“Hear me, don’t hurt me”: Survivors teach powerful lessons in trauma and transformation

CrossCurrents

 

By Lesley Young

Two of Tom Regehr’s best memories during his struggle with alcohol addiction are heart-rending, singular moments of trauma-informed care. Of course, living on the streets of downtown Toronto, the 30-something Regehr had no way of knowing that at the time. It was long after recovery, during therapy for his own childhood and adult acute traumas, that he came to understand why those experiences ultimately changed his life.

He can’t recount them without choking up. The first came from a friend, Josie, who ran into him after he’d been homeless for years and offered him an apartment in her house for three months in exchange for work around the yard. “While I was there I had a chance to see how much my life sucked,” says Regehr. His drinking had destroyed a successful landscaping career he’d built in his 20s, a time when he had managed to keep his nightly drinking and drug binges from interfering with his in-demand design skills, although he was bouncing from sofa to sofa.

“One day she knocked on the door and there was something in her hand. I knew I wasn’t looking very good. She said, ‘Tom, I need you to fix the garage, because next month I need you to work on the fence. By the way, here are some mashed potatoes.’ Well, I squared up my shoulders. Everything I needed was there. She used plain talk. She mentioned a positive future. And the mashed potatoes said I care about you. That was my turning point.” That was a quiet but profound event that reflected many of the qualities of trauma-informed care.

Regehr would face an uphill battle yet, however. As he puts it, “I was angry, volatile and antisocial.” But he was also determined. He managed to hold onto accommodations, despite the fact that he couldn’t quit drinking. The second memory that rocked his world came from a Region of Peel helpline worker, who put him in touch with an addiction agency. “She was kind. She had a gentle tone. At the end of the call, she said, ‘Tom, you can call back for the number any time.’ Fifteen years later it still makes me cry. She was present enough to know I might not have a pen because I was in a pickle.”

Regehr says these memories affected him deeply because they are shining examples of how to interact with mental health and addiction clients in ways that are sensitive to preventing further trauma. He adds that he was lucky to eventually find a therapist who provided trauma-informed care, which ultimately led to healing, 13 years after quitting alcohol.

Today, after founding CAST (Come and Sit Together) Canada in 2000, which has evolved from a support group into an education forum that includes panels and speaking engagements, 51-year-old Regehr is determined “to change the world.” He recently created a trauma-informed care initiative, which will launch with a conference in London, Ontario, in June. The goal is to raise awareness among front-line workers and other professionals. He says these people are unprepared by life to deal with trauma issues, personally or in a helping role, and are under-prepared by post-secondary education institutions and largely under-supported in the workplace.

Regehr knows this to be true not just because of his own experience. Over time – after 60 or so CAST Canada panels – he discovered through the passionate questioning of audience members that front­line professionals were looking for detailed insights into his treatment experience in order to learn how they could do a better job with their clients who may have trauma issues. Regehr and other addiction and mental health clients who have participated in CAST Canada panels, have been sharing their insights and experiences to give these helping professionals first-hand tips for what a trauma-informed systems looks like.

Regehr could explain how his trauma therapist gauged his individual potential and determined he would respond well to having more control. At his third session, she sent him away with homework, to read books such as Judith Herman’s pivotal Trauma and Recovery. The insights in those books gave Regehr affirmation regarding his own personal traumas, but equally important, they empowered him.

“[My therapist] enabled me in her demeanor and in her basic language to normalize large-scale emotions,” he adds. Regehr points out how, for more than a year, he screamed and whaled in his sessions, and how his therapist never once “acted OK with it. She was OK with it.” In order to feel confident, comfortable and respectful of trauma-related stress and loss emotions – essentially, to be present for clients – Regehr suggests that front-line workers develop boundaries. “Time and time again, I hear – and you don’t get better evidence-based information that this – consumers feel strongly that when helping professionals did a good job of setting their own boundaries, they felt safe with their own emotions.” And the best way to truly honour emotions within boundaries, suggests Regehr, is to think of them as real, whether they make sense or not, recognizing the power the emo­tion has over clients, and giving them hope that they can live with them.

Trauma-informed care involves a fine balance between control and coercion, the latter of which can be retraumatizing, says Regehr. “I feel strongly that there is a time and a place for the helping professional to take direct control over small decisions for the individual,” he says. Similarly, he suggests some clients need firm, plain speak, as opposed to coddling, which is misdirected kindness. For example, “we need to be told, ‘Go take a bath.’”

One of the most compelling insights driving Regehr’s trauma-informed care initiative is learning from members of the consumer panels that for almost all of them, the most helpful professional was someone who was trauma aware and trauma informed, but not actually doing trauma work. “That just goes to show you that how people are treated is what brings them to a point where they are actually able to heal.”

Regehr’s moving memories from his own experience are examples of another finding from his panels. “Patients who think back to their most helpful moment from a helping professional say, in almost 100 per cent of cases, that they were short interventions, short conversations with absolutely clarity,” he says. “Real trauma work doesn’t mean excavation. You can be a person who helps change lives simply with the right demeanour and future-forward language. And you can do that without being afraid.”

For more information about CAST’s trauma-informed care initiative, visit www.cast-canada.ca

 

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