The World may not have been built with you in mind, but Courageously You was.
A Program built to hold the parts of being Black & Queer that Society Cannot.
What is the impact of living in a society as a Black and Queer person wherein you repeatedly experience and/or witness invalidation and oppression because of Black and Queer people? The answer is Disempowerment Stress.
Disempowerment stress refers to the slow but heavy erosion of psychological well-being caused by chronic systemic oppression. It is caused by those unique stressors we experience—the ones usually only people in our community can understand. It is not an individual problem, it is a systemic failure for which modern day mental health strategies are unequipped.
Courageously You is the first dedicated resource focused on providing the antidote to Disempowerment Stress; collective Liberation.
“Evidence-Informed” Individual healing meets Collective Black Diasporic Liberation.
As a Harvard-trained psychologist and published scholar in the area of LGBT health, I recognize the limits of modern day mental health. Namely, the “evidence” that informs diagnosis and treatments in mental health often does not include Black or LGBTQ+ voices. As a result, we are often given tools to “cope” or “be resilient”, but nothing to transform the system that makes these things difficult. This means that the chronic stress of living in an oppressive system is never addressed.
Courageously You Psychological Liberation Program integrates this evidence with scholarship relevant to Black and LGBTQ+ voices to create a revolutionary program to support Black and LGBTQ+ liberation.
“A great resource for understanding how negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can emerge for gay and bisexual Black men, rooted in the intersecting challenges of their marginalized identities. These intersecting challenges often result in a very distinct experience of distress—one that disempowers and inhibits my ability to be my authentic self.”
—Courageously You Reader