2020 has been a challenging year. COVID-19, longstanding racial inequities coming to a head, political divisions, and economic upheaval have collectively fomented into one of the most unique years I have witnessed in this nation across my lifespan. Daily reminders of these experiences figuratively and literally come crashing into our lives, and not a single life has escaped unaltered by these forces.
As a clinical psychologist, I have devoted the last two decades of my life attempting to understand how best to help individuals struggling to overcome various psychosocial challenges. At some point in all our lives we have weathered experiences of prolonged stress with elements of emotional helplessness and powerlessness commingled in varying degrees. The experienced intensity of the stressors, the age and length of time over which they occur, the type of relational resources we have around us during these periods, and our capacity to emotionally access them and experience them in a supportive manner often combine in inexplicable ways to surpass some invisible threshold, leading to an experience of psychological trauma.
Trauma ultimately exists outside the sphere of language and leaves an indelible imprint upon our psyches and bodies, powerfully shaping the unique array of physiological, emotional, behavioral, and relational patterns we then – often reactively and unconsciously – rely upon to “go on being.” In some sense, an adaptation or preservation has then occurred, though these adaptations oftentimes carry a defensive, inhibitive, self-destructive, or emotionally and relationally-destructive fragment within them. Thus, trauma becomes and remains a part of us.
While the current situational factors we are facing might very well have a traumatic impact upon any of us, what I’m more frequently observing in clinical work is how the present forces are, in tandem, serving as psychological triggers evoking or intensifying those unique patterns we historically internalized to weather the earlier storms of our lives: reactive isolation, compulsions, addictions, dissociation, shame, despair, self-hatred, or relational hegemony, to name a few. Thus, 2020 and all that it has ushered in become the grounds for a psychosocial regression and re-traumatization of sorts.
As a practitioner of the art of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, I spend my hours listening in a highly trained way to others: listening to language, thoughts, affect, sensations, experiences, dreams, parapraxis, defenses and resistances, psychosocial patterns layered within systems, experiences of objectification, exploitation, and oppression, and to various historic traumas endured and internalized; listening to what is unverbalized yet still communicated, listening to another’s experience of themselves and those in their lives, listening to their experience of me, listening to my self-experience as I tend to them, all as some further hint to the idiosyncratic nature and complexity of their struggles.
This listening, over a consistent and sustained period of time, informs how I aim to be and intervene in any given therapeutic hour with any individual so as to gradually introduce a sense of psychosocial healing and growth; to help another feel less alone, less anxious, less depressed, less overwhelmed, less painfully reactive, less compulsive, less confused, less afraid, less angry, less hurt, less empty, less numb or detached, less shame-ridden and self-hating. In essence, listening, being, reflecting, and intervening in a way with others so as to gradually help them become more aware of and free from the impact of situational, developmental, and relational traumas in their lives. All of which leads over time to a sense of more – more awareness, more engagement, more validation and security in self-experience, more emotional and relational freedom to choose and to act, more comfort being appropriately vulnerable in the right relationships, more emotionally connected, more hopeful, and a greater capacity to find pleasure and fulfillment in the simple beauties of life…
Typically, when people say *anything* is the new black, they are usually inferring that something has become suddenly popular or fashionable.
Signature prints are the new black.
iPhones are the new black.
And yes, even the color orange is the new black.
But what about antiracist ideology and behavior? In the wake of the tragic murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, and countless others, terminology related to police brutality, institutional racism, and anti-blackness are being introduced to the lexicon of white people. You’ve probably seen an increase in public statements from your favorite brand showing solidarity with the Black community. But, how can we be sure these companies are practicing antiracist behavior behind the scenes as opposed to joining a popular trend?
Antiracism focuses less on who is racist and focuses more on the question of how racism is perpetuated. In practice it may look like readily admitting that you exhibited a racist act or verbalized a racist idea. It may look like challenging policies that perpetuate racist ideologies such as those that led to mass incarceration. Antiracism work can also operate on an individual level as you work to challenge racist ideas that are exhibited by your parents, friends, employer, colleagues, members of your church, and even yourself.
But why is antiracism behavior suddenly popular? Race has always been a prominent feature that readily impacted the livelihood of Black people in the US. Reviewing the history of race relations in the US yields prominent eras including, but not limited to, the transatlantic slave trade, the civil war and reconstruction period, black codes, the civil rights movement, and more recently the black lives matter movement. There have been ample opportunities to denounce racist ideology and enact effective change by those who hold privilege and power. Perhaps we would live in a different society if antiracism work was less of a trend and more ingrained into the fabric of who we are as people.
Given the influx of public statements, performative allyship, and surface-level education it makes me wonder if being antiracist is now suddenly fashionable. And more importantly, will this new fashion trend actually lead to effective change?
So ask yourself: why now?
