Afro Botho hosts mental wellness session

October 10th is commemorated as the World Mental Health Day. To mark this day, Afro Botho organised an intimate session held under the theme, Psychological First Aid and the support that people can provide to those in distress.

As much as the day is commemorated internationally, at some point in our lives we all go through a period of distress and longing for that one voice that can reach out to you and ascertain whether you are fine. But that is not always the case. Everyday, be it mild, or once off, or something that requires the attention of experts, one finds themselves in dire situation when it feels like no one understands what you are going through. At other times you just feel blue with emotions overwhelm you, which is where psychological first aid comes in handy.

The event held under the tagline Heal the Healer was an intimate session that brought together different ambassadors of Afro Botho under one roof to take time out from their hectic every day schedules and afford them time to do a body scan. MotherK Masire and Didi Biorn heads Afro Botho. According to Afro Botho, mental health includes our emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. It affects how we think, feel, and act.

Sharing her story, Biorn says that in 2012 she was in the depth of her depression and that she didn’t know what to do especially as she is the psychologist and the healer. She also says that she took to all the things that she had been taught which is envisioning that which you want to become so that can go out of the dark path. Her long path to healing included hiking and writing in a journal, as well as creating a vision board. “I was providing myself with pysch first aid,” she notes.

An accident that she was involved in Kgale Mews also highlighted the fact that sometimes one can be among lot of people but still feel lonely. She says that right after the accident, which was a head on collision, onlookers filled the scene but that for what seemed like eternity no one came forward to ask her whether she was hurt and needed assistance. “Not a single person came to me to ask how are you.

The only person who came out to me was this lady who said I know this lady, I have seen her on television,” she says. She adds that as a healer, she deals with many wounded souls and rarely encounters genuinely happy people.