Local psychologist and assistant professor specializing in intimacy, relationships and racial trauma, Dr. Candice Nicole Hargons. Photo furnished
In recent weeks, our society has found itself in a major reckoning with deep and painful schisms. Amidst mounting tensions and civil unrest, many everyday conversations have turned to complex and difficult topics, from bias, privilege and oppression, to racism, violence and trauma.
Dr. Candice Nicole Hargons, a local psychologist and assistant professor specializing in intimacy, relationships and racial trauma, is no stranger to these types of conversations – in fact, she has cultivated her career around addressing difficult subjects.
“I love talking to people about the things that most people have a hard time talking about:
sex and racism,” said Hargons, who goes by Dr. Candice Nicole.
A faculty member with the University of Kentucky’s counseling and psychology program, Hargons largely splits her focus between those two topics. She directs a research team at UK called RISE^2, which is an acronym for both “Relationships, Intimacy, and Sexual Enrichment” and “Race, Intersectionality, and Social justice Engagement,” and is also the founder and director of the Center for Healing Racial Trauma, a Lexington-based organization that stems, at least in part, from her experience pursuing an academic career in healing and therapy during the onset of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
While earning her PhD in psychology at the University of Georgia, Hargons focused her academic studies on sexual health and pleasure from a black perspective in the early 2010s. A number of high-profile incidences of racially charged violence, including the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and 2015 Charleston church massacre, spurred a shift in her focus.
“I started to shift my framework for how to use therapy, so that people who were grieving and who were mourning could have outlets and healing,” she explained.
Once Hargons moved to Lexington to take a job with UK’s counseling and psychology department, which she calls her dream job, wounds were reopened yet again with another series of high-profile killings of black people, including Philandro Castile, who was shot during a traffic stop in Minnesota in 2016. Hargons found herself seeking new therapeutic tools – not only for students, clients and BLM activists, but also for herself. Calling on her academic training in biofeedback, stress reduction, and mind and body intervention, she turned to meditation, a tool that she had found helpful while pursuing her PhD. She decided to create a guided meditation specifically designed to reduce race-based stress for people of color who are dealing with racial trauma. Available online, the 17-minute meditation utilizes mindfulness, affirmations specific to the black experience, and metta, a term meaning “loving kindness.”
“I created it because I needed it,” she said, adding that “sometimes, when you do that, it can be valuable for you and not for anyone else.” That wasn’t the case this time, however – the meditation was picked up by the Huffington Post, and shared widely. University counseling centers started adding it to their resource lists, and young people and private practices across the country started utilizing it. Building on that momentum, Hargons ultimately created a second guided meditation, designed for white people who are looking to be better allies and accomplices to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Dr. Candice Hargons presented at a University of Kentucky event called “Ed Talks.” A faculty member with the university’s department of counseling and psychology who specializes in race and interpersonal relationships, Hargons also has a private practice and is the director of the Center for Healing Racial Trauma. Photo furnished
“The format for both of them are the same, but the intention behind them are different,” she explained of the two meditations. “[The meditation] for people who identify as black is really focused on their healing, and affirming their identities. For people who are white or not black, the Allies and Accomplices meditation is focused on how to reduce the level of stress or fear you experience when you’re going to start cultivating an anti-racist mindset – and how to take action.”
Hargons’ work at the Center for Healing Racial Trauma, which she founded a year and a half ago as part of her private practice, has many modalities and functions, including individual and group therapy, workshops, talks and trainings. The organization features both an intervention arm, which focuses largely on working with people of color who have experienced incidences of racial trauma, and a preventative arm, which focuses on working with businesses and organizations that are predominantly white-led and that are ready to think about policies and take steps to adopt an anti-racist mindset.
Possessing a level of calm and clarity born out of study and experience as a therapist, Hargons has the kind of wisdom we seek during times when racial wounds and anxieties feel like they are reaching a breaking point. We sat down with her in June for a conversation about collective and individual ways to address racial tensions and healing.
Between the ongoing pandemic and the acute racial tension the nation is grappling with, these past few months have been incredibly stressful for our community, our country and our world. What are some of the ways that you personally manage stress, and things you recommend individuals do to stay connected, constructive and healing at this time? I manage stress with a repertoire of coping strategies, which is what I recommend to clients. If you over-rely on one strategy, you’re likely at increased risk of experiencing racial trauma. Some of them include journaling, writing poetry, dancing, exercising, cuddling, meditation, going for daily walks with my baby, going to the park with my family, red wine and engaging in resistance/healing work for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and People Of Color]. I recommend all of these strategies, and I also include setting a good sleep routine, eating well and engaging in some form of movement. These are free ways to reduce stress. Meditation, therapy, art-based healing, social connection and engaging in activism or resistance, through whatever your strengths are, also get included in the recommendations I give to clients and the community.
What do you see as some common hindrances to racial healing? As an expert who has centered her career on healing racial trauma, what are the key points that you hope to see people focusing on with this current movement? The most common hindrance to healing sadly includes overwork, without any type of care routine. The tendency to endorse what the research calls “John Henryism” or “Superwoman/Strong Black Woman Syndrome” leads Black people to work so hard at whatever it is that they do not take time to rest. It burns them out, because they’re consciously reacting to false stereotypes about Black people being lazy.
Another hindrance to racial healing is not recognizing that healing is necessary. Many Black, Indigenous and People Of Color have been told to “suck it up” and have learned to suppress some informative, normal emotions. It erodes them from the inside out, eventually showing up as physical and mental illness. The final hindrance, and most important, is inequitable access to healing resources such as therapy, insurance, health care and complementary health professionals. Some of the costs are out of the reach of most people, and with economic inequality aligning with racial inequality in many ways, systemic racism intentionally prevents health care from being accessible. Then, when it is accessible financially, there is often the additional interpersonal barrier of racist behaviors and beliefs in the health care industry. That’s why systemic change is so central, because I think the first two points are outcomes, or symptoms, of the latter point.
What would you say to those who want to help and support the movement, but are feeling a particular hopelessness or depletion? Start with empathy, rather than evaluation. Empathy says, “I’m with you.” Evaluation says, “I agree/disagree with you.” Empathy is the cornerstone of solidarity. So, if you, as a non-Black person, can say to your non-Black friends, colleagues, family members, “I’m with the movement for Black lives,” it amplifies your solidarity. If you can tell them why you’re “with it” with some evidence, you prevent them from having to burden a Black person with the labor of educating someone for free. If you can use that empathy to inform your actions – for example, considering what you would like someone to do for you if you were hurting or being treated despicably – then you’re more likely to do the research and take the actions of anti-racist resistance using your skillset. Take good care of yourself if you feel hopeless and depleted, but do not avoid the work. For Black people who feel hopeless and depleted, honor that emotion with true rest and compassion first. This has been a long, ongoing battle, and it is taxing. When you are able, do the smallest things you can think of to contribute until you recover. Then, take the level of action you are able, based on your strengths.
Your academic work has had a strong focus on sex, intimacy and relationships, and that remains a central focus of your career. What drew you to those particular topics? And in what ways does your work focusing on healing racial trauma intersect or overlap with your work focusing on sex, intimacy and relationships? I’ve been interested in sexual health since I was young; reading about puberty in my grandmother’s Encyclopedia Britannica set empowered me to learn more. I was the high school friend who was informally providing sex education to my peers. When I learned sex therapy and sex research were actual career paths, I was elated. I think sex and racism are the two topics people are most afraid to discuss, and I love them both, so I stand in that gap. There is so much misinformation about sex and race, and they relate to each other because many racial stereotypes also have a sexual connotation. In my research, they both come up often enough to pair them.
Photo furnished
What are some of the most important ways that people who don’t identify as black can be supportive right now? What do you see as some of the most important things that we as a community and a nation – BIPOC and non-BIPOC alike – can do to unite and to maximize this momentum to enact real and positive change? What I’d love to see is poor White people realize the way these systemic oppression policies and strategies negatively impact them, too. I’d love to see more coalitions, and there are a few, where people who are well enough and racially aware enough come together to dismantle racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, cisgenderism, sizism, ableism, and other aspects of marginalization without feeling as if there has to be a hierarchy. Non-Black people can start with self-awareness and reflection through therapy and re-education, to realize the ways they have been complicit in endorsing anti-Black racism. We’re all socialized in it, so to pretend as if we haven’t been is to fail to see how the neighborhoods, schools, churches and entertainment outlets in Lexington are organized largely by race and class for a reason. If non-Black people are willing and able to cultivate an anti-racist mindset, the interpersonal and systemic work can emerge authentically.
What’s next for the Center for Healing Racial Trauma? I plan to expand nationally, with telehealth and in-person services provided to all states. We already provide consultation and training nationally and internationally. I see this in the next few years. I’d also like to expand the ways we heal, to include massage therapy, reiki, sound therapy, yoga and other mind/body, creative and indigenous ways of healing that are necessary for this type of work. Lastly, I’d like a recruitment and training program to prepare BIPOC healers.
What kinds of conversations do you think need to be happening to be moving toward healing? I think the conversations are needed among White people in particular. I would like for them, accountable to a Black person who is paid to guide them, to learn how not to disown each other for a commitment to anti-racism. I’d like them to talk about how they will choose to raise their children to see race and racism critically, to disrupt oppression, to be confident and have grit when it comes to being anti-racist. I’d like them to talk to political and religious leaders who are White about the need for urgency in making some changes. I’d like them to talk about how they came to understand Blackness as dangerous and disposable, and go to therapy to unpack that. I hope non-Black people of color are talking about divesting from the myth of meritocracy and realizing that it is all of us or none of us. I hope that Black people are talking about collective economics, therapy and healing work to rid ourselves of internalized racism, enhancing our education and knowledge about our history and capacity, beyond narratives of enslavement, and how we learn to love each other well.
For more info:
You can learn more about Dr. Candice Nicole Hargons at her website, drcandicenicole.com. Her Black Lives Matter meditations can be found at drcandicenicole.com/2016/07/black-lives-matter-meditation/. More about the Center for Healing Racial Trauma can be found at centerforhealingracialtrauma.com.