Professional Development Training | Consultation | Packages
"There is no life without trauma. There is no history without trauma...Trauma as a mode of being violently halts the flow of time, fractures the self, and punctures memory and language." Gabriele M. Schwab (2010)
Professional Practices
Trauma as Presenting Problem & Communication as Response
Whether you practice as a helping professional, an educator, a health-related specialist, or a different type of practitioner, you are encountering trauma regularly, as it situates itself in a person as a wound, and as it acts collectively in our world. Communication competence and effectiveness offers both the ability to witness as well as to respond to what is consistently presenting itself across many role relationship spaces.
- TRAINING: Trauma Understanding & Communication (Introductory, Intermediate & Advanced Training Experiences)
- PROFESSIONAL CONSULTATION: Contextual or case focused
Do I understand how to work with clients/patients/people who hold trauma in their body? Am I able to communicate effectively about what is happening with their trauma response in the context of my practice?
Discourse of Trauma
Communication As A Process
Any practitioner working with any person does so with the process of communication. Whether acknowledged verbally or avoided nonverbally, when trauma is present in the space, competent and effective communication that both witnesses and responds to trauma is most relationally ethical. Witnessing and responding communicatively works against further fragilizing the trauma wound and creating additional complications for the person, as well as offers the practitioner a chance to engage communicatively in developing a process that minimizes somatic and emotional reactions.
Can I both witness and respond to a trauma response happening in a person without the trauma remaining the focus?
Practitioners Working With Trauma
Personal AND Collective
Trauma exists as both a personal wound as well as a cultural object. When we find ourselves as practitioners working with one but not addressing the other the trauma burden increases, both collectively and for individuals, as one cannot be separated from the other. Communication theory with accompanying frameworks, and processes offers agility in responsiveness, grounded in relational ethics, allowing for participation for all voices across differing experiences.
How am I responding communicatively to both personal and collective trauma in our world?
Sensemaking, Power, & Interdisciplinary Approaches
How we make sense with our practices of 'good' can be held hostage by toxic systems and people with institutional discretion to wield emporer-like power. Interdisciplinary approaches that offer meaning making, communication ethics literacy, and intercultural perspectives offer helping professionals working with trauma the best chance of working with perspectives of difference, particularly when there are competing meanings.
Do I understand how to institutionally advocate for what serves the person when it opposes what serves the system? Am I conforming to systemic values and practices that are unethical?
PROGRAMMING CREATED BY
Credits:
Created with images by Wool World - "Shattered glass on a dark, textured road, bathed in a melancholic glow, serving as a poignant reminder of the profound impact on Road Traffic Victims" • Kale Galaxy - " branding for a continuous learning initiative in the workplace (1)" • thodonal - "Colorful mosaic of abstract shattered glass pieces" • mhmdyatt - "Colorful Glass Pieces Abstract Mosaic Texture Background" • Sasha - "Vibrant Glass Fragments Collage using photos of glass with vibra" • pit24 - "2D collage pieces of broken transparent glass leaded window, sun symbol illumnated"