Trauma-Informed Gun Violence Prevention with Josh Novick
Content Warning (CW): This episode centers the discussion of gun violence and explicit mentions mass shootings. Please be mindful as you listen and provide this content warning when sharing.
I didn’t want to record this episode. And that’s exactly why we did. So let's cut straight to the truth: we need to get real about gun violence. This is an important and timely episode with Josh Novick (he/him) is about gun violence, trauma exposure, and what it actually costs to care inside broken systems. No platitudes. No easy answers. Just the truth—and the choice in front of us. Josh is a nationally recognized leader and advocate for gun violence prevention. Working in education throughout his career, he has been both the responder and the experiencer of the impact of gun violence. It wasn’t until a mass shooting hit his own backyard at the Highland Park Parade Shooting in 2022 that he began to his advocacy journey. This is not a theoretical conversation—it’s a grounded, urgent look at how trauma shows up in classrooms, communities, and bodies, why gun violence is a public health crisis (not a mental illness), and what trauma-informed care actually demands from us. Honest, sharp, and unapologetically human, this episode names the harm, challenges the myths, and calls listeners into action.
Learn more about Josh:
Josh Novick, LCPC, PEL-SC is a nationally recognized therapist, school counselor, speaker, and advocate who combines clinical expertise, lived experience, and unapologetic passion in the fight for safer, more connected schools and communities. He is the founder of Trust and Grow Consulting, where he partners with schools, districts, and community organizations across the country to expand trauma-informed, equity-centered practices that support resilience and recovery.
Josh’s perspective is shaped by his years as a school counselor in North Lawndale on the West Side of Chicago, where he worked alongside students and families navigating systemic inequities, community violence, and extraordinary resilience. His commitment to trauma-informed recovery deepened after the Highland Park Fourth of July parade mass shooting, which impacted his own community and led to his leadership role in creating a temporary Community Counseling Center. In just one week, the center provided immediate relief to more than 3,000 community members with the support of over 650 volunteer therapists, becoming a model for rapid, compassionate crisis response.
An Ambassador with Teachers Unify to End Gun Violence, he is a leading voice on educator wellness and community response after critical incidents, helping schools navigate the aftermath of violence with compassion and clarity. Josh is also a contributing author to A Dog Story: Misty’s Healing Power, a middle grades book and lesson guide that helps classrooms and communities hold courageous conversations about trauma, healing, and resilience.
His work has been featured at national and regional gatherings including the Building Resilient Communities for Children Conference, the Creating Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference, and the Illinois School Counselor Association Conference. Beyond these stages, Josh partners with community organizations such as Lambs Farm, where he supports and learns from adults with developmental disabilities while also finding renewal among the animals who embody unconditional connection and joy. He is also deeply involved with CATCH (Community Action Together for Children’s Health), helping lead conversations on youth mental health and family advocacy. His expertise has been quoted in regional and national articles, extending his impact beyond direct practice and into broader public discourse.
Beyond his professional work, Josh openly shares his recovery journey as a way of breaking stigma around addiction and mental health. He often speaks about how becoming a father reshaped his sense of urgency in building safer, more compassionate communities for the next generation. And whether it is the wisdom of his 11-year-old pitbull Rosie or the comfort he finds among the animals at Lambs Farm, Josh is constantly reminded that healing, joy, and resilience come through connection, not isolation. These personal experiences ground his message that change is possible when we build systems rooted in dignity, compassion, and courage.
Connect with Josh:
Website: https://trustandgrow.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-novick-lcpc-7b653843/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trust-and-grow-consulting/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jnovick24/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trustandgrowconsulting/?hl=en
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Dog-Story-Mistys-Healing-Power/dp/B0FP85S937
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to A Trauma Informed Future podcast. I am your host, Katie Kurtz, and I'm very excited to be joined by Josh Novick today.
And this is a really, important episode one that I have been eager to talk to Josh just to talk to you. But also I think it's sadly and important to continuously talk about the prevalence of violence and the trauma associated with it. And also hopefully give us some things that we can do about it or feel like we can access our power within this.
Without further ado, welcome Josh. So great to have you, so great to connect. I know we talk a lot on all the social media platforms, but I've been eager to have you on the pod, so welcome, welcome.
Josh Novick (he/him): Thank you so much. I am so eager to be here. I love listening to your podcast, the different ecosystems with which you embrace to become a trauma-informed future.
I'm honored to be a guest and yes, we have communicated in lots of different forums, I'm really eager for us to finally meet face [00:01:00] to face and have a nice chat on the record.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, same. I am curious if we can just start like. I, as you mentioned, the podcast really highlights all of these different ways that this approach is being used, right?
How people are practicing it, applying it into all areas and industries. So I'm curious,, do you mind telling us a little about yourself, your own trauma-informed journey, how you got to where you are today?
Josh Novick (he/him): Yeah, I would love to. So I started my career as a social studies teacher and I was from the suburbs of New York City and I really thought when I graduated I was gonna go back and be a social studies teacher in the suburbs, and I really prided myself on my content knowledge and my pedagogy and being a really impactful teacher.
And unfortunately around the time I graduated, it was a pretty bad recession and I had a really hard time finding a job, [00:02:00] and so one of my friends from school reached out to me and said, Hey, I work at this school on the west side of Chicago. It's pretty rough, but we're hiring and I think you'd be a good fit.
And I packed my life into a couple suitcases and moved across the country from New York to Chicago on a whim. Not really knowing at all what I was getting into personally or professionally. And I will share with you fully transparently that when I showed up to start teaching that January in the middle of the school year I was woefully unprepared.
I had all the pedagogy, I had all the content knowledge that I thought I needed to be a successful teacher. I thought I could write great lesson plans. I thought I could connect with students. I thought I was culturally competent for what that meant at the time, 15 years ago.
And so let me just say that all went out the window pretty much day one. I [00:03:00] did not have the language at the time, but I can say now that the students and the staff and myself were all outside of our window of tolerance.
It became my charge as an educator not to teach social studies, curriculum and content that became irrelevant quite frankly. It really became educating our students and myself and staff on how to get closer to within our window of tolerance. And then at the time, what we called soft skills. We have lots of different terms that we would use these days, but you know, one of the programs that my students really enjoyed was soft skills to pay the bills and.
Essentially, if I was to pull out that binder that would be a social emotional learning curriculum that was trauma informed without any of those labels. And so, I very quickly realized that my students, [00:04:00] while I had a great effect in the classroom, I wanted to enact change. And I wanted to be a, better supporter and a more knowledgeable supporter for the things and for the traumas, quite frankly, that I was hearing.
So I decided to go back and pursue my master's in counseling and take every single training and certification in trauma that I could, because without belaboring the point the school that I was working in is in North Lawndale, the west side of Chicago, which was is one of the most economically disenfranchised areas of the city, if not of the country.
And so seeing what students and staff had to walk through, I mean, I had to drive through, which is extremely privileged, but still parking in the parking lot and getting into the building, going through metal detectors, [00:05:00] always being aware of what was going on in our surroundings. Constantly being in lockdown.
It was no surprise looking back that students and staff were outside of their window of tolerance. It would've been quite remarkable to see everyone within that window. And yet. There was teachers, counselors, principals and staff that continued to show up day in and day out to support the students.
And I got to learn and witness the incredible resiliency. That exists within communities and exists within families. And that's really where , my on-ramp to this trauma informed and equity centered journey began. I had to do a lot of unlearning. To do some learning. I had to check a lot of my own biases and still do daily.
And so it was a tremendous learning curve, but it was something where I didn't necessarily [00:06:00] label it trauma informed. It was just the way in which I felt like I could connect with students and the way in which I needed to show up.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love, that. Journey. And you just walking us through that and bringing in that perspective, especially from an education lens.
And I'm curious I have two things, but I wanna start can you just help remind people maybe if they're not familiar or they forget what the window of tolerance is? Yes, of course. 'cause I, of course, I love the way that you frame that and it like, that makes so much sense to me. And sometimes I think, once we tell people what it is, they're like, oh, like it's just another one of those invitations to go deeper in understanding this. But it may not be as familiar. So if you don't mind just sharing like how you talk about it, just to give people kind of an update, that would be great.
Josh Novick (he/him): I would absolutely love to.
Thank you. I love that direction. So here's how I explain window of tolerance to anyone from 10 [00:07:00] years old. Let's say you have a cup of coffee and your morning has been going really well, and you hit all the green lights you did. Your homework is done, your presentation is prepared. You have your nice outfit on.
Your shoes are comfortable and you spill your coffee. Ah, bummer. You go down, walk down the hall, you get some paper towels, and you clean the coffee. Are you thrilled? No. Is it the end of the world? No. You have a lot going on. That coffee was just an unfortunate accident. Next day or maybe next week, let's say you're having a little bit of a more rough morning.
Let's say you hit some red lights. Let's say the daycare drop off was too long. Let's say you got your coffee order wrong, and so you are in a little bit of a different headspace, and then you spill the coffee again. Now it's all. [00:08:00] Expletives, my day is ruined. This wo is me.
This is how my classic Monday morning, this is how my week's gonna be. And it was. The same experience, the same cup of coffee that spilled the week before. And so that is how I describe the window of tolerance in that how we show up to experiences and events influence how they impact us. And so that coffee spill was the same coffee spill.
It was 16 ounces of coffee spilled on a linoleum floor, right? It doesn't change in those scenarios, but the way in which we react and the way in which we respond is drastically different because of the way in our nervous system was at the inception of that event or experience.
And so I always think, thank you for your question. I think that is a pretty good analogy at helping people understand what the window of tolerance is fancy [00:09:00] terminology for
Katie Kurtz (she/her): that is the best explanation I've heard. Truly. Like I think sometimes I'm gonna be really honest, I like to avoid the window of tolerance because sometimes it's so complicated.
To get into that, I just am like, all right, well, I, I'll explain like I dance around it and like it's, it can be really hard. And then I look, I'm like, well, let's see if there's anyone else talking about it. And then I see these visuals and there's more triangles and windows and I'm like, arrows. I'm like, there has to be a simpler way to make this relatable.
'cause in a very extreme traumatic experience, or someone with a cumulative trauma, we can. I can talk about that, but like in an everyday understanding that we all have a window of tolerance. Chef's kiss. That was great. Everyone take note and use that from now on with crediting Josh and that take it example, please.
It's really, really simple, but , it's helpful to understand just how our nervous system [00:10:00] adapts and changes. And it's impacted by all the, the things, right? The environment, the lived experiences, the season of life we're in, et cetera, and the resources we have in the moment. Love that. So simple but so powerful.
And so timely, right? So we're recording this, in the fall of 2025 the year that has felt like 10 in one, one year. And I don't know about you, but my window of tolerance is, is just I feel like a tornado has blown through the window and it's hard to, to find my bearings. So, yeah, that was really helpful.
And I think kind of back to why you were sharing it, how we can see when we're working with young people or anyone, how each person individually, we have to be mindful of that. And that's the essence of trauma-informed care, right? Is like being able to just pause and be mindful that each person has their own window of [00:11:00] tolerance, their own lived experiences, the intersection of identities, and then existing in these systems that impact us so differently.
Thanks for that. I'm, I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about like, where you're at now, like what are you doing? Where has your trauma-informed journey kind of taken you to today?
Josh Novick (he/him): It has taken me to some really interesting places. So I will be as concise as I possibly can be. But ultimately I can't start this journey without sharing that I was dealing with a lot of vicarious trauma as you and the listeners could probably understand, working in this environment .
At one point in time, not for very long, but at one point in time, I was one of the only mental health providers, working at this alternative school, which when you think about it, is so backwards.
It's an alternative school. It should have the most amount of mental health providers. But that's a different podcast altogether. Yeah. And so I had a really hard time, and I'm not, I'm certainly not ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it. I had a really hard time with vicarious [00:12:00] trauma and compartmentalizing and setting up boundaries really, quite frankly.
And so a couple different things happened in COVID. Most importantly for me and most relevant is I got sober. And so when we talk about, my, when I talk about my window of tolerance my sobriety journey plays a tremendous impact on that window of tolerance. And so, I actually found through my sobriety journey that I could no longer in the season of life that I was entering with a young child and a young family continue to support.
The, the schools in the way that I was. And so I stepped away. And I, I quite literally moved to the suburbs. And I thought I was going to be shifting my focus away from gun violence and more into some of the high pressures demands that we see in a affluent neighborhood such as outside of Chicago.
And then gun violence followed me home. And [00:13:00] so I live on the border of two towns, which is Deerfield and Highland Park. And unfortunately, many of your listeners may recognize the town of Highland Park because there was a mass shooting there July 4th, couple years ago. And so it was at that time that some of the administrators from Highland Park High School reached out to me.
I had some relationships at that school for some other reasons. And essentially what they explained was there was no roadmap. They had resources, but they weren't exactly sure how they were going to deploy or in what way. And so I was able to assist the community and the district and we were able to set up a community counseling center that had over 500 volunteer therapists.
And we saw over 1500 community members that came through. And it was truly a transformative experience both [00:14:00] personally and professionally. And I will say that, there were so many amazing clinicians that came out.
But where we live in Deerfield and Highland Park, nobody had gun violence experience because it just wasn't something that was occurring in this bubble yet. We're a train ride away from North Lawndale where I could have pooled 20 therapists together, who all they do is work in gun violence.
So it was a really interesting dynamic to witness as someone like myself who prides themselves on being equity centered and trauma informed. There was just, there was a lot of interesting developments personally and professionally through this experience and so, I could talk about that for a long time, but ultimately what that led me to was back into the school system.
And where it landed me was in a position to provide trauma informed system support [00:15:00] to schools and communities. And that's really where I am today. I'm helping to provide support via trust and grow consulting to schools, colleges, communities. Businesses. I really pride myself on the opportunity to do preventative work to go upstream.
Certainly I do not enjoy or am happy about being called in to do postvention work. And sadly, we are on a very realistic podcast that is something that I am asked to do entirely too frequently.
And so, that is the. Ultimately what I am, I find myself spending a lot of time doing is that balance between trying to spend my efforts in the prevention work.
I work with an organization called Erica's Lighthouse. They provide suicide and depression awareness to high school students. It's tier one for all [00:16:00] students. Everyone should be exposed to it. And that's just something that I firmly believe , in that the more we talk about mental health and the more that we bust the stigma, the less likely it is that schools will have to reach out to someone like me in a postvention situation to help walk them through it.
And so, that's really where I am today. And then I also wanna share one other thing that is coalescing as we speak. I'm a volunteer for a pretty incredible organization called Teachers Unified to End Gun Violence. And essentially that organization is very similar to a Moms Demand Action or an Every town or any of those really prominent gun violence groups.
However, it is geared primarily and specifically for educators. Now, I am not a teacher, I'm a counselor. So it really covers the educator umbrella and through that work with [00:17:00] that organization. Sadly, we have identified a need for a crisis intervention and support team. And so as we speak, Teachers Unified to End Gun Violence is in the process of creating a team and a framework that will help to deploy, not if, but when school shootings occur in order to provide clinical and lived experience. And so I wanna highlight that because I think it's a really interesting initiative that pairs clinicians such as myself, that also have some lived experience with, with individuals who have been directly impacted by school shootings. Whether it be Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, or , U valdi, Sandy Hook. There are a number of representatives on this team, and so it's just really interesting to see the coalition build and it's sad to see the [00:18:00] need for this team , that's existed.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing that, Josh and I really wanna be sure we come back to that. When we wrap up, just to call people forward who may be interested in joining, either as a volunteer or as a teacher or educator, or unfortunately be aware of it as something, this impacts every community.
Especially in the US I have a lot of incredible international listeners. And although we know gun violence hits everywhere across , the world we know it disproportionately is, the number one, killer of children in this country. My husband's a journalist and so every day I hear the breaking news , of another death or injury , to gun violence. And I love your passion around prevention, which, this is a. Public health crisis and in any true public health, crusader out there knows [00:19:00] prevention is so key, yet we always do an abysmal job of funding that and, putting it towards the top.
And it often gets kind of brushed to the side, but there's so much we can, prevention we can do. And I think trauma-informed care is prevention work, right?
Like trauma-informed care is gun violence prevention and intervention it crosses. And so I'm curious, like, if we can talk a little bit about the inherent traumatic nature , of violence, but especially gun violence.
And maybe you can share just a little bit about the scope of this public health crisis. I think it's a crisis on all levels, not just public health, but it's a humanity crisis in our country.
And sadly one that is, we're becoming so desensitized to. But I'm curious if we can just talk a little bit about what's the scope of the problem right now?
What are we looking at? When it comes to this [00:20:00] issue, that's all of our issue. It's not just people in schools. It's not just gun owners or whatever it, this is everybody's problem.
Josh Novick (he/him): Agreed. And I am, as I am preaching to the choir of a trauma informed therapist and systems analyst, when I say we're always supposed to come to things from, benefits from positives, from a strengths analysis. And so that's really challenging at this moment in time because quite frankly, it feels like the scope of the problem is not narrowing.
At this very moment in time and is quite frankly expanding. Which is really unfortunate after a short period of time where we saw some real, tangible gains being made in reduction of gun violence when we were addressing this as a public health crisis, which it is.
But when the government was labeling it as such and addressing the funds and the resources. To these [00:21:00] problems. As such, we were starting to see, and you can look at community violence intervention work. You can look at data on school shootings. You can look at rural versus urban. Any real data sets that you look at, for the most part showed improvement.
The more that we embrace this problem as a public health crisis that needed to be embraced through all of our different channels and ecosystems, like you said, right? It's for doctors, it's our educators, it's our business people. It needs to come from all sectors of our lives.
And so sadly it does seem to be at a stagnation, if not escalation, which is a really scary, scary place to be. And , I agree with you sadly, that it is the ripples are unimaginable and incalculable. I have seen and I have read articles and I've worked with researchers who try to their best [00:22:00] and they're incredible statisticians to quantify the damage of gun violence economically.
And it is so often a guessing game, a highly educated guessing game, but a guessing game because we don't even know how some of those ripples are going to reverberate throughout the future.
And so, you asked, how violence of any kind can be inherently traumatic. I wanna share a very brief story that I think really speaks to some of the inherent traumas and how we're moving into intergenerational trauma with gun violence.
Within recent history, I had the opportunity to be in a school and I was meeting with administrators and all of a sudden on the loudspeaker, what sounded like an administrator I later learned was the principal came on and said, this is not a drill.
This is not a [00:23:00] drill. Lockdown. Lockdown. And so, I was in the room with a couple of administrators. One or two of them left the room and the rest of us locked down, barricaded the door. And I will share with you, it was. About 150 seconds. It was just over two minutes from the announcement of lockdown, lockdown to then the announcement of this was a false alarm, but this was not a drill, so teachers did not know this was coming.
Administrators did not know this was coming. Guest to the building did not know this was coming. And first and foremost, I was incredibly dysregulated. Incredibly dysregulated. For anybody who has been in that scenario, you know how long two and a half minutes is, and if you have had the good privilege and fortune of not being in that scenario, [00:24:00] two and a half minutes sounds really quick, but it is not when your nervous system is in full legitimate fight or flight panic mode.
And so I wanna name number one. I was completely dysregulated. The staff that was in the room with me, which was consisting of social workers and psychiatrists were dysregulated. So now we, now I'm facing the helpers who are, are myself included. Dysregulated. But then we go out into the hallway and my first interaction is with some teachers.
And the teachers seem less dysregulated, not perfect, but significantly less dysregulated than those of us in the mental health field. And here's what's really most striking in what I, what I wanna share with you, Katie.
The kids were not phased. The students. Now granted I'm generalizing, but in in [00:25:00] general, most of the students carried on moving to their next classes.
They expected their teachers to move on with curriculum. They expected the day to move on. They expected to attend their extracurricular events. And we can look at that in a couple different ways, right?
We could look at that to the incredible power of resiliency of our young people that they have to, bounce back from these ridiculous very real intrusions into their school day for fear of their life.
So we can, we can honor that resilience and really embrace that. And we can also acknowledge that, that we are literally watching intergenerational and chronic trauma be encoded into our students as normal, as routine, as something it just happens. And to me [00:26:00] that is really the most frightening place that we can be is where we as a society, if we grow comfortable with these kinds of losses, what does that say about us as a society and as a culture, and us as human beings?
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you so much for sharing that story, and we know violence is the inherently. Violence is traumatic, right? Because it's a threat to safety and anything that is a threat or immediate danger or direct impact of safety is going to create that dysregulation and can have that lasting impact.
There's a few things I wanna talk about. First of all, I think people who have developing brains and bodies typically can access that resilience. And I think schools are one of the most important places where young people can find protective factors that help build the resourcing for resilience.
Yes. But I think [00:27:00] what we do are really. Just bad job at, I'm just gonna say it like we, we do a really bad job at this, and this is something that , I try to do in the work of, like ushering this approach into the future of ushering trauma-informed care in the future, is that we just kind of assume resilience is expected of young people.
That it is like, well, that was really hard, but you, you did it, you, you're fine now. And it's like, are they fine? Or is it exactly what you said is Yeah, they were able to go back to their day, but it's imprinted, it's encoding. It's that it's becoming, imprinted on their genetics that is going to be passed on and it's becoming culturally desensitized and quote unquote normalized.
And also, if we're not resourcing these people, these young people, these teachers, these mental health providers, it's not resilience, it's, there's no resilience if there's no resourcing. [00:28:00] And resourcing in relationship. I always say like, resilience is relational. That is such a harrowing, kind of heavy sigh story.
But it's so real and I appreciate you naming it because those are the conversations. Especially around taking a trauma-informed approach that we need to be having and we need to be looking at. It's not just like, talking about six principles and Right. Calling it a day. Right, right.
Josh Novick (he/him): And, and I don't mean to interrupt, but also acknowledging that the system.
The system is not really designed to support that regulation in that, I'll, I'll take you back to that example. I was done for the day. I will, I will be fully transparent. I packed up my backpack and I went home to go decompress and do some yoga and do the things that I know help me regulate. But not everyone has that ability..
I was a consultant being brought in. If that's the [00:29:00] school that you're employed at, you might not be able to excuse yourself. That might be a situation where. You unfortunately have to either pretend to be back in your window of tolerance or use every single coping strategy you have to just get through the day.
And I think that's what we see more frequently with our teachers and our mental health providers. And so it's that the constant usage of the coping skills and the resources and the the inability to just have a break.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. . I hear so similarly in spaces, whether it's in education or in, treatment facilities, residential treatment, mental health treatment , , that have high acuity of violence or aggressive behaviors or whatever it may be that like, well, somebody has to do this job, we just have to push through, [00:30:00] and there is that.
That armor that is up in that field and like that's where I started as a social worker. Like I started in that never experienced violence, thankfully physical violence in my lifetime till I turned 22 and entered social work. And then was experiencing a lot of it all at once and it was very directly and indirectly traumatic.
But I even saw myself begin to just get used to it to do the job and then like even say like, oh, I love a crisis. Like I'm good. I thrive in crisis and can like run into all of those like burning buildings and riots and things and looking back not, I didn't love that I was doing it to survive and like make it and keep a job during a recession and a new newly fresh graduate.
It's this paradox of like, how do we show up and continue to do the thing while still [00:31:00] disrupting the system that makes us do the thing? And there's so many other layers to this, obviously, like it's, this is not just an individual or individuals committing these acts of violence towards multiple people and, and a system.
This is systemic violence. Because, because policy is at play and policy makers are at play. And I'm curious if you don't mind going there for a minute. 'cause I do have two other questions I wanna ask you. But if you could highlight just how this isn't just a singular.
Thing that's happening, right? There's layers and levels to this that makes us all of our responsibility.
Josh Novick (he/him): Yeah, I, so I, what I like to, I don't like to, but what I unfortunately say is that the gun violence crisis infiltrates all of our other systems. And so, when we think about it, if we don't have effective safe storage and we don't have effective firearm [00:32:00] restraining order laws and background checks and all the things that we know to be scientifically proven to reduce gun violence deaths.
The more gun violence we are going to see and the more we are going to continue to see it show up in different spaces and places. One of the examples that I give when talking about this work is anyone who has been to a hospital recently, depending on the geography of your hospital, you've probably walked through a metal detector if you were going into the emergency room or being wanded.
I'm in my thirties. That is a new and recent development in our hospital systems that is a direct and proportionate response to the gun violence that is permeating around our systems. We see more armed security, we see more security guards in general in all of our spaces. We see more businesses talking [00:33:00] about exits and contingency plans and bringing people like me in for recovery plans.
Right. Just the sheer fact that companies, schools, communities, towns, cities, et cetera, are all putting into their budget crisis response plans. Not for an if, but really for a when. That in and of itself speaks volumes because there's not a taxpayer in America that isn't having some of their money. If not a good portion of their money go towards some of this gun violence ripple effects, whether it be health insurance, housing, education, food instability, right?
Gun violence permeates through all of these, and it's bidirectional. We see that , it is not, gun violence creates these problems or these problems create the gun violence, right? We know [00:34:00] that this is an ecosystem that continues to feed off each other, and most importantly, for I think our listeners, this is not a inner city problem.
This is not a rural problem. There is not a demographic that hasn't been touched by gun violence in America. We've run out. Right. There was a time where, it was fear of white suburban schools , having these shootings. Well, we have, we are far removed from that as being, a hypothetical fear.
We have a hard time finding anyone in the United States regardless of demographic, geography, really economic status that has been isolated from gun violence , and it's really so around us that , it's a lot like we don't even recognize the pool that we're swimming in because [00:35:00] it's just become so ordinary and so, normalized.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I think that's such an important thing to highlight. And again, when I teach trauma-informed care, the model I teach, I always start with shared language and understanding because I think, and perhaps you being in this field may agree that we're still like functioning from a really outdated understanding of trauma.
That it's just these certain things which creates this divide in othering, right? Well, that's just those people and. When we think of these inherently traumatic experiences events or environments that we know are going to cause trauma on individuals and collectives, there's still that, well, that's, that's them, right?
But gun violence in this country has blown that up. And I don't think it's a good thing. But it's been an example of understanding like. It's not just those people or that school or that town or whatever, like this [00:36:00] is our response to events and environments and relationships that cause that response and that type of event is happening everywhere, not just every so often, but multiple times a day.
I'm sure it's hard to keep track of, and, this kind of brings me to two linked questions that I would really love you to speak on and then we can kind of wrap up. 'cause I, and I'm gonna have you back 'cause I have like, so with, so much more , to go into.
But, especially just because you have the expertise around bringing a mental health lens to this crisis. So often what happens is a mass shooting occurs and then we get the trolls and the people in the media saying, well, they have a mental illness. The shooter has a mental illness.
And anyone who's in mental health can quickly say like that most people who have a mental health diagnosis or pervasive mental illness are typically not [00:37:00] the perpetrators of violence, but the victims. Right? And the most insidious nature of violence towards people with mental illness , is obviously death by suicide and how suicide is gun violence.
Myself and my husband are suicide survivors. My husband's mother died by suicide from guns, and that's gun violence, and I don't think we think about that or we talk about that enough. So I'm just curious, like, can you help debunk some or bust some of these myths around this jump to just. Again, other, and blame mental illness.
Obviously mental health is a part of this, right? But we tend to then create the scapegoat and then it ends up just targeting people unfairly who have a diagnosis when we know, that's not the case.
Josh Novick (he/him): Right. Well, I think you, you named a number of really important pieces of information here.
And the first and foremost is that you are absolutely right. [00:38:00] Most individuals with an identified mental health disorder or mental illness are very statistically more prone to be the victim of violence. That being said. I do think it is a problem when we jump to the mental health lens of putting that on gun violence.
Especially from a journalistic standpoint. And I think , there is no more succinct argument than look at any other country if there was even one comparable country. There would be an argument, but we live in a global society where the internet is everywhere. And yes, there are extreme cultural differences that still exist, but there are countries that have very similar , better socioeconomic, worse socioeconomic status, higher education, lower education, all sorts of different factors that are not dealing with this.[00:39:00]
And that includes the use of SSRIs and the use of Tylenol and anything else that you could, think of, right? The difference is the guns. And so I think the most important thing to highlight there is if we look outside of our borders, this is not a global crisis. I'm not saying there is not violence.
No. Please do not hear me say that. There is not gun violence outside of America, however it looks and feels very different and so this idea of the othering it, it's gone. That whether it be unfortunately, and I'm sorry to hear about your family, whether it be death by suicide using a firearm, or it be an accidental shooting because there was no safe storage or one of our, more typical gun violence experiences, which is hearing about a mass shooting or in our [00:40:00] more urban and rural areas, there's a higher level of crime that usually is associated with gun violence as well, and that is by design.
And so the idea of this that's gonna happen there. Is so absurd and outdated. And I don't mean to be trite when I say it, but in a week I will work with some of the most economically disadvantaged areas and I will work with some of the most economically advantaged areas, and we might not be having the exact same conversation.
It's a very similar conversation, and it doesn't matter if students are showing up by foot or by the L or the subway or by Range Rover and Uber, right? Like there are some inherent risks that come with being a student regardless of where your school is. That comes with being a human being in America, regardless of where you are.
And if you are still [00:41:00] hanging onto, that's something that's going to happen in. The other community and not here. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that, that will shatter. And, and it's just a fact of life.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Let's kind of come back to the work you're doing with the Teachers Unified program, because I think that , this is something that at least for the folks listening to this podcast who are committed to co-creating a trauma-informed future, the future we're is now. Right?
There are so many things that are beckoning us to have this be the standard of care. Right?
But I think we're all starting to have this empathy fatigue, this compassion fatigue and , this sense of like, what do we do, right?
Because we know so much of this is dictated by our systems and our policy makers. But that doesn't mean we're powerless. And I think there are [00:42:00] things that we can do to be in action and to orient ourselves to be a part of the, I don't love like always using like solution because that's so binary. And this is such a, when we're working with humanity, it's so nuanced, but like, how can we be a part of addressing this public health crisis?
How do we take a stand? How do we take a role, how do we promote prevention? So I'm curious if you can tell us a little more about that project you're a part of, and then anything else that you can leave people with.
We'll take it. Any little sliver , of hope we can get.
Josh Novick (he/him): Awesome. Well, I'm gonna share with you about the work that Teachers Unified is doing. I think the work that they are doing is absolutely incredible for a number of different reasons. I think they're providing a space for advocacy, for a voice that has not had a seat at the table around a lot of these conversations for a long time.
So you know myself as a counselor, you as a [00:43:00] social worker, we sometimes we're privileged enough to be brought into some of these crisis plans and readiness. However many of our educators, especially teachers, feel that they are not included in many of that much of that process.
And as if you are not feeling like a co-creator, it can lead to some disenfranchisement. All sorts of other issues. And so I think , the main calling behind Teachers Unified, or what calls many people to Teachers Unified to End Gun Violence is that one of their main missions is to provide a voice for those in education, in creating a trauma-informed future like yourself are also advocating for with the elimination of gun violence.
And so the lens that they take is really through an educator lens. And I would be remiss if I didn't share that when I view educators and when Teachers Unified views. [00:44:00] Educators, we're talking about everyone who has an impact on your child or your own education.
We're talking about our bus drivers, we're talking about our school nurses, we're talking about our cafeteria attendants. We're talking about everyone involved in your student's care. Any one of those , people could inherently be a trusted adult and be the difference behind, alerting someone else to a crisis , or not.
And so Teachers Unified really works to bring teachers to the table and to advocate for reforms that are going to impact teachers and educators directly and therefore are going to impact our students. And so that's gonna really lead me into , my final spiel for the group. And that's, there's three different levels that I really think of this work in.
And so the first is individual. And there's a really great graphic a friend of mine made, and I will share [00:45:00] it with you afterwards, but basically it's a visual of a dysregulated adult is never going to regulate a child. And it's this idea that until we regulate ourselves, we can't co-regulate others.
And so for those of us who understand window of tolerance and how neuroscience impacts education, if we have educators who are not regulated. It makes delivering pedagogy and content and behavior management and all of those things more difficult because they're coming to a place where co-regulating is much more challenging.
So I think about that on the individual level. We really need to do, , and this will we'll put a pin in for vicarious trauma, but we really need to do on an individual level what regulates us, what recenters us. Not to sound cliche, but what fills our cup because we need it.
Then I [00:46:00] think looking outward, it's our communities.
I'm a very big proponent of , when it feels like the sky is falling and I'm doom scrolling like anybody else. Think about the local and immediate, what can you do , depending on your audience a mile. Five miles, 10 miles within , your area, right? What food pantries, what groups, what organizations are operating.
Because everywhere I've gone in this country and everyone I've spoken to, there are threads of this work and it's just a matter of pouring into and getting the appropriate resources allocated. And so my charge is to really look inside your own community and look at where we can create safe spaces close to home, if not in our own home. Well, not if in addition to our own homes.
And then lastly, I think thinking about it in more of a systemic way, right? Like, how can we [00:47:00] invest in prevention? How can we invest in care? How can we change , the mental model that we have around gun violence and mental health and threat management and all of these things that we know coalesce into gun violence.
Afterwards, right? What can we do as a community, as a culture, as a society, as taxpayers, to ensure that we are providing resources in the aftermath, but arguably much more importantly, helping set up systems and creating resources and pathways for individuals. In certain pipelines that we know encourage gun violence to be redirected and rerouted.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Those are some really good tangible things that I think whether you are in the educational system or [00:48:00] not, we're still able to take a part in. I really appreciated the emphasis on how we again, we exist in systems, so like we have that as individual power and looking to our local neighborhoods, our local areas.
There's already a lot of things happening. We just don't know what we don't know till we know it. So even if you don't have, a young person in school or maybe they've graduated, like we can all do something and we all, kind of back to that point, like our tax dollars go to public schools and hopefully we'll continue to.
That's important. Yes. And we also have the power to vote and, make sure that we, are in the face of disinformation or. Perpetuation of violent myths, like we talked about, taking this information and using it in conversations with people to say like, actually [00:49:00] that's not true, and here's why.
I always refer back to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. They have great research and statistics right up there. If you Google it right away, you'll get it. There's plenty of other, and I'll link everything you shared in the show notes,. Data that you can share. The comparison of other countries like this stuff has been studied , and shared and there's ways that we can raise that awareness.
We can also talk about our window of tolerance with people like raising trauma awareness in everyday conversations is so, so important. And then again, using a trauma-informed approach is also how we can all be a part of moving forward with prevention , and, helping each other out and ourselves out. I believe trauma-informed care is prevention , in so many ways.
So, Josh, this was such a great conversation the whole time. I'm like, oh, this is, this is so good. I definitely wanna have you back. Is there anything else before we move into our gentle spritz that you would like to [00:50:00] share or, tell people to connect with you. Yeah.
Josh Novick (he/him): I have one last thing that I wanna say.
This is just that at an individual community, systemic level, my charge as serious and as important as all of this work is as serious and as important is celebrating glimmers.
And finding our moments of joy. And if you heard nothing else that I said today, it's that even though all of this is existing, the more that we can celebrate the glimmers and the joys that are existing within our world and within our ecosystems, that in and of itself is contagious.
That speaks to other people's nervous systems. I tell you about the amazing work that the food pantry near me is doing, that's gonna put your nervous system in a different state than if I talk about the terrible circumstances that have led to the food pantry being needed.
And so I'm not saying to put our heads in the [00:51:00] sand and not pay attention to that need. Certainly it's there and we need to celebrate that joy and those glimmers where they do exist because they do. And they're all around us. And if we are not taking the time to embrace those joy and those glimmers in our lives, we will miss them.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you for that. That is the essence of this approach too, is Right. Is holding that and both lens and this approach is a long game. , highlighting just the work you're doing, even though so much of it is that responsive work and that prevention, it's still hopeful, right?
Because people are seeing the need. We're starting to see more people talk about trauma-informed care and not just talk about it, but look at it systemically.
This is why I invite people to have conversations about what you're doing because we don't see the work. 'cause you're doing it, right.
We need to like, bring people on to show , there's really incredible trauma informed leaders like [00:52:00] Josh on the ground, like really moving this approach forward.
And that gives me a lot of hope when there's so much things that feel hopeless. There's still so much happening. So thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story and the work you're doing, and.
These ways that we can really get involved and kind of keep that one foot in front of the other during these times. So, thank you. Thank are you ready for the gentle spritz of questions? I think so. Okay.
Josh Novick (he/him): I think so.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): So if you could describe trauma-informed care in one word, what would it be?
Josh Novick (he/him): Connections.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): What is your current go-to for nervous system care?
Josh Novick (he/him): That is a good one. Outside time with my son.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love it. And what does a trauma-informed future look like for you?
Josh Novick (he/him): Creating safety. .
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Thank you so much, Josh. What are good ways that people can connect with you or learn more about [00:53:00] trust and grow and the work you're doing in the world?
Josh Novick (he/him): I would love to have anyone reach out to me on social media. My Instagram handle is Trust and Grow Consulting, or please join us at trustandgrow.org.
I would love to have you reach out. I would love to talk more. These are my passions and the more that we have conversations like this, the more upstream work we do and the less likely I have to do postvention and crisis work afterwards, which is a good thing in my book.
