Mental Health is incredibly important as it plays a huge aspect in our daily lives. Mental wellness is incredibly important to me because I have not only dealt with mental health myself but I've also witnessed what it can do to many people close to me. Coming from a religious and Hispanic household, mental health is not a priority in our culture. I grew up in a household where if we were to speak about how we were feeling, we were met with "I'll give you something to be sad about", "You think your life is hard, you have no idea what we had to do to get to where we are now", or "You're sad, is because you're on your phone all day, you don't clean or read books, go outside". I was constantly met with insults. Every feeling I had was invalidated as my life wasn't as hard compared to my parents. My parents immigrated from Mexico and had to build their whole lives from scratch upon entering. They had no time to deal with their mental health as they needed to do everything they could to survive another day. So when we speak about our mental health, they see it as a struggle to just get over it. They prioritized education above everything else. I felt I was unable to voice my own opinions or thoughts out loud. I was always scared to say anything as I either knew what they would say or was met with insults from my siblings. It felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells and I eventually developed hyperawareness and anxiety. Of curse when it comes to anxiety, they didn't believe it deserved medication or counseling. Receiving counseling in a Hispanic household means there's something wrong with you. My parents believed it was not that serious, even distant family members would believe that. I wasn't the only one affected growing up like this. My brothers also suffered from depression and anxiety. My little brother was lucky enough to receive medication and counseling for it but I had to find other ways to deal with it. While being the only girl in the household, my mother had high expectations that I needed to meet otherwise it was met with disappointment. I was constantly looking for validation. As I grew up I learned that journaling and speaking with friends was an amazing outlet for me. I was able to voice myself to my friends and vice versa. Journaling helped me write my thoughts and feelings down on paper. Sometimes I would look back and see how much I have grown since those times and reflect on how I was able to get through it. I focus a lot on my mental wellness now. I learned to do things that I wanted to do and stopped focusing on what others thought about me. I focused on saying daily affirmations and looking at things more positively. That had changed my perspective on the world and myself. It's made me happier and improved my relationship with my parents and friends. I also like to pick a day out of the week to treat myself mentally, physically, and emotionally whether it's grabbing dinner, getting a pedicure, etc. Mental health is something that is constantly overlooked and I hope everyone learns how to maintain and improve it for the better.

Being a part of the Hispanic community, our parents have lots of expectations for us. I am a first-generation degree earner. I am also the only girl in my family aside from my mother. That meant having to deal with family stereotypical roles, gender role expectations, education expectations, and social expectations. Growing up with that meant I was stressed, anxious, and depressed. If you anything about having mental issues in a Hispanic household, you know that they do not believe in therapy or medications for it. Most parents will say "There is nothing wrong with you", "I'll give you something to be depressed about.", or "If your anxiety, just go walk or clean the house". We are constantly invalidated. Even pursuing higher education and growing more knowledgeable. We aren't allowed to use it and show how our parents can be wrong sometimes. It's considered disrespect. I've had to learn how to deal with this all on my own and not rely on anyone when it came to my mental health. Even as I have gotten older, I work in a career field that deals with therapy yet can't take my advice or get rid of that stigma. I've seen my brothers deal with their depression and anxiety. My younger brother was amazing and lucky to have faced his cultural stigma behind mental health and pursue receiving therapy. He was able to get the help he needed and continues to receive to this day. Since growing up, I have always had a fascination for psychology and therapy. I knew I wanted to pursue a field in mental health. Whether it was family therapy, child therapy, or counseling I was interested in either one. People were always surprised to see that I knew what I wanted to do at a young age. During high school, I chose to do just that. I pursued a bachelor's degree in Psychology. That way I knew I would be and do anything I wanted to related to that field. It wasn't till I started work that I was able to see what special therapy I wanted to do and pursue for the rest of my life. I chose to pursue a career in Applied Behavior analysis. I had already received my bachelor's degree in psychology. After graduating college, like most college students I was pretty lost about what to do after. I knew that I wanted to work with children and behavior, but didn't know what that entailed. After searching and searching, I found something called a Behavior technician. A behavior technician is someone who works with children diagnosed and not diagnosed with autism. We provide behavioral therapy for children and help to decrease their maladaptive behaviors. I work in schools, clinics, and home settings with children from ages 2-18 years old. I currently have 4 clients I worked with of various ages. This was an amazing experience to have honestly. It's changed everything I wanted to do in life. Starting this job was both interesting and stressful. It's super stressful being patient and showing understanding constantly no matter the situation at hand. It was emotionally and mentally draining every day. I had to pick up a log of knowledge and skills fast, especially because I was about to be thrown into a case with children right away proving therapy. I worked super hard to complete my training. It took me quite a while to get used to my job and fall in love with it. One of the cases I worked with is what made me fall in love with this job. My client was 4 years old when I met him. He had low-functioning autism, behavior issues, communication deficits, social skill deficits, etc. He needed lots of help and therapy. I had only been working with him for about 2 months at this point. There was one day when we were working on getting him to answer a question, "What is your last name?". He had been working on this for over a year now and 2 months with me. I worked every day using different strategies to get him to answer it. He just could not get the answer down. They were using a DTT-style format for learning. This is where we have the client sit down at a table, like at school, and learn. After noticing that my client was struggling with staying at the table and learning. I decided to change my approach. I instead used a more NET training procedure. NET is a more naturalistic environmental training procedure. So, we played together and left the table whenever we wanted to. I would use our environment and other factors to teach him things. After a week, we started to pair together and learn each other's behaviors, language, wants, needs, and boundaries. We needed to build that trust in each other. Work started to get easier and easier with each passing day. However, it was still incredibly stressful and emotionally draining. Sometimes I would go home crying. Then one day after three months of working together, he did it. It finally clicked for him. When I asked him, "What is your last name?", he answered me. I was so shocked and so overwhelmed with excitement and happiness I was about to cry. I had to compose myself and hold myself together. I celebrated with him and his accomplishments. After so long and struggling so much, he did it. It made all the hard nights worth it. This was the moment I fell in love with this work and career field. Not everyone can do this job I know that now. It's emotionally and physically draining. You get hit, spit, bitten, thrown at, pushed, etc. You can get injured in this job because of their behaviors and still have to act like it doesn't faze us in that moment. We need to hold so much patience and understanding. We can't take anything personally and hold no grudges. Every day comes with new challenges; it's not gonna be the same as yesterday. Their behaviors could happen in a split second for no reason at all. You could be removed from a case you love for no reason at all and not question it. Not everyone can do this job. I've seen so many people leave incredibly fast. The fastest I've seen someone leave has been a week. People come into this field, thinking it's super easy or you're just a glorified babysitter. When in fact it's so much more challenging than that. To make matters worse, we don't even get paid the amount of money we should be earning. That means we are doing all this for less than we deserve. The people that stay get tossed around everywhere in different companies. So far I've been to two different companies yet they were almost the same. Still, the same low-paying job, still not appreciated, being tossed around the system, and still being mentally and emotionally drained. As a current full-time graduate student earning my Master's degree while working as a full-time employee. The amount amount of stress I have to go through is insane. I am so mentally drained and constantly exhausted. Having to go to work all day and provide therapy for these children and then come back and do homework. I have almost no time to do anything fun. I can barely go out on weekends unless I push through the week ahead of time to finish incredibly long assignments. Grad school comes with its many challenges and many readings. It is worth it as I am having the most fun I've ever had. I have had to ' fake it till I make' mentality to keep myself happy and sane. There are days I just want to cry and stay at home all day. I have to deal with my anxiety and not fall into depression. I'm lucky to have the friends and community that I do. I'm hoping that scholarships and grants will help me complete my goals. My parents were generous enough to provide me with a college undergraduate education. I would like to relieve them of any burden for helping provide me with a graduate degree. I save every paycheck I have and stay at my parent's home to be able to afford it. Even then I need to take out loans to pay for school. Not qualifying for FASFA and Pell Grants was difficult to accept. I knew I would need to look elsewhere. I've applied to so many and received no luck. I'm hoping no matter what I still have a chance. Being positive and optimistic will only get me so far. Putting in the hard work is where everything matters.