This article is part of Her Campus's 'Anxiety on Campus: Feeling Seen & Speaking Out', a project dedicated to highlighting mental health and anxiety on campus.
Imagine you're walking to class on the sunniest of mornings, but in your mind there's a powerful storm, raining on your day before it even begins. This feeling is familiar for many students who are carrying the weight of their own problems, plus worldly issues, on their back. As a young black woman in her second year of college who struggles with anxiety, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. From childhood on, black girls are raised to become the caretakers for their community. We are the hero and sacrifice of every story, as we are expected to put everyone else’s needs before our own. We're checking in on everyone else, but who in particular is checking in on us? This results in feeling like you have to be self-reliant, and as you continue your matriculation throughout your college years, you must remember this: sometimes you are not strong enough to do it alone. And that's okay.
Whether you deal with stress that comes with being the minority at a PWI, or the underlying issues of colorism at an HBCU, “there’s no sin or shame with being anxious,” states Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett, a professor of Psychological Sciences and director of the Program for Research on Anxiety Disorders among African Americans at Kent State University. Being in college is hard, but being black and anxious is even harder — here's what Dr. Neal-Barnett has to say on what it means to be an anxious black college woman and how to start overcoming the anxiety.
