Quote:
Originally Posted by Detoxing
It might be insensitive, but it's the truth.
Someone who is dealing with depression, and by the sound of it, Martin is, is typically dealing with confidence issues.
Lacking confidence in yourself can certainly make you "soft" and "weak". If you don't have confidence in yourself, you won't stand up for yourself.
Players have already stated that Martin was quiet, kept to himself, wouldn't look people in the eye when talking to them. Reports are coming out that Incognito had to step up and defend him because he wouldn't defend himself.
In a culture full of overconfident, huge men, he'll absolutely be viewed as soft.
You may not like the terminology being used because you have sympathy for his condition, but that doesn't change the reality of what he is right now.
You can't go around in life being PC about everything. Sometimes you have to call it for what it is.
In a culture where you're constantly on the hot seat, coaches are constantly nitpicking at you, the media is ripping you apart, thousands upon thousands of fans are calling you a failure and your teammates are giving you a hard time and making you the butt of their jokes, it's very easy for someone to lose it.
And I think that's what happened here.
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But is it justified to prod these people to toughen them up?
If you want my answer, it would be no. Instead of being a full on dickbag to toughen him up, Incognito (or someone with slightly more common sense) should have told him to seek medical help for his mental illness.
It's very easy tell someone to be confident and mentally strong, but the reality is mental illness is a disease. Though it isn't tangible, and we can't measure it on a blood panel, MRI, CT, etc., it should be treated like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or any other illness. Mental illness has predispositions (genetics, environment) just like any other disease we perceive as serious, and the consequences can be as profound.
What Incognito did was the equivalent of giving a diabetic increasing glucose injections, and the final one sent him into a hyperglycemic diabetic coma.