Jasmine J. Singleton, LCSW

Tag: Mental Health

  • When Staying Becomes Surviving: Anxious Attachment and Why We Hold On Longer Than We Should

    You were never meant to lose yourself trying to make someone stay. — Jasmine J. Singleton, LCSW

    There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from staying in something past the point where it was ever going to become what you needed it to be. Not the exhaustion of working hard toward something. The exhaustion of pouring into a space that keeps emptying out, and convincing yourself that if you just give a little more, love a little harder, or hold on a little longer, something will finally shift.

    Many women know this feeling. And for Black women especially, it often goes unnamed, because we have been taught that staying is strength, that enduring is love, and that leaving means we gave up.

    But what if the staying has less to do with the relationship, and more to do with a wound that has been there a lot longer than the person in front of us?

    The Weight We Were Already Carrying

    Women wear many hats simultaneously, and most of us manage to do it in a way that looks, from the outside, like we have it all together. We are the caregivers, the decision-makers, the ones who hold households and relationships and families in place. When a parent’s health begins to decline, it is often a daughter, or the women in the family, who step in first. When a household needs managing, it is often a woman who manages it. And when a relationship starts to unravel, it is often a woman who tries to hold it together.

    We are praised for this capacity. Called strong. Called resilient. And those words carry real weight, because the endurance they describe is real. But endurance is not the same as thriving. And staying is not the same as choosing.

    At some point, every woman has to ask herself — when does staying in something become staying beyond what I actually have left to give? When does loyalty to a relationship become a loss of yourself?

    What Most of Us Were Never Taught

    Here is something that does not get talked about enough. Most of us have never been taught to understand our own attachment styles, and most people would not even recognize that term if they heard it. Yet our attachment styles shape nearly everything about how we show up in our closest relationships. What we need from a partner, what triggers us, what we reach for when we feel afraid, and how long we are willing to stay in something that is hurting us.

    Attachment theory tells us that the way we bonded, or struggled to bond, with the adults who raised us creates a kind of emotional blueprint. That blueprint gets carried into every significant relationship we have as adults, often without us realizing it.

    If you grew up in an environment where you felt consistently safe, seen, and responded to, you likely developed what is called a secure attachment. You are able to trust your partner, communicate your needs without spiraling, and tolerate the natural distance that comes with conflict without it feeling catastrophic.

    But many of us did not grow up in that kind of environment. Some of us grew up in homes where love was inconsistent. Where a parent was emotionally present sometimes and completely unavailable other times. Where affection had to be earned, or where we learned early that expressing our needs led to rejection, punishment, or being dismissed altogether. Some of us experienced neglect that was never dramatic enough to be called abuse, but that quietly taught us that we were not quite worth the effort of showing up for.

    When that is what love looked like growing up, we do not arrive at adulthood with a clean slate. We arrive with patterns, coping strategies that made sense in childhood but do not serve us in adult relationships. And one of the most common of those patterns is anxious attachment.

    What Anxious Attachment Actually Looks Like

    Anxious attachment does not always announce itself clearly. It does not show up as a neon sign that says “I am afraid of being left.” It shows up in subtler, more exhausting ways.

    It looks like checking your phone one more time to see if he responded, even though you just checked it. It looks like replaying a conversation from last week, trying to figure out if you said something wrong and why he seemed distant. It looks like working overtime to manage his moods, anticipating his needs before he even names them, making yourself smaller so that there is less for him to push back against.

    It looks like staying. Long past the point where you know something is not right. Long past the point where your gut has been telling you something that your heart refuses to hear. Not because you cannot see the problems, but because the thought of losing the relationship activates something deep and old inside of you. Something that has nothing to do with this particular man, and everything to do with a fear that was installed in you long before he arrived.

    Anxious attachment is driven, at its core, by a fear of abandonment. Not just the surface-level fear of being alone, but a more primal terror that you are not enough to make someone stay. That if you let go, you will confirm something you have always been afraid was true about yourself. That love does not last. That people leave. That you are too much, or not enough, or somehow fundamentally difficult to love.

    And so the brain does what brains do under threat. It tries to problem-solve its way out of the fear. It says, maybe if I love him better, he will stop pulling away. Maybe if I stop asking for what I need, he will stop feeling suffocated. Maybe if I just hold on, this will become what I always hoped it would be.

    Why This Hits Black Women Differently

    For Black women, anxious attachment does not exist in isolation. It exists alongside a cultural narrative that has long insisted that we are not supposed to walk away from hard things. That staying through struggle love is loyalty. That when a man is not yet who you need him to be, it is your job to love him into becoming that person, and if you leave before he gets there, you did not love him correctly.

    We are told that having standards means we are difficult. That setting boundaries means we are masculine or aggressive or impossible to please. We are given a long list of unflattering labels for simply requiring that our love be reciprocated, and many of us internalize those labels early enough that we stop asking.

    The result is that anxious attachment in Black women can run especially deep. The fear of being called difficult is layered on top of the fear of abandonment, which is layered on top of a lifelong experience of having emotional needs dismissed or minimized. We do not just stay because of our attachment wounds. We stay because we have been told, in a hundred different ways, that asking for more is the problem.

    The Question Worth Sitting With

    Here is what I want you to consider. When you are staying in a relationship that is costing you your peace, your sense of self, your emotional stability, are you staying because the relationship is genuinely growing and worth holding on to? Or are you staying because leaving feels like proof of something you are terrified to confirm?

    Those are two very different reasons to stay. And only one of them is actually about the relationship.

    Recognizing the difference is not easy, especially when your nervous system has been wired since childhood to read distance as danger and conflict as an incoming abandonment. But that recognition is where something begins to shift. Not the relationship necessarily, but you. Your understanding of what you actually need, what you deserve to have, and how long you are willing to bargain with yourself before you are willing to choose you.

    You were never meant to lose yourself trying to make someone stay. And the fear that has been driving some of your choices is not a character flaw — it is a wound that has a name, a history, and a path toward healing.

    That path is worth taking.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • She Is Still Showing Up — What High-Functioning Depression and Anxiety Actually Look Like

    She Is Still Showing Up — What High-Functioning Depression and Anxiety Actually Look Like

    For the woman who has not missed a single day, and is quietly disappearing anyway.

    When most people picture depression, they imagine someone who cannot get out of bed. Someone crying through most of the day, moving slowly, letting things fall apart around her. And when they picture anxiety, they think of restlessness, constant visible worry, a person who cannot sit still or stop preparing for every worst-case scenario.

    Those are real experiences. Every woman who lives them deserves to be seen and taken seriously. But there is another woman who often goes completely unnoticed. She is not in bed. She is at her desk. She is in the carpool line. She is at your dinner table, making sure everyone else has what they need.

    She showed up today. She will show up tomorrow. And she has not told a single person how close to empty she actually is.

    What It Looks Like From the Outside

    She performs. At work, she does not just meet expectations. She often exceeds them. She manages her home, her children, her responsibilities, her calendar. From the outside, everything looks like it is running on schedule, maybe even impressively.

    But pay closer attention and you will start to notice the edges. She is a little more irritable than she used to be. Her friends notice she has been pulling back, not showing up the way she once did. Her family chalks it up to stress or a busy season. Nobody names it for what it is. Nobody thinks to ask.

    She is also quietly changing in ways that even she might be slow to recognize. The things that used to feel like her are slowly fading. Getting dressed in the morning, doing her hair, putting on her makeup — things she used to enjoy, or at least found easy, now require more energy than she can locate. So she simplifies. Just enough to walk out the door and look presentable. Nobody notices, or if they do, they assume she is just tired.

    She is tired. But it is not the kind that rest can fix.

    What It Feels Like From the Inside

    She cries in the shower because that is the only place where nobody needs anything from her. When she walks out, the straight face is already in place. It has to be. Everyone around her is waiting for her to hold it together, and she has never given them a reason to expect anything different.

    Her mind does not stop at night. She is planning tomorrow while trying to fall asleep, running through everything that needs to happen, rehearsing every scenario that could go wrong if she does not stay on top of every detail. Some people call that organized. Efficient. She would call it exhausting. She cannot turn it off.

    She questions herself constantly. Is she doing enough? Is she good enough? What would happen if she stopped holding everything together for just one day? The thought of finding out terrifies her more than the weight of never stopping does.

    She feels guilty for being tired. She tells herself that other women handle more. That rest is something she will earn eventually, once things slow down. Things do not slow down. And the guilt of feeling exhausted sits on top of the exhaustion itself, making everything heavier.

    This is high-functioning depression and anxiety. It keeps her going precisely when everything in her body is begging her to stop.

    Why It Gets Missed

    High-functioning depression and anxiety do not announce themselves loudly. They do not look like what we have been taught mental health struggles look like. The work is still getting done. The kids are still taken care of. Life, from a distance, appears to be working.

    Her symptoms may be misread entirely. Fatigue gets blamed on her schedule. Irritability gets labeled as attitude. The emotional withdrawal gets called introversion or being antisocial. Nothing assembles itself into a picture that anyone takes seriously, including her.

    And because she is still functioning, still producing, still present, no one turns on the alarm. Her light is dimming steadily, and nobody has noticed yet because she has not let them see it.

    What Women Carry

    For women broadly, there is a long-standing message that strength means silence. We learn early that our value is tied to how much we can carry, how little we complain, and how consistently we take care of everyone around us. So when depression or anxiety shows up, it folds right into that existing pattern. It wears the same outfit as being busy, being responsible, being strong. And nobody knows the difference.

    For Black women specifically, that weight has additional layers. There is the chronic stress that accumulates from moving through spaces not designed with you in mind. Code-switching. Having to prove yourself, again and again. Absorbing microaggressions that settle in the body over time and do not disappear at the end of the workday. These stressors compound. They stay.

    There is also the stigma that still exists in many communities around mental health. Seeking help can feel like admitting failure, like betraying a generational standard of endurance that was passed down as protection. So the struggle stays underground. Unnamed. Where it becomes harder and harder to address.

    Strength was never supposed to mean silence. And endurance was never supposed to mean going without.

    For the Woman Carrying It Alone

    For women raising their households on their own, the weight takes on a specific and relentless shape. There is no off switch. No handoff at the end of the day. You are the one who notices when your child seems off, who remembers the car needs attention, who figures out dinner and also carries the quiet fear of what this world might do to the people you love if you are not watching closely enough.

    The margin for rest is razor thin. Falling apart feels like a luxury that does not fit in the schedule. So the falling apart gets postponed indefinitely. It goes underground. And underground is exactly where it becomes harder to find, harder to name, and harder to heal.

    The loneliness of it is also real, and it is a specific kind. Not the loneliness of being alone. The loneliness of being surrounded by people who need you, while wondering privately whether anyone truly sees what this is costing you.

    What You Can Do Right Now

    Therapy is one of the most powerful tools available, and we will get there. But while you are building toward professional support, or alongside it, there are real things you can do today in your actual life.

    Start by naming it. Say the words out loud, even if only to yourself. I am not okay right now. I have been running on empty for a long time. Something feels wrong even if I cannot fully explain it. Naming what you are experiencing is not being dramatic. It is being honest. And honesty is where healing begins.

    Reconsider what rest actually means. For women managing households alone, sleep itself is rarely fully restful. True rest means moments where you are not producing, not performing, not caretaking. Ten minutes outside. Reading something that has nothing to do with your to-do list. Stillness that belongs only to you. Small moments accumulate.

    Find one person you can be a little more honest with. Not someone who will fix it. Just someone who will hold it with you without making it smaller than it is. A friend, a sister, someone from your faith community, one person who will sit with you in it.

    Move your body in a way that feels kind. Not as a project, not as punishment. Walking, stretching, dancing in your kitchen. Movement is one of the most well-researched supports for mood and anxiety, and it does not have to look like a gym routine to count.

    Give yourself permission to say no to something. One obligation on your plate that is taking more than it is giving. One commitment rooted in guilt rather than genuine desire. Saying no to something is saying yes to yourself, and that is not selfishness. That is survival.

    When to Reach Out for Professional Support

    There are limits to what we can do alone, or with the people around us. Professional support exists for a reason, and reaching for it is one of the most courageous decisions a woman can make.

    Consider connecting with a therapist if the heaviness has lasted more than a few weeks and is not lifting on its own, if you are relying on numbing behaviors just to get through, if you feel disconnected from the people and things that used to matter to you, or if thoughts of hopelessness or not being enough have started showing up regularly.

    When looking for a therapist, seek someone with experience working with women, and if it matters to you, someone who understands your cultural background and values. Clinicians of Color, Melanin and Mental Health at melaninandmentalhealth.com, and Therapy for Black Girls at therapyforblackgirls.com are solid starting points. If you are in Texas or New Mexico, you can also reach out directly through Guiding Light Wellness Center at glwellnesscenter.com.

    You do not have to be in crisis to deserve support. You are allowed to ask for help before you hit the floor.

    A Note on Faith and Community

    For many women, and especially for many Black women, faith and community are not separate from mental health. They are part of it. Your prayer practice, your church, your sense of connection to something greater than yourself — these are real and meaningful sources of strength and comfort. They do not have to be left at the door when you seek clinical support. A therapist who respects your values and your spirituality is out there, and they are worth looking for.

    You Deserve to Actually Be Okay

    Not just to look okay. Not just to manage. To genuinely, actually be okay.

    You deserve rest that restores you. You deserve to be truly known and not just needed. You deserve to stop white-knuckling your way through your own life while everyone around you assumes you are fine because you never stopped moving.

    The fact that you are still showing up says something real about you. But showing up is not the full picture of what you deserve. Allow yourself to acknowledge where you actually are. Name it out loud. Find one person. Take one step. Give yourself the grace to begin.

    If this resonated with you and you are navigating emotional exhaustion, burnout, or the weight of holding it all together, support is available. If you are in Texas or New Mexico, visit glwellnesscenter.com for a free consultation. Wherever you are, you deserve the space to stop performing and start healing.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • You Are Not Who You Were — And That’s the Point

    You Are Not Who You Were — And That’s the Point

    On releasing the guilt of growth and refusing to be held hostage to a past that no longer belongs to you

    Have you ever noticed how quickly someone reaches for the phrase “I remember when” the moment your life starts to look different than it once did?

    It almost sounds gentle at first. Nostalgic, even. But spend a little more time sitting with it and you begin to feel what it actually is—a leash. A quiet, calculated pull back toward a version of you that was easier for them to be around. More familiar. Less threatening. Less free.

    “I remember when you used to…” is rarely about honoring your story. It is about keeping you tethered to it.

    The Unspoken Expectation Hidden Inside That Phrase

    When someone says “I remember when” or “you used to think that” or “that’s not like you,” they are rarely trying to celebrate how far you have come. What they are really saying, underneath the softness of it, is: come back. Come back to the version of you I understood. The one who didn’t make me question my own choices. The one who stayed where I could see her.

    Because here is the truth that nobody wants to say out loud: your growth can feel like an indictment to the people around you who have not moved. When you begin to make different decisions, set new boundaries, choose better relationships, or simply refuse to carry what you once carried without a word, it holds up a mirror. And sometimes the people closest to you do not like what they see in it.

    So they reach for the “I remember when.” They remind you of your mistakes. They reference the version of yourself you worked the hardest to leave behind. Not because they are trying to hurt you, though sometimes they are. But because your evolution is inconvenient to their comfort.

    Your growth is not a betrayal of who you were. It is a testimony to everything you survived.

    The Disguise That Insults Wear

    There is a specific kind of cruelty that presents itself as humor. The joke at your expense that is supposed to be taken lightly. The “remember when you did that” delivered with a laugh so that any pushback on your part makes you the one who is too sensitive, too serious, can’t take a joke.

    Pay attention to the people in your life who use your past as a punchline. Who bring up your lowest moments when the room is full. Who remind you, in front of others, of who you used to be with just enough of a smile to make it socially acceptable.

    That is not love. That is a power move.

    It is designed to keep you small enough to need them and familiar enough not to threaten them. It is an insult wearing the outfit of inside-joke intimacy. And you are allowed to name it, even if naming it makes them uncomfortable.

    You Are Not Required to Live in the Past

    Here is what is true: you have made choices you would take back. We all have. Decisions that we replayed a hundred times, that we wished we could reach back and undo. Roads that felt right and ended badly. Relationships we stayed in too long. Versions of ourselves that we are not entirely proud of.

    But you are the one who lived through those moments. You were there for all of it. The shame, the confusion, the regret, and the slow, hard climb out of it. You do not need anyone to remind you of what you already carry.

    You cannot time travel. What you can do is refuse to let someone else use your past as a permanent residence. Your mistakes are part of your story. They are not the whole of it. And they do not define what you are allowed to become.

    You have permission to want better and to actually pursue it. Full stop.

    On Being Held Emotionally Hostage

    There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being around people who are still attached to a version of you that no longer exists. Who talk about you in the present tense as if you are still the same person you were five years ago. Who resist every sign of your change because somewhere in their own story, your staying the same served a purpose.

    These people are not always strangers. They are often people we love. Family members who remember our worst chapters. Old friends who bonded with us over shared suffering. Partners who preferred us when we were a little more uncertain, a little less sure of ourselves.

    And the thing is, letting go of their version of you is not the same as letting go of them. It is possible to love someone and also refuse to be defined by their memory of who you were. It is possible to hold the relationship while releasing their grip on your narrative.

    You are allowed to outgrow the version of yourself that someone else still needs you to be.

    Standing in Your Truth in the Present Moment

    The work is not about defending your growth to anyone who challenges it. You do not owe anyone a detailed explanation of how you got from there to here, or why you are no longer willing to fit into the container they built for you.

    The work is about standing firmly inside of who you actually are right now, today, in this present version of your life, without apologizing for the distance between that and where you started.

    Setting a boundary with someone who holds your past over you is not cruelty. It is clarity. It is saying — I know who I was. I know what I have lived. And I have also decided what I am no longer willing to carry.

    That is not arrogance. That is self-preservation. That is healing made visible.

    Release the Guilt. Keep the Growth.

    Guilt is one of the most effective tools people use to keep us frozen. And when it is attached to our past, to who we once were, the mistakes we made, the ways we fell short, it can feel almost righteous to hold onto it. As if carrying it is some form of penance.

    But guilt that has expired its usefulness is just weight. And you have already proven, more times than anyone has given you credit for, that you know how to carry weight. What you are learning now is that you do not have to.

    You do not have to live in the shadows of who you were. You do not have to keep apologizing for the choices you made with what you knew at the time. You do not have to remain a permanent exhibit of your most painful chapters for the comfort of people who never had to live them.

    You are allowed to close that chapter, not because it never happened, but because it is finished. And you have not just survived it. You have grown past it.

    A Note for the Woman Reading This

    If someone has been using “I remember when” to keep you small, this is your reminder that you are not required to stay.

    If someone has been holding your past over your head like a ledger of everything you owe them, this is your reminder that the debt has been paid.

    If you have been carrying guilt about who you were before you knew better, this is your permission to put it down.

    You are not the woman you were. You are the woman you chose to become. And that choice — the decision to learn, to evolve, to build a life that reflects who you actually are now — is one of the most courageous things a person can do.

    Stand in that. Unapologetically.

    If this resonated with you and you are navigating the emotional weight of growth, relationships, or releasing the past, support is available. If you are in Texas or New Mexico, visit glwellnesscenter.com for a free consultation. Wherever you are, you deserve the space to become who you were always meant to be.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • Trauma Bond, Soul Tie, or Relationship PTSD: Why You Can’t Seem to Let Go

    Trauma Bond, Soul Tie, or Relationship PTSD: Why You Can’t Seem to Let Go

    There is a particular kind of confusion that comes with loving someone who is not good for you. Not confusion about whether they are good for you. Somewhere deep down, most of us already know the answer to that. The confusion is about why, even knowing what we know, we cannot seem to fully walk away. Why we keep returning. Why the thought of them still takes up so much space. Why a song, a smell, a late-night moment of loneliness can send us right back to wanting something we know has already cost us so much.

    You have probably heard the words by now. Trauma bond. Soul tie. Relationship PTSD. People use them often, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes casually. But underneath all of those words is something very real that a lot of women are living with and not fully understanding. And when we do not understand what is happening inside of us, we tend to blame ourselves for it. We call ourselves weak. We wonder what is wrong with us. We stay stuck in shame instead of moving toward healing.

    So let us talk about what is actually going on.

    When Your Nervous System Gets Hooked

    One of the most important things to understand about these kinds of connections is that they are not just emotional. They are biological.

    When a relationship runs in cycles, periods of tension, disconnection, or pain followed by moments of warmth, affection, or feeling truly seen, your nervous system learns to live inside that cycle. The lows are real. The anxiety, the walking on eggshells, the disappointment and emotional exhaustion all flood your body with cortisol and deplete your dopamine over time. Your nervous system becomes dysregulated. You are not yourself. You cannot quite settle.

    And then the good moment comes. A kind word. A gesture that reminds you of who they can be. A conversation that feels like the early days. And your brain, which has been starved of the good feeling, responds with a rush of dopamine. The same reward response that lights up in the brain of someone struggling with addiction.

    That is not a metaphor. That is neurochemistry. Your brain does not stop to evaluate whether this person is healthy for you before releasing that reward signal. It only knows that it felt bad, and now it feels better. So it tells you to go back. To hold on. To wait for the next good moment. And the cycle continues.

    This is what makes it so hard to leave, and so hard to stay gone even when you do. You are not weak. You are not foolish. You are responding to a very real chemical pattern that has developed inside of a relationship that was never stable enough to let you heal.

    When Shared Pain Feels Like a Bond

    Then there is something else that keeps women tethered to certain people, and it is often the thing that is hardest to see from the inside.

    Some connections feel profound because of shared suffering. You went through something hard, and this person understands it in a way no one else does. Maybe they experienced something similar. Maybe they were present during the worst season of your life. There is an intimacy that comes from being known in your pain, and that intimacy can feel like depth, like destiny, like something you would not find anywhere else.

    But shared trauma is not the same as shared healing. And this is where a lot of women get stuck.

    If you and a partner have both experienced significant pain, loss, or trauma, and neither one of you has done the inner work to process and heal from it, that unresolved pain does not disappear inside the relationship. It shows up. It creates conflict that neither of you fully understands. It triggers each other in ways that feel out of proportion. It makes love feel complicated and exhausting in ways that are hard to explain to people on the outside. Hurt people, even when they love each other, can hurt each other. And staying connected because someone understands your pain is not the same as being in a relationship that is capable of supporting your healing.

    The Part Nobody Talks About: Relationship PTSD

    When most people hear the word PTSD, their minds go to combat veterans, survivors of natural disasters, or people who have lived through major accidents or acute tragedies. And those experiences absolutely warrant that conversation. But what gets left out is the trauma that comes from something less visible and no less real: repeated emotional pain.

    When you have been in a relationship, or multiple relationships, where you were consistently let down, betrayed, dismissed, or treated in ways that made you feel unsafe, your nervous system learns from that experience. It starts preparing for the worst before the worst even arrives. You become hypervigilant. You read into things. You brace yourself in quiet moments because you have learned through lived experience that quiet moments can turn. You feel anxious in ways that seem irrational to people around you, but that make complete sense given what you have been through.

    This is your brain doing its job. It is trying to protect you from being hurt the same way again. The problem is that it does not always know the difference between a genuine threat and a moment that simply resembles one. So old wounds show up in new relationships. You find yourself struggling to trust even when trust is being offered. You want control because control has felt like the only way to prevent pain. You become distant when things feel too good, because good has not always been safe.

    That is not you being difficult. That is an injury. And like any injury, it needs care. It needs to be acknowledged and treated, not pushed through and ignored.

    What Healing Can Look Like

    Understanding what is happening inside of you is the first step. And it matters, because when you know that this is not about weakness or poor judgment, you can approach yourself with a little more compassion and a little less shame.

    Here are some places to begin.

    Name what you are experiencing. Whether it is a pattern of returning to someone who is not healthy for you, a connection built on shared pain that has not led to shared growth, or anxiety and hypervigilance that you carry into every relationship, give it a name. You do not have to have the perfect clinical vocabulary. You just have to be honest with yourself about what is happening.

    Pay attention to your patterns, not just the person. The person who keeps drawing you back is worth examining, yes. But so is the pull itself. What need is being met in those good moments? What fear is driving the return? When you understand the pattern, you have more power to interrupt it.

    Let your body be part of the healing. Trauma does not only live in thoughts. It lives in the body. Somatic practices, breathwork, movement, even learning to notice when your body is in a stress response, all of these are tools. Healing your nervous system is not just a mental exercise.

    Seek professional support. This kind of work is deep, and it is okay to need help with it. A therapist who specializes in trauma, attachment, or relationship patterns can help you untangle things that are very difficult to see clearly on your own. If finding a culturally affirming therapist matters to you — and for many women, especially Black women, it does — Clinicians of Color, Melanin and Mental Health, and Therapy for Black Girls are excellent places to start.

    Give yourself grace for the time it took to get here. You were not weak for staying. You were not foolish for loving someone deeply. You were human, responding to very human needs with the tools and understanding you had at the time. Healing is not about rewriting the past. It is about building something different going forward.

    You Deserve a Love That Does Not Cost You Your Peace

    A bond that is built on pain, on cycles of longing and loss, on the chemistry of craving something that is never quite consistent, that is not the depth of love it can feel like from the inside. Real connection does not require you to lose yourself in order to hold onto it. Real love does not keep you anxious and guessing.

    You deserve to feel safe in your relationship. Not just in the good moments. Consistently. You deserve love that is not something you have to earn back over and over again, a love that does not leave your nervous system bracing for the next fall.

    That kind of love starts with understanding what has happened inside of you and deciding that you are worth the work it takes to heal. You are.

    If you are in Texas or New Mexico and are ready to take that first step, visit glwellnesscenter.com for a free consultation.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • Loved but Never Soft: Why Black Women Struggle to Receive the Love They Freely Give

    Loved but Never Soft: Why Black Women Struggle to Receive the Love They Freely Give

    There is a question that lives quietly in the hearts of many Black women, one that rarely gets asked out loud. Is it that we love to struggle? Or have we simply struggled so long that we no longer recognize love unless it costs us something?

    We show up. In our communities, in our friendships, in our homes, and in our relationships. We rally when there is injustice. We give second, third, and fourth chances. We stay committed even when commitment is not being returned in equal measure. And when the weight of all of that finally becomes too heavy to carry gracefully, we get labeled.

    Difficult. Too independent. Masculine. Hard to love.

    But no one stops to ask how we got here. No one asks what it looks like to pour endlessly from a vessel that no one ever refills.

    This article is an attempt to ask that question out loud. Where did this narrative come from? How has it shaped the way Black women experience love, give love, and believe they deserve to receive it? And more importantly, how do we begin to shift it?

    Where the Narrative Began

    To understand what Black women are navigating in love today, you have to go back. Far back.

    The strength that Black women are known for was never chosen. It was inherited. It was forged out of survival conditions that left little room for softness, rest, or the luxury of being taken care of. Across generations, Black women were required to work, to endure, to hold families and communities together in the face of systems designed to dismantle both. There was no space to be the one who needed comforting. There was only the next thing to get through.

    That endurance was real, and it was remarkable. But somewhere along the way, what was a forced adaptation became a cultural expectation. Strength stopped being something that was required of Black women by circumstance and started being something that was required of them by default. By their families. By their partners. By their communities. Even by themselves.

    The expectation was passed down through generations like a family heirloom, wrapped in admiration but heavy as iron. You are strong. You can handle it. You always figure it out. What those words communicated, underneath the compliment, was something far more isolating. You do not need help, and you should not ask for it.

    And so Black women learned to carry the weight. All of it. And to do it quietly.

    What It Does to Us Internally

    When you spend years, or decades, operating in survival mode, something shifts inside of you. You stop asking for support because experience has taught you it probably will not come. You stop showing vulnerability because vulnerability has been met with either absence or the label of “too much.” You develop a kind of emotional self-sufficiency that, on the surface, looks like strength. But underneath, it is often loneliness wearing a composed face.

    Black women are navigating not just personal stress, but racial stress, financial stress, and the weight of raising children in a country that still has not fully decided it values their lives. That accumulation does not disappear because the workday is over. It settles into the body. It shapes how we move through the world, how much we trust, how much we allow ourselves to need.

    And here is what makes it particularly complicated. Many Black women have internalized the narrative so deeply that they begin to reinforce it themselves. Rest feels irresponsible. Asking for help feels like failure. Softness feels like a risk they cannot afford. Because every time they have let themselves be soft, history, personal or collective, has shown them it was not safe.

    That is not a personal flaw. That is a wound.

    Pouring from an Empty Cup

    There is something else that does not get named often enough. Black women are some of the most nurturing, giving, and selfless people in the world. They show up for their children, their partners, their families, their friends, their churches, and their communities. The giving is constant, and it is real, and it is beautiful.

    But so many Black women are pouring from a cup that has been empty for years.

    When you have been conditioned since childhood to believe that your value lives in what you provide for others, your own needs become an afterthought. Rest feels selfish. Saying no feels like letting someone down. Taking time for yourself feels like something you have to earn first. And so the pouring continues, even when there is nothing left. Even when the body is begging to stop.

    And the body does beg. It speaks through exhaustion that sleep cannot touch, through headaches that will not release, through tension that lives permanently in the shoulders and the jaw, through stress-related illnesses that accumulate quietly over time. Black women experience higher rates of hypertension, autoimmune conditions, and chronic stress-related health crises than nearly any other group. This is not coincidence. This is what years of depletion looks like in the body.

    Self-neglect does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like the woman who remembers every appointment for everyone else but has not seen her own doctor in two years. Sometimes it looks like being the last one to eat, the last one to rest, the last one anyone thinks to check on, including herself.

    The cup was never designed to be drained. It was meant to be filled, tended, and allowed to overflow. The people in your life were always meant to benefit from that overflow, not from you scraping the bottom dry. Caring for yourself is not a distraction from loving others well. It is the very source of it. And love, real, sustainable, genuine love, has to begin with the love you extend to yourself first.

    How It Shows Up in Romantic Relationships

    This is where things get tender, and also where the conversation gets avoided most.

    Black women are choosing partners in the context of everything described above. And sometimes that context means choosing love based on potential rather than pattern, staying committed to someone’s future self while the present self continues to cause harm. It means forgiving things that violated boundaries not because those things were acceptable, but because we were taught that love requires that level of endurance. It means reading the word “strong” in someone’s eyes when they look at us, and quietly accepting that we will have to be.

    At the same time, there is a very public narrative being pushed, in social media comment sections and in content designed for engagement rather than truth, that pits Black men and Black women against each other. That paints Black women as incapable of healthy love. That says we are too damaged, or too masculine, or too independent to be good partners.

    But here is what that narrative conveniently leaves out.

    Black women have some of the highest rates of single-parent households in the country. They face higher rates of infidelity and domestic violence within their relationships. They often carry the financial load of a household alone, becoming one of the most educated groups in America in part to compensate for economic gaps that structural inequality created. And in spite of all of that, they still show up. In their relationships, in their communities, in their love.

    They still choose Black men, again and again. They still rally around injustice. They still invest in families and relationships that do not always invest back.

    So the question is not whether Black women are capable of love. The question is what it looks like to love from a place of exhaustion, and why that exhaustion has been mistaken for a character flaw.

    The Resentment No One Wants to Name

    When needs go unmet long enough, resentment builds. That is not unique to Black women. That is human nature.

    But for Black women, the resentment gets named before it gets understood. It gets labeled as bitterness, as attitude, as evidence that she is “too much” to love. What it actually is, in many cases, is the natural result of years of being unseen, unsupported, and undervalued in the spaces where she was also expected to give the most.

    When a woman has been operating in survival mode her whole life, when she has never had a safe space to fall apart, when vulnerability has consistently been met with absence or judgment, she does not suddenly become warm and open the moment someone offers her love. She tests it. She holds back. She waits to see if it is real. She may even push it away before it can leave her first.

    That is not her being broken. That is her protecting what has been broken before.

    The way back from resentment is not willpower or positive thinking. It is the experience of something different. Safety, consistency, being chosen without conditions, being held without having to perform strength first.

    This Is Not the Whole Story

    It is important to say this clearly. This is not the story of every Black woman or every Black relationship.

    Black love exists, and it is beautiful. There are Black men who are present, who protect, who cherish the women they are with. There are Black marriages built on genuine partnership, on mutual respect, on the kind of love that actually looks like what it is supposed to look like. It exists in our families, in our communities, and in homes all over this country.

    The point is not to suggest otherwise. The point is to ask why the exceptions so often feel like the standard is being exceeded, rather than simply met. And to acknowledge that for the many Black women who are not in those relationships, the lack is not a reflection of their worth or their capacity for love.

    What Has to Shift

    We have to change what we teach girls about love. If we teach them that love means staying through anything, that commitment means endurance, that a good woman is one who never stops giving, we are setting them up to repeat the patterns that have already cost so many Black women so much. Girls deserve to be taught that love should feel safe. That their needs matter. That softness is not weakness.

    We have to allow Black women to need things without penalizing them for it. The moment a Black woman expresses that she is tired, that she needs support, that she is not okay, she should not be met with judgment or absence. She should be met with presence. That starts in our families, in our friendships, in our churches, and in our relationships.

    We have to stop allowing the “strong Black woman” narrative to function as an excuse not to show up for Black women. Strength is not a reason to withhold support. It is not evidence that someone does not need care. The assumption that she will figure it out has left too many Black women figuring it out alone, at great cost to their health, their hearts, and their sense of self.

    Black women have to give themselves permission to receive. This is not about blame. It is about healing. When you have spent years giving and not receiving, the act of receiving can feel uncomfortable, even suspicious. Learning to receive love, support, care, and rest is part of the healing work. You do not have to earn it. You do not have to justify it. You simply have to allow it.

    Creating Environments Where Love Can Grow

    For Black women who want to experience love differently, the work starts from the inside out. And it is work, not because something is wrong with you, but because unlearning generational patterns is genuinely hard.

    Therapy can be a powerful starting point. Not because something is broken, but because everyone deserves a space where they can process without performing. If you are in Texas or New Mexico, I offer services through Guiding Light Wellness Center and would love to walk alongside you in this work. Visit glwellnesscenter.com to schedule a free consultation. If you are outside of those areas and are looking for a therapist who understands the specific weight Black women carry, Clinicians of Color, Melanin and Mental Health, and Therapy for Black Girls are excellent places to start.

    Community matters. Finding other women who reflect your values, who hold space for your wholeness rather than just your strength, is one of the most healing things available.

    Faith can be an anchor. For many Black women, spirituality is not separate from healing. It is part of it. Bringing your full self, the tired parts, the longing parts, the parts that want to be loved without conditions, into your prayer life and your faith community is not weakness. It is honesty before God.

    Setting boundaries is an act of self-love. Saying no to what diminishes you is saying yes to what is meant for you. You do not have to justify your limits. You are allowed to protect your peace.

    Softness is not something you have to earn back. It was always yours. The conditions that required you to set it aside were never permanent, even if they have felt that way for a long time. You are allowed to be feminine, to be tender, to be cared for. You are allowed to stop being everyone’s everything and just be yourself.

    You Were Made for Love, Not Just Endurance

    Black women have shown the world what it looks like to love through impossible circumstances. That love is not in question. What is in question is whether the people and systems in their lives have done right by it.

    You deserve a love that does not require you to disappear into strength to receive it. You deserve partnership, presence, and the kind of safety that lets you breathe. You deserve to stop waiting to exhale.

    The narrative that says Black women are too strong to need softness, too damaged to give love, or too independent to deserve it has always been a lie. One that has been told loudly and repeated often, but a lie nonetheless.

    You are not too much. You are not the problem. And your cup was always meant to overflow.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • What the Bible Actually Says About Anxiety (And What That Means for You Right Now)

    What the Bible Actually Says About Anxiety (And What That Means for You Right Now)

    Let me say something before we even get into scripture. If you are reading this while your mind is already running through tomorrow’s to-do list, or replaying a conversation from last week, or bracing for something that hasn’t happened yet, I see you. And I want you to take one slow breath before we go any further.

    Okay. Now let’s talk.

    Anxiety is one of the most common things women come to me with in the therapy room. And for Black women specifically, it often arrives wearing a disguise. It looks like being on top of everything. It looks like handling it. It looks like strength. But underneath all of that doing, there is often a woman who has not felt truly still, truly safe, or truly present in a very long time.

    Faith is something many of us were handed early. And for a lot of us, it has been a lifeline. But sometimes the very scriptures meant to bring comfort get used in ways that leave us feeling like anxiety is a spiritual failure. Like if we just prayed harder, trusted more, or quoted the right verse, we would finally stop feeling this way.

    So I want to look at what the Bible actually says. Not as a checklist. Not as a correction. But as an invitation.

    The Verse Everyone Quotes and What It Really Means

    Philippians 4:6 is probably the most referenced scripture when it comes to anxiety. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

    On the surface, it can sound like a command. Like a spiritual to-do item. Stop being anxious. Just pray. Done.

    But Paul wrote those words from prison. He was not writing from a comfortable place of ease. He was writing from a place of genuine uncertainty, and yet he had found something that anchored him. He wasn’t dismissing the hard feelings. He was pointing to a practice of prayer, gratitude, and bringing your whole self to God that creates a pathway through those hard feelings.

    The verse that follows is the part we don’t quote as often: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

    Guard. Not erase. Not shame. Guard.

    God is not asking you to never feel anxious. He is offering to stand watch over the places inside you that feel the most vulnerable.

    Yesterday Is Gone. Tomorrow Isn’t Here Yet. So Where Are You?

    One of the most profound things Jesus ever said about anxiety is found in Matthew 6:34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

    Read that again slowly.

    Tomorrow will take care of itself. Yesterday is already done. The only moment that is actually real, the only ground you are standing on right now, is this one.

    Anxiety almost always lives outside of the present. It either drags us back into what already happened, the conversation that went sideways, the decision we second-guess, the wound that never fully healed, or it pulls us forward into something that hasn’t arrived yet and may never arrive the way we’re imagining it.

    What would it feel like to just be here? Not to fix anything. Not to figure anything out. Just to be in the actual moment you are living right now?

    This is not a new concept that came from a wellness podcast. This is ancient wisdom. Scripture has always known that the present moment is where God meets us. “I AM,” God tells Moses in Exodus 3:14. Not “I was.” Not “I will be.” I AM. Present tense. Always.

    When we are anxious, we are often living everywhere except where God already is, right here, right now, with us.

    The Weight Black Women Carry Into Their Worry

    Anxiety does not show up the same way for every woman. And for Black women, there are layers that deserve to be named directly.

    There is the everyday anxiety of managing households, raising children, and showing up at work while navigating spaces that were not always built with you in mind. There is the particular exhaustion of code-switching, of being one version of yourself in one room and another version in the next, never fully at rest in either place. There is racial stress that accumulates quietly in the body, the kind that doesn’t just disappear at the end of the workday.

    And then there is the anxiety that comes from never having been given permission to need help. From being raised to be strong. From being praised every time you held it together and left alone every time you were falling apart. When your resilience becomes the expectation, there is no safe place to put your worry down.

    But here is what I know to be true, both as a therapist and as a woman of faith: carrying everything was never the assignment. Strength was never meant to mean silence. And God has always been more interested in your honesty than your performance.

    Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you.” Cast them. Not manage them perfectly. Not figure them out first. Cast them like something you’re releasing from your hands because they were never yours to hold alone.

    What It Means to Be Grounded

    Grounding is a word that shows up in both therapy and scripture, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

    In clinical terms, grounding means bringing yourself back into your body and into the present moment when anxiety has pulled you out of it. It is one of the most powerful tools we have for managing anxious thoughts and nervous system dysregulation.

    In spiritual terms, being grounded means being rooted in something that doesn’t move. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God.” That stillness is not passive. It is an active choice to stop striving, stop spinning, and let yourself be held by something greater than what is worrying you.

    Both are true at the same time. And both take practice.

    Ways to Find Your Ground Starting Today

    There is no one path back to yourself. What grounds one woman may not ground another. So I want to offer you options, because you know yourself better than any article does.

    Through Faith

    Prayer does not have to be formal. It can be as simple as sitting quietly and saying, “I don’t know how to handle this, and I need you.” Scripture can be a grounding tool too, not something you recite to make the anxiety stop, but something you sit with until the truth of it begins to settle in your body. Try writing out Psalm 23 in your own words. Or spend five minutes with just one phrase from scripture and let it breathe.

    Through Your Body

    Anxiety lives in the nervous system, not just the mind. One of the fastest ways to shift your state is through your breath. Try inhaling for four counts, holding for four, and exhaling for six. Do that three times and notice what changes. You can also try placing both feet flat on the floor, pressing them down deliberately, and naming five things you can see around you right now. These are not tricks. They are ways of telling your body that you are safe, you are here, and this moment is manageable.

    Through Connection

    You were not designed for isolation. One of the quietest lies anxiety tells is that you are the only one who feels this way, or that no one would understand, or that sharing it would be too much for someone else to hold. Find one person, not someone who will fix it but someone who will sit with it, and let yourself be a little more honest than usual. Community is one of God’s oldest designs for healing.

    Through Professional Support

    Therapy is not a sign that your faith isn’t enough. It is a resource, the same way a doctor is a resource. A therapist who understands your cultural background, your faith, and the specific weight that Black women carry can offer you tools and a space that few other places provide. You do not have to be in crisis to deserve support.

    If you are looking for a therapist who gets it, these directories are a good place to start: Clinicians of Color (cliniciansofcolor.org), Melanin and Mental Health (melaninandmentalhealth.com), and Therapy for Black Girls (therapyforblackgirls.com).

    And if you are located in Texas or New Mexico, I would love to connect with you personally. You are welcome to reach out to me directly for a free consultation at glwellnesscenter.com. You deserve care that sees you fully.

    Through Small, Everyday Rituals

    Grounding doesn’t always require a grand spiritual moment. Sometimes it’s stepping outside for five minutes in the morning before the day starts pulling at you. Sometimes it’s a cup of tea without your phone. Sometimes it’s putting on music that makes your shoulders drop. Sometimes it’s writing down three things that are true and good about your life right now, not to dismiss the hard things, but to remind yourself that the hard things are not the whole story.

    You Are Allowed to Be Here

    The present moment is not something to get through. It is where your life is actually happening. It is where God is. It is where you are, right now, in whatever state you arrived in.

    Yesterday is finished. It cannot be changed, and it does not get to define what this moment holds for you. Tomorrow is not yours to carry today. It will come with its own grace, its own provisions, its own set of things God has already worked out that you cannot see yet.

    All you have to do right now is be here. Breathe. Feel the ground under your feet. Let yourself be held by a God who already knows everything you’re worried about and has not left.

    You are not falling apart. You are a woman who is learning what it means to be still. And that is one of the most courageous things there is.

    If you are in a season where anxiety feels heavier than manageable, please reach out for support. You can call or text 988 (the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) at any time. You matter too much to stay silent.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It

  • Why “Strong Black Woman” Is a Trauma Response, Not a Compliment

    Why “Strong Black Woman” Is a Trauma Response, Not a Compliment

    I want to tell you about one of the lowest seasons of my life. Not because I enjoy revisiting it, but because I know someone reading this has lived a version of it too, and I want you to feel less alone in it.

    Where This Strength Actually Comes From

    Black women did not choose this narrative of strength. It was placed on us, generation after generation, born out of circumstances that left us no other option. Survival looked like strength. And strength became our identity, whether we wanted it or not.

    We work ourselves to exhaustion, holding down careers while raising children, many of us doing it alone. We navigate financial stress, emotional labor, and the mental weight of moving through spaces not designed with us in mind. We carry all of this quietly, because speaking up means being labeled difficult or angry. Because asking for help is treated as weakness.

    Strength was never supposed to mean silence. And endurance was never supposed to mean going without.

    What It Has Done to Our Relationships

    When a woman is viewed as unbreakable, the natural instinct to protect her gets diminished. The narrative that positions us as strong above all else has quietly communicated to the men in our lives that we do not need what other women need. That our needs are optional.

    We were never meant to be everyone’s backbone. We were meant to be someone’s partner, someone’s equal, someone who gets to be held too.

    Let Us Talk About Our Femininity

    I am a soft-spoken woman. Extremely feminine. I have an unreasonable fear of lizards. I do not believe in taking out the trash when there is a man around. I love being in my femininity in every gentle, girly, tender way that word means. And yet, the story told about me has never led with any of that. It leads with how much I have endured. How much I have survived.

    Pain and perseverance have become the metrics by which Black womanhood is measured, while softness and femininity are treated as traits that belong to other women.

    We do not want to be statues. We want to be women. Fully, completely, softly, beautifully human women.

    The Narrative Has to Change

    It means the people who love us have to stop using our past resilience as a reason not to show up for us now. It means that we, as Black women, have to give ourselves permission to stop performing invincibility for people who have grown comfortable with our strength at the expense of our wellbeing.

    You are allowed to need things. You are allowed to not be okay. The myth of the Strong Black Woman has had its season. It is time to tell a fuller story.

    If this resonated with you

    Share It With Someone Who Needs It