’s still a significant statistic. It’s also true behaviourally. For many men, stress is like a hum in the background, like when you have an air-conditioner on, you become so used to the noise, you only notice it when someone turns it off.

I debrief a personality assessment tool for corporate leaders, and it measures stress levels, among other things. And sometimes when the person has a low resilience score, it’s better, because they will usually recognise that they’re stressed and get help. The problem comes when it’s a very high resilience score. Those are the ones who you have to give a warning to. You’re in danger of burning out. You’re not going to listen until you have a heart attack, are you?

When you point this out, then the truth often comes out. They got sick only last week, and they insisted in coming in to work and they’re already back at training. Or they’ll admit to having been told exactly that by their spouse, children or boss. If you dig deeper, you’ll find they’re doing too much of something, too, apart from just working late. Too much drinking, too much exercise, withdrawing too much. That unusual, excessive behaviour—unusual meaning they don’t do it as much when things are in balance—is a coping mechanism. So, if you can’t hear the background noise, you can look for these signs: feedback from other people, or unusual, excessive behaviours. If someone has already pointed that out to you, you should probably listen.

And there’s one exception. You can handle a significant amount of stress in the short-term, say three to six months. But if it’s acute, or prolonged, you need to be more careful.

Men’s mental health mistake #2. If we do recognise something, we think (a) we’re the only one going through stuff and (b) there must be something wrong with me.

I’ve been part of various men’s groups and when you get together and introduce new guys to the group, you ask them to share something about themselves. Always the first round is what gets called the sales pitch. It’s all the superficial stuff and it gets presented in the most positive light. Career, business, family, hobbies and interests. Then you always do another round, and you invite the men to share “a deeper truth”. Usually, one of the men who’s been part of the group for a while will lead, and he’ll share more honestly what’s not going well for him at that time. Perhaps it’s a health issue, a financial issue, or a relationship issue. Then each man has a turn and slowly all the men start to realize that they’re not alone in having stuff going on in their lives. And that’s often a breakthrough key moment for them, to realize, okay, I’m, I’m not alone on this. So, if you’re going through stuff and you feel ashamed, like you’re the only one and there’s something wrong with that, be like a scientist, get out your white coat and clipboard and go an interview a few people. I’m sure just having that thought will resolve that one for you. Although actually going out and doing it, literally or figuratively, would be better. If you have some friends, invite them over and ask them what’s really going on in their lives, and share what’s going on in yours. Be aware that sometimes the light-hearted banter between friends is designed to keep things at the surface level and avoid going to that deeper level, so you may need to make a deliberate effort to get beneath the surface.

Men’s mental health mistake #3. We think we ought to be able to solve it on our own.

There is a Buddhist saying that an evil man can be helped more than a proud man can, and in my experience, there is much truth in this. I’ve seen men in real trouble during the midlife phase, behaving in ways that are truly self-destructive, and they won’t seek help. With few exceptions, it has led to their ruin. The irony is that their inability to ask for help stems from pride and that very pride is what destroys them. By attempting to remain high, they are taken low.

Pride is often a defence against low self-acceptance. Here’s how it works. When you have a high degree of self-acceptance, you’re both proud of your achievements, and you’re able to admit your shortcomings without feeling ashamed about them. This is the key piece: being able to admit, which means share, which means tell someone else that you don’t know something, or that you’re not good at something, or that you’re failing at something—and naturally then asking for help. If you can’t do that, it’s because you can’t accept that shortcoming, you can’t accept that fact about yourself. And not asking for help makes your problems worse, which puts your self-acceptance on a downward trajectory, making it ever harder to break the cycle.

There’s a good chance that a low self-acceptance is based on some bad experiences, or lack of emotional support, in the past. You shut down years ago, and you’ve never challenged that belief. Well, it’s time to be that scientist again. Get out your white coat and clipboard, and go and test it, not just once, because sometimes when we try something it backfires. That’s just how life is. So, test it a few times and start to gather evidence that I’m confident will challenge your beliefs. What I mean is that you’ll find people are far more receptive and forgiving and supportive than what you currently think.

Men’s mental health mistake #4. Some men haven’t developed the range of emotional words.

Many men don’t have the emotional language they need. Often when I’m working with men in the leadership context, they’ll talk only about the work context. If it ever goes deeper, they’ll translate their insights or their understanding back into a work solution. For example, they might be on the cusp of an awareness that they’re naturally risk averse. They’ll talk about it in terms of the need for compliance in the business. This points back to the Saturday Night Live sketch, where the father uses sport or the car analogously. This indicates that they have not reflected enough internally or had enough conversations about what’s going on for them internally to have developed the language.

There’s the saying that boys are taught not to cry and that they should learn to cry. I’m not convinced about the crying piece. Boys don’t really have a major need to cry. What they do need, and what men need, is to learn is to develop a bigger emotional vocabulary. We need to be able to identify what’s going on for us internally and find the words to express it. That’s the key piece, more than crying. If while you’re using those words that describe your internal process you hit across a sensitive topic or deep emotion, you might naturally tear up, but crying is not the objective, it’s more about developing the language. The way some men develop that is to look at the emotions wheel. You start at the inside with five or so distinctions and work your way outwards, learning more and more emotional words within each category. My suggestion for men who lack an emotional vocabulary is to look online for an emotions wheel and work with it.

I sometimes wonder what it must be like to live, as my father must have, with the barrenness of not being able to see and articulate the richness of what is going on inside. It’s a reason to have compassion for men who have not developed that side of themselves, and a reason for all men to explore their inner worlds.

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