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169. This Isn't My Norm: Reconsidering Mental Health with Therapist Amenah Arman

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Norms, Beliefs, and Showing Up

Reconsidering your normal is essential to clarifying and living your values.

The norms we live with create the belief systems that underpin how we show up in life and in our work. When those norms come from outside of us, they pull us out of alignment with our values.

But reconsidering your normal isn’t a one and done process. It is an ongoing process that holds space for where you’ve been and what’s possible in the future.

Amenah Arman joins Erica to discuss how reconsidering her normal has impacted how she shows up in her business, in her values, and in her mission.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

  • How getting clear on your values helps you evaluate belief systems and come into alignment with your mission

  • Why reconsidering your normal is an ongoing process that will evolve over time

  • Why we have to normalize suspending judgment and not oversimplifying the lived experiences of BIPOC individuals

  • Why some systems need an overhaul not an update

  • Using anger and frustration as a generative force

Supporting Creative Self-Acceptance

Amenah Arman (she/her) is a holistic therapist, community organizer, advocate, and artist. As a nationally certified counselor, she supports creatives, marginalized communities, and those who feel like outsiders in their own life. Taking a nontraditional approach to therapy, she helps her clients cultivate self-acceptance and identify what they need to thrive.

Amenah specializes in narrative exposure therapy and has been sought out for her approach to addressing anxiety in adolescent women of color. She received her MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Georgia State University.

No Such Thing As One and Done

On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Amenah Arman (she/her) starts by saying that when she wears her Reconsider Your Normal T-shirt, people turn their heads.

For her, reconsidering your normal “means taking a step back…really kind of taking a magnifying glass to all of my actions and behaviors and decisions and my interactions and all that, and kind of poking and prodding and questioning it.”

And this process of evaluation is ongoing.

Erica adds that the process of it is often where people get stuck, because it’s not “I did it and I’m done. There’s no such thing.”

Amenah says it’s also important to reconsider your normal because “your norm becomes a part of your belief system. And we hold on to what we believe, even if it’s not benefitting us.”

Without checking in with yourself, you can end up straying from your values.

Erica says, “If you can go back to your values, that should be able to help you sift through a little bit better.”

And, she adds, “our understanding and our processing of those values does shift and it evolves and it grows.”

Reconsidering Whose Norm It Is

Amenah says that the way her values show up in her business has definitely evolved with time and consideration.

One major way that has shifted is in differentiating her mission from her values.

She says her mission is systemic–to change the way therapy is delivered to the BIPOC community–but she “was so focused on that change that I wanted to make in my field of mental health that I was missing…exploring the human that wanted to bring about this change.”

She continues, “If you don’t have your values, if you don’t know what they are, that’s an extreme burden to carry because there are days when your mission is gonna mean shit to you, where you’re not gonna show up for it.”

In her business, that meant distancing herself as the person from the work that she was doing.

“I had people around me and clients telling me straight up, we want more of you.”

Erica says she’s had similar experiences in her businesses and that “I often think that when you’re in a service-based type of offering, I do think that you compartmentalize yourself so much because you are over-prioritizing the people that you are supporting, and so therefor you don’t matter.”

Amenah adds that when she didn’t show up in her work, “you don't recognize that you’re replicating the system you’re trying to fight.”

She says “by not showing up as a woman of color in my own business, what is the belief there?”

She struggled with a belief system that left her feeling like an imposter and that “you’re brown, your voice doesn’t matter. Your mission is too big for you. Take a seat, just chill over there. Do your little quotes, don’t show your face.”

She had to “reconsider [that] this isn’t my norm. This should never be my norm because this is keeping me small and keeping me silent. This is the norm that the system has placed on me, but it doesn’t belong to me.”

Alignment and Dissonance

Amenah says that getting clear on her values and disrupting the belief system that she was operating under, “allowed me to align myself with my overall mission,” but she had to do that internal work, which is still an unfolding process.

Erica says that “the more of that that we are able to integrate and be able to actually embody, it shifts us. It shifts who we want to work with, who we want to serve. It changes the way that we’re able to serve them, because I think we limit our capacity when we don’t get ourselves right.”

Amenah agrees and says that while it’s possible to serve from a fragmented space, “it feels off, it doesn’t feel like this person behind the brand, behind the mission is actually being congruent.”

Being in alignment, “transforms you, the person, but it transforms everyone that comes into contact with you because they’re meeting a whole person.”

Erica says she refers to that fragmented self as “the representative” that you send because you don’t know if people want the real you.

“And so you send what they want, what you know is gonna get you the type of response that you are really seeking, but then you hit this point where the representative is like ‘Yo, you didn’t pay me. So I’m done.’”

And the dissonance that creates leaves people feeling confused about who you are and what you’re about.

Normalize Suspending Judgment

At the same time, Erica says, “because of the world that we live in, we’re constantly having so many pieces of ourselves affected in different ways,” and outsiders will want to cherry pick pieces to understand or judge you.

She says that especially, “being women of color in the world that we live in, there’s a lot that we are having to process on a minute to minute basis.”

And because that processing takes time and energy, she says, “I suggest that you don’t judge me because, guess what? I’m trying to do the best that I can…[And] honestly that’s where your values come up of…if I really open this, I’m gonna open it. And if I don’t have the space to open it, I don’t wanna do it injustice. So there’s stuff that I can’t open right now because then I won’t function.”

Amenah agrees and says, “it’s almost like we have to normalize suspending judgment with folks that aren’t engaged in the same reality. We’re all engaged in the system, yes, but we’re partaking in two separate realities. So literally speaking, you won’t fathom my lived experience. You won’t be able to fully comprehend and understand it for what it is, and so you can’t judge me because you don’t get it.”

She continues, “And that’s okay. You can still be an ally, you can still have empathy…But to think that my lived experience can be packaged in a workshop or in a multicultural course or a training? No.”

Erica adds that, “there is a point to where from a space of Imperfect Allyship®, from a space of reconsidering your normal, there is absolutely room to march with, to partner with, to listen to, to support. But you also don’t want to so easily digest somebody’s experience…into a couple of conversations and ‘I got it.’”

Reimagining Systems

Amenah says that this oversimplification of others’ experiences happens in the therapy space all the time. 

“I call it the prepackaged microwaveable therapy…Everyone gets a bite size of what their therapist thinks they need to hear, or the techniques, or the diagnosis, and there you go, off you go to your own world and reality…But it doesn’t work that way.”

She says that many therapists are following and using techniques that are outdated, that were developed 60 or more years ago, often by straight, white men who were thriving in the oppressive systems of white supremacy and patriarchy.

“My lived experience as a woman of color with multiple marginalized identities will not be accounted for when a therapist is using a technique that was made 60 plus years ago by a white male…That space is not for me. It’s not safe.”

She continues, “For real healing to occur, you have to take more of an individualized approach. You have to be open to learning, being curious about another human being, instead of trying to sum them up through the lens of this outdated theory that you’re using.”

Erica adds, “when you’re constantly trying to do something new with all the old things, like there are some old things that can’t become new. They just need to be recycled and regenerated into something else based on you having new knowledge.”

Amenah agrees and says, “change is uncomfortable because it challenges us to look deep within and figure out what belief systems are working and what aren’t. And that shit is not comfortable….Like DEI, where did that come from? That came from a state of anger, of discomfort, of knowing shit’s gotta change.”

Use Your Anger

Amenah says to think about “whatever it is that causes you to have an emotional or a visceral reaction and you can sense or feel like there’s something off or has to be changed or something isn’t right. Know for certain, that feeling is not coincidental.”

She says we can create from a place of anger. “Utilize that anger, or that sense of something’s gotta give…We can create from that angry space of something gotta give, something gotta change, this shit isn’t working anymore…Go for it. Do something.”

Ready to Dive Deeper?

If you’re ready to reconsider your normal and what you know about values, join Pause on the Play, The Community for Implicit to Explicit: Reconsidering What You Know About Values.

Erica and India will discuss why you have to establish shared meanings and definitions, how behavior modeling showcases your values through your actions, how common business practices like ideal client profiles contribute to dehumanizing who you want to attract to your business, and more.

Community membership gets you access to this workshop and our full library of past workshops and Q&As, along with community discussion and support.

Learn more  pauseontheplay.com/community

Connect with Amenah Arman

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