Mental health is a dial, and you can train it

So it’s Movember again. The moustaches are coming in, and so are the statistics. I want to write about the men who don’t really show up in either, because they’re the men I spend most of my time with.

A lot of the men who come to my circles look fine from the outside. They’ve got good jobs, they train, and they’re usually the person everyone else rings when something breaks. And quite often, early on, one of them will say something like “I don’t really have a mental health problem, I’m just tired.”

I get that, because “just tired” is a lot easier to say. But when we breathe together for a while, the tired often turns out to be something else. Sometimes it’s grief, and sometimes it’s anger that’s been sitting there for years with nowhere to go.

The numbers

I’ll keep this bit short. Around three in four suicides in England and Wales are men. In 2024 the male rate was 17.6 per 100,000, the highest since 1999, and it was highest of all in men aged 50 to 54 (ONS).

Most men will never get anywhere near that end of things. But I feel the road there is long and quiet, and a lot of us walk some of it without ever really naming it.

Movember’s own research backs this up. Almost half of men said they don’t talk openly with friends about their problems, and only 1 in 10 said they’d turn to friends or family when life got hard. The one that really stayed with me is that two in three young men said they’d rather be known as short-fused than vulnerable.

Fine or broken

Most of us grew up with two settings: you’re fine, or you’ve “got a problem”. So we tick the fine box and get on with it.

I find it much more useful to think of mental health as a dial. On a good day you’re sleeping well, you laugh easily, and a hard meeting is forgotten by dinner. Turn it a little and you’re short with the kids, you need a couple of drinks to switch off, and you’re still on your phone at 1am. Turn it a bit further and you stop replying to messages altogether. None of that makes you broken. It just tells you where you are right now.

I really like what Talk Club do here. They ask the men in their groups to give themselves a score out of 10 and then explain why. It’s such a simple thing, but it changes the question from “is something wrong with me?” to “where am I today?” And the number moves around from week to week, which is completely normal.

The gym bit

Most of the men I work with are pretty disciplined about their bodies. They’ve got a training plan, a sleep tracker, maybe a supplement stack, and nobody waits for a heart attack before they start walking. But the same men will run their nervous system flat out for years and only look at it when something gives.

I think the mind works in much the same way as the body. Small things done often add up over time, and they’ll beat a big push in a crisis. It’s the boring consistency that does the work, same as it does in the gym.

I do want to be careful with the gym comparison, though. If you’re struggling, it doesn’t mean you didn’t train hard enough. Fit people tear hamstrings all the time, nobody blames them for it, and they go and see a physio. So if you’re injured, see someone who treats injuries, whether that’s your GP, a therapist or a helpline. That’s part of looking after yourself too.

Why “just talk” is hard

Every November the message is “talk”, and I agree with it. I just think it misses a step for a lot of men.

Plenty of high-achieving men can’t talk about how they feel because they honestly don’t know. Most of us were raised to perform, fix things and provide, and noticing what was going on inside wasn’t really part of that. So when a friend asks how you are, you say “busy”, and you mean it, because busy is the only thing you can feel.

This is why I start with the body rather than with words. It’s the clenched jaw, the shoulders up round your ears, the breath stuck high in your chest, and lying awake at 3am going through the to-do list. That’s a nervous system that’s been left switched on for too long. You can’t really think your way out of that, but you can breathe your way down a few notches. And once you’re there, the words usually come a lot more easily.

A simple place to start

If you want something practical, this is what I’d suggest. Pick 2 of these to start with rather than trying all 5.

• Daily: 5 minutes of slow breathing before you open your laptop. Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4 and out for 6. The longer out-breath tells your body it’s okay to stand down.
• Weekly: give yourself a number out of 10 and say it out loud to one person, whether that’s your partner, a friend or a brother.
• Weekly: move with someone, whether it’s a walk, a run or a session at the gym. It’s a lot easier to talk side by side than face to face.
• Monthly: have one honest conversation with a man you trust, and let it go on a bit longer than one pint.
• If your number drops and stays low for 2 weeks: treat it like an injury and book in with your GP or a therapist.

Going first

One thing I see again and again in circle is that once one man is honest about how he’s actually doing, the others tend to follow. It just takes someone to go first.

So this Movember, maybe that’s you. Tell a friend your number and ask him for his. And if he says “fine”, it’s worth asking again.

If you need support now

If you’re in the UK, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time. CALM’s helpline is 0800 58 58 58, from 5pm to midnight every day. You can also text SHOUT to 85258. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999.

If this landed

I run men’s circles and breathwork through Brothers in Breath, mostly for men who look fine and aren’t quite sure they are. If you’d like to talk through where you’re at, you can book a free discovery call. Or if you fancy it, just send me your number out of 10.