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Dena Simmons: Without Context, Social-Emotional Learning Can Backfire | EdSurge News

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Even when the smoke clears, schools find student trauma can linger | EdSource

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ESUHSD PM Jam Trauma Informed Practices - Google Jamboard

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Schools across the country are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) standards as an approach to creating school communities that are safe and positive climates for learning, as well as a foundation to set students up for success in school and in life. In theory, this is a step in the right direction - we want schooling spaces where students, families, educators, school staff, and all those who come into contact with the school building feel safe, affirmed, and supported. We want schools that foster emotional support between students, staff, and communities, where there's a trust-building approach rather than school hardening, and we want restorative justice, rather than the policing, punishment, and criminalization of Black and Brown students.

However, these SEL conversations, practices, and curricula are too often based on white, cisgender, patriarchal norms and values which further enact emotional and psychological violence onto Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ youth of color, in particular. The current narrative around SEL is that students must manage and regulate themselves and their emotions, conform and constrict their identities, and not express their fullest, most authentic selves. As school districts begin to devise plans for back-to-school, we must re-examine how we talk about and teach SEL.

While visiting classrooms in a middle school this year, I perused how every classroom had the same print-out displayed on the wall. The poster detailed the five core competencies of SEL, as defined by CASEL - self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. As an example of social awareness, the signs read, "Keep your hands to yourself and don't take other people's property." While social awareness should be about unpacking bias, having critical dialogue about social issues, and collectively crafting justice-oriented solutions, this white-washed version, as Dr. Dena Simmons reminds us, made me wonder: whose social norms are we abiding by and adhering to?

In Dr. Monique Morris's newest book, Sing a Rhythm, Dance A Blues: Education for the Liberation of Black and Brown Girls, Morris tells the story of Esperanza, who as part of the EMERGE program in Oakland, California, was scheduled to speak at a national conference on Chicana/Latina girls in the...

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When SEL is Used as Another Form of Policing

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Schools across the country are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) standards as an approach to creating school communities that are safe and positive climates for learning, as well as a...

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ACES and Resilience Tests and Information

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ACES and Resilience Tests and Information

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What's Your ACE Score? (and Your Resilience Score?)

There are 10 types of childhood trauma measured in the ACE Study. Five are personal -- physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect. Five are related to other family members: a parent who's an alcoholic, a mother who's a victim of domestic violence, a family member in jail, a family member diagnosed with a mental illness, and the disappearance of a parent through divorce, death or abandonment. Each type of trauma counts as one. So a person who's been physically abused, with one alcoholic parent, and a mother who was beaten up has an ACE score of three.
But there are many other types of childhood trauma - racism, watching a sibling being abused, losing a caregiver (grandmother, mother, grandfather, etc.), homelessness, surviving and recovering from a severe accident, witnessing a father being abused by a mother, witnessing a grandmother abusing a father, etc. The ACE Study included only those 10 childhood traumas because those were mentioned as most common by a group of about 300 Kaiser members; those traumas were also well studied individually in the research literature. The most important thing to remember is that the ACE score is meant as a guideline: If you experienced other types of toxic stress over months or years, then those would likely increase your risk of health consequences. For more information about different types of ACE surveys, go to this section of the ACEsConnection.com Resources Center.

Prior to your 18th birthday:

1. Was your mother or stepmother:
Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?
No___If Yes, enter 1 _ _

2. Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? No___If Yes, enter 1 _ _

Now add up your "Yes" answers: _ This is your ACE Score

__________________________

Now that you've got your ACE score, what does it mean?

First....a tiny bit of background to help you figure this out.....(if you want the back story about the fascinating origins of the ACE Study, read The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study -- the largest, most important public health study you never heard of -- began in an obesity clinic.)

The CDC's Adverse Childhood Experiences Study ( ACE Study) uncovered a stunning link between childhood trauma and the chronic diseases people develop as adults, as well as social and emotional problems. This includes heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and many autoimmune diseases, as well as depression, violence, being a victim of violence, and suicide.

The first research results were published in 1998, followed by nearly 70 other publications through 2015. They showed that:

childhood trauma was very common, even in employed white middle-class, college-educated people with great health insurance;

there was a direct link between childhood trauma and adult onset of chronic disease, as well as depression, suicide, being violent and a victim of violence;

more types of trauma increased the risk of health, social and emotional problems.

people usually experience more than one type of trauma - rarely is it only sex abuse or only verbal abuse.

A whopping two thirds of the 17,000 people in the ACE Study had an ACE score of at least one -- 87 percent of those had more than one. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have done their own ACE surveys; their results are similar to the CDC's ACE Study.

The study's researchers came up with an ACE score to explain a person's risk for chronic disease. Think of it as a cholesterol score for childhood toxic stress. You get one point for each type of trauma. The higher your ACE score, the higher your risk of health and social problems. (Of course, other types of trauma exist that could contribute to an ACE score, so it is conceivable that people could have ACE scores higher than 10; however, the ACE Study measured only 10 types.)

As your ACE score increases, so does the risk of disease, social and emotional problems. With an ACE score of 4 or more, things start getting serious. The likelihood of chronic pulmonary lung disease increases 390 percent; hepatitis, 240 percent; depression 460 percent; suicide, 1,220 percent.

(By the way, lest you think that the ACE Study was yet another involving inner-city poor people of color, take note: The study's participants were 17,000 mostly white, middle and upper-middle class college-educated San Diegans with good jobs and great health care - they all belonged to the Kaiser Permanente health maintenance organization. Prior to the ACE Study, most research about effects of abuse, neglect, etc., involved poor people of color who live in the inner city. And so the notion was that it was inner-city people of color who experienced abuse, neglect, etc., not white middle-class or white upper-class people....that somehow white people of means were immune from the kinds of problems affecting people who were poor. That's not only ridiculous, but it was just another way to perpetrate racism and classism. The ACE Study quashed that notion. So, it's not that I'm saying that the ACE Study is credible because it was done on white people, I'm saying that the ACE Study opened the door to an understanding that ACEs are at the root of nearly all problems of physical, mental, economic and social health in humans, no matter where in the world those humans live. The ACE Study and the other research that makes up ACEs science provided an opening to a better understanding of the constructs that make up our notion of why people suffer ill health - physical, mental, economic, social - and that includes systemic racism.)

Here are some specific graphic examples of how increasing ACE scores increase the risk of some diseases, social and emotional problems. All of these graphs come from "The relationship of adverse childhood experiences to adult health, well being, social function and health care", a book chapter by Drs. Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda, co-founders of the ACE Study, in "The Hidden Epidemic: The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease."

What causes this?

At the same time that the ACE Study was being done, parallel research on kids' brains found that toxic stress physically damages a child's developing brain. This was determined by a group of neuroscientists and pediatricians, including neuroscientist Martin Teicher and pediatrician Jack Shonkoff, both at Harvard University, neuroscientist Bruce McEwen at Rockefeller University, and child psychiatrist Bruce Perry at the Child Trauma Academy.

When children are overloaded with stress hormones, they're in flight, fright or freeze mode. They can't learn in school. They often have difficulty trusting adults or developing healthy relationships with peers (i.e., they become loners). To relieve their anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, and/or inability to focus, they turn to easily available biochemical solutions - nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, methamphetamine - or activities in which they can escape their problems - high-risk sports, proliferation of sex partners, and work/over-achievement. (e.g. Nicotine reduces anger, increases focus and relieves depression. Alcohol relieves stress.)

Using drugs or overeating or engaging in risky behavior leads to consequences as a direct result of this behavior. For example, smoking can lead to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) or lung cancer. Overeating can lead to obesity and diabetes. In addition, there is increasing research that shows that severe and chronic stress leads to bodily systems producing an inflammatory response that leads to disease.

Fortunately, brains and lives are somewhat plastic. The appropriate integration of resilience factors born out of ACE concepts - such as asking for help, developing trusting relationships, forming a positive attitude, listening to feelings - can help people improve their lives.

Here's a link to the long questionnaire (200+ questions).

To cite the original ACE study/questionnaire, please link to the article published online in American Journal of Preventive Medicine: https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/fulltext#Defining%20Childhood%20Exposures.

_______________________

What's Your Resilience Score?

This questionnaire was developed by the early childhood service providers, pediatricians, psychologists, and health advocates of Southern Kennebec Healthy Start, Augusta, Maine, in 2006, and updated in February 2013. Two psychologists in the group, Mark Rains and Kate McClinn, came up with the 14 statements with editing suggestions by the other members of the group. The scoring system was modeled after the ACE Study questions. The content of the questions was based on a number of research studies from the literature over the past 40 years including that of Dr. Emmy Werner and others. Its purpose is limited to parenting education. It was not developed for research.

Rains wants everyone to know that the resilience questions are only meant to prompt reflection and conversation on experiences that may help protect most people (about three out of four) with four or more ACEs from developing negative outcomes. A secure early childhood is helpful, but not necessary. A higher number of positive experiences is not necessarily more protective. He regrets that the questions have taken on a life of their own and that people may have misinterpretted or misunderstood their experience of risk and resilience, based on the ACE or "Resilience" questionnaires. For more information, he suggests reading this article on ACEs Too High -- Putting resilience and resilience surveys under the microscope.

RESILIENCE Questionnaire

Please circle the most accurate answer undereach statement:
1. I believe that my mother loved me when I was little.
Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

2. I believe that my father loved me when I was little.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

3. When I was little, other people helped my mother and father take care of me and they seemed to love me.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

4. I've heard that when I was an infant someone in my family enjoyed playing with me, and I enjoyed it, too.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

5. When I was a child, there were relatives in my family who made me feel better if I was sad or worried.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

6. When I was a child, neighbors or my friends' parents seemed to like me.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

7. When I was a child, teachers, coaches, youth leaders or ministers were there to help me.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

8. Someone in my family cared about how I was doing in school.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

9. My family, neighbors and friends talked often about making our lives better.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

10. We had rules in our house and were expected to keep them.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

11. When I felt really bad, I could almost always find someone I trusted to talk to.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

12. As a youth, people noticed that I was capable and could get things done.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

13. I was independent and a go-getter.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

14. I believed that life is what you make it.

Definitely true Probably true Not sure Probably Not True Definitely Not True

How many of these 14 protective factors did I have as a child and youth? (How many of the 14 were circled "Definitely True" or "Probably True"?) _______

Of these circled, how many are still true for me? _______

I cannot effectively answer the questionnaire re Resilience because it asks for present feelings/attitudes. I see now through the lens of experience, therapy and spiritual growth that my mother and my stepfather loved me and did the best they could to raise me based on the store if love available to them. I have written a small piece on what I see now as my history. I want to share that with ACEs appropriately. if someone would give me guidance I would greatly appreciated it. Thank you.

Hi Robert--I'm not sure if you got your answer back in June or not so just wanted to leave instructions on how to make your own blog post: https://www.acesconnection.com...how-to-post-a-blog-1

I cannot effectively answer the questionnaire re Resilience because it asks for present feelings/attitudes. I see now through the lens of experience, therapy and spiritual growth that my mother and my stepfather loved me and did the best they could to raise me based on the store if love available to them. I have written a small piece on what I see now as my history. I want to share that with ACEs appropriately. if someone would give me guidance I would greatly appreciated it. Thank you.

Know Jessica... If you are going to figure it out and then heal, you are going to have to be a scientist. You are going to have to be a voyager and you are going to have to figure out what to do for yourself. Yes, biology determines response. Psychiatry and most of psychology will not be able to guide you. Guide yourself. It's tough and scary.... but you get to be the captain and as long as you always look for truth... you will find it... and if you want to get out of Missouri... come find me in Asheville.. I will be working on the brain.

Kathy Brous is a person who had serious early trauma and wrote about her healing journey. has a lot of very good info synthesizing much of this research. She summarizes a lot of the relevant researchers and various aspects of the problem really well. She writes about Peter Levine, Allan Schore, etc, and also child development people Fonagy, Bowlby, etc.

I also strongly recommend the book by Laurence Heller, "Healing Developmental Trauma." It really puts the somatic element in, and illustrates how emotional flashbacks work. His method for healing is to help people re-enter their somatic awareness in small pieces in a safe situation, say just focusing on the tight neck, or the jumpy stomach int he presence of a therapist that keeps the client at the EDGE of the feeling without letting it take over. And it is healing to have the horrible feeling in the presence of a safe person and help place its origins in the past.

The tricky part is 0-3 rejection/ injury leaves its traces in the Right brain. The right brain is not the part of the brain reachable by CBT, etc. The R brain learns a lot 0-3 via IMPLICIT learning. Explicit learning is what you are taught overtly, like manners or math. Implicit learning is what you ABSORB from environment and the facts of life. So your worldview (life is good/ life is bad) and other assumptions about the way things are mostly live in the R brain.

One of the best ways of thinking about the R brain is "the right brain drives the car." You could not possibly use the L brain to logically assess oncoming traffic, the yellow light, the guy tailgating you, and pedestrians stepping close to the curb, all at once. It's the R brain that can do all this calculation, in concert, and tell you to hit the brakes... The R brain is so fast it takes over.

Well, the injured R brain must assess/take over too. Only it has learned about how things "are" in a state of danger, of pain, of not being wanted, of being told 'you are no good,' etc. So what the R brain KNOWS is now based on false information, leads it to false conclusions about 'dangers' and hostilities lurking.

Where the body comes in: the emotional state of not being wanted or being hurt by people supposed to love you is so painful it is blocked as much as possible by the child. That remembered state can be triggered in the here an now and feel like it is actually happening in the here and now. It might be a noise, smell, or other small thing, but suddenly your R brain is "driving the car" to get you the hell out of there to avoid the horrible feeling or the sense of grave danger that happened long ago. And it happens in a microsecond. The person might run, hide, rage, freeze, dissociate, or whatever the old pattern of avoidance might be.

WOW!

This is hardcore. Is there a more in-depth version of this questionnaire? The responses for this one leave me with an ACE's score of 10 and a Resiliency score of 2. Seems dismal at best.

J.

Jessica - The "resiliency" score is basically an attachment scale and attachment, especially a secure attachment in infancy is the greatest protection against accruing these Adverse Childhood Experiences from the ACEstudy later in childhood. This "resilience" questionnaire is not standardized and the ACE questions are not the only childhood stressors nor are they necessarily the most important - they just happen to be the factors included in the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.

Yeah, having an ACE score of 10 and a "resiliency" score of 2 is pretty bad. It means you had lots of hard things happen to you and you didn't really have anyone there protecting you as a kid.

You probably have a lot of anxiety, maybe panic, confusion. Resilience is built in our biology according to everything I have read over this last year --- by a secure attachment with a parent who loves and protects you in infancy from the ages of zero to three.

This early toxic stress - is pretty resistant to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Psychiatic drugs. Psychiatric drugs basically numb, deaden, take away feelings. CBT isn't really useful for memories that were never verbal. There is a lot of feelings in the body for many people that are Implicit Memory. We don't have any verbal recall because the experiences were preverbal. These can be really strong emotions in the body as an example a feeling like the gut is gonna explode or the chest is going to explode but having no idea where this is coming from. It is a body memory that doesn't have words because the memories (neurons wired and firing together) were laid down before we were verbal. Also the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions and the "personality" can be kind of all over the place because segments of memory are kind of activated in different ways by different things that we see, hear, sense in the environment and there are like walls between sets of memories to help us survive chaos, terror---- I didn't explain this very well because it is hard to find a book that gives the straight answer to this kind of thing. I have been looking since I was 25 years old some 25 years ago. Hope that helps.

WOW!

This is hardcore. Is there a more in-depth version of this questionnaire? The responses for this one leave me with an ACE's score of 10 and a Resiliency score of 2. Seems dismal at best.

J.

I'm looking for a revised ACE's questionnaire. I need a shorter, simple, quick questionnaire to complete in a clinic based service. Is any one aware of a revised version? Is this even allowed to maintain the fidelity of the original questionnaire.

Hi Chris, I wrote a story a while back about the work of Dr. Kathryn Erickson-Ridout at Kaiser Medical Center in San Jose, Calif. who was testing out a shorter 4 question ACEs questionnaire. Here's a link to that story. I suggest you reach out to her. Here's a link to her bio. I'm happy to introduce you. Please write me at: ludesky@acesconnection if you would like me to do an introductory email. I would also suggest that you check out the ACEs Connection resource center

I'm looking for a revised ACE's questionnaire. I need a shorter, simple, quick questionnaire to complete in a clinic based service. Is any one aware of a revised version? Is this even allowed to maintain the fidelity of the original questionnaire.

This "resilience" questionnaire is basically an attachment questionnaire. The first 4 questions are about attachment in infancy. If you reverse questions 10 and 11, the first 10 questions are all about interpersonal relationships in childhood. You could learn a lot from a large data set with a corresponding ACE Score - and a longitudinal study. I envy RJ Gillespie.

However it is really a misnomer to call this a resilience score, as it implies that one is resilient if one has many instances of adults who cared about you as a child and one is not resilient if you had no one. These questions are more like a tally of questions about childhood relationships that can lead to adult resilience. And though it is true, life will be a lot easier if you had a lot of people who cared and loved you as a child, especially a mother in infancy, that says nothing about one's own drive to overcome the developmental deficits that are inevitable when a child did not have critical social experiences that are essential for sound development. Basically what I am trying to say is the child who is developing in a social environment that creates disorganization cannot expect to develop the kind of brain that would develop in a secure social environment. It is not possible for a child to develop a secure brain in a disorganizing environment. Any secure child placed in a disorganizing environment would quickly experience developmental forces pushing brain development towards disorganization. The adult resilience is a result of the secure foundation.

We are all social creatures and every pediatrician should know that emotionally neglected infants can die and many will have serious social emotional delays that look like autism; these delays cannot all be reversed Think feral child or Spitz's orphans. When you have these kinds of social delays as a social creature in a social world and you don't have the skills to navigate your developmental deficits, life is going to be hard.

However, children are incredibly malleable. They will develop around whatever environment is presented to them to survive and I think that is pretty resilient even if the score on this set of 14 questions happens to be zero.

Infancy is an incredibly important period to prevent childhood trauma and adversity and irreversible developmental deviation. I hope we don't overlook this.

Hi, Romer: In our definition, hope is part of resilience science. Poly-victimization is the way criminal justice described ACEs, until the community learned about ACEs science.

Scrolling through the comments on this post, it inspired some compassionate and profoundly well rounded reflection upon my own experiences spanning abuse/neglect/under guardianship of the minister until 18. Grandparents raised one of my btothers and i from ages 7 & 9 after witnessing a heartbreaking and unstable sequence of events all our young lives.

My ACES score is 9. Resilience score is 12. Have good days & bad

I had all 14 resilience factors.

I think my experience may be somewhat common.... My parents were VERY limited in their ability to deal with OLDER children but they did very well while we still deified them.... I think the break point is about age 9, when a kid begins to form their own opinions on things they have not questioned before. I recall noticing gaps in the logic of my parents and beginning to disagree or express a divergent point of view about that age.

In the case of my parents, this threatened them a lot, when I stopped always echoing them. They needed/wanted too much control, from their own trauma histories. Controlling was the one way they knew to "raise" kids... making us do what they said and echo their positions on things, making sure we walked the exact right path.

However, the resilience part is incredibly important, because though I have 5 ACES, I also have never suffered from depression, nor let dangerous people into my life, nor viciously turned against myself internally. I am nice to myself. I had my own trances due to parental narcissism that I had to wake up from in adulthood, and some authoritarian parenting tendencies I had to unlearn, but I was able to do that without fear once I figured it out.

10 sounds like a good even number, yet I would add an 11th question to the ACE test.

It would be about serious physical illnesses in the childhood.

At the age of 8, I spent 3 days dehydrated with an untreated gastrointestinal infection (similar to but not dysentery) in a hospital in Russia. My mother rescued me after 3 days when she heard the rumors that I am not getting better from another mother. This in turn predetermined my life for many years, mental health including.

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What's Your ACE Score? (and Your Resilience Score?) There are 10 types of childhood trauma measured in the ACE Study. Five are personal -- physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect.

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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Behavior and Trauma –            A Child’s Experience

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Behavior and Trauma –            A Child’s Experience