#ItsOKMan: Men, It’s OK If You’re Struggling With Your Mental Health.

Silence.

When you read that, what’s the first meaning of the word that comes to mind? Most people’s first thought might be that silence means quiet, no sound, maybe peace. But like the good ole English language, a lot of our English words have various different meanings.

To me, silence can be good but it could also be evil. The good silence is like having peace and quiet after a long day and having time to clear your mind. The evil silence is like an emotion, it is fear, sadness, and anger packaged into an emotion of its own.

Many people like myself, struggle or have struggled in silence. We don’t have a person to let all of our bottled up silence out. There may be someone or people in your life that are there physically, but we are alone emotionally and mentally. We cannot talk about our thoughts, emotions, and feelings, whether they’re good or bad.

The type of pain this silence brings is beyond what anyone ever expects. This is because when we bottle up and hold in all of those emotions, thoughts, and feelings, we don’t recognize how long we’ve suffered or how much we’ve bottled up until it is too late.

There are people out here who try to talk and explain their feelings/thoughts/emotions to people they love and the people/person they love they’re trying to tell about what they’re feeling, completely takes offense, wants to say “what about my feelings”, gets angry/upset because of the feelings you’re trying to explain, hateful because you’ve said something that upset them, ignored, and much more.

So what do you do when these events happen, when you feel wrong for trying to talk about your feelings? You’ll bottle it up, go into a silent state of mind. And after a long time of doing that and being rejected of the persons time to explain your feelings, thoughts, or emotions, you begin to develop a trust issue to expressing anything personal at all. If the person you love does not want to hear you out, what makes this person think that anyone else would? Especially a stranger, like a therapist.

So many people deal with this evil silence and do not want to talk about anything with anyone. These people do not even know if they’re being mentally abused or not because they’re always made to feel like they’re the ones who are wrong.
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This Part Gets Into Relationships:

-For the Men-

•For the Men Part 1: I know a lot of men are designed with this evil silence by trait, but there are a lot of women who have this evil silence too because of relationship abuse. Men do not want to seem weak, but what’s crazy is, you may not seem weak in those moments of silence, but just wait till that bottle fills up, because it is going to, and you’ll explode. When that explosion happens, you just made yourself look weaker overall than if you were to just express yourself just enough to keep the bottle from overfilling.

•For the Men Part 2: Work on your personal feelings and controlling those outbursts of emotions. Life is hard as hell and when someone you love makes you angry, we seem to lose sight of why we’re there because someone we loved hurt us.

•For the Men Part 3: You need to be able to do the same for your loved one. Listen to them and their feelings, don’t get angry because of the way that they feel, these are not your feelings, these are their feelings, and you cannot control someone’s feelings. Women vent, some women, A LOT. But hey, they’re talking to you about it right? They’re not out texting a coworker or friend all their feelings because you don’t listen right? Maybe they are? If they are, it’s because you do not give them the time, attention, and focus on what/why they’re venting to you. They’re upset about something, help them understand what they’re feeling and make them feel good for sharing their emotions with you. Because, they could be sharing them with someone else but they obviously trust you enough to tell you things.
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-For the Women-

•For the Women Part 1: When a man is trying to express themselves, we may come across as angry, upset, all over the place, and not making sense. This is because we’re confused about what we are processing in our brains at the moment, and when we don’t understand, we get frustrated. We may not make 100% sense and it may be mushed up, blended information we’re saying. We’re only trying to piece things together mentally and we do not explain things in full detail like a lot of women do. We already bottle things up, so if we’re explaining something, we are giving pieces of information from various things we’re thinking about. It’s like a puzzle, we’re giving you the pieces and we’re asking you to help us put the puzzle together as a team.

•For the Women Part 2: Please do not bash the man who tries to explain things his way, after all, it’s his only way he knows how. Do not make the man feel guilty for feeling what he’s feeling, I do not know about some men, but most men (including myself) absolutely hate when women tell us how to feel or there’s something wrong with what we’re feeling. There is nothing wrong with someone feeling what they’re feeling. And honestly, they’re probably feeling that because of you, and that’s the truth that hurts. It’s hurt me many times.

•For the Women Part 3: Please listen to your man and let him get all of his words and thoughts out before you try to talk or before you try to explain or make sense of what’s going on. You’ll likely get less information and an upset man because a quarter of the way through him talking you interrupted him and you’ve made him now think that his feelings aren’t right and you’ve just pushed him back to silence and now when the conversation started because of what he’s feeling, you’re the one controlling the conversation, do not take over the conversation.
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-Final Note-

There’s been less good silence in my life than all of the evil silence overall. This post is from personal experiences I’ve been through in the past with someone who wasn’t right for me. I am 10 years married now and after all this time, I can have good silence to make this post because I know what me and my wife have done in our relationship to make it work and to realize the shit I’ve been through in the past with people who didn’t care and were abusive.

If you’re struggling with evil silence, please feel free to reach out to me anytime you want. I don’t care if it’s 3:30 in the morning, I have #Insomnia anyways lol, we can chat about anything you’d like and I will never judge you for being you. I will only try to help make sense of what is going on with you and offer any advice that I can.

I just joined The Mighty last night, and this is my first post. I’ve been on this app all day to get an idea of this community as a whole. I’ve fallen down some rabbit holes here, and so far, this app is awesome, and the people are awesome too! Hoping to help others in their time of need as well as their time of success. Here’s to much more posts and responses from me!

Quote:
“When I am silent, I have thunder hidden inside.” -Rumi

#MentalHealth #Anxiety #Depression #Abuse #Relationships #alone #FamilyAndFriends #Marriage #ADHD #BipolarDisorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #Insomnia #PTSD #OtherMentalHealth #ItsOKMan #InvisibleIllness #Faith

How are we all ??
What are we all doing to help ourselves with self care justnow ???

I want to check in and see how we are all doing justnow ?

The good ,the bad, even the absolutely dreadful things we are all experiencing or going through right now ???

How are you coping??
Are you coping ??
What would you want or need in order to try and cope ??

Would love to hear it all and share our experiences and support each other together .
For many this may be there only support or way of being able to express their situations ,I know it is for me .

Please feel free to comment ,share our stories,our support ,even tips .
You can also send me a message as always all in complete confidence if you prefer to do that.
Anything at all we can do to communicate together and support each other ♥️

#COVID19 #longcovid #Anxiety #Depression #Selfcare #Toxic #Abuse #youmatter #beyou #loveyourself #Bekind #Insomnia #SkinCancer #narcissist #AloneTogether #Endometriosis #Upallnight #CheckInWithMe #WritingThroughIt #Selftalk #Anxiety #PTSD #Cancer #ItsOKMan #Relationships #GeneralParenting #MentalHealth

We all have come across various mental health problems associated with women and children. But men’s mental health problems are rarely spoken or discussed among people. Here explains why it is so and some ways to cope if men are still not ready to talk to someone: www.beingtherapy.ca/mental-health-of-men

#MentalHealth #MensMentalHealth #MensHealth #ItsOKMan

The other day, a coworker had to go to the doctor during the workday. It's normal to say I'm going to the doctor for stomach pain, the dentist for a cleaning, the eye doctor for new glasses, etc... Even in a mental health clinic, she didn't yet feel comfortable telling us that she was going to her therapist. While no medical event is another person's business to know, there is much more hesitation when it comes to mental health. I have done this too. "It's just a doctor's appointment", I'd say, not simply because it was a personal matter...it was a personal matter because of the judgment I feared from my boss and coworkers. I feared being labeled crazy or "having issues", looked down upon. Do you feel safe to say "I'm going to therapy" (if you go to therapy)? If you don't go to therapy yourself, how do you feel when you hear someone else is? It's ok to say you think they have issues, you worry, whatever. No answer is wrong. The conversation is what's important. #EndTheStigma #DBT #CBT #ParentingWithMentalIllness #Depression #ChildhoodAbuse #bipolar schiZoaffective disorder #Trauma #sad #Agoraphobia #ItsOKMan #AfterSuicideLoss #Grief #Anxiety #MentalHealth #Cancer