Man Down: The Seven Deadly Lies

How to see the lies grief makes it so easy to believe

Jul 05, 2025

By now, you’ve probably realized grief doesn’t just show up as sadness, anger or other emotions that seem intolerable. It shows up as stories. Stories about who you are. What you should’ve done. What you failed to do. Why this is your fault. And if you’re not careful, those stories start to feel like ironclad facts.

This chapter is here to put those stories on trial. To name the lies that grief sears into your heart and mind. Because if you don’t see them, name them and question them, they’ll run, and ruin, your life. They’ll keep you stuck in a twisted hell where it’s impossible to tell the difference between pain and truth.

1. “I should have done more.”

This is the Guilt Lie. It turns every imperfect moment into a personal failure. It takes a complex, messy, fully human relationship and reduces it to a checklist you didn’t finish. Every missed phone call becomes proof you didn’t care. Every harsh word becomes a nail in your own coffin. The guilt lie thrives on hindsight and chokes out self-compassion.

Why it sticks: Because love feels powerless in the face of death. And when you feel powerless, your mind scrambles to find something, anything, you could’ve controlled. You tell yourself, “If I had just done this one thing differently, they might still be here.”

And maybe some of that’s true. Maybe you weren’t the dad you wanted to be. Maybe you were too busy, too distracted, too hurt yourself to show up how they needed. That’s real. It matters. And it hurts like hell.

But guilt isn’t the same as clarity. Guilt keeps you stuck in self-punishment. It tricks you into believing that if you suffer enough, it’ll somehow make up for the past. It won’t. Guilt doesn’t heal your pain. It devours your life. And it keeps you focused on what can’t be changed instead of what can.

You’re never going to hate yourself into rebuilding a meaningful life.

The invitation isn’t to ignore what you regret. It’s to face it without letting it define you. Ask yourself: “What was I carrying that made it hard to be the man I wanted to be? What kind of man do I want to become now, in their absence?”

Stand in front of a mirror. Say the thing you regret out loud. Then say the truth: “I’m still here and I AM a man who honours their memory by how I heal, love and live.”

2. “If I show how much I’m hurting, I’ll make it worse for everyone else.”

This is the Protector Lie. It sounds noble and self-less. Hell, it sounds pretty heroic on the face of it. But it’s rooted in fear, not love.

You tell yourself you’re holding it together for your family. That they need you to be strong. That if they saw how wrecked you really were, it would crush them. So you swallow the pain. You give them your best impersonation of stability, hoping it’ll be enough to keep them afloat.

Why it sticks: Because as a man, you were probably taught that real love means shielding others from harm. That your job is to suck it up and shoulder the burden in silence. That emotion is fine, for everyone else.

But when you lock up your grief, you don’t protect your people, you isolate them. You turn your pain into a wall, and suddenly the people who love you are stuck on the other side of it. They feel confused and alone, wondering if you even feel the loss the way they do. They might even start to resent you because you don’t care as much as they do.

And here's the kicker: the more “okay” you look, the more they question their own devastation. Your wife starts to feel like a burden. Your kids think they’re weak. Your friends stop checking in because “he seems like he’s got it handled.” Your silence doesn’t make things better, it makes things lonelier.

Show them something. It doesn’t have to be everything. Start with a single sentence. That’s how connection starts.

Look someone you love in the eye and say, “This is a lot harder for me than I’ve been letting on.” Give them a chance to meet you where you really are.

3. “I have to get over this.”

This is the pressure lie. It shows up in your head like a deadline, like there’s some invisible finish line you’re supposed to cross. It berates you with, “You should be further along by now. You should be functioning better. People are waiting for the old you to come back.”

Why it sticks: Because grief is relentless and exhausting, and when you’re in it, all you want is out. You crave relief. And the world around you doesn’t exactly help. People want you to move on. They want to see progress. They want their friend, their husband, their dad back.

But, grief doesn’t work like that. Hopefully you understand that by now.

You don’t “get over” someone you love. You learn how to carry the weight of their absence. You figure out how to live in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore. You find meaning in places you didn’t expect. You build a life that includes the loss, not one that erases it.

If you believe this lie, you’ll start to pretend you’re okay when you’re not. You’ll measure yourself by the wrong metrics: “Am I back at work? Am I crying less? Am I making people comfortable?” And then you’ll wonder why it still hurts like hell.

You’ll start labelling days as good or bad depending on how sad you feel. And you’ll start being willing to do anything to avoid another bad day. You’ll say shit like, “I felt good for a few days and now I feel terrible. It’s like I take one step forward and two steps back.”

None of these concepts apply to grief. Grief isn’t a project with clearly defined milestones and end date. It’s a relationship with the person who died, and the version of you that’s now gone too.

Put a hand on your chest and say: “I don’t need to get over this. I need to learn how to carry it. And I will.”

4. “I should be stronger than this.”

This is the Shame Lie. It confuses devastation with weakness. It shows up when you're crying on the bathroom floor and says, “This is pathetic. Real men don’t fall apart like this. How the hell am I supposed to protect and provide for my family while I’m in the fetal position like a helpless baby?”

Why it sticks: Because we’re raised to believe emotional control is strength. That feeling too much is a liability. Emotion is for women and logic is for men. Vulnerability makes us unreliable, unstable. When your world’s falling apart, the last thing you want is to feel less like a man.

But grief isn’t a test of masculinity, it’s the cost of love. And the truth is, you’re probably stronger than you’ve ever been. To feel this much and still get out of bed? That’s strength. To cry and still make your kids lunch? Strength. To sit with the most intense pain you’ve ever felt instead of running from it? That’s strength most people will never understand.

You don’t have to be fearless. But you do have to stop pretending that strength means silence.

Clench your fists. Then let them go. Say to yourself, “Strength isn’t stuffing the pain into a vault. It’s squaring my shoulders, stiffening my spine and facing it head on. It will not kill me and the only way past it is through it.”

5. “There’s no one I can talk to who would really get this.”

This is the Isolation Lie. It convinces you that no one can handle what’s inside you. That if you shared the rage, shame and guilt people would run the other way or look at you like at you like you’re a mental patient.

Why it sticks: Because it’s not entirely wrong. A lot of people don’t know what to say. They fumble, minimize, change the subject. They are too emotionally retarded to be able deal with their own issues, much less support you with yours. The best way to not hate them is to just shut up, shut down and mumble, “I’m fine,” if they ever ask.

You can’t do this alone brother. Too many guys try to lone wolf their way through life and they pay the price for it. Any army of one is infinitely weaker than a band of brothers.

You don’t need twenty people who get it. But you need at least one. One man who will listen to you without trying to fix you. One friend who doesn’t need you to be okay. One safe place to say, “I’m coming apart and I don’t know how to stop it.”

Find that guy. Or become him for someone else. Or do both.

Talk to a counsellor. Most guys hate the thought of sitting across from someone and barfing out the thoughts they don’t want to admit to themselves. Trust me, I get it. But hear this. If you let your thoughts rattle around in your head for too long, the craziest ideas will start to make sense. Saying them out loud to someone else can help you see how whacked they are.

Join a support group, whether online or in person. Being around other people who get it is a game changer. If you’ve lost a child, Helping Fathers Heal is on Facebook and is a group I highly recommend.

6. “If I give in to the pain, I’ll never come back.”

This is the Survival Lie. It tells you grief is a monster too big to face. That if you drop your guard even for a second, you’ll fall into a pit you can’t climb out of. That if you feel it, it’ll destroy you.

Why it sticks: Because the pain really does feel that big. Like madness. Like being torn apart from the inside. So you hold your breath, push it down and do anything to numb it away.

Let’s be real. As we’ve talked about before, most guys have spent their entire lives avoiding their emotions or pretending they don’t have them in the first place. So the idea of allowing yourself to sit in the darkness is terrifying at a primal level. It’s unpredictable and uncontrolled when all you want is to control your way to not falling apart.

But doesn’t disappear. No matter how hard you try to will it away. It waits, and if left unattended it mutates. It becomes panic, rage, isolation and addiction. The demons you’re afraid to face are always breathing down your neck.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s acting with intention and integrity in the face of it. You won’t fall into a bottomless pit, I promise. Like a wave, it will wash over you. It will be painful as hell and it will pass. And you’ll have taken a tiny step forward towards healing. When the next one hits, and it will, do the same thing again.

Remind yourself that strength is facing what needs to be faced. It means getting back up after you take a knee. And it means telling yourself the truth about what it’s going to take to grief, grow and rebuild.

7. “If I let anyone see how lost I am, I’ll never get their respect back.”

This is the Image Lie. It tells you that once people see you falter, they’ll never trust you again. That if they glimpse the chaos inside, you’ll lose your credibility, your influence, your identity. Overnight, you’ll go from strong to pathetic. And it’s a lot easier to lose respect than it is to gain it back.

Why it sticks: Because sometimes it’s true. Some people will pull away when they see you’re not okay. Some will judge you because they’re seeing something they’re afraid to confront in themselves. Some won’t know what to do with your pain, so they’ll pretend it doesn’t exist or make maddening small talk so they don’t have to talk about it. And yes, some people will see your vulnerability and mistake it for weakness.

That hurts like hell. Especially when you’ve spent your whole life showing up strong.

But here’s the part that matters: the people who can’t handle you being real were never actually seeing the real you. Your relationships were built on seeing the masks you showed each other. And if the only way to keep their respect is to fake your way through grief, it’s not really respect. It’s performance management, and it sucks.

Real respect is built on integrity. Which means telling the truth about yourself when it’s hard. That’s leadership and it will draw a lot more people to you than it will push away. You’ll find that you’re constantly surrounded by people waiting for someone else to go “first”.

Be the man who goes first. It’s good for you and it’s good for others. You’ll build stronger relationships built on being honest about what’s real.

You don’t need to barf out your innermost thoughts in the middle of a staff meeting. But you also don’t need to keep pretending you’re fine when you’re not.

The next time someone asks you how you’re doing, consider telling them the truth. It might mean saying, “I really miss them and I don’t know what to do.” Or it might look like admitting that you want to be honest but you’re worried about people thinking less of you. Either way, the truth will set you free, brother.

Challenge the Lies

Grief is a cunning companion who will lie right to your face. It will prey on your silence, your shame, and your old programming. But you don’t have to believe every thought that passes through your head. Your thoughts are not facts. They’re stories you’re telling yourself.

You have the power to rewrite them. Don’t let grief convince you to abdicate that power. You can’t stop the thoughts from coming. But you can challenge them when they do.

That doesn’t mean turning into some guru who questions every emotion like a monk on a mountaintop. It means pausing for just a second and asking yourself if it’s really true. Or is this grief distorting the story? Ask yourself if there’s another way you could look at it. One that will lead you away from misery and towards healing.

You might not get a clean answer. But even asking the question loosens the shackles.

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re a failure, ask yourself how much of the outcome was truly in your control.

If you’ve been telling yourself no one cares, ask yourself how many people you’ve let see how much it hurts.

If you’ve been telling yourself you’re weak, ask yourself if facing your pain head on might make you stronger.

If you’ve been telling yourself that other people need you to “man up”, ask them what they most need from you.

You don’t need to see the magical path forward right now. It’s way too soon. But you do need to stop letting the lies steer the ship straight toward the rocks that will sink you.

Grief tells you this is the end of who you were. I’m telling you it can also be the beginning of who you choose to become.

As much as you want to, you don’t get to go back. Wishing for it will keep you stuck. But you do get to go forward. And not just as a broken, hollow version of your old self.

As a man who walks through the fire, one honest step at a time.

The lies don’t get the final word.

You do, brother.

Man Down by Jason MacKenzie

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