Men’s Mental Health: What Does Struggling Actually Look Like?

When people talk about men’s mental health, the conversation can become surprisingly predictable.

Men do not talk. Men bottle things up. Men get angry instead of sad. Men need to be encouraged to open up.

There can be truth in parts of that for some men. But if we turn it into a description of men generally, we stop being curious about the actual person in front of us.

So a better question might be:

What does struggling look like for you?

For one man it may be obvious anxiety. For another it may be low mood, exhaustion or panic. For somebody else it might look like working longer hours, becoming more irritable, drinking more, withdrawing from a partner, spending every spare minute at the gym or finding reasons never to sit still.

And sometimes it looks like somebody continuing to function remarkably well.

That last one is easy to miss.

Functioning is not the same as being okay

A man can go to work, pay the mortgage, look after his children, make people laugh and still be struggling.

We often use functioning as a rough measure of wellbeing: if I am still doing everything I am supposed to do, things cannot be that bad.

But there is a lot of space between “everything is fine” and crisis.

Some people spend a long time in that space.

They are managing. They are dependable. They are getting through the week. But life has gradually become something to endure rather than something they are properly involved in.

That is worth noticing before it becomes more serious.

Irritability can be information

Men sometimes arrive in therapy because somebody else has noticed the change first.

“You’re angry all the time.”

“You never talk to me anymore.”

“You’re always at work.”

“You’re here, but you’re not really here.”

The temptation is to decide quickly what those behaviours mean.

But anger is not an explanation. Withdrawal is not an explanation. Working excessively is not an explanation.

They are things we can observe.

The useful work is understanding what sits around them: pressure, disappointment, fear, shame, resentment, grief, relationship difficulties, exhaustion, feeling trapped, or something else entirely.

We should not decide in advance.

Some men are simply unfamiliar with the conversation

I have worked with men who have reached middle age or beyond having never really spoken to anyone about some of the things they carry.

That does not necessarily mean they have been consciously “avoiding their feelings” for decades. Sometimes there has simply never been a relationship, setting or language in which those conversations felt normal.

So when somebody arrives in therapy and gives short answers, says “I don’t know” repeatedly or seems unsure what is expected of him, I am cautious about calling that resistance.

It may be resistance. It may also be new territory.

Those are not the same thing.

Therapy does not require you to perform vulnerability

There is no prize for being the most emotionally articulate person in the room.

You do not need to arrive knowing the names of all your feelings. You do not need to cry. You do not need to agree with your therapist. You do not need to tell somebody everything in session one.

What matters is whether the conversation is useful enough for you to keep engaging with it.

That is partly about the approach, but it is also about fit.

I think the relationship between therapist and client matters enormously. You can have a highly qualified therapist using a well-established model and still feel that they are not the right person for you. Equally, the right therapeutic relationship can make difficult conversations feel possible without forcing them.

Strength is not the problem

I am not interested in telling men that independence, resilience, responsibility or stoicism are inherently unhealthy.

They can be strengths.

The question is whether they remain choices.

Being able to cope on your own is different from believing you must always cope on your own. Being dependable is different from believing you are not allowed to need anything. Keeping calm under pressure is different from never acknowledging when pressure is taking a toll.

Healthy masculinity does not require men to become somebody else. It allows a bit more flexibility about how strength can look.

When might it be worth talking to somebody?

There is no perfect threshold, but it may be worth paying attention if:

• you feel noticeably different from yourself;

• people close to you are commenting on changes;

• work or distraction has become your main way of not thinking;

• anger or withdrawal is affecting relationships;

• you are relying increasingly on alcohol or other behaviours to switch off;

• life looks fine from the outside but feels increasingly difficult from your side.

You do not need to decide whether any of that counts as a “mental health problem” before having a conversation.

At Charles Flint Therapies, counselling for men is built around curiosity rather than assumptions about how men should talk or what masculinity should look like.

For another local counselling route, you can also explore Churchill Square Counselling.