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Trauma-Informed Approaches

The purpose of this module is to explore how we can work together to integrate a trauma-informed approach through the following steps.

  • View our commitments through a trauma-informed lens.

  • Understand the 3 E’s of Trauma: Events, Experiences and Effects.

  • Become familiar with the 4 R’s Key Assumptions in a Trauma Informed Approach - Realization, Recognize, Respond, Resist Re-traumatization - and how they can help us build responsive services.

  • Understand how the 6 Guiding Principles for integrating a trauma-informed approach can help us build collective and relational capacities.

  • Learn how to create collective capacities for all to thrive within a trauma-informed community.

 

Revisiting our Commitments

In this module, we take up our four key commitments (see Principles Module) to serve as a guide toward embracing a trauma-informed approach. This guide intends to help us to adopt a healing perspective, focused on developing supportive and transformative experiences with ourselves and with each other.

When we assume a trauma-informed approach we:

  1. Acknowledge that trauma occurs at all levels (within people, families, organizations, and communities) and can significantly impact people’s lives. 

  2. Seek to understand and respond to this trauma so we can minimize its impact in the work we do and nurture healing transformation. 

Engaging from a  trauma-informed perspective is a way of being and doing. Our role is not necessarily to heal but to facilitate healing. Therefore, we must be aware that trauma exists on all levels, beginning with our own. Because of this, we then are conscious of promoting healing on all levels: individual, professional, organizational, and community level. 

From this perspective, we have an opportunity to be intentionally active in promoting growth on a personal, professional, and community level.

The 3 E’s of Trauma

SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) developed a framework for understanding the concept of trauma and a trauma-informed approach. You can read more about this framework here. A foundation of SAMHSA’s framework for understanding trauma is the 3 E’s. The information below has been adapted from the SAMHSA framework.

Events

There are many lived experiences and circumstances that may be traumatic. Revisit the Trauma 101 section about different kinds of lived experiences. Remember, events and circumstances may happen one time or happen repeatedly over time. People may also live with a high level of toxic stress that may be traumatic.

Experience of events

Each person may experience events or circumstances in their lives differently. One person’s lived experience may be more traumatic than for another person. It is not the event itself that is traumatic, but our experience of it. How we each label and assign meaning to our lived experiences and how we are impacted physically and psychologically contribute to how we experience events as traumatic.

How an event is experienced may also be linked to other factors such as a person’s cultural beliefs, availability of social supports, and developmental stage.

Another way we can shift how we think about people’s lived experiences is by recognizing how the beliefs we have can filter our understanding of what the other person is living.

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves with humility:

  • What are my own beliefs and cultural values?

  • How do these play into how I understand what another person is going through?

  • What questions can I ask to better understand what they’re experiencing and not impose my way of viewing things?

We can accept that we may never fully know other’s experiences but by staying curious and respectful we are able to build stronger relationships and be more responsive. Relationship building focused on genuineness and trust is the foundation for practicing with compassion and facilitating healing.

Effects of events

The effects of lived experiences or circumstances that may be traumatic may be immediately apparent or may be invisible, insidious, or have a delayed onset. It may be challenging to see the connection between events and effects. SAHMSA shares effects may include things like:

  • An inability to cope with normal stresses and strains of daily living.

  • Challenges trusting others in relationships.

  • Managing cognitive processes such as memory, attention, thinking.

  • Regulating behavior or expressing emotions.

There may be other effects in a person’s health and well-being. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study shares how trauma and toxic stress in childhood can lead to long-term consequences. This stress can affect the development of young brains and nervous systems, hinder the ability to bond and connect with others, and dramatically increase the incidence of negative adult outcomes – including behavioral health issues like depression, violence, and suicide, as well as physical health challenges such as diabetes, heart disease, and other serious problems.

Compassionate and Trauma-Informed Responses

SAMHSA has developed a simple method to remind us how to keep a compassionate and trauma-informed perspective. This is called the 4R’s and are key assumptions of a trauma-informed approach.  

Understanding actions

We can start by thinking about how our and others’ behaviors might actually be reactions to our lived experiences and how our reactions might continue a cycle of trauma. “Acting out” and “acting in” behaviors are common ways individuals, organizations, communities, and societies reenact trauma and can be common coping strategies to survive adversity and overwhelming circumstances. 

Some common examples of acting out behaviors are:

  • lying

  • fighting

  • bullying

  • substance abuse

  • participating in unsafe activities

Some common examples of acting in behaviors are:

  • self-harm or mutilation

  • avoidance or isolation

  • lack of commitment

  • lack of trust

  • dependency on other people

  • anxiety or depression

We often react to these behaviors (in ourselves and others) rather than seeking to understand them. A trauma-informed healing approach understands that these are common and normal ways of reacting when we have lived through difficult experiences. They are often strategies we develop to adapt and survive these experiences and act from a place of protecting ourselves. By shifting to a place of compassionate understanding, we can move from a deficit or blame-based perspective to a strengths-based one that promotes trusting relationships and safe environments. 

Acknowledge each other’s strengths and knowledge

We have often been trained in assuming an expert-client relationship where I am the “expert” that has the best idea of what is best for the person we’re working with. 

A trauma-informed approach, however, recognizes that we all have strengths and knowledge that can become useful resources for healing and well-being. We can often check-in with ourselves and each other by asking: "How can we better support each other?

Promote well-being in organizations

Promoting well-being throughout organizations is essential. Let’s pause and think about the oxygen mask on planes. Adults have to place the mask on themselves first to later assist children; otherwise they may lose consciousness and not be there for the child. By connecting with ourselves and connecting with others we can take care of ourselves to be able to better support others:

  • Practice self-care: breathing, meditation, exercise, yoga, healthy eating, counseling, practice hobbies, watch TV or movies, take walks in nature, read, do gardening, etc.

  • Practice collective care: create a space and time for exercise or yoga within the organization’s facilities, provide space for debriefing sessions, have team-building activities, celebrate each other’s professional and life achievements, etc.

Our goal as a trauma-informed organization is to foster a thriving environment. What are some practical ways in which we can better support everyone within our organization in a trauma-informed way? Here’s a suggested path:

Guiding Principles for Trauma-Informed Ways of Relating

Healing is a complex process and can look many ways or take many paths. There are guiding principles developed by SAMHSA that we can embrace for trauma-informed ways of relating. Adopting these principles can facilitate healing and thriving.

Click on each image to view a video that shares a suvivors’s perspective on trauma-informed principles.

Note: We have included a video clip with each of the principles in the interactive visual above. We acknowledge and are grateful to In The Hollow Films: Giving Voice to Survivors of Violence & Trauma for the voices included in the videos for each of these principles. We thank Leah Harris, Pat Risser, Cicely Spencer,  Michael Skinner, and William Kellibrew for sharing your stories.

Create Conditions for All to Thrive

What changes would we make if we viewed social issues through a trauma-informed lens? Acknowledging trauma and its impact underpins our ability to respond in a more compassionate way.  Rather than “treating” specific behaviors, we embrace an approach that helps the whole person, families, and communities heal:

Transform conditions

To promote healing and thriving, we can can continuously work to transform the conditions that reinforce people’s lived experience of trauma, limiting beliefs about each other, and other forms of oppression and injustice. It is important to build and promote environments that acknowledge hardships and disparities, provide space for trauma healing, promote resilience-building, and create conditions for all to thrive.

Understanding intersectionalities 

We should also be aware of systemic violence and create spaces that break with these cycles of hardship. By systemic violence, we refer to social or institutional practices that adversely affect a group of people: 

  • psychologically or mentally

  • culturally

  • economically

  • spiritually

  • or physically 

It is important to recognize that many adverse childhood experiences, trauma, and historical trauma are strongly related to systemic violence. By not acknowledging racism, violence in communities, poverty or other forms of systemic violence, we may inadvertently be increasing a person’s physical and felt sense of vulnerability. 

Another dimension to more fully understand people and communities’ experiences is by understanding the intersectionalities that are present. Intersectionalities is a framework developed by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. By intersectionalities, she means when people have multiple intersecting social identities that can lead to an experience of disadvantage, discrimination or oppression:

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Community Response Example: As a response to the high profile police brutality against Black people, Equal Justice USA has developed the Trauma to Trust: Police-Community Collaborative Training Program. This program brings together police officers with community people to talk about their own trauma, racial trauma, and violence. It acknowledges how all these factors intersect and seeks to create space for healing conversations that build trust, mutual understanding, and transform how community members and police live their relationships from a different and supportive role.

Intersecting disadvantages can make certain groups of people more vulnerable. It is important we are constantly checking in to make sure we are reducing harm, building systems of care that provide safety, fostering trusting relationships, empowering people, and creating collaborations to actively prevent and support healing from toxic stress and trauma.

To dig more into how we can disentangle intersectionalities visit this module.

Building trauma-informed communities 

A trauma-informed community is one where all players come together as partners (schools, community organizations, communities of faith, government agencies, and local businesses) to develop common goals that foster healing and well-being for everyone who forms part of that community. Resilient Communities Wisconsin shares four elements that can help us to develop a more trauma-informed community (1):

Let’s think about ways in which we can start building collective action within our communities:

  • Who makes up your community? 

  • How do these partners or potential partners collaborate? 

  • What are the dynamics between them? 

  • What are each partner’s strengths? 

  • How can we as partners integrate services to better support people (i.e. who is doing what, what works, what are each group’s resources and strengths, avoid competition or redundant services, facilitate support services)? 

  • What resources can partners share with each other?

  • How can we develop or enhance continuous communication between partners?

Sources:

  1. Resilient Communities Wisconsin - https://www.resilientcommunitieswi.com

Final Thoughts

As facilitators of healing, we seek to reduce harm and develop supportive environments for everyone to thrive. This starts by developing sensible plans that address the individual, organizational, community, and overall systems issues that may be barriers as well as identify and allocate strengths and resources in a collaborative way. 

Remember, many people who have lived adverse experiences are able to overcome them and continue through their lives. By embracing a trauma-informed approach, we aim to provide spaces to reduce harm, protect, support, and help people thrive. This video below shows us how we can shift from treaters to healers with a trauma-informed approach.