I heard this comments for Prince William outside he's been on on this sort of bound wagon up I don't mean that in a derogatory way but abound like ever quite a some time now in which he seems to suggest that everything about a stiff upper lip is wrong and harmful that we shouldn't encourage I've got three sons for example all late teens early 20s now as their father the responsible thing to do is to tell them to emote about everything and to wear their heart and the sleeve and to open up and so on but
that the bad thing to encourage them to do would be to toughen up to be resilient to man up if you like the world's most offensive phrase now and to show a stiff upper lip I I come from a generation of very strong women actually in my family where you could emote if you wanted to but actually pretty soon someone would say come on crack on get up move on life's tough deal with it yeah I mean I I'm of a similar mind to you peers I think this is this romantic idea dating back to
the 18th century that there is something bad something inhibiting something that's going to be corrosive to your mental well-being and if you repress your feelings and keep a stiff upper lip and don't vent all the time and it's just false I mean if you look at the research evidence actually men who exercise emotional regulation who keep a stiff upper lip who don't always speak what's on their mind but can control themselves actually have much better mental health that they're likely to do better at school they're likely to have more successful relationships they're less likely to
suffer from psychosomatic illness or depression generally speaking all the psychological evidence tells us that that old-fashioned attitude is actually better mental health works the issue I have with this is that I think obviously there are times when you need to be resilient and you need to be stoic but if that becomes a prison and you feel that's all you can be that's when it becomes dangerous to people as mental health and I think that's probably what Prince William is trying to guess at that we can at times be strong but we also need to be
weak and vulnerable when when that's necessary I wouldn't use the word weak because I think to express your thoughts your feelings and your emotions is actually a sign of strength and I speak as somebody who's been hot fertilized twice with mental health issues and I still to this day take a small maintenance dose of medication to keep me well keep me working keep me thoroughly enjoying life and I think part of the problem that I had with my mental health was that i bottled everything up inside I didn't I I didn't lay bare my thoughts
my concerns my emotions and of course we're now living in an age where male suicide rates are astronomical particularly in the under 40s and you know you guessed killer men it is and and and it's shocking and I go out regularly with with my friends and we sit down and we tell each other about the issues that we have in our lives what we're experiencing because I firmly believe that a problem shared is a problem half you see it seems thing you're hearing that for me you you know a tough detective and everything else I'm
not surprised or shocked but I'm interested that you take that view but I sort of feel that what's happened in this debate I've got no problem other than you just said I think that's right and a lot of people it must be very helpful my only problem is that I feel the pendulum swung so far now that having a stiff upper lip if you choose to have that if you genuinely feel like I do it the best way to do what most of is to grit your teeth and crack on and maybe I'm lucky that
I'm mentally strong enough to be like that and I accept that but somehow that's become a stick to beat me with that actually I'm the I'm a problem when actually I think were a lot of people being a little bit tougher with and teaching kids maybe at school so we've been involved a lot of schools very capably on my head I think I have by the way for the record what's happened to you recently over some old tweets and the fact it's cost you so much with the school where you do I think was disgusting
and I'm so glad to have you on the program today but for that totally separate that's just there's this thing about whether having stiff upper lip now is wrong that's my key problem with it I think certain people a lot of people and she take pride in being tough in that way and don't want to be forced into being into emotive yeah I mean I think Peters quite right if you are suffering from a serious mental illness if you've got issues with mental health then of course you should talk about that and get the help
you need no one's arguing about that but I do think that this this this encouraging children to constantly talk about their feelings and to say whatever's on their mind to always ventilate I think it's part of a larger demonization of masculinity which you know you've discussed by its program qualities like stoicism right the ability to withstand hardship and not constantly complain in the current debates about social media having such a negative effect in some cases on young teenagers and the fact that if you put in certain hashtags you can see material online which you know
I did it yesterday completely lowered my mood when I look at it I wonder in that case whether there is an argument that we should just turn away from that you know that that actually sharing all of that can have a negative effect on your mental health as much as you think that sharing and talking about your feelings can be a good thing there can be a moment when it crosses over into being a bad thing and being a bit more resilient helps I think anything that encourages a teenager to put down their screen and
talk about their thoughts and their feelings and their emotions must be a good thing they spend too much time on their screens there is too much damaging material out there anyway so can we not gather around the dinner table sit in the lounge socialize with our friends and work through our thoughts our feelings our emotions and yes discuss their issues so be one of the things that's very relevant in your case because you've been through this is we're now in the offense era where everyone is protest be offended by absolutely everything and people's lives in
careers get trashed yours was completely buried for a few months over this because of old tweets he'd done which were a bit on the racy side and it seems to me that we we've reached a point now where the Oscars apparently may not even have a host because they can't risk appointing somebody because of what's just happened we Kevin Hart who was bounced out of it overall tweet who is so squeaky clean that they can't survive the Twitter mob what do we do about this over offended well we now live in where people can't just
be offended they have to destroy anyone that they feel has disagreed with them I think the the the awful atmosphere on sites like Twitter the viciousness the malice the cruelty that's constantly being exhibited by the users which make it almost unusable then for ordinary people I think that's symptomatic of a lack of self control the lack of emotional relation people constantly venting their anger people frequently took looking to take offense I mean in my case people went back you know 10 years things I tweeted searching searching desperately for things to be then offended about I
call them offense archaeologists and they go and dig just to look for reasons I'm a really get up so come a real stick to be people with Peter I mean well worries me if you spend time with the older generation I go back with my parents at the weekend with a lovely weekend but you know my dad would laugh at all sorts of stuff and then even he now in his 70s he's like wait am I allowed to say that or find that funny anymore and yet what has just been laughter is funny and humor
ISM so what but we've become so prickly and defensive about everything it seems to me the fun is also along with all this political correctness being sucked out of our lives my life is full of fun my children my family the work that I do and enjoy I've got fun in every corner of my life and I'm deeply deeply grateful for that and I realize realize how lucky I am but that doesn't mean to say that I want to poke fun or find fun in something which is offensive what is offensive is offensive and if
the goal posts of me been moved in recent years so that what we laughed at 40 years ago we now found upon so big hang on when you say so BAC my problem with that is there is somebody out there ready to be offended by absolutely everything and not just offended but as we see with the Trump debate in America the brexit debate here it's not enough to just have your opinion disagree with somebody and have an argument a civilized argument this is what we used to do now you have to scream and hound and
silence the other person and the best way to do that they've discovered on all sides of these debates is actually to be so offended by something that they may have said five ten years ago that you can use that as a stick to silence them shaming look at the language in the terminology that was in everyday use 30 40 50 years ago and now which is completely frowned upon in fact might almost be illegal so it's a good thing we don't call people that so one of the difficulties is that the police have now taken
it upon themselves to go after people who they deem to be offensive even if there'd been no complaint so recently the Humberside police went after someone for retweeting a limerick right which which they said was transphobic it wasn't actually a hate crime but they said we have to monitor what people are thinking in case their thoughts might be offensive surely you think that police should be focusing on dealing with real crimes like assault burglary theft and not wasting their time policing social media to make sure people aren't being offensive threats are different these are imagined
they're called something like numb hate and the senior officer responsible for that decision and that potential waste of resources needs to be called to order you
