The Fashion Show That Turned Into A Mental Health Movement

A sold-out fashion show sounds like lights, music, and runway moments but what happens when it turns into a mental health movement? With Pops away filming, I take the mic solo to recap the GentSlee fashion experience and why it hit harder than I expected. Between the packed venue, the energy in the room, and the speakers who brought real testimony, it felt like more than entertainment. It felt like community care, built around mental health awareness that actually sticks. 

From there, I go deeper on something we say a lot but don’t always unpack: suffering doesn’t always look like suffering. Stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, and mental exhaustion can hide behind smiles, jokes, productivity, and perfectly timed social posts. I talk through the subtle signs we miss in ourselves and others, and why waiting for a dramatic breakdown is a dangerous way to measure mental health. 

Then we get real about therapy. Therapy isn’t somebody telling you “it’s gonna be okay.” It’s conversation that helps you name what’s happening in your head, release what you’ve been carrying, and connect dots you couldn’t connect alone. For men especially, “don’t cry” and “man up” can wire us to stay silent, even when life pressure keeps stacking. If you’ve ever thought, “And then what happens if I open up?”, I answer that from experience and explain why the right person matters. 

If this connects with you, share it with someone who’s been saying “I’m tired” a little too often, subscribe for more, and leave a review so more people find these conversations. What’s one sign of stress you wish you took seriously sooner?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to another episode of Pops and Son Conversations. It is I, your host son, aka Check Three Times. And of course, if you haven't noticed by now, Pops is absent. He is filming. Once again, you know, Pops, you know, he stays on set. You know what I'm saying? I can't really give y'all all the details of what's going on with that. But don't be surprised if you see him somewhere in the next movie you watch. Because, you know, he really gets it in with that. And, you know, I do a little bit myself too. I ain't on his level quite yet, but it's definitely inspiring to see him, you know, in action. You know, I've been on a lot of the same sets as him and watching him work, you know, just kind of when he gets into his actor bag, is it's something it's something to see for real. So uh, you know, this podcast is gonna be a solo. Um uh taking the reins on this one, but don't worry, Pops will be back sooner than you know. So

Pops Is Away On Set

SPEAKER_00 1:16

uh yeah, without any further ado, um, you know, I want to get into something super, super cool that just happened. Um, as y'all know, as you should know, uh if you've been listening to the podcast, we've been talking about uh mental health awareness. Uh we've been talking about it uh the whole month. In fact, Pops just uh uh we just completed the the fashion show, um, the gentslee fashion show, uh, which was uh really an ode to mental health. And man, it was it was it was super dope. I had a different role this go around. Um, you know, my role was the the model coordinator, so I was basically in charge of you know making sure the models had everything they needed, making sure the designers were okay and good and happy with the models and and all that good stuff. So I didn't do as much modeling um as as I was just kind of behind the scenes uh helping the the show run and things like that. So um I had a good time though. It was different, you know, different experience for me. Um

A Fashion Show With A Purpose

SPEAKER_00 2:31

but I liked it a lot. I liked it a lot. I I I would do it again. I met uh a really a lot of really cool guys, some dope guys, and um, you know, some new models, some fresh faces, but everybody enjoyed it, you know what I mean? So to get into more specifics about the show, man, um exceeded my expectations. Uh completely exceeded my my my expectations. I thought the the venue was awesome. Um I thought the entertainment was was crazy. Um a lot of good energy in the building, packed out, um, sold out show for sure. Um and Pop says, you know, like like it was really an experience, right? It wasn't just uh a fashion show. It really was a fashion experience because there were uh speakers that also came up, um, you know, specifically um uh Dr. Curtis uh Jasper was there and he talked about um you know mental health and men, which which he does so eloquently and always has um you know very, very good insight. Um and you could tell that he's really good at at what he does. So even to be there and hear an expert um, you know, give their insight and their perspective on on a lot of the issues that aren't talked about, I mean that that was just um some invaluable information. You know, we had testimony from you uh from other speakers that just kind of gave um their journey as far as mental health and what they had to to deal with and overcome. So it it just was was an awesome experience. So food was great. Um, you know, uh like I said, the models did their thing. Um it it just was was super, super awesome. Um everybody that I talked to uh that came out, you know what I mean? They said it was it was it was so cool. And, you know, definitely something that that could be uh a repeat. Um because those type of conversations, those vibes, and just really what it's what it stood for to do something like that in the community, um, you know, you can't really put a price on that type of stuff. Awareness is is is super, super important. Um, and you know, that's that's already what we do here at Pops and Sun Conversations anyway, right? We always uplift, we always bring the conversations that are worth having to the forefront. And um, even if they're difficult, even if you we don't want to talk about it, somebody has to be uh courageous enough to to speak on these issues, right? And um, yeah, so definitely if you didn't make that show that experience, if you see it on Instagram at any point in the near future, you make sure you get those tickets because um, like I said, this this one exceeded my expectations, so I can only imagine what it's gonna look like the next go-round. So of course we want to have more people come out to support um bigger venue, bigger, you know, just just just everything to to to accommodate this massive um uh um you know production. Not production. I can't I can't find the word I'm looking for, but um y'all know what I mean. Um movement, that's what I mean. Just just accommodate the movement, because the movement is really a lot bigger than Pops and Son conversations. It's all accommodating for everybody. You know, your your your grandfather, your your son, your brother, sister, uncle, um, you know, the the vibes in that room and the things that that we talked about uh is stuff that I know people are gonna remember and carry, carry on for the rest of their lives. Um so yeah, uh gentsleave fashion experience, look out for it. Look out for it. If you did attend and you're listening right now, there's clips uh, you know, going up on Instagram and you may get tagged or you may see yourself. So, you know, show some love, share it, and uh, and keep that spirit alive. Um so yeah, since we are in still in mental health awareness months, I did want to talk about, you know, uh since, you know, it's just me here, you know, you know, on my on my solo thing, and I can kind of be uh uh, you know, give my little monologue, you know what I mean, how I how I feel about things. Um, and just really talk directly to you guys because it's serious. It's it's it's so serious that you have to, if you if you even want to talk about things like this, you you can't be short with it, right? There's never a subject that's gonna be like, oh, we'll just spend 15 minutes on mental health, we'll just spend 10 minutes. Like, no, you gotta go in depth every time because there's too many things that can be um, you know, misconstrued or misunderstood when we talk about mental health, and we always want to try to stay um as clear and explicit as we can. So don't click away, don't don't fast

Why This Talk Needs Depth

SPEAKER_00 8:06

forward me to the next one. You know what I'm saying? Because I'm I'm saying it's about to get serious, it's it's all good, right? Um therapy, right? Therapy is one of those buzzwords um that a lot of times people shy away from. Um and I think the reason for that is people think that therapy is somebody telling you, oh, it's gonna be okay, just think positive, just no. That's not what therapy is. And trust me, I've seen therapy work um uh firsthand um on other people, on myself. Um so that's not what it is. It's it's not somebody coddling you or somebody, you know, just kind of rubbing your woo wounds down. It's it's really just real conversation. It's just real conversation. Um, you know, because the truth is we spend a lot of time talking about our uh uh uh uh physical health, losing weight. We do talk about the gym and all that different type of stuff, but we don't spend as much time talking about what's happening inside our heads.

unknown 9:30

Right?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

I think a lot of times it's because we don't have, or we don't feel like we have uh a way to vocalize it or a way to conceptualize it even a lot of times. But you know, that is crazy when you think about it. Like because, say for instance, when you break an arm, people can see that, you know, they see your cast, if you if you got the boot on your foot, people instantly know, okay, he's injured, something is going on. Right? If you get sick, you got the sniffles, you got your Kleenexes all up your nose, people can see that, right? But when you stressed, you're anxious, you're overwhelmed, you're burned out, you're depressed, or just plain old mentally exhausted, people can have no idea. And

What Therapy Really Is

SPEAKER_00 10:26

why? It's because you're smiling in every picture, right? You still showing up to work, still taking care of the kids. Hey, you still posting on social media like everything is all good. Smiling in the photos, right? You know, laughing with your homies, posting little funny memes and stuff. Um, but you still could be carrying all that weight that nobody else sees. And I think one of the biggest reasons uh conversations about mental health matter is because suffering doesn't always look like suffering. You know, that's the exact reason. It can look like silence and and isolation. Or somebody saying they tired every day. Are you tired every day? Somebody being angry all the time, like you always mad, always mad, right? You know, it's funny, but we we know we know people like that in our lives, and and you don't ever really stop to think about, like, man, they always upset about something, like little small stuff, like just chill, you know. Back back in uh look, I'm acting like I'm old, talking about back in my day, but it is low-key back in my day because we did have a little saying, like, yo, take a chill pill. I don't think people say that anymore, but you know, like, yo, take a chill pill and just mellow out. Um sometimes people need to do that. Uh, but the but the truth about it is it's not even that they need to take a chill pill, it's that they don't understand that there's something underlying their mentally that's going on that's causing them to um, you know, to express it in that in that type of manner. Um so mental health isn't always, it's not always obvious. Um, and I think a lot of us miss the signs, even in ourselves, because we expect those mental health struggles to look as dramatic, you know, as as it is like on TV or in the movies, like this big, huge mental breakdown, you know, like you see the celebrities like, oh, your mental health crisis, the first thing you do is cut your hair and go bald, you know what I'm saying? Or the first thing you do is uh, you know, you you start overeating and you get weight. You know, it's not always um like some type of major life event or um, you know, just some catastrophic disaster. Um it can be really small and incremental. You know what I mean? I think um, you know, it could stop just with being exha way more exhausted than you normally are, not enjoying stuff that you normally do. You stop returning phone calls, you stop calling people, reaching out, you stop making plans, or stop uh, you know, going out when people invite you to things, right? You start that disconnection, you waking up tired, you sleep tired, and then on top of all that, you convince yourself all that's normal. Right? You become a completely different person, and you you think, you know, is it's it's normal, right? And you also may convince yourself that this is just like something everybody goes through, everybody is experiencing that, but um, you know, eventually all that weight starts to add up. And this is why awareness is so important. Um, because people don't know. Like I said, like you convince yourself this is how it's supposed to be, or this is, you know, but nah, um, you're experiencing um, you know, something mentally that's causing a change in your daily routine, your daily activities. Um, and so uh being aware helps us recognize what's happening before we hit that breaking point where we shave our head or we um you know we have that catastrophic disaster. Um so of course, you know, as a man, I I can relate mostly to the guys and women listening. You uh this knowledge is, you know, basically insight for you on, you know, maybe how some men feel. Um, you know, next month is is is men's health month. Um and mental health is is just huge. It's huge uh uh among men. And I definitely will talk, you know, we'll talk about that on the next on the next um pod um and get a little bit more in depth. But just for for the guys, um you know there there was there was a speaker at the fashion experience and I won't give his you know his name or anything about that, but he talked about um his his struggle uh growing up and

The Hidden Signs We Miss

SPEAKER_00 15:57

how the childhood trauma that he faced um really affected him in his adult life. Um you know, as young men, you know, we hear things

How Men Learn To Shut Down

SPEAKER_00 16:16

and as young, impressionable men who and I don't know about like I don't want to speak for every man, but I know me personally. I've always been um a pretty like literal guy. Like you tell me one plus one is two, and that's what I'm sticking with until I experience something different, then one plus one is gonna be two. You know what I mean? So as as a young man, you hear so many, so many things, you know, man up, don't cry. Um, you know, dust it up, get up, dust it off, you know, be strong. Um, you know, even some more derogatory things, like and I'll, you know, I'll let y'all figure that out, but don't be such and such. Like it's okay to be strong, just don't be whatever uh, you know, people will will constitute as the opposite of that. But hearing these things as as young men, you know, we take that in and that becomes uh, you know, our our our mode of how we how we operate and how we adjust and deal with the world, right? But some of those lessons are dangerous because life is hard. You know what I'm saying? Growing up and being a man can be hard, right? Fatherhood can be hard, providing can be hard, relationships can be hard, financial pressure, like all of the things that that me and my dad talk about on this podcast, uh, you know, the reason that we talk about it is because it is hard and you can wind up, you know, racking your brain and and stressed out if you don't talk about these things. Right? Um it just makes you lonelier. So uh to get back, uh the things that like I said, you know, these things that we hear in our youth, um, it really can affect us in our our adulthood. Um so I think from generation to generation, these things have slowly started to shift. And you may say, for better or for worse, I know some people think that the generations have gotten softer as as time has progressed, but I don't think that it's really gotten softer. I just think that there's a difference in challenges for the different generations, right? So, you know, the older generations, you you know, there was different societal pressures that they didn't necessarily have to face, right? Um, you know, if you get embarrassed or or something embarrassing happens to you, you know, in the 70s or the 80s or or even the 90s, even the early 2000s, it wasn't broadcast to an entire world. Like you could have an isolated incident and the people who knew about it, all right, they saw it. And whoever they told, you know, is a game of telephone. So it could be, you know, it could, it could turn out to something that's way far off from the truth. But, you know, in today's day and age, these young men are dealing with um, you know, constantly being surveilled, constantly being judged for whatever they say or whatever they do because the internet is so prevalent. Um, and you know, at this point, like they say, it's eternal. Um, you know, so you'll deal with some and it can haunt you for a long time. Can haunt you for a long time. Um, you know, there's the the and you know, not to get super grim, but you know, the the so the suicide rates, right, they're up because the the what what we have to deal with nowadays is like I said, it's just it's just a lot different than the pressures. Um so you know, that's just that's just one of the reasons why I think talking about uh your mental health is not saying that it's like the the um the the panacea for any of this stuff because you know even in talking about things, you're always going to have um roadblocks. Right? You're always gonna have different types of roadblocks. Maybe you want to admit to something, maybe you don't want to admit to it. Um so break those breakthroughs can be difficult, but I think at least the very least um and the most important thing that we need to do um is talk about it, have that open open conversation, and don't be afraid to start the conversation. Right. So I like to tell my uh personal stories because, you know, uh I know myself better than anybody else. Um But, you know, me and Pops have these pops and son conversations. Um, but me personally, you know, I'm not as forthcoming, right? So maybe I do represent a big population of men, but yeah, I'm just not as forthcoming. And I and I don't know if that comes from some childhood trauma, right? So maybe that's something I gotta go back and kind of deal with. And I, and you know, I really kind of have been doing it in my own way. But if any guys out there can relate to me, um you know, I've never was the type to burden anybody with my issues or my my thought process on what's going on with me or what's wrong with me.

The Relief That Comes From Sharing

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Um because a big part of it for me, I felt like, all right, I tell you what's going on, I tell you what I'm thinking, I tell you why I'm upset, I tell you why I'm uh not as focused as I normally am, or you know, why I seem scatterbrained. Okay, and then what? Right? What is gonna come after that? What comes from that, you know, like that funny meme that used to be going around, like, what what will you gain from it? Right? Like what do I gain from this other than telling somebody all my business? Right? For some reason, it feels intrusive to be vulnerable with somebody. It almost feels like I'm um allowing you to trespass into, you know, my my guardian or my uh, you know, my my my uh my front lawn or whatever you want to call it. But as I get older, as I age, as I mature, and as I've been in different situations where it seems uh more conducive for me to open those gates, um you know I've learned that there is value in it, and I've learned that that question of, and then what? Well, actually, what happens is you feel better for having got something off your chest, it sounds wild, and to some people listening, it sounds obvious. But I'm telling you, for men, making that connection is not as easy for us. It's just simply not as is because we think so so logical about it, and like I said, we're we're we're impressionable young. So what we hear growing up is suck it up, don't cry, right? So that's embedded. That's embedded. So you gotta you gotta imagine how difficult it is to say, all right, I know I've been living this way my whole life, let me switch it up and let me just spill my guts out to this person, or let me just tell them how I really feel, what I'm really thinking in my brain. That's not an easy feat. But what happens is you do feel lighter. You feel like you got something off your chest. You feel like, you know, that maybe there was like one little missing circuit that wasn't connecting, that all of a sudden now it's it's connecting for you in your brain. And though literally nothing has changed, it seems. Nothing has changed physically, maybe not even emotionally. You may not even feel like an emotion. You may still be upset. You know, whatever you expressed, you may still be upset about it, but it's it's it's hard to explain or conceptualize exactly what that thing is that happens, but fellas, you gotta trust me. It's there. And the magic, the magical thing about it is, listen, I talk to myself more than they say if you talk to yourself, it means you're crazy. But I grew up as an only child, you know what I'm saying? So I had my imaginary friends and I had me, I had inner dialogue, I had I had all of that. Okay. So I don't care what they say. You can call me crazy, but I've had some uh uh some great conversations just going back and forth with myself, like playing chess with myself. So the magic part about it though is that as many of the conversations that I've had with myself where I maybe was acting out what I would do or what I would say to someone or how I would express myself, I never got the relief that I got from when I sat across from someone and expressed what I had been thinking. And you know, you start off with maybe you say a couple things, but as you talk, and if you if you know, I think it's really important, this is why therapy is so great. It it has to be the right person. That's a big part of it too. Um has to be a good listener, it has to be someone that's constructive and not destructive because you're giving something of you that is precious, right? These thoughts are rare, right? And the reason they're rare is because they're never they've never been shared with anyone other than yourself. So for someone to hear this, a lot of times, hey, you're the first person I've ever told this to. If you have have you ever had somebody say that to you, hey, you're you're I've never said this to anyone. Whatever they say after that that follows that, you gotta understand that for them to express that to you, that that's never something that happens on a whim, right? That is something that uh is very deliberate and it and something called them to express that to you. Um so it's important. Um, and I guarantee you the feeling that they got for having expressed that, or if you've said that to somebody, I almost can guarantee that the feeling that you get after you express that info to somebody and they receive it well, you know, it it it there's a lift, right? That there's um a burden lifted off your chest, or there's there's just something that makes you feel lighter. Um so yeah, so I know I kind of went on and on this episode, y'all. If you're still here, if you haven't turned, if I haven't bored you to death with this uh mental health talk, I hope that for at least one thing that you got uh from this episode is that you know it's okay to talk to somebody. You know, it's okay to express yourself, it's okay to confide in other people. I know it can be scary, I know it can be um risky. Um, of course, you want to make sure that you are talking to people that have your best interests in mind and in heart, um, but it's worth the risk. Right? It's worth the risk as opposed to keeping things locked in, keeping things buried, because that is where the stress comes from. That is where the major problems arise in your personal day-to-day life.

Choosing Safe People To Talk To

SPEAKER_00 31:19

You will notice it, the people around you will notice it, and if you aren't talking about it, then they'll see that something has changed, but they won't particularly understand why, how, um, or or or when. And then to be truthful, like I said earlier, a lot of times they won't even see it if you're good at masking and pretending like everything is okay when it ain't okay. So let this podcast be a reminder to you. It's okay to talk about your problems, it's okay to not feel okay, because we all go through that. But what's important is to use the community around you to use family, friends, to be uh a good family or friend to the people around you as well, and be that listening ear, be that that therapy for somebody, and also go to therapy. There's nothing wrong with that either. So that's it. That's all I got. I hope y'all enjoyed this solo episode. Uh, y'all let me know. Hit us up on Pops and Son Conversations. That's the Instagram, uh popsand conversations.com. You can go there to get all the info that you need. You can go there if you want to book us um for an appearance panel, uh all those type of good things. Um, so with that being said, until next time, this is Pops and Son Conversations. I'll see you next week. Peace.