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December 10 - December 25, 2023
But when we encounter people with attributes that are different from “our people,” the brain’s default is to activate the stress response. When that happens, we feel dysregulated, even threatened.
Your brain will sort, compare, and categorize this person. In the beginning, it will use your existing defaults—this is a person with male attributes, this is a person older than I am, this is a person who is a teacher. But the more times you’re with this person, the more chances you have to build new, more nuanced associations. You get to know the facets and complexities of the person, and not simply their “categories.”
At the same time, though, the brain is always using “shortcuts.” And these shortcuts are not always accurate; they make us vulnerable to stereotypes and “isms”—generalizing attributes of people based upon the broad categories they fall into. And the most powerful categories in our brain come from our first experiences, usually in early life. This contributes to our tendencies for bias.
One of the hardest things to grasp about implicit bias and racism is that your beliefs and values do not always drive your behavior. These beliefs and values are stored in the highest, most complex part of your brain—the cortex. But other parts of your brain can make associations—distorted, inaccurate, racist associations. The same person can have very sincere anti-racist beliefs but still have implicit biases that result in racist comments or actions. Understanding sequential processing in the brain is essential to grasping this, as is appreciating the power of developmental experiences to
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Training about trauma, the brain, stress, and distress is essential if you are going to be a first responder—especially a police officer. Anyone given the responsibility of carrying a gun in service of society should have extensive training in these things.
In the U.S., racism is the marginalization and oppression of people of color by systems created by white men to privilege white people. You could say that racism is embedded in the top, “rational” part of your brain, whereas implicit bias involves the distorting “filters” created in lower parts of the brain.
Remember that the cortex is the most malleable, the most changeable part of the brain. Beliefs and values can change.
You need to create real, meaningful relationships so that you get to know individuals based on their unique qualities, not based on categories.
You can’t become culturally sensitive from a three-hour seminar.
We have to think about ways to raise our children with more opportunities to be exposed to the magnificence of human diversity earlier in their lives. And we have to change the inherently biased elements of so many of our systems.
Angry, polarized groups don’t listen well, but they are communicating fear and pain and hunger for change.
colonization intentionally fragments families, community cohesion, and cultures, and that disconnection is at the heart of trauma.
This relational poverty means less buffering capacity when we do experience stress. We are becoming more “sensitized” to anything that feels potentially threatening, such as a person with a different political opinion. Many people are overly reactive to relatively minor challenges.
We all need to get better at listening, regulating, reflecting. This requires the capacity to forgive, to be patient.
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
Part of the challenge of inventing ourselves away from the natural world and our “social” preferences is that doing so stresses the neural systems involved in monitoring the world.
The unpredictability and insecurities of poverty drain the stress-response system’s bandwidth in ways that make “opportunities” to escape poverty extremely difficult to take advantage of.
Our culture is so “advanced,” and we have such wealth, creativity, and productivity—yet the disparities and inequities in all of our systems continue to marginalize, fragment, and undermine community and cultural cohesion.
But being on the bottom of any power differential makes life a lot harder. If you don’t belong to the “in” group, your marginalization can contribute to feelings of not belonging.
As we talked about earlier, the brain is continually scanning the social environment for signals that tell you if you do or don’t belong. When a person gets the signals—many of which are subconscious—that they belong, their stress-response systems quiet down, telling them they’re safe. They feel regulated and rewarded. But when they get cues that they don’t belong, their stress-response systems are activated. And “don’t-belong” cues are our default response to anyone we don’t know, especially if they don’t have the attributes of our familiar group. We view this person as a potential threat.
Activating your stress-response systems, even at a moderate level, for long periods of time is physically and emotionally exhausting.
I sometimes see an almost frenetic attempt to be connected by getting more “friends” or “followers” or “likes.” There is such a powerful pull to belong, to make your clan, but as you say, social media connections are often hollow.
How ironic that the cultures our modern world has marginalized are the very cultures with the wisdom to heal our modern woes.
So back away from “teaching,” “coaching,” and “reasoning” when the child’s state is such that they cannot learn. Focus on being present and regulate yourself when you start to feel frustrated, disrespected, or angry because they have not listened to you. If you step away and calm down, you will have access to your cortex to then remember ways to help regulate the child. Your relationship lives to teach another day.
Self-care is huge. Unfortunately, many people feel some guilt about taking care of themselves; they view self-care as selfish. It’s not selfish—it is essential. Remember, the major tool you have in helping others change—whether you are a parent, teacher, coach, therapist, or friend—is you. Relationships are the currency of change.
I believe it’s hard to understand humankind unless you know a little bit about adversity. Adversity, challenges, disappointment, loss, trauma—all can contribute to the capacity to be broadly empathic, to become wise. Trauma and adversity, in a way, are gifts. What we do with these gifts will differ from person to person.
The wise learn how to carry their burden with grace, often to protect others from the emotional intensity of their pain.
How can our society move toward a more humane, socially just, creative, and productive future without confronting our collective historical trauma? Both trauma experienced and trauma inflicted. If we truly want to understand ourselves, we need to understand our history—our true history. Because the emotional residue of our past follows us.
The core elements are awareness coupled with connectedness. Together, these can create a trauma-informed community.
I made peace with my mother when I stopped comparing her to the mother I wished I had. When I stopped clinging to what should or could have been and turned to what was and what could be.
