Dr. Isha Metzger of EMPOWER Lab: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Pace your passion and stay in your lane! Healing the country of racism sounds like such a daunting task, so I think it’s important to know that we can all do a small part. Once you’ve made yourself accessible, gotten ingrained in the community, educated yourself, and gotten comfortable having difficult conversations, it is likely that you’re going to be fired up and ready to do EVERYTHING that you can to make the world a better place. I think it’s important to remember that we all have roles to play and to pace ourselves so that we can stay focused on doing our job well. Resting and unplugging when necessary is critically important to restoring your energy so that you are able to continue the work that is so important.
As part of our series about 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country, I had the pleasure of interviewing Isha W. Metzger, PhD.
Dr. Isha Metzger is a first generation American from Atlanta, Georgia by way of Sierra Leone, West Africa. She is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Director of The EMPOWER Lab, and Owner of Cultural Concepts Consulting, LLC.
The overarching goal of Dr. Metzger’s career is to take a strengths based, anti-deficit approach to prevention for youth of color. Dr. Metzger stands against anti-Black racism and oppression through “”Engaging Minorities in Prevention, Outreach, Wellness, Education, & Research” through community-based participatory methods and advocacy. Both personally and professionally, Dr. Metzger is heavily invested in mentoring and training the next generation of community based prevention scientists.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
I grew up in College Park, Georgia, the youngest of a huge family in a household that was constantly filled with music, rich foods, culture, laughter, and love. My early upbringing as a first generation American from Sierra Leone, West Africa provided me opportunities to appreciate speaking both English and Krio, eating both pizza and pounded yams, singing to Beyonce and dancing to Soukous, and experiencing the richness of both urban and traditional cultures
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
I remember being so impacted by “A Child Called It” that I read it several times throughout the years. It’s a novel about a boy who was ruthlessly physically and emotionally abused by his mom. I think this book stood out to me because up until reading this book, I had only heard of the Civil War back home as a stressor that children were experiencing. Once I realized it was the survivor telling his own story, it made real the long term harmful effects of child abuse and the potential benefit of advocates, mental health professionals, and supportive adults in the community. I guess I thought of the United States as a problem free zone and it wasn’t until reading this book that I realized there were kids here who needed help as well.
Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?
The quote, or scripture, that is most relevant to my life and my work is “Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:13–16 is a Biblical scripture, but it’s a quote that is a constant reminder for me to be intentional about what my work seeks to achieve and how it serves my larger purpose in life.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
For me, leadership is really ‘leading by example,’ so it’s important for me to do the work and then to bring people in who are also willing and able to do the work with me, not for me. It’s an important distinction that allows us all to take ownership and responsibility over our own work as we move towards our collective goal. To be the leader just means I was doing it first, or that I am the glue that connects us all, but in the community-based research, prevention, and outreach efforts that I lead, we are all doing the same work.
In life we come across many people, some who inspire us, some who change us and some who make us better people. Is there a person or people who have helped you get to where you are today? Can you share a story?
I typically answer this question by talking about my father, mother, grandparents, an influential client, or one of my mentors. Today, I’m compelled to answer that my faith in God and my relationship with God is one that has been most shifting, beneficial, grounding, and inspirational, for me throughout the years. The story that I’ll share is advice that I received from my pastor over 15 years ago that I still follow to today. And that is to spend 15 minutes with God each day: 5 minutes to praise God, 5 minutes in prayer to God, and 5 minutes in the word of God. Whichever God you serve, I think it’s beneficial to take 15 minutes a day to check in with that relationship. Spend 5 minutes being present and giving thanks, spend 5 minutes being intentional about manifesting your wants and desires, and 5 minutes getting information from a trusted source that will help ground you in your values. Practicing this small 15 minute habit has been one that has led to gratefulness for my past, contentment in the present, and hopefulness for my future both personally and professionally.
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. The United States is currently facing a series of unprecedented crises. So many of us see the news and ask how we can help. We’d love to talk about the steps that each of us can take to help heal our county, in our own way. Which particular crisis would you like to discuss with us today? Why does that resonate with you so much?
The work that my career has focused on has been at eliminating mental and behavioral health disparities that result from both interpersonal and racial stressors for ethnic minority youth. Given our current social, political, and historical context, I’d say that the toll of anti-Black racism and discrimination on developing teens is the crisis that resonates with me the most. As a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, I see it as a crisis that we have our Black youth being exposed to racial stressors that are potentially traumatic who are not engaging in the evidence-based services and treatments that we know work to help youth heal from traumatic experiences. This crisis is most salient for me in this moment because I think we now have the attention of policymakers, lawmakers, funders, etc. who can use their positions to help fund, develop, research, evaluate, disseminate, and amplify work that is being done to help Black youth heal from the effects of racial trauma.
This is likely a huge topic. But briefly, can you share your view on how this crisis evolved to the boiling point that it’s at now?
Racism is a historic and systemic problem that has plagued our nation since slavery, Jim Crow and desegregation, disproportionate suspensions and expulsions and tracking and special education in our school systems, and the pipeline to prison that is characterized by not only the mass incarceration of Black peoples for nonviolent crimes. Now, not only are Black youth experiencing discrimination and racial stressors in their schools and sometimes in their communities, they are experiencing them vicariously from watching videotaped police sanctioned violence and brutality on the news and in the media. When it comes to mental healthcare, Black youth and families are not able to readily access and utilize cognitive behavioral treatments, and when they are able to access them, they are not engaging with these services or benefiting from them over time.
Can you tell our readers a bit about your experience either working on this cause or your experience being impacted by it? Can you share a story with us?
I’ve worked with Black families who say, ‘of course I want to go in and receive mental and behavioral health services — but they’re only offered from 9–5, or they’re only offered during the week, or your center is not on the bus line, or I don’t have childcare for my other children.’ Or, these families say that they were able to access these services but that they had a clinician who was invalidating, biased, making them feel like a bad parent, or that the services were otherwise not attending to their racial stressors at all while focusing on their interpersonal stressors.
Ok. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share your “5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our Country”. Kindly share a story or example for each.
To this, the 5 steps that I would suggest are for each of us are:
Make yourself accessible! If you are offering help or offering services, offer them during the evenings or on the weekends sometimes. For organizations, this means things like offering telehealth services, accepting and offering travel vouchers, having a sliding scale for fees or offering free services, and advertising services in communities that are in need.
The second suggestion that I have towards helping to heal our country is to meet the people where they’re at! Individuals, organizations, leaders, should all be ingrained as a part of the communities that you want to help. Listen to us, learn from us, give back to us, with us! Building trusting relationships often comes from familiarity and being in close proximity to each other, so it’s important to be in the community that you want to heal.
Educate yourself. This means doing the work yourself to learn about systems of oppression and how they marginalize and negatively impact mental, physical, behavioral, and emotional outcomes. That means reading and sharing what you’ve learned, doing training and continuing education if you are in a helping profession, checking your own implicit biases, and engaging in experiences that will allow you to actively engage in advocacy and allyship in whatever capacity you are able.
Have conversations. Talking about race and racism is difficult for many. To help heal from a wound, though, you have to attend to it and clean it out. The same goes for dealing with racial trauma as an individual, family, community, or society at large. To heal the crisis of racial trauma, we really need to all get comfortable with having the conversation in our personal and professional lives. Parents should talk to their kids about racism at home, teachers should talk to students about it in school, friends should talk about it amongst themselves socially, communities should band together to have the conversation as well. What role can we each play? Having conversations to openly solve long standing issues is important for sharing information, strategies that are effective, and successes so that we are motivated to continue the grueling work of undoing centuries of oppression.
Pace your passion and stay in your lane! Healing the country of racism sounds like such a daunting task, so I think it’s important to know that we can all do a small part. Once you’ve made yourself accessible, gotten ingrained in the community, educated yourself, and gotten comfortable having difficult conversations, it is likely that you’re going to be fired up and ready to do EVERYTHING that you can to make the world a better place. I think it’s important to remember that we all have roles to play and to pace ourselves so that we can stay focused on doing our job well. Resting and unplugging when necessary is critically important to restoring your energy so that you are able to continue the work that is so important.
It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but what can we do to make these ideas a reality? What specific steps can you suggest to make these ideas actually happen? Are there things that the community can do to help you promote these ideas?
The great thing about the 5 steps that I’ve outlined is that we as a community are already doing these things and having these conversations! We literally just need to keep the work going and stay diligent in our efforts to reach broader communities and ultimately heal our nation. A large part of my work is in integrating ‘racial socialization’ into evidence-based services, but it really is just sharing information about the conversations that Black families are already having about race and racism and how to respond to racial stressors.
We are going through a rough period now. Are you optimistic that this issue can eventually be resolved? Can you explain?
I am extremely optimistic about the state of our nation and its ability to heal from and ultimately irradiate anti-Black racism.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
I look at our youth and their peaceful protests and lobbying, their creative expressions and academic writings, and their investment and interest in holistic health and healing, and I am so hopeful about our future! I really don’t think that our young people need any convincing, but it’s because I’ve been working with them for so long. For example, I hold “Passion, Purpose, Power sessions” (https://www.instagram.com/p/CNvhI-ELfhw/) on Monday’s from 1–2:30pm. During these ‘Virtual Office Hours,’ I have had the pleasure of meeting with students, organization leaders, healers, creators, and youth in the community who are all eager to explore how to best utilize their personal strengths, resources, and talents toward the advancement of social justice. For those young people who are still unsure about how to make a positive impact on society, I would tell then to sign up for an upcoming session with me at www.tinyurl.com/passionpurposepowersessions, or to reach out to me via email at [email protected]
Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Beyonce, Beyonce, Beyonce.
How can our readers follow you online?
· www.instagram.com/theEMPOWERlab
· https://www.facebook.com/TheEMPOWERlab1
· https://twitter.com/TheEMPOWERLab
· Also, towards eradicating anti-Black racism and healing from racial trauma, I also have an online Racial Trauma Guide (http://www.drishametzger.com/racial-trauma-guideand https://psychology.uga.edu/racial-trauma-guide) and an online “C.A.R.E Package for Racial Healing” that focuses on ‘Coping and Resilience through Empowerment” and includes interactive and real-world activities for Black teens (http://www.drishametzger.com/care-package-for-racial-healing). My Public Health Messaging Campaign (http://www.drishametzger.com/public-health-messaging is also on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/p/CMc9GhygIc2/) uses yard signs and posters to spread information about the signs of racial trauma, how to cope with racial stressors, and strategies for effective allyship. This campaign has been widely disseminated on campus (in the two largest colleges, campus recreational center, housing halls, main class room buildings, and health clinic), around Athens (at churches, community organizations, children’s advocacy centers, and government buildings), at community rallies against racial discrimination and hate crimes (https://www.instagram.com/p/CNOBHKphxVm/), and across our social media. Also, I discuss and disseminate strategies for coping and healing from racial trauma on my Black and EMPOWERED podcast (https://blackandempowered.podbean.com/ and http://www.drishametzger.com/black-and-empowered-podcast) with two of my graduate students and we now have both national and international listeners.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Dr. Isha Metzger of EMPOWER Lab: 5 Steps That Each Of Us Can Take To Proactively Help Heal Our… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
