The Social Impact of Vetting with Julie Johnson
How do we create a trauma-informed future if we don’t know who to trust or better yet, know how to trust ourselves? In today’s episode, I am delighted to be in conversation with my colleague and trauma-informed trail blazer, Julie Johnson. Julie is the co-founder of the Integrate Network, a Learning & UX Designer and one of my favorite humans to co-create a trauma-informed vision with. Julie shares not just why but how vetting is an essential practice for creating social impact and reducing harm systematically. We discuss the benefits of learning how to self-vet as a way to lay the groundwork for harm reduction and to build a more structured vetting process for trauma-informed leadership to thrive. This is a must listen for anyone who wants to play an active role in creating a trauma-informed future.
Learn more about Julie:
Julie Johnson (she/her) is the co-founder and learning experience designer at Integrate Trauma Informed Network, an LLC Micro-business Community. Julie is passionate about community work and skill development in human-centered communication and trauma-informed decision-making skills.
As a survivor and trauma-informed yoga teacher, Julie co-founded an adaptive yoga program in Ferguson, MO—her aim is to provide trauma healing resources and interdisciplinary training to survivors and care providers. Julie also completed Reiki training and co-wrote a Reiki for Trauma and Grief Care course. As the Director of Community Learning, Julie is dedicated to expanding her reach in promoting trauma-informed that presents a social impact.
Connect with Julie:
Website: www.letsintegrate.org and www.juliejohnson101.com
Email: integratenetwork@gmail.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/integrate_network
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Hi everyone, and welcome to a Trauma Informed Future podcast. I'm your host Katie Kurtz. I'm so delighted today to be in conversation with someone I truly admire, an incredible human, and someone who is a trailblazer in creating a trauma informed future, Julie Johnson. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.
Julie Johnson (she/her): Yeah, so glad to be here. I always love talking to you about this stuff, so it's great to be here.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, I do too, and I have no doubt this conversation will be full of so many good nuggets and takeaways and just things to consider. And I'm sure, as I say this with so many people, but especially with you this is just the beginning of so many conversations.
And I so appreciate being able to have a platform like this. Because, as we both know, there's so much nuance and layers and complexities to trauma and trauma informed care and healing and all the things. So to be able to talk it out and to be in conversation humanizes it and just, it makes things flow so much easier and it gives so much more context.
So I'm really grateful you're here and I'm just curious how you're arriving here today.
Julie Johnson (she/her): I'm arriving pretty good. It's a pretty big week. We got a lot going on this week as a just as a platform for Integrate, but I actually feel very grounded today. So that's good. I've been drinking lots of tea and doing lots of things that I do before I have a big thing. So I think that's why I'm almost 100 percent sure that's why.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love that, especially in a very eclipsing week. I love that you're showing up grounded. And hopefully we can all access a little of that this week. Yeah. So I , shared your formal introduction, but I would love for you to just introduce yourself in your own words to everyone today.
Julie Johnson (she/her): Yeah. My introduction to trauma informed care, of course, was through my own history and healing. And , I started out, needing a trauma therapist as I was circling through my own healing from sexual trauma and sexual assault and and childhood trauma.
And, I remember reading, I know there's lots of things about this book that aren't great, but we had to start somewhere. The 'Body Keeps the Score'. We had to start somewhere, and that's where I started. Many of us did. But I read The Body Keeps a Score, and I was like, that's like what I need and I was , seeing a therapist who was doing mostly talk therapy with me, and I was reading about this body bottom up or body based psychotherapy, I'm in yoga, , I've done dance, I've done lots of things my whole life, and I was like, yeah, that's what I need.
How do I go find that person? I don't know. Where do I go find that person? And I think I was asking a lot of the questions that a lot of us are asking these days, and I ended up having to like dig deep. And we had a lot of people, we did actually have a lot of people in St. Louis where I live because we're in a big university town. We actually did have a lot of people that have made that switch from just talk therapy to more body based stuff, so I didn't actually have to go very far. And I did find a therapist who was really helpful for me in those initial really deep trauma healing.
And then I was like, now I need a chiropractor. Now I need this person and now I need that. And anyway, and so it started with me. And then I, at the time I was working pretty heavily in education and I was like, now my job needs it. And like all the things. So it started with me and it like became like a whole system, which is usually how these things work. Yes. And so we built a system.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I would love for you, if you're okay with it, to share a little bit about. Integrate and just what exactly it is and , where you are at and where you're going with it because you're on the precipice of such an incredible horizon of not just growth, but all the things like just in the last few months, the amount of people talking about trauma informed care and the many things you're leading with in it, I'm really excited for people to know more about and get clarity around and also just the processes you're leading within this movement towards a trauma informed future. So yeah, tell us a little bit about Integrate, what it is, what it entails, like what you all do and even like where it came from.
Julie Johnson (she/her): This iteration, it's in it's fourth. It's, we've had lots of forms. , if you followed us for, that's what I love about this community is a lot of you all have followed us for almost a decade and it's just wonderful you all are still with us. I'm so grateful for all of you. Anyway, we've had lots of different iterations of self, which is also mirrors life Integrate is a mirror of our humanity. So Integrate is what we call a community of practice, which is based off of Emily Wheeler's Tacit Model.
This isn't based in Agile, like business based stuff, but it actually works really well for trauma informed care because it's flexible. , so the whole idea of a community of practice, I also call it like a lab really? It's like a lab, meaning we're going to be practicing these skills in a way, by the way, my background is in learning experience design.
I didn't put that because I put my personal story first. My background is in instructional design and learning experience design and accessibility. So everything has a growth lens or a skills lens to it. It, so right now we're a community of practice or a community, lab of trauma informed skills.
But all that means is everyone's in a process and no one is mastered, no one is the most trauma informed. There's some of us that have been at it for a long time, but we're all in practice, right? So we call it a community of practice. And we have these central skills that we are practicing, which we have put through as human centered communication skills and decision making skills.
And those are like the core. So whether you are a yoga teacher or a social worker, or you're working in you, because we have these people now UX design, you will be working through these two skills. All the time. And so that is really what we're practicing is human centered communication and how do we make decisions within our scopes of practice, right?
So that's where we are now. And then we're like, okay who is doing that? We have a vetting process for that, okay, which is like a another layer to our practice. Our vetting process is for our SMEs that want to grow in that skill, but they have to have a common baseline.
So the people coming into our community are vetted and, we've always had a vetting process. We're just really loud about it right now. And that's a good thing. That's a good thing because usually vetting processes are almost like they're underground. They're almost like, shh.
And we're like, why not tell people they're going to be vetted? Let's just get a little bit louder about it. And and we're saying, you're going to come in, we're going to be assessing you. We're not saying you have to be perfect, but you do have to have a baseline in order to be what we call net affected in a community.
Whereas we're going to come in with at least a baseline of these core skills, , within trauma informed decision making communication skills. And then once you're in there, Then you have all these people we can work with, we can create content, we can put you in a mastermind group based off of something you're interested in, you can customize your journey inside of it.
Now if you're like, okay, I don't have those skills, we have courses you can take, we have, this is building, but right now we have a couple of courses you can take, we have one in process. Even if you're like, okay, I have five years of, experience, and I want to come in. And I want to see if I can pass it and you don't, that's okay. We have multiple ways you can access it, whether it's one of our courses or someone else's. So there's ways that we can make it so you can learn. But yeah, it's really cool. So that's like our. core things right now, vetting, human centered communication, and decision making. If that's the only thing you took away from what I just said, those three things.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): All right, so SME is a subject matter expert, SME, and I am really honored to be a part of, it's been such a gift to be in a community of practice with this work and something people hear me talk about a lot is we can't just say we're trauma informed we have to be it. I'm not going to lie when I first heard you start to talk about vetting. I got a little like. Like a little cringy, because when we often, like you said, think of vetting, we think of it from a very not transparent process, and something that often creates a lot of exclusion rather than inclusion, and something I've really learned from you throughout this process of not just witnessing you create it and put it up but also be a part of it is that it's actually quite inclusive and it creates, some standards in which we can collectively adhere to because we, again, like trauma informed care, there's no perfection or arrival. It's an evolution and it also, though, takes practice. It takes us time and effort to commit to it.
And I think having that kind of vetting process that you're putting into place really allows for that and also allows us to self assess our strengths and areas that need strengthening. So I'm curious, can you talk a little bit more about that for anyone who might be hearing vetting and getting that little Oh, what is that?
Because I know it is a really hot topic right now and you're getting a lot of exposure and a lot of people noticing that. And I think especially when we think of trauma informed care, we might not always think about vetting. And I think for a trauma informed future, again, a conversation I'm in almost every day, I had it this morning again, is people, especially where this Approach started and health and human services it's still not a standard of care. People are just saying the words and they're not actually aligning with their actions or practices and we need it to be actionable. And so I'm curious if you don't mind sharing a little more detail about what that might include or how you came about even choosing that process.
Julie Johnson (she/her): I know, so I want to call in Molly Boeder Harris, who helped implement that, who helped lay the seeds for me to start putting my very , analytical curriculum development and L& D brain around it, which nobody wants to go deep into that, but I do want to honor Molly's thought leadership on this first.
And so I remember as going back to my story about being like a trauma survivor. And I was like, I remember listening to Molly. Was like, "that's really cool". And I loved that she had that. And so we ended up doing so Integrate itself, ended up just having an application process at the beginning and the whole idea of vetting, as I was looking at Molly's stuff and I was looking at how we were going to build one, which we've had three versions we are on version three at the moment.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): An evolution, right? It's all an evolution.
Julie Johnson (she/her): That's why it's called a community of practice. Absolutely. For me it was about harm reduction, and because really what it comes down to is yes, standards of care, but really we're also for me is like in the trauma survivor brain, I'm looking at what practices are involved in helping to identify and reduce harm. And how do we screen for if you are more prone to harm, and how do I do that for myself? This is all stuff I have done within myself and how, when I'm interviewing a therapist, what are the red flags for me that this is not a match, and So that's what ended up laying the groundwork for that is harm reduction for myself. And now it's like more like how do we do extra, harm reduction like as a system. And I think that For as far as like vetting and where it gets a little bit a little cringy is we're used to it from the hiring process and we're used to it from the inequity that we see in the hiring process, right?
But really and that's just going to happen systematically. But the cool thing about the way do we do it here is how do we do it with accommodation and rigor? Because that's what we're balancing is accommodation and rigor. I have an ADHD diagnosis, and I have, some other, I guess CPTSD is considered neurodivergent.
So yeah, so I have that too. And, but at the same time, I also need to have my skills challenge, and so I think I like this sort of inclusive vetting process because we can say, yes. We might need these accommodations, but we can also still give ourselves a rigor.
We can also still offer, give that opportunity to grow and offer rigor with accommodations in place, right? So in what this is, in our third iteration of our vetting process, we have people can talk it out, they can video themselves out, they can write it. If there's an opportunity to draw, and I can translate it, like that's fine too.
It's like interpretive dance it so we can figure it. No, that's fine. But that's like meeting those two That's like the key to making it sure it's equitable. Is that accommodation with rigor?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love that and I think that's such a helpful way of looking at it and It's just another prime example of how, again, we need to move beyond or dispel these myths that trauma informed care is a clinical approach, and it's only reserved for clinical settings, which you and I both know, first and foremost, it's not even happening in all the clinical settings,, first so don't assume that, and also, This is so applicable to all spaces, whether it's caregiving in any kind, if you're giving care to someone in some way, it's applicable if you're providing any human centered services, which is pretty broad, and It also is a really great example of what trauma informed care looks like in action, right?
You're not creating a restrictive or constrictive space, you're creating structure with flexibility and adaptability in it. And I think that's another common thing I hear is that trauma informed care, it's just loosey goosey, everyone all over the place, a million choices, everyone does what they want.
No, we can still have... structure. We know actually structure's incredibly supportive to our nervous systems and for co regulation and it's just like a necessity in things with still maintaining inclusion and equity and flexibility and accommodations with allowing for accessibility. All those things are possible.
I think about what would this kind of process look if it were placed within hiring processes or in other settings where, it could greatly. It's there's so many possibilities with it.
Julie Johnson (she/her): Yeah, absolutely. And I'm definitely not, I'm versed a little bit because I work with HR people, so I can do a little bit of HR but not like I can't play one on TV.
Not fluent. Yeah. I'm not fluent in HR.. But I think the thing when we start looking at in like the hiring is that is the accommodation and how kids so because what happens in accommodation in the work world is when people just don't say anything, like they just don't say if they need accommodations because of bias and, and all the thing that and the bias between accommodation and rigor is if you have accommodation, you can't take rigor, and I, and I think that I'm going to stick with that just to stay clear but I think that if we had a little bit more of an understanding about how we work accommodation with rigor, regardless of and what our needs were with that, looking at our needs with. Mental health needs in terms of work accommodation or assistive technology accommodation.
I think if we had a better understanding of accommodation, we wouldn't be biased when we start to talk about rigor.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I'm not going to divulge too much of it here, but I went through , the Integrate Vetting process, and I have to say as you are the person that introduced me to subject matter expertise in trauma informed care.
I would never, ever say that about myself. To be real, like imposter syndrome, sure, but also I struggle, and I know we've talked about it, with the word expert. I struggle with it because I think that's always been a term and an identifier for somebody with authority or creating, pedestalling, and I'm A firm belief that I'm always in practice, that I don't perfect this I'm, but I'm in it.
I practice this approach in all areas of my life. My partner has complex PTSD and we live in a trauma informed household. It's a good thing. I love it and believe in it, but I, Really learned from you to embrace that term and that and I really have worked on embracing it because it's redefining that like term expert and it being more of that community practice and I really love the vetting process because it.
Oftentimes when you're in roles, and especially after years and years of experience and moving more into leadership positions,, what's interesting is within leadership of any kind, we often move up, and then we lose community a little bit and I often find Wanting to be in community and especially in this work like it's community work.
We need it to regenerate our capacity and for feedback and peer support. And so Integrate has provided that, with your guidance and within the community. It's been so incredible to have that space to be with where we're all speaking the same language. So it's almost okay, we can be in this work together.
But the vetting process was really Almost, dare I say, fun? It helped me use my skills a little bit, and I really enjoyed being able to move through it, and the options within it also created I love that there was options to talk it out or video or whatever I chose to write, but I really enjoyed looking at the different scenarios and things, and I think that, again, it was A way to challenge myself, but also still be within accountability and honor that there's always room for growth and also always room to honor where the growth you've had and that kind of process honors both things it shows both things of like where how far you've come and where you can continue to grow and learn.
Julie Johnson (she/her): Thank you for sharing that. I know we're building to that in our Slack group. Fihmiya I'm going to put Fihmiya's experience on the spot, but I'm pretty sure we can do that because she's like the bomb. Fihmiya said a very similar thing, right? Cause Fihmiya and you are the first ones to finish it.Go Katie and Fihmiya. Everyone else go, you are awesome too, but like this does give us some meat to work with. But Fihmiya shared a similar experience as a someone that does. community management. She shared a similar experience where she was like, we can't step into other people's shoes.
Those scenario based, by the way, for people that don't speak learning and development scenario based is when you we set out like a specific, very, it's very simple, but like a very fictional situation. And we ask you to make decisions about your scope of practice, how you communicate within that these particular scenarios that Go from how do you work with suicidal ideation amongst someone that is non binary, going, non binary or someone that is going through some sort of process with gender identity. That's just one of them. But we ask you those situations is how would you work with those, with who you are in the world, in your school of practice. And for me, I was just saying that it's, like that I'm going to put it in. She didn't use these words.
But I'm putting these words because your audience listens to, says these things. Empathic witnessing. So this is not Fihmiya words those are the Julie words to yoga people and like mental health people. But she was like, how do I like meet them where they're at? Do the empathic witnessing.
And it just put her in a space where we really had to like, step into what's good for them. and even bypassing my own opinions and really going back into those skills. I had to really focus on my skills and not really focus on an opinion, but this is the person's real experience.
And by the way, Fihmiya is great because she had no concept before of Integrate from trauma informed care. So I love getting her feedback.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love that. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit more about how, so you shared earlier how Integrate really focuses on a community of practice, but really focusing on human centered communications and trauma informed decision making.
Now, typically within the trauma informed world, everyone has their own expression, interpretation of the approach, right? And it usually falls, though, within some sort of proximity to the most formal approach and framework we have, which is that SAMHSA model from, only 15 years ago, but still, and that's it's somewhere around there.
And I have seen, and, I have my own approach to it, which is very aligned. Deciphered it into these two pathways. And I'm curious if you can share with folks who You know we might get on the surface like human centered communications, sure, or like decision making, but what does that actually mean, or what may people expect if they come in contact with Integrate, or maybe desire to join Integrate's community?
Julie Johnson (she/her): Yeah we used to be SAMHSA models. We We all were, right? No, we used to start there. I think our Facebook page actually still has it on there. But when I really started, we really started to look at it what I was seeing was some confusion. So I went from SAMHSA model to okay, but what are we doing?
And especially during COVID, I was like, okay, but what are we doing here? And I so what got us to doing more communicate, being more skill based or behavioral based was a deep dive I did with people that are in, that have no concept. They are like in like an action and aligned actions, but they are like, they're like Fihmiya, they don't know what trauma informed, they're not in the mental health world, they're in tech, but they are really good problem solvers.
And so they will look at information and objectively give me feedback. So I took like actually cut and pasted like different things from Instagram and I showed it to them and I was like what are we doing here I think I gave them some Zabie Yamasaki's and some other stuff like from the brief like people that I love it I'm like but what are we doing here and I asked several individuals that would give me an objective I would say but what are the skills like what are they doing and like when we hear them talk in this very invitational way. What is the thing? And they were like, oh they're talking, so they're communicating in a way that is the most validating to people. Which I thought they loved. They said validating. And I was like, good job. Good job L& D, we did it. And we're very concrete people, so the fact they pulled that out was really cool.
And then the other said making decisions, and I thought that was really interesting. And so there, and across the band, because you are making decisions when you're a yoga teacher and doing trauma informed, you're constantly making decisions. And I think for me what got me to this point to begin with was because I do teach, I'm a Reiki professional and I do trauma and I do human care work.
It's and I'm a body worker. And I used to front with that, but I haven't fronted with it recently, but I do know that from my own experience in that role. And so I think for me. Starting to see conversations like, we don't do happy baby, we do happy baby, we don't do it in this situation, we don't do this.
And it was just like, every time anyone would get on Instagram, it was like, with an opinion, it became a rule. And I was like, no one knows how to make decisions here, because it's all contextual. So I was like, how can we take it out of this kind of, someone will say it on Instagram and therefore it's the rule and like really help people make decisions?
So we need to build up our stamina to make decisions in situations where we have to where people's, to decrease harm, so we can't be like that, so and so person on Instagram said happy baby is bad, I understand why it is a highly risky move, but we also have to understand.
Why we have to make that decision sometimes, or maybe why, I don't know, maybe someone might like it. I don't know, I'm just using that as an example, because that is something I hear all the time in yoga world is, you don't do it because it'll trigger all people. So when I hear that, I'm like, we really need to learn how to make decisions.
Not that there isn't red flags around happy baby and trauma survivors. There is, but we need to understand the why behind it and we need to understand the decision making behind that.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I always tell people, cause it's not uncommon and I'm sure you hear it too, it's Oh, I'm doing that already.I must be trauma informed. It's yeah, but now you know why you're doing it. That's the informed piece. Like, why would you choose to create a yoga class with specific moves or make certain decisions? That's the why behind it. And I agree with you. I am always in that process. I thank goodness for family and friends.
I'm always like, tell me what this means, because sometimes we're in it so much. We speak the language of trauma informed care. Like, when you say things, I'm like, yeah, of course. And then I say this in my personal life, people are like, what are you saying? And it's okay, I need you to translate it into something that everyone else will understand.
And I always think, and what you reminded me of, is I always tell people I'm here to help you build capacity if you need to have the capacity to be able to to offer choices to people in your yoga class, and you need to have the capacity to sit with the nuance because there's a lot of it and what happens is, of course, as humans, we're going to swing to those binaries and those extremes and it's helping people garner the skills to come back to neutral to say, okay, what is the context and how can I make decisions given?
The subjectivity of everything. That alone is people always think, oh, you're, we're digging into trauma so deep. And I was like, not really, actually, it's not even really about the trauma. It's about really building the capacity to be with our humanity and the ebbs and flows of it, given any moment and getting into skillful practice around that.
Julie Johnson (she/her): And I like how you talked about skillful practice because I think that when we see it as like a trauma as a practice, it loses, it's I'm never going to be good. You know what I mean? I think that when we move it into we're practicing it, it's that level of we're all growing through it.
We're all, growing through, some part of it. And that's, what's cool about, the vetting process is you can see like. This is this question felt hard for me. And this question, I actually had a situation like that. So I really that's where scenario based learning can be, is really powerful for trainers.
I think you and I said this in Slack, but it is because that's what you're assessing people on is in these nuanced situations, what do you do? Because that is, and that's what I love about crisis intervention work, because, man, if we could just bring in a little bit more crisis training to a little bit of trauma informed care, I, because that's what it is, that's, how do you make staff decisions when crap's on fire, that's no different than. what we do in any trauma informed situation.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. And crisis 101 work too is to know how not to join in on the crisis to create more crisis. And that's harm reduction everything we do is about reducing harm and then elevating opportunity for safety to be felt.
And there are so many ways to do that. And it's not clear cut, which I know is hard. It's hard for our brains. It's hard for everyone. But when we look at it through these other very human skills, like listening, communicating, pausing, pacing, all these things are things we likely do, or we could be better at doing.
And if we have more cultures in which we can do them within, the better, and I think that's also what you're doing some culture making with Integrate, where we're able to practice what it could be like to be in a trauma informed culture of care.
Julie Johnson (she/her): And I know I was talking about this because I was talking, I've been centering a little bit about this in some of our content last week, but one of the things that I see happening, is we're seeing, more of these cults of personality rise, and I'm seeing more and more of this. And, I, questions I get a lot, I get probably messaged by like personal friends and stuff like that quite a bit. People are like, what do you think of this guy? What do you think of that guy? Do you, what do you think of his content?
But particularly in the context of people you should trust online and follow online. This learning to develop our internal vetting process, is really huge. This is where somatic experiencing, somatic work is the whole thing. It's the part of the beginning of the structure of a vetting system.
We have an external one, but at the end of the day, we need an internal one. We need an internal locus of safety. Think that sometimes when people are talking in these very declarative statements on Instagram in particular I think that sometimes it can, at least for me, I'm going to say from my experience, it can make, put me in this really weird place, especially if I'm not feeling very confident about where I am in life, or if I'm feeling a little, if I'm in a little bit of a transitional space, I'll have this really person saying flowery words or promising things.
And I'll start following them. And all of a sudden, six months later, I'm like, I'll feel really icky. I'm like, what is going on? It's that's your internal vetting process, moving through. And I think the reason I say that is because we need to pay attention to those markers. We need to pay attention to the people that we give money to because Instagram is a grooming space for and so is Facebook. I'm just focusing on Instagram right now, but trust me, Facebook and LinkedIn is too. I'm sure it's on LinkedIn somewhere cause it's everywhere. And, but we need to pay attention to those red flags Especially, as we move into spiritual work, we move into more of those human care spaces.
That internal vetting system, learning to, like, how does it, like, when I'm scrolling, how does this feel in my body when I read these person's words? Am I getting mixed messages from this person? Does this seem contradictory from other things he's said? They've said, whoever. They, he, she. But I just am saying that because I always, I have a huge heart for trauma survivors and while we're here, while we are serving human care providers, a lot of us are trauma survivors at base, and so I always say that because I do see that there's while we need an external vetting process, Dr. Shefali, who I love, says we also need that internal as well. And so I always try to highlight that. I may not talk about it all the time, but it's still important and we still need that internal nervous system space and our vetting process should not take the space of that. That's where you start. is with your own stuff.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Julie, I love that so much. I'm so glad you touched upon that because I think that brings this full circle of why this process is so important because it also mirrors and encourages us to put, center ourselves first in identifying or in the process of identifying safety within, which as trauma survivors is a lot, it can be a lot more sticky and tricky to get there.
Yeah, having lived on Instagram for so long I've shared in the past, like I have fallen prey to, especially within the online business coaching world. It's really hard. It's really, I should say it's very easy to fall into what you think is a relationship online and then purchase things and then discover, oh, my goodness, this is actually quite harmful and it's unfortunate.
And there's a lot of shame that arises when you thought you trusted someone when you thought you were making a good decision. And then that, impacts that internal vetting system. My. Dear friend and mentor Sas Petherick always talks about self belief and self trust and how my inner critic, it comes out, or, all these parts of me, of my self doubt, rose during those things, which impacted my trust of other People and I believe in coaching.
I love coaching as a space to be held in for so many transformative experiences, but just the coaching industry alone, which is a whole other topic. This is rampant. And I think that self vetting to know within where you begin and end and where you know what is important to your values like all these things come into play to help really make those decisions in a way that are aligned for you first and then we can also see that more externally within the processes in which Integrate is really mirroring for us , I sit at the cross section of so many industries and in the more regulated ones, if we think health care, mental health care, sure, we have boards, we have licensure, but like looking unregulated fields like online business, corporate coaching, wellness, spirituality, , it's the Wild West out there. There are no industry standards, let alone any type of vetting processes or practices, and that's where we're seeing these very cult like, straight up cults, let's just name it what it is yeah, happening, and I think what happens, unfortunately, is folks who have complex trauma histories often are under are harmed most by those practices, and people can see vulnerabilities or see trauma and they prey on that, and it's it makes me both sad and ragey and I think that it's hard to be on Instagram when you don't know what's happening or where, what, it feels so surface level sometimes, and I say that with both also knowing how Instagram when you Having created such deep connections with people on the platform as well but even just with the pandemic collective aftermath, although I believe we're still in it and we're seeing is just the impact of that which again could be a whole other podcast episode.
Julie Johnson (she/her): I think what you're speaking to is we're seeing a lot of what we say in I've done a lot of studying of cults, by the way. I've been down the road. Okay. I was like I was like, so if it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, it's because I've been in the road, in there, in different ways. Some other Mostly with just some insects of Christianity in my 20s, so I've been down the road in this, but and I've done some deprogramming around cult thinking, so I think and as someone that's been through that, I'm always you start to see it, you're, like, oh, and and you're, like, and I think for me, what I'm seeing is that makes me feel a little is since the pandemic, more people caught on to the nervous system and I'm seeing more word salad, which just means in like culty, like cult talk is they're going to manipulate you. And so whenever I see things like people say nervous system stuff and and it doesn't, it sounds really Weird. The rise of the nervous system is my new Yellow flag. And that happened during, and I think every time, and it's probably just my algorithm, so I still see these nervous system people come in and all they do is nervous system regulation. That's all they do. And that's great. And we need them. But I saw a rise in it. And and it and, and it makes me a little just a little bit, and I do, they sound legit. I wouldn't know if I didn't have, if I weren't in touch with my own internal vetting process, which I am at the moment.
I go through periods when I'm not. I would probably be falling in because no, and I think that's the thing for me that I think that is the reality is we can all fall into that. We can all fall into those spaces of feeling vulnerable and can be caught into, a little bit of indoctrination.
And I think because we'll all go through that, and I think that's the danger, and that's my sort of red alert right now, you all on the self vetting process, is staying in true with what is that inner wisdom, the strong base within, and when you start really following someone, what is this person saying that's I'm attracted to, what is it, and what does it do for me? And what are the qualifications?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I agree. And I say this a lot is. Because like just yesterday, I was given an ad to become a certified nervous system coach for $39 and I'm like, I'm sorry, just like $200,000 in student loans to be a social worker. And I'm going to be a nervous system coach in six hours for 40 bucks.
Like I just can't like if I sound judgy. It's because I am and I encourage people because I agree. I think we've seen a huge uptick in the adoption of therapeutic language. That word salad is real. The nervous system care language is being [00:35:00] adopted And then trauma and trauma informed care and mental health in general.
And I always encourage people to pause. Just pause first. Slow down. Whatever you're reading, before you hit follow or buy or click, just pause. Ask questions, because I think to your, if we think about vetting, vetting is about asking questions. And listening. And so if we're gonna vet ourselves and have that within ourselves, and also vetting other people.
If we're gonna, Work with people or have people hold space for us or our processes or our art or whatever it is, or therapy or bodies or anything like ask questions and listen and definitely please anyone using anything related to anything therapeutic, whether it's nervous system care, trauma, trauma informed.
Find out how they're qualified to do that. They're learning lineage. How long have they been doing it? Did they just take a $40 class? And no shade maybe it's really good. I don't know. I have a lot of questions about it. And I want to know if somebody is doing a coaching certification on trauma, I want to see their bio and how they've actually come to be somebody who can teach on this.
Because I think that's also something that happens is that people were this old age mentality, especially I've heard it a lot in the coaching and online business world is you only have to be a chapter ahead of somebody to teach it. And I used to believe that. And now I do not. I think that our learned and lived experiences matter, but I also think practice Also is important and building skill and knowing how to teach something.
You should have some backing behind it, especially if we're working with anything as vulnerable as trauma and anything like people's bodies it's important work. So be discerning. And I think discernment's a hard practice. It takes time, and especially if we've had an experience where we have fallen for people that are, have created distrust, or there's a rupture, or a conflict, or something happened, it can be harder to practice discernment. But like you said, I love this idea of internal vetting that helps rebuild it and rebuild that trust within ourselves.
Julie Johnson (she/her): And the cool thing about that is that I've used for myself in these because hi, a reason I know this, I have wisdom around this because I've done it, and I've always been like, I've had that buyer's remorse
I call it the coaching package buyer's remorse. Oh God, so many, and I was like, man I think the thing that helps. bring me back to that is being like, but I have made good decisions for things. Look, this person's my friend, and look, this was my therapist and she was cool.
And this was my chiropractor and he's dope. You know what I mean? I I really I have to roll back and look at the good decisions that I've made to be like, and that's true too, and, but sometimes we because of complex trauma, because what complex trauma does to us, especially if we're in spaces, as I would say, the Holy Trinity is always an attachment wound, a transition in life, and a loss of relationship.
That's my holy grail of, shit could hit the fan, Julie. Just watch what you're doing. And I think that's the thing I've said this in Slack before to you, Katie, too, Understanding our vulnerabilities is also really important. Like I just said, like my therapist had to point that out to me.
She was like let's look at what you're going through. You're going through some estrangement. There's this happening. You're in this transition in motherhood and yeah, you have to understand when you turn on your Instagram that you're going to be vulnerable. And once you know you're vulnerable, you're going to be a little bit more, attentive.
And she was not wrong. I think that's something else that I mean, I've been reading about this recently, but I think really understanding as trauma survivors, that's something we don't talk about very often, but God, I wish I'm talking about it now. But is understanding our vulnerabilities to falling into That, and I think just being aware that, of that, sometimes we don't know, what we don't know.
I didn't know until my therapist told me, I was like, oh my god, she was very correct. But I was like, here's some of the reasons why you would believe that, it makes sense. They're saying these things, all these things, but also because I I tended to abandon myself really quickly.
I would go fall to the next person who was saying something really great that I wanted to believe in, and that's a for some trauma survivors, not everybody, but it can be something we can be impressionable. And I just, I had to identify that within myself. And I could, I can be impressionable and that I just needed to go a little deeper pause and go to that deep space within when I was encountering anybody new.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I think that just brings us full circle into I think that's why having a community of practice is so important in this work, because we can come back to a space where we can build trusting relationships to share these things or get feedback or peer support in a way that helps us grow, to be accountable, to unlearn, relearn, reestablish, with also acknowledging that connection of any kind can be risky, and if we have history of relational trauma, which, to be honest, most trauma is relational in, or in relational context in some ways, that being with or beginning relationships or being in community can be really challenging, if it might take a little longer to build trust or to access a felt sense of safety within a community, and I think that just having a community that acknowledges that reality in and of itself is huge and that's what trauma informed care is, but I think Integrate does a really beautiful job of holding that kind of space and being, inviting people into it, and I think just wrapping up, I'd be curious if you could share a little bit about how people may learn more about, Integrate or perhaps join or be a part of it.
Julie Johnson (she/her): So the best entry point is to, I always say come to our panels. If you go to www.letsintegrate.org, you can see all of our events. I always say come to one of the trauma-informed q and as I go every month. That's one of our practice is that I get on and I'll, sometimes it's a recording, sometimes people get on.
It's depends on the week, on the month. But I get on and I explain these things. I explain vetting, I explain what the. courses at this point in time. And trust me, that's a changing ship all the time. But what it is this week and and it hasn't changed. It will be changing in 2024, but right now it's the same as it was six months ago.
But, I go in and talk about the updates to it every month because that's a practice of staying updated. And heck, the way that this thing is a moving thing, it's a moving target sometimes, we have to have these updates every month, so you can attend one of the trauma informed Q and A's.
I do send out I think I do it the third Saturday of every month. And then we have a human centered communication practice circle. And the whole idea of the practice circle is that you can get an idea of what skills we would be practicing if you decided to go through the vetting process. So you get to see a preview of what we're talking about, I actually run through the entire all the skills and what that is and through a scenario based situation.
So you get to practice the skills that we get to do in vetting, so it is like you do get like a preview. We have panels on a monthly or quarterly ish basis, depending on what's available and who has capacity so we do things on, I think the next one's on co on conscious parenting, and then so we have a lot of our panel, our community panels are coming up, so you can attend those if you're .
If you're ready you would just need to send me an email kind of saying where you are at in your own understanding of things. And that will just help me understand if you would be coming in on our growth path, or if I would assign you to a course you could take right now.
So that's the thing. So you would just need to email me and tell me where you are in your own trauma informed skills. If you're at an entry point or if you're like, I've been in, I've been a, I've been a trauma informed somatic worker for 25 years. Then, okay, there's so we have different pathways depending on what the needs are.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Awesome. And all the links will be shared in the show notes so folks can access that at any time. Julie, this has been so great. I'm very lucky that I am in conversation with you pretty much every day. So it's a delight and I'm grateful to, allow people to either be introduced to you and the work you're leading or just to be in conversation like this.
So I always like to close our time together with a gentle spritz of questions to invite you in too. So if you'll indulge us, if you could describe trauma informed care in one word, what would it be?
Julie Johnson (she/her): Witnessing. When it comes down to it, that's what it is.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. What's your current go to nervous system care practice or tool?
Julie Johnson (she/her): Let's see here. I would say my go to nervous system care. at the moment is herbs. So because I'm in, I'm studying, I'm doing my herbal studies right now for my own thing for my own care at the moment. So I, right now I've been doing lemon balm for nervous system, like it's actually a nervous system herb.
And so I'm really, I've been really excited to just cause it's not the body, it's not yoga, it's a new form of nervous system for me. So I really loved just exploring more of the plant support for the nervous system. It's been new for me.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love it. And what does a trauma informed future look like for you?
Julie Johnson (she/her): For me, cause I'm thinking about that a lot right now. I think for me, a trauma informed future looks like spaces where those of us that are working, whether we're creating systems for humans or we're working With humans for supporting humans. Because we work a little bit on the tech side these days.
Where we have, systems and in place to customize our experiences to offer voice and choice from, whether it's internally or externally in the container, the systems we're in, that we have more of that customization option and we can build more of those internally and externally.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much. Anything else before we close or any anywhere else people can connect with you? I know LinkedIn is a big place where you share so much great information and such a great place to connect with you. But anything else you'd like to share with anyone listening?
Julie Johnson (she/her): We have a substack you can follow us on substack, , it's at least two times a month, so you can, if you want a little slow version of us, because we can be a lot, so it's more of the slow vibe, slow food version of Integrate, you will get all the info, , I would follow our substack, our our Instagram is always here I would say most of our mojo right now is on LinkedIn, but we're on Instagram, we put most of that out there, but most of our mojo right now is is on LinkedIn.
And we have a Facebook group too, which is fun. And we do have a lot of activity with member, like with people that are like trauma survivors and offering resources there. There's a lot of movement there too. So you would just have to get on Facebook and say integrate. And I'm still trying to figure out what we're doing on threads. I don't know yet.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I gave up on threads.
Julie Johnson (she/her): posted anything there in a week, so I was like, I don't think this is doing all right.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I think I'm done. I was like, see you later, everyone. I don't know. Maybe like I'll come back in this. Maybe it's my, like my summer home. I don't know. But it just felt like it.
Julie Johnson (she/her): That's how I felt, too. I was like, I don't really know what we're doing here. I didn't post for a week and a half. But yeah, so LinkedIn, I would say, is the most, and Substack are probably the most. And then our Facebook group is where you can connect with people, ask questions. Do you know of a trauma therapist in Dallas? That's what we get sometimes,
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Awesome. All that'll be included. Thank you so much, Julie, for being here, for being in conversation. I'm so eager to see \where you and Integrate as a whole are headed. Into the future and leading and gathering. I feel like we're all linking arms and skipping ahead into a trauma informed future kind of Wizard of Oz style.I’m excited and thanks so much for being here!
