Why Successful Men Are Often Secretly Struggling

[00:00:00]You know, cuz something's going on with men.

[00:00:02]>> Yeah.

[00:00:02]>> quite sure what it is. I I I certainly see responsibility as a big part of it.

[00:00:06]Like I've had patients who are making seven figures and are suicidal. This is another really interesting statistic. Potentially up to 60% of men who kill themselves may not actually have any mental illness.

[00:00:19]There's some really fascinating studies on that where we're not quite sure. But I think one of the trickiest things we understand is or we're starting to understand and that I'm really appreciating as a clinician is that suicidality doesn't necessarily equate to mental illness.

[00:00:33]And that especially with the men that I work with, a lot of them it's not like their mind is malfunctioning. So when we think about mental illness, we think about pathology. This is not the way that it's supposed to function. And for a really long time, I think we just assumed and we sort of still do. We sort of take suicidality as a mark for it. And I definitely think it warrants like a clinical evaluation cuz if there is an illness that can be medically treated, like we don't want to miss that by any means.

[00:01:00]But the really disturbing thing is that some of the people that I've worked with I I I wouldn't really they don't fit the standard profile of something like a mood disorder.

[00:01:09]>> Yeah.

[00:01:10]>> Instead, what I see is a lot of overwhelming responsibility.

[00:01:15]An attempt to live up to that responsibility and inevitable failure because the responsibility is inappropriate.

[00:01:22]>> Mhm.

[00:01:23]>> And it it in many ways it's similar to what you're describing, but go go ahead.

[00:01:27]>> No, that I mean uh I I'm not as familiar with the broad patterns, but when you do say that that that matches very much my subjective experience. Um which is I think it's possible that there is a generation and I certainly in my neighborhood there was of mothers that wanted to heal through having children. Um when I hear you know, that wanted that that was their their connection point with the world was to have that child as opposed to having a connection point with themselves. And then I'll speak only, you know, to my own limited family, there's also the element that I haven't mentioned of the inability to acknowledge, like there's a shame in acknowledging daddy issues if you're a man, or mommy issues if you're a man, because, you know, those those terms in themselves can feel derogatory, demeaning, or childlike, but my relationship with my dad had a massive impact on who I became, the wonderful things and the negative things, not the negative things, the the things. And one element of that was feeling as if I contributed to like when I saw him uh working to provide for his family, that I had made his life worse. When I saw his frustrations and holding that he'd be better off without me. And I And, you know, people had different levels of um emotional fluency with their dads.

[00:02:47]For me, mom was the I love you, the hugs, and all of that. My dad was catch and sports, and he was present, but um the tenderness, like there was not that that level of tenderness had to dip by age three, four, five, I don't know when, where we couldn't do the hugs anymore, and we couldn't do the the sincere depth of I love yous. Like that that that was inappropriate, and as I look back, it's like recently I've gotten some of them I've uh through some of the work we've done together, like the hugs that he has given me have transformed my life, and I'm not I cannot exaggerate the the I could have done it without it, it would have taken me a while, but oh my god, receiving some of that and going he loves me.

[00:03:31]I have been a gift to him.

[00:03:34]What a What a my like earth-shattering for me to let that to let that um in, and I know that everybody has their own different family configuration, of which that may or may not be true for them, but the um I don't want to reduce everything to the mother the and the father wound, but that has been a real access point for me to become more soulful, more whole, and to um not fall into the categories that you are describing that men are falling into. Of, you know, self-harm and all those sorts of things.

[00:04:10]>> It's so interesting because so many of the things that you're saying can lead to some of the people that I've worked with.

[00:04:19]You know, when you kind of say that to realize that I'm a burden. Like that's the first step on a path that can end in a very dark place.

[00:04:27]>> Yeah.

[00:04:27]>> I think the other thing that I'm I'm sort of appreciating is just how touch-starved so society as a whole, this is not exclusively men by any means. I think we're becoming a society where women are also increasingly touch-starved.

[00:04:40]>> Yeah.

[00:04:41]>> Um and but men I I think I know so many men who, like you said, like we don't It's kind of weird, but I I almost sort of chalk this up to the the general homophobia of the '80s and '90s. Right? Where I also grew up in a place where gay was a derogatory term. Like I grew up in East Texas.

[00:04:59]And and to be gay was the biggest insult that you could possibly have. And there was just a complete lack of acceptance.

[00:05:05]And the other really interesting thing that I kind of noticed when I think about my own life is that it was because of that homophobia that my friends and I were not allowed to touch each other. Right? Like we couldn't hug or we couldn't do any of that stuff.

[00:05:19]And if you kind of look at you know, the way we're wired, I mean, we're wired to touch. If you look at like aboriginal societies and stuff like that.

[00:05:26]I remember there was I was in India and and this is my first summer in India and there was one of my friends or mentors was getting married.

[00:05:34]So I was like 21 at the time. He was like 28 or something.

[00:05:38]And he had two of his friends like come up to him and they like flanked him on each arm.

[00:05:43]So he had one arm around each of their shoulders and they were like both rubbing his belly.

[00:05:49]>> [laughter] >> And they were like like cooing at him. I don't know what else to call it.

[00:05:54]And and you know, my East Texas mind was like, "What is this?"

[00:05:58]>> Yeah.

[00:05:59]>> You know, and they were like joking with him about, "Oh, you know, you're going to get married now." And they were talking about how he's going to like eat well or something like that. And and I just that level of touch was just completely foreign.

[00:06:08]>> Yeah.

[00:06:09]>> Yeah.

[00:06:10]>> And like you know, friends in India, like men will hold hands when they like walk, which is a little bit unusual, right? So like at least to to me it was.

[00:06:17]>> Yeah.

[00:06:18]>> And and so I think that there's there's a big lack of you're talking about the healing power of just like hugging your dad. And yeah. And like you know, I I wonder if that's a huge part of it. Like just >> I I think it is. And also like the the level of disconnection for me from my body that would have let me know, "Hey, this is something I want." Like I couldn't even feel the lack of that. Uh it's we only are aware of these problems because seven steps down the line, somebody does something dramatic, hurts themselves. But there's also, I mean, even the men that you're describing don't have mental illness. There's an entire I know them of successful, high-producing leaders that are uh trying to medicate the internal world with external success. And they're not addicted to drugs in the traditional sense, but they are they are addicted to that cycle that uh for me cannot be >> [snorts] >> tended to in that way. At least that's what I have come to learn. And uh I think it's probably true for them as well. But yeah, there's the the other ways in we're not even aware of.

[00:07:30]>> Yeah, I I think that's well said. And I I think the unfortunate thing that I've found, and there's some Eastern teachings to support this, is that I think you have to kind of go through that to recognize its insufficiency.

[00:07:41]>> Mhm.

[00:07:41]>> So often times when I when I work with people in general, I mean we're talking about men right in the second, but I think it applies to women as well where you know, you can't know that something is not going to make you happy until you actually have it.

[00:07:56]>> Mhm.

[00:07:56]>> And there's a really interesting kind of uh conundrum in in the East is if you look at all the people who attained enlightenment, I'm not sure if you're kind of familiar with this concept of like, you know, Buddha became enlightened.

[00:08:10]>> Yeah.

[00:08:11]>> Um so, if you look at every all the people who basically are like the religious figures and if we kind of look at it from a historical perspective, these pop people were probably enlightened.

[00:08:19]>> Mhm.

[00:08:20]>> And the really interesting thing is in in India, you know, you have four castes and the highest caste were the Brahmans or the priest caste and they were the closest to God, they were the teachers of meditation. But there are no enlightened Brahmans.

[00:08:34]All of the enlightened people were actually from the noble caste. So, Buddha was a king or prince.

[00:08:40]Um you know, like the the Ram and Krishna, which are considered avatars of Vishnu, are also kings or princes. And so, it's really interesting because you would think that shouldn't the priests be the ones that are enlightened because they're the ones that are teaching meditation?

[00:08:55]And there's a really simple kind of take on this, which is that you can't really move towards spirituality until you realize that material pursuits are unsatisfying.

[00:09:07]>> Yeah.

[00:09:08]>> And so, just talking about, you know, the journey that you're on like it's like I don't mean to demean your experience, but it's lovely to see how you're on this journey and it's kind of textbook of like material success and then kind of like finding yourself and then like, you know, and and and once again, I really don't mean to demean it cuz I honestly think it's cool, but >> Jim Carrey has that commencement or acceptance speech where he's talking to I think college grads where he says, you know, I hope you get everything that you dream of so that you can realize that that's not the answer. And I am so grateful to have been able to get those markers early in my life. And uh what Yeah, gosh, so grateful to have done that. And I And I wish people the success that they imagine as long as they're not hurting other people partially for that reason. It's like I hope you get it. And then you go, "Oh, is this it?" You know, is is this did this do the thing that I thought it would do?

[00:10:04]Um But you had said something about men one thing that I just wanted to to mention.

[00:10:08]Somebody brought this up to me and I thought that it was poignant was that with the exception of perhaps handshakes and the occasional bro hug, a lot of the uh touches that men receive from other men are violent. And meaning like you know, if you're touched, you might perhaps it's spanked or it's a it's a knock on your arm or uh you know, you God forbid you're molested or something like that.

[00:10:30]And it's I have felt and this is something I had to unlock that there was a pro- tectiveness in me not extending myself towards other men. There was I don't want to let that like again, uh not knowing who I was confused maybe I'm that that person. And at times I think I could have let that out with rage.

[00:10:49]And uh so that there's there's uh self There's there's an other protectiveness, which is I'm not going to do that to you. Let me stay in my own private island of not touching and not acknowledge that this is something that I wish that I had in a safer way.

[00:11:05]>> Yeah, it's it's it's interesting. I mean, I I think that mirrors a lot of my own experience. When I started dating, um you know, early on my girlfriend described what I had as a bubble.

[00:11:16]And she was like, "Anytime I get inside the bubble, like you recoil." And she was very intentional about like bursting my bubble. It made me really uncomfortable at the time. I mean, I'm glad that she did it now, but um you know, it's it's so interesting to think about. I had not quite thought about it that way, but even in my own life, how like like touch was like alien to me, like physical touch.

[00:11:37]Until I started dating, and then it became normal more normal.

[00:11:42]>> Yeah, for me, I mean part of part of it, and I'm working through it still, um to recognize again, cuz I I I have the tendency to beat myself up for the ways in which I fall short of a perfect loving person.

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