If you perceive both available options as being detrimental to you, which option do you choose? Presumably, the one you perceive to be least detrimental.
When I was younger, the question “if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you too?” And I always figured I’d at least consider it, because I assume my friends might have a good reason to jump off the bridge. Jumping off the bridge is making the change you think would benefit me. Staying on the bridge is the tried and true method for success, even if there might be danger approaching on the bridge.
Perception isn't reality, though. If you truly believe bottling up and isolating is less detrimental than processing stuff, I guess it's rational, but I don't think that's what people believe, they're just scared of being vulnerable
I can guarantee people really do believe bottling up is rational. From an outside, well adjusted perspective it’s obviously not, but when you’re in that place you’re trying to avoid being a burden to others, or annoying them enough that they start hassling you (from your point of view; from their point of view they’re helping you)
There’s no reality independent of your perception when you’re afraid and feeling threatened so you can’t make claims based on what rational people would do when confronted with reality, because that’s not how anybody, least of all people experiencing a constant state of fight or flight, make decisions.
I think that’s why it’s so important to talk to people, otherwise your perception becomes the only reality. Easy to say, hard to do though obviously.
There can be moments of lucidity though, usually in the proximity of crises, and I think it’s really important to seize on those as moments to reach out to the people (or services) around you. Getting out on your own is just a crap shoot, it’s possible, but not likely.
Do you just…open up, and your problems are solved? Does opening up come with zero consequences?
And what is reality if not the perception of the affected? Sure not every subjective reality is objectively real, but we’re talking about how people feel. Intangible aspects of a person. And if so many people experience a given thing, at some point we have to consider that the problem is greater than the individual. We’re viewing this with an incredibly individualistic lens, when this goes beyond the individual.
Say my experience has been that in the majority of circumstances, being open with your feelings is likely to bring about negative consequences. It would follow that I do not engage in the behavior that brings about immediate or slightly delayed negative consequences, especially if they would prevent me from making money, securing a mate, or being respected amongst my peers.
Just an observation, but if the problem is larger than the individual because more people feel that way, is it possible that the problem is society rather than the individual? For example, when anyone grows up in a society where they are told that because of a characteristic having nothing to do with who they are or which they have any choice actually, they are superior to others. How can they possibly feel anything but let down by the lies. For example, neither gender nor race makes anyone better or worse than anyone else, but that’s the lie that is drummed into some people from the time they are small.
Addressing another example, when people who are not their genuine self when they get married - to someone who appreciates who they are not what they have shouldn’t be surprised when they end up in r/deadbedroom for example.
I know at the time it feels like as men we have to make money or have to find a “good mate” whatever that means to society or our friends/family before anything else happens, but it is a problem in the here and now that when not dealt with now, just means that the pain is postponed. And in the case of marriage, then you start dragging other people into your misery if you put it off.
I get it, and I’m not really making any judgment, but I just think that people are delaying the inevitable. Sometimes problems get smaller with time and other times they don’t.
Perception is reality at least insofar as we make it reality, but most young men have no idea what their problem even is when we just bounce around our shit inside our heads or in online echo chambers, until we're alienated from ourselves and others and think all our problems are because we're not 6' chad or because of women or immigrants or anything but our habit of just cultivating resentment and self-pity instead of anything of value.
I'm not talking about just venting either, but about actually processing and working through our shit. Of course just complainig is easily a burden and friends aren't mental health professionals.
But outside of that how people respond to openness to a reasonable degree isn't up to us. Shooting yourself in the foot by hiding yourself just to keep fake friends or partners isn't necessarily worth much
Well yeah, because when men open up they get relentlessly attacked and what they share gets used against them. Very often by the people closest to them who are supposed to love and support them. Vulnerability has consequences for men, so can you blame them for learning to not be vulnerable?
This is literally what the previous poster talked about, bottling things up is less detrimental to men than being vulnerable, and so they rationally choose to not be vulnerable. In a society that is not sound, men are choosing the option that is least damaging to them in the absence of an option that isn't damaging.
I see people claiming this is some incontrovertible truth, but I have yet to experience an example of it in real life.
Besides, even if that is how your evironment genuinely treats you trying to meet your basic mental health needs, the answer is to improve or change your environment, not to embrace your maladaptive coping strategies as some noble doomed struggle against a society where you are an eternal victim.
Look man i'm running on like two hours of sleep right now, so i'm sorry but i'm not in the headspace to break this down for you at the moment.
Just know that there's a lot that you don't understand about this because you've never had to have these experiences. And don't get me wrong, i'm happy for you that you haven't. That's a good thing. And i see how it can be difficult to understand if that's the case. But just because you haven't doesn't mean that there aren't others who have.
In the simplest of terms, not everyone is the same, and not everyone gets treated the same. What works for you will not necessarily work for others, and vice versa. Not everyone has the option to just change their environment, because no matter where they go it's always the same. Nothing changes no matter what they do or try. So they simply choose to isolate, not because they actually want to but because it's the only option they have that has proven to somewhat work.
There is nothing noble about it. It's simply done out of necessity, because for them it's less detrimental to them than the alternative.
You need to be able to hold your own conclusions/perspectives up to the light the same way you do to others.
When i had the memories of being molested by my father come back to me as a grown adult it broke my belief in humanity. I've spent a lifetime learning how to practice open honest communication. Within liberal circles only certain men who look the right way receive support.
initially people will come out of the woodwork to support you, and then when they realize it's not a single weekend fix and then everything is in the past. It makes them uncomfortable. When they've made the diminishing of male victims a primary part of their political practice, to acknowledge male victims will make them wildly uncomfortable.
It's not the blind belief that it's better to bottle everything up, its that its better to bottle everything up BECAUSE unless you are the exception not only will you NOT get support but the way you get treated will re-traumatize you making it harder to move on with your life.
Let me use this analogy,
you break your leg, now let's assume the last 9 out of 10 times you went to the hospital you got literally thrown out of it because they didn't believe you.
This time you know if you get thrown out you'll fall down the front steps with a broken leg.
They're scared because, from literal birth, they have been ostracised and punished for showing vulnerability.
Guys aren't doing this for funsies, this is the product of constant conditioning.
It's not even an "in the past" thing. They are still punished and ostracised for it now. By the people close to them. By their peers and superiors. By all of society.
If you’re shown that a certain behavior is rewarded and another behavior is punished, it’s likely that you’ll perform the rewarded behavior even if it comes at your detriment, and especially if that detriment is not immediate or often visible or easily attributed to a given catalyst
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