Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Redefining Masculinity and Men's Mental Health

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Redefining Masculinity and Men's Mental Health · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

0:08
Speaker 1: Doctor Zach Seigler, Welcome to the podcast.
0:10
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Paul. Great to be here.
0:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to have you on.
0:14
Speaker 3: And now you are a clinical psychologist, you're an associate
0:19
Speaker 3: professor at Melbourne UNI and you're also the global director
0:23
Speaker 3: of research for November. Now, anybody who's in Australia and
0:28
Speaker 3: probably New Zealand knows what November is, but people in
0:33
Speaker 3: the UK and the US may or may not. It's
0:36
Speaker 3: kind of global now, isn't it so. But to talk
0:39
Speaker 3: to our listeners about what November is, why it started,
0:42
Speaker 3: and your involvement.
0:44
Speaker 2: In it for sure, Hence the global in my title.
0:46
Speaker 2: I hope that the you're Irish and UK and US
0:49
Speaker 2: listeners are onto it. But yeah, I'm very lucky to
0:53
Speaker 2: work for the Mustache Factory. We're we're in our twenty
0:57
Speaker 2: first year actually as a mental health organization, which is
1:01
Speaker 2: pretty wild. Yeah. So begun in around two thousand and three,
1:06
Speaker 2: a couple guys in a pub hanging out, going where
1:10
Speaker 2: did mustaches go? What's going on there? They'd been working
1:15
Speaker 2: as admin and creatives doing a lot of breast cancer
1:19
Speaker 2: campaigns in that era, which was very, very big in
1:24
Speaker 2: Australia at the time, and really they started to go,
1:29
Speaker 2: who's talking about our health? Our wellbeing? Some of their
1:32
Speaker 2: mates had suffered with mental health issues, their dads had
1:36
Speaker 2: had prostate cancer, and so they started in earnest with
1:40
Speaker 2: a couple. There was probably twenty of them. The month
1:43
Speaker 2: of November, they said, all right, who can grow the
1:46
Speaker 2: shittiest mustache year, Let's see how we go, and they
1:49
Speaker 2: brought them back. This was before you know, hipsters. Every
1:52
Speaker 2: man and his dog was growing the mustache for fun
1:55
Speaker 2: and I just looked like Bora when I grow one.
1:58
Speaker 2: But the the way in which it kind of moved
2:03
Speaker 2: really organically was it started out, you know, with a
2:08
Speaker 2: couple of guys raising some money. They tried to share
2:11
Speaker 2: it with a couple of prostate cancer organizations who are like,
2:14
Speaker 2: who are you fuck off? This isn't happening. And then
2:18
Speaker 2: they came back the year after and they doubled the
2:20
Speaker 2: amount that they'd raised, and suddenly everyone started to you know,
2:24
Speaker 2: there iss started to prop up, and we went from
2:27
Speaker 2: strength to strength to the point where over the past
2:31
Speaker 2: you know, twenty one years or so, we have raised
2:33
Speaker 2: over a billion dollars. As a ment Health were the
2:38
Speaker 2: largest men's health organization in the world. We operated in
2:41
Speaker 2: over twenty countries. We've got around four hundred staff. We've
2:45
Speaker 2: got offices in London, in la in Toronto, in Melbourne,
2:51
Speaker 2: and we, you know, have now moved beyond purely the
2:57
Speaker 2: practical joke of growing mustaches to to really changing the
3:01
Speaker 2: face of men's health. We are fundamentally investing in thousands
3:05
Speaker 2: of programs in uh, you know, disadvantaged communities, in mental health,
3:11
Speaker 2: in prostate cancer, in men's health more broadly, just trying
3:15
Speaker 2: to actually galvanize the field and put money into research
3:20
Speaker 2: and programs.
3:22
Speaker 3: That is incredible, And I feel rather embarrassed because I'm
3:26
Speaker 3: clearly not up on.
3:28
Speaker 2: High but that's the point. I'm here to just blow
3:31
Speaker 2: people's minds. That's the fun of it. We're sneaky. This
3:33
Speaker 2: is sneaky grassroots stuff, Paul. We don't want to put
3:36
Speaker 2: it in everyone's face, you know. It's it's so important
3:39
Speaker 2: that this is by the people for the people. It's
3:41
Speaker 2: not about being showy, you know.
3:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, because I'd spoken to the November guys pre covid
3:48
Speaker 3: by actually coming into doing a talk for the stuff,
3:51
Speaker 3: and it never actually happened, and I knew then that
3:53
Speaker 3: they were growing but Jesus had no idea. Just high
3:57
Speaker 3: much legs that it's actually got and you know that
4:00
Speaker 3: massive expansion around the globe that is bloody awesome.
4:04
Speaker 2: Pretty cool.
4:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, So tell me what drew you as a psychologist
4:10
Speaker 3: to start to focus on man's health.
4:13
Speaker 2: So yeah, I did obviously end up post PhD in
4:16
Speaker 2: Masters at November, and I can talk about that journey.
4:20
Speaker 2: But the reason I kind of got into mental health
4:22
Speaker 2: I was I was really really focused on masculinity as
4:26
Speaker 2: a you know, pretty much in like high school. I
4:29
Speaker 2: was really interested in it. I've got two older brothers,
4:31
Speaker 2: We've got a pretty competitive household, and I was like
4:35
Speaker 2: a drama and music nerd, and I also played soccer,
4:40
Speaker 2: and so I constantly was like shifting between hanging out
4:43
Speaker 2: with the girls and hanging out with the guys. And
4:45
Speaker 2: I felt.
4:45
Speaker 1: Myself just just a quick one.
4:48
Speaker 2: It's I'm just trying to read my audience here.
4:51
Speaker 3: Mate.
4:54
Speaker 2: I would normally say football, I say footy, and then
4:56
Speaker 2: people like, you've never played a life, what are you
4:58
Speaker 2: talking about?
4:59
Speaker 1: That's right.
5:01
Speaker 2: So I chamelelyoned my way through high school, really just
5:04
Speaker 2: trying to you know, fit in belong, you know, have
5:08
Speaker 2: mates and not be bullied is pretty much how most
5:10
Speaker 2: most guys you know moved through the world. Don't don't
5:13
Speaker 2: hit me. And as a result, I think I just
5:18
Speaker 2: I started to learn to like be able to read
5:22
Speaker 2: situations and read how people were responding in certain situations.
5:26
Speaker 2: I got really really invested in understanding how people respond,
5:30
Speaker 2: what their stories are, what drives them, what their fears are.
5:35
Speaker 2: I was a pretty weird kid, I guess, and being
5:38
Speaker 2: a third child, I think that that kind of happens.
5:40
Speaker 2: You just you pay attention to dynamics in strange ways
5:44
Speaker 2: and and try to peace make and all of that
5:47
Speaker 2: type of stuff. And so moving through my dad was
5:50
Speaker 2: a medical practitioner. I had a lot of interaction with
5:55
Speaker 2: at risk populations. He worked in Sydney's King's Cross. There
5:59
Speaker 2: was a lot of you know, heroin addicts and homeless people.
6:01
Speaker 2: And I would go in, you know, once a week
6:04
Speaker 2: and work with him as a teenager and just be
6:06
Speaker 2: thrown in the deep end. And so I just had
6:10
Speaker 2: a lot of interaction with a lot of different people
6:13
Speaker 2: and a lot of different stories, and so psychology kind of,
6:16
Speaker 2: you know, I was really drawn to it as a profession.
6:20
Speaker 2: But as I started in my undergrad. I was one
6:24
Speaker 2: of you know, a canful of guys in that degree,
6:28
Speaker 2: and there were like two thousand people there and just
6:31
Speaker 2: lots of girls, and most of the guys who were
6:32
Speaker 2: there were just there to pick up, like that's kind
6:34
Speaker 2: of how it went. So I was like, I can
6:37
Speaker 2: actually if I stick at this, I think something's going
6:39
Speaker 2: to happen here. And so I put in the time
6:44
Speaker 2: and I loved it, and I just I stuck with it.
6:47
Speaker 2: You know, I was at UNI for like nine years,
6:49
Speaker 2: and throughout that journey, I just realized that no one
6:51
Speaker 2: was talking about man, no one was talking about masculinity.
6:56
Speaker 2: I was, you know, the only guy pretty much in
6:58
Speaker 2: my master's call where I was seeing clients, and I
7:02
Speaker 2: just kept seeing these guys come in and drop out.
7:05
Speaker 2: I kept seeing them be misdiagnosed. I kept seeing this
7:09
Speaker 2: glossing over of men's diverse, nuanced, intricate, beautiful lives, and
7:15
Speaker 2: so I just went, this is this is a bit broken.
7:19
Speaker 2: And so my PhD just started to really open up
7:22
Speaker 2: that door and be like, why aren't guys seeking help?
7:24
Speaker 2: What does this look like? And eventually it became pretty
7:27
Speaker 2: clear that lots of men are seeking help heaps of
7:29
Speaker 2: guys are going to therapy, but they're just not talking
7:32
Speaker 2: about it or they're not getting what they actually want.
7:35
Speaker 2: And so I spent quite a bit of time actually
7:38
Speaker 2: then pivoting towards what happens on the other side of
7:40
Speaker 2: the door, you know, what is taking place in therapy
7:43
Speaker 2: that is not hitting the mark. And that's how I
7:46
Speaker 2: kind of ended up in November. I sat down and
7:49
Speaker 2: had a discussion with the executive director there where I
7:52
Speaker 2: was like, you keep, you know, creating a movement that
7:55
Speaker 2: is getting guys to open up, to be more vulnerable,
7:58
Speaker 2: to have these conversations, but you're not checking what happens
8:02
Speaker 2: on the other side. You're not making sure that when
8:05
Speaker 2: they are vulnerable, what they are open, that someone is
8:08
Speaker 2: ready to listen. Because inherently there's just this belief that
8:13
Speaker 2: the system will work and that's just not the truth.
8:17
Speaker 2: Like many many times men slip through the cracks, women
8:19
Speaker 2: do as well. And so I pretty much you sold
8:22
Speaker 2: to him. We need to make sure that clinicians are ready,
8:25
Speaker 2: that the system is ready, and we need to actually
8:28
Speaker 2: adapt to men's needs. And so that's what November, you know,
8:33
Speaker 2: embraced me, and I became part of the team like
8:35
Speaker 2: six years ago, and from strength to strength, I've been
8:38
Speaker 2: able to take over our research team which is now
8:43
Speaker 2: in a number of different countries and looks at not
8:46
Speaker 2: only systems, it looks at masculinities, it looks at social media,
8:49
Speaker 2: It looks at all of these different things that are
8:51
Speaker 2: going on in men's lives and goes, how can we
8:54
Speaker 2: talk to them about what's happening and how can we
8:57
Speaker 2: actually offer them something that they want, not what you
9:00
Speaker 2: think that they need.
9:02
Speaker 3: Mm hm, that's really interesting. There's there's a couple of
9:06
Speaker 3: things I want to jump into there. I want to
9:08
Speaker 3: talk about the whole masculinity piece. And you know that
9:13
Speaker 3: word is almost becoming synonymous with toxic today, and especially
9:19
Speaker 3: because I got a fourteen year old boy, it's like,
9:23
Speaker 3: you know, what do we tell these guys about?
9:26
Speaker 1: Because I'm hearing.
9:27
Speaker 3: A lot of I'm having an oscar coming home from school.
9:30
Speaker 3: You know there is in school, there's respectful relationships, which
9:33
Speaker 3: you're probably aware of. For our listeners, this is a
9:37
Speaker 3: program throughout schools and it just seems to be at
9:42
Speaker 3: least through through what we're hearing from him, it's this
9:46
Speaker 3: is how men are bad.
9:47
Speaker 1: This is what not to do.
9:48
Speaker 3: This is how not to behave and nothing around talking
9:52
Speaker 3: about values and virtues and how you should behave and
9:56
Speaker 3: what good masculinity actually looks like.
9:59
Speaker 1: And and it's it's driving lots of men away. You'll
10:03
Speaker 1: be aware of that's more than me.
10:04
Speaker 3: And they're going into the monosphere and listening to wankers
10:07
Speaker 3: like Andrew Tiitt and stuff like that. Right, So, so
10:11
Speaker 3: what what can we do, particularly with those emerging young
10:15
Speaker 3: men who are going through their teens, they're trying to
10:20
Speaker 3: find out they're clace in the world, and they're just
10:23
Speaker 3: getting bombarded with all this negativity on one side and
10:27
Speaker 3: all these deckheads on the other side saying, hey, come
10:31
Speaker 3: in here, I'll show you something.
10:34
Speaker 2: So wanker is like, Andrew, that's a great quote. We're
10:37
Speaker 2: gonna we'll take that one out. But I think that
10:40
Speaker 2: something that is so important is, as you said, they
10:44
Speaker 2: are trying to work out who they are. They're going
10:46
Speaker 2: through and we all remember that that that identity molding,
10:52
Speaker 2: that extreme discomfort of like trying to work out who
10:56
Speaker 2: I am and where I belong. You need not only role,
11:00
Speaker 2: you need messaging, you need structuring and scaffolding. You need
11:05
Speaker 2: a process that provides you with growth opportunities and provides
11:10
Speaker 2: you with a sense of aspiration and future orientation. And
11:14
Speaker 2: the messaging at the moment is devoid of that. It
11:18
Speaker 2: is filled with this mentality of what not to do,
11:21
Speaker 2: what not to be, and it's a deficit focused view,
11:25
Speaker 2: which for all intents and purposes, despite the fact that
11:29
Speaker 2: there is a lot of harm that goes on, we
11:31
Speaker 2: cannot excuse the fact that, you know, men and boys
11:34
Speaker 2: are doing some bad shit across the globe, but we
11:39
Speaker 2: need to find a way to lean into the good,
11:41
Speaker 2: to exemplify the good, to talk about the fact that
11:45
Speaker 2: there are silent heroes all over the place. You know,
11:49
Speaker 2: this idea that there are incredible role models in dads
11:52
Speaker 2: and teachers and grandfathers who are never on the front pages.
11:56
Speaker 2: It's just the dickheads who are on the front pages
11:58
Speaker 2: of the paper who take up all of our time.
12:01
Speaker 2: And that's where toxicity comes from. So I have a
12:03
Speaker 2: fundamental issue with that term. As you would expect, it's
12:07
Speaker 2: very harmful. It's not useful. It does not provide any
12:12
Speaker 2: structure for young men to adapt their behavior. All it
12:16
Speaker 2: does is says, here is a blanket ban on this thing.
12:21
Speaker 2: That you have inherited and you now have no ability
12:24
Speaker 2: to change that at all. Like if it's said there
12:27
Speaker 2: are toxic elements to the way in which masculinity is
12:32
Speaker 2: socialized and you should try and consider this, that's a
12:36
Speaker 2: different ballgame. But the media will never purport that the
12:39
Speaker 2: narrative is just like this is broken, You're all fucked.
12:43
Speaker 2: That's kind of how it looks at the moment. And
12:46
Speaker 2: that type of problem orientation without any solutions is exhausting,
12:51
Speaker 2: it's degrading to young men, and fundamentally, my main concern
12:55
Speaker 2: with the topic is that it does not make anything
12:59
Speaker 2: better if we are afraid of violence against women. Calling
13:04
Speaker 2: men toxic will not fix that. That's my issue, and
13:08
Speaker 2: so I'm really focused on building up young men and
13:11
Speaker 2: showing them what is possible, in providing them with a
13:14
Speaker 2: manifesto of health and well being, rather than letting them
13:19
Speaker 2: be driven into the arms of these guys who have
13:25
Speaker 2: a really clear doctrine of life that is do this,
13:30
Speaker 2: do this, do this, date this woman, make this money,
13:34
Speaker 2: buy this car, get this job, And it's all about
13:37
Speaker 2: power and domination, and it is fueled by men's insecurity
13:43
Speaker 2: and this feeling that they are constantly pressured to achieve
13:47
Speaker 2: something when in fact, really what we should be doing
13:50
Speaker 2: is going, hey, guys, life is very scary, it's tough,
13:56
Speaker 2: it's uncertain, but here is a path that we can
13:59
Speaker 2: all work walk together. Mah.
14:02
Speaker 3: I love that, and we need a lot more of that.
14:05
Speaker 3: It's one of those things and we see it so much. Right,
14:09
Speaker 3: is that there's well intentioned programs that then are just
14:14
Speaker 3: misguided and have lots of an intended consequences. And as
14:19
Speaker 3: you rightly pointed out, the unintended consequences is pushing.
14:22
Speaker 1: Man towards all the wanker spear wanker spit.
14:27
Speaker 2: But I think the thing is is that they're well intentioned,
14:31
Speaker 2: and the one way that you can ensure that they
14:33
Speaker 2: are going to actually hit the mark is by co
14:36
Speaker 2: creating them with the audience. Sit down with the fourteen
14:40
Speaker 2: year old boy and go does this pass the sniff test?
14:44
Speaker 2: And they're going to be like, no, that sucks, that's boring,
14:47
Speaker 2: that's stupid. Why are you talking to me like that?
14:50
Speaker 2: I'm out? And then you go, all right, maybe this
14:52
Speaker 2: won't work.
14:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know what, it's really interesting because my
14:57
Speaker 3: wife sent an email and to the school that Oscar's
15:00
Speaker 3: in exactly around that, saying.
15:02
Speaker 1: Where are the workshops?
15:04
Speaker 3: Where are you talking to because Oscar's coming home and going,
15:06
Speaker 3: you know, they're they're talking about guys thinking this. I've
15:11
Speaker 3: never thought about that in my life, and it's almost like.
15:14
Speaker 2: A self fulfilling prophecis yeah, yeah.
15:16
Speaker 3: And suggestibility right, and Oscar's going, gee, that's so weird,
15:20
Speaker 3: and he's coming home, going this shit's weird.
15:23
Speaker 2: Why don't why don't we assume that these young guys,
15:26
Speaker 2: and I always say this about the manosphere, which I
15:28
Speaker 2: think is really important that young guys, and We've got
15:31
Speaker 2: so much research on this, they don't go in with misogyny,
15:35
Speaker 2: they leave with it. They leave with it. They don't
15:38
Speaker 2: go into these classes with misogyny. They sit there, they
15:42
Speaker 2: hear all of this stuff. Then they end up in
15:44
Speaker 2: this you know, shitty banter with their friends because they're
15:47
Speaker 2: now being force fed content that seems at odds with
15:50
Speaker 2: their values, and they leave with these ideas you know,
15:54
Speaker 2: that are pretty pretty dark. And so I think that
15:58
Speaker 2: what we should be doing is going, here is an
16:00
Speaker 2: offering for us to say to you, we believe that
16:04
Speaker 2: you have inherent goodness. We believe that this is what's
16:07
Speaker 2: possible for you. Let's help you get there. Let's provide
16:10
Speaker 2: you with the path, rather than here is the badness,
16:15
Speaker 2: and we're going to assume that this is who you are.
16:18
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you need to rewrite the curriculum on respectful relationships.
16:23
Speaker 3: That would be a big step forward. I'm absolutely serious.
16:27
Speaker 3: I think one of the things I've been thinking about
16:29
Speaker 3: this a lot, right, particularly with a fourteen year old boy,
16:34
Speaker 3: is the lack of in the West a ride of passage.
16:40
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's pretty huge. Ide interview that
16:42
Speaker 3: doctor his name escapes me just because my head is
16:45
Speaker 3: full of PhD and book at a minute, but he
16:49
Speaker 3: actually was a medical doctor. He saw a lot of
16:51
Speaker 3: problems with boys and went into the whole heap of
16:53
Speaker 3: research and so all round the world and many many
16:57
Speaker 3: traditions a ride of passage for teenage boys to bring
17:01
Speaker 3: them into to manhood. And and he's saying, you know,
17:04
Speaker 3: that is missing in our lives in the Western world,
17:08
Speaker 3: and and actually has started this movement on ride passage,
17:11
Speaker 3: which is I think brilliant.
17:13
Speaker 1: Have you any.
17:14
Speaker 2: Experience is that? Anna Rubs? Anna Rubins, Yeah, I apologize,
17:19
Speaker 2: we got there.
17:20
Speaker 1: It was a brilliant podcast.
17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so no, I know, I know Ana's worked really
17:25
Speaker 2: well and I think it's important. You know, I don't
17:28
Speaker 2: know if you've heard of the Man Cave, which is
17:30
Speaker 2: an organization that goes into schools and does you know
17:35
Speaker 2: young men's programming. We fund them at November. We consider
17:38
Speaker 2: ourselves like the big brother of the men's sector. There's
17:42
Speaker 2: also Top Blokes, and there's tomorrow Man, and there's you know,
17:48
Speaker 2: the Positive Masculinity movement. There's there's a lot of different
17:50
Speaker 2: school based programs that are trying to do this type
17:53
Speaker 2: of rights of passage in different ways because some of
17:56
Speaker 2: them are shorter, some of them are actually camps that
17:58
Speaker 2: are that are longer. It's it has taken off, and
18:01
Speaker 2: I think that we should also point out that the
18:03
Speaker 2: right of passage movement is a beautiful in many ways
18:07
Speaker 2: indigenous tradition and you know, going back to country, for instance,
18:12
Speaker 2: is something that you hear about so often. Adam Good
18:15
Speaker 2: spoke about it when he was going, you know, through
18:17
Speaker 2: the horrible experiences that he was, you know, copying all
18:21
Speaker 2: of that racism in the AFL, he went back to
18:23
Speaker 2: country to try and you know, reconnect and that's something
18:26
Speaker 2: where you start to access your identity, access who you
18:30
Speaker 2: want to be and what you want, you know, your
18:33
Speaker 2: life to look like. We've lost sight of that. And
18:37
Speaker 2: do I think that we need a really structured societal
18:41
Speaker 2: process for young men to move between boyhood and masculinity
18:45
Speaker 2: and manhood. Maybe not. Do I think that there needs
18:49
Speaker 2: to be a clearer discussion about how that period looks,
18:55
Speaker 2: who needs to show up, and what success looks like. Yesnally.
19:01
Speaker 2: And the right of passage as a concept I think
19:04
Speaker 2: is essential in many ways because you know, women go
19:07
Speaker 2: through it biologically. You know, they have a literal turning
19:11
Speaker 2: point where they go to womanhood pretty quickly, and that
19:16
Speaker 2: happens mind and body for them, and there's a lot
19:18
Speaker 2: of conversation around it, thankfully now used to be. We
19:23
Speaker 2: have gone from a point where there probably used to
19:26
Speaker 2: be far more discussion for young men as they moved
19:29
Speaker 2: into that in manhood towards this let's not let's not
19:38
Speaker 2: in a way wake up the beast. Let's not have
19:40
Speaker 2: that conversation. We don't want to point at that. We're
19:43
Speaker 2: just going to hope that it works out. And I
19:45
Speaker 2: think that that pluralistic ignorance in some ways that idea
19:49
Speaker 2: that if we just shy away from this thing and
19:51
Speaker 2: don't look at it, it'll just work out has really
19:55
Speaker 2: fundamentally failed. Rather than going we need to structure this.
20:00
Speaker 2: We need to make sure the boys have a sense
20:03
Speaker 2: of belonging, they have a sense of community values, they
20:07
Speaker 2: have a sense of service and altruism. And when I
20:11
Speaker 2: talk about masculinity, people always go, you can't define healthy masculinity.
20:15
Speaker 2: All we can do is define toxic. And I was like,
20:17
Speaker 2: I can define healthy masculinity. It's focused on leveraging masculine
20:22
Speaker 2: traits flexibly, which is that things like service, altruism, you know, fatherhood,
20:30
Speaker 2: generative fatherhood. There are lots of different things that exist.
20:34
Speaker 2: Stoicism and self reliance in the right dose are extremely useful.
20:39
Speaker 2: I know you think you know long and hard about
20:41
Speaker 2: hardiness and grit and toughness. All of this stuff, when
20:45
Speaker 2: applied effectively in the right time, at the right place,
20:50
Speaker 2: that is healthy, positive masculinityrit large and we should not
20:54
Speaker 2: shy away from having those conversations.
20:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. Let's not jump over and talk
21:03
Speaker 1: about therapy.
21:04
Speaker 3: So you have done a lot of reading and the
21:10
Speaker 3: research into the area of gender sensitive therapy, and why
21:15
Speaker 3: some traditional therapeutic modes.
21:18
Speaker 1: Might not work as well for men. So just talk
21:22
Speaker 1: to us about that.
21:23
Speaker 3: And is there an element because you mentioned right at
21:27
Speaker 3: the start that in your masters you know you'll be
21:30
Speaker 3: the only guy. And I remember at university psychology was
21:33
Speaker 3: the vast majority were females. Has that influenced the way
21:38
Speaker 3: that therapy is done and therefore is not the best
21:43
Speaker 3: approach for men? Or is there many other things that
21:45
Speaker 3: play I'm sure there's quite a few things to play
21:47
Speaker 3: into it.
21:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are so many different things to play. I
21:50
Speaker 2: think the fact that the vast majority of people who
21:52
Speaker 2: come to therapy are women is probably more of a
21:55
Speaker 2: factor than who is offering it. But you know, psychologists,
22:01
Speaker 2: you know it's about eighty percent are women in the profession.
22:05
Speaker 2: And I actually don't think that that is anything other
22:08
Speaker 2: than a marketing failure. Like it's a damn good job,
22:12
Speaker 2: like you know you've got, especially in this day and
22:15
Speaker 2: age where everyone is being replaced with AI, I think
22:18
Speaker 2: I have pretty good future aspirations to exist as a therapist.
22:23
Speaker 2: I'm not being replaced anytime soon. And you know, you
22:27
Speaker 2: have stability, you get paid pretty well. There's just this
22:30
Speaker 2: belief that it's women's work. And I think that that's
22:33
Speaker 2: a serious issue within our society that that type of
22:36
Speaker 2: sitting in someone's distress, in someone's life, you know, for
22:40
Speaker 2: a moment, is not considered to be men's work. I
22:44
Speaker 2: hope that we're going to see a shift and that
22:45
Speaker 2: more men are going to get into it. It's not
22:47
Speaker 2: because women cannot treat men. Let me be really clear.
22:50
Speaker 2: Women are just as good at offering therapy to men
22:54
Speaker 2: as men are. It's just that more choice is always better.
22:58
Speaker 2: You know, you want more gay therapists, more indigenous therapists.
23:02
Speaker 2: You just want you know, greater Yeah, you know, diversity
23:06
Speaker 2: so that someone can always see someone who they want to.
23:09
Speaker 2: I think that that's really important. But when it comes
23:12
Speaker 2: to the therapeutic model, you know, you'd understand that it is.
23:15
Speaker 2: It's very much focused on emotional communication and vulnerability, two
23:20
Speaker 2: things that are like fundamentally at odds with the way
23:23
Speaker 2: that we're brought up as men. In many ways, also,
23:25
Speaker 2: it's like, sit down and let's have an hour long
23:28
Speaker 2: face to face conversation about your deepest, darkest thoughts. Talk
23:31
Speaker 2: to me about your mother and your sex life, and
23:34
Speaker 2: every guy is like, damn that that is not where
23:39
Speaker 2: I want to be right now. And there are some, thankfully,
23:43
Speaker 2: who are into it, and there are many who are
23:46
Speaker 2: not socialized to that experience, and it's it's very uncomfortable
23:50
Speaker 2: and foreign and unaccommodating in many ways for them. And
23:53
Speaker 2: so what I try to do and what this training
23:57
Speaker 2: that I've created through November with my team is called
24:00
Speaker 2: Men in Mind, which is like, how do we actually
24:03
Speaker 2: get therapists to upskill to realize that when men come
24:08
Speaker 2: into therapy, they have a lot of beliefs and expectations
24:11
Speaker 2: and attitudes and biases that are going to stop good
24:15
Speaker 2: therapy from happening. Also, you as a therapist have a
24:19
Speaker 2: lot of beliefs and attitudes about men. You might be
24:23
Speaker 2: reading god knows what, and you've got toxicity running through
24:26
Speaker 2: your brain and then a guy all tattered up comes
24:29
Speaker 2: in and you've decided that he's a ship bloke. Yeah,
24:33
Speaker 2: And the issue is, as we said before, you end
24:35
Speaker 2: up with a self fulfilling prophecy where he's only going
24:37
Speaker 2: to show you what you're looking for. And so the
24:41
Speaker 2: aim is to open this up. That's what the aim
24:44
Speaker 2: of this training is, which is to be like, let's
24:46
Speaker 2: actually make masculinity not just some commentary bullshit that we're
24:50
Speaker 2: reading constantly in our opinion pieces, but rather, let's go
24:56
Speaker 2: beyond adolescence, the show that everyone wants to talk about,
24:59
Speaker 2: and actually look at what is at the core here
25:02
Speaker 2: of this guy's distress, which is often the way he
25:07
Speaker 2: was brought up, the pressures that he has, the stress
25:09
Speaker 2: that exists in his everyday life. And when I talk
25:12
Speaker 2: about the fact that therapy is in many ways a
25:17
Speaker 2: contradiction with masculinity, it's because many of these guys don't
25:21
Speaker 2: have mental health issues in the stereotypical sense. What they
25:25
Speaker 2: do have is situational stresses. They have financial distress and uncertainty.
25:31
Speaker 2: They have, you know, stress around unemployment, they have financial
25:36
Speaker 2: relationship difficulties. You know. The number one risk factor for
25:40
Speaker 2: suicide in this country is not a history of depression.
25:44
Speaker 2: It's past six months separation.
25:48
Speaker 1: Really, it's breakup.
25:50
Speaker 2: Breakup is the greatest risk factor for suicide. So if
25:53
Speaker 2: anyone has a mate who has just gone through a divorce,
25:57
Speaker 2: those six months are like crucial for jumping on and
26:02
Speaker 2: offering support and services for guys. But we don't see that.
26:06
Speaker 2: We go, oh, he's not depressed, This all happened out
26:09
Speaker 2: of the blue. It didn't happen out of the blue.
26:12
Speaker 2: You know, this stuff is so important that we realize
26:14
Speaker 2: that things look and feel different amongst many guys when
26:18
Speaker 2: they get depressed. For instance, there's a subgroup of men
26:21
Speaker 2: who don't go into this like sad, crying, worthlessness whole.
26:26
Speaker 2: They go into anger, irritability, and drug and alcohol use.
26:31
Speaker 2: They go into externalizing. They send all of their distress
26:34
Speaker 2: out onto the world, and it looks like men behaving badly,
26:39
Speaker 2: it looks like shit behavior. But in many instances it
26:43
Speaker 2: is a cry for help, and we just need to
26:47
Speaker 2: get more attuned and sensitive. That's what gender sensitive treatment
26:51
Speaker 2: is being attuned to the fact that if this guy
26:53
Speaker 2: was brought up in this way with these parents, in
26:56
Speaker 2: this world, he is going to respond to his internal
26:59
Speaker 2: experience in this way.
27:02
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting point, and it's actually made me
27:05
Speaker 3: think about stuff. I actually have three minutes in that
27:08
Speaker 3: category in in my sort of large social group, and
27:13
Speaker 3: and and and you know, there's a there's a bunch
27:16
Speaker 3: of us, you know, making a concerted effort to get
27:20
Speaker 3: around them.
27:22
Speaker 1: But it does this play into.
27:25
Speaker 3: Just had of thought that that you know, the biggest
27:28
Speaker 3: risk for suicide is my age group middle aged and
27:32
Speaker 3: is a chunk of that because of that tends to
27:37
Speaker 3: be the age where there are separations and divorces and
27:42
Speaker 3: then men are not dealing with it when big factor.
27:46
Speaker 2: So the divorce, the divorces tend to happen. Yeah, at
27:49
Speaker 2: forty to fifty, like, that's where most divorces take place,
27:52
Speaker 2: and that's where the suicide rate is that its highest. Yeah,
27:55
Speaker 2: that's forty four to fifty five year old age bracket.
27:58
Speaker 2: It's it's for that group. And no one actually gives
28:03
Speaker 2: a shit about men in the middle years, Like, it's
28:05
Speaker 2: just not it's not a concern. Everyone is very focused
28:09
Speaker 2: on young men, as they should be in many ways
28:11
Speaker 2: because they are the future of our society. But when
28:14
Speaker 2: you look at base statistics, we need to pivot to
28:17
Speaker 2: start to focus on these guys because what happens is
28:20
Speaker 2: that there is a long term suppression of emotion, There
28:25
Speaker 2: is a long term breakdown in social connectivity. You know,
28:30
Speaker 2: the number of friends that those guys have drops off
28:34
Speaker 2: a cliff. Yeah, And so very lucky that you've got
28:38
Speaker 2: at the vast majority of guys who are in that
28:41
Speaker 2: age bracket who have kids have very few people to
28:45
Speaker 2: call on when they're in a time of need, And
28:47
Speaker 2: so they get to divorce and their whole social scaffolding
28:52
Speaker 2: is gone. They literally don't have anything to stand on.
28:55
Speaker 2: No one is there to wrap around them. Their wife
28:58
Speaker 2: created all of the social events for them.
29:00
Speaker 3: That's a massive thing, isn't it is that most of
29:04
Speaker 3: the social stuff is.
29:05
Speaker 1: Driven by the wife and their friends.
29:07
Speaker 3: And then when the divorce happens, vacuum choose and the
29:11
Speaker 3: guys left on them of.
29:12
Speaker 2: Course, because it's done. No fucking work do the work?
29:15
Speaker 2: Like what like why is it that this is women's work?
29:19
Speaker 2: And this is the thing women don't want to do that.
29:20
Speaker 2: They don't want to arrange everything. You don't need to
29:23
Speaker 2: be hopeless at this stuff like it is. And they
29:26
Speaker 2: say this to guys all the time. This is fundamentally
29:29
Speaker 2: life saving for you. You can go and have as many
29:32
Speaker 2: ice baths as you want, but if you don't have
29:34
Speaker 2: any mates, you're done. Like, it is essential that in
29:38
Speaker 2: you when you're eighteen, when you're twenty five, when you're thirty,
29:41
Speaker 2: no matter how important your job is, if you do
29:45
Speaker 2: not spend time on your social connections, your life expectancy
29:50
Speaker 2: will drop like that is the thing that keeps guys alive.
29:53
Speaker 2: You look at the Harvard Longitudinal Study. Consistently, the only
29:57
Speaker 2: guys who are alive in their nineties, regardless of whether
30:00
Speaker 2: they smoked, what their diet was, what their exercise was,
30:03
Speaker 2: the ones who had quality relationships are still alive. That
30:08
Speaker 2: is essential, and that is why when you get to
30:10
Speaker 2: your mid forties and you have a separation, you don't
30:14
Speaker 2: have any friends around to call on when you're in
30:16
Speaker 2: a time of need. You have extreme shame around all
30:21
Speaker 2: of this that you have no vocabulary to describe, and
30:25
Speaker 2: you have stigma around gunotherapy or the therapist doesn't connect
30:28
Speaker 2: with you. It's a pretty bad situation. So we just
30:32
Speaker 2: need to do a lot better at not only empathizing
30:35
Speaker 2: with those guys and providing them with structures, we need
30:38
Speaker 2: to make sure that they know that there are so
30:42
Speaker 2: many like them out there and that they can connect
30:45
Speaker 2: with one another. Because all they want, all of us want,
30:50
Speaker 2: all the time, is this sense of connection and belonging.
30:55
Speaker 2: And so when guys go, oh, I don't want to
30:57
Speaker 2: pick up the phone, and guy seem nady, you know
31:01
Speaker 2: that's always I don't want to, I don't want to
31:03
Speaker 2: be vulnerable. I see nadiy blah blah blah. I'm like, mate,
31:06
Speaker 2: I know that all you want is to hang out
31:08
Speaker 2: with him, So like, we need to move past that
31:11
Speaker 2: shame response that I might look weak for asking for
31:16
Speaker 2: something when in fact your values are telling you I
31:21
Speaker 2: need this, This is important to me.
31:24
Speaker 3: Do you know one thing I often talk about in
31:27
Speaker 3: my talks is the Hanoi Hilton prison camp in Vietnam
31:33
Speaker 3: where they had something called the tap code. And I
31:37
Speaker 3: interviewed Lee Ellis, who spent five and a half years
31:39
Speaker 3: in that prison camp, and the tap code was away
31:42
Speaker 3: when they were in solitary confinement, they could tap on
31:45
Speaker 3: the walls and the pipes and communicate with each other.
31:49
Speaker 3: And the research shows that that is the single biggest
31:53
Speaker 3: predictor of PTSD and suicide and combat veterans is whether
31:58
Speaker 3: or not they have social networks that they use.
32:01
Speaker 2: I'll tell you something, you know. I gave evidence to
32:03
Speaker 2: the Royal Commission into Veterans Suicide and everyone was kind
32:07
Speaker 2: of perplexed about the fact that the suicide rate is
32:10
Speaker 2: so high in veterans. But I tell you, when it's
32:13
Speaker 2: so high, it's not when they are active servicemen. It
32:17
Speaker 2: is when they return. It's always when they return, and
32:19
Speaker 2: I'll tell you why, because they have a sense of purpose,
32:22
Speaker 2: meaning and belonging. And then the carpet is ripped out
32:25
Speaker 2: from underneath them and they go, who am I? And
32:28
Speaker 2: where is everybody? And that's literally what happens when men
32:32
Speaker 2: just get into their forties, they go, wait a second,
32:35
Speaker 2: I was having fun, all my mates are around, and
32:38
Speaker 2: I actually didn't water the seeds. I did not help
32:42
Speaker 2: my social life grow because it wasn't a priority. You
32:45
Speaker 2: need to make it a priority. I sound like I'm
32:47
Speaker 2: preaching here, but it's something that is so fundamentally simple
32:53
Speaker 2: and is so disregarded. And I think that this notion
32:57
Speaker 2: that like masculinity going your own way, being your own man,
33:00
Speaker 2: is absolute bullshit. We are human beings and the way
33:04
Speaker 2: in which masculinity flourishes is when we are in tandem
33:09
Speaker 2: with other people.
33:11
Speaker 3: You're preaching the correct palm. And actually, my wife so
33:17
Speaker 3: because I'm ex military, right, I spent eight years in
33:19
Speaker 3: the British military and they moved over to Australia. I
33:22
Speaker 3: didn't know anybody.
33:23
Speaker 1: And just you know, dove into work.
33:25
Speaker 3: And building my career and my wife one day said
33:28
Speaker 3: to me, you need to go back and start playing football.
33:32
Speaker 4: And she was, actually, I always know, they always and yeah, exactly,
33:36
Speaker 4: she she knew, she absolutely knew, and it was definitely
33:41
Speaker 4: the best thing I'd ever did, right, because it's Deny,
33:44
Speaker 4: this whole group that are around soccer and even though
33:49
Speaker 4: we're not playing anymore, we're still hanging out and talking
33:52
Speaker 4: and supporting each other.
33:55
Speaker 3: How much of the just to come back to the
33:56
Speaker 3: therapy thing, how much of this is that men normally,
34:03
Speaker 3: You know, if you're going to generalize, lots of females
34:08
Speaker 3: have fierce to fierce conversations.
34:10
Speaker 1: They catch up over coffee and they sit in the
34:13
Speaker 1: talk fierce to fierce. But with me and a lot.
34:15
Speaker 3: Of it's shoulder to shoulder right in the pub, watching sport,
34:20
Speaker 3: chatting and stuff like that. How much of that plays
34:23
Speaker 3: into therapy because therapy is that fierce to fierce, which
34:26
Speaker 3: as men are not as accustomed to in general.
34:30
Speaker 2: Exactly. So there are two things here. The first is
34:32
Speaker 2: that men are not beyond face to face conversation, So
34:36
Speaker 2: we should never do this thing where we're like, we
34:39
Speaker 2: have to completely adapt everything because they can't do it.
34:43
Speaker 2: It might take longer, and so you build in systems
34:46
Speaker 2: that are going to get you to that endpoint. But
34:48
Speaker 2: let's not throw out the baby with the bath wat
34:50
Speaker 2: and be like, men can't sit down and have our
34:52
Speaker 2: long conversations because we're right here doing that. Yeah so yeah,
34:55
Speaker 2: not true. But it does take longer, it is more uncomfortable,
34:59
Speaker 2: it is more ful in many instances, and it's extremely foreign.
35:03
Speaker 2: And so for those guys who do more of that
35:06
Speaker 2: shoulder to shoulder, I think what's really important is that
35:10
Speaker 2: that doesn't need to go away. That can exist within
35:13
Speaker 2: the therapeutic setting. And this is what I try and
35:16
Speaker 2: teach in this program, which is that just because you
35:20
Speaker 2: decided as a clinician, yeah, or you were taught. Actually
35:24
Speaker 2: I was always taught, and I was reprimanded if I
35:26
Speaker 2: did anything different during my Masters that you must sit
35:31
Speaker 2: in these two chairs. They must look the same. You
35:33
Speaker 2: must be at this angle, you must ask these questions.
35:36
Speaker 2: When I'm doing an assessment, I have to you know,
35:38
Speaker 2: have my clipboard, blah blah blah. Very quickly I was
35:41
Speaker 2: like fuck this, like this is not happening. I went
35:44
Speaker 2: to Darwin from one of my placements, and I was
35:47
Speaker 2: working with young indigenous kids, and it's like, if you
35:50
Speaker 2: attempt to do any of that with them, you're done. Yeah,
35:53
Speaker 2: And it's a baptism of fire to really learn that
35:56
Speaker 2: very early, which was great. But what I do is
36:00
Speaker 2: is I do what is necessary to get to the
36:04
Speaker 2: same endpoint, which is to say, I've had ping pong
36:08
Speaker 2: tables in my therapy room, I've had pool tables. I've
36:11
Speaker 2: played Call of Duty with young guys, like when their
36:15
Speaker 2: hands are busy, the ability for them to open up
36:19
Speaker 2: is profound. And so this is what I mean. The
36:21
Speaker 2: endpoint of interest is around openness and vulnerability and whatever
36:26
Speaker 2: way it looks, how you get there. They do not
36:29
Speaker 2: decide that it has to look like this. And so
36:34
Speaker 2: I think that our therapy, you know, I've done running therapy,
36:38
Speaker 2: there's adventure therapy, there's equine therapy. There are so many
36:41
Speaker 2: different modes that are opening up. They're considered like crazy offshoots,
36:45
Speaker 2: you know, but really what should be considered crazy is
36:48
Speaker 2: the fact that we've decided that these four walls, this
36:52
Speaker 2: is how you're going to talk about your trauma, like
36:55
Speaker 2: wild And so I threw out the clipboard because I
36:57
Speaker 2: was like, if I can't look at him or if
37:00
Speaker 2: if I can't be there with him, he thinks I'm
37:02
Speaker 2: a robot and my first two sessions or so, I'm
37:06
Speaker 2: not going through his entire family history chronologically because he
37:10
Speaker 2: doesn't talk like that normally. I talked to him about
37:13
Speaker 2: surfing for twenty five minutes and how the waves were
37:15
Speaker 2: this morning, and then in the last ten minutes he
37:18
Speaker 2: dumps because he's calm, he's relaxed, he's been able to
37:22
Speaker 2: be a human being. So just do what works and
37:26
Speaker 2: ask him what he wants, and if he doesn't know,
37:29
Speaker 2: co create it with him.
37:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I love that.
37:32
Speaker 3: I actually know somebody who went to see who was struggling,
37:35
Speaker 3: really struggling, and went to see a psychiatrist who sat
37:39
Speaker 3: behind a desk and quite far away from them with
37:43
Speaker 3: a clipboard, just firing questions Adam and then just give him.
37:48
Speaker 2: A something for eleven minutes and asked for five hundred dollars.
37:51
Speaker 2: But this is the thing, It's like the system is broken.
37:54
Speaker 2: It's not any one individual who's going to be able
37:56
Speaker 2: to change this. I can only see however many people
37:59
Speaker 2: I can. That's why I'm trying to create system change,
38:02
Speaker 2: because we need our training programs at our universities. We
38:07
Speaker 2: need our you know, practitioner regulation, stuff like it's not
38:11
Speaker 2: unethical to do treatment in a way that's going to
38:14
Speaker 2: be beneficial. But they've created such strict bounds that we've
38:17
Speaker 2: ended up actually shooting ourselves in the foot.
38:20
Speaker 3: Yeah. Agree, My wife's going through a master's in counseling,
38:23
Speaker 3: and it's so bloody rigid some of this stuff.
38:26
Speaker 1: But I think you you become the artist.
38:29
Speaker 2: You find your way doing exactly.
38:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, So let's let's let's come back to this suicide thing.
38:34
Speaker 1: I remember my dad telling me. So he lives in
38:37
Speaker 1: Ireland in an area whe there's a lot of farmers.
38:40
Speaker 3: And and he said, when Ireland, which is one of
38:42
Speaker 3: the last countries in Europe to bring in the drink
38:47
Speaker 3: driving laws with full force, he said, meal suicides in
38:52
Speaker 3: farmers went through the roof and and and he saw
38:55
Speaker 3: it in his area because these guys, a lot of
38:58
Speaker 3: them were single. They work really, really hard, and then
39:01
Speaker 3: a couple of times a week they'd drive into the
39:04
Speaker 3: pub and have a few paints with their mates, sending
39:08
Speaker 3: shoulder to shoulder, and as my dad has described it,
39:12
Speaker 3: that was their church. And then when they brought in
39:15
Speaker 3: the drink driving lots. If they had like more in
39:17
Speaker 3: a paint, that was it. They were, they were done.
39:19
Speaker 3: They'd lose their whole livelihoods. And he said they just
39:22
Speaker 3: stopped coming, and suicides massively spiked. So and that comes
39:29
Speaker 3: back to your early point about that that men need
39:33
Speaker 3: those social networks, and we all need the social networks, but.
39:36
Speaker 1: But we're not as good at them as females.
39:39
Speaker 3: What other So you talked about the importance of that
39:42
Speaker 3: in suicide prevention. What other approaches are promising in the
39:48
Speaker 3: suicide prevention space for sure.
39:50
Speaker 2: So we've been working at this for a long time,
39:53
Speaker 2: and it's it's really central in some ways because I
39:58
Speaker 2: you know, my my theasis was really folks is on
40:00
Speaker 2: depression whenever I did that when I was a wee boy.
40:03
Speaker 2: And it's funny how when you talk about men's mental
40:08
Speaker 2: health you get dragged always into the pointy end of suicide.
40:13
Speaker 2: It always goes there because it seems that that journey
40:17
Speaker 2: and all of the other distress that kind of sits
40:19
Speaker 2: in the middle, it's only the crisis that people are
40:23
Speaker 2: willing to kind of deal with, that's where they want
40:25
Speaker 2: to focus much of their attention when it comes to prevention.
40:30
Speaker 2: It is about those early times. It's about getting on
40:35
Speaker 2: this stuff around social connection, around relationship health, fundamentally, around
40:40
Speaker 2: making sure that they understand what rejection looks and feels like.
40:45
Speaker 2: You know, this idea that we can't be in control
40:48
Speaker 2: and powerful and dominant of our relationships and in fact
40:52
Speaker 2: it's a push pull always and it will not always
40:56
Speaker 2: go your way. And learning how to regulate our emotions.
41:01
Speaker 2: I would say that that is the one thing that
41:03
Speaker 2: we are really struggling with as men, is our emotion regulation.
41:08
Speaker 2: Everything kind of comes back to a sense of shame
41:10
Speaker 2: and failure, I think for many guys, Yeah, which is
41:12
Speaker 2: that I couldn't do this, I couldn't be this, I
41:16
Speaker 2: couldn't achieve what I thought was necessary, and there's all
41:18
Speaker 2: of these wood I should have could at things, and
41:22
Speaker 2: this ability to go in your own mind. Actually, this
41:28
Speaker 2: is what's happening right now. This is what I need
41:31
Speaker 2: to do. This is how I need to calm myself down.
41:33
Speaker 2: This is how I'm going to talk to myself in
41:35
Speaker 2: a way that's going to soothe me and help me
41:38
Speaker 2: move past whatever this feeling is. Instead, what happens is
41:42
Speaker 2: that that feeling comes up and it is fundamentally intolerable
41:47
Speaker 2: for many of these guys because they have not been
41:49
Speaker 2: given the code to be able to actually respond to it.
41:54
Speaker 2: And so you go from a twelve year old who
41:57
Speaker 2: is you know, pre suspended for showing emotion in class
42:01
Speaker 2: rather than sat down and spoken to about what he's
42:04
Speaker 2: feeling and thinking. And then he's an eighteen year old
42:07
Speaker 2: and he's drinking and drug taking and a girlfriend's just
42:11
Speaker 2: broken up with him, and there's just seemingly no way
42:15
Speaker 2: for him to overcome this feeling because it's just too
42:18
Speaker 2: much for him. To the thirty year old who's just
42:20
Speaker 2: had a kid and now he is suddenly in this
42:24
Speaker 2: new world and he has no ability to understand the
42:27
Speaker 2: extreme stress that he's feeling about being a protector and
42:29
Speaker 2: a provider. It goes on and on and on, and
42:32
Speaker 2: at some point it just becomes too much for some people.
42:36
Speaker 2: And so what we need to do is get on
42:39
Speaker 2: it early. But it's also never too late, Like there
42:41
Speaker 2: are ways I've worked with sixty seventy year old men
42:44
Speaker 2: who have so much trauma about things that happened to them,
42:48
Speaker 2: you know, early on. And the thing about the Irish,
42:51
Speaker 2: which was so lucky to learn from is this poetry,
42:55
Speaker 2: this storytelling, this ability to make light of pretty dark situation.
43:00
Speaker 2: And I think us men need to find a way
43:03
Speaker 2: to realize that is deeply masculine, to make meaning of
43:06
Speaker 2: what has happened to you, to describe it, to corral
43:11
Speaker 2: those internal pieces and actually regulate those feelings rather than
43:17
Speaker 2: try and push them further and further down with more drink.
43:20
Speaker 2: You know, because like alcohol is a huge thing. It's
43:24
Speaker 2: extremely social for many guys. It's the thing that gets
43:27
Speaker 2: them out of the house, but they don't seem to
43:29
Speaker 2: have any flexibility and like I can do other things
43:32
Speaker 2: with my mates, you know, yeah, yeah.
43:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's where that's where sport, golf, soccer, whatever,
43:40
Speaker 3: you know, really comes to the forward. But I wanted
43:43
Speaker 3: to just come back to something you kind of started
43:46
Speaker 3: talking about this, and I think it's kind of endemic
43:50
Speaker 3: of our whole health care system is that we have
43:53
Speaker 3: a set curse system, not a healthcare system. You know,
43:57
Speaker 3: we weird until people are screwed and then we try
44:01
Speaker 3: to treat them. And in the medical model, there's a
44:03
Speaker 3: lot of drugs, as in psychology, a lot of drugs
44:06
Speaker 3: that that that that you know, have limited effectiveness. So
44:10
Speaker 3: if you were czar of the universe, right, what what
44:14
Speaker 3: would you do?
44:15
Speaker 1: What sort of things would you implement? And and what
44:19
Speaker 1: it is?
44:19
Speaker 3: And I think we've talked about some of them along
44:20
Speaker 3: the way, but just just you've got that magic wand
44:24
Speaker 3: nigh what.
44:25
Speaker 1: Would where would you start? And where would you go?
44:28
Speaker 2: I don't want this trumpy and power. But the what
44:31
Speaker 2: I what I would do, I think is I would
44:35
Speaker 2: I would totally agree that I would focus heavily on
44:39
Speaker 2: health and well being. I would focus on like you
44:42
Speaker 2: don't remember any of the arithmetic that you did at
44:44
Speaker 2: fucking school, Like none of that holds. You need a
44:46
Speaker 2: certain amount, you need the building blocks. And then we
44:49
Speaker 2: need to focus on life skills. We need to focus
44:52
Speaker 2: on our emotional inner world in a way that is
44:56
Speaker 2: not feminized, that is not at odds with the way
44:59
Speaker 2: and we're we're brought up, but is actually directly tied
45:02
Speaker 2: to our sense of self and so doing values work,
45:05
Speaker 2: doing rights of passage, doing ideas of you know, spending
45:10
Speaker 2: a period a month you know at school, going who
45:14
Speaker 2: do you want to be? Not? What do you want
45:16
Speaker 2: to be? Not I want to be a five? This
45:18
Speaker 2: is always a thing that everyone is asking kids, what
45:20
Speaker 2: do you want to be? It's who do you want
45:22
Speaker 2: to be? It's it's and how are you going to
45:24
Speaker 2: get there? And it's not about this aspiration of I
45:28
Speaker 2: need to be a CEO, I want to be an entrepreneur.
45:31
Speaker 2: That's what's killing us. It's this idea of achievement rather
45:35
Speaker 2: than that hard work of self determination and growth, you know.
45:40
Speaker 2: And so what I would focus on is building up
45:44
Speaker 2: those course skills around making sure that our communities are
45:47
Speaker 2: actually interlinked and tightly bound in ways that they used
45:52
Speaker 2: to be for our grandparents, where people would have neighbors
45:54
Speaker 2: that they would talk to, God forbid, Like I don't
45:57
Speaker 2: know where that went, you know, absolutely. You know, we
46:01
Speaker 2: can talk about tech and social media, like there's a
46:03
Speaker 2: whole thing going on there which is harming everybody and
46:06
Speaker 2: is leading to serious brain rot and an inability to
46:09
Speaker 2: actually be in the present moment. And anxiety is going
46:12
Speaker 2: through the roof with that as well. Let alone pornography
46:16
Speaker 2: and all of these other situations which are really harming men. Pornography, gambling, alcohol,
46:23
Speaker 2: seriously undermining men's ability to show up for themselves and
46:26
Speaker 2: their families and so and that leads to this spiral,
46:31
Speaker 2: you know. And so if I am the Cizar, I
46:34
Speaker 2: am focused really heavily on connection, on understanding your emotional
46:39
Speaker 2: experience and being able to discuss and describe it, and
46:42
Speaker 2: making sure there are some schools that you know that
46:45
Speaker 2: I've worked with where every boy sees a psychologist once
46:48
Speaker 2: a month. You know, we should have a public school
46:51
Speaker 2: system where I don't want to see you when you're sick.
46:54
Speaker 2: I have no interest in that be because when you're depressed,
46:57
Speaker 2: I need to actually like get you out of bed.
47:00
Speaker 2: I need to get you going to work. That's not therapy.
47:04
Speaker 2: Therapy is building you up. It's creating that resilient scaffolding
47:10
Speaker 2: so that you can continue on when you're down in
47:13
Speaker 2: the dumps. That's that's not where the work happens. And
47:17
Speaker 2: so it's really important that we actually see psychology as
47:22
Speaker 2: dental care preventative. Once every six months, give me a
47:26
Speaker 2: give me a check up, check my gums. You know.
47:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that that is very powerful. Is there
47:32
Speaker 1: anything that November are doing in this space?
47:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, because because because this is this is the stuff
47:39
Speaker 3: that I'm really pastiate at about is like how do
47:41
Speaker 3: you how do you head this off at the past,
47:44
Speaker 3: and how do you give people a guide a scuffold
47:48
Speaker 3: as you say, to live the good life? And and
47:51
Speaker 3: and actually, just before I finished the question, I think
47:54
Speaker 3: you know I'm not religious. I'm a recovering Catholic from
47:57
Speaker 3: Northern I don't have been in recovery for forty years.
47:59
Speaker 1: But I think part of the overall problem.
48:04
Speaker 3: Is the breakdown of religion, although I'm not a massive
48:06
Speaker 3: fan of it, because it gives people a set of
48:09
Speaker 3: values and a guide from how to for how to live,
48:13
Speaker 3: but also a community.
48:15
Speaker 1: And then you're taken you're taking that away, and people.
48:18
Speaker 3: Need to then go and do the work, particularly about
48:21
Speaker 3: what sort of a person do I want to be?
48:23
Speaker 1: What sort of values do I have?
48:24
Speaker 3: And if you don't have anybody steering them, then often
48:29
Speaker 3: that is outsourced to social media and these tribes and
48:34
Speaker 3: social media that that can become really destructive.
48:38
Speaker 1: So sorry, but that that that turned into a rantom.
48:43
Speaker 2: The moral fabric. When you when you had really clear
48:47
Speaker 2: institutions that provided community, there were scouts, there's rotary churches,
48:54
Speaker 2: and they all fell apart because they were all corrupt.
48:56
Speaker 2: And that this is the issue. How do we create
48:59
Speaker 2: safe male only spaces as well, you know, how do
49:03
Speaker 2: we create places that are actually going to not be
49:06
Speaker 2: abuses of power, that are not going to be corrupt,
49:09
Speaker 2: and that are actually going because there was a lot
49:11
Speaker 2: of health that came with that, there was a lot
49:13
Speaker 2: of benefit. It just so happens that we actually unraveled
49:17
Speaker 2: all of it rather than some of it, which I
49:19
Speaker 2: think is problematic. But what my Vember is doing, We've
49:23
Speaker 2: got programs all over the globe and we fund you know,
49:28
Speaker 2: some of the school based stuff. We fund a program
49:30
Speaker 2: and we created it called Ahead of the Game, which
49:33
Speaker 2: is a sport mental health and resilience training and so
49:38
Speaker 2: we go in. We're partnering with the AFL on this
49:41
Speaker 2: at the moment, and we're actually partnering with Gaelic Football
49:45
Speaker 2: as well in Ireland. And what we do is we
49:48
Speaker 2: go into a club, into a community club. This is
49:50
Speaker 2: not elite, it's at the grassroots and you go in
49:53
Speaker 2: and you give a program on understanding and responding to
49:58
Speaker 2: your own mental health issues, building up resilience in these
50:01
Speaker 2: young guys. But something that we do that is so
50:03
Speaker 2: important is that we also train the coaches and the
50:06
Speaker 2: parents because you have to have the ecosystem because what happens.
50:10
Speaker 2: And this is, you know, something that I'm learning a
50:12
Speaker 2: lot of in the violence prevention space is I do
50:15
Speaker 2: more of it. When you go and you tell a
50:17
Speaker 2: boy at thirteen, this is what you need to do
50:21
Speaker 2: to be a respectful man, and how to you know,
50:24
Speaker 2: not be misogynistic and violent and whatever. If he goes
50:27
Speaker 2: home and his dad is beating his mum, none of
50:30
Speaker 2: that matters. Build an ecosystem of health and well being
50:35
Speaker 2: and safety for a young kid, and he will feel
50:38
Speaker 2: like he exists within a place that makes sense. He
50:43
Speaker 2: exists with rules that he can follow. He exists with
50:46
Speaker 2: an aspiration that he can achieve because his coach and
50:50
Speaker 2: his dad is playing the game with him, you know.
50:53
Speaker 2: So that's you know, one really key program that we're
50:56
Speaker 2: rolling out across the globe. And I continue to spend
51:02
Speaker 2: most of my time with my team researching how we
51:05
Speaker 2: can get this no do gap being a bit shorter,
51:10
Speaker 2: so knowing and actually implementing, because at the moment, it's
51:12
Speaker 2: just like Ivory Tower. Let's all sit up here and
51:15
Speaker 2: churn out PhDs and they don't go anywhere. My team,
51:18
Speaker 2: who all have PhDs, are fundamentally obsessed with translation, and
51:23
Speaker 2: I need to make sure that when we find something,
51:27
Speaker 2: it gets into the hands of guys quickly. Yeah.
51:31
Speaker 3: I love that. That translation and closing the knowing doing gap.
51:35
Speaker 3: I talk about that all the time and health behavior
51:37
Speaker 3: change right, because a lot of people know what they
51:39
Speaker 3: need to do, but they're not. I want to want
51:43
Speaker 3: to talk a little bit about adverse childhood experiences. I
51:47
Speaker 3: know we've got a limited time here, but I remember
51:49
Speaker 3: talking to Professor John Reid, who's done a lot of
51:52
Speaker 3: research in this sorry, and said that psychologists and therapists
51:55
Speaker 3: and survey said he did only twenty five percent of
51:59
Speaker 3: them ever ask somebody about whether they had adverse childhood experiences,
52:04
Speaker 3: and he's like, they are their biggest driver of mental
52:08
Speaker 3: health issues. What's your thoughts on that and high and
52:14
Speaker 3: when do we intervene and how is that different from
52:18
Speaker 3: somebody who hasn't had those adverse childod experiences that are
52:21
Speaker 3: setting up their view.
52:22
Speaker 1: Of the world.
52:23
Speaker 2: Well, when we talk about upstream and downstream, you know,
52:26
Speaker 2: we've spoken about prevention and how we're going to get
52:28
Speaker 2: ahead of this stuff. Nothing that we do is going
52:31
Speaker 2: to be more important than dealing with aces with adverse
52:35
Speaker 2: childhood experiences. It is the bedrock of mental health issues,
52:40
Speaker 2: of violence in our society, of basic trauma that is
52:44
Speaker 2: leading to personality difficulties, that is leading to alcohol and
52:47
Speaker 2: substance misuse, and we have it rife within our society
52:51
Speaker 2: and no one is willing to look at it. So
52:54
Speaker 2: whether it is violence in the home, whether it's sexual
52:58
Speaker 2: child sexual abuse which is amongst young men, and nobody,
53:02
Speaker 2: nobody is willing to call this out. It is so
53:06
Speaker 2: so common and it is having such untold effects across
53:12
Speaker 2: the lifespan. If we get onto this stuff early, if
53:16
Speaker 2: we are willing to say we need to focus on
53:18
Speaker 2: our young people, we need to focus on children fundamentally
53:22
Speaker 2: and safeguard them from this stuff and build services for
53:25
Speaker 2: them so that we can actually nip it in the
53:27
Speaker 2: bud so that they're not the forty year old man
53:29
Speaker 2: who is now perpetuating violence because he knew nothing else.
53:33
Speaker 2: He knew nothing else. There are so many ways that
53:37
Speaker 2: if we get onto this stuff early and we actually
53:40
Speaker 2: say this matters, This matters to us as a society
53:44
Speaker 2: to expunge this behavior and to make sure that children
53:48
Speaker 2: can live safely and happily as they should as children,
53:53
Speaker 2: and to not stigmatize them when they enter into a
53:57
Speaker 2: service with stuff like this, because that's what happened. They
54:00
Speaker 2: come in and they're just too complex, the behavior is
54:03
Speaker 2: too disordered, et cetera. I really think that that is
54:10
Speaker 2: at the core of our future success here is going
54:13
Speaker 2: to be how we actually respond to child maltreatment.
54:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a big, soorny wiki problem, I think,
54:21
Speaker 3: as is the whole mental health stuff. But mate, you
54:25
Speaker 3: and November November are are our trading and awesome bloody path.
54:30
Speaker 3: So I tip my hat to you, and I tip
54:33
Speaker 3: my hat to the organization and the massive growth of
54:37
Speaker 3: the organization because God is this needed. It is just
54:41
Speaker 3: so needed. So so thanks for everything you do, Thanks
54:44
Speaker 3: for everything your organization does, and thanks for sharing your
54:48
Speaker 3: knowledge on the podcast.
54:49
Speaker 1: I could speak about this stuff for days.
54:52
Speaker 3: But I know you've got to go.
54:53
Speaker 1: But may that was bloody awesome. Thank you.
54:54
Speaker 2: I'll be back. Thanks a lot more.
55:00
Speaker 1: The long way