European Americans Conflating Emotional Responses with Actual Harm

By Amy Immell

I’m just going to be blunt, us white bodied people keep conflating our emotional responses with actual harm. It isn’t until we take that first step into the realm of discomfort that we truly can start to deconstruct from white supremacy and white supremacy culture. The realm of discomfort is where the learning begins.

A lot of us miss the message because we are too busy listening with our feelings, and not to hear what’s being said. We lash out when we don’t feel validated in our feelings. And so often when we do this we are wrong. We derail conversations, shut down others’ points of views, and demand that we be the center of attention until our feelings are soothed over. And in the end, we weren’t even correct in our doubled down emotional responses most of the time. How often have we used our feelings to push group think instead of being open to hearing what others are saying? How often are we too busy feeling in the moment and lashing out and demanding others care for our feelings instead of earnestly participating. Or conversely tiptoed around conversations because you know the other person can not operate in the realm of discomfort?

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/collage-photo-of-woman-3812743/

But once we learn the skill of holding onto our discomfort and looking past it, it’s amazing! Uncomfortable, but amazing! You can learn to find where that feeling originated from. But that’s the surface, the conversations that happen are more impactful. The topics more indepth and less surface level. It’s in the realm of discomfort that you learn and fumble your way through your first conversations on deconstructing.

It is in the realm of discomfort that you learn to act instead of thrash out. You have to be comfortable in the discomfort to step up and be disliked for your deconstructing mindset. You have to be okay with being the “bad guy” to your friends and family when you point out problematic beliefs and behaviors. It’s also in the realm of discomfort that we learn to find community and healing.

Discomfort is also where the hard stuff happens. The stepping up to uplift marginalized people while we step back. It’s where we learn conflict resolution skills, and how to hear the underlying message. Discomfort is where we find those with our same beliefs and we walk together out of white supremacy. It’s where we understand that there is no one way forward, no one right community, no one right belief system, no one right aesthetic.

And I’m going to close this with something that should be obvious, but many Black, Brown, Indigenous and other people of the global majority do not have the luxury of being able to operate in a feelings first manner. They have to operate in the land of discomfort in order to not be further harmed in a white supremacy system. Meanwhile us white bodied individuals keep pushing our feelings as the priority in situations, instead of also operating in the realm of discomfort and opening ourselves up to new emotions and feelings.