[00:00:00] 

[00:00:03] Amal: one thing that we misunderstand with young men and young boys is that They’re not in touch with their emotions.

[00:00:10] Amal: They’re not actually connected with their emotions and the feelings that they have. But the reality is, I think, that they do. , they are quite well and truly in touch with their emotions and feelings. The way we expect them to express it is probably not what we expect it to be. So, it’s not that they don’t have emotions and they’re not in touch with their feelings. It’s just that the way we expect them to express using words, they may not be able to do that. Because I think, they don’t necessarily always have the language. 

[00:00:37] Marie: We get so much wrong about men’s mental health, especially when it comes to young men. Welcome to This Complex Life, a podcast dedicated to exploring the beautiful mess of life and relationships. Whether you’ve got a question about family, career, sex, relationships, or friendships, I’m here to help you.

[00:00:53] Marie: Join me as I explore the ups and downs of mental health and relationship and navigate some of life’s complexities. Coming to you from the lands of the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people, join me as we navigate life’s messiness and complexities, one conversation at a time. In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Amal, a dedicated counsellor, And a friend and colleague of mine, , he’s a passionate advocate for young men’s mental health.

[00:01:16] Marie: He brings a wealth of knowledge and personal experience to our discussion. And we talk about some of the often misunderstood parts of young men’s lives, their emotional lives and their mental health. 

[00:01:27] Amal: we can actually acknowledge, and the way I explain it to them, I say, if you take light and you put it through a prism and light scatters and it creates a rainbow. All the colors of rainbow combined and makes light. So same way as human beings, we’re made up of such a range of different feelings and emotions that if we try to isolate it, we stop being human. So for us to be human, we need to experience all of those feelings and emotions. Regardless of whether you’re a boy or a girl, or however you identify, but having all those range of emotions is actually what makes us, or gives us a human experience. 

[00:02:05] Marie: In our conversation, we discuss how societal expectations shape young men’s ability to express their emotions and the vital role that fathers and male role models can play in fostering emotional openness and some of the unique challenges that are faced by young men, in particular from diverse cultural backgrounds

[00:02:21] Marie: amal’s insights are invaluable and his personal journey from engineering to counselling offers a unique perspective on supporting young men. Join me and Amal as we dive into some of these important issues. If a parent is listening what would you like them to know or understand

[00:02:38] Amal: This is something that I guess we joke around quite a lot. And as part of society, we say, boys, boys are quite stupid, or they’re probably not as switched on, or they’re aloof. Unfortunately, this is something that we, we joke about. And this is quite common or it’s meant to help. workers, , but kind of sometimes trivialize the way these young boys or young males are, what they’re feeling.

[00:03:03] Amal: But I think as acknowledging that they might have some very deep thought or some very deep feelings and they’re not necessarily able to open up and it’s quite hard and quite challenging because as a community as a society we always talk of there’s this expectation that boys have to be tough and I think this is not something that is done consciously but there is this image of masculinity that we have, unfortunately.

[00:03:34] Amal: And this is something that stops these young boys and men to be able to open up and be vulnerable and open up to the sensitive side, because if they do, they are worried that they’ll be made fun of. 

[00:03:47] Marie: You’re touching on some of the, challenges around expressing more vulnerable emotions or, or showing vulnerability. Is that the kind of thing that you’re thinking? The thing is, Marie, 

[00:03:56] Amal: when you, as a group, yes, they kind of joke around [00:04:00] with each other that, Oh, how could you be talking about feelings like that?

[00:04:03] Amal: When you speak to them individually you see a different side of them. So I think there’s this unfounded fear that if they open up. W. Joshua, their friends. Our fathers play a big role here quite often that I see and I hear young boys saying that they hear from their fathers or father figures in their lives, the role models, toughen up, be a man, don’t be soft.

[00:04:28] Amal: So, if we can actually acknowledge, and the way I explain it to them, I say that and this is the, my background in maths and physics that kicks in. I say, if you take light and you put it through a prism and light scatters and it creates a rainbow. So, the light that we actually see is consistent and made out of.

[00:04:48] Amal: All the colors of rainbow combined and makes light. So same way as human beings, we’re made up of such a range of different feelings and emotions that if we try to isolate it, we stop being human. So for us to be human, we need to experience all of those feelings and emotions. Regardless of whether you’re a boy or a girl, or however you identify, but having all those range of emotions is actually what makes us, or gives us a human experience.

[00:05:16] Marie: I love that analogy. As you were talking about dads playing an important role, I was having I was thinking about a conversation I had with some of the parents that I work with in my parenting groups, Most of the parents who attended mums, and they’re talking about how they keep trying to talk to their sons about emotions.

[00:05:37] Marie: And what we were reflecting on is when a dad, and this is just in a sort of cisgender heterosexual relationship where if a dad kind of handles the, the feeling stuff to mum, it actually in a way reinforces the idea that. Dad doesn’t do feeling stuff. And then for some boys, it’s like, Oh, only women do feeling stuff.

[00:06:02] Marie: So they almost really need to feel what it’s like to have people around them, men in their lives, show them those more vulnerable emotions, talk to them about feelings. Boys need other men to lead by example, to have teachers, uncles, grandparents, like other men in their lives, talk about how they’re feeling or role modeling the behavior that we want to see. What’s your experience? 

[00:06:31] Amal: I think that is absolutely spot on.

[00:06:32] Amal: This is something that it for example, as much as we want to acknowledge the experience of the importance of both every parent figure that plays a role in the lives of our children, especially when it comes to young boys, I think there’s certain behaviors that are the male. Role models play a big role in terms of it kind of reminds me of a story a documentary that i was watching a while ago. It reminds me of a story a documentary that I was watching and they’re having these issues with with elephants attacking villages and killing them and they’re finding rhinos with broken back and they’re trying to figure out what was going on You So they got this expert into, to study this over the course of two years and what they found was that when they were transporting baby elephants, they didn’t have the resources to be able to transport the adults.

[00:07:25] Amal: So what they ended up doing is what they just transported young male elephants into a new area. And these young male elephants didn’t have the role models to teach them how to mate and how to forage for food. So they were going to villages for food and then they started trying to mate with rhinos and which was causing them to break their backs.

[00:07:47] Amal: But what they did was now that they figured out what the problem was, they transported male, adult male elephants into the area and soon after all the problems stopped. [00:08:00] Because the adult male elephants were able to demonstrate and teach the young elephants. on how to hunt on how to mate and how to actually survive out in the wild.

[00:08:11] Amal: So I think that’s a really good reflection of what our young boys need. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a father to be able to do that. But as you said, the father figures. In our lives, whether it’s grandfathers, uncles, all the brothers I think they need to, we all can step in and actually role model the behaviors to show our young boys that it’s okay to talk about these things.

[00:08:39] Amal: It’s okay to discuss these things and it almost gives them permission to be able to accept that part of them. Because I think that’s where the problem is that they have these thoughts, they have these feelings, they have these vulnerabilities and insecurities. But because nobody’s talking about it, they don’t have the permission to be able to express it.

[00:08:59] Marie: Yeah, I really like that it’s the, the permission to express it. And I hear a lot of parents sort of say, Oh, but they can come to me with anything or they can say anything. But if They can’t be what they can’t see. So if that, if you haven’t had those vulnerable conversations, if you haven’t expressed some of that language, if you haven’t come home from work and said, you know, I’m disappointed I applied for this promotion and I didn’t get it, or it actually really hurt my feelings when you said X, Y, Z to me, if they’re not labeling those things themselves, it’s really hard for a young person to, to know even what to say, how to phrase it, what context to use it in.

[00:09:40] Amal: Absolutely. One of the things that actually I remember in one of the trainings that I attended, they said that if we want our young people to be able to become more resilient, we actually need to voice out our thought, our self talk that we have. So for example, if you’re in the car with a young person and somebody cuts you off, You don’t need to pretend like it didn’t bother you.

[00:10:05] Amal: You can absolutely say, Oh my god, I’m so annoyed. It’s okay. It’ll be okay. That’s all right. Nobody got in here accident. Let’s just get on with our day. Let’s not that, let that ruin my time or my day or my night. But that shows the young people. Adults have these moments, but we also actually, how do we resolve it?

[00:10:27] Amal: How do we process it? How do we address this thing as they come up? so I think sometimes And I can understand why parents do this, but they always try to show the best Parts of themselves to their kids because they don’t want to stress them or worry them But in doing that I think sometimes it takes away the opportunity for those young people to learn From their parents experiences of their parents or the adults around them So I think we need to as Brene Brown talks about the power of vulnerability, it’s like we do, there’s great power in being vulnerable.

[00:11:04] Amal: And being authentic in that moment, I think we can allow, all of us can learn from each other and also shows us all to be a human. 

[00:11:15] Marie: Yeah, I love that. I really try and encourage parents to think about that when they’re, especially with a teenager. And I think the role changes from childhood to having a teenager. I really encourage parents to think about All these challenging things in life being an opportunity for role modeling, how you would like your kid to be able to handle it, because I get the idea of wanting to be seen as. Perfect. Or have it all together or not worry them. But sometimes the wrong message gets taken away from that.

[00:11:52] Marie: They might think, well, I can’t struggle with this because my parents never struggle and there’s something wrong with me if I can’t cope or [00:12:00] I’ll worry them because they’re always so worried about me. So I can’t share with them. So the intention is so good, but I think sometimes, yeah, it really masks or maybe it’s not always a bad thing.

[00:12:15] Marie: But I. It misses an opportunity to connect on a deeper level and role model different ways of handling situations. And. Emotional vulnerability is being a really big part of that. 

[00:12:27] Amal: And as you said, it becomes those teachable moments. They’re great learning. I mean, also like there can be quite extremes where one side you’re not teaching, you’re not showing any vulnerability to the kids and young people, and the other extreme is where you’re almost treating them like you’re a therapist, where they hear and see everything all the, and I think there needs to be that middle ground of.

[00:12:52] Amal: There are times when you actually want to use that opportunity to teach them to go, Hey, this is what’s going on. Like, I’m not, for example, I’m not liking my job. I’m having some difficulty with my colleagues, which is very similar for young people. The issues that they might have with their teachers or friends, how do I work through this?

[00:13:10] Amal: I have a job, I have a responsibility. I still need to be professional. I still need to get on with my day. I don’t have to be friends with them outside of work, but I do have the responsibility to work with them. So just an example of how young people go. I don’t need to like my teachers, which they don’t always have to like their teachers.

[00:13:31] Amal: They don’t have to be friends with their teachers, but they do need to work together. So I think there can be some parallel processing that can happen between. Parents and young people. 

[00:13:42] Marie: Yeah. So if we, if we narrow, narrow in a little bit about people from diverse communities, I know I work a lot with first and second generation migrants and they, they’re really struggle when they’re caught between two cultures.

[00:13:57] Marie: How might we look at And focusing for Men’s Health Month, focusing just on young men’s experience in this, what are some of the things that you notice, maybe some of the challenges faced by young men from different cultural backgrounds? 

[00:14:14] Amal: I think quite often they don’t even know what is not normal. And I guess that’s not exclusive to migrant families, but young people who come from different backgrounds that may not have the language.

[00:14:27] Amal: The understanding of mental health. For example, I came here as a refugee at the age of 12 and it wasn’t until I was 29 years old that I was actually starting to become a counselor to go, Hey, hold on a second. I think I have anxiety. And then when I started to look back at the signs and symptoms and my history.

[00:14:49] Amal: So, oh wait, aha, that actually all makes sense. So not having the information, I think makes it really challenging for those young people. So especially when it comes to coming from different refugee backgrounds, not knowing what the norm is or what is available, what supports are there, what services are there.

[00:15:12] Amal: I think it can be extremely challenging and added on top of that, there can also be language barriers. So I think that just exacerbates the situation even more. 

[00:15:22] Marie: Yeah, I found that really tricky when trying to communicate with families, because even if you found a direct translation, sometimes the understanding in another culture is very different.

[00:15:34] Marie: Like, I think of how much public health information has been promoted through things like Beyond Blue, for example. So your, your everyday person has some understanding of what anxiety, depression means. And I was talking to someone on the weekend who was saying back home where they’re from Yeah. Only, like, kind of one flow of the cuckoo’s nest type, you know, patience.

[00:15:57] Marie: But just that, that’s what they thought anyone who goes to [00:16:00] see a psychologist is like that kind of unwell, hospitalized, maybe going to get some sort of lobotomy or ECT. So they, they really didn’t know the, the wide range of supports available and how it can be used to promote health or for mental ill health or to navigate relationships.

[00:16:22] Marie: Like there was a lot of shame and stigma associated with that. And that was a really good tension point for some families. 

[00:16:29] Amal: And in some countries, depending on what countries and what, how mental health is looked at, for example, as an Afghan Australian in Afghan community, it used to be that if somebody need a psychologist or mental health, oh, you’re crazy, there’s something wrong with you.

[00:16:46] Amal: Unfortunately, that stigma, I’m hoping that it’s becoming a bit more talked about and that stigma is reducing. For someone who comes to Australia and new. That stigma is still quite high, that shame around mental health, and also the cultural expectation is that you don’t talk about your problems with outsiders.

[00:17:08] Amal: So if it’s your problem, you must deal with it within yourself or within the family. So if you’ve got a family member who is not well or not coping, you don’t go telling people that they need help. You just keep that to yourself because otherwise it brings shame to the name of the family. 

[00:17:25] Marie: I think when it comes to mental health, we, we know that environment community, there are a whole bunch of other things that actually promote good mental health and wellbeing. And so if we take away mental illness and working with mental health professionals in your experience, what are the sorts of things that people can look for in their own community or in their network that feels maybe a little less confronting?

[00:17:49] Marie: or a little less stigmatizing that can still bolster mental health and be a really good support for them. 

[00:17:57] Amal: I think the informal support that can be like communities have great protective factors built in automatically like being able to talk to like when we’re talking about families who are as migrants or coming to Australia like for example I’m thinking of Afghans like when they came to Australia, the sense of community is still quite strong.

[00:18:22] Amal: That thing of wanting to be other around other community members, being around elders and being connected to the wider community that can play a big role where they can actually start talking about, Hey, things have been a bit tough or they don’t need a psychologist or a counselor with them all the time, but just talking to each other or recognizing how difficult it might be for someone who just come from a.

[00:18:50] Amal: For example, a war situation or another situation, it’s like, ah, we know that it takes time to settle in because just because you’re in a safe country that doesn’t automatically set off. How are you doing with that? Are you talking to anyone? Because you know, It’s quite common to have some that has an impact on you.

[00:19:13] Amal: So just normalizing and I guess empathizing and normal. I like just making it available to say, you know what, if you ever need to talk to someone, I’m not a psychologist, a counselor, but. You know, we are around and you don’t have to deal with everything on your own. 

[00:19:31] Marie: Yeah. I love that. So it’s the friendship and connection.

[00:19:34] Marie: Yeah, 

[00:19:35] Amal: absolutely. 

[00:19:36] Marie: And yeah, sorry. Yeah. We, like I was I was looking at some, some data and some doing some study around the impact of trauma. And one of the things that is consistent in people’s stories and in the literature as well, is the, the. Capacity for a community to come together and having people that support you and believe you is a [00:20:00] really big buffer to some traumatic events.

[00:20:02] Marie: So not having to do things alone, part of that is really healing in itself. 

[00:20:09] Amal: And I think that, like, I was remembering watching this TED talk that he was, there was this gentleman who was talking about addiction. And he was looking at a study of mice and that got them addicted to drugs. And then what they did was afterwards, they put one mice into like a mice heaven where there’s community play.

[00:20:30] Amal: The rat play, the rat playground 

[00:20:32] Marie: was it or something? Yeah, 

[00:20:33] Amal: yeah, yeah. The rat heaven as he called it. And the other one where there was only, but they had still had access to the water, drug laced water. And the other one who was lonely, the mice, the mouse that was lonely drank the drug laced water until it died.

[00:20:49] Amal: Where’s the other mouse? Was able to actually not go to that because we’re still getting his needs met through the community to other means So it actually started drinking normal water So once we had that sense of community sense of connection And I think that helps us to go not feel so lonely Because one of the biggest problems with mental health is that it makes us feel lonely.

[00:21:14] Amal: It makes us feel alone in our struggles And those voices or those feelings constantly reminds us that No one will understand you. No one will be able to help you. But having a community around you can make a huge difference no matter how great the challenge is. It might not fix it, but it might be able to support it.

[00:21:37] Amal: And may I add the right kind of community, the community that is compassionate and empathetic rather than what’s wrong with you. Just get over it. 

[00:21:48] Marie: You mentioned earlier your experience coming to Australia as a refugee and some people don’t know that you. Before counseling, you studied engineering. 

[00:21:59] Amal: Yes.

[00:22:00] Marie: What is, and I mean, I’ve worked quite closely with you for a number of years, you’ve got a presence that really does ground people and provides a lot of compassion and support. What is it in your history or what, what do you think has contributed to the work that you do now once you realize, hey, there are feelings, you know, all these lights through the prism.

[00:22:20] Marie: There’s all these feelings. How does all of that come together in your work? 

[00:22:25] Amal: In all honesty, if I talk about my refugee background, one of the expectations is that. People from those parts of the world that pursue engineering, lawyer, doctor, accountant, that’s the expected professions. And to be honest with you, that was a big influence on me when I was trying to pursue engineering.

[00:22:42] Amal: And it took me about five years to be able to accept that maybe I need to change direction. I was fortunate enough. To be able to have that opportunity to change pathways from engineering, like the one thing that I like about engineering, it’s all quite systematic. And the one thing I like about engineering is, and the physics and the maths, there’s always an explanation, there’s always a reason to why a system operates the way it does.

[00:23:08] Amal: And if something is not operating, then there’s also a reason for that. So, I kind of bring that mentality into my counselling. If something has gone wrong and there’s stopping someone from operating a certain way, if we can find that and help them with that, then maybe the overall functioning of the system or the person can be improved.

[00:23:31] Amal: So the other thing is, it also gives me just like I told my friend, it’s like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You’ve gone from. Programming machines to programming humans. I’m like, well, yes, you could say that. It’s it’s as far more complex machine that you’re dealing with, but sometimes I have to use that analogy with my students with young people, I say to them, it’s like your body’s like the phone.

[00:23:54] Amal: That’s the hardware. But your programming, what you think, and how you do things, your habits are the [00:24:00] software, but your schemas, your self talk, that’s like the BIOS, that operating system that runs in the background. And if there’s a bug in the system, you don’t throw out your device. You find out what’s causing that system, that virus or that malware.

[00:24:16] Amal: And once you debug it, the machine can actually operate to normal functioning. So that’s why if you have any problems or any issues with your mental health, you don’t throw away the whole system. You work on debugging it, and once you fix the bugs in the system, the operating system will function as it’s supposed to.

[00:24:37] Amal: So, it helped me to bring those two connections, and be able to, yeah, make that connection, and, As a young Afghan who came to Australia, I also had the opportunity to live in India for six and a half years. So I’ve been quite privileged in the sense that even though it required moving around quite a bit, it’s given me, I guess, a different perspective to be able to speak different languages, but not just the language, but to be able to speak to people in the language that makes sense to them.

[00:25:08] Amal: Because whether it’s software machines, whether it’s computers, Always helps me to actually explain it in a language that makes sense to young people. Games, that’s another go to one for me, to explain it to them why it’s important when you’re playing a multiplayer shooting game. You don’t fight on your own, you have a team, you have a squad.

[00:25:30] Amal: And, yeah, you upskill, you find new levels, you find challenges, and you work together as a team to overcome the problem. You don’t try to deal with it on your own. 

[00:25:38] Marie: Yeah. I really love in all of those analogies and examples, you’re really focusing on, like, the story or what happened or how did we get here.

[00:25:49] Marie: It’s not stigmatizing, it’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s there’s something that, like, a bug here or, you know, it’s really reminding me of those books, like, You know what happened to you and the body keeps score, like all of those sorts of things that are really talking about what we do comes make sense if we understand the story and it’s a function of our, like it serves a function sometimes and really trying to understand that.

[00:26:16] Amal: And one of the things that I normally share with pretty much every client that I see for the first time, I tell them that as my, it’s not my job as a counselor to tell them what to do. But it is my role to help increase their self awareness. I go back to the Johari window and I talk about increasing that awareness.

[00:26:36] Amal: Because rather than just reacting to the situation, it’s really important to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, how it’s affecting you, but afterwards you’re absolutely free to continue doing that, should you choose to do that, but you have choice to maybe make different decisions. So again, it gives them the agency to go, you’re allowed to do whatever you want, you’re free to make your own choices, but just know why you’re making those choices, so there’s a little bit more self understanding and self awareness.

[00:27:07] Marie: I love that. And as a parting kind of thought or kind of encouragement for listeners, what can we share with them around either encouraging the young men in their life to talk about emotions or if dads are listening, what’s one thing you’d like them to take away from today? 

[00:27:26] Amal: To all the dads who are listening to this and moms, but let’s, since we talk about men’s mental health.

[00:27:32] Amal: To dad that, if you’re listening to this, you’re listening because something within this resonates with you. The young males in your lives, whether it’s your son, whether it’s your friend’s son, whether it’s your nephew’s. Someone in your life sometimes they just need to hear you talk about how it’s okay to talk about feelings, just to open up that little gateway, that little opportunity for them to be able to encourage them to come to you.

[00:27:57] Amal: They might not come to you straight away, [00:28:00] that it’s not like it’s going to happen overnight, but if you just keep consistent. I’m sure that they’ll open up and realizing that young males young boys young men are going through a lot these days. The more connected we have become due to our technology, that’s also actually significantly exposing us to more traumas and more pain around the world.

[00:28:24] Amal: So, I think, just encouraging to go, you know what, life’s tough sometimes, but we were never designed to face life on our own. We always had a team, we had a community, we had a tribe, we had a clan, and we always have groups. So, as long as they know you’re on their team, you’re not going to always be able to solve their problems, but knowing that they have you on their team, they will find their own solutions.

[00:28:50] Amal: And they’ll do it in their own time, their own manner, as long as they know that they’re loved and accepted as part of the group. They’ll come to you when they need you. 

[00:29:00] Marie: I love that. Such a beautiful message. Thanks so much for your, for your contribution to this series, Amal. I’m sure our listeners will find it really helpful.

[00:29:10] Amal: A pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Marie. And thank you for doing what you’re doing.