By Lindsay Lamont-Airey, LMFT (above), some initial musings on how people malformed by white culture can start to get free from our repressive relationship with anger (reflecting on a series of slides below, posted by Rev. Dante Stewart on IG)

Whiteness trains us to be emotionally controlled and repressed. Not whole and free. Do not let the spiritual bypassers shame you for anger at injustice. They are legion, and they dominate the spiritual/cultural/therapeutic waters. It is a reflection of a white western therapeutic culture that has focused far more on what to do with anxiety (the response one has to violation and threats to safety) than on what to do with abuse of power (what causes violation and threat to safety in the first place).

As a trained therapist, I can tell you: anger is a primary adaptable response to active violation – of the self, and also when witnessing violation being actively committed against others. If you struggle to feel, express and metabolize it freely, and in a way that assists you in acting meaningfully in response to violation (I.e.. holding violators accountable vs. shrinking, collapsing, staying silent), then please know you are not alone. It takes a lot of healing and liberating work to get free from the forces of domination that have shaped us, early and often, in the belly of this beast of U.S. empire.

May we listen to voices like Dante Stewart. To those whose emotional range and health has not been constricted and atrophied by whiteness. To those who have a healthy relationship with anger – who don’t push it down, but who let it wake them up and mobilize them into acting meaningfully from a place of agency, a place that speaks out against injustice and refuses to give into cynicism, despair and denial.

Now is the time to get free.
Free Palestine.
Free us all.

—————————————-