Mind If We Talk?: How to Be a Better Man

Welcome to Episode 3 of Mind If We Talk?

Mind If We Talk? is an original podcast created by BetterHelp and Acast Creative Studios. Hosted by licensed therapist Haesue Jo, this 8-episode series takes a grounded, therapeutic approach to some of life’s most relatable mental health challenges. Each episode features candid, two-part conversations exploring topics like imposter syndrome, grief, procrastination, and setting boundaries. With warmth, clarity, and professional insight, Mind If We Talk? creates space for honest reflection and emotional growth. Whether you're deep into your self-growth journey or just starting out, this show offers comfort, connection, and practical tools for healing.

Episode 3: How to be a Better Man

With conversations about a “masculinity crisis” and “manosphere” growing nationwide, what’s actually going on?  

On this episode, host and therapist Haesue Jo talks with author, podcast host, and mental health expert John Delony. John is used to giving advice to callers on-air, but today, he’s swapping roles. From marriage and fatherhood to self-worth, John is redefining the role of masculinity in his life. He talks with Haesue about what it means to be a better man for his family, his audience, and himself.

Then, Haesue is joined by David Yadush, Principal Clinical Operations Manager at BetterHelp. They break down where harmful ideas about masculinity come from and offer practical advice for how to form a healthier relationship with the topic, even if you don’t know where to start. Whether you’re a man looking to feel better, a parent raising boys, or someone who wants to better understand the men in your life — this episode can help you find your way.

JOHN DELONY:

The big dirty secret I had was I had this show that had taken off underneath all of us. No one expected this. And I'm telling people about their marriage. I'm telling people about their mental and emotional health. I'm telling 'em about their kids. And my four and five and 6-year-old daughter would not hug me and I could pick her up and say, you will hug your dad. Right? And I tried to solve that, and it was about a year and a half of me just avoiding confrontation with my daughter.

HAESUE:

Welcome back to mind if we talk where you get to be a fly on the wall for many therapy sessions and learn some mental health tips in the process. I'm your host, Haesue Jo. I'm a licensed therapist with over 10 years of experience providing individual and family therapy. This week's question: how can I be a better man? June is Men's Mental Health Month. It's a time when men and boys are encouraged to pay attention to their physical and mental wellbeing. Of course, this awareness is important year round, but the conversation on men's mental health feels even more necessary to have in today's climate as talk of a masculinity crisis and manosphere grows.

In the US, an estimated 6 million men live with depression each year. Studies also show that male loneliness is increasing. In the past three decades, the percentage of men who say they have close friends has been slashed in half.

And 15% of men say they have no close friendships at all. Yet, seeking help through therapy and even simply being vulnerable is the very opposite of what society has traditionally encouraged men to do until more recent times. Today we're going to talk about these challenges and opportunities to find support. To do that, we're gonna first chat with John Delony, an author, podcast host, and mental health expert. He draws on his background in crisis response counseling and higher education management to champion wellness through bestselling books like Building a Non-Anxious Life and podcasts like The Dr. John Delony show and The Ramsey Show. John has dedicated his platform to helping others on their healing journey, but he's gone through a journey of his own, specifically confronting his masculinity. Today he opens up about the masculine stereotypes he grew up believing and the skills he's developing now to become a better man for himself and others. It's not an easy process, but this conversation with John is proof that it's never too late to start. After we talk with John, I'll chat about takeaways and practical advice with David Yadush, Principal Clinical Operations Manager at BetterHelp. Let's get talking.

So John, today we are here to talk about you in the context of some of the things that you have been very public about, speaking about masculinity, relationships growing up, all of the good stuff. There's a growing conversation around this idea of a masculinity crisis. When you hear that phrase masculinity crisis, what comes up for you?

JOHN DELONY:

Yeah, I mean, I can't think of a better way to frame it. I mean, this is my lived experience, but also I just have a ringside seat to the guys I grew up with and the guys I went to college with and the guys that call into my show. I was raised by a homicide detective and a swat hostage negotiator from Texas, right? So, I grew up with this picture of masculinity. And at the same time, what I would consider now in retrospect, a pretty forward thinking dad, but he would open up the toolkit and there just was only a couple of tools in there. And he was raised by a World War II vet who was raised by a guy who died when he was 10, right? And so there's just, um, a generation of men looking to fill a gap and they keep looking in their toolkit and there's just no tools in there.

HAESUE:

Generational. It's making me think of epigenetics, talking about how anxiety, trauma, the things that aren't external stimuli, it's not supposed to be changing our DNA, but we actually pass this stuff down to our kids for generations to come. So what I'm hearing from you, it's not something that's unique and just popped up in the past 10 years.

JOHN DELONY:

But I think also, I was a high school teacher for a couple years. I taught elementary school for a year, and then I've been in the university classroom ever since before I left all that to do this. And my experience was at the tail end of like, I was just becoming pathologized as I left middle school and high school. I was just a part of a generation where if they took recess out and they took movement out and they took shop out and they took the arts out and we're supposed to just sit there and repeat and repeat and repeat. And if you couldn't do that in that system, your parents were told there's something wrong with your child's brain, with their body. And so you have this generation of little boys that turns into a young man that turns into a grown man that's been told since day one: there's something wrong with you. And men just have checked out like, I don't know what to do next and I don't want to keep hurting anybody, so I'm just gonna sit here. And then it's a, if you have any sort of feeling, it's 'cause you're weak and you're a coward. And men don't feel their feelings, they just go hammer it. Or the other narrative has been that the only thing that matters is how you feel. And if you feel like people don't like you, then check out, then just quit it. It's easy to feel frozen. I don't want to hurt anybody and I want to do what's best and I don't have a path forward.

HAESUE:

You were a boy at one point, I imagine. So what was your relationship with masculinity like as a child?

JOHN DELONY:

I mean, I consider myself pretty fortunate that I had a dad who, like I said, was a hostage negotiator. So when everyone was running out of the building, my dad was walking into it. And so there was something about that message that was really powerful. Additionally, and he's just now learned about this over the last couple years, but he had a little bitty closet and it backed up to my bedroom and there was a thin piece of sheet rock between the two. And people from all over our community would call him and say, "hey, my marriage just blew up. My kid's going to jail. My kid's going to the hospital. I don't know what to do." And so I had a ringside seat of listening to a man who was trained in how to listen and how to be still. And so I got another ringside seat to a different picture of what masculinity could look like, which is sometimes helping, running into a burning building, but often helping is just being quiet and listening and being present. So I'm pretty fortunate in that. But again, I grew up in Texas and I grew up, you know, I played like the Friday night lights. I played Texas high school football and all those tropes are real. And, and all that stuff was real. And so, yeah, I had a ringside seat to it. But I think what was most important for me was being in a home where it was a both and it was not an either or.

HAESUE:

So it's a pretty unique upbringing.

JOHN DELONY:

It was very unique, yeah. And when I started my show, I was so desperate to be looked at as smart, right? I wanted to be, my older sister was a savant. My little brother missed like two questions on the ACT and I was like the jock. And I have two PhDs because I have really low self-esteem, not 'cause I'm super smart. I just wanted to be like, "Hey, do you like me now? Do you love me now?"

HAESUE:

“And I'm a doctor!”

JOHN DELONY:

"Oh, that wasn't good enough? I'll get another one.” How about that? Right? but I wanted so badly to be smart, and it was about six months in that we sat down with our team who runs the analytics and they're like, "Hey, nobody really cares what you have to say." Peeling apart the diagnostic criteria for ADHD.

They've never seen a big loud tattooed man compassionately talk to a woman who just blew up her marriage or talk to a dad whose kid's dying of cancer. They've never seen that. And I realized, oh, that's the value of giving people a picture of what it looks like to do something in the world, right? But also how to do it with compassion and kindness and gentleness. And that's a skillset. It's just a skillset. We don't have it, we don't have that tool in our toolkit. And so maybe that's the next frontier of masculinity is learning those skills.

HAESUE:

I'm hearing about your endeavor through the content you've created, and now you're not the only person doing this kind of stuff. I feel like you've been part of something that started a different kind of content space. So I can see even what you're doing, what you're sharing, contributing to people's new formed core beliefs about what masculinity is and based on what you've shared about your childhood and how you had somewhat of a unique upbringing there. If you can recall, what were some of the core beliefs you developed as a child and now into manhood about masculinity?

JOHN DELONY:

Your only value is in your answer, or your quote unquote ability to fix a thing. That your only value is in a paycheck. And like the answer to the question, what are you worth is answered with a number, which I think is insanity. But that was just the reality. That not being, and I don't know how to say this without sounding goofy. Um, I spent years in an MMA gym, right? Like learning how to take care of myself. And so I think there's, I think that's important. I I think walking down the street, I want my family to know if things go sideways, I'll stand between you and what that thing is. But also that doesn't happen very often. And so there is a utility in that. And I remember one of the most, like I, one of the most transcendent moments of my life was sitting down with my daughter.

JOHN DELONY:

She was probably six or seven at the time. And I remember sitting on her bed, we had just been butting heads and butting heads and butting heads. And it felt like emotionally she felt emotions like they were on fire. And my wife is like, we joke, she's the walking Xanax in our home. She's very likable, she just is calm and can just do the next right thing. And I'm pretty histrionic and can get really dramatic. And um, but I remember sitting down with my daughter after going through the, "I'm, I'm bigger than you, you have to do what I say." Oh man. I just remember sitting down with her and saying, "Hey, God gave you and me different kinds of heads. He put a different brain in us. And what does that mean? That means we feel things really big. And also that means that we are especially skilled at sitting with people who have had a bad day.

And so some of our things in our life are gonna be hard. We're gonna feel 'em really big and we're gonna have to know to do the next right thing. And also while other people feel things are big, we're gonna know what that feels like and we can enter into that space with 'em." And I remember watching that 6-year-old little girl, her shoulders dropped and it was like she, yes, she needs me to be big and strong. Of course I'm the most giant person she knows. She's a little bitty 6-year-old girl. But she also needed me to know, "Hey, you're not crazy and your dad actually has those same feelings too, and here's what this might look like lived out." Right? And so for me, it's been unwinding some of those things and I didn't have a toolkit for that. So I went and sat with a therapist and said," Hey, hey, I've got a little girl who feels this and I don't have the tools for it.

Can you help me? Because of my tools, I'm out. I'm out of, I'm out of skills, right?" And when I, when I didn't look at it as a moral failure or a character failure or the world needs to bend to my arc, but man, I just don't have skills.

Like I'm, I'm an NBA player and I don't know how to shoot free throws. Great, I'm gonna practice free throws. It's not like a character issue. It's just a thing you gotta practice now. Then taking that shame away from me and taking away that, I mean, there's something wrong with me instead of I got some skills I gotta learn, man, that man that's just been freeing.

HAESUE:

You know, when you approach a therapist or even when you're coming up against something that you're, you're kind of recognizing that you have a toolbox, but it doesn't include the things that you might need at this point or might be best for this situation. I'd love to hear about what tools you had. What are the tools that men of today kind default do get, and then the tools that you've since been able to add through professional support or just lived experience. What are those tools like? How have they changed? Are they different?

JOHN DELONY:

Yeah, so the, the, the tools I had were to get as big and strong as you can and then you can bend the, the arc of the world to your favor. Be loud, be loud and big, and um, be big in your proclamations. Be big in your declarations. Don't ever say you're sorry. Just be big. I'm six foot two, right? If you're, if you're five foot eight, be big in your bank account. Be big in your fashion, in your truck, right? I'm from Texas for god's sake jack it up as high as you can get as big tires as you can. Um, but everything was about being big and then it just became a ruler contest, right? And I mean this, this is as vulnerable as I can get there. The big dirty secret I had was I had this show that had taken off underneath all of us.

No one expected this. And I'm telling people about their marriage. I'm telling people about their mental and emotional health. I'm telling 'em about their kids. And my four and five and 6-year-old daughter would not hug me. She wouldn't, and I'm a big, I could pick her up and say, "you will hug your dad," right, and I tried to solve that and it was kind of a game, but it was kind of not a game, right? It was just an awkward exchange. And I mean, I can get choked up thinking about this. I remember my wife saying, Hey, you know, you're just teaching her that when her body says no, that somebody that's bigger than her can just have their way. And I remember setting her down and being like, no. And I got down an eye level and I was like, "no one can ever, you know, take away your autonomy."

But I realized, okay, so my next move is, this is another masculine trait. If you can't bend the world to your, you will just leave because you can. Right? And you look at the fatherless homes across the country, guys can just leave and just back out. And it was about a year and a half of me just avoiding confrontation with my daughter, which is the exact opposite thing, right?

I would've run into a burning building, but I wouldn't take on, I wouldn't approach a 6-year-old, right? I knew my house became a failure factory. I can't work here good. What I'm doing doesn't work here.

So I'm gonna go to the office 'cause I can help my family that way by putting money in the account. And finally one day my wife came through and she said, "Hey, I had a thought," and I was always paddling on about neuroscience and blah, blah blah.

And she said, "has it ever occurred to you that maybe our daughter, her little body has perceived you as not safe?" And of course I got mad and I said, "I don't yell. I'm a quiet guy. I provide for this family. I don't swear. I mean, I don't hit anybody." And my wife said, "no, no, no, you're an amazing dad, but you have a nuclear reactor in the middle of your chest and we can all feel it. We all know." And I got frustrated. And so I went, finally, I went and called a therapist here in Nashville and I sat down and said, evidently. And it was about six months later that I started talking about stuff that happened to me when I was a kid that I had never told anyone, right? And so tools that I now have in my toolkit is, um, as the great David Kessler says, grief demands a witness.

 Uh, men walking around not talking about the things they experienced as a kid doesn't help anybody. You can talk about it and still go do the next right thing. Um, being angry all the time doesn't solve anything. So how do I sit in proximity to the most precious people in the world to me and just be a safe presence? My wife was Dr. Delony before me. How do I not, when she comes in and says, "dude, I had this professor say this," and I start going, "you should have told them that", just sitting there and going, "dude, that's the worst. I'm sorry." And trusting if she needs me to solve something, she'll ask like, what would you do? Right? And resting in, my wife didn't marry all my answers. She married me. And that meant I had to look in the mirror and say, why does she like you so much more than you, like you?

And so that's just digging into some of those tools now, and I don't get it right all the time, but maybe the coolest thing that's happened in, I don't know, the last decade as my wife popped in the house a month or two ago and she just said, "Hey, at eight o'clock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine or The Office reruns you pick, I just need to borrow your nervous system." And her part was very helpful as she gave me a job. That was her telling me, "you have value to me. I need you and I don't need you to hit anybody and I don't need your answers, I need to borrow your nervous system." And she curled up next to me and we watched, I don't know, Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And we laughed at the same jokes we've watched 500 times. And then it was over. She literally popped up and said, "ah, that's what I needed." And she headed off and it was, that was me thinking, "Oh dude, I'm getting it now. I'm getting it now."

The greatest gift I can give my family is, uh, I can give them peace. And those are some things I'm trying to put in my toolkit now.

HAESUE:

Giving them peace. It's making me think. You've talked quite a bit about parenthood, but I still wanna ask you and hear about it from you. Do you feel like being a father has challenged your outlook on masculinity, changed it, evolved it in some kind of way?

 JOHN DELONY:

Yeah, it's the difference between playing little league with your buddies and then going into the major leagues. Like these games matter and these interactions are important. I'm taking somebody's biology that they just have and I'm helping regulate a nervous system into the 21st century. Like, that's, that's an important thing. And I'm teaching them and their minds are developing underneath it. Like what love feels like, not what love looks like, what it feels like, what safe feels like. And so in the off time, I am learning. When somebody cuts me off in traffic, that's practice. I'm exhaling. Instead of yelling and getting all fired up and giving myself a stroke, yelling at some guy, they can't even can't even hear me in the car ahead of me.

HAESUE:

But can he know how to drive?

JOHN DELONY:

He could, but he's not. But my exchange with him isn't gonna help. Yeah. Um, it's realizing that

when I yell, it sends everyone around me into fight or flight. So there's no learning, there's no solving, there's just me bulldozing my way through a situation like yelling doesn't solve any of those problems. And so my kids don't need me to scream and yell at them and force them to do X, Y and Z. That's not helpful. What's helpful is them watching me navigate a really tough world with strength when necessary, but also with grace and kindness and compassion so that they learn how to navigate that world.

So yeah, I, I I don't know, I think everything in my life has shifted to becoming a dad because you get underneath the squat rack, you actually take on what I think is the most important thing a man can take on, a person heading into masculinity can take on. And that is an increasing amount of responsibility. That's the greatest gift you can give yourself.

HAESUE:

And there's a lot of that as a father. You mentioned your daughter a couple times, your son not as much, which is interesting. It could be because she's younger and there's just some differences that you're navigating as you mentioned, at least I'm hearing that a little bit. But would you say that there are different things you're trying to model for your son versus your daughter? When it comes to masculinity?

JOHN DELONY:

The reality is, I want to raise a young man who knows how to take care of himself and the other people in his world, right? His neighbors, his friends, his family, his connection, the people that he loves, et cetera. There's a reality to that. And I want him to recognize that sometimes taking care involves putting your physical body in harm and danger's way. And most of the time taking care of other people is seeing a waiter or a waitress running a section in the restaurant and nobody else showed up. And so your food's coming out 45 minutes late and noticing that person, calling them over to the table and saying, "I just want you to know how hard I see you working. I appreciate you guys taking your time." And then showing my son and my daughter of course, but my son, he's a little bit older, "Hey, I want you to see what this bill is. We're gonna tip this waitress, three x the bill. We're gonna absolutely let her not just talk to her, we're gonna let her see in action." That also means to have that money that I'm gonna drive an older car and we're, 'cause we're gonna live with margin and we're gonna talk about finances. So I think some of the difference you're hearing, yes, there just is, this is not what I learned in grad school. There's just a difference with my son and my daughter. There just is, and I think even bigger than that, every kid is different. And your job is to take the human that shows up on your doorstep and help them be the best version of that person you possibly can. I just know I want someone to, if danger strikes, my daughter's small, I want someone to get between her and that danger. And I want to raise a kid that can do that. And also I want to raise a young man who can be thoughtful and quiet and listen and know how to show up and be the next right thing for somebody. And there is some gendering to that. And maybe that's the Texan or the Tennesseean coming out of me, I think a lot of men are taught to run their mouths a lot. And what I'm trying to teach my kids is dude, behavior's a language. The world doesn't need another voice. In fact, AI's coming on strong, it's not gonna need your voice at all. It's gonna need to watch you do the next right thing. And so as a parent, it's easy for me to yell at them to get off social media while I'm sitting there scrolling my phone. What they need to see me doing is grabbing a soccer ball and running outside and saying, "guys, let's go play soccer." And that's hard. That's hard.

HAESUE:

Yeah. I'm hearing a lot of, uh, this beginner's mind, this openness to continuing to work on things. What kind of relationship with masculinity are you striving for today? How's it going?

JOHN DELONY:

I think it's going well. It's, but it's, uh, it's, it's hard. It's just a matter of choosing your heart. I can try to bully and push the world and I can be angry all day and I can have coronary heart disease and aneurysms because I'm angry all the time and I'm just mad. I'm just mad. And I can repeat the old tropes about kids ruining everything. That's hard. That's a hard life. Or I can do the other hard thing, which is try new skills, try to listen before I talk, try to exhale before I like to listen and ask questions before I pop off. Or when I make a generalization of somebody and a whole group of people, before I do that, I need to at least have the name of one of those people that I've had a conversation with, that I've had coffee with. And so it's just practicing new things. And is that hard and exhausting? God? Yes. It's really tough. Um, do I say I'm sorry and I miss the mark on this one a lot every single day of my life. And you get up and maybe the most masculine thing to do is to get back up and go again. And I think hope is, I think hope is an action. And I think hope is a thing that you do. I don't think it's a blissful, wishful state of frolicking around. I think it's a thing that you get up every day and say, I'm gonna choose in the face of all of this, I'm gonna choose hope.

HAESUE:

I've heard love described in a very similar way. Love is an action, love is a verb, something that we choose to do and we actively go out and do that for ourselves, for other people. John, thank you so much for your wisdom sharing your insights, your experiences. Thank you so much for coming to speak with me.

JOHN DELONY:

Well, I appreciate your, um, hospitality and for letting me, uh, run my mouth a little bit here.

HAESUE:

Please keep running in your mindful healthy masculine way.

JOHN DELONY:

There you go. There you go.

HAESUE:

So much came up in that conversation with John. His earliest ideas of masculinity were shaped by generational experiences and cultural expectations. Although in some ways he grew up with a more progressive model of masculinity, he still bought into harmful stereotypes about what it means to be a man, being loud and unapologetic, bottling up emotions, avoiding vulnerability. Through therapy and honest conversations with loved ones, he's been able to confront those tropes. Now he's working to model a better type of masculinity for his son. One that prioritizes listening and compassion. John is deep within his journey to redefine masculinity, but as he said, if you open up your toolkit and find that it's empty, it can be hard to find a path forward. So let's explore this a little more with another therapist. Joining me next is David Yadush, Principal Clinical Operations Manager at BetterHelp. As a licensed professional counselor, David has years of experience empowering clients with tools to overcome life's challenges and embrace their full potential. We revisited key moments from the conversation with John and pulled out some advice and takeaways that everyone can learn from not just men. Let's dive in.

HAESUE:

Hi David. It's nice to see you.

DAVID YADUSH:

It's great to see you. Thanks for having me here.

HAESUE:

So now I wanna talk about this so-called masculinity crisis. He kind of described this as having a sense of aimlessness, a lack of purpose, and it seems to be a growing issue among men. What advice would you give to men struggling with feeling this way?

DAVID YADUSH:

The first thing I'd advise is, what is it that you are connected to right now? Right? Is all of your energy going into work? Is all of your energy going into being a provider? And once you can recognize where all that energy is going, what can you spare to do something different? What can you spare to, you know, invest in your interests, in your family, in your loved ones? The feeling of aimlessness, of not having direction or not feeling connected often comes from not being able to engage in the things that you want to or that you care about. And as men, you know, often we're taught that what you want and what you care about isn't as important as what you have to do as the expectation of providing or working hard or all of those pieces. And I would say that if you can't invest in the things that make you happy, the things that you enjoy, your interests, your hobbies, then how are you going to be as productive and good at the other pieces? Right? Yeah.

HAESUE:

Not just with men, anybody, any person that's feeling this aimlessness, my hope is for everybody is that you find purpose. This is something that I talked about earlier with John that I wanted to speak a little bit further with you about. And that's this idea that young men or boys, I should say, don't have enough models of different types of masculinity. So what steps do you think we can take to broaden boys and young men's perceptions of masculinity early on?

DAVID YADUSH:

I think the first step we can take is to be a role model, like model, openness, model, vulnerability model, the different ways to be a man that it doesn't have to just be this one thing. The other piece too is giving that positive reinforcement and encouragement when you're seeing young boys do something that is courageous, that is vulnerable, that is open.

A lot of times we give tons of praise to young boys when they're showing strength if they fall and get hurt, but can get back up and say, you know, I'm okay. While that could be great, absolutely, it's also important to say, "Hey, you can talk about how that hurt. Or you can talk about how you're upset about something that happened at school or at home." And modeling that is just as important, if not more important sometimes.

HAESUE:

That's an interesting point that you're bringing up. You kinda mentioned this when we talk about masculinity traits like being strong and assertive or often seen as mutually exclusive or in direct conflict with being vulnerable. In my conversation with John, he brought up this interaction that he had had with his daughter, and he does have a son too for some context here. But he mentioned that with his daughter, they were in some kind of disagreement. They were butting heads at first. And he noted in the conversation with me in reflection that he tried to assert himself as the superior, superior, as a parent, as a father, as a man. And then, you know, he noted that he took a step back. He told his daughter that he also has really big feelings just like her. And that seems to have diffused the situation. And I wanted to break down that interaction with you a bit. What do you think is behind the tendency of trying to dominate intense situations like an argument? What is the value in your perspective of vulnerability, especially in a situation like John described having with his daughter?

DAVID YADUSH:

Yeah, I mean, men are taught at a young age that like being dominant, being assertive is manly, right? And that, that's the important thing. That's what we need to do. So it makes sense that if that's what you're taught, that that's gonna be your natural instinct. When you go into a situation where emotions are high and you know, conversations get heated regardless of whether it's with your child or a friend or a loved one. And it's so powerful that he was able to share that he could stop himself in that moment, take a step back and recognize that because that is vulnerability, right? Like vulnerability doesn't mean you have to, you know, be crying in front of people. Vulnerability can be just recognizing how you feel. And we've created such a system that's not okay for some reason. And that's just ludicrous. You know, vulnerability is strength. And I tell my clients this all the time. I try to present this myself because when you can be vulnerable, when you can express what's going on underneath, that expands your emotional intelligence, that expands what you're capable of feeling and sharing. So if I can say, you know, I'm having these big feelings like John was saying and explaining that to your child or someone you care about, then you can also talk about joy and love and all of those other emotions that get blocked if we try to block these so-called bad emotions of anger and fear. And doing so also gives license for the people that we're being vulnerable with to also be vulnerable, to also understand and experience the breadth of human emotion.

HAESUE:

John had shared that some of his earliest core beliefs about masculinity were that a man's value depends on their productivity or their paycheck. This trope of the pressure that men have to provide, it seems like he grew up with a notion that self-worth amounted to how much money you make. I think that actually makes a lot of sense for a lot of people to believe that. What do you think is a long-term effect of these types of beliefs on men and society at large?

DAVID YADUSH:

I think these beliefs on men, and like you said, you know, society in general is this need for work to be someone's entire personality, right? People get stuck investing in work being 90% of their time, and this causes burnout. This makes people's work life balance completely unhealthy. And what we see from this is if all of the pressure of being the sole provider, of making money, of being the breadwinner of all of these things we kind of taught mean you're a strong worker and you're a good person. If you're stuck in that cycle of fulfilling that, then what part of life are you missing? What can't you connect to? What can't you do that you want to do? And with that, people get stuck in not exploring their passions or their interests because they have to work harder. They have to work two jobs, they have to work overtime, they have to work overtime, even if they're not paid for it, because that's what good employees do, right? Men stand up and do the work and get it done, even if it hurts or they're upset or they've got other things going on.

HAESUE:

This question is making me think of some of the clients that I work with. And in the past couple years I've seen an increase in the number of male clients coming to therapy, at least with me. And there is a theme, especially with adult men who have been in long-term significant relationships, married, have kids. I was actually like mentally scanning my clients right now trying to think of a male client where this hasn't come up. But this idea of being a provider like this is something that a couple of my clients have actually said in the past couple of months that there's this big pressure to always be safe. As in "if my wife loses our job, we're gonna be fine because I'm there, but if I lose my job, things are going to some bad place." You know? And then we look at the reasons for people getting divorced in the US and one of the top reasons is not somebody losing their job, it's if the man in a heteronormative relationship has lost his job or has some kind of difficulty with finances. So I feel like some of the long-term effects of these beliefs is creating a population of adult men who are super stressed out. This idea that masculinity means you can't reach out for support. So they're stressed and they're alone. So I think these are some of the long-term effects of a belief that man's value is about productivity, paycheck.

DAVID YADUSH:

I've actually heard the same things in my sessions with male clients. I mean, almost verbatim what you've shared. 

 HAESUE:

People are all the same, we're all the same.

DAVID YADUSH:

Right? What a what a what a novel concept that people are all the same and also totally different, right? But you're, you're spot on there. Like if you just think about it on paper, the stress of being told that you're the provider, that feeling like our entire world will crumble if I lose my job or I lose my source of income. That level of stress is ridiculous. And not being able to talk about it on top of that, not being able to share that with people, that makes for an almost impossible situation. How do you come back from that if you're holding all of that weight by yourself?

HAESUE:

Right? John spoke about feeling like he and his father had a really limited set of tools when it came to dealing with certain kinds of situations that come up in life. He mentioned that the tools or advice that he had been given over time, being aggressive, being close-minded, getting big, getting loud, weren't really working anymore. And he mentioned that these kinds of ways that people react only foster a sense of comparison. So how do you think men can work to undo this type of generational lack of emotional tools, especially parents raising boys.

DAVID YADUSH:

Raising, this is the perfect opportunity for this analogy of like the toolbox, right? The mental health toolbox, because I'm sure a lot of guys can relate to the experience of being handed down a literal toolbox from our fathers, right? And sometimes those tools are incredible and important and get us through, you know, having to fix a bookshelf.

But sometimes those tools are secondhand old tools that they weren't using anymore and aren't going to be useful anymore. You know, some of these things that we've been handed down worked for our fathers and our parents and our grandparents, right? There was a time where assertiveness and that kind of mentality was needed to survive, but it's not the same anymore. We don't need that to survive. And there's a way to be assertive without being aggressive. And that's also something you can talk about and learn about in therapy in engaging with people.

DAVID YADUSH:

So, you know, I, I don't want men to think they have to kind of throw away the tools that they were given by their parents, but I want to share that those tools aren't the only tools available. You can find other tools, you can explore and invest in learning new things. And when we talk about mental health, there's more than one way to improve yourself and to feel better and to be vulnerable and to communicate. It's not just breathing techniques or meditation or mindfulness or going for walks. Like there's thousands if not an infinite number of opportunities for people. And you have to be open to exploring that.

HAESUE:

It's the idea that seeking out help is seen in some negative way, or maybe it's seen as some kind of weakness. And we've been talking about there being so many different ways that men can go out and find some kind of increased insight or relief from some kind of symptoms that they're having. And John mentioned seeking out therapy, which is definitely an option for people. But we know going out and asking for that kind of help or seeking it out can be very difficult. How do we continue reducing the stigma for men in particular when it comes to reaching out for help or asking somebody for some kind of support?

DAVID YADUSH:

It's a good question and I don't think there's any one answer. I think it's a breadth of things that we need to do as a society, as a culture. But what's really important is continuing to have these conversations. I think a lot of the change we've seen, you know, I've seen a lot more men coming to therapy and being open to the idea. I think a lot of that comes from the de-stigmatization of therapy in general, right? It comes from having these conversations from men, hearing other men talk about being vulnerable, talking about going to therapy and asking for support. It's really important, especially for men, to stop putting other men down for doing something that's vulnerable or something they think is soft or feminine. Because even when it's a joke, even when you're trying to be buds and just kind of rag on each other, those wounds go deep and they live there and they fester. So I really want to encourage men to be supportive of other men.

HAESUE:

Yeah, I think we all have a part in playing. Like if we wanna see a population of healthy men out there, I think they need to be treated like they're healthy. If you tell a kid all his life that he's a bad student and you put him in remedial classes and you give him poor grades and you just give the constant messaging that he's never gonna amount too much, that's generally the life path that's gonna unfold. We see this happen all the time. There's research on this in a lot of educational spaces. So if we keep telling men that you're too aggressive, that you're too angry, you're big and loud, all you ever amount to is making a paycheck, then that's what they're, a lot of them are gonna keep doing. Trying to break down decades worth of harmful ideas and behaviors as an adult is not easy. And John has tried to do this by listening more before he speaks, taking a deep breath when he notices himself potentially getting angry. What are some other tangible exercises or coping mechanisms for men trying to do the same?

DAVID YADUSH:

Absolutely. You know, one that I personally use a lot and I teach a lot is like progressive muscle relaxation. Now there's a whole process to this, but the core piece that works for me is if you can tense up a muscle like in your foot or you know in your thigh, and focus on really tensing that up for a moment and then releasing it, you can also release a lot of that energy in anger or frustration that happens in that moment. It's a way to kind of take focus away from that and put something more tangible. Also, you know, for individuals that struggle with this, like pausing and taking a breath, something you can do is focus on other senses around you. What is something that you can hear in the background right now? What is something that you smell? What is something that you see? And focusing on those senses and taking a step back from the emotion, the thing that you're feeling that's really heavy and present gives you that time to process and be able to respond in a much more thoughtful way.

HAESUE:

I think a lot of mental unwellness and emotional strife comes from dwelling on something that already happened or worrying about something that hasn't. And when we're stuck in this place of being caught between the past and the future, it doesn't leave a lot of attention, focus, and enjoyment of the present, which is where our lives are. So thank you so much, David, for your time today, for your expertise. All the wonderful nuggets of insight here.

DAVID YADUSH:

Thanks for having me.

HAESUE:

This is an ad by Better Help. We covered a lot in this episode surrounding what men experience today. For many, it's a confusing time living in a society chasing emotional wellness after so many men were raised to bottle up their emotions, therapy is a great way to find a path forward and to get feedback from someone who isn't biased on your life, use it as a tool to help navigate your relationships, your friendships, and your parenting. Visit betterhelp.com/mindifwetalk? For 10% off of your first month. That's betterhelp.com/mindifwetalk?.

I wanna give a big thank you to BetterHelp for their passion behind this project and for giving us a platform to champion the wellbeing in all of us. Mind If We Talk? is produced by Acast Creative Studios in collaboration with BetterHelp and hosted by me, Haesue Jo. If you like what you just heard, drop us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share with your friends. Maybe one of our topics will help someone in your life. And remember, your happiness matters. Mind If We Talk? is intended for entertainment and education, not for mental health diagnosis or medical advice.