I have a passion for helping men to express the things that historically we haven’t been the best at expressing. The longest wait from getting my number and actually calling is always the longest with men.
I had a new client recently that it took 3 years and so often men get to the absolute lowest point before asking for help.
I pride myself on my ability to create a safe, non-judgemental and caring environment to help men thrive when it comes to their mental health.
The impending pressure of being a father can hit men hard – it certainly did me.
I had no issues with money or worries about supporting myself and my wife then kids arrived and I created all sorts of stress relating to being the provider. You’ll notice I said created. The beauty there is you can create another version if you want to.
So often we as men get ourselves locked into stressful places based on a belief system that says we must be strong, provider, even tempered and worst of all, we can’t show or talk about our emotions.
There’s nothing wrong with being sad, but of course we should ‘toughen up and carry on’.
Sadness is an emotion and has an energy all its own if we can let it be, feel it, be inquisitive and ask ourselves why? That energy will decrease. But that’s not what most of us have been taught. Instead we ignore it, push past it and it grows into depression.
Depression can often be our system saying ‘what about me’, when we spend all our time giving to others, fixing things for others, and being helpful all the time our system craves to be filled up. Having your thing that fills your cup is so important, I do it with golf once a week.
The voice in our head is making us think of all the things we’ve done wrong in the past or worrying about the ‘what ifs’ of the future.
That’s the job of the voice, to keep us safe. Safe sounds mad but it’s job when we lived in caves was to make sure we were not eaten by wild big toothed animals. We no longer have that risk but by natural selection this part of our brain is very strong so how do we quiet that voice?
You’ll notice when you are doing something that puts you in the present moment, where you are super focussed like riding a mountain bike fast down a winding track. If you’re thinking about last week you’re in big trouble. That’s because that voice doesn’t function in the present moment – so finding something that does that for you is finding your version of meditation. And that can be anything running, swimming, knitting, walking on the beach, reading, music, dancing, training…..
