Five Years Since Lockdown: The Hidden Toll on Male Entrepreneurs

Five years. It’s been five years since the world shut down, since businesses closed overnight, since everything we thought was certain got turned upside down.

I remember those early days of lockdown—business owners scrambling to adapt, cash flow drying up, the sheer pressure of keeping things afloat with no clear end in sight. Some pivoted, some held on, some lost everything. But what no one talked about enough was what happened after.

Five years later, the dust has settled—but the impact? It’s still there, woven into the way so many men run their businesses, their lives, and their minds.

Because it wasn’t just about financial loss. It was the mental toll. The isolation. The stress. The relentless pressure to survive. Entrepreneurs were already more likely to experience burnout, depression, and anxiety—but lockdown didn’t just increase those numbers, it hardwired them into how we operate.

The Unspoken Cost of Survival

For a lot of men, survival mode never really switched off. The habits that got built in those lockdown years—working longer hours, saying yes to everything, pushing harder just to stay afloat—became the new normal. Rest felt risky. Slowing down felt like failure.

And even now, when the world has ‘moved on,’ I see it every day in the men I work with. The constant urgency. The inability to switch off. The quiet exhaustion that never fully goes away.

Isolation Didn’t End When the Doors Reopened

Lockdown forced isolation on everyone—but for male entrepreneurs, it deepened something that was already there.

67% of business owners report feeling isolated. Half say they have no one to talk to about their struggles. And let’s be honest, that’s not new. Men in business were already carrying their struggles in silence. Lockdown just made it worse.

We got used to going it alone. To handling everything ourselves. And five years later, too many men are still stuck there—isolated, carrying it all, convincing themselves they should be able to handle it.

What Happens When You Don’t Process It?

Here’s the thing about stress and trauma—it doesn’t just disappear because time passes. You don’t just ‘get over’ the pressure of those years. If you don’t process it, it just buries itself deeper.

The mental health crisis among entrepreneurs didn’t start in 2020, but the past five years have fuelled it. More stress-related illnesses. More burnout. More men feeling trapped in businesses they built for freedom.

And the worst part? Most won’t talk about it. Because after all, shouldn’t you just be grateful you made it through?

So What Now?

Five years on, maybe it’s time to stop normalising burnout. To stop treating stress like it’s just the price of success. To stop carrying things in silence because we think that’s what it means to be strong.

The world shut down five years ago. But for a lot of men, it hasn’t fully reopened—not in the way it needs to.

If you’re still carrying the weight of those years, still running on survival mode, still struggling to switch off—you’re not alone. The impact is real, but so is the way forward.

This is exactly why I created Rewired for Men—for entrepreneurs like you who are ready to break out of survival mode, stop the mental exhaustion, and actually enjoy the life they’ve worked so hard to build. No therapy, no endless mindset work—just real, lasting change without reliving the past.

If this resonates, let’s talk.