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What Does “Taking Responsibility” Mean?

I remember, many years ago, I was suffering very badly from depression.  I was unable to get off the couch and days rolled into weeks which, in turn, rolled into months of starring at the ceiling.  Everything I had tried hadn’t worked. 

I had spent years in therapy.  Why, after spending all that time had therapy ‘not worked’?  I had trained as a therapist.  I knew ‘from the inside’ the nature of mental health problems.  Why hadn’t this knowledge helped?  In desperation I had turned to the psychiatric profession who duly treated my depression ‘aggressively’.  I was on a cocktail of five psychiatric drugs.  But they hadn’t worked either.  Why?

I felt at the end of the road.  Nothing was working.  Therapy, insight or drugs.  I felt I had nowhere left to turn.  I remember standing one rainy winter’s night by a railway line.  I had scaled the wall and scrambled to the edge of the track.  High speed inter-city and local trains screamed past frighteningly close.  The police and my mother were repeatedly calling my cell phone, but I ignored them. I was perilously close to death. 

Fortunately there was enough of me that still wanted to live, and I turned away and started walking home.  The police were searching for me and quickly picked me up.  The officer was relieved to have found me alive.  The care and compassion I saw in his eyes reconnected me to the human race.  He didn’t make a fuss, for which I was grateful.  I was returning home to try one more time.

This time, though, it was different.  I was going to sort my life out.  I had spent years putting my faith in other people’s solutions.  My therapists.  My lecturers.  My trainers.  My psychiatrists.  If I was going to be rescued from my living hell, I was going to have to do it for myself.  By myself. I realised I had to start to take responsibility for myself.

The changes I made to my life transformed it.  They form the basis of the work I now do with my clients.  What I realised was that I had spent years expecting professionals to sort my life out for me.  This therapist, this drug, or this book … will make the difference.  I was outsourcing my happiness, and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working.

I sometimes see this with my clients too.  They want me to work it all out for them.  Tell them what to do to be happy.  Like me, they fail to realise I am only a guide.  I can only support and encourage them on their journey.  The journey, however, can only be travelled by them.

So I learnt to take responsibility for myself, my life, and my happiness.  The result is a happy and successful life for me.  It also gives me something solid to base my work with my clients. It seems to resonate with my clients, and I simply can’t keep up with the demand.

It also made me realise in choosing my own therapists and consultants, I need people who had themselves been battered by the rough waves of life.  Qualifications, though important, are not my main criteria. I don’t need a therapist who has had a charmed life and read lots of books!

So why am I telling you this?  Well one simple reason is to get you to think about your attitude to the people who are trying to help you.  Whether this is a friend, family member or therapist.  However good the advice, unless you take responsibility for your own suffering, it is unlikely to help in the long run.

There is another reason, though.  I’ve decided to put my insights down in a book.  I want to say what depression and anxiety looked like from the inside, and what I needed to do to take responsibility, and recover.  I want to inspire others to do the same.  I want to go beyond the fifteen or so people I can see each week.

I hope you are interested in this project and want to follow its development. Check out my new website “How To Beat Depression Without Drugs” and register your details.  I will keep you informed of developments.

If I know there are people supporting me it will help me enormously.  Thanks.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) for men in Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and Skype counselling for men wherever you live
• Supervision and consultative support for therapists in Manchester
• Mediation for employment disputes in Manchester and the UK
• Dr Tyson is writing "How To Beat Depression Without Drugs" a self help book for sufferers

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Why Are Men Four Times More Likely to Kill Themselves Than Women?

The latest suicide figures have been released and, unsurprisingly, little has changed.  Four times as many men commit suicide compared to women.  This is true whatever age range is being considered.  It is also true internationally.  Wherever you live in the world, as a man you are four times more likely to end your own life than your female neighbour.  So what is happening?

One key factor is that the people who kill themselves tend to be depressed or have alcohol issues.  It’s not that women don’t get depressed or have alcohol issues; it’s more the way women choose to deal with these problems.  Women are more likely to talk through their problems with a close friend or family member.  This acts as a protective factor.  If you can talk through your problems you not only feel less alone, but paradoxically, the problems don’t seem as bad either.

Men, on the whole, are not as good as women about asking their mates for help.  I see this all the time with the men I work with.  They may be going through hell and grappling with really serious issues, but they wouldn’t dream of turning to their mates for support.

And this is crucial.  If you feel alone with your problems, they can often seem insurmountable.  Suicide seems more reasonable in these circumstances, as a way of ending the pain.  Perhaps this is also why men choose more lethal ways of taking their own life than women, and succeed more often as a consequence. 

Saying that men are more likely to commit suicide because they are less able to talk through their problems with their mates just begs a different question:  Why don’t fella s talk?

At a biological level, testosterone starts killing off the social/emotional brain in men from only six weeks old.  The testosterone surge at puberty, for many men, finishes the job off.  As a consequence many men simply lack the ability to communicate effectively about their problems and needs.  No doubt this has an impact on male subculture, which prizes strength over vulnerability and competence over failure.  It’s unsurprising that many men, when faced with difficulties in life feel they have nowhere to turn.

So what should you do if you are having suicidal thoughts and feelings?  It’s really important you let someone know how you feel.  I understand its difficult talking to friends and family, but they can often be the best people to turn to.  If there is simply no one you trust, then turn to the professionals.  Your G.P. is a good place to start, as is a therapist.  Both will have heard men talk of suicide many times before, so you won’t be burdening them.  If anything they will be concerned to hear how unhappy your life is right now.  If speaking to someone face to face is too much to start with, ring the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90.  They have decades of experience of helping men with their suicidal feelings.

At a broader level, we need to change the male culture of ‘toughing it out’.  We may not be able to change the impact of testosterone on our brains, but we don’t have to accept indifference to our fellow men as desirable or acceptable.  You can start to make that change yourself today.  Start looking out for your buddy’s, and if they seem to be having a hard time of things, make the space for them to talk about what’s going on for them.  You don’t have to solve their problems, and they may well turn the offer down, but simply knowing that someone cares enough to try can literally mean the difference between life and death.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) for men in Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and Skype counselling for men wherever you live
• Supervision and consultative support for therapists in Manchester
• Mediation for employment disputes in Manchester and the UK

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Depression and (Over-) Work.

Much is often made of the link between lack of work and depression.  There are two reasons for this.  First, in losing a job, we lose not only an income but social contact, a structure to our day, and our self esteem.  Second, lack of activity gives us lots of time to get caught up in our worries and concerns.  Such rumination, unsurprisingly, is linked to both anxiety and depression.  In the UK we are prescribing more antidepressants than ever before, up 28% according to recent NHS figures, and this is no doubt connected to the economic down turn and higher rates of unemployment.

Less though, is made of the link between too much work and depression.  A study in the online journal PLoS ONE suggests that working more than 11 hours a day will make you 2.4 times more likely to suffer depression over a five year period (factoring out all other variables) compared to a 7 or 8 hour day.  As men are more likely to work longer hours, they are also at greater risk.

Why does over work lead to depression? Unfortunately the study does not suggest hypothesis as why this might be the case.  One clue however, might be in their finding that the people who were younger and less skilled were at higher risk.  The younger and less skilled you are the less control you have of your work.  People who do not feel in control of their lives often feel powerless which can lead to depression.  Perhaps too much work deminishes our sense of control and autonomy?

The truth though, is this is just a guess.  All we do know for sure is that too much work isn’t good for you!

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) for men in Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and Skype counselling for men wherever you live
• Supervision and consultative support for therapists in Manchester
• Mediation for employment disputes in Manchester and the UK

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What’s the Point?

Have you ever asked yourself ‘what is the point of life’?  Well you’re not alone.  In fact it’s a question philosophers have been asking themselves for recorded history.  Yet at the same time it is a profoundly personal question.  We all have to work out what our own point of living is.  Of course, when things are going well, the point is pretty obvious … its love, sex, family, friends and the good times.  But what about when things aren’t going so well?

When people get depressed they often spend a lot of time asking themselves what the point of their life is.  For these men it is a serious problem.  When depressed the world and the future looks bleak.  In fact the world looks stripped of meaning.  Everything just seems so pointless.  In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a journey into the depths of melancholia, Hamlet is found asking himself “To be or not to be, that is the question”.  It is one of the most quoted lines in the English language for a reason.  It speaks to our being alive, and if meaning cannot be found, the bringing of life to an end.  It is the most profound question of existence we all face.

Unfortunately trying to grapple with these big questions when depressed is not the most sensible of strategies.  None the less the question often presses itself on the mind of the depressed person with some force.  How should we respond to a person that sees so little point in life?

My take on this is that just by being able to ask the question is astonishing in itself.  Let me explain.  Space, as we know, is vast.  Millions and millions of light-years pass revealing nothing but stuff.  Comets, stars and planets.  Separating this stuff is endless amounts of nothingness. Space.  Yet in the middle of this vast universe is a small star called the sun with a small planet called the earth on which you and I sit.  Here we can reflect on this whole process, and ask ourselves … ‘just what is the point’!  In other words we are that small part of a vast universe that can reflect on itself and ask why?  It is in being able to ask what the point of life is that the point of life is revealed.  Our life is a miracle.  The point is everything.

Image by James Dent. Thanks.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Cognitive behavioural therapy (cbt) for men in Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and online counselling for men wherever you live
• Supervision and consultative support for therapists in Manchester
• Mediation for employment disputes in Manchester and the UK

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