The COVID 19 experience influences behavior and triggers responses just like any other traumatic event would, just with more breadth and intensity. What this extreme, pandemic, experience allows us, is an opportunity to see very clearly how trauma-informed work is relevant and necessary. This pandemic offers a unique opportunity as a researcher to be able to critically assess how the impact and response is differential across lines of culture, class and race. Responses and reactions to COVID 19 serve as a demonstration for the need to create and facilitate trauma informed practice from the lens of inclusion and diversity. I am seeing trauma in so many spaces and with that, the complexity of this trauma. Specifically, how trauma touches people in different ways, all of which deserves attention. I am reminded of my research on both trauma informed practice and inclusion.  I see so clearly the opportunity to positively disrupt spaces that do not give voice to the experiences of groups who have been scapegoated, the undocumented people, the working class people who cannot afford to “shelter-in-place” and the families who depend on the stability, structure and food delivered by school systems across the country. I also see how one can to work from a traditional trauma informed lens and still exclude those who are most vulnerable.

I am reminded of the intentional mindfulness needed in order to operate from the place of trauma informed inclusion and diversity in order to honor the diverse outlooks and experiences that people have in this real-life example. Some of the questions I am reflecting on are; how are we entering this experience? Are we examining our own personal positionalities and experiences, along with critically examining the pandemic’s disparate impact on families and local communities? As a single, working mom with two school age kids my needs are pulled in different directions but my lens is not myopic and so I strive to be in a space of both gratitude and collectively vulnerability.  I strive to wake up in a space of gratitude every day and with the goal of disrupting at least one space that is silent to the experiences of others who are vulnerable. I am helping my clients, students, friends and colleagues see the intersection of trauma, diversity, and inclusion because we are living it. For many, this pandemic has disrupted and challenged the view of the world. For some, it is a reminder of the daily challenges of living in fear and the everyday occurrences of traumatic experiences shaped by social structures. I have had organizations ask how to incorporate diversity and inclusion into this space. My response is widening the lens and adopting a trauma informed ideology of inclusion that positively disrupts spaces that exclude the most vulnerable.

Many carry scars of marginalization and discrimination based on race, class and culture. This is not true for my community of white friends, including my mom, who do not live with such everyday distress. Living with trauma of survival is normalized for communities of color.  For many white folks, this pandemic engages with fear and uncertainty in a way that is so new and so frightening and this anxiety of survival manifests in different ways. I look at the behavior of the stockpiling of toilet paper, an item whose availability and use are in no way changed by the pandemic or its symptoms.  Can the emotional toil of this pandemic be a starting point for white individuals and communities to see a glimpse of how racism is experienced by people of color?

Trauma is very much connected to the individual who experiences a sense of emotional risk or constant stress or inability to navigate the world. The psychological experience of the traumatized individual becomes paramount, yet not all are treated with the same kid gloves. When trauma of this nature impacts the dominant culture, the response is different. The psychological experience of the individual becomes paramount, depending on the positionality of the individual, as does the classification of the event as traumatic. In the COVID-19 case, as in all-natural disasters, there is a consensually agreed upon criteria. Outside of the state of an emergency the traumas of racism and classism do not have a consensually agreed upon criteria and are not recognized as traumas.

Please click the title below to join us on Thursday, June 25th, 2020 for our webinar on;

COVID-19: The Intersections of Trauma, Social Justice and Compassion