Episode 2: Black Men Don't Talk Until It's Too Late

Episode 2: Black Men Don't Talk Until It's Too Late

What happens when strength becomes silence?

From an early age, many Black men are taught to be resilient, independent, and to keep their emotions to themselves. But what happens when those unspoken struggles begin to take a toll?

In this episode of Beyond The Office, we explore why so many Black men find it difficult to open up, the barriers that make vulnerability feel unsafe, and how creating spaces for honest conversations can change lives.

We discuss:

•  Why many Black men struggle to express their emotions 
•  The difference between strength and emotional suppression 
•  The importance of safe spaces for honest conversations 
•  How families, friends, and communities can help break the cycle of silence 

"A lot of men don't lack feelings... they lack safe spaces."

Whether you're a Black man navigating your own journey or someone looking to better understand the men in your life, this episode is an invitation to listen, reflect, and continue the conversation.

Thank you for being part of the Beyond The Office community.

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Transcript

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What's something men are taught to hide emotionally? The I'm good response to even though their life is on fire. A lot of men don't lack feelings, they lack safe spaces. And in this episode, we're gonna talk all about it. Let's get into it. You ever notice how men can talk for hours about sports, about money, about cars, about work, about the Eagles? Who won the championship? Nixon Five. But the moment somebody asks, How you doing? Everybody suddenly becomes a comedian. I'm good. I'm just tired. I'm chilling, y'all. Those three answers have probably covered up more pain than we'll ever know. Today, we'll talk about why so many black men don't talk until life is already falling apart. What's going on everybody? Welcome back to Beyond the Office. I'm your host, Gerard, and this is where we have real conversations about life beyond the titles we carry. Because here's something I've learned. Being called strong doesn't mean you never struggle. And somewhere along the way, many black men learned that being emotional somehow meant being weak. And today I want to change that idea. I remember growing up in the streets of New York, and if you've never lived there, you would never understand how crazy that city can be. And at a young age, we're taught things that no kid should have to worry about. And I remember again being a kid up in New York City, hanging out and stuff like that. You're prone to people picking on you, you're prone to fights. So anytime you would just hear from adults, you would hear it from your peers, you would just hear from anybody walking around as you got a man up. Don't be weak round here. You should be walking over people. Emotions was not a thing that we could have. Because at any time, anything could happen. A gun fight, uh you know, a just a regular fight, things along those natures that made New York as dangerous as it is, but it became normal to some people where people are just like, it's not that bad, you know, and crying being emotional was not the thing. I remember in the second grade, I got picked on so much, I cried all the time. And by me crying, I got picked on even more. So from the second grade to the third grade, that's what happened to me. I got bullied until the third grade, I became a bully, in essence, and that was the major thing. It was stop crying, being called a baby. You'll be alright when you start telling people what's going on, like hey, this is what's going on with me, and it's not okay. And then all you hear is a you be alright, toughen up. And when you try to express yourself, all you'll hear is uh, well, nobody really asked, so why are you giving us this information? And it wasn't that people didn't care, it's that many of them had been raised the exact same way, and how they were raised is being passed down to the next generation, and it was just a repeated cycle. So if we're trying to express ourselves and nobody's listening to us, eventually we're gonna stop talking, and it's not because we don't have emotions or you don't have emotions, but because you stop believing anybody wants to hear them, and let's be honest, many men don't struggle because they don't have emotions, they struggle because they're never learnt what to do with them. We're taught how to work hard, to protect our families, to pay bills, keep it moving, keep pushing, keep grinding. But who's teaching us how to deal with disappointment? Because in life, we're gonna deal with disappointment. How do we process grief? Especially in certain areas where you live, where you're seeing and you're living real life situations every day. Who is teaching us how to process grief or how to handle rejection or how to recover from failure? Nobody, so we carry it until it becomes too heavy. I honestly believe a lot of men don't lack feelings, they lack safe spaces. I want y'all to think about that. A lot of men don't lack feelings, they lack safe spaces. If every time someone opens up, they're being judged, laughed at, or told, get over it. Why would we keep talking? Why would any man keep talking? Or, and here's the most important one, or when we do open up and we get into a disagreement later on. It's used as a weapon, and you can forget about another chance for a man to open up to you again. Again, we carry it until it becomes too heavy because we have no way of releasing it. Men have the funniest coping mechanisms. Ask a man how he's doing. Do it! He'll say, I'm good. That phrase could literally mean my relationship is falling apart. I'm broke. Dead ass. I ain't got no money, bro. I'm depressed. I haven't slept in weeks. I'm questioning everything. I'm good. We've turned three words into an emotional hiding space, and it's just the reality sometimes that people just need to understand is that no safe space, and you're going to get neutral answers because we don't want people prying into our lives, especially when we feel there's nothing anybody can do about it. Like, why would I tell you what's going on with me? Can you help me in this particular moment? Can you give me a solution? Can you give me an answer? And maybe sometimes we can get that answer. Sometimes you may have the answer. But the problem is that we're so afraid to open up, we're so afraid to be looked down upon and looked differently, other than a man, that we rather not ask. Or we have some pre-perceived notion or assumption that the minute we tell you, you're gonna go around and you're gonna tell everybody, and then we're gonna walk around and we're gonna be looking and thinking, like, Did you tell this person? Did you tell that person? Because sometimes our mind they play tricks on us, and when they play tricks on us, what could be nothing, we turn into something, and maybe that's not the most healthiest thing to do, but I'm sorry to tell y'all, it's just the reality of things, and we definitely need to heal and deal with those emotional traumas that we face. One of the biggest reasons relationships struggle is because many men were taught how to provide, but never taught how to communicate. Understand that, you know, in past time different generations. My upbringing, when I, you know, came about and become young and and able to understand things. I saw that the men worked, women stayed at home, or they had a small, like, part-time job, but then had to come home and take care of the kids and cook and stuff like that. That's what you saw. You saw the man came home after work, you know, he's tired, he wasn't really dealing with the kids like that. You know, he ate his food, he watched TV, or he read a newspaper, and it was a comp it was a it was a cycle at the end of the day. And when you're taught that as a kid, and and you gotta understand is that we're sponges. So if that's what we see, that's how we're gonna move about in life. And we're not being told differently, or or you're being taught by your grandparents, you know, because they've been together for decades, and it was the same concept. Dad, dad worked, mom stayed at home. Mom, at those points, but before that, was those mothers weren't even working, they were just certified housewives. And I'm not saying, again, I'm not saying like that's not a job, but in the scheme of things is men were always outside. And then back in the 60s and 50s, and and before all of that, men came home and had to deal with whatever was going on in the house, whatever issues were going on in the house, lack of money, resources, whatever the case may be, but then had to go back outside in the morning to go to work and face with whatever was going on in the outside world. People not liking you, people disrespecting you based off of your color, based off of you know who you are, they don't even know you. It's just a a perception based off of other people, and other people feeding off of other people. But at the end of the day, a man has to deal with that. So tough skin had to be put in place. Now, but we were never taught how to communicate properly either. So when conflict happens, many men don't yell, they disappear emotionally, not because they don't care, because shutting down feels safer than being vulnerable. It's not healthy, but to be perfectly honest, it's understandable because sometimes it's just easier to hold on to that anger, to that frustration, that disappointment. It's easier to hang on to that because sometimes we use that as fuel, and we're thinking by using that as fuel, it will propel us to push harder, but it only creates more problems, and it's using more problems in the household. My man, I really want y'all to reflect deeply onto this because the more we dig deep within ourselves, is the more we can start understanding why we are the way we are, why we act the way we act, and why we say things the way we say things. And here's something that I want every man to hear when I say this is that sometimes we're not emotionally unavailable, and it's not because we don't care, it's sometimes we are emotionally unavailable because vulnerability has never felt safe. That is a that is the honest truth, and we have to admit that if you don't feel safe, you're not gonna speak, especially on things that are going on with yourself, not childhood trauma, not adult trauma, not what happened at work, not what happened at the basketball courts, not what happened walking down the streets, police, all ailments that we deal with each and every day. We are not going to say anything if we don't feel safe to be vulnerable. And there's a difference. And healing starts. Healing starts when we look within ourselves and we recognize that and we actually admit that to ourselves because we have to admit that to ourselves before we can actually admit that to anybody else. We can't continue to be like we're good, we're okay, there's no problem. We can't. We gotta be honest, because nobody will know what's going on with us if we're not honest. A closed mouth doesn't get fed out here. And you know what the sad reality of all of this is? Is many men don't ask for help until life forces them to. When their marriage is ending, their relationship is ending, you know, their relationship with either their spouse, their significant other, their parents, their kids, their grandparents, anybody who took care of them, when that is ending, when burnout hits, when depression becomes overwhelming and unbearable, and we start releasing it onto the people that we love. When they're sitting alone wondering how everything got so heavy, how the hell did we get here? I shouldn't have taken it that far. And to be perfectly honest, it shouldn't have gotten that far. If we were able to speak on it, if we were able to be have the space to speak to somebody, to speak to your friends, speak to your loved ones, speak to your significant other. See it, see a therapist for crying out loud. But the problem is that all of those things that I just listed equals weakness. And it's not again what we think, it's what the world and society put on our heads. Is that it sounds like whining, it sounds like complaining, and things don't get done with whining and complaining. Results don't happen when we're whining and we're complaining. So that's just the never-ending cycle that men face is that we don't say nothing until it blows up, and then when it blows up, we're sitting around looking around, trying to figure out how the hell did we get here? How did I get here? How did you get here? And it wasn't meant to be like this, it wasn't meant to happen, and I don't know why. And most men can't explain it. Sad reality, many men don't ask for help until life forces them to. When your marriage is ending, when burnout hits, when depression becomes overwhelming, when you're sitting at home wondering how everything got so heavy. But the problem is that anytime we feel able to speak to somebody is labeled as weakness, and we hold things in, it pushes us to a point that is outside of our character. And then the worst problem is that we can't explain or we can't think at that moment how do we get here, even though the answer is as simple and as clear as as a day in the summertime, is that holding things in sooner or later it's gonna overflow. It's like sweeping something under the rug, and you don't eventually look under the rug to sweep all of that out, sooner or later a lump is gonna happen. The same thing with a closet. You can put so much stuff into a closet to a certain point, to the point where that closet cannot close, and stuff just starts falling out, and then all that anger, all that frustration, all that grief, all those issues come about, and it gets released, unfortunately, it gets released to the wrong people. Talking isn't weakness, talking is maintenance. We maintain our cars, we maintain our homes. Why don't we maintain our health, our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health? Those are the things that we put to the base side and we don't care about because those aren't issues, those aren't values that that we deal with, because our value is based off of things that that we can provide and give people. That's just the honest truth. That's what men focus on, that's what men care about. Because our duty is to provide, protect, and provide. So anything eternally that we can't physically see, we don't care about. And it shouldn't be that way because we care about children's feelings and their problems and their emotions, we care about women, we care about our significant other problems, we care about our elderly parents and our grandparents' problems, we care about our friends' problems, but we can't focus on our own problems, and that's something that needs to be changed, not just on us to change, but everybody else around us. Anybody else who doesn't who does not give a person the space to be able to speak. Everybody needs to work on that. I think one of the biggest lies we believe is that strength means carrying everything by yourself. Real strength is knowing when to put some of that weight down. That's just like going to a gym and you're trying to bench. And you know your limit. But you decide you know what? I'm a man. I'm gonna put a whole bunch of plates plates on here for 45. You gonna you just gonna think you can just you got it. And then you turn around and you lift that bar up, or let's be honest, you try to lift that bar up, and you honestly can't. But the problem is, is you don't get up off that bench, you don't say, let me take a couple plates off because this is too much for me and I can't lift it up. No, the problem is that we still think that we can lift up that bar, even though that bar is impossible. That bar is for like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and we ain't no Arnold Schwarzenegger around here, and we still continue to try to lift up that bar knowing that we can't, and it is okay, but the problem is mentally, if we can't lift it up, we think we're weak, that we're incapable of doing things, and we get more frustrated and we still try to. And that's the same thing about mental, is that we need to realize when enough is enough, when something is too heavy, when something is unbearable, that we need to just put something down and not saying to put it down and leave it there forever, is that sometimes we need to train and practice ourselves, our mental to be able to go back and to lift those weights up. I want to leave you with something though. If you're a man, what's one conversation you've been avoiding? And trust me, we all have that one conversation that we've always been avoiding. And if you're not a man, because again, even though this discussion is about men, everybody gets affected. So, if you're not a man, what's one thing you wish men in your life felt comfortable talking to you about? Leave your thoughts in the comments. I'll read them, and trust me, I will read them and I'll respond back. I genuinely want this community to become one of those safe spaces we've been talking about. I want it to be one of the safe spaces that I'm currently talking about. And if I have to be the person to start it, then let me start it. But I need you all to be able to utilize and come here and open up and speak, and everybody can again comment, uplift, motivate, and bring this to light. As we wrap up this conversation, if this conversation challenged you in any way or reminded you somebody that you care about, I want you to share this episode with them. Don't keep it to yourself. Again, a closed mouth don't get fed. And if you keep it to yourself, how are you helping those you love? Follow Beyond the Office wherever you're listening to this podcast on all platforms and connect with me at Beyond the Office TV because life doesn't stop at the title. Impact starts with insight. I'm Girardi. And I'm gonna see you at the next episode.