Season 5, Episode 3: Anticipatory Intelligence and Anxiety with Rebecca Wheeler Walston

Trigger Warning: Proceed only if you are comfortable with potentially sensitive topics.

This is not psychological advice, service, or prescriptive treatment for anxiety or depression. The content related to descriptions of depression, anxiety, or despair may be upsetting or triggering, but are clearly not exhaustive. If you should feel symptoms of depression and/or anxiety, please seek professional mental health services, or contact (in Kitsap County) Kitsap Mobile Crisis Team at  1-888-910-0416. The line is staffed by professionals who are trained to determine the level of crisis services needed. Depending on the need, this may include dispatching the KMHS Mobile Crisis Outreach Team for emergency assessment. 

In the Words and Voice of Rebecca W. Walston:

Anticipatory intelligence  is a phrase that I heard at a seminar talking about racial trauma. The speaker whose name I can't remember, was talking about this idea of a kind of intelligence that is often developed by marginalized people. And because this was a seminar on racial trauma in the United States, her examples were all primarily around racialized experiences as the United States understand that sense of racialized society. And so the idea of anticipatory intelligence is the amount of effort or energy that we put in emotionally, mentally, psychologically, to anticipating how our bodies and the stories that they represent will be received in a space that we are in before we get there.

Speaker 1 (00:18):

Welcome to the Arise podcast, conversations on faith, race, justice, gender, and spirituality. In this episode, I get to interview my dear friend, Rebecca Wheeler Walston, and we are talking about anticipatory intelligence. I think all of us, or at least most of the people I speak with lately when I'm like, how are you doing? They're like, and they're like, well, that's a complicated answer. And it definitely is. There's an underlying sense of unease, of discontent, of just a lack of surety, about what is going to come next in the new year that I think I haven't felt for a long time. The collective sense that I have right now as you listen to this episode and take a sneak peek into some of the conversations Rebecca and I have had for a while, I encourage you to be kind to your body Again. I've put in previous episodes, resources, get out, get mental health care, spend time with friends, play, go play pickleball, get out in the snow, read a good book, text a friend, call a friend.

(01:37):

Do the things that connect you back to life giving activities. Find your spiritual practices, light candles, take a bath. All these things that therapists often say are helpful. I mean, maybe it's you go hug a tree or put your feet, your literal bare feet in the dirt. I don't know what it is for you, but leaning on the people and the resources in your area and also leaning on things that connect you back to groundedness, to feeling in your body. And so those are the things that I do. I enjoy lately eating Honey Nut Cheerios. Sounds weird. I love Dry Honey Nut Cheerios. I don't know why, but I let myself indulge in that. So again, I'm not prescribing anything to anyone. This is not a prescription, a diagnosis, a treatment plan. It is saying, how can you find ways to ground yourself in really good healthy ways that you can actually care for your good body?

(02:50):

I don't enjoy talking about anxiety. I don't love it. In fact, talking about it sometimes I feel really anxious in the moment my heart starts pounding, I get sweaty hands, et cetera. And yet there is something grounding for me about stepping into shared realities with my friends or neighbor, colleague or family. And so this is a reality that Rebecca and I have been talking about. What is anticipatory intelligence? And I'm going to let her jump in and start it off here. Hey, Rebecca, I know you and I chat a lot, and part of our talks are like, Hey, how you doing? Hey, how am I doing? And a while back when I reached out to you and said, Hey, let's do this thing way before the election on anxiety and race. And you're like, wait a minute. I want to talk about this thing called anticipatory intelligence. And so I want to hear about that from you. What is that?

Speaker 2 (03:51):

Hey, Danielle, as always, Hey, hey,

(03:56):

Post 2024 election, I'm going to just take a huge breath and say that I've had this low grade sort of nausea in my gut for at least a week, if not longer. So yeah, let's talk. So anticipatory intelligence is a phrase that I heard at a seminar talking about racial trauma. The speaker whose name I can't remember, was talking about this idea of a kind of intelligence that is often developed by marginalized people. And because this was a seminar on racial trauma in the United States, her examples were all primarily around racialized experiences as the United States understand that sense of racialized society. And so the idea of anticipatory intelligence is the amount of effort or energy that we put in emotionally, mentally, psychologically, to anticipating how our bodies and the stories that they represent will be received in a space that we are in before we get there.

(05:23):

So it's that notion of I'm a black woman, I'm getting ready to go to a function that I anticipate will likely be predominantly white. And the kind of internal conversation I have with myself about what that's going to feel like look like to enter the question in my mind of how safe or how dangerous might the environment be to me racially? So the first piece of anticipatory intelligence is that sort of internal conversation that we may be having with ourselves as we step into a circumstance. The second piece of that is when we arrive in the space and we start to read the room,

(06:12):

Read the faces of the people in the room, and this work of how close was my hypothesis or my theory about my reception in the room to what I'm actually seeing and feeling and hearing in the room as I enter the space is that sort of second piece of anticipatory intelligence. And then the third piece of it is really this question of how do I navigate that answers to those first two questions? And so what is my body, my brain, my emotions, my spirit, my gut, all of it doing with what I'm reading of the faces in the room and the reaction to me being there could be a positive space. I could get there and realize that the people in the room are all receptive to my presence and what I'm reading and feeling is a sense of welcome and warmth and an invitation for all of me to be in the room. And then what does that feel like in terms of the letdown of anxiety and the ability to absorb that sense of welcome and to participate in that sense of welcome? Or it could be a hostile environment. And what I'm reading is something that isn't welcome,

(07:44):

Something that feels like fill in the blank, resentment, who knows?

(07:53):

And then what does my body do with that? What does my gut do with that? What does my emotions, what does my spirit do? And how do I react and respond to what I'm actually reading in the room? So you can hear that sense of three steps, and sometimes that can happen over a matter of days, weeks as we build up to something. Sometimes that can happen in a matter of seconds as we enter a room, but the amount of effort and energy that is expended and the idea that you can actually develop a very well thought through grid for this as a kind of intelligence that can be yours individually might belong to your group. Collectively idea of how we anticipate and then how we engage a space based on and in this race, it could be extended to gender,

Speaker 3 (08:58):

Religion

Speaker 2 (09:00):

In this day and age, probably politics and any other places where we find intersectionality of the pieces of our identity.

Speaker 1 (09:11):

I had to take a deep breath because it is this giant reframing and pathologizing of what a lot of us walk around with, which is an internal disruption as we move from space to space.

Speaker 2 (09:29):

Yeah, I think that's true. And I mean, I think about it as a black woman, as a black mother raising two kids, I have taught my kids this notion of, I didn't call it that there's too many syllables and SAT words, but I have taught my kids a sense of pay attention to people and places and sounds and vibes and nonverbal communication and verbal communication and learn to interpret and decipher and then do what is necessary to keep yourself safe and do what is necessary to enjoy and participate in places where you're actually welcome.

Speaker 1 (10:17):

When that intersects with the concepts of Western psychology, let's say, where we're as a part of that system, there's this constant move to how do we heal anxiety, how do we work towards calm? How do we work towards finding a quote safe space? And I think it's becoming more and more evident in our current society. It's evident to many before, but I think some people are jostled into the reality that there might not be that safe space or you might have to understand anxiety differently than the western psychological framework. Have you thought about that?

Speaker 2 (11:04):

Yeah. I mean, couple of things, right? Is that in western sort of psychological space, the phrase that's usually engaged is something called hypervigilant. This idea that the time you spend reading a room and your sense of threat and the need to be vigilant about your own safety, the concept of hypervigilance is to say that you're overreacting

Speaker 3 (11:36):

To

Speaker 2 (11:37):

The space and you have a kind of vigilance that is unnecessary. You have a kind of vigilance that is a trigger to some threat that doesn't actually exist. And therefore you as the person who is doing this anticipatory work, needs to rea acclimate to the room and engage the room as if you are safe and to reimagine or recalibrate your sense of threat to an idea that it doesn't exist and it's not there. And one of the things that I would pose is that's a false reality for marginalized people in the United States. The sense of a lack of safety is present and it's real. And therefore, could we be talking about a necessary kind of vigilance as opposed to an over reactive hypervigilance?

(12:45):

So that's kind of one way that I think is a necessary exploration, and it requires the country to wrestle with the truth and the why and how of the lack of safety for marginalized people, whether that is on racial lines or gender lines or whatever power structure we are engaging. There's always the question of those in power and those who are not. And if in that moment you are in the category of the disempowered and the disenfranchised, then a sense of your own vigilance might actually be the wisest, kindest thing you can do. And the error of modern psychology to pathologize that is the problem. The other thing that I think about because you use the word safety, and I did too often, and of the growing belief that the idea that I can be safe in an absolute sense is probably a misnomer at best, an illusion at worst. And so there can there be this sense of safer environments or safe ish environments or even the suggestion that I've heard in recent years of a sense of bravery instead of safety, the ability for the space, the room to hold, the idea that if there's a power differential, there's going to be a safety differential.

(14:31):

And so the question is not am I safe? The question is the level of courage or bravery that I may need to access in order to step into a room and note that there is a certain amount of of safety.

Speaker 1 (14:50):

And I think that can be played out on all levels. I mean, I attended a training on immigrant rights and one of the things they mentioned is that ICE has the ability, the immigration service has the ability to use a digital format on online form to write their own warrant. Now, we know that regular police cannot write their own warrant.

(15:16):

We know that ice can also obtain a warrant through the courts, but when you have an empowered police body to write their own warrant, even if you're not in an immigrant, what is a sense that you're going to actually be safe or you're going to walk into a room where there are those power differentials no matter what your race or ethnicity is. If you are not of the dominant class, what's the sense that you're going to feel safe in that power differential? I think as I hear you say, I don't want to go to the extreme that it's an illusion, but I do agree that each step out is a step of bravery. And some days we may have the bravery and the data points that say, despite this anticipation of potential harm, I'm going to be able to work through that today and I'm going to be with people who can work through that with me, even through the power differential. And I think in the coming days, and there's going to be times when we say I can't step into that space because of what I anticipate, not because I'm a coward, but because it may lead to more harm than I can metabolize.

Speaker 2 (16:27):

Yeah, I mean the word safe has its problem. So does the word brave, right? Because again, the weight of that word is on the marginalized person in many ways to push path, the power differential and show up anyway. And there's something about that weight and the imbalance of it that feels wildly unfair, but historically true.

(17:00):

And so what I love about your sense of there might be some days I do not have it in me, and then can we come to that moment with the reverence and the kindness and the sanctity that deserves for me and my individual capacity to say I don't have it today? And I say that knowing that most of us come from, I come from a cultural backdrop, a collective story around blackness and the black bravery and black courage and black power and black rights. That doesn't always give me space to say I don't have it in me. I don't have that bravery today. I don't have access to it. I come from a cultural narrative that screams we shall overcome in a thousand different ways. And so you can hear in that both a hope and then a demand that you find the capacity in every moment to overcome. And we don't have a lot of stories where you get to say, I don't have it. And I have some curiosity for you as a Latino woman, do you have those stories, those cultural narratives that give you permission to say, I don't have access to the kind of bravery that I need for today?

Speaker 1 (18:40):

That's a really good question. As you were speaking, I was thinking of the complexity of the constructed racial identity for Latinos, which is often a combination as you know, we've talked about it, a lot of indigenous African and then European ancestry. And so I often think of us coming into those spaces as negotiators. How do we make this okay for dominant culture folks? Can we get close enough to power to make it okay? Which is a costly selling out of one part of ourselves. And I think the narrative is like when you hear nationally, why do Latinos vote this way even though the electoral percentage is so low compared to dominant culture folks? So I think the question we have to wrestle with is what part of our identity are we going to push aside to fit in those spaces? Or sometimes the role of negotiator and access to privilege can lead to healing and good things.

(19:53):

And also there are spaces where we step into where that's not even on the table. It's going to be an option. And so can we step back and not have to be that designated person and say, actually, I can't do any negotiations. I don't have the power to do that. It's kind of a false invitation. It's this false sense of you can kind of belong if you do this, but you can't really belong. I want you to vote for me, but then in 30 days, 60 days, I'm going to deport you at risk to be arrested. So you have to vote against your own best interest in order to be accepted, but after being accepted, you're also rejected. So I think there's a sense for me as I ramble through it, I don't know where that permission comes from to step back, but I think we do need to take a long hard look and step back

Speaker 2 (20:57):

Just listening to you. I have a sense that the invitation to your community is a little different than the invitation that has been extended to my community. And of course the extension of that invitation coming from the power structures of the western world of America, of whiteness. I hear you saying that if I'm mishearing you, let's chat. But what I hear is the sense of this notion that you can negotiate for acceptance, which I think is an invitation that has been extended to a lot of ethnic groups in the United States that do not include black people. Our history in the United States is the notion of one drop of black blood lands you in this category for which there will never be access. And I say that also knowing that part of the excitement of a candidacy of someone like Kamala Harris is the notion that somehow we have negotiated something or the possibility that we actually have negotiated a kind of acceptance that is beyond imagination. And in the days following the election, some of the conversation of literally she did everything that she has, all the degrees, she has the resume, she has this, she has that, and it wasn't enough to negotiate the deal

(22:53):

And the kind of betrayal. And so I started this by saying, oh no, y'all over there in Latinx spaces get to negotiate something we as black people. But I think that there's a true narrative in post civil rights post brown versus board of education that the negotiation that we are in as black people is if we get the degrees and we build the pedigree, we can earn the negotiated seat. And I think other ethnic spaces, and you tell me if this feels true to you, the negotiation has been about bloodline.

Speaker 1 (23:50):

Yeah, absolutely. And adjacent to that negotiated space is the idea that you wouldn't have to anticipate so much that you could walk in and feel safe or that no matter where you think about any of the presidential spaces, that Kamala Harris could walk in and she could be accepted

Speaker 2 (24:15):

And that she would bring all the rest of us with her. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:29):

I wanted to believe that this election was based on issues. And I wanted to believe that no matter where you stood on certain things that you could see through that Trump was going to be a deadly disaster for bodies of color. And yet that's not what happened.

Speaker 2 (24:55):

Yeah, I think, right. And my first pushback is like, he's a problem. He's a disaster not just for bodies of color. And I think there was some segment of the country making the argument that he is a detriment to a kind of ideal that affects us all regardless of race or creed or color or gender. And I am still trying to make meaning of what it means that that's not the choice we made as a country. I'm still trying to, in my head, logically balance how you could vote against your own interests. And I was watching a documentary this weekend, the US and the Holocaust, and one of the things that is true in that documentary is the fact that there has always been a strain of American life that voted against its own interest. That notion is not new. And if I try to think about that in psychological terms, I mean, how often have you seen that as a therapist, a client who makes decisions that are clearly against their own interest? And the therapeutic work is to get to a place where that is less and less true,

Speaker 1 (26:38):

Which I mean, I know we'll record a part two, I think of the collective meaning we are making out of this, that the sense that in the voting against our own self-interest, I can speak from my cultural background, you may say goodbye to your grandma or your brother. You may say goodbye to the friend down the street that runs a restaurant. And what does that do to your psyche? It's nothing new. We've been asked to do that for centuries. This is not new. This was introduced when colonial powers first arrived and we're asking for loyalty in exchange for some kind of a false hope of true safety. And yet when we experience this anxiety or this anticipatory intelligence, I think our bodies aren't just speaking from what's happening today, but the centuries of this was never, okay.

Speaker 2 (27:48):

See, again, I'm hit with that sentence reads different to me when I hear you as a Latino woman say, that's not a new negotiation for us. We've been asked to vote against our own interest from colonial days. And what does that cost you? I want to cry for that story of an immigration that sounded like it was voluntary and never actually was. And I say that feeling in my own experience, the trajectory of enslaved Africans were asked to negotiate something very different than that. What is the cost? It'll be a different kind of cost. There is a section of the black community that voted against our own interest in this election, and what does that mean and what's the story that we're telling ourselves around it in order to justify a choice? The consequences of which I think have yet to be made clear for any of us. I know that there's this anticipated, we can say the word mass deportation and think that we can anticipate the cost of that. And just from the few conversations you and I have had over the last week, I don't think any of our anticipatory work will be anywhere close to the actual cop.

Speaker 1 (30:11):

I think you're right. I think we will do our best based on what we've lived and tried to do for one another and for our own families to anticipate what we need, but we won't escape.

Speaker 2 (30:38):

I think the other thing that I think about is the cost is not just to Latinx people. There is a cost to all of us that are in proximity to you that is different and arguably far less. But I think we're missing that too. I think we're underestimating and miscalculating. There's a science fiction book that was written, I read it in college by the author's name is a guy named Derek Bell. He's a lawyer, and he wrote a book called Faces at the Bottom of the Well. And there's a chapter in the book's, a collection of short stories. There's a short story about the day all the Negroes disappeared. And the story is about this alien population from another planet who is disenchanted with the treatment of enslaved Africans. So they come to earth and they take everybody black. And the story is about what is no longer true of the planet because Africans are no longer enslaved. Africans in the US are no longer in it, on it. And all the things that are no longer true of American life, the things that will never become true of American life because of the absence of a people group. And I think that, again, we can say the phrase mass deportation and think we have some sense of what the cost of that might be. And I think we are grossly underestimating and miscalculating all the things that will not be true of American life.

Speaker 1 (32:33):

Yeah, I think I don't have words. I don't have a lot of explanations or what our kids will, what they're learning about life. I know we have to pause. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 (33:09):

Part two, to come

Speaker 1 (33:10):

Our cucumber. I'll catch you later. As you can see, we ended this podcast on a difficult note, and it's not a space that Rebecca and I are going to be able to resolve, and we are going to continue talking about it. So tune in to our next episode in part two. And I really think there's a lot of encouragement to be found in setting a frame and setting space for reality and what we are facing in our bodies and understanding ourselves and understanding as collectives, how this might be impacting us differently. Rebecca and I aren't speaking for everybody in our communities. They're not monoliths. We are speaking from our particular locations. Again, thank you for tuning in and I encourage you to download, share, subscribe, and share with others that that might be researching or thinking about this topic. Talk to you later. Bye.

 

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.