How does dirty pain show up for you?

"Clean pain is the pain that mends and can build your capacity for growth…Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial. When people respond from their most wounded parts, become cruel or violent, or physically or emotionally run away, they experience dirty pain. They also create more of it for themselves and others."

- Resmaa Menakem


You may have noticed a trend in my writing. I’m engaged in a yearlong study of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem, and the book’s concepts have become the lens through which I’m seeing so much of my personal healing work and the challenges that my clients bring. Remsaa’s work integrates a focus on the body and the nervous system with history and action for social justice in a way that’s compelling and clarifying for me. Writing as I’m in process with this book has been a main way I’ve been integrating its lessons, and I’ll continue to share some of that writing here.

The distinction between what Resmaa calls “clean pain” and “dirty pain” has been particularly helpful in distinguishing how my response to a situation impacts how I metabolize the stress of that situation, or how that stress gets stuck or loops. (I’ll say that the terms “clean” and “dirty” don’t really resonate with me. For myself I’ve been thinking about “clear pain” vs. “murky pain” or “moving pain” vs. “stuck pain.” Once you understand the concepts, choose the words that resonate with you.)

Last month I wrote about how we must understand our personal patterns so that we can show up more fully to our personal and collective healing work. When I think about dirty pain as the pain of avoidance, blame, and denial, it becomes clear to me that codependence is a manifestation of dirty pain on an individual and family level. Patterns of codependence are rooted in avoidance, blame and denial, as well as patterns of control, compliance and low self-esteem.

What are your relationship patterns?

"Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma in a people looks like culture."

- Resmaa Menakam


Lately I’ve been sitting with this quote from Resmaa Menakem, licensed social worker, trauma specialist, somatic abolitionist, and author of My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. The first time I heard him say these words, they felt both as familiar as anything I’ve always known and like a riddle to puzzle my way through. In my puzzling, I did what any word nerd would do: I looked up some words in the dictionary. Here’s what I found. To decontextualize something is to consider it in isolation from the set of circumstances or facts that surround it. When we isolate something from its context, it necessarily loses some of the meaning it originally held. It’s also vulnerable to new, perhaps unrelated, meanings being added.

As I sat with this concept of decontextualization, I realized that I spend a lot of my time as a therapist helping clients contextualize their trauma.

A new world is possible. And Black trans leadership is at the center.

In April I wrote about anti-Black racism and white supremacy and the role that systemic factors play in our physical health. Just as communities were reeling from COVID-19 and the news of Ahmaud Arbery's murder, another wave of Black murders rolled in, this time at the hands of police across the country. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. These names are added to the unnumerable other Black people, some children, who have been killed by the police.

As some are waking up to the violent realities and oppressive history of policing for the first time, others have been working for decades to make their communities safer by working to defund or abolish the police. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed and where an international uprising against police violence began, the city council has announced "their intent to disband the police department and invest in proven community-led public safety." The same Minneapolis city council that boasts both the first openly trans Black woman (Andrea Jenkins) and the first openly trans Black man (Phillipe Cunningham) elected to public office in the United States. These folks, along with so many others in their community, have been working on this issue for so long, and the visibility and outrage of this moment has offered a tipping point to propel them toward their goals.

A new world is possible. I see it taking shape before my eyes.

Helping Therapists Challenge Social Injustice During COVID-19 Pandemic

I recently sat down, virtually, with Lynn Louise Wonders, LPC of Wonders Counseling to discuss the racial health disparities making the news during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lynn had seen my post about this topic on Instagram and invited me to share more on her YouTube channel. We talked about understanding racial health disparities through a social justice lens, the underlying principles of minority stress theory, factors that have been shown to improve mental health for marginalized people, and how to learn more through my upcoming supervision and consultation group.. I hope that you’ll check out the video and let me know what you think in the comments. Thanks to Lynn for inviting me to share with her community of therapists about ways to challenge social injustice during (and beyond!) the pandemic.




The pandemic, minority stress theory, & racial health disparities

I am sad, angry and scared about the news that Black people have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. I am not at all surprised by it. Black people and those who are in solidarity with Black communities are not surprised by this development. I’m certain that many predicted it.

When I train about trauma and oppression, I include a discussion of minority stress theory. Minority stress theory studies how social stressors, including those associated with discrimination and “microaggressions,” become chronic stress and negatively impact the mental and physical health of marginalized people. Over time the accumulated stress of oppression, and the constant adaptation required to manage that stress, can make you physically sick and lead to many of the underlying medical conditions that increase the severity of COVID-19. (We’ll be learning about and discussing minority stress theory in my upcoming supervision and consultation group, Trauma, Oppression, and the Therapeutic Relationship.)