Historic trauma
has been imposed through structural, institutional, societal, and individual
racism and there is a generational impact it has had on the mental health of
specific populations. All my life I’ve always had a curiosity of the continent
of Africa and the culture of Black/Colored folks that live in the many
different countries. A place where Black/Colored is not the minority. I often
believed that internalized oppression/hatred could not exist where there is
extensive knowledge of your bloodline. What I’ve come to learn and understand
is that the historic psychological trauma that African Americans experience is also
what our African Diaspora brothers and sisters experience. I want to be a vessel to provide tools,
exercises, and examples to what spaces of individual and collective healing can
look like. Healing that is needed for all in a post-Apartheid/Jim Crow era.
Historic Trauma
To understand the impacts of trauma we need to first know the definition of mental health, which is defined as a person’s condition regarding their psychological and emotional well-being. A person’s mental health determines how they live their lives and their physical health. My definition of Historic Trauma (HT) adopted from social work refers to “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, extending over an individual lifespan and across generations, caused by traumatic experiences.” Some symptoms of Historic Trauma include violence and suicide, substance abuse, anger, fear and distrust, loss of sleep, and anxiety.
To understand the impacts of trauma we need to first know the definition of mental health, which is defined as a person’s condition regarding their psychological and emotional well-being. A person’s mental health determines how they live their lives and their physical health. My definition of Historic Trauma (HT) adopted from social work refers to “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding, extending over an individual lifespan and across generations, caused by traumatic experiences.” Some symptoms of Historic Trauma include violence and suicide, substance abuse, anger, fear and distrust, loss of sleep, and anxiety.
When looking
at racial trauma everyone is impacted, whether it is Blacks and Indians or
White folks becoming numb and oblivious to the impacts it has had on people of
color. I’ve read that trauma is remembered in the mind and the body. It’s
passed from generation to generation until there is an intentional effort to
treat these post traumatic stressors. Psychotherapist Dr. Joy DeGruy describes
trauma as an injury caused by an outside usually violent, force, event or
experience. We can experience this injury physically, emotionally,
psychologically, and/or spiritually”.
A most
recent example is the Group Areas Act South Africa passed in the 1950’s. The
purpose of this act was to create a so called “racially segregated Utopia”. Within
urban areas Blacks/Colored’s were to be relocated, forcibly removed, to
racially homogeneous townships. This resulted in suicide by residents and many elders
dying prior to and after the relocations, which many blamed the trauma of
eviction.
Similar in
the US, but now it is described as gentrification. In the US Blacks,
American/Native Alaskan Indians, and other groups were and still are
historically impacted by dislocation, segregation, discrimination, racism, and
even genocide. This has resulted in self-hatred, mistrust of police, mental
health challenges, family stress, and an extensive list for reasons of fear and
anger.
Proposed Solutions
Healing does not happen overnight. It is an individual and collective process, much of a journey and it looks different to each person/community. I’ve read that race based trauma needs mindful isolation, community, discharge of energy, well-being. My intention is to look at different exercises and strategies where these forms of healing for mental, physical, and spiritual self-care practices. By using the space that we create as an example. Potentially incorporating music, writing, movement, meditations, etc.
Healing does not happen overnight. It is an individual and collective process, much of a journey and it looks different to each person/community. I’ve read that race based trauma needs mindful isolation, community, discharge of energy, well-being. My intention is to look at different exercises and strategies where these forms of healing for mental, physical, and spiritual self-care practices. By using the space that we create as an example. Potentially incorporating music, writing, movement, meditations, etc.
Trauma will
continue to be here long after we leave this earth. My hope is to provide,
through experiential learning, ways of self-care and mental health.
References
Trauma and memory:
the impact of apartheid-era forced removals on coloured identity in Cape Town
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (2005)
, Dr. Joy DeGruy
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