Men's Mental Health Series

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What would it take for you to feel emotionally safe with somebody?

For some of us, even the phrase emotional safety can feel uncomfortable.

But in this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about what it can mean to feel at ease with another person, to trust them enough to go beyond surface level, and to decide what level of access different people should have to you.

I think we are all layered.

Not everybody deserves access to every layer.

Some people might only know the surface version of you. Some people may get a little deeper. And a very small number of people may know the parts of you that carry pain, fear, regret, vulnerability, and the experiences that shaped you.

That kind of access requires trust.

And trust can be incredibly difficult when you have been hurt.

A lot of men have experienced situations where opening up did not feel safe.

Maybe something you shared was later used against you.

Maybe you were hurt by a family member, a friend, a romantic partner, or somebody else you trusted.

Maybe you have experienced abuse.

And I think it is important to acknowledge that men can be abused too.

If something happened to you and you experienced it as abuse, your experience matters. You do not need somebody else to minimize it or decide what you were allowed to feel about it.

Working through those experiences can take time.

It can bring up anger, sadness, frustration, shame, fear, and a lot of other emotions we were never taught how to handle.

That is why I think patience matters.

Patience with yourself.

Patience with people who genuinely care about you.

And patience with the process of figuring out who deserves deeper access to you and who does not.

You can forgive somebody and still have boundaries.

You can care about somebody and still hold them accountable.

You can acknowledge that people disappoint each other without excusing harmful behavior.

There is a lot of nuance here.

That is also why I continue encouraging productive work with a therapist or counselor who is the right fit for you.

These conversations with the people closest to us matter, but simply being understood is not always enough to work through everything we have experienced.

So think about this today.

What does emotional safety look like for you?

Who makes you feel like you can actually relax and be yourself?

Who has earned deeper access to you?

And where might you need stronger boundaries?

These are hard conversations.

But they can also help us build deeper, healthier relationships with ourselves and with the people who truly matter to us.

Mental Health Support

If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com.

Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Get the Journal Prompts:

https://yourlevelfitness.com/men-email

How do you know what you are actually feeling?

That question sounds simple, but for a lot of us, it really is not.

In this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about why identifying what we feel matters and what can happen when we never really learn how to do it.

When emotions go unnamed, they tend to sit there.

They build.

They get heavier.

And even if we try to distract ourselves or run from them, they usually are not very far behind.

Sometimes all it takes is one difficult moment for everything we have been carrying to come crashing down at once.

That is why I think there is real value in learning how to name what you are feeling.

For me, journaling can be as simple as writing, I am feeling this.

That is it.

Then, if there is something underneath that emotion, I can write that down too.

Sometimes there is one dominant feeling.

Sometimes there is a mix.

Sometimes you may write something down and think, I would never normally say that I feel this.

But that is part of the practice.

You have a full range of emotions, even if you were taught growing up that some of them were weak, unnecessary, or better left alone.

They are still there.

And knowing what you feel is better than carrying around something you cannot identify.

This also matters in your relationships.

The people closest to you need to be able to identify what they feel too, because healthy communication requires some ability to understand what is happening internally and then talk about it.

That does not mean every conversation has to become a deep emotional excavation.

Sometimes you need to go deeper.

Sometimes you do not.

There is nuance to this.

And you deserve to figure out what that nuance looks like for you.

Practice writing it down.

Practice saying it out loud.

Practice communicating it with people you trust.

Those repetitions matter.

Over time, they can help some of that emotional heaviness start to loosen its grip.

Mental Health Support

If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com.

Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Maybe you opened up to somebody and had your emotions used against you.

Maybe you tried to explain what you were feeling and felt dismissed, misunderstood, or exposed.

Eventually, it can become easier to decide not to talk about any of it.

But that does not mean the feelings disappear.

In this episode of The Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about emotional awareness and why I think it is such an important skill for men to develop and practice.

Emotional awareness starts with being able to identify what you are actually feeling.

Not just angry.

Not just upset.

Not just happy.

We are more complex than that.

Sometimes there are multiple emotions happening at once. Sometimes one feeling is dominating everything while something else is sitting underneath it.

Being able to recognize that can also create something incredibly valuable.

A pause.

That little bit of space between what you feel and how you react.

How many times have you reacted to something and almost immediately thought, I wish I had handled that differently?

With practice, you can start noticing what is happening internally before automatically reacting to it.

And I think another important part of this conversation is emotional safety.

What does it feel like to be around someone where you can actually relax?

Where you can loosen up a little?

Where you can talk about what you are feeling without immediately worrying about how it is going to be used against you?

Not everybody deserves access to that part of you.

But there should be people in your life where you can have those conversations.

And those conversations start with being able to have them with yourself.

That is where journaling can help.

You do not have to write pages.

Start with a couple of thoughts.

What does emotional awareness mean to you?

How comfortable are you identifying what you feel?

And how easy or difficult is it for you to talk about those feelings with the people you trust?

This takes practice.

But the more you understand what is happening inside you, the more choice you have in how you respond and how you communicate with the people around you.

Mental Health Support

If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com.

Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Get the Journal Prompts:

https://yourlevelfitness.com/men-email

The Men’s Mental Health Series is evolving.

In this episode, I talk about a couple of changes I am making to the podcast and why I think they are going to make these conversations more useful and more consistent.

Moving forward, I am going to be putting out solo episodes Monday through Friday, in addition to the interviews and conversations that are already part of this podcast.

The interviews will continue to focus on the real experiences men have with emotions, vulnerability, relationships, and the ways we were taught, or not taught, to deal with all of this growing up.

Those conversations matter because most of us were never really given a roadmap.

We are figuring this stuff out as we go.

The solo episodes are going to give us another way to work through specific topics around emotional awareness, communication, relationships, and the softer skills that impact how we move through life.

Most of these episodes will be short.

The goal is not to give you another long list of things to do.

It is to give you something to think about.

Something you can apply to your own life.

Something that might help you better understand yourself, your relationships, and the people around you.

That is also why I continue coming back to journaling.

You do not need to write pages.

Sometimes it can simply be a thought, a short list, or a couple of sentences that help you see what is actually going on internally.

The journal prompts are designed to help you develop and strengthen emotional awareness by slowing things down and giving you a chance to figure out how all of this applies to you.

The podcast can start the conversation.

The journaling can help you continue it with yourself.

And the interviews can remind you that other men, from all different backgrounds and stages of life, are trying to figure this out too.

None of this replaces therapy or counseling.

I think having a productive working relationship with a therapist or counselor can be incredibly valuable, especially when you find someone you trust enough to help you recognize blind spots, challenge you in a constructive way, and give you things to work on between sessions.

This podcast is here to keep the conversation going.

Because the more honestly we talk about this stuff, the more opportunities we have to understand ourselves and show up differently in the areas of life that matter to us.

Mental Health Support

If you are in the United States and are experiencing a mental health crisis or need immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you are outside the United States, you can find crisis and emotional support resources in your country at findahelpline.com.

Disclaimer: The Men’s Mental Health Series shares personal experiences, conversations, and general information related to mental and emotional health. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and this podcast is not a substitute for professional mental health care, diagnosis, treatment, or emergency services. If you are struggling, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or an appropriate crisis resource in your area.

Men are often comfortable fixing things we can see. We can clean up a mess, repair something that is broken, finish a project, and stand back afterward knowing exactly what we accomplished.

Emotional work is different.

In this episode of The Men's Mental Health Series, my buddy Nick joins me for a conversation that starts with a simple analogy. While doing a dirty, uncomfortable job at work that he had been putting off, Nick realized how similar it felt to some of the emotional work we avoid. We may know something needs our attention, but when we cannot see the problem or measure the progress in front of us, figuring out where to begin can be much harder.

From there, we get into what happens when men who are used to being the person everyone else relies on suddenly do not know how to fix what is happening inside themselves.

We talk about the feeling of failure that can come with needing help, how difficult it can be to find the right words for an emotion, and why anger can sometimes become the easiest outward expression for feelings like fear, sadness, frustration, grief, anxiety, or overwhelm.

Nick shares how conversations with his wife, friends, and other men have helped him better understand what he is feeling. We also talk about how emotional conversations between men do not have to completely change the dynamic of a friendship. Sometimes it is ten minutes of openness in the middle of an entire weekend of joking around, camping, and being yourself.

That small conversation can still matter.

One of the biggest ideas we come back to is that opening up did not leave Nick feeling like less of a man. The fear that it might happen was often stronger than what actually happened once the conversation began.

We also discuss the importance of emotional safety, having people around you who can listen while you work through something without expecting you to explain it perfectly, and recognizing when a relationship may not provide that kind of space.

Finally, Nick shares what he has seen within the Australian construction industry, where mental health initiatives and recognizable work shirts can signal that someone is willing to have a conversation. It is a small visual cue, but it can help create an opening for conversations that many men still struggle to start.

None of us completely figure this out.

We keep learning the language. We keep practicing the conversations. We keep getting a little more comfortable sitting with emotions that we may have spent most of our lives avoiding.

And sometimes simply knowing that another guy is willing to listen is where it starts.

Mental Health Support

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis in the United States, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If there is an immediate life-threatening emergency, call 911.

In Australia, Lifeline is available 24 hours a day at 13 11 14. If there is an immediate emergency, call 000.

If you are elsewhere, contact your local emergency services or a crisis support service in your country.

What if emotional softness is actually part of what makes us strong?

In this episode of The Almost Daily Podcast and the Men’s Mental Health Series, I talk about the relationship between vulnerability, emotional awareness, and the version of strength many of us were taught to value.

For a lot of men, the message was pretty straightforward.

Be tough.

Handle it.

Do not show too much emotion.

Keep moving.

The problem is that having emotions was never optional. We were still feeling everything. A lot of us simply were not taught what to do with those feelings once they showed up.

I talk about why being connected to your emotions can actually help you handle pressure, why a productive relationship with a therapist can provide tools you can use outside of therapy, and why vulnerability does not take anything away from focus, consistency, resilience, or follow through.

In many ways, I think the softer parts help hold the stronger parts together.

I also talk about why this can take time. If someone has spent decades suppressing emotions or tying their identity to being the strong one, opening up can challenge the way they see themselves.

That deserves patience.

At the same time, struggling to process emotions never removes our responsibility for how we treat other people. We can give ourselves compassion while still taking responsibility for our actions and responses.

And although I spend a lot of time talking specifically with men about this, the larger message applies to everybody.

Human beings have emotions.

We need room to feel them, understand them, work through them, express them constructively, and sometimes let them go.

If you are in the United States and experiencing a mental health, suicide, or substance use crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also chat through the 988 Lifeline online. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.

What happens when you grow up never really learning what love is supposed to feel like?

Jeremy joins me again for The Men’s Mental Health Series, and this conversation starts with something a lot of men experience but may struggle to put into words, emptiness.

Jeremy talks openly about growing up in a broken home, not feeling loved as a kid, and spending years trying to fill that void through alcohol, drugs, food, and other escapes. Eventually, he realized that none of those things could actually give him what he was looking for.

That led us into a much bigger conversation about self love, discipline, vulnerability, fatherhood, relationships, and the kind of man he wants to be today.

We talk about what love actually looks like in everyday life. For Jeremy, it can be waking his boys up for school, making breakfast, encouraging them, spending time together, or hearing that his partner is proud of him. It is not necessarily one huge emotional moment. It is something that gets built through the way we consistently show up for the people we care about.

We also get into something I think a lot of men from our generation can relate to, the difference between tough love and actually feeling loved.

You can appreciate lessons that came through toughness while still recognizing that you needed softness too. You needed the hug. You needed someone to tell you they were proud of you. You needed opportunities to talk about how something made you feel.

And you may still need those things now.

Jeremy also shares how discipline has helped him develop a better relationship with himself. His running, training, family responsibilities, and the promises he keeps to himself have become ways of building self respect rather than simply escaping what he feels.

But underneath all of that discipline is something softer.

Honesty. Vulnerability. Connection. Love.

We talk about being honest about the character you are when nobody else is around, allowing different versions of yourself to show up authentically in different parts of your life, and recognizing that every day gives you another opportunity to decide how you want to show up.

For the man who feels empty right now, this conversation is a reminder that you do not have to solve your entire life today.

Start by doing something you can genuinely be proud of.

Then keep building.

Connect with Jeremy on TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremygrap22

If You Need Immediate Support

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency services.

In the United States, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you are outside the United States, contact your local emergency services or a crisis support service in your country.

Every man has a story. Some stories stay hidden for years.

In this episode of The Men's Mental Health Series, I sit down with Jeremy for one of our deepest conversations yet. Jeremy shares his journey through childhood trauma, addiction, recovery, forgiveness, self worth, and the daily discipline that has completely changed the direction of his life.

What makes this conversation so powerful is its honesty. We talk about the emotional roots behind addiction, why so many men suppress what they're feeling, how anger often masks deeper pain, and why learning to love yourself is one of the hardest, but most important, things any of us can do.

Jeremy also explains how replacing destructive habits with purposeful ones, including running, fitness, and serving others, helped him build a completely different life. Throughout the episode, we explore what it means to take ownership of your story without allowing your past to define your future.

If you've ever struggled with anxiety, addiction, self doubt, shame, or simply wondered whether life can look different than it does today, this conversation is for you.

In this episode we discuss

• Jeremy's childhood and the lasting impact of family trauma

• Why addiction often begins as an attempt to quiet emotional pain

• Replacing destructive habits with healthy purpose

• The connection between fitness and mental health

• Forgiving yourself and letting go of your past

• Why men struggle to express emotions

• Understanding anger as a symptom, not the root cause

• Learning to build self love one day at a time

• The power of helping others during your own healing journey

• Why hope often begins with one small decision

Connect with Jeremy

Follow Jeremy on TikTok for more conversations about mental health, resilience, and personal growth:

https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremygrap22

Mental Health Resources

If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, please know that you are not alone. Reaching out for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

If you are experiencing emotional distress or are in crisis, you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States and Canada. Trained counselors are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to provide free and confidential support.

If you believe you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency services right away.

No matter how difficult today feels, help is available, and there are people who care. You do not have to face it alone.

What does discipline actually look like in real life?

In this conversation, Jeremy shares how sobriety, purpose, and consistent daily action have completely transformed the way he approaches fitness and life. From running a single mile to completing a full marathon on a treadmill and consistently logging more than 50 miles each week, he explains why discipline isn't about motivation. It's about keeping the promises you make to yourself.

We also discuss why most people place limits on themselves long before they reach their true potential, how to gradually push beyond your comfort zone, and why building confidence comes from repeatedly following through on your commitments.

Whether you're working toward a fitness goal, building a business, pursuing personal growth, or simply trying to become more consistent, this conversation is a reminder that meaningful progress comes from showing up, taking action, and believing you're capable of more than you think.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What discipline really means beyond motivation

• Why keeping promises to yourself builds lasting confidence

• Going from one mile to marathon distance through consistent progression

• Using fitness to strengthen your mindset for every area of life

• Why purpose naturally creates discipline

• The role sobriety played in creating long term change

• How to stop comparing yourself to others and focus on your own progress

Connect with Jeremy on TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@jeremygrap22

Sometimes the greatest transformations don't begin with a workout plan or a new diet.

They begin with surviving your darkest day.

In this episode, I'm joined by Kyle Fry, who shares an incredibly honest conversation about living through chronic pain, surviving suicidal thoughts, rebuilding his life after multiple back surgeries, and ultimately losing more than 75 pounds by changing far more than his body.

Together, we explore how mindset, personal responsibility, supportive relationships, and daily action helped Kyle move from simply surviving to creating a life he genuinely enjoys living.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Kyle's battle with chronic pain and multiple back surgeries

• The day he nearly lost his life to suicide

• How one unexpected moment changed everything

• The mental and emotional side of long-term weight gain

• Why rock bottom became the turning point in his journey

• Losing more than 75 pounds through sustainable lifestyle changes

• Food addiction, habits, and rebuilding a healthier relationship with yourself

• The importance of surrounding yourself with people who genuinely want to see you succeed

• Why small, consistent goals often lead to the biggest transformations

• Making peace with your past without allowing it to define your future

This conversation goes far beyond weight loss. It's about resilience, choosing hope during incredibly difficult seasons of life, and recognizing that lasting change begins long before you see it reflected on the scale.

Whether you're navigating your own health journey, struggling with your mental health, or simply looking for encouragement to take the next step, I believe you'll find something meaningful in Kyle's story.

Connect with Kyle Fry

TikTok

https://www.tiktok.com/@kilofree86

Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/kilofree86

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/kyle.fry.9210

Mental Health Resources

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or experiencing a mental health crisis, please know that help is available.

United States & Canada

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline

Call or text 988 to connect with a trained crisis counselor 24 hours a day.

https://988lifeline.org

If you believe someone is in immediate danger, call 911 or your local emergency services immediately.

You are not alone. Reaching out for help is a sign of strength, and support is available.