What Does It Mean To Be Trauma Informed?

Before we get into the trauma informed approach, let’s take a step back to make sure we’re on the same page about trauma. Trauma may be physical or psychological harm. Psychological harm particularly results from frightening or distressing events, which generally intrude someone’s day to day life and is life threatening or otherwise pose significant threat to an individual’s physical or psychological wellbeing. Importantly, trauma affects everyone differently, and what is experienced by someone as traumatic will also vary. There is a difference between trauma and trauma related diagnoses like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD.

Trauma informed practice, or a trauma informed approach, operates based on the idea/ assumption that anyone could have experienced trauma. Trauma informed practice places emphasis on safety for both parties (that is the person supporting and the person being supported) and centres on 5 core principles;

• safety

• trustworthiness

• choice

• collaboration

• empowerment

• respect for diversity

What the trauma informed approach looks like in practice will vary between individuals.

At Illuminating Insights, we are committed to providing support in accordance with trauma informed practice. We recognise trauma will likely arise as part of the support we provide and do not seek to shy away from these discussions (this is one reason Courage and Safety are some of our organisational values). However, we are not a specific trauma support service and may seek to work in partnership with other specific trauma support if serious trauma arises in the course of our support provision.

For specific trauma support, we recommend checking out the Blue Knot Foundation, who are Australia’s major trauma support service, as a starting point.