Trauma-informed training: what is it and why you need to know about it Part Two

Around 70% of people globally will experience a potentially traumatic event during their lifetime.

In my trauma-informed training over the past few decades, I’ve worked with people who’ve survived El Shabab attacks, child soldiers, survivors of gender-based violence, kidnapping, etc.  

Given the number of people who have experienced trauma (revisit those stats above), we owe it to our participants to take very good care of them and create as healthy and safe a learning environment as possible.

So let’s turn the page and focus on what trauma-informed training looks like.

I’ve organized five tips and tools for each of the five guiding trauma-informed values and principles proposed by Drs. Maxine Harris and Roger Fallot.

I’ve included an additional five tips under the category of Preparation.

These values and principles are: safety (physical and emotional), trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. Source: What is Trauma-Informed Care?, Buffalo Center for Social Research, University at Buffalo.

In Part One – Trauma-informed training: what is it and why you need to know about it, I covered five tips each for how to prepare and build safety and trust.

Below, I continue with five tips for choice, collaboration, and empowerment.

Choice

1. Choice. Give people choices whenever possible.  Type of music played during breaks/how loud or how soft – give a choice.  Where people sit (see above) – let them choose. Whether to participate or not, plus the option to pass – give people the option to choose. When to break – give it up to the group to decide. It’s very common here in Kenya and surrounding countries to have a group photo.  You guessed it.  Give people the option of whether to have their photo taken.  In some cases, for example, for local UN staff in Somalia, it can endanger their personal safety if a photo gets published.

2. Move and return. In my workshops, there’s always movement.  As in people moving around the room, working in small groups, working with different partners, etc.  Let people know that they will always be able to return to their original seat.  Why?  It’s a safety thing. See note number two under safety above.

3. Diversity of participation. Participation can be defined in a lot of different ways.  Not just by speaking.  Give people choices around how they feel most comfortable participating.

4. Diversity of division. Give people a choice in how they work – solo, pairs, small group, large group, etc.  Mix up your content and include it all.

5. Suffering is optional. I always encourage my participants to do what they need to do to make things work for themselves. And to tell me (however they choose – at break, slip me a note, send a DM if we’re doing an online workshop)  if something’s not working.  I explain that I’m there to serve them.

Collaboration

1. Lean-er / Lean-ee.  There’s a time to lean on others and a time to allow others to lean on you.  Balancing both makes for a sweet collaboration. Especially in trauma-informed training.  There’ll be times when certain participants are vulnerable and need to lean on others, and times when those same participants will be able to have others lean on them.

2. Move. As a matter of course, emotions can run high during workshops.  To calm folks down and ‘massage their almonds’ (see link above for more info on that) it can be helpful to borrow a page from Peter Levine’s trauma work and move.  Literally.  I once had a very emotionally distraught participant in a workshop.  We did some debriefing, and then I moved the group (literally) to another corner of the room.  Moving bodies helps disperse adrenaline and cortisol when conversations get heated.

3. Follow-up resources. Depending on who you’re teaching and what the content is, if you anticipate triggers and trauma responses, make sure to have some supportive follow-up resources in place that people can turn to for help after the workshop has ended. Target them to your specific workshop and your specific groups.

4. Check in:  Especially if you suspect someone might be struggling, use the time before the workshop officially starts, the breaks, and after the workshop has concluded to gently check in.

5. Marsha’s promises: Marsha Shandur is one of the most gifted trainers I know. Watch and learn how she immediately sets a collaborative tone in her workshop introductions, where she says:

• You will learn a minimum of one new thing

• The workshop will be interactive, AND you’ll have options for how to participate

• I will never do anything to make you look stupid

• I will make this as safe a place as possible for as many people as possible.

Empowerment

1. Stress and trigger reducers. Be sure and keep some quick stress and trigger reducers in your back pocket, to help people overcome when they’re feeling overwhelmed and get back feeling empowered. (Note to self: write a specific blog post on these tools 🙂

2. Set up: From the very start, set up your workshop to empower participants, including your ground rules/housekeeping/guidelines (whatever you may call them), the seating arrangements, not making people wait to ask questions, and encouraging people to share their own opinions, resources, wisdom, etc. 

3. Plan. If it’s likely that you’ll have people who’ve survived trauma, then encourage them to create a plan.  The plan can include what they should do if they get triggered, it could include identifying a safe person to turn to, etc.

4. Room. Just as you’d arrange a separate prayer room when working with Muslims who pray several times daily, again, if you’re likely to have people who’ve survived trauma in your workshop, arrange for a separate room and let people know they can go there to calm themselves, relax, and reboot.

5. Pre-engagement. If you’re able to communicate with participants ahead of time, you can consult them.  For example, when I survey workshop participants before we meet, so we can collaboratively build the agenda together, one of the questions I ask is, “Is there anything else I should know that would affect your ability to participate in the workshop?” (Note the nod to choice.  Participants can say as much or as little as they wish.) 

Based on what you’re teaching and to whom, pick the tips above that work best for you.

From Preparation, Safety, and Trustworthiness, to Choice, Collaboration, and Empowerment, these tips are good and healthy for all, those who have survived trauma and those who haven’t.  You can’t go wrong.

Now go on and learn, laugh, and lead

Learn

• Again, based on what you’re teaching and to whom, pick the tips above that work best for you.

Laugh

• One step at a time.  As each of us takes those same steps differently!

Lead

• Try your hand at the tips and let me know how it goes.