Episode #80 

Men & Male-Type Depression

Depression is increasingly common, especially post-Covid. Men are not immune and can experience depression differently to women.

What is male-type depression?

What are some of the symptoms?

What can men suffering from depression do to get better?

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Full Episode Transcript

Hi, my name is Dr. Julie Osborn. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life. So in this podcast I'm going to answer your questions and share with you some practical ways to apply CBT principles so you can achieve a greater level of happiness and satisfaction in your life and your relationships. I hope you're all doing well.

And thanks, as always, for joining me. I appreciate you spending the time and sharing my podcast with anyone who you feel find the tools that we talk about, be helpful, and maybe relate to some things are going on in their life. So today I'm going to talk about men and depression. We're going to get a little more specific. So I'm first going to let me talk about depression.

I do have an episode just on depression, but I thought it's worthwhile to kind of talk about what is that? That's a word we all use so often. Right. And the incidence of depression in our society is definitely on the rise. And there's recent estimates with research that suggested as many as one in three of us experience some form of depression within our lifetimes.

Others claim that depression may even represent a symptom of our times, which can characterize by feeling alienated, which I think happened a lot with code. Right. Lacking a strong community, which a lot of people share with me that they don't have that community. And it's different than even when I grew up in the that kids were all playing more. We all knew our neighbors.

I know people now that say they don't even know their next door neighbor, and they've lived there for 15 years. So that community bond has changed and hopeless economic situations for many, which obviously is going on right now with the price of gas and food going up and people really struggling, especially again with COVID happening. A lot of people have some financial distress with that, and they're still trying to get back on their feet. So it's normal to feel sad and experienced down days occasionally that's completely normal. And most people go through some normal periods of feeling down, especially after they experience a loss or any other times of stress in their life.

Right. But what specialists call clinical depression is different from just being like, down in the dumps. And the main difference is that the sad or empty mood that you might be feeling does not go away after a couple of weeks. And everyday activities like trying to eat well, get enough sleep, socializing or work can be affected. So people who experience depression describe it as, like this agonizing pain that cannot be shaken and seems to have no end in sight.

That's why it makes it so difficult. It's just constant, and they feel trapped and talk about having a dark, empty pit in their chest or stomach that just can't seem to be filled. Sometimes people that feel depressed suffer so much, they may even contemplate suicide. So virtually all people with depression complain about reduced energy, difficulty concentrating, and the inability to complete projects. About 80% of depressed people say they have trouble sleeping with frequent nighttime awakening during which they worry about their problems.

Many people with depression over sleep during the daytime. Sufferers of this also report that they have had either an increase or decrease in their appetite. Sometimes they gain weight, sometimes they lose weight. About 50% of people with depression say they have symptoms that are worse in the morning and that they feel a bit better by the evening. And half of all people with depression report only one severe episode within their lifetimes.

But the remainder may have this happen twice, repeatedly through their lives. And I definitely have clients that have relapsed. So some of the symptoms of major depression are diminished ability to enjoy yourself, loss of energy and interest, as I mentioned earlier, difficulty concentrating, kind of feel slow or fuzzy kind of thinking, being indecisive, having a hard time making decisions, a magnified, feeling hopeless, sad, as well as anxious, changes in your sleep or appetite, feelings of worthlessness and inappropriate guilt, meaning that you're feeling guilty for things that you didn't do anything wrong, and recurring thoughts of self destruction or even death, which would be the suicide. So these are just some of the symptoms you can have. And again, I just wanted to kind of go over depression before I focused on male depression because the symptoms describe women and men.

But there's another form of depression, again, which is called male type depression. It has a different set of symptoms. So I thought it'd be interesting to share this with you because lots of shades of Gray, right. Things are not black and white. So let me first start off with Mal depression, and then we'll talk about some different symptoms that come along with that.

So because of how we're socialized, there's patterns found in our society. And depression in men takes on a different look. So men do everything they can to avoid appearing vulnerable, weaker, and decisive. And while women tend to think through a process of feelings, when they feel depressed, men tend to take action, right? So men who are depressed usually don't admit to feeling set, although they may feel fatigued or irritable.

And they usually don't have a name for their feelings. But they know they feel maybe even kind of dead inside or flat or numb. So they turn to activities in order to distract themselves from their sad feelings. And sometimes the activities are adaptive, such as going out to find a job if they're unemployed. But at other times, men distract themselves in destructive ways like avoidance, denial, or acting out.

And they're more reluctant to take responsibility for their underlying feelings of sadness, which they don't name or admit to. So let's talk about some of the main ways that men negotiate depression. So unhappiness with himself is the way I'm going to label this. So a man dealing with depression may express profound dissatisfaction with himself, his accomplishments in life and his ability to deal with the challenges of everyday life. His way of framing his life experiences takes on a negative tone.

And he may feel that he's missed out an opportunity to experience by others and that he's failed as a protector, a provider. He looks on life as a glass half empty and has difficulty in rewarding himself for his true life accomplishments. And he may find it's challenging to see his setbacks as only temporary or as an opportunity to overcome his adverse experiences. So everything I just share with you right now, you can see there's 1000 hot spots here that men need to address and understand and figure out what they're thinking. That's making them think that they have failed as a protector, as a provider, but they haven't reached their full potential or done enough to get there.

And for men, failure is a huge source of great shame. When shame comes to dominate your life, the negative thought process is magnified and leads to rage, defensiveness and self destructive behavior such as substance abuse. So let me say that again, the negative thought process is magnified and leads to rage defensiveness selfdestructive behavior. So there we talk about that the thought is leading to the behavior, right? So let's stop for a minute and realize that when someone is raging, they're defensive and self destructive.

They're really running off of their moods because they don't even know or aware of what they're thinking. Right. They just feel the shame. So that's where the behavior is raised. Defensive Self Destructive behavior.

So let me take a moment again just to review the CBT, because that's what we're here to learn is your thoughts create your moods, which affects your behavior and your physical actions, and then your environment is a huge factor. So a man will probably refuse to recognize the underlying problem as depression because that would also be a source of shame. Unfortunately, men would probably be more productive to address their depression by exploring it directly rather than engaging self blame and avoid looking into the true causes of their unhappiness. That makes sense, right? So let's talk about blaming and antagonizing others.

So usually men in depression defend against their feelings of sadness at all costs. And this leads them down the path of blaming others for their unhappiness. Right. If they're not going to look at themselves, they need to blame someone else for it, then. Right.

It's as if they tell themselves, quote, I'm feeling bad and I know it's not because of anything I've done. So I need to find the cause outside of myself that's more acceptable than thinking I've done something wrong. And men dread living with their feelings of being depressed. And they know a certain level that they can't take any more experiences and make them feel even worse about themselves or more hopeless about the future. So therefore, to defend against this, they go on the offense and blame others.

So the main target of men blaming their behavior is usually family, the one that they're closest to, although others may bear the blame as well. So they generate conflict with others seemingly out of the blue, although they may also ruminate over an issue and bring it up again and again without resolving it. Relationships can be sorely tried during this phase if a man is depressed and even results in domestic violence. So during the conflict, he may have a sense of feeling of power and give his own feeling of the unhappiness. A cause and a name and a target out there is concrete and identifiable, right?

So it's easier, in a way to deal with than the uneasy feeling of emptiness that he may harbor inside. The drawback to attacking others is that he ends up feeling even more alienated and isolated as the depression magnifies. So if you're out there taking it out on others and getting to that extreme of domestic violence or screaming or raging or scaring people, it just feeds into you being more alienated because people are going to withdraw from you and then you feel more isolated. And then again, the depression just gets worse and worse. Another way that men deal with depression is seeking stimulation.

So depression can represent a threat to a man's traditional sense of masculinity. Men may feel weak, vulnerable, and unable to take action, and this is unacceptable for the men to deal with. So as a result, they may turn to exaggerated, hyper masculine behavior to address their inner fear of appearing powerless. So they hate feeling ineffective. So they turn to highly stimulating experiences to convince them that they are vital and powerful.

So for this reason, many depressed men engage in substance abuse, look for places to express anger, and seek sexual stimulation. So a lot of men in depression may drink alcohol to excess because it gives them a temporary experience of, wellbeing, a way to escape the dreaded dead feeling that depression is giving them. And similarly, they may use marijuana or stimulating drugs such as cocaine or methamphetamine. Unfortunately, alcohol and other drugs do give a temporary feeling of euphoria and escape from depression because it feels good. Many men might go back to repeatedly until an addictive pattern is established.

So I've talked a lot about this. Where in the cognitive therapy regarding the thoughts, moods, behaviors, physical corrections, most people live off of their moods and go to their beat determines their behavior, right? So I'm depressed, I'm going to drink. That makes me feel good. Next time I feel depressed, I'm going to go back and do that again.

And that's where the addictive behavior or pattern, I should say get started. Also, anger provides a similar feeling of stimulation, not just psychologically, but actually neurochemically. People report a sense of power and feeling alive during that adrenaline rush they get when they have explosive anger and sexual experience can provide a similar rush, too. However, the result is always the same. It's a temporary feeling of wellbeing is not a cure for the underlying depression.

In fact, it distracts the people from engaging in behavior that will address the depression in a healthy and more permanent way. So it's just like it's a mess, right? I mean, nothing's working, they're not getting anywhere, and they're just going from mood to behavior, mood to behavior. Another way that men deal with depression is avoiding and escaping. So when people feel bad, it's normal.

You want to try to find a way to escape from the negative experience, right? However, depression can be addressed therapeutically, obviously, and to avoid dealing with it just perpetuates it. So men and depression may engage in an infinite variety of avoidance or escape behaviors, anything to take the time so that they don't have to face the empty feelings of their depression. So an example is someone. A man that's depressed may zone out for extended periods of time.

He may spend hours online, watch TV or reading. He may drink excessively or use drugs. He may have a series of sexual affairs. He may lose himself in his work. There are healthier strategies for dealing with depression.

That's what we're here to talk about, right? So as they say, what you resist persists. So the longer a man resists getting help and really looking at what's going on in his life, all of this stuff will persist. The depression will persist. The behaviors will persist.

So let's talk about some healthy ways to address male depression. So if you're a male and you're feeling depressed, you want to give yourself permission to feel depressed. There's no shame in having a condition that so many people experience within the course of their lives. And accepting the reality of it will allow you to find better solutions to deal with it. So that is step one.

And then you want to learn how to describe your feelings. So remember, in the mind of Remote book that I use, there's a whole there's a mood list. We talk about rating your moods and feelings. I use both words interchangeably. So learning how to describe your feelings.

Again, there's a mood list. In the mind of a mood book, we rate them. The focus is to feel better by changing the way you think. So we do want to address your feelings. And throughout the course of the day, take out some time to describe your mood.

At the moment, just ask yourself, how am I feeling? If you understand your feelings, you can have an effective tool for having more control over your life and making better decisions. Because then you can say, okay, why am I feeling depressed or scared or sad or worthless? So you can start identifying those hot thoughts, and then we can start working with those. Another great way to address your depression is to redefine what masculinity really means.

What it really means is being a whole person being flexible, adaptive, using every tool at your disposal for living an effective life. So a healthy man knows when to exert control and when to yield control. He knows that true intimacy keeps him healthy. Try not to set difficult goals for yourself or to take on more responsibilities, and you can realistically handle when you're going through depression and break large tasks into smaller ones. You want to set priorities and take things one at a time.

You have to be honest with yourself and say, you know what? I've got enough on my plate right now and I'm not going to take on anything else. You also want to realize, which is what we're here to talk about. Again, with CBT, you have lots and lots of negative thoughts, and most of them are hot. Most of them are not 100% true.

You want to become conscious of your thoughts and then identify if they're facts or hot thoughts so we can start having more balance thinking. Sometimes you want to do things to distract yourself, and that's okay if you're in the moment that you just say, I can't walk through this and figure everything out. Distraction is also a tool you still want to do with twenty four seven. And when you have negative thoughts about your own life, you want to remind yourself of all the positive things you do have, which is about being grateful. So it's not about thinking positively only, but getting back to that gratitude and thinking about that.

You may have everything you need even if you don't have everything you want and how grateful you are for the things you do have. You also want to postpone important life decisions until your depression is under control. So if you have to make major decisions, I would suggest consulting others who can be trusted and can take an objective view of the situation and help you make that decision. It's also really important to avoid using alcohol, drugs, or any other addictions when you're depressed. Other addictions could be excessive work, pornography, video games.

Those are just some examples where you might feel a temporary high. This can lead to a dangerous pattern of highs and lows, which ultimately create a negative spiral that's very difficult to get out of and just feed the depression. You also want to avoid impulsive actions. If you really are angry, you want to tell yourself, this is the time I'm not taking action. I do have a podcast called I'm Pissed.

If you want to listen to that about anger management, it's okay to be angry. The problem with anger is the behavior that comes from it, so I'm not going to take action. Let me figure out why am I angry? What am I thinking about and underlying your anger, you tend to feel hurt, frustrated, and scared. Maybe looking at those moves and figuring out what thoughts are connected will be a much positive option to start dealing with the anger and talking it through with your therapist or someone, a support person in your life.

Again, it's okay to be angry. That's the mood. You just don't want to take the action on it. You also want to try to spend as much time as you can around other people. While this sometimes feels impossible because depression makes you want to avoid people and with pullback, it is better than being alone, because being alone just feeds your depression.

It's also important not to overdo it. However, feeling better does take time. So I'm not saying to be with people 24/7, but also don't isolate that's. The tough thing about depression, right? Is it makes you want to pull back, avoid, withdraw.

But that actually makes the depression worse. But be very mindful who you're spending time with. Again, you want to be around people that love you are positive or not. Other people with addictions, other people that may be drinking a lot or doing drugs or you don't want to feed into their negative behavior as well. And while it may seem impossible if you can get some exercise and get your heart pumping even for a half an hour a day, it can really do wonders for your well being, even just taking a walk, because moving can help you release some of that stress that you're feeling.

And let me tell you, it's not a quick fix. I had people say I took a walk, I didn't feel anything. It is being consistent over and over again and over time, that really does help. Also, don't blame yourself if you can't accomplish as much as you think you should. We don't want to use the word should, right?

Because that's scolding. But if you're thinking I should do be able to do more. You don't want to scold yourself. You want to be mindful. So you know what?

I'm doing the best I can. And you know what? I took a walk, maybe even around the house today. I got out of bed. That's good.

So obviously take time to acknowledge the accomplishments you do have and don't judge them, even if they seem to be small in your eyes. Also, treat yourself every day, if possible, to some activity that makes you feel better. Maybe making a small meal, reading a good book, having a conversation with a friend, put your arms around the ones you love and allow them to put their arms around you. People get better from depression all the time, and you can as well. And using the cognitive behavioral therapy tool that I've been teaching you guys through all these podcasts, if you really take action and reach out for help and do the work, you will get better.

So just to finish up here, I want to give you some questions that you can just answered or yes or no to see if you are depressed or if a man in your life may be depressed and doesn't realize they're keeping it a secret. So if at least half of the questions I'm going to give you, you answer yes. It probably is helpful to reach out, find a therapist and discuss some treatment strategies. And if you want to find a cognitive behavioral therapist, you can always reach out to me. I can give you some referrals and you can always go to Feelinggoodinstitute.com.

That is a website I'm connected with that is based on the work by Dr. David Burns. His book is Feeling Good, Feeling Great, which are excellent. And you can always just put in the zip code and find a therapist in your area. Personally, I work with people in California, in Colorado, in South Carolina, in New Jersey.

So I am able to do therapy in some other States as well if you want to reach out. But if I'm not in those States, you can also find one by looking through the Feelinggoodinstitute.com website. So let me ask you I'm going to give you the questions to ask yourself if there's a man in your life that's secretly depressed or obviously if it might be just for yourself. So number one, is, does he harshly criticize himself? Number two, is he highly sensitive the idea of being criticized or looking bad?

Number three, does he have a limited vocabulary to describe his feelings? Number four, does he avoid situations where it might appear that he is failing? Number five, does he blame others for his bad moods? Number six, does he demand respect without earning respect? Number seven, does he insist that all of his problems would be solved as only you would change?

Number eight, is he suspicious and guarded? Number nine, is he a perfectionist? Number ten, does he have addictive tendencies, substances, TV, the internet, video games? Number eleven, is he a workaholic? Number twelve, does he engage in high risk behaviors like driving fast or spending money unwisely?

Number 13, does he insist that everything is fine when it's not? Number 14, does he avoid talking about relationship issues that need to be addressed? Number 15, does he seem discouraged about the future? And number 16, does he feel that everything is going to be wrong no matter how hard he tries? So again, if you answered yes to at least eight of the 16, then I would say for yourself to find a therapist.

If it's someone in your life, hopefully you can find a way to sit down or even pass along this podcast to them. And maybe they will be open to at least talking to somebody. And let me just say about talking to somebody is it can be a really difficult conversation for a lot of people going to therapy because a lot of people think that if I need help and I'm weak and I'm a failure and I've always looked at people going for help as a strong people. Weak people don't show up. Strong people show up and say I need some help.

Things aren't going right now on my life better. That takes strength. That takes courage. That is not a weakness. So if you think getting help is a weakness, that's a hot thought and I have a lot of evidence to go against that.

So I hope this was helpful again. If you share with others how you're feeling, you're probably going to find more people are feeling the same way you are and you won't feel so alone.

So that's it for today. If you have any questions for me or any suggestions, any way I can be helpful, you can always email me at mycbtpodcast@gmail.com

My website is MyCognitiveBehavioralTherapy.com. Within my podcast, where there's the transcription, you can always find the books that I mentioned: the Mind Over Mood, Feeling Good, Feeling Great. You'll see a tab if you want to purchase those just makes a little easier and you get more in depth in learning the tools.

You can also follow me on Instagram with MyCBTPodcast, and on Facebook with Dr. Julie Osborn.

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Thanks for joining me. Stay safe and remember: make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.