First, Id like to say currently I am single because currently I kind of suck at being a human. It is easy to call someone else out for things that manifest within oneself, especially if you are honest enough to admit that you are not perfect. Ive been scrolling social media as the summer has gotten comfortable here in Connecticut, and boy is the thirst real out there. Ive always been a relationship kind of person so I certainly understand the desperation some have to be "with someone". I get it, who wants to be alone when you do not have to be? Their is someone for everyone however most of us; myself included are single because of us. We suck! The difference between myself and many others is I can admit that I am not that great of a person and because of that I just may be contributing to the non-sense that is the shit show I call life. I am moody, sometimes I do not feel like being bothered other times I like nothing but all of your attention. I am lazy, I do not want to do much unless I am convinced it is worth me leaving my comfort place. I am a true introvert like that, I do not require social connection as much as I recognize its importance. I can be demanding and at time harsh if my feelings are hurt. I am young minded in many ways, I am very intelligent and know many things, a lot more than my peers and because of this I find myself talking in a tone that offends people that are not used to my personality. The other side of me is incredibly loving, affectionate and loyal. I will provide financially as well as mentally. I am always available physically for my spouse even if it at that time id rather not be. I can be very passive for the sake of argument and in some cases can be an over communicator. I struggle with energy and vibes and I always require intentions and very specific details on what a persons intentions are when they are communicating with me. I like to decide at what magnitude shall I be present in the life of someone. I say all of that to say this, It has taken years of horrible relationship choices and even worse life choices that has finally directed me to a place of reflection and growth. I started going to therapy and getting deeper into my bible and religion. I started realizing my purpose and working harder at my goals and woke up one day and realized I didn't want a relationship as much as I thought I did. I started to say to myself more than a woman to hold I want to be happy. I want to feel fulfilled within myself; I am a human, I get lonely, I crave a physical connection like the next person. However I have elevated into a space where being single is not nearly as bad as being in a bad relationship. I wake up everyday and do exactly what I want to without worrying about anything that I am not required to. I eat what I want when I want without having to consider if another person would like to have the same thing. I can watch whatever I want including hours of youtube documentaries and never do I have to fake pretend to be interested in Little women of Atlanta. All of these things may seem selfish but how come they cannot just be triggers to my happiness? I deserve to live the kind of life that I prefer regardless to how it may make someone else feel, and because of that I remain single. Finding the right person that does not disturb but instead enhance your happiness is difficult that is why we are only promised one soul mate. We should not have to over compromise ourselves to attach ourselves to someone whom clearly does not like the real version of us. Truth is, many of you reading this suck at being a human. You assume you know exactly what it is you need from the universe. You walk around swiping left and right on people based on nothing deeper than physical attributes. You spend no time looking at yourself so that you can heal yourself rather you place blame on others for the things that you allow to happen to you. Many of you are so busy judging other people that you are missing what that person may have to offer you and a few more of you are so thirsty for a relationship you stopped paying attention to yourself a long time ago. Ladies, why not spend some time getting your mental health together? Your finances together? Your life together? Why should someone have to take you as you are when doing so would be taking a burden? A lot of you do not work, some of you have three and four children. A lot of you are constantly in the mix trying to be seen and then wonder why nobody of substance and prominence shows you any interest? Same with some of the males that may be reading this. Many of them have very little to offer beyond sex or money however expect way more than they could ever provide. If you had to be in a relationship with yourself would you want yourself? If you had to date the version of you that only you are familiar with would you be satisfied? Would you date you? This blog is all about single people cutting the bullshit lies and games and acknowledging simple facts, being single isn't a punishment it is a time for growth and development in one self. Stop trying to force people into friendships with you when you really want to try them on as a spouse. Stop abusing the word friendship because you acknowledge you lack the correct tools to actually commit and be in a real relationship. Stop trying to manipulate the way others interact with you because you do not understand the importance of vibes and energy, all you know is what you have been through and what you are afraid to feel again. Listen baby you are not in control and the quicker you realize that the better off you will be. The bible says he who finds a wife finds a good thing. Let that settle in, "A good thing". A Good thing cannot be manufactured, it will always be organic and authentic if it is real. Stop begging for attention and realize the attention you deserve is sent to you when your energy attracts it. What we get is an example of what we work for and what we have is an example of what we have manifested. Being in a relationship will never be more important than being a good person or being your true authentic self. Being in a relationship will never be worth your self worth and personal happiness. If we focused on being good people we would find ourselves worried less about who wants to be with us.
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Sometimes when we are in a bind the first idea that comes to our mind is to scale back, cut corners and figure out how to save pennies because of course those pennies add up. We like to convince ourselves we do not need a new outfit and that day trip we were planning isnt so neccessary.
We start to pack our lunches instead of paying for that over priced diner with the sandwiches that are so good you justify the price with the astronomical amount of food you recieve for it. Most of us are all wired to survive when we should be making the best choices so we can live. Why does our mind think subtract when we clearly need to add? Is it the fear of the unknown or is it the reality of what is? The unknown is; logically we all can do more and produce more. However life may sometimes enable us to get lazy and comfortable with our existence and we begin to just roll with it. What if we started saying. I need some extra cash, let me DO MORE!? Instead we immediately consider what we can I do less of? Here is my logic, firstly many of us are spending too much money on regular life anyway! You may eat out a lot, you may smoke marijuana and drink. You may be the kind of person whom loves new clothes and sneakers, clubs. What if your a parent? God forbid you may be a person that juggles many of these things. Sometimes you pray for days you spend ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY FOR ANY REASON AT ALL. What if before we started taking away from ourselves we evaluated ourselves so that we are not being reactive rather proactive to financial pitfalls? What if we started to actually budget our money and plan how we were to spend our money prior to doing so ultimately creating a situation where we are ALREADY spending money on things of value. Instead of our mind thinking "oh I can just cut out starbucks" the mind will say "Damn I am already budging let me looking for passive income." Or maybe you are saying things like; "how can I maximize my finances so that I am making the best financial choices ALL OF THE TIME? The idea is let's not do less but do more. Why should we rob ourselves of things we desire or feel as though we deserve because we do not financially have it? Why isn't our first thought is to figure out how to maintain our lifestyle or what could we maximize in our life to provide? Some of us make 20$ an hour after taxes you make about 120$ a day give or take a few dollars. That is 580$ a week and maybe your saying I want to go on vacation. I cant go because vacation cost 2000 all inclusive and I cant save that kind of money. You consider all the things you can cut out, you'll stop getting your nails done you'll stop eating out and eventually u will have enough to go on vacation. The issue with that is we go on vacation and have fun then go back to our ways of spending prior to belt tightening to get to the vacation. We never considered hey I could just not get my nails done and I can just not eat out at all and my budget can get used to that money being a constant. We never say instead of taking away from myself why don't I turn my spare time into dollars? Why not work some extra hours to create the extras in my life? Maybe you invest in yourself by making your spare time profitable instead of wasting money. My mother always used to say you go out of the house for two reasons 1. To make money or 2 to spend money. Most of the time what we are doing in our spare time is the difference maker. We are wasting a lot more time than we like to admit or agree too. 24 hours in a day for most adults 8 hours are used working and approximate travel time is 2 hours u can get 8 hours of sleep and still have 6 hours of time that you can never get back. 6 hours in most cases is being used wasting money or time. What if we decided we were going to cut back on wasting time instead of saving minor amounts of money? Realistically speaking if you saved 5$ a day it would take u a month to make 100$. If you got a part time job it would take you only 15 hours or less depending on what the minimum wage is where you live. You could save all of your loose change or you can just recycle. You could shop less or you could use reward points cash back offer apps clip coupons and shop smarter. You could tell yourself; you are going to quit hanging out and shopping or you can give yourself a comfortable amount of money to use toward said activity. Here it is, what we want and what we require in most cases are not the same and most of the time we allow what others have tell us what it is we need and then we make unrealistic over challenging goals for ourselves to commit to when really we should be making promises to just be better humans no matter how much money we want. If we worked on being better humans we would be shocked at how much money we saved because we are going to walk into a season where what we require to be whole and fulfilled will me much less, directly equaling to us needing less to finance our happiness and desires. After a while of responsible living and responsible money spending we find those financial pitfalls are further in between. We discover we are able to feel comfortable when we swipe our cards and even better we get to a place that our money begins to work while we are asleep or working on other streams of income. Once we see these levels the days of cutting back on lunch to make ends meet are over. For a lot of us in the African American community suffer from the stigma attached to therapy and mental health. A lot of us believe we do not need it, we cannot benefit from it or we simply can pray our sadness into happiness and misery into effective living. Like many of my readers now, my break up with my ex fiance forced me to look for something else. I was with this woman for nearly four years just to learn that she was not who I thought she was. I love her greatly and that will never change however I had to realize I did not love myself. I latched onto her and wanted her to fill the void of emptiness that I felt within myself and when she dropped the ball on me and found her happiness by leaving me I was in a state of mental hell. I was drinking way too much alcohol smoking way too many cigarettes and smoking way too much marijuana to deal with the pain that I felt on the outside. I was going through mood swings and depression levels that I could no longer handle on my own, I was seriously hurting myself. I was on a budget because I was also in the process of finishing my degree in computer networking and technology. I was studying for several certification exams and just didn't have the time or money to take therapy seriously. One day I discovered online text therapy and my life changed instantly. I was given a life coach a therapist and began my sessions. I was introduced to spirituality, I was reintroduced to my religion and I got saved. Rededicating to the lord initially kept me at peace as I studied the bible and got deeper into therapy I started feeling a lot better. I started feeling better in the mornings, started using the tools that were given to me in my therapy sessions and making mental health apart of my everyday life.
This foundation is to aid and enable African Americans to begin to take active care of themselves mentally with the help of professional doctors that look just like us. For a lot of African Americans we struggle with the idea of therapy because we fear our therapist cannot relate to us or understand us so we tend to shy away from the idea and not take it seriously. Truth our children our dying of suicide, our parents are fighting alcoholism drugs and lack of education. Our men are being locked away in prisons leaving women to raise children alone. The whole idea of the African American family has been destroyed and Taraji's foundation is helping with that among other things. Today on the second day of mental health awareness month we want to send a shout out to Taraji for what she is doing for our community and we encourage all to visit her website and to seek help with a mental health evaluation. It is never too soon to break the cycles and make a promise to yourself to stride for a healthier lifestyle. 7 Toxic Habits and What they Mean: 1. Holding on to an ex or holding on to any extra Baggage. Stay away from partners that go from relationship to relationship. Every breakup no matter how long the relationship last requires a certain level of processing and healing. People that generally go from one situation directly into the next have failed to heal and recover from the issues that presented itself in its last relationship and because the problems have not been fixed or examined they will be carried into the next relationship. Worst than holding on to an Ex many toxic people are holding on to trauma and sorrow from the past that they have allowed to make a core value within themselves that causes conflict and issues down the line. Before we enter relationships you have to get yourself together. It is okay to be alone for an extended period of time so that you are sure you are not bringing your past pain into a new situation with someone else. 2. Constant Lies. The issue with Lies are liars will claim they are not lying. They lie so much that they start to believe the lies they tell themselves and others. Lies do not just mean outright lies that we can all recognize as lies or even small white lies they lie to you about how they see you as well as how they see themselves and your relationship. Lies are a sign of insecurity so you try to make your situation seem better than it is to avoid the fixing process. 3. Love Bombs. Do not confuse this, this is toxic! If your spouse demands to constantly be with you, on your phone or within some kind of connection and communication with you at all times they are toxic and lack wholeness. Secure people that are whole within themselves do not need constant interaction with their spouse in fact they are annoyed by it. A healthy relationship is normally a morning call or text and catch up on a lunch break or after work and maybe a phone call and video chat at the end of the night. If you live together your constantly communicating so texting and phone calls should not be required as much as a person whom lives far away and cannot see their spouse on the regular basis. The communication within a relationship should be decided by both people, one person should not constantly feel that they are being bombarded with phone calls and text messages and feel obligated to respond and fake communication because their partner will get upset if they do not answer the phone or text. That is also signs of insecurity, control and immaturity. You should be confident that your partner has seen you reached out to them and that they will be responding back to you as soon as they can. Allowing yourself to think the worst of your partner is why the love bombs happen and love bombing is toxic. 4. Frequently Monitoring You. If they require to know where you are going who you are going to be with and when you are coming back run for the hills! If they require you to check in with them when you have already told them where you would be and what you would be doing it is toxic! Do not get me wrong, if you would like to call or text your partner while you are out and about with your friends because you miss her/him that is okay and even kind of sweet. However if the understanding is that you are required to do these things or your partner will be upset with you ignore you and pick fights with you run it is toxic. You do not have to answer to your spouse as if you are answering to your parents. You have a right to be an individual, come and go as you please as long as your respecting the boundaries of your relationship your spouse should be just fine and if they are not you need to find someone more secure in knowing that their spouse is not out here disrespecting the unit. 5. Partner Isolation This happens when your partner has no friends or activities of their own if they are insecure or worst all of these things. People who have been hurt and have never had a chance to be in a loving relationship tend to try to control their partner. They want to isolate you keep you to themselves. They do not want you to have friends and activities they are not included in and in a lot of times they try to create issues within your life so you come to a place of self removal. You will look around one day and realize you have isolated yourself from your friends and our family and now the only person you have to depend on is your spouse and that is the start of a co dependent toxic relationship. 6. Hot and Cold Personality If you ever wondered if your partner is bi polar or if their attitude was incredibly inconsistent run that is toxic. If your partner takes your happiness and turns it into a negative argument or something negative they are toxic and you should run. If they are constantly rejecting you but then love bombing you a few hours later gushing all over you making you feel loved and appreciated they are toxic you have to get away from them. Nobody has to deal with a person who cannot balance their emotions and stay in control of their feelings. A hot and cold personality is normally an attention seeker and they also are super insecure within themselves and argumentative all signs of a toxic relationship you should run from. 7. Pressing Resets If you argue so much in your relationship you find yourself always trying to start over and do it again then guess what! It is toxic you need to run. Arguing is actually a healthy aspect of relationships. They build growth communication and understanding between the two partners. If fighting doesn't elevate your relationship rather ends up in one person feeling like they are making the sacrifice for the happiness of the other person it is toxic it is time to leave. People should be able to agree to disagree and those disagreements shouldn't affect the communication moving forward in the relationship. If your partner is not receptive to your emotions and your feelings and the arguments get to be too much and your constantly trying to start from scratch to leave the arguments in the past because they are not producing growth it is time to find you someone else to love. Toxic relationships only exist because either one or both parties in the relationship suffer from: Low Self Esteem, Insecurity, Trust Issues, Control Issues. Many more factors contribute but these are the main ones. A person with low self esteem does not find themselves attractive, they do not see their worth and value so when they finally find a relationship they are attached to it in unhealthy ways because they believe that nobody else would find them attractive. Insecurity issues cause arguments and the need for your partner to do more than what is required for a spouse. Failure to fulfill yourself and complete yourself as a person makes you desire completion by your spouse. We as people must complete ourselves. We cannot connect with a person and make them responsible for our wholeness as adults.
Wholeness starts with knowing who you are, understanding your flaws and what you are good at is the key to finding balance in your relationship. Trust issues come from a person either not being honest within themselves, so they project what they know they are doing onto their spouse. They have been hurt so much in the past they have built walls around the trust functions of the brain. When you find yourself with a person whom has all of the listed issues it all boils down to control. They want to control the narrative of the relationship and make sure their spouse acts accordingly to the ideas of happiness that THEY have designed. They have not for one moment considered their partner's view of how they would like to build the relationship rather they have told their partner what THEY need in order to stay present in the relationship. Relationships require two people being able to express themselves grow as a unit and develop a united front built on respect and loyalty. Love will come however it is important that the two people in the relationship are working toward the same goals at the same time. My Advice for anyone whom finds themselves in a toxic relationship is to talk to your partner. You have to be prepared to end the relationship if your partner is unwilling to understand how the relationship is toxic and willing to do the work to fix the issue. We all have gone through things that have shaped how we feel on the inside however choosing to be in a relationship means that we have taken a chance at love with someone whom we believe could make us happy. If you find yourself unhappy and you tried everything in your power to make it work and your spouse is coming off unwilling to work with you then understand your worth and look for something more healthy. For anyone whom is watching the video and reading this blog and maybe they are feeling like they are the toxic side of their relationship it is my advice you reach out to a local therapist. You must learn how to process your personal issues as well as learn how to function as a person before you allow yourself to function as half of a solid relationship. What Is Immaturity Development is a lifetime obligation, most minorities grow up in situations where in some cases they are forced into positions of per-mature adult hood. Some of us become teenage mothers/fathers, come up in the projects and get jobs. We learn how to survive, we learn how to make it in our environment, sure. In some cases we lack the intellectual development because we do not read, we do not understand the concept of how large the world really is. A lot of us struggle with alcohol and drugs because of the inability to mellow out and relax. Maturity comes with the ability to relax your thoughts. We have set up these module to help people to understand if perhaps they may be a bit immature. Remember the key to fixing anything about ourselves is to acknowledge the issues with ourselves. 1. Reactive: We cannot control what people do however we can control how we react to what they do. It is important for us to remain calm cool and collected within our thoughts and refrain from yelling and screaming when we are disagreeing or faced with a complication. Reactive people also display an inability to take control over their emotions as they are easily affected by their surroundings and other people's issues. A reactive person's whole day can be decided by something that is done by someone or something else. Reactive people should focus on developing the ability to think before they respond and only focus on things that in witch they can control. Consider your life like the battery in your cell phone, give the apps that you absolutely cannot live without the priority so you are not draining battery on the things you do not need. If you cannot change it do not give energy to it. 2. Obsession With Looks Looks are not forever and looks do not measure the value of what can be found in the heart. Most mature people are looking for what is in your heart and place very little value in the physical representation of you. Any person that is more concerned with your physical attributes than what actually makes you you is just as immature as the person that thinks too much of the way they look. Mature people tend to invest more time money and effort into the things that matter and sadly for the superficial too much attention in the area of your looks shows signs of low self esteem and immaturity so if you are this way you should work on that. 3. Defensive We have to stop thinking that just because a person does not agree with us they are attacking us. Healthy conversation and debating are signs of a mature person. An immature person cannot trade ideas because they are too busy defending themselves and their perspective to learn something from the conversation. Defensive people are argumentative because they constantly feel attacked. If you are defensive it can be helpful for you to consider the fact that you do not have to agree with everyone just as everyone will not agree with you. People will disagree with you and still enjoy you and would like to have you around however you can change that fact with how you behave when you are faced with conflict. 4. Consistent Playing Of The Victim Card Stop blaming your past experiences for the things that you conscientiously decide to do in your present. You cannot say I do not trust because I have been cheated on and hurt however you decide to enter a relationship. Relationships are built on trust, if you have issues with trust you have issues with relationships. You do not get to play the victim to help escape accountability for the choices that you make. Mature people are in love with holding themselves accountable where as immature people love to find people things of moments in life to justify their inability to take responsibility for their thoughts and ideas. Communication is the number one relationship killer. Watch and Learn
Communication is the one of the most important tools if you want to develop and maintain good mental health. Let us be honest, no one is ever 100 percent okay 100 percent of the time. The difference between those of us with a healthy mental mindset and those of us without is simply the ability to communicate. It is important for us to first learn how to understand our own feelings, actions and emotions so that we can PROPERLY articulate them to people. One of the biggest issues when people attempt to communicate is we often say one thing when we really were trying to say something else. Worst, our actions are not in alignment to what we feel or what we say leading to confusion. Confusion is the last thing you want to be in the middle of your attempts to communicate with someone. If you do not have a proper understanding of how you feel and why you cannot correctly explain it to other people. The other half of communication is listening. Learning how to listen is harder than it may seem. We have to learn to sit through what is hard to hear, what may hurt our feelings, what may not be true. We have to always be willing to hear others out if we expect for them to be willing to hear and understand our side of the argument. The ability to hear others allows us an opportunity to learn from our experiences. We may not see value in what they are saying however if we want to maintain healthy relationships with people weather they be romantic or platonic it is essential we disable the ability to be selfish.
Many of us minorities often label therapy as "White People Shit". We ignore the benefits of it, we allow ourselves to struggle mentally as well as emotionally through our lives. We remain in the slave mind, we refuse to break the cycle and understand what is truly going on within our minds and bodies. We do not allow ourselves to obtain the knowledge of mental as well as physical health. We refuse to acknowledge that learning how to meditate is essential to maintaining balance and mental stability. We are not allowing ourselves to be educated on how to partner our faith with spirituality and really learn to tap into ourselves like never before. Learning how to set goals, use critical thinking as well as getting more organized could greatly benefit the African-American community. Think about where you may be as a person if you were raised to be financially responsible? If you were raised to set goals and think your life through versus just floating off into space dealing with what comes? Imagine a life where you had support of positive people and energies that helped to elevate you into different levels of enlightenment instead of the constant digression of our people? Therapy is one of the hidden keys used to unlock places in the brain your average person does not tap into on the regular basis. Therapy helps us learn to properly communicate, you learn how to hold yourself accountable for the things that you do as well as do not do. Therapy helps people to address past trauma that may have lead a person to their current manifestation. Therapy helps us to understand that everyday is an opportunity to change our life if we are willing to grow from who we were yesterday. Most people's biggest enemy is procrastination partnered with complacence. People get comfortable with who they have become and forget who they were trying to be. Some of us have no ambition at all, some of us have already accepted the bad in life and figure we might as well take it for what it is. It is sad how many of us suffer from emotional issues, mental issues such as bi-polar or anxiety issues. Many of us are injected with all kinds of issues from our past, our history, our culture and our families that we have held on to extreme mental health issues as apart of life when really it is the very thing killing our communities. What We Are OfferingHere at Ghetto Gospels I am offering an opportunity for everyone to try Therapy for free!! I Am currently working with two therapist that are willing to offer free 35 minute sessions to anyone whom takes the FREE MENTAL HEALTH ASSESSMENT. This is a 60 question basic mental health overview that will be used to Gage your level of mental health. HOW DO I GET MY FREE SESSION Once you finish the 60 question assessment you will be transferred to a results page. The results pages is what we require. If you have taken the exam on your PC you would use a snipping tool to cut the results from each section and save them, if you are using your phone screen shots of each page will work. You will then e-mail the results over to one of our therapist Benji over at [email protected]. He will go over your results and let you know who you will have your free session with and let you select a date and time from a short list of times. The GOAL The point of #MinoritiesInTherapy is to promote therapy and to get people to actually sign up for therapy. The doctors that we are working with are not seeking any money from any of you rather wanting to give you the basics of therapy to encourage you to look at your own options. A lot of you do not realize that your insurance may cover the cost of you to get well mentally, even if you are on state insurance programs like Husky.
Our doctors want to chat one on one with you and show you your resources and your options based on what your results say about you. They will engage with in in a few basic email's and a one on one 35 minute chat session that will show you how therapy normally is. We want to empower people of color to find the wholeness and benefits of therapy. We would like to open up the discussion in our groups and hang outs so that the stigma deflates in our community. We are hoping that more people seek therapy or at the bare minimum take advantage of the free session. |
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We gather information from several different Poets, Therapist, and Minorities from all sides of mental health and therapy. Archives
May 2019
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