Inside The Secret Therapist Group Chat Fueling Today’s Top Athletes
To their clients, the Magnificent Seven—Wendy Borlabi, Angel Brutus, Nicole Charles-Linen, Stephany Coakley, Kensa Gunter, Lani Lawrence, and LaKeitha Poole—are mental performance experts who help athletes perform at their best. But to each other, they’re their own kind of all-star team—seven proud Black women in a relatively new field, helping each other navigate the ups and downs of a career in which their mental performance matters, too.
“As someone who tries to help others, sometimes our humanity is rendered invisible in that process,” says Kensa Gunter, PsyD. “The fact that we, too, are impacted and stressed out and have a whole life beyond the work that we do gets overlooked.”
Based across the country, M7 (as they call themselves) has manifested over the years as a text message thread, a pandemic-era monthly Zoom call, and in-person connections at conferences and events. They’ve come together for weddings and baby showers (four of them are also moms), moments of loss and grief, and professional highs and lows. They laugh and cry and hold space for each other when needed.
Let that sink in—yes, your therapist has real feelings, and they probably vent to their group chat just like everyone else. But that’s arguably what makes them so good at what they do.
“Beyond whatever titles and experiences and the work stuff that has brought us together to an extent, it's not the thing that keeps us together. It is the stuff in between,” says LaKeitha Poole, PhD. “Because of having them as people in my life, as friends in my life, I get to show up better in my job and I get to show up better for my family and people who care about me away from this work.”
Ahead, M7 let Women’s Health sit in on one of their storied Zoom calls to find out what really goes on in their group chat.
Meet The Magnificent Seven
Wendy Borlabi, PsyD, clinical and sport psychologist in private practice
Angel Brutus, PsyD, LPCC, CMPC, lead psychological services provider for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and in private practice
Nicole Charles-Linen, PsyD, clinical and sport psychologist in private practice
Stephany Coakley, PhD, CMPC, LPC, senior associate athletic director for mental health, wellness and performance at Temple University
Kensa Gunter, PsyD, CMPC, clinical and sport psychologist in private practice and director of Mind Health for the WNBA and NBA
Lani Lawrence, PsyD, director of wellness and clinical services for the New York Giants
LaKeitha Poole, PhD, LPC-S, CMPC, assistant athletic director for sports psychology and counseling at Louisiana State University and in private practice
On Their Origins
LaKeitha Poole: I feel like I've met these folks over the last nine years of me being in my role here at LSU. But there is a group that has been together in some ways—little trios and duos—who have known each other for years.
Wendy Borlabi: Kensa and I were in our doctorate program together [at Argosy University in Phoenix], so it's been since 2001. That's a long time. I think we all knew maybe one or two people really well, but maybe not everybody knew everybody as well. But because the person you knew brought somebody in, for me, it was automatically someone I know that I can lean on.
Kensa Gunter: We met individually in different places and spaces at different times over the course of the last 20-plus years and have, through divine intervention and connection, found our way to each other. But I would say this group started meeting during COVID. We started having Zoom calls to try to support one another through life and all the unprecedented things that were happening in the world in 2020—from COVID to racial injustice to just the day-to-day realities of the lives we live and the places we work. And that persisted from being on a Zoom call to having a group text thread that we still maintain today.
Lani Lawrence: The Zoom meetings started off monthly. Especially during COVID, just seeing other people's faces was really important. So we were pretty consistent, and then the time in between was supplemented by text messages.
Angel Brutus: It also turned into more than just talking about the business and the work. It was the shows that we were binge watching and monitoring our alcohol intake and being real with each other. There was nothing that was off the table in terms of just being able to support one another as true friends.
Wendy Borlabi: It was automatic, because we are all professionals and because we're Black women, we're here to support each other. I think we just took that and went with it. It has carried us and served us well four years later. I’ll get a text and see everybody's name and it’s like, “What's going on?” It’s a priority.
Kensa Gunter: As Black women, we often create our own circles of sisterhood. We find each other and offer the care, the compassion, the humanity, the support that we need to one another. I would dare say, in the Black community, one of our primary coping skills is coping through community and using the power of community to help us individually manage whatever unprecedented reality we may find ourselves in at any given time.
Supporting Others And Themselves
Stephany Coakley: I remember a particular moment when we met. I was still working—students left campus, but they were doing virtual classes. And it was also around the time of the racial reckoning. I was in my current role, but I was also the athletic director for inclusion and diversity. I was doing two roles, and it was very heavy. So this was a group that I leaned into, because they were there, and that's what we do.
LaKeitha Poole: I was in a similar spot in a collegiate setting. Before working in athletics, I worked in diversity and inclusion at LSU. The athletics department remembered that, so I took on a formal DEI role as well as my regular responsibilities. I'm pretty certain my kitchen table has a curve in it from where I sat with my laptop and my arm all day for months.
Nicole Charles-Linen: I remember calling them in tears. I was working at a university at the time, and I was the only Black woman and one of only two Black people in sports medicine there. I was having a hard time in 2020 with George Floyd. And I remember someone asked me, the only Black woman in sports medicine, to check on a white woman about something completely unrelated. And I was just like, “Read the room.” I was so torn up by that. So I called them, and I just broke down. They held me, and they talked me through it.
After I cried, a couple days later, I was like, “All right, I got to get back to work.” I needed paperwork for virtual sessions, so I called Angel. I didn't have any informed consent, any documentation—but I knew who did. Like LaKeitha, I had my little spot at the table where nothing but work happened. I had a background that was professional enough, and the rest of it was a mess. I was just figuring it out as I went and asking for help along the way.
Angel Brutus: We were called on to be all-of-a-sudden DEI experts in all spaces and places and also be the connection for other entities—whether it’s at the collegiate level, the professional level, you name it—looking to fill the gap in the supply-demand issues when it specifically came to Black practitioners who operate in this space and field. We were being pulled in multiple directions as somehow being this magic pill to help solve everyone's issues and problems and their desires to have a certain number of individuals who were Black in that space, given everything that was happening on the geopolitical side of things.
Kensa Gunter: Working in the mental health space is heavy, and it can be overwhelming, and it can feel isolating. I've heard a lot of people say about COVID, “We had an opportunity to pause and think about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to move forward.” And I'm like, not one of my colleagues in this mental health and performance space had time to pause. I feel like all of us experienced an exponential increase in the demand for our time and our services. No pause at all. And it feels like we haven't had a pause since.
Sports And Society And The Tough Stuff
Stephany Coakley: Certainly there are times when sport brings people together and it's amazing. But it's also exhausting because sport is a 24-hour, 365-day situation. I'm at school right now, and we're about to have six separate competitions on the same day. What energizes me is doing mental performance work and helping somebody who just wants to be better. I'm here for that all day. But the work that's really hard is when somebody's like, “I don't want to be here anymore.” And that can be heavy.
LaKeitha Poole: What I appreciate specific to my role in the collegiate space is getting to be a part of a very critical time in the development of lives of people. Like in 2020, I saw athletes take stands. Being in a different generation, I used to probably judge them a little bit from the outside—like, “Man, these kids are so apathetic, they don't care.” And life shifted a little where they had to make a choice of like, “Are we going to care about this? Are we going to speak up? Are we going to talk about what our department isn't doing for us?”
Angel Brutus: I think overall, sport is a microcosm of society. There can be this myth that somehow sport is a protective space or a buffered space where none of the things that are happening in society infiltrates it, and that's the furthest thing from the truth. I always think of the potential that sport has to impact and have ripple effects on the external pieces. I think of the analogy of the rubber band effect—you stretch a rubber band and it has this instant change and this sphere of influence, but as soon as you let it go, it goes back. It may not go back to the same circumference and it's been stretched a little bit, but it tends to go back. You stretch it out again, you're building its capacity, and then it still goes back. So there's this rubber band effect that takes place when it comes to the world of sport, especially depending on how invested different organizations and different institutions are in terms of the sustainability of whatever efforts towards change they commit to.
Kensa Gunter: Angel's comment about sport being a microcosm is exactly what was in my head. People think of it as this neutralized space, and it's absolutely not. But I do think sport is a universal language in the same way music is. It's something that resonates with people globally. Wherever you are in the world, more than likely you are familiar with sport—whether you've participated or been a spectator. So in that way, I think sport is a unique space for us to try to do the work that we do. Because I think people may be more receptive to a message that comes from athletes or from the sport space just because of their affiliation with it or because of their investment in it or because of their identification with it. I also would say athletes have really accelerated the conversation that we are having in society right now as it relates to mental health and sport.
On What They Love About Their Jobs
Stephany Coakley: I enjoy the process of mentoring young people and giving them what I wish I had—tips and things to avoid, landmines, the negative stuff, while also informing them of all the great things that the field has to offer now. And I enjoy helping the person who comes to me for help, who's vulnerable, who trusts me, who then opens up and we do good work, and then they have the life that they always imagined. For me, that gives me purpose.
Angel Brutus: I like building things. I probably will never let go of my private practice, because I like building and consulting and things of that nature. Like Stephany, I love the mentorship and pouring into others who don't see themselves working in the space, and being able to affirm a lot of identities. But I also think what keeps me in this space is—it is no secret, I often say out loud to anybody who will listen that I go to work every day not afraid to lose my job. Being able to walk in with that level of freedom unattached and not clinging to a position or an institution or organization is actually what keeps me in it.
LaKeitha Poole: I think I, too, have tried to embrace a part of me that in my personal life doesn't allow me to be as much of a rebel. But in this work, I like to be, a little bit. When an athlete walks into my office, I want them to know they're getting the best care, but also to see that comes in the form of this body and this skin and this hair, and I want to blow up whatever prior thought they had about what sports psychology is, what counseling is, what mental health is. Because I think that that, too, is therapeutic, in a way. I definitely get a thrill from getting to run this department. It can change people's whole perception of who can do this work.
Nicole is giving me snaps right now. That's what I love about this group. It’s taken me a minute to get to that point where I embrace that, and these ladies help to do that all the time. That's what the group chat ends up being, literally a just thread of support.
Nicole Charles-Linen: I love being an agent of change. If you say the right thing and it clicks for somebody and they look at something differently, they look at themselves differently, their behavior changes, and therefore their outlook, their environment, their experience changes. I love that. But I also love how systemically, I can be a catalyst for change. In our house, our family motto is “humanity first”—our outlook on life, the way we handle ourselves. I'm out here trying to be a good human so that hopefully it impacts someone else in a good way, so they, in turn, can be a better human, and then be a better human to somebody else.
Wendy Borlabi: I'm also going to say what keeps me going: I love sports, and we get paid to watch sports. I'm not going to be mad at it. So that's a big thing—honestly, it is. I also like that I get to change the narrative of what a successful Black mom looks like for other Black moms. Prior to having my twins, I was a very private person. I was working at the London Olympics, five months pregnant with my twins, and nobody knew. But after having them, it changed that for me, because I kept hearing conversations from other women about, “Oh, I want to do this but also have a family.” So being able to say and show that all this can happen—it's hard. It's going to be. The struggle is real. However, we can still do it, and it doesn't have to look any certain way. It just needs to look the way that works for you.
Kensa Gunter: What keeps me going in this field is the power to be a representative for all the things—what Black women can do, what help can look like, and to show those who are coming behind us, who are on their educational journeys, that there is space for you. That's become really huge for me over the last several years, just wanting folks to look up and see somebody that looks like them in spaces that they aren't sure that they belong in. I want them to know that they do.
Next Article: Is Therapy Really For Everyone?
Illustrations by Lauren Tamaki
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