(piano music)
- If I could describe how I felt
before going to therapy in one word, lost, I think, yeah.
- Conflicted.
- Sad.
I mean, I was just really sad.
- Chaotic.
- Numb.
- It was in October my sophomore year of college.
I was at my then girlfriend's house and all of a sudden
my brain started having this downward spiral.
My chest started racing, I was having trouble breathing,
then the panic attacks kept happening.
When I started going through depression
and I wasn't my full self,
I didn't feel like there was anyone I could talk to about it
because I felt like my friends only wanted to be around me
when I was my 100% goofy, super happy self.
So, I started thinking about going to therapy.
I tried to talk myself out of it a billion times.
Therapy is for people who have big, traumatic problems,
not a 19-year-old who's depressed and can't study.
I kept discounting my own feelings, and so,
thank god I got to go in there
and talk about these fears with her.
She was like, well, how are you feeling?
And then suddenly it was just like
every thought I ever had poured out.
When you go through depression or anxiety,
you often think something had to have happened.
There had to have been an event and oh, now you're sad,
but that's not the case.
Sometimes you're just sad.
- My reason for wanting to do therapy
was partly related to just life goals
and things that I wanted to get done
and feeling that there may have been
a little bit of a stagnancy,
and it's been life changing.
One of my larger motivators
for being open about going to therapy
is the fact that I am a black man,
and I don't think that, within the community of black men,
the topic of therapy is talked about very often.
Giving other black men encouragement
that it is okay and we can do this too,
that also helps us overcome a stigma that we can't,
or we're not allowed to take care of our mental health.
There is a privilege for a lot of people.
There is a privilege of having insurance,
and you're not having to pay $150 for every session.
Yeah, the system isn't really set up
for everybody to have access to that.
That's not okay.
- So, I started going to therapy at a relatively young age.
I was around 17 years old.
I was actually diagnosed with anorexia.
Around the same times that I was diagnosed with anorexia
I was also diagnosed with depression.
My being gay played a big part in my eating disorder.
It's really easy to feel shitty about your body
as a guy in an LGBTQ community.
As a recently identified queer person
with an eating disorder, going to therapy was super helpful,
it was really essential,
and I don't know what I would've done without that.
I know people can think that going to therapy means
that you're mentally unstable.
I would sort of try to erase those qualms if you can.
It is literally just like talking to a friend
whose job is to just listen to you and talk to you
and provide objective advice.
- My senior year, I was taking 21 and 24 credit hours,
and I had two very close friends get get killed.
So, I went to therapy and I started to talk to them.
It was a very cathartic feeling
because it allowed me to grieve.
It was very important for me
to have another black woman therapist.
It feels good to be able to speak to a therapist
and relay certain things
and they don't think that you're making it up.
It's good to just be like,
you've been through this too, I'm sure.
So, having an older black woman be able to talk to me,
but also walk me through my healing
was a very beautiful thing.
Learning to go through the feels.
So often we're sort of taught to suppress them
and keep it moving and act like we're okay.
If you're not okay, that's fine.
- I was grieving from having lost my father.
A month after that,
I lost my grandfather and moved away from my family.
I'd left my job that I loved and I didn't have a job.
It was just hard to even get out of the house.
I was finally like okay, I need to do something for myself,
get off my ass and do something.
It was very helpful for me because I felt like
I had this person that I was accountable to.
I don't know, everything kind of just changed after that.
Obviously therapy deals with people
all over the spectrum of mental health.
You don't have to suffer from anxiety
or depression to go to therapy.
Even if you don't think you benefit,
even if you don't think you qualify,
even if you think you're super happy and uber blessed,
I think everyone would benefit from therapy.
- Capable, I feel really capable.
- Shit, I feel...
I feel empowered.
- Better and stronger.
- Liberating.
- I felt validation.
I think it's the best thing you can do for yourself.
(uplifting music)
(squeaking)