Get therapy if you need it.  As a psychologist, I want you to know that you might be surprised by who gets therapy – brilliant, high-powered, high achieving, successful people!  They give themselves permission to get therapy, so that they can live fulfilling lives.  Getting therapy is not a sign of weakness or sickness in the debased kind of way that so many people still conceive of it; instead, it is a sign of maturity, strength, and self-love.  Doing something therapeutic for your mind is not any different from doing something therapeutic (like exercising and eating nutritiously) for your heart.  Good mental health is just as important as good physical health.  In the future we might even start getting an annual “psychological” just like one gets an annual physical examination.  Sigmund Freud called his brand of psychotherapy “the talking cure” because just having a dispassionate professional to talk to, who doesn’t impose stifling judgment or sanction, can often be highly satisfying, liberating, and even life-sustaining.  So, don’t be afraid to do it.

If you were somewhere suffering the signs and symptoms of a heart attack or stroke, and did nothing about it, people would consider that “crazy.”  So, if you are suffering mightily, mentally or emotionally, why shouldn’t you be able to access help in that situation?  Think about it.  I’m a firm believer that mental health is like physical health.  Just as your body can be compromised with a cold, or the flu, or something worse that requires medical attention, so, too, can the mind get compromised, breaking down your usual immunities for combating mental and emotional anguish and distress.  Nowadays, people laughingly talk about needing “a mental health day” off from work, just as you would take a few days off if you were physically ill.  That concept is always met with knowing laughter and affirmative nodding, because the truth is that people are really on to something even though they say it in jest.  Sometimes we do need to take some time off or engage in a course of psychological treatment.

If we look at mental health on a continuum, at one end of the spectrum is excellent mental health and at the opposite end is poor mental health, but most of us lie somewhere in between those two opposite poles.  Few people are completely at either end of the spectrum; that is, few people are in very poor mental health at any given time and few people are in the absolute best of mental health, no matter how they try to insist that they are.  Often, they are just “fronting.”  (I had to chuckle when one of my male students emphatically asserted in an undergraduate psychology class that, “Nobody is ever in the best mental health!”)

Again, most of us lie somewhere in between the two poles, but any one of us can shift – going in either direction – on any given day for a whole host of reasons.  So, you’ll hear people say, “I should have just stayed in the bed today,” or “I knew when I woke up today that this would be a bad day.”  Or people will say, “I’m going through it” meaning that for a couple of days or even weeks things just “aren’t right.”  Or people will say, “I’ve been kinda depressed,” or “I’ve got the blues,” but no one really wants to entertain those kind of comments, because we resist the idea that something could be wrong mentally or emotionally, and, in any event, we rationalize that the person will be “okay.”  Sometimes, we even, gratuitously, assert to our loved one, friend, or associate, “All, you’ll be alright.”  We, mindlessly, say that to people all the time even when we have no idea about the depths of a person’s psychological pain.  That is why we are so shocked when beautiful sisters, like the talented songstress, Phyllis Hyman, take their own lives, when they destroy their gifts by medicating their pain with alcohol or drugs like Whitney Houston, or when they burn through life fast like Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes.

The brain is an organ of the body and, just like any other organ, it can, to use the vernacular, “get out of whack.”  Looking back on your legacy as a person of African descent, Ancient Africans believed that the mind, body, and spirit/soul should be healthy for one to have overall good health.  Like a car, we should be firing on all cylinders.  So, if one thing – say the body – is out of whack – it can throw the whole system out of sync, thereby making the whole system unhealthy.  If your mental state is not particularly healthy doesn’t that “cylinder” deserve attention?

As Black women, often no matter how smart, pretty, charismatic, and wonderful you are, your lives can still be stinted and circumscribed in so many ways, on so many levels, for so many reasons.  Sure, we are socialized to “shrug” any and all problems “off,” to “just keep on keeping on,” and to “keep the faith,” but we are only human just like everyone else.  So we need a new paradigm.  In fact, your brilliance and dynamism, Black woman, seems to be more than this society wants in a Black woman.  So, you end up internalizing your hurts and sorrows and chasing a cupcake, instead of a legitimate dream that could have and would have been fulfilled in a more just society.  Then health and spirit, and even sanity, can become compromised because you know that you are not living your life as you had previously envisioned it, or as you deserve to live it.

Sometimes, having someone to talk to is a beautiful thing.  It’s okay.  There are places like the YMCA, county hospitals, and centers for women that provide good low-cost therapy.  Get therapy, if you need it, because you are ill (e.g. clinically depressed or bipolar), grieving the death of a loved one, experiencing existential angst, having a hard time adjusting to a major, unsettling transition, having a difficult time managing intense emotions, dealing with an unaddressed longstanding trauma (e.g. childhood sexual abuse or adult rape), experiencing drug or alcohol addiction, diagnosed with a major chronic physical illness, suffering from a life altering permanent disability, or if you just need someone to talk to in order to sort out some things.  Get what you need, without fear, shame, apology, or need for approbation, because, trust me, many of your White sisters have no problem accessing therapy, and I am talking about the well-educated, wealthy ones with high-powered careers.  There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t recognize your humanity, too, and get whatever you need to be happier and more successful in life – even if it’s therapy.

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This essay is from the book:  Surviving, Healing, and Evolving: Essays of Love, Compassion, Healing, and Affirmation for Black People © by Dr. Rhonda Sherrod

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A Few Good Books I Recommend For You to Read

Love's Executioner and The Gift of Therapy, both by Irvin Yalom (and both are classic works in the field of psychotherapy).