Men's Mental Health

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This episode may contain content that could alarm or trigger some people listener. Discretion is advised.

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It's not until someone has a conversation with you or you hit rock bottom that you go, It's time. But a lot of time, when you hit rock bottom, it's too late to save relationships or marriages or whatever, but they can save themselves, which is the most important thing. Save the relationships with their children or family or friends.

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Hello, and welcome to Brainstorm. I'm Guy Rowlison. Over the years, my guest today has helped hundreds of men who have struggled with emotional issues and life. He openly admits to having lived in a struggle bubble for three decades and knows all too well what life is like when it comes to depression and PTSD. He's an author, keynote speaker, and founder of The Momentum Revolution, designed to guide, inspire and empower men who are facing challenges from withdrawal and anxiety through to anger, or just feeling lost and not knowing why they feel unhappy. Dr. Brett della welcome.

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Thanks very much, Guy, and thanks for having me.

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Firstly, can I congratulate you on the work you're doing with men right around the country? But that comes from a place which emanates from your own powerful story as a boy, doesn't it?

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It does. It stems back from my own experiences, through my own struggles, and it took my life in a whole different direction once I hit 50.

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Look, if I can get into that a little bit later, perhaps, but at a TEDx event, you spoke about how the brain can protect us from physical and emotional pain, but can't necessarily distinguish between the two. And a bungee jumping experience, of all things you had with mates, helped you realize this. Can you explain that to me in a bit more detail, please?

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Yeah. So with bungee jumping or any sort of activity that's got that big adrenaline rush, that one that pushes you to the limit, I arrived that day and thought, oh, this will be fun. I looked up and I thought, oh, this might be not so much fun. So I got to the top and I remember standing there and the bloke sitting next to me instructing me, going, we want you to jump out as far as you can. I'm going, Wait, what? It's like, three, two, one. And as he's counting down, I'm going, I'm not doing this. I can't do this. I'm not jumping.

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And then he said jump. And the next thing I knew, I was off the platform and sort of just flopped over the edge and could see the ground coming towards me. And of course, in that moment, you're just screaming because you can't articulate any words. But in my head, very quietly, I was going, I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die. And then when I hit the water and bounced back up again, I remember thinking to myself, I was still screaming, but I remember thinking himself, I'm alive, I'm alive.

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And that fear that your body is designed to protect you from doing that silly stuff. But because of, I suppose the pre framing and knowing it's been done before, it's a massive adrenaline rush and I was on a high for probably at least 12 hours afterwards, where I was just on this massive high. And so the brain protects you from doing that silly stuff. Now, what I found out through my research, my experience when I was doing ah, reading up to this, this research from, from a doctor in the US, he actually found that if you stimulate people with and he did this in a functional MRI, so he was watching the brain in real time.

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And what he found was if he stimulated people with physical fear, like bungee jumping or heights or whatever it may be, then certain parts of the brain would light up. He then stimulated those same people in the MRI machine, but this time with emotional fear, fear of facing certain emotions, certain traumas. And he found that the same areas of the brain lit up. And so what he realized and what I found with my own experience and with working with other men is this fear is designed to protect us and keep us alive.

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But the problem is, because it can't distinguish between the two, it protects us exactly the same way. And as a child, for myself, with my trauma and the emotions that are attached to it, that allowed me to survive initially. But what happens is when you don't deal with those emotions, then it can have a real negative and detrimental effect on your emotional well being, your mental health, relationships, and basically every other aspect of your life, if being how it affects you. So it can be very beneficial to keep your life, but also can be very detrimental and cause some massive, sometimes massive challenges later on in life.

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So just how enveloping can fear shame, the stigma in all its forms be? And how does it start to manifest itself?

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Great question. Look, all the shame, guilt, embarrassment, fear, whatever those emotions are underneath, it sort of bubbles up underneath. And because we don't want to feel that, because that fear feels like we're going to die from it, we're so, like you said, enveloped in it. It just causes us to shut down and it shut down emotionally. And for me it came out in the form of depression. So as a child with my childhood stuff, I had an amazing childhood, amazing parents, great foundation, absolutely wonderful.

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Until I got to about the age of 17, 18,19. All of a sudden, all these emotions from my past had to come up and I just thought that was ignore it, ignore the memories, ignore the emotions and get on with it. And what it actually was, was I started depression. I just didn't realize at the time. And it can be come out in the form of anxiety. People can start to if the pain is so great internally, they can start to numb their pain. And this is where you get these young people who start using drugs or alcohol from a young age and then continue on through that, withdrawing, shutting down, disconnecting.

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It can come in a variety of different forms, but it can really just have a massive impact throughout their young lives and obviously into adulthood as well.

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Along those lines, what are the defense mechanisms we put in place when it comes to either being vulnerable or what lies do we tell ourselves in the belief that it's a self protect process or to help men potentially keep things from, say, family or friends?

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There's a couple of things. Firstly, I think we wear a mask for men. I call it our man mask. We show the world that we're okay, that everything is good, that we're tough, we're strong, and everything is fine. And there's a whole bunch of different masks, which was mine I'm okay mask. I also use a Joker mask a bit as well. And then the sporty mask. The sporty dude, but you've got the cool cat like Fonzie. You've got the know it all, you've got the bully mask and all these things are a defense mechanism. We develop these survival strategies to get through those moments. And whatever our situation is, it allows us to work through it in that moment, to get through those emotions until we can survive those moments that sort of can appear or reappear on multiple occasions, depending on your situation.

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And in regards to keeping it from our family and friends, it's the shame, it's the guilt, it's the embarrassment. We don't want people to see that we're weak or we've got you know, we've got a flaw because we're not perfect. And I was always ashamed. For me, I felt like a boy in a man's body until I was 43. I mean I mean, I'd been a police officer. I was running my own chiropractic business with my wife, and we've been married for three years. And it wasn't until the first three years of our marriage actually started feel like a man in a man's body. Before that, I felt like a boy in a man's body. And people are going to see straight through me.

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I felt like a failure and I felt like a fraud at times. And no matter what people said or did, it didn't matter what they said, I still felt that negativity within me, that negative voice going, you're full of shit, basically.

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Well, as you said, we all hear boys and men are told to be tough, not to show weakness, let alone ask for help or talk about uncomfortable situations. Yet in spite of what is seemingly a modern day society, it's still destroying men and their families, isn't it?

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Absolutely. I run workshops with men and I talk and mentor men regularly, very regularly. And I have men come to these workshops and they will talk about how their marriage has disintegrated and in the last twelve months, 18 months, two years, five years, or they've got a pattern of bad relationships and they just keep breaking down. And the common factor in all them is us, the men. And it's not until we realize that there's a pattern going on or there's a trauma there or there's this emotional blockage.

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And I'll give you an example which is just a generic one. It's not nothing in particular, no one in particular. But for example, a man will come through and go, okay, I've disconnected from my wife and disconnect from my family. I'm on my last legs, I'm drinking heavily. And then you go through and you unpack all that with them and you find that there's this trauma and it's usually from childhood, it's usually from dad, disconnecting from them or the physical or emotional violence that they saw or they were abused or they were bullied.

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And so this wall goes up and they shut down emotionally and they don't know how to communicate their pain, their fear, their emotions. And so it just becomes a pattern. And they don't know how to actually, a lot of times they don't even know they've got the trauma that's causing the pain. They understand they had a certain sort of childhood or a certain sort of trauma, but they don't understand the connection between the two.

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And once we connect the dots for them and they can actually see that, they go, oh wow, I get that now. And we can start pulling back those layers so they can actually start communicating, start feeling those emotions and most importantly, deal with them and let them go. Because if you don't deal with that trauma or those emotions, then I'll just continue to eat away internally. Because that negative mindset, that negative talk we give ourselves unless we get rid of that and get rid of the emotional attachment to those particular incidences, those traumas, those moments.

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Until we deal with that, it's just going to we're going to carry it around with us. And I know that from my first hand experience myself. But dealing with lots of men, same story time and time again, we have to deal with our shit to allow us to move forward.

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Is there a self realization? Is it because they talk to other people? What brings men particularly to the point where they say, gee, I need to actually go and speak to someone about this? And generally, I'm guessing it's sometimes almost too late.

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Often it is too late for certain things. I've had men that they know that their marriage is over. Well, don't even realize the wife has basically said to them, it's over. And they still think there's there's an opportunity. And and that's really sad because once the the woman has made that decision, they usually decide two years out before they leave, that's the research, from what I've been told, is they will go, you need to change, you need to change, you need to change. And we go, yeah, we bury ahead in the sand, think it's going to change. And then when it doesn't, they go, Look, I'm out. It's like, okay, what do I need to do?

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And we make the decision too late sometimes. And that's really sad. But at the same time, it's also an opportunity to grow and learn for those particular individuals. Now, one of the most powerful things I'll go back a step, one of the realizations for the men is for me, it was like someone actually said to me, brett, aren't you sick of living like this? Aren't you sick of being in pain all the time? Aren't you sick of being depressed all the time?

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Aren't you sick of just not being you? And I was going yep, yep. Yep. And he goes, don't you think you should do something about it? And I went, yeah, I should. I was in that moment I realized that I was really struggling more than I actually knew. And I've been suffering from depression for 30 years, on and off, and I just got through a really bad, probably my worst battle, depression at the age of 50.

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He said, Aren't you sick of living like this? And I thought, you know what? I am sick of it living like this. It's not until someone has a conversation with you or you hit rock bottom that you go, It's time. But a lot of time when you hit rock bottom, it's too late to save relationships or marriages or whatever, but they can save themselves, which is the most important thing. Save the relationships with their children or family or friends.

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This episode of Brainstorm is proudly supported by Hi F. What if your health insurer gave you the freedom to choose?

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That brings me to your book. Soften the f up. You talk about the challenges men face and the importance of mental and emotional health. Offer insights into the tools and skills needed to help turn their life around. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

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About the tools?

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Yeah, tools and tools.

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There's so many different ones out there. I mean, speaking to it just speaking to start with, admitting you've got a problem, that's the first step. Admitting that I need some help is probably the first step. And then trying to find out what the problem is. And speaking to a mate, a friend, a GP, a counselor, whatever it is, just be aware that there's a problem and you need to ask for help because we can't do it by ourselves. If we could, we would have changed it already.

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And we need that guidance, that support system now. We have to do the work as an individual, we have to do the work. It doesn't happen naturally, but you have to take that first step and get the support network and the tools and skills to do that. Now for me, I saw counselors and psychologists early on in my thirty s and that seemed to help me to a point. But I want to slide back into this same cycle. I never really cleared those emotions that I needed to, that pain that I needed to.

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And so along the way I went firstly I went to a workshop over in Queensland and that was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Probably the most powerful experience of my life apart from my wedding day, probably the most amazing day of my life. I got to deal with my pain, my trauma, my emotions in a very powerful way with a support of about 50 men at that particular workshop. And then along the way I then was getting mentored by some people when I was doing a life coaching course with at the time.

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And they allowed me to see things from different perspective, they allowed me to use certain tools and along the way some of those tools were mindfulness meditation. I found for me, for my mental well being to really kick me off ice baths. I used to get in the freezing cold pool every winter and just get into up to my neck, do some breathing exercises, do some gratitude work. And so the ice bath, the breath work and the gratitude work kicked my day off in a really positive sense and that started to really improve that mental health significantly.

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And then another really positive one that I use is journaling and I use those all the time. Breath work and gratitude is probably the most powerful I use regularly at the moment, but I use the other ones as I need to. Initially I used journaling, especially a lot, and I use that regularly, but not as regular as I used to because I've got less things to unpack now because I've been unpacking them for like five years. So initially it was very powerful tool, but bit by bit I can sort of chop and change and use the ones that really suit me in that moment. And I've learned that skill as I've gone along.

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Because as men we're pretty much of the mindset, aren't we, that most jobs are DIY jobs, but like any big DIY project, including our emotional and psychological well being, we're not necessarily equipped to take that on without the right help. And probably part of the reason I suspect that things like the momentum revolution was established as well. Is that right?

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Absolutely. To have the support of other men around you. And if we can get that momentum of men moving forward in a really positive, enlightened, empowered and inspiring way to help men talk about their stuff, to support men in that space, then all of a sudden things start to get this snowball momentum effect. And we can actually start to change, because when we help one man, we don't just help a man, we help their immediate family around them. It impacts them, which will impact their family and friends. And all of a sudden, we can start changing communities and the state, the world.

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We just want to make this massive impact so we can actually change the stigma around this. I'll deal with it myself. I'm fine, I'm okay. When internally, we're not. We're drinking, we're gambling, we're watching porn, we're using drugs, and we're destroying ourselves mentally, emotionally and physically. So we have to change that. And that's why the momentum revolution is there, so we can share our wins and our challenges, and most importantly as well, our wisdom. Because everyone's experience can often support and guide other people in their journey, because we all need that different perspective.

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Just, I can say one thing and someone go, yeah, whatever, and you can say exactly the same thing in different words, and it'll click with them. If we can get people to share that different wisdom from different angles, different perspectives, and all of a sudden men will start going, oh, I get that. And they can start to learn and grow. And once we start to learn and grow within ourselves, we can change the world.

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No ages, no topics, nothing's. Nothing's off the books, is it?

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Nothing we've had at our workshops we have it from 1818 to 78 has been our age group. Okay, find that the most and all those men who are like from 18 to 30, us older men within the group, we're not jealous, but we're envious. We wish we at that age that we didn't wait till we were 50 years old or 45 years old, and we found that the most probably common age is between 40 and 55, where we had this, what they used to call the midlife crisis.

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And this is more about we feel lost. We don't know who we are anymore. We were depressed. We can't deal with the emotional baggage that we're carrying around, and we're at breaking point, and we need to get that support at that time.

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Is this partly because when you see young men today, and women as well, they're a lot more accepting and open with not only their feelings and emotions, but they're prepared to speak with people rather than say, men that are in their forty s, fifty s, sixty s and seventy s. Who. It was just a different environment. It was just a different society.

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Yeah, that's a good question. I think it depends on the background. I think because of the education that's coming through the schools now and the whole are you okay? Day and all those sort of movements are starting to break the stigma around that. But if you grow up in a particular environment where your great grandfather, your grandfather, your father have got this mindset, where you just have to toughen the F up and get on with things, then it becomes ingrained in you, and that's really important. And I'm very blessed and lucky that my father broke the cycle from his dad.

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I've got this amazing childhood, but I've seen men and women come through the different workshops where they are the people who are about to break the cycle.

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From a personal experience. I remember as a young boy, my grandfather's visiting them, and they'd both been to war, and you were told you're not allowed to talk to them about this or that or something else. Hopefully things have changed over time and that the momentum revolution is a step in the right direction, which I'm sure it is. But even at a more base level, say, in the workplace and from time to time, we all harbor those fears, like whether we stuff up, whether we don't fit in, or even that fear of the boss.

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These are things that can actually take their toll and manifest over a period of time, isn't it?

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Absolutely. And like you said, it can happen anywhere. It's not just in the home, it can be at work, it can be on the sporting grounds, it can be anywhere in the community. And it's a compounding effect. And if we don't have a good solid base here within ourselves, then it's just going to trigger us again and again, time and time again. So we have to really deal with that stuff internally. So we're internally, mentally, emotionally strong. So if something does happen and the boss does cause a sort of trigger, then you can go, Hang on. Well, that's his stuff.

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I'm sitting in my clean energy here. I'm doing the right thing. What's going on with him? And you have to realize sometimes, is he being personal to you or is he just like that with everyone? And often he's like that with everyone. And it's not that it's a personal attack on you, but if we're not strong enough to be aware of that, it can trigger us into a negative downturn. I hated being disliked or being seen as a naughty boy or anything like that. And it was and I carried that through to my adulthood. And I hated confrontation because of all my childhood stuff.

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You're quoted Brett as saying, no man should have to live with the pain, like I did for 30 years. No man should suffer in silence like I did. No man should have to be burdened with society's expectations. Every man should live with happiness and purpose. All they have to do is choose to make a change and let their real journey begin. If there's one piece of advice, the more insightful Brett Deller could pass on to, say, the Brett Deller of 1015, 20 years ago, what would that be?

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Do it now if I had my time over again. And look, I've mentioned about my childhood stuff, and I'm not sure if you want me to mention what it was, but I'm happy to share. But my childhood, I was sexually abused by a neighbor when I was six and seven years old on several, multiple occasions. And I don't have any regrets about my life. I have no regrets whatsoever because this journey has allowed me to be the man I am today, has allowed me to find the strength of my purpose to help other men.

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And the only thing I would change in my entire life is if I got to do instead of waiting till I was 50, I did it when I was 40 or 30 or 20. That I did it as soon as I knew that it was a problem, that I was emotionally struggling, that I dealt with it immediately. Because that compound effect of the positive time will go through much, much quicker. So if I had the wise, Brett now, talking to the young Brett or any man out there who's going, what should I do?

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Make a stand now for yourself. Draw a line in the sand and go, that's it, I'm doing something different, I'm doing it for me, and I'm going to get the help I need.

0:25:12

Just sound advice, Brett. If people want to reach out to you or the Momentum Revolution, how do they do that?

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We've got the website Momentumrevolution.com or the Facebook page. You can go to Dr. Brett Della Facebook page. And just to clarify, doctor is doctor of chiropractic. I'm not a psychologist or counselor or anything like that. I'm actually a doctor of chiropractic and I still work in that space. And then for the men who want to join the Momentum Revolution, Facebook, it's a closed Facebook page just for men. Just go to the Momentum Revolution Facebook page and register and I'll just approve you as you get on board.

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Brett Della, appreciate your insights, the work you're doing with all men, and the time you've taken out of your busy schedule to have a chat. Thank you.

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Thanks, guy. I really appreciate the time.

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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are for informational, purpose and not intended as a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis or treatment. For questions about your own emotional health and well being, please consult a medical professional.