Episode 8: The Silent Struggle (Why Dads Don't Talk About Mental Health)

Episode 8: The Silent Struggle (Why Dads Don't Talk About Mental Health)

"You can fix a leaky sink, but how do you fix a panic attack?"

Most dads are raised to believe that being strong means being silent. We learn early on that our job is to fix things, not to feel them. So when stress, anxiety, or burnout hits, we bury it behind work, humor, or distractions, terrified that opening up makes us weak or a burden to our families.

In this episode of Dad and the What, we are breaking the "strong dad = quiet dad" myth. We sit down for a deeply honest conversation about what goes on in our heads—the stuff we usually avoid talking about. We unpack how carrying that heavy, silent pressure eats at your sleep, your patience, and your joy, and why talking about it is actually the ultimate form of strength.

In this episode, we get into:

• The Silent Pressure: The generational expectation for men to always "hold it together" and why the armor is so heavy.
• How It Actually Shows Up: Why dad-anxiety and depression rarely look like sadness, and usually disguise themselves as irritability, overworking, short tempers, or escaping into screens.
• The Nap Deficit: Using humor to deflect when you're secretly overwhelmed (and realizing it’s not a midlife crisis, you’re just burnt out).
• Breaking the Pattern: Practical, small first steps to take off the armor—from texting a buddy to normalizing therapy.
• Vulnerability as Leadership: How opening up to your partner or a professional teaches your kids that emotions are signals, not enemies.

🎧 Listen now, and if you know a dad who might be carrying a heavy load right now, send this to him.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Most of us, I would say, grew up believing strength means silence. That being a good dad means carrying it all without cracking. But I think we can say that the truth is that silence heavy at your speed, your patience, with joy. But talking doesn't make you make you delay.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

The podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Alright guys, welcome back to Dad and then what? Today's topic is Dad's mental health and why we don't talk about it. So, to start this discussion, I think the big question is that why don't we talk about it?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Well, I think there's many reasons why we men don't talk about many things, especially if we feel like it's gonna be a hustle or hurdle or some pain for other people, a burden in some kind of way. But I think the main reason why we don't talk about mental health is because it's also a status for us as men to be tough to remain calm, even in what you call it in bad weather situations.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Yeah, I think so too. And of course, like we have learned during the process of growing up that we need to be the person who are able to fix things, not necessarily feel them. So pretty much when we feel stress, anxiety, or sadness, we try to bury it. And of course, the burying process depends a lot about the person, but pretty much I would say we all try to bury it behind work, humor, or distractions because we're just afraid that opening up would make us feel weak or seem like a burden to other people in general.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

That's true. But is it really because I think many of us knows deep inside that the real truth is actually the opposite. We by talking about it as men, opening up, feel weak, but in reality, talking about it is actually a strength.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Absolutely. I can 100% agree on that once again. And of course, when we are able to share our feelings honestly with our partners, friends, or professionals, it doesn't only help us, it also teaches our kids that emotions are normal and we should encourage kids to show other people's, especially our loved ones, our vulner vulnerabilities.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Vulnerabilities, yes sir. Yes, sir. But I'm thinking, why are we then not talking more about it? I mean, this podcast is of course one of the first stepping stones in getting more openness about talking as a man about areas that might not be opened up to uh quite too often. But we're always so busy talking about what we got, what kind of status symbol we have, even though it's from the smaller cars, new car, or we make a lot of money or we do good at work or something like that. But not really what's deep inside our head and like you said, burden us. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

And that's of course because we're not used to it, because we are used to, like you said, talk about our goals, hitting the milestones that we're actually making in life and status symbols as well. And I think like all the emotions, especially when it's a little bit negative or sad or whatever, it's behind our own heads and it really needs some digging sometimes to get it up. Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

And we kind of somewhere put up some false or fake stories in our own heads where we quickly reach the conclusion that it's better to bury it. It's better because then nobody sees weakness and see that we have flaws because we want to be the strong guy, the builder, the one that everybody can come to with every problem, but we never have one ourselves. What about you, Daniel? You have a like a relatable moment where you came to the conclusion this is probably something that I need to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Absolutely. There has there have been a couple of instances actually, but the first one that came to my mind is about that I remember some time ago I had a very stressful moment, like everything felt like it's falling apart pretty much. Like I was in very tough spot in my own head, and I was trying to figure out like how to manage with this whole situation and how to get by it. And even though I felt super stressed all the time, only thing I wanted to tell the people that oh everything is so good, my life is super chill at the moment, and nothing is bothering me, even though the truth was exactly the opposite. But it felt felt like that if I were to tell about the whole truth, I would feel like how would I say it? Not small, but you know, vulnerable. Less of a man, yeah, vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Agreed. I mean w w when I think about it, I have a situation that came up right now about sleep. We have been visiting that in in our previous episodes, but I had a period where I got between four to five hours sleep in a long time, and I didn't, especially in the beginning, necessarily notice that I was being short, what do you call it? I was being very short to timber, especially in the mornings. And that also had over time an effect on my kids, family life, and my wife. And I would say it took her some time to make me aware that this proudness or this selfish behavior of trying to be the rock when I wasn't able or when I was not in the right state to be there, that made me realize that I had to move a lot of things around and prioritize my sleep to get back to where I could be, my uh if you say so, old self and more of a rock again.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah. Yeah. And did it at some point feel like almost like a big effort to admit that you were actually overwhelmed with that situation?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Absolutely. That that's why it didn't work the first time. She was kind of making me aware of it. And proud as I was, as proud as I am, about being in the rock and being the man in the whole show or in the whole family. Then it it took sometimes, I think three or four times, where she really had to talk with the bigger letters and tell me that you need to calm down from that that the big horse you are riding on at the moment because it's going too fast and you will fall off eventually. Which made me realize when I took a great and long look at it that she was absolutely right from the beginning, but it took me a while to to realize myself.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Of course, and that's so nice to hear that you had your wife actually stopping you in that moment and telling how she sees the whole situation in a completely different way. And I can also imagine that if you take the role of pretending that everything is okay for a longer period of time, especially, the stress comes even bigger and harder to manage, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

It's a very ugly loop to get catched in because this is where misunderstanding white lies and and a lot of other stuff is created. And I would say it is a little bit hard because also when we think about woman, man, the difference in it, my wife have always been wanting my best, but that has not necessarily always been what I thought was best for me.

SPEAKER_05 8:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

And that has aligned throughout our relationship and the years a lot more than it was in the beginning. But I really appreciate that she has been standing there no matter if she understood it or not. And that is kind of what our relationship also is built up on, I would say, is the realization that we both might not always have been as good or as easy as we could for each other because of our proudness or because of our stubbornness in in in different directions, but we have always stand there and we always ended up back, and that really created the foundation for a fruitful growth and a very strong relationship now, of course, also in the future.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yes, sir. And have you noticed that when you jump into that ugly loop in quotes, like how does it see or how does it show in your day-to-day life? Because I can see clearly from my own behavior pattern that if I'm very stressed and pretending that the situation is something else, I become very short-tempered. I start to see a lot of negative things about how people comment what I do or how I feel, etc. And that makes me even more angry and anxious, and it's just like a snowball effect once again.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

I see, yeah, and I totally agree. But I see it a little bit like when you are out there where you push yourself and you're over the limit, you're already there where you're kind of creating some different patterns than you normally would because you need to survive in some way, and that creates easily what you're talking about with the anger because she and the people that is very near to you in your inner circle, they don't understand why you are changing your patterns and you don't even not understand, but you're not able to answer them with questions that's settling. Yeah, it's so deep in your subconscious mind. Absolutely, yeah. And you end up in in some situation where she corners you because you're doing something different, or you're doing something that is bad, or you're m yeah, you're angry or whatever, that you turn off in such a way that you feel the right to turn off in this way because you feel attacked. Yes. You feel like you just barely have it together, but you just forget in that moment that she have or they have no clue about where you are compared to where you normally are, and they are even much more speechless and mouththrobbing after you had your outburst because they didn't understand at all what they did wrong or what is wrong with you. Exactly, and that's terribly weird, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Absolutely. Yeah, and I think also like when the loop goes on and on, you get more exhausted all the time, and when you're starting to feel the constant fatigue, you become less and less motivated with your relationships, with your friendships, with your work and whatever. And like you said, like no one really knows what's happening, necessarily, not even yourself. So this is why I think we actually need to talk about these things more openly, especially with our inner circle, because I think they're the only people at the end of the day who can actually give you a different perspective about the whole issues that are happening.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

I also think there's another side to it that we as men have a hard time opening up and be vulnerable to women in general. We have a certain way when we talk to a woman about our softer sides, I would call it, and softer subjects. Of course, we can be romantic, and of course, some will have easier to talk about everything than other, but in general, throughout my life and my relationships, I have always been talking to my mom about everything. Yeah. And that has been kind of weird when there are situations where it was supposed to be my dad that I talked about it with. And of course, some things I also talked with my dad about, which I didn't mention for my mom, but let's say 80% where it should have been maybe 50-50. Then we're coming to the whole relationship part, and I think as a man, I have always have a tendency to kind of create some kind of softer story about it than it actually was, which backtracking and looking at it now maybe could have hindered me in getting all the way, all the way to to to where I want to go. And very hard for my partner to understand where I actually was. But it could also be a little touch of that I didn't even understand where I was myself completely.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah. And to continue that thing with another question, is it because you tried to make them feel like less stressed about your situation or to make yourself like seem as a tougher dude?

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Probably probably both seasoning in that one.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Yeah, that's very relatable. And like you said previously, that you have been used to talking about everything with your mom as well. I have very similar experience, especially when growing up, something bad happened. I always felt like it's much easier to talk to my mom because she's not gonna judge in the same way as the dad might have done.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Absolutely, and I think there is a core twist to both cultural and religion and all these things where they are coming from, where you're living, where you're growing up. But I think that in a good relationship, at least for myself private, in a good relationship with your sons and daughters, it should be that you as a dad sh should be the you can always come and talk. We can always reflect on things together, but it should never be the judging. Yes, of course, if you really fucked up, and if we have been talking about this a long time and you did different and you fucked up and I told you so, and and so on.

SPEAKER_05 14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

But in the real bad situations where I had to call my mom and I thought my life was ending, we did something really bad. Uh yeah. You know, where you were out there and you were thinking, this situation I got myself into, I'm not gonna get myself out of. Yeah. She had been there a few times, and luckily always 100% supportive, and that she made it very clear that no matter like how great of a beep I did, she would be there and she will support me. And that is very important, I think, but from both parents.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Absolutely, and I think that's amazing to hear that you have had such a lovely experience in that way that when you felt like that you actually fucked up and m you might not have been proud what's been happening, there has been a person who has been able to listen to you without judging, just taking it all in and try to turn it back to good. And I think that's one of the things that I have also tried to reflect to my wife and my kid nowadays. I want to make them feel the same thing that I felt with my mom. Yeah, no judging. Yes, and I think that's one of the tips actually I could give for everyone listening to this show that if you had very similar experience that you actually had some person to talk to when the situation went sideways very bad, and they were able to listen to you and help you out of it, that if you're able to create this situation in your mind and it reflected to your loved ones, it's very precious for all of them. Absolutely absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

And I would also say compared to the relationship I had with my dad, was yes, there was expectations where I was afraid to disappoint him. He was my role model at a long time, and he was like my dad, and but I was together with my two sisters very afraid many times to even say things to him because of that. And it was not necessarily because it was yeah, it was in some way judge judgmental from his side, but I was at the time he was giving great advice, and he was a great dad, and he was a loving dad, but the way he communicated was very different from what I was able to receive. Yeah. So if he would have been a different communicator at that time, I would had a much better relationship with him and a much better understanding of where he wanted me to go and what he tried to say.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Absolutely. And of course, when it's not always the I would say softest way of talking that you get from your dad, especially when things hit the fan. Shit hits the fan, I would say it makes you shut down more easily.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Absolutely, and that's like kind of the core, I would say because we of course we don't want that for our sons or other children as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

And that's like the hard balance because you're need that there is need to be boundaries, there is need to be a firm uh dad that that also sometimes says enough is enough, and then it stops.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Of course, you need to show some leadership and you need to tell what are the guidelines and the rules in this house. And if you don't do things according to these rules, there will be some consequences as well. Of course, that that's how it should be.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

It is, but I remember when we're talking about this, I remember a situation where I was really pressured, like we talked about before.

SPEAKER_05 18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

And the problem is you're also withdrawing yourself. So if you are in a bad place with your partner and you don't feel like you can talk open to your partner, you kind of shut off slowly. Yes. So you become very silent also to your kids, and by not showing leadership, not showing direction, and not showing who is in control and the all-loving, all caring, all I would say, all fixing any situation, then it becomes a problem because they can feel it very much.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Exactly. And if you actually become, how would I say, as a shell of a human only, where you're like a shadow of yourself. Exactly. In those moments, like sometimes you actually need to seek out for some professional help as well. And I think that's not anything to be ashamed of either. If you go in that situation, I think that's something also that should be embraced, especially with all the dads out there.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

I have a personal experience with exactly that, and I was admitted, I would say, for a certain situation very young, around nine, ten, that I went with alone for three to four years. Yeah. That was very hard. I don't want to go into it very deep because it's not relating to this situation or this episode anyway. But when I finally took the step and came out again to my mom, we ag uh I agreed that there may be some help, professional help would be needed. And it did. I went for some sessions and it helped a lot. But what helped the most was the way the professional was able to give me some questions where I could set it up in a different perspective than I was able to. And secondly, that I thought that I was going around and being odd, different because I was the only one in the world that has been hit by this experience. I thought at that time. When I figured out I was far from the only one, and many other people had much even close relationships to me at that time, has much, much worse experience on their hands and their timeline. I was like, okay, this is first of all a relief, and second of all, I will never ever say that anybody should go with it themselves, keep it within the family, and all this bullshit narrative that's sold to us. Because yes, you can hit very bad professionals also and be aware of that, but you can also get someone who really, like you said, can help you take a turn for the better very quickly.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Yes, sir, and I think this was a very beneficial experience for you as well. And thank you for sharing that story because it really hits hard with me as well, because I have had some experience with the therapy as well, but it was actually before I became a dad, it was when I was a little bit younger, around 18 to 19 years, and I wasn't really having the best situation money-wise, health-wise, etc. And I was surrounded with pretty bad peers. Really bad boy. I would say so that I actually caused the whole situation for myself, but with this professional help, I was actually to get able to get out of it as well. And this situation and this sort of sort of help has taught me so much. And when I look back to in the the whole thing, the whole situation and how I get got out of it, it makes me even smile now nowadays. Agreed. Same here, same year. Yes. But you know, to summarize all the things, like, even though like we have always learned to keep the negative thoughts with ourselves, we shouldn't do, we should embrace them and talked about them, especially with our loved ones. Professionals, friends, whoever could help you.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Absolutely. And if you sit out there at the moment with a feeling that you have a question or you have a wondering or you have something you don't really have anybody else to talk to, especially w if it's about like being a dad or becoming a dad or something like that, or just a story you want to share, please don't hesitate and write to us. We will be happy to share stories and put it in the podcast so everybody that's listening can have a a take on the matter and we will of course also give our take and evaluation of the matter. Again, we are not professionals, we are two dads. That is talking real dad talk. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

But also we try to bring out why community matters and you know that we also want to be heard without judgment.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Exactly. I think all men, if they know or knew they were secure in the space they were talking, and it could be with other men or even women, but if they know 100% when they walked in there that this is staying here in some way or this could be comfortable enough to let your lighten your heart if you will, then I think they would talk much more. But we are going around in this bubble as we talked about before, where we're thinking we have to maintain this hard ass, hard ass facade. But yes, if we go 100 year or 50 years back, maybe 100 year and more, it would be much more matter to to have the status looking like that. But if we're looking where we are living today and what opportunities and what access we have to example these professionals and and all these things, we are living in in in a world where we are pampered, where we are having the best opportunities and the best, I would say the best we don't lack the prosperity. Exactly. And we have all the opportunities right at our front door. Yes, sir. Most of us, I would say, grew up believing strength means silence. That being good dad mean carrying it all without cracking. But I think we can say that the truth is that silence is heavy. It eats at your sleep, your patience, your joy. But talking doesn't make you weak. It makes you real. It makes you present. When you open up to a friend, your partner, or therapist, you're not just helping yourself, you're showing your family, your inner circle, your kids, that emotions are not enemies, they are signals.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Dad and then what? Real talk, real death. Life hits hard, but we bounce right back. We grow, we learn, we laugh on the track. Dad and then what?

SPEAKER_04 24:52

Yeah, we got your back. We stay done, but we stay in the fight. We don't miss the die.