Racial Trauma

When addressing cultural trauma, I look at the cultural and systemic differences in lived experiences and how those lived experiences have impacted the psychological, emotional and spiritual wellness of the client. This might lead to reviewing familial trauma (intergenerational and transgenerational), as well. The overview of the cultural trauma to the self and the impact on relationships and the client’s worldview are also visited.

I used valid and reliable screeners and assessment tools to review the impact of the trauma. This is followed by writing a specific treatment plan that includes using evidenced-base practices such as TF-CBT, Narrative Therapy and Emotional Focused Therapy to address the distress caused by the ongoing first-hand experience of cultural trauma and the vicarious experience of cultural trauma.

A careful analysis of daily emotional armor to ease the impact of systemic and structural racism, marginalization, micro-aggressions, double consciousness and unhealthy striving is carefully examined and humbly discussed to assess behaviors of risk and defense mechanisms that re-enforces the emotional armor. An additional analysis is considered of how the white and black churches have been complicit in cultivating an experience of unhealthy cultural practices.

My work with cultural trauma is informed by some of the scholars in the field, such as Sheila Wise Rowe, Austin Channing Brown, Ibram Kendi, Jonetta Rose Barras and Chanequa Walker- Barnes.

Source: Barras, R. J., (2000). Whatever Happened to Daddy’s Little Girl? Random House Publishing, New York, New York

Source: Brown, A.C. (2018). I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Convergent Books, New York.

Source: Kendi, I. X. (2019). How To Be an Antiracist. Random House Books, New York, New York.

Source: Rowe, S. W. (2020). Healing Racial Trauma. Intervarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

Source: Walker-Barnes, C. (2014). Too Heavy a Yoke: black women and the burden of strength. Cascade Books, Eugene, OR.