Inherited Worry? Is that you?
I’m sure you may be familiar with the feelings, the sensations and even the heaviness. You look around and KNOW you are okay but that feeling you can’t shake seems to be indicating otherwise. Is someone coming to harm me? Is something going to happen to my family? Will I wake up tomorrow and everything I’ve worked for just – disappears? This is what I call “inherited worry.” Consider that continuous, unnerved and unsettling feeling isn’t ALL yours. Maybe that’s the worry and fear passed down through generations of our ancestors and elders, now settling upon us.
When I think about my elders, the wisest people within my family – I think about the time that I valued most with them, past and present. Congregating in the living room absorbing the love and humor existing within each soul. Eating our most cherished dishes, those consistently shared and cooked among generations yet evolving each time. Sitting in awe as the stories of our lineage were told, some troubling but most empowering. Those are the memories I cherish.
But! The troubling stories. The stories that your brain wanders back to each time you try to forget. Those are the stories I paid attention to most, scared but still intrigued. These are the stories that informed how I learned to cope, trust and above all – protect myself.
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Perhaps, you are familiar with Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). This term was coined by Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary to help explain the consequences of multigenerational oppression from centuries of chattel slavery and institutionalized racism, and to identify the resulting adaptive survival behaviors. Essentially, PTSS is the notion that the traumatic effects of enslavement have been transferred to successive generations.
Key patterns of behavior to be aware of that are reflective of PTSS:
A vacant esteem.You have feelings of hopelessness, depression, and a general self-destructive outlook.
Marked propensity for anger and violence. Extreme feelings of suspicion and perceived negative motivations of others. Violence against self, property and others, including the members of one’s own group — friends, relatives, or acquaintances.
Racist socialization and (internalized racism).Learned helplessness, literacy deprivation, distorted self-concept, antipathy, or aversion for members of one’s own identified cultural or ethnic group, the mores and customs associated with one’s own identified cultural or ethnic heritage, and the physical characteristics of one’s own identified cultural or ethnic group.
According to Leary, PTSS cannot simply be treated and remedied clinically. Changes in society must take place first by ridding the U.S. of inequality and injustice toward the descendants of enslaved Africans. Maybe we see the impact of societal change during our generation, maybe we don’t. That doesn’t mean we cease opportunities to continue to fight, to persevere and to maximize our voices. As Rupi Kaur wrote,
“I am the product of all the ancestors getting together and deciding these stories need to be told.”
For more information regarding PTSS –
Dr. DeGruy has developed her theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, and published her findings in the book “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing”.
Watch Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary – Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Artwork by: Marietjie Henning
