It’s almost been a year. A year of Monday nights, of sitting in a circle, of listening to other blokes talk about things they’ve likely never said out loud to anyone before.
That doesn’t get old.
Every Monday night at AMC has positives!
I became a member almost a year ago, then a facilitator months later. And mostly, it’s been brilliant. More than brilliant, if I’m honest.
I’d recommend Andy’s Man Club to any bloke who needs that safe space to offload.
We have a fourth facilitator now. A 19-year-old lad who I’m genuinely proud of. First time he walked through the door, he was buried under the hood of his hoodie. You wouldn’t recognise him now. There’s something quite special and inspiring about watching that happen in front of you.
So yes, the positives are real and they’re many. But this isn’t one of those posts where I only share the good bits.
There’s been a nagging thing sitting in the back of my mind throughout the last few months. A question, really. Is the mental load on facilitators properly supported by those further up the chain?
I’ve spent my adult life around corporate structures. Businesses of all shapes and sizes. And I’ve noticed, more times than I can count, that the brand can quietly become more important than the people actually doing the work on the ground. I’d hoped AMC might be different. I still think it might be. But there have been moments where I’ve wondered.
Specifically, whenever we’ve needed to speak to our area coordinator, the interactions have left me feeling like we’re being checked up on rather than supported. Like we’re doing something wrong, even when we’re not entirely sure what. It’s a particular kind of deflating, that.
And then there was the Google Meet. A meeting with senior people at AMC to discuss a difficult situation we’d handled. All four of us facilitators came away feeling, to put it plainly, told off. The message, as it came across, was that none of us have the knowledge or experience to navigate complex situations. That the people at the top know better, full stop.
I did try to mention that my wife and I once ran a busy mental health support group. Not to wave credentials around, just to say – we’re not starting from zero here. But that was dismissed, invalidated. Quickly and clearly.
That stung. It still does a bit.
Now, to be fair, I don’t know what pressures they’re under. I don’t know what they’ve dealt with, what’s gone wrong before, what they’re trying to protect. Running any kind of national organisation is hard, and keeping things consistent across hundreds of groups is genuinely difficult.
But the impact on the people delivering the sessions matters too. Feeling unsupported, or quietly judged, doesn’t make Monday nights easier. And it doesn’t make it easier to sit across from a bloke who’s having the worst time of his life and give him everything you’ve got.
Maybe it’s just teething problems. Maybe it’s just my sensitivities bouncing around negatively in my head. But we are members too so when we are invalidated and come away from a meeting feeling deflated, guess what’s my Q3 answer next week… Not really. But that sure did feel like a gut punch from the very organisation we support and work hard for.
But now, it’s November. Christmas is coming, which I don’t particularly enjoy at the best of times. But we will open the door on Monday nights (except bank holidays, of course). And the dozen or so lads who come through it, many of them becoming proper regulars, they’ll be there. We’re building something real, whatever the politics above us might be.
That much I know.
Still Here
This stuff isn’t easy to write. Admitting that you felt not good enough, that someone dismissed your experience, that an organisation you care about has left you feeling a bit alone at times – that’s not comfortable territory.
But I’m still there on Mondays. Still opening the door.
And if you’ve ever volunteered, given your time and energy to something that mattered, and felt overlooked, expendable by the people above you – you’ll know exactly what this feels like. You’re not imagining it. It’s real. And it’s heavy.
But, right now, I’m still here. And so are you. That counts for something.