A 4-part series for EURweb · Black Mental Health Awareness Month (July 2026) By Dr. Loren M. Hill, Ph.D., PCC · Licensed Clinical Psychologist & Executive Coach, Founder of Acclivity
Part 2 — The Only One in the Room
*If you’ve ever been the only one in the room, the only Black person at the table, you already know the special kind of tired that this evokes. The kind sleep doesn’t touch.
It’s the exhaustion of code-switching in real time, weighing every word before it leaves your mouth, knowing a bad day won’t read as a bad day. It’ll read as evidence.
I call it the representation tax. You’re not just doing your job. You’re doing your job while also carrying what your performance supposedly says about everyone who looks like you. That’s a second full-time role nobody put on the org chart.
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This is a mental health issue, and there’s no shame in it. The hypervigilance, the 2 a.m. replay of a 10 a.m. comment, none of that is weakness. It’s what a workplace does to you when your stumble gets read as proof, and you can never quite stop bracing. Researchers have a name for that steady drumbeat of slights and scrutiny. They call it everyday discrimination, and a meta-analysis of 134 studies found it takes a measurable toll on mental and physical health, keeping the body’s stress response stuck on high.
And too many of us carry it without help. Among adults with fair or poor mental health, 50% of white adults had received mental health services in the past three years, compared with 39% of Black adults, a gap of 11 percentage points.
So which kind of support do you need? If the workplace keeps reopening old wounds, that’s a therapist’s work. If you’re trying to navigate the room you’re in without losing yourself, that’s where a coach comes in. Most people I work with need some of both, and neither is anything to be ashamed of.
Honestly, I can’t single out one person for this because there have been too many. The same story, over and over: an impressive résumé, the positions other people wanted, the “you make it look easy.” And underneath, someone who’s been running on empty so long they no longer notice. That’s the part that catches me. Not that they’re depleted, but that depleted has started to feel normal. When you never stop bracing, you forget there was another way to feel.
Read the full piece → theacclivity.com/the-only-one-in-the-room
Dr. Loren M. Hill, Ph.D., PCC, is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified executive coach and the founder of Acclivity.
Learn more at Acclivity | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube | Podcast
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