How Therapy Helped Me Find My Voice
Artwork by Richard Kahwagi. Photos by Michael Dziedzic and Jeffery Erhunse on Unsplash
As I reflect on my mental health journey through the years, I realise that I’ve come a very long way, however it wasn’t always like this. There were times when it seemed impossible to receive the support I desperately needed. Looking after my mental health was challenging due to the lack of services available ten to fifteen years ago. To add to this, the services that did exist always had very long waiting lists.
On one occasion when I asked my doctor for one-to-one counselling sessions, I was sent to a group session instead, which I found really uncomfortable. There were around ten people in the room and I couldn’t help but come to my own conclusions concerning the potential weight of everyone’s problems. I would always wonder if mine were bigger or smaller than theirs and if I concluded that they were the latter, I’d question my decision to seek help. Surely, if my mental health issues weren’t as major as everyone else’s, why couldn’t I just sweep everything under the rug and go back to life as normal?
The idea of sweeping everything under the rug was a major part of my conditioning growing up. I wasn’t taught to express my emotions so I really struggled to articulate myself. Aside from this, growing up in a single parent, West African household presents its own unique challenges. From the moment children are born, there are a wealth of unrealistic expectations placed on them. Additionally, we may also find ourselves on the receiving end of some incredibly toxic narratives that have been passed down the generations, narratives that later prove to be detrimental to our mental health and wellbeing. One being the idea that children or young people shouldn’t have anything to be unhappy about. As I found myself becoming more and more unhappy in my mid to late teens, I felt guilty because I thought that having these feelings made me a bad child or an ungrateful child, so I would act out. A lot of tension, anger and frustration had taken up residence in my heart and it was only a matter of time before I became accustomed to feeling and being misunderstood.
Something else I hadn’t anticipated in my mental health journey was how I would be treated by healthcare professionals. As a Black woman, it took some time to acknowledge that I won’t be able to navigate certain spaces in the same way that my white counterparts do. Although I’ve never been made to feel uncomfortable deliberately by a mental health professional, a slight contrast in understanding and relatability was always present as they were white and didn’t understand my lived experience. My second therapist was Turkish and although she did her best at the time, I didn’t really feel seen. I remember talking to her about something that I was enduring on an almost daily basis, and when she had taken it all in, she proceeded to minimise my experiences. It wasn’t intentional, it was simply a lack of awareness because when I mentioned the same thing to my third therapist, who is Black, she understood exactly where I was coming from and provided me with the tools I needed to navigate that particular situation with my best interests in mind.
Black people are four times as likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act than their white counterparts, yet the underrepresentation of Black people in mental health professions continues to be a concern. Representation matters and in order for things to improve within the Black community concerning mental health, we need more Black therapists. It was only until I found a therapist via The Black, African and Asian Therapy Network back in 2019 that I realised the extent to which I’d been doing myself a disservice. Having a Black therapist gave me the freedom I needed to truly express myself. It validated my experiences and I no longer had to over explain myself or hide anything in fear of being misunderstood. Therapy was finally the safe space I had always craved and as each session came to an end, I felt like I was finally starting to understand myself a lot more than I did before. Therapy doesn’t come cheap but when I think about everything I have learned and how it has allowed me to have control over my life for the first time in a long time, it is a small price to pay. It’s worth it because it gives me the freedom I need to be myself.
Understanding myself always felt unattainable because society has never taught Black women to put themselves first. A lot of the messages shared aren’t created with us or our wellbeing in mind. Instead, Black women have been subjected to a number of negative stereotypes that go back as far as slavery. In spite of this, now Black women aren’t afraid to take pride in who we are and understand how important it is to be ok. This has encouraged me to use my platforms to talk openly about my own mental health journey and how I navigate with my wellness in mind. Many people in the Black community continue to shy away from conversations about mental health. I can only hope that in time the stigma will be reduced so we can all truly be our very best selves.
To find out more about talking therapies and how you can access those services visit: https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/talking-therapies-and-counselling/nhs-talking-therapies/
