How We’re Creating a Psychologically Safe Home
“Mom, Dad I’m depressed”- Respond as an African parent. This post was inspired by the TikTok trend started by @famousmarshalldior and I’ve been cracking up over all the responses ever since. After the laughter, I thought about the overarching theme of dismissing or belittling feelings that has become such a norm that we’ve turned it into jokes.
Once my therapist helped me realize that I’ve always had anxiety and depression that gets triggered by grief, so much of my life started to make sense. I always say that my parents did a great job raising me in all departments EXCEPT the mental and emotional wellbeing space. For the most part, I like to think I have my life somewhat together- degrees, career, marriage, home, kids. All the things I know my parents wanted for me. But, mental health and emotional wellbeing make up a significant part of who we are as complete people. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my parents, two amazingly correct Mende people, simply didn’t have the tools in their toolbox to provide emotional support in the way we observe it in America.
Now that I’m a mom, here are 4 things I’m doing differently with my kids so I can break that cycle.
- Allow them to cry their cry
- Acknowledge their feelings
- Create a space for them to talk
- Normalize therapy and mental wellness
Cry your cry
Gone are the days of “if you keep crying, I’ll give you something to cry about.” We know better now, so I try to do better. Bottling your feelings up for too long can have negative effects on your mental health long term. It personally doesn’t help my anxiety and I do not want that for my kids. My 5 year old is a kind hearted, loving, kid that has very strong emotions. She feels deeply, which is good and also very trying at times for me as her mom. However, when she is upset about something, I encourage her to cry her cry so she doesn’t bottle things up for long. Now, I encourage her to cry her cry efficiently; but the encouragement is there nevertheless. I grew up constantly feeling like crying was a bad thing except in the case of death which is such an extreme reason that we pray we don’t experience often. What I do know is that there’s more reasons to cry as a kid than death because life be lifeing, even for school age kids. As those emotional moments happen, I give my girls the space to let it out so they can acknowledge their own feelings and work through them as opposed to ignoring them.
Acknowledge feelings
This is a big one! When I was growing up, my feelings were often turned into jokes, dismissed, or belittled. When I look back, I think that all I needed was for someone to acknowledge how I was feeling and offer comfort/support. Today, I strive to talk to my children about their feelings so that they know that I have acknowledged how they feel in those moments. For example, the other morning, my oldest was upset about the outfit choices I laid out for the week. She was in a mood because she wanted to wear a very fall outfit that didn’t match the last day of 92~ish weather for the day and I’m just not that kind of mom. The clear answer here was, my dear…choose from these other lighter outfits just for today, then when it gets colder you can wear your fall fit. But she was in her feelings so I gave her the space to do so. After she cried her cry, we calmly had a conversation about how she was feeling and why I couldn’t let her wear that outfit. My acknowledgement rarely equates to them getting their way, but it does help me create an environment of vulnerability, and that’s the goal.
Create a safe space for them to talk
This is done by making the first two points routine in our home. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. This is often referenced when speaking about workplace scenarios, but I think a lot of African homes are also not psychologically safe environments. Yes, I have said it! I love us and I love my culture but oh lawdamercy…it’s much. I didn’t really feel psychologically safe at home to talk about how things at school were making me feel or even how things my parents said to me made me feel. Even my personal diary wasn’t a safe space! My mom found that once and was upset about what I wrote in the place where I expressed my personal feelings *sigh* #IYKYK. This all led to me retreating further into myself and feeling somewhat trapped with all my thoughts and feelings inside. From what we discussed in point one…holding things inside is bad. As an adult, I sometimes struggle with expressing my feelings and setting/maintaining boundaries with people who… disregard/abuse boundaries. We’ve only got one kid that for real talks at the moment but all the schoolyard after action review discussions say that we’re doing a decent job creating a safe space! We listen to all her banter and participate in engaging conversations about all the schoolyard gist and some days I’m legit entertained! I know one day she might not be as talkative as her 5 year old self; but I’m enjoying it for now. I hope she grows up never forgetting how safe she’s felt in those moments to tell us things.
Normalize therapy and mental wellness
Those that know me know that I’m an advocate for therapy. As in, everyone and their parents should go because why not! As long as you are in a financial position to afford it, and you’re mentally ready to start the journey, there’s so much value. At this point, I’ve been in therapy for all my daughter’s lives and have no plans of stopping; probably ever. I regularly talk about going to therapy and even sometimes share some of the things with my husband. I’ve been an advocate for therapy in my broader family, even taking a few of them to sessions with me. I will most certainly continue to vocalize the benefits to my kids so they know there’s no shame in it. I take care of my mental health the same way that we take care of our physical health by visiting the gym. Luckily, we’ve come a long way in the normalization of mental health and wellness in society as a whole so I don’t think my kids will ever grow up in a wold where taking care of your mental health is stigmatized. For this, I am grateful.
I by no means have it all figured out. Definitely wouldn’t be placing myself in the gentle parenting camp anytime soon because I’m still an African mom after all. But, I hope that my kids will always know that we are honestly doing what we feel is best with all the information and experiences we currently have. Only time will tell if these small changes have the intended impact.
