PODCAST EPISODES

In this episode, Dr. Cheryl Tawede Grills, a clinical psychologist, joins to discuss how we can recognize and cope with racial stress and trauma at work and beyond. Dr. Grills is a Professor of Psychology at Loyola Marymount University and the past president of the Association of Black Psychologists. She focuses on training associated with racism, implicit bias, and the development of community-based self-help models to address the negative effects of racism on people of African ancestry. We talk about the impact that racial stress and trauma has on our mental, emotional, and physical health, as well as on our relationships with others, Black women’s experiences with racial trauma, and how we can emancipate ourselves from ubiquitous messaging regarding Black inferiority.  

Topics Covered: 

• How Dr. Grills began researching racial trauma and stress
• Defining trauma, racial trauma, and collective trauma
• The impact of trauma on our mental, emotional, and physical health
• Signs and symptoms of racial trauma
• Dealing with racial stress and trauma at work and strategies to cope
• The erasure of Black women’s experiences of racism and racial trauma
• How we internalize the myth of racial inferiority
• Emotional emancipation circles and how they can help to increase our consciousness 
• How to deal with anti-Black racism
• Resources: Association of Black Psychologists; Dr. Grills’ TEDx Talk, Emancipation from Mental Slavery

Highlights:

• “In the case of Black folk, racial trauma is actually something that is multi-generational. It’s not just the trauma I experience. I get handed down the trauma of my mother, the racial trauma of my grandmother, and of my great-grandmother.”
• “As we are dispersed throughout the world, we carry that fundamental connection that we have to each other as folks of African ancestry. We are in a shared experience. I don’t have to personally experience something, for it to impact me.”
• “We have not paid attention to what takes away the smile from the face and the hearts of Black women over generations.”
• “We have to defy lies and embrace the truth of our humanity.”

Connect with Dr. Grills: 

On the website: https://www.communityhealingnet.org/

Other References: 

• Malcolm X, Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?
• Dr. Cheryl Tawede Grills, TEDx Talk, Emancipation from Mental Slavery 
• Marcus Garvey, 1932 speech in Menelik Hall, Sydney, Nova Scotia, The Work That Has to Be Done
• Bob Marley, Redemption Song

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