Wale Okerayi’s approach to therapy is unique — using books to heal. As a therapist who has been an avid reader since her childhood, bibliotherapy stood out to her, a form of therapy that uses literature to provide resources to help people make sense of their surroundings. Her multicultural approach toward therapy addresses the intersectionality of race, marginalization, capitalism, and oppression.
A first-generation Nigerian American licensed mental health professional and counselor from Houston, Okerayi practices in New York and Texas. Her sessions focus on counseling couples, authors, and writers.
Upon completing her bachelor’s, she met with other psychotherapists through a babysitting job who ignited her interest in the field. At the time, there were not too many therapists who looked like her.
“That’s not the case any more now,” she said.
It has been seven years since she began her practice.
She has a double master’s in psychological counseling and ED.M in mental health counseling from Teachers College, Columbia University, and holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminal justice from Texas State University.
Today, her client base comprises mostly Black people, especially first-generation folks owing to the level of understanding that Okerayi brings to the therapy room.
“There’s a lot of explaining that my clients don’t have to do in the room, and I’m able to validate their experiences and empathize with their experiences as well from a firsthand experience, but also from a professional one too,” she said.
Bibliotherapy to heal
Okerayi uses bibliotherapy as an individual service alongside other practices. She believes books have the power to resonate with people’s experiences and describe them when those in therapy do not have the words.
Based on what her clients are experiencing at a particular moment, she recommends certain books that validate their experience, while creating a safe space for them. By reading the characters’ stories and the ways in which they navigate through their difficulties, people find relief.
These books cover topics that include parental relationships, dating, and marriage, gender and identity, sexuality, grief, trauma, and abuse.
“I found that it helps clients to feel not so alone in their experiences or the things that they’re struggling with. It gives them the language to describe it, but also the validation to know that it’ll be okay at some point,” she explained. “Or that they can seek help or approach a situation from this perspective, as well.”
If one feels connected to a character, she suggests asking what about the experience makes them feel this way, what they relate to, or even hate about a character.
“There’s a lot of information that you can learn about yourself based on reading these characters’ lived experiences. Reading can also be healing because it gives language to a situation that you didn’t know how to describe,” Okerayi told the Defender. “Maybe it was something dramatic or sad, it can give language to that experience so that you can do the work to also give language for yourself to something that you’ve experienced too.”
She also encourages her clients to use their imagination and be hopeful in a world that does not share these values, as modern-day work life is accompanied by stress and burnout. Books, on the other hand, let us live in someone else’s world for a while and imagine what life would look like had we taken a different path.
Her work with authors, albeit new, explores how they put parts of themselves into their works and the toll it takes on their mental health. Okerayi also works with them through the creative process of their writing as well, the memories they have stored away that resurface while they write.
She is constantly reading, she says, and creating lists categorized into themes. She sets reading goals.
“I have a client that is navigating through a domestic violence situation. I have books to recommend to them,” she said. “Maybe clients that are going through a coming of age or a big life transition, I have lots of books for that too. That includes mostly fiction, but also nonfiction. I’m interested in it so it doesn’t feel too much.”
Are there enough Black mental health professionals?
Okerayi believes there is not.
“There’s a lot of reasons for it. There’s a lot of different steps that one has to take in order to become a therapist that make it inaccessible for many people,” she said. “That ends up deterring a lot of Black people from pursuing their careers as well. Going to grad school is not cheap, and then after grad school, you have to get 3000 hours in order to be licensed, and then in working that way, you get paid significantly less because you have to supplement your pay for the supervision that you’re receiving.”
Wale Okerayi recommends
Okerayi recommends the following books:
- Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma by leading trauma psychologist, Mariel Buqué, addresses the trauma passed down from one generation to the next and how one can break the cycle through therapy to put a stop to the cycle of pain.
- Skin and Bones by Renee Watson explores fatphobia, body image issues experienced by Black women, and internalized racism. “It’s one of those books that I found to be very transformational that I think about often,” she said.
- This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan is a romance novel that explores self-love, divorce, betrayal single parenthood, and
- Bright Red Fruit by Safia Elhillo is a book for young adults that delves into teenagers seeking love from the wrong places.
