Interdisciplinary Insights
How we think about and understand a subject, any subject, can be rather limited (forgive me for saying) unless we dare to step into other genres and disciplines. Quite honestly, it can be a bit intimidating to confront a whole other body of knowledge that lies outside our own frameworks and theories for understanding the world. My work has always sat firmly in sociology, education and social work (with rather large dollops of psychology). However, for my doctorate, I needed to wander into the mind-blowing world of philosophy and the vast world of geography, two areas that I have had little relationship with. However, the riches of this venture are vast, almost like travelling to another country. Alongside this, it has become increasingly impossible to consider belonging without thinking about mattering, a shift that can be attributed to the work of Flett (2025).In this post, I will briefly introduce belonging and mattering across different academic disciplines.
General: Belonging
Anyone who has an interest in belonging will know that it is widely understood to be an intrinsic human need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). You are unlikely to read any work on belonging where Baumeister and Leary aren’t referenced. However, if we look at research across different disciplines, we can add more depth to this understanding. We will see how belonging is woven into the fabric of place, identity and power. To belong is not merely to be present; it is to be recognised, included and accepted. To matter is not simply to exist; it is to feel that one’s presence makes a difference and that we are significant. That our experience of these aspects of being human are fragile and transformative.
Education: Belonging in Schools and Universities
Studies in education highlight belonging as a critical factor in student engagement, well-being and retention. The extensive work of Kelly-Ann Allen in this area shows that belonging in schools is not automatic; it must be cultivated through pedagogy, staff support and inclusive cultures (2025). Yet belonging can be undermined by stereotyping, invisibility or systemic inequities.
Belonging in higher education has become a central theme in contemporary research, recognised as a powerful determinant of student engagement, wellbeing and retention. Critical reviews (Gilani & Thomas, 2025) show that belonging is shaped by multiple factors such as inclusive pedagogies, supportive staff relationships, peer networks and institutional culture. However, students often encounter stereotyping, invisibility, or exclusion, particularly those from marginalised or working-class backgrounds.
For newly qualified teachers, especially those from working-class backgrounds, the classroom becomes a threshold: between student and professional, insider and outsider (Smith, 2026). Here, belonging is a daily negotiation, where their contributions only begin to matter when their contributions are valued rather than overlooked.
Geography: Place-Belongingness and Migration
Drawing upon Antonsich (2010) in my research helped me shape an understanding that belonging must always be understood as both place-belongingness (a personal, emotional attachment to place). This contributed to my FACES PLACES SPACES conceptual model (Cherry, 2025) to ensure a broader perspective on the areas that we must visit to cultivate belonging.
The politics of belonging (the discursive and institutional boundaries that regulate inclusion) help us grasp who gets to belong and how! This lens has been taken up in newer geographical work, showing how belonging is constantly negotiated in contexts of migration, urban change and environmental displacement. In this way, geography reveals belonging not as a fixed state but as a process of navigation, reminding us that belonging is deeply tied to place.
Recent work (GeoJournal, 2024) distinguishes between place-belongingness, the felt sense of being at home, and the politics of belonging, as mentioned above, the structures that decide who is included or excluded. Migrant youth studies (MDPI, 2023) show how belonging is relational, constructed through community ties and cultural practices. Belonging is understood as fragile, yet mattering emerges when young people’s dignity and contributions are recognised by the communities they inhabit.
Philosophy: The Other Side of Belonging
Philosophers have begun to explore the shadow side of belonging, for example what happens when it fails. The Other Side of Belonging (2020) argues that ‘unbelonging’, can damage identity and fracture community. I used this concept extensively in my research to explain the historical context, one that casts a long shadow, in how we think about children involved with ‘the state’ in the UK (Cherry, 2025).
For refugees and asylum seekers, belonging is often ambiguous, reciprocal and contested (Research Papers in Education, 2025). Living between cultures, living without recognition, living with invisibility. Becoming significant can become the antidote, affirming that even in unbelonging, one’s existence carries value.
The Philosophy of Belonging asks not only what it means to belong but also what happens when belonging fails, providing philosophical debates about agency, recognition and relational ethics. It argues belonging not as a static state but as a dynamic negotiation of self and other, individual and community.
Sociology: Belonging as Social Capital
Belonging in sociology is understood as a social, relational and institutional process rather than simply a private feeling as to whether we feel the lived experience of belonging and mattering; our individual psychology. Rather, it is negotiated through norms, networks and of course, power. Belonging is seen as a key resource that shapes participation, well-being and identity across all aspects of our social life. It is produced (and sometimes denied) through everyday practices, policies and the symbolic boundaries that mark who belongs to a place or group.
Recent sociological research highlights belonging as a dynamic process shaped by everyday practices, social norms and community spaces. Thurnell‑Read (2024) explores pub culture in the UK, showing how pubs act as focal points for community belonging even as they undergo significant social and economic change (particularly post COVID). This study demonstrates that simply talking about pub‑going is a way for people to articulate both personal attachments and perceptions of wider social transformation. Belonging in this regard sits at the intersection of individual life and collective change. This work underscores how belonging is embedded in cultural institutions that provide continuity and also disruption in social life.
Understanding how an individual's sense of belonging and transformation intersect in pub culture might explain the mainstream development of more extreme political views, the recruitment to which relies on people feeling that they belong to something bigger. I don’t have time to explore this assertion fully here, but I hope it stimulates your own thinking about how cultivating belonging can provide what we need as humans, regardless of whether that is for the good of humanity as a whole or not!
Conclusion: Belonging and Mattering as Transformative
Across these disciplines, a pattern emerges about the complexity of belonging and its relationship with place, power and self. It also invites us to dance between (and hold) the individual experience of belonging and the social fabric that we may belong (or not belong) to. This deeper understanding helps us widen the lens for considering what our own role is in cultivating belonging and where we may feel limited (the politics of belonging, for example). It also provides us with a framework for understanding how our inherent need to belong will be met somewhere, whether that is good for us as individuals and our communities or not.
Belonging and mattering shape individual capacity, strengthen communities, enhance well-being and provide a context for transformation. Belonging and mattering are not the goal, as in ‘an ending’, but they are ongoing practices that cultivate recognition, reciprocity and care and hopefully, make the world a better place rather than a more fractured one.
References
Allen, K.-A. (2025). School belonging: Evidence, experts, and everyday gaps. Educational Psychology Review. Advance online publication.
Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
Cherry, L. (2025). Weaving a Web of Belonging: Developing a Trauma Informed Culture for All Children. Routledge.
Flett, G. L. (2025). Description and conceptualization of mattering. In G. L. Flett, Mattering as a core need in children and adolescents: Theoretical, clinical, and research perspectives (pp. 33–53). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
GeoJournal. (2024). Place-belongingness in real-life contexts: A review of practical meanings, contributing factors, and evaluation methods. GeoJournal, 89(2), 1–15.
Gilani, D., & Thomas, L. (2025). Understanding the factors and consequences of student belonging in higher education: A critical literature review. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 1(38).
Higher Education Research & Development. (2024). Students, community and belonging: An investigation of student experience across six European countries. Higher Education Research & Development, 43(2), 1–18
Mellinger, C., Fritzson, A., Park, B., & Dimidjian, S. (2023). Developing the Sense of Belonging Scale and understanding its relationship to loneliness, need to belong, and general well-being outcomes. Journal of Personality Assessment, 105(5), 589–602.
McIntyre, J. (2025). Conceptualising the art of belonging for young refugees and asylum seekers: Reflections from England and Sweden. Research Papers in Education, 40(1), 1–20.
Research Papers in Education. (2025). Conceptualising the art of belonging for young refugees and asylum seekers. Research Papers in Education, 40(1), 1–20.
Social Sciences. (2023). Geographies of belonging: Migrant youth and relational spaces. Social Sciences, 12(3), 167.
Smith, T. (2026) Working-Class Teachers and the Issue of Belonging in a Middle-Class Profession. Unpublished (forthcoming) thesis, University of Buckingham.
Studies in Philosophy and Education. (2020). The other side of belonging. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39(5), 1–15.
Thurnell‑Read, T. (2024). ‘It’s a small little pub, but everybody knew everybody’: Pub culture, belonging and social change. Sociology, 58(2), 420–436.
I have wanted to write about this quiet, peaceful, sometimes sad and incredibly uncertain space for a while and explore how this liminal space that I now find myself in intersects with belonging while applying a trauma informed lens. It has taken a while for me to formulate some of my thoughts, and I can’t say that I’m fully there yet but there is at least enough coherence for the beginnings of this exploration.
Liminality
I came to think about being in a ‘liminal space’ when I was informed that my incurable cancer diagnosis had been shifted to a terminal diagnosis. It happened on the 11th July 2025 when it was communicated to me that unless I responded to something, I had months left of living. This confronting news gave me the desire to make meaning by seeking out those who specialise in supporting those of us living this experience.
Liminality is a term rooted in anthropology, describing the “in-between” phase of transition rituals (van Gennep, 1909; Turner, 1967). In the context of having a terminal illness, liminality is providing me with a new map, a country with no name, yet a deeply human experience that most people avoid thinking about. So much happens in this space between living and dying; it is where I spend a considerable amount of my time thinking about my legacy, it’s a place where love deepens, where my soul cries out for nature’s gifts. I am reminded daily that I am living differently now and that life is unrecognisable to me. I have few other points of reference in the geography of my experiences to draw upon.
The future no longer stretches out in front of me. Ambition, drive and the need to plan have left me along with my ability to take my beloved long walks. Who I have been is disappearing and who I am now is taking shape but for the first time. I am fully in the “in-between” phase of a transition that I had not considered that I would live in nor have I ever witnessed in another before me.
There is trauma in how the familiar has been disrupted and the future is now unknowable. The medical model forgets to centre me and offers itself as a transactional experience whereby each interaction is a medical intervention; a canula, bloods, meds, observations. Take these drugs and we’ll try and keep you alive for a while longer.
I tried to talk to a nurse about how it felt to not always understand what was going on with my treatment and then unfortunately, I went to make a cup of tea in the corridor and heard her talking to another nurse stating “Lisa Cherry is complaining that she does not know what is happening.” I quickly returned to my room so that I could not hear any more. I do not want to know what is said about me… but I do know that I was not complaining, just talking about something beyond the transcactional.
Bringing a trauma-informed lens to the liminal space asks us to avoid ‘fixing’ that which cannot fixed, that the ambiguity and complexity of healing is honoured and that room is made for the reconstruction of my identity and the meaning-making of this circumstance.
Belonging
Cultivating belonging can offer continuity when identity feels fragmented; am I still loved, still needed, still woven into the fabric of my community. I can still write, I can still work (albeit less often), I am still important. I don’t want to belong to cancer or to hospitals, yet I do. I have a number, an NHS number, which they ask me for at different times. I am a number now in certain quarters.
My relationship with myself, with time and with my body, has changed. Sometimes I feel incredible and strong and brave, but mostly I feel a fragility which is a very new feeling. I have lived a lifetime of feeling strong and capable and fit and healthy.
I no longer belong to my calendar, to productivity, to goals, to achievements. I now belong to presence, to moments and memories. The past is gone and the future is accessed by using binoculars the wrong way round. Home is not a place anymore, rather it is located in my people, in rituals, in calmness and in solitude and in feeling a deep sense of safety. I find belonging in living differently, in watching the tallest branches of trees sway from my bedroom window. I am not waiting to die but I am finding a way of living differently.
Bringing a trauma-informed lens to thinking about belonging asks us to prioritise psychological safety and relationships and embed practices that reflect new and emerging identities and foster connection through co-regulation and trust.
The Complexity of the Liminal Space and Belonging
I make plans that invariably get cancelled. I have already missed two booked holidays, yet I feel to need to plan memory making, so I keep planning things knowing that these plans may never happen. The love I feel for those closest to me is deeper than ever, yet sometimes I wonder whether I should withdraw to protect them from the intensity of my reality. To live is to die. It is not possible to be alive without also understanding that dying is part of life.
What I really need in this space is to be seen, to be remembered for my work and my love. I notice that many people know this instinctively and write messages to me about what my work has meant to them. How clever that is, to know how important that might be to me. I appreciate being witnessed in this liminal space without sympathy or a being seen as needing to be fixed but from a place of knowing that we all have the capacity to live in this liminal space. That we all need the capacity to live in this space as invariably we will do so, or we will witness someone residing there. I need not be a diagnosis, while also needing adjustments. This is a time to be honoured, yet it has no time line. It could be a few months or a few years. It is sacred.
To be continued…. Hopefully.
Writing has always saved me and that is ultimately why I keep writing books and articles. If you’d like to write a non-fiction book, I’m hosting a day. I’d love you to join me. You can learn more here…
Belonging, met in the place
visited briefly, a person who
remembered us, the friendly
face, a welcome home
even when they knew
we had never visited this
place before, a show of kindness
welcoming words, an open
heart, inviting spaces to be still,
not expected to repeat
life stories in all our phases
acceptance met, upon
return, our hearts belonged
loved unconditionally, the
welcome, remains lifelong.
Chrissy Kelly
Care Experienced Poet
Poverty is a multifaceted issue with deep societal, cultural, and historical roots. It manifests in numerous ways, often affecting both the individual and community levels. Living in poverty means constantly worrying about basic needs like food and heating, causing stress that can dominate a person’s thoughts from morning until night. This cycle of deprivation can lead to feelings of isolation and despair, making it difficult to participate fully in society.
Poverty lacks a single, universally accepted definition, but it is generally understood through four key levels:
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) defines poverty as occurring when "your resources are well below your minimum needs."
Several systemic causes contribute to poverty in the UK:
In addition to these economic factors, poverty is also influenced by social aspects, such as:
Tackling poverty requires collaboration from multiple sectors, including government, businesses, communities, and individuals. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but a multi-pronged approach is necessary. Both the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) propose key strategies, including:
A trauma-informed approach can provide valuable insights into addressing poverty by focusing on safety, trust, transparency, collaboration, and empowerment. Relationships and community support are key protective factors that help individuals and families thrive despite the challenges of poverty.
Systemic Protective Factors:
Interpersonal Protective Factors:
By strengthening both systemic and interpersonal protective factors, we can develop personal protective factors such as:
Poverty is everyone’s concern because it affects all aspects of life and has lasting impacts across generations. A trauma-informed approach focuses on fostering relationships and building community resilience, which can help break the cycle of poverty. Prevention should be at the forefront, with a strong emphasis on supporting families and communities.
If you're interested in learning more or seeking training and consultancy on these topics, contact Lyndsay, our Working Together Lead, at hello@ticservicesltd.com for support on your journey.
You may have noticed that I have a slight obsession with coffee and you wouldn’t be wrong. This can be a challenge as a UK resident as I often need to try a few cups in each area I am in before I find a good coffee blend, a machine that is cleaned properly every day and a barista that knows what they’re doing simultaneously. Incidentally, one of my faves in the UK is UE Roastery. Where they roast, they also have a cafe so it’s not in the best location (an industrial estate) but it is sooooo worth a drive in. They supply to plenty of places in the area but it’s not just about the coffee remember? In my limited experience in Victoria, Australia, you can order a coffee literally anywhere and it’s amazing. Whether you’re in Melbourne, Werribee, Castlemaine, Daylesford, Macedon and stops in between, the coffee is fantastic!
Staying with the food and drink theme, I was very blessed to try some Bush Tucker at the event that I was speaking at last night and my tastebuds have now been introduced to Wattleseed and dried Ooray, goodies provided by local catering company Murnong Mummas. All the food provided was nutritious, sourced from nature’s wisdom, delicious and wholesome and has been sustaining this land’s people for over 65,000 years.
I had a day at leisure today and after waking up to a beautiful sunrise overlooking Macedon Mountain (in the pic above) and the sound of birdsong, I drove to Daylesford and sat and wrote some of this post in Koukla, acompanied by yet another fabulous coffee.
In the afternoon I met a Twitter friend in The Trading Post, a stunning foodie heaven and post office rolled into one. I can’t remember the last time I arrived in a town anywhere in the world where I didn’t have a friend to meet that I hadn’t met yet. Twitter has been incredible for the traveller that I am; professional connections that morph into long lost friends. I love that! It’s relational connection on speed.
Finally, Australia is really the best country I have visited (and I’ve been to a few!) in exploring belonging, intergenerational trauma and collective trauma. As a country, Australia is leaning into taking responsibility for the impact of the European invasion and the destruction that was created that continues to reverberate in every aspect of Indigenous life here. With taking responsibility comes the responsibility of repair; the hardest part of rupture(s) whether on a macro (country) level or on a micro level in our day to day relationships. Courage, curiosity and connection are the building blocks. So I say leaning into because there is still resistance to this repair work that I have picked up from watching the news. I am working with services here where intergenerational trauma is very much understood so the news provides a different view that I wouldn’t have picked up in the spaces I’m in. I see the fear of power sharing and a mentality of scarcity and repair begins with centralising lived experiences which will be a confronting concept to many. However, I challenge anyone to compare where Australia is at with the UK or the US. There is simply no comparison. The UK and the US are not even close. There is some serious global healing that needs to take place if we are ever to move forward from environmental and cultural harm (violence) and Indigenous people understand that in ways that we have to learn from. The time is now. It always is.
It’s Tuesday at the Australian Childhood Foundation Trauma Conference 2022 and it’s been yet another full day! There were several speakers that I had the pleasure of listening to today but I’m going to share the learnings from Louis Cozolino and Judy Atkinson as their work resonates with me the most (for very different reasons)!
Louis Cozolino, focuses on interpersonal neurobiology and the interface of mind, body, brain and relationships.
He asks us to reconsider how we understand executive functioning and how it connects with lived experience. The standard dogma is that executive functioning is located in the prefrontal cortex. However, the brain he argues, is more like a govt of systems; complicated, doesn’t work very easily together and doesn’t always get things right.
Why is executive functioning so vulnerable? It exists in our body, in our relationships. It’s not just a brain function: it’s a social and community function. We can only go so far if we don’t have the ability to connect and empathise along with the ability to self-regulate, it doesn’t matter how clever we are!
He prefers to refer to it as The Executive Suite rather than executive functioning. There is not one CEO but rather:
The Primitive Executive – amygdala centric. The job is to keep us alive. Mechanisms and systems help us to stay calm, to be our own amygdala whisperer. Amygdala system is anti-correlational to other two execs and has the most power. It’s the hub, designed to keep us safe but it’s not necessarily that intelligent, eg. doesn’t always know the difference between actual threat, perceived threat or an old threat.
The Task Executive – links goals to planning and execution. Links our thoughts, behaviours and emotions. This gives us a model to understand how somatic therapies might work. An Integration of mind and body – Cognition/relationship/emotion. It is focused on planning, goal setting and oversight.
The Social Executive – the default mode network (DMN) is active when we become involved in tasks involving self-awareness, understanding others, imagination and memory. Self-awareness – conscious awareness, self-reflection, auto memory. Social awareness – processing relationships, social rules. Perception and cognition – time travel, anticipation, imagination, create goals, environmental navigation, memory scene construction. In therapy we have to be the amygdala whisperer but also quiet down and inhibit the 2nd and 3rd execs.
Optimal executive functioning requires:
Judy Atkinson then takes us on a journey about the different forms of listening, how feeling comes before thinking. Thinking is last. I think this is something that most systems and services get very wrong because culturally there is a real terror about ‘feeling,’ a theme which is situated in my research about the kind of relationships that make a real difference for those with relational poverty
Judy, with emotional clarity, tells the room that the oldest living culture carries historic and collective trauma in the form of massacre sites, invasions, the killing times and fields. Indigenous healing practices are our gift of courage and hope to an oppressive world she tells us.
Hope comes through the communal storying, redefining our common humanity. When the unspeakable is spoken and heard, where there are no words, they are simply acted out. (The acting out is then punished I think to myself).
Healing:
Whole community crisis intervention:
We must create culturally safe spaces that allow us to
find and tell our stories, make sense of our stories, name and own our feelings and move through layers and loss
Tomorrow I’m delivering two sessions, one on my research about care experience, school exclusion and belonging and one on the trauma-informed education research insight undertaken in West Yorkshire. Luckily, there are a couple of keynotes I am attending first so I will still have a post for you tomorrow with lots of nuggets!
A gentle start to a week long conference designed to create a somewhat calmer space for 3000 people to register across a Sunday afternoon, opens with a conversation and you know how much I love conversations! I’m going to share the wisdom from the first conversation with you which was facilitated by the very lovely Janise Mitchell of the Australian Childhood Foundation interviewing who I have affectionately come to call The Boys; Jon Baylin and Dan Hughes.
I always love listening to Jon and Dan because they demonstrate the beautiful practice of ‘always learning.’ I get frustrated and also sad in equal measure when people tell me they’ve ‘done trauma’ which unfortunately means that they haven’t even begun to understand the work. I’m going to take a guess that these accomplished men are in their 80’s and they continue to talk about what needs exploring next, shifting the paradigms, unlearning and developing the collective wisdom of all the different lenses we apply to this work across many disciplines.
The ’conversation’ format is informal but even in that context there were many nuggets that I can share with you. There was much exploration about blocked care which refers to the experiences of carers struggling to care for a child who has blocked trust. The acknowledgment being one of compassion which understands is that it is very hard to care for children who don’t want to be cared for. It is vital that this isn’t pathologised as it is when we talk about disorders but rather, that it is noticed and that the child is not lost in this ‘perfect storm.’
Jon talked about the power of being prepared to be moved (I love that so much) and how that has required ‘unlearning’ much of what is taught in some therapy spaces and developing a deep understanding that if we don’t feel ‘it’ we can’t help ‘it’. This sits very closely within my own emerging research findings which highlight the depth a relationship needs to go to in order to have the impact that we so often desire.
Dan went on to provide what could be described of as a model for relational practice; centralise safety, co-regulate and then co-create meaning. This is very much how emotion coaching and restorative practice work. The co-creation of sense making, of developing a language, a narrative, by which to understand something troubling, is a key part of healing. It helps us to share stories.
Janise had opened up this conversation to share the sad passing of Archie Roach this weekend who said that it is the sharing of stories that helps us survive. A child of the Stolen Generations, he was forcibly removed from the age of two years old by the Government and placed in an orphanage. He was a musician and a campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians and I am going to make a point of listening to his song, to his melody, to his ‘tune’, to the journey of healing after experiencing such a violent assault in his childhood along with so many others.
I could write so much more, but for now let me leave you with thoughts of story telling, of song and of being prepared to be moved by sitting alongside that which can often feel too much, overwhelming, even unbearable. It is in these spaces that healing resides…
During a time, not that long ago, way before ‘trauma informed’ fully entered (almost) the mainstream lexicon for schools, services and systems in the UK, I had a dream. Before Brexit, Johnson and the biggest onslaught on our preventative services otherwise known as the ‘the violence of austerity’ (Whyte and Cooper, 2017), I was on a mission. It’s a mission that I am still on which is to be part of the collective energy and pursuit of shifting how we approach distress away from the ‘mad, bad or sad’ narrative to understanding distress for what it is; distress.
Already making my way around the UK to any setting that would listen to me talk about the impact of trauma and adversity, I came across a conference in Melbourne Australia. It was 2015 and I spotted the conference by accident while doing some research for a training event I was delivering. The conference was going to be taking place the following year and as I read through the speakers, I was absolutely desperate to go. I knew that the content was a game changer for my work and would enhance what I could bring into my writing, training and speaking.
Affording the ticket, the flight and the accommodation seemed out of reach so I focused on nothing else for weeks. I made the conference website page my screen saver, created a vision board full of ‘all things Australia’ and simultaneously asked the Universe to send me some money! I kid you not, but unbeknown to me, I had made an overpayment of £1500 on loan repayments 7 years earlier and a cheque for the said amount dropped through my letterbox. I was so excited and took this as a sign that the Australia Childhood Foundation was calling me! It would cover a significant amount of the trip and focusing on nothing else other than getting there paid off.
The conference was, as I predicted, a game-changer. I threw myself into it; networking, extensively using the conference app, sharing widely on social media, attending absolutely everything on offer through jetlag, exhaustion all while feeling a little trauma drenched (a week on trauma is intense). The richness of learning on so many levels was beyond what I could have hoped for. A bi-annual conference, I returned again in 2018 and again. Covid changed just about everything so a live conference in 2020 wasn’t possible and now in 2022, I’m in Melbourne again. This time though, I’m also presenting and sitting on a panel with many incredible women and the speakers I have chosen to listen to are not the big names but rather those who can really push my thinking in different directions.
As always, I want you to join me on this journey so I will post the highlights from every day for you so you can feel like you’re here with me. I know many of you will have read the posts of 2016 and 2018 and have therefore been on this particular bit of my journey with me. Right now, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude that I am here again and that I can share this experience with you as best as I can. May the conference commence!
In this short series of exploring trauma informed ways of being, we are being invited to think about developing what it is that sits behind was has been termed Trauma Informed Practice (TIP).
#1 started us off with sitting in a place of love and curiosity, not fear and judgement
#2 helped us think more about awareness
#3 asked us to think about the dance between reflection and action
Setting the scene in thinking about TIP, each post in this series will remind us what the 6 guiding trauma informed principles are that have been developed by the CDC and SAMSHA. These are:
Safety
Trustworthiness & transparency
Peer support
Collaboration & mutuality
Empowerment & choice
Cultural, historical & gender issues
For #4 I’m going to invite empathy into the room.
What is it? Empathy is often described of as the ability to stand in the shoes of another while trying to imagine what it is they are feeling or experiencing. It involves standing alongside another with compassion and ‘being with’ them wherever they are at. It is not about fixing, controlling, silencing or cajoling and it is not always easy.
We all have tendencies towards behaving in ways that can make empathy a challenge. I for one can be very practical and set about the business of sorting things out. I have definitely improved over the years but the tendency to ‘fix’, having written a long list about what needs to be done, is never far. What about you? What tendencies do you have that need keeping an eye on when you are being called to stand ‘with’ someone in pain?
Empathy is often mistaken for sympathy. Brene Brown’s video helps unpick this.
Here’s the messy stuff. Empathy is not about collusion, having blurred boundaries or preventing someone from benefitting from the learning that is available to them. Empathy is connection in the moment which opens the door for what many refer to as co-regulation, which then leads the way to any difficult conversations that need to be had. I prefer to think of empathy as making a space for deep resonance; that beautiful moment when you both hit the same note at the same moment and have that deep understanding that in that moment, there is no judgement, no fear and no them and us. We are just humans together, doing our best with what we have and where we are.
Why is empathy so crucial in trauma informed ways of being that sit behind trauma informed practice? Because where there has been trauma, there can be behaviours that we can find challenging. Bringing empathy into that sentence would be to change the word behaviours to adaptations. Surviving trauma requires adaptations that support surviving trauma, yet often those adaptations do not work so well when in other situations. Empathy helps us to not take another person’s behaviour/adaptations, personally.
Empathy helps me know where I end and you begin.
As always, these ideas are not exhaustive, rather they are support to stimulate thinking. Why not take the idea of empathy into your team meeting or supervision and discuss what it means to be empathic towards yourself. I often find that those working in the helping professions have a lot of empathy towards others and yet struggle to have empathy towards themselves. Think about why this might be problematic and how better self-empathy can be created. Another reflection might be to think about what gets in the way of empathy towards others. What biases are held that bring judgement to the fore rather than empathy? Does naming it tame it?
*Before any discussion that explores these areas, focus on safety. We will look at creating safety in more detail for #5 in this series. If we don’t feel safe, we can’t explore these things deeply as they require vulnerability.
This journey of understanding supports us in how we can respond better to the legacy of trauma. We are always aiming rather than arriving!
In this short series of exploring trauma informed ways of being, we are being invited to think about developing what it is that sits behind was has been termed Trauma Informed Practice (TIP). #1 started us off with sitting in a place of love and curiosity, not fear and judgement.
Setting the scene in thinking about TIP, each post in this series will remind us what the 6 guiding trauma informed principles are that have been developed by the CDC and SAMSHA. These are:
Safety
Trustworthiness & transparency
Peer support
Collaboration & mutuality
Empowerment & choice
Cultural, historical & gender issues
The #2 area that I am going to look at is awareness. Developing awareness of who we are, what we bring and how we impact others takes decisive action that involves learning the art of ‘noticing’ where we are in the moment. How can we know what we bring if we don’t ever stop to notice who we are?
The research completed by Dr Tasha Eurich (2018) helps us to understand awareness and support a deeper understanding as to where work might need doing in this regard. Can you see yourself in any of the self-awareness archetypes below?
The attraction of mindfulness and yoga really come into their own in developing awareness as they invite us to harness the skill of stopping and in us starting to become aware of (a) the internal chatter, (b) where we are holding tension in our bodies and (c) developing a connection with our breath. In teams that have worked on safety, starting the day or starting a team meeting taking 3 deep breaths will bring deep rewards. But a word of caution, many people have never consciously taken this moment of stillness before so anything that raises awareness of self needs to be gentle and with the caveat of it being done only if it feels safe to that person to do so. This can be modeled by those who do feel safe enough.
Alongside developing self awareness comes an awareness of others too and should enhance curiosity about the ways in which people behave through their adaptations to the experiences that they have had.
What does this look like?
Unawareness looks like:
1. Judgment
2. Defensiveness
3. Arrogance
4. Self as a yardstick for understanding all
5. Neglect
Awareness looks like:
1. Curiosity
2. Compassion
3. Boundaries
4. Perception
5. Self regulation
As always, these are not exhaustive lists, rather they are support to stimulate thinking. Why not take the concept of awareness into your team meeting and discuss what it means to each person, introduce the idea of taking 3 breaths at the beginning of a meeting or invite a Yogi or mindfulness practitioner to come and talk about developing awareness for self-regulation. When you work with trauma every day, this investment in the self, with the space created by the organisational leadership, is an investment in every single person you come into contact with.
*Before any discussion that explores these areas, focus on safety. We will look at creating safety in more detail another time, but if we don’t feel safe, we can’t explore these things deeply as they require vulnerability.
Next time I’ll look at another trauma informed way of being that supports us ‘leaning in’ on this journey of understanding how we can respond better to the legacy of trauma. We are always aiming rather than arriving!
