“The Gladiator Mentality: Heart Work Is the Real Work”

As we close out Men’s Mental Health Month, let’s talk about what we’ve really been hearing.

Most of the conversations this month haven’t been about clinical mental health, not diagnoses, disorders, or treatment plans. What’s come up over and over again is this:

👉🏽 Heart Health. Emotional pain. Emotional awareness. Emotional action. Men…especially Black men, and especially those with sport and performance identities—have been talking about their struggle to feel, to name what they feel, and to ask for what they need because of what it might cost them in masculinity, identity, or pride. And while mental health and emotional health are deeply connected, they are not the same thing. Emotional wellness is often the root—what comes before a mental health breakdown, diagnosis, or crisis. But many men don’t know how to access that layer, and so what begins as emotional injury becomes internalized and untreated… until it shows up as distress, dysfunction, or disconnection.

💪🏽** The Muscle Most Men Never Train** You already know what training the body looks like—biceps, quads, pecks, hamstrings.

But ask a man to train his heart muscle—to build capacity for vulnerability, sadness, trust, love, fear, and often it’s a hard stop.

Not just resistance. But complete unfamiliarity.

The muscle hasn’t been used. And what do we know? We don’t see development in muscles we don’t use. And yet, this muscle, your emotional self, is the one that determines the quality of your relationships, your peace, your self-worth, your future.

🔁 Emotional Intelligence ≠ Mental Illness

Emotions are not facts, but they are data.

Feeling sadness, disappointment, rejection, or heartbreak doesn’t mean you’re broken, it means you’re human.

The inability to express, understand, or navigate emotions isn’t always a mental health disorder.

Sometimes, it’s a lack of emotional tools. A lack of modeling. A lack of safety.

And that’s what I’ve continued to hear all month long:

Not conversations about mental illness, but conversations about how hard it is to feel.

To communicate needs without fear.

To show vulnerability without shame.

To be honest about emotional pain without feeling like you're forfeiting your masculinity.

🧠 Manhood AND Humanity

• You can be a man and be emotional.
• You can be masculine and vulnerable.
• You can be powerful and still need to process.
• You are allowed to be more than one thing at a time.
• You can embody all of this in what I call the Both/And Identity…

Manhood and the emotional experience of being a full human being. THIS…this radical acknowledgment of your humanity IS your Superpower.

• It reflects the complexity of the human experience.
• It means you no longer have to live in one corner of your identity.

🏈** Sport and the Myth of the Hardened Heart** In sport, having “Heart” is the highest praise. But too often, that stops at physical grit and toughness.

What about Emotional Heart?

What about the parts of you that want to be seen, heard, loved…not for your performance, but for your presence?

What about your essence? The part of you that's still fighting even when you’re hurting. Still longing, still hoping, still needing.

That’s not soft.

That’s strength.

That’s you, unmasked.

🔁 Reframing the Narrative

We’ve labeled emotional work as feminine.

We’ve confused resilience with repression.

We’ve mistaken strength for silence.

And it’s costing us…deeply.

Emotional neglect leads to emotional trauma. And that trauma, if unacknowledged, becomes mental anguish. Not because men are broken.

But because they were never given space to feel, tools to express, or permission to be.

🗣️ So here’s the call to action:

It is time to start the real work. 💥 Train the heart. 💥 Build emotional muscle. 💥 Name what you need. 💥 Give yourself permission to feel. 💥 Find safe spaces where you don’t have to perform strength to be worthy of support.

Because your healing doesn’t live in deadlifts and performance stats.

It lives in your Heartwork.

And that’s where the real wins happen.

• Dr. Carolyn

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