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Junaid Khan, the lead singer of the band Call, is opening up about vulnerability and allowing yourself to feel and process emotions as a Pakistani man.

The singer shared a video to his Instagram page on Friday in which he spoke about the emotions he felt after a recent Call performance in Lahore. During the performance, the band performed two “very important” songs — ‘Laree Chooti’ and ‘Sab Bhula Kai’.

“They’re important or valuable because we’re very emotionally connected to them,” Khan explained. “We hugged it out on stage because we’d performed after quite a while as a band. We came backstage and Xulfi was talking about what he felt, Sultan was too — and I was quiet, trying to act normal,” Khan recalled. His bandmates even asked him why he was so quiet at the time.

Two days later, he was sitting at home and watching a video of the same performance when the dam broke and he couldn’t hold himself back. “I realised after that we men do not have the licence to really express ourselves. We train ourselves over the course of years to be strong and not really be vulnerable in front of people,” he shared.

Khan said he chose not to let out his emotions while performing, because he felt that he wouldn’t have been able to get back on stage and perform if he had let go emotionally. “But at home, in a comfortable space, when I was sitting and experiencing the performance I saw what the audience felt, what I felt, while writing that song and performing that song, it was overwhelming and I had to let it out.”

He said it’s unfortunate for men that at some point, they don’t have the licence to express themselves. “We bottle [up] our emotions, we look for that safe space where we think no one will judge us or view us as weak,” Khan said.

“I say, one should let I out — alone, anywhere, in front of people you really trust, we should not train ourselves to bottle up our emotions, we should just let it out, it’s very comforting, reliving, makes you feel free, that’s what I felt after seeing myself performing with my friends after a while.”

He ended his video with a message to all the men watching: “So guys, we have that pressure of being strong in front of people, in front of family, but it’s good to just let it out at times.”

He captioned the post, “We, as men, are taught to bottle up our emotions to maintain the perception that we are strong. I’ve been guilty of doing the same. To all the boys out there; I know we’re constantly under pressure to never look weak, but trust me, expressing yourself is one of the truest forms of strength. Whether you let it out alone or in front of the people you trust, it’s liberating.”

He also reminded his followers that vulnerability doesn’t make anyone less of a man. “It makes us human. The moment we allow ourselves to feel, we stop carrying the weight alone. That’s when real strength begins.”