When our minds internalize oppressive realities, we can wind up rationalizing our own exploitation. In this episode, you’ll challenge the limits of your mind and question the institutionally-generated chaos that keeps you working against your core self. Credits: Written, created and hosted by Dr. Nicole Truesdell with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies.
Download the workbook to follow along: https://www.bbqplus.org/rage-to-heal. You can also use a pen and paper or your computer to complete the exercises in the series.
CREDITS:
Written, created and hosted by Dr. Nicole Truesdell with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies (BBQ+).
Produced by Ronald Young Jr. of ohitsBigRon studios.
Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
[0:01: Relaxing synthesizer music plays]
[0:15] Nicole: Hello everyone, and welcome back to “Rage to Heal: Finding Our Humanity Through Our Emotions.”
This limited series is produced in partnership with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies.
[0:29] My name is Dr. Nicole Truesdell, and I am a trained anthropologist focused on the project of liberatory humanity through what I call a Black decolonial lens.
[0:40] Now before we go any further, this is Episode 6 of this series, and in order for you to get the most out of these talks, you’ll best be served going in order. So if you haven’t yet, go ahead and start with Episode 1, and meet me back here when you’re done.
For those staying, welcome back! Again, this is Episode 6, The Mind: Where Chaos Resides.
[Relaxing synthesizer music continues and then fades out]
[1:15] Please grab whatever you’re using to take notes. Hopefully you still have it close by – if not, go ahead and pause this episode and grab it. And as always, go at your own pace and take whatever time you need to record your thoughts. You can pause me at any time, I’ll be here.
[1:37] Let's explore the Critics and Champions that reside in our minds using an exercise from Julia Cameron’s “The Artist's Way.”
At the top of the page, write “critics” – C-R-I-T-I-C-S. Then number one to three.
[2:02] List three old enemies – people who made you feel negative about yourself at any time in your life. List next to each one one thing they said or did that is an example.
[2:19] Take a minute to look at what you wrote.
[2:26] What do you feel?
[2:31] What song would embody that feeling? Write that down. This is your Song 7.
[2:43] Draw a line and write the word “champions” – C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N-S. Then number one to three.
[3:00] List three champions in your life – people who made you feel good about yourself. List next to each one of these people one thing they said or did as an example.
[3:18] Take a minute to look at what you wrote.
[3:23] What do you feel?
[3:29] What song would embody that feeling? Write that down. This is your Song 8.
[Relaxing synthesizer music swells and then stops]
[3:49] Chaos is defined as a state of complete disorder or confusion.
[3:54] And chaotic was how I felt as I tried to “make it” the way others had told me making it looked like.
[4:01] The mind really only knows one thing: safety. And for so long I had associated safety with security, and security with a paycheck that was guaranteed to be paid by an institution on a consistent basis.
[4:18] So when I felt in my body things were not right, my mind was able to spin the chaos around me and make it seem like an ordered reality that not only placed me in the role of the fixer, but then had me convinced I wanted to play that role.
[4:38] I was able to rationalize the exploitation I was enduring, justifying it in this weird way because my work was in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which is based on fixing the exploitation myself and others like me were experiencing in these same spaces. It’s a loop that has you always spinning, always in motion, always doing, so that you don’t stop and start to feel.
[5:14] It’s exploitative chaos and it is what whiteness thrives on to maintain power, thus having a hold on how we define and understand our reality.
[5:30] But this is what makes this chaos attractive because it keeps you busy – and in spaces that don’t want you to feel, too much busy is good.
Busy is what gets shit done.
[5:45] But whose shit, and for what purpose?
[5:50] In the spirit of chaos, rest is the enemy, ‘cause rest will have you quiet the mind down enough to ask the questions right for you. Like, who is all this for? Who the hell are you outside all the “supposed to”s? Outside all the labels and titles?
[6:13] Without rest, we become so distracted by the “busy” that even when we’ve supposedly “made it,” we don’t even get to enjoy it, because onto the next.
[6:29] For me, to be human means to be in the right relationship with the land and life around you. When you build institutions on land that is not just stolen but has been violently held under siege via the buildings that comprise these institutions with labor by enslaved people, the soul, the essence of the space will feel dehumanizing because it is.
[6:57] It is literally built into the foundations, so we cannot look to these spaces to either validate or see our humanity. That is not its function. Nor can we look to these spaces as the definers of what humanity is. Instead, let those spaces be a reminder to you of what happens when you give up and give over yourself to institutions rooted in your subjugation and dehumanization. And then operate in the opposite way.
[7:35] We reclaim our humanity by knowing there is more than one way to be human and embodying that. Our humanity is rooted in our rootedness to the land, our ancestors, and one another. But it first starts with a right relationship with Self – an honest relationship with Self that is based on radical truth-telling via love and compassion. Because it is only through truth that one can set themselves free, modeling for others how to be free in the process.
[8:15] After developing asthma, being diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, waking up each day in constant physical pain, and then having a panic attack so severe at work the EMS had to be called, I stopped trying to work within the chaos. I stopped making it my reference point, because I began to really believe what these spaces and people were telling and showing me who they really are. And then I began to move and act accordingly.
[8:47] I realized I don’t want to belong to an institution or to a group of people that I have to conform to by performing the expectations of the identities placed upon me.
[8:58] Instead, I want to belong to me. To show up for me. To love me in a way that is not contingent on my next grant submission or article acceptance or whatever else was projected upon me.
[9:13] Radical self-love is not about self-esteem or confidence. It is about a deep knowing in your body that you are a human being that feels and has connections to others and is complicated and complex, but you are still fully and deeply human.
To love yourself is to love the human.
[Gentle modern piano song starts playing and fades to background]
[9:41] So, free yourselves. Free yourselves from the holds of the institution that will work your ass to death and still demand more.
[9:50] Free yourselves from the lie you have believed in your upbringing or trainings at one point or another that you are only successful, therefore you are only good, therefore you only matter if you jump through all these hoops, suppress all the best parts of yourself, straighten your hair, whiten your teeth, cover your body, or whatever the hell they keep piling on to move the floor so you stay stuck. Always a push to be looking to the future or wallow in your past failures, but never any emphasis on the present. On just being. On being present, in yourself, in your body. In your humanity.
[10:39] Free yourselves of the hold society has on your time. On your sense of time. On your sense of timing in life.
[10:50] This is how we reclaim our humanity: we start to fucking live. And in living we do the thing that the oppressor fears the most: we sit and embody our full humanity that brings our most ancient pasts and our most expansive futures together in a powerful way in the present.
[11:14] And in that present state – in that state of being present – we then feel everything. We feel our body and what it has been telling us for so long but we could not hear or process because we believed the lie that our minds are what define our worth and therefore our humanity.
[11:37] Reclaiming our humanity is about reclaiming our stories. Stories from our pasts, from our bloodline, our communities. The stories we tell about ourselves.
[11:51] In reclaiming our stories, we push back against this chaotic whiteness, bringing our own chaos to the table. And in the meeting of the two, it is the one more grounded in authentic and true self that will prevail.
[12:10] Be true to you.
[Gentle piano music fades out]
[Music of gentle chimes starts playing and then fades to background]
[12:38] Let’s take a moment to check in with your body. How do you feel now after listening to this episode? Write that feeling down.
[12:53] What is a song that embodies that feeling? Write that down too. And if you’ve been recording along from Episode 1, your playlist now should have nine songs.
This concludes Episode 6 on the mind.
[13:11] Join us in Episode 7, when we’ll conclude this series by bringing all the components of the past six episodes together to complete this self study.
‘Til next time.
[Music of gentle chimes fades back in]
[13:35] Rage to Heal was written, created and hosted by me, Dr. Nicole Truesdell, with the support of the Pedagogy Lab at the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies. It was produced by Ronald Young, Jr. of ohitsBigRon studios. Music by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
[Music of gentle chimes fades back out]