Sean Hotchkiss on Men's Mental Health, Healing & Hope: How Losing His Father to Suicide Changed Everything |

Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?

Sean Hotchkiss shares his journey of grief, addiction, and healing after losing his father to suicide at age 22. Through personal recovery a

Key takeaways

• Grief can be a turning point rather than an endpoint when met with vulnerability and healing.
• Men often struggle to seek help due to outdated ideals of strength and self-reliance.

Main topics

• Suicide loss
• Men's mental health

Notable quotes

"I don't know if I have another run in me." – Sean on his father's final thoughts.

Conclusion

Sean Hotchkiss demonstrates that profound loss can lead to transformat

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) The new NFL season is here, and you should be listening to NFL Daily as we march along to Super Bowl 61. It is in the name, NFL Daily. You'll have fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. That game-winning drive. Maybe it's Herbert. Maybe it's Geno. Maybe it's Mahomes. We'll have the highlights. If Fernando Mendoza or any of the rookies are balling out, we'll break down the tape. Join me, Greg Rosenthal, and an all-star cast of co-hosts as we preview and recap every game. Listen to NFL Daily. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you Speaker 8 (0:32) get your podcasts. I'm Brett Coleman. And I'm Trevor Sykema. If you love football and want to understand what's really happening on the field, check out our show, NFL Pro. Every week, we break down the biggest plays, trends, and matchups using exclusive next-gen stats insights and NFL content you will not find anywhere else. Speaker 7 (0:50) Whether you're new to football, a fantasy football fanatic, or a diehard fan, NFL Pro will help you analyze the game like a pro. Listen to NFL Pro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 7 (1:07) Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, Lots to Say, with me, Bobby Bones, and Matt Castle. You're in training camp, and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to Lots to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 8 (1:36) Whether you're a seasoned NFL fan or new to the game, there's one place to keep up with all of it. The league's newest podcast, the NFL Report, hosted by me, Andrew Siciliano. It is your home for everything football, breaking news, expert analysis, game picks, and hear from your favorite players too. Join me and an all-star cast of experts for everything you need to know from around the league. Get new episodes of the NFL Report Monday through Friday, all season long. Listen to the NFL Report podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 (2:08) The World Cup is over, but if you caught the soccer bug and aren't sure what to do now, check out our podcast, Big Kick Energy. I'm Cameron Dicker, the kicker from the Los Angeles Chargers, and I'm here with Timmy Tillman, current LAFC star player. So, we know a little something about kicking balls. Each week, we'll tackle things like who's winning the Premier League this year? What do you think is harder, scoring a penalty kick or scoring a field goal? Join us each week for a quick chat with your soccer-loving bros about the best sport in the world. Soccer. Just don't tell my coaches I said that. Listen to Big Kick Energy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 2 (2:43) What if everything you thought you knew about autism and mental health wasn't the full story? Today's conversation might change the way you see it. Welcome to Why Not Me? Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide. where real conversations and lived experiences inspire understanding and hope. I'm Tony Mantor. This is where understanding begins. If this kind of conversation matters to you, then follow the show so you don't miss what comes next. When Sean Hoskins was just 22 years old, he lost his father to suicide. That devastating loss sent him into years of grief, addiction, and searching for answers. Instead of allowing that pain to define the rest of his life, Sean chose a different path, one of healing, vulnerability, and purpose. Today, he is an author, men's coach, and advocate helping men challenge outdated ideas of masculinity and discover that asking for help isn't weakness. It's one of the bravest things a person can do. In this episode, we talk about grief, suicide loss, addiction, and recovery. relationships, emotional resilience, why so many men struggle in silence, and how sharing stories can become the first step toward healing. Whether you're a man navigating your own challenges, someone who loves a man who's struggling, or simply looking for hope after loss, I think you'll find something meaningful in this conversation. Thanks for joining us today. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Okay, so let's take us back to the beginning. What experiences in your own life led you to dedicate your work to helping men heal emotionally? I Speaker 3 (4:29) mean, the big piece for me is losing my dad to suicide when I was 22 and he was 50. From then on, it was like I felt like, you know, whether I was engaged in my own healing or, you know, thinking about how I could help men live better lives. It just kind of happened automatically. I became a journalist for men's magazines and was helping guys learn how to dress and where to travel and some stuff that was a little more surface or that kind of thing. But, you know, once I got onto my own path of healing, I was thinking about how I could turn around and help other men do the same thing. Speaker 2 (5:01) Okay, so, and if you don't want to answer this, this is fine, but what led to your father committing suicide? Speaker 3 (5:07) No, I'm happy to answer that. Okay. You know, the hypothesis that I kind of lay out in the book is, you know, I watched him really plummet after his second divorce. Okay. Speaker 2 (5:17) From Speaker 3 (5:17) the conversations that I had with him in the last summer of his life, it really felt like he was struggling because he didn't have a woman anymore. You know, he didn't have a partner. Speaker 2 (5:27) And Speaker 3 (5:27) he was feeling like, I don't know if I can start over. Speaker 2 (5:31) Right. Speaker 3 (5:31) You know, the way that he put it was like, I don't know if I have another run in me. Speaker 2 (5:36) And Speaker 3 (5:36) what I took that as is like, I don't know if I have the juice to be able to build myself up again into making myself an attractive package enough to attract another woman into my life. Speaker 2 (5:47) And how old was you at the time? I was 22. So at 22, you was going through this incredible journey with your father. What kind of a toll did it take on you? Speaker 3 (5:57) Oh, I mean, losing him was... That was the defining moment of the first half of my life, for sure. My dad was, at that point, I was closer to him than I'd ever been to him, which was kind of a dream for me because he was always kind of this mysterious but very fun figure in my childhood. Speaker 2 (6:16) So Speaker 3 (6:17) being so close to him and getting access to him like that and then losing that, it was devastating. I just quickly, I, after his death, I really spiraled out. I was already well on my way to a pretty healthy drug addiction at that point. And that just tipped me over. Speaker 2 (6:34) And Speaker 3 (6:34) I spent the next four years essentially in some kind of a grief blackout facilitated by drugs and alcohol until I got clean at 26. Speaker 2 (6:43) Now, once you got clean and you went through everything that you'd been through, what was your mindset and what did you set out to do? Speaker 3 (6:52) The first thing that I remember feeling like when I got back from rehab at 26, I turned 26 in rehab and I came back a month later. Speaker 2 (6:59) I Speaker 3 (7:00) just remember feeling like, wow, you know, I just kind of blacked out for four years. I've got some, I've got some, I got to get my life together here. Speaker 2 (7:08) Yeah. I Speaker 3 (7:09) have to make up for lost time, essentially. That's how I felt at 26. But quickly, the good thing about that for me was, you know, it made very clear that Like I was like, I can't mess around anymore. I want to do what I'm passionate about and I want to pursue what is going to make me feel fulfilled. So that's when I really started to turn my attention towards writing. Speaker 2 (7:32) Now, mental health is a big part of this because how you feel about yourself going through the addiction, going through the loss of your father. How would you define healthy masculinity today? And how does it differ from the messages that many younger kids received growing up? Speaker 3 (7:50) Yeah, that's a great question. That's such a cornerstone of my work is kind of redefining masculinity for the modern time, right? Yeah. I mean, I can speak from my own experience and the experiences of other men that I've had the pleasure of working with in this context. Sure. You know, essentially we're told. growing up that were sold a certain kind of success, right? Yeah. Make a bunch of money. Right. Be successful. Climb the corporate ladder. Yeah. Be successful with women. Have as much sex as you can. You know, move on to the next one as fast as possible. Right. There's all these kind of quote unquote toxic messages that we receive, right? Right. And I think, you know, the big one for me and the big one that comes up a lot in my work is, you know, the classic line that so many of us, whether we get it directly or we get it indirectly is, you know, don't show any weakness. Right. Don't show emotion. I'm Speaker 2 (8:41) glad you brought that up. It's actually going to be my next question. Why do you think so many men today, and because we know in the past the reasons why, Why are they still struggling to admit that they're hurting? Speaker 3 (8:54) Yeah, it is. It's such an epidemic. I was just listening to the episode today that you did with John A. King. Speaker 2 (9:01) Okay. I Speaker 3 (9:01) was thinking about this very thing because I think you posed a similar question to him. I take myself back to that time in my life. I never saw men being vulnerable. Speaker 2 (9:10) Yeah. So Speaker 3 (9:11) I never felt like that was okay for me to be vulnerable. So I think, you know, young boys and young men are having the same problems that maybe you or I did as well, because they're still not seeing a lot of men be vulnerable. Speaker 2 (9:24) Yeah, yeah. Now, when men hold their emotions in, it affects them physically, it affects them mentally. They can spend years suppressing this grief and fear or the fear of being vulnerable. How do we get them out of that so they can start looking at, hey, I've got to do what I need to do so that I feel better? Speaker 3 (9:48) Yeah. For me, I think it really starts with giving boys and young men access to men that are being vulnerable, that are sharing their stories in a vulnerable way. Like even this conversation, right? Right. Knowing that another young man is having trouble, you know. knowing that another man was a boy who was having trouble. You know, like I think stories are so powerful, which is why, you know, like what you're doing, having conversations with so many people and normalizing that is really important, you know, and why it's a big reason why I wrote this book, right? It's like, I want people to be able to see themselves in it. Speaker 2 (10:23) Yeah, you know, so many men and not just men, people, they equate the ability to be vulnerable with weakness and it's not. it's a strength in how that they deal with it and process it. How do you put it out there so that people understand that just because they might be vulnerable today doesn't mean they're Speaker 3 (10:45) weak? I think it's really about, again, just kind of like showing them, you know, showing them the power of what can happen if you are vulnerable and you allow people in, right? I think a big piece of this for men too is like men don't want to ask for help. Speaker 2 (11:00) Yeah, yeah. Speaker 3 (11:01) You know, and so for for me, a big, big part of this, a big part of this book was looking at the people that that I, you know, getting to these points in my life when I felt like I really had to ask for help. Right. You know, which is which is a really vulnerable place for a man. But, you know, if I look at like the big turning points in my life, it was it was because I saw another man opening up and being vulnerable. There was this book that really changed the trajectory of my life in like 2014, 2015. And it was by a psychotherapist in Texas named John Lee. And it was his story of essentially going through massive heartbreak and this big healing journey that happened when he broke up with this woman. And to just hear another man share like that. Yeah. Like, again, having access to his inner life was like it was such an unlock for me. Speaker 2 (11:50) Now, mental health conversations like we're having. They're starting to become more common, but so many men still don't seek help. Just like you mentioned, help. What do you think is still standing in their way so they don't reach out and get the help they need? I think so many men Speaker 3 (12:04) get the programming that they have to do it alone.