Create Empowering Collaborative Learning

To  provide more responsive services, it is important to create time and space in our work for relationship building, learning, reflection, and growth. When we do this, we can work to create a more generative, thoughtful, and supportive space. 

Meaningful conversations

The work of creating trauma-informed systems is complex. We can start first with practices that support meaningful conversations.

Jenée shares:

• Trauma and stress are chronic public health issues. We need to address the ways that trauma and stress affect us in the workforce, so that we don’t end up doing harm to each other and to the very people we seek to help. 

• As organizations become more mindful, we can nest our trauma and racial equity work in being present, conscious, and kind. In this work, it is important to learn to reset, recognize unconscious biases, and build resilience, to help us be more compassionate. With mindfulness, we have tools for more difficult conversations.

Racism is a form of trauma. To begin to unravel the harm of racism—the historical trauma, the microaggressions, the white fragility that often is a barrier to conversation—people need to have a level of self-awareness, to be able to sit, without judgment, with what is uncomfortable, to be present and aware, and to hold this inquiry with curiosity and kindness. Being mindful—knowing and being in touch with what is going on with you—is essential to undoing racism. Jenée Johnson

Sharing stories

We can also support our collective learning through sharing stories, and focus on what is working well, opening possibilities.

Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it is done”. 

Stories make change visible by showing the small steps we are taking that makes organizational and systems change more possible.

Engaging in conversations and sharing stories help us to: 

• Explore both thoughts and feelings.

• Give voice to intuitive gut reactions. 

• Open up new solutions and creativity. 

• Builds lasting connections that can be used for future problem solving.

• Stories help modulate our nervous systems and our outlook, helping us to engage in this work with more compassion and resilience. 

• Being listened to and hearing back our stories makes us more visible — we feel seen and acknowledged. 

• Stories support people to bring their whole selves to this work — acknowledging each other’s humanity and learning from each other. 

• Strengths and resilience become apparent through stories, surfacing what we often don’t recognize in ourselves and others. 

• Stories can foster a sense of personal and collective agency. 

• Stories become a tool to support our practice, integrating learning into what we do in our work and lives that bring trauma-informed principles to life in a real and concrete way.

We can relate to each other's stories. They are concrete, we can learn from them. They help us feel more connected to each other and that we can work together as a team. Stories provide the fuel for our active learning. They can also help us to strengthen our relationships.

Sources:

1. Laura Porter, Kimberley Martin, and Rob Anda (2016). Self-Healing Communities. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2016/06/self-healing-communities.html

2. Jenée Johnson (2019). Encouraging Meaningful Conversations about Race and Trauma. https://www.mindful.org/encouraging-meaningful-conversations-about-race-and-trauma/

3. Bodiford and Burroughs (2019). Stories: Connection, healing, hope. https://medium.com/families-thrive/stories-connection-healing-hope-6c0ce2244347

Module Purpose | Secondary Trauma | Recognize Empathic Distress | Move into Compassionate Action | Disrupt Ripples of Trauma | Create Empowering Learning | Strengthen Calming Responses | Build Solidarity | Center Ethics | Expand Circle of Belonging | Acknowledgements