Excerpts from Dr. Courtenay’s contributions to an Esquire Magazine article on men’s mental health.

Anxiety

Like it or not, we all get anxious. It was anxiety you probably experienced during the Super Bowl or NBA Finals. Of course, your anxiety didn’t actually help that situation and only made you feel worse. But that’s pretty typical of anxiety.

Men suffer many types of anxiety: an intense sense of panic that strikes without warning; an obsessive-compulsive worry that the stove wasn’t turned off and needs to be checked yet again; a post-traumatic stress reaction that makes them hit the ground when a door is slammed; a social anxiety that sends them straight to a dark corner at parties; and very specific anxieties or fears — or phobias — like the fear of flying.

Other men simply live in a constant state of tension, finding themselves worrying about anything and everything. The one thing that these men share is a unrelenting worry or fear in situations where most guys wouldn’t feel worried, fearful or threatened.