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Microaggression
Harvard University Professor Emeritus Chester M. Pierce, developed the term microaggression in the 1970s—cautioning that we “must not look for the gross and obvious” but rather, these “subtle, cumulative miniassault[s]” are “assaults to dignity and hope [and] are incessant and cumulative” (Pierce, 1974). Microaggressions are “subtle blows are delivered incessantly.” Despite that a “single offense can be considered relatively innocuous, the cumulative effect [emphasis added] to the victim and to the victimizer is of an unimaginable magnitude” (Pierce, 1970). Microaggressions are “offensive mechanisms” and drivers of “a contagious and lethal mental and public health disease” (Pierce, 1974). Addressing micro-aggressions as ‘micro’ “problems [is] only in name...even though each single effort [to address] might be only a microeffort”; nevertheless, we “must be taught to recognize microaggressions and construct taking appropriate action at each instance of recognition” (Pierce, 1974).
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Implicit Bias
Implicit bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious way, making them difficult to control. An implicit bias may run counter to a person's conscious beliefs without them realizing it. For example, it is possible to express explicit liking of a certain social group or approval of a certain action, while simultaneously being biased against that group or action on an unconscious level.
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Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation involving conflicting attitudes, beliefs or behaviors. This produces a feeling of mental discomfort leading to an alteration in one of the attitudes, beliefs or behaviors to reduce the discomfort and restore balance. Festinger's (1957) cognitive dissonance theory suggests that we have an inner drive to hold all our attitudes and behavior in harmony and avoid disharmony (or dissonance). This is known as the principle of cognitive consistency. When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance.
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Intergenerational Trauma
A psychological term which asserts that trauma can be transferred in between generations. After a first generation of survivors experiences trauma, they are able to transfer their trauma to their children and further generations of offspring via complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms. Intergenerational trauma as a traumatic event that began years prior to the current generation and has impacted the ways in which individuals within a family understand, cope with, and heal from trauma.
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Complex PTSD
Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (complex PTSD, sometimes abbreviated to c-PTSD or CPTSD) is a condition where you experience some symptoms of PTSD along with some additional symptoms, such as:
· difficulty controlling your emotions
· feeling very hostile or distrustful towards the world
· constant feelings of emptiness or hopelessness
· feeling as if you are permanently damaged or worthless
· feeling as if you are completely different to other people
· feeling like nobody can understand what happened to you
· avoiding friendships and relationships, or finding them very difficult
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· Book by Arielle Schwartz--The Complex PTSD Workbook
· TED Talk by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris--How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime
Post Traumatic Growth
Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a theory that explains this kind of transformation following trauma. It was developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in the mid-1990s, and holds that people who endure psychological struggle following adversity can often see positive growth afterward. People develop new understandings of themselves, the world they live in, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life
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Mindfulness & Contemplative Practices
Mindfulness is the quality of being present and fully engaged with whatever we’re doing at the moment — free from distraction or judgment, and aware of our thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them. Contemplative Practices provide the self-awareness to objectively and mindfully be present and aware of one’s thoughts so they can viewed as mere phenomena flowing in and out of one’s consciousness (along with our perceptions, viewpoints, feelings, etc.).
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Healing Centered Education
A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. Healing-centered educational practices have been proven to produce positive outcomes for students’ social emotional well-being, staff wellness, parent/caregiver trust, and school culture.
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Structural Violence
Structural violence refers to systematic ways in which social structures harm or otherwise disadvantage individuals. Structural violence is subtle, often invisible, and often has no one specific person who can (or will) be held responsible. Structural violence is one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm’s way. The arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people, neither culture nor pure individual will is at fault; rather, historically given (and often economically driven) processes and forces conspire to constrain individual agency. Structural violence is visited upon all those whose social status denies them access to the fruits of scientific and social progress.
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Heartfulness & Tenderness
Cultivating the heart through inner stillness and silence, becoming more human, being more truthful with one’s self, opening the heart, becoming more loving, compassionate, and kind, to one’s own self and to all other human beings.
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Interpersonal Neurobiology
Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) is primarily a theory and practical working model which describes human development and functioning as being a product of the relationship between the body, mind and relationships. Another term for it is relational neuroscience. IPNB describes how the brain and mind are shaped, or developed, and how they function based on the interplay of genes in the context of relationships. IPNB is heavily rooted in attachment theory.
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White Fragility
White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. Discomfort and defensiveness on the part of a white person when confronted by information about racial inequality and injustice.
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