Thinking about Safety for White Folx
A post-election guide for white people on the left — and beyond Part III
November 15, 2020
It strikes me as particularly difficult to write about meeting our needs for safety in the midst of a global pandemic, during an economic crisis, and while in the middle of an attempted coup.
Nonetheless, we must deal with our safety needs — and reckon with the relativity of our feelings of unsafety — before we can do more work toward racial, economic, and environmental justice.
If we return to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we can see that not only are issues of safety the next most fundamental category of needs, but that the idea of safety is multivalent.
Let’s talk first about the physiology of our felt need for safety. Once our vagal system is fully developed and our cortex is on its way, the next system to finish developing — in either an evolutionary or neurodevelopmental sense — is the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
As the diagram indicates, the parasympathetic portion of the ANS is linked into the vagal system and viscera as well. The parasympathetic portion is what runs your rest and digest functions.
Its slightly more sophisticated partner is the sympathetic nervous system, which is linked into some of your systems for homeostasis, but is also your first fully-developed survival system, because it includes your fight or flight functions.
What the sympathetic system does for you is, when activated, funnel all your blood away from your viscera into your muscles, raises your heart rate, and pumps you full of stress hormones (including adrenaline and cortisol) in order to prepare your body for a short, vigorous survival response. Whether that’s to run, climb a tree, move a rock, throw a weapon, or wrestle a saber-toothed tiger.
This is an adaptive system (meaning helps you survive) as long as the danger is finite, and you are able to use one response or the other (fight or flee). Once the danger has passed, your parasympathetic system steps in to turn off those stress hormones and you then “come back down.”
It becomes maladaptive (i.e. unhelpful) when you are unable to meet one or the other of the criteria above. If you are unable to fight or flee, OR the stressor is not finite, then the survival response of this system is unable to turn off the stress response.
For many in a modern society, the stressors are less concrete and less contained than an attack by a predator. Anxiety about work, income, global instability, March 229th of a pandemic quarantine — all of that is a kind of constant background stress that never has a clear, definitive end. Which means our rest/digest response is never really allowed to step in and turn off the stress hormones.
Living in a constant bath of stress hormones is really not good for our bodies and long term health. For some it will lead to drastic weight loss and feelings of fatigue. For others, the cortisol in their bodies will interpret a chronic stressor as the only thing a pre-urban human would likely encounter as an ongoing crisis: famine. So, your cortisol levels will dutifully help your body survive this famine by storing away calories for future use. So, if you’re a stress eater, or you’re gaining weight eating kale while stressed, thank your body for trying to keep you alive through conditions of drought, scarcity, or natural catastrophe.
The longer we spend in a state of chronic stress, then, the more detrimental the health outcomes. Weight is not the only place we see this, but it tends to be what we can detect outwardly, and we should use that as a signal that we have unaddressed chronic stress internally.
I’m going to address this with respect to trauma below, so for this next section, let’s assume we are discussing chronic stress and anxiety at a sub-trauma level. I am going to address issues in the order of their necessity. If the answer to any of the following questions is “no,” then that is where you need to focus the majority of your time and energy.
Are you food secure? Can you count on there being enough food on the table for everyone in your household to eat enough, for each meal, all month long?
Are you housing secure? Can you count on there being a roof over your head that you can continue to use for the foreseeable future?
Are you physically safe? Are your living arrangements free from violence and/or the threats of it?
Are you emotionally safe? Do you live in an environment that is identity-affirming? Are you able to live as your authentic self without fear of either violence or social judgement?
HOW YOU ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS WILL AFFECT WHAT YOU CAN AND SHOULD DO IN THE WORLD.
If you answered “No” to any of the above questions:
Your first priority is to turn that “no” into a “yes.” Food and housing insecurity are likely conditions of economic insecurity, but the following section about financial stress is a discussion of this stressor under the assumption that there is enough to meet basic needs. That discussion is not for you.
This workbook is not here to tell you that you should work harder, or somehow have been able to achieve this security. Instead, I’m going to suggest that you can focus on meeting your needs as a form of activism. This means that you can both prioritize the activities you need to do in order to secure food and housing and accomplish justice work at the same time. This might mean not feeling guilty that you can’t “do more.” This might mean becoming willing to accept help. This might mean taking a hard look at the systems of economic inequality that lead to the circumstances you are in.
Bear all of that in mind as the series moves forward. There may be sections that don’t apply to you because they are aimed at helping those with more economic and social privilege find ways to intervene in systems that they don’t experience as directly oppressive. You are going to have a different relationship to those systems and therefore must take different actions for your own well being.
If you are still committed to activism that is oriented toward racial justice while working toward your own liberation, I will make this suggestion: find an organization that:
• works in your community,
• is founded and/or led by people of color (preferably womxn of color),
• and which advocates for the same causes which would benefit you.
Then FOLLOW their lead. Become a foot soldier in their army. Or if that metaphor is too militaristic for you, become support staff.
Finally, in future portions of this series that don’t apply to you, just write those off as being “for the privileged people” and keep on keeping on with the cause that is closest to your lived experience of unsafety.
If you were able to answer “Yes” to all of the above questions:
Please recognize that you are privileged. There are many people who could not do that. And the reality is that the folx who cannot say yes to all of the above are going to be disproportionately Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and/or Muslim.
Does this mean that you feel safe and secure? No, probably not. But we have to deal with those feelings of un-security in the context of understanding the suffering and oppression of others. Your nervous system is going to respond to your felt un-security in the same way it would any of the above stressors, so it’s up to you to maintain perspective and calm your nervous system.
And here’s why: so much of the work we — as white folx — need to do involves taking on the work of empathy and de-escalation. We cannot do this work if our nervous systems are in survival mode. We will treat everyone as though they are a threat, and we will respond with either combativeness (fight) or white fragility (flight).
With that in mind, let’s address some of the things that may well be chronic stressors for you:
- Do you experience feelings of scarcity? Do you feel like there’s not enough money or resources to meet your needs or those of your family reliably? Do you stress about being able to maintain your financial burden? Does debt weigh heavily on your psyche?
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If so, there are, of course, practical ways to address these feelings — budgeting, financial advising, minimizing, etc.
But there are also other steps you can take to remove some of the stress around these feelings. These are not meant to minimize the stress you feel or to participate in a kind of “toxic positivity” that asks you to “see the bright side” of whatever. These are, instead, proven cognitive behavioral techniques for dealing specifically with this kind of stress.
A. Remember that everybody suffers. Or, put your suffering in context. This is not an “it could be worse” exercise, so much as it is an empathy and perspective-taking exercise. Which will help you with the second:
B. Practice the cultivation of gratitude. You can literally stop a negative anxiety spiral about all the things you don’t have by pausing to acknowledge one thing you do. It’s almost as if you can’t feel both things at once, so making a point to cultivate gratitude crowds out feelings of anxiety about scarcity.
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None of this is to say that you don’t have real cause for anxiety. It is, rather, to provide a kind of touchstone for when that anxiety threatens to take over your worldview. When that happens, we are not able to look outward at doing work beyond ourselves because the world feels too dangerous and/or hopeless. - Do you experience chronic anxiety over things external to your direct situation? Are you regularly stressed about large-scale issues that feel too big to tackle, like climate change, social unrest, the pandemic, etc.?
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The thing that all the therapists will tell you is this: focus on what is within your control. Everyone cycling or using re-usable bags isn’t going to stop climate change. Overthrowing capitalism will. But, cycling and re-usable bags are things we can control, so they are great steps that we can take for ourselves. We need to remember, however, that they do not change the work that needs to be done — systemic change — but they give us an avenue through which we can manage our anxieties around the bigger thing being too big for our actions to matter.
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Next, we’ll be thinking about what else you can bring into your locus of control that will contribute to the larger issues that concern you. For now, focus on the low-hanging fruit. You might also consider finding an organization, run by non-white people, to which you can contribute on an ongoing basis— even if that’s $5/month — to add one more thing to your locus of control, and to work toward larger change. - Do you have other chronic stressors in your life? (a combative ex, the death of a loved one, single-parenting, etc.)
You are probably not the only one. Find a support group, join a community, discuss it with your therapist, do some research. Do whatever you need to do to focus on what you can control, and let go of (or draw boundaries around) what you can’t.
A note about the moment:
As I write this we may well be in the middle of an attempted coup. It might be a fairly weak and pathetic one, it may be doomed to failure, but this may be the language that is most appropriate to the situation. The current executive is refusing to concede a free and fair election because his ego is too injured at the idea that he lost and he is therefore feeding into the alternative reality in which a very large number of white folx live. This is dangerous. No matter how you slice it, your fears for the situation are warranted.
Once again, focus on what you can control, and then do it. Do you feel like you need to hoard canned goods? Do it. Do you feel like you need to pack a go bag to take to the streets in protest? Do it. Need to buy a gas mask? Arrange a safety plan? Figure out who will care for your kids if you end up in mass protest and/or jail? Plan for it. Whatever your fear moves you to do in this moment is something you should listen to. Not because it’s prophetic, but for two reasons: 1. it soothes your nervous system to do something 2. it prepares your mind for action if that action is necessary. It’s a version of “hope for the best but plan for the worst.” If you don’t take your fears seriously, you have not mentally prepared for what you will do if they come to pass. Do this preparation work. The thing you are afraid of is not impossible. And that voice inside that is telling you that you’re being silly — it’s doing you a disservice. The rest of your body is telling you that there is something to worry about. Listen.
The other major factor in un-safety is that there is a raging, un-checked pandemic tearing through our country at this moment. Unfortunately, all the stress and anxiety you feel about that is well founded. I know you’re exhausted, but now is the time to take stock, again, look at what is within your locus of control, and buckle down to do it.
Play whatever mental trick you need to play on yourself to feel like this is a new phase, but whatever you were doing when you first started to get serious about this pandemic, redouble that effort. Stay home. Have groceries delivered. Wear your mask. Sanitize surfaces. Wash your hands. Get your flu shot.
We are all exhausted by the sheer magnitude of the stress this has placed on our bodies, our families, our institutions. So find ways to meet your needs — attend to them or you won’t be able to sustain the burden this pandemic places on you. Make plans for quarantining. Get explicit about practices within your quarantine bubble. Figure out how to make the holidays special at home. Sacrifice. We must.
Trauma Coda:
I want to end this segment on safety by talking about trauma. This is useful for everyone, but can be activating if you are a trauma survivor, so please take care of yourself in choosing whether or not to read this.
Trauma turns on the fight/flight system and leaves you no way to turn it off and enact the rest/digest system. This makes us hypervigilant (i.e. always on alert, always ready for attack) and it makes us respond disproportionately to perceived threats. This is a normal part of the trauma response, and it results in a feeling of constant and pervasive unsafety.
What this means for you, is that if you’re living through a trauma (which, you might say we all are) you must be attentive to this aspect of your experience and take the necessary steps to stabilize or heal. You will likely need professional help.
If you’re a trauma survivor the same advice applies, but it means that you have a greater chance at healing because you are not trying to manage a trauma as it happens. The earlier and/or the more chronic your trauma, the more deeply engrained it is in your nervous system. Sometimes just doing work to be aware of this can help you to dismantle your reflexive combativeness or defensiveness. This, however, requires both doing your own trauma work, and acknowledging that this is your emotional and physiological landscape, which will affect the kinds of action you can take working toward racial and economic justice. Please make a note.
Finally, a word about ACEs. An ACE is an “adverse childhood experience.” If this is something that interests you I highly recommend the work of Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, The Deepest Well. But the main idea here is about the toll that trauma takes on the body over the course of a lifetime. An ACE is a category of childhood trauma (from food insecurity, abuse, a parent with substance abuse, etc.). These traumas are particularly insidious because children cannot escape the danger, particularly when it resides within their household.
This will affect their development, alter the development of their nervous systems, and will expose them to life long adverse health effects, including greater tendency toward obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer. It also substantially lowers life expectancy.
I want you to read that list again, and see “underlying conditions” that affect particular populations. Being a member of a racially oppressed group in this country is to live through chronic, life-long trauma. Which not only has adverse health effects, but literally makes the pandemic we are living through more deadly for those groups.
We will think more, later, about health justice. For now, let us just make a mental note of how the trauma of oppression compounds the gravity of the public health and constitutional crises we are all living through.
