Mental Health

Part 2

            In Part 1, I described my own work over the years as Gender-Specific Men’s Health Practitioner and why I believe it is a great career choice for the future. Here I will describe in more detail who might be interested in an upcoming training program I will be offering in 2025. If you might be interested, or know someone think would be interested, this may be a great gift for the holidays, one that keeps on giving.

            Although I have had an interest in mental health issues since I was a child growing up in a family with an angry and depressed father and a worried and anxious mother, I first became professionally interested in men’s health in 1976 when I read a book by psychologist Herb Goldberg, The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege. Goldberg wrote,

“The American man an endangered species? Absolutely! The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine ‘privilege’ and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself—emotionally, psychologically, and physically.”

            In 1979 I attended a men’s gathering where Herb Goldberg was the invited speaker. Following the one-day event, a group of guys gathered to continue our explorations and interest in our mental, emotional, and relational health and formed a men’s group. That group of guys has been meeting regularly since then. My wife, Carlin, will tell you that one of the main reasons she and I have had a successful 45-year marriage is because I have been in a men’s group for 46 years.

            I continued my work helping men and their families and focused my attention on the changes men experienced at midlife and the “change of life” that men experience how it is both similar and different from menopause in women. In 1997 my book, Male Menopause was published. It soon became an international bestseller published in 14 foreign languages including Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Greek, and Hebrew. I followed up with Surviving Male Menopause: A Guide for Women and Men published in 2000.

            I have long recognized the importance of an evolutionary and gender-specific perspective on health.

When Dr. Marianne J. Legato’s book, Eve’s Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine and How It Can Save Your Life was published in 2002, the world was introduced to a new field that would forever change our understanding of healthcare.

            “Until now, we’ve acted as though men and women were essentially identical except for the differences in their reproductive function,” says Dr. Legato. “In fact, information we’ve been gathering over the past ten years tells us that this is anything but true, and that everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their normal function but in the ways they experience illness.”

            Dr. Legato went on to become the founding President of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine in 2006. Though she says that the field “is not just about women’s health, but about the health of both sexes,” she acknowledges that men’s health has been neglected. In her book, Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan, she says,

“The premature death of men is the most important—and neglected—health issue of our time.”

            Premature death is the endpoint of differences between men and women that begin with our different biological makeup.

“Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their internal function but in the way they experience illness,” says Dr. Legato.

            Dr. Legato’s findings are consistent with another clinician and research in the field, David C. Page, M.D., professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“There are 10 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them is sex specific,”

says Dr. Page. He goes on to say,

“We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome,” says Dr. Page.  “Men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease. All your cells know on a molecular level whether they are XX or XY.”

Dr. Page concludes, “It is true that a great deal of the research going on today which seeks to understand the causes and treatments for disease is failing to account for this most fundamental difference between men and women. The study of disease is flawed.” 

The Importance of Focusing on Men’s Health

The science of gender-specific healthcare includes multiple fields including sexual biology, evolutionary psychology, and environmental ecology. To be an effective practitioner we need to have an understanding of genetic, hormonal, and biological differences between males and females as well as the rules, roles, and expectations that society places on men and women.

The MenAlive Academy of Gender-Specific Healthcare focuses on men’s health for three reasons.

First, men as a group live shorter and more unhealthy lives than do women. 

“The premature death of men is the most important—and neglected—health issue of our time,”

says Dr. Legato in her book, Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan.

Second, our interpersonal relationships are critical determinants of our overall health and wellbeing. Men have a vital role to play in the health men, women, and children. 

“What men do in relationships is, by a large margin, the crucial factor that separates a great relationship from a failed one,”

says world-renowned relationship expert Dr. John Gottman.

“This does not mean that a woman doesn’t need to do her part, but the data proves that a man’s actions are the key variable that determines whether a relationship succeeds or fails, which is ironic, since most relationship books are for women. That’s kind of like doing open-heart surgery on the wrong patient.”

            Third, men who are unhealthy and unhappy are not only harmful to themselves, but often harm women, children, and society. Comedian Elayne Boosler captures this reality with these humorous and insightful words:

“When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

            We recognize the problem of male violence in our personal, interpersonal, social, and community lives. According to the World Report on Violence and Health published by The World Health Organization,

“No country or community is untouched by violence. Violence pervades the lives of many people around the world, and touches all of us in some way.”

            In the Foreword to the World Report on Violence and Health, Nelson Mandela reminds us that

“Violence thrives in the absence of democracy, respect for human rights and good governance. We often talk about how a ‘culture of violence’ can take root. This is indeed true—as a South African who has lived through apartheid and is living through its aftermath, I have experienced it.”

            Mandela’s experiences can act as a warning about violence today. He goes on to say,

“It is also true that patterns of violence are more pervasive and widespread in societies where the authorities endorse the use of violence thought their own actions. In many societies, violence is so dominant that it thwarts hopes of economic and social development. We cannot let that continue.”

            There are three major areas of violence-related health problems detailed in the World Report: Homicide, Suicide, and War-related violence. Although violent deaths from mass shootings grab the headlines, they make up a small percentage of all homicides. What is less well known is that death by suicide is where most deaths occur.

The proportion of deaths by category are as follows:

• 18.6% are war-related deaths.
• 31.3% are a result of homicide.
• 49.1% are the result of suicide.

Men do most of the killing and men are the ones most often killed in all three categories of death.

Depression and suicide are not just problems for men, but there is something about being male that increases our risk of dying by suicide. According to recent statistics (2021) from the National Institute of Mental Health, the suicide rate among males was, on average, 4 times higher among male than females. It was also higher for males at every age, particularly for older males.

Suicide rates are based on the number of people who have died by suicide per 100,000 population.

Even during our youth where suicide rates are relatively low, males are still more likely to die by suicide than are females. It is also clear to me as my wife and I move into our 80s, we face many similar challenges as we age, but it is older males who more often end their lives by suicide with rates 8 to 17 times higher than for females for those over 75 years old.   

Who Is Likely to Benefit From Advanced Training with Dr. Jed Diamond?

            Those in previous trainings answered “yes” to one or more of these questions:

• Are you currently working as a healthcare provider?

• Do you now provide, or are you interested in providing, gender-specific healthcare services for men?

• Would you like to join a community of like-minded practitioners who recognize that supporting each other is good for those we serve and good for practitioners?

• Are you interested in being trained by one of the world’s leading experts in the field?

• Do you want to increase your knowledge and skills in the emerging field of Gender-Specific healthcare and men’s mental, emotional, and relational health?

• Would you like to increase what you earn doing work that you love?

If this sounds like you or someone you know, I would be happy to send more information. Drop me an email to Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Men’s Training” in the subject line.

If you would like to receive my free newsletter with timely articles and information to help you in your life, your relationships, and your work, you can do so here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.

The post The Gift: Becoming a Gender-Specific Men’s Health Practitioner in 2025 appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 1

            During the holiday season, we often reflect on what we’re grateful for and what gifts we might want to receive or give to those we love. One of the greatest gifts I have been given involves my family and my work with men and their families.

            It has been said that the two most important days of our life are the day we were born and the day we found out why. I was born on December 21, 1943. I found out why was November 21, 1969, the day our first son, Jemal, was born. When I held him in my arms, I made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to do everything I could to create a world where fathers were fully healed and engaged with their families throughout their lives.

            Following the birth of our daughter, Angela, on March 22, 1972, I launched my website MenAlive.com. Like many parents who have boy children and girl children, I soon became fascinated with their similarities and differences. Many things followed the gender norms that we tend to associate with male or female qualities. Despite giving them a range of toys to play with, our son was drawn to toy cars and our daughter was drawn to dolls.

We usually think of boys and men as being the risk-takers, but in our family, Angela was the risk-taker. Growing up in California, summer fun usually involved water sports so getting the children accustomed to water was something we started early. Angela loved the water. As soon as she could walk she toddled into the deep end of the community pool in our neighborhood. She immediately sank to the bottom and I had to dive in to rescue her. Pulling her own and admonishing her, I was sure she would never do that again. But I was wrong. As soon as our heads were turned, she scampered to the pool’s edge and repeated the process. She learned to swim very quickly or she wouldn’t still be here.

When I finished college at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1965, I applied and was accepted into several medical schools. I chose U.C. San Francisco and had visions of becoming a psychiatrist so I could help men like my father who had taken an overdose of sleeping pills when I was five years old after he had become increasingly depressed because he felt he couldn’t make a living to support me and my mother.

I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and how I could prevent it from happening to other families. I wrote about my father’s healing journey in my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound.

I found traditional medical education too restrictive at the time and I transferred to U.C. Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare where I earned a master’s degree in Social Work in 1968. I began a PhD program at the same time, but found I was doing research about issues with which I had little life experience. After many years working in the field, I returned to school and earned a PhD in International Health.

Even before I had children sex and gender issues were on my mind. When I began medical school in 1965, nearly all the students were male. When I transferred to social work, nearly all the students were women. When I graduated in 1968 and began getting interested in men’s health issues, there were very few professionals working in the field.

In was a time when feminism was on the rise. I still have my paperback copy of Betty  Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique with the $.75 price posted on the cover. I had bought the book when it first came out in 1963 and discussed it with my wife as we contemplated marriage. After publishing The Feminine Mystique, one of the best-selling books of the 1960s, Betty Friedan led a life of political action on behalf of feminism that led to a reformation of American laws and culture. She helped found the National Organization for Women in 1966, an organization that won notable legal and political victories for feminism. Friedan believed the future of civilization depended upon women choosing a new, career-focused way of life.

The first chapter of Friedan’s book was titled, “The Problem That Has No Name.” She described the increasing dissatisfaction that women were feeling in the 1960s.

“The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women,”

said Friedan.

“It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered…She was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question, ‘Is this all?’”

My wife was questioning the roles that she and other women were being told they must follow. I was dealing with similar questions about the male role. I had seen my father nearly die because he felt he was a failure at the traditional “breadwinner” role for men. I certainly wanted to be successful in the world of work, but I also wanted to be successful as a husband and a father. 

I saw the emerging women’s liberation movement as being a movement for men’s liberation as well. In my mind, if women were breaking out of old sex and gender roles that meant men could break out of the complementary roles that were restricting men. Although some feminists I encountered in the 1960s saw men as allies, most did not. 

I remember going into San Franciso one Saturday in 1965 and visited a feminist bookstore. I was alone, but always loved to explore bookstores and look for interesting books. I was immersed in the glorious world of reading and didn’t notice the young boy who kept bumping into me as the walked the isles pulling out books that could my attention. I finally noticed him and smiled as he walked by. On the next pass, he pushed a piece of paper into my hands.

At first I thought this was a playful game the boy was initiating until I read the note. My heart broke when I read it. In the scrawling handwriting of an eight-year-old it said, “We don’t like men in this store.” I looked up and saw the woman behind the desk looking at me, obviously the boy’s mother. I don’t know whether she would have approved of the note he left or what messages she passed on subconsciously, but it pained me to think about what this boy would feel about himself as a male as he grew older.

Training Men to Work in the Helping Professions

            Richard V. Reeves is the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) and author of the book, Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It. He says,

“Mental health needs are pervasive among men, yet the share of men meeting those needs in mental health professions is low and declining.”

He goes on to say,

“Men account for only 18% of social workers and 20% of psychologists, down from a male share of 38% in social work and 68% in psychology in 1968″.

            I was fortunate to have been healthcare professional who specializes in working with men and their families for many years. It has been a wonderful profession that I have enjoyed for more than fifty years. I have been able to do work I love, with people I care about, and make a great living for myself and my family.

            Beginning in 2025, my MenAlive Academy for Gender-Specific Healthcare is planning to offer trainings for the following groups:

• Men who are trained and licensed professionals in fields including medicine, psychology, social work, marriage and family counseling, who want to specialize in working with men and their families.

• Male practitioners including coaches, facilitators, healers, who currently work with men but want to add to their skills and professional success.

• Male professionals, including those from the business world and other fields, who would like to develop expertise to work to improve men’s mental, emotional, and relational well-being. 

If you would like to get more information about me and my work, you can visit me at www.MenAlive.com. If you would like to get more information about upcoming trainings, please email me: Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Men’s Training” in the subject line. If you know men who may be interested, please share this information with them.

I will be writing a series of articles to share more information about why men should consider becoming professionally involved with helping men and their families. If you are not already subscribed to my free weekly newsletter, you can do so here:

https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/ .

The post The Gift: Becoming a Gender-Specific Men’s Health Practitioner in 2025 appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 3

Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)

            You can read:

• Part 1: Where I’m Coming From, My Own Story, here.
• Part 2: The Day My Uncle Drove Me to the Mental Hospital.

            For most of my early adult life if you’d asked me about my early life experiences following my father’s hospitalization or the year I dutifully went with my uncle to visit my father, I would have said I didn’t remember much or made a vague reference to those early years. Even when I remembered some of the events that were painful at the time, I dismissed their significance and impact on my life.

            That’s just how things are, I thought to myself. No big deal. Stuff happens. Get over it. Forget about it. Don’t complain. Grow up. Be a man.

Most of us block out painful and traumatic memories from our childhood. We don’t want to remember times when we felt vulnerable and confused. We want to feel strong and in control of our lives. However, these old wounds don’t go away. They often come back to us in the form of bad dreams or childhood illnesses. I had a recurring dream from the time I was six years old (the age when I stopped visiting my father in the mental hospital) until I was nine or ten years old:

            I’m in my bed at night and something wakes me up. I get out of my bed and walk into the kitchen. There is no one there. I continue walking through the house afraid of what I might find but compelled to keep looking. Suddenly a dark figure lurches out of the darkness with a knife in hand. I begin running back to my bed. I know if I can get back before he catches me, I will be safe. But I don’t make it in time and I am stabbed in the back.

            The dream would recur without warning, every three or four nights. I always ran for my life, but never make it back before I am stabbed. I became afraid to go to sleep at night and would spend hours trying to create a safe place among my covers where I would be safe. I would try and stay awake as long as I could, but eventually I would fall asleep and the life-like dream would capture me again and again.

            I eventually told my mother about the dreams. She listened but dismissed the dreams as simply unwarranted fears of childhood, like being afraid there were monsters hiding under my bed. She tried to reassure me by telling me there was nothing to worry about. I didn’t stop worrying. I just stopped talking about my feelings. During that same period I developed asthma, a chronic lung disease that causes inflammation in the airways, making it difficult to breathe.  

            It was only later in life that I learned about the ACE studies and how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) impact our lives. The ACE studies began as a collaboration between the CDC and Kaiser hospital in 1998 and more than ninety research papers have been published since then.

The ACE studies found that adverse childhood experiences—including such common events as growing up in a family where parents were divorced, had alcohol or drug problems, or suffering from mental illness—harm children’s developing brains. The studies found that disrupted brain function leads to changes in how we respond to stress and damages our immune systems so profoundly that the effects show up decades later.

I learned that ACEs cause much of our burden of chronic disease, most mental illness, addictions, and are at the root of most violence. The original research listed ten possible adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. I had four. Having four aces is good if you are playing poker, but not so good for our health and wellbeing.

Even though there has been greater understanding of the impact of ACEs on our lives, many doctors and even mental health experts are not fully aware of the connection between adult problems and childhood trauma. In my article, “7 Surprising Reasons You Should See a Trauma Informed Counselor,” I said,

“Most people in the U.S. have at least one ACE, and people with four ACEs have a significant risk of developing health and relationship problems as adults. These include heart disease, cancer, diabetes, lung problems, depression, divorce, suicide, addictions, and relationship problems.  I’ve had chronic lung problems, bouts of depression, divorced twice, was suicidal at a number of stages of my life, and had numerous addictions.”

I went on to say,

“When I reached out for help, most health practitioners saw me through the lens of the mainstream medical model and tried to figure out what was wrong with me, what diagnosis I should have, and what kind of medications I should take. I did receive some help over the years with this approach, but the benefits were limited.”

Life Lesson #5: Rather than asking “what’s wrong with us?” a more helpful question is “what happened to us?”

In their book, What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, child psychiatrist and neuroscientist, Bruce C. Perry, M.D., PhD and Oprah Winfrey say,

“Healing must begin with a shift to asking ‘What happened to you?’ rather than ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Many of us experience adversity that has a lasting impact on our physical and emotional health. What happens to us in childhood is a powerful predictor of our risk for health problems down the road.”

In my article, “The Myth of Mental Illness and the Truth About Mental Health:  A Man’s Journey to Freedom,” I describe my describe my own healing journey, the original ACE questions, and an expanded understanding of trauma and healing.

What adverse childhood experiences did you experience in your life?  What adult problems have you experienced with your own physical, mental, emotional, and relational life as a result of those early experiences?

Life Lesson #6: Understanding what happened to us is the first step in healing. The second step is understanding the limiting beliefs about ourselves and our world.

My life changed dramatically when I stopped trying to deny and escape from the reality of my childhood wounding and how it impacted my mental, emotional, and relational life. It changed even more dramatically when I realized the beliefs I had about myself and my world because of my early trauma.

In their book, Code to Joy: The Four-Step Solution to Unlocking Your Natural State of Happiness, George Pratt, PhD, Peter Lambrou, PhD with John David Mann, say,

“Beliefs are stronger than feeling and  deeper than thoughts. Beliefs are patterns of thought so ingrained in our neural networks they have become automatic, like entrenched habits of thinking. They are the bedrock of our psychological architecture.”

Drs. Pratt and Lambrou have found seven common self-limiting beliefs that are connected to our early traumatic experiences:

1. I am not safe.
2. I am worthless.
3. I am powerless.
4. I am unlovable.
5. I cannot trust anyone.
6. I am bad.
7. I am alone.

I realized that a number of these beliefs became embedded into my body, mind, and soul and were like automatic programs operating outside my awareness yet colored all my relationships. Deep down I believed, I am not safe. Something could happen to me at any time. The world is a dangerous place. I cannot trust anyone. I never know when someone I love is going to leave me. If I do the wrong thing, they might die or be taken away. Ultimately, I am all alone. There’s no one I can rely on but myself. Its better to stay guarded and closed than to risk loving someone who will leave me.

Fortunately, as I have learned over the years, all these beliefs can be reversed. We can learn that we are safe and secure, worthy and valuable and have the power to be the loveable selves  ourselves we all are deep inside. We can trust others because they are good and we are good. And we’re never alone but connected in a web of wellbeing now and forever.

If you would like to read more in this series and other articles about improving your mental, emotional, and relational health, I invite you to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter.

The post Life Lessons of an 81-Year-Old Men’s Mental Health Maverick appeared first on MenAlive.

I have been a men’s mental health professional since November 21, 1969 when I held my newborn son and made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and do everything I could to improve the mental, emotional, and relational lives of men and their families. Along the way I have earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, a PhD in International Health, and written 17 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression. These are the lessons I have learned along the way.

You can read Part 1, “Where I’m Coming From: My Own Origin Story” here.

Part 2

The Day My Uncle Drove Me to the Mental Hospital

I was five years old when my uncle drove me to the mental hospital. I was confused and afraid.

“Why do I have to go?” I asked Uncle Harry.

He looked at me with his round face and kind eyes. “Your father needs you.”

“What’s the matter with him?” I was beginning to cry and I clamped my throat tight to stop the tears.

He turned away and looked back at the road. In our family, we didn’t talk about difficult issues. I knew that my father was in a hospital and it was my duty to visit him. It never occurred to me to ask why my mother didn’t come to visit. I just knew I was being her “brave little man.”

In my five-year-old mind I thought my uncle was taking me to a hospital that dealt with accidents, cuts, and bruises. I had my blankie with me, which I brought everywhere. I rubbed my cheek against the soft cotton and repeated over and over again in my mind, you’re safe and sound. You’re safe and sound. I talked to monkey, my little hand puppet, as Uncle Harry drove. “Daddy’s going to be fine,” I told him. “He just has some cuts on his head, like I had when I fell down chasing my dog spotty.” Monkey agreed with me.

It was 1949 and the drive from our home in the San Fernando Valley to Camarillo State Hospital took more than two hours, though the distance was less than fifty miles. I looked out the window and imagined I was flying over citrus orchards that spread out for miles as we drove along Ventura boulevard. Harry called out the names of the towns as we drove through them–Encino, Tarzana, Calabasas. I loved the sound of the names and imagined them as kingdoms in far-away lands where I would slay dragons and rescue damsels in distress.

We passed through a tunnel of trees and I felt a chill run down my spine. Uncle Harry called out “Camarillo.” He seemed happy that we had arrived at our destination, but I began to shiver. I pulled my blanket over my head. I thought of my father and pictured his blue eyes dancing as he told stories of his adventures in New York when he was an actor. 

As we drove up to the building, I felt calmer. Camarillo looked like one of the old California missions with palm trees in front and a big bell tower in the center with adobe buildings that had grassy lawns in front. But as we got closer, I saw the windows. They weren’t like our windows at home, but had thick bars over them and they were painted a puke pink, like Pepto-Bismol.

When we walked in, I immediately wanted to go home. I tried to pull away and leave, but my uncle held my hand tight and said we had to go in. “Your father wants to see you,” he said in his quiet, soothing voice. I liked Uncle Harry. He was married to my father’s older sister, Sophie. He was a round faced, roly-poly, man with glasses and a receding hairline. He was always smiling, happy, and upbeat.

People were everywhere and they were all in motion. A man in a white hospital gown walked around in circles, mumbling to himself as he made strange gestures with his fingers. A woman ran into the room yelling, “Don’t let them take me. Jesus, save me.” Two orderlies grabbed her by the arms and took her out of the room. A group of men walked back and forth, talking, but not to each other. A woman with grey hair dressed in a long dress that had once been blue, but was now faded nearly to white, twirled in circles and sang a sweet, sad song.

“Uncle Harry, please let’s go home.” This place wasn’t like anything I’d ever experienced in my life and I was terrified.

“It’s going to be O.K.,” Uncle Harry told me. But he looked scared himself.

I noticed my father at the back of the visiting room where we were told we could see him. He jumped to his feet when he saw us. I wanted to go to him, but I held back. He looked strange. His hair was messed up. His clothes hung on him and he had a wild look in his eyes I had never seen before. He walked our way, picked me up and hugged me, but quickly put me down. He suggested we go for a “stroll” on the grounds. I was glad to go outside and his words calmed me. We had often gone for strolls at a park near our home and he would often hoist me up on his shoulders.

My father took one hand and my uncle took the other and we walked outside. We found a bench in a grassy area outside on the hospital grounds. We sat side-by-side, my uncle, my father, and me. I looked up at the palm trees, but turned towards him when my father asked, “How’s your mother?”

“She’s O.K.” I told him. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to explain why she wasn’t here but I didn’t know. His attention shifted quickly to my uncle.

“You’ve got to get me out of here,” my father implored. He reached out and grabbed Uncle Harry’s shoulder. “It’s a crazy house. I don’t belong here.”

“Take it easy,” Uncle Harry tried to calm him with his soft words and kind smile. “The doctors say you just need some time to rest and recuperate.  “I’ll talk to the doctors, I promise. Just calm down. I’m sure you’ll get out soon.”

My uncle came to visit my father every Sunday and I went with him. Being a dutiful son was something I learned early. Even at age five, I felt responsible for my parents. Though the story of why my father was in a mental hospital emerged slowly and was never talked about, I came to understand from overhearing my mother and uncle talking that my father had a “nervous breakdown.” He had become increasingly angry and depressed because he couldn’t support his family and took an overdose of sleeping pills.

In my child’s mind, I saw him as a failure because he couldn’t take care of his family and he even failed at ending his life. Since the newest family member on the scene was me, I reasoned that I must have been the cause of his breakdown and his suicide attempt. I felt it was my job to fix him.

I visited my father for fifty-two excruciating Sundays with Uncle Harry. I came to fear the tree tunnel as we approached Camarillo and I thought about the story of Alice in Wonderland.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

 My father’s condition grew increasingly worse. He was given more drugs and more shock treatments, until he didn’t seem to know who I was. The doctors told my mother he would need treatment for the rest of his life. In my first act of rebellion against my role of dutiful son, I told my mother I didn’t want to go on any more Sunday drives to Camarillo to see my father. She agreed that I could stop going.

Life Lesson #3: When you don’t have answers to life’s problems, asking questions can be lifesaving.

I think of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Life Lesson #4: Have the courage to ask questions even when you are afraid of the answers you might receive.

Here are the questions I wrestled with?

• Is my father crazy?
• Why did they lock him up?
• Will the same thing happen to me?
• Will I want to kill myself?
• How can I become a man without a father to guide me?

I look forward to your questions and comments. We never stop learning. I will write more articles exploring these and other issues. You can subscribe for free here:  https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post Life Lessons of an 81-Year-Old Men’s Mental Health Maverick appeared first on MenAlive.

I have been a men’s mental health professional since November 21, 1969 when I held my newborn son and made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and do everything I could to improve the mental, emotional, and relational lives of men and their families. Along the way I have earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, a PhD in International Health, and written 17 books, including Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression. These are the lessons I have learned along the way.

Part 1

Where I’m Coming From: My Own Origin Story

            In my most recent post, “Calling All Men: Welcome to the First Day of the Rest of Your Life,” I talked about the changing world we all find ourselves in and what we need to do next with our lives. I quoted Václav Havel

“Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”

I believe we all feel the truth of these words and are looking for a community of support.

            I am reaching out to men because I believe males have a particular need for support these days and because women tell me that if there was one thing I could do to help them, it would be to help the men in their lives—their husbands, sons, fathers, friends, and colleagues.

            I will be offering several new program opportunities for men in early 2025. Between now then, I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned along the way in my work thus far.  I look forward to your questions, comments, and suggestions. Feel free to write me directly: Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Calling All Men” in the subject line and I will respond.

            When I counsel people, I often ask them to

“tell me about your parent’s lives five years before you were born.”

It’s a way to get in touch with some important information about who they are. Were there other children in the family before you were born? What were your parents like before you came into the world? Did they want more children? Did they want a boy or a girl? How did your parents meet, marry, and decide to have children?

            I was born on December 21, 1943. My parents had been trying to have a child since they first married in 1934 but had been unsuccessful. After consulting with their doctor, he suggested a new technique that was not widely practiced at the time of collecting my father’s sperm and injecting it into my mother’s womb. Later it became known as the “turkey baster” method. They were successful and I became my parent’s first and only child.

            From the time he was a young man growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, my father wanted to be an actor. On May 17, 1929, at the age of twenty-two he went to New York with the hope of being successful in the “Big Apple.” I had always wondered at the origin of the term to describe New York.

I learned that in the 1920s, sportswriter John J. FitzGerald popularized the term after hearing African-American stablehands in New Orleans use it to refer to New York City’s racecourses. FitzGerald named his columns about horse racing “On the Big Apple” and “Around the Big Apple.”

My father described his own early experience with New York in one of his first journal entries:

            With the plaudits of my Little Theater devotees ringing in my ears, I left my hometown. For the privilege of driving a poultry farmerette and her family to New York, I received free transportation. After an arduous thousand-mile journey, we arrived. The farmerette and her children went one way. I checked into the Grand Hotel. One day was all I could afford.

            A squib in the Morning Telegraph hit me between the teeth. The famed actress, producer, and director Eva Le Gallienne was auditioning people for her repertory company. That was my cue to head to 14th street. The stairs were rickety but the smell was just right. My nostrils were dilating like those of a full-grown rabbit. This was the theatre.

            He described the initial interview with Miss Le Gallienne’s assistant who he impressed enough to be granted an audition the next day with Miss L. herself.

            The rickety stairs again. I took them slowly. It was stage fright all right. Everything chattered, from my teeth down. There was a cathedral-like hush about the place. This was nice, and no organ music. That made it perfect. Would Miss L be…? But I didn’t have a chance to finish the thought. At the top of the stairs, behind a screen, the young producer-director sat, serene and friendly. Young too. Reddish, blond bob. Earrings, blue satin blouse and skirt.

            She didn’t waste a second. ‘What’s your name and what will you do? A scene from “The Man Who Came Back.” They liked that at home. I lit a cigarette, and emoted to an imaginary woman on the floor. After my dramatic moment, Miss L gave me a scene to read. That was the audition, no more. She nodded her approval. “Rehearsals start in two weeks…” Accepted! Accepted! I didn’t believe in pinching myself. I bruise easily, but I did have to hold on to a chair to keep from floating up with the frescoes. The seal of approval from Miss L. Just an apprentice, but in a real professional company. Maybe a chance for small parts. Maybe a chance for stardom.

            My mother had come to New York from Savanah, Georgia the previous year at the age of twenty and settled in Greenwich Village. The Village was not only a wonderful place for creative artists, but also for creative lovers. My mother, as I learned later, experimented sexually. She had numerous boyfriends and although she never came out directly and said it, I suspect she had a few girlfriends, as well.

            While my father was busy with the theater, my mother worked as a secretary to make ends meet and enjoyed the bohemian life of the Village during the “Roaring 20s.”  Over time they spent more and more time together, fell in love, and got involved in the political activities of the times.

            “I still remember the May Day marches in the 1930s,”

my mother told me years later.

“We would get off work and march down Fifth Avenue together. Progressives of all stripes marched for worker’s rights, opposed racism, and pushed for integration of minorities into the fabric of America. It was very festive and patriotic,”

she said with pride. 

“We all wore red and we marched in support of our country. We wanted America to live up to the ideals upon which it was founded.”

            My mother also described her early experiences with her pregnancy prior to my birth.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I was overjoyed. But I was also terrified of losing you. I remember walking gingerly down 5^th Avenue afraid I would lose you. I was anxious throughout the pregnancy and relieved when you were finally born. Even then, my fear didn’t go away. I always wanted to hold you close and was reluctant to let your father hold you, afraid he might drop you.”

            “When the doctor announced, “Congratulations, ‘It’s a boy!’ we were totally surprised. We were sure we were going to have a girl. We had girl’s names picked out and dolls for a little girl. So, we had to scramble to decide what to call you. I went along with your father who wanted to name you Elliott after his nephew who had recently died, but I didn’t like the name and cried for five days until he agreed to name you John, after my father who had died when I was five years old.”

            “So you finally had an official name on your birth certificated, “John Elliott Diamond.” We kept the dolls, which you seemed to like. Our family was now complete. We finally had the child we thought we’d never have.”

Life Lesson #1: We can’t understand our own lives unless we recognize the gifts we were given by our parents at the time and place of our birth.

Growing up and through most of my life, I didn’t think much about the impact of my early years on who I’ve become.  It wasn’t until mid-life when these examinations became more compelling. I’ve come to realize the gifts I received from being born in New York City at the time I did. From my parents I got a deep curiosity to explore all aspects of life and the courage not to be afraid to think and live “outside the box” of conventional wisdom.

From my father I got my passion for my work. From my mother I got my passion to explore sexuality and relationships. I also got from both my parents the passion to be my own person. When I went to college, I changed my name from John Elliott Diamond to Jed Diamond. I wanted a name that was sexy, a little mysterious, powerful, and unique. I picked Jed for myself.

Life Sesson #2. We also acquire a host of challenges that we spend our lives trying to escape from or learning to embrace.

There were many challenges I had to grapple with that had their origins in my early life. From my father I received is passion for his creative work, but also his belief that we must be successful at our career or die trying. I will have more to say about this challenge in future posts. From my mother I inherited her deep fears about life and death. Later in life I came to recognize and better understand the legacy of fear I had gotten from her.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes said of his birth during the turbulent political climate at the time,

“My mother gave birth to twins: Myself and fear.”

This realization that I had a hidden twin that I didn’t know was part of my life was revelatory when I got to know, embrace, and love him.

These early beliefs, usually embedded, deeply in our subconscious, can undermine our joy and happiness until we learn to understand and embrace them.

Reflect on your own origin stories and the life lessons you learned. I hope my sharing can stimulate your own at whatever age you are.

If you’d like to read more about my own journey, let me know. I appreciate your comments and questions. Visit me at www.MenAlive.com.

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Well, the election is finally over and there are a few things I know about you, my readers. You are happy your candidate won or unhappy because your candidate lost, or just glad you don’t have to watch any more political ads for a while and you can stop getting text messages asking for money. I also know that regardless of who we voted for, many of us are frightened about our future. And I also know that men are not the only ones who read my articles. So, let me tell you why this one is a call to men.

            Everyone who reads this, whether male or female, have things that must be done today, regardless of the election results. You have work to do, families to support, money to earn, bills to pay, meals to prepare, children who need your love and support, friends with problems, doctor’s appointments to make, healing to do, and decisions about what you need to do next in your life.

            This is a call to men because for the last fifty-five years, ever since the birth of our first son, Jemal, on November 21, 1969, I have been helping men and their families to live fully, love deeply, and make a positive difference in the world. I also think men are critical to the wellbeing of the future for themselves, their families, and most importantly for the community of life on planet Earth.

            For more than fifty years www.MenAlive.com has been my window to the world where I offer resources that have been shown to be helpful—including articles, books, on-line courses, as well as individual, couples, and family counseling. Three years ago I invited several colleagues to join me in what I called a Moonshot for Mankind and Humanity to work together to improve the lives of men and their families. You can learn about our work at www.MoonshotforMankind.org.

            We focus on men’s mental, emotional, and relational health for three important reasons:

1. Boys and men are falling behind and we are experiencing higher levels of “deaths of despair” as men is 4 to 17 times higher than the rate for women and increases with age.

• When males suffer from depression and despair, females also suffer. When we lose fathers, brothers,  and sons, the loss impacts mothers, sisters, and daughters.

• Violence turned inward can lead to higher rates of suicide. Turned outward it can lead to increased rates of family, community, and world-wide aggression. The comedian, Elayne Boosler captured this reality when she observed, “When women get depressed they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

Over the years working with men, I believe that men are both the “canaries in the coal mine” alerting us to the dangers we face, but also the hope for the wellbeing of all.

This is a Time of Transition in the U.S. and the World

“Today, many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born,”

said Václav Havel former Czech statesman, author, and dissident.

“It is as if something were crumbling, decaying and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.”

            I believe if we are honest with what we are seeing in the world, we will recognize the truth of Havel’s observation that something is crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself.  In her world-wide best-seller, The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse, social scientist Rebecca Costa looked at the troubles facing humanity and said,

“Today, the issues that threaten human existence are clear: an intractable global recession, powerful pandemic viruses, terrorism, rising crime, climate change, rapid depletion of the earth’s resources, nuclear proliferation, and failing education.”

            The problem isn’t this political party or that one, Democrats or Republicans, our side or the other side. It is something much more fundamental. Costa quotes her mentor, two-time Pulitizer Prize winner E.O. Wilson who said,

“The real problem of humanity is we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technologies.”

            Costa’s book was praised by a wide variety of luminaries:

• “Problems eventually become too complicated for the average intelligence—in The Watchman’s Rattle, Rebecca Costa depicts the challenges this presents.” –Dr. James Watson, Nobel Laureate

• “One of those rare books that one picks up and then knows within the first few pages is extremely important…extremely brave, spirited and well informed.” — Sir Richard Branson, Environmentalist and Entrepreneur

• “Rebecca Costa has written a riveting examination of our world’s most dire and complex issues. Her message for mankind is an ultimately hopeful one as she explores her fascinating theory about the brain’s ability to develop advanced problem-solving techniques in times of crisis. A must read!” –Donald J. Trump, Real Estate Developer and Entrepreneur

• “A brilliant understanding of how we got into our current predicament, and how we may well emerge from it relatively intact.” –Thom Hartmann, Best-selling author and host of The Thom Hartmann Program.

A Time for Hope and a Moonshot for Mankind

            As a healthcare professional who has been working in the field for more than fifty years, I have seen a lot of people who lose hope. Marriages fall apart, addictions take over our lives, we try and fail at our goals to lose weight, exercise more, save for the future, or be the best fathers for our children.

            There are times when we reach the end of our rope and feel there’s no use carrying on. We may even feel the world would be better off without us. I’ve been in those dark places myself in my life and I’ve been there for many others who almost gave up hope. What saved me and what I find saved others, is that we find a connection to another. We reach out or someone reaches out to us.

            It may start with a few words. “You look like you’re hurting. What’s going on?” Somehow in our darkest moments we find a ray of hope. We don’t know what would help, but we know we need something to change in our lives. At one of my darkest moments following a painful divorce, when I wasn’t able to see my young children, I saw a post on a bulletin board about a men’s workshop with a talk by the psychologist Herb Goldberg, author of the book, The Hazards of Being Male.

            These words caught my eye:

“The male has paid a heavy price for his masculine ‘privilege’ and power. He is out of touch with his emotions and his body. He is playing by the rules of the male game plan and with lemming-like purpose he is destroying himself—emotionally, psychologically, and physically.”

            I had no idea what to expect but I joined a group of twenty-five other guys on a Saturday in April 1979.  The day was transformative. Afterwards, those who were interested were invited to meet the following Wednesday at the home of one of the guys who had helped put on the event to see if we would be interested in starting a men’s group.

            Ten of us showed up and we formed a group that began meeting weekly. Soon a few guys dropped out and seven of us continued to meet regularly. We are still together, a band of brothers together to the end. My wife, Carlin, will tell you that one of the main reasons she feels we have a successful 44-year marriage is because I’ve been in a men’s group for 45 years.

The Moonshot for Mankind is a movement that is committed to helping humanity on its healing journey. We believe man’s mental, emotional, and relational health is the key to empowering men to live long and well. Our mission is to help men live healthier, happier, more cooperative lives—fulfilling lives of purpose and productivity, where men are supported and valued as they make positive contributions to their families, friends, and communities. When that happens, families grow stronger, communities prosper, and humanity takes its next leap forward.

In these challenging times, it is easy to lose hope. We are living in uncertain times and the future can seem frightening. Neuroscientist Julia DiGangi offers the following thoughts which I find helpful:

“As the world brims with uncertainty, it’s vital to understand that the opposite of fear is identity. When you are frightened by uncertainty, this is your clearest signal to turn inward—a chance to decide: When those around me are shaking and systems seem to be crumbling, who will I believe I am?”

Believing in ourselves and having hope that we can act to make a better world for ourselves and others is what keeps us going. Václav Havel offers these words of guidance:

“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well. It is the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.”

We know the outcome of the election, now it is our turn to act. We have an opportunity to come together and support each other in becoming the men we were meant to be at this time in human history.

We will be offering a number of events in the coming months and invite you to join us. If you’d like more information, drop me a note to: Jed@MenAlive.com and put “Moonshot for Mankind” in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you. Please share with others you feel would be interested.

The post Calling All Men: Welcome to the First Day of The Rest of Your Life appeared first on MenAlive.

“Tribalism,” says cultural psychologist Dr. Michael Morris, “has been named the culprit behind everything that’s wrong with the world today, from political polarization to failure to combat climate change.”

There is certainly a lot wrong with our world today, but the problem is not that we have become tribal. In his groundbreaking book, Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, Dr. Morris goes on to say,

“Tribal needn’t be a dirty word. Tribalism is as necessary to the human condition as breathing.”

In fact, tribalism is what makes us human. In his book, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure, historian Daniel Quinn reminds us that “the tribal life and no other is the gift of natural selection to humanity. It is to humanity what pack life is to wolves, pod life is to whales, and hive life is to bees. After three or four million years of human evolution, it alone emerged as the social organization that works for people.”

            Quinn goes on to say,

“If you note that hive life works well for bees, that troop life works well for baboons, or that pack like works well for wolves, you won’t be challenged, but if you not that tribal life works well for humans, don’t be surprised if you’re attacked with almost hysterical ferocity.”

Why do we have such a difficult time accepting that tribal life is the life we are meant to be living? I believe that one reason for our denial of our tribal roots is that we have been living under the mistaken belief that the emergence of what we have called “civilization” ten thousand years ago was what saved humanity from a way of life that English philosopher Thomas Hobbs saw as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

            The truth is that what we call “civilization” which began as our tribal way of life was supplanted by the advent of agriculture may better be characterized as the worst mistake ever. In a 1987 article, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race,” world-famous evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said,

“Recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.”

“The tribal life wasn’t something humans sat down and figured out,”

says Quinn.

“It was the gift of natural selection, a proven success—not perfection but hard to improve on.”

What has been called “civilization,” but is better characterized by systems scientist, Riane Eisler, as the “domination” system, is one that is collapsing. Trying to dominate the Earth, rather than learning to live in true partnership, is a recipe for disaster.

            The cause of our current conflict is not because humans are tribal, it is because a way of life that has worked for more than two million years has been replaced by a system that has caused humans to become disconnected from the Earth, from ourselves, and from the other creatures of the Earth as well as the ecosystem that allows us to live without disrupting the climate to a degree that all humanity is at risk.

            Thomas Berry was a priest, a “geologian,” and a historian of religions. He spoke eloquently to our connection to the Earth and the consequences of our failure to remember we are one member in the community of life.

“We never knew enough. Nor were we sufficiently intimate with all our cousins in the great family of the earth. Nor could we listen to the various creatures of the earth, each telling its own story. The time has now come, however, when we will listen or we will die.”

Back to the Future: Reclaiming Our Tribal Heritage and Reconnecting with the Community of Life

            In reviewing the book Tribal by Michael Morris, Harvard University professor of psychology Daniel Gilbert says,

“This original book lays bare the facts about our tribal natures and shows how the deeply human tendencies that have brought us to the precipice of disaster might still be used to save us.”

“Early humans became wired by evolution to share knowledge in groups and draw on this shared knowledge to collaborate with each other,”

says Morris.

“Language, literature, law–everything great we have attained emerged from these capacities to look at the world through the lens of shared knowledge or culture. When cultural codes operate unchecked and ripple out of control they can draw us into dysfunctional conflicts, but understanding tribal instincts enables you to break these cycles and harness them for collective action and even for social change. They can be our ‘worst instincts,’ but they can also be our best instincts, our greatest hope for rising to the challenges of cooperation ahead.”

            One of my favorite public intellectuals Scott Galloway says,

“There is no future, good or bad, without tribalism. This eye-opening book will change the way you think about why we behave the way we do.”

            For at least two million years, the tribal way of life was all we knew. The tribal system worked well for all human beings, both males and females, in the past and it will work well for all of us when we reclaim our tribal wisdom.

            Although some blame men and believe patriarchy is the cause of our problems, I don’t believe that is true. Systems scientist and historian Riane Eisler wrote a paradigm-changing book, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History Our Future in 1987 in which she described two very different ways of being in the world:

            “The first, which I call the dominator model, is what is popularly termed either patriarchy or matriarchy—the ranking of one half of humanity over the other. The second, in which social relations are primary based on the principle of linking, rather than ranking, may best be described as the partnership model. In this model—beginning with the most fundamental difference in our species, between male and female—diversity is not equated with either inferiority or superiority.”

            Eisler has written numerous subsequent books describing the two systems, including her most recent, Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape Our Brains, Lives, and Future, written with anthropologist, Douglas P. Fry. In it she describes the tribal cultures that have lived in balance with the land for more than two million years, as “the  original partnership societies.”

            They show that as tribal societies based on partnership principles began to be supplanted by hierarchical societies based on domination, there was increasing level of violence.

            Eisler and Fry say,

“Various archeological examples show the birth of war in association with hierarchical systems. For instance, in the Near East between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, nomadic foraging gave way to plant and animal domestication. In this region there is not evidence of war or hierarchical social organizations in the archaeological record at 12,000 years before the present, sparse evidence for war by about 9,500 years ago, and then clear evidence of spreading and intensifying warfare after that.”

            The trauma resulting from the loss of our tribal roots impacts both men and women, but in different ways. The comedian Elayne Boosler captures this difference when she said,

“When women get depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking.”

            Best-selling author Sebastian Junger offers us an insight into the mentality of men in his book, War.

“Combat was a game that the United States had asked Second Platoon to become very good at,”

says Junger,

“and once they had, the United States had put them on a hilltop without women, hot food, running water, communications with the outside world, or any kind of entertainment for over a year. Not that the men were complaining, but that sort of thing has consequences. Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure out how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for.”

            It should also be careful what kind of society we want for our young men to live within. In his book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Junger makes a case for creating a future based on our tribal past.

“Perhaps the single most startling fact about America is that, alone among the modern nations that have become world powers, it did so while butted up against three thousand miles of howling wilderness populated by Stone-Age tribes.”

“We have a strong instinct to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding–Tribes”

says Junger.

“This tribal connection has been largely lost in modern society, but regaining it may be the key to our psychological survival.”

            In the final chapter of Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, Michael Morris says,

“For our predecessors struggling to survive in the Stone Age, tribal interaction was a way to expand the bounds of social cohesion, to work in coordination as a united force, to cooperate in ways that were not immediately rewarded, and to sustain and build upon the wisdom of the past.”

            He goes on to way,

“Our evolutionary blessing of ‘Us’ does not fate us to violence against ‘Them,’ but we need awareness of our tribal psychology to guard against this possibility…One thing is certain: we will not overcome the present challenges as individuals. As even our earliest ancestors know, we can thrive only together—in tribes.”

            If you like appreciate articles like these I invite you to come visit me at www.MenAlive.com and check out our free weekly newsletter with information that can help you improve your mental, emotional, and relational health.

The post Tribal Instincts: The Core of Our Humanity, Cause of Our Worst Problems, and Best Hope For Our Future appeared first on MenAlive.

Richard V. Reeves is the founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) and the author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and what to Do About It. He has been a long-time advocate of sex and gender equality. He says,

“There has been a successful campaign to get girls and women interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professions. By contrast, the men-into-HEAL (Health, Education, Arts, and Literacy) movement is essentially non-existent.”

            He goes on to say,

“Getting a good estimate of how much is being spent overall on getting more women into STEM jobs is impossible, not least because so many institutions are involved. But to give one specific example, the Society of Women Engineers has a headquarters staff of 36, about $19 million in assets, and an annual expenditure of $12 million.”

            For me, I was lucky to get into one of the healthcare professions early on. After I graduated from U.C. Santa Barbara in 1965, I was accepted at U.C. San Francisco Medical School and was awarded a four-year full-tuition fellowship to attend. I hoped to eventually become a psychiatrist and help men like my father who had a “nervous breakdown” when I was five years old after he had become increasingly depressed when he couldn’t make a living to support his family.

            Medicine was primarily a male profession when I first attended medical school and there were few women in my class. But I quickly felt what I was learning was too narrowly focused and lacked emotional engagement and sensitivity. I requested a transfer to the School of Social Welfare at U.C. Berkeley and was willing to give up my scholarship to get it. However, before I was allowed to leave I had to see a psychiatrist. Evidently, a male leaving medical school for a career in social work was seen as aberrant, if not downright crazy.

            When I arrived, the other students in social work school were primarily women, with only a few men. But I loved the environment and felt at home in a community committed to helping people mentally, emotionally, and relationally. I also appreciated that we began helping people right away. My first-year placement was at a juvenile probation department. In my second year, I worked in a mental health facility. I earned my Master of Social Work degree in 1968 and have had a successful career ever since.

            In Of Boys and Men, Reeves says,

“In broad terms, HEAL occupations can be seen as the opposite of STEM. They are more focused on people, rather than things, and they tend to require more literacy than numeracy skills.”

I found that to be true. I am definitely better suited to HEAL professions and social work has given me experience with people I never would have gotten had I continued in medical school.

The focus on literacy has also helped me to become a successful author with seventeen books available, including international bestsellers Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: Overcoming Romantic and Sexual Addictions, Male Menopause, and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression.

            In recent years I have been training men who are interested in men’s health as a profession. Reeves says,

“There has been a striking drop in the share of men in mental health related caring professions. Men account for the minority of social workers (18%) and psychologists (22%), for example, and the gender imbalance is growing.”

Yes, Boys Can: An Action Approach For Now and For the Future

            What’s to be done? Reeves offers a challenging proposal.

“As a society, we recognized the need to get more women into STEM jobs, and invested accordingly. Now the same is true of men and HEAL. I propose at least $1 billion national investment, over the next decade, in service of this goal. This money, from both government and philanthropy, should be spent in three ways:

• First, creating a pipeline of future male HEAL workers in schools and colleges.
• Second, providing financial support to male students and workers in HEAL.
• Third, running social marketing campaigns to make these career choices more appealing to boys and men.”

Reeves goes on to say,

“First, the pipeline. We need to get more boys and young men thinking about HEAL careers early.”

To that end Reeves has joined with Jonathan Juravich, the 2023 National Elementary Art Teacher of the Year to create a masterful new book, Yes, Boys Can: Inspiring Stories of Men Who Changed the World.

I had the opportunity to interview Richard and Jonathan for a recent podcast which you can watch here. We discussed their work, the creation of the book, and talked about some of the inspiring men who work in the fields of Health, Education, Arts, and Literacy.

You’ll learn about who of the fifty interesting men in the book: Social worker Preston Dyer and health nurse Sir Jonathan Elliott Asbridge.

As described in Yes Boys Can,

“Growing up, the only person that Preston really saw helping other people was the pastor of his church. Preston loved the idea of helping others; it was what drove him. He wasn’t excited about writing and preaching sermons for church services.”

It wasn’t easy, but Preston got into social work helping people with mental health needs. He struggled through school, but persevered. He and his wife, Genie, started marriage enrichment courses and began helping more people. In sum,

“Against all odds and hurdles, he ended up becoming one of the most influential social workers alive.”

Jonathan Elliott Asbridge was born in Cardiff, Wales.

“He had his first taste of nursing when he began work as a cadet with the St. John Ambulance Service in South Wales. He knew at a young age that he wanted to pursue nursing as a career, but his parents were less than excited and strongly fought back. This wasn’t the future they wanted for him.”

Many men are drawn to work in the HEAL professions but are discourage by others. Sometimes it is family members who discourage us.  Other times it is teachers, friends, classmates, or the general sense we get from society that these are not manly jobs.

But Jonathan didn’t give up. Jonathan attended nursing school and continued schooling at university and began working in the field.

“Jonathan went from being a staff nurse to a charge nurse in a critical care unit, then an inpatient manager, a general manager, and the director of Clinical Care Services. Eventually he became a director of nursing.

He didn’t stop there. Jonathan continued work with further advocacy and professional advancement and was named the inaugural president of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of the United Kingdom.”

Since at least 1860, on the King’s or Queen’s birthday, individuals are awarded medals, decorations, and appointments. These recognitions celebrate the great works of citizens. As we learn in the book, “On June 17, 2006, Jonathan received such an honor. He was knighted for his dedication to the National Health Service and advancement of the nursing profession. Thankfully, his family’s reluctance about his career choice didn’t hold him back from pursuing his dream.”  

If you, or someone you care about, may be interested in HEAL professions for men, I highly recommend Richard’s book, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why it Matters, and What to Do about it.”  I also recommend the new book, Yes, Boys Can! Inspiring Stories of Men Who Changed the World.

For more information about Richard’s work, visit him at the American Institute for Boys and Men: https://aibm.org/. You can also visit his website: https://richardvreeves.com/

You can learn about Jonathan’s work here:

https://theartofeducation.edu/author/jonathan-juravich

You can order Yes, Boys Can! From the publisher here:

https://quarto.com/books/9780760391952/yes-boys-can or from wherever books are sold.

I write regular articles about men’s mental, emotional, and relational health. You can visit me here: https://menalive.com/ and subscribe to my free weekly newsletter here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post Men Can HEAL—Getting Men into the Jobs of the Future appeared first on MenAlive.

I have been helping men and women improve their love lives for more than fifty years. It’s never been easy to find the right partner or to keep our love lives growing and deepening through the years. It is even more difficult when we reach midlife and beyond. By the time we reach forty, many of us have been married and divorced, some of us more than once. We long to find a new partner, but we’ve been burned before and don’t want to repeat our mistakes. Even those who are in a long-term relationship struggle to keep our sex and love lives vital and alive.  

            In the past, midlife was seen as a short-lived “crisis” where we would do crazy shit like buy a flashy sports car or trade in our spouse for a newer model. As we are living longer, midlife takes on new dimensions of meaning. Chip Conley is founder of The Modern Elder Academy and author of the book Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age.

“In my opinion,” says Conley, “and that of a number of sociologists, in a world with more and more centenarians, midlife may last from 35 to 75. Just as adolescence is a transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, maybe part of midlife’s role is to be a transitional stage between adulthood and elderhood.”

            For most of human history we died before we got very far into midlife. The average life expectancy in 1900 in an advanced country like the U.S. was 47.3 years. With all these added years of life, we need new information to help us successfully navigate our sex and love lives.

            I have written seventeen books including international best-sellers Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places and The Enlightened Marriage: The 5 Transformative Stages of Relationships and Why the Best is Still to Come. A few years ago I learned about a book by Shana James that was recommended by a colleague, Ed Frauenheim, called Honest Sex: A Passionate Path to Deepen Connection and Keep Relationships Alive. Here’s what Ed had to say,

“Shana James is like your best friend, blended with the Dalai Lama and Dr. Ruth. Honest Sex is warm, wise and funny. It will help you create not only the sex life you want, but the rich relationships you need for true happiness.”

            Who wouldn’t want to have a best friend who is a blend of the Dalai Lama and Dr. Ruth? I reached out to Shana and got a copy of her book. She introduces the book with a personal sharing that reminds us of the kind of discussions many of us have experienced, the kinds of discussions that can lead to misunderstandings and trouble.

            She vulnerably admits to the struggles she faced that led to divorce, and walks readers through ways to transform challenges into connection and intimacy. Here’s one that had me think: This woman has been eavesdropping on me and my wife. This is a book I must read:

            “Really!” I said, looking toward the water bottle at the Target cash register that my husband was about to purchase en route to Burning Man. “Like we need more water bottles? Don’t we have a dozen of them in our cupboards?”

            “Mine leaks,” he said. “You know how it goes in the desert. We can’t mess around. I’m not going to go with a faulty water bottle. I remember when you got dehydrated in the desert and it wasn’t pretty.”

            “But it’s plastic” I yelled, aware of the cashier warily eyeing us. “Think about the toxic island of plastic that is now the size of Texas and killing marine life,” I said.

Here’s what I wrote after finishing the book:

            “As a marriage and family therapist for more than fifty years, this is the book I’ve been waiting my whole career to give to my clients. I’ll be telling everyone I know to buy three copies—one for yourself, one for your partner, and one for the friend who has been waiting for honest sex all their lives.”

            And here’s some good news that will make my recommendation simple and easy. For the first time Shana is offering her widely acclaimed and best-selling book, Honest Sex: A Passionate Path to Deepen Connection and Keep Relationships Alive, for FREE. To take advantage of this wonderful offer all you must do is click on this link and you will get a copy of her book and be able to connect with her.

            To give you a little “taste,” here are the chapter titles:

• What I Wish I Learned Before I Got Married.
• What is Honesty and How Can We Cultivate Mature Honesty?
• How Honest Are You With Yourself?
• Applying Honesty to Desires.
• What is Sex Actually?
• What is Orgasm Honestly?
• The Myth of Happy Sex.
• How to Improve Rather Than Kill Your Sex Life with Honest Conversations.
• Six Fundaments of Deeper Intimacy and Better Sex
• Conscious Relating Tools.
• Relational Alchemy.
• Maturity and Our Inner Demons.

Of course, having honest sex, deepening connection, and keeping relationships alive is helpful at any age and stage of relationship, I have found Shana’s wisdom to be particularly helpful for men and women in midlife. In an article I wrote recently, “Why More Couples Are Divorcing and How to Save Your Midlife Marriage,” I shared some disturbing trends that have been going on in recent years.

One of the greatest tragedies I am seeing today is the rise of midlife divorce with women initiating nearly 80% of the divorces.  Divorce can be devastating for both men and women, but contrary to popular perception, men suffer greater emotional wounding. I believe strongly that divorce is not the answer and most midlife marriages can be saved.

The National Center for Family & Marriage Research (NCFMR), Co-directed by researchers Susan L. Brown and Wendy D. Manning, was established in 2007 to help improve our understanding of how family structure is linked to the health and well-being of children, adults, families, and communities. Dr. Brown’s recent article, “The Graying of Divorce: A Half Century of Change,” offers the following findings:

• One in four persons who divorce in the U.S. is over 50, contrasted to less than one in ten in 1990.

• More than half of gray divorces are couples in their first marriages, including more than 55 percent for couples married more than 20 years.

• As the divorce rate for adults over 50 soars, so does the number of adult children experiencing parental divorce.

Regardless of your age or marital status, getting a copy of Shana’s book, Honest Sex, can help improve your sex and love life. You can get your copy here.

If you would like to read more articles about improving your mental, emotional, and relational health, I hope you will subscribe to my free newsletter. If you don’t already subscribe you can do so here: https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.

The post Sex and Love at Midlife and Beyond: Finding Intimacy and Passion with the Partner of Your Dreams appeared first on MenAlive.

We are living in a time of disconnection and despair where one group denigrates another and dire warnings are trumpeted by each side that if they win our lives are lives will be destroyed. When we talk to our friends and neighbors we sense that people are not as divided as the media would have us believe, but we feel powerless to change things for the better.

            Robert Waldinger, M.D. is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study on Adulthood Development. Along with his friend and colleague, Dr. Mark Schultz they have written The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness.

            Dr. Waldinger wrote an article recently titled “An Antidote to Anger and Despair in Our Polarized World.” He says,

“I’d like to share some thoughts on a matter that’s been weighing heavily on my mind lately, and I suspect on many of yours as well – the sense of uncertainty and dread we often feel when looking at the state of our world.”

            He goes on to say,

“It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the constant stream of news and information. We’re bombarded daily with stories of conflict, division, and what many would call ‘evil’ in various forms. This can leave us feeling helpless, angry, and tempted to retreat into the comforting simplicity of an ‘us versus them’ mentality.

But I’d like to suggest a different approach, one inspired by an ancient Buddhist tale that offers surprising wisdom for our modern dilemmas. Picture this: The Buddha, in his time, encounters a notorious serial killer. Instead of fleeing or fighting, the Buddha calmly walks towards this dangerous man. When the killer tries to attack, he finds he cannot catch the Buddha, despite the latter’s slow pace. Puzzled, he demands that the Buddha stop. The Buddha’s response is profound: ‘I have stopped. You stop.’

The Buddha explains that he has ‘stopped’ by casting off violence towards all beings. He recognizes the potential for violence within himself but chooses not to act on it. This story challenges us to look inward and confront our own capacity for what we might label as ‘evil.’ Now, let’s bring this ancient wisdom into our present context. How often do we eagerly consume news that confirms our views, feeling righteous when ‘our side’ seems to be winning? It’s a powerful feeling, isn’t it? It can be addictive — and ultimately harmful.”

I know I have felt that way and have written numerous articles sharing my concerns that about the potential election of Donald Trump as our next President. I am deeply afraid of his tendencies towards authoritarian ways of thinking and acting and want to let others know about my concerns. But I am also aware that other side has serious doubts about the candidate I support.

It isn’t only in the political arena that we seem to be seriously divided between “us” and “them.” We see it in our businesses and even in our families. But what if, like the Buddha, we chose to walk calmly towards what we fear or oppose? What if we recognized that the capacity for both good and evil exists within all of us? Dr. Waldinger introduced me to an important initiative called UNITE, led by Tim Shriver. It aims to help us move away from viewing and treating others with contempt and toward seeing the dignity of those we disagree with.  UNITE has developed the Dignity Index, a tool that allows us to rate newspaper articles, speeches, and our own thoughts on how much they polarize or unite.  It’s a scale from 1 to 8 that measures how we speak about and treat those with whom we disagree. At the top of the scale, level 8, we recognize the inherent worth of every individual, treating all with dignity regardless of differences. At the bottom, level 1, we dehumanize others and believe they must be stopped by any means possible.

Level 1: Escalates from violent words to violent actions. It’s a combination of feeling the other side is less than human and calling for or approving violence. The subtext:

“They’re not even human. It’s our moral duty to destroy them before they destroy us.”

Level 2: Accuses the other side not just of doing bad or being bad, but promoting evil. The subtext is:

“Those people are evil and they’re going to ruin our country if we let them. It’s us or them.”

Level 3: Attacks the other side’s moral character, not just their capabilities or competence. The subtext is:

“We’re the good people and they’re the bad people. It’s us vs. them.”

Level 4: Mocks and attacks the other side’s background, their beliefs, their commitment, their competence, their performance. The subtext is:

“We’re better than those people. They don’t really belong. They’re not one of us.”

Level 5: Listens to the other side’s point of view and respectfully explains their own goals, views, and plans. The subtext is:

“The other side has a right to be here and a right to be heard. It’s their country too.”

Level 6: Sees it as a welcome duty to work with the other side to find common ground and act on it. The subtext is:

“We always talk to the other side, searching for the values and interests we share”.

Level 7: Wants to fully engage the other side – discussing the deepest disagreements they have and to see what breakthroughs they can find. The subtext is:

“We fully engage with the other side, discussing even values and interests we don’t share, open to admitting mistakes or changing our minds.”

Level 8: I can see myself in every human being, I refuse to hate anyone, and I offer dignity to everyone. The subtext is:

“Each one of us is born with inherent worth, so we treat everyone with dignity–no matter what.”

Dr. Waldinger concludes saying,

“This doesn’t mean that all actions are equal, or that we shouldn’t work towards positive change in the world. But it does mean approaching our efforts with humility and an awareness of our own biases.”

He goes on to say,

“Let me offer another example: Think of a time when you were absolutely certain about something, only to later discover you were mistaken. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding with a friend that led to an argument, or a strongly held opinion that changed after you learned new information. These experiences remind us that our perceptions and judgments are often limited and flawed.”

“We can put ourselves in situations that remind us of the shared humanity in everyone, even those we strongly disagree with. Watching children play on a playground, noticing people acting with kindness in our communities, sitting in prayer or spiritual practice – these are just a few of the countless ways we can see beyond those seductive good-and-evil dualities. This doesn’t mean we ignore harmful actions or abandon our values. Rather, it allows us to respond more skillfully and compassionately to the conflicts that are inevitable in life.”

As a psychotherapist and marriage and family counselor for more than fifty years I am reminded of the work of Dr. John Gottman who wrote about the most destructive interactions that destroy marriages. He called them The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They are Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling, and perhaps the most destructive of them all, Contempt.

We can all monitor our own Dignity Index as we relate to ourselves and others. If you’d like more information about Dr. Waldinger and his work here: https://www.robertwaldinger.com/

At Moonshot for Mankind, we are bringing together organizations and individuals who would like to improve the quality of men’s health and increase our ability to create healthy partnerships. You can learn more here: https://moonshotformankind.org/.

If you’d like to read more articles like these, please consider joining our newsletter mailing list. https://menalive.com/email-newsletter/.

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The post Healing the Increasing Contempt Between Us and Them: Building  Partnership Bridges For the Good of All appeared first on MenAlive.