Talk Club is a national mental health charity for men over 18 years of age.  It was set up a few years ago by someone with a friend who had taken his own life, in part because he felt he had too few people to talk to about the things causing him anxiety.  We live in a world where men tend not to spend a lot of time talking about their feelings.  The aim of Talk Club is to help men improve their mental fitness by providing talking and listening groups that actively help men understand how they feel.

I am lucky that our little village of Horsley has a pub landlord who has cottoned on to this charity.  He has taken the initiative to set up a weekly Talk Club in his pub along with a few of his chums who share the role of ‘captain’ for the meetings.  I was lucky too that, about four years ago, a good friend in the village who was already familiar with this sort of group, persuaded me to attend this village’s instance of the nationwide network of meetings.  I’ve been attending on a semi-regular basis ever since.

The group sessions follow a pattern which I outlined in a blog post shortly after I started attending.  Each attendee is asked four questions in turn.  The first and last question each attendee is asked is how are you feeling out of 10.  Invariably scores tend to rise during the meeting for almost all participants – the process works in allowing us all to get things off our chests, feel listened to and feel a bit better.

Recently my scores have been particularly high and I have started to wonder why I continue to attend the Talk Club meetings.  My knees and ankles have been less troublesome recently and, touch wood, my health generally has been in line with my increasing age but not a cause of anxiety.  The onset of Spring has boosted my score (and that of other attendees) too. 

I’m also aware that I’m about double the age of most other attendees and my concerns – mortality, aches and pains and whether I’m going to manage to get my potatoes into the ground in good time – are very different from those of most others in the group who tend to worry about work, relationship breakdowns and looking after small children.

Also, Easter at home with all our close family was a triumph for my well-being.  It was just so lovely to have our sons, their partners and the grandchildren with us for quite a few days, the weather was good, the Easter Egg Hunt I had devised went well, and we all had lots of fun.  Even amid the anticlimax of everyone leaving after Easter, the memories, helped by a plethora of video and photographs, are keeping me ebullient.

Easter Fun

So, given my Talk Club meeting scores are so high, why attend?  There are a few reasons.

• Numbers attending each meeting vary from about eight down to three (or even on a couple of occasions, two).  There is a need for attendance because otherwise there is an insufficient listening element.  Participants need to disclose their feelings to others and so me just being there is valued.  And I have seen how that listening helps; it has been exciting to see how some new joiners to our sessions have felt better progressively through their attendance.
• One of the rounds of questions asks what we are grateful for.  Historically, I, for one, haven’t spent enough time thinking about this.  The Talk Club process forces that thinking and as the meeting progresses and others in the group talk about what they are grateful for, I am often prompted into thinking of additional reasons to feel grateful myself.
• Another of the question rounds asks what we are going to do to improve our well-being in the next week.  My answer usually fixes on a list of tasks rather than issues of diet, sleep and exercise which drive most other participants’ answers.  But just sounding out the key actions to the group makes them more likely to get done.
• My scores have been high recently but that hasn’t always been the case.  I may be ‘ok’ now but when I’m not, at some point in the future, I will need the support of the Talk Club to help me.  In that sense, attendance now feels like a bit of insurance for the future.
• We have a laugh.  Of course, not everyone feels good when they attend the meetings but usually someone will have an amusing story to lighten the mood.  The meetings are confidential so these stories and other tales are not generally repeatable, but, in the moment, they are welcome.

I couldn’t attend Talk Club this week because my football team, Forest Green Rovers had a County Cup Final game and home football games take priority for me (and we won!).  But I plan to be there the following week as usual.  I’ll keep attending Talk Club while we continue to live in the village and the other members of the group also continue to see it as worthwhile. 

I recommend Talk Club and other men’s groups like it to anyone over 18 especially if you are feeling down.  I’d say that it is a valuable support in life whether you are feeling happy and relaxed or not.