Then vs now (different mentality)

As a young boy from Africa, I remember whenever I saw any Hollywood movie that had to do with depression and people having to go see a therapists to feel better, myself and my friends would laugh at the idea because things like seeing a therapists and feeling depressed felt like the white people thing. Back then I never heard anyone dying of depression or anyone saying that they had an appointment with their therapist over here.

Back then I doubt being a therapists was even considered a career over here because a Nigerian man would rather go to church to talk to his pastor rather than pay a total stranger money just to sit and talk about their problems...and that is probably why I still haven't met any one who claims to be a therapist even till today. Of course there are therapists in the country but those kind of things are what we call rich people problem, we don't have it around here.

_{Photo by Priscilla Du Preez}

Anyway the reason why I'm talking about therapy and all that is because in those same movies, there are scenes where they try to explain to us that most people tend to exhibit the same character they saw their parents exhibit while growing up. So if your dad was a drunk or he always hit your mom, there's a possibility of you turning out a drunk or hitting your girlfriend/wife.

And of course I didn't believe that too because I felt that everyone is in charge of what they do and that we all know what is right and wrong, so growing up in an abusive home shouldn't make us abusive later on but I was wrong. Luckily for me, I didn't grow up in an abusive home.

My dad never for once raised his hands on my mom, the one thing he did however, whenever he was upset with her was not talk to her or eat her food. So whenever my mom did something wrong, my dad would go mute and not talk to her for days, and then my mom would recruit us to assist her in asking for forgiveness.

Most times it would be myself, my mom and my brothers all in the living room saying "daddy sorry" and we don't even know what mom did wrong. Thinking about it now makes me smile but that was how things were done at my home. They most times never told us what they were quarrelling about, our job was just to beg on their behalf. And of course I didn't know that all of that behavior from my dad was going to rub off on me but it did.

Back when I was in a relationship, I found myself not talking to my girlfriend for days whenever she did something wrong. Of course I would first make sure she knows she had done something wrong and then I go mute which really isn't a great way to deal with things like that because most times it's always better to talk things through, but unfortunately that was what I saw growing up and now I can't stop it.

I could go more than a month without talking to her just to prove a point. It's a weird way to punish someone but it's way better than me putting my hands on her.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to pass out there, especially to people who still have the same mentality on therapists and all that, well y'all should take your mental health serious and if you feel like you do need to see a therapists, please do. Those people are trained professionals and they do real work..so it's definitely not a waste of money.