The Men’s Mental Health Lie - What Men Need To Realise Instead

00:00 Everyone is telling men that we've got a mental health problem, that the problem is that men aren't talking about their mental health problem. But I'm here to tell you today that that is a lie. Most men do not have a mental health problem. They have a purpose crisis. And the help that is being offered to men isn't working because it isn't solving the right problem. Roll theme. Welcome to the Johnny Jensen Show, where modern dads discover how to create the true riches, relationships, and results they deserve. Get your high value man blueprint and join our community at highvalue manproject.com.

00:44 Let's go. Hello, men. Welcome back to the Johnny Jensen podcast. Well, I say welcome back to all those returning men. Yen, yes, welcome back. If you're here for the first time, as always, how did you find us? What brought you here? It is great to have you. My name is Johnny Jensen. I am the founder and head coach of the High Value Man Project. And of course, host of this podcast. We are now, it turns out we're on about episode 183, but I've kind of got it wrong. It says about 175 or something in the episode notes. But yeah, I was looking on the RSS feed the other day. It turns out we're 183. Today's episode, and by the way, we've had a little bit of a hiatus.

01:27 I've been doing a lot of work in the background on really the strategic side of the High Value Man project, the marketing aspects of it, the digital marketing and really cracking the code on what I talk about and how it brings people in. And I hope that the work I've done in this period that I've been missing has prepared me even more to have a successful rest of 2026 and give you the value that you need as men, as dads, creating the life that you desire instead of one that you feel stuck in. And today's episode is absolutely spot on for that. It's in many ways a review, a rerun on my origin story.

02:10 And it's been brought about, one, because of a conversation I had with a woman at a networking event, which I'll tell you more about on today. I had that conversation this Monday just passed, an incredible evening with the former Premier League and England striker, Spurs striker, Paul Stewart. Like I said, I'll tell you more about that in a moment, but a very powerful and moving story, which some of you may or may not be familiar with already. But what she shared with me about her ex-husband and about how they came to break up is everything that the High Value Man Project is about. She said to me, we just started talking, what do you do? What do I do? Like, you know, the classic networking conversation.

02:53 I said, I work with midlife, business owner and career-minded dads who want to create the success they have at work at home before they lose it all. And she said straight away, wow, my ex-husband and I could have done with that. The moment he lost his purpose, our marriage was over. And she nailed the thing. She nailed the thing that very few people are able to articulate with me when we talk about this. And even men who've been working with me for a while, it takes them a while for them to realize, for them to be able to say it. And I was the same. I was the same. In the middle of all the struggles and strife and the marriage breakdown and the burnout and all of that, I didn't realize that what was going on was really about me.

03:42 And this has made me reflect very powerfully on an issue, a point of view that I've had bubbling along, bubbling around in my mind for a while. And it's along the lines of this mental health crisis for men. You know, you can stand there having a piss at some public toilet, you know, service station, whatever, and they have those posters in front of the orionals. And so often, it's great that they're there because the increased awareness on men's mental health and the need to support men's mental health is vital because we know about how many men commit suicide, about how many men fry, right?

04:24 All the stuff that's going on. But very few blokes who are standing there having a piss will look at that and go, oh yeah, that's me. I'm having a mental health crisis. No, that's not what we do. In fact, we're in absolute denial about it because we don't realize. It's that classic expression of you don't know what you don't know. I was unaware that I was having a mental health and it wasn't even a crisis to start with. It was a mental health incident, which will go, I'll go into all of those details in a minute, just about my journey. And you may recognize. recognize yourself on that journey yourself.

05:03 But the reason why this is important is that, you know, men's mental health is kind of like a spectrum. At the one end, at the glorious end, is the man who's thriving, happy and successful at both home and in work, healthy, fit, vibrant. The husband he wants to be, the friend he wants to be, the dad he wants to be, the businessman or career, you know, leader that he wants to be. That's a man who's thriving. That's what we should all want for ourselves. And in many ways, that is what most men believe they can have. The pinch, the mental health crisis, if you like, which is at the other end of that spectrum, is a slow, slow,

05:49 is the word degradation, like a grinding down, like a, like, like, you know, just a slow descent, which eventually turns into a nosedive, or as we call it here at the High Value Man Project, the low value death spiral. But it's a spectrum and it's realizing where we find ourselves on that. It's the somewhere along the dirty end. It's that four out of 10 existence that too many men put up with. And this woman nailed it. She said, when my husband lost his sense of purpose, our marriage nosedive. The man I wanted to be with, the man I fell in love with, just stopped showing up.

06:31 And I waited and I hoped and we tried to fix it and that trying to fix it turned into arguments. And the arguments in the end turned into dismay. And I left him. This was an eloquent woman. Turned out she's some kind of coach herself. She actually works with women, midlife women, around financial success and creating businesses. Like literally that thing they've always wanted but never thought they could do. She helps women create that. So in a way, no surprise that she should be able to vocalize, verbalize this easily. But it was refreshing for me to hear it. And it brought about this episode. It brought about this

10:52 the reality check that we all need to have. Because when on the news, in newspapers, on radio, they talk about men's mental health crisis and they bring some guy in who, or a family who they've lost one of their loved ones through suicide, or they bring a guy in who's attempted suicide, but thankfully was unsuccessful and he's talking about his sort of comeback story. Too many men will instantly switch off then because that's not them. That's not what's going on for them. It's almost like, well, that ain't me. I don't need to worry about that. It's like someone who survived cancer or a heart attack telling you to give up flip in smoking or stop eating all the burgers.

11:38 You're like, that ain't me. I'm fine. Thanks, mate. So again, we don't know what we don't know, but it is that slow decline into these things. We think we're going to come out the other side of that challenging period, but then another challenging period hits us. And for me, that was very much my story. From getting both made redundant after our wedding, we got back from our honeymoon and that hit us 2008, sort of subprime recession. Couldn't get another job. Started up my own digital marketing agency. Started to win contracts. My wife wasn't very happy in Brighton. So we moved back to Maidstone, had our first child.

12:20 Everything was rosy. The things were good. And then the first miscarriage came. And then the second one. And then the third one. And during that time, our relationship changed completely. And there we are living in a, although we did come back to my hometown, we're living somewhere new, trying to wrestle with all these things. Financially under pressure, people sending us debt collection letters, navigating that whole process. But in the same vein, got a baby boy. I've got my stepson, the business, we're winning clients.

12:57 It's like, oh, it's happening. But then my wife isn't very well. Didn't occur to me then, really, that it was having an effect on me. I just thought if we can get through this, if we get out the other side, we're going to live happily ever after. So all conversation at that time around mental health problems didn't register. And it won't be with you, quite likely. Because what's really going on is that we're so focused on creating the dream of having it all that our own needs get a little bit lost inside of that. And that's okay, right? The having it all becomes for most men about providing, about giving our wife the life that she wants, about giving our kids the fun times, the toys,

13:44 the dance lessons, the football boots, like whatever it looks like about giving them all those things. Even the growing the business, it becomes like who we are is the business. Who we are is the family. We lose sight of that that's not who we are at all. Who we are is who we are. And we have to keep a hold of that because when the chips are down, we need to be able to come back to it as the baseline, as the foundation of everything that we stand on, that we build upon, we stand for. Your values, your strengths, your hobbies, your passions, your commitments.

14:25 You know, really, too many men, if it's not the business, it's the relationship. Like who I am is husband. Who I am is her and me together. That was very much me. Again, we still never really associate those things with a mental health crisis. But on this spectrum, we've gone from thriving at one end when we're sliding back down thinking, it'll be all right. in a bit. We'll jump back up. As men do it, though, as we go into that, I'll work my way out of this. I'll look after everybody else and we'll get out the other side of it. That loss of identity and that loss of purpose occurs.

15:06 And when that happens, the ability to pull ourselves through, the ability to stand up for ourselves in a conversation, let alone an argument, diminishes. Because if our identity is this relationship, this marriage, it becomes very hard to say, no, I don't agree with you. And if you keep on being like that, then this marriage may not see, we may not find a way through all this. Like, sorry to say. And that was, that was definitely me. Or you end up in arguments, you know, the classic couples arguing about every bloody thing, turning up at a party, like putting a brave face on it all.

15:46 And, and, you know, but everyone knows that there's something's up. Like, that's not a life. That's not existence. And again, it's another small kick in the bollocks, another slight slide back down that line. But still, we don't call it a mental health crisis. We call it a marriage struggle. We call it an argument. We call it she's being a dick. We call it the kids are exhausting. So, but it, but it is actually a pinch on our mental health. Because if you're going to bed exhausted, if you're, you know, your, your, your marital bed is a lonely place.

16:29 If you're not looking forward or you're not proud about what's happened during that day and you're not looking forward to the next day, not looking forward to the weekend ahead, then that becomes a very lonely and dark existence. Still, you ain't going to call that a mental health crisis because no man's going to want to do that. When I finally ended up in the doctors, that was really at the first point that I was able, I was able to accept, I was able to be told that antidepressants aren't an admission of failure, that a mental health problem, a mental health illness, a mental health crisis isn't admitting failure.

17:13 It's an awareness. It's like the tire light coming on on your car because the tire has got slightly less pressure than is recommended. It's not got enough air to perform at its best. Now, if you think about it like that, what does it take to just top up the air in the machine called you? Like, that's a really powerful metaphor. It's not the flipping tires burnt out and shredded and we've got to throw it away or we've hit the center of central reservation because we've had a blowout. It's like, yeah, you just need a bit of a top-up in there before things go too bad. So when you see the poster and it says mental health problem, X number of men have got a mental health problem.

17:57 Most people aren't going to look at that. Most men aren't going to look at that and go, oh, yeah, that's me. In fact, the opposite. So that's what we're up to here at the High Value Man Project is to raise that awareness of demanding more for yourself, demanding more for your quality of life, your experience of life, so that you stay up at that top end. You stay at a seven, eight, nine, 10 in thriving. And by the way, a lot of guys I work with, even when things are going really well, kind of score themselves a seven. And I'm like, seven. Let's have a little look at this. Seven, if you live in the UK and watch whatever that program is, strictly come dancing.

18:39 Never watch it, but I know that guy shouts out seven. It's not a good score. It's a comfort zone. It's like people that want to think they're doing better than they are might say, oh, you say a seven. And people that don't really feel it's okay to show off, to be proud of what they've got. They'll say seven out of sort of out of martyrdom. Like, oh, well, I couldn't possibly say I'm a nine out of ten, let alone a 10 out of 10. So I'll say I'm a seven. No. It's our job, our God-given opportunity to be living an eight, nine, ten out of ten existence. Why? Because we flipping can. We've got everything we need to thrive.

19:24 This body, this healing machine that we live in that can achieve incredible things. It's geared for us to win. But you have to know where you're at on the spectrum. You have to have a demand of yourself that is, yeah, I'm going to thrive here and I'm going to live and hold other people. people to account and say what needs to be said and keep on top of myself even when I don't want to, because the other version of that is just bullshit. It's an acceptance. It's a giving up. It's coming to terms with. It's putting everybody else before us. It's feeling bad and covering it up with booze, porn, gambling, adultery.

20:09 flipping whatever version of that gives you enough of a fake dopamine hit to distract you from how you're really feeling but here's the kicker in it all too many men will run out of road and the i'm going to get through this and feel better i'm going to get through this and we're going to live happily ever after it is a gamble it's a gamble on the result you expect to happen happening before you run out of road yourself mentally physically emotionally we don't really realize it though until it becomes really flipping close like like like a an aeroplane out of control there might have been opportunities to reverse the situation but when you're staring at the mountain in front of you before you hit the bloody thing that's a little bit too late

21:01 to pull out you exceed the capacity to carry the weight of the problem and everything on your own as i've said increasingly often these days that picture of atlas with the globe on his shoulders to many people it looks and we've been told that look how strong he is but another version of that is the guy's virtually on his knees doing it all on his own carrying the weight of the world on his own shoulders so we're going back to this point of where are you at on the spectrum where are you at when someone says men's mental health men's suicide and and here's the important people want to start to put some numbers on it not actual numbers but just like metaphorical numbers in in what's the thing it's a maths thing it's like

21:50 it's not a venn diagram because that's the three circles that overlap but it's it's when one circle fits inside another circle it's a bit like the chart you know the russian dolls kind of thing the number of men who attempt to commit suicide is like the arse end of this thriving scale the number of men who actually succeed is the final pot of guys there it's the x percent of men who actually take their own lives out of the whole population but of that final percent there was a slightly larger group who tried to do

22:30 it but didn't succeed my dad was in that group quite a funny story tablets he took slowed down his metabolism and saved himself from the flipping tube that he plugged into the car let alone the angel truly the random guy in the middle of the you know a dark winter's evening who happened to be walking through a field and pulled him out beyond that is the group of people who are thinking about it but never actually do it and i can put myself in that group that group of men

23:08 they're thinking about suicide not because they want to kill themselves it just becomes one of the options like this is a tough situation how are we going to get through this how much longer am i going to put up with this how much more pressure can i take what are my options you could leave you could jack in the business you could you could top yourself you could go and get a job like you just runs through it like as one of the options but as those options get tighter and tighter as the the walls close in sadly and i believe this is how a lot of men end up attempting their life it just becomes a flick of a switch like i'll sod it

23:48 and you chuck yourself off a bridge a lot of men and women by the way who survived suicide talk about how they kind of regretted it the moment they'd done it and they're happy that they pulled through then there's a group of people who wouldn't think about doing that but they're fundamentally miserable stuck not really sure how to get out of it don't know whether to stick or twist should i stay or should i go and that is just a couple of incidents away from a mental health crisis a couple of incidents away from i wonder if i topping myself would help and i was at that place around about

24:34 the second third miscarriage where the relationship was just utterly unrecognizable from how we ended up, how we were when I proposed or how we were before we got married. And it was a deep despair, a deep upset, frustration, struggling each day to perform work, wondering what I was going to come home to, reading books. having conversations, asking people at our church or friends, can you help us?

25:10 So still optimistic, but actually deep in the shit. And, you know, you can imagine that prior to that point actually is people who you would hopefully be, you know, will be say they're scoring themselves six, seven, eight, nine, 10 out of life. Ups and downs, few challenges, but they're still a strong team. Life's working out. I really enjoy my work. I'd like to be a bit fitter, but I'll working on it. Like, I'd like to see my mates a little bit more, but I'm working on it. That end of the scale. So none of those guys are going to read a poster that says men's mental health. Call this number. The day you search Google for am I burnt out is it's too late.

25:53 The day I was screaming in my counselor's face, there's nothing wrong with me. Definitely too late. And you would have heard all of those things. But there's a reason why I'm bringing this story, bubbling some of this story back up. It is about this woman who said to me, yeah, when my husband said, you know, when my husband lost his sense of purpose, lost his identity, then that ultimately was the end of our marriage. So, you know, the way that men's bodies, the way that our brains work, and by the way, you know, I'm not the scientist, but we have this, we're biologically predisposed to

26:34 survive. So when there is a struggle that we're facing, our body will produce cortisol as a way to, you know, to get us out of the shit. Okay, but it's, it's high stress and high impact. It's a low dopamine scenario. That is a man who doesn't really know what he's up to and he's just constantly fighting fires. When we live in a high stress zone, that high cortisol zone, it will deplete us of so many of the reward chemicals that we need to actually thrive.

27:12 We burn out, we don't sleep right, we're reactive, we're eating high sugar foods to get the energy hit, which isn't really good for the rest of our body. Like it all starts to create the low value death spiral. Attaching yourself back to your sense of purpose is part of the high value man system for living. It is clarity of the 3XC. Your sense of purpose isn't something that's going to land in your lap. It's for you to consciously be aware of. It's for you to consciously go after it. Who are you? What do you stand for? What do you want? What do you even like doing? When was the last time you watched a movie that made you laugh?

27:53 When was the last time you had an adventure that got your heart racing and left you thinking, wow, what a life to be living. What a time to be alive. You have to take responsibility for that. Because when you don't have that, how you show up, how you occur, first of all to yourself is, I feel a bit shit. Maybe I am a bit shit. But the energy you're giving off, people have been picking up on that way before. So your wife's experience of you is nothing like the man that she married. Your kids' experience of you is not very inspiring. And when your kids aren't inspired by who you're being, they play up.

28:35 They give you a hard time. They shit test you, which is, to be fair, more of an expression to be used against women. But, you know, kids do it as well. Set you little traps to see how you're going to respond just so they can be right about that's how you are. That isn't really them. It's them in response to how you're being. So it feels like you want to be out of the ass with them for being like that, but actually the responsibility lies with you. That's you living with purpose. That's you living tuned into who you are and what you stand for. So these posters, these men's mental health posters, I'm here to tell you today that it's actually about a high value man message.

29:21 It's about asking you, are you being the man you want to be? Are you living the life that you want to live? Are you creating something worth shouting about? Are you inspiring the people around you? Because when you are, you will. will feel awesome about yourself. You will feel purpose-driven. Whether you're introverted or extroverted, you will have charisma. There will be some passion there. There will be something about you that will leave other people saying, yeah, tell me more. What are you up to? Like, that sounds exciting. Going to bed excited about the day lived, waking up about the excited about the day to come.