Trauma-Informed Lens

Happy 2018! At the beginning of a new year, Matt, Curt, and Jerry look into their crystal ball and consider the future of the trauma-informed paradigm and movement. Tune in and see what happens when three passionate nerds dream about the future!!

Repeated, chronic exposure to overwhelming stress, especially early in life leads to a variety of disruptions to the developing brain, the ability of a child to form healthy relationships, the body’s ability to organize and manage its responses to environmental events, and the brain’s ability to store, organize, and retrieve information in a consistent way.  This combination of functional disruptions leaves individuals with thoughts and feelings that can be highly unpleasant.  The people providing support and treatment to that individual are often dealing with the extreme behavior exhibited by that individual.  The “5 R’s” (Relevant, Repetitive, Relational, Rewarding, Rhythmic) are a guide to thinking about the characteristics of a supportive environment necessary for recovery and healing to begin to take place.

Special Edition for Annual Homelessness Memorial Day in Collaboration with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council

We welcome special guest podcaster Dr. Barbara DiPietro, the Senior Director of Policy for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, for a discussion on self-care in the face of the many issues facing us and those we serve. 2017 has seen many threats of funding cuts, repeal of Medicaid Expansion, numerous revelations of sexual assault and harassment, and a rise in explicit racism and bigotry.  In this atmosphere, we continue to do our best to provide our clients, students, and patients the best services possible. In this episode, we will discuss some of the challenges to our own mental and physical health and some strategies to keep ourselves healthy and energized for the challenges in the coming year.

Collaborative Blog Post on Self-care: https://connectingparadigms.org/2017/12/self-care-struggle/

Our Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day page: https://www.nhchc.org/resources/consumer/homeless-persons-memorial-day/

Sign up for our action alert, the Mobilizer: https://www.nhchc.org/mobilizersignup/

The National HCH Council’s self-care resources (item #10): https://www.nhchc.org/resources/clinical/tools-and-support/core-competencies-for-the-hch-setting/

Become a National HCH Council individual member (free!): https://www.nhchc.org/about/membership/individual-members/individual-membership-application/

What can HIV in Iowa teach us about trauma’s impact on the health of individuals and communities? By conducting a simple survey, Holly Hanson and her team at the Iowa Department of Public Health showed the powerful connection between childhood trauma and HIV. In this podcast, Holly will present this study and participate in a discussion with Matt, Curt, and Jerry on the effects of trauma on individual and community health.

Learn more about Holly’s work in Iowa

Iowa HIV Report with Trauma Information

Memory is a process that allows for the organization, storage, and retrieval of information from the past to influence our perception of the present and anticipate the future. Many people continue to consider “memory” as what we recall in a life narrative but the process of memory is more complex. Due to a child’s age or a person’s state of mind, many of our most powerful memories are stored without words and are experienced as if they were reoccurring, without conscious awareness that one is remembering. Unintegrated, unresolved traumatic memories can continue to haunt an individual in the present and become barriers to new, successful life experiences.

The human body comes equipped with physiology to keep it safe by mobilizing internal resources when external demands are high, and recovering and repairing itself when demands are lower.  The autonomic nervous system is primarily responsible for managing this balancing act of shifting resources.    In 1999, Dan Seigel coined the term “Window of Tolerance” to describe the range of one’s optimal level of arousal.  This model is widely used to understand brain-body reactions to stress and regulation. One of the impacts of exposure to traumatic events, can be a shift in how the brain & nervous system respond to normal, everyday happenings in the environments we find ourselves in that results in a narrowing of the Window of Tolerance.  In this episode, we talk about our experiences observing the impact of this shift, and how we can individually and collectively work to expand our Window of Tolerance to effectively cope with the demands we are faced with.

Our challenge to you: Be very aware of cups through the Holidays!

In the 1960s, John Bowlby provided a theoretical framework for understanding the importance of early child-caregiver interactions, which has become known as Attachment Theory.  Bowlby’s framework has given rise to a vast amount of psychological research and the importance of attuned, attentive, consistent caregiver interactions to optimal child development is undeniable. But what constitutes an attuned, attentive interaction? What happens in the brains of children and their caregivers during these interactions that are so important to both?

Metronome Video

In this episode, Matt, Curt, and Jerry shine the trauma-informed lens on current events. The trauma in the news over the last months include sexual harassment, threats of nuclear war, political instability, military deaths, child sexual assault, natural disasters, and mass shooting. It is difficult for anyone to avoid being affected by all these traumas.

Triggers occur when something in the present brings back conscious or unconscious memories of past trauma. For some, these memories elicit extreme emotional state and behaviors termed retraumatization. In this podcast, we explore the science behind these phenomena and how our current news environment puts us all at risk and poses an especially tricky challenge to those with traumatic pasts.

In Episode 7, Matt, Curt, and Jerry examine the effects of childhood trauma on brain development. This examination begins with an introduction to the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study. This study redefined how we thought about risk factors and the lifelong impacts of ACES on all areas of health – behavioral health, brain health, physical health, and overall well-being. Building on the ACE Study, the podcast takes a deeper dive into the connection between childhood trauma and brain development.

Mollie Hiebert’s music therapy site: 6beet.com

Center for Disease Control’s Adverse Childhood Experience Site

In Episode 6, Matt, Curt, and Jerry present a framework that has important implications for answering the all-important question “Why do we do what we do?”  To change a behavior, you must first understand it.  This is where Trauma Informed Care and Applied Behavior Analysis overlap to give us a more integrated understanding. Along with the perspective gained from an understanding of the effects of early childhood adverse experiences on the developing brain, attachment, and the nervous system, functional behavior assessment provides an additional perspective for understanding trauma symptoms.  We call these two perspectives the “two why’s”.

First, traumatic environments cause disrupted attachment, underdeveloped brain structures, and sensitized nervous system which leads to the individual engaging in extreme behavioral and emotional reactions.   These behaviors are extreme coping strategies/ adaptations which help the individual to survive.  Second, our biology has equipped us with the ability to adapt to environmental requirements through the processes of reinforcement and punishment.  These extreme behavioral reactions and the development of extreme coping strategies expose the child to behavioral contingencies that typically developing children may not be in contact with such that the extreme coping strategies are maintained over time by both negative reinforcement (avoidance) and positive reinforcement.

These two “why’s” make us wise.  The complete understanding that they provide will guide treatment and interventions.

Links

Jerry’s Question of the week:  What are those environmental conditions that make it hard for you to stay connected to yourself? When was it hard for you to pause, reflect, and ask the trauma-informed questions about the situation?