Andy’s Man Club is “a talking group, a place for men to come together in a safe environment to talk about issues and problems they have faced or are currently facing”. Here, as part of Men’s Mental Health Week, one of our dads explains how the meetings work.

Walking through the door

Andy’s Man Club takes place across the country at over 100 locations. Whether it’s a college or university building, a sports club, a community hall, lighthouse, library or fire station the door is always open to men over 18. 

But whatever the doorway looks like, you’ll be greeted warmly when you walk through it. Like anything, the first time can feel a little daunting but you’ll soon be put at ease – the tea and biscuits help too.

The meeting structure

First up, one of the core features of Andy’s Man Club is that every meeting – wherever you join one across the UK – follows the same model. They all take place from 7pm to 9pm on a Monday (except Bank Holidays), they all have volunteer facilitators who keep things running as they need to, and they’re all completely free. You don’t need to sign in and certainly won’t be asked to part with any cash…though as a charity AMC has some cool merch you can buy to feel even more part of the club while helping them do their thing: https://andysmanclub.co.uk/shop/

Three simple rules

Each meeting starts with a round of applause for any newbies (this sounds awkward but it actually helped me take a few seconds to pat myself on the back for turning up on my first visit) and the facilitators will give everyone a quick intro to what will happen over the next couple of hours, as well as a reminder of the rules, of which there are three: 

1. Everything that is said in the room stays in the room. 
2. No politics.
3. No religion.

NB: while those topics are best avoided for obvious reasons, it’s made clear that if politics or religion are the source of your anxiety or mental health struggles, they’re clearly up for discussion within reason. 

The groups also don’t go into medication, which is different for everyone and something that is best left to GPs and other professional services. You’ll also be asked to turn your phone off or at least put it on silent.

5 questions every week

As we’ve hinted, the meetings follow the same pattern every week in every location – so if you’re away with work or even on your hols, you can pop to the nearest AMC and go through the same familiar process.

In the ‘first half’ there are three questions that never change:

• How’s your week been?
• What’s a positive from your week?
• Anything to get off your chest?

At my first meeting I was ready to just get everything out all at once. The whole reason I decided to go was that I’d finally accepted that I needed to offload everything that was crashing around my head. I assumed this ‘purge’ would be all at once in a great big rant.

I found the structure of the three questions REALLY helpful. It made me focus on one thing at a time, including some positives, which meant the fog in my mind was able to gradually lift, bit by bit – putting the actual issue I wanted to raise in perspective.

As you all sit in a circle, with a little football handed around as you take turns to answer the questions, you become a listener as well as a talker. It’s amazing how many men have been through what you’re struggling with. And equally, it’s amazing how much encouragement you find yourself offering from your own experiences when someone is going through an issue you’ve previously tackled – your own issues in a way become re-framed (you start to see that even the toughest times have taught you something and helped you grow) which is a big part of what makes AMC so helpful to s many. 

Those first three questions can obviously be quite heavy, so once everyone has ‘shared their s***’ a quick break is taken. 

After 10 or 15 minutes – which in itself is a chance to have a chat with other members and reflect a little bit on any common ground you might have uncovered in the first session – the group gets back together for two more, ‘lighter’ questions. ‘What era would you go back to if you could time-travel?’, ‘What’s your main goal for the coming week?’ or something as seemingly trivial as ‘What’s your favourite biscuit?’. It’s amazing how, having decompressed in the earlier questions, this part of the evening becomes tangibly more lively. It’s a metaphor for how, once you deal with the things that are on your mind openly, you free yourself up to enjoy other, more fun things that are bouncing around in there.

At my very first meeting, this second session was full of smiles and laughter (one of the lads had some completely ‘out there’ stories to tell off the back of his earlier sharing) and again, this massively helped to normalise what we were all doing there – just being blokes and allowing ourselves to ‘feel’.

Reflections

• Every man who goes along to AMC will get different things from it. You might end up going every week, or just every time you feel down. 
• I’ve found myself offering support and encouragement to other blokes, which I didn’t expect. In my head I thought it would all be quite formal and my focus was on how it would all help me. But I soon learned that a big part of helping yourself can come in helping others. 
• The facilitators won’t give you answers like a doctor or mental health professional might – but that’s to the benefit of everyone there. It’s the talking and listening itself that lifts the weight of your shoulders. That said, the little nuggets of personal experience that pop up get you thinking about your previous perspectives, and as you find yourself giving snippets of advice, you actually start to listen to yourself more too.
• The thing with mental health is that it can become the only story in your life. It’s massively refreshing – and less ‘dark’ than you think it might be – to hear stories of grief, divorce, drug use, work stress, parental anxiety and other issues being spoken about out loud by lots of other lads.  In your head, it can feel like you’re the only one struggling with something, and so it can be tempting to bottle it up. But when you realise that your problems have hit others too, and some of them have come through the other side, you start to learn to see the challenge as ‘normal’…which is the key to dealing with it in a healthy way.
• I’ve heard a number of chaps in the meetings say how much they miss a session if they can’t go one week. A bit like you miss the gym physically if you skip a session. I get that completely – it’s a great way to set yourself up for the week, and gives you an outlet for reflection that in some ways helps you every day – you can, with practice, allow yourself to ‘keep your rant’ for a Monday night rather than allowing a problem to kill your mood. That’s different to bottling stuff up, and can be a breakthrough strategy when you’re going through a storm.

I think I’d sum Andy’s Man Club meetings up by saying they help you go from a bad place, to a safe place, to a better place. However many times you might need to do that. I’d wholeheartedly recommend that you give them a go.