Introduction
The privileged position that I have (and it is beyond a privilege) to work with many different types of humans in endless organisations across different sector settings, affords me so much learning that is experienced from an embodied place as well as an opportunity to develop my skills in practice.
This article is a short reflection on that learning that I want to share with you to invite you to think more deeply. There is no judgement. There is no accusation. There is simply material from which we can all draw some gifts in how we shift from knowing about trauma informed practice, to integrating it into our practice. It is not about getting everything right all the time. I feel that sometimes people feel an immense pressure to do the right thing. We are working in groups; work teams, groups in training, conference tables. In groups, Social Identity Theory argues that most humans want to be experienced and seen as meeting the expectations of the group they are in (Tajfel, H., et al.,1979)). However, we won’t get everything right all the time. Ever. So it is always about what we do once we have got it wrong. How we repair any ruptures that may have occurred.
Trauma Informed Practice in Practice
The work towards becoming trauma informed has in places, become watered down, used as a tick box and generally quite misunderstood. Therefore, it might be helpful to start off this article with some basic definitions pertinent to this discussion:
Trauma aware:
Knowing that trauma exists and can affect people's behaviour and responses. (Foundational understanding)
Trauma sensitive:
Being mindful of potential triggers and avoiding actions that could re-traumatise someone. (A deeper awareness).
Trauma responsive:
Taking action to address potential trauma impacts by adapting approaches and providing support when needed. (Action motivated)
Trauma informed:
A systemic approach that integrates knowledge about trauma into all aspects of practice, including policies, procedures, and interactions with individuals. (A deeper understanding and implementation of trauma-sensitive practices).
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Trauma informed practice is the integration of extensive research undertaken across several disciplines; it is the daily work of those in practice and the lived experiences of those who have experienced trauma.
Making explicit how to integrate all of this into practice, is a challenge and may go some way to explaining why a setting might consider itself on the journey yet be incredibly far away from practising in ways that are trauma informed. It can be such a blind spot and quite a difficult comprehension to convey. For this reason, I’m going to attempt to use a few of my own experiences professionally to demonstrate how we connect professional practice with lived experience and academic research.
Vulnerability
I arrive at every environment as an outsider. Whether it is as a keynote, a trainer, or in a consultancy capacity. With some clients for whom I have worked for many years in the capacity as consultant or trainer, I no longer feel like an outsider, but I still am one. There is a gift in being the outsider to an organisation; I’m blissfully unaware of the internal politics and when the politics come to the fore, they are for me to work with rather than be affected by. I can also say things that people want to say but feel unable to.
The shadow side of being the outsider, is that I have to be vulnerable. Take delivering a keynote for example. I probably do around 4 in person keynotes a month and the same again online. I arrive at a completely unknown space. I don’t know anyone, I don’t know the area, I don’t really know fully what you need and I certainly don’t know what you know. I do as much ‘homework’ as I can, but I do not know what I have not lived. Your knowledge will sit on a broad spectrum if you're a large audience. What I say must land. I’m trusting you to look after me but you’re paying me to turn up and deliver something that will fundamentally shift some of the audience's thinking. The pressure is on. I must deliver! As strong and as capable and as experienced I am, there is of course a huge vulnerability in standing up in front of a few hundred people. If I do too many keynotes, I need at least 3 days to nurse my vulnerability hangover. If you’ve met me, you’d never think it would you?
Trauma Informed Practice
Exploring vulnerability takes me neatly to thinking about trauma informed practice in practice. Detecting safety is something that living organisms do which Porges (2022) calls neuroception. We can detect safety using neuroception when we are surrounded by people we know, with expressive faces and who have warm voices (Porges, 2022). This promotes a sense of safety. So as a person who arrives into places and spaces where I don’t know anyone, my hope is that the organisers have things in place to ensure that I can detect safety. I have learned a lot about what helps me detect safety. In fact, our TICS Conference is entirely developed and created, down to the tiniest of details, on the learning that I have gained about what is not trauma informed in learning settings. Here are just a couple of things that have to be considered as basics:
As a keynote:
As a trainer:
Lived Experiences
I always bring my own positionality (Rowe, 2014) into my work, but I do not talk extensively about my own personal experiences of having been in care. I have endless experiences that contain gifts that I can share but it is being in care that is often focused on by others. There are lots of reasons why I don’t share on this experience very much; feeling a sense of safety while also feeling vulnerable, a personal refusal to be reduced to my lived experience when I have worked in this area since around 1990! Yet I have been introduced by my lived experience (when it is not in my bio) and there are often comments on feedback forms that say that they wish I’d spoken more of my experiences (of care). Do shorten my bio but please don’t write your own about me! On occasion when I have shared something very personal to me, I have been met with ‘still face’ which further makes me wary. Of course!
I share a lot from my research and bring the voices of others’ experiences of being in care. However, just because I’m not talking about my lived experience of care, I am sharing from a place of having lived that experience so it is still vulnerable. It is personal and I’ve been immersed in this area all my life. I can get passionate to the point that it can look like I’m angry and I can feel drained afterwards. In other words, when someone is working in a space where they have lived experience, their work is coming from a deep place.
Conclusion
Now I’ve written this article, it feels like it could be a book so I will stop here. I have gently explored, using the lens of my own experiences to support thinking about how we extend the knowledge around trauma informed practices into practice in all that we do and be. We can be compassionate towards ourselves when we get it wrong but ultimately, it is how we reflect with empathy, repair when we are gifted the opportunity to do so and when we know better, we ensure that we do better. I hope this has provided some reflection for you, the reader, to consider your own experiences of detecting safety and how you take that learning into your own work.
References
Porges, Stephen W. (2022). Polyvagal Theory; The science of Safety. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, Vol 16.
Rowe, W.E., 2014. Positionality. In, edited by D. Coghlan, and M. Brydon-Miller, eds. The SAGE encyclopedia of action research. London: Sage.
Tajfel, H., Turner, J. C., Austin, W. G., & Worchel, S. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. Organizational identity: A reader, pp56-65.
Tronick, E., Als, H., Adamson, L., Wise, S., & Brazelton, T. B. (1978). The infant's response to entrapment between contradictory messages in face-to-face interaction. Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 17(1), 1–13.