Change Your Mind Change Your Reality: 2 Tips to Tackling Toxic Stress in Your Life

Random Acts of Vulnerability Blog: Volume 1, April 2020

By: Dr. Michael Allen

“At some point you have to decide for yourself who you’re going to be. Don’t let anyone else make that decision for you.” – Moonlight, 2016

Over the last few weeks, we have started to feel the destruction and human impact of COVID-19. It breaks my heart to know that many people are losing loved ones in the United States and abroad. As a result, I am compelled to hold space for those that have lost close relatives as well as generations of ancestors who have transitioned during their battles with the current pandemic and other social ills that have taken place all throughout humanity’s global history.

One of my closest mentors, Dr. Webb, recently returned to the United States from Ghana via plane amid the onset of the infamous Coronavirus with a very compelling story to share with me. He started by explaining how he and the passengers on the plane experienced toxic stress very differently throughout the journey. Instead of his usual flight to New York and then to Chicago, he landed four times. There was some sort of issue with the gas in the plane so the first unexpected stop was in Puerto Rico. Once they had the plane up and running there was a computer malfunction that forced them to make an emergency landing in Miami. When they finally made it to New York, which was a part of his original itinerary, the flight was delayed to Chicago. Thirty-four hours later, they arrived home safely to Chicago.

I asked what he did to regulate what he had experienced. Dr. Webb responded, “I saw many of the passengers complaining and demanding answers about what was happening…I accepted it, in Miami I realized that no one could get out...I thought about my friend (who flew standby) and was left back in Ghana because there was no more room on the plane...there was nothing I could do to change the situation…so I put my earplugs in and accepted it.” He went on to tell me that after that moment, he had “total peace” as his surrender released him from the burden of toxic stress. Near the end of the conversation he smiled, in a stoic but wise demeanor and said, “I saw seven movies and they were all good too.”

One of the world’s most renowned adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) researchers, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, describes toxic stress as the body’s natural response to a disruption to the stress response system often caused by a challenge, problem or threat.

Click on the book to hear Dr. Burke Harris' thoughts on toxic stress.

In her book, The Deepest Well, Dr. Burke Harris outlined a powerful metaphor as she referred to toxic stress as a bear when she wrote, “We all live in a forest with different kinds of bears...there’s a large group of bears that populate a part of the forest called poverty...if you live there you are going to see a whole lot of bears. There’s also a part of the forest called race...another called violence...if you live near any of these bear dens your stress response system is going to be affected in the same way no matter which bear you tangle with.”

She went on to explain what many of us already know, for the people who live in neighborhoods where poverty, race and violence overlap “it’s wall to wall to wall bears.” In addition, there are bears of parental mental illness, divorce, addiction and so forth.

It is important to note that toxic stress can impact how we learn, how we parent, how we react at home and at work. It affects our children, our earning potential and the vary ideas we have about what we are capable of accomplishing.

Researchers and clinicians both believe that toxic stress often occurs when the mind is in conflict with reality. In these types of situations, generally you have one of two options:

1). Change your mind and accept reality

2). Change your reality

Click on the picture to see the trailer of the film Moonlight.

Ashton Sanders who starred as Chiron in the Academy Award-winning film Moonlight was seemingly trapped in a world filled with toxic stress. The middle portion of the film depicted Chiron, a cisgender, black male as he transitioned from being an adolescent to a young adult on the streets of Miami. He had to endure the difficulties of accepting his sexuality in a homophobic society, his mother’s drug addiction and to make matters worse, physical and emotional abuse. Chiron’s turning point in his life came the day after his first intimate encounter with his friend, Kevin. Chiron was physically attacked in front of his entire high school by a number of school bullies including Kevin. While Chiron was heartbroken, embarrassed and crushed by what happened, he was also enraged. The next morning he decided to do something to change his reality. He came to school, went to class and broke a chair over the student’s back that was responsible for coordinating his attack. While he was being escorted out of the school, in handcuffs by the police, he made a promise to himself that he would never allow anyone else to ever bully him again.

As Dr. Burke Harris alludes to in her book while it is statically more likely to impact African American and Latinx people at higher levels of intensity because of the systemic racism in America, toxic stress and childhood adversity doesn’t discriminate based upon race, social class, location etc.

Whether your story is rooted in rural white communities where people are losing wages and work in the fall out from rampant drug use. Whether it is in Latinx communities who are experiencing unprecedented levels of discrimination and fear of forever being separated from your loved ones at a moment’s notice. Whether you live in African American communities that have experienced centuries of a legacy of inhuman treatment that disproportionately impacts your families even to this day (i.e. the disparities of death rates connected to COVID-19). Where your sons are constantly at risk when they play on park benches or walk home from stores wearing hoodies. Whether you live in Native American communities where many of the stories are about the obliteration of your land and culture and the legacy of dislocation.

It’s about time to realize and accept that everyone is suffering from toxic stress in the hands of a system that is designed to marginalize us all but in different ways.

For some of us it is blindness, for others it is silence, for some it is our stubborn demand to be separate from the universal struggle, and for others it is our acceptance of what is happening to us, our families and our communities.

While you don’t have control over the things that have occurred in your past, and you may not have say over some of the circumstances that you face in the present you do have total control over your responses. When toxic stress strikes, you can mirror the actions of Dr. Webb on his grueling flight back home from Ghana and accept reality or you can take a radical act (excluding violence) to run through your fears like Chiron in Moonlight and change your reality. Depending on the specific situation, either choice is a viable option. Just remember that the goal is to take actions that establish or preserve your peace. Your healing and ability to grow are in your hands. In the words of Grammy Award-winning singer, India Arie, remember that, “In times like these…that’s what your heart is for…continue to breathe.”