High-profile basketball player announces retirement to deal with abuse issues

This kind of item usually doesn't get onto MANN but I felt I had to run it. Article here. This is an example of how much misery a man can sit on, just bluff his way through it, until he can't take it anymore. A lot of senseless tragedies unfold wherein a man just loses it one day and does great harm to himself, or to himself and others. And I am not just talking about violent harm, but things such as chronic substance abuse. Not surprisingly though that a man may end up this way, if he is abused as a child and told at every turn to "deal with it like a man", either explicitly or through the many numerous suggestions and examples all around him. So the take-home message is this: It's more important to get to feeling good about being alive and living life positively than to do yourself the disservice of trying to meet everyone else's expectations of you and forcing yourself to grin your way through it. Excerpt:

'On Thursday, Jessica Camerato of CSNNE.com published a story on Dooling's decision and the life experiences that went into it. It's a brave set of revelations from Dooling, who discusses his history of abuse and his hopes for the future. A small sampling of a must-read piece:
...
Years of repressed emotions came rushing back during this realization. Memories that Dooling had tried to bury were flooding out. "I actually had such a meltdown that I had to get professional help and I ended up in the hospital," said Dooling.

"It just all came to a head. To be honest with you, I blocked a lot of things out of my life. I'm a man who's been abused, sexually, emotionally, mentally. I've been abused in my life, and there's so many guys around the NBA who have been abused and I know it because I've been their therapist. I didn't even have the courage because I blocked it out so much that I couldn't even share that...'

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