Trauma Informed Care

Trauma Informed Care and Healing Centered Engagement

What is trauma?

Trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Trauma is an inescapable stressful event that overwhelms someone’s existing coping mechanisms. It is intergenerational, meaning it can be passed down from our parents to us, and from us to our children. Trauma is also systemic and institutional. Without healing, trauma can keep a person “stuck” in the past, unable to move forward. Trauma has lasting effects on the individual’s functioning and/or physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.

What is Trauma Informed Care?

A trauma informed approach incorporates:

• Realizing the prevalence of trauma

• Recognizing how it affects all individuals

• Resisting re-traumatization

• Responding by putting this knowledge into practice

This can be practiced through simple actions like asking before helping, explaining what you’re doing, and not touching any person, or their belongings without their consent. Giving guests a 5 minute warning for a time limited activity (such as showers or shopping) shows compassion for guests who struggle with time. Reframing requests as a positive instead of a negative can be better received; instead of asking someone to not put paper towels in the toilet, we might ask that they please put them in the trash.

Core Principals of Healing Centered Engagement:

• Safety- ensuring physical and emotional safety

• Trustworthiness- maintaining appropriate boundaries and making tasks clear

• Choice- for people who have had control taken away, having choices makes a big difference

• Empowerment- essential in trauma healing

Healing Centered Engagement:

• Is Culturally Grounded: Culture can be used as a way to ground people in a sense of meaning and purpose. It highlights shared experience, community, and a sense of belonging.

• Views Healing as Political: HCE believes that the environment one lives in plays a role in restoring well-being. This goes further than clinical care.

• Focuses on the Well Being: This moves away from the symptoms we want to suppress and instead focuses on individual strengths and possibilities to sustain well-being.

You can learn more about Trauma Informed Care and Healing Centered Engagement by visiting our Continuing Education page here: Healing Centered Engagement

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