Author: MikeM

  • Sharing – How to lower a troubling male suicide rate? End the myths about emotions.

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I’ve seen this time and time again. As men, we might even be told that we should be open to our emotions, but there are still very few spaces for men to show emotion. Sports is one example of a space where we can show excitement or disappointment. Sometimes, we can show more complex emotions, but only in romantic relationships—never with friends. 

    He also discusses the limited range of emotions usually deemed acceptable for men. Note how anger is one we are allowed to have and how it gets used as the cover for several more complicated emotions. That might also explain why men with depression don’t come across as sad but angry and thus don’t get diagnosed with depression as often as women. It doesn’t “look” like the depression we see in the media. 

  • Shared Links (weekly) July 7, 2024

    ByMikeM Reading Time: < 1 minutes

  • Sharing – How Modern Culture Drowns Out Psychology’s Important Message

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I suspect that he is on to something. It’s hard to create a community of people caring for one another when our workplaces demand constant availability, and our culture rewards people who are singularly focused on career or commercial success. This reminds me of something I wrote about early risers and their productivity a few years ago. I thought it was weird that in a profile of these “very successful” men, every one of them talked about getting up early to start working, planning out their days, sending emails to their team so they’d be waiting for them when they got to the office, etc. 

    What was missing from every single person interviewed in the story? There was no mention of a family. None of these men talked about having breakfast with a spouse, taking their kids to school, etc. None of them mentioned having friends. Their entire goal was to get a head start on work so they could get ahead. And here we were, writing glowing profiles and encouraging everyone to live like this.

  • Sharing – The Best Way to Reduce Anxiety Is to Make Your Brain Feel Safe

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I think back to my childhood and the sexual and physical violence I was subjected to. I struggle with anxiety because my brain is always going back to that time – a time when I was not safe! The things my brain learned then weren’t a failure of mental health; they were survival instincts. They were healthy reactions to an unsafe environment. My current challenge is unlearning them now that I am no longer in that unsafe environment. Asking me to do that while I was unsafe would have been dumb. The anxiety was trying to keep me alive.