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Hi Readers,
In this blog, I am going to tell you my personal stories, when I am depressed. During that period, not about what my behaviour and daily activities looked like. And mainly about my thoughts about my achievements and my daily routine. Mostly my thoughts are questions about everything and finding the problem in everything. At one point, my entire life feels like a Gutter(filled with waste material).
One Bad day to Worst day
One day, I'm sitting alone in my apartment, it's a hot summer night and I've probably been staring at my phone for a too long while. In that night, I am not using my phone, but I am staring at it for too long without doing anything. I am just looking the 'n' number of times that I've tapped into the screen is for the suicide hotline or helpline and I have a number, but there is one big problem, "I can't bring myself to call them because I'm a man (my biggest ego). Because my thoughts are that I'm not some kind of weak princess or woman who always seeking help. So I decided that I shouldn't need to be helped or rescued from the problem". So instead of calling, I waited for a miracle to happen and suddenly I got a call from my sister and asked me to go to my uncle house. So I want you to keep her in your mind, we're going to come back to her soon.
Background of my personal life
At that stage, my life is very successful because I have a good job at a well-settled location and did not have many financial problems. I shouldn't complain about my life. And I am also delivering a project for many various clients and they are happy with that project. Our company has satisfied with my work. But last 2 years, I wake up every morning feeling dumb, void and empty and most important alone. I just can't stop drowning in my thoughts.
Here I'm sharing some static which I come across that, "The rate of fatal men suicides are up by 41% compared to 2019 and it's higher than it's ever been." Somehow I survived, I suppose what I learned might save/help the life of others like you or someone you know.
As a Man, I need to.....
According to my, aspirin is a minor miracle. And it's a simple solution for many of us to have to assess it for any depression problem. And the result when it worked, then lives will get saved and changed behaviour. So, What if there was aspirin for suicide. So, in 2019, the CDC estimated that there were 1.38 million suicide attempts in the USA in that year, but in India, it does not have clear data, but it will have more numbers. So, if that one per cent would go a long way, but if we can accomplish what we think we can accomplish today. And you all seem like pretty smart guys. That seems pretty likely to me, then the difference won't be one per cent, it'll be 60 times than that. But since suicide starts in the mind, it's not a pill that we need to swallow, it's more of a thought or an idea and that one directly counteracts is another one. And one place to begin to look is what thoughts, then there are causing men to kill themselves. If research is to be believed, it all points to one specific kind of stubborn thought and that is common connection is
As a man, I need to ___________
Here you can fill anything you wish, like "As a man, I need to be strong or As a man, I need to keep my word or As a man, I need to magnificent power or As a man, I need to protect the people that I love". Because we're a little bit upset, that we can't do it now. Yeah, it's complicated, but to understand what we're working with we need to also unpack that. So what comes to mind for you, when you hear the "Masculine "
Success secret(Lies I believed)
In this society, we were raised to believe, that a proper man should be strong, keep a word, protect the family, behaviour like a great leader, etc. But, I don't know about you, but I was raised to believe that when the man is crying, then it was a kind of shame or weakness for him. I also grew up believing that emotions were just as bad as killing. But I understand that emotions were appropriate for like two demographics, the first of which was like a schoolgirl and the second one was womenfolk, which I was neither of those things. So I shouldn't have a feeling and beginning to push those away. But the thing is that they never really tell you about that is how after a lifetime of particles. Maybe one day eventually you succeed and then you get to wish that you hadn't felt it.
Because you'll have also succeeded at pushing away the things that make you human. What they don't tell you about that is while you're pushing away crying, you also kind of begin to suppress the other emotions in your life like happiness, the joy, and then one day you wake up and you realize your entire life has been about going through the motions. It's doesn't matter what you're doing whether you're riding a roller coaster or at a theme park or a wedding. You can't feel anything. No matter how much you try and while you're distracted with that thought then one day maybe something really bad happens. Something that you can't push away. And your emotions are screaming, it breaks you.
Those emotions want to come out, but they can't because you've gotten too good at this pushing them down. So instead of reality just starts to hurt and it feels empty at the same time. And you don't know how to make it stop. So as a man, you endure your grit and your teeth, so you push through it because that's what you're supposed to do.
Grateful for my horrible experience
I think what I'd like to do is kind of create a little bit of levity here and just collective breath out, If you're been holding it. I'm so grateful and lucky to have that chapter in my life that is over and done with it. I'm thinking looking back one of the scariest parts for me was seeing how at some point, I got to a place where suicide just kind of made logical sense. Instead of all the pain, that I was experiencing that I could just have no pain, there was no drama to it. And that for me, was the most frightening part.
Some researchers data:
What I'm aiming to accomplish here today is to help people who are in this space. Need to find their way home because I know how dark it can get there. And to do that we need to turn to the researchers, What does the research have to say about what's happening here.
If we take a look it all seems to boil down to something really simple something easy to address at least in one paper and it looks like it's a cycle with only two steps of it and the first is a hard life event and a lot of guys it might be divorce or losing a home or losing a job or going through a breakup or losing a family member or the physical health just something that hits us hard enough, that we're forced to feel something, even if we're busy trying to push that away and then very naturally lead us to a place of suppressing. Because As a man, I shouldn't have feelings. So stuff them down, if you're anything like me, then that also comes with this constellation of other behaviours. So it might look like you also stop sleeping, you start eating poorly and you stop working out or you self-isolate or you get into a more fight or maybe you start drinking more.
And the research is beginning to show that when you take on that kind of behaviour especially not asking for help and that's commonplace for someone like I don't know about you, but my game plan when I'm hurting is to notice, the pain first and then ignore it. Hard and hope that eventually at some point it goes away. But when you do that research shows that you've also become more likely to fall ill or get injured or even die as a complication and if it doesn't happen to us, then it's liable to happen to someone that we know or we care about another Male family member or a Male friend. And so you can see just how insidious this cycle is we've just immediately gone back to the first stage which draws us back into stage two. Research out for Fordham university is showing that for men who reject things like crying or being moody or having emotions at all. We're up to two and half times more likely to die by suicide. This is a pretty grim statistic, but for me, it kind of also represents the way forward that's the ground that we have to gain. This is a clear bridge between emotions suppressing and men killing themselves.
It's not only grown men's problem, but young people also facing
The thing that I think that the most thought for me to know as a human is that it's not just affecting grown men but also males between the ages of 10 to 24. This is the second leading cause of death for them. I'm going to say that again because it bears repeating and with statistics, it can be easy to kind of get lost in the number, there's is no impact in that. So instead I want you to imagine that there's a 10-year-old boy and he's on the playground and he's got his friends running around screaming around him, but he's not participating because today is the day that he's chosen to die. And if that hits you if what you feel right now is sadness, grief and loss or shock or anger, then know that's the appropriate response because that should have never been allowed to happen. And it can be so easy to take at this situation and ask ourselves "Who am I Who am I in the face of these 1.38 million suicide attempts every single year. What difference could I possibly make".
But that in my opinion leaves the room for the world's greatest answer is what difference can I make? The difference I can make and we only need to interrupt one part of this cycle to make that difference before it all falls apart. The easiest the most straightforward thing that we do as a society is an address that bit around suppressing and what that can look like some of you are not going to like, but when we're having a hard day instead of popping on Netflix and binge-watching shows until we pass out on the couch and start drooling. Maybe it looks like reluctantly picking up the phone calling someone that we trust and saying, "Hey, Today.... Today was hard, and it hurt. I feel kind of alone right now and I could use someone to talk to about this". And then we commit the cardinal thing of Masculinity and we talk about our feelings, we talk about the things that we normally would never talk about. Instead of pretending like we're fine and it begins here with each one of us with me with us.
It begins here so that the people in our lives can begin to un-suppress, they can begin to treat this like it's normal. It begins here so that 10-year-old boy, he can do what he does best and he can do as we do, not as we tell him to do. It begins here so that we can look at every single dark statistic, that I've given here today and say this is the difference I can make.
Men need a female to live a better life
In the beginning, I spoke about my sister right. It's time to begin her back into a story because there's something about emotions that's so important that we just haven't talked about yet. So she used to tell me that she loved me more than I would ever know. And I'm sad to say that she was right. I was so busy pushing away my emotions, that I didn't have any room for her, especially for her love. So I didn't get it when she said that she begged me to stay here and work here. Despite all of that she still really fought with everything that she had to make sure that I survived. I'm going to take a step back from this too because I have known how that sounds and so for reassurance, she's doing great right now. And she's living a very different life as part of before she was and I don't talk much anymore.
So this next part goes out to her as much as it goes out to each one of you. I'm so sorry for who I was and for the damage that I caused. And I'm so grateful for everything that you did because now I finally get it. I get how sometimes emotions can feel weak and brittle they can make us feel vulnerable and sometimes they're the last thing that I want to do. But I also get that sometimes from a thousand miles away. They give us a second shot at life which is one that we could have never earned.
Conclusion
Today I am leaving you with an invitation. I'm inviting you to give that same gift to the in your life that you love that minor miracle or aspirin. I'm inviting you today for just a few moments to stop thinking so much and just to allow yourself to feel. I'm inviting you to allow yourself to be human again.
I wrote this blog based on a TED speech given by someone. Sorry I didn't have his name or his video link. Most of this blog research and data are taken from his speech.
Thanks for your valuable time and reading this article up to this. If you like it, then share your thoughts and this post as much as you can.
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