Trauma Informed

I sat in a session today about people with trauma in their lives and the impact that it has on them.  Trauma mostly defined as emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.  I is amazing to hear how much research is being done on this.

What I realized today is...

That student that seems to make the same mistake over and over- could come from an abusive home and his emotional brain has no space to worry about what we see as important for him right now.

That student that we help and makes great strides and just as he is about to be a success, creates a failure out of everything- could have endured emotional abuse beyond our wildest imagination and only knows feeling like a failure.  He is not ready or not used to success.

That student that is starved for negative attention in class- could be so neglected at home that they hunger for any type of attention.  They learn very quickly that negative attention is easier to get and that they can control when they get it...without even doing it intentionally.

We have so many students that hide a world of pain, a world of trauma that we will never know.  They are doing their best, they are just being human.

Sure, it frustrates us because they are off task.  It is irritating when they are giving little effort or self-sabotaging...but us pushing does not help.  We can't talk them into not being an abused person the same way we can't talk a person with a broken leg to ski down a hill in the snow.  We are asking and expecting the impossible.

Become Trauma Informed!

Be Mindful.

Peace.

Mark Levine

#Mindfulliteracy
@LevineWrites