February 11, 2025 • 37 mins
NK attends a workshop on divesting from people pleasing & begins to unravel a lifetime of grief and rage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's kay Baska. Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health. But keep in mind that I'm not
a mental health professional, and so in the description of
this and every episode, I'll leave you with a list
of relevant resources and links to the things I'm reading.
And while you're listening, take care. Three years ago, I
met someone in a bar in Bushwick and she invited
(00:20):
me to a workshop called Divesting from People Pleasing. In
Divesting from People Pleasing, we sit in a circle. Most
of the other women in the room are white, like me.
They're polite. When it would make sense to be bitchy,
we're nice. We say yes because it would be rude
to say no. In the workshop, we're asked to think
(00:45):
about and name the rules we make for ourselves. I
have to allowed to or I'm afraid to. These rules
are the things that we have learned are acceptable behavior.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Who are you afraid to displease? What are you afraid
will happen if you are displeasing? Or break rule?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
When we do things that break our own rules, things
that fall outside of this small window of acceptance, those
behaviors can often evoke a feeling of deep shame.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Persons blah person's gonna love me. Black, person's gonna lot me. Blah,
person's gonna lot me. When I'm depressionate anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Okay, picture this. It's twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. I sometimes
refer to this period of time as my death. There
are other people who might call it healing. Either way,
it hurt. I started to document how much it hurt,
and voice memos. I started just talking to myself on
(01:56):
a mic, and eventually I combine those recordings and some
of my writing into a series of audio essays about
what I was feeling. And I call that series of
essays divesting from people pleasing. There used to be a
lot of other parts to that story that I think
were kind of a way of hiding. But I don't
(02:17):
really need to hide anymore. Still, when I was thinking
about whether to share this this cut on this show
more than five years later, I was afraid to listen
to them. Those essays are messy and raw, and more
than one person told me at the time that they
felt uncomfortable while listening. So there was definitely something that
(02:37):
felt risky, vulnerable about opening up this part of me
again to myself and to you. I'm NK and this
is basket case, and this is divesting from people pleasing.
The director's cut the reducts like rules wrote down and
divesting from people pleasing. I write down a list of
(02:59):
my personal rules. These three prompts I have to I'm
not allowed to do. I'm afraid to a stream of
consciousness list ask for help, or to a representation of
an inner monologue so quiet I hadn't realized it was there.
Allowed to be demanding, coming beneath the surface, judging and
directing my every move to be allowed and to take
(03:19):
up space.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I'm afraid to be judged.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
I'm afraid to be.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Looked at on some level. I'm afraid of what will
happen if I'm not agreeable. I have to keep it
to myself. I have to pretend. I have to let
it go so I have to make other people comfortable.
I have to stay calm, I have to keep it down,
I have to hold it in. I have to accept
I'm not allowed to yell. I have to be even
I'm not allowed to go off, even when it's warranted,
like at work. And then what am I afraid will
(03:46):
happen if I displease or break the rules. Both of
my parents grew up in the nineteen sixties. My dad
is from a small town in rural Virginia. His dad
was a farmer. My mom grew up in DC and
her dad was a pharmacist, and when my mom was sixteen,
(04:07):
a high school junior, her family was one of the
first black families to move into a mostly white neighborhood.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
He always made that comedies, they didn't want to buy
the able to express us. Then we went seeing, we
went playing tennis, they get golf, And what he was
really saying is he didn't want anybody to ever think
that they were better than us because they were white.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
When my mom says that she and my dad had
different childhoods, she means that she wasn't subjected to explicit
racialized violence, the kind my dad experience, the kind that
you think of when you think of Jim Crow.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
I didn't grow up in an environment where that happened.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But what is the same about them is that they
both grew up knowing all of their cousins, their aunties
and uncles. They both grew up with a real sense
of black community. And then they met at an HBCU
in the seventies and they both pledge the oldest Greek organizations,
and they knew a whole array of black folks who
looks like them or who looked like someone they knew
back home, And it was new and different to both
(04:59):
of them, but it was also familiar, and they never
had to question their belonging, their sense of black identity.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
I think, jeth Bank, you would have thanked, you know,
doesn't matill your skin or whatever. You can do whatever
you want to do.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So and then ten years after they graduated, they had
me and then my sister, and they wanted the same
things for us that their parents had wanted for them,
for it to be easier. They wanted us to have
the best opportunities that they could provide. But however your
(05:31):
brain responds to danger the first time, is how it
responds forever. I went to kindergarten first in second grade
in a small town in Georgia. It was the kind
of town with one grocery store and one high school,
the kind of town where everyone went to the football
game on Friday nights in the fall. The house we
(05:53):
lived in had an actual white picket fence around the yard.
But we also have a neighbor who allowed refuses eat
my mom's food at those parties. We're going to educate
you in Martian yet before we leave here. But in
the VHS tape of Christmas ninety two that I found
in my parents' basement, she's making a really big deal
(06:14):
about this. She needs everyone to know.
Speaker 6 (06:17):
I might have a kids ainting it, but I don't
know about mom and Daddy.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
My family.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
There's only one other black family in the neighborhood, which
is mostly other families with connections to the army, and
all the Army wives hang out and have block parties
and swap kids. I only remember one other black kid
from school, a third grader, a boy in the grade
ahead of me.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
That year.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
My teacher is always putting me in the corner for talking.
Mostly my mom goes over my teacher's head to get
me into the gifted program.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Because I did a small thing. But it just seems
like so weird, you know, like yeah, because if he
had said that to Daddy, his worst reaction would have
been it was racism. Been like, no, Mark, that can't
be that, you know, because as a.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Kid, I have no idea that these experiences are unique,
are different than what the white kids around me might
be experiencing.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Why I have questions more because I don't want to
jump to that conclusion, so Daddy will go immediately to
that inclusion.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Or are different than what my parents experienced when they
were kids, And.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt,
But it's different in the way you grew up in
what you experienced those experiences.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Were you sort of thinking even when we were younger,
that like, we need to be prepared to I.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Don't know if I was thinking that directly, just you
know that, you know, exposing you to those things and
people that you would know how to act around them
so that you would that would be a foreign thing
to you. One of the memories I had that I
am writing about is going to the department stores.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I have these memories my mom yelling in department stores.
Do you even remember how any memories of that? First
you shore? Cashiers at the J. C. Penny or the
Pibli would be like them, Ary, take my check. So
I don't know why you're not now, Usually because someone
has refusing to take her check and a place that
has always taken it before, usually because of a woman,
usually because of a white woman who's refusing to take
(08:08):
her check before. My mom yells at people in department stores, cashiers,
sore clerks, clothing drape across the registers, their belt full
of groceries, a white woman refusing take my check. I
don't remember exactly what was said, more of what I
have as an emotional memory, woman, like the sort of
like I'm sorry, but I don't want Meanwhile, I take
(08:28):
on the role of trying to police my mom, trying
to get her to be quiet, just wanting it to
be over, and feeling really embarrassed that my mom is
causing trouble, sometimes even saying to her, like Mom, let's
just go, Just wanting to leave, just wanting her to stop,
Just wondering why she's always so agitant, and why is
she always so Why is she always like this undisciplined?
Why these cashiers are just trying to do their job
(08:50):
and my mom is getting angry instead of accepting what
they're telling her. And I don't understand why my mom
just won't accept this. They're telling her how the world is,
and I don't get why she's like this, Why is
she so why is she so easily provoked? Inevitably, a
manager intervenes, It's over she takes her clothes, her groceries,
(09:12):
we leave the store. Do you even have any memories
of that? Yeah, I don't be.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I don't ever remember that being an issue because of race.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
Historians have talked brilliantly about this, the dissemblance of sort
of maintaining a perfect exterior in order to push back
against any notion that you could be any of these
negative stereotypes.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
In her book on Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America,
Melissa Harris Perry describes the stereotypical images of black women
in white media. Patricia Hill Collins called them controlling images
because there are images designed to discipline.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
These images Jezebel angry black woman image, for example, Mammy.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Are meant to produce shame. They're designed to make us
feel like we're one dimensional, to make us feel like
over sext subservient, and angry, all that black women are
or can be. Melissa Harris Perry adds to this original
list of controlling images by pointing out that there's also
a fourth a fourth image, a fourth stereotype, a controlling
(10:12):
image that we created that.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
In the pushback the other way, the strong black woman
emerges as this internal community narrative about the ability of
black women, under all circumstances, to be able to manage,
to be able to do well, to be able to
stand up for family, for community, for church, for spouses,
and to do so almost naturally.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
A strong black woman is a political strategy. She's a
shame management strategy for an entire.
Speaker 8 (10:43):
Community that it becomes a kind of racial imperative. If
you are weak, if you are sad, if you need help,
then you are not only sort of failing in the
terms of the general American individualism rugged individualism, but you're
actually failing the race, actually generating shame in your neediness,
in your desire for help.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
While I'm in middle school in high school, we live
in a small city in Tennessee where I'm not the
only one in the school anymore, but I talk like
the white girls in my neighborhood, and I wear Chucks
in a green day T shirt to basketball tryouts. In
the sixth grade. I make the team, but I'm self
conscious around the girls who look like me, and they
can tell. In the girls' locker room before practice or
(11:29):
before games, I usually get dressed without talking to anyone.
The other girls talk around me, making jokes. When they
direct their attention at me, it's to call me whitewashed,
which feels like the worst thing anyone could ever say,
because they're pointing out something that I really don't want
anyone else to see. I take their teasing as a
(11:50):
confirmation of my worst fear. I take it as a rejection.
It's not the kind of attention I want, but it's
the kind of attention I keep getting. And every time
someone insists that I'm closer to whiteness than to myself,
I leave my body. I disintegrate a little bit more.
(12:11):
I don't go home and tell my parents, I don't
tell anyone. I don't cry about it. I don't even react,
but I do eventually quit the basketball team, and for
a while I avoid black spaces all together.
Speaker 8 (12:26):
It turns out that shame is not just a bad feeling.
Shame actually creates physiological responses in your body. And guess
what if you have those cortisol responses regularly, if you
are consistently confronted with shaming images. If you are consistently
(12:56):
confronted with shaming image.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I get older and get really good at pushing everything down.
I never feel the guy black enough not pretty enough
for the white boys, not good enough. I'm always worried
about not being perfect. I'm always worried about not being
smart enough, about not being perfect, And over years in
w I to anyone only leaving my room for class,
(13:21):
maintaining a perfect White people have the I'm twenty and
I start taking medicine for high blood pressure, and doctors
can't find any extenaction, pure just common in black communities.
At the clinic on campus, they prescribe me as a
stadd school. I start going to parties in white drink.
It's so anxious. I start to pull on my curls.
(13:42):
It's making a little bald spop on the back of
my head. I'm thirty two and a white woman turns
around on a plane to tell me to be quiet,
and ten minutes later, her eleven year old daughter stands
up and turns around and imitates her tone and tells
me to be quiet. For years, I just push it down,
I justizing, internalizing it until I'm so anxious. Sometime I's
(14:06):
so anxious, sometimes so filled with self loathing, a constant
kind of low grade shame. After I turn thirty, my
new life is very precarious for a while, I feel
like I'm in a liminal space, like I'm a temporary
person between selves. I know I want to be an artist,
(14:28):
but I have no idea what that means or how
to do it. I move to West Adams, a neighborhood
in LA that used to be called the Black Beverly Hills.
I want to live near people who look like me.
At one point I adopt the mandate of a local
writer and performer and comedianne Amanda Fay Jimenez, who says
her New Year's resolution is no new whites, no new
(14:50):
white friends. So simple, so effective. I start to follow
other black artists and see a lot of black art.
Every year, there's this big exhibition of emerging LA artists.
In one year, the biggest prize goes to an artist
from South Central, and the museum is hosting a talk
about her work, which is an installation a room made
of sandy white material the same materials that were used
(15:11):
in the construction of the pyramids. The walls of the
room are carved with hieroglyphs, images of South Central low
riders and rows of palm trees and women with corn rows.
Pharaohs use the hieroglyphs as archives, and the artist has
used this ancient method for a contemporary portrait of black life.
It's kind of a big deal, and it's a big
(15:32):
deal for me because I'm finally feeling comfortable. I finally
feel like I'm starting to belong in spaces like this,
spaces that are for me. A black curator is in
conversation with one of the founders of Black Lives Matter,
who's also an artist, and a fairly large crowd gathers
around the installation to listen. After the talk, people line
(15:54):
up to go inside, and I'm one of the first ones,
while a long line of mostly black women starts a
form outside. I spend a few minutes looking closely at
the carvings, but as I turn to leave, I run
into a white woman that I know. For some reason,
I'm caught off guard, and at the same time, I
kind of snap to attention. I was about to leave,
but now I'm frozen. We're in the room, we're in
(16:16):
the installation. There's a long line forming outside because only
four or five people can be there at once, and
this white woman starts to ask me questions about various
things that don't pertain around us. People are leaving, I
new people are coming in. I see a friend of
mine and as she passes through, she whispers, just so
you know. There's like a line forming outside. It's like me,
this white woman's there's a long line forming outside. There's
(16:37):
lots of black people waiting to see it. I'm aware
of this whole other universe around me. There are a
lot of black artists who I recognize. There very black
people especially, But it's like I'm trapped inside myself. She
talks to me, and I begin to perform professionalism application
of whiteness that I've been training, the sort of application
(16:58):
of whiteness I've been trained to for my whole life.
Because reflex, it's just like it happens. She talks to
me and I perform. It's like a switch is a
switch is flipped, and it just happens in spite of myself,
as if my body responds before my mind even does.
I hear my own voice leave my body and it
(17:18):
sounds like someone else's voice. It sounds like someone I
used to be all the time, and I don't want
to be that person, but my mind and my body
just take over. I just stand there for what feels
like a really long time, and it's not until later afterwards.
(17:39):
I feel so much shame. I feel so much anxiety.
That night, it's a Friday night, and I go home
and I'm trying to watch TV, and I can't concentrate
on TV because I just hear myself telling my brain,
this voice in my brain telling me how stupid I am,
how terrible I am, how I'm not black enough, how
it's so shameful that Liked would do this to a
(18:01):
Kopez and placate a white person in that context, and
how everyone saw it and knows how I'm not black
and knows how I'm so like white, you know, white adjacent,
like white aligned, and I'm like, so go out of
my way to appease whiteness, to make whiteness comfortable. That
they heard me use my white voice at the work
that I normally use at work, which I don't even
have to use, Like no one asked me to use it,
(18:23):
but I just automatically did it. I just used the
white the white voice. I have so much anxiety. I
smoke weed. It doesn't go away, like usually that kind
of calms my mind down, but it doesn't go away.
So I smoke more weed, and it doesn't go away.
At this point, it's like eleven PM. I text my partner.
I say like, I can't stand this. I'm just like
having an episode. I feel so fucked up. He's like,
(18:45):
what's wrong, and I'm just like, never mind, I can't
even tell you. I just feel so ashamed. I can't
even say never mind. I stopped texting him. I smoke
war weed. It doesn't go away. It's like eleven thirty.
I decided to go for a walk. I walk for
like an hour and a half, just like walking really quickly,
Just like as long as my feet are moving, like
once after the other, they're moving. As long as my
feet are moving that I'm not thinking about these thoughts,
(19:05):
like the thoughts that kind of go away for a second.
I'm just like it's like I feel a sense of relief.
As long as like my body's in motion, I feel
a sense of relief. Like I don't hear that voice.
The voice goes away. But as soon as I get
back to my house and sit on the couch, like bam,
it's like back. It's like as soon as the door closed,
the voice just floods in. Like my entire brain is
it's still with these thoughts and I can't take it.
I just can't take it anymore. I'm like stone, Like
(19:28):
smoking meat isn't working. I start taking shots of whiskey.
I'm just like trying to like numb it out. I
just like want to go to sleep. Like the only
way I can escape the voices if I go to sleep.
So I just like drink. I just start taking shots
of bourbon until I just feel fucked up enough and
tired enough that I can just go to sleep. That's
the only way I can escape is just go to sleep.
And so I do that until I pass out in
(19:50):
my bed. I perceive threat everywhere on stage at parties,
and the gazes of strangers and the gazes of friends.
I'm almost always in a state of fight or flight.
The shame and self loathing is about self discipline. It's
this horrible asshole voice that keeps me in line. It
(20:10):
thinks it's keeping me safe from judgment. It thinks that
if I seek attention, if I do a performance, i'm
standing on stage, if I'm talking too loud, if I'm
telling a story, if I'm asking for attention, that those
are all the reasons. Those things are all risky. It
doesn't want me to do that. It wants to keep
me in line. It's like, shut the fuck up, what
(20:30):
are you doing? Like, what do you think you're doing?
What the fuck do you think you are? No one
wants to hear this, and no one wants to listen
to you. Nothing you have to say is valuable. Just
shut up, shut up, Shut the fuck up, shut up.
(20:51):
It's a nightmare and it's unbearable. But I'm always telling
myself it's fine. Like I hear, I just live in
this constant state of anxiety. But I'm just like, it's fine.
I tell myself it's fine. I tell myself it's fine.
I tell myself it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine,
it's fine. I put up with all of this and
I'm fine. I'm fine, it's fine. I'm fine. I have
(21:28):
days where I don't have any of these thoughts at all,
but the minute I stop. When I'm not watching TV,
I'm not answering emails, i'm not scrolling my phone, I'm
not texting someone. The lights are all the lights are off.
When it's just me, me alone with my thoughts, lying
in bed, and I'm lying there in the dark, and
I heard this voice fucking ale I actually hates you.
Saving deal with what its fucking asshole, I even deal
(21:50):
with what hates you. I'm saying, like what the voice
is saying to me, what it's telling me. I'm just
like I'll cry out in the middle of the night,
like I'll moan in the middle of the night, and
I'm like my roommate and hear me like moaning. I'm
just trying to like make a sound to kind of
drown out this other voice, this other noise, and it's
like I wanted to go away, but it's just right there,
(22:11):
like those are the mild moments. It's like not attached
to me. But I'm just like, why don't you go away?
Like let me sleep, and it won't let me sleep.
It's been three years since divesting from people pleasing and
three months since I started therapy, and I'm in another workshop.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
Kind of keep us regulated or let us know.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In class, we study the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Ay heartbeat even slow down because you're in a really safe.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Environment, the part that handles emotional regulation and safety and
the fight or flight response.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
Or you know, stomach. You've ben relax, and it's okay
to eat right now.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
You also learn that there's a third response, to go.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
Numb, because it's the body's way of saying, when.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Your body thinks, we can't make it out of this
a lot, so.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
I'm going to eat you safe by making it so
that you can't feel anything.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The gap between ourselves and the earliest humans is small.
We are still social creatures. We thrive most when we
are part of a group. If left to live alone,
we suffer. Our bodies are still wired for connection and
still wired to quickly scan our environments for threat. That's instinctual.
(23:28):
It happens automatically. It only takes seconds or milliseconds. When
the brain scans the environment and perceives danger, it has
a stress response called fight or flight. In this highly
activated state, the inner ear shifts in order to hear
the lower registers of approaching predators. The heart beats faster,
(23:48):
pumping more blood from the heart to the muscles, which
tends up making you ready to run at any moment.
When poised to flee or fight, we also breathe more quickly.
The greater the threat, the greater the physical response. But
if your brain concludes that the predator is too powerful
to overcome, that you wouldn't win against the predator in
(24:10):
a fight, or that you wouldn't be able to outrun it.
Your body's third strategy is to go numb. Your heart pounds,
but your breathing slows down until it's hard to take
a deep breath at all. Soon I realize I need
(24:32):
a witness to my shame. I just want to remember
this that I feel compelled to document and share this process,
have therapy and told my therapist that's like to me,
it just means, it's like that feeling is like all
the things I don't say, like all the ways of
I want to disappear, Like I want like no one
(24:52):
to ever see me again. I want I don't want
to have to all that are unexpectedly coming up for
me by other people, which I start to think of
as my decolonizing, Like I wish I didn't feel so
like alone in this process.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
My name is Mi Nachi and I facilitate non violent
communication workshops, specifically with a decolonial lens. So today's workshop
is going to be looking at shame and rage.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Before that day's somatic exercise, we discussed our relationship to
shame and rage, and I share that I'm not easily
provoked to anger other than the righteous rage I direct
towards Bigot's rapists and unjust power structures.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I think a lot of people are ashamed of feeling angry,
but like, who are the bodies that I think could
benefit from being able to have access to rage in
a healthy, safe space.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Before that day's workshop, some of us had been asked
to participate in the somatic exercise, which asked us to
channel and release our rape, which asked us to push
against me Naji, our facilitator for three minutes. It was
both a vocal and physical exercise, and I was reluctant
to do it.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
We're outside and the moon is probably the brightest light,
and there is also this quality of energy that is
just running around and through the group to where the
group feels really connected. One of the things that feels
like a thread that connects us is that we're all
(26:29):
people of color, almost all people of color.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
One by one, the people of Mi Nachi had chosen
before went up to do the exercise.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Put your hands on me and we would move together,
and you would just push as hard as you could.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
If I felt anything in my body. In the workshop,
it was the familiar feeling in my throat when I'm
holding something that I need to express, and.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
At the same time, you would be making vocalizations, and
it could be any kind of sounds like grounds, yells,
whatever you want, but no words.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I mostly felt it while watching others release their rage, and.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
We're also moving out of the story or the narrative
of what the rage might be, right, especially because a
lot of the work is that underneath rage is a
lot of grief.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Each time someone finished their turn, Minachi would look at me,
but I needed several invitations to participate, and then permission
to use their body, and finally it reassurance that they
could actually withstand my release.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
So you're going to put your hands let me right here.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I placed both hands on me Nachi's body, beneath their shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So when you're pushing on me, I need you to
push consistently.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
And I started to push a little.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I can really feel the hesitation and resistance.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But then I whispered to Mi Nachi, I just I
don't think that I can push you. I can't. I
don't think that I can do it. I can't push
you I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I know that this is not an activity that is
beyond what her capacity it can hold, and there's an
underlying need for me to be able to take us there,
to be able to get us there, and I know
that I can't do it by myself. I know that
NK can't do it, like it can't be just the
two of us, and so I'm hoping that pulling in
(28:15):
these other three people will help us get us to
where we need.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
To be, and response may not. She said to the
rest of the group.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Okay, okay, So I'm going to have three people come
stand behind NK, and I just want you to be
with her and just make sounds as she goes, just
make whatever sounds feel appropriate as we're working.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So then I push against me, not she's body. So
now we're moving slowly at first, and then faster.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
There's a stronger energy coming from her.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
And as she's doing it, like her head moves up
and down and just kind of just breathing, and I.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Can also feel the energy of the three people behind her.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
You would pause in between it, but even though you're
still resisting and just kind of take deep breaths and
like put.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Stuff in again.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Sensing, hoping, imagining that that energy is flowing into her body.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
But I heard the people behind me making different noises.
I wasn't sure how many people there were. They were
sort of like making those noises of release, like it was.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
A lot of release of like air and like long
with every push came like a sound from your throat,
guttural like grunts. Also like I was also crying because
I was like feeling all of this emotion like radiating.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
There was like one final good push and then and
then it stopped. It ended.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
It was so emotional.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
It feels like NK falls into my arms. It's like
the first time that we've had that. I feel like
she has let me hold her in this space or
in this way.
Speaker 7 (29:46):
It was very like palpable that there was stuff inside
that needed to come out.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So a total of six people did the exercise. I
was the last one. Afterwards, we went back inside and
we talked about it, and there was no explicit or
linear connection made between the conversation about shame that we'd
had earlier that day and this final rage exercise.
Speaker 7 (30:09):
Well, just because in the previous sessions, the folks that
had gotten picked for this activity had expressed that they
had a hard time talking about how they felt, or
communicating their feelings or even like not being able to cry.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I don't know. Yeah, just the comfort level you had
with your feelings, feeling your feelings. I knew that there
was just like stuff in there that wanted to come out.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
That someone said, Armena said the most revelatory thing. It
was just kind of like you were exhausted.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
It just sounded like you were tired of holding this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
And I was just so shocked that she said she
could feel that, because in that moment when she said it,
I hadn't been thinking about it during the pushing, but
in the moment when she said it, I felt like
everything drained out of my body, Like, yeah, I am
so tired. I'm so tired of having to hold this.
It's like having to hold the posture, like the constant
(31:08):
sort of the rigidity of like constantly policing myself.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And I remember thinking about that thing, like, you know,
all the women in me are tired. And I think
that it came back to that when we all kind
of like shared back. I think I guess it confirmed
what I was thinking when you talked about, like, you know,
issues with the ways in which your mother would express
for yourself or lack of expression. But whether or not
(31:34):
you express it doesn't mean you don't feel it, right,
So I felt that maybe you carry that without even
meaning to. We all carry things that we don't mean
to carry because we inherit pain and trauma and love
and all these things that the women before us have carried.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
For any like any work that we're trying to do
with collective experience, with witness and with knowing your body,
to be able to discern what is rage and what
is grief, because if we confuse the two, we don't
actually attend to what needs to be attended to. I
guess grief just feels like big fucking open water, and
(32:19):
then rage feels really clear, It feels very direct, It
feels like a boundary. It also feels like, you know,
when it is acknowledged, when it is really heard, listen to,
attended to, it can dissipate immediately. It doesn't have a
need to hold on and stay in the body.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I mean, Nachi tells us that trauma isn't always a
big event like rape or abuse or other kinds of
physical violence.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
Like even the framework that we use right is really
able is colonial sort of framework, the idea that I'm
supposed to be able to live by myself.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
There's also trauma anytime we don't experience belonging or feeling
safe in a group.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
But the idea that I'm supposed to be able to
survive in a context where I'm not loved and celebrated.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
In fight or flight, your inner ear shifts to hear
the lower frequencies of predators, which means that today, in
a contemporary setting, we may not hear the higher tones
and the voices that the people were speaking to, the
tones that would reassure us that we're safe and wanted
and not actually in danger of attack. The terrible asshole
voice in my head once kept me safe, but now
(33:39):
it's preventing me from fully living my life, from experiencing
connection with the people I most want to connect to.
My public persona, the person I am in the world,
has been shaped by what was essentially a coping mechanism.
Fucking stupid. Everyone hates yourself. Fucking stupid. It may not,
she's workshop. We learned to confront our demon, asshole or
fucking bitch, to write down what they say, and to
(34:09):
thank them for their service, shut up, and then to
tell them that we don't need them anymore. That winter,
I'm home in Tennessee for the holidays. I went down
into my parents' basement and started looking through boxes of
(34:31):
old photos. I was looking for photos that would remind
me of Georgia, remind me of my younger self, younger
versions of my parents, my grandparents. And I find a
photo of myself from my high school prom. In the photo,
I'm standing alone without a date in the parking lot
of my high school and a vintage lay stress. I
(34:54):
just kind of hold this photo and stare at it
and like examine every detail the photo. There's this kind
of arc of attention around me that I don't think
I was aware of at the time. I definitely wasn't
aware of it. It's like a record of this disconnect,
like knowing exactly how I felt about myself at the
time that the photo was taken, Knowing how I saw
(35:16):
myself versus how other people see me. I felt a
lot like now, like how I see myself, the narrative
that's going on inside my mind that is so different
from what's actually happening. I fell asleep that night to
the sound of rain, and in the morning I woke
(35:37):
up crying. It was the last day of the year,
my last day in my parents' house before flying back
to Los Angeles, and throughout the day I'm just weeping.
There's this overwhelming feeling that there's a self that I
have to leave here, a self that I have to
(35:58):
leave behind, Leave here in this year, leave here in
this house, just leave in the past. It's like I
can't go back to California. I can't like live another year.
I have plans to spend New Year's Eve with my sister.
My sister leads us in a ritual, a cleansing. With
(36:21):
a glass of water, some table salt and a lemon.
We write down everything we want to release on pieces
of paper. We fold them up and gather them into
a drinking glass, sprinkle them with the lemon water I
don't and set them on fire. Maybe get back.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
We're working.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Divesting from People Pleasing was originally a three part series
produced for a show called The Heart in twenty twenty.
That version was edited by C. C. Pascal. It was
the first radio story I ever made, and I love
it very much. Divesting from People Pleasing the Redux was
made in the winter of twenty twenty three. Basket Case
(37:14):
is a production of Molten Hart and iHeart Podcasts. It
is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me NK Nicole Kelly.
I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who's also our executive producer. Production assistants by Siona Petros
and Ammani Leonard. Adrian Lilly is our mixed engineer. Our
theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our show
(37:35):
art was created by Sinney Rolson, fact checking by Serena Solyn.
Legal services provided by Rowan, Maren and File. Our executive
producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman.
Hey, it's kay Baska. Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health. But keep in mind that I'm not
a mental health professional, and so in the description of
this and every episode, I'll leave you with a list
of relevant resources and links to the things I'm reading.
And while you're listening, take care. Three years ago, I
met someone in a bar in Bushwick and she invited
(00:20):
me to a workshop called Divesting from People Pleasing. In
Divesting from People Pleasing, we sit in a circle. Most
of the other women in the room are white, like me.
They're polite. When it would make sense to be bitchy,
we're nice. We say yes because it would be rude
to say no. In the workshop, we're asked to think
(00:45):
about and name the rules we make for ourselves. I
have to allowed to or I'm afraid to. These rules
are the things that we have learned are acceptable behavior.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Who are you afraid to displease? What are you afraid
will happen if you are displeasing? Or break rule?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
When we do things that break our own rules, things
that fall outside of this small window of acceptance, those
behaviors can often evoke a feeling of deep shame.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Persons blah person's gonna love me. Black, person's gonna lot me. Blah,
person's gonna lot me. When I'm depressionate anxiety.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Okay, picture this. It's twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen. I sometimes
refer to this period of time as my death. There
are other people who might call it healing. Either way,
it hurt. I started to document how much it hurt,
and voice memos. I started just talking to myself on
(01:56):
a mic, and eventually I combine those recordings and some
of my writing into a series of audio essays about
what I was feeling. And I call that series of
essays divesting from people pleasing. There used to be a
lot of other parts to that story that I think
were kind of a way of hiding. But I don't
(02:17):
really need to hide anymore. Still, when I was thinking
about whether to share this this cut on this show
more than five years later, I was afraid to listen
to them. Those essays are messy and raw, and more
than one person told me at the time that they
felt uncomfortable while listening. So there was definitely something that
(02:37):
felt risky, vulnerable about opening up this part of me
again to myself and to you. I'm NK and this
is basket case, and this is divesting from people pleasing.
The director's cut the reducts like rules wrote down and
divesting from people pleasing. I write down a list of
(02:59):
my personal rules. These three prompts I have to I'm
not allowed to do. I'm afraid to a stream of
consciousness list ask for help, or to a representation of
an inner monologue so quiet I hadn't realized it was there.
Allowed to be demanding, coming beneath the surface, judging and
directing my every move to be allowed and to take
(03:19):
up space.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I'm afraid to be judged.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
I'm afraid to be.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Looked at on some level. I'm afraid of what will
happen if I'm not agreeable. I have to keep it
to myself. I have to pretend. I have to let
it go so I have to make other people comfortable.
I have to stay calm, I have to keep it down,
I have to hold it in. I have to accept
I'm not allowed to yell. I have to be even
I'm not allowed to go off, even when it's warranted,
like at work. And then what am I afraid will
(03:46):
happen if I displease or break the rules. Both of
my parents grew up in the nineteen sixties. My dad
is from a small town in rural Virginia. His dad
was a farmer. My mom grew up in DC and
her dad was a pharmacist, and when my mom was sixteen,
(04:07):
a high school junior, her family was one of the
first black families to move into a mostly white neighborhood.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
He always made that comedies, they didn't want to buy
the able to express us. Then we went seeing, we
went playing tennis, they get golf, And what he was
really saying is he didn't want anybody to ever think
that they were better than us because they were white.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
When my mom says that she and my dad had
different childhoods, she means that she wasn't subjected to explicit
racialized violence, the kind my dad experience, the kind that
you think of when you think of Jim Crow.
Speaker 5 (04:35):
I didn't grow up in an environment where that happened.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
But what is the same about them is that they
both grew up knowing all of their cousins, their aunties
and uncles. They both grew up with a real sense
of black community. And then they met at an HBCU
in the seventies and they both pledge the oldest Greek organizations,
and they knew a whole array of black folks who
looks like them or who looked like someone they knew
back home, And it was new and different to both
(04:59):
of them, but it was also familiar, and they never
had to question their belonging, their sense of black identity.
Speaker 5 (05:06):
I think, jeth Bank, you would have thanked, you know,
doesn't matill your skin or whatever. You can do whatever
you want to do.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So and then ten years after they graduated, they had
me and then my sister, and they wanted the same
things for us that their parents had wanted for them,
for it to be easier. They wanted us to have
the best opportunities that they could provide. But however your
(05:31):
brain responds to danger the first time, is how it
responds forever. I went to kindergarten first in second grade
in a small town in Georgia. It was the kind
of town with one grocery store and one high school,
the kind of town where everyone went to the football
game on Friday nights in the fall. The house we
(05:53):
lived in had an actual white picket fence around the yard.
But we also have a neighbor who allowed refuses eat
my mom's food at those parties. We're going to educate
you in Martian yet before we leave here. But in
the VHS tape of Christmas ninety two that I found
in my parents' basement, she's making a really big deal
(06:14):
about this. She needs everyone to know.
Speaker 6 (06:17):
I might have a kids ainting it, but I don't
know about mom and Daddy.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
My family.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
There's only one other black family in the neighborhood, which
is mostly other families with connections to the army, and
all the Army wives hang out and have block parties
and swap kids. I only remember one other black kid
from school, a third grader, a boy in the grade
ahead of me.
Speaker 7 (06:43):
That year.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
My teacher is always putting me in the corner for talking.
Mostly my mom goes over my teacher's head to get
me into the gifted program.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Because I did a small thing. But it just seems
like so weird, you know, like yeah, because if he
had said that to Daddy, his worst reaction would have
been it was racism. Been like, no, Mark, that can't
be that, you know, because as a.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Kid, I have no idea that these experiences are unique,
are different than what the white kids around me might
be experiencing.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Why I have questions more because I don't want to
jump to that conclusion, so Daddy will go immediately to
that inclusion.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Or are different than what my parents experienced when they
were kids, And.
Speaker 5 (07:20):
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt,
But it's different in the way you grew up in
what you experienced those experiences.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Were you sort of thinking even when we were younger,
that like, we need to be prepared to I.
Speaker 5 (07:30):
Don't know if I was thinking that directly, just you
know that, you know, exposing you to those things and
people that you would know how to act around them
so that you would that would be a foreign thing
to you. One of the memories I had that I
am writing about is going to the department stores.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I have these memories my mom yelling in department stores.
Do you even remember how any memories of that? First
you shore? Cashiers at the J. C. Penny or the
Pibli would be like them, Ary, take my check. So
I don't know why you're not now, Usually because someone
has refusing to take her check and a place that
has always taken it before, usually because of a woman,
usually because of a white woman who's refusing to take
(08:08):
her check before. My mom yells at people in department stores, cashiers,
sore clerks, clothing drape across the registers, their belt full
of groceries, a white woman refusing take my check. I
don't remember exactly what was said, more of what I
have as an emotional memory, woman, like the sort of
like I'm sorry, but I don't want Meanwhile, I take
(08:28):
on the role of trying to police my mom, trying
to get her to be quiet, just wanting it to
be over, and feeling really embarrassed that my mom is
causing trouble, sometimes even saying to her, like Mom, let's
just go, Just wanting to leave, just wanting her to stop,
Just wondering why she's always so agitant, and why is
she always so Why is she always like this undisciplined?
Why these cashiers are just trying to do their job
(08:50):
and my mom is getting angry instead of accepting what
they're telling her. And I don't understand why my mom
just won't accept this. They're telling her how the world is,
and I don't get why she's like this, Why is
she so why is she so easily provoked? Inevitably, a
manager intervenes, It's over she takes her clothes, her groceries,
(09:12):
we leave the store. Do you even have any memories
of that? Yeah, I don't be.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I don't ever remember that being an issue because of race.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
Historians have talked brilliantly about this, the dissemblance of sort
of maintaining a perfect exterior in order to push back
against any notion that you could be any of these
negative stereotypes.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
In her book on Shame, Stereotypes and Black Women in America,
Melissa Harris Perry describes the stereotypical images of black women
in white media. Patricia Hill Collins called them controlling images
because there are images designed to discipline.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
These images Jezebel angry black woman image, for example, Mammy.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Are meant to produce shame. They're designed to make us
feel like we're one dimensional, to make us feel like
over sext subservient, and angry, all that black women are
or can be. Melissa Harris Perry adds to this original
list of controlling images by pointing out that there's also
a fourth a fourth image, a fourth stereotype, a controlling
(10:12):
image that we created that.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
In the pushback the other way, the strong black woman
emerges as this internal community narrative about the ability of
black women, under all circumstances, to be able to manage,
to be able to do well, to be able to
stand up for family, for community, for church, for spouses,
and to do so almost naturally.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
A strong black woman is a political strategy. She's a
shame management strategy for an entire.
Speaker 8 (10:43):
Community that it becomes a kind of racial imperative. If
you are weak, if you are sad, if you need help,
then you are not only sort of failing in the
terms of the general American individualism rugged individualism, but you're
actually failing the race, actually generating shame in your neediness,
in your desire for help.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
While I'm in middle school in high school, we live
in a small city in Tennessee where I'm not the
only one in the school anymore, but I talk like
the white girls in my neighborhood, and I wear Chucks
in a green day T shirt to basketball tryouts. In
the sixth grade. I make the team, but I'm self
conscious around the girls who look like me, and they
can tell. In the girls' locker room before practice or
(11:29):
before games, I usually get dressed without talking to anyone.
The other girls talk around me, making jokes. When they
direct their attention at me, it's to call me whitewashed,
which feels like the worst thing anyone could ever say,
because they're pointing out something that I really don't want
anyone else to see. I take their teasing as a
(11:50):
confirmation of my worst fear. I take it as a rejection.
It's not the kind of attention I want, but it's
the kind of attention I keep getting. And every time
someone insists that I'm closer to whiteness than to myself,
I leave my body. I disintegrate a little bit more.
(12:11):
I don't go home and tell my parents, I don't
tell anyone. I don't cry about it. I don't even react,
but I do eventually quit the basketball team, and for
a while I avoid black spaces all together.
Speaker 8 (12:26):
It turns out that shame is not just a bad feeling.
Shame actually creates physiological responses in your body. And guess
what if you have those cortisol responses regularly, if you
are consistently confronted with shaming images. If you are consistently
(12:56):
confronted with shaming image.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
I get older and get really good at pushing everything down.
I never feel the guy black enough not pretty enough
for the white boys, not good enough. I'm always worried
about not being perfect. I'm always worried about not being
smart enough, about not being perfect, And over years in
w I to anyone only leaving my room for class,
(13:21):
maintaining a perfect White people have the I'm twenty and
I start taking medicine for high blood pressure, and doctors
can't find any extenaction, pure just common in black communities.
At the clinic on campus, they prescribe me as a
stadd school. I start going to parties in white drink.
It's so anxious. I start to pull on my curls.
(13:42):
It's making a little bald spop on the back of
my head. I'm thirty two and a white woman turns
around on a plane to tell me to be quiet,
and ten minutes later, her eleven year old daughter stands
up and turns around and imitates her tone and tells
me to be quiet. For years, I just push it down,
I justizing, internalizing it until I'm so anxious. Sometime I's
(14:06):
so anxious, sometimes so filled with self loathing, a constant
kind of low grade shame. After I turn thirty, my
new life is very precarious for a while, I feel
like I'm in a liminal space, like I'm a temporary
person between selves. I know I want to be an artist,
(14:28):
but I have no idea what that means or how
to do it. I move to West Adams, a neighborhood
in LA that used to be called the Black Beverly Hills.
I want to live near people who look like me.
At one point I adopt the mandate of a local
writer and performer and comedianne Amanda Fay Jimenez, who says
her New Year's resolution is no new whites, no new
(14:50):
white friends. So simple, so effective. I start to follow
other black artists and see a lot of black art.
Every year, there's this big exhibition of emerging LA artists.
In one year, the biggest prize goes to an artist
from South Central, and the museum is hosting a talk
about her work, which is an installation a room made
of sandy white material the same materials that were used
(15:11):
in the construction of the pyramids. The walls of the
room are carved with hieroglyphs, images of South Central low
riders and rows of palm trees and women with corn rows.
Pharaohs use the hieroglyphs as archives, and the artist has
used this ancient method for a contemporary portrait of black life.
It's kind of a big deal, and it's a big
(15:32):
deal for me because I'm finally feeling comfortable. I finally
feel like I'm starting to belong in spaces like this,
spaces that are for me. A black curator is in
conversation with one of the founders of Black Lives Matter,
who's also an artist, and a fairly large crowd gathers
around the installation to listen. After the talk, people line
(15:54):
up to go inside, and I'm one of the first ones,
while a long line of mostly black women starts a
form outside. I spend a few minutes looking closely at
the carvings, but as I turn to leave, I run
into a white woman that I know. For some reason,
I'm caught off guard, and at the same time, I
kind of snap to attention. I was about to leave,
but now I'm frozen. We're in the room, we're in
(16:16):
the installation. There's a long line forming outside because only
four or five people can be there at once, and
this white woman starts to ask me questions about various
things that don't pertain around us. People are leaving, I
new people are coming in. I see a friend of
mine and as she passes through, she whispers, just so
you know. There's like a line forming outside. It's like me,
this white woman's there's a long line forming outside. There's
(16:37):
lots of black people waiting to see it. I'm aware
of this whole other universe around me. There are a
lot of black artists who I recognize. There very black
people especially, But it's like I'm trapped inside myself. She
talks to me, and I begin to perform professionalism application
of whiteness that I've been training, the sort of application
(16:58):
of whiteness I've been trained to for my whole life.
Because reflex, it's just like it happens. She talks to
me and I perform. It's like a switch is a
switch is flipped, and it just happens in spite of myself,
as if my body responds before my mind even does.
I hear my own voice leave my body and it
(17:18):
sounds like someone else's voice. It sounds like someone I
used to be all the time, and I don't want
to be that person, but my mind and my body
just take over. I just stand there for what feels
like a really long time, and it's not until later afterwards.
(17:39):
I feel so much shame. I feel so much anxiety.
That night, it's a Friday night, and I go home
and I'm trying to watch TV, and I can't concentrate
on TV because I just hear myself telling my brain,
this voice in my brain telling me how stupid I am,
how terrible I am, how I'm not black enough, how
it's so shameful that Liked would do this to a
(18:01):
Kopez and placate a white person in that context, and
how everyone saw it and knows how I'm not black
and knows how I'm so like white, you know, white adjacent,
like white aligned, and I'm like, so go out of
my way to appease whiteness, to make whiteness comfortable. That
they heard me use my white voice at the work
that I normally use at work, which I don't even
have to use, Like no one asked me to use it,
(18:23):
but I just automatically did it. I just used the
white the white voice. I have so much anxiety. I
smoke weed. It doesn't go away, like usually that kind
of calms my mind down, but it doesn't go away.
So I smoke more weed, and it doesn't go away.
At this point, it's like eleven PM. I text my partner.
I say like, I can't stand this. I'm just like
having an episode. I feel so fucked up. He's like,
(18:45):
what's wrong, and I'm just like, never mind, I can't
even tell you. I just feel so ashamed. I can't
even say never mind. I stopped texting him. I smoke
war weed. It doesn't go away. It's like eleven thirty.
I decided to go for a walk. I walk for
like an hour and a half, just like walking really quickly,
Just like as long as my feet are moving, like
once after the other, they're moving. As long as my
feet are moving that I'm not thinking about these thoughts,
(19:05):
like the thoughts that kind of go away for a second.
I'm just like it's like I feel a sense of relief.
As long as like my body's in motion, I feel
a sense of relief. Like I don't hear that voice.
The voice goes away. But as soon as I get
back to my house and sit on the couch, like bam,
it's like back. It's like as soon as the door closed,
the voice just floods in. Like my entire brain is
it's still with these thoughts and I can't take it.
I just can't take it anymore. I'm like stone, Like
(19:28):
smoking meat isn't working. I start taking shots of whiskey.
I'm just like trying to like numb it out. I
just like want to go to sleep. Like the only
way I can escape the voices if I go to sleep.
So I just like drink. I just start taking shots
of bourbon until I just feel fucked up enough and
tired enough that I can just go to sleep. That's
the only way I can escape is just go to sleep.
And so I do that until I pass out in
(19:50):
my bed. I perceive threat everywhere on stage at parties,
and the gazes of strangers and the gazes of friends.
I'm almost always in a state of fight or flight.
The shame and self loathing is about self discipline. It's
this horrible asshole voice that keeps me in line. It
(20:10):
thinks it's keeping me safe from judgment. It thinks that
if I seek attention, if I do a performance, i'm
standing on stage, if I'm talking too loud, if I'm
telling a story, if I'm asking for attention, that those
are all the reasons. Those things are all risky. It
doesn't want me to do that. It wants to keep
me in line. It's like, shut the fuck up, what
(20:30):
are you doing? Like, what do you think you're doing?
What the fuck do you think you are? No one
wants to hear this, and no one wants to listen
to you. Nothing you have to say is valuable. Just
shut up, shut up, Shut the fuck up, shut up.
(20:51):
It's a nightmare and it's unbearable. But I'm always telling
myself it's fine. Like I hear, I just live in
this constant state of anxiety. But I'm just like, it's fine.
I tell myself it's fine. I tell myself it's fine.
I tell myself it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine,
it's fine. I put up with all of this and
I'm fine. I'm fine, it's fine. I'm fine. I have
(21:28):
days where I don't have any of these thoughts at all,
but the minute I stop. When I'm not watching TV,
I'm not answering emails, i'm not scrolling my phone, I'm
not texting someone. The lights are all the lights are off.
When it's just me, me alone with my thoughts, lying
in bed, and I'm lying there in the dark, and
I heard this voice fucking ale I actually hates you.
Saving deal with what its fucking asshole, I even deal
(21:50):
with what hates you. I'm saying, like what the voice
is saying to me, what it's telling me. I'm just
like I'll cry out in the middle of the night,
like I'll moan in the middle of the night, and
I'm like my roommate and hear me like moaning. I'm
just trying to like make a sound to kind of
drown out this other voice, this other noise, and it's
like I wanted to go away, but it's just right there,
(22:11):
like those are the mild moments. It's like not attached
to me. But I'm just like, why don't you go away?
Like let me sleep, and it won't let me sleep.
It's been three years since divesting from people pleasing and
three months since I started therapy, and I'm in another workshop.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
Kind of keep us regulated or let us know.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
In class, we study the brain, the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Ay heartbeat even slow down because you're in a really safe.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Environment, the part that handles emotional regulation and safety and
the fight or flight response.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
Or you know, stomach. You've ben relax, and it's okay
to eat right now.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
You also learn that there's a third response, to go.
Speaker 6 (22:54):
Numb, because it's the body's way of saying, when.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Your body thinks, we can't make it out of this
a lot, so.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
I'm going to eat you safe by making it so
that you can't feel anything.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
The gap between ourselves and the earliest humans is small.
We are still social creatures. We thrive most when we
are part of a group. If left to live alone,
we suffer. Our bodies are still wired for connection and
still wired to quickly scan our environments for threat. That's instinctual.
(23:28):
It happens automatically. It only takes seconds or milliseconds. When
the brain scans the environment and perceives danger, it has
a stress response called fight or flight. In this highly
activated state, the inner ear shifts in order to hear
the lower registers of approaching predators. The heart beats faster,
(23:48):
pumping more blood from the heart to the muscles, which
tends up making you ready to run at any moment.
When poised to flee or fight, we also breathe more quickly.
The greater the threat, the greater the physical response. But
if your brain concludes that the predator is too powerful
to overcome, that you wouldn't win against the predator in
(24:10):
a fight, or that you wouldn't be able to outrun it.
Your body's third strategy is to go numb. Your heart pounds,
but your breathing slows down until it's hard to take
a deep breath at all. Soon I realize I need
(24:32):
a witness to my shame. I just want to remember
this that I feel compelled to document and share this process,
have therapy and told my therapist that's like to me,
it just means, it's like that feeling is like all
the things I don't say, like all the ways of
I want to disappear, Like I want like no one
(24:52):
to ever see me again. I want I don't want
to have to all that are unexpectedly coming up for
me by other people, which I start to think of
as my decolonizing, Like I wish I didn't feel so
like alone in this process.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
My name is Mi Nachi and I facilitate non violent
communication workshops, specifically with a decolonial lens. So today's workshop
is going to be looking at shame and rage.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Before that day's somatic exercise, we discussed our relationship to
shame and rage, and I share that I'm not easily
provoked to anger other than the righteous rage I direct
towards Bigot's rapists and unjust power structures.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I think a lot of people are ashamed of feeling angry,
but like, who are the bodies that I think could
benefit from being able to have access to rage in
a healthy, safe space.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Before that day's workshop, some of us had been asked
to participate in the somatic exercise, which asked us to
channel and release our rape, which asked us to push
against me Naji, our facilitator for three minutes. It was
both a vocal and physical exercise, and I was reluctant
to do it.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
We're outside and the moon is probably the brightest light,
and there is also this quality of energy that is
just running around and through the group to where the
group feels really connected. One of the things that feels
like a thread that connects us is that we're all
(26:29):
people of color, almost all people of color.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
One by one, the people of Mi Nachi had chosen
before went up to do the exercise.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Put your hands on me and we would move together,
and you would just push as hard as you could.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
If I felt anything in my body. In the workshop,
it was the familiar feeling in my throat when I'm
holding something that I need to express, and.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
At the same time, you would be making vocalizations, and
it could be any kind of sounds like grounds, yells,
whatever you want, but no words.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I mostly felt it while watching others release their rage, and.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
We're also moving out of the story or the narrative
of what the rage might be, right, especially because a
lot of the work is that underneath rage is a
lot of grief.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Each time someone finished their turn, Minachi would look at me,
but I needed several invitations to participate, and then permission
to use their body, and finally it reassurance that they
could actually withstand my release.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
So you're going to put your hands let me right here.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I placed both hands on me Nachi's body, beneath their shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
So when you're pushing on me, I need you to
push consistently.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
And I started to push a little.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I can really feel the hesitation and resistance.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
But then I whispered to Mi Nachi, I just I
don't think that I can push you. I can't. I
don't think that I can do it. I can't push
you I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I know that this is not an activity that is
beyond what her capacity it can hold, and there's an
underlying need for me to be able to take us there,
to be able to get us there, and I know
that I can't do it by myself. I know that
NK can't do it, like it can't be just the
two of us, and so I'm hoping that pulling in
(28:15):
these other three people will help us get us to
where we need.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
To be, and response may not. She said to the
rest of the group.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Okay, okay, So I'm going to have three people come
stand behind NK, and I just want you to be
with her and just make sounds as she goes, just
make whatever sounds feel appropriate as we're working.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So then I push against me, not she's body. So
now we're moving slowly at first, and then faster.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
There's a stronger energy coming from her.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
And as she's doing it, like her head moves up
and down and just kind of just breathing, and I.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Can also feel the energy of the three people behind her.
Speaker 7 (28:54):
You would pause in between it, but even though you're
still resisting and just kind of take deep breaths and
like put.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Stuff in again.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Sensing, hoping, imagining that that energy is flowing into her body.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
But I heard the people behind me making different noises.
I wasn't sure how many people there were. They were
sort of like making those noises of release, like it was.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
A lot of release of like air and like long
with every push came like a sound from your throat,
guttural like grunts. Also like I was also crying because
I was like feeling all of this emotion like radiating.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
There was like one final good push and then and
then it stopped. It ended.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
It was so emotional.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
It feels like NK falls into my arms. It's like
the first time that we've had that. I feel like
she has let me hold her in this space or
in this way.
Speaker 7 (29:46):
It was very like palpable that there was stuff inside
that needed to come out.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
So a total of six people did the exercise. I
was the last one. Afterwards, we went back inside and
we talked about it, and there was no explicit or
linear connection made between the conversation about shame that we'd
had earlier that day and this final rage exercise.
Speaker 7 (30:09):
Well, just because in the previous sessions, the folks that
had gotten picked for this activity had expressed that they
had a hard time talking about how they felt, or
communicating their feelings or even like not being able to cry.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
I don't know. Yeah, just the comfort level you had
with your feelings, feeling your feelings. I knew that there
was just like stuff in there that wanted to come out.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
That someone said, Armena said the most revelatory thing. It
was just kind of like you were exhausted.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
It just sounded like you were tired of holding this stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
And I was just so shocked that she said she
could feel that, because in that moment when she said it,
I hadn't been thinking about it during the pushing, but
in the moment when she said it, I felt like
everything drained out of my body, Like, yeah, I am
so tired. I'm so tired of having to hold this.
It's like having to hold the posture, like the constant
(31:08):
sort of the rigidity of like constantly policing myself.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And I remember thinking about that thing, like, you know,
all the women in me are tired. And I think
that it came back to that when we all kind
of like shared back. I think I guess it confirmed
what I was thinking when you talked about, like, you know,
issues with the ways in which your mother would express
for yourself or lack of expression. But whether or not
(31:34):
you express it doesn't mean you don't feel it, right,
So I felt that maybe you carry that without even
meaning to. We all carry things that we don't mean
to carry because we inherit pain and trauma and love
and all these things that the women before us have carried.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
For any like any work that we're trying to do
with collective experience, with witness and with knowing your body,
to be able to discern what is rage and what
is grief, because if we confuse the two, we don't
actually attend to what needs to be attended to. I
guess grief just feels like big fucking open water, and
(32:19):
then rage feels really clear, It feels very direct, It
feels like a boundary. It also feels like, you know,
when it is acknowledged, when it is really heard, listen to,
attended to, it can dissipate immediately. It doesn't have a
need to hold on and stay in the body.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I mean, Nachi tells us that trauma isn't always a
big event like rape or abuse or other kinds of
physical violence.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
Like even the framework that we use right is really
able is colonial sort of framework, the idea that I'm
supposed to be able to live by myself.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
There's also trauma anytime we don't experience belonging or feeling
safe in a group.
Speaker 6 (33:08):
But the idea that I'm supposed to be able to
survive in a context where I'm not loved and celebrated.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
In fight or flight, your inner ear shifts to hear
the lower frequencies of predators, which means that today, in
a contemporary setting, we may not hear the higher tones
and the voices that the people were speaking to, the
tones that would reassure us that we're safe and wanted
and not actually in danger of attack. The terrible asshole
voice in my head once kept me safe, but now
(33:39):
it's preventing me from fully living my life, from experiencing
connection with the people I most want to connect to.
My public persona, the person I am in the world,
has been shaped by what was essentially a coping mechanism.
Fucking stupid. Everyone hates yourself. Fucking stupid. It may not,
she's workshop. We learned to confront our demon, asshole or
fucking bitch, to write down what they say, and to
(34:09):
thank them for their service, shut up, and then to
tell them that we don't need them anymore. That winter,
I'm home in Tennessee for the holidays. I went down
into my parents' basement and started looking through boxes of
(34:31):
old photos. I was looking for photos that would remind
me of Georgia, remind me of my younger self, younger
versions of my parents, my grandparents. And I find a
photo of myself from my high school prom. In the photo,
I'm standing alone without a date in the parking lot
of my high school and a vintage lay stress. I
(34:54):
just kind of hold this photo and stare at it
and like examine every detail the photo. There's this kind
of arc of attention around me that I don't think
I was aware of at the time. I definitely wasn't
aware of it. It's like a record of this disconnect,
like knowing exactly how I felt about myself at the
time that the photo was taken, Knowing how I saw
(35:16):
myself versus how other people see me. I felt a
lot like now, like how I see myself, the narrative
that's going on inside my mind that is so different
from what's actually happening. I fell asleep that night to
the sound of rain, and in the morning I woke
(35:37):
up crying. It was the last day of the year,
my last day in my parents' house before flying back
to Los Angeles, and throughout the day I'm just weeping.
There's this overwhelming feeling that there's a self that I
have to leave here, a self that I have to
(35:58):
leave behind, Leave here in this year, leave here in
this house, just leave in the past. It's like I
can't go back to California. I can't like live another year.
I have plans to spend New Year's Eve with my sister.
My sister leads us in a ritual, a cleansing. With
(36:21):
a glass of water, some table salt and a lemon.
We write down everything we want to release on pieces
of paper. We fold them up and gather them into
a drinking glass, sprinkle them with the lemon water I
don't and set them on fire. Maybe get back.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
We're working.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Divesting from People Pleasing was originally a three part series
produced for a show called The Heart in twenty twenty.
That version was edited by C. C. Pascal. It was
the first radio story I ever made, and I love
it very much. Divesting from People Pleasing the Redux was
made in the winter of twenty twenty three. Basket Case
(37:14):
is a production of Molten Hart and iHeart Podcasts. It
is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me NK Nicole Kelly.
I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who's also our executive producer. Production assistants by Siona Petros
and Ammani Leonard. Adrian Lilly is our mixed engineer. Our
theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our show
(37:35):
art was created by Sinney Rolson, fact checking by Serena Solyn.
Legal services provided by Rowan, Maren and File. Our executive
producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman.
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