As a psychologist working primarily with men in clinical practice, I can’t tell you how many countless number of times I hear guys talking about coming to therapy as “weakness.” I do want to affirm that mental health stigma is real. It’s a pride thing, and I get it. We want to already have the tools to fix ourselves. And it can be weird to talk about really personal stuff to some random dude you just met. But here’s the thing: there is a double standard with men and mental health services compared with literally everything else in our lives when it comes to utilizing tools and resources at our disposal.
Think about it. If you need something, you should go to the right place to get it. That isn’t weakness. If I’m trying to DIY to fix my broken dishwasher, but I don’t have the right wrench, I’m not going to just start banging on it with a hammer; I’m going to go the hardware store and get the right tool for the job even if it means talking to the clerk at Ace. It isn’t weakness to buy food at the grocery store just because I could grow my own farm-to-table garden and chickens in the backyard; I’m not less of a man for choosing to utilize my local produce section to its max potential. If I have a heart attack (God forbid), YouTubing “Pro tips: double bypass heart surgery” might feel more “masculine” because “real men” should be self-reliant enough to pick their family history of heart disease “up by the bootstraps,” but I should probably just go the doctor instead.
We could rely on ourselves for everything. But how ridiculous is that?? It’s not un-masculine to lean into the tools and resources at our disposal. And research informs us that self-reliance as a masculine norm is linked to a host of unhelpful outcomes.
If I’ve got a client who is a real DIY, pride-in-self-reliance type, I could just hand him 10 years worth of psychology textbooks and say, “everything you need to know is in there; God speed oh wise King of DIY.” But then I would have wasted the last decade and he would have thousands of dollars of dry textbooks on his DIY list. We simply don’t teach mental health as widely as we should, so it makes sense that many don’t know all the things. We need a place to get the information we were never taught about emotion regulation, relationships, happiness, and mental well-being.
The point is, using the experts – cardiologist, hardware store clerk, mental health professional, or otherwise – is efficient and useful. And if leaning into tools and resources makes us better men, then these are all masculine strategies for self growth and development.
Last I checked, the brain is part of the body. Therefore, honing it should just be another form of working out. On the other hand, if the self-reliant DIY pro has stuff like relationships, well-being, life balance, self-care, happiness, and the meaning of life all figured out, maybe he should start his own clinic, cult, or at least a YouTube channel. Because the rest of us are still digging through thousands of years and pages of wisdom about psychological health to get it into more hands and minds of men.
Happy mental health awareness month (May). For more cool resources for men’s mental health check out Man Therapy. Let’s take masculine pride in utilizing the tools, resources, and wisdom at our disposal to become the men we should be.