A different type of speaking, a different type of listening

28 January 2026

The Netflix film ‘Steve’ tells the story of a group of teenagers who have been given up by the  education system and the teachers, including ‘Steve’, the beleaguered head teacher, and other staff who try against the odds to help them. Over 24-hours the film follows the build up to a suicide attempt. An attempt hidden and silenced partially by the hard-to-hear speech of masculinity and made worse by a staff of teachers and psychologists who are unable to hear  - and how this all ultimately ends in tragedy.

What is most gripping about this film is how similar it is to a horror film. We know something bad is going to happen, but we don’t know how or who. There is a monster – a failure to see and hear. The extent to which the others around the main characters fail to listen to a man speaking and fail to see him acting out his suffering in wilder and wilder ways is a rollercoaster. This failure to listen isn’t just a turning away, it is often a turning toward yet devastatingly missing the glaring move towards a man’s attempt to end his life.

A main character and one of the young men in the school, Shy, experiences a ground-shaking indescribable loss when his mother tells him she and her new partner want nothing more to do with him. His mother dumps her own son. Since for Shy there is no obvious way be can speak about the absurd gravity of this almighty blow, he goes wild in speech and action, unable to understand let alone formulate into words what has been lost. He does things. He attends a therapy session. He sits down and chats with teachers. He even has an interview with a seemingly hysterical film crew, there to give an ultimately naive glimpse into the workings of this school. There is lots of speaking done but nothing is heard. Shy is suicidal, dangerously so. Alongside all this the funding is cut to the school and the teachers learn the school will need to close. It is too much to deal for the listeners, mainly the teachers, for them to truly hear and see what is happening around them.

The story brilliantly told in ‘Steve’ turns its attention to a system is not suited well to hear men or appeal to men to communicate suffering in a way which is possible, and safe. There is a possibility missed, not that it is impossible for men to speak.

One man I worked with when asked if he would speak about difficulties in his life with a friend, said he would but only if the time was right. He said he would spend a whole night with a friend drinking beer, speaking about football and then, and only then, in the final minutes of the night walking from the pub to the car, would he say how he was feeling. It was as if there needed to be a comprehensive display of normality and respect built before something could be said even to a friend, someone trusted and known. I have learnt from clients I have worked with as a therapist in a centre for men in suicidal crisis that in order to start to say what is happening, there needs to be an exit available. He needed a way out without losing face, a punctuating possibility, a way of retreating to protect himself against a potential humiliation. In this way the hard quality of masculinity is also brittle, breakable, delicate. Within health systems and therapy the point of humiliation or breakage (the sudden withdrawal from help or speech) is often completely missed. I have missed it too. A man might often seem strong, impressive, knowledgeable maybe, and in control, encouraging boldness on the part of the helper (‘this guy can handle himself’, ‘he’s safe’) but what is often needed is something much more gentle and thoughtful.

It's not always the case, but it is a pattern I have seen how men so often come to counselling and therapy because ‘someone told them to’ or that they ‘must do something’  because they are ‘causing pain for x. Help appears not to be sought for the sake of oneself, ‘me’, but instead because of another. This in my view is in order to maintain an identity which is convincingly independent, if not completely and utterly responsible, for those around. It is such a regularly repeated sentence: ‘I now need to sort myself out because I’m no good to anyone in this state’. Or ‘my partner told me to come’. And in this way this kind of brittle help-seeking speech often comes at the point of reliability falling away, to a point where the thought comes that ‘they would be better off without me’. At the same point of this speech is often action, particularly if that speech is not heard, in its extreme a complete withdrawal from the world and a suicidal act. This is often something that isn’t even ready to be verbalised, something hiding beyond awareness. And in these cases a man can’t just speak it to anyone, they need help to speak it.

As friends, teachers, therapists, family and other professionals,what do we do about this? In 'Steve' more care and support is needed for everyone to be able to find times and spaces where the truth comes out. There is simply no space. Lots of talk, some trust, but no space to listen. No possible wisdom to ask the questions directly to Shy (‘are you thinking about ending your life?). Instead the school is torn apart and speaking becomes more and more frantic. In these times, without the extra bits of time needed, walking home from the pub, side-by-side conversations with someone who can hear, there is no option for Shy or the other men in the film to stop and say how they feel.

The hopeful flipside is that the more safe spaces there are fully funded, with enough time to see and hear, the more hope that most important words can be said and listened to. In ‘Steve’, there is a parallel, less horrific version of the story. If the funding from the school didn’t rely on a fickle rich donor, if the teachers weren’t told the school was closing, if staff were well and supported, and if there wasn’t a intrusive film crew making noise and chaos, there would hopefully be a moment to avoid the tragedy and see, hear, what is really going on. As friends, teachers, therapists, family and other professionals we all have to continue listening and fully appreciating the barriers not just for men to speak out, or to get help, but also to truly listen and ask the right questions, finding the right space. This means listening differently and creatively, not relying on the same old things to get someone to speak. This means having the space and time to ask difficult questions. But like the film, in the end it is also worth bearing in mind that even when we think we are really watching and listening, we still might not be what is really going on.