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THE DIARIST RESEACH AND REFLECTIONS
Understanding Anxiety + Stress in Your Black Body: It Ain’t All Yours
April 1st 2025
For too many of us Black people in the U.S., in this oligarchic coup, our bodies are experiencing symptoms of nervous system overload: anxiety, extreme stress, fatigue becoming a kind of shutting down … yes, even more than usual. What’s happening with us is not just about all the shit that’s happening in our current moments — it’s about everything that has ever happened with us as a people.
We build it; they break it. We rebuild it; they break it again — EXHAUSTING! and infuriating …
The current onslaught of attempts to rule this nation with white supremacist/nationalist policies, the power grabs for the wealthiest white, cis-hetero men, and the systemic violence enacted every minute under the Felon’s leadership — along with Elon Musk’s invasion of and theft from our federal institutions … it’s all very familiar as we know the story, and it’s all rather foreign as well since many (most?) of us have grown up and lived in this country with a sense of federal protections.
The shifting of that reality feels like an unraveling of a stability that we’re increasingly realizing are mere illusions. It’s hella scary to discover that a foundation you’ve believed is solid is actually fleeting. The familiarity comes from the stories of our ancestors. It also comes from an ancestral knowing that no one ever had to speak to us, an embodied warning system that is screaming: “You will do well to know that you are no more free than we were.”
[ my animated short on how the ancestors came to me with this message the morning after the 2016 presidential election.]
Our bodies remember though…
Understanding What’s Happening Inside Your Body
When you feel that overwhelming anxiety — that tightening in your chest, the shallowness of your breath, the racing of your thoughts … it’s not just the weight of today pressing down on you. Your nervous system is responding to generations of survival programming, “You’re not safe.”
Your body is not just reacting to the news; it is recognizing plus processing centuries of state-sanctioned terror against Black bodies. It is pulling from the memories encoded in your DNA — memories of kidnapping, forced migration, of captivity, of brutality, and of betrayal. Your body has these stress responses to keep you alive; they are the same stress responses that helped your ancestors survive, and these responses are still alive — in you.
(You also have encoded in you a-mazing benefits of being Black — beyond our skin not cracking — that I’ll detail below!)
These nervous system memories are not metaphor, or allegory, or conjecture. These memories are epigenetics.
Understanding The Science of Inherited Trauma
Research in epigenetics shows that trauma, especially repeated/compounded trauma, changes how our genes express themselves. Studies on us as descendants of enslaved Africans, and studies on others like descendants of Holocaust survivors and Native American genocide survivors reveal that prolonged, heightened stress alters the very blueprint of our bodies.
The physiological markers of stress — elevated cortisol levels, persistent inflammation, hypervigilance — it all gets passed down. We inherit more than just eye color and bone structure; we inherit the biochemical imprints from what our ancestors survived.
This reality means that when you feel overwhelmed by the state of the world today, when your anxiety spikes and your body refuses to relax, it’s not just about this moment — it’s about alllllll the moments before this one. I
- t’s about the moment your great-grandmother held her breath while praying that the Ku Klux Klan would just pass on by.
- It’s about the moment your grandfather’s adrenaline spiked as he stood his ground with his shotgun, to defend his property from white men looking to have a good time through violence.
- It’s about the moment you realized you’re Black in a white-run world, as your parents sat you down for the talk to help ensure you arrive home safely each day.
These moments — they’re all in you.
Understanding The Nervous System + Black Survival
Your body has four main nervous system responses when facing a threat:
These responses come from your autonomic nervous system (ANS), meaning they happen without your conscious control. Your ANS is designed to protect you. It scans for danger and triggers the best survival strategy based on your current situation. When a threat appears, your body reacts immediately, releasing a flood of hormones and chemicals to help you survive.
Pretty dope, huh? 😉🤗
The thing is, though, for our Black bodies, our stress responses are more complex because we’re carrying significantly more (disproportionately more) of the past, and the present within us. We carry both an inherited, compounded survival system from our ancestors, AND the ongoing reality of living in a world where we are constantly under threat.
This extreme nervous system weight means that instead of our dope survival responses operating as designed to resolve, and return to normative levels after a danger has passed, our bodies stay in a heightened state because the threat never passes. This prolonged heightened state leads to the chronic health issues that we disproportionately experience as a people — just as we disproportionately carry the weights of the threats of the past and the present. Let’s get into it.
When your response is to fight, when you’re taking off your earrings and throwing your cap up in the air without even thinking about it, your body is preparing for battle. Your body has perceived the threat, and determined that the best way out of it is to fight. So, your sympathetic nervous system (SNS) kicks in, and triggers a surge of adrenaline and cortisol. These chemicals increase your heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. Literally, your body is prepared for physical combat.
To prepare for combat, inside, your amygdala, your brain’s fear center, sends out a distress signal throughout your body. Your adrenal glands respond by flooding your bloodstream with the adrenaline, and cortisol I listed above. Your heart pumps faster, sending the amount of oxygen you need to fight to your muscles. Your blood sugar then rises to provide you with enough energy to defend yourself from this attack.
Most of the time, for most of us, in our daily lives, thankfully (so far) the threats we face are not necessarily calling for physical combat. It’s typically some ol’ micro aggressive type shit. So, in our Black bodies when fight is activated, none of these a-mazing hormones have any way of being expended/released — and they build up. This prolonged activation leads to increased inflammation, high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol.
When your response is to flee (flight), your body has an urge to escape. Your body determines that fighting is not the best option in your situation; so, it activates a GET THE HELL OUT!!! (When 1 Black person takes off running, the rest of us don’t ask any questions, and take off too.) Your body pushes you to run, avoid, or escape, triggering releases of adrenaline and cortisol, like for a fight, but your focus is on rapid movement rather than a counter attack.
To prepare to get out, inside, your body redirects blood from digestion and other non-essential functions to your legs and lungs to support running. Your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis remains activated (releasing hormones corticotropin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and cortisol). Your vision narrows, and your hearing becomes sharper to detect escape routes. (I think about Black folks who’ve historically [James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, et al] and currently [expats] depart the U.S. to live abroad, and the exhilerating freedom they feel simply being on different soil.)
Again, most of the time for most of us in our daily lives, escaping like this is not necessary. Yet your body knows that you need to avoid certain situations, environments, people — those who believe in white supremacy, Karens, bullies … the police. You can see them simply walking down an otherwise safe street and your flight responses kick in, without any dissipation because you do not actually take off running. This response build-up leads to chronic anxiety, digestive issues, and insomnia as your body remains on high alert at all times without any relief.
When your response is to freeze, your body has calculated that neither fighting or fleeing will work, so it shuts down (paralyzes in place). This response is one in which you “play dead,” hoping that the threat passes. (Perhaps this is what Congress has been doing in its inaction, on both sides of the aisle, in the face of MAGA’s extreme assault on the U.S.’s government — displaying the trauma response of freezing.)
To prepare to remain still until the threat passes, inside, your body releases endorphins and opioids instead of adrenaline. These hormones numb your pain and reduce your panic. Your dorsal vagal nerve slows your heart rate and blood pressure, creating a sense of dissociation/disconnection from your present situation (because you cannot handle the full activation of your full reality — overload). Your muscles stiffen, making movement difficult or completely impossible.
Maybe in your mind you believe that it makes complete sense for you to do something, but your Black body just cannot seem to get it going. You’re stuck right where you are as generational and present-day racial trauma have led to chronic dissociation, depression, and fatigue.
When you appear to be unresponsive to extreme shit, when you have shut down in stressful situations — your survival mechanisms are in play. Again, the problem is that this response is meant to be temporary. In Black bodies, it’s a persistent response resulting in low blood pressure, chronic fatigue, poor circulation, suppressed immune function, lupus/fibromyalgia/rheumatoid arthritis, reduced metabolic function/insulin resistance/obesity/diabetes, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal issues, and premature aging (weathering) at the cellular level. Essentially, the body has checked out of life resulting in low motivation, lack of interest in things that once excited you, and can result in increased instances of dementia, Alzheimer’s, etc.
When your response is to fawn, your body has determined the best way out of this shit is to appease the threat, to submit to it to reduce harm. (My grandmother used to say that sometimes when your head is in the lion’s mouth … another possible explanation from the inaction of Congress, which actually has co-equal governing power, if they activate it and know how to use it.) You may fawn as a person who has experienced prolonged oppression like systemic racism and abuse.
To prepare to fawn, inside, your vagus nerve activates to encourage social bonding, even in unsafe conditions. Oxytocin is your bonding hormone (sound familiar?), and your body releases it in order to facilitate connection rather than conflict. (This situation is where you ask how in the hell can they “go to bed” with, become intimate with that __________ (choose your own description of a despicable human).) Your brain is suppressing anger, resistance, etc., to maintain safety. (Why, again, did millions of voters stay home or vote for an undesirable candidate?)
In your Black mind, you may be hearing the reminders to honor your ancestors by continuing the fight, but your Black body has chosen to mask your emotions, code-switch more often than not (or always), to overperform in predominately white spaces in order to reduce threats to your safety and security. Over time, though, this prolonged trauma response leads to chronic people-pleasing, burnout, emotional exhaustion, and a critical/unhealthy reduction in your agency and self-esteem.
REMEMBER: your body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
We are Black people. Our threatening situations are not occasionally stressful or traumatic — they are constant. The problem is this constant elevation, that we never get to return to safety. Our nervous systems are stuck in a cycle of hypervigilance, because the threats we face are ongoing. Laws may change, but the danger does not. The faces in power may shift to seemingly more friendly ones, but the systemic oppression focused on us remains.
And now, as we witness the unraveling of what’s been actual illusions of federal protections, and the rise of to-date unchecked authoritarianism, our nervous systems recognize the pattern. This time it’s time again for seeing past what’s tempting to see as business-as-usual, typical policy or leadership changes. It’s time again to recognize it’s about our survival.
Understanding The Consequence of Collective/Compounded Stress
Again, your body is not ever meant to stay in a constant survival state. When something temporary like survival becomes a way of life, our bodies pay the price. This prolonged activation of these trauma/survival responses is hella unhealthy, causing incredible wear and tear on your body. So, what happens when an entire people live in a prolonged state of stress?
“Our bodies, like the Earth, are the keepers of memory.” ~Dr. Ruby Gibson
As listed above, these memories, when they have nowhere to go, become disproportionate rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, and other chronic, stress-related illnesses. These conditions/diseases aren’t just about lifestyle — they are about living daily in a state of constant threat. They are about our bodies being conditioned to expect harm at every turn, and being ready to fight, flee, freeze, or fawn.
The exhaustion you feel? You tired, yo.
The sense of powerlessness? You don’t see a way out of this one this time.
The shutdown? You … your body knows it’s wayyyy to much for any one human being to cope with — too much, too fast, for too long.
Naming It to Understand It — We’ve named — and explained — all this shit because we cannot heal what we don’t name, and then understand. Now that we’ve named and defined our bodies’ systems and functions and how they operate when we’re threatened (in danger), it’s time to move into sustained remedies. Remember, if you’ve been feeling …
- Easily overwhelmed or unable to focus
- On edge, jumpy, or hyperaware of threats (especially feeling like events that happened decades ago are happening in real-time)
- Physically tense, with headaches, tight shoulders, or digestive issues
- Emotionally detached, numb, or shutting down
- Hopeless, like nothing will ever change
… your body is reacting exactly as it was designed to react in times of crisis. It may not feel like it, but your nervous system is doing its job. We are in crisis. The problem is, we are not meant to live in a crisis state as an ongoing situation — that’s why we wrote this blog, and ask you to share it with all of your people. Knowledge truly is power.
Understanding It Ain’t All Yours — Know that this fear, this stress, this exhaustion — while it’s in your body, and you have to manage it — it didn’t start with you. And that distinction means that there’s more to the story. Alongside the fear, stress, and exhaustion there is ALSO strength, resilience, and wisdom ENCODED in your body. There is always an empowered way forward.
This way is the healing work of releasing what is not ours to hold. It’s not ours literally as it’s generations of inherited trauma. More than that, there is nothing about being Black that means we deserve the weight of constant threat.
Reality check: we’re not going to heal fully while we’re under attack, but we can minimize oppression’s effects and heal some as we block and build (i.e., fight) a better world for us all. This is where sustained healing solutions come in, and we’ll expand on that in our next post.
In the meantime, one incredibly effective way to balance your nervous system is with breathing and meditation. While you stay tuned for my next post, . Another incredibly effective way to balance your nervous system is to be engaged with others in the fight to block oppression + build a better world. in these times for real-time resources.
See you back here soon to explore ways to balance our nervous systems so that we are best positioned to reclaim + maintain our power.
© 2025 candi dugas, llc
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