Trauma-Informed Conflict Engagement
Created by Wendy Wood, 2019
Build trauma literacy and explore the intersection of conflict and trauma
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Basic trauma-informed strategies for social change work
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Understand the nature and expression of trauma
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Why the brain matters as it relates to trauma
Reflection Questions
Trauma Literacy in relationship to your work
Tools and Tips
Trauma-informed practices to use in organizations working with potentially traumatized individuals, communities, and systems
Implications of Trauma and Peace Building
Those working in social, environmental, political and community spaces are often familiar with trauma and may have experienced it directly. It is important for those working in communities, leading social movements, or working as organizers or volunteers to build their trauma literacy. They must both understand trauma intellectually and develop a sense of how to work with people who have experienced trauma, whether directly or vicariously as co-workers, volunteers, or in communities. The collective trauma of a nation, a community, a family, a child, or a devastating environmental disaster asks us to show up in the best way we can, in a way that promotes peace and reconciliation, healing, and transformation, and, most importantly, does no additional harm.
Trauma-Sensitive Approaches
- Seek to ensure that their activities do not cause further traumatization or psychological harm to people already suffering the effects of conflict
- Recognize the ethical responsibility to ensure they conduct their work in a trauma-sensitive manner
- May need to adapt, amplify, or even abandon some core tools and approaches when working with a specific group, culture, or community
- Be aware of hazards associated with classifying people as traumatized, without recognizing that individuals, groups, and communities respond to events and experiences in different ways and within political and social contexts
Note: Not all people who experience trauma have on-going psychological problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
What is Trauma?
Trauma is an injury resulting from an experience that overwhelms one’s ability to protect oneself and stay safe. The injury can be physical, developmental, emotional, relational, and/or spiritual. Some people heal from the injury and recover healthy functioning. Some people’s functioning is altered in a manner that persists. Whether and how healthy functioning returns depends on many factors, including (but not limited to) the severity of the experience; age; innate characteristics; support within the environment; previous traumatic experiences; earlier experiences of chronic trauma; and existing levels of resiliency.
Trauma can be primary, secondary, vicarious, and/or generational. For those working in environments where there may be pervasive trauma, those seeking to alleviate the suffering may experience secondary victimization, empathy fatigue, sympathy PTSD, or compassion fatigue. Read More
The Brain Matters
The persisting consequences of severe trauma, beyond the physical injuries, can be understood as alterations in the threat appraisal and stress response systems. Changes are expressed across all domains – perception, processing, cognition, reactivity, self-regulation, and behavior. There may also be changes to the way our brains function, and for each of us, our brain’s functioning is a direct reflection of our experiences. Read More
Reflection Questions
To encourage trauma literacy, examine these questions within the context of your own work or a contemporary global issue that relates to your work in social change.
- What responsibility do we have to understand the effects of trauma in our work?
- How do we guide our work in light of pervasive trauma?
- How does our own trauma affect our ways of engaging?
- Have you noticed the effects of traumatic experiences in yourself during conflict?
- Have you noticed the effect of traumatic experiences among others during conflict?
Tools and Tips
Develop relationships with individuals, groups, and communities, especially those with a history of trauma, that are safe and trustworthy – relationships where the interactions are attuned, attentive, and respectful.
- Create environments and relationships where interactions occur should be consistent, predictable, safe, and familiar. Our brains do not like surprises.
- Develop shared agreements regarding what to do if people get triggered.
- Avoid re-traumatizing and respect personal boundaries.
- Avoid pressuring people to ‘tell their story’. Respect each person’s desire and ability to share information. It is not the same as people ‘telling their story’ in their own way and own time.
- Build in rituals and mind/body somatic experiences.
- Remove threats, including systemic ones.
- Be aware of what we, as individuals with our own personal histories, may be bringing into the relationships and spaces. Our own trauma or traumatic experiences, unrecognized and unmanaged, can easily be activated and alter the dynamic in very significant ways.
- Help build resilience – the sustained ability of communities to withstand, adapt to and recover from adversity – including building resilient communities.
- Learn trauma-informed conflict management skills.
Trauma and Its Relationship to Social, Environmental and Political Conflict
When social, environmental, political and community conflict engagement efforts build their trauma literacy, they are better able to anticipate and prepare, recognize and respond, and help make meaning of the effects of trauma in individuals, groups, communities and systems.
Trauma and PTSD have implications in the peace, social and environmental justice, and reconciliation processes, which include processes related to social change and working with traumatized individuals, communities, and systems. Best practice requires people in these fields to create and implement conflict resolution processes that are both sensitive and responsive to trauma and its symptoms. This could include training in recognizing those symptoms, developing comfort in listening and responding so as not to increase trauma, and creating conflict resolution processes inclusive of trauma symptoms and effects.
Read MoreResources
Robert Gass: Managing your Triggers Toolkit (PDF)
Tammy Lenski: “What Are your Conflict Hooks?” (Article)
The Child Trauma Academy Channel (Video)
Laura van Dernoot Lipsky and Connie Burk. Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self while Caring for Others. San Francisco, CA: Berett-Koehler. (2009).