Meet Umi.

I’ve always known about anxiety. Thankfully, my mother was a counselor. There were things that I saw and things I probably learned via osmosis.

Anxiety hits me in a way where it’s just all in my brain. There’s no real physical symptoms of [my] anxiety. But my brain just goes into hyperdrive. It’s moving so fast or it’s moving in slow motion, and that brings on this feeling of uncertainty. You need to take a second to breathe or stretch, shake it off.

I definitely believe that there’s heavy stigmas about how and what type of therapy makes sense to us.

In the barbershops, let’s not argue sports for the whole three hours. Let’s spend a good 45 minutes talking about why Charlie and Ray can’t mend their relationship. We’re working on it, but we’re a long way.

That’s what we need: We’re going to do a circle, like AA, and be like, how you feel, man, what you going through, bro? Who was sad this week? Who was mad this week? And that’s what it is for people in the barbershop. There’s a comfort. We’re just like, yo, it’s just brothers in here. And I just want to talk with the brothers, I don’t care what we’re talking about. So that means that there is room to talk about emotions and mental illness and all that kind of stuff. That’s where we’re at.

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