Narcissism Nation: Why Men Die and No One Notices

Eighty percent (80%) of suicides are men. Let that sink in. In this blistering Men's Mental Health Month finale, Enrique Arteaga dismantles the modern mental health system, calling out how therapy has become a female-dominated performance ritual rather than a solution for male suffering. From fatherlessness to financial collapse, from narcissism-as-identity to steroid-fueled spectacle, this episode breaks the silence on how American culture industrialized male despair—and how PrecisionCycle offers the only recalibration worth trusting. elevate.epo

Transcript

Narcissism Nation: Why Men Die and No One Notices
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[00:00:00] Men make up about half of the population yet are 80% of total suicides per year. Think about that Half of the population yet, eight out of 10 suicides is a man. If that was happening to women, We'd be launching National Blue Ribbon Commissions. To try to figure out what this epidemic was about.

But because it's men, we just accept it dismiss it make memes out of it, and continue to vilify men in a society that has really put a value on narcissism and personal worth, building personal brands. when men can't keep up with that, we pathologize them.

We make them into caricatures and into cautionary tales of what we shouldn't strive for. But that is just more silence. as we continue to go down this road of vilifying men and dismissing their pain, more and more men are. Choosing to go the full narcissistic route to end their pain rather than seek [00:01:00] help.

That is because A common refrain here is that the mental health industry, which is 80% dominated by women, isn't made for men. we could have a conversation about how men created all the models and are the ones in academia who. Created all the interventions and theory.

Absolutely. But that was, as a result of pathologizing women. that's why men created all those frameworks. It wasn't specialized with other men. Because if we go back to Freud, Yung Adler, all these early Psychodynamic theorists and practitioners, all these people, were working to apply a model to female sensibilities, which today isn't working, obviously, because when you see statistics, 80% of all total suicides are men.

That pretty much is a indicator of systemic failure. So today as we wrap up Men's Mental Health Awareness Month in the month of June, we're gonna take a moment to talk about how the industry [00:02:00] has significantly failed men and how it continues to fail men. And how people become so reactive when you say that because they want to wholeheartedly defend a industry that at this point from a statistical standpoint is indefensible.

It is an industry that is failing men. The numbers don't lie. in today's precision cycle, we will be going into what exactly are the failures of the mental health industry when it comes to men? And how precision cycle is the way out. Precision Cycle is the solution to the over feminized mental health model, which continues to fail men at a alarmingly higher rate.

Thank you for joining me today. My name is Enrique Arteaga. This is Precision Cycle brought to you by Elevate epo. Let's open it up.

We're not here to politicize anything. We're here to just give facts and to put the data out there. Every number that I'm going to be citing today comes from the US Census [00:03:00] Bureau. It comes from the CDC, it comes from the World Health Organization. We can sit here and debate about whether or not these organizations are valid or not, because they've become.

in political debate. The reality is that these organizations are just tracking numbers that are reported by hospitals, by the healthcare industry, and are giving us as accurate data as we can get. So let's look at what accurate data looks like. We'll begin with America's original father wound.

25 million kids live without a father. That's not me making up that number. That's coming straight from the Census Bureau. When we look at the numbers clearly from 2008 to 2013, approximately one and four children from 19.5 million to now 25 million children. Live in the United States without a biological father present in the home.

one fourth of every child lives without a father. That trend since 1980, has gone from 19.7% to what it [00:04:00] is today, 25.1%.

the proportion of single fathers has significantly grown. What are the impacts here to society? the impacts as research shows are very clear. 85% of incarcerated youth come from homes without any father. Poverty, dropout addiction, teen pregnancy, all higher in homes without a dad.

Youth suicide. According to the US Department of Health Census data, 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes.

there's an increased likelihood of behavioral disorders, delinquencies, and youth crime

with no father in the house.

And so if we look at all the numbers.

2018, nearly 22 American children had a parent who lived outside of the household, roughly 36 million men who fathered the 74 million American children under 18, about 9 million do not live with their minor children. A significant portion of non-custodial fathers do not pay formal child support.

Two [00:05:00] thirds of these do not pay any formal child support.

So when we look at it from a sheer numbers perspective. There is a , father wound that exists naturally in the United States at the moment. we tolerate a quarter of our children being raised without father figures and that number will be increasing 

Extreme rate at which we continue to incarcerate and separate men from their families. There's a lot to be said because there's an argument to be made about the term deadbeat dad and how that's thrown around, in society society has created this mechanism where the chase for narcissism is the last resort for a lot of these men. we see the silent epidemic occurring in this country. Men 45 through 64 lead those suicide numbers.

That is because. Of financial ruin. That is because of divorce. That is because of identity collapse that occurs in a society that values the creation of someone's personal brand and thus when we're not getting [00:06:00] there, men retreat back into their narcissistic coping skills, which leads to an end result of suicide Men 85. And older. These are men that are abandoned by their family and hospice care who would rather take that decision themselves than have to live in a world where they've essentially been abandoned by everyone who once claimed that they love them. Those are the two groups that are leading that eight outta 10 suicide rate.

So that begins to paint a picture about how society. really starts to throw men away after they've been unable to keep up with society or after they've realized that they may have gotten into relationships too early and married to early, and have gone through, significant issues that may have set them back in life.

male suicide is what happens when the world says you're not useful anymore. And therapy tells you to just sit with your feelings.

that leads us to what's currently happening in the mental health industry. these men are significantly [00:07:00] struggling to find purpose in life, try to make a family and a name for themselves then come across hard times society throws them away and they seek help.

And what ends up happening is they end up finding a. Therapist that eight outta 10 times is going to be a woman who is gonna then apply a female calibrated intervention to their male pain. And we started the show earlier by saying Yes, men did create the therapeutic models that we currently operate in.

Freud, Adler, Yung. Even if we go to modern days, Berg Lahan, these are all men. Absolutely. But they're doing that to pathologize women. That was the whole point of all their work, was to understand how mental health was pathologizing itself through the female brain.

And when we have an industry dominated by women who are now applying a more process oriented component to mental health, it's no longer about resolution, it's about emotional performance. How does that make you feel? How about we sit with that emotion and try to find a [00:08:00] way to breathe through it?

Can you do this dear man exercise and see if he can maybe find different pathways as opposed to trying to recalibrate someone using logic, reason and data to find ways to shift people away from their narcissistic poles. And so a man says, I'm lost and gets told to journal. He says, I'm failing, and he gets told to lean into his vulnerability.

He's bleeding out internally and externally and they hand them a breathing exercise you can understand how men cannot find appropriate ways to cope with their very real pain because it's being dismissed and given this caricature of therapy where you're literally being told to shrink your emotions so that other people can tolerate you.

Imagine going in there. I just lost my family. I've just gone bankrupt. I've got all these bills piling up, and the very well-intentioned LCSW sitting across from you is. giving you box breathing techniques [00:09:00] and asking you to jot down in some notebook all the feelings that come up when these thoughts arise.

That's not how men work. That's not how men process. That's not how men get better. Men get better by working with their therapists to find the way out of the abyss

Abyss exists because narcissism is the core brand proposition to the American experience. As we've highlighted in shows, prior narcissism was baked into the cake. When this country was created, it was created with the intentions of helping people gain independent freedoms.

That comes as a result of. Making it acceptable for people to chase their own interests. And when you do that, you're asking people to lean into narcissism because it's not about creating community, it's about creating opportunities that will further your own brand. this was baked into the cake with the American experience.

We can go back to 370 treaties that the American [00:10:00] government broke with indigenous people. A baseline example of how the narcissistic mechanism was baked into the cake. They would send settlers to invade indigenous lands when the indigenous population would react, that would then be pathologized and that was the justification to destroy.

Nations that were here prior to white European settlers. And all that was done in the name of capitalism. we see how capitalism rewards psychopathy. watch the brilliant. documentary called the Corporation, if you can, 1999, 2000.

That will pretty much tell you that modern corporate experience, what we've come to as a country normalize as the corporate entity is a psychopath, we'll be talking about that further in upcoming episodes. empathy is inefficient in this model because narcissism is made to scale.

Within this dynamic that we call the American experience. And so that gets reduced to your personal [00:11:00] worth being your visibility, not your character. It doesn't matter what kind of person you are, as long as you keep getting likes, views, and shares.

And we don't have to go far to see the models of narcissism, what they get us to. We're currently seeing them played out in our society with politicians that have completely hijacked the purpose of politics for their own personal gain.

As they say, money is the root of all evil. It is not. It is the narcissism that is the root of all evil and money is just the validation method for narcissism in our current society. So what do men do? They either disappear completely, or they build a persona to survive. They disappear completely by jumping off of bridges or putting guns in their mouths, or just doing whatever they need to do to not be present anymore, which goes to that eight outta 10 statistic about modern suicide.

or they lean into the other side of that, which is still narcissism, which is steroid culture, right? We [00:12:00] become clout chasers and people who are just out here saying, look at me. And when we're not being looked at, that gives us that ego hit that then drives that depression, which activates the narcissism.

And then the final outcomes are suicide or ruining your body with pharmaceuticals in an attempt to get notice, you don't have to go too far. To see this example, you could see it in the liver king, right? We all know who the liver king is. He's some crazy drug addict who decided that he was going to put, his lifestyle on display, on, social media, make it seem as if he gained this physique through hard work 

And eating raw organs. But the reality was that he was using steroids to sell, supplements and get rich. Is he someone we should revere and say he's not so bad.

No, because he's obviously doing things he knows are wrong, he is a cautionary tale the liver king example is exactly what is happening in this country. in a microcosm and a recent [00:13:00] interview, he was talking about how one of the reasons that he went and he lied about his steroid use he was overcome by this sense of society defining masculinity a certain way, and projecting his own insecurities, wanting to get that validation he did the things he needed to do to achieve this goal. He was ultimately found out.

And we continue to see as his behavior is more and more erratic, and he continues to deteriorate, most notably with the death threat against Joe Rogan, that this man not only has mental health issues, but he's reacting to a society that. Has created the mental health issue within him. He is locked in perpetual narcissistic drive because society has said that is your worth as a man.

That is the only reason that your story, your struggle will gain any real traction in this society and people will pay attention to you. Now, could he have gotten that from his family perhaps 

But from a society level, I understand what the liver King is trying to say. And again, [00:14:00] this is not to excuse any of his behavior or say that I'm on his side. I'm looking at the man as somebody with a mental health crisis. I'm not looking at that man as some influencer who doesn't deserve empathy or sympathy.

And again, this is exactly what I'm talking about. People look at him as a joke as opposed to, how can I help you get better in this world? How can I help you recalibrate? How can I help you not feel the way you feel so that you're not doing all these narcissistic behaviors, which lead to pathology?

And so how many men? , They're not really out there chasing abs. They're chasing respect from a society that doesn't respect men. And we wonder, and we sit here and we talk out loud, why men's mental health is so many bad outcomes 

It's because as a society, we really don't give a shit about men. The core takeaway from any of the research that you can do, and any of these statistics, 80% suicide rates for men means society doesn't give a shit about you. [00:15:00] 80% suicide rates for men means the mental health industry isn't made for you and doesn't give a shit about you.

And so that is the epidemic of the cult to maleo performance. But let's get to, just relational aspects because this doesn't live in a vacuum. Most men are lonely, most men don't have. Partners a 53% divorce rate in this country illustrates that a large number of men have fallen out of favor with relationships.

And unlike women who can essentially put a picture out into social media and get immediate validation, for men, It's not that easy as a 49-year-old. to go out and find another partner to even go out on the dating scene because not only is the market oversaturated with single, divorced men, but we see how women, single mothers now, three, four kids are engaged in these polyamory lifestyles that have been normalized in this continually deranged society that we're going down and so [00:16:00] we leave with having to compete with. this model that doesn't value the connection of partnership anymore and brilliantly illustrated here.

Let's look at Asia Argento. She is revered on social media like some kind of a saint sure she was abused by Harvey Weinstein and that is a horrible thing that happened to her. But let's not mince words here. The reason Anthony Bourdain killed himself is because she cheated on him and didn't really give a shit what Anthony Bourdain thought about it.

She actually tried to rationalize it. that it was always an open relationship, and that was the agreement. She is someone with a borderline personality disorder as a product of her previous experience, especially with Harvey Weinstein.

But she's manipulative, she's erratic, and she cheated on Anthony Bourdain. Those are the facts, right? And he killed himself weeks later. That is a microcosm of what happens to men, how we are systemically thrown away in this society by female narcissism that is reinforced in a [00:17:00] female dominated mental health industry.

And people can go on the comments and berate me all they want. I don't appreciate the message when 80% of female dominated therapists continue to lead 80% of the suicide rates for men.

That's telling me that's not an effective model. You don't have to sit here and wonder why it's just there's not compatibility there. And the culture saw her as a tragic icon and they continued to see her as a tragic icon. But where's the compassion for him? Oh, he was always troubled and had a long history of drug abuse and 

His own struggles and issues That's bullshit. this woman led him on, broke his heart, and the only way he had to cope with it was to take his life. And if the rules were reversed, if he had cheated on her and she had died, there'd be a documentary on Netflix right this moment.

And hundreds of hashtags and people would cancel him and he would never have a career ever again, and no one would ever take him seriously. [00:18:00] That's the double standard in this country. And we could say that's a product of the patriarchy. we can't hide behind these tropes because we live within a society.

That is what it is. we're not gonna change it overnight. Because the world's not perfect. The world is set up a certain way, and we can say the patriarchy sucks, but we can also say, Hey, you love your iPhone, and that's a product of that patriarchy. So whether or not it sucks the reality is that men don't receive the empathy that women do.

That is what male suffering looks like, criminalized when it lashes out, ignored, when it turns inward.

And they're romanticized once the person's already in the coffin.

And so this kind of leads us to, this way of thinking about masculinity the courts. The judicial system here in the United States is one of the biggest components of why male suicide continues to, climb, They've industrialized the masculinity shame complex to a point where even labeled it with deadbeat dad, But deadbeat dad is rarely about absence. It's about inaccessibility.

[00:19:00] Non-custodial fathers are bled dry, alienated from their children and treated like criminals. 

and so this is the thing in society, how many tropes don't we see on social media? Women don't want fathers. They want funders, but a check by itself never raised a child. And that's the thing that in society we value the fact that if you are gonna have the child at least have the means to pay for 'em.

and we see how that's just a recipe for just continual disaster. I am not saying let's get rid of child support. What I'm saying is you can't just go and call men deadbeats when they've fallen outta favor at their job or their boss decides that they no longer need their services and they're down and out and it's difficult for them to find work.

we can't sit here and criminalize that. We can't sit here and pathologize that. We have to say, Hey, as a country, how can we be more empathetic towards men? Who struggled to maintain and keep up with the Joneses. That seems to be the prevailing American theme here,

and value [00:20:00] the financial contribution over the very spiritual and cognitively developmental. Components that fatherhood and fathers bring to children.

we're left with dichotomies here, right? The we're left with you either go suicide route or you go the trend bro. Gym culture route. Both of those narcissism. and then we have a whole swath of people in the middle here who aren't suicidal and not juiced up. They're just tired. Tired of being told their pain is privilege, Tired of being gaslit by their therapists, their girlfriends, the courts, into believing that they're horrible human beings because they show fire and emotion and have goals and dreams.

And are motivated to do things that build skyscrapers and create all the things in the world that we've come to enjoy as technology advancements.

And they're also tired of just saying, they're quote, fine, these men don't need to be pathologized. They need to be recalibrated. That's what Precision Cycle [00:21:00] offers. Structure mission identity. You operationalize your own self respect through self-actualization, through understanding the limits of your narcissism, and working to find new pathways for cognitive growth.

Learning to instill proper boundaries which support the development of your masculinity and the natural outcomes that come outta that.

And so we need to get to, as we wrap up, June, men's Mental Health Awareness Month. America doesn't have a men's mental health crisis.

America is a man's mental health crisis, a narcissism nation where if you're not the spectacle, you're the corpse. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed, and unless we burn it all down and rebuild. And we build it around fatherhood, legacy and respect. You're going to keep burying good men.

This doesn't [00:22:00] exist in a vacuum. Eight outta 10 suicides being men doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in a broken model, which we continue to defend, which is only being defended because it is the. one of the areas where we can pathologize, masculinity and the patriarchy, but the female health, mental health therapeutic model is fundamentally broken for men.

It is fundamentally failing men. It has fundamentally failed men. And these female practitioners have blood on her hands. Because their inability to really comprehend theory and to commit to understanding how the male mind works, continues to drive these negative outcomes. I have sat in too many group supervisions dominated by female practitioners.

you sit in amazement and wonder how these people can seriously think that these types of soft female oriented [00:23:00] interventions are translatable to men who do not process the same way women do. This is the core of what's happening, the mental health crisis America is in right now is a product of incompetence.

From female practitioners that continue to only want to speak to their female clients and not to the male population that is truly suffering. if you're a male and you're tired, precision Cycle is here for you because you come and you sit down and we take the words that come outta your mouth.

Run them through software deliver to you a quantitative pathway to wellness And it's not something where you're gonna continue to be going to your female therapist sit there on their couch and process for years and never get anywhere.

You're gonna come in here, speak to me, and after one session, you'll receive quantitative data and a roadmap forward because you don't need a process. You don't need to do handholding, CBT forms. You don't need to journal. You [00:24:00] need to actually see the data and recalibrate in a way that will move you forward.

Here's the thing, today's the last day of June. DM me today. First three clients to DM me today will receive a free precision cycle assessment that is a $300 value. DM me today before midnight. You'll receive a free precision cycle diagnostic session and a free diagnostic roadmap session.

You will then no strings attached. Just go out and speak your truth about what you experienced. That's all I'm asking for. Give me a chance to show you what the precision cycle difference is. And gimme a chance to show you how precision cycle is the path forward for men's mental health recalibration.

Because the model isn't broken, the model's working exactly as it's designed to. In the mental health industry. It is exactly designed to have you go eight times outta 10 to a female practitioner 

Who does not know how to calibrate masculinity and will forget [00:25:00] you. that's the industry in a nutshell. Precision cycle, however, is here to help you because we won't forget you. We're gonna recalibrate you so that you can move forward and live your best life and be the person that you wanna be .

Remember, you're not broken. You're just disoriented. You need recalibration. Precision cycle isn't therapy. It's a return to command. Reach out, send me a dm. Let me know you're interested. I will hook you up with that free session. you will see the precision cycle difference.

this is now the time to do it. We have six months before 2026. This is the time to get back on track so that you can hit 2026 with your best life recalibrated where your boundaries are solid. You're solid. And you are aligned with what you want 

Thank you very much for your time. My name is Enrique Arteaga. You can reach me at enrique@elevateepo.com Precision Cycle TV on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. We're now on threads and [00:26:00] X. DM me today. The first three people to DM me today will have a free precision cycle,

which includes initial diagnostic roadmap, recalibration plan seven dimensions, where we measure your personality so we understand exactly what we need to work on and how to realign ourselves with our best life. Because the statistics are clear. eight outta 10 people in this country that commit suicide are men.

If eight outta 10 cars blew up, you wouldn't buy that car, right? If you got sick going to a restaurant eight outta 10 times, you wouldn't ever go back to that restaurant. And if you go to therapy, that is predominantly female dominated. 

That should tell you, maybe men shouldn't go to female dominated therapeutic models. They should go to models that are based in masculinity and celebrate and promote the positive aspects of healthy masculinity. Thank you very much for your time. If this hits you, you belong in the room.

Give me that dm. I'll hook you up. [00:27:00] Thank you for your time we will be back on Wednesday with another episode of Precision Cycle. Until then, take care.