“Cultural humility involves understanding the complexity of identities — that even in sameness there is difference — and that a clinician will never be fully competent about the evolving and dynamic nature of a patient's experiences.”
Dr. Shamaila Khan
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) continues to deliver the message that “You Are Not Alone”. The clinicians at Anchored Hope Therapy passionately believe in this message as well. We are available to offer support and help you put your mental health first in a way that honors the courage it takes to ask for help as well as acknowledging needs through a lens of competence and humility.
Our clients are the experts of their own experiences. We, as therapy providers, do our best to act as guides to support client healing in a way that honors who they are, where they come from, and how they identify. We consider ourselves privileged to witness this healing. We are committed to acknowledging what we do not know and working towards improving the care we provide to our clients to ensure it is accessible, authentic, and free from bias.
The number of people seeking out mental health treatment has increased rapidly over the last year and for good reason. We are all currently managing concurrent pandemics. Amid a global health crisis and worldwide pandemic, mental health issues are at an all time high. Acknowledging and dismantling systemic racism, balancing job and financial insecurity, processing grief and loss, working from home while balancing childcare/virtual learning, social isolation, and addiction are amid stressors we have endured not just this year, but are particularly at the forefront of our minds and experiences in the last year.
In a recent article written for the NY Times, Adam Grant discusses the concept of “languishing”. He credits Corey Keyes for coining the term to describe “those who weren’t in crisis, but also weren’t thriving.” Grant refers to languishing as “the neglected middle child of mental health” and “the void between depression and flourishing”.
Languishing describes the place between not exhibiting outright mental health symptoms but is also not functioning at one hundred percent or feeling like themselves. This could be any of us, especially right now when we continue to feel isolated and disconnected.
Often people wait until they are truly suffering to access care. We may not notice the need for support until we are in a place of despair. We often find ourselves functioning on autopilot and “going through the motions” to accomplish what must get done and not taking the time to notice the need to attend to our mental state. Chronic stress and trauma also keeps us in this state and perpetuates “survival mode”. This can feel like a life of putting out fires.
Now, more than ever, we need to find ways to make our mental health a priority. One way to do this may be to slow down and check in with yourself more frequently. To pay attention to the signs that we may be languishing, even if we are successfully making it through the day, working, and taking care of ourselves and our families. Pausing can feel foreign. It can feel like you do not deserve it for fear that things will fall apart if you take a break. Pausing and checking in with yourself is necessary.
Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, states that:
“In today’s America, we tend to think of healing as something binary: either we’re broken or we’re healed from that brokenness. But that’s not how healing operates, and it’s almost never how human growth works. More often, healing and growth take place on a continuum, with innumerable points between utter brokenness and total health.”
As therapy providers, we look at recovery this way as well, on a continuum and through a lens of cultural humility. The field of mental health has not historically felt safe for many groups of people. Asking for help and “airing your problems” holds great stigma for many. This stigma, implied judgement, and perceived weakness, keeps people suffering in silence. We acknowledge that healing spaces and therapy is a colonial idea. Healing and “recovery” looks different for folks and is not linear. Embracing the continuum of healing, as Resmaa Menakem states, is a tenant of the work we do at Anchored Hope Therapy.
Every struggle is real. Asking for help is not weakness.
Acknowledging that "things are not fine" and facing vulnerability takes courage.
If you or someone you know needs help, we are here. You are not alone.
Call 443-291-8090 or visit www.anchoredhopetherapy.com to request an appointment. Follow us on IG @anchoredhopetherapyllc FB @anchoredhopetherapy Twitter @anchoredhopeLLC Follow our Blog “Beyond the Couch” at www.anchoredhopetherapy.com/blog To read more from Resmaa Menakem https://www.resmaa.com/ To read more from Adam Grant https://www.adamgrant.net/ To request training on Trauma-Informed Care and Practices visit www.hopeignitedtraining.com For local National Alliance on Mental Illness resources visit https://www.nami.org/home
