In case you haven’t noticed, men are different from women. It shouldn’t really come as a surprise that their black dog is different too. If you go by the numbers it would appear that men don’t suffer from depression as much as women do. Or maybe it’s masked by anger, irritability, drinking, sex addiction, drug use, excessive work, etc . . . and just not reported?

I never thought of myself as a particularly macho man but when the black dog showed up, the desire to be in control (or at least appear to be) was overwhelming. Everyone wants to feel like they’re in control of their lives.

When my kids were little there wasn’t any difference between my daughter or my son in their desire for attention and control. The difference was in the way they went about it. My daughter was more passive. My son was more aggressive.

Both would show their emotions but my daughter was definitely more willing to show all of her feelings - happy or sad. She’d laugh and show excitement over a new toy or game and she’d also cry and wail if that’s how she felt. My son would hold his emotions in more, especially as he got older. It was like an unwritten rule of conduct - boys don’t display weakness and they saw anything emotional as weak.

It wasn’t just my kids either. To some degree or another, I saw it in all of their friends. Young women are told they must look like a super model and boys are told they must be tough like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis.

I don’t know that men and women are all that different in what we want. We’re just different in how we go about it. Whether nature or nurture, men hold their emotions in more than women. It gives us the false belief that we’re strong and in control. Because we want to be in charge (hand me the t.v. remote please) when we loose control of that most intimate part of ourselves - our feelings - we freak out a little. Okay, we freak out a lot. We just don’t show it, at least not at first. We bury our emotions as much as we can, but the black dog digs them up again & again.

My father was a career Army officer and even though he was in a lot of combat (WWII, Korea and Viet Nam) he was never physically wounded. Everyone who’s been in war is affected, wounded or not. Though I don’t think he suffered from depression, I know he buried an awful lot of memories and emotions.

As he got older, he started to open up more and talk about some of the things he experienced. He saw a lot of death, strangers and friends a like. I’m sure he caused some death too. He helped liberate a concentration camp in Germany and will certainly never forget that.

He once admitted that after losing close friends in the war, he decided to withdraw from people, including family, as he didn’t want to experience the pain of losing them too. But what about the joy, love and friendship he missed out on because he withdrew? Wasn’t that a painful loss too?

“Why are you crying daddy?”

I still remember the first time I cried for no apparent reason. I went down in the basement to prevent anyone from seeing me but my daughter found me anyway. I felt ashamed. I didn’t know why this sadness overcame me and I couldn’t stand the thought that it was out of my control. And there lies the rub. The more you try to control it, the less control you have.

I’ve taught Aikido and Tai Chi for years now. Both martial arts emphasize relaxation and blending with force rather than fighting against it. Most students have a very hard time giving up using force against force. They think if they use more strength and tension they’ll gain control. It doesn’t work. They don’t understand that relaxing and moving your body as a whole while blending with an attack, actually makes you stronger, gives you control and uses much less energy.

Whether it’s fighting or emotions we cling to using strength and forcing things all the while assuring ourselves that if we just exert more effort it’ll work, but it’s no match for the black dog. If you fight it, all you’ll get is bruised & battered and the black dog doesn’t go to a neutral corner when you throw in the towel. We must learn to blend with it and let go of our desire to fight it, run away from it or ignore it. We have to deal with it.

We don’t need to get in touch with our inner Alan Alda. We just need to learn to be more honest with ourselves and our emotions. Stop covering them up with drink, drugs, sex, anger or whatever your mask of choice is. It doesn’t make you less of a man to admit you have a problem. All diseases have an emotional component to them, it’s just our luck that depression has a little more than most.

When the black dog showed up in my first marriage it took a while before I finally mustered up the courage to tell my wife that I had depression. She literally told me, “Snap out of it! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you care what other people think?” Talk about kicking a man when he’s down. So much for her unconditional love.

They say you never really know your spouse until you meet them in court. I think you can add “until you introduce them to your black dog”. That was eye opening. She was a registered nurse too and had even done a rotation in psychiatry. All that schooling and training she had couldn’t do anything about her small heart. It took me a long time to realize she had a bigger problem than I did.

What kind of man are you?!

My ex saw depression as a weakness, as a personal fault. It was exactly the type of reaction anyone with a black dog, male or female, worries about. My black dog just lapped that up. Still I felt better just for letting the ‘dog’ out of the bag. I didn’t have to pretend anymore. If she couldn’t handle it that’s her problem. I’d taken care of everyone else up to that point. Now I had to focus on taking care of me.

The most important aspect of the ‘manly art’ of self-defense is awareness. Where are you, what kind of people are with you, what activities are they doing, where’s the exit, etc. You have the right to walk in the bad part of town at night wearing a lot of bling and carrying a lot of money, but don’t act surprised when somebody jumps you. It’s kind of the same thing with depression. You have the right to bury everything, ignore the growing uncomfortable feelings, the coming darkness, the anger turned inwards, your racing thoughts, etc. Just don’t be surprised when that dog jumps you too. The more aware you are that depression is coming or is here, the easier it is to head it off before it knocks and pins you down. Kind of like putting one of those anti-jump harnesses on a dog. The dog is still there but you’re more in control and that’s a good start. Now you can work on “come, sit, stay”.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 4:53 pm and is filed under masculinity.