Are you a middle aged, middle class, middle England man, who is feeling a bit lost, and frankly misunderstood?
And no you don’t want to bloody talk about it! You know what, not being okay is not okay! Being okay is okay, not being okay is shit! Accepting things are shit is not where you want to be. Accepting life goes up and down is fine, but putting up with stuff is not fine.
And talking about feelings and sharing emotions can just make things worse for a lot of us. Not me, I am as my mum said a sensitive soul, who has grown to accept that, but I tell you every time I feel emotional in public I feel terrible shame. So what I am saying is that if the prospect of opening your heart to someone makes you feel terrible don’t do it, and don’t feel bad about it.
Men in our society are conditioned not to cry in public to be strong, to protect and to provide. Now we are told to be sensitive, to share emotions, to want to talk about emotions. But at the same time don’t be overly emotional, don’t show weakness and provide. So what do we do? We avoid stuff we try to suppress what we are feeling so we don’t have to do that sharing shit. We then feel worse, we get irritated, we have mood swings, we withdraw and start to lose interest in home and work. Time with our family and productivity at work suffer.
As we get older more and more challenges us, things happen that we don’t expect, failure at work, illness (ours and family members), kids growing up and getting into trouble, and so on. All this comes at us and knocks us sideways, creates those feelings of stress and anxiety. Add to that the feeling of is this it, how do I keep this up or what if it all goes wrong.
Is there any wonder that we struggle and end up being miserable old gits.
There is a way out of this though, without sharing feelings and having group hugs. It is remembering what is important to you. Not just the obvious stuff like family, work etc, but stuff that you have forgotten about, stuff you stopped paying attention to when life, like getting married and starting a family gets in the way. Think back to what you use to do maybe as a kid or a young adult, that added value to your life, stuff that made you happy, but was productive. It might be something that you did with your dad or grandad, or with friends. It might be gardening, woodwork, messing about with engines, even Stamp collecting. Can you start doing it now, can you make time for it? This brings you back to what is important to you, and gives you space to start working through what is affecting you.
This will start to help you start paying attention to yourself, whilst doing something productive. This is just the beginning of the journey.
If this strikes a chord with you message me to arrange a 20 minute call to discuss what I could offer
Connected Coaching 