Men, it’s time for a tune up

Mental health is an integral part of the overall health and wellbeing of every one of us. It is often said that men don’t look after their health generally and in particular will avoid dealing with their mental health and wellbeing, but this is changing rapidly.

Men nowadays have a real understanding that there is nothing weak or wrong about seeking help to deal with issues they can’t figure out how to fix themselves.

If something goes wrong with the car and you don’t know how to fix it you seek advice, you may go to a mechanic to help you figure out what is wrong and what needs to be done. Getting assistance and more information to help yourself is a sensible and very practical way forward. It leaves you in control. The practitioner you choose to get a mental health tune up becomes a resource and an important part of your support team as you regain control and learn how to take charge of your life.

Most men prefer to see a practitioner who will give them practical ideas and help them choose a viable way forward to deal with problematic issues. What they don’t really enjoy and often find of little use, other than a for an initial period of relief because they have someone is listening to and empathising with them, is talking about how they feel in great detail. They are looking for practical steps they can take to start the change process that leads to better mental health.

It is interesting that men who attend counselling often don’t see much point in going into great detail about the past and are reluctant to do so. Whilst the past has everything to do with how we got to the present, it has little or nothing to do with what happens in the future unless we allow it to. So, most of the focus should be about working out what is happening now which isn’t working and what they can do to change this. After all, there is nothing we can do to change the past, but we do have control over what we do from the present point forward. If we have some good advice about how to go about changing the things which aren’t working and support from our team as we put this into practice, then we usually get a great result.

Choosing the right practitioner for you is really important. It doesn’t matter how good the practitioner is or how useful the information they can share with you, if your relationship with them is not one where there is trust and mutual respect, then it is unlikely that you will get the most out of your sessions. Talk to friends and family to try to find someone they know who might suit you, if they don’t have any suggestions, have an initial conversation with the practitioner and see how it goes. If they don’t seem right for you try another, this is no reflection on you or them, it just makes sense to find someone you can connect with because the issues you want to resolve are personal, private and important.

Finally trust yourself, if something in your life doesn’t feel right, trust your instincts. Any ongoing negative feeling you have is your system telling you something is wrong, and you need to attend to it. Just as you wouldn’t ignore a change in how your car sounds or drives and would see if you can work out what is wrong before the problem got worse, so too are negative feelings our early warning system that something is not right. Get onto it quickly, because if you don’t, the problem is likely to get far worse. Early action is usually easy action and delayed action far more costly in all sorts of ways as well as being time consuming to resolve.