Effectiveness of Cognitive-Attribution Therapy on Shame and Guilt Feelings of Women Exposed to Spousal Rejection in Nigeria

Abstract

Nowadays, one of the ways to reject a woman in Africa especially Nigeria is when the spouse elopes with a lady in the
Western state in the guise of seeking greener pastures. Economic depression, lack of job and general insecurity, political
instability and lack of social amenities have been attributed to reasons many men leave their home country for the Western
world for better living for self and the family; but the current trend has been abandon, neglect and eventual divorce of the
women with their children. This has brought shame and guilt to many women because of the perception of many Africans
towards divorce. This empirical study involved twenty-five women whose husbands have been overseas in the last five to ten
years and waiting to be invited over; but were later divorced. It was established that these women were suffering from guilt and
shame. The twenty-five volunteer women were subjected to twelve weeks counseling using self-developed scales that were
patterned after Cognitive-Attribution Therapy of Lewis (1993), and Shame and Guilt of Barrett (1995). The prognosis revealed
that the level of shame and guilt of the women were reduced; some of them concluded to move forward by remarrying, while
others concluded to take the incidence as fate and continue to take care of self and children. It was concluded that many
people inflict self pain on self for not being responsible for a particular occurrence, but psychological therapies such as
Cognitive-Attribution can be applied to help such individuals.