July 19, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, we talk with Fatima Hafiz about understanding emotional responses to trauma. Dr. Hafiz is an educator, facilitator, and CEO of The TEA group - Transformative Education Associates. They specialize in bringing transformative practices to under-resourced communities, primarily in Greater Philadelphia.
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Fatima Hafiz (00:07):
The Western education is about the intellect, but the education
that's necessary is a connectionbetween the intellect and the heart.
Sam Fuqua (00:17):
That's Fatima Hafiz, and this is Well, That Went Sideways!
A podcast that serves as aresource to help people have
healthy, respectful communication.
We present a diversity of ideas, tools,and techniques to help you transform
conflict in relationships of all kinds.
(00:38):
In this episode, we talk withFatima Hafiz about understanding
emotional responses to trauma.
Dr. Hafiz is an educator,facilitator, and CEO of the TEA group
- Transformative Education Associates.
They specialize in bringing transformativepractices to under-resourced communities,
(01:03):
primarily in Greater Philadelphia.
I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of theprogram with Alexis Miles.
Hi Alexis.
Alexis Miles (01:10):
Hello Sam.
Sam Fuqua (01:11):
Very delighted to be here with Fatima Hafiz at the
2025 White Privilege Conference.
Hello, welcome.
Fatima Hafiz (01:18):
Thank you for having me.
Sam Fuqua (01:20):
We are speaking to you after I just attended your workshop.
I came away, uh, certainly withan appreciation of your lifelong
dedication to helping communitiesthrough social work, through
restorative practices, and through,uh, a very interesting new app that
you're developing that we'll get into.
(01:40):
Given your decades of experience, what didyou find most, say lacking in social work?
Fatima Hafiz (01:48):
Yeah, I wanna say that I, uh, began a journey, in terms
of career journey, with education,and looking at the ways in which
educators were put into black and browncommunities, and particularly as it
related to white female educators andthe experiences that they had that
they didn't, they didn't get taughtin their training, and I was part of
(02:12):
that, but I actually added things to it.
So, I try not to talk in lack, I tryto speak more about what is missing.
And, what was missing is the abilityfor the universities and folks who teach
social workers and um, educators, and eventherapists, uh, what it means to deliver
(02:38):
services in black and brown communities.
And, delivering service in black and,black and brown communities doesn't
necessarily fit all the time with DSM, theDSM, you know, diagnosis, because we don't
consider the trauma, we don't considerthe historical context for black and
brown communities, and their experience,in terms of their mental health
(03:01):
experience, in terms of their economicexperiences, and what drives them.
And so, part of it is the inability fora lot of the white educators and white
social workers, which is predominantlywhite females, when they come in, they're
not, uh, able to support people at alevel that they could support people.
(03:26):
They can come in with ideas, uh, theycan come in with their training, but
there's a different kind of experiencethey need in order to service.
People who have gone throughhistorical trauma, who's gone through,
you know, who's carrying a lot ofepigenetic trauma, uh, people who
are continuously being bombarded withsome of the, uh, inequitable things
(03:50):
that are happening in our communities.
Alexis Miles (03:54):
I'm guessing people have heard those terms, epigenetic
trauma, historical trauma.
Could you just briefly say whatthey are and give an example?
Fatima Hafiz (04:03):
So when I talk about historical trauma, I'm talking about the
journey of the African American experiencefrom enslavement, and that this trauma
goes from enslavement to Jim Crow, toall of the, uh, more systemic things
that have happened and that continue tohappen through this structural things
like the structural racism, thingsthat have happened, uh, in terms of
(04:27):
the economic racism, geographic racism.
And so historically, we, uh,have been under the pressure
of these kinds of conditions.
And so, that's where the historicaltrauma, so when one is getting
service as a, uh, client,"client," we change that language.
(04:48):
But as a client, usually thatis not considered when you are
diagnosing, when you are engaged ininterventions, it's not considered.
Um, and so, uh, that'sthe historical trauma.
Epigenetic trauma is trauma thatis passed through the genes.
There is studies by Jewish Holocaustvictim, victims who show that
(05:12):
they are carrying some of the samefears, some of the same things
that they experienced, that theirparents, their great grandparents,
their great grand grandparentsexperienced during the Holocaust.
The challenge with looking at that forthe African American experience is that
they don't wanna acknowledge that thisepigenetic exists in African Americans.
(05:33):
They say, "Oh, it's too farback." But the truth is, is
that it's continuous oppression.
And so, the epigenetic istalking about the genes.
It's talking about what we carry.
Like, uh, they'll say, "Oh, wellblack people have a lot of high blood
pressure," you know, but we are carryinga lot of this because we are carrying
trauma that has not been resolved.
And so, that's what I meanby epigenetic and historical.
Alexis Miles (05:56):
Thank you for that.
You mentioned people being educated intheir fields, but something's missing.
The missing piece.
And the things you just described.
What can be done to help bridgewhat's missing so that they
can be effective teachers?
Fatima Hafiz (06:15):
So, I think the first thing is acknowledging, I mean, talking
about those who are going into thefield, acknowledging their own humanity.
And, I think that's missing is thatthere's not a recognition that your
humanity is tied to my humanity.
And, you get caught in a system thatsays that you are an individual.
(06:39):
And that, you know, yes,you have privileges.
Your white skin actually gives youprivileges that you may not acknowledge.
And so, uh, the missing is thatthat's the first thing we have
to do is get present to our ownhumanity so that we can see others.
Um, when we can't see others,it's because we have closed
(07:00):
something off inside of ourselves.
And, the other part of that iswe are educated from the neck up.
We are not educated from thehead to the feet, you know?
Uh, so the lower part of our bodiesjust don't get educated, right?
And so, the Western educationis about the intellect.
(07:23):
But the education that'snecessary is a connection between
the intellect and the heart.
And what does that mean with regardsto the idea of love, you know?
Dr., Dr. King talked a lot about love.
When I was doing my research, I didresearch with white female educators.
And when, uh, I wanted to do mydissertation, I wanted to talk about
(07:46):
love, and I wanted to talk about fearbecause inside of this culture, you
know, addressing the fear that whiteeducators, white social workers, when
they go into a black community orbrown community, there's a fear there.
There's an internal fear that they maynot recognize because you push it off.
Why?
Because you're the authority and you'vegiven the role of being the authority in
(08:10):
the space, whether it's in a classroom,whether it's as an administrator,
whether it is a social worker, you'vegiven, you've been given a role.
And so, people see it,but they don't speak it.
They just carry it, you know, knowingthat, oh well, I can't fuck up
against authority, and this whiteperson represents the authority.
(08:33):
And, the second bridge is beingable to understand your own fears
and your own sensibilities when youare in spaces with other people.
Alexis Miles (08:44):
Would you say that part of that is also, if a white person is
in, in the presence of black or brownpeople and certain feelings or thoughts
come up, they think, oh my God, thatsounds, feels like, sounds like racism.
I've gotta push that away.
Fatima Hafiz (09:00):
Yes, yes.
And, they start to internalize it andthey don't realize that they thoughts and
their feelings are actually expressed.
Without them even realizingthat it's expressed.
But many times they don'twanna talk about it.
They don't wanna say it becausethey don't wanna be wrong.
They don't want to, oh, uh, I can't saythis because then I'll appear racist.
(09:22):
No one, they don't wanna, whitepeople don't wanna be called racist.
But, uh, the idea is that yes, itcomes up and to recognize it is,
uh, power to be able to recognizeit and then to do something with it.
And doing something with,it's not the reaction.
It's the more of like, what am Igonna, how am I gonna respond to it?
(09:42):
And most of the time, if theresponse is to shut it down,
you're never gonna respond.
Uh, but if you respond to it, notworried about whether it's the wrong
thing, I said the wrong thing, I didthe wrong thing, because if you can
stand in that and be in a conversation,you might be able to get past that and
actually expand your capacity to workin spaces with black and brown people.
Alexis Miles (10:08):
So learning to be comfortable with discomfort.
Fatima Hafiz (10:10):
Yeah.
Being comfortable with un, withdi, with discomfort, let's say.
Being comfortable withbeing uncomfortable.
I learned that a long time ago witha mentor of mine says, "Well, if
you can't be uncomfortable, youdon't need to be doing this work."
Sam Fuqua (10:25):
Do you have any tips for when, you know, like you said a few minutes
ago about how some conflicts, we try tocompartmentalize them to the head, right?
But we know, I know, there's aphysiological response that, that
I feel in my body, but I'm notalways, uh, aware enough to deal
(10:47):
with that in, in the right way.
And so that can lead meto fight or flight, right?
Say something that I, that will justescalate the conflict rather than
work through it or just avoid it,you know, that would be the flight.
Just shut it, shut it down.
Any advice for how people can get moreself-aware in those moments and respond
(11:09):
not just to what's going on in ourhead, but what's happening in our body?
Fatima Hafiz (11:14):
Yeah.
One of the first things is being aware.
That's the biggest thing.
And in this culture, we are nottaught to be aware of our bodies.
Be aware of what's happening.
If you think about in black communities,the suppression of the internalized
oppression won't allow us, our voicesto be heard and to be activated in a way
(11:38):
that we can release what we are carrying.
Uh, van der Kolk says that thebody holds the score, and the body
will become ill when you can'tlet things go, let things out.
The first way is to begin to breathe.
See, we forget to breathe.
We, we are breathing automatically.
(11:58):
We think it's okay, you know?
But, think about it when you don'thave a breath, you, you can't breathe.
The thing is to come back to yourbreath and to slow the breath down
because you'll notice when somethingstarts to happen, something happen, we
go (rapidly breathing in and out), youknow, we don't even pay attention to it.
But we start to breathe heavily orwe start to, uh, hold our breath.
(12:20):
And so, the breath is the firstthing to pay attention to when
that experience in your body.
And you start to breathe into thatplace, but you gotta identify where
that place is, and sometimes you can'tidentify where that place is, right?
It's just that I feel it somewhere.
I don't know where I feel it, right?
But you breathe into thebody and it'll find its way.
Oxygen is the one thingthat keeps us alive.
(12:44):
If you can't breathedead, right, we are gone.
And so, breathing is the first thing Iwould think that we would do to slow the
brain down so that now you can think moreclearly and you can process whatever it
was that made you like, and I, one can'tsee the movement, but it's like a, um,
(13:08):
shimmering in the body and you don'tknow exactly what to do with it, right?
But the breath, I think is the numberone thing to remember when you get that.
Alexis Miles (13:19):
I wasn't in your workshop, but Sam described one thing that happened.
It was like turning over a card andlooking at it and, and being able
to identify that first feeling.
Can you say more about that exerciseand what you're getting at with that?
Fatima Hafiz (13:36):
So, many times when we come to these kinds of
conferences, we are intellectualizing.
We are talking and talking andtalking at each other, and we go
from one talk to another talk.
It's like we are trying to holdall this stuff right, and we get
back to wherever we come fromand all of that is gone, right?
(13:57):
But the feeling is the feeling.
They'll say, um, with children,it doesn't matter that you
taught them two plus two is two.
If they remember that,okay, maybe they won't.
But what they do rememberis how they felt.
And children tend to know to feel.
Adults, we grow not to feel.
(14:19):
And so, it, what I was getting at withthat exercise is so that you can feel
something and know where you felt it.
Like, you felt it in your body.
So, the cards had to do with thisconference conversation - race.
Uh, white, black, oppressor,all these words, these labels
that are put on people.
(14:40):
And it's these labelsthat we are experiencing.
It's not the person, it's not us,but it's a label that we've, uh,
it's already been defined for us.
So, it scares us to see the wordoppressor or victim, you know,
or white supremacist, or racist.
Those things, and we don't, wedon't pay attention to those.
(15:01):
Okay, somebody just called me a racist.
What do I do with that?
I'm feeling it, you know,what do I do with that?
Know that it's not you.
First of all, you breathe and thenyou take on what it, because what
you do next is you start thinkingabout, it's just an emotion.
Okay, that emotion was quick.
90 seconds.
I felt that emotion.
It was like somebody said surprised,but that surprise was only a second.
(15:25):
Few seconds, few moments.
But when you start thinkingabout what that's, that word
meant, then you start spiraling.
Am I this?
Is that true?
What is that, you know?
Do I do that?
All of those things start runningthrough your head, through your
body, and you can't adjust.
(15:46):
You can't adjust because thatlabel is labeled inside of you.
It's not just the label onthe words, on the paper.
And so, what the intention is, is to getpresent to it, not to those words, take
those away, but anything that happenswhen you're talking with family, when
you're talking with friends, when you'retalking in a, uh, situation, when you're
(16:07):
in a situation, just pay attention tothe moment that you felt something.
But you have to practice.
I was saying how it's not thatit just happens like that.
It's really a practice.
Everything is a practice.
When you learn something, it's a practice.
Uh, I was talking about those young,the young people that were there, the
young educators, if they just took onething and practiced that one thing, it
(16:33):
would shift something in their being.
Uh, with the app, we have thisthing about I experienced being.
So, I do something, but I'm being acertain way when that thing happens.
But we don't pay attention to that.
What's my perceptionof what just happened?
The perception is the thinking thatkeeps us spiraling in our feelings, and
then we can't get rid of our feelingsbecause we are spiraling because of all
(16:57):
the things we are thinking about it.
So, it's being able to separate thethought so that now you can be fully
present to the feeling and to feel it.
I remember, um, some colleagues, wewere at a, a pub and we were just
talking about feelings, and every oneof them, all scholars, all, you know,
(17:18):
and I says, "Well, how you feel?"Oh, um, "I think I feel..." and, "I
think I feel..." But how do you feel?
"I think I feel..." andthat's all we heard.
People said, "I think I feel." "I thinkI feel," right, but I don't really feel.
I feel, but I've never cultivatedit because our culture doesn't
cultivate that, doesn't haveus cultivate how we feel.
(17:40):
They make that, uh, seem like, oh,that's a woman, that's emotional.
She's feeling so much stuff, right?
But we all feel.
We all human beings.
That's what makes us human.
Uh, and uh, in Sufism, uh, it says thatthe emotions are the seed of the heart.
Like our heart, actually, the emotionstell us what our heart is saying.
(18:03):
Our bodies tell us what our emotion is.
So, that's the intention, is toget people to feel something.
Alexis Miles (18:11):
What I think I'm hearing you say is, you and I could be in a conflict.
We are talking.
You say a word.
That word can cause me to spinif you say, "You, you racist. You
colonizer." I'll be in here spinning.
We are still talking, but I'm,I'm really not listening because
I'm spinning, and I, I can't getmyself back into the conversation.
(18:37):
So, if I wanna have a realconversation that's gonna resolve a
conflict, I've gotta stop spinning.
Fatima Hafiz (18:43):
I gotta stop spinning.
Yes.
Yes.
And, the way you stop, you gotta speakit, "I, you just called me a racist.
Tell me more.
How do you see me as a racist?
What did I do?
What did I say?" Just being frank,being truthful, you know, we as human
beings, we have the power to speakit, speak things into existence.
(19:08):
When we label, we are speakingsomething into existence.
Sam Fuqua (19:13):
You've done some work with, uh, restorative practices as
well, and as you pointed out in theworkshop, you prefer strongly the
word practice rather than justice.
Sometimes people talkabout restorative justice.
So, could you talk about your workin communities around violence and
maybe some of these personal practicesthat you've been talking about, how
(19:34):
they might connect with that work?
Fatima Hafiz (19:38):
I wanna say one of the first big opportunities that I
had to work in community was whentwelve young people were shot at a
party and two of, one of them diedand a couple of them were maimed.
And, uh, we were called in to have someconversations with the community because
(20:02):
when this incident happened, youngpeople were taken to the hospital and
the community was going to the hospitalbecause there was their children, and the
hospital closed doors, and didn't allowparents and people into the hospital.
And, we thought that was pretty egregious.
They called the president of the hospital.
(20:24):
President of the hospital came, and Ifind him to have been a very enlightened
person because what he did was he lookedat the situation, he looked at what was
happening, and he said, "What would I doif this was my son?" And, he was paying
(20:46):
attention to the way the parent and thechild, one of the child who was, their
cousin or friend was in the hospital andthey were banging their head against the
wall, and he looked at this and he said,"What would I do?" But he heard the woman
say, "Come on boy, let's get outta here.
Let's go." Right?
And he didn't understandthat that was pain.
(21:07):
That was something they couldn't do.
And he says, "How would I handle it?"So, we got a call from him and people
from the hospital system to come inand to do some work around this issue
of what had happened in this incident.
At the time, I was working with a Frenchsocial psychologist, his name's Charles
(21:27):
Rojzman, and we were doing some workand people would call it DEI, but it was
more like racism, hatred, and violencethat he works around, works with.
And so, we were doing some work atTemple University in Pennsylvania, and
I told him this is what's happening.
We had been working around conflictsand conflicts around the world.
(21:48):
His work has gone to Israel and Palestine.
His work has gone through Rwanda,uh, where you had to bring the
Hutus and Tutsis together, uh, afterthe massacres and the killings.
And, uh, we looked atconflict a little differently.
And so, because of the way that wewere looking at conflict, that conflict
(22:08):
is part of the human experience, butwhen we can't express that conflict,
what we do is resort to violence.
And when we can't have thatconversation around the thing that
we think we are in a disagreementwith, it can resort to violence.
When we look at people andwe see a caricature of that
(22:29):
person, it becomes violence.
And so I asked him, uh, to help medesign something to address this
issue in that community, and he did.
And, um, we were supposed to deliverit and he went back to France and
couldn't get a visa back into the US.
So, it meant that I had to do the work.
(22:50):
And, it was my first time,like, doing this large work.
And, the group that I had to present to,that we were gonna present to, because
he was going to Zoom in, however, theZoom didn't work, and here, I'm still
here having to do this work, right?
And they, and the president asked hisgroup, "Do you think Fatima can do the
work?" And, uh, the group said yes.
(23:13):
And, that's where I began doing thiswork and looking at conflict in a
way that it allowed people to expressthemselves no matter what, we, we
claimed it as no blame, no shame,no labeling, but being in the space.
And the way we set the work up is thatwe did parallel conversations with
leadership, with policy makers, withpolice and educators and social workers,
(23:37):
direct service people, with community.
And they could be veterans.
They were people who wererenters and homeowners.
And young people.
And so, these conversations went,you know, parallel until we came
together about 18 months later,and people were able to talk with
each other on a horizontal level.
(23:58):
There wasn't the hierarchy.
There wasn't where the, uh, the mayor,you know, because he's the mayor, that he
didn't, he didn't, uh, share his humanity.
And, he came and he shared about hismother beating his father when he was a,
before he became a mayor, his, he was onthe street beating up other people, but he
talked about the relationship in his home.
(24:21):
And so, people could relate.
And so, we use a lot of techniques.
We use a lot of techniques that allowpeople to actually see the violence.
And, see the violence outsideof themselves so they can see
the violence within themselves.
And so, we talk a lot about conflictand allow the conflict to, we allow
the conflict to show up so that we knowwhere people are, and people can see.
(24:43):
And, out of that came stories.
People started to tell their stories,and when they started telling their
stories, other people could relate totheir stories because it was their story.
And so, we didn't have to pinpointany one person, any one family.
They just saw themselves in that process.
And so, that's some of thecommunity work that I did.
(25:04):
I loved it because it gave me lifeto know that there's a possibility
for us to heal, uh, through authenticdialogue, through the kind of dialogue
that allow us to tell our truth.
And, the practices and the methodsthat I use is some of these, the
meditation, you know, sitting withpeople, the quietness, various exercises.
(25:29):
We used theater, uh, we used variousways so people could see themselves.
We did public appearances with thetheater where the community became the
actors in the public theater and theywere acting out lives, their own lives,
and in, other people saw that theirlives were being acted out on stage.
(25:49):
And with the public theater, anyonefrom the audience, if they saw an
incident happening on stage, theycould come on stage, and that they
could play that out for themselves.
So, it's a modality forhealing, uh, without people
having to sit in one-on-one.
'Cause one-on-one therapyis a Western concept.
(26:10):
You know, in cultures wherethey're a community is a group
collective process for healing.
And so, uh, that's someof the things that I use.
Uh, we are looking through ourorganization, what we are doing is
finding other modalities for healing,uh, outside of just Western medicine.
So, we use reiki and weuse, uh, sound and dance.
(26:34):
Dance is huge in terms of healing.
Uh, we use EFT, whichis a tapping technique.
So, these are all free.
Like you don't have to goanywhere to do it, to get it.
You don't have to pay for anything.
We use drumming.
We use all kinds of other modalities tosupport the healing in communities, uh, of
(26:54):
color, particularly the black community,uh, from the traumas that they experience.
Alexis Miles (26:59):
So, ever since you talked about breathing and how it can help
slow us down and be present, I've beensitting here breathing and just feeling
my feet on the floor and all of that, andit, it's a different experience talking
with you than it typically will be.
I'm less in my head andmore present with you.
You know, with Dr. Hafiz, you know.
Fatima Hafiz (27:21):
Thank you.
That, that's so, and justthat you took that on, uh, you
know, I, uh, have this story.
It's a Sufi story where the Sufi mastercame into a post office, and the clerk
was doing his thing, but the masterrealized that this man was breathing.
(27:42):
He had a conscious, intentionalbreathing that allowed him to do his
work, but at the same time, he was inhimself, but he was able to see and
hear, and feel because of the breath.
And, I remember once with Charles, my,the mentor, the social psychologist,
(28:05):
we are in the room with the group thatwe are working with, and the group was
talking, everybody was talking, andall I had to do was sit there and just
breathe, and consciously breathe, andbefore I knew it, everyone was turned.
I didn't have to open my mouth.
I didn't have to ask them to be quiet.
All I had to do was bepresent and to breathe.
(28:26):
So, thank you for sharing that.
I appreciate that.
Sam Fuqua (28:30):
Tell us about the app that you're developing.
Fatima Hafiz (28:33):
This application, uh, I call it a social emotional application,
and the name of it is TheraMe.
And, so this was about sevenyears ago, and it was when I was
working, uh, with educators, neweducators, particularly white
females going into black communities.
And many of them would come backand, uh, they would have all
(28:54):
of these emotional experiences.
And, uh, when they came back, they wouldcry 'cause the kid didn't listen to
them or something happened, you know?
And I'm like, "Well, why are you crying?""Oh, I dunno what to do with it." Okay.
Okay.
And this was pretty often, so whenI was doing restorative practices in
(29:16):
the schools, I noticed that it washard for them to actually apologize
to students when they were wrong.
To identify they were wrong.
And so, I started thinking if they havesomething in real time, that they could
say, okay, this is what's happeningevery time, uh, Jamil, you know,
(29:37):
does this, I get like this, you know.
I'm screaming at him.
Or, I'm sending him out of the room.
I want you to pay attention to whatyou are doing in relationship to
Jamil, not what Jamil is doing.
I wanna pay, pay attentionto what you're doing.
And so I thought, well, maybe ifyou could capture what you felt, and
capture the feeling, capture the, theemotion, and then capture the moment.
(30:01):
What can you do now?
Uh, what do you need, right?
Or meditate for 30 seconds, fora minute, for three minutes.
Three minutes.
We can walk you through a meditation.
Uh, 30 seconds could giveyou a chance to breathe.
A minute can give you a chance tobreathe, and it would bring you down
so that you can get clear so thatyou can now see Jamil differently
(30:21):
'cause you're seeing him through alens that you always see him through.
And so, then I started,okay, how can I do that?
That's how we startedwith women, with teachers.
But then I realized how much I needed it.
And I started to figure out,oh, this is what I need.
I started with a sheet of paperwhen I was talking with teachers.
It's like, what's the event?
(30:43):
What's the episode?
What's the outcome?
Right?
And, um, that's what,you know, started me.
Um, and I started when I wasdoing research with these
teachers, these veteran teachers.
And so, the app itselfcaptures the emotion.
And like I said before, there'sa distinction between the
emotion, feeling, and mood.
(31:05):
So, those three things can makeup our emotional health, right?
Um, so, uh, you capture the emotion,and the emotion can only last it, it
really only lasts like 90 seconds.
The actual emotion.
You find out what the intensity is,then you add where I feel it in my body.
(31:25):
And then you find the words,which is the feelings.
Then you think about, well, what'smy experience of it being right now?
And then perception.
And those two things, experience andperception, requires a little bit
more depth for you to think about.
And then I'll ask you,well, who was it with?
(31:47):
Or what was the situation?
And then, what do I need?
Because most times wedon't know what we need.
And so, it gives you some options.
And then you can write in optionsabout what you need, and then what
can I do right now in this moment?
And, that's where, it was forteachers, educators, like in
this moment, what can I do?
I can stop.
I can breathe.
Maybe I can walk out the classroom.
(32:08):
Maybe I just need to sit at thedesk and be quiet and watch what's
going on and breathe, right?
So many different things youcan do in any sector, any field.
Um, and then once you do thatand say, well, what can I
do now, then you submit it.
You go back, you can review what youjust did, and then you can change it if
you want, and then you submit it, andyou can share it with a good friend,
(32:34):
community member, somebody you trust,or you can share it with a therapist
or someone that's a professional.
Then you just track it.
You know, you track it for a period,you start to see, wow, I thought I was
angry more times than I was, but it'sthe negative emotions that make us think
that we are in that all the time, right?
And so, you track it and you see, wow,I wasn't angry all these last two weeks.
(32:58):
I had some joy.
I had some gratitude.
I had some pride.
I had some good feelings.
And so, we want people to remember thegood feelings because that's what can
ground us rather than the negative ones.
And the negative ones are gonna happen,and it's important that they happen
because you won't know the good onesif you don't address the negative ones,
but it makes us whole as human beings.
(33:19):
And so, the app is to help people withlanguage around their emotions, to help
them capture what's happening in theirbodies, and to help them to find ways
to settle their brains, settle theirbodies, um, so that they can pursue what
it is they're pursuing in that moment.
Sam Fuqua (33:36):
Yeah, I thought it was a more sophisticated and more
precise version of journaling to me.
Like, rather than having to write downand try to articulate in the moment,
or remember many hours later, you havethis app on your phone, and it gives
you choices for emotions and feelingsand moods and, and if the choice doesn't
(33:58):
fit, you can also put in your own.
And, and then you have a record ofthose feelings and emotions as well
as a quick text you put in aboutwhat happened and who was involved.
And, so I could see during thedemonstration that if I could make
this a regular practice, you know, itreally could help me track my state of
(34:22):
being and, and better understand it.
Fatima Hafiz (34:25):
Thank you for that.
Uh, the other part of that is we,on the other side of the app is
the professional or the guide.
Uh, we call those who are usingthe app, the journey here.
I'm on a journey.
You are on a journey.
Everybody's on a journey with life.
And, you might be two steps ahead of me,and you might be able to guide me from
those two steps that you're ahead of me.
(34:46):
But the guide, it, we, therapists,we are trying because in certain
communities these are triggeringthings and when you see a therapist,
they don't wanna go to a therapist.
Ain't nothing wrong with me.
I ain't crazy.
Right?
But then if you say, okay, this isa guide, and you are on a journey,
and even that guide might be on ajourney, but they're here 'cause
they're a little bit ahead of you andthey know a little bit more, they can
(35:09):
help you navigate this stuff, right?
And so, with the guide side of theapp, the guide can invite someone.
Uh, we can recommend somebody say,oh, well you know what, I really need
somebody to help me process this.
We recommend someone.
The guide will invite that person,and then that person accepts it,
and then they're in relationshipwith the, with the professional.
(35:29):
And then the professional, if you onlysee the professional once a month, a
lot of things happen in a month, right?
So, if you can capture maybe thingsthat happen between the time you see
your, your guide, and the next timeyou see your guide and share with the
guide, the guide has a clear idea theseare some things that are happening.
So, when I come in to talk withyou, you are clear what I've been
(35:52):
through, and how does it fit withinthe therapeutic intervention that
I'm here to talk with you about.
So, it helps the guide to become moreeffective, more efficient, and to help
the journeyer to become self-reliant,more self-reliant on what they can
do for themselves, rather than, youknow, paying for a therapist forever.
Alexis Miles (36:14):
Well, do you have to have a guide?
Fatima Hafiz (36:15):
Nope, you don't.
And that's the power of it.
You don't have to have a guide becauseif you are watching your patterns, you
can start to shift something yourself.
And, if you have close friends, and thisis where I see community coming in, if you
have trusted people in your community thatyou can share something with then that's
the person you might wanna talk with.
(36:36):
With young people, you might wannatalk with your parent, but you can't
talk to them directly because youfeeling stuff and there's a lot of
stuff going on between you, and so,you just send them the, "Hey mom, I'm
dealing with all this stuff," right?
"This is what I'm dealingwith today." Right?
And then you don't have to talk to them.
You don't even have to say anythingto them when you go home or, but just
letting them know that these thingsare going on inside of me, and give the
(36:58):
young person a chance to pay attention tothemselves so then when they're 30 and 40
they ain't sitting on somebody's couch.
The guide can also give feedback tothe person if they send them something,
they can give them feedback, and thenthey can look at the, the number of
incidents or number of things that they'vesubmitted and get the feedback right away.
(37:20):
And it gives the guide spaciousnessto see more clients or to not become
inundated themselves with, with,uh, you know, serving other people.
Alexis Miles (37:30):
So the guide might, for example, say, oh, the journeyer sends the
guide something, some information, and theguide can say, oh, I see a pattern here.
Fatima Hafiz (37:42):
Yes.
Yes.
Alexis Miles (37:44):
Or, or they could even say, oh, you are really catching on.
Good job.
Fatima Hafiz (37:48):
Yes.
Yes.
That's, and that's whatwe want them to say.
Yes.
Look at that.
You are taking care of yourself.
Yes, those, either way, uh, it'sto support the person who's coming
to see you to get the service.
So, uh, we are, uh, planning togo into beta testing, um, towards
the middle of April sometime.
(38:09):
We, we're going into beta testing andthere was a limited number of people.
Not more than 50 people.
And then, um, we get the feedback.
So, we are in phase one ofproducing what we you saw.
And when we get the feedback, we canenhance, so we can see what people like or
don't like, and we can work through that.
(38:30):
And then, we will bemoving into phase two.
That will lead us to our soft launch.
And our soft launch, hopefully isin, sometime in the fall, early fall.
My real goal is to go into communityevents, and share it with communities
so that they can see the value andthey can ask for it from the people
(38:50):
who come into the communities to servethem, that those people also use it.
Alexis Miles (38:56):
Let's say this really takes off and people are using it.
What's your vision of what society willlook like if we have this kind of tool?
Fatima Hafiz (39:06):
We'd have a different approach to addressing mental health,
and we would, uh, put the onus oftransforming humanity in humanity's hands.
That's what I could see.
And it's not just centralto here in the US.
I've, uh, tested some of this in Africaand people are looking for this also.
(39:30):
Uh, so my vision is that we cando mental health differently.
Sam Fuqua (39:35):
Fatima Hafiz, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Fatima Hafiz (39:38):
Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
Sam Fuqua (39:41):
Dr. Fatima Hafiz is an educator, facilitator, and CEO
of the TEA Group - TransformativeEducation Associates.
They specialize in bringing transformativepractices to under-resourced communities,
primarily in greater Philadelphia.
We spoke to them at the 2025White Privilege Conference
(40:04):
in Hartford, Connecticut.
For more information on the TEAGroup or on the TheraMe app,
you can go to theteagroup.org.
That's TEAgroup.org.
(40:26):
Thanks for listening toWell, That Went Sideways!
We produce new episodes twice a month.
You can find them whereveryou get your podcasts and on
our website, sidewayspod.org.
Our site has information on our guests,interview transcripts, and links to
more conflict resolution resources.
(40:48):
And, we encourage you tosign up for our newsletter.
That's at sidewayspod.org.
Our production team is Mary Zinn,Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles,
Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua.
Our theme music is by Mike Stewart.
(41:08):
We produce these programs in Coloradoon the traditional lands of the
Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute nations.
To learn more about the importanceof land acknowledgement, visit
our website, sidewayspod.org.
And this podcast is a partnershipwith The Conflict Center, a
(41:28):
Denver-based nonprofit that providespractical skills and training for
addressing everyday conflicts.
Find out more at conflictcenter.org.
The Western education is about the intellect, but the education
that's necessary is a connectionbetween the intellect and the heart.
Sam Fuqua (00:17):
That's Fatima Hafiz, and this is Well, That Went Sideways!
A podcast that serves as aresource to help people have
healthy, respectful communication.
We present a diversity of ideas, tools,and techniques to help you transform
conflict in relationships of all kinds.
(00:38):
In this episode, we talk withFatima Hafiz about understanding
emotional responses to trauma.
Dr. Hafiz is an educator,facilitator, and CEO of the TEA group
- Transformative Education Associates.
They specialize in bringing transformativepractices to under-resourced communities,
(01:03):
primarily in Greater Philadelphia.
I'm Sam Fuqua, co-host of theprogram with Alexis Miles.
Hi Alexis.
Alexis Miles (01:10):
Hello Sam.
Sam Fuqua (01:11):
Very delighted to be here with Fatima Hafiz at the
2025 White Privilege Conference.
Hello, welcome.
Fatima Hafiz (01:18):
Thank you for having me.
Sam Fuqua (01:20):
We are speaking to you after I just attended your workshop.
I came away, uh, certainly withan appreciation of your lifelong
dedication to helping communitiesthrough social work, through
restorative practices, and through,uh, a very interesting new app that
you're developing that we'll get into.
(01:40):
Given your decades of experience, what didyou find most, say lacking in social work?
Fatima Hafiz (01:48):
Yeah, I wanna say that I, uh, began a journey, in terms
of career journey, with education,and looking at the ways in which
educators were put into black and browncommunities, and particularly as it
related to white female educators andthe experiences that they had that
they didn't, they didn't get taughtin their training, and I was part of
(02:12):
that, but I actually added things to it.
So, I try not to talk in lack, I tryto speak more about what is missing.
And, what was missing is the abilityfor the universities and folks who teach
social workers and um, educators, and eventherapists, uh, what it means to deliver
(02:38):
services in black and brown communities.
And, delivering service in black and,black and brown communities doesn't
necessarily fit all the time with DSM, theDSM, you know, diagnosis, because we don't
consider the trauma, we don't considerthe historical context for black and
brown communities, and their experience,in terms of their mental health
(03:01):
experience, in terms of their economicexperiences, and what drives them.
And so, part of it is the inability fora lot of the white educators and white
social workers, which is predominantlywhite females, when they come in, they're
not, uh, able to support people at alevel that they could support people.
(03:26):
They can come in with ideas, uh, theycan come in with their training, but
there's a different kind of experiencethey need in order to service.
People who have gone throughhistorical trauma, who's gone through,
you know, who's carrying a lot ofepigenetic trauma, uh, people who
are continuously being bombarded withsome of the, uh, inequitable things
(03:50):
that are happening in our communities.
Alexis Miles (03:54):
I'm guessing people have heard those terms, epigenetic
trauma, historical trauma.
Could you just briefly say whatthey are and give an example?
Fatima Hafiz (04:03):
So when I talk about historical trauma, I'm talking about the
journey of the African American experiencefrom enslavement, and that this trauma
goes from enslavement to Jim Crow, toall of the, uh, more systemic things
that have happened and that continue tohappen through this structural things
like the structural racism, thingsthat have happened, uh, in terms of
(04:27):
the economic racism, geographic racism.
And so historically, we, uh,have been under the pressure
of these kinds of conditions.
And so, that's where the historicaltrauma, so when one is getting
service as a, uh, client,"client," we change that language.
(04:48):
But as a client, usually thatis not considered when you are
diagnosing, when you are engaged ininterventions, it's not considered.
Um, and so, uh, that'sthe historical trauma.
Epigenetic trauma is trauma thatis passed through the genes.
There is studies by Jewish Holocaustvictim, victims who show that
(05:12):
they are carrying some of the samefears, some of the same things
that they experienced, that theirparents, their great grandparents,
their great grand grandparentsexperienced during the Holocaust.
The challenge with looking at that forthe African American experience is that
they don't wanna acknowledge that thisepigenetic exists in African Americans.
(05:33):
They say, "Oh, it's too farback." But the truth is, is
that it's continuous oppression.
And so, the epigenetic istalking about the genes.
It's talking about what we carry.
Like, uh, they'll say, "Oh, wellblack people have a lot of high blood
pressure," you know, but we are carryinga lot of this because we are carrying
trauma that has not been resolved.
And so, that's what I meanby epigenetic and historical.
Alexis Miles (05:56):
Thank you for that.
You mentioned people being educated intheir fields, but something's missing.
The missing piece.
And the things you just described.
What can be done to help bridgewhat's missing so that they
can be effective teachers?
Fatima Hafiz (06:15):
So, I think the first thing is acknowledging, I mean, talking
about those who are going into thefield, acknowledging their own humanity.
And, I think that's missing is thatthere's not a recognition that your
humanity is tied to my humanity.
And, you get caught in a system thatsays that you are an individual.
(06:39):
And that, you know, yes,you have privileges.
Your white skin actually gives youprivileges that you may not acknowledge.
And so, uh, the missing is thatthat's the first thing we have
to do is get present to our ownhumanity so that we can see others.
Um, when we can't see others,it's because we have closed
(07:00):
something off inside of ourselves.
And, the other part of that iswe are educated from the neck up.
We are not educated from thehead to the feet, you know?
Uh, so the lower part of our bodiesjust don't get educated, right?
And so, the Western educationis about the intellect.
(07:23):
But the education that'snecessary is a connection between
the intellect and the heart.
And what does that mean with regardsto the idea of love, you know?
Dr., Dr. King talked a lot about love.
When I was doing my research, I didresearch with white female educators.
And when, uh, I wanted to do mydissertation, I wanted to talk about
(07:46):
love, and I wanted to talk about fearbecause inside of this culture, you
know, addressing the fear that whiteeducators, white social workers, when
they go into a black community orbrown community, there's a fear there.
There's an internal fear that they maynot recognize because you push it off.
Why?
Because you're the authority and you'vegiven the role of being the authority in
(08:10):
the space, whether it's in a classroom,whether it's as an administrator,
whether it is a social worker, you'vegiven, you've been given a role.
And so, people see it,but they don't speak it.
They just carry it, you know, knowingthat, oh well, I can't fuck up
against authority, and this whiteperson represents the authority.
(08:33):
And, the second bridge is beingable to understand your own fears
and your own sensibilities when youare in spaces with other people.
Alexis Miles (08:44):
Would you say that part of that is also, if a white person is
in, in the presence of black or brownpeople and certain feelings or thoughts
come up, they think, oh my God, thatsounds, feels like, sounds like racism.
I've gotta push that away.
Fatima Hafiz (09:00):
Yes, yes.
And, they start to internalize it andthey don't realize that they thoughts and
their feelings are actually expressed.
Without them even realizingthat it's expressed.
But many times they don'twanna talk about it.
They don't wanna say it becausethey don't wanna be wrong.
They don't want to, oh, uh, I can't saythis because then I'll appear racist.
(09:22):
No one, they don't wanna, whitepeople don't wanna be called racist.
But, uh, the idea is that yes, itcomes up and to recognize it is,
uh, power to be able to recognizeit and then to do something with it.
And doing something with,it's not the reaction.
It's the more of like, what am Igonna, how am I gonna respond to it?
(09:42):
And most of the time, if theresponse is to shut it down,
you're never gonna respond.
Uh, but if you respond to it, notworried about whether it's the wrong
thing, I said the wrong thing, I didthe wrong thing, because if you can
stand in that and be in a conversation,you might be able to get past that and
actually expand your capacity to workin spaces with black and brown people.
Alexis Miles (10:08):
So learning to be comfortable with discomfort.
Fatima Hafiz (10:10):
Yeah.
Being comfortable with un, withdi, with discomfort, let's say.
Being comfortable withbeing uncomfortable.
I learned that a long time ago witha mentor of mine says, "Well, if
you can't be uncomfortable, youdon't need to be doing this work."
Sam Fuqua (10:25):
Do you have any tips for when, you know, like you said a few minutes
ago about how some conflicts, we try tocompartmentalize them to the head, right?
But we know, I know, there's aphysiological response that, that
I feel in my body, but I'm notalways, uh, aware enough to deal
(10:47):
with that in, in the right way.
And so that can lead meto fight or flight, right?
Say something that I, that will justescalate the conflict rather than
work through it or just avoid it,you know, that would be the flight.
Just shut it, shut it down.
Any advice for how people can get moreself-aware in those moments and respond
(11:09):
not just to what's going on in ourhead, but what's happening in our body?
Fatima Hafiz (11:14):
Yeah.
One of the first things is being aware.
That's the biggest thing.
And in this culture, we are nottaught to be aware of our bodies.
Be aware of what's happening.
If you think about in black communities,the suppression of the internalized
oppression won't allow us, our voicesto be heard and to be activated in a way
(11:38):
that we can release what we are carrying.
Uh, van der Kolk says that thebody holds the score, and the body
will become ill when you can'tlet things go, let things out.
The first way is to begin to breathe.
See, we forget to breathe.
We, we are breathing automatically.
(11:58):
We think it's okay, you know?
But, think about it when you don'thave a breath, you, you can't breathe.
The thing is to come back to yourbreath and to slow the breath down
because you'll notice when somethingstarts to happen, something happen, we
go (rapidly breathing in and out), youknow, we don't even pay attention to it.
But we start to breathe heavily orwe start to, uh, hold our breath.
(12:20):
And so, the breath is the firstthing to pay attention to when
that experience in your body.
And you start to breathe into thatplace, but you gotta identify where
that place is, and sometimes you can'tidentify where that place is, right?
It's just that I feel it somewhere.
I don't know where I feel it, right?
But you breathe into thebody and it'll find its way.
Oxygen is the one thingthat keeps us alive.
(12:44):
If you can't breathedead, right, we are gone.
And so, breathing is the first thing Iwould think that we would do to slow the
brain down so that now you can think moreclearly and you can process whatever it
was that made you like, and I, one can'tsee the movement, but it's like a, um,
(13:08):
shimmering in the body and you don'tknow exactly what to do with it, right?
But the breath, I think is the numberone thing to remember when you get that.
Alexis Miles (13:19):
I wasn't in your workshop, but Sam described one thing that happened.
It was like turning over a card andlooking at it and, and being able
to identify that first feeling.
Can you say more about that exerciseand what you're getting at with that?
Fatima Hafiz (13:36):
So, many times when we come to these kinds of
conferences, we are intellectualizing.
We are talking and talking andtalking at each other, and we go
from one talk to another talk.
It's like we are trying to holdall this stuff right, and we get
back to wherever we come fromand all of that is gone, right?
(13:57):
But the feeling is the feeling.
They'll say, um, with children,it doesn't matter that you
taught them two plus two is two.
If they remember that,okay, maybe they won't.
But what they do rememberis how they felt.
And children tend to know to feel.
Adults, we grow not to feel.
(14:19):
And so, it, what I was getting at withthat exercise is so that you can feel
something and know where you felt it.
Like, you felt it in your body.
So, the cards had to do with thisconference conversation - race.
Uh, white, black, oppressor,all these words, these labels
that are put on people.
(14:40):
And it's these labelsthat we are experiencing.
It's not the person, it's not us,but it's a label that we've, uh,
it's already been defined for us.
So, it scares us to see the wordoppressor or victim, you know,
or white supremacist, or racist.
Those things, and we don't, wedon't pay attention to those.
(15:01):
Okay, somebody just called me a racist.
What do I do with that?
I'm feeling it, you know,what do I do with that?
Know that it's not you.
First of all, you breathe and thenyou take on what it, because what
you do next is you start thinkingabout, it's just an emotion.
Okay, that emotion was quick.
90 seconds.
I felt that emotion.
It was like somebody said surprised,but that surprise was only a second.
(15:25):
Few seconds, few moments.
But when you start thinkingabout what that's, that word
meant, then you start spiraling.
Am I this?
Is that true?
What is that, you know?
Do I do that?
All of those things start runningthrough your head, through your
body, and you can't adjust.
(15:46):
You can't adjust because thatlabel is labeled inside of you.
It's not just the label onthe words, on the paper.
And so, what the intention is, is to getpresent to it, not to those words, take
those away, but anything that happenswhen you're talking with family, when
you're talking with friends, when you'retalking in a, uh, situation, when you're
(16:07):
in a situation, just pay attention tothe moment that you felt something.
But you have to practice.
I was saying how it's not thatit just happens like that.
It's really a practice.
Everything is a practice.
When you learn something, it's a practice.
Uh, I was talking about those young,the young people that were there, the
young educators, if they just took onething and practiced that one thing, it
(16:33):
would shift something in their being.
Uh, with the app, we have thisthing about I experienced being.
So, I do something, but I'm being acertain way when that thing happens.
But we don't pay attention to that.
What's my perceptionof what just happened?
The perception is the thinking thatkeeps us spiraling in our feelings, and
then we can't get rid of our feelingsbecause we are spiraling because of all
(16:57):
the things we are thinking about it.
So, it's being able to separate thethought so that now you can be fully
present to the feeling and to feel it.
I remember, um, some colleagues, wewere at a, a pub and we were just
talking about feelings, and every oneof them, all scholars, all, you know,
(17:18):
and I says, "Well, how you feel?"Oh, um, "I think I feel..." and, "I
think I feel..." But how do you feel?
"I think I feel..." andthat's all we heard.
People said, "I think I feel." "I thinkI feel," right, but I don't really feel.
I feel, but I've never cultivatedit because our culture doesn't
cultivate that, doesn't haveus cultivate how we feel.
(17:40):
They make that, uh, seem like, oh,that's a woman, that's emotional.
She's feeling so much stuff, right?
But we all feel.
We all human beings.
That's what makes us human.
Uh, and uh, in Sufism, uh, it says thatthe emotions are the seed of the heart.
Like our heart, actually, the emotionstell us what our heart is saying.
(18:03):
Our bodies tell us what our emotion is.
So, that's the intention, is toget people to feel something.
Alexis Miles (18:11):
What I think I'm hearing you say is, you and I could be in a conflict.
We are talking.
You say a word.
That word can cause me to spinif you say, "You, you racist. You
colonizer." I'll be in here spinning.
We are still talking, but I'm,I'm really not listening because
I'm spinning, and I, I can't getmyself back into the conversation.
(18:37):
So, if I wanna have a realconversation that's gonna resolve a
conflict, I've gotta stop spinning.
Fatima Hafiz (18:43):
I gotta stop spinning.
Yes.
Yes.
And, the way you stop, you gotta speakit, "I, you just called me a racist.
Tell me more.
How do you see me as a racist?
What did I do?
What did I say?" Just being frank,being truthful, you know, we as human
beings, we have the power to speakit, speak things into existence.
(19:08):
When we label, we are speakingsomething into existence.
Sam Fuqua (19:13):
You've done some work with, uh, restorative practices as
well, and as you pointed out in theworkshop, you prefer strongly the
word practice rather than justice.
Sometimes people talkabout restorative justice.
So, could you talk about your workin communities around violence and
maybe some of these personal practicesthat you've been talking about, how
(19:34):
they might connect with that work?
Fatima Hafiz (19:38):
I wanna say one of the first big opportunities that I
had to work in community was whentwelve young people were shot at a
party and two of, one of them diedand a couple of them were maimed.
And, uh, we were called in to have someconversations with the community because
(20:02):
when this incident happened, youngpeople were taken to the hospital and
the community was going to the hospitalbecause there was their children, and the
hospital closed doors, and didn't allowparents and people into the hospital.
And, we thought that was pretty egregious.
They called the president of the hospital.
(20:24):
President of the hospital came, and Ifind him to have been a very enlightened
person because what he did was he lookedat the situation, he looked at what was
happening, and he said, "What would I doif this was my son?" And, he was paying
(20:46):
attention to the way the parent and thechild, one of the child who was, their
cousin or friend was in the hospital andthey were banging their head against the
wall, and he looked at this and he said,"What would I do?" But he heard the woman
say, "Come on boy, let's get outta here.
Let's go." Right?
And he didn't understandthat that was pain.
(21:07):
That was something they couldn't do.
And he says, "How would I handle it?"So, we got a call from him and people
from the hospital system to come inand to do some work around this issue
of what had happened in this incident.
At the time, I was working with a Frenchsocial psychologist, his name's Charles
(21:27):
Rojzman, and we were doing some workand people would call it DEI, but it was
more like racism, hatred, and violencethat he works around, works with.
And so, we were doing some work atTemple University in Pennsylvania, and
I told him this is what's happening.
We had been working around conflictsand conflicts around the world.
(21:48):
His work has gone to Israel and Palestine.
His work has gone through Rwanda,uh, where you had to bring the
Hutus and Tutsis together, uh, afterthe massacres and the killings.
And, uh, we looked atconflict a little differently.
And so, because of the way that wewere looking at conflict, that conflict
(22:08):
is part of the human experience, butwhen we can't express that conflict,
what we do is resort to violence.
And when we can't have thatconversation around the thing that
we think we are in a disagreementwith, it can resort to violence.
When we look at people andwe see a caricature of that
(22:29):
person, it becomes violence.
And so I asked him, uh, to help medesign something to address this
issue in that community, and he did.
And, um, we were supposed to deliverit and he went back to France and
couldn't get a visa back into the US.
So, it meant that I had to do the work.
(22:50):
And, it was my first time,like, doing this large work.
And, the group that I had to present to,that we were gonna present to, because
he was going to Zoom in, however, theZoom didn't work, and here, I'm still
here having to do this work, right?
And they, and the president asked hisgroup, "Do you think Fatima can do the
work?" And, uh, the group said yes.
(23:13):
And, that's where I began doing thiswork and looking at conflict in a
way that it allowed people to expressthemselves no matter what, we, we
claimed it as no blame, no shame,no labeling, but being in the space.
And the way we set the work up is thatwe did parallel conversations with
leadership, with policy makers, withpolice and educators and social workers,
(23:37):
direct service people, with community.
And they could be veterans.
They were people who wererenters and homeowners.
And young people.
And so, these conversations went,you know, parallel until we came
together about 18 months later,and people were able to talk with
each other on a horizontal level.
(23:58):
There wasn't the hierarchy.
There wasn't where the, uh, the mayor,you know, because he's the mayor, that he
didn't, he didn't, uh, share his humanity.
And, he came and he shared about hismother beating his father when he was a,
before he became a mayor, his, he was onthe street beating up other people, but he
talked about the relationship in his home.
(24:21):
And so, people could relate.
And so, we use a lot of techniques.
We use a lot of techniques that allowpeople to actually see the violence.
And, see the violence outsideof themselves so they can see
the violence within themselves.
And so, we talk a lot about conflictand allow the conflict to, we allow
the conflict to show up so that we knowwhere people are, and people can see.
(24:43):
And, out of that came stories.
People started to tell their stories,and when they started telling their
stories, other people could relate totheir stories because it was their story.
And so, we didn't have to pinpointany one person, any one family.
They just saw themselves in that process.
And so, that's some of thecommunity work that I did.
(25:04):
I loved it because it gave me lifeto know that there's a possibility
for us to heal, uh, through authenticdialogue, through the kind of dialogue
that allow us to tell our truth.
And, the practices and the methodsthat I use is some of these, the
meditation, you know, sitting withpeople, the quietness, various exercises.
(25:29):
We used theater, uh, we used variousways so people could see themselves.
We did public appearances with thetheater where the community became the
actors in the public theater and theywere acting out lives, their own lives,
and in, other people saw that theirlives were being acted out on stage.
(25:49):
And with the public theater, anyonefrom the audience, if they saw an
incident happening on stage, theycould come on stage, and that they
could play that out for themselves.
So, it's a modality forhealing, uh, without people
having to sit in one-on-one.
'Cause one-on-one therapyis a Western concept.
(26:10):
You know, in cultures wherethey're a community is a group
collective process for healing.
And so, uh, that's someof the things that I use.
Uh, we are looking through ourorganization, what we are doing is
finding other modalities for healing,uh, outside of just Western medicine.
So, we use reiki and weuse, uh, sound and dance.
(26:34):
Dance is huge in terms of healing.
Uh, we use EFT, whichis a tapping technique.
So, these are all free.
Like you don't have to goanywhere to do it, to get it.
You don't have to pay for anything.
We use drumming.
We use all kinds of other modalities tosupport the healing in communities, uh, of
(26:54):
color, particularly the black community,uh, from the traumas that they experience.
Alexis Miles (26:59):
So, ever since you talked about breathing and how it can help
slow us down and be present, I've beensitting here breathing and just feeling
my feet on the floor and all of that, andit, it's a different experience talking
with you than it typically will be.
I'm less in my head andmore present with you.
You know, with Dr. Hafiz, you know.
Fatima Hafiz (27:21):
Thank you.
That, that's so, and justthat you took that on, uh, you
know, I, uh, have this story.
It's a Sufi story where the Sufi mastercame into a post office, and the clerk
was doing his thing, but the masterrealized that this man was breathing.
(27:42):
He had a conscious, intentionalbreathing that allowed him to do his
work, but at the same time, he was inhimself, but he was able to see and
hear, and feel because of the breath.
And, I remember once with Charles, my,the mentor, the social psychologist,
(28:05):
we are in the room with the group thatwe are working with, and the group was
talking, everybody was talking, andall I had to do was sit there and just
breathe, and consciously breathe, andbefore I knew it, everyone was turned.
I didn't have to open my mouth.
I didn't have to ask them to be quiet.
All I had to do was bepresent and to breathe.
(28:26):
So, thank you for sharing that.
I appreciate that.
Sam Fuqua (28:30):
Tell us about the app that you're developing.
Fatima Hafiz (28:33):
This application, uh, I call it a social emotional application,
and the name of it is TheraMe.
And, so this was about sevenyears ago, and it was when I was
working, uh, with educators, neweducators, particularly white
females going into black communities.
And many of them would come backand, uh, they would have all
(28:54):
of these emotional experiences.
And, uh, when they came back, they wouldcry 'cause the kid didn't listen to
them or something happened, you know?
And I'm like, "Well, why are you crying?""Oh, I dunno what to do with it." Okay.
Okay.
And this was pretty often, so whenI was doing restorative practices in
(29:16):
the schools, I noticed that it washard for them to actually apologize
to students when they were wrong.
To identify they were wrong.
And so, I started thinking if they havesomething in real time, that they could
say, okay, this is what's happeningevery time, uh, Jamil, you know,
(29:37):
does this, I get like this, you know.
I'm screaming at him.
Or, I'm sending him out of the room.
I want you to pay attention to whatyou are doing in relationship to
Jamil, not what Jamil is doing.
I wanna pay, pay attentionto what you're doing.
And so I thought, well, maybe ifyou could capture what you felt, and
capture the feeling, capture the, theemotion, and then capture the moment.
(30:01):
What can you do now?
Uh, what do you need, right?
Or meditate for 30 seconds, fora minute, for three minutes.
Three minutes.
We can walk you through a meditation.
Uh, 30 seconds could giveyou a chance to breathe.
A minute can give you a chance tobreathe, and it would bring you down
so that you can get clear so thatyou can now see Jamil differently
(30:21):
'cause you're seeing him through alens that you always see him through.
And so, then I started,okay, how can I do that?
That's how we startedwith women, with teachers.
But then I realized how much I needed it.
And I started to figure out,oh, this is what I need.
I started with a sheet of paperwhen I was talking with teachers.
It's like, what's the event?
(30:43):
What's the episode?
What's the outcome?
Right?
And, um, that's what,you know, started me.
Um, and I started when I wasdoing research with these
teachers, these veteran teachers.
And so, the app itselfcaptures the emotion.
And like I said before, there'sa distinction between the
emotion, feeling, and mood.
(31:05):
So, those three things can makeup our emotional health, right?
Um, so, uh, you capture the emotion,and the emotion can only last it, it
really only lasts like 90 seconds.
The actual emotion.
You find out what the intensity is,then you add where I feel it in my body.
(31:25):
And then you find the words,which is the feelings.
Then you think about, well, what'smy experience of it being right now?
And then perception.
And those two things, experience andperception, requires a little bit
more depth for you to think about.
And then I'll ask you,well, who was it with?
(31:47):
Or what was the situation?
And then, what do I need?
Because most times wedon't know what we need.
And so, it gives you some options.
And then you can write in optionsabout what you need, and then what
can I do right now in this moment?
And, that's where, it was forteachers, educators, like in
this moment, what can I do?
I can stop.
I can breathe.
Maybe I can walk out the classroom.
(32:08):
Maybe I just need to sit at thedesk and be quiet and watch what's
going on and breathe, right?
So many different things youcan do in any sector, any field.
Um, and then once you do thatand say, well, what can I
do now, then you submit it.
You go back, you can review what youjust did, and then you can change it if
you want, and then you submit it, andyou can share it with a good friend,
(32:34):
community member, somebody you trust,or you can share it with a therapist
or someone that's a professional.
Then you just track it.
You know, you track it for a period,you start to see, wow, I thought I was
angry more times than I was, but it'sthe negative emotions that make us think
that we are in that all the time, right?
And so, you track it and you see, wow,I wasn't angry all these last two weeks.
(32:58):
I had some joy.
I had some gratitude.
I had some pride.
I had some good feelings.
And so, we want people to remember thegood feelings because that's what can
ground us rather than the negative ones.
And the negative ones are gonna happen,and it's important that they happen
because you won't know the good onesif you don't address the negative ones,
but it makes us whole as human beings.
(33:19):
And so, the app is to help people withlanguage around their emotions, to help
them capture what's happening in theirbodies, and to help them to find ways
to settle their brains, settle theirbodies, um, so that they can pursue what
it is they're pursuing in that moment.
Sam Fuqua (33:36):
Yeah, I thought it was a more sophisticated and more
precise version of journaling to me.
Like, rather than having to write downand try to articulate in the moment,
or remember many hours later, you havethis app on your phone, and it gives
you choices for emotions and feelingsand moods and, and if the choice doesn't
(33:58):
fit, you can also put in your own.
And, and then you have a record ofthose feelings and emotions as well
as a quick text you put in aboutwhat happened and who was involved.
And, so I could see during thedemonstration that if I could make
this a regular practice, you know, itreally could help me track my state of
(34:22):
being and, and better understand it.
Fatima Hafiz (34:25):
Thank you for that.
Uh, the other part of that is we,on the other side of the app is
the professional or the guide.
Uh, we call those who are usingthe app, the journey here.
I'm on a journey.
You are on a journey.
Everybody's on a journey with life.
And, you might be two steps ahead of me,and you might be able to guide me from
those two steps that you're ahead of me.
(34:46):
But the guide, it, we, therapists,we are trying because in certain
communities these are triggeringthings and when you see a therapist,
they don't wanna go to a therapist.
Ain't nothing wrong with me.
I ain't crazy.
Right?
But then if you say, okay, this isa guide, and you are on a journey,
and even that guide might be on ajourney, but they're here 'cause
they're a little bit ahead of you andthey know a little bit more, they can
(35:09):
help you navigate this stuff, right?
And so, with the guide side of theapp, the guide can invite someone.
Uh, we can recommend somebody say,oh, well you know what, I really need
somebody to help me process this.
We recommend someone.
The guide will invite that person,and then that person accepts it,
and then they're in relationshipwith the, with the professional.
(35:29):
And then the professional, if you onlysee the professional once a month, a
lot of things happen in a month, right?
So, if you can capture maybe thingsthat happen between the time you see
your, your guide, and the next timeyou see your guide and share with the
guide, the guide has a clear idea theseare some things that are happening.
So, when I come in to talk withyou, you are clear what I've been
(35:52):
through, and how does it fit withinthe therapeutic intervention that
I'm here to talk with you about.
So, it helps the guide to become moreeffective, more efficient, and to help
the journeyer to become self-reliant,more self-reliant on what they can
do for themselves, rather than, youknow, paying for a therapist forever.
Alexis Miles (36:14):
Well, do you have to have a guide?
Fatima Hafiz (36:15):
Nope, you don't.
And that's the power of it.
You don't have to have a guide becauseif you are watching your patterns, you
can start to shift something yourself.
And, if you have close friends, and thisis where I see community coming in, if you
have trusted people in your community thatyou can share something with then that's
the person you might wanna talk with.
(36:36):
With young people, you might wannatalk with your parent, but you can't
talk to them directly because youfeeling stuff and there's a lot of
stuff going on between you, and so,you just send them the, "Hey mom, I'm
dealing with all this stuff," right?
"This is what I'm dealingwith today." Right?
And then you don't have to talk to them.
You don't even have to say anythingto them when you go home or, but just
letting them know that these thingsare going on inside of me, and give the
(36:58):
young person a chance to pay attention tothemselves so then when they're 30 and 40
they ain't sitting on somebody's couch.
The guide can also give feedback tothe person if they send them something,
they can give them feedback, and thenthey can look at the, the number of
incidents or number of things that they'vesubmitted and get the feedback right away.
(37:20):
And it gives the guide spaciousnessto see more clients or to not become
inundated themselves with, with,uh, you know, serving other people.
Alexis Miles (37:30):
So the guide might, for example, say, oh, the journeyer sends the
guide something, some information, and theguide can say, oh, I see a pattern here.
Fatima Hafiz (37:42):
Yes.
Yes.
Alexis Miles (37:44):
Or, or they could even say, oh, you are really catching on.
Good job.
Fatima Hafiz (37:48):
Yes.
Yes.
That's, and that's whatwe want them to say.
Yes.
Look at that.
You are taking care of yourself.
Yes, those, either way, uh, it'sto support the person who's coming
to see you to get the service.
So, uh, we are, uh, planning togo into beta testing, um, towards
the middle of April sometime.
(38:09):
We, we're going into beta testing andthere was a limited number of people.
Not more than 50 people.
And then, um, we get the feedback.
So, we are in phase one ofproducing what we you saw.
And when we get the feedback, we canenhance, so we can see what people like or
don't like, and we can work through that.
(38:30):
And then, we will bemoving into phase two.
That will lead us to our soft launch.
And our soft launch, hopefully isin, sometime in the fall, early fall.
My real goal is to go into communityevents, and share it with communities
so that they can see the value andthey can ask for it from the people
(38:50):
who come into the communities to servethem, that those people also use it.
Alexis Miles (38:56):
Let's say this really takes off and people are using it.
What's your vision of what society willlook like if we have this kind of tool?
Fatima Hafiz (39:06):
We'd have a different approach to addressing mental health,
and we would, uh, put the onus oftransforming humanity in humanity's hands.
That's what I could see.
And it's not just centralto here in the US.
I've, uh, tested some of this in Africaand people are looking for this also.
(39:30):
Uh, so my vision is that we cando mental health differently.
Sam Fuqua (39:35):
Fatima Hafiz, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Fatima Hafiz (39:38):
Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
Sam Fuqua (39:41):
Dr. Fatima Hafiz is an educator, facilitator, and CEO
of the TEA Group - TransformativeEducation Associates.
They specialize in bringing transformativepractices to under-resourced communities,
primarily in greater Philadelphia.
We spoke to them at the 2025White Privilege Conference
(40:04):
in Hartford, Connecticut.
For more information on the TEAGroup or on the TheraMe app,
you can go to theteagroup.org.
That's TEAgroup.org.
(40:26):
Thanks for listening toWell, That Went Sideways!
We produce new episodes twice a month.
You can find them whereveryou get your podcasts and on
our website, sidewayspod.org.
Our site has information on our guests,interview transcripts, and links to
more conflict resolution resources.
(40:48):
And, we encourage you tosign up for our newsletter.
That's at sidewayspod.org.
Our production team is Mary Zinn,Jes Rau, Norma Johnson, Alexis Miles,
Alia Thobani, and me, Sam Fuqua.
Our theme music is by Mike Stewart.
(41:08):
We produce these programs in Coloradoon the traditional lands of the
Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute nations.
To learn more about the importanceof land acknowledgement, visit
our website, sidewayspod.org.
And this podcast is a partnershipwith The Conflict Center, a
(41:28):
Denver-based nonprofit that providespractical skills and training for
addressing everyday conflicts.
Find out more at conflictcenter.org.
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