Coming Out About Mental Health As A Man

Choose strength.

Choose responsibility.

Choose to be the one who holds it together when others can’t—or won’t.

Choose litigation from nineteen to forty like it’s a long apprenticeship in endurance.

Choose to carry family, students, employees, institutions, histories, expectations.

Choose to smile while doing it, because people tell you that leaders smile—and because sometimes smiling feels like the least disruptive thing you can do for everyone else.

Choose silence.

Because coming out about mental health isn’t something men are taught to do. We’re taught to manage. To absorb. To keep things moving. To be Atlas—spine bowed, jaw locked, carrying the world because someone has to—and apparently, it’s us. We tell ourselves it’s noble. We tell ourselves it’s temporary. We tell ourselves we’ll rest later.

But no one can be Atlas forever.

And even Atlas, if we’re honest, probably needed a day off and someone to ask how he was really doing.

I’m coming out about mental health not because it’s fashionable, and not because it’s easy—but because pretending has a cost, and eventually that cost exceeds the silence. For me, that silence stretched across two decades: litigation from age nineteen to forty, constant pressure, public scrutiny, rumors and outright untruths, antisemitism both whispered and blunt, the responsibility of supporting a family, running a school, continuing my own education, fighting lies while being told to stay calm, stay professional, stay smiling.

And I did smile. For a long time.

I smiled because it helped other people feel comfortable.

I smiled because I thought it was my job.

Even when I was unraveling inside.

Here’s the thing people don’t always understand: what they call weakness often looks like defensiveness, guardedness, intensity. I struggled with being defensive—not because I was cruel or arrogant, but because when you’ve lived under prolonged attack, your nervous system stops distinguishing between threat and conversation. You armor up. You anticipate blows that never come. You protect yourself even when protection is no longer needed.

That’s not failure.

That’s a system doing its best to keep you standing.

Friends and family saw it before I did. That’s important.

Because here’s a truth we don’t say loudly enough: the people who love you often know you better than any therapist or psychiatrist ever could. They’ve seen you tired. They’ve seen you hopeful. They’ve seen you at your worst and still stayed. When they say, You’re not okay, it’s not an accusation—it’s recognition. It’s care trying to get your attention.

I resisted that recognition for years. Not out of pride—but out of habit.

Part of it came from bad early experiences with mental health care—being unheard, being rushed, being treated like a checklist instead of a person. I’ve been on the other side too, through psychiatry training, and I know the system’s limits. It isn’t perfect. It’s human. But avoiding help because some doors were broken kept me stuck longer than I needed to be.

And part of it came from believing that if I just did more good, it would fill the hole.

When the pandemic began, I donated $100,000 to local synagogues. I stopped rent on twenty apartments for twenty-four months so people could survive. I did it because I believed—honestly—that doing good would bring relief, meaning, connection. The rabbis went silent. I got a thank-you letter. A phone call. And then nothing.

And that taught me something hard but necessary.

Money doesn’t heal loneliness.

Money doesn’t fix despair.

Money doesn’t substitute for being seen.

The rent moratorium didn’t become shared responsibility; it became expectation. No one resumed paying. Eventually, my brother and I sold our real estate one house at a time—not out of bitterness, not out of punishment, but out of reality. Sometimes reality doesn’t clap when you do the right thing. Sometimes it just nods and keeps moving.

This isn’t a story about people being bad. I don’t believe that. I believe deeply in the good of humanity. I believe, as Socrates suggested, that people are born with the truth inside them—that education is not insertion but extraction, bringing forth what already exists. That belief is why I teach. It’s why I keep showing up.

But I also learned something freeing: I can only control myself. I can’t script how others respond to generosity. I can’t expect reciprocity as payment for sacrifice. Everyone gets their own life, their own choices. That doesn’t cancel compassion—but it does invite boundaries.

And boundaries start with honesty.

Coming out about mental health means admitting that being the strong one doesn’t make you invulnerable—it makes you tired. It means saying out loud that the double life of a constant smile and private turmoil isn’t sustainable. People told me to always smile, so I did. For years.

But smiling is optional.

And suffering in silence is not a requirement.

We don’t have to do that anymore.

We are in a mental health crisis. I know people who are bipolar. People with OCD. Depression. Anxiety. Panic disorder. Trauma that never got language. Grief that never got time. These aren’t moral failures. They’re human experiences—made heavier by pretending we should handle them alone.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is listen when the people who love you say what they see. Sometimes help looks like trusting that concern isn’t criticism. Sometimes it means acknowledging that carrying the world has changed how you walk, how you speak, how you relate—and that setting it down isn’t quitting.

It’s choosing to stay.

To come out about mental health is to loosen the grip of the super-ego—the myth of who you’re supposed to be—and meet the person you actually are. And beneath that, the simple, stubborn human core: the capacity to feel, to give, to receive. Not endlessly. Not sacrificially. But honestly.

Choose that.

Choose kindness toward yourself.

Choose help wherever it shows up.

Choose to believe that strength can look like rest.

Because no one was meant to be Atlas.

And even Atlas deserved a break.

Coming out about mental health isn’t weakness.

It’s not quitting.

It’s not letting anyone down.

It’s the beginning of telling the truth—and that’s where real healing starts.