VOX Studios members Mikayla and Tavin attended the Silence The Shame Festival, where they asked Morehouse students and mentors about their strategies for managing mental health amidst loneliness and stress in school, and the importance of these efforts in everyday life.
Transcript (Edited for Clarity)
Mikayla: This is VOX ATL, and we are here at Silence The Shame Festival, asking Morehouse students and mentors how they manage their mental health while balancing loneliness, stress in school, and why it matters in everyday life.
Erin Cooper: [I’m] Erin Cooper, and I’m 19.
Mikayla: My first question is, how do you protect your mental health?
Erin Cooper: In all honesty, I get overwhelmed quite a bit with my daily tasks with my major, and everything. So I try to take breaks in between studying.I also feel like resting and taking naps sometimes helps refresh my brain and playing video games is kind of like a quick relief.
Mikayla: Video games are fun. With you talking about balancing stress, how do you balance school and friendships?
Erin Cooper: So, I try to take one day out of the week where I don’t do any homework or studying. So I typically study all day, every day after my classes.
In between classes, I’m studying. So, I feel like I’m justified in taking one day off. I’ll spend that day with my friends, hanging out with my family, and just doing it as a mental refresh so that I don’t get overwhelmed throughout the week and burn out before the semester’s over.
Mikayla: I might have to steal that. I like the one day off. So, with moving on campus, did you deal with any loneliness? How did you cope with that if you did?
Erin Cooper: Honestly, I feel like the first semester of my freshman year, I was definitely very lonely. I had a hard time finding my groove and connecting with new people. But I feel like going out and joining different clubs and really pushing myself into that social scene really helped me to meet new people and feel a little less lonely. And I’ve met so many amazing friends through the process.
Mikayla: What do you think causes loneliness with young adults?
Erin Cooper: Many people are very judgmental and lack grace for others. So, you’ll meet someone and then immediately cut them off or judge small things about them without giving them a chance to get to know them. So staying open-minded and being open to meeting new people is definitely a great way to make new friends.
Nathaniel Giles: My name is Nathaniel Giles, and I am 20 years old. How do I protect my mental health? I would say journaling. I’ve been journaling since 2018, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began. And just tracking my thoughts, tracking my emotions, and recognizing the patterns and seeing when things and problems arise, and how I can circumvent that kind of change.
Mikayla: Do you live on campus?
Nathaniel Giles: As of right now, no. But I used to stay in Graves Hall.
Mikayla: Did you experience any loneliness with that?
Nathaniel Giles: I actually did during the parent parting ceremony. My mother or father was not here, so I had to move in by myself, and it was very hard. As part of the honors program in Graves Hall, I had to haul all my suitcases up to the fourth floor, and I was the first one to move in on my entire hall. So I just looked out one day, and I kind of shed a few tears.
I was like, ‘Wow.’ I see all the parents and their moms hugging their sons and brothers, and it was like, ‘You know what? This is just a reminder that this starts the legacy. This starts the story.’ So it was kind of lonely, but I had to get through it.
Mikayla: How did you cope with that?
Nathaniel Giles: I’m still coping, but I try to remind myself that. I’m here for a reason. Like, you know, God did not put me in Morehouse for no reason. So I have a story that will be told. My time is just beginning.
Mikayla: How do you balance stress and school, and also friendships and family relationships?
Nathaniel Giles: That is a good question. I would say honesty, regulation, going back to journaling, but understanding that everything is an energy exchange, and you have to be honest with your friends and family. Like, ‘I’m not emotionally available right now to handle what you’ve got going on.’ And vice versa, they can’t, sometimes they can’t be emotionally available for, to handle the things that you’ve got going on. So, you need to have that discipline and recognition to know when you need to be by yourself and when you need to be social.
Eli Reese: My name is Eli Reese. And I’m 18 years old. How I protect my mental health is simply by going to God first. I went through a point in my life where I was rehabilitated into a mental facility because that’s how bad my mental health got. I realized I was in this position because I hadn’t spoken up earlier. Now, I don’t hesitate to speak up. I love to write, so I just write my thoughts down. I just write stories down of multiple things.
Mikayla: What do you think causes loneliness within teens and young adults?
Eli Reese: Loneliness can come from a lot of things. From what I’ve learned, when I was in a facility, it can stem from being a child, not having a mom or not having a dad, or just having friends all around. But for young teens, especially for college freshmen, you’re in a new environment.
Like myself, my parents are 15 hours away, so I can’t just drive up and see him like that. It’s going to take half of the day. I can’t even really explain, but loneliness is something that’s hard to overcome.
One of the ways I overcame loneliness and realizing your surroundings, that you have brothers and sisters around you, especially here at Morehouse, it’s a brotherhood. And at Spelman, it’s a sisterhood. So you have people who really do care about you, even when you think that you don’t, you do have people who really care about you.
Kyle Hobson: My name is Kyle Hobson, and I’m 26 years old. I think the biggest protection of mental health is understanding that you need help. I think a lot of times, myself included, I’ve gone a lot of my life moving in survival, and sometimes survival does not allow you the space to where you can truly comprehend or understand what your mental health is or what state your mental health is in.
So, I think it’s important to take the time to sit and say, “Yo, I need help,” or “Yo, something’s going on right now.” That’s the biggest step in preserving and saving your mental health. You can’t save something unless you know it needs to be saved.
Mikayla: How do you balance stress with responsibilities like friendships and family?
Kyle Hobson: It’s a consistent balance. But I think communication is the biggest part. A lot of times, people go through things, and they don’t want to be a burden to another individual. They don’t want to put that on anybody.
A community is supposed to be something that you lean on. So, I’m doing a disservice to my community if I don’t communicate what’s going on with me. If I’m not having a good day, my community needs to know that, so they know, ‘Alright, I’m gonna leave them alone’ and they just need to know how to address that.
Jayden Grid: My name is Jayden Grid, and I’m 19 years old. One way I protect my mental health, honestly, is by staying active. For me, I like to play tennis or any type of sports, or something I can use to distract myself from what’s going on. I find that it’s easier for me to handle that way when I’m going through active movements and going back and forth from pacing my feelings.
Jalen: My name is Jalen, and I am 19 years old. Personally, if I’m ever having any issues with my mental health, the first thing I do is I reach out to friends and family, the people that I look up to the most. They usually know things that would get me back on top, to where I’m flowing properly through, like games and stuff, things like that.
Mikayla: How do you balance stress and loneliness with responsibilities like school and friendships?
Jalen: Well, I like to think that I don’t want anything else to get in the way of what’s more important for my future. I will keep all of my friends and family, and other close relationships. I also want to make sure that I’m doing the right things to align my career in school.
So I will make sure that I knock out school stuff first, even though it would be the most stressful. But like soon after, I would take a lot of breaks to make sure that I am staying happy. Things like that, checking on other people.
Jalen Wallace: My name is Jalen Wallace, and I’m 18. To protect my mental health. I normally just like meditating. Just try to get into my happy place and remember that everything’s going to be all right. Not everything’s gonna go your way all the time.
Mikayla: Have you dealt with any loneliness since moving on campus?
Jalen Wallace: Not really, because I did a program here during the summer, so I met a good group of people. And normally, when I’m just feeling lonely or bored, I just go over to their dorm to hang out or call him, something like that.
Mikayla: And how do you balance stress and loneliness with responsibilities like school and friendship?
Jalen Wallace: I normally put it in my calendar, so I put all my important stuff, like my work, my classes, stuff like that, that needs to get done first, and then if I have any free time, that’s where I put like my extracurriculars.
Kentrell Adams: My name is Kentrell Adams. And I’m 18 years old.
Mikayla: How do you protect your mental health?
Kentrell Adams: I think personally, it just depends on the people that you surround yourself with. Put yourself with good energy, it’s good energy that comes to you. So I think that’s like the biggest part. You know, you are who you hang around.
Mikayla: Did you experience any loneliness with living on campus?
Kentrell Adams: I mean, I personally feel like I’m a pretty social person. I do have times when I feel like I need to be by myself, but I wouldn’t say I’ve ever experienced loneliness. I do think, though, that sometimes you need to be in your own thoughts. You do need to be by yourself, ’cause I feel like yourself is your best critic. So yeah, loneliness can sometimes play a role. It could be negative and positive.
Mikayla: And how do you balance stress with responsibilities like school and friendships?
Kentrell Adams: How do I balance stress? God is definitely one of my biggest things that I look towards, and honestly, I say writing. Writing is definitely one way to balance stress. Personally, I talk to myself too, so you are your best critic.
So if you are able to get your thoughts out or just talking in general, instead of bottling everything inside, sometimes it’s better to let it out, ’cause they say, ‘never let your cup overflow. ‘Cause, if you got too much water, then that’s bad.’ So, it’s not good to let your cup over-fill.
So expressing yourself, being able to express your emotions and express how you feel, and good closed circles, is one way to keep that stress maintained.
Tavin: Silence the Shame College Fest was so much fun. It was filled with community and mental health tips. We would love to keep the conversation going on voxatl.org
