Trauma and the effects of trauma is a common topic in our society. However, how well do we understand trauma and what does it mean to be trauma informed? In this episodes we talk about how big behaviors, anxieties, and turning to substances are linked to Trauma. Learn more about trauma and how we can be more aware of the impacts Trauma has in ourselves, friends, and neighbors.
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Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.
Hilary: Welcome to the Parents Place Podcast, so we have Jen and I are here today to talk about a topic that. I know we've touched on for many times over the over the years. I don't know if we've ever necessarily really dove deep into what exactly trauma is?
Jen: No, we haven't.
Hilary: And so, we have two articles that discuss trauma and what trauma informed care looks like, and how that relates to substance abuse, given the fact that this October and we are focusing in on substance abuse prevention and awareness. But I think it's important that we maybe start at the beginning and that is trauma in and of itself, right?
Jen: What is it?
Hilary: Because I know that and I don't know you, I think trauma is one of those words that we're starting to hear more about like it's more widely talked about, and it's more commonly used in our vocabulary. But you don't necessarily know if the general community knows exactly what trauma is. I don't know. Maybe you may disagree.
Jen: Well, no, because I feel like some people, well, just take COVID. The most recent thing that all of us as humans...what is the word I'm looking for? Humanity there, you know that all of humanity has dealt with. It was traumatizing for some people and for some people it wasn’t. And so, to say that. If everybody experiences the same situation or hard thing, everyone's going to have trauma from it. And that's not true. I mean, my husband, he loved COVID. It meant he could stay home, and he didn't have to interact with anybody. And he was a happy clan.
Hilary: And there's some people that. Are like please, I’m slowly dying inside! I need my people
Jen: Yeah. And so, I think we just need to have that understanding of how different it can affect people.
Hilary: It's true. I do think that sends COVID. I mean, I think trauma and resilience, those are the 2 words that we hear quite often. We talk about kids are resilience, resiliency is powerful. We have trauma in our lives, but it's like, OK, let's bring it back down to like our second-grade status. What is it though? Like when we talk about trauma or being traumatized or a traumatic event? What does that mean? Yeah, so. So, I guess to you, what would you say is trauma? Like, what's the easy definition?
Jen: I think for me, trauma is anything that overwhelms us, that changes the way we do things.
Hilary: Yeah. And given that's the definition that can be something very big. That can be something very small that can be something short term and even long term. Because there are little things that affect how we do things and cope. And then there are some things. That will affect how we do it for the remainder of our lives. So that's interesting. So, let's give some examples of maybe what might be under that trauma category. So, you mentioned COVID, which I don't think a lot of people think about.
Jen: Oh, it was traumatic for me.
Hilary: But if you refer to our definition. It changed the way that we lived our lives and for many of us still continue to live our lives. So, I think that so we can all say I mean with that being the case that we've all been through a traumatic event, right? Having lived through that experience. OK. And I'm assuming things like, I mean, we've like, the common ones that. We think about maybe a death in the family, A divorce.
Jen: They even have childbirth because they feel like you know we've been through that traumatic situation, but how it did it really affect your life and how you changed it or no? And so, like for, you know for childbirth, one of your kids, if you're having the second child or the third child. The second child probably I mean, that's a hard time. Mom was gone for a minute, mom spending more time with the baby. That would, I think, fall more under a stressful time for that child. But then you have this other one that now is having big behaviors, and all of these things that are super hard and it changes the way that they're behaving. It is important to understand too. Grief is the same way. If you know some people, it's like, OK, I know they're in the better place. I know that they're not hurting anymore and other people, it's really hard. I mean, my husband was just saying the other day, he is really having a hard time missing his folks. But it's been like I've known him for seven years and they've been passed before like two or three years prior to that. And so, it's grief and death really affect him. But for me, yes, I miss them. But I also know that they're not in pain anymore. At least for the people that right in my life, it's been painful and so.
Hilary: Yeah, yeah.
Jen: It just affects everyone differently.
Hilary: I think it and that's I think important for us to understand because kind of like stress and maybe you know emergencies everybody is definition is different. And so, for some people, they're going to look at that situation and they're going to say not a big deal, yeah. Actually, it was kind of nice like with the COVID situation. Where others it is going to potentially set them back and stress in their life so. I think that's good for us in general as a community to understand that. That we define trauma differently and we react to trauma differently as well too.
Jen: Another important thing to realize with trauma is that if it is that part to where it's overwhelmed you and you've changed like abuse. I mean, you do that is super overwhelming and it is going to change the way you have lived your life prior to the incident and so we can be triggered down the road years down the road back to that. And I think for trauma that is unique at being triggered back to it because we all go through hard and stressful things. But five years down the road, we're not triggered back to that hard or stressful thing. We remember it, but it's more of like, oh, that was a hard thing. And I did a hard thing and that's great. I've learned lots of great things from it.
Hilary: So, trauma and stress in those regards are different. Because oftentimes with stress. It's something that's in the moment that we can potentially overcome and move on, and I don't know if we completely erase trauma in our lives
Jen: I personally don't think so. It's always going to affect the way you think about someone who's been mugged or physically abused or things like that, I mean. It's just with different effects, and they may walk down different streets or hold their personal belongings a little bit closer. Whatever that may be.
Hilary: So, I dare say that even like everyone, even young children, to some degree, we've all experienced trauma. In some way shape or form without, maybe even realizing that that was a traumatic event.
Jen: Yeah, there's. Doctor Vanderkolk, I wrote a book called Body Keeps the Score. And so that is all talking about how trauma is kept within our bodies and our body remembers it. And so even infants that have experienced some type of trauma, be it, let's see, we were just talking about this the other day. Babies that have been in the NICU and they are poked in their little feet, so many times and then they have an adverse reaction whenever someone is touching their feet. So, it's not that they remember.
Hilary: No, because you can't say. I remember when I was 2 weeks old, and I experienced this.
Jen: But their body remembers it, and now it's saying don't touch my feet
Hilary: Oh interesting.
Jen: So, it's an it's a big book, but it's an interesting book.
Hilary: We'll have to put that in the in the show notes so that that you guys can check that. Out. You know, you bring that up and it is. Interesting because a few days ago. I lost a tooth and my friend.
Jen: You lost a tooth?
Hilary: Yeah, it just fell out of my mouth. Yes, I have a hole in my mouth. At this point, so it was a spot where a root canal used to be, and I think just the inside, it's just kind of rotted away over the years, isn't this glorious?
Jen: Well, I feel like. You're the one that goes to the dentist often.
Hilary: I am I am!
Jen: So why didn’t the dentist notice this before?
Hilary: We won't blame it on the dentist, we’ll blame it on my poor dental care in my childhood. But and, you want to hear the best part of it. I was eating a doughnut. Can you think of a softer food to lose your tooth in than a doughnut?
Jen: They say, because I had it, I had to get a cap on a tooth, and it was pasta that cracked it. It's because they can get in the little cracks.
Hilary: Dang it, doughnut! And you know, that's my favorite food! Anyway, so I went to the dentist and he and he was explaining what needed to be done to correct it. And so, we'll have to remove the extract of the remainder of my tooth. And then he explained that for about four months, they'll just have that hole in my mouth because they need to allow that spot to heal. And he used the word. Because essentially, you've gone through like your body's gone through trauma. And here I was thinking Well, I didn't think this was trauma. This is Just really annoying, kind of expensive, right? It's a stressor. Maybe in my head. But as like. But it's like what you were saying. You know, my body is responding to some type of trauma having portion on my mouth that is no longer there. And that's not great. But yes, it was interesting to hear him explain that physically, my body's responding to that trauma. Or will you know that's what is required through that healing process, because it's experience that trauma, so.
Jen: It's crazy, but there's lots of research that is going on right now and they're finding that trauma does really affect us in both our physical and mental ways, and even mentioned aces. And so that's at first childhood experiences.
Hilary: So, you know, you mentioned these aces and aces, stands for adverse childhood experiences. So basically, what they have found the research is that, as we mentioned, all individuals go through trauma to some degree. And we know when we're dealing with a tough situation, our body is put under stress and what tends to happen is our body tends to react in almost like a fight or flight mode right. And so, we know that physically things occur in our body during those stages. Our heart beats faster. Right. Blood pumping in there. We're breathing quicker than what we normally are. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because fight or flight is a protector. Exactly, we're glad that we have it. But what we found is that children that experience a lot of trauma through situations like you mentioned abuse, divorce, a parent being incarcerated, substance abuse use in the home they experience ongoing stress.
Jen: Yeah. And they call that complex trauma because there's lots of different things of trauma.
Hilary: So, whereas in with a child that has stress that is temporary, you're going to experience that fight or flight, but then you're going to recover from that and your body's going to readjust and it's going to go back to its normal state. For a child that's continuing to live in that traumatic atmosphere. That fight or flight is always there, and you can see that if your body is living in that mode, it's going to start to deteriorate. It's going to start to wear down. So, what we find is that the more trauma we experience in childhood. The more likely individuals are later on in life to have problems not only physically but also mentally as well too. So, we see an increase in things like cancer and diabetes and stroke. But we also have a higher risk of substance abuse delinquent behavior.
Jen: Suicide behavior.
Hilary: Exactly. And so, I think it's important that we recognize that. We know that trauma is there, and we know it plays out on our body and so if that is the case what can we do? To help maybe to prevent some of these future risks that we have right. Help children learn proper tips and techniques to relieve stress if they are going through a stressful you know, time in their life, stage in their life and we know through that study as well too. That the more we can connect these kids to a strong support system. Somebody that provides some predictability, some routines, some consistency in their life. Those risk factors decrease. And so, we want to surround these kids that are going through tough things with a strong support system so that they have that ability to overcome. And I think something we. And that is something we can all do as a society.
Jen: Yeah, it's. I think one of the biggest things that we can do is teach our kids or to regulate their emotions, to understand their emotions. And then when they are having hard ones, what can I do to make those hard ones decrease, so the anger the sadness, all of those things. They're all great emotions and we need to have them. But we need to also know how to handle them as well.
Hilary: And we've discussed this like helping kids to understand that there are no bad feelings. You know, oftentimes if we put a feeling chart up for kids. In their heads, they can, they can categorize what they view as the good emotions and the bad emotions. And the bad emotions are things like you just said. Fear, anxiety, stress, sadness, guilt, and the reality is, is that all emotions are appropriate to experience. We all felt sad. We've all felt frustrated.
Jen: There's no bad emotion.
Hilary: Exactly. But you're right, it all boils down to how do we as individuals cope when we experience these emotions cause it's not that the emotion, it's bad, but we may not necessarily be reacting in a positive way.
Jen: And I think that's where our topic for October ties in is that we're not teaching children or even adults who haven't learned it as a child, how to cope with hard things. Or big emotions. And so, then we can turn to substance abuse, which is what we really want to make everyone aware of this month is that. Is really substance abuse is really trigger or not triggered connected to that trauma. When we haven't learned coping skills and how to do it because most of the time people will become addicted. To substances. And substances can be anything. It can be drugs, it can be alcohol, it can be pornography. I mean, there's lots of things that we can become addicted to, but we do it to cover the pain that we felt and our body remembers. And so, we're wanting to turn off that pain so that we're not having to deal with it.
Hilary: You know, we talked about this in our in our parenting courses, the often time. When kids misbehave, our natural reaction is to tell them no, you can't do that. Stop doing that. Leave that alone, and we eliminate that option. But we don't necessarily replace it with a different option. So, then we're left with this void of, OK, well, if I can't do that, then what can I do? And that's often why you have kids that continue to misbehave because we haven't ever set up the positive expectation, and I think oftentimes we see that substance abuse is, like you said, I feel overwhelmed. I feel stressed. I don't know how to handle this. I don't know an appropriate response and I need something to fill that void and so therefore I'm going to reach too, whether that be alcohol or drugs or whatnot. What other thing we have to fill that up. Because we don't have. Any other solutions.
Jen: Right.
Hilary: We don't have any other options and so we as parents, you know, or friends or whomever it is that we're working with that may have this potential problem, helping them to find those options and be aware of what that is.
Jen: And really recognizing because I think we can go back to what we teach parents about kids is the iceberg analogy of, you know, you see the tip of the iceberg, but there's so much going on below, and that's the same with substance abuse. You see the substance abuse and that's the behavior. But what's going on down below is trauma, fear, not feeling loved. All those things let's deal with what's under the water because then that will help us deal with what's on top.
Hilary: So, in these two articles, which per usual guides will include in our show notes. It talked about finding well if you are in the situation where maybe you are looking for a substance abuse facility or need some help in that area, how to find a place that is trauma informed, which at The Family Place we take great pride in the fact that we are a trauma informed agency. And Jen, you know better than I do what exactly that means. But when we have an agency or a site that claims their trauma informed, what should we be looking for?
Jen: I think #1 is understanding what trauma is and understanding that it's personal for each person and showing them their respect. It's the whole, instead of what's wrong with you? It's like what happened to you? Because you as a person are not bad because you've experienced trauma. It's what has happened to you, and let's start from there. Let's find your strengths. Let's work together on what is going to work best for you. And so, working with them, having them allows them to have input into their treatment and to the goals that they want to set. I mean, if someone sets a goal for me. And it was learned how to regulate your emotions. It's not very meaningful. Yeah, but if I'm involved in that process, it's going to be more meaningful for me, and I'm probably more likely going to do it.
Hilary: Not to discredit doctors by any means because we have great respect for them, but it's it goes back to that idea like it's not a prescription approach, right? We can't necessarily have someone walk in the door and be like, OK, take XY and Z and you're good.
Jen: One thing doesn't fit all.
Hilary: Yeah, so it's individualizing that treatment plan or that program that they're involved in so that it works best for their needs.
Jen: But I think also in a trauma informed care place. It starts with the receptionist all the way up to the top and includes like you know, janitors, things like that. Every person that works within a facility is educated on trauma and how to be trauma informed.
Hilary: Because I'm assuming somebody coming in from the community just walking in those doors, just getting to the point where they admit I need some help, right. I don't know what else to do. And walking in those doors could be an experience in and of itself that could be traumatic depending on who greets. How those people view that person that walks in so I can see that that that, that first face that they need to see as they walk into that facility needs to be somebody that is open and welcoming and informative so that they know how to best help from the beginning.
Jen: And I think then it goes on to the next one is. You know the intake process for us, we have an intake process, substance abuse places have an intake process instead of having. To be this question, answer, question, answer where you're really trying to build that trust with that person that you are doing that into paperwork on. If we need to take a break, we can take a break. If you need some water, we can get some water. There's not, we are here to put this. To get through this paperwork as easy and nonjudgmental as possible.
Hilary: And you know, Jen and I will speak on behalf of our agency. And see the nature of the beast. Is that there's always paperwork. We can't ever completely eliminate paperwork, and I know that that is a hindrance to many people. They're like, why should I have to fill that out? Why should I have to tell you, my story? It's my story. Like, it's not. It shouldn't be public knowledge and you know well; I agree. We're not going to spread that out. To everybody but I do think it is important. We understand as an agency that. That we do have some protocols as. So, paperwork will probably never go away, but it's how we go about finding that.
Jen: You know, clear and calm way and really learning how to trust that person and then letting them know that we are trustworthy ourselves.
Hilary: And I think it's important as an individual, you know, if you are going through that process. Because that intake process can be a little bit overwhelming, especially if you're sharing your story and really to a degree reliving that trauma that you've experienced. I think it's OK to be able to recognize like. If I need to stop for a while, I can do that and I can say that to those individuals, I can say, you know what I think I need to be done for now, or I need to step away for a second, I need to take some deep breaths, so advocating on behalf of yourself too, I think it's important that we remember that.
Jen: Yeah, I think also. I mean, just think about. Someone who is coming off of a high and having to do intake paperwork. There may be a time where they need a break altogether because their body is going through shock.
Hilary: Yes, just physically needing that break. And I'm sure you've experiencing that an intake process that maybe has occurred over the course of multiple sessions rather than just one. That's OK. And I think you know; I'm making the assumption that as you explain this trauma informed care that it's personalized that it's. In a comfortable setting, I'm assuming it probably takes more time with that being the case than the traditional treatment plan that we have.
Jen: Yeah, yeah.
Hilary: And that's fine.
Jen: And that's OK. It's going to be more beneficial. In the long run. I always like to. You do the hard stuff now and in the long run. You're going to be spending less time with those.
Hilary: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point to bring up
Jen: We also need to remember to bring up we need to also make sure that we're focusing on the person's strengths. Even someone who has had let's way an addiction problem for, you know, 30 years. They still have strengths and helping them recognize what those strengths are super important.
Hilary: Yes, I think that's when you have found yourself a good case worker or a good clinician is when you feel like you don't have strengths and they help you find a way to become aware of those things, because I think there's a lot of people that probably walk in the door thinking, I'm not really good at anything. And so, through this process of working with those individuals, being able to help them to identify. What that is? That's when you know you found something good. Hold on to those people tightly. Oh, I love this, you know, and as Jen is saying she's describing aspects of our agency. At The Family Place because we are trauma informed here at our agency and. Are quite proud of that we've made some great strides in getting to this point, and I think we've seen significant differences in doing so. But I think in general, if you are looking for an agency for help for support, particularly regarding substance abuse, look for these skills. You know as you're meeting these individuals as you're sitting down. For these initial appointments and these intakes, making sure that you're looking for these skills because these are the types of agencies that you want. To be involved in or you want your family to be involved in.
Jen: You can even ask them are you trauma informed? Even if they say no. Say thank you. And find another spot, because if they are trauma informed, they're going to understand that the behavior is connected to the trauma. And so yeah, just ask. I know, here for The Family Place where we're trained on trauma every year so that it is never something that's not a one and done thing. It's we have. To be retrained and retrained. So, we're forgetting or getting stuck in. Yeah, things that we don't really want to get. Stuck in there.
Hilary: And because I think it's such a new concept that there's new research that's coming out on how to be better than even what we are now. So, to be up to date on the best techniques that we can use for our clients is important too. So, I like that. You know, it's OK to be a little bit picky. As you're searching for this support. And I think gratefully, we're seeing more sites that are trauma informed, so you don't necessarily have to settle. You can find that trauma informed care.
Jen: I feel like we got in on it right at the beginning of. You know, they always call them the new golden. You know, coin that we're a shiny coin, we're going to focus on, but I think we got right in in the beginning when people are like, oh, this is just another shiny coin that we're going to focus on and then something else will come along. But with trauma, it's not a shiny coin. It's not going to go. But we, as the family place, got in on the beginning of the research showing that we need to be trauma informed, so we've had seven years of practice and we still have, you know, room for growth.
Hilary: Several years to come, yeah.
Jen: And so yeah.
Hilary: We're going to keep working on it. We're going to get better and better guys so stay connected right.
Jen: I do think wherever you're going to get help from, always ask if they're trauma informed. You'll just have a different experience. So, all right, well, this was an interesting conversation. Good articles were some good information. And like Hilary said, we'll have those in the show notes. Hope that you have a great day, and we will see you back here next week.
Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly – The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is TheFamilyPlaceUtah.org or if you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes, we'd love to see you there!
Articles:
1. https://childinst.org/a-brief-explanation-of-aces-adverse-childhood-experiences/
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