[00:00:00] Mental health is still a highly stigmatized topic from a lot of people. And this month is men’s health month and I’m interviewing a range of different guests all around men’s mental health and relationships. Welcome to another episode of this complex life. Today. I’m excited to have Simon on the podcast.

Simon is a lived experience therapist who has a special interest in working with men and men’s mental health. He’s based on the sunshine coast in Australia. He juggles family life and work with. A level of passion and dedication. That is pretty impressive. In this episode, Simon shares his personal journey with obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and burnout. Offering a unique perspective on mental health. We dive into how depression differs between men and women, some of the societal and cultural factors at play and the importance of creating supportive environments for men to discuss their mental health openly. We also explore some of the common signs of depression in men, some of the barriers that they face in seeking help and the critical role of a supportive relationship in encouraging men to seek treatment. Simon provides valuable insights into how partners and families can navigate the challenges posed by depression and support each other through difficult times. Join us for an authentic conversation about mental health. Where two therapists are talking about depression, mental health, and Simon sharing some of his insights, not only as a therapist, but as someone who’s experienced, some of these things himself. I hope you find this. Podcast insightful and get tips on what to do. If you’re concerned about somebody you love.

Marie: hello and welcome back to another episode of This Complex Life. Today, I have the privilege of being on the other side of the podcast, mic. I’ve been interviewed by our guest who I’ll introduce you to in just a moment. , and now the tables have turned, so I get to grill him a little bit. So welcome to the podcast, Simon.

Simon: Marie, happy to be grilled and looking, really looking forward to it. It’s been a little while since we had our chat and it was so much fun on our, on my show and really looking forward to having some fun on your show too.

Marie: Awesome. So do you want to just let the listeners know a little bit about you and like what you do and who you are?

Simon: Yeah, sure. So my name’s Simon. I’m a lived experience therapist as well. So I specialize in men’s mental health. And I live up in the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, beautiful place of the world with my wife and my two little kids. We’re on school holidays as we’re recording today. So we’re trying to juggle school holidays and working from home.

Simon: Very challenging. But yeah, just really passionate around mental health and particularly men’s mental health. Given my own story of lived experience for over 30 years with obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and I’ve also experienced burnout as well. So really excited to come on wherever I can to talk about those issues and try and prompt other guys to talk about it as well.

Marie: Amazing. And I really resonate with that conversation. Encouraging people to talk, I guess, most of my clients would be non [00:03:00] binary folk or female. So it’s it’s really great to have more men in this space, encouraging other men to find the support. That’s helpful.

Simon: Yeah, there’s not many of us around, so it’s nice to have a voice and, and, but I’m finding little pockets of guys across Australia actually trying to promote men engaging with their mental health, which is really cool to see.

Simon: But as we’ll talk about a bit later on, you know, for, for three decades, I haven’t really seen a lot in this space for men. So it’s nice to be yeah, advocating for men to, to open up and share their stories.

Marie: And even to join the workforce, I think my degree, my undergrad or my, my masters of social work only had, I think it was like 90 females and like eight men.

Marie: So you know, we need to have more people of a variety of backgrounds in the workforce to support.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. I remember those days at uni actually, you were the token guy in the class. Yeah, you

Marie: were one of the eight probably. Yeah,

Simon: so, but same in my career. Like before I was a social worker, I was in the public service and, and that was, you know, a female dominated industry, even though at the executive level, and I’m not going to get into the gender equality stuff, but that was all male, but down at the grassroots where I was, it was all female.

Simon: And now I work a lot in the disability space and there’s a lot of females and that, and not so many men. Yeah, we need to come out and get into these industries because they’re really cool industries to work in as well.

Marie: Yeah, absolutely. So we had a bit of a chat we were corresponding about what we would talk about, and we sort of decided to kind of look at depression which is one of the leading mental illnesses in Australia.

Marie: So anxiety and depression are two most common, and that we could have a bit of a chat about some of the gender differences and then kind of look at how partners or friends or family can be Supportive or have different types of conversation. So maybe to get us started in your own observations how does depression differ between men and women or what do you notice in men in particular?

Simon: Yeah, I guess a lot of, a lot of what I know comes from my own lived experience. So thinking back. To when depression showed up in my life, it would’ve been probably as early as 13 or so. And, and I’m talking in, in the nineties here, and as I got older, it’s become more profound and more of an impact on my life compared to back then I, back then I didn’t really know what depression was.

Simon: I definitely didn’t know what OCD or anxiety was either. And so I think. Thinking back to those days, the key words that come up for me is, is particularly for guys is the suck it up, you know, culture in Australia. And so depression is reflective of that. It’s, it’s this notion that we can’t talk about what’s going on inside and that compounds and compounds compounds to the point when you’re looking at, I guess, statistics from an Australian community’s perspective.

Simon: Was it seven out of nine deaths by suicide per day are male? And what that tells me is that guys really do struggle to open up and talk about these things. Because they’re, you know, the stats [00:06:00] heavily weigh of, you know, in guys, you know, taking their life. And I also kind of couple that with family and domestic violence data, which indicates, depending on which literature you read, 75 to 90 percent of victims say that the perpetrator is male.

Simon: And if, if a guy knew how to engage with his emotions and, and deal with things like anger and depression, sadness, anxiety, whatever it is, in a more healthy way, then I think some of those Stats would come down. It wouldn’t be so heavily weighted towards the male. But yeah, so, so certainly looking back, it’s a cultural thing in Australia.

Simon: It’s a lot of the suck it up mantra, as we mentioned. And, and I guess it shows in different ways as well. Guys bottle it up and then they don’t talk about it. When they get together with their mates, it’s very superficial discussions, it’s very much so, you know, what’s going on with the sport or what’s going on at work or how’s the missus going or how the kids going, but it doesn’t really scratch much deeper than that.

Simon: And so often you guys actually do want to talk, it’s just they don’t know how to, they don’t have those. Environments that they feel safe enough to talk, because if they do, they often feel like they’re going to be laughed at, ridiculed. And I’ve had clients that come into my therapy clinic, say that exact same thing.

Simon: They’ve been to a therapist before, for example, for the first time and were laughed at for, for how they felt or anything like that. And so what I value as a lived experience therapist is that individual journey that each of us take and, and just recognizing however guys are hurting. And for whatever themes or issues that are hurting about.

Simon: It’s all important. It’s there’s no, you know, there’s no benchmark of, oh, if you don’t, if you meet this benchmark, then you’re, yeah, you’re depressing you and you’re worthy of being depressed. It’s, it can be as small or as big as the individual, you know, believes it is.

Marie: Yeah, and it’s a nice segue into the next thing I want to talk about is how the symptoms differ.

Marie: And I guess one of the things that when I’ve worked with with parents and we’re looking at emotional intelligence for teenagers, there’s a really big difference between someone crying and someone getting angry. Yet both can be symptoms of something like depression. There’s, it’s, you know, one of the criteria is an unusually sad or irritable mood.

Marie: So both of them fit the criteria, but our responses are very different. How we treat someone who’s sad versus irritable and maybe angry differs. So could you share a bit more light on how you see those symptoms manifest or more commonly seen in your male client?

Simon: Absolutely. Anger is the one that comes, comes to mind and you know, whether it’s family, domestic violence, or it’s just, they just feel angry with the world.

Simon: Maybe they’re having workplace issues or relationship issues and anger is, is, is the culturally accepted way that guys know how to deal with this stuff. And I guess I come from a sporting background. So, [00:09:00] you know, I played Aussie rules growing up and I know guys that are into boxing and into mixed martial arts and rugby and all that type of stuff.

Simon: And, and the guys, Often would take out the anger on the pitch or in the ring or wherever they are. They, they throw their weight around as a way of asserting authority in the game. But sometimes it’s also just to release the anger or the pent up frustration that’s inside. And so, but anger is like, you know, it could be physical.

Simon: It could be verbal as well, but sometimes, and actually not sometimes, in many cases, guys use other coping strategies to try and suppress the anger as well. Cause I know that anger is, is not something that. It is accepted in society, even though it’s a valid emotion, so they use things like drugs and alcohol to suppress it.

Simon: And that also suppresses the emotions or the thoughts or whatever that’s underlying and causing the anger. And so that’s a big one is around how they’re using drugs and alcohol, how they’re, how they’re responding to anger. But then you’ve got the, it’s the same for, for females as well. It’s the trouble sleeping or feeling tired all the time.

Simon: That was certainly something that’s showed up for me over my journey. It’s just always feeling tired. And so when you’re feeling tired all the time, you cranky all the time. And so you have a very short fuse. And sometimes even as a lived experience therapist and I still have, you know, experiences today is like we just snap and we know we just snapped and we know that wasn’t the right way to respond to a situation, but we just, it just becomes automatic.

Simon: And so often these things are, are an automatic response and we don’t think much about them. And then it’s not until after the fact, maybe when something is really bad has happened, maybe they’ve punched someone or punched a wall or, you know, had a car accident or whatever it is, and they go, Oh, yeah, that wasn’t the best way to deal with that.

Simon: But often it’s just very automatic. But, you know, you talked a bit about that profound sadness as well, that that feeling of lack of hope. Is one critical thing and something I work with my guys on is how can we find the hope inside? How can we reflect on our resilient factors, our strengths, but also set goals that are meaningful for the future and goals that are based on values as well.

Simon: So I work in that acceptance and commitment therapy space where values underpin a lot of what we do. And I find that when the guys reconnect with values and or they identify their values. They can start to live with greater purpose and things just become a little bit easier. They’ve got this compass point now, go, okay, this is why I’m getting triggered or this is what’s making me happy.

Simon: And, and, and what can I do to, to get more of that as well? So I think it’s, it’s, it’s a, anger is the biggest one, drugs and alcohol, but certainly the other symptoms and signs are very similar to females that I’ve worked with as well. But another one key one that just comes to mind is loneliness,

Marie: which I guess it might be worth just, you know, running through that.

Marie: So if people are listening and thinking, [00:12:00] Oh, well, what does that mean? So there’s, you know, an unusually sad or irritable mood that does not go away and, and, or a big difference in, Finding activities you used to find enjoyable, not being enjoyable. So we know we need one of those two to meet the criteria and then weight changes, so eating too much or too little.

Marie: So big fluctuations there, trouble sleeping too much or too little. That slow motor movement fatigue, loss of energy, which you mentioned feeling worthless. Inappropriate guilt reduced thinking capacity and recurrent thoughts of death or dying. So I think you need at least five of those to sort of meet that criteria.

Marie: So it’s not just about being sad. You might, it might be that it’s irritability and then all of those other things, which I think some people kind of don’t pick up on. They think, well, I’ve got nothing to be sad about, but that’s not, it’s not that simple.

Simon: I’m glad you brought up guilt there because that’s one of the key things.

Simon: I guess one thing that guys do think about is guilt and shame, shame that they’re feeling that way in the first place. And I mentioned loneliness at the end there. It’s even shame about feeling lonely. You know, we grew up in, you know, I guess traditional villages, you think about the notion of it takes a village to raise a child.

Simon: And, you know, growing up in the 80s and a little bit in the 90s, it was still that notion of, you know, You kind of grow up and live where you, you grew up and you don’t move. But then as, as technology changes, as transport, you know, increases around the world, it makes it easier that we have more fluid, I guess, communities around the world.

Simon: So many people that live where they are, aren’t from that location. So I live on the Sunshine Coast. I’m not from the Sunshine Coast. I’ve actually, I’m from Adelaide. My wife’s from Hobart. We’ve lived in Canberra, Hobart, Brisbane, now the sunny coast. I’m sensing a bit of

Marie: a theme there of closer to the sun.

Simon: Yes, definitely. It’s just slowly

Marie: creeping up the island.

Simon: Definitely. And every time we move though, we have to recreate a community. And even the guys that I work with, so a lot of guys do fly in, fly out. So they’re not even living in the community that they. Sleep at for two weeks out of the month or whatever it is.

Simon: And so this is disconnect and then this is guilt that comes on and saying, why do I feel like this? Sometimes I don’t even know why they’re feeling like that. But if I do know why they’re feeling like that, then that continues this negative thoughts that go around their heads and then they just get stuck in this cycle until they either do something bad or they finally get help.

Marie: It makes me think if anybody’s listening and likes to kind of digest some books, the book Lost Connections is quite a really good one for conceptualizing depression. Have you read that one?

Simon: No, I am a very slow reader. I’ve got a whole bunch of books here. Oh my god, you can probably see

Marie: mine and they’re the ones I haven’t read.

Marie: And

Simon: I guess, I guess I, I can stream a lot of podcast stuff. So if it comes out in the podcast, I’ll listen to it. Maybe I need to get an audio book or something [00:15:00] like that, but I struggle with that. I struggle with attention because I just get caught up in the day to day hustle. And this is also part of the issue is day to day hustle takes over.

Simon: And we learn, we forget how to kind of look after ourselves and fill out cups up with good stuff, like, you know, books as well.

Marie: I mean, that book is excellent. So I really recommend it. And each chapter covers kind of a different thing. So you can listen to it in snippets. So thinking about the, the symptoms that you mentioned and some of the causes like loneliness, it’s a bit of a, it can lead to it and it can also be a side effect because if you think about low energy, you don’t enjoy doing things you might slowly start to withdraw, which increases the isolation.

Marie: So our bodies are almost doing the opposite of what we need in that moment. How does. Depression impacts, you know, relationships, like what are you starting to see in the folks that you work with about, you know, with parents, partners, children, like what is the, I guess ramifications is a strong word, but what are the impacts, like what’s happening day to day?

Simon: Yeah, it’s, it’s huge in the moment. I guess we’ve got a lot of external pressures as well that, you know, at the moment when, as we’re recording, there’s a lot of financial pressure across the board is housing pressure. It’s, it’s finding money because mortgages are going up and, or if you’re renting can’t, can’t get out of that market, you can’t get into the homeowner’s market and you’re stuck in the rental.

Simon: But what happens if your house gets sold as well? So there’s a lot of these financial pressures. which are just pressing down on an already existing issue of depression or mental illness more broadly as well, which I think reared its head from COVID. So COVID was actually one of the, I always say one of the good things about COVID was it gave us time to reflect on ourselves, but also it gave us permission to talk about mental health.

Simon: As a community as well, but now we’ve come out of it and we’re suppressing it down again and now we’re, we’re thinking about things like finances, which put a lot of strain on a family relationships as well. You know, do I put food on the table? Do I pay my credit card debt off? Or, you know, there’s, I work with one client who doesn’t have enough money to put petrol in his car.

Simon: So we’re reverting to zoom calls as opposed to seeing him in person, you know, and all these types of, I think this one’s a critical one at the moment. It’s finances. But I guess if you’re, you strip that away and don’t think about the external pressures and think just about the internal pressures as well, it’s, it’s, it’s ban, it’s bickering with each other to start with, it’s being snappy, it’s being tired, it’s, you know, not pulling your weight if you have like an equal household where everyone pitches in as well.

Simon: And I, for example, when I’m feeling really rough. I, I stopped doing things like housework, and that puts pressure on my wife because she likes a tidy house, and so that impacts her as well, and so there, then, I feel bad because I’m not doing it, but I also don’t have the energy or the will or anything like that to do it, but then when I’m feeling good, yeah, I’ll be up and doing my chores like everybody else, or, or even with the [00:18:00] kids, it’s, it’s getting snappy with kids very quickly.

Simon: Mm. Or even without with my son when he’s feeling a bit off as well, he’s very short fused and and things blow up and then then the daughter blows up and everyone kind of blows up and and and sometimes you just five minutes into a yelling argument and you’re like, why is everybody yelling and we don’t really know, but then that you, you, you talked, we talked, you talked a bit about withdrawal before.

Simon: And this is, I guess, where alcohol comes in and drugs as well is, is we find ourselves maybe sitting on the couch on a Wednesday night, having a few beers instead of just the weekend. And we start using these things as coping mechanisms just to get through family life, let alone life in general as well.

Simon: Or, on the flip side of that, Is we use things like alcohol or drugs to, to re engage as well. Kind of like this old Dutch courage concept. If we drink, then we’ve got the, the energy and the drive to actually communicate with somebody else. And that could be for a family barbecue, for example. Just to show up and say, Hey, I’m here, I’m present.

Simon: But I’m using this as my, my comfort blanket just to be engaged. But the long term effects of it is, I guess, if you’re not going into something like therapy or you’re not taking meds and you’re kind of hiding away from it, and I’m talking more to the guys that haven’t ever engaged in a mental health conversation at this, at this stage, is unless you do that type of stuff, it can, it can ruin relationships.

Simon: You can really put a pressing point on there and again, that comes out into the family and domestic violence situation, it could end up in that space.

Marie: Yeah. So what I’m hearing is that relationship, like the bickering and again, I guess, you know, for people listening, don’t you’re allowed to have conflict. That’s fine. But when that’s. Often and irritability. What I, what I hear you saying is the ripple effects of that is not just for partners, friends, children, but then there’s health implications. So further choices around alcohol consumption, maybe other substances. Lack of exercise, you know, if you’re sitting at the, on the couch drinking beer on a Wednesday night, you’re probably not playing footy soccer, Dungeons and Dragons, you’re not connecting.

Marie: So those patterns, that behavior that keeps kind of reinforcing the mood as well.

Simon: Yeah. And comfort eating is another one getting mackers on the way home instead of cooking the meal.

Marie: Oh, that sounds delicious.

Simon: But when you’re doing it every week, you know, and, and I guess it comes into that, that forms into habits as well.

Simon: So you go, we often opt for the easy option when we’re struggling with something like depression, because Oh, yeah, it’s easy just to get Maccas on the way home. I don’t have to deal with it. I don’t have to deal with the washing up afterwards or, you know, if I drink tonight, then I don’t have to deal with awkward pauses and in conversation where I’m, I’m expected to say something because I can either just take a sip.

Simon: Oh, someone’s having a drink or Joe’s having a drink or Bob’s having a drink or, or, you know, a smoke or whatever they [00:21:00] do. And that alleviates the distress of having to communicate, for example. So become, these things become habits and, and what we want to do is create healthy habits, not so much of the negative habits and healthy habits are like you said, exercise.

Simon: It’s, it’s, you know, seeing a therapist, it’s engaging with friends as well. And we talked about loneliness is it’s reconnecting with friends and or redefining friendship circles that lift you up and don’t hold you down as well. Yeah.

Marie: The interesting thing you mentioned about therapy, there was some data that came out not too long ago saying that we know that more women than men seek support for mental health in general, but still about a third of about one to two thirds of people who suffer from a mental illness and so diagnosable don’t seek support.

Marie: And then out of the one out of the men who do, I think it’s like half don’t come back for their second session. So there’s something in either as a field, we’re not meeting people where they’re at. But also maybe what expectations men have of what therapy is going to be like. And I know some don’t do the feeling stuff, but therapy can still be, you know, we need one to three sessions to kind of figure out what’s going on and then we can do pure behavior activation if that’s, what’s helpful.

Marie: So how can we encourage men to, you know, how do we address that disparity in the help seeking behavior, knowing that some of the stats are not in, in men’s favor and mental health support.

Simon: Yeah, no, it certainly makes sense and it took me back to when I first went to therapy and my first therapist was a psychologist and I went in there and I felt it was okay to talk, but after a while, it became like homework. And so I had a bit of a break from therapy. Then a couple of years later, I went to another therapist, which also happened to be a psychologist, and it was exactly the same conversation that I had a couple of years earlier.

Simon: And so I’m like, okay, I’m not feeling the connection here. Then I went to a psychiatrist, and it was that. Stereotypical older guy that I just did not connect with at all and I just felt icky going into that session and I went for once and I’m like, I’m never going back to that room again. I just hated that place.

Simon: But then as I’ve progressed and got, I guess, more in tune with my mental health and understanding it a lot more. Now I’m a bit more purposeful of who I go to see. So I’m very big now on reading up about a therapist before I see them, like what’s on their website or their Facebook group about them. Are they going to be involved in conversations about the stuff I want to talk and talk about?

Simon: So that’s really critical. Whenever I speak to someone, I say interview your therapist or do some research on your therapist before you go in there. Because if you go in there, Oh, there’s a psychologist, or they’re a mental health, social worker or counselor, whoever And they’re not interested in male depression, why are you in there?

Marie: It’s such a, that’s such a good point. I was literally just updating my website or the therapy hub, my practices website to help people figure out what to do. Cause I’ll [00:24:00] say, I need a clinical psychologist. And it’s like that clinical psychologist might specialize in eating disorders for 12 year olds.

Marie: That’s not going to be helpful. And you might have a registered counselor who specializes in I don’t know, pregnancy therapy. So it’s really about the skills stop being as relevant after a few years of practical experience between clinical psychologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, unless you need sort of complex medication, you’re spot on in trying to find someone who either you gel with, or who has experience with those presenting concerns or needs.

Simon: Yeah. And that’s the starting

Marie: point. And I’ve there’ll be probably by the time this is out a little, I’ve created like a journal an e journal that people can download to help them prepare for the therapy. So to actually just have a think about. What do I want to get out of this after six or 10 sessions?

Marie: If I was going to say, yeah, it’s been helpful, what would that look like? Because I don’t know about you, but, you know, you wouldn’t go to a personal trainer and be like, I want to get fit and then have one session and then nothing for six weeks. And be like, I’m not fit yet.

Marie: What’s going on? Like we need to adjust our expectations to what’s actually possible

Simon: in the treatment. Absolutely. And, and it comes from trial and error. Like I didn’t know how to do all this without actually going into these different therapists and realizing, okay, these are not the right fits for me.

Simon: And I think it also adds on there. It’s, it’s knowing, or, you know, researching a therapist before having some sort of expectations of what therapy is. And the perfect examples are to listen to podcasts, for example, by therapists, because you can hear them talking about, you know, what different therapy modalities are.

Simon: But it’s also around male centric supports and supports that get male culture. And I come to this because whenever I, when I started my journey, and that was 11 years ago that I went to that GP and got my first mental health treatment plan, which used to be a mental health care plan, is The supports weren’t for men, they were female centric or they were children centric and the ones that were male centric were family and domestic violence or alcohol and drugs.

Simon: And, and so that puts a shame and stigma on the guys already because they’re like, well, I’m not, I’m not either of those, or maybe they are, but they’re not identifying as, and I don’t want to go in there and feel berated because I’m a guy dealing with anger issues with my partner. They want someone who.

Simon: Gets what it’s like to live with depression and because I’ve got clients that say to me, Simon, do you know what depression is? And do you have you ever experienced? I’m like, hell yeah. And we talk about it and we talk about it in a non judgmental way, in an open way, in a way that It adds value to the session.

Simon: It’s not about me. It’s about how can I just share a little bit of insight into my journey, such as, for example, finding the right therapist for me. And I’ll say to this, guys, if I’m not the right fit for you, that’s okay. Like, don’t let this stop you because there are millions of other fits [00:27:00] for you. We’re not going to get it on the first go.

Simon: And so, yeah. And so it’s just, it’s about providing that male centric support. And this is where I love being a lived experience therapist. And I, I recommend anyone who’s thinking about getting into a therapy role, but they’re holding themselves back because they’ve got lived experiences to do it because you have such a deeper connection with your clients.

Simon: If you can say, yeah, I’ve been in those shoes.

Marie: I think, I mean, the lived experience bit is interesting because if the statistics, the lifetime prevalence for mental illness is about one in two. Some data even suggests as high as 80 or 90%. So you’re almost guaranteed that every second therapist you see will have had a lived experience, but for a number of reasons, people don’t feel comfortable necessarily promoting that or taught that too much self disclosure isn’t helpful.

Marie: So yeah. You can ask for people, yeah, I guess it’s, it’s interviewing the therapist and kind of getting a sense of what they’re like, I even thought like, I’ve had some people who want to have therapy, we do it in a park or like, I don’t know if you remember that old episode of friends where I think they’re just throwing a ball around for like hours, you know, I’ve done that, I’ve been a whole session, like throwing a hacky sack with someone just because sitting and staring was too uncomfortable.

Simon: Yeah, yeah, I’ve got 90 percent of my clients don’t come to my clinic. In fact, I’ve, I’ve stopped renting my clinic so much because I just rent it as a casual basis. For that very reason. And I actually, I play basketball with one guy. I play video games with another guy. There’s one guy, we walk his dog, or we go and buy him a pack of smokes.

Simon: And as we’re doing these things, we’re doing our therapy in the car, or as we walk along, or, you know, we’ve got beautiful beaches up here on the sunny coast. And we, I’d spend three sessions of a week walking and talking on the beach with people. And it’s just that it’s that connection with the outside world because I hate sitting as a therapist.

Simon: I hate sitting in a clinic all day and I’d rather be outside and enjoying the beautiful weather. But also it’s the gentle exercise, which might be the first time these guys have walked anywhere for the last week. And it’s also, I, I look at it as also connecting with community. It’s, it’s the subtle how you’re going or, or a nod or a smile at the person passing them by.

Simon: And this counteracts that, that. Concept of loneliness. We’re talking about earlier because we’re connecting in a, in a very broad way, a vague way with community by being out in community as well. And so most of my clients, we, yeah, that’s what we do. We do, we do therapy a little bit differently to the traditional ones.

Simon: And again, there’s not many of us doing this kind of stuff because as therapists, we feel I’ve got to have a clinic. I’ve got to do six a day. I’ve got to do this and that. Well, we don’t, we can actually be a bit more flexible.

Marie: Yeah, I think it’s really tricky because I think some of it’s the therapists.

Marie: Ideas and sometimes it’s client led. So sometimes if no one asks us, we never think that that’s something people want. So, yeah, definitely. I’ve done a lot of that. And you know, basketball, shooting hoops, like it’s still therapy. You’re just, instead of playing, you know, with your fingers or [00:30:00] ripping up a piece of paper, you’re doing something else.

Marie: The last thing I kind of wanted to talk about before we wrapped up, like we’ve covered so much Is how can, how can couples support, support each other or navigate this? So a lot of podcast listeners are female. And probably a lot of the data for this podcast has shown that that is probably about 70 percent female listeners as well.

Marie: So if someone is listening to this and they’re like, Oh, my, I think this relates to my partner instead of just like sending it to them randomly. People can do if they’re, if they’re listening, they’re like, Oh, this would be really good for, for a client or for, for a friend or family member, how can either couples navigate and support each other?

Marie: Or, you know, how do we kind of, what’s the next step here?

Simon: Yeah, this is one of the most commonly asked questions. I often get calls from a distressed partner or maybe in the NDIS space, the support coordinator or a friend or someone who’s like, I’ve got this guy in my life and nothing’s sinking in.

Simon: Nothing’s getting in for one thing. It’s like, we also want to do therapy differently. We don’t want to go to a clinical space. And so that’s a beauty of my services. I spend most of my time outside, which is fantastic. But I often say the people, people who ring me, it’s like, well, you can’t. It’s like, you can’t lead the horse to water, you can’t make them drink.

Simon: So it has to be a recognition in the guy himself. Yeah, and this could be a young, this could be a child as well, or someone who’s early. The whole spectrum of males out there is, they have to be kind of willing to start talking about stuff. And it starts that encouragement starts in the house, for example.

Simon: So I’ll give you a quick snapshot of some of the relations of relationships. I’ve been in over the years is, you know, growing up in high school at the end of high school, university, all those years. I had a couple of serious relationships and I was still undiagnosed at this stage. So living with the depression, the OCD, the anxiety in particular, and It felt like they were always saying, Simon, you know, you can be such a dick or whatever and, and we want you to go get help or you need to go and sort this stuff out.

Simon: And I always felt like I was the problem and that I was trying to be put into their box of what an ideal partner should look like. Simon, you need to talk more. Simon, you need to drink less. All this stuff. And I just felt like, yeah, I was the problem. Fast forward until I met my now wife and, and she was the opposite.

Simon: She never really wanted to put me into a box or paint me as this person who’s different or, you know, try and try and mold me into this amazingly sociable person, even though, which might sound weird because I do podcasts all the time and I’m a very sociable person, but I’m a very much of an introvert as well.

Simon: And so I like my quiet time. I just like being quiet sometimes. Sometimes that’s the depression, but sometimes that’s just me, who I am as my makeup. So trying to force me to be this overly bubbly person in every single social situation doesn’t happen and I get very awkward. So my wife was the first person to just kind of accept me for being a little bit [00:33:00] quieter or accept me that she doesn’t want to mold me into this person who’s this ideal partner.

Simon: She just wants me to be the best version of myself. Once I started connecting with that kind of vibe from, from our wife, we weren’t married at the time and she’s the one who said, Simon, you’re doing all this stuff, you’re no longer that person I met, I worry for you, I want you to get help and that kind of nurturing and that took a long time, took me years to get to that stage, that, that nurturing was what I reflected inwards and go, you know what, now’s the time, I am ready now to talk and she’s right, but also didn’t feel like I was getting pushed into this, And so then I made the phone call and I drove myself to the doctor some for some people.

Simon: They need help to go and do that as well, which is fine. But that was a catalyst is it was having that loving relationship that just saw me for me and was okay with me doing things. In my own timeline as well. And then since then, she’s been catalyst for me starting the mindful management therapy business, for example, and and we’ve been, you know, we’re two lovely kids now and and she supports me so much because I am the head case in the family.

Simon: And I openly share that. I’m okay with that. But without her support and just willingness to just let me be me, you know, that I would probably wouldn’t have never gone to therapy if I felt like I was just getting put into another box. And so partners can do that for each other. They can see each other for just who they are as human beings.

Simon: Don’t push it, because if you push it, it’s not going to happen, particularly for guys. But also, I guess, you know, Changing the environments as well, just subtle changes. You can, you know, I can change different ways that you eat differently or you consume different stuff, recommending different podcasts or books or different TV shows that don’t keep facilitating the same discussions or anything like that.

Simon: Just little things like that. But I think a lot of it goes to just how supportive you are as a part. It’s a really hard question to answer. But that’s the support I had. It was what led me to go and see that GP for the first time.

Marie: Yeah, no, I think it is a hard one and it’s one of the things that when I run mental health first aid, it’s one of those times where often workplaces will get their teams to do it.

Marie: Or, you know, schools will get a whole bunch of teachers, but then practicing having a bit of a framework. People then say, Oh, I’ve actually like, cause I usually run them a week apart. I use this at home with someone and it’s really about sort of noticing the signs and symptoms and saying, Hey. I can see that you’re not enjoying this activity as much as you used to.

Marie: You do seem cranky and irritable. I wonder if it could be that your mental health isn’t great or you don’t seem quite like yourself. And it’s being really, it’s being clear and direct, but with empathy and cares. And there’s a subtle difference. And then saying, I wonder if now’s a good time to maybe see your GP, or I know that you’ve had trouble in the past, but things feel like they’re getting You know, out of control again.

Marie: It’s having a bit of a framework. So if people need those those skills, I recommend [00:36:00] looking at the Mental Health First Aid Australia website. I think R U OK? Day has like little videos and, and scripts, but avoiding it’s probably not a great thing.

Simon: We talked a bit about earlier around interviewing a therapist, and I found this also applies to GPs. So, for example, just quickly, I have a GP who specializes in men’s mental health, and he’s my go to every time, but for a while, he wasn’t at the at the clinic, and I just relied on the person on the reception to say, Oh, yeah, this person’s okay.

Simon: I walked in. I said, I want a med review. I want to check my medications. All right. And his response was, well, what medication do you want to go on? And then, so what I found was I said, okay, you’re not the right fit here. I don’t think you really get what’s going on. I actually want to refer to a psych to a psychiatrist because I knew, I know they, they deal with meds.

Simon: And so I did that, and then when I reflected back, I checked the website of my GP clinic, and that particular doctor didn’t specialize in men’s mental health. I think he was just a guy who had the next availability. So it’s the same thing that goes for your GP, and they all have their websites and about me things.

Simon: Read them and find the one, oh, men’s mental health. This guy might actually get what I’m talking about.

Marie: Yeah, absolutely. And it is a bit of resilient help seeking. GPs are general practitioners. So you might need to be okay with trying a few different ones. And then finding the right fit.

Marie: Cause it, it is it’s not as simple and straightforward.

Simon: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and that’s the same with all the modalities of therapy as well. Like we’re saying a lot of, like, I do a lot of mindfulness stuff, but there’s people that do equine therapy or animal assisted therapy, just straight out cognitive behavioral therapy.

Simon: There’s a whole, you know, breath work. I’m finding some amazing results from my own personal journey through breath work at the moment, men’s yoga. Like there’s all these things you can do that aren’t traditional therapy and you don’t always have to take meds as well. It’s just about being open to the possibilities and the, and the, and the.

Simon: The breadth of services that are out there and doing a bit of research and, and I guess trial and error, just trying things out and seeing how they go as well.

Marie: Awesome. Thanks so much, Simon. I appreciate your insights and hopefully folk learn something from this. If people want to connect with you or find you where do you frequent?

Simon: Yeah, apart from strolling the beach,

Marie: strolling the beaches of the Sunshine Coast.

Simon: You will find me on the beaches of the Sunshine Coast. Look out for my black t shirt with my white logo on it. But the website’s the easiest because that links to all my social media and stuff. So it’s www. mindful men.

Simon: com. au and yeah, that links to all my socials. I’ve got the Mindful Men podcast as well, which you’ve been a guest on and I had an amazing chat with you. Come and check that episode out. It was a great chat around emotional emotions and all the stuff around social work, which I love talking about as well.

Marie: Awesome. Thanks so much.

Simon: Thank you.

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