Jake of @thephitcoach is our first writer for MENtal health month. He's written this fantastic, thought evoking piece about the silence surrounding

mens mental health. We hope it will help open peoples eyes to the importance of this issue, and break down some walls to communication around male mental illness. Thank you Jake. As always, leave any comments/feedback below or contact us.

Every time I put pen to paper, or rather finger to keyboard, and write about my struggles, I suddenly feel myself suffocating amongst feelings of anger, worry, sadness, guilt, despair and frustration. Caught up amongst a sea of confusion, I have to pluck up the courage to bring these emotions bubbling up to the surface and confront the demons inside my mind.

It’s damn hard and in some respects I feel it always will be.

I still get moments where I’d rather just smile and sit there quietly, where I’d argue with myself to shake it off, to develop a little bit more resilien

ce and to just get on with the job. But beneath the surface I can’t sleep, I stare blankly into space for hours on end; I question my purpose and the point of everything I do. I struggle to take on the positives and would rather vilify myself irrespective of how others perceive me.

I remember the days in the beginning where I passed it off and shrugged off any emotions. I remember the days where I’d drink until I’d pass out every time I went out with friends. I remember the days where I’d work until I’d burn myself out. All the time I was suppressing emotions and issues. I was staying silent and I was fuelling depression not fixing it.

How did I let it get so bad?

It was 2014, I had left University whilst being self-employed and I felt like an imposter. I didn’t feel like I was good enough, smart enough, strong enough or rich enough. Truth is I felt empty, insignificant and I was genuinely flat out broke wondering how I’d pay bills. I didn’t feel like I was making enough impact or helping enough people. I didn’t think I was doing enough and I convinced myself I needed to do more. During this time, I felt so alone, so inadequate and in so much pain. I’d debate with myself what would happen if I drove my car into a ditch when I used to drive home from work late at night. Thoughts wishing I wouldn’t wake up or crawling into bed whenever I was awake were at the forefront of my mind. I’d become a zombie and a shadow of my former self.

When I confided to go to my Doctor to explain these thoughts after almost being forced to go, I made lightheartedness of the situation and made it out as no big deal. I couldn’t even give my Doctor the honest truth. “Pfft! Me? Struggling? No, I’m fine, we all get bad days” I said. If I had told him everything from the start, maybe it would’ve been easier. It was a slow and lengthy process until I finally refrained from passing off the situation as no big deal. It meant I delayed the healing process.

I sit here knowing there will be men out there whom continue to stay silent, who numb the pain and discomfort. Who embrace solitude, silence, drink, drugs or whatever else they can find as a means to escape.

So despite the figures surrounding male suicide, why aren’t we talking about it? Why is there this ongoing sense of shame and embarrassment whenever we shed an emotion?

Is it perhaps that admitting our struggles, our failures and our problems does not fit in with the current social construct of masculinity? We’ve been indoctrinated into believing that we must suffer in silence, “man up” and get on with the task at hand. We’re told by the older generation that our current generation is too soft and has been mollycoddled too much; therefore asking for help is deemed to support this argument of being “too soft”.

As a society not only are we quick to pass judgment but we also struggle to empathise and view a situation from another person’s perspective. We’re quick to disparage and dismiss views or comments that don’t align with our own at first glance. We don’t try hard enough to attempt to understand what it might be like for someone else. Instead, we’ll sit there in our own bubble and point the finger with no remorse.

Consequentially, we seem to anticipate the worst and are scared that denouncing that we might have a mental health problem will mean that either people will tip toe round us or sharpen their proverbial pitch forks. When Chester Bennington died as a consequence of suicide, social media comments were quick to flame him and call him incredibly “selfish”, “weak”, “pathetic”. Everything society has deemed that men shouldn’t be and in truth we don’t want to seem like that. This is evidence to support the fact that education is still somewhat lacking surrounding suicide and mental health. Suicide is NOT an easy or selfish decision.

One day I decided to publicly announce my issues on social media. I had no expectations but felt anxious all the same. Hours in, I had received messages of support from people I hadn’t spoken to in years. I bumped into a guy I had known from school a few months later who commended me for what I had written and said he had a lot of time for it. In some respects I didn’t know how to respond other than a brief “thanks”, but my intention was never to be rude, I was just terrible at conveying emotion as many people can be. But I realized the more I speak about my mental health, the more support I receive and the better I feel about myself. It becomes easier each time and with that I can make better sense of the thoughts inside my head.

More men are putting themselves forward and that’s a good thing in the sense that we are more able to talk about it. However with male suicide rates still over three times higher than female suicide rates, more of us need to be open to the idea of talking about it further, rather than being afraid of seeming like a burden or weak. Silence is the oppressor in this context, not only do we need to start talking more, but we need to keep talking because if we stay silent, we don’t come out on top.

Together we can do tackle this, but communication needs to be at the forefront of it all.

MENtalhealth meets Movember

My Male Mind and Me

Food, emotions and your relationship with yourself

Coping at University

Positive bikini prep

The mental race

Meditation in motion

Gym hunt

Sets, sweats and survival

The Oppressive Sound of Silence

Jake Gifford

@​MyMuscleMind #StrengthNotStigma

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@MyMuscleMind #StrengthNotStigma