Understanding the trauma-informed approach

The power of trauma, its impact, can be tremendous.

It can feel like a wave crashing over you, leaving you fighting for air, trying to reach the surface, before another wave comes towards you.

It can feel like being deep within a hole, looking up towards the surface, towards the light at the top, but not able to find a way to reach it.

It can encompass every part of our being – how we think, how we feel, how we respond, how we react.  It can leave us feeling disconnected from the world around us, and perhaps from who we are, leaving us feeling discombobulated, disorientated.

It can impact our physical body and wellbeing, as well as the emotional.

It can feel like living constantly on ‘high alert’, looking around us, not sure what is going to happen, but waiting.

Or perhaps feeling that we need to find a way to bring control to what has felt so uncertain, so unsafe.

Or it can impact us when we least expect it or are not expecting it at all.

Trauma can be scary.

Trauma can be life changing.

But what is trauma?  We are perhaps used to hearing words or phrases such as ‘trauma’, ‘post-traumatic stress’ (or PTSD), ‘flashbacks’, or ‘triggers’, but we may not be sure of what they mean.  Our understanding may come from what we see in popular culture, it may stem from reading or researching, or it may come from personal experience.  Ultimately, trauma can mean different things to different people.  Why?  Because what may be traumatic for one person, may not be for another.

Trauma is individual.  Even if a number of people experience the same event, each person may respond to it differently. 

For some, it may have a lasting impact, for others it will have none.  The impact may also differ in nature from person to person.

This doesn’t make any one person’s experience more or less than another. 

It makes it unique – it’s an individual response to an event or events, that causes emotional and physical disruption and/or harm.

The trauma-informed approach acknowledges this.

It recognises the way that trauma is individual in nature, and at its core, are the questions, ‘what happened to you?’ and ‘what is it like for you?’, enabling an understanding of the impact and lived experience for that person.  The counsellor meets the individual in their world, where they are.

Whilst there are many models and frameworks within the trauma-informed approach, I would summarise them as having three common components, with these being:

·       Safety

·       Understanding and processing

·       Moving beyond

Safety: this is fundamental when working with trauma, whether as a counsellor supporting an individual, or as an individual who wishes to understand and process experienced trauma.  With trauma, there can be a disconnect between the past and present.  The brain doesn’t realise that the individual is not still ‘in’ that time or place.  It can respond as though the trauma is the present, rather than the past, and that can lead to us viewing things, or responding to things, as those we, too, are still in that moment or experience that happened to us.  It is therefore imperative, that before starting to understand or process these experiences, that time is spent supporting the individual to keep themselves safe, both emotionally and physically.  This might be through learning stabilisation techniques, things that can be done to help to ground us, to remind us that we are in the present or bring us back to it if our mind and body tells us otherwise or steers us away.  Or it might be considering the physical environment in which the counselling takes place, such as the room, things within it, scents.  Or perhaps, things that can be done afterwards to help with returning to the world outside of the counselling room, such as a walk in nature, or a moment of calm and relaxation.  It’s about working together, in partnership, in collaboration, to identify what works for the individual, and what enables them to feel or keep themselves safe, to feel anchored to shore, so that they can take the step of exploring, understanding and processing, what has happened and their experience.

Understanding and processing: this is very much led by the individual, at their pace, and where they wish to go, in the same way as the person-centred approach.  It is about the counsellor entering the world of the individual, seeing it through their lens, what it is like for them, what their experience is.  It’s about seeing, hearing, and understanding the lived experience of the person with whom they are sitting. 

However, alongside this, there is also an informative component of the trauma-informed approach, one that differs slightly from that of person-centred.  An aspect of trauma-informed practice is the sharing of information and knowledge by the counsellor, with the purpose of enabling the individual to understand what has happened to them – why they respond how they do, what is happening within the brain and body, and why. 

From this, the individual can make sense of what is happening.  It can create understanding where there has been uncertainty.  It can instil calm where there has perhaps been fear. 

It can enable the individual to view their experiences through a different lens, through the lens of understanding.

Moving beyond: trauma can have a lasting impact.  It can lead us to change, to evolve.  It can shape who we become or what we do

The Japanese have a word, ‘kintsugi’, which means ‘golden repair’.  It refers to the practice of repairing cracks or breaks with gold joins and celebrating the beauty that follows, the beauty of the object in its new and present form.  This is often used as a metaphor for the healing from trauma. 

Through processing and understanding our experiences, we too, can start to see and appreciate the new joins of gold.  We can start to reconnect with our self, and the world around us.  The trauma remains part of our story, but it can become a previous chapter, as we turn a page and move into the next, beyond the trauma.