"I don't want to talk about it"

When I was about 12, I got hit by a car coming back from the mosque. I ran across the road without looking. I remember screaming from the shock, but I didn't cry. The next day I had people coming to me as I was hobbling around in school and asking me how I was. I even had my food tech teacher ask me "What happened to you?", I told her I got hit by a car. She gasped, but I assured her I was okay as I casually limped out of class feeling like Superman. 

I remember the people who witnessed the accident saying:

"He's tough, he didn't cry"

And I remember feeling like I was bulletproof. 

Why did it matter that I didn't cry? Who knows. But I remember how much them saying that I didn't cry meant to me. Something bad happened to me, it could have been life-changing but I survived. And more importantly, I didn't show weakness. 

This was something I was happy to talk about - almost wanting others to ask because it showed the toughness and resilience that boys want to radiate amongst their peers.

However, these incidents are far and few between. The majority of the time boys will go through early life often saying: 

"I don't want to talk about it"

Growing up this was an ever-common phrase, either implicitly stated or expressed through an action of avoidance.

The subject matter was changed or you'd pretend you didn't hear the person asking the question you were expected to respond to. Anything that made boys feel uncomfortable was avoided entirely because you didn't want to be seen as weak. And so growing up we never learned how to deal with our emotions. In any way, let alone a healthy way. The only acceptable emotion that could be shown amongst boys (especially your friends) was anger. Crying was never tolerated. You'd be considered unreliable. Pathetic. Weak. 

Over recent years there has been an attempt to remove or lessen the stigma around men seeking help for their mental health issues through therapy and how it is okay for men to feel vulnerable, yet men are still not responding to it. Those same boys who didn't want to talk about it grew into the men of today who now don't.

In the UK the biggest killer of men under 45 are themselves [1]

There is something about men not wanting to open up that is quite hard to pin down. Maybe it has something to do with feeling exposed, almost naked. Men want to feel strong not weak, powerful not vulnerable. Men don't want to feel like they are being held hostage to the thoughts and emotions expressed. Don't want to be mocked for them. If even a small portion of their thoughts were to be exposed, a man may never fully recover parts of himself.

So on one hand men not wanting to expose their innermost selves to the world is understandable. On the other hand, the repercussions of not dealing with them in a healthy manner can cause you issues later on in life, which we are now finding out.

We have an emerging red pill movement that tells men that if they speak about their emotions, they cease to be men. So what are otherwise natural emotions, men are now told to push them deep down inside to not let the world know of them. Simultaneously there is a societal push for men to openly talk about their emotions and feelings because that has worked wonders for women. And because we are equal, it should also work for men. 

Kinda ... but no. Because men and women aren't the same. We are not equal. We don't process emotions the same, we don't express emotions the same. So why would the solutions to our problems be the same?

There is some evidence that men and women deal with stress in different ways; for example, a meta-analysis found that women prefer to focus on emotions as a coping strategy more than men do [2]

So … what is a man to do? Get therapy.

Therapy can open up avenues that you had otherwise thought were closed off to you, or worse didn’t even know they existed. You can leave the therapy room with a sense of purpose and direction, and leave feeling strong and powerful by taking a pragmatic approach with the ever so slight caveat of 'as long as you put in the time and work on yourself'. Exploring your emotions in therapy is something that'll always be on the table for you should you so choose. But that doesn't have to be all that is available to you as a man.

As therapy for men doesn't have to be how therapy is for women.

[1]  Male suicide: 'His death was the missing piece of the jigsaw' - BBC News

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318320520_Gender_differences_in_preferences_for_psychological_treatment_coping_strategies_and_triggers_to_help-seeking