MENTAL HEALTH
The Weeping Patriarchy
Contrary to popular belief it is not a man’s world. Suicide shows us why.
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Raising Boys
Often there is a disproportionate ratio of women to men at wellbeing events, talks on social emotional issues, workshops on relationships and more intuitively based yoga classes.
Understandably, for many, schedules just don’t allow for men or women to attend events either due to work or other obligations. It is a busy world.
Yet somehow women are better able to find the time to balance work and life commitments.
Are women simply better humans?
Biologically they are the life-givers and the nurturers of children. Socially they tend to communicate better and have an uncanny ability to share.
Are men so ego-driven that we can’t take the time to engage in personal development? Are we just stubborn and arrogant?
Men, for the most part, have been raised to be tough. We are told to man up, don’t cry, be strong, work through it, just do it and deal with it on your own. The home environment and schools often treat boys differently than girls.
This starts even before babies are out of the womb when parents make blue rooms for boys and pink rooms for girls.
While some schools try, most are not a healthy environment for social-emotional development. They perpetuate old paradigms which we see play out in subtle ways from sports, dress codes, classes and events.
And this societally demanding model continues from school into the working world.
The Trial of the Boardroom
I was at a wellbeing yoga class and discussion the other day.
The studio was full.
There was only one man.
The imbalance was not lost on anyone and the usual jokes about men not being present were made before the work began. It’s easy to look at this lack of men as disinterested or uncaring. Men have been mostly responsible for a world that has given us slavery, oppression and abuse. Why should we expect anything else?
Perhaps, however, there is another explanation, one that sits at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Maybe what creates this empty space is the fact that men are trying to fill a void of sadness and loneliness that has been created by societal expectations.
And they have not been given the tools to work through life’s challenges.
I saw this in my 25 years in the corporate world sitting around the boardroom table. For anyone who has worked with a large company or in the corporate world, you are well aware of boardroom dynamics.
The boardroom is a mosh pit, a fight-to-the-death ring.
The alphas establish themselves very quickly and let it be known who they are. Others try to play the game, planning when they will speak and wanting to say something intelligent. Often there is so much nervousness around just wanting to say something that the comments are out of context when eventually shared. The extroverts thrive, the introverts get squashed.
Yet the most interesting dynamic in the room are the young men who are new to the company. You can see them struggle to fit in. They see these executive examples and realize this is who they are to become if they are to be successful. So they unquestionably adopt this as the norm.
It is equally distressing for young women. But they already have in their heads that it is an imbalanced male world so they are better prepped although they go through similar anxiousness.
What I always found so interesting was that I saw how people would transform in the room from someone they were to someone they weren’t. Most people don’t like aggressive discussions. They don’t want to fight to be heard. They realize that being soft spoken is a better way to communicate. But they couldn’t rationalize this with what they were witnessing as they see the CEO and VPs dominating the room.
Once out of the room, or even out of the office, men are different people. They become themselves.
The boardroom is a societal transformation portal where some enter and are deemed worthy while others are not. Sadly the approval process, much like how society works, gets it wrong.
So young men enter and become something that is usually against their innate nature.
Then they often are the ones who perpetuate the model. It is a vicious cycle that in a highly competitive, for-profit world is almost impossible to break.
The Empty Mat
A yoga mat can be a place of liberation, freedom and vulnerability, a path to joy. Yet this same path can also be one of fear when men have been raised to be tough and suppress their feelings.
This discussion is complex and requires subtlety, patience and nuance. On one hand, men need to take responsibility, not the blame, for the current state of affairs. None of this is to condone bad actions of the past.
But we also need to allow room for men to break the societal chains that keep them from being their whole selves.
A very sad aspect of this male roleplaying is the significantly higher suicide rates for men compared to women. Worldwide approximately 70% of all suicides are men. All of my friends who have committed suicide have been male. And I’ve known quite a few.
Oddly one reason for the higher rates is that men are more successful at taking their lives than women. Even at deaths door a voice in their head is screaming at them not to be a failure.
I can only imagine that for many young men the last words they hear before they pull the trigger is their own ulterior self screaming at them to quit being a coward and just do it.
That is the same voice in their heads in the school and the boardroom.
So the next time we see an empty mat in a yoga room or attend a discussion on relationships where the majority of the attendees are women, let’s not judge.
Perhaps a man isn’t cold but only sad.
Maybe we are not witnessing a lack of interest but rather a cry for help.
But when you can’t cry, the call is silent.
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