In our story series ‘How Are You Today?’, we have a meandering, mental-health focused chat with some of our most well-known New Zealanders. Check out previous chats with people like Hayley Holt, Roseanne Liang and former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Today we chat to Bryce Casey.
When it comes to mental health in Aotearoa, a lot of our men are not having an easy time and without a safe space to share their feelings, many can struggle. One of the men trying to change this is The Rock’s Morning Rumble co-host Bryce Casey, who has not only raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for mental health support in NZ, he has helped create an ongoing safe space for the people who need it. As part of The Rock’s latest fundraising effort for Gumboot Friday, Bryce has written a picture book, Tummy Rumble in the Jungle. He talks to Capsule about his experience of baby loss, alongside his wife Sharyn Casey, the cathartic power of a good cry and the privilege of being someone that Kiwi men feel they can be emotional with.
Hi Bryce, how are you today?
I’m good thank you! We’ve been getting feedback in about how the book is going and it’s been good news, so it’s a good day.
What was the idea behind the book in the first place?
We’re always looking for ways to raise money – and we’ve had three big fundraisers in the previous years, from the bowling marathon to the days of the darts and then last year we didn’t do anything, because we didn’t want to ask people for money again, after they’d been so generous in the previous years.
I came up with the idea because I’d been reading lots of books to my sons Tyson and Rueben and then I started drawing pictures with Tyson. He said ‘Daddy, you should write a book and do the pictures.’ Then I realised that the books he reacted to the most were the ones that had anything to do with poos or farts [laughs]. I was like ‘there you go.’ Honestly, that’s as simple as it was.
I love a good fart joke, so that’s a great narrative start. How did you find the process of writing a kids’ book?
It was quite cathartic, because it was doing something different to what I’m used to – but in saying that, I can’t act like it was some amazing effort, because it’s a book about four animals that go into the jungle and do farts together [laughs]. It’s not like I was reinventing the wheel or anything.
But it was fun, because I would go sit at the desk and tell Sharyn that I ‘wasn’t to be distracted, because now was writing time,’ [laughs]. It took a couple of weeks, then it was little tweaks here and there, trying to get the rhyming right.
So much of the work you’re known for is mental-health related; when did you become aware of mental health as a concept?
I don’t know the exact answer but I had a friend take his life when I was 16, he was one of my good mates. That was my first big memory of us all trying to piece together what had happened; our parents trying to explain to us about how sickness in the brain can be greater than any of that in the body, that brains can work in different ways. That’s my first memory of being conscious that your brain can play terrible games with you.
Then in 2017, I lost another friend to suicide and on the morning of his funeral, I said to the guys on the show – and I asked my boss – that I wanted to have a chat about it on the show. And the response was outrageously bigger than what we’d ever done before.
Why is The Rock audience such an important audience to reach in terms of helping the conversation around male mental health?
Because it’s them. The Rock is number one for men – every radio station think they’re number one in some way, which is hilarious, but The Rock is genuinely the number one for all men (even though 40% of the listeners are female!) And men are hugely represented in suicide statistic – we worked out that we lose a Rock listener every day [to suicide], those statistics would show.
So when we started talking about it, we knew we were either talking to someone who was feeling that way, and this was the first time they’d been made to feel normal, or you were talking to someone who had lost someone to suicide.
When it comes to talking to Kiwi men about their mental health, why is it important that the call is coming from inside the house – e.g. they’re hearing from their peers, people like you, people like Mike King?
I think it’s an acceptance thing – they feel comfortable. And there’s that trust – trust is everything, whether it’s work or a relationship, and we have a relationship with them, as radio presenter and listener. They know we’re not f—king around with them, we genuinely care. And I think people can sense if you’re authentic; they can sense if you genuinely mean it or if you’re full of sh-t. They work that out pretty quickly, so with that comes the importance of trust.
How has your communication with your own friend group changed over the years, in terms of opening up about your mental health?
Monumentally. It’s like night and day. At school, in my early 20s, I don’t recall much of that kind of chat. Whereas now, it’s constant – whether you’re having discussions with your other mates about ‘do you think such and such is okay?’ Mates tell each other about therapy and stuff, now – these big open discussions about it.
When I go to concerts, I have grown men come up and cry to me every time. Sharyn hadn’t really witnessed it until we went to Kings of Leon, we were standing in a long line getting a beer and I had eight different dudes come up and start crying to me. It wasn’t because they were hating life, it was for a multitude of reasons. That would never have happened at the Big Day Out in, like, 2003.
God, it makes you think about all those generations of men who didn’t get that.
100%. It’s not even people who are ever going to get to the point of wanting to take their life, there are so many layers back from that of literally just going ‘maybe a little bit of medication would help me feel not as fucked?’ or ‘whoa, is therapy actually good? Does it not make me crazy to have someone explain to me why I feel this way about that?’ It’s amazing – it’s amazing how much I’ve learned in the last few years, and how differently I think I will parent our two boys because either what Sharyn has taught me within her own journey or what I’ve learned from other people.
Boys can get a hard rap, in terms of the language we use about them, even when they’re little. What have you learned about parenting boys?
Well Reuben I don’t know so much because he’s only 14 months [laughs] but Tyson is a sensitive little fella. I guess what we do differently than what I may have grown up with – from what I can remember! – is that we’re real flat-out in our communication, in that it’s totally okay to feel anything when he’s feeling it. We always tell him that he’s never in trouble if he tells us the truth – just trying to create the trust that that communication is always there.
I also punishingly tell him how much I love him – like it annoys him [laughs]. He’s like ‘Yes, I get it!’ and I’m always telling him that I’m proud of him. Because I’m 42 – and you still search for your parents to be proud of you. It’s such a weird thing – you don’t want to disappoint your parents. So I’m trying to build it right from the start. And not being a dick – that’s honestly our mantra. You can be a lot of things, but don’t be a dick to people.
You’ve also been super open about the male partner’s side of how it feels to go through an infertility struggle and baby loss [Sharyn and Bryce lost three babies before having their two sons]. How can we better support dads in that position?
It’s tricky to answer that without sounding like ‘poor men’, because I’m super aware that it’s the woman who does the lion’s share in terms of all of that – it’s your body that you give up, and it’s incredible; I’ve witnessed it five times with Sharyn. I can only speak to my own experience but even when it came to the attempts early on, we just couldn’t get pregnant. And you feel useless, and I remember feeling like there wasn’t anyone you could really talk to about it, apart from your own partner, of course. It felt like you weren’t doing the simplest job ever, which was ‘hurry up, give me the sperm and make a baby’.
The loss is brutal – because you feel equal loss to your partner but also, you weren’t the one who was carrying the baby. You’re trying to deal with your own loss of a baby that you loved and wanted, but you’re also trying to make your partner feel better. There can be a misconception that it’s not as hard for dudes, when things aren’t going well – that it’s like water off a duck’s back. And it’s not – It’s brutal.
Is this a topic that people also want to come up and talk to you about?
Yes, definitely – because we’ve talked about it on the show a lot. I find it tough not just to talk about but tough to hear from people going through the same thing, because I know exactly how it feels. I really didn’t think we were ever going to have kids – and it was all I wanted. So when I get messages from people, you don’t want to fill them with false hope but I do have genuine empathy for them. I can easily get emotional either thinking about it or talking about it, because when you’ve lost three babies, it’s brutal – but we’re super blessed because we have two kids that are here now, who are awesome.
You are someone who isn’t afraid to get emotional in public – how has your relationship with that changed over time?
It started in 2017, when my friend died. I really broke down when I was doing the long bowling in 2019 – because I was so tired as well, and the significance of the money that was being raise. But now, I’m super comfortable with it. I cried on The Project, when we were talking about the infertility – I wasn’t planning to, by any stretch, it just sort of happened. But I remember thinking ‘don’t fight it’, it is what it is and it shows you care. It’s like when you’re nervous and people say, ‘It’s good to be nervous, because it shows you care.’ I’m not ashamed – I encourage other people to do it as well. It build that trust and also it feels really good. You always feel good after a cry – it’s really underrated, and people forget that!
Bryce’s book Tummy Rumble in the Jungle is available for pre-order for the next two weeks via therock.net.nz or by texting book to 3520, with all proceeds going to Gumboot Friday.