…the visceral response when I saw a police car. I was agitated and on edge, unfocused and tired. Every time I got in the car I made sure my lights were working. I kept to the speed limit and stopped at all stop signs. A yellow light no longer meant speed up. It meant come to a dead stop. Navigating my responses on top of my every day responsibilities was both emotionally and physically exhausting. I was experiencing what health professionals call a “trauma response.”
Typically, the most common response to trauma is resiliency. That is what I had after the Zimmerman verdict. I was sad and disappointed but I was also motivated to see change and I could tolerate heartbreak. I knew the face of racism and I had a plan of working through it.
Though years of ongoing small racial slights and an occasional encounter with overt racism shaped the way I interacted with people and systems, I did not start to experience a trauma response until summer 2014. In other words, the rules of living had significantly changed. Like with many other trauma responses, I became keenly aware of my surroundings in a fight to protect myself. I moved to an unhealthy “woke” place.
The beautiful part of a racial trauma response is…