Trauma-inform your thinking
Safe, effective, empowering relationships are vital to enhancing resilience and recovery for those affected by trauma.
Trauma can “impact on our connection to ourselves”.[49] We can start to view things as our fault or feel we are deserving of bad things. It can also impact on outward connections, making us feel that we do not deserve these either, particularly if past relationships have been unhealthy or untrustworthy.
Trauma is an important consideration when talking to anyone about their experiences, and in caring for yourself too.
If we have suffered trauma in our life, we will be at higher risk of further poor mental health and physical health problems. We might struggle to learn, have trouble in our relationships, come into contact with the criminal justice system, be at risk of further harm, and health harming behaviours. This is because, due to trauma, we might have difficulty in regulating emotions, we may have risky strategies for managing stress, and we may face difficulties in relationships with others. All these things have a detrimental effect on mental and physical health, as well as sometimes in our social lives.[50]
This is made worse if we suffer inequality due to being LGBTI, such as health care inequalities, minority stress or discrimination, or if these inequalities have contributed to our trauma in the first place.
- What is trauma-informed practice?
- This practice recognises why someone may adopt certain behaviours or have distrust towards others, to external connections or to public services. It sees these are coping mechanisms, and normal reactions to ‘abnormal circumstances’, focusing on ‘what has happened’ to a person, not “what is wrong” with that person.
NHS Scotland[52] hope to implement trauma-informed practice across the country. Many who read this will be doing so not because of where they work, but because they want to better support others in their local communities or in their personal lives. So, we have taken some of the principles of this framework and considered how we might approach our own or another’s experience at a given moment if hoping to provide support. Perhaps this can allow for a bit of trauma-informed thinking.
This is at a very basic level and we have adapted it slightly to fit the context of these resources – learn more about the National Trauma Training Framework and Trauma Informed Practice in a professional capacity.
Trauma is very common, and it can have a wide range of impacts on an individual. Trauma-informed thinking might prioritise:
- Recognising that people are affected by trauma and adversity
- Recognising inequality faced by people who are LGBTI
- Recognising the unique lived experience of individuals
- Recognising a need for wellbeing in all aspects of life
- Responding to others in a way that might prevent further harm
- Responding safely by signposting to equalities-competent interventions for recovery
- Considering access, and the barriers that someone may have faced in accessing the things that could have helped them to have an emotionally and physically healthy life.
Trauma-informed thinking would consider:
- Choice
- Collaboration
- Trust
- Empowerment
Footnotes
- Herman, J. (1994) Trauma and Recovery, London: Rivers Oram Press :133 (Return to reference [48])
- PEER2PEER Project Partners (2015) Peer2Peer Vocational Training Course. [Accessed 08/05/2021] (Return to reference [49])
- ‘Transforming Psychological Trauma: A Knowledge and Skills Framework for the Scottish Workforce’ (PDF). [Accessed 08/05/2021] (Return to reference [50])
- PEER2PEER Project Partners (2015) Peer2Peer Vocational Training Course. [Accessed 08/05/2021] (Return to reference [51])
- NHS Scotland ‘National Trauma Transformation Programme’. [Accessed 08/05/2021] (Return to reference [52])
