Trauma-Informed Care

The Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences

In 1995, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente began what would become a landmark study on the health effects of adverse childhood experiences, often referred to as "The ACE Study." Over the course of two years, researchers collected detailed medical information from 17,000 patients at Kaiser's Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego.

In addition to personal and family medical history, participants were asked about childhood experiences of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction -- including emotional and physical neglect, sexual and physical abuse, exposure to violence in the household, and household members who had substance abuse problems or had been in prison.

Researchers found that the presence of these negative experiences in childhood was predictive of lifelong problems with health and well-being. The more negative experiences a participant had, the more likely -- and numerous -- these problems became. Almost two-thirds of participants had endured at least one adverse childhood experience, and more than 1 in 5 respondents had endured three or more.

Our Approach to Trauma Recovery

The notion of trauma-informed care is an umbrella term which describes the overarching principles regarding trauma recovery. Trauma-informed therapy utilizes psychoeducation to help clients understand the roots of their behavior by explaining trauma's effects on the brain and emotional regulation.

Therapists also help clients learn and understand the real importance of basic self-care, emotional regulation techniques such as deep breathing, mindfulness techniques and visualization, and that a focus on wellness including states of calm and joy on a daily basis is the best way to stabilize the repetitive trauma arousal response of the nervous system.

Structural Dissociation techniques of "Mapping" and "Parts Work" also help to orient the clients to their symptoms in a new way that helps to lower arousal and increase states of calm. Once clients are emotionally stabilized, the work of healing the underlying trauma begins using a variety of specific trauma-focused approaches such as EMDR, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and sensory-motor and somatic therapies.

Safety is a key concept in trauma work -- helping clients avoid overwhelm, orient to the here and now using mindfulness techniques, and always giving power, choice, and control in the process.

Learn More About Trauma

We recommend these videos to help you understand how trauma affects the brain and body:

• How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime - Dr. Nadine Burke Harris explains how repeated stress of abuse and neglect has real effects on brain development (TED Talk)
• How Trauma Affects the Nervous System: A Polyvagal Perspective - An overview of how trauma and chronic stress affects our nervous system, based on Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory