What do you do, and what does your organization do?
Peter Pollard is the Communication and Professional Relations Director at 1in6, a national organization that works to provide resources and information to help adult male survivors of sexual abuse and unwanted sexual behavior during childhood to have healthier, happier lives. He also serves as a facilitator for groups for men who have engaged in intimate partner violence and is the western Massachusetts Area Director for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). In previous lives, Peter was a newspaper man and a social worker in child protection.
When did you learn about ACEs, and how did that change your work or life?
Peter remembers hearing about ACEs shortly after the 2005 studies came out and soon after he went to hear Robert Anda speak at a nearby college. What he heard validated many of the experiences he had in child protection. Over the 15 years he spent in child protection he saw many children grow up. When they were young their trauma was respected and understood, but as soon as they turned 18 their behavior was criminalized, even though they were reacting to the same trauma. ACEs gave Peter a framework with which to understand this; he felt he had found the “holy grail.”
What personal or professional moment or event in your life inspired you to work on ACEs?
The experience that most inspired Peter happened 20 years ago and can be read about in his recent blog post. While he was working at a newspaper, a man was arrested for very violent acts of child abuse. Peter got to know him and understand his experience. Although Peter is very clear that none of this excuses the man’s behavior, Peter began to understand that the community needed to share more responsibility for violent behavior. He believes that we need to share responsibility for how we fail children and fail the adults they become when we have strictly punitive responses to these behaviors. He realized that while it was easiest for society to find and punish the “bad guy,” this did little to understand the causes of that violent behavior and change it. After this experience, Peter left the newspaper business, faced his own trauma history, and went into social work.
How have you used ACEs in your work or life? Has it changed what you do?
When Peter works in his many capacities, he makes sure his actions are informed by his ACEs knowledge. In his work with men who engaged in domestic violence, he tries to separate who the men are from what they have done and tries to see their experiences as an important piece of understanding their behavior. He avoids thinking of them as bad people and instead sees them as people who have developed unhealthy survival techniques. To illustrate his point he tells a story. When he was young, he was swimming in a river and ended up in an area that was too deep for him. Two of his friends swam over to help him, but as he struggled to save himself he kept pushing them under. He sees a lot of violence as a result of this type of defective coping; someone is trying to save themselves, but they harm others in the process. Individuals need to take responsibility for the hurt and harm they cause, but we also need to realize that it stems from self-preservation.
What does resilience to early childhood adversity mean to you?
When working in child protection, Peter was always struck by the fact that although the children he worked with had experienced horrible things, they still grew up, managed to put one foot in front of the other, and function in the world. He sees this strong desire for resilience and survival as a basic human quality and sees professionals’ role as providing resources and support for this.
How would you like to see trauma-informed practices shape your field?
In the domestic violence field Peter would like to see a greater openness to the understanding that trauma is a factor in the lives of people who commit partner violence. In the five years he has facilitated the domestic violence groups, he has not met a single man who did not have a massive trauma history. To ignore this fact seems counterproductive, yet the expectations, approaches, and policies for men who engage in intimate partner violence often resist the legitimacy of dealing with trauma.
If you encounter or deal with trauma often in your work, what coping skills do you rely on to stay happy and healthy?
While working in child protection Peter never saw another social worker cry, despite regularly dealing with very traumatic situations. Showing emotion might demonstrate they weren’t cut out for the work, so many of them, himself included, would go in the bathroom and cry. Peter now tries to be aware of secondary trauma, and when he’s in a safe place, with a safe person, he makes sure to allow himself these emotions. He also deals with secondary trauma from a position of hope. He draws on the work of Kay Saavitne, from whom he learned that while it is easy in this work to see people’s negative future trajectory, we need to visualize a positive and hopeful outcome for them. Peter also loves to garden and often works from home on his screen porch overlooking his garden.
How do you hope to contribute to and what do you hope to gain from ACEs Connection?
Peter is refreshed by the many validating posts and articles shared by ACEs Connection community members. He feels a sense of community with these many people who view the world through a similar lens. On ACEs Connection he hopes to learn from this community and share what he has learned as well.
You can find out more about Peter or get in touch with him on his ACEsConnection profile:
http://acesconnection.com/profile/PeterPollard
To read more profiles, click the "profile" tag below!
Comments (7)