that news stories about traumatic events can have a big impact on people, especially if they consume a lot of them. Breland-Noble said there’s a term for that: vicarious trauma, which can be even more affecting for people who share the racial background of the victims. “Witnessing people being attacked, that is traumatizing,” she said. “We're looking at people who literally look like us; they could be our family members.
So what can people of color do to take care of their mental health, knowing that the tenor of the news is unlikely to change? Breland-Noble recommended that people, as much as they are able, turn off the news or limit how much of it they consume. “I think the other thing is making sure that if you find yourself exposed, you find ways to replenish what you've lost,” she said.
Still, being a therapist of color who works with clients of color is no easy task. “We have to help our clients, but we're also dealing with a lot of the same concerns and issues,” said @blackfemaletherapists’ Dee. “It is retraumatizing every time you see something else happening. And we're all experiencing it as a community.” The people running these popular Instagram accounts are potentially speaking to hundreds of thousands of people daily.
It’s a reminder that mental health is holistic — affected by everything and anything, with no one right way to address it. And as I discovered, just because you know the path, that doesn’t mean you can automatically take it. Still, these practitioners are providing a map, one that charts new and surprising territories. “One of the things that I really learned from building @browngirltherapy is that my content has been able to give people language,” Kohli said.