Today's episode features Iya Affo, the founder of Heal Historical Trauma Culture Wellness Academy, and the International Historical Trauma Association.
In this episode we discuss:
If you have any questions or comments that you would like addressed in the YouTube series Office Hours with Abbie and Juwan please email ccofficehours@gmail.com
And, as always, please review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know :)
To stay up to date on all of the latest announcements, be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter!
Become a supporter of the show with a monthly subscription (amount of your choice) and get a shoutout in upcoming episodes!
Today's episode features Iya Affo, the founder of Heal Historical Trauma Culture Wellness Academy, and the International Historical Trauma Association.
In this episode we discuss:
If you have any questions or comments that you would like addressed in the YouTube series Office Hours with Abbie and Juwan please email ccofficehours@gmail.com
And, as always, please review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know :)
To stay up to date on all of the latest announcements, be sure to subscribe to the weekly newsletter!
Become a supporter of the show with a monthly subscription (amount of your choice) and get a shoutout in upcoming episodes!
Speaker 0 00:00:01 We are hearing all this talk about self-care. Self-care. Pet the cat, take your sip of water, have a bath. That's cute. But in that moment when I'm about to knock everything off the table, pet the cat doesn't work. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So you've gotta learn how to get yourself before you move into that fight or flight response.
Speaker 1 00:00:28 Please listen carefully.
Speaker 3 00:00:32 Welcome to Critical Conversations. I'm Abby Henson, your host and an assistant professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. This podcast is a space to learn from change makers and experts on racial, social, and criminal legal issues, and to inspire further dialogue with friends, family, and community in order to impact culture and ultimately achieve equity and justice for all. I hope you enjoy being part of these critical conversations. Now let's get into it. Today's guest is IA afo, a historical trauma specialist. IA is an executive board member for the Arizona ACEs Consortium, a member of the Arizona State University Disparities in the Justice System Advisory Board, and an adjunct faculty member at the Trauma Institute International. She is also the founder of Heal Historical Trauma Culture Wellness Academy, and the International Historical Trauma Association. In today's episode, we speak specifically about the teaching she's been doing with police departments on historical trauma and subsequent neurological dysregulation, as well as the importance of engaging in activities that release what IA calls the feel goods as a way to prevent problematic stress responses throughout our days. I really hope that you enjoy this episode, and if you do, I really hope that you leave a review. It's the best way to enhance the growth of this podcast. And if anything comes up that you would like further discussion on, please email cc office hours gmail.com. And don't forget to check out the breakdowns that Juan and I do in our YouTube series, office Hours. The link is found in the show notes. Let's get into it.
Speaker 0 00:02:20 My name is I afo. I really started researching about historical trauma 30 years ago. I come from an African-American family and I grew up in a very Jewish community and I just wonder what happened with black people. What, what happened with my family? Why? Even though gen education goes back four generations in my family and we've always had entrepreneurialism and access and opportunity, why did I still see so many struggling family members And why if, when I look at my friends who I grew up with, they have the Jewish Holocaust, we had the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Their families were, were just like more intact. And you know, like they had Hebrew school and they knew language Yiddish. We would, you know, speak Yiddish in their houses. And they just had all of these connections that we didn't have. And I just kept wondering, even though I also see pain in their families and I see suffering and sadness, I just saw something in my community that really probed me to have a better understanding of, you know, what was happening.
Speaker 0 00:03:44 And then I got pregnant with my first son and it scared me to death. Mm. I cried when I found out it was a boy. Mm. Cause it's like, how am I gonna raise this black child in America? What am I gonna do? Am I, and I mean, my oldest son is turning 30 this year. And so even we hear all the time now about the shooting in the back and all those things, you know, all the police things. But even 30 years ago, it was like, what am I gonna do? So that really propelled me into the work. So I've been studying and anywhere I can for the past 20 years and speaking about this work probably for the past 15 or so, historical trauma. It's just my life. It's, it's, you know, I'm passionate about it. It drives me.
Speaker 3 00:04:36 Can you dive into a little bit more how you just define and identify historical
Speaker 0 00:04:42 Trauma? You know, trauma, we use the word trauma so often, and I always feel like it's kind of misused cuz we don't quite understand the definition of trauma. And I really look at trauma as anything that overwhelms my physiological systems capacity to cope. So not necessarily the fire that burned my house down or, you know what I'm saying? Like, not necessarily these big events, not necessarily a single event, but anything that happens that just overwhelms my capacity to cope. Because trauma really is about what happens to our nervous system in different scenarios because it's because of the nervous system's reaction that will have negative, emotional, behavioral, psychological, and even physical health outcomes. It's because of what's happening with the neurological system that we end up with. These issues in term of historical trauma, collective trauma and intergenerational trauma are all referring to the same phenomena.
Speaker 0 00:05:56 We're just looking at that phenomenon from a different perspective. So historical trauma, we're looking at it right from the perspective of something that's happened in the past that overwhelms someone's capacity to cope. Collective trauma is referring to the fact that because we are part of a collective, we are impacted by certain situations that happen. So for instance, covid 19, whether you've had covid, whether anybody in your family's had covid, you're impacted by it because you're part of the collective known as human being. And intergenerational trauma is referring to the fact that this thing that's happened, right? That's exceeded a person's capacity to cope, can be transmitted from one generation to the neck, one environmentally. Because we change what we do, we change culturally based on things that happen that impact the collective, but also we have a change in the epigenome of the D n a mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So the idea is that the genetic code doesn't change. The genetic information does not change, but how and when and if that genetic information is released does change based on the environment.
Speaker 3 00:07:29 Right? So I think a lot of people don't realize that events can actually change our D N A and then that gets passed on. So one of the things that you talk about and what you practice is assisting and supporting individuals healing their historical trauma. And one of the questions that I always wonder is whether the process of healing can ever be complete or if it's an endless and ongoing practice. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about the process of supporting someone healing specifically their historical trauma.
Speaker 0 00:08:12 First, let's say that even when we have gone through generations of things that have impacted our physiology, things that we're calling traumas, we grow in the face of adversity, right? Adversity is painful and it's difficult and, um, it's hard to overcome. But we must have adversity in order to grow, evolve, and transform. We are not feeling like adversity is al is al always horrible, right? So we've had all these things for the last generation, which has made us stronger, which has made us wiser, which has made us able to withstand and, and persevere. So what we're looking to establish is how do we become more resilient, right? How do we have, and I like to term it this way because we really can never say that people are not resilient. Cause we are, we're still here. How can we help people have a full expression of resilience?
Speaker 0 00:09:25 Not just we're here in surviving, but what is our quality of life? What is our mental health, behavioral health, physical health? One of the first things that we do is that we must be in relationship. We must improve our relationships. Most trauma happens in relationships. So we heal trauma through relationships. And just like trauma can be passed from one generation to another, so can love and benevolence and hope and perseverance, all of those things also can go generation to generation for up to 14 generations according to the cherry blossom study. So what are looking at, number one is relationship, relationship, relationship. What's more powerful? Your history of connectedness is a better predictor than your, of your health outcome, than your history of adversity. Hmm. So it really is all about connection. So at the top of the list, I say we increase our relationships, we work on healing, familial relationships, family structure, um, our relationships with one another, our relationships with Mother Earth, right?
Speaker 0 00:10:49 Because that's an attachment, that's an, that's a relationship. And I will say while we're on the same path, because it really goes hand in hand, right? If we wanna look at issues of climate and the, the climate crisis, we can look at that parallel with our issues of oppression and racism and historical trauma. Because it requires the same mindset. We know fossil fuels are dirty. We can never prioritize our capitalism growth and expansion safely with fossil fuels, right? We know this. So we know that if we're using fossil fuels, we must not have a relationship with Mother Earth because we know that we're helping to destroy mother earth mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And at the same time, we can't use fossil fuel and not oppress or other, some group because somebody is going to live among the toxicity that we create with fossil fuel. These are two issues, one and of itself. So we must solve the issue of culture that we're having, which is we've divorced ourselves of relationship with one another and we've divorced ourselves with relationship to the earth. And this is why we can have both of these crises happening parallel.
Speaker 3 00:12:18 I'm so glad that you brought up the relational aspect because I think relational is also a level of systemic. And so I think one of the critiques that I've engaged in with numerous people about this idea of resilience is that to some degree, in some settings by some people, it can perpetuate this kind of personal responsibility narrative without actually giving critique to the systems and structures that force resilience upon someone.
Speaker 0 00:12:49 Right?
Speaker 3 00:12:50 So in practice, what does it look like to engage in a process of healing relationally?
Speaker 0 00:12:58 So we work with one another and try to increase our, our relational network, number one. Okay? Number two, we have to work on our neurological regulation because that's at the heart of a lot of the issue. Because what happens is when we go through an experience that threatens us, we activate the flight or fight response in our brain, our sympathetic nervous system gets activated. When that gets activated, it causes a release of the stress hormone hormones in our system. Right? Noad, adrenaline, adrenaline, cortisol. When we have high level of no adrenaline, adrenaline and cortisol, we're going to have certain behaviors, right? We're gonna become aggressive, we're gonna become hostile, we're gonna become controlling, we're gonna become threatening. We are not going to have good reasoning. We're not going to inhibit impulsive behaviors. We're not gonna be able to do any of that. Because when we activate the sympathetic nervous system, i e the fight or flight response, we are utilizing the brainstem, which is the most primitive part of the brain, and it's meant for survival.
Speaker 0 00:14:17 So if we consistently live in this neurological dysregulation, we stay in survival brain and we don't have access to the part of the brain that we need in order to think and reason and do complicated things. So we must understand the physiology, right? What's happening in the body, and then how does my body feel when I'm about to enter that fight or flight response? Because the nervous system controls how we think, how we emote, how we relate. So if I'm always in that fight or flight response, the way I do those things is going to be altered. So we have to figure out how does my body feel when I'm going to enter into that fight or flight response. Because that's the point at which we can use coping tools to impact our neurobiology, which therefore is going to impact our behavior and our overall health. So it, it becomes learning the body and controlling the neurobiology. We're hearing all this talk about self-care, self-care, pet the cat, take a sip of water, have a bath, right? That's cute. But in that moment when I'm about to knock everything off the table, pet the cat doesn't work. Wait. So you've gotta learn how to get yourself before you move into that fight or flight response.
Speaker 3 00:15:55 So I engaged in a research study where I was interviewing black fathers and looking at their relationship to the police. And one of the things that I observed through their interviews is that their parents, their grandparents taught them that when you engage with police, you personally have to regulate your behaviors and emotions so that you don't spike the stress and the trauma and all that in the police in order to somehow manipulate or attempt to manipulate the outcome. And then those fathers who I was interviewing, right, this is the message they got passed, are now passing that to their, so there's this kind of intergenerational messaging about regulation of emotion and behavior within a system that we're now understanding more about of like, there's that resilience piece. And now let's think about the racism and structures of the carceral system and why that is forcing these individuals to have to regulate in these ways.
Speaker 0 00:17:10 Exactly. That's exactly the thing, right? And we don't know the terminology for it, right? We're not talk, we don't know to talk about it in the sense of, of neurology, right? But we do know because out of survival, we all right, all black mothers or black fathers, if, if they're, you know, participating, but all of us, all of us black mothers, and I'm, I raised all black sons, all of my children are males. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so it is always, you don't go outside with your hood on at night. You don't, you can, as a matter of fact, you can never wear a hoodie. A hoodie is not for you. You can wear a hoodie if the hood is on your back. You can never wear, wear a hoodie with it on your head. And this is before the, the tragedy of the Trayvon Martin.
Speaker 0 00:17:54 Right? This is 30 years worth of this. And you have to control, you have to try to control that dynamic Exactly as you say. And as mothers, you know, that's what we teach our children. And it is in fact talking about the neurology because the policeman also has that fight or flight response, the police. Because now, and, and let's think it through, we've got the media that influences, you know, what we all think and how we perceive people. And so maybe we have police that don't have any interaction with black people. Maybe they don't even, you know, they've never had a friend that's black, maybe they don't ever interact with anybody, you know, that's bipo from a bipo community. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, all they know is what they've seen on tv. Exactly. Right. All they know is what the media shows them. And so as soon as they encounter these iPOC people already, they move into fight or flight response. So now they're having these interactions while in fight or flight response, and they too cannot reason properly, don't have good self-reflection, are not able to inhibit impulsive behavior. All of that also goes for what's happening on, on, on the police side.
Speaker 3 00:19:13 Right. A lot of your work recently at least, has been working to heal the historical trauma or to do these workshops on healing historical trauma with police departments Yes. Here in Arizona. And so I'm wondering if you can speak to how you thought to get into that work, how that's been and what that looks like.
Speaker 0 00:19:37 I'm gonna be fully transparent. Um, I live in the, in the city of Gilbert, people ask me, how can you live in Gilbert? Right? There's really, you know, I mean maybe 3% black people, and I think that's generous, you know what I mean? Like, it might be 1%. For many years you would never see a black person walking around Gilbert. Now we see black people and we're excited, like, oh my goodness, look, there's a black person. You know, because that's how it's, but I purposely live here because of the police culture. Hmm. I moved to this city because I felt like they're not gonna shoot my sons in the back. Hmm. The culture of that police department. I'm not gonna say there's no racism. I'm not gonna say any of that. But what I'm saying is that culture of that department for many years has not been aggressive in that way toward African-American people.
Speaker 0 00:20:32 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so every time I have an interaction with a police officer for years, I would write a letter, you know, and it was a positive interaction. I would write a letter about that officer and have it put in his file because I wanted it to be that they understood that the way you handled me and the way we interacted felt safe for me. Please do more of that. So I've done that for years and years. When we had the murder of George Floyd, it opened the window to start saying hello, it might be time that we work on, you know, it was that collision of Covid 19 and George Floyd and black people saying, enough is enough, and, you know, wanting to burn the country down. And it opened up a window. And I sent, um, an email to the chief of police in Gilbert and I said, here's something that I think could help our community.
Speaker 0 00:21:33 I sent a video of me doing some work. One thing led to another. He invited me to be a part of this community organization that he has that follows racial issues in the city. We built more of a relationship, built more of a relationship, and then he asked me to go ahead and train the entire police department. So 500 people, 13 commanders, 500 people in total. That's how much he believed in the work. And then people start, you know, I, i, I just, more and more people just started reaching out, you know, more and more starting to understand that it's not just about d e I work, right? It's not just about inclusion and equity. It is about what's happening neurologically, what's going on on both sides. Do you understand that? Because of the history of my people interacting with p people of authority and police, I'm scared.
Speaker 0 00:22:31 I don't do anything illegal. I'm a whole grandmother, right? Like, I'm driving along a whole grandma and if I see the blue and red, I move into fight or flight response and I have to work with myself. But you didn't do anything wrong. It's okay. It would just be a ticket if you did something wrong. It's just a ticket. You have insurance, you have a driver, you know, this is the process I'm going through because there's been so much violence within the community that even if you're not guilty, you're afraid. And then what's that gonna do to me? Put me in a fight or flight response and now I'm gonna have inappropriate interaction and then what happens next? Right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, because the other part of that fight or flight, we talked about fight, but we didn't talk about flight. Right? The person that sees the, the blue and red, and maybe they're not even wrong and they just take off mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we're wired to do that. We're wired for survival if we feel threatened. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So some of the behaviors are very driven by what's going on neurologically.
Speaker 3 00:23:40 The intent of these trainings is to heighten awareness. I'm currently working on a project interviewing police officers. And all of my work prior to this has been with community and specifically marginalized and minoritized communities, looking at how the carceral systems impact their lives. And so this is a very different kind of study. One of the things that I am running into is that many of the officers that I encounter, even if they're from that neighborhood, they grow up in that neighborhood, even if they currently live in that neighborhood, and have a deep awareness of the issues that their community members are going through, what they are tasked to do, what we as a society deem criminal, and who we as society deem threatening inherently disproportionately impacts people of color. I am curious how you see this heightened awareness as a means to potentially decrease disparities in criminalization or decrease the potential for problematic outcomes other than kind of waking people up to this awareness. Is there a deeper intent or intended outcome that you hope to see?
Speaker 0 00:25:13 I don't ever really dream of policy change at this point, or that it's, there's going to be something that changes in the disparity. I don't know that piece. What I do know is we talk a lot about the slave trade and, you know, all of this history. And most people say, why are we still talking about slavery? Why are we still talking about Native American genocide? Why are we still talking about colonization in the Latino community when this happened so long ago and we've changed the, the laws and you have a right to do this and you can do that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And so one of the things is we can't go based on how somebody feels, right? Like, how do you think that makes somebody feel? Or they have this behavior because of something that happened 500 years ago.
Speaker 0 00:26:15 Most people can't bridge that gap. That's just not gonna happen. If we talk about neurobiology and we talk about science and we talk about what we know from studies, people can get, oh my goodness, if I as a human being, if I am experiencing this, that's gonna be my behavior because science says so. And that's how neurology works. People usually can bridge that. People are, are able to start to make that connection in making that connection. My hope is when that police officer encounters that bipo person or any human being and registers, am I in fight or flight response? How do I move forward? You know, where am I, am I thinking clearly before I pick the gun up and pull that trigger before I pistol whip somebody before I sit with my knee on their neck? Mm-hmm. <affirmative> be cognizant of the fact that this is what's going on with you neurologically.
Speaker 0 00:27:30 Now maybe it can even extend, and I think potentially with the right training it can, and the willingness of the person for sure, right? I'm encountering this person. They are feeling threatened in this moment. I need to try to recognize what behaviors are because they're in fight or flight response versus is this person a danger? And I need to take these aggressive steps to protect myself and apprehend them. Wisconsin is the first trauma informed state in, in the country. They have adopted ways in all of their municipalities to work in a trauma informed way, right? So that they're not constantly re-traumatizing people in the community. Just like we have the Menominee tribe that are also a tribe that are, you know, in Wisconsin. And they too have become a trauma informed tribe so that they're not constantly retraumatizing community members. And we see great numbers when stuff like that happens.
Speaker 0 00:28:52 We, we see great outcome in these communities. What kind of outcomes? Less violence between, with inmates that are serving time. We see a decrease in pregnancy for young girls. We see, um, fewer, I think the Menominee tribe was down to zero expulsions from school. So we start to see very good outcomes when we employ some of these trauma informed practices mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and so that's what I'm, I'm hoping to see so that we start to, you know, get to an understanding that we need to be dealing in a trauma informed way, and we are going to start seeing changes in our community when we stop re-traumatizing people and people can feel safe and stop having behavior that's in alignment with feeling unsafe.
Speaker 3 00:29:46 I'm sure that there are some people who hear trauma and roll their eyes or feel like it's always the same people talking about trauma and why can't they just pull themselves up? And one of the things that I find in the interviews with police officers is that almost all of 'em admit to having trauma or being officially diagnosed with P T S D. Right? And it exhibits in their vigilance outside of their work. They speak to the fact that they can't sit with their back to a door. They're always looking at people's hands. They're carrying their gun with them everywhere. And it was interesting because this is a lot of overlap that I hear with the men that I've interviewed from the communities. The idea of trauma-informed care is not just to, in the eyes of some people placate certain communities. It's everyone. It's everyone.
Speaker 3 00:30:55 And so I, I feel very hopeful about the fact that you've encountered departments that are so willing and so excited at the prospect of waking people up. Because I, I had a conversation with a mentor of mine Yes. Or Payne, who's at University of Delaware. And we were kind of talking about how just kind of like everything is functioning as it's intended to, and kind of feeling like a lot of dismay about the potential of change as you kind of described this lack of hope for policy change. So then, you know, my response at the end was like, well, why are we doing this then? Like, what is our intention? And he was like, all you have to do is just wake one person up, just wake one person up to the reality of these situations, to all of the trauma, to the inequality. All of these things. Just, if you can wake one person up throughout your life, you've done something good. And it seems like the work that you're doing is on a mass awakening.
Speaker 0 00:32:10 Yeah. I, and I am just a person that has to stay optimistic. You know, I don't look at everything from the perspective of being broken in disease. I look at what's positive, what's there, and how can we build on that. You know, it's fun for the public. It's scary for the public that a lot of our officers have P T S D. Right. And a and, and a lot of officers get hired when they come back from war. And frankly, we don't do a very good job of de debriefing people when they come back from war. And in fact, our mental health and our behavioral health system is failing everybody all over the country. Right? So all over the world, our western way of mental health and behavioral health is failing. But the fact that we can be in a position of getting people to recognize what they are dealing with themselves, right?
Speaker 0 00:33:10 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if an officer has P T S D and can recognize that they have P T S D, then they know darn good and well that they have certain behaviors. And if we start talking about, and this is what your body is doing, this is what your, your physiology is doing in this moment. This is what's going on with you neurologically. It's hard then to deny what your interactions with someone else might be while you're in that uniform and doing your job. And it's hard for you to deny what the person you're dealing with, with whatever their mental health, behavioral health, neurological regulation is in the moment that they're interacting with you. Um, I, I, I think that too gives us some hope when we have people that can recognize and look at where they are within themselves and what they're dealing with.
Speaker 3 00:34:05 Yeah. Have you experienced people pushing back against anything that you're trying to open their eyes to?
Speaker 0 00:34:12 To be honest with you, I don't experience pushback when I talk about neurology before I evolved to where I am now. Right. And I would talk only from a cultural perspective because I would teach historical trauma and how to heal historical trauma and the vision of historical trauma from a cultural perspective, I would have pushback. But when I brought the science and I integrated that adverse childhood experiences and trauma science with the cultural pieces and an understanding of historical trauma, I really have not been getting a lot of pushback. It's very rare that there's not a good response. There's a usually, you know, an aha for people.
Speaker 3 00:35:06 Yeah. So just to give our listeners some background, the adverse childhood experiences was really brought to the forefront by Dr. Nadine Harris. And it was this idea that there's basically an eight point scale and there are different childhood experiences such as being abused, being housing insecure, uh, having a parent who was incarcerated or absent, experiencing divorce. Uh, all of these different childhood experiences that are labeled as adverse. And what we find is that if certain individuals score a certain amount or higher, we see an increased likelihood of incarceration. We see a decreased academic success, we see all these outcomes and it's, it's science-based. And these are Dr. Nadian Harris is a, a medical doctor. And so these were brought as public health issues, not simply cultural issues or social issues. I think it's so great that you're bringing that in too, to kind of contextualize and understand how not only does this impact that one child, but it also is relational and intergenerational. Right. These are experiences that they're having because of the relationships or lack of relationships that they're having throughout their life.
Speaker 0 00:36:32 And what we know is the original adverse childhood experiences study, which was done in the nineties, had 17,300 participants. 75% of were Caucasian, 39% had college education, 36% had some level of college. All of them had good jobs, great health insurance. And two thirds of that population experienced at least one adversity in childhood. And 87% of those people experienced at least two or more. So what we know is this is not a special thing for iPOC communities. Socioeconomics has nothing to do with this cuz this is certainly middle America. And that first study happened in San Diego, California. And the median age of the person was age 57. So we were talking about, you know, a certain demographic and I, ideal demographic we can say. And of that ideal demographic, two-thirds of that population had something in their childhood that is impacting their emotional, psychological, behavioral, and physical health outcomes. As an adult,
Speaker 3 00:37:59 Since we're kind of alluding to the fact that we've all experienced some level of trauma in our lives and we all need some A healing, but also b, some awareness of our behaviors and our reactions and our responses. Can you give a quick tip, essentially to listeners on what maybe the first step or something helpful that you share through your trainings on what can be something that they can do to address their own trauma or to spark or continue their own process of healing?
Speaker 0 00:38:42 Yeah. This is my favorite part of the whole thing. I love this because we need to be empowered to be self-healing communities. We cannot have to rely on outside providers or rely on health insurance that's gonna help us be able to see a therapist or have the funds to be able to pay for therapy. We can't have to rely on that because we know that most people don't have access to good health insurance. And even if you do, there's out-of-pocket costs. There's things that become too much for us to bear. So here's how we can control our own healing. Let's think about things in terms of bandwidth. Okay? When you go through trauma, when you have difficulties happening in your life, it decreases your tolerance, it decreases your bandwidth. If I am a black mother that is raising all black sons and George Floyd has just been murdered and every other day now I'm seeing other murders and I'm in the middle of the pandemic and my job is being threatened, right?
Speaker 0 00:39:50 All of this intersectionality decreases our window of tolerance. It keeps us with higher levels of stress hormones in our system. I have to have a way of managing that so I can increase my bandwidth and open up that window of tolerance so that I don't have behaviors that I don't wanna have. I e too many cupcakes, drinking drugs, smoking too much sex, that type of thing. When you do certain activities, you will activate the pleasure center of the brain. And when the pleasure center of the brain gets activated, you'll have a release of hormones like dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin. Those are things that help you to feel safe and regulated. If you have a lot of the feel good hormones that I just named in your system, you're going to feel safe, you're going to feel pleasure, you're going to feel happy, you're going to feel regulated.
Speaker 0 00:41:00 Mm-hmm. We can control having the pleasure center activated and having those hormones released. For example, if we have behaviors that are in alignment with our value system, if somebody believes in church and this is in alignment with their value system and they go to church every Sunday, every time they go to church, every time they read their Bible, every time they go to Bible study, every time they do something that's in alignment with that belief, it's gonna activate the pleasure center of their brain. They're going to have a release of those feel goods. Mm-hmm. If we have positive human interactions, the more positive interactions we have with human beings, the more the pleasure center of our brain gets activated and we have a release of those feelgood hormones. So how do we increase our relationships? How do we spend more time with friends and family to have those positive interactions?
Speaker 0 00:42:00 Because then we have more of the feel good hormones released into our system. If we increase all of those things in our day-to-day lives, we are giving ourself a head start against that adversity and giving ourselves an opportunity to change some of the behaviors that we don't really like to have. So for me, when I get stressed really bad, I drive to the cupcake shop right here in Cubert and I get three cupcakes and it's a problem. And I really don't wanna have that behavior, but that's my neural pathway for when I'm stressed out. Right. That's the default thing that my brain says, I get stressed. The brain says, oh boy, go over there and get cupcakes. Right? And, and that's what we do. Right? Some people smoke a cigarette, some people go and vape. It's something that you wanna change. Then you have to get yourself regulated and then learn to make different decisions.
Speaker 0 00:43:02 In the morning, I wake up at 4:00 AM because I, I identify as an African tribal woman and as a spiritual African woman, I need to wake up before the sun comes up. So every day I wake up at 4:00 AM I activate that pleasure center of my brain. I go to the gym every day at five and at the gym I have friends that I love. There's women there that are fantastic. I love to play with them. I love to party with them. We have a great time. Mm-hmm. So I, I get to the gym and now I'm having my positive interactions, pleasure center activated again. I then there's music that plays and I love the music once again, pleasure center, dopamine, all those things activated I box and kickbox. Right. That's the exercise we're doing. That's very rhythmic hitting the back. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, again, pleasure center activated hormones released.
Speaker 0 00:43:55 I drive home and I listen to one of my goofy neurology podcast because I'm a neurology freak mm-hmm. <affirmative> and I'm learning something new. And every time we learn something new, it activates the pleasure center of the brain. And we have a release of those hormones that make us feel good. So before eight o'clock hits and the first idiot gets on my nerves, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I had done several things. So now I have a lot of the feel good hormones floating in my system. Mm. So now, as soon as I get that first aggravating email or that first aggravating call, I'm, I'm more regulated. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Cause I've been able to calm myself down because of the release of the good hormones in my body. And then I continue to practice this throughout the day. And then what I find is I feel stressed, but I say, oh boy, I feel stressed, but I can change my course.
Speaker 0 00:44:59 Right. I feel stressed. Okay, let me go do meditation for a few minutes and calm myself down. Oh, I feel stressed. Okay, let me go sit down by myself and do some breaths. I'm not at the level of the Hulk where I'm headed over to the store. Right. And before I can think about it, I'm down to cupcakes, <laugh>. Cause I'm learning to change that neural pathway by practicing behavior that I want to have. We have control over this, this is free. Continue to practice that throughout the day and change the behaviors that we don't wanna have or control the anxiety that's debilitating for us.
Speaker 3 00:45:47 Yeah. It makes so much sense. Essentially just increase joy. So that as a prevention method.
Speaker 0 00:45:55 As a prevention, right. That's
Speaker 3 00:45:57 Right. Our stress response is only exacerbated if we're already in a heightened or even in a neutral space. It has more ability to take over because there's less feel goods, as you call it, floating around to combat. That's a really good point. And it's so simple, but the way that you just laid it out is, is really, yeah. It just, it's great
Speaker 0 00:46:22 <laugh>. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. And, and I love that and, and it works for me. I'm a person that is always dealing with, with stress. I have a lot of stress. I have a lot of fear. I, I struggle with my anxiety, I struggle with, you know, wanting to withdraw and, and all of those things. But if I'm on top of those pieces of my life, it all becomes manageable and slowly I'm changing the behaviors that I don't like in myself. And we all have the possibility to do that.
Speaker 3 00:46:55 Yeah. I think one of the key points you're saying is it's something you want to change. Because I think some people do get, feel goods from engaging physically with people and do get, feel goods from smoking marijuana and don't necessarily feel like those actions are a detriment to their lives. And if anything, they think it's positive. So I think it's just finding the thing that works for you, that helps you and that makes you feel connected, that makes you feel good and doesn't contribute or exacerbate when you find yourself in a stressful situation.
Speaker 0 00:47:32 Absolutely. And it's all individual and personal. Right. It's not for me to decide what anyone else's behavior needs to be. Right. I only control me and my behavior.
Speaker 3 00:47:43 I, I wanted to hit on one thing before we end. And it's this idea, and I'm not sure if you raise it too, but I teach a victimology class mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And one of the things that we talk about is post-traumatic growth. And it's exactly what you're talking about in terms of the need for adversity to be connected to people, to see yourself as strong too. And it doesn't negate the stress or disorder that stems from trauma, but it also acknowledges the growth. And so I think that that's a really awesome framework that you're taking as well.
Speaker 0 00:48:18 And I, I think we have to, you know, sometimes as American people especially, we believe we have the right to comfort all the time. So we feel that everything is supposed to be comfortable. It's not a knock on us. We just live in a society where just have a lot of opportunity and a lot of things at our disposal. You know, many of us and, and a lot of ability to be comfortable. And so we think we're supposed to be comfortable all the time, but we don't grow in comfort when we are comfortable. We're getting the rest right. And we we're able to take a breath for a minute, we relax, but soon enough we're gonna have that next challenging piece. Cause the whole idea is for growth and transformation. Right. So it doesn't need to be comfortable all the time. We, we welcome adversity.
Speaker 0 00:49:11 Cause every time we go through another adversity, we start to get practice knowing, don't worry, I have experience overcoming this. It'll be okay, this just is for a season. Right. This too shall pass. You know, all of those, you know, terms, all, all, all of those sayings become relevant when we have the experience of overcoming. But if we never have the experience of interacting with adversity and overcoming, we don't get a chance to learn and to grow. And when it does come, we're knocked on our butt and we're devastated because we don't have any experience in how we overcome it. We haven't grown enough, you
Speaker 3 00:49:55 Know. Exactly. I always think of ourselves as kind of trapped in this cylinder that's built out of bricks, of discomfort that keep us in our discomfort zone. And kind of as you go through each step of di uh, adversity, you pull away that brick. And ultimately as you put yourself in these more and more uncomfortable or adverse experiences or you, you come into these adverse experiences, you get to expand this comfort zone because you understand that you're able to overcome it.
Speaker 0 00:50:27 Exactly.
Speaker 3 00:50:29 Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. I'm, I'm so happy to hear your perspective and I know it'll be helpful for the listeners and it was helpful for me. Yeah, I, I really appreciate you speaking with me today.
Speaker 0 00:50:43 No problem. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me and, um, I look forward to us being able to connect again and, and talk some more. So thank you so much.
Speaker 3 00:50:57 Thank you so much for joining me in my critical conversation with IA afo. I love the way IA explained how trauma happens in relationships and therefore we must heal trauma through relationships. I also appreciate that she included the relationship to Mother Nature. The correlation between abolitionist ideals and climate change is something I've actually been reading and thinking more about. I also loved i's description of self-care as a prevention method rather than a reactionary one. As it's often framed in mainstream culture, like taking a bath after a stressful day, et cetera. It's nice to think about maybe starting the day with a calm bath to set yourself on the right path. I really liked that. I'm really curious your thoughts. So please email cc office hours gmail.com with any feedback or any note of what you do for self-care to start the day. And please be sure to check out Juwan and my breakdown on YouTube. Please subscribe, review, share this episode with everyone you know, and I'll catch you next time.