graphic by kayleigh woltal
Author’s Note: I’m speaking only from my own experience. I understand that there is a breadth and diversity of experience of mental health within BIPOC communities. I am fully aware that access to therapy is often determined by privilege and socioeconomic standing, and I acknowledge having both.
My therapist told me that I was struggling with anxiety over a year ago, but I didn’t really believe her until last month.
The first time I remember experiencing anxiety without understanding it was my junior year of high school. Each morning, I would draft a mental list of what could possibly go wrong that day. The scenarios varied in magnitude and effect. My dad could get into a car crash on his way to work. A friend could stop talking to me. I could fail a test. My mom could have forgotten that my sister had a dentist appointment. The possibility of these events played out in a loop in my head throughout each class, lunch and the bus ride home. Finally, when I was slumped in bed after school, these jitters would ease.
Only to start again the next morning.
I considered why I made this list. I had food, water and shelter. Caring family and friends who I cared about. I liked to dance, and I was in clubs at school. I volunteered at my local library and I enjoyed tutoring kids. Maybe the problem was that I thought that there was a problem. At the time, this reasoning was enough for me to ignore the constant churn in my stomach and move on.
The first time I considered therapy was in my freshman year of college. Most mornings, I’d wake up with this acute pressure in my head, as if my brain was bulging out of my skull. My heart rate would pick up, and thoughts cycled so fast that I could not distinguish one from the other. I overloaded my schedule, filling up each day with schoolwork, club meetings and social events. The knots in my stomach and the desperate need to avoid my thoughts helped me work for hours on end. At night, I was relieved by my exhaustion. Because there was no time to think, I could just fall asleep.
One night, in my junior year of college, I was lying on my parents’ bed after celebrating Diwali. My grandmother’s laugh sounded distant even though she was just downstairs. The smell of freshly made pulihora made my stomach turn. My sister’s head weighed against my shoulder. The sound of her scrolling through TikTok was overwhelming. I tried taking deep breaths, but I couldn’t think past my heart racing. My hands were shaking, so I wiped the sweat off my palms and squeezed them into fists. The shaking wouldn’t stop. The pandemic had been going on for six months. The events I attended and the people I interacted with had reduced, leaving me more time to think. But the real source of my stress was having to decide which summer internship to take. As I’m writing this, I’m laughing because it sounds like such an insignificant decision. Even at that time, I would remind myself that, in the long run, this choice wouldn’t matter. But I still thought about it constantly. I would make numerous pros and cons lists for each option and then throw them away because they didn’t cover every possible scenario of what could happen based on which internship I chose. I’d then calm down and tell myself to take a break to get out of my head. That break would inevitably be filled with first, indecision, and second, anger at myself for taking so long to decide. I’d compare myself to other friends and family who I thought were better decision makers. And then I’d go back to making a pros and cons list.
This cycle took a toll. Most mornings I would wake up nauseous, and I couldn’t calm down until I sent an email or wrote a paragraph or finished some other arbitrary task on an elaborate list that I had made the night before to help me make a decision. I would lie in bed with a racing mind, where my thoughts about this choice clambered over, under and through each other, until I fell asleep. And during that particular night on my parents’ bed, I considered calling every close friend, or even just going downstairs to talk to my family. But I couldn’t. So I Googled how to find a therapist.
Since then, I’ve been going to therapy once a week. I press my fingertips together, thumb to pinky, thumb to ring, thumb to middle and thumb to pointer when I’m nervous. I still think a lot, but I can distinguish which thoughts to pay attention to and which to let go of. When I do feel overwhelmed, I journal or stretch or play the piano or hang out with a friend. The anxiety hasn’t disappeared, and whenever I do need to make a decision, I feel many of the same things that I felt during that Diwali night. But now, I’ve come to understand myself better, so I can work through those feelings.
Looking back, I realized that it had taken me that time to first identify, and then act on my emotions because I felt alone in navigating my mental health. I wasn’t aware of anyone else, in my circle of family and friends, who had a therapist. My parents were supportive and there for me, but I didn’t understand how to start talking to them about my emotions. My friends were open and kind, but I didn’t want to talk to them again and again about what was going on in my head. At the core of it all, I was scared to share my thoughts with the people I knew because I didn’t want them to see me differently. So working with a therapist was what I had needed — a space to voice the things in my head once a week to someone who felt distant from me. I thought it was the only space I needed.
But then, last month, I discovered that July was BIPOC Mental Health Month. I was surprised by my surprise. I thought that I had finally figured out how to navigate my mental health. That I didn’t need anything or anyone else because I had a therapist, resources and websites that I could access, friends and family members that I could reach out to. But having a month dedicated to something that so closely affected my day-to-day life was validating on another level. Because after learning about this month, I found that 48.1% of people in the United States are part of BIPOC communities. I learned that 6.1% of the U.S. population identifies as Asian American or Pacific Islander, and out of that, 15% — or over 2.9 million people — reported struggling with mental health in the past year. I can’t assume that each individual within this group is navigating anxiety. But I would like to think that a few of them have probably tried therapy, and maybe a few of them experienced what I experienced. So my experience with anxiety is not something I’m alone in. It’s also not something that I need to hide. When I realized this a month ago, I sat down to write this article, bringing me one step closer to acceptance.
Some resources that helped me navigate my mental health:
National Institute of Mental Health
AAPI Communities and Mental Health
An Infographic about BIPOC + LGBTQ Mental Health
Goodbye, Again by Jonny Sun (The chapter titled Anxiety Tax was particularly helpful!)