So back in January as some of you may know I wrote my first post about mental health, particularly my experience with anxiety. In that post, I spoke about how I would be starting Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which I did start a few weeks after. I think it’ll be positive for me to give an update on what I learned from the therapy. For those of you who don’t know CBT deals especially with anxiety or depression. It helps tackle the root causes of it, changing your thoughts and behaviour, helping you to think more positively. I’ve dealt with anxiety for a while, and last year I wrote about dealing with panic attacks, constant low moods and isolating myself.

Going into therapy is a big step for anyone to do, no one likes to feel vulnerable and not many of us feel comfortable with the idea of opening up to a complete stranger.  I kept trying to tell myself I can get out of this “phase” on my own, but I tried and I was just sinking into an even bigger hole. As a young black girl, coming from a family that has dismissed mental health and swept it under the rug at times it is difficult to want to seek help. Black females are deemed as strong, but in being that it gets lonely and many of us don’t really have an outlet to express ourselves. That’s one of the reasons why I never spoke about what I was going through to hardly anyone. I felt as though I could deal with it by myself. But by doing this, we hurt ourselves.

So, therapy was a big step for me, my experience with therapy was positive. It taught me a lot about myself and helped me identify very self-destructive behaviours and thoughts. Your thoughts and behaviours are linked. Negative thoughts exude negative behaviours. Surprisingly I felt comfortable talking to a ‘stranger’ because It felt like there was no judgment involved and that I finally had an outlet.

I wanted particularly to work on my thoughts, I’m a natural overthinker in general and a worrier and I tend to overanalyse a lot of things. Now add anxiety and negative thoughts to those personality traits, that’s a recipe for disaster lol.

CBT was very helpful for that, the focus was on my thinking and changing these negative thoughts into positive ones. But what I also learned from therapy is in order for you to grow and to make positive changes you really have to you have to sit with your emotions. My therapist told me if you feel anxious, that’s ok, sit with it, accept it, feel it. Instead of looking for destructive ways to cope, just sit with your feelings. And once I started to sit with my anxiety or when I felt down or low I understood it, I worked out why I was feeling that way and it helped me to deal with it more positively. Rather than me start doing things to distract myself or start with obsessive-compulsive behaviours which I used to do. When you sit with your feelings you don’t bring them with you, let it go at that moment by allowing yourself to feel these emotions and by not judging yourself in the process. It can feel uncomfortable doing this, but it’s important because then you won’t carry these negative feelings with you, you let them go naturally and they won’t manifest into something bigger and more self-destructive. It ultimately makes room for positive thoughts, helping you create a positive space.

I did therapy for a while, I stopped but I will go back into therapy again in a few months because I still feel like there’s a lot more for me to learn about myself and I really want to unravel and get to the root causes of my thoughts and behaviours. I recommend therapy to anyone, it’s positive and it’s healthy to seek help. Your mental health is so important and it should not be ignored, many of us can benefit from therapy. You shouldn’t feel ashamed for wanting to better yourself. I also want to stress the importance of therapy for those in the black community.

Thank you for reading.