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Mitch: If you're listening, I know you care about your health, and maybe you've taken steps to improve your diet, maybe get a bit more physical activity in your routine. Maybe you're sleeping better. But a person's health is more than just physical. It's mental as well.

You're listening to "Who Cares About Men's Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ," where we aim to give you some information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of your health. I'm Producer Mitch. Scot, Troy, and I are having a little bit of a summer break. In the meantime, we've put together some best-of episodes highlighting some of our very favorite moments over the past 145 episodes.

Today, we're talking about mental health. I don't know about you, but before I started working on this podcast and talking with other men and specialists, I would rather do just about anything than even start to talk about my personal mental health.

I, like maybe plenty of men out there, was raised with a certain idea of what a "real man" was, and real men don't talk about their feelings to anyone. Never, ever, ever.

But to get serious for just a moment, this approach to mental health just may be killing us guys. According to the CDC, suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death for all U.S. men, and the number two cause for men between the ages of 20 and 44.

Additionally, American men have been shown to be four times more likely to die from deaths of despair than women. And deaths of despair include not only suicide, but drug and alcohol overdoses, all things that happen with bad mental health.

And just like any other aspect of our health, we can take active steps to improve our mental health, and it can not only prevent some potentially deadly consequences down the line, but it can also help you live a more extraordinary life.

In fact, mental health is so important to men's health, and because many men like myself may be lacking in some knowledge or tools on how to improve it, we're going to make this episode a two-parter.

We're going to start today with a bunch of what we like to call tools for your mental health toolbox. These are just some simple mental strategies and techniques that you can try out right here, right now as you're listening to minimize stress, be a little more present in your life, and it might just be a first step towards improving your own mental health.

Now, let's start with the basics all the way back on Episode 7, "What Is Mental Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ Anyway?" Licensed clinical social worker gave Scot and Troy a primer about mental health and why it's just so important.

Scot: What is mental health, Kevin Curtis? I mean, it's kind of a term that's thrown around a lot, right? But what is it really?

Kevin: Right. I mean, if you think of the analog of physical health, you're talking about so many different things, right? You're talking about your muscles, you're talking about your internal organs, you're talking about all of these different systems that work together.

When we talk about mental health, or at least when I talk about mental health, I'm talking about the state of our thoughts and the state of our emotions, and making sure that we're taking care of that. And so are we having thoughts that are useful to us? Are we having thoughts that impact our ability to function in life? And is our emotional state supportive of us meeting our goals, or is it a barrier to doing the things that we want to do in life?

Scot: Yeah. Just like is our physical body able to meet the goals we want to meet?

Kevin: Sure.

Scot: For some people, it's playing with their kids. For some people, it's socializing.

Troy: And it's a lot tougher. I mean, obviously our physical body changes become very obvious to us sometimes when we look in the mirror, but mental health not so obvious sometimes.

Kevin: No, it's really not. You could present as "I've got everything together" and be a complete and total mess inside, right? So external presentation isn't necessarily a good indicator of where we're at with our mental health.

Troy: That's a good point. Yeah, it's a lot easier to fake it to know what I need to do to get through the day at work and to function in that setting, but like you said, on the inside, we could just really be a mess.

Kevin: Right. And there are strong taboos to keep us doing that, right? It's not something that most people have a ton of shame or embarrassment about if they have diabetes or if they have some sort of heart condition that they take medication for, but for people that are struggling with troubling thoughts or troubling mood states, there are lots of reasons why somebody wouldn't necessarily want to let other people know that that's going on.

Scot: For me, I don't talk about stuff like that because I'm like, "Who really cares? Nobody cares about my problems or my thoughts, right?"

Troy: But you're right. I mean, I don't know how many times I've told the story about hurting my hamstringing and how much sympathy I get for this, but how often do we really want to talk about our mood and how we're feeling? Maybe sometimes we're willing to open up about those things, but it is sort of taboo.

Scot: Is that a man thing or is that a people thing? Is it equally men and women?

Kevin: I would not say that it's equally men and women. I think that there's a generalized taboo that keeps all of us from talking about mental health, but particularly our culture reinforces that this is not something that men do. Men do not show emotion other than anger. That's socially acceptable to show anger, right? But we don't have a lot of social reinforcers for sharing our thoughts and feelings.

Troy: Yeah, this is a kind of a fascinating thing to me because you're right, it's such a thing in our society that we don't talk about it. But I love history and I studied history as an undergrad and I just continue to love to read about history, but I read about Alexander the Great and when his horse died, he didn't come out of his tent for a week. And this is . . .

Scot: "This is Alexander the Great."

Troy: This is Alexander the Great. He faced so much emotion, and at that time, that was acceptable and those demonstrations of emotion were far more acceptable I think in many times in history than they are today.

Kevin: Sure. Yeah. The modern analog is I think that men can express their emotions related to sport, right? That's one little area where they can be in the presence of other men and express their emotion in a pretty open way.

Troy: That's our outlet.

Kevin: But it's not very common in other areas of life that men feel, generally speaking, able to talk about what's going on with them.

Scot: I hope I don't get into the weeds with this, but does this cultural thing that we talk about then affect individual men's ability to even help another man to even process it? If I were to start talking about my mental health issues with another man, would they even know what to do?

Kevin: Oh, that's a great question. I don't think that's in the weeds at all. I mean, I recently had an experience with a friend that had lost a job, and as a mental health professional, going to that person to ask, "How are you doing?" was a really challenging thing for me because it was kind of changing the nature of our relationship a little bit, right? Because that was not a part of our common language to talk about, "How are you doing?"

Troy: And maybe that's a big part of it. We're afraid of what we're going to find out if we start asking people and we won't know what to do about it. Or maybe we're afraid of what it's going to bring up in ourselves and what we're going to say.

Mitch: Talking with other men in my life about my mental state used to be a real struggle, just like the guys we're talking about. But it was actually this next bit of advice that Kevin shared that made it a whole lot easier for me to talk openly about my mental health.

Kevin: If you think from a standpoint of "What am I willing to give in return for somebody else that would be in this situation?" I think that we've all been in situations where we've given support where, in other situations similar, we would never be the ones to take the support, if that makes sense.

So I'll listen to 20 people tell me about the things that they're going through before I feel comfortable sharing what I'm going through, right?

Scot: And this is what you do.

Kevin: It's what I do, so if I can't quite figure it out all the time, how is anybody else supposed to, right? But it's just about practice and it's about being brave. Maybe that's something that we need to talk more about, is that it's not a sign of weakness to be vulnerable like this, but it's actually a sign of bravery to open yourself up and kind of lay bare the things that you're not super proud of or that you're struggling with or that sort of thing.

Mitch: All right. So talking to a friend is a good, simple way to improve your mental health, but even if just talking about our emotions is a struggle for a lot of men, even pros like Kevin Curtis, what are some ways that we can start strengthening our emotional side?

Kevin: Sure. So, again, I think that our physical health is a good analog to this. What are the things that you do to keep your body healthy? And it's not too different for keeping your mind healthy, right?

So we talk a lot about the importance of good routine. We talk about managing your hygiene, making sure that you're getting up every day, you're doing some sort of physical activity, you're showering, you're putting on clean clothes, you're putting good things into your body. Just developing good, healthy routines does so much for your mental health.

Scot: I can agree with that from personal experience, absolutely.

Troy: Oh, I can too.

Scot: So physical health does definitely lead to mental health. What about mindfulness? You hear about that a lot, or meditation, those sorts of things.

Kevin: Sure. That is certainly one of the areas that we focus on in therapy, is developing mindfulness practice. And really, what that's about is detaching your thoughts from the emotion connected to the thoughts, right? So it's about creating a space where you're not thinking, where you're not feeling, where you're just present in the moment.

And when you're doing that, you really begin to realize how much of your day-to-day functioning can be tied up in what came before or what's happening next, right? And that's really no way to live a life where you're constantly stuck between this push and pull of the bad things that have happened and the bad things that are going to happen.

So mindfulness practice can be a really great way to stay focused in, "What am I doing now that leads to the future that I want to have?"

The other thing that I would add is if you're not feeling mentally right, if you're feeling like things are not going well, you don't have to be in a point of crisis to start thinking, "Might it be helpful for me to engage some professional help?"

You don't have to wait until your arm falls off before you go to see a doctor, right? So it's that same thing. We've got to stop separating our physical health from our mental health.

So when you start having those feelings and thoughts that things are just not going that great, it doesn't hurt to reach out and talk to somebody. Maybe the solution is medication related, but more often than not, it's really about just being able to talk to a professional.

We've already talked about this. It may not work to talk to one of your male friends, right? It may not work to talk to your spouse, but there's something magical that happens when you can talk to kind of a neutral party that's not invested in your life that can maybe help talk through what's going on and maybe get things on a better track before it gets really bad.

Mitch: Next up, let's talk mental resiliency. When it comes to mental health, the academic definition of psychological resilience is the ability for a person to cope with or adapt to uncertainty, challenges, and adversity. Basically, how much we can handle all the things in life that stress us out, and those things that can ultimately be detrimental to our mental health. Think of improving your resilience like a preventative measure for your mental health.

is an expert in psychosocial health and wellbeing in elite athletes. He helps these sports stars better handle some of the extreme stressors that come with that level of competition. And on Episode 9, "Dealing With Stress," Nick shared some of the strategies for resilience he uses in his own life and with his clients, even strategies for those of us dealing with more everyday stressors compared to his usual clients.

Scot: Nick, how about you? How do you deal with stress? You have a new Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ, you have a couple kids, you've got a family, you've got a full plate at work.

Nick: Yeah, lots of new stressors. Good stress, though. So I think I try to have a mix of what I would call structured, set-aside stress-management activities. But I also think . . . and this is something that when I work with clients, sometimes just like with exercise and eating, it's a lot to think about doing something new or separate. Even if it's for stress management, that can be stressful.

So it's a mix of maybe one or two structured things that you do, but also something that you can be doing as you walk through life, as you are doing the stressful things, just a different way of approaching them.

So, for me, it's exercise. If I don't get the exercise that I need in a week, I'm definitely grumpier. I don't have as many good ideas. I'm just a worse person if I don't exercise.

And then I'm a reader and there are some Netflix shows that I'm drawn to, so even though I've got the kids and sometimes bedtime is late, I always make sure I have an hour at the end of the day to either veg out and watch a show or do some reading, or both.

So those are my structure, but then I've really taken to this idea of self-compassion, and that was put forth by a psychologist named Kristin Neff, who wrote a really good book about it.

And this is what's helped me more in my day-to-day, is that when I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed, first being mindful of that. And maybe we'll talk about mindfulness and just being aware of it, being with it.

Second, recognizing that there are millions more people like me dealing with similar things or worse, and it's just life, and I'm not alone. I know that, at least with what I go through.

And then third, just making sure that . . . and I try to practice what I preach with my clients. It's having good conversations with yourself. And what I mean by that is being productive in how you talk to yourself, thinking about how you would want other people to talk to you during those times. So that's how I've tried to integrate stress management into my life.

Scot: I took a class with Nick and . . . Well, he was my instructor. I didn't take it with him. There was an exercise. I loved this exercise about this talk. I just want to pull this out a little bit.

He asked us to think about a time we screwed up really, really bad, and then think about what we said to ourselves in our brain, like, "So stupid. How could you let this happen?" And then we had to turn to our partner and say that out loud to them at scale that we said it to ourselves. I couldn't do it, which really highlighted how terrible we can be to ourselves in a way that we're not to other people. So that was very kind of paradigm changing for me.

Nick: I try to help clients make sure that they have a rational view of their stressors. So I think just talking to someone about it, not with the expectation that they're going to solve the problem, but just somebody who's a good listener and talking it out. Some people like to journal. Journaling can be really useful.

Scot: Yeah. I do morning pages. I forgot about that. I spend a half hour and just do this brain dump of whatever I'm thinking and whatever I'm feeling. And a lot of times . . .

Nick: That's incredibly helpful.

Scot: Yeah. At the end of it, a lot of times I feel much better.

Troy: And do you save that or do you just brain dump and then delete it, like, "I want this gone"?

Scot: No, I don't delete it.

Troy: You save it for later or . . .?

Scot: No, I don't delete it, but where I learned this from said that you should not go back and reread. Although I used to journal as a kid, and I've read some of those as an adult, and I'm like, "This stuff you were concerned about was not a big deal." And as an adult, I do go back in my daily pages. I might go back to the last year and see what's going on and be like, "I was really worried about that?" And it does help me have perspective going ahead.

Nick: Yeah. And one other thing related to the journaling that I will recommend clients do, especially those that have a lot of thinking anxiety where they just can't get these thoughts, these ruminations out of their head, but they need to be able to, to focus on a task, it's to say, "Okay, that's fine. You want to worry about that? Designate 5 minutes or 10 minutes a day as your worrying time. And if you want to just sit there and worry, set the timer, or if you want to be journaling and getting the worry out in that way, that's fine. But when the timer's off, it's off and you leave it and you close the book on it. You've now honored that worry and you're moving on to the next thing."

Troy: And do you find people say they're able to do that, or does that thought just then stay with them throughout the day?

Nick: It's 50/50. It works well for some people, other people not as much.

Scot: Yeah, in some situations.

Nick: It's a tool.

Mitch: Now, if your media feed is anything like mine, the word mindfulness is used so frequently as a sort of catch-all, cure-all cliché for mental health or a buzzword of something that seems just a little woo-woo. But Nick takes a minute to explain his approach to mindfulness.

Nick: So much of our stress comes from being future oriented about bad things that might happen, or things that we're worried about in the future. And so many people spend so much time in that state that you've got to wonder if you never do anything about that, you're never really living.

You're always thinking about, "What's next? What's next? What's next?" Even when you accomplish something really positive, you never enjoy it because you're always thinking about the next thing or worrying about the next thing.

Troy: Well, you mentioned mindfulness, and Scot talked about that a little bit as well. We're hearing the term more and more I think, mindfulness. Sometimes I wonder if we really understand what mindfulness is. Sometimes we hear it in the context of being very mindful toward others, which sounds more just thoughtful toward others. What is mindfulness exactly and how does that really play into stress management?

Nick: Yeah, good question. I think of mindfulness as having two characteristics. One, it's about being present, not just physically, but . . . I tell my students, "I don't want you just here physically. I want you here mentally and emotionally and spiritually." Maybe not spiritually, but I want your whole being here. So part of it is being present.

And the harder part I think is being present in a non-judgmental way, meaning we're very good at judging ourselves often in the negative. It's learning how to view our thoughts and our behaviors in a more neutral way. They just are what they are. So being present and being present in a way that's more neutral and removing judgment from what we're doing.

Scot: And being present meaning, "Oh, I'm feeling stressed. I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling . . ." and not judging it and just going, "Why?"

Nick: "This is how I feel right now. Interesting." Honestly. We talk about being researchers. We're human beings. We're all researchers to some degree. We're interested in things. We wonder. So view your own emotions in that way. Think about them in that way.

I find for me that when I'm feeling overwhelmed, one really simple thing that I have taken to doing is, if I'm by myself especially, narrating, literally being my own narrator out loud. "I am getting my keys. I'm walking through the door. I'm opening the garage and I'm opening the car door. I'm sitting down. I'm putting the key in the ignition. I'm turning the key."

I mean, sometimes you've got to talk yourself into being present. Or when you're doing something you don't particularly want to be doing, just talk your way through it. Pretend you're Morgan Freeman or something. I don't even know where I learned that, but I just started doing it and it was kind of helpful.

Mitch: So a bit of a mindset change, some journaling, maybe even narrating your life for a kind of fun approach to mindfulness. Hopefully there are some tools in there that can help give you a little bit more resilience and get you a little stronger against stress.

But what can we do when stress is a little bit more than you can be resilient against? Listener Ben's stress was so severe that he was starting to experience panic attacks. So he took a big step to improving his own health and actually started working with a mental health specialist.

On Episode 39, "Three Tools for Your Mental Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵ Toolbox," Ben shares some of the basic strategies he learned to better manage his emotions and how he uses them in his day-to-day life.

Scot: Ben has had a lot of success. Would you say you've had a lot of success with working with licensed clinical social workers to work through some issues in your life?

Ben: I'm not the paragon of mental health.

Troy: None of us are.

Scot: Yeah, right?

Ben: But I am better than I was 10 years ago.

Scot: Well, that's good.

Troy: Nice. That's great.

Ben: So I went in and saw an EAP licensed clinical social worker about . . . I was experiencing panic attacks about a situation that was outside of my control. And so I went and met with him, and in the very first meeting he explained to me that . . . Well, we are both men, so I think he brought this up because this is a manly thing. He said, "Have you ever seen the videos of Navy SEAL training?" It's the Navy SEALs, they're lifting up logs and they're sitting in the ice cold water, and every once in a while somebody goes up and rings the bell because they can't take it anymore and they're out of the selection.

And he said, "The people that make it through selection are not any stronger physically. They don't have any different physical capacity than the ones that opt out eventually. They're just the ones that have learned how to manage the mental situation better."

They realized that most of the candidates that got through selection and went on to become Navy SEALs had either learned or discovered the technique of box breathing.

Box breathing is the situation where you breathe in for a count of four, and then you hold your breath for a count of four, you breathe out for another count of four, and then you hold for another count of four. So it's like a box. The side going up is breathe in for a count of four, going across is holding for a count of four, breathing out is going down for a count of four, and going back across. And so you kind of picture a box.

He said, "When you are in a highly agitated or highly engaged state, you can box breathe and it will . . ." He explained it this way. "In the panic attack, your physical systems are following a mental process, and when you box breathe, it flips it, and you start having a physical process, which then your mental state follows the physical process."

Troy: Well, I'll tell you, I've been box breathing just while you've been talking, and I actually do feel a little bit calmer.

Ben: Yeah. There's a related technique called tactical breathing.

Scot: Oh, that sounds good.

Ben: It's even more hardcore.

Scot: That sounds very manly.

Kevin: I picture a lot of men getting right on board with tactical breathing.

Scot: Yeah. Please explain.

Kevin: "Guys, do your tactical breathing" is very manly.

Ben: That's why I responded so well to it. Tactical breathing is similar to box breathing except for you take out the hold for four seconds. So you breathe in for a count of four and breathe out for a count of four. That's if you are physically engaged and you can't not breathe for those . . . I think why it's called tactical breathing, if you're engaged tactically with somebody, then you still get some of these benefits of clearing your mind and getting centered and focusing.

Anyway, he explained this technique to me, I went home, I started using it, just practicing it. And then within the next day or two, I started to feel some anxiety or some panic starting to ramp up and went into the box breathing.

And it is a combination of you're taking care of yourself physically, you're bringing everything into just where you're only focused on your breathing, and then it helped me to become a little bit more circumspect and think about just taking inventory of, "Okay, what's happening? What am I thinking? What is creating these feelings of anxiety?" while I'm box breathing. And it really helped.

In fact, it's something that I use now that my wife and I have Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵren. I use that with my kids, like, "Okay, let's box breathe." And the younger ones, I hold up four fingers and pretend they're candles and you have to blow out these candles when you do it. So it seems to be a technique that's worked really well for me.

Mitch: Hopefully you took a minute to try out one of these breathing techniques while you were listening. If not, I really suggest giving it a try sometime today and see if it works for you. It works for me pretty regularly with my anxiety.

Now, for the next strategy, Ben shared an acronym that the guys were pretty excited about.

Ben: It's an acronym, which we all love, and the acronym is BLAST.

Scot: Oh, yeah.

Troy: This is so good. Tactical breathing. BLAST.

Scot: Pow.

Ben: Contact left.

Troy: Destroy.

Ben: So BLAST is the acronym, and this is maybe something to use if you feel things are getting maybe a little bit overwhelmed. One of the therapists that I've seen over the years has said, "You'll make your poorest decisions when the BLAST conditions are operational, one or more of the BLAST conditions." And the BLAST conditions are B is for bored, L is for lonely, A is angry, S is stressed, and T is tired. And he added an H on the end of that for hungry, so BLAST H.

Scot: I'm glad that they added hungry.

Ben: Or BLASHT. But he said, "If you've made a decision or you're doing something and you're not acting in your best mind or you're not being your best self, take an inventory. Which of these conditions were present? Bored, lonely, angry, stressed, tired, or hungry?"

Scot: So all of them don't need to be present, just one of them.

Ben: Yeah, one of them, or more of them. And so you can see it really easily in maybe your partner or your Ìð¹ÏÊÓƵren. It's like, "Oh, they're tired," or, "Oh, they're hungry," or they were bored, which is why they got the paint out and painted their whole naked bodies and painted their floor and their bed and everything.

Scot: Wow. That's very specific.

Ben: That happened four weeks ago. Then it was time for box breathing.

Troy: Box breathing while you clean up.

Ben: So we're really good at identifying it in other people. It's much more difficult to identify it in ourselves, I think. And so it's that. And I think, for me, the technique I guess is maybe staying out of those domains, right? If I feel like, "Oh, I'm bored," I should probably do something so that I don't . . . Or, "I'm lonely," time to reach out. Or, "I'm angry," what's going on that I'm so upset about? Stressed or tired, what can we do?

And so BLAST, it's a cool word, it's a cool acronym, but I think it's also almost a checklist of, "Okay. What's happening? Let's run this down. Where am I at?"

Mitch: And for the third and final tool, Ben shares what he learned from one professional he was working with about how to start building a support system that can help when times get really tough.

Ben: But she did say something that was really helpful. She said, "I want you to create a network of support," which was something that I had not really considered. You have a therapist-client relationship, but you can also create your own mental health scaffolding with people around you that you trust.

And she said, "I want you to pick two people and reach out to them this week and tell them what's going on, and that you don't need them to do anything but just to know." I think that's an important piece too. You don't want to maybe invite a friend to lunch and say, "I'm really struggling and I've got this going on. I just don't know if it's all worth it." Your friend is your friend. Your friend is not maybe prepared to give you any kind of solution.

But if you frame it with, "Hey, I'm just telling you this. This is where I'm at. You don't need to do anything about this. I just need to let you know," that was a new concept to me.

And so that week I went out to lunch with my dad, I went out to lunch with a friend, and I said exactly that. I said, "I asked you to lunch because I want to tell you what's going on with me, and I just need you to know. I don't need you to do anything for me."

Scot: What was your lead-in sentence for that? "I need you to know this, and . . ."?

Ben: That was my lead in sentence.

Scot: "I was at the gym today," and then you just kind of kicked into the story?

Ben: I didn't get in even into the details. I just said, "Hey, here's how I'm feeling about myself and here's how I'm feeling about life right now."

And it wasn't even about that I was disappointed that I got in this altercation with this person. I said, "I just feel low right now, and I just want you to know. You're important to me and that's it."

I mean, Kevin, you were the other person that I reached out to, and it was interesting because my dad said, "Oh, thank you for telling me about this." He said, "I had a similar experience with . . ." And he talked about some situation in the family from a couple years back that I was familiar with and he shared with me what it was like for him.

And it wasn't like we even gave each other any kind of therapeutic response, advice, or anything. It was just sharing that experience and feeling like my dad and my friend saw me and saw what I was going through and sharing that, which was very powerful.

And it seems like, "You just told them that you're having a hard time and that was it?" Yes, that was it. They knew, and I knew that they knew, and it was just . . . I essentially made an invitation to become part of my network for my mental health, and they said, "Yeah, let me know anytime when I can help you." It sounds weird that that was all it was, but it was just a reach-out and saying, "I'm struggling," and that's it. And then our tuna melts came out and we ate them and it was great.

Scot: And you didn't pepper in the good news that was going on at the time? Because I would feel this need to do that then.

Ben: Well, it was really a couple of minutes of just being real. "I'm having a hard time with this. This is hard. I'm not sure this, that, and the other." It wasn't like the whole meal was a downer. It's my dad and one of my best friends.

Scot: Would they look at you differently after that?

Ben: No, they're just like, "I really appreciate . . ." Yeah, go for it.

Kevin: What I would say as being a recipient to that was that it was a transformative act for our friendship in terms of . . . I was relatively new to the area. Ben was one of the few people that I knew, and the radical act of kind of being vulnerable in a very real and human way, whatever benefit it had for him, it was very beneficial to me in terms of feeling that connection.

And I think that that's one of the big things that is missing for a lot of men that drives their unhappiness in life. They may have a lot of acquaintances, but they don't have a lot of connections. And so even just that moment of being real with each other, we were able to go back to kind of the superficial parts of our conversation and relationship, but having that knowledge that, "Oh, this is a friend. This is somebody that I can count on. This is somebody that trusts me and that I trust," that's a really valuable thing to have in life.

Scot: What's this technique called?

Ben: Let's call it the reach-out.

Mitch: So now you have a bunch of tools to try out improving your mental health today. Now just like anything else with your health, you've got to find what works for you. Some of these strategies may not work for everyone. I mean, personally, narrating my own life wasn't really that helpful when I tried it out, but sometimes you've got to try some things out before you find what works for you and what you can really use to improve your life.

Now, Scot likes challenges, so I have one for you. Try out two or three of the mental health techniques that we shared today. Give them a test drive and see if they're a good fit for you. How you feel before, how you feel after. Let us know how it goes, or if you have any questions for our specialists or a story to share, don't hesitate to message us via email at hello@thescoperadio.com.

And if you liked anything you heard on today's best-of episode and want to hear more, a list of the episodes featured today is in the show notes.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for caring about men's health.