Self-Reflection Puts Trauma Informed
Advocacy First
As a shelter manager for a domestic violence agency, I recently had a
very difficult experience turn into a learning opportunity for clients, an
intern, as well as for me. As we know,
working on such an intimate level with women in crisis can be challenging,
painful, and even rewarding, but ultimately it tests our ability to practice
what we preach, trauma informed advocacy.
A recent change in our household dynamics shifted our shelter from a fairly
peaceful environment of two families supporting each other, both far along in
their journey of establishing safety and independence, to a contentious and somewhat
unsafe situation. A new resident arrived
with her children and began confronting others in an aggressive manner and
discussing inappropriate topics with teens in the house. This was upsetting and definitively a trigger
to our current residents. Her mannerisms
and demeanor were offsetting even to staff, putting us in a place of carefully promoting
discussions of safety and healthy conflict resolution while tempering feelings
of distrust or frustration.
In our house meetings a conscious effort was made to encourage the more
intimidated client to share her concerns and requests regarding her children. We discussed the type of households families
may come from and the fear and domination victims face when wanting to be heard,
but emphasized that this was a safe opportunity to build positive communication
skills. Although the one resident was
able to show a marked change in her ability to display healthy boundaries for
herself, the newer resident appeared impassive, somewhat arrogant and claimed
no responsibility for any of the actions described by the other residents. Despite the lack of resolution, it provided a
format for practicing appropriate assertiveness for clients and even a chance
for staff to role-model this when the client pointedly confronted staff.
The teachable moment came at a subsequent house meeting, at which I will
own my mindset with regards to our residents.
I was impressed with the client who was speaking up for herself and was
concerned the aggressive resident was displaying power and control
behaviors. Honestly, I felt protective
of the one client and expected more negativity from the other. Although I truly believe I remained
professional, I know that this preconceived notion did not take into
consideration the “whys” for the behaviors in the first place. During this next meeting I recognized an increased
confidence in the client standing up for herself, but noticed that the tone of
the meeting had become accusatory. With
five adults in the meeting and the power in the room shifting, I carefully looked
at things from our new resident’s perspective and wondered if I was at all being
led by any biases. After one resident
became more vocal, displaying her frustration, I took the opportunity to ask
everyone to consider some things. I
requested first that rather than taking someone else’s behavior personally, we assume
that the actions are not intended to
be hurtful. Secondly, we can recognize
that our new resident came into an already established household. Most importantly, I stressed that we really
knew nothing about her story, her fears, her concerns and where she was in that
moment of her journey. We ended up
discussing how coping mechanisms to trauma may include having control over her
own life in whatever way a victim can and one person’s survival skills may look
very different than another’s.
This conversation opened up some amazing dialogue and the fact that our
residents found some common ground was a positive moment for all. However, I know the most fundamental aspect
of this was truly modeling the trauma informed perspective. My acknowledgement that no matter how
compassionate I believe I am, putting aside my presumptions to see each client
as an individual victim of trauma is the key to the best practice of advocacy
and that there is always room to grow.
