I (Don’t) Want to Talk About It
Fatherhood invited me to be brave.
Marriage invited me to show up more fully.
AND… being a business owner made me look busy enough to avoid both.
For years I wore competence like armor—early morning runs, productive days with 3 coffees, making the bread… tidy answers.
Inside, I was often numb.
Terrence Real calls it covert depression.
I called it “fine.”
The fix wasn’t (and still isn’t) more hustle; it was turning toward the people and parts of me I’d quietly exiled.
My son’s “push back”, my partner’s eyes, my clients’ pain—they all asked the same thing: can you be here, unarmored?
If my healing journey has a before & after moment, it’s this book.
The summary and questionnaire below are for men who find themselves avoiding the conversation—and realizing that silence isn’t working anymore.
My hope is that you find something useful here, and I’d love to hear what stands out or resonates for you, and there’s SO MUCH MORE in the book too.
As always, feel free to reach out or join our upcoming men’s work breathwork as it’d be a joy to connect.
SUMMARY
Terrence Real’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It shines a light on a condition often invisible in men: covert depression. Unlike overt depression, which is characterized by despair, hopelessness, and collapse, covert depression hides beneath anger, addiction, compulsive achievement, and emotional disconnection. Real argues that men in patriarchal cultures are socialized to disown vulnerability and connection, leaving them prone to a “hidden depression” that is both destructive and contagious across generations.
1. The Bomb Inside
Real opens with stories of men like David, whose unacknowledged pain simmers like a time bomb. Instead of sadness, their depression shows up as irritability, dominance, drinking, overwork, or withdrawal. They push away the people they most love, unaware that their numbness and aggression are symptoms of a deeper wound. Men’s reluctance to admit weakness often shortens their lives, as they delay care and neglect their health.
2. Depression as a Disorder of Self-Esteem
At the root of covert depression is wounded self-esteem. Healthy self-esteem means cherishing oneself despite flaws, grounded in unconditional positive regard first modeled by parents. In contrast, men raised without this internal anchor come to depend on external validation—success, power, money, sex, approval. This dependency mirrors Narcissus, who was immobilized not by love for himself but by obsession with his reflection. Many depressed men lose not only joy but even the capacity to feel at all, living in a frozen state of alexithymia.
3. Addiction and Covert Depression
Addictions—whether to alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or even exercise—often mask covert depression. Real stresses that therapy alone cannot heal addiction without sobriety; first, the addictive cycle must be broken. Only then can the depression emerge and be treated. Importantly, he reframes overt and covert depression as two expressions of the same condition: women tend to implode (self-blame, despair), while men tend to explode (anger, victimizing). Both are faces of internalized pain.
4. Trauma’s Role
Childhood trauma—both active (abuse, boundary violations) and passive (neglect, emotional absence)—lays the foundation for male depression. Boys, often more sensitive than girls, are deeply affected by unmet needs. Yet society consistently offers them less comfort, less nurturing, and fewer opportunities to express emotion. Over time, they internalize abandonment as normal. Trauma fuses child and parent in a painful intimacy: the boy absorbs the parent’s shame, rage, and neglect, carrying them forward into adulthood.
5. The Wounding of Masculinity
From early life, boys are taught to disconnect from emotion. They are pushed out of the expressive, relational mode where girls remain. Expressiveness and vulnerability are branded as feminine, leaving boys to equate manhood with toughness, silence, and suppression. This process is ritualized across cultures: boys are wounded—sometimes literally in rites of passage—and praised for stoicism. They learn that connection is childish, competition is adult, and winning means inflicting pain.
Sports, war, and hierarchical “antlering” behaviors reinforce this model. Boys are trained to filter their emotional needs through achievement, leaving them dependent on performance for self-worth. Yet success comes at a cost: every win demands someone else’s loss, further alienating them from compassion and connection.
6. The Loss of Relationship
Covert depression thrives on disconnection—from others, from one’s own heart. Men are taught to suppress expressiveness and avoid vulnerability. This fosters alexithymia (difficulty naming feelings), which is both a symptom of depression and a fuel for addictive coping. Recovery requires reconnecting—to the feminine, to one’s own emotions, and to others. Without intimacy, men remain trapped in numbness.
7. The Family Legacy
Depression is not just personal; it’s generational. Shame, rage, and emotional neglect are passed down like toxic inheritances. Fathers unable to process their own wounds often wound their sons in turn. Healing, then, is both individual and collective: when a man confronts his depression, he breaks the chain for his children. Real calls these men “relational heroes,” willing to endure the pain of recovery not only for themselves but for those they love.
8. The Two Inner Children
Depressed men carry within them two regressed selves: the harsh, perfectionistic child (the aggressor turned inward) and the vulnerable, wounded boy. Healing means learning to parent both: setting limits on the harsh child and nurturing the vulnerable one. Recovery is the daily practice of bringing the functional adult self to bear—choosing, again and again, connection over disconnection, compassion over contempt.
9. Therapy as Moral Work
Real insists that medication alone cannot heal depression. At best, it creates a platform for deeper work. Therapy, in his view, is not merely science but morality: helping people discover how to live rightly. Depression arises from wrong turns; recovery requires daily re-choosing intimacy, vulnerability, and responsibility.
10. Recovery as Hero’s Journey
Healing unfolds in phases: stopping addictive defenses, repairing the relationship with self, and confronting buried trauma. Like mythic heroes, men must descend into their pain, slay the monsters of shame and numbness, and return transformed—not just for themselves but for their communities. Recovery is not about personal glory but restoration.
Relational heroism is found in small acts: pausing before lashing out, staying present in discomfort, choosing tenderness over anger. Each choice rewires old patterns, each victory breaks generational chains. Ultimately, recovery shifts a man’s central question from “What will I get?” to “What can I offer?”
Conclusion
I Don’t Want to Talk About It reframes male depression from a hidden shame into a path of transformation. Covert depression may rob men of feeling, connection, and legacy, but recovery—through vulnerability, intimacy, and reparenting the self—can heal not only the man but his family and lineage.
Real’s message is clear: facing depression is not weakness but a heroic act of love, a spiritual gift to past and future generations.
Five Important Quotes
“Depression was ‘disappearing’ him.” (p.32)
→ Captures how covert depression erodes identity and relationships invisibly.“Covert depression is at its core a disorder of self-esteem.” (p.44)
→ Defines the root problem: dependence on external validation.“Childhood injury in boys creates both the wounds and the defenses against the wounds that are the foundation for adult depression.” (p.98)
→ Shows trauma as both cause and coping mechanism.“Recovery requires dragging men back into the relational—often kicking and screaming, initially.” (p.158)
→ Highlights that healing demands reconnection to vulnerability and intimacy.“Face this pain, now, or pass it on to your children, just as it was passed on to you.” (p.229)
→ Underscores the generational stakes of healing.
Exercise: Internal Inventory on Covert Depression
This 10-question self-reflection helps men (or anyone) explore whether they might be experiencing covert depression:
Do I often feel numb or disconnected from my emotions, unsure of what I’m truly feeling?
Do I rely on work, alcohol, achievement, or other habits to feel “enough”?
Do I push away the people I most love through irritability, withdrawal, or control?
Do I find it difficult to show vulnerability, even to those closest to me?
When stressed, do I turn to action or intensity (risk-taking, anger, crisis) rather than quiet reflection or support?
Do I carry harsh, critical self-talk inside—judging myself for not being strong enough?
Do I recognize patterns of neglect, abuse, or disconnection from my own childhood that still echo in how I treat myself or others?
Do I feel pressure to perform, win, or succeed in order to prove my worth?
Do I struggle to ask for help, fearing it would make me weak or dependent?
Do I notice myself repeating dynamics from my father or family, even ones I vowed never to repeat?
If many of these resonate, it may point to covert depression—not as a flaw, but as an invitation to begin the hero’s journey of healing.
BRAD CONCLUSION :)
Hope you found value here.
I love the quote “No one can do the work for us, and we can’t do it alone”
If you’re looking for brothers on the journey, learn more about our monthly men’s circles or reach out to me directly. And above all, be well!
