All kinds of trauma create stress reactions. People often say that their first feeling is relief to be alive after a traumatic event. This may be followed by stress, fear and anger. Trauma may also lead people to find they are unable to stop thinking about what happened.
Simply put, when a person experiences something traumatic, adrenalin and other neurochemicals rush to the brain and print a picture there. The traumatic memory loops in the emotional side of the brain, disconnecting from the part of the brain that conducts reasoning and cognitive processing.
What Are Some Common Responses? A person's response to a traumatic event may vary. Responses include feelings of fear, grief and depression. Physical and behavioral responses include nausea, dizziness, and changes in appetite and sleep pattern as well as withdrawal from daily activities.
Trauma-informed care seeks to: Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand paths for recovery; Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in patients, families, and staff; Integrate knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and.
The Guiding Values/Principles of Trauma-Informed Care
The Five Guiding Principles are; safety, choice, collaboration, trustworthiness and empowerment. Ensuring that the physical and emotional safety of an individual is addressed is the first important step to providing Trauma-Informed Care.
According to Stephen Porges, PhD, the nervous systems of mammals have developed three autonomic nervous system responses to threat: social engagement, sympathetic mobilization, and parasympathetic immobilization.
When we experience trauma, the brain shuts down all nonessential systems and activates the sympathetic nervous system and the mammalian brain. To help us survive the trauma, the brain releases stress hormones and activates the flight or fight response.
As we all know, most of the work done by the brain is unconscious. This is also true for traumas. Unconscious traumas – even light traumas – can explain some blockages, stress or behavioral patterns. As a result, we can be uncomfortable in a seemingly insignificant situation.
The trauma-informed approach is guided four assumptions, known as the “Four R's”: Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups, recognizing the signs of trauma, having a system which can respond to trauma, and resisting re-traumatization.
Trauma response is the way we cope with traumatic experiences. We cope with traumatic experiences in many ways, and each one of us selects the way that fits best with our needs. The four types of mechanisms we use to cope with traumatic experiences are fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
There are three stages of fight-or-flight: Alarm, Resistance and Exhaustion, the body's healthy response to a life-threatening crisis.
Not everyone has the same reaction to trauma, or recovers in the same way, or in a set time frame. Research has shown that there is wide variability in recovery from trauma, with few indications as to who will recover relatively quickly and who will not.
Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.
Data synthesis: Hormonal responses to trauma are bidirectional. Functional derangements include increases in adrenocorticotropin hormone and cortisol, growth hormone, and prolactin levels. In contrast, gonadotropin and gonadal steroid, and thyroid hormone concentrations decrease.
Trauma is not physically held in the muscles or bones — instead, the need to protect oneself from perceived threats is stored in the memory and emotional centers of the brain, such as the hippocampus and amygdala. This activates the body whenever a situation reminds the person of the traumatic event(s).
The ANS can be further subdivided into the sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric nervous systems.
The nervous system includes the brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves. This system sends messages back and forth between the brain and the body. The brain is what controls all the body's functions.
First, the basic functions of the nervous system are sensation, integration, and response.
The keywords in SAMHSA's concept are The Three E's of Trauma: Event(s), Experience, and Effect. When a person is exposed to a traumatic or stressful event, how they experience it greatly influences the long-lasting adverse effects of carrying the weight of trauma.
Having partnerships with students and families. Creating a trauma-informed learning environment (social/emotional skills and wellness). Being culturally responsive.