I believe that men’s and women’s problems couldn’t be more unique from one another. While women indeed have a multitude of different social pressures when it comes to body image, beauty, and sexuality, I want to speak to the social influences and struggles that men go through and their effects on our mental health.

Men are strong. Men don’t show emotion. Men have to be aggressive, standoffish, and reluctant to any sort of commitment or signs of interest. I have long been told by adults and friends alike that I need to be less emotional and to not wear my heart on my sleeve. For those who know me and have known me for a long period of time, you’d understand that this simply isn’t the kind of person that I am. I’ve always considered myself an emotional person, and I have been told from a young age that carrying myself in this way isn’t how I should be. I’ve been pressured into being less in touch with my feelings, and to put on the face of someone that doesn’t care. If you would compare the way I carry myself vs how I carried myself in my first year of college or prior, you’d see an entirely different person. You’d now see someone who isn’t entirely sure if he likes who he is now, and certainly didn’t like himself back then either. Torn between who I was told to be, and who I wanted to be.

I wanted to be that person anyone could come to talk to. I wanted to make myself emotionally available and to delve into why people feel the way they do. I wanted to reveal part of myself through these conversations as a sort of self-therapy, while helping others get through their own personal issues. I long felt robbed of this freedom due to the pressures that others put on me to hide my emotions, and felt forced to change who I am regardless of who I wanted to be. I turned into a self-hating, depressed teenager in no time at all who felt like he was riding completely alone against the grain of social expectations. I grew up timid as a result of feeling as though I didn’t fit, as though I were a piece of a puzzle that got lost in the wrong box. I felt this way while being raised by the most caring, thoughtful family imaginable and yet how I felt emotionally still resembled  a fire burning quietly that I didn’t have the tools to control. It felt as though an extinguisher was within reach, but I just didn’t have the courage to use it and would rather burn slowly as to not cause an inconvenience to those around me. In other words, completely irrational, but this is the battle my mind fought day in and day out. These demons successfully conquered my mind, and I felt powerless due to social pressures and the snowball effect my mind performed on itself. For being in touch with how I felt and refusing to ignore it, I was called a plethora of names. Loser, gay, pussy, fag. If I didn’t lie to myself or at least behave as though I felt nothing, I was one of these things. If I was myself, I was a “pussy”. As though hiding how you really felt and lying to the world was truly a way to be a bastion for strength and masculine thought.

I was provided nearly everything I needed growing up in Niverville and Winnipeg. I had a caring family, a roof over my head that was beyond adequate, and a few really good close friends. I did well in school despite not pushing myself at all, and I was extremely successful in athletics my entire life. Yet, regardless of my many blessings, there was always a hole. I didn’t like who I was as a person, I wasn’t happy, and I was bullied because of who I was. Whether it was when I was overweight, or when I was the new kid in school, it happened. Every day felt like living hell. I rarely went an entire week making it to school each day, and instead piled up an incredible amount of absences because I simply didn’t have the will to get myself out of bed. Yet here I am. I’m still here, taking life one day at a time, and I want you to be here with me. When I feel as though living for myself has proven too difficult, I live for others. I live for those I love and those who would lay down their lives for my own. Other people’s lives are worth living for when I feel as though mine isn’t, and yours is one of those lives worth living for. It’s one that I want to live for. I want to see growth, prosperity and unrelenting drive in you when I can’t see it in myself.

The 2nd leading cause of death in men between 15-34 in Canada is suicide, only following accidents. In other words, the most likely way for an individual to purposefully die is through the horrific act of taking one’s life. Men are over 3 times more likely to take their life via suicide than women, and are far less likely to seek help for mental health or addiction  issues than women are. In my eyes, this issue has come to existence on the back of our society’s toxic view of masculinity and the role that men need to take as being emotionless, tough providers. Men are not enabled to seek help for their issues. Instead they’re told that they have to just sit back and watch it happen, instead of learning how to use the fire extinguisher to keep the flames at bay. While I have developed some of these tools for self preservation, I still feel lost some days. This blog has given me some direction and a positive outlet, but I still struggle some days. Depression may be something that never completely disappears from my life, but it’s given me some incredible opportunities to help others that I never would’ve expected otherwise. I’m thankful that my life didn’t end when I thought it might; I have resisted becoming yet another statistic on a shelf coupled with a news story, and hope to give others the hope and drive to get the help they not only need, but wholeheartedly deserve. The help that YOU deserve.

Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide.

-Viktor E. Frankl

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