It’s ok to talk….
I watched a film last weekend called “The Last Breath” and if you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend giving it a look. A dramatization of a true story from 2012 (apparently there was also a documentary in 2019), it portrays events involving a saturation diver and a catastrophic set of circumstances surrounding an accident on the seabed.
Now I don’t work in that world, nor do I pretend to imagine what it must be like to be part of the teams that make up the onshore & offshore support elements of such projects. Therefore, I can’t pass judgement or form an opinion around the accuracy of the dramatization in the way that some of the readership of this blog may be able to.
However, what I do know is the film took me on an absolute rollercoaster ride of feelings including but not limited to; fear, anxiety, stress, anger, sadness, sympathy, empathy, happiness, relief, grief, melancholier, and probably even emotional exhaustion by the time the final credits were rolling (that moment when you know your eyes are leaking, so you have to disguise a wipe of the face as some other kind of involuntary itchy eye response).
To say the events were a bit traumatic for all who were actually there would surely be an enormous understatement. Look again at the words I’ve used to describe how it made me feel…and I was just an armchair viewer; the biggest danger I faced was burning my dinner due to being so captivated and rooted to that armchair by the suspense playing out on screen.
So where am I going with this and what does it have to do with men’s mental health? Firstly, vicarious trauma is very, very real. One doesn’t need to be at the epicentre of a traumatic event to experience some of those emotions I mention above…think of all the other guys indirectly involved in that situation at sea, the tentacles of trauma are far reaching and definitely do not discriminate!
Furthermore, there was a period of decompression depicted in the film, that crucial and carefully controlled process of physiological readjustment that’s paramount for proper recovery. It got me asking the question, I wonder if there was a robust process in place for supporting those men to decompress and recover mentally? The effects of trauma do not just evaporate over time or get washed away with a few beers and a retelling of the experience with machismo muster. On the contrary, we hang on to the trauma at a subconscious level, a memory template gets written up and stored in the brain, ready to be referenced in future when we encounter certain threatening situations. These future situations do not even have to be a close match to the original traumatic event in order to activate the ‘fight, flight, freeze’ response – the survival part of the brain hasn’t got time to run a full risk assessment and what’s more it doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined. This is why men might find themselves in emotional crisis and have no idea why. Why are they triggered by the mere sight, sound or smell of something which seems to have no rational or plausible connection to the traumatic event? Mood swings can ensue; angry outbursts, sadness, hopelessness and loss of self-esteem are not uncommon responses.
Shutting down or turning to unhealthy behaviours as a mechanism to cope, a way to block out the images, numb the emotional pain and just make it all go away…it’s all standard reactionary stuff. Not good, but perhaps not surprising?
So why is it that…..
“Men don’t talk”.
I’m not really a fan of that phrase, because it could quite easily be interpreted as “Oh, yeah we don’t do we, therefore I won’t!”.
But why don’t men talk easily about their mental health? It’s not because they (we) think it’s all a bit too much of an effort to string some words together, nor because we are devoid of emotional intelligence. No, it’s often due to stigma. Stigma plays a very big part in it.
Self-Stigma: those internalised feelings of shame, failure or weakness will likely cause a reluctance to open up and seek support.
Societal Stigma: after all, we’re meant to just man-up aren’t we, not open up? That’s the message historically isn’t it…”Get your head together mate, you need to crack on!” That is not a helpful narrative.
Workplace Stigma: Demands placed upon individuals to show resilience and step up again and again. Let’s use the broken leg analogy, break a leg and a process of healing, rest and physio needs to take place before you can walk on it again, let alone work a physically demanding job. Suffer a broken spirit due to any number of traumatic life events though, and the damage is unseen. But a healing, repair process still needs to take place. Resilience will do you no favours in the long run, burying trauma, or leaving it unresolved will not make it disappear. Quite the opposite, it can lead to stress-related illnesses, increased anxiety, depression, disrupted sleep, substance abuse and chronic pain.
Let’s finish this on a positive though (I won’t tell you what happens at the end of the film in case you plan to watch it). The brain is a phenomenal organ – our command centre – with billions of neurons that transmit electrical impulses to carry out its many functions. Feed it the right information back and it will get its act together and switch over to manual mode, it will listen to what’s needed, rather than operating only on auto response (fight, flight, freeze). Therefore, with the right professional support, therapy and guidance, we CAN process trauma, we can heal and repair, we can get better, we can feel better and be better!
But it all kind of needs to start with a conversation…
Men MUST talk!
Written by Lee Duguay
Hypnotherapist - AfSFH
Sift Practice
Norwich