Men, Mental Health, and the Legacy of Silence After Father’s Day
Father’s Day was just celebrated — a day filled with backyard barbecues, sentimental cards, and heartfelt posts about appreciation and love. And yet, for many men, the day may have passed with a quiet ache, an unnameable heaviness, or even a sense of emotional distance that felt hard to explain.
As a therapist, I often think about what doesn’t get said in moments like these. The pain that lingers beneath the surface. The discomfort with intimacy. The emotional inheritance passed down from father to son.
Terry Real, founder of Relational Life Therapy (RLT), speaks directly to this in his powerful book “I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression.” The title captures something I see every day in my work with men — a profound inner struggle that rarely makes it to the surface, let alone into conversation.
Real introduces the concept of covert depression in men — a form of suffering that is often missed or misdiagnosed because it doesn’t look like “typical” depression. Instead of sadness or withdrawal, it shows up as irritability, emotional shutdown, overworking, substance use, or even perfectionism. The result? Men who feel lost or disconnected, even as they try to hold it all together for the people around them.
The Inherited Silence
Many of these men were raised by fathers who didn’t have access to their own emotional world — not because they didn’t care, but because they had been cut off from their feelings too. Vulnerability was punished. Sensitivity was shamed. Emotional needs were minimized or ignored.
Real writes, “The most important fact to understand about male depression is that men are taught not to feel.” And when feelings like fear, sadness, or tenderness are treated as weaknesses, boys learn to bury those parts of themselves. Over time, they lose access to their emotional life — and, by extension, to the possibility of deep, sustaining connection.
Unless something interrupts that pattern.
The Call to Heal: The Day After
That interruption can begin now — the day after Father’s Day — when the world quiets down and the attention fades. This is the moment when reflection becomes possible.
As a therapist working through the Relational Life Therapy model, I don’t just ask men how they’re feeling. I help them relearn how to feel, how to express, and how to show up in ways they may have never been shown. RLT helps men connect the dots between their early wounds and their current relationships, while also teaching the skills needed to do intimacy differently — with more honesty, more courage, and more heart.
Healing doesn’t mean becoming someone else — it means reclaiming parts of themselves they had to hide to survive.
An Invitation, Not an Obligation
If you’re a man reading this and you felt something stirring yesterday — numbness, guilt, pride, disconnection, or maybe just a vague discomfort — I want to say this clearly: You are not alone. And you’re not broken.
You might start with these questions:
What feelings did I push down yesterday?
What did I need from my own father that I didn’t get?
What do I wish I could say — or hear — from the people I love?
What would it mean to risk being known, fully?
And if you’re partnered with, raised by, or raising a man, know this: much of the emotional work men need to do was never modeled for them. Compassion and accountability can coexist. Supporting someone’s growth doesn’t mean excusing harm — it means believing in their capacity to change.
Let’s keep the conversation going. Not just about what kind of father someone was this Sunday , but about what kind of man — and partner, and parent — they’re still capable of becoming.
The real legacy isn’t what’s passed down.
It’s what we choose to do with it
If you would like to hear more by Terry Real - I just finished listening to him on the Modern Love’s podcast titled “Open your heart and loosen up” where real stories by real fathers are answered.
