Why we all need to be a little more like Tom

Jerome Lebel-Jones
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

Tom is the success I wish I could be. He has a stellar career, he does important work, he has amazing friends, and a wonderful family.

Tom also has depression.

I don’t know why Tom is depressed, but he is. What makes Tom unusual is not that he’s a super-successful guy with depression; it’s that he’s willing to say so.

I asked Tom why he felt comfortable talking about his depression. “Actually, at the start I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t think people would understand. But I got tired of pretending that everything was OK.”

The reason that men are reluctant to talk about their struggles is complex, and many factors contribute to it. One of these factors is that we feel the need to present a certain version of ourselves to others; the happy, successful version. But none of us is happy all the time and success is an amorphous concept. Every guy I know who is successful in the classic, masculine version of the word (being a good provider, husband and dad), has a trove of war stories full of fuck-ups, missteps, and even outright failures.

Therein lies the problem. We offer others a simplified, sanitised version of ourselves. We say “I’m a success: I’ve got a big house, a happy family and we go on nice holidays”. It’s not that we shouldn’t pursue this version of success, but perhaps more that no life is one-dimensional.

Why then does it diminish us to say “I have a nice house and a great family but I’m having a tough time at the moment”? Are we not aware that everybody’s life is a mixed bag?

What if it has more to do with what we believe people expect of us? We suspect others have much higher expectations of us than they actually do. We worry that people expect us to have a perfect life.

I asked Tom how he went about telling his family and friends about his depression. “I really felt that the people who cared about me needed to know what was going on, so I was straight with them. I just said ‘I have depression’. It was hard, but I also found it liberating in a way.”

We need to be more like Tom. Everyone’s life is a mixed bag. Being able to say so makes us more, not less. It lets our friends know who we really are.

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Jerome Lebel-Jones

Getting men talking. Founder Talk Yourself Better & EspressoMelbourne.com, marketer, coffee drinker, wanderer.

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