Testimony in 2021

Hi, this is Dr. Jameca Cooper. Thanks for joining us. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to this channel right now. Okay, thanks for joining us on our 30 Days of Radical Healing. Every day this month, we're putting out videos about how you can be better, how you can really experience this radical healing. Radical healing is not just about dealing with symptoms and surviving from day to day. It's about getting better overall. It's about busting through the wall with healing that eradicates— in other words, gets rid of— all of these problems that have been ailing you all of these years psychologically. So it's about getting past it, moving on, and getting to a better you in the new year. Today I wanted to end this year, calendar year, with a bang and talk about one of the really big parts of radical healing. And in my book I Am My Sister's Keeper: The Brown Girl's Guide to Radical Healing on Amazon, there is a chapter on testimony. I think testimony can be one of your biggest tools regarding healing, and today you are going to learn why it's going to be your biggest tool. And I'm going to convey that to you using a story from my own life, which I rarely do because I consider myself to be a somewhat private person, but I think for this benefit it is definitely necessary. So Stay tuned to hear about how this is directly applicable to you in your own life and how I hope it can not just help you but help someone else as well. So testimony, the whole idea of testimony is telling your story. Who are you? What's happened to you? Why? And what has that done to you? We all have a story. We all have a past and we all have things that we've had, we've experienced that have made us who we are, whether good or bad. So what I find in therapy is that so many people, especially people of color, are reluctant to talk about what those things are. Now, it's various reasons why people don't want to talk about it. Sometimes they don't want to talk about it because they feel as though it's embarrassing to them or their family. They don't want to bring light to things that might have gone on in their families, and they want to conceal that because one of the traditions, and I think norms, in African American community specifically is to not talk about family business. So people for that reason don't talk about it, even when they get in the room with me as a therapist, who they're supposed to be open and share things with, they don't always find an easy time of talking about those things. So one could be embarrassment, family embarrassment, and, um, sometimes people feel as though they're being disloyal by talking about things that have gone on in their family. So that's a reason as well. Shame is sometimes involved. When people have experienced difficult things in their life and trauma, they feel bad about it. They feel as though they did something to bring this on, when lots of times— most times, actually— they have not done anything to bring it on. But that doesn't mean that they don't walk around with that shame. So lots of reasons why people don't tell their story, but it's important and it's crucial to your healing that you are able to own and tell your story. Um, lots of research has been done about the healing benefits of just being able to share your story. And if you think about stories and examples of people that you know that have started going to counseling or psychotherapy, they'll talk about how much better they feel just by sitting down with someone that's an unbiased party, a stranger, someone that doesn't know them from Adam, and someone who can listen to their story objectively, hear them out, and then they always talk about how relieved they feel. It's like a burden has been lifted off of their chest. I see that a lot. I hear it a lot. And of course, I get to take part in the journey as a therapist. So there is a lot of benefit in just telling someone about your story. The other thing about it is many times when we experience things in our life, we feel like, "Oh, woe is me. I don't know why this is happening to me. Why me? Why didn't this happen to someone else? I'm cursed. I've been blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and the list goes on and on and on. But what people don't do a lot and enough of is to sit down and look at your experience and your story to determine what is the value of this experience. What's the benefit? What's the value of it? Every situation has a value. You just have to look very, very hard, very, very deeply sometimes to find that value. The other thing I notice about telling your story and testimony is the language that we use. Working with a therapist can definitely help you change the language that you use. There are certain terms that people use as they're healing or still suffering with things such as the victim. I was the victim of, I am a victim of, or I am suffering with, I was suffering with. Those type of things and those words really kind of help us stay in that place of feeling like all of these things happen to me. Look at how all these things have occurred to me. I've suffered with this. So the language a lot of times plays a really big role in how we feel about ourselves and our story. So sometimes in therapy, just working with someone and changing, reframing, changing the language can really serve a huge benefit. So now to my story that I will talk to you about, and I want to first say I have to thank one of my friends, a radio personality in the St. Louis area, um, Tammy Holland, who shared her story about now being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer as a result of getting a colonoscopy and then finding out that, um, polyps have spread to other areas. And now she is currently undergoing treatment for that. So had she not shared her story on Facebook about what she is experiencing, I'm not sure that I would have taken the steps that I did that I'm talking about now. And those steps for were going to schedule and get a colonoscopy. So now we all know, or most of us know, that Chadwick Boseman died last year from colon cancer, and he was young. He was definitely not old enough to die from cancer. But as we all know now, he had been suffering with this for many, many months, if not years, and no one was aware of it. So what we now know about colon cancer as a result of his death is that it often strike some demographics of individuals in larger numbers. And what we also know now is that prior to, um, Chadwick dying and some other things that needed to happen in the medical world, you were not able to get a colonoscopy until you were 50 years old. So now in the past year, that has now changed. So if you are African-American, and I'm assuming other racial and ethnic minorities that have higher rates of colon cancer, you can now go get a colonoscopy starting at the age of 45. So, as a result of my friend sharing her story about being diagnosed with colon cancer, I went in to get my colonoscopy early, um, earlier than the age of 50. And although I had no symptoms or no family history, I just wanted to make sure everything was fine because I don't like surprises in my life. I don't like to find out things that are too late. That makes me worry. So I wanted to go find out. I had a colonoscopy, and the results of the colonoscopy were that they found a large polyp, and the polyp will now need to be surgically removed as opposed to being removed during a colonoscopy. Now, subsequently, I've also met with a different doctor who has to have this— has to perform the surgery in order to remove the polyp. And what I've been informed of is that had I not gone in early for my colonoscopy screening, that possibly and very, very likely this polyp would have turned into cancer by the time I hit 50 years old. So what that means for me is an opportunity to have surgery instead of cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment. So I am thankful for that. And I know I talk about this in all my other videos, but gratitude is a real thing. It's based on real life experiences. You have to really think about and practice gratitude. I'm very grateful, not just to Tammy for sharing her story, but I'm grateful that I followed my intuition to have this colonoscopy despite what my doctor was saying at the time, which is, oh, you're not having any symptoms, you don't need to have one. I followed my gut and I went and did it anyway, and I'm glad I did because it might have been the thing that saved my life. So when I talk about testimony, I'm even speaking about it in my own life, and it's important to share your story because your story not only helps you, but it can help someone else. I hope that by watching my video, someone somewhere will now go and make an appointment and schedule their colonoscopy if they're over the age of 45. Hell, if you're under the age of 45 but you have any related symptoms or family history, please go get your colonoscopy early because it pays. It pays, and it pays in a really big way, right? So That is my testimony. So now I want to ask you, I want to talk to you. What is your testimony? What is your story? What are you thankful about in 2021? What has 2021 taught you? And what are you going to do with what 2021 has taught you? You have another chance, just like I have another chance to reconstruct my story, and I'm so, so thankful for it. So what is your story?