← The Latest with Loren LoRosa
The Latest with Loren LoRosa
Therapy in Real Life: Breaking the Stigma Around Mental Health | Essence Festival Live
00:19:16
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A
I'm the homegirl that knows a little bit about everything and everybody.
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B
You know, she don't lie about that, right?
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Lauren came in hot. Hey, y'.
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All, what's up? It's Lauren LaRosa. And this is another episode of the Latest with Lauren LaRosa. This is your daily dig on all things pop culture, entertainment news, and all of the conversations that shake the room, baby.
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So y' all know that we just
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had an amazing time at the Essence Festival down in New Orleans. Um, I got a chance to host the main stage in the convention center. Shout out to the Essence Festival team Teyana Taylor and the aunties who put it together. That's her production company. But one of my favorite things that I got a chance to do was sit down with one of my favorite reality star girlies, Ms. Mimi Sanders, who is on the cast of Married to Medicine. She's the founder of a company called Inter Community Health, and she talks a lot about mental health, mental health awareness, autism, because she is a mom of a kid on the spectrum, and just everything preventative, but also everything to kind of keep you feeling good. So we get into a live conversation on the Essence Festival stage. That made it a very safe space. So welcome to the safe space. Let's get into it.
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B
Hello, everybody. Back again. Y' all still doing good out here. All right, so this one's going to be a little different because I'll be with you guys on the stage a bit longer, having our conversation live here on the Essence Festival main stage, because this conversation is going to be therapy in real life, and we all need to check in. Y' all done checked in on yourselves recently, and maybe. Okay, here a couple people. No, I see some no's. At least you honest. Me either. But today we are going to check in, sis. So you guys know the column, and now it's live. This is therapy in real life, brought to life right here on this stage. We're doing this together, so raise your hand if you feel it. Raise your hand if you feel like this is a safe space, a collective space to have conversation. Okay. By the end of this conversation, my goal is to have every hand raised in here. We're going to ask that question again at the end of this conversation. And I'm not doing this alone. I'm going to be doing this with an amazing woman who is a professional in this space. You guys may have seen her on one of your favorite reality shows. Please welcome to the stage, Dr. Mimi. Hello, doctor Me. Any seat you want, whatever. We got a side okay. All right. All right, y'.
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All.
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So joining me Right here is Dr. Mimi. Dr. Mimi, season 11, married to medicine, correct? Yes. Wife and mother of three beautiful babies, co owner of a mental health center, which we'll talk about. I know you are a big autism advocate, stress advocate, postpartum pregnancy advocate as well, too. An author. Inner beauty. Bringing the true beauty out of every woman. Girl, you were busy.
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Yes, very busy.
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You are very busy. But also Tennessee State University. Grad.
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Yes, tsu. Are you here? Tennessee State University.
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And you went to school for chemistry?
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Yes, I majored in chemistry and then graduated and went to medical school at Ohio University.
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So talk to us, first of all, a little bit about, you know, what your day to day is like amidst all of those things that we just named and how you managed to check in on yourself.
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Yeah. So. Well, first of all, thank you guys for having me. I am so excited. I have been to ESSENCE as a small child, and now I am here. And this is just beautiful. I love being around just black people.
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Not only are you here, you are here. You are on the main stage.
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Well. Well, the Lord has good all the time. No. So what does my day to day look like? Day to day looks different. And that is why I embrace pivots. Normally, yes, I try my best to have slow mornings, but that always does not happen. But I always wake up in a sense of gratitude. I remember just reading what Oprah did daily, and she said, I journal what I'm grateful for. And so in the morning, I'm journaling my gratitudes. I am making sure that I am doing my devotion. I'm just pouring into myself. So I want to set the tone of my day, and I don't want anything to kind of hijack that. But then, of course, you got. I got kids, I got a whole business. You know, I gotta help the people.
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A husband.
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I got a husband. So we just have a lot of hats to wear, but I wanna make sure I'm wearing it well. I don't want it to wear me out.
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I mean, but there are some days that we're being honest where wearing thin might be a thing for you. Right. So how do you check in on yourself when you don't even have the energy to sit and journal or to even think about gratitude.
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So the question is, like, where does the energy come? Well, if you don't have the energy to check in, and I think that you have to make time. Just as you would put your, like, a to do list, you have to put yourself on your to do list. And so we may not. It may not look like it. Every day the same thing. But you're making sure that you are putting yourself on your. On the. On the list. And it can simply be, let me just have a. Let me just sit down for one moment, have a cup of coffee, and just make sure that I am okay. Ask me, how are you doing, Mirica? How are you doing, Mimi? And sometimes it's not, oh, okay, I'm fine. I'm okay. No, I feel kind of like, not necessarily sad, but I feel convicted.
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Why?
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And so just making sure that I'm checking in just like I would check on a girlfriend.
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Gotcha. At one point, you know when you're checking in on Mimi and you're asking yourself those questions, like, when do you realize that stress has become something that's not just normal stress, and it's something that can be taken a step farther? And what do you do in that scenario?
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Yeah, so I tell my patients that you know yourself better than anybody else. So if you are even coming to my office or I'm seeing you online, I'm asking you, who are you? What do you like to do? And I want you to be able to sit down and just really think about that question. And so you know, when you're not doing well and if you don't necessarily know, like, okay, what is going on, your body's going to tell you.
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Yes.
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If you don't take care of yourself, it's gonna. The stress is going to come out. So it can come out in any type of ways. It can come out with high blood pressure. It can come out as irritability. It can come out as, hey, I'm not really communicating right. To my loved ones. And it just can come out as just anything. Bowel problems. It's going to come. So I really want to. Well, my goal in life is to have people to look at their mental health in a preventative way. Just as we go to the primary care doctor, like, make sure that they are doing the screenings for your mental health. And so we don't need to always be with a psychiatrist or a therapist in crisis, we need to be with a therapist or a psychiatrist, like, just daily and making sure we have that particular person and making sure that we are treating our mental health just as we are doing our primary or physical health.
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When you say that we should be asking for these screenings on a daily, like, how you just check up on yourself at, like, a regular doctor's office, what is it that you ask for? Like, if I walk into a psychiatrist for the first time or even my primary care doctor to get a recommendation for a psychiatrist or whatever. If I've never done this before, what do I say?
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So, okay, so if you're going to your primary care doctor, they are supposed to ask you depression screening questions and it's called a patient health questionnaire. Sometimes it's just two questions and sometimes it's like nine questions. They're asking you, hey, have you felt depressed in the last two weeks? Have you really not been able to do your day to day activities? And that is, I'm getting up, I'm making sure, I'm doing my activities of daily living, showering, I'm eating right. How's your appetite? How is your sleep, sis, are you sleeping?
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Yeah.
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And so, and they're asking you these questions and they are doing that particular type of mental health screening, but if they don't do that, you ask for it, say, hey, I haven't been feeling quite normal, I'm feeling a little off. And they should also ask you follow up questions. What does that mean for you? Well, I don't necessarily get to sleep when I want to. I'm staying up, I got racing thoughts, I can't get my mind to rest. And they say, okay, well do you want to see somebody? Absolutely. And so that also is the hardest step for some of my patients, even asking that I want to see someone for my mental health. So also my goal in life is to break that stigma. Like everybody has mental health, good and bad. And so as especially in our culture, we have to break that stigma that it is okay to see someone, it is okay to talk about your emotions, it is okay to have Jesus and therapy. So it is okay for us to
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protect the people in here. Now you just say, she didn't say, don't take it to the pool, take it to the doctor. Some of y' all gonna get up and walk out. That ain't what your grandma be telling you.
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Take it to both. And so we are. I, I really, really enjoy what I'm doing because when I was, I guess, picking my profession, I really didn't see a lot of us in those particular areas of mental health. And when you want to see someone, sometimes you want to see someone that you can relate to.
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Yes.
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That gets you, that gets your culture. They can talk to you in, you know, in our way. And that really does matter.
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I was going to ask, you know, how much does that matter, right? Like finding someone. So if I'm a black woman, do I need to have a black woman psychiatrist or therapist or from black. Like, how does that work? How do we try the therapist on for size? Like, what's that process like?
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I tell people therapy is like dating. So you may not get the right one. The right at the. At the first time, but when you
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don't get the right one when you're
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dating, you try again.
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You do, but you're a little scorned. It's a little different.
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Well, well, no, because if you look at it, all things are gonna work for your favor. And so you get to this particular therapist that may. Or psychiatrist that you're not vibing with, you still have learned, okay, this is a communication style that I may not receive well from.
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Right.
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And so when I'm going to see that other psychiatrist or that other therapist, I know exactly what I'm looking for more now. And so you're just. You're just testing them out.
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Got you.
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And you're also. You're advocating for yourself. My patients sometimes come with a list of what they want to work with. And I say, thank you. Give it to me, because I need to know. And so we're just making sure that we're vibing someone that you relate to because you also have to be very vulnerable. These first initial sessions are hard. It's like de bribing a wound. We got to get up in there, and that hurts.
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It sounds like what you're talking about is like. Because we talk about dating. There's dating and then there's dating with intention. Yes. And it sounds like someone. Eventually you get to that point of your therapist journey where you're trying to find a therapist or the right psychiatrist. Right. And your intention starts to develop because you understand what you want and you don't want.
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Absolutely.
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Is what I'm hearing.
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Okay. Absolutely.
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Got you. Now I have a question about intention. Right. Because we all have family, we all have friends, and we love them dearly, but how can we support the people around us without taking on their emotional load?
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You be honest. You tell them, hey, well, you learn how to communicate honestly. So you tell them where you are. And you don't have to tell everybody your business. But if you know you're at a place or don't have the capacity to take that on, to take on, okay. What they're going through, you. You tell them, hey, I hear you. I want to. I appreciate you thinking that I'm a person that you can come to. However, at this time, let me direct you to where I think that you should go. We don't have to do all the things. As black women, sometimes we want to carry everything, or we have just innately been taught that, or we've seen that. So we need to put it down, put the bags down. We ain't got to carry everybody's stuff. Put your stuff down and let somebody who is maybe a trained professional and say, hey, I picked that up because I know how to do it. I know how to do it, and it doesn't weigh me down.
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Erykah Badu's Bag lady hits so different. When you start to understand that when you get to a certain point and you're. You're tired of you trying to figure out your own heaviness and battling with others as well. That song hit a little different.
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And we have generational heaviness.
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Yes.
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And so we have to understand, and that's everybody. We have to understand that we are carrying a lot of things that we never picked up. We just kind of just got it, whether it's from our moms or from my grandparents, from just society or from like a systemic pressures. So really sitting down. And that's why I'm an advocate for preventive mental health. You don't have to be in a crisis, but we also know that there are things that we have that we didn't pick up that we need to process. So go see someone and say, oh, I'm. I'm good right now, but what. How can I be better? How can I live the best quality of life that I deserve?
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What's one thing, you know, with all of your experience that you wish people really understood about mental health and like, taking care of yourself? Because I think it's very trendy right now to have the conversation and, you know, but what's one thing that you feel like we're still missing the mark on that you wish people really understood?
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Well, I touched on it a bit. It is about being preventative instead of being reactive. Just a short story. When I was going through my training, you have inpatient psychiatry, and you have outpatient psychiatry. And when I was in the psychiatric units, I saw a lot of us. And then when I went to the outpatient psychiatrist doing my rotations, I didn't see a lot of us. And so that kind of just told me we perhaps are not seeing people until it is too late or we in a crisis. So one thing I want people to take away from this is let's be preventative.
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Yes.
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Let's make sure that we're checking in on ourselves and let's making sure that we have someone, a licensed professional that can help us. We don't have to do this alone. We're not supposed to do it alone. We thrive in connectivity. Look at where we are. Yes, this is connection. This is good. This is pouring into yourself. So kudos.
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Let's talk about protecting your peace. Right? Yeah, that is such a, that's also a buzz thing right now. Like protecting my peace and safe space. What's one thing that you think is an easy, like super easy thing that everybody here today can do to actually protect their peace?
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You say no and set boundaries.
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That's not the easiest thing.
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Well, it's not. Well, saying the word no is an easy thing. Enforcing that boundary of no can be hard. But it starts with you saying, no, I can't do that right now. No, it does. It's not in alignment with what I'm going forward right now. And so just saying no and that's. It's hard because it can come from family, it can come from our children, it can come from work. But you know, where you are mentally in the capacity and if you cannot take it on, it is okay. Does not mean that you will never take it on. It's just not right now. Yeah, not today. I'm.
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I.
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Let me direct you elsewhere. So saying no and enforcing that boundary.
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And what about my last question to you in today's time, right? Like we turn on the news and you feel from the top of the segment when the news starts to the time the news ends, there's such a mix of emotions for people all over the world today. In today's time, how does things externally like that, like news media, music, like, how do those things affect your mental health in ways that people don't even understand?
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It greatly affects our mental health. I would tell my clients and my patients that we have to turn the news off. We cannot just have it on because it is going to jump on you. The pressures. We're in a today's society, there are a lot of just difficult situations and stressors that if you are a very empathetic person that you're going to take it on. Yes. And so set some time limits, set some boundaries for yourself. Hey, I want to know what's going on. I want to be informed, but I don't want that, all that information to transform me.
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Right.
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And so saying no to yourself, setting that boundary or that time limit and saying, I can't, I don't have the capacity to do that right now. And let's, let's counteract that so now we're going to put on something that pours into us and uplift us. So instead of the news outlet, or maybe I've watched it for 10 minutes, I'm going to now put on some music that really is uplifting. I'm now really going to call that girlfriend that I know that she pours out because that she has that gifting.
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Right.
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So you're going to find things, and those are actually coping skills. So what serves you, and we know what don't serve us because we get that feeling, you know, the chest.
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Yeah.
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So we know what doesn't serve us. And so recognize that, but also recognize what does serve you. So we're going to sleep. We're going to make sure we sleeping. We're going to make sure that we have a great diet. We're going to make sure that we're moving our body. We're going to make sure that we are in connectivity. And so we're going to go back to what we may think. Oh, that's kind of simple. But no, those are your core four.
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Love it.
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You're going to sleep, you're going to exercise, you're going to eat right, and then we're going to be. We're going to stay connected.
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The thing that sleep does for you, just being able to think through the rest of your week after you wake up.
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Yeah.
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Miracles. Well, Dr. Mimi, thank you for joining me in this conversation.
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Yes.
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Have you all enjoyed this conversation? Now, I'm gonna ask y' all the question I asked y' all in the beginning of this. Did y' all feel like this was a safe space? Dr. Mimi gave y' all some tips. Were we vulnerable up here? Alrighty, y', all, this is Essence Fest 2026. Dr. Mimi, thank you for all the work that you are doing. Make sure you guys go out and support her book. It is the inner beauty bringing true beauty, bringing the true beauty out of every woman.
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Yes.
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And where can they purchase?
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They can go online@inner community.innercommunityhealth.com so I n n e r communityhealth.com and it has all my informations and also about the practice.
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Thank you guys.
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But I tell you guys, every single episode, y' all could be anywhere with anybody talking about all of these things and the things. But y' all choose to be right here with me. My lowriders. I appreciate you. I'll catch you in my next one.