From Trauma Informed to Healing Centered
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
This is a post by Sue Holdsworth and Emma Ash from the RECOVER Urban Wellbeing core team.
Recently, we had the pleasure of watching this recorded webinar, called “From Trauma-Informed to Healing-Centered Engagement: A Youth Work Teach-In with Dr. Shawn Ginwright”. So many neurons were firing and so many ideas were bubbling in our heads. We had to share some highlights and further thoughts.
Perhaps one of our favourite lines in the webinar was this: “I am not the worst thing that has happened to me. I am more than this.” Yes, we all have dreams and aspirations, and these are as much a part of us as anything else. People living on our streets - coping with terrible trauma - also have dreams and talents. They are artists and parents. They are so much more than their vulnerabilities, just like each of us is more than our own vulnerabilities.
“Healing centered engagement is a strength-based approach that advances a holistic view of healing and re-centers culture and identity as central features in wellbeing”
So, what is healing centered engagement? It is a strength-based approach that advances a holistic view of healing and re-centers culture and identity as central features in wellbeing. Dr. Ginwright says that it happens on three levels: the individual (about one’s stories and self-location), the interpersonal (about fostering new bonds, new connections), and the institutional (about practices, values and policies that foster wellbeing). He also identifies 5 healing centered principles - CARMA:
Culture - learning about our respective identities
Agency - supporting the ability to act and create, as well as change the root causes of trauma, providing opportunities for civic engagement
Relationships - creating, sustaining and growing healthy connections with others, practicing empathy and fostering a culture of connectedness
Meaning - identifying your own assets and connecting to your purpose
Aspirations - focusing on possibilities, on the ability to dream, providing opportunities for dreaming and imagination building, embedding opportunities that reinforce asset-driven language.
The healing centered approach acknowledges how trauma is experienced collectively, not just individually. Dr. Ginwright reviews PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), a concept that is widely known, that focuses on individuals and episodic trauma. He then introduces a less known concept, PTSE (persistent traumatic stress environment) that occurs as a result of systemic problems such as racism, classism, colonialism, ageism, homophobia, othering, and a myriad of other damaging influences. He emphasizes that the root cause of trauma exists in the environment, not in the individual.
“He emphasizes that the root cause of trauma exists in the environment, not in the individual. ”
This resonates on so many levels.
Back when RECOVER was getting started in 2017, it was assumed that what was going to help improve urban wellness was improving safety, coordinating our services and better integrating them - the focus was on what government and social agencies are doing. Council asked us to come back with a wellness centre concept housing many services for marginalized people.
We learned early on that in Edmonton, our services are already well coordinated and integrated. We have also come to understand that it is in fact the red bubbles on the right side that need much more attention. Things like healing, culture and meaning.
Our wellbeing framework is all about connections - including connection to one’s purpose (we call it “the human project”), to culture, and to others. Our wellbeing framework also says that before we can get to these sorts of connection outcomes that we need to acknowledge people’s grief and loss.
We focus on assets, on strengths and resources (the right side of the scale) - the gifts that each of us has to offer. With prototyping, we help test ideas that help with healing, that relate to the 5 healing centered principles. Are the ideas we are testing going to work for everyone? No. We know that this isn’t possible, but we will keep testing and learning - hopefully helping some people to heal and become more “well” along the way. Hopefully, also helping to foster a culture of connectedness, and maybe even shifting some practices and policies.
By creating space for individuals to heal, helping people to connect to their own purpose and to develop healthy reciprocal relationships, and by using a capacity building approach, RECOVER aligns with Dr. Ginwright’s healing centered approach. The Soloss prototype explicitly acknowledges loss as part of a racialized and colonial experience, creating space to identify these sources of loss and to explore culturally-based rituals for healing.
Moreover, RECOVER’s work attempts to cultivate conditions that support healing. See, when we help on an individual basis, those individuals often remain stuck in the environment which may have been the root cause of their harm. RECOVER works to nurture safe and compassionate environments. That way, when an individual’s wellbeing improves, that wellbeing can be reinforced. The everyday contexts and interactions that make up the environment can help or hinder the building of connections. Whether viewed as connections as in RECOVER’s framework for wellbeing, or Ginwright’s CARMA, what matters is holistic change.
Here is an example of healing centered engagement by BeLoved Asheville (from North Carolina, USA) that inspires us.