The Psychology of Representation: Part 2
Written by Dr. Fabrice Lubin
“And for so long it was like we didn’t exist.”
We laugh about the fact that the coronavirus has made it impossible to get a haircut. Throughout the session, our curls flap loosely and with a mass, dense gravity carrying the weight of our time in quarantine. Without our partners to reach, grab, pull, tighten, and braid, we might succeed in total compliance and never venture outside. Our dress, how we style, where we show off, when we panic about not having shopped in quite a while -- all of this and the stuff we leave out matters and adds to the story.
The recollection of one’s life comes in pieces and tangents, and to someone not used to diving through the thicket of an anxious internal monologue, it might seem like the loosely woven locks of our hair: unkempt, frazzled, and wild. To my ears, one trained to find the beauty in me when there are no available mirrors by which to see I know how to read the breadcrumbs of my tangential stories, deviations, and shifts. I know how to follow the glints, sparkle, and fragile light emanating from their self-reflections. Catching it on the leaves of their words, I gently stoke the fire of our conversation. Time slows down to a crawl in a therapy space affording me various outlets to approach a person's inner life:
I might offer a small token of gratitude: "thank you for sharing such a harrowing tale of the moment the police pulled you over."
I may congratulate them for "having the strength to ask a supervisor for a break from their work."
Or relate: "I can still see the strength of your spirit, even when you remained silent in front of your racist brother-in-law."
These were not the words taught in graduate school. If I spoke these words or used them, I risked reprimands for not being objective, neutral, and precisely distant. If I came dressed down when meeting with my people from the community, my supervisors admonished me for failing to be "professional." I learned how to push back by citing stories of threats to my physical body as I curled my way through the streets to make it from the train to the office or community college. Instances where being too dressed up in “professional” clothes made me a target for roaming youths itching for a fight. These supervisors, blind to the fact that their student sitting in front of them, was held precisely in the same traps as the clients they were serving, would remark to me: "why don't you just drive?"
"Because I can't afford a car," I replied
"Oh," these leaders would say without a sense of their trespass. "Oh," was the kind of word I always found myself hating. It was something someone always said, indicating they heard something but were unwilling to process any further. The conversation for them was complete, as if to say, "yes, I understand," when they did not understand a single damn thing.
Like many BIPOC people who exist in predominantly white spaces, I formed these words myself, forging them into tangible sharpness on these everyday rides from Uptown to Southside or from East near the Lake to West Lawndale. To be on those buses and trains, you had to connect with the bodies that surrounded you. They were often used to hiding themselves, prepping their masks on their way to work, or avoiding direct eye-contact. Chicago trains us to unsee, and instead, encourages us to lean into our various perceptions of threats, suspects, and intimate paranoia. This avoidance wasn't just the escape for the well-off body, broken body, Black body, and Brown body; it was everybody.
For many white people, it was internalized anxiety, and for Black and Brown bodies, it was tangible fear. Our culture teaches us to look away, with our eyes cast downward in order to conceal our words of awareness. BIPOC individuals consistently exist in ambiguous, liminal spaces and places. Code-switching, professional decor, and even how we emerge in photographic imagery, let alone interactions of the police or authority figures, can lead to uncertain outcomes. Racial tension and ambiguity, i.e: the anticipation of experiencing racism or microaggressions bring stress and anxiety partly because it elicits a loss of control. Therefore, attempts to suppress uncertainty comes with a focus on control-seeking behaviors and avoidance. Like most humans, we want to avoid unpleasant experiences, which, paradoxically, risks other aspects of life. When BIPOC individuals avoid the steps to seek mental health services, it is an attempt to suppress psychological discomfort and previous trauma. Noted clinical psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brach, observes:
When we become insecure, our reflex is not to come into the present moment; our reflex is to control. How do we shift from that reflex to control things to opening ourselves to what's happening?
What does it mean to ask the BIPOC community to relinquish control? Primarily when so much of our control remains out of our hands? Without sufficient representation, we continue to risk being misinterpreted, mislabeled, and misdiagnosed. Our resistance to oppressive forces becomes "argumentative" and anti-authority. Our seeking and desire for perfection, excellence, and achievement could be hiding workaholism. The implicit bias of perceiving black women as "strong" and "wise beyond their years," may force someone to avoid endorsing social and performance anxiety. Lastly, many BIPOC individuals feel pressure to "deal with things on their own" and refuse to seek consultation.
A representative mental health field can play a significant role in reducing this tension. Having an understanding of the world that my clients inhabit both internally and externally assists with rapport building, assessment, and structuring relevant intervention strategies.
By speaking the words that are often so hard to find, my BIPOC clients relate to the pleasure and experience of finally being seen rather than perceived.
There is something hopeful in this -- that elastic and unique joy of being heard, possibly for the first time, and knowing there's so much more to say.