Trauma is an event where a person experiences
a threat of injury or of death or of sexual violence.
Now, that threat can be an actual threat or it can be a perceived threat.
And that's really important to know that.
Traumatic events can involve things like
a sexual assault; someone being physically assaulted.
It can also involve a serious car accident or a natural disaster.
Trauma is a big word. And trauma covers a whole lot, a whole range of different experiences for people.
But we know that there is something very particular about the experience of interpersonal violence.
And why it is different for people when you're the victim/survivor of an act of violence
that has chosen to be perpetrated against you.
It's a very personal experience held in your body.
But what happens for victim/survivors often,
part of disclosure, is that they are then blamed
for what's happened, or that it's minimised in some way.
The other thing that we know about who perpetrators of violence are
is that, more often than not, it's someone that's known and trusted.
So there's the betrayal of the trust and the relationship and the rupturing that happens
in that moment. One of the fundamental things to think about
when working with the aftermath of trauma,
and in thinking about working in a trauma informed way,
is to really ensure safety as a primary focus of your work.
So once you have safety, you can establish that for somebody, you can connect with them,
validating and listening to someone's experience, as they understand it,
is really important. To support somebody, to make choices and options
about what they might like to do next, and to facilitate those links, if they choose to do so.
Looking at a person's needs through a trauma lens
means a number of different things.
For one thing, it's looking at the person's presentation.
So how they present to you will look very different
if you understand trauma. For example, if you have a person who talks to you about having panic attacks,
they may feel panicky because they're encountering reminders of the trauma.
So a woman who may have been sexually assaulted by a particular type of man
may find herself having panic attacks
when she sees men that look like her attacker.
Another thing that's very important is to understand
how a person may engage with treatment,
or may engage with a service,
and it's very easy for a practitioner to see them as resistant or not ready to engage in help
or as chaotic because they're not showing up to appointments.
When in fact they have a very good reason for not doing so.
Having an understanding of trauma informed practice
is really a key thing. When you think about interpersonal violence and experiences of what that is
for victim/survivors, it's experiences of trauma and responses and reactions to that,
that affect all aspects of their life. The most important thing in understanding that
is to know that quick fixes aren't what happens after trauma.
That it can take a long time for people to recover.
And that support needs to occur over the long-term.
It's important to continue over time to re-establish safety,
to keep re-establishing safety, to continue to provide options,
and for people to have as much control over decision making as they can.
Not everybody who has experienced sexual assault,
or family violence, needs or wants to have professional support.
Certainly those options are available there for them.
But we know that the vast majority of victim/survivors out there don't necessarily have contact with a specialist service.
But the important thing for them to know is that those options are available,
and they can choose to access them in their time, when they want to.
For someone that's been in a traumatic incident,
it's very important to be able to provide some practical tools to help them deal
with the symptoms they are experiencing as a result of the trauma.
So it may be simple things to help them feel more in control of their emotions,
or to deal better with their relationships,
and also to help them have a sense of hope and of the future.
So it can be very simple strategies.
There are lots of supports available for frontline workers.
Working with trauma can be tough,
and you don't need to do this alone.
There's supervision that workers can have within a workplace.
There are spontaneous and formal debriefing processes that can happen.
Workplaces often have EAP [Employee Assistance Program], or external supervision available for staff.
And there's also the opportunity for people to access secondary consultation from specialist services.
What that means is you can access a worker who's a specialist in the area of sexual assault
or family violence. Have a conversation with them about some of the issues you might be facing in the work.
And get some support around how you might respond in the most effective way.
And to feel confident in the work that you're doing.