## Description *I Don't Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression* is a book written by [[Terrence Real]], a family therapist and father. It describes ## Provocative Sections The following parts of the book either made me cry or caused some emotional distress within me that I want to revisit in the future. They include: - [ ] [[Covert Depression]] and how they create addictions - [ ] Page 134, Janie's husband and sons withdrawing - [ ] Page 142, mothers neglect their sons in different ways that fathers neglect their sons - [x] Page 146, [[Alexithymia]] - [ ] Page 149, approximate length of therapy needed for a traumatic event - [ ] Page 151, "many [[Covert Depression|covertly depressed]] men, unwilling to face the vulnerability of their own hidden pain, and unable to be intimate with their own hearts, cannot face intimacy with anyone else" - [ ] Page 158, "when a man like Frank positions himself in the world as though he were invulnerable, the trauma of his relational losses further perpetuates itself" - [ ] Page 162, "grandiosity, privilege, and 'better than' positions offer an escape for depressed me" - [ ] Page 175, "boys constantly have to make the choice to betray themselves and others to stay in the success hierarchy--this is the most fundamental element of [[False Empowerment]]" - [ ] Page 205, [[Judith Herman]], trauma expert, says "even more than adults, children who develop in a climate of domination develop pathological attachments to those who abuse and neglect them, attachments that they will strive to maintain even at the sacrifice of their own welfare, their own reality, or their lives" - [ ] Page 206, [[Pia Mellody]], "carried shame and carried feeling are the means by which the legacy of pain is passed down; [[Projective Identification]]" - [ ] Page 207, "the same violence that causes trauma in a child is also violence that lives inside the child" - [ ] Page 233, "double jeopardy of equating pain with the feminine" - [ ] Page 235, "abused men either further entrench themselves in traditional masculinity or reject it" - [ ] Page 236, "men raised by single mothers do not show appreciable signs of psychological illness; men raised by abusive fathers have a higher rate of becoming abusive" - [ ] Page 239, "healing requires developing a stable and mature adult platform for emotional regulation and self-parenting" - [x] Page 241, "the [[Geographic Cure]] is moving to another city to avoid or to get 'high'" - [ ] Page 243, "a father who never smiled or asked questions or had any interest in his son or anything else" - [ ] Page 245, "reframing Henry's Folly as a quester and not a loser" - [ ] Page 246, "hitting ground zero and coming out triumphant; Oedipus Rex is the rock bottom of a trilogy and becomes hero in the third story" - [ ] Page 248, "depression dissolves when reframing oneself as a transforming legacy" - [ ] Page 249, "healing father's trauma by rediscovering the vitality and relationally/vulnerability that the father had lost" - [ ] Page 250, "the more a man struggles against the impossible, the more ridiculous he looks" - [ ] Page 253, "the Depression and the gruff nature of Terrence's father speech is similar to how my dad talked" - [ ] Page 253, "a man who doesn't understand other people's emotions seems to parallel my own shutting down or self-proclaiming that I am a robot. "I would read things in books, novels, and such, about falling in love, friendships. I know that people feel that - [ ] Page 255, "surviving the Depression and the constant hunger took a toll on him, and sounds kind of similar to how my dad felt" - [ ] Page 257, "Terrence's grandfather gave up and tried to kill everyone in a car with carbon monoxide poisoning" - [ ] Page 258, "father sabotaging a son's drive to help the family" - [ ] Page 259, delinquency - [ ] Page 261 "a father has his own dependency while further becoming a dependent himself" - [ ] Page 262, "healing interrupts the transmission of depression from parent to child" - [ ] Page 262, too much to talk about - [ ] Page 269, "patient feels like he's depressed because he doesn't allow himself to feel his feelings--the journey to healing starts with facing his condition instead of running of blocking himself from it" - [ ] Page 269, "healing is a 3-step process: 1) active defenders must stop; 2) attend to the dysfunctional patterns in the man's relationship to himself; 3) release early-buried trauma" - [ ] Page 270, I alienate myself by diving into video games and my personal projects - [ ] Page 272, "*false empowerment* from success continues to cause men to feel lonely and alienated from the people who love them the most" - [ ] Page 274, "a covertly depressed man cannot afford to be fully responsive to those around him because his primary bed lies in maintaining his defense" - [ ] Page 275, "Kyle, software engineer, was too preoccupied with his view of perfection instead of his customers' wishes" - [ ] Page 275, "a man's *covert depression* covers up the capacity for a man to respond to his environment; it medicates the pain of the man's poor relationship to himself" - [ ] Page 281, "reconnecting with himself--stop the addictive defense; learn how to parent myself; release the internal shame" - [ ] Page 285, "[[Grief]] is the cure for *depression*" - [ ] Page 285, "*depression* is not really a feeling--it is a condition of numbness and nonfeeling" - [ ] Page 286, "trauma stores itself in circuits in our brains" - [ ] Page 287, "combat veterans relive their experiences when exposed to combat scenes" - [ ] Page 290, "childhood trauma leads to disorders of self-regulation, and this lack of self-regulation creates either [[Overt Depression]] or [[Covert Depression]]" - [ ] Page 300, "need to reconnect to heal the disconnect" - [ ] Page 302, "roles were more fluid pre-industrialization; men also had to help out at home; at the height of the industrial era, families could be dependent on only one salary; the man had to give everything he had at work to win food, and the woman had to do everything, including the psychological work, to keep the man working; the roles post-war are now becoming more fluid again" ## References within the Book - [[Death of a Salesman (movie)]] - [[Searching for Bobby Fischer (movie)]] - [[Regarding Henry (movie)]] - [[The Prince of Tides]] - [[Patty Hearts]] - [[Olga Silverstein]] - [[Jack Sternbach]] - [[Joe Pleck]] - [[David Lisak]] - [[Edward Khantzian]] - that addictions attempt to "correct" flaws in the user's ego capacities - [[Ego Functions]] - the relationship between a man and himself - [[Five Point Grid]] - self-esteem - self-protection - self-knowledge - self-care - self-moderation