How talking clubs are getting Bristol blokes to open up and be vulnerable
Illustration: Till Lukat / Photography: Julian Preece
Hugo’s feeling alright. He could be better, but his mood has improved thanks to a walk home in the sunshine after a difficult day at work. This afternoon he was at about a six, maybe a little lower, but now he’s a solid seven.
The 22-year-old is ‘checking in’ at a talking group for men in the back room of a pub in Southville. I’ve joined him and five other members for my introductory session, which begins by everyone sharing how they’re doing out of 10.
I’m immediately struck by how bad I am at articulating my emotions compared to the others, and how difficult I’m finding it to truly listen to everyone. Maybe I’m struggling to be present because I’m nervous, worried about what to say.
But then I start to realise that this lot have mastered a language that I haven’t. When talking about how to keep on top of their mental health, they use phrases like ‘just be with yourself’. What the fuck does that even mean?
As a global conversation about men’s mental health grows, and against a worrying trend of toxic masculinity fueled by misogynistic ‘self-help’ gurus, groups like these are popping up all over the city, and now all over the country.
Talk Club was founded in Bristol in 2019 and has since exploded in popularity, now running more than 60 clubs across the UK. The charity has received celebrity endorsements, national press coverage, and has launched its own non-alcoholic craft beer. I was sceptical – not my cup of tea, really – but my colleagues encouraged me to sign up and find out what all the fuss was about.
Keeping on top of things
It’s a simple idea: you sit in a circle, go round and say how you’re feeling out of 10, then a bit about why. You go round again to share the things you’re grateful for that week, and then a final time to talk about how you’re going to work on your ‘mental fitness’.
“It’s a bit like after surgery, going to the physio to rebuild your muscles,” says Hugo when I ask him to define the phrase as we meet on Zoom for a debrief the day after my induction. The gym terms are bit cringe, but I get it.
He says these techniques – like asking yourself how you’re doing out of 10 – helped him improve how to communicate precisely how he’s feeling. “The more you come, the better you get at it, and you start practicing it in your daily life.”
But, I ask him, don’t you think it’s all a bit niche? Think about the marketing – craft beer, tote bags – doesn’t it appeal mainly to a certain kind of man? The kind who’s already privy to things like mindfulness apps and meditation?
“Completely disagree,” says Hugo, in a blunt tone that suggests I’ve rubbed him up the wrong way. And instantly I feel a bit shit about my question, even more so when he goes on to explain his route to Talk Club. I realise I’ve missed the mark.
He discovered the talking group after a particularly dark period during university. He was on his way back up from rock bottom, after receiving clinical support for depression, and joined the club to help maintain his mental health.
“My first year at uni was bad for that,” he says. “It was this sort of strange mix of having a brilliant time, but also having some really, really low moments. And then lockdown happened.”
“In my second year, I just spiralled. I was having some quite serious suicidal thoughts. I needed medical care, went on antidepressants and got some emergency therapy sessions,” he says. “The talking groups come in when you recover from those periods. It helps you keep on top of things, so that you don’t become unwell again.”
Hugo is the co-captain of the Southville group, who meet at Bristol Beer Factory once a week for two hours. I wondered if he’d had much training, given that pretty vulnerable men might walk through the door.
The captains are trained to not let one person dominate the group, he says, by politely asking them to finish what they’re saying. But does it work the other way? If someone isn’t opening up, do you have ways to try and get them out of their shell?
“Some people just talk more than others, and that’s fine,” says Hugo. “I’ve had sessions where I’ve just wanted to go and listen. I’ve said, ‘you know, I’m a seven out of 10, been fine, a bit tired, and just here to listen.’”
A circle of support
Talk Club was started in Bristol by Ben Akers after his childhood best friend Steve took his own life in 2014. The 38-year-old was one of about 4,500 men in the UK to die that year by suicide, which remains the biggest killer of men under 45.
Steve’s death left a huge hole in the lives of his friends and family, and Ben, who worked in advertising, decided to make a documentary about him to raise awareness. It was during production that the idea for Talk Club was formed.
Ben co-founded the charity with Gavin Thorpe, who made the music for the documentary and was training to be a counsellor at the time. He now leads on the group therapy arm of the charity, the launch of which means the charity can now offer support to men with more complex needs, rather than needing to refer them elsewhere.
He says it’s a bit like a “triage system”. If you go to a talking group and you’re checking in at low numbers out of ten, you might start going to therapy. When things improve, you might go back to the talking group to maintain your mental ‘fitness’.
The group therapy sessions cost just over £6 per session. It costs Talk Club £150 to send one person through the standard eight-week course – money they make up from donations and fundraising partnerships.
It’s much cheaper than you would pay for private therapy, and means there’s something there for those who are on the NHS’s waiting list for community mental health care, which according to the latest data has risen to 1.2 million people.
Given that the sessions are open to men, Gavin says he’s often asked when they are going to open a Talk Club for women. “I say well, 76% of suicides are male,” he adds. “But also I say, well, women are already [talking].”
Mr Misogyny
But, according to a quite eccentric Talk Club therapist who I met for a coffee, there are more reasons why creating spaces just for men are important. Nigel his name is, and I start by asking him: what are the benefits of the sessions being for men only?
“If someone is a misogynist or chauvinist, they can be a chauvinist or misogynist without being politically correct about it,” he tells me. “Women in the group might take umbrage and kick off.”
It’s important, Nigel says, to create a safe space for men to air their views, feelings and emotions – even unsavoury ones – so they can be challenged and explored in the group.
“There was one character that was really disturbed that they couldn’t get on with women,” says Nigel. “It was a big problem. And right across the circle was a chap who’d just broken up with his lady, and was telling the story of his break up and his feelings, and the complexities around it.”
“[The two men] were diametrically opposed in the conditions that were prevailing in their lives at the time, but through the session they helped each other because they could make that identification.”
While we’re on the topic of misogyny, I asked what Nigel thought, as a professional therapist, of the self-styled ‘king of toxic masculinity’ Andrew Tate, whose misogynistic messages are all over TikTok, influencing a growing number of teenage boys and young men. A recent YouGov poll found that more than one in three men under 30 in the UK agree with the sorts of things Tate say.
“So if you’re macho and fit and a player, you might look up to Tate and think, ‘yeah, he exemplifies who I am’, and they get their affirmation in that way,” he says. “But that’s a pretty precarious self-image to have – a corporate capitalist manufactured picture of something that you have no idea of the authenticity and reality of.”
I get that. But I think it’s also okay to look for role models, even manufactured ones – it’s just about picking ones that don’t think women are a man’s property and that rape victims must “bear responsibility” for their attacks.
Emotionally regulated
That said, the closest I have to a male role model in the manufactured capitalist world of entertainment and celebrity is an anonymous man who wears a plastic bag on his head and makes podcasts about what happens when you mix bleach with cat piss.
But actually – Blindboy his name is – I’ve never come across a man who can better talk about mental health in a way that I’m on board with. And in fact, one of his recent podcasts made me reflect on how my own brain ruined my Talk Club experience.
As he’s rambling on during one of his podcasts, you can hear a cleaner in the background hoovering in the hallway before she comes into his office, notices that he’s recording, apologises and leaves.
Blindboy had been talking about the importance of regulating your emotions – a common theme, among other mental health related things, on his podcast – and uses the moment to explain how someone might react in that situation if they weren’t.
“Importantly, I actually have a choice about how I react to that. Now what I could do is allow myself to get very stressed and very anxious, and I could say, ‘ah fuck, the cleaner is here… I’ll never be able to do this podcast.”
He explains that an emotionally unregulated person might have snapped at the cleaner, might have sent an angry email to the office manager. They might have been a dick basically – all because they were emotionally reactive.
And that’s kind of, in a roundabout way, what happened to me when I joined Hugo and the others for the talking group. I wasn’t emotionally regulated, I wasn’t present in the moment, I was scared to be vulnerable in front of strangers, and as a result I didn’t make the most of the experience.
I was there thinking, “I’m shattered, this lot are good and talking about their emotions and I’m not.” But if I’d just taken a moment to, I don’t know, take a breath – to regulate my emotions – then it might have been different.
Instead of arriving there, sceptical of the whole idea, pissed off after a long day, wondering why I agreed to come, I might have had a more valuable experience. This story, also, would probably have been completely different.
I’m glad that I had the time and space to think about how to write this. If I worked somewhere where speed is more important (as I have done previously) then I might have written a story based on my initial response. Headline: Talk Club is pants.
Thank god I didn’t because maybe they wouldn’t have had me back, and now that I truly understand the value of it, I plan to. There’s so much power in talking, listening and learning how to keep on top of things. And Talk Club provides spaces for that to happen.
Report a comment. Comments are moderated according to our Comment Policy.
Good article, well done for highlighting the important work going on. Anything that reaches as many men as this Talk Club can is brilliant.