How Fear and Shame Are Killing The Modern Man

*If you can’t handle your st, can’t keep it together, then you aren’t a real man….right?***

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Most of our parents, if you are a Gen X’er or a Boomer, grew up with the idea that manhood meant having your shit together. Real men managed their shit, they didn’t let their shit get to them. If their shit got to them, they sure as shit didn’t show it. When shit got real, they dug deep and found the strength to persevere. Being a man was being stoic, non emotional, strict and above all else composed. Good men kept all that shit under wraps. Shit may have been real but they never bent under its pressure. Shit was not allowed to get to them.

We often look at history through the rosiest of lenses. We can’t help it. Leave it to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show remind us of a simpler time when life lessons were easily learned and internalized. Being a man then just meant doing the right thing. Life was easy if you just swallowed the distasteful and had time to sit in front of the television and relax for a few minutes. Retire to your study or office, light your pipe and reflect.

We’re like a boy in a batting cage, the pitching machine turned way up and the intervals too close.

For most of us, life has never been that simple. We can’t just turn it off. We don’t have time to sit and reflect. The reality of life today is vastly different than our expectations. We’re like a boy in a batting cage, the pitching machine turned way up and the intervals too close. We don’t have time to reset before the next ball comes screaming towards us. Most of the time it’s all we can do to make contact let alone get a productive hit. We end up with a ton of foul tips and rarely hit the solid contact long ball.

The world is more interconnected and moving more quickly than ever before. I spent some time with a close friend last night, both of us struggling with man of the same issues. The thing that bothered us the most wasn’t that we were struggling. It’s not the panic attacks, feelings of worthlessness or fear of failure.

What’s killing us is the shame we feel for admitting that we can’t handle it. Somewhere along the way we were conditioned to believe that we should never need help. Suck it up, buttercup. Real men aren’t broken. Hell, real men don’t even bend let alone break! We’re supposed to be the rock everyone clings to during the storm. How can you be the rock if you can’t hold your own?

The happiness is gone, replaced by stress and anxiety we can’t show lest we’re judged as incompetent, too needy and immasculine.

The world has changed and attitudes have begun to adjust with them, but we are a generation of men lost in between. We can’t cope and we can’t ask for help. The happiness is gone, replaced by stress and anxiety we can’t show lest we’re judged as incompetent, too needy and immasculine. We’re caught between what worked for generations past and what will save the generations ahead.

How does a man, a father, husband and son navigate through a life he doesn’t understand without the tools to comprehend and cope? How does that same man show his sons and daughters that it is not just OK to ask for help but a necessary part of life if he is unable to do it himself?

We self medicate. We seek escape. We close our eyes to the damage we do to our lives, convincing ourselves we’re still Good Men, still living up to an outdated and harmful ideal. We do things we know are mistakes and still somehow find ourselves powerless to stop them. We can’t ask for help even as we drown in a sea of our own misdeeds. Guilt feeds into regret that feeds into a hopelessness that feeds into a further need for an alternate to the painful reality we face every day.

It isn’t enough to tell them asking for help isn’t shameful while retreating to our fantasy worlds, vodka and nights crying ourselves to sleep.

The answer, like Schrodingers cat, is both there and not there. All we have to do is ask for help, admit that we can’t manage. We can’t though. We can’t just allow that level of vulnerability without letting down everyone who relies on us. The horrible and inescapable reality though is that without asking for help we are guaranteed to fail those we love the most. It’s a horrible quandary to face daily.

I don’t know what the answer is, but we have to do better for our children and grandchildren. We have to model the behavior we expect. It isn’t enough to tell them asking for help isn’t shameful while retreating to our fantasy worlds, vodka and nights crying ourselves to sleep. We need to stand up and finally reach out for the help that can save us. It’s not just a matter of life and love. It’s a matter of survival. Sometimes, we really can’t keep our shit together. When that happens, we need to admit it and be open to help.

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