I’m just curious to know more from a man’s perspective because I know there are both spoken and unspoken barriers to this. As a mental health professional, I’ve encountered a lot of men in my career who seemed to be resistant to the idea of seeking any type of treatment or making any changes until it became a crisis situation. This isn’t meant to be a generalization nor is it something that is gender specific, I’ve just noticed an uptick recently and have been interested to know more about this.
Was this an “aha!” moment for you? Did anyone offer any kind of support that helped this transition? What type of changes or treatment options did you start with? Any other insight you have to add?
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About 5 years ago, after our second kid was born, I started having nightmares about my kids and tangible, actionable suicidal ideation, so I told my GP. I ended up on mild anti-depressants that helped me stabilize enough to get me through a few years, then I went off them and have been mostly stable, although recent events have me spiraling a bit. I’m trying to work up the impetus to seek help again but I haven’t yet.
My wife was just very clear about how worried she was. She told me directly that she worried she might come home someday to find me hanging in the garage. It shocked me out of the vicious depression-apathy cycle and got me to a therapist and mood stabilizers.
in November, within the span of 24 hours, Trump was elected and my dad was diagnosed with an incurable terminal disease. I had already been suffering from depression and anxiety and I felt this double whammy was more than I could handle by myself.
I sought out a therapist and within 2 months, was able to find someone I could trust and work with.
The barrier to seek help before that was a belief that I could self treat. But at some point it became clear to me that I was getting too far under water. It was helpful that the process was straightforward to sign up.
After a family event brought up all the anger and emotions over my circumcision and I just couldn’t let them go, decided I needed a therapist as I obviously never addressed the childhood and adult trauma of it and just kept pushing it off until I just couldn’t.
The Wednesday I downed 12 beers at noon, went for a walk and don’t know where I went, or how long I was gone.
I was depressed. I sat down to figure out why. I discovered that social media was bringing me down. I dropped like it was hot. My mood improved immediately and stayed that way.
I developed an autoimmune issue from stress
Got an extra $1,000 check at work and went and spent $350 or so on porn and I wasn’t sure why I was doing it. My brain said one thing but I did another on my phone real quick.
Started in therapy where she slowly helped me with impulse control issues.
The day my family had an intervention for me, but pretended it was going to be a family meeting. I’d known for a couple months that I was slipping and a few days before it I’d planned on leaving anyway if they didn’t offer an alternative to the situation.
It isn’t that I haven’t tried therapy before, but when the therapist is repeating what you already know, offering you solutions or exercises you’ve already tried… Yeah, it tends to just kinda put a damper on things.
Didn’t realize I had depression in my early 20s, coped by drinking and partying and thought I was having fun. I was distracting myself from all the discipline I wasn’t using on developing.
In my later 20s I recognized the ruts and patterns I would get into when I was distracting myself and not progressing forward. It’s never one big moment for me it’s a series of digging myself in and out of a hole.
I was a teenager. In my country, it is normal to show charity adverts at lunch. I was looking at malnourished kids in Africa, with nothing more than skin and bones, and I felt nothing. I was looking into their eyes like if they were nothing.
While I didn’t felt anything in my heart, my mind was telling me that that’s not normal….