Trauma Aware Care

As humans we are extremely adaptive and any response from our being is there because it allowed us to survive in some way. Even the most frightening and unsettling feelings are protective responses that are trying to keep us safe from danger.

Sometimes our system can become overwhelmed and the fight/flight or dissociative responses that emerge don’t have a chance to be completed and the tremendous amount of energy that is mobilized for survival does not get discharged. In these cases, these states can become chronic and feel disruptive and unhelpful.

It can be hard to know what to do or how to support ourselves when we are experiencing big feelings and sensations, or feeling numb and incapacitated. This can be challenging, exhausting, and overwhelming. If this feels resonant for you, you are not alone.

When we look at these responses from a trauma-informed perspective, it might allow us to hold more compassion for ourselves, see the strength in our coping strategies, and tend to...

The healing community teaches and offers grounding practices that are not always trauma-informed.

Often there isn’t much choice. There might not be an awareness of the nervous system. Teachers might employ mindset work and spiritual bypassing techniques in the hopes that folks will power through or transcend their discomfort.

If you are someone who has experienced trauma, you might struggle with these techniques and practices, and without a trauma-informed practitioner, you might internalize the challenges you experience. You might feel like a failure. You might feel hopeless. You might feel like you are doing it wrong when big feelings or sensations come up, when you feel agitated or panicked or trapped and you don’t feel more grounded.

If you have tried meditation, breathing practices, spiritual rituals, earthing, affirmations – and you were promised they would be grounding and bring you peace, and they did not — this is not your fault. You might just not have...

If you feel like you need someone else or something else to feel grounded, you might also feel like you are co-dependent, weak, even needy. In a world where we are told again and again to self heal, to heal alone, to draw solely from our own strength - it can feel vulnerable to need another being as we heal. But part of the truth is that co-regulation is grounding.

When we are with another regulated nervous system, another being who is in their center while attuned to our needs, there is comfort there. Think of a loving friend, your pet, a wonderful therapist or practitioner who holds space alongside you. There is an alchemy in these connections that can soothe our own nervous systems and help us to regulate in times of distress.

Co-regulation can also happen in nature. This is part of the reason that some folx find healing in the woods, by the water, and in the mountains. The earth is a master of regulation, reaching always for equilibrium. We have a lot to learn from that and can be...

In our culture we often think of healing as linear, ascending and as having an end point. This model can often leave us feeling stuck, broken or like we aren’t moving fast enough.

I visualize healing as a many layered and circular process that can occur much more slowly than many would have us believe.

We may find ourselves circling back to things that we thought that we had resolved and feel frustrated because it can feel like we are returning to the beginning.

Yet, we are never going back to the same place we came from. Each time we return there are new resources, a newfound resilience, a shifted perspective and different things that we are feeling and accessing.

Sometimes it will feel like healing is the last thing on our minds, but sometimes that is exactly what is happening beneath the surface. Something is settling or integrating. We are finding our own unique way outside of prescriptive norms or the path that was set out for us.

On the...