"trauma-informed" practice

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 18:11:09 GMT

Lots of thoughts, not much clarity, just yet, but I wanted to get this stuff out of my head:

"Trauma-informed practice" is a concept from healthcare, where a service that's working with clients from marginalized populations presumes that this group of people might have a higher percentage of folks who've experienced trauma. They can proactively adjust their practice to avoid retraumatizing people who might have experienced violence.

So, what I've been thinking about lately is how we might apply these ideas to our social organizations. Our alternative-lifestyle meetups, our gaming groups, our fan conventions, our burning man camps: I want to start with the principle that we're committed to including marginalized people in our social groups. This means not just a tolerance-sort of open-door, but actually making changes in our social structures to welcome people who have historically been excluded.

One principle of trauma-informed care I'd like us to embrace sooner rather than later is transparency: when we make a complaint, how often do we hear from leadership, "we're looking into it, but due to privacy concerns, we can't give you any status"? Our processes are often indistinguishable from a black hole. Not everybody has lived a life where people in power have treated them fairly -- this is why transparency is an important aspect of trauma-informed practice in our social organizations. If we can't see the process, the only people who are going to trust it's working are the people for whom historically the process has worked for them.

Other bits I'd like to noodle on in more depth at some point:

The legal system is a vector of state-sanctioned oppression, so using legalistic metaphors in our structures can make our groups unwelcoming.

For some people, the police come assuming they're dangerous as the default, so let's not have "call the police" as the first response to discomfort, and definitely let's not invite them to our parades.

Something about the language groups use regarding "how can we get more diverse people in our group?" rubs me the wrong way. For one, I am tired of being the diversity sprinkles on somebody's boring cupcake. And also, that language ignores the invisible marginalizations that might be already-present in the group (disability and trauma are two that come most quickly to mind)

comments

sev

"trauma-informed" practice