Why Mental Health Looks Different for Everybody | Lex Hristova & Nicole Cutting

What if depression doesn't look like sadness? Lex Hristova and Nicole Cutting on the gender gap in mental health, from medical gaslighting to the anger nobody recognises as depression. This week's pairing: Lex Hristova and Nicole Cutting, two cognitive behavioural psychotherapists on the gender script for emotion, the medical gaslighting women keep running into, the way depression hides as anger in men, and how to reframe therapy as a tool for living the life you actually want rather than the one expected of you. About the speakers Aleksandra Hristova, known as Lex, is a BABCP-accredited Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist with degrees from the University of Oxford and the University of Exeter and over ten years of experience treating depression, anxiety, stress, and trauma in NHS Talking Therapies. Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for the MSc Psychological Therapies with Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner at City St George's, University of London, she has held clinical, supervisory, and leadership roles across NHS services, and specialises in Low Intensity CBT and the training and development of the next generation of therapists. Nicole Cutting is a CBT Psychotherapist and the founder of The It Therapy Co., trained at the University of Hull with a First Class honours degree in Psychology, a Diploma in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and a certificate in Evidence-Based Hypnosis from the UK College of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Based in Northallerton, she works with clients aged thirteen and over across NHS, community, inpatient, and forensic mental health services, with particular focus on PTSD, OCD, severe anxiety, low self-esteem, and complex trauma, delivering individual, couples, and group therapy. Chapters 0:00 - Intro 2:30 - Why gender shapes mental health 8:00 - Medical gaslighting and women 14:00 - 'It's just your hormones': the dismissal pattern 20:00 - The caregiver expectation and the fear of seeming unstable 26:00 - Why men don't seek help 32:00 - The stoicism script and the emotion ban 38:00 - Depression in men: anger, not sadness 44:00 - Hormones across the lifespan: puberty, pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause 50:00 - The clinical data gap for women 56:00 - Representation: why so few male therapists 1:02:00 - Training the profession on gender 1:08:00 - Reframing CBT as a tool for living the life you want 1:14:00 - The It Girl and the It Boy: therapy as self-knowledge 1:20:00 - Challenging the internal beliefs: looking for the counter-evidence 1:26:00 - Normalising therapy In this episode Lex and Nicole open with the gender script for emotion and where it does the most damage. For women, the most common script is medical gaslighting. Symptoms get dismissed as hormonal, or framed as anxiety, or labelled 'all in your head' before anyone takes them seriously. Underneath that sits a quieter pressure: the expectation to be the steady one for everyone else, and the fear that admitting you are not coping will make you look unstable, unfit to mother, or unfit to lead. The pairing is direct about how often this story gets repeated in the consulting room. For men the script runs differently. Stoicism still dominates: expressing emotion is treated as weakness, asking for help as failure, and the result is a generation of men who arrive in therapy late, or do not arrive at all. The conversation lands on something most listeners will not have heard named clearly before. Depression in men frequently presents not as sadness or tears but as irritability, anger, and the externalising of feeling someone else has to deal with. The pairing argue that this is part of why men's depression goes undiagnosed and unrecognised by the men themselves. The close is the reframe. The pairing argue for repositioning therapy in modern terms, as a tool for understanding yourself, building real confidence, and living closer to the version of life you actually want, language they think lands better than older clinical framing. Nicole runs her practice as The It Therapy Co., and uses the language of the 'It Girl' and the 'It Boy' to describe therapy as the place that lets you become the person you have been quietly waiting to be. They close with a CBT reflection: when a thought says 'displaying emotion makes me weak', look for the evidence that contradicts it, and then talk to someone who can hold that conversation properly. Resources mentioned Lex Hristova - https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/counselling/lex-hristova-cognitive-behavioural-therapist-london/1432738 Nicole Cutting - The It Therapy Co.: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/counselling/nicole-cutting-northallerton/1413961 MindFriend (the platform): https://mindfriend.com/ MindFriend Pro: https://mindfriendpro.com/ Connect with us Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2OnHUJDQnwcjcp67wLC6O1 Instagram: @mindfriend @mindfriendtalk TikTok: @mindfriend