It’s good to talk. And talking is easy, isn’t it? All we have to do is open our mouth, vibrate our vocal cords, make sounds and form words. That’s talking, after all.
Ah, but hold on a minute. The next thing you might think is: what are we talking about?
Some conversations are easier to have than others. Talking about our last holiday is probably easier than addressing conflict at work. So the content and context of a conversation have some bearing on how comfortable and ready to talk we actually feel.
What if I asked you how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking? Again, if the conversation was about the meal you’d just eaten, you might give me plenty of detail.
But what if the subject was a trauma you’d recently experienced, or some emotional distress you’re currently dealing with? How easy would that conversation be? How readily would you think, “it’s good to talk (about that)”?
The reality is that we are all likely, at some stage, to experience some form of trauma or emotional distress, whether that’s witnessing or being involved in a critical incident such as a road traffic collision, experiencing loss in one of its many forms, being bereaved, or living with elevated and extended stress. That’s the uncomfortable truth of life. Life doesn’t play by our rules.
For many of us, reaching out for help and talking at these times becomes a safe place where we can heal and recover.
But some groups find it harder to open up. Who, and why? One group in particular is people who identify as male and whose idea of masculinity has been shaped by western male gender norms.
Wow, what does that mean?
Let’s look at it simply. We are the product of a variety of influences. We are surrounded by information and lessons from the world we live in: our parents, caregivers, peers and colleagues. We also have an internal world that exerts influence: how we think about, encode, assign meaning to and make sense of our experiences. Bussey and Bandura (1999) explore this in depth in their social cognitive theory of gender development.
All of this, and more, adds up to our sense of self, our identity.
When we think about maleness and masculinity, and how they are shaped by stereotype and certain norms, some noteworthy things emerge.
Golombok and Fivush (1994) identified social pressure on men to be tough, robust and “strong”, and to deny anxieties and insecurities. Canetto and Sakinofsky (1998) noted that men’s response to depression often involves “social withdrawal (including hiding symptoms from others), unwillingness to consult healthcare professionals, and a denial of symptoms”, because the symptoms are seen as inconsistent with male identity.
Whenever the economy tightens, these findings become more relevant, not less. Because male identity norms are built around ideas like success, losing a job or a fall in economic status have been studied in relation to suicidal behaviour. Qin et al. (2003) found evidence of a relationship between unemployment and suicide, and Sher (2006) found evidence linking a drop in economic status with suicide. In 2020, King, Shields, Sojo and colleagues surveyed 829 young men in Australia and found links between conforming to masculine norms and worse mental health outcomes, including greater risk of suicidal thinking.
Taken together, the research indicates that western male gender norms such as toughness may increase suicide risk and stop men reaching out for the help they need.
This matters because of some stark and tragic statistics. NHS England reports that suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 50. ONS figures for 2020 put the male suicide rate in England and Wales at 15.4 deaths per 100,000, against 4.9 for women.
So, what can we do?
While it’s important to acknowledge the social, cultural, hormonal and other differences between us, and that each of us is an individual, we are all (broadly) running the same system: the human brain and the psychological mind.
This is where I’d ask you to reflect on all the influences that have fed into your construct of you, your identity, and then to exercise some self-compassion. We’ve all got the same operating system in our heads. It’s just as likely to hijack our thinking, to give us stress and anxiety, or to offer up rigid, inflexible constructs as the next person’s. It can even offer up thoughts that it might be better if we weren’t here any more. Those thoughts may be very fleeting. The thing to watch for is if they begin to hang around, become more regular or pervasive, or we start to make plans around them.
Maybe no one has given you permission before, as a man, to know that it’s OK not to feel great, to feel down, to doubt yourself. Here’s the reality: we all feel like that sometimes.
So we can begin by practising some self-compassion. When challenging thoughts show up, we can create some distance from them with tools like box breathing or mindful awareness.
We can then learn skills to observe our thinking, to examine our beliefs about what our gender identity deems “allowable”, and to recognise that stress and anxiety affect us all at times. After all, life simply does not play by our rules.
We can use evidence-based behavioural skills to manage our internal physical responses, and skills such as reframing to explore our beliefs about toughness. Leaning into uncomfortable emotions and exploring our own vulnerabilities and self-critical thoughts isn’t easy.
Ultimately, we can build the skills and the beliefs that let us seek and accept support when stress and anxiety get on top of us, and build a new understanding, consistent with our identity, that whatever the topic: it’s good to talk.
If you’re struggling right now, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time.