I first heard about I Don’t Want To Talk About It while reading Outlive, which has a chapter on mental health and the author’s personal struggles. This chapter made me reflect deeply on my own emotional health, leading me to explore Terrence Real’s book for a broader understanding of male depression and its unique challenges. While I feel fortunate to have been diagnosed with depression, I’ve had my share of tough times and sometimes wonder if those struggles were simply because I went undiagnosed for so long. This book seemed like a great starting point to explore depression, mental health, and gain a deeper understanding of myself and my emotional well-being.
In my Pillars of Health, I’ve already included some practices to support my emotional well-being, but I want to take it further — especially when it comes to understanding myself better.
Now, let’s dive into I Don’t Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression and explore what it has to offer.
This post is part of the series Learnings from books where my goal is to share what I learned from the book that I read. It is a mixture of review and summary with a bit of my opinion and point of view. But, as reviews, these learnings can say more about me than the book itself, so I trust that you the smart reader will take it with a grain of salt.
Learnings from the book I Don’t Want To Talk About It
Book I Don’t Want To Talk About It
The book was written in 1997, and fortunately, a lot has changed in the mental health space for men since then. Still, many of the book’s concepts remain true today or at least feel deeply relevant.
I approached this book with curiosity. I’d never read much about emotional health before, and the subtitle, particularly the phrase “The Secret Legacy of Male Depression” caught my attention. While I’ve had my ups and downs, I was never diagnosed with overt depression. But it made me wonder — could I have been experiencing depression in secret?
This quote from the book captures its essence perfectly:
“As other fathers have done to their sons, my father — through the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the quality of his touch — passed the depression he did not know he had on to me just as surely as his father had passed it on to him — a chain of pain, linking parent to child across generations, a toxic legacy.”
Some of the stories in the book are incredibly heavy, emotionally speaking, and they make you pause and reflect. I found myself and my family in some of these narratives — especially in the idea of generational trauma being passed down. This hit close to home, as I could see echoes of my family’s past in my own experiences.
I think this book is incredibly valuable for men who want to better understand their mental health. It offers insights that could help improve relationships with a father, with family, or even with oneself. Personally, it gave me a new perspective on my father’s actions. I realized that much of what he did likely came from how he was raised, shaped by what he knew at the time.
I won’t dive too deeply into personal details, but I do want to share what I learned. In this post, I’ll go over my top five takeaways from I Don’t Want To Talk About It.
men tend to manifest depression differently than women
One of the key things I learned is that men often experience and express depression differently than women. While some types of depression affect both sexes in similar ways, men tend to externalize their pain in ways that can make them appear psychologically dangerous, in addition to struggling with communication, just as women might.
This difference might stem from how men and women are culturally conditioned to handle emotions. Historically, men have been encouraged to suppress their feelings with phrases like “man up” or “tough it out,” making it harder for them to process their emotions in healthy ways.
covert depression is very dangerous
Another concept I learned is that depression comes in different forms, primarily overt and covert depression. Overt depression is the kind we typically recognize, with clear and visible symptoms. Covert depression, on the other hand, is often hidden — not just from those around the person but even from the man himself.
As the book explains, “covert depression is at its core a disorder of self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem is essentially internal. It is the capacity to cherish oneself in the face of one’s own imperfections, not because of what one has or what one can do.”
One of the greatest dangers of covert depression is its impact on intimacy. Men with covert depression often struggle to form genuine emotional connections because they cannot be emotionally honest with themselves. As the book puts it, “covertly depressed men do not dare know themselves; the man’s own experience, the pain of depression, is avoided. It is managed and denied.”
The dangers of covert depression, including its ties to intimacy issues, often drive men toward coping mechanisms like socially accepted addictions. These behaviors may stem from a misplaced sense of self-worth rooted in performance-based esteem.
socially accepted addictions can be worse than non-accepted
Addictions come in many forms, often categorized as socially accepted or not. Some socially accepted addictions — like workaholism in men or obsessive weight control in women — can be even more harmful than stigmatized ones because they are often praised and normalized by society.
The defining characteristic of any addiction is persisting in a behavior despite knowing its negative impact. This holds true for these “rewarded” addictions, which can quietly erode a person’s well-being while appearing admirable or necessary. The cultural acceptance of these behaviors makes them harder to recognize and even more difficult to confront, sometimes with devastating consequences.
performance-based esteem is a big problem
Many people attempt to build self-esteem through professional achievements. Climbing the career ladder, earning more money, or achieving recognition might feel like it’s building your self-esteem. But as the book emphasizes, covert depression is rooted in a disorder of self-esteem, and true self-esteem isn’t something you can earn — it’s something you inherently have.
Performance-based esteem tries to compensate for an internal sense of inadequacy by comparing accomplishments to others and feeling validated only by “winning.” The problem is that no amount of performance can ever fill this void. The more you chase external validation, the more you realize it’s never enough. You’ll always feel like you’re falling short of being good enough for yourself.
traumas are passed from father to son, on and on again
The way society treats boys and girls is often very different. Fathers, in particular, are usually tougher than mothers, and both tend to be stricter with boys than with girls. This stems from the traditional idea that masculinity means being brave, strong, and never showing weakness.
Because of this mindset, fathers often pass their unresolved traumas onto their sons, treating them the same way they were treated. A beating, for example, isn’t just a punishment—it becomes a twisted lesson in “how to be a man.” Fathers also rarely share their feelings, not only because they often don’t know how but also because they believe that showing emotions isn’t something a “real man” should do.
Reading about how fathers pass down their traumas struck a chord with me. It made me think of moments in my own upbringing where tough love might have been a reflection of my father’s struggles rather than an intentional parenting choice.
Favorite quotes
These are my 5 favorite quotes from the book:
- “Depressed women have obvious pain; depressed men often have “troubles.” It is frequently not they who are in conscious distress so much as the people who live with them.
- ”We know that across a wide spectrum of strictness, fathers tend to be tougher than mothers and both are tougher on boys than on girls. In many homes, violent fathers pass on active trauma to their sons as if toughness were a gift, a necessary initiation.”
- “It is hard for many successful men, like Thomas, to see the harmful effects of compulsive work until the relational bill comes due.”
- ”While workaholism in men may be socially acceptable, it can still wreak havoc upon their personal lives, and erode their physical health as well.”
- “Disempowering abuse shames the child setting the stage for victimization later in life. False empowerment instills grandiosity in the child and sets the adult up to become offensive. The first is a disorder of too much shame, the second a disorder of too little. Disempowering abuse leads to overt depression, falsely empowering abuse leads to covert depression.”
This book gave me not just insights but also tools to better understand myself and my relationships. If you’re curious about male mental health or want to reflect on your own emotional well-being, I highly recommend giving it a read.
These are my learnings from the book I Don’t Want To Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression written by Terrance Real. A special thanks to Vancouver Public Library (VPL) for allowing free access to the book.
Cheers.