5 Reasons to Prioritize Trauma-Informed Care
If we know how pervasive and insidious trauma is, then why wouldn't we want to ensure we are utilizing an approach that minimizes harm as much as possible? If we know that trauma is our bodies doing exactly what they are meant to do to keep us safe, then why wouldn't we utilize an approach that reconnects us back to our sense of safety and care? In today's episode, Katie is sharing five reasons why we need to prioritize trauma-informed care. These reasons are helpful reminders for us to reenergize our commitment to showing up in this practice. Whatever your why is for doing this work, this podcast episode is a gentle reminder we are not in this alone.
People/Things Mentioned In This Episode:
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Hi everyone and welcome back to A Trauma-Informed Future podcast. I'm your host Katie Kurtz. Welcome to season three, welcome to 2024. If you are listening in the current times, if not, if you're listening back. This is when season three is beginning. It's January of 2024. And I don't know about you, but this feels like the longest year ever.
And it's only I'm recording this. In week 2nd of January. That's where we're at.
I'm delighted to be back and I'm excited to welcome you into season three. We have some amazing guests and conversations and twists and turns and things to go deeper in and questions to sit with in this new season.
And so if you're new here welcome! I always like to remind folks at the first four episodes of this podcast are really helpful in creating shared language and understanding. So if trauma is new to you or if trauma-informed care is new to you, it's a great place to start. Or if you're somebody who's coming into this space and these are not new things- I still encourage you to start there because I definitely talk about trauma informed care a little differently than the traditional model.
I'm actually going to have an episode this season to talk a little more about why I don't teach the SAMHSA model, which is the most known kind of trauma-informed care model. I don't have anything against it. There's no shade or anything like that. I just share a little bit more about the integrative model I teach and why.
And so we'll have an episode on that this season, something to look forward to. And again, those first four episodes just help us create your language, understanding it introduces you to me. I always think it's helpful to get to know who is holding this space. And again, there's some incredible conversations in seasons, one and two that are great to check out.
So please be sure to do today's episode is going to be a little shorter and sweet just to help us set up the space for this new season, this new year and something I've been sitting with is again, this question of what does a trauma informed future look like?
And when I talk about creating or co-creating, cause it's not just me, it's all of us. A trauma-informed future is not a future way off in the distance. The future is happening right now. Every act of step, every intentional. Meaningful interaction. Is this act of creation of the future we desire, which is trauma-informed and that encompasses so many things.
So I've been sitting with looking out at the landscape of 2024 after 2023 and looking at, the last few years of living in the historical trauma of a pandemic with compounded stressors and traumas within that. And I wanted to focus today on five reasons why we need to prioritize trauma informed care in 2024. And let me tell you, it was really hard to pick five.
But I wanted to for simplicity purposes, focus on just these five things. With always knowing the nuance here, that there are many more. And there is no hierarchy in this, but I wanted to just highlight five reasons. And again, if you're new to trauma-informed care, If you're dancing on the edge of uncertainty of whether you want to adopt this approach or not, or you've been in it for a while, maybe a way to reaffirm realign and strengthened your approach in this new year. So I wanted to go over these five reasons. And why it's so imperative.
And I feel like over the years, I have been invited to talk about the importance of trauma informed care, especially when the pandemic happened, this hyperbolic kind of statement of it's “now more than ever” It's so important. And it's hard for me not to say ‘now more than ever’. But then another thing happens and then I feel like Ugh, now more than ever, and then another historical trauma or collective trauma happens or something in my own backyard or in my life.
And I'm reminded. My goodness, we need this so badly. And I want to emphasize that. If you hold values. That are important to you, such as integrity and compassion or kindness. If you hold values of trust and honesty and safety, if you hold values of community and care and connection, then trauma informed care is the comprehensive unifying approach that brings all of these things together to lead those values out loud.
And guest in season one, Crystal Whiteaker talk to us about values don't matter unless we are demonstrating them. We can say all the wonderful words or circle all the words on a list and say, this is what we value, but if we're not demonstrating those values, then we're going to fall short values are meant to be let out loud. They're meant to be actionable. They're meant to be demonstrated. And so if you hold these types of values, then trauma-informed care is not creating another thing for you to do. It's actually only going to amplify and support you. In demonstrating and leading those values out loud. And unifies you and connects you to other people in community who are doing it as well. And there are so many benefits to trauma-informed care.
And this podcast really is meant to highlight those many different benefits and outcomes and, return on investment, even if you will. But there are so many things that come from this approach and so today I really just wanted to focus on a few different reasons why it's so important for us to prioritize trauma informed care this year. And again, whether it's new to you or you've been doing this awhile to reaffirm realign, recommit, strengthen whatever it may be.
So let's dive in.
So the first reason is to remind us that everyone, every single person on this planet is impacted by trauma. Whether it is individually, collectively and or systemically trauma is a reality of our humanity. And we know that even if we don't self identify or know, or have even experienced trauma, which is very unlikely, we know, and research has shown us in population studies have shown us that virtually everybody on this planet has a lived experience of trauma or will have a lived experience of trauma.
And we live in systems. We exist in social systems. So there are collective and systemic trauma occurring around us. So it's no longer, this very narrow definition that so many people are still functioning with even still functioning within health and human services. That trauma are these just really shock events -war or, injury or violence like yes, those things can create and cause trauma, but it's so much more than that.
It's our human response. And again, I refer you back to the first four episodes where we really dig into this, but if we know, and this is a question I sit with. Every day. If we know that virtually everyone, including ourselves has experienced or will experience trauma in their lifetime. Then why wouldn't we inform ourselves of this reality? And it's impact. And then utilize this very accessible approach to help us expand our empathy, to build safer connections with ourselves and others. Trauma informed care is the approach that will help us not just resist future harm.
Although trauma may be a reality of our human experience. It doesn't have to be the destiny or the outcome. And we know that as much as trauma changes our brain and our bodies so does healing. Everyone is impacted by trauma. This is a priority then too. Bring our awareness to this. Be more informed on it and expand our understanding so we can expand our empathy.
The second reason is that trauma-informed skills are applicable to any professional role or industry. If you're not familiar I sit at the intersection of every industry, I've trained across so many different industries, so many different professions, and I teach the same trauma informed training to every single person, no matter what their profession is, whether they are all lawyer or a judge or a doctor or a surgeon, social worker or a nurse, a teacher, copywriter, corporate C-suite leader, a journalist, hairdresser, whoever you are, you get the same training. Now I teach a specific framework called integrative trauma informed care where I am teaching you the same thing, but then you're applying it to your scope of practice, which is your professional boundaries. So obviously know someone who is in a hair salon is going to be different then a nurse or somebody who is a photographer. It's going to be different than a lawyer. But it's the same skills.
It's applying it within your scope of practice and those skills. The skills we're talking about our relationship building. Communications. Critical thinking decision-making self-awareness problem solving. These are all essential leadership skills. They're talked about all the time.
I don't know if you're on LinkedIn. I am. I really recommitted myself to LinkedIn last year, I really avoided it. But really that's where the party is and I'm loving it over there. But if you take a moment or even Google search, like leadership skills, all of these different buzz words are going to come up emotional intelligence, which is a big one. All of these things are essential skills for leadership and not just leadership, those few people at the top, but all of us leading our lives, all of us who have values and desire to lead those values out loud. When we adopt a trauma informed lens, these skills are not only strengthened, but everyone benefits from them, including ourselves.
And I think it's always important to remember that relationship building skills, communication skills, self-awareness those things just don't live at work. They live when we go home in our own. Relationships in our communities, et cetera. So these trauma-informed care skills are applicable to how we lead our lives, not just professionally, but personally as well. It is so common for me to walk away from a training and hear back from participants and say, I came to this training for professional development reasons. I had no idea it would impact my marriage, my partnership, my parenting, my relationship with friends and family. It's because we can't compartmentalize these skills.
When we look and develop a lens of empathy and understanding for our human experience. It's not meant to just exist at work. It's meant to seep into all areas of our lives. And that takes time of course it takes practice like anything. But what incredible benefits can come from that.
The third reason is something I've touched upon already, which is a creates more empathy, more understanding and more connection. We need connection as much as the air, we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat and now again, now more than ever we're seeing divides. We're seeing dehumanization. We're seeing marginalization. We're seeing more and more rupture and distrust and burnout within our individual communities, our families, our workplaces, but then in a broader scale, a more collective sale where we're seeing political conflict, we're seeing human rights, violations, war, and violence. So many things being played out and because we're seeing them on our screens every day. We're becoming more and more disconnected to our shared humanity.
Trauma informed care helps us build relationships, not divide them.
It helps us become more effective and communications rather than shutting them down. It helps us build our capacity to be wit our humanity, it builds our emotional capacity so that we can better understand our emotions and our feelings, and then feel safe to express them. It builds our capacity to be with difference, to be with nuance, to be with discomfort.
It builds our capacity. To be with the difficulties and the edges and the harshness. That occurs in our humanity. It also builds our capacity to be with what's possible with healing in all its forms. This approach is essentially a bridge back to connection. Trauma-informed care is a reconnection back to ourselves, back to our humanity. And empathy is not something we're born with. It's something we learn and we learn it through modeling and mirroring, and it's a skill that we have to nurture, and it's not just having empathy. It's about also having compassion. And boundaries. And all of these things that better help us connect to ourselves and to each other.
The fourth reason is that it improves longer health and wellbeing outcomes. There's a lot here when it comes to the impact of trauma on our health and wellbeing. As well as I always like to make sure we're looking at both sides here. I believe we can't be trauma-informed without being healing informed.
So as much as trauma can change our biology our genes, all of those things. So can healing. So when we look at the long-term outcomes of trauma, it's also important to look at the long-term outcomes of healing. And when I say healing, I'm talking about healing and all its forms, not just healing in intensive therapy or treatment or recovery, but healing in all the other ways.
We access regulation, our nervous systems and safety in our nervous systems and bodies through nature, through dance, through art, through expression, through safe and healthy relationships, et cetera. . When we look at trauma informed care, when we actively apply it in different spaces, when we're able to receive trauma informed care. It will have an impact on our health and wellbeing because when we have safe, healthy, nurturing relationships, whether that's in our families of origin or chosen families in our communities and our faith communities in our healthcare systems. In our school systems. In our places in which we just, learn exist, socialize, et cetera, in our political systems. Then we're able to access a sense of safety, which means we're more likely to have trust exists, which means open communications and better, stronger relationships, and the ability to self-express safely and critically think and problem solve in ways that gets shut down when we don't feel safe.
When we aren't able to access a felt sense of safety in those spaces. And this takes time. There's not, it's not oh, you adopt trauma-informed care and then everything gets better. If that were the case, we wouldn't be here. That's why this commitment to leading our values out loud to co-creating a trauma-informed future is so important. And , it's also so key and I'm going to have an episode on this season is that trauma informed care applies to us. We have to ensure we are included in this approach because when we are focused on our own healing, And our own health and wellbeing that impacts the health and wellbeing of the communities we exist in. And again, this is the emphasis on the bidirectionality of this approach.
And lastly the last reason is the collective social impact that trauma informed care has the collective social impact.
The trauma informed care has again in our smaller micro individual lives, but in the collective around us. We are humans and we exist in systems. We exist in all sorts of social contexts. We have our family systems, our home systems, our community systems, such as our neighborhoods. Our schools. Our political or government systems are health systems. Our faith systems.
If that is something that you engage in recovery systems, we have social systems, et cetera. We exist in all of these constellations of community. So again, when we ourselves, we don't live in a vacuum, we don't live in isolation nor should we. So when we individually adopt a trauma informed approach and we are. Leading it out loud with others and towards ourselves that has a ripple effect. We're modeling and mirroring this for other people and you never know. Who you may impact or who may feel that and realize I never knew. That this could sound that way, or this could happen that way trauma-informed care aids us in our collective responsibility. To understand the impact of trauma, this reality of our humanity. And to take an active social responsibility to be a part of resisting, further harm. It's this nuance of understanding that yes, we may not be able to eradicate trauma from our human existence. However we can actively resist and reduce the likelihood of harm and we can increase access to safer spaces to exist in and healing.
And so this one is so key and this one's hard because in our culture, especially in American culture, there's this individual stoicism of just getting by on your own or just looking out for yourself. And not for the collective. And this is where mutual aid and community care is so essential in that it's not just us.
And when we focus on ourselves and others, we all benefit. And we have a social responsibility. As people who have our values driven and who lead with a trauma informed lens. That responsibility has collective social impact. And if you're trauma informed or you self-identify as trauma informed, whether you're a trauma informed copywriter or marketer or business or massage therapist or doula, whatever you may be. This is social impact work because when we're providing this kind of approach or our work within this approach, it has an impact on the socialization. Of the other person, the social systems, the social contacts, the relationship, the connection.
There are so many reasons why we need to prioritize trauma informed care. And I don't know about you, but this heaviness of the last year, and going into an election year and seeing so much violence and disruption and dehumanization around us. It can feel so heavy and collective exhaustion and fatigue and trauma and from care can help revitalize it can help re-energize it can help us reconnect. And if anything. This is a practice of reconnection. It's a reconnection back to ourselves, to our humanity, to our healing, to our collective purpose, to our social impact. And it is a bridge. It's a bridge back to ourselves to that humanity affirming practice of listening and honoring and.
Acknowledging and holding space for. So I wanted to leave those reasons with you. I'd love to hear what other reasons you have, feel free to share them. You can leave them in the comments. You can email me hello@katie-kurtz.com. I share them on Instagram, where I have this posted. I would love to hear from you.
I'd love to hear from you. What is your why do you believe in this work? What is your reason for showing up I've shared? Again, back in those first four episodes, my reason and why I so strongly believe in this, in my reasons for prioritizing trauma-informed care in my life and committing to embodying this practice is both personal and collective and it's affirmed every single day.
When I utilize this approach with others now. Again, I'm the first to say I am not a hundred percent trauma informed all the time. We can't be. There's no perfection here. Perfection isn't real. It's not possible, but we can strive to prioritize it. And we can be real with ourselves that it's not going to be perfect and release that expectation because it's not real as a Virgo and recovering perfectionists.
That's a hard one to let go of. But it's the reality. And so we come back again and again, it's that practice piece. That's so key.
I'm grateful to be sharing the space with you. I'm so grateful to be in conversation with you. I'm so grateful that you listen and that you're sharing it. These conversations with other people, I am very excited to share with you some incredible humans. On season three and to also go deeper into some of these topics and wade in the waters of nuance that occur come with talking about our humanity in this way.
And also my commitment to sharing practical ways we can integrate trauma. And from our everyday lives. But for now, I encourage you to make sure you're subscribed. So you don't miss an episode. Please share this with other people in your life who may benefit. And until our next episode, take good care.
