The value of significant professional helpers

Please describe a relationship, service intervention, program implementation, policy, or other that you initiated or know about that would be considered trauma-informed:

The practitioner cultivated emotional safety in every interaction, engaging with the client so she felt enabled to speak freely and comfortably and without the danger of re-traumatisation.

 

What was the outcome?  

The client was able to talk about a traumatic childhood experience without her internal voices coming to the fore and threatening her with punishment for speaking out. This had not happened with previous practitioners because they had focused on the psychotic symptoms  and allied labeling rather than exploring skillfully the underlying causes. This person was able to continue with the therapy without  undue fear.

 

What supported the positive outcome? (systemic supports? Organizational supports? Interpersonal supports?):

The outcome was the result of interpersonal skill and support through listening carefully to the client thus giving her a voice, and so creating a therapeutic relationship by slowly building trust, but crucially had knowledge and experience of psychological trauma + allied psychosis,  its effects and how best to help heal it. Such relationships and understanding are key factors.

 

In what way has your example changed you, your practice or your goals:

It reconfirmed my belief that the therapeutic focus needs to be not 'What is wrong with you? but What has happened to you? And, to avoid working on given diagnostic labels and focus rather on helping the client find her own story via a process of working out what the underlying reasons are for her distress, and how they have combined to result in her particular form of distress.

 

Tell us more about what motivated you to bring this example to discuss:

This particular person had experienced many interventions/treatments over a period of years but not one of them actually helped to heal her. This example was the first time that she experienced some actual healing.

 

Whose needs are met in the example that you outline:

The client’s and those closely associated with her, and I would add, the practitioners too.

 

Was there any one person or factor that was central to the success of your example and why:

Utilising a trauma-informed approach does not necessarily require disclosure of trauma. Rather, services are provided in ways that recognise the need for physical and emotional safety, as well as choice and control in decisions affecting the client’s treatment. Trauma-informed practice is more about the overall essence of the approach, or way of being in the relationship, than a specific treatment strategy or method.

 

What can you or others do to spread this good practice to colleagues and services:

Point them in the direction of useful resource materials -both print and video- that raise awareness of the key issues and offer examples of good practice.