Adverse Emotional Weight: How to Drop a Few Pounds

By Angie Harvey

It doesn’t matter who you are. It would be nearly impossible for you to not have gained some weight in 2020.  No, I’m not speaking about the weight from putting food in our mouths and not working out.   I’m speaking of the adverse emotional weight we’ve gained from what we’ve put in our minds.  This adverse emotional weight leads to racial trauma or race-based traumatic stress.  Yes, it’s a real thing and there is likely no person of color who hasn’t contracted it.

Race-Based Traumatic Stress is the mental and emotional injury that is caused when we are exposed to racial bias, discrimination, hate crimes and racist acts and behavior.  In this last year, we have been overly exposed to these things.  Thus, without our permission or even knowledge, we’ve gained a lot of adverse emotional weight and our minds, hearts, and spirits are heavy and traumatized.

I recall watching the beating of Rodney King.  It was horrible to see. and I only watched it once yet it’s an event that I can’t unsee.  Thanks to smart phones we now are more exposed than ever to watching people of color being murdered in their homes, shot dead in the streets, and asphyxiated right before our very eyes.  The videos recorded of the deaths of three unarmed Black people; Breanna Taylor, Ahmaud Abery, and George Floyd sparked a wave of protests.  We’ve demonstrated, marched, and unconsciously gained weight: the emotional weight of trauma.

This exposure, our having to see, hear, live, re-live, and experience racist speech, acts, beliefs, and behaviors, have created a different type of pandemic.  This race-based traumatic stress is real. It’s crippling. It’s deadly. It’s contagious, and there isn’t a vaccine for it.  Nor will there ever be. Not only are we traumatized by racists actions, but to add insult to injury, we’re having to be exposed to the political and social justification and indifference of such injustice from folks who haven’t gained a pound of adverse emotional weight. That reality alone is distressing and disturbing to experience.

Racial Trauma can easily create or worsen many mental health conditions.  Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicidal ideations are just a few of the disorders that can develop or be triggered by racial trauma.  It’s also been proven that race-based traumatic stress is a mental and emotional equivalent to post-traumatic stress disorder.  Thus, we’re also walking around hyper-vigilant, evasive, paranoid and hopeless.  None of these things weigh good on our mental health and wellness.

In order to change or GROW from anything, you have to be willing and able to identify what it is.  I’m hopeful that the information thus far has helped you with that.  It’s highly unlikely that you haven’t been exposed to racial trauma, suffered through the symptoms, and unconsciously infected others.  On any given day we’re talking about protesting, reading, posting, sharing, and living this trauma and with no end in sight.  It has and will continue to spread.

I never want to drop knowledge on you and not leave you with some ways to apply or resolve what you’ve read or heard.  Once you’ve confirmed your weight gain, I’d like to offer you a few ways to lose a little of it.  Unfortunately, these suggestions won’t be enough to grant total weight loss. That can only happen when all forms of racism are eradicated.  However, the following “exercises” can potentially keep you from being triggered into a mental health condition.

• Seek professional counseling
• Get mentally, physically, and spiritually active
• Become a part of the solution and help combat racial injustice
• Find supportive and affirming friends, family and communities that understand racial trauma
• Define and engage in multiple forms of self-care
• Continue or create a spiritual practice that promotes safety and comfort
• Identify triggers and avoid them during times of intense distress
• Limit your exposure to TV, radio, social media, and conversations that can trigger you
• Develop a mindfulness practice or healthy pleasant distraction
• Practice and prepare your responses to racial micro aggressions
• Be able to identify how someone can support you in losing the weight
• Create a plan to prevent any further adverse emotional weight gain

If misery loves company, you’re in great company.  I don’t want this fact to comfort you but to make you aware that we’re experiencing TWO pandemics – not one. I want you empowered enough to use what you can, to achieve a better sense of emotional and mindful healthfulness.   Awareness is going to be the best way to identify that you’ve gained the weight and mental, emotional, spiritual and physical exercise is the only way to lose it. I have no doubt we’re in for the fight of our lives and we’re all GROWING to need to be emotionally fit and not weighted down.

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@ANGIEHARVEYSPEAKS.COM