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Caribbean Women on a Healing Journey: Breaking the Silence for Mental Wellness

Updated: May 10

How culturally informed therapy with Nada helps disrupt cycles of pain and build new legacies 🌎


There are many Caribbean women carrying unspoken childhood wounds. Often these emotional injuries are buried beneath expectations to “be strong”, “stay silent” or “don’t bring shame to the family”. From early on, many are taught to suppress pain and “move on”, often without the space or safety to unpack what really happened. However, silence is not healing, and unhealed trauma does not disappear; it weaves itself into your relationships, parenting, identity, and self-worth.



Caribbean Identity spans a wide range of cultural, racial, and national roots from countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia and Haiti, among others. A Caribbean woman’s lived experience is shaped by both cultural richness and the intergenerational impacts of colonialism, migration and survival.


🌴 Colonialism introduced Eurocentric beliefs about control, shame, and hierarchy into many Caribbean homes, which often resulted in harsh parenting practices. These legacies emphasized strict discipline and emotional suppression, shaping authoritarian approaches still present today (Stephens, 2023; Jamaican Mothers’ Perceptions, 2018).


🌊 Migration led many families to split apart, with children raised by grandparents or other relatives, sometimes without emotional closeness. This phenomenon, often referred to as "barrel children," reveals the emotional toll of family fragmentation due to transnational migration (Lashley, 2000).


🧱 Survival mode can be passed down through generations. It meant suppressing vulnerability to “stay strong” rather than confronting emotional wounds. This can lead to chronic hyper vigilance, emotional numbness, and difficulty with trust or vulnerability in adulthood (Van der Kolk, 2014).


💬 Do you identify as a Caribbean woman?


If so, you might have experienced issues such as…


  • Being beaten as a child:

    “Licks” were normalized as a form of discipline. Maybe you were hit for speaking up, crying, or questioning adults. This was often justified as "teaching respect" or "tough love."

  • Being told that children are to be seen, not heard:

    Many Caribbean girls were expected to suppress their emotions and stay silent, especially when adults were present. Expressing feelings could be labeled as "talking back" or "being rude."

  • Being silenced about traumatic experiences:

    Topics like abuse, neglect, or abandonment were often taboo. You may have been told to “keep it in the family” or “just forget it happened,” leaving you to carry pain alone.


These are not isolated experiences. They reflect systemic patterns shaped by history, culture, and survival, and many women are now beginning the brave work of breaking these cycles.


🌟What is Culturally Informed Therapy? 🌟


Culturally informed therapy is an approach to mental health care that recognizes and respects the cultural background, beliefs, values, and lived experiences of the client. It adapts traditional therapeutic methods to be more relevant and effective for people from diverse cultural, ethnic, and racial groups (APA, 2023).


Rather than applying a “one-size-fits-all” model, culturally informed therapy:


  • ✅ Acknowledges how culture, identity, and systemic oppression impact mental health.

  • ✅ Uses language, metaphors, and practices that resonate with the client’s worldview.

  • ✅ Avoids assumptions and instead emphasizes curiosity, collaboration, and humility.

  • ✅ Addresses how factors like colonial history, immigration, intergenerational trauma, and racism shape the client’s experiences and coping strategies.


For Caribbean women, this means therapy that not only explores personal and family struggles but also honours their cultural resilience and understands the unique pressures of silence, strength, and survival that often come with Caribbean heritage.


“Culturally informed therapy helps clients feel seen, not just treated.” 💙 

At Nada Johnson Consulting and Counseling Services (NJCCS), Nada understands how deeply cultural norms and intergenerational silence shape the mental health of Caribbean women. Whether it’s the lasting impact of harsh discipline, emotional neglect, or family secrets never spoken aloud, therapy with Nada offers a space to finally be heard and to heal


🍀 You are allowed to take up space, speak your truth and rewrite your narrative

with compassion and power. 🍀



✨ 5 Ways Therapy With Nada Supports Women, Like You, To Heal From Childhood Trauma:


✔ Culturally safe space - Therapy affirms your cultural identity while addressing how colonial legacies, gender roles, and silence impact your healing.


✔ Repairs emotional disconnection - When your feelings were dismissed or shamed, you may have learned to shut down. Therapy supports you in building emotional intimacy with yourself and others - starting with trust.


✔ Encourages self-compassion over self-criticism - Many Caribbean Women carry guilt for being “too sensitive” or “ungrateful.” Therapy helps you unlearn those narratives and replace them with compassion for how you’ve survived.


✔ Helps regulate your nervous system responses - Growing up in households where fear or unpredictability was common can leave your body stuck in ‘fight, flight, or freeze” mode. Therapy teaches grounding and regulation strategies that soothe and reset the body.


✔Reclaims your inner child - Inner child work lets you reconnect with the younger version of yourself who needed tenderness, protection, and safety. That part of you still deserves care and healing makes that possible.



How NJCCS Helps Caribbean Women Heal Childhood Trauma


At Nada Johnson Consulting and Counselling Services (NJCCS), trauma work is approached through a lens of compassion, cultural safety, and deep respect for every woman’s lived experience. Nada offers services specifically tailored to help her clients heal from unresolved childhood trauma, often rooted in silence, shame, and intergenerational pain.


If you are in need of support, please reach out. You do not have to travel this life alone. Support is available.




🌸Healing is not always light but rain grows flowers too🌸




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References


American Psychological Association. (2023). Culturally responsive therapy. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/04/feature-culturally-responsive-therapy


Cloitre, M., Cohen, L. R., & Koenen, K. C. (2011). Treating survivors of childhood abuse: Psychotherapy for the interrupted life. Guilford Press.


Jamaican Mothers' Perceptions of Children's Strategies for Resisting Parental Control. (2018). Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(10), 3125–3137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1125-5


Khenti, A., Mustafah, M., & Adams, M. (2016). Culturally Adapted Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CA-CBT) for African, Caribbean and Black populations in Canada. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). https://www.camh.ca/en/professionals/professionals--projects/ca-cbt-black-populations


Lashley, M. (2000). The unrecognized social stressors of migration and reunification in Caribbean families. Transcultural Psychiatry, 37(3), 345–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346150003700304


Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

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