Supporting Healing from Internalized Oppression

Internalized Oppression is an insidious tool of systemic oppression. It invades the very sense of self for some marginalized people and becomes a kind of toxic erosion from within ourselves: individually and collectively.

One important antidote to oppression is to root ourselves in the gifts, traditions, and beauties of our culture. But Internalized Oppression makes that much harder by teaching us to denigrate our cultures or attach shame to them.

Mindfulness and embodied practices, when rooted in social justice principles, can help unravel or heal some of this harm.

1.     Explore some aspects of one’s marginalized culture that offers strength, support, or wisdom. 

2.     Share some Identity Stories—stories from one’s identity that connect you with others.

3.     Do a project around the art of your community and explore beauty that way.

4.     Talk with an elder from your community about some of their experiences and life insights they’ve learned.

5.     Create art that highlights some of the beauty, resilience, and wisdom of your community (students can include the challenging parts alongside the supportive parts.)

A few caveats: Some people, especially traditionally-aged college students, may have a hard time recognizing the positive sides of their cultural identities if the internalized oppression is strong. They may also find it challenging to do any kind of healing in university spaces that can be sites of institutionalized oppression or in classroom communities with whom they may not feel supportive.

I like to normalize all this by naming it. But we can plant the seeds and expose them to processes that might be helpful to them later.