Mental Health Journey – The Office Black Girl

365 Days of Posts, Hair, Mental Health Journey, Office Stories

The Big Chop: More Than A Haircut

August 25, 2023by The Office Black GirlLeave a Comment

In 2018, I had reached such high levels of stress that a large bald spot formed at the top of my head. In the midst of an emotional breakdown, I decided to chop all of my hair off. But I had a hard time accepting the idea of cutting it to buzz cut essentially.

The hair grew back only for a bald spot to return at the start of 2020. I was working in a toxic environment, and that balding only grew when the pandemic hit and I lost my job. Fast forward 3 years later, my body can’t let go of the stress my mind is convinced it has overcome.

So after months (hell, even years) of talking myself out of chopping my hair off, I chopped and buzzed the damaged hair away at the end of last month. Despite some reservations and small precut panic, I actually felt good about the haircut. Which is saying something because it wasn’t barbershop-worthy.

I remember killing the idea of cutting my hair in the past due to the ideas that my husband wouldn’t find me attractive, my head was shaped funny, or I was too fat to have short hair. But my husband has actually been pretty supportive of my decision.

Prior to the big chop, I watched a bunch of TikTok videos to get in the right mindset. For the most part, it felt encouraging to see other black women take on the chop for their own reasons.

When I looked in the mirror to cut off my hair, I saw the damage and realized I was holding on to unhealthy shit. It felt like my hair was the literal embodiment of me holding onto damaging things in my life: people, bad habits, negative thoughts, etc.

I have always seen people talk about how a woman is ready for a change in her life when she does something drastic to her hair. And as cliche as I always thought it was, I am coming to see it as true. While there are still some emotional ties to the loss of my hair, when I look at my short hair, I see new beginnings, hope for new possibilities, and excitement that I can take on anything.

My hair has shown noticeable growth in the past few weeks, which excites me every day. I even went to a dermatologist the day after my haircut to finally have a black woman look at my scalp.

Let me tell you, black women in healthcare make a difference! I went to a dermatologist years ago to examine my scalp for hair issues. He was a white man and was pretty much dismissive. But not this time. I was assigned a nurse practitioner, and the way she listened to me, examined my scalp and gave me treatment options……I almost could have cried. I am looking forward to what my hair will do as I start over.

Have you ever done the big chop? How did you feel before and after?

Mental Health Journey, Motherhood, Uncategorized

Therapy Journey: Surprise…I’m Depressed

June 9, 2023by The Office Black Girl1 Comment

It is a Friday night, and I am trying to milk the last of the power of my ADHD medication to push me through to type this.

Since my first post about therapy, I have had two sessions. Before my first session, my husband and I had an uncomfortable conversation about his next career move and the impact it will have on my mental health. I immediately informed him that I had started the process of going to therapy, and he sounded relieved, even proud.

I didn’t tell anyone else before my first session. I wanted to see what I was getting myself into first.

My first session was a bit of a hot mess, but that was on me. I found myself word vomiting answers that weren’t part of her questions. But at the same time, I was holding back because I was all too aware that my husband and son were within hearing distance.

To add to the hot mess, my phone was blowing up during the session (I took the video call on my phone), and I had to hang up at one point because of an Instacart drama. After that first session, she sent me a packet about dealing with depression, and it was an eye-opener.

In the two weeks that followed, I realized I have been battling with depression for a while and have downplayed it as something else. On the day of my second session, I woke up and just felt dead inside and realized that it was not uncommon for me to feel that way.

When I got to work that day, I started wondering if I needed to be on antidepressants. But I knew that would be another hurdle because my therapist doesn’t have the ability to write prescriptions and my insurance is already a bit of a headache about dealing with mental health that doesn’t involve the immediate threat of suicide.

During my second session, we discussed the causes of my depression and my spiraling episodes, as well as techniques to help deal with depression.

The biggest thing I took from the second session was the idea of “should.” She made me realize how much of a hold that idea of what I “should” be fuels my spiral. The idea that I should be further in my career, I should be a better mother/wife, I should be doing a lot of things, are expectations that I put on myself that hinder me from moving forward or even finding joy.

I have been working on the idea of letting go of “should” and replacing it with “I am doing the best that I can” or some other forgiving/positive thought. But I won’t lie, it is hard. I was raised with expectations and they are deeply rooted in me. So the idea that I am falling short of them on a daily basis feels like it is a hard thing to just give myself a pass that doesn’t feel deserved.

While I’m still not sure how I feel about therapy so far, I am anxious to continue. Maybe that is what I am overlooking….my way of thinking is what landed me in therapy. Maybe it is time to really give in to thinking a different way and therapy is definitely different.

What does therapy mean to you? Is it a space to vent, be analyzed, be comforted, or something else? Comment below because I would love to know what others think about therapy.

Mental Health Journey, Motherhood

Therapy Journey (Part One)

May 11, 2023by The Office Black Girl3 Comments

Last night, I reached a breaking point.

Google had told me that one of my oldest accounts was maxed out on storage, and I needed to clear space for storage or pay for it. That led me down the rabbit hole of old videos and pictures of my son.

My ovaries ached a little bit, looking at this little person I spent so much time with as a stay-at-home mom. And his little voice just hit me in the heart. But the longer I watched the videos, my mental state started crumbling.

Suddenly I wasn’t seeing a happy little toddler on my phone screen, but a flood of bad memories of things that happened during those years. Years of me feeling like I was failing as a young mother (thoughts I still struggle with now) while I was struggling to figure out my life.

Perspective and social media are amusing because they both can give you the false idea from the outside that everything is perfect for someone else. I look back on old memories and see comments of people reflecting positively on a happy moment in time that I shared. But I was struggling for years.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t as if I never had a happy moment. I had plenty of them.

But last night made me realize that despite my growth as a woman, a mother, and a wife, I still have demons that I have only managed to quiet at times with noise. During the quiet, unexpected moments…they definitely rise against me.

Despite all of the change in practices and views on mental health, people often overlook the simple thing of cost and time that comes with taking care of your mental health. Even online therapy costs money, and spending time trying to find the right therapist causes me anxiety at the thought of spending time and money trying to find the right one before I even get help.

I finally looked into my healthcare options and started the process today to book my first session. My insurance offers options, thankfully, but they are a bit limited. I am hoping that this will be the first real step in healing the wounds I merely bandaged for years.

Today, I really hate where my desk is positioned. I have been crying as I type this, and I am exposed to my coworkers and people coming into the office. One delivery guy just made a comment about allergies…my eyes must be red (just checked, they are a little). But it is just a confirmation that I finally need to do something to heal myself because time doesn’t heal all wounds.

Have you gone to therapy? What has been your experience in tackling your mental health issues?

365 Days of Posts, Mental Health Journey, Office Stories

What I Didn’t Know About Adderall

March 20, 2023by The Office Black Girl2 Comments

When I was in high school, my parents took me to a psychologist/psychiatrist. They thought that maybe my teenage moodiness may be something chemical.

I was diagnosed with depression and ADD (no H).

I never took anything for the depression (though I should have after a few episodes got a little scary). But I did take something for the ADD. I was originally prescribed Concerta. But that was short-lived because it made me sleepy, which sort of defeated the purpose of taking the medication.

Next, I was prescribed Adderall, which was a game-changer. The two side effects I experienced were a suppressed appetite (which I loved) and a weird emotional numbing. Though some may argue now that I am already emotionally dead inside at times, with Adderall, I really felt the emotional switch.

To say I loved Adderall was an understatement. But unfortunately, my mother went through a weird period where she didn’t want me to be on it. She was afraid that somehow people would label me for being on the medication. Looking back, I can appreciate her concern. People weren’t talking about ADD/ADHD diagnosis and medications back then like they do now. Now, it seems like we accept ADHD like it is a normal thing.

When I was in college, I don’t recall many women/girls being diagnosed, let alone publicly talking about their struggles.

So after years of being on and off Adderall, I was stuck off the train when I found myself on Tricare, and trying to get back on it was a very unfun game of hoop jumping. I never won.

15 years after I last took Adderall, I found myself with insurance and a job that allowed me to visit a doctor. She gave me a trial prescription of Adderall, and to say I was excited doesn’t even begin to cover the emotion I felt. That was until last weekend.

Did you know that Adderall and other ADHD medications can have a side effect of dry eye/blurry vision? I didn’t.

Guess who found out the hard way?

My eyes had started getting a bit sensitive to the light recently. I thought maybe it had something to do with me wearing my contacts too long. Then last weekend, I was suddenly struck with an unbearable level of light sensitivity. I had to miss work because my eyes were so sensitive to the light I could hardly see.

To make a long story short, I suffer from dry eye, but it was never severe or even something I felt. The Adderall exasperated the issue so badly that the receptors in my eyes were basically stripped of moisture, making it painful to open my eyes. A week later and a few hundred dollars spent, my vision is just starting to creep toward normal (I already have crappy vision naturally).

The irony is that the thing that I tried so desperately to get ended up costing me a week of being able to do anything productive because I couldn’t see. I have a follow-up next week about the Adderall, and two days before that, I have to see a cornea specialist for my eyes.

A friend suggested another medication, but now I am scared to try anything else. Guess we will see how this plays out. Just happy I can finally see well enough to type.

365 Days of Posts, Mental Health Journey, Office Stories

Sometimes The Money Isn’t Enough

Featuredby The Office Black GirlLeave a Comment

It is almost 10 at night and I am sitting here trying to gather the bottom-of-the-barrel brain cells to complete a freelance job for someone. My contacts are hours past the point of needing to be taken out, and my annoyance is just tapering off.

I started doing freelance marketing work during the start of the pandemic because, like so many others, I found myself unemployed. For years, I felt fortunate to have clients to help build my portfolio and give me a steady line of work without constantly hustling for work.

But I think I have reached the point where I can no longer ignore the burnout, even if it has been screaming in my face for months.

I had a conversation today with a co-worker. We talked about work-life balance and how basically, our mental health falls behind our desire to pay bills. I find myself making that “joke” a lot: my bills don’t give a fuck about my mental health, or me mentally breaking down just to keep my credit from falling to shit.

My husband tells me to quit the freelance stuff. He has even encouraged me to invest more time into The Office Black Girl. But this online world doesn’t pay the bills. While I appreciate his belief in me, fear runs deep in my veins.

I hate to admit that I have had the chance to pursue my side hustles and projects as something full-time, but I messed up. I wasted my opportunities and, even worse, a lot of money. So I find myself here on a Thursday night, trying to find a single thread of thought to latch onto and create this content for this client before I go to bed.

Do I want to? No. Do I secretly want the client to tell me that they have found a cheaper option and “fire” me? Maybe.

Then I remember I have a credit card payment due that has yet another late fee attached to it. And I remind myself that I must keep doing the work, despite everything else overflowing on my plate.

But maybe one day I will just let it go and focus on what I find joy in…..maybe.

Mental Health Journey, Motherhood

A Needed Phone Call

Featuredby The Office Black GirlLeave a Comment

This was not my original blog post idea for today.

But it is the blog post I want to share…today.

As a black woman, I feel this constant pressure to suck shit up and handle things. But the reality is that narrative is forced upon me as a black woman that I constantly struggle with. I struggle with the idea of dropping the ball, asking for help, and even not pushing myself harder.

While this era of social media is now showing that this is a problematic idealogy, my timeline hasn’t shown me enough women still struggling to find the right balance. It seems as though my timeline is filled with black women who are doing the damn thing (which I applaud them) and others who have managed to break through that crippling ideology and voluntarily remove things from their plates.

Then there is me, stuck somewhere in the middle.

While I struggled with the guilt of not going to the gym again today, not completing my story update (I just did before I typed this post), and not pushing myself to finish my never-ending to-do list…

That all went out the window when I got an unexpected call from my son’s teacher.

My son finished the first half of the school year, failing most of his classes. As any mom will understand, failing your kid is the biggest blow (even if the failure is an imagined one). So my husband and I bit the bullet and enrolled our son in tutoring. A cost that we feel every month. But I refuse to let my kid fail because I didn’t do all that I could to help him succeed.

I feel like I am constantly bogged down as a black mother because there seems to be no room for error. Because I am raising a black son that will eventually be a black man, any of his shortcomings fall on me and are multiplied by a skewed perception. I’m not even a single mother, and I was disgusted by the remarks of Jason Whitlock in regard to single, black mothers. Like how do you even reach to make that connection?

With that being said, my son’s teacher called me and told me that she didn’t know what we were doing at home, but my son’s grades had made a dramatic improvement since they returned from Christmas break.

While it seems like such a small thing, I found myself in tears.

It is bizarre to me that someone can fix their lips to generalize black women and black mothers under some distorted, negative narrative. I know so many amazing black women (single and married) who do so much for their kids, and they do it without praise.

To those mamas, I see you.

Today, I felt seen. I have had many conversations with my son’s teacher about his grades, and it was how she delivered the news that made me realize she saw that I was trying to do my best for my kid. And it was exactly what I needed today.

Mental Health Journey

The Office Black Girl is Depressed

Featuredby The Office Black GirlLeave a Comment

It has been over a year since I last posted and so much has happened.

So many beautiful and painful things have consumed my days that I didn’t even know where to begin to share my thoughts. However, today I was reminded why so many black women feel the need to guard themselves from the world. Because while we want to share our vulnerable side, we are often reminded that even those closest to us cannot seem to comprehend that we need help too.

July has been the hardest month I’ve had in quite some time. Mounting debt, poor sales for my business, and other personal issues had my depression in a feeding frenzy. More often than I care to share, I would stand in my home as silence crept around me and wonder if my death would ultimately bring relief to my family.

While my brain is trained to keep my darkest thoughts and feelings to myself as to avoid burdening others, I made the mistake of sharing some of my darkness with someone I love dearly. I regretted it instantly.

The need to protect even my most dangerous thoughts was confirmed when this person angerly replied that other people had worse problems and maybe I SHOULD GO AHEAD AND DO IT….

What is more ridiculous is the fact that I was more mad at myself for even sharing my feelings than the fact that someone I love told me to go ahead and unalive myself. How messed up is that?

My mother always told me that you have to learn to save yourself because NO ONE else is going to do it. Those words have been dragging me through this episode while my depression fights to keep me unproductive. It is my mother’s strength that keeps me going even if I refuse to tell her what is going on.

I can’t lose this battle for the sake of my son and I am working on ways to heal but that takes time. Writing has always been a therapeutic activity for me since I was young, so this is where I am starting. Join me on this journey of figuring out how to heal myself because I am sure it will be one hell of a ride.

Until next time….