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0 By Alan D.D.
One of the main problems we guys face when we deal with depression is that we often express it by being angry at everything and everyone. While women cry, men tend to be more irritable, have bad humor and be so tensed even the littlest thing makes us explode. We can come across as always angry.
Depression can have many faces, but it seems that feeling angry, stressed and maybe anxious are just a few of them. This is especially true if you’re a man, and there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is knowing and doing nothing about it.
We’re living in a stigma where we have to be strong and mighty, but that’s not the case for many, me included. How do you deal with this sickness correctly? Taking control not of your feelings, which is nearly impossible, particularly when you’re always angry, but of your reactions.
I don’t have the luck to be in a calm job, or only one there. If I’m in the office with the “serious one” and feel there’s something stirring inside, I take a deep breath, walk out of the office and go to a lonely corner near to the bathrooms where there’s almost always no one around. It’s a little, private haven.
At home? If there’s no one around, I walk around a table. I walk and walk and walk and walk, or put some music, sing along the lyrics. No matter if I do a hundred mistakes. Singing has helped me when it’s something I can relate to. If you ask any professional, they’ll tell you that singing can really help with your emotions.
If home is filled with people and I cannot find a calm space, I go out. Walk the dog, or go to a room to breathe for a couple of minutes, or, even better, the bathroom to wash my face over and over and over again. Obsessive? Yes. Helps? Bigger yes.
I create a bubble around me
However, if I’m in a public space, a park, a mall, a store, or whatever, and feel that something inside my head is starting again the inner hell, I create a bubble around me. Sit somewhere, check my phone, write text messages I never send, write in my block of notes, look at the environment or go to the bathroom, again, and lock myself in one of the toilets.
If you’re at school, have a bully bothering you, then go talk to the principal, your professors, your parents, yell, scream and let everyone know about it. There’s nothing wrong at all with telling them, because that’s exactly your best weapon. As long as you keep silent, they’ll keep doing it. Never keep your feelings to yourself because you’re expected to.
Be a warrior, but to save yourself
Boys feel, boys suffer. Boys cry and boys can be depressed. We have the right to, and even if people think we’re strange, what other choice do we have? Pretending everything’s fine until we explode one day? It already happened to me, more than once, and things got worse than you can imagine. Mark my words.
We’re humans, we’re alive, we’re people, and it’s perfectly fine to feel like this. But it is up to us to fight as much as we can, be the warriors society wants us to be. But there will be no damsel in distress, only ourselves. To wake up every day is already a prize, a victory. As long as we keep fighting, we’ll be warriors, no matter what other people tell us.
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
