As part of Chiije’s bi-monthly event on mental health and well-being, our CEO Chisom held a conversation with Martin. Martin is a Swedish-Norwegian tech leader, with twenty years in C-suite roles and a father of three. He spoke from lived experience, and what he’s learnt from discussions with other men, books, and Netflix documentaries.

Martin described the night before this event. His son called from upstairs. Martin wasn't sure if the call was for him or his wife. So he did nothing. When they went up to bed later, the lights in his son's room were still on. The boy had fallen asleep waiting for a parent to come up and give him a kiss goodnight.

"I have this window of opportunity now," Martin said. "To throw so much love at him that he will always know he's loved."

That's where this conversation lives, in the gap between the men we were taught to be and the ones we're choosing to become.

1. How has Martin’s perception of being mentally well evolved?

Ten to fifteen years ago, mental health simply was not on Martin’s radar. When it came up at work, someone burning out or taking time off,  his internal response was that those people were probably weak, not strong enough leaders, unable to handle stress.

That has changed significantly. He now reflects regularly on his own mental health and recognises it has shaped him from childhood. He treats it as a maintenance practice on par with physical health:

• Going to the gym to train his physical body

• Eating well to feel good

• Meditating

• Taking walks

• Calling people just to have conversations

He actively feeds both physical and mental well-being rather than treating mental health as something you only address when it breaks.

2. Silence, Shame, and Why Men Don’t Talk

Martin spoke about how from a young age, boys are taught to run away from emotions. Men carry significant shame around:

• Not being in control of everything

• Not knowing everything

• Not being perfect

• Not always acting correctly

He also observed that many men are their own worst critics. The internal voice isn’t just “don’t share this” — it’s “I’m not worth being loved, my opinions aren’t worth listening to, my feelings aren’t worth listening to, because I’m not a good person or not good enough.”

When Chisom asked where the internalised shame comes from, he traced it back to the Swedish cultural concept of Jantelagen (“don’t believe you’re special”) and to a defining moment at age six or seven. Playing ice hockey in his small village, he was hit hard from behind by a bigger boy and sent flying into the rink. He started crying. Instead of being comforted or having the aggressor reprimanded, one of the dads just patted him on the back and said, “Oh, maybe Marcus was a bit hard now. Why don’t you go and sit on the side for a bit, until you feel better.”

Marcus wasn't told off. Martin sat on the bench, ashamed of his own feelings. The unspoken message was: maybe you were weak, maybe you didn’t handle it. The memory crystallised something he sees everywhere:

“Your worth is based on your performance; what you did today, what you did last practice, how you compare to others, and it’s an impossible scenario to live up to.”

Layered with Jantelagen, men end up suppressing feelings of hurt and weakness inside.

Chisom brought her own lens as both a mother of a son and a daughter and  noted what struck her most: how early these moments land, and how long they stay. "When people dismiss early harm with 'they're young, they'll forget' the opposite is true. Unaddressed harm just keeps piling up."

3. How the Pattern Passes Down

Martin recounted a story from a youth ice hockey match. A 13- or 14-year-old boy was playing — not bad, not a star. His father yelled at him and shamed him in front of 100–200 people in the arena. The boy started crying; the father then shamed him for crying. The boy went up into the stands and sat next to his mother. She tried to comfort him and put her arm around him. The boy punched his mother in the face.

“He was hating himself," Martin said. "Not his father. He had talked himself down so far that he didn't deserve the love his mother wanted to give him. That is how the patriarchy gets transferred through generations."

Chisom pushed back on a point Martin made about women carrying some of this work. 

"If women pour love while men don't participate, nothing changes. Women are already on the receiving end of men's anger — that boy punched his mother, not his dad. The work has to be concerted."

She also pointed to something often overlooked: language. Girls are socialised toward a vocabulary for feelings. Boys often aren't — sometimes not even in a way that's coherent to themselves. They don't just lack the words for others. They lack the words for themselves.

4. Breaking the Cycle with His Own Children

Because Martin grew up in a home where emotional expression from the masculine,his father, was not modelled, he has made a deliberate choice to do things differently with his own kids. 

Learning to Say “I Love You”

Martin knew his father loved him, but never said “I love you.” He says every man his age he speaks to reports the same pattern: love was shown in different ways but never expressed in words. In his teenage years, Martin decided he wanted to say it to his father. The first time, he cried. His father cried. They had to practice it before it came naturally. With his own kids, he committed to telling them often so they would never doubt it. He hears the same shift from friends his age with their own children.

Chisom shared that her own mother also never said “I love you”,  though there was never any doubt she loved her children. She also reflected on her dual lens as a boy mom and girl mom, and the residual programming from a culture where boys are told “aren’t you a man, why are you crying?” She remembered an aunt saying that to her own brother when he was hurt as a child.

Unlearning is ongoing

He also catches himself slipping, judging his son's tennis performance in the same breath as trying to affirm his feelings. 

“I’m trying to raise a boy who is allowed to feel all the emotions and be whomever he wants to be, but at the same time, I judge him based on his performance when he plays sports, or I want him to perform better when he’s in school.”

5. The Alpha Male Archetype

Chisom asked how Martin negotiates the internalised logic that being a man means not having or showing emotions. His answer was nuanced:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with alpha men (or alpha women) — society needs people willing to lead and say “follow me, everything will be alright”, as long as it’s done to protect rather than to abuse power or dominate. Many leaders he has admired could be called alpha.

The problem is when the alpha position forbids vulnerability. If a leader says, “I don’t know where we’re going, I’ve had a shitty day, this conflict is tearing me up inside,” people start questioning whether he’s someone they want to follow. 

This is why spaces like men’s clubs were created, so men could sit among equals and actually share. Martin also raised a research paradox:

“Research says we want men to open up and be more emotional. But the same research shows women don’t want men who are emotional. So it puts us in a difficult position — do I want to find a wife, or stick with being the tough guy?”

Chisom acknowledged that these expectations are upheld by everyone and when men eventually break under them, the damage doesn’t stop at the man himself; it also spreads to those around him.

6. Martin’s Breaking Point (COVID Lockdown, 2020)

In February 2020, Martin quit snus (nicotine pouches) after 25–30 years of using it. Six weeks later, the world locked down.

His work, mergers and acquisitions, stopped completely. After 14 years of being an important person at his company, nobody was calling. Nobody was emailing. He had built his identity around what he did for a living, and suddenly that was gone.

He'd go down to the basement, lock the door, tell his family he needed to work. And just sit there crying.

Compounding Pressures

• Protector role: “There’s a virus out there that can kill people,  I need to figure out how to fix this so my kids survive.” He consumed news obsessively, couldn’t protect his family from it, and felt bad about that too.

• Lost opportunity guilt: “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be home with your kids.” But he was not in a mental state to appreciate a 5-year-old screaming in the house or two teenagers everywhere, so he also felt shame for not appreciating the moment.

The Pattern

“You take it on so much internally first,  you carry it until you’ve killed the person inside. Then you start lashing out on everyone else.”

He didn’t feel like an amazing husband or father anymore. His wife eventually “kicked him in the ass” and told him to sort it out.

The Therapist Call

He eventually called a therapist. Because no one was meeting in person, he parked his car in a lot near his home and took the video call there. For the first half hour, he just cried. What helped most wasn't advice. It was being listened to without interruption, and hearing: given everything you're going through, I understand why you're here.

That was enough to keep his head above water.

Chisom reflected on her own pattern here: the instinct to compartmentalise fast, to move into fix-it mode. "Hearing Martin's story made me realise I can unintentionally foreclose the space for her husband to just be heard."

7. Anger: A Difficult Relationship

Chisom raised how culturally contextual anger is. In her Nigerian side of the family, anger is fine as long as it doesn’t become violence,  a family argument at dinner is normal, and everyone is friends by dessert. In the Norwegian family context (at least her own), the norm is to keep the peace even while seething, which can build into something more violent or hateful over time.

Martin’s Honest Admission

Martin tries to be calm and rational. When he gets angry, he often feels he has failed to keep things inside, in the past, he’d frame himself as the victim (“someone did something toward me”). But he does his best not to do that anymore.

He admitted that he still goes quiet after conflict sometimes the way his father did. His 20-year-old daughter told him recently: "It's okay if you get angry with me. But afterwards, say sorry and explain why. Don't just go quiet and come back an hour later pretending everything is fine."

He recognised himself immediately.

8. What Boys Need (and the Group Dynamic)

Asked what the missing link is, Martin centred on two things:

• Love as the core message.

• Seeing boys in their relationships: Boys are good at forming groups, but groups have leaders and people who set the rules. Inside those groups, there are moments where it’s very hard for an individual boy to stand up. He admitted he doesn’t have the full answer because the same dynamic shows up in adulthood,  group mentality at work, hard to be the one who speaks up. The work has to happen in schools, with young children, to practice speaking up and opting out.

9. What Still Feels Hard

Asked what still feels hard even with the tools he has, Martin described waking up some mornings to a wave of emotions that drags him down, and the work of getting to a place where he can function for his family and coworkers.

A key therapist insight that unlocked things for him:

“Your mind is not your friend. Most of the time, it’s just pushing me down. So you need to do activities that help.”

10. Martin’s Toolkit

• Walks, especially in nature

• Calling friends and family  just to talk

• Long hugs (yes, with male friends too, he insists the endorphin hit is worth the awkwardness)

• The gym

• Meditation

• Staying off social media and news

• Deliberately consuming things that fill him with something good

• Making his world smaller

Chisom reinforced the point about boundaries, they aren’t only about other people, they’re also about ourselves. Affirming the kind of life we want to live and the kind of person we want to be matters, alongside giving ourselves grace because we’re human.

11. Where to Start if You’re a Man Struggling

For any man watching who doesn't have the language yet, Martin's answer is simple: talk. Out loud, even if only to yourself. He sometimes talks to his dead father.

Ask one level deeper when a friend mentions a hard week. Instead of making a joke and moving on, dig in a little. That sounds like a lot. What's going on? Listening without jumping to fix it is often enough.

And reciprocity opens the door. A friend shared something hard with Martin first. That's what let him open up. They now talk almost every day, not about big things, but small ones. Bad sleep. The kids. It helps.

Chisom added: find your outlet. She writes. There are apps you can talk into. "The load feels enormous inside your own head. Externalising it lightens it."

Closing

In closing, Martin offered to connect on LinkedIn with anyone who wants to talk — he is a pretty good listener. 

Connect with Martin on LinkedIn here and with Chisom here.

Key Takeaways

• Your worth is not your output. Men are taught from childhood that it is and that lie is the root of most of what follows.

• Silence is taught early. Specific moments (Martin’s hockey bench at age 6–7) cement the lesson that vulnerability is weakness. These memories don’t fade; they compound.

• Love has to be spoken, not assumed. Many men of Martin's generation never heard it said. The first time he said it to his father, they both cried. That's not weakness, that's decades of silence breaking open.

• Society tells men to open up then punishes them when they do. Research shows the same people asking for more emotional men often lose respect for men who show emotion. It's a trap, and naming it matters.

• Breakdowns cascade outward. Men first internalise until the “person inside is killed,” then lash out at those closest to them. Martin’s COVID breakdown is a textbook case.

• Being heard is the intervention. Martin's therapist said to him: "Given everything you're going through, I understand why you're here." That was enough.

• Anger isn't the enemy, misdirected anger is. The work is catching it before it reaches the people who didn't cause it.

• The patriarchy is transmitted generationally through shame. The boy who punched his mother hated himself, not his father.

• Women can’t do this alone. Love pouring one way doesn’t produce change. Men must participate. Women are disproportionately on the receiving end of male anger.

• Boys need language. Girls are socialised toward vocabulary for feelings; boys often aren’t, even for themselves. Schools and early childhood environments are where practice speaking up has to happen.

• You can't outbehave a thought you haven't changed. Thoughts → actions → habits. The default pattern will still show up, but deliberate thinking is how you slowly rewire it.

Where to start if you’re struggling: talk — out loud to yourself if you must — and dig one level deeper with friends instead of laughing things off. Reciprocity (someone else opening up first) is often what unlocks it.