In March 2021 the Chai in the City Open Group for Punjabi men met virtually to discuss the topic of anxiety. Here are some reflections from the brilliant team who facilitate and contribute towards those conversations.
This month’s session was on the topic of anxiety, as always, a warm welcome for everyone and well attended. This was an opportunity to talk about the experiences of having anxiety as well as a space to reflect on how our community views the experience of anxiety. We also took some time to think how we could help within the community to have a better understanding of these experiences.
As it was a large group, we split into three smaller groups to allow time for everyone to have the opportunity to explore the topic and talk about their own perspectives. This was helped by the facilitators offering three questions to guide this large topic. The questions were around our own experiences from our personal perspective as well as how our community responds to this.
We then all came back to feedback some of the themes of the discussions. It was interesting to hear whilst there was a broad range of conversations there were some common themes. These ranged from the fundamental points such as within Punjabi there is no specific word for anxiety to the challenging topic of how to find culturally sensitive help. It was also talked about how we can take time to take care of ourselves when experiencing anxiety. Another theme which was echoed by many was how do we overcome the image of anxiety as weakness to help everyone understand it better, whilst there was no clear answer to this there were some good ideas shared of how to talk about the subject with others.
It was good to hear from both those that have attended previous forums and newcomers the benefits of having the opportunity to talk and listen about the topic in a safe and welcoming space.
Next months session is on the topic of sexuality which will be a safe space to explore the issues within our communities.
