#PTSDnotforme and hopefully not for you after you read this...

I wrote a comment on a thread about male suicide and I thought that might be good enough for the book I am writing about how to recover from PTSD and or step back from suicide.

Here goes...

Suicide happens when the pain you endure overwhelms the resources you have to cope.

Men are inundated with information upon exiting the womb that their intrinsic value to the world/society is measured by how resourceful they are and/or are going to be in life. It is not difficult then to see why men reach suicide as an option in such numbers, because the male guide to being a male is a one pager with two words on it what says "man up".

The external message men are bombarded with daily is you should all be able to cope because you are a man, and you should all be able to cope with everything that is ever thrown at you in any shape, form or volume... because you are a man.

In a world where a multiple resources are needed, men are told they need only one "man up". Talking gets you extra resources.

So instead of man up let's "talk up"

The reality is we all cope in different ways, talking about mental health brings that to life and does one of three things in the process.

One it normalises your thoughts (fuck it's not just me who thinks this way). Much of mental illness is spent alone with your thoughts and the thoughts you are somehow alone in your way of thinking and broken because of it. Liberation comes in part when you find out you are not the only one who needs more than "man up" to cope.

Two it gives you a new measurement of your value (good enough is OK, seeking unrealistic perfection is what made you sick). I am severely dyslexic one GCSE grade 1 to my name but I have managed to set up and run my own website company that has clients in multiple continents, in multiple languages and I compete with companies 10 times my size with 50 times by budget and our sites stay up while theirs fall over. That's good enough, not a failures to become the biggest recruitment website vendor in the world.

Three it will lead you to understand and unpick your version of when your resources were overwhelmed and how to get new resources to sure up the banks of the rivers of pain that have spilled over and are flooding your mind. Your need your own way to cope, I can share some wider experience from my journey to empathise but essentially because you are you, not me I can give you the line drawing you need to provide the colours. Why?

Well I fell in a river when I was 5 or 6 and got to the point of drowning, then my dad was killed when I was 9, then I had some run in with abuse and poverty and so my story goes. The common factors I had/have with fellow sufferers was low self esteem, low self worth, high self doubt and even higher self criticism.

But my cure came from setting very personal coping strategies in place from my direct set of life experiences, needs that had remained unsolved by generic cures I tried in the past.

Talking produced the specific cures for me, it will do the same for you I am sure.

Talk is cheap, well some is!

One trap you can fall into is thinking all you need to do is talk up, speak out about your condition.

If you talk up and speak up to out your mental illness that is very cool, but if that is where you stop then all you have done is told a wider audience you have the symptoms but you are not looking for a cure. That will get you some compassion, some more 'man up' advice but not your cure.

I did that countless times and you can slip easily into victim mode thinking as a result. Victim mode is where you take what is a floating "mental illness" and start to stitch it into the fabric of you, and it will become harder and harder as a result to let go of. Having PTSD is a skill level issues (find new coping strategies), believing PTSD is part of you is a belief system identity level problem, "I have" versus "I am" is the difference between 12 weeks CBT and 5 years of multiple therapies.

I see this transition quite bit within PTSD circles, words like I have "PTSD", I have "PTSD for life"appear on people posts and conversations. Now if you are at that phase of your journey you are not going to like this next bit because you are making a choice to stop at talking and fire up the change of your beliefs, supported no doubt by doctors with meds.

It might not be a conscious choice but for sure it is a choice. So start with the talking and stop when you get your new coping tools, not with giving or accepting a label of you have PTSD.

You need more than the operating system you were shipped with from the baby factory to be a man.

The biggest tip I can give any man on recovering from mental illness is talking to the right person, if it is th eonly thing I could tell you then it would be this. Talking will lead you to the resources you need because as I said "talking produced the specific cures" in me and others like me.

Post recovery from Complex PTSD, that held me back over 40 years, from talking to the right people I concluded in the end I was not mentally ill, but mentally unaware over this past 40 years. Bev Gold 80% and Stephen Aish 20% led me in the direction of the awareness I needed and I was cured when I learned more resources. Better still I learned resources to clean up my past thoughts and to set me on the straight and narrow for the future.

It took some time like 5 years and was self funded which came to several thousand in fees. The NHS route was not open to me but that is a post for another time.

New beginnings new beliefs

My new belief is likely many are not "mentally ill", doctors give you that tag so you can take drugs legally. I don't advocate not taking your doctors advice or drugs mind just don't swap "man up" for 50 mg of "be-a-man-azopan" twice a day in pill format as your only cure. Making that swap alone will fire up your victim mode thinking. If the drugs give you a stable field of battle cool, then step onto the field with talking therapies. "Talking produced the specific cures" for me I think it will for you.

Anyway back to my point which is like me I suspect many were/are mentally unaware of how to cope because the male life guide book thus far was one page book, with two words on that page which read "man up" as I said prior.

Or if you have the extended book for a one time fee of just $19.99 the book is still one page it is just the page now reads "man the fuck up". great value indeed.

Talking is best "talk up"

Talking is the best way out of what ails you but one word of experience you will go backwards in most cases before you go forwards and some days talking will lead you to many dead ends or seemingly impossible situations.

This is called resistance, in the stormy seas of PTSD hanging onto the life buoy can be an alluring feeling stability in those inhospitable waters, but you must push on. The buoy is slippery and the waters raging around you still you must shout mayday, mayday... "talk up" and get to the beach for safety.

With resistance you need some old fashioned patience, you might in times of crisis think you have no patience but you will have it as a resource as it comes in our default operating system.

You might recognise it best intourself as the time you go shopping with your your wife/life partner/significant other when they ask you to take them to Lakeside/Meadowhall/Trafford Centre type places and you go into 50 shops they try on 50 items and then then go back the first shop and buy the first item they saw. Reward your search for new coping strategies with this level of patience mastery.

So talk chaps it is time for you to talk and talk to an expert. It might take you a few experts to find the one you feel most in rapport with (it took me two before I found Bev Gold my main provider of "copesourcery"). But talking is what you must do.

That's it for this particular rambling of a former "one flew over the cuckoo's nest patient" be well men, be well.

#PTSDnot for me Talk-Train-Thrive