One Big Beautiful Forehead

Therapist as Human | Hair Untamed | Part 2

Over the past couple of months, I have tried so many different hairstyles in while still quietly negotiating that a client commented, " Ms Carlita, every time I come in here you are doing something different with your hair. Is everything okay?" I laughed and told her I had just talked about it with my therapist the day before, so I was good. She laughed too and said, "Oh ok, so you're working on you too, so if your therapist says everything is ok, then I'm fine with it too", and then we moved on to our work together. The exchange lingered with me though, because she was picking up on something that was going on with me that was not really about hair.

I have spent most of my life wearing my hair in such a way that it drew attention away from my forehead. It was not until a DIY haircut gone wrong sent me to the barber, who cut it shorter than I intended, that I had to reckon with what I had been doing and why. A large part of my problem was not the hair, but my insecurity about the size of my forehead that had been with me my entire life.

Somehow, at six years old, I already knew my forehead was too big.

When I was around six years old, my mother styled my straightened hair with a part down the middle, and two ponytails with ribbons on each side. As I walked across the street to the school bus that morning, I held my head down because I was ashamed of my forehead. I think she was watching, because after a while she called me back to the house, and after telling me to " Hold your head up and stop acting stupid ", she pulled hair from each ponytail, swirled it forward, and added a bow so that something covered my forehead. I held my head up after that, partly out of obedience, and partly because I felt better with my forehead covered.

Comments and messages about my forehead accumulated over the years, from a well-meaning friend who once walked up to me and, without a word, pulled my hair forward toward my forehead and told me I needed the covering, to my ex-husband who referred to my forehead as a fivehead. Those moments contributed to my insecurity, and every hairstyle or strategically placed headband became a shield for my forehead self-consciousness.

When my new haircut took away that shield, I processed the self-image crisis with my own therapist, who encouraged me to go into some of my client sessions without the headband as an exercise in radical self-acceptance. That week, I met a client I had not seen in a month, so she hadn't seen the different versions of my hair since I combed out my locs. She raved about the haircut, gushing over how it showed off my face, how it brought out my smile. She paused when I thanked her and said, "But you do not love it as much as I love it, do you?" I tried to play it off, and when she pressed, I was tempted to explain the whole forehead insecurity but I held back because the session was hers, not mine. I told her that I was simply still getting used to it because it was such a big change. That was true. It just wasn't the full truth.

An Edward Scissorhand moment led to my freedom

A couple of days later, I was on FaceTime with my son and caught my own image on the screen. I thought it looked cute, so I screenshotted it and posted it on Facebook without explaining that it was an exposure exercise. The feedback was nice, but I did not post the picture to get compliments so that I could feel better. I posted it because I wanted to feel better independent of people's thoughts, feelings, or comments. I was working on accepting my forehead, and part of that involved not hiding it from others. Their positive regard for the photo did not change how I felt about my forehead.

A friend's response to the photo pushed things forward in a way I had not anticipated. I had texted it with the note "big forehead and all," and the friend responded, "It's one big beautiful forehead, like Trump's one big beautiful bill," and I fell out laughing. There was something deeply affirming about that and I chose to use it as a mantra. I followed my own clinical advice and shifted from negative self-talk to a positive reframe, and that shift set me on a path toward self-acceptance. My forehead did not become something I loved overnight, but it became something I accepted without judgment.

There is a difference between wanting approval and wanting freedom. They can look identical from the outside. Both involve showing something you have been hiding, but one is waiting for someone to tell you it is okay and the other is giving yourself permission to be okay.This past month I finally got to a place where I can tell myself that it is. I really do like my haircut now, and I am considerably less self-conscious about my forehead. That is not the same as being over it completely, but now I hold my head up because I choose to.

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