Check Your Privilege

“Check your privilege” is not helpful when we turn it against ourselves.

Checking our privilege when working for social justice is necessary. “Check your privilege” is not helpful when we turn it against ourselves and minimize our trauma.

I didn’t have it so bad. At least I wasn’t homeless. Others had it worse. At least …

Our primitive brain and nervous system are always assessing our relative safety and danger. Our conditioning around whether it is safe to be here, and how much we disconnect to escape from fear and overwhelm, is highly relevant to our adult relationships.

When we know that someone has a high ACES score, it helps us to set a context for their behavior. Knowledge can help to make sense of their fight/ flight/ freeze responses as well as our own.

Click here for more on ACES Adverse Childhood Experiences Score.

We don’t want to use our relative power or privilege as a weapon against our tender inner child. We already have a strong survival drive and will take the blame on ourselves because it is in our best interests to keep our parents/ adults on our side. We can’t consider, even to ourselves, that our parents were responsible for the environment we grew up in. This includes safe and secure housing and food, and also…