I have always had an adverse reaction to negative emotions. I never liked feeling sad, upset or scared. I prefer things to be positive and everyone to be happy. I prefer to laugh and smile! A lot of this has to do with my upbringing; I grew up in a family who focused on being positive, encouraging and optimistic. My mom is literally the nicest person I know, and she never showed pain or anger towards me (outside of normal needed childhood lessons).

When I was upset, I looked at the bright side of things and tried to look at things from the other person’s perspective. Really tried to understand the meaning of everything. When I was sad, I got over it. It’s not that I’ve had an easy life, or never had heartbreak or challenges. I’ve had plenty of those. It’s just that I never decided to focus on that side of things. I thought I was all good. Until I wasn’t.

I’m a Black woman, talking about anxiety and depression, for most people those words alone seem to be an oxymoron. They don’t even exist in the same space. Black, especially black women, are expected to possess unlimited strength, courage and resilience. With a dab of “anger” to fit all the stereotypes of course. And, honestly these are not the words I would naturally describe myself. This expectation puts immense pressure on me to uphold the “Strong Black Woman” persona I often see portrayed on Instagram or in the media. (Cough* cough* follow me @itskimballslice). This idea of having to be strong, unlimited self love, and on point all the time is hard but the root of my anxiety and depression, point blank period there is too much on my plate, I am not taking great care of myself and I need to slow down.

As a woman who deals with anxiety and depression, I often feel “weak” due to my over communicated emotions and some really bad days taking a lot of precedent over the good ones. As someone who has always been adventurous, rarely felt the full force of fear and wired for positivity, this was NOT me and I had no idea what to do. What I learned (that I have always known, but maybe never fully understood) as I worked through that anxiety, was that it was a symptom. But as I grow more in my understanding of mental health, I’ve realized my struggle doesn’t negate my strength. And, that everyone has bad days.

So to help you lets go over some basics: I am going to go over my experience with anxiety/depression, some of things I notice about my own triggers and how I am dealing with this, then conclude with some preventive care tips and tricks that have helped me.

Basic key terms:

Anxiety: a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. It is not your stereotypical carrying a paper bag or continuous hyperventilating as typically perceived on TV, although it could be those things for some people.

Mine shows up in the form of over awareness. Kind of unrealistic pressure or doubt, mostly a result of my stressful situations, when I feel a lack of control or things are not going as planned. Main triggers for me are career goals or family issues. Sometimes preconceived notions of some interaction or event. Me not liking where I am in life in regards to thinking I should be further along. For me it looks like restlessness and having sleep difficulties with constant thinking. When it gets really bad sometimes panic attacks once I get to an extreme “hopeless” place.

Depression: can come in variety of forms and there are different types. From a medical standpoint, depression is defined as a mood disorder which causes a persistent feeling of sadness and the often profound loss of interest in things that usually bring you pleasure. When people think about depression, they often divide it into one of two things—either clinical depression which requires treatment or "regular" depression that pretty much anyone can go through.

As a condition, depression can be a difficult concept to grasp for a lot of people since we refer to it as both the symptom of a condition and a condition itself. Mostly for me the symptoms are either an overwhelming feeling of sadness or feelings of worthlessness and guilt. I typically seclude myself and lose my appetite. I overthink my friendships & relationships, peoples actions like "Are they really my friend?", "Do they really like me?", "Am I really worthy?", "why me?" Which confuses me because these thoughts are pretty common it’s just I can go from 0 to 100 in my hopelessness and loss of self-esteem.

Okay great, now that that’s out the way: I honestly didn't know that these were two different things, in my mind they are similar or the same thing because they were both negative feelings to me. I usually get down on myself for having such strong emotional responses to things, but they are natural. It really comes in spells and it is easier for me to fall deeper in the hole when sometimes life circumstances and other personal factors are still likely to have an important influence on me because I hold a lot of responsibilities in my mind for multiple people. Depression isn’t common for me, but it’s the end result for an extreme anxiety attack. For example: My career means everything to me right now, I have an extreme attachment to my accolades in this current season of life. I like control, it’s just easier if I do things myself LOL. At work, I let someone else take lead on an event I was planning and they dropped the ball. Now in any real world situation, this wouldn’t matter. You might say, welp! That’s their fault not mine but I CARE! I care HARD! And I was so triggered, it went something like this .. She dropped the ball, I shouldn’t have given her the project, she makes more money than me why is she messing up? I’m now doing her job & mine, why am I being taken advantage of? I told ya'll not to hire her, oh so now I look bad because she dropped the ball so now I won’t get a promotion and this looks bad on my own personal performance. I’m going to get fired. And so on and so on.

When I can't juggle multiple things that are important to me and I literally can’t control them I get overwhelmed and I feel like I am disappointing people or not where I should be in life. And, even though I know I can’t control everything, I still let it get to me. It is mostly my personal outlook on situations, not understanding my own triggers and how I react to life events. It’s almost like I get worked up because I don’t like my own emotions to something that happen. Personal criticism and being so self-critical takes me to a negative place. Experiencing some level of these negative emotions is actually normal. Experiencing ongoing and excessive levels of these emotions can be a signal that something much deeper needs to be addressed. And it’s that “deeper” that are my actual triggers vs my own actual emotions.

Therapy, spirituality and being still are how I handle my anxiety/depression. Dealing with it is not even “dealing with it” it’s just who I am! It’s pretty normal for me now as I understand what is going on and kinda check myself so I don’t derail as easily as before. Consistent work in progress just as any other goal in my life. We need to provide space to allow us to realize that life is going to be difficult, challenging and incredibly hard sometimes, which leads to uncomfortable or negative emotions. We need to learn to acknowledge, embrace and understand what those emotions are trying to tell us. We need to learn the power and value of these emotions.

Accepting my struggles doesn’t mean I am any less of a woman, or crazy or emotionally unstable because I have these labels of “ anxiety or depression”. When I have really bad days, I make a priority to talk to someone or acknowledge the moment I am in. It’s important to remember that the negative things you hear and feel about yourself during depressive spells aren’t true. In some cases, your actions may be to do nothing at all other than feel you’re feeling. And ultimately that’s okay, too because it's okay to not be okay. Take the time to acknowledge and recognize your feelings and seek professional help if needed!

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