Representation in Mental Health Matters: A Queer Black Muslim Woman’s Guide to Therapy

By Sanaa Mirz

Why are you here today? This was all it took to make me break down.

It was our first (free) thirty-minute meeting. The wall I had built over my young twenty-something years of life came crashing down and no matter how gentle my therapist was or how much I wanted to stop myself from crying, I couldn’t stop the tears.

When I told my friends that I was finally finding a therapist some were confused: why would a seemingly functional person need one? Others knew that – despite my funny anecdotes – I was unhealed from both my own life trauma and the generational trauma that plagued me.

My massive breakdown was years in the making. Black women rarely get the space to be vulnerable, to merely exist rather than be some monumental beacon of confidence and hope. I took on the role of carer, friend, sassy sidekick, confidante, sister, daughter, strong black woman, nice black woman. Little thought was given to who I was underneath those roles. I became everyone else’s shelter with little thought for myself.

I was taught from a young age that good Muslimahs (Muslim women) cared for others, but I was not taught how to care for myself. I am the eldest daughter in an African household, so I was primed at an early age for the task of caregiving. I was the child that adults loved because I ‘seemed mature’. I knew how to pick up on others’ emotions because I was raised to know how my father felt based on how heavy his footsteps were on a given day. I knew when my mother felt angry or helpless by the way she scrubbed at the dishes or called for dinner. In my world, every emotion and thought were overanalysed to think of the best way to shift myself into someone who would survive without being harmed.

Being a queer black Muslim woman is not what caused my trauma. Existing as a queer black Muslim woman in an African household with parents still reliving their trauma in a world made by and for the white cishet Western individual – who are somehow threatened by my existence despite historically people like them hurting people like me – is what caused my trauma.

It is easier for some to blame my parents for the environment I grew up in without seeing how Western colonialism, slavery and racism perpetuated the generational trauma that has haunted my family, that the world’s Islamophobia and thereby the pressure to be perfect the entire course of my life was what broke the camel’s back. These are the things that I struggle to articulate when tasked with explaining to those who ask why I need to talk specifically to a queer black professional.

Who do you shape yourself into when you lack representation in the media of someone like you? The answer: someone who will survive. Though there has been a surge in recent years of people going to therapy and ravings of why you should ‘love yourself’, the reality of navigating therapy as a person with an intersectional identity is very different.

We are told that going to therapy is a noble quest, that it is a way to stop the cycle of both generational trauma and self-hate. We are informed that we can wake up one day and ‘choose’ to love ourselves. The message surrounding mental health and healing today is much like being shown the floorplan of a mansion without being given the tools to build it. We know the ‘what’ of mental health and healing but not the ‘how’.

I started 2022 knowing that something was wrong. I could no longer ‘grind’ the way I used to. I was emotionally and physically exhausted, not processing the effect that a pandemic and being tasked with explaining racism to white folks had taken on me. I was depleted of peace and felt forced to take on the world’s problems.

I could not ‘black girl magic’ my way through this period of exhaustion. Getting out of bed and simple tasks like brushing my teeth or grocery shopping were much harder. Years of being everything to everyone had finally taken a toll. Some think going to therapy is the hardest part of the ‘journey of healing’. The hardest part was accepting that I was no longer ‘okay’. Though I could fake being functional, I lost my purpose and drive for life. I existed rather than living.

I had always considered therapy but could never afford it because when the idea first occurred, I was a teenager with no income of my own. Finally, having gotten a job in university, I knew that I could afford to go to therapy. The only question was how.

No one in my family had ever gone to therapy. Therapy is for white people was the definite answer whenever the subject was brought up with my parents. It was for rich white people who complained about being ‘broken’. The ones who meditated and went on missions to ‘save the poor African children’.

Having found that all the therapists in the city I live in were white, I broadened my search to the whole of the United Kingdom, knowing that I could not wait months to find one. I eventually searched the national directory of registered therapists, bookmarking three that I liked and could afford.

Going to therapy can be intimidating. I found myself pacing my bedroom, suddenly dry-mouthed and panicking, when I finally called my current therapist to set up an appointment. Talking about something and actually going for it are two very different things. Eventually, I managed to book a ‘getting to know you’ appointment.

I could give a million reasons why I finally made the choice to have my one-hour sob sessions. The truth is that I was an exhausted mess existing the way I was. I had pushed my trauma behind a door inside of me for so long that I forgot the door was there until it could no longer shut close. I was traumatised from my own generational trauma, from racism, and was unable to cry without feeling guilty.

While therapy has helped me grow, the reality of it is very different to Instagramable sessions or lying on a comforting stranger’s couch like people do on television. It is sitting stunned in the reality of who you are now an hour after a session; it is keeping a water bottle next to you and a roll of toilet paper because you know you might cry. And that is okay for once. Going to therapy means making the choice to be honest with yourself about where you are, have been and are going. It is knowing that you are breaking old, learned behaviours.

The reality of going to therapy as a queer black Muslim woman is that I am confronted with my own individual behaviours, trauma and resilience. I go to heal myself and take up space in a place where I belong to myself. We are so often told how miraculous our sheer existence is that we forget our individual pain and dreams. We all owe it to ourselves to thrive and to live a little – especially black women and those with intersectional identities.