Trauma-Informed and Resilience-Informed

What Does It Mean to Be Trauma-Informed?

People who are trauma-informed understand that trauma can affect individuals in many different ways.

You learn that people are suffering whether you know the exact reason or not but still try to understand it. This is why it’s important to look for signs in individual’s behavior that might be the result of a traumatic experience.

Someone who is trauma-informed would never ask someone “what is wrong with you.” Rather they would ask “what happened to you?” These individuals understand that you cannot blame a victim and that a person’s trauma is not their own fault.

Trauma-Informed Care

Trauma-informed care providers need to know what their patients have been through and how it has affected them. This will allow them to provide the specific type of care they think is best for every individual they see.

Goals:

• • Understand that trauma is extremely common among all people and has a major impact on both children and adults.
  • Understand many paths of recovery specific to individuals needs and certain types of trauma.
  • Recognize behavior and symptoms that may be the result of traumatic experiences.
  • Avoid re-traumatizing individuals.
  • Treat individuals with patience, kindness, and respect to actively help individuals recover.

This type of care helps people recover and heal. They allow individuals to find new purposes and live full, meaningful lives even after having experienced
trauma.

The better care individuals receive, the more resilient they will become.

What Does it Mean to Be Resilience-Informed?

Being resilient means having the ability to “bounce back” when something bad happens.

Individuals can learn new resilience skills that allow them to deal with issues in healthy ways. As well as find ways to lessen their suffering.

Being resilience-informed also means being aware that anyone could be dealing with trauma. They would never ask “what is wrong with you” or “what did you do to cause this bad thing to happen.” Rather, they would ask individuals “what is right with you?” and “what are your strengths?”

Resilience-Informed Care

Resilience-Informed therapy often goes along with trauma-informed care. This is a type of therapy that allows individuals to work through their trauma. It also helps them build up more resilience and learn new skills.

Goals:

• • Help individuals find new resources and learn how to lean on support systems.
  • Focus on their strengths while also finding new ones.
  • Help people process and talk about traumatic events in a healthy, safe environments.
  • Avoid re-traumatizing them.
  • Provide opportunities for individuals to grow and feel empowered over their own life and well-being.