Archive for the ‘Men and Depression’ Category

Family Fury in a Small Space

Written by John on June 6th, 2009
4 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by _marmota at Flickr This is a story I had to get out of my head onto paper purely for healing. It’s still hard, though, and I may not be getting it right – best I can do for now. A name has been changed, but otherwise this is the way I [...]

Read more »

Tags: brother, family, father, Fear, fighting, home, mother, rage, sound, violence, voice, words
Permalink

Early Steps Toward Recovery

Written by John on March 27th, 2009
10 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by paintmonkey at Flickr Lynn left a comment on Why Depressed Men Leave that ended with a question I’ve been thinking about all week. She summarized the wrenching story about her bipolar husband and his blaming her for everything that was wrong with him. Then she asked me how I gained the [...]

Read more »

Tags: anger, awareness, belief, Connecting, life, partner, phases, rage, Recovery, steps
Permalink

Work, Identity and Recovery – 1

Written by John on March 19th, 2009
10 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by Funky64(www.lucarossato.com) at Flickr Understanding what work means for my sense of personal identity, for a basic acceptance of who I am, has been a central issue in making progress in recovery over this past year. Yet it seems strange that both my identity and feelings of self-worth should so depend on [...]

Read more »

Tags: career, harmony, identity, lost, peace, purpose, Recovery, soul, Thomas Merton, work, Writing
Permalink

Why Depressed Men Leave – 3

Written by John on February 26th, 2009
28 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by boskizzi at Flickr. I’ve written a lot about the form of depression in which men look outside themselves to find the cause for an inner pain that simply can’t be faced. They may feel anger, rage, a longing to act out fantasies, or a compulsion to blame and abuse those closest [...]

Read more »

Tags: blame, despair, emotion, Emotional Abuse, emptiness, family, isolation, leaving, withdrawal, work
Permalink

Why Depressed Men Leave – 2

Written by John on February 21st, 2009
19 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by nyki_m at Flickr Some of the comments on the last post in this series hit hard on two issues. First is the question of personal choice: is a man supposed to escape responsibility for destructive behavior by attributing everything to depression? The answer is no! Depression is never an excuse for [...]

Read more »

Tags: action, behavior, children, family, hurt, impact, leaving, love, men, partner, responsibility, wife
Permalink

Why Depressed Men Leave – 1

Written by John on February 9th, 2009
38 Comments

Some Rights Reserved by lepiaf.geo at Flickr About a year ago, I wrote a series of posts about my experience with the fantasies of a better life that often prompt depressed men to leave their families. You can find the first of those stories here, here and here. Those brief pieces tell only a small [...]

Read more »

Tags: anger, blame, denial, family, grief, leaving, love, men, partner, self-esteem
Permalink



© 2007-2010 John Folk-Williams All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright