I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression

by Terrence Real

The difference between the healthy enjoyment of achievement and competition and its unhealthy expression is analogous to the distinction between the recreational and the abusive use of intoxicants. A recreational drinker begins with a baseline feeling of relative contentment and the drug is used as an enhancement. The state he returns to after the drug has worn off is the satisfactory state he began with. The abusive drinker medicates a baseline experience that is painful or empty, and when the drug wears off, the underlying ill ease returns or worsens. Similarly, healthy joy in competition and achievement enhances an already invigorated boy. He does not rely on it to feel worthy, and he is not devastated on occasions of failure. In the same way that performance is not the boy’s ticket to a sense of self-worth, it is also not a ticket to relational connection.