Safety, Trust, and Recovery for People of Color

Guest Blog By Vanessa Blackstone, MSW

We talk about safety like everyone has equal access to it. They don’t. And that changes recovery.

Safety is not a switch you flip. It’s a pattern you experience. And when that pattern has included dismissal or harm, the nervous system doesn’t forget. It predicts. It prepares. It keeps you alert.

I’m writing this as someone who works in neuroplastic symptom treatment, where we talk about safety constantly, and as someone who has also seen how often “safety” is assumed rather than built.

What it felt like speaking at ATNS last year

Last year, I presented at the ATNS conference with Christie Uipi. First and foremost: it was an utmost honor. I was surrounded by people I deeply respect, and I couldn’t have been more grateful for the opportunity.

And, I was also aware, in a way that was impossible to ignore, that there were not many people in that room who looked like me.

I remember standing there as Christie spoke, scanning the audience, and feeling my mind start to pick me apart. I had on clothing I suddenly decided was “too tight.” I told myself my body was “too voluptuous” to be wearing a bodysuit on a stage like that. I wondered if I wasn’t going to sound smart enough. I worried that my cultural tattoos, tied back to my Indigenous roots, made me stand out too much. I was anxious that I’d be too loud. Too abrasive. And then: I should have straightened my hair.

Those thoughts didn’t appear out of nowhere. They were familiar.

When I was in grade school, a social studies teacher walked up to me and told me I looked “unruly.” I didn’t even understand the word. I had the same Lisa Frank notepad and the same cute K-Mart backpack as everyone else. But I was the one being labeled unruly because I had curly hair, because I didn’t fit a standard. That message stuck.

This is part of what people miss when they talk about safety as if it’s a mindset shift you can simply choose. For many people of color, the body has a memory of being singled out, judged, watched, dismissed, or misunderstood. And it doesn’t have to be dramatic to matter. It just has to be repeated.

The unique reality for people of color in chronic pain

People of color often carry a different starting point in chronic pain and neuroplastic symptoms. One that isn’t always talked about or represented in meaningful ways.

There is the historical layer: being ostracized for skin color, cultural background, hair, language, accent, body type, even tone of voice. And there’s the everyday layer: walking into spaces already on guard. Not because someone is doing something overt in that exact moment, but because lived experience has taught your nervous system what could happen.

And too often, it’s not only about the past.

There is a real reason it can feel unsafe in these spaces because of present experiences, too. In the last year alone, I’ve received countless messages from people of color in pain describing how invalidated and unsupported they’ve felt in treatment and in recovery communities. I’ve also been contacted by clinicians of color describing microaggressions they’ve experienced in professional mind-body spaces, spaces where you would assume safety would be foundational because we talk about it nonstop.

When microaggressions happen in “healing spaces,” it creates a specific kind of injury. It tells the nervous system: Even here, you have to protect yourself.

And that matters clinically. Because if someone’s brain is scanning for danger (social danger, identity-based danger, credibility danger) it changes how easily they can engage. It changes how much they trust. It changes how it feels to be in their body.

A note directly to clinicians of color

If you’re a clinician of color reading this and you’ve ever left a training, consult group, or conference feeling small, on-edge, or quietly humiliated…please hear me: you’re not imagining it. Your reaction makes sense. And you shouldn’t have to choose between your professional development and your dignity. The field needs your voice, your clinical brilliance, and your perspective. Not in spite of your identity, but as part of what makes this work more accurate and more effective. You deserve spaces where you don’t have to brace for impact.

Where neuroplastic symptom work has to zoom out

Neuroplastic symptom treatment often asks people to reinterpret signals from the body and brain. That is hard work. It requires trust. It requires a sense of “I’m safe enough here to try something new.”

But if a client of color is also managing whether they’ll be believed, whether they’ll be stereotyped, whether they’ll be labeled as “too much,” whether their pain will be taken seriously, then they’re doing two jobs at once.

So yes, we can talk about outcome independence and nervous system regulation. And we also have to be willing to ask: who is safety easiest for in our community, and who has to earn it?

A note about my own position

I want to hold some nuance here. I’m a former foster youth. I’m a BIPOC clinician, citizen of Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, raised in a Jewish family that adopted my Black father. I grew up experiencing racism and othering and those experiences shaped me.

And I also carry privilege within my identity. I am lighter-skinned than many people of color. I was raised by an “articulate” family. And I know that the way I speak and present can read as psychologically “safe” to many white clinicians. That reality matters because it gives me a specific role in this conversation: I can invite accountability and skill-building in a way some people may be more able to hear while still being rooted in lived experience and real clinical stakes.

What you can expect at ATNS this October

This October in Dallas, I’ll be giving a talk that speaks to both sides of the room:

• To white clinicians: practical insight and skills, how to hold yourself accountable, how to recognize rupture moments, and how to become a safer person in the room in ways clients actually feel (not just ways that sound nice).

• To people of color in recovery and in the field: you are not imagining it, you are not “too sensitive,” and you are not alone. You deserve to feel seen, believed, and included in neuroplastic symptom care.

I care about this topic because it isn’t theoretical. It affects whether people stay in care, whether they trust the process, and whether they can actually take in the work. And representation matters here. It changes what feels possible for people when they walk into a room and finally see themselves reflected in the expertise.

If you’ll be in Dallas for the ATNS Conference October 15th-17th ,2026, I hope you’ll join me. My goal is to offer something practical and real: language, repair tools, and ways of building safety that clients can actually feel. I deeply want this field to keep becoming more effective, more accessible, and more honest about what “safety” really requires.