For most of her adult life, Gabrielle Union could not simply sit in a backyard and watch her daughter do cartwheels. Before long, her mind would pull her away from that ordinary moment and into a spiral of worst-case scenarios, imagined threats and the relentless vigilance that had defined her inner life for decades. What looked like distraction from the outside was, for her, the daily reality of living with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.
Union was sexually assaulted at 19 while working a summer job at a shoe store near her university. She began therapy three days later and continued with traditional approaches for the next three and a half decades. Despite that sustained effort, she has said that genuine recovery continued to feel out of reach. She did what was expected and what was recommended, and still the weight did not lift.
That changed in October, when she began a new form of therapy specifically designed to target trauma rather than simply manage it. The shift, she has said, has been transformative in ways that extended beyond her own interior life and into her relationships, her parenting and the atmosphere of her home.
What was standing in the way
Union’s story is deeply personal, but the barriers she encountered belong to far more people than just her. For Black women in particular, the path to effective trauma treatment is shaped by forces that have little to do with individual willingness to seek help.
Research indicates that roughly eight in ten Black women will experience some form of trauma in their lives. Nearly one in five are survivors of rape, and a significant percentage experience sexual coercion and other forms of unwanted contact. Despite those disproportionate rates of exposure, Black women face well-documented obstacles to accessing mental health care.
The stereotype of the strong Black woman, the social expectation of resilience in the face of hardship, has historically discouraged many from acknowledging vulnerability or seeking outside support. Decades of biased and inadequate care within mental health systems have deepened that distrust. Roughly 58 percent of Black adults who need mental health resources do not ultimately pursue them. The result is a pattern in which trauma goes unaddressed for years, sometimes for a lifetime, manifesting instead through chronic stress, strained relationships, physical health consequences and emotional dysregulation.
Union has spoken directly about this gap, describing not just her own experience but the broader conditions that kept her from accessing the right kind of care for so long. Her 34 years were not simply the result of how long healing takes. They reflect, in part, how inaccessible the most effective forms of trauma treatment remain for many of the women who need them most.
Finding what actually works
The treatment that ultimately made the difference for Union involves structured, trauma-specific therapeutic approaches rather than the general talk therapy she had relied on for years. Her sessions have been brief but intensive, sometimes just 10 to 15 minutes at a time, followed by exercises that can take close to an hour. She has described the process as engaging enough that she often completes more than one session in a day.
The impact extended beyond her own sense of wellbeing. She has described a new quality of peace in her home and marriage, and a capacity for presence with her children that had not been accessible to her before. She is now able to simply watch the cartwheels.
Union was moved enough by the experience to become an investor in and strategic advisor to the platform that provided her treatment. She has been transparent about that involvement while also making clear that her advocacy comes from having lived the difference the treatment made.
A message for anyone still searching
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and Union’s willingness to speak publicly about her experience carries weight precisely because of how long she stayed silent about the specific shape of her struggle. She did everything right by conventional standards and still suffered for decades. Her point is not that therapy does not work. It is that not all therapy is designed for trauma, and that millions of people, disproportionately women of color, may be in the same position she was in for much of her adult life, working hard at something that was not built for what they actually needed.
