Black Mental Health
My Birth Story
I love that in addition to Mother’s Day, May has become a month of acknowledging the many ways that motherhood affects our mental health and adjustment to motherhood. I only knew this journey vicariously through friends, and of course clients. Once my husband and I decided to start our family I experienced my own journey,…
Read MoreTrauma & PTSD
Trauma has become somewhat of a buzzword lately in social media and other platforms, however when I meet clients for the first time many may not see their own experiences, either from childhood or later in adulthood as ‘traumatic’. As you begin or consider counseling it helps to have an understanding of a variety of…
Read MoreWholeness to Wellness
Happy new year! My blog will likely be new to most and there’s good reason for that. It has taken me nearly two years since finishing my doctorate degree to even get enough clarity to consistently work on the many projects that I’ve had in my head, including promoting the blog. I really had to…
Read MoreWhat is DBT & is it for Black Women?
Trauma is one of the main issues I specialize in & I implement many of Marsha Linehan’s (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) DBT interventions (Barlow, 2001; Neacsiu et al., 2012). This therapy integrates concepts from different counseling theories and has very specific behavioral techniques to address the severe emotional responses related to past trauma and relationship/attachment issues.…
Read MoreBeing a ‘Strong Black Woman’ & Our pain
The mind and body are connected right, so here I am talking about our physical health and medical treatment. Increasingly in social media articles & videos we have seen more about the experiences of Black women and our health. Celebrities such as Serena Williams & Beyoncéshared their traumatic childbirth experiences. As a result there has…
Read MoreHow counseling African Americans is different
There are a few essentials to achieving success in counseling with African American clientele. Below are some keys to counseling African-Americans most effectively: 1) Be solution-focused. It’s important that counselors are solution-focused when it comes to counseling African-Americans. In my recent dissertation research with African American counselors, some of the most significant factors were overcoming…
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