What’s Trauma-Informed Care?
Understanding Trauma-Informed Care (TIC)
Trauma-Informed Care provides the foundation and environment that supports healing. Trauma-Informed Care refers to a broad, organization-wide approach. It is about how systems such as clinics, schools, or community services create policies, environments, and cultures that are sensitive to the impacts of trauma. This involves considering:
How safe and welcoming the physical space feels
How staff are trained, supported, and supervised
Whether policies respect autonomy, boundaries, and cultural needs
How leadership models and reinforces trauma-informed values
In other words, Trauma-Informed Care focuses on structures. It addresses the systems, spaces, and policies that influence everyone who interacts with the service.
Understanding Trauma-Informed Practice (TIP)
Trauma-Informed Practice is how that environment comes to life through the way people are treated, supported, and engaged. Trauma-Informed Practice focuses on how individuals such as therapists, social workers, teachers, or healthcare providers interact with others in ways that are trauma-aware, compassionate, and empowering. Trauma-Informed Practice includes:
How professionals listen, validate, and respond
How choices are offered and power struggles are avoided
How coping strategies are acknowledged and respected, even when they appear “messy”
How relationships are built based on trust, collaboration, and mutual respect
Where Trauma-Informed Care creates the conditions for healing, Trauma-Informed Practice carries those values into real-time human interactions.
My Approach to Trauma-Informed Practice
Trauma-Informed Practice is at the foundation of my work. This approach recognizes that trauma is both common and highly individual, and that its effects can be emotional, physical, cognitive, behavioural, and relational.
Rather than asking "What is wrong with you?", I approach each person with curiosity and compassion through questions such as "What has happened to you?" and "What has helped you survive?"
This lens is not a technique or checklist; it shapes how I build collaborative, empowering relationships. Whether or not trauma is named directly, I recognize that many individuals have experienced histories of invalidation, rejection, or adaptation within systems that were not designed for them.
The Principles That Guide My Practice
The following principles guide every aspect of my therapeutic work:
Safety
I prioritize physical, emotional, sensory, and cultural safety. Therapy is a space where masking, overexplaining, and performing are not required.
Trust and Transparency
I strive to be consistent, clear, and honest. Clients are invited into collaboration and are provided with information about processes to ensure clarity and predictability.
Choice, Control, and Collaboration
Clients are seen as experts on their own experiences. Therapy supports autonomy through offering choices around goals, pacing, communication styles, and session structure.
Empowerment and Strengths-Focused Care
Coping strategies are viewed as creative adaptations rather than flaws. Resilience is acknowledged and new skills are supported when individuals feel ready.
Cultural, Historical, and Gender Humility
Trauma is understood within the broader context of systemic oppression, including racism, colonization, ableism, and cissexism. My practice emphasizes critical self-reflection, cultural responsiveness, and humility rather than assumptions.
Universal Application
No disclosure of trauma is required to receive trauma-informed care. I work from the understanding that many individuals carry histories that are unseen or unspoken.
Understanding Trauma
According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), trauma is an experience that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope and can have lasting emotional and physical effects. Trauma is shaped by subjective experience, cultural background, developmental stage, and access to resources.
Examples of trauma may include:
Childhood abuse or neglect
Medical trauma, injury, or serious illness
Systemic oppression (for example, racism, homophobia, transphobia)
Rejection, bullying, or abandonment
Cultural or intergenerational trauma
Experiences of institutionalization or psychiatric hospitalization
Intimate partner violence or betrayal of trust
Trauma may affect:
The body: chronic fatigue, sleep challenges, digestive issues, chronic pain
Emotions: shame, fear, emotional numbness, grief
Thinking: intrusive thoughts, rigid beliefs about safety, difficulties with decision-making
Behaviour: avoidance, impulsivity, shutdown, struggles with control
Relationships: difficulty with boundaries, mistrust, fear of intimacy or connection
Learning and Functioning: challenges with memory, organization, or executive functioning
I work with care, flexibility, and cultural humility to acknowledge that trauma often reveals itself in subtle, relational, and layered ways.
What Trauma-Informed Care Looks Like in Our Work Together
In our work together, trauma-informed care may include:
Offering choices around pacing, session format, and areas of focus, especially during emotionally challenging conversations
Inviting regular feedback and collaboratively building comfort and safety plans that are trauma-informed, sensory-aware, and executive functioning-friendly
Naming and validating protective patterns such as dissociation, fawning, perfectionism, or people-pleasing, without judgment
Respecting the pace at which trauma is explored, with options to focus on resourcing and stabilization first
Supporting emotional regulation using grounding, co-regulation, and compassion-based skills before, during, and after vulnerable moments
Actively addressing power dynamics by checking for impact, reflecting on practice, and naming moments of disconnection if they arise
Honouring executive functioning fluctuations, fatigue, and energy changes without pathologizing them
Engaging in ongoing supervision, consultation, and self-care to protect therapeutic presence and sustainability
Trauma-Informed Practice is a living, evolving commitment. It requires continuous learning, unlearning, and reflection. I engage regularly in professional supervision, consultation, and additional training to deepen my understanding and presence in this work. Healing is seen as relational, non-linear, and deeply individual.
As part of my professional development and continuing competence, I am currently completing ECHO Ontario’s Psychotherapy: Developmental Trauma and Resilience curriculum and certification in Trauma-Informed Care through the Trauma-Informed Practice Institute, with anticipated completion on May 25, 2025.
This training enhances my ability to support individuals impacted by trauma, including an emphasis on how trauma is experienced emotionally, physically, and relationally.
To learn more about trauma and trauma-informed approaches, visit the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website or download their free trauma-informed practice resource (see below).