Cassandra’s Haitian mom urges her to turn to God to help her feel better, but she prefers therapy. And Cidna Valentin, a mental health practitioner, speaks with Juleyka about how to utilize our families’ lived experiences to build mutual understanding, and debunks myths about religion and mental health treatments.
Cassandra Dunbar runs Be Well, Sis, a podcast and online community dedicated to inspire and support Black women on their journey to wellness and self-care.
Featured Expert:
Cidna Valentin, Phd. is a clinical psychologist and Clinial Director and Supervisor at Let's Talk Psychological Wellness. As a clinician of diverse cultural experiences, she values culturally-relevant and integrative evidence-based practice and has flexibility in psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, and interpersonal therapeutic approaches. She has experience working with clients across the lifespan in a variety of settings, practicing most recently in global mental health/international psychology. Through the lens of social justice, she is dedicated to creating healing spaces for people of color and underserved communities. Her specialties include depression and mood disorders, Haitian mental health, migration/acculturation stress, trauma/PTSD, and Maternal mental health. Learn more about her work here.
If you loved this episode, listen to "You're Grieving and in Pain. They Call you 'Crazy'" and "When You Don't Believe in God, And They Really Want You To".
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. Today we have Cassandra with us. Cassandra is going through a difficult time. She recently lost a close relative and had a baby. To cope with these transitions and their impact on her mental health, she turned to therapy. But discussing topics like depression and its treatments with her very religious Haitian mother is straining their relationship. It also makes it really hard for Cassandra to ask her mom for help when she needs it. Let's get into it.
Cassandra: My name is Cassandra Dunbar. I am an educator, a podcaster and the mother of two little boys. I am Haitian American, born and raised in New Jersey, and now living in the south. And when I was younger I used to call my mom, and I still do, Mummy.
I grew up in a very traditional Haitian, very Christian background. So for everything, the remedy is to go to God and to pray about it, and that even included mental health. So the way that my mother views mental health is that depression or anxiety was like a spiritual failure or a moral failure.
What's interesting is that when I was eight or nine, my grandfather, who was the only father figure I had up until that point, so her father, he committed suicide. I understood very little as a child, but as time went on I understood the gravity of how he passed, and then to hear her not really put any credence in mental health was really something that I struggled with.
When I was in high school, and I was really dealing with a lot of feelings of isolation and just not feeling like I belonged anywhere, that's when I really started to understand that maybe the feelings that I'm feeling is something deeper. I think I might be depressed.
Whenever I broached the topic she would always say, "Just go pray about it. Are you reading your psalms? Are you doing your morning prayers? Should we be going to church more?" Then I start to feel like, well, maybe I'm not a good Christian, and maybe that's why I feel these things.
So when I became an adult, I decided to seek therapy and there was so much happening in my life. My husband and my oldest son, we moved from Chicago to Charlotte, North Carolina. And at the same time, about a month prior, we unexpectedly lost my mother-in-law who we had a great relationship with, and she was very present in our lives and she died unexpectedly. At that time as well, my mother decided to move in with us. So I said, "You know what? Let me go ahead and seek therapy and see if it's something that could be beneficial to me."
I went to therapy, but did not tell her where I was going. It was midday, so she thought I was running errands, whatever, didn't ask me any questions. Fast forward to about a year and a half later, I had my youngest son. And it was a traumatic delivery. We almost lost him and me during childbirth. So I decided to ramp up my therapy sessions and go more than once a week. And because I had a newborn at the time, I needed her help to watch him. So I had to tell her where I was going now and that I was seeking therapy.
Cassandra: What I distinctly remember her saying is, A, “that is for Americans. You're so Americanized now. Why are you telling people your problems? The only person who should know your problems is God." And, "I will talk to you. I will listen to you. You don't need to be going to therapy." And it was the first time that I had asserted myself as an adult to my parent. And I'm like, "That may work for you, but for me, I am going to try something different because I don't feel well."
It was tense for the first year whenever she knew it was time for me to go, she did not like it at all. So my mother isn't a woman of many words, but she's very expressive. I had a standing appointment at therapy, so just about every Monday at a certain time, that's where I'm going. And whenever I would just set her up to take care of the children and say, "Okay, here goes the milk bottle. He might need another bottle 30 minutes from now. I'm going to head out to therapy now,” the atmosphere changed. She didn't say anything, but the facial expressions changed and just the body positioning changed.
Cassandra: The past few months have been difficult because of just life happening. So we recently had a conversation a few weeks ago about my mental health. So I've been kind of depressed, and she recognized that. She was like, "Your husband said that you're depressed. What is that?" As if we hadn't had the conversation years ago. And she's like, "It really is that you're not praying enough." I'm like, "All right Ma, this is real. It runs strongly in our family." She's like, "No. Well, where I come from in Haiti, as long as we have a roof over our head and something to eat, we're all happy." I'm just like, "Are you being honest with yourself?" She didn't have anything to say.
Cassandra: I think she internalizes it as in a failure on her part as a mother. And I would want to tell her that, what I experience is not a reflection of her. Is not a failure of you as a parent and a reflection of you as a parent. I know that she has done her very best and she's given me more than she was given herself as a child.
Lantigua: Cassandra's experience made me think about this false idea that being a person of faith is somehow incompatible with taking mental health seriously. Or the false belief that suffering from a mental illness is a moral or spiritual failing, or anything to be ashamed of for that matter.
Her story made me wonder what we as first-gens can do to show our loved ones that prioritizing our mental wellbeing is not a rejection of our spiritual selves or of their beliefs. And how can we get this point across without falling into the trap of judging them for what they believe in the same way we feel judged for our choices? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Cidna Valentin:
My name is Cidna Valentin. I am a licensed clinical psychologist, a former global mental health practitioner, specifically in rural Haiti. And currently I am the clinical director and supervisor for a group practice in New York called Let's Talk Psychological Wellness.
Lantigua: What did you hear in Cassandra's story?
Valentin: Yeah, my first impressions, I thought a lot about just the fact that there's this history of significant losses. The suicide of her maternal grandfather, the death of her mother-in-law, the significant loss that her family almost experienced through her second childbirth experience. On top of that, there's other transitions that we know can also contribute to depression in terms of relocation. Becoming a mom. And then the tension between her and her mom. I don't have that much information, so I'm not sure what the history is of her relationship with her mom, but certainly just the little conflict that was described can also be a part of what she's experiencing in terms of managing her own mental health and mood. There's so much there in itself.
Lantigua: I actually want to start with just that initial conflict that she presents. Or the perceived, I want to say actually, the perceived conflict between believing in God and getting therapy. Is this something that you come across a lot and how do you help your clients navigate that? Because it's really a myth. God wants us to go to therapy. God wants us to be healthy.
Valentin: Right. I love that. I actually, I really love how you just put that. And I think it's also a myth that people who are really religious or spiritual are somehow inherently against seeking mental healthcare. Studies here as well as studies that have been done in Haiti and what I know from my time working there from my own upbringing as a Haitian American with a very spiritual and religious mother is that, people essentially will seek care wherever they determine they can get effective care. It's about efficacy. In Haiti there is this perception that particularly patients who come from rural areas will seek out a Vodou practitioner, will seek out church clergy before they go to the hospital, when actually they'll go to both wherever they can get the help that they need to feel better.
Lantigua: So here's the thing that, as I listened, I realized that God, in the way that she describes her mother talking to her, was really a proxy for public shame. Because what the mom was actually worried about was her telling other people her business. Can we talk a little bit about that shame and about that constant fear of, what would people say?
Valentin: There's a saying in Haitian crowd of something along the lines of “rad sal lave nan fanmi.” So essentially, dirty laundry is washed in the family. So we can even challenge this idea that mental health problems is dirty laundry, because it's not. I mean, we all have mental health, we all can have mental health problems at any stage of our life. So I immediately thought of that expression and I felt Mom's concern about being exposed, about bringing shame to the family, about being perceived as not self-sufficient enough to take care of her own child. But what I thought was also really lovely was, how much compassion Cassandra seems to have for her mom. She's not trying to hold her to expectations of the parent she wishes her mother is.
Lantigua: So I want to posit something, which is that, I think Cassandra really represents one of the sort of culminating points of a progression that includes self-exploration, a lot of maturity and a lot of compassion. How do the rest of us get there?
Valentin: Right. I mean, it's really difficult and patience and grace with yourself. I think sometimes in parent-child dyads, we come down really hard on ourselves when we do feel anger towards our parents or we show anything other than what we were brought up to believe is how to interact with a parent. But the fact is, we can be angry with our parents, it's okay, and we can work through those sort of ruptures in the relationship with them. But we often take on so much of our parents' worries and fears and emotions and don't honor our own, and so having awareness about what's really important to us and maintaining limits that helps us to have our needs met in the relationship as well.
Lantigua: So it's so interesting because Cassandra started out just not telling her mom, because she could put the therapy sessions comfortably into her day without any really major disruptions or interruptions. Then she decided she wanted to increase the frequency, and then she had to just kind of fess up to Mom. So what would you suggest we consider as we try to get the buy-in? Even though we understand, we're not trying to convince them, we're not trying to persuade them, we're simply trying to get their buy-in. How do we do that?
Valentin: Right. Sometimes there's... People are approaching the same problems from different explanations for illness. I suspect highly that Mom is coming from a model of illness that is oriented in spirituality, maybe even supernatural explanations for the problems that Cassandra's experiencing. But my question is, is there anything about what Mom believes Cassandra also values? Is there any alignment with that? And if so, is there anything that they can share?
Lantigua: Like praying together, lighting a candle, saying the rosary.
Valentin: Exactly. Some space where there can be some kind of collaboration between the two. I'm not saying that she should back down on what she knows to be true for her and how she wants to take care of herself in this situation, but it does sound like there needs to be some kind of-
Lantigua: Middle ground.
Valentin: Yeah.
Lantigua: Maybe she can just identify what that middle ground can be.
Valentin: Right. And then I also wonder what other resources are available to her if Mom isn't able to meet her there. Who else in the family is potentially in, a great influence on Mom? Maybe that person could also help Mom have some better understanding and awareness of why this treatment doesn't actually have to go against what she also understands to be a helpful intervention.
Lantigua: So, coincidentally, I'm wearing pearls today, but I definitely had a pearl-clutching moment when she says, "And for the first time in my life as an adult I confronted my mother about her being disingenuous or dishonest about her own feelings," essentially hinting at her father's suicide. And I was like, “Girl, girl.”
Valentin: Right. Right.
Lantigua: Right? What are some of the best practices from your practice in terms of, how do we not weaponize our parents' past? Especially in the context of, “I'm trying to work on me?”
Valentin: Right. That makes me think of another thing I was thinking about as I was listening to her story. The discussion on mental healthcare in Haiti is relatively new and started around the time of the 2010 earthquake, when people from pretty much all over the world were coming in and discussing things like trauma and PTSD and really sort of opening up the more public discourse about how our minds can be affected by the adversity and different stressful events that we experience. And so there's so much about this conversation that people are just learning about and learning how to incorporate that into their own lives. And so part of having compassion for our parents is having some idea about where they come from and why they have come to have the beliefs that they have.
It doesn't mean that we have to take it personally, that they don't believe what we believe in. We believe what we believe in because of our own experiences as well. And so could Cassandra explain to Mom what the process is for her? When she goes to therapy, what exactly does it mean for her to go to therapy? What does she gain from it that is different from what maybe Mom thinks church or prayer will benefit her?
Lantigua: That totally makes sense because I do think that there's just a lot of myth-making around what therapy is and what it isn't. And so, yeah, a little bit of that demystification also helps.
I think sometimes it also helps just to say, "I'm not in therapy talking about you all the time. I am talking about all of the really complex and challenging things I deal with in my life. My work, my relationships, my children, myself." Because I do feel like our parents, for survival, they sort of flattened out a lot of these layers of complexity that now we have the luxury to explore. And so when you talk about compassion, some of that is also recognizing how very little we know about their lived experiences, because they only tend to give us the highlights. “Came to this country, worked really hard, bought the house, put you through college.”
Valentin: Right. No, it's so true. I mean, I sometimes encourage my clients to ask questions. Ask questions of your parents. Hear more about their stories and their childhoods, and let's talk about what you learn. And how maybe that changes or helps to better inform your perception of them and your relationship to them.
Lantigua: All right. Final question, which is, what did I forget to ask you?
Valentin: One thing I was thinking about too is the comment about “everyone is happy as long as there's food.” That immediately reminded me of studies on intergenerational trauma, and how we have these behaviors and ways of thinking that sort of get transmitted down generations that at one point were about survival, were adaptive, but then maybe not so much anymore, and maybe now are actually more harmful to us. I've heard that line and I kept going, “no, it's okay for Cassandra to want more now. She can want more than food and shelter.” If living now means more thriving, then it means surviving. And if seeking optimal mental health is her priority, that's absolutely okay.
Lantigua: Oh my God, that's such a beautiful point to end on. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Valentin: Thank you so much, Juleyka for having me. This has been a joy.
Lantigua: All right. Here's what Cidna taught us today.
Demystify therapy. When trying to get loved ones to understand your experience with mental healthcare, try breaking down a therapy session. What does it look like? What do you do when you're there? How does it actually help you? Hopefully familiarity will lead to acceptance.
Incorporate their lived experience. Sharing a spiritual or religious practice with a relative or asking questions about their past might help you understand where they're coming from. As you cultivate compassion for them, you also learn that you don't need to take your disagreements so personally.
And remember, let yourself thrive. Life doesn't have to be just about surviving anymore. It's okay for you to want more, to ask for more, to grow and expand in any direction you want.
Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Tren Lightburn mixed this episode. I'm the creator and host, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we are @TalkToMamiPapi. Bye everybody.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Mom Tells Her to Pray Her Depression Away” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything, LWC Studios., February 13, 2023. TalkToMamiPapi.com.