Racismo y proyecto nacional: El mito de armonía racial

3. IMAGINAR LA NACIÓN MESTIZA

3.3 Racismo y proyecto nacional: El mito de armonía racial

Take a few minutes to focus on a difficult past event in your life, a time when you were upset. While this may be painful, attempt to recall your experience. Think about what happened and who was involved. Think about what you said to yourself and how you felt. Were you embarrassed? Did you feel rejected? Did you think others were responding to you in some strange way, perceiving you negatively, or treating you with a lack of respect? Think about what you did as a result of how you felt.

Below, you are asked to describe five of these situations. Notice the ways in which what you did or said proved to be self-sabotaging; in other words, notice where your behavior avoided, eliminated, or in some other way sabotaged an opportunity that you might have had. For each incident, describe:

z exactly what happened

z the significance of the situation

z what you began to say to yourself immediately following the incident

z what you felt

z how you responded in words or actions

z what the final outcome of the situation was

z what you said to yourself when the incident was over

z how you felt about yourself when it was behind you

2F-1. With as much detail as you think is important, describe one of these incidents, sharing the significance of it and who was involved, e.g., “My boss told me he wanted to see me in his office right away” or “A coworker whom I admired asked me out to lunch for the first time” or “Coworkers asked me to join them for drinks after work on Friday. I have turned down these invitations in the past so that my coworkers wouldn’t see how awkward I am in such settings.” (Note that the situa-tion may be a perfectly natural or normal one that would not cause undue anxiety for someone with healthy self-esteem.)

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2F-2. The first thing that occurs in such an incident for the LSE sufferer is that our self-esteem is threatened. When that happens, we experience an emotional reaction far out of proportion to the incident itself because we are reacting to the sum of our negative doubts. We realize we are in danger of revealing our inadequacies or have already done so and we become irrational, imagining that worst-case scenarios have happened or are about to happen. We imagine that the boss is going to fire us or that if we go to lunch with the admired coworker, he will see our inadequa-cies and will never want to lunch with us again, or worse yet, he might say nega-tive things to other coworkers about us.

z What were your immediate feelings in the incident you described in 2F-1? Use the Feelings List or choose words of your own.

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2F-3. Once our low self-esteem—our self-doubt—is re-activated, we begin to talk nega-tively to ourselves. Whether or not we are aware of it, we automatically begin to berate ourselves and/or others, and we think that the worst has happened or is about to. Becoming aware of these self-statements before we act on them is the task now at hand; developing this awareness of how you talk to yourself is a big leap toward reaching your destination.

Even though self-statements cause our feelings, it’s much more difficult to identify those self-statements than the feelings that result from them because the emotional reaction is so instantaneous; it hardly seems that any thoughts preced-ed them. That’s why you were askpreced-ed to share your feelings first and then to work backwards from them. Now try to imagine your self-talk:

z What might you have been saying to yourself as soon as the incident in 2F-1 happened? Did you instantly begin to doubt that you could handle the situation?

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It is at this point that the LSE sufferer acts out of fear, often doing and saying things that are not in our own best interest. We have given ourselves critical messages;

our emotions are running full bore, and we feel extremely frightened, possibly to the point of terror.

Our next thought is for self-protection: what can we do to feel safe? This might mean leaving the premises, (going to the bathroom where no one will be watching us, feigning sickness and going home, etc.), lying to get out of the lunch, reacting defen-sively or angrily, or anything else we can do to protect ourselves immediately from what we consider to be imminent danger

At this point, we are usually so consumed with the emotions we are experiencing that we are unable to take a step back and recognize the process that is taking place.

Thus, the goal is to learn how to remain objective and rational, realizing that an inci-dent has occurred that seems threatening and has activated our low self-esteem.

Secondly recognizing that this activation is causing us to reinstate our habit of critical self-talk, which, if left unbridled will upset our emotional equilibrium and result in self-defeating behavior. In other words, the goal is to stop the downhill slide into irra-tional, excessive, and self-defeating behaviors by eliminating false assumptions and inaccurate conclusions and only allowing self-statements that are rational and true.

2F-4. With this in mind, describe your actions following the incident in 2F-1:

z What did you actually do? Did you become depressed or so consumed with worry about meeting with the boss that you couldn’t enjoy your lunch or couldn’t focus on conversations going on around you? Did you turn down the lunch with

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2F-5. How did the situation work out? For instance, was the meeting with the boss as bad as you had anticipated? Was he really upset with you? Regardless of his rea-sons for asking you to meet with him, how did you act and feel during the meet-ing? Or if you went to lunch with the coworker, how was the experience?

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2F-6. What did you say to yourself when the incident was over? Did you berate or chide yourself, did you label your behavior in negative terms, or did you compli-ment yourself, telling yourself you handled the situation well? Write down as many self-statements as you can remember or imagine what you probably said to yourself.

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2F-7. Select words from the Feelings List that best describe how you felt when the event was over. Were you pleased with your reactions and your behavior? Were you relieved that the situation was over? Were you depressed or disappointed in yourself?

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2F-8. How long did these residual feelings last? Was it minutes, hours, days, or even weeks?

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Before continuing, please read Chapter 8, (pages 213-233), “The Relentless Pursuit of Validation” of Breaking the Chain of Low Self-Esteem. Then return to this page and work through page 72.

In document MESTIZAJE Y NACIONALISMO: GENEALOGÍAS DE LA IDENTIDAD RACIAL EN LA NUEVA GRANADA (página 67-73)