Healing the White Female Toxicity of Economic Trauma
First breathe. Notice your body. Head to toe, just like in your yoga class or on your meditation retreat. Notice the pleasure of presence. Now, visualize what you most desire. Be sure that when you think about what you want, you feel good at the same time. Then, stop thinking about what you want, and just feel good. Maybe make a collage. Then go back to being in the vortex, noticing the pleasure of presence.
Good job. That’s it.
Now, if by any chance, you aren’t getting what you want in life, it is because you need to practice more positivity. Try hearing me say it more often- until it drowns out any other thought in your brain: just focus on feeling good. Come to my seminar or webinar, and I will say it however you want me to. You can pay me to say it in your inbox every morning, or over Youtube whenever you want. You can pay more and join one of my intimate circles where I will say it to you in a soft voice and we will journal about it. Feel good. If you pay me enough, I’ll even spit it at you with expletives in front of large groups of people.
It is good to focus on feeling good.
Except when we ignore the connection between the magical thinking of New Age Spirituality, the magical thinking of Neoliberal Free Market Capitalism, and the Cognitive Dissonance of Domination. Among other things, these merging worldviews result in a particular kind of Economic Trauma: White Female Toxicity.
Knowing and practicing what feeling good feels like is an important energetic leverage point in moving toward a better existence for all. However, when we focus exclusively on the power of positive thinking to override the discomfort of cognitive dissonance, our minds are not in coherence with our hearts. When our minds are not in coherence with our hearts, our brains are not operating at full capacity, we walk ourselves into cognitive bias, and react with according self-righteousness. Outwardly expressed, this is also commonly known as White Fragility.
The Cognitive Dissonance of Domination upholds a story that legitimizes the worthiness of a select few to cash in on their dreams. The Secret is real: when we see domination as unavoidable, then we can avoid personal responsibility.
Behavioral scientist, Dr. Paul Piff, has done amazing work studying the behavioral implications of privilege- those who have it tend to feel they deserve it. These studies bring into stark relief the fallacies of a meritocracy that upholds a donor class of individuals who, by virtue of patten laws and compound interest, control the destiny of people and planet.
The subscription to upward mobility that dominates white culture has insidious effects that manifest in so many ways. From the visible impacts of NIMBYism and transactional relationships to the not so hidden psychoses of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and White Female Toxicity, Economic Trauma has a long and continuing legacy of violence in America.
Economic Trauma is perpetuating a culture of tribalism and warfare.
Our brains, and therefore our cultural evolution, are responsive and adapt to the environmental context. With eco-system collapse and widespread economic insecurity, we truly face an Apocalyptic Dawning of the Age of Aquarious.
Yet, like a cosmic striptease, the Greek origin of apocalypse means uncovering or revealing the opportunity that lies hidden beneath the shroud of our cognitive dissonance. There is nothing sexier than the pure potential that arises from the singularity of Coherence.
Cognitive Coherence arises when our minds and hearts are in resonance. We are internally at peace because our future security does not require our retirement funds to be tied up with extractive investments. Supporting locally-owned businesses does not trigger frustration and resentment because we can’t really afford it. We fail to imagine answers to the housing crisis because our minds are entranced by myriad home improvement shows and absorbed by the need for the equity to increase faster than the interest on the home loan.
Like the air we breathe, we fail to see these micro-traumas to Cognitive Coherence. Especially amidst the hyper-normalization of domination, destruction, death, and despair. It’s like Groundhog Day all over again, notes critical cultural commentator, Caitlin Johnstone. We see the clouds change shape, but it is always the same underlying story of humans responding to the environmental context we created with our economic design.
White Supremacy is Economic Trauma. Race is a social construct. Bolstered by laws and perpetuated by hidden agendas aimed at enclosing, protecting, and siphoning wealth upward into its ballooning, metastisized coffers, racial division decreases competition and increases profit. Racism, therefore, is a mental illness caused by Economic Trauma.
To heal racism, we cannot rely on BIPOC and LGTBQ writers, thinkers, and speakers to tirelessly share the wisdom of their experiences and face the existential consequences. As white people, it does not suffice to deflect our own accountability by blaming “the real racists” or shaming the Karens.
Resmaa Meneken, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, has given white people an explicit challenge: until we work with one another on our own particular Economic Trauma, we will continue to perpetuate toxic behaviors and maintain a toxic culture. This means talking about how we relate to one another, including being willing to have conversations about race. Avoiding the concerns of others because of one’s personal discomfort, being unwilling to engage in conversation or self-analysis, blaming it “toxic wokeness”, and asking the wealth holders to buttress one’s bank account, isn’t in Coherence with Peace nor the Oneness of Life. It is White Fragility. This White Fragility is self-righteous and gaining ground, tired of capitulating, and unwilling to sacrifice further.
This is the Economic Trauma that needs to be addressed. It is the shroud of scarcity and sacrifice that keeps us trapped in defense and domination. Our defenses are body-based, and so become convictions that we are willing to sacrifice life for.
As we enter the Apocalyptic Age of Aquarius, it is time to lift the shroud, uncovering the raw, naked infinite potential of humanity as loving, caring, co-creative beings.
If you are counting on the Law of Attraction, unless we want more of the same, we must cultivate Cognitive Coherence: inwardly aligning hearts and minds, outwardly aligning our actions, and lifting our gaze and aspirations upward toward the infinite potential of our purpose.
Thus tending the soil, we can cultivate syntropic economic ecosystems that become fertile environments for a coherent cultural evolution.
Healing Economic Trauma requires addressing our true needs and wants; continuously revisiting and realigning our purpose with our actions; learning to be in relatedness with nature, including awakening the intelligence of our own body-brain; practicing intimate relatedness with others by responding with compassion and curiosity rather than reacting from trauma; revisiting and realigning our shared purposes; holding one another accountable for competent Coherence; practicing true autonomy and co-existence; seeing conflict as fertile ground for synergy; and co-creating shared visions of a shared and exquisite existence.
