On World Mental Health Day, I pause and reflect on the people I have met and worked with during their separation and divorce. The breakdown of a relationship, the potential loss of time with cherished children, the need to move home, the uncertainty about what the future holds – all cause a strain that can pressure even the most robust of individuals.
One of the pressures placed on all parties to a separation is the inability to control or deal with how the other party is acting or how the likely result of that separation will fall. This causes enormous pressure and strain which seems to feed upon itself so that such pressure and strain exacerbates; causing some people to lose all objectivity and develop a persecution complex. In turn, this terrible situation clouds focus, causing parties to act irrationally and obscuring a pathway to a future which, although may not have been the one that had been envisaged in happier times, is nonetheless a good way forward to what will be a satisfying life.
In my practice, I noticed that there is a real gender divide between men and woman when it comes to seeking help at such troubling times. I have had very little difficulty inviting female clients, who were under real strain, to seek the appropriate mental health advice and care, in order to help them through a very difficult process.
By contrast men, particularly, “alpha-males”, seemed to find it incredibly hard to seek the help that they desperately needed to deal with the psychological fallout of their separation and the separation process. It seemed to me that the more busy the man, with the more pressured occupation, the less likely they were to cope or find the support they needed at a crisis point in their life.
With this in mind, a psychotherapist Dr Tarun Pamneja, and I developed a specific programme for the needs of men having mental health crises. The Man Mind Journey Planner is a bespoke programme which assists men through this time via the use of four simple steps/appointments with Dr Tarun – to try and help those men adjust their thinking in relation to the difficult situation so that they are able to cope better and manage better the strain under which they find themselves.
Whilst a relatively new programme, the clients of mine who I have referred to it have found it invaluable and I have noticed the dramatic change in those clients and their approach to their former partner, the separation situation and the legal process of moving onto the next stage of their life.
One of the key elements of the MMJP is to help men who have found themselves in a compounding stress cycle to re-evaluate their relationship, their approach to the end of that relationship and their approach to their legal case by reframing their views – which in turn helps them find the pathway out of this difficult time to a brighter and healthier future.
The MMJP is open to any man, not just Rayden’s clients, who is in need simply by emailing planner@raydensolicitors.co.uk to start the process towards better mental health and a clearer future.
