"What would it look like to integrate an understanding of trauma into our change process rather than assuming everyone is entering the process from a place of groundedness and well-being?" (34)
This question from Chapter 2 is what I'm wrestling with this morning. I recognize how so often I've observed and experienced how my own capacity to change as well as those around me felt like it required "being at a good place"—feeling supported and affirmed, being provided with time and resources, etc. Once we "checked those boxes," then myself and others could make the changes necessary.
But reading this chapter, I realize that through a trauma "lens" (34) those boxes are never going to be fully checked—not for any of us. So the process and path to change needs to be available to all of us with our unchecked boxes, too, or else that change is destined to fail. (What that process and path looks like? That's the challenging thing!)
We can never really know what others are experiencing, unless we make connections with each other. The pandemic was a strange time because it felt very personally isolating, yet it affected everyone. We all experienced varying degrees of trauma simultaneously, and then were thrust back into "business as usual." This chapter is pushing me to use a trauma lens with everything.
"What would it look like to integrate an understanding of trauma into our change process rather than assuming everyone is entering the process from a place of groundedness and well-being?" (34)
This question from Chapter 2 is what I'm wrestling with this morning. I recognize how so often I've observed and experienced how my own capacity to change as well as those around me felt like it required "being at a good place"—feeling supported and affirmed, being provided with time and resources, etc. Once we "checked those boxes," then myself and others could make the changes necessary.
But reading this chapter, I realize that through a trauma "lens" (34) those boxes are never going to be fully checked—not for any of us. So the process and path to change needs to be available to all of us with our unchecked boxes, too, or else that change is destined to fail. (What that process and path looks like? That's the challenging thing!)
We can never really know what others are experiencing, unless we make connections with each other. The pandemic was a strange time because it felt very personally isolating, yet it affected everyone. We all experienced varying degrees of trauma simultaneously, and then were thrust back into "business as usual." This chapter is pushing me to use a trauma lens with everything.