The oppression of Black people is more than just a historical or political question. The accumulated harms of centuries of slavery, segregation, mass incarceration, and racism in all forms have a psychological and medical effect, in addition to political and economic ones. Trauma, after all, describes the physical injury of the brain as a result of harmful experiences. At the scale of communities and generations, such trauma can be passed down and reproduced for decades, and even centuries. In the first of a two-part conversation, traumatologist Dr. Da’Mond Holt explains the medical reality of Black historical trauma, and what kinds of interventions and solutions are required to promote healing as a form of justice.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino, Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
This is part one of a two-part interview with Dr. Da’Mond Holt. He’s an author, researcher, clinician, and national trauma expert, certified traumatologist through the Traumatology Institute, and a certified mental health specialist, trauma crisis specialist through the American School Council Association, and is a licensed restorative practice justice trainer. In his book, Black Trauma: What Happens to Us, he says that trauma is real, but more importantly, Black trauma is real. Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Dr. Holt.
Dr. Da’Mond Holt:
Thank you, sir.
Mansa Musa:
And for the sake of our audience, Dr. Holt is from Arizona, University of Arizona, and it’s our honor and pleasure to have him come down this way to talk about trauma and all things relative to trauma. Dr. Holt, first let’s pull back some of the things. So in your opening chapter, titled Black Trauma, you first explain what trauma is and then explain why you say Black trauma. Because as soon as somebody say trauma and then you say, “Oh, trauma, native American trauma, European trauma, certain certain trauma.” Explain what trauma is, and then is there a disconnect between that and Black trauma?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah. So again, thank you for having me on your show. Trauma is very, very important, and it’s most important to be able to fix trauma, understand trauma, you need to be able to properly define what trauma is. And right now we are in a society where people are using the word trauma or, “I’ve been traumatized,” or, “I have PTSD,” and these are buzzwords to a lot of people, but they really don’t understand what that means. So to define it from our perspective as a traumatologist and trauma expert is, according to American Psychological Association, trauma is a traumatic experience that’s based on something mentally, emotionally, physically, or sexually. But to make it more important, more in detail, it’s based on wounds and injuries. The root word of trauma means an injury. So when we say trauma or someone’s been traumatized, from a neurological or a psychological perspective that means the brain has been traumatized, or the brain has been wounded or injured because of life’s circumstances, as far as, the brain can be injured because of a life-threatening situation or a life-devastating situation.
It actually brings injury and wounds to different regions of the brain, and that impacts brain functioning. And so when these injuries and wounds have been impacted because … The brain has been impacted by wounds and injuries because of trauma, when it’s untreated, it is symptoms like having an infection. And this is where we began to have symptoms like mental illness, like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, all those things. It’s because it has come from an injury that has been untreated. So if you continue to have injuries that’s untreated, it becomes maladaptive and you begin to have these symptoms. Two, why Black trauma?
Black trauma is really a, what we would consider in the traumatology world, it’s historical trauma. Historical trauma is a trauma that is associated with minority groups. African-Americans are certainly as part of the minority group and a disenfranchised and marginalized community. And we have our own specific traumas. Every ethnic, pretty much, ethnic type of population in our country have a historical trauma. Jewish people have a historical trauma because of the Holocaust. Latinos and Latinx and Hispanics have their traumas because of border issues and things of that nature. Native Americans have their type of trauma because white America came and Europeans came and took their country and took their land and language and whitewashed, exactly, right? So that would be our native type of trauma. But there is something called Black trauma as well. And it goes back 400 years ago, going back to the 1600s all the way in slavery when Africans came into the Americas.
And all of the concerns that happened to them, far as lynchings, far as tortures, far as amputations, far as rapes that took place, all that was traumatizing. And what makes it dangerous is we didn’t heal from that 400 years ago. Every decade in every century, that trauma of our Black people matriculated all the way through generations up to today. So all of that stuff that our ancestors went through, we are still being impacted in our brain and in our bodies. So the question is, though, if I had the technology of reading CAT scans and MRIs 400 years ago, what would the brains of slaves look like?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Okay, you set it up in terms of identifying that each ethnic group has trauma.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
And you set it up and you identify those things that would be relative to why they would be traumatic.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah, most definitely.
Mansa Musa:
Right. But initially you said that trauma equals injury, that when you say the brain, when you say trauma, I’m traumatic, I’m suffering from trauma, I’m suffering from some kind of injury.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. How is it that when you say Black trauma, what is the injury that Black people are suffering from, to say we will keep it in that context, as opposed, to simplify, we’re injured?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yes. Yes, we’ve been injured and I speak into to that space. So trauma, the root, trauma means an injury or wound. And when you’ve been traumatized, it does impact the brain. Sometimes it even rewires the brain where the person is really not the person who they used to be. In the African-American community, we know for a fact that trauma impacts different regions of the brain. It impacts your thalamus, which is very important because that’s what uses sensory perception to sense the room for danger. We know it impacts your amygdala, which is your fear center. We know it impacts your frontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex area where you make decisions, choices, and all of that. People that have been through a lot of trauma, that most definitely impacts that. We know it impacts your hippocampus When it comes to your episodic memory, your emotional memory, short-term, long-term memory, all of that comes from your hippocampus region of your brain. Your hypothalmus-pituitary-adrenal axis that releases all of the cortisol in the body along with the HPA, that all is impacted.
So we know that trauma does that, certainly African-American, Black Americans, regions of the brain have been impacted in those areas. And those things are very, very important. This is the reason why, because of our traumas and because of our wounds and scars that we did not heal from, we pass it on to the next generation. So perhaps what I’m struggling with, maybe my great-great-grandfather went through it and my great-great-grandfather went through it. And my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, has all now been passed on to me through generational trauma and also something we call epigenetics, where we pass it on through our genes and how our genes express in our DNA. So it’s very important. These are the things that we are going through. And then also cultural. In a Black family, Black communities, we don’t talk about things. We don’t go to the doctor, we don’t see counselors, we don’t go to therapists, we don’t like talking about what we issue. So we have a lot of family secrets in Black families.
All of that is like a pressure cooker brewing, just waiting for that opportunity for an explosion. And so when we don’t heal from our traumas and we allow these things to happen and exacerbate the outcomes for African-Americans without the right love, without the right treatment, without the support network and building those type of support networks, can be very maladaptive for our community.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So how do we process this trauma? Because, okay, you outlined some of the things that goes on into, when you say epigenology, it impacts our DNA.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yes, it does.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, I want to try to get a perspective on relating it to what we see today, in terms of, okay, is this the result of this, what we see today with our kids? Or is this the result of when we see in the Black community where a little kid, I’ll give you an example, like a child, her little friend get killed, four-year-old friend get killed. And her four-year-old friend get killed, and the parents, the innocent Black community parents tell the kid that she gone with Jesus. But at the same time, when the parents talking to their adult friends and saying the no-good father created the problem, and the kid’s sitting there listening to this. How do we process it? How do we get to a space where as far as the normalcy, everything, you can go anywhere in the world in the Black community and you can fit in. If you’re Black, it is no problem making an adjustment to fit in. Is that the normalcy that’s come from the trauma, or what?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Well, a lot of times …
Mansa Musa:
If you can understand my point.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
I understand your point. So really ask for more application of how people can really understand what does it look like, right?
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So one, you have different types of trauma. You have acute traumas, that’s kind of like a one-hit wonder that happened one time but have long-term effects. Then there’s something called complex trauma where it’s more long-term, like a person living in poverty or have been abused for several years and never told anybody. Or you have complex trauma, where you have people who have been through four different traumatic experience and they’re living with those four different traumatic experiences every single day, from someone having a parent that have a mental illness or having a parent that’s on drugs or substance abuse and addictions, or a family member has been incarcerated, or someone who’s been sexually abused. All those things, that’s what we call complex trauma. And so it can be from abandonment, it can be from rejection, it can be from all kinds of different, from going from foster care to foster care.
We see it in the classrooms. A lot of kids, most of the schools are failing right now because of trauma, because of the frontal lobe can’t process information that the teacher is teaching. Because if you haven’t eaten in three days, you’re not paying attention to algebra.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So that’s how I’m breaking it down to where people can get it. So when people’s like, “Well, why was I struggling?” And a lot of these kids don’t have learning disorders like we’re just pushing out.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
A lot of kids have early childhood trauma that impacts the brain, the process to learn.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
And if you don’t understand that that’s early childhood trauma, it’s easy to misdiagnose kids and over-medicate kids from symptoms that they really don’t have because the root cause is really trauma. So I always say even as practitioners, clinicians, therapists, school psychologists, speech pathologists, we need to slow down on a diagnosis and really understand what type of traumas that these kids are having. Because a lot of times we are overly medicating kids, and we are certainly misdiagnosing too many kids when we don’t understand trauma is a factor.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, then in your book you speak of coming face to face with adverse child experiences. This is a good way to move into that. Walk us through that, walk us through what that looked like and try to contextualize to what need to be done. Because you just spoke on if I’m in school and I’m smart, but I can’t get it. And they diagnosed me as having a learning disability. And so I have a learning disability, they put me in a low class and then I’m in a low class, now I’ve got these complexes about being here. Because I know I know the material, but I can’t process it.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah, your brain can’t process as long as you’re in a fight or flight.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
When you’re in survival mode and you’re in a fight or flight. And God created our bodies to be like that, because if you are in danger and a bear is chasing you, you don’t need to know algebra, how to get out the equation, right? Is that kind of making sense?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So it’s hard to process that curriculum when the frontal lobe is offline because the survival mode of the brain is taking over to survive.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So what happens is, when you are in survival mode all the time because you’re in the hood, let’s go, let’s make it real practical.
Mansa Musa:
Come on, come on.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
You’re in the hood, you’ve seen your homie get blasted, that’s a traumatic experience.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
You’re in the hood and you’re trying to study your homework and you hear gunshots throughout the night, that has you hyper vigilant. When you’re in the hood and you see your mom get beat up by a lover, domestic violence, all of that impacts the brain. And that child goes to school with those traumatic experiences. And we be wondering why kids can’t learn. Kids are not learning because they’re dumb and stupid and ignorant. No, that’s not the case. It’s because the frontal lobe has been hijacked because of all of the trauma, because they’re in survival mode. So when we want kids to be learning, we have to get them out of that fight or flight. So to your question, ACEs, adverse childhood experiences is what it means, it’s an assessment on how practitioners and doctors such as myself assess and evaluate the ramifications of early childhood traumas.
And it’s a 10-questionnaire and you check one for each box of the question that pertains to you and your trauma. If you’re over four more in your score, then you’re more likely to get into substance abuse, get into addictions, for young kids to be having risky behavior far as being promiscuous and having too many … All kinds of different stuff.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So we see all of that because of the early childhood traumas, and that is what impacts us. And then another thing we need to see, a lot of people, early childhood trauma we see through technology is, the brains are smaller. You have smaller brains, you have compromised neurodevelopment, which is going to probably be some signs that this person’s going to have issues far as with AD, ADD, ADHD, can’t pay attention, have issues with readiness, language delays, all of that is coming from trauma.
So this is the reason why as a traumatologist, I want to be advocating that we need to bring healing. Today’s data, 80% to 90% of Americans have experienced at least one traumatic experience. Can you imagine that? That’s a very high number. 80% to 90% of Americans have experienced at least one traumatic experience in their life. So trauma is extremely high, and our bodies are not designed for that. So let me throw in something that is probably not in your questionnaire. So not only am a traumatologist, but I’m an integrative medicine provider. So that also means I treat the body. And so what do I see in the body outside of the brain, is that when people have a lot of trauma, a lot of chronic stress, it creates something called chronic and cellular inflammation, which makes us sick.
So people, say you start having earlier development of rheumatoid arthritis and you start having early development of back pain and chronic pain, swollen feet, all of these different things. And you’d be saying, “What’s going on in my brain from all of that trauma and stress could really give me swollen feet, where I can barely walk or I can barely stand up straight because of back pain and chronic pain?” Yes, because that turns into chronic inflammation. If you don’t address chronic inflammation, it turns into autoimmune disease. If you don’t deal with the autoimmune disease, then it turns into myelobolic disease.
Mansa Musa:
Come on now, you’re telling me that pork, you’re telling me that swine ain’t giving me hypertension, that the pork ain’t the reason why?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
It can, yeah, most definitely, too much of it.
Mansa Musa:
The fact that I looked up, they’ve been lynching everybody in my neighborhood and I’m scared of that. But let me push back on this right here, because I’ve got serious issues with this. Okay, so you say that, and it’s not in reflection to what you’re saying, this is a reflection of how society does things. Okay, so I codify behavior. I say, “Okay, I’m going to give you a list of 10 things. If you get scored high on these things, you’re all right. If you score low on these things, something’s wrong with you.” Now, what if a person … Okay, I’m in this space and you tell me you’re doing this assessment on me.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
And I say, “Okay, I’m intentionally manipulating the score.” All right, so how do you gel with that in terms of saying, “Well, you’re going to treat me when I already know that.” I said, “I’m in here for the purpose of manipulating this mechanism.” So how you …
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So you make a great point. So I’m just going to flat out and be very bold and raw and say everything has to do with readiness. You can have the best doctor, you have a team of doctors. If the patient is not ready, nothing is happening.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So if you’re manipulating, that’s a sign of readiness. That’s a sign you’re in denial and you’re not ready. So one of the things before I take on a patient or a client is that person have to have a level of readiness. If a person is not ready, it doesn’t matter how …
Mansa Musa:
Okay, not to cut you off, how do you get that? Because this is where I’m saying I’m drawing the line in the sand saying the problem lies in the system saying I identify and I can get money for it. I’m identifying, I can get a grant for it. I’m identified, I can do a paper on it.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
So I’m saying I’m drawing the line in this. Okay, you’re saying that in your practice that you have a mechanism to identify or get them to be comfortable or developing into getting ready?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
I can help them to show where they are, but the readiness comes from the patient. It can never come from me.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Actually, we’re not even … We are healers in certain ways, but the real healing comes from the inside of the person. So the person have to really have a level of readiness, no matter who that practitioner, clinician, or that doctor is, is that the patient have to really want it and they have to be committed to putting in that work. I cannot do that for them. So that’s another thing also in my field of work, is getting people who pretend and they’re just ready to put in that work, then they’re not showing up to appointments. You know what I’m saying? They’re not following up, they’re not taking any medicine, they’re not doing the treatment. You’re not ready.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So that’s another thing we have to really put emphasis on when we’re talking about people healing, is that a lot of that has to do with them on the inside of really being ready, coming out of denial, stop blaming because your father wasn’t there. I’m not saying your father wasn’t there, I’m just saying your daddy can’t continue to be the excuse why you’re not being the best version of yourself.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Is that kind of making sense?
Mansa Musa:
That makes good sense.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So readiness is a big issue in this work. Not just as a patient, but also as a community, that we have to support our Black men. Black men far as being able to have a space and talk about our Black masculinity, talk about our anger issues and talk about getting in touch with our feelings. Because you know how we were raised, I know I was in the hood, you showed emotion, you’re getting beat up, you’re getting punked, you’re getting bullied, you were soft. You cry, cry in front of us and see what happened, right? And so what happens is we got molded with that mindset that wasn’t healthy. And now we are 30, 40, 50, 60 years old and we don’t know how to build attachments with our own children with our emotions because we were taught and trained from our environment to cut that stuff off.
That’s trauma as well. So one of the things I say in one of my books is, hurting people hurt people. Stop bleeding on people that didn’t cut us. If you don’t heal from your trauma, you’re going to continue to bleed on others. You’re going to bleed on your marriage, bleed on your children, bleed on your friendships, bleed even in your church. I don’t even think we talk enough also about the Black church’s trauma as well and how we need to prepare to be able to bring healing and facilitate healing even in the body of Christ.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s go here then, all right, because you’re saying, okay, we are going to accept the perspective that readiness is on the individual.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
And I’m not putting the onus on you to say to make me ready.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah, yeah.
Mansa Musa:
I’m saying …
Dr. DaMond Holt:
But how I can assess it.
Mansa Musa:
Ah.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
How do I assess it, that’s good. Assessment. That’s assessment, right? So I’ve got to evaluate and assess you and come with a rubric and a score to be able to say, “Okay, based on what I’m saying is, based on what I’m looking at, you’re not ready yet.” Or, “Based on what I’m seeing, let’s make your first appointment.” That’s pretty much how it’s going to go. Or you’re in the middle range. Let’s take care of some things first and let’s revisit and have these conversations to see, can we get you ready for that next appointment. So readiness is going to be huge in regards to helping people heal. And that can never be all on your doctor, that can never be all on your therapist. That’s not even fair for us. But we do have the skill sets to help you navigate through your issues and through your challenges to help you get to the next level. I think we also underestimate the power of life coaches as well.
Not only do you need a doctor and a therapist, because we help you with your deficits.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
With you bleeding, we need to sew you up so you can stop hemorrhaging.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Once we get you stabilized and get you to stop bleeding and hemorrhaging, I also think life coaches is very important too. Because now life coaches start giving you, pushing you in that right direction far as purpose, far as strategies and goals and targets. That’s where that coach come in. So you need coaching, you need counseling from the therapist, the psychological world. You need care from your doctors in the medicine world. But you also need coaching. It’s the three Cs.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
And I ain’t put that in the book so I’m going off the cuff, so you’re getting some free stuff today.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, yeah.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
But that’s how I look at it. It’s a community, it’s overlayered, it’s a holistic approach. You need care, you need counseling, and you need coaching to really steer this thing in regards to helping people heal from their trauma. And you need everything, you need all of that, your doctor, your therapist, your priest, your rabbi, your pastor to bring that spiritual component as well.
Mansa Musa:
So basically it takes a village.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
It takes a village.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so as we close out, you say Black Trauma: What Happens To Us? So Black trauma, how do we change what’s happened to us?
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah. How do we change? I think we may even have to, and I’m probably going to make a bold statement as a traumatologist and say I think at some point I think we are going to have to go back and revisit post-traumatic stress disorder. Because the word post suggests that it was the past.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
And I think that we may have to be looking at our trauma as constantly being present. A lot of people’s trauma is a present situation. And if it’s a present situation, how in the world could it ever be post?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Right? So that’s one of the things that we may have to start considering, a new term of PPTTSD, which is present and post-traumatic stress disorder, in the future in regards to a future thing. But let’s get to the resilience piece since we’re closing. The good thing is, you can heal.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
And that’s the powerful thing, and that’s really the opportunity to shout, is because no matter what has happened to you, you can heal. I always say that trauma may be your history, but it doesn’t have to determine your destiny.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
And you can heal. There’s something called neuroplasticity that we talk about in the neurology and psychological world. It’s that the brain can be rewired to learn and adapt to new things. So no matter what has happened to the brain, the brain can regenerate and create healing for the individual with the right steps in place and the right methodologies in place. Their outcomes of life can be very, very promising. This is now what we call trauma resilience. So I am the architect of a new model in our schools called trauma resilient schools, where we actually help people come into these schools to heal in the classrooms. And that’s where we’ve got to be. We’ve got to shift from just surviving to thriving. So yes, I am record saying that trauma informed may be a good start for people who have never been introduced to trauma training, but trauma informed is not enough.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So everybody’s still going around talking about trauma informed training. That’s nice. But after COVID it is not enough. You’ve got to have something more. So in my trainings I do four trainings. You get your first training called trauma informed. Then trauma two is trauma sensitive. Trauma three is trauma responsiveness, and then trauma four is trauma resilience.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
So there’s four steps that get you to that place of resilience. And pretty much defining resilience really means it’s a person who can bounce back from a setback, people who don’t allow difficulties to be the big issue why they can’t achieve. In other words, in short, surviving to thriving. And so I just wanted to tell all your listeners today that I don’t care what traumas or experiences that they’ve been through, Dr. Holt is saying you can heal. If you’re committed, if you’re ready and you’re tired of living the life you have, and sometimes you’ve got to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes that light don’t come on until you’re really being sick and tired of being sick and tired. But if you are able and ready and committed to put in that work, I’m telling you right now, you can heal and live the best version of your life.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it, the real news, rattling the bars. Dr. Holt, he ain’t laying hands on you, he’s laying a plan on you.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah, I like that.
Mansa Musa:
We want to make sure that you understand that when we talk about trauma and he’s talking about Black trauma, we’re talking about healing.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
At the end of the day, we’ve been able to identify two things. One, we suffer from an injury, and two, we can heal from that injury.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
So just like any medicine, when you go somewhere to get sewed up, they put a band-aid on it, they tell you take the prescription, this is the prescription that Dr. Holt is telling you to take. Take the prescription of focusing on your problem and then healing from your problem. Dr. Holt, we appreciate you very much.
Dr. DaMond Holt:
Thank you for having us. It’s been a pleasure.
Mansa Musa:
And we want to remind all our listeners that the real news of Rattling the Bars, you’ve got to continue to support the real news of Rattling the Bars. We’re in this space primarily to bring people like Dr. Holt in, to give it to you raw, to give it to you the way it is and the way it should be. And you can question whether or not he has any validity. I’m quite sure he can represent his point of view wholeheartedly. But at the end of the day, we ask that you continue to support us, continue to support Rattling the Bars, and there you have it, the real news of Rattling the Bars. Because guess what? We actually are the real news.
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