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In this powerful episode, Scott and Jess are joined by Samir Mourani to have an open and vulnerable conversation about men's mental health. They discuss their personal experiences with anxiety, depression, and emotional breakdowns, sharing how they've worked to overcome societal pressures that discourage men from expressing emotions.
A few important topics covered in the episode include:
* The importance of having close male friendships where you can be vulnerable
* How bottling up emotions often leads to them coming out as anger later
* Ways to model healthy masculinity and emotional expression for children
* The healing power of therapy, medication, and having a supportive partner
* Finding hope even in the darkest moments of mental health struggles
This raw and honest discussion aims to reduce the stigma around men's mental health and encourage listeners to seek help if they're struggling. This conversation is an uplifting reminder that no one is alone in these challenges.
Hear more from Samir on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/samirmourani/].
Listen to Samir's Ted Talk "Redefining My Masculinity" here. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tQSvX6lLZk]
Get 10% OFF parenting courses and kids' printable activities at Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/] using the code ROBOTUNICORN.
We'd love to hear from you! Have questions you want us to answer on Robot Unicorn? Send us an email: podcast@robotunicorn.net.
Learn more about the Solving Bedtime Battles course here [https://nurturedfirst.com/courses/solving-bedtime-battles/].
Credits:
Editing by The Pod Cabin [https://thepodcabin.com/]
Artwork by Wallflower Studio [https://www.wallflowerstudio.co/]
Production by Nurtured First [https://nurturedfirst.com/]
Join me, Jess VanderWier, a registered psychotherapist, mom of three, and founder of Nurtured First, along with my husband Scott, as we dive deep into the stories of our friends, favourite celebrities, and influential figures.
In each episode, we skip the small talk and dive into vulnerable and honest conversations about topics like cycle breaking, trauma, race, mental health, parenting, sex, religion, postpartum, healing, and loss.
We are glad you are here.
PS: The name Robot Unicorn comes from our daughter. When we asked her what we should name the podcast, she confidently came up with this name because she loves robots, and she loves unicorns, so why not? There was something about the playfulness of the name, the confidence in her voice, and the fact that it represents that you can love two things at once that just felt right.
Welcome to Robot Unicorn.
We are so glad that you are here.
I think you guys both have stories of getting to this point where you're broken.
Right.
And you're like, I can't move forward anymore with the way that I'm feeling.
And as we talk today, I I thought it would be maybe helpful for both of you to share those stories like as much as you guys feel comfortable to.
'Cause I'm thinking of the dad who might be listening to the episode or a man like I don't think it it's not necessarily a dad listening who
maybe a set this episode because someone's like, you might be struggling with your mental health.
Like maybe listen to these guys talk.
And hearing the story of getting to that breaking point.
maybe will help someone feel like they don't have to get to that breaking point, right?
They can notice maybe some of the signs beforehand.
Because I think with both of you, your stories are, you know
Men don't cry, we don't have feelings, we don't acknowledge our mental health.
All of these things so that it got you to that point.
And and my hope would be
my mission here is that eventually down the road, we raise kids who don't need to get to that point, right?
We raise boys who don't need to get to a breaking point because they know from an early age
It's okay.
Like I'm allowed to have feelings.
Samir, I thought maybe you could introduce yourself just a little bit to our audience who might not know you.
and then talk about what your mission is and then maybe we can talk a little bit about your story.
Absolutely.
Firstly, thank you so much for having me on.
I'm on
Robot Unicorn, which is so cool.
Oh, we're so happy to have you here.
I mean you've helped us a lot with this podcast to grow it to the point that I'm gonna do it.
Well the first time Jess and I met and then after we recorded on Jen's talk, we had a brief conversation and I was immediately hooked by the idea of what you're trying to do and
I like to try and support people who are doing meaningful things.
If you said to me this was a podcast that was just talking about clickbait stuff, viral content, I'm like it just
I've gotten to a point in my life now where unless there's meaning behind something, I don't really want to associate with it.
Yeah.
But to to answer your question or to introduce myself rather
It's something I've actually been toying with.
I'm like, how do I introduce myself these days?
Because I wear so many hats and I'm like, how do I do that?
And then I was listening to I think it was Simon Sinek talk about stop introducing yourself by what you do and rather who you are.
So
I'm gonna try it now for the first time.
Okay.
My name is Samir, and I am a man who has struggled with his mental health.
for a number of years and as a result of that have decided to make it my life's work to support other men and I do that
by hosting a podcast called Jen's Talk, where we have conversations with experts like yourself, Jess, and actors, athletes, you name it, to pull the curtain back on what real masculinity looks like.
I've suddenly found myself in the public speaking realm, which is really cool.
I never thought I would enjoy that as much as I do.
I did the TED Talk back in January of this year and
Since then I've started doing more and more of these talks.
I'm doing one coming up to talk to a an incredible foundation out west about gender based violence and the role that the current form of masculinity plays in shaping young boys to grow up to become aggressive men.
Aside from that, I used to be a project manager, but I just I didn't find meaning in that.
I did it because the pay was great, the benefits were better.
And I just thought I had checked off all the right boxes.
I thought, you know what?
I got the job, the one that I was always told I was supposed to get.
Mm-hmm.
And then I got married.
And I thought, cool.
I'm checking off all the boxes.
Look at me guys.
Like I'm doing great.
I'm traveling.
I'm seeing great things.
Next on the list was to have kids
And then everything, I remember one day I was sitting there on my couch thinking, wow, I'm so content
And then it's like a week later I was suddenly was everything was flipped on its head.
I was moved from an office that I felt
so comfortable in because the people were great to an environment where nobody talked to each other, old gray walls everywhere.
It really sort of just felt completely isolated.
And then I realized
I had actually been distracting myself with work all this time without really comprehending what I was avoiding.
Because
One, I didn't know what was wrong, and I used to just bury it, because that's what we've been told all our lives.
Man up, be quiet, don't talk about it.
Boys don't cry, they don't show emotions.
If something's wrong, you bury it and you move forward
Absolutely.
And this was the true test of our masculinity.
This is how we compared ourselves to other men.
And the challenge is the goalposts are constantly moving.
Tomorrow versus last year is drastically different.
And it could be by the time this episode airs, you don't know what comes out and happens in the conversation space
But I realized in that moment that something was really wrong because work was now no longer my source of fulfillment.
And when I looked at the rest of my life,
Again, I'm married, I'm traveling, about to have kids.
But something just didn't feel right and I didn't know how to articulate any of that.
And so I fell into this sort of depression, never formally diagnosed, but I just remember
It was hard to wake up.
It was hard to to find any motivation in anything.
I would sit at my desk at work just staring at a blank screen for hours sometimes, phones ringing, emails coming through.
Not responding to anything, my work suffered.
I went from being, you know, superstar material to like, how did this guy have a job here?
Type of thing.
Very different from my personality in every way.
But
I didn't know what I could do.
And then I went down the rabbit hole of, you know, let's just go on YouTube and figure out what guys do once they want to get out of whatever state this is.
A lot of the the videos were about, you know, start going to the gym, change your diet.
It'll help kinda to your point.
Get those endorphins.
Get that
blood flow and I wasn't overweight by any stretch, but it was more like I was just carrying some weight because I wasn't working out or doing anything
And I started going to the gym and I started feeling better, but I only realized later that I was feeling better because of the way other people were looking at me
complimenting me and when you feel this small, the smallest compliment makes you feel this big.
And so I took those compliments to heart and was like, I need more of that.
So I kept going to the gym and I had dropped like forty pounds in three months.
Very unhealthy in the way I did it, but
And I was like, I want more of this.
And then suddenly I started getting all this extra attention from other guys saying, bro, you look good.
Like you've been working out.
What's the routine?
Share it.
random women, you know, like wow, you look fantastic.
I love your outfit, whatever.
But all of those little compliments started to really build me back up.
But that foundation is not stable.
And then what ended up happening was it forced me to really look inward and look at the relationship I was in.
And it highlighted to me that there was something still off in my relationship.
I was married and I didn't know how to articulate
I don't know what's wrong.
Like I don't have the words for it, but there's something wrong.
Fear of maybe hurting her, fear of not really knowing how to deal with the emotions.
Right, like there was no toolkit, guidebook.
No one ever pulled me aside and said, Hey son, this is how you do it.
My father never did that, not because he's a bad man or a bad father, but because he was never taught that.
He grew up without a father
So he did the best he could with the tools he had and here I am trying to do the best I could with the tools I had, except it was inadequate and there was nowhere to turn to.
to get that kind of reinforcement.
There was no men in my life that I could say to, hey, you know, I'm feeling a little bit weird and I don't even have the words for it.
You know, have you ever experienced that?
I couldn't do that.
Long story short
The relationship started to falter.
I didn't show up the way I wanted to as a partner, as a husband, as a friend, as a confidant, the way you would expect to with the person that's supposed to be closest to you
And I failed to show up the way I was supposed to.
I worked as hard as I did to get to the altar and then packed it up and said, All right, I'm done.
I've done the work.
I've checked off the box.
I don't need to put in the effort
And then one morning she packed her bags and said, You know what, I can't do this anymore.
There's a ton of stuff that happened in between but
She left and I just sat there in my condo, seven hundred square foot, not big by any stretch, but it felt massive.
And I was alone for the first time.
I'd never lived alone.
You know, I went from living with my parents to living with my wife to suddenly living alone.
And this was March 2020.
And I thought, all right, well, you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna do the one thing I know how to do very well.
I'm gonna distract myself.
So I buried myself in work again, forced myself to find
work I liked, went to bars and clubs and nightclubs and restaurants and hung out with friends and went to the gym so I had good outlets and not so good outlets.
Yeah
But I was distracting myself.
I watched every sport I could find on TV, movies, you name it.
And then a black swan event happened.
The pandemic rolled around, the lockdowns took effect, suddenly
There's no sports on TV, and I couldn't remember a time in my life where there was no sports on TV.
Couldn't go out, couldn't see friends, couldn't go to the gym.
Good outlets, bad outlets, all gone.
And I held it together for maybe a handful of days before one night I'm sitting on the couch and you know that Instagram filter, the black and white one that you can put on, it just felt like I was looking at a black and white filter.
Like I c I can't even
I can't even explain how it happened, but it just it's like my peripherals were gone and everything was just dark.
And it all just boiled to the surface and I star I broke down and I'm like this is I'm uncontrollably breaking down
Yeah.
It's funny when I think about it, I s it's still like it was probably the hardest night of my life.
Yeah.
Because
I realized in that moment it wasn't just the relationship that I was hurting over.
It was everything up to that point that I had never resolved.
from you know, my favorite uncle dying and at his funeral standing there like tensing up to hold in the tears because I can't cry.
Not because my dad said don't cry, but just because I thought that's what I was supposed to do.
You know, when I had my very first heartbreak
as a teenager.
My emotions are high, my hormones are wild, and instead of again, just allowing myself a moment to go, that hurt, buried them.
And imagine what holding in all of that for years will do to someone.
And they all boiled to the surface and then I went to wash my face and looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize the guy looking back at me.
It was this
ugly, angry, sad man just looking back at me.
And in the TED talk I I showed the photo that was a
First time I'd ever put the photo anywhere into doing on a TED talk is uh like talking about authenticity.
I'm like, if I'm gonna have this conversation, I'm gonna have this conversation.
And
You know, I don't I rarely shave, but I decided to shave like a handful of days before that.
And so the tear my face is red, the tears are streaming.
And I knew in that moment, if I didn't course correct, I don't know where I would end up
I didn't know if I had anyone in my life I could turn to.
I had talked to my parents, I had talked to my cousins, but I needed to actually work through it.
And I knew that the only way out was through.
I had to sit there and go, all right, Samir, we're gonna open up this Pandora's box and we're gonna have to figure out, you know, what's been holding you back all these years
You know, like this relationship, this passing, this job failure, this messy situation, this, this, this and this, and I had to literally pull them all out, resolve every single one of them, and that's not an overnight process by any stretch.
work through that.
It was the first time I'd gone to see a therapist and I remember sitting in the office with the therapist for the first time ever, thinking, oh my god, only crazy people come see therapists.
Like why am I here?
You know what I mean?
But it was a reflection again of this notion of what masculinity was supposed to be.
I grew up watching Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and funny enough I learned later how Marlon Brando was a very open and vulnerable human being.
But he portrayed an iconic character that slapped around his godson for crying because he was fearful of something.
And I thought that's what I needed to do.
Right.
But working through it all
I learned that one, I stopped caring what other people thought.
And kind of to your point, when you have people coming to you because you finally being authentic, there's a freedom in that
You stop caring.
You know, I don't care if someone looked at me and said, that guy's going through something.
Because yeah, I am.
Yep.
And you know what?
You're not gonna do anything to save me.
Only I'm gonna save me.
And so I have to
go through the pain.
I have to go through it.
I have to go through the nights of breaking down again.
I had to go through the nights of realizing this is where I screwed up.
This is where I'm at fault.
But also understanding where I'm not at fault.
Where I was blaming myself for things that I shouldn't have blamed myself for.
And that again is not an overnight process, but in hindsight, the pandemic
Forcing lockdowns kind of expedited a lot of things.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
I was there for hours doing this stuff versus, oh, you know what?
I'm I finished early from work today.
I can spare, you know, an hour to to work on myself.
Yeah.
It's like, no, no.
I'm you know, I have my laptop up
literally on the other laptop, just like reading, listening, watching.
And it took a while to understand the difference between real, meaningful experts, thought leaders versus performative
masculinity.
Yes.
Right.
It's difficult to know differentiate between the two sometimes.
Yeah.
I mean I get asked all the time, you know, like why do a lot of these performative
masculine personalities on social media do so well.
And it took me a while to finally come up with the words to explain why.
I just like I knew there's a reason and I couldn't put it into words.
And then I thought to myself, well let's actually go through with what they're doing here.
If you're a young man growing up being told, man up, be quiet, your emotions don't matter, you don't matter.
And then here comes along a very charismatic social media savvy influencer says, Hey, I see you.
I see the crap you're dealing with.
And I can feel you because I felt the same thing.
But come with me, I'll show you how you actually get out of that.
Except when they follow along this journey.
And they see other men doing it too because social media is public.
So you see the comment section.
You see other guys going, Yeah, that's the way you do it.
And you go, Oh, okay.
And then you see some women saying, Yeah
That's what the definition of a man should be.
And you go, okay, so if I wanna be with her and I want them to be my friends, I gotta follow this route.
And then when they follow this route, it's basically
just a different form of negative masculinity.
It's still don't talk about your emotions.
You just have to go work out.
It's a lot of working out, I feel like, right?
So we're going on that same masculine treat, but it's like, let's just work out.
Just package different though.
Yeah, it's just packaged different.
I wanted to talk about so as you were sharing your story, you talk about like that moment that you're in your apartment, your condo, and you're breaking down
And then we kind of jumped to like going to therapy.
But was there anything in between that that like conversations that you had or
Like what was the first time like you actually said, like, look, I'm genuinely struggling here?
Because I know that that's a hard yeah.
That's a hard step to make.
So I surveyed my surroundings and thought, all right, who can I actually talk to?
Went through my list.
Can't talk to them.
Can't talk to them.
I've lost them in the divorce.
Can't talk to them
And so I'm like, who am I gonna be able to talk to?
And funny enough, there was a a guy who's now one of my best friends in the world.
His name is Daniel Deering.
I was actually just at his wedding uh this past weekend
I called him because of a single conversation we had had, I think maybe two years earlier, where he had expressed a vulnerability to me.
about a relationship he was in and I'm like, I don't really know you, and you're kind of telling me this.
So I wasn't in a position to receive it.
I was just kinda like this guy is weird.
Why is he telling me this?
But
I was like, you know what?
Let me just send him a message and see if he's open to talking.
I sent him a message.
He's like, yeah, let's chat in an hour and pick up the phone and I'm ready to to talk about anything but the reason I was calling
And there was something comforting about talking to someone that felt a little more like a stranger than like a friend.
And just to give you even more context, Daniel was my ex-wife's sister's best friend.
Okay.
Okay.
So like even further removed, right?
So in my mind, I'm talking to this guy that probably has all sorts of preconceived notions of who I am now because
you know, by proximity and relations, I'm the bad guy, I'm the devil.
But he picked up the phone and before I could really say anything, he goes, you know, Samir, I'm actually struggling today.
I'm like, I said, hey, how are you?
And he goes, I'm struggling.
He's a beach volleyball player.
He was actually in Paris competing for Team Canada.
And at the time he had just started his journey to work towards the Olympics and he goes, I can't
do anything.
Not only can I not compete, I can't even train.
And this is one of those things where I can't train at home.
It's if I'm not training on a court
My body is not in a position where I can perform at an elite level when this we don't know how long it's gonna be, whenever the pandemic ends.
Like you can hear the pain in his voice, and I just thought in that moment
This is what vulnerability looks like.
This is what it sounds like.
And while I was already fearful of what I was going to talk about, I suddenly like felt myself just completely relaxed.
And I just said to him, you know, I'm I'm struggling.
Honestly, I'm just struggling.
I've never been in this position before.
I don't know anybody who's
going through a divorce.
I don't know the first thing about this.
I don't know how to reconcile the fact that I'm no longer so and so's husband, so and so's son in law.
I'm now just Samir and I don't even know who that is.
And we talked for what was maybe two, three hours, just what are you feeling?
And immediately I realized him giving me that space.
And it's not like he even said very much.
It was mostly me talking.
But him giving me the space to have that conversation immediately made me go, okay, I need to do more of this.
Because
Maybe all these other people are on to something.
Like maybe the talking is the thing.
Like it sounds simple and to some degree it could sound ridiculous.
It's like, all right, I talked about it, great, now what?
Yeah.
But sometimes it's literally just getting it out of your head and out.
And just be like, just get rid of it.
And doing that was immediate like I needed more of it.
But then I s you know, still when I went to therapy I was battling that like uh there's like a person that's being paid to sit across from me right now.
probably judging me and I'm probably like one of eight other people they're seeing and they're only really just sitting there nodding and trying to be warm to me so that I can talk more and come back and spend more and like I had all these like judgments without actually really participating in the therapy, like really giving it away.
Real chance.
And it took maybe four sessions before I was finally like, all right, I'm tired.
Can we just talk?
Right
And now I try to do the same thing for other people.
And to your earlier point, I I always position myself as I'm not an expert.
I'm not a trained psychiatrist.
I don't have a degree in anything.
I just have lived experience.
I went through hell.
I saw the demon in the mirror.
I went through the pain.
I came out the other side.
I'm so much better today than I ever could have imagined.
And that old version of Samir that existed even before the pain doesn't hold a light to who I am today.
because of the work that I've done.
And I still have so much to do.
Like this is not a once you're finally on the other side and you're healed and you're not grieving a past relationship or a trauma that suddenly you're good.
It's like there's constant work you're doing all the time
Because life is constantly throwing you curveballs.
Definitely.
It's a lifelong journey.
Yeah.
Yeah, I always say that like to clients and ev even to myself, right?
It's like it's always a journey
There's not like some finish line.
It's like, okay, I'm healed.
Right.
Yeah.
That would be nice because That would be nice.
Oh, that'd be true.
That would be great.
Like I wish.
I always decline.
It's like I wish I could give that to you, but that's not what it is.
And to your point about therapy
I've heard that from so many clients too, right?
They're like, Well, you're only here 'cause I'm paying you.
It's like, well, it's more than that, right?
And I think even about talking about how you feel.
Like it sounds so simple.
Yeah, just say how you feel.
But it's not that simple.
Because when you
Talk about what you feel, you're going through layers and layers of like messaging about, well I can't share this and will someone think I am ridiculous if I say that and like
speaking.
Speaking your story out to anyone fully.
And the hard part is is for a lot of men I think they try and speak it out to another man and they might not know what to do or say.
Right.
And so then they might speak it and the person is uncomfortable.
Kind of like what you were describing when this friend initially told you his problems, right?
You were uncomfortable and you don't know how to receive it
You don't know how to receive it because men don't talk about these things.
So then I think that can give a message too to yourself.
Like well then yeah, I shouldn't share
Right.
I shouldn't say anything because the first thing he says when you ask how are you doing I'm kinda struggling today.
No.
Maybe now that's more common, but how often was that previously the way people respond?
Everyone's always like, Yeah, I'm good.
I'm fine.
Oh, you know, work, busy.
Yeah.
And that was it.
And you go, okay, cool.
And like
We know.
We know if we probed a little bit more, they would probably say something, but we don't want to because we don't want to receive all that and then not know what to do with it.
It's uncomfortable.
Mm.
There's a sitting in discomfort, I think that's really hard.
I mean for women too, when we talk about things, but specifically for men, that it's uncomfortable when you call your buddy and he's like, Yeah, I'm having a really shitty day.
It's like ugh
Oh well I don't know.
You don't even know how to deal with your own emotions, right?
Is there anything more uncomfortable than talking about emotions for men?
Like I'm trying I've been trying to think while you were talking there, if there's anything that could be more uncomfortable
I don't think so.
I mean I was really uncomfortable.
Even in that story where he was sharing something with me and it was just like
I c I was just like counting we literally had I remember it perfectly.
We had come upstairs back to the condo from a party we were throwing for a family member downstairs.
And it was him, myself and another guy and he shared that and I had whatever I was bringing back downstairs in my hand thinking, maybe if I just stand here like
twenty more seconds I can then be like, all right, we should get going because they're waiting for the first time.
Yeah, like how can I wrap this conversation up?
Unfairly to him because he had always been the type to just
lead with vulnerability.
And again, when you consider that if that was his experience with me, and then I pick up the phone to call him to s to try and express something, and again he leads with vulnerability again, that's the hard part is you're gonna get rejected at times.
Mm-hmm.
And for men, it takes a lot of courage for a lot of men to even start that process.
And if it's met with a rejection the first time, you go, oh see, that's why I don't do it.
Mm-hmm.
And in particular, if you're having that conversation like with your partner, so in my case, if I had that conversation with with a girl and she rejected me.
And I told my buddies like, oh yeah, you know, like I was we were trying to have a conversation, she shut me down.
Those guys are gonna go, this is why you can't talk to women about this either.
Right.
Because they'll see you as less than, they'll see you as weak
I was like, you can't provide, you're not alpha or whatever.
Like I don't know why we start throwing around these Greek terms, but basically like you're not capable.
Right.
And you now take that in and go, I have to be uber successful, I can't show emotions, and I have to take all of everyone's challenges on my shoulders because that's what men do.
We're the problem solvers.
Just grin and bear it.
Yep.
Yeah.
And somehow we're supposed to be okay by the end of it, and we wonder why we grow up to be alcoholics, drug abusers
criminal offenders.
Not all of us obviously, but the stats are shocking and they're only getting worse.
So like where are we going wrong?
And I'm very much a proponent and believer that it's easier
to teach young men than it is to heal broken men.
Absolutely.
So how do we teach the next generation of young men that expressing yourself is not going to suddenly mean you're not a capable man in a relationship
And we see some of that on social media, but the ones that go the most viral are the ones that drum up the most amount of arguments because that's how it works.
That's how the algorithms work, which is why performative masculinity
has basically filled the void.
And that is the leading discourse when it comes to conversations about what it means to be a man today
So when we go all the way back to when I was introducing myself and I talk about the work I'm trying to do is trying to fill that void with another voice.
mine, the people who come on the podcast, people I talk to, just to say, hey, let's change this narrative.
Let's really understand what it means to be a man today.
You can express your emotions, you can feel your emotions.
No one's saying run around cry to everybody.
Time and place.
Right?
If you're in the workplace, that's not maybe the best time for you to, you know, go around to your coworkers in the middle of a workday being like, I'm not feeling great.
If you really need to do that, then take some time away, right?
But go work through it.
When you're emotionally regulated, you're actually stronger.
Right?
Then you can actually move forward.
That's what we're talking about.
And to talk to most men, we almost have to take away the whole, you know, like it's okay to cry because sometimes it r they're like
I don't want to cry.
I'm not ready to cry.
Right?
They're not there yet.
And so you have to slowly introduce it to just be like, yeah, man, you know, I'm actually really anxious because I might not get that promotion.
If I don't get that promotion, I can't buy the house I want to buy.
I can't get married.
I can't whatever.
And you start with something like that and you go, Oh yeah, I actually you know, I'm struggling at work too.
Yeah, I have this really terrible boss or
I'm applying to multiple jobs because I just I can't be here anymore.
And then it's like you do that, I guarantee the next time you go and you have a conversation with each other.
You go a little further, a little further, and then suddenly you're actually having real meaningful conversations.
And isn't that the trick to having a meaningful friendship and relationship with another human being?
Is real connection, not surface level
Well and I think even on that note and on a deeper level, when we can create real friendships, like real authentic
authentic friendships, that can actually help us in our healing journey too.
Like I'm thinking about you, Scott, and I know you had a moment too many years ago, not to speak your story, you can say it yourself.
But when we had our first daughter, I think there was a lot of time in your life that you were kinda like, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.
You've been through a lot of trauma as a kid and you'd witnessed a lot of different things.
sort of distract myself from that.
But like Samir mentioned about the project manager, you also had a great job.
You were making a lot of money.
You had a great job for being just out of university.
It's like all the things that you should have, right?
Traveling around the world for my work.
Like it was amazing in terms of the actual work that it was doing.
And anyone who would talk about Scott would be like, he's doing great.
You know, he maybe didn't have the best childhood, but
He couldn't be doing better.
He's a good job.
Like that's what you should have.
You make a lot of money.
That's what you should do.
All those things that provide for your family.
And then when we had our first daughter, like that was your first moment
Not the biggest one, I wouldn't say.
But definitely not the biggest one, but it was the first true moment where I had to sit there and think
Wow.
I have not dealt with a lot of things that I probably should have dealt with before having a child.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It was definitely one of my lower moments then, and there were some
It triggered.
Yeah.
Hey friends, so at pickup last week, our daughter asked Scott a truly kind of tricky question in front of her younger siblings.
Scott was telling me that when he heard a question like this, he used to panic, but this time he had a plan.
And he said to our daughter, thank you for asking.
Let's talk
tonight when we've got privacy.
And that's a line that he learned straight from our new body safety and consent course at Nurture First.
So this new body safety and consent course is taught by me.
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Can I tell you what I think is different between like your lowest moment and the moment Samir's talking about and that one?
I've just been thinking about this the whole discussion.
That one, it came out in anger.
Yes.
Right.
It didn't come out in tears.
And I think that's the case for a lot of men.
That's that's the only emotion we've ever been allowed to express.
That's what we're doing.
If you're sad, you have to express it through anger.
If you're scared, anger
So he was just angry.
Angry, quote unquote.
So you were mad.
Yeah, not even well, maybe specif like specifically at one person, but in general it was just anger.
And it was outward in every single event or situation I was in, it was just I was uncontrollable, no direction to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just spray.
anger everywhere type of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that that to your point, it's what ends up happening to us because we've been conditioned since childhood to think that, you know, if you laugh, you're okay.
And when you're happy, you can express laughter
But if you're sad, fearful, anxious, depressed, you name it anger.
That's it.
You know, you grow up on action flicks where the guy loses the girl, he's angry.
That's how
the story goes.
And so we have to unlearn how to be angry almost.
And then relearn how to express our emotions.
And that's the part where
You know, when we talk about guys being very aggressive and when you really have conversations with them, you understand to your point, it's just misdirected anger because they don't know how to express themselves otherwise.
They don't even know that they have the permission to express themselves otherwise.
I had an interesting conversation on GenS Talk with a doctor from KMH, Dr.
Ishrat.
Hussein, who actually talked about postpartum depression, but for men, particularly brand new fathers, because they don't know how to express the full range of emotions that they're suddenly feeling
And they don't know how to share that.
And so they actually go through something as well, but we don't actually look at it the same way because there isn't a biological change that happens.
Right.
So it was something that he brought up and he's saying that there's more and more conversations at least at the research level into that and I just thought that that was fascinating because I mean I don't have kids but I have two of my best closest men in my life.
One of them's gonna have a kid in like a month.
The other one just found out that they're gonna have a kid and they're both so excited.
And I'm watching them going, I sincerely hope that
they're in a position where they're able to work through their emotions.
And we have these conversations.
I have them with them all the time.
Like it y the men in my life know that if you're gonna have a conversation with me
We're gonna get deep.
It's not gonna be surface level.
Yeah.
Like that just doesn't happen.
Yeah, I know.
That's that's our that's our thing too with our friends.
Yeah.
I mean that's how you have that real connection, right?
But I think to your point about postpartum depression as a perinatal therapist
It shows up in men.
Anger, like how it showed up in you.
Gaming.
Gaming all the time.
All of a sudden also showed up in you.
Right.
It shows up in not being able to bond with the baby.
It shows up in working, like being overproductive.
It doesn't typically show up in tears, but it is a depression, right?
It just shows up in a different way
And I think that that's the case for many men, probably even that are listening right now, right?
It's like I don't know how to feel this way, these emotions towards my child.
I don't know how to feel all of this.
So it's gonna come across and that's like distraction, distracting myself.
And the emotions are gonna come out, but it it's likely gonna be anger because that's more acceptable.
I'm allowed to be angry and in your case.
Well, that's all.
Let's say that's all I saw.
That's all you ever saw, right?
you saw angry men a lot.
And so when you felt something, it was okay for you to be angry.
That was okay.
And then that situation in that time the situation kinda died down and you never dealt with the feeling underneath it.
Yeah, I dealt with it, let's say, twenty-five percent of the way, and I should have kept pushing forward and dealing with it, but it sort of felt like it went away for a time.
And then yeah, of course there's all these distractions and
Again, I'm so busy with work, I'm gone fifty percent of the year traveling the world.
Then when I'm back I'm trying to spend all of this time with my daughter and get all the activities in in that short period of time I have with her, and then I'm gone again and I didn't really
There's no time for you to just there was definitely no time for me.
And I was the thing is I would read all the self-help books in my travels and I would finish two books a week.
But they never got deep.
No.
Right?
It's self-help.
Like how can I make more money?
How can I
Yeah, a lot of them were related to sales and engineering and w whatever different types of books, but not like even some psychological books on self-help, but I file
found that but to Samir's point about the masculinity that's like just enough, right?
Yeah it's maybe like just enough reflection that you feel like you're you're doing something, you're being different, you're moving forward.
But never the actual work that makes you open yourself up and be so vulnerable.
So I like in simpler terms, and this is sometimes how I reframe it for conversations I'm having.
It's like
saying you're gonna go to the gym, finally getting to the gym, but just deciding I'm gonna take a very casual stroll on the treadmill.
And I'm I'm good.
That's it.
And that's where it ends.
It's like, well I got to the gym
uh check.
Yeah.
But it's actually like when you're in the gym, that's when you have to really do the work.
Yeah.
Same idea.
Right.
It's like uh just enough that
Yeah, I'm doing some I'm working on myself.
That's the sexy thing to say.
Yeah, I'm I'm doing work on myself.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
And then really only you know and the people closest to you know.
It's not going very far.
Mm-hmm.
I'm curious about the gaming piece that you talk about.
Because I'm a gamer.
Okay.
But I use it as a tool to decompress.
Yeah.
There have been times where I just
game excessively.
Used to play a lot as a kid.
Stop because I was told that gaming is bad for you.
And yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
And then uh picked it back up during the pandemic because it was the only real social outlet
I was able to get on a headset, talk to some of my friends, and play video games.
And even now, it's mostly our social connection because we all live so far away from each other.
So we'll go on, we'll play for an hour, an hour and a half, but we're just really talking and we're talking about life, we're talking about things.
So I found that there's something therapeutic about doing that versus solo gaming, for example
I wonder if Scott you should like maybe share what that looked like for you when it was unhealthy.
Well yeah, and I think there's that's the difference, right?
Like gaming in itself is not
unhealthy.
Yeah.
It's more when I was playing I would still play with buddies, but I would play, let's say, Warzone.
Mm-hmm.
And I would get so enraged by how badly I was playing.
And it would just be every night and it wouldn't actually make me feel better.
It would make me feel
Way worse.
I would be angry coming back upstairs, essentially rage quitting, because I was I was playing so poorly.
In in the past m I would play and I would be significantly better, but yeah, as I'm older I guess my uh my reflexes are not as good.
And I just at a certain point Jess asked me, Are you sure that this is actually helping you?
Because he would say it was to decompress.
Like I have to.
And it was to spend time with people that I wasn't able to see and we would go on a couple nights or a few nights a week and I would the problem is I would be playing, like I would get obsessive over watching YouTube videos.
Like, how do how can I play this better?
And I would play on the other nights too to practice.
the and that would be my issue and then I would be unhappy every time I played.
And to the point of like your big breakdown, which I think we'll talk about, but this kind of started when we had our second daughter.
So maybe it just started during COVID.
the first daughter was yeah, like connect with my friends and I think it started from like a healthy place.
And then what I remember from my perspective is it turned into like I have to play.
And like so if the kids were up late or they weren't like going to sleep when they were supposed to go to sleep
And then you've been mad at the kids.
Why are you up?
Like I have to play.
I have to have my time.
I have to have my alone time.
I have to have my decompression time.
But it wasn't decompressing.
So then I would be upstairs with the kids trying to put them to bed and Scott's in the basement playing
And I can just hear him like getting angry and swearing and then comes upstairs and he's all mad.
I'm like, how is this decompressing too?
Yeah.
I think that was the question you asked me.
And like Yeah, and you couldn't
I couldn't answer it.
You couldn't answer it.
The one night I really had to sit down and say, Scott, like I'm concerned.
Not just about the gaming, but in general.
Like I think your mental health is struggling a lot after
This like kind of continued till we had our third baby.
And if this is your way to decompress, I don't think it's working.
It's almost as if like that was the only way you were able to manifest what you were feeling from everything else.
Yeah
The anger was a very good thing.
Yeah, probably.
Like that was the whole thing.
It was like, okay, this is the one arena that I can now be that loud angry man and get it all out of my system.
Except to your point, by the time you're done, you're now so
That you like you're like, I don't know.
Yeah, I couldn't sleep even afterwards.
Like I You're still thinking about it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember you'd come up and you'd be all angry and of course I'm a therapist.
I'm like
I know it's not about this.
Like I know it's not about this.
Like the way you're getting angry telling me about something, something like who cares about the video game, right?
But it's an outlet and it's a way and it's
acceptable.
It's socially acceptable, right?
It was all of those things, distraction, outlet, whatever, everything all wrapped into one.
You know, it's funny because I I associate or I equate gaming in some ways to why men take such like passion in sports.
It's again another opportunity to finally express yourself
in a loud way amongst other groups of men where it's acceptable because you see them doing it.
And then I started thinking
Okay, well why do we like sports so much?
Like why do we gravitate to it?
Outside of the the competitive angle to it.
Sports is also one of those arenas that allows men to express emotions that they otherwise would not be able to.
When you see, you know, a basketball player
tap another basketball player on the bum.
You don't think anything of it.
You see hockey players do it.
They tap on the head, tap on the bum as they're changing, they score a goal, whatever.
Yeah.
They hug.
Sometimes they'll kiss each other on the cheek, they s they cry, they show emotion, and we resonate with that.
We love it.
We want more of it.
It's because we crave it.
We want that connection and we don't have an outlet to show it, which is why sometimes we'll gravitate to sports, even if we're not good at it, because we just we want that outlet.
We want the ability to show that emotion.
And in gaming, it does the same for me too.
There are plenty of nights where I've gone to bed pissed off because my buddy didn't push when he was supposed to and he didn't buy the loadout and we died and like if you're a gamer and you understand this.
It's just it's so upsetting even thinking about it.
Yeah, I know.
But it's been uh several years
years since I've played and I can still feel it.
Yeah.
But even like now I do this thing where I'm like, you know what?
If I get mad, just remember Samir, it's a video game.
The real reason you're even playing this video game is because you're playing it with your friends.
When they're not playing, I don't even pick up the controller.
So that's the real reason I'm there.
And it's that constant just reminder for me
Still get mad and Mila my partner will literally say to me like what happened?
Who who who upset you today?
Right?
And I would start
Listing it all off and as I'm telling her, I'm just I start laughing just like this is hell.
Like why am I even upset about this?
Yeah.
And I think it's good you have to have that awareness and the ability I feel like for some people like Scott, like maybe that type of game we kind of recognized might
does not be a good fit for you.
And maybe now it would be different, but yeah, at that time it was not serving the purpose I was saying externally.
Exactly.
Yeah, it was like, oh, I need this to decompress.
But now a lot of the games that I play satisfy a lot of the needs that I have, but in more puzzle-based
games.
Yeah, and then I play it with the girls too.
So then that can't get mad there.
No, exactly.
Or if I do, they would
probably call me out for it, right?
It's my own.
Kids are the best for calling you out for all of the things that you do poorly.
Yeah, they're good at shining a mirror into like the the things that you might be struggling with, right?
I wonder, Scott, if you're able to share about your point of kind of breaking down.
Well, I mean, that's a lifelong Yeah.
I think what caused it, but in two to three sentences.
In two to three sentences, yeah.
There was a public event that a family member that I do not have
uh connection with anymore that has been out of my life for several years now.
They showed up to an event that they were not invited to.
And I guess long story short
It resulted in me getting a restraining order, a peace bond, going through the whole court system in order to make that official, that they were not allowed to attend anything or any location that we were known to be frequenting.
They have to stay a certain distance away from me and the kids and Jess.
Can I push you on something for a minute?
Yep.
Of course, always.
I feel like I asked you to talk about the situation where you broke down and you're talking about the facts uh that happened after and not like the emotion that you were feeling in that moment.
Oh yeah, well in that moment
when this person showed up, it was probably the most frantic energy that I've ever experienced in my life to end up having a cardiac arrest just because my heart was going
completely insane.
And I don't even know what I saw.
Like I all during that moment I felt like everything was just constricting
And I saw I had tunnel vision and I spoke to very specific people to discuss the problem, but I don't even remember what I was saying to them at that point.
It was just so almost out-of-body experience
But in the worst way.
Mm-hmm.
It was kind of sim to Samir's moment of like that black and white, right?
It was like your entire life you've been able to be angry or be upset or
Just like have all these other emotions, but then when this person broke this one boundary that you had and showed up somewhere where your children were, and I wasn't there, and it was your breaking point in terms of
Feeling unsafe.
There was this event with hundreds of other parents and grandparents and different people there.
And I was just in the back pacing.
back and forth the entire hour and a half that we were there and just bawling.
Just in the back and there were people just standing around like, what is this guy doing?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and our daughter was like on the stage
Yeah, she was on stage and doing this thing and I'm always.
All those things are just compounding on top of each other on top of the fact that you're already feeling like you're about to just like And he's like I have to stay because our daughter's on stage
But it's like all these years of your life you didn't allow tears.
You didn't allow yourself to feel what you were really feeling.
And then in that next for sure, a whole year
But during that first two months of that experience, it was at almost every moment that I was awake, there were tears in my eyes.
I was
basically in a corner of our house just bawling.
The kids were kind of wondering like what's going on with dad?
And they would come up and comfort me and all that, but it was just a release of all of those feelings.
Not from that one moment specifically, but all of these moments leading up to it.
That was the straw.
That was the straw.
It was yeah, thir over thirty years of tears.
Yeah, and all of these major life events that were either traumatic or abusive and traumatic and like all of these things are being brought to the surface and there's no holding it back anymore
Can I ask you in that moment did you feel like you were anything less than a man?
In that moment?
Yeah, 100% I did
Yeah, I would say like I shouldn't be get it together, Scott.
Yeah.
You literally would say that about it.
Why can't I just stop crying?
Like I need I have to be doing things.
We have to be getting back to work.
Like I You were embarrassed
Yeah.
Oh yeah, definitely embarrassed.
Because of course it happened in the most public setting.
I mean even now, knowing what you know, being
as far along as you are if you were to suddenly start crying in public, that's an embarrassing thing for anyone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well and I'm sure I looked insane because I was just
I was not running, but it was probably fast enough that it looked like I was just running back and forth in the back pacing.
It was a very scary moment.
I had a lot of people that I knew there texting me like
Scott's not okay right now.
Yeah.
And it was it was not good.
But in the same way, I truly believe that everyone's tears eventually have to come out in some way or another, maybe it's thirty-five years later
Right, but like tears will come out.
And so that was your moment where it was like, it yeah, you were upset about that event, sure, but it was about
all like you were saying All these other events.
Little Scott and the trauma that you went through then and like all of these losses along the way.
And one final thing happened and then you hit that breaking point.
And then you were forced to
have to deal with your emotions and like you talked about smear same thing like you have a choice, right?
And in that choice a lot of people will choose not that it's like conscious, but like alcohol
or drugs or getting deep into video games or porn or like an addiction because they don't have the tools or the resources available to deal with that feeling that they have.
And that feeling is so awful and hellish, like you said, that you want to get out of it in any way possible, right?
And I remember us talking about that during that time.
Thankfully that was never the path for you.
I know it's a little bit surprising too, just because of
like on both sides of my family, there's substance abuse, there's significant mental health issues.
My grandfather committed suicide because he felt like he couldn't share about any of his thoughts and feelings.
And like even that event
I felt like I wasn't able to share like cry because that's not what we do.
So when you look back on that event now
You know, in a as you're talking about thank you for sharing that by the way.
But as you're talking about it, again, I'm not an expert, but I noticed a little bit of shifting and discomfort from
a bit more of that relaxed version of you that existed maybe five minutes ago.
Um what do you think about like if you can go back and talk to Scott that was in that moment, what would you say to him?
Knowing what you know today.
Yeah.
Good question.
So you're talking about the moment that my lowest Scott that was pacing.
Yeah.
Yeah, good question.
I mean I would probably tell myself
that it's going to be okay.
Your children are safe.
Because I think that was the biggest thing in my mind at that specific moment was my children are unsafe.
I need to get them out of this.
And maybe even more deeply, it was me.
Little me that was unsafe.
So I think a reminder of that.
I'm like, you are okay, you're safe, you're allowed to feel
upset about the fact that this person is here, but you're not gonna get hurt and your kids are not gonna get hurt.
I think that probably would have been the thing that I would have said in that moment.
And that whether or not that would have fully calmed me down, probably not, but it probably would have brought me back a little bit more to reality.
Your body was existing in a state of your childhood emotions
Yeah.
I believe in that moment.
You saw someone who has hurt you as a child and you resorted back to being that twelve year old boy being hurt.
Right, or or whatever age that was.
I think that's where your body remembered that and came back to that age and you couldn't access your logical.
No, oh 100%.
There was no logic.
And the irony of that too is I imagine I mean I don't know who the person is, I don't know what their build is, but I imagine you would be capable of defending yourself if you needed to.
But in that moment to Jess's point, when you go back to being that little boy who couldn't defend himself, you suddenly, despite your current build, feel weak.
Yeah.
And I've heard victims of abuse talk about that
where when they come face to face with their abuser in any way, it's like they resort back to feeling helpless.
They can't even if they can physically take them ten times over, it's like all the strength in their body just wears away and they're helpless.
And they're afraid and that yeah, one hundred percent that was exact what I had in that moment.
Like I said, there was no logic or reasoning with me at that point.
And they feel like the months even after, right?
It it takes a lot to get back to your present state.
So you feel like even the months after, like all the tears that you had, it was
Tears of all these things that happened to you as a child and as a young adult and adolescent, like all of those tears came out and you weren't in your adult brain anymore.
For a while
It took me a bit to get back there.
And what would you say?
And Samir, I want to ask you the same question, about your healing journey and what's been helpful to you.
Because I I now know like if someone's listening, they're probably like, okay
So I'm not alone in my mental health.
Other men never alone.
You're never alone.
Yeah.
And other men have been in this state.
I know a friend was describing this to us recently, like a dark cloud is over their whole life
Yeah, and everything is hopeless.
They feel as though nothing will fix this and they're gonna have to deal with this their entire life.
This feeling of this crushing weight of life
And everyone's story is different.
Every person who gets to that breaking point might have been through something different.
Doesn't always mean you had a traumatic childhood.
It it could
be from many different reasons.
But I'm curious, like to the person listening, there's a healing journey out there.
There's hope on the other side.
Scott, yours is more recent.
Smears yours
Still is pretty recent.
What would you each, like Scott, we can finish your story up first say about your healing journey and what's been helpful to that person who's in that spot right now
I think having someone to talk to.
So I would say you, of course, have been the biggest help in that.
And then even outside of just you, friends and family that I've been able to talk to.
And finally share truly
some of these stories of what I dealt with, having the ability to have those discussions has been the most healing.
So I mean yeah, I'm on medication for anxiety.
I have been seeing therapists.
That's all very helpful and
Of course, that is something that is important and you should do, but I think having that person that you can talk to, that one person that I can go back to and just have this conversation and really, I don't know, speak out.
what truly happened is the most powerful that I was able to experience.
Similar to to you, for me it was having Daniel
initially to be able to say, you know, it's okay to not be okay.
And showing me what life could be like as a man, looking at another man, leading with vulnerability, going, I can work through these things
But also I was very, very fortunate in that I met my current fiance in the pandemic.
And she women I think also have such an important role to play in
modern masculinity because you can either hold space for it or you can, to an earlier point I made, send it down a very different rabbit hole.
She gave me space to express myself.
She said, You're going through something traumatic
I totally understand as much as I can understand that this is not easy.
Let me remind you, I don't think that this in any way you dealing with the anxiety of a divorce, the anxiety of dealing with lawyers and the fact
that your savings are being depleted by fees and all these things.
None of that for any second makes me think that you're not capable of being
a partner, a future husband, a future father, or any of that.
So get all that nonsense out of your brain and just focus on healing yourself and focus on your journey.
And having a partner like that, like I I can't put a value on that.
But I also say that knowing there's going to be people who don't have that.
Yeah.
And I think that's the challenge.
is when you really feel like there isn't anyone in your circle, the way I had felt at that very moment where I was like, I gotta go through my phone book to see who I can talk to.
Because no one immediately jumps to mind
And in that scenario, I think the first course of action would be try to seek professional help.
Yeah.
Because at least you have an outlet while you develop
the relationships with the people around you.
And I promise you there will be people around you in your life that you will be able to have a conversation with.
You just have to you have to try.
Yeah.
And that part's uncomfortable.
And if you're so uncomfortable with trying, start with a professional because at least that'll help show you how to have the conversation.
And then you can start to integrate the people in your life that you're comfortable with to share with them.
And if they don't reciprocate, because there will be people who are super close to you and
We'll show up at all your main events in your life, all your wins, and we'll show up when someone in your life passes away and you feel like they're super close, but when you really try to have that conversation with you, they're like, nope, can't do it
It's okay too.
Mm-hmm.
It just means that that connection is a different one.
Yeah.
And there will be I've made connections with men in my life now that I never in my life would have thought
would be this close to me.
Under no other circumstances would he and I be having these types of deep conversations, but our relationship is stronger
than relationships I've had with people that have spanned two decades, three decades.
And so don't be afraid, firstly, to start with a professional if you need to.
I promise you it's not for crazy people.
Just get that nonsense out of your head because that's what I thought
In the same way, you know, like when you hurt your arm, your knee, you go to a doctor, it's the same concept.
Right?
The exact same concept.
Yeah.
And I think to the point about friends that you both made, there's like an intimacy that can come with friendship when you're willing to be vulnerable.
And we've noticed that too, I think.
since Scott hit that breaking point, he had no choice but to be vulnerable with his friends because truthfully some of them were there that matters.
Yeah, some of them were there.
And I mean you could see it on me.
There is no way that you could He couldn't get through a conversation.
Yeah.
So we had no choice but to be vulnerable, but because of that, there's been so many gifts in the fact that your friendship's deepened.
Yes, you have me, but you also have friends that you can call and talk to.
Yeah, 100%.
Now I have 10 people that I could easily pick up the phone and call.
That point there is so important.
It took me a long time to learn that my partner can't be everyone to meet.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And
I put a lot on my partner being my romantic partner, my confidant, my best friend, my advisor.
Too much for any one person to hold that space for one person.
Like it's just too much.
Yeah.
I would not be able to hold all of that
for Mila.
It just I can't.
And sh I can't expect her to do the same, which is why it's so important to have those relationships outside.
Yeah.
Because otherwise you're dumping everything on one person.
There's no more room for the relationship to grow
You're just constantly dumping.
So when you have those other relationships, and I highly encourage men in particular, go have other male friends.
Yeah.
You need that
Because you need to see how they've gone through their situations.
You need to understand how they've resolved their past traumas, how they're working through things, and maybe they haven't.
But you're doing it together and that's real meaningful relationships.
Yeah, I think male friendships can be so beautiful.
And I know men maybe don't want to hear that, but they truly can be.
And I think we think, oh, it's just about watching sports together, it's just a b but every man you know is going through some
thing in their life too, right?
Like sometimes the sports are just an excuse to get together and it can result in those kinds of conversations.
Exactly watch sports together.
I've literally heard people say that golf was invented so that men can get on a pitch and just
Talk for four or five hours.
That's the only reason why it was invented.
Yeah.
Because it's the only sport where you can actually just, as you're going to the next hole, talk to each other.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Play
Play golf with a friend.
Yeah.
I'm thinking about one of our friends who loves golf.
I can't do that.
I can't swing in golf club in my life depended on it.
I always want to hold it like either like a hockey stick or a baseball.
Yeah.
I can't do it
Yeah, I just think that one of our friends who loves golf is gonna be like, Scott, come golfing with me now Yeah, they probably will.
The other thing just before we wrap up that I've just been thinking about is if you are like a dad or a male figure in the child's life.
the importance of being able to model that healthy masculinity.
I think part of why I was able to handle Scott and actually above and beyond being a therapist when you had your tears
is because my dad and my family a lot for the most part are very in tune with their emotions.
And I've watched men cry in a healthy way.
And I've been able to see men express tears in a way that has never made me doubt their masculinity and never made me think, oh, my dad's less of a man because I've seen him cry or be emotional at things.
It's been a gift to me, like as a daughter.
Well, even to me.
We've been together so long that I've definitely looked up to your family and your dad specifically in the way he is able to deal with his emotions.
Yeah
But also just consider if you saw your dad express himself that way when you met Scott and when you were looking for a partner, you're looking for a man who's comfortable in his skin.
Right
Like that.
We can have that conversation at length.
But like I'm just thinking about it from the lens of you have three daughters.
Yeah.
You expressing your emotions and showing yourself and providing that model of what
positive masculinity can look like.
When they go out into the world and they meet their eventual partners, now they have a model to replicate.
They go, if you're not emotionally regulated, why would I want to s be with someone like that?
Right
And so like both for young boys and for young girls, there's such an importance on modeling what positive masculinity could look like because it affects them both in different ways
Absolutely.
And I know that like seeing that from my dad and my family in general, feeling like they're allowed to cry, I've been able to encourage Scott in a different way.
Right?
A completely different upbringing from you where boys don't cry, they don't have emotions.
They're allowed to be angry, but that's it.
You know, I was able to bottle it up.
Yeah, I was able to question that for you and be the one who kind of pushes back.
And I know for me, I've been able to mostly
Except for my anxiety at times, you know, handle my own emotions because I learned how to cope with them at an early age.
And so I speak a lot about that.
Because I think that we have a tendency of talking about like all these negative messages that we've heard as kids, but we also have such a role as
fathers or uncles or anyone pouring into a child's life to be that positive role model too.
And I think that's where, like to your point earlier, we can break the cycle a lot easier.
Absolutely.
I I wholeheartedly agree
If we model positive masculinity, it just creates a generation of healthy people.
Period.
Yeah.
Right?
Really quickly, I did a talk
at St.
Michael's College in Toronto.
That's a an all-boys high school that has had its fair share of negative history from hazing incidents that have turned criminal.
to boys taking their own lives.
And they were asked, you know, what do you want to talk about for your grade twelve retreat before you go off to university and
start this new chapter of your life and they said we want to talk about men's mental health because we don't know how to deal with it and we don't know how to support our friends And I just thought to myself, and all the time sometimes I get cynical about where we're headed, I think back to that and go, The next generation is
aware enough that they're even having this conversation when I was in high school I didn't even know the words mental health existed.
Yeah, exactly.
So that's like my little positive undertone that I'm constantly thinking of every time I'm in the space and working in some way
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I think it's good to maybe leave on that note, like there is hope and for anyone in it.
I mean both of you spoke about your events that are quite recent.
like in the last, you know, five, ten years and y there's hope, right?
Like you were both in that point where it felt like, I don't know if I can move forward, my whole life feels black and gray.
And now
You're out here, Samir, talking about men's mental health, like being such an incredible voice.
Scott, you're being willing to share your story on such a public podcast as well.
And I think that's so powerful.
And I know that there's men listening who are gonna find that really powerful
And the reminder for themselves.
And I even say this as a therapist that like hope is like the therapeutic treatment, right?
Just there is hope.
There is hope.
And clinging to that hope.
Like we were talking to one of your friends and Scott shared a story and was like
He said, that strand of hope that you've just given me, Scott, that's gonna get me through this week.
It's beautiful.
And so I think let's leave it there
There's hope.
There's always hope.
Thanks so much for coming on.
Thank you.
This was wonderful.
It's nice to be on the other side of there are moments where I wanted to start asking you questions.
You're used to interviewing.
But honestly this was fantastic.
I think the work that the two of you are doing is so important.
And it it feels such a the space is so big
and there's so many voices already in it, but your voices are important in pushing these conversations forward.
So thank you for even giving me the space to have this conversation further and I sincerely hope that if anyone listening, watching this, hears this conversation, it
encourages them to go out and either seek help or work with someone in their life who's currently struggling to say, Hey, maybe you should do X.
So
Thank you.
I appreciate both of you for this.
Yeah, you're welcome.
Hey friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.
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