A Mental Health Moment
By Bernadette Joy Graham, MA, LPCC
The Truth Contributor
When we talk about consciousness, we’re talking about what you’re aware of right now — your thoughts, your choices, your reactions, your emotions in the present moment. It’s the part of you that decides, “I’m going to pray,” or “I need to calm down,” or “That comment hurt my feelings.”
But the subconscious is deeper. It’s where our experiences, memories, trauma, beliefs and learned behaviors live — even the ones we don’t actively think about. It’s shaped by childhood experiences, generational patterns, cultural messages, church teachings, racial experiences and even unspoken family rules like, “Stay strong,” or “Don’t tell our business.”
In mental health therapy, we help bring subconscious material into conscious awareness. For example:
- A person may consciously say, “I don’t know why I keep sabotaging relationships.”
- But subconsciously, they may have learned early on that love equals abandonment.
- Or they may carry generational trauma from racism, poverty or family instability.
Therapy gently helps uncover those hidden patterns so the person can choose differently instead of just reacting automatically.
- Therapy provides tools, language, and emotional safety.
- Therapy helps you understand the “why.”
When we heal consciously and subconsciously, we stop repeating generational cycles. We learn to respond instead of react.
As a Black mental health therapist, I want to speak directly to us. In our community, we’ve learned how to survive. We’ve learned how to push through. We’ve learned how to “be strong.” But rarely were we taught how to understand our own minds. Healing begins with understanding the difference between our conscious and subconscious selves.
Your conscious mind is what you’re aware of right now. It’s your thoughts, decisions, reactions, and the stories you tell yourself:
- “I’m just tired.”
- “That didn’t bother me.”
- “I’ll deal with it later.”
It’s logical. It analyzes. It tries to make sense of things. But it’s only part of the picture.
Your subconscious holds the experiences you don’t actively think about—but that still shape you.
It stores:
- Childhood messages about worth and safety
- Generational trauma
- Survival strategies
- Pain you didn’t have space to process
- Beliefs about love, success, and identity
For many Black people, the subconscious carries not only personal experiences, but collective ones—racial trauma, code-switching fatigue, unspoken grief, and the pressure to overperform just to be seen as “enough.” You may consciously say, “I know I’m worthy,” but subconsciously feel anxious in rooms where you’re the only one.
You may consciously want healthy love, but subconsciously fear vulnerability. That’s not weakness. That’s conditioning.
Therapy helps bridge the gap between the conscious and subconscious.
In therapy, we:
- Slow down enough to notice patterns
- Identify emotional triggers
- Explore where beliefs came from
- Connect present behaviors to past experiences
- Learn new ways of responding
Insight is powerful. When you understand why you react a certain way, you gain choice.
And choice is freedom. Therapy is not about “fixing” you. You are not broken.
It’s about increasing awareness so you can live intentionally instead of automatically.
Many of us were taught to normalize stress, silence pain, and spiritualize suffering without processing it. Therapy does not replace faith, community, or cultural strength—it complements them. It gives language to what we’ve carried quietly.
When the subconscious becomes conscious, healing accelerates.
You start to notice:
- “This anxiety isn’t random—it’s connected to past instability.”
- “This anger isn’t who I am—it’s unprocessed hurt.”
- “This fear of rest comes from survival mode.”
That awareness allows you to respond differently. Healing is not about erasing your story.
It’s about understanding it deeply enough to rewrite the parts that no longer serve you.
As a Black therapist, I believe our healing is both personal and collective. When one of us chooses self-examination over silence, growth over shame, and therapy over stigma, we shift generations.
Your mind is not your enemy.
Your subconscious is not a flaw.
They are parts of you waiting to be understood.
And therapy is one of the tools that helps you listen.
Take a conscious mental health moment and consider things in your life that are challenging, seem out of your control and seem to have no solution; take a deeper look inward and realize there are things running over and over in your subconscious, which by the way is very tricky but with therapy you can begin to find solutions to things that seem out of your control and free your previous and unchanged patterns, behaviors and coping mechanisms that have not worked and will not work on your journey in life. Consciously make a decision to consider seeking therapy to allow your life journey other paths that offer not just happiness but joy. You can get and keep your mind right.
Bernadette Joy Graham is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Therapist. Email: graham.bernadette@gmail.com
For Appointments: Maumee location – 419-866-8232 – Toledo location – 419-578-2525
If you feel you may be in a mental health crisis, please call 988 or go to the nearest emergency room.