The Stress of being black

People like to think they know what the stress of being black is like.

If you’re not, you don’t.

Think about the stress of having a final exam in high school or college coming up.

You worry about it for two weeks or so leading up to it and it is very hard and stressful.  You get to the time of actually taking the exam and it is very stressful.  Then, the exam is over.

Being black is not like that because it’s never over.  Every morning you wake up you have to deal with the stress associated with being black all over again.

I was talking to my 30-year-old son a couple of weeks ago about race problems in America and was saddened when I realized that our generation couldn’t do enough to hand over a society further along than what we have now.  The fact that a police offer could kneel on the neck of a black man for over 8 minutes with other officers standing by in front of a group of people urging him to stop until he was dead shows how much further we need to advance as a society.

What is even worse than the horrible act is the real concern that there is better than a small chance that real justice may not be served in this case because there have been so many other cases where that has happened.  As a black person I live every day knowing that black people all over this country are being mistreated in so many ways solely because of the color of their skin.  We are discriminated against in housing, banking, employment, education, law enforcement, civil and criminal courts, and in so many other ways that it becomes a clear disadvantage, a burden, and a constant source of stress that goes unseen and unappreciated by most other people.  Don’t get me wrong, I love being black and wouldn’t trade if just to make my life easier.  There are many, many things that I love about it that I will save for another time.

I have been blessed to learn about stress management and methods like biofeedback and neurofeedback as ways to help decrease the negative effects of stress.  I have also had the opportunity to work with many individuals over the last 30 years to teach them how to manage stress mostly using biofeedback and neurofeedback.  Some of the people I have worked with have been black.  Most of them have not been.  Most of the therapists who provide biofeedback and neurofeedback and stress management in general who I have met are not black.  Over the last year or so, without any specific effort on my part, I have been training more black therapists to provide biofeedback and neurofeedback.  I hope that they will be able to help more black people deal with the normal and added stress that we have to deal with every day.

I enjoy training and working with clients of all colors and backgrounds and I will continue to do that.

As a black man blessed with this knowledge, I believe that it is part of my job to be a leader in bringing stress management, biofeedback, and neurofeedback education to the black community specifically while continuing to bring it to the broader world in general.

Harry L. Campbell

914-762-4646 – Harry@biofeedbackinternational.com

Author of What Stress Can Do, Available on Amazon.com

Biofeedback Resources International Corp.