Men Would Rather Die Than Go to Therapy. That’s Not Good for Men, or for Therapy.
Many men would never dare sign up for therapy. If they did, they would never admit to it.
A few days ago, I noticed that Elon Musk “Tweeted” (okay, fine, “Posted”) the following on Twitter / 𝕏:
“Put ‘Never Went to Therapy’ on my gravestone.”
As of this writing, this was posted 12 days ago. Here are some quick statistics about this one-line sentence:
It was seen almost 67 million times
It was “liked” over 302,000 times
It was quoted over 6,000 times
It was reposted over 32,000 times
It was bookmarked over 7,600 times
This is all very interesting to observe.
I know it’s getting boring to constantly refer to the new owner of Twitter / 𝕏 as “a billionaire” or “the richest man in the world,” but it is important to state here just how influential he is.
When “the richest man in the world” brags online that what he wants to be known for after his death is the fact that he did not go to therapy at any point in his life, this is strange and, arguably, sad.
Something is wrong here.
If you think I’m specifically talking about Elon Musk, you’re missing the point: this really isn’t about him. Honestly, what’s more telling isn’t what he said but what other people said in the comments.
There are obviously some people saying silly things in response, as if it’s all a very funny joke, like “Men would literally go to Mars instead of going to therapy” and “Men will literally build rockets and escape orbit to avoid [therapy]. You’re proof.”
But there are lots of other comments from a different angle, too:
One from a firefighter who says, “Huh… well, some of us did stuff where therapy helped, and we aren’t ashamed of it,”
A Marine who says, “…I won’t be able to deny going to therapy. …PTSD is a real bitch.”
There are also jokers, haters, trolls, and Musketeers (people who think everything Musk says is amazing) who have their turn.
In other words, the comments run the gamut from supporting a statement like that to making fun of it, saying it’s stupid, saying there’s nothing to be ashamed of in going to therapy and everything in between.
As a man who has lived, loved, married, become a father, run a business, and recently experienced the death of very close loved ones, I don’t exactly know what to say about all of this.
I visited a therapist myself a few years ago when I was in a very dark, very depressed state. I am not ashamed to say that.
I don’t know that it transformed my life or “cured” me, but it was certainly a step in the right direction, and that’s all it needed to be.
I met with a woman who was an LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) and a Marriage and Family Therapist. You had better believe that I was in need of help and actively looking for help when I went to see her.
I admit: it was embarrassing walking through the door, sitting down, and hearing a woman I’d never met before asking me, “So Ron, tell me, what’s going on?” But I took that opportunity very seriously. I answered her question.
I told her what was going on.
She gave me some good advice. She was there to listen and to help. I was very appreciative of that. She helped me course correct when I was—as I said—in a very dark state of mental confusion.
Today, I went to the gym, and as I was working out, I was thinking about all of this.
I thought about the ways that men do cope with hard things in life instead of seeking therapy or counseling. Men deal with really hard things on a fairly regular basis, but they don’t often like to talk about them.
Men have to deal with things like losing their jobs (which happened to me three times), losing family members (which happened to me twice in the past few years), and struggling financially (this happens on a semi-regular basis).
Women deal with a lot of these things, too, of course, but it seems they usually have people they can vent to. Finding a “safe space” to talk about it, either in front of friends or strangers, seems to be much easier for them, or at least more available to them.
As you might notice in the comment section on Musk’s post, men typically don’t have this and don’t want it. There are lots of jokes about “crying” and “talking about our feelings” in a mocking tone.
As I was taking a shower today after my workout, I think I figured out what it is men do when they need help. It’s not good.
Instead of seeing a therapist or a counselor, there are three things men do consistently to help themselves cope with life’s challenges:
They get drunk on alcohol.
They get high on drugs.
They commit suicide.
That’s pretty much it. Just look at that list: it’s horrible.
What a contrast. Many men, at least in America, would rather get drunk, get stoned, or even take their own lives than deal with some of their issues or find ways to work through them with the help of other people.
I still remember the first time I met a woman who talked about “going to therapy.” She spoke about it all… the… time… openly, loudly, and frequently, like she had no shame about it. It was so awkward: the fact that she didn’t even seem embarrassed about it made me feel embarrassed for her.
She’d start sentences with: “My therapist tells me I should…” or “In therapy, I’m learning about…”
The weirdest thing about this was, at one point, I asked her how long she’d been going to therapy.
“Three years,” she told me.
This nearly took my breath away.
She had been going to a professional counselor to get therapy for her many, many issues for three entire years, and STILL needed to go… every week?!
That was SO weird!
I couldn’t understand how she hadn’t been “cured” yet or why her life was still such a disaster. I couldn’t imagine how much better my life could have been if I had been able to afford to seek help from a professional once a week for the past three years.
Why wasn’t she the smartest, most functional person I knew, with all the best habits and the greatest marriage? How could it possibly be that she’d visited a mental health professional at least 156 times in a row and wasn’t better?
I didn’t know then, and I still don’t know now. But that definitely turned me off to therapy in a huge way. That doesn’t make any sense at all.
But thinking about my own life, I can’t imagine being a man in this world in the same situation: openly admitting to people that I’m so completely broken that I have to go every week to talk about my problems, my struggles, and my feelings with a woman (I know it’s not always a woman, but it usually seems to be a woman) just to function.
If that’s what therapy is, it clearly isn’t working. I know very, very few men who would put up with that. What an incredible waste of time.
But here’s my point: what men are doing isn’t working either.
I recently wrote about my friend Dan, a fellow entrepreneur who was just like me: he was also a Christian, he was also a husband and father, and he was also working in the tech/web industry. We had much in common. We referred business back and forth to each other. He was great. I liked him. He did good work.
In 2018, Dan died by suicide, leaving behind his business, his clients, his wife, and his seven kids.
He did this because he felt this was the only way to solve his problems. He’d gotten himself into a pile of debt, and his business was failing, and clearly, he concluded that killing himself was the answer.
It wasn’t.
But what’s so frustrating is that if I had known he was struggling—(I didn’t)—I might have suggested he go see a therapist or counselor.
Yet if he was like Elon Musk or the many people who commented on his post and clearly agree with him, he probably would not have gone.
He probably would have been proud of not going to therapy.
Looking at all of this, there are no obvious solutions that stand out to me. I know there are no easy answers. This is a very complicated problem to tackle, and it affects us all: even if you’re not a man yourself, you surely have a father, brother, husband, uncle, or grandfather. This issue affects you, too.
Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t know if I believe that therapy is really helping women, even though it seems to be mostly women who are offering therapy and mostly women who are going to therapy. And it doesn’t seem to be the answer for men, either.
Having said that…
I do know that going through life drunk on alcohol to try to minimize your pain or avoid your problems is not the answer for men.
I do know that getting stoned on drugs to avoid your problems or “help” you get through life is not the answer for men.
I CERTAINLY do know that suicide is not the answer for men, no matter what they’re going through. Period. End of story.
But it doesn’t appear that therapy is the answer for men either.
I wish we could figure this out. I don’t have good ideas at this point. But as it stands, it’s clear that many men would rather die than go to therapy. That’s not good for men or for therapy.