Rachel Dolezal

So I watched the Rachel Dolezal documentary on Netflix and these are some of my thoughts:
Her identification with being transracially black is definitely rooted in childhood trauma. It is very unfortunate the horrific trauma she has been through. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I have definitely seen many traumatized children and the manifestations of their trauma vary. This woman has a lot of unresolved trauma that has not been worked through (from what I saw in the documentary), which has led her to identify with a race out of shame and guilt of what her parents and brother, who happen to be white, put her through as well as their black adopted children. All of them have been traumatized and it appears that none of them have gotten treatment. I feel for her teenage son whose life has been very negatively affected by this during a very difficult time in his life in early adolescence. She continues to put things on social media and put herself in the public eye, which opens herself and her family up for ridicule and negativity. The adoptive brother she adopted as her son had to eventually leave to go to Spain to get away. The teenage son doesn’t have that option. The adoptive sister couldn’t get justice for her abuse from her brother due to the negative attention Rachel got. Repetitive trauma. Rachel talked about race being a social construct yet she is so pressed to be black. I see some contradiction in that. To compare a social construct such as race in identifying as transracial to transgender, which is based off of gender (a biological/genetic construct) doesn’t make sense to me. I think Rachel could do so much advocacy for racial equality and be taken more seriously if she were to authentically live her truth (which is not Nkechi…). I really hope ALL of the kids of those abusive parents as well as Rachel’s son get some therapeutic treatment in order to heal.

Thank you for your time.

#mentalhealthpsas