By Oluwaseun Oloruntegbe

Nigerians deal with a shitload of emotionally traumatic issues that are never addressed, let alone resolved. For starters, a good percentage of Nigerians grew up in abusive homes with angry and frustrated parents. Many homes are fully devoid of parent-child interaction or any form of healthy communication. Parents speak at children not with them. They turn to physical abuse when the child talks back. But you can't completely blame the parents. They grew up in even worse conditions and don't know any better. When I was growing up, my Mom was a loving tyrant whose words and actions were enough to motivate a child to greatness and at the same time scar him for life.

Where am I going with this? We don't communicate enough in Nigeria and we most definitely don't acknowledge our emotions and emotional shortcomings let alone try to understand or resolve them. We then live the rest of our lives like zombies unaware of the incredible weight of unresolved emotions, stress, and trauma that we carry. What we do, and this is an instinctive and survival strategy, is deflect the manifestations of our own issues on others. This is why we're so angry and lash out at every opportunity.

We never had family meetings, outings, or vacations when I was growing up. The only places we went together as a family was Church and our farm. Now I realised how distant we all were even though we lived together. There were just no avenues for us to express our emotions and concerns with each other. And my parents are both practicing Christians and very educated.

I had some deep conversations with my Mom when she recently visited about addressing emotions in a healthy manner. I don't think she understood what I was saying. She probably thinks I'm becoming too white.

On a side note, it wasn't until I left Nigeria that I realised pets are supposed to be friendly. Even our animals are angry and scared of us because of our hostility towards them.