The Key to Healthy Living is Therapy!

My parents thought I was the smartest kid in the world and I was foolish enough to believe them. So you can imagine my shock when I was transferred to a magnet school for the fourth grade and realized that I was actually one of the dumbest people in my class.

I mean, I was nine years old but apparently at least three years behind most of my peers who had already begun studying latin in their free time and made jokes about somebody named Stephen Hawking.

Despite witnessing the birth of my imposter syndrome, I actually excelled in an extracurricular activity called “the black history club.” I remember walking in for the first time and seeing my fourth grade social studies teacher conduct a quick-fire round with a room full of (all of the?) black kids. It was impressive, but what I remember most was that I was warmly invited to participate, and soon became one of the MVPs of the club. More than just a mere extracurricular activity, the club was preparing to compete in the annual black history bowl hosted at Columbia High School.

This would effectively be my first competition, and one of the first opportunities to prove myself as someone smart and deserving of being in the same space as the other smart kids.

30 local schools enrolled in what was the olympics of black history trivia. My team and I won every round until we had made it to the championship round.

Now, all of a sudden, the stakes were really high. At the time, I didn’t know that my school had never actually won the bowl, but had always come in second place. So if we were ever going to win, it was now, or at least, that’s what my teachers told me.

And that’s when I had my first panic attack . . . After a few friendly pats on the back and a big sip of water, mama was back in the race - and we won our very first black history bowl in the Spring of 1996.

Ever since then, success, anxiety and imposter syndrome have been my faithful bedfellows. While at Morehouse College, I once had to pull my car to the side of the road and just cry because I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I was smart, but I felt the need to join a fraternity (to prove that I was a real boy) and do community service and maintain my perfect GPA and apply for scholarships, but not just any scholarships, the Fulbright and the Rhodes. At least at Morehouse, similar to the black history club back in elementary school, I felt like I fit in, and this, I succeeded.

It was at Princeton, a place where I did not easily fit in, that I first decided to go to therapy. Somehow, I was once again the dumb kid in the room asking all of the stupid questions, feeling like my peers were lightyears ahead of me. I loved my time at Princeton, but it was a grueling academic experience that once put me in the hospital because I had started using caffeine patches to stay awake long enough to do the same amount of work some of my peers did on the train ride from New York after a long weekend of partying.

Therapy, back then, was free but it wasn’t necessarily helpful. Was it good to get a few things off of my chest. Absolutely. Did I walk out of there with a sense of the steps I needed to take to get better? Not so much.

Now, I am writing as the Trendy Diplomat (but no longer an actual diplomat) with 11 years of service behind me and a career in the private sector ahead of me. And strangely, I am once again that kid back in the fourth grade feeling overwhelmed by how little I seem to know compared to my peers, wondering if I should also be learning Latin.

If the pandemic and this blog have taught me anything, it is that self-care matters. So I searched for a therapist, and after a few failed attempts, I found someone who understands me and who is listening and guiding me towards a future filled with an inner peace.

Finally, I can feel myself healing … slowly … and it feels good.

This blog is about living a very full, healthy and fulfilling life. One full of joy, adventure and new experiences because life is too short to do anything else. But sometimes, you can’t fully feel the joy or appreciate the adventure until you have taken the time and the steps to heal yourself. I am doing it through therapy. My humble advice for you today is to seek that same healing - you deserve it.

Yours always,

The Trendy One . . .