I find myself becoming increasingly upset with each story I read ,or that is relayed to me, regarding another male suicide victim. A couple of months ago, a good friend of mine told me how his step brother committed suicide out of the blue at the age of 45. On the surface, he seemed to have a life of abundance and happiness. He was financially secure with a good job, a wife and family that loved him and plenty of holidays abroad each year. Basically, he sounded like he had a lot in common with many men who have reached middle age in the west. Sadly, though, it wasn't just these surface things that he had in common with these men of a similar age. Just from speaking to my friend, it was clear that he was keeping a lot of his internal angst, strife and pain bottled up inside of him, not letting enough of it out to relieve the deep hurt and pain that was clearly eating away at him. While I do not pretend to have known him in any meaningful way - we met at my friend's wedding and shared a cab ride back to the hotel together - I can say that he was clearly in a lot of pain. Nobody commits suicide unless they are in a high degree of emotional (and sometimes physical) pain. What troubles me, is that this pain can be dealt with. But it requires the person to put their hand up and admit they need help in the first place. This is something I believe that men find especially hard to do.
So why is that? Why do men find it so difficult to ask for help? Well, we as a culture in the west seem to see it as a sign of weakness. I am not saying this idea is endemic in all parts of society but, when you consider how much of our values as individuals is handed down to us by generations of family members, then you can see why, for some vulnerable individuals, this can be a real problem. First of all, there is a culture in the UK that still persists to this day that used to be called "the stiff upper lip". It is the stupid, ingrained idea that men should put up and shut up. If you've got personal problems, are depressed or are struggling with how to express or handle the intense emotional difficulties you're experiencing, then the answer in this case seems to be - suck it up. Which basically equates to, stop complaining and get on with your life. This pathetic and deeply damaging attitude is synonymous with that hopelessly patronising platitude "Cheer Up! It might never happen". I don't know about you but anyone who has ever said that to me I have always wanted to universally punch into next week.
And that's coming from someone who is pretty much a pacifist.
This "Stiff Upper Lip" mentality is one of those that seems to have been accepted by large swathes of families who have passed it on as a key life value to their children, effectively damaging them by proxy emotionally. Why? Well, because you don't need to be a scientist or a doctor to know that if you constantly bottle up your emotions, especially feelings of sadness and anger, they are known to be contributing factors to crippling emotional and (sometimes) physical illnesses. Some cancers, for instance, are increasingly thought to be a product of repressed anger or emotional pain in more enlightened medical circles.
We are, each of us, different as individuals. While some may be able to cope with emotional difficulty because they have a strong, resilient character and the ability to switch off emotionally when they need to, others of us are not made this way and will be affected by their life experiences in a decidedly profound manner.
I think one of the saddest aspects of suicide that I hear with regards to male victims is this idea that they don't share how they are really feeling inside because they don't think they will be properly listened to or understood. If you join this together with the above mentioned cultural and generational aspects, as well as the often prevailing notion that men should always be the strong ones, then we are left with a depressingly dark picture of why so many men commit suicide. However, it really doesn't have to be this way.
When I was facing profound difficulty in my own life because of problems relating to addiction, I remember feeling that I didn't really want to reach out and ask for help - partly because I felt I was being a burden due to the nature of my own problem feeling self inflicted, but also because I was acutely aware of how I shouldn't have to ask for help as a man. Fortunately, I chose to listen to those people around me who showed me that I did deserve to receive help. We sometimes trip up as human beings and, when we do, we are fortunate that, in the wealthier western countries, there is a lot of (sometimes free) help out there. And it's out there precisely for that reason. I think the problem is that there is a big gap between the help that is available and convincing especially men that it is actually a sign of strength to reach out and ask for help, not weakness. While I am aware that the help available is often adequately advertised, the trick comes in convincing men, especially, to grasp it.
Let's think about that for a moment because it helps to deconstruct this very old, inaccurate view that men asking for help are eroding a sense of their own masculinity. If we try and look at ourselves holistically we realise that we are not robots as men. We are much more than the singular idea of masculinity that dominates certain cultural viewpoints of men. Human beings in general are physical, mental and emotional beings. And yet the emotional aspect of our make up is often overlooked and, at worse, sometimes ridiculed. I think this is slowly changing but unfortunately it's not changing enough to have permeated into the heart of society so men can feel more comfortable with the idea of themselves as emotional beings who can express themselves emotionally.
If men can accept the importance - or at least - relevance of the emotional aspect of their characters then they are much more likely to reach out and ask for help and, therefore, talk about the fact that they are struggling emotionally. I know from experience that when you do acknowledge how important it is to talk about your own, personal emotional strife and can share it with another, empathic person - professional or otherwise - it helps you at least come to terms with it. Sure, it may not necessarily make it easier to deal with in the short term but it can help put it into perspective more. That perspective can sometimes make a real difference because sometimes, our problems seem so insurmountable that they are like the Sword of Damocles, hanging by a thread over us and always a fraction away from completely overwhelming us.
Even if, by talking to someone about your problems you don't feel much relief in the short term, it can be an important first step in the process of healing. The more you share, the easier it becomes to sometimes find solutions that you might not have considered; something that can appear impossible if you are just running the same, damaging thoughts round and around inside your own head.
One of the most valuable growing experiences I have had, as a man, is by facing up to my own vulnerability and accepting it, I could be free to not only ask for help but also realise the importance of acknowledging both my feelings and my emotional side.
Give a voice to your anger and sadness as a man. Let this voice be heard by those that are able to really hear it empathically and reflect it back to you. In this process we are able to heal ourselves and, most importantly, this process can help prevent men who are suffering from thinking that the only way out of their pain is in suicide. Suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem. It may be a well worn phrase but it is also a very true one. We go through a lot of different phases of our lives as human beings, but our pain does not have to be a permanent truth, if we can learn the benefits of how to accept it and heal it.
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