The basic condition for keeping us alive is proper nutrition and physical condition, but we must not forget about our mental health, which is not a measurable factor for the overall health of the body and the vitality of the entire society. Through family relationships and proper self-understanding.
It was assumed that “a healthy mind is in a healthy body” but is it for everyone? How we perceive each other maps our being and interactions in society. What we are talking about here is that we perceive or accept more women, and children who are assisted by a psychologist, but not men. So it’s hard to keep our healthy spirit in the body and mind.
Talking about your own emotions and working with them is like the domain of women, but is it really and right? Also, the performance of a given profession may be questioned here, such as a kindergarten teacher, nurse or psychotherapist, but it begins to sound completely different to us when it is a male form, only because it has also been badly rooted in our minds, that it is a female but not a male job.
Similar stigmatization is shared by a woman – a train driver or a truck driver. Understandably, this is how we were shaped and some activities were performed only by women and the rest only by men. Again, depending on the culture and structure of a given country or a given ancient culture. The only question is whether it was right and if it was not worth changing it and starting to perceive each other as the same organism in terms of feelings and emotions.
Can you understand a man going to a psychotherapist or using a psychiatrist? Does a conversation with a psychologist have to be associated with something strange, unusual and often unacceptable to the environment? Namely, it so happens that we should learn to understand it as much as possible and support each other in a righteous cause. As a society, we have already taken a big step toward taking care of mental health and increasingly perceived emotional problems, along with the ailments of the physical body. Which of course cannot be compared. As someone once said, “my toothache will be nothing to your headache”. Although we have made every effort to improve our awareness of mental health , the mental health of men still lags, namely in two aspects: social stigma and our “male” perception of the world. Many of us are still rooted in “boys don’t cry”, “don’t be crying” etc.
The general pattern of behaviour adopted should change and if someone does it, and it is right and should not be labelled with different epithets, because it does not help in the fight for their health.
On the other hand, we, as a male part of society, have a great distance from ourselves and the world of emotions in which we still exist. The fact that we perceive ourselves as individuals almost perfectly, strong and emotionless. We can at least admit to ourselves that it is different.
We must also know that, for this reason, it is much more difficult for us to ask for help or to manifest our own emotional needs. I know that we are different and that we have a different approaches to many things. For example, when men talk they avoid eye contact because it is completely unnecessary to us, while when women conduct conversations, they rather look at each other during the conversation. Women talk about emotions more often and more often use the help of mental health specialists, which may also translate into the suicide rate in men on an average much higher than in women. After our efforts through social stigmatization, we will not express ourselves the fear of ridicule, unfortunately, such phenomena appear among professionals such as the police or health centres. A man reporting domestic violence is perceived ambiguously, when a service officer hears that a woman is beating him and humiliating him, he will accept the report because he is obliged to do so, but the language of the body can reveal a lot, such as smiles or meaningful statements, which does not help the victim. Of course, many people in such places can perfectly understand situations without further ado. These and other patterns we learned during growing up and accepted as generally accepted rules that a guy is supposed to be a guy … that we do not talk about feelings, but react with one basic emotion: anger. But let’s ask ourselves what other emotions are hidden under our anger, will rejection and non-acceptance will be familiar, whether fear and shame appear in our heads, and whether the feeling of guilt and imperfection in the presence of the fullness of expectations of us is obscured by anger, often at us themselves.
These and other emotions accumulate, which can lead to a tragedy.
We have a lot to learn and do because no one has learned our emotions properly, rather we have learned that frustration turns out to be aggression and other feelings such as jealousy, losing a competition, or school skirmishes were not subject to a written trial and were carried out only in one way namely the use of force.
But please note that the more we talk about it, the easier we are, the more we want to describe our problem, and the more we understand it. The use of psychotherapy is extremely fruitful and does not diminish us in any way, but rather shows our strength and willingness to fight for ourselves. A person working with us during therapy also has feelings and a wide range of experiences girded with understanding and empathy. Statistically, more and more men visit the mental health clinic compared to the previous years and the “mental health for men” day has been introduced, which as you can see has more and more support in the society. You can find phrases such as a week, man or month for men. Each year, different organizations take care of their circle of interested parties, focusing on various topics: obesity and other diseases in men or bullying in a school for boys and many others that are widely promoted by social media and local institutions.
The beginning can be hard, but you can find help on your own if only starting with psychoeducation on a given topic. No matter how embarrassing or enormous it is for us, we must know that there are people trained for it and often a given training is strengthened by the experience of more than one therapist.
Working on yourself is a challenge, but it is also recommended for a better understanding of yourself and your own often unsavoury personal problems. Mental health is important to everyone. And looking for help shows our passion for a healthy lifestyle and taking care of ourselves and our loved ones.
Multicultural Counselling Service 