An article for International Men's Day, 19 November
One of the things I've noticed in my work with men is that not everybody arrives knowing what they want to talk about.
Some people do.
They've experienced a bereavement, a relationship has ended, something has happened at work or they've reached a point where they know they need some support.
Others aren't quite so sure.
They know something isn't right.
But what that something is can be surprisingly difficult to explain.
They might be working, paying the bills, looking after their families and doing all the things they've always done.
From the outside, everything looks reasonably normal.
And yet something feels different.
Perhaps they're becoming irritated by things that never used to bother them.
Perhaps they're finding excuses not to see friends.
Perhaps the things they used to look forward to don't seem quite as interesting anymore.
Or perhaps there's nothing particularly noticeable at all.
Just a feeling that life has become something they're getting through rather than something they're participating in.
And then somebody asks a perfectly reasonable question.
What's wrong?
The difficulty is that they don't know.
And I wonder whether that's a part of men's mental health we don't talk about nearly enough.
