Special Guest: Brian Favors is the Co-Founder and Program Director of the Nate Parker Foundation, which merges film, storytelling and culturally responsive educational programming for youth and young adults to combat the crisis facing African and African American communities. The four-part docuseries, 400 Years Later…’free-ish, explores the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Virginia in late August 1619.
There is a quote that we use:
"Genuine healing requires a candid confrontation with our past. If there is to be reconciliation, there must first be truth." - Tim Tyson
"Genuine healing requires a candid confrontation with our past. If there is to be reconciliation, there must first be truth." - Tim Tyson
"Sankofa" tells us that we have to know what happened in the past, if we're to know where we're going in the future.
Clay Cane (today's host; filling-in for Karen):
I feel like we're in such traumatic times. I'm seeing videos. I'm still recovering from "When They See Us" on Netflix. It's traumatic. It's triggering. What are some coping strategies that you might have for people, who are just trying to process where we are?
I feel like we're in such traumatic times. I'm seeing videos. I'm still recovering from "When They See Us" on Netflix. It's traumatic. It's triggering. What are some coping strategies that you might have for people, who are just trying to process where we are?
Special Guest: Dr. Jody Adewale:
Acknowledge that there is trauma there. There is something called "Community Trauma", where you don't have to be the actual victim of the trauma but you feel very similar symptoms to the person who is the victim. So, watching this stuff on TV, hearing the gunshots in your community, it's trauma. Even if you weren't shot, it's trauma. Acknowledging the fact that you are traumatized.
Acknowledge that there is trauma there. There is something called "Community Trauma", where you don't have to be the actual victim of the trauma but you feel very similar symptoms to the person who is the victim. So, watching this stuff on TV, hearing the gunshots in your community, it's trauma. Even if you weren't shot, it's trauma. Acknowledging the fact that you are traumatized.
Another coping skill is, look at your behavior and see how the things that you're not thinking about or talking about, are affecting you. For example, if you're smoking weed all the time, all day, you might be pushing away some of the trauma. If you are avoiding social situations, if you're avoiding going to the movies, those are some signs that you might have some trauma.
Find someone that you trust, someone that you feel comfortable with, and talk about it.
Decrease the avoidance of whatever it is that you're afraid of. One of the coping skills that we call, "Opposite action", is doing the opposite of what your body is actually telling you. In a slow and controlled way.
Another one, that is very common with people with PTSD, especially veterans, is meditation. Not meditation in a sense of sort of a spirituality meditation, but a sitting in your chair, deep breathing, just focusing on the present meditation. It really does help with trauma. Exercise helps a lot too. There's no one coping skill that will work for everybody, most importantly, reach out to someone who is trained in trauma to help you through that process.
Clay: I know a lot of other brothers that would go to therapy, at least the people that I know, if there were other black men in it.
It would be great to see a Black or Latino therapist but if you can't find one, it doesn't mean that a Caucasian or an Asian one can't help you. In African and Latino communities, we're often taught to just deal with it, don't talk about, be strong. To anyone out there looking for a therapist, the strongest point in your life, is when you say, 'I need help'. You might feel like you're weak. You might feel like you've lost it but that is when you let go of the BS. You let go of the constructs of yourself. You get down to 'I need help and I'm going to improve from here'.
Clay:
I didn't know that, the planter elite (the wealthiest plantation owners), for every enslaved person that they lost, they got a check.
I didn't know that, the planter elite (the wealthiest plantation owners), for every enslaved person that they lost, they got a check.
Lurie: They were rewarded for their loss of property.
RSS Feed
