Every year, Men’s Mental Health Week encourages us to think about the wellbeing of men across the UK. There are usually plenty of conversations about exercise, diet, stress management, and the importance of reaching out when life becomes overwhelming. These are all worthwhile discussions. Yet as I sat thinking about what I wanted to write this year, I found myself drawn towards a different question altogether.
Who looks after the men who spend much of their lives looking after everyone else?
It’s a question that has stayed with me for a long time. Perhaps because I encounter it so often in the therapy room.
Not always in obvious ways. Most of the men I am thinking about don’t arrive announcing that they have sacrificed themselves for others. In fact, many wouldn’t recognise themselves in that description at all. They simply describe their lives. They talk about ageing parents who need support, children who need guidance, partners who need understanding, workplaces that depend upon them, friends who turn to them during difficult times. They tell me about responsibilities, commitments, obligations and expectations. They tell me about being busy.
And they usually are busy.
But somewhere beneath all that activity, there is often a quieter story emerging. A story about what happens when somebody becomes so accustomed to being needed that they gradually lose touch with what they themselves might need.
The Curious Burden of Being Reliable
Reliability is generally regarded as a virtue. If somebody describes you as reliable, you are unlikely to take offence. Most of us would probably feel rather pleased. After all, reliable people are trusted. They are valued. They are the people others feel safe depending upon.
Yet reliability can become surprisingly complicated.
Over the years, I have become increasingly interested in what happens when a person’s sense of worth becomes closely tied to their usefulness. Somewhere along the line, many men seem to absorb the message that their value lies not so much in who they are, but in what they provide. It may be practical support, financial security, emotional stability, problem-solving, protection, leadership, or simply being the person who holds everything together when life becomes chaotic.
None of these qualities are problematic in themselves. Quite the opposite. They are often admirable and deeply important. The difficulty arises when they become the primary way a man experiences his value in the world.
Because if your self-worth is built upon being useful, what happens when you feel unable to help? What happens when you are struggling yourself? What happens when life demands something from you that cannot be fixed, solved, organised, or worked harder at?
These questions rarely arrive dramatically. More often, they creep in quietly. A sense of exhaustion that doesn’t seem proportional to your workload. An irritability that appears out of nowhere. A feeling that you’ve somehow become disconnected from parts of yourself without quite knowing when it happened.
It’s often at this point that therapy begins to feel less like a luxury and more like a necessity.
When Life Becomes One Long To-Do List
One of the less glamorous aspects of adulthood is that nobody really prepares us for how relentlessly practical it can become.
As children, adulthood often appears wonderfully liberating. You can eat what you like, go where you want, and stay up as late as you please. Then adulthood arrives and you discover it consists largely of remembering passwords, paying bills, booking appointments, responding to emails, maintaining relationships, arranging repairs, and trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen.
For many men, life gradually becomes dominated by responsibility.
There is nothing inherently wrong with responsibility. In fact, having purpose and commitment is often psychologically protective. The problem is that responsibility has a habit of expanding to fill every available space if we allow it.
I often meet men who cannot remember the last time they did something purely because they enjoyed it. Not because it was productive. Not because it was useful. Not because somebody else needed them to do it. Simply because it brought them pleasure.
At first glance, this may seem like a relatively minor issue. Yet psychologically it can be significant. Human beings are not machines designed solely for output. We require rest, creativity, connection, playfulness, curiosity, and meaning. When life becomes an endless sequence of tasks and obligations, something important can begin to wither.
Not all suffering arrives as a dramatic crisis. Sometimes it arrives as the slow erosion of joy.
The Parts of Ourselves We Leave Behind
One of the things I appreciate most about psychodynamic therapy is its willingness to look beneath the surface of everyday life. Rather than focusing exclusively on current difficulties, it invites us to become curious about how we came to be who we are.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that most people are living with patterns they did not consciously choose.
Somebody learns early in life that achievement earns praise, and spends decades pursuing success whilst wondering why satisfaction remains elusive. Another learns that conflict creates discomfort and becomes the person who keeps everyone happy whilst quietly neglecting themselves. Someone else discovers that vulnerability feels risky and develops an impressive ability to appear calm, competent and self-contained regardless of what is happening internally.
These adaptations are rarely mistakes. In fact, they often represent creative ways of navigating the environments we grew up in.
The difficulty is that strategies which were once helpful do not always continue serving us in adulthood.
A man who learned to prioritise everybody else’s needs may become highly successful at work and deeply appreciated by those around him, yet privately feel invisible. Another who learned to derive his value from achievement may spend years climbing ladders only to discover that the view from the top feels unexpectedly lonely.
Psychodynamic therapy is not about blaming the past for the present. It is about understanding the invisible threads connecting the two. Because once we begin to recognise those patterns, we have more choice about whether we continue living by them.
Why Being Surrounded by People Doesn’t Always Prevent Loneliness
One of the themes that emerges surprisingly often in my work with men is loneliness.
Not necessarily the loneliness of physical isolation. The loneliness I am referring to is more subtle than that.
I’ve sat with men who have partners, children, friendships, careers, and busy social lives, yet who describe a profound sense that nobody truly knows them. Their lives are full of interaction, but much of that interaction takes place around roles and responsibilities. They are somebody’s husband, father, son, manager, colleague or friend. They spend their days responding to the needs and expectations of others.
But who is paying attention to them?
Who notices when they are struggling?
Who asks how they are and genuinely wants the honest answer rather than the socially acceptable one?
The older I become as a therapist, the more I suspect that being understood is one of our most fundamental human needs. Not admired. Not respected. Not even liked.
Understood.
There is something profoundly relieving about discovering that another person can see aspects of your experience that you have never quite been able to articulate yourself.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons therapy can feel so powerful. It offers a rare opportunity to step outside of our usual roles and spend time exploring who we are beneath them.
A Different Conversation About Strength
During Men’s Mental Health Week, there is often discussion about encouraging men to be more vulnerable. Whilst I understand the sentiment, I’ve never been entirely convinced that vulnerability itself is the goal.
What interests me more is authenticity.
There are times when strength is absolutely required. Life occasionally demands resilience, determination, courage and perseverance. We all encounter circumstances that require us to dig deep and keep going.
However, genuine strength also involves knowing when those qualities are no longer enough on their own.
It takes strength to acknowledge confusion.
It takes strength to examine uncomfortable truths about ourselves.
It takes strength to admit that something is missing, even when everything appears fine on the surface.
Perhaps most importantly, it takes strength to recognise that being needed by others is not the same thing as being connected to yourself.
The men I admire most are not those who never struggle. They are those who remain curious about their own experience. They are willing to ask difficult questions. They are prepared to explore parts of themselves that have been neglected, ignored, or pushed aside.
That, to me, feels like a far more interesting definition of strength.
Reaching Out for Support
If any part of this reflection has resonated with you during Men’s Mental Health Week, perhaps it offers an opportunity to pause and consider how much of your life is spent looking after others, and how much attention you give to yourself.
Therapy is not only for moments of crisis. Sometimes it provides a space to think more deeply about who you are, how you came to be that way, and whether the roles you have carried for years are still serving you. Sometimes it is simply a place where you no longer need to be the strong one, the responsible one, or the person with all the answers.
At Serenity of Mind Therapy, I can offer psychodynamic therapy both online and in-person at my therapy rooms in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, and Crowborough, East Sussex.
Whether you are struggling with anxiety, relationships, low mood, self-esteem, life transitions, or simply a sense that you have lost touch with yourself somewhere along the way, therapy can provide a confidential and supportive space to explore what lies beneath the surface. If you would like to find out more, feel free to reach out and contact me here.