You are listening to Take Out Therapy, speedy sessions for everyday problems. This is your host, Rebecca Hunter. In my role as a private practice therapist, I don't really just tell people what to do, but in this podcast, I'm doing things differently.
In the next few minutes, I'm just going to be straight up with you about what to do in certain situations. Keep listening for awesome tips on how to live a more intentional and less reactive life. Clearly, this is not a substitute for therapy, but I guarantee it might help you.
Listen up. Hello, friends. Thank you so much for being here with me today.
I just want to start today's episode by saying thank you to you for just showing up every week. You guys send me emails and direct messages on social media. You're friends of mine.
You're people that I don't know. I'll tell you, it's really helpful because not only am I trying to normalize the struggle of mental health, but I'm also like, I'm doing my own work here, you guys. I'm processing my own life.
I'm bringing things that come up a lot in the therapy office out into the world so that we can all kind of have a collective experience. It would be really helpful for me if you review the podcast, if you subscribe to the podcast, if you like the podcast. That helps.
I don't know. I don't really understand the whole back end of things very much, but I know that that really helps us get seen by more people. And we're talking about mental health, so it's kind of important.
I want to start today's episode by telling you that while today's episode, I'm going to talk about men's mental health. I do know that the majority of my listeners, 90% of my listeners are women, and I have gotten a request for this subject by multiple listeners, including my assistant who produces the podcast. So thank you for your input, ladies.
And also, let's get some more male listeners. So today's episode is on men's mental health, basically. And I want to talk about what is happening with men's mental health and how we can all help change the tide of things as it relates to men and mental health.
Because here's the deal. Life is really hard. It's not only hard for women.
It's really hard for men, too. But in our culture, and I'm just kind of talking generally about the culture in the U.S., but I know I have listeners from other countries. In our cultures, I think that men have generally not addressed their own mental health because there is so much stigma.
Do you guys understand what stigma means? Stigma is like how we don't fart in public, okay? So the reason that we don't fart in public is because people are really rude to us when we fart in public. And they treat us badly, and maybe we're kind of pushed to the side, right, like as the farter. Men's mental health is not... Men and mental health, like men are taught that they're okay, right? They need to like man up and be strong and not be emotional.
They're taught, actually, that showing emotion is pretty unacceptable, much like farting in a restaurant. Not okay, guys. But that's not true.
And so it's not only not true, it's not current. It's kind of old-school thinking, and it's also incredibly destructive for us to keep supporting the guys that men are doing fine and women are the ones that really need the mental health help. So let's talk about this today.
Men are struggling in their mental health as well they should be. We're all struggling with our mental health because life is struggle. Life is really difficult.
It's very hard. And if we don't acknowledge that, then it doesn't make it any less hard. It just means there's nowhere to put that.
And so what happens is that with men in general is that life is a struggle and they have as many if not more kind of mental health concerns and issues than women do, but they don't have a place to put it. And so it all stays like very internal. I think it's dangerous, frankly, for us to continue to support the idea that men don't have mental health issues the way that we do.
No, men do not process the world like women do because they've been taught not to. It's completely acceptable for me in my own home to have a full-on crying, screaming, ugly Kleenex box meltdown. It's totally normal, totally acceptable by all the men in my house.
Now if one of them were to do that, is that as acceptable? And I would say yes, in my house it is and they can, but they don't because men tend to be internalizers. They tend to process their experience of their lives internally, meaning I'm stressed, I'll just deal with it on my own, or this idea that they can just solve their own problems. And for the most part, that's what they try to do, but it's no less difficult than it is for women.
So my opinion and the opinion of my colleagues on many fronts is that we need to lose the stigma around mental health and around the conversation about mental health because here's the deal. One in 10 men report a mental health disorder. Now I'm saying reported.
Do you know what that means? That means more than one in 10 men are struggling with mental health, you guys. Men's mental health is vastly underreported. You know what this means? Is that there's a lot of silent suffering going on.
Men, if you're out there, I know that life is hard and I know you're probably not talking about it very much, but I see you and I hear you and I want to pave a way for you to be able to talk about the difficulty of life in your own way, in your own homes and with your own therapist because here's the deal. This silent suffering that's going on with men, it's incredibly unsafe. Suicide rates are three and a half times higher among men than women.
I said three and a half times higher. That is really not a good situation. So basically because we haven't paved the way for men to be able to talk about their emotional experience of their life and the difficulty that arises in their lives, they often feel incredibly isolated and incredibly unaccepted and judged and that's where suicide happens, you guys.
Suicide happens in the dark. It happens in silence. It happens oftentimes when people don't feel like they can talk honestly about their mental health.
They don't feel like they have anybody that has their back, that cares, that can handle their processing of their lives. Male suicide has been on the rise since the 2000s and continues to be a huge problem. The understatement of the year is that men are less likely to reach out.
Are you kidding? Men are far less likely to reach out and I have been fortunate enough to have many male clients. I absolutely love the experience of doing therapy with men. I think it's a beautiful process of helping a human being to get to know their emotional side and their emotional self and frankly get comfortable with all the different parts of themselves.
And yet it's not something that men really do because, and I was just talking with somebody about this, because two women can have a conversation and we can walk up to the line of that welling of emotion that happens for us. But men are really less comfortable with that level of emotion. They feel like when they get welled with emotion, many men will back up from the conversation and say, I don't want to talk about this or let's talk about this later or even get kind of aggressive and defensive and things like that.
Men do more numbing than women do. I'm sorry guys. One in five men have a substance use disorder.
Binge drinking is much more popular among men than it is among women because alcohol is America's number one coping skill, frankly. And you guys know I'm not in support of that action. I think that there are ways to process our lives away from numbing.
So men have been taught that they don't have the right or the space or the place to express emotion and so they just don't. And honestly, like I've seen it with my own boys. I have older teenage boys and sometimes we'll be talking about a subject and I can see the emotion coming to the surface and then they'll say, I don't want to talk about this anymore.
Whereas I kind of cry about everything. I do. I'm a very emotive person.
As a matter of fact, I've always told my family and my kids, my tears aren't about you. I'm an emotive person. Like when I feel feelings, they fall out of my eyes.
It's not, we don't have to put somebody else in a place to be responsible for our emotions. But men have been taught that crying is like kind of not something they're supposed to do. And even though my boys have grown up in an incredibly emotionally accepting environment with emotionally developed people, they still shy away from difficult conversations as many of us do because they're hard.
And I get it. But let's try to have a conversation with the men in our lives about their emotional health. So I want to just point out that when men deny their own ability to heal, because by the way, like growing up is really hard and it takes a long time to heal from it.
And I don't care how you grew up or where you grew up or what the environment was. Growing up is hard and it takes a healing process in order to fully emotionally develop. And I guess I just want to say like when men aren't able to fully heal, it affects their ability to parent, to be in close emotional relationships with their kids, to be in close emotional relationships with their partners, to be in close emotional relationships, accepting, loving, compassionate relationships with themselves.
Men are very hard on themselves in general. It's also when you're not doing your personal growth work and your emotional healing, it's hard to feel fulfilled in a career as well. And so many times I hear this from women quite a bit in therapy and frankly, in my own life where, you know, their spouse, their man goes to a therapist and they have a couple of sessions and then the therapist says that they don't need to come in anymore.
And that is really kind of a direct quote that I've heard several times over the course of my career as a therapist. And I have to say, if you're going to a therapist and they tell you you don't need therapy, get a different therapist. It's not a therapist's choice about whether you do personal growth work or not, my friends, it's your choice.
And so my interpretation of that is either the therapist wasn't skilled enough to hold space for a man who wasn't able to express himself or they weren't willing to teach in that environment. Yeah, like something's off about that. So I think the important thing to to say here is like men need to do healing, too.
They can do healing, too. And we can change the conversation as women and as men to just kind of open the door to that. We can each one of us can impact this stigma is what I want you to really understand, because men have been holding up these ideas, false ideas about mental health for a really long time.
And frankly, they're dying for it. And I don't like it. It's scary and it's upsetting.
And I want to help more men get into some more personal growth work, some more mental health work. So I've seen plenty of men and I'm sure you have to get divorced before admitting that they have healing to do. A lot of men have been taught to put the emotional burden and the emotional blame on women.
And I think that it's OK for us as women to just go ahead and give that right back. Right. Let's hold each other accountable.
I think accountability is love. I I always say if you didn't want an accountability partner, you shouldn't have gotten married. That's one of my quotes that I use in the office.
So here's here's a couple ideas of what we can do to kind of move this thing forward for men and with men. Let's talk to the men in our lives about their emotion. Let's ask them open ended questions about how they're handling their lives, their jobs, where they're at with their mental health and their emotional health.
Like, what's it like being a man today? When's the last time you asked a guy like, how's your emotional health? How are you feeling about things? And really got into a nice conversation, a deep conversation in which there is emotional sharing on this topic. Right. Who are males? Who are our men's role models? Who are they watching as far as their mental health role models? And what do they see as their responsibility in their own healing journey? I think that at some point we have to confront each other.
We have to be confrontational when there's abusive, either emotional, obviously physical. We have to be we have to be confronting with men about their inability to handle their emotions and the sometimes backwards way that they conduct relationships because of a lack of emotional maturity. We should always confront abuse and domination, like always and with everyone.
Like, please do not allow people to batter you emotionally. I don't care if it's a woman or men, but men who use tactics of power and control need to be confronted with compassion and understanding and courage so that they can heal. And frankly, we may need to demand it.
We may need to say, you need to get some help, my friend, and I will support you in doing that. But I will not have a relationship with you in which you continue to do X, Y and Z. And frankly, like I'm talking about men today, but I just want to say across the board, my people, if someone's treating you badly, you have to set boundaries. You have to hold them accountable.
So importantly, let the men in your life know that you expect them to take responsibility for their own emotional growth, for their personal growth. I really like the phrase personal growth because it's so much less kind of stigmatized and threatening than like getting mental health help. So using the phrase personal growth can be really helpful with both men and teens, which are both stigmatized populations, frankly.
But here's the deal. Accountability always has to be part of the conversation. So men, I just want to end up by saying something very important to you.
Men are just like women. Men are human beings. They they're like us more than we want or understand or are willing to see.
They want what we want. They want connection. They want compassion.
They want to be understood and empathized with. They want to be able to feel safe expressing themselves without the risk of being called whatever, dramatic, emotional, blah, blah, blah. Right.
All the things that were super popular in the 70s and 80s. That stuff's old school, like what I wouldn't give for an emotive man. And actually, I kind of have a really emotionally mature man.
John certainly did his healing work earlier than I did. I'll tell you that. And that has always pushed me and held me accountable for doing my own work, which has been incredibly helpful and meaningful.
So we're both kind of into personal growth. And that has always been a connector and an avenue for increased closeness in our relationship. So just make space, make some space to connect with men in a more emotional way, whether they're friends or you're dating or you have a brother or you have a husband or you have a dad.
Right. We can always make space to connect in a more emotional way. So I talked with Camille, who produces my podcast.
I'm very grateful for Camille and I'd like to give her a shout out because she is really good about, well, she helps me a ton with this. She does most of the back end work and she also suggests topics. And this is one that she suggested.
But her idea was also to give some resources. So Camille's going to put some resources in the show notes that we can just spread the love, spread the resources, spread the word that mental health is not a women's issue. Mental health is let me just repeat that mental health is not just a women's issue.
It's a human issue. So let's all get accountable and let's keep doing the work and just keep showing up every day all the time. Invite your favorite man to listen to this podcast.
There are therapists out there that literally specialize in helping men. So we love to work with men and we love to reduce stigma. So give us the opportunity to be our best selves and do our work.
OK, and we'll be here with you doing the work. Thanks for listening. Before you go, let me ask you a question.
Do you think about things way more than you think you should? Do you go over and over situations or conversations or conflicts in your mind to the point where it basically drives you bananas? Overthinking is a major complaint of people entering my therapy practice and my private group, actually. And it's not that complicated to get a handle on. It's just like any other personal growth topic, guys.
You got to just be willing to dig into it a little bit. When people don't get a handle on the overthinking habit, they tend to end up with an anxiety problem. So I created a super affordable online class that will teach you about how to get rid of all that thinking.
It's thirty seven dollars, you guys, and you know me, there will be homework. It's way worth the investment. It's just a complaint I hear a lot that has a relatively simple path to solution.
So I wanted to just share it in a simple method. It's on my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com. It's called The Overthinking Solution because you guys, some problems can actually be solved. Thanks so much for listening.
This podcast is not meant to be a substitute for therapy, but I hope it was super helpful for you in any case. I want to be part of some much needed change, but I'm going to need your help. Please subscribe and review the podcast, recommend it to your friends and family and share it on social media.
We're living in the digital age, people. Let's do some good where we can. All right.
Visit my website at RebeccaHunterMSW.com to have access to resources, videos and the show notes if that interests you. And again, I'm so grateful you're listening to Take Out Therapy. Thanks.
