I Am Too Strong for Therapy
Redefining strength: why the strongest people seek therapy
I Am Too Strong for Therapy
The phrase I hear most often in this field isn't a diagnosis. It's a defense.
LaShundra Vines, Founder & Licensed Professional Counselor, Awaken Mind Therapy & Healing In Color
It was 3 a.m. when the vision for Healing In Color woke me up.
Not a dream I could shake off and forget by morning. A vision—clear, specific, and insistent. A directory connecting BIPOC communities to mental health providers who truly understood their lived experiences. I lay there in the dark, wide awake, and I knew exactly what I was being shown.
I believe God will not give you a vision without provision.
That belief has been tested more than once.
I'm on my third website developer. I had to rebrand my private practice and essentially start over—with a new name, a new identity, and a new foundation—after already building something once. And I've done all of it while raising my son as a single mother, with no built-in partner to hand things off to when exhaustion hit.
There were nights when I wondered if the vision had been a mistake. If I'd misheard something at 3 a.m. that felt so clear in the dark and so uncertain by daylight.
But provision doesn't always look like ease.
Sometimes provision looks like the strength to start over a third time. Sometimes it looks like figuring out how to rebuild a brand while still showing up for my son, maintaining my therapy caseload, and believing in something no one else could see yet.
That belief is the only reason Healing In Color exists today. Because if I had waited until I felt fully equipped, fully funded, or fully ready, I'd still be waiting.
I tell that story because it's connected to something I hear constantly in this field—from clients, family members, and strangers who ask what I do for a living and then quickly assure me they don't need it:
"I am too strong for therapy."
It's usually said with pride. Sometimes with a laugh. Beneath both, it's almost always fear.
Because here's what I've learned after two decades in this field: strength was never the thing keeping people out of therapy. Fear was. Fear of being seen. Fear of what they might find if they finally stopped holding everything together. Fear that needing help means the strength was never real to begin with.
So the phrase becomes armor. "I'm too strong for therapy" is easier to say than, "I'm afraid of what I'll feel if I stop being strong for one hour."
I understand where it comes from.
For many of the communities I serve, strength wasn't optional. It was survival. Somewhere along the way, entire generations learned that falling apart wasn't safe—not at work, not at home, and not in front of the people counting on them. So they learned to carry it. They became good at carrying it. Eventually, the carrying began to look like identity instead of what it truly was: exhaustion wearing a strong face.
Let me say this as plainly as I can, drawing from every year I've spent in this work:
Strength was never the opposite of therapy. Strength is what makes therapy possible.
It takes strength to sit across from someone and say the thing you've never said out loud. It takes strength to examine a pattern you inherited and decide not to pass it on to the next generation. It takes strength to be honest about what's beneath the armor instead of performing that everything is fine.
What I've witnessed, over and over, both in my work and among the clinicians I mentor, is this:
- The strongest people are often the ones who have been carrying the most for the longest, with the least support.
- Strength without support has a ceiling. Eventually, something gives—a body, a relationship, a career, or a sense of self.
- Therapy doesn't diminish your strength. It gives your strength somewhere to rest.
This is exactly why representation in this field matters so much to me.
Many people who say, "I'm too strong for therapy," have never seen someone who looks like them, prays like them, or comes from where they come from sitting in the therapist's chair—let alone the client's chair. It's difficult to imagine healing as an option when you've never seen someone like you choose it.
That's part of why I built Healing In Color. Because strength and healing were never meant to be opposites. And no one should have to abandon their culture, their faith, or their sense of self to ask for help.
God didn't wake me up at 3 a.m. and hand me a fully formed practice, a directory, a team, or a plan. He handed me a vision. The provision—the third developer who finally got it right, the strength to rebrand and start over, and the stamina to do it all while raising my son alone—showed up as I moved, not before I started.
That's true for healing, too.
You don't have to have it all figured out before you begin. You don't have to be "healed enough" to walk into a therapist's office. The provision meets you in the movement, not before it.
So if you've ever said those words—"I am too strong for therapy"—I want you to hear this instead:
You are not too strong for therapy.
You are strong enough to finally put something down.
And that is not weakness.
That is the bravest thing your strength has ever done.
