The Iyashi Pulse

Founder's Note

Hello & Welcome Welcome to the August edition of the Iyashi Pulse. August was a heavy and reflective month as we observed Grief Awareness Month, leading up to National Grief Awareness Day on August 30th.

Grief is a universal human experience, yet it is frequently carried in silence. This month, our focus was on bringing these conversations out of the shadows — sharing educative videos on navigating loss and continuing our clinical education through our #TruthTuesday series, where every week we spotlighted a common mental health diagnosis, debunked the myths surrounding it, and provided practical steps for seeking help.

As part of our advocacy this month, we also released an episode of the Iyashi Conversations podcast featuring our guest, Machocho. Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify. In this conversation, Machocho bravely shared her lived experience of losing her spouse. We discussed the emotional toll of bereavement, the challenge of navigating a shattered reality, and the slow journey toward healing. Whether you are currently navigating the waves of grief yourself or supporting someone who is, her story offers validation and hope.

Our goal this month was to equip you with the knowledge to understand your mental health, and to remind you that you do not have to carry your heaviest burdens alone. As always, I invite you to follow our updates on our social media pages.

Warm regards,
Emily Mbelenga Founder, Iyashi Wellness Centre

In This Issue

Actionable tips for resilience in a changing world

Guiding Children Through Grief

August is Grief Awareness Month, a time to reflect on one of the few guarantees in life: our shared mortality. When a family loses a loved one, adults are thrust into the double role of processing their own heartbreak while serving as emotional anchors for the children of the household.

How we guide children through their first encounters with death influences how they will understand and cope with grief as adults. Here are ways to support children through a loss:

Insights from the therapy room

When a Diagnosis Becomes Your Identity

As we have been discussing in our #TruthTuesday posts, diagnoses are important tools. They give us the language to understand our pain and the frameworks to treat it. But in the therapy room at Iyashi Wellness Centre, I frequently see the unintended side effect of finally getting an answer: the diagnosis becomes a label that suddenly defines everything about who a person is.

A diagnosis is simply a helper marker — just as CD4 is the primary surface protein used to identify T-helper lymphocytes in immunology. It is a roadmap that tells you, "This is what is happening in your brain and body right now." It is not your identity. It is not your personality. It is a condition you are managing, not who you are.

Recently, I was working with a client whose depression diagnosis had become the only lens through which they viewed themselves. To challenge that cognitive distortion, we used Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques to reframe the narrative. You can practice these on your own if you are feeling trapped by a label:

Navigating the future of mental health

AI Chatbots and the Illusion of Intimacy

In one of our #AIWednesday posts this August, we talked about a significant shift in how we interact with technology. The direct-to-consumer market for AI chatbots has become a digital wild west. We are increasingly bypassing human connection, choosing instead to take our questions directly to the bots. But as we integrate these tools into our lives, we need a reality check: these are not neutral tools.

They are engineered using psychological principles designed to maximize engagement and exploit human vulnerabilities:

Our work at the intersection of technology and mental health has always been about building safe digital tools that bridge the gap to human connection — rather than replacing it. It is an honour to continue advocating for this balance as a Fellow at the Childhood and AI Lab, and as a Top 10 Winner of the AI by HER Global Impact Challenge. We must innovate responsibly, ensuring that our digital future protects our psychological well-being.

Nancy Mwangiri Licensed Counselling Psychologist · MHPSS Practitioner & Peacebuilding Advisor We are privileged to feature Nancy Mwangiri as our guest expert for this month. Driven by a commitment to creating safe spaces for healing, Nancy brings a very important perspective to the conversation around holistic wellness and trauma-informed care.

In her exclusive piece, "The Loss We Rarely Talk About: When Grief Means Losing Yourself," Nancy challenges society's narrow definition of mourning. She points out that when we hear the word loss, our focus is almost exclusively on the death of someone we love. However, looking through the lens of psychology, Nancy argues that we are missing a much more complex reality: sometimes, the greatest loss is the person we slowly stop being.

She makes a compelling case that the loss of identity is one of the forms of grief, often occurring when our authentic selves are buried underneath layers of familial or societal expectations. Nancy explores how we can grieve unfulfilled dreams, roles, or versions of ourselves we never had the chance to discover. She validates these quiet struggles by unpacking concepts like disenfranchised grief — which happens when a person's loss is not socially recognized.

Nancy leaves us with a reminder about the tasks of mourning — that healing is not a destination but a slow, courageous act of becoming.

🌿 Your Safe Space to Heal

If you are carrying the weight of unspoken pain, our individual therapy sessions are confidential and empathetic. Whether you are seeking support for yourself, or looking for resources for a partner, colleague, or friend — our clinical team is ready to help you rebuild your resilience. Virtually and in-person.

A Final Thought for August

If there is one thread tying this month's issue together, it is this: the courage to sit with our grief and reclaim our authentic selves. Whether it is helping a child navigate their first encounter with loss, refusing to let a diagnosis define your existence, or realizing that an AI chatbot cannot replace the healing power of human empathy — healing begins the moment we decide to face our reality.

We often try to compartmentalize our pain, hoping it will resolve on its own. We allow labels to dictate our potential, seek temporary comfort in the synthetic responses of algorithms, and carry the silent, disenfranchised grief of unfulfilled expectations. But as we have explored this month, resilience is not found in avoiding the discomfort. It is found in acknowledging the messy, ambiguous parts of our lives and building a robust psychological toolkit to manage them.

If you find yourself mourning a version of yourself that is gone, navigating the waves of bereavement, or struggling to separate who you are from a diagnosis, give yourself permission to pause. You do not have to have it all figured out, and you certainly do not have to heal in isolation.

Your well-being requires the same intentional investment as every other aspect of your life. Treat it accordingly.

Here is to a month of honouring our grief, rediscovering our identities, and choosing authentic connection.

— Team Iyashi Wellness Centre

👀 Coming in September

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month & The Power of Survival

Our steady drumbeat of clinical education also continues. For our #TruthTuesday campaign, we will be exploring diagnoses that frequently intersect with severe emotional distress, breaking down the warning signs that are often missed, and equipping you with practical tools to support yourself and those you love.

See you next month 👋