Young, Black And On The Journey To Self-Improvement
“Therapy is for white people.”
This is one of the many misconceptions about mental health care for someone who is black — especially black women. Along with this comes the dismissiveness towards our struggles. If we don’t keep our composure, it’s an attitude problem. If we’re feeling depressed, we’re not praying enough. If we’re abused, it’s our job to get up and fight it. We are strong for everyone else. We take on so much, yet a crack in our mental health isn’t taken seriously. It’s not justified.
If this battle is such a “white people thing,” then my anxiety and depression have definitely missed this memo. You’d think those two would have given me a break and flew over my cuckoo’s nest.
Hold on. I now understand the confusion. I definitely enjoyed Taylor Swift’s latest album. Damn.
However, I am black! And therapy isn’t just for white people. My pills don’t make me crazy — they’re actually making me less crazy. Contrary to incredibly problematic belief, mental health discriminates against no one! Seeking help does not diminish your strength! Hoorah!
I am young. I am black. I am a woman, and here I am struggling every day.
Strong, independent black woman. We are all born into this role without a choice. It’s as if we slide out of the womb and are given a cape and a prewritten Tyler Perry monologue. The reminders of our “responsibility” are spewed everywhere. We protect. We provide shoulders. We listen. We cannot be broken.
Except so many of us are.
I’m sitting in my first counseling session, which has been provided free to me on my college campus. I’ve arrived early, as I left the house 20 minutes earlier than necessary. Varner House is home to the counseling center on the campus of James Madison University. I live less than five minutes away and I’ve let time be my invisibility cloak. I am ashamed.
The session I’m sitting in is just my beginning. Before this, I barely had mustered up the strength to leave my room for classes. I’m involved heavily in my leadership positions; my anxiety has been putting a wall between my peers and me. I have become my mental health issues — issues that I’m supposedly not to have.
Surrounding me in this battle are the women that simultaneously hold me up and hold me back. There is my mother who, seemingly without a sweat, has overcome unemployment several times. A sister, who is a mother to three beautiful children and does it all on her own. An aunt, who buried a child, and still somehow gets out of bed every morning. A grandmother, our matriarch, carrying the family’s burdens without complaint.
Part of me is proud of the women that have paved my way and set the example. The other part wonders where my strength went. I chastise the way I’m handling myself. I have failed. I’m made to believe this is not okay.
I let myself get to the lowest place there is. I have graduated from college now. I’m unemployed. I don’t leave my bed. Dozens of messages go unanswered. My only refuge is fast food, crying and angry journaling.
I finally get tired of this. With trembling hands, I pick up the phone and make that first counseling appointment. Counseling is an hour of talking, not leading to much outside the session. I’m still struggling and I endure an anxiety attack at a job that could have been my One Good Thing. All the while, I’m holding my head as high as I can. My armor is cracked and what’s underneath its surface begins to seep out.
I am prescribed an SSRI. I take a dive before I’m feeling back to who I once was. I’m starting to decide for myself that it’s okay to not be okay.
In the beginning of this year, I start to do yoga and more exercise. I pick up my reading habit, read blogs of other struggling black women and stop hiding my flaws. This is not the powerful ending to my anxiety story, because there isn’t one. In between those gaps of progress lay tons of setbacks. There are days that I still don’t get out of bed, crying for no reason.
Societal expectations still exist. The encouragement to pray or to keep it all inside — it’s all still there. But the light at the end of the tunnel is growing. There are movements in the community. We are speaking out and fighting. Tearing down the stereotypes. We are strong, but finally, we are beginning to be strong for ourselves.
