Mental illness is a global phenomenon but not globally
accepted. Some societies view it as a myth, a generation gap, or a luxury.
Every place, generation and person has their own baggage and their own coping
mechanisms; even if that’s just pretending it doesn’t exist. It scares many
because it is a new concept. Today there are diagnoses, prescriptions and
therapies that didn’t exist 10 years ago (let a lone a generation ago). Even
faced with ¼ people in Canada being diagnosed with a mental illness; there are
those who tell me I’m full of crap for saying I deal with depression and
anxiety.
A concept nobody seems willing to accept (myself included)
is that we’re all damaged. Not one person has it all figured out. People walk
around like it’s all good; they’re on top of the world and nothing can touch
them. The greatest offenders of this are men; they have to appear strong, brave and
indestructible for fear of not being “manly” enough. Of my siblings, my brother
is probably the most damaged because he internalizes everything and doesn’t
allow himself to show any deep emotions. I think that intellectually we can all
agree that this isn’t healthy, but nobody is willing to change. Regardless of
health, we still expect so much of these guys and they expect even more of
themselves.
There’s a lot of talk about the pressure on women and I am
certainly not contesting it but the hardships males endure have been very much
grazed over. Many guys will end up taking whatever emotion they are feeling and
turn it into workout motivation instead of actually addressing it. I know this
sounds a lot healthier then my past coping strategies (i.e hurting myself) but
wait, we’ll get there.
Working-out in general is good for you, both mentally and
physically but it is becoming something more than just a feel-good activity;
it’s turning into an addiction. Any sensible person knows that an addiction is
bad and has an extremely negative connotation around it, largely involving drugs
and rehab. However, similar to how addicting self-harm (in the traditional
sense) is, there are many other things that fall into the same category. Most
people are addicted to something and if your addiction is knitting then good
for you, A+ on your choice of addiction but the rest of us have problems we
don’t want to admit.
I’ve gone over many different forms of self-harm and
frankly, I thought I had most of them figured out; but as usual, I was proven
wrong…there’s a lot more then I realized, they’re just more sneaky than
anything I figured out. I knew previously that people with eating disorders
would use workouts as a form of purging but I failed to see it as self-harm in
itself. Like anything I suppose, working out excessively is a self-abuse strategy
and although not all the way to self-mutilation-still inflicting intentional
pain on one’s body.
Not showing emotion for most males is something instilled by
the older generation and perpetuated by one’s peers. Weakness, at most, should
be kept in a man’s home but even then “quite acting like a girl” is a common
phrased commonly used by a father as his son’s lip quivers. The concept is
hideous; not being allowed to be who you are and show how you feel.
Then, later in life these guys are nagged by their
significant other about not communicating or talking about their feelings…how
is he supposed to know how to do that? “Manly” men don’t show emotion/ weakness
(words which are viewed as synonymous although aren’t) but they also have to be
good communicators/listeners for their partner.
I don’t expect anything to change over night about this. If
history has taught us anything, it’s that change that happens too fast doesn’t
turn out well. I just thought that this was something interesting for us to consider.
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