Emotional Resilience and Accountability Training

Module 4: Communication in Connection

To be in conversation about racism and white supremacy with others can be anxiety-producing. We can feel unsure of ourselves, feel blocked in the throat from speaking up, be afraid of losing our job/friends/family, and afraid we’ll cause more harm. We often feel very ungrounded and nervous to talk to other white people about ways they might be causing harm to folks of color, as well as being a recipient of a call in.

There is no expectation these anxieties will ever totally go away, but this module will explore how to manage and move beyond those feelings.

Please watch the following video, and then complete the activities below.

DEEPER DIVE: I reference Thomas Hübl and attuning to another person a couple of times. Here is a 19-minutes video of him talking about what this means in him.)

Your convictions

Having conversations about racism and white supremacy culture in our places of work, schools, families, etc., can feel like riding dangerous, wild rapids of emotions. Because we have less at stake than folks of color, we need something to hold onto to keep us committed to riding those rough waters. We can find this holding place in our convictions– our deeply held commitments that keep us from indulging the temptation to prioritize our own comfort.

1. How does anti-racism work align with your core values?
2. Why are you willing to do this work? 
3. Who do you do this work for?
4. What conviction jewels do you hold in your heart?

Mapping emotions in our body and imagination

We’re going to build a sort of toolbox or paint palette of emotional redirects for when we’re actively engaged in communication with another person that starts off with what you notice in yourself as feelings of separation (e.g., shame, defensiveness, superiority). 

Developing familiarity with where emotions live in our body can be helpful when feeling pulled down by shame, inflamed by defensiveness, or stuck in some other emotion related to feeling separate from another person.

I like to think of our initial emotional reactions as what seems to be a sudden bonfire in our face where the heat and brightness is all we can feel and see. If we are able to notice this, we can move back enough to feel more air between us and the fire. And we can move back more and more, which reveals it’s only a campfire. We then realize we have the option to walk away from the fire, and towards a cooling river.

Shifting our sense of relation to other humans, and beings, and the Earth

Those of us who were raised in the settler-colonizer culture have been programmed to place ourselves and other beings into hierarchical relationships. An important aspect of communicating in connection is to shift our sense of self as above and below others towards a more indigenous ecological perspective.

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Click on the titles below to jump around to other modules:

• Introduction to the course
• Module 1: Taking inventory of our personal nervous system tendencies
• Module 2: Leaning into the truth on how whiteness shows up in us
• Module 3: Slowing down
• Module 4: Communication in connection – Part 1
• Module 4: Communication in connection – Part 2
• Closing
• Body scan video