RESEARCH

Talking trauma talk

Reinvigorating the personal as political

BY DR. CATRINA BROWN, RSW

While those experiencing trauma often feel hopeless, vulnerable and out of control, those who work with trauma feel increasingly desperate as they struggle to find the time and resources they need to do this work within the context of fiscal cutbacks and the emphasis on short term efficiency based practice in social work service provision. Taken in tandem, the reduced welfare state, limited community resources, the intensified focus on bio-medical discourse and the lack of focus on the sociopolitical context of people’s lives produces a decontextualized and depoliticized focus on the individual in trauma work. The “personal is political” foundation of feminist trauma work has been replaced by the mainstreaming of trauma-informed discourse.

While it is encouraging that we are talking about trauma today, the mainstreaming of this talk is also conservatizing. What happened to words like rape, battery, incest, sexual abuse, or violence? Where is the violence, pain, suffering, impact, injustice, exploitation and oppression?

Trauma talk today is too often minimized, sanitized and stripped of particular meaning as seen by the normative use of acronyms – DV (domestic violence), IPV (interpersonal violence), VAW (violence against women), GBV (gender-based violence), TI (trauma-informed), and ACE (adverse childhood experiences). This shorthand talk is arguably a disservice to the importance of these issues. In addition, violence is increasingly framed in the language of being “trauma informed “and “evidence-based” alongside the privileging of the DSM-5 and the biomedical neuroscience framework over the experiences of people (Marecek, & Gavey, 2013). In response to the medicalization of trauma and the growing neuroscience focus, it has been argued that we need a “critical dialogue about this reliance on biological knowledge to promote a social justice framework in mental health services is needed, since it potentially reinforces the privileged status of biology and medical knowledge over social science and women’s own narratives” (Tseris, 2013, p.157).

The dominant bio-medical approach often delegitimizes other forms of knowing or interpretations of people’s struggles, such as those that situate the problems in the context of people’s lives (Lafrance & McKenzie-Mohr, 2013). Despite a growing emphasis on being trauma-informed, there is little, to no, parallel growth of supports, resources or programming for trauma work and mental health services (Author 1, 2, 3, 2020). Not only is there a lack of adequate social services, those funded are often “the wrong kinds of services” (Baines & Waugh, 2019, p. 250). Brief trauma-informed approaches are now emphasized when complex trauma work is often required. Evidence of commitment to dealing with trauma and its effects requires shifts in public policy that support the development and funding of appropriate programming and resources that allow mental healthcare settings time and space for trauma therapy which is often long-term and intensive work (Author, 2020). Trauma-informed discourse encourages practitioners to be aware of trauma without an investment in trauma-based programming or actual traumabased work.

Social work needs to reassert principles of practice, which includes recognizing that the personal is political, making space for double-listening to trauma stories, and emphasizing that trauma work is often difficult and relational. Themes of power, betrayal, self-blame, and stigma are critical components of complex trauma work. Coping strategies are often treated as primary rather than secondary responses to trauma and interpreted as unhelpful or dysfunctional which prevents us from seeing how they are also creative and make sense. “Symptoms” often need to be reframed as “coping skills” and trauma needs to be seen as “a reaction to a kind of wound” rather than a disorder (Burstow, 2003, p.1302). The effects of trauma and violence are then both hidden and potentially revealed in the coping strategies themselves. As practitioners, we have too often pathologized the very behaviors that have helped people to survive (Burstow, 2003).

“Trauma-informed” work is presented today as an innovation, invisibilizing the historical work of the women’s movement. Feminist ground breakers understood violence against women as political and developed feminist practice consistent with feminist politics.

Therefore, issues of power and social context were central to both theory and practice. Beginning in the mid 1970’s, the women’s movement worked to shift violence from the private to the public sphere, creating an impact on policy and law, while broadly communicating how common violence is toward women and children in patriarchal society, and how significantly violence impacts upon their lives (Brownmiller, 1975; Pizzey, 1974). The “personal is political” approach adopted situated women’s experiences in the context of society, seeking to make sense of rather than pathologize their responses to trauma and violence. The critical clinical strategies developed by the women’s movement in the 1980’s and 1990’s (i.e., Bass & Davis, 1988; Brown, L., 1992; Burstow, 1992; Courtoise, 1988; Herman 1981, 1992, Russell, 1986) are not incorporated, and trauma-based therapy has not generally been advanced beyond earlier feminist approaches. People still find themselves struggling to tell their stories as talking about trauma is often dangerous, especially as the frameworks available often fail to represent their experiences. (Author 1, 2013, 2018).

Herman (1992) has been an influential and incisive voice on feminist trauma work stating: “[t]raumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptions to life,” reminding us that trauma often involve “threats to life or bodily integrity,” and can be “close personal encounters with violence or death.” Through her work she highlights experiences of powerlessness and lack of control as central features of psychological trauma. While trauma experiences are broad based, it is important not to minimize that the high levels of trauma experienced by women, such as child abuse and sexual violence, and the impact of these experiences on women’s mental health. Traumatic experiences of powerlessness, helplessness, lack of control, domination, exploitation, and violation alongside relational injury associated with traumatic violence requires a strong therapeutic alliance. A strong alliance helps to facilitate the development of “reconnection” and collaboration in a context of emotional and physical safety and control (Herman, 2015).

A history of trauma and violence is often reflected in people’s negative stories about themselves. The dangers of speaking in a culture in which violence against women and children often continues to be normalized and minimized needs to be recognized in trauma work. It is no surprise then that telling trauma stories often involves significant uncertainty, minimization and self-blame alongside apparent contradiction and gaps (Author 1, 2013). As such we need to pay close attention to how people tell their trauma stories by “listening beyond the words” (DeVault,1990). Double-listening opens possibilities for telling the trauma story, and allows us to see that coping strategies are often entry points to trauma stories. It creates opportunities to uncover the skills and knowledges embedded within responses that helped strengthen coping and resistance to traumatic experiences.

DR. CATRINA BROWN, RSW, is a private practitioner psychotherapist, and a professor at Dalhousie University. She is graduate coordinator at the Dalhousie School of Social Work, cross-appointed at to the School of Nursing, and to the Gender and Women’s Studies program. Her teaching, writing and research focus on women’s health and mental health issues. Dr. Brown’s extensive contributions to the social work profession include co-authorship of a research report published by the NSCSW in 2021: Repositioning Social Work Practice in MentalHealth in Nova Scotia.

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