Men's Health Awareness Week

IF, however, you can cope with things, and feel so inclined, then read on. I’ve talked before about Mental Health but this time I’m going to get a lot more personal and tell you a little bit about the challenges I’m currently having with my own wellbeing. 

I grew up in an era when men didn’t talk about emotions or issues, they just absorbed everything and dealt with it. Men were “Strong”. Men didn’t show emotions. That for me was the norm. There are several events that have happened in my life that that helped ingrain this thinking in me quite deeply. I won’t go in to all of them, but here’s a few of them….I was put up for adoption at a young age and placed in a children’s home (which I don’t really remember but I suspect back in the 70s they weren’t the greatest of places!) and then, once I was placed with my adoptive family (who were amazing), my new Dad died in front of me when I was still young (8ish) and so I took over the role of being the “strong man” despite my young age. My mum tried to protect me from this, but I still took this role on and didn’t talk about my issues or worries because I knew she was grieving and had her own stuff going on. As a consequence, I never spoke to her about MY feelings or how I was doing. I went to a prestigious private school but as the “poor kid” (mum struggled to pay the fees on a single wage) I was bullied mercilessly. Day in and day out I was mocked, jeered at and generally made to feel like a second-class citizen. 

I couldn’t tell anyone though as I was the “Strong” man. 

As I’ve gone through my adult life (Uni, Job, parenthood etc) I’ve maintained this same ethos and not wanted to “burden” anyone with my woes – everyone has their own story to live with ups and downs, and we’re all just side characters to everyone else - why would they want to hear about my problems? And so, I’ve always just dealt with things that came along on my own. I didn’t even involve my family as I didn’t want to “burden” them with my problems (I’ll come back to that word – burden – later), so for me to have the realisation that I wasn’t coping was a real shock. At first, I didn’t see it going wrong, I just thought that with the stresses of everyday life, things were just slightly worse at the moment and that they’d improve. I tried to rationalise things and so thought it was issues with my relationship, my friends had changed, we’d grown apart, career stresses from having to be responsible for everyone in the team and a whole raft of other excuses. The point is that I didn’t for one minute think that I could be the issue.

NOW however I know that this was all taking its toll on me. 

I had wrongly assumed that things would improve if I just got on with, but they didn’t, and over a period of approx. 2 years things got worse and worse until eventually I found myself sitting on a bridge in Manchester staring at the water and contemplating throwing myself in. I can still clearly remember the emotions bouncing around in my head and the thoughts that had driven me to that point. The reason I didn’t jump? Bird poo. I remember looking down and seeing a massive amount of bird poo on a ledge on the bridge which turned my stomach and made me think “I can’t do it here”. This should give you an indication of how messed up people can be!

If I’m honest, the thought still bubbles along under the surface and occasionally push themselves to the forefront of my thoughts, but at the time everything felt out of sync and I couldn’t understand what was going on in my head – why things felt so disconnected and why I felt so alone. I just thought that this was the easiest way to solve things as I felt I was a “BURDEN” and that for the good of everyone around me it would be easier if I just wasn’t there, as my moods and attitudes, although I played the part outwardly so no one would know, were beginning to impact those around me despite my best efforts to hide them. 

Here we are, a few months down the line and I’m getting Counselling, which is helping me put things in focus – I’m still a long way off feeling “right” (I’ll leave the debate over if that’s the correct word or not till another day!) but at least I’m taking action. I was lucky in that I recognised that things were all discombobulated and that I wasn’t happy. Some men don’t, and they end up on the bridge without the saviour of bird poo. 

We don’t need to be “Strong Men” anymore. We have support. We can talk, if not to each other, to professionals. There’s always someone there. We just need to talk. You can even reach out to me if you’re struggling – I wouldn’t want to think that anyone is going through what I’ve been through in the past two years.

If you’ve made it this far through the post then I strongly advise you to take the actions I stated at the start of this….check in with your male friends and family, tell them that “you get it”, give them a hug, offer to go for a drink with them, ask if everything is ok, buy them a coffee….Don’t just assume that because someone close to you SEEMS ok, that they are. 

The point I guess I’m getting at is DO SOMETHING. Anything. Just do it NOW. Don’t do nothing.