What can be done?

This is the final part to my previous post about men’s mental health. I’ve asked a small number of men on their experience and although it maybe be a shock to some learning about this, it isn’t to the rest of us. Mental health isn’t a new thing for men, due to the socialisation and the pressure from certain influences, it can be hard to identify and to know this is happening to them. I hope these posts help at least someone to understand or even to know they aren’t suffering by themselves and there is help out there.

What are some of the things you do to help yourself?

Person A:  I kind of covered it but to help myself I have meds and my therapist. I also use the calm app to do daily medication and to help me sleep. Eating and sleeping properly plus doing regular exercise and being sociable helps me stay in a good headspace too.

Person B: What helped me was a number of things working together. We must obviously promote healthier lifestyles, going out for walks and eating well because I really enjoy my alone time in the gym where it’s just me and my workout. But most of all what I found myself to be a huge outlet was writing or finding a creative outlet. Writing worked for me because I was able to express myself and my emotions on paper or in my notes and no one ever had to see it. But once I wrote it down it really did feel as though those feelings passes through my fingertips and out my body or at least the strong feelings did- it made feel a lot better. That as well as watching shows/doing things I liked when I wanted to and not worrying about other for some time. It’s important to be selfish sometimes.

Person C: In the previous question I touched based on some of the things I do to improve my mental health. A common one is gym- but gym is a double edge sword, if I train for the wrong reasons it will deteriorate my mental health. In that case I made it clear why I was training, to feel better for myself and to reach specific goals for it e.g. fitting into my Spiderman outfit. I also embraced more of my inner child and did things I knew I always enjoyed while balancing good work ethic. Thankfully I was always able to speak with my family about my issues and this always helped me feel more at ease and lastly I think some guys should masturbate (or if they have a girlfriend or have more healthy sex) more to release the stress and feel more comfortable with their own body as it makes us feel wanted.

Person D: As I’ve gone through life I can start to tell when I’m starting to slip back into things so it’s less about  helping myself and more preemptive damage control. Like when I feel a depressive episode coming I’ll try and reach out to friends and get outside more and that kinda thing before it gets too deep and I just shut myself away. Interesting that you ask this now though because the last few weeks I have been looking into therapy and possibly taking antidepressants. Also a stat that I read somewhere is that suicide is the number one cause of death for men under 30.

Let’s sit down and talk….

When it comes to mental health everyone experiences it differently and most times it can be hard open up and talk about what you’re going through.

So here is the second part to yesterdays post, before moving forward to read the experiences, some of the issues mentioned may be triggering.

Tell me about your experiences with mental health?

Person A: 

In terms of my experiences, I’ve had panic attacks since I was 8 on and off to the point where at worst I can’t leave the house for fairly long periods when it gets bad. I still suffer on and off now but it’s mostly manageable and I have a good therapist and take sertraline on a low dose to help with it. I used to be super anti medication and to some extent still am so I didn’t start taking it till 18, but at that time in my life I needed it for things to be manageable.

Person B:

As for my experiences with mental health, I’ve always felt like I was never good enough. I’m always the problem. People don’t care about me or what I have to say and so I began to view myself as inferior and “other”. 

This got to the point where I was genuinely sitting in my balcony and even climbed up on the ledge thinking of jumping off. ODing on pills or just hanging myself so that it would be clean with no blood or mess for whoever found me. My brain let me down. But that was brought about by childhood trauma and having a father myself who said similar things about weakness and vulnerability to me.

So I never had a real outlet for expressing myself and my emotions with how I felt. I just thought it was normal to suffer because it was “a phase that would soon pass” as well as not wanting to be a burden to someone else and the whole invalidating myself because there’s suffering elsewhere in the world- the whole “children are starving” and dying in other places.

Person C:

Mental health for me has definitely being a journey for me, to shutting myself from the world and not knowing what it meant to "act like a man" since my father figure only showed me what a men "should never do". Also growing up around women and learning to respect them made me feel I wish I wasn't a man to fit in and not feel like we are trash, but eventually over the time and become more mature I started experimenting with meditation and started doing the things that made me happy despite how childish it seems or how sensitive it made me look and it has helped me understand that I should act "like a man " but rather act like a good human being and take of my mental health the same way, or if not more than I take care of my body

Person D:

My journey with my own mental health is hard one to answer, I go through phases where I don’t like myself very much at all but other times I think I’m God’s gift to the world. Like mental health covers a lot of different aspects of life but to me it’s almost just a synonym for depression. When I was younger I thought about taking my life a few times, but as I get older the lows seem more frequent but less deep.

This whole lockdown things have been heavy though, the feelings of loneliness was very hard to deal with, especially at the start. I’ve tried the whole drugs to take your mind off it, but personally that usually makes things worse and feel even lower overall.

Can we talk…

This post has been in the works for some time now, so here is part two with questions for men on mental health. 

Mental health is always an important issue I care about, and I wanted to de-stigmatise the way society views men’s mental health.  

The questions I’ve asked these individuals were all open ended, and this is just the first part of the questions I’ve asked them, these will be split up in parts, and posted the next day. I didn’t want to write everything in one blog post, I wanted to create a stage where we can understand what a person is going through.

We are all so quick to have expectations on how a man should behave and to make fun of a man for expressing his emotions.

Before we go ahead with the first question, I want to thank the individuals for taking part and for being able to share their experiences which isn’t an easy thing.

How can we bring up men’s mental health?

Person A : I think bringing up men’s mental health is easiest when it comes up naturally in different situations, like I don’t like to bring mine up randomly, but I’m usually comfortable talking about it if someone asks me or in the right setting.

So if there were spaces to talk about it at work or in formal settings or if friends and family asked about it more often in a supportive way I’d feel more comfortable talking about it. 

Person B: It’s a tough one to because we’re always told to “man up”, “grow some balls”, etc and are told that “men don’t cry”, “crying is showing weakness” and that we cannot show those weaknesses. Because of this I think we need to start small before we can go big. So we can’t expect men to immediately talk about their feelings and share when they feel overwhelmed and that they can’t cope. But we mustn’t let it get to that point either.

We have to ensure that men know it is okay to be vulnerable, to be weak, and to show feeling because that’s what makes human. We also need to further and healthily promote that they aren’t alone in how they feel however we can. Whether it be statistics like or videos etc. And of course speaking out breaking social norms that men need to be “manly” men who don’t talk about feelings and all that nonsense. Not only for the men living right now but also so that if they become fathers their sons won’t have to suffer with mental health issues and it’s normal for them to talk.

Person C: I think it's a matter of making men feel safe and that their ego won't be attacked, cause despite the tough persona men are quite sensitive and that's because they get brought up thinking showing emotion or talking about mental health makes you weak.

Person D: So I think the biggest way to improve men’s mental health is to de-stigmatise asking for help, like we’re moving in the right direction but still most guys I know would never ask for professional help, and yet a lot of guys I know when they actually open up have suffered from depression or suicidal thoughts at some point. There’s that whole thing of “I’m the man so I have make sure everyone else is ok and just suck it up if I’m not ok,”

like backwards sexism or something? 

Like having an environment where dude can open up without the thought that they’re weak or they’ll get judged for doing so. And being about to seek professional help without the feeling of being weak, a sort of example of this is I know three girls diagnosed with borderline personality disorder- I don’t know a single guy with this diagnosis of anything yet I’m pretty much friends with equal amount girls and guys.

Dhal bhat and fish and chips

I’m in bed right now ill from the lack of rest and I’m here missing my country and the hot weather. I’ve spoken to all my friends about my time in Nepal, and are probably sick of hearing me wanting to return every so often. Previously I hadn’t visited in nearly 5 years and now I’ve told everyone how much I love being there, and asking them to join me when I return.

It’s funny when you haven’t lived your whole life in a country you were born in. I remember when I left Nepal, I was only 4 years old, I was upset with my mother and didn’t want to leave all my relatives and my cousin behind. Turbulence was dreadful and it was cramped on the plane, when I arrived in London it was night time. I stared at my surroundings and felt homesick, everything was loud. My aunt and great uncle greeted us and we arrived in my new home in South Croydon.

A few months later I had started school, it was a difficult time for me, I had an accent and my English was terrible. However I was only a child and looking back at it now it was impressive I was coping being in classes with a few words I could say in English. 

I think that was the start of me rejecting my culture, I barely wanted to continue speaking Nepali and wanted to stop eating my home food. I remember teachers commenting, “she smells of curry” or people taking the piss out what Nepal sounds like “nipples” and groups of children bullying me because I looked different. So I swapped my dhal and bhat for sandwiches and pasta and avoided most parts of my culture. 

It became evident in year 2 (I was 8 years old) I wanted to hide from where I was from. My mum forced me to wear our cultural dress for international evening. For those who don’t know what international evening is, it was an event ran by schools that allowed students to showcase their culture. This event was where each student could either bring their cultural food or even present a dance to show where they’re from. 

I want to thank my mum for forcing me to wear a kurta that evening, it was showing everyone who I am and where I’m from, because now 26 year old me is happy that I didn’t wear jeans and a top that day. Even more I appreciate my mum, grandma and aunts encouraging me to speak Nepali at home because I would have lost my mother tongue.

When I was a teenager, I definitely felt out place, I was the only person from Nepal at my secondary (high-school). It made it difficult and sometimes I wished there was another Nepali. I was so jealous of all my friends who had their own groups (Latinas, Filipinos, Portuguese and many more groups).

I was 13 years old when I first returned to Nepal, it didn’t feel like home, of course it had been 9 years since I was last in Nepal, and I felt like a stranger in my own country. All I kept wishing was to go back home to England, skip to a further 7 years later and I was 20 years old, it was prominent I felt the cultural dysphoria. 

I remember feeling so confused because some people in Nepal felt offended I called England my country, and the other half in England saying I’m British. I felt so lost and unsure who I was. But what I know is that I slowly fell in love with Nepal on my second visit and I started to appreciate the culture and wanted to practice my language. Of course even now speaking Nepali can be a bit difficult but staying there for 3 months helped me improve.

I’m forever grateful that I can speak my language and even though I’m not the most fluent I’m happy I’m always trying. 

The language and food of my culture is something I want to keep a hold onto, but it is also the people I want to hold on to close in my life. 

In my culture, and I’m sure in other cultures we have big families, we treat our cousins as brothers and sisters. This is something which has been encouraged and I was socialised into since I was small, my baby cousins are my little sisters and they truly are my sisters, and only in the recent years have I tried and truly yearn for a close relationship with the rest of my  cousins. It made me desire to have this relationship with them because of my mum and her sisters close relationship with their cousins, hearing about their memories when they were young. Which is why I also miss my cousins in Nepal. So to my cousins in Nepal and elsewhere I am not sorry for the constant messaging and calls. I hope we maintain a close relationship wherever we are!

My friendship circle has also changed, I have my own group of Nepali friends and this is also one of the many reasons where I won’t forget about my culture and for me appreciate it more, one of the guys I know also showed me how to make Newari (a Nepalese tribe) momos, which I now wholeheartedly can make. Which also shaped my love of cooking!

So back to the present time, here I am missing Nepal, I remember my kaka (uncle) asking me why I love Nepal so much? I don’t have one answer for it, I have several, coming back makes me feel nostalgic, it’s a missing puzzle piece, it’s a part of me. I remember last week when I arrived in Kathmandu, as soon as I stepped into my bojus (grandmothers) house I realised how much I missed this country. It’s the people and the laidback, chill atmosphere, the complete opposite to London. Someone who has anxiety and depression, being in Nepal has helped me feel better and takes away my anxiety. 

To the people who ask me who am I- I am both Nepali and British, I have a sense of belonging for both and this is who I am! Some times I will feel the cultural dysphoria, however I remind myself that I’m happy to be raised in two different places.