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.