What Is Being Trauma-Informed?

Guest Posts

Mar 5

Have you heard the term trauma-informed? We asked Danielle Braun-Kauffman MC, RCC, a longtime friend and a Marriage and Family therapist to walk us through some of the basics around being trauma-informed.

Danielle is the founder of RePose Therapy, in Abbotsford, B.C.. An interdisciplinary health space which houses meditation and mindfulness practitioners, two trauma-informed yoga teachers, and about 10 therapists.

KA: Danielle, can you please tell us about yourself and your work?

Sure. I am a mom of 3 school age kids. I own and operate an interdisciplinary health space called Re.Pose Therapy. I am a Marriage and Family therapist that specializes in trauma, and I supervise a team of therapists who are also wanting to specialize in this area.

In my journey I realized that healing from trauma is complex and requires many access points to healing which have to include the body. Typical psychotherapy only focuses on the mind and talking I wanted to start to create a space where all practitioners could be wholistic in their approach so I created Re.Pose therapy out of my own healing journey from my childhood experiences of trauma.

KA: Can you tell us about a time, memory or moment when your resilience grew?

You know when I think about what ‘resilience’ means to me, I realize I might think about it differently than some people. My belief is that in order to have resilience, growth, and strength we first need a capacity to feel our pain. I like to think of this as building pain tolerance. In order to truly grow, thrive and change we cannot bypass our pain but rather we need to move through it as uncomfortable as it may be.

I won’t get into my whole history here but I think it gives context to say that much of my childhood was filled with trauma, pain, and different forms of abuse. When you are a child growing up in that you have to cut off from your pain in order to survive, this is normal and healthy even given the circumstances. I suppose you could say it is even ‘resilient’ to cut off from pain when there isn’t the safety to feel it. The thing about this though is that you survive your circumstance, but you stay stuck. The pain you are cutting off from becomes embedded into the cells of your body. In order to have true resilience you need to reconnect to that pain in a safe, predictable way, and feel it to heal it.

The memory that comes up for me of when my resilience grew is when I was going through a really painful time and decided I needed to have no contact with my mother for a time. There were some painful patterns of emotional abuse beginning to surface again with her and I knew I needed to separate myself from her for a time in order gain clarity and stability. This was a time when I really leaned into the grief of this relationship. I had weekly therapy appointments and I gave myself permission (when it fit with life) to lay in bed and cry and grieve the loss of a mother as an adult, and as a child. It was painful and gut wrenching, but necessary for me to own my worth as a woman and mother. I needed to feel the acuteness of that loss in order to rise. As Glennon Doyle says “First the pain, then the Rising”. The resilience comes in the rising but it is not possible without the pain.

KA: Can you define the term trauma-informed?

To do that first I need to define the term trauma. Trauma is any unexpected or unpredictable experience, that threatens your physical, mental, emotional or sexual well-being, and feels like life and death.

Emphasis on the ‘feels’ there, as our life may not be in danger but our body/mind registers it as if our life is being threatened. So trauma is defined by an absence of safety, predictability and choice. Being trauma informed means being mindfully aware of how to add safety, predictability and choice back in to any and all interactions.

Why do you think being a trauma-informed human is important and not just the work of professionals like yourself?

I think being a trauma-informed human is important because SO many of us have experienced various forms of trauma and are not aware of the impact that has left on our bodies and minds. If we can move through the world from a trauma-informed perspective we have an opportunity to be a part the healing journey for the people around us. To heal from trauma we need to always be adding back in safety, predictability and choice, if we can do that for ourselves and others we help the world heal.

KA: How does being trauma-informed grow empathy and resiliency?

I think to be trauma-informed we need to have our own self-awareness around our own experiences and traumas. When we understand ourselves, we understand others better. When we are aware of how our experiences impacted us, we have more curiosity for how others are impacted. This grows empathy when we have a capacity to understand someone else’s experience, but we can’t do that if we don’t understand our own experiences. And thus as we are self-aware we hopeful cultivate a tolerance for pain, ourselves and others, and thus experience resilience.

KA: How can we grow our understanding of being trauma-informed?

I don’t know any books specifically about being trauma-informed but there are many resources around understanding trauma.

The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel Vanderkolk
In an Unspoken Voice - Peter Levine
The Body Says No - Gabor Mate
The Heart of Trauma – Bonnie Badenoch