I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
Terrence Real, 1997
A man works late, drinks in the evenings, lashes out at loved ones, and insists he is fine. Family therapist Terrence Real shows that this behavior often hides depression even the man himself cannot see, and that it passes from father to son. You will discover where this hidden pain comes from, why escaping it only makes things worse, and how to stop the chain with yourself.
Who it is for
For men who have long felt nothing but fatigue and irritation. For anyone living beside such a man without understanding what is happening to him. And for anyone afraid of repeating their father’s pattern.
A man will ask for help with his depression as readily as he will ask for directions.
The advice his father gave his sons
When Terrence Real’s father was in high school, he saw two boys he knew drown. A current swept one away off the New Jersey shore; the other jumped in to save him. This story became one of the defining images of his father’s life. “A drowning man will grab you if you swim too close,” he told his sons. “Throw him a rope or a life ring. But don’t touch him.”
His father was a huge, loud man whose rage struck suddenly, like a storm. Terrence was the family’s “sensitive” child and suffered the most. His father threatened to beat him half to death and sometimes did beat him. Afterward, the boy climbed into bed, pulled the blanket over his head, and fell asleep.
Real grew up and became a family therapist. In time, he understood that his father had carried depression throughout his life without knowing it and passed it to his son just as he had received it from his own father. Real calls this a chain of pain running from parent to child across generations. In many men, such depression is so well hidden that neither loved ones nor the men themselves see it.
In this book, you will meet a lawyer who stopped noticing his own life, a man convinced he had no feelings, and a father and son talking on an old yellow sofa. You will also find an answer to whether his father was right. Let us begin with depression nobody notices.
The pain felt by those nearby
David Ingles, a middle-aged lawyer, sits in a chair in Real’s office and starts telling a joke. His wife Elaine, also a lawyer, looks somewhere above his head and says, “Don’t, David.” Their seventeen-year-old son Chad puts on dark glasses and turns his chair toward the wall.
Elaine came to Real for the marriage. After twenty years, she had realized how painfully lonely she was with her husband. David was good-natured and always ready to help, yet seemed absent. Nothing brought him joy: not his wife, his son, or even his own successes. He had worked too much for years; now he also drank too much and exploded more frequently. During an argument over car keys, he shoved his son.
David himself saw no depression, and Real explains why. There is overt depression: sadness, poor sleep, lost appetite, withdrawal. But Real observes that many men experience depression differently. The depression itself is buried deeply, and only its traces are visible: actions through which a man desperately tries to drive it away. This is covert depression.
Imagine tracks in snow. You cannot see the animal, but the tracks show it passed here. Real identifies the following traces.
• Escaping into activity. Late-night work, exercise, anything preventing you from stopping.
• Self-medication. Alcohol and other habits temporarily numbing bad feelings.
• Affairs and withdrawal. A man distances himself from his family even while physically present.
• Anger. Irritation, outbursts, and sometimes violence.
Women more often turn pain inward: blaming themselves, recognizing their distress, and reaching toward people. Men more often direct it outward: blaming others or circumstances and escaping bad feelings through action. They themselves seem not to hurt. Those living beside them do. Thus a wounded boy becomes a man who wounds his loved ones.
A common mistake is blaming character: “That’s just how he is.” According to Real, late-night work, drinking, and outbursts may conceal pain a man is fleeing. This is not a diagnosis, but a reason to ask what exactly he is escaping.
About the author
Terrence Real is an American family therapist from Massachusetts who has spent many years working with men and their families. The son of a depressed, abusive father, he experienced depression himself and writes openly about it in the book.
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