Some men look fine. They’re not.

In this episode of The Lonely Chapter, I’m joined again by Dr Susie Bennett, a researcher whose work focuses on male suicide, men’s mental health, emotional suppression and the hidden pain many men carry.

We explore why some men appear completely fine on the outside while struggling internally, how men learn to hide pain, and why emotional suppression can become dangerous when it disconnects men from what they are actually feeling.

This conversation goes into the “performance of self,” male suicide research, internal unsafety, relational unsafety, childhood experiences, shame, body image, loneliness, male sexuality, unmet human needs, and the empathy gap around men’s pain.

This is not a conversation about blaming men or excusing harmful behaviour. It is a conversation about understanding what can happen beneath the surface when men feel they have to cope, stay in control, and carry pain alone.

In this episode, we discuss:

→ Why men hide their pain until they break

→ Why some men do not realise how badly they are struggling

→ Signs of distress in men that do not look like distress

→ Male suicide, emotional suppression and hidden psychological pain

→ The loneliness of pretending to be okay

→ Internal unsafety and relational unsafety

→ Childhood adversity, shame, bullying and emotional regulation

→ Male body image and pressure around appearance

→ Male sexuality, unmet human needs and difficult conversations

→ What helps men begin to feel safe again

If you’re new here, please do follow The Lonely Chapter wherever you’re listening - it really helps the show reach more people who might need it.

Why do you think so many men seem completely fine up until the point that they break?

I mean, I think so many different factors come into it and that is it.

You know, the suicide deaths kind of happen across the spectrum of people where there's been no mental, sorry, known as in people know about it, known mental health challenges for sometimes decades and decades and other times where suicide happens completely out the blue, as you're describing now.

I think that we.

One of the findings that comes up in the research we've done is a lot of men feeling, we sort of label it this kind of performance of self, of feeling that the expectations on them as men in the world is to be somebody that's coping, got things under control, you know, is dealing with whatever pressures and challenges they might be under and therefore doesn't feel the sort of safety, I suppose, to be able to disclose the reality of whatever he may be feeling.

And I think that that's really dangerous as described by men in two ways.

The first of all is absolutely exhausting pretending, if you've ever lived your life, trying to conceal something really critical about yourself from other people.

It's really, really draining of your resources.

So first of all, it's depleting.

And then the second thing that men tell us is just how incredibly lonely it is as that gulf kind of opens up between what you're presenting to the outside world and what you're feeling on the inside.

And then, you know, the real danger becomes that the.

In that isolation, the only person that you're talking to about suicide is yourself.

And that of course, then becomes very, very dangerous.

And also the.

The energetic kind of drain of performing is also dangerous from the point of view.

It takes energy to regulate your emotions to reg pain.

And if that's being taxed by this sort of performance of self that you're feeling that you need to take on, then you're depleting the resources that you need as well to kind of cope with the challenges that are happening.

So I think it's, you know, really complicated.

And the thing is, Sam, that men live in such diverse worlds.

So there's some men in certain places where that performance of self is.

The people around him would want.

Would want so much to know the reality of what he's feeling.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And, you know, and that it may be that those.

Those feelings that he has about how he needs to be in the world are out of sync with what actually those around him kind of expect.

And then there's other parts of the world where of course, those May be very real.

There may be real pressures around needing to feel like there's no space for you to reveal what's.

What's going on for you.

And I think as well, that something that comes through in the work as well for certain men is a challenge around understanding themselves as recipients of care.

So their understanding of themselves is, I'm the person that takes care of the people around me.

And so being able to occupy a space where you actually go, actually, no, I'm, you know, I'm struggling in this moment could be really, really difficult.

But the point I'm trying to make is this huge diversity in men's behaviors and what might be driving it.

Yeah, it's absolutely different for everyone.

It's an individual thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

But the reason I ask is, I think you hear it so often when someone does take their life, that people around them, or maybe not the closest to them, but people who sort of saw them every now and then be like, you wouldn't know.

There's totally, like, no signs or anything.

And is there an aspect of it you spoke about when men are maybe covering up and portraying a different version of themselves externally to internally?

Is there an aspect where some men potentially don't actually realize how much they're struggling until that point?

Sam?

I think that's a very astute reflection.

And actually, in terms of the evidence of that period of time between thinking about suicide and making a suicide attempt can look really, really different for different people.

So I've spoken to men who've spent years planning their suicide, thinking about the moment, the best time, the best circumstances, conditions in which they're going to do that.

Other men where they've said there was just a few minutes in between thinking about suicide and making an attempt.

So, again, there's huge diversity within that.

So I think it's, you know, sometimes you have really heartbreaking conversations with family or friends who say that they saw a man, you know, they may have gone for dinner or something that evening, and then they've, you know, and then a suicide has happened in the night.

And I think it's really.

There's no consistency, I think, around whether that person in that moment.

Of course, it doesn't happen out of nowhere in terms of, you know, there would have been pain building inside.

But it may not have been that in that moment, suicide was necessarily as present as we might imagine it to be.

Sam this is so, so, so important.

It's such an important point.

And so one of the things, one of the things that comes up in the work that we look at a lot and is one of kind of the obvious things that we may think about in terms of male suicide is this aspects of emotional supp.

In terms of a lot of men being raised in ideas that you need to suppress the pain that you might be feeling.

And that suppression for some men can lead to an enormous disconnect with their internal state about what they might be feeling.

If you're receiving these messages over and over to basically effectively not feel those aspects of your human experience, then it dislodges you from.

And that's not true for all men.

A lot of men have a really good grasp on their pain, but may not feel like they have permission to communicate that to other people.

But really your relationship with your pain and being able to navigate it and manage it starts internally, starts with your own ability to sort of identify what you're feeling and why you're feeling it.

And I think that one of the consequences of these ideas of emotional suppression can be that we dislodge certain men from having a healthy understanding of that because they're being told, don't feel that.

And that's so dangerous.

Yeah.

What's more important there is, is either one of them more important?

Whether that's having a good relationship internally of your pain and understanding your body and your mind, or being actually able to vocalize that and get that out of just your brain?

I mean, I think that they're both really important, but I think that I have huge respect for the ways in which people want to deal with their pain as long as it doesn't cause pain for, you know, for other people.

But I really understand when I speak to men who, you know, because these, it's, it's not like you flick a switch and suddenly you go, I always make the point, it's slightly different, but I make the point about, you know, I'm in my mid-40s and when I was a teenager growing up, we had this idea that women should be size zeros.

And so most of the women I know internalized really, really toxic, awful ideas about their bodies.

That doesn't mean all the middle aged women I know suddenly feel fucking fantastic about themselves just because the social conversation has changed.

These ideas become deeply, deeply entrenched.

And I think it's the same with men when we, when we talk about them, you know, that we may be living in the moment now where we're trying to correct the Gross kind of, you know, violence I think we've done on men's emotional interiors.

It doesn't mean that men suddenly go, oh well, I'll just, you know, I can sit down now and tell you all the intimate things about myself.

So I really respect that.

For some men, that still feels very, very difficult.

But it's absolutely essential to your well being for you to understand, you know, what's going on for yourself.

Because that knowledge, Sam, changes the decisions that you then make.

If I know I'm being activated in this moment because of these reasons, then that informs then the decision that I make about how I want to respond to whatever's going on in my life.

So I stress all the time, Sam, because it upsets me so much.

You are an emotional being.

That is a fundamental characteristic of being a human being is that you are existing in constant feeling states in the same way that I am and the same way that everybody listening.

That's part of being human.

We're always feeling something.

And it may be that the feeling is very.

I think of it as like a D, A dial on a soundboard.

Sometimes it's down really low.

We're not feeling much and.

But there's still something happening.

But sometimes that switch can be yanked all the way up and we can be flooded with enormous feelings and we can do all kinds of behaviors then in that moment.

So accepting that every single one of us is a feeling creature to have then effectively said to half the population, don't have a good relationship with that aspect of yourself.

Yeah.

Is absolutely.

I wanted to say it so bananas.

But it's more than that, Sam, because it's so, so dangerous or it can become so, so dangerous because we've evolved feelings and emotions for a reason to help us live better.

And so I think that it' really.

Going back to your point about what aspect is most important, that part of understanding for yourself what is going on and why.

And Sam, just to stress for anybody listening.

So, for example, I've had therapy at different points in my life.

I had it when I was 30 and I had it again when I was 42.

And I've learned different points at different times through those processes.

So it's not.

I don't suddenly I'm not sitting here now with a complete understanding of my emotional self.

It's something that was always kind of.

It's.

It's a life's work in a way.

We're always learning.

Exactly.

And so I think that there's.

It's also.

I don't Want to suggest in any way that there's.

There's a completion to it.

It's a bit.

But, you know, the more you can sort of understand what's happened to you and how it may shape your behavior as a consequence, just some.

The.

The better decisions you can make about.

And sometimes, Sam, it's.

You feel things more fully.

Yeah.

Because maybe that anger or that shame or that trauma that you've been suppressing, suddenly you have to bring it out into the.

Into the spotlight.

So I also have tremendous respect for the fact that doing that work is really, really difficult at times, depending on the things that have happened to you.

Yeah.

I think you make.

You make a great point in terms of the historical message that's been put out there and the fact that whether or not that's now changed and it's a lot more accepting in the world, that doesn't change people's ability to do it.

Just because you've changed the environment doesn't change the internal environment of that person.

And the point about women and sort of body dysmorphia, I suppose, is this great sort of comparison just to allow people to get their heads around it.

And Sam, I worry now a bit.

We've just done a study.

We haven't published it yet.

I've just finished the manuscript.

But it was looking at this sort of interaction of risk factors for men.

Because often a lot of work in suicide research has looked at risk factors in isolation.

So we might identify that unemployment increases, risk or relationships, relationship breakdown.

But, you know, risk factors work in interaction with one another.

So we were kind of looking at networks of risk.

And one of the big things that have come out is about sort of body, physical appearance, food for men.

And I. I wonder if that is.

It seems to me, I'm not.

I haven't done any research on this, but anecdotally, like, as a cultural observer, it feels like the.

The male body is socially presented in a different way to when I was in the 90s.

We didn't, you know, there were some guys with six packs or whatever.

But I mean, now it feels like that is the expectation that you need to.

It's fascinating to hear how the perception of women's bodies has changed from something that was sort of unachievable for most people and unhealthy.

Yeah.

To something that's a lot more accepting and healthy now.

Whereas men's bodies have sort of done the opposite.

And you look around advertisement campaigns and a lot of time it's still very chiseled men on these things.

And a lot of men like dads, they can't, they don't have the time to sort of get to that level.

It takes so much commitment and discipline and it's diet, it's training, it's everything.

And there's no, it doesn't seem to have that same level of body acceptance on both, sort of for both genders.

So it's a, it's quite an interesting thing that.

Where they've sort of changed in the opposite way maybe.

I mean, do you feel that.

And you're.

How old are you, May I ask?

31.

So I've grown up.

So you started going to the gym?

When I was like 17.

Okay.

Which would be what year?

Like.

2012, I think.

2012.

Okay.

So that start social media time.

Yeah.

So I was seeing all these bodybuilders on social media, bodybuilding.com forums, trying to work out how to get as big and muscular as possible.

So I've always felt that and I feel a lot of people my sort of age will.

And maybe older, maybe younger as well, but a tape.

Trying to attain that, that bodybuilder look.

And it was only maybe eight years ago.

So maybe it's almost halfway through my training life from that point where I started to realize that I wasn't actually that healthy.

Whilst I was getting a little bit bigger.

I wasn't, I couldn't play football.

Oh really?

I played a five a side game and I was so out of breath so quickly I was like this, this has to change.

So sort of from that point on, my mentality around training has been more about performance based in doing what I want to do in that time as opposed to just how I look.

Yeah, because you can, you, any, anyone will resonate with this.

You can wake up one day and feel pretty good in yourself.

You look in the mirror, you think, yeah, I'm looking all right at the minute and then the next day nothing's changed, but you just feel like that little, that bit of fat wasn't there before and it's so easy to fluctuate that way.

So I try not to look at myself as a aesthetic style goal.

So, yeah, that's my own perspective.

Yeah, I mean I, I do think it's.

I like worry about it on a very deep level in the sense that I think for like most of our evolutionary history as a species and the species that we evolved from, we didn't really have any access to our, to what we look like.

And so we sort of psychologically developed without that, that Sense of, of self and, and actually how I, my understanding of myself came in a way in response to how others looked at me.

You know, like whether the people, you know, whether people around me, how they responded to me.

Whereas now particularly in the era of social media and not just that like zoom meetings where you're, you're confronted with your own image.

Yeah.

Over and over and over again.

I think that that is something really different for us in the modern era and that can be psychologically very, very burdensome.

Yeah.

And yeah, I worry a bit about, particularly for young boys, what their expectations is around their physical self.

Yeah.

I think, I think that aspect of it is like non gender specific really.

I think I'm reading a book currently by Freya India.

It's called Girls and it's about Gen Z and social media growing up with that social media.

So that cohort of specifically girls, but this would be boys as well who have grown up seeing these physiques online and like you said, sort of being judged by others and that's how they have their perception of themselves.

So they put a photo up, it gets a certain amount of likes.

They put another one up, it gets less what happened, what went wrong?

And I'd never heard of this app before but apparently it's one of the most popular apps called Facetune where you can.

Girls were more into it I think where they go into it and they'd change features, they completely change their face, bring the jaw in, nose smaller, all that sort of stuff.

And I think, I think Gen Z across the board are really struggling now off the back of that because they've just grown up being judged by others as opposed to bringing it internal.

Yeah.

And so I'm just too.

Because I think, I think we kind of, we hear this a lot and maybe we become a bit numb to the implications of what we're talking about.

But actually it's so important because they've done really interesting studies where they've looked at, they put people in, in scanners to look at the, to brains in terms of what happens in moments of like social rejection.

And they found that the pain part of the pain networks light up when you feel physical pain.

So if I came and punched you can, can be similar to incidents where I, you know, maybe we're out socially and you become excluded.

There's a pain response happening.

And so you know, I think about those micro pain incidents that now people are exposed to from a very young age.

Yeah.

Every day.

And I think hell, this is, this is a potential to Be.

I mean, we're already seeing it really corrosive to.

Well, being.

Yeah, absolutely.

In terms of sort of just jumping back towards the men suffering and the pain that they hide.

From your research that you've done, are there any signs of distress that seem to be sort of common that we don't really recognize as a sign of distress?

I think probably one of the most surprising ones can be that for some men there's an uplift in mood before they make an attempt.

I remember speaking to one man.

You know, he'd.

There'd been mounting pressures and challenges for a long time, a lot of tension at home because he was really struggling, but he didn't feel able to communicate that.

But it was coming out of his behavior in different ways.

And then he sort of settled on this idea that he was going to kill himself and he said it was like everything.

Like a weightlifter.

Yeah.

He suddenly saw this way out of his problems.

And that of course then is incredibly disconcerting for.

I mean, fortunately he survived his attempt and, you know, wonderful, wonderful man.

But I have heard from other families that that's been something that they experienced.

So I think that's probably the most surprising one.

But again, there's huge diversity around what, what the evidence tells us.

So in terms of those signs leading up to a suicide attempt or a suicide death.

So I wouldn't say that there's ever a consistent pattern.

And again, going back to that point, it can be very quick, the shift between thinking about suicide and making an attempt.

So sometimes there's not even time for there to have been visible flags.

Yeah.

So I read something that you posted recently about a study that you did, and it was about painful childhood experiences.

So you mentioned the two things that were internal unsafety and relational unsafety.

Can you elaborate on those two terms slightly?

Yeah, I have to say so that's been kind of the last 18 months of my life looking at that relationship between experiences in childhood and male suicide risk.

And it sparked a lot of reflection and thoughts for me.

So this finding that we found, we.

I mean, again, I don't.

I feel like I, I keep making this point about diversity, but again, I just want to flag it.

It is.

Men described very diverse experiences happening in childhood.

And I think that's really important to state because some men had amazing caregivers at home, but maybe they had an absolutely horrendous time at school.

Other kids had horrendous caregivers and, you know, so.

So there was all kinds of different experience described, different forms of physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, caregivers with mental health problems or addiction problems or challenges between the caregivers themselves.

So maybe you.

Your parents have split up or there's a custody battle, or you lose access to seeing one of your parents.

Some talked about bereavements in childhood, some of which were people losing people to suicide.

Other men spoke about sexual violence, or a lot of men spoke about bullying at school.

And then for a smaller minority of men, they spoke about community violence or what it was to grow up as a racial minority or a sexual minority or growing up in poverty.

And so we had all these.

This sort of diverse range of experiences.

And I was trying to understand what is the psychological common thread here, and how does that thread then link to increased suicide risk?

Because it's a pretty well established suicide risk factor that if you've had adversity in childhood, your suicide risk goes up.

And I remember reading one guy was sort of describing his childhood experiences as, sam, it was bleak as fuck.

I mean, it was just a litany of just awful, awful things.

And then he said at the end, and it was happening at both school and at home, and he put outside or inside, I had no safe space.

And then I was really thinking about, what does that mean for a child to live as a child when you are innately, to some extent, helpless or you are highly depressed, dependent on other people?

What does that do for a child when you don't feel safe?

And then what does it do when that child is a boy and has some sense as.

As in terms of the social and cultural messages he has about who he needs to be in the world, how he needs to present.

And so we started to explore then all of this data and experiences through this lens of psychological safety and what it means to not have it.

And we started to see that for some men, a lot of what they were talking about seemed to be describing that they were not safe.

Yeah, it was not safe to be them.

That they were either being rejected by people or that there was some aspect of who they were that was socially, you know, diminished or in some cases, unacceptable.

Whether that was about physical appearance, going back to what we've just been talking about.

So things like even like childhood acne or having a cleft lip or a physical impairment to being neurodiverse, things to do with sexuality, being a virgin, being gay.

Um, so this feeling of internal unsafety for other men, it was also described as this unsafety came in a way because in childhood they already were aware that they were not Coping.

So a lot of men spoke about mental health challenges in childhood.

Anxiety, panic disorder, suicide attempt, or already feeling like they've internalized this idea that I am a piece of shit, that I am not worth what other people are worth, or internalize this idea of it's not safe to show my emotions.

So this feeling that they are carrying around a psychological sense for different reasons, that it is not safe to be them in the world.

And then there was this other description of childhood experiences.

It seemed to be describing men receiving this message that the outside world is not safe, other people are not safe.

And so we went on to talk about how this potentially creates for these young boys an insecure attachment to self and to others.

And this is really, really, really important when we think about some of the major suicide risk factors or the major drivers of suicide, which I always describe as this chord pain of three notes in this cord of suicidal pain.

One is about your relationship with your emotions.

And so often people who are suicidal are really struggling to regulate overwhelming feelings of pain.

The second note in that cord of pain is how we think and feel about ourselves.

So often suicidal people are dealing with very, very painful thoughts about themselves that they're a failure, that they're not worth anything.

And then that third note is about our relationship with other people.

So a lot of suicidal people will talk about.

We describe it, or it's described in the literature as like, thwarted belongingness.

So essentially struggling, for whatever reason, to have meaningful, intimate connections with other people.

So that's our.

If we think of our chord of suicidal pain as those three notes.

And then if we take those childhood experiences and map them over those three notes, if you're developing in childhood an insecure attachment to yourself, a sense that you are not as valuable as other people, then we can start to see that link then to that ongoing potential risk for suicide.

And the same in terms of insecure attachments to other people is really, really difficult to establish.

Meaningful.

It's so hard for, you know, for a child, if there's abuse or neglect at home, very, very difficult to then learn to feel safe with other people without being given the opportunity to process some of what's happened to you.

And again, I think it's really, really important when we think about childhood adversity as a potential suicide risk factor, when we're talking about men, that we think about that potential double jeopardy of that boy who, for whatever reason, is potentially absorbing very painful things in childhood, being socialized in these cultural ideas that you suppress your pain, that you cope with It.

Yeah.

So where does that pain ever find meaningful release?

And I have to say, Sam, that it was so emotional working on that data because there were so many harrowing stories.

And I found it really, I was working on that paper and writing it up in this wider public conversation going on about boys and, you know, with things like adolescence and now we've had that recent kind of manosphere documentary.

And there are of course important things about what those programs are presenting that we need to look at as a society.

But it feels to me that the only conversation that we're having about boys is through the lens of their propensity to do harm.

What can we do to stop boys becoming harmful men?

And I was spending all this time looking at data screaming at me over and over and over again about the ways in which these men as boys were deeply harmed by life.

And I don't see that balancing aspect of the conversation about there's huge harms happening, happening to the boys, to certain boys in this country right now.

Some of those boys will go on to become suicidal men.

And what are we doing, you know, as a society to prevent that?

So for me, you know, it's, it's so critical, the things that happen in childhood in terms of who we, who we become.

What do you make?

I was going to actually ask you about those two dramas, I suppose, the adolescents and the manospheres particularly, but there's been loads more and it seems like speaking to George from the Tin Men about it.

And it's like this annual ritual almost where something gets made.

We talk about it for a brief period of time.

And normally the conversation is about, like you say, how do we stop men being bad or boys being bad specifically there.

Why is that conversation so skewed to the negative as opposed to like bringing them up?

Sam, I do think that there is a real empathy gap, which I'm sure I spoke about last time we were together because I always hang on about it, but I just see it over and over and over and over again in my work.

And I think that there has to at some point be a kind of social reckoning around that and a period of reflection about why that is and what it means.

And I probably used this same quote last time I spoke to you, but it's worth sharing again because I think it sums it up so perfectly, which was from this 26 year old man.

He participated in one of our surveys and we'd asked at the end of the survey, is there anything that contributes to your thoughts and feelings of suicide that we haven't discussed yet that you want to share.

And he was 26.

He says he thought about suicide every three days or so.

And he'd been thinking about suicide since he was 13.

So in this age that we're now discussing, and he said the ever increasing hopelessness as I age, unless people giving a shit now that I'm a grown man, at what age does society decide that the boy worthy of love, care and protection is now a man and no longer deserving of any.

And I really think that I use that quote all of the time because for me it's just the most powerful articulation of this empathy gap, which I really want to stress doesn't just exist in women.

I see it in men all of the time that they have also internalized ideas about men masculinity that makes it.

It can be difficult for them to come alongside, you know, that there can be barriers and limits to their compassion that they may feel for, you know, other men struggling even recently, I was speaking to a guy who's a dad and he was saying, you know, that he.

It's really impacted his mental health and he's struggling with it.

And then I was sort of sharing a bit of stuff from the work and he was saying, it's so interesting because as you're talking, my brain is going, well, they just need to get over it, sort it out.

Like he was, he was caught in this internal kind of conflict between seeing the ways in which he was struggling and understanding that he was struggling and needed support and also being resistant about that being given because he also had these internalized ideas about who men should be in the world.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I think that sometimes I think there's this misunderstanding that, like, I am very, very passionate that I want men to have fully emotionally embodied lives.

I want you to have full access to the feelings that you feel and a full, as rich understanding as possible about why you might be feeling them.

And I think there's this sometimes this understanding that that is somehow this soft thing to do.

Actually it's fucking hard as hell.

Like it's hard as hell to fully feel what you might be feeling.

And it's not about.

And it doesn't mean that you then become boundaryless kind of.

It's not, it's not weak.

It's.

It's so scary to do, to actually like to actually reflect on the way you're feeling and like, maybe it's a reaction that you made that why did I suddenly get so angry at that thing?

Like you might reflect back on it and think, that wasn't something that I should really be that angry about.

To then do that internal work and just look one layer deeper on.

And when I spoke to James Elliott, who I know you've worked with as well, he's fantastic, brilliant mind.

And yeah, he was saying about that, that first level, it's like you've got to go deeper.

So that first, that first time you ask yourself, like, why did I react angry there.

Yeah.

The first thing that comes to your mind, it might be, I was tired.

I was tired.

I didn't sleep well last night.

It's hot.

I'm on this bus, I'm sweating and I'm really hot.

Yeah.

But what actually made you react that way, like go a bit deeper than that?

It's not that simple.

That's just a.

That's a surface level answer.

But to do that is so difficult and it's scary because it's going to a place where a lot of people have never been and that's.

Yeah, a lot of men and probably a lot of women as well, maybe don't do that all the time.

But, yeah, just.

Just searching that little bit deeper, I think is so important.

But it is scary.

Yeah.

Especially if you, you know, have huge respect for people as well.

When there's, you know, and I.

And you have to do it when the time is right to you to some extent.

Like, I've also spoken to men who've had really, really difficult lives and they know, they need, they know that they're not coping.

But there's also this fear.

It's like this tidal wave of pain is suspended over them and this fear that if I go and start talking about it and that wave crashes, you know, and I release that wave, how do I know that I don't drown, you know, within it and you can't.

Pick it back up after as well, once that's out there.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I would say most of the time that it's.

It's worse living suspended.

Oh, absolutely.

And when you let it go, you start to realize, you know, this can be survived.

And it's.

Yeah, but going back to you, to your question about.

It was about the shows, wasn't it?

And how.

Why we talk about.

Yeah.

Why are we not talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I really hope with time that that's going to change.

Even just on a small kind of anecdotal note, I went to my dentist and they had like a sort of gender neutral bathroom and in the toilet they Had a poster up for Women's Aid, which is obviously the charity for female victims of domestic violence.

And then they had by its side a poster for Mankind, which is a charity for male victims of domestic violence.

And I thought, that's incredible.

I've never seen that in my life.

Yeah.

And I thought not only is it amazing because men that might need that who come to the bathroom and see it suddenly see that there's an organization for them.

But I was like, it's telling everybody that looks at that poster.

It's raising the visibility of the fact that there are of course really sadly male victims of domestic abuse as well.

And so I think bit by bit, we need to sort of seed that different conversation.

But absolutely, you know, I think the government needs to be doing more about sett the tone around.

I mean, when Keir Starmer was saying the things about adolescence being shown in, you know.

Yeah.

That was outrageous.

I thought, it's Sam.

I can't.

I want to.

My brain wants to slide out my ears.

I think that the fact that it's something is a drama.

And we know that he called it a documentary.

Yeah.

In that speech as well.

But to take something with no real like study into it and to take it so literally and within.

Within a week, talk about rolling it out into schools.

Like, everyone needs to see this.

It's.

It's a drama like we've never done that before about any other drama that's come out.

And there was that one more recently where Ross Kemp did a show and I don't think he did very well, but he did a show like looking into incels and like potential violence of incels off the back of that adolescence sort of wave, I suppose.

And there was a.

There's just a clip I saw where he sat down with William Costello and he's one of the world leading incel researchers and he asked him a question about.

He said, okay, so out of the incels, like how many of them go on to commit like murder or crime?

And he was like, seven.

He's like across all the research worldwide, like everything we see, probably estimated to be around seven.

Seven people.

Yeah.

And then Ross Kemp was like, it was 7,000.

Yeah, no, no, seven.

It's like what, what seven.

Like just in the UK, he's like, no, no, worldwide.

And it's like he couldn't any fair play.

They put it into the show because he sort of then goes and realizes that it's not quite as bad as it's been made to.

It's not this Immediate risk that people seem to think it is off the back of that show and off the back of our Prime Minister talking about it.

And yeah, I just, I just remember that time and I remember thinking if I was a boy now and there's like the anti misogyny lessons coming into schools as well.

I think it's like this is wild to me because like almost all of those boys won't.

Won't naturally be that way.

In fact, they won't.

None of them will naturally be that way.

It's stuff they've learned, but they're such a small minority and to, to branch that across all of education is just.

Yeah, it's, it's as well.

The like.

I was so blessed when I was at school.

I had an amazing group of mixed gender friends.

So I had really, really close male friends growing up who helped me so much.

Like I partly sat in this chair because of those, those friendships.

And I think that I would be.

I, I don't know, Sam, when you, when I was at school we did this convers.

This like our parents were having maybe a conversation about battle of the sexes.

But it wasn't prevalent at school in the 90s.

I mean I'm not, can't speak for all the kids, but like it just feels it's become more and more.

Divided.

Yeah, yeah.

And that, that you know, actually, you know, there's so much deep listening that has to happen on either side because I, I know as well that that empathy some of is.

You know, almost every woman I know has been deeply harmed by a man, as you know, by.

That's a, that's a reality of war.

And I understand that when you've been deeply harmed by somebody, it can, it shapes all kinds of rights.

You know, I understand what the body and brain is then trying to keep you safe.

And so, so there's a reality to these things, but there's also a reality to the way in which men are experiencing very, very painful lives sometimes at the hands of the behaviors that women are doing.

And I think that the more we kind of push each other into that tribe and that tribe and the less we're able to come together and have deep listening with one another.

Because that's what this work is completely.

You know, I say it's like putting my brain through a car wash in terms of what, you know, because I've heard so many stories from so many men now of difficult, difficult lives that they've lived.

People's pain can manifest in all kinds of different ways.

And sometimes that Pain manifests in an externalization of that pain.

And I am going to put it in all these other places.

Try and put it in all these other places outside of me.

Yeah.

For some people, that pain is.

So much of it is directed inwards and enacted on the self.

Yeah.

And so I think it's really important, particularly when we're talking about something like suicide, to really acknowledge that spectrum because, you know, I, I worry sometimes that we, you know, I, I try all the time to, to respect the diversity of.

So, for example, there can be high rates of suicide related to domestic abuse issues.

And sometimes that's where the man has been the perpetrator of the abuse.

There's also lots of male suicides from men that would never, ever, ever, you know, be violent to somebody else.

And there's a context for every single person within that spectrum.

But it's important all of the time to not, not, you know, I, I feel very mindful to.

Not to be, you know, anchoring back at us in a sense of kinds of diversity.

But yeah, the, the point, Sam, about how we keep dialogue and deep listening open between people who many of us have been carrying around painful things.

Yeah.

I mean, that diversity is such an important point to make because when you, you spoke before about the divide, perhaps, and how we speak about things and the different camps of like, the tribes, it goes beyond just gender.

We do it, like politically and everything.

It's.

You have to be fully in one camp or the other.

There's no in between.

And.

Yeah.

Sam, can I just say, sorry to cut.

You're so mad.

Right.

Because, you know, I think about that big story that exploded about the rape academies and how many men were accessing the site and that there was a real misinformation about the number of men.

Yeah.

Which was very, very unhelpful because it, you know, it is important that we are, you know, accurate about things.

At the same time, it's very disturbing.

The number that the.

Which I can't remember, but the number that it is.

I think it was like.

Was it.

They were claiming like 60 odd million.

It's about a thousand.

Yeah.

Which again, that's the disturbing.

But there's still a thousand odd.

But I think they were counting hits on the site as opposed to individual users.

Yeah.

And it easily got carried away into this.

Like 60 million men are on this.

It's like.

No, but that issue for me, I, I think that the.

It should.

Men should be as outraged about the reality of that as women.

It's not for me, when we make it kind of a gendered issue in that way.

I understand it to a certain point.

But also, we can't then cut people off from also engaging, being outraged and speaking out about it in the same way that I'm here being outraged and trying to speak about suicide in men.

You know, as a woman.

And I think that, you know, for me, there's something.

There's people.

There's groups of people that you can access that I never can because you have social value, social currency to them.

And therefore, the things that you say, the behavior that you tolerate or don't tolerate has much more impact for them than I do.

Similarly, I have access to people and so on.

But I think that, like, you are.

Are like, how many women in your life.

Are.

How many significant women are there in your life?

Yeah, a high number.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, this is the point I was gonna make in terms of, like, speaking about it.

We.

We speak about it like a zero sum thing.

Like, if we speak about one group of people, it's taken away from another group of people.

And so everyone's got their own issue, like, their own things they're going through.

And I always think about it, so the women in my life and the women who have me in their life or other men, and like, anyone listening will have people from the other gender in their life.

And it's like, surely you want them to be the best they can be and, like, be helped if they need it.

So I never really understand that, like, truly tribal way of speaking.

Like, it's taking away something from.

From you.

Like, I'm not losing out by women being supported through whatever they need to be supported through.

I'm winning because it means the women in my life are being supported.

So surely people would want the same going the other way.

And.

And I'm sure there's a lot of women listening going, yeah, obviously.

But it's that, like, minority voice that seems to get that it's the loudest voice that think that men have it easy.

And to be a man struggling to hear that those words spoken.

And yeah, men have it easy.

The patriarchy, toxic masculinity, these are all words that just get thrown out with no regard for how those men are feeling.

It's brutal, Sam.

It's brutal.

I'm interested for you because obviously you have a job that, I mean, I'm sure not every day is required, but you have to accept within your job that there is a risk to yourself.

There may be a risk yourself at some point.

Most of us don't have jobs like that.

My laptop isn't going to.

And how does that feel for you when you hear those kinds of narratives about men?

As a man who's chosen with his life, you could have made all kinds of choices.

Yeah.

And you've chosen to do something that's.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's like difficult to hear.

But it's almost like I'm so used at this point to hearing it that I just sort of dismiss it.

I've had enough conversations and like I'm lucky enough to speak to people of all genders who like, don't think that way.

So I know that it's like not everyone, but yeah, it can be difficult.

And I mean a lot of the time, like we are a male dominated job in firefighting and we risk our lives in terms of like the incidents we go to.

But, but there's also a massive like the mental strain of it, which is arguably more, almost certainly more dangerous.

I mean, in.

Yeah, I've been in the job maybe nine or ten years now and there's probably been at least one person per year that's taken their own life.

And in that same time we've maybe lost three or four operationally.

So it's like that aspect of it and that's again, is that because we're not giving people the space to talk about things?

Is it the messaging that men are hearing?

Maybe they have the place to speak, but they don't feel like they should go and speak because they'll be less of a man for doing so.

So yeah, it's something that I've seen personally and from my own experience in that one job, but there's probably a lot of people that will resonate and certainly jobs like the military, police probably as well, and ambulance services where you are exposed to stuff, but because it's what you signed up to do, if you start speaking about it, are you gonna get.

Oh, like surely you knew that was part of it.

Like, don't let that affect you.

Just, just forget about it.

But it's, it's way easier, easier said than done.

It's very.

What a sobering reflection that for you to say that the bigger risk as a firefighter is the mental risk.

And yeah, I mean, I mean, obviously I don't know the backgrounds of those people and whether it was job related or just home life related, but in a job where people look at and think of that risk, like losing your life in an incident, the risk isn't as high from my own perspective.

And from what I've seen and what I can remember of the events since I've been in the job, that's how I would perceive it for sure.

And do you think there's challenge around?

Because if you've.

So there's, there's kind of interesting ideas around the cultural evolution of male.

Of this idea of men suppressing their emotions.

So why did, why did we as cultures suddenly decide this would be a good thing to encourage?

Yeah.

And some people whose name I can't remember wrote very interesting idea around this, rooting this idea to the emergence of heavy warfare and dangerous industry.

So if, if as a society we required men to potentially risk their life in daily, daily either work or war, then encouraging them to suppress their emotions would be useful.

Because if you think you might die, it may be better to, you know, if I'm being told, deny, don't.

You can't show your pain.

And by the way, you might die.

It's, you know, that, that maybe the, the society benefited from encouraging that idea.

And I wonder in something like the fire surface, I don't know how real that feels of,.

In terms of being told that or.

Yeah.

And also how much space you think there is in that kind of environment, that kind of job to be like, how deep do you think you can take the.

If you've got to get up the next day and do the same job?

Yeah, I think, I think the message is changing.

I think like society wide, slowly and within the job job specifically, it's trying to change a bit in terms of like that, trying to give more openness to speak.

We've got a group called walk and talk 999 where they.

All over the UK now.

I think they meet up and they go for a walk every whatever day of the week it is where, where they are.

And it just gives men that space to, to meet up, go for a walk and chat and sort of speaking to experts and yourself.

Like we know with men, sometimes sitting down with a therapist, which is the traditional sort of method that we think of, isn't very useful.

Because if you've, if you've grown up maybe in a dysfunctional childhood and then you've been taught that men should never show their emotions and then one day you're told, okay, men should talk, go and see a therapist.

And then you sit down across from someone like this and go, right, tell me about your deepest, darkest emotions that you've never told anyone about and that you probably put yourself down about every single day you think of as shameful.

Like, say them out loud.

It's like, that's just almost impossible.

So, like, to go and walk with someone who has maybe.

Has maybe walked that path already, has been through what you've gone through or something similar and got through it, and to just hear their story and go, I'm not alone.

It's not just me.

Because I think so many people think when they're going through those mental states that it's just them.

Like, no one gets me.

No one understands what I'm going through.

So there's a lot of people.

Yeah, a lot more than, like, it's comfortable to acknowledge, like.

Yeah, so many people go through stuff.

Yeah.

And it's like you're.

You're not as alone as your brain is trying to tell you.

And just simple things like that.

We're trying to set up more stuff in terms of, like, men's groups and information events and getting more information on.

On various topics into the brigade.

But it's.

Yeah, it's slowly changing, but as we said at the top of the episode, it's.

It takes much longer than that to actually sink in because the men that we're talking to have been told their entire life this one narrative.

So to suddenly change that.

Yeah, yeah, it's gonna take a long time.

Yeah.

So last time we spoke, you mentioned that you wondered about what space existed for sort of candid conversations on male sexuality and unmet human needs.

What can we do, do you think, to make those conversations more available?

I think I probably was saying that in response to the sort of incel.

I've just tread carefully through what.

What I say now because it's.

There's a lot of sexual trauma in women towards certain experiences that they've had, which are often being with men.

And I think that.

That sometimes in the conversation about incels, which, as I understand is involuntary, celibate people.

But we often focus on the.

On the men within that community.

And to have.

To have not experienced or to struggle to experience intimacy with other human beings, if that's something that you want and desire to struggle to do that or to have never done that is a legitimate source of human.

That, you know, that is a painful thing to endure.

Nobody's then saying, you have rights to other people's bodies.

Yeah.

But I think that's often what people hear is being said.

And they don't hear somebody just expressing a human pain that maybe you felt at some point in your life.

I've certainly felt at some point in my life of, you know, romantic isolation or frustration.

You know, and all of us, for different reasons, but for, for that not to be able to be said and heard, I think then becomes something very, you know, dangerous.

And you know, and, and, and you know, I often, sometimes I think if you said something and then I said something and we're saying this and we said the same thing, but how it may be received and interpreted versus how it may be received and interpreted in me similarly, I think in the same way we're talking about, maybe about sexual stuff, but also in terms of like anger.

Anger for me is a very available emotional emotion.

A very comfortable to some extent being angry and, and I know to some extent that presents differently.

But for me, I suppose what I'm saying is part of the way that I regulate myself is with.

At times I'll be angry or frustrated about something.

And that's for me, part of my regulation toolkit.

Obviously it has to be done within reasonable limits.

But that anger that I access as part of the ways in which I regulate myself is red and looks very different in a man that's, you know, bigger and stronger and whatever.

And I understand why it's read differently, but at the same time it's.

We also have to acknowledge that there is some difference in social accessibility for those things between you and between me.

The same way as if I spoke about, if I said the words that may be an insert somebody that is labeled or self labels as an incel says.

And I think when we're just not.

When we cannot listen to each other, we become, you know, like the biblical Tower of Babylon where everyone's speaking a different language and nobody's, you know, kind of listening to one another.

And so Sam, I don't know how we get there.

I do not know how we get there apart from just trying as much as possible to model doing that in, in our own kind of lives and being as curious as.

As we can be about, you know,.

Each other on, on that sort of topic of how things are perceived.

I suppose this conversation is perceived differently.

Like sometimes you will see a man talking about it.

And especially when it comes to much more difficult conversations around stuff like domestic abuse and the stats around that.

I know like, George does great work about putting stats and like putting them across in a very fair way.

But there'll always be people that say you're a man, you don't understand, like what we go through.

And when a man's talking about issues that do affect men, it's again, it can be very easily washed away and said, well, you've Got everything.

You've had the patriarchy's, ruled the world for however long.

How do you find it as a woman speaking to these experiences of men?

And do you find that you don't get that similar sort of pushback when you speak to George or James about some of the things you're talking about?

I. I've experienced very little pushback, I have to say.

I still, when I'm not working, I'm a human being in the world and I still am in rooms where I hear certain things being said and that I find now personally very, very uncomfortable, difficult to hear.

Whereas prior to doing this research, I probably.

It would have washed over me and now I have a different kind of lens on it.

But I do.

I find it, Sam, something so significant happens.

I don't know if you've had this experience yourself of having your pain hurt and just some.

I'm not saying that you then become healed by any means.

I wish it were that simple.

But something within you can start to shift or some part of you can start to calm down, to be soothed.

It's like a splinter in the soul of our societies, I think, that we cannot allow or tolerate kind of men's pain being acknowledged or being soothed without putting some sort of caveat on it around.

You've somehow done this to yourself.

Yeah.

And I think then that the pride of, you know, I always say, as a queer person, if I felt, Sam, a sniff of homophobia off you, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna feel safe to you.

You're not going to feel safe to me around.

I mean, I'm at a point now where I would put, you know, it's different because.

But what I'm saying is I think that we.

There's a real kind of contradiction around this kind of social conversation, around encouraging men to talk, but also at the same time kind of diminishing their pain.

And I just.

Sam, I'm.

I'm so tired of it.

Really, really tired of it.

Because it's so, like, it's just a pathway to hell for all of us.

And, you know, like I say, there's things that men really need to understand about the ways in which women in their lives are really suffering and the fear that they have, you know, deep, deep fear.

We need to be able to listen to one another about those things.

And, you know, we just get nowhere constructive without doing that.

I feel.

Yeah.

How do we start to hold more space and compassion for men when they do come forward?

Because we hear this Men should talk.

And a lot of time maybe there aren't the spaces or the spaces that provided aren't necessarily the best mechanism for that person.

How do we begin to hold more space and compassion for them without sort of excusing those minority of harmful behaviors?

For me, it started, it started for me personally as a personal excavation of my own gender biases.

I was carrying around that I did not realize that I was.

And I always, and I may have said this last time I was on.

But I think about, you know, when you hit your knee there, there's a bit of knee that you hit and it just immediately as a reflex kicks out.

And I described like in the sort of early part of this journey for me, I had a reflex version of that which was, yeah, but men.

So, you know, starting to think about these things and in my brain's going, yeah, but men.

Yeah, but men.

Yeah, but men.

In the same way.

And I'm, I don't think that's a woman, female thing.

It's the same as that guy was telling you about the new dad.

Yeah.

Who was in his brain going, yeah, but men.

It's a message that we've been receiving.

Exactly.

And, and, and so we're all carrying, or a lot of us are carrying some aspects of that.

And then the more conversations I had with men and the more I started to hear about the things, the pain that they're carrying around, which tastes different for the, for different men.

Different things, different issues, different challenges.

But through that deep, deep listening, that voice just fell away.

That kind of.

Yeah, but men.

You know, I just do not hear it anymore.

And now I have it completely, you know, when I meet a man now, I have a completely different reading of what I think might be going on for him or the challenges he might be facing or the pain he might be carrying.

And then, you know, I don't think that we realize how two dimensional in a way are or how narrowing of the sort of humanity of the men in our lives.

You know, we may be participating without meaning to.

In that narrowing.

Yeah.

And you know, I think that's a, that's really, really sad.

And I think that I've certainly been so deeply enriched through this work, through the connections that I've made with, with, with men and that different perspective I now have on their, on their lives.

And Sam, the amount of care that I receive and support.

I always say that every, every email message that I get from a man who's suicidal always ends with basically the same four words, which is, how can I help.

There's such a desire from.

From men in tremendous pain.

Yeah.

To be useful.

Yeah.

Even if they don't feel like they can be.

Yes.

That it's necessarily going to help them.

This desire to want to help other people, to help other men take care of their brothers, I think is something really, really amazing, profound and important, and that we need to allow that to, you know, manifest in the world.

For someone listening today to this conversation, who's maybe listened to some of the topics we touched on and the behaviors that we've discussed, and they hear themselves in some of it, they start to recognize that maybe they've been suppressing certain things.

What would you want them to take more seriously now?

Themselves.

Absolutely.

To take themselves more seriously.

And to take seriously the fact that they may well have had a really difficult life.

Sam, I cannot tell you the amount of men that I've spoken to, just as an example, who've said, you know, I had a happy childhood.

My childhood was good.

And then they start to tell me about the things that have happened to them.

And.

And I think, wow, that you had some challenges there.

Yeah.

That you just don't acknowledge it.

Yeah.

And.

And I respect that there may be, you know, that may have been a really, really useful survival strategy for you.

I always.

You say, you know, if you grew up in an environment where there's physical violence, for example, at home, learning to suppress your emotions is probably the best.

One of the best things you can do in that kind of environment where, you know, I remember a guy saying to me, you know, that he'd.

He.

There was violence at home, and if he cried, there was more violence.

So for him, learning to suppress his emotions was the best strategy available to him as a young boy.

But now he's an adult man.

He's, you know, he can make different choices for himself.

And I think taking seriously yourself and the things that may have happened to you and the pain that may have been, you may now be carrying, and understand that that pain is having an influence on your life, even if you think that it isn't.

I promise you it is.

And learning to have a relationship with it, to understand what its contents are, where it came from, and learning how you may want to manage it.

I wish, Sam, I absolutely wish that it were possible that you could just reach into a human being and take that pain away.

I. I have my own pain that at moments, has led me to very dark places.

I have people that I love that at times I'm desperately worried about.

With all the research and Knowledge and understanding that.

That I have, I. I still know that that pain can be.

When it rises up and the fog around around you descends, that pain can be so fucking scary and fucking dangerous.

Yeah.

So take that seriously.

And there's no one.

There's nothing you can do as well from.

From the outside, apart from support.

The actual action of getting out of that.

What it's going to come down to eventually is you and using the support around you to get there.

Absolutely.

But you've got to realize, and I think so often people in general, but a lot of men will put their own feelings aside to sort of serve others, whether that's a family and absolutely, they'll struggle through a lot just to provide for someone else and so rarely take themselves seriously, like you said.

And to actually be a bit selfish in order to be a better person for the people you're serving and providing for.

I think that's a really important point and a lovely point to sort of bring it in on.

So at the end of my episodes, I think I was doing it last time we spoke, I asked my guest to leave a question for the listener.

So I love to go away and have a conversation about what I've listened to.

And in order to give the listener a question to go away with, whether that's to start a conversation with a stranger, a family member, a friend, whoever that is, what question would you give them?

That's a great thing.

I'm worried now I'm gonna give the same question I gave last time because I've got the memory of a sieve and I can't remember.

But the question that comes to mind is, what man has had the most positive influence on you?

Like, what's the man?

Who's the man that shaped you in the most beautiful way?

Or some of the men.

That's why I really encourage people.

That was really, really important for me again in my work to realize that when I looked at men through a kind of telesco, I was putting on the lens of the worst men that I'd known in my life and looking at all of men through that lens.

And then actually when I thought about it and I thought, fucking hell, I exist in some ways because of certain men who.

It's not capable to find the words to express what they mean to me and the beauty and love that they've given my life.

When I put that lens on the telescope and start to look at mentality completely, something so profound happens.

So that's a question for people of all genders.

I really encourage them to go and have a conversation with others about.

It's a brilliant question.

Susie.

Thank you so much for your time today.

I've really enjoyed our conversation.

If people want to keep up to date with the work you're doing, where can they find you?

The best place is the website malesuicideresearch.com and on my Instagram melsuicresearch.

Yeah, awesome.

I'll link them both below so anyone listening can just scroll down and click on them.

Brilliant.

But from me to the listener, if you have enjoyed this episode and you found some value from it, please do share it with someone who you think would also find some value from it.

If you haven't already, please do follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching.

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And if you've done all of those, then you are my favorite.

Thank you.

And all I've got to say lastly from me, thank you for listening.

Stay curious and I will see you in the next one.