Preparedness
3 MYSTERIOUS TOPICS FOR MEN
3 Mysterious Topics for Men with our super Duper Guest on our Live Stream Show is with Tim Krass, a veteran media and entertainment executive, who is also a writer as well as a leadership coach for business executives.
“Mental health is not a destination, but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going”, Noah Shpancer
Every life is complicated, every mind a Kingdom of unmapped mysteries!”, Dean Koontz
Tim Krass’ harrowing, dramatic personal story weaves its way throughout his book YOU DON’T HAVE TO SWALLOW YOUR GUN. Tim lived with depression, suicide attempts and has studied masculinity for more than thirty-seven years. Although women are about twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression, men are almost four times as likely to die from suicide, suggesting that many men have undiagnosed mental health issues. Research indicates that rates of undiagnosed depression are substantially higher in men than women. Why do so many men choose not to get treatment for depression? Most men are not aware that they suffer from depression. Many men who do know that something is very wrong with them are stigmatized by the fear that they will be perceived by others as feminine or weak.
Side note:
If you have experienced emotional abuse, the following post could be potentially triggering. You can contact the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741.
Childhood emotional abuse is a tricky topic to cover. Especially in movies, it can be hard to balance representing the true impact of emotional abuse without making it a caricature by being “over the top.” Whether we realize it or not, childhood emotional abuse is a fairly common storyline in a lot of movies — and there are some that actually make an effort to “get it right.” Here is a favorite movie amongst the viewers:
“Precious”
“”Precious,” is a movie based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, and follows 16-year-old Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) as she navigates her abusive upbringing, which includes both sexual and emotional abuse. While most of the emotional abuse comes from her mother, Precious is given HIV and impregnated twice by her father. In addition to depicting the realities of abuse, we also see Precious struggle with body image and disordered eating behaviors.” ~ https://bit.ly/3jnYPL9
The next one is:
“I, Tonya”
“”I, Tonya” is a biographical comedy based on figure skater Tonya Harding and her connection to the 1994 attack on rival skater Nancy Kerrigan. Though some have criticized the use of dark humor in depicting domestic violence, others have praised the way the film spotlights the cycle of abuse and how physical violence and emotional abuse often go hand in hand. The movie has garnered critical acclaim, earning Oscar nominations for Margot Robbie for her role as Tonya Harding, and Allison Janney as Harding’s abusive mother LaVona Golden.” ~https://bit.ly/3jnYPL9
In our interview, 3 Mysterious Topics for Men, my mother and father, my father was an executive in the rental car business. And my mother was tremendous at preparing food. And, you know, she had a household that was, you know,
impeccable. So, tickety boo. Boo, I love it. I wouldn’t tell her. But anyway, I thought it was typical middle class. And, you know, it wasn’t until I left home and went to college. At that, I looked back and did some self discovery and found out that, you know, when I, my parents were yelling at myself and my brother, and they were getting into arguments, and they were being emotional. And they were physically abusive as well would would hit us that I was being abused. I didn’t know that.
I did, I was conscious of the fact that I felt like I had to walk around the house on on eggshells, because I didn’t want my mother or my father to think that I was doing something wrong. So that I would be yelled at or screamed at or hit or have to go to my room or, you know, whatever it was, but abuse was was part of it. And when I went to college, you know, you got away from it. I got I got away from it. But the first thing my friends put in front of me was all bunch of marijuana. And that was like the first and best relationship I ever had in my life. You know, I loved it. I couldn’t I couldn’t put it down because it made me free from all of these thoughts, all of this pain that I knew nothing, you know, I wasn’t even aware of. I didn’t know that I had depression. I didn’t know I had mental health issues that I It was full of fear, full of anxiety. I didn’t know. And I went on a 41 year run of drugs and alcohol. And it. And I was leading a double life because I was this executive in media and entertainment for the top, top five media and entertainment companies in the country in the world. And I was an executive vice president of distribution. And I was before the day started. And after the day ended, sometimes during lunch, I was going to get high. And I was playing a game with myself to challenge myself how high IQ I could get, but still maintain. In my mind, in my work,
I think I’ve seen that many times and many different people.
CLEARING RELATIONSHIPS
It’s sick. I mean, until I did an inventory and look back at my behavior. I didn’t realize that how damaging my behavior was, it was very egotistical, and very unprofessional. And I’ve since gone back to many people that I worked with, and, and made amends with them and told them that that was not right. And because I wanted to have a clear relationship with them, and a lot of them said, you know, we didn’t even know. And, you know, that’s, that’s the sad part. The sad part. I thought I was getting away with somebody. And it was something, but I really wasn’t, I was hurting myself and those around me. And I just kept going for 41 years until finally, you know, the world caved in 2008 2009 the economy took a real dip. I was raising money for children’s educational sports website. We thought we had enough money. The since with the economic turndown, we didn’t get that money, bus, I thought I could get a job. But the economy was so bad, I couldn’t get a job. So things spiraled down. And I was in a very difficult place. And somebody in my family suggested that I go to some 12 step meetings, which I did. And luckily, I ran into a gentleman who was I asked him to be my sponsor, and to help me with the program and walk me through. And the guy wore a leather jacket and chains and drove a motorcycle and he scared the living daylights out of and the first time I met him, he say, he said, okay, pick me up. And we’ll go get coffee and talk about if, if you You are a valuable use of my time is valuable candidate for
Whoa. Like, I thought you were my sponsor. And he’s like, oh, not yet. We got to talk this out.
So for the next hour, he just chewed me up and down and said, Look, if you’re serious about this, and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to eradicate yourself from this usage of drugs and alcohol, then I’ll I’ll be shoulder to shoulder with you and walk you through the whole program. But if you don’t if you’re not serious, he said you can go to hell on your own. I’ve been I’m not going back. And I’m telling you, he scared the living daylights out of me and I had to go home. My first assignment, go home, throw away any little bottles of vodka have any kind of alcohol, beer, any kind of marijuana pipes, joints, paraphernalia, whatever, put it in a black garbage bag and throw it throw everything in the dumpster. No roaches, no little bottles of liquor, nothing. Well, I started crying. I started shivering. I didn’t know how it’s gonna make it.
Well, it’s the fear of the unknown, I guess, right? I’ve only learned all of this from the mom show, you know, the mom. TV show? Yeah, that’s where it all sounds very familiar to me.
Yeah. And, and, you know, that’s one of the bits of research that I’ve found that that these mental health issues start at a very young age because of the environment. The parents put the children and the results on teen suicide have been skyrocketing in the last five years. So I’m, to me, the long term solution is to get to be proactive and get an educational curriculum or for these teams about, about all these issues, so that they talk about these issues. And it’s not something that they run away from and hide underneath the bed and think that well, one day it’ll just go away because it doesn’t.
Well, and one of the ones you didn’t talk about is one of the notice this stats rising for 30 to 40 year olds, middle class, higher average class people with well, paid jobs, drug overdoses, yep, skyrocket, the numbers are skyrocketing.
Yeah, there’s so much pressure to perform. And, you know, what I’m, I learned that I had severe depressive disorder that’s reoccurring. And my doctor told me that that was the reason that my addictions were flaring up in a lot of different areas. And that was at the same time that I started going 12 step meetings and got this sponsor, who walked me through the program, and he literally saved my life. Because I did have a butcher knife in my hand a couple times and was ready to take take a slit at my wrist because I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I, I felt shame. I felt defective. I was not making, you know, money. I couldn’t get a job. I thought I was worthless. You’re at the bottom of the Yeah, the bottom of the barrel. But I listened to my sponsor, I went to 12 step meetings, I did all the work required. I did extra work, I learned how to be of service to others. So as soon as I got sober, which was eight and a half years ago, now, I got the idea about writing a book. And describing my situation, so people don’t have to go through what I went through is too painful. I couldn’t sleep at night, I couldn’t eat. I was afraid to talk to anybody. Whereas before when I was in business, I was doing presentations in front of three 5000 people.
But you had a crutch. Yeah, at that time. So now you don’t so you’re on your own. So you felt they kept I guess so to speak. Totally. No self esteem, no confidence. I felt very defective. And slowly, slowly, as I work through this program, I did self discovery myself and found out all these behaviors, a trend of behaviors were starting to be evident, self evident to me that I needed to cut out of my life. And that’s when things started to turn for the better it sometimes it takes six months or a year, just to get on like equal ground. They say after five years. Finally, you get to a place where you know you’re you’re getting close to where you used to be. They can say you feel normal. Yeah, whatever normal is, but that first year was extremely difficult for my health, for everything that was going on.
And right before I got sober I had I was rushed to the hospital at three in the morning because my head felt like it was in an incinerator. It was on fire. And I had to call 911 and they did some tests and they took me into the hospital and said I had a heart attack and they put a stent in my one of my blocked arteries. And three hours later, I’m woken up by my primary care physician and he’s all smiles and I said What’s so funny, he said, I’m so proud of you, because you got here so quickly. They put a stent in your artery and you have 00 heart damage, because you took care of it so quickly. And that’s one of the themes of, of what I talked about today is asking for help and how important it is.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO SWALLOW YOUR GUN, a simple book for men about depression, masculinity and suicide, offers a potentially life-saving experience that is easy for men to read because men are simple. Thus, it is easy to understand and to immediately apply what they have read.
*To ask for help. As soon as you think you feel something, most men don’t even know they have depression, they don’t know that they have stress or anxiety, they just think that’s part of the deal. They have a mental health condition that can be managed. And you can live a normal life where you can have happy and healthy relationships.
You don’t need the alcohol, you don’t need the drugs, you don’t need the pills. You don’t need to fight with your wife, you don’t need to, you know, beat up on your children, or beat up on your friends, or beat up on your friend’s wife, or go get go get a gun, or get some heroin or, you know, attempt suicide. And now, how many stories do we hear about these mass shootings? And children and adults lives are taken needlessly? And what do we hear at the end of the report in the news? Oh, by the way, this person in his file had a record of having mental health issues.
How many times have we heard that?
At least 90% of the time. And this is why I do what I do. People don’t like to talk about mental health. It’s taboo, nobody wants to talk about it, they think it’ll go away on its own. Oh, I won’t let anybody know about it.
Well, and we, we talk a lot about grief on the show as well. And that’s part of the mental health issue, and it’s affecting us more and more, every day with COVID. And with everything else, so yeah, it’s even highlighted.
Yeah, PTSD, post traumatic depression syndrome, and and, you know, people from war, haven’t people from growing up haven’t people from, you know, get it gone through a relationship and a divorce, people having to move people having to change in their economic situation? There’s all kinds of weight loss, weight gain. There’s all kinds of issues that come up. abusive relationships, yes. And you can abuse yourself, because your mental health issues are not getting researched and checked. It took my doctor four months of meeting with me face to face, him asking me questions for an hour at a time to understand what where I was what was going on, so that he could properly diagnose me, and then from there, prescribed a remedy that that was going to work to make me healthy. And thank God, I ran into this guy, because I had seen three or four or five doctors before that just said, Oh, you have low level depression? Well, this guy said, No, you don’t have low level depression. You have severe depressive disorder, that is reoccurring. And he said, to be honest with you, not a lot of people get to the other side. A lot of people commit suicide. And he said, frankly, I’m worried about you. Wow, it took that many times to get to that point. Yeah. So combined with my doctor’s help. And with my sobriety, which he said my severe depressive disorder was causing my addictions, to drugs and alcohol, that finally I cleaned everything up. And I decided I got to write this book. And it took three years for me to finish this book. But I saw the issues of mental health, and unchecked mental health issues like depression and stress and anxiety, things that people live with every day and they don’t think number one, that it’s a problem. Or there’s a lot of guys who are hung up on. If they ask for help. They’ll be pigeonholed as a feminized man, not a real man.
A weak guy. Because they grew up with everyone’s saying, Hey, don’t cry. toughen up. Pull your pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and be a man. Yeah, how many times and sports Have you even heard that example? Pull up your big boy pants and get get out there and hit the stupid ball and what’s going on? sports you’re seeing players in the NBA A basketball in football.
In college sports. You’re seeing all these people coming out. There was a baseball player that two years ago, took a gun to his head. He pulled the trigger. But he was still alive as blood comes gushing out. And he had to make a split decision whether he was going to pull that trigger again and kill himself, or he was going to get help. And he, he decided he wanted to live in today, the guy is healthy. He plays in minor league baseball. He’s trying to get back to the major leagues. And he’s come out and talked about his mental health issues.
Kevin Love who plays professional basketball for the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Martin de Rosen, who plays NBA basketball for the San Antonio Spurs. Brandon Marshall played foot NFL footballs in the New York Jets in the Chicago Bears. He has come out, there are more men coming out saying, Wow, I have mental health issues. And I need to get help with them. And when they do that other guys come to them and say, really, I thought it was just me that felt this way. But now you have told me that you do. So how do I get help. And this is the beauty of your mental health issues is that they can be managed. And you can have happy and healthy relationships. If you get help, it actually takes more courage to ask for help, then to hide behind the curtains and hide underneath your bed. And think I can’t tell anybody. I can’t trust that anybody’s going to perceive me as a masculine man. And especially can’t tell women, because I’ll never get a date with them. Whereas I say, look, healthy, integrated masculinity is what every man needs to practice.
Men need to be vulnerable. They need to create a safe space, a space, a safe environment. For a woman, whether it’s their partner at home, whether it’s the people at work, a man needs to create this safe environment for a woman to be exactly who she is. and not be threatened by that or intimidated. man thinks he’s got to fix all of a woman’s problems. How can he fix a woman’s problem? He’s a man. I can’t fix your problems. I’m a man. I don’t know what a woman goes through. Men have to go talk to men, women already talked to women. And they get a lot of help. Women are more emotive than men. Men have to ask for help. There are men’s meetings, men’s clubs, men’s tribes, these are all about men trusting men, and helping them to get to their truth. So that they can see the path they need to get on in order to get healthy. And they need to get off the alcohol or drugs, or yelling and screaming or violence or domestic violence or whoever they’re beating up or whoever they’re killing, whether it’s themselves or others. But slowly, but if you’re an addict or an alcoholic, it’s not just you having the problem. You start affecting everybody in your family, and everybody in your life. Everybody you work with and yes. And it’s problematic. And we don’t, we don’t have to go through this. It’s a human thing. It’s okay, we’re humans, we make mistakes. Forgiveness, and love is a big part of life. You know, my fiance and I, we get in arguments. But we have a commitment to each other that before the night is over, we’re gonna resolve it.
And thus, once we do, personally, I get the perspective. Like I’m looking down at it from 15 feet and saying seeing my behavior and most of the time, I’ve been projecting work problems or other issues that I’m dealing with, and I projected on my fiancé and give her a hard time. And she gets upset. And I have to number one, I, myself, I have to check myself, I have to get help with that. I need your forgiveness, I want to make an amends, I don’t want to have this issue, continue to, you know, ruminate between us. And I make a commitment that I will get the help I need, whether it’s talking to other men, whether it’s talking to my doctor, or having a better relationship with God, to ask for guidance, so that I don’t do that again. But, you know, we’re all humans, okay, I just can’t turn things on and off regarding my behavior, but I can get help.
So in in the your other world, you would have just got out the marijuana or the drinks, then just kind of washed it away. And then sometimes I found around certain people that drank a lot, you would find them switch personalities. And, and people would always I’d be in my 40s and my 50s. And I go to a you know, a get together of some sort. And people would say, do you want to drink like they’d be pushing these Drinks on me? Not that I’m I’m ever been an alcoholic. I’ve never really enjoyed drinking. But I’d have one drink perhaps or, you know, that’s that’s about it. And people would ask me, it was like, it was like a strange kind of philosophy that if you didn’t drink, you’re not normal. And so I thought, Wow, this is so strange. I here I am in my 40s and 50s. And people are still pushing drinks on you like you’re in college. And I just don’t understand that concept. Because I always said to them, I’m fine. I don’t need to have a drink to have fun. I’m fine without the drink. So some people can do that. Some people can smoke one joint, and they’re fine. If I see a bag of marijuana, we’re sitting there until it’s all gone. That’s just the way I’m put together. Yeah.
But we’re all different. And you know, there are some people who, like you said they look at you having one drink and then walking away and going home. They say, Are you kidding me? They have to drink until they black out until they pass out until they broken dishes. They broken glasses. They broken relationships. They’ve made a mess. God forbid they get in the car and have a car accident. Yeah. You know, look at Tiger Woods. Look at a lot of people. A lot of people end up killing other people, God forbid because they are drunk or on drugs. And they smash in other people. Yeah. And they they don’t realize that they have a mental health issue that they need help with. And that there are doctors and people out there that can help them manage their mental health issue. So that you can have a happy and healthy relationship with yourself and others.
Yeah, I think this is such a good topic right now. for mental health. It’s coming out more and more and my nose is itchy. So that means it’s important. So yeah, because Prince Harry and Megan even came out of like I talked about coming out like they came out of the closet or something but, but it feels like that right? Because you’re trapped like you feel trapped. With no one that hears you No one can understand you. No one’s there to support you. What do you do you feel like you’re literally trapped and bound, right? That’s how I picture it.
Look, it’s the rare person today. That does not feel anxiety and stress from the world we live in. It’s a crazy world out there. crazier than I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, I mean, there are politicians and business people that want to see these people with mental health issues locked up instead of providing help and support. And that’s sad today. Because people do need help. With COVID-19 with the eradication of our economy, the isolation, isolation, businesses have taken have gone out of business. People are struggling left and right. Their children are struggling left and right. Everybody is affected by this. Everybody needs support and help people to go to that can help them manage these situations, some of which some men and women don’t even know that they are living an unhealthy life when it comes to mental health. Sometimes people have physical bad physical health. Don’t even go to their doctors because they’re afraid. They don’t want to hear what they have to go through. They don’t want to have to think they have to go to a hospital and have surgery. They don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take the drugs afterwards, the pain medication because it’ll make them drink. And they could get hooked on those opioids. That is becoming a serious, serious problem in this country, because they’re much cheaper than heroin. And they’re pretty much having the same effect on people. And, unfortunately, people in surrounding countries are lacing these opioid opioids, and these pills with fentanyl? Yes, and that’s deadly. Yes, that’s deadly. You. So many people, I know they’ve gone to Mexico, they go to the bar, ask for a drink. The next day they’re dead. They’re found dead in their room because the drink was laced with fentanyl.
If you want to see more of this interview, check out our YouTube channel
For our interview on all Podcast Platforms check out this link
You can follow Tim Krass and his book at the following links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TO4MentalHealth
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/timkrasscom
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/Tim-Krass-7aa3306/
Please note: Here are Links for any Mentalhealth Hotlines:
National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1.800.273.8255
Mental Health and Substance Abuse National Helpline: 1.800.662.4357
National Hopeline Network (Depression and Suicide): 1.800.SUICIDE (784-2433).
National Youth Crisis Hotline: 1.800.448.4663.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1.800.799.SAFE (7233).
If you are in immediate danger: Call 9.1.1.
In Canada: With Crisis Text Line powered by Kids Help Phone, you can chat with a trained, volunteer crisis responder for support any time, about anything, via text message. Our texting service is free and available across Canada 24/7 Funded by the Government of Canada and geared toward Indigenous people nationwide, the Hope for Wellness Help Line provides immediate mental health counselling and crisis intervention. You can call 1-855-242-3310, available 24/7, to talk in English or French, as well as Cree, Ojibway or Inuktitut upon request
Comments are closed
Share Your Thoughts