May 8, 2024 • 43 mins
After living through a global pandemic, missing years of in-person interaction, and dealing with the constant onslaught of violence displayed on social media, I think it’s safe to say that our kids are far from alright.
Joining me today to talk about some of the top concerns youth are facing when it comes to their mental health is fellow psychologist, Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble. A thought leader in her field, Dr. Alfiee focuses on mental health and suicide prevention for intersectional Youth and Young Adults of Color. She is a regular media contributor for outlets like The Grio, Today Show, The Breakfast Club, the New York Times, and others. During our conversation, we discuss the impact of racial trauma on youth mental health, how parents can monitor their child’s activity without invading their privacy, and strategies for cultivating an environment in which a child can express themselves freely.
About the Podcast
The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session three fifty eight of the
Therapy for Black Girls podcast. We'll get right into our
conversation afterword from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I'm doctor Alfie. I'm on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast.
I'm in session today discussing youth mental health concerns.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
After living through a global pandemic, missing years of in
person interaction, and dealing with the constant onslaught of violence
displayed on social media, I think it's safe to say
that our kids are far from alright to talk with
me today about some of the concerns youth are facing
when it comes to their mental health. I'm joined by
my colleague and fellow psychologist, doctor Alfie Brelan Noble, A
(01:45):
thought leader in her field, Doctor Alfie focuses on mental
health and suicide prevention for intersectional youth and young adults
of color. She's a regular contributor for outlets like The Grio,
Today Show, with The Breakfast Club, The New York Times,
and others. Over, we discussed the impact of racial trauma
on youth mental health, how parents can monitor their child's
(02:06):
activity without invading their privacy, and strategies for cultivating an
environment in which a child can express themselves freely. If
something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share
with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session,
or join us over in the Sister Circle. To talk
more about the episode, you can join us at community
(02:27):
dot therapy for Blackgirls dot Com. Here's our conversation. Thank
you so much for joining me today, doctor Elfie.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Thank you for having me my sister. I am so appreciative,
my sorrow, I had throw that in there right quick.
I am really grateful for.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
You, absolutely, Thank you so much for joining us. So
I wonder if you could get started by telling us
a little bit about your work with the Acoma Project
and what really interested you most in youth mental health.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, so my work really is an outgrowth of my
own up bringing. I'm from Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm from
in between where I grew up, and we're all about
the same age. I'm a little bit older than these guys,
but Chad and Pharrell, otherwise known as the Neptunes, they
grew up in one direction about three miles away from me,
maybe five. Then in the other direction less than two
miles away from me. Timberland grew up the super producer
(03:20):
and Missy Elliott's from a couple towns over and from Portsmouth, Virginia.
And so that childhood growing up a Virginia Beach, I
think was the impetus for a lot of my interest
in youth mental health. Because I'm sure a lot of
the professionals that you have on your podcast we grew
up in environments where my parents are Baby Boomer and
Silent generation, right, and so they were doing what they
(03:41):
thought was best for us, which was moving us to
another area where they thought we could have great opportunities
in public schools. I come from a public school family,
and so it was rough, right, because I was just
sharing with somebody. They said, tell us something that would
blow a millennial's mind if they knew this was part
of your experience. And I said, we used to have
(04:02):
these classes. Now, maybe y'all had track in two. I
certainly didn't hear it. With my children. We had superior,
average and remedial classes. And guess whose classes all the
kids of color were and remedial, right, And so I
was one of the kids in the superior was honest class.
But just think about the terminology. That's what I grew
up in. Like you're telling the kid they were remedia
and it's on your report card that you're in like
(04:23):
the little r you're in remedial classes. And so it
was tough being a smart, I don't know, like relatively
self confident with my books. Now we can talk about
the other stuff, but being confident with my books and
knowing that I was smart, and I had teachers at home,
so I knew stuff. And so that was tough growing
up in an environment where I felt isolated. And so
the youth mental health piece really did come out of
(04:46):
my experiences growing up in Virginia Beach and knowing what
I experienced in predominantly white spaces being a black girl,
a dark chocolate black girl, and I just felt like,
if I can be a light for another young person
at any point in their life who might be experiencing
something similar or anything that interferes with their mental health,
I really wanted to try hard to be that light.
(05:08):
And that's how I really got interested in it because
I know what my experiences were.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So that's quite a special cool heart of peers that
you grew up with, right, So clearly there's something going
on in that area that also leads to lots of
creativity and greatness as well.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's funny because Farrell's producing a movie that I
think Hallie Bailey is going to be a start in,
and it talks about his growing up in these apartment
I know exactly where the apartments are. They called the
Atlanti's Apartments. This is all out in the press release
and everything. I was like, I know Atlanti's Apartments. I
remember being down there, was in the area closer to
the ocean front. And so when he talks about skateboard
(05:44):
pee and surfing and I'm like, I know exactly what
he's talking about because that was our childhood, you know,
growing up in that area. There were so few of
us black kids, and so you gravitated to the things
your peers did, right, and your peers surf, our peers skateboarded,
So that's what we So there had to be something
special down there, Like these parents, these black parents down
(06:05):
there and these Filipino parents were like pushing something into
these kids to make us think we could do great things.
And you've got these folks who are out there doing
great things. So I'm not in their stratosphere, but I
give them all the respect they deserve.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Here in a sphere of your own. That's okay, So
talk with me, doctor LFA, about why it's important for
us to also focus on youth mental health as a
part of our larger conversations about mental health in general.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I think about I was sharing with you earlier.
I love the fact that we have the same degree.
And part of what I learned and part of what
I gravitate to with having that particular psych background is
this focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion before it was popular, right,
So we had the multicultural Handbook of Counseling, way back
in the day before anybody was checking for that. The
(06:54):
Super Brothers, right, So we know those guys are icons
in our field, Like you know, there's so many in
our field, doctor James, White people like that. And so
when I think about those folks, I think about the
fact that they really created a space back then, like
late eighties, early nineties, early two thousands, for us to
be able to have conversations about having a big tint
(07:17):
that everybody could fit in. So whether a person had
a disability, whether a person was LGBTQAI plus counselor psyche
was talking about that like decades ago. And so it's
just the idea that for our young people, just like
with anybody I think about, like therapy for black girls,
I actually think about girls, the girls who grow up
to become women. I think about the trans girls. I
(07:39):
think about the non gender conforming young people who may
lean feminine sometimes right, And so when I think about
all those young people, I think our field rit laars
the whole all of psych all of psychiatry, all of
social work. Although they've done better than we have in nursing,
nurse practition, psychiatric nurse practitioners and those folks. I feel
(07:59):
like we as a field have not done a good
job of amplifying and centering the unique mental health needs
of diverse young people, right because when we build interventions,
we build them and we have this category called non white,
which I cannot tell you how much I hate that term,
because that's not how we identify ourselves. And so for me,
(08:21):
it is why would we not focus on youth mental health?
Because our young people, they don't get those issues addressed
as young people, They're going to grow into adulthood carrying
those issues which you know well and talk about all
the time. So so much of our experience as adults
is rooted in what were our experiences as children, And
so why wouldn't we start the conversation with our young people.
(08:45):
Why would we not want to support young adults who
graduated high school and maybe in the military, out working
or starting families, or in college. All of those young
people have needs, and those are periods of heavy transition,
like you're going from elementary to middle middle, the high
hi to college or the work or the military.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
You're getting married and.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So finding yourself and trying to figure all that stuff out.
And not having mental health support is too much. So
I figure we can do a little something to support
our young people and make sure that their mental health
needs are met. And that's why we do the work
that we do at a COMA.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So I know I don't have to tell you, but
I will share for the benefit of our audience these
staggering stats that are coming out from lots of organizations,
but the Pew Research in specific talked about from twenty
eighteen to twenty twenty one, we saw suicide rates among
black youth grow at a faster rate than any other
racial group. And so can you talk a little bit
(09:40):
about what factors really contribute to the heightened struggles that
we're seeing and that are leading to some of these
increased suicide rates.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Absolutely, so two things.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I had the great pleasure of being part of a
group with the Congressional Black Caucus led by Representative Bonnie
Watson Coleman Wring the alarm. The Congress and the federal
people were task force. We were the working group. So
the working group was comprised of twenty twenty five Black scholars,
all different kinds of disciplines whose interest was in these
increases in black youth suicide rates, and we put out
(10:13):
this Ring the Alarm Report with Representative Watson Coleman. And
one thing that we don't talk about in general, again
going back to how we do research around youth and
young adult mental health, one thing we don't talk about
enough is racial trauma and the unique experiences of young
people of color around these issues of racial trauma. So
(10:35):
when you look at the research that we've done at
a COMA, we put out something called the State of
Mental Health of Youth of Color. The Big Full Report
was put out in twenty twenty three, and what we
find is that about eighteen percent of all young people
of color from our survey, which should reflect the larger
population of young people, report exposure to racial trauma in
(10:56):
the prior year. Now, eighteen percent doesn't sound like a lot,
but in my mind, nobody's asking the questions. So if
we were to ask the question more frequently, who knows,
the numbers might be higher. But it's the idea that
we decided to ask the question, and that's not typically
a question that's asked. So we often talk about the
usual suspects, intergenerational trauma, right exposure to other kinds of trauma.
(11:20):
We talk about young people just in general, with worries
about climate change, finance, COVID. There's so many things that
our young people are faced with that are slightly different
from maybe what older millennials and Gen xers and older experience,
and so I think it's just the perfect storm of challenges.
(11:41):
And let's not forget I think social media can be
a force for good, but one of the challenges with
social media is they're constantly bombarded with information. So whether
that's world affairs, all these wars and conflicts going on,
or more day to day stuff like comparing yourself to
your peers. Oh so and so got a new car
ford their birthday. I don't have a new you know
what I mean? Or so also got the latest essential sweatpants.
(12:03):
I don't have essential swept I just got regular sweatpants.
So it's all these challenges that they have that I
feel like it's important for us, is the caregivers in
their lives to give them tools to help them manage
and cope.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You know, it always is such a struggle to me,
doctor Elphie, and I know we are both parents. I
feel like it is such a heartbreaking experience and we
talked about this on the podcast before, about like how
to prep your young people of color for this world
that they are entering.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So, when you talk about like racial trauma and all
the protests that we are seeing happen even in real
time right now, right what kinds of conversation should we
be having with the young people in our lives. What
suggestions would you give to parents and caregivers about how
to open up and give them some strategies.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I think the first thing is exactly what you do here.
It is helping people understand how to look at these
things for themselves. There are too many of us again
gen X and older, much less so for millennials younger,
but there are too many of us who grew up
as parents of color, Black parents in particular, and caregivers
where we never had conversations about mental health. That's not
(13:08):
something you talk about you either, right from the South,
You pray it away, right, go to doctor Jesus. There's
nothing wrong with that. But you also have to have
things day to day, moment to moment to help you.
And so what I say to parents and caregivers is
you have to be modeling for your young people that
you take care of your own mental health, that you
(13:29):
are concerned about your own mental health. And I think
if we don't start there, you got young people. They
can sniff out in authenticity a mile away, right, So if.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
You say you should do they're like, but you don't
do it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
You come in here yelling and screaming, and you stressed
all the time with why I got to do it?
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So I think it's being.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Clear with ourselves, which is not a quick fix, but
I think we can start there.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Then.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I think in terms of having a conversation with young people,
it's really critical that we maybe write out a script.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You got to think about what are the messages that
you want to communicate. And I think more important than anything,
I heard somebody say this yesterday, you have two ears
and one mouth governing yourself accordingly. Actually it was my
husband's pastor, And what I took from that is it's
important to be willing to listen to what.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Our young people are dealing with.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And then as we're listening, your listeners know all this terminology,
but for other folks who might be new to it,
it's important to do active listening, right, so you'd be
nigh in your head, your mouth is closed, you're looking
at the young person, you're not looking at your phone
or looking away. And then the other thing I think
that's really important is to listen with the intention of
love and care, not with the intention to fix, because
(14:39):
if you go in trying to fix everything for them,
sometimes our young people will shut down because they're not
looking for a fix. They're just looking for support and
they're looking for somebody to listen. So those are some
of the things I say to parents and caregivers.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Thank you so much for that. More from our conversation
after the break, but first a quick snippet of what's
coming next week on TVG.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
One of the key findings though that I saw was
the ways that black women often used humor to talk
through some of the oppressions that they faced. So it
could be racism, it could be sexism, agism, but it
was the way that we told the stories to each other.
Where we inserted humor, we retold the stories. We were
(15:20):
the characters right in all of these stories. That really
made me think about the ways that we use humor
in telling our stories, and that it's so innate that
it just happens right. We're storytellers and we just continue
to tell these stories and use humor at every part
of the way. Even when we thought we should be crying.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Moment where we are literally laughing and crying at.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Some pretty serious things.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
But the ways that we were able to handle that
was through the humor.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I know. We also know that sometimes even some of
the symptoms of anxiety and depression and other things look
different in youth, and probably particularly in youth of color,
than they do maybe in adults. Can you give us
a little bit of insight into what we may be
on the lookout for in our young people?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So one of the things we did with our survey
was we asked young people. We use some of the
same standard surveys that are used with what they call
the YRBSS. That's an annual survey that they do with
teenagers all over the country that's put out by SAMSA
and the CDC. So we use those same questions and
we add to some of our own. And what we
find is when you look at the symptoms that young
(16:37):
people report, say, for example, anxiety, young people will say
that they have a hard time making decisions right, they
have a hard time concentrating, they get fearful, not just
having a hard time by making decisions, but worry about
making decisions. So it's like meta worry, right, it's like
worry inside, the worry inside, the worry for depression. I
think sometimes what we're looking at often in young people
(16:59):
of color because of different cultural moraising values right, not
right or wrong, they're just different. Anger and aggression an
assertion is often what you will see in our young
people of color who might be experiencing depressive illness instead
of sadness. I call it like the e or syndrome.
(17:19):
Everybody who's depressed not walking around looking like you're. Some
people who are experiencing depressed walking around just looking angry,
And I tell parents and caregivers look. Part of why
that's effective for young people is it has the same impact.
When you withdraw and isolate yourself and shut people out,
you're actively trying to get people to leave you alone
because you want to be alone with your sorrow and
the heaviness.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
The same thing happens when you're angry.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I remember that old er Kabaidu song bag Lady. It's
like when people see you coming, they take off running.
And so if you're angry and like aggressive and leave
me alone and everything gets on your nerves all the time.
You have the same net effect. People go away, they
don't want to be around you, and it serves your purpose,
which is you want to be alone as wallow and
the sadness and the sorrow. So I try to tell
(18:03):
parents and caregivers and all of us pay attention to
day to day sort of mood swings or day to
day behaviors, and if it changes for one day, maybe
that's not the thing to worry about, because young people
go through moods, we all do. But if it persists,
you notice if it persists for a week, ten days,
two weeks, and you're seeing sort of some of the
same stuff, the sadness, the isolation, the disinteresting things that
(18:26):
used to love, then maybe it's time to check in
or think about going to get some help. But if
we don't communicate with our young people, that's one of
the things that we found in our research too, is
the caregiver young people die. Ass that have open lines
of communication are better able to identify and begin to
navigate the process because they're communicating right, so you know
(18:49):
what's going on with you. But if you don't communicate,
you may never know what's going on. So these are
the things I try to encourage our caregivers and parents
to think about.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
But it's a lot, right.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
You already got many things you're trying to jug right already,
don't eat breakfast, we know that, right, And so it's
just really hard to keep up with all of it.
But that then becomes that paying attention and just understanding
your child on a day when they hear she or
they feel neutral. That's how you can begin to calibrate
because that's the child's baseline, and you can sort of
look for those ups and downs and the intensity of
(19:21):
the ups and downs once you understand day to day
what is my child like? And too few of us,
myself included, pay attention to what's my kid like day
to day when they're just kind of neutral.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So I wonder, doctor La, if you can give us
a little more insight into how we can establish these
open lines of communication. So you already gave us a
little bit in terms of like listening more than we talk,
But what other kinds of things can we do to
cultivate this space with the young people in our lives.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I tell people it's hard to guess, and we always
gonna get it wrong, and sometimes we get it wrong
by the kid's intention when we try to guess what's
cool or what's popular, because the minute I said, oh,
I don't like that, it's not cool anymore.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So, like I'm a big old school hip hop here,
and I like a lot of new artists too, But
when I start talking about an artist, like my favorite
right now is central Cy and Dave, they're from the UK.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Love them. The minute I started talking about Central Ce,
my son was like, Mom, you tweaking. That's why. Don't
do that normal?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And so it can be hard to try to figure out, right,
And so I think what I encourage caregivers and parents
to do is again, pay attention to what they're looking at.
So when they're watching TV, you don't have to go
sit down with them necessarily. They may not want that,
but look at what they're looking at. Are they looking
at Dragon ball Z? Are they looking at My favorite
used to be The Backyard Agaans. I love The Backyardings
God Rest their Sister Soul Janis Burgess. That show was phenomenal.
(20:40):
But my daughter used to love Scandal reruns, And so
what are their interests, right, Like they go to school,
what are they doing at school? Like nowadays everything's like
trying so you can't fifty thousand emails today, right, So
you can see what kind of things are accessible to
your child or what they have available to them at school.
One trick that I learned a long time ago is
(21:00):
try a reading or book club. One of my kids
is loves reading. Can we think of a book that
we can read together, and then just have these periodic
check ins over the course of like six weeks, just
twenty minutes, let's sit down and talk about the book.
Or your child's not a reader. Can you take them
for ice cream? Just randomly, just go find something to do?
Can you take them to the movie? So it's finding activities.
(21:22):
They don't all have to cost something, but finding activities
that you can do where the focus is not a
staring at each other. The focus is we're doing something
together and hopefully in the course of doing that shared activity,
you find the openings to have a conversation. So it's
being creative with the stuff that you already do. Can
they help you cook? Are they interested in helping you cook?
(21:43):
When you're washing dishes? And that's their chore. Can you
go in and say, I'm gonna help you for twenty minutes,
let me get this side over here, you get this side,
and those then become ways for your young people to
get used to you being around, right, because sometimes what
we do is, I remember this from high school a
million years ago. I come home or go straight up
to my room. I come out to eat, I go
back to my room. Where's the opportunity to interact? There
(22:05):
really isn't any. So it is finding stuff that you
already do and either inserting yourself into it with your
child or the young person you're caring for, or it's
inviting your child into things that you like to do
for very brief periods of time because you know their
attention spans are not.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Long, right of course, of course, so I need some
insight as a parent myself, Doctor Elfie around because you
already talked about electronics and how so much of their
lives exists on these little screens. What is the fine line?
Because I do think it's probably fine around allowing them
to have privacy, but also needing to know like what
(22:43):
they're watching, who they're talking to, what they're paying attention to,
like what is the line there.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
One tool I think we have to have is going
back to communication. We have to have a way to communicate.
So whatever that is for your family, figure that out
and stick with it.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
So the direct answer to your question from my experience
to research that we do and having two of my
own children, is I like to give them enough freedom
that they know and they can see a demonstration that
I trust them, I am trusting you. But that freedom
has limits. Right, So I was weird. My parents are
from Mississippi, and it was very much just do it
(23:19):
because I told you to do it right, Just do
what I say it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Do.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And there are a lot of parents who are wearing
their children that way. I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with that. So if that's the relationship that you have
with your child, and you know your child is gonna listen,
you can set those boundaries. This is how much time
you're gonna spend on this device per day. Don't touch
that device so that homework is done or your chores
are done, whatever the case may be. I'm gonna give
you latitude with these platforms. Let's figure out which platforms
(23:44):
you're gonna use, because you can't have eight of them,
you can have two. Let's figure out which two you're
gonna have, and then you know again, if communication lines
are open, I think you build a kind of relationship
where you can say to your child, I'm gonna give
you space. If this works for you, I'm gonna give
you space. Used to do this without me over your
shoulder monitoring. But I don't want no fence to this right.
(24:06):
Don't let me find out it's a fake TikTok and
the right that you got me following and I find
out some of because then I'm gonna take all of it,
do you.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So it's being really clear. So I'll tell you what
we did with ours when we were younger. One is
out of high school, one is about to be out
of high school. We did a contract the condition of
you getting this phone that I'm paying this bill for.
Is this contract. One other thing I learned from the Obamas.
I watched them on some interview years ago when he
was in the White House. She said limited screen time.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That blew my mind.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I had never considered it. So they said that their
children had no screen time during the week, and I
was like, well, what does that mean? No TV, no devices,
no nothing, right, So have a contract that works for
your family. And I think it really is trial and error.
I don't think that there's any rule for how long
it should be, how short it should be. I think
it's what works for your family. And I think what
(24:53):
you find is when those lines of communication are open
and you set those boundaries, not always, but of and
you'll have a very compliant child who's okay letting you.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Know what's going on. Right.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But if we don't set those boundaries, it's like a
free for all. We either gonna set those boundaries or
the world is gonna set those boundaries. And we don't
want the world to set those boundaries. So those contracts,
lines of communication, and us as caregivers getting clear what
is acceptable to me for a daily amount of time
I'm willing to allow my child to be on this platform.
(25:25):
And there are all kinds of folks out here doing
things to try to set national standards, but again for
those of us who are parents of color, those conversations
often don't include us, and so we have to find
the ways that are culturally relevant, culturally appropriate for us
to be able to set those boundaries. But setting them
is the key we have to set them more.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
From our conversation after the break, we've already outlined some
of this, But I wonder if you can talk a
little bit more about the impact of social media on
youth and mental health. So, I know a lot of
the organizations like Instagram and TikTok they have these mental
(26:07):
health tanks, force and things for looking at youth and
how they interact with their platforms. Can you talk a
little bit about what kinds of things we need to
be paying attention to as it relates to youth and
social media.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Sure, so some of the tools that are out there,
you've already talked about some of the platforms. Instagram has
a monitoring tool where the parent and the child can
be connected to each other, and you have like different
levels of how you monitor what your child is doing. Right,
And so I think there is this idea that a
lot of these platforms recognize that it's kind of a
(26:41):
wild wild West out there, and we got to try
to wrap our arms around it. And I think more importantly,
it is imperative for us as parents and caregivers to
be the ones monitoring and supervising and supporting our young
people and teaching them the right ways to use social media.
So from our data, what we know is for our
young people they struggle with some of the same things
(27:02):
in social media that they struggle without in the world.
Not for young people of color, we know from our
data not seeing good representation of themselves, not seeing enough
representation of themselves.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
And so what do they do.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
They try to fill in the gaps so I don't
see it, I'm going to create it. And if you're
creating it without a sense of what needs to be
out there, what needs to be shared, and what needs
to be private, because you've never had those conversations with
your family members. But what they do is put it
all out there, right and once it's out there, you
can't get it back. And so I think part of
our responsibility and part of what the challenge is is
(27:36):
helping young people have a clear understanding of the landscape.
What exactly is social media? Where does that stuff go?
What are your rights? What is privacy? What is confidentiality?
And so I think if we don't know, we can't
communicate effectively to our young people, and we sort of
lead them to their own devices or to their peers
(27:57):
who may also not know right, So I know this
one young sister, her name is Lars. Lars is like
under thirty, and she's been an advocate in this area
of supporting young people around their use of social media
and how they interact with it for a decade, right,
so since she was in high school, just finished in
high school. And then our responsibility around privacy, confidentiality and
(28:19):
support is to really sort of lay out the rules,
to sort of ask how young people get them focused
and ask them to like really think about what they're
doing and to really understand what they're signing up for
when they put all their business out there, and to
understand what are the parameters that they really should be
operating within, and to recognize things like once you put
(28:41):
it out there, it's out there forever. So you might
be fifteen now, well when you're thirty five and trying to.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Get that job, it's still going to be out there.
And is that what you want?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So I used to have this thing I would tell
young people, remember the grandma. We call my grandmother Mama Alice,
big Mama, a boi la rue. If you don't want
a buela to see it, don't put it on the internet.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Do you know.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I mean, like, just think about it. And I heard
somebody say I really love this the other day. She
said the five year rule. If it's not going to
matter in five years, then maybe it's okay.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
But if it is going to.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Matter in five years, then you might want to think
about do you want that out there in the world.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
So I don't think there's any.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Easy answer, but I think that there is some balance
between the latitude that we allow young people what those
impacts of social media, just that unfettered exposure might be,
and also setting them up for success by giving them
tools to help them navigate it when we're out of
my cause we can't be around twenty four to seven
to help.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Them, right, right, So I think some of this we
are still learning in real time. But I'd love to
hear your thoughts about how youth were impacted during the pandemic,
right So, I think we know some early things right
just around what it meant to not be in the
classrooms and to the loss of socialization years. Well, what
kinds of things are you paying attention to right now?
(30:00):
You think our community also should have an eye on
about how youth were impacted.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I think for us, I'm just gonna speak to us
as black folks. I think that when I think about
our community globally, and I think about all the challenges
that we faced during the pandemic, I think about what
you know, and I know, and all your listeners I'm
sure know, and all your experts know as vicarious trauma.
(30:26):
And I don't think we can underestimate the significant impact
of the vicarious trauma that our young people were exposed
to around racial issues during the pandemic. Right, it was
like one thing after another. I don't even need to
start naming the names. I can think about my social
media posts during the pandemic, and I felt like every
week I was making another post about how to cope
(30:47):
with some traumatic thing that happened to a black person.
If I said, curate your news once, I say that
a thousand times, Right, you can't sit and consume that
all the time. It's painful and it hurts you. And
so I don't think we can underestimate that. I think
our young people are still very much struggling, particularly our
Black young people, very much struggling with what it means
(31:08):
to have to navigate all of that, right, to have
had to navigate all of that to still be carrying
the impacts of it, And so that's a biggie for me.
And then I think on top of that, there's this
interesting thing. We had a lot more conversations about mental
health during the pandemic. It sort of grew little by little,
And I was telling somebody this morning, following you and
(31:31):
following your work and just watching, right, it was always
on the rise, but just watching how it just shut
up during the pandemic because so many more people needed
what you're offering. Right, we were all struggling, and our
kids were struggling. So I think the import of recognizing
that stuff doesn't just go away right when we're exposed
to trauma, that's lifelong impact. We think about aces, right,
(31:54):
you have these early childhood experiences, that's the rest of
your life that it impacts you.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
So that for me is a biggie.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Was the racial trauma, the social unrest, and then it
was you couldn't get away from it because we're all
stuck in the house. So for me, that's a biggie
that I don't think we talk anywhere near enough about.
On top of everything that you said, the loss of
the ability to hit those developmental markers learning how to socialize,
the loss of the educational gains that they might have
(32:21):
made is.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
A perfect storm of a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
But I think that by Carrie's trauma, I think that's
gonna be with us for a long time. People still
trying to process and on top of trying to process
what so many people struggle with and the the surch
in general talks about the loneliness right just you don't
even really know how to be with people because you
spent so much time by yourself. So for me, those
are things that we're gonna be unpacking for a long time.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
It's so interesting that you mentioned ass because I'm pretty
sure that work didn't include a pandemic as like a
life event that many of us would have been experiencing.
And so now that adds like a point so to
speak to people's ass school about the things that we
are going to have to kind of navigate through for
the rest of our lives.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Amen A three one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
And I think in addition to that asis point is
the universality of it, like we all get that point,
you know what I'm saying, Like some points, we are
all getting that point. And I think it just breaks
my heart when I think about the number of people
who might have been exposed to those things sitting at
home by themselves, right, young adults, the number of young people,
like the whole college experience. I'm a Howard University grad.
(33:29):
I can think about some of the students I've talked
to recently. You had a whole generation of young people.
I think the graduating class this year, their first year
or two years in college. They weren't on campus, so
they're not going to get that back. Like those are
opportunities that they're never going to have. And so I
think you're right, it's we all got that. I don't
want that point, but you know, we got it. We
all got it, and it really is going to be
(33:49):
with us for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, you know, doctor LFI something that I've talked a
lot about kind of in this post pandemic space that
we are in is the grief that I think a
lot of us are, which you just talked about beautifully right,
Like this whole idea that the graduating class of twenty
twenty four also lost like their first two years in
high school or in college, and that is also grief, right,
Like it's not just about the lives we lost, and
(34:14):
there were many, of course during the pandemic, but there
are also those experiences. I wonder if you could share
something for parents or caregivers or even the youth themselves
about how to process the expectation that it would have
been this one thing and then the reality of it
being very different.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
I will tell people what I do for myself and
what I do for my children, and I do for
my family, and I try to work on mindfulness. And
the reason I say mindfulness is helpful for me is
because I'm an anxious person, right.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
It runs in my family. I'm positive.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I've never had a diagnosis, but I am positive I
meet criteria for generalized anxiety.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
It's everything right, and it's just always coming at me.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And so I think what's critical. And I did this
when we lost my mother to pancreatic cancer, like eighteen
years ago. It was be present. I have to be
in this moment. So I would tell myself, Okay, Mama's
still here. We at the hospital.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
She's here.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I have her right now, and let me enjoy and
be appreciative of this moment. I can touch her, she
can speak to me that kind of thing, and I
think the same thing is true for me for grief.
Let me be present as an extension to that. I
tell young people all the time, if you feel it,
I want you to find a way.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
To express it.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
So, whether that's journaling, whether that's exercise, whether that's talking
to somebody like doctor Joy or a licensed mental health professional, right,
whatever that is, you have to get that stuff out
because you cannot allow that grief to sit in fester,
right because that grief, unresolved grief, that complicated grief, that
complex grief, that can have physical health outcomes for us
(35:53):
that aren't positive. And so it's important for us, particularly
as people of color, with all the other stuff coming
at us, we've got to be able to process greef.
So we have to name it. We have to recognize
that what we're feeling is grief. We have to be
loving and forgiving of ourselves. It's okay to experience grief.
You can get online and google what are the stages
of grief and figure out where you are pretty easily.
(36:14):
And then the final thing I say is, if you
feel the emotions, allow yourself to feel the emotions as
long as you're in a safe space.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Find that safe space might be in a bathroom, might
be in your bedroom under the covers. But allow yourself
to feel your feelings, because suppressing your feelings does not
help manage grief. It is the expression of feelings. I think,
at your own pace, in your own way, even for
young people, that allows us to grieve in more healthy ways.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
And grief understand it can take a long time, right.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Grief is not like you get a week off from
work and you're supposed to be like fixed. I have
this really good girlfriend, doctor Helen Sue. She has ancestry
in Taiwan, and she taught me that in her culture,
you have a year to grief. And she told me
about this client she had once who wore a black
armband after he lost the loved one and he kept
it all for a year and was intentional. So what
(37:07):
I did, We lost somebody close to us. So my
daughter and I bought these little silver bracelets and you
can add charms to them. They're very thin, and we
bought them in honor of the person. And so a
couple of people I know personally who've experienced different kinds
of grief, I have bought them one of those bracelets
and said, this is just your reminder. You take it
off when you're ready to take it off. But this
is just your reminder that you're going through grief. It's
(37:29):
a difficult experience, and it's okay for you to feel
your feelings, so that tangible thing to help you remember,
Oh yeah, this feeling is grief, This sadness, this anger,
this frustration, it's okay for me to feel.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
This has always been very helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Thank you for that. You know, you mentioned the Surgeon Generals,
and you know all of the information he has shared
around loneliness and how that is of course on the
rise post pandemic, and he is mostly talking about that
for adults, so I think we can only imagine what
that may be like for our young people. Can you
give us any ideas or tips to share around, like
how to help young people cultivate community and you know,
(38:06):
really decrease that experience of loneliness.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I think they have to go read books by people
like doctor Joy where people talk about right, how sisterhood
heals like.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
It, bringing us together.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I think you can find work books that help young
people process. We certainly use them in my house, right
workbooks to help you process grief, or help you process loneliness,
or help you develop social skills.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I think practicing with our kids, our young people, the
people we care about, teaching them social skills. Right, So
we think often it just happens by osmosis. They watch
us and they get it. Everybody does know how to
do that. So what can we give to our young
people to teach them how to engage? And it's really
not about you need to go doing social because that's
what I did and it helped me. It's figuring out
(38:52):
and paying attention to what kind of kid do I
have to have a kid who shy? Do I have
a kid who will fade into the woodwork? Do I
have a kid who's like out there and nobody knows
who they are as soon as they.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Hit the room. What kind of kid do I have?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
What is their personality like? So if we understand them better,
I think we can do a better job of calibrating
the tools that we give them. It's all about coping skills,
the tools that we give them to help them develop
their own little toolkit for coping or managing relationships or
managing interpersonal interactions, or managing their own emotions. But if
(39:24):
we're not intentional with tools and we just hope that
it's going to work, and we hope if they watch
us they'll get it. I think we do our kids
at disservice. So our job is to really equip and
prepare them. But guess what, we got to have tools.
We can't give them tools that.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
We don't have.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So it's imperative that we develop a set of tools
to help us manage some of those challenging things in
our lives to be able to share those with our
young people.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Doctor Elfie, is there anything we haven't talked about today
that came up in your recent research report that you
want to make sure we put on the radar or
related to youth mental health?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yes, one thing.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
The only thing is to end on a hopeful note,
and to say that for our young people of color,
what they tell us is that they have hope for
the future. So over seventy five percent of our young
people when we surveyed them, talked about having hope for
what was coming in the future for them. So even
with all the struggles, our young people are so resilient
and they find a way, you know, to find the
(40:24):
best in things that are out there in the world.
And then the other thing that they told us was
that over sixty five percent of our young people have
someone at least one person they love, which I thought
was beautiful. I'm sorry for the thirty something percent who
don't and around that same number had at least one
person who they knew loved them, right, and so allowing
(40:47):
space for our young people to talk about the things
that they're excited about, the things that they're happy about,
the things that bring them peace and joy, and the
things that are good for their mental health. I would
say that's the only other thing I would add in there,
because you're young people, your children, my children, they're so
beautiful and so wonderful, and if we can do any
little thing to uplift them and support them and taking
(41:10):
care of their mental health, I am all here for it.
So I just am grateful for you, and I appreciate
the opportunity to talk about our work at the Acoma
Project and our young people.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Thank you so much for that, Doctor Lpie. Please remind
us where can we stay connected with you? What is
the website for the Acoma Project and any social media
channels you'd like.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
To share absolutely so all socials. If we're a COMA project,
it all runs together aa k Is and kite o,
Emas and mary A a Cooma project. It's a take
on Alkama West African I think for symbol. So we're
on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, we got off the X don't
mess with X, lead them alone, and we're on LinkedIn,
(41:50):
and then our website is a Cooma Project dot org,
and then people can always find me across all socials.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I always tease it looks like Drousie d r A
l E.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
So my son's friends Chris and me drowfi years ago
when they were in middle school. So I've been Droughty
forever and I'm literally everywhere as Drowfie. And the website
is doctor Alfie dot com as.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Well, beautiful. We will be sure to include all of
that in the show notes. Thank you so much for
spending some time with us today, doctor Alfie. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Thank you, Doctor Joy, I appreciate you absolutely.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
I'm so glad Doctor Alfie was able to share her
exercise with us today. To learn more about her and
her work, visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com slash session three five eight, and don't forget
to text two of your girls right now and tell
them to check out the episode. If you're looking for
a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at
(42:44):
Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you
want to continue digging into this topic or just be
in community with other sisters, come on over and join
us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of
the Internet designed just for black women. You can join
us at Community Therapy from blackgirls dot com. This episode
was produced by Elise Ellis and Zaria Taylor. Editing was
(43:07):
done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining
me again this week. I look forward to continuing this
conversation with you all real soon. Take good care.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
What's
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session three fifty eight of the
Therapy for Black Girls podcast. We'll get right into our
conversation afterword from our sponsors.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I'm doctor Alfie. I'm on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast.
I'm in session today discussing youth mental health concerns.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
After living through a global pandemic, missing years of in
person interaction, and dealing with the constant onslaught of violence
displayed on social media, I think it's safe to say
that our kids are far from alright to talk with
me today about some of the concerns youth are facing
when it comes to their mental health. I'm joined by
my colleague and fellow psychologist, doctor Alfie Brelan Noble, A
(01:45):
thought leader in her field, Doctor Alfie focuses on mental
health and suicide prevention for intersectional youth and young adults
of color. She's a regular contributor for outlets like The Grio,
Today Show, with The Breakfast Club, The New York Times,
and others. Over, we discussed the impact of racial trauma
on youth mental health, how parents can monitor their child's
(02:06):
activity without invading their privacy, and strategies for cultivating an
environment in which a child can express themselves freely. If
something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please share
with us on social media using the hashtag TBG in session,
or join us over in the Sister Circle. To talk
more about the episode, you can join us at community
(02:27):
dot therapy for Blackgirls dot Com. Here's our conversation. Thank
you so much for joining me today, doctor Elfie.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Thank you for having me my sister. I am so appreciative,
my sorrow, I had throw that in there right quick.
I am really grateful for.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
You, absolutely, Thank you so much for joining us. So
I wonder if you could get started by telling us
a little bit about your work with the Acoma Project
and what really interested you most in youth mental health.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, so my work really is an outgrowth of my
own up bringing. I'm from Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm from
in between where I grew up, and we're all about
the same age. I'm a little bit older than these guys,
but Chad and Pharrell, otherwise known as the Neptunes, they
grew up in one direction about three miles away from me,
maybe five. Then in the other direction less than two
miles away from me. Timberland grew up the super producer
(03:20):
and Missy Elliott's from a couple towns over and from Portsmouth, Virginia.
And so that childhood growing up a Virginia Beach, I
think was the impetus for a lot of my interest
in youth mental health. Because I'm sure a lot of
the professionals that you have on your podcast we grew
up in environments where my parents are Baby Boomer and
Silent generation, right, and so they were doing what they
(03:41):
thought was best for us, which was moving us to
another area where they thought we could have great opportunities
in public schools. I come from a public school family,
and so it was rough, right, because I was just
sharing with somebody. They said, tell us something that would
blow a millennial's mind if they knew this was part
of your experience. And I said, we used to have
(04:02):
these classes. Now, maybe y'all had track in two. I
certainly didn't hear it. With my children. We had superior,
average and remedial classes. And guess whose classes all the
kids of color were and remedial, right, And so I
was one of the kids in the superior was honest class.
But just think about the terminology. That's what I grew
up in. Like you're telling the kid they were remedia
and it's on your report card that you're in like
(04:23):
the little r you're in remedial classes. And so it
was tough being a smart, I don't know, like relatively
self confident with my books. Now we can talk about
the other stuff, but being confident with my books and
knowing that I was smart, and I had teachers at home,
so I knew stuff. And so that was tough growing
up in an environment where I felt isolated. And so
the youth mental health piece really did come out of
(04:46):
my experiences growing up in Virginia Beach and knowing what
I experienced in predominantly white spaces being a black girl,
a dark chocolate black girl, and I just felt like,
if I can be a light for another young person
at any point in their life who might be experiencing
something similar or anything that interferes with their mental health,
I really wanted to try hard to be that light.
(05:08):
And that's how I really got interested in it because
I know what my experiences were.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
So that's quite a special cool heart of peers that
you grew up with, right, So clearly there's something going
on in that area that also leads to lots of
creativity and greatness as well.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, it's funny because Farrell's producing a movie that I
think Hallie Bailey is going to be a start in,
and it talks about his growing up in these apartment
I know exactly where the apartments are. They called the
Atlanti's Apartments. This is all out in the press release
and everything. I was like, I know Atlanti's Apartments. I
remember being down there, was in the area closer to
the ocean front. And so when he talks about skateboard
(05:44):
pee and surfing and I'm like, I know exactly what
he's talking about because that was our childhood, you know,
growing up in that area. There were so few of
us black kids, and so you gravitated to the things
your peers did, right, and your peers surf, our peers skateboarded,
So that's what we So there had to be something
special down there, Like these parents, these black parents down
(06:05):
there and these Filipino parents were like pushing something into
these kids to make us think we could do great things.
And you've got these folks who are out there doing
great things. So I'm not in their stratosphere, but I
give them all the respect they deserve.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Here in a sphere of your own. That's okay, So
talk with me, doctor LFA, about why it's important for
us to also focus on youth mental health as a
part of our larger conversations about mental health in general.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Yeah, I think about I was sharing with you earlier.
I love the fact that we have the same degree.
And part of what I learned and part of what
I gravitate to with having that particular psych background is
this focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion before it was popular, right,
So we had the multicultural Handbook of Counseling, way back
in the day before anybody was checking for that. The
(06:54):
Super Brothers, right, So we know those guys are icons
in our field, Like you know, there's so many in
our field, doctor James, White people like that. And so
when I think about those folks, I think about the
fact that they really created a space back then, like
late eighties, early nineties, early two thousands, for us to
be able to have conversations about having a big tint
(07:17):
that everybody could fit in. So whether a person had
a disability, whether a person was LGBTQAI plus counselor psyche
was talking about that like decades ago. And so it's
just the idea that for our young people, just like
with anybody I think about, like therapy for black girls,
I actually think about girls, the girls who grow up
to become women. I think about the trans girls. I
(07:39):
think about the non gender conforming young people who may
lean feminine sometimes right, And so when I think about
all those young people, I think our field rit laars
the whole all of psych all of psychiatry, all of
social work. Although they've done better than we have in nursing,
nurse practition, psychiatric nurse practitioners and those folks. I feel
(07:59):
like we as a field have not done a good
job of amplifying and centering the unique mental health needs
of diverse young people, right because when we build interventions,
we build them and we have this category called non white,
which I cannot tell you how much I hate that term,
because that's not how we identify ourselves. And so for me,
(08:21):
it is why would we not focus on youth mental health?
Because our young people, they don't get those issues addressed
as young people, They're going to grow into adulthood carrying
those issues which you know well and talk about all
the time. So so much of our experience as adults
is rooted in what were our experiences as children, And
so why wouldn't we start the conversation with our young people.
(08:45):
Why would we not want to support young adults who
graduated high school and maybe in the military, out working
or starting families, or in college. All of those young
people have needs, and those are periods of heavy transition,
like you're going from elementary to middle middle, the high
hi to college or the work or the military.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
You're getting married and.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
So finding yourself and trying to figure all that stuff out.
And not having mental health support is too much. So
I figure we can do a little something to support
our young people and make sure that their mental health
needs are met. And that's why we do the work
that we do at a COMA.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
So I know I don't have to tell you, but
I will share for the benefit of our audience these
staggering stats that are coming out from lots of organizations,
but the Pew Research in specific talked about from twenty
eighteen to twenty twenty one, we saw suicide rates among
black youth grow at a faster rate than any other
racial group. And so can you talk a little bit
(09:40):
about what factors really contribute to the heightened struggles that
we're seeing and that are leading to some of these
increased suicide rates.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Absolutely, so two things.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I had the great pleasure of being part of a
group with the Congressional Black Caucus led by Representative Bonnie
Watson Coleman Wring the alarm. The Congress and the federal
people were task force. We were the working group. So
the working group was comprised of twenty twenty five Black scholars,
all different kinds of disciplines whose interest was in these
increases in black youth suicide rates, and we put out
(10:13):
this Ring the Alarm Report with Representative Watson Coleman. And
one thing that we don't talk about in general, again
going back to how we do research around youth and
young adult mental health, one thing we don't talk about
enough is racial trauma and the unique experiences of young
people of color around these issues of racial trauma. So
(10:35):
when you look at the research that we've done at
a COMA, we put out something called the State of
Mental Health of Youth of Color. The Big Full Report
was put out in twenty twenty three, and what we
find is that about eighteen percent of all young people
of color from our survey, which should reflect the larger
population of young people, report exposure to racial trauma in
(10:56):
the prior year. Now, eighteen percent doesn't sound like a lot,
but in my mind, nobody's asking the questions. So if
we were to ask the question more frequently, who knows,
the numbers might be higher. But it's the idea that
we decided to ask the question, and that's not typically
a question that's asked. So we often talk about the
usual suspects, intergenerational trauma, right exposure to other kinds of trauma.
(11:20):
We talk about young people just in general, with worries
about climate change, finance, COVID. There's so many things that
our young people are faced with that are slightly different
from maybe what older millennials and Gen xers and older experience,
and so I think it's just the perfect storm of challenges.
(11:41):
And let's not forget I think social media can be
a force for good, but one of the challenges with
social media is they're constantly bombarded with information. So whether
that's world affairs, all these wars and conflicts going on,
or more day to day stuff like comparing yourself to
your peers. Oh so and so got a new car
ford their birthday. I don't have a new you know
what I mean? Or so also got the latest essential sweatpants.
(12:03):
I don't have essential swept I just got regular sweatpants.
So it's all these challenges that they have that I
feel like it's important for us, is the caregivers in
their lives to give them tools to help them manage
and cope.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You know, it always is such a struggle to me,
doctor Elphie, and I know we are both parents. I
feel like it is such a heartbreaking experience and we
talked about this on the podcast before, about like how
to prep your young people of color for this world
that they are entering.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
So, when you talk about like racial trauma and all
the protests that we are seeing happen even in real
time right now, right what kinds of conversation should we
be having with the young people in our lives. What
suggestions would you give to parents and caregivers about how
to open up and give them some strategies.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I think the first thing is exactly what you do here.
It is helping people understand how to look at these
things for themselves. There are too many of us again
gen X and older, much less so for millennials younger,
but there are too many of us who grew up
as parents of color, Black parents in particular, and caregivers
where we never had conversations about mental health. That's not
(13:08):
something you talk about you either, right from the South,
You pray it away, right, go to doctor Jesus. There's
nothing wrong with that. But you also have to have
things day to day, moment to moment to help you.
And so what I say to parents and caregivers is
you have to be modeling for your young people that
you take care of your own mental health, that you
(13:29):
are concerned about your own mental health. And I think
if we don't start there, you got young people. They
can sniff out in authenticity a mile away, right, So if.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
You say you should do they're like, but you don't
do it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
You come in here yelling and screaming, and you stressed
all the time with why I got to do it?
Speaker 4 (13:43):
So I think it's being.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Clear with ourselves, which is not a quick fix, but
I think we can start there.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Then.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I think in terms of having a conversation with young people,
it's really critical that we maybe write out a script.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You got to think about what are the messages that
you want to communicate. And I think more important than anything,
I heard somebody say this yesterday, you have two ears
and one mouth governing yourself accordingly. Actually it was my
husband's pastor, And what I took from that is it's
important to be willing to listen to what.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
Our young people are dealing with.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
And then as we're listening, your listeners know all this terminology,
but for other folks who might be new to it,
it's important to do active listening, right, so you'd be
nigh in your head, your mouth is closed, you're looking
at the young person, you're not looking at your phone
or looking away. And then the other thing I think
that's really important is to listen with the intention of
love and care, not with the intention to fix, because
(14:39):
if you go in trying to fix everything for them,
sometimes our young people will shut down because they're not
looking for a fix. They're just looking for support and
they're looking for somebody to listen. So those are some
of the things I say to parents and caregivers.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Thank you so much for that. More from our conversation
after the break, but first a quick snippet of what's
coming next week on TVG.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
One of the key findings though that I saw was
the ways that black women often used humor to talk
through some of the oppressions that they faced. So it
could be racism, it could be sexism, agism, but it
was the way that we told the stories to each other.
Where we inserted humor, we retold the stories. We were
(15:20):
the characters right in all of these stories. That really
made me think about the ways that we use humor
in telling our stories, and that it's so innate that
it just happens right. We're storytellers and we just continue
to tell these stories and use humor at every part
of the way. Even when we thought we should be crying.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Moment where we are literally laughing and crying at.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Some pretty serious things.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
But the ways that we were able to handle that
was through the humor.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
I know. We also know that sometimes even some of
the symptoms of anxiety and depression and other things look
different in youth, and probably particularly in youth of color,
than they do maybe in adults. Can you give us
a little bit of insight into what we may be
on the lookout for in our young people?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So one of the things we did with our survey
was we asked young people. We use some of the
same standard surveys that are used with what they call
the YRBSS. That's an annual survey that they do with
teenagers all over the country that's put out by SAMSA
and the CDC. So we use those same questions and
we add to some of our own. And what we
find is when you look at the symptoms that young
(16:37):
people report, say, for example, anxiety, young people will say
that they have a hard time making decisions right, they
have a hard time concentrating, they get fearful, not just
having a hard time by making decisions, but worry about
making decisions. So it's like meta worry, right, it's like
worry inside, the worry inside, the worry for depression. I
think sometimes what we're looking at often in young people
(16:59):
of color because of different cultural moraising values right, not
right or wrong, they're just different. Anger and aggression an
assertion is often what you will see in our young
people of color who might be experiencing depressive illness instead
of sadness. I call it like the e or syndrome.
(17:19):
Everybody who's depressed not walking around looking like you're. Some
people who are experiencing depressed walking around just looking angry,
And I tell parents and caregivers look. Part of why
that's effective for young people is it has the same impact.
When you withdraw and isolate yourself and shut people out,
you're actively trying to get people to leave you alone
because you want to be alone with your sorrow and
the heaviness.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
The same thing happens when you're angry.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
I remember that old er Kabaidu song bag Lady. It's
like when people see you coming, they take off running.
And so if you're angry and like aggressive and leave
me alone and everything gets on your nerves all the time.
You have the same net effect. People go away, they
don't want to be around you, and it serves your purpose,
which is you want to be alone as wallow and
the sadness and the sorrow. So I try to tell
(18:03):
parents and caregivers and all of us pay attention to
day to day sort of mood swings or day to
day behaviors, and if it changes for one day, maybe
that's not the thing to worry about, because young people
go through moods, we all do. But if it persists,
you notice if it persists for a week, ten days,
two weeks, and you're seeing sort of some of the
same stuff, the sadness, the isolation, the disinteresting things that
(18:26):
used to love, then maybe it's time to check in
or think about going to get some help. But if
we don't communicate with our young people, that's one of
the things that we found in our research too, is
the caregiver young people die. Ass that have open lines
of communication are better able to identify and begin to
navigate the process because they're communicating right, so you know
(18:49):
what's going on with you. But if you don't communicate,
you may never know what's going on. So these are
the things I try to encourage our caregivers and parents
to think about.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
But it's a lot, right.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
You already got many things you're trying to jug right already,
don't eat breakfast, we know that, right, And so it's
just really hard to keep up with all of it.
But that then becomes that paying attention and just understanding
your child on a day when they hear she or
they feel neutral. That's how you can begin to calibrate
because that's the child's baseline, and you can sort of
look for those ups and downs and the intensity of
(19:21):
the ups and downs once you understand day to day
what is my child like? And too few of us,
myself included, pay attention to what's my kid like day
to day when they're just kind of neutral.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So I wonder, doctor La, if you can give us
a little more insight into how we can establish these
open lines of communication. So you already gave us a
little bit in terms of like listening more than we talk,
But what other kinds of things can we do to
cultivate this space with the young people in our lives.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I tell people it's hard to guess, and we always
gonna get it wrong, and sometimes we get it wrong
by the kid's intention when we try to guess what's
cool or what's popular, because the minute I said, oh,
I don't like that, it's not cool anymore.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
So, like I'm a big old school hip hop here,
and I like a lot of new artists too, But
when I start talking about an artist, like my favorite
right now is central Cy and Dave, they're from the UK.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Love them. The minute I started talking about Central Ce,
my son was like, Mom, you tweaking. That's why. Don't
do that normal?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Right?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
And so it can be hard to try to figure out, right,
And so I think what I encourage caregivers and parents
to do is again, pay attention to what they're looking at.
So when they're watching TV, you don't have to go
sit down with them necessarily. They may not want that,
but look at what they're looking at. Are they looking
at Dragon ball Z? Are they looking at My favorite
used to be The Backyard Agaans. I love The Backyardings
God Rest their Sister Soul Janis Burgess. That show was phenomenal.
(20:40):
But my daughter used to love Scandal reruns, And so
what are their interests, right, Like they go to school,
what are they doing at school? Like nowadays everything's like
trying so you can't fifty thousand emails today, right, So
you can see what kind of things are accessible to
your child or what they have available to them at school.
One trick that I learned a long time ago is
(21:00):
try a reading or book club. One of my kids
is loves reading. Can we think of a book that
we can read together, and then just have these periodic
check ins over the course of like six weeks, just
twenty minutes, let's sit down and talk about the book.
Or your child's not a reader. Can you take them
for ice cream? Just randomly, just go find something to do?
Can you take them to the movie? So it's finding activities.
(21:22):
They don't all have to cost something, but finding activities
that you can do where the focus is not a
staring at each other. The focus is we're doing something
together and hopefully in the course of doing that shared activity,
you find the openings to have a conversation. So it's
being creative with the stuff that you already do. Can
they help you cook? Are they interested in helping you cook?
(21:43):
When you're washing dishes? And that's their chore. Can you
go in and say, I'm gonna help you for twenty minutes,
let me get this side over here, you get this side,
and those then become ways for your young people to
get used to you being around, right, because sometimes what
we do is, I remember this from high school a
million years ago. I come home or go straight up
to my room. I come out to eat, I go
back to my room. Where's the opportunity to interact? There
(22:05):
really isn't any. So it is finding stuff that you
already do and either inserting yourself into it with your
child or the young person you're caring for, or it's
inviting your child into things that you like to do
for very brief periods of time because you know their
attention spans are not.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Long, right of course, of course, so I need some
insight as a parent myself, Doctor Elfie around because you
already talked about electronics and how so much of their
lives exists on these little screens. What is the fine line?
Because I do think it's probably fine around allowing them
to have privacy, but also needing to know like what
(22:43):
they're watching, who they're talking to, what they're paying attention to,
like what is the line there.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
One tool I think we have to have is going
back to communication. We have to have a way to communicate.
So whatever that is for your family, figure that out
and stick with it.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
So the direct answer to your question from my experience
to research that we do and having two of my
own children, is I like to give them enough freedom
that they know and they can see a demonstration that
I trust them, I am trusting you. But that freedom
has limits. Right, So I was weird. My parents are
from Mississippi, and it was very much just do it
(23:19):
because I told you to do it right, Just do
what I say it.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Do.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And there are a lot of parents who are wearing
their children that way. I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with that. So if that's the relationship that you have
with your child, and you know your child is gonna listen,
you can set those boundaries. This is how much time
you're gonna spend on this device per day. Don't touch
that device so that homework is done or your chores
are done, whatever the case may be. I'm gonna give
you latitude with these platforms. Let's figure out which platforms
(23:44):
you're gonna use, because you can't have eight of them,
you can have two. Let's figure out which two you're
gonna have, and then you know again, if communication lines
are open, I think you build a kind of relationship
where you can say to your child, I'm gonna give
you space. If this works for you, I'm gonna give
you space. Used to do this without me over your
shoulder monitoring. But I don't want no fence to this right.
(24:06):
Don't let me find out it's a fake TikTok and
the right that you got me following and I find
out some of because then I'm gonna take all of it,
do you.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (24:11):
So it's being really clear. So I'll tell you what
we did with ours when we were younger. One is
out of high school, one is about to be out
of high school. We did a contract the condition of
you getting this phone that I'm paying this bill for.
Is this contract. One other thing I learned from the Obamas.
I watched them on some interview years ago when he
was in the White House. She said limited screen time.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
That blew my mind.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I had never considered it. So they said that their
children had no screen time during the week, and I
was like, well, what does that mean? No TV, no devices,
no nothing, right, So have a contract that works for
your family. And I think it really is trial and error.
I don't think that there's any rule for how long
it should be, how short it should be. I think
it's what works for your family. And I think what
(24:53):
you find is when those lines of communication are open
and you set those boundaries, not always, but of and
you'll have a very compliant child who's okay letting you.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Know what's going on. Right.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
But if we don't set those boundaries, it's like a
free for all. We either gonna set those boundaries or
the world is gonna set those boundaries. And we don't
want the world to set those boundaries. So those contracts,
lines of communication, and us as caregivers getting clear what
is acceptable to me for a daily amount of time
I'm willing to allow my child to be on this platform.
(25:25):
And there are all kinds of folks out here doing
things to try to set national standards, but again for
those of us who are parents of color, those conversations
often don't include us, and so we have to find
the ways that are culturally relevant, culturally appropriate for us
to be able to set those boundaries. But setting them
is the key we have to set them more.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
From our conversation after the break, we've already outlined some
of this, But I wonder if you can talk a
little bit more about the impact of social media on
youth and mental health. So, I know a lot of
the organizations like Instagram and TikTok they have these mental
(26:07):
health tanks, force and things for looking at youth and
how they interact with their platforms. Can you talk a
little bit about what kinds of things we need to
be paying attention to as it relates to youth and
social media.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Sure, so some of the tools that are out there,
you've already talked about some of the platforms. Instagram has
a monitoring tool where the parent and the child can
be connected to each other, and you have like different
levels of how you monitor what your child is doing. Right,
And so I think there is this idea that a
lot of these platforms recognize that it's kind of a
(26:41):
wild wild West out there, and we got to try
to wrap our arms around it. And I think more importantly,
it is imperative for us as parents and caregivers to
be the ones monitoring and supervising and supporting our young
people and teaching them the right ways to use social media.
So from our data, what we know is for our
young people they struggle with some of the same things
(27:02):
in social media that they struggle without in the world.
Not for young people of color, we know from our
data not seeing good representation of themselves, not seeing enough
representation of themselves.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
And so what do they do.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
They try to fill in the gaps so I don't
see it, I'm going to create it. And if you're
creating it without a sense of what needs to be
out there, what needs to be shared, and what needs
to be private, because you've never had those conversations with
your family members. But what they do is put it
all out there, right and once it's out there, you
can't get it back. And so I think part of
our responsibility and part of what the challenge is is
(27:36):
helping young people have a clear understanding of the landscape.
What exactly is social media? Where does that stuff go?
What are your rights? What is privacy? What is confidentiality?
And so I think if we don't know, we can't
communicate effectively to our young people, and we sort of
lead them to their own devices or to their peers
(27:57):
who may also not know right, So I know this
one young sister, her name is Lars. Lars is like
under thirty, and she's been an advocate in this area
of supporting young people around their use of social media
and how they interact with it for a decade, right,
so since she was in high school, just finished in
high school. And then our responsibility around privacy, confidentiality and
(28:19):
support is to really sort of lay out the rules,
to sort of ask how young people get them focused
and ask them to like really think about what they're
doing and to really understand what they're signing up for
when they put all their business out there, and to
understand what are the parameters that they really should be
operating within, and to recognize things like once you put
(28:41):
it out there, it's out there forever. So you might
be fifteen now, well when you're thirty five and trying to.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Get that job, it's still going to be out there.
And is that what you want?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
So I used to have this thing I would tell
young people, remember the grandma. We call my grandmother Mama Alice,
big Mama, a boi la rue. If you don't want
a buela to see it, don't put it on the internet.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Do you know.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
I mean, like, just think about it. And I heard
somebody say I really love this the other day. She
said the five year rule. If it's not going to
matter in five years, then maybe it's okay.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
But if it is going to.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Matter in five years, then you might want to think
about do you want that out there in the world.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
So I don't think there's any.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Easy answer, but I think that there is some balance
between the latitude that we allow young people what those
impacts of social media, just that unfettered exposure might be,
and also setting them up for success by giving them
tools to help them navigate it when we're out of
my cause we can't be around twenty four to seven
to help.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
Them, right, right, So I think some of this we
are still learning in real time. But I'd love to
hear your thoughts about how youth were impacted during the pandemic,
right So, I think we know some early things right
just around what it meant to not be in the
classrooms and to the loss of socialization years. Well, what
kinds of things are you paying attention to right now?
(30:00):
You think our community also should have an eye on
about how youth were impacted.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
I think for us, I'm just gonna speak to us
as black folks. I think that when I think about
our community globally, and I think about all the challenges
that we faced during the pandemic, I think about what
you know, and I know, and all your listeners I'm
sure know, and all your experts know as vicarious trauma.
(30:26):
And I don't think we can underestimate the significant impact
of the vicarious trauma that our young people were exposed
to around racial issues during the pandemic. Right, it was
like one thing after another. I don't even need to
start naming the names. I can think about my social
media posts during the pandemic, and I felt like every
week I was making another post about how to cope
(30:47):
with some traumatic thing that happened to a black person.
If I said, curate your news once, I say that
a thousand times, Right, you can't sit and consume that
all the time. It's painful and it hurts you. And
so I don't think we can underestimate that. I think
our young people are still very much struggling, particularly our
Black young people, very much struggling with what it means
(31:08):
to have to navigate all of that, right, to have
had to navigate all of that to still be carrying
the impacts of it, And so that's a biggie for me.
And then I think on top of that, there's this
interesting thing. We had a lot more conversations about mental
health during the pandemic. It sort of grew little by little,
And I was telling somebody this morning, following you and
(31:31):
following your work and just watching, right, it was always
on the rise, but just watching how it just shut
up during the pandemic because so many more people needed
what you're offering. Right, we were all struggling, and our
kids were struggling. So I think the import of recognizing
that stuff doesn't just go away right when we're exposed
to trauma, that's lifelong impact. We think about aces, right,
(31:54):
you have these early childhood experiences, that's the rest of
your life that it impacts you.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
So that for me is a biggie.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Was the racial trauma, the social unrest, and then it
was you couldn't get away from it because we're all
stuck in the house. So for me, that's a biggie
that I don't think we talk anywhere near enough about.
On top of everything that you said, the loss of
the ability to hit those developmental markers learning how to socialize,
the loss of the educational gains that they might have
(32:21):
made is.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
A perfect storm of a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
But I think that by Carrie's trauma, I think that's
gonna be with us for a long time. People still
trying to process and on top of trying to process
what so many people struggle with and the the surch
in general talks about the loneliness right just you don't
even really know how to be with people because you
spent so much time by yourself. So for me, those
are things that we're gonna be unpacking for a long time.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
It's so interesting that you mentioned ass because I'm pretty
sure that work didn't include a pandemic as like a
life event that many of us would have been experiencing.
And so now that adds like a point so to
speak to people's ass school about the things that we
are going to have to kind of navigate through for
the rest of our lives.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Amen A three one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
And I think in addition to that asis point is
the universality of it, like we all get that point,
you know what I'm saying, Like some points, we are
all getting that point. And I think it just breaks
my heart when I think about the number of people
who might have been exposed to those things sitting at
home by themselves, right, young adults, the number of young people,
like the whole college experience. I'm a Howard University grad.
(33:29):
I can think about some of the students I've talked
to recently. You had a whole generation of young people.
I think the graduating class this year, their first year
or two years in college. They weren't on campus, so
they're not going to get that back. Like those are
opportunities that they're never going to have. And so I
think you're right, it's we all got that. I don't
want that point, but you know, we got it. We
all got it, and it really is going to be
(33:49):
with us for a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Yeah, you know, doctor LFI something that I've talked a
lot about kind of in this post pandemic space that
we are in is the grief that I think a
lot of us are, which you just talked about beautifully right,
Like this whole idea that the graduating class of twenty
twenty four also lost like their first two years in
high school or in college, and that is also grief, right,
Like it's not just about the lives we lost, and
(34:14):
there were many, of course during the pandemic, but there
are also those experiences. I wonder if you could share
something for parents or caregivers or even the youth themselves
about how to process the expectation that it would have
been this one thing and then the reality of it
being very different.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
I will tell people what I do for myself and
what I do for my children, and I do for
my family, and I try to work on mindfulness. And
the reason I say mindfulness is helpful for me is
because I'm an anxious person, right.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
It runs in my family. I'm positive.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
I've never had a diagnosis, but I am positive I
meet criteria for generalized anxiety.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
It's everything right, and it's just always coming at me.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
And so I think what's critical. And I did this
when we lost my mother to pancreatic cancer, like eighteen
years ago. It was be present. I have to be
in this moment. So I would tell myself, Okay, Mama's
still here. We at the hospital.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
She's here.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I have her right now, and let me enjoy and
be appreciative of this moment. I can touch her, she
can speak to me that kind of thing, and I
think the same thing is true for me for grief.
Let me be present as an extension to that. I
tell young people all the time, if you feel it,
I want you to find a way.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
To express it.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
So, whether that's journaling, whether that's exercise, whether that's talking
to somebody like doctor Joy or a licensed mental health professional, right,
whatever that is, you have to get that stuff out
because you cannot allow that grief to sit in fester,
right because that grief, unresolved grief, that complicated grief, that
complex grief, that can have physical health outcomes for us
(35:53):
that aren't positive. And so it's important for us, particularly
as people of color, with all the other stuff coming
at us, we've got to be able to process greef.
So we have to name it. We have to recognize
that what we're feeling is grief. We have to be
loving and forgiving of ourselves. It's okay to experience grief.
You can get online and google what are the stages
of grief and figure out where you are pretty easily.
(36:14):
And then the final thing I say is, if you
feel the emotions, allow yourself to feel the emotions as
long as you're in a safe space.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Find that safe space might be in a bathroom, might
be in your bedroom under the covers. But allow yourself
to feel your feelings, because suppressing your feelings does not
help manage grief. It is the expression of feelings. I think,
at your own pace, in your own way, even for
young people, that allows us to grieve in more healthy ways.
Speaker 4 (36:43):
And grief understand it can take a long time, right.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Grief is not like you get a week off from
work and you're supposed to be like fixed. I have
this really good girlfriend, doctor Helen Sue. She has ancestry
in Taiwan, and she taught me that in her culture,
you have a year to grief. And she told me
about this client she had once who wore a black
armband after he lost the loved one and he kept
it all for a year and was intentional. So what
(37:07):
I did, We lost somebody close to us. So my
daughter and I bought these little silver bracelets and you
can add charms to them. They're very thin, and we
bought them in honor of the person. And so a
couple of people I know personally who've experienced different kinds
of grief, I have bought them one of those bracelets
and said, this is just your reminder. You take it
off when you're ready to take it off. But this
is just your reminder that you're going through grief. It's
(37:29):
a difficult experience, and it's okay for you to feel
your feelings, so that tangible thing to help you remember,
Oh yeah, this feeling is grief, This sadness, this anger,
this frustration, it's okay for me to feel.
Speaker 4 (37:41):
This has always been very helpful to me.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Thank you for that. You know, you mentioned the Surgeon Generals,
and you know all of the information he has shared
around loneliness and how that is of course on the
rise post pandemic, and he is mostly talking about that
for adults, so I think we can only imagine what
that may be like for our young people. Can you
give us any ideas or tips to share around, like
how to help young people cultivate community and you know,
(38:06):
really decrease that experience of loneliness.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
I think they have to go read books by people
like doctor Joy where people talk about right, how sisterhood
heals like.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
It, bringing us together.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
I think you can find work books that help young
people process. We certainly use them in my house, right
workbooks to help you process grief, or help you process loneliness,
or help you develop social skills.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
I think practicing with our kids, our young people, the
people we care about, teaching them social skills. Right, So
we think often it just happens by osmosis. They watch
us and they get it. Everybody does know how to
do that. So what can we give to our young
people to teach them how to engage? And it's really
not about you need to go doing social because that's
what I did and it helped me. It's figuring out
(38:52):
and paying attention to what kind of kid do I
have to have a kid who shy? Do I have
a kid who will fade into the woodwork? Do I
have a kid who's like out there and nobody knows
who they are as soon as they.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
Hit the room. What kind of kid do I have?
Speaker 3 (39:03):
What is their personality like? So if we understand them better,
I think we can do a better job of calibrating
the tools that we give them. It's all about coping skills,
the tools that we give them to help them develop
their own little toolkit for coping or managing relationships or
managing interpersonal interactions, or managing their own emotions. But if
(39:24):
we're not intentional with tools and we just hope that
it's going to work, and we hope if they watch
us they'll get it. I think we do our kids
at disservice. So our job is to really equip and
prepare them. But guess what, we got to have tools.
We can't give them tools that.
Speaker 4 (39:40):
We don't have.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
So it's imperative that we develop a set of tools
to help us manage some of those challenging things in
our lives to be able to share those with our
young people.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Doctor Elfie, is there anything we haven't talked about today
that came up in your recent research report that you
want to make sure we put on the radar or
related to youth mental health?
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yes, one thing.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
The only thing is to end on a hopeful note,
and to say that for our young people of color,
what they tell us is that they have hope for
the future. So over seventy five percent of our young
people when we surveyed them, talked about having hope for
what was coming in the future for them. So even
with all the struggles, our young people are so resilient
and they find a way, you know, to find the
(40:24):
best in things that are out there in the world.
And then the other thing that they told us was
that over sixty five percent of our young people have
someone at least one person they love, which I thought
was beautiful. I'm sorry for the thirty something percent who
don't and around that same number had at least one
person who they knew loved them, right, and so allowing
(40:47):
space for our young people to talk about the things
that they're excited about, the things that they're happy about,
the things that bring them peace and joy, and the
things that are good for their mental health. I would
say that's the only other thing I would add in there,
because you're young people, your children, my children, they're so
beautiful and so wonderful, and if we can do any
little thing to uplift them and support them and taking
(41:10):
care of their mental health, I am all here for it.
So I just am grateful for you, and I appreciate
the opportunity to talk about our work at the Acoma
Project and our young people.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Thank you so much for that, Doctor Lpie. Please remind
us where can we stay connected with you? What is
the website for the Acoma Project and any social media
channels you'd like.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
To share absolutely so all socials. If we're a COMA project,
it all runs together aa k Is and kite o,
Emas and mary A a Cooma project. It's a take
on Alkama West African I think for symbol. So we're
on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, we got off the X don't
mess with X, lead them alone, and we're on LinkedIn,
(41:50):
and then our website is a Cooma Project dot org,
and then people can always find me across all socials.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
I always tease it looks like Drousie d r A
l E.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
So my son's friends Chris and me drowfi years ago
when they were in middle school. So I've been Droughty
forever and I'm literally everywhere as Drowfie. And the website
is doctor Alfie dot com as.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
Well, beautiful. We will be sure to include all of
that in the show notes. Thank you so much for
spending some time with us today, doctor Alfie. I appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
Thank you, Doctor Joy, I appreciate you absolutely.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
I'm so glad Doctor Alfie was able to share her
exercise with us today. To learn more about her and
her work, visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls
dot com slash session three five eight, and don't forget
to text two of your girls right now and tell
them to check out the episode. If you're looking for
a therapist in your area, visit our therapist directory at
(42:44):
Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And if you
want to continue digging into this topic or just be
in community with other sisters, come on over and join
us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy corner of
the Internet designed just for black women. You can join
us at Community Therapy from blackgirls dot com. This episode
was produced by Elise Ellis and Zaria Taylor. Editing was
(43:07):
done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining
me again this week. I look forward to continuing this
conversation with you all real soon. Take good care.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
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