What if some of the things we believe about ourselves were never ours to begin with? Think about the last time you left a conversation and replayed everything you said. Were you too much? Not enough? Did you explain yourself properly? We all second-guess ourselves sometimes, but what happens when that feeling becomes familiar? When you find yourself working harder to prove your worth, questioning whether you’re being treated differently, or wondering if you need to change something about yourself to fit in?
For some Black people, these aren’t just passing moments of self-doubt. They can be part of navigating a world where race influences how you’re seen, heard and understood. When these experiences happen repeatedly, they can affect how safe you feel, how much you trust others and how comfortable you are being yourself. So how do we begin to separate what we believe about ourselves from what the world has taught us to believe?
When the world gets under your skin
We develop our sense of self through our relationships, our experiences and the world around us. We pick up messages about what makes us valuable, what makes us likeable and where we fit in. Imagine repeatedly being the only Black person in a room, feeling you have to prove yourself, or finding that your experience of racism is questioned when you try to talk about it. You might start anticipating being misunderstood, monitoring how you come across or feeling exhausted by the effort of making sure you’re taken seriously.
In the 1940s, psychologists Dr Mamie Phipps Clark and Dr Kenneth Clark explored how racial prejudice and segregation affected Black children’s understanding of race and identity. In their well-known doll studies, children were shown dolls with different skin colours and asked about their preferences and perceptions. Their findings became important evidence in legal challenges to racial segregation in American schools. They raised a question that still matters today: what happens when the world repeatedly tells us that some identities are more valued than others?
The issue wasn’t that Black children didn’t understand themselves. They were growing up in a society that attached different values to different racial identities. The psychiatrist and political thinker Frantz Fanon explored similar questions in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), examining how racism and colonialism could shape the way Black people experienced themselves in a world that viewed them through a racialised lens. His work invites us to look beyond the individual and consider what might be happening around them, too. Sometimes, the pressure to prove yourself has a history.
What happens when you don’t feel like you belong?
Belonging is something we all need. We want to feel accepted, understood and able to show up as ourselves. But belonging can become complicated when acceptance feels conditional. Perhaps you’ve learnt to make yourself smaller so others feel comfortable, or become the person who never makes mistakes, never causes a fuss and always has an explanation ready. Maybe you’ve questioned whether an uncomfortable interaction was really about race, only to dismiss your feelings because you don’t want to make things awkward.
Experiences like these can take up a lot of emotional space. You might replay conversations, anticipate other people’s reactions or find it difficult to relax around others. These questions aren’t about assuming every uncomfortable interaction is shaped by racism. They’re about allowing ourselves to consider the wider context of our experiences, rather than automatically turning everything into something we need to fix about ourselves.
In Britain, our histories of empire, colonialism and migration continue to shape conversations about race, power and belonging. These histories influence the institutions we move through, the assumptions we encounter and the experiences we bring into our relationships. Understanding this context can help us make sense of feelings that might otherwise be difficult to name.
What does this mean for therapy?
We bring our whole selves into therapy: our relationships, our histories, our worries and the things we’re still trying to understand. So what happens when you enter a space that’s meant to help you make sense of yourself, but an important part of your experience goes unrecognised? You might talk about feeling exhausted from constantly proving yourself at work, only for the conversation to focus on perfectionism. Or describe an experience of racism and find yourself explaining why it hurt, rather than exploring what it felt like to you.
Therapy can help us understand our responses and find different ways of navigating difficult experiences. But if we focus only on how someone responds, we can miss the circumstances that contributed to their distress. British psychotherapist and author Dr Dwight Turner explores race, privilege and otherness in counselling and psychotherapy, encouraging practitioners to consider how their own assumptions and experiences can influence the therapeutic relationship.
Good intentions aren’t always enough. Therapists need to remain curious about the worlds their clients inhabit, recognise the limits of their own perspectives and make room for experiences different from their own. This doesn’t mean that only a Black therapist can understand a Black client, or that sharing an identity automatically creates trust. It means recognising that people’s experiences of the world differ, and that those differences deserve space in the conversation.
What if you could tell yourself a different story?
One of the things therapy can offer us is the opportunity to become curious about the stories we tell ourselves. Maybe you’ve learnt that you have to be exceptional to be taken seriously, that it’s safer not to speak up, or that you need to prove your worth before you can feel accepted. These beliefs might make sense in the context of what you’ve experienced, but they don’t have to define how you see yourself forever.
Fanon’s work helps us understand how wider systems of power can influence our inner lives, while Turner’s work brings questions of race, privilege and difference into contemporary psychotherapy. Together, their work encourages us to look beyond individual experiences and consider the systems that shape them. For individuals, that might mean recognising that the way we’ve been treated isn’t a measure of our worth. For therapists and organisations, it means asking whether the spaces they create genuinely allow people to feel respected, supported and able to belong.
Personal healing and wider change aren’t always separate things. We can work on our confidence and self-worth while questioning the environments that make those things harder to sustain. And it’s important to remember that Black identity isn’t defined by experiences of racism. There’s also joy, creativity, connection, community and the freedom to be yourself.
What if the starting point is simply to become a little more curious about the beliefs we carry. Where did that belief about yourself come from? Has it always felt true, or have your experiences taught you to see yourself that way? What might change if you gave yourself permission to question it?
Beyond Black History Month
Black History Month gives us an opportunity to recognise the Black thinkers and practitioners whose work has helped us understand the relationship between identity, society and mental health. But these conversations shouldn’t be limited to one month of the year.
Understanding ourselves requires more than looking inward. Sometimes, we need to look at the world that has shaped us, too. Not to define ourselves by what we’ve experienced, but to understand ourselves more fully, recognise which beliefs we’ve inherited and decide which ones we’re ready to question.
Because the stories we inherit don’t have to be the stories we keep telling ourselves.
Continued reading
- Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin, White Masks. Explores how racism and colonialism can shape identity, self-perception and psychological experience.
- Turner, D. (2021). Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Explores privilege, intersectionality and experiences of difference in therapeutic relationships.
- Turner, D. (2026). A Phenomenology of Racism in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Examines the relational and psychological effects of racism, including how racialisation can shape identity and inner experience.
