Mantalk: Real men don't need therapy or do they?

In 2021 I checked into therapy. By that time, I was hanging by my fingernails on top of KICC. I was a wreck—mentally, financially, physically. My body had put me on notice, issuing me a warning that it was an authority not to be questioned. To get help, I was paying through my nose, dipping into my dwindling savings—therapy is hella expensive—charged per hour. Before then, I had tried to macho my way through life, burying my issues under some hand-me-down carpet I inherited from my father, who un/surprisingly, showed up in my therapy sessions as a strawman. Clearly, I had issues I needed to work out.

Till then, I knew therapy was for weak souls who can’t handle their business. What do you mean that you, a man with a respectable job, a wife in Nairobi (and another in Naivasha) need therapy? To me, my distaste for it was borne out of a misunderstanding about what therapy is for. In my books, therapy was a crutch for those who were broken and couldn’t ‘fix themselves’—so to speak. 

When I started my sessions, I almost vomited in my mouth. My therapist—Peter—who has the same name as my dad, funny about how life works, prodded me with a scalpel of sharp words, cutting just deep enough to spill decades of buried pain: my childhood, my self-identity, “what it means to be loved”, my feelings—oh, God. Or as Gen Z would say, it was giving me the ick. This is not what I had signed for. I wanted a troubleshooter, not a Jedi feelings whisperer. On that chaise lounge, I could feel sadness sneaking up on me, my communication skills—or lack thereof—a man who makes a living from selling words, rendered speechless. I was emotionally naked, and with nowhere to run, I faced the man I had been angry at for years: me. I’m already a naturally introverted person, so I say less by default and design. This? This was a personal slight and life’s greatest sleight of hand. Me? In therapy? Confirming that maybe I wasn’t all that. Maybe I ain’t all that.

It took me another three months to tell my closest friends that I was in therapy. Some still don’t know up to today. Kenyan men have taught me that Kenyan men don’t go for therapy. Just vibes and Inshallah. Or alcohol. And nyama. Too many people think that doing without therapy is a sign of strength. I think it takes courage to examine yourself and your emotional tools and decide, I can learn more.

I learned that I had pent-up issues (who doesn’t?). I learned of anxiety, and triggers, and how, we usually meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it. The devil on my shoulder wouldn’t go out without a squirm, no. I was struggling to see the wood for the trees. I was this close to giving up quicker than you can yell “toxic masculinity!” He whispered. I ignored. He nudged. I dodged. He was in my brain; I was living in my head. Accustomed to stonewalling, and silent treatments, I learned how to voice my wants. My needs. It’s a lifelong fight, even today, I struggle with assertiveness. But I am learning. I am here by grace (and some would say for Grace.) Cheap joke aside, I needed to get out of it, and I wasn’t about to leave money on the table. I moved out of my head, if not for me, then to give Grace some more headspace. Therapy gave me that (space, not Grace you bimbo!).

Therapy, however, is to men what accountability is to government officials—pardon the tautology. Too many men are walking these Nairobi streets with unresolved issues, years of underlying traumas the invisible hand in their dealings. I told you I stopped asking people how they are doing because I realised they are not doing well. I am not ready to lap up their decades of pain with my ears. Not in the current economy—or the next one. My people say it’s not the job of the goat to check whether the lion has eaten. 

As the lights dim in your darkening head space, your self-esteem grazes the ground, until the loud voices became indecipherable ribbons of air. Pain is a strange feeling. For some, it galvanises. For most, it crashes. You know that alone in a room full of people maxim? It’s a thing. Long days needed short glasses; I’d tell myself. Maybe that’s what you too tell yourself. I understand. 

While researching therapy, I stumbled upon a 1980 study published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology that found that women were more likely to reveal things about themselves to intimate friends while men were more likely to reveal things about themselves to strangers and acquaintances (Which explains why I am here, me emoting, you digging for my deep secrets. Win-win). Sharing confides intimacy, intimacy confides a need to get help, which goes against the credo of being a man—essentially, the absence of a need for help.

Men treat going to therapy the same way they buy condoms: they’d rather not get one. Now I understand why someone’s daughter always wants me to ask: “How was your day?” This is *free* therapy for her, with the extra bonus of us breaking physician-patient privilege when we later take matters to bed if you know what I mean. 

Kenya’s average crude national suicide death rate is estimated at 6.1 per 100,000 population with a male-to-female ratio of 3:1. Men have grown up learning strength as a coping mechanism since it is easier than self-awareness. I too used to believe therapy was for weeds and weirdos; overthinkers and navel-gazers who couldn’t just enjoy life and were preoccupied with the “meaning” of it. “Don’t take yourself too seriously, no one else does!” was my mantra. Until it wasn’t.

Those 12 months changed my life. Maybe you can’t afford it, but talking, is, for many people, a key step in blotting the repression of past traumas. While you are reading this, I will be on my annual pilgrimage to the Coast where I go to the beach and just scream for five minutes because Weeuh! It is easier to find a virgin in a maternity ward than make an (honest) living in Kenya. That’s not a sentence you ever think you’re going to say. But this is our mecca, and someone has to throw the stones.  It’s not a magic bullet. This is my catharsis. Therapy gives you answers as to the origins of your behaviour and feelings but does not provide a blueprint for change. Only you can do that. We as Kenyans need a collective therapy session.

Ahem: What do you call a group of men together? A podcast! But, really, the real answer should be therapy. Or exorcism.

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