The Reason I’m Leading, Coaching & Mentoring Men

is because..

I didn’t have that as a child. I didn’t have a role model to look up to. I had a complicated relationship with my Father and Uncle. My brother was the golden child and I seemed to be surrounded by women who had struggles with men and friends who were bullies. 

Many men struggle with an understanding of themselves, including why they react in certain ways and how to change how they are showing up in life, often unknowingly wearing masks, with many challenges figuring out who they are meant to be, who they are meant to please and how they are meant to behave to fit in and be accepted by family, by culture and society.

Which can mean many men feel stuck and confused, some are unfulfilled, and some struggle with relationships, emotions, sex, body image and low-key addictions and habits that aren’t healthy.

Some of my story as a man..

I grew up in the 70s in east London. Back then, mental health was something there was a lot of shame about. Society wasn’t evolved at that point. You weren’t normal. You were “mental” and you weren’t a part of society. Where we are now, compared to where we were then, is light years ahead. 

I found it really difficult to concentrate at school. I just really struggled. I didn’t get it, and it certainly didn’t interest me. There was a lot of bullying because I was Jewish, I was little, and I had big ears. I was diagnosed depressed at 16.

Self-image, confidence and mental health were all pretty low. My mum lived in a family where everything was brushed under the carpet.

Nothing was ever dealt with or spoken about. My dad’s side of the family were just a classic Jewish family - they would just fight it out, which was the opposite end of the spectrum.

Neither of which would be considered healthy. That shaped the dynamic of the family. 

I was a sensitive kid, even going into employment. I didn’t have a clue about relationships or communication.

I was very emotionally stunted, wasn’t able to read social cues and found it really difficult to fit in.

I worked in an office but found it very stifling and restrictive.

I then worked in a record store, which I loved. After being held hostage during an armed robbery at the record store, I developed agoraphobia and started having panic attacks. The police had called me in and accused me of being a part of the robbery. That absolutely destroyed me.

That’s when I first understood mental ill health at a life-changing level, way beyond adolescent depression.

I couldn’t go out, I couldn’t walk down the street. I was overly medicating with dope. 

When I started getting into proper relationships with women, I really struggled to understand what was going on in terms of relationship dynamics, but there was also loads of conflict.

There was a mixture of my mum’s family and my dad’s family coming out in me, without me realising it. Very toxic and dangerous co-dependent relationships. Fight, sex, fight, sex, fight, sex.

In my late 30s I found yoga, and it changed my life. I was doing something with my body in an environment that was non-judgemental, and things started to change for me. It started to give me moments where I didn’t feel desperate.

Moments where it felt like there might be a part of me that could be loved by other people without there being stress on my part or their part.

10 years later, I was getting ready to qualify as a yoga teacher. I was driving my car and I hit some ice, and flipped three times into a hedge. My brother-in-law raced to the scene to make sure I was ok and I spent the day having x-rays and glass picked out of my head.

Amazingly I was still alive. I was off work for three months and I was in chronic pain. I had to cancel all my training.

My sister had to come round and hoover for me and make me food. I was in my forties, and I felt like a complete failure. That was the first time I was really suicidal. 

A yoga teacher friend of mine gave me a book called Healing Back Pain by Dr John E. Sarno. Within a month of finishing the book, I was back on a yoga mat.

It was then that I started to look at alternative therapies that use the body - somatic work and embodiment work (using the body to process trauma and repressed emotions that are hidden within”.

This then led me to breathwork and other modalities.

I qualified as a yoga teacher and did that for 7 years. I realised that the relationship stuff was still a problem for me.

While I was doing something I loved successfully and making a good living, I still didn’t have it together in terms of relationships, and I really struggled, believing that I’d never be able to hold down a long term relationship.

I worked with a mindset coach called Eileen McCotter to explore how my unconscious wounding was causing me such relationship pain, communication challenges and a fear of conflict. It was a lot of deep work. Yet it was so much fun too - I made so many friends in Eileen’s incredible community.

At the same time I was exploring a lot of embodiment, shadow and trauma work.

“I thought to myself “I need to become a coach.” I wanted to help other people with everything I had learned on my own journey about psychology, the body and trauma. I’m now 4 years into being a professional coach.

To the extent that I eventually cleared my relationship anxiety completely. It doesn’t exist anymore. 

When men do something or feel something that they feel wouldn’t be welcome, they isolate themselves, withdraw and the self-protective “I can handle this on my own” armour comes up. They’ll take a step back and overthink. They’ll experience guilt or shame, self-hate, or self-abuse. When a group of men are together, and when they’re able to emotionally express themselves fully, they can heal all of the wounds from times when they weren’t supported, encouraged or acknowledged.

Men need to work together and say “I see you in your pain and I feel that pain too sometimes. It’s okay to be in that pain. It’s okay for you to express it, however you want to express it. I won’t judge you. When you’re ready, I’m here to support you in getting out of it.” 

Men need that healing. Men are the medicine for each other.

This text comes from an interview I did with Graham Williams, an Edinburgh-based photographer who has curated a project called TALK to spotlight men’s mental health. You can access the project HERE.