Ask Dr. Joy: January Jumpstart Edition

Published Jan 31, 2025, 8:00 AM

We’ve had a beautiful month of January Jumpstart episodes. We chatted with Yolo Akili about building community, with Attorney Aimee Griffin about cementing our legacy through estate planning, and much more. But what better way to close out the series than by hearing directly from you, our community?

Today, we’re diving into two thoughtful questions, and I’m here to share insights that may connect with many of you.

The first is about cleanliness—what happens when you didn’t grow up in a tidy household and now feel shame around organizing and keeping your space clean?

The second is about leveling up—how do you manage the frustration of wanting to grow each year but feeling like you’re falling short?

If you've got a question, we'd love to hear it. Drop us a voice note at memo.fm/therapyforblackgirls and let us know what’s on your mind. We just might answer your question on the podcast!

 

About the Podcast

The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.

 

Resources & Announcements

Grab your copy of Sisterhood Heals.

Vote for Therapy for Black Girls in the Best Lifestyle/Self-Help Podcast category of the NAACP Image Awards!

 

Stay Connected

Is there a topic you'd like covered on the podcast? Submit it at therapyforblackgirls.com/mailbox.

If you're looking for a therapist in your area, check out the directory at https://www.therapyforblackgirls.com/directory.

Take the info from the podcast to the next level by joining us in the Therapy for Black Girls Sister Circle community.therapyforblackgirls.com

Grab your copy of our guided affirmation and other TBG Merch at therapyforblackgirls.com/shop.

The hashtag for the podcast is #TBGinSession.

 

Make sure to follow us on social media:

Twitter: @therapy4bgirls

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Facebook: @therapyforblackgirls

 

Our Production Team

Executive Producers: Dennison Bradford & Maya Cole Howard

Senior Producer: Ellice Ellis

Producer: Tyree Rush

Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy Hard and Bradford, a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or to find a therapist in your area, visit our website at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much for joining me for a special bonus episode of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. We'll jump right into our conversation after a word from our sponsors. We're so honored to be nominated for the Outstanding Lifestyle and Self Help Podcast category at the fifty six annual NAACP Image Awards, but we cannot win without your support. Please take a second to go to vote dot Naacpimage Awards dot net and vote for Therapy for Black Girls. We've had a beautiful month of January jumpstart episodes. We chatted with you a little Achille about building community.

I know you probably see this also the community cultivate, like you know, everybody, I don't want nobody in my business. Everybody gotta be in all your business. But sometimes in this culture of instagram perfectionism, we're trying to always project this image that it's not real. We're trying to like hide behind an image, and if that image becomes a prison where we cannot connect authentic level people we care about. We're so afraid black people seeing our blemishes and our flaws or the reality is those things make us beautiful. But in order for people to really care for us, we felt lean into the fear of being cared for and the fear of being seen, which a lot of us have. Right, we got the nice pictures up, but who am I.

Really with Attorney Amy Griffin about cementing our legacy through estate planning?

What I think about is state planning is pulling in your life insurance, your philanthropic work, and all that kind of stuff to decide what is the legacy that you want to leave. Because if you have a great life insurance policy and leave it to someone who doesn't unter manage money, or someone who has sevens abuse issues, or no matter what it is if there is a structure and support to create multi generational wealth. It's just often sometimes it's not just the best blessing, it's a detriment. I tell people all the time, I'm a professional pessimist because I've seen what can go wrong. We've seen those lottery wedding shows where those people at the end of the show they have nothing or what we know is and inheritance is a lot like a lottery way. If you don't have a structure and a plan and support system in place, or the right people with the right knowledge base and place, what's going to happen? It'll just be honest.

Well, what better way to close out the series than by hearing directly from you, our community. Today We're diving into two thoughtful questions, and I'm here to share some insights that just might connect with many of you. The first question is about cleanliness. What happens when you didn't grow up in a tidy household and now feel shame around organizing and keeping your space clean. The second is about leveling up. How do you manage the frustration of wanting to grow each year but feeling like you're falling short. Great questions, right If something resonates with you, we love to hear it. Please share your feedback with us on social media using the hashtag TVG and session and let's get into it. So here's our first question. Like I mentioned, it's about cleanliness.

Hi, doctor Joy, I'm really curious about how young people, especially people who grew up maybe in a household they didn't feel was very clean, could maybe learn how to be more organized or clean in the new year. I know I've been working really hard on this and I've experienced a lot of shame around not feeling like I am where I'm supposed to be. But I do think that this is probably a more common issue than we think. So maybe talking about how to stop the shame feeling around this, and then also any tips for developing systems that you know, taking the baby steps to be more of an organized or clean home in the future.

So when I hear this question, my immediate thought and something that I really want you to hold on to, is that shame is not at all a helpful motive. So shame does a really good job of making us feel lousy about ourselves, but it doesn't actually cause us to really get up and move right, Like it is not actually helpful in us changing our behavior. So any shame that you are feeling related to this or anybody else holding onto shame related to something, it does us a great job of making you feel lousy, not so good about actually making you change anything. The second thing that I want to say is that there is no shame in you not knowing a skill that nobody taught you. And so we are all allowed to be bad at things that we are beginning to do, and it is okay to find the resources and get the help that you need to learn this new skill. So when you feel this shame coming up for yourself, I want you to just notice that it's there, right, just like any other emotion. When you feel the shame, just notice like hmm, there's that thing again. But work really hard not to judge it, because that is where the spot happens. Right Like now I feel bad about myself. Now, I don't want to do anything, and so try really hard to just notice the shame without making any judgments about it. So now for some like practical steps about getting started with cleaning. So if you have the budget for it, I think it could be great to work with a professional organizer who could maybe help you to get your space straight and then maybe it's something that is easier for you to maintain. Something else that you may want to explore is actually hiring someone to clean the house for you and then paying attention and like making notes of what they're actually doing so that you can then learn how to clean on your own. I think that those could both be great strategies if you have the budget for it. Something else that could be a great idea is to look at social media resources. So I often see what's called clean talk, so lots of people sharing videos and tips about how to get started with cleaning your house. Now, do make sure that you find videos that are for beginners, right, Like a lot of what I see is like an advance level kind of thing. But you can find some videos that are likely beginner friendly, and if not on social media, definitely on YouTube. If you just search how to get started with house cleaning or house cleaning one oh one, I am sure that it will pull up some very helpful resources for you. Something else that we have practiced in the Sister Circle that may be a good idea for you too is to have an accountability buddy. So sometimes we will get on Zoom for an hour and everybody is cleaning like their own individual spaces, And so just this idea of kind of coworking can sometimes be good to just kind of have a little bit of company while everybody's doing their own individual things. So if you have a friend who will get on Zoom for you and get on FaceTime with you and just both of you clean at the same time, that could also be a great way to just incentivize cleaning for you. But again, I just really want you to hold on to the idea that there is no shame in not knowing some skill. It is a skill just like anything else that you can get better at. But I think the first step is you recognizing that this is something that you want to do a better job of, and then going and finding the resources to get better. I hope that helps. Thank you for your question. More from our conversation after the break. We're so honored to be nominated for the Outstanding Lifestyle and Self Help Podcast category at the fifty six annual NAACP Image Awards, but we cannot win without your support. Please take a second to go to vote dot NAACP Image Awards dot net and vote for therapy for Black girls.

Hey, doctor Joy, I've just had a question about with each new year, you know, there's always this idea of trying to level up or trying to better yourself and improve, and everyone always goes in with the best, well intentioned, But what happens or what should you do if you're not leveling up? E cheer if you feel like you're continually missing the mark or having years where things don't go as planned. You know they always say that we make plans and God laughs, but what do you do if that keeps happening for you year over year over year? Thanks?

Okay, So our second question, as you heard, is all about leveling up. So my fighty senses immediately went off when I hear this idea of leveling up, and I keep missing the mark because my first question is who decided what the level up looks like? Right? Like? What measuring stick are you actually using to identify whether success is happening? And so a lot of times I think this level up that many of us may be working for or thinking about doesn't happen because we are one using unrealistic standards, or we are trying to achieve a goal that isn't really in alignment with who we are, and we are just trying to go after what we think we should have at a certain stage, or what we see other people have, and so we kind of throw ourselves into a tizzy thinking like I got to go after this thing. But then it's really hard to keep up any momentum or really see any success because it may not actually be anything that we are super excited about anyway, or it could be something that is just super unrealistic. So first, I want you to do some assessment about whether this is actually a goal you were interested in, something that feels in alignment with like who you are and your values, and decide, Okay, is this something that I really want to do? And if that's the case, then I want you to make sure that you are setting actionable steps to achieve the goal, right, because goals are not really effective if you don't break them down into small steps. So let's say you decided that she wanted to go back to school to get a master's degree. Well, you're not just going to show up for class on Monday without doing anything else, right, Like, there's a whole process involved. You have to study for an interest exam, you have to complete the application, you have to do an interview, Like there are all these steps that go into this larger goal, but a lot of times we are just starting at the end of the process as opposed to breaking it down into actionable steps. So once you've identified that whatever this level of whatever this goal is for yourself, I want you to make sure that you're breaking it down into smaller steps. Next, I want you to see what additional resources you might need to actually level up. So when I hear you say that I'm missing the mark, it makes me think like, hmm, is there some additional resource that she needs? Is there some kind of mentorship that she needs? Like what is the misstep there? Again, after you've decided that it is an alignment, may be the missing piece, and so maybe there is a resource that you need. Maybe there is some additional help that you either have not identified yet or you've been afraid to ask for, right, because a lot of times we think, oh, I'm very capable, I should just know to do this, right, I should just know how to do this. When you may know how to do it, but there are likely other people who are steps ahead of you, who may be a great resource for you, but you just haven't taken the opportunity to ask. So that's the next thing that I would wonder, is there a resource or somebody or something that could help you in making this level of happen for yourself. Also, I want to say, I don't want you to lose what the past five years have been like for so many of us. Right, so we think about the backdrop of the past five years in terms of the pandemic and politics and just so many world tragedies, it can be really hard to feel excited about goals or to you know, think about, okay, this next level up when really just existing it feels like it's a miracle these days. And so I do want to make sure that you are showing yourself the appropriate level of grace and compassion because the past couple of years have been really, really hard, and so if that has been the case for you, then that may be why this level up is feeling more difficult, because you're actually working against so many more stressors and so many more barriers that maybe you wouldn't have had if it weren't the past five years. That's something else I want you to keep in mind as well. If you want to send us another message and give us more information where details about what you are thinking this level up can look like, and there's some things that we can help or maybe we open it up to the wider community about ideas that they can share to help you with the level of We definitely would love to do that, so send us another message if you'd like. But I do hope that this gives you some place to start so that you can figure out what the level up looks like for you if it is in alignment. But thank you so much for your question, and do take good care well. I love hearing from you all. I love being able to give you some feedback that may help you to re examine a question that you have or to think about something in a way that may be different than you thought. So if you love this episode and you want to hear your question perhaps answered on a future episode of the podcast, do drop us a line so you can send us a voice note at Memo dot fm slash therapy for Black Girls. Again, that is mimo emo dot fm slash Therapy for Black Girls. We'll include that in the show notes as well. Leave us a message asking a question and you just might hear it answered here on the podcast. If you love this and you want to share this with your circle, don't forget to text this and send it to two of your girls right now so that they also can check it out. And if you're looking for a therapist in your area, if a part of your twenty twenty five plans include working with a therapist, then do check out our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. This episode was produced by Alice Ellis and Tyree Rush and editing was done by Dennis and Bradford. Thank y'all so much for joining me, and we will see you again next Wednesday for our next episode. Take good care,

Therapy for Black Girls

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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