Welcome to the Purple Elephant Trauma Series
How Can We Become Trauma-Informed?
This six week course will provide the basic information to begin your journey to becoming trauma informed. It is by no means meant to complete that journey! It is only a beginning and a opportunity to access the resources that have been helpful to me in understanding the impact of trauma. Why a purple elephant? That story is below.
I am currently teaching a graduate course on Current Trends in Neuroscience and Trauma. There are twenty-seven students in two cohorts. What a remarkable group of people from all professions working hard to better understand how to help communities, students, schools, churches, etc. I was preparing for an hour Zoom meeting with each of the cohorts and was sure the student's political views fell on both sides of the aisle. While half of the nation was feeling various levels of trauma from the election, my job was to guide a discussion about trauma and avoid politics. Politics felt like a huge elephant sitting in the middle of the room.
Then it occurred to me that we are neither blue nor red, we are purple. We are human beings who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. Learning about the impact of trauma is what binds us together. Learning how to gracefully lean into love when others are traumatized and to practice self-care and self-regulation when we feel traumatized is the very essence of trauma-informed/sensitive/responsive living.
Our job is to be the best purple elephant that we can possibly be!
I can have a personal take on this election and also enter the classroom as a purple elephant. People across many helping professions are practicing that this week. We can be purple elephants for one another. How we voted is far less important than how we care for one another.
So, that is exactly what I did. I arrived in class with my purple elephant and said, “This is who we are.” What occurred in the class was remarkable. We discussed how learning about trauma and toxic stress was helping them view others differently--more compassionately. It was two solid hours of vulnerability, sharing of epiphanies, some deep angst, and some tears about the children and adults in their lives who are hurting as a result of trauma.
And no one talked politics. I mean, there was that purple elephant, but I do not think it would have mattered. They were focused.
At one point, while we were talking about the ACE research study, one teacher said, "Why have we not been told about this? Why is this information not in every school?" She did some work asking people if they had heard of the research and if they had studied it. She asked in her school, in other schools, and in the community. She was stunned that no one else seemed to know much either.
It occurred to me that as much as my colleagues and I teach or talk about trauma, those who understand its impact are still a minority. This saddens me because the only thing I have ever seen effectively move people toward nonjudgemental compassion is a deep dive into understanding trauma. The impact of trauma was already overwhelming our country and world—it is only going to get worse.
I can be the purple elephant and teach others about trauma. This I can do.
So, I am rolling up my sleeves because I know learning about trauma can make a difference. I am going to take my Facebook friends to trauma school through January. Posts and resources will be summarized here on Saturdays.
The first assignment was to buy Trauma in the Pews if they hadn’t done so already. I will be referring to the information in the book. I wrote the book because when we know better, we do better. (Maya Angelou) We can know better.
I got up this morning, ready to teach!
