Trauma X: Holding Space Radically

Trauma – Usually refers to either a physical injury or emotional state of profound and prolonged distress in response to an overwhelmingly terrifying or unstable experience.

Traumatic experiences are events that threaten or violate one’s safety, health and integrity.

They can be:
Community-wide or personal
Accidental or intentional
Via someone we trust or a stranger
And being the survivor, witness, or proximal.

Definitions

Acute traumatic events are typically singular, and initially accompanied by feelings of intense fear and/or helplessness.

Chronic (sometimes called “ambient”) traumatic situations are persistently repeated threats or violations of safety and integrity. They are associated with a complex range of emotions potentially including fear, shame, distrust, anger, hopelessness, and numbness.

Complex trauma includes experiences of different types of trauma (including the above described) traumatic stress (or PTSD) refers to emotional trauma when an individual’s capacity to absorb traumatic experience becomes stuck.

Let’s hear that again
Structural oppression is trauma.
So… yes, living with racism is trauma. This includes racial profiling, death via law enforcement, higher incarceration rates, hate crimes, living daily with the threat of viokence, exclusion and microagressions. Black women face higher infant and maternal mortality rates. Community trauma includes targeted shootings, a global pandemic that put communities of color at risk, systemic death, etc.

Intergenerational trauma (including from chattel slavery and colonization) describes: The compounded inherited traumas and their effects, such as mental and physical illness; and poverty.

Cultural considerations!
Never decide for someone else or label their experience as traumatic! Let folks self-determine. There are many possible reasons why people may not want to expose or pathologize: shame, pride, distrust, professional or job, cultural notions of respect or coping mechanisms and survival (which we will discuss later)

Institutional trauma (and structural oppression!)
As mentioned, a type of trauma happens at the hands of institutions, and also can result in institutionalization.
Institutions can include:
• Colonization and imperialism
• Capitalism
• Totalitarianism
• White supremacy and anti-blackness
• Ableism
• Heteronormativity
• Neurotypification/Neuronormativity
• Classism
• Ageism
• Military Industrial Complex
• Prison Industrial Complex
• Justice System
• Immigration System
• War, being refugees or victims of war
• Religion and oppression from religion
• Aspects of government/enforcement
• Education systems (authoritarianism)
• Caretaking systems (when abusive)
• Patriarchy and gender violence
And repeated exposure can accumulate effects, like reactivation of symptoms and learned coping strategies.

What is Trauma Informed Care?
TIC is a universal precaution; and a lens much like harm reduction or anti-racism; that recognizes the prevalence of trauma and frames action and practice with that understanding.

The Five Principles of Trauma-Informed Care*

Safety – Which includes creating space where people feel culturally, emotionally, and physically safe as well as awareness of an individual’s discomfort or unease

Transparency and Trustworthiness – Which includes providing full and accurate information about what’s happening and what’s likely to happen next.

Choice – Which includes the recognition of the need for an approach that honors the individual’s dignity.

Collaboration and Mutuality – Which includes the recognition that healing happens in relationships and partner-with shared decision-making.

Empowerment – Which includes the recognition of an individual’s strengths. These strengths are built on and validated.

*[Of course, I always add “equity and inclusion”]

What is Resilience?
Resilience is the ability to withstand trauma, the strength to process difficult life events and to move through them with minimum negative lasting effects.
This includes flexibility, responsiveness and coping skills.
There are several categories—
• Psychological resilience
• Emotional resilience
• Physical resilience
• Community and cultural resilience.
Resilience can be learned and practiced through building regulation skills or grounding skills, recognize and learn coping skills that not not cause harm, foster hope, and build self-awareness — like knowing your strengths and naming your feelings. It can also be fostered by community.

How to Care for Ourselves?

For those who have lived with or are living with trauma, the effects can be super real.
If you sometimes feel your window of tolerance is getting smaller, or your triggers increasing in your environment and life —
Let’s discuss ways to build your resilience and deescalation skills.

First of all, you are not to blame.
Let go of guilt and start to forgive yourself.

Build Feelings of Safety

There are many ways to build safety including learning more about trauma responses, and ways to build resilience. As we know, PTSD/Trauma can cause feelings of instability, insecurity, risk, anxiety or escalation. In order to build feelings of safety, we want to practice de-escalation skills, and finding balance in our loves to open up the window of tolerance. We want to build resilience, skills to bounce back after adversity, and increase access to feelings of calm, control, and a strong sense of self. Think of your protective factors and how to increase those, including setting boundaries. Hold onto the activity and relationships you love and that nurture you to access that space of calm as much as possible. Build out structure, and notice the aspects of your life you can rely on — to happen, to show up, to respond — and let go of the aspects you might not be able to depend on — which will bolster a consistent sense of control.

What’s So Radical About This Anyway?
(Great question!)
Trauma-informed care is one lens that one can practice using — and it must exist adjacent to other lenses or else it isn’t fully realized.
Anti-Racism – Committing to behavior without any bias, and fighting racism in all aspects of our lives, in the hope to end it.
Equity and Inclusion – Recognizing that equity is the practice of correcting and paying reparations for past inequities.
Anti-Colonialism – Recognizing that settlers and colonizers who are not Indigenous are able to thrive, due to colonization.
Disability Justice – Understands that ableism connects to all other forms of oppression.
Informed Consent – Uses the awareness of trauma to build ways and steps for people to choose, or agree.
Anti-Capitalism/Abolition – Know that people and nature are not only for exploitation and profit, and seeks to end systems that do not treat these holistically.
Harm Reduction – Reducing harm!

Power Relations
Lastly, we exist in a society permeated by structural oppression, determined by all the institutions (and more!) listed earlier so it’s vital to recognize our positionality and privilege. Consider the ways that you aren’t disadvantaged or marginalized — and figure out ways to contribute to or collaborate with folks who are, in that way.
Recognize where you may have privilege, access, clout or visibility, and leverage that power for people and communities beyond yourself. Check in on fold with marginalized identities, those that are disproportionately impacted or being targeted by historic and current events, who are in most danger or at higher risk of further retraumatization. Trauma informed care isn’t complete without Disability Justice, racial justice and environmental justice. Nothing and no-one is isolated and a holistic approach is necessary.
Recognize how we may represent or utilize different types of power, esp. during our trauma responses, and attempt to pass that power along to those who typically have access to power.

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Vo is a radical educator of 11 years in over 20 countries in inclusion, racial justice, intercultural communication, trauma-informed care, de-escalation, and transformative justice. They have trained staff and board members from over 300 organizations in OR and WA since immigrating to the US in 2014. Editor of an internationally renowned publication, speaker, curator, artist, and musician who has exhibited and toured in Australia, Germany, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Singapore, Croatia, Mexico, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, Vietnam, Sweden, Malaysia, and the States. Local festival organizer. One of the festivals they curate is IntersectFest: A Festival For and By People Of Color – now in its sixth year. It has featured over 200 Black, Indigenous, and POC artists, including dancers, poets, filmmakers, curators, visual artists, and more. It also creates space to discuss radical political approaches to community organizing and artistic practice. Their recently initiated career as a visual artist has seen them primarily work in textiles, embroidery, weaving, and furniture building. Their installations seek to interrogate power dynamics, structural oppression, challenge histories, and realities of imperialism, white supremacy, and colonization. They continue to explore support strategies and models of community care within a post-traumatic social landscape, focusing on the resilience of BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+ and disabled communities.

This article is published in issue 38.2 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue