"What we repress returns-healing begins when silence is broken."
Every year, millions silently carry unspoken grief, stress, and trauma that slowly eat away at their bodies, their relationships, and their communities. We call it depression, hypertension, diabetes, or "bad nerves"-but at its root, much of it is emotional indigestion. What we swallow but never digest becomes sickness.
This book unmasks emotional indigestion as a silent, chronic illness-one that is claiming lives as surely as heart disease or cancer. Drawing on Freud's psychoanalysis, Jung's depth psychology, and the lived realities of communities across Africa, Europe, the Americas, and beyond, it reveals how silence, stigma, and repression are destroying health at both personal and public levels.
Through powerful stories, case studies, and a global health lens, it offers not just diagnosis but a path to healing. You will learn why silence kills, how emotional pain becomes inherited, and what it takes-individually and collectively-to break free.
This is more than a book-it is a lifeline. If you have ever felt that what you carry inside is too heavy, too hidden, or too shameful, this work will remind you that healing begins the moment silence is broken.
Why do so many men suffer in silence, bound by expectations of strength and control, yet carrying unspoken emotional pain? Why do women, in villages and cities alike, find their identities tied to marriages, cultural norms, or careers-leaving parts of themselves hidden, repressed, or fragmented?
This book offers a psychoanalytic exploration of how attachment, repression, transference, and ego dissolution operate within African contexts of family, marriage, and identity. Dr Branny Mthelebofu applies Freud's and Jung's frameworks to real-world case reflections-from rural women in arranged marriages, to educated professionals in Johannesburg, London, New York City, Lagos, Pretoria, to men negotiating fragile masculinities in the North West.
By unpacking the hidden dynamics of repression and emotional pain, this work challenges conventional understandings of mental health in patriarchal and communal societies. It further illuminates how even therapists and helping professionals remain vulnerable to their own "emotional indigestions," perpetuating cycles of unresolved trauma. Part story, part psychology, part healing guide, it offers not only insight but also practical tools to reclaim selfhood
The book closes with a practical workbook section, designed for both individuals and professionals, offering tools to identify repression patterns, work through transference dynamics, and reclaim authentic selfhood.
Scholarly yet accessible, deeply local yet globally relevant, this book is essential reading for students, researchers, therapists, and anyone concerned with the intersections of psychology, culture, and emotional health.
