Therapy Notes Ep.1| Death Without A Burial

“Death without a burial” is the kind of grief that doesn’t get a funeral, but it still wrecks you. We’re talking about the loss that comes with divorce, the silent pain of losing an entire support system, and the pressure to keep looking “strong” while your inner world is falling apart. I share the real reason I started therapy, why I stayed in it for years, and what I wish I’d done before my life hit rock bottom.

We also get into burnout and mental health for men, especially Black men navigating stigma, isolation, and the extra stress that comes with being the only one in certain rooms. I break down what my therapist means by “you cannot pour from an empty cup,” why 16-hour workdays and nonstop grind culture can push you into dangerous territory, and how using PTO and setting boundaries can be an act of survival. Therapy isn’t just crisis care for me, it’s preventative maintenance.

Then we draw a clear line between spiritual guidance and professional clinical care. I’m a person of faith, but I’m not interested in pretending you can pray away clinical trauma, acute depression, or suicidal thoughts. I talk about building a true care team, and I share the healing ecosystem that helps me stay grounded: prayer, scripture, meditation, journaling, and music alongside licensed therapy and primary care.

If this hits close to home, press play, share it with someone who’s carrying too much, and then subscribe, leave a review, and tell me this: are you pouring from an empty cup, and what’s one thing you can unplug from today?

Transcript

Therapy Notes Intro Song

SPEAKER_00 0:22

These are my therapinos Therapinos Dreamy mine, but it's heavy in my chest. Writing down the weight of every quiet kind of stress. Soft voice, but I'm screaming in between the lines. Tryna heal the parts of me I always hide behind. Who checks on the strong? When the lights all fade, when they hold every stone, but they still feel afraid. I've been holding up the world till my hands turn cold, still feeling kinda hidden in a life so bold. These are my therapy notes, my therapy journey. Erasing all the stigma that was laid on me. I know what it's like just to pray, just to cope, feeling so invisible. But I know that I'm dope from my mouth to ease every word I wrote. Here are my truest thoughts, here are my therapy notes. Hear my therapy.

Why Therapy Tuesdays Exists

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Man, I figured I drop some more knowledge on y'all. And as you know, if you've been following me on the Heavy on the RB podcast and Wellness Wednesdays and K Way's gripes, um, one of the things that I get most, one of the comments that I get most is man, I really appreciate your therapy content. You should do more of it. So here I am giving the people what they want and um you know, trying to be a good man, I guess. It's a good man, Savannah. Thank you. Thank you. Good man. Thank you so much. I think I am a good man. Perfect. Um, so today I I want to just to continue that. I think a couple weeks ago I started to talk about like what got me into therapy. And that was um, I think that was a wellness Wednesday episode, but you know, go it's on YouTube. Go back and check. Um, so you know, this is this is uh audio only for now. This is just my voice, so y'all can, you know, work in the background, do whatever you gotta do. But yeah, I wanted to pick back up on that, and I just wanted to talk more about my my journey with therapy, and I'll I'm trying to do this every Tuesday, uh, hence the name Therapy Tuesday.

Defining Death Without A Burial

SPEAKER_01 3:42

So, yeah, man, today I wanted to talk about um death without a burial, and this is why I started therapy. So, those those of you that don't know, I divorced my ex in 20 uh 2021. So we're coming up on five years uh since I got that decree, that final degree in the mail, and that's what got me into it. Go back and check out um you know that well in this Wednesday episode where I talked about just you know, it was just something to do at first. You know, I was I wanted to, you know, kind of be seen, I guess. I was going for all the wrong reasons, and turns out it was the best this best decision of my life because I've been going to therapy consistently for um damn almost six years now. So yeah, bi-weekly, every Monday, every other Monday, I'm sorry, I go. Um, Miss Manly, shout out. I found her through Grow Therapy. So yeah, check out that episode and I give give you uh a little guidelines and and things of like how I found my therapist, good sites to use. I use growth therapy, that's how I found mine. Also went through like four therapists, so you know it was it was a lot of a lot of learning, a lot of trial and error. Go check that out if you get a chance. You might find it um informative. Also, that was me on the intro, man. Uh, a lot of y'all know that I have a lot of outlets that I use for therapy, and I'm gonna talk about that. RB is one of them. That's my podcast, Heavy on the RB with K, where I talk about the rhythms and the blues of my life, general life, your life, and you know, it's just a good time to fellowship. But I do a little singing, man. I can hold a low tune. I really can't, you know, go too higher than that. Um, but I do create RB songs. I write, I got a crazy thick poetry book, pause. Um, I got a lot of a lot of notes in my OneNote, a lot of journaling, man. Because I spent a lot of time in isolation just growing up, and you know, we'll we'll get into all of that though. The story of K way is more than just you know, a funny nigga in the comments that's witty and things like that. It's a different side of me. So, from my mouth to your ears, like I said in the song, I appreciate y'all. So, let's get into it, man. I want to talk about death without a burial, why I started and why I stay therapy. First thing I want to talk about is um the hook, you know, in the real human behind the screen. So just to just to uh shift the the perspective, um, you know, just a little bit. Um so like I said, I started going um in 2021, uh consistently. So um at first, like I said, it was just something that I thought I needed to do. Uh, but it turns out it was the best decision of my life, and for me, it's helped me be a lot more transparent. So present day here on Tuesday, um, July, what is this? July 28th. Just had a birthday three weeks ago on the 8th. So shout out to the Lord for um blessing me to see another year around the sun, and I didn't get burnt too much, so thank you for

Pouring From An Empty Cup

SPEAKER_01 6:56

that. But man, honestly, if I'm like being all the way transparent, like I said I was gonna do, that's why you know I created the song, I use my raw vocals, um, touched them up a little bit with a little bit of reverb, but that's me. Uh, I gotta be honest with the people, man. I've been pouring from an empty cut, uh empty cup lately. Man, I've been exhausted. Like, so um, daytime I'm an engineer. Everybody knows I graduated from UCLA last year with my master's um in uh computer science, specializing in cybersecurity. Uh, that's what I do. And man, it's it's hard working for a company where you like kind of you know worried about rifts, you always looking over your shoulder. You you're the only person of color in the entire company um on this side of the country. So, man, I've been putting in a lot of like just 16-hour days, man. Like, and then working from home in isolation where uh my fiance is gone most of the day, and I you know, none of my friends live here in Dago, so I don't really like have a lot of interaction, but man, just being on that road a lot, you know, out problem solving, presentations, conferences, a lot of cybersecurity-ish, a lot of breaches, you know, going on. Kind of working myself into a ground, you know. When you when you when you work in 16-hour days, like for 30, 40 days straight, man, it'll it'll wear on you. So um about two weeks ago in my latest in my therapy session, like my my therapist, Miss Manly, Mrs. Manley, she I guess she saw a change in like low energy and everything. And um, man, she was like, you know, you cannot pour it from an empty cup. So I decided to take some time off for work because that's what you got it for, right? I don't think God put us on this earth just to go to work, pay bills, and wake up and do it all over again. Um, you we we as humans, we are meant to live, um, not to exist. And um, I think going into this wedding that's 12 weeks away, I needed to reset, refocus, and get back to living because I was I was just existing, you know, just working and trying to meet metrics and KPIs and things like that. Man, y'all know how it goes, especially when you a person of color, you the only person of color, you know. Y'all know how that can go. So I recognize I wasn't myself, you know, falling falling asleep doing the little things, driving behind the wheel. It had a very um scary incident, and um yeah, man. I I'm I want to live, I want to live for myself, I want to live for my family. Uh the the wedding is coming up, live for my fiance, my dog, the kids, you know, like hopefully they have kids soon. Um, so yeah, so here I am, you know, introducing therapy Tuesdays, and I want to frame this series as bringing um actionable notes and real life realizations straight from my bi weekly therapy couch um to the audience, to you guys' ears. So here we go. Um, rock bottom and death without a burial. This is how I stayed, why I went to therapy and I stayed in therapy.

Stacked Loss And Divorce Grief

SPEAKER_01 10:06

I had a like just a cumulative loss. Um so, along with the divorce, my mother died uh 10 days before I got married. My mother died October 23rd, 2018. I got married November 3rd, 2018. I funeralized my mother, eulogized her on November 7th. So you can understand like the range of emotions that I was going through. Um and six months before my mother passed, my grandfather passed, and about eight, six, eight months after my mother passed, my grandmother passed, then they found my aunt um in the alley overdose. I lost two uncles the following year. So it was just like a lot of loss, man. A lot of loss, a lot of loss. Um, and then you you tacked that on with the with the ensuing divorce about a year, shit, not even well, yeah, about 14, 16 months later, it was another loss. And essentially, when I first started going to therapy, my therapist told me, you know, you gotta be okay with saying that you divorced. And it was embarrassing at first because the first thing that people would ask, well, what'd you do? And it's like, I didn't do shit. In this instance, this ain't a Tyler Perry movie, you know what I'm saying? Um, I'm not like there was no infidelity, there was no heat uh hitting. Um, it was just a person that wanted to play team ball, and the other person didn't want to play team ball without essentially throwing her under the bus. Um, yeah, it wasn't it wasn't nothing malicious. And I decided to to leave. So, you know, I was the one to introduce the paperwork and everything. And I did try to save my marriage at the end because I was like, damn, I'm in a church. I'm I'm I'm one of the youth leaders here. This is kind of embarrassing. You know, that's that's some smut you don't want on your name, right? But my therapist said you gotta you gotta be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and you just gotta come to the realization that it's over, man. It's over. It's you try it. She said she didn't want to work it out, and that's what you gotta do, man. So, you know, the death without a burial comes when you divorce somebody, you gotta, you know, the the in-laws, the cousins with that, and and me not having a lot of family, her family in return became my family. And me and her cousin, we was close. Like that was that was my homegirl, man. Like uh older sister to me. So you deal with that, right? Um, and I think the mistake that I made is I waited till my world was on fire, literally burning into the ground to go to therapy. This is after it failed suicide attempt, literally had a gun in my head, squeezed the trigger, and the shit fell apart. Like I'm like really here for a reason. So um, you know, I'll and I'll go more to that as we journey through these therapy Tuesdays.

Two Rules For Getting Help

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Um so my one of my rule first number rule uh first rule rule number one uh to men, especially black men out there. Now, this is for everybody. This ain't just you know for black people, white people, uh Asian, whatever, whatever your uh, you know, your race, creed, religion, color, whatever it is, this for everybody. This is my opinion. I'm not a licensed therapist. This is just what I suggest. Um, you know, and I'm not giving out no medical advice, but for me, if you are a man, especially, man, run, don't walk to therapy, don't wait like I did until your life is in the gutter to reach out for a lifeline because everybody don't receive that lifeline and they're not able to make it out, and you just never know what could happen. Rule number two is you gotta understand the distinction between distinction distinction, Jesus English language been kicking my ass lately. You gotta understand the difference between spiritual guidance and professional clinical care. I was a person, I was in the church, I was one of the youth leaders, I relied on a lot of crooked deacons that gave me a lot of crooked ass information. Shouldn't have never done that. I learned the hard way. Trust me, brothers and sisters, this is not something you want to do. Um, I think the the danger of misspelled faith is this is spiritual advisors offer comfort, prayer, and faith, but they do not replace licensed clinical therapy. For me, I had to learn that the hard way. You cannot pray away clinical trauma or acute depression um or suicidal thoughts. Uh well, I guess you could pray on it, but you know, you you you need a professional, you know, any more than you could you could pray away a compound fracture. You break your bone, you're not just like, you know, Lord, please put some robot testing on this and let this shit heal up. Nah, you need an actual doctor. You gotta build a true care team, right? So um the difference that I found between like the people at the church and my therapist now, Mrs. Manley, is Mrs. Manley is a is a licensed um therapist and she cares about me on a human level. She's not just here for the copay, and I think oftentimes church folk become a little too judgmental in um either their diagnosis or their treatment, and it could push you backwards. You know what I'm saying? Everything may not work for everybody, and I think, you know, I mean, God created doctors and therapists for a reason. Um, so I just think you know, everybody works together. It it works a tandem, it's it works in a tandem, you know, with my my therapist and my primary care physician, you know, they they know they got uh they got different notes. Sorry about that. I share my notes with with both of them, you know, because I want to make sure that I am my best self and my health is is A1 from day one. So um that those are a few rules.

Therapy As Preventative Maintenance

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Now we're gonna get into some other things, and for me, right now, therapy is preventative maintenance, and uh one of the first things is the external the external world pressure. That's why I keep going all these years bi-weekly. Um I think beyond my personal life, the daily news cycle is overwhelming, corporate quotas is overwhelming, societal violence, systemic pressures, uh, medical disparities affect affecting black men and women. You got you know, cops killing black men and and doctors killing black women, uh, even the food root recalls. I can't even eat Taco Bell no more or get lettuce without my asshole exploding. Like it's just it's it's all over the place. So for me, you couple all that stuff in, and you just you know, you kind of need the uh the preventative care for me because I can't do all of this alone. I can't uh I can't just walk through daily life like existing and you know acting like this. None of this bothers me. I'm human, like it does bother me. So that's that's why I I still go uh biweekly, and it's a preventative model. I don't want to wait for my engine to blow on the highway or you know, it my engine to catch my car to catch on fire before I change my oil. To me, therapy is a tune up, it keeps me from crashing out when life gets heavy. And like I said in previous episodes, therapy is keeping a lot of y'all safe. I'm a very nice guy, but there's a side of K Wade that you know I don't want to go back to back in the day where I'm from, you know, West Side of Nap growing up. Like, I don't want to let's just leave that there. I'm gonna I'm gonna leave that there, man.

Faith, Music, And Real Care Teams

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Uh, also there's an ecosystem of healing for me. I lean on Romans 8.28. If you're a person of faith, um, you get it. If not, it may not be for you. You gotta find what works for you, and there's a multitude of things. But for me, Romans 8.28 says God works for our good and brings good out of all things, and that's just what I kind of I lean on, you know. Um I encompass it all. Therapy works alongside prayer. I'm not sacrificing one for the other, I do it all. I got you know, I go to the morning, uh to the beach, I do morning beach devotions, scripture, meditation, RB podcast, RB is healing for me. Um, not only my podcast where I talk about you know the rhythms and the blues of life, hence RB, but music is an outlet. I lean into music that means something, people that say something, people that evoke emotion out of a song, you know. That's why I'm so addicted to nostalgia. We just don't have that nowadays. Um, you know, and that's just that's just where it is, man. Um and also there there you can you can deep dive into all of this, you know, when it comes to black men in mental health care. So uh the CDC along with the uh uh the st uh statistical and data research findings show that black adults are 30% less likely to receive mental health mental health care treatment compared to the national average. So we not only gotta deal with the racial microaggressions at our job and and in public, but we also have to deal with severe emotional distress and especially in men, and it presents itself as burnout, which could turn into rage, and then rage can turn into extreme fatigue, and then we don't want to go past that. We already know what what happens after that. So I just think we gotta no, I'm trying to normalize seeking help. Um I don't want to show like stoicism and suffering and silence, and that's a that's a systemic issue, you know what I'm saying? So I told myself I was gonna I was gonna start this segment of the podcast and and uh and be vulnerable and honest, and that's what I'm doing. Um, also divorce is a uh a psychic a psych psychological impact almost. So studies show um uh studies in the journal show that uh epidemiology and community health uh it was some journal I read, but they indicated divorced men face two and a half to nine. That's a crazy, crazy number, by the way. Two and a half to nine times higher risk of severe depression, suicide compared to married men, largely due to sudden loss of primary social and emotional networks. And I went through this. All the loss that I detailed at the beginning of this segment, I literally went through this and I was done, like I was finished where I ain't want to exist no more. So I know that to be true. And I think for me, you know, I just had to validate the phrase that death without a burial, it basically explains why losing an ex-spouse, a family member, a mother, brother, sister, cousin, it feels like fuck feels like it is, it's total grief, and you gotta deal with that in the best way possible. And hopefully, some of these things that I'm saying to give you the tools to do that. Um, you also got faith versus clinical therapy. For me, I think uh I read a study that over 80% of black Americans identify church slash faith as their primary wellness tool. That's cool. Instead of putting period there, I think we should put a comma. Like, because while spiritual foundation and guidance would you know it is is cool, uh, but without medical and psychological intervention, it it can leave clinical trauma unaddressed. And you know, I I know my mama said some real stuff to me one time. She said, I know a lot of nice people that's going to hell, I know a lot of nice people that's suffering inside. Like, you know what I'm saying? You can correlate the two. There's a there's a uh man, just do it all. I cannot stress that enough. Don't lean on one more than the other. Man, do it all, do what works for you.

Work Culture, Burnout, And PTO

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Um, and that's why I said I lean on Romans 828. Also, you got the corporate stress in the in the physiology of it. So, um, like man, 16 hour work days is not meant for anybody. I I don't I don't I feel like only we do that, only we normalize stuff like that in America, you know. Like I've I I I made a video to Dr. Eric Thomas uh speech, bad as I wanna breathe. And in hindsight, as an adult in my late 30s, looking at 40, I kind of regret that. You know what I'm saying? I don't regret the grind, but the message. Like when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, because he said something in there, like, you know, you gotta you gotta want it so bad that you forget to eat. Like, nigga, what? Nah, take care of your stomach first, man. Because that goes back to you being able to uh you can't pour from an empty cup. And uh, I don't know if I could go back, I would have I would have modified it. Great video though. Um, so utilize your PTO, that's what it's there for, especially if you at a company where you got unlimited PTO. Like I said, man, God didn't create us just to exist, you know. We supposed to live. Um, we're not supposed to just go to work, pay bills, and um wake up and the next day and do it all over again. There's more to life than that because those bills are always gonna be there, always gonna be there.

Role Models, Listener Challenge, Closing

SPEAKER_01 22:58

And you know, wrapping this up, you know, I uh there's some people that I saw struggling with mental health, and they were they were open about it, and it kind of motivated me to talk about it. Now, regardless of how you feel about this brother, um, I do appreciate him opening up about his his uh his bout with mental health, and that's Charlemagne guy. Uh, I know he he frequently speaks about transitioning from you know South Carolina street trauma to uh and stoicism to advocating for licensed therapy and and emphasizing, you know, for black men especially, you know, go get the tools you need to continue to live a prosperous life. I know Jay-Z in 444, he rapped about this. Same thing with with Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers to me should be the most important album to men. Unhealed men. If you if you have not listened to that, please, please give it a chance, man. Go zone out somewhere and listen to it. Uh Damar DeRozan and Kevin Love, you know, NBA superstar, NBA champs, they talked about just how they uh, you know, they they suffer from anxiety, high anxiety, and and you know, that can affect performance. Um, I was a uh a high-stakes athlete, I was a professional athlete at once, so I definitely understand uh what they were going through. So, you know, we're not the only ones. Uh I mean, the depression, mental health struggles, uh, anxiety, it it affects everybody. Your money don't matter, your status don't matter. Nobody is above from dealing with these real issues that nobody wants to talk about. So, you know, for me, man, wrapping this episode up, I just wanted to get on here real quick and and just you know give some free game on my therapy notes, and uh hopefully it impacts you. And one thing that I will ask directly, man, if you listening to this, um if you if you're listening to this, uh do you feel like you've been pouring from an empty cup? And what is one thing that you can unplug from today? And if you can do that, do it. I encourage everybody, man, like, comment, subscribe, share this. We're gonna start this mental health journey together and we're gonna dive deeper. Y'all gonna get to know me a little more, and hopefully, in return in the comments, and who knows when I start showing my face on camera and and all of this, you mean we you know we can really start connecting on a uh human face to face level. But like I close out the podcast with heavy RB, man. Please, man, put value in yourself by taking care of your mental. That way, we could put value in each other and we can have a value society. Peace.