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ESSENCE GU Summit, Presented by CBS "The Equalizer." A few of today’s most reflective creatives open up about how to cope with the emotional weight of being young adults in the current environment with a little help from a mental health professional.
Panelists: Artist & Model Selah Marley, Singer & Activist Tangina Stone and Licensed Mental Health Therapist Nicola Pierre-Smith
Panelists: Artist & Model Selah Marley, Singer & Activist Tangina Stone and Licensed Mental Health Therapist Nicola Pierre-Smith
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00what's up girls united summit my name is brooklyn white i'm the associate editor of essence girls
00:14united and as a young black woman taking up space in today's world i'm really learning the importance
00:20of emotional balance and it's not always about being the bigger person sometimes it's simply
00:26about releasing those negative emotions that are sometimes kind of hard to express so today i'm
00:31joined by some very talented and black women who are doing just the same taking up space in today's
00:36world and who are prioritizing their mental health so first up we have selah marley who's a model and
00:43artist hello hi thank you for having me of course of course and then secondly we have artist and
00:51activist tangina stone hey y'all hello hello hello and then thirdly we have licensed mental health
01:01specialist nicola pierre smith hello everyone hi how are you all doing today good it's such an honor to
01:12be speaking with you all today this is such an important topic especially for young black women
01:16so i'm really thrilled you speaking about this so first um i'll start with selah and tangina and
01:22selah you can answer first i would love to have a little bit more of a peek inside your world and
01:27just the moment that you realize that mental health is first and foremost in your life mental health is
01:32such an interesting thing it's always been present in my life i think i've been taking a front seat on it
01:40for the past five years maybe six years um i mean it's interesting because in the current culture
01:52that we've grown up in anxiety is a buzzword depression is a buzzword mental health is even
01:57a buzzword like growing up is my thing my generation is where the idea of taking a mental health day was
02:03introduced in high school so we kind of like got introduced to these concepts concepts and also
02:09allowed the room to think about these concepts and i think this generation is where like a lot of
02:15people have kind of softened into understanding that mental health is important because growing up
02:22and i think i mean i'm not sure if this is just me or like if this is a cultural thing but growing up
02:29it was like what do you have to cry for you know or do you want something to cry for when in reality like
02:36i have a reason to cry like can i just cry you know and um i think for me i have definitely had my
02:50my own personal struggles with regulating my my emotional health understanding my most emotional
02:58health and um processing it healing it those are some of the things that brought me to therapy before
03:06because i just had these like darker experiences mentally that didn't really understand and so
03:14thankfully my mother my parents were very supportive and they were like well do you want to talk to
03:20someone about this so the good side is that my mother is someone who has always like opened the door
03:26for me to explore that side of myself heal that side of myself i think she also someone who has
03:34understood that we're healing and not just our family's healing but we're healing as a collective
03:41i would say it's been a it's been a it's definitely been a lifelong journey i think i started really
03:48taking it seriously five years ago six definitely in high school high school is where i started exploring
03:54this yeah similar to what sayla said it's definitely been a journey that has been it's been a long journey
04:00for me um and it's interesting because i'm a person that has i i think i'll say like i really began to
04:09um take it seriously maybe around like five years ago when i wrote a song that i released called
04:14anxious i wrote a song and i for the first time like talked publicly about my mental health um which
04:21is something that i've never you know i've never done before then and so when i shared a song that i
04:27wrote about my own mental health after like going to therapy and being diagnosed with ptsd um i started
04:33talking about that and it kind of led me into a space where i talked about it a lot and people relied
04:41on me to like have you know these open like transparent conversations these really vulnerable conversations
04:46and it it also just made me take a look at myself pretty often it made me check in with myself more
04:52often because these conversations were being implemented into my life in a regular way because i'd open
04:57this door you know in my career and my music um already so i became a safe space for folks to have
05:03those conversations and simultaneously i found safe spaces to talk about my mental health um i will say
05:11that this the pandemic definitely really maybe put a lot of things into perspective because it was the
05:18first time that i really had to address the fact that although you know i've made i've made efforts you
05:24know to help my mental health i've made lots of efforts to talk about it to give space to go to
05:28therapy um i'd pretty much been in a perpetual state of burnout up until the pandemic for my whole adult
05:35life you know with and it was really hard it was really difficult for me to implement some of the things
05:40that i need to do to take care of myself um while keeping up with how quickly that my world was moving
05:46and so so i'll say that you know i started the journey a while back but i've never been more
05:52serious about it than i am now just because i understand um what happens when i don't take care
05:57of myself awesome well thank you both so much for sharing and then nicola um i want us to know a little
06:03bit more about your mental health journey as well and kind of what led you to the work that you're doing
06:07right now yeah and for me my journey started a few years ago um being an immigrant in the us it comes
06:15with its own particular stressors and then you add being black being first generation college educated
06:22and the expectations and pressures that just the immigrant community and family system places on us
06:31that was a time for me when i started realizing that even if i'm differentiating from the
06:37family system that the feeling of guilt or obligation to meeting certain expectations
06:44i can let go of that and knowing that i still have worth in the family system and in my community
06:50as i'm differentiating and making moves that the system that i'm from whether culturally or within
06:57the family they may not necessarily agree with that and it's still okay to set those boundaries because
07:02as tanjina was saying the consequences of doing that are really severe that could lead to anxiety
07:10and depression that i have experienced thankfully on a really mild level that it wasn't something that
07:16was a severe that i may not have been able to function but recognizing that that mild experience if i
07:24wasn't taking care of that the consequences could have been really severe yeah well thank you so much
07:31for sharing um that really impacted part of your journey and then my next question is for selah and
07:38kenjina as creatives i know that you both go through so many different emotions on nearly a daily basis so how
07:45do you decide when to release and when to kind of hold back if you ever do hold back and say i'll go to you first
07:53i would say that i really just try to let my emotions flow where they need to flow and let my mind have
08:02the thoughts that it wants to have and if anything it's really just i really just try to be patient with
08:10myself i really try to regulate um it's interesting because i definitely feel like part of my journey has been
08:20this i've been i've oscillated between like really expressing my emotions and really letting people
08:28have it and then i've also like gone into my shell and kept everything to myself and internalized
08:34everything so i think i'm actually currently in a space where i'm finding the balance between what i
08:40internalize and what i externalize and healthy forms of expression i mean i think the good thing about
08:45creativity is art when it comes to art if i want to throw a plate i can throw a plate because that's
08:51my art as long as in that contained space but when it comes to like my interpersonal relationships i
08:57definitely have to navigate that with a lot of patience a lot of kindness empathy because
09:06i mean i think that all humans most humans most humans have an inherent goodness about them but
09:17we often just get these like emotional blockages we have these emotions come up these triggers these
09:22traumas come up that we don't know how to process and i think it's about creating a safe space with
09:27yourself and a safe space for others to process because i'm an adult now so it's a little different like
09:35everything i'm fully responsible for myself i have to count on myself so that accountability brings
09:43out a new level of um how you are expressing yourself and how you're regulating yourself and
09:50how you're working with new things um but yeah i think it's just a balance of patience accountability
09:58compassion and empathy and just creating the space in the room for me to experience what it
10:05is i need to experience in that time thank you and then tangina you next for me when i think about
10:12releasing now um i think in a previous chapter of my career when i released i was releasing music for
10:20others consumption releasing my art to the world for others consumption and it actually really made me
10:26develop an unhealthy relationship with my art um because my art is something that i've always
10:32created i've always been an artist since i was a child um and the relationship when you move into
10:38a space where you make your living off of your work you know it can sometimes create a very strange
10:43relationship between you and your art and so for me at one point in my career i definitely was at that
10:50place where i began creating music to fit in the industry and that's hard um because i'm a really
10:56alternative artist you know when it comes to my music like if you listen to my music there's no real
11:01genre you know what i mean and i i finally had just like embraced taking up space in other areas of
11:07music outside of the ones that you know black artists in our industry typical typically get funneled into
11:14i think for me it's a form of protest to release an edm song or you know any any any genre of music that
11:22like folks don't expect from me i mean i listen to it all um so when i release now i release it just with
11:29with the intention of you know sharing my work with the world um but not not measuring you know if it is
11:37any good at all you know by the fact that not everyone's going to consume it like even if someone
11:44is not going to consume my work it doesn't make it trash so i think about the intentions that go
11:49into the work now and over the beginning of the pandemic um now i wrote an entire album of music
11:57and i started that album out not planning to ever really release it it was the first time that i gave
12:02myself total freedom to just write um and so now those are the songs that i'm sharing when i'm ready
12:08as i'm ready and not because i'm making music to fit in industry anymore because i'm making
12:13making music to challenge industry to change it to shift it to talk about things that i think are
12:18really important so yeah that's what i'm thinking about yeah i really um like your point about
12:25intention i think that's so important to get to the root of why you're doing what you're doing because
12:29it can really be a transformative realization and my final question to to wrap up is towards nicola
12:37as people how how can we do a better job of knowing when to you know speak out about how we feel um
12:46versus you know holding it all inside it's a great question brooklyn the first thing would be is
12:52recognizing that emotions are neither
12:54everyone but especially for black women who because of what's happening in the world
13:06we typically want to present um a display of strength and resiliency to not be perceived as weak
13:14or vulnerable so first step recognizing that having emotions are not good or bad they're just our bodies
13:21we have indicating to us that this is the way that we're experiencing the world around us and an
13:26example that i would give to further help people understand it's like the feeling of hunger that shows up
13:35in our body as headaches hunger patterns um difficulty focusing and we don't judge that feeling of hunger
13:43and that distress that we have in our body as a bad feeling we appreciate it as hunger and then we provide
13:49our body with the nutrients that it needs so if we approach other emotions like anxiety shame disappointment
13:58sadness in that same way of appreciation and compassion then rather than running from and
14:06avoiding the emotions we're able to then provide our body with what it needs provide our mind and soul
14:13with the same nourishment it just looks different than if it were the feeling of hunger
14:19well thank you so much um tangina and nicola thank you for your time today i really appreciate you
14:26all for sharing your experiences and thank you all for watching my second annual girls united summit
14:32and again i'm with me white and i hope you all had a great day thank you
14:45hey
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