Do they recognise how your experiences of racism may intersect with other parts of your identity? For example your gender, religion or sexuality. Forced to suppress how you feel. You may find that you can't show or even fully feel your natural responses to your experiences. To avoid more abuse, and keep yourself safe, you may feel like you must not react to racism. This can leave you feeling numb, or mean that the experience stays with you for a long time.

This can all lead us to hold contradictory views about our heritage and skin shade. We may feel both 'too much' and 'not enough' at the same time.

Do you feel able to be honest about your experiences of racism with them? For example, do they help you feel at ease? Or it can be covert or harder to recognise, involving subtle comments that put a child or young person down and devalue their experience or identity.

This may make it harder to develop a good relationship with them. In some cases you may end up feeling more upset, stressed or isolated. Expectations and pressure around who we should turn to for support, like elders and spiritual leaders Unwelcome, lonely or isolated. Especially if people or organisations have said or implied that you don't belong. Not having enough money can have a negative effect on your health. This also contributes to people with first-hand experience of racism being under-represented in management jobs. Which makes it less likely that services will meet people's needs.

Questions

Unfortunately, not all therapists are confident talking about racism during therapy. This can happen even if they have had some cultural competence training. Anti-racism is taking action to challenge racism and promote equality. It is more than not being racist – it is about working against racism. Contribute to the pressure we feel to change or downplay parts of ourselves. This can include our hair, clothing, accent or even our skin. When society compels people in a minority to act like people in the majority, it's called assimilation. It can feel like we must 'fit in', to protect ourselves from racism.

Stressed. All kinds of racism can contribute to stress. This might be events such as sudden, unexpected abuse from another person. But it can also be a more long-term impact of encountering regular microaggressions. Or from the ongoing effects of systemic racism on your life. This can partly help explain links between racism and physical health problems, like increased blood pressure. But often racist comments or actions are more subtle, and may not be intended to cause harm. This is often called covert racism or microaggressions. Make us feel cut off from parts of our identity and culture. This can leave us feeling unsure about who we are. Racism and racial abuse or bullying can be really distressing for children and young people. When a child is bullied or treated differently because of their race, it can lead to feelings of isolation, depression, anger or even shame about their race or how they look.Feeling very anxious, on edge and unable to relax (called hypervigilance or hyperarousal). For example, you might always be looking out for threats or danger. Internalised racism is when we hold negative views about ourselves because of our race. Internalised colourism is when these views relate to our skin shade. Stop seeing them, or ask to be referred to another therapist. This might feel like the right option if they're often making you feel unheard, or unsafe.