What is Trauma-Informed Care and why is it relevant?
Trauma-Informed Care is a compassionate approach that recognizes and responds to the profound impact of traumatic stress on individuals connected to an organization, including children, caregivers, and service providers.
Having a foundational understanding of trauma is important and relevant to anyone because trauma is a universal human experience that can shape individuals in profound ways. Whether we have personally experienced trauma or not, it affects the people around us, our communities, and society as a whole.
Understanding trauma helps us develop empathy and compassion for others, and for ourselves allowing us to create supportive environments and relationships. It also helps us recognize the signs and impacts of trauma, enabling us to respond effectively and provide appropriate support. By being trauma-informed, we contribute to a more inclusive and understanding society that values healing and resilience for all.
What kinds of Creative Somatic Approaches are provided by Creaturae?
- At Creaturae we provide baking therapy and cake decoration classes which harnesses the therapeutic benefits of baking to support individuals in their healing journey. By engaging in the process of baking, individuals can experience a range of positive effects on their emotional well-being. Baking therapy provides a creative outlet and a sense of accomplishment, promoting self-expression and fostering a sense of empowerment. The sensory experience of working with ingredients, mixing, and kneading dough can be grounding and soothing, offering relaxation and stress relief. Additionally, the act of baking and sharing homemade treats can facilitate social connection and a sense of belonging. Baking therapy recognizes the therapeutic potential of this enjoyable and fulfilling activity, harnessing its power to promote emotional healing, enhance self-care, and cultivate overall well-being.
- Creative writing therapy is a powerful therapeutic approach that utilizes the act of writing to promote emotional healing and personal growth. By engaging in creative writing exercises, individuals can explore their thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a safe and non-judgmental environment. This form of therapy encourages self-expression, self-reflection, and self-discovery, allowing individuals to gain insights into their own lives and emotions. Through the process of putting thoughts and emotions into words, creative writing therapy can help individuals process traumatic events, reduce stress, and improve overall well-being. It provides a creative outlet for self-care and can be a transformative tool for personal empowerment and healing.
- Expressive Writing: Expressive writing encourages individuals to write freely about their traumatic experiences, emotions, and thoughts. It can help individuals gain insight, process emotions, and integrate their traumatic experiences into their personal narratives.
- Somatic Experiencing: Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach that focuses on releasing and resolving trauma-related stress and tension. It involves tracking bodily sensations, promoting self-regulation, and facilitating the completion of interrupted fight, flight, or freeze responses.
- Mindfulness-Based Approaches: Mindfulness practices, such as meditation, breathwork, and body scans, are utilized to cultivate present-moment awareness and develop a compassionate relationship with one’s body and experiences. These practices can help individuals regulate their nervous system and reduce trauma-related symptoms.
- Music expression and production therapy is a dynamic and innovative approach that harnesses the power of music to facilitate therapeutic healing and personal growth. This form of therapy allows individuals to express themselves and communicate their emotions through creating, playing, or listening to music. Through active engagement in music production, individuals can explore their inner thoughts and feelings, release pent-up emotions, and find a sense of release and catharsis. Music therapy can also enhance self-awareness, promote relaxation, and provide a means for self-expression when words may be difficult to find. Whether it’s composing, playing instruments, or simply listening, music expression and production therapy offers a unique and powerful medium for emotional expression and healing.
These creative somatic approaches recognize the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and emotions in the healing process. By engaging the body’s wisdom and promoting creative expression, they offer individuals unique pathways for exploring, healing, and integrating their traumatic experiences.
Breaking the cycle with Creative Somatic Therapy
At Creaturae, we believe that cycles of trauma can be broken through creating a deeper awareness of trauma – the various types of trauma and how it can manifest itself. And from there, how to deal with it firstly within yourself, so that you can have bandwidth and compassion for others with trauma. We focus on creative somatic approaches to recover the connection between the mind and the body which is disrupted when trauma affects the brain.
As an entry-level to understanding trauma at its core, we offer foundational classes on “Breaking Free From Trauma” to provide you with a foundational understanding of trauma and how it affects you (and your capacity for caring for others).
Understanding the roots of your trauma and your potential triggers and being provided with awareness of somatic approaches for how to heal from your trauma responses is fundamental to recovery.
In addition to creating awareness and foundational understanding of trauma and its effects on the body, Creaturae also provides creative somatic therapeutic therapies to incorporate expressive and mind-body integrative practices to address trauma.
The Importance of Trauma-Informed Care
Because of the prevalence of trauma – and how it affects each individual uniquely depending on their family circumstances and other socio-biological factors – providing trauma-informed care is especially important.
Our examples from before are just three ways trauma can impact different parts of a client’s life.
But when someone has been traumatized, they don’t get to pick and choose where they bring it or what triggers them. That’s why recognizing the prevalence of trauma has to be one of the first steps to adopting a trauma-informed approach to care.
According to the National Center for PTSD[1], about 60% percent of men and 50% percent of women experience at least one trauma in their lifetime. It is also estimated that 7-8% of the United States population will have PTSD at some point in their lives.
And for many clients, their traumatic experiences occur in childhood. A study led by Victor Carrión, MD[2], found that 67% of children have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE) — and their trauma responses are often misdiagnosed as ADHD or even simply “bad behavior.”
It was trauma expert Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, SEP who said that “Trauma decontextualized in a person will look like personality.”
So to truly understand how trauma is impacting a client, we need a shift in focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?”