Decolonizing Mental Health and Healing
What does it mean to heal? Is it a privilege? Is it attending therapy, meditation, yoga practices, self help seminars, and using essential oil? In many of these spaces and experiences, Black folks may not feel welcome nor have access. For generations, we've needed to focus on survival before caring for our emotional and spiritual self. Black Lives Matter protests & COVID-19 exposed our need to care for ourselves, and the difficulties we face in functioning in a world that was not designed for us. Redefining healing has become essential this new year and beyond.
Healing begins once we are conscious of how our traumas, generational curses, triggers, and life experiences influence how we interact with and interpret the world. With this consciousness, healing can happen once we are able to manage our inherent patterns and belief systems through coping skills. We typically go on this healing journey once we have a traumatic life event, adversity, or we notice that life patterns such as recurring unhealthy relationships.
Healing is an objective and life long experience. We must consider our interests, environment, resources, and background to understand what we need to heal. The Black healing experience is separate and unique from any other person of color. Why? Well let’s look at the history.
Our traumas have been passed down for centuries through enslavement, which has been redesigned into inequities, oppression, and racism towards Black communities. As a result, we have had less opportunity to understand how trauma impacts us, so our wounds are covered by the masks of violence, addiction, self loathing, emotional neglect, and abuse.
Our wounds are being exploited in a society where we are told our skin is too dark, hair too big and kinky, and bodies are not beautiful. Our culture appropriated. Conditioned to not to trust our fellow brothers and sisters. “We are invisible, not good enough, our lives do not matter…”
This narrative is often translated into many spaces including the mental health space. The traditional treatment models do not typically represent our communities, access to therapy is limited, Black therapists are scarce or burnt out, or we believe therapy is not for us.
I encourage healers of all types and backgrounds to redefine, reclaim, decolonize, and ultimately create a new normal for mental health and healing with the following practices:
Self Disclosure & Eliminating the Power Dynamic
Mental health professionals are trained to not self disclose as it may affect the client negatively. Training is often based on an old school of thought that centers around the therapist as the expert, and therefore, creating a power dynamic. Effective mental health treatment should adjust based on modern and cultural needs. With an increased number of Black therapists being sought out following the George Floyd protests and overall unjust political climate, it became essential for clients to not feel alone or marginalized in the therapy room. Treatment should continue to transform into the clinician and client connecting over shared experiences, and as humans.
Connect Our Communities through Collective Healing
Black communities have experienced collective trauma from racial injustice and oppression, yet we continue to be separate in some ways based on where we live, how we grew up, colorism, and perceived whiteness. While individual healing is important, collective healing is needed to remove the divide and implement support among our race and communities. It takes a village to come together, facilitate change, and feel supported. As mental health professionals, we can create spaces for healing within our clients and communities. Some examples include community events, group therapy, panels, and collectively supporting a local black owned business.
Reclaiming Blackness and Decolonizing Professionalism
Have you ever felt obligated to hide your hair’s true texture for a job interview? Wore clothes to this interview that you would never wear on a regular work day? Code switched? Consider every way that you have changed aspects of who you are for a job. These hidden aspects are usually culturally or racially related in order to be perceived more “professional” and “good enough” for the job. Hiding our true selves is not professionalism, it is racist-based assimilation. As Black professionals, how can we decolonize professionalism? It begins with reclaiming our Blackness by honoring our authentic selves, being in professional and personal spaces that accept us as we are, and upholding this value throughout our relationships, careers, and businesses.
Accessing Healing on Multiple Levels
Even though healing is depicted as a privilege, healing does not have to be a luxury. It is a human right. The levels of healing are physical, financial, relational, and mental/emotional/spiritual. Here’s some examples of each:
Physical: eating healthy, exercising, body acceptance, body positive
Financial: career (exploration), access to jobs, money to survive and thrive
Relational: family, friends, colleagues. Are these healthy and what you need? If not, why? How do you change that and learn what healthy relationships are for you? Do you have a support system that allows you to thrive? Do you have authentic connections outside of digital means?
Spiritual: finding life’s purpose, exploring nature through gardening, hiking or walking in greenery, being mindful by finding stillness and setting intentions,
Mental/Emotional: self care, understanding and acceptance of who you are and how you operate in the world, managing mental health issues, practicing boundaries in all areas of life disconnecting from tech and social media
There continue to be barriers that Black communities face when accessing healing. As healers, community organizers, and mental health professionals, we can lead the way in slowly but surely: eliminating the stigma of mental health services and redefine Black healing; allow mental health and healing to become accessible, inclusive, and culturally sensitive; and create safe and accepting environment where our cultural, societal, and racial experiences can be validated and celebrated.
This blog was inspired by the amazing clinicians and healers I met at Break the Silence: Continuing the Conversation on Race and Mental Health.
Written by: Cicely Green, LPC, RYT-200