I first publicly spoke about internalized bias in my 2017 TED Talk, What We Can Save By Breaking Unconscious Bias (have a watch, if you haven’t seen it yet). And healing from and ultimately breaking internalized biases is what put me on the path to building a mission-driven company centered around breaking bias.
Now if you’re reading this, you probably have a sense of what internalized bias is, but what you’re probably craving to know is what you can do about it. In this piece, I want to give you an overview of what internalized bias is and some tools you can use - starting right now - to transform and break it.
If you’ve ever been in session with me, you’ve heard me say that the longest journey we’ll ever take is from our heads to our hearts, and this post is certainly an example of that! Let’s start in our heads, though that’s not where we’ll end.
Internalized biases concern how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive others are perceiving us. These ideas, concepts, emotions, and notions are biases that we have about our own self-concept and our relationship with ourselves. Internalized bias is one of the four forms of bias that we cover in many of our learning journeys. (The other three are interpersonal bias, institutional, and systemic bias… and don’t worry, I’ll get to those in a future article!)
Because internalized bias is rooted in our unique selves, it’s also agnostic to identities. We can talk about it from the perspective of age, ethnicity, size, gender, disability – any identity we can imagine. As a result, it can show up in ways rooted in our own relationship with self: such as internalized racism, sexism, homophobia and the like that harms our own mental wellbeing.
Effects of Internalized Bias
Ultimately, the negative ideas we may hold about ourselves erodes our own sense of self-worth. For me, this looked like a constant sense of uneasiness in social situations. I needed to have another human of color, or a queer person, or a spiritual person to feel okay - otherwise, my guards just went up. Now for someone who spent most of his life in rather elite educational and professional environments, searching for and seeking comfort in humans with marginalized identities - like race, sexuality, or spirituality - was generally hard to come by.
This is what kept me stuck in my beliefs about myself and others, and it prevented me from seeking connection with humans who my mind already labeled as ‘other’ based on stereotypes. One really important piece to pull out here is that internalized bias is exactly that: it’s internal. It has nothing to do with what others actually think of us. It has nothing to do with the truth, and it exists completely independently of what our actual relationships with others are. It’s rooted entirely in our own perceptions of identity.
You can see, then, how this can do several negative things:
- Exhaustion and Burnout. Internalized bias is what causes us to spend inordinate amount of energy fighting battles that aren't being voiced, and what we believe others are thinking of us. This hypervigilance was my MO. For years, I walked out in the world ready for battle! In my mind, I was constantly defending myself and disproving things others said, did, or I thought they would say or do – all things that are false to begin with! These imaginary battles - which are absolutely real in our experience - but they aren’t true, and overtime suck the life energy out of us. I know they did for me.
- Play Small, Hide & Shrink. Internalized bias prevents us from being. Being our dreams, aspirations, desires, and hopes out loud. Instead these biases shrink our ambition and dreams and succumb to the voices of others. We fear what others will think of us so we hide our true selves. I spent a quarter of my life playing small, and sometimes that conditioning still returns. I have seen it still sneakily trickle in when I have failed to disclose relevant information to my doctor because I am more afraid of what they might think of me - because of my race, sexuality, or nutrition, rather than what’s good for my health. We hold back parts of ourselves from new friends or colleagues because we worry that they might think badly of what we share.
- Isolation and Loneliness. Internalized bias blocks us from being in and with community. It gets in the way of building relationships that are based on the real give-and-take of being in true community with others… and it plants seeds of self doubt, imposter syndrome, and a need to qualify ourselves constantly in the place of community. There is a deep longing within each human to want to connect with others. We are social animals and we want to be seen, heard, and celebrated - just as much as we want to see, hear, and celebrate others! Internalized bias, however, keeps us from seeing, hearing, and celebrating ourselves…which builds the armoring and the architecture for the remaining three types of bias.
So what is the salve? How do we move forward? Well, speaking from personal experience, there are three major tools we can use to break internalized biases.
Mindfulness to heal ourselves and the world
Again, let’s start with the heady and remember that internalized bias is harm that stems from our perceptions of ourselves, or our perceptions of what others are thinking about us. It isn’t real. (Its impact is real, of course, which is why the work of breaking bias is so critical!)
Now let’s contrast this with how I define mindfulness: present-moment awareness of one’s experience.
Hopefully this contrast makes it clear why I am so convicted in my belief that all breaking bias work must begin with mindfulness: mindfulness focuses on awareness of what is really and truly happening, both within us and to us.
Martin Luther King, Jr., tells us that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” I would humbly add that only mindfulness can drive out bias.
It’s from this point of view that I discuss the idea of mindfulness to heal ourselves and the world in conversation with Sharon Salzberg for the Asia Society.
Self-compassion and Loving-Kindness
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I’ve written before about my own long road toward self-compassion and self-love. In 2013, I remember being on a silent meditation retreat for people of color with my teacher and friend, Spring Washam, and just battling it out with self-doubt and self-loathing. In that moment, Spring reminded me to return the most essential dose of mindfulness: self-compassion. Since then, there are many self-compassion tools I have practiced over the course of this journey.
A wonderful place to start here is our post on Asian-American & Pacific Islander traditions of healing. I share ten traditions of healing here, and I highly recommend reading all of them.
Loving-kindness, though, is the self-compassion exercise that truly started me on the path of breaking my own internalized biases. Since first learning it over a decade ago, I have practiced it every single day. When we approach this work with sincerity, humility, and openness, it has truly transformative power. (I am living proof of this!).
If you’re interested in learning more about the lovingkindness meditative practices that changed my life, try one of my free meditations on Insight Timer to get a taste of Loving-Kindness.
PRISM Toolkit
Finally, of course, our own PRISM toolkit is comprised of transformative tools and techniques that apply these practices to our own experiences, and bring them to life.
The work I do is about breaking bias, and about working with companies to go beyond compliance and actualize their commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and in doing so create a world where everyone belongs and is welcomed. That’s our mission; it’s the what of our work.
But the PRISM toolkit is the how of our work; this is the work of going on the journey from our heads to our hearts.
How the PRISM Toolkit helps us make change
The PRISM toolkit is made up of five tools:
Perspective-Taking: The practice of imagining other people’s viewpoints and lived experiences. This strengthens compassion and generosity.
pRosocial Behavior: The practice of cultivating kindness, empathy, altruism, gratitude, and joy.
Individuation: The practice of differentiating the individual from group-based associations (or stereotypes) by investigation and cultivating curiosity.
Stereotype Replacement: The practice of noticing stereotypes in awareness and replacing them with a real-life opposite example .
Mindfulness: The practice of noticing and being aware of the present moment.
Recall the negative effects that we can observe from internalized bias (it exhausts us, it asks us to hide and shrink ourselves, it blocks connection). As you recall these effects, and as you begin to process the PRISM Toolkit above, I hope it’s clear that these ways of being are truly in opposition. Practicing the PRISM Toolkit, by definition, will support your brain in unlearning unskillful habits, and replacing them with habits that break bias in your workplaces, communities, families, and friendships.
Beginning your Mindfulness Journey
One last note: these are practices – we are in dynamic communion with them at all times, and our environments and experiences are always pushing us to keep learning and growing within them. So if part of what you’re thinking as you read this is something like… oh, goodness, this is a lot… just know that everyone starts at the beginning.
Twelve years ago, I made the decision to begin practicing lovingkindness meditations everyday. I didn’t know where this decision would take me. I didn’t know where I would end up. I only knew one thing: that, that day, I would complete the meditation.
Each day, I listened to myself, and my practice grew. But I couldn’t start there; I could only start where I was.
This ties into one of my favorite quotes on overwhelm, which comes from the Talmud:
"Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
Mindfulness asks us to inhabit this moment fully. It is the only one in which we experience control over ourselves; we cannot change the past or predict the future.
So, if while reading this you feel a sense of overwhelm: notice this feeling. Make a note, observing it for what it is. Congratulations: you just engaged in the practice of mindfulness. 🙂
Reach Out!
I hope this overview has been helpful in understanding how internalized bias affects us… and, perhaps even more importantly, the tools we have available to us in re-training our habits to support mindfulness and break bias.
This is the great work of our lifetimes, and it’s the work to which I’ve dedicated myself and my company, BE MORE with Anu. Our product portfolio infuses this approach into every single step of any client’s learning journey, and we’re proud that our work supports long-term behavior change, not just increased memorization.
If this resonates with you as a leader of an organization, I hope you’ll get in touch with us. Our work has been deployed at companies large and small who are interested in using business to build a better world. We’d love to see whether you’re the next organization to break bias and BE MORE with Anu.
Separately:
- If you’re interested in jumpstarting your own breaking bias journey with the PRISM Toolkit, register for our seven-day Breaking Bias with Mindfulness course.
- If you’re interested in doing this work with others in the community, sign up for my Fall dana-based (donation-based) course, Breaking Bias with the Brahmaviharas, with the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.