Sounds like a form of therapy in and of itself.
Sharing your enjoyment with others. Work you can take pride in. Preserving history. Sounds pretty great for mental health.
That was my thought.
Men got themselves a hobby they enjoy, and gets to share with others. Two amazing things for someones overall mental health. Sounds like someone living the dream.
Yeah, I was gonna say that these men DID go to therapy.
And probably cheaper.
steam equipment is definitely not cheaper than therapy, you get a cracked cylinder? Better hope you have literal tons of iron/steel sitting around, and or something/someone to pay for it, as well as someone to machine it, because none of that exists anymore.
I can guarantee it’s not cheaper
Depends on if you’re in America, or a real first world country.
One won’t be cheaper, the other has a high likelihood of being cheaper.
Also depends on your insurance. I pay $25 per visit, and even over a year when I went every week, I doubt it was more expensive than restoring a train lol.
I am an American, and I pay zero dollars for my and my kid’s therapy. But it’s okay, you just wanted the low-hanging fruit by taking a shot at America.
Am American. The fruit is low hanging for a fucking reason.
Having a hobby and being part of a community is a very constructive, helpful, and effective way of beating back the isolation and despair that is killing so many young people.
People will bitch about anything someone else does that is therapeutic for them.
OR, they’ve already been through therapy and found some decent medication, and are keenly aware that personally enjoyable hobbies are an essential part of self care.
Not that I know anything about that.
- throws food into back yard koi pond *
It’s a meme, guys.
As a mental health worker, if a client got involved with something like this, I’d be thrilled. This sounds like it provides purpose and community to all involved. Good for them!
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Why would someone assume these people needed therapy in the first place?
The vast, vast majority of men (in the US, can’t speak to other cultures) need therapy. Just getting over internalized phobias is something the entire culture needs. Really, everyone needs therapy at some point and very few have a chance to get it, and fewer take it.
But in regards to this meme: men tend to need therapy more. The patriarchy (what society pushes as male “culture”) heavily represses emotional expressions and few men have an outlet to talk to their friends or family about their feelings. This leads to a lot of repressed emotions, lashing out, etc.
These guys are not lashing out, though. There is no discernable connection between somebody taking an interest in trains and avoiding therapy lol
I think they’re lashing out. Coal is very harmful to the environment and to other people. They should pick a less violent hobby.
I’m just gonna assume you are making a bad joke rather than saying the couple hundred functioning steam locomotives have anything more than a negligible impact on the environment
the disconnection is that they are spending money on trains, not on therapists.
That is a hilariously bad reading of what this meme is about.
i think it’s less that men need therapy, though older men, particularly those above 30 probably do, the problem with young men right now is not therapy, it’s a lack of societal engagement from them, presumably because society doesn’t really know what to do with them, or doesn’t really understand how to deal with shifting tides.
because men are bad, and women are good.
and the only way for men to get good is to spend $1000s of dollars talking to therapists, who are predominantly women.
or maybe… the apparatus of therapy is woman-biased and therefore it negates and legitimatizes men’s emotions and their expression. and the positive things men do in the world with their emotions must be shame and ridicule because they should submit to our belief that talk-therapy is the only legitimate form of emotional outlet…
You can flip that around and suggest that it’s normal and accepted for men to put effort into a hobby as a mental release, and this should be perfectly fine for women as well, but sometimes it’s not amd they are in the past seen as weird, abnormal, or hysterical for having interests.
You realize you can just get a male therapist right?
They do exist and a lot of them will relate to male emotional expression where it isn’t just outright toxic.
Ok buddy, I think you pushed it a bit too far…
Would’ve been more productive to keep it at “male depression and anxiety is underdiagnosed”, maybe also say “because therapists only learn about female-pattern symptoms”, YMMV on that being pushing a bit too far.
I will not comment on comments talking about men’s mental health getting downvoted in a post about men’s mental health and, should a definite pattern emerge, let that speak for itself.
No one wants to work, which is clearly a human trait despite the fact we do work like this constantly, across the board, for fun
Yeah, if I didn’t have to spend time on a job, I’d spend some of that free time volunteering with habitat for humanity to build houses. I love doing that kind of shit.
It also preserves History.
That is therapy
Doing something you enjoy ✅
Doing something with a community ✅
Doing something different to your normal routine ✅
therapy is anything you want it to be. there are 100s of styles, varieties, and etc.
therapy is whatever makes life worth living, in a broad sense, in a more narrow sense it’s whatever improves your being day to day.
and according to some folks in this thread the only thing making life worth living is seeing a therapist… and you can’t possibly be well adjusted if you don’t.
that is what we call ‘projection’.
this is what we call the “therapist industrial complex”
im kidding, but no seriously.
I don’t know dude. Hobbies are quite different from therapy. If you were looking at something like alcohol versus therapy, that would be a more realistic comparison.
Sorry, they can’t hear you over all the CHOOO CHOOOO MOTHERFUCKEEEEEERRRR!!!
CRANKIN STEAMY HOGS WITH THE PACK
SO FUCKING WHAT?!?!? DO I NEED TO ASK PERMISSION TO HAVE A FUCKING HOBBY, YOUR MAJESTY??? JESUS CHRIST!!! (smashing noises and incoherent yelling from garage)
Sounds like somebody needs to go restore a train…
Men will literally pay someone to have a conversation about their feelings instead of restoring a train.
yeah what the fuck, go restore a train, it’s preservation and gives something for your local community to enjoy!
Thank you for your wise words, o slayer of the ages.
fuck you, coal fired steam boilers, and steam engines are one of the coolest, and most technologically impressive things we have ever done throughout history. Only topped by the deep space probes currently hurtling to the middle of nowhere spaceland.
that and hit or miss engines
idk man, i hate combustion based engines. They’re cringe and unfunny.
You know what is better than crying and taking mind altering drugs? Not needing either.
I know this is a joke post (at least I really hope it is) but why are some women so against men being happy? Like they want do to everything in their power to take away “guy stuff” it’s not enough that they don’t have to go. But the fact they don’t like it means that no one else should and men are wrong because they do something women don’t.
I strongly believe that men’s mental health is positively impacted by male groups. But women don’t want men to have male groups. Women can obviously! That goes without saying. But men. No, not allowed they should be ashamed of themselves.
I think it’s a really issue in society and you never ever hear women criticise women’s role in negatively impacting men. But somehow I bet this is all the patriarchy’s fault
I dont even know how you got the upvotes this post has, but this is just crazy talk!
Maybe you only know women who are bad people
Of course they are. The point is it is normalised and that’s the issue.
Women telling men what they should do, what they shouldn’t do, how everything in their life is other men’s fault and no one else’s. All perfectly acceptable.
If we want men to be happier mentally we should start by asking men what they need. What we shouldn’t do is get women to tell then what they need. Also women need to take responsibility for the negative things they do, why should they get a free pass to mistreat people? Just because they aren’t “part of the patriarchy”?
Like I seen this the other day. Some guy talking about what makes him happy and he gets told he’s sad for doing it.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/ZwELEUQKcwkpvdVc/?mibextid=xCPwDs
My point is, women dont do things like that. The wrong type of women do though.
I have been in the same relationship for 15 years and my partner and I respect what we do and support each others interests. Its the same with our friends. Some times we’ll meet people in dysfunctional relationships and try to help. But in the end its up to people to decide what they accept
They’re speaking about their experience and you just completely dismissed it as “women don’t do things like that, the wrong type of women do.”
I recall a man/bear hypothetical being posted recently and any man that said “not all men” was shouted down and called a misogynistic rape apologist or worse.
When someone speaks about their lived experiences it’s best to just listen and acknowledge, not try to defend shitty people.
I don’t know if you assume that I am a woman, or you are trying to make me cheer for the bear.
I understand that people have personal experiences that can be hard and even unbearable, to even talk about, but that does not justify one saying that men are like that and women are like this. I understand that it is important to share about ones lived experiences but also important not to make conclusions about all humanity based on the few people you have had a relationship to
We agree it’s important not to judge an individual based on the actions of a group. It unfortunately happens all the time.
