The Therapist’s Therapy – a Journey to Discovering Mental Health

 

I remember the first time somebody spoke to me about the importance of my mental health. Extra points if you can guess what race they were. I suppose I had kind of heard of mental health issues but under the guise of "demon possession" and spirits that needed to be cast out by prayer. As an African Christian, I’d only ever heard of mental issues in this way, from television to family gossip. It was not something a “normal” person like me had to think about. But then all of a sudden, I did have to think about it. I had to think about it a lot.

 

After experiencing sexual assault at 16, my favourite teacher, my school and the police collectively decided that therapy was thing for me. I had no idea how to process the ways I was starting to feel about myself and my own self-worth, but it still didn’t make sense to me. “Therapy? Black people don't go to therapy!” Of course, I didn't tell any of my friends I was going. As far as they knew I got to miss a class a week for 6 weeks and that belief was perfectly fine with me.

Therapy was odd, really odd. I felt like all I did was sit there to be picked apart by a complete stranger who had no idea how difficult life had been for me. Surprisingly enough for me, I was really transparent with her. There was something quite freeing about being able to talk to someone about what had happened to me without fear of hurting them in the process. To my dismay, she suggested the assault was my fault and spoke loosely about promiscuity. I was a 16-year-old virgin (prior to the incident) and her comments confused me. I felt she was conflating me with perhaps another of her Black clients, because that just wasn't me. I still stand by that. Microaggressions and unconscious bias in therapy exist, despite what you may assume, therapy isn't always a safe space. 

The therapy ended and I was glad to see the back of the old white woman that thought she was better than me. This was of course my projection, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel that way. I spent years thinking how ridiculous therapy was until it was time to pick an undergraduate course and all of a sudden, my rage inspired me. I remembered how freeing it felt to have the space to talk, I was just certain that it should have been facilitated by someone else. Someone who understood me, or at least attempted to. I wanted to be the therapist that young girls like me came to. Someone people could be vulnerable with whilst they were hurting. Someone who would listen to them. A real therapist. 

Almost 10 years later, I can say the road to becoming a psychotherapist has not been an easy one. After my undergraduate, I thought I would move straight onto my masters but was told that I would have to do a postgraduate diploma first. I did that and then the journey to the master’s certification began. Ironically, I began the first term of the final year this month and after 200 hours of seeing clients and being a real therapist, I am so much more appreciative of my journey. Several of my clients I've been seeing for over a year and the growth has been beautiful to see but to be able to cultivate a safe space for people to do so is the most rewarding thing I have done outside of motherhood. 

I also run a mental health organisation called PSYCOOL pronounced cycle, because mental health is a journey another passion birthed through pain, quite literally. 2017, I suffered a miscarriage and entered the darkest period of my life. It took a while to climb out of that space but once I had I was still left longing for a baby. I needed something to call my own. Ignited by my grieving, mental health advocacy was now more important to me than ever. And so, PSYCOOL was born. We use Instagram to connect with our audience, reaching people in a way which is not out of the norm is incredibly important to me. Scrolling Instagram can often leave us with toxic feelings and so we try to uplift our followers’ feeds. Our spaces on and offline are platforms where discussions around mental health can be had in a safe environment, with people with real experiences talking about their real lives. We've had events based on motherhood, manhood, social media and so much more. I'm looking forward to returning to in person events but I'm learning not to be too harsh on myself, we are in a pandemic after all!

I'll end by saying that mental health help is disproportionately unavailable to people of Black and ethnic minority origins but there are people like myself fighting to change this. The mental health system within itself is rife with unconscious bias, budget cuts and evidence-based practice that limits the good work that can be done. By the good work that can be done, I mean that people may find themselves on waiting lists for months and be signed off of therapy after 6 sessions, feeling as though the therapy was not substantial enough. In many cases, affordable therapy via the NHS also means the client has no real control over the therapist or the modality. I believe therapy is not one-size fits all and you should be able to voice if it isn’t working, however funding just does not allow for this freedom. It is important to know that people are advocating for you. In the hospitals, In the GPs and in the psychiatric wards. Mental health is not a trending topic, it is our livelihoods personified and we owe it to ourselves to take it seriously, whatever that looks like for us. I could add statistics but in being authentic to myself, I’d like to express that mental health statistics are often driven by funding applications and so I am always slightly sceptical, but as a practitioner and someone who has been in therapy myself, I am also aware that they are not always reflective of the real picture. We are more than tick boxes and I work to remind us all that our mental health requires the attention it deserves, without barriers.

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/

 
Precious Tawia

Precious is a Mother, trainee Psychodynamic Psychotherapist, Assessor and Mental Health Advocate. As she has been working in mental health spaces for over 5 years, and training for the last 10, it is more than a passion. Precious calls mental health advocacy her "calling". Bringing people together to create safe spaces and really live authentically is something Precious champions and she is currently looking at ways to bring people together again after a very challenging few years.

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