Bassey Ikpi, a poet, writer, and mental health attorney, opened the third week of the American Counseling Association's 2021 virtual conference experience by sharing details from her own mental health journey. She recalled that her first encounter with mental health awareness was in elementary school. An avid reader, she consumed everything she could get her hands on, including her mother's psychology textbooks and subscription to Psychology Today.
In particular, Ikpi recalls how the May 1986 Psychology Today cover story about Howard Hughes shaped her relationship with mental health. The article discussed Hughes' struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and detailed how he locked himself naked in a hotel room, refused to brush his teeth or cut his hair and nails, and carried boxes of Kleenex on his feet.
This picture would scare almost anyone, let alone a 9 year old, but what Ikpi noticed the most was how no one was helping Hughes. "I told myself that if I ever needed help, I would find a way to get it," Ikpi told the audience for her keynote. "I never wanted to get to the point where I had Kleenex boxes on my feet."
Find help
Ikpi, author of the bestselling memoir "I tell the truth, but I lie", had severe depression for the first time while studying. She said she vacillated between inability to sleep and inability to get out of bed, using her credit card to the max.
Although Ikpi felt fine at the time, she was concerned enough to seek counseling on campus. The counselor sat across from her and only scribbled in her notepad during the entire session, Ikpi remembered, which made Ikpi feel unheard and invisible. "I came in nervous but hopeful and discouraged and determined never to return," she told the audience. "If this was advice, I thought, 'I'm good. "
A few years later, however, Ikpi ran into trouble again when she took a spontaneous trip to New York City during a hypomanic episode and dropped out of college and moved to Brooklyn. She hoped the move would keep her spirits in check, but it didn't work. Ikpi sought help, but like her early experiences, the therapist mainly wrote notes on a notepad and asked clinical, not personal, questions. Once again, Ikpi felt that looking for therapy had been a waste of time.
After joining the Tony Award-winning Broadway show Def Poetry Jam, Ikpi found that her previous coping methods no longer worked and she quickly began to deteriorate. She lost weight, did not sleep, and withdrew. After a breakdown backstage, the stage manager said to her, "If you don't get help, Bassey, you will die."
Ikpi left the tour the next day with a list of doctors determined to get help. “Based on my previous experience with consulting, I have drawn up an agenda. I wanted to be helped, but only as far as I can accept it, ”she said. Her goal was to get enough help so that she could get back to her job.
After Ikpi had received several misdiagnoses, she went into the office of the last doctor on her list. This therapist didn't have a notepad. She had a conversation with Ikpi instead, and for the first time Ikpi felt heard.
“With this meeting, my journey to a healthy relationship with therapy began. It taught me the type of therapy that works best for me, ”she told the audience. This therapist also introduced her to another psychiatrist who gave a name to what Ikpi was going through – bipolar II disorder.
Overcoming the shame of mental health
Ikpi admitted that her first instinct was to remain silent about her diagnosis for fear that it would change the way others perceived her. But she noticed that the shame also meant that she couldn't take full care of herself.
Shortly after the diagnosis, Ikpi saw an episode of the TV series Girlfriends in which one of the characters found out that her birth mother had bipolar disorder. Ikpi recalls thinking, “You're going to have a conversation about bipolar disorder. It'll make it so much easier for me to have that conversation when I need to.” But the series dropped the ball, Ikpi said because when the character asks a friend if she inherited the disorder, the friend quickly rejects the option and says the character is amazing and not "crazy."
"The juxtaposition of 'crazy' and 'amazing' tried to dispel all of these things that I knew were true about myself, my experience and my diagnosis," said Ikpi.
Frustrated by this experience, she wrote about her diagnosis on her blog. She admitted to the keynote audience that this was partly a selfish act because she no longer wanted to feel alone and was hoping to find someone who lives with bipolar disorder.
This blog post was the beginning of Ikpi to find ways to “make space for other people to name what they have experienced, to get encouragement from people and then to do something about it”. Ikpi, founder of the Siwe Project, a non-profit organization promoting mental health awareness in the Black Community, launched the global movement #NoShameDay to encourage people of African descent to share stories of mental health problems without shame and to provide help when needed search.
She attributes the success of #NoShameDay to the fact that "people are allowed to use it loudly instead of quietly, where you can talk yourself out of it or … where you can" act differently "in a way that makes it uncomfortable, to live in your own brain. "
Ikpi also told the audience that it is no coincidence that #NoShameDay falls on the second Monday of July, which is Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. While #NoShameDay tag exists for everyone, it is especially true of the Black Community as they are constantly being punished for their sanity, she noted. “Our mental health is criminalized. Our mental health is regulated in ways that others are not. [this movement]… bring it to your attention [s]”she said. The movement humanizes mental health by speaking "about people's lived experiences and stories, not a collection of texts or a list of diagnoses".
Growing through therapy
Ikpi compared living with an untreated mental health diagnosis to "living in a shabby house in a bad neighborhood" where she learned how to survive and deal with what she was given. She continued that analogy, saying that medicine enabled her to move to a better neighborhood, and therapy taught her how to traverse that new neighborhood.
“Your instinct … is to fall back on the habits that worked before. Therapy teaches me a new way to navigate when the old ways don't work or don't meet my needs, ”she explained.
Ikpi also shared that some people had reconciled their diagnosis with her artistic ability, telling her that if she did not have bipolar disorder, she would not be the writer she is. To which she replies: “I would rather not be a writer. I would give up everything. I am not writing about bipolar disorder. I write anyway. "
"Having bipolar disorder is not who I am; it is what I have," she told the audience. "It no longer defines me as being short or wearing glasses. It's just part of what I have to use to navigate the world. "
Ikpi concluded with a reminder of the importance of their work. "It's a service that I don't think is rewarded enough," she said. "I wouldn't be here – literally wouldn't exist – if it weren't for the people who have made it their business to take care of people like me."
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This keynote is part of a month of virtual events, including hundreds of training sessions and three additional keynotes ending April 30th.
For more information about the American Counseling Association's 2021 Virtual Conference Experience, visit Counseling.org/conference/conference-2021
Registration is open until April 30th. Participants will have access to all conference content until May 31st.
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Lindsey Phillips is the Senior Editor for Counseling Today. Contact them at [email protected].
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Opinions and statements in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to reflect the opinions of the editors or guidelines of the American Counseling Association.
