A familiar format, culturally specific language and a tissue-box ending. The therapist shares the thinking behind her carousel.

The rock-paper-scissors carousel made me stop scrolling. The phrases felt familiar: talk to a pastor, drink tea, tough it out. Then came the tissue box. Funny, yes. But what did Roxanne Francis want people to take away once the laugh landed?

Francis, a Pickering, Ontario-based Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist, is the CEO and founder of Francis Psychotherapy & Consulting Services. I asked her about the thinking behind her Instagram post. Her answer was clear: she wanted people to recognise the ways they put support off, and to know that help and healing are possible.

She adapted the format. The details were hers.

Francis is upfront that she didn’t invent the rock-paper-scissors format. She saw similar posts on Instagram, liked the idea and noticed it appearing again. If the format was becoming a trend, she wanted to use it before everyone else did.

That distinction matters. She didn’t claim the original concept. She took a familiar structure and gave it a purpose rooted in her own work and community.

“The words were easy because I literally hear them on repeat,” she told BCC. She hears them from clients, people who call to ask about therapy and people in her community. Rather than reach for a generic list of reasons to delay care, she used language she recognised.

A trend gives you a format. Your experience gives people a reason to care.

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A post shared by Roxanne Francis | Therapist • Keynote Speaker • Therapist Coach (@francispsychotherapy)

The tissue box wasn’t just a punchline

Francis had the “strong Black woman” archetype in mind. She says she wanted people who identify with that expectation to notice the ways they might keep pushing through and wait until crisis before asking for help.

That’s her intended audience, not a claim about every Black woman. The humour helps the carousel catch someone’s attention; the language gives them something specific to recognise. And the tissue-box image changes the tone. A laugh can open the door, but the post doesn’t leave the conversation at “that’s so true.”

“We laugh at a lot of painful things in our community,” Francis said. “I wanted people to know that first of all, it’s OK to cry about the challenges, but that support and healing are available.”

The post also makes room for faith and family traditions. Francis doesn’t frame therapy and religion as competing choices. “They can actually work well together,” she said. Seeking support, in her view, doesn’t mean rejecting your family or culture. But if a family responds to someone’s emotional growth by turning away, she says there may come a point when that person has to choose themselves. That can hurt, too.

The point isn’t that one choice fits everyone. It’s that seeking support needn’t require someone to erase other parts of their life.

She made the images with a clear look in mind

Francis said she prompted AI to create images, then refined the work in Canva. When asked who made the carousel, she answered: “Me, Claude and Canva!” She didn’t specify which tool did which task, so the tools’ individual roles shouldn’t be guessed.

She did describe the creative direction as her own. As a business owner, she has learned to handle parts of content creation herself. That doesn’t mean she never gets help; for this post, she knew the look and feel she wanted and created it herself.

For creators, the useful detail is the decision-making. Tools can help make an idea, but they don’t decide which words will feel recognisable, where a joke should end or what the last image should leave with the audience. Francis made those calls.

“Put it online” isn’t the same as processing it

One slide sets public posting apart from working through a painful experience with appropriate support. Francis says the idea came from thinking about how people share personal struggles online, sometimes in detail, before they’ve had time to process what happened.

Her concern is about care, not a rule that people must be fully healed before they speak. She also acknowledges that sharing with someone can help. The questions are where, with whom and what a person needs from the moment.

Francis put her perspective this way: “If we are going to share publicly (posting) it’s important to share from a healed scar and not a gaping unhealed wound.”

That line is her view, not a standard every person must meet before telling their story. There’s a difference between choosing to post and having a safe, informed conversation with someone who can support you. Creators who share personal material can ask themselves what they want from the post, what details they want to keep private and whether the platform is the right place for that disclosure.

Barriers are not just “excuses”

Behind this conversation sits the wider ecosystem Francis is part of. She founded The Therapists’ Lounge, a Toronto event for therapists that is heading into its sixth year on November 15, 2026. The day focuses on live coaching, practice-building insight and peer connection, with the event’s own framing summed up as community over competition. Private practice can be isolating; the event exists so therapists have a room where that changes. For creators watching this story, it is a reminder that the person making the post also built the room where the professionals behind the content recharge. The connection between content and community runs both ways.

The carousel names reasons people put therapy off. But cost, access, cultural fit and past negative experiences with care are not minor details. They can be genuine barriers. Don’t turn a conversation about seeking support into blame for people who can’t access it.

Francis calls access a systems issue and argues that government has a responsibility to address gaps in universal health care. Therapists alone can’t fix a system-wide problem. At the same time, she says, options may exist: some practices offer low- or no-cost support through supervised interns or students, and some community agencies offer lower-cost services, though wait lists may be long.

Virtual or phone sessions can help with some access challenges. Francis says her practice works to support cultural fit, including through the diversity of its team. Those options are worth asking about, but availability and costs vary. Check directly with a provider or community agency.

And what if someone had a bad experience with a therapist? Francis compares it to uncomfortable shoes: one bad pair may make you more careful about the next one, but it doesn’t have to mean giving up on shoes altogether. She suggests telling a prospective therapist what went wrong before and discussing how the next experience could be different. Fair enough. The person who was hurt should not have to pretend it didn’t happen.

The response backed up her approach

Francis says she shares mental health information regularly, but this post drew an unusually strong response. People told her it resonated, and she noticed reshares from Black mental-health professionals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Caribbean. She did not provide reach, share or save figures, so the response is best described in her terms, not dressed up as a performance claim.

The feedback hasn’t changed her approach. She says her social platforms are for “bite sized pieces of useful information” people may need, especially when therapy is expensive or talking to a stranger feels difficult. The response, she says, tells her she’s on the right track.

That’s the creator lesson. Don’t copy the celebrity. Study the career mechanics. Francis didn’t present a borrowed format as her invention. She adapted it, built it around language she hears and gave the ending more weight than the joke.

What makes someone recognise themselves in a post, and what does the creator hope happens next? The carousel is one answer: start with a familiar format, make the details specific and be clear about the care behind the punchline.

What post made you recognise yourself? Share it in the comments, and suggest other Black Canadian creators for BCC to feature.

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“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” — Coretta Scott King

Sources

• Roxanne Francis, Francis Psychotherapy & Consulting Services
• The Therapists’ Lounge 2026 event page
• Roxanne Francis’s Instagram carousel
• Roxanne M. Francis’s Psychology Today profile
• Interview quotations and responses: written interview with Black Canadian Creators, October 19, 2026.