Mental Health Awareness Month
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Success doesn’t automatically create peace because achievement and emotional capacity are not the same thing. Many high-performing men learn how to carry pressure long before they learn how to process it.
A lot ofmen in leadership were taught how to carry pressure, but very few were taught how to process it in a healthy way.
Leadership naturally comes with responsibility, uncertainty, and emotional weight, and over time many leaders stop paying attention to what all of that pressure is doing internally.
That’s part of why Mental Health Awareness Month still matters to me.
Not in a performative way or in the polished corporate version of the conversation, but in the real version most founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders usually only talk about privately, if they talk about it at all.
I’ve noticed over the years working with founders and entrepreneurs is that a lot of leaders are carrying far more than the people around them realize.
According to recent mental healthresearch, only about 42% of men with a mental illness receive professional support, despite nearly 1 in 5 adult men experiencing mental health challenges every year.
That gap says a lot, especially when you think about leadership.
When you become the person everyone looks to for certainty, direction, and stability, it changes the way you move through the world. Your team depends on you, your clients depend on you, and your family depends on you, which means many men slowly stop asking themselves a very important question:
“How am I actually doing inside all of this?”
Once you become “the strong one,” people often stop checking, and eventually sometimes you stop checking too.
Men account for nearly 79% of all suicide deaths in the United States, yet many still delay seeking help because vulnerability is often mistaken for weakness.
That’s a conversation I think we need to take more seriously.
This is something I’ve had to learn the hard way more than once.
There were seasons of my life where everything looked successful from the outside. The companies were growing, opportunities were opening up, and by most external standards things looked solid.
Internally, though, my nervous system was overloaded and I was carrying far more than I knew how to process well. There were seasons where I could sit alone in my office for hours after everyone left and just stare at the wall because my brain wouldn’t slow down. From the outside, things looked successful. Internally, I was completely disconnected from myself.
A lot of leaders experience this quietly, especially men, because most of us were conditioned to push through stress instead of understanding what prolonged stress actually does to us mentally, emotionally, and physically.
We learn how to perform strength, but very few of us learn how to build real internal capacity, and those are two completely different things.
Over the years, I’ve tried a lot of different approaches to personal growth and mental health support, including therapy, coaching, meditation, and other healing modalities.
Some helped more than others.
Ketamine therapy became one of the most impactful things I’ve personally experienced, not because it removed pressure from my life, but because it helped me develop a healthier relationship with it.
That distinction matters.
Leadership still carries weight, business still comes with uncertainty, and being responsible for people still creates emotional pressure. None of that disappears.
What changed for me was my ability to hold that pressure without letting it completely control my nervous system every minute of the day.
I think a lot of leaders secretly believe the goal is to eliminate pressure completely, but I don’t think that’s realistic. The real goal is learning how to carry responsibility without losing yourself in the process.
That’s a very different conversation.
*DISCLAIMER: Ketamine therapy is not something I’m recommending casually, and I’m not a doctor or mental health professional. I’m simply sharing a personal experience that had a meaningful impact on my own mental health journey. If you are exploring any form of treatment or mental health support, please do that with qualified medical guidance and professional care.
I think more leaders need to acknowledge that AI is accelerating business faster than most people emotionally know how to process.
Leaders are being asked to absorb more information, make decisions faster, adapt constantly, and navigate levels of uncertainty that didn’t exist a few years ago.
At the same time, many companies are becoming leaner, which means more responsibility is landing on fewer people, usually founders, executives, and leadership teams.
The emotional weight compounds fast when more responsibility lands on fewer people, which is exactly what many leaders are experiencing right now.
I think that’s one reason so many people feel disconnected from themselves right now. A lot of leaders have become very good at functioning while quietly running on empty, and eventually that stops feeling like burnout and starts feeling normal.
Not because they are weak, but because they have been carrying too much for too long without enough places to put it, and eventually that level of pressure starts feeling normal.
Men in leadership still struggle with figuring out where the line actually is. How honest should you be? What should stay private? How do you talk about mental health without turning it into performance?
I think those questions matter because vulnerability is not the same thing as emotional dumping.
Healthy vulnerability creates connection, while oversharing usually creates instability.
The goal is not making other people responsible for your emotions. The goal is helping people feel less alone inside their own experiences.
That’s part of why I’m sharing this at all.
Not because I think I have everything figured out, but because I know there are founders, CEOs, and leaders reading this who are carrying far more than anyone around them realizes, and I want them to know they are not the only ones.
A few things changed my relationship with leadership and mental health over time.
Learning I didn’t have to carry everything alone was one of the biggest. I’ve also realized how important it is to have real relationships outside of business. A while back I sat around a table with a group of guys talking honestly about business, money, relationships, pressure, and life, and it reminded me how many men are carrying things they rarely say out loud. We spend so much time trying to hold everything together that we forget we were never supposed to do all of it alone.
Research consistently shows men with strong social support systems experience significantly lower rates of depression, anxiety, and stress-related symptoms.
I also had to learn how to let the people closest to me actually see what was happening internally instead of trying to manage everything myself.
Understanding my own neurodivergence helped too, and so did building a healthier relationship with stillness instead of constantly trying to stay busy.
Rachel has been a huge part of that evolution for me, both personally and professionally. Having Ava now, raising 2 teenagers, and building a 2 businesses while trying to stay present inside all of it has made me think very differently about what success is actually supposed to feel like.
There is something powerful about having people in your life who help you stop performing strength and start building a life that actually feels aligned.
That experience changed the way I think about leadership, business, relationships, and success itself.
A lot of men think asking for help means something is wrong, I think the opposite is true.
Waiting until you completely collapse before you finally deal with what’s happening internally is the thing we should stop normalizing.
You don’t have to earn support by breaking first, and you don’t have to pretend pressure isn’t affecting you simply because other people depend on you. I think a lot of men were taught to wait until things become unbearable before they finally say something, and by then the damage is usually much deeper than people realize.
🟠 That’s not leadership.
🟠 That’s survival mode.
The strongest leaders I know are not the ones pretending nothing affects them. They are the ones learning how to carry responsibility without disconnecting from themselves in the process.
Mental health conversations for men in leadership need to become more honest. Less polished. Less performative. Less “5 ways to avoid burnout.” More real. A lot of high-performing men are struggling behind competence, and many people around them have no idea.
If this newsletter lands with you more personally than professionally this month, take that seriously. Talk to someone. Slow down long enough to actually check in with yourself. Pay attention to what your nervous system has been trying to say underneath all the noise.
Pressure is part of leadership, carrying it alone doesn’t have to be.
*DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor or licensed therapist. This newsletter is based on personal experience and leadership conversations over the years. If you are struggling emotionally or experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek support from a qualified professional or contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.
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That includes how leaders experience themselves too.
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