ORLANDO, Fla. – Health and wealth go together, but not every injury wears a cast or bandage. Just as a broken leg or a high fever can take you out of earning money, problems with your mental health can also arise.
This week on Black Men Sundays, host Corie Murray interviews Chantelle Doswell – a deliverance-focused trauma specialist in New York City, founder and owner of a therapy provider Ordinary Healing, LLC – to learn more about how impacts on your mental health can affect your ability to build generational wealth.
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Doswell explained an issue in the black community she called “schoolishness,” describing it as people approaching a career outside of school while retaining the learned habits of a submissive student.
“So when you’re told you’re bad, when you’re told you’re not good enough, when you’re learning how to become a little bit, you know, avoidance of authority, stuff like that, you start learning yours.” place in the world, right?” said Doswell. “…Black kids do simple things like they’re going to lie to the doctor about how many veggies they’re going to eat, right? And a lot of white kids don’t, and one reason is they’re learning that they’re just like this doctor, this doctor is here to minister to them, even as a kid, while the black kid is like, “Well, what is the right thing to say?” to the right? Like, ‘What am I supposed to do here? Because I’m not really the same as that doctor.” And we carry those habits into adulthood. We don’t see ourselves as bosses or leaders or people with the same skills as the people we admire and who have wealth.”
However, the solution is not to simply look to others and copy them, but to look within, find self-worth and dare to dream, Doswell said.
“We don’t have to project this idea that our kids have to be better than everyone else. It’s like, ‘No, you could be yourself and maybe that would actually be healthier and more successful than trying to be like that white person over here, that white family over there,’ you know what I mean? And so a lot of mental health, self-esteem and self-image is really about how big you can dream, how much you can envision for yourself and your kids, you know, beyond surviving,” Doswell said.
In Doswell’s private practice, clients with complex trauma are involved in her work, but the perspective she takes in treating such issues brings a silver lining to an otherwise difficult conversation and potentially more difficult healing process.
“Black people are very smart. We can find things out. We don’t really need anyone telling us about ourselves all the time, we know ourselves; Most importantly, can you learn your emotional language? Can you learn how to deal with the things of the world and do you know what that means?” said Doswell. “We’re really trying to work up from your body to make you feel better, and that can include everything from writing to – I’ve done stuff with teenagers where we’ve rapped for a whole session – and there are times where we just do like anything that’s really good for you: dance, move, stuff like that. It’s not quite as sad as it would sound for these strangers, right, because trauma healing is often about making you feel safe, about feeling good, about knowing who you are is.”
Sundays for black men talks about building generational wealth. Watch each episode in the media player below.
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