What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

This chapter examines the kinds of biases present in our brains, how these biases function at a biological level, and how they permeate the social systems and institutions around us. The authors emphasize the need for a trauma-informed approach, at both individual and societal levels.

Perry explains how trauma permeates all aspects of the human experience: From generations, families, communities, cultures, and whole societies and their institutions, to individual biology, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behavior. Because of the pervasiveness of trauma and its effects, a trauma-informed approach in personal interaction and public and social systems and institutions becomes of vital importance. Perry explains “trauma-informed” to mean approaching people with the awareness that what happened to them is important, and to respond to them accordingly from this awareness. The latter is particularly important, as acting accordingly means thinking about how society can create opportunities for healing from trauma. It also means recognizing and working on intrinsic biases; marginalization is a fundamental trauma, and a trauma-informed society is, at its core, an anti-racist society.

The need for a trauma-informed approach is illustrated through an example of a child’s school experience; owing to their experiences, this child may not have been able to attain skills that are developmentally “typical” for their age. A 10-year-old may only have the social maturity of a six-year-old, or a related academic comprehension of a seven-year-old. When this child fails to meet the expectations placed upon him to “act his age,” the question of what is wrong with him, rather than what happened to him, will result in labels such as “dumb” or “difficult.” Over time, the child may internalize these external labels, coming to unfairly view himself in this way and believe himself incapable of better. Winfrey also points out that even outrightly disruptive behavior, such as a violent outburst, is possibly the result of trauma—a reaction caused by an association that the child is unaware of, as in Samuel’s case when he was reacting to the scent of Old Spice. A trauma-informed approach allows one to see that these outbursts are not random, and act to unearth what happened to the child. In addition to not asking these questions, school spaces are further prohibitive of natural regulation, such as dissociation (in the form of daydreaming in class) or rhythm (fidgeting, for instance, or even activities like sport or dance, which are given far less importance than mainstream academics). When an already dysregulated child does not thrive in such an environment, they are sent to a mental health service which may not do much more for them. Spaces without trauma training often end up mislabeling and overmedicating such individuals.

Perry suggests that an ideal mental health service space would begin with a thorough history and assessment of what has happened to the child. They would also embrace the possibility of multiple methods and approaches, understanding that one cannot adopt a “one size fits all” approach in trauma care. Thus, they would have multiple tools at their disposal, from occupational, physical, and speech therapy to appropriate psychoeducation, regular liaisons with the child’s school, and a range of techniques to be employed as needed. However, Perry asserts that access to several caring, involved people is a far better predictor of an individual’s mental health and recovery than access to a therapist alone. This idea was understood and practiced in Indigenous societies; ancestral wisdom propounded the importance of connectedness and the toxicity of exclusion, whereas the modern world seems to favor disconnection.

A huge barrier to community building in the modern world is, according to Perry, the presence of implicit bias. The brain functions in such a way as to constantly monitor one’s internal and external world to identify threat and ensure safety. Furthermore, since the only predators that humans have had to fear for a long time was other humans themselves, the brain has adapted to feel safest with those that are like the “clan” one was surrounded by in childhood and feel threatened by those who are dissimilar. Growing up in a fragmented and isolated world that does not offer much by way of diversity in human interaction can, thus, cause implicit bias, leading one to unconsciously feel threatened by those who are different than oneself. Furthermore, it is not one’s beliefs and values alone that drive behavior; these are located in the cortex, whereas, as explained earlier, in moments of stress it is the lower brain that tends to react. Associations formed earlier in life are stored in the lower brain, and in this manner, implicit biases can form and drive behavior.

Perry differentiates between racism and implicit bias by explaining that the latter is an unconsciously held association and is often unintentional, whereas racism represents a very clearly articulated and held set of beliefs present in the cortex cutting through one’s whole brain and behavior. However, even deeply held racist beliefs can be changed due to the malleability of the cortex. Winfrey offers a story to illustrate this: a Black man named Anthony Ray Hinton, who had been placed on death row for a crime he did not commit, befriended his fellow death row inmates over time. Though they could not see each other, separated by the walls of their cells, they began to converse and exchange stories, striking up strong friendships. Anthony eventually discovered that one of the men was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, committed for hanging a Black boy to death. Rather than shun him, Anthony continued to maintain a relationship with him, an act that completely changed the latter’s racist beliefs over time. The man’s last words were that his parents had taught him wrong about Black people being the enemy, and that he believed he had come to death row to learn what love was.

Perry reiterates that, with implicit bias, unlike racism, the challenge lies in first recognizing that one carries these biases; only then will one be able to anticipate when these biases arise. Following this, one must have courage to interact with different people to create new associations and experiences that help break down these biases. Perry hopes that, in teaching about trauma and connectedness, things will eventually change for the better at both an individual and societal level.