"I just learned a term at a Racial Equity Workshop that I just took: Internalized Racial Depression. When I heard this, it felt like a punch in the gut. It almost brought me to tears because I could never put a finger on my emotional status sometimes. Everything makes sense now." --Tarish Jeghetto Pipkins
Understanding our clients' needs as counselors must include an awareness of how trauma is transmitted across generations, as well as a recognition of the strengths communities have developed as a response to oppression.
Our clients who face discrimination, stereotypes, and distorted representations of their ethnicity in the media, are bringing into therapy not only present day stressors, but also are often living with psychological and emotional consequences of generations of traumatic events. "Psychic legacies," Psychology Today author Dr. Molly Castelloe writes, "are often passed on through unconscious cues or affective messages that flow between child and adult. Sometimes anxiety falls from one generation to the next through stories told." Some patterns of behavior, roles, rules, and values in the family that are passed down may be coping strategies and adaptations to the extreme conditions of slavery. Additionally, as Native American journalist Mary Annette Pember notes, epigenetics is a growing field that suggests trauma is passed in the DNA, as "our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress" in the present. "Trauma experienced by earlier generations" Pember states, "can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to switch on negative responses to stress and trauma."
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary coined the phrase Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) in her book of the same title. She describes the impact on people whose ancestors experienced a lifetime of slavery: "Today people can get treatment for PTSD. I don't remember reading about any counseling centers that were set up for freed slaves after the Civil War. The effects of the trauma were never addressed, nor did the traumas cease. African Americans have continued to experience traumas similar to those of our slave past. " Trauma, she asserts, included the physical and sexual violence and abuse, but also the "assault on their psyches," as people's families were torn apart, their cultural traditions and their native languages were forbidden, and they were subjected to a bombardment of dehumanizing messages. According to Dr. Leary, PTSS presents itself as low self-worth, unresolved rage, and internalized racism.
For counselors, understanding how history shapes our present is of particular importance because our racist past, exemplified by forced sterilizations and the Tuskegee experiments, has made many black people understandably distrustful of receiving health care and they may be more reluctant to seek help from a counselor. We may be able to extrapolate similar mental health vulnerabilities in the indigenous population, generations of whom experienced numerous traumatic events including removal from their land, violence, germ warfare, and the assimilation of American Indian children, who were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in boarding schools whose mission was to "kill the Indian and save the man," by eradicating their native culture and traditions through abuse and indoctrination. The Office of the Surgeon General reported in 2001 that: "Past governmental policies regarding this population have led to mistrust of many government services or care provided by white practitioners. Attempts to eradicate Native culture, including the forced separation of Indian and Native children from parents in order to send them to boarding schools, have been associated with negative mental health consequences." Counselors must see our clients as embedded in larger psycho-histories and create innovative and sensitive solutions to their emotional and psychological needs.
Acknowledging the ways in which communities survived and resisted such overwhelming external circumstances is also crucial piece of countering the low self-worth and internalized racism that is heightened by mainstream historical narratives that relegate contributions by people of color to boxes and sidebars in our textbooks. Uncovering examples of excellence in the arts, culture, academics, science, and a long tradition--not only during the formal Civil Rights Movement--of struggle and organizing, can be used to affirm and validate our clients. Recovering historical memory that highlights the positive and centers the experience of people of color can help inspire a vision of what is possible individually and in communities of care and activism that have preceded us.
Our clients who face discrimination, stereotypes, and distorted representations of their ethnicity in the media, are bringing into therapy not only present day stressors, but also are often living with psychological and emotional consequences of generations of traumatic events. "Psychic legacies," Psychology Today author Dr. Molly Castelloe writes, "are often passed on through unconscious cues or affective messages that flow between child and adult. Sometimes anxiety falls from one generation to the next through stories told." Some patterns of behavior, roles, rules, and values in the family that are passed down may be coping strategies and adaptations to the extreme conditions of slavery. Additionally, as Native American journalist Mary Annette Pember notes, epigenetics is a growing field that suggests trauma is passed in the DNA, as "our genes can carry memories of trauma experienced by our ancestors and can influence how we react to trauma and stress" in the present. "Trauma experienced by earlier generations" Pember states, "can influence the structure of our genes, making them more likely to switch on negative responses to stress and trauma."
Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary coined the phrase Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) in her book of the same title. She describes the impact on people whose ancestors experienced a lifetime of slavery: "Today people can get treatment for PTSD. I don't remember reading about any counseling centers that were set up for freed slaves after the Civil War. The effects of the trauma were never addressed, nor did the traumas cease. African Americans have continued to experience traumas similar to those of our slave past. " Trauma, she asserts, included the physical and sexual violence and abuse, but also the "assault on their psyches," as people's families were torn apart, their cultural traditions and their native languages were forbidden, and they were subjected to a bombardment of dehumanizing messages. According to Dr. Leary, PTSS presents itself as low self-worth, unresolved rage, and internalized racism.
For counselors, understanding how history shapes our present is of particular importance because our racist past, exemplified by forced sterilizations and the Tuskegee experiments, has made many black people understandably distrustful of receiving health care and they may be more reluctant to seek help from a counselor. We may be able to extrapolate similar mental health vulnerabilities in the indigenous population, generations of whom experienced numerous traumatic events including removal from their land, violence, germ warfare, and the assimilation of American Indian children, who were forcibly taken from their homes and placed in boarding schools whose mission was to "kill the Indian and save the man," by eradicating their native culture and traditions through abuse and indoctrination. The Office of the Surgeon General reported in 2001 that: "Past governmental policies regarding this population have led to mistrust of many government services or care provided by white practitioners. Attempts to eradicate Native culture, including the forced separation of Indian and Native children from parents in order to send them to boarding schools, have been associated with negative mental health consequences." Counselors must see our clients as embedded in larger psycho-histories and create innovative and sensitive solutions to their emotional and psychological needs.
Acknowledging the ways in which communities survived and resisted such overwhelming external circumstances is also crucial piece of countering the low self-worth and internalized racism that is heightened by mainstream historical narratives that relegate contributions by people of color to boxes and sidebars in our textbooks. Uncovering examples of excellence in the arts, culture, academics, science, and a long tradition--not only during the formal Civil Rights Movement--of struggle and organizing, can be used to affirm and validate our clients. Recovering historical memory that highlights the positive and centers the experience of people of color can help inspire a vision of what is possible individually and in communities of care and activism that have preceded us.
"It is difficult to meet basic everyday needs when the majority live in a here and now that ignores both past and future." --Mark Burton
References
Burton, M. (2013, April-June) "Liberation psychology: A constructive critical praxis." Estudos de Psicologia Campinas. 30(2): 249-259.
Castelloe, M. (2012, May 28). "How Trauma is Carried Across Generations." Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201205/how-trauma-is-carried-across-generations
Leary, J. D. (2005). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, OR: Uptone Press.
Office of the Surgeon General (US). Center for Mental Health Services (US); National Institute of Mental Health (US). (2001). Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44242/
Pember, M.A. (2015, May 28). "Trauma May be Woven into DNA of Native Americans." Indian Country. Retrieved from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/05/28/trauma-may-be-woven-dna-native-americans-160508
Pember, M.A. (2015, June 19). "When will U.S. Apologize for Boarding School Genocide?" Indian Country. Retrieved from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/06/19/when-will-us-apologize-boarding-school-genocide-160797
Burton, M. (2013, April-June) "Liberation psychology: A constructive critical praxis." Estudos de Psicologia Campinas. 30(2): 249-259.
Castelloe, M. (2012, May 28). "How Trauma is Carried Across Generations." Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201205/how-trauma-is-carried-across-generations
Leary, J. D. (2005). Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, OR: Uptone Press.
Office of the Surgeon General (US). Center for Mental Health Services (US); National Institute of Mental Health (US). (2001). Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK44242/
Pember, M.A. (2015, May 28). "Trauma May be Woven into DNA of Native Americans." Indian Country. Retrieved from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/05/28/trauma-may-be-woven-dna-native-americans-160508
Pember, M.A. (2015, June 19). "When will U.S. Apologize for Boarding School Genocide?" Indian Country. Retrieved from http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/06/19/when-will-us-apologize-boarding-school-genocide-160797