Dr. Nicole Cain responds to the Atlanta shooting with a three-step method for processing collective trauma: acknowledge your feelings, examine the social and structural causes, and take action through education and local support. She urges people to listen across differences and break out of social media bubbles.
Chapters
Hey, loves, this is Dr. Nicole. And I wanted to jump on to extend my heart and my love to our Asian American brothers and sisters, to those who were directly affected by the shooting in Atlanta, to those who have struggled with racial and social injustices. And so I want to tell you that I love you. I'm thinking about you, and I support you, and I've got your back. And I also want to just share a little bit of something that I'm doing as I'm watching the information unfold, as I'm watching the news unfold. And one of the most important things in situations like this is to acknowledge how we're feeling. And that's the first step in the ACT method. I created the ACT Method to offer us a strategy for dealing with things that come up in life, for dealing with grief or anxiety or stress or trauma. And the first step, when something big like this happens, is to acknowledge. Is to just simply notice. Notice how you feel. Notice the fear, the grief, the anger. Sometimes our feelings are contradictory and confusing, and sometimes they can be so very deep that we just don't know what to do. And I don't know about you, but sometimes my initial impulse is to turn off the news, to. To censor myself, to. To not be inform. So the first step is to just simply acknowledge. Acknowledge where you are, how you're feeling, acknowledge what's going on. And then the C in the ACT method is the cast of characters. And that's where we start to examine what are the variables, the factors that contributed to this. And this will help us to start to think about the world, society at large, our community. How are we contributing to racism, to injustice, to violence, either passively or directly. Right? And then the T in the ACT method is tools for transformation. And this is where we have the opportunity to make a difference. This is where we have the opportunity to transform our experience and to transform the experience of others. And so I heard the news about Atlanta. I am thinking about all of our brothers and sisters. And this provides me an opportunity to think about what can I do to make a difference. And my job is to be informed, to be authentic, to get educated, to listen and to hear and to support in whatever way I can. And my passion is to help people with anxiety and depression and anger and fear and all of those emotions that sometimes ask us to suppress, right? They ask us to push it down. And my passion is to help us face those feelings head on. Because sometimes we don't want to face anger. We feel ashamed, we feel embarrassed. We have fear and we feel like we can't talk about it. And so get educated. Talk with your brothers and sisters. Talk with people who are outside of your bubble. Sometimes social media algorithms create that bubble. And so to break that, to break outside of that is to research a belief system that is different than yours on three different social engines. And that's going to disrupt the algorithm, and it's going to help us to open our eyes and to open our worlds. And so as you guys are here, as you're watching the news unfold, address your feelings, notice your feelings, acknowledge your feelings, examine the cast of characters, examine the culture, the world, the language that we're using, and get educated. And then think about what you can do. How can you make a difference, whether it's in your local community, in your family, in your heart, or maybe on a larger scale, how can you use tools to transform this world and make it better? I love you. I'm with you. We're all in this, and we have to support our brothers and sisters. And so think about what kind of difference that you can make and let me know. This has been Dr. Nicole. I'll be back. I'll talk to you guys later. Take care of.
