Terrence Real

Highly Recommended

Summary​

• I understand my grandfathers, dad, and myself much better after reading the book. The author's premise is that there are two types of male depression. Overt depression is the one we all know: sadness, apathy, etc. Covert depression has symptoms of anger, addiction, and performance-based self-esteem. 

Memorable Parts

• "Depression in men, unless it is dealt with, tends to be passed along. That was the case with my father and me."

• "Deep inside his bullying and drinking, his preoccupations and flight, lay that little boy. The depressed part of David, his unacknowledged child, waited in darkness, resentfully, for its moment in the light, wreaking havoc  upon anyone near."

• "In his efforts to escape his own depression, David had let himself sink into behaviors - irritability, dominance, drinking, and emotional unavailability - that pushed away the very people whom he most loved and needed."

• "Our current patterns of judgment and denial about depression are reminiscent of the older moralistic attitudes toward the disease of alcoholism, and the source of our minimization is much the same now as it was then. The issue is shame."

• "The very definition of manhood lies in 'standing up' to discomfort and pain. It is sadly predictable that David would be more likely to react to depression by redoubling his efforts at work than by sitting long enough to feel his own feelings. Until therapy, 'giving in' to his pain would have been experienced not as a path toward relief, but as a humiliating defeat."

• "Half of the participants were told the crying baby was a girl. The subjects saw the crying 'girl' as frightened, but when they thought they were watching a boy, they described 'him' as angry. If you think your child is angry,' the authors ask, 'would you treat 'him' differently than if you think 'she' is afraid?'"

• "'Be kind to me, Lord,' reads the epigram for the National Children's Defense Fund, 'My boat is so small and the sea is so wide.'"

• "Boys need fathers who have themselves emerged from the gauntlet of their own socialization with some degree of emotional intactness. Sons don't want their father's 'balls'; they want their hearts. And, for many, the heart of a father is a difficult item to come by."

• "Through the mechanism of carried shame, the unresolved pain of previous generations operates in families like an emotional debt. We either face it or pass it on. When a man stands up to depression, the site of his battle may be inside his own head, but the struggle he wages has repercussions far beyond him. Such a man serves as a breakwall. The waves of pain that may have wreaked havoc across generations spill over him and lose their virulent force - sparing his children. Each man is a bridge."

• "'Do the work. Face this pain now or pass it on to your children, just as it was passed on to you.' Many of the men I treat would never tough out the process of therapy for their own sake. But men have been trained to be good soldiers and many are willing to experience the pain for the sake of their children. Like the great adventurers of old, they are willing to descend to the depths and encounter their monsters."

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