Sarah talked to Andy about the value of talking therapies and barriers to accessing them as a student, especially during lockdown.
It’s more than seeing someone who just looks like you, it’s having access to people with a range of lived experience so that you feel you can start from a place of mutual understanding and comfortability, especially in cultures where it already feels like a hurdle to access such therapy in the first place. Even if they were not from the same ethnic and racial background, the value of lived experience is vital when it comes to untangling issues of race and ethnicity from daily struggles that intersect with one’s mental health.
As a response to the barriers she encountered Sarah created her own small, but global, network of other women in similar situations.
It has been nice to see others making connections and sharing positive therapy and coaching experiences to inspire others.
Andy’s painting is an investigation into the idea of barriers to entry, featuring closed or inaccessible doors, mazes, and reflecting on the “dreamlike experience of lockdown” references to the graphical surrealism of MC Escher.
On seeing the painting Sarah said:
It evokes the feelings around barriers to education and the idea of being the ‘outsider within’ looking for opportunities (doorways) and connections (pathways), navigating obstacles to reach them. I think the colours/fluorescent lighting suggest some of the isolation and ‘bleakness’ of everything - but there is a small light through the middle door if you can reach it.
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