Informed Consent and Healing from Trauma

A friend called me recently to consult on some support she was providing to a recovery home for women in abusive relationships. The question at hand was how we could support this home, these women and the staff who care for them, in addition to any children involved from a psychological standpoint.

This is a tough question because often humans recently rescued from traumatic situations are stuck mentally and emotionally in survival. While they may be immediately physically safer, their brains are often wired in a perpetual state to haphazardly get their needs met. Before we can do anything else, we have to get their consent. Do they actually want to heal? Are they ready?

How they got into those relationships in the first place isn't usually a case of a few simple mistakes, but rather a fulfillment of a lifetime of trauma, meaning harmful things happening to them that they didn't willingly chose or comprehensively understand. Giving them a chance to freely choose what happens next is a valuable moment of healing, instilling inherent respect for their autonomy.

One of the next barriers to healing is shame. No one feels good about having to be rescued. You're immediately framed as a helpless victim, unempowered as "needy," and even if you recognize your role in how you got there, you're embarrassed by your situation.

If the internal narrative is "I'm bad," most of your moves are going to be to try to prove that you're not bad, rather than humbly learning how to do better. Education about the effects of trauma is a defense against this shame. Understanding that we all respond to life threatening scenarios in ways that help us survive, and that those same survival skills can also eventually prevent us from thriving in non-life-threatening scenarios is imperative to giving ourself the grace to heal. You're not bad, you're just injured. And you don't have to keep operating that way. You can heal.

A final barrier to healing is a lack of education. Knowledge is power. How can a person have knowledge if no one ever gave it to them? Those of us with power need to share it generously. A child who is discipled in mindfulness and embodiment becomes an emotionally regulated, empowered actor as an adult. Traumatized humans need those same skills. Meditation is a form of taking charge of your own mind. It is stewarding what you've been given, rather than floating along as a victim. You can't do it when your life is threatened, but you can the moment you are safe. Embodiment is learning to access all the information you have access to within yourself, instead of giving too much weight to just part of the information. What you know, what you've learned and heard from the outside of yourself is important and good. There is also good information on the inside. Knowledge from your body was good from the beginning, as your body is created by a good God. No one source of information should be considered the complete picture. We have to take a survey of all the sources.

The body has a powerful coping mechanism called "dissociation" that shuts off our conscious access to some information because it is too overwhelming to manage in unsafe situations. In order to reconnect and utilize that information, we have to become embodied, meaning we have to learn how to listen again, to a part of us that's been shut off, potentially for a long time.

1. Ask for consent

2. De-shame

3. Educate

All this to say that there are things we can do to help, but our best bet is to offer these opportunities for free and with no strings attached. Trauma is essentially harm done to us without our consent. Offering informed consent (even for good things!) is a powerful first step to valuing a person and their right to choose whether or not they heal. Then we need to de-shame and educate in order to empower those who want to heal to do so.

Are you in a place where you are ready to heal? You can do it. It's time to start learning.