November. The time of year that many call No-Shave November. I’ve always used it as an excuse to show my beard growing skills (and I do grow a killer beard). However, this year there is something else I have chosen to be part of. That is the mustache movement of Movember. Grow a Mo (a mustache) and raise awareness for Men’s health. I never had any interest in this because I never really thought I could pull off a mustache (I’m just not hipster enough). However, the purpose behind the MOvement has driven me to participate. This is why I Movember.

   This facial hair style is on a mission to bring awareness to the issues of prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health. I know men are typically too prideful go to the doctor, and because of that, their stories can end in tragedy due to realizing they’re sick much too late to treat the illness completely. I believe these situations are terrible and shouldn’t be overlooked. Mental health though, is near and dear to my heart, and my purpose is to bring focus to it. I know mental health tends to be a buzzword right now, and rightly so. It’s no secret that society longs for true connection and vulnerability in a world so constantly connected it leaves us emotionally disconnected. 

  See, all people (not just men) tend to hide their emotions and struggles. They don’t just hold it together in public for all to see, they hold things together for themselves. Out of sight, out of mind is how we tend to deal with difficulty and shortcomings. Aren’t all of our personalities developed by how we learn to cope with guilt, shame, sadness, tragedy, anger, and all the difficult emotions of life? The problem with men is they have this ideology that they cannot show much, if any emotion. They aren’t allowed to struggle. They aren’t allowed to show weakness. They tend to believe that what’s expected of them is to be strong for their families; to be strong for their spouse, their children, their friends, and relatives. They tend to believe that their “strength” is what holds everything together. That brings us to expectation. The real silent killer. Expectation kills dreams, it kills relationships, it rips apart families, it murders friendships, and extinguishes any hope for a better future. We expect certain results from our behavior or actions. We expect to get a certain raise. We expect to come home from a long day and have our spouse nurture us and love us in our favorite ways. We expect a close friend to be there for us in a time of need. All of this typically happens without any clear communication of our expectations or any regard to how the other person may have felt or what they had going on. Your spouse may have also had a difficult day or wasn’t feeling well. Your friend may have had some internal struggles going on that you didn’t know about, keeping them from being available for you. We narrate the story of our own lives, typically without any concern for others and the way they may feel internally. All we know is how we feel internally. At that point is where these expectations cause pain and resentment in all of our relationships.

  My life didn’t quite turn out how I expected, that’s for sure. (Does life ever really end up the way we planned or expected?) My expectations left me broken, hurting, and addicted. Growing up we all have something(bad) happen to us. Childhood is always awkward and kids with their insults can be brutal. Whether it’s an embarrassing moment at school that scars us for life and destroys our confidence, or maybe we have a family member pass or leave us causing us to need to grow up too soon. Maybe we lived in a broken home with struggles of it’s own, or we have an over-critical parent that expects too much from us (there’s that expectation again) causing us to fear doing anything because we will mess it up for sure. All of this can cause us deep pain and drive our self-esteem into the ground. These things cause us to have this critical need to be liked and accepted. To feel like we belong. We learn what it takes to get people to like us, and we perform in front of them. We become this chameleon or shape-shifter so to speak in order to fit in with whatever group of people we are around. 

  Think you never wanted SO MUCH to be liked? Imagine yourself on a first date. You’ve talked some hottie into going on a date with you, and most people will say that you present the best version of yourself on a date. LIES. You present a version of yourself that you think they will like. That’s what we want. To be liked. Not to be the best version of ourselves. Don’t believe me? Give it 10 minutes into the date and you’re laughing at jokes that you don’t think are funny and you’re lying about things you’d like to do or try to show common interest. Yeah, we’ve all been guilty of performing or putting on a façade in order to be liked at some point. Even though this may present itself as a solution to our loneliness, our low self-esteem, and perhaps our overcritical inner-self causing us to lack any confidence, it will leave us more lonely than before without true relationships. This continues to deepen our pain as we age, but we learn to cope by avoiding it. If we can wear a mask around others, why can’t we wear a mask around ourselves, building walls no matter the cost to guard our emotions. After all, even the friendliest golden retriever can turn vicious when injured in order to protect its wounds. We do, however, hide these things from ourselves. If we don’t acknowledge it, we don’t have to deal with it. Sometimes it’s not that easy though. We need to distract ourselves instead of dealing with it. 

   Sigmund Freud alluded to the idea that a person’s motivation is for pleasure and that which gives one pleasure. However, Viktor Frankl believed that humans are motivated by something called a “will to meaning”. He argued that the motivation for life is to find that meaning. Viktor Frankl said, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” This lack of meaning paired with large amounts of pain and loneliness caused me to seek out distraction. You know how we typically handle pain, stress, and financial burdens? We distract ourselves. We distract ourselves with entertainment (tv shows, movies, going out and doing other things), with partying, with work, with whatever we can. If we don’t think about it, we don’t have to deal with it, right? The stress, the loneliness, the pain, whatever it is, is still there. Distraction never works when the pain is still there. Our financial burdens remain, but distraction gives us a momentary break. These distractions often put us on a path of destruction, developing self-destructive habits and addictions, like I did with pain pills and alcohol.

  Many of us have learned to distract ourselves with not so destructive habits and we “manage” our pain in less openly destructive ways. Ignored wounds though, don't just disappear. If your arm is broken, it may heal in some way if you just let it be, but it will ALWAYS cause problems. With the pains of our past this can be in the form of living a selfish life, continuous relationship issues, codependent relationships, unhealthy obsessions with work and other things, and yes, it can even cause us to become addicted if we need to be distracted from ourselves and issues badly enough. Myself, I had a deep need to quiet the voice of criticism inside my head, always killing my confidence to try anything and telling me I’m not good enough. I needed to be distracted from that voice. I needed a way to escape the harshness of the internal criticism that many of us face, but never talk about. This all can leave us with a false perception of ourselves. It's when we become honest and vulnerable with ourselves, and when we realize we can't do this on our own that we can actually make true progress. That's the difficult part, but you don’t have to go through this alone. It hurts and its scary to be vulnerable and be honest with your doubts, your fears, and your brokenness. Being honest with yourself and talking to someone about your issues doesn't mean they will have the answers, but they can be there and listen. Two of the most powerful words in the English language are “me too”. It helps to know that you really aren't alone. 1 in 10 men experience depression and anxiety, 3.5x more men die by suicide than women, 6 out of 10 experience at least one trauma in their lives, men are 2x more likely to binge drink than women, and 49% of men feel more depressed than they admit to people (according to the NCHS). Someone else really does know what it's like to experience the stress, the anxiety, the fear, and the doubt that you're feeling. So if you see me out ‘stache-ing around, let’s have a conversation about it. We need it.