Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Kim Neely, and welcome to the Trauma Informed slp.
[00:00:06] This is a podcast where we learn to promote safety and empowerment in everyone we know, including ourselves.
[00:00:14] That's right.
[00:00:16] Which is probably the hardest part, actually. To be kind to ourselves. I know for me, that's super difficult.
[00:00:24] And this time of year can be extra difficult with that for people who have any, you know, difficult memories and things swirling around their head around the holidays. So for all of those for whom this time is difficult, do your best to be as kind to yourself as you can.
[00:00:43] Sometimes just moving forward through the bad times is the best we can do. Doesn't mean we're the best version of ourselves. And quite frankly, it's rather unkind to think you're going to be the best version of yourself when you're going through a really difficult time. That's just.
[00:00:57] That's just not how we work as humans, you know?
[00:01:00] With that said, long time, no record, on audio only. Hello, everyone.
[00:01:06] I know it's been a hot minute, so before we get into the episode proper, I do have a few announcements I wanted to share with you. One's about, like, just what I've been up to these last few months, to give you a heads up on that. And also one is an idea I have for 2026 that I'm really excited about.
[00:01:22] If, however, you wanted to skip ahead from these announcements, feel free to do so. I will put a timestamp in the show notes for you to skip on ahead to, to get right into the meat. Because sometimes that's just what you want is the content. Right. I get it totally. I'm the same way sometimes. But for those who are sticking around to listen to the announcements, thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for your support as well. If you're a longtime listener or if you're a new listener, welcome. Lovely to have you here.
[00:01:49] And here's the thing. So I am on social media a little more often now, thanks to this, trying to make this sort of my job thing here. And I've noticed, listen, the influencers are really out there influencing. You know what I mean? There are a lot of SLPs out there on social media. There's teachers, there's occupational therapists, there's mental health therapists. There's all kinds of people out there just influencing and selling courses and selling this and selling that.
[00:02:16] And I don't actually want to be one of them. I'm gonna be honest. I do not want to be an influencer. What I want to Be is an info-dumper. And I want to have people info dump at me so I can learn new things and, and, and let people in on those discussions. The other thing I really want to do is to provide a safe community for people who need it. You know what I mean?
[00:02:38] So in thinking about this and trying to think of the thing that I really want out of my platform, I have decided to go ahead and start up a Patreon account, which I know everybody's like, pat, everybody does Patreon these days. But listen, what I want it to be, this is my idea. It's not just, you know, maybe some bonus content for audio podcast stuff, which it will be. There will be bonus content and live chats and things like that.
[00:03:07] But the biggest thing I want to do is to create more of a community for SLPs, or really anyone in the helping professions who just need a place to go to, like, maybe vent about work. If, like, you're dealing with kind of a toxic work environment or if you're just feeling incredibly insecure about things or maybe troubleshoot, like, tricky situations or tricky clients, maybe get a little more affirmation, a little more validation for what you're trying to do out there as a helper.
[00:03:39] Because, you know, what got me thinking about this is, you know, especially in today's trying times, you know, people use that Fred Rogers quote of the like, look for the helpers. You'll always find people who are helping.
[00:03:52] And the issue is with that is, like, who helps the helpers, right? Like, I mean, mental health people usually have their own counselors, and they usually kind of seek their own work through that. But I know as an slp, like, especially working in the schools or even working in skilled nursing, so many of us work essentially alone, right? Like, we have colleagues, but they don't do our job. We're the only person in the building doing our job at any given moment in time. And then maybe you get to see your fellow SLPs at Professional Development meetings or maybe occasional happy hours, But I feel like those situations are always like, you know, 10 minutes to just try to catch up and vent and do all of those things. And then you listen to a presentation or at a happy hour, people are like, venting about work and getting ideas about work for like, a solid hour and a half. And then suddenly it's like, oh, yeah, also, how's your life as a human? You know, suddenly it'll be like, how's your kids? How's your spouse? Right? Like, we suddenly are like, oh, yeah, let's actually connect as people now inst.
[00:04:53] Work. Right. But I think that's just the nature of the job and how isolated we tend to feel.
[00:04:59] Like, sometimes I would try to vent to some of my, like, teacher friends about, like, billing or, like, the billing software, and then they would be like, I don't know what that is, you know, And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's the thing that we have to deal with, you know? So I was just thinking maybe I could make a bit of a space.
[00:05:16] And it's behind a paywall. Yes, but intentionally. Right. Because it would be a little bit. A little bit more privacy. Right.
[00:05:23] Little bit more anonymity, perhaps, with people out there. The idea is, you know, Patreon already has the infrastructure for, like, chat rooms and forums and, you know, zoom hangouts and live chats and things like that. And so since it already has that infrastructure, I don't want to, like, reinvent the wheel here, but if I use that infrastructure and put it behind just a little bit of a paywall, essentially giving us a little bit of an extra space to just kind of say what we need to say. And it also gives me a little more control over the type of community that I'm hoping to build, I. E. That is, like, if a troll shows up and starts to, like, just be really mean or something, it's pretty easy to get rid of them when it's my own thing, you know, versus, like a Reddit, for example.
[00:06:11] And like I said, not so public. Little more, you know, little more behind, a little bit more privacy. Right.
[00:06:18] So that is my idea for that. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to make all the content available to all the pay tiers. I'm going to have three tiers, but it. The tiers are literally just like, if you can afford and you want to support more, you can, but you don't have to. Lowest tier is going to be $3 a month, which is kind of the lowest Patreon lets you go nowadays. But what I'm asking for you guys right now, if you're still listening after all this little bit of a ramble for this announcement, what I want to do, though, is for January, I want to set up a trial run with a group of people who just want to try it out for free for a month, and let's see how it goes. Because my idea is to do weekly, like, chat hangouts, you know, brainstorming things. And I was thinking there could be different themes. So like, one week could be. Let's talk about workplace stuff or professional things and another one can be. Or like burnout for example. Right. We could definitely do like a burnout hangout. Like let's all just kind of do our best to feel a little bit better about what we're trying to do out there, you know, and then maybe another week of like let's all brainstorm like tricky clinical situations and any like questions anybody has. Because I don't have all the answers. But I think whenever I go to trainings there's always people with so many excellent questions and also equally a very amazing number of people with amazing ideas.
[00:07:47] So like some place that just can have more of that, more of like that Q A after training kind of vibe, you know, where like you can just go, go and get some advice and it's hopefully you know, somewhat helpful in that sort of meta like trauma informed kind of way. Right.
[00:08:03] So also it would be great if you're out there, if you're an SLP out there or a nurse or a teacher and you feel like you're trying to be trauma informed in a vacuum. If you feel like you're kind of an island where you happen to live, if you feel like you see things in a very different way but is aligned a little more with maybe my viewpoint and viewpoint of some other SLPs out there, this also could be a great space because then you could have an online community needed to go to, to feel a little less crazy because I've been there, I've been the one feeling like I'm going a little crazy for just like trying to connect on a human level, you know, before jumping into like full on communication SLP stuff. So I get it. Sometimes you feel like you're going a little, little Wonka doodle when it's like why am I the only one trying to do that? I don't know. But anyway, that's the idea for the Patreon. So if you're interested in being part of the trial group, you. There is an email in the show notes. Feel free to send me an email and just say like Patreon trial interest or something like that in the subject line just so I know. And I will send out a nice group email keeping your emails private of course be ccing everybody on it with like a, a code essentially a link to the Patreon that would give you the access for free. And we will figure it out from there together. Let's all, let's do that. All right, let's give it a try.
[00:09:23] The other announcement I'M going to move along to the next thing. One of the things I've been doing over the last few months I' been focusing a bit more on my YouTube channel just trying to get my flow going over there because I I like long form content, I love info dumping and I've decided to pivot and make YouTube really more focused on the public general populace.
[00:09:46] Not so much SLP specific stuff, but one of the things I'm doing over there that might be of interest to any of my SLP listeners or any other helping profession listener out there. I am doing a series on late diagnosed or specifically for late diagnosed adults for like neurodivergent adults like particularly ADHD and autism since those tend to be the hotter topics people look into. But it's I'm essentially going through my own way of thinking of neurodivergent affirming care. I have this Venn diagram I tend to use. It's also on my website under the free handouts under resources if you go there. But I'm kind of going through it and what I mean by those different topics just to give people some overview of what I think the more helpful things to know about when you're trying to unpack a late diagnosis. And it also could be helpful for parents dealing with, you know, their child recently receiving a diagnosis as well.
[00:10:41] So if you're interested, hop on over there, take a look. It's free content for all to take a look at and learn and comment and send me questions and suggest additional topics and deep dives because I'm happy to do that.
[00:10:55] The very final announcement I want to give here is I am going to move this audio podcast into more interviewing in the coming year. That is my goal to start interviewing a lot more because I love getting to just have someone tell me about the stuff they know. Oh my gosh, I love it. So I'm gonna do kind of an info dump series where it's like I'm not even gonna put any pressure on anyone to talk about any specific topic. It's going to be like, what are your soapboxes? What do you really want to shout to the sea, to the heavens about how things should be. You know, it's just going to be like conversational casual, like let's connect as humans and let's just talk about stuff that's important to us kind of a thing. I actually did complete my very first interview. Yay. Which I'm currently editing. Boo. Because I'm doing all the edits myself for everything. And it's taking a little while. It's a little bit of a learning curve, learning to edit an interview. But I am really excited about it and I'm going to be releasing that episode hopefully in the next couple weeks. It might be a really long episode or it might be split into two episodes. I'm not exactly sure. But I did an interview with Janice Boynton, who is a really probably one of the most foremost advocates against facilitate communication and all the variants that are popping up. And she herself was a facilitator back in the 90s and was part of the original court cases here in the United States that disproved the idea that the student was the one authoring the messages.
[00:12:25] And since then, she has been an outspoken advocate against facilitate communication. And so it was absolutely fascinating. She's full of such wonderful information. I learned so many interesting things about sort of the narrative and who's behind facilitated communication. And we talked a little more about like kind of psychology of people who get into it and what they sort of think. And so, yeah, I'm actually really excited about that because I know, you know, the discussions are starting to crop up again about the new variants that are out there. And that particular podcast, if you've heard of it, the Telepathy Tapes podcast thing, you know, I think they released a season two or something recently. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to re release my response to the Telepathy Tapes podcast because I did do an episode about that where I kind of gave my 20 billion sense on like what I think of their premise, as far as I am aware of their premise. And I'll re release that first and then I will release the interview with Janice after that. So hopefully you can be super excited for that. Hopefully it gives you something to listen to over the, over the winter break here if you're in schools and you're getting winter break.
[00:13:40] Or it can just help you out with, you know, giving you something to listen to just during this time of year when the days are super short, at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere. I do have some Australian listeners, so yeah, they're. They're having the opposite happening. I guess you guys could just store up the episodes for when your days are shorter. How about that?
[00:14:01] For those of us in the northern hemisphere though, maybe it gives you something to listen to when the taste gets super short.
[00:14:07] So anyway, those are my three main things I wanted to talk about and thanks for listening to these announcements and let's go ahead and get into the episode.
[00:14:21] So for today, I am going to talk about the red flags of what is not trauma informed and some of the green flags for what is trauma informed care. What would fall under the trauma informed paradigm? I don't believe I've done this yet on the audio podcast and I've been meaning to, so let's go ahead and do it. On my website I have a section called free handouts. It's under educational content.
[00:14:46] And you know, I have like, the anatomy and physiology of our limbic system, our emotional system, what trauma does to it, things like that. But one of the things I have there are what is and what is not trauma informed care. So I am going to go through this handout as my episode outline today, which essentially are red flags. When I hear certain things, I think that's not trauma informed. And then, you know, there are other things where I'm like, yeah, no, that would fall under a trauma informed paradigm. Absolutely.
[00:15:16] And I just want to kind of go through this as just a general guide for people out there, just for how I tend to think about these things. Because trauma informed is ultimately a big umbrella term.
[00:15:28] That is it. It encompasses a lot. And I always think of it as it's essentially an umbrella under which we can really put pretty much our entire scope of practice. Everything pretty much falls under there. I've heard some people call it a counseling technique. It is not actually trauma informed care is a shift in how we look at how we' our service to our clients, our students, our patients. But also it does consider how we treat ourselves and how we treat others like our colleagues and such. Right. And how we think of things. So it really is just this entire shift of our perception of things, our worldview, how we interpret things. And so that's what's so hard about looking at red flags versus green flags. Because a lot of times, if you're thinking of it as just being a single technique or a single this or a single that, or only specific to when you have a student with known trauma. Therefore you use trauma informed. If that's how you're thinking about it, you're going to get really confused as to why people like me and ptsd, SLP, and other people out there who are trauma informed. I know A.C. goldberg out there. Shout out, A.C. what up?
[00:16:40] I hope your ashes stuff went awesome. I'm sure it was fabulous. But listen, when you see some of us out there online, when we're talking about what is trauma informed, we're getting into like systemic oppression stuff. We're getting into Social justice, we're getting into all of these areas that people are like. That's what.
[00:16:59] That's not what you should be talking about. Well, it is actually because trauma informed requires a certain level of cultural humility, cultural responsiveness and, and knowledge of historical generational traumas that marginalized groups have faced, because those traumas have shaped the cultures of those marginalized groups. Okay, Remember that my favorite Resmaa Menakem quote? The whole trauma decontextualized in a person looks like a personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits.
[00:17:31] And trauma decontextualized in a people looks like culture.
[00:17:37] Right.
[00:17:38] So I always, I love the way resident minicum distilled that into that quote, because that is the essence of it. Understanding what individual, what trauma does to an individual is where you start.
[00:17:49] But as you become more and more and more trauma informed, what I have found is the, the information holes I continuously go down is learning more and more about that, that third aspect of the quote there. The whole trauma in a people looks like culture. That tends to be more and more where my focus ends up being, because there's so much to learn there for groups that I'm not a part of.
[00:18:14] So of course, and even the groups I am a part of, it's still important to continue to learn that. So that's the thing. Trauma informed is an umbrella, It's a paradigm, and it's an ongoing journey to continue to educate yourself and create more of a habit of seeing the world through this lens. Right. And that's what's so difficult when people ask me, you know, what is and what is not trauma informed care. Like, if you want me to distill it into some pithy little statement, it's rather hard to do.
[00:18:45] The closest I can get is the statement that many people have said before me. I'm not even sure who came up with it, but the idea of shifting the way you think from what's wrong with this person or what's wrong with these people to what happened to them or what happened to that person. Okay, that's more of the shift. Right. It's becoming a little more curious about other people's experiences and their perceptions and how they have arrived at the point they've arrived at where you have now interacted with this human and acknowledging that we're all very complex and nuanced and that one little snapshot of somebody, say, you know, having a meltdown at a store on Tik Tok or something is not the summation of that entire Person's being. Right.
[00:19:30] So ultimately it means we're shifting from pathogenic approach, which I know is troublesome because SLPs, we're speech language pathologist, it's intertidal. But most of what we do, since we don't do cures for viruses or bacteria, for things that might, you know, invade our bodies and kill us, those are fine. Let's. Let's do a. Fix it on that. Let's do a cure.
[00:19:53] Right. Like, it's lovely to be able to cure strep throat in your kid when they're sick. Right. That's wonderful.
[00:19:59] But when you're talking about complex things and you're talking about whole humans and whole family units and whole cultures, the pathogenic paradigm doesn't work as well because it's too binary. It's too, this is wrong. We have to fix it. If you see this, then you do that. If X, then Y. Right.
[00:20:17] And it's focused on patient compliance over anything else, really. You know, and like I said, great. If you're dealing with life or death, perfect. Wonderful. You know, if you're trying to keep someone's lungs healthy in a hospital through your swallowing work, pathogenic paradigm's a pretty good one. But you also can enfold more solutogenics. This is true as well. This is usually what we do anyway. So solutogenic is focusing on the factors that promote overall health for the person. So it's more of a holistic approach, looking at the individual as well as the environments they're in, their family, the culture they're from, all of that sort of things, and working with that person or, and. Or the family to address how their issues impact their life and overall wellness. I say and. Or family because some people don't always have much family around that are very supportive. So that's why I said and. Or not because you should ignore family. That's not what I mean.
[00:21:16] But in a solutionic paradigm, treatment is focused on supporting a complete, complex individual. Right. Developing individualized treatment plans and things like that. Yeah.
[00:21:27] So if it sounds common, if it sounds like something you've learned, it likely is. The solutogenic approach is very much aligned and overlaps a lot with the biopsychosocial model of medicine. Right.
[00:21:42] So the International classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, the ICF model that I know Asha has whole things on their website for, like, this is what we feel is the best way to approach care that is essentially a form of trauma informed care. Okay. It's kind of synonymous with it to some extent.
[00:22:00] But the Only reason why there's a new name for this thing is that despite best efforts, when most people look at biopsychosocial model, social kind of comes last. People tend to kind of ignore the big social factors that really influence other people's experiences in life and what they really need from us. And how to be more affirming as, as the, you know, as the expert in one area in the room, right. Things like that. Usually we have blind spots in those areas. Historical and generational trauma.
[00:22:31] And these like social media factors are one of the biggest ways we will unintentionally, potentially traumatize somebody by just triggering something that we were unaware of. Right? And we might all make those mistakes. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I've made those mistakes before as well. But learning to learn the best you can to not do those things, but then also to like apologize if it does happen. Right is the idea there. So the whole point here is to acknowledge the fact that existing as a human on this planet has been traumatic for millennia, since the dawn of humanity. Basically. We apologize to any history professor out there who's tired of hearing that opening to an essay, but we have, as humans, culturally, across the globe, we have experienced an enormous, enormous amount of trauma. And it's had a huge influence on human history. Right?
[00:23:29] And it's so much so that we really can't begin to truly get human interaction at like an individual group or even a global level without really understanding those impacts of that trauma and how it's echoed across the generations and across time across the whole globe. Right? So when I think of trauma informed, I think this is something that applies to all humans across history, across locations.
[00:23:57] That's how I see it, my little paraphrased version of the tip 57 definition of trauma.
[00:24:05] Trauma is a neurophysiological and psychological response to an adverse event or multiple events that sends a person or group into survival mode.
[00:24:17] Their resources to cope with the event are overwhelmed and they develop lasting adverse effects and including chronic feelings of fear, vulnerability and helplessness.
[00:24:30] So the key takeaway here is that a traumatic event leads to a physiological shift and that has lasting adverse effects. That's the key takeaway, right?
[00:24:41] And in fact, there are some researchers, a fair number of researchers out there, especially in like autoimmune and stress reactive type type studies, they consider nervous system dysregulation to be the primary symptom of ptsd, of clinically diagnosed ptsd.
[00:25:00] So when we think of this, when we think of what is not trauma, Informed versus what is biopsychosocial models of medical care.
[00:25:11] Those are pretty trauma informed, neurodivergent affirming approaches, green flags. That is a form of trauma informed care. It is a more specific form for neurodivergence, but that is, that is trauma informed.
[00:25:26] Diversity, equity, inclusion, dei, decolonization, gender affirming. If you dedicate yourself to deconstructing the implicit biases you've inherited from society, you are being very trauma informed. Okay? White supremacy, culture, knowledge of it, and deconstructing that, like the decolonization piece, that's definitely trauma informed. It focuses a lot more on building relationships with people. So being relationship focused over just rapport. I liked the quote. Somebody, somebody told me this at one of the trainings I recently gave, which was, I forget who said the quote. Who they said said it. But it's move at the speed of trust. And I love that move at the speed of trust. But also remember, trust can be broken, right?
[00:26:14] So it's holding that trust as a sacred thing, you know, as a sacred thing and acknowledging that if you do need to repair it, you have to be careful with that repair. And it makes it a fragile. It might be a little more fragile for a little while, right?
[00:26:30] Perhaps. Until when you think of like, what is that Japanese art where they repair things like with the gold and the porcelain and stuff. And you know, it might make it stronger in the long run, but you gotta wait for the stuff to cure, right? So same with rebuilding trust in relationships.
[00:26:45] Bodily autonomy is an aspect of trauma informed care. So using hand underhand, asking if they, if they would like you to show them how to move their hand. Here's my hand, I can show you, right? Giving them permission not to hold your hand. Maybe if you're working with little kids, for example, maybe giving them like a rope to hold the end of instead, if it's dysregulating for them to hold someone's hand.
[00:27:07] And of course, like I said in the whole like safety, physical safety sense, bodily autonomy, if you need to violate it to save someone's life or keep them safe from something incredibly dangerous, right? If you need to grab a kid before they run out in front of the bus, when the bus is not stopped yet, okay, yeah, that's still, that's still trauma informed, okay. If you need to do CPR and crack some ribs, that's still trauma informed, right? But ball the autonomy in the sense of when it's not those sort of emergency situations, when you do have the time and the, and the opportunity and the chance to ask for permission, to touch someone, ask for permission, understanding or at least being curious about difference versus disorder. Right. We know in our field bilingual is fantastic for the brain. It's absolutely wonderful for all children and all their brain development. That's not how we used to think though.
[00:28:02] Right.
[00:28:03] It took a little bit to get there.
[00:28:05] I personally think something very similar is likely going to happen in the future and I promote it now, which is neurodivergence.
[00:28:14] A lot of neurodivergence. Especially as adults, we kind of create our own little subcultures, you know, so there are differences there and not all of it is a disorder all the time, depending on your situation in your environment. Similar to how people think of, I guess, bilingualism, since there are still people out there who think that is potentially harmful for someone and it's not. Right.
[00:28:35] So knowledge of things like the double empathy problem, being more curious about what is a difference and perhaps versus what might be a disorder and also acknowledging that difference can still be fairly disabling in a very inequitable society that we live in. Right. So we do have to also acknowledge that as well.
[00:28:58] If you focus on improving quality of life using collaborative team based approach that is trauma informed, that's very solutogenic. Presuming competency in the sense of multimodality communication for everybody. Because every human uses every modality they can to communicate basically.
[00:29:17] And just thinking about it in terms of allowing non speakers to access robust aac, robust high tech things that give them access to a wide range of like a huge range of vocabulary, vocabulary, if not all the vocabulary in the human language that they are using, you know, not thinking that, that because perhaps their cognitive scores are not as high, they can't handle high tech. That is not, that's not trauma informed. Right. You got to presume that competency that yeah, they could probably handle. They could probably handle a pretty complex system. More complex than you think they can handle. Right.
[00:29:56] And then using preferred terminology, you know, including the pronouns. Right. You've got to do that because like identity first for autistics as well. Autistics versus people with autism as, as a group, as a cultural, culturally speaking, as a group, autistics prefer autistic.
[00:30:15] There are people, individuals who prefer the other way, which is perfectly trauma informed and wonderful to respect and honor when they tell you that. But that is what's important about understanding terminology, that there could be individual preferences, but there's also group preferences. And so when in doubt you go with the group preference or when you're talking about the group, you tend to go with the group preference rather than the individual preferences. Using preferred terminology is definitely trauma informed because as I said in my last episode that I released here, it's part of building that emotional and psychological safety. Right. If you refuse to use preferred terms, it doesn't feel very safe. Think about it. Let's once again put yourself in their shoes. Let's. Let's do a little perspective taking here. Right. If somebody just chooses to call you by a name that's not your name, and if you correct them and they continue to get your name wrong, does that feel very good? Do you feel very safe with that person?
[00:31:10] Not really. Right. If they refuse to acknowledge that. Right. Or if they just aren't gonna bother trying, you know, I mean, it's kind of like. I mean, even in the old, you know, the old school, like Bewitched episodes. Right. Remember how Samantha's mom never called Darren the right name? Yeah. It doesn't feel great. Right. Like it was comedic in that show, but, you know, in real life, it can be very triggering and very upsetting for people. So especially as the person providing the professional care, you definitely. If you're gonna try to build trust in a relationship, you can't start with just dismissing one of the smallest, little, most brief things you can do to ensure that they feel just that much more emotionally and psychologically safe with you. Right.
[00:31:56] That is also not to say that if you do get a pronoun wrong. I've done it with transgender clients, folks. I've gotten prone. I've slipped up on pronouns in front of my own clients. But the important part there is to just apologize without making it a huge deal. Go, oh, I'm so sorry. Wow. That was just a slip of the tongue.
[00:32:16] Move right along. Right. Don't make it a huge deal about yourself. Don't make it a huge deal about having to defend it just like it was a blip on your brain. And it's just. So. Sorry.
[00:32:27] That goes a much further way. Right. Because basically, you don't want to make the moment about you. That's pretty much the idea. Don't make it a huge deal in the sense that it's not about you. It's about making sure they feel like you did not intend to disrespect them at all.
[00:32:42] So let's contrast that with what I feel are the red flags of what is not trauma informed.
[00:32:50] Any approach that purports to fix or cure some kind of disorder or a neurological difference.
[00:32:59] Right.
[00:33:01] So if somebody purports to cure a brain difference with something like high intensity training can. Can completely rewire the brain, which it cannot, by the way. Neuroplasticity is not a magic wand. It does not rewire your entire brain. It only makes localized changes.
[00:33:19] So localized changes to make certain areas of your brain more efficient in certain tasks. That's pretty much what neuroplasticity does. Okay, Just want to get that out there because it does drive me a little bit batty.
[00:33:30] As someone who took a lot of neuroscience classes at the PhD level, it just drives me a little batty that people wave neuroplasticity like it's this magical thing.
[00:33:39] Think of it like street planning in a city, okay? To improve traffic flow, your city might do things like adding traffic lights or yield lanes or expanding the road a little, little bit, or adding a traffic circle, which are fantastic things, but are not as often used in the United States. But they are great for traffic flow. So maybe that's something, right? Maybe adding in an extension road or something that parallels another one that just alleviates a little bit of bottleneck traffic.
[00:34:07] That's neuroplasticity. That's essentially what neuroplasticity does for your neurons in your brain. Okay?
[00:34:13] It is not something that will level the entire city and completely lay down brand new roads and a brand new city layout. Right? That's not neuroplasticity. And that's not also. That's also not really something people tend to do with cities, right, with established cities.
[00:34:34] So unless something else, like I'm sure In World War II there was a fair amount of that happening in Europe in terms of rebuilding cities. But you know, on the whole, you know, people don't tend to say like, let's level New York City completely and then rebuild it from the ground up with better city planning. That's not usually how that works. Right? So think of it more that way, okay?
[00:34:56] So please don't fall for approaches that say high intensity equals increased neuroplasticity equals can cure the thing, can fix the problem, right?
[00:35:07] Because that is not how it works.
[00:35:09] Compliance based approaches, heavily compliance based, that is by its own nature, being more patient complies with the authority figure that is more pathogenic, more fix it more curative type of paradigm. You're not really taking into account the perspective of the person you're there helping to treat. And quite frankly, there's a lot of approaches that fall into this. But one of the biggest places that fall into this is, is United States educational training.
[00:35:40] Really, most of the Education system is based in compliance for the sake of classroom management, which as a non teacher, I can't quite really talk about the biggest differences there. Obviously if you're managing an entire group of people, things have to be different than one on one. But heavy compliance based to the point of perhaps traumatizing like half of the kids in your classroom.
[00:36:06] No, that's not really very trauma informed. I do also want to add the caveat here though to any medical personnel who are listening or medical SLPs who are listening. Compliance based stuff in hospitals is a little different because the focus there in hospitals and rehabilitation centers and skilled nursing and places like that, usually there's compliance for the sake of physical safety. That's the purpose, which as I said before, physical safety trumps it, right? Physical safety trumps emotional psychological safety, especially when you're dealing with medically fragile populations. So that is why compliance with hospital orders in terms of not, you know, getting up and moving when the patient's going to fall, right? If they're a big fall risk or something, having them comply with, getting help with going to the bathroom and things like that is important. That is an important thing for their physical safety.
[00:36:59] Other approaches, especially in nerd divergent world, hand over hand, like just grabbing their hand and moving it, that's not, that's pretty compliance based, right? You're saying I can physically overpower you, so therefore you have to do what I say.
[00:37:12] It's using that physical power differential to get a child to comply or a patient to comply with you that is not trauma informed.
[00:37:24] If there's a high emphasis on meeting societal expectations or behaviors without any other correlational focus on what best helps you to relax, who, where can you be yourself?
[00:37:37] Where could you take the mask off? Basically, right? So we don't want to teach masking as in like a. You have to do this 100 of the time, all the time. There are specific situations where different people and especially bipoc autistics, especially bipoc neurodivergence, they'll need to do some serious, this what we would call masking in terms of trying to ensure their own safety and their own physical safety with certain authority figures, right?
[00:38:05] But what's so psychologically damaging about it is if they feel like they can never be themselves when they feel like they can never take that mask off. That's what it gets really psychologically dangerous for mental health long term. So you can teach some societal expectations like when you're going to a job interview, if you're working with high schoolers, for example, or adults with brain injuries. Talk about behaviors at job interviews. Talk about how to answer the questions. Talk about how to talk to authority figures if you're pulled over on the side of the road. If you're dealing with bipoc families especially, please consider authority figures, particularly police. Please consider behavioral expectations there that help to improve the chance that they'll remain physically safe.
[00:38:55] Please do respect those things. That is trauma informed because that is culturally responsive.
[00:39:00] What is not trauma informed, though, is to teach them to mask and to do those sort of behaviors and say they have to do it all the time. They should never stop doing that masking. That's what's not trauma informed. Right. They need space and time to be themselves and to learn to relax and enjoy themselves. That is also a critical, vital human need.
[00:39:22] So there has to be some safe spaces that they can access to just relax and be themselves. Right.
[00:39:29] Be their self.
[00:39:30] Along those same lines, if you emphasize heavily, emphasize taking neurotypical perspectives without also countering it with consideration for neurodivergent perspectives. Right. There needs to be more of a give and a take.
[00:39:47] For example, neurodivergence do need self advocacy.
[00:39:52] I think it's also important to let them know that self advocacy is not a panacea. It does not solve everything. There are people out there who will just ignore their advocacy. That's important to let them know and that really, that tells you more about that person. Somebody who respects your advocacy, that's someone you can trust. Someone who doesn't might be a little more hesitant around that person. It's fair to not feel very safe around someone who ignores your requests for your needs and your advocacy for yourself. Right. That is a fair thing.
[00:40:22] But also, maybe you're working in a school where there's neurotypicals who, you know, maybe you have more neurotypical kids or kids who like, have more articulation, perhaps. And maybe you see them with an autistic kid because of scheduling. Right. Sometimes our groups get mixed like that, especially in the schools in the United States.
[00:40:43] So, you know, teaching the autistic kids solely about the perspectives and the neurotypicals without also allowing that autistic to explain their perspective, or without you making an effort to learn what their perspective was in a particular situation.
[00:41:00] That's the imbalance there. Right. We wanted to have perspective. Taking needs to go both ways. It's good to teach it to go both ways. Right.
[00:41:08] To promote understanding on both sides. So it's not the whole responsibility is not just on the neurodivergent. To teach everyone about their neurodivergency 100 of the time. It's pretty exhausting to be an advocate 100 of the time societal norms that are based in hierarchical standards.
[00:41:28] So this is something I believe I talked about this actually on my YouTube channel. I just did a systemic oppression video for that. Welcome to your late diagnosis series.
[00:41:37] And that is a really good one. I based it a lot on my newer training slides for systemic oppression where I talk about hierarchical societal standards. So essentially any global society, like I said, global thinking, global. And across human history, societies that entered into some sort of hierarchical structure where there's like a caste system or a class system, or you have the peasant class and you have the aristocracy and you have the rulers and whatnot. And that we've never really gotten away from that, right?
[00:42:08] So we have white supremacy culture, we have colonizer culture 100. And most of that at this point in human history, most of that has come from the European colonizer standards, which were very hierarchical at the time most of that colonization was happening. We're still talking monarchies, right?
[00:42:27] And I don't know, I feel like lately these days, I don't know, guys, I feel like capitalism feels like. Like we essentially just moved the monarchy over into the economy. We didn't. It's not explicitly government right now, I guess, kind of. But like, economically, it feels fairly feudalistic, really. Like, let's face the facts, with the amount of wealth hoarding happening at the top. So when we have norms based in that, this is where we get to the idea of privilege, right? The more privilege you have, the closer you are to the societal ideal. Therefore, the. The more benefits you're able to access, right? You can have less stress, basically, more privilege, you have less stress in life, essentially. Okay. And so being part of a group that is not considered ideal puts you in a marginalized category. And for those who have intersectionalities, people have more than one of these groups, as many people do and some people don't. But hey, the more you have, the lower you are on the societal rung of privilege, right? The more stress you're going to encounter trying to access supports and societal structure things and, you know, equal pay and things like that.
[00:43:37] So you have the isms like the racism, sexism, ableism, right? You have the. I call them faux phobias because actual phobias are actual mental illnesses that do need to be acknowledged. But pho phobias, like homophobia, queerphobia, you know, you have misogyny, you have these sort of things.
[00:43:55] Those are all from that hierarchical standard. Right.
[00:43:59] And it's society basically saying this particular group has a right to access their wants and needs first and everybody else has to fall in line behind them. That's kind of the idea there, right? That's not very trauma informed. Right. It's not based on need, it's not based on equity. It's just based on this particular. We don't like these people, so they don't get access to things. Right. Like, that's not a very trauma informed way of looking at it. It's like the ultimate playing favorites. Essentially.
[00:44:29] Essentially at the societal level, that's pretty much all societal oppression is. It's just, it's. It's the tippy top, the people with all the power and the money playing favorites with whole groups of people. It's pretty much all that is. And listen, I don't know. At the individual level, when people play favorites, it doesn't feel very good, especially when you're not usually a favorite. It makes it much harder to get through things if you intentionally persist in using dehumanizing language and trying to say like, well, it's what I learned and so I'm not going to unlearn it or oh, I'm just, I'm not going to bother to try. Right? So examples, if you continue to use functioning labels for disabilities and neurodivergence, low functioning, high functioning, that's fairly. To say, that's fairly dehumanizing. Most people don't like that. That. Right. Any sort of microaggressive type of label like calling a grown woman a girl, any of those sort of things. Where if you're part of the. In group, in group, people do reclaim these sort of labels and use them with each other as just ways of. It's empowering, right? It's empowering for people within a marginalized group to reclaim a slur for themselves.
[00:45:42] So that does happen. But if you're outside of that group, you don't use that slur. That's not for you. You don't need that empowerment because you're not part of that group.
[00:45:53] Now, these last two red flags, really briefly before I wrap up here, these last two red flags are some really big ones in my mind, which are if you think of resiliency as just pushing through the stress or toughening up, getting a thicker skin, that's not resiliency.
[00:46:13] That is not resiliency. That is just a recipe for building up and ignoring your chronic stress and all the upsetting emotions that come from that and just waiting for them all to explode at some point, because I have a little emotional parody I do in my trainings, which was. It was. It was inspired by a comment I saw on a Reddit thread once. But essentially, remember that your emotions are basically the same as poop in the sense that just as the children's book says, everybody has emotions, everybody has it. And you can hold your emotions in for a while, but eventually they do have to come out.
[00:46:54] And so we don't want to have all those upsetting emotions coming out on our clients, on our students, on our colleagues, or on our loved ones at home, right? We want a way to healthily experience those emotions and move through those emotions and let our body and our brain process those emotions, which is so hard because society does not teach us how to do that very much.
[00:47:21] So that gets to the last red flag, which is if you reject the idea that emotional regulation for yourself is important, that's a big red flag, right?
[00:47:35] Being able to regulate in a sense of processing through upsetting emotions when you have the time and when it's safe to do so, process through those emotions, let your body move through them, right? Let it out so that you don't have it come out in very un trauma informed ways of like picking on someone or nagging or saying a nasty comment or yelling when you didn't mean to. Right?
[00:48:05] That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Emotional regulation is super important for yourself, it's super important for others. And listen, man, when times are particularly tough, if you're especially a pediatric SLP or somebody who works with children a lot as a helper, or even if you work with like dysregulated patients in a hospital setting, like brain injury patients or dementia patients, right? CO regulation is magical and wonderful. It's a wonderful thing to learn to do and it's wonderful to build lessons around.
[00:48:36] And it's always good in my mind to revisit it. It's not usually something you just teach once. CO regulation can be a whole thing that needs to come back around because it's just gotten really tough. We're all having a tough time right now. All the students are super stressed about something or some kind of event happened in the news that was very upsetting. Perfect time to do more CO regulation with each other and maybe perspective taking and just more, you know, building upon that sort of a thing.
[00:49:04] So one thing to think about when you're trying to think of these red flags, think about it for yourself. If you or any of Your loved ones, your closest friends, your family.
[00:49:16] If you've had any negative experiences in your personal life as a result of these sort of red flags, right?
[00:49:23] Think about that and think just for a second, I don't want you to go too far into upsetting emotions about it, but think about how that made you feel and how uncomfortable, unsafe you felt when those experience occurred, right? And that's really why we want to try to do the unlearning, to not continue that sort of cycle of having people feel chronically unsafe in certain environments and situations.
[00:49:46] So when you think through that, you can then start to take a step back. You know, that's the whole good thing about regulation, is calming yourself a bit and learning to think through what you could do to improve the sense of safety for any client or student or patient who you suspect might have had experiences like yours or maybe slightly different experiences with these types of red flags that I just went through, right?
[00:50:15] Because even just the tiniest bit of just compassion can go so far for helping someone feel safe when they otherwise would have felt like, I am not going to trust this person as far as I can throw them. You know, whatever that phrase is. I don't know. I feel like that phrase does not always have very good applications. I mean, you know, I don't know, football players can probably throw me, you know, like, I don't know. I don't know what's up with that phrase. It's my neurodivergent brain. I'm like that phrase. Not the best phrase. But listen, that's the idea though, right? It's like to build, moving at the speed of trust, trying to offer a little bit of compassion, understanding, validation, affirmation. It goes so far for things. And that doesn't mean just glossing over things. That means acknowledging. That sounds so hard.
[00:51:04] And you can feel like you're a broken record and you're just going on a script, but take a moment to actually feel a little bit of how hard that is and go like, yeah, that sounds really hard. Like you actually mean that. You know, it's okay to say scripts if you mean them. That's all right.
[00:51:21] Let's not pretend like the toxic positivity stuff isn't a script either, right? Well, look for the silver lining. That's a script. Come on. We can just say. Instead of that, we can say, oh, my gosh, that sounds incredibly hard. I am so sorry you're going through that.
[00:51:35] That's a good script. Right?
[00:51:39] Now, after you finish thinking through what you can do to Help people feel more safe. Safe if you feel like they've had these red flags. Another thing you could think to yourself on the flip side are, what are you already doing that falls under trauma informed care? What kind of things do you incorporate throughout your day? Your thought patterns, your. Your behaviors, your things you say, the things you do for people? What are following under that salutogenic program?
[00:52:04] Take a moment to think about those things and think, yeah, good job me. Give yourself a little. Yeah, give yourself a big thumbs up, high five yourself. Hug yourself if you can. I don't know, but yeah, go you. Right? Because we, I'm sure helping professionals, we all have something we do that falls under that paradigm. You know, you're not, you're not having to start from scratch, right? There's stuff, you know, to do and then the other thing to think about is, you know, just taking that and expanding on it. How can you expand the things you do for solitogenic paradigm, and how can you improve your kind of holistic view of wellness for people who are different from you?
[00:52:45] For cultures that you don't know a lot about?
[00:52:48] Right.
[00:52:49] For groups you don't hear from very often?
[00:52:52] You know, just think of how you would expand it there, right?
[00:52:56] And I'll give you a big hint. Starting from a place of humility in the sense of wanting to learn, of being open to learning. That's a great place to start. Especially if it's a group you have not really encountered and you don't know much about that culture subculture, you know, group.
[00:53:13] So ultimately, just remember through all these red flags and green flags that I just went through, trauma informed care really is a big umbrella, right? It is the overarching concept under which we can put a lot of these sort of meta aspects of our practice like relationship versus rapport and how to develop trust with clients and things like that. And also just holistic view of creating goals and things like that, right?
[00:53:43] If we put this all under this umbrella of our practice and we start to be thinking more about people's overall wellness and helping them heal within our scope of practice, but still also with that safety in mind, because that is what promotes the best learning and the best outcomes, really. Right?
[00:54:04] Hard to learn if you're unsafe. All you're learning is how to survive it essentially you will still learn, but you'll just learn how to survive.
[00:54:13] But let's help our clients learn how to thrive instead. And maybe also help ourselves learn how to thrive even when times are tough. With all that said, do something kind for yourself. Today. Tell yourself something kind.
[00:54:26] What's something you really like about yourself that doesn't really have to do with what you provide to other people as a service?
[00:54:34] Do you like that you're funny?
[00:54:36] Are you intelligent? Are you introspective?
[00:54:38] Are you very self aware?
[00:54:41] Are you a very compassionate person?
[00:54:43] Yeah. Go ahead and let yourself know what you really like about yourself.
[00:54:49] Take a deep breath.
[00:54:51] If you have a safe community to be around, be in touch with yourself. Safe community.
[00:54:56] And do your best to take care of yourselves. Okay? And until next time, guys, I hope you have a good one. Oh, and look forward to my interview series coming out and the upcoming episode with Janice about the facility communication pipeline that is ramping back up again. All right, looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys and what you think of it. So email me what you think about that episode when you hear it. Thank you so much. And as always, take care of yourselves. Okay, bye.
