Unburdened by false humility, postmodern trauma activists claim to have understood for the first time what drives all of human suffering
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Trauma DispatchTrauma news you can't get anywhere else. |
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CATEGORY: GOVERNMENT PROJECTS Megan Carson, First 5 Mendocino Commission Source: National Association of Counties Read time: 1.9 minutes This Happened First 5 Mendocino Commission brought together 42 agencies that support children’s wellbeing for its annual State of the Child summit in March. Speakers stressed that it is possible for children who encountered adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to grow beyond those experiences. Who Did This? First 5 Mendocino is a government agency that falls under the California Children and Families Commission, also known as First 5 California. It is one of 58 county commissions funded by a California state proposition tax. The board that runs First 5 Mendocino is appointed by elected officials. Their charge is to create, support, or promote programs in the community focused on healthy child development in the first five years of life. The operationalization of that mission is an overarching metric of equity [1]. They emphasize that oppression, including institutional racism, creates intergenerational trauma. First 5 embraces the ACEs and toxic stress narratives which claim that “the events of childhood shape a person’s biology, personality, dreams, and aspirations: their entire trajectory of life” [1]. Their stance is that “very few families have the support they need” and it is the government’s job to provide them (pages 12-14). The Premise The premise of the summit was to shift participants’ focus to resilience. For the past two decades, the trauma advocacy movement was fixated on promoting the theory of brain damage caused by trauma. Megan Carson, Community Outreach Leader, said, “What we also started to realize was that people were getting hung up on that and losing hope.” The adjacent graphic shows the tree analogy, a fixture of the ACEs and toxic stress narratives, which displays an extraordinary assortment of societal stressors that presumably damage children’s brains and physical health [1]. Speakers included Tina Payne Bryson, social worker, director of a play therapy institute and book author who claims her works deploys the latest neurobiology research on the power of relationships to shape brain architecture and mold personalities. Georgie Wisen-Vincent, marriage and family counselor, co-author with Bryson, and director of the play therapy institute, advocates using play to process traumas. MaryCatherine McDonald, PhD, has been skeptical of using ACE scores to predict individual outcomes, and wrote a book that reframes trauma responses as the body’s natural adaptive responses rather than the breakage of fragile humans. Analysis Many within the sprawling movements of ACEs, toxic stress, and trauma-informed approaches have realized that they have a bit of a messaging problem. While their message that trauma damages the brain has been an eye-popping success at gaining adherents, the acceptance of this belief system ultimately can be a downer. It is ironic that movements that were born from marketing rhetoric find themselves hamstrung by their message. As a result, there has been a slew of branding by many groups to highlight resilience. Agencies [2], projects [3], bills [4], and a documentary [5] have incorporated resilience into their titles. Oprah Winfrey and her frequent guest, child psychologist Bruce Perry, have staked one of the most extreme positions that a nurturing relationship in the first two months of life represents a nearly irreversible period for neural development [6]. The science of resilience, however, is as misguided as the science of the trauma narrative that it supersedes. Both are based on the claim that humans are highly malleable and life experiences can mold nearly every aspect of character and predict human flourishing. While the virtue of providing good care for young children is not disputed, the claim that parenting practices can shape the architecture of brains and impact adult physical illnesses is unproven and disputed by empirical research [7]. REFERENCES [1] 2021-2026 Strategic Plan. First 5 Mendocino Commission. https://first5mendocino.org/first5-flipbook/PDF.pdf [2] Doña Ana County Resilience Leaders (New Mexico); UCLA-UCSF ACEs Aware Family Resilience Network; Hawaii Governor’s Office of Wellness and Resilience; Idaho Resilience Project [3] Healthier Together Initiative Growing Resilience in Teens (GRIT) Grant Program (Philadelphia); North Carolina Center for Resilience & Learning; Community Resilience Initiative (Washington state); MassBay Community College, Institute for Trauma, Adversity, and Resilience in Higher Education [4] Resilience, Investment, Support, and Expansion from Trauma Act, federal H.R. 4541 bill [5] Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope (2016). James Redford and Karen Pritzker (producers). KJPR Films. [6] Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. & Oprah Winfrey (2021) What Happened To You? Conversations On Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. New York: Flatiron Books [7] Judith Rich Harris (1998), The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. New York: Free Press Scheeringa MS (2018). They’ll Never Be The Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth. Las Vegas: Central Recovery Press. ISBN 978-1942094616 Like Trauma Dispatch? You can subscribe to our email notices of new posts on this page. Comments are closed.
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