When November comes around I know I am going to grow a moustache. Bye bye November, good day Movember! Movember is the time when men worldwide get together and raise money for research into prostate cancer. The idea was created in Australia but has now gone global. 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. Dreadful figures. The despair is worsened when one realises that it can be addressed if one catches it swiftly. 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 have an understanding of why men don’t go for checkups.
I’m afraid compared to women us blokes are a bit emotionally stunted. We are how we are because of the way in which we were brought up. It’s not our fault. We struggle with emotions because we were taught at an early age that men are strong, do not cry, and work through situations regardless of how we feel about things. Many of us grew up with emotionally remote fathers and had little modeling of doing anything other than “being strong”. Women are complicitous in this message and often support it covertly. This also serves a purpose in work and when times get Rough. It can be a very useful behaviour when things are tough and I am not for a minute recommending that we go around sobbing and acting out at the slightest provocation. It’s about getting the balance right.
So what does being emotionally limited cost us men? * We tend to get stuck when situations with high emotions come along. Many men either go to a numb place or we express ourselves using the emotion that we have learnt is safest i.e. rage. This can alienate us from our loved ones and get us into trouble with those around us.
* 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?
There is no doubt that working with a good therapist is a great way of rebuilding the balance. Counsellors come in all size and shapes and you will find some male therapists that ooze emotions and some women therapists that are very “thinking” in the way they do things. Go meet a few and make your decision based on who you feel at ease with.
If you would like to read about Counselling in Manchester for men and possibly therapy in Manchester for men then you will be interested in reading this article.