Originally Posted by mahhong

Hair loss is a difficult one, especially combined with depression or people prone to depressive thoughts. Some people are able to accept hair loss as "one of those things", but not many people on these boards would count themselves in that company! Hair loss can run very deep psychologically and probably manifest itself as something almost like a body dysmorphic disorder or similar syndrome. I don't know the facts on the psychology of hairloss, but it related deeply to perception and our visual imagination of ourselves. We all walk around with a perception of what we want to look like and that changes how we feel. Hair loss robs many men of the ability to form a comfortable perception of themselves.

When I first noticed I was losing my hair it did hit me hard, though I am very fortunate that I am not prone to depression and wouldn't say I've been "depressed" about it. That having been said, a large part of my ability to deal with hair loss is based in the hope and belief I have options on the table when it comes to the right time; shaving down, HTs etc. I don't think the shaving down route would work for me (although I'd be happy to try it), but HTs are of course a potential option. If I wasn't suitable for a HT I don't think I'd necessarily become depressed, but I would feel unfairly robbed of my personal image and that does force you to change how you feel about and work with yourself.

It is a vicious circle though, in that feeling unattractive or undeserving makes you so. Most men who feel a victim to their hairloss are usually more mentally damaged than physically damaged. They beat themselves up, tell themselves they'll never be attractive or like they were, that they're getting old and are less masculine. That train of thought leads you to go out into the world without confidence or belief that you can achieve what you want and then, just as you feel, it happens to you.

Look at men like, for example, Jason Statham. Jason Statham is NW6/7 and not even a particularly good looking guy. But he IS sexy to women and confident to men, because he wears himself with pride. He works out and looks after himself and just shaves down and "gets on with it". If Jason Statham went the other way and put on 20 pounds and said to himself "you're a big bald failure", he'd be no more attractive than any other man on the street. There is nothing special about him save for the fact he feels special.

A book I recommend a lot of guys read is 'The Game' by Neil Strauss. Yes, it is ostensibly a book about how an ordinary, ugly-duckling guy becomes a pickup artist and beds loads of beautiful women using a well honed technique he learns, but, there are some deeper ideas in that book about what success is and how success is earned and strove for. Interestingly Neil Strauss is as bald as any man on here and he shaves down to the skin. Unlike Statham he doesn't even have the body! But the guy learnt that "picking up girls" is the same process as winning jobs or finding investment or toning your body - its about visualisation, belief, understanding and action. Fundamental to being who you want to be is working very hard at all areas of it. Hairloss does not destroy any chance you have of being a real man or a real success, but it can allow you to destroy it for yourself.

The book is fun and also recommends a bunch of other books on NLP and learning body language etc. I know a lot of guys dismiss the whole thing as "lifestyle nonsense" or just being about shallow things like sleeping with girls but there is a deeper message there, and certainly in the other books and ideas suggested.

In many ways hairloss can both cause depression and be just like depression. Depression is something you cannot stop from happening unless you research and take proactive steps. We all know now it's a real disease and so is MPB. But it's also the excuse a lot of men need to berate themselves into even more hopeless states. Most people beat their depression by working at it - it's not easy and it's not a switch you can flick whenever you want, but it is a disease you can work at successfully lifting from you.

So yeah, hairloss is bad news and we don't have all the answers for it yet, but there are things you can do both within and outside of the hairloss problem to improve life in general and make hairloss less of an overall problem. If you tell yourself a HT will cure all your problems then you're deluding yourself. Usually it cures one problem; confidence. And once that's cured everything else falls into place. But hair is not the only way to get confidence and learn self respect so I urge guys to think deeper about why their hair is important to them!