Why We Need to Talk About Men’s Mental Health

Many men don’t grow up being shown how to recognise, name or talk about their emotions. So when life becomes challenging, there often isn’t a clear way to make sense of what’s happening or how to respond.

In this episode of The Choice Space, Dr Lee David speaks with Chris Hemmings, therapist and founder of Men’s Therapy Hub, about why men’s mental health can be harder to recognise, talk about and support.

They explore how men are often socialised to disconnect from emotions, making it harder to understand what’s going on or to ask for help. This can show up through behaviour rather than words – irritability, withdrawal, overworking or isolation – where something feels wrong but is hard to explain.

The conversation also reflects on the role of shame, both culturally and internally, and how this can delay men seeking support until things reach crisis point. Alongside this, they discuss how connection, curiosity and compassion – from friends, family and wider society – can begin to shift this.

Chris shares practical ways men can start to take small steps, including building awareness through behaviour, opening up gradually and finding spaces where it feels possible to be heard without judgement.

This is a thoughtful and grounded conversation about understanding men’s mental health with more compassion, and creating space for earlier support and connection.

Key moments

00:00 Feeling alone in struggle
01:37 Chris’s story and coping patterns
04:18 Why men suppress emotions
07:06 Strength vs flexibility
09:33 Crisis before seeking help
12:05 Supporting boys and listening
17:49 Why men come to therapy
23:37 Choice Pause – heavy moments
26:17 Behaviour as a signal
30:28 Reaching out for support

About the guest

Chris Hemmings is a therapist and coach who specialises in working with men. He’s the founder of Men’s Therapy Hub, a directory of male therapists for male clients. Before training to be a therapist he was a BBC journalist, writing and making documentaries about men, masculinity and mental health. He’s also the founder of M-Path, who go in to schools across the UK speaking to students about what it means to be a man.

Connect with Chris via his website, and Men’s therapy hub via Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn

No Man's an Island podcast

About the host

Dr Lee David is a GP, CBT therapist and author specialising in mental health and wellbeing. Lee has written many books on CBT, mindfulness and teen wellbeing, and speaks regularly at conferences and in the media. Away from work she enjoys running, hiking, singing in a choir and spending time outdoors with her family. You can find Lee through her website and on Instagram, TikTok (@dr.lee.david), Facebook and LinkedIn.  You can find more about her books, wellbeing courses and therapy here:  https://linktr.ee/dr.lee.david 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

These men feel like they're the only one. Nobody will understand me. Nobody else has been through what I've been through. And it's like, are you sure? And that doesn't mean that what you're experiencing isn't painful for difficult for you. It just means that there's a lot of people out there who are also struggling. Go and be brave. Go and take that first step. It doesn't make you any lesser. It doesn't make you weak. It makes you stronger in the long run. There are people around you who care about you who knew and who want to hear what you're going through. You just have to find the courage to do it. And that's where I call in that masculinity. Like, go and be brave. Be brave enough to dare to say, I'm actually not okay today. Can I tell you about it?

Dr Lee David 0:46

Welcome to the Choice Space Podcast. I'm Dr. Lee David, GP, CBT therapist and author. Today we're focusing on men's mental health and why it can be so hard to talk about it. Many men go through periods of stress, pressure, or low mood, but don't always have a way to put it into words or share with others. They may start to keep things in, focus more on work, become irritable, or pull away from important relationships. In this episode, we're going to start to explore what helps men start to recognise, talk more openly, and take steps that support their mental health and well-being. Today I'm joined by Chris Hemmings, a therapist and coach who specialises in working with men. Chris, welcome. Could you start by telling us a little about yourself and about your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a coach, and I focus and I only work with male clients. I've done that ever since I started out as a therapist. And something that I knew I was going to do from before I even started my therapeutic training, because, and I'll start here from the very beginning. In 2013, my father died, and in the wake of his death, I dealt with it in the way that I thought was expected of me as a man, which would be to pretend like I was okay, to keep calm and carry on. I was a BBC journalist at the time. I was going back to work. I was a mess, actually, though. And on the surface, I was trying to keep it all together. And the way that which I was doing that was every single night I was going out into Manchester, which is where I lived at the time, and I was just drinking alcohol and taking cocaine pretty much every night for about three months solid. Until some friends intervened. And it was at that point that I started to realize, well, hang on. I'm a privately educated, middle class English white guy. Like I'm supposed to be privileged, and I am, of course. And yet, despite all of that, here I was completely floundering. And it didn't make sense to me at first. And so, as a journalist, what I did was I started to research and I started to tell my own story and I started to uncover just how much socialization I had had in terms of suppressing my emotions. And actually, I didn't really have access to them at that time. So I started writing about it. I was freelancer, I wrote for The Independent. I made documentaries for the BBC that I produced and presented about men. And what I what I started to write about was issues that affect men and that men affect. I wrote a book about uh macho culture in 2017. I launched my business called Empath, which goes into businesses and schools to educate men around mental health and masculinity. And then I did my therapeutic training. And then once that finished, I launched uh Men's Therapy Hub, which is the UK's first, as far as I can see, directory of male therapists for men. We are a directory of male therapists who are specifically want to work with more male clients because men make up a minority on both sides of the sofa. And I'm really hoping to redress that.

Dr Lee David 3:47

Thank you so much for sharing that story. It's really powerful. And what I'm hearing there is how the coping strategies that men, it's just not normalized how to respond to to name emotion, to think about feelings, and to to know what to do with them, or even to have the language to discuss them. And that makes it very hard when then big things happen because it doesn't stop us feeling them, I'm I'm guessing, but it does make it harder to then respond to them in a helpful way.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Yeah, and I think what's interesting there is it doesn't stop us feeling them, no. But I think what we try to do as men, what we are kind of socialized, what we are trained into, is how to not feel them, or at least how to give the impression that we are not feeling them. So when I do mental health workshops and businesses, I make the joke at the start, which is I talk about what like uh mental resilience looks like as men, and they will talk about like stoicism and and sucking it up. And I'm like, well, that's what we think mental resilience is. And actually, this workshop is not about how to suppress our emotions because you're all experts at that already. This is about how can we recognize them? How can we understand what they are? And actually, the stoics are really saying, get to know your emotions, understand them, then you can choose whether or not in any given moment a response, sadness for grief, yeah, okay, that's a valid response, but I'm I'm angry because I'm grieving. Okay, maybe I can look at that in a different way. And it's about getting to know your emotions. And and the reason I called my first business empath was because what I realized was I'm a deeply empathetic human. It helps, you know, being a therapist. But from about the age of 14, 15 to my mid-20s, I just actively cut myself off from my empathy because I didn't think it was what the world wanted from me as a man. Of course, I realize now that that was misguided to a certain extent. Because I still think that sometimes as a man, when you are vulnerable, the world doesn't know what to do with you. The first ever article I wrote for The Independent was, Why do my male tears make so many people uncomfortable? And I still think that that happens today. I still think people are are not sure what to do. I mean, I'm I'm six foot three, very big former rugby player. People don't know what to do with me when I'm crying. People don't know what to do with me when I'm sad. They know what to do with me when I'm angry, which is to move away from me, but they don't know how to move towards me, maybe, when I'm really struggling. And so, yeah, it it's it's what do we do with those feelings as men? And how do we create containers for it? How structurally in society, how do we start to tell men, hey, do you know what? It's all right if you're sad. It's okay if you're angry. It's okay if you're confused, if you're in despair, like let let's let's create a space for that to exist. And I think that's the challenge that we face culturally.

Dr Lee David 6:28

Yeah, so it sounds like something about finding a new way to be able to express emotions that works for that individual man and to be able to make room for whatever the emotion is and to have that strength. I mean, it's a real sense of strength that we to be able to withstand emotions. I often think of it being like a strong tree with with with roots and a strong trunk. So we need to be very strong to cope when this wind or rain or you know, when the storms hit, and actually that sort of strength of being able to choose how do I deal with this in a way that works for me as that individual man. And it perhaps it's something that doesn't even exist at the moment in a lot of our cultural ways.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

It doesn't. And I would say that it's starting, and and I like the analogy that you said because I use this with my therapy clients, and I say to them, like, name me the strongest tree that you can think of. And they say, Oh, that 95% of them say an oak tree. And I say, Okay, so an oak tree is extremely strong, it's extremely rigid. What is the one thing about that oak tree that we know? Or we know that at a certain point the wind is going to be strong enough that that oak tree will fall. And when it does fall, it can't stand back up again. So what I say is, what if we can reframe it? And actually, we look at a palm tree. Because what a palm tree has done, a palm tree has learned that it needs to be flexible. And the strongest hurricane winds can come in. They can bend and flex almost at a point where they're lying flat. And then what do they do over the next few days? They stand themselves back up again. And actually, in Hurricane Alley in the US, because I've gone too deep into this, there is an oak tree that thrives there, but it's had to learn to be smaller and fatter and squatter to resist the wind. So if you're not allowing yourself to be flexible with what life throws at you, you have to make yourself extra rigid and lesser of yourself. So, can we create a space for you to be flexible? Can we create an environment in which it's okay for you on some days to lie down and say, I can't do today? And it's okay if you're doing that every day, then we have a problem. But some days we need to give ourselves the freedom as men, and this is not just men, this is all genders. We need to give ourselves the freedom to say, Do you know what? I can't do this now. I need calm, I need to relax, I need to lie down. This is too much, I'm overwhelmed. And if we can allow ourselves to do that, we create an environment in which long term we're going to be more resilient. And short term, it might not seem that way. And the problem culturally with men is that for a lot of men, that is perceived as weakness, that's perceived as a failure. And so we just pretend like we're fine until we have a breakdown. And actually, most men don't come to therapy until they're at a point of crisis. And I see that play out with my clients.

Dr Lee David 9:06

Yeah, and I we would see that too in in the service that I work for, that often people are presenting when things have become really, really difficult. And at that point, lots of significant change has to be made, and it takes a lot of effort and time. I I do you think sometimes for some men it's necessary to get to that point? Is there a way for people to start to recognize things a bit earlier in the trajectory so that things aren't getting to that crisis point?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

You have to think about the socialization that men experience and also the environment in which most of us as men have been brought up, which would be that if all of the men around us have been trained in this same way to not express our feelings, to keep it bottled up. So we are all responsible for this. So then as men, we are brought up in a culture in which we are encouraged not to show feelings. What we do know is that in male socialization, anybody who starts to show that again is mocked and shamed for being weak, for being feminine, for being gay, which is also akin to being female for some reason, right? And there is nothing worse than a young boy than being described as a girl. So, first of all, what are we teaching boys about what it means to be a girl, first of all? But also, we are saying that to have emotions is female. Well, to have emotions is human. So what we need to do, we need to kind of rewrite the script. We need to start to encourage young boys from an early age to recognize that they are complex emotional creatures, to understand their feelings, not to give into emotion all the time, but to understand them in the way that we teach young girls to understand them, which is to say that you are whole and that your pain is a part of who you are as a human. It's gonna take a long time for us to unpick and undo the damage, because I do think it's damage, of generations' worth of programming that has told men that they are not allowed to be emotional.

Dr Lee David 11:04

Yeah, so it's a societal issue as much as it is a therapy issue, is what I'm hearing. It's a lot of complexity. And so thinking as a parent and as a parent of a son, then it makes me start to think about how we as a society are starting to support boys and young men to understand, to recognise their emotions in healthy ways that enable them to recognise but have that flex that you talked about, where they're not snapping like a very dry stick, but they are able to flex like that palm tree and cope with different circumstances and disappointment and hurt, and then all the distress that happens at that period of life when it's really quite an intense time for everybody, adolescents, for example, and is a very difficult period of life. So, what are your thoughts? What what advice would you give to families through your experience, both as a therapist, also as a journalist, in your kind of wider view on the world? What can we be doing?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

The thing that we are doing right now, which is definitely not helping, is there seems to be a mass demonization of men. You mentioned adolescence there, there was the TV show Adolescence, right? People seem to forget that that wasn't a documentary, that was fiction. And much of what that boy experienced in that program was not what 99.999% of boys experience. And yet then what happens is all boys are painted as problematic, as dangerous, and it simply isn't true. And actually, there's just been some new research come out that has shown that 73%, I think, or very high percentage of boys have a positive relationship to women and girls. But a very small and diminishing percentage of girls actually think positive positively of men and boys. So we're living in a culture right now where there is a polarization between boys and girls, between men and women. And men are being made to feel a lot like they are the bad guy. Like they are they are automatically dangerous until they prove otherwise, which I understand, but imagine what that feels like to a man who has never hurt anybody and yet they're being painted as such. And young boys are picking up on that message. And what we're what we're not doing is we're not talking to young boys compassionately. We're not expressing understanding and sympathy for or empathy even for their challenges in life right now, particularly for like working class men and boys who it's becoming increasingly difficult to survive in this world financially. The guarantee of a job that was there 20, 30 years ago has disappeared. So, what I what I really want us to do culturally is to actually speak to young boys and ask them what they really think about feminism one-on-one. Ask them what they really think about equality, ask them what they really think about what it means to be a man. Ask them what they really think about some of these grifters online because most boys, they they're not interested in Andrew Tate. They understand that he's a bit of an idiot, but a small percentage really are into him. And you only need a small percentage of billions of people, and that makes him a lot of money. So he gets a lot more clout than actually he has. And so, young boys, what they really crave, and and we know this from our work in Empath, and I see the other amazing organizations that go into schools. Boys crave being listened to. They crave being seen, they crave being understood. So speak to your boys, and when they do vocalize something that might be difficult, that might be challenging, don't start lambasting them and shaming them. Be curious. Empathy before reason. That's what my colleague Will at Empath came up with, right? Empathy before reason. Can we understand where they're coming from? Can we understand what it's like? I'm nearly 40. I don't know what it's like to be a 15-year-old now. Very difficult, I would imagine. So can we find out what's actually going on with them and meet them with that compassion? Because that's what the boys are really missing.

Dr Lee David 14:54

So I'm just hearing there something really powerful about the importance of connection and of listening, of empathy, of creating a compassionate understanding of another person who may be very different to us, whether whatever our gender is, actually, it's likely if we're certainly an adult, we're not going to know what it feels like to be in the shoes of a young 15-year-old boy, for example. And so actually, we all need to have that curiosity, not step into judgment, assumptions based on media, based on our own experiences, what we've read in the newspaper or what documentaries we've seen, but actually slow down, pause, regulate ourselves because sometimes there's fear. I speak to a lot of parents who get quite fearful about the risks. And so we may need to take a breath and settle ourselves so that we're able to then hear what that person is really saying, that young that young man is saying, and absorb it and then respond in a way that enables them to connect with us. Because I'm, I can't help but think that the more connected we are, the more influence we'll have, the more impact we'll be able to have. And it's a two-way thing. Like I like to be influenced by my children as much as influence them directly. It's like a we learn from one another, I think. Because you can't shame people out of difficult behavior. That never works, does it?

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Shame is an anathema to change. Shame is, and in fact, it's it's what I say to my clients at the very start, after the end of my first therapy session, I say to them, your homework is to go for a walk, sit on a park bench, just look at a tree, be present. I'm going to tap into the sense of pride that you are doing this work. Because that pride is going to help you overcome the feelings of shame for the fact that you had to go to therapy because you're a man. So anything we can do to remove shame, and unfortunately, that's what a lot of boys are feeling right now. A few years ago, I had a teacher put a hand up and say, if you're saying that the boys aren't responsible for how they behave, then but then how do we hold them accountable? And I was like, the thing is, if 14-year-old boys are behaving in certain ways, we need to look at the culture around those boys. Yes, we need to speak to the boys about their behavior and try to get it to change, but they're not really to blame for the way that they think. So can we create a space for boys where actually we say to them, you know what? I'm willing to hear what you have to say. And no matter what you say, I'm not going to shame you for it. I want to create a space where you can feel like you can say what you want and you'll be challenged. So it's can we meet each other with with more compassion? And I just think that's what's missing culturally right now. And that's what young boys want. They actually just want to be heard and not just judged and belittled for being who they are.

Dr Lee David 17:37

And if we move to your work as a therapist, what are the commonest reasons that men are coming to see you? What what kind of issues are they experiencing?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

It's an interesting question because, of course, every client has their own nuanced challenges. The vast majority of the men that I see are struggling because they they literally don't know how to understand what it is they're experiencing. They don't have the language. There is uh so there is a a clinical term called alexothymia, right? And alexothymia is the clinical inability to verbalize one's emotions. Now, there is no real difference between the genders on that. But then there's this guy in the US called uh Ronald Levant, former head of the uh American Psychological Association, came up with this idea of normalized male alexothymia. So this is not a clinical condition, this is a societally induced condition. And that's what I see most of all. It's guys who are just like, I'm I'm in conflict with my partner and I don't know how to be, I don't know how to regulate myself, I don't know how to speak what it is I'm experiencing. They are feeling lonely and they don't know how to reach out to people, they don't know what to say, they don't know what to do. And I think about if you've if you were born, and from the moment that you were born, you have been discouraged into emoting, and then suddenly you're in a relationship 25 years later, and you've got your partner saying, I need you to be emotional with me. Well, how? I can't do that. And I say to my clients, because uh a way to try to decouple them from the shame, is I say to them, that would be the equivalent of me giving you a trombone and saying, Play me a jazz solo. Can you do it? No, well, why not? Well, no one's ever taught me how, right? So you don't feel shame about not being able to play a jazz solo, but then what we're expecting from men is well, you and your mates just go and start up a jazz band together. But what? Well, I don't have the skill. So a lot of my work, particularly in the early days of therapeutic work with these guys, is just like, hey, it's not your fault that you don't know how to do this. Because whether they're 15-year-olds or 50-year-old CEOs, they all have this idea of, oh, I should be able to do this. And that should is so critical, self-critical. But you how could you? No one's ever shown you how. Because that's where I'll go. Like, I know, I know you think I'm good at this now, and I am quite good at this now, but when I first started out, I also didn't know how to do it. And someone helped me and taught me how to do it. So, like, I'm just passing that on, all right? So let's just do that together, shall we? Remove the shame. And and also, like, it would be weird if you could do this based on what you've told me about your life. Or, you know, somebody who grew up with an abusive father and they have anger issues. Well, it it would be weird if you didn't have anger issues, you know. Actually, can we normalize the fact that you have that? Not to say that we want to keep you angry, but let's talk about the fact that it's absolutely reasonable that you are an angry person based on your experiences. The question the question was, what do men come with? All of the issues that you will have anybody presenting with the added problem of not knowing, not knowing how to engage with them, not even knowing where to start. It's I don't know what an emotion even is. So can we can we start from there?

Dr Lee David 20:41

So it it sounds like there's there's a lot of layers there, and actually it it speaks to why it takes men perhaps longer to then seek support, because it may not be easy to understand even what it is they're going through from what you're describing, and then lacking the tools. But it what I'm really hearing there is again coming back to compassionate acceptance, just being really accepting of this is the me that I'm I am, and there are multiple factors why I've developed in this way, and most of them were outside of my control. Self-blame is a coping strategy we sometimes use because it helps us feel a bit more powerful. Because actually, if I blame myself, maybe I can fix it. But I think blame keeps us feeling small. It's back to the shame thing. We're trying to shame ourselves out of a behaviour, and I think shame, shaming ourselves for lacking emotion is is really unhelpful because we need to feel safe to express emotion, don't we? So I think the idea of shame helping with that feels like that would actually be quite counterproductive.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Particularly for a man who is constantly seeking evidence of the bias he already holds, that the people around me don't know how to deal with my emotions. So, as a therapist, if a guy comes in and I give him any suggestion that his hurt, his pain is going to be something difficult for me to hold, he's gonna run a mile. Because a lot of them Be like, oh, sorry, this is this must be really hard for you. This is heavy. And I'm like, first I make a joke, like, hey, like, first of all, you're paying me, right? So that's the first thing. Secondly, this is my job. And you can be as sad or as hurt or as angry as you want here. And I and I'm gonna be all right. And you need to start to trust that. And I know that you're not gonna trust that from the beginning, but I'm gonna continually try to prove that to you. And over time, this will come. But then I have to say to guys, like, and you can't win at therapy. This is not a sprint race. In fact, it's not a race of any kind. You're not in competition with anybody. This takes time. And it takes a long time. Imagine coming into a space where somebody like me is encouraging you to be emotional and you literally don't know how to do it. And at the same time, you're also pressuring yourself to try and be really good at this. Again, you're just setting yourself up to fail. So let's create a container for you to be incompetent. And there's going to be no judgment of the fact that you're incompetent at this one thing. And that's okay. Because in fact, I'll remind them it says on my bio, I specialise in working with men who come to therapy for the first time and who don't know what they're doing when they get there. That's my speciality. So come on, man, let's do it together.

Dr Lee David 23:14

I think that sounds like such a welcoming space. And letting go of that expectation feels like that would actually be a therapeutic intervention in its own right, a bit of self-acceptance, which feels really, really important, even in how you start the therapy. So it feels like it's being woven in right from the very beginning. This is the choice pause, a short tool you'll hear in every episode. Each time it offers a different way to pause, notice what's happening, and choose your next step. Today is a pause for when things feel heavy, even if we're not quite sure why. Take a slow breath in and a longer breath out. Let your shoulders hang down and let go of any tension or clenching in your jaw. Allow your hands to rest where they are. Sometimes brings periods where things feel like a lot to carry. There may be pressure, uncertainty, responsibility, or worry. For a moment, see if you can pause and sit with those rather than pushing them away. Take another slow breath and allow your attention to widen. Notice your feet on the floor, maybe wriggle your toes. The support beneath you where you're sitting, the feeling as the breath leaves your body. Quietly say to yourself, this is a heavy moment. It feels hard. You don't have to solve everything right away. You're just giving yourself a moment to pause, be steady, and find your strength. Take one more slow breath and then ask yourself, what could help a little as my next step? It might be stepping out and getting some fresh air and a change of scene. It might be moving your body in some way, sending a message to someone you trust, or letting someone know how you're doing. Even when things feel heavy, you don't have to carry everything on your own. Sometimes a small step or a moment of connection can begin to lighten the load. I'm just thinking about men who may be listening and who might struggle with that alexithymia that you're talking about, where actually it's very difficult to name emotions, to recognise emotions, to feel emotions directly. Sometimes I might think that behavioural signs are easier to pick up than emotions when people find emotions a bit uncomfortable or they're not used to them. They can look for habits that might be more unhelpful or a little bit self-destructive. And so I'm wondering if you have noticed that there's any patterns that may sometimes be a clue that maybe there's some emotions underneath the surface, like an iceberg, the tip that's showing.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

And you you touched on it uh in your in your intro, and it just made me think of the amount of externalizing behaviors. So um addiction, gambling, anger, and violence. These are all things that men are much more likely to express and engage in. So three times more likely to develop a drug and alcohol addiction, eight times more likely to develop a gambling addiction, men are much more likely to experience and perpetrate violence. And what we don't really do as a society is we don't look at that and think, well, that is a maladaptive coping strategy. That is a coping strategy that you are using to cover something else. If you're sitting at home all day and you're gaming and you're isolating, that's also something to look out for. If you are overworking, a lot of men will work and work and work and work and work because it's where they can feel worth to the point where they're burnt out. And I've worked with some extremely wealthy clients, and it's like, you know what, you work for yourself, you earn half a million quid a year. And have you ever thought about just going picking your daughter up from school? Have you ever thought about going down to four days a week? And that they just can't see that, right? Because it's it's it's not baked into the culture. So there's so many ways men externalize these behaviors, and we don't see them as flags to look at, right? We don't see them as, like you say, the little bit of iceberg that's pointing out of the surface. Because underneath there is a man who's desperately struggling. Loneliness in men is increasing and increasing and increasing. And we don't say, well, actually, why is that man isolating? What is he isolating from? What is he scared of out in the world? What's happened to him that means that he doesn't feel like the world wants to engage with him? And yeah, it's the same with pression and anxiety in men, and there's a great work by a woman called uh Dr. Krista Fisher in America in Australia. A lot of these behaviors in men will come out with anger and frustration, over exercising, with working too hard. And it and it is about anything to cover up because it goes back to that shame. If you can see that I'm at work every day, I must be okay. We try to hide it in any way we can and we try to cover our tracks. And we need to start trying to be more aware of subtle changes in our mates. Is your mate being a little quieter than usual? Is he not coming hanging out with you as much? Is he being louder than usual? Is he shouting a lot more? Is he going out and all he's interested in is trying to hook up with as many women as possible? Like, is something changing in his behavior? Because usually that's a sign that something is changing internally.

Dr Lee David 28:44

Yeah, so there's there's a few things that stand out to me there. With the, you know, noticing, you know, our mates, the people around us, our family, then it's asking, how are you doing? And I really like that the thing of asking twice, how are you doing? So how are you doing? And then, but how are you doing really? Because the the first one, people just give a social response. Yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, mate, yeah, I'm fine. And then the second one, when you say, but really, it signals that you actually want to know what the answer is. And I think it it's giving the opportunity, it's opening a door. Now, people may or may not want to step through it at that point, but it might be that, well, if you want to chat, you know, I'm here, you know, just send me a text, just let me know if you you want to catch up. And so it doesn't mean you've got to push people to tell you stuff, but I think creating that opportunity to share something when someone feels ready feels really important. And I think the other thing I just wanted to highlight, and I know you'll be very aware of this, but I think it's important to say how significant it is to recognise the impact of mental health on men. And one of the ways that that shows is that increased risk of completed suicide in men, and and that is a very difficult topic, and I realise it can be very sugaring for people to hear that, and people can be affected by suicide in many ways, and it's incredibly distressing for families and for for those around. So just really wanted to say if you are concerned about your own mental health, if you're concerned that you're struggling and you're struggling to talk about it, please do seek help because there are ways to access support, and you don't have to be good at talking about it to get that support. It it's something that can be learnt. And the very first step is to just start to make some contact to say, actually, this isn't going all right. There's something I need to do here. I'm not okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

And I would I would add to your plea to the men listening that I spoke for our podcast, which is called No Man's An Island, I spoke to Eleanor Donohue, who runs James's Place. And James's Place is a charity where men who are in suicidal crisis go for emergency care, basically. And she said the single biggest thing, single biggest hurdle that anybody in in that service has to overcome is that most men who come will say, I shouldn't be here. Somebody else is more worthy of this care than me. And that makes me feel so sad just even thinking about that. Because I mean, first of all, dude, that service is literally set up for you. Like you're there because you need it. But it speaks so much to the depth that men feel like I don't want to be a burden to people around me. If I'm struggling as a man, then I'm a failure as a man. If you go to your mates and you're really struggling, you're not a burden. If you call the Samaritans, if you come and speak to a therapist, you're not a burden. People want to know what's going on with you. If your mate came to you and told you he was really struggling, you wouldn't think he was a burden to you. But we have this like compassion paradox where we don't do that for other people. And that's such a big challenge that men face, which is why I say in my workshops, like we need to take this idea of masculinity because masculinity is not toxic. Masculinity is this wonderful, beautiful, like powerful energy. And I wish it wasn't masculine and feminine. I wish we had other words. I wish it was zigg and zog. It would be much less contentious. But masculinity is about being courageous, it's about being assertive, it's about being brave, it's about being strong. Do you know what? The single bravest thing you'll ever do in your life is put your hand up and say, I need help. I spoke to a firefighter recently at a conference that I was speaking at. And in front of everybody, I said, Hey, you're from the London Fire Brigade. He's like, Yeah. I was like, You'd rather run into a burning building than tell your mate you're struggling, wouldn't you? And he was just like, Yeah. I'm like, right, exactly. Exactly. Like the level of courage it takes. And that's why I say to my clients when they come in. I'm like, you are so brave for being here today. Well done for making it every time you come. Well done. Because that takes courage to keep coming back. Because I'm going to annoy you and ask you loads of challenging questions. And you know that, and you're still here. So you're way stronger than you think you are. And to anybody who's struggling, you're stronger than you think you are. And it's not weakness to ask for help, it's strength.

Dr Lee David 32:53

One of the things I loved when we were first talking about um this episode, you were talking about the idea of for ourselves learning to be a compassionate dad, a compassionate father. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means and why it feels important?

SPEAKER_01 33:07

So this is a term that my supervisor explained to me. I said to my supervisor one time, I was like, I feel like with client X, I feel like sometimes I'm like the dad that he needed. And it feels weird for me because I'm in my mid-30s and I'm not a father myself. And he was like, Yeah, but do you know what, Chris? He said, What what I get the sense you do really well is you do this idea of being the compassionate dad. And I was like, tell me more. And he's like, the compassionate dad is that is that father figure that actually many of us wanted as a kid, which is, and I think are some of the best sports coaches I ever had. When I was struggling, they would come to me, they'd put their arm around me and go, Hey, Chris, are you okay? Like, what's going on? Like you seem to be struggling with this, or you're not having a good game. Like, are you feeling okay? Like, what sometimes, if I'm being lazy, he would be like, Chris, get off the floor and run after the ball. Oh, yeah, okay, right. So it's that with my clients, I feel like I need to sometimes be like, hey, you can do this. I know this is hard, and I know you are struggling because you've explained it to me, but I believe in you and I know that you can do it. Or if you're sitting around and you're you're unemployed and you just can't be bothered, it's like, hey, come on, man, no one's gonna do this for you. Like, I wish I could do it for you. I wish I could flip a switch to give you motivation. You're gonna have to find it in yourself, and nobody is gonna do it for you. And it's that it's that fatherly voice, which doesn't come with judgment and shame. It comes with encouragement and compassion, but also like a kick up the arse every now and then. Because that's important, right? That's really important. Some of us we need a kick up the arse every now and then.

Dr Lee David 34:48

I love that idea, and it strikes me that you will model that voice and that over time men will start to embody that voice and be that for themselves and learn how to be that compassionate but strong. So I'm really hearing strength coming through there, but also that kindness and and also thinking about what do I want to get done and how do I do it. So it's really forward, it's quite movement focused. It's not just sitting down and letting things happen to me. It's taking power, I think.

SPEAKER_01 35:19

And I think what a lot of my male clients who've come to me having already had therapy before, is and what they've recognized was that for the first many sessions, it was this really lovely, like cozy arm round the shoulder, which was amazing because they've never experienced that before. But then it's like the therapist forgets that these guys have been socialized male, and as men, we're used to being spoken to in a certain way, which is kind of direct and with a bit of force sometimes, and it actually speaks to like a core part of us because sometimes we need our parents to give us the encouragement to go and climb on the climbing frame. Yeah, you might fall and break your arm, but you probably won't. Go and climb on it. You can do it. You can go and do it, you can do it, go and do it. Go and have that difficult conversation with your partner that you've been putting off now for three weeks. Go and do it. That's your homework. Go and do it.

Dr Lee David 36:09

I love that idea about getting out there in the world, a bit of directness, but but again, done in that compassionate dad way where it's kind, it's caring, but actually we still need to do stuff, and some of that stuff is difficult. And I think doing stuff outside, you know, our norm is much harder than doing what we've always done. So actually, it will take that energy and it will take a bit of a kick, probably, to do something different, but it needs to be a kind of a loving kick, if we like. Yeah, yeah. Um, so just to finish, and I'm I'm aware you'll you'll have lots of strategies you'll use, and they'll be very individual. Starting to think about some initial steps that men might start to take maybe before they reach the point of needing therapy to actually start to improve well-being so that they're moving themselves, giving them themselves that kindness kick. What should they be kicking themselves to be doing more of, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Yeah, and I'm gonna caveat this by saying that I'm a massive hypocrite and I don't do these things myself, but I try to, right? Because we're all hypocrites. So the first thing is 20 minutes every day, something for your body or something for your mind. That is really important. Whatever it might be, journaling, go for a walk, go for a run, cycle. I I I like to go and swim in the freezing cold sea. Like something 20 minutes every day is gonna revolutionize yourself. Second thing is you would be shocked if you were to realize how many of your friends around you were struggling. I can't tell you how many clients I've had who've finally come clean to their mates that they're in therapy. And it turns out two or three of them are either in it right now or have already done it. And they've never spoken about it before. Because what we hear a lot is that these men feel like they're the only one. Nobody will understand me. Nobody else has been through what I've been through. And it's like, are you sure? There's billions of humans on this planet. There isn't really much unique experience left, and that doesn't mean that what you're experiencing isn't painful for difficult for you. It just means that there's a lot of people out there who are also struggling. There are so many organizations, there are so many men. Go to Andy's Man Club, Talk Club, Proper Blokes Club, just Google men's groups, right? Men's sheds, no matter what your age. There are so many organizations out there who are doing the most magic, like I'm not religious, but the Lord's work, whoever the Lord might be, which is creating a space for men to come and just be themselves and to chat and to have a laugh and not be too serious about it. You can talk about your mental health and you can laugh about how absurd it is. You can laugh about it with your friends, but also take it seriously at the same time. Go and be brave. Go and take that first step. There always has to be in a friendship group, a male friendship group, that has to be the first one. I was the first one in our group of friends, the first one who dares to say, Do you know what? I'm not okay. I need to talk about it. It doesn't make you any lesser, it doesn't make you weak. It makes you stronger in the long run. And it actually what it does is it makes you better friends. There are people around you who care about you who knew and who want to hear what you're going through. You just have to find the courage to do it. And that's where I call in that masculinity. It's like, go and be brave. Be brave enough to dare to say, I'm actually not okay today. Can I tell you about it? And do it in whatever way you can. And the first time, if it's just I'm not okay, but I don't want to talk about it, at least you said you're not okay. Making those, it's it's it's incremental steps and it's difficult and it's gonna be difficult and tough, is what I say to that. It's gonna be difficult. You have to go and do it. No one's gonna do it for you.

Dr Lee David 39:38

Yeah, so it's having those conversations, and I think, like you say, not feeling like you've got to jump straight into sharing stuff we're not comfortable, that's too much, but just toe in the water. It can just be, as you say, I'm not okay, had a rough week, and that could be enough. But if that is something you've never said before, then that's still a win. And so it's trying to see that as a progress as a successful outcome, is just to literally start. And then I would add on that, ask the other person how they're doing, because it might be that you inspire them to share something about themselves that actually they've been waiting for somebody to ask about for a really long time and nobody's done it. And so suddenly you're both able to connect a bit more, you can be a safe space for them, and that can give that sense of strength in numbers, like you were talking about earlier. It's not just me. Actually, we're all struggling in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

And there are so many places where people are ready to engage with the fact that you're struggling. I mentioned all those organizations, of course, men's therapy hub is full of men who want to work with you specifically because you're male. We're not saying that men should have a male therapist, but we're saying here's a load of men that want to work with you because you're a man, because actually, all of us, we get it. Like we were all at one point in the position that you're in now. So it is possible. You just have to try and do it. You just have to go for it. And it will be difficult at first, and that's part of the deal.

Dr Lee David 41:06

Thank you so much. It's been such an interesting conversation. Thanks for listening to the Choice Space podcast. I hope this conversation has offered a little room to pause, breathe, and choose your next step. We've linked all the ways you can connect with Chris and find the men's therapy hub in the show notes. If today's episode has been helpful, you can download it, follow the podcast, and please share with anyone that you think might value the conversation as well. Please also leave a rating or review on whatever platform you listen on. It really does help people find the show.