I Don't Want to Talk about It
Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression
From Chapter One: Men's Hidden Depression
When I stand beside troubled fathers and sons I am often flooded with a sense
of recognition, All men are sons and, whether they know it or not, most sons are
loyal. To me, my father presented a confusing jumble of brutality and pathos. As
a boy, I drank into my character a dark, jagged, emptiness that haunted me for
close to thirty years. As other fathers have done to their sons, my
father-through the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice, the quality Of his
touch-passed the depression he did not know he had on to me, just as surely as
his father had passed it on to him -- a chain of pain, linking parent to child
across generations, a toxic legacy.
In hindsight, it is clear to me that, among other reasons, I became a
therapist so I could cultivate the skills I needed to heal my own father -- to heal
him at least sufficiently to get him to talk to me. I needed to know about his
life to help understand his brutality and lay my hatred of him to rest. At first
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