Below is an excerpt from The Collective, Poynter’s newsletter by journalists of color for journalists of color and our allies. Subscribe here to get it in your inbox two Wednesdays each month.
Content warning: This column mentions domestic violence and sexual assault.
In 2015, I moved up 100 TV markets to take my second job in the industry, as a news reporter in Oklahoma City.
I was the first in my family to go to college in the U.S. and every time the news cameras turned on and it was time to go live, I felt like a success story, living my dream.
I frequently thought back to myself as a little girl, daughter of Mexican immigrants, to see how far I’d come. I remembered the times my family was homeless, living in a women’s shelter. Or the times we’d spend all day at the local pizza buffet because it meant we’d get enough to eat for once.
My lived experiences helped make me a great reporter because I saw humans in a different way. I was an expert at talking to families who were victims, because I’d been one, too.
I became one of the best at my news station, reporting on everything from tornadoes and earthquakes to crime and police injustice.
Everyone who knew me thought I had life figured out, including myself. Still, when the camera turned off, I sat alone in a nightmare of thoughts and memories.
I’d spent 26 years suppressing trauma from my life growing up.
A cycle of suppression
As a kid, I witnessed domestic violence and I was sexually assaulted. I grew up around emotional abuse and manipulation.
The adults around me coped with their own pain through anger and alcohol. A normal night included slamming doors, crying, household items being broken and shouting matches.
When I left home for college, I knew I didn’t want the same life, but I didn’t have the tools or knowledge to cope with the trauma cycle passed down from generation to generation.
I carried this generational trauma as I began my professional career, covering the same topics I’d lived through.
When things got chaotic in this incredibly stressful career, I dealt with deadlines or a manager yelling at me by modeling what I learned.
I hid my emotional wounds well. The only way people could notice might be through the occasional alcohol binge or losing my temper.
As I continued suppressing, pressure built up inside me like a shaken soda bottle. Then, in March of 2015, my body said enough!
I was covering a political rally where a group of people wished for the violent death of Mexican immigrants. I can still hear the crowd cheering as the person at the podium said: “They will fall to their death and lay there in little pieces.”
That day, something in my brain was triggered. I felt scared, I started crying and sobbing. I was minutes from my live shot, but all I could think about was hiding.
An intense heat came over the back of my neck. I felt the same way that day as when police showed up at my house when I was in third grade to take my dad away after a big fight with my mom. My body was drawing on emotional memories from the past to help keep me safe.
My body also saved my life, forcing me to pay attention to the years of unaddressed emotions and trauma.
At the time, I wasn’t ready for talk therapy, so I focused on healing my body’s nervous system through yoga, breathwork and meditation.
Deb Dana, author of the book Anchored, speaks about the Polyvagal Theory, which explains how the autonomic nervous system has evolved to keep us safe and alive.
In that moment at the rally, my body went into what Dana refers to as the feeling of shutdown, collapse and disconnection. The theory states that this portion of the nervous system is activated when the body and brain feel trapped in a cycle of endless challenges.
I’d lived in chronic stress and family dysfunction my entire life. It was no wonder my brain emotionally shut down during the rally. It had had enough.
In that moment, my brain’s prefrontal cortex sounded the alarm by sending messages to my body that things were not safe. The hippocampus acted on the alarm and drew on its memory bank, equating that moment at the rally to another time that felt unsafe to me as a child, when my dad was hurting my mom. My brain sent a signal to the amygdala, which is the part of the brain that sends messages to the nervous system to take action.
At that moment, all my body could do to keep me safe was to shut down and disconnect.
Leslie Rangel launched The News Yogi in 2020. (Courtesy: Leslie Rangel)
How you can recognize your body’s signals
It’s taken me years of therapy, studying yoga, the nervous system, neuroscience and emotions to finally understand what happened that day and why.
My work continues as a yoga and mental wellness coach, now helping other journalists understand the nervous system and learn better coping and resourcing tools to recognize some of the warning signs I missed before my breakdown. I launched The News Yogi in 2020 at the height of the pandemic after leading an online meditation for a group of about 15 journalists.
Here are some things in my life that I ignored, and I encourage you to take notice of:
- Every day feels like a bad day.
- You’re constantly exhausted even after sleeping.
- Work is your only life.
- You have a difficult time saying no.
- You use alcohol or other substances to emotionally cope.
- You feel withdrawn from family and friends.
- You have a difficult time being alone.
I also created the five-step HUMAN method to help journalists cope in this stressful career:
- (H)OLD SPACE FOR YOU:
Put yourself first. It’s OK to take a day off when you need to. Let the guilt go. - (U)NDERSTAND:
Understand how your brain works, your family history, what your stress response is and learn what resourcing tools work to keep you regulated. I use response tools, like breathing practices, yoga, meditation, emotional freedom techniques (tapping acupressure points to restore balance), dancing, therapy, acupuncture, energy clearing work, cord cutting and more. - (M)ANIFEST YOUR MAGIC:
Check in with your negative self-chatter, interrupt negative thoughts, remember you are enough. - (A)LIGN AND AFFIRM:
Turn the lens on yourself to better understand when you need time to reset and recharge. - (N)OURISH AND NURTURE:
Have an action plan to help you move toward your goals and navigate your stressful career.
My therapist describes healing as a spiral. We start at the top and while you may have cleared past a painful moment or trigger after the first cycle, the spiral continues and we may go past the same spot again.
What’s important is that we’re ready, with an understanding of what triggers us, and that we have a plan to respond as emotions come up.
It’s no secret that communities of color are disproportionately impacted by mental health disorders, meaning many of us BIPOC journalists struggle.
We spend so much of our time as journalists questioning others, but when will we make space to turn the lens on ourselves to begin healing?
Remember, we’re humans first, journalists second. Take care, newsies.
Leslie Rangel currently works as a morning anchor in Austin, Texas. She was recently nominated for an Emmy for a feature series that she shoots, writes, edits and produces focusing on communities of color.
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