Trauma-Informed Lens

Podcasters: Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

It is too easy to see ourselves and those we work with as isolated individuals. When we look at any person in isolation, we miss not only the bigger picture but some of the most important drivers of behavior, mental, and medical health. In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry examine the research on social networks and what it means for our services and ideas about self-care.

Discussion Questions

Resources mentioned in podcast:

This Emotional Life

Podcasters: Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

Our first listener request episode! We spend our days giving our all to those we care about. Often our compassion and caring are met with frustration and a sense of entitlement by those we serve. What is going on here? Why don’t people we serve appreciate our efforts and sometimes treat us like disposable people in their lives? In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry explore this issue in depth and try to answer the great questions from our listener.

Discussion Questions

Matt’s Blog Post on Entitled Client

Podcasters: Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

In the last couple of episodes, we did a deep dive into safety. We have more to say! In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry will reflect on the material covered in the last couple of episodes. We will examine how safety planning plays promote trauma-informed services as well as look at how slowing down increases safety and helps us avoid re-traumatization.

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Podcaster: Susie & James Kowalsky, Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

While pre-dating the trauma-informed movement, harm reduction approaches and philosophies are highly effective for programs serving people with trauma histories. Harm reduction and trauma experts James and Susie Kowalsky join Matt, Curt, and Jerry to discuss how harm reduction complements trauma-informed approaches and helps us improve outcomes while increasing our compassion and acceptance. Trauma-informed and harm reduction are changing how we structure programs and approach client and community issues, join us for this fascinating exploration.

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Susie Kowalsky Information:

James Kowalsky Information:

Joseph Grenny Video

Watch the Video!

Podcasters: Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

Safety is a critical component of trauma-informed care. Without safety, people stay in survival mode and rarely change behaviors or adopt new ways of thinking. Physical and psychological safety provides space for people to test out new behavior and start thinking about their future in different ways. In this episode, Matt, Curt, & Jerry explore the role of safety and its role in the healing process.

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Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/tjwhypj9Hbo

Last episode we discussed on reaction to stress and trauma when we examined rigidity. In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry explore the other extreme responses include chaos and the related fight or flight response. While the rigid responses often help people in need fade into the background, these responses pull our attention and can elicit a fear-based reaction from us due to the danger it threatens us and others.

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Podcasters: Matt Bennett, Curt Mower, & Dr. Jerry Yager

The trauma symptom of rigid thinking and behavior was a constant theme in our first 29 episodes.  In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry will explore this topic in greater detail. Recognizing rigid thinking and behaviors help us to identify people who are struggling with trauma and helps build empathy and compassion for specific behaviors that might otherwise frustrate us. Like so many consequences of trauma, rigidity in thought and behavior serves as a coping skill in high stress or traumatic environments but quickly become maladaptive in others.

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Podcasters: Matt Bennett & Curt Mower

Stop the madness! Token economies, level systems, behavioral management plans, IEPs, Positive Behavioral Support, RTI, light systems, and the list goes on and on. It seems like everywhere you look in the helping, parenting, criminal justice, or educational world you see systems of rewards and punishments designed to control and change behavior. Unfortunately, many of these are designed by people without much understanding of behavioral science or neurobiology and often result in unintended consequence which does more harm than good. In this episode, Matt and Curt examine the cost of many of these popular approaches, how they fail those with unresolved trauma, and how we can help those we serve find their own internal motivation.

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Few things have impacted psychology, education, wellness, and pretty much every other human endeavor like mindfulness. With advance to technology and neurobiology, practices dating back thousands of years are demonstrating incredible measurable effects in brain scans. Also, mindfulness practices are showing practical results in academic achievement, psychological well-being, combating burnout, social and emotional intelligence, and immune functioning. One of the most exciting findings of mindfulness research is how it helps heal a traumatized brain. In this episode, Melissa Springstead joins Matt, Curt, and Jerry to discuss these findings and how we might integrate mindfulness into our work and our own self-care.

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Do we have free will? Do we have the capacity to enact our volition even when our neurobiology and environment support us to continue our habits? Does trauma’s effect on executive functioning make free will even more illusionary for those with unresolved trauma? In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry take on the massive issue of free will and talk about why changes in behavior and thinking are often extremely difficult for those with traumatic pasts.

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Matt’s post on Quantum Physics and the Brain in honor of Stephen Hawking