Body Responses and Intergenerational Trauma
Trigger warning: harassment, abuse, generational trauma, colonial violence.
This is the second part in a series on Colonialism, Racism, and Shadow Work. To read Part 1, please click here. To read Part 3, please click here. To read Part 4, please click here.
In our last discussion, we spoke to racism and colonialism as part of shadow work. This week, I want to speak to the way it sits in our bodies and minds, having been passed down through generations of colonial and colonized bodies. This is intergenerational trauma - trauma transferred down to us from generations past, from our ancestors before us. This trauma sits in the body until it finds healing. This is where collective shadow work comes into play.
In his book “My Grandmother’s Hands”, Resmaa Menakem writes
“Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope, and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee, or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.”
Our bodies are the first line of defense to any stimuli we come across in the world. This means that the body actually reacts to stimuli in the environment before the brain does! When it encounters stimuli in the environment, it starts with one question: “Is this safe or unsafe?”. The below is an overly simplified explanation of this process.
1. When your body asks the question “Is this safe or unsafe?”, it’s actually assessing the stimuli around you as it sends a signal up towards your reptilian brain (your brain stem) and amygdala.
2a. If it is assessed as safe, the message/stimuli can continue to travel ‘upwards’ in your brain, to your limbic system and neo-cortex. The neo-cortex is where you can begin your reasoning and higher thinking about the situation.
2b. If it is assessed as unsafe, the message stops in the brain stem and amygdala, and the body takes over the situation. The body’s goal over millennia has been to try to survive in these unsafe moments. The body holds the line.
3. The body will not send any new stimuli to the limbic system and neo-cortex until it deals with the unsafe threat, and it usually does this through fight, flee, or freeze responses (a number of new body responses are now known, but we’ll focus on the big three for now). This threat might be a stranger harassing you, the fear of embarrassment, or the sound of heavy rain or harsh winds. Whatever the threat, the body keeps score.
4. Fight, flee and freeze are meant to help you deal with the threat, and we may experience stress and anxiety in these unsafe moments. They’re actually reactions to help us respond to the unsafe stimuli in our environments. When the danger is constant, or reoccurs frequently, it can get stuck in the body as the body does not have a chance to process the dangerous stimuli as often as it needs to.
5. Many of these body responses become a part of your shadow - which can come up again in the body when there is triggering stimuli.
Here are two examples of how the above process:
A. Imagine that a few of your ancestors are sitting by a fire eating a meal. They hear rustling in the brush. Now, their senses alert them to this rustling and the message sent up to the brain stem is that this is an UNSAFE moment. Their bodies immediately activate their fight or flight mechanism to respond to this stimuli. They are primed to run away from the threat, or fight it if need be. Their blood is heading towards the limbs they’ll need to use to fight or flee - their arms and legs. That means energy is being diverted from their stomachs and digestion that they were using a second before.
They see a flash of movement behind the brush and realize it’s a leopard! Before it has a chance to pounce, they begin yelling and brandishing fire torches to scare the animal away. They rush the brush with large spears and swords, and chase the animal off by running after it together! The stress hormones in their body that were released get used up as they chase the animal. Once they’re sure it has run off, they begin a slow walk home together. They are able to speak to one another about what just happened and process the moment. They can laugh about it together and engage in camaraderie. Their heart rates decrease. The extra blood that was being pumped to their arms and legs begins cycling through the rest of the body, including their core organs. They arrive back to a fire that is merrily crackling, and an unfinished meal. They are able to sit down knowing that they are safe, and finish their meal in peace.
B. You’re at work, sitting in front of a computer trying to meet a strict deadline by 5 pm. It’s a bit stressful, but that’s okay - you’ve got your headphones in, you’re plugging away at your work, and you’ll be finished soon! At this point, your stress level is helpful in getting things done. At 4:30, your boss comes by, and you can tell they’re irritated. They snap at you, telling you that you’ve got to meet this deadline, and have more work and deadlines to meet by tomorrow. You estimate that the new workload they’ve given you is going to take you more than 8 hours. All of a sudden the speed you were working at doesn’t feel like it’s fast enough. You start to sweat, your stomach tightens, and your shoulders tense. You’re anxious as you can’t stop thinking about the deadlines you have to meet that you don’t have time for. Now you’re overthinking the work tomorrow, and it’s causing you to lose focus on your deadline for 5 pm today. Your boss continues to harass you every 5 minutes or so, slowing down your work. You’re now hunched over your computer, and your breathing is a bit more laboured. Your body does not feel safe, but there’s no way for you to fight, or flee, or freeze. You meet your deadline of 5 pm, but you don’t have time to take a breath or a break. You decide to work two extra hours past 5 to get ahead of the work you’ve been given for tomorrow.
The next day, you come into work on 3 hours of sleep - you stayed up all night thinking about the work deadlines you had to meet (this was your body’s way of staying alert as it felt unsafe). Your shoulders are already tight, and your stomach is tense - you can’t eat or drink much without feeling nauseous. You’re already sweating as you sit down at your desk. The sight of your boss makes you even more anxious. When they come over and tell you that this is your new workload for the next few months, you freeze. You feel like there’s no way out. Over the next few weeks your stress and anxiety stay constant. There’s never an outlet for you because the work is recurring. Over time you develop digestion issues, and stop sleeping well. The tenseness in your shoulders travels further into your neck, and you get constant headaches. Your health suffers because of your work, and your work suffers because of your health. The cycle is continuous.
In scenario A we see the rise and release of stress, and a movement back to rest. In scenario B, we see constant stress and anxiety with no apparent end. How do you think those health issues and stress and anxiety states can pass on to others if the ‘you’ in scenario B had children, or lived in a social group or community that could be affected by your lack of body safety?
This is where the shadow of colonialism and racism come in. Colonizers and colonized people both lived in a time of recurring stress and anxiety. Those who were colonized had to fear for their lives, and for their communities. They could not speak their languages. They could not pray in the way of their people. The threat was constant. Imagine being pregnant during this time - what fears and anxieties would travel to the fetus? How might this manifest after birth?
The story is no different for colonizers, who subconsciously (and consciously) passed their own pain on to others, not realizing that they became what their ancestors had feared. White Europeans carried their own European trauma with them to the places they attempted to colonize. Menakem argues,
“The trauma that now lives in the bodies of so many African Americans did not begin when these bodies first encountered white ones. This trauma can be traced back much farther. Through generation upon generation of white bodies, to medieval Europe.
For America to outgrow the bondage of white-body supremacy, white Americans need to imagine themselves in Black [and brown] bodies and experience what those bodies had to endure. They also need to do the same with the bodies of their own white ancestors. And they need to ask themselves this question: “If we don’t address our ancient historical trauma, what will we pass down to our children, and their children and grandchildren?”...Throughout the United States’s history as a nation, white bodies have colonized, oppressed, brutalized, and murdered Black and Native ones. But well before the United States began, powerful white bodies colonized, oppressed, brutalized, and murdered other, less powerful white ones. The carnage perpetrated on Black and Native Americans in the New World began on the same soil as an adaptation of longstanding white-on-white practices. This brutalization created trauma that has yet to be healed among white bodies today.”
Menekem speaks specifically to Americans, but I believe the same message is needed for all white Europeans, and all BIPOC around the world. In our next section, we’ll look at constant trauma from colonialism, and how the lack of shadow work around colonialism persists in colonial and colonized bodies, especially in folks who purport to disrupt these systems.
Questions for Reflection:
1. What sorts of situations leave your body feeling unsafe? Are these situations recurring, or are you able to use the stress and anxiety in your body and get back to rest and safety?
2. Where do you hold your discomfort in your body?
3. Where are your ancestors from? What colonial trauma did they experience? Were they colonizers, or the colonized?
4. How does it feel for you to acknowledge the trauma of your ancestors? What emotions arise in you when you consider what your people did, or what was done to your people?
