Everyone is traumatized. It’s not just survivors of abuse or violence who experience trauma. Perhaps you witnessed a bad car accident on the way home from vacation. Possibly you or someone you care about recently experienced a sudden job loss. Maybe an unexpected turn of events stirred up a painful memory. Face it, any significant change in our normal routines ignites an immediate need to adapt and employ a coping strategy.
When we measure performance, whether in interpersonal, team, or organizational settings, we often assume purely normal circumstances support the platform upon which our actions are built. In most cases, however, the platform has a rickety infrastructure weakened by whatever current and past events are disrupting the norm. Those who dance effectively upon a shaky foundation are not trauma-free. They simply have acknowledged their challenges and factored them into the equation of their coping plans.
Practice trauma-informed care. There’s always a story behind the story. Effective teams, like effective relationships, honor the background context as intelligence about how to move forward. Empathy is the currency of understanding.
