Our bodies serve us well through a variety of internal signals. The most important of these warn us of danger. When danger is clear and present, they enable our body to bypass our cognitive brain and swiftly fight, flee, freeze, fawn, or annihilate.
Discomfort is an equally important set of somatic signals. Discomfort tells us that there’s something we need to do, address, or change. We may need to adjust our shirt collar, or make a dentist appointment, or speak up on behalf of someone being unjustly harmed. Discomfort is mediated by our cognitive brains, so it provides us with a level of discernment. This gives us the ability to choose how we respond to our discomfort.
Danger is a call to act—often immediately. Discomfort is a call to examine, consider, and decide. It is also an opportunity to learn and grow up.
It’s natural for our bodies to desire both safety and comfort. Unfortunately, most American bodies are deliberately trained to confuse the two.
This confusion is a reflexive, non-cognitive response that gets embedded in most American bodies—and not just white ones—very early in our lives. It is also a rubric that has been part of the fabric of American culture for over three centuries.
I see this confusion of comfort and safety all the time when I work with groups around Somatic Abolitionism. As we work together, someone with a white body may suddenly say, “I don’t feel safe”—but it almost always turns out that they’re experiencing discomfort, not danger.
Most white bodies receive very little conditioning and tempering to help them handle the charge of race. They haven’t had the willingness—or many cultural incentives—to develop much discernment around race, either individually or communally. As a result, when they experience any form of racialized discomfort, they don’t examine that discomfort. Instead, they reflexively see the cause of that discomfort as a threat—and they may respond with white fragility and/or white ferality.
This problem is compounded because so many aspects of our culture are racialized. Thus, any action or discussion involving education, parenting, history, law, public safety, or politics may evoke discomfort in a white body—and, perhaps, a fragile and/or feral response as well.
Right-wing politicians and pundits, and organizations such as the NRA, capitalize on this conflation of comfort and safety. They encourage, inflame, and weaponize white bodies’ discomfort in order to garner votes, energize their supporters, and rake in money.
Here are some of the cultural and energetic messages that this braiding of comfort and safety supports:
- The comfort of white bodies is paramount. It trumps nearly everything else, including growth, justice, liberation, understanding, compassion, and the resolution of conflict.
- Keeping white bodies comfortable is everyone’s constant responsibility.
- When it comes to matters of race—or any subject that has been racialized—it is a special obligation of bodies of culture to provide comfort to white bodies.
- When a white body experiences discomfort, bodies of culture may get hurt.
- From that white body’s viewpoint, bodies of culture may need and deserve to be hurt.
There’s a lot of money in making white bodies comfortable. Indeed, an entire political-industrial complex has been built up to provide comfort to white bodies (and, in some cases, to bodies in general). So much of what we call religion and spirituality, self-help and human development, yoga and meditation, politics, DEI initiatives, and new and proposed laws are largely designed to create or maintain comfort in white bodies.
Most of all, there is lots of money to made and lots of power to be acquired by spreading and repeating comforting lies among millions of white bodies. Some of these lies will be familiar: the Lost Cause, Holocaust denial, election denial, white-body supremacy, and so on and on. As Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States, said of one of our most pervasive lies, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Many millions of people reject uncomfortable truths and, instead, insist on embracing comforting lies. Purveyors of these lies routinely profit handsomely by selling false narratives to these folks—and by pandering to their smallest, most immature, and most wounded parts.
There is also a lot of money to be lost by failing to provide white comfort. Here is one of innumerable examples:
Until June of 2022, this blog was published on psychologytoday.com as well as on resmaa.com. But when I posted my blog entry entitled “White Ferality” on the PT site, it was immediately taken down. Then I received an e-mail from my PT.com editor, who wrote, in part:
So much is happening in the world, and singling out White people seems too much…Can you please rethink this in some way? We have millions of readers and there needs to be some compassion.
I encourage you to read that blog post and judge for yourself whether I singled out white people. (I make a point of doing the opposite at the beginning of the post.) Then ask yourself whether the entry genuinely lacks compassion—or whether the real issue is that it might induce discomfort among millions of white readers.
* * * *
We’re all familiar with this common scenario: a white body experiences discomfort in the presence of a body of culture. The white body, unable or willing to hold the discomfort and examine what’s behind it, tells the body of culture, “I don’t feel safe.” The body of culture hears the full message loud and clear: You’re at fault. Stop whatever you’re doing right now. Reassure me and restore my comfort. If you don’t, you could be in big trouble.
In another common scenario, the white body responds to their discomfort by calling the police, security, or a superior. Think of Amy Cooper in Central Park.
In another, the white body responds to their discomfort by pulling a gun, or threatening the body of culture with violence, or actually becoming violent. Think of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white St. Louis couple who waved guns at a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 (and who later pleaded guilty to assault and harassment charges for it). Or think of the burning of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in 1921.
Many bodies of culture learn from an early age to constantly monitor any white bodies they encounter for signs of discomfort. They understand that their own safety may depend on the comfort of those white bodies. As a result, they develop a variety of self-protective mechanisms. Some of these—such as leaving the scene when possible, or distracting an uncomfortable white body by changing the subject or refocusing their attention—are simple and generally healthy. But some bodies of culture develop a white-body adjacency in which, for their own safety, they rearrange their own lives around keeping white bodies comfortable. You may recognize this as a parallel to codependence, in which the partner of an addict or abuser focuses their own life and actions on making an addict or abuser comfortable.
Here is what makes the conflation of safety and comfort so pernicious: discomfort is necessary for growth. We learn and grow up by experiencing discomfort, accepting it, moving through it, and coming out the other side. In the process, we metabolize the discomfort—and, paradoxically, it disappears.
When we don’t allow ourselves discomfort, we don’t permit emergence or growth.
Over time, all of the body practices in this blog, and in my books, can help your body discern and disentangle comfort from safety—and discomfort from threat. However, the body practice below can be especially helpful for growing this discernment.
BODY PRACTICE: UNTANGLING SAFETY AND COMFORT
Imagine that, as you leave your home one morning, you’re approached by a smiling young woman carrying a shoulder bag. She says, “Good morning. Who did you vote for in the 2020 election—Trump or Biden?”
Pause.
For the next few breaths, carefully note what you’re experiencing in your own body. Pay close attention to any constriction, tension, recoiling, or quaking.
Now imagine that you smile back, answer her question honestly with a single word, and begin walking away.
The woman grabs your upper arm tightly and pulls on it, so that you have to stop and turn toward her. She is no longer smiling. She says angrily, “You voted for a traitor.”
Pause again.
For the next few breaths, carefully note what your body experiences now. Once again, pay close attention to any constriction, tension, recoiling, or quaking. Also note any:
- Vibrations
- Images and thoughts
- Meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations
- Behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges
- Affect and emotions
- Sensations
- Imaginings
You give her another brief smile and say, “I voted for the candidate I thought would do the best job. I need to go now.”
The woman reaches into her shoulder bag, swiftly pulls out a gun, and points it at your face. She says grimly, “You’re a traitor, too.”
Pause once more. Now what is your body experiencing? Note any:
- Vibrations
- Images and thoughts
- Meanings, judgments, stories, and explanations
- Behaviors, movements, actions, impulses, and urges
- Affect and emotions
- Sensations
- Imaginings
Now mentally review how your body’s responses changed during this encounter. As yourself these questions:
- When did your discomfort begin? How did you know?
- When and how did this discomfort grow? How did your body’s signals change?
- When did your discomfort shift into a sense of danger? How did you know?
Stay with that moment when this shift occurred. What changed about your body’s signals and experiences in that moment?
Repeat this practice, once a day for several days, until you can readily discern your body’s signs of discomfort from its signals of danger.
Your personal cultivation of Somatic Abolitionism is only part of the process.
The other part is cultivating SA in others, so they can hold its energies and emergence with you.