Womanly Chats
Issue No. 5: Stressed Out!
Words - Attia Taylor & Alpana Choudhury
Illustration - Singha Hon

Alpana Choudhury is a practicing psychotherapist and an active member of the New York Mental Health Counselors Association. She has a background in applied psychology research, having presented at the Association for Psychological Sciences and managed projects funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.

Alpana founded Wove Therapy in 2018 as a response to the constant request for counseling that takes intersectionality and systems into account. Having worked with clients from many backgrounds and life experiences, Alpana recognizes the need to have an informed and open perspective in order to truly be present. We sat down with her to discuss stress, therapy, and coping.

Attia Taylor: What are some common misconceptions about stress that you find in your work? 

Alpana  Choudhury: Many people come in and describe chronic severe stress levels. It’s often expected that there's nothing you can really do about this stress. And that's just not true. Sometimes other factors are playing a role in [your] stress. Many people think that [higher] levels of stress are more normal than they actually are. 

AT: How can we measure whether our stress is actually normal? 

AC: Stress has almost been romanticized in our culture. It means you're working hard. Actually, what we're feeling is not something we have to deal with all the time. Obviously, I'm a big proponent of therapy, but there are lots of different ways that you can check that perspective.

Sometimes our stress comes out in physical ways. Symptoms like a heavy chest, our hair falling out, or our skin breaking out. All of these are things to pay attention to when we're stressed. 

AT: We asked our older community what their biggest concerns are related to health. Stress was huge. Do you think that age plays a role? 

AC: I think it's scary to admit when you need help, and that can change with age. Sometimes there's pressure that older people feel to have all the answers or to have it all figured out. For a lot of reasons, people don't come forward and acknowledge, even to themselves, that they need help. For example, a lot of [younger] people suffer from imposter syndrome and worry about how others perceive us, which I think a lot of people with marginalized identities suffer from, and that tends to fade away as we get older. However, when we get older we also have more responsibilities, family obligations, and financial obligations. 

AT: How does race come into play with how stress is managed or added to our lives? How can we navigate stress as marginalized people?

AC: If we're socially connected to our peers, we tend to feel as though our stress is more manageable. Maybe you've lived in the U.S. your whole life, but your parents immigrated from another country. There's an element of feeling like an outsider and that's stressful, right? That's not really something you can change. There are many things about our current system that people get caught in that make it very difficult to get out of in a cyclical sense.

If we do more work to destigmatize mental health, then people will be able to find resources in their communities to help them deal with stress, whether it's psychotherapy or emotional health care. I'm also talking about other forms of self care, such as having a great conversation with someone that you know who hears you and sees you. Practicing meditation, yoga, and eating healthy; all of these are ways that we can actually help people manage stress, regardless of economics. 

AT: How specifically can talk therapy benefit folks who have both struggled and gotten caught up in our system? How can we make talk therapy more accessible? 

AC: I think that everyone can benefit from therapy. You don't have to be in crisis; therapy can significantly improve anyone’s day to day experience. A good therapist is going to be interested in your struggles, and the way you experience them—they're going to be curious and they're going to be compassionate about the roles that culture and economics play in your life. They will also understand that you may not be able to change everything about your life, but there are ways to cope and manage stress. A strong, healthy relationship with a trained therapist can help you make sense of some of the difficult situations in your life so that stress doesn't hold you back.

AT: Therapy can be expensive! Which is counterproductive when you’re experiencing a marginalized existence.  Are there ways that people can find therapy if they have little to no income? 

AC: Depending on where you live, there are a number of clinics, community based organizations, mental health hotlines, and mental health movements out there. A lot of younger folks have been doing work in destigmatizing the role of mental health. At Wove, we provide resources and you'd be surprised at how many private practitioners will set aside a certain number of slots in their practice to work with free or low cost clients. 

AT: I applaud your work in helping people of all backgrounds and income levels receive access and resources. Therapy changed my life and I personally think it's extremely beneficial. 

AC: It takes a lot of courage to say, “I don't have my shit together,” or “I could do better.” Culture can play a big role in that, the degree to which someone is even comfortable acknowledging that to another human being. There's nothing more powerful than being able to say “I want you to see me for all of my parts.”  

AT: How can we help people understand the difference between output and input in terms of relieving daily stress?

AC:  People do a lot of things in the name of self care that are probably what I would call distractions, rather than actual ways of dealing with or processing their stress. Watching TV can be a way for someone to metabolize stress, but they're not actually shutting down. Instead, they're ramping up, or focusing on someone else's drama instead of their own. 

A lot of people come home from work and mindlessly start noshing on easy food that's not necessarily what their body needs, because it's not related to physiological hunger; it’s more of an emotional hunger. Sometimes just simply pointing that out to someone gives them a choice that they may not have realized they had. 

AT: What do you like to do to relieve stress or take a load off? 

AC: I use exercise a lot. I'm feeling stressed out, I tend to feel lethargic; I might try to convince myself that I just want to shut down. And counterintuitively, often when I push myself to get in a workout, get my heart rate up, or do some strength training, I feel more powerful. That spills over into my emotional world; I have more agency, and I feel powerful as a person. 

When I'm stressed out, like most people, I will sometimes see food as a possible antidote to how I'm feeling. I think we really need to get away from assigning moral status to foods. Sometimes I will do something or eat something and I'll feel shame or guilt about it and not realize that you can get trapped in a cycle.

AT: What are your favorite foods to eat when you're stressed out? 

AC: I notice that I tend to gravitate toward foods from my childhood. I come from a family of immigrants and so there are foods that I grew up with that weren't always available to me in the greater society. Those foods tend to make me feel like I'm being hugged.