Men's Mental Health Series

Get the Journal Prompts: https://yourlevelfitness.com/men-email What would it take for you to feel emotionally safe with somebody? For some of us, even the phrase emotional safety can feel uncomfortable. But in this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about what it can mean to feel at ease with another person, to trust them enough to go beyond surface level, and to decide what level of access different people should have to you. I think we are all layered. Not everybody deserves access to every layer. Some people might only know the surface version of you. Some people may get a little deeper. And a very small number of people may know the parts of you that carry pain, fear, regret, vulnerability, and the experiences that shaped you. That kind of access requires trust. And trust can be incredibly difficult when you have been hurt. A lot of men have experienced situations where opening up did not feel safe. Maybe something you shared was later used against you. Maybe you were hurt by a family member, a friend, a romantic partner, or somebody else you trusted. Maybe you have experienced abuse. And I think it is important to acknowledge that men can be abused too. If something happened to you and you experienced it as abuse, your experience matters. You do not need somebody else to minimize it or decide what you were allowed to feel about it. Working through those experiences can take time. It can bring up anger, sadness, frustration, shame, fear, and a lot of other emotions we were never taught how to handle. That is why I think patience matters. Patience with yourself. Patience with people who genuinely care about you. And patience with the process of figuring out who deserves deeper access to you and who does not. You can forgive somebody and still have boundaries. You can care about somebody and still hold them accountable. You can acknowledge that people disappoint each other without excusing harmful behavior. There is a lot of nuance here. That is also why I continue encouraging productive work with a therapist or counselor who is the right fit for you. These conversations with the people closest to us matter, but simply being understood is not always enough to work through everything we have experienced. So think about this today. What does emotional safety look like for you? Who makes you feel like you can actually relax and be yourself? Who has earned deeper access to you? And where might you need stronger boundaries? These are hard conversations. But they can also help us build deeper, healthier relationships with ourselves and with the people who truly matter to us. Mental Health Support If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com. Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Get the Journal Prompts: https://yourlevelfitness.com/men-email How do you know what you are actually feeling? That question sounds simple, but for a lot of us, it really is not. In this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about why identifying what we feel matters and what can happen when we never really learn how to do it. When emotions go unnamed, they tend to sit there. They build. They get heavier. And even if we try to distract ourselves or run from them, they usually are not very far behind. Sometimes all it takes is one difficult moment for everything we have been carrying to come crashing down at once. That is why I think there is real value in learning how to name what you are feeling. For me, journaling can be as simple as writing, I am feeling this. That is it. Then, if there is something underneath that emotion, I can write that down too. Sometimes there is one dominant feeling. Sometimes there is a mix. Sometimes you may write something down and think, I would never normally say that I feel this. But that is part of the practice. You have a full range of emotions, even if you were taught growing up that some of them were weak, unnecessary, or better left alone. They are still there. And knowing what you feel is better than carrying around something you cannot identify. This also matters in your relationships. The people closest to you need to be able to identify what they feel too, because healthy communication requires some ability to understand what is happening internally and then talk about it. That does not mean every conversation has to become a deep emotional excavation. Sometimes you need to go deeper. Sometimes you do not. There is nuance to this. And you deserve to figure out what that nuance looks like for you. Practice writing it down. Practice saying it out loud. Practice communicating it with people you trust. Those repetitions matter. Over time, they can help some of that emotional heaviness start to loosen its grip. Mental Health Support If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com. Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Maybe you opened up to somebody and had your emotions used against you. Maybe you tried to explain what you were feeling and felt dismissed, misunderstood, or exposed. Eventually, it can become easier to decide not to talk about any of it. But that does not mean the feelings disappear. In this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about emotional awareness and why I think it is such an important skill for men to develop and practice. Emotional awareness starts with being able to identify what you are actually feeling. Not just angry. Not just upset. Not just happy. We are more complex than that. Sometimes there are multiple emotions happening at once. Sometimes one feeling is dominating everything while something else is sitting underneath it. Being able to recognize that can also create something incredibly valuable. A pause. That little bit of space between what you feel and how you react. How many times have you reacted to something and almost immediately thought, I wish I had handled that differently? With practice, you can start noticing what is happening internally before automatically reacting to it. And I think another important part of this conversation is emotional safety. What does it feel like to be around someone where you can actually relax? Where you can loosen up a little? Where you can talk about what you are feeling without immediately worrying about how it is going to be used against you? Not everybody deserves access to that part of you. But there should be people in your life where you can have those conversations. And those conversations start with being able to have them with yourself. That is where journaling can help. You do not have to write pages. Start with a couple of thoughts. What does emotional awareness mean to you? How comfortable are you identifying what you feel? And how easy or difficult is it for you to talk about those feelings with the people you trust? This takes practice. But the more you understand what is happening inside you, the more choice you have in how you respond and how you communicate with the people around you. Mental Health Support If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com. Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Get the Journal Prompts: https://yourlevelfitness.com/men-email The Men’s Mental Health Series is evolving. In this episode, I talk about a couple of changes I am making to the podcast and why I think they are going to make these conversations more useful and more consistent. Moving forward, I am going to be putting out solo episodes Monday through Friday, in addition to the interviews and conversations that are already part of this podcast. The interviews will continue to focus on the real experiences men have with emotions, vulnerability, relationships, and the ways we were taught, or not taught, to deal with all of this growing up. Those conversations matter because most of us were never really given a roadmap. We are figuring this stuff out as we go. The solo episodes are going to give us another way to work through specific topics around emotional awareness, communication, relationships, and the softer skills that impact how we move through life. Most of these episodes will be short. The goal is not to give you another long list of things to do. It is to give you something to think about. Something you can apply to your own life. Something that might help you better understand yourself, your relationships, and the people around you. That is also why I continue coming back to journaling. You do not need to write pages. Sometimes it can simply be a thought, a short list, or a couple of sentences that help you see what is actually going on internally. The journal prompts are designed to help you develop and strengthen emotional awareness by slowing things down and giving you a chance to figure out how all of this applies to you. The podcast can start the conversation. The journaling can help you continue it with yourself. And the interviews can remind you that other men, from all different backgrounds and stages of life, are trying to figure this out too. None of this replaces therapy or counseling. I think having a productive working relationship with a therapist or counselor can be incredibly valuable, especially when you find someone you trust enough to help you recognize blind spots, challenge you in a constructive way, and give you things to work on between sessions. This podcast is here to keep the conversation going. Because the more honestly we talk about this stuff, the more opportunities we have to understand ourselves and show up differently in the areas of life that matter to us. Mental Health Support If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com. Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Men are often comfortable fixing things we can see. We can clean up a mess, repair something that is broken, finish a project, and stand back afterward knowing exactly what we accomplished. Emotional work is different. In this episode of The Men's Mental Health Series, my buddy Nick joins me for a conversation that starts with a simple analogy. While doing a dirty, uncomfortable job at work that he had been putting off, Nick realized how similar it felt to some of the emotional work we avoid. We may know something needs our attention, but when we cannot see the problem or measure the progress in front of us, figuring out where to begin can be much harder. From there, we get into what happens when men who are used to being the person everyone else relies on suddenly do not know how to fix what is happening inside themselves. We talk about the feeling of failure that can come with needing help, how difficult it can be to find the right words for an emotion, and why anger can sometimes become the easiest outward expression for feelings like fear, sadness, frustration, grief, anxiety, or overwhelm. Nick shares how conversations with his wife, friends, and other men have helped him better understand what he is feeling. We also talk about how emotional conversations between men do not have to completely change the dynamic of a friendship. Sometimes it is ten minutes of openness in the middle of an entire weekend of joking around, camping, and being yourself. That small conversation can still matter. One of the biggest ideas we come back to is that opening up did not leave Nick feeling like less of a man. The fear that it might happen was often stronger than what actually happened once the conversation began. We also discuss the importance of emotional safety, having people around you who can listen while you work through something without expecting you to explain it perfectly, and recognizing when a relationship may not provide that kind of space. Finally, Nick shares what he has seen within the Australian construction industry, where mental health initiatives and recognizable work shirts can signal that someone is willing to have a conversation. It is a small visual cue, but it can help create an opening for conversations that many men still struggle to start. None of us completely figure this out. We keep learning the language. We keep practicing the conversations. We keep getting a little more comfortable sitting with emotions that we may have spent most of our lives avoiding. And sometimes simply knowing that another guy is willing to listen is where it starts. Mental Health Support If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis in the United States, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is an immediate life-threatening emergency, call 911. In Australia, Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at 13 11 14. If there is an immediate emergency, call 000. If you are elsewhere, contact your local emergency services or a crisis support service in your country.