Could you tell me a time you felt pressure?

Pressure is an emotion that is felt by everyone every single day. It could be a personal pressure, a work pressure, a friendship pressure. Each person gets affected by pressure in their own way. In that sense, it is relatable for everyone. I disagree! The way pressure affects someone is unique to every person, and that is what makes it even harder to overcome.

Relating to my own experiences, I have felt pressure in varying degrees, and in varying forms. A prime example which I think effects men more than we know, is the pressure to achieve an "idealistic body type". This has affected me for a lot of my life. All forms of media have received backlash surrounding women’s "idealistic body type", and rightly so. Men have not responded to this issue in the same way. There is pressure for men to look a certain way, and contrastingly to women, this has just been accepted. This shouldn’t be the case, as not only is this "idealistic body type" difficult to achieve, the pressure to get these results greatly impacts men more than they would care to admit. Of course, there is a fine balance, and being healthy hugely improves mental health. I have learned a lot about this, and it has helped my mental health greatly. Achieving the muscular, 6-pack body type, is very challenging to balance alongside full time education or employment and so shouldn’t be glorified!

Personal pressure to achieve academically, or in employment, has also greatly impacted me over the years. I have always felt the need to make sure I’m financially secure, or to try and perform at the highest possible level. Similarly to the "idealistic body type" this is not only difficult to achieve, but sometimes sets you up to fail. If you don’t achieve your personal goal, then your mental health slowly deteriorates, and you start believing that you cannot achieve any goal you set out for yourself. This outlook on life of having to perform at the highest possible level has negatively impacted my mental health, and paired alongside trying to achieve a ‘perfect body’, has meant that I’ve felt pressure everyday.

What I have learned, is that exercise is vital for my mental health. Not only that, surrounding myself with those who support you and help you grow is far more important than trying to achieve unrealistic goals.

My final thought is that I have always found that supporting someone emotionally is easier when you can relate to the emotion they are going through. What makes pressure, in my opinion, harder to help support, is that it differs from person to person. As I said earlier, it is unique. Therefore, the best way, I think, to help someone who is feeling pressured, is to go for a long walk, or sit them down, and just listen. Speaking through issues, or pressures, helps put everything on the table. It is very difficult for someone else to help fix your own personal pressure, but having someone there to listen is sometimes all that is needed. Men need to speak out more about pressure! I reckon, we are all suffering from it mentally more than we may initially think.