When November comes around I know I am going to grow a moustache.. Bye bye November, hey there Movember! Movember is the time when men everywhere get together and raise money for research into prostate cancer. The idea was created in Australia but has now gone all over the world. It has been running for seven years now. . Yep – it’s global!. In the United Kingdom around ten percent of all deaths of men are a result of prostate cancer, that’s one man every sixty minutes. Breathtaking figures. The misery is worsened when one realises that it can be managed if one catches it promptly. This is why it’s best to have your prostate checked out every twelve months if you are past the age of fifty. Move this time forward ten years if you are unfortunate enough to suffer from cancer in your family. Maybe we could attempt to appreciate why men don’t go for checkups.
Women are so much more effective at tending to their emotions than us men. I guess this is a direct outcome of how we were reared. I’m certainly not blaming us for anything here. Men get the message from a young age that we have to be tough, not weep and think through problems whether we feel sad or not. The common image of our Father’s being tough and unfeeling would be another way of us learning about how not to be emotional. This is often backed up by women of the family who did not like to see boys become over emotional so colluded with the negative message. Let’s not forget though that being tough serves a useful purpose. Weeping and wailing anytime things get complicated isn’t going to be a great tactic either. Maybe go somewhere in the middle?.
How do men pay for being unable to show their emotions? * If feelings are strongly provoked, us blokes struggle to know what to do. Lots of use either click in to “no feelings at all” or whip out our most familiar feeling i.e. rage. The result is often pain for those we love dearest and ourselves.
* Men are rubbish at tending to ourselves and feeling what’s going on in our bodies. As a result we ignore pain and only go to the doctors when we can bare it no more, by which time it’s often too late. There is no finer example of this than prostate cancer. The early symptoms such as trouble urinating or going to the toilet more often are often ignored and then only seek medical help if we are really hurting. the cancer may well then have moved to the bones which causes fatality.
* Us men don’t chat to our friends about our emotions because we get scared they will think we are soft.. Things get worse and worse until suicide seems the only way out. Women have a quarter of the suicides of men (figures from the office for national statistics). So what can we do about it?
Making things better could well involve making use of a psychotherapist. It’s not right to presume that women counsellors will be more emotional than male counsellors, they are all diverse regardless of sex. That’s why you should check out a few and go with who you feel comfortable with.
Check out my articles on live journal and blogger for more information on this subject.