Being Black In America Comes With A Unique Kind Of Anxiety. Here Are 4 Ways To Cope

These days, African American men, women, and children are mistreated and sometimes killed for doing normal things that white people do or could do without a second thought or consequence. In this reality, it is very hard not to worry. 

Trayvon Martin walked through a middle-class neighborhood on his way home. He did not walk across a dangerous freeway. He had purchased a bag of Skittles from a nearby store. He did not make it home that night. Instead, he was killed by a neighborhood watchman who had been told to stay in his car and not approach Trayvon.

Two years later, Tamir Rice was 12 years old when he played in a park for the last time. He was shot by police who indicated that he had been told to drop his "weapon."

How many times did you watch the video or listen to Diamond Reynolds as she kept her composure while pleading with the police officer, who had shot her boyfriend, to tell her that her boyfriend wasn’t dead? My own heart broke even more for her daughter who sat still in the back of the car. You never heard the child scream or cry. At some point, she told her mother, "It's OK. I'm right here with you."

These stories go on and on because police kill Black people on 300 out of 365 days each year.

There is a sickness in our society that has given you (as a Black person) plenty of reason to worry. When the story of Trayvon's death unfolded in the television news coverage, you may have felt keyed up, tense, and angry. As time passed, you may have become emotionally numb to police violence, but one year later, when you were subjected to the trial for Trayvon's 2012 murder, you relived much of the same intense emotions.

The thing about anxiety is that the cause of the actual anxiety does not matter. What matters is what you do in response to your fear and how you manage your worry. The cause of your anxiety could be frustration about never-ending disrespect from a supervisee, agitation about a potential bully at your daughter's school, or the police response to a shooting in the next town over. First, assess your mindset about the situation. If you can, join an advocacy group—pushing in the same direction with like-minded others will be more helpful than re-exposing yourself to the TV drama from your kitchen table.