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Trauma Informed �Rehabilitation & Reintegration

Rick Williamson, PhD

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Panksepp, 1998

Number of Chest Pins

Days

Panksepp’s experiments with juvenile rats (as proxy for young people). X Axis = Days (10 day range); Y Axis = number of play behaviors that day. Put 2 juvenile rats in a cage and they naturally engage in play behaviors with each other – measured by the number of contacts between them.

Two groups – the first is the blue control group – they average about 20 contacts on each of the first couple of days (lots of play), they settle into an average over 10 days.

The second group – on day 5 a cat hair is dropped into the cage. This produces a natural fear (flight/fight) response and no play behaviors occur that day. The next day (day 6) the cat hair is removed never to be reintroduced. Yet, the rats stil don’t engage in play right away. Eventually they re-engage in play over the subsequent days but look at the gap between the two groups on day 10. This suggests that the rats in the trauma group are different and things for them may never be the same again. Even though they can play, their brains become wired to constantly look for cat hairs in the environment so the energy is diverted from play to this vigilance.

The brains of traumatized young folks are looking for “cat hairs” in the environment and these ”cat hairs” may not be cat hairs that most of us recognize as cat hairs.

Examples – Cal Endowment wall art with smiling children (but one child is smiling and throwing a gang symbol. Only certain people recognize this but when they do they recognize it immediately. For some youth, this would be a cat hair that most would not recognize as a cat hair.

Careful not to conclude that change is always negative or leaves one impaired. Resilience is a possible outcome. There can be difficulty that results but there can be gifts that result as well to survivors. This process extends to therapists. STS or Resilience/VT or Vtransformation. How to move towards one and mitigate the other. What is supervisor role in this?

The traumatized brain has challenges with self-regulation in response to emotional triggers. It requires healthy adults to assist in co-regulation. All kids need this to some degree and the older they get the more they are able to self-regulate and less co-regulation is needed from those around them. But for traumatized youth – co-regulation may be needed more intensely and or for a longer time as the capacity for self-regulation is challenged. How you, the adult regulate and respond to emotion is what they see and learn to model. It is very important that you as the adults in the lives of youth who deal with trauma be adept at handling your own emotions and reactions in healthy way in order to really help them.

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Trauma-Informed Approaches

Reach of Trauma Dynamics

Reach

Recognize Signs & Symptoms

Recognize

Respond with Practices & Policies

Respond

Resist Retraumatization

Resist

Goal: Enhance the well-being and resilience of those working in the system:

Goal

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1

2

3

4

X

Intended Performance

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Zone 3

Early insomnia
Decreased tolerance
Increased emotional sensitivity
Indecisiveness over daily decisions
Pull towards instant gratification
Intrusive thoughts
Unable to give others the benefit of the doubt
Lapses in short term memory

Zone 4

Anxiousness, Middle Insomnia
Withdrawal and conflict
Everything affects emotions
Indecisiveness over major issues
Alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex
flashbacks
Misattributing the intentions of coworkers as negative
Accident proneness & getting lost

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Resilience

Healthy Life Rhythms

Engagement in the Workplace

Trauma Informed Communities