Tagged With "left-brain right-brain"
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12 Things I Wish My Doctor Understood About Childhood Trauma
It doesn’t happen that often anymore, but one place where I almost always get triggered with my Childhood PTSD symptoms is when I visit the doctor. I could never even put this into words before. But now that I’m mostly healed from my Childhood PTSD symptoms, I want to express what I wish my doctors – all the doctors of my life – had understood about the effects of Childhood trauma, about me. Note: This is one of my most personal posts ever. Unless you’re someone who really prefers text, I...
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2017: Juggling Act: Boston Mom Champions Community and Self-Care
Marisa Luse is pictured above, on the right. Marisa Luse was accustomed to juggling multiple roles: as the mother of a three-year-old son, a parent ambassador for the Boston Children’s Museum and a board member for the Boston Association for Childbirth Education. She was used to helping youth and families access and achieve their goals: a healthy family, a school-ready child. But when leaders of a Community Organizing for Family Issues (COFI) training asked Luse to name priorities for her...
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2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference Series - Why Take Course One and Course Two?
Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...
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90 Minute Lesson Plan for screening "Resilience"
A 90-MINUTE PLAN FOR SHOWING "RESILIENCE" "Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope" KPJR Films (2016) is a 60-minute documentary film. Depending on your audience and your circumstances, you might consider the following 90-minute plan for showing the film. PART I (1) Screen first 20 minutes of "Resilience." (2) Ask participants to reflect, "What are your thoughts about the film so far?" Instruct participants to reflect silently and write some notes. (10 minutes) PART II (1)...
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A Better Way to Investigate Rape (www.startribune.com)
This article by Brandon Stahl, Jennifer Bjorhus, and Maryjo Webster recently published in the Star Tribune . It is part 8 of a series entitled, Denied Justice: When rape is reported and nothing happens. How Minnesota's criminal justice system has failed victims of sexual assault. To read this entire article, go here and find an excerpt below. To read the entire series, go here . Again, to read this article by Brandon Stahl, Jennifer Bjorhus, and Maryjo Webster, go here and for the rest of...
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A Black Immigrant Woman Is Now the Most Powerful Health Official in California [vice.com]
By Richard Morgan, Vice, July 18, 2019. It was an early summer morning at the San Ysidro Health Center, situated on the Mexican border. A flu outbreak gripped a nearby ICE detention center, where a larger humanitarian crisis continued to unfold, threatening the future of hundreds of children. In a small conference room, brimming with 20 or so of the San Diego area’s most diverse academic and activist minds, Nadine Burke Harris sat at the head of the table. The 43-year-old pediatrician from...
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A Call to Children’s Residential Treatment Centers: Please, Please Do Your Own Trauma Work
The challenges of becoming an effective trauma-informed organization are considerable for sure. Taken as an opportunity, and not a burden, they present a unique platform for organizational learning, healing, and growth. Among so many other things, the efforts inure to the benefit of a milieu that becomes a sanctuary for healing and where little boys are not subject to blame for unintended treatment outcomes.
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A Case for Collecting Adverse Childhood Experiences Data
Let me start with a radical statement: I love data. One of my favorite activities in my role as chief strategy officer at Children & Families First , a large non-profit child and family services agency, is turning columns of numbers into sets of colorful graphs. But even more satisfying is watching someone engage with the data as it reveals previously hidden meaning. Since 2014, Children & Families First has been collecting adverse childhood experience (ACE) data from the people we...
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A GOFUNDME Campaign for RESILIENCE is Warming My Heart in New Hampshire
ORIGINAL POST 1/20/18 Right after the New Year, Jocelyn Goldblatt, Cissy White, and I discussed Jocelyn's capstone project for her Master's Thesis. The screening and panel discussion of the documentary Resilience was her brain child and the cornerstone of her project. But it would also doubly duty as the launch event for the new ACES Connection chapter in Keene, NH (Monadnock Thrives). During the discussion, I boldly announced that we would be lucky to get 30 people in the audience. And I...
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A Vicarious Trauma Informed Organization and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Building a resilient workplace begins by recognizing the importance of connections and relationships at work including leaders, supervisors, and staff. A Vicarious Trauma Informed Organization recognizes the challenges human service professionals face and addresses the impact of vicarious trauma and disaster mental health. Through an organization’s policies and practices, an employee’s resilience is fostered. Your mission statement can recognize the need for self-care. The goal of...
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ACEs Connection's Inclusion Tool makes sure nobody's left out
We developed ACEs Connection's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tool — called the Inclusion Tool, for short — to ensure that ACEs initiatives across the world focus on being inclusive when forming a steering committee, recruiting leaders, providing education about ACEs science, recruiting members, or providing resources and services within their communities. The more inclusive your ACEs initiative is, the more diverse it will be, giving your initiative a real shot at achieving equity and...
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ACEs Research Corner — January 2020
Research papers this month include links between ACEs and bullying, dropping out of high school, adult disability, and the effects of countering ACEs.
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ACEs Science and Racism
This is a collection of resources regarding structural racism and trauma. This list aims to give a broad overview and is not all-inclusive. We welcome suggestions; if you have any, please comment below! The titles below and the PDFs in attachments are in alphabetical order. BSC Full Report Trauma Resilient Informed City Baltimore: This is the full report of the work, data, lessons, and direct quotes from several teams of people from various backgrounds in the Baltimore community as they...
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ACEs teach us why racism is a health equity Issue: Dr. Flojaune Cofer (Part One)
Dr. Flojaune Cofer and Ben Duncan , each from public health backgrounds that focus on health disparities, addressed ACEs in the context of health equity for their panel entitled ACEs, Race, and Health Equity: Understanding and Addressing the Role of Race and Racism in ACEs Exposure and Healing . Cofer and Duncan co-presented to a standing-room-only audience on day one of the 2018 ACEs Conference: Action to Access co-hosted by ACEs Connection and the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco...
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Adaptive Change to REBUILD Your Organization
Keeping your organization afloat in challenging conditions... Following up on "Adaptive Change in Behavioral Health Organizations Serving Survivors of Trauma" (posted 2/20/19), here is the first of 3 webinars Villa of Hope presented through the Alliance for Strong Families & Communities. It's called "REBUILD: Adaptive Change to Rebuild the Perspective, Courage, & Leadership of Your Organization." Enjoy!
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Addressing ACEs as a Social Transformation Initiative
It's time for adult children to fully recover from the lies they were programmed to believe about themselves and others when they were developing, and to adjust the norms in our society to ensure the healthy development of our descendants and the recovery of the adult affected.
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Addressing Trauma and Building Resiliency as Comprehensive Disaster Planning and Response
The attached memo is intended to make observations about communities affected by disaster-related trauma, and to offer recommendations for trauma-informed recovery. Community examples provide case studies or models for other communities grappling with similar issues. Suggested resources and tools provide communities with support for accelerated action. Memo authors represent active cross sector networks that contribute to resilient community infrastructure development, awareness building,...
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Announcing New Trauma Informed Care Trainings!
Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership is pleased to announce two fabulous new training opportunities! This introductory level live webinar is essential for anyone who works with the public, especially now as the world is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants of this live webinar will learn what trauma is, its possible effects, and how to respond appropriately. This new course is designed to help you start practicing trauma-informed care right away. Great for anyone who already has...
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At an HIV Clinic, Patients and Staff Have a Voice in Shaping Trauma Informed Care
Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the Women and HIV Program, front row, center and clinic staff To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a...
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At an HIV Clinic, Patients and Staff Have a Voice in Shaping Trauma Informed Care
Dr. Edward Machtinger, director of the Women and HIV Program, front row, center and clinic staff To the casual observer, the offices of the Women and HIV Program at the University of California San Francisco look like any other primary care clinic. There’s a waiting room with vinyl-covered chairs for the clinic’s patients. Staff check in patients from a non-descript desk ringed with a bank of computers. A video screen promotes the clinic’s services. But as you make your way further into a...
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ACEs Science Champions Series: Because of Andres Perez, 10,000+ Latinx parents in Northern California embrace trauma-informed parenting
Andres Perez immigrated to San Jose, Calif., from Mexico in 1990. He was 24 years old, undocumented, knew little English, lacked job skills, and had a pregnant wife to support. He hit the ground running by completing an ESL program in San Jose City College, and, while working days at any job he could find, at night he earned an associate of science degree with specialization in electronics and computers in 2002. Fortunately for thousands of Latinx parents and their children, he never worked...
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Building Organizational Resilience in the Face of a Ubiquitous Challenge
Ubiquitous: present, appearing, found everywhere. The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic fit this definition better than any event I have experienced in my lifetime. We each have a moment when our life changed – a before and after COVID-19. For some it was a few weeks ago – when you worried about laying people off, contemplated canceling events or faced confounding questions such as “How do I keep my staff safe?” For many it was the news of Wednesday night, March 11: suspension of...
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Building Organizational Resilience in the Face of a Ubiquitous Challenge
Ubiquitous: present, appearing, found everywhere. The challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic fit this definition better than any event I have experienced in my lifetime. We each have a moment when our life changed – a before and after COVID-19. For some it was a few weeks ago – when you worried about laying people off, contemplated canceling events or faced confounding questions such as “How do I keep my staff safe?” For many it was the news of Wednesday night, March 11: suspension of...
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Case Statement on Trauma Informed Approaches
Attached is a Case Statement on Trauma Informed Approaches--it is a review of the Greater Harrisburg Area's and beyond's ACE scores, the outcomes of these ACEs and some ideas of how to resolve the negative consequences of this crisis of epidemic proportions. Please use it to advance the cause of moving from the bad news of ACEs towards the good news of becoming trauma informed and resilient. I would also welcome your comments, questions and recommendations! Thank you.
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Conversations with the Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community Managers & Invitation to You
"Over the last few years there has been a positive increase in the amount of awareness in our communities on understanding the impact of trauma, ACES and resilience. Training has become more frequent and accessible, but I have noticed that many people are still stuck on what to do next. What do I do with all of this knowledge? How do I actually change my response? What does being trauma informed actually look like in practice?" Melissa McGinn Our Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond...
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CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast!
CRI Course 1: Trauma-Informed Training Webcast! Date: February 26, 2019 Time: 8am - 3pm Pacific Time A dynamic six-hour WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into action. The training includes three groups of topics: the NEAR sciences , a cluster of emerging scientific...
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Developing Super Powers: Using Resilience Strategies to Cope with Negative Experiences. Introducing CRI's Newest Book!
“I believe that everyone, especially a child, deserves to know how their brains are shaped by environment, to then understand their capacity for building proactive protective factors. We all deserve to be super heroes as we do the best we can to consciously live life well. ” - Teri Barila The superheroes we learn about in comics, movies, and TV shows swoop in to save the world with their incredible powers, to shield people from harm. But in our world, no matter how much we wish to protect...
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Dr. Jeffrey Brenner: "I believe ACE scores should become a vital sign, as important as height, weight, and blood pressure."
Dr. Jeffrey Brenner, f ounder and executive director of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, and a 2013 MacArthur Foundation genius award winner, wrote this essay for The Field Clinic on Philly.com. For nearly 15 years we’ve...
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Environment Matters: It's More Than Just Common Sense
The connection we are trying to make with those we serve can be only as effective as the level of safety one feels within the space we are doing the work.
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Erasing My ACES
Why I hid ACES from my medical records in order to receive equal treatment.
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Essentials for Childhood Framework
From the CDC’s Injury Prevention & Control, Division of Violence Prevention: "Safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are essential to prevent child abuse and neglect and to assure all children reach their full potential. The Essentials for Childhood Framework proposes strategies communities can consider to promote relationships and environments that help children grow up to be healthy and productive citizens so that they, in turn, can build stronger and safer families and...
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Growth through Trauma-Informed Strategies: Coaching and Consultation with Rick Griffin
There is a Chinese proverb that states, “If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people." The benefits are evident, yet the real question becomes, “how do you grow people?” This Big Idea Session, CRI’s Trauma Coaching and Trauma Consultation Training, answers this question. Schools, organizations, and parents are discovering that the traditional “command and control” style of working with...
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Harvard Infographic on ACEs and Toxic Stress
This was just posted by Harvard. I thought all of us could use access to it, for use in our schools and the settings we work in. The full image is on the attached PDF.
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Heyman Oo integrates ACEs science as foundation of pediatric care
Dr. Heyman Oo, a 34-year-old primary care pediatrician, first learned about the science of adverse childhood experiences in medical school at a grand rounds held around 2012 at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, which she attended from 2009 to 2014. The presenter was none other than Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician who went on to become California’s first Surgeon General. The founder and former director of the Center for Youth Wellness drew millions of views for her TED talk on...
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How Exercise Has Helped My PTSD Recovery [bustle.com]
People exercise for many reasons, and one of the major ones is for its mood-boosting benefits. But as someone who lives with co-occurring mental illnesses, I was skeptical as to whether these benefits would actually work for me. However, as I read more and more research about the therapeutic benefits of working out, I decided to give exercising on the regular a shot. Developing an exercise routine as a way to cope with my PTSD and eating disorder became a pivotal moment in my healing process...
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How I Became a Champion for Trauma-Informed Change
I began riding the “trauma-informed care” wave three years prior to realizing I was part of something bigger than my own vision to bust open the conversation on trauma. When my life as a writer, editor, and advocate for parenting survivors of childhood abuse collided with my professional life as a mental health care manager, I knew the universe was trying to tell me something. Having long ago succumbed to the realization that everything really does happen for a reason, I started to see my...
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How Oxytocin Can Make Your Job More Meaningful [Greater Good Magazine]
Does your job suck? Neuroscience research suggests it might be missing two key ingredients. BY PAUL J. ZAK | JUNE 6, 2018 Let’s be honest: For many people, work sucks. But for others, work is an adventure. The difference doesn’t always lie in the nature of the work. Two different people can have two very different responses to the same job—but my research has also shown that organizational culture makes a huge difference in how we feel about, and perform, at work. I spent eight years...
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How You and Your Kids Can De-Stress During Coronavirus [pbs.org]
By Deborah Farmer Kris, Public Broadcasting Service, March 13, 2020 A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old daughter made a glitter jar for my students: “Tell them that when their brain has a glitter storm, they can shake this up and take deep breaths as the glitter falls.” We could all use some help settling our glitter right now. If you are feeling stress about the COVID-19 pandemic, your brain isn’t misfiring. Stress is a normal, healthy biological response to perceived threats and challenges.
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I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy (dailygood.org)
The use of the term “empathy” has been expanding in recent years, from workplaces to prison systems to conversations about gun control. Research into mirror neurons in the 1980s and 1990s brought sharper focus to the notion of empathy, but it has since acquired numerous dimensions, according to Cris Beam, a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and the author of a new book titled, I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy. Empathy is ingrained in the psyche from...
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I’m Sick of Asking Children to Be Resilient [nytimes.com]
FLINT, Mich. — A baby born in Flint, Mich., where I am a pediatrician, is likely to live almost 20 fewer years than a child born elsewhere in the same county. She’s a baby like any other, with wide eyes, a growing brain and a vast, bottomless innocence — too innocent to understand the injustices that without her knowing or choosing have put her at risk. Some of the babies I care for have the bad luck to be born into neighborhoods where life expectancy is just over 64 years. Only a few miles...
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Improve Birth and Perinatal Outcomes with a Trauma Sensitive Approach
The Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health is excited to bring together 10 talented practitioners to explore the Trauma Informed Practices that help improve birth outcomes and support human development right from the very start. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (1998) launched the importance of trauma and trauma informed care in our health and educational systems. We suddenly had a measure of how early experiences in childhood could correlate with adult disease.
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Introducing Melissa McGinn, Community Manager: Becoming Trauma Informed & Beyond
What can readers expect to learn from you? At this point in my career I am doing less direct practice, and more teaching, training and consulting. My focus has really shifted to helping individuals, organizations and systems put their knowledge of trauma, ACES and resilience into practice. What does being trauma informed actually look like in our day to day interactions, on the job, or in our community? Over the last few years there has been a positive increase in the amount of awareness in...
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Introducing NEW Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community
Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...
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Investing In Community Resilience: Deploying Trauma-Informed Practice for Funders & Capacity Builders (Webinar Series)
Register Here As a philanthropist, your passion for building just, healthy, resilient communities is evident. Until recently, we have been missing critical information that can help us develop best practices to achieve such a goal. Today, the science is clear – adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and trauma can impact the brain and body, contributing to a host of negative outcomes in all aspects of life. Some effects can even be passed from generation to generation. In the last two decades,...
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"It Took Us 400 Years to Get to This Point and It's Going to Take a Long Time for Us to Make Things Right' [cleveland19.com]
By Sia Nyorkor, Cleveland 19 News, February 7, 2020 “When those folks are on the sidelines when black and brown bodies are being killed in our midst, it leaves a community feeling devalued, like they don’t matter," said licensed social worker, Habeebah Rasheed Grimes. It’s February, Black history month and 19 News has brought you a series of special reports, on-air and online, examining complementary life and the connection to slavery. We now focus on unresolved trauma in the black community...
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Japan's first severely disabled lawmakers join parliament [BBC News]
August 2, 2019 BBC News Two politicians have taken their seats in Japan's parliament as the first lawmakers with severe disabilities. Yasuhiko Funago and Eiko Kimura are both largely paralysed and rely on carers for their physical needs. Their election last month has been seen as major step for representation and the visibility of disabled people in Japan. The upper house underwent special modifications to allow for their access. After entering through the main gate of the National Diet via...
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Leading an Organization Through the COVID-19 Crisis [blog.boardsource.org]
By Phil Buchanan, BoardSource, March 26, 2020 Editor’s note: Running an organization is a huge responsibility on its own, but doing so in today’s environment is truly a different beast. We are in uncharted waters. This post, originally published as a series of tweets by Phil Buchanan — president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and author of "Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count" — touches on 15 things to keep in mind as you adjust to the many...
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(Learning Circle) Investing in Community Resilience: Using ACEs and Trauma Science for More Effective Practice
The spread of COVID-19 has created a myriad of challenges for communities around the globe. The science of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), trauma, toxic stress as well as healing and resilience, can provide helpful tools for supporting communities through this time of crisis. Please join us on Wednesday, May 13th from 3-4pm ET for the first Learning Circle of the Investing in Community Resilience web series. Connect with others from around the country who are integrating ACEs and...
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Looking for online training and consulting?
Looking for tools to help your organization or community integrate a trauma-informed and resilience-building approach? At Origins, we offer training courses to support you from your aha moment to your action plan. It all starts with The Basics, a 90-minute online training that will provide you with an overview of the key concepts behind a trauma-informed approach. When you’re ready to move from aha to action, sign up for The Resilience Champion Certificate, a self-paced 6-week online training...