Dr. Ken Martz has spent nearly 30 years working in mental health. He’s written 16 books, worked with anxiety and panic for decades, and knows firsthand what happens when being productive, driven, and “fine” becomes a substitute for noticing that your system is overloaded.

In this conversation we unpack high-functioning anxiety in men, why the same drive that makes you successful can eventually start working against you, and how to tell the difference between healthy stress and a nervous system that has been running at full throttle for too long. Because the problem isn’t ambition. It’s having a gas pedal without a brake.

Brian Alsruhe has spent nearly 30 years under the bar. Strongman, powerlifting, coaching world champions and did a stint in counterterrorism before turning toward clinical mental health work.

In this conversation we map how Brian trains men for capacity in the gym, how Tim trains for it in the therapy room, and why the same program can break two very different men for two opposite reasons: the guy with no capacity who snaps at the first hard week, and the guy on the edge of burnout who runs any plan perfectly on paper and still falls off a cliff at home. Neither one has a willpower problem.

Every year we lose more men to suicide and overdose than we can easily talk about and the men most at risk are often the ones who've been taught they're not allowed to ask for help. The "honor or die" culture tells guys to be stoic, self-sufficient, and silent, and that silence is exactly where we lose people. In this episode, Tim sits down with Khara Crosswaite. a TEDx speaker, educator, and clinician who trains the next generation of therapists on suicide prevention to unpack what's really driving these deaths of despair and what any of us can do about it.