Too Little Too Late: Missing the point of men's mental health

There is a notable reason why so many men push away from the world of mental health. Men are often socially tailored to be overly attuned to focusing on productivity. And unfortunately this means that these men feel that they must achieve this by any means necessary. The means given to men are the tools of self-shaming, self-deprivation, and and self-hate. It is these tools that allow men to perform and get work done. And these tools are both incredibly effective and incredibly accessible to men due to a myriad of reasons. However the downsides of these being the primary tools in many men’s toolboxes is that it builds them into a difficult catch-22. You either succeed by hating yourself to make something happen or you fail and hate yourself because of the things you didn’t make happen.

With that noted, its no wonder why men have the issues they have. What must they do to function at the levels that society demands of them? They must medicate in some way, shape, or form. Drug addiction, excess anger expression, physical altercations, sex addiction, sexual violence, hate crimes, mass shootings, etc. all can come back to not just the results of social pressures that men are put under but also their lack of accessibility to more mental health tools. Why do we treat men’s mental health more in line with a medical disease model, only to be worked on after a problem is found, and not as a core-concept to be embraced and built upon?

While we have a plethora of mental health tools out there, they tend to be less accessible to men and often come far too late, missing the formative years of a man’s life. A man is given labels of lazy, irresponsible, or heartless. And while this can be true for a few, there tends to be missing any room for alternate labels like misunderstood, unheard, self-loathing, or abused. When these labels are given, it is only after they have had notable success and they have done something deplorable. Why is compassion for men publicly (and often privately) displayed only for successful men? Why are we directly teaching men that compassion is an award to be gained only after success has been reached?

This is not the only reality that has to be but this is the reality that is. Men have little practical choice but to engage self-scathing monologues to feel like they can earn their sense of self. And we must admit this is the demand of society and the failure of society - that we actively encourage men to hate themselves. Men do this to other men too yes, but it’s an all around problem. Places of personally centering and psychological decompressing/destressing for men are not readily available or at least socially difficult to access.

Where is the Brene Brown for men? Where is the masculinization of mental health? How can we find a way to engage the innate dignity of men to gain a sense of personal inspiration and not leverage self-hatred as a means to progress? Why aren’t we building a better narrative for men that is compassion-led or based on recognition of virtue? Why is the building of emotional vocabulary and emotional understanding one of our last priorities?

*Image by Erendira Tovar

Social class and anti-validation: Gaslighting without realizing it

When looking at the world of therapy and mental health needs, one area that is often criminally overlooked is the role that Socioeconomics play on our mental fragility. The lower the class you come from, the more the communication style changes. If you are middle class or lower middle class, you tend to find more demand put on to you than others of a different class might. Its expected that you have to work harder and know how to do more things than those around you and that you at all times are closer to failure than anyone else. And only you alone understand this and bear this burden.

This is an isolating truth to wrap our minds around but, if you have experienced this and are honest with yourself, you know this feeling intimately. Why is that? Lots of reasons really, but one I want to focus on anti-validation in communication. To put it another way: Any time you do something that you enjoy that doesn’t add up to social gain, its presented to you as a character flaw. Want to play video games because you enjoy it? You are made to feel like something is wrong with you. Want to learn a new skill that (likely) isn’t able to be turned into profit? Wasting your time. Want to learn to play an instrument without intents of becoming a professional musician? You must be distracting yourself from your real calling - work.

And this emphasis to this group of people is often abusively gaslighting. They carry this feeling with them constantly - the only value they can ascertain is work. This is not due to a character flaw - though it is presented to them that way. Its due to a mindset of the people around them, like parents, who are supportive (sure you can do that) but is anti-validating (but you are wasting your time). So now everything that individual does that isn’t about sustaining themselves or working is actually a burden to carry or a shame to hide. And that sort of psychic damage adds up.

And getting out of this is not easy. How do you undo decades of programing? It takes a lot of work from the individual and surrounding culture. For the individual you have to build an awareness of how you are promoting this system in yourself. Begin drawing attention to the repeating cycle of downplaying or gaslighting your own wants and needs. Begin to build a new view that sees things like personal creative endeavors, taking in entertainment, or simply doing nothing as both valid and fulfilling in themselves. They are not just something to be earned to be enjoyed but can also be a part of being human. As Bernard Suits puts it in his book “The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia” - 'playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’. Relaxation and work are one in the same. Taking the steps of action and changing the rhetoric around this takes focus and will. Talking about it more is a great step in changing this and finding a more enjoyable and thus more fruitful life.

Socially for those of us who did glean this insight and knowledge and were not given the burden of work as our only value, I’d make an argument that a change in rhetoric is a necessary one. We can’t go around just telling others that ‘self-care is important’ since we now know that the people receiving the message are feeling guilty for doing self-care. Out rhetoric must shift to one that sees the demand of self-care as placing yet another burden. We must dignify the underlying feelings of the people receiving this message. We must hear their words, know the struggle of the lower-middle and middle class workers, and act on their behalf. For them self-care feels like an act of defiance and an action that is against their survival. Social supports - legislation and community engagement - is part of the answer here. But individual recognition that there are class differences and not living there are class differences can be just as gaslighting as any of the previously mentioned actions. Begin by making these a part of your casual conversations. Ask questions of your struggling friends like “what was it like growing up where you grew up?”, “Do you find it hard to relax sometimes?” or “What was it like for you as a child?”

This is a problem that takes both personal and social work. We can’t do it together unless we do it alone. And we can’t do it alone unless we do it together.