Men, and the Power of Mens' Retreats

Yeah, well, two distinct things really. Being dyslexic, but not being diagnosed at the time, and really struggling academically with my studies, obviously, each of my lessons. And the teachers just not being sympathetic to that at all. You know, one teacher really stands out with how they would utterly rip into me, just because I found my studies and writing so difficult. And then another thing, just being bullied by peers for being gay at the time as well. So I came out to my friends roughly at the age of 12, but the bullying had started happening about a year previous to that. So again, just real difficulty in feeling safe and secure and like I belonged anywhere.

And how long ago was it when you were 12, you looked like a young man to me. I mean, all my hair has gone gray. Yours is beautifully chestnut brown from what I can see. But so I'm imagining it was like, what? 12 years ago for you, when was that roughly?

I'm 41 now. So that was quite a long time ago.

I was, yeah. No, you're looking good for 41. Let me tell you that. Let me, yeah. So yeah, so if you're going back to 12 from 41, minus 12 is sort of 28, 29 years ago, which takes us back to sort of the mid 90s. And I suppose when you think back from what I recall to the mid 90s, kind of lad, ladet culture, I remember as a young man, sort of I was in my 20s then, all the FHM and loaded magazines and a culture that wasn't helpful. Do you think in terms of being dyslexic today, or in terms of coming out today at that age, do you think things have changed for people in that situation?

It's a big difference. I'll definitely do. You know, I look at friends of mine who have children who range from, say, 12 up to 18 years old. And the narratives that I hear about those young people coming out, or the topics around being gay, being bisexual, even trans, you know, identifying as non-binary, it's a very different conversation that's happening now to what was happening then. And that's certainly not to say that it isn't without difficulty, but I think there's a lot more openness that goes on these days. You know, back then, and don't get me wrong, I was brought up in a very female-dominant household, and I naturally felt very relaxed around women more than men. But yeah, definitely felt on the outside of it, of just really that sense of belonging. Whereas nowadays, I think there's more opportunity for that sense of belonging and connecting with other people. And I think social media is a big part of that as well, you know, for good and for bad.

Yeah, I mean, it can be an obviously a horrible, horrible place if you have a particular opinion on something in terms of being trolled. But there is an openness. Culture has, I feel, moved on. I know when I grew up in a very churchy background, my dad was a Baptist minister. If within our youth group, someone had come out, that would have been like a major scandal, you know, massive news. But today, it would just be like no news at all.

Yeah, 100%. Like that really brings to mind a story that an ex of mine told me of when he came up, when he was gay, some of the kind of timeframes of myself. Again, his family were deeply embedded in the church. His mom and dad did so much charity work with the church as well. It was a very big part of their lives. And then he came out as gay to his parents. The parents went to their priest or minister and said, look, our son's just come out as gay. How can we support him? And the priest said, yeah, you have to denounce him. You have to reject him from your family, or he either converts, tries to suppress that side of himself. And they were like, are you joking? And he said, no, that's what you need to do. And then they completely cut the church out of their lives. They said, no, we're not treating our child like that. And they stepped away from church and religion. Thankfully, they had that strong sense of loyalty and love and care for their son. But there's so many stories out there that I could completely offset.

And I'd like to think again that things have come on since then. There's been a lot, the church has had to move as culturally we have shifted. Do you think, so the bullying that you experienced, looking back, what was the impact on you at that time and sort of shaping you as your teens, how did that affect you?

Yeah, definitely. For me in particular, it was this sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with who I was as a human being, that there was something so abhorrent or just wrong or broken, that I just did not belong anywhere. I was getting this message from my peers that I didn't belong because I was gay. I was getting the message from my teachers that I didn't belong because I was stupid, I wasn't intelligent, I wasn't academic. And then when I started going out into the gay village and like my mid-teens, I then wasn't allowed into gay clubs or gay bars because I was told I was straight. Like, oh no, sorry, mate, we don't like straight guys in here. So I was doing everything possible to present as normal, quote unquote, and straight, and not give anything away that what my orientation was. But again, even in the gay village, I then wasn't accepted or wasn't allowed into those spaces. So a real sense of not belonging anywhere.

And do you think that's what gave rise to your, I mean, you're a therapist now, among other things. As I mentioned, when we've sort of discussed things in the part, in emails over the last sort of few weeks, your qualification is very much counselling orientated. So do you think that bullying has created that desire to become a counsellor, perhaps given you a real understanding and passion for that? Or is there something else that was sort of prompted you to go into counselling as a profession?

Sure. I'd say those early years of the bullying from the teachers and the peers definitely impacted my sense of self and my identity. So I think from the majority of my life, I've had a low self-worth, quite a lot of anxiety, which I didn't recognise until I trained to become a counsellor and a lot of imposter syndrome and self-doubt as well. Back in roughly 2018, I was really questioning my purpose in life and any meaning that I had. And that's not to say that I was suicidal, but I just really didn't understand if I was of value to my friends, my family, society. And I was just questioning everything. It was a real challenging time in my life. So I took eight months out of work and a friend who'd qualified as a counsellor about six years previous to me, I'd been trying to convince me to look into counselling as a profession. And I turned him down for about two years saying, I don't think I could do that, mate. I'm pretty sure I'd take on other people's issues too much. I'm quite a sensitive person, I'm quite empathic, and I didn't think I'd be able to do it. But tentatively, I started looking into it and absolutely fell in love with it. And I think it's helped part of my own process to understand my own life experiences, my traumas, my successes, my highs, my lows, really looking at every single relationship I've ever had. And that has been such a healing part of my journey. But part of the counselling training I did, you have to do a placement. So I was placed with one charity, which is an addiction recovery support service, and then a second charity called Mentel. And that's a men's charity that runs free weekly peer-to-peer support groups for men. And I volunteered with the second one for about three years. And some of the men that I met there, I've just formed the most unbelievable friendships with. And through those friendships, they've introduced me to more men. And that's what's developed this real sense of community and brotherhood, which has led into the retreat work.

Amazing. And we'll talk about the retreat work in a minute. I absolutely want to get into that. But I was looking at various data around the gender breakdown within sort of the counseling profession. And it varies from country to country, of course, but it would appear sort of as a rule of thumb that roughly 70 to 75% of counselors, therapists are female, 20 to 25% are men, depending on when the study was and where it was. Why do you think there's such disparity within that profession?

Yeah, I think it's the stereotype of what is a counselor and what is a therapist. I think it's, and it still very much is, a female-dominant profession. But it's those qualities of nurturing, empathy, and caring. They're seen as quite feminine qualities, aren't they? I think it takes quite a lot for probably a guy to recognize what journey he's on and if that profession is something that he wants to do. But I also think there's a stigma potentially around it too. How many men feel comfortable talking about their emotions, witnessing another person's emotions, holding somebody? As men and in society generally, if somebody comes to us with a problem, generally we want to offer solutions, problem solve, fix them, or if we don't know how to handle what somebody's telling us, we just interject with banter to try and defuse the situation because we feel uncomfortable.

Yeah, I mean, I'm processing out loud here and usually when I process out loud, I end up talking absolute garbage and put my foot in it and say something utterly nonsensical. But I wonder whether in terms of counseling as a profession for young men, if you think that a teenage guy's 17, 18, their brains aren't fully developed yet, that doesn't happen till mid-twenties for guys and women the same. So there's a lack of maturity for men in their late teens. There's something like 25 times more testosterone in their system than the equivalent age women, young ladies. So you've got that maturity, the testosterone, societal pressures. I wonder whether at that kind of key formative time, when you think about, well, what job will I do? It just doesn't sound very cool as a 17, 18-year-old, but then perhaps when we mature later into our twenties, it feels more palatable, it feels more exciting as we mature. Maybe there's a maturity thing there that makes us think, the link with stigma, that makes it appear like, not a really appealing job for young guys, particularly, young immature guys, which they will be till their mid-twenties.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's very true. You know, the level of maturity that you have and what stage in your life you're at and your own personal journey is really reflective of when you'd actually start looking at this as a profession and as a career for yourself. If you're looking at university, somebody might go and do a psychology degree, but they might not necessarily go in to do counselling. You know, because again, just how that's perceived, how much money they could earn, if there's a social status to what that title or degree level status would give them. But lived experience is something that, you know, these governing bodies absolutely look for when you're becoming a counsellor. And most of the people when I was studying myself were between the ages of say 35 and maybe 60.

Yeah. So talk me through Men's Retreats UK. And obviously we'll get the link for that at the end for any guys that are like, ah, that sounds really cool. I really should check into that. But first of all, why did you start it? Where did the idea come from to do those retreats?

Sure. Well, at the time, I met a gentleman called Andy, who was back then the CEO of the charity Mencel. And he became quite a fast friend. And he was telling me about a retreat that he was going on. And the space opened up. He said, Oh, do you want to come along to this? And I was like, Yeah, let's give it a go. You know, I've never been on anything like that before. So I went along to this beautiful country estate. There's about 20 other people there. And it was just this amazing space of incredible, radical authenticity and vulnerability. You know, people going from multitude of reasons, you know, relationship problems, work, questioning purpose in life like I was at the time, and just being held, you know, and witnessed, and given space and permission to express what was really going on for them, what they were struggling with, and that just being met with such a level of mature masculinity that I find it astounding. I've never been in a space like that, or witnessed by men or held by men in that way in my life before. And it was just overwhelming. You know, I must have cried at least five or six times throughout the course of that weekend. Other men did the same. And just the whole experience was otherworldly. I know it might sound odd to say it like that, but it was. You know, if you think about what your day-to-day relationships are like with men, you know, your brother, your father, friends down the pub, you know, your manager at work, your teammates on a sports team, you know, there's a certain level of bravado or wearing a mask or showing up in a certain way because of these external narratives that we think we have to conform to around what masculinity is, what strength is, what success is. And there was just none of that on this retreat. And then I met another gentleman there called Anga Kara. Here he's from Indonesia. He's an immigrant and he's been trying to get status. What do you call it? Citizenship over here for about the last 13 years. And he finally got it. And then he told me about retreats that he'd been running. And it was just this, again, went along to it. And this amazing weekend of professional life coaches, therapists who were holding men in this space, but also sharing from a place of lived vulnerability and lived experience. They weren't intellectualizing these concepts or the traumas or the pain that they've been through. They were very, very open about what they've struggled with and how they've come through the other side of that.

So having this experience on other retreats, seeing almost the magic, not that it is magic, of course, but the depth, the bonding, the male camaraderie, the vulnerability, all that stuff, you then thought, well, actually, I should probably be running these. And you set up Men's Retreats UK. Talk us through what happens on an average weekend. In a nutshell, if I was booking in, I thought, well, I might as well. I know nothing about this. I'll come along. What should I expect on a weekend?

Yeah, well, we get guys to really connect with what it is they're struggling with and what they might want to get out of the weekend. So our core tenets are safety, confidentiality and respect throughout the course of the weekend. And that's for people who are in our spaces and outside of our spaces. So how we speak about ourselves and how we speak about others. And then three other pillars of what we do is community, brotherhood, and mature masculinity. So as soon as you arrive on one of our retreats, we get guys settled in, and then we have the first kind of contracting session of how we want to be with each other. What is allowable behavior? How do we want to receive one another? And guys can just shout out a word, and then we drill down on that word. So if it's safety, okay, what does safety mean to you? What does safety look like to you? What is behavior of safety? So whatever the list of words is, and we generally have between 12 and 20 words that get written up on this board, and then we all hold our hands up, and we agree to respect this and to stick to this code of conduct for the course of the weekend. And then we'll generally have a pretty amazing dinner. We've got some awesome chefs that are on board with us.

Oh, I like the sound of that.

Absolutely phenomenal. And then, yeah, the course of the weekend is, the Friday is generally the settling in, the Saturday is a deep dive into whatever it is that you're bringing that weekend, and the Sundays are resurfacing. Like it's focusing on the future and where you want to get to. So it's this gap between what you're struggling with right now and where do you want to be moving forward. So it's giving you the time and space to really articulate what's going on, to be witnessed in that, and to really express yourself, you know, with the help of therapists, counselors and life coaches who are incredibly skilled individuals. I've got a fantastic team of guys that I'm working alongside. And again, all with their lived experience of what they've struggled with in life. And again, the guys on our team cover such a range of demographics, you know, black, white, gay, straight, young, old, you know, natives, immigrants. You know, we've got such a range of lived experience that you wouldn't believe it, you know. And it really speaks to the individuals that come on the board.

Yeah, and in terms of your downtime, do people go off walking? Are there activities? Because are you out in the countryside, the woods, by the beach? Where are you, roughly? What are you doing?

Yeah, sure. So we generally have a large house to ourselves in the countryside. The numbers are usually between 12 and 20 guys. That's completely dependent on the venue and the rooms available. And yeah, we conduct coaching workshops indoors or outdoors depending on the weather. We do breath work, cold water therapy, a lot of somatic practices. So by somatic, I mean just into the body. So really introducing guys to their nervous systems and what's going on there. You know, as men, we can live in our heads quite a lot of the time. You know, we can try and apply logic and rationale to everything that's going on. But how much do we actually feel into our nervous system? So coping strategies, for example, how many of us might rely on a bottle of wine at night just to kind of relieve stress from the day? Okay, instead of having a bottle of wine, what if you did a breath work practice instead, which allowed you to dissipate all of that cortisol that's crushing around in your system and all that angst that's being held in your muscles? And that's a different way of actually releasing and processing that. So we're introducing guys to therapeutic practices that they can do by themselves at home, readily accessible, without the need to pay for them or some gimmick or some fad. You know, so we're teaching and resourcing men on how to look after themselves and care for themselves and also how to be in community with their partners, their families and the wider society.

So, I mean, you're helping them to really connect with their inner selves. You're creating that kind of male bonding and you're equipping them so beyond the weekend, they've actually got some stuff they could use as they go back to their normal life, which I like the sound of that. That sounds really good. And the men that come, I mean, you've mentioned they come from all walks of life. What you did say earlier with, you mentioned they really kind of connect with whatever problem they're struggling with. Do all the guys that come on your weekend have something that they're struggling with that's prompted them to book on? Would you ever get guys coming on that are just like, well, I'm fine, I just thought I'd come along for a bit of a laugh, make some friends? Is there usually a trigger that has pulled a guy onto your weekend?

There usually is a trigger. You know, whether it's isolation and loneliness, struggling in their relationship, questioning where they are in life currently. Something feels off, but they're not sure what it is. You know, they might be having this depression or anxiety or fear, and they can't even put a name to it. You know, they can't logic it out. They can't reasonably explain what is going on to make them feel this way. And again, other men who just feel so lonely. They don't feel like they've got any friends whatsoever. And on the outside, they look like they've got absolutely everything. You know, they've got a fantastic job, they earn an amazing wage, they've got a beautiful family. But on the inside, they're just so incredibly alone.

And what we forget often about some of the loneliness statistics, I think something like 3.4 million people in the UK say they're very lonely or extremely lonely. But what surprised me about some of the data around loneliness is that one of the most at-risk groups, you know, I would have always thought, well, probably when you're in your 80s, your 90s, and, you know, the TV becomes your companion if you don't live near your grandkids or you don't have any grandkids. But the age bracket of the 20s appears to be the age group most at risk. Now, that really surprised me in terms of loneliness data. What do you think men are saying on your retreats about being a man? Do you find there are any recurring themes or challenges that they're facing because they're male?

Yeah. I think there's a lot of fear right now about having an opinion as a man. You know, if you think about the perception of men being the top of the food chain, they've got everything. You know, if you compare it to women, if you can compare it to LGBT society, if you compare it to, you know, people who are disabled, men are just kind of, what's the word, villainized for being who they are. It's like, oh, you're a man. You shouldn't have any problems. You're the top of the food chain. You know, what have you got to complain about? And yet at the same time, the pressures on men to look and have a certain type of body, to have a certain type of success, to be the provider for their families, to be a good son and look after their parents, to be this financially stable individual that's looking after everybody else around them, but not really considering themselves. If you think about the Titanic, it's women and children first. Fuck the men. We might laugh at that, but it's like, wow, that's quite a big thing. You look at the amount of men in the armed forces. 76% of suicides are men. 85% of homelessness is men. 40% of domestic abuse victims are male. You know, these are big statistics, and are not talked about. Or if they are talked about, they're talked about in comparison to women or other demographics, and therefore it's minimized.

Yeah, and I think also with things like, I saw a post yesterday on LinkedIn, some big speaker who shall remain nameless, on allyship, and the whole post about allyship is men needing to be allies for women and their challenges. And that's how allyship is portrayed. But allyship surely is where, as a group of people, you stand shoulder to shoulder with another group of people. Actually, men and women should be allies for each other. But I think some of these phrases are sort of grabbed and used for this kind of ongoing view that men are, like you say, apex predators, top of the food chain. I think some of the data though shows as well that the ultra elites may be at the top of the food chain, but the majority of men are not in that small handful of ultra elites, a very small group of men. Actually, the majority of men do have issues, are struggling. And other data shows that 15% of men in their 30s still live at home with their parents, but only 5% of women do in the UK, which would suggest that the picture perhaps is more mixed, but somewhat skewed by those ultra elites that have so much wealth. But saying that, men are afraid. I would agree. I pick that up talking to men in men's forums, that they are nervous of speaking their mind because they don't want to be cancelled, they don't want to be fired, they don't want to be trolled. And that is an issue. Surely, it becomes very ironic that within diversity and inclusion, we've created this space where a large group of people is afraid of being honest. That seems very ironic.

Yeah, it does. And I think that's really fair-mongering as well. You talk about how men are portrayed in the media and the people that are like the top 1% of 1% who are super rich and controlling the narrative or they have all the money and the wealth of the country. It's like that's not the majority of men. That's this really pinpoint accuracy of some men. And that's not what general society is. The struggles of the average man day to day are absolutely massive.

And you go to a council state in one of the top postcodes of deprivation, and you say to those white men, you are privileged as white men living on this council estate. I mean, that seems a bit rich, excuse the pun, to me. They certainly won't see that privilege. So you're saying you feel there's a fear of being open and honest in terms of the way that culture has evolved. And we maybe need to think about the way men are portrayed in the media, the way that we're open to debate. I'm not sure we're so great at that. That's one of the downsides of social media. I think debates become more polarised. Are there any other challenges that you really see as an ongoing trend that men are saying, this is difficult because I am a man?

Yeah, I think that wider sense of connection with people around them. You know, if we take one example of a man in his mid to late 30s going through a separation from his partner and children and having to leave the family home, all of a sudden, if you think of a man who's got together with a partner, he might have let some of his own friendships drop, adopted the friendships that his wife has, and as soon as he leaves his partner or that relationship breaks down, all of a sudden, you've got a guy who has to leave the family home, he's not got any friends around him, he's still having to pay to look after his wife and kids in that house, then he's got to pay to put himself in a different living situation, and all of a sudden, he's got nobody else around him. You know, that is such a common story that I hear, either in a counseling perspective or in a men's group that I run or on the retreats. You know, so all of a sudden, again, you've got this person who's incredibly isolated. You know, there's some real themes there around coping mechanisms as well. You know, I work a lot with addiction and addictive behaviors in the counseling work that I do. And again, these coping strategies, because guys don't feel that they have connection to other people around them. You said some statistics before. Another one is that one in five men in the UK say that they don't have a close friend. That's devastating. If you don't have anybody that you can open up to and connect to and be real with, then you're just suffering alone, trapped in your own mind.

And it isn't just sharing the tough stuff, having a close friend to share some amazing news with. I don't know, it's something that you've started to do that you're really, you know, having someone to go away on holiday with. I read some research. I think it was Samaritans did a big piece of research on suicide back in 2016. And they made the point that often, we know that when in midlife, when men or women get divorced, that is a real elevated risk of suicide for men and for women. But the Samaritan piece of research, what they were saying was it's particularly marked for men because in terms of social circles, they tend to be more reliant on their female partners, social circle, than vice versa. And often, just because they're married, they'll be like, well, I'm fine. And then they're not plugged into any community. So then when they do, the marriage does break down as many do, they really are, as you say, they're on their own, they're isolated. And now, facing some of the pressures that come with divorce, such as not seeing their kids, family courts, seeing a partner they love, maybe, with now someone else. There's all kinds of stuff they're facing on their own. So I guess that's where the retreats come in as such an important part of addressing men's mental health.

It really, really is. And just giving a space where other men can actually share that commonality of struggle and what they're going through so they can see that they're not alone. We have it in some of the sharing circles over the course of our retreats where you can see that there's a bit of a nervous energy, there's a real question, a slight fearfulness of like, what are people going to say, what are they not going to say? And in that first share circle, we get guides to introduce their name, what's brought them here, and something that they might be struggling with. And after we've done that group contracting of safety, confidentiality and respect, and all the other words that people wanted to put on from there, and seeing how people have responded to that, then they start opening up about what's really going on. And you would not believe within those first four hours of the retreat starting, how these walls come crashing down straight away. You know, you mentioned something before about how we look after guys after the retreat as well. We help guys integrate what's happened. You know, one guy sticks out to me from the retreat that we ran in December. And he said, you know, that first night back at home, I found really difficult. And the next day, my wife and the kids went out. We went on a walk in the countryside. Went to the pub. The kids were playing in the garden outside. And I just broke down in tears. And he said, and I realized that I missed being around the guys. And my wife asked me what was wrong. And I said, yeah, I'm just, I've never been in a space with men like that before and I miss them. Like, I don't know what I'm going to do. So that post-retreat integration of what you've learned, what you've experienced, that level of vulnerability is really key in helping guys. If they've just been cracked open like a nut for the first time and really explored their emotions, then we really support them for the next five to three months after that, or five weeks to three months after that.

So how would people get in touch with you to find out more about your retreats? How would they find you? What's the best place for them to start?

Yeah, for sure. You can either get in contact directly through the website mensretreatsuk.co.uk. I'm also on LinkedIn and on Instagram as well. So any one of those ways getting in contact with us, just drop us an email, and we can send out information to you.

We can have that initial conversation. And for you, thinking about how we best help men and boys, for me, it's really exciting on this podcast. I've had Charlie Bethel from Men in Sheds. I've had Mike Nicholson from Progressive Masculinity. They do loads of amazing work in schools, as do lads need dads doing incredible work, as does Ben Mason's Grieving Pint in pubs in Bristol. I mean, the list just could go on and on. Men's Talking Groups, Men's Pie Club. We've had Scott Johnson from Proper Blokes Club, the Walking Groups in London. And it's exciting to see this vast array of kind of men's groups and initiatives popping up. Now you, Christian, with Men's Retreats UK, have not spoken to someone doing retreats before, so it's great to see all these different things happening. And that's a great start. Beyond those men's communities, how do we best help men and boys to be the best version of themselves? What practically can we do? Anybody listening to this podcast thinking, well, I've got a real heart for men, the men in my life. I want to do more. How do we help men and boys?

I think it feeds into this narrative like men don't talk, and I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's that we don't know how to listen. So I think a really simple solution is we just need to get better at listening. You know, we don't have to have a solution. We don't have to have the answers with what somebody's struggling with. It's enough for us simply to be present, to be curious and to want to listen. That's more often than not what we need. You know, I think as men in society, if we think about young boys in schools, in high school, college, university, I think there's a lack of male role models. And I think that comes from a fear of being vulnerable with younger people and being honest that we don't have all the fucking answers. You know, I was probably about 23 by the time I realized that there's no difference between a child and an adult. No one has a fucking clue what's going on. Everyone's just trying to figure themselves out. We're all just doing the best that we can with what we have. And I think we need to be honest with children about that. It's like we need to differentiate between what's a fact, what's science, what's an opinion, what's a concept, what's an idea. You know, in schools, we present things as fact all the time. And I think we're so fearful of having honest conversations, like sex education, for example. How honest are we being with our children about sex? You know, about intimacy, about love, about connection, about being rejected, about receiving the word no without internalizing that and thinking that there's something fundamentally wrong with us. We don't have any of these real conversations. And I think it starts from a place of, as adults, us modeling vulnerability and appropriate behavior. And that's creating a safe environment then for them to respond in kind. And to ask us the messy, you know, taboo, uncomfortable, awkward conversations. You know, we need to be real about our own lives, our own struggles, our own first experiences of sex and intimacy. You know, we're all human. We need to be human together.

So there's two things you mentioned there, both of which I think are really insightful, really important. The one is the modeling of vulnerability, because that creates this buzzword we all know about, psychological safety, where you feel safe to be open and transparent, to create those kind of safe spaces. It requires people to be vulnerable, and vulnerability can be infectious and in a really great way. The listening part, I think you're absolutely right, that I still feel as a guy, so when I've had marital relationship advice or been on these kind of courses, which I have both times before I got married, I'm very happily married second time around, you learn that actually a lady wants to be listened and understood. She doesn't necessarily need you to advise her. She just wants to be heard and understood. Actually, that's the same for men as well, that actually when they've got challenges and issues and they're unpacking what's going on for them, they don't necessarily need a whole load of advice. Just that process of being able to talk and be listened to by people that are really for you and with you is hugely important. So taking the pressure off yourself to have a solution at the ready, because often these situations are quite complex. We're not going to have a solution. There isn't a solution, but just the listening is enough. I think that's really important, really insightful.

Yeah, it's definitely what we found. In each of the spaces that we've run, in my work as a counselor, in my space holding work as a group facilitator as well, it's just that. It's enough to show up, be present and to listen.

So as a message of support, I always ask this to close off the podcast. If in a sort of a two-sentence summary, you could give a message to men, a message of hope, encouragement, what would that message be in a couple of sentences?

We are hardwired for community. We used to operate in tribes. We used to hunt as tribes. If we go to war, we go to war as a team, as a unit. And yet in today's modern world, we face all of our issues and our struggles alone. And we're not meant to. We're meant to be connected to each other. You're not meant to have all the solutions yourself. So reach out, tap into that community that's around you.

Yeah, we are hardwired for community. I like that. That's absolutely right. Christian, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for giving up your time for this podcast. Anybody listening to this, the links to Men's Retreats UK will be in the written description for this podcast. Christian Chalfont can be found really easily on LinkedIn, particularly, and you mentioned as well, you're on Instagram as well. Is that the other? So do reach out to Christian. Christian, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks so much for your time.

Thank you for listening to Andrew Pain's Men on Show. If you could leave us a five-star rating and short review, it would be really, really appreciated. It helps us get this important message out to more people that need to hear it the most. See you on the next episode. Thank you for tuning in.