A conversation with men about men's health | Aware

you're very welcome to aware's june webinar and this month we're delighted to be in conversation with three men and i'll introduce them in a few moments but we'll just wait for everyone to get in so we'll be starting very shortly so i need to put my glasses on again so that's great just give another few moments for everyone to get in right we'll kick off so my name is claire hayes and i'm delighted to welcome you to awares webinar monthly webinar series and this one our june one is a conversation with men about men's health and i'm delighted to be welcoming in a little while um stephen mcbride and keith walsh and joey carberry but first i'd just like to give those of you who aren't familiar with aware or a webinar series a little bit of background information so first of all aware we provide mental health support services for and well-being programs for anyone who's impacted by anxiety depression and bipolar disorder and this includes those people who support a loved one we also have lots of mental health resources available and i encourage you to have a look at our website aware dot ie so with international men's health coming up on monday we decided to focus today on male health with a specific focus on mental health we invite you to submit questions in the question and answers box and only the panel will be able to see them we also have people from aware back stage jamie and karen who will be gathering the questions and sending them to me and we will be then asking the panel so we'll only be talking about people's personal perspectives today and stephen is a clinical expert alex and talks about that in a few moments but the others are going to be talking about their personal experiences and we can't get to everything but we'll answer the most relevant questions and the most commonly asked ones and unfortunately we cannot take questions after the webinar what we've learned and we're on a learning curve here is every month people submit questions afterwards and we're just not able to go back to our panel experts and ask them and get back to people so if anyone has any questions or difficulties or concerns after this in terms of your own well-being we strongly encourage you to talk to your gp about them so then let's start so i'm delighted to welcome steve mcbride and stephen is director of services at aware stephen's also a parent psychotherapist himself we have joey carvery and you might recognize joey as a monster an ireland rugby player and we have keith walsh and you might have come across keith and social media over the last while he's put out really important messages he's a broadcaster and a mental health advocate and we also have a contribution from minister simon harris minister for further and higher education research innovation and science minister harris was going to be with us present as some of you might be expecting and unfortunately the doyle business the government business came first and he's unable to be with us but as in any really well organized best occasion he sent a message so i'm going to ask each of our panelists to introduce themselves briefly and then we will watch miss minada minister claire make sense minister harris's video and then we'll have a conversation with our three guests so stephen maybe if i can ask you first please to introduce yourself thanks very much claire good afternoon everyone yeah my name is steve mcbride and i'm the director of services here at aware and i come from a background in in psychotherapy as claire has mentioned earlier so i'm a psychotherapist by uh training and i look forward to the conversation uh this afternoon about men's health and how we can look after ourselves as as men in our relationships out there in the world with other men and women so let's see where the conversation brings us to in that regard great thanks steven and joey if you could introduce yourself briefly please hi everyone um joey carber here i play rugby with monster in ireland and i'm really looking forward to the conversation today with keith and steven and yeah like steven said let's see where it brings us and we're looking forward to it great thanks and keith yeah uh my name is keith walsh broadcaster and uh former radio host and i work currently work with a company called think house there um a global advertising company and i work there as creative director so i've recently completely done a career uh uh change pivot i suppose is the word that we would use now that the the friends reunion um has happened i can say the word pivot but yeah so um and over the last while uh i've been talking about men's mental health things like therapy and just trying to make it part a normal part of a conversation just like fitness has become uh in the last 20 years and aren't just a normal part of your day normal part of your hygiene and that's very important to me so i'm a mental health advocate great okay thank you keith and stephen and joey and we'll have a look at minister harris's video now but just to let you know we've had some technical problems we're not sure how well it's going to work so we're not going to put everyone through three minutes of it not working so we'll try for the first few 30 seconds and see how it goes hi everybody and thank you so much to aware for inviting me to take part in this important panel on events today on men's mental health i'm really sorry that i can't be with you live today but unfortunately this event is now clashing with a cabinet meeting but i did want to send this message to show my support for this event and indeed to share some thoughts with you on mental health men's mental health and the issue of resilience i must say i'm honored to be sharing a panel with keith and joey and really want to thank them for their leadership and their advocacy and for the attention that they're drawing to such an important topic in our country at such a crucial time in our country and in our world as people try and recover and rebuild post the coven 19 pandemic i think we've seen over the last year the most incredible show of resilience of community spirit of coming together and pulling together by all people right across this country in many ways we've seen the best of ireland the best of community spirit we've seen that metal that we talk about so much in our country and in many ways people have described that as resilience people have faced the most horrifically difficult times and they have shown a huge resilience perhaps a resilience that they didn't even know they had but i just want to share a few thoughts with you i think what the pandemic has shown is the link between physical health and mental health is so clear for all to see we all know how much we enjoy getting out for that exercise even if we got fed up walking that same five kilometers over and over again because our physical health and our physical well-being was so linked to our mental health and well-being i think we also saw a much greater awareness of mental health people talking about it more in the country i think that in and of itself is important but we do also have to be honest there is still too much of a stigma attached to discussing mental health issues and perhaps that stigma is even more acute when we talk about men's mental health there is still sometimes this macho view that people have to say i'm all right plow on when people are feeling extremely fragile so i think the more we talk about mental health i think the more we can help each other and the more indeed we can help our country become a place where we foster positive mental health resilience is something that's so important and i'm so proud of everyone in this country and the resilience that we've all shown individually and collectively over the course of the last year and a half but sometimes i think resilience can be used as a bit of a buzzword and sometimes it can maybe paper over the fact that people are feeling very fragile for a whole load of different reasons the last year plus has been an extremely difficult time and i think we have to be honest with each other it's going to take time for our country to get back to some degree of normality it's going to take time for all of us to readjust i'm meeting people who even though they're looking forward to going back to normal still have an anxiety about that about actually having to re-emerge and socialize and reconnect and anxiety and concern about work and the future work prospects these are all normal things and that phrase which i know has become a bit hackneyed at times but that it's okay not to be okay does ring true because we are going to get through this together but it is going to take time i really want to thank everybody and aware for the work that you are doing for the work that you're doing day in and day out in providing help and support to all of us mental health isn't something over there it's not something that affects somebody else it's something that affects each and every one of us and mental illness is something that can visit each and every one of us at a stage in our life just like physical thoughts so please keep doing what you're doing aware and please know that we stand full square behind you in helping promote your vision of living in a country where we foster an environment of positive mental health i hope the webinar today goes really well and thank you so much for giving me these few moments there's a saying in irish too smite la nihoubra a good beginning is half the work so i'm certainly taking a deep sigh of relief now that our video worked the picture was a little bit out of sync with the sound but we could certainly hear minister harris's message loud and clear and on behalf of where i really like to thank minister harris for taking the time to make the video and to contribute today so stephen if i can ask you first mr harris mentioned their stigma he mentioned resilience one thing as you would know when we were planning this is our previous webinar in may was on the menopause i presume none of the three of you are watching but maybe aware but we had three times as much heat engagement right through a week ago there were three times more people who were interested three times more people signed up and then are watching this today why is that why is why is there less interest in a conversation on men's mental health than women it's a very interesting question claire yeah and obviously i'd be aware of the figures that uh signed up for the last month's webinar around the menopause and here we are talking about men's health and men's mental health and i was thinking about it in in the context i suppose of how perhaps from a male perspective and as a man you know that self-reliance is is more treasured or more seen to be a a virtue to hold on to or to um to embody in one's life you know that the idea of coping along and actually there can be quite a cost in that now i don't know if there's a direct correlation between that necessarily and uh you know two thirds less of a figure signing up for this month's webinar but i suppose speaking as a man there is something of that around uh and perhaps it's more uh prevalent in western societies about how self-reliance and coping alone is is is virtued and i i think there can be a cost in that even though there's you know this is the kind of counter-intuitive nature of it that it's it's been official to be able to cope and to have this resilience that minister harris spoke to as well so i was wondering a little bit about that uh in the sense of um these two webinars you know maze one and now this one and what might be going on in that regard yeah thanks and joey or keith is there anything that you'd like to say in response to minister harris said or thoughts that you and maybe if i go with you joey first and keith i'm not leaving you last the best to last as you know but so that's key to you and then look it's organic so if i if any of you want to come in too but maybe if i can ask you first joey and then come to you keep yeah i thought minister harris's messages were very spot-on i suppose the last 15-16 months have been extremely tough for everyone and not being able to see people i know from a personal level and i i'm very social and what helps my mental health the most and um would be to see people and meet people and i suppose during the pandemic we weren't able to do that so i think everyone has shown great resilience to get to where we are now and and things are starting to get look up so yeah yeah i think the message is spot on and it just shows how strong the country we are when we pull together and we can get through anything okay thank you i'm keith yeah it's it's interesting that you know the the numbers of men who are you know interested in having this conversation and the stigma attached to it and and it's going to take a long time like i always use the example of of jogging in ireland like when i was joe you won't remember this but when i was a young man people didn't jog you know if you saw someone jogging they were either in an athletic club or they were you know they were training for a marathon or they're running away from somebody and now you see people i see people every day i live in new bridge in canterbury i see people out in the evening they're walking they're jogging there's groups of them there's all different levels there's 50 year old ladies in their in their groups of three or four out for their jog there's you know these you'd see these like athletic clubs the numbers are up like people i i can remember myself going to australia for the first time as a young man and just seeing people out doing exercise and just being amazed that wasn't our country we didn't do that we didn't look after our health our physical health i'm kind of hoping i think it was due to people traveling and coming back and was people like me or the people who who left in the 80s and came back you know to america in australia they came back with these habits of exercising and getting out and about and getting fresh air and all that kind of stuff and that all helps your mental health as well so i am hoping that things are changing and that with people like the likes of joey and and myself and uh brezzy and you know talking about it that it is changing but at the moment we're not there yet uh people are still kind of embarrassed to be associated with like like you might have been embarrassed to go out for a run in the 80s you know what i mean it's it's just it's a mindset change um and and yes we are bad at asking for help especially the men and and the women as well but women tend to talk to each other and share a bit more and they will go to their mothers or their friends or talk to their husbands um the problem is sometimes the husbands are so preoccupied they're not listening but we we don't we don't talk to our friends because it is that thing of you you are expected to man up you're expected to grow a pair you're expected to deal with the situation and that's bad because we often you'll find men back themselves into a corner and they can be asked the question again and again is everything okay and of course men without men everything's grand everything's always grand and you know it's a great word that we use here in ireland where we just say everything's grand and suddenly you know the finances aren't grand or the job isn't ground and you don't like going to work every day and no you're not happy in your circumstances but you haven't told anybody and you haven't shared that with anybody but you're trying to cope and then all of a sudden you just can't cope any longer it just it's gone too far we've backed ourselves into a corner and that's what we really need to look at so for anybody saying that like there's there's too much talk about anxiety or there's too much talk about stress or there's too much talk about mental health it's only making people have anxiety and mental health that's false and that's not a fact like it's we we just need to it's okay to talk about it it's all right to say that you're struggling and that's the point we're trying to get across and i think to concur with that keita and i think just to add on to something of that you know it's the idea that and i'd like to listen to you talk about normalizing the idea of therapy or counseling or reaching out for support and it's the idea that if if a man is to reveal something of of himself around a struggle he's having that it's not about necessarily opening up about his as darkest fears or deepest struggles it's the idea that uh it doesn't have to be necessarily emotional support per se it's a mixture of emotional support as well as the practical support which can alleviate these feelings of anxiety and stress whether as you mentioned it's about a financial uh concern or whatever you know uh bereavement anxiety around that all the natural and normal things that happen to us all in our lives and and reaching out and finding some of that support with a loved one or a friend you know can can be so rich and beneficial about what comes back to you you know by revealing that kind of idea of self-revelation yeah and i think that it's it's only when the when the proverbial hits the fan that we we suffer and like joey be able to relate to this i was talking to somebody recently who plays a lot of sport and she's been injured and she struggles you if you're a young lad and you're playing sport and everything's fine and you're and you're going great guns and you're getting picked for the team and everything's fine that's all fine you don't really need to deal with your you don't feel like you need to deal with your mental health because you're getting your you're getting uh your satisfaction from playing your game from getting picked you know everything's good everyone likes everyone's talking to you but then suddenly if you get injured or you're you're suddenly your form you know you lose form for a while nobody wants to know as much you you know you aren't as important to people and and it's directly linked then to your ability to play a sport or to do your job or whatever it is and that's when we we that's when we need to talk and and if we're not talking all along and then when something like that happens i'm sure joey can attest to this that's that's when the you know the doodoo hits the fan you know yeah i completely agree with you keith i think um having experienced an injury where i was out for 15 months and and like you said keith when everything's going well you kind of take for granted um the highs and the lows of sport and then when it's taken away from you and there's nothing you can really do about it it is it's a tough place to be and and i think that's why sport is such a good i find anyway such a good release for me and so being back playing has really made me appreciate the highs and lows of everything and i suppose you can take the highs and lows of sport and then completely correlate it to the highs and lows of life as well and i do think you have to appreciate when the times are good and i know for me i'm appreciating every every good every good game and every good training at the moment for being taken away and then the lows as well but and i do think like you said i'm very lucky to be part of a team and some of those guys in the team would be my best friends so i can talk to them on a daily basis i can chat to my girlfriend and i found that was the biggest thing for me when times were tough and and i almost couldn't see through some days where i'd go in and nothing was working and the only relief i could get was by chatting to people and i think the injury unfortunately happened when it did but i had so many learnings from it now that i feel like i'm better for it i'm just struck listening to you that there's a lot of myths about this so one is men don't talk you three have no problem in talking so is it that men don't talk when women are around or that when they just keep going and don't make it a and then women thing but i give a talk an input of the plowing championship a few years ago on behalf of aware and for men men's mental health and about seven women turned up and no men and when i talked to the then president of the irish country women's association the ica they were down there as well they said they were there to talk about men's physical safety on the farms and that what they had found was that the way that the men would listen was through the women so preaching to men or talking to men and maybe the word preaching but talking to men about keeping safe on the farm wasn't working but once they went through the women then they listened i i think that's a myth too i mean what would you the tree if you really like young men and older men to get from this webinar today from this conversation in terms of managing supporting their mental health well i mean don't be afraid to turn around to whoever will listen to you you don't always the first person you turn around and talk to might not be the right person to talk to so you know if you're getting the if you're not if you're getting the vibes that somebody you're talking that doesn't care move on find somebody else you know um i would always be an advocate of professional help and and i'm i would see a therapist i went through a period for about a year and a half where i saw a therapist every week and now if that's been pushed out every six weeks or you know two months whenever i feel like i want to check in um so don't be afraid to put up your hand and say listen um i could do with some advice it's for men look it's advice on mental health i contacted a friend of mine when then when the first lockdown happened i got in touch with a friend of mine who lives abroad and he's away from his family and he's away from parents and sisters and you know things weren't going well with the wider family his dad wasn't well sister wasn't well he was stuck sort of working from home and had no couldn't travel to help them couldn't you know felt felt kind of i suppose trapped and useless like i can't do anything you know and i could tell by talking to him that he could do a talking to somebody and i said look would you if i send you a number and the great thing about uh coven all that is that now you can just see your therapist on zoom doesn't matter where you're so i recommended a local guy here in kildare and i said look will you check in with this lad and he kind of my friend got annoyed with me and he said what he said what's he going to do get rid of covid and it's not about getting rid of covet it's not about getting rid of the problem it's about talking to somebody who can help you figure out a way out of the problem how do you deal with covert how do you deal with the problem how do you deal with the job it's not about walking away it's about figuring out a way for you personally because everyone deals with it differently what are your skills what are your traits how can you best approach this how is your hygiene how is your sleep how is your physical activity what what what can you do and what can we nurture here and you for you to be and i suppose to talk to men it's about if you if you if you've got to play a sport if you're going to play sport you've got to transfer if you want to deal with an issue you've got to train first you've got to be ready you've got to you know make sure you've got the right weaponry you know the right physical attributes to deal with the whatever it is covet or being made redundant what are you going to do you know you kind of in one way you are on your own but in other words you can talk to that can tell you look you have these skills and if you create this scenario and if you think in this way and if you talk about it like there are there are people can help you with discover your tools uh to deal with with the problems you know and that's all it is and i was thinking about that in the context of allowing once allowing yourself or ourselves as men and speaking as a man obviously you know to be vulnerable you know and again it's it's not this position of having to reveal every last thing but it it can be as uh as shorter term or as longer term and you've alluded to your own uh journey and that keith you know about revealing yourself you know whether it's in a professional capacity or with our loved ones because i was thinking about the word you know allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and the word around being emotionally intimate or intimate intimacy you know and how that makes sense because that creates the kind of space i think for uh all human beings and obviously as men to be to be known a little bit more and that fosters a deeper connection in relationships because we're all social beings you know we're all we're born to relate in the world and and how we can uh further develop that you know that social connectedness through allowing ourselves to be vulnerable as is appropriate and as this feels safe to you okay there's a few questions coming in and really one for each of you that i'll come back to in a moment but joey what message would you like people watching this to get just that it's okay and to have bad days and and to feel to to sometimes just not feel great and and like he said i i always like to think of it as you have a gearbox and like driving a car where when things are good you're in gear one but when things are bad you you need to use the tools and get to gear five and and be able to use the tools that you've you've worked on and i i i'm the same i've chatted to a therapist over my injury and i felt it even just if it was a general chit chat about the weather and it helps and so being able to chat with him and discuss what what i need to do and what i need to bring out of myself when times are tough and that really helped me to um see past a few things and and yeah i suppose that's one thing i'd love for it to be more um accepted joey there's a particular question for you so i'll ask you just while you're the floor so question for joey do you feel that the skills you required as a professional sports person transferred readily when dealing with taking care of your own mental health given physical health is so crucial for a sports person yeah definitely um i suppose to relate to that question um in a game you might be losing um and it might be frantic and you might need to compose yourself compose the guys around you and get back on track to where where the team's how the team's playing and i suppose that's directly correlated to life like he'd said you could be made redundant and your back might be against the wall but being able to keep a level head and just to keep seeing rationally uh is massive as it it's a big indication what your neck your next step is going to be and it might be your most important step so i do believe that there's a massive correlation between what happened in sport what happens in life and as far as being able to be resilient as well and when the times are tough to keep to keep going through and to be able to ask for help is a big thing as well um i believe that's a massive thing so yeah that's what i would say yeah okay thank you yeah go on keith that's what you always said about the next step like that's so important because if you you need to break it down because and i i've been there and i would have been in a scenario where i would have just thought everything it's too much it's too much for me to deal with there's too many things going wrong here i can't deal with them but when you when you you know if you talk to a therapist or if you can manage to get into a place where you can be more mindful or you know or meditate or any that kind of stuff it teaches you to just just take the right next step and then then deal with the step after that afterwards very important to break things down like that very similar to that scenario and sport keep if i can just stay with you then and then there's a question for you stephen as well this specific but and somebody's written in and said hi as a man and a father i struggle with being a father who cares for and is strong for my children and being able to say when i am not good i feel i should be caring for them and not the other way around how would you react to that yeah like i mean the thing about it is with a fat in a family unit we've always traditionally the father is the the head of the household and then everybody sort of like you know files in under that i mean it's not it's not the truth because a lot of the time women run the household um but with the way i approach it and i would have had my struggles with my family and and feeling like an outsider you know i would have had moments where my wife and children were laughing and fooling and you know proper belly laughing and i really just felt like i i can't i'm not involved because my emotions were so locked up i just wasn't i didn't have the ability i didn't have the tools to just enjoy that moment um but sort of through through the work i've done on myself like we have a sort of a situation like the problem is dads men we come into different situations as different people so we're in work we're a different guy where we come home we're dad we we we were out in the football pitch playing five aside with the lads we're in the pub where we're keith or we're we're stephen or joey we're different people in different places the trick is to try and be yourself this is the one thing that therapy really helped me with was to drill down into me and who i really was and try and be that person all the time and it's been difficult for me because now i'm sort of having trying to foster new relationships with my kids and that i'm behaving differently and it's it's it's awkward for them i'm behaving differently with my wife it's awkward for her but they're slowly getting used to it it's just things change i've decided that i'm going to be the same person in every scenario if i go to work i'm going to be me if i go if i'm at home i'll be me and it's allowed me to be able to share the funny thing the the things that i find funny in life i can share that with my kids because i'm just keith just sharing a funny moment with them i'm not dad trying to be i mean obviously you've got to be responsible and you know and you've got to guide them as well but you know you can only do so much of that but at the same time you ought to yourself to be yourself with your kids and then that will allow them to see that they can be themselves with you and not and they they can bring themselves into the house the same way they are with their friends and i see my son now more as his friends see him than i would have before because i've allowed him to see me as who i really am and it's important to think about these things who are you to the people around you what way do you behave around them are you closed off to them do you share things do you talk to them do you listen more importantly and do you allow them to make mistakes and not be judgmental because if you are judgmental of the people around you they won't tell you anything and then you're locking yourself out of your own life and also if you're judgmental of yourself and maybe being hard on yourself and this idea of supposed to be strong as a father or as as a man that that adds or heaps an extra layer of pressure and in some regards you know society driven you know about the uh the strong man and and whether that's about a man in the family you know and the heterosexual understanding of it or not you know but that as a father figure um how strength uh strength comes from vulnerability and allowing yourself to to get to know yourself as keith is attesting to and and also kind of thinking about what way you want to be in that position of the father and speaking to your loved ones about us you're in the role of as a father in the position as a father and you're also psychotherapist so separating out and you know other people are whatever jobs men have separating that out and being being the father how do you manage that and there's a specific question for you so maybe if i ask you the question too and then you can um can answer in whatever way you want so for those people who are more resilient and don't suffer from mental health issues how can i explain lack of resilience and the practical daily aspects of difficulty with men's mental health and also how others can help to family friends and also managers employers i struggle with explaining my mental health issues to people i'd also be interested in the panel's reaction or practical experiences is that question for me claire lesson for you stephen but also the one about being a dad as well um yeah to go back to that first bit it's kind of trying to forget in a strange way you know that i'm not my children's psychotherapist so it's almost a disadvantage knowing some of what i know and what i practice in my work life and have practiced in my training you know i'm their father not you know so it's trying and it's not compartmentalizing it it's it's kind of allowing both in rather than one or the other but taking on the the position of uh their father uh in in a healthy way or in this healthy way as possible uh while realizing that the stuff that i do know to do with my training and work life is relevant but not uh the central aspect of it i suppose and then i was thinking about the second aspect of the question or the second question claire and i was thinking about it in it sounds as though that behind that question there might be some kind of internal judgment about not feeling as though so this idea that the person who's asking the question is saying that they're not resilient or feel as though they're less resilient maybe than other people and i wonder how that's been defined you know and and how their understanding of that may be uh is a little bit off or something and by that i mean kind of not as accurate as it could be because in just the sense of that of being um kind of a little bit judgmental and if you feel a little bit less resilient what you might do to kind of think about uh you know again it's back to what we've been talking about how you feel as though you can open that conversation with people that you're close to you know in as um gently as possible you know and how you can foster some compassionate relationships and maybe that's not exclusively with your partner or uh with the family member that friends are so central to it too yeah and there's a response here as well from one of the participants uh some somebody attending the webinar as a father of three boys i find it extremely helpful that you have spokespeople that kids can relate to outside of the family network high-profile young people like joey and brezzy are key in my opinion and and joey the question is to absolutely agree with if you look at the vodafone advert at the moment you can see how society promotes the phrase i'm grand so you know yourself so somebody's saying we need to move beyond when we say we're not okay what does that actually mean what supports does this mean that the person needs and so in work when they say they're not okay or if they've had a mental health difficulty or illness and they're returning to work so that that's very broad but you're in the in the mature world if i can use that word where people possibly some men are saying i am grand and they're not yeah i definitely think it comes back to having the strength and being honest enough with yourself to realize that things aren't uh grand as as you said and i think it's the easy answer a lot of the time and and i suppose having the strength to be able to understand that something's even if you don't know what's wrong but just being able to realize something isn't right and being able to ask for the help of someone and is massive like it's incredibly tough thing to do i know with my injuries and i tried to pretend i was okay i tried to pretend i wasn't injured and i'd be like no i'll be fine i'll go out and train and end up doing more damage so i i from i think it's it's it's a lot easier to just say no i'm okay um and i think it's it's something that we all need to get better at is being able to say no something's up here i need to do a bit more research i need to ask someone who might know and i think it's it's a skill that we need to we need to get better at and it only comes with practice really thank you and there's another question for you joy but um i'll ask you that just when when you're there and were there supports within the team and organization structure that were of help to you and are they available or could they be replicated for the general public yeah um i suppose like i said earlier i'm privileged enough to be part of a team and some of them will be my best friends but i don't think there's anyone within the organization who i couldn't go to and ask and they wouldn't do their utmost best to help me and so there was obviously that close circle and i had my girlfriend robin who i suppose i probably tell you the ins and outs of every day and then my family a huge part but then i i was lucky enough like i said the monster the doc and he put me in contact with the therapist who i was able to chat to and and i found him to be someone who's completely attached from my environment and was very helpful but um i suppose having people ask me the whole time was i okay was a big thing for me because some days like you said it was just a habit where i'd say it's grand and then it got to the point where i was so sick of just saying that that i was like no i need to do something here and and i would sit down and i'll chat with someone and afterwards i felt so much better about it so yeah there's definitely people out there you can talk to and i suppose you can be replicated through in that everyday life and and it just comes from the people around you and you're yourself being honest and putting your hand up saying i need some help i'm really conscious as i'm listening to you that there's individual differences you know so you are each representing yourself rather than men in general and there's cultural differences and ireland as a society has changed and one of the questions or the comments that we've got in is just reminding us that in the traveler community that the men find it difficult and see themselves that they can't let themselves down so if they talk about that they're not okay it can be seen as letting themselves down because they're the keepers in the family so that they might never get help when they need it as i think then if they do they're not going to be able to support their families if they fall down and and keith i can ask you a specific question and i'm conscious this is coming into question and answers rather than a fluid as you said stephen conversation is is that okay with you and you can each not if it is and i'm just conscious of people wanting questions and and the questions i've asked you up until now have all been from men that last comment was from a woman and um keith a woman has asked would you suggest someone should approach a man if they feel they're struggling mentally or leave it to the man to talk to them if needed and that might be depending on the man and depending on the woman but what's what are your thoughts on that yeah it's very difficult um for i mean i can only talk about my own personal situation and i was um the kind of the as i keep saying like for me that the reason i went to therapy was because i was i've been presenting the breakfast show on 2fm for five years we've been quite successful and suddenly came to an end and and i would say that it was kind of not of my own doing in that like these things happen you know it's not that's that's show business it's you know it works like that you know things shows finish up and but i felt a tremendous sense of rejection i felt a tremendous sense of just not being good enough i felt and also i was a bit lost and i was kind of in my 40s like what do i do now where do i go next what's you know and i and this is all kind of like weighing on me and it was i suppose i was looking that my wife she suggested and this is how men's heads work so this could help answer the question you know i was sort of thinking well i've got some i've got a bit of time here this show's finished up i've got a bit of leeway uh you know how do i make make sure that i'm the best version of myself for when the next challenge comes along that was kind of like my head i was like i was making sure i was eating rice and i was you know going to the gym and keeping myself fit and all this kind of stuff i gave up booze at one point um and i i haven't drank since but my wife actually said to me would you consider talking to somebody and straight away in my in my in my head because i'm a man i was thinking yes excellent that's one thing i haven't thought about he can tell me what to do from like a psychotherapist point of view because i didn't know you know but he could he can block you know that's that boxed off i've got the you know i'll keep fit i'll make sure i'm eating right and then he's going to tell me what it what i can do you know i was it was almost like i was handing it over to him so i was happy enough to go to see him uh thinking well this guy is going to just point me in the right direction and tell me what to do he's going to give me all the you know i didn't know that he was going to talk to me and tease it out of me and actually i was going to answer the questions myself i didn't really know you know i expected to go into the therapist like almost like a man with a clipboard and a white coat and you know sort of a you know roundy glasses much like myself and and paul fest but you know i went into a guy called luke and he was wearing a big woolly jumper and cords and you know he just kind of sat there and listened to me and you know ultimately i started answering my own questions it's not something to be afraid of it's just a safe space to talk but but it was my wife who said it to me and and if somebody's saying and yeah it's difficult how do you approach and how do you say it to somebody but maybe for a man if you can approach and say look you've you know you've got you've got all the tools here maybe just kind of have a look at what's going on uh in the head and see see how that is i would always say yeah do it try it there's no harm and and they might might not react properly uh and positively straight away but i guarantee you the way men work he will think about that and he might at some point revisit that suggestion sure don't leave the elephant in the room being the elephant if you know if you have a go an urge to say something you know and even though there might be a kind of unintended consequence that might be uh difficult to receive backwards as to is to speak to it you know speak to your as spontaneously as possible and that would be my sense of it you know in in a relationship just to check in in the spirit of everything's gone you know you're doing okay you know and i know uh eventually as you alluded to joey you know being asked are you okay in a daily basis over and over you know sometimes that you know as you say the penny drops he said right i have to do something but perhaps it will come there is the positive response will come in the first or second time you're asked it depends on the person uh being asked a question doesn't and yeah i think as well like things like suggesting podcasts is a great way of you know because as we said at the start we're very much men are still we're very much in a place where we don't want to talk about the fact that we might have worries about our mental health but suggesting podcasts you know if my you know if you've a partner or your wife suggests oh you listen to the latest sort of brazzy podcast or if you're you know something that might be a bit more spiritual than they're used to listen to something on on mindfulness the big the big thing for me and the big thing i got out of therapy and stephen mentioned earlier earlier was the word vulnerability and like being vulnerable i thought i thought being vulnerable meant not wearing your your your your helmet onto the hurling field or not wearing your um your gum shield onto the rugby pitch you know but but it's the ability to allow yourself as joey said to tell somebody you're you're not feeling okay and you know in a safe place to say look i i'm i am struggling here and i found that once i mean it was funny because my therapist had to explain to me what vulnerability meant and i was like i didn't really get it but after a few sessions i was like okay and and then i was like so it's okay for me to go back to my wife and say i'm not sure about x y and z or you know i think that this might be an issue or you know to be honest with her it took her a while to to sort of figure out this new man in her life who was being honest you know and and you have to give the people in your in your in your life time as well to get used to the changes but vulnerability for me once i understood what vulnerability mean and meant and being vulnerable it unlocked this whole world of then i was able to be mindful then i was able to think about meditation then i was able to think about knocking the booze on the head then i was able to but there was that first step of like joey said of being vulnerable and and do do a little do a little do try a small bit of vulnerability and then a bigger bit again and build on that so like if joey is able to say yeah look i'm not feeling and have a quick chat with somebody about how they're actually feeling that's opening the door a little bit and then you can do more of that and it doesn't have to be a big like you know you don't have to go onto social media and tell everybody you know all your troubles straight away just bit by bit be a little bit vulnerable be a little bit more vulnerable and that goes back to the other question if you're asked about be vulnerable around your children you know you can tell them you don't have all the answers as well and that creates a different relationship there as well keith you've answered a few questions that have come in one was does anybody in the panel practice mindfulness and you've mentioned that also what you mean about being real but being being yourself and i think you've answered that in terms of expanding on the vulnerability piece and there's a question that's come in that has ended the last sentence jumped out because it's in capitals and it says in capitals great to see joey back in the pitch so we just pass that on and that's somebody who's asking saying that covert hasn't been too difficult but that's mental health difficulties over the last 10 years and and describes a little bit of his own experiences in terms of medication and so on and his question is would um any of you be able to give advice on dealing with paranoia if they've ever dealt with it or come across in in other walks of life so somebody who might think that um he's describes his illness has made him very paranoid so which he's trying to control yeah as well i can speak to that uh claire perhaps you know i think in relation to paranoia is that to try and and and you know not to take the heat out of that person's experience but you know that we we can all experience it you know the sense of um you know we often do an exercise here in relation to the impact on people's thinking and then behavior if they a neighbor ignores them or they perceive the neighbor to ignore them and one of our skills and exercises around examining your thinking process isn't it around the experience of a a friend or a neighbor ignoring you or you your perception that they've ignored you so i think one of the antidotes to kind of if paranoia is taking root is to try and examine some of your thinking and examine the evidence for it and there's a tangible way of doing that of even getting out an 84 piece of paper and writing down you know your thoughts about it and what is um what genuine and real and obviously your perception of the event is that for in that instance as i'm putting the example out you know that you might really feel as though the neighbor is ignoring you but what are you going to do to kind of counter that kind of growing evidence in your head so that's the bigger risk isn't it to try and challenge the paranoia rather than of letting it take root i don't know maybe other joey or keith or yourself even claire have a different sense of that i'm going to come to joey if that's okay because i'm conscious of time and we've had loads and loads and loads of questions but there's one here that i i'm struck by that a lot of people are particularly in the sports world are talking about their own experiences their own challenges and somebody is concerned about yes but could that backfire and could be a judgmental piece and it's important to choose the right person so joey you've very generously agreed to become an ambassador of aware and volunteered to become an ambassador for aware and i know this is our our start and we're so thrilled to have you have you experienced any um fallback or a negative response to you being so upfront about the importance of men addressing their mental health definitely not um i think it's i think it's a topic where i think it was mentioned earlier where when initially it is mentioned men might react in a way that they have to come back to it and think about it again and they're like hang on they're actually on to something there and i think it's a point that men just overlook it and the more we talk about it and the more it's recognized the more it seems to make sense to people and and i think the the awareness of what actually is mental health is probably not there and within some people and so yeah the more i've kind of been exposed to it and the more i've chatted to people about it it's kind of like an awakening where they're like okay maybe they're not they might react not hostile at the start but they're not as keen on it at the start but then the more they think about it and the more they appreciate it then i think it is a topic where people are a lot more interested in and um i suppose that's a big reason for me coming on this is my personal experience allowed me to see things differently and and almost a new outlook on things and and i'd love to be able to share that and how people and who are in tough times and so yeah that's i think that's a it's it's definitely something that is growing and it's getting people become more aware of it uh excuse the pun but yeah it is it's uh definitely getting better we've got quite thank you we've got quite a lot of comments about the impact of the three of you talking about this conversation is is having and and a lot of people thanking you for it somebody who would say explain that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and since he was 17 15 or 16 and back then nobody talked about it so the difference in terms of this conversation and be recorded so my hope is that young men older men teenagers will really gain from it and we've got a question that i can answer and it's been asked what would we recommend for people who can't afford therapy and i'd encourage people to have a look at aware's website because there are resources there that are free of charge there's um cognitive behavioral therapy courses life skills there's support groups is support line there's a really detailed website with a database of lectures and webinars that people can access and resource and of course the number one is always for people to go to their gp and there's so many questions that we're not going to be able to address what did the panel think about the connection between ectism and um i'm not pronouncing that properly and egotism and the competitive spirit and comment hearing keith and joey talk so openly about the vulnerabilities really really helpful talking about the language taking the stigma out so i'm going to just give each of you sort of 30 seconds if that's okay to say maybe one thing that you would really like to emphasize in terms of men a conversation about men about their mental health and stephen if i can come to you first thanks claire yeah i was just thinking and trying to generate a few thoughts in my head following on from the conversation i think two things come to mind and i was tuning in to what uh you know keith said about the idea of physical health and going for drugs and i can kind of validate that because i witnessed that as well and i engaged in that as a middle-aged man much to my frustration about being middle aged about running and the connection of physical health so the ongoing conversation about uh mental health and emotional well-being is very much to be welcomed because there's a further role to be traveled and i was thinking about it in the context of where do we learn to be a man and some of us if not a lot of it comes from our experience of being fathered on our relationship with our father our fathers and i was thinking about it in the sense that nowadays it's also very common to see young men as fathers pushing boogies or prams or whatever and that might not have been the case maybe 15 20 years ago so i think that speaks to something culturally and very hopeful and helpful as well around a societal change in that regard as we see it you know as i see it you know around the suburbs where i live so i think that's helpful and hopeful as we continue on this conversation together about the nation's mental health and from our perspective this afternoon from from a man's perspective of it of health and mental health great thanks stephen and keith yeah i would say um you know after this go and find out about the word vulnerability find out what it means do as much research as you can listen to all the podcasts just put the word vulnerability and podcast into google i think brene brown is one that writes books and has talks and ted talks about vulnerability what does it mean really look into what it means and try and discover who you really are and try and that all leads into mindfulness meditation being you know in the moment i think it was one of your former managers joey used to talk about you know dealing with what's in front of you um on the pitch you know just to just do what's in front of you that's all you can do and and that that all comes down to mindfulness and meditation and allowing yourself to be yourself in the moment and just deal what you need to deal with and living each day [Music] just live each day don't worry about tomorrow you know it's easy to say but the word vulnerability research it it'll be your friends believe me and and it takes a strong man to be vulnerable great thank you keith and joey yeah um i suppose being honest with yourself and and knowing when something might not be completely fully right and being able to trust the people around you and trust the support systems you have and be able to ask and ask for help and have them the strength to ask for help and i think is is massive and i think we can all definitely learn from that great and i'm just conscious of you know the strength it takes to ask for help but even more courage and strength to take help so and look i really want to thank each of you very very much for putting yourselves forward again you're talking as your individual person as a man to be continued and i just really like to say grameela mahogany of galer and joey representing everybody who's watching this to wish you the very very best out there in the rugby field and we will be watching you and keith will be listening to your podcast and stephen i'm just delighted to have you as a colleague and continue working with you so thank you so to move to next week so um so thank you also to thank the people who've attended it has been really really helpful and apologies for those who i haven't got to your specific question and next month and it's just shocking how quickly the time is going by but next month we are looking at brain imaging and mood and the role of the brain in mental health and it's fascinating and it's an area that is evolving over and over and we're very fortunate to be welcoming dr derek cannon who's an expert in the whole area of the brain and i'm very much looking forward to having conversation with her if you'd like to stay up to date on our upcoming webinars you can subscribe to aware's webinar mailing list and that's on our website or via the follow-up email that you'll receive tomorrow and the follow-up email will also include a link to allow you to watch back and share this webinar today if you so wish it will also be available on our youtube channel as are all past webinars and just a reminder that unfortunately aware can't take any more questions for the panel today but if you do have questions or concerns about your health we really strongly encourage you to to speak to your gp and then for more information on aware and our services visit aware.ie so final word of thanks to joey to stephen to keith and wishing each of you the very very best in your careers in your lives thanks claire thanks joey thanks keith lovely conversation yeah thank you very much everyone thanks guys

Channel: Aware

Views: 1,713

Keywords: mental health, men's mental health, men's health

Id: CeOacOp74Aw

Length: 56min 57sec (3417 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021