PSY-BH-402: The Psychology of the Strong Black Woman: How Cultural Myths Shape Love & Mental Health

About Course

The Psychology of the Strong Black Woman: How Cultural Myths Shape Love & Mental Health
This course explores the psychological and emotional impact of the “Strong Black Woman” myth, tracing its historical roots and how it shapes Black women’s experiences with love, identity, and mental health. Through discussion, reflection, and analysis, students will uncover how cultural expectations fuel perfectionism, emotional suppression, and relationship struggles—and learn to reimagine strength through the lens of vulnerability, healing, and self-worth.

✨ Here’s What You’ll Learn:

Week 1: Understanding the Strong Black Woman & Introducing the ESP

Origins of the SBW myth and its cultural transmission
Overview of the Extraordinary Superwoman Paradox as a psychological adaptation
Activity: “Who Have You Had to Be to Survive?”
Reading: Excerpt from Sister Citizen

Week 2: Intergenerational Trauma, Emotional Inheritance & Suffering as Identity

How pain became culture and resilience became expectation
Family roles, trauma repetition, and emotional labor
Genogram + Reflection: “How Did the Women Before Me Survive?”
Introduction to the ESP’s hidden parts: The Overgiver, The Performer

Week 3: Attachment Wounds & the Roots of Overfunctioning

Anxious/preoccupied attachment in high-functioning women
The need to earn love and prove worth
Journal: “How I Learned Love Was Conditional”
Tool: Superwoman Attachment Map

Week 4: Perfectionism, Control, & the Paradox of Power

Control as a trauma response
The internal war between visibility and vulnerability
Activity: “Who’s in the Driver’s Seat? (Identifying Your Inner Parts)”
Reading: ESP Framework handout (your own original material)

Week 5: Religion, Respectability, and Emotional Repression

Spiritual bypassing, church trauma, and the suppression of emotion
Guilt, performance, and the disembodiment of pleasure and rest
Discussion: “God, Guilt, and Generational Silence”
Reading: Audre Lorde – Uses of the Erotic

Week 6: Love, Boundaries & the Performance of Worth

How struggle love becomes a template
The “illusion of being chosen” and CRAVES model
Tool: Relationship Scripts & Survival Binds
Activity: “Who Are You Without the Role?”

Week 7: Emotional Suppression, Somatization, and the Body’s Cry for Help

How trauma lives in the body
How Black women’s emotions are misdiagnosed or pathologized
Practice: Grounding techniques + body scan
Reflection: “What My Body Has Been Trying to Tell Me”

Week 8: Liberation Through Love, Boundaries & Self-Remembrance

Rebuilding self-worth, safety, and identity outside of the cape
Boundaries as sacred love and liberation
Final Project: Create a Liberation Manifesto
Affirmation: “I Am Not What I Had to Be to Survive”