 I fell in love with this topic so it's so funny that you would ask me this because I did my capstone on the misrepresentation of African American men in the community, in society, not even community, in society. You know the work that I do is primarily with adults and it's with communication, specifically for black people and some of what I've been talking about is how our childhoods affect our ability to communicate and our ability to empathize, our ability to change even. So you know there was something I saw that said like 92% of who we become as an adult is dictated between ages of zero and seven. So the question I have for you as somebody who works with kids, black kids specifically in that age range, how true is that? Oh gosh that is, I don't want to say 100%, you just know nothing is 100%, you have to hold nature versus nurture, debate and all that good stuff but I would say at least, at least 90% only because the developmental stages, during that time you know you're going through the oral stage, the anal stage and those are really, really important stages because that's when you know the children, they are depending on their parents for everything you know. And if they miss one of those needs on Maslow's hierarchy of needs you know you don't, you're not getting that support, you're not getting the loving, the nurturing, you know just being comfortable and knowing that if I'm hungry my parents are going to feed me, if I'm upset about something they're going to you know provide their comfort, they're going to reassure me. If you miss that during that time you know as adults the way that you react to even if it's just you know someone giving you that constructive criticism you're going to take it a completely different way or you may become more fixated on things and specifically for African Americans you know we're already marginalized in society as it is you know. So when we're not given what we need at home and from society that kind of stunts where the child is at and so as your, yes your age increases but you know your emotional ability to handle and to process things it stays at that point and let's not even get started on if your family has you know some mental diagnosis you know there are certain ones that are strictly genetic so and you have your time I think it's 18 or 21 but if you have you know if it's schizophrenic or bipolar disorders those will manifest at those ages so when you don't when you haven't gotten all of the assistance that you need or gotten that love from your family or and it doesn't necessarily have to be bio family members you know it can be we call them kinship family members so for another family a church member you know either a teacher if you don't get that extra loving from them as you're growing up and you're going through these different developmental stages and you're trying to find your independence and things of that nature it definitely definitely can cause an issue and I have seen that in a lot of our kids and if you don't get the help the therapy that you need then you're just going to keep going back to well you know my mom never did this or you know my mom would yell at me whenever I did such and such and so now that's our response so people don't understand that if you don't even if you feel like your childhood was great there are still certain elements that you know you may have missed and if you don't work through those as an adult it will definitely cause issues you know not only internally but in your relationships with others and you know on jobs in your professional lives as well so with somebody who works in this profession are there some I guess nuggets of wisdom that you have learned and that you can pass on to others on how to interact with deal with help heal or not even help heal but empathize with provide space for a partner for instance who has a less than ideal childhood especially black part yes oh my gosh I is the main thing that I have realized and I feel like has helped me is you got to put your bias aside when you're working with other people regardless of the age and for me because I am so involved with you know the kids that I work with so I'm always doing clinical staffings and I feel like for me and I can't generalize for social workers but for me as a social worker my mind is always before I say something I'm always like okay if someone is let's say you're going through a crisis right now you're you're reacting one way and I wouldn't react that way I had to think about my words before I say them I don't want to just say oh that's how you know that's that's not how you should be reacting let's let's take a step back and think about it because not everybody when they're they're up here you know some people want you to be up there with them that's how they respond and then some people you know you come at them from this level and it brings them down as well so just putting aside your your own bias when you're talking to people when you're working with them and just realizing that the way my thinking as a social worker is not going to be your thinking and I had a bad habit initially in relationships of assuming that you know because I'm going through these processes whether it be you know biopsychosocial or just breaking it out to just the the psychological issues you're not doing that and you can't just assume that they are you know and you can't just assume that they're understanding where you're coming from because they don't and when it comes to like actually being in the field of social work you have to think about the person first you know social work is a vast field and you can do so much with it from you know being working at the Department of Social Services to you know being in hospital being in the schools as a counselor you know as a therapist as a school social worker but it's not your behaviors are not just subjected to that one okay I'm a social worker so that means I have to give them all the resources it's not always gonna happen like that you know you can give them resources that doesn't mean that they're gonna use it so just keeping in mind that you're here for the client or you know certain settings they don't like for you to call them clients but overall you're here for the client and you can't project what you want them to do on to them because they may not be ready for that they may not be at that stage of okay you know you were just in pre contemplation yesterday where you're like I know what I need to do and now you're actually putting the action in it doesn't always happen like that so just realizing that you're here for them and the same goes for relationships you know I am here for you where you need me to be and what you need me to be as long as it's not damaging to both of us then I will keep showing up like you need me to show up so I think that's that's what I've learned um even though I've only been in this field this is my fifth year um but I feel like my initial position was so just raw to the point where when I started my first day I was they were like oh you've only been in our college for a year this is what you chose to do with your first day out of college I was like so be concerned but yeah you know yeah um but you do learn a lot and you get exposed to a lot in this profession so something that comes up a lot during some of the conversations that I have is that black men don't properly empathize with the struggles of black women black women don't properly empathize with the struggles of black men so as a black woman who works in social work who works around children specifically black boys who've been traumatized what have you learned about black men oh wow um their voices are not heard enough um that's that's the biggest thing um and I I fell in love with this topic so it's so funny that you would ask me this because I did my capstone on um the misrepresentation of African American men in the community um in society not even community in society but I had to of course narrow it back down so I narrowed it um to the PD region but um I don't know how I guess as I got more into social work um and I just I will read the RDSM vibe that has all of our diagnosis and it um symptoms and all of that I will just read that just so that I could get more information because it's really interesting to me so as I was learning more about different diagnosis um and how they can manifest themselves I started thinking back to men in my family or you know my male friends and I realized that there are a lot of they may not be able to be diagnosed they may be unspecified but there are subtle hints of you know PTSD among black men and you know even some men um I had a friend and he was schizophrenic um all the symptoms were that he knew something wasn't right but you know he was going to the psychologist and the psychiatrist and they would not prescribe him anything and I just realized like and then just seeing on social media how you know it was I can't remember what month it was but it was like every post that I scrolled past was a black man saying that they were going through a lot but they didn't feel like they could talk about it that or you know I'm telling you know people that I'm feeling this way and they're like oh just suck it up you know because that's what as boys they're told oh you're crying you hurt suck it up you know just move on stop acting like a little girl you be all right so I have seen that black men really cannot express how they're feeling you know they can't have these mental check-ins are these emotional check-ins um and sadly it's even when there are relationships with people that you know they don't feel comfortable telling them how they feel because you know the person's just like oh you're a man you're supposed to be strong you know you're you're not supposed to feel anything you know but do they get that from women too really okay yeah and I feel like for for women um the stigma around what it goes for men like women and men the stigma around mental health um and I did a paper on that as well and I interviewed you know a few people and everyone they were in different regions but they all pretty much said the same thing that because you know if you say that you know you're feeling this kind of way um or if you get like the official diagnosis you don't want that label slapped on you and because then you feel like you become you're just bipolar or you know you're just um you just have even ADHD which is so crazy to me like you know just as a black person being oh you know yeah you may have ADHD then it's okay now everybody's looking at me crazy or them just feeling like people are looking at them and judging them or um if you react a certain way um you know like if you have a manic episode where you're just you're out buying a lot of things or you know more commonly known people when they think about manic episodes you know when it comes to bipolar think about people throwing things all over the place but that's not always the case or borderline if you just express you know any instance of a heightened emotion if you are if you've made it known to people that you know you have this um mental illness then they're automatically oh it's because of her bipolar it's because of this you know it's because of that and that was the deterring factor for a lot of the african-american men and women that I talked to as to why they didn't feel comfortable you know um speaking on anything that was bothering them in their relationships or um just to mental health professionals at all because they didn't want to be viewed differently um and they didn't want to basically feel like their value as a person to their significant other went down as well which was just so sad to me because you should feel safe with the person that you're with like um get a little personal here but I um last year it was just a lot with school um I had just stepped into my new program director position um working as a full-time intern as well and I wasn't just doing like oh I'm just show up as my you know at my internship I was looking for groups to do with the girls some were autistic some were borderline you know have borderline personality disorder um some just had they were like unspecified disorders as well so I was actually putting in that extra work to find groups for them because I wanted them to feel like they were seeing you know to feel like they had that support but at the same time I was battling depression and anxiety and I was smiling on the outside but it took so much to get up just to go to work um just to you know go there to the group home with them um I just cut out my whole gym routine I had been going you know Monday through Friday and I just didn't feel like it and on certain days I would just be sad and I just didn't want to talk I didn't want to be bothered but in my position I had to so I was just pushing through it and it wasn't until I had a really really bad panic attack um and I said you know what I need I need a therapist I need to find you know I need to find a therapist and now in my current relationship you know I I feel comfortable talking to him about you know okay this I feel like this is going to be a bad day for me I it was really hard for me to get out of the bed and I just I know my triggers and he's taking the time to learn my triggers as well and knowing okay you know if the weather is this way let me see what I can do to try to you know get her parked up so that this is not a bad day for her um so I just really appreciate that and he's entire you know becoming more open to me because I'm showing up that way to him so you know a lot of times when you show up one way to someone not all the time but because you know humans we mirror each other they're going to show up to you in that same way so I just think that that's great and I wish that more African-American men and women felt that comfort in their relationships