How To Be A Beacon Of Hope To Those Precious In Our Lives
-Relationship Expert/Author Heather Dugan Available For Insights-
This week, fans of The Ellen Degeneres Show and So You Think You Can Dance were shocked and saddened by the unexpected death of beloved Dancer/DJ/Actor/Producer Stephen “Twitch” Boss. The public acknowledgment of his passing by suicide has once again brought to the forefront discussion around mental illness and depression.
Acclaimed author and relationship expert Heather Dugan (The Friendship Upgrade) is offering insights into how we can endeavor to pay better attention to the signs of depression in our friends and loved ones, especially as we come upon a holiday season.
“Stephen “Twitch” Boss’s death has a personal impact on the many who watched him dance across their screens at home and online throughout the years. He exuded joy. To learn that, in the end, he wasn’t able to access that joy within himself is shocking and frightening”, says Dugan.
“The strongest amongst us are often the ones who lack a safe place to download the very basic trials of life, and we need this kind of connection to feel fully human… we have to share our weaknesses to access true strength. None of us can fully know the life experience of another, and some carry far more than we know. Real connection requires more than pleasantries, so create conversations.”
Heather Dugan is available to offer insights and important tips on how we can help those grappling with emotional darkness and supportive thoughts for those who are struggling, despite the challenges of mental illness often being silent or hidden from the view of others.
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ANOTHER VIDEO ON TWITCH HERE
Various mainstream news and social media will state the obvious, that society must open up its collective minds and common dialogue when it comes to far more progressively addressing the challenge of more fruitfully treating and preventing such illness in general.
But they will typically fail to emphasize that general society still fails to adequately address the problem of men with life-threatening mental illness refusing to open up and ask for help due to their fear of being perceived as weak and non-masculine.
The social ramifications exist all around us; and it is endured, however silently, by males of/with whom we are aware/familiar or to whom so many of us are closely related. … To this day there remains a mentality, albeit perhaps a subconscious one: Men can take care of themselves.
Even the book Childhood Disrupted only included one male among its six interviewed adult subjects, there presumably being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized men willing to formally tell his own story of childhood abuse.
One must ask: Is it yet more (in a societal pile of) evidence of a continuing subtle societal take-it-like-a-man mindset, one in which so many men will choose to abstain from ‘complaining’ about their torturous youth, as that is what ‘real men’ do?
The author of The Highly Sensitive Man (2019, Tom Falkenstein, Ch.1) writes that there are “numerous psychological studies over the last forty years that tell us that, despite huge social change, the stereotypical image of the ‘strong man’ is still firmly with us at all ages, in all ethnic groups, and among all socio-economic backgrounds.
“In the face of problems, men tend not to seek out emotional or professional help from other people. They use, more often than women, alcohol or drugs to numb unpleasant feelings and, in crises, tend to try to deal with things on their own, instead of searching out closeness or help from others.
“While it is true that a higher percentage of women than men will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or a depressive episode, the suicide rate among men is much higher. In the United States, the suicide rate is notably higher in men than in women. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men account for 77 percent of the forty-five thousand people who kill themselves every year in the United States.
“In fact, men commit suicide more than women everywhere in the world. Men are more likely to suffer from addiction, and when men discuss depressive symptoms with their doctor, they are less likely than women to be diagnosed with depression and consequently don’t receive adequate therapeutic and pharmacological treatment.”