By Rev. Dr. Philippe SHOCK Matthews, D.Msc., D.Ph. — The Metaphysical Minister of Mental Liberation
A note before we begin: If you are in crisis right now, call or text 988 any time, day or night.
There is a phrase I have heard more times than I can count: “I’m fine.” It is usually delivered flatly, with a smile that never reaches the eyes. “I’m fine” is rarely a report on someone’s condition. More often, it is the sound a nervous system makes when it has run out of energy to perform anything else.
New CDC figures show young Black men are now dying by suicide at higher rates than young White men — for the first time on record. I want to start one step earlier than crisis — at the place where numbness first sets in.
The Question Beneath the Question
What if “I’m fine” is not a lie, but the only true thing a shut-down nervous system can still say?
A Trauma-Informed Explanation
Anhedonia — the loss of interest or pleasure in things that once mattered — is often mistaken for laziness. But when numbness becomes baseline, we are looking at a body that made a survival decision. When a threat is chronic enough, the nervous system moves into shutdown, or dorsal vagal collapse, dampening feeling itself to conserve energy. This is not weakness. It is neurobiology doing what it evolved to do.
An Africana Phenomenological Interpretation
Through the Trinity of Black Trauma — historical, systemic, psychological injury — anhedonia is frequently the nervous system’s cumulative answer to living inside all three simultaneously. Through the Four Frequencies of Humanity: First Frequency is our unwounded origin; Second Frequency is trauma-induced consciousness where shutdown takes root; Third Frequency is the domesticated performance of “fineness”; Fourth Frequency is adaptive misidentification, where a person believes the mask is who they are.
“Nothing is wrong with Black people…something happened to Black people! IT’S TIME TO BREAK BLACK TRAUMA!”
Radical Self Evolution begins the moment a person stops accepting the Third Frequency mask as identity.
What the Research Shows
Olson and colleagues (2018), in Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, found trauma-exposed individuals with elevated anhedonia showed measurable changes in reward-circuit connectivity. Webb and colleagues (2024), in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, found racism-related stress functions as a distinct, chronic physiological burden with identifiable nervous-system signatures.
References
Olson, E. A., Kaiser, R. H., Pizzagalli, D. A., Rauch, S. L., & Rosso, I. M. (2018). Anhedonia in trauma-exposed individuals: Functional connectivity and decision-making correlates. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 3(11), 959–967. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2017.10.008
Webb, E. K., Carter, S. E., Ressler, K. J., Fani, N., & Harnett, N. G. (2024). The neurophysiological consequences of racism-related stressors in Black Americans. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 161, Article 105638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105638
The SHOCK Method Sensation Inventory Practice
- Pause and name the setting.
- Take an inventory, not an interrogation.
- Find one point of sensation.
- Name it without judgment.
- Ask the First Frequency question.
- Close with one small act of aliveness.
You Do Not Have to Keep Carrying This Alone
Book Your SHOCK Method Discovery Call
Nothing is wrong with Black people. Something happened to Black people—and what happened can be named, understood, interrupted, and transformed.
If you are in crisis: Call or text 988, or text HOME to 741741.